Podcasts about zipmessage

Colleen Schnettler, founder of HelloQuery, joins me for a wide-ranging discussion around the question of choosing the right product idea to commit to as an entrepreneur. Brian and Colleen recorded this conversation on November 17th, 2023.Brian's update was recorded on December 8th, 2023. (00:00) - Colleen Schnettler (05:33) - Twitter, Conference, and Podcast friends! (07:15) - Transitioning between between ideas (08:00) - Joining TinySeed (08:59) - the ZipMessage to Clarityflow story (as of Nov 2023) (20:26) - Emotional Runway (21:51) - Choosing a product idea (25:38) - Converting a service into a SaaS (30:33) - Riding a wave (34:30) - Evaluating potential ideas (38:04) - Validating ideas before building (45:33) - Audience growth vs. not (49:40) - What are you optimizing for? (55:04) - Survivorship bias (56:42) - Looking back on mistakes (59:03) - Shipping tiny ideas Instrumental ProductsHelping you build and ship products & transition a products-based business.✉️  Get my Instrumental Products newsletter

In this episode, Brian Casel, founder, and CEO of ClarityFlow, discusses the benefits of asynchronous messaging for coaches and the recent rebranding from Zip Message. They also talk about the importance of name changes and pricing strategies for SaaS startups, and ClarityFlow's success with their demo-led approach and upcoming updates, including mobile apps, courses, community spaces, and payments integration. Lastly, Casel emphasizes the value of sales calls for research and development.Brian Casel is a software company owner and founder known for his expertise in software product design and web development. He is the mastermind behind ClarityFlow (formerly ZipMessage), a popular asynchronous messaging tool for professionals in coaching, consulting, and remote teams. With a successful track record of founding and operating businesses like ProcessKit, Audience Ops, and Productize, Brian's vast experience also extends to his roles as a designer, web developer, and podcast host. Here are a few of the topics we'll discuss on this episode of Product Launch: Clarity Flow is growing to include payments for coaches, personalized coaching programs, and community spaces for coaching groups Castle and his team are 100% asynchronous and use tools like Slack and GitHub to collaborate effectively Names can affect the success of a product and the perception of its direction. Customer research, both live and asynchronous, can provide valuable feedback for naming and strategy decisions. Analyzing usage data and creating custom reporting can also help identify a target audience and pricing strategy. Inbound demo requests have become a preferred way for some coaching businesses to evaluate the product The success of a demo-led approach influences product development, marketing materials, and customer success Resources: ClarityFlow NxtStep Podcast Chef Connect with Brian Casel:LinkedInConnect with the host: Sean Boyce on LinkedIn Sean Boyce by Email Quotables: 02:59 – “My team and I, we literally don't have calls live, like live calls. We're a hundred percent asynchronous. And it's weird, it's a little bit weird, but I'm not exaggerating. Like we literally just have, we use Slack and we use GitHub issues and stuff like that when we're working on stuff. But we do have like video meetings where they're seeing my face, they're seeing my screen, I'm seeing their response. We're collaborating together on things, but we're doing it across the world, across time zones and spread out at a time that makes sense” 03:38 – “But we can really still have the same level of collaboration as if we're on a live call together. I actually would even argue that it's better because we have space in between our collaboration. So I could ask something and then my marketing assistant can think about it and do some work and jot down some notes and then get back to me with her thoughts and then I digest that and I get back. So, I really think that communicating asynchronously and having these meetings at like a slower, more spread out pace really, really helps a lot.” 04:41 – “I can't help but think sometimes nowadays when I'm on one-to-one meetings, or even worse if I'm in a group setting at so many meetings and so much time and effort and energy is largely wasted because yeah, only one person could be talking at a time, right? So if you've got a meeting with like 10 people on it or grows even larger than that, just the, the cost to hold that session when most people aren't really doing much. It's asynchronous for the win all day there.” 11:229 – “So if you look at our site now, it's like, yeah, we're still like an async conversation at the core, but we're building into more of a platform to run an entire coaching business. So I got to really understand exactly what they're trying to do, and then that informed all the features that we're rolling out now.” 19:18 –  “I think especially when you start to gain traction with your product, right? Prioritization becomes critically important because if you put the wrong step in front of a step that should have been prioritized. Like you said, you could pause something that's really important for a really, really critical moment, like an inflection point.” Free Email CourseHow to Build a Profitable AI-Powered B2B SaaS Business for Less Than $750Notes generated by Podcast Show Notes  (podcastshownotes.ai)

Brian's taming the chaos of inbound customer growth mixed with urgency to ship. Jordan's experimenting with 2 go-to-market strategies, one for enterprise, one with partners.Jordan's business, Rally  Brian's business, Clarityflow (formerly ZipMessage)

Jordan announces Rally's Series A and we unpack the whirlwind road that it took to get there. Brian launched a pricing increase, which coincided with a competitor's unexpected shut down. It's been a wild few weeks while we've been off, but we're back! Jordan's business, Rally   Brian's business, Clarityflow (formerly ZipMessage )

Random thoughts on what's happening in AI and startups. Jordan and co move to self-signups. Brian and co work on marketing projects. Jordan's business, Rally  Brian's business, Clarityflow (formerly ZipMessage)

Brian shares the news rebranding ZipMessage to a new name and the transition roadmap ahead... And the new name is...Jordan and team step away to a conference while go-to-market heats up.Oh yeah, and recorded on the day the Silicon Valley Bank saga unfolded in realtime... So that was a (and scary) discussion.

Lemon Squeezy, the new platform for building SaaS businesses went through quite a few iterations before J.R. Farr and the Make Lemonade crew figured out what it is and who it's for… And how to make people aware. Lots of gems in this conversation!Watch this episode on YouTubeJ.R. Farr:J.R.'s company, Make LemonadeJ.R.'s product, Lemon SqueezyJ.R. on Twitter: @jrfarrBrian Casel:Brian's company, ZipMessageBrian on Twitter: @casjamThanks to ZipMessage (today's sponsor). ZipMessage is the video messaging tool that replaces live calls with asynchronous conversations.  Use it free or tune into the episode for an exclusive coupon for Open Threads listeners.

I invited Corbett back on the show when I noticed he's been picking up steam on his Substack-based newsletter. Clearly, he's in the exploration phase of his next entrepreneurial chapter. The perfect time for an Open Threads check-in :)Watch this episode on YouTubeCorbett Barr:Corbett's website, Starting ThingsCorbett on Twitter: @CorbettBarrBrian Casel:Brian's company, ZipMessageBrian on Twitter: @casjamThanks to ZipMessage (today's sponsor). ZipMessage is the video messaging tool that replaces live calls with asynchronous conversations.  Use it free or tune into the episode for an exclusive coupon for Open Threads listeners.

Founder Summit was one of the best conferences I've attended because it's built on the idea that a conference is really about the relationships, not the headline speakers. Tyler Tringas, founder of Calm Company Fund, takes us through how Founder Summit came together and where it's going next.Watch this episode on YouTubeTyler Tringas:Tyler's company, Calm Company FundTyler on Twitter: @tylertringasBrian Casel:Brian's company, ZipMessageBrian on Twitter: @casjamThanks to ZipMessage (today's sponsor). ZipMessage is the video messaging tool that replaces live calls with asynchronous conversations.  Use it free or tune into the episode for an exclusive coupon for Open Threads listeners.

Back for our weekly founder therapy session, err… podcast episode Here’s what’s up this week: – Brian (finally) ships sub-threads in ZipMessage – Jordan’s hiring an SDR – Learning from strategic decisions that went wrong – Product insights with vs without a product in market Brian on Twitter Jordan on Twitter ZipMessage Rally As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a review on iTunes.

Harry Morton, founder of Lower Street, is back on the show today to take us inside the creative process behind big brand podcast productions. These aren't your run-of-the-mill interview shows. This is what next-level podcasting looks like — and how Harry built an amazing agency business around it.Watch this episode on YouTubeHarry Morton:Harry's company, Lower StreetHarry on Twitter: @podcastharryBrian Casel:Brian's company, ZipMessageBrian on Twitter: @casjamThanks to ZipMessage (today's sponsor). ZipMessage is the video messaging tool that replaces live calls with asynchronous conversations. Use it free or tune into the episode for an exclusive coupon for Open Threads listeners.

In 2020, after a hugely successful run building and exiting MOJO Marketplace, J.R. Farr announced the formation of a “dream team” new company known as Make Lemonade. What they're making is truly impressive. We get into it!Watch this episode on YouTubeJ.R. Farr:J.R.'s company, Make LemonadeJ.R.'s product, Lemon SqueezyJ.R. on Twitter: @jrfarrBrian Casel:Brian's company, ZipMessageBrian on Twitter: @casjamThanks to ZipMessage (today's sponsor). ZipMessage is the video messaging tool that replaces live calls with asynchronous conversations.  Use it free or tune into the episode for an exclusive coupon for Open Threads listeners.

After building, selling and exiting Fizzle, a community and content-based business, Corbett Barr decided to hit the reset button. How? By deleting all of his social media and past blog content to start with a clean slate. We explore what came next.Watch this episode on YouTubeCorbett Barr:Corbett's website, Starting ThingsCorbett on Twitter: @CorbettBarrBrian Casel:Brian's company, ZipMessageBrian on Twitter: @casjamThanks to ZipMessage (today's sponsor). ZipMessage is the video messaging tool that replaces live calls with asynchronous conversations.  Use it free or tune into the episode for an exclusive coupon for Open Threads listeners.

We look back on the ups and downs in 2022 and look ahead to 2023. The emotional rollercoaster rolls on… Thanks for listening and for sticking with us another year on Bootstrapped Web. “Everything before product-market fit is a form of suffering” – Jordan Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Talking Points: Viruses, holiday cards, and coming back from vacation 2022 for ZipMessage and Rally Lack of product-market fit Tim Ferriss' Fear Setting The Ten-Year Business Staying “based” and staying true to your vision Themes and goals for 2023 Building features specifically for specific markets “The first year [for Zipmessage] was a dream and the second year was more bumpy and challenging.” – Brian Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Resources: Brian on Twitter Jordan on Twitter ZipMessage Rally As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a review on iTunes.

Brian Casel is a software company owner and founder with a background in software product design and web design. Brian has found, operated, and sold 4 different businesses and is now focused on his company ZipMessage, a tool for swapping video, audio, or text messages with clients and customers asynchronously.Brian started out as a professional designer for the web, offering this as a consultant to a variety of businesses before leveraging these skills to design and build products that power businesses he starts up and operates.Brian also regularly hosts podcasts where he shares notes about his work in the software and design industry, and hosts conversations with friends in this industry. Here are a few of the topics we'll discuss on this episode of Product Launch: The decision process involved in selling a business. How to work on multiple businesses at the same time. The differences between working on multiple businesses compared to a single business. The benefits of working on multiple different businesses. How coaches can automate their workflows. Different approaches to finding a product market fit. How to research your ideal client profile. The problems with real-time meetings. Resources: ZipMessage Bootstrapped Web Audience Ops Restaurant Engine Slack NxtStep Podcast Chef Connecting with Brian Casel:LinkedInConnecting with the host: Sean Boyce on LinkedIn Sean Boyce by Email Quotables 05:02 - “In 2021 I essentially sold 6 different businesses but some of them were tiny just a couple of thousands of dollars, others hundreds of thousands of dollars so that was over the course of 5 or 6 months there I exited everything other than ZipMessage.” 13:08 - “You'll hear a lot of advice out there like yes you have to just focus on a single business and even though that's what I'm doing today I don't necessarily agree that's the right advice for most people in their career especially if you're earlier in your career I think you're actually much better off doing multiple things whether they're small products or service business, plugin products, SaaS products, courses you gain so much experience and just chops when it comes to copywriting, or putting up websites, or talking to customers, or doing sales, these are skills you're going to need no matter what business you settle into.” 14:22 - “I've really enjoyed being able to experience working on multiple things because it enables me to make progress more quickly and figure out the right overlap of passion proficiency demand of what it is I really want to focus on so like you said as you get a little bit older and little bit more experience that stuff starts to become clear and then you can always focus from there but you've got that experience and a lot of these skills are really important in product.” 22:19 - “I do research in a number of different ways and sometimes it's different at different phases of the business and I've launched multiple new businesses over the last 10 years and at the very beginning when it's a brand new business may be in a pre-launch mode before the product is even ready I usually start with a landing page that has an email capture for an early access and after they enter their email it goes straight to a survey with a bunch of detailed questions where I'm asking them to freeform write and after reading every one of those survey responses I usually invite people to interviews based on their responses to the survey and that's usually how I start with early market research for a new potential product.” 27:00 - “There's a bigger benefit to using asynchronous, it's not just that it's more convenient and we can do it across time zones and things like that it's also having space in between our messages gives us that space to prepare notes, I often put a list of talking points on the screen before I hit record, we have the ability to pause and continue, we have the ability to edit a message before sending it back, you can discard it and re-record it if you want to say it a little bit tighter, I'll receive a customers question or some feedback and then I'll go take a walk or maybe respond the next morning so I'm coming back to them with a much higher value response and I'm getting the same back from them.”

From bootstrapping and selling a SaaS to… Starting a fund for bootstrapped SaaS companies. Tyler Tringas talks about that transition and what he's learned since starting and growing Calm Company Fund.Watch this episode on YouTubeTyler Tringas:Guest's company, Calm Company FundGuest on Twitter: @tylertringasBrian Casel:Brian's company, ZipMessageBrian on Twitter: @casjamThanks to ZipMessage (today's sponsor). ZipMessage is the video messaging tool that replaces live calls with asynchronous conversations.  Use it free or tune into the episode for an exclusive coupon for Open Threads listeners.

It's strange how little we talk about the code side of building and running a software business. So Benedikt Deicke, technical co-founder of Userlist, joins me to geek out on Rails, front-end frameworks, software testing, and more.Watch this episode on YouTubeBenedikt Deicke:Benedikt's company, UserlistBenedikt on Twitter: @benediktdeickeBrian Casel:Brian's company, ZipMessageBrian on Twitter: @casjamThanks to ZipMessage (today's sponsor). ZipMessage is the video messaging tool that replaces live calls with asynchronous conversations.  Use it free or tune into the episode for an exclusive coupon for Open Threads listeners.

We asked ChatGPT to suggest some topics for today’s episode but it came up short. So you’ll have to settle for the boring human versions of Brian and Jordan, talking about what’s happening in ZipMessage and Rally. Enjoy. If you have any questions, comments, or topic ideas for Bootstrapped Web, leave us a message here. … Continue reading Hey ChatGPT, what should we talk about?

We asked ChatGPT to suggest some topics for today’s episode but it came up short. So you’ll have to settle for the boring human versions of Brian and Jordan, talking about what’s happening in ZipMessage and Rally. Enjoy. If you have any questions, comments, or topic ideas for Bootstrapped Web, leave us a message here. “What can this do? How does this change our product? Does this change things significantly enough that we should come off our roadmap?” – Jordan Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Here are today's conversation points: The future of AI and creators Q4 spreadsheets and budgeting Updates in Rally and ZipMessage SEO content Marketing and sales Product-led content “If we're not working on those growth graphs, I don't feel comfortable. But, at the same time, I need to work more on the product” – Brian Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Resources: Brian on Twitter Jordan on Twitter ZipMessage Rally As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a review on iTunes.

I'm on a quest to geek out with all my founder friends who are also musicians. Harry Morton shares a love for the combo of tech + creativity in music production. We geeked out about pursuing careers in recording studios, synthesizers, making music as a hobby, and buying unnecessary music gear.Watch this episode on YouTubeHarry Morton:Harry's company, Lower StreetHarry on Twitter: @podcastharryBrian Casel:Brian's company, ZipMessageBrian on Twitter: @casjamThanks to ZipMessage (today's sponsor). ZipMessage is the video messaging tool that replaces live calls with asynchronous conversations. Use it free or tune into the episode for an exclusive coupon for Open Threads listeners.

Craig and his family moved to France for 5 years, but they've moved back here to the states. We unpack life and business abroad vs. stateside and the many tradeoffs.Watch this episode on YouTubeCraig Hewitt:Craig's company, CastosCraig on Twitter: @TheCraigHewittBrian Casel:Brian's company, ZipMessageBrian on Twitter: @casjamThanks to ZipMessage (today's sponsor). ZipMessage is the video messaging tool that replaces live calls with asynchronous conversations.  Use it free or tune into the episode for an exclusive coupon for Open Threads listeners.

In SaaS, speed matters. A lot. Benedikt Deicke, co-founder of Userlist, joins me to chat about shipping speed and how we decide what to build next. It's too easy to get these essentials wrong!Watch this episode on YouTubeBenedikt Deicke:Benedikt's company, UserlistBenedikt on Twitter: @benediktdeickeBrian Casel:Brian's company, ZipMessageBrian on Twitter: @casjamThanks to ZipMessage (today's sponsor). ZipMessage is the video messaging tool that replaces live calls with asynchronous conversations.  Use it free or tune into the episode for an exclusive coupon for Open Threads listeners.

I could talk for days about music. So can Justin Jackson. So we geeked out on our favorite bands, documentaries, and how these experiences actually shape us as entrepreneurs (believe it or not!).Watch this episode on YouTubeJustin Jackson:Justin's company, TransistorJustin on Twitter: @mijustinBrian Casel:Brian's company, ZipMessageBrian on Twitter: @casjamThanks to ZipMessage (today's sponsor). ZipMessage is the video messaging tool that replaces live calls with asynchronous conversations.  Use it free or tune into the episode for an exclusive coupon for Open Threads listeners.

After exiting his 1st SaaS, then shuttering all his social media profiles, Nathan Powell is back online with a new idea for a SaaS. Let's dig into it.Watch this episode on YouTubeNathan Powell:Nathan's previous company, NusiiNathan's current company, Feature FluxNathan on Twitter: nathanjpowellUXBrian Casel:Brian's company, ZipMessageBrian on Twitter: @casjamThanks to ZipMessage (today's sponsor). ZipMessage is the video messaging tool that replaces live calls with asynchronous conversations.  Use it free or tune into the episode for an exclusive coupon for Open Threads listeners.

