The Hourglass w/ Jordan Gal

March 18, 2025

Aaron is joined this week by Jordan Gal (Ian's off at Disney World) to discuss everything from finding product market fit for his new product Rosie to the Try Hard business model and so much more. Sponsored by: Bento https://bentonow.com/ Stream https://getstream.io/chat/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=&utm_campaign=mostlytechnical Laravel Cloud https://cloud.laravel.com/ PHP Tek 2025 https://phptek.io/ Interested in sponsoring Mostly Technical? Head to https://mostlytechnical.com/sponsor to learn more. 00:00 #1 Topic 02:28 What Makes A Podcast Compelling? 33:25 Early Product Market Fit 56:47 Fighting the Bootstrap Ideology 01:15:39 The Try Hard Business Model 01:30:05 It's Business Time 01:48:04 Making Friends 02:02:35 Disneyland vs. Disney World
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Transcript

Aaron
00:00:00 – 00:00:09
Alright. Welcome, back to Mostly Technical this week. No, Ian. Ian is a no man, and he said no to the podcast. And so he's out today.
Aaron
00:00:09 – 00:00:19
I think he's at Disney, which we all know my feelings on Disney. But, you know, no shade to Ian. I I think we might we might have a better cohost here. We'll see. Uh-oh.
Aaron
00:00:19 – 00:00:30
We got Jordan Gall on the show today. I'm super excited. We've been friends feel like we've been Internet friends for a long time, but never spoken. So this is, this is our maiden voyage. Welcome, Jordan, to the show.
Jordan
00:00:30 – 00:00:35
Thank you very much. Thanks for having me on. Aaron, have we not spoken, like, on Zoom or something? We must
Aaron
00:00:35 – 00:00:44
I I don't think we have. I've heard you talk about me on your show, and you've heard me talk about you on my show. Yes. We've DM ed, but we've never spoken.
Jordan
00:00:44 – 00:00:51
Very funny. I feel like I know you. Same. I have questions for you. I'm looking forward to getting to know you more.
Aaron
00:00:51 – 00:00:54
I can't wait. Also, I'm kinda nervous, but I can't wait.
Jordan
00:00:54 – 00:01:01
Well, look. The number one rule I have for this podcast is we cannot talk trash by Ian. He's not here to defend himself. Ah. So, Ian, that was
Aaron
00:01:01 – 00:01:12
my number one that was my number one topic. So dang it. That's too bad. And thank you for wearing the uniform, the black shirt and the glasses. I really appreciate that.
Jordan
00:01:12 – 00:01:14
You know, this is my actual uniform.
Aaron
00:01:14 – 00:01:14
Uh-huh.
Jordan
00:01:14 – 00:01:17
This is maybe four out of five days a week.
Aaron
00:01:17 – 00:01:17
Yep.
Jordan
00:01:17 – 00:01:21
So it's not for you. It's just the uniform. It happens to be very similar to yours.
Aaron
00:01:21 – 00:01:23
Yeah. I appreciate that.
Jordan
00:01:23 – 00:01:24
Have you considered the LASIK surgery?
Aaron
00:01:25 – 00:01:32
No. I haven't because at this point, it's part of the it's part of the style. Like, I like I like wearing glasses.
Jordan
00:01:32 – 00:01:38
That's how I feel. The other day, I thought I maybe I can get the surgery in silverware glasses. No. I can't live with myself if I do that.
Aaron
00:01:38 – 00:01:47
Yeah. Fashion glasses are tough to rationalize in in my opinion. I know that people do it, but I would feel a little bit I would feel a little bit inauthentic wearing fashion glasses.
Jordan
00:01:48 – 00:01:48
Fair. Fair.
Aaron
00:01:48 – 00:01:53
Yeah. Alright. So you're here. I am. I've heard you doing the tour.
Aaron
00:01:53 – 00:02:04
I've listened to all of your your guest shows. You did one with Rob recently. Rob Walling started for the rest of us. Yeah. So I feel like I have a little bit of, a little bit of fact story of what you're up to.
Aaron
00:02:05 – 00:02:14
Where do you where do you wanna start? We've I've got topics. I've got topics for you. We could talk Rosie, which is your your new startup. You can ask me questions.
Aaron
00:02:14 – 00:02:15
What do you wanna do?
Jordan
00:02:15 – 00:02:28
Okay. Okay. So I do have some topics. I don't I I I wanna, like, give, you know, to to at least some of these topics around Rosie and what I've learned. It is but before we get there, let's get there.
Jordan
00:02:28 – 00:02:35
But I do want to talk first. I want to ask you about podcasting. Okay. I want to ask you one thing very specifically to start off. Okay?
Jordan
00:02:36 – 00:02:40
I associate you with the phrase, you can just do things.
Aaron
00:02:41 – 00:02:42
Love that for me.
Jordan
00:02:42 – 00:02:52
What what I wanna know is is is it your original, or is it are you do you so embody this phrase that my the association is very close for me? Which which one is it?
Aaron
00:02:52 – 00:03:17
You know, it's good for the lore and for the aura to say, this is mine, and I invented it. Yes. I'm not sure that that is true. I'm I'm pretty sure that that is not true. I don't think I am the originator of the phrase, but I think to some extent in our in our maybe our little corner, I have popularized it enough that people associate it with me, which is good enough.
Aaron
00:03:17 – 00:03:18
That's good enough for me.
Jordan
00:03:18 – 00:03:23
Yes. Fair, humble, honest, and it does answer the question. Because I And I was trying to
Aaron
00:03:23 – 00:03:24
be clear.
Jordan
00:03:24 – 00:03:26
Because I find myself saying it all the time now.
Aaron
00:03:26 – 00:03:34
It's great. It's just so pithy. You'll be pleased to know I do own the domain. You can justdothings.com. That might be that might,
Jordan
00:03:34 – 00:03:38
you know, be the deciding factor. You now will maybe There you go.
Aaron
00:03:38 – 00:03:49
It's mine. I don't know who can say. Okay. So yeah. And I do love I do love when, like, Sam Altman will say something like, You can just do things and people will tag like, Hey, did you steal that from Aaron?
Aaron
00:03:49 – 00:03:51
And I'm like, I don't know, guys.
Jordan
00:03:51 – 00:03:58
Look, good ideas are contagious as are bad ideas, but we push the good ideas. I have another question for you.
Aaron
00:03:58 – 00:03:59
I love this. This is great.
Jordan
00:03:59 – 00:04:03
Alright. So here's the thing. Okay. You've you've seen me on a bunch of podcasts for
Aaron
00:04:03 – 00:04:05
for two reasons. Mhmm.
Jordan
00:04:05 – 00:04:14
One good, one not bad, maybe ugly. Let's call it. K. The first reason is because I am trying to figure out how to create more content.
Aaron
00:04:14 – 00:04:15
Sure.
Jordan
00:04:15 – 00:04:25
And I plan on starting my own podcast in the future. So I was like, best way to do that, let me go on to these shows. The the second reason you've seen me on all this all these, just seeing more of me is because Rosie's doing well.
Aaron
00:04:26 – 00:04:26
Okay.
Jordan
00:04:27 – 00:04:57
And and that is a weird thing because that means that means my confidence is directly tied to the performance of the business. And my willingness to go out there and create content and be in front of people and basically talk with some sense of authority relies on the success of the company that I'm currently building. And I have to kind of, like, confess, when things were not going well with Rally, I felt inauthentic coming out and being like, here's what you should do. Do. Here's what works for me.
Jordan
00:04:57 – 00:05:14
Because nothing was really working. So anyway, that's somewhat ugly. The question is, what makes a podcast compelling? What makes you want to hit play on a podcast? All of this stuff that I'm doing, I'm trying to figure out what kind of podcast I want to create.
Aaron
00:05:14 – 00:05:15
Mhmm.
Jordan
00:05:15 – 00:05:19
And I have been trying to analyze it by looking at my Spotify podcast list
Aaron
00:05:19 – 00:05:19
Mhmm.
Jordan
00:05:19 – 00:05:33
And trying to identify why do I want to hit play or not hit play. So what is it? I think of your podcast, Dean, as one of the ones that I wanna hit play. I wanna ask you what what you think does it. What makes a podcast?
Aaron
00:05:33 – 00:05:40
That's interesting. Compelling. Okay. So as as an avid podcast listener, I listen to tons of podcasts. Yep.
Aaron
00:05:41 – 00:06:08
So I feel well qualified to answer this. I really like, I really like the the ride along shows. That's what I like. That's what I what I liked about your show, that you did with Brian for so long. That's what I liked about Art of Product, Hackers Incorporated for a second, old school, old school startups for the rest of us when Rob and Mike were on there just sharing the journey.
Aaron
00:06:08 – 00:06:15
Okay. I like I like the ride alongs, the, you know, what's going on this week? How's your father? What's the good word? That kind of stuff.
Aaron
00:06:15 – 00:06:28
Right? So I like I like to know the cast of characters, and I like to know, like, hey. This person I get it's like a longitudinal study in a business. And so I get to hear the ups and the downs. I get to hear that we tried this.
Aaron
00:06:28 – 00:06:36
We you know, this didn't work. That's why I think art of product was so good because Ben and Derek were both, like, building. Yes. Yeah. They were building.
Aaron
00:06:36 – 00:06:48
And every week, you know, Ben would come on and be like, well, I did a enterprise sale, and I just, you know, multiplied the number times 10, and they still said yes. And I'm like, this is great. This is gold. I love hearing this. And and you you
Jordan
00:06:48 – 00:06:52
hear something that came up a month ago and then where it ended up.
Aaron
00:06:52 – 00:07:03
Yes. Exactly. And so the thing, the thing that I don't like as much is when people pivot to people pivot to interview only. I don't like that as much. Mhmm.
Aaron
00:07:03 – 00:07:10
Because then I'm like, do I wanna listen to this guest talk about this thing that doesn't matter to me? Right.
Jordan
00:07:10 – 00:07:17
And the host that you might have a connection with isn't really part of that conversation. They're facilitating the conversation, but it's not the same thing.
Aaron
00:07:17 – 00:07:38
Okay. Exactly. So when you're when you and or you are, Jordan. When you and Brian are talking about how you're, like, trying to do you know, back in the rally days, you're trying to, like, figure out this headless, you know, checkout thing, and it's like, this doesn't apply to me at all. And if you if I didn't know you and you were a guest and went on somebody else's show, I'd be like, headless checkout.
Aaron
00:07:38 – 00:08:03
Like, I don't even know what you're talking about. Skip that. But I've listened to every single one of your episodes because it's like, I am invested, and I am following along. And so maybe back to your back to your your bad or your ugly reason for not going on, I have found the most enjoyable podcasts to not be the ones that are like, here's exactly what you should do. Here are 10 takeaways for, you know, b to b sales or something.
Aaron
00:08:04 – 00:08:19
I found the ones that I enjoy the most to be, here's what I have done. And maybe it worked, maybe it didn't work. But the, like, the big difference is, here's what you should do, and here's what I have done. I'm always picking, here's what I have done every time.
Jordan
00:08:19 – 00:08:25
Okay. Very interesting. We we line up on a lot of it. First of all, you like narrative nonfiction. Yes.
Jordan
00:08:25 – 00:08:30
That's basically what it's just in real time. A podcast allows for narrative nonfiction in real time.
Aaron
00:08:30 – 00:08:31
Mhmm.
Jordan
00:08:31 – 00:08:33
Written on the spot audibly. Yes.
Aaron
00:08:33 – 00:08:35
It is kind of exactly. It's fun that way.
Jordan
00:08:35 – 00:08:43
Yes. Yes. Yep. Yeah. I I when I first set out in my mind, I said, okay.
Jordan
00:08:43 – 00:08:45
I'm gonna I'm gonna start a podcast.
Aaron
00:08:45 – 00:08:46
Mhmm.
Jordan
00:08:46 – 00:08:49
The obvious thing in front of you is an interview show.
Aaron
00:08:50 – 00:08:50
Mhmm.
Jordan
00:08:50 – 00:09:12
Yep. Because that allows you to interview people from your space, from your ICP. You you can interview people. It's, like, strategic. Like, I'm gonna talk to this person who runs a $20,000,000 roofing company that they acquired using an SBA loan, and that is gonna get pushed out, and my ICP is gonna be attracted to that because it is just like them or just like who they wanna be.
Jordan
00:09:12 – 00:09:20
Mhmm. My problem with that that's that was my original thought on on the new podcast. I promised it didn't sound like any fun.
