Bootstrapped Web Update

[00:00:00] Speaker A: On one level, it's like I'm starting with the distribution first, the marketing first, the audience first. I'm head first into YouTube. That's what I'm spending most of my time on is creating YouTube videos. And the YouTube channel for me has been finally something that I feel is actually a pretty strong marketing distribution channel. Like it went from, I think back in January, I was at around 2,000 subscribers. It's over 12,000 now. [00:00:25] Speaker B: Welcome to the off site podcast. I am your host, Jordan Gahl. This is where I team up with friends to catch up on our work and just as importantly, what's going on beyond the work. As always, this podcast is brought to you by Rosie, the AI powered phone answering service for small businesses. Welcome back, everybody. A reunion update episode of Bootstrapped Web. Brian, it's great to be back with you, Jordan. [00:00:52] Speaker A: It's, it's great to catch up again. I mean, we were just catching up off air, but you know what, as soon as you said welcome back everybody, I, I got this sudden, like, rush of like nervous energy, like bootstrapped Web. Oh, man, here we go. [00:01:04] Speaker B: Yes, yes. It's great to be back. [00:01:06] Speaker A: Yeah, dude, this is. So we, we were talking, I think it's been about seven or eight months since our last update. And as I said back then, hopefully our, our listeners kept the feed alive in your podcast player. So here we are with an update. [00:01:19] Speaker B: Yep, yep. It's going to be funny to open up Spotify and you know, you hit the podcast thing and the newest ones come up to the top. No new one. [00:01:26] Speaker A: Yep, yep. [00:01:28] Speaker B: So it is, it's the end of summer. It's August. My kids started school yesterday. I think in your neck of the woods. They start a little later after Labor Day. [00:01:36] Speaker A: They're starting on Monday. So, yeah, this is our, this is their last week off. We, we just got back from a quick trip up to New Hampshire. We, we had an Airbnb on a lake and so we're, we're wrapping it up here. [00:01:47] Speaker B: Yeah, same. Summer's over. We, we are back. Back. Get the kids off to school. I got the house to myself to get some work done. Let's talk about summer. What are you up to? I, I've been listening to the podcast. [00:01:58] Speaker A: You. [00:01:58] Speaker B: We were both at the Outer Banks. Brian's wearing an Outer Banks shirt. It's kind of cool over there. [00:02:03] Speaker A: It's great. I, I've never been there, but we, so we went down there in June, I think drove all the way down there, did a stop in Philadelphia and Then had a great Airbnb on the beach, and that was a great beginning to our summer. Yeah. [00:02:17] Speaker B: Cool. And I was there in July with family, and I miss the Atlantic Ocean, you know? [00:02:23] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:02:24] Speaker B: Lake Michigan is amazing because it. I mean, it's. It's an ocean of freshwater, and it's super, super close. And I went on a boat recently, a friend's boat. Like, it's great to be able to use almost as an ocean, but the Atlantic is its own thing. [00:02:36] Speaker A: Oh, the Atlantic is great. Yeah. And same with my. My girls. Like, we go to the beach all the time here in Connecticut, but it's the Long Island Sound, so there's. There's no waves, so they got some wave action. And then on our drive back up, we stopped through Atlantic City, New Jersey, and the town next to it is Margate, New Jersey. My dad came down and met us down there. That's where my dad grew up. His grandfather, my. My grandfather, his father started Castle's Supermarket in Margate, New Jersey, which is still the dominant supermarket in this small town right next to Atlantic City. So. So we. [00:03:10] Speaker B: Independent. [00:03:11] Speaker A: Independent grocery store. This is. So Margate is like a very small beach boardwalk town. Right. It's literally right down the road from Atlantic City. It's where my dad grew up. And so, you know, it was a really a kick, especially for my. For my kids to come in and see, like, their name in. In light, and they've got like. Like castles, like, branded foods and stuff in there. And. And so it's pretty cool. [00:03:35] Speaker B: Very cool. Different form of entrepreneurship, but still entrepreneurship, for sure, man. [00:03:40] Speaker A: Yeah. The real deal. [00:03:41] Speaker B: Cool. Did you guys chase crabs on the beach at night by chance in. In the Outer Banks? [00:03:45] Speaker A: No, but we saw the little ones crawling around a lot. [00:03:48] Speaker B: Yes. Yes. This is the first time we did it. We've gone there two years in a row. And this year we discovered at night on the beach, everyone takes their flashlights and chases these crabs. [00:03:57] Speaker A: And I didn't tell you, that's the thing. [00:03:59] Speaker B: Yeah, we didn't know the first year either. So at night, everyone goes out and you just hear kids screaming all the way up and down the beach, chasing crabs, like, putting them in the solo cups. [00:04:10] Speaker A: We saw dolphins swimming around. [00:04:13] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right, the dolphins. [00:04:14] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:04:15] Speaker B: It was some great core memory stuff, just. [00:04:17] Speaker A: And we. We missed the horses, so we. We like, we went up there to. To Corolla and had a. Had like, a tour booked for these horses. And then I realized I booked it for, like, the following week when we're already Home. So we. [00:04:31] Speaker B: We did the horses. You just gotta go once. It's just a very odd, unique thing, but it's. [00:04:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:04:36] Speaker B: You know, it's not that big of a thing. [00:04:37] Speaker A: Right, right. How's the summer overall? Like. Like work wise with the family, like, kids going into camp, like, what's that looking like? [00:04:44] Speaker B: It. It was great. The kids went to sleepaway camp. [00:04:47] Speaker A: Oh, nice. [00:04:47] Speaker B: And yes. And there's an overlap of two weeks. The oldest one goes for four weeks. The young ones go for two weeks. So there's this overlap of two weeks where they're all out of the house. And, you know, my wife and I had a great time this time. We did not go away because we. We had a trip planned that we just got back from last week from Croatia, so we didn't feel the need to go add another trip on top of it. So we kind of just got to lay low. Of course, my wife is restless and so we like redid one of the kids rooms that hadn't been redone yet or something or other. [00:05:15] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, we're already doing a room here too. Yeah, my kids, you know, they're doing day camp, so they did like four weeks at one and they did two weeks at another one. And then we did this quick New Hampshire trip last week and now it's. Now it's back to the grind, back to school. [00:05:32] Speaker B: I was in Croatia last week. Very cool place. You know, we. We gave my daughter, who's 13, we gave her the option to have a big bat Mitzvah party or to take a trip. In her infinite wisdom, she chose the trip, which I have to give her credit for. [00:05:48] Speaker A: Fantastic. [00:05:49] Speaker B: So we went to Croatia, hit up Dubrovnik, which is the Game of Thrones vibe, but that's busy. And Tery, it was great. You just need like a day or two there. And then we spent the rest of the week in Hvar, which is an island and just lovely place. [00:06:05] Speaker A: It looks amazing. I wish I had made it to those microconf that were there, but I miss those. [00:06:10] Speaker B: I stayed at the hotel that microconft was in on Rob's recommendation because, you know, we just needed a place to stay for. For one night while we were in the. In Dubrovnik area before we took the boat to Hvar. So it was funny. I like, texted him, you know, photos, a photo from the lobby, and I was like, guess where I am? So that was cool. Beautiful place. [00:06:32] Speaker A: You're doing the hallway track, but no one else was there. [00:06:34] Speaker B: Y. Just the solo solo hallway track. [00:06:37] Speaker A: Right. [00:06:38] Speaker B: But it was cool. It was really nice to see Europe, the right version of Europe. Europeans know how to vacation and that's kind of the cliche, but it's true. You know, we, we like took a boat one time. Like, basically what my daughter was after was like crystal clear water to swim. That's like what she had in her mind. And I was like, all right, noted. So I did like a sailing trip and you like park in these little inlets where it's just your boat and maybe another two or three sailboats and everyone's anchored and one's swimming around and you just bump across