Probably fine

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Brian Casel (00:16):
Hey. It is Bootstrap Web, 10/25/2024. We
are what are we? A week or twoaway from election day here in
America?

Jordan Gal (00:26):
Yeah. I think we're one Scaramucci away from
election day.

That's a that's a great way to put it. Yep. How
you doing, buddy?

Jordan Gal (00:33):
Good. I am looking forward to the election being
over. Yeah. Yes. Everything thewhole country gets crazy.

I know. It's crazy. Twitter gets up.

Jordan Gal (00:44):
Life or death. It's either we win and it's, you
know, and everything's gonna beglorious or we lose and
everything's over.

I know, man.

Jordan Gal (00:52):
We're gonna be okay. We are gonna be okay. It is
healthy.

It's gonna be fine.

Jordan Gal (00:58):
I think overall

It's probably gonna be fine.

Jordan Gal (01:01):
It'll probably be okay. It's most likely it turns
out okay. Yeah. It's healthyseeing how engaged everyone is,
but it does feel like it tipsover into unhealthy when it's
like demonization and everyonelike, you're right and the other
side doesn't disagree. The otherside's crazy or evil or

(01:24):
something.

That that is the worst part of it is this like,
it look, I I'm I'm in this I'mdescribing myself too. Like, I'm
I did a tweet the other day, apolitical tweet, which I rarely
do anymore.

Jordan Gal (01:38):
I saw. I saw.

Talking about who I'm voting for and why I'm
voting. And it's I'm not votingfor her. I mean, I am. But I'm
not voting for her. I'm votingagainst him.

Jordan Gal (01:50):
Okay. Okay.

And I and I feel

Jordan Gal (01:52):
like Common

Yeah. That's what most people in America If you
can define the the politicalclimate, everyone is voting
against the party. Very fewpeople are actually voting for
their candidate.

Jordan Gal (02:05):
Yes. I'm not voting for him. I'm against her side.
Yep. I I saw a TikTok recentlyof a woman and she was like, I
don't know where I'm supposed tobe, but like this is what I
believe.
And I was like, just sign me upfor that political party. It was
just like what I assume a verylarge chunk of people believe.

(02:28):
Just like reasonable positionson a huge list of issues. Yep.
Nothing extreme.
It's just kinda like, hey, Ithink this is totally fine. Do
whatever you want, but not this.Sense, but not that.

I mean, you're right. I think that that is the
vast vast majority. The the thebig middle, the big center of of
of at least in America. I knowit's absolutely for me, like
there's a whole list of ofpolicies that I do not agree
with, the the Democratic Party,and then and then a whole bunch

(03:05):
that I do agree with. Mhmm.
And a lot of stuff fromRepublicans that I do resonate
with and I agree with theirstance on things, this and that.
I mean, this this election, Ijust I'm just not Trump. That's
that's to me. Oh, completelyunderstandable.

Jordan Gal (03:19):
Yeah. Yeah. I often think of it as like as like a a
rank of priorities, but theweight on each priority is super
super skewed to the top fewpriorities. So if you have like
10 issues and you know, look,I'm I was born in Israel. I'm a
Jew.
Like, okay, that issue is prettydamn high up for me.

Of

Jordan Gal (03:42):
course. And and I put a lot of emphasis. So it has
like a multiplier. And if you'rea young woman and you're single
and reproductive rights are veryimportant, like, goes to the
top, but there's a multiplier onit. So going in and like judging
based on who someone's votingfor is actually it doesn't make
sense to judge them on it.
It's like this list ofpriorities, background, parents,

(04:07):
where you grew up. It's such amix that to just assume a bunch
of stuff is so unfair.

Yeah. I mean, because really you're you're not
judging the per the otherperson's opinion on that
particular issue. You're judgingwhy do they weight that value so
heavily. Yes. That's and that'sa judgment on like their own
values.
Right. They can't do that. Like,can't just like because look,
like, there's gonna be there'salways, you know, 50 different

(04:35):
issues on the table and we'renever gonna agree a 100% with
our chosen candidate. There'splenty of stuff that I don't
like about the person I'm votingfor. Yeah.
But you have to wait differentthings differently and Mhmm.
That's what the really thechoice is. Right? What what
always when it comes to, like,the these, like, political
times, I don't agree with anyonewho does not vote. I just think

(04:58):
if you have the right to vote,use it.
Just whoever you're voting for,just do it. Like like Yeah. And
and I also don't get on boardwith the idea of, oh, I hate
both candidates, so I'm notgonna vote. Or I hate both
candidates, so I'm gonna vote orwrite in or or vote for this
Really? Third party that hasthat has zero chance of winning.

(05:19):
I I just don't get on board withthat And line of thinking I am
someone who desperately wants toget out of the two party system.
I would be all for a a viablethird party. I you know? Yeah.
But there aren't any viablethird parties.
So you have to choose one. Youknow? Yeah.

Jordan Gal (05:37):
I I That's my totally understandable. It does
end up being an individualchoice. So I mean, last time,
last election, I did exactlywhat you described. I could not
bring myself to vote for him. Idid not wanna vote for Biden,
and I just left the top of theticket blank.
And then I voted on all theseother things. And especially

(06:00):
locally, you can be

Probably more of an impact.

Jordan Gal (06:04):
It does have more of an impact. I mean, I have lived
in extremely blue places likePortland, Oregon. But inside of
the local politics, it stillmakes a difference on which
which Democrat you choose,basically. But here in the
suburbs of Chicago, it's kind ofbeen very interesting. You live
in Connecticut, but you live faraway from the city.
Yep. The local stuff is both amystery because it's kind of

(06:27):
it's more difficult to getinformation on and be informed
on, but it has so much moreimpact on your life, your
family, your kids, the school,

your Yep. So we were talking a bit offline about
this. I'm always fascinated bythe local vibe on as as we lead
up to an election. And somethingI always look out for and I and
I really paid attention to itstarting in 2016 when it was
Hillary and Trump. And then isis the yard signs.

(06:58):
Right? Like, you you look at theyard signs. Okay. And and so I'm
driving around my town here inConnecticut. So I'm in Suburban
Connecticut, but pretty far awayfrom the city.
I'm not like, you know, I'm aI'm a good like out over an hour
north of New York City. So I'mactually Connecticut is known as
a blue state, but I'm in a, Iwould say, leaning Red county or

(07:21):
or town Mhmm. In in my area.Right? So just driving around my
town, like, are 100 clearly moreTrump signs on lawns than Harris
signs.
And and just like by a lot,like, there's there are some
Harris signs, but there are notonly Trump signs, you also see
the handmade Trump signs, thebig ones. The the Okay.

Jordan Gal (07:41):
Yes. The

They'll nail them to a tree. They'll they'll do
stuff, you know. Which is like,look, that's enthusiasm. And you
don't see that on the Democraticside.

Jordan Gal (07:50):
And then

And back to 2016, I remember driving around and I
saw zero Hillary Clinton signs.Not one. And this was at a time
when, like, so at this time,like, weeks out, every single
poll, every news outlet waslike, Hillary's got it in the
Yes. In the bag. There's there'sno chance Trump can win.
And I'm driving around my townthinking, man, there's a whole

(08:13):
lot of these Trump signs, and Idon't see any Hillary signs.
That's weird, isn't it? And andwhat do you know? Yeah. You
know, so that so ever sincethen, I've been very very tuned
in to like what I'm ground andCool.
Here

Jordan Gal (08:28):
is how would I describe it? Not okay. Was gonna
say not a single Trump sign, butI stopped myself because I
noticed the one Trump signbecause it's the only Trump
sign. Okay?

