Bootstrapped Web

Brian Casel: 00:10

This is Bootstrap Web Episode 87. It's podcast for you, the founder who learns by doing as you bootstrap your business online. And, today's kind of a special episode. It's actually a conversation between myself and Craig Hewitt of Podcast Motor, and he's also the cohost with Dave Rodenbaugh of the, Rogue Startups podcast. And so this conversation today is being, broadcast here on Bootstrap Web, but it's also being, released as an episode on their podcast too over on, Rogue Startups.

Brian Casel: 00:41

So, I don't know what you call that in the podcasting world, kind of like a double podcasting simulcast. I don't I don't know. So, so Jordan's not on this one. It's just a conversation between me and Craig, but, Jordan and I will be back with our, episode as as normal. Hopefully, hopefully, next week, we'll we'll get our, schedules in order, and we'll we'll get back to our normal, recording routine there.

Brian Casel: 01:07

But, you know, Craig and I had a really good conversation talking all about our respective productized services. And I think it was really interesting because, you know, I'm running Audience Ops and Craig is running Podcast Motor. And, our businesses are actually very, very similar, just doing different things. So they're very similar in that we both kind of run a production line type of ongoing service. We're doing blogging and audience ops, and they're doing podcast editing.

Brian Casel: 01:37

And so we kinda, you know, spent a good hour, really kind of diving in and kind of comparing notes about what we've learned so far in our businesses and how we get things done, how we work with a team. We got into hiring, we got into processes. We've got into marketing and scaling up and profitability. We kind of touched on all these different aspects of of launching and growing a productized service. So, hopefully, you know, we don't get lost too much in the weeds there for you, but it gives you a good insight into what the day to day looks like in this type of business.

Brian Casel: 02:11

Without further ado, here is my conversation with Craig Hewitt. Enjoy!

Dan Norris: 02:25

Alright. Welcome to the show. Today, I am sitting down with Brian Castle from the Bootstrapped Web podcast and founder of AudienceOps. Think most of you are familiar with Brian. So let's just jump right into the conversation.

Dan Norris: 02:37

Brian, how's it going, man?

Brian Casel: 02:39

Yeah. Good, Craig. How's it going, dude?

Dan Norris: 02:42

It's going good.

Brian Casel: 02:43

Yeah. You know, and and I guess we had talked about kind of, what do you call it in the podcasting world? Like simulcasting this? Or

Dan Norris: 02:50

Yeah. I think it's a double cast.

Brian Casel: 02:54

Yeah. So so this will go out on the Bootspark web podcast as well. And, you know, on on there, I've been talking I mean, you know, Jordan and I kind of our weekly updates about what we're working on, and obviously I've been talking about Audience Ops a bit. But I think it's been it's actually been a couple of weeks now or several episodes since the last time I really did a deep dive into productized services, which of course I I write a lot about and I teach a course about it and, I run now, now it's my second productized service business. So it'll be good to kind of talk a little bit more about like behind the scenes kind of nitty gritty of what actually goes into building it and running it on a week to week basis.

Brian Casel: 03:35

Yeah, so, but you you and I have been talking about this because, Podcast Motor is actually in many ways very similar to my business and audience ops. Not just the fact that they're both productized services, but they're actually very similar types of productized services, and that we we both manage a production line of content, You know? You know, like, I I think from week to week, we're we're publishing a a whole a whole bunch of blog articles for our clients, and you're publishing a whole lot of podcast episodes for your clients. And that happens on a on a rolling, like, week to week basis. Mhmm.

Brian Casel: 04:15

So it's very similar that way.

Dan Norris: 04:16

Yeah. And you know, I think that if I had it my way and could could sort of design the perfect productized service, it might look a little bit different than what we do. I mean, I'm very happy with Podcast Motor and how it's done, but one of the things that I think, is a little bit challenging about what we do, and you might feel the same way about, you know, writing blog articles or having your team write blog articles for customers every week is that it is very sort of creative or an artistic thing, and it leaves some room for subjective interpretation. And so what we find sometimes is some customers, maybe very few, I guess, you know, sort of come back and say, oh, what about a this and a that? Then, you know, your version of, like, what about a comma there?

Dan Norris: 04:59

You know, sometimes I feel like if I was able to pull out my magic wand and say, hey. This is gonna be the perfect product I service, it would be something that you either deliver once or you deliver in a very objective way where there's not as much artistic room for interpretation because I think it's one thing that interrupts the productization of a service is is so much of this artistic input and room for interpretation on the client's part where you can say, alright. This is the thing we deliver, and they they come back and say, well, yeah, but I want it like this. I think sometimes as we're scaling, we're finding that something that is a little bit challenging and we're sort of working to optimize our service and our our products, I guess, to to sort of optimize that.

Brian Casel: 05:50

Well, I'm interested to to dig into more about what what you're seeing with podcast episodes because, as as some listeners may know, you know, boot Bootstrap Web, Jordan and I are clients of Podcast Motor, and you guys do our editing for for this podcast. And I I'm assuming that we're very different than most of your other clients. Like, we're we're probably very, very hands off with it compared to other other clients. Like we literally just hit record, drop it in Dropbox and let you guys do your thing. And we like that.

Brian Casel: 06:24

We we like kind of like the unedited approach even though you guys do some editing and cleanup. Like we we like most of our content to stay in. So I'm interested to hear like what are the issues that other clients come up with. So maybe we can dig into that in a minute. With audience ops, with blogging, well, the other kind of difference about what we do is that we are the ones creating all the content for our clients.

Brian Casel: 06:54

Mhmm. It's not like they get and and and we're also coming up with the topics too. Like, we do a lot of initial research for for each client, and we build We actually do a a pretty intensive process internally for us to come up with topics that will really resonate with the business' target customer. Then we recommend that as like, this is the calendar of topics that we're gonna do for for the next couple of months. Mhmm.

Brian Casel: 07:22

But basically, we we have a pretty standard process for creating posts. Of course, every every article that we write is different. It's a different topic. It's for a different client.

Dan Norris: 07:32

Right.

