[99] Updates De-Bottlenecking, Productize Relaunch, & Firing a Client
This is Bootstrapped Web episode 99. Jordan, how's it going, buddy?
Jordan Gal:I'm good, man. Episode 99. We're, we're getting there. Yep. We're right there.
Brian Casel:Yep. We've got we've got big big plans for episode a 100.
Jordan Gal:Huge plans.
Brian Casel:Yep. Actually, I'm sorry. We we have nothing.
Jordan Gal:Yeah, we got nothing. Cool, man. Well, good to be back with you. We're gonna we're gonna dive in. This is gonna be a therapy session.
Jordan Gal:I hope you're ready for that.
Brian Casel:I think for me too. Yep. Yep. I
Jordan Gal:have been, very fucking stressed.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. Well, I see I see, like, boxes in the background of of of where you're sitting in in your house. Boxes? One of the boxes.
Brian Casel:It just looks like things are things are moving, things are happening. What like, what's going on over there?
Jordan Gal:The the the box big box you see is actually great. It is the standing desk, like the convertible stand at the top. So now I'm up dancing and standing, which makes me so much happier. That's been a big improvement.
Brian Casel:Alright. So I I actually wanna ask you about that. Have you actually started using it? The the standing desk? Yes.
Brian Casel:Because I'm gonna be, you know, moving we're getting a new house in a few months, and I'm thinking about doing the standing desk too. What are your thoughts of doing it?
Jordan Gal:It makes me happier. I'm in a better mood if I'm standing most of the day than if I'm sitting. So I just noticed it. I was just in Miami for a month and there they had, a big table that you could sit at and then right in back of it, like a bar almost that you could stand. And I I stood almost the entire time and was just I was just really energetic and happy and up.
Brian Casel:Was it like a transition to get used to it or like were you tired the first few days or
Jordan Gal:I do it anytime I go to the co working space here in Portland, but I have been going lately because the weather sucks lately, so I just stay home. I've also kind of gotten more productive at the home office, but it's only sitting. So after Miami, I was like, I'm not okay with just sitting all day and I want to be able to be here and so I got this little convertible thing and it's fantastic. So I do that and then I could just sit down whenever I my legs are tired or I want to.
Brian Casel:Cool. And and do you have to get like a special floor mat? I have. I heard it's like better for your back or for your feet or something.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I think the biggest thing is I need to stop wearing flip flops. I would like to spend the rest of my life in flip flops. Yeah. But evidently, they're not as good for you as sneakers are for your feet.
Jordan Gal:Right. So I think that's the biggest thing. And then I'm just giving it a try to see if I really need the the mat or not.
Brian Casel:Good stuff. I I think I'm gonna go for that that convertible thing when I, you know, set up the new home office in a few months.
Jordan Gal:I find standing and music together is my my happy place.
Brian Casel:So you're like, working. You you Yeah. We're doing little dance. Alright.
Jordan Gal:Uh-huh. Mhmm.
Brian Casel:Yep. Cool. So you're back in Portland. And I think, if I'm not mistaken, this is the first episode where you and I are both on Pacific Time.
Jordan Gal:Wow. Bootstrap web goes West Coast.
Brian Casel:That's right.
Jordan Gal:And you're you're in San Francisco.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Right now, I'm in San Francisco, and we're loving it here. We we've been here for almost a week. We're heading out of here in two days from now.
Jordan Gal:You did something last night. Made me very jealous. You went to Mixergy.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I had the the the famous Thursday night scotch at Mixergy headquarters.
Jordan Gal:That's so cool, man. How was that?
Brian Casel:Who else was there? It was a good time. It was this was originally supposed to be a a DC Dynamite I just joined that a a week ago. Nice. Better late than never, I guess.
Brian Casel:So two guys who I'd never met before, also from San Francisco, we just had to to meet up. And one of them happens to work with Andrew. And he was like, why don't we do it over at at Mixergy? I mean, Andrew and I have have have talked before and and met a few times, but never in person. So so that was really fun.
Brian Casel:So we so we hung out there, had some scotch, saw saw where all the, the magic happens with mixture.
Jordan Gal:Cool. That's awesome.
Brian Casel:Which is, it's it's really cool. He's got a whole, production setup going on over there.
Jordan Gal:Very cool, man.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I'm actually booked for an interview there, so that'll be coming out in a few months probably.
Jordan Gal:Nice. And you've been on there before more than once.
Brian Casel:I've only done the Did a course. I've only done the courses. I've I've done two premium courses for Mixergy, but never like
Jordan Gal:a So you're coming out interview. From from behind the paywall. I
Brian Casel:guess so. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Very cool.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It should be fun.
Jordan Gal:Nice, man.
