Podcast appearances and mentions of mini sessions

SummaryIn this conversation, Christa discusses the value of mini sessions in photography, emphasizing that they can be profitable if structured correctly. She shares insights on how to maximize income through upselling and providing additional value to clients. The discussion covers strategies for enhancing the client experience, the importance of including products, and the role of sales as a service in building long-term client relationships.TakeawaysMini sessions can be profitable if set up correctly.The right structure can lead to higher income from mini sessions.Including products in mini sessions adds value for clients.Upselling options can significantly increase average earnings.Sales should be approached as a service to clients.Mini sessions can lead to future full-service bookings.Having an assistant can streamline the mini session process.Client experience is crucial in photography services.The importance of intentional shooting during mini sessions.Clear communication about upsell options enhances client satisfaction.Thinking about joining Uncapped or Intensive coaching? DM me the word COACH to www.instagram.com/christa_rene for a no pressure convo on if this could help your business grow to the next level.Thanks for listening! We'd LOVE if you left us a review!Connect with Christa on Instagram HERE!Enjoy a free 20-min training on adding $50k in income from products HERE!Apply for Uncapped HERE!

#551 Elizabeth DeVoe is a first-grade teacher in Atlanta who recently embarked on her photography journey. The discussion navigates Elizabeth's early experiences and the unexpected spark that ignited her passion for photography. Elizabeth shares her beginnings with a Canon Rebel XS, a journey that transitioned from a poor initial photo attempt to a newfound love for capturing everyday moments. The episode delves into her learning paths, notably through podcasts, and emphasizes the relatable struggles and triumphs of a beginner photographer. KEY TOPICS COVEREDBeginnings of a Photography Journey - Elizabeth describes how a mix of chance and personal necessity led her to pick up the camera again after a year, highlighting how a creative outlet can offer solace and joy amidst life's stresses.Learning Through Audio - A significant portion of Elizabeth's early education in photography came from listening to podcasts while driving, showcasing how non-visual learning can effectively complement a visual art form like photography.Transitioning to Client Work - Elizabeth talks about moving from photographing friends to paid sessions, underlining the importance of creating comfort and connection with subjects, which is a fundamental skill she honed through teaching and customer service roles.IMPORTANT DEFINITIONS & CONCEPTSBack Button Focusing: A technique in which the focus function is removed from the shutter button and assigned to a button on the back of the camera, allowing for more controlled and repeatable focusing.DISCUSSION & REFLECTION QUESTIONSHow can finding a personal creative outlet improve mental health and balance in one's life?In what ways can non-traditional learning methods contribute to skill acquisition in visual arts?RESOURCES:Follow Elizabeth DeVoe on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/elizabethdevoephotography/Download your free copy of 46 Creative Photo Ideas to Get You Out of a Rutat https://creativeimageideas.com/ Sign up for your free CloudSpot Account today at www.DeliverPhotos.comConnect with Raymond! Join the free Beginner Photography Podcast Community at https://beginnerphotopod.com/group Get your Photo Questions Answered on the show - https://beginnerphotopod.com/qa Grab your free camera setting cheatsheet - https://perfectcamerasettings.com/ Thanks for listening & keep shooting!

I'm taking you behind the scenes of how I booked out my most recent set of spring mini sessions from the planning to the marketing. You will be able to take my strategy and try it for yourself!Come tell me your biggest takeaway. Join the NEW Fully Booked Blueprint program! Your roadmap to a profitable, fully booked photography business. A course + coaching with Brooke Jefferson. Join the Blueprint!

Apple Podcasts |Spotify |TranscriptMore Resources: Email Freebie| Flodesk DiscountEmail marketing is one of the most powerful tools for booking out your mini sessions, yet many photographers overlook it. If you've ever struggled to fill your spots, relying only on social media, it's time to rethink your approach. Unlike social platforms, where algorithms limit your reach, emails land directly in your audience's inbox. I hear from students all the time who are shocked at how effective email marketing is—they send a couple of emails and book out almost instantly! Today, I'll talk through how to use an email list to book out your Mini Sessions. Plus, why it's important for you to get started now!Here's What We'll Cover:My Favorite Email Marketing Platform (2:49)Why Start with Your Email List (4:03)What to Send to Your Email List (7:43)How to Grow Your Email List (10:57)Why Use an Email List to Book Out Your Mini SessionsYour email list is filled with your warmest leads (people who already know, like, and trust you). This makes email marketing the fastest and easiest way to turn potential clients into booked clients. While Instagram stories might only be seen by 4% of your followers, emails reach your entire list every single time. Plus, with the right strategy, you can create a personal connection with your audience, keeping them engaged and eager to book when your minis go live.What to Send to Your Email ListIf you're wondering what to send, start with a four-email sequence for your Mini Session launch. First, a teaser email to build anticipation, second a "Now Booking" email giving your list first access, third an update email sharing how spots are filling up, and finally, a "Last Call" email to create urgency before opening to the public. Many photographers hesitate to send multiple emails, fearing they'll annoy their audience, but the truth is—people are busy! A single email can be missed, and follow-ups ensure more eyes on your offer.How to Grow Your Email ListIf you're not sure how to grow your email list, start with past clients! Invite them to join your VIP email list for exclusive early access to sessions. Use social media to collect emails with a freebie, like a Mini Session prep guide, or run a giveaway where entry requires signing up. The key is to take action today! Start building your list and commit to growing it. Your email list has the potential to transform your business, making Mini Session bookings easier and more profitable than ever!Some actions steps I want you to take include starting your list today! Grab my Email Freebie and get started. I'll walk you through how to get going. Second, check out this

Apple Podcasts |Spotify |TranscriptMore Resources: 12 Theme Ideas Freebie | Flodesk DiscountMini sessions are an incredible way to attract new clients, but many photographers wonder how to convert those Mini Clients into Full Session bookings. While Mini Sessions are highly profitable (especially during peak seasons like fall and spring) not every type of session can or should be a mini. When big life events happen, like welcoming a new baby or celebrating a first birthday, clients are much more likely to book a full session. The key is to strategically leverage your mini sessions to encourage those Full-Session bookings. So, let's dive into how you can use Minis to get Full Session clients!Here's What We'll Cover:3 Must-Be Full Sessions (3:22)How to Leverage Your Minis (8:29)Key Marketing Strategies for Full Sessions (11:45)Recap (14:36)Not Every Session Should Be a MiniEducating your clients on the difference between mini and full sessions is crucial. Some sessions require more time, flexibility, and a personalized experience—meaning they simply can't be squeezed into a 10-15 minute slot. Three session types that don't work as minis include: Smash Cake Sessions, Lifestyle Newborn Sessions, and Extended Family Sessions. By educating your clients upfront, you naturally create opportunities to upsell them into full sessions when these milestones occur.Turning Minis Clients into Full Session ClientsMini sessions serve as the perfect entry point for clients to get to know you, experience your style, and fall in love with your work. When you deliver a top-notch mini session experience, booking a full session later becomes an easy decision. A great strategy is to plant the seed early. During a mini session, mention full-session options if you learn a client is expecting or has a milestone coming up. Follow up with past clients at key times, like when a newborn turns 10 months old! Remind them about first birthday sessions and other milestones. Offer incentives, like early access to Full-Session dates or priority booking for loyal Mini Session clients.Marketing Strategies to Encourage Full Session BookingsTo consistently book more full sessions, be intentional with your marketing. Showcase Full Sessions by posting images from full sessions on social media so clients see what you offer. Educate on the Differences. Use blog posts, Instagram captions, and emails to highlight the benefits of full sessions. Leverage real client stories! Share before-and-after journeys of Mini Session clients who later booked Full Sessions.The goal isn't to replace Mini Session bookings with Full Sessions. Both serve different purposes. Instead, it's about maximizing revenue by making sure Mini Session clients...

Send us a textIn this episode, I'm sharing how Cloudspot completely transformed my photography business. From stunning client galleries to seamless contracts and mini sessions, Cloudspot.io has streamlined my workflow and elevated my client experience. Tune in to discover why this tool is a game-changer for photographers!Get Cloudspot.io! https://jenvazquez.com/cloudspot

Apple Podcasts |Spotify |TranscriptMore Resources: 12 Theme Ideas Freebie | Flodesk DiscountHave you ever wondered why your Minis aren't booking? If you've struggled with booking out your sessions or they aren't booking the way you expected them to then you're in the right place! Trust me, we've all been there. The good news? Mini Sessions work, and with a few strategic tweaks, you can turn things around. In this episode, we're diving into the three biggest reasons your minis aren't booking: your timing or theme isn't resonating, your marketing strategy is incomplete, or your messaging isn't connecting with your ideal clients. Stick with me, and let's troubleshoot your Minis so you can start booking out with confidence!Here's What We'll Cover:Theme or timing holding you back? (2:14)Social strategy (7:01)Is your messaging connecting with clients? (12:03)Recap as a whole (14:27)Is Your Mini Session Theme or Timing Holding You Back?One of the biggest reasons Mini Sessions don't book is that the theme or timing isn't resonating with your ideal clients. Just because a theme was popular last year doesn't mean it will work again this year! Trends shift and client preferences change. Some themes become overdone, while others may not be in demand at all. Additionally, the dates you choose can make or break your success. If your minis fall too close to holidays, school breaks, or major local events... families might already have plans. So, do your research! Look at current trends, ask past clients what themes they're excited about, and test new ideas that fit what families want right now. When you align your Minis with what your audience is actually looking for, you'll see more interest and faster bookings.Are You Relying on One Post to Fill Your Mini Sessions?Posting once and hoping for bookings isn't enough! Only 4% of your followers see what you post, so you need to reach beyond your audience to get more bookings. A strong marketing strategy includes consistent social media posts, reels, and stories, plus email marketing to remind past clients. Local outreach, like sharing in Facebook groups or partnering with businesses, also helps spread the word. Creating urgency with limited spots or early bird discounts can drive faster bookings. Instead of relying on one post, map out a marketing plan across multiple touch points over several weeks for the best results!Is Your Messaging Connecting With the Right Clients?If your mini-sessions aren't booking, your messaging may not be resonating. Clients don't just want a “Mini-Session”... they want an easy, stress-free way to capture beautiful family photos! Focus on the emotional appeal rather than just the photography itself. You should clearly communicate when, where, how much, and what's included to eliminate any...

Apple Podcasts |Spotify |TranscriptMore Resources: Prep Week | 12 Theme Ideas FreebieSpring is right around the corner, which means it's the perfect time to start planning your Spring Minis! With warmer weather, blooming flowers, and families eager to capture seasonal memories, spring is one of the best times to book out your minis. Today, I'm sharing creative Spring Mini Session ideas that will make your Minis stand out, attract more clients, and boost your bookings. Whether you're looking for fresh ideas or want to refine your approach, this episode will lend inspiration to help you plan successful and profitable Spring Minis! Before diving in make sure you sign up for my newest FREE resource... PREP WEEK! This 4 day training paired with today's episode is a guaranteed win for Spring.Here's What We'll Cover:Why Spring? (5:45)Theme Ideas (7:52)Questions to Ask While Planning (11:25)Prep Week (15:03)Spring Mini Session IdeasA well-thought-out Spring Mini Session idea can be the key to booking out your spots quickly! A strong theme creates excitement making it easier for potential clients to envision themselves in the session. It also helps you stand out from other photographers running minis in your area, giving you a unique edge in the market. The best spring themes are fresh, colorful, and family-friendly! By incorporating elements that feel light and full of life you'll end up attracting more clients. And while being unique is important just make sure it appeals to a wide range of clients! Some go to Spring Mini session ideas would include seasonal flowers (think blue bonnets or cherry blossoms), vintage Spring picnic, Easter Minis or a flower market location!Spring Mini Marketing MustPreparing for your Spring Minis starts with capturing promo shots that will attract clients and fill your calendar. The best way to do this? Set up your Mini Session backdrop in advance and use a real family for test shots. This helps potential clients visualize what their photos will look like and creates instant marketing content. If you're doing a wildflower field theme, you can use a stock image of wildflowers for early promotion and then update your marketing with an actual portfolio image once you've photographed a session. The key is to help future clients envision themselves in your promo!If you're feeling unsure about how to market your minis effectively, Prep Week starts next week! It's a FREE, four-day challenge where we'll cover marketing strategies, pricing, workflows, and everything you need to book out your minis with confidence. Don't miss this opportunity to make your Mini Sessions more profitable and stress-free, sign up today!

Apple Podcasts |Spotify |TranscriptMore Resources: Episode 107| Prep WeekPricing your full sessions correctly is key to making sure your mini-session pricing makes sense and stays profitable. In this episode of Minis Made Easy, I'm breaking down how full sessions set the foundation for your pricing strategy, common mistakes photographers make, and the steps to ensure your full session pricing supports (not competes with) your minis. If you've ever struggled to balance these two session types, this episode is for you! Before diving in you need to how to price your Mini Sessions. This is only possible by doing a CODB which I walked us through in last week's episode! Give THIS podcast a listen then you'll be ready to jump into how to price your photography sessions so they make sense.Here's What We'll Cover:Define a Full Session Vs. Mini Session (2:52)Pricing Mistakes (5:42)Sessions that are NOT Minis (10:29)Key Take Aways (15:01)Why Full Sessions Set the Foundation for Your Photography Pricing StrategyFull sessions play a crucial role in your photography business. They offer clients a full-service experience while establishing the foundation for your pricing structure. As the premium option, full sessions set the perceived value of your work and help differentiate your services from mini-sessions. Mini-sessions should be a lower investment, but they must still reflect your expertise and not undercut the value of full sessions. A common mistake photographers make is pricing minis correctly but then realizing their full session pricing no longer makes sense! Often this requires an adjustment to maintain profitability. By positioning full sessions as the high-end choice and aligning your pricing strategy effectively, you can create a sustainable and profitable photography business while ensuring that both session types attract the right clients.How to Price Photography Sessions for Profitability and AlignmentSetting the right price for your full sessions starts with understanding your target client... their budget, what they value, and how to position full sessions as a premium experience. Next, calculate your costs and desired profit by factoring in session time, editing, and business expenses to ensure your pricing reflects your expertise and brand. A good rule of thumb is to set your full session price at least double your mini-session price to maintain a balanced structure. For example, if your full sessions are $500, your minis should be in the $200–$250 range.Finally, communicate the value of full sessions by emphasizing their benefits—longer session time, more variety in locations, all-digitals included, and a fully personalized experience. Educating your clients on the differences between full and mini sessions is...

Apple Podcasts |Spotify |TranscriptMore Resources: Mini Session Theme Ideas | Prep WeekPricing your mini sessions can feel like a guessing game. Should you charge what other photographers do? Should you price lower to attract more bookings? Or maybe you feel like you're just throwing out a number and hoping it works. If you've ever second-guessed your pricing, you're not alone! Many photographers struggle with setting prices that not only attract clients but also ensure profitability. Today we'll be calculating your cost of doing business (CODB) because pulling numbers from thin air or copying what other photographers are doing won't help YOU and your business succeed! Let's learn how to price your mini sessions for profit!Here's What We'll Cover:Why Calculate Your CODB (3:40)Gathering Your Numbers (7:02)Calculating Your Numbers (10:34)Brand New Resource - Prep Week (20:18)How to Price Your Mini Sessions for ProfitHave you ever felt like you're working hard, but you're not sure that you're seeing the profit from? Have you ever wondered if you're even covering your costs and making this thing worth it? Whether you're a numbers person or not, learning to calculate your Cost of Doing Business is a must! In the simplest terms you make sure all expenses and taxes are covered in your revenue AND you're paying yourself. Statistics show that most photographers don't make it past year 3. This is solely because they don't price their work appropriately.Gather Your NumbersStep one you need to list EVERY expense you have. Let's take your Spring Minis Sessions for example! List out any expenses that would go towards them including softwares like your CRM (gallery delivery), Lightroom or Imagine AI (your editing software), email marketing, google domain, website costs, gear, props or client gifts, etc! If you pay for something annually divide it by 12 to give you a monthly amount. Next, calculate the number of hours you spend on Spring Minis. Don't just include your shooting time! List the time spent marketing, driving to locations, editing and post processing! Lastly, ask yourself: how much do I want to be paid for my hourly rate? And please pay yourself more than a teenager who works at Costco! I suggest no less than $50/hour because you are well worth your time!Calculating Your NumbersIn any given month for Spring Minis list how many sessions you realistically want to book. For example's sake we'll say 16 (that's 2 days of minis). Here's where gathering your numbers come into play. How many hours will you spend on these specific Mini Sessions (for everyone it's different, but remember to include marketing, post processing/editing, shooting time). So, you should have your total number of expenses for one month and the number of hours you will work for these sessions. Take your hourly rate multiplied by the number of hours for these sessions and that's your profit. Next, take your expenses and add them to your profit amount. Finally,...

