Our final episode (for now)

[00:00:17] Speaker A: Hey, it is Bootstrapped Web. We are now in 2025. Jordan, how are we doing, buddy? We've got a big episode here. [00:00:25] Speaker B: We do have a big episode. Brian, it's great to see you. [00:00:28] Speaker A: Of course, on Thursday. [00:00:30] Speaker B: Not our regular Friday. [00:00:32] Speaker A: It is a Thursday because I did not work last Friday, and I don't intend to work tomorrow Friday. I'm trying to stick with it. So cool. But let's not bury the lead here. We're gonna call this the final episode for now, I think. Yeah. We're gonna take a big time out on Bootstrapped Web. That's sort of the headline. And I guess we can think of this as like a final episode. But don't unsubscribe to the feed. Just leave it on your phone or whatever. We might pop in here, I don't know, in a few months, maybe later in the year, whenever, with just a quick update from us to check in. But we're going to stop regular episodes going forward. [00:01:21] Speaker B: Yes, yes. This is a finale in some ways. We're not going to stretch it out to 90 minutes and make it like a movie. [00:01:27] Speaker A: We're not going to do like a man. [00:01:28] Speaker B: That could be relatively short because I got. I got a hard stop in 40 minutes. But yes, you know, the way. The way I'm looking at it is we are calling a timeout on regular, weekly episodes. I think both of us are full. Yeah, we got. We got a whole bunch of stuff going on. Um, it's been such a great experience. It's hard to even, you know, take it all all in. And I think because of that, I'm not willing to say it's over. [00:02:00] Speaker A: You know, Me too. And when we were chatting about this the other day, I think you and I both had the same feeling about this conversation, which is like, man, we are so torn. Cause it's like we love doing the show. [00:02:10] Speaker B: Yes. [00:02:11] Speaker A: We love talking to each other, and of course, we love doing this feed for all the listeners. I very much feel like I am a fan of the show, as weird as that sounds. But I'm a fan of this show, too. I was just digging up some stats this morning, and it's weird because the really old one, there's some missing episodes in the very beginning. Sure. So the very first episode, I started it alone in May, on May 31st of 2013. That's over 11 years ago. [00:02:46] Speaker B: Oh, my God. [00:02:47] Speaker A: Was the first episode of a podcast called Bootstrapped Web. You joined me. See, there's a gap in the first 20 episodes. Where we're missing some. So I don't actually have your first episode, I think, in Kastos, but I think it was around April 2014, thereabouts. [00:03:08] Speaker B: 10 years. [00:03:08] Speaker A: It's been like, over 10 years with. With you and me on the mic. [00:03:13] Speaker B: That's a trip. It's been. It's been fun. I'm so happy that we have that documented. [00:03:18] Speaker A: Yeah. The total number says 324 episodes. I think there's been a few more than that that got lost, but, yeah, cool. [00:03:27] Speaker B: But, yeah, we were. We were consistent with it for a long time, and I don't know what it is, you know, so we were torn right. When we talked, because we don't. We don't want to stop doing it. But what's the other side if we're torn? That is almost like the easy default, like, emotional. Like, I don't want to stop. You know, it's fun. What's the other side? What's doing it for us? What's pulling us in the other direction? Saying, oh, you know what? I think I got to spend my time differently. I got to do different podcasts. I'm going in this direction. I have some thoughts. [00:03:58] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, first, just on the thought to say, like, what you were just saying, you know, we're torn. We're thinking about it. Maybe that's enough to say, let's put a pause. It reminds me of. I've heard Jerry Seinfeld say this a bunch of different times, and also Larry David about the Seinfeld show. They feel like they ended it sort of like, at its height before it became bad, essentially. Not that I would expect us to go bad or anything, but, like, you know, Seinfeld has also talked a lot about this as well. Like, just with, like, comedy sets, like, you want to leave the audience, like, about 10 minutes before or they get bored. That thought has been rattling in my mind, just not trying to get out. [00:04:40] Speaker B: Or getting to a point where we're doing episodes that we don't really want to do. [00:04:43] Speaker A: We don't want to make it a chore. Yeah. I think another thing that we were chatting about the other day was as we head into 2025, as I said, I'm being very intentional about my time. I'm trying to go to four day work weeks, and I think we're both trying to be very intentional about everything we do and what we commit to and where we're putting our energy and focus and time. And, you know, like, you make a list of all the things that you do and like, this is one that's like, I don't know, do we have to keep doing it? It has been 11 years. You know. [00:05:17] Speaker B: Yes, it's right. It should not feel like obligation because it isn't one. And, yeah, I feel pretty full right now. You know, I think we. We talked a little bit about the last six months for me, and things have gotten harder recently. And what I mean by harder