Brian Casel:Well I was also recently on the the Tropical NBA podcast, which I don't know that that's gonna publish sometime in the next month, I think. So Cool. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Cool. Cool. Cool. What's new, man? You wanna get into into a bit of an update?
Jordan Gal:I have my list is too long.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Sure. So I don't if
Jordan Gal:you wanna go one by one or go you first and me first, but
Brian Casel:Okay. So I'm gonna go, you know, fun into a good update into a shitty update.
Jordan Gal:Alright. Sorry. Be dramatic about it with with an arc.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Okay. The fun stuff is is just talking about travel again. I'm I'm, here in San Francisco. And from here, we're gonna be driving out to Colorado.
Brian Casel:Unfortunately, we so our original plan was to go up kind of Bayou, Portland, and and Seattle. But, you know, we're kind of speeding up our trip a little bit and we cut out the Northwest. So instead, we're we're just gonna go back east now and head to Colorado, and we'll we'll get there by the end of next week. Really, really excited for, like, the next thirty days of this of this trip for a number of reasons. I mean, first of all, Colorado, which I love.
Brian Casel:Every time I've been out there, I'm gonna get some snowboarding in. My dad, shipped me out my my snowboard. I'm gonna be meeting my snowboard in in, in Colorado. Next next week, January 25, I'm then flying from Denver to Vermont for the first of two big snow tiny comps. So the one in Vermont is the one that I co organized with with Brad Tunar.
Brian Casel:We've got a packed house for that. We we booked the same house as last year. This will be the third year of us doing this trip. Really, really excited with for that one. It's, that is always so much fun, and and it's like a big mastermind session.
Brian Casel:You meet some new folks every year. You meet up with old friends every year. You go snowboarding. We have dinner. You know, it's it's just a a ton of fun.
Brian Casel:So I'll be doing that. And then then I come back to Colorado. We're we're basically setting up my my family and I are setting up shop in Colorado for a good thirty days in kind of a cabin outside of Breckenridge, Colorado. So we'll be there. And, I'm gonna try and meet up with my buddy Greg Hickman in Denver, Mastermind buddy there.
Brian Casel:And then a few weeks later in February, I'm gonna be driving to Beaver Creek, Colorado for for the second of Big two Big Snow Tiny Confs. So that's the brand new Big Snow Tiny Conf West, which is, Dave Rodenbaugh is is, organizing that one. So, excited to do that. Got a good group over there as well. And, and then after that, we we start making our way back east.
Brian Casel:We're gonna do a quick stop in Chicago in late February, probably for two nights, and then just get back to to Connecticut. We're, you know, shopping for a home and look to, look to make a move in, like, March and April around Connecticut.
Jordan Gal:Wow. That's a full schedule.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:I like how 30 is like long time. We're really gonna be settled settling down in Colorado for a full thirty days.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Jordan Gal:It must sound like a lot after doing a week here and
Brian Casel:a week Yeah. We got, like, one week here in San Francisco. And before this, we were we were in Austin for two weeks. And, of course, in between these places, we're literally on the road for a week because we don't we're traveling with a almost a two year old and a dog, which means we can't cover a lot of ground in a day. So, like, driving from Texas to California, that takes us, like, six days.
Brian Casel:When if it were just me or me and my wife, we could do it in, like, two days. But, you know, we're limiting every day to about, you know, four hours max of of driving. We'll just get a get a hotel somewhere. Alright. Alright.
Brian Casel:So yeah. It's fun. But, like, the the next the next leg of this trip, I'm really excited about. I mean, we're gonna drive down the Pacific Coast. We're gonna drive through
Jordan Gal:Driving down
Brian Casel:the Pacific? Well, we we were gonna come up this way, but instead we we went inland. We went through, Fresno. The the weather was really shitty, coming in here. So we're like, oh, let's not do the coast.
Brian Casel:It actually might be shitting on the way out of here too. So but then we're gonna get through Utah and check out some of those kinda, national parks through through Utah. Then and then we get into Colorado and drive through the mountains. It's gonna be pretty cool.
Jordan Gal:Nice, man. You you still have a lot of the trip ahead of
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Alright. Cool. So that that's your that's your fun update.
Brian Casel:That's the fun update. Alright. Do you wanna go back and forth? Like, big initiatives,
Jordan Gal:the big things on my mind, I am bottleneck. My name is bottleneck. I have the word bottleneck stamped on my forehead right now and it needs to change. So right, we have a small team. We have three people and you know, we've talked about this before.
Jordan Gal:Sometimes product leads and marketing lags behind. Sometimes it's the other way around. Right now marketing is lagging and I'm in charge of marketing, but it's not just marketing, I also end up doing a lot of different things, too many different things and I am the bottleneck. So all these things that are important for user acquisition that would bring in more leads at the top of the funnel, all these different things, they're all on my plate. And so I have to prioritize.