Brian Casel: 07:33

So it's unique in that sense, but but it follows a standard set of guidelines that we have. You know, every article comes in at around 12 to 1,500 words. Every article comes with at least one custom designed graphic by our graphic designer. We've got some, like, formatting stuff where, like, you know, use subheaders in this way and try to use some block quotes in this way and things like that. So that's kind of, you know, formatting wise.

Brian Casel: 08:02

Everything is pretty standard, and we haven't had a whole lot of feedback on that. What we we do have a feedback loop with our clients though, where we send every client an email a week before their next post goes live. And so our project manager, Kat, will send these emails out, and she sends like a whole bunch of them every Monday. And so that way the client can see a a link to the finished it's basically a finished blog post. They can see the draft in WordPress, and and it's scheduled to to publish a week later.

Brian Casel: 08:34

So they have about seven days to to take a look and give us any feedback that they have. And sometimes clients come back to us, you know, they'll they'll hit reply on that email and just have a couple of points like, you know, we we'd like if you mentioned this or, you know, there's this aspect of our product that we'd like to kind of highlight as an example here, you know, something like that. And with a couple of days notice, our writers can certainly, you know, get that, incorporated into the blog post. No problem. And the the other the other trend that I've seen happen is as we onboard new clients, that feedback, those kind of revision requests that we get, it it can be somewhat intensive for the first couple of weeks of working with a client.

Brian Casel: 09:19

Yeah. And and sometimes we're kind of under the under the gun, you know? Instead of one or two tweaks, they're asking for five or six, and they don't actually come in until, like, two days before the the post is supposed to publish. And, it can be kind of a a crunch for us, but I found that it it does die down after the first month or two. And it's kind of like a getting to know you process where, okay, we understand, like, these are the things that are important to you.

Brian Casel: 09:46

Our writers are also learning more and more about the product and about the audience as as we go along as well. You know, we're kind of building up all this knowledge so that by the time we get into month two and month three, we kind of fall into a pretty good groove with the client. And I mean, for many of our clients, they receive those Monday preview emails from Kat, and a lot of them don't even reply, know.

Dan Norris: 10:09

Yeah. And that's that's that's me most of the time. I mean, full disclosure, guess, Podcast Motor is a customer of audience ops, and you guys do a fantastic job, and the the blog has really taken off since you guys took over writing for it. But yeah. I mean, Kat sends me the email on Monday, and I very rarely have anything of note to to add to it or to the email that you guys draft up.

Dan Norris: 10:34

So you draft up an email for me in drip and, I mean, it's spot on, you know, most all the time, and, it's fantastic.

Brian Casel: 10:43

Yeah. So we also write and send the email newsletter and we give you a preview of what, you know, what we wrote in there as well. And it's all lined up in Mailchimp or whatever you're using. And, but you do have the opportunity to take a look and and yeah, you know, it's funny, like, Kat was saying to me the other day, she was like, know, a lot of our clients, like, don't even reply to to these emails. And, and so she was wondering, like, is that is that okay?

Brian Casel: 11:08

Like, is is everything okay with them? You know? And and what I said to her was like, you know, I think I think that's a big part of our value proposition. And it's almost like a good thing when our clients don't reply to those emails because it it shows that, like, we're taking this off of their plate. It's like, these are very busy founders and people running companies that, you know, I I know that they that they like receiving the email and knowing that it's getting done and and things are getting produced, but they don't necessarily have to reply or give us any feedback.

Brian Casel: 11:43

And I think that they see that as a good thing. At least that's the feedback that I've had from from our clients.

Dan Norris: 11:49

Yeah, they don't necessarily wanna see under the hood, right?

Brian Casel: 11:52

But, you know, I mean, we we do and actually early on, this was something that was that was an issue for us that we had to work through because in the very first few weeks of audience ops, we didn't have a full week, buffer in between the preview and and the the published date. Like we were we were sending that preview maybe two or three days before the published date and that and then we'd have like all this feedback and revisions from clients and then it was like, oh, we have to push back the published date and now now we're under our crunch. And that happened like several weeks in a row. So then we had to work through this, like, we had to shift our whole production schedule back a week, which took a few weeks for us to phase in, you know, like the because basically for for an article that that gets published on on like, there's basically, like, a four week process time, from, like, idea to the writer starts the draft, and and the writer takes about a week to write the draft. And then we take a full week for us internally to do copy editing, graphic design, setting it up in WordPress, queuing up, email newsletters and social media posts.

Brian Casel: 13:08

Like, take a whole week doing just that stuff. So that's, two two weeks now. And then the following week, we send the preview to the client. And then it's a whole week after that to to wait for any, feedback from the client before it actually gets published.

Dan Norris: 13:22

Oh, you lucky bastard. I think no. And it's a it's a shortcoming on our side, I think. But we, the truth is we are have not been disciplined enough to set these expectations straight with our customers, and in and in turn, we get some shows, the the raw audio files, the day that they want them published. And so what that really does for us, it it puts a crunch on me as kind of the organizer of of the whole system.

Dan Norris: 13:49

It puts a strain on our what is now our our full time producer and on the team doing the technical work. So we have to scramble around to have this sort of fit everybody's everyone else's schedule when in turn I know that and like you have, you've set this four week expectation with your team for you guys to produce these things, but we rely so much on the customers giving us a big chunk of what the end content end ends up looking like that we're a bit at their I wanna say at their mercy, but on their timetable as to when things can get produced. And I think it's probably up to us ultimately now to say, okay. We're gonna get this out, whatever, a week after you give us the audio, and that gives us time to do QA. It gives us time for our audio guys to really do a bang up job.

Dan Norris: 14:36

It allows our writing team to to write really good show notes with tweets and quotes and embedded images and things like that. So I think the onus probably should come back on us to do a better job and say, hey, for you to get what you really wanna get out of our services, we need just a little bit more time.

Brian Casel: 14:55

Yeah, it's it's interesting. I I mean if I were you, I would try to just standardize that as much as possible, you know, just have like a standard policy and you know, maybe like the default is, you know, a a one week turnaround time from from the time that you guys receive the audio to the time that it's like publish ready. And and if if they need something faster than that then charge more for that. Yeah

Dan Norris: 15:24

I like that.