The story of why Nathan Powell quit the internet for a while after exiting his SaaS business (and why he came back).Watch this episode on YouTubeNathan Powell:Nathan's previous company, NusiiNathan's current company, Feature FluxNathan on Twitter: nathanjpowellUXBrian Casel:Brian's company, ZipMessageBrian on Twitter: @casjamThanks to ZipMessage (today's sponsor). ZipMessage is the video messaging tool that replaces live calls with asynchronous conversations.  Use it free or tune into the episode for an exclusive coupon for Open Threads listeners.

Tyler's back on the show to talk about teams. Remote, in-house, culture, experience, and everything in between.Watch this episode on YouTube Tyler King:Tyler's company, Less Annoying CRMTyler on Twitter: @TylerMKingBrian Casel:Brian's company, ZipMessageBrian on Twitter: @casjamThanks to ZipMessage (today's sponsor). ZipMessage is the video messaging tool that replaces live calls with asynchronous conversations.  Use it free or tune into the episode for an exclusive coupon for Open Threads listeners.

Building in public ain't all about the highlight reel. Craig Hewitt and I agree that there's so much more to learn from our fails. The question is, how can we share them publicly in a helpful (and healthy) way?Watch this episode on YouTubeCraig Hewitt:Craig's company, CastosCraig on Twitter: @TheCraigHewittBrian Casel:Brian's company, ZipMessageBrian on Twitter: @casjamThanks to ZipMessage (today's sponsor). ZipMessage is the video messaging tool that replaces live calls with asynchronous conversations.  Use it free or tune into the episode for an exclusive coupon for Open Threads listeners.

“Selling any kind of knowledge or expertise is completely different than selling a shoe. When you sell a shoe, use a physical object, you're talking about the attributes of the object, is it the right size, the right color? Does it have the right fit, and you're judging the shoe. And even if you don't like this one shoe by Nike, you don't hate Nike, you just don't like this shoe, right? So it is abstracted already. When you sell knowledge and expertise, it feels very, very close to who you are right? And when someone rejects you,  it can feel like they're rejecting you, not your offering.” - Chris LemaWatch this episode on YouTubeChris Lema:Chris's Website: chrislema.comChris on Twitter: @chrislemaBrian Casel:Brian's company, ZipMessageBrian on Twitter: @casjamThanks to ZipMessageZipMessage (today's sponsor) is the video messaging tool that replaces live calls with asynchronous conversations.  Use it free or tune into the episode for an exclusive coupon for Open Threads listeners.Quotes from this episode:Quote 01:Chris Lema:Any kind of knowledge or expertise is completely different than selling a shoe when you sell a shoe. You sell a physical object. You're talking about the attributes of the object the right size the right color, and does it have the right fit? And you're judging the shoe. And even if you don't like this one shoe by Nike, you don't hate Nike.You just don't like this shoe, right? So it is abstracted already. When you sell knowledge and expertise it feels very, very close to who you are, right? And when someone rejects you, it can feel like they're rejecting you, not your offering. And that can be painful. It's also difficult to know how you sell, right?How do you close the deal when it's abstract and there's nothing to show? Like you don't have the physical shoe. Right. And my answer to that is forever, right? Has been you needed to use a story or narrative? You need to be able to tell, you know, rapid versions of case studies. Here's what here's where they were and here's what happened at the end you need to be able to tell prediction stories.Here's what you're about to experience, whatever, because that makes you feel like a magician. But the most important part of that is you're not going to close those deals on email. You're not going to close those deals on the phone. You're going to need to get on video because people are buying someone they can trust. They're buying someone that they feel good working with if it's like their movie product is the communication, is the relationship, right?Yep. And they may there be 100 coaches and the bottom line is they got to be comfortable with you, right? They got to feel like I would like you on my team. I want you on my team.Quote 02:Chris Lema: Product strategy isn't just let's go build stuff. It's about what you say yes to and what you say no to. More often than not, saying no is what's really critical because saying no allows you the freedom to have the time to go say yes to something valuable. And then and then you go, Okay, let's go from here. What I will tell you as a coach is right now all of my frameworks. So files are Dropbox links, right? And you can imagine if you're a coach wanting to be able to load up, which makes Zipmessage stickier. If I say, oh, I've loaded all my frameworks in here so that I can share a ZM link, but that also means, oh gosh, I don't want to leave that message because it has all my stuff already preset.Brian: Yeah, right. Chris Lema: And so things that make it stickier, having that file archive that allows me to share in my frameworks easily becomes interesting.Quote 03:Chris Lema: Different clients function differently. Some will come and say, I want to grow in this way or I want to drive this specific change and then we'll go, okay, so let's break out how we do that. And I will tell you, okay, you need to do A before being B, before C and C before D. And so that's what we're going to cover over the three months.Others will come in saying, listen, I've talked to these other people. They say that you're the most indispensable part of their team. I want you on my team. What things can you cover? I rattle off 20 things we can cover. They go, Are these three feel important right now? So we go into those three for a period of time, and then they're like, Hey, let's talk about this other one now, and then let's talk about this other one.And we just keep moving, right? But it's because what I promised them upfront is that they're not going to go through a coaching program. So I am not against other people. There are other people that have very specific models. Right. And that model maybe I have a coaching program at 16 weeks and each week we're going to talk about something.

This is our mega-productivity episode. It's nearly an hour of our best tips, tricks, tools, and advice for getting more done and making more money with less time and effort. That's the dream right: keep growing your business without working yourself to death.  And in today's show, that's exactly what you'll get! (This episode originally aired Dec 2021) PS: Get featured in an upcoming FTF SHORT! Just visit http://freelancetofounder.com/ask and submit a question.  Support our sponsors so we can keep airing new episodes: Sendinblue - Use promo code FOUNDER for 50% off your first three months on a premium account at https://www.sendinblue.com/founder/ Hectic - Everything you need to start, manage, and grow your freelance business — in one place. Tailor Brands - Launch your business in just a few clicks (Use the code: F2F for 40% off Tailor Brands) LinkedIn Jobs - Find the candidates you want to talk to, faster. Justworks - Manage your remote team and run your business with confidence. Zapier - The automation platform that connects your work apps and does repetitive tasks for you. Dripify - Premium learning platform for entrepreneurs. SolidGigs - Get more freelance jobs Get your own on-air coaching call We'd love to feature your business and offer some free on-air advice for growing your business. To see if you're a good fit, click here. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts: If you enjoy the show, can you do us a favor and leave us an honest rating and review on Apple Podcasts? We'll love you forever. Click here to leave a review. Tools & Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Getting Things Done by David Allen Chuck.Email for managing your overflowing inbox. Hectic App for managing your entire business from one place. ClickUp for managing projects. Trainual for employee onboarding & team processes. Loom for quick screen recording.  Vimeo also has a quick screen recording option. ProcessKit for managing your agency's processes. Intercom for Client FAQs or automated chatbots. Slack for team communication. ZipMessage for asynchronous team communication, coaching, or client communication. Best Home Office Chairs ‘Deep Focus' playlist on Spotify for concentrating while working. More Recommended Listening: This show is a part of the Podglomerate, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter. We suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows about entrepreneurship, business, and creativity such as Rocketship.fm and Creative Elements. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What has happened in the venture funding world in the past couple of months? How do you handle repositioning? Can you lean too heavily on your product, features, and roadmaps? What do you do when one of your features falls flat? It's the middle of the summer edition of Bootstrapped Web. Brian and Jordan are back behind the mic after surviving family vacations, COVID, and cancelled flights. Today, Brian dives deep into repositioning and how ZipMessage has refocused in the past couple weeks. Meanwhile, Jordan talks about the biggest mistake he has made with Rally so far. If you have any questions, comments, or topic ideas for Bootstrapped Web, leave us a message here “It went from, everyone's growing and there's plenty of money to fund what you want to do to, all of a sudden, the water went back out and it turns out a lot of people don't have pants on.” – Jordan Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Talking Points: ZipMessage and Rally updatesThe changes in the venture funding and the bootstrapped entrepreneur worldRepositioning and refocusing at ZipMessageDifferent pipelines: influencers, coaches, consultants, etc.Building CRMs (Airtable, Pipedrive)Learning from mistakesBeing led by productHow Jordan built a stronger working relationship with his teamLearning from an existential crisisThe truth behind SaaS companies “It doesn't make sense to focus on product unless we have a daily pipeline that is ready to present that product too.” – Brian Powered By the Tweet This Plugin

On this episode, Jonathan shares a series of guidelines implemented with his agency, that can be helpful when working as part of a team. The guidelines are as follows: Always confirm having received, read and understood messages Always give an indication of when tasks or next actions will be carried out + reporting back once they have been completed Be detailed & specific to avoid ambiguity (include names & links to anything referred to), making this as simple as possible to understand. When text alone is insufficient to explain, include supporting screenshots or a Loom video to help clarify Offer next suggested steps/actions, in addition to presenting a problem or situation If there are any unforeseen delays that mean that you are unable to meet a deadline, let the team know as soon as you can + give an updated estimated time of completion All internal communication should all be done using the open channels rather than DMs. Be pro-active with your communication - so when you can see a potential problem arise in advance or an improvement can be made, make the team aware ahead of time. If some of the communication (particular to clients) is something that will be repeated and can be standardized, we should template it, and include it in the team wiki Resources mentioned: http://zipmessage.com (ZipMessage) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B014OISVU4/ (Non Violent Communication) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005K0AYH4/ (Crucial Conversations)

How do you avoid consistent churn with new products? What tools do you use to learn about your market? What influences the changes in your products? It has been a while but Brian and Jordan are back, and they've brought updates with Rally and ZipMessage. Jordan talks about his fundraising efforts. Brian talks about his … Continue reading Talking to Customers

How do you avoid consistent churn with new products? What tools do you use to learn about your market? What influences the changes in your products? It has been a while but Brian and Jordan are back, and they've brought updates with Rally and ZipMessage. Jordan talks about his fundraising efforts. Brian talks about his customer research project and what he has learned through that process. If you have any questions, comments, or topic ideas for Bootstrapped Web, leave us a message here “It went from, ‘This is going to be a piece of cake' to… ‘That's not what's going on in the market.'” – Jordan Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Talking Points: Trends in the industry and the economyCan you avoid consistent churn numbers in new products?Jordan's fundraising effortsInvestor behaviorsAre people driven by FOMOThe various stages in the funnelBrian's research project The lessons that Brian learnedWhat motivates customers and what makes them think?Shifting product features based on the marketLearning from other competitors and their customers “When you actually talk to [a customer], you not only learn a ton, it also helps me emotionally and mentally” – Brian Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Resources: Brian’s Twitter thread documenting his customer research project Brian on Twitter

Brian Casel of ZipMessage shares insights into how you can increase your ability to communicate effectively online... The post How to Increase Your Ability to Communicate Effectively Online with Brian Casel of ZipMessage appeared first on LMScast - LifterLMS Podcast.

News With the release of WordPress 6.0 RC1, it is time to explore the 97+ enhancements that have been made. Milana Cap over at make.wordpress.org has shared the field guide where developers can read about the high-level changes in WordPress 6.0. The field guide also covers changes in accessibility, blocks, UI, and more for the non-developers out there. Birgit Pauli-Haack has done a great review in the Gutenberg times newsletter of what is new in the latest Gutenberg Plugin 13.1. Go check out the updates along with how to switch your website to a FSE theme by Carolina Nymark. Carolina's long post covers the benefits and cautions about third-party plugins that may not yet be updated.  Events David Bisset shared in a tweet that the 19th anniversary of #WordPress is coming on May 27th.  Go to wp19.day to share a few words, a photo (direct or via Twitter w/ #wp19 #wp19day) or a video short via @ZipMessage on the website. It's a global event and you can already check out some of the submissions posted to the site. From Our Contributors and Producers If you are concerned that WordPress can still compete in the CMS market you may be interested to find out that searches for WordPress terms hit over 10 million per month for the first time. Alex Denning wrote a post about what might be going on over his website at Ellipsis. There has been the largest volume of search traffic for WordPress yet, with a growth of 25% in absolute volumes from Q3 to Q4. If search data indicates interest and growth then WordPress still has some validity in the CMS market space. It looks like LearnDash is creating a “circle-esque” solution by providing a modern community plugin with just the core essentials for WordPress LMS. Head over to wptribe.io to try this new plugin. Automattic acquired Clipisode in January 2022. Brian Alvey shut down the social video platform and is now the CTO of WordPress VIP. Sarah Gooding reported on WPTavern that James Kemp acquired ReplyBox. The system can be embedded on any website, including static HTML pages to add dynamic commenting. It integrates with WordPress through a connector plugin that is available on WordPress.org. It is great to know that this system will now be maintained and updated on a regular basis. Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today: Jeff ChandlerBirgit Pauli-Haack

Brian Casel comes by and we talk about his latest product zipmessage.com - how it's grown, what he's doing for marketing, becoming a backend developer himself, podcasting, and more!Links!CasJam (Twitter)ZipMessageOpen Threads (Brian's new podcast)Chipper CIChris Fidao (Twitter)

How do you decide what features you should work on now? How do you stay unplugged during a vacation? What are the milestones and progress markers that tell you if you are on the right path? As Brian comes back from a vacation and conference (and before Jordan leaves for his own), we're catching up on the latest updates on ZipMessage and Rally. We're also talking about how to best judge our own traction, and how to decide which feature to work on first. “All the best paying customers are usually pretty quiet. ” – Brian Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Here are today's conversation points: Staying unplugged during a vacationRecognizing milestones and gauging progress Updates on ZipMessage and RallyDealing with big competitors head-onFuture plansBeing a SaaS business owner and a SaaS customerIntegration partnerships: the approaches, the benefits, and the selection processDeciding how to move forward: short term decisions versus long term/strategic decisions If you have any questions, comments, or topic ideas for Bootstrapped Web, leave us a message here “I highly recommend working with a lawyer that you both trust and like, because there's some moments out there…” – Jordan Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Resources: Brian on Twitter Jordan on Twitter ZipMessage Rally As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a review on

What do you get out of conferences? Do you mute competitors on Twitter? How to you utilize Twitter as a budding SaaS entrepreneur? After a brief hiatus, Brian and Jordan are back with some big news: Carthook was officially acquired! Jordan shares what details he can about the acquisition as well as the process and journey of the company. They also talk about the upcoming MicroConf and what conferences can do for you. After all, they're not just about networking, there are a lot of things gained when meeting with colleagues, competitors …and podcast listeners. If you have any questions, comments, or topic ideas for Bootstrapped Web, leave us a message here “The thing that I want out of a conference is a huge boost of confidence.” – Jordan Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Talking Points: Carthook officially acquiredShutting down and selling the supported Shopify appA mixture of emotions after a crazy journeyUnwinding after the stress of a tripWhat conferences can do to your mindsetThe energizing effect of conferencesMeeting podcast listenersHow it feels to be an anonymous company in a space with huge companiesCompetitors on Twitter: To Mute or Not To MuteHow many people do you need for a startup?Access the gratitude “Since Day 1, we've had a fundamental difference of what ZipMessage is and that's the intake ability.” – Brian Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Resources: Brian on Twitter Jordan on Twitter

SaaS Acquisition Stories w/ Brian Casel - Founder of ZipMessage Brian is serial entrepreneur who has founded multiples SaaS startups and have sold five of his businesses in the span of 8 months. With most of them, Brian found the right buyer on MicroAcquire. He's now focused on his main SaaS startup called ZipMessage. Brian Casel - https://www.linkedin.com/in/briancasel/ - https://twitter.com/CasJam - https://briancasel.com/ Andrew Gazdecki - https://www.linkedin.com/in/agazdecki/ - https://twitter.com/agazdecki - https://microacquire.com/

I talk with Brian Casel, founder of ZipMessage, an asynchronous video messaging tool.Brian has created several successful products in the past, and sometimes ran them in parallel. But he recently sold his entire portfolio of products to focus on ZipMessage. Brian explains why he made this decision.  He also talks about why sometimes you need to shut something down, even if it does seem to be kind of, sort of working.And we talk about the feeling when you realise that a new product is really getting traction.Links:zipmessage.comBrian's podcast, Bootstrapped WebBrian on Twitter  

Brian's bio Brian Casel is a serial founder who currently runs ZipMessage.com. In the past, they've built (and sold many of the following): ProcessKit, Big Snow Tiny Conf, Audience Ops, Productize, Thready, SunriseKPI, Ops Calendar, Restaurant Engine, Hotel Propeller, WP Bids, ThemeJam. Their website reads: I love the hard, creative work of designing products just as much as my mission to build a business that lasts. Join thousands and follow along. —— Links Brian's Twitter: https://twitter.com/CasJam Zip Message: https://zipmessage.com Brian's website: https://briancasel.com/ Reddit SaaS: https://www.reddit.com/r/saas My Twitter: https://twitter.com/chddaniel My product: https://Simple.ink/notion-forms/

How can asynchronous conversations help us achieve work goals? Our guest today is Brian Casel, founder of ZipMessage. You'll learn why async is so important for remote workers, how it can improve your hiring process, where realtime calls still work better, and more.Download the MP3 audio file: right-click here and choose Save As.Podcast feed: subscribe to https://feeds.simplecast.com/4MvgQ73R in your favorite podcast app, and follow us on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Podcasts.Show NotesZipMessage — Brian's product, a tool for asynchronous communicationAudience Ops, ProcessKit — Brian's previous productsUI Breakfast Podcast. Episode 85: Validating Your SaaS Product with Brian Casel2021, a 'shake-up' yearHow Stripe Manages Remote & Hybrid Work and CultureBasecamp, Tailwind CSS, Userlist, SavvyCal — several product inspirations for BrianUI Breakfast Podcast. Episode 154: Refactoring UI with Adam Wathan and Steve SchogerSend Brian a ZipMessageFollow Brian on TwitterBootstrapped Web — Brian's podcast with Jordan GalOpen Threads — Brian's personal podcastToday's SponsorThis show is brought to you by Userlist — the best tool for sending onboarding emails and segmenting your SaaS users. To follow the best practices, download our free printable email planning worksheets at userlist.com/worksheets.Interested in sponsoring an episode? Learn more here.Leave a ReviewReviews are hugely important because they help new people discover this podcast. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, please leave a review on iTunes. Here's how.