Jordan Gal:I can't do everything at once. I'm not Superman. So I'm slowing down the company. And so now the big decisions to be made are how do we get out of that? How do we extricate ourselves from that situation the right way and on a budget?
Jordan Gal:So is it, do you hire for the least important things or least impactful things like customer support and customer success? Or do you actually hire for the most strategic things like content marketing, email marketing, helping set up webinar flow. Where should we be spending our money? If we're not going to hire for everything, where should we go? Those are the decisions being talked about and made internally right now.
Jordan Gal:So the reason I'm very stressed is because I'm the bottleneck and I have constant guilt whether it's about not following up with someone on the sales thing, not getting back to someone on the support thing fast enough, not finishing some integration documentation, not launching the next advertisement initiative. It's just too much. It doesn't make sense.
Brian Casel:Well, was going to say, like, identifying that you're the bottleneck, I guess that relates to what are the goals that are not being or the milestones that are not being met. Or or maybe a better way to look at it is, like, your yearly, goals. Like, did you set deadlines on these things that, like, okay, if we're not gonna hit this deadline, if it's if it's me doing all the work on on this thing, like, are you looking at it that way? Or how do you identify what is, like, the result of of you being a bottleneck? How what's that holding up?
Jordan Gal:We're we're trying to look at what what's, like, the one thing that we need and it's just, it's top of the funnel, it's new trials. So we're doing a pretty good job at onboarding at the percentage of people who launched their campaign as opposed to the number who actually sign up for a trial. All these different things can be tweaked, but we see it as much more impactful. Let's say we're getting a 100 trials a month and 50 of them are launching, right? Let's just say like a numbers are like that.
Jordan Gal:Should we be focused on which numbers will you be focused on? Should we try to get 60 people launched and improve our onboarding by 20%? Or should we just try to get 150 trials? Which one is going have more impact? So right now it's top of the funnel.
Jordan Gal:If that isn't growing fast enough, then we're not going to hit our revenue goals, Right? So December was our best month of growth in trials and in revenue, but how are we going to go a lot faster? Well, you and I've talked about doing things that don't scale. And now for the first time in the company, we're looking at each other and saying, you know what? It's time to do things that scale.
Jordan Gal:Ten minutes ago, ten minutes before we started, I saw someone who has made over $500 in recovered revenue in the first three days of their trial. So I go into intercom and I ping that person. I say, Hey man, you're awesome. You got set up super quickly and you're already doing amazing. Let me know if you need anything.
Jordan Gal:That does not scale, but I will never stop doing that. Can't see yet where I would stop doing that. But doing things that are very incremental on the acquisition front versus, no, let's invest in content marketing and email marketing webinars so that three months from today, our revenue is growing by double and triple and quadruple the MRR that it's growing at now.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. And and I also like to think of it like, what will you be doing when you offload some of these things? Even if even if there are things that you're not doing yet, how are you personally or or the business really gonna get the return on investment from from freeing up your time to to go do what? Right?
Brian Casel:Right.
Jordan Gal:Right. And so that's directly related to what should we hire for.
Brian Casel:Right. Right. Right.
Jordan Gal:So that's yeah. That's that's the that's the biggest, thing that's happening internally.
Brian Casel:Very cool.
Jordan Gal:How about you? What, where are we now? We're the
Brian Casel:Well, okay. So I've got like the, you know, like the kind of good business report update. But even before that, just to relate to what you were just saying, I I also find myself in that boat a little bit with Audience Ops right now. The delivery of the service, I'm I'm not a bottleneck. That's pretty smooth.
Brian Casel:We've got people and systems and processes in place for everything except for sales. I mean, leads are coming in. That's that's good. But I'm the only person doing sales calls. And that's really, really tough when we're traveling.
Brian Casel:So I'm like, we we got a bunch of leads this week, and I'm and I give them my standard response saying like, hey, here's my Calendly link, but sorry, my my schedule is completely unavailable for the next two weeks. You know? It's a little it's a little tricky. And I'm just trying to figure out, like, the next steps of how to, delegate that top of the funnel sales. I'm I'm it's it's a fear, really.
Brian Casel:It's, if I'm honest. I mean, I think I think I had an easier time with this when I when I delegated sales in Restaurant Engine, than I than I do with Audience Hops. Partly because it's it's a higher price point thing that we're selling. It's, I I think it's also has to do with the fact that, like, I treat almost every lead as a really important lead. So I I would think that, like, once I have a salesperson, I would give them the lesser important leads.
Brian Casel:But I there are none that I feel are are lesser important at this point.
Jordan Gal:And and you're still the best person to sell it?