Brian Casel: 15:25

I mean it it costs you more resources to get it done faster right? You know to to kind of push something up up at a queue to get an editor to do it and then and when you guys are doing the show notes too and creating a graphic, mean that's more work that has to be done. And it's not just I'm sure you do things similar to that. We don't just like the writer doesn't just create the we don't just draft a blog article. They they do a draft but then it goes through our internal editor and then it also goes through a graphic designer and then another project manager does like a final checklist on everything to make sure everything was done right.

Brian Casel: 16:03

All of that before it even gets sent to the client. So you know in a client's view they're not necessarily seeing all that goes into it. Just like to them it's like oh just create a quick graphic for this for this show note. I mean, how how long does that take? But it actually takes a while to have all these, like, checks in place.

Brian Casel: 16:24

Mhmm.

Dan Norris: 16:24

Yeah. Yeah. We have a we have a few checks in place throughout our process and and what it really ends up looking like is each person checks sort of the previous person or the previous step in the process. And we're really sort of just building that out now, but it's been really helpful and we've caught some what are just, you know, human errors since it's all a human process for us right now. And it's been nice to sort of catch that before it gets to the customer.

Dan Norris: 16:51

And at any one of sort of like four steps throughout the process, we've been able to to catch a few things along the way. And, it's a real testament to the team working together by itself and apart from me, which is a really nice thing to see the team kinda take full under ownership of the whole process. I think it's, I don't know, it's just really been nice.

Brian Casel: 17:13

Yeah. And and you know, for those clients who who need a fast turnaround, like they record today and they need it published by tomorrow or or within two days or whatever, can you just publish the audio episode to iTunes and then say, you know, the show notes will come like a week later?

Dan Norris: 17:31

Yeah. We can. You know, the the show notes are used, in the ID three tagging. I mean, it's a little technical, but the show notes are used as part of the production process and really helps kind of the SEO juice of your show within iTunes or Stitcher to have all the content from the show notes. But you definitely can.

Dan Norris: 17:49

And, whenever we can, we like to. We have a show that we we sort of have to push that out there pretty quickly for. And then some of our customers tag wanna tag the files themselves, they just don't put show notes on there. They'll just put a real short description linking back to the the actual blog post page that has all the all the details for it. Because I mean, the the reality is not a lot of people go through on their phone and click links and things like that.

Dan Norris: 18:14

I think it's more for the website itself. And the reality is some people just really want to have the show done as soon as it can get done and essentially live. And for those people, I think we just need to say, hey. We'll get it done as soon as we can and up to a week or whenever your next scheduled post is supposed to be.

Brian Casel: 18:33

And I think, like, for us, we we totally realize that a lot of the issue with our show is that it's it's on us that we don't, you know, we we try to record and publish every week, but it's just we get we get busy and we do traveling and things and it's we we have to skip a week here and there. But I I think that Jordan and I both would agree that we we don't expect any faster turnaround because of that.

Dan Norris: 18:59

Sure. Sure.

Brian Casel: 18:59

Like, you know, I think a week turnaround for us is totally reasonable.

Dan Norris: 19:06

Okay. I'm laying the law down then. Alright. So let's talk about team building and hiring and the process that you've been going through. We have, I think, similar sized teams at Podcast Motor as you do with Audience Ops and we've done the vast majority of our hiring through Upwork.

Dan Norris: 19:25

We just are hiring our first person outside of Upwork and it's a positive experience on the whole. There there's always sort of trial and error and vetting and things like that that we have to go through. But I I found really high quality people. Our our team is is very distributed. We have, two people in Europe and the rest are in The US.

Dan Norris: 19:47

And I think maybe we'll talk about VAs, you know, foreign VAs in in a little bit. But it's been a process and been something I've been really involved in. But, you know, it's just it's just sort of tough. It's not been a slam dunk, I guess. And there's been a lot of a lot of work, that I've put into it.

Dan Norris: 20:08

So I I don't know. What are what are your thoughts on so, like, where you guys have been finding people and what does that process look like and kind of some things maybe you've learned along the way? Because I sure have learned a lot.

Brian Casel: 20:19

Yeah. Think it depends on the role. I've I've gone I've used different sources to find candidates depending on on the role. So the first role that I was hiring for on on day one of audience ops was was writers, and I think I hired about three all at once in the first month, and now we have five writers on the team. All of them are US based.

Brian Casel: 20:46

I found them all through a combination of inbound.org and the pro bloggers, problogger.net job board. But and those are, you know, like, writer specific job boards, basically. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Norris: 21:06

And so right now, all of our people up until almost, you know, right now, actually, about two weeks ago, yes, everybody has been sort of hourly and or and or on a contract basis. And now we're just moving into hiring our first full time person, which has been a a really big move and sort of a mindset shift a bit to to get myself there and to get the business there, it really needed him. It needed a lot that handholding and, like you said, running the internal process on our end. But most of your folks still hourly. Is that right?

Brian Casel: 21:37

I think at some point in the next couple of months, at least two of them will will become full time employees. I haven't made that transition yet, but I think we'll we'll get there in a couple of months. By the way, of those five writers, two of them now double as project managers. So like Kat, who who you know, who you get emails from, she's also a writer, and and she's actually writing for one of our other clients now. And so I actually like that.

Brian Casel: 22:07

I I like that the project managers have a background in in writing, and they can also do some writing as well. Like our other project manager is kind of like our internal project manager, and he's a writer as well, but he actually does most of our copy editing. So I think that works out pretty well. And then the other roles, we now have three assistants in The Philippines. I just heard I I just hired the third one this week.

Brian Casel: 22:39

And I have gone back and forth on this historically, and even even in my, other businesses, I've I've usually used Upwork to find, virtual assistants in The Philippines. And this time around, I I tested out, what's it called, Virtual Staff Finder.

Dan Norris: 23:00

Sure,

Brian Casel: 23:00

yeah. Which is kind of a one time service, one time fee and they quickly match you up with three highly vetted virtual assistants. And I was, I mean, I was fairly happy with that process, think. So our first two assistants in audience ops came through that. And that worked out pretty well and they're still, they're with us now, they they've come into the team nicely.