Apple Podcasts |Spotify |TranscriptAs we're headed into this new year and our Mini Sessions season I wanted to talk through the importance of planning EARLY! January is the perfect time to set the tone for your year. Preparation like this will set you up for success and why not determine this year to be your most profitable!? In this episode not only will you learn why planning ahead is valuable, but you'll understand what happens when you don't. So, for starters let's look at key reasons why planning your Mini Sessions early is a must!Why Planning Your Mini Sessions Early is ValuableIn order to plan ahead you need at least 6-8 weeks before your Mini Sessions take place. When you start marketing early you get ahead of other photographers! Why not be the first photographer seen by your audience for Spring Minis and beat the competition? Rather than scrambling last minute to do Easter Minis or Wildflowers, you can prepare now and get fully booked! This also means you'll be maximizing your profits. You get the opportunity to think through your pricing, structure and upselling. And the best part is you can do it all--stress free!Key Areas to PrepOne thing you need to look at is the calendar as a whole. Start with your personal calendar including birthdays, vacations, important dates. Then you can pencil in dates for Mini Sessions. That way you aren't overbooked and you have control of when you work! My suggestion would be to look at doing Spring, Fall and Christmas Minis. Next, an area you want to plan is thinking through the themes that you could potentially have for your Mini Sessions. You want to think of fun, creative ideas, but things that your clients will actually book. Lastly, plan ahead in your marketing plan! Put together a real strategy including your email list, your SEO and your socials. Trust me, good marketing takes time so tackle this early and give yourself the ability to be profitable.What Happens If You Don't PlanI know there are so many things you have to think about when planning your Mini Sessions, but that's why I'm here! You won't be doing this alone. The danger in not being proactive is you'll be stressed out, overwhelmed, losing clients or missing out on profits! The earlier you start preparing the better off you'll be. Throughout the coming weeks I'll walk through all the important keys in planning your Mini Sessions! Tune in next week for specifics on pricing to be profitable!What We Covered:Why I started planning ahead (1:55)Why planning your mini sessions early is valuable (3:03)Key areas to prep (6:08)What happens if you don't plan (11:00)

Apple Podcasts |Spotify |TranscriptIf you're a family photographer looking for mini session tips to simplify your business while maximizing profits, you're in the right place! I'm thrilled to announce the rebrand of my podcast: Minis Made Easy. This podcast is your go-to resource for everything mini sessions—helping you streamline workflows, master posing, and build a profitable photography business. The goal is to leave you inspired, provide actionable tips and educational content tailored for your photography business! I've discovered a major part of my why in this industry is to help other photographers in their journey. And friend, it all starts with mini sessions!Why Focus on Mini Sessions?Profitability and Scalability: Minis allow you to serve more clients in less time while still providing an excellent experience. Simplified Marketing: With clear themes and short time slots, minis are easier to market and fill. Community Demand: Many photographers shared their struggles and questions about making minis work. This rebrand allows us to address those needs in-depth.What Can You Expect from Minis Made Easy?Each episode is tailored specifically to help you master mini-sessions. Here's a sneak peek into what we'll cover! Workflows: Learn how to streamline booking processes, client communication, and gallery delivery for a seamless client experience. Posing Tips: Discover techniques for maximizing short 10-minute sessions while keeping your posing natural and stress-free. Business Strategies: Get insights into pricing your minis for profit, marketing effectively, and scaling your mini-session offerings. Creative Inspiration: Stay ahead of the curve with fresh seasonal themes and evergreen session ideas that clients will love.You can count on this podcast to serve you in key areas! I'll be breaking down the how, what and when for successful Mini Sessions and be sharing all the mini session tips. Let's simplify the way you run your business while making your minis more profitable than ever.

What are the secrets to mini-session success? This episode is the third in my series featuring the women of my Education Blueprint mastermind. I'm speaking with fellow photographer Danielle Miranda about her impressive success with mini-sessions and how to get started with stress-free sessions in 2025. The Shoot It Straight Podcast is brought to you by Sabrina Gebhardt, photographer and educator. Join us each week as we discuss what it's like to be a female creative entrepreneur while balancing entrepreneurship and motherhood. If you're trying to find balance in this exciting place you're in, yet willing to talk about the hard stuff too, Shoot It Straight Podcast is here to share practical and tangible takeaways to help you shoot it straight. I am so excited to announce the Pre-Black Friday Sale. During the week of November 18th, I will be highlighting a different offer every single day. There is something for every level of photographer, plus an offer at every price point with massive discounts. Put your name on the waitlist now to grab these offers before quantities run out. Learn More >>Review the Show Notes:Get to know Danielle Miranda (2:07)The love-hate relationship with mini sessions (5:33)Actual numbers from Danielle's minis (6:34)The journey to easy mini sessions (10:52)Making your mini session feel successful (14:10)Offering an up-sell and avoiding over-delivery (19:36)What photographers do wrong with mini-sessions (21:30)Your first step to a successful mini-session (24:33)Mini-Session Tool Kit (27:36)Rapid-fire questions (29:03)Connect with Danielle:Website: daniellemirandaphotography.comInstagram: instagram.com/daniellemirandaphotographyMini-Session Tool Kit: daniellemirandaphotography.com/mini-toolkit-signupMentoring: daniellemirandaphotography.com/photographer-mentoringThe Focus Collective: the-focus-collective.comConnect with Sabrina:Pre-Black Friday Sale: sabrinagebhardt.com/holiday24Instagram: instagram.com/sabrinagebhardtphotographyWebsite: sabrinagebhardt.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

268 - Mini sessions—are they a blessing or a curse? In today's episode, we'll explore why mini sessions might be your secret weapon to ensure a full calendar for 2025. Discover the dos and don'ts of running these sessions, why naming them matters, and the simple tweaks to make them profitable without cutting corners. Let's make your mini sessions work harder for you.What to Listen For:The power of mini sessions and why they're more than just quick cash.How a holiday mini session can secure your 2025 bookings.Why you should never call them “mini sessions” (and what to call them instead).Best practices for pricing mini sessions without undervaluing your work.How to structure these sessions to avoid cannibalizing your full sessions.Mini sessions don't have to be a hassle—they can be a goldmine for your business! By following these best practices, you'll streamline the process, attract quality clients, and even secure bookings for 2025. Ready to take the leap? Listen now, subscribe, and let's start planning out a profitable year. And don't forget to check out Freedom Focus Formula and Elevate for more tools to help you succeed!Resources From This Episode:Hair of the Dog Academy Freedom Focus FormulaCommercial Pet Photography AcademyElevate Coaching ProgramAre you enjoying the Freedom Focus Photography Podcast? Please leave a rating or a review!JOIN THE PARTY: Connect with us on Instagram Explore valuable pet photography resources here Discover effective pricing and sales strategies for all portrait photographers. Ready to grow your business? Elevate helps you do just that. Check out our recommended gear and favorite books.

SummaryIn this conversation, Christa discusses the effectiveness of mini sessions in photography, emphasizing strategies to maximize revenue, set client expectations, and enhance the overall client experience. She shares actionable tips on upselling, marketing, and building lasting relationships with clients, ultimately aiming to help photographers increase their average earnings while maintaining a streamlined process.TakeawaysMini sessions can be profitable even for full-service photographers.Setting clear boundaries with clients is essential for mini sessions.Offering unique products can differentiate your mini sessions from competitors.Efficient shooting can lead to quicker sessions and happier clients.Upgrading options should be clearly presented to clients during sessions.Marketing efforts need to be consistent and persistent to fill mini sessions.Building relationships with past clients can lead to repeat business.Using samples can help clients visualize products and increase sales.Personalized communication can enhance client engagement and conversion rates.Creating urgency in offers can drive quicker decision-making from clients.Thanks for listening! We'd LOVE if you left us a review!Connect with Christa on Instagram HERE!Enjoy a free 20-min training on adding $50k in income from products HERE!Apply for Uncapped HERE!

Today we are talking mini sessions. Mini sessions are a hot topic - people either love them or hate them! I personally love mini session and I want to teach you how to run really profitable mini sessions this year. Keep listening to learn more! SHOWNOTES https://sandracoanstudios.com/how-to-market-and-sell-your-mini-sessions/ LINKS The Mini Method Sandra Coan Certification Program: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://sandracoanstudios.com/certification⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

you feeling stuck in the cycle of holiday mini sessions and digital file delivery?  Today, I'm excited to introduce you to Alicia Sorenson, a mom of seven who transformed her photography business using the boutique model we teach at the Photography Business Institute.  In this episode, I sit down with Alicia to discuss: How she went from dabbling in photography to landing a $1,700 order The challenges of balancing family life with entrepreneurial dreams Overcoming fears and self-doubt to embrace a new business model The power of guided support and community in business growth Why the boutique model is a game-changer for photographers seeking profitability and fulfillment You'll hear how Alicia: Shifted away from time-consuming digital file editing Found the courage to approach clients with confidence Leveraged our Boutique Breakthrough program to uplevel her business Whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting out, Alicia's story will inspire you to rethink your photography business model and tap into your true earning potential. Ready to transform your own photography business?  Don't miss my upcoming 5-day Booking Boost challenge starting September 30, 2024.  RESOURCES: WORTH EVERY PENNY JOYCAST SHOW NOTES: https://photographybusinessinstitute.com/podcast/episode-231 SHOW TRANSCRIPT:  Click Here BOUTIQUE BREAKTHROUGH – 8-WEEK WORKSHOP www.joyofmarketing.com/boutiquebreakthrough INSTAGRAM – DM me “Conversation Starters” for some genuine ways to strike up a conversation about your photography business wherever you are. https://www.instagram.com/sarah.petty  FREE COPY: NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLING BOOK FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS www.joyofmarketing.com/freebook  FREE FACEBOOK GROUP: Join and get my free mini-class: How I earned $1,500 per client working 16 hours a week by becoming a boutique photographer. https://www.facebook.com/groups/ditchthedigitals  YOUTUBE: Check out my latest how to videos:  https://www.youtube.com/c/thejoyofmarketing  LOVE THE SHOW? Subscribe & Review on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/worth-every-penny-joycast/id1513676756 #201 - How a Florida Educator Transformed Her Photography from Dabbling to $3,200 Orders:  Turning Her Back Burner Hobby into Real Money

You still have time to sign up for my free training on Thursday with Zenfolio! Learn how to make 4-figures with mini sessions. Register here: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/e03c3d64-de85-419c-909c-8fd8f07286d1@f53224c4-9d71-44c1-9fad-19b66d9d1121

Hey friend! Mini sessions tend to be all the rage in the photography world come Fall! And while I do think they make sense in some situations, I don't think we should all default to doing them. In this episode, I'm sharing five reasons I no longer offer mini sessions. After trying to make them work for years in different ways, I finally concluded that they simply don't make sense for me. My hope is that understanding why I don't do mini sessions anymore may help you in looking at them from a different perspective. Perhaps they do work for you, but if they don't, I hope that this episode gives you the permission you need to step away from them! In this episode, you will learn: 5 reasons I no longer offer mini sessions An alternative solution if you offer them for financial reasons Why offering mini sessions may actually be hurting your business in the long run Questions to consider to determine whether or not mini sessions make sense for you Enjoy, friend! xo, Morgan Next steps: Free family posing guide: ⁠https://morganwilliamsphoto.com/sketching-freebie⁠ Ask me anything to be answered in a future episode! - ⁠https://forms.gle/BxHkc1bs8tcNC7UX9⁠ Related episodes: ⁠Ep 9: Understanding Your Creative Purpose -a conversation with Leah O'Connell⁠ ⁠Flourishing in All Areas of Your Life: How a Healthy Business Supports a Healthy Life⁠

Want to know how Kimberly was able to make $8000 from just 1 day of shooting?

Brigid Yates of BYates Photography joins us to share the exciting details of her Boudoir Photography Demo for SnoBall! If you missed it, we did a full length interview with her when we did our own sexy photo shoot in her studio called "Mrs Sno Bares All - Boudoir Photography". Mini Sessions are ON SALE NOW for registered party guests! Sign up early to get your preferred time slot! For more information about attending SnoBall - visit: https://www.schedulingsin.com/new-snoball-2024/ PLEASE share your feedback and stories with us! Email Us: SnoMilf@yahoo.com Twitter (X): @SchedulingSin Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/F4Wk558TaT https://schedulingsin.com IMPORTANT - Please read and respect our chat server rules before joining our Discord Chat Server. This service is completely free, there are many rooms to enjoy with fellow members of the swinging community. You MUST BE OVER 18 YEARS OLD TO JOIN THIS DISCORD SERVER. Our Discord chat is for social chat. it is not a pick up site or dating site.  

It's often when I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place I come up with my most brilliant ideas... and I know I'm not the only one. Pressure has a way of forcing us to think outside the box and get creative about solutions we might not have otherwise considered. Paula Brennan, my guest today, likewise found a creative solution in a time of need, and it revolutionized her business. Paula is a personal brand photographer known for her creative (and wildly popular) approach to  mini brand sessions. But these aren't your typical mini sessions: she's figured out a way to maximize her time and resources while also allowing her clients to participate in something bigger than just a "brand shoot."Whatever your niche, Paula's ideas will get your creative juices flowing... my mind was spinning with the possibilities! Tune in to hear all the details on how she is able to supercharge her income with this smart strategy.Links:Watch BTS of a full Mini Session at styled location as Paula captures 60+ sellable images in under 45 minutes, to learn how too can do the same! Ready to finally get consistent with your marketing? Join The Consistency Club for monthly made-for-you marketing delivered directly to your inboxResources: Listen to the Simple Sales Limited Series Podcast where Annemie teaches the 6 steps to running a profitable, sustainable photography business you love. Join the TCBTH Facebook Group - a supportive, business-focused group for photographers. Leave a review!

Heyyy, Thriver!! Welcome to our latest episode, hosted by Shay and Devin, your go-to hybrid photographers and videographers. Today, we dive deep into the art of hosting mini sessions that are not only creative and aligned with your brand but also highly profitable.In this episode, we cover:

Send us a Text Message.[REBROADCAST from March 2023]Do you currently offer mini sessions in your photography business? Whether you're a mini session pro or you've launched them a few times without much success, today we're going to talk about if you should offer minis as a luxury photographer. We're also digging into common mistakes photographers make with mini sessions that make them less profitable and how to price and market your minis if you decide to offer them.This is a juicy one. Make sure you listen to the end!Episode Highlights:01:46 – Mini Sessions in a Nutshell04:53 – Should Luxury Photographers Offer Mini Sessions?07:10 – Mistakes that Luxury Photographers Make When Running Mini Sessions13:19 –Best Ways to Offer Mini SessionsPast Episode to Listen To:Episode 116: How to Easily Offer Santa Sessions (And Still Be a Specialist) with Lindsey BrooksHas this episode been helpful to you? Let us know by leaving us a review on iTunes! Here's a guide to help you in leaving a review.Love to read while listening? Check out the transcription of this episode here.

This week's guest is Kayla Brint, natural light studio photographer with over 10 years of photography experience. In this episode, we are chatting all about mini sessions. Mini sessions for luxury photographers Benefits of mini sessions during economic downturns and to support work-life balance Pricing and services for your next round of mini sessions Lessons learned the hard way about mini sessions gone wrong Mini session marketing strategy And so much more! Connect with Kayla: https://www.kaylabrint.com/ Connect with TMA: Website | Membership | Courses: https://www.themotherhoodanthology.com Free Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/themotherhoodanthology  Our Instagram: https://instagram.com/themotherhoodanthology Connect with Kim: Site: https://kimbox.com  IG https://www.instagram.com/kimbox  Check out Kim's NEW Substack: https://kimbox.substack.com/p/beginnings-are-scary Connect with Allison  Site: https://www.lentillephotography.com/ IG: https://www.instagram.com/lentillephotography Connect with Jenny:  Site: https://www.jennycrugerphotography.com/ IG https://www.instagram.com/jennycrugerphotography

Send us a Text Message.[REBROADCAST from March 2023]Do you currently offer mini sessions in your photography business? Whether you're a mini session pro or you've launched them a few times without much success, today we're going to talk about if you should offer minis as a luxury photographer. We're also digging into common mistakes photographers make with mini sessions that make them less profitable and how to price and market your minis if you decide to offer them.This is a juicy one. Make sure you listen to the end!Episode Highlights:01:46 – Mini Sessions in a Nutshell04:53 – Should Luxury Photographers Offer Mini Sessions?07:10 – Mistakes that Luxury Photographers Make When Running Mini Sessions13:19 –Best Ways to Offer Mini SessionsPast Episode to Listen To:Episode 116: How to Easily Offer Santa Sessions (And Still Be a Specialist) with Lindsey BrooksHas this episode been helpful to you? Let us know by leaving us a review on iTunes! Here's a guide to help you in leaving a review.Love to read while listening? Check out the transcription of this episode here.

Are you struggling with your mini sessions, or even sessions in general? Then this is the place for you! On Today's Episode , let's take a look at what is going is going wrong when you plan and execute your mini session experiences.  I'll dive into mini session insights with Kayla Brint,  who joins me in a wonderful conversation as to how we can help you with flops in sessions. OUR PODCAST SPONSOR FOR THIS EPISODE:Save 50% off your first year of Flodesk here. Design email people love to get.The Social Media Marketing Playbook is your complete, step-by-step guide to optimizing your social media platforms & creating content that results in photography bookings. Grab it today.Are you loving the podcast? Take it deeper inside of my From Broke to Booked Blueprintprogram where I teach you how to build a profitable photography business in a saturated market.The Social Media Marketing Playbook is your complete, step-by-step guide to optimizing your social media platforms & creating content that results in photography bookings. Grab it today.Are you loving the podcast? Take it deeper inside of my From Broke to Booked Blueprint program where I teach you how to build a profitable photography business in a saturated market.