Aaron
00:09:21 – 00:09:24
No. I'll I'll be honest. It doesn't. Doesn't sound like fun? It really it really doesn't.
Jordan
00:09:24 – 00:09:39
And and when I think about my Spotify playlist, what does it for me is that it sounds like fun. Mhmm. I listen to too much politics. So when I get real full on that, because that's not fun these days
Aaron
00:09:39 – 00:09:40
Mhmm.
Jordan
00:09:40 – 00:09:45
I look for some form of an escape, but that's business adjacent Right. Or interest adjacent.
Aaron
00:09:46 – 00:09:48
You can at least tell yourself it's business.
Jordan
00:09:48 – 00:09:54
Yes. Kinda. Yeah. I'm not looking to, like, make my business better. I'm looking to hang out with some people.
Aaron
00:09:54 – 00:09:55
Exactly. K. Yes. K.
Jordan
00:09:55 – 00:09:57
I like David Chang.
Aaron
00:09:57 – 00:09:58
Okay. I don't know David Chang.
Jordan
00:09:58 – 00:10:12
Okay. He's a chef. He runs Momofuku, interesting businesses, interesting restaurants, and it's like a hang. Mhmm. I think about your podcast, and one of the reasons I really like it, is because it is half hang
Aaron
00:10:12 – 00:10:13
and
Jordan
00:10:13 – 00:10:24
half business. So it's got the narrative nonfiction line running through it, but you're you got you're not in a rush to just get to business and talk about the thing that worked or didn't work and just, you know, focus on that.
Aaron
00:10:25 – 00:10:39
It is not the most value dense format. The way that we do do the show is not the most value dense, but we're also not in we're not in the value dense game. We're in the sweet hang game. You know? Yes.
Aaron
00:10:39 – 00:10:47
That's that's the game that we're playing. And I saw you tagged, group chat news. That's why we love group chat. That's why we love that podcast. Yep.
Aaron
00:10:47 – 00:10:58
Because they, like, they yuck it up for half the show, and the other half, they're talking about what they're seeing as, you know, retailers and is the consumer soft. And I'm like, I don't know anything about this. Tell me more.
Jordan
00:10:58 – 00:11:01
Right. And it doesn't directly impact your business, but it's just interesting in general.
Aaron
00:11:01 – 00:11:02
It is. If you take ten
Jordan
00:11:02 – 00:11:15
minutes and talk about the golf tournament you went to, it's still interesting because I like you, and I wanna hear about it. Yeah. So I've been trying to figure out what what what that is and what that format is. Yeah. And so maybe this is a good transition.
Jordan
00:11:15 – 00:11:24
I can talk about the thinking there and where the podcast is going to live in Rosie's business in general, because this is not for me personally.
Aaron
00:11:24 – 00:11:45
Yes. So I wanna hear, I wanna hear you back up a little bit and tell me the story of, the end of Bootstrapped Web, and now you've both gone both gone on to do new podcasts that are similar and different formats. I mean, he's doing the panel with Justin Jackson, which is very enjoyable. Yes. Same.
Aaron
00:11:45 – 00:11:57
You're looking you're looking for something that I think is more, like, pointed at the people that would consume Rosie. And so tell us, like, couch it in that narrative. Give us the kind of the story there.
Jordan
00:11:57 – 00:12:06
Sure. Well, Brian and I had a great time. We we did podcast for ten years. Ten ten years. Yep.
Jordan
00:12:06 – 00:12:28
We really saw each other through, you know, a big portion of our lives and careers, family having kids, moving cities, the whole thing. So it was a lot of fun. The way Brian and I started out was through Mixer GE. Back in the day, Mixer, he posted something about, like, Andrew Warner, right, from Mixergy. He posted something that was like, what if I did a mastermind?
Jordan
00:12:28 – 00:12:38
Would you be interested in it? So both Brian and I reached out and were accepted into the original mastermind with Brennan Dunn, with a few other guys. Boy.
Aaron
00:12:38 – 00:12:44
Yep. Old school years ago. I remember Brennan Dunn being big on the scene. That's right. Those were those were the days.
Jordan
00:12:44 – 00:12:50
What Brian and I realized by some insane coincidence is that we lived ten minutes from each other.
Aaron
00:12:50 – 00:12:51
I did not know that. Yes.
Jordan
00:12:51 – 00:12:58
We both lived in Connecticut. I lived in Westport. He lived in in Norwalk. Ten Minutes from each other, and we were like, well, this is weird. I guess we should, like, get to know each other.
Jordan
00:12:59 – 00:13:02
And that's where the podcast started from. So we really started way back.
Aaron
00:13:03 – 00:13:03
Yeah.
Jordan
00:13:04 – 00:13:09
In terms of the end of the podcast, I think it was just time we were starting to go in different directions.
Aaron
00:13:10 – 00:13:10
Uh-huh.
Jordan
00:13:10 – 00:13:18
I think the most important thing is I was holding him back. Mhmm. Because I started looking at the podcast. This is just a fun thing I did on Fridays. Mhmm.
Jordan
00:13:19 – 00:13:27
But I needed to put more effort in, and it wasn't fair to him because he was putting effort in. And I was just showing up on Friday and then walking away. I didn't promote it. I didn't even say, hey.
Aaron
00:13:27 – 00:13:28
We should have
Jordan
00:13:28 – 00:13:39
a new episode. I just thought of it as, like, this therapy session for myself. Mhmm. And I had fun, and it was valuable for me to synthesize the stuff at the end of the week. But but it it started coming out of whack.
Jordan
00:13:39 – 00:13:50
And I'm not surprised right now that he's going off and doing something, I think, better. And I'm gonna go off and do something better because we're breathing new life and energy into what we're doing on the podcast front
Aaron
00:13:51 – 00:13:51
Mhmm. From a
Jordan
00:13:51 – 00:13:59
different point of view, maybe a more honest point of view. Like, no. I I need to do this, and I wanna do this for myself in this way. So it was just time. It was ten years.
Jordan
00:13:59 – 00:14:00
It was awesome.
Aaron
00:14:00 – 00:14:13
Ten years. I remember I think I started listening back when restaurant engine was a thing. I remember listening through your decision to move cities. Yep. I man, I just, like I followed that thing for forever.
Aaron
00:14:13 – 00:14:19
Yeah. So It's a trip. It's So it had a big impact on on me. So it's a fun fun show.
Jordan
00:14:19 – 00:14:20
Thank you for saying that. And I'm
Aaron
00:14:20 – 00:14:23
I'm glad it exists and lives on the Internet Mhmm.
Jordan
00:14:23 – 00:14:32
In general. And that that that's great. Yeah. Now now it's time to do something else. And I don't necessarily care to link it to Rosie's ICP.
Jordan
00:14:33 – 00:14:42
I think the most important thing is to have a great time and really enjoy it, and I think that will that will be the most compelling version of a podcast that I can do.
Aaron
00:14:42 – 00:14:43
Mhmm.
Jordan
00:14:43 – 00:14:45
The exact format, I'm not sure of.
Aaron
00:14:45 – 00:14:58
So what is the, so if you're justifying putting more time into it and you're saying, alright. I need to put some effort. I need to bring some stuff. I need to promote. Like, I'm gonna make this a part of my life and my business.
Aaron
00:14:58 – 00:15:05
What is your, like, desired outcome from doing a podcast like that if not necessarily linked to Rosie's ICP?
Jordan
00:15:05 – 00:15:15
Yeah. So a lot of this stuff, I end up going through a a similar cycle where a lot of it starts off as this very calculated, somewhat cynical decision of I I want content for Rosie.
Aaron
00:15:16 – 00:15:16
K.
Jordan
00:15:16 – 00:15:25
And then I back away off the cynicism, and I say, well, okay. How do I make enjoyable? How do I make it so that I care about it? Because that's actually the best version of the product.
Aaron
00:15:25 – 00:15:30
I I would I would challenge cynicism, and I would say it's strategic. That's extremely strategic.
Jordan
00:15:31 – 00:15:31
Sure. Sure.
Aaron
00:15:31 – 00:15:31
Yeah.
Jordan
00:15:31 – 00:15:51
Okay. So here's where it fits in. We launched Rosie, I guess, July, we took on our first users, and then August 1, like, you know, Yes, you can log in. Here's a username and password version of the product. And then October, it started working with the first cohort and we asked them for money.
Jordan
00:15:51 – 00:16:03
And then we started making our way toward self serve. And then it really kind of popped when we added a few features and self serve. And we can talk about that process, that I'm calling an hourglass process. We'll get into that.
Aaron
00:16:03 – 00:16:05
We love a name we love a name for things.
Jordan
00:16:05 – 00:16:07
That's great. Names are important.
Aaron
00:16:07 – 00:16:07
Oh, that's
Jordan
00:16:07 – 00:16:13
great. You know what I call these? I call all these lies. L a h. Like, learning in hindsight.
Jordan
00:16:13 – 00:16:14
Lessons in hindsight.
Aaron
00:16:14 – 00:16:19
That's great. That's great. You fit in you fit in perfectly here. Okay. Keep going.
Jordan
00:16:19 – 00:16:19
Yes.
Aaron
00:16:19 – 00:16:21
We'll we'll come to Hourglass later. That's great.
Jordan
00:16:22 – 00:16:55
So where it fits in right now is that advertising is working for us. I did not expect ads to work for us, but I had a hunch that it could because our ICP being like small businesses and local services, I just think they behave like consumers and they're just hanging out on Instagram and TikTok like everybody else. So we have been pushing ads there, and it really worked. So we are ramping up investment, and I'm a little shocked by how much money we're spending on ads. It feels very strange to do so, but that's why we raised venture.
Jordan
00:16:57 – 00:17:12
So, ads are working. Okay. Got a great SEO company on board. Got them on board probably in December, and now it's like officially working and publishing things all the time and so on. And so the next step is more content.
Jordan
00:17:12 – 00:17:29
And so I've tried to think about how do I create content that makes sense for the business in a way that doesn't make me cringe too much and and all that. I decided that the best way to go with content for me as the founder, because I think people don't pay attention to companies. I don't pay attention to any companies.
Aaron
00:17:29 – 00:17:29
I agree. I don't
Jordan
00:17:29 – 00:17:36
care at all what a company says. Okay. So that was, like, the first big fork in the road. Okay. It's gotta come from me.
Jordan
00:17:36 – 00:17:47
So what I did is I hired a content agency that creates content from me as the founder. K. Okay. So now we're talking strategic. You don't wanna call it cynical, but strategic.
Jordan
00:17:47 – 00:17:49
Okay. Next thing you
Aaron
00:17:49 – 00:17:53
know We can call it ruthlessly strategic if you want. Yes. That's fine.
Jordan
00:17:53 – 00:18:14
So think about put yourself in in these shoes. You're gonna go spend money, and this company is gonna create a lot of content that comes from you and your Twitter profile and your Facebook profile and your LinkedIn profile and everything else. Once you internalize that that's about to happen, you have a choice. You could not care and embrace the cringe, or you could care and say, I gotta make this good.
Aaron
00:18:15 – 00:18:15
Mhmm.
Jordan
00:18:15 – 00:18:21
So that's where I'm at right now. Yep. There's a whole bunch of content. I'm about to be a thread boy, okay, on the Earth.
Aaron
00:18:21 – 00:18:24
And you gotta live with
Jordan
00:18:24 – 00:18:33
your decisions. Right? Here we go. So starting in, like, a week or two, you're gonna start to see a lot more content from me. And when I thought about that, I started to sweat from shame and embarrassment.
Aaron
00:18:33 – 00:18:34
Sure.
Jordan
00:18:34 – 00:18:54
And the only way I can kinda get through that is by saying, I'm gonna make this good. And the best way that I can make it good is to generate the foundational content for all of it through a podcast. The medium sparring partner. The medium that I'm most comfortable and most confident in talking on video like this
Aaron
00:18:54 – 00:18:54
Yep.
Jordan
00:18:55 – 00:19:07
Let that be the foundation of the content that they can clip from, they could take ideas from, turn into threads, turn into posts, turn into carousels or whatever else there is. Yep. So that is where the podcast thinking came.
Aaron
00:19:07 – 00:19:21
Okay. So I buy it because backup backup thirty to sixty seconds. Okay. You're the agency. Backup this show thirty to sixty seconds, and you've got a blog post, a thread, a LinkedIn post all about authentic content from the founders.