is, like, there's just more work to do in some ways, because Rosie is working where Rally was not. But it really. I feel very focused. Like, no, no bullshit. I'm just trying to. I'm just trying to execute. [00:05:56] Speaker A: Yep. [00:05:57] Speaker B: You know, we had. We had a great all hands yesterday, and we tried to change it up. We said, all right, 20, 25, there's six of us. Let's take advantage of the fact that there are six of us. And instead of having, you know, Jordan and Rock talk about what's going on and maybe a few slides from Sam or Jess, it's kind of like, let's all talk. So we started to do this thing where each individual has a few minutes to present something, and the goal is basically to add your perspective that could be. Here's what we're not doing, that I think we should be. Here's what we're doing that I think we shouldn't be. Here is how I'm approaching development in an AI universe where I can't track when I release changes. Normally I can just track and analyze how things are going. And now it's kind of like, well, this AI is off talking to people, and I don't know how to track that. So let me give a presentation on Lang Fuse on how we're using. So. Right. So all these individual things, my presentation, the way I thought I could add the most value is just open kimono finances. I just said, here's where we are. Here are the projections. Here's. Here's what happens to revenue, expenses, cash in the bank, and burn every month for the next 12 months based on these projections. And I want everyone to take it in and feel good about the transparency and take on the stress that goes with it. [00:07:25] Speaker A: Yep. [00:07:26] Speaker B: And it really helped me because it felt like I was holding that in and dealing with that pressure and stress myself. And opening it up felt good, like sharing that. But what it also goes directly to is feeling pressure. [00:07:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:07:48] Speaker B: And I think that connects directly to being very mindful of how we spend our time and how productive we want to be. And this podcast has turned into something that's fun and it's not like I want to eliminate fun. I don't have time for any fun. But it does feel like, hey, if you don't want to work on Fridays, and I like to do the podcast on Friday because Friday's my more chill day, then it starts to move over into my Thursday Thursdays. I'm still in killer mode. I want to stay in killer mode. So I think that's kind of what brought us to, hey, you know what? Let's just call a little timeout, do a quarterly update, but not put that pressure on ourselves to make it work, even though it may not. [00:08:27] Speaker A: Totally. Yeah, totally feel you on that. And I know that, like, I think my taking Fridays off sort of probably triggered the conversation, but I feel the same way, too. Cause, like, I also now feel a pressure of, like, I need to ship everything I need to need to ship between Monday and Thursday, you know? And, you know, one of the other things that. That I've been torn about probably for quite some time, I think, with this podcast, if I'm being totally honest, is, like, I always, like you said, we both have fun doing it. We both really enjoy it, but I also feel like I get other benefits from podcasting and being in public, including this show. And I always felt like I probably receive more, like, business benefits and network benefits for my business and work than you probably do. Yep. And so. And then that. That also led to sort of like, a hesitation for me to, you know, end the show, you know, like, do I really want to, like, stop being out there every week the way I have been? Because the truth is, like, I've had so many positive benefits to my work through this podcast, specifically. I mean, yeah, I started to jot down a few here. I'd say, like, number one, maybe this is for both of us, but it definitely keeps me sharp. [00:10:04] Speaker B: Yeah, the muscle. [00:10:05] Speaker A: Yeah. Being here on the mics, knowing that I have to report to an audience and talk about what I'm doing with my business and make a case for it and know that there's gonna be listeners who are driving in their car and thinking, like, brian's such an idiot. Why is he doing that? And in my mind, I have to try to argue against them. [00:10:31] Speaker B: I'm gonna say that that's 80% positive. And it does actually come with a bit of a negative impact around. I don't know, Sometimes you don't need justification. It's just because I felt like doing this, and I don't want to do that anymore. [00:10:43] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:10:43] Speaker B: I don't want to be consistent. [00:10:45] Speaker A: You're, you're right about that. I actually jotted down here. I was like, like both the good and the bad of that pressure. Like, there is the good. It, it, I think it does actually, for at least for me, like, force me to follow through on the things that I talk about here. But there is the bad. Like, like, like you said, like, it, I overanalyze. I, I, I think about a lot of mental bullshit that doesn't even need to be there. So there's that. But the other big one for me is it is the best networking tool that I know of, especially for someone like me. Like, in real life, I am an introvert. Yeah. I am very, like, we're very