like six Italian, like 75 year olds, like three couples, they're all floating together on a little floaty. Oh yeah, they got wine, they're smiling and tan. It's like that's, that's, that's how I do it. Right there. Yes, exactly. Very cool. [00:07:23] Speaker A: It's been a while since I've been to Europe. We got to get, you know, we're already trying to think through what are the next, what are the next two or three trips we're going to make, you know? [00:07:30] Speaker B: Yeah. How old are you kids now? [00:07:32] Speaker A: 9 and 11. [00:07:33] Speaker B: Okay. So very similar. Mine are 9, 11, 13. And this was the first time that they had experience with travel, not vacation. Right. You can fly in somewhere and go to a nice hotel and sit around. Fine. [00:07:46] Speaker A: But you guys travel a lot. [00:07:48] Speaker B: We do, but this was their first challenging travel. [00:07:51] Speaker A: Okay. [00:07:51] Speaker B: Different languages, very foreign looking. You know, experience and place in roads and people and sweating and you take a three hour boat ride and the bureaucracy is strange and why do they ask, see our tickets four times and then you get to the port and you got to walk with your luggage for 10 minutes in the heat. So like it was their first time. Like, wow, I'm, I'm tired. [00:08:12] Speaker A: Like now we, my, my girls have been through that. I, we, we went to the Philippines with them. We, we went to Cambodia with them with a bunch of hops in between and, and then getting stuck in Ho Chi Minh City and like, no, like, no, there was no English spoken there. And it's a scene. Yeah, but they're troopers at this point, you know? [00:08:32] Speaker B: Yes, I think it's really important. And, and it's makes you appreciate your home life, makes you appreciate America and how easy and relatively functional everything is. So it's cool, It's a cool growing experience. You know, sitting by the pool, always good for you. [00:08:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, you know, we're, we're big travelers, but we're also very Big homebodies. My, my whole family, like, we're, we're actually very chill. So we like to, we have, we're super routine at home, but then even on vacations, we, it's literally like we split up every day. It's like half the day of activities and half the day of just chilling, like, reading. I'll, I'll, I'll open the laptop. So, like, you know, we did this lake house in New Hampshire where we're hitting the beach half the day, we're going canoeing and kayaking, and then we're chilling in this really nice Airbnb with a lake view. And so like, that's been our routine on like every trip, whether it's, whether we're going on airplanes or Airbnbs or. [00:09:26] Speaker B: Wherever, you know, so you, you, you balance properly. Were you able to get away from work? [00:09:32] Speaker A: I was, I work, I did work. Well, this last one, I worked a lot. The, the Outer Banks, I worked less. But, but this, this was sort of a workation for like, I released a new agent OS version while I was there and. Yeah, cool. [00:09:47] Speaker B: Well, may. Maybe this is our segue right here. [00:09:49] Speaker A: Here we go. [00:09:50] Speaker B: All right, so let's think. We spoke months ago and the goal of this update was to be like, all right, let's catch up in like six months and see where things are going. And it's always good to be able to take a little bit bigger perspective than just what happened last week, this week. You know, if we look over a six month period, it always looks different. [00:10:09] Speaker A: Yeah, because, you know, especially for folks listening, like, we, you know, we always used to do these like, annual, like end of the year recaps, like how, how did the year go? What, what are we looking forward to next year? On this one, we're, we're roughly midway through the year, a little bit past midway. So how are we feeling about 2025 from a high level? And then we'll drill into what we're focused on right now. [00:10:30] Speaker B: Okay, so let's see. I would categorize the last six months as mixed, but in the right direction. Things have gone well for sure, but some real challenges over the last like two, three months. So in January, we started growing and the product started clicking and people started using and activating and converting. And so like, that felt great. So I wanted to use our key resources, which is we got money in the bank if advertising is working, and that was the channel that we found that really worked for us. Then let's hit the gas. And we got into this Very, very positive place where if I put in 10 bucks, we would grow by 2 bucks in MRR and if I put in 100 bucks, we'd grow by 20. If I put in a thousand, we'd grow by 2000. If I put in, you know, 20,000, we'd grow. So it stayed pretty consistent for a while and I just kept ratcheting up and all of a sudden we were growing. I had some of my biggest months in my career by far. It was like carthook, you know, adding 10, 20K in MRR per month was like, I thought, right? So in my mind I got, I could not help myself but get into this space where I was like, up and to the right, baby, you know, why should this stop? It's all working. And then it did stop and it was like, you know, I just wrote this indie hackers article and I talked about we got to a million ARR in eight months from the first paying customer. Absolutely awesome, you know, better than I expected, much faster than anything else that I've done. And right, right at a million ARR is when the friction started. [00:12:15] Speaker A: What did the, the stop come from? Was it like the, the marketing channel dried up like, or like we know that like ads can burn out after a while or was it like Churn is catching up with it or. [00:12:25] Speaker B: It wasn't Churn, which is great, right? It wasn't like, oh, you know, we've kind of hit that, that equilibrium of how much you're growing and how much you're churning and now you're kind of stuck. It was not that Churn stayed pretty consistent on a percentage basis. It got better at some months. Actually what, what happened was it's, it's like the advertising, you really don't have that much control and insight. You can control your spend, you can control your creative, but what meta and Google do, you don't control. So you don't really know what's happening and who's being shown the ads. You can look at your analytics and you can look at your reporting and that gives you guidance. And in many ways that guidance and that analytics really led us astray. I'm not a data driven founder, I'm a gut kind of driven founder and I felt very much like I needed to go toward being more data driven because this is a self serve product and what matters are the individual conversion rates of the points in the funnel. How many people are at the top, how many people getting to account creation, how many people are activating, how many people getting to this step and this step, and this step. And I really felt the need to become more data driven and work and be guided by that. And what I did not appreciate along the way was that bad data is worse than no data. And we got some bad data and combined with some inexperience on my part, and it led us, it led us. [00:13:55] Speaker A: Astray with the, with the advertising channels. Is it that, like, they're start. Maybe the algorithms are starting to target different users. So you might see a lot of engagement on the ads, a lot of signups, but maybe those aren't producing the quality signups that you were getting earlier. [00:14:11] Speaker B: Yes, that's a good way to put it. What we were doing at first was we really focused on signups. So how much are we paying per signup? And the reason for that was because the conversion rate of those signups was consistent for a solid two or three months in a row. So January, February, March, that conversion rate was very high. And because of that, I didn't really worry about it. I was like, okay, great. So our funnel converts really well. Therefore add more to the top of the funnel. And that is maybe the first mistake that led us into some of this difficulty. Because when we were too focused on signups and the cost per signup, that led us to focus on that number and optimize that number. And what happened was we were running several types of campaigns. We were running on meta platforms, right? So this is Instagram and Facebook, and we were also on Google. And Google in particular has this type of campaign called a pmax campaign. Speaking of granular, let's get into it because this is what really happened. So PMAX campaign performance Max campaign. You just give it your creative, you give it your copy, you give it your statics, you give it your videos. [00:15:15] Speaker A: Let Google robots figure it out and let. [00:15:17] Speaker B: That's right, they go get you conversions. And so what happened was that campaign started to work so well. It cut down the cost per signup by more than 50% compared to all the other campaigns. So in my mind, I'm like, oh my. We hit pay dirt, we found oil, and then we started increasing the budget in that campaign. But I wanted to stay disciplined on the total amount that we were spending in ads. So as we increased the budget on that campaign, we pulled budget from the other campaigns. [00:15:45] Speaker A: Okay, so that, that's like the shift in the, in the type of. Because if you think about it, it's probably very different people, very different segments of the market are coming through Google as compared to meta. [00:15:59] Speaker B: That's right. And we didn't quite realize that and we weren't fast enough to move on it. And so three, four weeks in, all of a sudden the conversion rate's not the same. And then we look back and we say, oh boy, we not only made a mistake in attracting the wrong people that don't convert, we also pulled money away from the campaigns that were working really well on converting. [00:16:20] Speaker A: What do you know about the people and the businesses that are coming through? Like, are you able to see, like, okay, these types of businesses with these characteristics are great and these sort of look like them, but there's some red flags that make them not so great. [00:16:33] Speaker B: So here's the thing. It got pretty difficult to keep a firm grasp on that when we had a hundred signups a day. Right. 100 account creations a day. I don't really, I can't keep track of every single one, do that every single day for three weeks in a row. You don't know who's in the funnel. You know, you're like, I see, I see these businesses and I see the names and I see the email addresses and the website being scraped and it feels kind of right, like everyone else, but they were coming from a different place with a different context and they, they, it was wrong. [00:17:04] Speaker A: I'm also like you, not very data driven. I have data and I use it for some things, but I am much more story driven to, to a point, like just what am I hearing from customers? And that comes through different channels, whether it's support requests, onboarding, surveys, you know, things like that. And I sometimes I wonder how if I'm biased toward the people who are just the loudest and that might not be giving the full picture. Yeah, because, because actually often the best customers are the quietest, so it's hard to hear from them. [00:17:37] Speaker B: You know, they're just right for you and you're right for them and they just go on their merry way and they activate and sign up and convert. Right. Nice and easy. Is this. So this combination of things like, right, getting 3,000 signups a month almost made it impersonal because you can't know everyone. You can't, you can't keep track of every support ticket. You're. You start to become a little more disconnected. And so when we finally realize what was wrong to turn the boat around, it's not, you can't just go back to Meta and say, that campaign that was working really well, I'm just going to increase the budget. I want it to work just as well. It doesn't work that way. So we had to find our way back to the same level of performance and ICP and all this combination of things. It took us, you know, it took us two months to kind of get back there and. And that was very painful because I was, I thought up and to the right was just going to keep going in that direction. And when it didn't, it stressed me out. It creates, you know, changes the vibe inside the company. Because we were on a rocket ship. Who. Everyone's happy when you're on a rocket ship. As soon as the rocket ship stops rocketing, everyone's like, oh, I guess we got to really do all this work to kind of figure out what to do. And then we rebuilt the funnel and. Yeah, so that's kind of where I am now coming out of it. Why don't I pause there and let's hear about what's going on on your half of the year and then I'll come back to some of the lessons learned, what we're doing. [00:19:01] Speaker A: I know that you were posting some stuff about like, like the onboarding overhaul and stuff. I want to, I want to hear more about that. [00:19:07] Speaker B: Yes, we redid the funnel alongside, finding this better targeting at the top of the funnel. So that's. That's what I can talk about. How about you think about, you know. [00:19:15] Speaker A: January, February, high level, looking at 20, 25 so far. I feel like, you know, I think about it in two halves and I think that the first half was just not as good as the second half is turning out to be. I'm much more excited and focused on the. The business that I'm working on right now is called buildermethods.com and this is, this is like the thing that I'm really, finally found something that I feel like I'm taking a much bigger swing on and I can. And I'm really digging into this, trying to settle into it for a long time to come. I think it's off to a really good start. One thing that I sort of kick myself for is like, I should have been starting this back in January, but I delayed because I guess I had been thinking about this concept for what builder methods is for much, you know, going back to last year. But I, for whatever reason, sort of waffled on it, got distracted with other things. I spent the first half of the year shipping instrumental components, which is like this, you know, the UI library for Ruby on Rails launched that, you know, got. Got about as. As much sales as I expected to get from it. They. They still trickle in but it's. It took me longer to ship that and get, get it out the door than I had wanted wanted it to. And I was sort of. It was the kind of project that was like, all right, I'm in Q1, Q2 of 2025. I had started this back in the fall of 24 and I was like, well, I know that I, like, I was already thinking that I want to get into this builder methods concept, but I don't want to just jump, jump ship. I want to see this first project through and actually ship it and get customers on that. So I did that. It took me half the year to get there, but I did. So finally, as we get into, around June is when I started to really make the turn to okay, now it's time to finally start building what's been floating around in my head for about a year now, which is some sort of business brand. Maybe we call it a training company, maybe we call it a membership or a community. I'm not really sure yet. But something in the space of building with AI, that is what I'm doing here. And what's sort of interesting about this business is that I'm going about it in a very backwards way from, from how I've done everything else. [00:21:38] Speaker B: Yeah. Can you get into that? Because I feel like that's the defining characteristic of what you're doing very differently. [00:21:43] Speaker A: On one level, it's like I'm starting with the distribution first, the marketing first, the audience first. I'm head first into YouTube. That's what I'm spending most of my time on is creating YouTube videos. And the YouTube channel for me has been finally something that I feel is actually a pretty strong marketing distribution channel. Like it went from, I think back in January I was at around 2,000 subscribers. It's over 12,000 now. It really started to click once I started making videos about Claude Code and Cursor and building with AI and the workflows and also just putting a lot more effort into my videos and the writing behind them and the production. But I think it's more about the topic space that there's just a lot of demand in the market for that. And I've, I've seen it for a while, but I hadn't started really executing on it until around June. What's also interesting about it is that I'm starting this business without a concept for what the product is going to be yet. So in every other business I've ever started, it's like I've got this product idea. Let's see if I could build a business around that. [00:22:49] Speaker B: Yes. Now the marketing engine for that product. [00:22:52] Speaker A: So, so now I'm starting it as like a creator, building an audience first. I know what space I'm in and I, and I also know what sub segment of that space that I'm in. A little bit more leaning more toward the professional, the career software developer who needs to get, who needs to sort of stay ahead of the curve when it comes to building with AI. I'm also getting a lot of inbound from teams who want to get their teams, you know, up to speed on AI. And I've been working with some teams on that. So individuals and teams, professionals. But professional can mean a lot of things. You can be younger, more junior in your career, but I'm also getting more senior people coming through. So