Aaron
00:19:21 – 00:19:30
And then you just it came off the top of your head while you were speaking in the zone hyped up. And now in that chunk, they've got a week's worth of content right there.
Jordan
00:19:30 – 00:19:42
Yes. So that is the ideal. And so that because of that, I am allowing myself to not worry about the content being so right for the ICP. Mhmm. Right that look.
Jordan
00:19:42 – 00:19:53
I I started off thinking I need to create a show for SMB AI. Right. How are SMBs using AI in their business? In a calculated way, that's probably the best content for our ICP.
Aaron
00:19:53 – 00:19:54
Mhmm.
Jordan
00:19:54 – 00:19:58
But I'm gonna I'm gonna lose my mind from boredom doing that.
Aaron
00:19:58 – 00:20:08
And and honestly, Chris, my lawn guy isn't looking for podcasts about AI and SMB, frankly. He's just mowing lawns and making a ton of money. Do you understand? Yeah. It's
Jordan
00:20:08 – 00:20:09
great that this actually
Aaron
00:20:09 – 00:20:12
Yeah. I know. I pay him. It must be.
Jordan
00:20:13 – 00:20:20
Yeah. I have the kind of landscaper that just doesn't bill me and then sends me, like, a $2,000 bill six weeks later. And I'm like, what what why? What'd you do?
Aaron
00:20:20 – 00:20:32
I got one of those when we sold like, a few years ago, we sold a house. And I to my credit, I had flagged this guy down three or four or five times and been like, hey. Do you have can I, like, pay you?
Jordan
00:20:32 – 00:20:32
Yes. Do
Aaron
00:20:32 – 00:20:37
you have a invoice? Can I pay you? And he's like, yes. You can pay me. I'll I'll get you an invoice.
Aaron
00:20:37 – 00:20:42
Right. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Put a for sale sign in my yard, got a bill for $3.
Aaron
00:20:42 – 00:20:45
Yes. There you go. Okay. Okay. Where's, like, where's the documentation?
Aaron
00:20:45 – 00:20:46
Yeah.
Jordan
00:20:46 – 00:20:46
Help me out.
Aaron
00:20:46 – 00:20:47
Oh, I don't I don't have it.
Jordan
00:20:47 – 00:20:55
So yes. It's tough. It's my job to make sure that that guy has an AI answering their phone before they have an invoicing system. Okay?
Aaron
00:20:55 – 00:20:59
Wish me luck. That's fine. Good luck. Yeah. That's fine.
Aaron
00:20:59 – 00:21:05
The new guy sends me a a Venmo request every week, and I just yes. Good job. There you go. It's great. I love it.
Jordan
00:21:05 – 00:21:26
So if we if we go back into the in into the the podcasting Mhmm. What I now that I'm fully engaged in this mindset around Mhmm. Generating content, I think what you'll find whatever everyone listening to this, if you become more aware of what you're doing during the week, you're actually a content machine. You have 100%. There's so much.
Jordan
00:21:27 – 00:21:51
There's so much. And I have a list of things that I can go through from the last few weeks and months of Rosie that I basically just formalized. I talk about them all the time internally. It's almost like I practice explaining my thinking to people on our team effectively to justify my decisions as CEO. Here's an example.
Jordan
00:21:51 – 00:22:05
Why are why is Rosie a horizontal software and not verticalized? Okay. Generally speaking, advice to a a software founder, I would say, don't be general. Find a niche. Yep.
Jordan
00:22:05 – 00:22:06
Nail it for them.
Aaron
00:22:06 – 00:22:12
Worry about that. Do the Nathan Barry. Do the Nathan Barry. Do bloggers or whatever, and then just make a ton of money.
Jordan
00:22:12 – 00:22:14
You are you are good at this because that's why
Aaron
00:22:14 – 00:22:16
I'm in the game. I've listened, man.
Jordan
00:22:16 – 00:22:22
That is okay. You good. So that's my example. Yep. My example is ConvertKit.
Jordan
00:22:22 – 00:22:42
If email gets invented, you don't build ConvertKit. You build Mailchimp. When the market is just forming, you go very horizontal to capture as much of the wave that's on the way as possible. And then you have a problem on how to verticalize. Do you build extra features for specific verticals?
Jordan
00:22:42 – 00:22:57
Is it just a marketing play where you have a page and a case study and a whatever geared toward that? And that's kind of later. So here's the thing. You've probably heard me say that before, right, on Rob's podcast. So I'm, like, turned into, like, an actor practicing my lines.
Aaron
00:22:57 – 00:22:58
Yep. Yep. Mhmm.
Jordan
00:22:58 – 00:23:07
And then I oh, look. That's a little bundle of content. It is. That's a little package. And how do I I've never been able I don't have discipline like you.
Aaron
00:23:09 – 00:23:10
Well, I appreciate it, but I don't know. You
Jordan
00:23:10 – 00:23:35
make, like, 30 videos a week. Sometimes. I think about them, and I don't make them. And my hope is that this content agency and this potential shame around being too cringey and my own content coming from me being bad has finally motivated me to go just far enough in packaging these little bits of content Mhmm. To at least hand them over to someone that I paid to actually post them as content.
Aaron
00:23:36 – 00:24:03
That's You know, being being driven by shame. I can't I can't endorse I can't endorse that strategy, but if it works, I'm proud I'm proud for you. So here's, I fundamentally 100% agree. And to point out someone who does this super well, I think, would be pointing back to our mutual friend, Justin Jackson. So Justin will back when he was on Twitter, RIP, Justin Justin will go on Twitter and throw out an idea.
Aaron
00:24:03 – 00:24:11
Right? He'll throw out an idea. He'll he'll, like, you know, yuck it up with the normies and go back and forth in banter. K. Then it becomes then he talks about it on some podcast.
Aaron
00:24:11 – 00:24:38
Then he puts it out in some newsletter, and then it comes back out on Twitter in a more refined fashion. And it's just like, he just kinda he just kinda bandies about the idea or the problem until it's refined and honed down into something that ends up as a blog post and a newsletter and a podcast episode and now a YouTube video. And I think that is a very that's, like, a very good way to hone the message. And I think, partially, also what you're describing is bits and sticks. Right?
Aaron
00:24:38 – 00:24:52
We've got bits. We've got sticks. I've got my you can just do things, you know, try hard. Like, all of those things, like, they end up being, I think, functionally memes, but not like, you know, cheap images. But it's like Yeah.
Aaron
00:24:52 – 00:25:07
It's a it's a simplification of kind of like a point of view or a way of living or an idea. And if you do that enough, people start adding on to it for you. Like you asked at the beginning, like, I see people saying this. Did you invent this? It's like, no.
Aaron
00:25:07 – 00:25:42
But if you say something enough, people start attributing it to you. And podcasts are a great way to get that, like, that first draft out there, especially if you, like me, have a good sparring partner. I've got Ian who is, like, very smart, doesn't always agree with me, which is amazing, but wants, like, wants me to succeed. And so he's always trying to, like, let's let's get to a good place together even if we fundamentally disagree on some things. And so I'm I'm all on board as podcast as, like, we could say content engine.
Aaron
00:25:42 – 00:25:49
Even if, you know, Chris, at the light landscaping service doesn't listen to the show, it is the nugget from which other things can, you know, spring.
Jordan
00:25:50 – 00:26:08
Yes. I'm I'm pushing off the ICP concern out into the future Mhmm. Because I think it's because I have felt what you feel and other podcasters feel. You don't just give, and and it works out. It'll it'll all come back around.
Jordan
00:26:08 – 00:26:32
You really don't have to think about the outcome. You just keep doing your thing and keep giving, and it makes everything easier and better. So I'm just really just pushing off that concern. Because in reality, after two months of doing my podcast and eight episodes are out, when I then reach out to the amazing, deck building company in California, this guy on Twitter is awesome. He doesn't know me right now.
Jordan
00:26:32 – 00:26:35
Two months from now, it's much more likely that he'll say, yes. I'd love to come on the podcast.
Aaron
00:26:35 – 00:26:37
A %. Yes. So it's
Jordan
00:26:37 – 00:26:39
like Yep. I'll worry about that later. That's that's
Aaron
00:26:39 – 00:26:47
fine. Yep. Yep. And now with, as you well know, all these AI tools, your, they can gather your your digital detritus. Right?
Aaron
00:26:47 – 00:26:59
So you've got a bunch of tweets. You've got a bunch of podcast transcripts. You've got maybe some newsletters. They can grab it all, and I have done this. I have actively done this many times.
Aaron
00:26:59 – 00:27:22
I have, like I exported, an archive of all my tweets, so I have them all. I've got blog posts that I've written turned into, like, you know, one giant PDF, and then I've got all podcast transcripts on aaronfrancis.com. And so then I can go to Gemini deep research and say, hey. Here's what I want you to look at. Look at everything I've said on this topic, this idea, pull examples from the shows I've been on, and write me a first draft.
Aaron
00:27:22 – 00:27:33
Here's the title, and here are the key highlights I want you to hit. And it, like, spits out a first draft. And it's all stuff that I've said. It's just, like, scattered across the web, and it pulls it all together for me. It's awesome.
Jordan
00:27:33 – 00:27:44
Yeah. Very interesting. I have not I have not I have not done anything like that. Reminds me of a very funny experience we had a few nights ago. My wife had her first AI experience of, like,
Aaron
00:27:44 – 00:27:45
oh
Jordan
00:27:45 – 00:27:54
my god, this thing works. And what was it for? It was for a scavenger hunt, a set of poems on where to go in our house next. Cool. It did it so perfectly.
Jordan
00:27:54 – 00:28:00
But it's a reminder, you you you can do more with your content than you think you can.
Aaron
00:28:00 – 00:28:00
Yes.
Jordan
00:28:00 – 00:28:08
With these AI tools, I I I don't think of that, but that's very interesting. I would love to put all of my podcasts somewhere to be able to access it. Yeah.
Aaron
00:28:08 – 00:28:17
Yes. Yeah. Especially you with ten years of of podcasts. You've got transcripts. I mean, you've you've talked about a ton of stuff.
Aaron
00:28:17 – 00:28:30
And so getting all of that transcribed and searchable yes. Searchable, but, like, consumable by an LLM Yes. Your agency you're gonna be the easiest client your agency has ever had. It's unbelievable.
Jordan
00:28:30 – 00:28:37
Yeah. That's that's my my hope is that the content they create originates from my thinking and my experience.
Aaron
00:28:37 – 00:28:39
As it yes. Yeah. As it should. Yeah.
Jordan
00:28:39 – 00:28:53
Right. That's kind of what you want. And I have been taking tweets and posts and showing them I like this and I don't like this, and I identify very, very strongly with your your preference for advice
Aaron
00:28:54 – 00:28:54
Mhmm.
Jordan
00:28:54 – 00:28:57
On it being, here's what I did. Here's what I
Aaron
00:28:57 – 00:28:58
learned. Mhmm.
Jordan
00:28:58 – 00:29:00
As opposed to, this is the way it's done.
Aaron
00:29:00 – 00:29:00
Yes.
Jordan
00:29:00 – 00:29:03
Here's how here's how you should do it. If you're not doing it, you're doing it wrong.
Aaron
00:29:03 – 00:29:12
Yes. Yep. Don't I don't like that. I don't like that to consume. I also don't like that to produce, and I think a lot of people try to produce content like that.
Aaron
00:29:13 – 00:29:23
Like, here's the way you should do things, and it's a very high bar. Like, if you're if you're intellectually honest, it's a very high bar to say, here's the way you should
Jordan
00:29:23 – 00:29:24
do things with no doubt.
Aaron
00:29:24 – 00:29:27
If you're if you're a grifter, it's fine. You can just say that. Right?
Jordan
00:29:27 – 00:29:37
The danger is the grifter is confident. And then there's, like, this memetic, like, experience where people, like, I guess that's what gets likes. Yep. But it is it is unhealthy. Not good.
Aaron
00:29:37 – 00:29:56
Yes. Yes. And so it it creates this artificially high bar, and people don't produce content because they're intellectually honest and don't wanna say this is the 100% right way to do things, when really, I wanna hear how you did something. Yeah. And you can tell me why you thought it was the best way to do it, but don't tell me that it is.
Aaron
00:29:56 – 00:29:59
But just tell me what you did. That's all I wanna know.
Jordan
00:29:59 – 00:30:05
It's tough because declarative on Twitter is better than caveats and Oh, it's a nightmare.