different in this way, probably. Like, I am not a networker, you know, but having this podcast has supercharged my professional network. Like, there's just no doubt about that. I've been invited to conferences. I've been, you know, all this, like, clients have come through the podcast. Referrals, introductions, hires, team members, partners, partnerships have come through the podcast. Like, all sorts of stuff that, like, I, yeah, I wouldn't have just like, networked my way there. [00:11:53] Speaker B: It's like you get to start on, you know, step five of ten. [00:11:59] Speaker A: Yes. [00:12:00] Speaker B: You know, I, I will always remember the first time I went to microconf after we started this podcast. And it went from, I'm an anonymous person and I'm going to network my way into relationships to I listen to your podcast handshake. And that is like, it is starting at 9.5 out of 10 on the networking scale. It is just this acceleration. Now. What happened over the last few years is I started to look at this as just fun. I don't get any business benefit. Not direct. And maybe you are better off on a more consistent basis, let's say a weekly commitment type of a thing. Doing something like this with someone that is also getting business benefit because it just increases the motivation, the seriousness. Sometimes I feel a little bit like a slacker, but because I don't get any business benefit and it's just fun, I maybe don't prepare quite the same way as somebody else would be honest. [00:12:59] Speaker A: But, you know, but, you know, I mean, it's funny that you say that. I actually am jumping onto another podcast pretty soon. Right. You know, I'm talking to Justin Jackson. He and I are starting up a totally new show. It's called Panel. It's called the, the Panel podcast. You can get [email protected] that's the official announcement I think actually later today we're gonna be recording the trailer episode. And the idea is that it's Justin and me co hosting, but we're gonna be bringing on a panel every episode with like one or two other guests. Jordan, we definitely gotta wrangle you in there. [00:13:37] Speaker B: Part of this arrangement is an agreement to, you know, with a minimum number of appearances on the panel. [00:13:44] Speaker A: Yeah. X number of appearances. Yeah. [00:13:45] Speaker B: But Justin is not going to do a podcast hang up and then not share it the way I do. Cause I don't remember to, because I just had fun with you talking and I'm not looking for anything beyond that. [00:13:57] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And you know, that's gonna be a different show, different vibe. But if you listen to this, you probably know Justin and me and people in our circles, we're gonna bring him on and talk about all sorts of stuff. Cool. We have an email list if you want to get on the launch thing there. That'[email protected] But I mean, other than that, like, you know, like, as I said, like the other big benefit and going forward for me, like, it's also been very important for me to build in public and to share everything that I'm working on publicly. I know that not everyone operates in business this way, but I don't know what it is about my personality or what it is, but, like, I feel uncomfortable when I'm working super privately. And I have projects right now that I have not announced publicly. And I'm already feeling that discomfort with, like, I've been working for weeks on this thing and nobody knows about it. Like, this doesn't feel right. I need to tell and show the work. And I saw this podcast as a big outlet for that. I have other outlets for that. Social media, my newsletter. I do have a private podcast called what's Next? You can get all that at my personal site, briancastle.com so I continue to post there, just sharing notes on updates on what I'm working on. So, you know, like, I don't know, like, it's just again, like, maybe it's like, since I work at home and I'm all alone in here, I feel like I don't have, like a team culture vibe like you have. So I feel like I have to, like, show other people what I'm doing. [00:15:44] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I think that muscle has benefited you tremendously in that. That set of habits. So I think you'll do more of it outside of this. [00:15:53] Speaker A: Probably. Yeah. [00:15:56] Speaker B: And I don't know what I'm going to do if Anything. I might just take a little break and just kind of look inward, you know, and why don't we get into a little bit of an update? Because the intention is to do something quarterly. [00:16:11] Speaker A: Yeah. I was going to say, I actually think that this can make for a really interesting thing where like, if we talk about like what, what our plans are for the upcoming year and we catch up four, five, six months from now, it'll be really interesting to sort of see how we did on. [00:16:26] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a different. That's right. It's kind of a. It's a different. It's a different timescale. [00:16:32] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:16:32] Speaker B: And so instead of what am I? Weekly? Weekly. Weekly. To go a little bit more. You can kind of see progress in a different way. Yeah. [00:16:39] Speaker A: I think it'll be actually really interesting to like listen back