So often I hear from other photographers that their mini sessions were a failure. When asking them about it, they share they only promoted it a few times but because no one was booking, they stopped sharing about it. This mistake of essentially quitting before starting is something I commonly see with mini sessions. The only way to fill your mini sessions though is to talk about them! Many photographers get really in their head about marketing their mini sessions, but their mindset around it is so important, which is the topic of this episode. Any time you are struggling to market your mini sessions, it feels like a failure, or it feels like you're being annoying - come back to this episode! Here are the highlights: 00:44 The Power of Persistence in Marketing 02:23 Switching to a Launch Mindset for Mini Sessions 03:40 Understanding Audience Engagement and Frequency 05:08 Pricing Strategies for Mini Sessions 07:24 Handling Unsubscribes and Unfollows Positively 11:17 Adopting a Business Mindset for Success   CONNECT WITH MADDIE: Instagram Website   LINKS: Make 4-Figures with Mini Sessions Free Live Training on April 25 at 12pm CST: Sign up now! The Ultimate Personal Brand Session Shot List: 10 must-have images   FULL SHOW NOTES HERE

This short session was recorded at Reefstock Denver 2024. Steve and ICP-Analysis have been a great sponsor of the podcast for many years now! More here: http://icp-analysis.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of Take It Personally, Sean, owner of Unique Unicorn Photography, shares his transformative experience with the Make Four Figures with Mini Sessions training. Initially struggling to attract clients after deciding to fully commit to their photography business, Sean and his wife discovered mini sessions as a strategic entry point for client acquisition. The episode delves into how this approach not only built their portfolio rapidly but also significantly increased their client base by booking 30 families during a single weekend. Sean discusses the importance of marketing, branding consistency, and the value of community building. He reflects on how mini sessions became a key component for business growth, client satisfaction, and a means to efficiently showcase their work and get referrals. This story is a testament to the power of mini sessions in kickstarting and expanding a photography business. 00:12 The Journey to Unique Unicorn Photography 00:37 Discovering Mini Sessions: A Game Changer 04:01 The Impact of Training on Business Strategy 10:43 The Success Story: Booking 30 Families 18:12 Marketing Strategies and Building a Client Base 19:44 The Future of Mini Sessions 21:58 Wrapping Up: The Power of Mini Sessions   CONNECT WITH SEAN Instagram | Website   CONNECT WITH MADDIE: Instagram | Website   LINKS: Make 4-Figures with Mini Sessions Free Training on April 25, 2024 at 12pm CST: Sign up now! Brand Session Shot List: 10 must-have images   FULL SHOW NOTES here

In this episode, I share my successful strategy for conducting high-4-figure mini session days! Since starting mini sessions in 2020, I have seen significant revenue growth and average $7,000 on these mini session days. I'll be sharing an overview of the simple strategy I have in my business that allows me to accomplish this. Here are the main highlights from this episode: 00:52 My Mini Session Journey: From Start to Success 01:58 Strategic Insights: Transforming Mini Sessions into Brand Builders 03:29 Yearly Growth: A Deep Dive into My Mini Session Evolution 05:55 Maximizing Profits with Smart Mini Session Strategies 10:59 The Power of Limitations: Crafting the Perfect Mini Session Offer 15:24 Marketing Mastery: How to Promote Your Mini Sessions Effectively 16:14 Next Steps & Free Training   CONNECT WITH MADDIE: Instagram Website   LINKS: Make 4-Figures with Mini Sessions Free Live Training on April 25 at 12pm CST: Sign up now! The Ultimate Personal Brand Session Shot List: 10 must-have images   FULL SHOW NOTES HERE

Hey, Thriver! In this episode of the Hey, Thriver podcast Devin and Shay chat about some ideas for how you can make some QUICK CASH as a photographer. QUICK CASH: How photographers can make money fastHeyyy, Thriver -- if you've been thinking about attending our next in-person event but money is a littleeee tight then let's think about how to make it possible by earning some quick cash. SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE: https://www.heythriver.com/blog/quick-cash-how-photographers-can-make-money-fastJOIN US FOR OUR NEXT IN PERSON EVENT: https://www.heythriver.com/in-person-eventsSNAG THE ELOPE FRAMEWORK: https://www.heythriver.com/elope5 CLIPS CHALLENGE: https://www.heythriver.com/5clipsFOLLOW US ON IG: https://www.instagram.com/heythriverJoin us at THRIVE: Oregon Coast May 22nd!A styled elopement at a gorgeous mid-century cabin in Tillamook and ending on the coast, put on by two hybrid shooters who value diversity and support ALL love A long lunch for dumping cards + Education from SEO + blogging expert Danielle JohnsonTime to implement — edit video, blog, ask us anything!Headshots + content time before we hug goodbye!! Join us for the free class at https://www.heythriver.com/freevideoclass This free class has EVERYTHING you need to know about integrating video into your photo biz without buying new equipment, getting techy, or wasting time! YOU NEED THIS CLASS! It's time to use video to double your income in 2024Thanks for listening to the Hey, Thriver Podcast!! Don't forget to rate and review on your fave podcast platform -- it helps us get amazing guests and climb in the charts!

There are some exciting opportunities available for Kansas Farm Bureau members to get involved in their communities and strengthen their voice for agriculture. Mike and Ashley Beying join the Inside Ag podcast to share their experience in the Communications, Media and Spokesperson Training. This training is designed to develop the skills to craft key messages within agriculture. Learn more about CMS training by visiting Communications, Media and Spokesperson Training (kfb.org) Next, Brenden Wirth discusses Campaign School. This KFB program helps potential political candidates develop a solid foundation for campaign management. Learn more about Campaign School by visiting KFB's Campaign School and Mini Sessions

Hello, sunshines! If you have tried mini-sessions before and didn't feel successful, or if you have never tried mini-sessions (and had no plans to), I bet this episode with change your mind! Kayla shares tips and strategies on how to be successful in running mini-sessions. We talk about starting with the desired profit, offering a great client experience, having an effective marketing strategy that includes creating scarcity and urgency, and getting upfront full payments during booking. You are going to get SO much from this episode! DM me and tell me what your next mini-session is going to look like!  ☀️Extras!☀️ You are going to LOVE my posing freebie! Need a wedding photography contract? Use my code RACHELT10 on The Legal Paige to get access to any of their amazing pre-written contracts! Have you signed up for Aftershoot yet? Use my promo code: RACHELTRAXLER to try it FREE! Leave a review for a chance to be entered into this month's giveaway! ☀️Time stamps☀️ 00:00 Introduction 01:01 Communicating Value in Mini Sessions 04:03 The Importance of Running Your Own Numbers 08:13 The Profitability of Mini Sessions 10:20 Marketing Strategies for Mini Sessions 16:48 The Power of Scarcity and Urgency in Marketing 23:09 The Importance of Full Payment in Booking 23:51 The Potential of Upselling in Mini Sessions 24:54 Conclusion and Final Thoughts Sign up for Kayla's FREE Mini-Session training! Follow Kayla on Instagram!

Get an inside look into the incredibly valuable conversations happening live inside the TMA membership in today's episode. This is a recording of a live training that Allison led to supplement some new resources she has developed for our members all about planning profitable high volume mini session events. In this episode, we're discussing: - Strategies for hosting high-volume, profitable mini sessions - Balancing mini sessions with full photography sessions - Pricing mini sessions and optimizing the client experience - Event planning and sales, marketing, and promotional strategies - And so much more! Join Melissa Arlena's Picture Perfect Rankings SEO Program: https://melissaarlena.com/picture-perfect-rankings For our listeners, there's a little perk – 20% off on Shop products and courses with code "MOTHERHOOD"  https://www.melissaarlena.com  FB Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/raiseyourranking  IG - https://www.instagram.com/melissaarlena/ Join us at our upcoming retreat for photographers: https://themotherhoodanthology.com/the-motherhood-anthology-retreat/ Connect with TMA: Website | Membership | Courses: https://www.themotherhoodanthology.com Free Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/themotherhoodanthology  Our Instagram: https://instagram.com/themotherhoodanthology Connect with Kim: Site: https://kimbox.com  IG https://www.instagram.com/kimbox  Connect with Allison  Site: https://www.lentillephotography.com/ IG: https://www.instagram.com/lentillephotography Connect with Jenny:  Site: https://www.jennycrugerphotography.com/ IG https://www.instagram.com/jennycrugerphotography

What an exciting month it's been at the studio!

How can you get the most out of your mini sessions? In today's episode, I have the honor of introducing you to photographer, educator, and studio owner, Kayla Brint. Kayla is sharing her best tips for maximizing your mini sessions, building a luxury photography business in a small town, creating experiences that families will value, and building your dream studio. Today's episode is brought to you by The Green House, my resource garden for photographers! Let me help you AMPLIFY your heart online and in real life to turn bridesmaids into future brides through templates, workshops, and freebies!You can find the full show notes and transcript for this episode at quiannamarie.com/podcast!Connect With Kayla:Website InstagramHow To Price Your Mini-Session For Profit Mentioned In This Episode:The Green HouseRising Tide Society Episode 91: Connection Call with Cameron + TiaEpisode 89: Connection Call with Katelyn WorkmanEpisode 56: Creating A Legally Legit Business with Paige Griffith Connect with Quianna:Instagram Facebook TikTok Pinterest Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You're invited to the Plan To Profit Photographer Summit happening February 7th, 8th. & 9th. Grab your free ticket!Over the next few episodes, I will be spotlighting some of our speakers to give you a sneak peek of their topics. In today's episode, you will meet Kayla Brint. Kayla is a seasoned photographer,  studio owner, and dedicated photography educator."The biggest mistake is not offering mini sessions because you think they devalue your services. It actually makes my services even stronger." -Kayla Our Podcast Sponsor:Looking for a Photography Business Management Software? Iris Works is your one stop shop! Use Code BROOKE to save 20% off your first year's subscription. Loving this podcast? Come join us in the Photographer Community on Facebook.Looking to invest in REAL business strategy and coaching? Come check out my Blueprint program.