I sit down with Brian to talk about his new product ZipMessage, picking fights with the Goliath, Saas lessons from his journey, marketing, selling, business operations...

In this episode we were joined by our buddy Brian Casel, the founder of ZipMessage, to interview us on the backstory of Fathom and what it took to get Fathom off the ground.

Brian has sold ProcessKit! He explains the surprisingly stress-free and smooth process. Jordan talks about his upcoming move to Chicago. Meanwhile, they also give updates on Rally's marking and sales funnels, and prioritization at ZipMessage.  Today's episode is filled with business updates, optimism, and great outlooks for 2022. Don't forget to check out ZipMessage on … Continue reading Wheels Are Turning

Brian has sold ProcessKit! He explains the surprisingly stress-free and smooth process. Jordan talks about his upcoming move to Chicago. Meanwhile, they also give updates on Rally's marking and sales funnels, and prioritization at ZipMessage.  Today's episode is filled with business updates, optimism, and great outlooks for 2022. Don't forget to check out ZipMessage on ProductHunt! “I prioritize [the reliability of recording and playback] over shipping a brand new feature.” – Brian Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Here are today's conversation points: The sale of ProcessKitChicago, look out for JordanZipMessage on Product HuntIs Rally ready to go to market?Marketing funnels and sales funnelsPrioritization at ZipMessageZIpMessage conversion emails If you have any questions, comments, or topic ideas for Bootstrapped Web, leave us a message here “What helps me is knowing what the journey looks like.” – Jordan Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Resources: Brian on Twitter Jordan on Twitter ZipMessage Rally As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a review on iTunes.

Brian’s product, ZipMessage, is live today on Product Hunt the same day this episode airs—Tuesday, January 11th

Productized or Software as a Service? A hot topic often discussed on TMBA. Of course, there's no right or wrong answer but on today's show Brian Casel talks to Dan about the factors that contributed to him changing from one to the other by selling Audience Ops and starting ZipMessage and also the different challenges of the two: “With a productized service, it really was much more about the processes. And building a service that is highly repeatable … but in a SaaS, it's less about process, it's just much more about building. And every single month there's something new. It's not only just building new features, but what's the next marketing channel that I can try to tap into and unlock a new pocket of customers.” You'll also hear about Brian's decision to take funding this time around, having always bootstrapped before and selling Audience Ops without using a broker. Plus, And the return of one our favorite participation games - ‘donate a business idea'.

Brian Casel, founder of ZipMessage discusses his transition from Audience Ops to a new venture and what he has learned along the way. Get more insights from the podcast.  ZipMessage is a video messaging tool that facilitates asynchronous conversations with remote teams and customers. Brian Casel recently sold his content marketing company to focus on ZipMessage. He talks to Geordie about his journey.   What You'll Learn Why Brian sold Audience Ops The difference between a productized service and an agency How did Brian conduct the Audience Ops sale process? What was Brian's initial idea for ZipMessage? Why the asynchronous approach is ideal for teams working across time zones Why is ZipMessage viral?  In This Episode  Brian has sufficient experience in web and front-end development, and design. He has also spoken about productized services for many years. Over the years, Brian has created a course and developed audience applications. His interest in software, SaaS, and product design and the need to improve his full-stack skills with Ruby on Rails started in the last few years. Brian says he sold Audience Ops to focus on building ZipMessage.   Knowing what you can or cannot do is crucial when starting a business. Brian says he relied on a few rules for guidance during the beginning and running of Audience Ops. While he is a good writer, Brian did not want to complete writing tasks for his clients. Instead, he hired a team of professionals from the beginning, with whom they collaborated to grow the company into a five figures MRR. Apart from being sustainable and profitable, the company gave Brian lots of liberty to focus on SaaS ideas. Brian explains how Audience Ops operates and the tools they use. Get all the details in the podcast.   Brian also touches on his first SaaS idea, Process Kit, and highlights some of the challenges he experienced with onboarding new customers and convincing them to adopt a new tool. He says Process Kit is still operational and sustainable. However, when the ZipMessage idea came along, he focused all his energy on the new venture. At some point, he mentions shiny objects, saying they often solve many of the challenges he may have encountered in the previous project. Brian's sentiments are enough to conclude that he suffers from the shiny object syndrome, where he gets distracted by new ideas easily, abandoning his current venture to focus all his attention on a new concept.   Audience Ops was already successful, but Brian says the idea of selling it had crossed his mind in the first four years of running it. He decided to delay the plans until 2021 came, and he could no longer continue running it. Brian explains what was running through his mind before he finally sold Audience Ops. He also provides comprehensive details of the sale process, picking the buyer, and why he did not use a broker. Listen to the podcast for the details.   Brians's previous SaaS experience came in handy to help him build the initial ZipMessage prototype in less than a month. His developer would then come in to help him transform the prototype into a version one MVP, and within three months they had their first paying customers.   During the ZipMessage MVP development process, Brian watched the market closely for patterns and trends. He says he has worked remotely and been asynchronous throughout his career, an experience he leveraged when dbuilding ZipMessage. Brian explains how ZipMessage works in an extensive section that you do not want to miss. The ZipMessage solution is available in three plans which you can learn about in the podcast. ZipMessage features a viral aspect and Brian explains why in the podcast.  With the world adopting remote work, various agencies are using ZipMessage to cut down calendar calls, facilitate team and sales conversations, and offer customer support. Coaches are also using it for student conversations and coaching. Brian explains what the team is doing to market ZipMessage and get more partners on board. According to Brian, the shiny object syndrome has played a core role in his growth. He believes he would not have achieved tremendous success had he stuck with one business concept. Brian concludes the podcast by advising entrepreneurs to learn along their business journey, determine what worked and didn't, and establish strategies to improve their upcoming products. He also believes that entrepreneurs do not just stumble on ideas. Instead, there is always some form of luck in everything they discover.  Resources  ZipMessage Brian Casel LinkedIn Brian Casel Twitter Brian Casel Website  

Brian’s product, ZipMessage, is live today on Product Hunt the same day this episode airs—Tuesday, January 11th

What does traction feel like? How do you authentically build a network? Brian and Jordan talk about marketing, website updates, and the different phases of product/market fit. Jordan dives into the different and unique ways Rally is marketing. Brian updates us on ZipMessage momentum: website updates, premium enrollment, and crossing a customer milestone. Today's episode is all about the different ways you can build traction but also the different ways you can define traction. “If you can work directly with your audience to monetize the people who are crazy about you, you can make more money in a different model, and everyone is the most happy.” – Jordan Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Here are today's conversation points: Marketing site changes at RallyGetting credit for speed and momentumNFT Projects for marketingZipMessage website updatesPersonalization for customers Creating a WordPress pluginPremium enrollment/Private or public conversationsPhases of Product/market FitWhat does traction feel like?Are customers willing to adapt for your product? If you have any questions, comments, or topic ideas for Bootstrapped Web, leave us a message here “We did things a certain way and, if they didn't like that, either they didn't become a customer or they adapted. And we had plenty of customers who adapted.” – Brian Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Resources:

We talk to Brian Casel about launching ZipMessage and growing a SaaS business (vs a productize service). We talk to him about his previous business successes, how he got started programming, and how he's thinking about growing ZipMessage. 00:00 Intro 01:08 Brian's backstory 05:35 Scaling by hiring more people 09:40 ZipMessage 12:22 Audience Ops 13:14 Move towards software businesses 18:14 Christian's backstory 20:42 Chris's backstory 21:38 Tech stack: Rails vs React vs Laravel 28:24 ZipMessage company structure 30:26 Business structure: selling just part of an LLC 33:13 What to spending money on 38:18 Freemium 42:44 Buying a Tesla 48:01 Reading books 49:29 Investing thoughts 54:23 Outro Timestamps created with https://clips.marketing by @cgenco https://zipmessage.com/ https://twitter.com/casjam

Here's the recap...In today's episode, I chatted with serial entrepreneur Brian Casel, CEO of ZipMessage. We took a deep dive into asynchronous communications. Focusing on a new trend of asynchronous hiring. We spoke about the benefits of asynchronous be default remote cultures. Helping employees flip the switch from living to work to working to live. However, we noted the slippery slope async may lead to. Without synchronous team engagement, it could break company culture. So how does hiring someone without ever speaking with them live help the company ensure culture & team fit? If you're expanding your remote team this year and interested in how hiring synchronously vs asynchronously may affect the quality of hires, listen in... For a full transcript click here. For more information about the show click here. We'd love to hear your feedback and thoughts on the show - feedback@leadingfromafar.com

What does traction feel like? How do you authentically build a network? Brian and Jordan talk about marketing, website updates, and the different phases of product/market fit. Jordan dives into the different and unique ways Rally is marketing. Brian updates us on ZipMessage momentum: website updates, premium enrollment, and crossing a customer milestone. Today's episode … Continue reading Define Traction

Today is our mega-productivity episode. It's nearly an hour of our best tips, tricks, tools, and advice for getting more done and making more money with less time and effort. That's the dream right: keep growing your business without working yourself to death. And in today's show, that's exactly what you'll get. It all starts right after this message from our sponsors. Support our sponsors so we can keep airing new episodes: ButcherBox: Get our meat delivered, for free, right to your door. Justworks - Manage your remote team and run your business with confidence. Talkspace: Feeling better starts with a single message. Canva: Templates for absolutely anything. Marketing Mastery for Creative Entrepreneurs: Premium marketing course from Eric Holter. Dripify - Premium learning platform for entrepreneurs. SolidGigs - Get more freelance jobs Get your own on-air coaching call We'd love to feature your business and offer some free on-air advice for growing your business. To see if you're a good fit, click here. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts: If you enjoy the show, can you do us a favor and leave us an honest rating and review on Apple Podcasts? We'll love you forever. Click here to leave a review. Tools & Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Getting Things Done by David Allen Chuck.Email for managing your overflowing inbox. Hectic App for managing your entire business from one place. ClickUp for managing projects. Trainual for employee onboarding & team processes. Loom for quick screen recording.  Vimeo also has a quick screen recording option. ProcessKit for managing your agency's processes. Intercom for Client FAQs or automated chatbots. Slack for team communication. ZipMessage for asynchronous team communication, coaching, or client communication. Best Home Office Chairs ‘Deep Focus' playlist on Spotify for concentrating while working. More Recommended Listening: This show is a part of the Podglomerate, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter. We suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows about entrepreneurship, business, and creativity such as Rocketship.fm and Creative Elements. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Corey and Chris bring on Brian Casel to talk about growing ZipMessage, what he'd do differently today if he was starting from scratch, and recent experiments including freemium.Ask us a question →Notable mentions: @CasJam on Twitter ZipMessage Bootstrapped Web More podcasts for bootstrappers Learn more about their businesses: Swipe Files Jetboost Follow them on Twitter: @coreyhainesco @c_spags

When launching a new SaaS business, what comes first? What features do you focus on? How do you keep an eye on your key metrics early on? How do you handle onboarding when you're shuffling team members' priorities? Brian and Jordan talk all about the newest updates with ZipMessage and Rally. From experimenting with free plans, website redesigns, and preparing themselves for an influx of activity, there is a lot going on behind the scenes. Exciting things are happening but with excitement come daunting tasks, important decisions, and possible mistakes. “What we're about to do is, we're about to scramble people's priorities in a challenging way.” – Jordan Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Here are today's conversation points: New activity with ZipMessageOnboarding first merchants with RallyRemembering the excitement and joy that comes from sales demosExperimenting with a free plan on ZipMessageThe differences between the free and paid planRally's all-hands to mentally prepare for a different challenge: new prioritiesZipMessage's website redesignThe daunting task of revamping landing pages If you have any questions, comments, or topic ideas for Bootstrapped Web, leave us a message here “Nothing like having real customers to really drive what's really important.” – Brian Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Resources: Brian on Twitter Jordan on Twitter ZipMessage Ra

Brian Casel is a veteran of the bootstrapping game, having left his full-time job back in 2008. You might have heard him on the Boostrapped Web podcast where he shares his journey starting and building software products. Over the years Brian has pretty much done it all, built software businesses, courses, productized services and even sold some along the way. Most recently, Brian has been working on ZipMessage, a new way to communicate asynchronously.➡️ Get the uncut, 60 minute recording with Brian on the Indie Feast membership here.What we covered in this episode: Where did the idea of ZipMessage come from? How Brian validated ZipMessage Brian's unconventional approach to validation Why Brian raised funding from Calm Company Fund How can people go from freelancer to productized service The importance of building processes in productized services Why Brian didn't follow his passion for music Recommendations Book: Shoe Dog by Phil Knight Podcast: Smartless Indie Hacker: James McKinven (errm...) Follow Brian Twitter Personal Site Follow Me Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Personal Website Buy A Wallet 2 Hour Podcast Course Sponsor - Fathom AnalyticsFor the longest time, website analytics software was seriously bad. It was hard to understand, time-consuming to use, and worse, it exploited visitor data for big tech to profit. I've spent countless hours in Google Analytics dashboards trying to figure even out the most basic metrics.This is exactly why I signed up for Fathom as soon as I heard Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis were building it.Fathom is simple website analytics that doesn't suck. It's easy to use and respectful of privacy laws, with no cookies following your users around the web. They're also a bootstrapped, sustainable business so I love supporting them. Yes, it might feel strange paying for analytics at first, but once you realise the real cost of free Google Analytics and realising how easy to use Fathom is, you won't go back. You can install the lightweight code on as many websites as you want and quickly see the performance of all your sites.Link → https://usefathom.com/bites

When launching a new SaaS business, what comes first? What features do you focus on? How do you keep an eye on your key metrics early on? How do you handle onboarding when you're shuffling team members' priorities? Brian and Jordan talk all about the newest updates with ZipMessage and Rally. From experimenting with free … Continue reading Chicken or Egg Development

What is the difference between going to market and marketing? What mindset do you need to be in to accomplish your goals for both of these stages of business? In addition to answering these questions, Brian and Jordan dive into their marketing goals, content strategists, and updates on where they are with their Rally and ZipMessage. Jordan talks about Rally's methodical blog posts, which will be released slowly over the next few months. Brian shares some of the new features on ZipMessage and his plans for ‘going to market.' They also talk about how uncomfortable and rewarding the process can be. ‘Going to market' is humbling and requires authenticity after all. “There's a lot going on inside the company and inside the product. And ‘go to market' is one element of that but you can't just focus on that because there's a lot of other things going on that we have to get right.” – Jordan Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Here are today's conversation points: The difference between going to market and marketingWhat is involved when you go to marketMarketing techniques and content creatorsDifferent versions of networking If you have any questions, comments, or topic ideas for Bootstrapped Web, leave us a message here. “It's this idea (especially in the first year) where you've got to be doing activities that are introducing the product to more and more new people.” – Brian Powered By the Tweet This Plugin

Jordan shares some big news, 5.8 million dollars worth of news. At the feet of the news of Rally's seed funding announcement, Brian and Jordan talk all about raising money for businesses. What are the mechanics of starting the funding journey? Which funding path should you take? What does it mean for a fund to lead a round? Meanwhile, Brian gives updates on ZipMessage including marketing projects (comparison/competitor pages), hiring designers for website redesigns, and falling behind on content. “What we did was, we only worked with seed funds, because I wanted everyone to be focused on success at the seed stage.” – Jordan Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Here are today's conversation points: Rally funding announcementsPlanning for funding and growth for RallyStrategic funding approaches and plansComparison/competitor pagesWebsite redesignsSEO content opportunities for ZipMessageHow to get the right response and the right person for the job If you have any questions, comments, or topic ideas for Bootstrapped Web, leave us a message here “In this early stage, there is an element of creativity and strategy. I have to bring that knowledge to the project. I can't just hand that off to someone else.” – Brian Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Resources: Brian on Twitter Jorda

Bootstrapped Web is no longer bootstrapped, on either side! Jordan starts off this episode with his “coming out” strategy, which all starts with his initial three-post series on Rally. He also dives into Rally updates, comparing your start-up businesses, and the importance of developing a unique view of the market. Brian takes funding from Calm Fund (formerly Earnest Capital), which has been a month in the making. He talks about the different decisions and considerations to be made when exiting Audience Ops and taking funding for ZipMessage. If you have any questions, comments, or topic ideas for Bootstrapped Web, leave us a message here. “I love this [angel funding] ecosystem and how it's been evolving.” – Brian Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Here are today's conversation points: Jordan’s “coming out” strategy for RallyBrian takes funding from Calm Fund (formerly Earnest Capital) “I have been sitting on so many secrets, it's not healthy. It's not healthy to be quiet and fearful. It's not my natural state.” – Jordan Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Resources Rally Blog “Your Startup is a Movement” by David Sacks Calm Fund Brian on Twitter

Brian Casel joins Benedicte, Brian, and Benedikt to talk about ZipMessage, selling businesses, hiring contractors to collaborate with, and how becoming a developer makes you worse at marketing.  ZipMessage Brian's Productize & Scale course Brian's Website AudienceOps FounderGigs

After a month hiatus, Brian and Jordan are back with stories about trips, waking up in pain, and prepping for competition. They also talk about growth in terms of profitability versus milestones, the newest developments with ZipMessage, and introducing “common, everyday tools” to people outside of the SaaS community. If you have any questions, comments, or topic ideas for Bootstrapped Web, leave us a message here. “Growth as headcount as an acceptable growth metric. And the reason for that is if you're not shooting for profitability and you're shooting for milestones.” – Jordan Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Here are today's conversation points: The relationship between founder and VCHeadcount versus profitability as growthHiring a recruiterZipMessage goalsPrioritizing requestsSetting up new featuresOpening it up to the publicThe Shipped podcastBrian's new technical marketerIntroduction of technology to othersNiche toolsSummit, whiteboards that do math. The easiest way to create, test, and present your logic.Taming the chaos “If profitability isn't the goal on this path (which makes sense), what are the metrics that you're looking at for the next 12 months or 18 months?” – Brian Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Mentioned on today’s episode: Leave us a message here Rally On

After a month hiatus, Brian and Jordan are back with stories about trips, waking up in pain, and prepping for competition. They also talk about growth in terms of profitability versus milestones, the newest developments with ZipMessage, and introducing “common, everyday tools” to people outside of the SaaS community. If you have any questions, comments, … Continue reading Back and Running

Esto es Apps Para Emprendedores, mi nombre es Jorge Diaz. De Lunes a Sábado te recomiendo una nueva app cada día para incrementar tus ingresos. La App de hoy es https://zipmessage.com/ No te pierdas Apps Para Emprendedores y recibe las apps en tu Email. Envía un email en blanco a recibe@AppsParaEmprendedores.com y suscríbete hoy. Vuelve mañana por más Apps Para Emprendedores.