Aaron
00:30:05 – 00:30:14
I don't know if you've seen the most recent trend of, like, the first sentence is Salesforce is dead. And then it's, like, you know, three paragraphs of, like, why AI
Jordan
00:30:14 – 00:30:16
is I'm like, triggered
Aaron
00:30:16 – 00:30:26
out loud. One of them one of them recently was like, Stripe is dead. And then it was pitching a product that's built on top of Stripe. And I'm like, what are you doing?
Jordan
00:30:27 – 00:30:27
That's perfect.
Aaron
00:30:28 – 00:30:34
Oh, god. Yeah. It's the it's a nightmare. Okay. I'm pro I'm pro podcast for you.
Aaron
00:30:34 – 00:30:36
Yeah. We gotta get we gotta get this going.
Jordan
00:30:36 – 00:30:41
Yeah. I'm I'm I'm going. Well, I'm not going right now because I'm going to Hawaii on Wednesday.
Aaron
00:30:41 – 00:30:42
Yeah. You are. I'm not
Jordan
00:30:42 – 00:30:45
gonna think about any of this. K. I ain't gonna think about it, but just think.
Aaron
00:30:45 – 00:30:45
Of course you are.
Jordan
00:30:45 – 00:30:56
Yeah. Of course you are. You know, here's a recommendation. I wanna I wanna do a recommendation real quick, and then I want to get into something concrete, about, time. You can choose.
Jordan
00:30:56 – 00:31:08
Early product model fit, the hourglass process, or time versus usage based trials. Okay? But first, while you think about that, here's my recommendation. My recommendation is a little piece of hardware called Brick.
Aaron
00:31:08 – 00:31:12
Got it. You you got it? I have it. I think because of you.
Jordan
00:31:12 – 00:31:26
On the way. Okay. So I'm I'm so excited for this week to use it in my hotel room because you you have to touch your phone up against it. And when you do that, it blocks only certain apps. Because I need, and this is a perfect excuse, I need my phone.
Jordan
00:31:26 – 00:31:38
When I'm in Hawaii, I need Waze, I need Google Maps, I need Yelp, I need the phone itself. And I don't need Slack, and I don't need Twitter. And so Slack
Aaron
00:31:38 – 00:31:40
I agree with, but, yeah, keep going.
Jordan
00:31:40 – 00:31:45
Right. Well, for me, it's business and politics. I'd rather read Kindle than hang out with my kids.
Aaron
00:31:45 – 00:31:47
Yes. That's probably fair.
Jordan
00:31:47 – 00:31:54
So that's that's my recommendation. There's this piece of hardware called Brick that's fantastic. And then in order to unlock those apps, you have to touch it physically up against the brick.
Aaron
00:31:54 – 00:31:55
Physically.
Jordan
00:31:55 – 00:31:56
So I'll leave in the hotel room.
Aaron
00:31:56 – 00:31:57
Yep. And okay.
Jordan
00:31:57 – 00:32:02
So I'm very excited about that and my ability to unplug. And and I'm
Aaron
00:32:02 – 00:32:07
I'm excited for you. The brick, I think it's, like, brick it app or you'll you'll find it. You can Google it. Brick.
Jordan
00:32:07 – 00:32:08
You know? And it it's
Aaron
00:32:08 – 00:32:23
an NFC thing. And I don't know how they do it, but it, like, hooks into the screen time APIs. And so you're like, alright. I'm ready to break. And you click the button on your phone, and then you walk over to your physical device, and you, like, push your phone down, and it scans.
Aaron
00:32:23 – 00:32:28
And then you can't you can't get in. Yep. Like, it's it's game over. Yeah. To only see And so Yeah.
Aaron
00:32:28 – 00:32:45
And so then I have one I have one in my car and one on my nightstand. And so, like, you know, on Saturday, I'll you know, I try to break my phone before I walk out to go get the kids out because it's like, it's Saturday. You don't need to be arguing with people on Twitter, so brick your phone. Yes. Yes.
Aaron
00:32:45 – 00:32:47
Yeah. It's awesome. I love brick.
Jordan
00:32:47 – 00:32:53
I do the same for for dinner time. Yep. Like, my kids are finally home, like, get get off get off the damn phone.
Aaron
00:32:53 – 00:32:54
Yes. Exactly.
Jordan
00:32:54 – 00:32:56
With moderate success
Aaron
00:32:56 – 00:32:57
if if Moderate. Yes.
Jordan
00:32:57 – 00:33:00
But this week in Hawaii, full success. I'm looking forward to it.
Aaron
00:33:00 – 00:33:13
I love I love that you're as much of a Twitter addict as I am. I think you you lean way harder onto politics Twitter and for for good reasons in most cases, but you're very you're very online, and I I love that about you.
Jordan
00:33:14 – 00:33:16
It's addicting knowing everything.
Aaron
00:33:16 – 00:33:19
It is. It's not great. It's not great. It's not
Jordan
00:33:19 – 00:33:20
it's not great. It's not great.
Aaron
00:33:20 – 00:33:20
No.
Jordan
00:33:21 – 00:33:23
Plenty of, money spent on therapy.
Aaron
00:33:23 – 00:33:25
Yes. Yes. Okay. Are you
Jordan
00:33:25 – 00:33:28
ready? I'm gonna give you I'm gonna give you the choices. K. Hourglass
Aaron
00:33:29 – 00:33:29
Mhmm.
Jordan
00:33:29 – 00:33:36
Like feature product process Mhmm. Early product market fit, and time versus usage based trials.
Aaron
00:33:37 – 00:33:51
K. I've got my answer. Before we do that, this podcast is brought to you by Bento. Bentonow.com. Bento is the email service provider, the refreshingly delightful email marketing platform.
Aaron
00:33:51 – 00:34:11
We use that at TryHard Studios for both marketing and transactional emails. So check out bento at bento now dot com. Thank you to Bento for sponsoring. And PHP Tech twenty twenty five. PHP Tech is the conference for continuing education and community building for PHP developers.
Aaron
00:34:11 – 00:34:23
It is May at in Chicago. So thank you to PHP Tech at PHPTech.i0 for sponsoring the show. Alright. I've got my answer. Early product market fit.
Aaron
00:34:23 – 00:34:46
For sure. Because you've taken off like a rocket. You banged your head against the wall trying to beat, you know, the goons at Shopify, which I don't wanna do generational trauma, but I wanna talk to you about Shopify checkout because I just had an experience. Sure. But you banged your head against the wall, sheer force of will for a super long time, and you're like, finally, you know what?
Aaron
00:34:46 – 00:34:55
F this. I'm gonna switch into AI voice answering Yep. And you took off like a rocket. This is what I wanna hear about.
Jordan
00:34:55 – 00:35:05
Okay. I I think I talked about this maybe on Rob's pattern. Maybe it was in private with Rob, But it was a strange experience to have product market fit a few years ago with the checkout product
Aaron
00:35:05 – 00:35:06
Mhmm.
Jordan
00:35:06 – 00:35:09
Then rebuild the same checkout product more
Aaron
00:35:09 – 00:35:13
or less, but better with more money, with better design, with better team, with better everything,
Jordan
00:35:14 – 00:35:19
and then just not a product market fit. So, you know, that was a painful lesson
Aaron
00:35:19 – 00:35:20
in in time. When you've been to the mountaintop
Jordan
00:35:21 – 00:35:27
Yep. Yep. And then you build the same product, and you're like, Same mountaintop. Here we go, but bigger and better and more resources and all that. And nope.
Jordan
00:35:27 – 00:35:33
It's not really in your control. And then all of a sudden, to basically just face reality
Aaron
00:35:34 – 00:35:34
Mhmm.
Jordan
00:35:34 – 00:35:47
And say, we should stop pushing this boulder up the hill. It's too heavy. Mhmm. You know, pushing a boulder up the hill that, like, cartoon that that is being a founder and an entrepreneur, sure. But I guess sometimes you just go find a different folder.
Jordan
00:35:48 – 00:35:49
So that's what we did.
Aaron
00:35:49 – 00:36:03
We So let let me give the people the broad strokes. Sure. Sure. You had a very successful company that was a third party checkout for Shopify Yes. That boosted average order value with upsells, downsells, cross sells, all sorts of stuff.
Jordan
00:36:03 – 00:36:04
Yep. Went
Aaron
00:36:04 – 00:36:13
went great, ran into platform risk pretty head on, and they were like, you know what? Actually, we wanna own the checkout. Thanks. See you later.
Jordan
00:36:13 – 00:36:14
Appreciate the innovation
Aaron
00:36:14 – 00:36:15
that everyone
Jordan
00:36:15 – 00:36:18
wants, but we'll just inhale that into our system and commodify
Aaron
00:36:19 – 00:36:19
Exactly. What
Jordan
00:36:19 – 00:36:20
we're doing. And you can
Aaron
00:36:20 – 00:36:34
do that. So much you took your ball and went home. It's they took your ball and you went home. Yes. And so so then then you went out and built the same thing, which was, like, a third party checkout, but in, like, this whole headless ecommerce Yes.
Aaron
00:36:34 – 00:37:00
Space, and found the market very, very difficult is is my understanding. And so then after that, you're building you you're building this thing. You're spending a bunch of money on salaries and sales, and finally, you're just like, y'all, I don't think this is working. Mhmm. Incredibly, bold and brave move to say, not only is this not working, but we're not pivoting.
Aaron
00:37:00 – 00:37:02
We're just starting something brand new.
Jordan
00:37:02 – 00:37:02
Yes.
Aaron
00:37:02 – 00:37:12
It's not a pivot. It is like, I'm gonna go I'm gonna go on a journey for three weeks and find out what we're gonna do next. And if you wanna come along when I get back, we'd love to
Jordan
00:37:12 – 00:37:13
have you.
Aaron
00:37:13 – 00:37:24
And so you, like, went into the wilderness, talked to a bunch of people, came back, and came back with AI answering, sits above an answering service below a a full human. So Yes. Those are the broad strokes.
Jordan
00:37:24 – 00:37:31
Yes. That's right. So those are the broad strokes. We we had money in the bank. And just like you said, you know, we took the team down from, like, 20 to six Oh.
Jordan
00:37:31 – 00:37:43
And said, if you wanna stick around, this is what we're doing. Here's why I think it's gonna work. I understand if this you're no longer interested in this, version of the experience. So Do
Aaron
00:37:43 – 00:37:45
you still have Rock? Yes.
Jordan
00:37:45 – 00:37:46
My co founder. Yeah.
Aaron
00:37:46 – 00:37:50
Oh, co founder. Okay. Because he was your CTO before with the whole company.
Jordan
00:37:50 – 00:38:03
And then co founder. Yep. That's right. And then Jessica also, who is like basically a co founder, but not in name. And she's the VP of product, and she's the one that kinda saved Cardhook from going off the rails.
Jordan
00:38:04 – 00:38:10
We had so much demand, and we're growing so fast, but we're churning, like it's just it just wasn't gonna work out.
Aaron
00:38:10 – 00:38:11
Yeah.
Jordan
00:38:11 – 00:38:19
And she came in to kind of, like, button up the whole process. And so she came over to Rally with us also, and she's like, the the leadership team is myself and Rock and Jessica.
Aaron
00:38:19 – 00:38:23
Okay. And last last interruption. But Rock is a Rock's a Laravel guy. Right?
Jordan
00:38:24 – 00:38:30
Rock is a PHP Laravel guy in Hell yeah. In Slovenia. Yep. Yes. So we've yeah.
Jordan
00:38:30 – 00:38:42
We've been in the Laravel ecosystem since CardHook. Like, my original cofounder of CardHook, Ben, was also a big Laravel guy, still is. And that I think that was, like, the gateway into that along with the micro con community and everything else.
Aaron
00:38:42 – 00:38:45
Yep. Alright. Shout out Ben and Rock. Good job. Good choices, guys.
Aaron
00:38:45 – 00:38:47
Alright. Early product market fit.
Jordan
00:38:47 – 00:39:03
Okay. So I my take was this thing's gotta work quickly. So if we don't see it working quickly, I mean, those investor updates were tough, but, yes, we've raised $18,000,000 for a checkout. Oh. Uh-huh.
Jordan
00:39:03 – 00:39:16
And we've decided to do this completely different thing. I was I'm not religious on, investor updates. I don't get them out every month on time. I'm not bad about that, but they are always consistent. There's always one on the way.