If you missed the other episodes with thoughtbot Incubator Program partcipants and founders Mike Rosenthal and Chris Cerrito of Goodz, you can listen to the first episode (https://podcast.thoughtbot.com/s3e2incubatorgoodz) and the second episode (https://podcast.thoughtbot.com/s3e4incubatorgoodz), and the third episode (https://podcast.thoughtbot.com/s3e6incubatorgoodz) to catch up! Lindsey Christensen and Jordyn Bonds catch up with the co-founders of Goodz, Chris Cerrito and Mike Rosenthal, where they share insights from their journey during the Incubator program, including the usefulness of the application process in aligning their vision and the challenges and benefits of user interviews and the importance of not overreacting to single user feedback and finding a balance in responding to diverse opinions. They reveal the varied reactions of users to Goodz's product, highlighting the different market segments interested in it. As the Incubator program nears its end for Goodz, Chris and Mike reflect on their achievements and future plans. They've made significant progress, such as setting up an e-commerce site and conducting successful user interviews. The co-founders discuss their excitement about the potential of their product and the validation they received from users. Mike mentions the importance of focusing on B2B sales and the possibility of upcoming events like South by Southwest and Record Store Day. Transcript: LINDSEY: Thanks for being here. My name's Lindsey. I head up marketing at thoughtbot. If you haven't joined one of these before, we are checking in with two of the founders who are going through the thoughtbot Startup Incubator to learn how it's going, what's new, what challenges they're hitting, and what they're learning along the way. If you're not familiar with thoughtbot, we're a product design and development consultancy, and we hope your team and your product become a success. And one way we do that is through our startup incubator. So, today, we are joined by our co-founders, Mike Rosenthal and Chris Cerrito, Co-Founders of the startup Goodz. And we also have another special guest today, Danny Kim, from the thoughtbot side, Senior Product Manager at thoughtbot. So, I think, to start off, we'll head over to the new face, the new voice that we've got with us today. Danny, tell us a little bit about your role at thoughtbot and, specifically, the incubator. DANNY: Yeah, sure. First of all, thanks for having me on, and thanks for letting me join in on all the fun. I'm one of the product managers at thoughtbot. I typically work for the Lift-Off team. We usually work with companies that are looking to, like, go into market with their first version MVP. They might have a product that exists and that they're already kind of doing well with, and they kind of want to jump into a new segment. We'll typically work with companies like that to kind of get them kicked off the ground. But it's been really awesome being part of the incubator program. It's my first time in helping with the market validation side. Definitely also, like, learning a lot from this experience [laughs] for myself. Coming at it specifically from a PM perspective, there's, like, so much variation usually in product management across the industry, depending on, like, what stage of the product that you're working in. And so, I'm definitely feeling my fair share of impostor syndrome here. But it's been really fun to stretch my brand and, like, approach problems from, like, a completely different perspective and also using different tools. But, you know, working with Mike and Chris makes it so much easier because they really make it feel like you're part of their team, and so that definitely goes a long way. LINDSEY: It just goes to show everyone gets impostor syndrome sometimes [laughter], even senior product managers at thoughtbot [laughter]. Thanks for that intro. It's, you know, the thoughtbot team learns along the way, too, you know, especially if usually you're focused on a different stage of product development. Mike, it's been only three weeks or a very long three weeks since last we checked in with you, kind of forever in startup time. So, I think the last time, we were just getting to know you two. And you were walking us through the concept, this merging of the digital and physical world of music, and how we interact with music keepsakes or merchandise. How's my pitch? MIKE: Good. Great. You're killing it. [laughter] LINDSEY: And has anything major changed to that concept in the last three weeks? MIKE: No. I mean, I can't believe it's only been three weeks. It feels like it's been a long time since we last talked. It's been an intense three weeks, for sure. No, it's been going really well. I mean, we launched all sorts of stuff. I'm trying to think of anything that's sort of fundamentally changed in terms of the plan itself or kind of our, yeah, what we've been working on. And I think we've pretty much stayed the course to sort of get to where we are now. But it's been really intensive. I think also having sort of Thanksgiving in there, and we were kind of pushing to get something live right before the Thanksgiving break. And so, that week just felt, I mean, I was just dead by, you know, like, Thursday of Thanksgiving. I think we all were. So, it's been intense, I would say, is the short answer. And I'm happy, yeah, to get into kind of where things are at. But big picture, it's been an intense three weeks. LINDSEY: That's cool. And when we talked, you were, you know, definitely getting into research and user interviews. Have those influenced any, you know, changes along the way in the plan? MIKE: Yeah. They've been really helpful. You know, we'd never really done that before in any of the sort of past projects that we've worked on together. And so, I think just being able to, you know, read through some of those scripts and then sit through some of the interviews and just kind of hearing people's honest assessment of some things has been really interesting. I'm trying to think if it's materially affected anything. I guess, you know, at first, we were, like, we kind of had some assumptions around, okay, let's try to find, like...adult gift-givers sounds like the wrong thing, adults who give gifts as, like, a persona. The idea that, like, you know, maybe you gift your siblings gifts, and then maybe this could be a good gift idea. And I think, you know, we had a hard time kind of finding people to talk in an interesting way about that. And I think we've kind of realized it's kind of a hard persona to kind of chop up and talk about, right, Chris? I don't know [crosstalk 04:55] CHRIS: Well, it also seemed to, from my understanding of it, it seemed to, like, genuinely stress out the people who were being interviewed... MIKE: [laughs] CHRIS: Because it's kind of about a stressful topic [inaudible 05:03], you know, and, like, especially -- LINDSEY: Why? [laughs] CHRIS: Well, I think, I don't know, now I'm making assumptions. Maybe because we're close to the holiday season, and that's a topic in the back of everybody's mind. But yeah, Danny, would you disagree with that? Those folks, from what we heard, seemed like they were the most difficult to kind of extract answers from. But then, if the subject changed and we treated them as a different persona, several of those interviews proved to be quite fruitful. So, it's just really interesting. DANNY: Yeah. It really started, like, you kind of try to get some answers out of people, and there's, like, some level of people trying to please you to some extent. That's just, like, naturally, how it starts. And you just, like, keep trying to drill into the answers. And you just keep asking people like, "So, what kind of gifts do you give?" And they're just like, "Oh my goodness, like, I haven't thought about buying gifts for my sister in [laughs], like, you know, in forever. And now, like [laughs], I don't know where to go." And they get, like, pretty stressed out about it. But then we just kind of started shifting into like, "All right, cool, never mind about that. Like, do you like listening to music?" And they're like, "Yes." And then it just kind of explodes from there. And they're like, "This last concert that I went to..." and all of this stuff. And it was much more fruitful kind of leaning more towards that, actually, yeah. LINDSEY: That's fascinating. I guess that speaks to, especially at this stage and the speed and the amount of interviews you're doing, the need for being, like, really agile in those interviews, and then, like, really quickly applying what you're learning to making the next one even more valuable. MIKE: Yeah. And I think, you know, like, we launched just a little sort of website experiment or, like, an e-commerce experiment right before Thanksgiving. And I think now, you know, we're able to sort of take some of those learnings from those interviews and apply them to both sort of our ad copy itself but also just different landing pages in different language on the different kind of versions of the site and see if we can find some resonance with some of these audience groups. So, it's been interesting. LINDSEY: Are you still trying to figure out who that early adopter audience is, who that niche persona is? MIKE: I think we -- CHRIS: Yes, we are. I think we have a good idea of who it is. And I think right now we're just trying to figure out really how to reach those people. That, I think, is the biggest challenge right now for us. MIKE: Yeah. With the e-commerce experiment it was sort of a very specific niche thing that is a little bit adjacent to what I think we want to be doing longer term with Goodz. And so, it's weird. It's like, we're in a place we're like, oh, we really want to find the people that want this thing. But also, this thing isn't necessarily the thing that we think we're going to make longer term, so let's not worry too hard about finding them. You know what I mean? It's been an interesting sort of back and forth with that. CHRIS: From the interviews that we conducted, you know, we identified three key personas. Most of them have come up, but I'll just relist them. There's the sibling gift giver. There was the merch buyers; these are people who go to concerts and buy merchandise, you know, T-shirts, albums, records, things along those lines to support the artists that they love. And then the final one that was identified we gave the title of the 'Proud Playlister'. And these are people who are really into their digital media platforms, love making playlists, and love sharing those playlists with their friends. And that, I would say, the proud playlister is really the one that we have focused on in terms of the storefront that we launched, like, the product is pretty much specifically for them. But the lessons that we're learning while making this product and trying to get this into the hands of the proud playlisters will feed into kind of the merch buyers. MIKE: Yeah. And I think that, you know, it's funny, like, this week is kind of a poignant week for this, right? Because it's the week that Spotify Wrapped launched, right? So, it's like, in the course of any given year, it's probably, like, the one week of the year that lots and lots and lots of people are thinking about playlists all of a sudden, so trying a little bit to see if we can ride that wave or just kind of dovetail with that a bit, too. LINDSEY: Absolutely. And do you want to give just, like, the really quick reminder of what the product experience is like? MIKE: Oh yeah [laughs], good call. CHRIS: This is a prototype of it. It's called the Goodz Mixtape. Basically, the idea is that you purchase one of these from us. You give us a playlist URL. We program that URL onto the NFC chip that's embedded in the Good itself. And then when you scan this Good, that playlist will come up. So, it's a really great way of you make a playlist for somebody, and you want to gift it to them; this is a great way to do that. You have a special playlist, maybe between you and a friend or you and a partner. This is a good way to commemorate that playlist, turn it into a physical thing, give that digital file value and presence in the physical world. LINDSEY: Great. Okay, so you casually mentioned this launch of an e-commerce store that happened last week. MIKE: It didn't feel casual. LINDSEY: Yeah. Why [laughter]...[inaudible 09:45] real casual. Why did you launch it? How's it going? MIKE: I don't know. Why did we launch it? I mean, well, we wanted to be able to test some assumptions. I think, you know, we wanted to get the brand out there a little bit, get our website out there, kind of introduce the concept. You know, this is a very...not that we've invented this product category, but it is a pretty obscure product category, right? And so, there's a lot of sort of consumer education that I think that has to go on for people to wrap their heads around this and why they'd want this. So, I think we wanted to start that process a little bit correctly, sort of in advance of a larger launch next year, and see if we could find some early community around this. You know, if we can find those core people who just absolutely love this, and connect with it, and go wild around it, then those are the people that we're going to be able to get a ton of information from and build for that persona, right? It's like, cool, these are the people who love this. Let's build more for them and go find other people like this. So, I think, for us, it was that. And then, honestly, it was also just, you know, let's test our manufacturing and fulfillment and logistics capabilities, right? I mean, this is...as much as we are a B2B, you know, SaaS platform or that's what we envision the future of Goodz being, there is a physical component of this. And, you know, we do have that part basically done at this point. But we just, you know, what is it like to order 1,000 of these? What is it like to put these in the mail to people and, you know, actually take orders? And just some of that processing because we do envision a more wholesale future where we're doing, you know, thousands or tens of thousands of this at a time. And so, I think we just want to button up and do some dry runs before we get to those kinds of numbers. CHRIS: I think it also it's important to remember that we are talking in startup time. And while this last week seems like an eternity, it's been a week [laughs] that we've had this in place. So, we're just starting to learn these things, and we plan on continuing to do so. MIKE: Yeah. But I think we thought that getting a website up would be a good way to just start kind of testing everything more. LINDSEY: Great. Danny, what went into deciding what would be in this first version of the site and the e-commerce offering? DANNY: I mean, a lot of it was kind of mostly driven by Chris and Mike. They kind of had a vision and an idea of what they wanted to sell. Obviously, from the user interviews, we were starting to hone in a little bit more and, like, we had some assumptions going into it. I think we ultimately did kind of feel like, yeah, I think, like, the playlisters seem to be, like, the target market. But just hearing it more and hearing more excitement from them was definitely just kind of like, yeah, I think we can double down on this piece. But, ultimately, like, in terms of launching the e-commerce platform, and the storefront, and the website, like, just literally looking at the user journey and being like, how does a user get from getting onto a site, like, as soon as they land there to, like, finishing a purchase? And what points do they need? What are the key things that they need to think through and typically will run into? And a lot of it is just kind of reflecting on our own personal buyer behavior. And, also, as we were getting closer to the launch, starting to work through some of those assumptions about buyer behavior. As we got there, we obviously had some prototypes. We had some screenshots that we were already working with. Like, the design team was already starting to build out some of the site. And so, we would just kind of show it to them, show it to our users, and just be like, hey, like, how do you expect to purchase this? Like, what's the next step that you expect to take? And we'd just kind of, like, continue to iterate on that piece. And so... LINDSEY: Okay. So you were, before launching, even showing some of those mockups and starting to incorporate them in the user interviews. DANNY: Yeah, yeah. I mean, we tried to get it in there in front of them as early as possible, partially because, like, at some point in the user interviews, like, you're mostly just trying to first understand, like, who are our target customers? Who are these people? And we have an assumption of or an idea of who we think they are. But really, like, once you start talking to people, you kind of are, like, okay, like, this thing that I thought maybe it wasn't so accurate, or, like, the way that they're kind of talking about these products doesn't 100% match what I originally walked into this, you know, experiment with. And so, we, like, start to hone in on that. But after a certain point, you kind of get that idea and now you're just like, okay, you seem to be, like, the right person to talk to. And so, if I were to show you this thing, do you get it, right? Like, do you understand what's happening? Like, how to use this thing, what this product even does. And then also, like, does the checkout experience feel intuitive for you? Is it as simple as, like, I just want to buy a T-shirt? So, like, I'm just going to go by the T-shirt, pick a size, and, you know, move on with my life. Can we make it as seamless as that? LINDSEY: And so, you mentioned it's only been a week since it's been live. Have you been able to learn anything from it yet? And how are you trying to drive people to it today? MIKE: Yeah, I think we learned that sales is hard [laughs] and slow, and it takes some time. But it's good, and we're learning a lot. I mean, it's been a while since I've really dug deep in, like, the analytics and marketing kind of metrics. And so, we've got all the Google Tag Manager stuff, you know, hooked up and just, you know, connecting with just exploring, honestly, like the TikTok advertising platform, and the YouTube Pre-Rolls, and Shorts. And, like, a lot of stuff that I actually, since the last time I was heavily involved in this stuff, is just totally new and different. And so, it's been super interesting to see the funnel and sort of see where people are getting in the site, where people are dropping off. You know, we had an interesting conversation in our thoughtbot sync yesterday or the day before, where we were seeing how, you know, we're getting lots of people to the front page and, actually, a good number of people to the product page, and, actually, like, you know, not the worst number of people to the cart. But then you were seeing really high cart abandonment rates. And then, you know, when you start Googling, and you're like, oh, actually, everybody sees very high cart abandonment rates; that's just a thing. But we were seeing, like, the people were viewing their cart seven or eight times, and they were on there sort of five times as long as they were on any other page. And it's this problem that I think Danny is talking about where, you know, we need to actually get a playlist URL. This gets into the minutiae of what we're building, but basically like, we need to get them to give us a playlist URL in order to check out, right? And so, you sort of have to, like, put yourself back in the mind of someone who's scrolling on Instagram, and they see this as an ad, and they click it, and they're like, oh, that thing was cool. Sure, I will buy one of those. And then it's like, no, actually, you need to, you know, leave this, go into a different app, find a play...like, it suddenly just puts a lot of the mental strain. But it's a lot. It's a cognitive load, greater than, as you said, just buying a T-shirt and telling what size you want. So, thinking through ways to really trim that down, shore up the amount of time people are spending on a cart. All that stuff has been fascinating. And then just, like, the different demographic kind of work that we're using, all the social ads platforms to kind of identify has been really interesting. It's still early. But, actually, like, Chris and I were just noticing...we were just talking right before this call. Like, we're actually starting to get, just in the last 12 hours, a bunch more, a bunch, but more people signing up to our email newsletter, probably in the last 12 hours that we have in the whole of last week. Yeah, I don't know, just even that sort of learning, it's like, oh, do people just need time with a thing, or they come back and they think about it? CHRIS: Yeah. Could these people be working on their playlists? That's a question that I have. MIKE: [chuckles] Yeah, me too. CHRIS: It's like, you know, I'm making a playlist to drop into this product. It's really interesting. And I think it gives insight to kind of, you know, how personal this product could be, that this is something that takes effort on the part of the consumer because they're making something to give or to keep for themselves, which is, I think, really interesting but definitely hard, too. DANNY: Yeah. And I also want to also clarify, like, Chris just kind of said it, like, especially for viewers and listeners, like, that's something that we've been hearing a lot from user interviews, too, right? Like, the language that they're using is, like, this is a thing that I care about. Like it's a representation of who I am. It's a representation of, like, the relationship that I have with this person that I'm going to be giving, you know, this gift to or this playlist to, specifically, like, people who feel, like, really passionate about these things. And, I mean, like, I did, too. Like, when I was first trying to, like, date, my wife, like, I spent, like, hours, hours trying to pick the coolest songs that I thought, you know, were like, oh, like, she's going to think I'm so cool because, like, I listen to these, like, super low-key indie rock bands, and, like, you know, so many more hours than she probably spent listening to it. But that's [laughs] kind of, like, honestly, what we heard a lot in a lot of these interviews, so... LINDSEY: Yeah, same. No, totally resonates. And I also went to the site this week, and I was like, oh damn, this is cool. Like, and immediately it was like, oh, you know, I've got these three, you know, music friends that we go to shows together. I'm like, oh, this would be so cool to get them, you know, playlists of, like, music we've seen together. So, you might see me in the cart. I won't abandon it. MIKE: Please. I would love that. CHRIS: Don't think about it too long if you could -- [laughter]. LINDSEY: I won't. I won't. CHRIS: I mean, I would say I'm really excited about having the site not only as a vehicle for selling some of these things but also as a vehicle for just honing our message. It's like another tool that we have in our arsenal. During the user interviews themselves, we were talking in abstract terms, and now we have something concrete that we can bounce off people, which is, I think, going to be a huge boon to our toolset as we continue to refine and define this product. MIKE: Yeah, that's a good point. LINDSEY: Yeah. You mentioned that they're signing up for, like, email updates. Do you have something you're sending out? Or are you kind of just creating a list? Totally fine, just building a list. MIKE: [laughs] No. CHRIS: It's a picture of Mike and I giving a big thumbs up. That's, yeah. [laughter] MIKE: No. But maybe...that was the thing; I was like, oh great, they're signing up. And I was like, gosh, they're signing up. Okay [laughter], now we got to write something. But we will. LINDSEY: Tips to making your playlist [crosstalk 19:11] playing your playlist -- MIKE: Yeah [crosstalk 19:13]. CHRIS: Right. And then also...tips to making your playlists. Also, we're advancing on the collectible side of things, too. We are, hopefully, going to have two pilot programs in place, one with a major label and one with a major artist. And we're really excited about that. LINDSEY: Okay. That's cool. I assume you can't tell us very much. What can you tell us? MIKE: Yeah. We won't mention names [chuckles] in case it just goes away, as these things sometimes do. But yeah, there's a great band who's super excited about these, been around for a long time, some good name recognition, and a very loyal fan base. They want to do sort of a collection of these. I think maybe we showed the little...I can't remember if we showed the little crates that we make or not, but basically, [inaudible 19:52] LINDSEY: The last time, yeah. MIKE: So, they want to sell online a package that's, you know, five or six Goodz in a crate, which I think will be cool and a great sort of sales experiment. And then there's a couple of artists that we're going to do an experiment with that's through their label that's more about tour...basically, giving things away on tour. So, they're going to do some giveaway fan club street team-style experiments with some of these on the road. So, first, it's ideal, provided both those things happen, because we definitely want to be exploring on the road and online stuff. And so, this kind of lets us do both at once and get some real learnings as to kind of how people...because we still don't know. We haven't really put these in people's hands yet. And it's just, like, are people scanning these a lot? Are they not? Is this sort of an object that's sitting on their shelf? Is it...yeah, it's just, like, there's so much we're going to learn once we get these into people's hands. LINDSEY: Do you have the infrastructure to sort of see how many times the cards are scanned? CHRIS: Mm-hmm. Yep, we do. MIKE: Yeah. So, we can see how many times each one is scanned, where they're scanned, that sort of thing. CHRIS: Kind of our next step, and something we were just talking about today with the thoughtbot team, is building out kind of what the backend will be for this, both for users and also for labels and artists. That it will allow them to go in and post updates to the Goodz, to allow them to use these for promotion as people, you know, scan into them to give them links to other sites related to the artists that they might be interested in before they move on to the actual musical playlist. So, that's kind of the next step for us. And knowing how users use these collectibles, both the kind of consumer Good and the artist collectibles that we were just talking about, will help inform how we build that platform. LINDSEY: Very cool. And right now, the online store itself that's built in Shopify? MIKE: Yeah. The homepage is Webflow that Kevin from the thoughtbot team really spearheaded in building for us. And then, yeah, the e-commerce is Shopify. LINDSEY: Y'all have been busy. MIKE: [laughs] LINDSEY: Is there anything else maybe that I haven't asked about yet that we should touch on in terms of updates or things going on with the product? MIKE: I don't know. I don't think so. I think, like Chris said, I mean, we're just...like, now that the site has kind of stood up and we're really switched over to kind of marketing and advertising on that, definitely digging into the backend of this kind of SaaS platform that's going to probably be a big focus for the rest of the, you know, the program, to be honest. Yeah, just some other things we can do on the next front that could eventually build into the backend that I think can be interesting. No, I guess [laughs] the short answer is no, nothing, like, substantial. Those are the big [crosstalk 22:26] LINDSEY: Yeah. Well, that was my next question, too, which is kind of like, what's next, or what's the next chunk of work? So, it's obviously lots more optimization and learning on the e-commerce platform, and then this other mega area, which is, you know, what does this look like as a SaaS solution? What's the vision? But also, where do we start? Which I'm sure, Danny, is a lot of work that you specialize in as far as, like, scoping how to approach these kinds of projects. DANNY: Yeah. And it's interesting because, I mean, we were just talking about this today. Like, part of it is, like, we can, like, really dig into, like, the e-commerce site and, like, really nailing it down to get it to the place where it's like, we're driving tons more traffic and also getting as low of a, like, cart abandonment rate as possible, right? But also, considering the fact that this is in the future, like, large-scale vision. And there's, like, also, like, we're starting to, I think, now iron out a lot of those, like, milestones where we're kind of like, okay, like, we got, like, a short-term vision, which is, like, the e-commerce site. We got a mid-term vision and a potential long-term vision. How do we validate this long-term vision while also still like, keeping this short-term vision moving forward? And, like, this mid-term vision is also going to, like, help potentially, either, like, steer us towards that long-term or maybe even, like, pivot us, like, into a completely different direction. So, like, where do you put your card, right? Like, how much energy and time do we put into, like, each of these areas? And that's kind of, like, the interesting part of this is starting to talk through that, starting to kind of prioritize, like, how we can maximize on our effort, like, our development and design effort so that things just kind of line up more naturally and organically for our future visioning, so... MIKE: Yeah. A lot of different things to juggle. I saw there was a question. Somebody asked what the URL is, but I don't seem to be able to [crosstalk 24:10]. LINDSEY: The same question as me. We got to drop the link for this thing. MIKE: Yeah, getthegoodz.com. CHRIS: That's G-O-O-D-Z. LINDSEY: Get in there, folks MIKE: Yeah, get [crosstalk 24:23]. LINDSEY: And let us know how it goes. MIKE: Yeah, please [laughs]. Any bugs? Let us know. Yeah. I think that those...yeah, I mean, it's a good point, Danny, in terms of juggling kind of the near-term and longer-term stuff. You know, it's a good kind of reminder our big focus, you know, in the new year is going to be fundraising, right? We're already talking to some investors and things like that. So, it's like, okay, yes, as you said, we could tweak the cart. We could tweak the e-commerce. Or, like, can we paint the big picture of what the longer-term version of this company is going to be in a way that makes it compelling for investment to come in so that there can be a long-term version of this company? And then we can build those things. So yeah, it's definitely a balance between the two. LINDSEY: Oh, also, just casual fundraising as well. [crosstalk 25:06] MIKE: Yeah, yeah. LINDSEY: [laughs] MIKE: But it's hard. It's like, you wake up in the morning. It's like, do I want to, like, write cold emails to investors? Or do I want to, like, look at Google Analytics and, like, tweak ad copy? That's actually more fun. So, yes. LINDSEY: Yeah, life of the founder, for sure. All right. So, that's getthegoodz (Goodz with a z) .com. Check it out. We'll tune in and see what happens with the e-commerce site, what happens with the SaaS planning the next time that we check in. But Chris, Mike, Danny, thank you so much for joining today and sharing what's been going on over the last few weeks: the good, the bad, the challenge, the cart abandonment. And, you know, best of luck to you over the next few weeks, and we'll be sure to check in and see how it's going. AD: Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at: tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions. Transcript:  LINDSEY: Thank you to our viewers and listeners. We are catching up once again with one of the startups going through the thoughtbot Incubator. My name is Lindsey Christensen. I'm joined today by Jordyn Bonds, who heads up the thoughtbot incubator, as well as our Co-Founders of Goodz, Chris Cerrito and Mike Rosenthal. Welcome, everybody. MIKE: Thanks, Lindsey. LINDSEY: Before we get started, before we put Chris and Mike back in the hot seat, at the top here, Jordyn, we have a special announcement for our viewers and listeners. JORDYN: Application window is open for session 1 of 2024, folks. You can go to thoughtbot.com/incubator and apply. And Chris and Mike can tell you how easy or hard applying was. MIKE: It was easy. It was totally easy. It's a very straightforward process. CHRIS: Yeah, it was way more straightforward than a lot of applications that we've dealt with in the past, for sure. JORDYN: Ha-ha. And if you've got a business idea that involves software but you haven't gotten anything out there yet, come talk to us. We will help you make sure that it's a good idea and that there are people who might buy it, and maybe get you even a little further than that. MIKE: We actually have a friend who's considering applying. I'll tell him applications are open. He's worried his idea is not big enough to actually be a business idea, so we'll see. CHRIS: Even the process of doing the application was really helpful for us because it helped us get aligned on exactly what we were doing, yeah. JORDYN: I love that. And I found that to be true when I was a founder applying to some of these things, in particular, applying for an SBIR grant was one of the most challenging things that we did, but it was so productive. I was so annoyed by it at the time, and then I cribbed from that thing. It actually sort of forced us to make a business plan [laughs], and then, basically, we ran it, and it was great [laughs]. CHRIS: Yeah. I think that was, for us, that was our point where we were like, "Is this idea fleshed out enough to move forward?" And we were like, "Yes, it is. Let's go. Let's do this." JORDYN: So, use the application as a forcing function, everybody. It will help you clarify your thinking. LINDSEY: Yeah. Jordyn, what would you say to Mike's friend who's questioning if their idea is big enough? How do you respond to that sentiment? JORDYN: That is a fascinating sentiment because I feel like so much more often, I am trying to help founders with the opposite problem where they think this thing is so big that they are not thinking about what step 1 is going to look like. They're just, like, in 10 years, we're going to be the next Amazon, and I'm like, "Maybe [laughter]. Let me help you figure out how to get to that giant vision." So, I don't come across the "Is this big enough to be a business?" question as often. And, I don't know, what would I say? I guess I need the details. LINDSEY: It could be a perfect fit MIKE: It could be. JORDYN: It could be a perfect fit. LINDSEY: In a way, that's what you're answering, right? MIKE: Right. LINDSEY: In some of this work. MIKE: That is true. So, yeah, you guys would certainly...just thinking through the process we've gone through the last two months, it would definitely help them flesh that out. LINDSEY: Which is a great segue. MIKE: Great segue. LINDSEY: Chris and Mike, we're actually coming up to the end of your incubator time. CHRIS: It's so sad. LINDSEY: Can you believe it? MIKE: It's gone by really fast. I mean, eight weeks is not a long time, but it has gone by very, very fast. CHRIS: It felt like a very long time in the middle of it. MIKE: [laughs] CHRIS: But now that it's over, it feels like a blink that it's coming to a close. MIKE: I don't know. It's funny. I think we had some note in our retro today that was like, maybe the very end of the year is not the best time to do an accelerator just because you have, like, the holidays kind of jumping in here in the end. So, that might have helped make it feel like a... I feel like the end of the year always feels like a rush anyway. So, I think just life gets a little bit busier this time of year, too, but yeah. CHRIS: Yeah, my gingerbread man decorating game is, like, really down this season because we've been so busy. Tragic. LINDSEY: Chris, can you remind our viewers and listeners who might not be familiar what was the idea that you and Mike have been exploring with the incubator or, like, what did you come in with? CHRIS: So, with Goodz, what we're trying to do is make little, physical collectibles objects that connect back to the digital content that a user loves. The idea being that today, we are awash in these digital files, links, so many things on our desktops, on our phones, on our devices, and it's really hard to tell which part of those are really, really important to us. So, by giving them a presence in the physical world, that denotes that's something that's really important, worth keeping, worth sharing, and showing off to your friends and family. And to start this off, mostly because Mike and I are both kind of music nerds, we're starting off with a music focus, but at some point, we're hoping to move into other realms, too. LINDSEY: And a lot of the incubator, as repeat listeners will know, is focused on really kind of evolving user interviews all the way through and narrowing in on, you know, a core audience, a core market. Mike, how has that evolution been? I think the last time we chatted was around three weeks ago. What has the latest iteration of user interviews looked like in terms of the people you're talking to and even what you're asking them? MIKE: It's been a really fascinating process. I mean, I'm trying to think of where we were exactly the last time we talked to you, but I think we'd probably just launched the e-commerce site that we had been experimenting with putting up. LINDSEY: Yeah, exactly. MIKE: And so, and we really then started cranking on user interviews kind of once that was live. And so, moving away from the conceptual and more into like, "Okay, share your screen. Here's the link. Like, tell me what you think is going on here," and really sort of getting users who had never, you know, never heard our pitch, never been involved with us to sort of try to wrap their heads around what we are and what we're doing just based on that website and trying to sort of make iterative changes based on that. You know, for me, because I had not done user interviews very much in the past, like, it's very tempting, like, you get sort of 1 note from 1 person in 1 interview, and you're like, oh, we need to change this word. That word didn't make any sense to them, or this thing needs to be blue instead of pink. I think, for me, it was like, all right, how do we kind of synthesize this data in a responsible way? And it emerged naturally, which, I mean, Jordyn and all thoughtbot folks said that it would, but you sort of started hearing the same things again and again. And we never really got to a place where, like, you heard the exact same things from everyone. But there were enough buckets, I feel like, where we're like, okay, like, this part really isn't making that much sense to people, or, like, we do really need to, you know, structure this differently to convey. So, it was a bunch of that kind of work over the last three weeks or so and sort of just getting a sense of like, are we conveying our message? It's hard. I mean, it's a new, like, we're not the only people making physical products with NFC chips in them, but it is not the most common, like, product. Like, it is kind of a new category out there. And so, really trying to understand just right off the bat, do people get it? And you get wildly different answers [laughs] as to whether they get it or they don't, which has been fascinating, too. JORDYN: Yeah. [crosstalk 7:12] LINDSEY: Chris or Jordyn, anything to add there? JORDYN: Yeah. You get the best, like, bootcamp in the don't overreact to a single user interview experience in some ways because we [laughs]...it would literally be like, interview in the morning someone says this thing. Interview in the afternoon, someone says the exact opposite thing [laughter]. And you're like, okay [laughs], like, which one of these things are we going to respond to, if either of them? CHRIS: Yeah. It's hard. As somebody with, like, a strong desire to please, it's hard to reign yourself in and want to change things immediately, but it definitely makes sense to do so in the long run. MIKE: But yeah, but, I mean, like I said, I do feel like it kind of came down to buckets. It's like, okay, you're that. I can, like, categorize you with all those other people and you with all those other people. And yeah, I hear you. I'm like, yeah, it's tempting to want to please them all. But I think with this one, we're fighting hard to be like...or we sort of have a philosophy that this product is emphatically not for everyone because, at the end of the day, you get a lot of people who are like, "Wait, you're just putting a link to a streaming playlist on a physical object? Why don't I just text someone the link?" And sometimes that breaks down by age group, like, 18-year-olds being like, "What are you talking about, old man? LINDSEY: [laughs] MIKE: Like, why the hell would I do that? It makes no sense." But it sort of skews all over the age ranges. But then there'll be other people who are 18 or 20 years old who are like, "Wow, I never had cassettes when I was growing up," or "I never got to make, you know, mixtapes or CD-Rs for people." And like, you know, so it's, yeah, it's about finding the people who are the early adopters. As Jordyn has said a lot, it's like, we need to find those early adopters and, like, make them love us, and then other people will come later. CHRIS: I mean, some of the most gratifying moments, I think, are there's been some interviews where people have been so excited that after the interview, they've gone and purchased our products, which is just, like, the coolest feeling ever. LINDSEY: Wow. MIKE: Yeah, it's pretty cool. LINDSEY: Are you open to sharing a little bit more about what those buckets or what those segments look like? CHRIS: I mean, I think there's folks who outright just get it almost immediately, and I think those people tend to be hardcore music collectors, hardcore music fans, Jordyn and Mike, please feel free to jump in if you disagree with any of this. They just get it right off the bat. Then I think there's, in my experience, there's another bucket of people who are a little more hesitant, and maybe they wouldn't buy it, but they seemed really excited about the idea of getting one as a gift, which is really interesting. They're like, "I don't know if I'd buy this, but I'd really like to have one." And then there is another segment, like, which Mike just mentioned, of folks who just don't see the value in this whatsoever, which is totally fair. MIKE: Yeah, totally. I think it's also...I see it almost as, like, a matrix. There's, like, desirability, and, like, technical understanding because people were like, "I technically understand what this is, and I do not want it in my life." Or like, "I get what this is and, oh my God, I have to have that," or like, "I don't really understand what you're talking about, but, man, I love physical stuff. Like, sure I want..." you know, it's like, it goes across those two planes, I think. JORDYN: I will say that it, I think you alluded to this before, Mike, but, like, we're going to run a whole analysis of...because we did a ton of interviews, and we haven't actually done that, like, sort of data-driven thing of like, are there trends in the demographics somewhere that we're not getting? Because the pattern has not been there. Like, someone will talk to an 18-year-old, you know, at 1:00 p.m. who is just, like, "Why on earth would I ever want this?" And then I, like, you know, will talk to a 21-year-old who is like, "I love this." And it's like, why? Like, this is the answer. The thing we're trying to get out now is, like, what is the difference between those two people? It's not a demographic thing that we can see from the outside, so what is it instead? But with consumer stuff like this, often, you don't necessarily...you don't need that in such great detail when you're starting. You just kind of, like, throw it out there and see who grabs it, and then you start to build sort of cohorts around that. And that is kind of what these interviews have shown us is that there are people who will grab it, and that was part of what we were trying to validate. Are there people who Mike and Chris do not know personally who will, like, get this and be psyched about it immediately? And that is, you know, check unequivocally true. Like Chris said, there are people that we were, you know, that we had recruited on this user interviews platform [chuckles] who then just turned around and bought the product because they were so psyched about it. One of the guys I interviewed was like, "Can I invest in your company right now?" Like, during the interview, and I was like, "Maybe?" [laughs] CHRIS: There was, like, another person who wanted to work for us immediately... JORDYN: Yes, great. CHRIS: Which was really interesting and kind of awesome. JORDYN: Yeah, they're like, "Are you hiring?" You're just like, okay. So, it's validating that there are people all over that spectrum. Like, where those trends lie, though, which is, I think, what you were asking, Lindsey, not as straightforward and in a fascinating way. So, we still have a little more, like, number crunching to do on that, and we may have an answer for you later. LINDSEY: That's exciting. Exactly. I'm curious: what are the connecting dots between the folks who are really into it, and how might that impact how you approach the business? MIKE: Yeah, it's hard. It's definitely going to be a niche to start. And so, we got to figure out kind of got to crack the code on how we find those people. LINDSEY: And, Mike, I think you had also mentioned last time that, you know, you or both of you have a network kind of in the music industry, and you've been floating the idea past some people there. Have you been having more of those conversations over the last few weeks, too? MIKE: We have, yeah. Well, so yeah, we've had a couple more just kind of straight-up pitch calls versus like, "Hey, there's this cool thing we're doing," and having those people be like, "Cool. Let's do a pilot." And so, they're ordering, you know, 500 or 1,000 units at a time, which is rad. LINDSEY: Whoa. MIKE: For the first...yeah. LINDSEY: Okay, very cool. MIKE: Yeah. The first two or three of those should happen in January or maybe early February, but yeah, those are done and in production and arriving soon. So, that's really exciting with some cool bands. We won't say the names in case it doesn't [laughs] work out, but it does look like it's going to work out. LINDSEY: And so, it's specific bands that are creating merch for their fans. MIKE: Yeah, yeah. So, we're working with one artist manager on a band that he manages, and then we're working with a record label. And they're going to try with a couple of smaller artists. And so, yeah, it's actually really good for us. One is going to be straight-up sales, most likely, and it's, like, selling these things. And the other ones will be given away as kind of promo items on tour artists, which is also a really interesting use case for us, too, that we're excited about and using them as a way to sort of get email addresses and, like, fans engaged and stuff, so... And then yeah, then I had another conversation, and they want to talk about doing some pilots. So far, like, that side of things is going great. We're sort of 3 for 4 in terms of initial calls leading to pilots right off the bat, which is kind of unheard of from [laughs] my experience. LINDSEY: Yeah, I'd say so. No, a lot of very good signals. MIKE: Really good signals. But then we were able to turn some of those into user interview conversations, actually, as well over the course of the last couple of weeks, which has been really helpful, like, talking to manager and label-type people about what they might want out of a software product that is associated with this because we're not just thinking about making physical products but sort of coupling that with an online toolset. And that part, we haven't gotten as far along as we did with the direct-to-consumer e-commerce, but it's been fascinating. LINDSEY: So, what has been happening with the online shop? As you noted the last time we talked, it was just a baby less than a week-old Shopify site getting, you know, some first hits of people going around maybe putting things in their basket. I'm sure a lot has happened over the last few weeks. What kind of work, what kind of insights have you seen around the site? CHRIS: We've been, I mean, we've been selling stuff at a slow but steady pace. It's been great because it's enough to, you know, because our product really straddles the line between physical and digital; there's a lot of physical aspects to this that we need to figure out and kind of the level of orders that we've been getting have been really...it's, like, the perfect number to think about fulfillment issues, things like what kind of package does this go in? How do we mail this out? Things along those lines, just very basic, practical questions that needed to be answered. But yeah, it's been great. We actually, I mean, we hit our goal for the amount of these that we wanted to get in people's hands before Christmas, which is pretty awesome. And we continue now with the lessons learned. I think our plan is to try and make a push for Valentine's Day because these seem like they would be a great Valentine's Day present: make a playlist; share it with your loved one; share it with a friend; share it with somebody you don't like at all. Who knows? LINDSEY: [laughs] CHRIS: But yeah, that's kind of our next sales push, we think. LINDSEY: The hate playlist. CHRIS: [inaudible 15:40] hate playlist. MIKE: Yeah, perfect. Real passive-aggressive. CHRIS: Just Blue Monday, like, by New Order, like, 14 times. LINDSEY: [laughs] Yeah, every song is just like a sub-tweet... MIKE: [laughs] LINDSEY: About something they've done and [inaudible 15:53] Have you updated the site? Like, how do you decide what gets updated on the site? [laughter] Everyone laughed. MIKE: It was a little haphazard, I would say, there for a minute. But -- CHRIS: We got the site up very, very quickly. And from my perspective, I've been dealing a lot with the physical side of things, just getting great product photos up there, which is, like, something that thoughtbot has actually been super helpful with. You know, everybody on the team is starting to submit photos of their Goodz in the real world and using their Goodz, which is great. And we continued to update the site with that but also making sure our text made sense, refining copy in response to things that people said during user interviews. The checkout process, the process of adding the URL that we point the Good to that, we did a bunch of experimentation there based on what people were saying during user interviews. So, it has been a little haphazard, but we have made a bunch of changes. LINDSEY: Jordyn, has there been any experiment, like, structured experimentation around the site or how you're getting people to the site? JORDYN: Mike actually did a little bit of ad funnel work that I don't think we've, like, even remotely scratched the surface of. So, I wish I could say that was conclusive, but I think we've found a little bit more...here are plenty of sales that are from people that nobody here knows. MIKE: True. JORDYN: So, people are finding out about this somehow [laughs]. But I think it's a little bit, like, word-of-mouth sort of chain of events is our sense so far. I wanted to say, though, about the site, we did get what Chris was saying about, like, this experiment was, in part, about fulfillment and figuring out how fulfillment would work and packaging, and not just messaging and not just closing the sale with consumers, but also, just, like, how do you fulfill these? But one of the really fun things we've managed to do in the last, since we talked last time, which I can't even believe...I feel like this wasn't even a gleam in our eyes for this project, but we managed to get out, like, stood up and out the door, and working in production in the last few weeks is a way for folks to actually assign the URL to their mixtape themselves. Previously, the plan had just been for Chris and Mike to do that, which is fine but a little bit unscalable, right? CHRIS: That was a huge dream or, like, that was high on our wish list. And we didn't think we'd get to it. And it's been pretty amazing that we have, yeah. JORDYN: Yeah, so that was one thing that is an update to the site. So, then we had to do a little bit of, like, micro iterating, on, like, the messaging around that. Like, how do you communicate to people? This is, like, a little bit of an abstract challenge, right? Like, here's this object. It's going to point to a digital thing. How do you tell the physical object which digital thing it's pointing to [laughs]? So, a lot of our recent interviewing has been to sort of get inside the mind of the consumer about how they're thinking about that and how we can best communicate that to them. So that's been a lot of the, like, recent iteration is getting that mechanism stood up and then the messaging around it. CHRIS: It's also really cool because it adds to the utility of the object itself in the sense that now our Goodz, when a user gets one, they can add a URL to their Good themselves, but they can also change that URL. So, it's much more malleable. JORDYN: Which is something that in one of our early user interviews was, like, a hot request [laughs], and we were like, "Someday, someday." And it's, you know, I should actually go back to her and be like, "Someday is today." [laughter] MIKE: Well, yeah, and just as Chris was saying, it just makes it so much easier to ship these out without having to manually load them, and you could sell them, and yeah, retail outlets, like, it just opens up a lot of opportunities for us for them. LINDSEY: And Mike mentioned that some of the, like, kind of future looking aspirations for the solution are, you know, how might you figure out the B2B, like, SaaS aspect of it? Jordyn, is that something that's been explored at all at this point, or is it early? JORDYN: That experiment I just described is actually sort of the link between the two projects. It sort of proves the concept and proves the value in some ways, and it has given us a little bit more visibility into sort of how we're going to execute some of this technical stuff. Like, how easy, how difficult is it going to be? These little experiments all build your confidence around your ability to do those things and what it's going to look like. And so, this experiment absolutely feeds into that question. But I would say it was really this week where we got to have a really fun brainstorming sort of blue sky conversation about that that I don't think would have been nearly as both creative and blue sky or rooted in reality as it was if we hadn't done these experiments and hadn't talked to so many...we had so much work...we could participate in a conversation like that so much more confidently and creatively because all of us had a lot more shared context. So, we really got to dream big, like, what is a SaaS platform built around these physical objects? And I don't want to, you know, I'm not going to give it away at this moment because we had a lot of, like, really cool ideas. It's one part talking to the B2B customer, which, you know, you mentioned earlier, getting what their pain points are, and what they're looking for, what they need, but then also dreaming big about now we understand the technology a little bit more and how it feels to use it. What does that unlock in our brains? The analogy I used in that conversation and that I use all the time is like, the users of Twitter invented hashtags, right? Twitter did not invent hashtags. And so, hey, everybody out there, newsflash: users invented hashtags, not Twitter or something else, if you didn't realize that Twitter was where those things kind of emerged. But there was just a user behavior that was happening in the wild, and Twitter was just very good at making that easier for them, looking at that and being like, "Oh, hey, is this a thing you all want to do? Here, we'll make that even more useful for you." And it was part of Twitter's early success that they were able to do that. And so, that was the kind of thinking we were trying to employ here is, like, now that we have these objects and we understand a little bit more how it feels to use them, you get these second order effects. What does that then make us think of? What is then possible to us that we wouldn't have been able to dream of previously because we didn't quite get it? So, that was really happening this week. LINDSEY: So, as the incubator time wraps up, what are the kind of final activities or deliverables, one, that Goodz wants and you know that they're going to get? What are the parting gifts as we send you out into the next phase? MIKE: Yeah, well, loads of stuff. I mean, we're getting all that code that [SP] Guillermo and the guys worked on to let people set their own playlist settings. And we've got that up in a GitHub repository now. And we've got a bunch of great design work that's all being handed over, like Chris was saying, product shots that a bunch of the team members were taking, synthesizing all the user interviews. We're actually sort of making some kind of final reports on those, so it's kind of more usable, actionable data for us. The whole website, you know, that didn't exist before. And that will sort of continue to grow as the entire website for Goodz moving forward. I don't know. That's a lot. What else was there, Chris? CHRIS: As a result of all that, I mean, one of the things I'm most excited about is now we have a small user base who actually has the physical products that, hopefully, we can get them to answer questions. That's huge for what's coming next. Starting the path towards the SaaS platform, too, it's really helped narrow our scope and think about, you know, how to make that successful or if it will be successful. LINDSEY: Yeah, that sounded like a big discussion this week that I know has been on your minds from the beginning. Wait, the last time, also, you said you were starting to get emails, too. Have you emailed anyone yet, or are you still holding on to them? MIKE: Oh. No, I still haven't sent a newsletter out [laughs], actually, but we have Mailchimp set up. Yeah, no, we've got a good kind of core of our, yeah, early folks on there. We'll start getting a newsletter out with some sort of regularity. We're building up the socials very slowly just focusing on Instagram mostly right now and trying to get back into that game. It's been a long time since I've had to do kind of social marketing stuff. And so, it's a lot of work, as it turns out, but we'll get all that cooking. I think this was just such a sprint, working with the thoughtbot folks and trying to get all this stuff done. Before the end of the year, now we can sort of take a breath and start engaging folks in the new year. LINDSEY: Yeah. Well, so, do you know what you want to do next or what the next phase looks like? Are you going to do fundraising? MIKE: We're certainly going to continue to have some fundraising conversations. We've had some conversations emerge over the last, you know, since we've been in thoughtbot, again, not the greatest time of year to try to be raising a round. But we're also not, like, desperately, urgently needing to do that right this second. I think, you know, part of it is the fundraising landscape, you know, doesn't look amazing. And we're still sort of building out a lot of traction, and sort of every week, there's some new, exciting thing, or we've got some new, big artists who wants to do something. So, I think, in some ways, to the extent that we can bootstrap for a little while, I think we will, yeah. So, we will focus on...I'd like to get back to focusing on, like, B2B sales. I'd like to hit the ground in January and just start talking to a bunch of music industry folks. And thinking ahead a little bit, sort of Q1 and Q2, like, what are the big tentpole events? You know, you got South by Southwest coming up in March. You got Record Store Day in April, or whenever it is. But, you know, there's, like, a bunch of those sorts of things that it's like, oh, let's not let those things suddenly be tomorrow. Like, right now, they're all still two or three/four months out. Like, let's make sure we're queued up for those things and see what happens. And Jordyn has been giving really good advice on the fundraising side where it's just like, just keep getting cool stuff like that and just do almost like little drip campaigns with funders who aren't maybe giving you the time of day or think it's too early, and just kind of keep going back to them. Like, the best excuse to go back to funders is like, "Hey, we just closed this new thing. We just launched this new thing. We just got this thing working. Hey, we're launching with this major band," Like, enough of those happen, and I think the fundraising will happen more organically. It's a strategy. CHRIS: I think we're really lucky in the fact that, you know, now, at this point, we're not talking about vapourware, you know, like, these are actual things that actually exist that, like, anybody could go onto our site right now and buy, which is awesome. And because of that, the product's going to continue to evolve, and, hopefully, our sales record will continue to evolve, too. LINDSEY: Amazing. Well, that feels like a good place to wrap up, maybe. Are you going to hang around in our incubator Slack, the thoughtbot incubator Slack for all our past founders? MIKE: Yes. Emphatically, yes. LINDSEY: Okay. We're holding you to it then [laughs]. CHRIS: I'm excited about that. We met with the other founders yesterday for the first time, and it was a really great and interesting conversation. It was cool seeing how diverse all these projects are and how folks are working on things that we had no idea about and how we're working on stuff that they have no idea about, and it was really great. It felt like a good cross-pollination. MIKE: Agreed. LINDSEY: That's awesome to hear. Jordyn, any final thoughts? JORDYN: [inaudible 26:58] out there listening and watching and want to join this community of founders [laughs], don't you want to have office hours with Chris and Mike? LINDSEY: All right, thoughtbot.com/incubator. You can apply for session 1 of the 2024 incubator program. And yeah, you two, if you have more recommendations, referrals, definitely send them our way. Chris, Mike, Jordyn, thank you so much once again for joining and catching us up on all the exciting developments for Goodz. MIKE: Thank you. LINDSEY: A lot of really cool milestones. JORDYN: I got to say, so much good stuff. And like, you know, just wrapping it all up almost diminishes the impact of any single one of those things that we just talked about, but it's, like, pretty amazing. People out there, apply to the incubator but also go buy yourself a Goodz mixtape. It's cool with playlists on it. MIKE: It's a good point. JORDYN: Give it to your BFF. Come on. LINDSEY: Getthegoodz.com. MIKE: Getthegoodz.com. Awesome. LINDSEY: All right. Thanks, Chris and Mike. AD: Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at: tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions. Special Guests: Chris Cerrito, Jordyn Bonds, and Mike Rosenthal.

