[95] Rollercoaster Entrepreneurial Emotions, Working with Partners & Hiring Fast Enough
This is Bootstrapped Web episode 95. Back at it, Jordan. How's it going?
Jordan Gal:I'm good, man. I'm good. Nice to speak with you again. And, your new location once again. I'm still in Miami.
Jordan Gal:You are now down south in the sun along with me.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Down in Austin. We're here, we're here in Austin now through the December. So we're actually heading out January 1. We kind of shifted our our travel plans around a little bit.
Brian Casel:So so we're here in Austin for a shorter period of time. Last week we we had kind of a whirlwind tour driving down from North Carolina where we were for a few months, then we did a quick stop through New Orleans and a couple short stops in between there and stayed in Galveston, Texas, which was interesting. On the beach there, it was kinda cool. And then we got here in Austin. Oh, and and we did two nights in San Antonio at an Airbnb there, and and then we got to Austin.
Jordan Gal:Very nice. And I think I I might I may as well just apologize ahead of time because the the WiFi in my Ambie hates me, and I So hate we might we might have some some, you know, interruptions. Yeah. That's Cool, man.
Brian Casel:You know, when when I set out on this trip, people were always saying like, oh, man. Internet is gonna be such a challenge as as you travel around. And for some for whatever reason, I'm an idiot. And I thought that, you know, oh, these days, Internet, like, how hard can it be to get a decent connection somewhere? And that is not the case.
Brian Casel:I mean, Airbnbs, HomeAways, you know, coffee shops, it's just not reliable. You gotta you know, it's and even though they advertise it as, you know, this place has WiFi, it's it's not like it like it is at home, you know? So but luckily, one where I'm at today in in Austin is actually not so bad. So
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I've I've gotten into tethering on my cell phone and just blowing through my Verizon plan. Oh, that's That's my my my fallback.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That's same here. And and we've gone over our plan like two or three times in a month, you know, pretty often now. So it's, you know, it is what it is.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Cool, man. So we've got a good episode for today. Episodes.
Brian Casel:Yeah. As you're giving
Jordan Gal:me a tour
Brian Casel:of your of your co working space there, you're walking around.
Jordan Gal:That that was me nonchalantly trying to get better WiFi in the conference room and then getting kicked out. No big. No big.
Brian Casel:Cool. Yeah. So today's an update episode. Let's let's get right into it. What's what's new with you on your end?
Jordan Gal:The emotional roller coaster continues. It's accelerated the pace at which things go from amazing to horrible. So I think that's like the theme of the past few weeks for me. And we were doing our daily stand up with with, you know, myself and Brian and and and Rock and just kind of going over our things and we were looking at our our KPIs, right? What we focus on is how many free trials and how many launched campaigns.
Jordan Gal:And we were talking about a week ago, a week, one week ago, I was like high on heroin on this on this business. We were we had the best few days we'd ever have. We launched a new integration, the most trials ever, the most launched in a day, everything amazing. And I remember how freaking, I was walking on clouds and it is one week later and the past few days I have been so unhappy. So just look back, it used to be like that, you know, more than one week, but it's compressed.
Jordan Gal:But I'm trying to like acknowledge it
Brian Casel:Well, happened is, did something change in the last week?
Jordan Gal:That's the thing, nothing actually changed, it's just that you get into this mental rut. And for me, what it's been lately is productivity. So we're making adjustments internally because remember we've talked about when marketing is ahead of product and then when product is ahead of marketing? So right now, it switched. Marketing was too far ahead of product, we had some technical issues, needed to get that sorted out.
Jordan Gal:That's now sorted out. So now product is ahead of marketing, so I feel behind because that's my area. And not only do I feel behind, but because product jumped ahead and we got a few new integrations done, I'm overwhelmed. We we've had more free trials in the past thirty days than we've ever by like double, which is awesome, but I am responsible almost solely for all customer interaction. And so I am there there's a list of super important things I I need to do and I can't get to it because I just spend a lot of time.