Okay. So you're in a much more blue

Jordan Gal (08:44):
are so here's the thing. We are incredibly blue
because we're in in near theChicago or in Illinois which is
blue and Chicago which is beyondblue.

Mhmm.

Jordan Gal (08:54):
And the interesting thing about Chicago is the
horrific horrific level ofcorruption.

Right.

Jordan Gal (09:02):
It is devastating, and it's so out in the open and
so heartbreaking because it'sjust the schools that just get
demolished Mhmm.

And

Jordan Gal (09:10):
all the money stolen from the schools. So it's like
this very ugly sore that's kindof out in the open, and the
mayor here is a hot mess. Butwhere we are in the suburbs,
this is highly educated, highincome blue. And what that means
is that every sign is forHarris, and every conversation I

(09:33):
have not every conversation.Fifth call it 50% of the
conversations I have are thesame.
The wife supports Harris, thehusband supports Trump.

Interesting.

Jordan Gal (09:46):
But you cannot put a Trump sign up. Mhmm. Because
socially, it's unacceptable.Yep. Yes.
And that's a kind of interestingdynamic, you know, among this
state, this location, and this,like, socioeconomic strata

Yeah.

Jordan Gal (10:03):
Where supporting Trump is seen as, like, beyond
the pale. How how could you?

Yep. People just avoid it and they put it

Jordan Gal (10:10):
aside and they go into the voting booth in private
and they vote for them.

I totally know what you mean. And I I think that
that sort of I think there therestill is this, like, stigma,
like, against Democrats, like,in in all in a lot of part of
the country. Like, here too. Youknow? And that that was always
sort of my assumption, like, whyI don't see as many Democrat
signs as as Trump.

(10:33):
I mean, in in 2016, it was likeit wasn't just that. Like, there
was actually a lot moreenthusiasm enthusiasm for for
Trump. I think there's stillsome of that. But, yeah. I don't
know, man.
It's it's it's crazy out there.

Jordan Gal (10:48):
Yeah. Is. Well, another week or so and and we'll
be done with it.

It'll all be over. Well, or or it'll be just
beginning for another threemonths of recounts. Who knows?

Jordan Gal (10:57):
That's I I think what all of us agree on is just
avoid some mess, some January 6thing, some riding, like, please
let us get through a nice,peaceful transfer of power.
Maybe even a little respect,maybe even a little grace, God
forbid. So

that Right.

Jordan Gal (11:17):
That's that's what I really hope.

I mean, there's anything that should just be
like off limits in terms of likecontroversy, it should be the
counting of of votes. Like thatthat to me is like the area
that's just like, come on. Therethere's so much bullshit flying
around. Like, it it's a it's anelection. Like, no one's trying
to, like whatever.
I I don't wanna get too

Jordan Gal (11:36):
deep into the weeds of conspiracy theory, but it's
like and this. So it's it's itis it is tough to find some
consensus on

Anyway.

Jordan Gal (11:44):
Basic things. But one way regardless of how this
thing goes, we gotta make aliving, Brian.

That is true, sir. We gotta

Jordan Gal (11:51):
make and then some, because the other day, I had a
conversation with my youngest,Daphne. She loves sushi, but
she's in that phase of earlysushi adoption where you don't
eat fish yet. Okay. Cucumberrolls, avocado rolls, you you
California roll. Right.
And I'm like, honey, there's aworld out here that you gotta
make the crossover to some rawfish. And I was like, tuna is

(12:14):
the great starting point withsalmon. And she goes, dad,
tuna's gross. Tuna's cat food.And I said, kid, one day we're
gonna go to Japan, and we'regonna eat some tuna, and we're
gonna go to the market.
In my back of my mind, I waslike, get busy, bro. Go make
some money so you could takeyour kid and your family to

(12:35):
Japan. Do these things that youwanna do in life and like

That's right.

Jordan Gal (12:38):
Really helps that visualization. Like, really
helps. Because I think about it.I'm like, you know what that
cost? Cost about $25.

I don't want to Japan?

Jordan Gal (12:48):
Yeah. Yeah. A big ass trip with the family, you
know, to Japan. I I think it'sit's 15 to 25.

You're right. Like, we're we're big travelers too, I
I do gauge my current financialcomfort on like, how readily
just on a whim. We're like,let's book another trip. When's
your next one? Let's let's justbook something.
Right. We're we're, you know, weactually just booked something
just now and like it's like sothat's that's the the meter in

(13:14):
in my mind. It's not The willingit's not like literally like how
much is in the bank account.It's like how willing are we to
just

Jordan Gal (13:20):
go somewhere.

You know?

Jordan Gal (13:21):
Yes. So I just booked tickets last night for
DC. We we have a new niece inthe family.

Oh, yeah.

Jordan Gal (13:27):
Sister-in-law had a baby. Everybody's so excited.
They're gonna come up here forthe holidays for Christmas and
Hanukkah. But everyone all mykids were like, we don't wanna
wait two months. We wanna seethis baby.
And we were like, you know what?Let's go for Thanksgiving. We
have ten days off. Yep. And sothat's one of those things.
I go, I look up some miles. I'mlike, oh, this trip is like a
normal trip. Right? Let's behonest. What's a normal trip?

(13:48):
Two to five grand.

Oh, at least.

Jordan Gal (13:50):
Right. That's like a normal little look, we're gonna
stay with them. We don't rent acar. It's this very contained
thing.

Yeah. Once there's like flights and hotels involved
like and kids, like tickets forkids, like, yeah. You're
multiple multiple thousands nomatter where you're going.

Jordan Gal (14:05):
Right. So that's the normal trip and and and you
you've read it's almost like thethe emotional friction to
booking that tells you Yeah.Kind of like how you feel about
Yeah.

Are we talking about road trips? Are we talking
about plane trips? That's theYeah. Well, my

Jordan Gal (14:20):
wife was like, do you wanna drive to DC? I'm like,
honey, it's sixteen hours.

Yeah. That's a far one.

Jordan Gal (14:24):
There's just no.

Absolutely. Last random bit on this before we get
into business. Okay. I I kickmyself for not getting on the
the credit card flyer milestrain sooner. So I you know,
about a year ago, year and ahalf ago, I switched over all my
cards to United.
You know, United cards. I'm inthe United program with Hartford

(14:49):
as a United hub. So, I mean, Idon't know why like, I was in
Chase cards for all those yearsbefore that. But like Now you
get mad. Like, it's just so muchmore economical to to book
flights using miles and rackingup the miles.
And Yeah. And so now it's likelike, you know, it's it's easy
to get a first class on mosttrips throughout the year paid

(15:12):
for. Like, it's yeah. That'sgood. Like, that's just my one
tip to listeners.
Like, it I think anyone in thisindustry who's going out to
conferences and doing vacationswith their family, just make
sure all your cards, includingyour business card, are racking
up flyer miles, not just, likegeneral credit card points.
Mhmm. You know? Yep. Commit toone airline.

Jordan Gal (15:32):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of the the great hacks that
venture funded founders do isyou you are running all the
company's expenses on creditcard and you are accumulating
that personally. It is it is acheat.

Yeah. Like that and that is one of the just
literally the difference betweenany any entrepreneur like, if
you're running your own businessversus someone who who just has
a w two job, like, we can justpull all those points Yeah. All
those miles That's that's right.With the business expenses.
Anyway.