In this episode of the Super Real Human podcast, I'm joined by Ally Thompson, founder of RylieMay Rescue Ranch. From her experience as a movement coach to navigating and confronting self-doubt, and embracing the beauty of trying and failing, she was able to follow her purpose. Through significant life changes, including the closure of her business and the end of her marriage, she found the courage to embrace new beginnings.  Ally's inspiring journey led her to establish RylieMay Rescue Ranch, where she provides senior dogs with a safe haven, embodying her belief in the power of taking leaps and embracing new opportunities. Through her story, Ally exemplifies the transformative nature of facing challenges head-on and finding purpose in unexpected places. Her unwavering spirit serves as a reminder that even in life's darkest moments, there are opportunities for growth and new beginnings. In this episode, we cover: Overcoming self-doubt and embracing failure Finding strength in personal challenges Resilience and reinvention after setbacks Accepting uncertainty and lack of control   Want to connect with Ally and learn more about RylieMay Rescue Ranch?  Connect with her at https://www.ryliemayrescueranch.com   Work with me!  Introducing VIP “Do. The. Things.” Days and Mini-Sessions! The hardest part of doing anything… Is getting started.  Do you have a laundry list of marketing stuff you want to do but don't know where or how to start? Do you have loads of questions and ideas but need someone with the expertise, experience, and empathy to help you get the strategy and action items in place - and maybe check a few off your list? Work with me for 90-minutes, or for a whole day, and you'll identify, prioritize, and (in the VIP Day) DO the things to get you moving.  Need more than a day?  Private coaching & mentorship is now open! Let's take your business (and life) to the next level! The support, mentorship, and transformation that happens inside this 1:1 container is unlike any other. It's time to set yourself and your business up for success and joy in 2024! Need more inspirational guidance on how to make your passion a reality? Follow me on Facebook and Instagram where I share stories and practical tips to help you untangle what stands between you and a successful business! I want to hear from you and why you're here! Send me an email and tell me all about you!