Jordan Gal:I do from onboarding to customer support to converting people to sales conversations to marketing plans and advertise it's just it's just too much. So so we're starting to it used to be I will block for you guys. I will take all the incoming fire because you need to handle product. If that doesn't get fixed then, you know, nothing nothing works. And now it's now it's switching.
Jordan Gal:So what happened was Monday and Tuesday this week, I got into work on Monday, I look at my inbox, it's like a 113 emails, Help Scout has 16 tickets in it and Intercom has like nine chats. And I'm like, guys, this is this is not cool. I'm not gonna be able to do anything for an entire day when I have these these priorities. So I think that's what put me in a rut of like, how am I even going to get this done? How are going to move faster?
Jordan Gal:You get into like this hopeless thing and then you start talking to your team and you get it off your chest, you start to feel better, a few things fall into place, someone signs up for $250 a month, someone ten minutes ago just signed up for our first annual plan, our first annual customer paying upfront for annual. So it's like, okay, okay, you know, and I knew it was going to happen. On Monday, was like in the darkness and I knew by Friday, when I walk out of work on Friday, I'm gonna feel good. So just just go through.
Brian Casel:It's amazing that roller coaster. The same exact thing happened to me. I mean, I guess it continuously happens to me, but I definitely remember I think you and I were talking about this a few weeks ago. It's like, you know, you get a couple of new customers sign up in a cup in in a span of a couple days, then and then a few few bad days, you know. Different, like a writer quits or or something happens, and it's like everything, you know, goes back to shit.
Brian Casel:But then, you know, when you look back on on the month as a whole, you're like, actually, the the numbers are looking pretty good. And when that's that's what always happens to me. Like, day in, day out can be kind of a grind or kind of, you know, frustrating or exciting or or it's a roller coaster. But that's why I love the first of the month because that's when I get to just look at it from a macro perspective and see, okay, things are actually trending in the right direction. We can we can calm down a little bit here.
Jordan Gal:Right. And and this first of the month coming up is is the big one. That's the January 1.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So it's
Pippin Williamson:kind of
Jordan Gal:like
Brian Casel:fresh
Jordan Gal:start, new habits, new everything.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And and next week's episode, we're gonna get into all of our goals and and thoughts for looking back in 2015 and getting into 2016, so looking forward to that. Right.
Jordan Gal:Had to take advantage of that opportunity to kind of look back and look forward at the same time. Besides that, the other thing that I wanted to share was something, speaking of productivity, I have found it easier to not be so hard on myself about shortcomings and just kind of go with it and instead of trying to change my nature, but kind of going with my nature. So Ben sent me a blog post from Dan Martell talking about like mindset changes and mind hacks. I'm trying to remember the right terminology. Anyway, just for like time management and productivity and one of the things that he wrote about there is something that I do without noticing that it's like a tactic.
Jordan Gal:And and for me, when when I work with someone in real time, when Ben and I jump on Skype and we work together at the same time for half an hour, I am so unbelievably productive because I don't know what it is, what the nature of it is. If it's performing for someone or the social pressure or just saying, hey, let's write this homepage copy together and so you will work on the imagery and I'll work on the copy and then it's like, hey, they're doing whatever the dynamic
Brian Casel:I guess it's like the accountability of working in real time. We need to get something done by the end of this hour.
Jordan Gal:Right. So let's do it because we're here to do it. So let's let's do it. Yeah. It removes all distractions.
Jordan Gal:So that works for me. So I'm just doing that more. So, you know, when becomes really important, I I make it is it important enough to take up double the time? My hour plus Ben's hour.
Brian Casel:How does that style of working flow with with Ben's style and and everyone else on your team?
Jordan Gal:They would prefer not to have it that way, but they they can acknowledge Jordan sending out the email to all of our paying customers saying, hey, here's the offer for the annual plan. That's actually important enough for the business for Ben to hang out with Jordan on Skype for half an hour while he writes that email. It's not like Ben doesn't do any work and just watches me. He's kind of focused on also and gave me feedback and kind of doing other stuff on the side, but we are there and and he's present for me saying, okay, here's what I got. Check it out.