Brian Casel: 23:27

For this third one, I actually went back to to Upwork.

Dan Norris: 23:29

Right. Right.

Brian Casel: 23:31

And the reason for that is that this this third virtual assistant is actually not doing the same things that the first two are doing. The the first two are kind of working in our production line, where they're they're in charge of, putting the articles up in WordPress, queuing up email newsletters and social posts and, you know, formatting blog posts and all that kind of stuff. This third one is now helping me out with some marketing and sales related tasks, and I'm kind of working through some new processes there. And so I found him on Upwork, which I've done in the past, and and that worked out pretty well. I I kind of hired two, and I gave them the same task.

Brian Casel: 24:15

And both of them basically did the task pretty well, but the one of them was clearly a better communicator than the other one, and, that's the most important thing to me. Like, if you're if you're asking me smart questions and and you're setting the right expectations, you know, saying things like this is what I'm doing today and this is this is what I'll get done tomorrow and and, you know, you're sending me an email once or twice a day with an update and, you know, being clear about that and making sure that that you're answering all of my questions. That's the kind of stuff that's, you know, I I think that that stuff is even more important than talent or skill. No doubt. Because the skill and the process can be trained over time, and and the the communication is just gonna make the training much easier.

Dan Norris: 25:07

Yeah. I mean, one of the sayings I heard recently was, I think the Applied Filters guys said that, you know, the higher attitude over aptitude, and I think that's spot on. I mean, every time that I've had a a bad experience with a higher, it's been because, you know, they just don't care or they're not trying or they you know, you can just tell when somebody doesn't give a shit. But I think if somebody can communicate with me and express what's going on and really engage in what's going on and the process and the quality, then that's almost all that I care about. And that goes for age and background and geographic location.

Dan Norris: 25:46

I mean, have people almost all over the world and it's it's fantastic.

Brian Casel: 25:51

Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Our graphic designer is based in Argentina and he's awesome. Found him through Upwork as well.

Brian Casel: 26:02

He does a really good job. I mean, I've hired designers in the past over the years. I come from a background of web design, so I've worked with different designers and developers. And I've hired them through a number of different ways and from different places, a lot in The US and stuff. But this guy works out really well in Upwork.

Brian Casel: 26:23

And I actually like working through the Upwork system for some of these roles because it just kind of automatically handles the hourly pay and logging of the hours. For part time contractors, think it's a good system. For our other teammates, like the writers who are US based, it's actually kind of a pain because we use hub staff for them to track their times, like they have basically timers on their computers. And that kind of locks their hours and then they just manually invoice me with PayPal twice a month. Which, you know, it it's fine.

Brian Casel: 27:07

You know, I just have to kind of like manually pay everybody twice a month. And I mean, Hubspa Hubstaff is supposed to integrate with PayPal to to make it automatic, and I've tried to set that up, but it it just doesn't work. And so, yeah, kind of a pain.

Dan Norris: 27:22

Yeah. Yeah. No. I hear you. That's, we're we're getting ready to bring our first person in.

Dan Norris: 27:27

Think I like I mentioned, outside of from outside of Upwork. We actually hired her from hiremymom.com. It's fantastic. I I recommend for anybody who wants kind of like that four to six hour a a day person that can really handle your stuff. It's fantastic.

Dan Norris: 27:41

But since she's coming from outside of Upwork, we're needing to find another solution for logging hours and invoicing and paying and stuff like that. And so we are using we're using Hubstaff too and, really excited about it. I think it's a really neat tool. Those guys are part of the whole transparency movement, so that's cool to be involved as a customer with a company that's part of that too. So just a little side benefit, I guess.

Dan Norris: 28:04

But, yeah, in general, the team is pretty mixed. I mean, we have we have a handful of folks that are still operating within Upwork. Most of actually, of our editor guys, we pay on a per episode basis just because it's a pretty well known amount of work that they're having to do. It's one episode, whether the episode is thirty minutes or sixty minutes, kinda all come comes out in the wash to be something fair that we've all agreed on, and everybody gets paid the same amount. So that's really nice that it's it's sort of fair and equitable there.

Dan Norris: 28:32

But we you know, two of the writers are still through Upwork, but now I think we'll start moving more and more people from Upwork, whether they're an hourly or a or a sort of project basis over to Hubstaff just so it's kinda one place for me to go and one place to manage everything. And and like you said, it should offer direct integration with something like PayPal or maybe even through my bank account directly and should keep track of things like ten ninety nining and withholdings and things like that. I would imagine that that it's sort of a full service complete solution. So, yeah, really sort of excited to get digging into what it's about. And I guess the last part is we we did start off with a a full time VA from The Philippines.

Dan Norris: 29:18

We used Virtual Staff Finder as well and sort of initially thought it was gonna be a really great solution. And it did it did start off very well, and I think in the end, it probably came down to my shortcomings as a manager as much as anything. You know, the time zone difference really got me. I'm I'm in central time zone, so it's thirteen hours ahead for me. So really had very little overlap in working hours.

Dan Norris: 29:42

And so even though, you know, I do work a fair bit in the mornings and evenings, it's it's just a lot to ask me, I think, to sort of be ready to go, and be engaged a lot during what I think should be my sleeping time. So, it didn't really work out for us to to keep working with her. And I think if I if I did it again, it would be under very diff different circumstances and probably involve asking someone to overlap at least a few hours a day just so that we can keep the continuity going within within the business process, or or have someone who can work asynchronously and has really well defined processes that they go through and not something they need to to learn on an ongoing basis or so, you know, these tasks that that revolve or change every time, something that's very well defined.

Brian Casel: 30:37

Yeah. I actually I actually have those guys. They they're working through their night shift, and they're working on US day hours.

Dan Norris: 30:48

Oh, interesting. And

Brian Casel: 30:49

I paid a little bit of a premium for that. I mean, it's still obviously very affordable compared to hiring people in The US. But that was one of my initial requirements when I had set it up with Virtual Staff Finder. Was you have to be available forty hours a week, US business hours, like these hours, Monday through Friday. And for this particular role, that's just really important for us because you know, they're working on this production schedule, and they're working directly with our project managers, and a lot of times we need to have them do like a quick edit or a quick fix or something, and we just kind of communicate that back and forth in Slack, and we can't have like a day of buffer time just to get quick requests done.

