[85] Refocusing and Getting Things Done in Less Time
This is Bootstrapped Web episode number 85. This is the podcast for you, the founder who learns by doing as you grow your business online. I am Jordan Gahl.
Brian Casel:And I'm Brian Castle. Good to be back, Jordan.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. We're back. I missed this podcast, man. I wanna do this every week.
Brian Casel:I know.
Jordan Gal:Cool. Well, I I blame you. It's totally your fault.
Brian Casel:Yep. I'll I'll take that. It is it is definitely my fault. I've been traveling on, like, a nonstop back to back, travel schedule over the last month or so. But now I'm kinda setting up shop here in Asheville, North Carolina.
Brian Casel:We just arrived a couple days ago and I'll be here for a little bit more than the next two months. So through the month of November, I'll be here in in, Asheville, North Carolina. I'm not sure if there are any any listeners around this part of the country but if there are, definitely reach out to me and we can, you know, go grab a beer or something.
Jordan Gal:Nice. So you are officially on the road. You have no you have no home.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That's what I keep telling You my know, it it's it's like so weird. It's like we're homeless. We don't have a home now.
Jordan Gal:Strange how nowadays, that is actually a mark of success.
Brian Casel:Right.
Jordan Gal:Like, I am It's free. I am homeless. I have no permanent home. Therefore, I'm like, people are envious of my situation. Very very strange thing.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It is it is kind of a strange thing, especially, like, as I talk about it with certain people, you know, and we definitely got well into this, in our episode with Brecht a couple of weeks ago. But, you know, you talk to people who are not doing the entrepreneurial thing, not doing the online business thing. And, you know, some people are kind of excited, but they're but they're not quite getting it or they're not quite on board with the whole idea. But then, you know, last week I was at Brennan Dunn's conference and telling a lot of people about our plans to travel and how last week was basically the start of our travel.
Brian Casel:And everyone in that world is like, oh, that's awesome. Want to Right. Been talking about doing that for years, you know.
Jordan Gal:Right. That's the goal. Yeah. Because once you get a glimpse of the freedom that working fully online gives you, then you start to, you know, you start to realize you're you're untethered geographically also, and then you kinda feel silly just staying in the same place for forever.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That's exactly how we felt. And and, you know, my my wife felt that way too. I mean, she it was actually largely her idea. I mean we've both been talking about it for years but you know now that she stopped working she's kinda home every day.
Brian Casel:It's like let's have some adventure and we both love to travel and go new places so it's cool.
Jordan Gal:Yes! I think there's a theme there because you and I talk about this and it sounds like our decision and like we get the credit for it. The truth is a cool wife is a requirement if you are married and you have a kid too. I had a one year old when we left. Yeah, that, it's not gonna work out unless your wife is cool with it and wants to do it also.
Jordan Gal:It obviously makes it much more of an adventure. I think it's awesome to do with kids because it adds this element of like a family unit adventure. Like it's awesome to go on your own. It's awesome to go with a partner. And then with the family, it's this really cool dynamic.
Jordan Gal:You kinda get to show your kid the world, which is such a dream in itself.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Totally. And and, you know, I was thinking about this the other day. It's not like it's not like we're super adventurous and it's not like every single day we're running around, you know, checking out sites and doing all these different things and doing the nightlife and all that. My wife and I for years, even before our one year old daughter was born, we've always been very much like homebodies, you know, and you know staying home most of the week watching Netflix and just kind of hanging out and she and I will go out to dinner and we enjoy that but we're kind of homebodies and this trip is actually almost almost designed around that too like we we just checked out a cool place in Asheville, North Carolina.
Brian Casel:We'll be we've got this really awesome house, you know, up in the mountains and it's it's kind of like allowing us to live our our regular homebody life but in a in a different location a couple of months, you know, at a time. So it's it's kinda cool.
Jordan Gal:Cool. So look. Why don't we why don't we touch on the the conference you just came back from? You're you're a conference. You're a speaker now.
Jordan Gal:You're on the speaker circuit.
Brian Casel:Yes. Actually, speaking of conferences, before I get into double your freelancing conference that I was just at last week, I want to mention, Big Snow Tiny Conf, which I mentioned, I think, on the last episode. So so Big Snow Tiny Conf this year actually has two trips, east and west. The Vermont trip is in the East, and the Colorado trip is out west. And those are actually now on sale.
Brian Casel:So, you know, we're recording this what's today? The twenty fifth or twenty fourth? Yeah, twenty fifth. Both trips are now on sale. There are as as we're recording, I don't know what what it'll be like in the next couple days, but but as of right now, there are only three spots remaining for the Vermont trip.
Brian Casel:So hopefully, if if there's one or two left, can hop on that. I believe there's a handful of spots still open for the Colorado trip, so you can check those out. The Vermont trip is at bigsnowtinycomp.com, and the Western and out West, the Colorado trip is bigsnowtinyconfwest.com. And even if you're not interested for this year, you can get on, either of those mailing lists and find out about about next year's trip. But, yeah, hopefully, you can join us.
Jordan Gal:Cool. Let's do it now. That's that's con conference one. Like, last episode last episode, we did the MicroConf Europe wrap up. And and, Brennan, this is the first time Brennan has done this.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:Right? How was it? What was the
Brian Casel:It was cool.
Jordan Gal:The theme?
Brian Casel:Yeah, it was really great. It was out in Norfolk, Virginia, which I've never visited there before, that was kind of cool to check out the city. Didn't have a whole lot of time there. We were kind of just came in for the conference and left but, it was great. It was, you know, double your freelancing conference.
Brian Casel:The focus is for freelancers and consultants, and definitely a big focus on sales and marketing. So not like not very technical, and that sort of thing. It definitely had a microconf type of vibe to it. And obviously, you know, Brennan comes from that world, I think. So, and there are a lot of familiar faces, you know, lot of kind of overlap in the attendees and the speakers between the two conferences.
Brian Casel:But there's definitely a freelancer consultant bent to the W freelancing conference. A lot of great speakers. I met a lot of people and caught up with other people who I've, you know, friends with for a while. Just a couple that kind of stuck out to me. I really like Alan Branch's talk.
