Operating a Media Company

Operating a Media Company === Brian: [00:00:00] Hey, it's bootstrapped web. We are back. It's been a couple of weeks. So, uh, you know, we, we took a break for Thanksgiving. There's been, uh, probably a bunch of things happening in our lives and in the world o over the last two weeks there, there's a open AI almost blew up there for a second. Jordan: That was exciting. Brian: That Jordan: was, that was high entertainment Brian: Oh my God, that was, it's so funny how, like, you know, when that was breaking and then for like the five days that that whole saga lasted, like, I, you know, I, of course, like I'm glued to the, to Twitter and to, and to all the tech news stuff, and I'm like trying to share this news with like my wife and my kids at the dinner table. And I'm like, do you get, do you [00:01:00] understand how crazy this thing is? And they're like, yeah, we Jordan: like are you talking to us about, about a board of a random private tech company in San Francisco, as if that matters at all? Brian: to my brother about it at Thanksgiving and, and they're just like, yeah, I just don't give a shit Jordan: It's like, no, no, no. It's, it's the D accelerators and the e accelerators and it matters for the future Brian: Uh, it's incredible. Jordan: Oh, yes. Uh, that was entertaining. Uh, it happened on like a Friday, so it really was like an entertaining Brian: Yeah. Yeah, it really was. Jordan: yep. And we had Black Friday, cyber Monday, so that, that's our Super Bowl in, in e-commerce land. Uh, and just watching all that happen around, you know, Shopify and then Stripe came out with their dashboard this year and that was cool. And, um, Brian: Yeah, I ran a Black Friday, um, sort of coupon for clarity flow. Um, and that's been that it, it was a nice little jolt. It wasn't huge and I, I don't generally do a big discount. I certainly don't do like [00:02:00] long-term or lifetime discounts for, for SaaS products on, on Black Friday. But I also used this as a, because one of my efforts that's going on now, like now through the end of the year and into next year, is to, is to make a concerted effort at getting our legacy customers to upgrade themselves to our newer, higher priced plans. Um, which, which, when they do that, they get access to a ton of new features that we've shipped this year, which, which have not been available to the legacy customers. Like, you know, the program like running courses and clarity flow running groups, um, workflows, like all these different things. And then this month we're, we're actually like two weeks away from shipping the commerce feature. So all that stuff on the, is on the new plans. Um, and I, and those customers have been receiving the product updates. Uh, so they, so they may or may not see these updates, but like now I'm doing like a dedicated like, [00:03:00] Hey, like you should probably upgrade and here's why you should like . Dedicated emails just to legacy customers, and I extended the Black Friday discount to them. Normally that's only available to like, new customers coming in. So, um, yeah, kinda interesting. Jordan: Okay. Cool, Brian: Um, yeah, I had a kind of a sad week this week too. We, we let go of my, my dog, uh, Trey. He's, uh, he, he was, he was an old, old boy and, um, Jordan: Did, did you have 'em from the start? Brian: yeah, we had him since he was like four, four or five weeks old. Yeah. Um, it was a, it was a rough thing and, um, it was, it was the first time as an adult to, uh, to, to let go of our, of our dog. Um, I did when I was a kid, but, you know, it's a different thing. And, and I think I was pretty, like, I, I had a pretty good bond with him. Like, um, especially since, like, I work alone at home every day for the last 13 years, and Jordan: That's right. Brian: in here, you know? [00:04:00] And like. Yeah, walking and just like, and literally like in my office, like, it, it, like, one of the things that I always remember is like when I'm, when I get frustrated with business and, and stuff, like I, I'm, I'm all alone in my house during the day, so I'll just like curse and like yell at the computer screen and, and shit like that, you know? And, and he would like wake up from his nap and come over here and like, just ppl, just plop his head on, on my like, like he knows like, something's up. Jordan: yeah, Brian: Um, and so yeah, that, that was, that was kind of rough, kind of, kind of weird emotions all week, but, Jordan: of course, well condolences. Sorry to hear that. Uh, we, we, we said goodbye to our dog after 15 years, right before we left Portland. And there is nothing that will crumble, uh, like grown man, like, like that relationship. It's just this unique thing. Especially if you, you almost become a man with them, like, like from like your 25 to 35 or 25 to 40. Um, you go from, you know, [00:05:00] being young to all of a sudden, uh, you know, the, the, the final act of responsibility of dog ownership is knowing when, when to Brian: Yeah, you, that's what you said to me. And I, I really appreciated that. Um, 'cause you know, that's, that's a tough thing. 'cause he, he was getting old. Like we, we knew it was coming in the, in the, over the last couple of months. He's starting to deteriorate and everything. But, um, yeah, at some point I just sorta like, it, it does come down to me like I'm the one who like, makes the call like, all right, we gotta make, Jordan: nature's not gonna do it. Yes. Nature's not gonna do it the way you want it to happen. So it really, if you have to play, you have to play God in, in, in that. Um, now you, you, you only had the one dog, so you went from having dogs to not having dogs. Brian: Um, yeah, correct. Like right now we don't. Yeah, Jordan: Yes. Now some people rush out and go get another dog. Brian: that's not happening. Jordan: I, I went the other way. I'm like, I have no capacity to take that on. Brian: No, I, I mean, I, I would like to, again, at some point we probably will, but, but it's not gonna be anytime [00:06:00] soon. The, a big difficulty is traveling for us, like, like, like dealing with him and getting him taken care of or, or, or take him with us and at, and at this point, like, he's way too old to come with us anywhere. So, um, Jordan: Then you have Yes. Yes. Every time you want to go away, it's, it's a thing. Well, we're, we're sorry to hear that. Hopefully you are, uh, you know, able to, to remember all the fun stuff. You know, I, I have, uh, I dunno if anyone uses the, the photos tile Brian: Oh, it, it is the, the single greatest feature of the iPhone to come out in the last couple of years. I, I, I, I really, I, I say this all the time to, to friends and stuff like that tile, it's like a dynamic widget or whatever on your iPhone home screen. And Jordan: You can put it on your home screen. Brian: it has, 'cause I, I'm, I don't go through like old photos like. Like, that's not something I normally do, but this just surfaces old photos. And you know, one comes up every day and I'll, and I'll text it to my wife and like, that's our whole [00:07:00] conversation. Jordan: Yes. Yes. And, and it has like this, the, the technology now that it makes, uh, slideshows. Brian: Yeah. Jordan: Yes. So every once in a while it'll be like a slideshow. Well, yesterday it created a slideshow of pictures, like, of my dad, so that I sent it to my family. Yeah. It's, it's incredible. And it makes the, well, no one's ever gonna look at these photos anyway. It makes that actually Brian: totally. Jordan: because it, it, it does. You actually do get to see the Brian: Like, like, that's why it's actually worth snapping a lot of photos at Jordan: Yes, Brian: And actually just, just this week, so I'm in my, I'm in my office, which I've been redesigning. I got all new desk here and everything. Jordan: I've been seeing that. Yeah. What's going on in the background Brian: speaking of the iPhone thing, I just got a new, um, uh, desk charger