Dan Norris: 31:46

Sure, yeah.

Brian Casel: 31:47

So I think that works out pretty well, but I think that's just a matter of setting expectations from day one, and that's definitely, an interview question. Even though I said that to Virtual Staff Finder, once I got on an on an interview with each of them, like, that's definitely one of the questions that I that I get a clear answer on. Like, are you available to work these hours and I mean believe it or not this may come as a surprise to most people listening but, virtual assistants in The Philippines not all of them but many of them are actually accustomed to working that that night shift because so so many people in The Philippines do work remotely for clients in America and, you know, North America and and Europe. And and so a lot a lot of those clients, you know, require, daytime availability. So, you know, quite a few virtual assistants have have kind of, you know, adjusted their their schedules accordingly, especially, you know, the younger younger guys, like, in their twenties.

Brian Casel: 32:50

They're kind of just out of college. They're able to kinda do that sort of thing. In my last business in in Restaurant Engine, it it was sometimes an issue. I I I had the same deal where I I asked our support team to work, the night shift so that they're available during the day. And over time, you know, some some of those teammates were with me for, like, three years.

Brian Casel: 33:14

And over that time, like, one of them had a had a child and got married. And then once that happened, you know, the night shift was kind of not as doable for him. I mean, luckily, that that by that point, we had some flexibility on their team where where he could shift into the day shift, and then other people kind of took over the night shift, and we kinda worked it out. But, know, I I think it's just an expectation to, to to work out. And like, for example, when I was when I went through virtual staff finder, you know, their their thing is they give you three candidates.

Brian Casel: 33:48

And my main reason for going with them initially is because I I have gone through Upwork in in the past. And when you go through Upwork, you get, like, twenty, thirty candidates. And then you kinda have to sift through all of them and and vet them and and hold a bunch of interviews. And I saw virtual staff finder as kinda like a way of forcing me to just make a decision quickly and not spend too much time on this. And I I think it it did its job because it it did give me three quality candidates.

Brian Casel: 34:19

I I did find that one of those three, when I asked her about the hours and her availability, she said that she couldn't she couldn't do I think she could do part of of the night shift, but she was also doing some work for for another client. Like, she wasn't available for forty hours. So I was like, yeah, that's kind of a deal breaker. So, but I ended up, you know, bringing the other two on. So

Dan Norris: 34:44

Yeah. I mean, I I think that at some point as we scale for profitability reasons as much as anything, we're gonna need to, utilize, some some labor that can get some of these very basic things done. And I think The Philippines is a great thing for them. It's a fantastic place. Everybody speaks English.

Dan Norris: 35:02

It's a very family oriented environment. And I think a lot of it actually translates really well to to folks located in The US. The biggest downer for me, and I know you touched on it before, but is the is the time zone thing. And if I can find a better way to manage that, I think it's a great way to be able to scale your business without decreasing your profit as you go along.

Brian Casel: 35:24

Yeah. And I think it also depends on the role too. I I think your what you're doing is pretty similar to to what I'm doing in in that those type of VAs need to be available in real time for for us. But I'm the other like, the last person on my team who's kind of like a regular team member at this point, I would consider is is our developer who's working on our WordPress plugin that we're developing. He is based in The Ukraine, and he and he doesn't work, like, in real time.

Brian Casel: 35:56

Like, he's he's basically working through the night. And I think for that type of role, it doesn't matter as much. Like, I'm I'm fine with giving him I'll I'll post issues in in GitHub or whatever, and and he'll get back to me, you know, two to three days later. And that's that's not a problem because we're kind of just, like, developing something over a long period of time, and I don't really need him to be on call or anything. So

Dan Norris: 36:21

Yeah. No. That's great. I think that's one of the benefits of, of a distributed team is is folks can work kinda on their schedule and don't have to be beholden to the the nine to five that so many people are trying to get away from. Right?

Dan Norris: 36:32

So, but hey. So one of the other things, I wanted to to touch on maybe is we were both at MicroConf Europe, and I know, we were in similar conversations, people asking both of us, hey. Does this thing scale? Right? You know, the the typical place we're built think they can scale as products, whether it's a physical product or a software product, but can a productized service scale?

Dan Norris: 36:52

I'm sure you've gotten this question a thousand times. And I see I see our business to where we can we we at the the people that we have in our business right now, we have capacity for probably 50% growth. And the nice thing, I think, from what I see in our business is that we are poised to be able to add people intelligently. We've figured that out, I think, at this point, what it needs and what it costs to be able to add people. We really have the system down, which I think is probably the most important thing to, sort of master the input of.

Dan Norris: 37:26

So once we've figured out what, what it really takes to run the machine, we just have to add more people to it to start putting out more more episodes and have more customers and all this kind of stuff. And I think along the way, we'll be hopefully as profitable as we are, which would be really nice. But I think to the people who ask, you know, can this really scale? The answer is absolutely. But you gotta get the the nuts and bolts of it, you know, right ahead of time so that you don't run into the scaling issues that I think so many people have in their head.

Dan Norris: 37:56

You know, specific for our business, though, the the one thing that we've run into a bit of a bottleneck with is is the writing. It's where your bread and butter is is made, and I'm sure it's been a challenge for you to hire hire well. But, you know, there's only so much that someone can do writing show notes, and they have to listen to an hour long podcast and then write a really good sort of one page summary around that. So that's kind of been the bottleneck in our business so far is finding really good writers that that wanna write about this stuff and can do it for a relatively affordable price.

Brian Casel: 38:26

Yeah. Exactly. You you do run into, I mean, we haven't exactly run into this yet, but but we will. You you do run into that issue where it's just not enough hours in the day. Like, you can't just have you can't just fill, like, five roles on the team and expect five people to serve 50 to a 100 clients.

Brian Casel: 38:46

Like, it it's gonna have to multiply at some point.

Dan Norris: 38:49

Yeah. What do they say? Nine women can't have a baby in a month.