Jordan Gal (16:04):
Oh, yes.

Let's talk about business.

Pippin Williamson (16:06):
Yo. What do

Jordan Gal (16:06):
you got going on? What what's up this week?

So this week, one of my running themes and the
stuff that I've been talkingabout on this podcast for the
past year has been my off and onmostly off attempts at trying to
get serious about content. I wastalking about trying to grow my
YouTube channel

Jordan Gal (16:28):
Mhmm.

That started and then sputtered and then started
again and then sputtered. Andand just in general, I I think
that I need to be doing morecontent, like personal like me
putting out content. And I thinkmost of it has to be video
based. I think that is the bestway for me to grow my reach to

(16:52):
distribute products. And and I Ican get more into the strategy
there.
But like the frustration that Ithat I came into this week is
like, man, how long have I beensaying I wanna do more content,
I wanna do more content, and Ifeel even more and more crunched
on my time and my creativeenergy? Like I have a lot of

(17:12):
creative ideas and content ideasthat I wanna put out there, but
I'm literally not publishing thecontent that I wanna be pressing
publish on. Why is that? Becausethere's a bottleneck. That
bottleneck is clearly me.
So I need to solve that problem.So I'm gonna hire someone.

Jordan Gal (17:27):
Please explain because I have this problem. I
feel like a lot of people havethis problem. How do you

So, I have not made the hire yet. I'm talking to one
one guy about this but I'm I'mstill open to talking to people
and bay basically, what I wantto have is the ability for me to
record or write content on aregular basis. Hit record. Like

(17:54):
I literally have my good camerasitting right here. I should
just be able to hit record, rawfootage, put it into a Dropbox
or something, hand it off to mycontent producer, and they do
all of the editing, all of thewhatever, create a thumbnail,
write up the show notes,schedule it, publish it, send
the thing send my written thingto the newsletter.

(18:17):
If it if it's a blog post, thenlike do do the spell check and
publish it. Like I just wanna II only wanna be on the mic or on
the camera or write the rawcontent in a page and hand that
off. And everything else shouldbe done. I don't wanna do post
production. Right?

Jordan Gal (18:36):
Okay. So the t ball analogy that we have described
before. Set it up. Let me walkup. Take a swing.
Walk away.

That's right.

Jordan Gal (18:43):
You're gonna you're gonna attempt to to kind of set

that up. I I want I just want to remove any excuse
for because I I feel like everytime I try to just create a
video about something, I'llspend an hour at least, you
know, like scripting and thenand then recording and and
delivering it. And then likeanother two hours editing it and
getting it up. And I just can'tdo that. I have other projects

(19:07):
to do.
You know? Right. So I so that'sthe thought. So I I I am hiring
someone who is mostly a videoeditor, but someone to to handle
all the other legwork, Thepublishing, the cutting it into
short form and distributing todifferent platforms and
repurposing. All this kind ofstuff, right?
That's the role. I did wannatalk about my favorite approach

(19:32):
to hiring people. Especiallypeople like this. And and this
goes across different types ofroles. I I And it's this part
time retainer model and a queuebased system.
Let let me talk Let me explainwhat I'm talking about. My my

(19:54):
customer success person is on aflat monthly part time retainer.
We don't have a a strictschedule. She just kinda shows
up most days a week, not fulldays. She has other stuff going
on.
But she just takes care of whatI need her to take care of in
that role. She's hands she'sanswering customers' questions.

(20:16):
She's talking to them on thephone. She's she's filing bug
reports, all this differentstuff. The video guy that I'm
gonna be hiring soon, same sortof idea.
Like, we're agreeing on a flatmonthly retainer fee. I'm not
expecting them to work fulltime. It's gonna be a part time
thing. I don't exactly care howmany hours or which days a week

(20:38):
this person works. What I docare about is just I I'm gonna
have a constant queue of newpieces of raw content, and I
want him to be working throughthat queue and getting them
published.
And and it and we're not like amagazine. We're not like a
newspaper where we have to bepublishing by a deadline every
single Monday. Like, not likethat. Like, I don't care when

(21:01):
exactly when things getpublished. I just want things
coming out on a pretty regularbasis.
You know? And and that's that'sbasically it. Just like, I'm I'm
not tracking hours here. I'm notnecessarily paying per
deliverable. I'm just saying,like, you're the person to work
through my queue, and you canmanage your own pace as long as

(21:28):
we sort of agree that that we'republishing like a good amount of
content on a regular basis.

Jordan Gal (21:33):
Okay. So you can find some form of equilibrium.
We we do this with the designer.We pay a flat amount. I don't
track hours.
He doesn't track hours.

There's no point in that.

Jordan Gal (21:42):
Right. Is the level of work does it make sense? Then
yes. You don't need to be onemonth you'll do more hours than
you would have if you had paidhourly. One month you'll do
fewer.

Yeah. And I really like the queue based approach.
So like literally we have aKanban board. So like it's it's
extremely similar to mydeveloper. How I work with the
developer.
Right? So like, I have a developshe's actually full time, but
like, she just has a long listin her queue that I keep adding,
adding issues to. We use linear,so I just add an issue to the

(22:15):
bottom of her queue, and she'sgonna get to it and then work it
through the system. Anddifferent things take different
amounts of time. That's okay.
Whatever what and then I can Ican reorder things? Like, if I
want something to come outsooner, then I'll put that near
the top of her queue. Or or lesspriority, then I'll put it near
the bottom. But like, it's justa queue. That's all it is.

(22:35):
And the same thing should happenwith content. I expect to have a
Kanban board, and I'm gonnacontinuously drop new pieces of
raw content into the board Andthat and he's gonna take it
through the rest of the stages,you know.

Jordan Gal (22:49):
Okay. I'm very curious about this. I think this
is a large and painful problem.Yep. And if the content comes
out good, then I I mean, theremust already be services that do
this for people.

Yeah. There's services that like do content
for you. And of course, there'salso like editing services.
Sometimes I don't like thosebecause they are too strict on
like what you are purchasing andwhat they will do. They're
productized services.
Right?

Jordan Gal (23:24):
Like I used

to run one. So like, so we so we have to have
our clients fitting into ourmold. This this is why I I much
prefer to hire individualfreelancers or consultants or
someone to just be my person.And and we can be flexible. We
can constantly iterate on like,because I'm gonna have different
types of content.
Sometimes it's gonna be YouTubevideos, sometimes it's gonna be

(23:46):
a Twitter thread, sometimes it'sgonna be a blog post, sometimes
it's gonna be a mini course.Like, I just wanna put all that
stuff into a big pile and haveit, you know.

Jordan Gal (23:56):
Okay. So you are you are not assuming, you're
specifically assuming thatthere's different forms of
content. It's not like Yes. Iwill give you a five minute
video, you turn it into a sixtysecond video with editing post
production and then go here.You're saying Yeah.
Sometimes it's gonna be writtenand you It's gonna be a lot a
lot of different Yeah. I'm I'mvery curious to see how it
works. I think it's

because this is I'm talking about like my personal
content. Right? Mhmm. Like, it'snot like a it's not like we're
developing a quote unquotecampaign for a like, here's what
the campaign is structuredaround. We're gonna deploy this
campaign to do that thing.
Like, this is just me ongoinglong period of time committing

(24:38):
to like the long term. Like, Ijust need because like, I feel
like my whatever audience andfollowing has stagnated. And
it's it's been like hoveringaround the same level of growth.
Same email subscribers, sameYouTube subscribers, same
Twitter followers. And to me,that's like, I don't think that
this should be important formost people.