w so I could put the iPhone horizontal and use that new feature. So I'm looking at my iPhone right now. I've got a clock and that photos widget, like on my desk. So it's a new, new feature of iOS that just came out. So if you put it [00:08:00] horizontal and then you clo like close the iPhone, like lock it, Jordan: Oh, Brian: you, you see it? Jordan: what is this? Oh, what a trip. It's just for me. It's a clock and the Brian: Yes. Yeah. And you, you could switch what those widgets are. Yeah. Jordan: Oh, fascinating. Brian: That's pretty cool. Jordan: did not know that. Um, alright, well, what, what we up to? What we got going on? Brian: um, I know you got a bunch of stuff. I, I've got a bunch of stuff today. You know what? Because I am, I, I've been talking about over the last several weeks how I'm transitioning into 2024, and part of this is a transition. Into like going from a single business clarity flow to, I think of this as having two businesses now. I'm, I'm entering this new phase where I am gonna have to be splitting my time. And I would say right now into December is when I've begun actually structuring my week around roughly 50 [00:09:00] 50, um, of my hours are spent on clarity flow tasks and 50% of my time is on this new business, which I'm calling instrumental products. Um, and I'm thinking of it very much like a media company. Uh, so I can get more into that maybe later in the episode. Um, but I've got some, I've got some, you know, so I think like first half of this episode I've got some updates on clarity flow and then, and then I can get into some stuff that I'm, that's developing with, uh, with instrumental products. Jordan: Cool. So the show will reflect your like, week or, or, yeah. Focus. Yeah. Um, cool. For, so what do we got? Um, black Friday, cyber Monday, uh, always high stress, uh, and always fun. 'cause the numbers just kind of, you know, go 10 x or whatever, five x what, what, what they normally are. Uh, and for us, the stresses around, uh, infrastructure and things going wrong. Uh, fortunately it was smooth sailing, which was a, a, a relief and [00:10:00] a challenge because we, we just launched our first Salesforce Commerce Cloud merchant, so first merchant on a new platform, and they're high volume, so this is pop, so Pop sockets, Brian: right before, uh, Jordan: they, they launched like. Brian: Okay. Jordan: So we got to see some stuff and their team was very good about testing and QA and coming up with different scenarios. And, you know, they worked with r QA team, it was great, but it, but it's still stressful. So, uh, first Salesforce Commerce Cloud merchant, uh, pop sockets, you know that thing on the back of the phone that a lot of people have where they, you put through your finger so you can hold your phone in that way. Uh, and so that was exciting. Uh, it went well and, and with it, our revenue for the month is, is great because of the, the volume goes up. Brian: Hell yeah. Jordan: The, the other thing for me is that I wanna talk about is one website. I have a website problem that I'm trying to solve. And then, uh, working with [00:11:00] two new account executives, we now have two salespeople that started, they're onboarded and I'm making mistakes all over the place and learning so we can laugh at and learn from that Brian: All right, cool. Yeah, sounds, sounds fun. Um, I've got this. So here's, I, I already talked about clarity, flow commerce. That's, it's, it's like the, the finish line is in sight Now. We're, we're like finishing up the final details on that. So that's like a big stripe integration with selling subscriptions, selling, um, one time products give coaches, giving their clients like a billing portal. All, all inside of clarity flow. It's pretty slick and you can do a lot of pretty cool stuff with it. We're probably like two weeks away from launch on that. I would say we're next week, we're gonna get into like, final testing and probably get it out the week after. Um, thing that's sort of exciting and super frustrating at the same time, um, I talked about cold outreach. That is a channel that I've started testing about a month [00:12:00] ago. Uh, it's been, we've been building and working on it for like three months at this point, but it took us a really long Jordan: It takes some time to build the machine. Brian: time to build a machine. Um, uh, we built up a huge prospects list, um, but also like the infrastructure, uh, the, the email, sending domains, multiple, you know, uh, Google Workspace accounts, domains, DNS sending tools, warmups, if, if you've done this sort of thing, you, you know, how complicated it gets. Um, I've been getting a lot of, Jordan: You gotta worry about domains. Brian: domains, all that, all that stuff. Um, finally got after two months of, of grinding on that. Got it all set up, got the tooling all set up, put the live campaign. Oh, and, and like, there's a big, um, whole, there's a massive process of like, even once we have the big list, we have to do all these, all these, um, verifications and cleaning of the list. Make sure that you're, you're only sending to good emails. And, and we, we go through an exhaustive set [00:13:00] of checks on that. So we start sending the live emails about four weeks ago. Uh, I would say three weeks now of like, of like live emails. And they're working like first multiple weeks now of definitely more trials and several new paying customers directly from cold email. Um, Jordan: Okay. Without, without talking to you as a Brian: I, yeah, we have a, we have a recorded demo that they are coming into, um, Jordan: Okay. Brian: and they are self, they are self signing up and self converting and it, that is super exciting to me. Jordan: Yeah, that's pretty exciting. Brian: and then in week two, things start to break down technically on the infrastructure that I talked about. So like, Jordan: Domain problems Brian: don't, like des despite, uh, all, all, all the verification checks, like, like 30, 40% of these emails are not getting delivered even though they've, they've already passed through multiple verifications.[00:14:00] And we do like a bounce checking campaign, all, all this different stuff. Um, and then a bunch of the domains, um, with, you know, using like Google Workspace accounts, like the authentication on those broke down. And Google sees me as owning like way too many Google accounts for one cell phone number. And, you know, you can't use a, a throwaway cell phone number to verify them. And then, and so, so then I get like, locked out and it's just like a total. So it's like, it's, it's the most frustrating thing ever because it's like this channel is starting to work Jordan: Oh my God. Brian: and then it starts to break. It's like, ugh. Jordan: Yeah. That's, that's wild. We, we use, uh, a tool called Smart Lead. I think it's smartly.ai. That is kind of what, uh, what helped us deal with, uh, seasoning email . Of different, uh, domains, knowing how long to send limited number of emails before sending out more, like, [00:15:00] because it's the same issue, but we have two people who are full-time. This is, this is what they do. So we like have no choice but to throw money at it and figure out what to do. Brian: of, uh, a lot of good advice, um, from some friends on this stuff and using a lot of, um, a lot of different tools. And then I, right now I'm actually in the, uh, I don't wanna like, I don't wanna name companies yet 'cause it's too early to to, Jordan: Sure. Brian: to, to say like whether they're good or not. But, um, um, there's, there's one, one company from that cold emailed me and broke through. They, I don't know, they have some detection system on, like, they, they noticed that I just recently started up some, some cold email campaigns. And this company is an out, they, they must be like a, they're probably like an SEO backlink out outreach company. They do that as a service, but I think that they're spinning off a side business