Brian Casel:Like, literally this morning, I just had a sales call, and and it went really great. I'm I'm pretty confident that this person is gonna sign up probably next week. And after I got off that call, I thought to myself, like, what if I was not the person who just did that call? And and I just thought to myself, like, that I I don't I it's hard to picture how that would how that would work. And obviously, that there is a solution, you've gotta, you know, train the person and and kind of get them they're they're not gonna be great overnight.
Brian Casel:Not that I'm so great either, but it's and it's also like like this being like like feeling like this is a long term business for me, audience ops, and I'm talking to people who I'm who I personally network network with quite a bit, it's gonna be a challenge. But it's something that I'm definitely gonna be focused on in, in February for sure. So
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Tricky. The the good thing is that people have done it before and and have gone down this path and figured it out and guarantee that's been in more complex situations with more complex applications and services. But it's a difficult thing to envision and get over that. I'm the best person on the planet to respond to sales emails and inquiries for Kartak period, but you have to get over that.
Jordan Gal:And like, what does it take to get over that? Is it just so many leads that you you say, okay, cool. So the conversion rate goes down, but it
Brian Casel:doesn't Plenty of leads.
Jordan Gal:Right. Or is it a combination, right? In your situation, it's higher ticket. So is it a separation? It a talk to you for fifteen minutes, not really a sales conversation, almost like a quick discovery thing, or maybe a salesperson does that first and you just close, or or you have nothing to do with it because you have enough, enough leads coming in.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But I mean, like, other thing with this is that it's, every sales calls that I've that I've had has been one call closed. And and sometimes that means closing on the call. Sometimes it means, like, they sign up the following week, but they've they sign up on their own or they sign up after an email follow-up. They don't really require, like, two separate calls.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. That's good.
Brian Casel:But, you know, maybe that's what it will turn into. As I don't know. We'll we'll figure that out as we go. But then that that does bring the question of, like, bot you know, the bottleneck, which is if I'm stuck doing all these sales calls, if and if I did not have have to do that, what what would I be focused on? And, yeah, mean, I look at, like, the the goals for this year, things are starting to fall behind a little bit.
Brian Casel:Like our our plugins we have the second plugin, this this Landing Pages plugin that that's coming along, but I'd like to do more to to do some pre marketing for that and and kind of build up, which I'm doing zero of of that right now. Soon, I wanna start getting to work on on, on an educational product, which I don't know where in my schedule I'm gonna fit that in as of today. I I do need to still work constantly on on the team and some HR issues and getting not only hire like, making sure that we have enough capacity on the team, but also doing a I I wanna improve our teammate onboarding. So, like, training of our new writers and and teammates and and get them, all falling into the same kind of methodology. Like, we still do our methodology, but just people get a little bit lost when they're brand new to our our process and and our production line and all that.
Brian Casel:So, you know, we're figuring that out. I've I've gotta hire another assistant this this week. And, it's it's just really hectic. So, it's it's just hard, like, when when I have these calls sitting on my calendar, which just break up my whole day. And like like today, we're sightseeing around San Francisco, and then I had to break off for twenty minutes while we're walking around a park to go do a sales call.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That's not easy. That's not a cool thing
Jordan Gal:to do. Not not ideal. You know?
Brian Casel:So that's that's where I'm at with that. But I guess on the better on on the brighter side of things, I'm finishing up my work on on Productize, which I had I had, like, dedicated December to that, but it's kinda spilling into January. But, basically, I I have launched the second edition of Productize, which has a a handful of new lessons and a bunch of new case studies in it. Yesterday, I did a webinar, for my newsletter list, which went really, really well, actually. Better than I expected.
Brian Casel:And, we're right now going through the the weekend, have kind of a a promotion going on for to kinda, you know, celebrate the second edition of Productize. That that's going really well. And I've been recording a bunch of other interviews about Productize services, which are gonna form a new podcast called the Productized Podcast. And I I wanted to get that all produced and and wrapped up by the end of this week, but that's probably not gonna happen because we're heading out on Sunday. So that's gonna spill into into February.
Brian Casel:But I that's pretty close to being done. And and once I'm once I'm I'm done, like, producing about 15 of these episodes or so, I'm just gonna schedule them out to come out for, like, throughout the rest of the year, and I'm not really gonna touch it after that.
Jordan Gal:I like that that
Brian Casel:batch. Yeah. In audience ops news, I mean, I'll just give, like, the good update, and then I've got a a tough update, which will go to you before
Jordan Gal:we go.
Brian Casel:The, December was like, oh my god. Like, definitely the best month yet, for Audience Ops and probably the best month of my whole business career yet. And, that took me very much by surprise. I mean, we added 10 new clients in December and and, you know, added, like, four new teammates and, I mean, revenue breaking all sorts of goals, and it was crazy. So that was that was good.