(24:59):
But in my case, I think it isimportant. Agree. Especially
given the products that I'mgetting into with
instrumental.dev. Like one ofthe one of the challenges that I
have right now with my currentreach and audience is that like,
a lot of people listen to thispodcast, which is a pretty wide
range of boot of like startuppeople and some are developers,

(25:23):
some are not, some are morebusiness focused.

Jordan Gal (25:26):
Yep. Some are employees, I guess.

You know? And so I'm I'm getting into building a
developer tool. So I need tostart to put out more
opinionated content on how Ibuild stuff. So development
related content, design, productstuff. A lot of that is gonna be
video based and yeah.

(25:50):
That's okay. It's it's like ait's a priority. It's been a
priority for a long time. I havenot been executing on it so I
need to hire someone and that'swhy

Jordan Gal (25:57):
I'm I'm doing very interested to see how you work
it out. Hell yeah. Damn it.Okay. You wanna hear about my
week?
What do you got? I'm Jason Friedthis week, baby. Speaking
Chicago, I'm 37 signals. I amreducing. We are removing
features.

Adding by subtraction.

Jordan Gal (26:14):
Yes. It's it's funny how we got here. I'll explain.
And then the immediate reactionfrom everyone on the team. Like
enthusiastic, yes.
Let's make it less complex.Let's reduce this other thing.
That's not necessary. So okay.I've spoken about the last few

(26:36):
weeks.
We are very focused ononboarding. Right? We fixed our
sign up flow. That's new and whowants to go see it? Go to
heyrosy.com.
What you'll see there is a multipath sign up flow that provides
a preview of the AI voice agentbefore you need to create an
account. So that's this is ourinterpretation of the sign up

(26:57):
flow before account creation.And next up is great. You've
created an account. Right now wejust kind of dump you into an
admin and say good luck andhere's intercom.
Please get in touch with

Nathan Barry (27:09):
us. Mhmm.

Jordan Gal (27:09):
So we did that on purpose because it didn't make
sense to try to build anonboarding flow when you don't
know what you're talking aboutand that turned out to be right.
We didn't know what we weretalking about. We did not
understand exactly how peoplethought about it, what their
expectations were and so on. Sogood. It's ugly and our
activation rate is bad and we'rewatching a lot of sign ups every

(27:33):
day, like that's increasing,that's great, but we're it feels
wasteful.
Mhmm. Because you're seeing signups get put in the admin and you
know you're not maximizing.Okay. That helped put pressure
on all of us to say, alright,we're ready to do this self
serve onboarding that actuallyguides people through the setup.
Now that we know who thesepeople are, what they're looking
for, what's important to them.

(27:53):
As we are finalizing that,that's now like being you know,
it's over at the developers,like all the design decisions
have been made, all that. That'snow being built. That forced a
lot of focus around featuresbecause if if you're looking at
your onboarding and your guidedsetup flow, you're asking
yourself which features arenecessary for us to surface and

(28:17):
to force some type ofenablement, settings, something
so that the feature is useful.Right? If we have a
notifications feature, anytime aphone call comes in and Rosie
gets the phone, what we weretold was that you need
notification.
Otherwise, you don't know thatyou're missing calls. Like,

(28:38):
didn't didn't realize that. Ourbad. You're right. So we built a
notifications feature.
For notifications, you need tobe able to turn it on or maybe
have it on by default. And thenyou need an email address. You
can assume it's the accountemail address, and then you can
also put in a phone number toget SMS. Hey, you have a new
call from Rosie. Click here tosee the recording.
Okay. That feature you realize,oh, that actually needs to be in

(28:59):
the onboarding. So when welooked at the onboarding and and
and we're forced to make thesedecisions around which features
are so important that we need toinject them into the actual
guided setup and which featuresare now that you're ready here's
this other stuff that you cando.

That's a good one for activation too. I this is
something directly that I thinkwas helpful in Clarity Flow
since the early days is the factthat we are notifying users when
a new message is sent and when amessage is viewed. Because it's
it pulls them back in.

Jordan Gal (29:35):
Yes.

Like Right. On a regular basis.

Jordan Gal (29:37):
Be able to do who else do you wanna notify. Right?
The ideal is that we're sendingout an email to 4 or five people
every time a call comes in.Mhmm. Right?
To me, that's adoption. Becauseat that point in time, to take
that away is painful.

So Yep.

Jordan Gal (29:52):
Here's right. Here's an email with the transcription
and a summary of a phone call.Do you how do you wanna deal
with that phone call compared toor you could not pay us and you
could just handle that phonecall yourself. So like I I love
that setup.

Yeah. Yeah.

Jordan Gal (30:06):
So as we started to look at these features and try
to understand which are reallyimportant and which are being
put off to the side. What we conwere confronted with was should
we actually have these featuresat all? The ones that we're
saying are not necessary for aguided setup. And we're putting

(30:26):
over here as like keep finetuning or you know keep going
with your rosy setup. We startedto look at those features very
skeptically and said do weactually need the ability to
transfer a call to a differentphone number?
Is that actually right now?

That seems nice to have.

Jordan Gal (30:43):
Right. It's so if it's nice to have, should we put
it in there as a nice to have?Or should we remove it and
really nail down our base tier?

Mhmm.

Jordan Gal (30:54):
And our base tier right. So it's almost like this
synthesis of this informationfrom different places because
we've been in the market for awhile now. We've got paying
customers and they areopinionated. And they're not all
super happy. Right?
Everyone's like, I want this. Iwant that. How come this doesn't
work? And then you really startto pay attention to where the
support issues are coming from.And then if you match up those

(31:18):
support issues with a featurethat doesn't feel necessary and
essential because you justlooked at your onboarding in
that way, you start to realize,oh, wait a second.
Maybe this feature doesn'tbelong here at all. Maybe this
feature should actually bepulled out and reintroduced
later when we have a betterunderstanding of the feature,
more confidence in its abilityto be reliably good, and maybe

(31:40):
belongs in a higher pay tier. Soall this stuff started swirling
around and what really poppedout and it it was it was Sam who
really like introduced it allthe way out into the sunlight
because he's the one that speaksto customers all day.

Mhmm.

Jordan Gal (31:57):
What he said was, I think we're a little off on our
our product market fit search.It's not that people want a
receptionist. That's a humanreplacement. It's that people
want a better voice mail andthey don't wanna pay for an
answering service. So it's likethis little shift toward toward
being really good at takingmessages.
Think about a phone call. If youcall a local business

and you get a voice mail instead of calling it like
an AI receptionist, it's almostlike a smart voicemail or
something like that. Like a

Jordan Gal (32:25):
Right. Right now, it's AI answering service.

Uh-huh.

Jordan Gal (32:29):
Right. Which is kind of like like the new headline
I'm gonna publish today is like10 x better than voicemail, 10 x
cheaper than an answeringservice.

Oh, I like that.

Jordan Gal (32:37):
Yeah. That's basically that's what that's
what it is.

I like that. Right.

Jordan Gal (32:41):
So when we started to look at like that
positioning, then all of suddenwe start to realize, oh, the
features for that are basicallywhat we put into the guided
setup. They're not these otherthings. Let's just start ripping
them out of the admin and andlaunch not launch, have the sign

(33:03):
up flow, the onboarding flow,the messaging, and the
positioning for a smaller,tighter product.