where they, um, What do you call it? Like they, they replace the need [00:16:00] to have domains running through Google Workspace accounts. Jordan: Okay. , this is such a big problem that it requires. Brian: the a first of all, it's like a huge cost for the, like most of the cost in running these campaigns is just paying for all these different Google accounts. Um, but it's a, but it's insanely hard to to, to get that stuff, like to, to not like break down because they 'cause the authentication. So they, they're like sort of like outsourcing their own infrastructure as a service. Um, so I'm, I'm maybe getting started up with them. We'll, we'll see. But, um, yeah. Jordan: so you got a, you got a taste though. You got a little bit of proof that it's worth the effort. Brian: it is working, but there's like a portion of the emails that are not working. So, um, yeah, that's, that's always fun. And then the other, the other thing, the only, my only other update on Clarity Flow is this programmatic SEO system is. Now, you know, I talked about how cold email was like two months of like building before [00:17:00] we could actually do get it going. Um, I'm in like month two of building on, on this channel. So, uh, a lot of automation stuff, a lot of chat, GPT, a lot of, um, make workflows and um, and we basically got that all mapped out and set up. And now I handed off some tasks to my assistant to, uh, to do some competitor research. And, and so like most of that is like delegated, but still in the construction phase. And probably by January we should be able to, um, have some new like SEO content campaigns sort of deployed. Um, but you know, for the most part, like these are things like by design this build this business clarity flow is, I, I've got these two main channels, cold outreach and SEO. Which are sort of working and, and SEO has been historically working for us, but most of the work and the tasks are delegated. Like I give a a little bit of input on [00:18:00] these from time to time. Sometimes it's like a, a sprint of input from me, and then it's like weeks where my assistant or, or someone is, is handling it. Um, and then on the product right now, it is pretty intense with getting commerce out the door. So I spend a good number of my hours every week, like reviewing their work, doing a bit of product work myself, and getting things ready to ship. Um, but I would say by January that's gonna start to calm down because, because our roadmap is calming down. So, so I'm, I'm starting to like be really aware of exactly where I'm needed, how many hours I'm needed on everything. But, but while keeping the, my small team, like running efficiently, you know? Jordan: Is, is commerce the last of the big features that you kind of identified as feature complete? Yeah. That, that's the one, because that, that's what allows a coach to no longer need an external system to like, go take payment here and then join [00:19:00] my portal. It, it puts it all Brian: will still use Stripe. So, so the, we're we're setting it up, so like you connect your own Stripe account. Um, and, but other than that, uh, everything else is fully integrated inside Clarity Flow. Um, uh, yeah, and we, and we had to do commerce last because a lot of the features that we built this year are the things that you would sell through commerce, you know, so, or sell access to. So, and, and like, you know, it's not just like, um, you know, of course you, you could use Stripe to just, like, Stripe gives you a payment page, Stripe gives you a payment button. You, you could just do that. But our integration makes it possible so that you can say like, when someone buys . Automatically set up a conversation for them or automatically give them a membership to your group space, or automatically enroll them in a course in Clarity flow. And then when their subscription ends automatically revoke their membership or automatically close their conversations, or, you know, so it's, it is [00:20:00] tightly integrated with everything that you do in clarity flow. So the other, the other cool thing about it is like you're in an async conversation with a client, or maybe it's like a prospect or like a potential new client for, so you're going back and forth, you're discussing, then you can like pop a, a payment request right in line in the conversation to say like, okay, we just discussed this. You're ready to pay. Here's the link. You can pay it and let's continue our conversation. You know? Um. Jordan: Okay. Okay. Yeah, I, I get it. I mean, this is all shaping up to, to, to be where you put a ton of work on getting the product where it is, identifying how, what it needs to do. And then if you can get this relatively passive outbound plus SEO to grow, then you know, then you're a genius , right? You got it all set up and then it, then it can grow. So. Brian: we've, we've talked so much about this, like, like with like product market fit. Um, one of the, one of the things that I'm, [00:21:00] that I'm, I, I, I don't, I don't know that I'm gonna sit here and claim that we have product market fit. I, I don't, I don't think that we do our, our MRR certainly doesn't, doesn't look like a company that has product market fit. But I, I do think that especially with coaches, especially with a, with, with coaches, that, that structure their business in a certain way, which many of them do. Clarity flow is a perfect fit for those customers. And they get, and those customers do get really, really excited about clarity flow when they discover it for the first time. And I'm getting a lot of really positive messages. Like, I really love it. That's why I just converted like a lot of, a lot of good signs from coaches, but there's still the timeframe. So just thinking about like SaaS in general, bootstrapping a SaaS in general. I, I, I don't know how how we would describe this, but like I think that there is, I think you and I have talked about how like degrees of product [00:22:00] market fit, it's not like a binary yes or no. And I think that you can have it or you can have a version of product market fit, but there's still the timeframe aspect like. Just because you have customers who love your product, and just because there are many of those customers in the world, and just because you have built the perfect product for all those customers in the world does not mean you have the mechanisms to reach all the customers that you need to reach in a timeframe to meet your runway, your financial runway needs, you know? Jordan: that's that. That's right. Yeah. It's, I am, I have not, I don't think much about product market fit. I, I don't think it's that useful other than, you know, just shorthand for, we, we, we built the right thing people are paying for and getting value out of it. On that, it's like, I can see how in like a venture investing framework, product market [00:23:00] fit, uh, helps to understand what's happening here, how much money's being spent, how much effort is this, like at a moment where it. it's going to make sense that if we shove more money into the front, uh, of this process, a a lot more value will come out the back than the amount of money put in the front. Like I could kind of see that in, in an hour or the everyday universe. It, there are so many other factors and constraints around like marketing budget, like how many people can you get to the site? Can you get to your campaigns? Can you, Brian: Yeah. And just, and Jordan: yeah, really like profitability is probably a much better Brian: yeah, profitability. And I mean, of course, like people talk about like this, like you, you shift from push versus pull, like Right, right. Like, like the market, the, the, the demand is just so heavy, so acute that people are just gonna be banging down your door. But of, but of course we all know that like you, it's not just like, if you build it, they will come. I, they're, you know, if you like, they, they, they still might [00:24:00] exist that just because they're not. Banging down your door naturally does not mean that the market is not there. Um, and so it's, you know, it, it's, it's an equation. And like you still need to get a, a, you know, x number of many, many customers within X timeframe for, you know, so that, that's why I'm, I'm still on this like, mindset of like, you know what, SaaS just really, really takes a long time to become viable and profitable. Um, not, not every company's just gonna hit it within like an 18 month timeframe, you know? Jordan: No, no. Yeah, it's a, it, it's very similar in the venture context and it looks different because what people see. Is revenue, but that is not the same thing as sustainability. So bootstrapping and putting, you know, a hundred K into the company and then it, taking 18 months [00:25:00] to get to 10 15 KA year is really not that dissimilar from raise $10 million. And then sure, you might be at $300,000 a month, but you are not sustainable yet. You still need to get to a different mark. Yeah. Uh, yeah, it's good that fundamentals are cool. Again, and everyone's thinking about them and everyone's kind of focused Brian: Yeah, for sure. What do you got going on? Jordan: speaking of Yeah, on, on, on, on my side of things, right? Let's my life right now and my focus at work is sales first, and then I know I need to get to marketing. So let, let's talk about sales first and then we can talk about the, the website marketing problem I have, um, both of our new AEs are now. They've started, they're, they're onboarding. Uh, one started two weeks ago and one started last week. I don't even, I, I think it was last week. Um, but both are now officially in the company. And what's coming up is I am having a mix of emotions. [00:26:00] I'm really excited to have two really motivated, ambitious, accomplished people in the company. At the same time, I'm getting that imposter syndrome of, they're gonna find out, I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to enterprise sales , and then they're gonna wanna run away and they're gonna think they made a mistake in joining the company. Like all that stuff like that fear around being exposed or whatever. And I don't, I don't usually get that, but that comes out when you are in, uh, a section of business, an area of business that you're just not familiar with. So that's kind of what I've been dealing with Brian: Well, what is their, um, what does their onboarding look like into the company? What does their first week, first two weeks look like? Jordan: I have a little checklist here, . So it's some simple stuff, right? Get a laptop, get them the accounts, and then, and then meet the team, right? And then we start to go in with, Brian: they're, they're, Jordan: now we, Brian: everyone remote or, I forgot. Jordan: they're remote. Yep. One is [00:27:00] in North Carolina, one is in the Los Angeles area, Southern California. Laguna Beach, I believe. Um, so they came into the company and now they have been doing trainings with, uh, g the sales consultant. And she has been bringing them through things like, uh, discovery and what that means for us, uh, demo and pitching and what that means for us. And then pricing and packaging. So these like distinct trainings and then we start to get into, uh, them viewing previous demo recordings so they can hear how I'm pitching the product and the questions that are coming up, right? All of this is to get to the goal of them being able to do sales conversations on their own, right? So it's like these training wheels until that point, and we wanna get there. My goal is like by the end of January, so then they've been joining some sales conversations that have happened over the last two weeks, and then we look at the existing pipeline [00:28:00] and I am taking the existing pipeline and divvying up, uh, who gets which deal, right? Some deals are so far along that it, there's no work to do, so it doesn't make sense to assign to them. Some of them still have work to be done, but it's great to have them come into the company and ba basically hand them three or four deals like, Hey, these are decent chances of closing and let's introduce you to the prospect. And all of a sudden, if, if you can close this, you get a nice win on the board. Like we, we might get a win on the board, uh, either today or Monday. So we have an order form, like a contract out, uh, and that sales, it's not a big deal, but if we can get a win on the board with one of these salespeople in the first like week or two, that, that's just gonna feel good. So along with that, there's always a, like an ongoing review of tools. What have you used, what do you like, what, what do we not have that you need? Uh, one of them is gong. So we're looking at gong to do recordings and also put, it puts like a layer on top of the CRM. So you don't actually have to go into HubSpot. You can just live [00:29:00] in Gong and have all your tasks Brian: Oh, very cool. Jordan: Yeah, I, which, which I didn't know. Right now we just use meet record, which is just recordings and transcripts, and then we start to get into some, uh, some nuts and bolts. So this, this role is really different from all of the roles. This role is directly connected to a quota and the pressure that goes with hitting that quota and the compensation, the reward that goes with hitting that quota. So this is what these people do. They come in and they're basically like, what do I need to do to hit my quota? 'cause that's how I make my money. And everything points in that direction. Brian: they, uh, Jordan: And so Brian: what comes from, from them during the first week or two? What are they asking? Lots of questions. What, what do they, what do you think like they need? What, what are they asking for? What do they need? Jordan: they wanna understand, uh, who the right customer is. Brian: Hmm. Jordan: They wanna understand pricing and how that works. They [00:30:00] wanna understand the process of someone being interested and bringing them through. They wanna understand, uh, what they are responsible for in terms of their own efforts compared to what the company brings their way, right? So the way we do it, right, right now, we're trying to go as vanilla as possible and then adjusting from there. So right now we are based on territory. So one of them is West Coast, one of them is East coast, literally Mississippi River, east West. What that refers to is the accounts that you are going after yourself. Like you have a list of, uh, Salesforce Commerce Cloud merchants. Where is that merchant based? If it's in my territory, I can go reach out to that customer. Those like specific accounts. And then there are additional sources of leads. One is inbound, like just came to the site and filled out a form. Another one is the SDRs. So we have two people who do outbound all day. And so if a [00:31:00] lead comes in through them, that's another source. And then the third one is partnerships. So you have territories east and west that you are going out to yourself with your own efforts and then the company, right? SDRs, partnerships and inbound. That goes by round Robin. You get one. I get one. You get one. I get one. You get one. I get one. So all of these systems need like tracking 'cause this matters Brian: Yeah. Like, Jordan: terms of their compensation and fairness. Brian: they come from? Yeah. Jordan: Yes. And so I feel relatively stressed 'cause I don't wanna, I don't wanna screw up. Because when you screw up, you're like, yo, you kind of screwed me over. You made a mistake, but it can cost me, you know, $50,000 because this person got the deal when I was supposed to get the deal. And then that deal closed, and I'm not happy with you . So I feel a bit stressed around making mistakes because I haven't really done this Brian: But that, that sounds like a project management workflow like [00:32:00] somebody is figuring that out. Is that you? I mean, Mm-Hmm. Jordan: so, so, yeah. Well, G really helped. So, so what she did is she created a go to market command center. For me, it's, it's a, it's a Google spreadsheet, and I can see from a top level my AEs, what their quota is in each quarter and where they are currently. In terms of pipeline and close deals. And then an SDR sheet that goes with it on who is generating leads and how many emails are going out and everything. And then a partnerships and what his quota is in terms of generating pipeline. So I have like this overview. And then one level deeper is the individual salesperson's comp plan. So their comp plan and their quota. You wanna help them understand where they are. So we have a Google spreadsheet that basically shows this is your base salary, this is your on target [00:33:00] earnings, these are your kickers. Kickers are additional incentives. So if you get someone to sign for three years instead of one, you should make more money. 