Josh Herzig-Marx, founder of Knect, discusses the latest developments in his startup journey since his last appearance on the show. He emphasizes the program's value in helping founders like himself refine ideas and strategies. He particularly notes the program's effectiveness in addressing challenges unique to startups, such as managing professional networks and dealing with the rapid growth of online presence. The conversation also delves into AI's technical aspects and potential applications and the practicalities and ethical considerations of using it in professional networking. Josh and Jordyn explore various AI use cases, distinguishing between beneficial applications and those they deem undesirable. Transcript: LINDSEY: We are back for our Incubator update with Josh Herzig-Marx and his startup, Knect. I'm Lindsey Christensen. I do marketing things at thoughtbot. We are also joined by Jordyn Bonds, who runs our incubator and does product strategy for thoughtbot. And today, we're going to be catching up with Josh and learn what's new since last we checked in. But before we get to that, we have an exciting incubator update: our application window has just reopened. JORDYN: Yes. LINDSEY: You could be the next Josh. JORDYN: You could. JOSH: Don't be me. You should join the incubator. [laughter] JORDYN: Go to thoughtbot.com/incubator and apply. It's just that easy. The application doesn't take long, even though it's in Typeform, and we have gotten some feedback, including from Josh, that it's challenging to plan your application efforts because, as you all probably know, Typeform just gives you one question at a time. So, sorry, maybe we'll update that. But it won't take you very long. It's a pretty brief application. And we are looking for pre-product folks, so you don't have to have a lot. Don't worry about what you do or don't have. Just apply. LINDSEY: Pre-product founder trying to figure out, is this problem worth solving? Who is it for? Jordyn and the team can help you out. thoughtbot.com/incubator. JOSH: And me. LINDSEY: And Josh. JOSH: And if, for some reason, you want to ask somebody about the program who isn't directly affiliated with thoughtbot, you should reach out to me. I'd be happy to talk about my experience. LINDSEY: You should. JOSH: I'd be happy to tell you what I think would be some reasons to join and some reasons that it might not be a good fit for you. And I'd be happy to chat about any of those things. It'd be my pleasure, in fact. LINDSEY: That is a great offer. JORDYN: It is a great offer. You all should take Josh up on that offer. He is an excellent sounding board and mentor. And additionally, if you get into the incubator, you'll just be in a Slack channel with Josh for the rest of time, inside of thoughtbot's Slack. So, that's another [crosstalk 02:05] JOSH: Statistically, there's a good chance you already are. [laughter] JORDYN: You mean in a slack with you. That's true. Josh is in a lot of Slacks, not [crosstalk 02:14]. LINDSEY: Yeah. Once you go through the incubator, you're family for life. JORDYN: You're family. You're here. You're with us. You can't get rid of us. LINDSEY: And you're able to hit us up with the questions, talk to the other founders, so that's another great benefit of participating. All right, but topic of the hour, Josh, hey, how are you? How you doing? JOSH: Lindsey, I am floating right now. We had our end of incubator session last official meeting. And we reviewed how we started, what we hope to accomplish, what we actually did accomplish, and next steps, and it feels really awesome. LINDSEY: It does. That's so great to hear. And can you, at the top here, maybe remind folks who haven't listened before, you know, what was that beginning point that you came in the incubator or the problem that you were looking to solve? JOSH: So, I had this Josh problem, which is that I am overwhelmed by the number of places that I am online and by the rapid increase in my professional network, professional social network, I guess you could say, but in my professional network, you know, see that comment a few minutes ago about how we're probably already in multiple Slacks together, whoever you happen to be online. Plus, if you're on LinkedIn, we're probably at least secondary connections on LinkedIn. Like, there's an awful lot of people, and it's growing really, really fast. And as somebody with a whopping case of ADD, which just feels like making an excuse, as somebody in, like, this modern world, I was feeling overwhelmed, and I felt like I was dropping the ball. And my problem was somebody must have a solution to this. I cannot be the only one. I could not find a solution myself. And I thought, well, maybe if there is no existing solution, maybe we should just go ahead and build it. And that was the genesis of my application to the thoughtbot incubator, which was that even though I've done this once before, I had never done this alone. I don't want to do this alone. And I thought that, you know, because of my experience with thoughtbot in the past and my understanding of, like, thoughtbot's unique organizational skills and capacities, this would be a particularly good fit for the thing that I wanted to figure out. And when I say figure it out, there was really four things I was hoping to get from this program. Let's see if I can remember them all in order. Number one, is this a Josh problem, or is this a broader problem affecting more people? Number two, this is, like, a ladder of problems, right? Like a cascading set. Number two thing I was trying to figure out: if this isn't just a Josh problem, is there at least one identifiable and addressable set of people who think about this problem in a similar way with whom I could engage? Number three, if there is such a group, are they willing, ready, and able to, like, spend money on solving this problem? And then number four, which I guess is kind of orthogonal to the other ones, it's kind of alongside, is this thing to solve even technically feasible, right? Because you can have this, like, amazing opportunity, but you just can't build it. And, you know, is this a thing that we could build or that I could get built within the resources that I might have? And I came in with some hypotheses, with some ideas. It's not like I had never done any research in this at all. But coming out of it, we have four pretty good answers. And I would not have been able to reach those answers with the same level of confidence, certainly not within eight weeks, if I hadn't gone through the incubator, and it's a really nice way to end the year. LINDSEY: With a bow on it. The last time we talked, you had narrowed in, I think, on your starting target market. And you had also recently introduced a prototype into the mix. How has the prototype evolved? JOSH: It's...and this is going to be no surprise to either of you or anybody who's listening. But, like, the difference between, like, talking about something in the abstract and actually having, like, a thing in your hand is night and day. So, the prototype actually evolved pretty rapidly. You know, it allowed us to try using it, like, to put on our own empathetic user analog hats and try it ourselves and be like, "Well, this doesn't quite make sense." This doesn't actually flow right. And it allowed us to show it to a lot of people. I'll say, we are, by far, our own strongest critics, which is good. Mostly, when we showed it to people, people are like, "This is amazing." And they would ask us, like, really specific, weird questions like, "Where's, you know, your about page? Could I see your privacy policy?" which is, like, a really, really good thing to hear. Because if the only thing...one way to interpret that is the only thing keeping them from maybe, like, diving in and using it right now, besides it doesn't actually exist as a product, is, like, some questions around privacy because it seems maybe too good to be true. Like, that's a pretty good buy sign. You know, we were expecting, like, "The screen makes no sense. Why are we swiping here? Where does this data come from? Is this really complete?" They're like, "No, I'm pretty much ready to go." So, that was good, helpful feedback, though we evolved it ourselves a lot internally. It's really nice having a thing. Do we use the term Pinocchio prototype or Pinocchio test [crosstalk 06:58]? LINDSEY: Yes, I did hear that. JOSH: Yeah, I like that. If this was like, you know, this wooden toy wanted to be a real boy, like, two weeks ago, it really, really wants...I don't know, Lindsey, we should, you know, get you in front of it. You're going to be like, "Why can't I use this today?" [laughter] JORDYN: That's definitely what we're hearing from people. JOSH: And my answer would be, "Well, you can't, but maybe in a couple of weeks." [laughs] JORDYN: Yeah, exactly. I will say I want to say for anyone listening in, though, that that was not, getting to what Josh just described where folks weren't really...they didn't have any hang-ups about the functionality or the value prop. They were basically just like, "What's your privacy policy? And when is it going to be ready for me to use?" It's not like the first draft of this prototype that was what we jumped to. I want to be clear. The first time we showed someone, there was this interesting problem, which is that we were still talking to the wrong people, somewhat. And the prototype hadn't evolved to be the slam dunk that it is now. So, at first, it was like, we'd have these kinds of muddled conversations where people were like, "Well, I don't really understand what this is supposed to be, and I'm not sure about that. And this seems interesting," but then their interpretation of what that thing was would be, like, wildly off from what it was intended to be. I just want to make it clear: this was work and effort. And the team did a really great job of iterating quickly based on, like, every time we talked to someone and showed it to them, we'd come back and say, "Here's what I heard." And it really pushed our thinking forward. Like Josh said, like, we are our toughest critics, so, like, every new version unlocked some new insights in ourselves about what it was we were actually driving toward. Really, just there's nothing like having a thing to look at and bang on to, like, clarify your thinking. LINDSEY: There's nothing like having a thing. Jordyn, you touched on you were talking to the wrong people, maybe. How has that exploration of the core market evolved? Is it still the startup enthusiasts? Are you even more narrow in that? What are the updates there as our chief market focus get everyone thinking about this all the time, officer? JORDYN: Yes. So, you know, startup enthusiasts is still the umbrella. What you're looking for with this is that you can guarantee pretty much every time you talk to someone in a segment or a sub-segment you will know how the conversation is going to go. And we've gotten there with two sub-segments of startup enthusiasts, which is repeat founders, key, key kind of nuance there. Founders, sure, but repeat founders really have this problem, for reasons we could talk about, and then chiefs of staff at startups, which is a relatively new role that's sort of emerged over the last sort of several years. But those folks are really the people that you ask them about this pain point, and they immediately are, like, yes. They use the same words to talk about the pain point. That's another really strong signal. When folks are using the same vocabulary, and they say the same sentences in the same order, and you start to feel a little bit creeped out, like, you're like, "Did you see these questions before I...? What? Did someone pay you to say that?" is, like, how you start to feel [laughs] [crosstalk 09:59] LINDSEY: Also, a marketer's dream. Oh my gosh, here comes the messaging, right? JORDYN: Exactly. LINDSEY: [inaudible 10:04] JORDYN: It feels like a cheat code because you just get to reflect their language back to them. You don't have to write copy. They wrote the copy. You just show them it, and they're like, yes. And everyone's like, "Yes," and it works. LINDSEY: Any thoughts to add to that, Josh? JOSH: It's really good. I would say the bummer or the good thing about this point is we're getting diminishing returns from testing everything other than the actual product, which is good that we got there in eight weeks. But we're not going to learn, you know, keep on adjusting the prototype and making little tweaks and more user research. But the truth is, we're not going to get anything substantial until we get this into some users' hands. JORDYN: Like you say, this is sort of bad news, but it's good news. JOSH: Right. JORDYN: It's how you know, right? When you get to the point where the thing is so clear, and the way to talk about it with folks is so clear that you're not learning as much anymore, diminishing returns is the right way to frame it. You really just need people to get in there and use it. That's the only way you're going to keep learning. That's the moment to build. Hey, everyone out there, don't build before that. That's when you build. And then you really build the smallest thing you can conceive of building, and then whatever that thing is that you've conceived of building that's very small, scope it back by 50% [laughs]. Do it. JOSH: And it's a little humbling as someone who considers himself a founder but who had reasonable success as a founder and who has had pretty good success as, like a very, very early-stage, you know, zero to one and 1 to 10 product leader, has done this a bunch of times and actually coaches people in doing this, and came in with, I'm not going to lie, a pretty good vision in my head for how this stuff was supposed to work together. And it's so much better now. Going through a process actually makes things better. This wasn't just, like, wasting time. Like, going through a process, a thoughtful process actually makes us much better. Like, the thing we're talking about building is much more likely to be successful than the thing I was originally thinking about building, right, Jordyn? JORDYN: Yes. I guess it bears sort of diving into that a little bit, which is, you know, for all the founders out there or folks with a product idea kicking around your head, you're apt to have a little bit of everything we've talked about already. You have an idea of the solution you want to build. You have an idea of who it's for. You have an idea of what their pain points are. And you might be sitting there thinking to yourself, I don't need to do eight weeks of discovery. I already know the answers to all of these questions. And it's possible Josh felt that way coming into the incubator, but doing the work, gathering the data, talking to a ton of people, what you can't understand before doing that is how much more confident and at ease you will feel once you have done it and how much clarity you'll have about what it is you need to build first because likely, you're sitting there with a vision in your head for this product that is fully featured, fully formed. It is the 18th month. We just went into a hidey hole and built a really complex thing, thing. Cool, don't throw that out. But you got to begin somewhere, and you got to begin somewhere meaningful and valuable. And it's really hard to know where to begin without this discovery, without focusing on a specific person, talking to as many of those folks as you can. And really, it sort of writes itself. It does feel easy. But you've got to set aside the time and the effort to do the research, market research, whatever we call this, customer discovery. And it thrills me to no end, Josh, to hear that that is how it felt for you, that you probably felt like you already knew the answer. But it just feels different, having talked to, I mean, how many people, 100-plus people? We were looking at the stats. JOSH: Well over 100. LINDSEY: Josh was talking to a bunch of people before he came to the incubator, and all the founders that we accept have been doing that. Like, we want to know that you've been doing that research. But then, I guess, coming into the incubator, you're continuing that process and maybe in a more structured or a differently structured way where the thoughtbot team is helping you, maybe zero in far deeper on the segment. Is that accurate to say? Just kind of the difference between, like, maybe some of the pre-research and then the thoughtbot-specific user interviews that happen. JOSH: Yeah. I think they were more focused. They're both more focused from the audience, but also more focused from if it's not just you doing it; it forces you to have a more clear, here's the questions we're asking, and here's what we're trying to learn, all these conversations. It's also really nice to have some diversity in who's asking the questions. As good or bad as I am at user research and user discovery, I am only one person. And having people with different backgrounds professionally, who live in different countries, who have different feelings about social media, basically, who are not me in a variety of really interesting ways, I think, made the entire process more interesting. Caro, who is our lead designer on the project, handed off basically the summary document of, like, everything we learned, and she pulled out, like, little snippets from the interviews. First of all, that is not something I would have done had it been just me, like, let's be very, very clear. This is an incredibly valuable document, particularly as we consider adding additional people onto this project to be able to, like, translate insights. But also, like, this is, like, summarized in a way that, like, takes some real expertise. And I would have walked away with vibes, and instead, we walked away with like, structured learning. LINDSEY: Awesome. So, the last time we checked in, also, you were very excited because you had just maybe started a technical spike and were starting to dig into the, okay, like, how technically feasible is this product? And I think, at that point, you all were looking at circling around this target market. Here are the main tools they use to communicate. What does it even look like to connect with those APIs? How possible is it? Can you give us an update on some of that work? JOSH: The way that I framed the question in the very beginning was, is this a science project, or is this going to be engineering? And, for the most part, the answer is, it's going to be engineering, right? Some are a little bit easier; some are a little bit harder. But it isn't, like, reinventing new stuff, with one exception, and that is connecting up with iMessages, which has been in the news a little bit. And I honestly just hope the ghost of Steve Jobs comes back and haunts, you know, the Apple headquarters at Cupertino because, come on, guys, interoperability is sort of the future, and you're ruining it for everybody. But other than that, I think we have a pretty clear path. I'd like to test out some of these. Like, you don't really know until you do it. I think that's kind of the next step of what we're doing is to, like, demonstrate that it is possible for a person to connect up a couple of different accounts. It is possible for us to extract data and turn that into information and insights in the kinds of ways we thought we could and then present that back in a meaningful way. I think that would be the next step for us to do. Mostly, everything seems feasible, except for iMessages. LINDSEY: I've also, I think, heard some whispers of artificial intelligence for Knect. Is that true? Have you all looked at, you know, what AI's role could be in the solution? And how does that research look? JORDYN: We assume it will be part of the mix. That said, I don't know how to frame it exactly. It's not like it's not an essential ingredient. I think the work with large language models and the democratization of that work recently is absolutely going to make this product way better than it would have otherwise been. But there are a lot of heuristics we've, like, been able to, you know, draw out and come up with that are, frankly, algorithmic, and they're not AI necessarily. Now, the line between big data plus an algorithm and AI in the popular lexicon, like, there's a big difference between those two things. But, like, as people talk about it, yeah, where does one end and the other begin? But we definitely will be making use of a lot of the newest technologies, and we've dabbled in them. I've dabbled in them. I know, Josh, you've been playing around with some of them, too, to the point where we're like, okay, yeah, we can make use of this stuff. It will be a valuable kind of tool in our toolkit, but it will not be the sole basis of value. I guess that's the sort of nuanced answer. But maybe Josh has a more bite-sized hype machine answer to this. Yeah, AI to the moon, right? JOSH: Um, no. My only answer would be more cynical. Would anybody rightfully start a company in 2023 without having AI in there someplace? Maybe I'll say something different. One of the things that we've wondered is, there's more than a handful of companies that are adjacent to what we're doing that are definitely looking at similar kinds of problems and that aren't building the solution that, clearly, some market is, like, desperate for. And these are not, like, wildly successful companies that have grown astronomically and changed the market. And, like, trying to figure out, like, why is that? And one of the reasons is...I sound like a tech bro, right? There has been a paradigm shift in the technology world, but there really has been. What do, you know, publicly available LLMs like, you know, OpenAI's ChatGPT, like, what have they done? They have taken a whole set of problems that were once really, really complicated and allowed you to do a reasonable job of solving them much more easily than you ever could before. And it takes some amount of imagination, to realize that, to realize that these things are more than just, I mean, every product I have on my computer has some kind of OpenAI ChatGPT-style thing in there, right? It's, like, 16 different variations on give me a prompt, and I'll write your essay for you, and they all kind of suck. But those aren't the really exciting uses that I've seen. It's the more subtle things. There's a company called Booklet, which tries to replace, like, noisy email lists or noisy communities to something more calm. And one of its features is it'll send you a summary of what's been going on in the community since, like, the last time you checked in. And it gives you, like, two paragraphs to read, and they're really chill and really informative, and they don't make you feel FOMO. They don't make you feel stressed up. Like, okay, stuff's happened in the community. This is really neat. And it's all powered by OpenAI's APIs. And it's really kind of magical. And, like, you have to have a slightly different perspective to imagine these kinds of magical moments. So, that's what I'm excited about. There's a set of things that we would have had to do with, like, terrible, complicated queries and, like, pattern matching, and freaking grep, or whatever old-school tools we would have had, you know, for doing things in the past. And now you just get to, like, shove text in one end, and say how you want the results structured and get the results back in the other end. And it doesn't have to be perfect, but that's okay. Like, we're talking about human relationships, which are inherently imperfect. So, I'm fine with this. And it's kind of exciting. But we'll see in, you know, if we end up continuing going down this path. Like, that's the goal of the next stage is to be, like, okay, what are the easy things which we can generate out of this? Is there an intersection between, like, easy and meaningful? And if there is, this is pretty exciting. JORDYN: Can I add something to that? Which is that the problem Knect is trying to solve and the way that we're trying to solve it, the way we've thought of solving it that's differentiated, lends itself really well to the current landscape of AI tools in that, and you were kind of getting at this, Josh, but I feel like it bears drilling into a little bit, in that what we are proposing here is not a set of deterministic things. We're not going to give you a to-do list. It's not, like, a linear...deterministic is really the right word. Like, there's a to-do list. There are things that make the cut. You got to go address them, et cetera. We're way more trying to approximate the way a slightly more put-together person with more time would approach nurturing their relationships, which is just to remember more of it more of the time. It doesn't mean we need to remember all of it every time. That's not the kind of task this is, which makes it a really good task for the place that AI is at right now. And I think where folks have failed in the past is that they've either tried to turn it into a deterministic set of tasks, which then just feels like another to-do list, another inbox in a series of to-do lists and inboxes that you have in your life that just make you feel guilty and inadequate. That doesn't seem fun to us. We don't think you need another one of those. Or other places we've seen this fall down, which is that it takes the current sort of state of AI and tries to actually do the deterministic thing for you, but it doesn't do a good enough job right now. But where we've kind of landed in the middle is that, again, what we're trying to solve for is solvable in a way more probabilistic way. Like, can we get more of this accomplished more easily for you? It's never going to, like, completely, you know, do the task in this perfect deterministic way. But it is going to make you feel more confident and more relaxed à la Booklet, it sounds like, how to do that for this particular problem, which is a different bar and one we think we can clear. And that really does provide value. People are really longing for this. LINDSEY: Jordyn and Josh, building on those descriptions of, like, kind of maybe bad AI use case, good AI use case, could you give some specific examples of, like, what that might look like for Knect, like, how AI could be used in a good way or maybe what you're trying to avoid, more specifically? JOSH: Yeah. First, I'm going to start with what I want to avoid, which is, there are tools out there, and these may be interesting to some people listening, and if so, go find them. Good luck. But there are tools out there that say things like, "Keep in touch with your network at scale." And will use AI to write a message which you can send out to people without you ever having to, like, review it. That seems like creepy, futuristic sort of, you know, there's, like, a Black Mirror episode about that. Like, the whole point of having, like, a professional network of people who you care about is actually interacting with them. And having some service, like, write some prompt, maybe in its own voice, maybe if it's really good in your voice to, like, let them know that you care about them, let them know that you're thinking about them is, like, that's just bad. I think that's bad. And we don't have any plans to do that kind of thing, even though most uses for AI in the products that I use are writing three or four paragraphs in response to, like, a prompt. So, certainly, that's the common use case. It's not very appealing to us, and, frankly, in the people we were talking to, that wasn't one of the things that anybody ever suggested. It's obvious, but as far as we can tell, uninteresting, right? Just because it's obvious and just because it's straightforward doesn't mean it's interesting. The things we're imagining, for example, is, talk about Jordyn. Jordyn and I have known each other since 2020, I think. And we have, like, a whole history of text messages going back and forth, which, by the way, we actually could integrate because we both have Android phones, you know, shout-out for Open Internet. It might be interesting to, you know, summarize some of that, like, I know Jordyn pretty well, but other people who I might have not talked with in a while, sure, you could present me with a whole timeline of our communication. But that isn't necessarily useful. I'll have to read every bit of it. Why not, like, take all that and summarize, here's things you guys talk about. Here's things that, like, prompted your past few conversations: job change, got laid off, started a company, got a cat. Whatever those topics happen to be like, share some of those things. Bring me up to speed a little bit faster without having to literally review every word that could have been going back multiple years. That's a pretty good use of it. If you think about the way that messages work, right? Like, my kids are now at the age where they have phones, and I can now text my kids during the day. I will just tell you, like, this is, like, an incredibly joyful thing for me to be able to send, like, stupid memes to my kids or, like, what's exactly the right emoji to, like, send to them or for them to send to me. If every one of these things were, like, pushed to some kind of timeline, and I'm like, "What's going on with my kids?" Like, that's just, like, going back and reading through, like, your WhatsApp thread, which is something that isn't interesting necessarily, at least not from, like, a professional perspective. And there's, like, thousands of these things. Like, why do I want, like, a record in my, like, database of people who I talk to that says, "OMG," or "K," or "lol," or those sorts of things? Like, that's, like, a phrase. It isn't a conversation. And we could use an LLM to go summarize what the conversation was all about, which is, by the way, a way more interesting thing to persist over time than, like, my daughter typing "JK, JK, JK," which I think is 15-year-old for laughing at me, but I'm not entirely sure. LINDSEY: [laughs] Okay, so as you are...you mentioned wrapping up, and you did your last meeting, and you've got your kind of takeaway docs. You know, one, I'm curious, like, if there's, for your last, you know, days, hours of the program, if there's any final morsels you're trying to get out of it, and then how that kind of leads you into, like, what's next. What are you planning? JOSH: Let's do another one of these things in two weeks. [laughter] LINDSEY: Oh, okay. JOSH: Yeah. I'm inviting myself back on your show. We have one more day of school then, like so many folks, we get in a plane or get in a car and go do some travel and try to disconnect a little bit from our professional networks. So, I'm consciously not trying to say what's going to happen next. I would love to have this conversation again, maybe in two weeks, in the new year, about what comes next. I don't know that I could have a meaningful one right now. JORDYN: I will say what we are trying to send Josh off with into his R&R is what's it going to take to get to a viable MVP, not merely viable, but actually viable? Given what we know, given all this, you know, work that we've done in the last eight weeks, we now have, you know, the ability to envision what version one of something might be. And so, making that kind of argument: here's why it is what we're imagining it to be; here's what it is; here's what it would take to build that thing, gives Josh a lot of stuff to think about in the meantime in terms of how to accomplish that. And the thing that will happen in two weeks is understanding a little bit more about, like, the actual, okay, here's the actual plan. But the ingredients are there, which is super valuable and is a thing we have done every time at the end of every incubator we've done. It's essentially a...it is that what's next plan and why, why that thing. What's the ultimate upside of pursuing this product, and what's the near-term upside? And what's it going to take to get there? Because that's often a thing that founders, especially for some founders, which Josh is not, but what they often can't get their heads around is there's this little feeling if you've got this big vision over here, and you've got, like, the set of things you could do tomorrow, really tasky things really, like, operational things, oh, I need to, like, set up a C Corp, but I need to...whatever those things are, right? What's in between? What's that near-term path that's going to directionally head in the direction of that big vision? It's, so far, always, what we have sent founders off with. LINDSEY: So, if you weren't here at the very beginning of our session, we mentioned that the applications are now open for session 1 of 2024. I'm curious, Josh, what kind of founders would you recommend for the thoughtbot incubator? What's the profile of someone you might send our way? JOSH: I'm going to say something, and I don't think I match that profile, which is interesting, and folks should think about that, what that means. But I would say that if I had to, like, pick a profile, having gone through this, I would say somebody with an idea, of course; ideally, it's one that they have some connection to. They have some personal passion for but, not just because it's an abstract idea but a personal passion that comes from their own experience. And it's really great for somebody who hasn't been inside of a tech company before, at least on the tech, half the business. Tech companies have three halves: one half is, you know, the product building side of bit of it or the tech half, which is engineers, and product designers, and product managers. And the other half of that is the go-to-market side, like sales, and marketing, and customer success. And the third half would be, like, operations like HR and finance. So, if you have experience in, like, the sales, or the marketing, or the customer success side, or the HR, or the finance, or corporate operations or that part of it, and, you know, you're familiar with tech coming from that perspective but maybe haven't been on the actually building stuff side of them before, this is a really, really good process. Because what does thoughtbot do? It does the building in tech side of things: designers, product managers, and especially engineers. And it has this, like, legacy and this history and expertise, therefore, with, like, the journeyman program where they help, like, level people up in those areas and now are applying this to founders. Because as the founder, you do need to develop some ability to converse around engineering and technical stuff. And you really, really, really, really need to get good at the discovery side, especially of, like, product design and product management. And those are the things you're going to get to do and you're going to get to do with people who are themselves really, really good at it. And that's awesome. The flip side is if you're, you know, a founder who is super attached to every bit of your vision, and you think you have the strategy all laid out and you're just looking for, like, warm bodies to build it, I mean, is it the insight team? What's the right level at thoughtbot? I forget the names of things, but, like, thoughtbot has, like, a startup program where you can give thoughtbot money, and they will build things for you. And they're also really, really good at that, but that's not the incubator program. The incubator program is probably a step earlier. So, I think it is worth thinking, are you at the I'm so confident of my vision; I'm so confident in my strategy that I just want to get this thing built, then maybe don't sign up for the Incubator. But if you're at the stage of I think this is a problem; I'm pretty sure this is a problem; I really want it to get solved; I have some vision, but I know it's going to change, then I think the incubator is really ideal, especially if you're looking to upskill yourself, too, because you're going to walk away with the ability to be conversant around the technology stuff. And you're going to walk away with a crap ton of experience with the discovery, qualitative discovery, like user interviews, quantitative discovery, like, you know, running ads, and landing pages, and all that stuff. Like, you're going to be really solid with that stuff after eight weeks because you will have done it. LINDSEY: Jordyn, any thoughts? JORDYN: I love all that. I think it's accurate. I would only say to those of you sitting out there who are thinking, I'm in that other camp; I'm very confident about what it is I want to build; I would ask you to do a little soul-searching as to whether that's actually true. Like, what evidence do you have? If you needed to stand up in court and defend your conclusions and your vision, could you? And I say that as the person who, as a first-time founder, was deluded in that way. I thought I knew exactly what I was doing and for whom and why. And, boy, howdy, could I have used a program like this to actually get me to sit down and, like, talk to people, listen to them, figure out what was valuable and what wasn't, what a valuable, you know, initial market offering was going to be like. Ah, I wish really, really badly that I'd had something like this because I was pretty deluded. I don't even know, like, what the right word is. I just didn't know what I didn't know. So, like the way you described it, Josh, I know Jordyn of 2017 would have been like, "That's me. I know this thing that I need to do. LINDSEY: [laughs] JORDYN: So, I don't need to apply to this program because I don't need to do any of that discovery work." But I was wrong [laughs]. I was absolutely wrong. I was wrong to the tune of, you know, two years and $150,000 of angel investment. So, consider, it is not idly that I say this to you, person sitting out there who feels very confident in your vision right now. Perhaps you have done all those things already; in that case, [inaudible 33:43] you don't need this. And you just need to [inaudible 33:46] with the thing you already know to be true. But ask yourself, how do you know what you know? LINDSEY: Yeah, even if you...we can help you build the thing. But we're probably, also, still going to push you on [laughs] some of those things we [crosstalk 34:01]. JORDYN: Yeah, we're still going to ask. We're going to ask to see the receipts. LINDSEY: Yeah [laughs]. JORDYN: And maybe you have the receipts, which is great, but we're still going to ask you for them, I guess, is my point. Every team at thoughtbot will ask you for the receipts, by the way, not just mine [laughs]. LINDSEY: The other interesting thing you touched on, Josh, was, I think, where we kind of started the incubator was with that target profile that you just described, which is, like, the less technical founder, and maybe even, like, a first-time founder. And then over time and seeing, like, applications, we broadened that as we saw, like, oh, you know, actually, also, technical founders and repeat founders do still need, like, help with this and can use guidance. So, we've expanded a bit, and maybe that is still, like, the person who gets the most value at the end of the day is the non-technical who hasn't really done this before. But yeah, we've kind of expanded to those other profiles as well. JOSH: There's a reason that repeat founders are no more successful on average than first-time founders, and it's something really important that Jordyn said, which is, you may think you've done all this, but we're going to ask you for the receipts. Just because you've done this before doesn't mean you're going to be good at it. Chances are, if you've done this before, it's mostly because you got really, really lucky; ask me how I know. So, it's nice to have. I mean, I described a profile, and I said that wasn't me. But I'll just tell you, as somebody who, like, spent his entire career, almost his entire career, in the tech side of tech companies, and I think I'm pretty good at it, I'm certainly not the worst at it, thinks I'm pretty good at it, it's still really nice to have a team backing you up in this early moment. It's really nice to have a team. JORDYN: Yeah, I will say another thing that we've heard from every founder we've worked with is just how much more real and actionable their idea feels when they have a team sitting there with them taking them seriously, which is another thing, you know, I really would have benefited from is, like, suddenly, when you've got three or more industry professionals sitting there in a Zoom call with you, like, okay, what are we doing? Why are we doing this? How do we know? The feeling of being taken seriously in that way and then having a bunch of people working full-time with you for eight weeks, they're in it with you; they're asking the questions; they're talking to people; they're coming back and saying, "I just had the most amazing conversation with someone. Here's what I learned," it just takes your project to a different level of reality. Like, we're humans. We're social beings. We create reality together. And when you're working alone, you know, through force of will, you can do a lot, but with a group, it really feels like you're creating something together. And, like Josh said, having those other brains with other experiences in other contexts percolating on your idea it's like bringing a team to bear on something. There's just nothing quite like it, and it's a huge value of the program. Like, we can give you the programming and, in fact, you can go run the programming. It is published in our handbook. The things that we do together you can go do, but it is a whole other matter to do them with a team. It just feels different. LINDSEY: Great. Well, I think that's where we're going to end today. I mean, Josh is leaving us hanging a little bit. So, we might need to...we're going to figure out a way to get your final thoughts, conclusions in a few weeks because I know everyone would love to hear what the plan is for Knect. Josh and Jordyn, as always, thank you so much. Any final thoughts or farewells from you today? JOSH: I've really enjoyed it. I'm going to miss these folks. Though, apparently, I get to hang out in a special Slack channel forever. LINDSEY: Yeah, you get to hang out. JOSH: Which is nice. LINDSEY: Exactly. You can't get rid of us just yet. JOSH: Good. I wouldn't want to. LINDSEY: All right. Thanks, y'all. And thanks, everyone, for tuning in. Special Guest: Josh Herzig-Marx .