Jordan Gal:Here's what I have. Check it out. Here's what I have. Check it out. Okay.
Jordan Gal:I'm sending sent and then it and then it's done. So if it's worth it, I I I like I've been elevating things like that.
Brian Casel:Very cool.
Jordan Gal:Yep. And that's it. The the last thing on my end is the something that I've been kind of dealing with. I've never I've never been in a team of three people. Not not in this way.
Jordan Gal:I've worked with my brothers out. That was three of us. But the brotherly thing is just like a, you know, a different story.
Brian Casel:And it's also remote.
Jordan Gal:I've worked by myself a lot. I've worked with right. And it's right. And so and I've also worked with like contractors that I pay. Right?
Jordan Gal:That's a different relationship. But now we have three team members that each kind of own their own domain, and what I have been struggling with lately is management, to manage by consensus or decree. So I've had a lot of gut feelings about where to go next and when market and potential product opportunities and where to take Cardhook and how to make it more unique and differentiated, and it's like you need buy in from the team, but you can't do it all by consensus because then it just kind of ends up in the middle of whatever the opinions are. So that's something I think will increase in importance in the 2016 because we were looking at the market and saying, how do we make our products more differentiated? And anytime you do that, it's scary territory.
Jordan Gal:Are you gonna add features? Are you gonna change direction? Are you gonna niche down? So so making those decisions, one person with buy in versus three people consensus, so that's that's been a tricky thing the the past, like, two weeks.
Brian Casel:Mhmm. Yeah. It's tough because you're I mean, really, I guess all all of you are responsible for the big picture, but it seems like you're a little bit more on the big picture side of things. And the other guys are kinda more in the technical not like just like building out the product on a day to day basis.
Jordan Gal:Right. And product management too.
Brian Casel:So And like product I I guess. But Right. But even beyond the product roadmap, there's even, okay, well, what's the strategy behind this roadmap? You know?
Jordan Gal:Right. It's about what the market would react to and that that I am best positioned because I talked to people all day. Used to run e commerce business and all that. But then then when you have someone smart and experienced saying this is a dangerous path for a product to go in because I've seen it in this situation and that situation where this happens and this might happen, it might be better to go a different approach. Then you're faced with, is is it my call?
Jordan Gal:Do do I need everyone on board? Should we have everyone on board? Should it go by gut feel? How do we so lately, it's been a lot of that and like how do you validate? How do you get buy in?
Jordan Gal:And and it shouldn't just be, it's my opinion because I'm I'm smart and therefore you must listen to me. It's like, okay, what if we just did this to a limited extent and then talk to 10 people? You know, so I've been I've been like doing screenshots of people's emails and reactions to what I email them and I post that in a Slack channel that like, for product.
Brian Casel:Do you record any of your calls with customers so that the team can listen?
Jordan Gal:I don't I don't record. No. I I I regurgitate. You know, I give feedback after a phone call, which is a little dangerous because it's colored through my bias. I like the emails I point to as as more as less bias.
Jordan Gal:Like, yes, they're reacting to what I say, but I also make sure to include in the screenshot what I said to them in the email and then what their reaction is. You can kinda see. Look at the way I phrased it and look at the way they responded.
Brian Casel:Cool.
Jordan Gal:Yep. Alright. So that's that's my, my update on my stuff. Cool, man.
Brian Casel:Well, let's see. As I said, I'm in Austin right now. I I don't know when this episode goes out. I think it goes out next week, so I'll still be here in Austin for a couple more days. If any of you listening or or in Austin wanna grab a beer or something, hit me up on Twitter.
Brian Casel:I'll I'll be here, through January 1, and that's the day that we head out. After that, head out to San Francisco, and I'll be in San Fran in San Fran for about eleven nights in the January. So again Is
Jordan Gal:that new?