Man, I'm so excited to hear you talk about this. I
dude, this to me, what you arelearning here and making these
adjustments, this is to me themost exciting part about
starting new products andpositioning and listening to
customers and doing thatfiguring that out, man. It's

(33:33):
that's the best thing becauseit's like we we always start
with something that we thinkthat we need to build in terms
of like, what is this product?And our customers just think
about it differently. Ourcustomers put put the product in
a category themselves.
Whether we like it or not andwhether we agree with how they
categorize it or not, they aregoing to do that. And it's our

(33:53):
job to figure out like, whatbucket are they putting us in
and how do we meet them there?You know?

Jordan Gal (33:59):
Yes. And and the likelihood that you have it
right at first is low.

Very low.

Jordan Gal (34:04):
Yeah. Unless you are building it specifically for
yourself and there are lot ofpeople like you, the likelihood
is that you're a little off. Sothis the the way we are talking
about this internally is this isour first adjustment in search
of product market fit sincebeing out in the market with our
initial hypothesis. Yeah. Wethink people want an AI to

(34:24):
answer their phone.
It was like our first broad

And you can't get to today without shipping what
you've already shipped.

Jordan Gal (34:32):
Yes. Yes. And all

cannot figure this out with just customer calls or
surveys or observations of amarket. You have to actually put
something out there and get realcustomers using your thing, and
then seeing where's the frictionor where's the drop off, you
know.

Jordan Gal (34:48):
Yes. And and when I look back at the money spent
slash wasted around gettingpeople into the product, I
realized that is the investmentin this insight. That Yeah. To
drive a bunch of people inthrough the system to sign up
and then and then say no, wrong,or yes right but Mhmm. This

(35:10):
other thing.
So it's just we're at like thisincredibly exciting moment
because what we're doing is whenwe launch the new onboarding on
November 4, we are launchingwith fewer features. Yeah. So
the onboarding goes there and wedon't make the recommendations
on these other features that youshould go set up. It's like two

(35:30):
or three things. But we're Yep.
We're eliminating four bigfeatures that you just won't be
able to find in the admin at

all. Right.

Jordan Gal (35:38):
Right. So it feels like, oh, we have a chance to
have it lined up. That ouradvertising and messaging all
the way at the top of the funnelwill be about these messages and
voicemail and answeringservices, not about appointments
and receptionists and all thisother stuff. You'll get to the
site, it'll talk about that. Thesign up flow works with it.
The onboarding works with it.The feature set works with it.
And I'm like, okay. Now nowwe're about to learn new stuff

(36:00):
over the next few weeks.

Yeah. It's so interesting, man. That learning
from from customers. I love it.Like, one of the things that I
have on my list here is I've gottwo more things.
But the thing that's mostrelevant to what you were just
talking about is So I'm activelynow building at
instrumental.dev.

Jordan Gal (36:22):
Okay.

So so this is a a new product that's in the works.
It's it's not even close toready to put out yet. It's a
it's a Rails UI componentslibrary for for the Rails
ecosystem. And and so, you know,I'm taking my components that I
use to build Rails applicationsand I'm starting to productize

(36:43):
them into into like a systemthat lets you like generate and
insert components and put theminto your projects. Right?
So what I have there now on oninstrumental.dev, when you go
there, you can you can click andput your email in and then you
get to a survey. And on theback, there's there's a survey
with, a whole bunch of questionsthat that try to ask exactly
what we were just talking about.Like, what I'm trying to get to

(37:05):
is like, how do you, as someonewho's at at least somewhat
interested in what I'm buildinghere, what I showed on the
homepage. If you're so sort ofinterested in that, you've put
your email in. Now I have a lotof questions for you.
And what I'm asking you arethings like, what other
components library products haveyou purchased? What do the best
ones get right? What do they getwrong? How do they do

(37:27):
documentation well or not well?Do you like it when they're more
of an app template or more of apick your own components style?
This is like so 10 morequestions like that. Right?

Jordan Gal (37:38):
Mhmm.

And then I'm getting all these responses back
now. And I'm reading everysingle one. And I'm I'm I'm so
aware now of how how differentit is, and and in many ways more
difficult to build a product fordevelopers compared to, let's
say, a SaaS. You know? Can youdig in Can

Jordan Gal (38:02):
I give you my guess into what that's like? And then
and then like you talk aboutyour experience? Please. My
guess is that the thebattlefield of disagreement is
very heightened with developers.Mhmm.
Meaning, there there's a biggerbase, a large number of people,
but very opinionateddifferences. You almost need you

(38:24):
you need thick skin. You need tobe able to say cool story, but
no I I'm not doing that thatway.

You are very accurate on that. That's exactly
what I'm seeing. It there'sdefinitely little details in the
responses that where I'mstarting to see some patterns
emerge, which I 100% like, I Ilove to see these particular
patterns, like sentences thatpeople are writing. I'm like,
yes. I believe the same thing.
I have the same opinion.Everyone's frustrated with the

(38:51):
lack of this in in all theseother component library. I love
to hear that. That's great.

Jordan Gal (38:55):
I I saw you talk about that on Twitter.

Yeah. I I posted one of them. Yeah. But the
there's still a bunch of otherelements where the audience is
like fifty fifty. Like, there's50 in this camp who do things
this way, and 50 in this campwho don't like the way that that
other camp does it, and we do itthis way.

(39:19):
Right? And so and and there's abunch of other examples of that.
This and I I just think that,like, for a developer product,
especially a components product,it's you're just gonna everyone
builds things differently.Everyone has different
preferences. So, like, I justhave to go into this accepting
the fact that, like, noteveryone is gonna be on board or

(39:41):
this is not gonna fit everyone'sstyle.
But my the way that I combatthat is actually the way that I
like to build my products, whichis I'm sticking to the most
Rails core way of doing things.Right? So this product is for
people who use the stack that Iuse, which is Ruby on Rails,

(40:03):
Stimulus JS, that the new RailsHotwire Turbo stuff,

Jordan Gal (40:07):
and Okay.

Tailwind CSS. Does it have to be all of those?

Jordan Gal (40:12):
Yes. Okay. Okay.

Yeah. If you if you different All of those all of
those are the most common stackif you're building in Rails.

Jordan Gal (40:21):
Okay. Great. So you're not like super
opinionated from like a uniquerebel point of view, like only

Right. So what I just gonna do it. Rails, hot
wire, stimulus, talent. Like,that those are the core. There
are some people who don't likeTailwind, but more and more
people do.
That's like the base most commonsetup. Then there are other
third party tools layered on topof that. So if you're involved

(40:48):
in the Rails space, there arethings called like Vue Component
and Flex, like PH Flex, andother other like sort of third
party things, which in myopinion, they sort of like over
complicate components. Somepeople love them. A lot of
people don't like them.
So what I'm doing like, I don'tuse those things. I I stick to

(41:09):
ERB partials. I'm getting intointo the technical weeds here,
but like, I'm I'm trying to keepthings as simple and rales y as
possible to keep it as adoptableby as many people as possible.
And it and it just so happensthat that's the simplest,

(41:29):
cleanest way to do this and it'sthe way that I prefer to build
my products. It's it's very muchlike the the 37 base camp
approach to it.
Like, they're the makers ofrails. Like, you know, it's so
I'm taking that approach. And,of course, you could still take
these components, insert theminto your projects, and then
enhance them in other ways or oradapt them in different ways.