In this episode of the Super Real Human podcast, I'm joined by Kim Craig who shares her personal experiences as a small business owner and bookkeeper. She discusses the importance of finding the joy in business and the value of understanding financial information for business owners. We discuss the challenges faced by small business owners, particularly in the realm of financial management. Some of these challenges included the need for business owners to understand their financial information, the importance of selecting the right software for business growth, the significance of maintaining a healthy profit margin, and the struggle of managing clients' payment patterns.  In this episode, I cover: The importance of understanding financial information as a small business owner The significance of joy in business Being empowered through knowledge and tools for accounting and bookkeeping The benefits of tailored solutions that address accounting and bookkeeping challenges   Work with me!  Introducing VIP “Do. The. Things.” Days and Mini-Sessions! The hardest part of doing anything… Is getting started.  Do you have a laundry list of marketing stuff you want to do but don't know where or how to start? Do you have loads of questions and ideas but need someone with the expertise, experience, and empathy to help you get the strategy and action items in place - and maybe check a few off your list? Work with me for 90-minutes, or for a whole day, and you'll identify, prioritize, and (in the VIP Day) DO the things to get you moving.  Need more than a day? Private coaching & mentorship is now open! Let's take your business (and life) to the next level! The support, mentorship, and transformation that happens inside this 1:1 container is unlike any other. It's time to set yourself and your business up for success and joy in 2024! Need more inspirational guidance on how to make your passion a reality? Follow me on Facebook and Instagram where I share stories and practical tips to help you untangle what stands between you and a successful business! I want to hear from you and why you're here! Send me an email and tell me all about you!  