Brian Casel:He talked about hiring and kind of growing the team. James Clear had had a really great talk. He opened the conference, you know, talking about productivity and it was great to meet him in person for the first time. Nathan Barry gave a good talk. You know, there there are a lot of really great speakers.
Brian Casel:Kurt Elster and his wife actually both spoke which was in, you know, had two separate speaking, two separate talks and they were really they're both really great. Kurt Elster had a real was talking about some pretty cool automation stuff that he does with as he gets inbound leads, he somehow connected up his, like, Gmail inbox with Drip. So that it's like these auto automated responses go out to to leads to kind of help qualify them before they even reach a point where they can book a consultation call with him. And it was, you know, some pretty crazy, automation stuff going on there. It's pretty cool.
Jordan Gal:Nice. And and Julie, who who I know also, right, she runs Just Tell Julie. Is is that what she what she was talking about?
Brian Casel:Yep. She was talking about, what she does with Just Tell Julie, which is basically like a collections a payment collection service.
Jordan Gal:Right. But, like, with with a modern bent, like, with what you would what you would expect. Like, if you want someone to call look. The word collection agency has bad connotations of people, like, hounding you for money, but it's a different thing. If if you're a consultant, you built a website for someone for $3,000 and they paid you 1,500 up front, they owe you another 1,500, you treat that very differently than the phone company treats if someone doesn't pay the bill.
Jordan Gal:And so it's a great idea.
Brian Casel:She gave a really great talk and some some actual, tips and advice for for getting paid on time and advice when it comes to invoicing and presenting yourself professionally and that sort of thing. And she also shared some pretty crazy stories from some of her clients. I mean, people there are some guys who like hire her because they have outstanding invoices that are over a year old. And it's like, wow, you haven't been paid on this for over a year.
Jordan Gal:You know? I mean, that happens. Yep. I saw some slides that she did, I think maybe on Facebook or Twitter, and my favorite thing that I saw of hers was something to the effect of there's this fancy app that you can use to collect money and it's called the phone.
Brian Casel:Right.
Jordan Gal:Right? Something like that. Like like the hottest app for, you know, for getting paid is the phone. Yeah. And and I I love that because I I think the phone is just so underutilized.
Jordan Gal:I don't know what happens. We just work behind a computer and we just just prefer to stay off the phone. But it really works.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And you know this dunning thing, the idea of dunning.
Jordan Gal:Oh,
Brian Casel:yes. With any kind of SaaS or productized service who are using credit cards, when credit cards fail, I mean, I feel like this is an aspect of running a SaaS that really doesn't get talked about enough. Because it's serious issue. I mean, I think the actual industry stat is something around like 15 to 20% of credit cards fail over the course of a year of a SaaS, something like that. Richard Felix would have some
Jordan Gal:Right. Him and Andrew from Churnbuster. I mean, we deal with it also, and we're at the point where we need a service to kind of get it done.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And and so I've I've been using Richard's, Stunning. I I used it for for years in Restaurant Engine, now I'm using it again in audience ops. And I feel like if you're collect if you're using if you're collecting money with credit cards, especially a subscription based, it's kind of a no brainer. Just plug it in and it'll send automatic emails to when cards fail or even when cards are at risk of expiring and that sort of thing.
Brian Casel:But the other thing that happens and this this was a huge deal in Restaurant Engine. I kinda wish I knew about Julie's service you know earlier on in in in Restaurant Engine. Like even when you have a Dunning service like Stunning or or like the other ones plugged in, still, some clients will just ignore those emails. We'll send them three automated emails to get them to fix their credit card, and they still just ignore them or they don't see them or whatever. And then we have to get on the phone and call them up and figure out, do you want to continue service or are we looking at a cancellation or what's going on here?
Jordan Gal:Right. I never know what other people are doing. Like, I feel like other SaaSes take such an automation mentality when it comes to onboarding and cancellations. I'm like, am am I the only one that's, like, following up with them and calling them on the phone to get the credit card? Like, there's no way people are just like, oh, I guess they churned.
Jordan Gal:Oh, well. And just ignoring it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. No. I I was I'm the same as you. Like, I always called up when they're so I used Stunning to automatically follow-up via email, and there was, like, three automated follow ups if if they don't fix their credit card on their own. So hopefully, and I think a large percentage of them fixed it on their own.
Brian Casel:No need for me to call them or touch it at all. I got notifications too, so then when I saw that it reached the third email and it hasn't been resolved yet, then yeah, I used to call them up.
Jordan Gal:Yeah, why not?
Brian Casel:And then I did that for a while and then I built it into the responsibility of somebody on my team. Like, it was Right. And then I built some integration where, like, it notifies her on Slack and, like, it looks like we have someone to call up, creates a Trello card, we we track them, and you know, because sometimes you you get enough customers that it gets a little bit out of hand, and then these things can kinda, like, fall through the cracks, you know.
Jordan Gal:Right. But it's it's hugely important. Yeah. I yeah. It's an interesting thing.
Jordan Gal:And speaking of the phone, the reason I think I'm gonna end up going with Churnbuster, right, Andrew Culver, I think is his name. Yeah. It's the truth is it it's a problem that kinda reminds me of of card abandonment where it sounds pretty simple. Someone abands a card, send an email, or someone's credit card fails, send an email. It's actually much more complicated because Stripe, at least now, they don't just try once and say, oh, it failed, done.
Jordan Gal:They try the next day and the next day, and then they wait three days and try again because oftentimes that will work by just charging the exact same card on a different day. So both Richard and Andrew have had to build their services around the complexity around this issue. Yeah. The reason I think I'll let him go along with Andrews is because he has that phone call built into the service.
Brian Casel:Right. Right.
Jordan Gal:And I I would do it anyway. So I would just look at it and say, I'm already paying a service to do it. Like, I'm gonna make the phone call or ask, you know, someone on the team to make the phone call. So just wrap it into the service.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Very cool. How about some other general updates? What what's up by you?
Jordan Gal:Oh, man. I feel so much better than I did a few weeks ago when my whole face was all the way up in the product and tech and support and just a lot of worry about what's oh, are we gonna screw something up today? Are we gonna send five emails instead of one by accident? There was there was like a month period where I was just thinking about the product the whole time. And not surprisingly, sales stalled and we didn't grow very fast during the month of August.