Brian Casel: 38:52

There you go. You know, so I I think I think with the productized service, the nice thing about it is that you can launch very, very quickly. Like, literally in within a week, you put up an offer, you start get getting clients, getting revenue in the door. Of course, that's that makes it sound a lot easier than it than it is, but it's but it's certainly possible. Businesses have done it again and again, getting getting paying clients within the first month.

Brian Casel: 39:21

And then and the other nice thing is that you can start to actually deliver the product, deliver the value within that first month. You don't have to go spend six months building out some software. You can literally start giving them what they've paid for immediately. Now in the very in the very early days, it's it's a messy process. Like, have not documented your processes yet.

Brian Casel: 39:43

You've built your systems, hired the right people yet. So it's it's a lot of hustling and figuring things out as you go, and that's exactly what it's been for me. I mean, this is my second product type service business, so I I am able to do things faster than I did in the first one. But we so the the nice thing is that you can launch very quickly and get a few clients on board very fast, but then the scaling up process is is probably a slower, more methodical, you know, path to go down. So what we did was I signed like a a batch of first clients in the first month or two.

Brian Casel: 40:25

And then I think by month three, that's when our system got pretty overwhelmed because we're so new, right? Like we had about a team of five at that point. And and even like those writers and everybody on our team had hours in the day, like they still have extra hours that they could contribute to audience ops. But at that point, we didn't have systems and procedures to make sure that things didn't fall through the cracks and to make sure that we always deliver the level of quality that we need to. Edits are being done and graphics are being done and publish dates are being met.

Brian Casel: 41:07

We had to have systems in place for all of that. So so by month three, I actually shut down all sales and marketing and and didn't sign any new client. I actually turned away or or put a bunch of clients on on waiting list for a good two months there for, like, months four and five, or, like, months three and four, I think. And just really heads down focused on our processes, the tools that we're using, documenting, getting the right people in place, training them on their on on how we're gonna do things, and and redoing a lot of stuff. Like, I'd write a bunch of processes in the first month, and then by month three, realize, okay.

Brian Casel: 41:44

I have to redo this and change the order of how we do things. And like I said earlier, we had to shift our our schedule so that we give an extra week of buffer time. Like, that took some time to to work out. So I I got all those kinks kind of worked out in months three and four. Now we're talking I think it's been about six months.

Brian Casel: 42:04

And so now I'm back to like pushing on sales and marketing. And we've been, you know, we've we've been adding a few more clients over the last month or two. We and we're now ramping up some some marketing stuff. So I expect to, really just kind of ramp up the client list over the next couple of months. And I think now we're we're ready for that.

Brian Casel: 42:24

Like, now we have the team in place. We've got the systems totally dialed in. We've got project managers that have already taken a a lot of the stuff off of my plate. So that really all I'm focused on now is is doing sales, marketing, and a little bit of the, onboarding and and strategy work up front. But the writers are really doing most of the creative, creative work there, and I'm just kinda giving some input.

Brian Casel: 42:50

And so now I think we're we are ready to start really ramping it up. I think there's still a limit or at least there are, like, certain milestones where things need to be reorganized. Like, I I think the the next thing that'll happen for us is, So I I think our current team has They they all still have available hours that I can still ramp up with with them. But eventually, we're gonna start bringing in a a couple of more writers and and also the way that we manage the process. You know, like, I could see it breaking out into, like, different units where, like, one project manager plus, like, two writers and an assistant handles these eight clients.

Brian Casel: 43:33

And then and then we kind of duplicate all that, you know, into, like, groups of, like, eight clients or so. I think that's kind of like the traditional agency model really is to, like, break up into small units.

Dan Norris: 43:51

Yeah. That's how we have it structured. I mean, we have the same audio guys work on the same show every week, and we're starting to organize the writing team into the same sort of buckets just to where people have consistency not on not just on, like, the the style and what they're hoping to expect out of a show, but on the content and the context. You know, one of the tough things for you, it's the same for us probably, we're we're writing about a a a huge variety of topics. And even though you have the podcast to go off of, you don't know like, a a layperson might not know what buffer is or what a podcast even is.

Dan Norris: 44:30

But coming in and try to write this, it can be kinda tough if you are starting from scratch every month. And so, you know, this one of the things we try to do is try to streamline it so that the team's expectation is a little more straightforward.

Brian Casel: 44:43

Yeah. Definitely. And, I mean, yeah, we like, we do assign the the same writer to to to the client. Like, one writer is the one is the same one writing all the articles for for a particular client. Unless in some in some cases, writers will double up on their plan with Audience Ops, and they'll have us do, like, eight articles a month instead of four.

Brian Casel: 45:03

In that case, we we put two writers on on that client, and each writer does four. So, and I think that's actually good because it kinda mixes up topics and voice and things, which is nice.

Dan Norris: 45:16

Yeah. The voice is really tough to master, right, we found.

Brian Casel: 45:21

But the, let's see. The other thing that I was gonna say about this alright. Well, two things. One one of the challenges that I'm starting to face now, and I don't know if this really applies in your business, but I also try to match writers with certain clients and the audiences that they'd be best writing for, given their personal background and expertise and and areas of of focus. I mean, I all the clients on Audience Hops, I try to make sure that they're all generally selling to businesses, that they're all generally, like, online businesses, either selling software or, like, a productized service or something.

Brian Casel: 46:02

And there's that overall fit, but then each individual client like, for example, you're a client and, actually, I don't know if you know this, but, like, early on with Podcast Motor, we switched the writer for you guys to yeah. Okay. So so to a guy named Trevor because Trevor is happens to be like a podcast junkie. You know? He and and the first writer isn't isn't as much into podcast as as Trevor is.

Brian Casel: 46:30

So so we put him on, and and I think he's been really good. And so, you know, just things like that, like trying to match up the right skill or the right background expertise with the right clients. So I'm starting to think about which writers we need on the team and and which writers and also, like, which clients we can go after based on which writers we we have on the team and and things like that. So, that's one thing. And then the other thing about scaling up is we're also looking ahead into kind of phase two of the audience ops business.