I know the space, I know the customer. I'm really digging into what their specific problems and pain points are and there's a few. So I know all that. And I've been building up this Funnel first the YouTube channel which is going into my email list and both of those have been growing really like, like finally I found like a marketing funnel that I can actually drive. I feel like everything else that I've ever done before YouTub YouTube has been like, you know, I've had some wins in my career but I always felt like from a marketing standpoint it's been like I, I got lucky. Whether it's some word of mouth, a little bit from this podcast, some SEO stuff that came and went, some tactics that are short lived or, or I felt like I'm forcing it on, trying to make some marketing channel work. With YouTube it's a ton of work, it's insanely hours consuming but, but it is exposing me to new people every single day. [00:24:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:24:28] Speaker A: On a consistent basis the algorithm on YouTube to me is, is the best channel. If you're to, to just get in front of your people. Like it's just extremely efficient. And you might assume about YouTube that like okay, viewers on YouTube are just going to stay on YouTube. They're never going to come into your funnel. That's not what I'm seeing. [00:24:47] Speaker B: That's interesting. How are you making that transition? [00:24:50] Speaker A: Every video I do, I'm promoting my newsletter and they're signing up every day. Okay. [00:24:56] Speaker B: You used to be, I think you're either discounting or not mentioning or forgetting. You used to be like a newsletter pro. You had a good newsletter. [00:25:03] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:25:03] Speaker B: So before newsletters were a thing, before substack, before Beehive, before Any of it. So this seems to be, it looks like, I guess YouTube is the better top of funnel nowadays than 10 years ago when you had a newsletter, at. [00:25:17] Speaker A: Least in my experience, for this space. They are watching my videos, they're subscribing, and then they're coming into my email newsletter and they're replying to my emails and they're filling out surveys and I'm getting inbound leads almost every day for coaching or team coaching or projects. [00:25:34] Speaker B: So the YouTube's working to build trust with the audience, not just watching the video, but also start to connect with you. [00:25:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Think of you as authority. [00:25:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:25:42] Speaker A: So now it's like, all right, I have action at the top of the funnel now. Right now, like this, this week, this month, I am starting to really tinker and try to figure out, okay, I've got a funnel now. How do we monetize what is the product going to be? [00:25:57] Speaker B: You do want it to be a product. [00:25:59] Speaker A: So this is not like a SaaS business. This is a creator audience first business. My assumption has been it's going to be some sort of training business, like probably some sort of like lineup of courses or maybe one big flagship course. But as we sit here today, I'm starting to change my thinking on that. I might not even go the courses route. I'm thinking a little bit more toward like a membership. Like, okay, there's all this free content and free resources from Builder Methods. By the way, Agent OS is a free open source. That's essentially the first product, but it's free open source and that has a lot of really good traction. We can talk about that. So that, that's also bringing a lot of action into my funnel, if you will. But maybe it's not courses. Maybe it's more of like a Builder Methods pro membership. I'm thinking more about workshops. [00:26:50] Speaker B: Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, look, companies just have money to spend. The number of people that I've hired over the last six months that were just will help you redo your positioning and give you homepage, you know, wireframe with finalized copy, that'll be 7,500 bucks. You know, the number of times I've said absolutely, yes, that's so worth it is a lot. I think I've done that three individual times over the last few months. [00:27:15] Speaker A: So I've had a lot of inquiries from team leaders, developer team leaders to have me consult and offer coaching with their team. And I'm putting together packages on that front. So that could be one component of it. [00:27:30] Speaker B: Yeah. Really like a stair step of different offers between free and then the next level and the next level and the next level and then working directly with you as the most expensive. [00:27:39] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. The main thing that I'm see I'm trying right now, I'm trying to balance all the different variables for what, what would it mean? What is the business model behind this business? Right. Every option has some trade offs. The, the first one where I was thinking about courses like that, that's a typical path that like a, that a YouTuber or creator business would, would lead into some courses. Right. One of the downsides of that, like the upside is that it's like once you have the courses on the market there it's, it's more passive self serving. [00:28:09] Speaker B: Right. I'm thinking about Aaron Francis and some of the products that he has that just exist there. [00:28:13] Speaker A: And also I was sort of modeling off of all the traditional coding bootcamp businesses like this is, this is essentially that except for the AI era of software. So that was my thought is like let's make the next, I don't know, Egghead or Treehouse or whatever that looks like for building with AI. But one of the problems with that is that these tools are changing so incredibly fast. Like literally month to month it's changing. So the idea of creating courses that just go out of date so quickly and also just creating courses in general is very time consuming. So I, I'm not sure. And then also like I, I don't know that like courses are actually going to solve my customers biggest problems that I'm hearing. So now, now I'm starting to have some hesitations about courses. I do want to do a membership as like the core offering and I like the idea of having just one Builder Methods Pro Membership. That's the one thing that I'm always promoting all year round off the YouTube videos, off the email list, like what. [00:29:09] Speaker B: You see on YouTube but more in depth and more direct access to community. [00:29:14] Speaker A: If you consider yourself a professional in building products with AI, then you should get yourself a Builder Methods Pro Membership like an Amazon prime for this space. [00:29:23] Speaker B: Tell your company to buy this and they will say yes, exactly. [00:29:26] Speaker A: That's the other thing is that I could sell it to individuals and teams, they could buy seats. Then the question is what do you get as a member? And I'm starting to think about workshops because I feel like that is the most efficient way to actually solve the problems that I'm hearing from my customers. Because if I think about it from a job to be done, standpoint or product market fit standpoint. I think that live workshops like a day all about Claude code. Maybe another day all about leading your team to get up to speed with AI. Another day all about my agent OS framework. Because I can do these regularly. I could rotate through these every month in the calendar where it's like okay, here's the October edition of what, what we're learning with how to use cloud code, which is probably very different from how it was back in September, you know, so it's changing all the time. We want these like short workshops where you can join and get, get the latest, you know. And so that's one concept is that like I don't need to spend all this time creating courses, I could just put on these, these workshops and if you're a member you get access to the workshop. Maybe if you're not a member you could just buy a ticket to a workshop and it's like you could either buy the ticket or you can become a member and get full access. So that's an interesting pricing idea. [00:30:47] Speaker B: What I'll tell you as like the non technical decision maker on spending. If you offer a workshop specifically to our developers because everything is relatively generalized and then it has to get specific. Well, we use this and this and this and we host here like okay, I got all the concepts but help us apply it internally. Given our stack, that's very, very valuable. [00:31:14] Speaker A: That's exactly. And I've had calls like essentially sales calls with team leads talking about exactly that. And so that would be like the upper level like enterprise team engagement. I