Jordan Gal:And then it became stressful and then it like saps your we were just on a downward spiral. And now we're like, we're back. We got our mojo back. And a lot of it is just because now 90% of my thoughts and my actions are just on the sales and marketing front. And so I just feel so much better and so much more confident and optimistic because I'm literally just taking actions and emailing people and following up and launching different campaigns.
Jordan Gal:And, you know, it has an effect. It's not the most efficient, perfect machine, but it has an effect. And so people are signing up and MRR is going up and it's like, I feel like we're back. It was a rough month.
Brian Casel:Very cool.
Jordan Gal:So that's where my majority of my thinking is. And then at the same time, you know, the analogy we're making in the company right now is like a war, like a battle on a battlefield, where we have the troops up front and they're engaging in battle day to day. And that's the current product that we have. And we are presenting it to the market and we're trying to get people to sign up and show them value and get them to pay. And that's like what's happening right in front.
Jordan Gal:And at the same time, we have like a group of spies going around back to kill the king, like behind the forest sort of thing. And that's what we're working on internally, saying to ourselves, what technology do we want to build? What's the next step for CartHook? What additional value do we want to bring? What is CartHook two point zero going to be that makes it a much more compelling product.
Jordan Gal:And so that's the other part of my brain. So it's like sales and marketing and all the regular stuff, and then where should this product go? So I'm back in customer development mode. I'm back in get anybody on the phone that will talk to me. I literally just went out to lunch with someone here in Portland that has a Shopify store and give her advice and learn from her.
Jordan Gal:Just I'm back to learning mode so that we're not guessing at what we should do next so that people are actually telling us what we should do next.
Brian Casel:You know, this is interesting because I I hear SaaS owners talk about this all the time. You know, software companies, and it's like they're continuously developing the software product for years on end. I always kind of wondered like, isn't like the first year, maybe two years, all about building out the product and getting the feature set exactly right? But then after that, isn't it about growing? And yeah, maybe updating the existing feature set, tweaking them or tweaking the UI or whatever.
Brian Casel:But isn't it about growing and just kind of building out the growth? Or do you have to keep adding features?
Jordan Gal:Yeah, I think that's a really important point to make you make there because internally, a group of three or four people, you feel strange not moving forward. And that's part of it. And there's definitely an argument to be made that says, hey, Jordan, someone more than one person, it's not a fluke, multiple people are paying you a 100, 200, $500 a month for exactly what you have right now. Should You probably stop developing and just sell more. So that's a very compelling argument.
Jordan Gal:But I think what happens is a combination of, like, inertia, like three people working on a product. It doesn't make it doesn't feel right to just stay still. As much as I would love to stop thinking about the product, I'd love to just sell.
Brian Casel:But there are certain indicators that could bring up, like, maybe it's time to expand. I mean, or like, I guess the question that I have is our leads, our sales conversations are like questions and objections coming up saying, looks good, but I'm comparing this competitor or it seems to be missing certain feature or are you hearing things like that?
Jordan Gal:A little bit, but it's a combination of what you hear and what you sense and what you see and what I talk to a lot of consultants in e commerce, I talk to our customers, I talk to prospects. So it's this combination and eventually it kind of gets distilled down into like a gut feel. And I just see all these things swirling and what competitors offer. And I see cart abandonment being offered as an important component, but one component of larger feature sets. And then I so I start to think, if I'm an e commerce store owner, would I buy CartHook to address this one singular problem and do it in do it well, but only address that?
Jordan Gal:Or would it be more compelling if I looked at this other product and say, well, they have that built in and that just means I need, like, less services. So it's it's tricky. There's one thing that's, like, the perfect card abandonment product, and then there's something else that's, like, do we wanna add more value on top of that or we wanna just stay there? That stuff I don't know.
Brian Casel:And then and then it also connects back into your marketing because if if you're the best cart abandonment app on the market and you solve that problem better than anyone else, then you can market yourself. All of your messaging is about don't lose customers in your shopping cart. Card abandonment fixes that with CartHook. But if you become a suite of tools for e commerce stores, then maybe the message becomes the suite of tools that helps you optimize every aspect of your ecommerce store, and that's a different marketing play.
Jordan Gal:Yes. And a lot of what's been happening lately, and I'm sure this happens to a lot of people in our position who are either bootstrapped or have a little bit of funding, You see other competitors that are well funded, people that raise 10 and $15,000,000 that are directly in your space, and it's kind of pointless to try to outfeature them. Why are you going to try to build everything that they have and then some? That's kind of a losing battle. So I think it's a healthy thing that that forces us to really say, what niche do we want to go after?
Jordan Gal:What part, what segment of the market? How do we want to position ourselves? Do we want to stay in e commerce? Do we want to move to a different space but do the same thing for someone else? So I think it's just healthy market pressure and that is the driving force for the team internally to say, all right, what's next?
Jordan Gal:All right, we don't want to sit still. So same analogy with the battle. I'm trying to make sure that revenue grows with exactly what we have right now to the point of stability, and at the same time, we have this longer term thinking of like two point zero, and if two point zero fails, as long as revenue is up with what we have right now, we're we're kind of in a safe place. Yep.
Brian Casel:Very cool.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Nice. How about you? What's what's happening with the AO?
Brian Casel:Yeah. AO, audience ops. You know, thinking about it and working on it full time now. And my goal and and I'm starting to think of my overarching goals as, like, time blocks based on my travel schedule. Right?
Brian Casel:So we just arrived here in Asheville, North Carolina. We're gonna be here for about two months. So I'm thinking about what do I wanna get done in the next sixty days, in the next two months.
Jordan Gal:And By the time you leave Asheville, you you want X done.
Brian Casel:Right? Exactly. That's good. And in December, like two two weeks out of December, we're gonna be traveling a lot, like going from place to place. So I know I'm not gonna get a whole lot done in in December.
Brian Casel:So I wanna get a whole lot done up between now and the November. So and it's really pretty simple and that is I just wanna build out our marketing and sales engine. And it's still gonna involve me very much. I'm not necessarily removing myself from the process, but I just wanna get So up until now, we we've basically had all of our clients come to us just from my personal network, a few people who listen to this podcast, a few people who I know from, you know, met at MicroConf and other conferences and things. I think those leads will, you know, they may continue to trickle in over time.