Do you want to achieve increased clarity and effective strategic planning for business growth? In Part 2 of the "Plan With Me" series, I focus on looking ahead to 2024 by sharing how to help you gain a clear and well-defined strategy heading into the new year. What excites you? What do you want to let go of? This year, let's step away from "anything for a buck" and focus on what truly lights your soul on fire and resonates with your clients. It all begins with gaining clarity on  your goals, revisiting your ideal client and your existing offers, and choosing how you want to show up. In this episode, I cover: Strategize for business growth and maximize potential Adapt to current trends and meet evolving customer needs Showcase authenticity and stand out positively in the online space Craft compelling offers to excite both businesses and clients   Work with me!  Introducing VIP “Do. The. Things.” Days and Mini-Sessions! The hardest part of doing anything… Is getting started.  Do you have a laundry list of marketing stuff you want to do but don't know where or how to start? Do you have loads of questions and ideas but need someone with the expertise, experience, and empathy to help you get the strategy and action items in place - and maybe check a few off your list? Work with me for 90-minutes, or for a whole day, and you'll identify, prioritize, and (in the VIP Day) DO the things to get you moving.  Need more than a day? Private coaching & mentorship is now open! Let's take your business (and life) to the next level! The support, mentorship, and transformation that happens inside this 1:1 container is unlike any other. It's time to set yourself and your business up for success and joy in 2024! Need more inspirational guidance on how to make your passion a reality? Follow me on Facebook and Instagram where I share stories and practical tips to help you untangle what stands between you and a successful business! I want to hear from you and why you're here! Send me an email and tell me all about you!

Check out Ana's member site https://anabrandtmemberapp.com/ All links for Ana https://www.findanabrandt.com/ Thanks for listening please subscribe!

Are you taking some “you” time for self-care this time of year? In Part 1 of the planning series, I discuss the importance of prioritizing self-care and my approach to planning. A big part of planning starts with visualization, a powerful tool for setting and achieving personal and business goals. In this episode, I guide you through a visualization exercise and questions to ask yourself to set goals and find clarity so that you can plan for your future success in 2024. In this episode, I cover: The importance of self-care in the planning process Visualization and goal setting for 2024 Balancing business and personal goals   Work with me!  Introducing VIP “Do. The. Things.” Days and Mini-Sessions! The hardest part of doing anything… Is getting started.  Do you have a laundry list of marketing stuff you want to do but don't know where or how to start? Do you have loads of questions and ideas but need someone with the expertise, experience, and empathy to help you get the strategy and action items in place - and maybe check a few off your list? Work with me for 90-minutes, or for a whole day, and you'll identify, prioritize, and (in the VIP Day) DO the things to get you moving.  Need more than a day? Private coaching & mentorship is now open! Let's  take your business (and life) to the next level! The support, mentorship, and transformation that happens inside this 1:1 container is unlike any other. It's time to set yourself and your business up for success and joy in 2024! Need more inspirational guidance on how to make your passion a reality? Follow me on Facebook and Instagram where I share stories and practical tips to help you untangle what stands between you and a successful business! I want to hear from you and why you're here! Send me an email and tell me all about you!

As you know, we're in one of the busiest seasons of the year for photographers. Everyone is getting ready for the holidays by getting family photos done and planning out photos for spring. Wouldn't it be amazing if you had mini-sessions available to provide to your clients? If you're wondering how to have successful mini-sessions in your photography business, Angelica Pompy is your girl. Angelica has been practicing photography since 2009, but decided to launch her own business in 2017. Since then she has been able to leave corporate and focus solely on the work she loves. How? Through gaining a true understanding of business, marketing, and creating seamless systems.She has successfully used mini-sessions to bring in cash injections when needed and help her to find lifelong clients because she treats her mini-sessions as if they're a full package. Listen in as she shares how she markets her mini-sessions, what she's done to set up systems around them, and why building an email list has been critical to the success of her business. Angelica is a marketing whiz and is able to impart her knowledge in a way that makes doing the things simple. You won't want to miss out on this one.Links and Resources:Connect with Angelica:Angelica PompyFacebook | Instagram | Pinterest | YouTubePompy PortraitsInstagram | Facebook | Pinterest Connect with Success Beyond the Lens:Success Beyond The Lens - https://successbeyondthelens.com/@successbeyondthelensInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/successbeyondthelens/@successbeyondthelenspodcastFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/jennbays/Picbabun - https://picbabun.com/successbeyondthelenspodcastGrab your Boundaries Resources - https://view.flodesk.com/pages/5d6d09f19b5f4c0015d956e7

In this episode of the Build and Bloom photography podcast, I (@jessicawhitaker) am sharing how to CRUSH mini sessions this holiday season. I cover the booking process, how to make sure the photoshoot day runs smoothly, and delivery! Free PDF Guide for Mini Sessions: https://www.jessicawhitaker.co/mini Camera gear, tech, and lifestyle favorites: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.amazon.com/shop/jessicawhitaker ⁠⁠⁠ WHAT'S NEXT: Join The B+B Facebook group: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/buildandbloomjessicawhitaker/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Jessica on Instagram:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/jessicawhitaker⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow the Podcast Instagram:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/buildandbloom/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ This podcast has been made possible by: Business Basics:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.jessicawhitaker.co/photography-business-basics-course⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Honeybook, the ultimate client management program:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠https://www.jessicawhitaker.co/photography-tool-honeybook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Narrative, the $6 photo culling software:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠https://www.jessicawhitaker.co/photography-blog-tool⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Contractista, reliable lawyer-drafted Photography Contracts:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠https://www.jessicawhitaker.co/photography-contract-template

In this episode of the Beginner Photography Podcast, I had the pleasure of speaking with Phillip Blume, a talented photographer and entrepreneur who shares his incredible journey of taking his photography business on the road while traveling with his family. From leveraging mini sessions to rebranding and creating strategic partnerships, Phillip's insights will inspire you to think outside the box and find new opportunities for growth in your own photography business. Learn how to reset client expectations, maximize your mini session profits, and simplify your processes to achieve scalable success. Phillip's practical advice and actionable strategies will empower you to take your photography business to new heights. So listen in, take notes, and get ready to capture both stunning images and exceptional business results!The Big Ideas with Time Stamps:00:11:39 Photographer community forms real relationships, hosts mini sessions parties.00:18:18 Mini sessions are often undersold by photographers who use them as a promotional tool.00:26:10 Flexible branding for mini sessions increases value.00:28:42 Starting business with debt led to success.00:34:56 Relating to Big Brother, same age, marketing minis.00:36:44 Facebook ads, misconceptions, marketing, grassroots, partnerships, contacts, trust.00:43:38 Identify markets, set clear prices, reward customers.00:49:57 Teaching system with documents and audio files. Autopilot mini sessions for photographers' success.00:54:37 Take action, success not guaranteed. Philip and Eileen's mini session training.Resources:Philip and Eileen Blume's Maximizing Mini session training - https://beginnerphotopod.com/miniGet Back your Family Time and Start Building Your Dream Photography Business for FREE with CloudSpot Studio.And get my Wedding and Portrait Contract and Questionnaires, at no cost!Sign up now at http://deliverphotos.com/ Connect with the Beginner Photography Podcast! Join the free Beginner Photography Podcast Community at https://beginnerphotopod.com/group Email me at BeginnerPhotographyPodcast@gmail.com Send in your Photo Questions to get answered on the show - https://beginnerphotopod.com/qa Grab your free camera setting cheatsheet - https://perfectcamerasettings.com/ Thanks for listening & keep shooting!

In this episode of the Beginner Photography Podcast, I had the pleasure of speaking with the amazing Phillip Blume, who shared his journey of transforming mini sessions into a profitable and fulfilling venture. If you're looking to maximize your mini sessions, this episode is a goldmine of valuable insights and practical advice. Phillip and his wife learned the hard way that traditional pricing and structure can be limiting, which led them to reevaluate their approach. They discovered the power of selling the experience and value of their portraits, rather than just the images themselves. They also emphasize the importance of creating a system that serves the needs of your clients and provides exceptional value. By attracting ideal clients who appreciate the experience, you'll not only book fewer sessions for higher prices but also enjoy a more fulfilling and rewarding photography business.The Big Ideas with Timestamps00:04:06 Unplanned beginnings, diversified business, hidden profitability00:08:52 We shoot luxury weddings, but also mini-sessions.00:17:57 Artists turned photographers embrace proven business principles.00:27:28 "Some students opt out of 'mini sessions'; market concern addressed."00:36:09 Free photo sessions support charities and sales.00:43:16 New photographers should create portfolio for free and learn to charge strategically for their work.00:50:35 Image-based marketing with positive ad copy works.00:55:52 "Ask yourself why. Connect with kids."01:02:04 Photographer does mini sessions in backyard.01:06:27 Getting authentic portraits is a valuable experience.01:12:43 Philip and Eileen are hosting a live webinar on maximizing mini sessions. Register for the webinar to receive helpful videos and tools. Connect with the Beginner Photography Podcast! Join the free Beginner Photography Podcast Community at https://beginnerphotopod.com/group Email me at BeginnerPhotographyPodcast@gmail.com Send in your Photo Questions to get answered on the show - https://beginnerphotopod.com/qa Grab your free camera setting cheatsheet - https://perfectcamerasettings.com/ Thanks for listening & keep shooting!