am trying to be careful with my time but I think that there's an offer where it's like a one month engagement. I do some private coaching with your team. Maybe create a private workshop just for your team and your stack and everything. I'm getting inquiries around that like a lot of teams wanting to implement my agent OS framework and they want guidance from the creator on how to do that. So that could be something as well. And then, and then kind of like layering on top of all that sort of like nice to have revenue would be sponsorships. I'm getting inquiries around about that. So you could sponsor the, sponsor the YouTube channel, sponsor my newsletter, you know. But the, the, the, the trade off or the balance is like a, I have like financial targets that I want to hit with it, like revenue targets that I want to hit with this business and what's the most efficient way to get there. I want to get it to a sustainable thing where it's predictable Every month. But for me, it's always been about my time and what I'm actually doing, what's giving me energy. Because already just, just producing on YouTube, which is the top of my funnel, it's extremely time consuming. Like every video that I'm doing, which is like a 15, 20 minute video that takes me four full working days to create every, every time I do one. So it's. [00:32:38] Speaker B: How often do you try to post something new? [00:32:40] Speaker A: I like to do it every week. It ends up being maybe every two weeks. Because of that time commitment, I'm improving with every video getting much more efficient around the edges. But there are some things that it just takes what it takes, you know? You know, at some point I'll probably hire a, I had a video editor, I'll probably hire a video editor again at some point. But the when it started working was when I took it back over under my full control, full creative effort on every detail. And that's when it started working. But at a certain point, like I'll definitely need to hire help, but I need revenue before I can get there. [00:33:15] Speaker B: So tricky. So it's like the monetization piece can't also be very time consuming because then you kind of get bogged down. Ideally speaking, you can continue putting a lot of time into the content to grow the top of the funnel, but then the monetization behind that is ideally more efficient than the creation of the content. [00:33:35] Speaker A: Yeah, like if I had to guess how the rest of my year is going to look or at least how this business model is going to shake out, and it completely might change by next week. But my concept of it right now is I spend most of my time, or at least at least half of my time every week creating content for YouTube. And I'm building apps like I'm building my own tools like in this business. So I need to do that to stay up on the workflows and generate teachable material through my actual practice of building with AI. Like I'm building a tool right now to help me generate my newsletter every week using AI. So that's like an internal tool that I will release as a small SaaS product. You could actually see, see the landing page for it at, at Newsletter Lab AI. I'm like halfway through building that, but I'm. But I'm also using that project as, as teachable material that I can feed into my YouTube channel. So most of my time needs to be on that. Creating videos and building with AI, like actually building software. And then the monetization side has to be like something that's sustainable. Like I could probably do these workshops a couple times a month but I, that's just where I need to figure out like how do I slot in time to actually deliver paid services. I don't want this to be 100 me coaching people all the time and having my calendar packed with sessions. So it has to be something that's, that's sustainable. There's, that's why I think like a core membership where people are paying annually to join and every month my funnel is generating X number of new members. That's a little bit of recurring growth, recurring revenue at the base of this thing. There's sponsorship revenue that's a little bit more passive. And then I'm doing these workshops and I'm doing some high level coaching to top it off. That, that's how I think it, this ends up being built. [00:35:25] Speaker B: The only thing I would say around the workshops is coming at it from my point of view with like a, you know, venture money, not my own money. My guess is that you'd be surprised how much people are willing to pay for that. Yeah, so that's, that's the thing, you know, if, if you tell me I'm going to take your engineering team, let's just call it five people. And we're going to get them from where they are right now to fully caught up on the latest. Using your stack. That's worth a lot of money. 10, 20 plus thousand dollars. [00:35:58] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And I just gave a quote for, for that like with, with the team yesterday. The. You're right. I think, I do think that that's. And like there's a lot of overlap. Like there can be these private, you know, high ticket company engagements. They get their own workshop but there's a lot of material from that that can be presented to members. Like if you're a membership then you can get onto, you'll see a calendar like these are the upcoming sessions. Join the ones that are interesting to you. And it's also, I also see workshops as the conversion point. Right. So I've got free people coming from YouTube into my free email newsletter. And the offer on the new newsletter would always be like, join the next workshop for this. Like low ticket price. [00:36:45] Speaker B: Right. But it breaks the barrier from a. [00:36:46] Speaker A: Free, it breaks the bar. It's, it's a low ticket price to join one free free workshop. And then like the offer on that workshop is like you can get access to all the workshops for X dollars a year to become a builder Methods Pro member. You know, separately I get these inquiries from teams and we can, and I would give them a separate quote, but like the main funnel is like email list to purchasing a, a ticket for a workshop, to upgrading to become a member, you know, in. None of that exists today. So. So yeah, I would say that could all change. [00:37:21] Speaker B: You know, I would say that there's a key essential ingredient that does exist and that was born out of an enormous amount of effort on YouTube which, you know, anyone who follows you sees the trajectory of the quality of the YouTube videos has reached a point where YouTube's gonna reward it and the audience will, will come because there isn't that much incredible content at that level and it's the right topic at the right time. So it's kind of like if you stick with it for a year, like, it can't not work. [00:37:53] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's, it's already, it's already started working. It's been pretty cool for me because this is like the first time something like that has actually really clicked. I've had, I've had some content wins in the past, but like I had a couple of videos that, that got to 50,000 views within a week, you know, and like, not every video, like some, some of them are, are duds still. But like, I'm definitely improving with every video that I do and I'm starting to figure out my formula. [00:38:20] Speaker B: And the sphere feels like it's growing in a different way, where a year ago when you put something out, it was basically to your existing audience. Now that audience is kind of growing and touching completely new people on the Internet that you have never seen you before. You don't follow you. Yes. [00:38:38] Speaker A: That is what's most exciting to me. This is the first time that I found a channel that every single new subscriber on my list is somebody who just found me for the first time last week. Right. [00:38:49] Speaker B: It's like, it's like it will get to 20,000 and it will get to 50,000 and beyond. It's just consistency. And I guess you got juggling the monetization while, while being able to keep consistent with it. Is this the challenge? [00:39:02] Speaker A: Yeah, that's the challenge. Like, again, like, you and me have always had this dynamic where like, you have this firepower, the like the funds to, to do these like, you know, ad funnels and experiments. Like, for me, my challenge is always like, I'm, I'm a one person bootstrapped founder. I need to like allocate my time and energy. Even, even if it's not time, it's it's energy, like creating a YouTube video wipes me out, you know, even if it only takes me three hours in a day, the rest of my day is shot. So it's like that's, that's the challenge for me personally is figuring out how to, how to make all these activities in this business model like, work for me, you