Brian Casel:But now we need a an actual, like, proactive marketing strategy and start to build out our own funnel, and predictably have a number of leads coming in every month and then start to see what kind of conversion rates, you know, we're seeing with cold leads who come to into the business from marketing, not just from my personal network, and and then start to optimize those things. So I'm I'm getting so my my work over the next two months is to get all these pieces in place. My goal by the November is to have these things running, have a number of leads and a couple of clients signed up by the November who have come via these new marketing channels that I'll get into, and a way to track it. Like, I wanna see the funnel, and I wanna see how many leads we're getting, and what the conversion rates are, and where they're coming from. That'll that'll be my goal for the November.
Brian Casel:So the things that that we've started to put in place are: number one, our blog for audience ops. I've written now about three articles. The team is also writing a mix of articles, and and we're publishing every Monday and every Thursday. So you can check that out at audienceops.com/blog. It's actually been
Jordan Gal:Two times a week?
Brian Casel:Yeah. We're gonna be publishing twice a week.
Jordan Gal:Who's doing the the the writing?
Brian Casel:So I wrote the first two articles that published. The team is writing a mix of the articles, and I'm I'm continuing to, you know, sprinkle in some articles that I'm writing. So, we have three three main writers that we kind of rotate between in writing. So it'll be like three writers plus me doing a mix of these articles. Other members of our team will also write stuff, so, that'll that'll get mixed up as well.
Brian Casel:But the the focus there is really t not teaching like how to do content marketing, but we're teaching business online business owners how to implement content marketing in your business. So even if that means you're going to delegate it or outsource it to someone like us or or do or set up systems internally, how how are you going to implement it and how are you going to actually get a return on investment from content marketing. That's the overarching theme of the entire blog and all the stuff that we're writing there. So it's kinda been fun for me to to write a few articles now that are purely educational and And I write educational stuff on my own blog about productized services and whatnot, entrepreneurship. But this is much more focused, lesson based type of articles.
Brian Casel:Like the first article that I wrote there was about how to begin your blog how to start up your company's blog. And it was kind of like a it was the very first blog post on our own blog for our company and we were and I was writing, you know, writing through some some strategies and some kind of goals and and and things to to keep in mind, you know, because it's not just a personal blog, it's a company blog and has to, you know, drive results.
Jordan Gal:Right. That's must be an interesting thing for you. You you used to writing for your self or your own brand, and now when I see a lot of people make the transition, their voice changes so much. It's it's unrecognizable. You, like, fall into corporate speak.
Jordan Gal:You fall into talking in a way that you normally don't talk. It's really hard to avoid.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, I still definitely wanna keep my personality and also the individual personalities of the other writers who are who are contributing stuff. I think the articles that I put out there are actually more polished because they go through our standard editing process. Like our editor goes through them and we do some internal brainstorming around stuff.
Brian Casel:They're probably a little bit more polished than the stuff I put on CastJam, which is just me with tons of mistakes and spelling errors and stuff. That's kind of fun. And our graphic designer ads, like custom graphics and things like that. And we've got content upgrades and all that.
Jordan Gal:It's legit. It's awesome.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So that's kind of the first piece. I felt like we can't have any sort of marketing strategy, really a content marketing strategy, without having a blog with a regular publishing schedule and things that we're teaching our audience about.
Jordan Gal:Right. I wanted to bust your balls about why the blog is the first thing in marketing, but but it really it really makes sense in this situation.
Brian Casel:And and then I think the next step from there is to have a a primary lead magnet. So currently we have our content upgrades on each blog post. So those are driving email subscribers. But I also wanna have our main lead magnet which will be, probably an email course. Which that that has not come out yet.
Brian Casel:That'll you know, a a couple weeks away. That's something else that I wanna get done in the next month or so.
Jordan Gal:Okay. I wanna I wanna ask you about this. You you know more about this than than most people, myself included. My struggle with the main lead magnet, about to do the same thing. I used to have one on the previous site.
Jordan Gal:Now we redid the site. I don't have one yet. I'm about to do it, right? My question on the main lead magnet, the central one in the business, is how far down the funnel should this content be? Should it be how to optimize your shopping cart, like all the way up the funnel?
Jordan Gal:Should it be how to set up an abandoned cart campaign or should it be further down the funnel? The previous one I had was opt in for a sample abandoned cart campaign, right? That's all the way down the funnel. That's people who are interested in an abandoned cart campaign and now they just want to see what it actually looks like. So it's all the way down the funnel.
Jordan Gal:So almost not all the people. A lot of the people that opted in would soon after start a free trial. And I don't think it's because my lead magnet was this amazing piece of content. It's because they were already down there at the decision anyway.
Brian Casel:I think that, I think for a company like yours and probably for most SaaS, I think you had it right with the sample abandoned cart campaign as as the the the very last step before they become a paying customer. Or one of the last steps, right? Or at least one of the last steps before they open an account. Because that is a very focused piece. A sample abandoned cart campaign is like you're clearly thinking about specifically abandoned carts, and we sell abandoned cart software.
Brian Casel:So this is gonna lead you right into starting your free trial.
Jordan Gal:It was almost like looking at at the back end without creating an account. It's being able to see what you
Brian Casel:can look for it's like a demo. It's like a free trial, basically. So I would equate that to a standard free trial of a SaaS, Right? So I I think that piece is is important to have in place. But that's not necessarily the content marketing lead magnet.
Brian Casel:That's that's like the SaaS onboarding lead magnet. Okay. So the content marketing in your case can be a second piece that you also have in place, which is it gets a little bit more broad, but you're still solving a painful problem with the email course, and that problem has to be directly related to the problem that they come to CartHook to solve. So I think in your case, specifically, you're solving abandoned cart. You're solving orders that people abandon.
Brian Casel:But really you're helping e commerce store owners optimize their site and increase their revenue. The course can be about how to optimize your your e commerce site and maybe a little bit more specific than that, like optimize every step of your checkout flow.
Jordan Gal:Right. Or
Brian Casel:your checkout page specifically. Yeah. Or like ways ways to stop letting money drop out of out of a leaky bucket, you know, something along those lines. Okay. Or or like like five different places where you might be losing money in your ecommerce website.
Jordan Gal:Okay. And and you you default to the the drip email course as as kind of like the go to opt in these days?