Jordan
00:39:16 – 00:39:21
And people saw that we tried a lot of different things. We tried hard. Yeah. So That's good.
Aaron
00:39:21 – 00:39:23
They weren't that surprised. And, you know, as
Jordan
00:39:23 – 00:39:41
long as we had our lead investor who's on the on the board, like, fully engaged and on board, which he is because I talk to him all the time. So we made the pivot. And what I I was desperately on the lookout for product market fit. I was like, how am I going to know? Because we need to know quickly.
Jordan
00:39:41 – 00:39:55
Originally, we went in and we said we're gonna build one product every three months and then see if it works, see if it gets product market fit, and move on and move on and move on. That did not work out. It's much harder to do in Yeah. In reality, especially with
Aaron
00:39:55 – 00:40:02
the Did you go through that loop? Did you build something and then we're like, no, let's trash it? Or did you just stop before you even executed that strategy?
Jordan
00:40:02 – 00:40:12
Stop before executing. So we looked at a bunch of different ideas, and then we chose this idea and committed it. And then maybe forty five or sixty days in, we were like, We're not doing anything else. This this is it. We've put a lot of time in.
Jordan
00:40:12 – 00:40:32
This is our big bet. If we stick with it for the next year, I think we have a good chance of making it. So here is my version. Let me describe my experience with product market fit at CardHook. When I knew that there was something really, really there, early on, before you were able to sign up on your own, you had to sign up for a demo.
Jordan
00:40:32 – 00:40:53
And so at CardHook, I would do the demos myself. And over, like, a week or two span, the demos just changed in nature completely. And it went from here's this product, do you want to buy it, to people just losing their minds on a demo. Just, I cannot believe what you built. It was, like, repeated over and over.
Aaron
00:40:53 – 00:40:55
God, it feels good. Oh my god.
Jordan
00:40:55 – 00:41:06
It felt so good. I remember one person specifically said, can you hold on? I need I need to call my friend. He he needs to he needs to come to this call right now so he can see this. And I was like, Oh, oh, I think we have something.
Aaron
00:41:06 – 00:41:08
Oh, we got it, baby. We got it.
Jordan
00:41:08 – 00:41:22
Yes. We have something that people really, really, really want. So I was on the lookout for a similar type of experience, but Rosie is self serve. So, it's not the same engagement in a demo. But here's what I knew.
Jordan
00:41:23 – 00:41:30
We have events piped into Slack. We have this one channel called, like, I don't know, Rosie notifications, whatever it is.
Aaron
00:41:30 – 00:41:31
It's very creative. Yeah. Very
Jordan
00:41:31 – 00:41:36
creative. It shows sign ups, and it shows the first call.
Aaron
00:41:37 – 00:41:37
K.
Jordan
00:41:37 – 00:41:39
And then it shows credit card.
Aaron
00:41:40 – 00:41:47
So k. Over the span telephony. They're like, your customers are taking phone calls. Phone calls. So that's what you mean by first call.
Jordan
00:41:47 – 00:41:54
Yes. Now the first call is always a test call from them. Right? Makes sense. I mean, in our onboarding, we could talk about onboarding.
Jordan
00:41:54 – 00:42:12
In our onboarding, a key step in the onboarding is, here's your phone number. Give it a try. And then if you're happy with it, go to this next step. So this will loop back around to the trials and the changes we made there. But after we made the changes, I would see the same pattern repeating.
Jordan
00:42:12 – 00:42:15
I would see sign up, 09:04AM.
Aaron
00:42:16 – 00:42:16
Mhmm.
Jordan
00:42:16 – 00:42:23
First phone call, 09:08AM. In my mind, I'm like, it took them four minutes, and they have a voice agent up and running. That that that has to be great.
Aaron
00:42:24 – 00:42:25
Pretty good. Yeah.
Jordan
00:42:26 – 00:42:38
And then 09:12, another few minutes later, put the credit card on file. So why would you put your credit card on file voluntarily after you called an AI voice agent unless you were like, oh, this is
Aaron
00:42:38 – 00:42:39
it. Yep.
Jordan
00:42:39 – 00:42:56
I I found what I'm looking for. And so that little pattern kept repeating, and I basically told the team, we we got it. We're we're we're there. People are putting in their credit cards voluntarily after a test call. This is now just a matter of time before they convert.
Jordan
00:42:56 – 00:42:59
Because they're done. In their minds, they have found what they're looking for.
Aaron
00:42:59 – 00:43:00
Right. And
Jordan
00:43:00 – 00:43:12
so the promise that we made in the ad on Instagram has just been fulfilled. And they took action themselves. They pulled out their credit card, and they put it on file when they didn't need to. And we told them this is this is optional. You do not need to put your credit card.
Aaron
00:43:12 – 00:43:16
Because there's a certain amount of usage they can do without putting the card on file.
Jordan
00:43:16 – 00:43:16
Yes. That's right.
Aaron
00:43:16 – 00:43:22
And they looked at it, and they said, I don't wanna remember to come back and put my card on file because I don't want this to go away.
Jordan
00:43:22 – 00:43:28
That's right. Our messaging in the credit card is don't you know, avoid interruptions. Put your credit card on file.
Aaron
00:43:28 – 00:43:28
Yeah.
Jordan
00:43:28 – 00:43:30
Yes. And so now
Aaron
00:43:30 – 00:43:42
Before before you found product market fit, was that loop much longer, or did it never close? Was it just, like, sign up and then maybe a first call, but never, like, a credit card? Or did it just take seven days?
Jordan
00:43:42 – 00:43:49
Okay. So let's this leads into the time based trial versus usage based trial. K. So I had a conversation with our friend Justin McGill,
Aaron
00:43:50 – 00:43:50
who
Jordan
00:43:50 – 00:44:07
was very successful with an AI product called Content at Scale. It now has a different name. And I remember talking to him and he said, Look, I tried everything. The only thing that worked really well and what worked better than everything else is seven day trial with a credit card required. That works best.
Jordan
00:44:07 – 00:44:17
And I said, you know what? That's a good starting point. I like the idea of requiring a credit card because it shows real willingness. He's got some data. It's as good of a starting point as any.
Jordan
00:44:17 – 00:44:30
What why start with thirty days when you can start with seven? Because, you know, what everyone says. Okay. So when we first launched, we had a seven day trial with a credit card required, and everybody converted. And I was like, we are geniuses.
Jordan
00:44:31 – 00:44:34
And product has arrived. Yes.
Aaron
00:44:34 – 00:44:34
And then
Jordan
00:44:34 – 00:44:45
and then what do you do? You look under the you know, a little bit under the hood, and you look at the usage, and you go, oh my god. No one's using the product. Right. And we are building our house on sand.
Aaron
00:44:45 – 00:44:48
Yes. And as we know, that's not a good strategy.
Jordan
00:44:48 – 00:44:56
Not a good strategy. So even though the very first month, I think September, October, our our revenue just started going straight up. Mhmm.
Aaron
00:44:56 – 00:45:00
And I knew that that there was a bad idea Right.
Jordan
00:45:00 – 00:45:08
To grow based on that. So I said, we're gonna do the opposite. We're gonna we that's one extreme. Seven days credit card required. We're gonna do the opposite.
Jordan
00:45:08 – 00:45:15
We're gonna do take as much time as you want. No credit card required. We're gonna give you fifty minutes of usage time.
Aaron
00:45:15 – 00:45:16
K.
Jordan
00:45:16 – 00:45:32
So the the most passive version of of the free trial. And what that did is it totally screwed up our growth for, like, three weeks. So we had to just kinda, oh, just get through those three weeks of of no growth compared to consistent growth on the seven days.
Aaron
00:45:32 – 00:45:38
Mhmm. Which was a facade in the first place. But still, the number goes down and you feel real bad. You feel bad.
Jordan
00:45:38 – 00:46:05
That's right. So our our, like, profit well graphs are, like, up, up flat and then the next month up. So that's when I knew that we had that first inkling of product market fit because we had built it to the point where people were signing up on their own, not talking to us. They don't need to put their credit card on file. And then we built the onboarding in such a way that allowed them to test it very quickly, and then and then they put their card on file, and then three or four weeks later, we didn't know how long it would take.
Aaron
00:46:06 – 00:46:06
Mhmm.
Jordan
00:46:06 – 00:46:15
And at some point, we were like, you know what? It's just, like, fifty minutes, twenty five minutes. That's actually the same thing. So make it twenty five minutes. And then all of a sudden, people started converting, like, two, three days later.
Jordan
00:46:15 – 00:46:26
But it was their choice. They were putting the card on file. They were using the minutes. And because of that, our churn is, like, super small. And everyone I talked to was like, Oh, the issue with AI apps is the churn.
Jordan
00:46:26 – 00:46:34
And our churn is very, very healthy because 100% of our users are fully activated and using the product.
Aaron
00:46:34 – 00:46:50
And they put their freaking phone number out to the public, and it's powered by y'all, and they're not gonna switch. You know? Yeah. Like, at that point at that point, they're getting it's just very sticky, I would have to imagine. It's like, you know, switching the domain over and point giving someone else all your DNS.
Aaron
00:46:50 – 00:46:53
It's like, do I really wanna switch at this point?
Jordan
00:46:53 – 00:47:01
It's almost that. And I wouldn't be surprised if we end up in that position a year from today because right now, we give them a phone number and they forward their existing phone number.
Aaron
00:47:01 – 00:47:04
Their public one to an internal one. Got it. Okay.
Jordan
00:47:04 – 00:47:15
The phone number is printed on their trucks. Sure. They're printed on their business cards, on their websites. Some people switch right away. Most people are forwarding their calls, and that's actually the single biggest friction to our growth is that Yeah.
Jordan
00:47:15 – 00:47:16
That call forwarding issue.
Aaron
00:47:16 – 00:47:33
So what happens you you changed, like, the billing model, but what did you change in the product? Because, you know, at first, people were signing up and paying and not using it. Then they were signing up and using it. And, yes, the billing model at the front door is different. What did you change in the product to get people to actually start using the thing?
Jordan
00:47:33 – 00:47:38
Okay. So the this is this is the hourglass process. We're just going to plan
Aaron
00:47:38 – 00:47:42
for this. Yeah, this is awesome. This is professional life. Yeah. Come on.
Jordan
00:47:43 – 00:48:04
Okay. I'm going to try The reason I call it an hourglass because it helps me visualize, hopefully helps other people visualize. We started off very wide, the top of the hourglass. We looked at the competitors, and we said, here is our guess at the feature set required to compete. And so what that created was a pretty wide set of features.
Aaron
00:48:04 – 00:48:05
Mhmm.
Jordan
00:48:05 – 00:48:13
The product was very young. All those features were very thin. Okay. You could say we have this feature, but it didn't have any options. You couldn't really do anything with it.
Jordan
00:48:13 – 00:48:18
But we wanted it on the marketing site to say, we do all this stuff because we wanna be competitive. Check mark.
Aaron
00:48:18 – 00:48:25
Yeah. Yes. Go to check mark next to it. Give give the people an idea, just a handful of what those those features might be.
Jordan
00:48:25 – 00:48:36
Call transfers. K. Message taking. Right. So if you call and, the AI doesn't provide you with the information you need and you wanna talk to someone in the office, you can call you can transfer.
Jordan
00:48:36 – 00:48:41
The AI says, I'll transfer to the office. Right? Think about what that looks like in software. It's a it's a feature.
Aaron
00:48:41 – 00:48:42
It's got a whole bunch of options
Jordan
00:48:42 – 00:48:52
and which phone number at what time and this and schedules. Right? So we just had the most basic version of it. And we had the most basic version of all of these things. Very, very wide.
Jordan
00:48:52 – 00:49:00
We get people into the product by sending cold email. We Finally. Yes. We fire up cold email. We send three, four hundred, you know, emails a day.
Jordan
00:49:01 – 00:49:15
And that is not a good channel for us. But it it is just brute force to just get 20 people who are interested. So we brought those people in. This is, like, August. And what they did is they identified the most important features.
Aaron
00:49:15 – 00:49:16
Okay.
Jordan
00:49:16 – 00:49:19
Features that were actually fundamental to getting value.
Aaron
00:49:20 – 00:49:20
Mhmm.
Jordan
00:49:20 – 00:49:28
And what we then did, once we understood the actual feature set required to generate value, is we just removed all the other features.
Aaron
00:49:30 – 00:49:30
Interesting.