'cause the company wants that to happen more often. If you get them to pay upfront annually, the company wants that to happen. Therefore we should incentivize that so you get, you know, another kicker there. And then some scenarios, an average year, a good year, and a bad year. And what you should expect to make in each. And then the second tab of that spreadsheet is a bunch of rows where you can put in an individual deal. How many years is it, are they paying upfront? Are they doing an implementation fee? Just all that stuff. And then that flows into a calculator that shows them where they stand. Brian: it. Jordan: It's, it's great. And then what that needs to do is that needs to, it basically gets printed out as a PDF and we sign it. So it's like, we agree, this is how we're, this is how our model is. Brian: like a contract basically. Yeah. Jordan: Yes. And so all of that feels like, you know, this is a little high stress for me 'cause [00:34:00] I, I want to get it right and I don't want to feel like an amateur, I don't want to, you know, all this stuff Brian: Yeah. Like I'm I'm also wondering about, um. How, I don't know how much of this you currently do, but like, what about like, qualification of, of the leads? Like so, uh, uh, on the, on the front end. A lead looks good on the surface, but once you get into it, once you get into a discovery call or this or that, like something, something maybe either disqualifies them or like they, they might pass the qualifications, but they could turn into some sort of problem, like how does that play out? Yeah. Jordan: Yeah. So, so, so, right. All this stuff that we've been talking about so far is the theory. This is how it's going to work. And it's been about a week of, of practical, actual experience. And already the strange things come up, like what you're talking about. So we had one thing come up where, uh, we got a lead through a partner, [00:35:00] and because it was a demo with a real merchant, like right when these AE started, of course, they should both join and both learn. I was not on that call. And then when I went to the CRM Brian: who, whose lead? Is it Jordan: to. Exactly right. And I gave it to the wrong pers so, so there's a lot of stuff that requires like rules. What you're talking about is a scenario that we just confronted where, okay, so if you get a deal signed, when do you get paid? So let's just say for example, we decide Brian: month later? , right? Jordan: Exactly right. Okay. So, right. This is a good deal. It got signed ho amazing. $50,000 for the year. Great. Everyone's happy. When should the salesperson get paid their commission? So if we wanna do it, uh, uh, generously, let's just say we do 30 days after they sign, that means a few things. That means we need to make sure that the merchant starts to pay 30 days after they sign, not when [00:36:00] they launch. 'cause when they launch might be two months after they, right. And then at the same time, should that contract even go out. Brian: up this way, but isn't it, or shouldn't it be part of the sales executive's job to collect payment too? Like, no. Jordan: No, Brian: Interesting. Jordan: no. It shouldn't be part of their job to onboard, and it shouldn't be part of their job to collect. We should incentivize them to do what they are best at, which is going out, finding people, talking to them, identifying if they're good or not getting them into a contract. Brian: but if there's a problem with their delivery and the, and the, and they've been working with them through the sales process, like, hmm. Jordan: yes. Because you have to, you have to admit that human nature will do what it's in incentivized to do. So if you simply incentivize to close deals and get contracts signed, maybe, oh, the fraud protection app that we don't have an integration for, maybe that just never comes up. And it's okay if [00:37:00] it didn't come up, if you are incentivized to get the deal closed. Right? So this isn't about like dishonesty, this is about incentive alignment. So it's like, cool, before you send a contract out, I need to approve it because then it's on me. If we find something out that we didn't know about, it's not the salesperson's fault 'cause I signed off on it. So it's like, it's like a, it's like a Brian: of like signing off Jordan: of our, Brian: was promised and what, what the expectations are with this and Jordan: I'm committing that the company is going to pay you what the company said it was going to pay you. I'm approving that. That's, that, that's really what it's, Brian: customers? Jordan: that that's, well, right. Both it's, it's, it's, can we fulfill what we promise to the customer? Can we fulfill what we promise to the salesperson? And so there's, you know, there's some, there's some maturity and growth required The organization to be able to handle this stuff, uh, and get it down now before it gets outta control. And we're starting to juggle [00:38:00] 30 different leads at, at the same time. So it's, yeah, it's exciting and a little, Brian: like, it, you know, everyone wants to move fast and just like, just get the sales flowing. But, but yeah, you're, this is like the type of thing that could like crop up into like real disputes over money and that, you know, you, you do gotta Jordan: Yes, yes, Brian: Yeah. Jordan: yes. And right, because the last thing you want is the thing to work, the process to work, and then have the salesperson be unhappy because you mess Brian: But it, but I'm also like, it also seems like little, know, you have a team around you. You've got g you've, you've, you've got infrastructure who, who should be. E equally like involved in the project management and the tracking and the documentation of things, right? Yeah. Jordan: Yes. So it's cool. It's, uh, it's uh, more new stuff on go to market and on sales, uh, more than anything, just really, really exciting to have things come together on the sdr. [00:39:00] R we just did what you did. We just built the machine to go outbound, and now we have those hundreds of emails going out. Took a few weeks to kind of get it there and figure out all that stuff. Uh, but now all of a sudden things were real quiet in November and now all of a sudden all the calendars are starting to fill up. We're starting to get things on the calendar for January where I, I feel relieved that it's, it's coming back. Brian: All right. So instrumental products is, uh, that's where I'm spending, I. It's, it's, I would say it's not yet, like the majority of my hours, I'm still putting the majority on clarity flow, but I would say it's like the majority of my head space and, and I'm starting to devote some hours and actual work toward this thing that I'm, that I'm really thinking of now as, uh, starting up a media company. Um, Jordan: Okay, explain more please. Brian: so, you know, this is over, over every week [00:40:00] now, over the last two months and, and continuing ongoing, I'm getting more and more clarity on what I'm building here, you