even just six months ago to say, like, oh, I was saying that. Yeah, that did not turn out. [00:16:46] Speaker B: Yes. And it goes by, it does go by fast, you know, and now I have, I have board meetings quarterly. So I, I have that time frame as part of my like business habits. And it is, it is cool to see sometimes it is embarrassing in terms of, you know, making plans and stating them. And then three months later you're like, that was completely wrong and we went in a different direction and here's why. [00:17:16] Speaker A: And I'm always surprised both ways, both positive and negative. Like I'm, I, like I just looked back at 2024 at my revenue numbers and everything. I'm like, oh, it actually ended up like a lot better than I, than I expected that it would at the start. [00:17:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:17:29] Speaker A: But then there's also other things like, oh, I'm going to build this and launch that and like those just never happened. [00:17:34] Speaker B: Yes. [00:17:37] Speaker A: So what can you. Because, you know, we talked a lot offline about our businesses and stuff. Of course we can't share everything but like, what if you had to sort of predict or project out what your 2025 is going to look like or what you hope it will look like for you? What do you see? [00:17:57] Speaker B: I'll take Q1 on 2025. Seems like too big of a bite. [00:18:01] Speaker A: Too far. [00:18:01] Speaker B: Yep. But Q1 feels right. So I'll give the quick update before we left for break. Call it mid December. When we left, we were not sure. I was not sure. And as a team, we were not sure if we had made the right decision in switching from time based trial, seven days and you convert regardless of your usage or adoption. We switched over to usage based. So you got to use the product fully without a credit card. And you only converted when you went through 50 minutes of call time. We did that for a very specific reason, and it's not for revenue growth, because revenue growth looked beautiful at the seven day trial. But if you take one teeny tiny look under the covers. Sorry about that. FaceTime. So we are not new at this, right? I'm not an amateur at software. I've kind of seen some good and some bad. And I knew we were building our castle on sand, on quicksand. Because if you look at, if you look at usage in that scenario, if you force everyone to convert, if you force everyone to put their credit card on and then seven days later they convert, an unhealthy percentage of your user base does not use your product. And so the revenue growth looks good, but it is not good. We wanted to go the other extreme. We wanted to say you only convert if you proactively put your credit card in and you are actively using the product. Because this AI thing is a question mark. Is it good enough to answer people's phones? Do people feel confident enough? And so we wanted to really test out like, what's going on here. How healthy is this product in business between then one very important thing that we did right before we left. So like December, like 16th or 17th, I just kind of woke up one morning, it was like, 50 minutes is too many. Let's move to 25. Because I thought same thing in terms of usage and adoption. You're effectively using the product at 25 minutes. People test, people test for between five minutes and maybe 10 minutes at most. [00:20:25] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, 20 minutes, 25 years using it. [00:20:27] Speaker B: Same thing because we count by the seconds. So if a phone call takes 14 seconds, it eats up 14 seconds of usage, not a minute. So 25 minutes is like actual usage. And I thought that would have no negative impact on sign of conversion whatsoever. So I just didn't see any downside. So we made that switch and that switch turned out to be right. So both things, now that we're in January, we now have the confidence that both of those were right. The move from time base to usage worked. Now, we knew when we made that switch that we would kind of eat it for a few weeks because conversions would disappear because the cohort of seven days disappears and you start up with a new cohort of usage. First 50 minutes, then 25. So you get a bunch of signups and nobody converts because they have to work through their 50 minutes. So we were hoping, okay, at some point this should all Hit at once as this cohort goes through their usage. [00:21:23] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:21:24] Speaker B: And so it was a stressful few weeks. And then sometime toward the end of December, then we also made the 25 minute switch. And then all of a sudden, all at once, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang conversions every single day. [00:21:38] Speaker A: That is so cool. It's awesome, dude. I was gonna do my side of the update. I will talk about instrumental products since that's the majority of my time and focus and energy, like getting this new business shaped and formed into what it's going to be. But before I get there, I'll do a quick note on clarity flow because it's pretty similar. Okay. Even though this is like the 20% of my time in focus, I've been talking about the experiment that I've been running since August. So August through The end of 2024 has been no trial. We charge you on day one. Like you pay on day one to get into clarity flow. And at first, the first couple of months of that, I thought that it was working pretty well. But I was keeping my eye on everything, all the cohorts coming through those months and their performance in terms of churn and all that. And here we are, what, five months later, you know, like around December, end of December, I was like, this is. The cohorts aren't as pretty as the ones that came before them. So the new experiment that will be going live like tomorrow or Monday is we are returning to free trials. 