Brian Casel:We were gonna hit San Francisco in the original plan, but we shifted around. So after San Francisco, instead of going north, we're gonna kinda cut out the Northwest, unfortunately. And from there, we're gonna head to Colorado. And we're gonna spend the whole month of February in Colorado. And then from there, we're heading back to Connecticut.
Brian Casel:So Okay.
Jordan Gal:Alright. That's your loop.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So my update for this month, we're right in the December. So my my focus, my big goal for the month of December is to update the Productize Course.
Brian Casel:So I've got a whole list of new lessons that I wanna add to it, incorporating stuff that I've been learning in in Audience Ops. I have a number of new case studies, some that I've already recorded, a few that I plan to record. Some of them are with actual ProductHyde students who've pretty awesome things this year, as well as other business owners. So those will be added to the course, adding a bunch of new templates and worksheets and everything. So, I'm making a whole bunch of updates there.
Brian Casel:I'm also planning on releasing a whole line of new free content to help support the Productize course. So my goal for this month is to compress all of that production work on Productize into December, but really into these two weeks while I'm here in Austin, So that I can kinda get that stuff done, put it in place, build the the email automation systems and and everything. So that it's basically all queued up for for most of 2016. And then and then I can get right back to work on on Audience Ops. So that's
Jordan Gal:So you see the the December as, like, an opportunity. Like, I I don't have to focus on Audience Ops because no one's no one's gonna I assume most people are not gonna sign up for a service like Audience Ops at in the December, so you almost have, like, a few weeks of opportunity to focus on, projects.
Brian Casel:Well, we have once once I get into the Audience Ops updates, I I mean, we have been growing, and that's that's what's been it's a good problem to have, I guess, but it's that's what's been making this difficult is that I'm trying to focus on Productize. And really, this whole Productize update was something that I wanted to do earlier in the year. And it's like, I've been pushing it and pushing it and pushing it. But the truth is Productize has been doing pretty well this year. It continues to sell, continues to grow, and it justifies me putting in time to come out with like a Productize two point zero, which I really wanna do.
Brian Casel:So I'm off a few things in Audience Ops in terms of like building out new stuff in Audience Ops. I'm not not doing any of that in December. I'm focusing that effort on Productize. As I said, Audience Ops is, growing. It's actually growing pretty fast.
Brian Casel:I did all this work around sales and marketing for Audience Ops back in October and November. And a lot of it is kinda like automated stuff. And and and a lot of that is now starting to return, in kind of a big way in in December. So the flow of leads is doubled, if if not tripled at this point. We've got a whole a whole line of new sign ups coming through.
Brian Casel:And like, the week after Thanksgiving, it's like, I think four clients kinda pulled the trigger to to get started. So they were waiting for that, you know, at, like, last November to to start going, which is great. And and, you know, the the client base is growing significantly, and we're we're really attracting the right type of clients, which I'm really happy about. You know, software companies, SaaS companies, especially those with with larger audiences, and and they've kind of established somewhat of a brand name, but they're they're looking for, you know, extra power and extra extra resources into content. That's really kind of what we're what we're we're shooting for in terms of our ideal client.
Brian Casel:And so the big challenge has become the team. You know, growing the writing team. I'm starting to realize, like, now that we have a pretty strong pipeline of of leads and sales coming through, I'm realizing that the big challenge is not gonna be so much getting enough leads and getting enough sales. It's it's mostly gonna be about getting enough writers who can take on enough clients for each writer. That's number one.
Brian Casel:But then the other challenge is finding writers with the right background, the right, knowledge space and and experience. You know, specifically, because we're we're working with a lot of technical software companies. We're also working with a lot of web development agencies, and and user experience agencies, and that sort of thing. So I'm I'm kind of seeking writers who have also done work in web design or web development or user experience, but they also happen to write as well. And I know that there are actually quite a few writers in that space.