know? Um, and it's, it's like the earliest days of, of a new company is essentially what it is, right? And so, and so that means there's a lot of, like, I, I'm not like bouncing around to like different directions. It's more of like zeroing in on what I'm doing, um, and, and, and crafting the, the. The, the direction and the operation and like figuring it all out. So, so I'm thinking of this like a media company of, of course, it's, you know, built around me, personal brand audience that, that sort of stuff. Like, like I talked about, like a creator type, uh, a creator type business. Um, I did start with this coaching offer. Uh, I, I picked up a couple of coaching clients for the first time that, that's been an interesting, um, learning ex experience. Um, but that was really just like a step one. Really. The, the bigger, uh, push here is to build this into a [00:41:00] media operation. Um, what that means is, um, like operationalizing, , uh, content as our core business. I, I was on a podcast the other day and, and I was asked like, what do you think about like using content marketing in, in your business as As a strategy. And the way I think about it in, in this business instrumental product is like, it's not content marketing. Like content is our business. Like that's the, the, the thing that we do. We make content, right? Um, so, that means like figuring out what a weekly production schedule looks like of like, uh, creating, researching, writing scripts for, for YouTube videos, recording, um, recording the, like doing video shoots, doing, uh, an editing process of post-production, um, planning out content calendars, um, writing email newsletters, uh, repurposing content into social media [00:42:00] content. And so a whole weekly operation. Um, and that's like a production schedule. What, what I'm responsible for, what other team members will I need to hire and, and when will it make sense to hire those team members? Um, I, I'm, I'm in the middle here of this like whole office redesign, uh, which is. About halfway done, like, you know, painted the, the walls, got all new furniture. Now I have like a second desk over there that I'm setting up as like a filming desk. Um, you know, I, I'm, this week I'm spending a lot of time on tools like, um, finally really learning like Des script, um, uh, which apparently acquired Squad cast. So I'm starting to use that for, for, and I'm firing back up my Open Threads podcast that sort of falls under the umbrella of instrumental products, learning about, like Da Vinci Resolve for, for video editing. Doing a, I I've been doing a ton of research on, on YouTube. That's where a lot of this effort is gonna be really focused. Um,[00:43:00] Jordan: Okay. Right. You're not gonna do every type of media Brian: no, there's, there's gonna be some repurposing of like, you know, going from YouTube to Twitter to LinkedIn, um, and email newsletters. But I would say it's like YouTube is like the tip of the spear. Where, where, um. Every week I'm responsible for producing a really, really high quality video piece of content. Um, Jordan: Is that ultimately the goal on where to get subscribers? Newsletter Brian: about this previously where it's like there are these exposure channels or like audience growth channels, and then there's like these relationship channels. The growth channel is number one for me, gonna be YouTube, um, uh, secondary would be a Twitter and LinkedIn. Um, because those are things where you can post content and their algorithms will serve them up to new people to, so that those people can discover you. And then the relationship con channels are like, get those people who discover you to join your email list or subscribe [00:44:00] to your podcast or both. Um, and that's where you can go deep and really build trust over a long period of time. And from, from there, the, the funnel leads into products, whether it's courses or community membership. Um. You know, there's, with a media company, there's also the opportunity to do like sponsorship revenue streams and things like that. So all, all of the revenue and, and stuff, uh, with, with the exception of this like coaching stuff that I just recently launched, all the other like revenue generating stuff is being pushed to, to next year. Right now, my main focus is build the distribution engine, and that's audience. Um, and so I'm, I'm, I'm putting together that engine now, and I'm starting to drive that engine hopefully by the end of December. And, and like by the end of this month before the the year is out, I, I wanna start to be publishing and producing weekly new content coming from, from me, from, from this instrumental [00:45:00] products brand. Um, there's a lot of moving parts that need to be launched essentially. Um, or really it's like taking my existing like beginnings of an audience and like reviving it and. And cleaning it up and putting some new pieces in place. But, um, so, so that's like all like the logistics and the operations. I'm spending a lot of time like kind of mapping it out and yeah, machine building. But the other thing is like strategy and that is audience. Um, Jordan: Yeah. You wanna be known for like one thing? Brian: I talked a bit about like, like when I started this journey, it, it started just with the word, like, I wanna focus on product strategy. I, I wanna be in the product realm. And, and so think about it, like, I just, in terms of how this is developing, it starts like super broad and wide. And I'm, and the more I'm working on this, the more I'm trying to narrow and, and niche down. Um, and it's still gonna be an [00:46:00] ongoing process. I think that, um, there's, there's gonna be an element of like, I just gotta publish . A bunch of content and start to see where the points resonate and, and then, and then double down and niche down from there. But I'm, I'm starting to, to, to carve down even further now where it's like I really want to focus on product building and, and the creative and technical side of creating, launching, ideating, um, uh, architecting and literally like coding and launching products. Um, and, and so, you know, 'cause like, like, I, I don't like, there's certain areas of, of this whole, um, tree of, of potential topic areas that you can go down in, in the world of like startups and software and products and even non-software like productized services or courses, coaching info products. Like there, [00:47:00] there's a huge tree that you can go down. I, I don't wanna do everything and. I also want to not get too, much involved in like the, um, marketing and lead gen and how to get customers and how to, and, and growth hacks and stuff like that. Like, that's just never been my strong point. I'm much more stronger on what people think of as product, like building and shipping and launching product. Of course there's still gonna be customer strategy and customer research and finding product market fit and validation and stuff like that. But Jordan: Yeah. But there's gotta be a line Brian: really wanna start to dial into helping you build a product. And I think that's gonna get into the realm of like how to, learning how to code. Like I, I went through that, um, process of like going from designer, marketer, front end person to full stack, helping people make that transition and build and ship a product. [00:48:00] Um, so like. One, one way that one little tactic that's helping me start to narrow down my focus is to think about the most important part of an audience funnel. And that I think is like the page or the headline where you're asking someone to enter their email address. To join your email newsletter, right? So, you know, the, Jordan: Okay. Like the promise you're making there. Brian: like, like, please enter your email to come into my audience because you are perfect and you want to achieve this very specific result. So that's what my, that's what I'm offering, you know, 'cause most people, um, make the mistake