14 day free trial. [00:23:03] Speaker B: Okay, so this is going to define your Q1 here. [00:23:05] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. On clarity flow. Yeah. Totally new math equation to work out going forward. This is just the next experiment. I don't know how many more months we're going to try this one, maybe revert back, I don't know. But this is a new experiment, though. We had trials before, but a few variables are different this time. One is we just have more traffic now than we had before, like a lot more traffic. And we have more leads, more word of mouth. So it'll be interesting to see how those react to a trial. And then we are doing credit card upfront trials, whereas before we did not have credit card up front. Before it was you start a trial and then you put your credit card in once you want some premium features or at 14 days, whichever comes first. Now it's credit card in on day one. Then you do your 14 day trial and we will automatically bill you on day 14. That's variable number one. Variable number two is we are now introducing a paid setup service. So this is totally new. Never tried this before. You sign up on day one, you put your credit card in, you get to a success page. And on that success page we have a second sales page that says, hey, welcome to Clarity Flow. Glad you're here. Here's a button to purchase. It's optional but you can purchase and we strongly recommend it. Big button, big video. To present it, purchase the setup service, you get a strategy session with Cat, our customer success. We're going to set you up, we're going to import your content, we're going to set up your automations, your courses, all this stuff. That's a one time fee. Right now we're starting it at 400 bucks. The plan is if it works, we're going to just ratchet that number up throughout the year. There's a small link there that says, no, I'll skip for now. I'll just explore my own. And then we've got a big link that you can come back and purchase it if you want to. So the hypothesis on this is number one, it's weird. Like different variables cancel each other out. So we should expect more trials than we had in the previous phase of trials because now we have more traffic. But we should expect less trials because now we're requiring a credit card whereas before we were not. So it'll be interesting to see like literally how many trials do we get in a month. [00:25:34] Speaker B: Before you had no credit card required, then you had no trial. Now you have trial with credit card. [00:25:40] Speaker A: Yes. [00:25:41] Speaker B: Yeah. What I like what you played with in the experiment around no trial was basically forcing skin in the game. You can't just come in here, create an account and look around. [00:25:52] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:25:52] Speaker B: We want you committed. And now it feels like what you're doing with this optional setup fee is making like different levels of skin in the game. Like putting a credit card on file for a trial, that's some skin in the game. And then paying a few hundred bucks is like, well, now I am choosing to put skin in the game. [00:26:07] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool. And the setup thing is like, it's not just about obviously it's not just about just more revenue. It's not. And yes, like, yes, it is more revenue and yes, it is more skin in the game. So that expectation is there. But it's also like, it literally is a ton of work to set up Clarity Flow for your coaching business. Like you, you are like customers spend a whole month setting their business up on Clarity Flow and they have like a thousand emails back and forth with Kat during that Month. So this is part, part of it is literally to make her job more efficient. And we know that like, when she does work directly with, with customers, they're gonna stay on and be successful. It's the ones that like, choose not to like. We've been offering like, really like, like free calls and all this stuff, but like now it's like you could still get a free call, you could still do free customer support, but like, if you, if you. We're really kind of pushing this as the option, so that'll be interesting. We are going to launch another feature pretty soon for tasks. Coaches really want to track tasks with our clients, but like beyond that, like, we don't have a ton in the roadmap. So it'll just be interesting to see where we end up with clarity, flow. I would say probably around May, June is when I'll really want to evaluate how these months have gone, you know. [00:27:37] Speaker B: Very cool, very interesting. The right, the real, the real thing that gets opened up by us concluding that it was the right move to go toward usage based is that we almost move on to the next step of the