Brian Casel:It was exciting. It was super hectic. I was working my ass off through the holidays. And then January started off actually pretty slow. So today, we're recording, like, right in the January.
Brian Casel:And and so far, this this month has actually been slow. And I I thought it would be the the opposite. Right? I I thought that December would be slow and then January would be would be hectic.
Jordan Gal:That's what you figured.
Brian Casel:But it's actually the opposite. You know, some some leads are starting to pick up now in the second week of of January, and I think we'll have a few sign ups near the end of this month. But, it's, yeah. That that was interesting.
Jordan Gal:It is interesting. I had the opposite. I had the last two weeks of December, I lost my shit. I didn't know what was happening. Nothing's moving.
Jordan Gal:I I was I literally would have been better off just going to the beach and being on vacation. That would have been better for me and better for the company than sitting there and stressing. And then as soon as January, I think we added like 10 paying customers in the first seven days of January. Same kind of experience like, damn
Brian Casel:it. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:But but flipped, I guess.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Awesome.
Jordan Gal:Alright. Cool. So that's that's
Brian Casel:your ad.
Jordan Gal:That's a good December. Yep. What else? The big thing, the other big things we're working on is we are redoing our marketing site. And at the same time we are figuring if we're going to redo the marketing site, let's take another look at pricing.
Jordan Gal:So we changing pricing. Yes, we are changing pricing. But it's not a straightforward change. Pricing is the most difficult thing with software. It's so tricky.
Jordan Gal:It's like, is it, do we make it aspirational? Do we make the pricing in such a way that we, you know, based on who we want to attract or do we adjust it based on who we are attracting? It's been like an endless conversation for the past, like, two weeks of what do we want to do pricing.
Brian Casel:So how is what is the change basically?
Jordan Gal:So what we're trying to do is we're trying to take advantage of who we're currently attracting. We said to ourselves, our pricing is 99, $2.49 and $499 a month based on total number of orders. So we said maybe two months ago, okay, what we want to do is we want to orient our marketing and positioning around attracting the higher end customers. That just hasn't really happened that much. What's happened is our integrations, has attracted a lot, a good number of trials, but mostly on the lower end.
Jordan Gal:So a lot of people are coming in, they're seeing our bottom pricing is 99 and they're saying, too expensive. And they're not signing up, but a lot of them are signing up and then not doing that well during their free trial. And so we, we at times make like a hidden offer. We say, hey, our lowest published price is 99, but based on how much you've made, we think a different price would make sense for you. And a lot of those people are converting.
Jordan Gal:So we're saying to ourselves, you know, we're not getting the advantage of these people signing up and we're also not getting the advantage that we're trying to get, which is the higher end. So we're kind of hurting ourselves on both ends. So we're switching our metric instead of completed orders, like total number of orders that your ecommerce site gets, we're doing it based on recovered revenue. So it's more directly linked with ROI. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:And then we're saying, just sign up and then your plan will be based on your performance during the trial.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I was gonna ask you about that because I if if it if it was based on just sheer number of orders, you can have a store that's selling, like, $5 items, and and they have a lot of orders, but it it may not make sense to be on the highest tier for them.
Jordan Gal:Exactly right. It made sense for us for a bunch of reasons, when we did it, but now it's making less, less sense. So at the same time, have some people that pay us $99 a month that recover like $8,000 a month and they should be paying more. They should be paying based on performance, We ideally want pricing to be linked to value. So we are technically lowering our price.
Jordan Gal:Our new published price will be $49 a month, but that will be based on like up to a thousand bucks in recovered revenue. And so we're hoping that that attracts people who have like smaller stores, but at the same time, people who have more successful stores go through the trial and end up paying more because they're making more from from the product.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So That makes a lot of sense.
Jordan Gal:In theory, it makes sense. Now we'll launch it and we'll see how things go for, call it, thirty or sixty days in
Brian Casel:the future. Yeah, but like, especially when you look at it from from a customer's perspective, it's like, pay $49 to get a thousand dollars? That makes mathematical sense. Right?
Jordan Gal:And that's that's the thought process you want people to to go through. Right.
Brian Casel:Like, rather than, I guess, what you have now, which is, okay, $99 gets me, like, x number of transactions. Alright. Now I gotta start doing calculations. Well, what's my average transaction? What is this?
Brian Casel:What is that? You know? At least this is like, here's free money, and this is how much free free money costs.
Jordan Gal:Right. It's it's more straightforward of of, like, yes, selling free money. And for the marketing side itself, we're going it's so it's funny how who you look to for inspiration, It kinda like it moves around. Right? At some point, look at Leadpages, then you look at someone else, and and and I've been looking a lot at at two competing companies.