Brian and Jordan are back to back-to-back weeks before vacation and travel plans kick in because… It's summertime! While Jordan deals with a minor lacrosse injury, they both gush over Matt Medeiros, and give updates on their latest business endeavors. They talk about the progress on the search for a media creator for both Rally and ZipMessage, hiring funnels and hiring hurdles, getting feedback, and ways to get out of a funk. If you have any questions, comments, or topic ideas for Bootstrapped Web, leave us a message here. “I saw a ZipMessage pop up in my Slack the other day. I love seeing it organically used because that's the tool that fits.” – Jordan Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Here are today's conversation points: Matt Medeiros and the media creator roleThe technical side of ZipMessageReading stats and getting feedbackGetting out of a funkCompleting tasks, self-induced stress, and forgivenessFiguring out the right workflow and the right peopleHiring funnels, hurdles, testimonials, and role-specific adjustments “People get value from it and they don't tell you they're getting value from it. It's just happening and you don't see it right in front of you. You have to see the stats.” – Brian Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Mentioned on today’s episode: Matt Medeiros' Twitter Thread on the media creator role ChartMogul DynamiteJobs

Brian and Jordan are back with updates about diving headfirst into team sports with an “old man lacrosse leagues,” to celebrating 10-year wedding anniversaries, job postings, and creating messages that resonate with customers. They're covering a little bit of everything today. Brian shares a couple of interesting job openings based on ZipMessage: a media creator and a technical marketer. Check out the job opening for media creator if you love to create content, are comfortable telling stories, and coming up with creative new ideas. He is also looking for a technical marketer who will work on distribution and optimizing channels and SaaS funnels. If you are interested in either job position, use the links below to apply. Media Creator Technical Marketer If you have any questions, comments, or topic ideas for Bootstrapped Web, leave a message here “You want the authentic version of the media and the audience and value, and then allowing for a bridge from there, over to the product.” – Jordan Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Here are today's conversation points: ZipMessage Updates:Growth and skepticism Job openings:Media creatorTechnical marketerCreating a communityThe Bloomberg ModelAxiosConversations and conveying the Rally messageWhat to lead withHow to make your message resonateShopify opinionsBrian is hiring for 2 roles: Media Creator Technical Marketer “If you want an engaged community where they interact with each other, the audience has to come first.” – Brian Powered By the Tweet This Plugin

Brian and Jordan are back with updates about diving headfirst into team sports with an “old man lacrosse leagues,” to celebrating 10-year wedding anniversaries, job postings, and creating messages that resonate with customers. They're covering a little bit of everything today. Brian shares a couple of interesting job openings based on ZipMessage: a media creator … Continue reading Hiring Media Creators

Brian and Jordan are back with no excuses and plenty of updates for both Rally and ZipMessage. Today's topics are all about roadmaps, leading tech teams, and ecommerce marketing. While ecommerce has been around for a while, SaaS is evolving in the way it is marketed and sold. What are your thoughts on SaaS marketing strategies? Do you prefer leading a large tech team or would you rather keep your team small and easily manageable? What are your thoughts on the importance of communication for teams who work remotely? If you have any questions, comments, or topic ideas for Brian or Jordan, leave a message here. “When you start to talk about a bunch of people, all in coordination, all in different time zones, all on different things, that stuff is just magic to me.” – Jordan Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Here are today's conversation points: The next step for RallyThe many uses for ZipMessageCombining live Zoom calls with asynchronous follow-upsDirect Slack integrationsThe ZipMessage roadmapLeading a tech teamRequirements for leadershipThe importance of communicationDifferent strategies for marketing “The way that I think about integrations generally is, it's more about, ‘Does it solve a customer problem and customer conversion?'” – Brian Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Mentioned on today’s episode:

Brian and Jordan are back with no excuses and plenty of updates for both Rally and ZipMessage. Today's topics are all about roadmaps, leading tech teams, and ecommerce marketing. While ecommerce has been around for a while, SaaS is evolving in the way it is marketed and sold. What are your thoughts on SaaS marketing … Continue reading Raising The Bar

Post Status founder Brian Krogsgard has sold the remaining half of his ownership of the WordPress media brand to his partner, Cory Miller. Kicking off his his farewell post, A New Era for Post Status, Brian states: “It has been an extreme privilege to create and run this community — and see it blossom into a wonderful entity with its own identity. In the last few years, I’ve worked to bring more voices and more talent into the fold, and I’m confident that I leave Post Status in very able hands.” I had a chance to Interview Cory Miller about the transition, and here’s what he had to say. (Hit play on the podcast, reader!) You can gain more insight from Cory’s announcement on the website and his Draft podcast episode. The Blocksy Theme, was covered on the Tavern recently highlighting all of their investments into the theme + Gutenberg. It’s better for all of WordPress when we see a privately owned theme company growing these days. Stackable Gutenberg page builder founder Benjamin Intal was interviewed on the WP Jukebox podcast delivering his outlook on the now competitive Gutenberg block landscape as compared to his start back in 2018. Note the use of the phrase, “Gutenberg page builder” a noteworthy and intentional title in his pitch about the company. Affiliate Royale has re-branded to EasyAffiliate. You can see the whole new brand and website at EasyAffiliate.com. It’s a CaseProof owned company which includes PrettyLink and MemberPress, both of which owner Blair Williams entered into the Awesome Motive accelerator WP Beginner Growth Accelerator program, a Syed Balkhi owned initiative. Oldies but goodies The Query Block received some enhancements back in the Gutenberg 10.6 update. Pay close attention to the Query Block. I think it’s important to how users experience pulling content out of WordPress and displaying it on the front-end and will be crucial in the full-site editing experience. How do you feel about presenting your vaccination status at the next WordCamp? A proposal including comments from around the community was posted back on May 12th. I interviewed Brian Casel founder of ZipMessage over on The Matt Report podcast. That’s it for today’s episode, if you enjoyed please share it on your social media, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser. Don’t forget to share share share this episode with others and jump on the mailing list at thewpminute.com