Brian Casel:I mean, I I kinda consider myself to be to be one of those. I mean, I don't do actual writing for audience ops, but but I have been able to attract a couple of new writers in the past week or two who who have that that mix of of technical design, as well as, like, business and marketing, know how. But they're also great writers, and they and they do that as a as a service as well. So, I mean, if anybody's listening to this, I'm constantly on the lookout for that sort of writing talent. So if if you're at all interested, we do have an application form on the site.
Brian Casel:But if you just, you know, tweet at me at CastJam, you know, that's a really great way to kinda get your name to the top of the list. Because I do have a long list of applicants, but I'm I'm really working hard at sifting through and finding people with that exact experience. And at this point, at at this rate, we're I'm really looking to kind of bring on at least one or two writers every single month in order to allow for the sales and marketing to remain open without having to shut that down.
Jordan Gal:Right. That's actually your bottleneck. Yeah. Because you have to keep the quality up.
Brian Casel:Yeah, exactly.
Jordan Gal:You can't just hire anyone or outsource everything. Yeah, that's interesting.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But it's been good. I've been able to grow a really great team so far. The people that we have on the team are awesome. I'm just really happy with how all that is going.
Brian Casel:I mean, as I said, we actually closed a lot more sales than I expected to in December. I thought that December would be a pretty quiet month and that's kind of why I started to focus on productize. I mean, I I would expect it to slow down as we get into the December, as we get, you know, into Christmas and New Year's, but I'm just trying to make sure that we have the pieces in place to to hit the ground running in January too.
Jordan Gal:Interesting. And is it is it starting to to grow out from your network? Right? That that would obviously make sense as the first layer, but then is it it would be very encouraging if it wasn't just based on, like, trust and knowing you ahead of time. If it starts to attract strangers that have very little exposure to you, that would be very
Brian Casel:Absolutely.
Jordan Gal:That would make me optimistic.
Brian Casel:That's exactly why actually, I had that as a note here. That's exactly why I'm really happy with how things are going because we have kind of crossed that threshold now where most of the leads that I'm talking to now I'll still get a, you know, one or two who I've met in person or I know. They come from my network. But now most of them are people who I have not known before. They came either through a referral, you know, maybe somebody in their network kind of follows my stuff.
Brian Casel:So that's indirect, somewhat related to my network. But we have actually signed a couple of clients now who came from, like, a cold email that I sent, you know, or or finding our content that we've been publishing or or our new, email course that we that we just released. So that stuff is starting to come through and it's it's it's also interesting because I'm I'm still the one doing all the sales calls myself And that's in a way kind of a bottleneck, especially while I'm traveling. It's kind of hard to schedule all these things in. But I think at this early stage, still enjoy doing the sales.
Brian Casel:I think it's important. I I mean, as always, you know, sales calls are are easy when it's when it's a friend, you know, when when you're talking to someone you know. But I but now I'm doing more and more calls with people I'm meeting for the first time. I'm I'm learning, you know, how to overcome certain objections, but how to how to speak to certain really just how to ask the right questions and how to learn about people and understand what's important to know about them. So I'm kind of learning those things and getting the ins and outs.
Brian Casel:I think I'm getting a little bit better with that.
Jordan Gal:Is it structured? How structured do you have your, I don't know if you call it a demo. It's more of a consultation.
Brian Casel:It's not too structured right now, to be honest. I probably could do a better job. I don't have like a natural sales technique with this. It's something that I'm trying to get better at. I did come out with a new PDF that you can get right on the homepage of of Audience Hops, which is like a a collection of sample articles that we've published for other clients.
Brian Casel:That's kind of a common question that comes up is like, can can I see some some samples? And here's a bunch of samples. So there's that. And and I mean, I kinda answer a lot of the common questions. But part of the thing about this productized service is that it's really all, for the most part, laid out on the Homepage, pricing and everything.