or they're not very effective with audience because they're just like, Hey, join my newsletter and I'll, and, and I'll share some ideas and tips and, and just follow my stuff. Please. Like, that's not specific enough, you know? Um, it's gotta be much more, you know, just crunchy. Like, um, I was, I was just looking at three people who have been really a, a, a fan [00:49:00] of, especially recently. Um, Justin Welsh, um, uh, I really liked his course recently, and, and hi, he, he runs, his main newsletter. I was just, I'm just looking at it now. He's got the Saturday solopreneur. The headline is Practical Tips Guiding You from First Dollar to First Time Solopreneur. So, hi. His big thing is like building like one person, like creator content, uh, driven businesses, um, like, you know, enter your email address and that's, that's what he's going to teach you to do. That's the, the journey that you're on. And, you know, um, Jay Klaus, I've, I've been, uh, really getting into his stuff lately. It's sort of a similar vein, like, hi, his landing page to subscribe to Creator Science is, uh, become a smarter creator in just 10 minutes per week into your email address. Um, Jordan: Okay. It's like the what you will be like after the transformation that joining this community newsletter you can[00:50:00] Brian: One, one more, and this is like a d sort of a different space, but, um, uh, drew Riley, he runs Trends vc, uh, incredible, uh, business, which on the front end all you really see is this weekly newsletter. But on the backend, he's got a really great, um, membership product and he does sponsorships and everything. Um, but his homepage for trends VC is like, dive into new markets and ideas with 62,000 like-minded founders. Um, and they, they send a really great weekly newsletter about, you know, trends in, in, uh, startup land. Um, so, you know, I, I'm just like getting inspiration from those and I'm just like thinking through, I don't, I don't know what my final version of this is gonna be, but, but it's, you know, it's, it's something along the lines of like, you know, join my audience to, to learn how to build and ship a, a product. And, and really the transformation that I think I, I could help people with is like. Transition into a product-based business, especially if [00:51:00] you're coming from like selling your time for selling billable hours or coming from a job. Um, it, there's a really big mindset shift that that changes when you start to think of like, how can I build a business around a product instead of like going one-to-one with clients. Um, and I mean, that's a, that's a big part of what I was connecting with when I was doing the productize stuff, but now I'm, I'm, I'm just not pigeonholed specifically to productize services there, you know? Um, I think for, for me, a big part of the transformation was like when I learned how to code and go full stack and I, and I gained the ability to build and ship a SaaS product entirely myself, that opened up a whole new world and a whole new mindset shift. And, and it opened my eyes a lot to like what . The potential possibilities for product businesses are now that I gained that ability to actually build and ship. So, um, [00:52:00] that's sort of a, that's what's getting like me, like really excited. I, I think there's still a lot of work to do to like dial that in and just, just start publishing on a weekly basis and, and then dial that in even more. You know, Jordan: Yeah. Very cool. Well, I, I'm, I'm excited to see it. I, I have, I have so many questions around the monetization and what comes next and all this other stuff, but, you know, Brian: you know, it's, it's interesting with monetization, I, um, I have a lot of ideas and, and things that I'm thinking through of like, potential products and, and product lines. But I think my biggest goal, and this is gonna be, you know, whenever we start talking about 20, 24 goals for this business, I, I think that the most important thing is audience growth and distribution. And, and if I can look at all of my previous businesses. That's always been the biggest challenge is getting the distribution channel figured out and dialed in. Um, and if, and, and so [00:53:00] this time around, I just really wanna focus on like distribution first. And, and I think with a concerted effort and building this operation, this engine around content production and getting really consistent with it, like now through the year, I think that by sometime next year, second half of next year, like, I'll definitely be in a good position audience wise to start to think about like, all right, what kind of products make sense to offer this audience? Um, I, you know, I, right now my mind is going to some form of a membership, um, maybe, uh, small conferences and, and mixing in like sponsorship revenue. Um, Jordan: Yeah, and, and people do paid newsletters too. I mean, there's, there's a lot of options, but I can't help but think. . Seeing which newsletters resonate, which videos get the most views, like just understanding more around, you know, if you're taking a, it's not overly wide, [00:54:00] but if you're talking about product, there still are multiple categories inside of that, and one might just present itself as more attractive, uh, than the others, or at least from a monetization point of view, and maybe from an entry Brian: And I, and I'm also gonna, I think for the first time in my career of, of being, I, I, I've been public and I've taught things in the past and I've done the productized course in the past and stuff. But all, all of that stuff, and even on like this podcast and everything, it's always been about like strategy. Um, but so much of my, what I do is actually in the design and code and technical. Um, things, and I've, and one thing I have not done yet in my career is really teach technical concepts. Um, and I was talking to like Aaron Francis about this a couple weeks ago where it was like, I need, I, I, I, I need to gain some comfort with, with, uh, it's sort of like getting over like an imposter syndrome [00:55:00] about like being, being willing and able to teach people how to code or how to learn a technology or how to be effective at, at shipping with a technology. When, when I know that there are people in the industry who are much more talented and experienced with these things, but I know how to build and ship a product, and that's, that's what I can help, Jordan: Right, right. Brian: know? So Jordan: Yes. Brian: be an interesting, uh, Jordan: Very Brian: interesting learning experience for me. And I'm, I mean, you know, it's also an opportunity, um, for me to learn a lot more on like product chops. Um, um. My, my, my mother was, was a, uh, a, a career teacher for, for, for many years. And one of the things that she taught me was like, you don't really learn something until you have to teach it, you know? Um, and so I think this is a, this will be kind of an interesting, fun way for me to gain new product skills, learn new technologies, frameworks, tools, [00:56:00] um, and things for the purpose of teaching them to an audience. But then I also learned them and I can use them to ship stuff of my own. So, you know, 'cause like I, I, I've learned a lot over the last, like, six years being like full stack, uh, rails and tailwind and stuff and, and using that to ship process kit and then, and then clarity flow and zip message. But one of the frustrating things with me with for all that was like, I'm only working on one product every single day for years. And that means like, I'm not being. I don't have a good project on my, on my plate to be able to expand my skillsets. Like there, there are things, like, it just does not make sense for me to go learn Laravel because clarity flow is not on Laravel, you know, um, or whatever, whatever tech it might be. Um, that's just an example, but like I, this gives me a whole new opportunity to, to learn a wider range of skills