(41:51):
That's the whole point. But soso I'm definitely gonna be
making a lot of, like, productdecisions and I'm already
responding to people's surveyssaying like, I know that you're
into that view component thing.
Like, I'm just letting you knowlike like, I'm not taking that
approach with this. So there'sgonna be some things like saying
no and and following the vision.And I'm also taking in a lot of

(42:13):
this information and going downthese technical rabbit holes and
learning more and more andfiguring out like, well, is is
my way really the best way? Andhow opinionated do I wanna be on
certain things? And, you know,so it's it's a very much a give
and take and and it's a it's alearning approach because it's
like building a SaaS, trying toget to product market fit on a

(42:33):
SaaS.
It's like, alright. Thesecustomers have this exact
problem. Let's just build afeature to solve that Right.
Problem and deliver it.

Jordan Gal (42:40):
Only what they say matters.

Yeah. Yeah. And and what's the most efficient way to
build the solution to theirproblem? Let's just build that.
Yeah.
In in this, it's it's more likeI'm taking on the responsibility
of giving you some like, I'm nottrying to solve all of your
problems. I'm just trying tomake your lives easier as as
builders, you know. So how can Ihelp? How can I remain niched

(43:04):
while while not turning off themajority of users in this
ecosystem? So that that's justbeen an interesting, like, give
and take.
And I'm learning a ton fromthose surveys as I build. And
it's also, firing me up when Ihear hear people describe things
like, oh, I've I've picked upthis or that UI components
library, but it's not made forthe Rails ecosystem and adapting

(43:27):
it to Rails is a lot of legworkand I couldn't agree more. And
so that's a big reason why I'mwhy I'm building this, you know.

Jordan Gal (43:33):
Cool. I feel like you're about to go through a a
Indiana Jones gauntlet of neckbeards and hate and being cold.
Why make

sense. My impostor syndrome here is, like, through
the roof.

Jordan Gal (43:49):
Oh, that's tough. Because everyone's a a more
senior dev than you are.

I mean, they literally are. You know?
Because, like, I'm I'm juststronger on the front end and
and weaker on back end. Youknow? Can build stuff, but I'm
everyone everyone's gonna have amore technical understanding of
of things.
And I and I but I sometime Ilike I try to use that to my
strength. Like, keep it simple.It's supposed to be simple. You
know? Yeah.
We we don't have toovercomplicate.

Jordan Gal (44:13):
Okay. Yeah. Cool. I wonder if you need like a like a
trusted mentor on, you know, avery senior engineer.

I've been thinking about that. Like, I I like to
get into mastermind groups.

Jordan Gal (44:26):
But I'm I'm not being stupid here.

Well, exactly. I'm I'm I've actually been chatting
with more of my technicalfriends lately about this kind
of stuff and I and I would loveto get into more of a mastermind
group where I could gut checkand sanity check a lot of these
technical decisions for sure.

Jordan Gal (44:41):
Right. It's You know. If you're gonna get used
to arguing back and saying,yeah, I hear you. You could do
it that way, but I do it thisway for these reasons. It would
be great to have a sanity check.
Someone to be able to readsomething like that and say,
actually, you should actuallynever do that. Here's why.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

Jordan Gal (44:58):
Yeah. Don't be mean don't let me don't let me look
too stupid

Yeah.

Jordan Gal (45:02):
When when I'm out here.

Yeah. I mean, because, like, when I when I
hear that kind of stuff, Ithat's when I go into the rabbit
hole and be like, alright. Letme learn everything I need.
Everything I could possiblylearn about this particular
question. Like, is this right orwrong?
And and I think that's part ofit, you know?

Jordan Gal (45:19):
Yeah. But Cool. It's very interesting. We we talk a
lot about front end. And, youknow, basically why things take
as long as they do when you havesomeone really skilled and very
experienced.
Right? We've worked with ourfront end engineer since
Cardhook. She was one of thefirst engineers there. She's the

(45:39):
first engineer that focus onfront end exclusively, and it
took our app from everything onthe front end. It's actually
built by back end engineers, andyou know what that means.
It's not not great. And she hasbeen with us for years and years
and years and and she often hasto explain to us. Look here's
why it needs to take a long timebecause if I do it quick and

(45:59):
dirty here's what's gonna happenin the future. Mhmm. So we need
to do it this way.

Yep. Yep. 100% dude. Cool. I got one more thing
but you you have something elseyou wanna go to?

Jordan Gal (46:11):
You know, the only thing I have that comes to mind,
we launched a blog.

Oh. Yeah. Alright. What's this about?

Jordan Gal (46:20):
So it's our first blog post from Rosie. And at
Rally, I thought I looked at theblog as a pointless investment.

Mhmm.

Jordan Gal (46:32):
Because to try to rank for content in the e
commerce world is just it's justvery very difficult. And we were
going after enterprise that thatyou don't really read content
the same way. So I just didn't

benefits of using an AI phone answering system.

Jordan Gal (46:49):
Yeah. There you go. So right start starting basic.
But Rosie's different. And sowhat we're doing right now is we
are working with an SEO companythat was highly recommended.
And the first thing that we'redoing with them is is around a
content plan. And we found awriter and this is the first

(47:09):
blog post. So we went throughthe process and then we went
through the hurdle of, well, ifwe're gonna have

a blog, I guess we

Jordan Gal (47:17):
gotta design it, we gotta make these decisions, and
the font, and the colors, andthe spacing, and the blog page
versus the blog post page. Wejust finished that and now it
feels like we're in good shapeto just start publishing
regularly.

Nice.

Jordan Gal (47:29):
And it's the

Sorry. Go ahead.

Jordan Gal (47:31):
I was gonna say it's the first time that I've ever
looked at SEO as like this longterm strategic thing. Here are
the keywords. Here's what ourcompetitors rank for, and now we
just kinda put our head down formonths.

Yeah. Was gonna say are you doing the playbook where
it's like you have like a longlist of sort of long tail
keywords. Let's just make surewe have blog posts that cover
all of them.

Jordan Gal (47:52):
Yeah. What we first did is we hired a company to do
link building and without ablog. Just a few pages on our
site and then just build links.And that has taken us to a
pretty good place. I think we'relike 25 or 26 and like that
like, you know, domain rankthing.

Mhmm.

Jordan Gal (48:09):
And now the next layer is what this SEO company
does in their initial assessmentis they basically create a map
for you of which pages you needon your website. Like the entire
all the pages. Over the next xnumber of months build out all
these pages. These industrypages, these article pages,
these feature pages and likethis is what your site should

(48:30):
look like. Yep.
And then the content with thewriter and so we're just gonna
start to just go about doingwhat we're supposed to be doing.
I am very novice in SEO. Iunderstand most of the concepts
but I don't understand how toaccomplish any of it these days.
Yeah. So the way I look at it isjust a decent portion of our

(48:52):
marketing budget, 15% of ourmarketing budget for the next
foreseeable future.
Just basically don't look forshort term ROI from it. Just see
this investment. I'm almostlooking at it as an annual
investment. This is how much I'mgonna invest this year in SEO
and ignore the fact that it goesout the window every month.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It's hard to. Yeah.
I mean, I feel like I've I don'tknow. I've I've gone so many
different directions with SEOand I I've landed back on the
fact that like, we we do putlike SEO is our most important
channel, but it it still allcomes back to the homepage and a
very few number of bottom offunnel pages and optimizations.