know? [00:39:41] Speaker B: Yeah. Basically my second half of the year. So my goal is it's pretty straightforward. I want to get to 2 million ARR by the end of the year. And the reason for that is because that gets us to sustainability. We don't need any more cash. And I think in the market right now that's the right thing for us to do. I think we can raise more money and the environment is there for it and our performance is there for it. But I'm not convinced it's the right thing to do for the business. That might change, you know, maybe the market changes or, you know, I, I have rolling conversations with investors to just be aware of what's going on, meet new people and stay sharp on articulating a larger vision than just, you know, where's the revenue at right now and what are we doing next. But I'm not convinced that that is the right thing. And because of that, I, I, I just want to get to sustainability. Right. So if you think about that plateau we hit for like two months, the stress was around. Well, I want to get the sustainability and, and, and the longer this plateau lasts, the more likely it is for us to need to raise more money. And I don't want to be in a position to need to raise more money. I want to be able to raise more money from a position of strength if we want to raise more money. So I guess it's all relative, right? It's not this awful thing, but it was still very stressful. Fortunately, over the last few weeks, I guess really two weeks, it unlocked and it was extremely painful to get the advertising back on track. Now that's back on track. And then I would say the other mistake I've made over the last few months was getting too reliant on reporting and analytics. And I made several mistakes underneath that larger umbrella of mistakes. So in the effort to get more data driven, right, I basically saw this, oh, this is going to be a conversion optimization challenge. I'm going to look at this funnel and I'm going to identify where the bottlenecks are and we're going to jump in and focus on that part of the funnel and optimize it and the only way to approach that is with good reporting and analytics at our fingertips. And we did not have great analytics before. And so we underwent a series of projects and I put on a lot of pressure on Rock to get our reporting and analytics in order and he put a lot of work on it. [00:42:05] Speaker A: I relate to this so much. I remember in the early, early years of Clarity Flow, I spent so many developer hours of my own and my developer to just get our internal dashboards figured out. [00:42:17] Speaker B: It feels like it gives you power and better decision making and it just didn't. So one of the real challenges we have is that if we look at our analytics, I can be convinced that we should stop advertising. And the reason for that is because it's very difficult to understand which user came in through ads and which didn't. And the analytics gave us a false impression of where the customers were coming from. It showed that, let's just say it's 8020 signups coming from ads versus not. And then it looked flipped, it looked 80, 20 conversions coming from organic. And it was wrong. It was just wrong URL issues. [00:43:01] Speaker A: That's been my experience with it every time I've tried to do it. And also like you really just can't. My experience is like you can't trust the platforms to give you. They'll say they'll have their tracking pixel and tell you when you got a conversion. Like no, like that's not going to be accurate. That's not even close to me. Technically the only thing that is ever, ever worked is just dropping a cookie on the user's browser and passing that along into the analytics. And that later, later when they sign up we, we store that they came from this. [00:43:33] Speaker B: Right? So, so we have that now also. Right? We kind of, we got there also and we pass it through to our email provider so that we have that. Like we've tried. But really the conclusion I got to was we just need to stop, just be okay with a fuzzier analysis, just be okay with saying this is how much we're spending, this is how many people are signing up, this is who's activating, this is who's converting and like stop expecting precision in this decision making process. And what I realized that the secondary mistake that I made was I looked over at Rock and I was like, I have put you in this terrible position where I've said this matters a lot and I put a lot of stress on you. And we took away one of our two backend developers and so we slowed down on our feature Development. And we took Rock and we took his talent and we put it in the wrong direction. We put it internal facing in analytics for a month, maybe more. More. And I just said, enough. Let's just stop Rock. Let's take your talent and point it where it needs to go. And that is what unlocked. We had some issues around our prompting and around our agent quality because we switched providers. Sometime over the next maybe two weeks, you'll see, we make an announcement, we have this partner that is awesome. And we, you know, we're making a big bet on. So that transition's not easy. That transition happened at the same time as all the advertising trouble. And I was. And then it was really hard to tell. Like, is the transition the thing that's screwing us up? It was really hard to tell everything. Eventually we a b. Tested it and concluded it's not the provider issue, which was very. Was a relief. And then as soon as Rock got his head outside of analytics and reporting, all of a sudden he's creative again. And all these series of breakthroughs around the prompting and all of a sudden our agent is amazing now. And like, now I'm listening to these test calls that people make, and they're incredible. And of course, if you have a great test call as a new user, it builds up enough confidence to say, I guess I should use this thing. Let me put my credit card on and let me activate. Let me start forwarding calls. [00:45:45] Speaker A: Yeah. And so now that's always the most valuable stuff, is listening to real users. And I, like, I haven't done a lot of. I've installed it, but I haven't done a lot of, like, the watching of the video screen recordings of you. Yeah, the hot jar stuff. Yeah, I've tried that stuff. I. I don't know. That never really clicked for me as being super useful. The thing that it's always, like, subjective, just like. Or what do you call it? Yeah, qualitative. Like just listening to messages, talking to customers, looking, getting a feel for all the support questions and requests that are coming in. And also, like, cancellation reasons. That's always been, like, where I get my most actionable data for better or worse. And it could be worse sometimes, but. Yeah. [00:46:30] Speaker B: Yes. But I went the other way. I went quantitative and it just led us into a corner. So now. Now I feel more optimistic about being able to get to the financial goal and then getting to the sustainability goal and having kind of our, you know, our destiny in our own hands and get to profitability. And. And then there's other things in terms of what the future of Rosie looks like and what we're doing with it. And that part's been fun. That's the fun part. You know, which features, where are we going to live in the market? How sophisticated should we get? What should we say no to? [00:47:06] Speaker A: From a product standpoint, how do you think about Rosie? Like, obviously it's voice, like AI voice answering the phones for these small businesses. But like, do you have a more direct way to describe that? What's the vision of what Rosie can become in terms of like the product in the market? [00:47:25] Speaker B: Yeah, there's like a short term vision and a longer term vision. And the short term vision is in this relief around this phone issue for small businesses. That's what the product does. The product creates relief from stress and expectation and guilt and work around the phone for small businesses. So, and that has really split into two, like key use cases. The first is a service company and the other is a brick and mortar. So brick and mortar, it is a shield to the in store employees. Okay, so one of our biggest customers, 200 unit franchise of oil changes, amazing customer. Our first 100k per year contract, they had a situation where the people doing the oil changes were responsible for answering the phones. And that's a disaster because they can't get the work done because they're always answering the phone. But then management is like, we got to answer the phone, that's the next customer. So that was impossible. And this is a company that's operating from a distance and saying, hmm, what, what do we need to do for these locations to make them more efficient? So then they eventually ended up outsourcing it to the answering