Jordan
00:49:31 – 00:49:39
Just removed them. Like, you you just can't see them in the app. And so now we're shrinking into the more narrow
Aaron
00:49:39 – 00:49:39
part
Jordan
00:49:39 – 00:49:56
of the hourglass. Once we nailed those features and we knew people get value from this, they are paying us for this and they are using it, we call that bang, our base plan. Okay. Okay. So if you go on our site right now, the base plan, it's those features.
Jordan
00:49:56 – 00:50:13
Then what we started to do is we started to take the features that we hid and we started to slowly reveal them, but in conversation. So when we talk to someone and they would say, I would love call transfers, man. That's what I really need. We would say, we actually have that feature. It's not that fully built out.
Jordan
00:50:13 – 00:50:20
Would you like to be a beta user? And then we would literally just give them the URL that we had hidden. Okay. Yes.
Aaron
00:50:21 – 00:50:21
So then
Jordan
00:50:21 – 00:50:29
what we started to do is work with users on those features and started to understand, you know what those are? Those are the premium features.
Aaron
00:50:29 – 00:50:29
Mhmm.
Jordan
00:50:29 – 00:50:42
That's all. And so we we built and reintroduced those premium features with the help of users so that we knew what is actually necessary beyond the super basic functionality that we have.
Aaron
00:50:42 – 00:50:54
Okay. So I've got it pulled up right here. Professional, $49 a month. You've got minutes, message taking with custom questions, smart spam detection, and bilingual agent English and Spanish.
Jordan
00:50:54 – 00:50:56
Very cool. Very smart. If
Aaron
00:50:56 – 00:50:58
so that is that's the professional. That's the base plan.
Jordan
00:50:58 – 00:51:05
Base plan. What the base plan is in effect is it is a message taking service.
Aaron
00:51:06 – 00:51:14
Which is better than an expensive outsourced human nighttime call service that knows nothing about your business and frustrates me as a user to know it.
Jordan
00:51:14 – 00:51:18
That's right. That is more what we are competing with in the more premium tiers.
Aaron
00:51:19 – 00:51:19
Mhmm.
Jordan
00:51:19 – 00:51:22
What we're competing with at the base plan is your voice mail.
Aaron
00:51:22 – 00:51:23
K.
Jordan
00:51:23 – 00:51:29
Because your voice mail has a horrible conversion rate. From call to message that's valuable to the business, terrible conversion rate.
Aaron
00:51:30 – 00:51:38
So then we move up to scale, and we add on appointment links and call transfers for 99 a month and more minutes, of course. Right.
Jordan
00:51:38 – 00:51:49
But what are those? Those are more human like receptionist features. So what we have learned about this business is effectively that the base plan is a message taker, and the premium plans are more of a receptionist.
Aaron
00:51:50 – 00:52:00
K. So then we move up to growth. So we've done $49.99 at $1.99, get a bunch more minutes, same stuff. And then you add on live transfers coming soon
Jordan
00:52:00 – 00:52:00
Yep.
Aaron
00:52:00 – 00:52:04
Training files and custom agent training.
Jordan
00:52:04 – 00:52:04
That's right.
Aaron
00:52:04 – 00:52:08
We add on it. We add on a few specialized things at the $1.99 plan.
Jordan
00:52:09 – 00:52:44
Right. Where they start to get a little less self-service and a little bit, Hey, we're special, and we have all these PDFs that we would like to add into this agent's context window, and we understand AI. Okay. So the process, right, big up top, then narrow, and then wide, and then the key thing that was so exciting to kind of watch unfold was we had those premium features for about six weeks, but you couldn't see them. And the only way you saw them was if you pinged us and you talked to support, and we would say, yes.
Jordan
00:52:44 – 00:53:06
We'll reveal that feature for you. And what we knew along that six weeks is we understood how people use the product, what the base plan was, what the right pricing was, what the premium features, which premium plan a feature should live in, all that. And then somewhere around where are we? March February, we introduced what we called the premium UI. Okay.
Jordan
00:53:06 – 00:53:21
So we took the features that were hidden. We revealed them in the admin, but we made sure that the user could tell what a premium feature was and what a base speech was.
Aaron
00:53:21 – 00:53:24
So there's a little indicator that says, This exists, but you don't have it?
Jordan
00:53:24 – 00:53:45
There's like color and icons. And so you make the promise in describing the feature. And then if you want to use the feature, we shot away from any like dark patterns on like, you can set the feature fully and then we hit save. That's when you get a credit card model like it's annoying. So we did it very cleanly, white hat, let's call it.
Jordan
00:53:47 – 00:54:15
And that has changed our average revenue per user by like 20% over the last four weeks. Wow. Right? So it's like all the features, just the basic features, call that the base plan, expand out into these premium plans, and then reveal all those features so that everyone comes in at the base plan and more and more people are enticed to come up into what looked like a $49 a month product. We now give them the option to get more value if you're willing to pay more with these additional features.
Jordan
00:54:16 – 00:54:22
And that has changed the math around our advertising, and now we're now we're in hit the gas mode.
Aaron
00:54:22 – 00:54:43
So what would you call this hourglass strategy? Because it sounds to me like some sort of discovery. I don't know if it's pricing discovery or product discovery, but it's some way that, like, you went to the market with a bunch of ideas, and the market said these two or these three. Yeah. But then you didn't lose all the other ones.
Aaron
00:54:43 – 00:54:57
You just narrowed down scope and focus, and then you brought back the other ones later. So, like, if you had to give your hourglass strategy a subhead, like, what's what's the h two? How how do you describe this strategy?
Jordan
00:54:57 – 00:55:05
It's like feature set development. Something around that? I mean, remember, these are all these are all lies. These are lessons in hindsight. This is not me being a genius in August and saying this is exactly how things will unfold.
Jordan
00:55:05 – 00:55:07
Of course. Yeah. This is well, this
Aaron
00:55:07 – 00:55:12
makes sense. An emergent property that you have discovered Yes. Which is what makes it so valuable. Right.
Jordan
00:55:12 – 00:55:15
And I think maybe that is my favorite part
Aaron
00:55:16 – 00:55:16
of the job.
Jordan
00:55:18 – 00:55:53
I am a a a shameful ideas guy. But if you if you have good ideas, then, okay, then then it's fine. And so I think that guiding that process from being one step removed from talking to customers every day and creating content every day and kind of sitting back and thinking was the most valuable contribution that I could have made over the last few months by just noticing and just admitting, oh, that's actually not necessary. Only people using this. And this looks great, but it's not good for us to build this way because everyone's converting, but they're not actually using.
Aaron
00:55:53 – 00:55:54
Mhmm.
Jordan
00:55:54 – 00:55:56
So I don't know what that is. Maybe being I
Aaron
00:55:56 – 00:56:07
don't either, but you gotta you gotta write it because this is good. This is a good this is a good framework. We like a framework, especially one that has a name, especially one that has a visual too. So you gotta you gotta write this.
Jordan
00:56:07 – 00:56:15
If anyone could come up with a better description than hourglass, please let me know. Because I I think I I don't know. I called it barbell. I wasn't sure. Dumb I I didn't know what to call it.
Jordan
00:56:15 – 00:56:21
I'm I'm on hourglass. If anyone has a better suggestion, please hit me up. Because we do we need to brand this. You know? It needs to be Yeah.
Aaron
00:56:21 – 00:56:32
And I've I've had expand and contract, for certain things in my life, but this is a three step. Like, you you start expand, then you contract, but then you go expand again. So it's not quite as I call
Jordan
00:56:32 – 00:56:35
it accordion for a bit, but that I don't know if anyone knows.
Aaron
00:56:35 – 00:56:39
Yeah. Yep. Yeah. I don't know. Probably not gonna hit the youth with accordion.
Aaron
00:56:39 – 00:56:45
Yeah. I don't I don't think they'll get that one. Yes. I wanna hear so how much time do you have? I have a lot.
Aaron
00:56:45 – 00:57:11
Time? Yes. I wanna hear, I wanna hear about this ad strategy. Well, actually, first first, I I feel like you are in the bootstrapper circles, but you're not afflicted with the same, the same problems as bootstrappers, which is, shame around, like, selling. And so I wanna hear, your cold outreach strategy because I think most, you know, bootstrappers are like, oh, I can't send emails to people.
Aaron
00:57:11 – 00:57:20
Can you imagine? Mhmm. And then I wanna hear your paid ads strategy because that did you say that's the thing that's, like, really starting to take off? Yes. Okay.
Aaron
00:57:20 – 00:57:57
So I wanna hear about both of those both of those strategies from a non mired in the bootstrap person. But before we do that, this podcast is brought to you by Laravel Cloud, the best way to ship and scale Laravel applications. You can find that at cloud.Laravel.com. Thank you to Laravel for sponsoring the show, and this show is sponsored by Stream at gitstream.io. Stream, scalable APIs for chat, video, voice, feeds, and moderation at gitstream.io.
Aaron
00:57:57 – 00:58:00
So thank you to Laravel and Stream for sponsoring the show.
Jordan
00:58:01 – 00:58:04
Okay. I wanna make comments about the sponsors, but we're gonna keep going.
Aaron
00:58:04 – 00:58:08
We're gonna keep going. We'll keep going. Maybe we can do it at the end. We can do an errata at the end. Let's keep going.
Jordan
00:58:08 – 00:58:13
So the bootstrap ideology issue
Aaron
00:58:13 – 00:58:15
Mhmm. Is I've put that in my rear view mirror.
Jordan
00:58:15 – 00:58:22
I got over it a long time ago. I hope people I mean, they seem to be less ideological now than they were five years ago.
Aaron
00:58:23 – 00:58:28
That's part of what made y'all show so great, was y'all had different ideologies, which is Yeah. I love listening to that.
Jordan
00:58:28 – 00:58:38
Yes. I like ideology. I think it's important. Mhmm. But my my guiding ideology is after tax money in my personal bank account.
Jordan
00:58:38 – 00:58:42
That that is my actual ideology, and that is the god that I pray to.
Aaron
00:58:42 – 00:58:52
Okay? And it just that is not the god I pray to, but I do like that ideology, just for the record. I just want the record to be clear. Yes. Directionally correct.
Jordan
00:58:54 – 00:59:17
How you get there is is less ideological. And so so, yes, I I I think people do should do whatever they need to do, whatever they want to do, in order to increase the after tax money in their personal life. I happen to raise money for rally, and that that's just a different way to go in business. It's just different approach.
Aaron
00:59:17 – 00:59:25
And so You mentioned earlier 18,000,000. Is that what you raised for Rally? I mean, if you're not able to be public about anything, that's fine. But you said earlier 18,000,000.
Jordan
00:59:25 – 00:59:31
Stuff is public because it needs to be filed. But, yes, we've raised 18,000,000 to Rally, and Rosie is a pivot out of Rally.
Aaron
00:59:31 – 00:59:37
Okay. And have you been public slash do you want to be about where you were in your runway when you pivoted to Rosie?
Jordan
00:59:38 – 00:59:41
No. I've just said several million dollars. Okay. Okay.
Aaron
00:59:41 – 00:59:41
Alright. Carry on.
Jordan
00:59:41 – 01:00:02
Right. So we we basically had enough runway for, I don't know, call it eighteen months or something. Okay. So part of a very critical part of my job is to look at a spreadsheet and understand that I am better off spending money on customer acquisition than not. K.
Jordan
01:00:02 – 01:00:12
It it is literally mathematically worse off to be very tight on customer acquisition because the majority of the money spent is on people and software.
Aaron
01:00:12 – 01:00:12
K.
Jordan
01:00:12 – 01:00:34
And so to add on a little bit of expenses, that makes a big difference in your revenue growth, that makes a big difference in your burn and your runway. It is, like, mathematically better to spend money on on customer acquisition. So I have, like, internalized this. I come from the bootstrap world where it was very, how do I make something with very little?
Aaron
01:00:34 – 01:00:34
Right.
Jordan
01:00:34 – 01:00:56
And then I went toward, like, partnerships and and that type of thing that don't cost money. In this case, it was like, well, you need to spend money. So let's just hire a great consultant and fire up the cold email because that is the simplest way to go from where we are today to making 500 people a day aware of our software. Just the most straightforward way. And so that's what we did.
Jordan
01:00:56 – 01:01:07
We hired Brian Schackman, who runs a service for he runs his own SaaS, but he also on the side runs a service for cold email. And cold email these days is a bit of a science.