Brian Casel:Yes. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Right. Because I mean, this isn't about me asking you for a Cardoc advice. It's more about like, okay, if that works for me, like, does that make sense for other people also depending on their business? But your your default, like, the majority of people should go with, what, a five part email course.
Jordan Gal:How many parts it takes to solve the problem, essentially?
Brian Casel:Yeah. And and our default is is usually five lessons with a couple of with, like, a sixth and seventh email that follows up and pitches the product. Like, hey, now we've we've taught you these best practices on how to save money how to stop losing money from your e commerce website. You can do all that stuff manually all the best practices that we just taught you or you can use Cardhook which does all this stuff automatically. It's just plug and play and it just works.
Brian Casel:That's like the sixth email. And then the seventh email is usually a follow-up like, Hey, these are some common questions that people have about Cardhook.
Jordan Gal:Right. Here's a testimonial. Here's FAQ. Something like
Brian Casel:Yeah. But the the whole role of having this main lead magnet, the the educational course, is it targeting that that problem, you know, how to stop losing money from your e commerce website, it's attracting people who would be candidates to become your customers. They may not necessarily be in the market to buy Carthook software today, but there's a high likelihood that they will sometime in the future. And you wanna build a a big enough pool of those people that some segment of them will will convert on a regular basis.
Jordan Gal:So it's that it's that automated campaign, multi part course with offer and follow-up FAQ, whatever it is. And then if they don't convert, you drop them onto your regular newsletter. Now they're they're in your world. Are in your marketing.
Brian Casel:Every week, they're getting new stuff about about ecommerce optimization, you know, newsletters with new blog posts. But getting back to the top of the funnel, right? So once you've established this this main lead magnet, your course, like the course on how to how to, you know, reduce lost revenue in your e commerce website, that's something that you can then go out and drive traffic to. Whether it's Facebook ads or, you're a guest on somebody's podcast, you can finish it off by saying, Hey, by the way, we have a free course on how to how to do this. That's the thing that you can put your flag the ground and say, Hey, everybody, come check out this free thing that we're giving away.
Brian Casel:It's attractive. Rather than putting out Facebook ads that are Hey, buy our hook software or even ads that are like Hey, get a free, cart abandonment template. It's like most people are like What is that? What does that mean? But Hey, make more money with your ecommerce store.
Brian Casel:Yeah, I want to learn about that. And those are the people that you want to attract.
Jordan Gal:Right. So people can anyone listening can apply that to their solution and their market. Yeah. So I I like that idea because it I wouldn't want to only have that and not have a lead magnet that's all the way at the bottom of the funnel. So I I I in my mind, like, this conversation has convinced me, okay, cool.
Jordan Gal:I need to update my sample campaign for, like, you know, the changes we've made at the back of the app, and then I need to immediately get a course done and then have both of those. So one's a little further up the funnel and one's a little further down. I could test both of them with an exit pop up. I could do
Brian Casel:Well, I think that they should work in conjunction together. One should lead So to the it's not like like you're AB testing one against the other. You can have you can have, your educational email course, the general traffic that's being driven to coming into your content stuff, whether it's from ads or Google search landing on your blog posts, that stuff gets into your email course. Yes. And then as they complete the email course, email number six can be, hey, KartHook solves all these problems that we just talked to you about.
Brian Casel:Now here's the call to action. Get your free KartHook sample campaign to get a feel for what it looks like. And then that leads into them buying the thing.
Jordan Gal:Right. I I do also like the idea of having more than one asset, right? So we when we get to my side of, like, what's happening in the business, we're we're starting to do retargeting. So I like the idea of having two offers instead of just, hey, here's the course. The same people should also see an offer for the sample campaign.
Jordan Gal:And then I don't know if it'll self segment. In a way, you're AB testing one against the other, but I just like having more assets because who knows what people actually
Brian Casel:Yeah, exactly. And I think that's where something like content upgrades comes into play. This is what I've been doing in content upgrades on my own site, and we will be implementing this on Audience Ops. A Content Upgrade, talked about it before, it's basically a specific bonus content attached to a specific blog article. In Audience Ops, we attach them to every single article that we do.
Brian Casel:So people come to the blog and they can maybe they discovered one article that that we published today about, how to optimize an email newsletter, like to get it to get people to open it. Right? They came to the blog, maybe that's their first visit, so they they opt in for our content upgrade, which is like a template email that you can use for your newsletter. So they didn't opt in for our email course, they opted in for that one content upgrade. So that was their entry point into our list.
Brian Casel:And then we have automation on the back end in DRIP that about a week later we send them an email saying, Hey, we also have this email course. Click here to start the email course. And that kinda triggers the email course and it brings them into our main funnel Cause the course is designed to funnel them into a consultation or into the product. So so as we build up these content upgrades on on each individual blog post, they're all eventually being directed to our main sequence, our main Right.
Jordan Gal:Different entry points. And ideally, you can optimize that main course, that main sequence, to the point where you have a lot of confidence in it. And so everything that leads into that is going through the funnel that you want people to go through. Yeah, which is why I love I just like using content as like these little mini apps. That's I mean, we use them all over the place.
Jordan Gal:We add them into the PS of our onboarding emails. We add them into, hey, it's been three weeks since you started using Cardhook. Here's how you're doing so far. PS, our founder just did an interview on Mixergy. Here's the we just, like, throw value content and just build up the brand and the people behind the company with these little assets that once you create them, you can can use them.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Exactly. You can use them in different place different places than just publishing them to your block. Like you said, PS in in emails, you can mention it on podcasts, you can, put it into your onboarding sequence, you can put them within your app, have little pop ups, how to optimize this thing. And, yeah, I think because without the content stuff in place, all these like, what else do you have?
Brian Casel:You're you're really just selling, selling, selling, and you have to kinda supplement that with with adding some sort of value.
Jordan Gal:I think what I what I'm missing and what a lot of people are missing is that that central sequence to lead everyone into and then be able It's really It's the same mentality as a cadence, a sales cadence, whether it's outreach or, No, first we're going to have a discovery call, then we're going have a consultation, then we're going to go to your It's just a sequence of events that you want everyone to run through because then you can optimize that sequence and and test the order of it, and then once you get it dialed in, you have more and more confidence dropping more and more people into it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So just to kinda like round out my marketing plan between now and November. Step one: Get the blog publishing. And that's basically happening now. That's done.