(49:37):
And and all the content andmoney that I spent on, like, the
long tail blog post kind ofstuff was looking back on it. I
don't know if it was wasteful.Like, think I think it was
wasteful in in in terms of likethose pages don't necessarily
rank for stuff and don't bringus quality traffic that turned
into customers.
I don't know if it might havehelped with, like, the overall

(49:59):
domain authority of the siteMhmm. Maybe. But at the end of
the day, like, the people whofind us on Google, they tend to
land on our homepage or anotherhigh level, like, top level,
like, product page that leadsthem to to sign up as customers.
But we still are doing blogcontent now, much fewer and far

(50:21):
between, but it's Kat. Right?
She's our customer successperson. And any new blog
articles that we are writing,we're really not even caring
about SEO keyword optimization.She's just writing for our
customers. So she talks andhelps customers all day. Part of
her role, I've I've given her atask of, every month, just,

(50:44):
like, based on what you'relearning from our customers,
come up with an idea for an foran article that would help our
customers do what they're tryingto do and just write about that.
And and we've And she'spublished a few of those. She's
a great writer as it is. Sowe've published a few of those.
And it's also a good piece ofcontent that we can send to our
newsletter, which reactivatessome people who've been looking

(51:07):
at. And and she's talking aboutreal use cases for Clarity Flow.
So these are very Clarity Flowfocused articles. Like, how to
do this in Clarity Flow, youknow?

Jordan Gal (51:16):
Right. You can categorize them as lower in the
funnel.

Yeah. Bottom of funnel Yep. Or or like, even
more just like, did you know youcan you can run a course funnel
using Clarity flow? Like, here'show you would set that up and
and, you know, so stuff likethat.

Jordan Gal (51:32):
Okay. Cool.

Yeah, man.

Jordan Gal (51:33):
What what were you gonna

I got one more thing. This is about my
consulting work lately, whichhas been picking up in terms of
volume and busyness. So rightnow, I'm in the mode. Now that
it's starting to pick up, so Ihave like two two developers
coming on board next week tostart to work with me on these
consulting projects. Basicallytransforming from just me being

(51:58):
a solo consultant to being asmall development shop where
we're running multiple MVPprojects.
One of the big bottlenecks isproposals. So the typical flow
is somebody sends me an emailand it says I'm interested in I
have an idea for a new MVP. Iknow that you offer the one

(52:18):
month MVP service. Let's talkGreat. About Here's my link to
book a call.
We do a live call, twentyminutes. I learn everything I
can about their thing. And thenI go back and I write up a
proposal. And sometimes spendlike half a day writing a very
detailed proposal on on here'swhat a four week or a six week

(52:40):
or an eight week version of youridea would look like. And and,
you know, here here's, like,item by item, the things that we
will build in in this number ofweeks.
Right? So it takes me a longtime to like be very clear about
what we're building and whatwe're not gonna include in the
scope. So one one step that Idid this week was I started to

(53:02):
bring in AI into the process,ChatGPT, to help me go take my
rough notes from the call andjust format them into the
proposal. That definitely saveda lot of time in in producing
that v one proposal to theclient. Right?
So I can that that has taken medown from like four hours down
to like twenty minutes.

Jordan Gal (53:23):
Okay.

That's nice. Which is fantastic. Yeah. But there's
still another thing that Ihaven't quite figured out yet,
but I'm starting to mull itover. So I'll just do it out
loud here on the podcast.
Yeah. And that is, this is sortof a classic problem that many
agencies and consultants have,is like how much time do you
invest upfront to hammer out thescope and the proposal and

(53:49):
negotiate the terms and what'sincluded in the project and not
before you agree to move forwardand get paid and have a deposit
and and all that. Right? Becauseit could very easily, and I've
seen this happen a number oftimes. Like, I've had a couple
projects where I just send themone proposal, and two weeks

(54:11):
later, I have a payment comingin and we're starting a project,
and that's great.
I've had other things where Isend them a proposal, they come
back with questions. Oh, Ididn't realize what you wanted
is actually more complex. Let megive you another proposal. Let
me give you a third proposal.Oh, there's still more
questions.
What about this and that? Okay.Let's let's tweak it. Now we're
on a fourth proposal. Now I'venow I've literally invested like

(54:34):
ten, twenty hours of my time.
And and I'm and I still don'teven know if this is gonna be a
project or not.

Jordan Gal (54:39):
Mhmm. Not

good. So that's not good. And And so people end

Jordan Gal (54:44):
up doing the the paid proposal.

The paid discovery. So that's what I'm thinking
about. You know, but that's alsochallenging because it's like,
you don't wanna just say like,look, pay me x dollars, and and
then we'll find out what's what.Yeah. And I I wanna offer some
sort of value.
And and also like, pay me xdollars, but like, before you do

(55:08):
that, you're gonna have no ideawhat this is gonna cost in in
the end. Like, I don't like thateither. Like Mhmm. What if I'm
if I'm hiring someone, I wannahave an expectation of, like,
alright. Well, are we gonna endup with a $100,000 proposal or a
$20,000?
Because the question of like,help me understand what ballpark
we're playing in here. So okay.So so my thought right now is

(55:34):
I'm gonna keep things mostly thesame, have that initial call,
and give them a quick firstproposal, which I can use AI and
I can do that within a half halfan hour off of the first call.
Or or maybe on that in thatthing, I'll I'll sort of
position it like, if if we'regood to go, if this is simple

(55:56):
enough, let's just move forward.Here's the quote.
Let's let's do the project.Great. Or you can hire me for a
one week engagement for thisvery palatable dollar amount.
And in that one week engagement,I'm gonna do more of a deep
dive. Okay.
And I'm gonna create some visualwireframes of the screens that
go into this is another problemrelated to this, which is like,

(56:21):
I currently give a proposal justusing Notion, which is a text
page, a bulleted list of thethings that I'm going to build.
And then I give you a video ofme talking through that list and
trying to explain to youverbally, here, try to picture
this and here's what we're gonnabuild. And look, no matter how
detailed I explain it, I thinkthat most clients have a hard

(56:42):
time visualizing what is itreally are we gonna build here?
I think what most clients wantis they wanna look at screens.
They wanna see like screen oneis gonna do this, screen two,
screen three, and users aregonna be able to click this
button and it's gonna do this.
Right?

Jordan Gal (56:56):
Yeah. Help visualize.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's easy enough to do, but
I'm not gonna do that for free.I can't spend the time to create
wireframes and user flow andthese visual explainers. Like,
there has to be a a price pointon that to do that time.
So I'm thinking like some sortof like a one week engagement to
to take your idea into a muchmore tangible thing that we can

(57:21):
look at, that we can understandtogether. And the thought would
be like, whatever I price thatat, that'll be credited against
the project if you end up hiringmy team to actually build it. If
not, you came away withsomething super valuable with a
with a clear roadmap. You canthink about it some more. You
can shop it around to otherproviders if you want.

(57:42):
But if you come back to us, thenthen you get that credited
toward your project.

Jordan Gal (57:46):
A

lot. That's that's the thing that I think I'm gonna
start to introduce pretty soon.Yeah.

Jordan Gal (57:51):
I'll it matches very closely to my good experience
with the Sessio company.

Mhmm.

Jordan Gal (57:57):
Recommendation from a friend, little trust building,
get on a call, talk for thirtyminutes, and then the offer is
an analysis. The analysis comeswith all the pages you need to
build on your website, and acontent plan, and a bunch of

(58:18):
keyword stuff. That I pay for.Right? Yep.
And now I'm waiting for that tobe generated. So that is the
first service is cost money, nota commitment. And once I have
that, I can go do it myself. Wecan do it internally. We can say
we want you to do all of it.
We can say we want you to helpus with this part, but not this

(58:39):
part. Yep. And then what I foundmyself wanting to know before I
made the decision on whether ornot to go forward with the first
limited project was let's justsay we wanna work with you
after. What's the range ofprice? They gave me a range.
It was in my price range andexpectations, and then I feel
good moving forward with theinitial scoped limited project

(59:02):
that I know is gonna be valuableno matter what.