Aaron
01:01:08 – 01:01:09
The domain and the domain
Jordan
01:01:09 – 01:01:23
warming and the inbox warming and like, it's intense. At least there's great software to make it work, but that's not enough. You do want someone who knows what they're doing with it. Otherwise, you will just fall into every single possible trap.
Aaron
01:01:23 – 01:01:25
And burn your domain forever.
Jordan
01:01:25 – 01:01:40
Yes. Yes. And all those things. So that is what I saw as a, the most straightforward way to make 500 people aware of us every day, and, two, if it worked, a very easy channel to just hit the gas on and double and double and
Aaron
01:01:40 – 01:01:41
double. Totally.
Jordan
01:01:41 – 01:01:49
It did not end up working. K. Maybe we'll try again in the future. Maybe it'll work better now. But when we did it, it didn't quite work.
Jordan
01:01:49 – 01:01:57
It did the job at getting enough people in our inbox and in our funnel to just learn the product better.
Aaron
01:01:58 – 01:02:04
But long term, the economics were just not there. Yeah, that's right. The customer growth, it just wasn't there.
Jordan
01:02:05 – 01:02:09
But it did its job. And so it gave us that first cohort of like 20 ish users, and it just helped
Aaron
01:02:09 – 01:02:10
them
Jordan
01:02:10 – 01:02:22
talk to people and understand what they were saying. And I mean, this was a new business. I'm barely learning the lingo around telephony and around phone and all this stuff. I come from a small business universe and like my family business. So, I'm in touch with it.
Jordan
01:02:22 – 01:02:41
It's not like I'm completely out of touch with it, but I still didn't know what we were doing. So, the cold email strategy was relatively blunt force. How do we just get people, into our phone? There isn't that much more to say about that other than it worked. We probably spent, I don't know, $25 over the span of, like, two, three months and just got people To
Aaron
01:02:41 – 01:02:42
get 20 people?
Jordan
01:02:43 – 01:02:54
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To get 20 users. You know, we talked to a lot of people and dozens of people, but the actual value of it was this first cohort of people that actually told us what they needed.
Aaron
01:02:55 – 01:03:00
And did your guy do all the lead lists? Like, did he find all of that, or is that something you had to do?
Jordan
01:03:00 – 01:03:01
No. He did everything. Okay.
Aaron
01:03:01 – 01:03:04
That's cool. It was it was That's great. It was great.
Jordan
01:03:04 – 01:03:14
And it did exactly what it needed to do, and it accelerated our learning, which makes the 25 k, in retrospect, relatively meaningless if it saved us three months.
Aaron
01:03:14 – 01:03:16
Yeah. Big time. Three months of salary and
Jordan
01:03:17 – 01:03:17
And, you know
Aaron
01:03:17 – 01:03:20
That's right. Infrastructure and all the dollars and everything. Yes. Yeah. Okay.
Aaron
01:03:20 – 01:03:26
So that that worked in a way, but wasn't, like, the thing you needed. So then you moved on to ads.
Jordan
01:03:27 – 01:03:35
Yes. And my my hunch was that we are in b to b, but this should be marketed a little bit like b to c.
Aaron
01:03:36 – 01:03:36
K.
Jordan
01:03:36 – 01:03:48
And coming from the Shopify and e commerce universe, I really admire the advertising and marketing of these direct to consumer customers. Yeah. They are they're they're so good at
Aaron
01:03:48 – 01:03:49
making the art.
Jordan
01:03:49 – 01:03:52
This is so embarrassing. I don't even know if I want to do this.
Aaron
01:03:52 – 01:03:55
What is that? Yeah. Of course. It's great content. What is it?
Jordan
01:03:55 – 01:04:02
I'm I'm so I can't believe I just did it. I'm so embarrassed. These are the squeezy things you put in your cheek to bite down and build up your muscles in your jaw. Okay?
Aaron
01:04:02 – 01:04:05
Oh, wow. You're going for UltraChad. Yes. Okay.
Jordan
01:04:05 – 01:04:07
Yes. God damn it. That's so embarrassing.
Aaron
01:04:07 – 01:04:07
Hell yeah.
Jordan
01:04:07 – 01:04:09
Good. It's honest. Okay?
Aaron
01:04:09 – 01:04:10
Yes. It's good content.
Jordan
01:04:11 – 01:04:11
Here's the thing.
Aaron
01:04:11 – 01:04:14
These marketers Greco Roman. God.
Jordan
01:04:14 – 01:04:23
These marketers are so good that they convinced a 45 year old dad, one dad of three, that he needs his jaw more defined. Okay? Goddamn it. Aaron. Okay.
Jordan
01:04:23 – 01:04:27
We're gonna move forward. We're gonna just gonna take the lesson out of it. Okay? So what I Fantastic.
Aaron
01:04:28 – 01:04:31
I I You look great. So it's working. Congrats. Yeah. There we go.
Aaron
01:04:31 – 01:04:33
Huge. Huge job. Amazing.
Jordan
01:04:34 – 01:04:42
Okay. So I found an advertising company that did ads for direct to consumer companies and did ads in
Aaron
01:04:42 – 01:04:42
such a
Jordan
01:04:42 – 01:05:05
way that the goal was that the ad looked and felt native to the platform. It looked like user generated content. It looked natural as opposed to a polished perfect advertisement. That's thirty seconds exactly. It was, you know, a guy at his desk saying, I got sick of showing up on Monday and checking my voice mail, and everyone just hung up.
Jordan
01:05:05 – 01:05:14
I knew how much money I was losing. So I got Rosie AI, and now she answers my phone and takes my messages. I never miss a call, and then he listened to it. Oh my god. She sounds so human.
Jordan
01:05:14 – 01:05:17
I love it. Go to Rosie AI to start your free trial.
Aaron
01:05:18 – 01:05:20
Okay? And they shot the videos. They they did all of that?
Jordan
01:05:20 – 01:05:27
They do all of it. They so we do an interview. I explain to them the product and the benefits and the features and all that stuff, and then they come
Aaron
01:05:27 – 01:05:29
up with scripts, and I make adjustments to the script.
Jordan
01:05:29 – 01:05:33
And they're very scientific. They are this is our our it's called hook.
Aaron
01:05:33 – 01:05:33
In the
Jordan
01:05:33 – 01:05:45
first ten seconds. And we'll try these three. And this is the body, and then this is the conclusion slash offer. And then let's mix and match all three, and let's see which one works. And then let's get a different creator and see if that works better.
Jordan
01:05:45 – 01:05:51
And they have just been optimizing this thing for months, and it is working so well. It's awesome.
Aaron
01:05:51 – 01:05:53
What platforms? Instagram, TikTok?
Jordan
01:05:54 – 01:06:10
So Meta as an umbrella for Facebook, where a lot of our ICP lives, and Instagram. And then Google, which is YouTube, and then some right. YouTube, like, video, and then also YouTube has some static placement also. Okay.
Aaron
01:06:11 – 01:06:11
So those two
Jordan
01:06:12 – 01:06:14
Man. And and And
Aaron
01:06:14 – 01:06:20
so they found they found one or a few that worked, and then Slack just started popping off. The channel just started blowing up.
Jordan
01:06:20 – 01:06:27
Started blowing up? Absolutely blowing up. And then we were like, okay. What happens if we spend a hundred bucks a day? Right?
Jordan
01:06:27 – 01:06:37
What happens if we spend $300 a day? So, like, 9 or $10 a month. What happens if we spend thousand bucks a day? What does it look like then? What happens if we spend $2,000 a day?
Jordan
01:06:37 – 01:06:42
We were, like, just testing, and the ratio just stayed consistent.
Aaron
01:06:43 – 01:06:43
It held?
Jordan
01:06:43 – 01:06:47
It just held. And and then a few weeks ago
Aaron
01:06:48 – 01:06:49
You got a money printer.
Jordan
01:06:49 – 01:07:00
We got a money printer. That's right. Oh, man. So so one of the guys from the advertising company comes up to me, and this is partly why I love them. First of all, I met this this guy who runs the advertising company.
Jordan
01:07:00 – 01:07:06
He's like, I'm gonna be in Chicago for a conference. You wanna have lunch? Do we have lunch? And I'm like, okay. I need to understand.
Jordan
01:07:06 – 01:07:15
How old are you? He was like, I am a sophomore at Stanford. Stop. And I'm in between classes right now running this business. I was like, damn, kid.
Jordan
01:07:16 – 01:07:19
Damn. What? Yep. Yep. Awesome.
Aaron
01:07:20 – 01:07:27
The CEOs at a at a conference in Chicago, you go to lunch with them, and Young kids, like, he's a sophomore.
Jordan
01:07:27 – 01:07:33
He's a sophomore at Stanford. Yeah. His name's Hamza. He runs a company called Newform dot ai. These guys are very smart.
Jordan
01:07:33 – 01:07:35
I was track attracted to them by their content.
Aaron
01:07:36 – 01:07:39
I thought, like, what are we doing? I don't know. I don't know.
Jordan
01:07:39 – 01:07:44
I don't like it. I need more after tax money in my personal bank account. Okay? That's what that's what I'm doing.
Aaron
01:07:44 – 01:07:45
Oh, man.
Jordan
01:07:46 – 01:07:46
So he comes up Say
Aaron
01:07:46 – 01:07:49
the name of the say the name of the agency again. Newform.
Jordan
01:07:49 – 01:08:03
Newform dot a y. They're great. They are not cheap, but this is what I should be doing. And one of their one of the the the guy who runs my account comes up to me and is like, Jordan, what do we need to do to get you to 10 k a day?
Aaron
01:08:03 – 01:08:04
Oh, brilliant. And I'm like, okay.
Jordan
01:08:04 – 01:08:14
I'm like, that's ridiculous because that's $300,000 a month. And and Yeah. And what are you talking about? And what it did is it challenged me. It just said, why not, dude?
Jordan
01:08:15 – 01:08:27
Why not? And so I went to my spreadsheet. And let me be clear. We are not spending $10,000 a day. But it challenged me to explore what the limits are as opposed to thinking like a bootstrapper that maybe we thought five years ago and thought, oh, I can't
Aaron
01:08:27 – 01:08:28
spend this.
Jordan
01:08:28 – 01:08:36
I can't spend worth a thousand bucks a day. It's crazy. So now all of a sudden, we find ourselves in this very interesting position where we're like, I guess what we need to do is find where the diminishing line is.
Aaron
01:08:36 – 01:08:36
Right.
Jordan
01:08:36 – 01:08:53
And and we're pushing pretty hard this month, so we might find the diminishing line. But while we explore that, it's time to get organic content going, which is why I started investing in organic, you know, in SEO a month ago and then the podcast and everything else because we are gonna find the diminishing line.
Aaron
01:08:53 – 01:08:53
Sure. We
Jordan
01:08:53 – 01:09:02
don't wanna be entirely reliant on ads forever. Right? Twelve months from today, I would like ads to be a minority of our lead of our lead flow.
Aaron
01:09:02 – 01:09:02
Mhmm.
Jordan
01:09:03 – 01:09:30
But for right now, it's really an interesting challenge of, like, hey. You built a system for self serve software that allows a painting company, a dude in a truck, to onboard and have a voice AI answering their phone in under ten minutes. And so that is the advantage to lean into because our competitors right now are like, you know, sign up for a demo and talk to us. Look at all the models that we have and all this power, and we're like, that's the
Aaron
01:09:31 – 01:09:33
They don't freaking care about the models.
Jordan
01:09:33 – 01:09:43
No no one cares. Exactly right. So, you know Oh. I know it's an interesting kind of spot and problem, and we're not on the we're at the promised land yet. We're not profitable.
Jordan
01:09:43 – 01:09:53
But we understand, oh, we have an interesting year to go through to figure out where these limits are and how much we should invest in each thing and how do we keep track of cash and how do we lower our
Aaron
01:09:53 – 01:09:53
Right.
Jordan
01:09:54 – 01:09:58
Our margin because cost of goods sold in AI voice is a challenge these days. It's still expensive.
Aaron
01:09:59 – 01:10:01
Actually have some cogs that are hung.
Jordan
01:10:01 – 01:10:03
You have some cogs. Yeah. It's kind of an interesting problem.
Aaron
01:10:03 – 01:10:03
Wow.
Jordan
01:10:03 – 01:10:11
But here we are. So now now right? Like, what what an egotistical animal I am that now that everything's working and humming, I'm like, you know what I should do? I should go talk about
Aaron
01:10:11 – 01:10:36
it. I should go start a podcast. Oh, dude. This is amazing. This new form, like and the idea of going to a DTC advertising company for your, you know, app is it is b to b, but it's kinda prosumer because I bet a lot of them are, like, solo operators or, like, small shops or something.