Jordan Gal:I look at Drip from Rob, and I look at Convertkit from Nathan Barry. So it's very interesting. They're competing products, they're kind of at similar stages and they do their marketing differently. So we've kind of like taken the best of both. And one of the things that we're trying to do is use video and screenshots much more because what the trend at least that I find myself experiencing and what I think that Nathan Barry has done well on ConvertKit is just don't tell me, just freaking show me.
Jordan Gal:Just give me giant screenshots and videos so I can just see this thing already and answer my own questions and fill in my own blanks. So that's what we're trying to do. We basically, every one of our feature sections has a video and like, here's how this page works. And then the next video, here's how this page works and why, and what it does for you. And and just just showing, showing, showing, showing, and hoping that that putting that out front instead of in in back of the signup wall, gives people a much clearer understanding of what they're getting into and then ideally makes them more interested in getting into it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I like it.
Jordan Gal:I hope so. I'll I'll let you know how how it goes. We're hoping to launch it by, by next week.
Brian Casel:Cool. And the and the the new marketing site is up, but the the pricing won't come out next week, you're saying?
Jordan Gal:No. Neither neither is up.
Brian Casel:Oh, okay.
Jordan Gal:Cool. Yep. We'll just gonna launch it all at the same time.
Brian Casel:Nice. Yep. Awesome.
Jordan Gal:Alright. Now we gotta we gotta go we gotta go to the dark side. What's going
Brian Casel:on? Okay. So yesterday, I had to fire a client from Audience Ops. And it's the first time that happened. And, I mean, it sucks when it happens, but it had to happen.
Brian Casel:And so I guess I'll just kinda go through the story a little bit. Maybe there's there's something to learn from this. We we certainly had lessons to learn from it. So this person came to Audience Ops from a a referral from someone, and they the first thing that that that she said to me on on the sales call was, you know, how fast can you get up and running with the with the first article? And we've got a production process.
Brian Casel:Like, we always start with our research, and then we and then we do a draft, and then we we build into our our process enough room, enough time for you to give us feedback, and and especially the very first article. That's the most critical feedback that we can get. And so we need to have enough time to do that. So, you know, our our standard lead time for the very first article is is like, usually, like, four weeks into it, we'll we'll be publishing. She's like, can can we get the first article published within two weeks?
Brian Casel:And this was like the she we're talking about this on, like, December 22. So we've got the Christmas break. We've got New Year's, and she wants to be publishing articles, like, by the January. And she's in Australia. So any kind of communication, there's like an extra day of lag time.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Always like
Brian Casel:So what I said to her flat out was like, we don't we don't first of we we just don't do rush jobs. Like, that's not something we've ever done. It's not part of it's not an option that we offer. We just don't do it. It's it's logistically not possible.
Brian Casel:So if that's important to you, you know, don't sign up. And she signed up anyway. So a couple days later, she signs up. And, like, she she said, like, yeah. Yeah.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Okay. That's fine. We'll we'll go with the standard thing. A week after that, now we're, like, you know, in between Christmas and New Year's.
Brian Casel:She she's a new client. All of a sudden, she's she's asking for this rushed timeline again. Oh, I I should I I left out. Another thing that I almost never do is offer a a discount on our standard pricing that that you see on our website. She kinda hassled and and haggled on on the on the first month cost.
Brian Casel:Whatever. It was the end of the year. I I was like, let's let's sign one more client. I I gave her a break on on on the first month cost of of service. Okay.
Brian Casel:So so and I mentioned that because it's like, we had this discussion where where it's like, okay. I I gave you a break, and now you're gonna ask for for more, you know, out of scope requests.
Jordan Gal:Right. Which those two surprisingly go together.
Brian Casel:They quite often. And and it's and it's almost like this is like a lesson that I've learned years ago from consulting, and and it's and I just fell right back into it. So now she asked for, like, the rush timeline again. Again, I pushed back on her, and and and then she said and she's like, I still I still want it. And I'm saying, like, okay.
Brian Casel:If we're gonna do this, it means that we're gonna write your article, and it's gonna be published the very next day. There there will be zero time for any sort of revisions or feedback or review. You have to say that you're okay with that, and then we'll do that. Not to mention this is the New Year's holiday now. My my writing team, my project manager, they're working, like, over the weekend to get this first thing out the door.
Brian Casel:They're they're stressed out as as all hell. And she's asking for these other custom requests like, Oh, we gotta get this branding right over here. We gotta do this and that. And we're using Infusionsoft. And we've got our email blasts that you know, we're very clear that we actually write and send your your email blast.
Brian Casel:And so, you know, she she unscheduled it last minute, and then she scheduled it again. And and because of some miscommunication, because we're all rushed and this is our very first week working together, you know, two emails were were sent out, basically. Which is exactly the reason why we don't do rush jobs. Right. And and I literally said that a week prior.