It took me a while to draw out what I wanted to say in today's monologue about our guest. This will be his 6th appearance on the show. With this episode, we've covered 4 different SaaS based businesses, with a handful of digital products and one service-based business that's still running, of which, I've never fully interviewed him about. I really should since it's the cashflow center he has to fund all of these business experiments he's chasing. His name is Brian Casel and he's trying something new, it's called ZipMessage. It's an asynch way to share videos with customers & colleagues. Out of everything he's worked on, I think this will be the software project that defines his career in the software business. Just like I called it with Paul Jarvis and Fathom Analytics taking over his product world, I bet we'll have Brian back on for a 7th time when he sells his company to Microsoft. Enjoy today's episode! https://youtu.be/MLK9qQjRLSo Transcript [00:01:39] Matt: [00:01:39] It took me a while to draw out what I wanted to say in today's monologue about our guests. This will be a six appearance on the show. With this episode, we've covered four different SAS based businesses with a handful of digital products and one service-based business. That's still running of which I've never really fully interviewed them about. I really should. Since it's the cashflow center, he has [00:02:00] to fund all of these business experiments. He's chasing.[00:02:03] Can you guess who it is? His name is Brian Casel. He's trying something new. It's called zip message. It's an async way to share videos with customers and colleagues. Out of everything he's worked on. I think this will be the software project that defines his career in the software business.[00:02:19]Just like I called it with Paul Jarvis and fathom analytics taking over his product world. I bet we'll have Brian back on for a seventh time when he sells this business to Microsoft. You're listening to the Maryport a podcast for the resilient digital business builders. Subscribe to the newsletter@mattreport.com slash subscribe and follow the podcast on apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Better yet. Please share this episode on your social media. We'd love more listeners around here. Okay.[00:02:46] Let's talk to Brian and find out why he's launching yet another product. Hey everybody. Welcome back to what I'm calling the Brian report. Brian. Oh man. Welcome back to the podcast. You've [00:03:00] clearly won the, a amount of recurring times on the, on the merit port show. I should just have applied for all of the products that you launch. I should just have a podcast all to yourself and everything that you have going on today.[00:03:12] We're talking about. If that's[00:03:13] Brian: [00:03:13] not a sign of failure, I don't know.[00:03:15] Matt: [00:03:15] What is failure show castles here to talk about what might be another failure, the message you can find zip message@zipmessage.com. I'm going to open this up. I think a lot of people know your backstory. If they haven't, they can listen to the half a dozen shows that you and I have already done on this podcast.[00:03:33]Why this product last time we. We chatted. You were just getting your, you were, you were getting that sort of Ruby on rails, getting your chops down on that, like learning how to build whole other platform and suddenly zip message appeared out of nowhere. How, why, when did it come about, why did you pursue it?[00:03:51] Brian: [00:03:51] Yeah. I don't, I don't remember exactly when our last show here on a I'll call it Matt report aired. It must've been [00:04:00] probably around 2018 or 2019. I can't believe it's actually been that long, but you and I have chatted since then. The, so a little bit of of the timeline process kit, which is, you know, I still run and still going that product.[00:04:15] I basically started working on it really full-time in January of 2019, I kind of started planning it in 18, but really got full-time into it in January 19. Launched that to first paying customers by around June of, I want to say, yeah, 2019, and then really focused a hundred percent on that. Throughout 19 and 20 and into 20.[00:04:40] And then at the end of 2020 you know, process kit just got to the, to that place where a lot of SAS get to where, you know, a couple thousand in MRR it's really slow to grow. It has some. You know, so some, some challenges I tried a bunch of stuff and I'm still trying some stuff, but I decided at, [00:05:00] in around December of 2020 to just take a step back and start to open my mind to like, maybe I should try another product or two or three.[00:05:12] And actually like back in, back in, you know, back in January, the idea was. Let's let's throw a couple of ideas at the wall and see what sticks, but there was really this one idea called zip message, which I had the idea and midway through 2020, but I, you know, I shelved it along with all the other shiny object ideas in my long list of them.[00:05:29]But I was like, let me just try this. Take a little breather from, from really pushing on process kit, put it, put the roadmap on process could a little bit on, on maintenance mode. And and I went into zip message and, you know, I really liked the idea. I was attracted to the idea because a number of different things.[00:05:46]First of all, you know, in, in a lot of ways, it's sort of really every business that I ever get into, I'm trying to course correct from something that I learned in the, in the previous one. Right. One of the big challenges with process kit [00:06:00] has been that it's a really big. Product, which means it's a really big task to adopt.[00:06:05] If you're a new customer, like it literally takes new customers a good month, at least of. Of like everyday work on their part to, to[00:06:13] Matt: [00:06:13] really, they have to appeal the process out, template it out into your system, if you will, and then engage people to, to use it. And I remember you and I chatting a lot PR you know, privately between the two of us, like, wouldn't this be a great idea, like free templates to like kickstart that and nurture.[00:06:30] Yeah.[00:06:30] Brian: [00:06:30] And, and we have templates in there which really did help a lot in, in late 20, 20. Added the templates and put them like front and center in the onboarding experience. So actually since then we've had, you know, more customers, self convert without, without the heavy customer support load that it did have for a while there.[00:06:45]And that, that continues, I guess it's just super slow, you know, to, to grow and, and become a thing. And for those that don't know, like in the background, I also have audience ops, which I'm not super involved in day to day, but that, that is the other business that I have that, that sort of.[00:07:00] [00:06:59] Funds all the runway for, for getting into SAS. So it gives me a little bit of space and time to be able to explore different ideas which is, which is really nice. But with zip messaging, I really liked it because the first things that really attracted to me as the business idea is that it's so fast to get value from, you know, like again, process kit is like, you got to really commit like a good month to get, to really start to get value.[00:07:23] Like you're automating operations in your business. Whereas with zip message. You could sign up and have an, an asynchronous video call with one of the person and you just got. A bit of value from this tool. Is that something[00:07:36] Matt: [00:07:36] you, you sort of stumbled upon? I know countless products, services and stuff that you've, that you've gone through.[00:07:42] And I, and I want to kind of break that down of like what your best, most valuable lesson is thus far in your career, but will you like sort of. You know, midway through or three quarters way through here with process get going. You know what I think I missed, I think it was that I think it was that quick, easy, instant gratification to a [00:08:00] customer.[00:08:00] I feel like that's what I'm missing and, oh, that's right. I get this thing called zip message over here that I was thinking about doing[00:08:07] Brian: [00:08:07] learned. It it's, it's never just one thing. There's always, you know, there's, there's really probably like 10 big learnings that I've taken out of process kit. And some things that I, that I learned.[00:08:17] That, that we did really well, but yeah, that was one of them definitely is that activation adoption sort of thing. The most common , churn reason that I hear from people is you know, really it's so more of a challenge of, of getting new people to adopt it. Cause cause once people do do get like sign on the, the lifetime is really great and they actually do expand that they add, you know, team members and stuff like that.[00:08:41]But they, they basically stopped like the people who turn, they, they basically stop using it after a few months. So, you know, obviously there there's. There might be some like product market fit issues there, but there is a core customer base that is like power users on it and they really love it.[00:08:55] So it's sort of like a question of like, what do I do with that?[00:08:59]Matt: [00:08:59] This is a [00:09:00] reaction to just like, it's not even just whatever audio video tools to do apps and like all these other spaces. This is just everything. Every product in the world competing with that I need to, it needs to be instant or the customer.[00:09:15] They're out. Like it doesn't matter what kind of tool you're launching[00:09:17] Brian: [00:09:17] here. Yeah. The thing that I saw with zip message that, that got me really excited. Number one, was that like speed to get getting value from the tool. Number two is it's, it's heading into a space of software tools. That is, is not brand new.[00:09:33] So like loom is probably the most common call it competitor. And, and which, you know, lots of people use, I use loom as well. And so this idea of like video recording, video messaging tools, the thing that I saw with loom, and this was actually the, the way the idea for zip message came about was that I would commonly be on a customer support call for process kit, and ask the customer, Hey, I [00:10:00] need to see what you're seeing.[00:10:00] Can you record your screen for me? Can you, can you go use a tool like, like loom or, or record your screen and send me a Dropbox link or whatever you might do. And, you know, that's a lot to ask for, for customers. Like maybe they do use loom, maybe they don't. But it's just friction there. Right? So I wanted to, like, I, I started thinking like, man, there's gotta be an easy way for me to just send somebody a link.[00:10:22] They click it, they come to a page, they could start recording their screen. And that was the original idea for zip message. And that's what it is. You can, you can do that, but, but what it quickly evolved into was okay, they could re it's easy for somebody else to record, but I can record my response right back to them.[00:10:42] And now we have this asynchronous conversation on, on video or just audio camera, screen screenshot, or just text. And now is literally flowing down the page, like a conversation. But we're asynchronous. We don't have to book a live zoom call, you know? I don't have to [00:11:00] ask somebody to get on their calendar, all that.[00:11:02] It's just like, here's a link. Let's talk when it's good for both of us. And, and it just flows right down the page. And, and that idea of the asynchronous conversation turned out to be the thing that people are starting to really latch on to, you know, because. And that was a little bit to my surprise, you know?[00:11:20]And, and I'm finding all these other use cases. My original use case was like customer support scenarios, but. All these other use cases are coming up like, oh, I want to, I want to use it to, to take requests for my podcast. I wanna, I want to use it to, you know, collaborate with my team, my freelancers, talk to my customers, or use it in a sales situation to have asynchronous video chats with, with sales prospects, hiring, like getting, you know, video responses from applicants and stuff like that.[00:11:49] So, I'm sort of fielding all these different use cases right now, but it's, they're all interested in, I, I keep asking people, like, why are you interested in zit message? Why, why don't you just use a loom? [00:12:00] Right. And, and they all come back saying, this is the one that has that, that conversation, like a threaded conversation view.[00:12:08] And so we're really sort of leaning into that. And I'm pretty excited about it. I I've been. Ha having conversations with, with customers like using zip message. It's a[00:12:18] Matt: [00:12:18] really cool[00:12:19] Brian: [00:12:19] tool. Totally. It's a really cool way to actually communicate,[00:12:23] Matt: [00:12:23] you know? Yeah. Before we keep drilling into the product and how you're approaching it, , what has been the most valuable piece of education to Excel your career?[00:12:33] I'm going to bet that it's learning how to. Amy, you always know, you've always known how to develop, but I feel like this progression into learning Ruby on rails and becoming a a better developer has been something that has really skyrocketed your ability to launch and iterate and feel more confident in products.[00:12:52] Is that, is that true?[00:12:53] Brian: [00:12:53] A hundred percent. Yes. Yeah. I love it. And it has skyrocketed my enjoyment of what I do [00:13:00] with, with products. Yeah, it has really, really removed such a huge barrier. Cause I've, I, I have been a front end dev my whole career. I've been a designer. I am a designer.[00:13:11]And, and when I say designer, I, you know, as, as any designer knows that that doesn't mean. Picking colors and picking typography. Like that's just one detail of it. What you're really doing is as a designer, you're solving a problem. And so when you're designing for the web, especially if you're designing software, you're really designing the whole system from the way that it works.[00:13:34] In the database to the way that the user interacts on the, on the screen. And for years, I, you know, probably one of your mat reports, we talked about like ops calendar when I was doing that. And that was 2017. Yeah. Back then I couldn't develop backend. So I had to hire out. Help with that. Right now, I, I also have a developer that I work with them and we can work really fast together.[00:13:57] Another big benefit of being a developer myself [00:14:00] is I can collaborate on such a deeper, more productive level with him. He's in India and we, and we are hashing out every single feature together. Not to mention working You know, like two tracks, like we're, we're able to ship twice as many features in a week because it's both me and him working on it.[00:14:20] Yeah.[00:14:20] Matt: [00:14:20] So, I I'd say also one of your super powers, it's kind of funny. Not to get sidetracked on, on products. I'm looking at our 2017 episode on the Maryport building ops calendar. And one of the channel under the challenges bullet point section there's here's a bullet point. It says there's a side plugin business that is also being created from custom tools by audience, which I think was like your opt-in forms on WordPress, the content upgrades.[00:14:44] Yeah, it just goes to show like all of these different things that you would fragment and spider out too.[00:14:49] Brian: [00:14:49] That one was funny because we had that's a pair of, of WordPress plugins. And we, you know, some, some customers bought it, but we mainly used it for clients and audience ops. And then I think it was [00:15:00] around 2018.[00:15:00] I ended up selling those to liquid web. Which came about really randomly, but but it was nice to sort of just[00:15:07] Matt: [00:15:07] let those go. I'd say also one of, one of your super powers, which might often get overlooked is your ability. And this is just something that I've admired your ability to do. And I just don't know if I have the patience like you to do it, but as hiring people is higher as being able to find and hire and train people up to.[00:15:25]To help you develop these, these products. I think that's a skill set that is very difficult to hone over time. I've seen plenty of blog posts that are like, here's all you have to do, make a couple of test projects and hire and go through 12 of them and hire that one person. It's like, it never works for me.[00:15:41] Works for you. You[00:15:42] Brian: [00:15:42] know what? It's interesting you say that because I think, I think I've done okay with hiring over the years. In, in, in certain types of hiring, but, but now I'm in a different place with trying to build a small team to grow this SAS company that I'm working on [00:16:00] now. Right. So, and, and that I'm finding a lot more challenging to hire for.[00:16:04]I'm still figuring it out. I like, it's literally on my plate this week, like a problem that I haven't figured out yet. So, the what, what I've always felt pretty comfortable with is. Okay. I've got a service. I figured it, the process for delivering the service. I've documented the process. I set up the systems.[00:16:23] Now I need to hire people to plug into the process. And carry out specific roles. That's that's what audience ops is. We've got a team of about 25 people, writers, copy editors managers, assistants, and they, they just kind of carry out their tasks. And that has grown to where we have like a, a higher level manager.[00:16:41] We've got a sales person, we've got, you know, different stuff. So you know, that, that. I think, I think I'm an okay manager. Maybe not a great manager. I don't know that. I'm great. Yeah. Yeah. Like building a a strong team culture something I w I always want to try and get better at, but, but my team there is, has [00:17:00] been with me for many of them four or five, six years, you know?[00:17:03]Yeah. And, and that's gone, that's gone pretty good. And developers I've, I've had generally pretty good success with sometimes it's initially hard to, to find the right person who has the right skillset, but being technical now makes it so much easier, frankly. I haven't done it that much because I've just been working with this one developer.[00:17:19] Who's been awesome.[00:17:21] Matt: [00:17:21] One of the challenges for me. When I'm looking to, to work with a developer especially in the past is I feel like I should be finding somebody who just cares as much. About the product and like the vision and the future as I do about like, whatever product that was, or is that I was working on, that was a lesson that I learned really early.[00:17:42] Like, man, you got to just pump the brakes on that. A lot of people just want the task, want to get it done and do a good job, but they're not going to care about the long-term vision of where you want to go. Is that something that you wrestle with at[00:17:54] Brian: [00:17:54] all? With developers. We were just talking about how I'm, I'm still relatively new to learning how to build and Ruby [00:18:00] on rails, like backend development.[00:18:02]I am still in a newbie. I could technically build an app, but the code will be ugly that like, I don't have all the experience that that an experienced dev has. So. So it's actually nice to be able to work with somebody who's really strong career experienced backend developer. Like I, I I defer to him too.[00:18:21] Like we have, we actually have a lot of issues in our get hub where I built and finished a feature. It's all done. It's working tested. Good to go. And then, and then I just pass it over to him. Just, just go clean up, whatever. I just built here, like, you know, fix it, fix all the mistakes, like and keep it work in the same basically.[00:18:40]And then I get to learn from, from what he did and and so that that's been really good. So mostly I'm just sort of deferring on the technical side to him, but I'm D I'm directing him and managing like w what we're going to work on, how the is going to design, how, how it's going to function, all that kind of stuff.[00:18:56] Matt: [00:18:56] And one of the challenging roles, I think we can talk about it because I saw you [00:19:00] tweet about it is trying to find somebody to be like that. Content creator, video podcasts, blogging tutorials. Front-facing it's quite a unicorn. If I pat myself on the back here, because it's something that I do for Craig at Casos it's been a challenging, I don't know how long it's been, but it's been a challenging proposition for you.[00:19:21] How's[00:19:22] Brian: [00:19:22] that? Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up. I did. Want to talk about that. Cause it's something that I'm looking for right now. Just generally hiring marketers in general. Right? Most marketers are really good at what they do. But I think these days when it comes to marketing, excuse me, that's why I shouldn't drink coffee while I'm in the tunnel pockets.[00:19:45]Like most marketers. Who, who, who call themselves either a freelance marketer or a full-time marketer. Yeah. Hold on. Right. You know, most marketers are, are good at what they [00:20:00] technically at what they do, whether it's writing or or using analytics or SEO, research, outreach, whatever, whatever type of marketing they do.[00:20:11] It's usually a mix of things. They're technically good at that. But right now in 2020 or 2021, B2B SAS is. Just a really, really difficult from a marketing standpoint. And I'm mainly talking about like new entry, SAS products, very early stage SAS products like mine. Right. It's just the, the competition is just insane.[00:20:36] You know, it's one thing to S to S to market and sell a service, you know, because you, you just need a handful of good customers. To, to make it a really viable business, but, but for a SAS product to break through, like really no matter how you price it, even, even if you're pricing several hundred, a customer, even up to like a thousand or two per, per customer per month, like you [00:21:00] still need a lot of customers and a lot of traffic and visibility to make it work.[00:21:05] And. And, and it just, and there's so many other things that, that go into building a SAS product tech, like technically the product and all that. So with collaborating with a marketer, what I'm finding, I had a tweet about this today, or this week is I think it's a lot more about brand than people like to admit.[00:21:26] And we think about branding, like it's logo design, or it's our colors or something like that. Or you think about brand like it's. Like it's Budweiser in, in city field or something like that, but it's, but for SAS, it's really like, what are you known for on the internet, even, even within circles. And, and pop, like podcasting is a big part of that.[00:21:47] Like I think to this day go historically across all my products, the number one. Source of new customers is hearing me on podcasts either in my own or somebody else's right. [00:22:00] Like by far. And that's one of the hardest things to even track and measure. But I know when every time I ask someone, 90% of the times, like I heard you on a podcast or I follow your podcast.[00:22:11]And and so I, that's not just podcasting specifically, but. I just think that when, when you're talking about brand, like we need to be creating really interesting, unique things for the world for our people that are different, that are worth talking about that are worth sharing. And that stuff has to be more creative today than ever like, yeah.[00:22:31] Like you can't just put out the same stuff that everybody else is putting out. Like you have to, you have to have. New ideas. You have to be advanced. You have to be out there like making arguments for something, you know, you gotta be out there you know, advancing a brand new idea. And in, in a, in a, in a way that's like visually appealing, that's fast to get, to get it.[00:22:50] Like, usually that involves, you know, video and and things like that. And so. So what I'm looking[00:22:56] Matt: [00:22:56] at, can't be just one thing. It can't be one thing anymore, right? Like it [00:23:00] has to be the podcast. It has to be like at minimum it's podcasts, YouTube channel newsletter, blog, blogs sort of fell to fourth place recently, but still like, you need to do it.[00:23:12] And it's almost like one of those thankless you know, like those thankless. Jobs or, or whatever, like you have to keep producing it. Even if people aren't tuning in. This is the funny thing with audiences and content that I've learned over the last few years is. You better keep doing it, even if they're not tuning in, they want to know that you're still doing it because if you stop, oh, if you stop that podcast, they're going to judge you.[00:23:39] And they're going to say like, you didn't do it. Like, even if they're not listening, they know, I know Brian's doing a podcast. That's all I need to say that he's doing it. And he's putting in the[00:23:47] Brian: [00:23:47] effort, you know? It's so, it's true. What you're saying, because like, Like I said, like, podcasts are like impossible to track.[00:23:54] Like you could sort of see how many listeners you're getting, but you don't know how many of those listeners are turning into customers [00:24:00] or leads or whatever, whatever it might be. Or listeners referring other customers. Like that's actually usually how it happens. Right. You know, you can't really track that, but I know for a fact, I have this other podcast, I haven't done it in a while.[00:24:13] It was called a productized podcast is basically an interview show that I've had, it was off and on from my 2017 into 2018. And a little bit in 19, I think. And, and I would go off and on with it. I would do like six, eight months of it, and then I'd do a hiatus and then another six or eight months. And then it's, it's weird.[00:24:34] But I look at the sales graph on like my productized course and my other stuff. And sales go up when I'm podcasting and sales sort of trend down when I'm not podcasting. Like, I don't know, like the trend is definitely there though, you know? Yeah.[00:24:48]Matt: [00:24:48] I want to put on girls' hat for a second here. He would tell you, Brian, why don't you just do the podcast, the YouTube, the content for zip message and hire out.[00:24:59] The [00:25:00] development and the management of like the product itself. So why not? Why not[00:25:05] Brian: [00:25:05] do that? It's a good CR you know, it's funny, I, I sort of joke about this lately. Like the more that I get into product development and, and code it's like the worst I am at marketing and the less interested I am in doing marketing work and content stuff.[00:25:20] So. That's basically it, it's not that I have no interest in it. Like, I, I do enjoy hopping on the mix and getting on podcasts, but I don't enjoy the, the, the grind of, of especially video. I don't mind going on camera once in a while. But I that's, that's one thing is the actual production work. I'm not that interested in doing, I don't, I don't think I'm very good at it.[00:25:42] I could hack through something, but I'm not a professional video person. I'm not also, I'm also very much not interested in being a personal brand. You know, I know that gets, that term gets thrown out, thrown around a lot. And I think to a certain extent, everybody is a [00:26:00] personal brand, whether you like it or want to be or not.[00:26:02]And I'm not denying that, but the company that I'm trying to build right now is a small software company. I don't want it to be. The Brian castle show. I want it to be, we make awesome products and, and we put really cool stuff out into the world, you know? Yeah. That will involve people like, you know, my, my team myself on camera on microphone, but it should be more about the product and the ideas or the questions we're asking to the world then Then then just, just me all the time,[00:26:36] Matt: [00:26:36] you know?[00:26:36] Yeah. I feel, you know, again, it just kind of resonating with what we're doing at Casos and, and, you know, although Craig might not openly say it, like, I think part of the strategy behind it was that because he hosted the audience podcast, which is from Casos and now I largely do that along with a YouTube channel and all this stuff, and it allows that separation.[00:26:59] For [00:27:00] him to just show up on podcasts and show up on the audience podcast where we just recorded one before you and I started jokingly. Like he only shows up when he buys something, right? So we're going through this, this acquisition of podium another podcast hosting company. And when he, we acquired three clips, he came on the show and we talked about like broad visions and where the company's going.[00:27:20] But then the day-to-day is me. And, and on the YouTube channel, I'm largely showing off the products and where we're going with the product. And it allows that separation. So, I totally get it. I'm[00:27:31] Brian: [00:27:31] a different guy and hire for, and the other thing is I really, really love working on product. I like that.[00:27:37] That is, that is me. That is what I do. You know, people might see stuff that I do on like, Productized services and other stuff that that's, that hangs around on the internet for, for many years. But honestly, what I am is I'm I designed software products and that's, that's what I, I love to talk to customers and take customer feedback and [00:28:00] plan and build features that that's what I like to do, you know?[00:28:02] And that, that takes so much time and energy. That there's no way I could do the production, but the content grind and do[00:28:11] Matt: [00:28:11] that, you know, spearhead right back into zip message. And I want to talk about some of the, the, the challenges there in some of these wins that you've had. Let's start specifically with the way you onboarded zip message.[00:28:24] I think I heard you talk about this on your podcast with Jordan. Like, the way that you've done surveys, this isn't the first time you've done this, right? Like you had this onboarding. It's not just, Hey, I take an email. Off they go and they're in the system and then you'll, you'll reach out to them when it's ready.[00:28:39] But you asked a systematic questions here, like, who are you? And you had one specific question. It's not, is it, what are you going to do with the product? Right. When you get access to it, it was a question like that. Like tell me exactly and what you're going to do with it.[00:28:52] Brian: [00:28:52] Yeah. Let's see. Let me pull up one of them today.[00:28:55] See what, see what I actually had on there. So, so [00:29:00] basically the way that it works is you today, you come to the homepage and I haven't yet opened it up for anybody to sign up for zip message. You have to sign up for the early access list. First, you know, you put in your email now, now you're on the email list.[00:29:11] And then on the back end of that, it takes you to this survey page. And the questions on the survey are First, how did, how did you hear about, does that message and vast majority of them say your pockets? What does your business do? What's your role or job title? I like that too, to understand, like who, what do they call themselves?[00:29:29] Right? Are, are they a founder? Are they a marketer? Are they whoever a manager, right. And then in which situations do you prefer to, this is specific to that message, but which situations do you prefer to communicate asynchronously and with who? So I want to start to hear like, and what I'm asking there is how do you currently communicate asynchronously, right?[00:29:49] Not like, would you do this or that in the future, but like H how are you currently doing it? Or have done it in the past. I get a mix of different use cases there. And then which tools. If [00:30:00] any, do you currently use for recording, sharing, receiving video messages? Again, I'm, I'm trying to understand their current or past behavior, not like, would you use this tool in the future?[00:30:11] And then the last one here is how do you think zip message might help you and, and be specific? And so that's where I start to try to get at like, You just told me that you're using these other tools. You just told me that you do a synchronous in these, in these other ways. Why are you even looking at zip message right now?[00:30:30] Right? Like what, what is it about it that you, that you hope would, would be helpful for you? Right.[00:30:35] Matt: [00:30:35] Are you usually this information to reinvest into the product? Or are you at the, at least in the early days saying, you know what, this person, they just might not be. Really, and they might be kicking tires, right?[00:30:46] The old sales term, they might just be kicking tires. Is that what you're trying to do here?[00:30:50] Brian: [00:30:50] It's mostly just research into the market, you know? Cause I started this survey and this list before, before I even really started building it or as I was building it. And it's still up there [00:31:00] today. So, so really I'm just trying to understand like who, who are the people who are interested in this thing that I'm building and, and what are their commonalities?[00:31:07] So, so I have the survey comes into my email, but it also feeds into a spreadsheet. I've done some like, like taking all the data in the spreadsheet, trying to. You know, group, group it like, okay, this percentage of people are in client services. This percentage are in SAS. This percentage are loom users.[00:31:25] This percentage are not, or, or they're using some other tool. Right. And I'm trying to see where the patterns are. And then that helps me understand, like, I've already done this, right? Like the homepage on zip message. Now I've gone through probably three iterations on the whole site already, just in the last couple of months.[00:31:43] And. The F the very first version was just sort of like my gut idea for this new, this new product idea. And after getting feedback from surveys like this, I realized like, oh, there's a whole lot that was wrong in the way that I wrote and presented the [00:32:00] idea. And there's all these other really common things that people latch onto.[00:32:03] I was talking about like the, the the, the conversational aspect of it, the, the threaded conversation. That was not front and center in my first take at it. And that quickly became the thing. So now it's like this big animated thing on the, on the top of the homepage, that's shows you that the conversation.[00:32:21] Yeah.[00:32:22] Matt: [00:32:22] You can get a feel for, you know, if everybody's saying, let's say loom, we'll use them as an example. Again, you can bucket and find trends in pricing in their own marketing, you know, and you can quickly find out if somebody says loom, like, let's say six months from now and you say, okay, loom user comes in.[00:32:38] They might expect a free plan. Cause loom has a five minute free thing and you kind of understand. From a, you know, whatever churn and conversion ratio you can say, okay, a hundred people sign up looking for loom. I know that these people are gonna be the hardest ones to sell. Cause there might be expecting free and we don't have free here, so we can kind of gauge our interests.[00:32:59] And you just got to this[00:33:00] [00:32:59] Brian: [00:32:59] stage right now, you know, we're still early on, we're recording this when I'm only about five months into zip message. So at this stage, it's, it's really more, more about. What, what should I prioritize? And what should I not prioritize in terms of which things to build, who, who should we be speaking to on the marketing site?[00:33:20]That, that's what I'm looking for in, in the surveys. And then I, and then I do read all the surveys and then I invite a lot of them to calls and I, and, and the surveys reading, what they wrote is a, is a way for me to understand, like, I have a few hundred of these people. I can't talk to all of them. I shouldn't talk to all of them.[00:33:38] I need to know who are the best people from this group that I, that I should be talking to and, and reading their responses helps me kind of narrow that down.[00:33:47] Matt: [00:33:47] This looks like the, and I don't mean any offense by this of your past products, but this seems like the most simplistic, yet powerful tool that you've built.[00:33:58] Right? Like, I feel like from what I've seen [00:34:00] you launch. Interface wise branding wise. Like I get it. It makes total sense. I understand the use case, the user interface. Like I was just saying, it's super easy to understand, you know, what you're going to press in order to get a result. It looks like the most lightweight, yet most impactful product you've ever you've ever built in a short amount of time.[00:34:22] Is that yeah.[00:34:25] Brian: [00:34:25] Yeah. Really? That's what I'm going for with this To be honest. I didn't, I didn't know. Again, it's super new. I didn't know that, like right now you can call it a pretty horizontal product. It, it, I'm already seeing like many different use cases and different types of customers who were interested in using it.[00:34:44] And once I saw that sort of horizontal nature start to. Reveal itself that got me a little bit worried about zit message. You might've heard on the podcast with Jordan. Like I, I was starting to say like, how can I niche this down? How can I talk to this [00:35:00] niche or that niche, and then really make that message, the tool for whatever coaches or teachers or podcasters or whatever it might be.[00:35:08]I explored that a little bit, but at the end, but I've come around since then to say, like for right now it just is horizontal. And, and we're going to see where this goes. Like it has, you know, a bunch of first customers right now. We'll see how this evolves over the rest of the year. And then if, if there is.[00:35:27] One or two groups that emerge of like, these are the best customers, then maybe we'll double down on that, but maybe not, maybe we'll, it'll just be horizontal. And then we'll have like niche use case pages on the site and stuff like that, but I'm sort of still still exploring. And there's so much, it's a very simple product in terms of it.[00:35:48] It basically does one thing really well, this asynchronous conversation, but within that, there are so many little details. We're not even close to having built everything [00:36:00] that we need to be building. So it's like, yeah.[00:36:02] Matt: [00:36:02] It's of many products and, and this is the challenge, right? This is going to be the challenge for you.[00:36:09]You know, moving forward, I don't know of many, you know, paid for products. In other words, a customer has to go and pay for it that really can survive the simplicity of where the product. You know, starts off. Look at loom as an example, my God, there's like 50 billion things that it does now. I'm just like, I don't need all this.[00:36:31] And what happens is the customer like myself goes, I don't, I don't need all of these things, you know, popping out at me telling me what I should be doing. Like inviting collaborate. Like I don't need all that stuff. Where is the product that, let me just record that video and quickly share it. I guess the challenge is, is once you start getting to a certain.[00:36:52]User amount of users, capacity network, capacity, storage capacity. I don't know what the costs are internally, but then it's like, [00:37:00] how do we monetize this play? So that's another simple note is the only product I know that has survived, like being simple. As a product, but they're also not charging for it and it's owned by automatic.[00:37:11] So there's a billion dollars behind it. It doesn't matter.[00:37:13] Brian: [00:37:13] Yeah. You know, task managers are just, yeah. You gotta, you gotta have huge pockets to make that work. Same thing with loom. They're, they have a very generous, free plan. And it is difficult for someone like me to compete with them, you know, just be perfectly honest.[00:37:27]And, and I thought about doing free, not close to the idea someday, but right now it's not, we're not doing a free plan. Yeah. And you know, we're, we are differentiating in certain key ways that, that a certain set of customers seem, seem to be perfectly fine with, you know, and I'm still experimenting with different pricing, but it's But it has paying customers already and it's growing.[00:37:50]So we'll see. I, wasn't going to say the the, the simplicity thing is hard. Because, and I think this goes back to like choosing to get into zip message coming from process kit. Right? Cause one of the, [00:38:00] one of the challenges with process kit was like, it started getting first, very first customers like that.[00:38:08] Just a very small handful of first paying customers within like six, seven months or so after, after breaking ground on, on the code really call it like eight or nine months. If you include the early research but it wasn't until well, over a year of building features before process kicked got actually like really useful for people.[00:38:26]Cause cause that product is so much more complex, you know, complex that like you can't just have a glorified to-do list. As a, as a process tool, you know, there's, there's no reason to pay for that. When you could just use any other to-do list, you have to have the automations, the conditional logic, the, the, the reason why people want to use like smart SLPs, which is what process kit does.[00:38:52] We need a really, really robust Zapier integration and all this different kind of stuff. It took well over a year to get there. And then even [00:39:00] into the second year, there were a lot of important. Features that, that added value in that. And then that's where the, where the customer base, you know, likes to it has that like automations people who are super into auto automating everything in their business, they love process kit, but like, yeah, it took a good year and a half to really have a product to give them, you know, whereas like zip message.[00:39:23] It was, I was able to build, I guess, call it an MVP. Within a couple of months, And and now we're just trying to refine and build that, build that[00:39:32] Matt: [00:39:32] out. Yeah. And you can see the excitement. Like I can, I can, obviously, if you're watching the video, you see the excitement, but if like I can hear the excitement when you talk about it and your other podcasts.[00:39:43] And when I see you tweet about it I can always tell the kind of good mood you're in when I see your Twitter, when I see your tweets coming out, but even go down to like the branding. And like your approach to this, like the branding stuff that I put out publicly. You don't,[00:39:57] Brian: [00:39:57] you don't see me like throwing chairs in here the rest of the day, right?[00:40:01] [00:40:00] Matt: [00:40:01] No, but it, it, it comes across and like your approach to this product. I can tell that you're, you're becoming much more mature, you know, from, from when I first met you, which I probably say every time I interview a you at this point, cause like when I first met you onstage at WordCamp Providence, talking about restaurant engine, which was your, which was your original foray into SAS.[00:40:22]You know, this one is definitely something that looks like you're, you're really passionate about. Like, this will be the one that, that the history books really write a big chapter on you about you know, it[00:40:31] Brian: [00:40:31] seems like a well it's, it's funny to hear you describe that. I've have heard similar things from people like listening to the podcast and stuff.[00:40:40]And, and I, I appreciate that really. And I, I, a lot of it, I do feel, but. Also at this stage of trying many different products over the years the maturity thing I think has leads to what I actually think is pretty healthy skepticism of, of everything. I think you do need [00:41:00] to go into a new product with a lot of skepticism, you know, I'm, I'm still skeptical.[00:41:04] Like I'm still trying to understand that question. Like why, like people who are interested in that message. Like convince me, like, why are you really interested in this product? Like, why are you interested in it? I need to know that. And, and and I need to prove that and continuously, you know, it's It's just a process to, of like building confidence in like, okay, I think there's something here.[00:41:31] I think there's something here. Okay. Now I'm going to really double down investments here and, and, and that sort of stuff, you[00:41:38] Matt: [00:41:38] know, I think in a space, a final sort of final question thoughts around around this I'd imagine that. The pandemic COVID audio video, very hot spaces. Now that everyone was forced to work from home.[00:41:53]I think the video space obviously is going to be interesting. Audio is going to be interesting. But also probably quite challenging was, you know, [00:42:00] building process kit out is probably just a lot of thought. A lot of logic. You probably don't need a lot of CPU and infrastructure around this stuff.[00:42:07] Video, I'd imagine maybe a little bit more right. And storage, bandwidth, conversion, all this[00:42:12] Brian: [00:42:12] stuff. It, it definitely is more complex. I do have a great developer working with me. And I have learned a ton about handling video on the web in the last couple of months. It, it's definitely a challenge for sure.[00:42:26]There are some aspects of it that were a little bit. Easier than I, than I expected. And, and when I did some early technical research on it, it was part of, part of the reason why I decided to go into it and not be completely scared off because it's video. I started researching it a bit. I was like, oh wow.[00:42:45] We can actually do this sort of thing in browsers these days, which wasn't exactly possible even like one or two, three years ago. So that's kind of cool, but there's definitely. There, there are definitely costs in terms of bandwidth and processing of [00:43:00] videos and storage and, and playback. And there are just reliability issues of, of making sure that every time you hit record, no matter which browser you're in, it works.[00:43:10]You know, we're, we're constantly working with users to, to, to smooth that out and, and make an, and, you know, you might, you might think that everybody is using Google Chrome, everything it[00:43:21] Matt: [00:43:21] is. God, I hope[00:43:24] Brian: [00:43:24] not. You know, I'm, I'm literally seeing from from the user base, the, the small user base here, was it messaged that it's a, it's a good mix of Chrome safari Firefox.[00:43:34] You know, iOS, Android, like it's, it's a mix we've got to make them work. So that's a challenge,[00:43:40] Matt: [00:43:40] basic stuff. Brian castle zip message.com, a sync video conversations with customers and colleagues. I love the fact that you have the little arrow that points to what's. This led async to help define asynchronous, because I tell you that if I told my dad, Hey, check out this asynchronous video conversation tool, you might be like, what the hell is?[00:43:59]He's [00:44:00] not. And competent, but he might be like, what do you mean asynchronous? But he screen-sharing video sharing. He would get it. But I like how you define it there so[00:44:07] Brian: [00:44:07] that, you know, and that came out of the feedback. Because the very first, I think the very first version of the homepage, I did use the word asynchronous.[00:44:15] Maybe not in the H one, but somewhere around there. And, and I got a lot of feedback saying like, ah, I don't really know what, like literally people would ask me, like, what does asynchronous mean? And then other people would be like, I, I sorta know what it means, but I think most people don't know what that means.[00:44:30] And then, and then I backed off of it for a while. Like, oh, it's just for video conversations or video messaging, something like that. And I just didn't use the word asynchronous, but then it occurred to me that like, No, like we should own the, the term async, you know, cause that is growing in popularity.[00:44:48] Like people are starting to use it more often. So, so I want that message to be known for async conversations. But we have a little definition there for computer skills. You're [00:45:00] brand new to it. You know,[00:45:00]Matt: [00:45:00] Zip message.com. Request an invite@zipmessage.com. Brian, thanks for hanging out and talking to us today on your podcast.[00:45:07] It's your podcast at this point go, go to dot com and request an invite and maybe we'll see Brian again. Hopefully not, hopefully not. We don't see you in another six months talking about the[00:45:16] Brian: [00:45:16] product goal is to never be on that report. Again,[00:45:20] Matt: [00:45:20] it's amazing stuff. Everybody else, Matt report.com airport.com/subscribe to join the mailing list.[00:45:26] We'll see you in the next episode. ★ Support this podcast ★