Brian Casel:Step two: Get our email lead magnet in place. I'm probably gonna be working on that next. And then in a couple of weeks, I wanna start testing paid acquisition, and specifically promoted posts on Facebook. I haven't really done much of that myself, so I wanna get into driving paid traffic to each individual blog article and get them to opt into the content upgrade. And also do some paid ads to the to the email course.
Brian Casel:So I'll I'll I'll test that stuff out, and then the next step after that is to get into doing I I'll by the way, I'll also do some retargeting. If you visited a a blog article, haven't opted in, here's a retargeting ad, to get to come back to the site. And then in November I want to start doing webinars. So in October I think I'm gonna do a webinar to launch that content upgrades plugin that I had talked about previously. And that's at contentupgrades.io.
Brian Casel:It's a WordPress plugin that we're developing from Audience Ops to do what you know, basically implement content upgrades. I think the October, I'm gonna do a webinar to kind of launch that. And then in November I wanna start doing a monthly webinar for Audience Ops. So educating about content marketing for your company, to lead into the Audience Ops service. I'll I'll make that a monthly thing, probably me doing it for a while, but I also wanna, you know, get my team involved in that as well.
Brian Casel:So that's
Jordan Gal:Nice, man.
Brian Casel:A lot to do between now and November. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:It it can be overwhelming if you look at it all at once. Yeah. I try to just break everything down into, okay. I wanna launch retargeting. Cool.
Jordan Gal:One little step, add pixel. Next little step, get creative done. Next little step. Yep.
Brian Casel:Yep. Alright. So what is your what is your sales and marketing look like right now and where is it going?
Jordan Gal:Yes. So now that we're back in sales mode, we kind of have our confidence back and like, yes, now we want to push more people in. We really, you know, took a step back and said, wait a minute, let's push. Let's make sure we get all this stuff worked out first. Now that we're back there, I think we have four things or the five things that we're going after.
Jordan Gal:So first is AdWords, and we now have AdWords up and running, And that's going to cart specific landing pages, which I one of the things I realized, I really enjoyed landing pages. I got I had so much fun creating a landing page. A little weird, but I think it's fun.
Brian Casel:What are you using to create landing pages?
Jordan Gal:I actually went back to Unbounce.
Brian Casel:Oh, okay.
Jordan Gal:Because Leadpages, I love for its simplicity, and I like how rigid it is because it doesn't let me get too creative. It's like, no. Just make this disappear or appear, and that's really the only options you have.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And and, like, ship this thing today and don't work on it for a week. You know?
Jordan Gal:Right. But the issue with with this particular landing page is that I needed to I needed more control. I needed to add things and take things away and show screenshots, and I wanted to make it cart specific. So when you get to the landing page, says shop, you know, it has cart hook, heart, Shopify logo. And it says Shopify store owners, get more revenue from your Shopify store.
Jordan Gal:So obviously we're running AdWords that have contained the word Shopify. We want them to go to that, and we're doing it for a bunch of other platforms also. So we have AdWords. The second thing we're about to launch is Facebook News Feed ads. The third thing is retargeting for all of those.
Jordan Gal:The fourth thing is is a new outbound campaign. And I'm not sure I think we're gonna end doing a mix. We're gonna end up using LeadFuse for one side of it, and then we're gonna end up doing it internally for another side of it. Like, maybe we'll we'll let LeadFuse go on one cart platform, and then we'll do our own efforts on another CART platform.
Brian Casel:Gotcha. I guess the the idea there is that you're gonna target sites who have a certain CART technology installed. And you you could spider them and detect which cart is
Jordan Gal:Right. On the So we'll take a list of Magento sites and we'll let LeadFuse do that. And that's more of an automated hands off just email thing. And then we just launched our Shopify app finally. And so we want to get feedback from Shopify, so we want to get people on the phone.
Jordan Gal:So that will run ourselves through our own process, most likely using SalesLoft, and that will mix in an outbound campaign with email, with phone call follow-up so we get to talk to as many people as possible because I want to hear the objections from Shopify. Shopify has a built in cart abandonment email. So like we need to get over that objection. We need to hear people say, Oh, I already have that. And we need to know what to say to that.
Brian Casel:So I have a question for you. You know, I've always been all about like removing myself and delegating as much as I can. And when it comes to the service side of the business, I've I've never had an issue with with that. But I feel like when it comes to these marketing systems, I'm I tend to be a little bit too hands on. So you just listed a whole bunch of stuff.
Brian Casel:Adwords, Facebook ads, retargeting ads, landing pages, you know, using you know, doing the the cold email outreach yourself in in house. How much of that are you personally handling, and how much are you delegating to a team in in which pieces?
Jordan Gal:I I think this is the the key to a small team and and and doing things the way we do it is to, like, identify where you can be and where you should actually have your hands all the way in. So I hired someone here in Portland, a friend of mine actually, Brian Buchanan, runs a company called headline.io or headlines.io. And he's he's an AdWords whiz. So AdWords is its own thing, it's its own language. So I knew that's not where I should get all the way involved.
Jordan Gal:So I'm giving feedback and I am providing my opinion on what we should be doing. But he's setting things up and he's testing the ad copy and he's working with Ben to make sure we got the conversion pixel and the retargeting pixel. So that part I've outsourced.
Brian Casel:Yeah. You know, AdWords is so complicated, and I early on, like, I tried figuring out myself and running some ads myself, and then I hired a consultant a few years ago. It's And it's oh my god. I didn't know how much I don't know.
Jordan Gal:Right. Like, keywords and and and the right structure for ad groups. It's really best handled by an expert. So that was obvious. And now he also, he doesn't do much Facebook advertising, but he wants more experience on it.
Jordan Gal:So he was like, yeah, I'll do your Facebook also because I want to learn that up and I want to work with the SaaS on that front also. So he's doing the advertising side. Internally, we are doing the ad creative because I'm just picky and I know if we outsource the banner creation, I'm not going to be happy with it. And then it's going to run and I'm not going be happy with it every day whenever I see it all over the place. So, we're doing that.
Jordan Gal:But that's still efficient. Then the outbound pieces, what I am in full control of and insist on is the list. So, I create the list. I say, These are the 2,000 URLs that I wanna go after. And then from there, I start to let go.