service provided by the franchisor. And that's very, very expensive. Right. Basically $2 a call and it's not very good. And they were like, this is, this is, everything's bad. We don't have any good options. So when they came across AI voice, it creates this shield and we reduce the number of phone calls that get to the location by like 60, 70% because all those calls are, are you open tomorrow? How much does it cost? Where are you located? Do you do motorcycle oil changes? You know, like relatively straightforward stuff that an AI agent does a great job with. [00:49:01] Speaker A: Yeah, like it's filling the need of like the inbound phone call based business. [00:49:05] Speaker B: Yes. And a human does not need to do that. It is relatively simple. But up until now, a human had to listen to the words, process in their brain and say the words. So AI does a great job of that. That's use case number one. Use case number two is these service companies that for one reason or another can't always answer the phone. It could be a one person dog grooming company and the owner has another job and does you know, drives around on the truck on the weekends. So while she's working during the day, Monday to Friday, she's missing phone calls and that, that messes up her whole business. And this just takes the phone number, takes the message the person's what they're interested in their name and provides a real message instead of a hang up on a voicemail. And that's extremely valuable. [00:49:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Like you think about the phone tag that happens with all these, all these companies and like that. Those are leads that just go to the next one. [00:49:55] Speaker B: Just go to the next one. Right. And everyone's frustrated and everything's bad and it's. Yes. So that's the short term vision is just do an amazing job at that. Allow non technical people to get up and running in 10 minutes. That's it. That's enough. That's enough to grow a real business. Because that problem is so widespread and our ICP is so wide, this horizontal approach has been super interesting. Now we've kind of gotten to the point where I wanted to get to which was like the best of both worlds, which is very, very horizontal product being marketed vertically. So we have ads for. [00:50:26] Speaker A: Yeah, very like industry like vertical. [00:50:29] Speaker B: Yes. And we have pages on the site and they go there and it is like oh, I'm a real estate agent and I don't want to miss these phone calls. And the marketing and the messaging, the positioning is just right for me. And then I get put into a very horizontal product. But it solves my problem the same way. [00:50:42] Speaker A: I love that. Yeah, like the, you know the traditional bootstrapper advice is just like make the, make the product for dog groomers or whatever it is. But like I, I love this how it's like the, the product is so simple and universal that like every one of these verticals is going to need have the same product solve their problem. Just have the marketing funnel speak to them and then they get in and they're good to go. [00:51:03] Speaker B: So I've gone into the mindset and into the, the analogy and this is what I explained to investors. Also mailchimp is what I have in mind because mailchimp, you know, if email gets invented I don't think you should build klaviyo or loops. I think you should build mailchimp or Constant Contact. So that's My approach at the same time, if you're mailchimp you have to understand you're going to lose people to verticalized solutions as an E commerce store jumps on. They use mailchimp Great. As they grow they're going to move. [00:51:32] Speaker A: Over to Klaviyo especially once they want something more complex. [00:51:35] Speaker B: Yeah. So, so it has been this exercise in a lot. [00:51:38] Speaker A: So then on that note you're thinking like be the, the entry point. The entry point. The more basic like you don't need first all the, all the like you think about like a, like, like a call center that might have all these like if then like workflows of like yes, these things like that could be like the, the HubSpot of, of the market. But like this is the mailchimp, right? [00:51:58] Speaker B: Yes. They're going to leave us to go there and we have to kind of run quickly to add features so that they don't. Because UX commitment is a big deal. Nobody wants to set up a new product if you're doing a good enough job. So it really feels like we, we need to internalize this mailchimp experience of like be everything for everybody and just admit that you're not, you can't hold on to everybody. [00:52:20] Speaker A: The other nice thing about targeting, targeting that side of the market is that you're, you should be like their very first AI calling solution. So the, so the game is like more like education around the problem and that you have the solution whereas the game for these other companies is like rip you away from the competitor. Switch, get you to switch. [00:52:39] Speaker B: Get you over the hump of yes, woo you with. We can do absolutely everything and we're just saying we're just going to nail this thing for you. And then once they get in they're like okay, you've nailed this answering service for me. Can you help me with X and Y and Z. And that is our general strategy of everybody comes in at the base plan and then we reveal these features and we, we show this value curve that you can identify where you live there. Do you have knowledge based stuff and a spreadsheets then that's the highest tier or do you just. Actually I just need to send out text messages during the call and maybe book some appointments. So that's this in between thing. [00:53:16] Speaker A: Yeah, I love it. [00:53:17] Speaker B: And then longer term beyond that, you know, I think it's communication channels. So if you have a brain that understands the business, you can have channels relatively easily. Right. Outbound, sms, website, chat, it uses the same brain and then you start to Build the data over time that understands what is a good response and what's a bad response. And so that's, I think the longer term version. [00:53:38] Speaker A: I like it. I really like that baseline simplicity and there's so much to build off of that. [00:53:44] Speaker B: You know, it is fun because it's one of the, you know, rally. I couldn't take this advice and Kartika couldn't take this advice. And it feels like we are able to take a lot of base, campy type of software advice where you're like, no, my default is just going to be no. Yes, that's, that's right. Like, oh, do you do restaurants and can you integrate with our pos? And like, no, there's another company that does that and you're better off going there. [00:54:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Because at the end of the day all these different types of businesses have the same problem with their phones, you know, and the solution that you already have, like solves that. It's. [00:54:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I think we have, we have a lot of work to do. [00:54:26] Speaker A: I think actually on that note, like icp, I've been doing a lot of analysis and thinking a lot about the people coming through my funnel as I was talking about and I think, okay, so like my hypothesis going into this YouTube channel or my pivot on my channel and builder methods has been, okay, I want to help people stay up to speed, stay ahead of the curve when it comes to building with AI. But what does that mean? And there are so many different flavors of this. Especially on YouTube. There's a lot of channels that are more like vibe coders. Right. Like you're non technical, you can, you can just whip up any slop app in 30 seconds and it's amazing. And yeah, that narrative is starting to peak. [00:55:09] Speaker B: It's starting to change. [00:55:10] Speaker A: I think so. And also like my whole thing has been like, I'm speaking to the professional. And if you are serious, meaning, like you are making a career of this thing, you're not just a hobbyist, you're not just trying to whip up some vive code or something. Then I'm trying to speak your language. And I think that that was the first thing that started to resonate with people on YouTube is that like they consider themselves a little bit more serious. And I'm, I'm sort of a breath of fresh air. Right. [00:55:35] Speaker B: So you're talking to them, you're not talking down to them, you're not making promises that aren't real. [00:55:39] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But also like I'm, I speak in a way that's I, I try to thread the needle where it's like I'm going to assume that you have a baseline, full stack technical background. So there are some things that I can say that I'm just going to assume