It took me a while to draw out what I wanted to say in today’s monologue about our guest. This will be his 6th appearance on the show. With this episode, we’ve covered 4 different SaaS based businesses, with a handful of digital products and one service-based business that’s still running, of which, I’ve never fully interviewed him about. I really should since it’s the cashflow center he has to fund all of these business experiments he’s chasing. His name is Brian Casel and he’s trying something new, it’s called ZipMessage. It’s an asynch way to share videos with customers & colleagues. Out of everything he’s worked on, I think this will be the software project that defines his career in the software business. Just like I called it with Paul Jarvis and Fathom Analytics taking over his product world, I bet we’ll have Brian back on for a 7th time when he sells his company to Microsoft. Enjoy today’s episode! https://youtu.be/MLK9qQjRLSo Transcript [00:01:39] Matt: [00:01:39] It took me a while to draw out what I wanted to say in today’s monologue about our guests. This will be a six appearance on the show. With this episode, we’ve covered four different SAS based businesses with a handful of digital products and one service-based business. That’s still running of which I’ve never really fully interviewed them about. I really should. Since it’s the cashflow center, he has [00:02:00] to fund all of these business experiments. He’s chasing.[00:02:03] Can you guess who it is? His name is Brian Casel. He’s trying something new. It’s called zip message. It’s an async way to share videos with customers and colleagues. Out of everything he’s worked on. I think this will be the software project that defines his career in the software business.[00:02:19]Just like I called it with Paul Jarvis and fathom analytics taking over his product world. I bet we’ll have Brian back on for a seventh time when he sells this business to Microsoft. You’re listening to the Maryport a podcast for the resilient digital business builders. Subscribe to the newsletter@mattreport.com slash subscribe and follow the podcast on apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Better yet. Please share this episode on your social media. We’d love more listeners around here. Okay.[00:02:46] Let’s talk to Brian and find out why he’s launching yet another product. Hey everybody. Welcome back to what I’m calling the Brian report. Brian. Oh man. Welcome back to the podcast. You’ve [00:03:00] clearly won the, a amount of recurring times on the, on the merit port show. I should just have applied for all of the products that you launch. I should just have a podcast all to yourself and everything that you have going on today.[00:03:12] We’re talking about. If that’s[00:03:13] Brian: [00:03:13] not a sign of failure, I don’t know.[00:03:15] Matt: [00:03:15] What is failure show castles here to talk about what might be another failure, the message you can find zip message@zipmessage.com. I’m going to open this up. I think a lot of people know your backstory. If they haven’t, they can listen to the half a dozen shows that you and I have already done on this podcast.[00:03:33]Why this product last time we. We chatted. You were just getting your, you were, you were getting that sort of Ruby on rails, getting your chops down on that, like learning how to build whole other platform and suddenly zip message appeared out of nowhere. How, why, when did it come about, why did you pursue it?[00:03:51] Brian: [00:03:51] Yeah. I don’t, I don’t remember exactly when our last show here on a I’ll call it Matt report aired. It must’ve been [00:04:00] probably around 2018 or 2019. I can’t believe it’s actually been that long, but you and I have chatted since then. The, so a little bit of of the timeline process kit, which is, you know, I still run and still going that product.[00:04:15] I basically started working on it really full-time in January of 2019, I kind of started planning it in 18, but really got full-time into it in January 19. Launched that to first paying customers by around June of, I want to say, yeah, 2019, and then really focused a hundred percent on that. Throughout 19 and 20 and into 20.[00:04:40] And then at the end of 2020 you know, process kit just got to the, to that place where a lot of SAS get to where, you know, a couple thousand in MRR it’s really slow to grow. It has some. You know, so some, some challenges I tried a bunch of stuff and I’m still trying some stuff, but I decided at, [00:05:00] in around December of 2020 to just take a step back and start to open my mind to like, maybe I should try another product or two or three.[00:05:12] And actually like back in, back in, you know, back in January, the idea was. Let’s let’s throw a couple of ideas at the wall and see what sticks, but there was really this one idea called zip message, which I had the idea and midway through 2020, but I, you know, I shelved it along with all the other shiny object ideas in my long list of them.[00:05:29]But I was like, let me just try this. Take a little breather from, from really pushing on process kit, put it, put the roadmap on process could a little bit on, on maintenance mode. And and I went into zip message and, you know, I really liked the idea. I was attracted to the idea because a number of different things.[00:05:46]First of all, you know, in, in a lot of ways, it’s sort of really every business that I ever get into, I’m trying to course correct from something that I learned in the, in the previous one. Right. One of the big challenges with process kit [00:06:00] has been that it’s a really big. Product, which means it’s a really big task to adopt.[00:06:05] If you’re a new customer, like it literally takes new customers a good month, at least of. Of like everyday work on their part to, to[00:06:13] Matt: [00:06:13] really, they have to appeal the process out, template it out into your system, if you will, and then engage people to, to use it. And I remember you and I chatting a lot PR you know, privately between the two of us, like, wouldn’t this be a great idea, like free templates to like kickstart that and nurture.[00:06:30] Yeah.[00:06:30] Brian: [00:06:30] And, and we have templates in there which really did help a lot in, in late 20, 20. Added the templates and put them like front and center in the onboarding experience. So actually since then we’ve had, you know, more customers, self convert without, without the heavy customer support load that it did have for a while there.[00:06:45]And that, that continues, I guess it’s just super slow, you know, to, to grow and, and become a thing. And for those that don’t know, like in the background, I also have audience ops, which I’m not super involved in day to day, but that, that is the other business that I have that, that sort of.[00:07:00] [00:06:59] Funds all the runway for, for getting into SAS. So it gives me a little bit of space and time to be able to explore different ideas which is, which is really nice. But with zip messaging, I really liked it because the first things that really attracted to me as the business idea is that it’s so fast to get value from, you know, like again, process kit is like, you got to really commit like a good month to get, to really start to get value.[00:07:23] Like you’re automating operations in your business. Whereas with zip message. You could sign up and have an, an asynchronous video call with one of the person and you just got. A bit of value from this tool. Is that something[00:07:36] Matt: [00:07:36] you, you sort of stumbled upon? I know countless products, services and stuff that you’ve, that you’ve gone through.[00:07:42] And I, and I want to kind of break that down of like what your best, most valuable lesson is thus far in your career, but will you like sort of. You know, midway through or three quarters way through here with process get going. You know what I think I missed, I think it was that I think it was that quick, easy, instant gratification to a [00:08:00] customer.[00:08:00] I feel like that’s what I’m missing and, oh, that’s right. I get this thing called zip message over here that I was thinking about doing[00:08:07] Brian: [00:08:07] learned. It it’s, it’s never just one thing. There’s always, you know, there’s, there’s really probably like 10 big learnings that I’ve taken out of process kit. And some things that I, that I learned.[00:08:17] That, that we did really well, but yeah, that was one of them definitely is that activation adoption sort of thing. The most common , churn reason that I hear from people is you know, really it’s so more of a challenge of, of getting new people to adopt it. Cause cause once people do do get like sign on the, the lifetime is really great and they actually do expand that they add, you know, team members and stuff like that.[00:08:41]But they, they basically stopped like the people who turn, they, they basically stop using it after a few months. So, you know, obviously there there’s. There might be some like product market fit issues there, but there is a core customer base that is like power users on it and they really love it.[00:08:55] So it’s sort of like a question of like, what do I do with that?[00:08:59]Matt: [00:08:59] This is a [00:09:00] reaction to just like, it’s not even just whatever audio video tools to do apps and like all these other spaces. This is just everything. Every product in the world competing with that I need to, it needs to be instant or the customer.[00:09:15] They’re out. Like it doesn’t matter what kind of tool you’re launching[00:09:17] Brian: [00:09:17] here. Yeah. The thing that I saw with zip message that, that got me really excited. Number one, was that like speed to get getting value from the tool. Number two is it’s, it’s heading into a space of software tools. That is, is not brand new.[00:09:33] So like loom is probably the most common call it competitor. And, and which, you know, lots of people use, I use loom as well. And so this idea of like video recording, video messaging tools, the thing that I saw with loom, and this was actually the, the way the idea for zip message came about was that I would commonly be on a customer support call for process kit, and ask the customer, Hey, I [00:10:00] need to see what you’re seeing.[00:10:00] Can you record your screen for me? Can you, can you go use a tool like, like loom or, or record your screen and send me a Dropbox link or whatever you might do. And, you know, that’s a lot to ask for, for customers. Like maybe they do use loom, maybe they don’t. But it’s just friction there. Right? So I wanted to, like, I, I started thinking like, man, there’s gotta be an easy way for me to just send somebody a link.[00:10:22] They click it, they come to a page, they could start recording their screen. And that was the original idea for zip message. And that’s what it is. You can, you can do that, but, but what it quickly evolved into was okay, they could re it’s easy for somebody else to record, but I can record my response right back to them.[00:10:42] And now we have this asynchronous conversation on, on video or just audio camera, screen screenshot, or just text. And now is literally flowing down the page, like a conversation. But we’re asynchronous. We don’t have to book a live zoom call, you know? I don’t have to [00:11:00] ask somebody to get on their calendar, all that.[00:11:02] It’s just like, here’s a link. Let’s talk when it’s good for both of us. And, and it just flows right down the page. And, and that idea of the asynchronous conversation turned out to be the thing that people are starting to really latch on to, you know, because. And that was a little bit to my surprise, you know?[00:11:20]And, and I’m finding all these other use cases. My original use case was like customer support scenarios, but. All these other use cases are coming up like, oh, I want to, I want to use it to, to take requests for my podcast. I wanna, I want to use it to, you know, collaborate with my team, my freelancers, talk to my customers, or use it in a sales situation to have asynchronous video chats with, with sales prospects, hiring, like getting, you know, video responses from applicants and stuff like that.[00:11:49] So, I’m sort of fielding all these different use cases right now, but it’s, they’re all interested in, I, I keep asking people, like, why are you interested in zit message? Why, why don’t you just use a loom? [00:12:00] Right. And, and they all come back saying, this is the one that has that, that conversation, like a threaded conversation view.[00:12:08] And so we’re really sort of leaning into that. And I’m pretty excited about it. I I’ve been. Ha having conversations with, with customers like using zip message. It’s a[00:12:18] Matt: [00:12:18] really cool[00:12:19] Brian: [00:12:19] tool. Totally. It’s a really cool way to actually communicate,[00:12:23] Matt: [00:12:23] you know? Yeah. Before we keep drilling into the product and how you’re approaching it, , what has been the most valuable piece of education to Excel your career?[00:12:33] I’m going to bet that it’s learning how to. Amy, you always know, you’ve always known how to develop, but I feel like this progression into learning Ruby on rails and becoming a a better developer has been something that has really skyrocketed your ability to launch and iterate and feel more confident in products.[00:12:52] Is that, is that true?[00:12:53] Brian: [00:12:53] A hundred percent. Yes. Yeah. I love it. And it has skyrocketed my enjoyment of what I do [00:13:00] with, with products. Yeah, it has really, really removed such a huge barrier. Cause I’ve, I, I have been a front end dev my whole career. I’ve been a designer. I am a designer.[00:13:11]And, and when I say designer, I, you know, as, as any designer knows that that doesn’t mean. Picking colors and picking typography. Like that’s just one detail of it. What you’re really doing is as a designer, you’re solving a problem. And so when you’re designing for the web, especially if you’re designing software, you’re really designing the whole system from the way that it works.[00:13:34] In the database to the way that the user interacts on the, on the screen. And for years, I, you know, probably one of your mat reports, we talked about like ops calendar when I was doing that. And that was 2017. Yeah. Back then I couldn’t develop backend. So I had to hire out. Help with that. Right now, I, I also have a developer that I work with them and we can work really fast together.[00:13:57] Another big benefit of being a developer myself [00:14:00] is I can collaborate on such a deeper, more productive level with him. He’s in India and we, and we are hashing out every single feature together. Not to mention working You know, like two tracks, like we’re, we’re able to ship twice as many features in a week because it’s both me and him working on it.[00:14:20] Yeah.[00:14:20] Matt: [00:14:20] So, I I’d say also one of your super powers, it’s kind of funny. Not to get sidetracked on, on products. I’m looking at our 2017 episode on the Maryport building ops calendar. And one of the channel under the challenges bullet point section there’s here’s a bullet point. It says there’s a side plugin business that is also being created from custom tools by audience, which I think was like your opt-in forms on WordPress, the content upgrades.[00:14:44] Yeah, it just goes to show like all of these different things that you would fragment and spider out too.[00:14:49] Brian: [00:14:49] That one was funny because we had that’s a pair of, of WordPress plugins. And we, you know, some, some customers bought it, but we mainly used it for clients and audience ops. And then I think it was [00:15:00] around 2018.[00:15:00] I ended up selling those to liquid web. Which came about really randomly, but but it was nice to sort of just[00:15:07] Matt: [00:15:07] let those go. I’d say also one of, one of your super powers, which might often get overlooked is your ability. And this is just something that I’ve admired your ability to do. And I just don’t know if I have the patience like you to do it, but as hiring people is higher as being able to find and hire and train people up to.[00:15:25]To help you develop these, these products. I think that’s a skill set that is very difficult to hone over time. I’ve seen plenty of blog posts that are like, here’s all you have to do, make a couple of test projects and hire and go through 12 of them and hire that one person. It’s like, it never works for me.[00:15:41] Works for you. You[00:15:42] Brian: [00:15:42] know what? It’s interesting you say that because I think, I think I’ve done okay with hiring over the years. In, in, in certain types of hiring, but, but now I’m in a different place with trying to build a small team to grow this SAS company that I’m working on [00:16:00] now. Right. So, and, and that I’m finding a lot more challenging to hire for.[00:16:04]I’m still figuring it out. I like, it’s literally on my plate this week, like a problem that I haven’t figured out yet. So, the what, what I’ve always felt pretty comfortable with is. Okay. I’ve got a service. I figured it, the process for delivering the service. I’ve documented the process. I set up the systems.[00:16:23] Now I need to hire people to plug into the process. And carry out specific roles. That’s that’s what audience ops is. We’ve got a team of about 25 people, writers, copy editors managers, assistants, and they, they just kind of carry out their tasks. And that has grown to where we have like a, a higher level manager.[00:16:41] We’ve got a sales person, we’ve got, you know, different stuff. So you know, that, that. I think, I think I’m an okay manager. Maybe not a great manager. I don’t know that. I’m great. Yeah. Yeah. Like building a a strong team culture something I w I always want to try and get better at, but, but my team there is, has [00:17:00] been with me for many of them four or five, six years, you know?[00:17:03]Yeah. And, and that’s gone, that’s gone pretty good. And developers I’ve, I’ve had generally pretty good success with sometimes it’s initially hard to, to find the right person who has the right skillset, but being technical now makes it so much easier, frankly. I haven’t done it that much because I’ve just been working with this one developer.[00:17:19] Who’s been awesome.[00:17:21] Matt: [00:17:21] One of the challenges for me. When I’m looking to, to work with a developer especially in the past is I feel like I should be finding somebody who just cares as much. About the product and like the vision and the future as I do about like, whatever product that was, or is that I was working on, that was a lesson that I learned really early.[00:17:42] Like, man, you got to just pump the brakes on that. A lot of people just want the task, want to get it done and do a good job, but they’re not going to care about the long-term vision of where you want to go. Is that something that you wrestle with at[00:17:54] Brian: [00:17:54] all? With developers. We were just talking about how I’m, I’m still relatively new to learning how to build and Ruby [00:18:00] on rails, like backend development.[00:18:02]I am still in a newbie. I could technically build an app, but the code will be ugly that like, I don’t have all the experience that that an experienced dev has. So. So it’s actually nice to be able to work with somebody who’s really strong career experienced backend developer. Like I, I I defer to him too.[00:18:21] Like we have, we actually have a lot of issues in our get hub where I built and finished a feature. It’s all done. It’s working tested. Good to go. And then, and then I just pass it over to him. Just, just go clean up, whatever. I just built here, like, you know, fix it, fix all the mistakes, like and keep it work in the same basically.[00:18:40]And then I get to learn from, from what he did and and so that that’s been really good. So mostly I’m just sort of deferring on the technical side to him, but I’m D I’m directing him and managing like w what we’re going to work on, how the is going to design, how, how it’s going to function, all that kind of stuff.[00:18:56] Matt: [00:18:56] And one of the challenging roles, I think we can talk about it because I saw you [00:19:00] tweet about it is trying to find somebody to be like that. Content creator, video podcasts, blogging tutorials. Front-facing it’s quite a unicorn. If I pat myself on the back here, because it’s something that I do for Craig at Casos it’s been a challenging, I don’t know how long it’s been, but it’s been a challenging proposition for you.[00:19:21] How’s[00:19:22] Brian: [00:19:22] that? Yeah. Yeah. I’m glad you brought that up. I did. Want to talk about that. Cause it’s something that I’m looking for right now. Just generally hiring marketers in general. Right? Most marketers are really good at what they do. But I think these days when it comes to marketing, excuse me, that’s why I shouldn’t drink coffee while I’m in the tunnel pockets.[00:19:45]Like most marketers. Who, who, who call themselves either a freelance marketer or a full-time marketer. Yeah. Hold on. Right. You know, most marketers are, are good at what they [00:20:00] technically at what they do, whether it’s writing or or using analytics or SEO, research, outreach, whatever, whatever type of marketing they do.[00:20:11] It’s usually a mix of things. They’re technically good at that. But right now in 2020 or 2021, B2B SAS is. Just a really, really difficult from a marketing standpoint. And I’m mainly talking about like new entry, SAS products, very early stage SAS products like mine. Right. It’s just the, the competition is just insane.[00:20:36] You know, it’s one thing to S to S to market and sell a service, you know, because you, you just need a handful of good customers. To, to make it a really viable business, but, but for a SAS product to break through, like really no matter how you price it, even, even if you’re pricing several hundred, a customer, even up to like a thousand or two per, per customer per month, like you [00:21:00] still need a lot of customers and a lot of traffic and visibility to make it work.[00:21:05] And. And, and it just, and there’s so many other things that, that go into building a SAS product tech, like technically the product and all that. So with collaborating with a marketer, what I’m finding, I had a tweet about this today, or this week is I think it’s a lot more about brand than people like to admit.[00:21:26] And we think about branding, like it’s logo design, or it’s our colors or something like that. Or you think about brand like it’s. Like it’s Budweiser in, in city field or something like that, but it’s, but for SAS, it’s really like, what are you known for on the internet, even, even within circles. And, and pop, like podcasting is a big part of that.[00:21:47] Like I think to this day go historically across all my products, the number one. Source of new customers is hearing me on podcasts either in my own or somebody else’s right. [00:22:00] Like by far. And that’s one of the hardest things to even track and measure. But I know when every time I ask someone, 90% of the times, like I heard you on a podcast or I follow your podcast.[00:22:11]And and so I, that’s not just podcasting specifically, but. I just think that when, when you’re talking about brand, like we need to be creating really interesting, unique things for the world for our people that are different, that are worth talking about that are worth sharing. And that stuff has to be more creative today than ever like, yeah.[00:22:31] Like you can’t just put out the same stuff that everybody else is putting out. Like you have to, you have to have. New ideas. You have to be advanced. You have to be out there like making arguments for something, you know, you gotta be out there you know, advancing a brand new idea. And in, in a, in a, in a way that’s like visually appealing, that’s fast to get, to get it.[00:22:50] Like, usually that involves, you know, video and and things like that. And so. So what I’m looking[00:22:56] Matt: [00:22:56] at, can’t be just one thing. It can’t be one thing anymore, right? Like it [00:23:00] has to be the podcast. It has to be like at minimum it’s podcasts, YouTube channel newsletter, blog, blogs sort of fell to fourth place recently, but still like, you need to do it.[00:23:12] And it’s almost like one of those thankless you know, like those thankless. Jobs or, or whatever, like you have to keep producing it. Even if people aren’t tuning in. This is the funny thing with audiences and content that I’ve learned over the last few years is. You better keep doing it, even if they’re not tuning in, they want to know that you’re still doing it because if you stop, oh, if you stop that podcast, they’re going to judge you.[00:23:39] And they’re going to say like, you didn’t do it. Like, even if they’re not listening, they know, I know Brian’s doing a podcast. That’s all I need to say that he’s doing it. And he’s putting in the[00:23:47] Brian: [00:23:47] effort, you know? It’s so, it’s true. What you’re saying, because like, Like I said, like, podcasts are like impossible to track.[00:23:54] Like you could sort of see how many listeners you’re getting, but you don’t know how many of those listeners are turning into customers [00:24:00] or leads or whatever, whatever it might be. Or listeners referring other customers. Like that’s actually usually how it happens. Right. You know, you can’t really track that, but I know for a fact, I have this other podcast, I haven’t done it in a while.[00:24:13] It was called a productized podcast is basically an interview show that I’ve had, it was off and on from my 2017 into 2018. And a little bit in 19, I think. And, and I would go off and on with it. I would do like six, eight months of it, and then I’d do a hiatus and then another six or eight months. And then it’s, it’s weird.[00:24:34] But I look at the sales graph on like my productized course and my other stuff. And sales go up when I’m podcasting and sales sort of trend down when I’m not podcasting. Like, I don’t know, like the trend is definitely there though, you know? Yeah.[00:24:48]Matt: [00:24:48] I want to put on girls’ hat for a second here. He would tell you, Brian, why don’t you just do the podcast, the YouTube, the content for zip message and hire out.[00:24:59] The [00:25:00] development and the management of like the product itself. So why not? Why not[00:25:05] Brian: [00:25:05] do that? It’s a good CR you know, it’s funny, I, I sort of joke about this lately. Like the more that I get into product development and, and code it’s like the worst I am at marketing and the less interested I am in doing marketing work and content stuff.[00:25:20] So. That’s basically it, it’s not that I have no interest in it. Like, I, I do enjoy hopping on the mix and getting on podcasts, but I don’t enjoy the, the, the grind of, of especially video. I don’t mind going on camera once in a while. But I that’s, that’s one thing is the actual production work. I’m not that interested in doing, I don’t, I don’t think I’m very good at it.[00:25:42] I could hack through something, but I’m not a professional video person. I’m not also, I’m also very much not interested in being a personal brand. You know, I know that gets, that term gets thrown out, thrown around a lot. And I think to a certain extent, everybody is a [00:26:00] personal brand, whether you like it or want to be or not.[00:26:02]And I’m not denying that, but the company that I’m trying to build right now is a small software company. I don’t want it to be. The Brian castle show. I want it to be, we make awesome products and, and we put really cool stuff out into the world, you know? Yeah. That will involve people like, you know, my, my team myself on camera on microphone, but it should be more about the product and the ideas or the questions we’re asking to the world then Then then just, just me all the time,[00:26:36] Matt: [00:26:36] you know?[00:26:36] Yeah. I feel, you know, again, it just kind of resonating with what we’re doing at Casos and, and, you know, although Craig might not openly say it, like, I think part of the strategy behind it was that because he hosted the audience podcast, which is from Casos and now I largely do that along with a YouTube channel and all this stuff, and it allows that separation.[00:26:59] For [00:27:00] him to just show up on podcasts and show up on the audience podcast where we just recorded one before you and I started jokingly. Like he only shows up when he buys something, right? So we’re going through this, this acquisition of podium another podcast hosting company. And when he, we acquired three clips, he came on the show and we talked about like broad visions and where the company’s going.[00:27:20] But then the day-to-day is me. And, and on the YouTube channel, I’m largely showing off the products and where we’re going with the product. And it allows that separation. So, I totally get it. I’m[00:27:31] Brian: [00:27:31] a different guy and hire for, and the other thing is I really, really love working on product. I like that.[00:27:37] That is, that is me. That is what I do. You know, people might see stuff that I do on like, Productized services and other stuff that that’s, that hangs around on the internet for, for many years. But honestly, what I am is I’m I designed software products and that’s, that’s what I, I love to talk to customers and take customer feedback and [00:28:00] plan and build features that that’s what I like to do, you know?[00:28:02] And that, that takes so much time and energy. That there’s no way I could do the production, but the content grind and do[00:28:11] Matt: [00:28:11] that, you know, spearhead right back into zip message. And I want to talk about some of the, the, the challenges there in some of these wins that you’ve had. Let’s start specifically with the way you onboarded zip message.[00:28:24] I think I heard you talk about this on your podcast with Jordan. Like, the way that you’ve done surveys, this isn’t the first time you’ve done this, right? Like you had this onboarding. It’s not just, Hey, I take an email. Off they go and they’re in the system and then you’ll, you’ll reach out to them when it’s ready.[00:28:39] But you asked a systematic questions here, like, who are you? And you had one specific question. It’s not, is it, what are you going to do with the product? Right. When you get access to it, it was a question like that. Like tell me exactly and what you’re going to do with it.[00:28:52] Brian: [00:28:52] Yeah. Let’s see. Let me pull up one of them today.[00:28:55] See what, see what I actually had on there. So, so [00:29:00] basically the way that it works is you today, you come to the homepage and I haven’t yet opened it up for anybody to sign up for zip message. You have to sign up for the early access list. First, you know, you put in your email now, now you’re on the email list.[00:29:11] And then on the back end of that, it takes you to this survey page. And the questions on the survey are First, how did, how did you hear about, does that message and vast majority of them say your pockets? What does your business do? What’s your role or job title? I like that too, to understand, like who, what do they call themselves?[00:29:29] Right? Are, are they a founder? Are they a marketer? Are they whoever a manager, right. And then in which situations do you prefer to, this is specific to that message, but which situations do you prefer to communicate asynchronously and with who? So I want to start to hear like, and what I’m asking there is how do you currently communicate asynchronously, right?[00:29:49] Not like, would you do this or that in the future, but like H how are you currently doing it? Or have done it in the past. I get a mix of different use cases there. And then which tools. If [00:30:00] any, do you currently use for recording, sharing, receiving video messages? Again, I’m, I’m trying to understand their current or past behavior, not like, would you use this tool in the future?[00:30:11] And then the last one here is how do you think zip message might help you and, and be specific? And so that’s where I start to try to get at like, You just told me that you’re using these other tools. You just told me that you do a synchronous in these, in these other ways. Why are you even looking at zip message right now?[00:30:30] Right? Like what, what is it about it that you, that you hope would, would be helpful for you? Right.[00:30:35] Matt: [00:30:35] Are you usually this information to reinvest into the product? Or are you at the, at least in the early days saying, you know what, this person, they just might not be. Really, and they might be kicking tires, right?[00:30:46] The old sales term, they might just be kicking tires. Is that what you’re trying to do here?[00:30:50] Brian: [00:30:50] It’s mostly just research into the market, you know? Cause I started this survey and this list before, before I even really started building it or as I was building it. And it’s still up there [00:31:00] today. So, so really I’m just trying to understand like who, who are the people who are interested in this thing that I’m building and, and what are their commonalities?[00:31:07] So, so I have the survey comes into my email, but it also feeds into a spreadsheet. I’ve done some like, like taking all the data in the spreadsheet, trying to. You know, group, group it like, okay, this percentage of people are in client services. This percentage are in SAS. This percentage are loom users.[00:31:25] This percentage are not, or, or they’re using some other tool. Right. And I’m trying to see where the patterns are. And then that helps me understand, like, I’ve already done this, right? Like the homepage on zip message. Now I’ve gone through probably three iterations on the whole site already, just in the last couple of months.[00:31:43] And. The F the very first version was just sort of like my gut idea for this new, this new product idea. And after getting feedback from surveys like this, I realized like, oh, there’s a whole lot that was wrong in the way that I wrote and presented the [00:32:00] idea. And there’s all these other really common things that people latch onto.[00:32:03] I was talking about like the, the the, the conversational aspect of it, the, the threaded conversation. That was not front and center in my first take at it. And that quickly became the thing. So now it’s like this big animated thing on the, on the top of the homepage, that’s shows you that the conversation.[00:32:21] Yeah.[00:32:22] Matt: [00:32:22] You can get a feel for, you know, if everybody’s saying, let’s say loom, we’ll use them as an example. Again, you can bucket and find trends in pricing in their own marketing, you know, and you can quickly find out if somebody says loom, like, let’s say six months from now and you say, okay, loom user comes in.[00:32:38] They might expect a free plan. Cause loom has a five minute free thing and you kind of understand. From a, you know, whatever churn and conversion ratio you can say, okay, a hundred people sign up looking for loom. I know that these people are gonna be the hardest ones to sell. Cause there might be expecting free and we don’t have free here, so we can kind of gauge our interests.[00:32:59] And you just got to this[00:33:00] [00:32:59] Brian: [00:32:59] stage right now, you know, we’re still early on, we’re recording this when I’m only about five months into zip message. So at this stage, it’s, it’s really more, more about. What, what should I prioritize? And what should I not prioritize in terms of which things to build, who, who should we be speaking to on the marketing site?[00:33:20]That, that’s what I’m looking for in, in the surveys. And then I, and then I do read all the surveys and then I invite a lot of them to calls and I, and, and the surveys reading, what they wrote is a, is a way for me to understand, like, I have a few hundred of these people. I can’t talk to all of them. I shouldn’t talk to all of them.[00:33:38] I need to know who are the best people from this group that I, that I should be talking to and, and reading their responses helps me kind of narrow that down.[00:33:47] Matt: [00:33:47] This looks like the, and I don’t mean any offense by this of your past products, but this seems like the most simplistic, yet powerful tool that you’ve built.[00:33:58] Right? Like, I feel like from what I’ve seen [00:34:00] you launch. Interface wise branding wise. Like I get it. It makes total sense. I understand the use case, the user interface. Like I was just saying, it’s super easy to understand, you know, what you’re going to press in order to get a result. It looks like the most lightweight, yet most impactful product you’ve ever you’ve ever built in a short amount of time.[00:34:22] Is that yeah.[00:34:25] Brian: [00:34:25] Yeah. Really? That’s what I’m going for with this To be honest. I didn’t, I didn’t know. Again, it’s super new. I didn’t know that, like right now you can call it a pretty horizontal product. It, it, I’m already seeing like many different use cases and different types of customers who were interested in using it.[00:34:44] And once I saw that sort of horizontal nature start to. Reveal itself that got me a little bit worried about zit message. You might’ve heard on the podcast with Jordan. Like I, I was starting to say like, how can I niche this down? How can I talk to this [00:35:00] niche or that niche, and then really make that message, the tool for whatever coaches or teachers or podcasters or whatever it might be.[00:35:08]I explored that a little bit, but at the end, but I’ve come around since then to say, like for right now it just is horizontal. And, and we’re going to see where this goes. Like it has, you know, a bunch of first customers right now. We’ll see how this evolves over the rest of the year. And then if, if there is.[00:35:27] One or two groups that emerge of like, these are the best customers, then maybe we’ll double down on that, but maybe not, maybe we’ll, it’ll just be horizontal. And then we’ll have like niche use case pages on the site and stuff like that, but I’m sort of still still exploring. And there’s so much, it’s a very simple product in terms of it.[00:35:48] It basically does one thing really well, this asynchronous conversation, but within that, there are so many little details. We’re not even close to having built everything [00:36:00] that we need to be building. So it’s like, yeah.[00:36:02] Matt: [00:36:02] It’s of many products and, and this is the challenge, right? This is going to be the challenge for you.[00:36:09]You know, moving forward, I don’t know of many, you know, paid for products. In other words, a customer has to go and pay for it that really can survive the simplicity of where the product. You know, starts off. Look at loom as an example, my God, there’s like 50 billion things that it does now. I’m just like, I don’t need all this.[00:36:31] And what happens is the customer like myself goes, I don’t, I don’t need all of these things, you know, popping out at me telling me what I should be doing. Like inviting collaborate. Like I don’t need all that stuff. Where is the product that, let me just record that video and quickly share it. I guess the challenge is, is once you start getting to a certain.[00:36:52]User amount of users, capacity network, capacity, storage capacity. I don’t know what the costs are internally, but then it’s like, [00:37:00] how do we monetize this play? So that’s another simple note is the only product I know that has survived, like being simple. As a product, but they’re also not charging for it and it’s owned by automatic.[00:37:11] So there’s a billion dollars behind it. It doesn’t matter.[00:37:13] Brian: [00:37:13] Yeah. You know, task managers are just, yeah. You gotta, you gotta have huge pockets to make that work. Same thing with loom. They’re, they have a very generous, free plan. And it is difficult for someone like me to compete with them, you know, just be perfectly honest.[00:37:27]And, and I thought about doing free, not close to the idea someday, but right now it’s not, we’re not doing a free plan. Yeah. And you know, we’re, we are differentiating in certain key ways that, that a certain set of customers seem, seem to be perfectly fine with, you know, and I’m still experimenting with different pricing, but it’s But it has paying customers already and it’s growing.[00:37:50]So we’ll see. I, wasn’t going to say the the, the simplicity thing is hard. Because, and I think this goes back to like choosing to get into zip message coming from process kit. Right? Cause one of the, [00:38:00] one of the challenges with process kit was like, it started getting first, very first customers like that.[00:38:08] Just a very small handful of first paying customers within like six, seven months or so after, after breaking ground on, on the code really call it like eight or nine months. If you include the early research but it wasn’t until well, over a year of building features before process kicked got actually like really useful for people.[00:38:26]Cause cause that product is so much more complex, you know, complex that like you can’t just have a glorified to-do list. As a, as a process tool, you know, there’s, there’s no reason to pay for that. When you could just use any other to-do list, you have to have the automations, the conditional logic, the, the, the reason why people want to use like smart SLPs, which is what process kit does.[00:38:52] We need a really, really robust Zapier integration and all this different kind of stuff. It took well over a year to get there. And then even [00:39:00] into the second year, there were a lot of important. Features that, that added value in that. And then that’s where the, where the customer base, you know, likes to it has that like automations people who are super into auto automating everything in their business, they love process kit, but like, yeah, it took a good year and a half to really have a product to give them, you know, whereas like zip message.[00:39:23] It was, I was able to build, I guess, call it an MVP. Within a couple of months, And and now we’re just trying to refine and build that, build that[00:39:32] Matt: [00:39:32] out. Yeah. And you can see the excitement. Like I can, I can, obviously, if you’re watching the video, you see the excitement, but if like I can hear the excitement when you talk about it and your other podcasts.[00:39:43] And when I see you tweet about it I can always tell the kind of good mood you’re in when I see your Twitter, when I see your tweets coming out, but even go down to like the branding. And like your approach to this, like the branding stuff that I put out publicly. You don’t,[00:39:57] Brian: [00:39:57] you don’t see me like throwing chairs in here the rest of the day, right?[00:40:01] [00:40:00] Matt: [00:40:01] No, but it, it, it comes across and like your approach to this product. I can tell that you’re, you’re becoming much more mature, you know, from, from when I first met you, which I probably say every time I interview a you at this point, cause like when I first met you onstage at WordCamp Providence, talking about restaurant engine, which was your, which was your original foray into SAS.[00:40:22]You know, this one is definitely something that looks like you’re, you’re really passionate about. Like, this will be the one that, that the history books really write a big chapter on you about you know, it[00:40:31] Brian: [00:40:31] seems like a well it’s, it’s funny to hear you describe that. I’ve have heard similar things from people like listening to the podcast and stuff.[00:40:40]And, and I, I appreciate that really. And I, I, a lot of it, I do feel, but. Also at this stage of trying many different products over the years the maturity thing I think has leads to what I actually think is pretty healthy skepticism of, of everything. I think you do need [00:41:00] to go into a new product with a lot of skepticism, you know, I’m, I’m still skeptical.[00:41:04] Like I’m still trying to understand that question. Like why, like people who are interested in that message. Like convince me, like, why are you really interested in this product? Like, why are you interested in it? I need to know that. And, and and I need to prove that and continuously, you know, it’s It’s just a process to, of like building confidence in like, okay, I think there’s something here.[00:41:31] I think there’s something here. Okay. Now I’m going to really double down investments here and, and, and that sort of stuff, you[00:41:38] Matt: [00:41:38] know, I think in a space, a final sort of final question thoughts around around this I’d imagine that. The pandemic COVID audio video, very hot spaces. Now that everyone was forced to work from home.[00:41:53]I think the video space obviously is going to be interesting. Audio is going to be interesting. But also probably quite challenging was, you know, [00:42:00] building process kit out is probably just a lot of thought. A lot of logic. You probably don’t need a lot of CPU and infrastructure around this stuff.[00:42:07] Video, I’d imagine maybe a little bit more right. And storage, bandwidth, conversion, all this[00:42:12] Brian: [00:42:12] stuff. It, it definitely is more complex. I do have a great developer working with me. And I have learned a ton about handling video on the web in the last couple of months. It, it’s definitely a challenge for sure.[00:42:26]There are some aspects of it that were a little bit. Easier than I, than I expected. And, and when I did some early technical research on it, it was part of, part of the reason why I decided to go into it and not be completely scared off because it’s video. I started researching it a bit. I was like, oh wow.[00:42:45] We can actually do this sort of thing in browsers these days, which wasn’t exactly possible even like one or two, three years ago. So that’s kind of cool, but there’s definitely. There, there are definitely costs in terms of bandwidth and processing of [00:43:00] videos and storage and, and playback. And there are just reliability issues of, of making sure that every time you hit record, no matter which browser you’re in, it works.[00:43:10]You know, we’re, we’re constantly working with users to, to, to smooth that out and, and make an, and, you know, you might, you might think that everybody is using Google Chrome, everything it[00:43:21] Matt: [00:43:21] is. God, I hope[00:43:24] Brian: [00:43:24] not. You know, I’m, I’m literally seeing from from the user base, the, the small user base here, was it messaged that it’s a, it’s a good mix of Chrome safari Firefox.[00:43:34] You know, iOS, Android, like it’s, it’s a mix we’ve got to make them work. So that’s a challenge,[00:43:40] Matt: [00:43:40] basic stuff. Brian castle zip message.com, a sync video conversations with customers and colleagues. I love the fact that you have the little arrow that points to what’s. This led async to help define asynchronous, because I tell you that if I told my dad, Hey, check out this asynchronous video conversation tool, you might be like, what the hell is?[00:43:59]He’s [00:44:00] not. And competent, but he might be like, what do you mean asynchronous? But he screen-sharing video sharing. He would get it. But I like how you define it there so[00:44:07] Brian: [00:44:07] that, you know, and that came out of the feedback. Because the very first, I think the very first version of the homepage, I did use the word asynchronous.[00:44:15] Maybe not in the H one, but somewhere around there. And, and I got a lot of feedback saying like, ah, I don’t really know what, like literally people would ask me, like, what does asynchronous mean? And then other people would be like, I, I sorta know what it means, but I think most people don’t know what that means.[00:44:30] And then, and then I backed off of it for a while. Like, oh, it’s just for video conversations or video messaging, something like that. And I just didn’t use the word asynchronous, but then it occurred to me that like, No, like we should own the, the term async, you know, cause that is growing in popularity.[00:44:48] Like people are starting to use it more often. So, so I want that message to be known for async conversations. But we have a little definition there for computer skills. You’re [00:45:00] brand new to it. You know,[00:45:00]Matt: [00:45:00] Zip message.com. Request an invite@zipmessage.com. Brian, thanks for hanging out and talking to us today on your podcast.[00:45:07] It’s your podcast at this point go, go to dot com and request an invite and maybe we’ll see Brian again. Hopefully not, hopefully not. We don’t see you in another six months talking about the[00:45:16] Brian: [00:45:16] product goal is to never be on that report. Again,[00:45:20] Matt: [00:45:20] it’s amazing stuff. Everybody else, Matt report.com airport.com/subscribe to join the mailing list.[00:45:26] We’ll see you in the next episode.