Brian Casel: 47:06

Like it's not just gonna be the done for you service. We're also going to get into selling software, selling tools, and even eventually getting into like selling educational products. So we have some internal tools that we're using for our clients. Like we have a plug in for doing content upgrades, which are like email opt ins on on blog posts. We're getting ready to to release that as its own standalone product.

Brian Casel: 47:34

We've we've got about three or so additional plugins that I plan to have built over the next year, which first and foremost, they'll help us serve our clients better. They're like content marketing related little plugin tools. But they're they're also valuable standalone useful tools that others can use. And so I'd like to get to a point where, we have a like one section of our business is the done for you service, and that drives a chunk of the revenue. And then we've got, you know, selling tools, which are much, much lower priced, you know, selling licenses to these plug ins.

Brian Casel: 48:18

And and that that kinda scales up because we're we're selling those to, like, hundreds, potentially thousands of customers, and then eventually selling either an ebook or a course or some kind of training that helps to teach what we do from a content marketing standpoint and kind of tackle it from all these different angles and also kind of vary you know, diversify the the revenue sources. The the key there is to make sure that all these things still serve the same audience. And and for us, that's, you know, founders of online businesses and they're who who need to use content marketing and put it put it into action.

Dan Norris: 48:59

So how do you balance the, the blending of priorities between the the service that you're fulfilling for customers and looking at both information type products and software type products. The only reason I ask is we're we're looking at both. I I think both would fit podcasters very well. There's a lot of information out there about podcasting, but I think a lot of it can be done better, particularly for business focused podcast. And I think there's a ton of technology gaps in the podcasting space these days that that we're looking at solving.

Dan Norris: 49:30

And I sort of have a hard time keeping focused in general, and so trying to figure out how I can diversify our interests while still sort of staying true to what the business is really all about. And, you know, getting into all these other types of businesses, think, is good because like you said, it diversifies your exposure and your risks and serves the customers better. But I wanna make sure I do it in a way that doesn't delude the core of the business, you know, the done for you service, like you said. And I guess the other part of it is the allure of of a product, whether it's a tech product, software, or a information product is the margins. I mean, you you build the thing once, it could cost a fair amount of time and money to build, but then every time you sell it, the the the profit is close to a 100%.

Dan Norris: 50:22

And there's a lot of allure in that. I mean, we have a pretty significant cost of human capital to get our shows out the door, and the thought of increasing our sort of profitability per per unit sold is pretty appealing. I I don't know.

Brian Casel: 50:38

Yeah. And we see the same thing. I mean, the current just the done for you productized service is profitable, and it's and it's working out very well and and it's definitely gonna grow. And that really solves a burning pain for a lot of companies and I'm sure the same is true for you with podcast editing. So I think that'll always be there but yeah, I mean there's no doubt about it when you're selling software or information products, I mean, the profit margin there is is huge.

Brian Casel: 51:16

The you know, you're also it it also allows you to serve different segments of the same market. You know? Like like, we're going to be selling plug ins and information to people who probably won't hire us for the done for you service. There might be some overlap, and they might turn out to be kind of lead generators for the done for you, maybe. But, really, it's for people who either, a, can afford the done for you or, b, have no interest in outsourcing it and actually wanna do it themselves.

Brian Casel: 51:50

And so we're giving you the tools to do that. So I I think I think that's it is important to think about, like, even within one single market or one audience, there there are different segments who have different types of needs. And I think growing out the product line is a good thing to do there. I mean, the hard part about it is to take your time with it. Right?

Brian Casel: 52:14

Like to say to yourself, okay, this year, it's really just the done for you service, and next year, we're gonna get into that other stuff.

Dan Norris: 52:21

You

Brian Casel: 52:21

have to kind hold yourself back. At least that's been my my thing. But, you know, looking at your business, Podcast Motor, this is what I was speaking about at MicroConf Europe. You know, whenever you you do get into software or selling or educational products with podcasting, you you would have never been able to do that had you not launched the done for you service first.

Dan Norris: 52:47

Sure. Sure.

Brian Casel: 52:48

You know, if if you had never established Podcast Motor to begin with as the go to company if if you wanna run your podcast and do it the right way. And, of course, you know, building up the revenue, and the team, and the infrastructure, and the brand, all of that has been done through your done for you service, then it allows you to launch the next thing to that same audience. I mean, if you were to just launch some podcasting software without having built any name or or brand recognition. Not to mention, sinking your own money into into developing a big software product. It would have been a a much harder, you know, uphill battle.

Brian Casel: 53:31

But you can actually like roll roll it out and kind of, you know, have the the the done for you fund and give and accelerate the the next phase.

Dan Norris: 53:41

Yeah. Yeah. No doubt. I and for me, it was just, you know, allowing myself to get the the business sort of standardized and now looking at other options and we're we're going through validation of that right now. But, yeah, it's it's it's tough to ignore the shiny object when when it's there.

Dan Norris: 54:02

But I think, you know, staying with staying with your core business, like you said, to get you in the place to launch other things is is really key.

Brian Casel: 54:12

Yeah. I mean, I I definitely struggle with it. I think this year, I struggle less with the shiny object syndrome, meaning like I I'm not really chasing other projects that aren't related to audience ops. I'm I'm just totally focused on on audience ops, and this is gonna be my long term focus for a while. But I there are lots of little things that I wanna do within the umbrella of audience ops.

Brian Casel: 54:37

You know? Like, I like, I've already registered domain names for the next three or four plugin products that I that I wanna launch. And we we only started building one of them.

Dan Norris: 54:46

Yeah.

Brian Casel: 54:47

And so I I'm trying to not get ahead of myself and try to get all the all the pieces in place first with the done for you, and build that up, and then, and just try to prioritize my focus and just the the focus of the whole company, you know.

Dan Norris: 55:07

Nice.

Brian Casel: 55:08

Yeah. So I mean, it I think it's exciting. I think this whole idea of of productized services, at least from what I've seen, obviously, because I write a lot about it, is it's definitely starting to resonate more and more this year, especially with people who are kind of freelancers, consultants, or just looking at starting their first software business. I'm seeing it as like a a bridge to to to get in there faster and to kinda, you know, take it kinda one step at a time. But it's it's interesting and it's definitely a lot of it's a lot of hard work and it's and it's kind of a different process, a different path to to putting all these pieces in place than than it would be using the traditional MVP of some software idea, and then hiring a developer, and getting a a couple of first paying customers for a SaaS.