Brian Casel:There are a few details that I haven't communicated everything on the Homepage, like what we're doing when it comes to content promotion and whatnot. So I'll kinda go into those details and and how we we'll we'll, like, create the content upgrade on all the articles and things like that. So I'll kind of explain that to new leads. But my my approach to doing sales calls has always been just to ask a lot of questions. You know, really, I'm I just wanna learn as much as I can about about you, what your situation is, what you're looking ahead to doing, what goals are, and and see if we can even help in any way, you know.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. There's an article I came across on First Round, you know, that VC company. They have an amazing amazing blog. And the guy from TalentBin, the cofounder of TalentBin, Peter Kazanji, he wrote an article really, really in-depth about their sales process, their cold email, exact verbiage, everything, their templates, and then also how they ran demos. So I'll I'll put a link in.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Really, really good. It made me kinda question a lot of things that I hold as common wisdom of, like, be really short and to the point of your email. These guys super long, detailed everything. And it also kinda it jives with the email templates that people have sent me from our competitors.
Jordan Gal:So it was a bigger funded competitor that we kinda keep an eye on. You know, my my customers have sent me, hey, this guy's emailed me. I figured you'd wanna see. I couldn't believe the level of default detail they were going into in email three and email four of a cold email sequence that the person hasn't responded to, but they're just giving the information. So speaking of that, I want to ask you your opinion.
Jordan Gal:You're mentioning that when you get into a sales call, some of the things have not been communicated on the site. Things like how you do content promotion after something gets published, right? So what's your opinion on that? We are redoing or adding, whatever you want to call it, updating our marketing site now And half of me wants to just include all the information and half of me just wants to include a lot of it but not quite every single detail for fear of it being overkill and also for you know, to have some things be like, wait a minute, I like this, I want this, but I wanna know how this works. And then that can pull you into doing a demo, getting in touch.
Jordan Gal:So I'm I'm Yeah. Unsure of how to approach that.
Brian Casel:I I think that you're right on on the latter. And and I think that's what I found with Audience Ops, to be honest, now that now that now that you've you've voiced it in that way. I mean, the homepage of Audience Ops is the same homepage that we've had since day one. Like, that's basically the sales page that I created before we had any clients and before we even really learned anything about this market, except for what I had when I launched. And so I just haven't gotten around to rewriting any of the copy or changing anything on that.
Brian Casel:And it's worked fairly well. And I really had no reason to change it up, at least not yet. And so over the last few months, we haven't changed things drastically, but we did add a few additional benefits to what we do. Content upgrades, I mean, that's kinda touched on on the homepage. But like, we'll we'll go on to Quora and answer questions for as the client, and and our writers will will write answers and link back to content that we've published.
Brian Casel:We'll syndicate their articles to Medium, and we'll do all these different things. Do email, drip automation sequences for clients and that sort of stuff. And we help people migrate over to drip and all this. And and like, not all that is really hashed out on our homepage. What I'm what I'm finding now is like, okay, they they read the homepage, they request the consultation.
Brian Casel:They're they're already basically on board with the core concept. Like, they're they're looking to outsource the writing for their content. But then once we start talking about it, and once I start talking about these or explaining these these other benefits specifically that we're focused on building their email list and the content promotion and content upgrades, then it becomes like, oh, I didn't even realize you guys did that. That's like a that's like, oh, well, now it's like icing on the cake. Because they're already on board because they see the price, they see what's included, and that alone was enough to request the consultation.
Jordan Gal:Right. And now you've given them the goods. Yes.
Brian Casel:It's very interesting. Now it's like something extra that doesn't cost anything extra. It's just like we include it. I've heard that happen a couple of times. What I've been doing for most leads is we actually still send proposals.
Brian Casel:We use Nucy to create our proposals and send them out. And it's a productized service, so it's like super standardized. We've got like a template. And I think I talked about on a previous episode, my VA sets up the proposal using one of our templates and sends it out and, but lately a lot of these leads, I mean it's signing up on the first call. Know, forget the proposal, let's just, sign you right up.
Brian Casel:If they're ready to go, they're ready to go. And I think that comes down to they're already educated before we even get on the call. It's just a matter of getting a few questions answered and getting comfortable with it.