funnel. Right? And all hands. One of the slides I have at the beginning of every single. Every time we talk is I break down the funnel into the different steps and I basically say, we are here, we are focused here. There's other stuff after this, but right now we got to focus here. And this all hands allowed me to basically say we're moving from one to the next. We're moving from. Do people activate? Do people use this product? And that question mark has been answered with a check mark. Yes, they do. Now we know they do. And then the next step in the funnel is like, well, how are you going to convert and monetize them? And so this quarter is going to be all about that step of the funnel. We have features. We have five features that are coming up. None of them are earth shattering. There's a few that people really, really ask. Call transfers. People really want to be able to. [00:28:53] Speaker A: Say, oh, like, like from the AI to a human. [00:28:56] Speaker B: Yes, yes. And there's different versions of that. The basic version that we'll launch first is you want to talk to billing, you want to talk to marketing, you want to talk to Stacy, you know, just say the word or say or the number, whatever. And then gets forwarded to a phone number. That's the basic version. The higher level version is live transfers. You want to talk to George? One sec, right? Rosie calls, George says, hey, George, do you want to answer the phone? This is a phone call from this person. This person. And depending on what George says, yes, transfer. No, take a message. [00:29:27] Speaker A: Interesting. [00:29:27] Speaker B: Okay, so cool. Like features like, oh, it's straightforward but really the work that is going to be focused is how do we allow people to see the features that are at the higher tiers and how do we allow them to self serve? Right now you can self serve and you can pay without talking to us and that's working great. But if you want to go up to the higher tier, there is. The paths are ugly. You can't. You're looking at the marketing site. Then you go into the product that you don't see those features. So you have to email us and we say, yes, we'll open those up. But those are in beta. Here's the link to. You know, it's like the way that. [00:29:58] Speaker A: I've always approached that is I show all the buttons in the interface all the time. [00:30:04] Speaker B: That is what we're building in January. [00:30:06] Speaker A: Yeah. So like all the buttons that are in the premium stuff, like if you try to click it and it's not in your plan, it just kicks you to the upgrade screen. [00:30:13] Speaker B: Okay, so you and I are going to have a conversation after this because that is what we're working on right now. So add more to the top of the funnel and then figure out how to convert and monetize. That is our Q1. So next time we talk, we'll be talking about how did Q1 go? Did your average revenue per user go up? Are people upgrading on their own? Are you attracting larger customers because you're doing a better job showing the bigger features and that type of thing. That's the goal. [00:30:40] Speaker A: Nice, nice. I'll do a quick update on instrumental products. I feel like the phase that I'm in in this business, it started, it's a gray area but like sometime midway through 2024 is when this like company started Instrumentl products. When I started doing one month app MVP as a service, you know, Rails apps for clients. And I've had a bunch of those in the, in the portfolio over the last couple of months. Still actively finishing up three of them right now. At some point I would like to do like a series of case studies on these that's sort of on the never ending to do list and really start to promote the apps that we've built the thing. But I still feel like this whole company of instrumental products is in its infancy and it's like a big ball of clay that I'm still shaping into figuring out like what Is it that I'm building here? The one thing that I know for sure is like this brand, this company exists for builders. We are building for builders right now. We have services that we offer to like if you want to build a product, you can hire us to build your product. I'm actively building components for Rails. Those are for builders. Believe it. This is the first time I'm mentioning it but I actually started building an editor for Rails like a block editor, a notion style block editor for Ruby on Rails and Hotwire and Tailwind. It's sort of a byproduct that came out of putting together the docs for the components. So this is going to be a, it's going to be called like instrumental editor. It's going to be like a separate product in the line of products from Instrumentl. Couple other ideas for products like things that if you build products, whether you have a product or you build products for other clients, we want to give you a lineup of tools and components and things that you can use in your work. So that's like the product vision and that's just going to continue to develop like a line of products from Instrumentl. But the other side is the more immediate stuff which is like how do we have revenue coming in in the door? Because this is a fully bootstrapped business. We have to be self funding this right now. That's through the services. But I am this week I'm starting to kind of think