and, and then teach them. So, we'll, [00:57:00] we'll see. That's what I got. Jordan: Okay, cool. We'll, we'll, we'll see what you come out with. Um, I mean, real quick for me, the, the, I have been really focused on sales and marketing has been languishing. And now when I like go and look at our website, I'm like, this, this needs a lot of work. It, it doesn't do the product justice on where the product Brian: know, we were DMing about your site this week and. I like just looking at it. I, you really changed it since the last time I saw rally on.com. Jordan: So what happened was we were, we were, we were in a, in a project and I did not like the way it was going. And so what I basically did was I just said, just publish what you have and give it to us, and we'll get it to a place where, you know, we're happy with it. And that's what we did. It [00:58:00] got published and I, Brian: Okay. Jordan: it's, it's pretty new. Uh, yeah, it was like, it was like a facelift. It wasn't totally all new. Um, and then we, we did enough work so that I'm not crying and embarrassed of it, but it is not. It's not good enough. It doesn't do the product justice on where the product is right now. It doesn't build up the credibility that we've built up with these great merchants and all this revenue process and all these new features and everything. Uh, I want to add a pricing page. Uh, there's, there's a whole bunch of stuff, like the blog looks great, the demo form looks great, but we are doing a lot more, uh, marketing. Now we're about to start spending money on LinkedIn ads. And what I found myself was you can either do a total new website design, which I don't wanna do, that takes too long, and I don't think it's necessary and [00:59:00] I can try to do it myself, meaning like I drive the project and I found myself in this spot where like, I, I need, I need someone with experience to come in and focus on it with me. So I've been looking for that solution and that type of like, you know, fit. So my, my hope is that I found the right person to work with today who is a designer and business-minded and can take what we have right now and just improve it. Not reinvent everything from scratch, but just get it a lot Brian: that was one of the things that was one of the key things that I was looking for when I collect, when I was looking for a designer to work with me on clarity flow.com, um, like number one, obviously you're looking for design shops, but for me the most important thing was like somebody who, an ideal world, somebody who has actually owned their own products business and designed really awesome sites for their own products. And, and so like they, [01:00:00] they know what's important. Um, 'cause there, there are some fantastic designers in the world, but they don't really Know how to like, sell through through a design, you know? Um, Jordan: Right. And you don't, you don't wanna, you don't wanna explain that, you know, and, and price is not directly correlated. You can go get a 50,000 website from one of these agencies and they will not get things right from a marketing sales point of view. And there's a bunch of stuff that's low hanging fruit for us from, uh, uh, you know, uh, an initial entry point. Like, give us your email for something valuable or a demo or something. So it's not just the only way, the only entry point into our sales process right now, I guess we have chat, but I don't love it. Uh, and it's filling out a demo form and our buyer is hesitant to fill out demo forms. Brian: They want, they wanna learn a bunch on their own. Just, Jordan: yeah. So, Brian: and, and it's gotta look awesome. Jordan: yes. Yes. And it is a, uh, you know, you have to think about the goal. And the [01:01:00] goal is demo and sales process and information and contacting us. It's not trial. And so there's just a bunch of work that needs to be done around that. Brian: I feel like still there's this like, I think, I think, uh, misguided notion that like, oh, design doesn't matter. Um, look and feel, doesn't matter. I think it totally matters. Um, and it all matters, Jordan: it all matters, doesn't it? Brian: it really does lend a level of credibility and I, and I, and word of mouth is still, I think, the most important thing for a product to start spreading. Like, like people have to be so excited that they, that they are going to share it with their colleague or, or share it with their boss. And they are not gonna do that if the thing looks, looks janky. You know, even if they believe in the product, if the, if the website that they share with their boss not impressive, they're not gonna share it. Yeah. Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. And I think we have a real opportunity because our big competitor, [01:02:00] I think they just went the completely wrong direction with their site. They went toward the consumer. And I think it leaves the lane open for us to go really hard toward the merchant and their problems and payments and trust and, and that angle, uh, you know, our, our business like theirs has two sides to it. The merchants and then the shoppers. 'cause of the, the vault mechanism. Our vault is smaller and that's just not part of our calculation right now. We're not monetizing, we're not even looking to monetize that anytime soon. And I think they are, but I think they did it prematurely. So if you go to their site, it doesn't feel like it's met for a hundred million dollars a year merchant that has like payment issues and checkout problems and that, and I'm very happy about that. So I want to go really hard at that. And the problems that those people deal with around conversion rate and average stuff that's boring to the shopper, but who cares about the shopper? We're we're talking to the Brian: you're doing like a, a website [01:03:00] redesign, working with agencies, just in, in my experience, having, I, earlier in my career I worked at web design agencies, like big ones that, that were serving like nationally recognized brands and everything like that. And like, oh my God, the bloat is insane. It is Jordan: It, it can be, Brian: And even at the, at small, like lower levels of working with small businesses, like the, if it's an agency with a team, man they are, there is so much blo, first of all, the, the, the cost is bloated, but just the actual cycles of, of work is like, oh. So, so much of that is like just you're, you're just spinning wheels, you know, like. Jordan: Yeah. Approval and, and then looking at Brian: honestly, like these style guides that, that they, that they will sell you on. Like how, you know, they'll give you the this 20 page style guide that, like, you're, you really just need the first two pages of that thing , you know? Um, or like, uh, to, to me, the most, the most useful thing [01:04:00] when I, when I, you know, worked with a designer on clarity flow, the, the most useful thing is getting the homepage really, really dialed in, like the look and feel 'cause, and then I Jordan: everything closed Brian: Like I designed all the other pages, you know, um, and, uh, yeah. But that, that defines it all. And then a little bit of like brand style stuff to, to know how to set up buttons and text and stuff. But like colors and That's it. Yeah. Jordan: Yep. So I'll, I'll update on that as, as it progresses. My, my hope is that by like end of January, we, you know, we, we have in hand what, what we need. Alright dude. Well, it's Friday, it's uh, you know, 25 degrees out here. So, uh, that means that for me, that's fire season for me. I, I got a fireplace. One of my joys in life is making fires Brian: Yeah, have one. Jordan: the house. Yes, in Brian: in the room over there, but we never, that's like the kids' playroom. We never hang out there. But last summer we built a fire pit in our backyard. [01:05:00] So we're, uh, we're firing that up, uh, most weekends now. All right, folks. All right. Later. Jordan: Good to see you, brother. ​