It's a big day here at Bootstrapped Web now that Jordan can talk more openly about his newest endeavor: Rally. Brian and Jordan talk about what Rally is, breakdown Rally's elevator pitch, as well as the steps Jordan has taken up to this point. They also get into a few updates with ZipMessage. Brian talks about the possibility of building a small team and the stigma around hiring a team full of contractors. Are you a freelancer looking for a little work? Are you a marketing specialist? If you have any questions, comments, or topic ideas for Bootstrapped Web, leave us a message here “I'm in the middle of that thing that happens if you post a Twitter thread just at the right time. It's fun. You have to remember to enjoy the fun days. This is one of those fun days.” – Jordan Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Here are today's conversation points: Rally and RallyOn.comWhat does Rally do for customers?What does it mean to go headless?Definition of “Modern brands”What makes Rally different?Enjoying and being in the momentThe importance of elevator pitches and headlinesMultiple fits and building relationshipsThe next step and roadmap for RallyZipMessage updatesDoing everything yourself vs. building a small teamContractors and freelancers vs. employeesThe stigma behind hiring overseas Creating your perfect company culture Brian's marketing talent wishlist:Technical marketer (Google analytics, SEO, etc.) Media producer (podcasting, interviews, etc.) “I'm already all in in terms of hours. But to really go all in, I need a team with me.” – Brian Powered By the Tweet This Plugin