That's a 100% exactly what I'm what I'm
thinking here. And the in in mycase, I'm delivering MVP
software application products asa service. Right? And so, you
know, I'm doing a I'm I'mfinding I'm I'm having to do a
lot of explain not that theydon't understand this concept,
but, like, I still have toexplain it in in terms of scope,

(59:26):
which, you know, we all know thethe infographic that floats
around, like, for MVP products.

Pippin Williamson (59:31):
Yeah.

You start with a skateboard, and then you build
up to a bicycle, and then youbuild up to a car. Like,
everyone comes in with an ideaand a concept for what their car
should look like. And I have totell them that, like, okay.
Well, the four week version ofthis looks more like a
skateboard or maybe almost abicycle. Mhmm.
You know? And here's and here'sit was like so I have to give

(59:52):
them a proposal for, like, 60 or70% of what they actually want.
And I have to explain to themWhy? And then and then here's
the actual proposal for a 100%.Right?
So Mhmm. But also, there's,logistical things. Like, we we
can't build the 90% featurebecause functionally, we need to
build the foundation first.Mhmm. Right?
And so, like, just logistically,things have to be built in a

(01:00:17):
certain order. And it's just sohard to, like, really explain
that kind of stuff withoutlooking at it in wireframes. You
know? Cool.

Jordan Gal (01:00:27):
I I I like it. If if you want me to send over like my
conversations and the proposal,I feel like it's I would love to
is very similar to to whatyou're describing.

Brian Casel (01:00:36):
Yeah. That would be that would be great. And anyone
listening to this, because Iknow that there are a lot of,
you know, development agenciesout there who who've and this is
a very common model, like yousaid. Like, it's a it's a very
common, like a like a paiddiscovery sort of thing. I like
to productize things.
I productized the one month appthing. Unfortunately, somebody
already owns a one week app. I'mthinking about putting a price

(01:01:03):
point on it and making it like avaluable thing. Even if you just
have like an idea that you wannaflesh out and don't even intend
to hire me to build it, like, II still want it to be like a
valuable mini service, you know.

Cool. I like it. Well, that's it. You know what
this weekend is? It's primeapple picking, pumpkins, cider
donuts.

I was just last night I was watching the daily
show and they did a funny bit onapple picking. They're like,
who? What are we gonna we we eatlike one apple a month. What are
we gonna do with a bucket ofapples, you know?

Okay. That might be your family. My family goes
through $50 of apples everyweek. I don't know. We're Okay.
We're apple crazy.

Yeah. My kids eat a

lot of plus apples a week.

Yep. I don't know. Just Nice man. Just pushing
through it. Yeah.
We we do the pumpkin pickingjust like get a pumpkin and then
just throw it out. Like, youknow. You don't

you don't carve? Mine's my kids sit.

We carve sometimes. They they paint them. Yeah.

Yes. There's usually crying. There's some screaming
involved. There's dad, you'redoing everything wrong. This.
There's a lot of that. But youknow, I I carve When

I was a kid, we like kids would go like walk
around my town and smash like,the the band name Smashing
Pumpkins, that was a real thing.

Yeah. Look, you and I from Long Island, you know,
it's a different thing.

It's a different scene.

The level of violence and danger and, like,
fear involved in Halloween isnot normal the way

I'm realizing, like, now, I don't know if it's
this generation or just where Ilive now, but like it was not
what Rockville Center in LongIsland was. What like, it it was
like Halloween in that town wasthe one day a year where like
everyone, parents and policesort of like tolerated a light
level of like Loss. Mischief

and Yes.

And and like mayhem. People would have like
shaving cream fights and eggsand smashing pumpkins and

all Do you remember the shaving cream?

Toilet paper?

You stick the needle in the shaving cream and they
use the lighter to melt theplastic around it. So the hole
was very skinny so it wouldshoot out

Spray. Yeah.

Between feet? Yes. Oh, yeah. I don't want any part
of that. Yeah.
Any part of that.

Somebody last year this you rarely see this in
Connecticut, but somebody likethrew toilet paper up on on like
a tree near my house.

Okay.

Some kids some kids were like running around like

Yeah.

You know. And I'm like, man, that's that's
annoying. I gotta I gotta rip itdown. A part of me is like,
alright, respect. I did thatwhen I was a kid.
Yeah.

The kids around here, I don't know if it's like
the Ferris Bueller's Day Offlike North Shore Of Chicago
vibe, they're they're a littlemischievous. My house has been
toilet papered multiple times.

Oh, yeah.

I have I have three daughters. There's always some
idiot out there ranging betweenages eight and like 12 doing
something stupid.

Yep.

Yep. And teepee is annoying because as soon as

it gets sticks up there. Yes.

Yes. Anyway, I'm an I'm an old dad. Now, Brian, we
just gotta end this off in theright way. We're podcasters.
This is a podcast.
There is a podcast mega eventhappening today with the orange
man going on Joe Rogan.

Oh, is that really? I didn't know about that.

That will be an interesting podcast event
overall.

Oh, that's crazy. Yeah.

That's It's cool that podcasts have well broken
into the mainstream, includingpolitics and now everyone does
podcast.

For sure. I heard yeah. Like I heard Tim Walls on
Smartlist the other day. Notexactly a podcaster but like,
you know, Kamala Harris went onHoward Stern. You know, I I do
wanna call out that.
Call her daddy?

It's a big podcast?

Yeah. Apparently, that's a big one. I I Look, most
of these things I don't tuneinto because it's just such
politician bullshit. They theyhave their canned answers and
it's just nonsense. I must say,I had, like Howard Stern, I'm
such a long time lifelong fan ofhis.
I truly think he's like bestever the GOAT when it comes to
interviewing And the interviewthat he did with Harris, like,

(01:04:59):
two weeks ago, it was one of thefew where he can actually get
her to speak real. And and hedoes this with multiple
politicians and and and otherpeople. Like he he just has this
thing about about how he maybeit's like catching them off
guard or making themcomfortable. But like, you they
start to take down their guardand actually be a real person.

(01:05:20):
And they're they're that was areally good one, I thought.

Cool. I I have searched for her like real self
to come out. It's it's kindarare.

Yeah. It's like an hour long. You gotta get through
it. It's like she takes liketen, twenty minutes to get into
that comfort zone. But then thenit's like, oh, these are some
like real stories coming fromher now.
So it's like, yeah.

Yeah. I would like to listen because the the
caricature is not good and theclips of people on Twitter
basically like, here's the worstpossible thirty seconds of her.
You know, like if you if that'swhat you take in all the time,
you're like, well, who is thisperson?

Or if you watch like not like like whatever like
CNN stuff, like it's alwaysgonna be like Right. Trump's and
and and like Yeah. Do you

see Trump on on Andrew Schultz? I'm not a big
fan of Andrew Schultz, But Yeah.That was it was just kind of
like when you are there longenough, you do start to get your
guard down and then you're like,oh, there's a person in there
somewhere Mhmm. That I can kindof see.

Right. You know. Right.

Whole thing's so crazy.

It's all over soon. It's all over soon.

Okay. Yep. Apple cider donuts. Family. Yep.

More important.

Alright, brother. Later. Thanks.

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