Jordan Gal:I start to send that over to my researcher and I give her a video and I say, this is how you need to qualify. You need to make sure it's actually a store, that they sell physical products, that they're in English, and that they use the dollar sign as the currency. Like, right, like these little qualification, and then she comes back from a list of 2,000, here are 1,200 that we consider qualified.
Brian Casel:Gotcha.
Jordan Gal:Right? So that list I've just given off, and now we've gotten back. And then And
Brian Casel:so it's I think that's important there because you did not outsource, hey, just hey, assistant or hey, consultant, just go find a list of 2,000 names. Because if you did that, you know, there could be a large number that just, for whatever reason, did not fit some technical requirement. But you can can figure out, alright, at least even if we sent an email to all 2,000 of these, it would be okay. But of course, we wanna optimize that, and that's why you clean it up and and get down to, like, 1,200.
Jordan Gal:Right. And for for $4 an hour, I think it's worth it to spend a $100 on cleaning up a list and making sure you're only targeting people that you actually want to get into a conversation with. Right. So so then we get a clean list back, and then I'm gonna hand it off again to my my man Jonas, who does Salesforce, and he's gonna load up that list into SalesLoft and start sending out emails. But what should I have control over?
Jordan Gal:The email templates that are being sent. So he's gonna send out 50 emails a day, but I need to make sure that I approve of the copy that's being sent out to 50 people a day.
Brian Casel:Gotcha. So who who is he? Like, it is he doing, like, all of your outbound sales? Like, what is what's his role on the team? Yes.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Sales. He does yeah. He helps me manage the CRM so that we are we have, we're on top of our shit and we understand where people are and who needs follow-up. So he does that with me and he does outbound sales and he also does some onboarding.
Jordan Gal:Most of that is automated now. So he's basically just like staying on top of things. I used to be able to do it when I had 10 prospects at once. Now that we have like, you know, a lot more people in the system, he helps manage that so we don't let things fall through the cracks. And he also does this type of thing.
Jordan Gal:He's great on the phone. So he will run this type of campaign and so it's funny. In explaining it, what you find is what insist on is only the absolute most critical parts and then I hope to let go of them. So he's going to do that. I control the email template that gets sent and I help him with the phone script.
Jordan Gal:At the end of the day, he's gonna make kind of his own script because, you know, when you rub up against reality, you have to adjust. But then he's gonna he's gonna set up demos. I'm gonna do the demos right now.
Brian Casel:I took a break from that. Like, when do you get on the phone with customers?
Jordan Gal:I took a break from that, and that was cool. But we didn't grow as fast. And now, like I said earlier, that I'm back in customer development mode, those demos, those fifteen minute demos are that's the gold. If
Brian Casel:you all can actually the gold research, yeah.
Jordan Gal:Right. If you're sending out a thousand emails and you're getting 10 demos from it, I don't know, just just call it 10 demos, those hundred and fifty minutes, that is the that's the goods. That's what all the effort is worth. Yes, some of them will become trials and customers, but what you learn from real people that you're actually targeting is like, I need to hear that personally right now.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Very cool.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. So, yeah, a few different things. And then I have my I'm doing some outbound sales myself for high end and experimentation, let's call it. I have some cookie ideas that I think are worth throwing up against the wall, and I wanna run those because I wanna talk to people and get get feedback.
Brian Casel:So you're just kinda personally finding a name of someone who matches some criteria. You're personally reaching out to them to say, hey, can we chat about this thing?
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yes. And it's totally out of left field and it's not even in our niche, but I kind of have a hunch and I wouldn't even say publicly because I think it's some of these ideas are good. Most of them are gonna be crap, but I think I owe it to myself and the company to explore these things because anything that can differentiate us, anything that can give us a different angle, I think I think is is worth pursuing instead of just blindly going according to whatever we have on the map now and whatever other people are doing. And so I'm spending like 5% of my time on that.
Brian Casel:I think that's awesome. And, you know, like, without talking specifically about what it is, I think it's interesting that, you know, you have some idea for some new direction or some way that you want to expand into. And what so many people do is like start prototyping or start even wireframing or writing notes. What you're doing is you're getting on the phone with someone and running it by them. Someone who might become a customer.
Brian Casel:Somebody who might fit that profile. And that's exactly the very first step that you need to do. It's just like And it sounds to me like these calls are really to help you clarify what this idea actually is. It's not even a fully formed idea yet.
Jordan Gal:Right. Without without the company changing direction at all. The company doesn't move a degree from the direction it's going in. But I just kinda stick my head out and say, is this worth looking into? And I might most likely will come back and say, No, no, I don't even need to tell anyone about that.
Jordan Gal:Let's just ignore that entirely. Let's just stay on track. But there's something out there. I think all of us experience this. We hear about the outliers.
Jordan Gal:We hear about people who have managed to find a particular angle on a particular market in a certain way where they are making money much more efficiently than most people. Right? You talk to people and it's like, what the hell are you guys doing that you're making $250,000 a month with four of you? They have a slightly different angle and a different take. It's just like, I'm always convinced that in almost every market, there's a way to do that.
Jordan Gal:And I would much rather find that than grind it out. I don't want to grind to 20 ks a month and then 30 and then 40. I'd much rather go from where we are right now to a 100 ks a month three months from now if we find that thing that clicks with the right market at the right time with the so I I I never want to just ignore that possibility and just say, oh, I guess I'll just grind it out. Why not?
Brian Casel:Right. Right. Very cool.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I mean, the the ballgame that you're playing in, you know, there there's there's something there. There's a very large market of people who have bought into content marketing.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:And the the offer that you have right now is very compelling. And there there might be a way to put the jigsaw puzzle together that it's really efficient to make a lot of money offering what you offer.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I I'm definitely seeing much more demand than I had expected going into this business for sure. I'm seeing it's it is much easier to convert proposals into clients. And that may have something to do with, you know, I'm still kind of just working my own personal network. Those tend to convert better.
Brian Casel:But I'm now in in this mode as we start to become active with marketing and and actively attracting new, you know, kind of cold leads into our into our audience and things. I'm starting to try to figure out who are the ideal clients. But and even among our existing client base. Like who's really working out with us and who, you know, could be, problematic in the long term. Not them specifically, but other clients like them.