Brian Casel:Was like, the reason we don't do rush jobs is because we we cannot do our our quality assurance testing. We just don't we won't have enough days. And so that's what happens. Miscommunications, and and then she gets all pissed off. And and I was like, here's here's your full refund.
Brian Casel:I'm sorry. You know, this is not a not the right fit. For the most part, it's it's my team. I know that they're getting even more aggravated dealing with her on the front lines than I am. And that's most important to me Right.
Brian Casel:To kind of nip this in the bud within the first month. Okay. This first article is kind of a a train wreck. My project manager's kind of freaking out because she's the one emailing with her every day. The writer is, you know, really, really bust busting her ass to to get this first article done in in a rush deadline.
Brian Casel:And it's like, that's not the atmosphere that I want on the team. Mhmm. And it was a good, learn you know, lesson learned. You know, number one, don't don't do rush jobs. And number two, I'm I'm getting a very a much clearer sense of who our most ideal client is.
Brian Casel:She did fit fit the model in that she has a b to b audience. But she's kind of like a personal brand. And and not I mean, we have some clients who are who are great, and and they're kind of fall into that boat too. But there there were just a few red flags. Like like I said, like, you know, haggling over their price up front, that that should have, you know, been like, maybe this is a questionable thing, you know?
Brian Casel:So just, you know, I'm I'm glad to be to to have that out the door, and, we're we're taking the lesson learned, we're just gonna move forward.
Jordan Gal:Right. I bet your team is happy that you're willing to forego some revenue in exchange for, I mean, the it's it's they're taking the brunt of it. So it improves their lives and their work environment and their stress level.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It's not it's it's also it's not even I gave her the full refund, and it like, we're also eating the cost Right. Right. Of paying the team to do all all the work and and all that.
Jordan Gal:So Yeah. I I think it's you know, I I listened to some of your webinar, the other day, and and one of the things you talked about was the difference between freelancing and and productized service. And that defined scope, it really sounds like the more rigid you could be, it's better for you and for the customer. Because this is what we do, this is what we're good at. Give us a chance to do it this way or or don't
Brian Casel:or don't buy it. Exactly. That's you're you're exactly right. And that is that's why doing what I do today with AudienceOps is completely different from from what I've done in the past as as a freelance web designer. Like, I I it used to be and this is the case for most, you know, freelancers, really, where the client comes to you and they have all these requests.
Brian Casel:And and and again, like, this particular client for Audience Ops was treating this like like like we were just a consultant or or a team of two or three consultants. And I'm telling her, like, look, we are a whole operation here. We're a company. We have a very, specific process, and we do things like, we we we make this recommendation for a reason. And and I'm trying to tell this to her, and I have to kinda spell it out for her, whereas, like, all of our other clients get it.
Brian Casel:They they get it from the day they come to Audience Ops. But the thing that I was I was explaining was, look, she was so gung ho about getting us to publish this very first article within two weeks. And I'm telling her, like, you're not that's not gonna move the needle for you. The content marketing is a long term play. You're not gonna see immediate results, especially from the very first article.
Brian Casel:You know? It it it's it's just the beginning of building up a long term asset. Know? So it it's not even like having us do the rush job is gonna benefit you in in any way. It's only gonna cause, you know, an issue because we can't do quality assurance.
Brian Casel:So
Jordan Gal:Tricky. Tricky. I think the dangerous thing is the scar tissue leftover. Right? If you take that and you say, okay, that means in the sales process, I must define exactly our process and be super rigid about it upfront.
Jordan Gal:Like that might be a good lesson to learn or that actually might be a scar that you should actively ignore. Like, no, I'm not gonna let this person and this experience, more so than the person change the way we do things on the sales side.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It's not that we're completely inflexible. You know? We we do have a very standard process. And the whole idea of of a product high service in general is that we built this thing because I I know that that it's the best solution for a very specific problem.
Brian Casel:Like, if your company is looking to outsource content marketing, this is the solution. This is what worked for me and works for other companies. You know, e either you're on board with that or you're not. So that's the basic concept. But there are there are still aspects of that where where we can make minor adjustments to to kinda make it work.
Brian Casel:Like, we'll work with your email service provider. But then there are other things where, like, custom requests come come up, and and then I have to treat it just like any other software product where, okay, this is a feature request. You're you're asking us, like, to do a feature request. And is that something that will benefit all of our clients? That that maybe we can work it into our process and and and it can make our service better, which has happened several times before.
Brian Casel:Right. Then there are these other requests that it's like, no, this is just custom just for you, And we just can't do it that way. Know? Mhmm. Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Alright. Alright. Well, look, it was bad. It wasn't that bad. I'm I'm I'm relieved.