through like what is the future of that part of it. We're going to continue to maintain and have maybe a few retainers with some select clients. I think we might bring on a couple new MVP projects but I'm starting to think more about either a coaching offering or a small cohort community offering where if you are building a product or if you want to learn how to build your product, especially if you want to use AI to build your product. I could be your human coach with your AI work, help help unblock you, help to like advise on like all right you can ask the AI these questions but let's like really shape your product and to make sure you don't run into some roadblocks, that sort of thing. I don't know if that's going to be like a one to one coaching or a small group thing but the idea is like move away from me and my team building and shipping the full product for you to you are the builder, you build or you learn to build as you build and me and or my team of coaches will help speed up that process and help speed up the learning curve. And we have a lineup of tools to make your building life easier. Like that's the vision of what I'm trying to build out here. So it's all coming together. The product stuff, the component stuff is making a lot of progress. But I'm so busy with all these different things that it's hard to get them to the finished launch state, launchable state. And frankly the services with clients like that just eats up so much of my time and energy that it's hard to make progress on stuff. So that's why I'm starting to rethink like what's the sustainability of that side and maybe get to more of. More of the psych coaching community model. [00:35:13] Speaker B: Yeah, less. Less time intensive or it's just different relationship. So when you think about Q1, what let's say at the end of Q1, what do you want to look back and say let you maybe you've identified a sustainable model on servicing. Like do you expect. Right. You've got a few different things going that are like products, like actual products. Are you kind of waiting to see which one of those kind of takes off first? Which one hits the audience in the right way? [00:35:44] Speaker A: Well, I mean on the product side it's just a matter of like when I actually build them and ship them. So the instrumental components product@ Instrumentl.dev. that one is like 80% built. [00:36:00] Speaker B: So does that one go out first? [00:36:02] Speaker A: That one will probably go out first. The main holdup there is building out the docs site for that which the docs for any developer have to be excellent. So that's the holdup there is getting those built out. But the more immediate question for Q1 right now is figuring out the service side. I don't know if that's going to look like getting more MVP projects to do. I think it's all. Maybe it might be a mix, but I need to start to do some research or pre launch of a coaching and community offer. I might do literally next week or the week after I might do a free live webinar workshop thing, invite eight people who might be interested in this sort of thing so that I can learn from them in terms of what their top questions and challenges are. And then based on what I learned from that, how can I shape it into a pretty compelling offer? It's so raw right now. I'm literally just thinking about this this week that I think it just needs more research. So I would hope that by the end of Q1 I will have learned enough and maybe launched an MVP of this. Of this coaching or community or small group cohort building thing. That's all I know right now. Yeah. [00:37:33] Speaker B: Yeah, right. It's kind of like a direction. No direction. What people want to do with it. Cool. Well, I don't know what to tell you. I don't want to be overly dramatic. I refuse to be overly dramatic. It's not over. [00:37:48] Speaker A: Don't unsubscribe. Keep the feed open. We'll randomly pop in here at some point. [00:37:53] Speaker B: Yes, yes. [00:37:54] Speaker A: And, hey, you know, I should have led with this at the top. I want to really sincerely thank all the listeners. Number one, it's been so awesome to hear from many of you, and I still get emails today from people who say, I've been listening to Bootstrap Web for years and I've never heard from these people ever before. [00:38:15] Speaker B: Yeah, what a trip. [00:38:15] Speaker A: So it's such a trip to have a podcast like this where people know so much about us, but we don't know you. So just go ahead and send me. Send Jordan, or hit us up on Twitter or bluesky. We want to hear from you. Yeah. [00:38:31] Speaker B: It's such a jolt. It's so positive. [00:38:33] Speaker A: It really is. It's super energizing for us. That's number one. I want to thank you for riding along with us. It's been such a trip. Jordan, I got to thank you, buddy. This has been so awesome and obviously getting to know you as a great friend. But, like, I think listeners would agree, we've developed a pretty great podcasting chemistry here. I think it's worked pretty well. [00:38:59] Speaker B: That's been great. Thanks for inviting me on 10 years ago. Cool. I will see you on Twitter. We'll talk privately, and then we'll be back in this feed when we have something cool to say. [00:39:10] Speaker A: That's right. Later, folks. [00:39:12] Speaker B: Thanks for listening.