Brian Casel: 56:03

I mean, it's it's different than that. It's, you know, it's working out systems and procedures and doing a lot of things manually and sticking with manual processes over the long term.

Dan Norris: 56:13

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we, you know, my mastermind group, I'm the only one doing a productized service And, you know, I see these people developing software products as their only product, and and I think it's just really tough for them. And, yeah, to to have, like you said, the ability to start it up, deliver something, get customers quickly, even if it's not the most profitable in terms of margin. I do think it's a good way to get started because it allows you the platform to grow from there if you want to.

Dan Norris: 56:43

And if not, you scale it up and just know that you are operating on a 20 margin instead of 80. And so you just have to make a bigger business, which is not not all bad. Know one of the things that that I you know, I'm just starting to really appreciate is and this is on like a nano scale but we are we have eight people on our team. We are really providing a fair amount of sort of economic value for those people. You know, the business that we've started is providing for for one person to quit her day job and do this pretty much full time and be home with, you know, her child which is just so cool.

Dan Norris: 57:25

I mean, I I I look at this as, you know, this is my business and we wanna grow it and do all these great things. But then you step back a little bit and say, holy shit, like, we're giving someone the opportunity to do what they've always wanted through our little business that is so microscopic on the grand grand scheme of things, but it really is affecting someone's life kinda substantially. So Yeah. It's it's really cool.

Brian Casel: 57:51

It it is. I mean, it's kinda scary to with that kind of responsibility, but it's also very exciting and and very thrilling to to work with a great team and to see them thriving as a result of working in in your business. I mean, I It's totally awesome. Yeah. And I mean, what I found with our team is, you know, they're I mean, right now, they're all freelancers.

Brian Casel: 58:20

They I hired them as freelancers. They came in as as freelancers, and slowly, they've been ramping up their hours to the point where they're like part time, almost working half of like a full time person and even a little bit beyond. And you know, like the feedback that I get from from them is, you know, they they want to transition more of their time into audience ops and away from their other clients, which which I love to hear. You know? And we're all we're a fully remote team, so I think they all appreciate that as well, a lot of us like to travel.

Brian Casel: 58:55

I mean, I'm traveling right now long term, and actually, one of our other teammates, he's not necessarily doing long term travel, but he travels a lot. Like, he's he's constantly on the road and every week he seems like he's somewhere else, which is cool, you know, because we all kind of like work from anywhere. We we use Slack and Trello and get it all done. Yeah. And, but, yeah, it's it's been it's been really cool to kinda, you know, build up this team and and also this camaraderie.

Brian Casel: 59:27

It's, that's another thing that I'm trying to learn and and figure out as I go along here is to really build some some sort of team culture, beyond just Slack, you know? And that's definitely a challenge, but it's, you know, I'd I'd like to get to a point where we're taking team retreats or something, like, where we all get to meet up, or something like that. But, you know, again, taking it one step at a time.

Dan Norris: 59:53

Yeah. No. For sure. I mean, we have, you know, I don't know if we're a step behind or not. I talked to our team individually a lot.

Dan Norris: 01:00:00

We're having our first call with all of us on the phone together tomorrow actually. So it'll be really neat for people to get to chat with each other and I think hopefully level up a few things, know, share some the ideas to share some best practices and things that they're concerned about with me so that I can address it sort of with our process or our people or our customers. And then and then, you know, let them be more comfortable in their job. So yeah. I think the culture in a in a distributed team is is a tough thing to to get real tangible.

Dan Norris: 01:00:35

But if you can do it, it it really is optimal all around.

Brian Casel: 01:00:41

Yeah. The meetings thing has been something that I I I've tried different variations of this and I'm I still haven't totally figured it out. We've had a couple of full team meetings on on Google Hangouts. And the couple of times that we've done it, I just found that they weren't very productive. It was a lot of, I would just say something and try to get everybody's feedback.

Brian Casel: 01:01:03

And I think just having like the group setting and then some connection issues, it it just didn't really work very well for that. Mhmm. Like, we we have great team collaboration over text within Slack. But having everybody on one group call has never been totally effective for us. The other thing that I do every month to two months is I schedule one on one calls with everyone to kinda review, you know, how your your personal performance over the last month, things you you're doing great, things you can do better, things that are going on in audience ops and and how your role is impacting that and what's coming up so so that you're aware of it.

Brian Casel: 01:01:45

So I try to have these, like, catch up calls, which have which have been very good. I think that's good for me to get to know each person individually. A couple of times, like when I need to roll out a new feature, like a new process or something, like, I'll just record one video message and just share that recording with the team, which isn't ideal. I mean, I don't I don't like just me speaking and and not getting any feedback. But sometimes, I just need to like tell everyone this is like some new thing that you need to be aware of.

Brian Casel: 01:02:15

Mhmm. But I think like next week, we're gonna have another group call just to kinda catch up and and have, you know, some group updates. So it it's just something that we're figuring out as we go along. Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Casel: 01:02:27

Good good episode. It was good. I always like, you know, comparing notes on on this kinda nitty gritty behind the scenes stuff. Hopefully, it's helpful. I'm sure a lot of it was kinda boring to our to to our audience here, but if if you're in it or if you're if you're working working on things in your company or you're thinking about launching something, you know, here's This is a look of like what it what it looks like from day to day.

Dan Norris: 01:02:50

Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's, you know, we we I think we both paint it, in in very rosy but real terms, and and a lot of it is very straightforward. I I think if you hire the right people, it it it gets to be very easy to do the work and the tough part is managing the the team and the growth and the process because that is your business. You know, your business is not a thing.

Dan Norris: 01:03:14

It's a process that involves people and that's your job as a founder is to establish it and grow it and refine it and optimize it. That's your product. So that's what I've come to realize is it's not that the thing we're delivering, it's the organization that we're building. Totally. Yep.

Dan Norris: 01:03:34

Cool. Awesome, Brian. Thanks, man.

Brian Casel: 01:03:37

Yeah. Thanks for having me.