It’s a big day here at Bootstrapped Web now that Jordan can talk more openly about his newest endeavor: Rally. Brian and Jordan talk about what Rally is, breakdown Rally’s elevator pitch, as well as the steps Jordan has taken up to this point. They also get into a few updates with ZipMessage. Brian talks … Continue reading Rally On

Brian and Jordan are back behind the mic for the second week in a row. Today they're focusing on bugs over customers, or should it be the other way around? After some project and business updates, they talk about the early stages of development and launch for a new product. How do you decide if this new project is worth it? How do you find people who are as excited about it as you are? If you have any questions, comments, or topic ideas for Bootstrapped Web, leave a message for Brian and Jordan on their ZipMessage account at https://zipmessage.com/bootstrappedweb. “I'm slowed down by the product and the bug-fixes.” – Brian Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Here are today's conversation points: Project and business updates: marketing, development, and not moving fast enoughTalking with partners and agencies versus potential customersTaking a position and what that means for a businessHow to decide whether a project or a product is worth the time?The Catch-22 of starting and growing a new businessHow to evaluate a “head-of-growth” expertPivotal moments in ZipMessage and secret projectsGrowth hacks for ZipMessage “My favorite thing (the thing that I'm good at) is articulating that future vision clearly.” – Jordan Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Resources: ZipMessage SunriseKPI Productize Audience Ops ProcessKit Carthook As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a review on

Topics this week: We're using a tool called ZipMessage to collect listener questions. If there's something you'd like us to discuss on the podcast, leave us an audio recording of your question at zipmessage.com/tyler Less Annoying CRM had a good April. LACRM's average account size is going up slightly, but it's having a significant impact on revenue. We discuss the theory of constraints, and how Rick can apply it to his next project. We talk about interviewing software engineers, especially when people with different experience levels will be applying for the same position. Rick finished a book on taking notes, and he gets it now. Rick is enjoying the "two co-founders chatting" style podcasts (like this one) Rick set up Coinbase and Robinhood accounts for fun. We talk a bit more about the basecamp drama now that more news has come out.

Brian and Jordan are back with big news about both of their newest projects. Today they're doing a deep dive into some of the mental struggles when you start something new. Some touchy-feely topics, some logistics, and back to touchy-feely topics: a typical Bootstrapped Web episode. If you have any questions, comments, or topic ideas for Bootstrapped Web, leave a message for Brian and Jordan on their ZipMessage account at https://zipmessage.com/bootstrappedweb. “We need to complement each other more. Because everyone asks for feedback, nobody asks for compliments.” – Jordan Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Here are today's conversation points: Updates on Jordan's secret productFeeling down and (surprising) external motivatorsWhat founders do and the meaning of being a founderThe importance of compliments and empathyUpdates, changes, and uses for ZipMessageFramework and patterns in successful niche SaaS productsThree-phase process: enter, lean-in, all-in “For founders, literally all we do is solve problems. What's the next problem to solve? What's the next thing that's not working? Every single day.” – Brian Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Resources ZipMessage New! zipmessage.com/bootstrappedweb Productize Audience Ops ProcessKit Carthook As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a review on

Brian and Jordan are back before Brian leaves to scratch his travel itch. Today, they are talking about the things they can control (launching ZipMessage and Jordan's new company), while also touching on a couple things they can't control (vaccines and concerts). They also spend a little time talking about Josh Pigford's amazing public journey, from exiting Baremetrics to starting his own company for modern financial planning & wealth management. How do you handle your professional persona? Are you an open book on your social media accounts? Are you strategic about what you post? Brian and Jordan discuss Josh's strategic and surprisingly open discussions on Twitter and how they differ in their social media personas. “I did want to step in and reiterate some of my larger goals and priorities to the team on Audience Ops, about what makes Audience Ops great. Kat really did that well, but I want to make sure that the team really knows, ‘This is why things work so well here. Let's keep this going.'” – Brian Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Here are today's conversation points: The roller coaster of ZipMessage onboardingFinalizing copy and launching landing pagesAudience Ops team changes and transitionsThe vision at Audience OpsExpectations, emotions, and performative reactions during Monday morning callsThe importance of understanding the “Why”Josh Pigford's exit from Baremetrics and his professional trajectory…in publicAngel investing and asking for money “If you have an audience and you want to start a company, at this point, you can just ask for money. You can legally, publicly ask for money.” – Jordan Powered By the Tweet This Plugin