Brian Casel:Like should we target more clients like that or should we target more clients like this? And I'm trying to figure that out. And there's a number of different factors like, I mean, number one, we do turn away a lot of leads who are actually ready to sign up just on the basis that our writing team doesn't write for that type of audience. So for example, like consumer brands, we tend to turn away. We tend to write only for B2B businesses that operate mostly online.
Brian Casel:So I mean, that's what we're focused on right now. We may expand that at some point, but it's but you know so figuring out the right type of audience for the client, but also the stage that the client is in. Should we work with more startups or should we work with more established companies? And I think there are, you know, benefits and drawbacks to each, but, it's, it's you know?
Jordan Gal:Yes my man. Yes. Gotta gotta find it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But, yeah, it's, you know, it feels good to kind of dig in. I guess the other thing that I'll I'll just mention today, I guess it's on my mind, like, another kind of big goal as I start this traveling thing with my family is, I'm trying to work less. And I still wanna get the same amount done but I but I wanna do it in less hours. And I know that, you know, maybe that's possible, maybe it's not, but I I think it is possible because I I think I found that when I was living at at home in in Connecticut for the last few years so many days would go by where I I tend to get a whole lot done in the morning I always I'm always very productive up until lunch and then in the afternoon I'm kind of just I'm there, I'm at my desk, I'm at my computer somewhere, but I'm not getting a whole lot done.
Jordan Gal:You may as well not be.
Brian Casel:Yeah exactly. And Yeah. And so now I'm really thinking a lot about as we're on this trip we're in these new places we wanna explore. So my goal right now is literally to only work mornings. Like I wanna be done with work at lunchtime and with a few exceptions like I mean you and me were podcast Yes.
Brian Casel:On Friday afternoons and things but I'm trying to make it so that like in the afternoon I don't actually even feel guilty about going out and exploring Asheville or Austin or Colorado, you know, or go, you know, like I It has to be normal that by lunchtime I've gotten done my two or three big things that I need to check off the checklist today and I'm free to go. And I'm also looking at different I kinda revisit my whole getting things done system every two or three years, and I feel like I'm in that mode now where I need to, I have a lot of of shit that's flying into my inbox or or through Slack or, you know, things that are coming at me, and I need to have a better system of getting it out of my head, out of my face, and into a system where I'm just deciding what's a priority this week and what's frankly not, and I'm just not gonna do it. You know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yeah. I think that's I mean, that's my my biggest struggle. I I assume a lot of people in in in the same boat. It's funny you say that.
Jordan Gal:I feel like that's like the next frontier. Like, okay, geographic freedom. Now the constraints of the Monday to Friday, nine to five, that mentality is so strong. And you do feel guilty if you're not working. Part of the high of being, you know, not at work at 03:00 in the afternoon on Wednesdays, because you know that you should be at work or at least you're programmed to think that you should be.
Brian Casel:Yeah, exactly.
Jordan Gal:For for me, it is the exact opposite. I don't get a thing done until lunch. I really I may as well not be at work. And and part of me has thought like maybe a few days a week, I should just not be at work in the morning. Maybe Tuesdays and Thursdays, I'm just gonna hang out with the kids and take them to school and go get a coffee and read a magazine because it would bring a lot of joy to my life and it would really I I think not that it wouldn't hurt the business.
Jordan Gal:It might even hurt it might even help the business because
Brian Casel:I think it would help more than hurt. Yeah. And I think Same
Jordan Gal:thing with you.
Brian Casel:There is depth I read the book Essentialism a couple of months back, which really kinda hit home for me about this, and that's about focusing on the most essential thing but really what it's about is making space in your mind and in your life for new ideas to to manifest themselves and that's only gonna happen when you have that space to hang out with your family and explore and go on trips and like playtime and sleep time and it's like the non work hours are still productive in your brain like in like the subconscious. Things are happening there, You know, so you can't just be on all day long and just coffee your way through it, you know. Which is how I definitely worked for the last few years and I know most people do. So, And I also found that working so many hours, like, it makes me wanna work even more and take on even more tasks and more tasks and more tasks. And it's like, it's just too much, you know?
Brian Casel:Just focus on the essential things.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yeah. The other thing I've tried to do is I have a time block where I work on projects instead of tasks. And that's what I've been trying to do lately. I say, okay, my most productive time is from like one to four.
Jordan Gal:So let me do email and sales tasks and support and these other things up until then. And then from one to four, one window open at a time and just write this blog post, just write this newsletter, just rewrite these SalesLoft emails, like projects that have a big impact. Once you finish them, they get used over and over and over and over and have like a lasting impact. Totally. Moderately successful.
Jordan Gal:I I do it maybe two two days a week.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And I don't think anybody like, I was listening to James Clear talk at W. B. Euer Freelancing Conference and super productive guy. He writes all about forming strong habits and all that.
Brian Casel:And I think even he would would probably admit that he's he's not perfect on every single day. And I I think most people are, you know, falling out of the routine. And I I I definitely struggle with that as well. So
Jordan Gal:Of course. Only human. Yeah. Well, it does does sound nice to have half days forever. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:That's the idea. So today's Friday, and that was the idea this week. And let's see. I think I accomplished that two days out of the five days this week. So I'm I'm getting there.
Brian Casel:This is week one.
Brennan Dunn:Not a
Jordan Gal:bad start.
Brian Casel:Not a bad start.
Jordan Gal:Cool, man. Alright. So another another episode in the can. If if you're listening, thanks for listening. If you're enjoying it, hit us up with a five star review on iTunes.
Jordan Gal:That would be much appreciated. And as always, you wanna get back issues, back issues, back episodes, check out bootstrapweb.com.
Brian Casel:Absolutely. And hopefully, we'll be back on schedule for the next few and, you know, with less traveling and and whatnot. But yeah. Cool, I
Jordan Gal:have I a great time doing the show. So let let's do it. Get back on it. We'll we'll we'll plot your map. We should have a map on Bootstrap web.
Jordan Gal:Where is Brian?
Brian Casel:Yeah. Right? Gotta figure out how to do that. Cool.
Jordan Gal:Alright. Cool. Cool, man. Have a great weekend.
Brian Casel:Alright. You too. Bye.