Jordan Gal:So what's the normal process? Someone hits your site, requests a demo, requests a consultation, talks to you, downloads something, looks through your site, gets an email course? Like what?
Brian Casel:Well, we just recently put put, like, the email course in place, and we just recently put that that, sample articles in place, which also gets them into the email list. So that sequence is just beginning to play out. So a lot of the leads will come through that first. But historically, before that stuff was launched, most of it hap basically what happens is somebody requests a consultation right on the Homepage, the form is there. That comes straight to me.
Brian Casel:I reply. Here's my calendar link. Let's talk sometime this week or next week. We talk, and then typically what happens is by the next day I'll send them the proposal link and a link to a special page on our site created just for them with the Buy button. That gets them subscribed in Stripe.
Brian Casel:And then they'll follow that link to sign up, or I'll follow-up with an email a week later, and I'll kind of follow-up every single week for probably three or four weeks until it's until it's not happening. Or in in the case of some some recent clients, like, we didn't even do the proposal. I just signed them up right on the first call over the phone. But that's basically how it happens. And then and then once they sign up, I just pass them right over to my team.
Brian Casel:My project manager does the kickoff call, and they and they kinda get rolling from there.
Jordan Gal:Very nice, man. Very nice.
Brian Casel:It's good. You know, I I gotta be I mean, it's it sounds it sounds good on the surface, but there are things that I'm really challenged with.
Jordan Gal:Delivery, man. Delivery.
Brian Casel:It's a service. Yeah. It it is a service. I mean, luckily, it's not me doing doing the the the daily delivery of of the stuff. You know, I've got the project managers in place, doing a lot of the the client communication, got a great team of writers.
Brian Casel:But but, man, this I'm I'm really challenged with making sure that we have enough capacity to to keep growing the client list. So so that means I find myself constantly going back into my job's email account and, and sifting through applications and and running interviews with writers. And so that's something that I'm gonna need to kind of systematize at some point. And then the other thing that I'm just it's constantly on my mind now is running a remote team. And the fact that we're remote is not new to me.
Brian Casel:I've been remote basically my whole time doing business on the web, but this is definitely the biggest team that I've managed yet. I think we have something like 12 people total in like four different continents. I mean, across The US, but, you know, everywhere. And and so I'm trying to, figure out how to how to keep a strong work culture in even, like, beyond just Slack. I mean, lot of that happens in Slack.
Brian Casel:And I'm also trying to keep my finger on the pulse of where everybody's at. You were saying, how you're working with partners who are kind of on equal footing and and you and you all kinda own your own domain. I'm a little bit challenged with not having that situation. And I I am the sole owner or the sole quote unquote boss, but I and and that makes it tough to to get an accurate read on everybody sometimes. Yeah.
Brian Casel:You know?
Jordan Gal:I hear that. I hear that. I have difficulty with it among three people who talk multiple times a day and have a stand up every day. So I can imagine as things get more spread out and it's not business partners, yeah, it's a big challenge. But that sounds to me like your challenge for 2016.
Jordan Gal:It's management, hiring, systems.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Good, man.
Jordan Gal:All right, cool. So what do you think? We cut it as our update? Let everyone get back to work? We'll be back to listen to music?
Brian Casel:Yes, sir. So we'll be back to it. Next week, we're going to talk all about goals, look back on 2015. We'll look ahead to 2016.
Jordan Gal:I'm a little scared. I'm a little scared.
Brian Casel:Me too. As always and by the way, we received some tweets from you guys about some sites and businesses that we'll review on an upcoming episode in the next couple of weeks. So looking forward to that. And, and why don't you guys, you know but well, I guess we'll get into the into the next episode. But, you know, tweet us, you know, what your goals are for 2016.
Brian Casel:Love to hear what you guys are working on.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Make it public. Make it a little a little bit more accountable. Yep. Alright.
Jordan Gal:Cool, Brian. Better. Cheers.
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