you know what I'm talking about. But at the same time I, I've. What has always frustrated me as someone learning development and watching YouTube videos over the years, learning Ruby on Rails and whatnot, is that it's like sometimes they just gloss over things that are too technical for the beginner coming in. And so I like to try to thread the needle where like yes, I'm speaking a more professional tone, I am speaking in some more technical terms, but I am getting more non technical people in this ocean of demand for this topic space. Like there are non technical people who don't know anything about coding, but I think some of them are resonating with my content because it's like they get a taste of what the pros do. [00:56:37] Speaker B: It's like it's the next step up, which is achievable as opposed to someone who started their career and now knows a lot more than they do. [00:56:44] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like, it's like yes, you could get the vibe coding stuff. You can play around with the nat ends and the, and the zapiers and stuff and no code stuff. But if you want to start to actually start, like a lot of them are starting to shift into using cursor. And cursor is a tool used by professionals and vibe coders. And so I feel like, I feel like there's something here. Like the takeaway for people is that like you could generally target one side of the market. In my, in my case I'm targeting the more professional serious developer but it's still going to be attractive to the non developer because it is like, because they're sort of like reaching behind the fence to see what the pros are doing, you know, and that's one thing. And then the other thing is quote unquote serious or quote unquote professional can mean a lot of things. And I'm seeing the mix and then this maps to like what is each of these problems or their pain points. Right. So there is the senior developer who's been in this career for 15, 20 years. They need to transition their own skill set from the old way of coding to leveraging AI tools. There's the more junior developer who is employed and they, they need to learn the tooling and they're also a little bit more. I'm getting messages from people saying like, they are afraid that they're not going to keep their job very longer at these junior levels. So they need to skill up to make themselves more valuable either within their current position or to hit the job market or to build something on their own. So there's that and then like the third, the third level is the team leader and their pain point is like, how do I get my team to adopt the tools? And I've tried to do that and I hear a lot of like grumbling from my developers and it's a lot of variance. And so it's just been interesting to observe, like, observe and absorb what all the different pain points for the different ICPs are with within this umbrella. Right. [00:58:45] Speaker B: You're not for everybody, you're not for the full spectrum, but you're actually not for an individual point. You're for a range in the spectrum. [00:58:52] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's also like, if you're just selling to vibe coders, then you're going to sell a course that says like how to build your first app in one hour with cursor. Or there's a market, you know, there's a, there's a market for that and you can sell a lot of courses that way. But I'm, I'm thinking about it more like if you're a professional, you should join this membership or you should go to many of my workshops because this is what professionals do. They're constantly improving, they're constantly trying to stay ahead of the curve. And that's where I see it as like a more long term sustainable, like instead of selling a one and done course where you get this thing and then, and then I'm useless to you after that. It's more about like networking with fellow professionals who want to stay ahead of it. And that's how I'm starting to think about it now. The question is, how do I build products around that? [00:59:43] Speaker B: My actionable element is send a survey. We've been doing a better job of that overall. And about a month ago, our SEO team came to us and said, here's the deal, we want to get you a lot of links. And the best way to get you a lot of links is to have proprietary data. If you can look into your customer. [01:00:03] Speaker A: Like a public survey. Yeah, nice. [01:00:05] Speaker B: Look into your data that only you have and let's come up with a PR pitch based on that data that will go out to reporters and people in the tech world. [01:00:18] Speaker A: That's a great strategy, great strategy. [01:00:20] Speaker B: And I was like, I think that's really smart. Let's do that. So we crafted a survey that, right. We don't choose the answers, but we do choose the questions. So we chose the questions in such a way that we hope what comes out of it is a narrative that we can talk about. For us, the narrative is our AI adds jobs and grows businesses, not the other way around. Right. Because we free people up to do higher level work. They get more customers, they can do more high level work. They can then grow their business and hire more people. So we're like this positive force in AI as opposed to negative. What I did not really, you know, realize what would come back was gold, absolute gold. Feedback. First, people are really willing to fill out surveys. And normally I think of people, I think we're going to get no responses. [01:01:13] Speaker A: I know. [01:01:14] Speaker B: And we get everything a lot. [01:01:15] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm like, I never fill these things out, but then I read them, it's like, oh man, this is so bad. [01:01:19] Speaker B: Yeah. I guess people who really care, they want the opportunity to tell you it's awesome. [01:01:23] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:01:24] Speaker B: So it has feature questions, feature issues, churn responses more, pointing toward the roadmap of what we should do and where we should be in the future and how they're thinking about us and their competitors and just testimonials for the website. And then along with that, we'll write a blog post and then we'll go take that blog post and we'll pitch it to tech reporters and say, this is our own data, we're happy to give it to you, but you got a link to us. So it's the, you know, this one thing just created so much value. And when we hang up, I'm going to go launch this new homepage and use it. [01:01:59] Speaker A: The nice thing about that strategy is, yeah, you can go pitch it to news, but then also writers will just start to cite you because they need to fill out their articles with data points to support their things. Like, well, this survey from Rosie says that this percentage of the market does this. [01:02:17] Speaker B: Right. And then the claims that you're able to make on the site are different in nature. Right. 38% of Rosie users have added jobs to their business over the, you know, since, since starting to use Rosie. It's like now we now like these honest kind of claims. Feel great. [01:02:35] Speaker A: I love it, man. [01:02:37] Speaker B: We can keep going forever, huh? [01:02:39] Speaker A: Exactly. We could keep. I mean, I've been getting a lot of that feedback through YouTube comments that. And again, that's the kind of thing like I Never comment on YouTube videos, but like people do this. And they're. And they're not just, like, bots. They're not just, like, randos. Like, they're serious developers, like, writing long comments. So that's been interesting. And then the other thing I used to do this back in the day is an email auto response. You sign up for the email list, you get an email from me that day with a question, and my inbox is full of responses. Just. [01:03:11] Speaker B: Okay. [01:03:12] Speaker A: You know, that's a really good way to get a feel. [01:03:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Maybe you should send a survey on what product to build. [01:03:19] Speaker A: I do that, too. I also have, like, sign up for these potential courses because I thought I was going to do courses, and on the back of that, I have surveys, and I'm getting a lot of those responses as well. So just a lot of. A lot of messages to sift through and figure out. [01:03:34] Speaker B: Let's call it. But we got to do this again, definitely. [01:03:36] Speaker A: If you want. We're in August 2025. Maybe we'll try to get in here by the end of the year at some point, do a recap again, you know. [01:03:44] Speaker B: Cool. I would love that. [01:03:45] Speaker A: Awesome. [01:03:46] Speaker B: Thanks, everyone, for listening again. Let's talk on Twitter together, like. [01:03:50] Speaker A: Like the old days, as always. Yep. See you. Thanks, folks. Later.