Brian Casel:Yeah. But, you know, it's I guess there's like the emotional toll where I get all heated and then impacts the rest of my day. And it's like
Jordan Gal:When did this happen?
Brian Casel:This was yesterday.
Jordan Gal:Okay. So it's it's fresh.
Brian Casel:Well and I and it was like sitting in bed reading these emails at, like, seven in the morning. Damn it. And it's like, alright. Now the rest of my day is
Jordan Gal:hate that. Yeah. Alright. I guess for for me, the the last thing is almost like a bit of insight that I experienced, while thinking about, some of these issues that we we talked about earlier. If you've ever read Aaron Ross, that predictable revenue, right?
Jordan Gal:He talks in sales about a split between prospectors and closers. Basically, the theory is if you're asking the same person to prospecting and their own demo scheduling and closing, they're not going to be really good at either one. You want people to be able to specialize. So I had a similar experience where as we were thinking through, okay, Jordan's a bottleneck, what should we make sure that he gives up? Let's go control it first.
Jordan Gal:What I saw was happening was that if I am responsible for user acquisition, if I'm responsible for top of the funnel, new trials, if the same person who's responsible for new trials and also responsible for the support that goes with it, it's almost like you are experiencing pain upon success. I was like, you get more trials good for you. And you immediately have work to do emails to answer. And I saw that like, that's the problem. You're tasking someone, this happens to be myself, but you're tasking someone in the company.
Jordan Gal:You do this and get really good at it and do it better and better and better every week. And then you're also telling that person, but you also have to deal with the repercussions of your success. It's like that that's flawed. Or I think about what my incentives and forget I'm incentivized enough for what that does to your day to day, like your flow, it should be separated. I don't know.
Jordan Gal:A little separated. It's completely separated.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like like it's not only separating the roles of like the tasks of like this person is in charge of these tasks and like just the the prospecting and then the other person is on the closing. Right. You're talking about also separating the incentives, basically. Because you're gonna have these KPIs of, like, we need x number of leads in the top of our funnel.
Brian Casel:And having too many leads should not stress out the person in charge of go going and Exactly. Getting the
Jordan Gal:It's exactly right. So it's like when you're dealing with a small team, how do you separate out those functions so that you I mean, this is why people hire growth hackers and they say, just sit here and think about how to grow and that's it. The rest of the company will deal with the repercussions. You just get out there and be the hero and create all of this activity. And so I I saw that and, like, shared it with my team and they were like, that's that's it.
Jordan Gal:That's what's happening. So I thought that was just kinda worth sharing.
Brian Casel:It is. That's hitting me right where I'm right where I'm thinking about this. Like, talking about outsourcing sales and
Jordan Gal:Right, like, oh, we're generating leads. Oh shit, now I have to deal with these phone calls. It's like those two feelings should be separated. You should just be looking at like, look, I'm doing awesome. I'm getting more leads.
Jordan Gal:And then the other person should be like, look how many I'm closing out of the leads instead of like, oh, I have to now switch my function and and, like, my mindset.
Brian Casel:That's a good reminder, you know, because I I read that book maybe a year or two ago, and, like, hearing you talk about it makes me wanna just go back and read it again. And and that that just goes to show, like, with business books in general or really, like, anything, like, podcasts or whatever, it's like, it it hits you in a different way depending on what you're currently working on or what you're focused on.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. This is like the beauty of Mixergy. Sometimes you read the descriptions and you think this has nothing to do with me, and those are actually the episodes that give you the most insight because you transpose their experience in their field directly onto how it's applicable to, you know, to to your
Brian Casel:Yeah. And and then, like, the flip side of that is, like, when you're working on something and and you and you seek out only the titles that you think will help you accomplish what you're working on, it's kinda hard to dig in, you know, just based on, like, show notes and titles and but, yeah. Good stuff. So
Jordan Gal:Alright. My man. So episode 99 in the can.
Brian Casel:Yep. Another another week, another roller coaster ride.
Jordan Gal:Yep. Good luck in your travels. Be safe. Enjoy San Francisco.
Brian Casel:Thank you, sir.
Jordan Gal:Out there. Have a good January.
Brian Casel:Yep. Alright.
Jordan Gal:Alright. See see you at one hundred. Alright. Later. See you, man.
![[99] Updates De-Bottlenecking, Productize Relaunch, & Firing a Client](https://img.transistorcdn.com/LDB_Cv9bHAA2vtoSPkZCpkdHPF6fAqfl7PL-PG7_c-M/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:800/h:800/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9jMjkw/MDYxZDQ0MWIxYTUw/NTMzMGI2NTExZWMx/MWQ1Yi5qcGc.webp)