Jordan
01:10:36 – 01:10:38
One to three person companies.
Aaron
01:10:38 – 01:10:49
Yeah. The idea to go to them yeah. Because all the logos on their on their home page are all Direct to d c. Team. It's all BlueChoo, Kajabi, a Prisma.
Aaron
01:10:49 – 01:10:52
It's like all these things that, you know, you've heard of.
Jordan
01:10:52 – 01:10:52
Yes.
Aaron
01:10:52 – 01:11:02
This is great. This is this is genius. I love this. And you got a money machine. You put some in at the top and more comes out at the bottom.
Aaron
01:11:02 – 01:11:09
That is the dream. It it is I have been pursuing it for years, and I couldn't get it.
Jordan
01:11:09 – 01:11:18
Rally just didn't work that way. Rally was like, doesn't matter what you spend. You need to go meet these people at conferences Right. And get into their three month sales process and convince them And
Aaron
01:11:18 – 01:11:20
then their eighteen month migration.
Jordan
01:11:20 – 01:11:35
Right. Right. So I a lot of a lot of Rosie's attributes are directly an overreaction to the pain from Rally. Like, no enterprise, self serve. Not complicated.
Jordan
01:11:35 – 01:11:48
No platform to rely on. So, like, all these things are, like, maybe I'm making a mistake by just overreacting in all these different ways, but maybe it adds up to just being a better type of product to, you know, to sell.
Aaron
01:11:48 – 01:12:15
Well, it sounds like it's working. Are you getting Steve and I have talked about being able to buy ads. We I don't think we would do, you know, video ads like this, but we've talked about being able to buy ads and, like, the ancillary benefits of it is you're spending a ton of money, so then you get all these credit card. Like, you get either cash back or you can fly first class anywhere you wanna go. And I'm like, I'm flying first class to Boise just to hang out with Steve before, you know, if we're buying ads.
Aaron
01:12:16 – 01:12:22
So are you getting like, are you playing that game too with, like, trying to optimize that part of the spend?
Jordan
01:12:22 – 01:12:35
I am. And that is, like, a dark, corner of the venture capital world that all these founders spend their company money, and and
Aaron
01:12:35 – 01:12:38
and they they collect the points Personal benefit.
Jordan
01:12:38 – 01:12:45
Because because it's on your card with your name. Yeah. Because it should be. It shouldn't be on someone else's card at the company. You need to take responsibility.
Jordan
01:12:46 – 01:12:57
But the, you know, the result is a tremendous number of credit card points. And if you use Chase, you will get three x when you spend money on online ads.
Aaron
01:12:57 – 01:12:59
Good lord. Yes.
Jordan
01:12:59 – 01:13:02
So there's a limit on that. Looks like it's only 450,000 for the year or something.
Aaron
01:13:03 – 01:13:06
I'm okay with that limit. Yeah. Same. Same. That's fine.
Aaron
01:13:06 – 01:13:07
That's fine with me.
Jordan
01:13:07 – 01:13:08
You you wanna hear a question?
Aaron
01:13:08 – 01:13:12
You could you could get into a tail wagging the dog situation there pretty easily. Easily. Well well, look. You know, that that's not that's
Jordan
01:13:12 – 01:13:16
not like the any reason to change behavior in any
Aaron
01:13:16 – 01:13:17
way. Yeah.
Jordan
01:13:17 – 01:13:24
But we what we were using the advertising company, they were buying the ads, and then we were reimbursing them. And at some point, I was like, okay.
Aaron
01:13:24 – 01:13:27
So why don't we just put that card on card on card? Yeah. Totally.
Jordan
01:13:27 – 01:13:54
That is boy scout compared to someone I used to know who ran a company that bought tickets for, like, Broadway shows. That's what the company did. But the way the company actually worked is is that the company would buy the ticket and then resell it to the person buying it on the marketplace. So this company was very big and very successful, and all of the volume went through the founders' credit cards. Millions and millions of points.
Jordan
01:13:54 – 01:14:02
Yep. So whatever I got going doesn't hold a candle to that operation. That was a full fledged that was a hack.
Aaron
01:14:02 – 01:14:10
Oh, man. Sometime when we're not recording, I wanna hear more about the dark sides of VC that you have seen. I would love to hear that. I'm sure you've seen some stuff.
Jordan
01:14:10 – 01:14:20
Yeah. Everyone knows the the the dark side of VC. You're using other people's money to benefit yourself, but, it doesn't really work unless you benefit others.
Aaron
01:14:20 – 01:14:20
It it
Jordan
01:14:20 – 01:14:23
is it is a capitalist alignment. It's beautiful, actually.
Aaron
01:14:24 – 01:14:25
It's pure it's pure capitalism.
Jordan
01:14:26 – 01:14:29
Pure capitalism, there is one problem, and that is your liquidation preference.
Aaron
01:14:30 – 01:14:30
That's that's
Jordan
01:14:30 – 01:14:31
your problem.
Aaron
01:14:31 – 01:14:31
You you got I need
Jordan
01:14:31 – 01:14:34
to sell for more than $18,000,000 before I see a dollar.
Aaron
01:14:34 – 01:14:38
Right. That's my that's my problem. $1,818,000,000 is a lot of It's it's a
Jordan
01:14:38 – 01:14:39
lot of millions.
Aaron
01:14:39 – 01:14:40
It's a big number. It's a big number.
Jordan
01:14:40 – 01:14:44
Right. Relatively speaking, a a big a big number. Wow. Tacos.
Aaron
01:14:44 – 01:15:06
Fascinating. Man, this is great. This is a this is a look into, you know, Ian and I are both I think Ian's more business dad, but I'm still very much in, like, the bootstrapper mentality because Steve and I haven't raised any money. Yeah. And seeing hearing all of these, like, I don't know if it's pejorative to call them proper business, pejorative to myself.
Aaron
01:15:06 – 01:15:12
You know? This is like proper business stuff. Yeah. I I pay money to find a channel and then pay more money. Yeah.
Aaron
01:15:12 – 01:15:13
That seems obvious.
Jordan
01:15:13 – 01:15:24
There's a spectrum. You know? And I talk to people who are I'll go to March Capital. That's our lead investor. I'll go to their, conference in in LA a few weeks ago, and then I come across people, and I'm like, oh my god.
Jordan
01:15:24 – 01:15:29
I am playing around with toys over here in in the corner compared to what what these other people They pat
Aaron
01:15:29 – 01:15:31
you on the head and say adorable dresses. Meeting next year,
Jordan
01:15:31 – 01:15:41
you'll you'll be on stage, then you can talk about what you're doing when that it's actually interesting. So I think it's just a spectrum. It's good to be exposed to all of it. Aaron, what is your business model?
Aaron
01:15:41 – 01:15:50
You know, Jordan, that's a good question. So let me I I I'm I do want I do want all of your thoughts. You've listened. Okay. You followed.
Aaron
01:15:50 – 01:16:00
I do want all of your thoughts. So here here is, here's our current business model. We make educational material, and we sell it. Mhmm. That's it.
Aaron
01:16:00 – 01:16:01
That is the current
Jordan
01:16:01 – 01:16:03
business model. Partnership? You you and Steve?
Aaron
01:16:03 – 01:16:09
Me and Steve. Yeah. K. So Steve and I Steve and I own the business. We're full fifty fifty partners.
Aaron
01:16:09 – 01:16:18
We make educational content and sell it. That's it. Cool. So that is, like you know, we can talk about it for an hour, but that is the business model. Yeah.
Aaron
01:16:18 – 01:16:25
Individuals and sometimes companies give us US dollars, and we give them, basically, video courses. Yeah. That's basically it.
Jordan
01:16:25 – 01:16:28
I remember when you were transitioning out of
Aaron
01:16:28 – 01:16:28
Uh-huh.
Jordan
01:16:28 – 01:16:29
A full time role.
Aaron
01:16:30 – 01:16:37
And I was transitioned. You're kind. But I was transitioned out of a full time role. That's very that was very, deft of you.
Jordan
01:16:37 – 01:16:43
I don't necessarily see that. I think when people quit their job, it's a a congratulations is in order.
Aaron
01:16:43 – 01:16:44
Mhmm.
Jordan
01:16:44 – 01:16:49
I think when people get fired from their job, you just have to hold off on the congratulations for about six months.
Aaron
01:16:49 – 01:16:49
Or because
Jordan
01:16:49 – 01:16:52
you can't say congrats right when someone gets fired because that sucks. Right. Of you.
Aaron
01:16:52 – 01:16:53
You know?
Jordan
01:16:54 – 01:17:02
But but maybe six months or a year later, you're like, was wasn't that a good thing? It was almost certainly a good thing. Yeah. But I remember I reached out to you
Aaron
01:17:02 – 01:17:03
Mhmm.
Jordan
01:17:03 – 01:17:09
And it's almost like my capitalist instincts kicked in. I saw you as undervalued. I was like,
Aaron
01:17:09 – 01:17:09
oh my god.
Jordan
01:17:09 – 01:17:34
This guy is gonna make a million dollars a year very very soon because of the quality of both the content, the education, and most importantly, the strength of the relationship with the audience. So it makes sense that that is your business model now. And I Yep. And I still firmly think you're you're gonna do incredibly well with it. Do you wanna expand beyond education?
Jordan
01:17:34 – 01:17:52
You know, almost like the way Adam Wathan has gone into product in that way. Brian also toward that. Mhmm. Mhmm. Education feels like a very, several steps up the value ladder in terms of when you love me and you wanna pay a larger amount, that's when you go toward this educational content.
Jordan
01:17:52 – 01:17:55
So are you thinking about filling in the other steps in the ladder?
Aaron
01:17:56 – 01:18:14
Yes. So that's the first of all, thank you. That's very kind of you to to say that. But, yes, that is that is the existing business model is sell, what we believe are extremely high quality courses to people that know, like, and trust us. That has been very good.
Aaron
01:18:14 – 01:18:21
I mean, the first year in business, we've made enough money, which is like, you know, that's kinda hard to do.
Jordan
01:18:21 – 01:18:22
So No joke.
Aaron
01:18:22 – 01:18:38
Last year. We did it. Yeah. And now I think, so if there is, like, a if there is, like, a a spiritually aligned business, I think you might have heard of this one because it's in the AI space. It's Every.
Aaron
01:18:38 – 01:18:49
Have you heard of Dan Shipper and Every? Yeah. So they've got Lex dot page. They've got Sparkle. They've got a couple of products, but then they have, like, their blog, and they've they've got, like, a podcast, their whole thing.
Aaron
01:18:49 – 01:19:08
So that is one that is close. And then, I think to some extent, Tailwind is close, but slightly different. And so what they what what I am seeing for our business is we have distribution, which, as you know, is incredibly hard to come by. Yes. Right?
Aaron
01:19:08 – 01:19:34
And so we have it. We have distribution. We have people that trust us, and I take that very seriously. And so then the question becomes, like, what else like, where else is the value, and what else can we offer? So I think you're correct to point out that education is pretty far up, up the chain of, like, they really know me, and so they're willing to spend 203 hundred dollars on a course.
Aaron
01:19:34 – 01:19:56
Yep. How do we move down? So things that we are exploring actively right now, one is we are redoing, this is still education, but we're redoing Screencasting.com to offer a much broader, spectrum of of courses. So I'm doing the main one. Steve is doing premiere.
Aaron
01:19:56 – 01:20:16
We hired a guy to do final cut pro. We hired somebody to do DaVinci, OBS. So, like, we've hired, on a contract basis. We've hired a bunch of people to make a bunch of courses on screencasting. And so part of the play there is can we can we expand to a sort of, like, truly a studio?
Aaron
01:20:16 – 01:20:36
We're called TriHard Studios. Can we expand to, like, a studio model where we've got a cast of characters that are all teaching this one specific thing? And I think we can. And that will that's an experiment that we'll see, hopefully, come to fruition this month. I think another question on education, and then there are products.
Aaron
01:20:36 – 01:21:00
Another question on education is, I am I am given to wanting to educate people who are intermediates and, like, level them up into being advanced. Like, I want to take people that want to learn and want to know things, and I want to, like, I want to enrich and edify their lives by saying, hey. Here's all the hearts. Keep going. Look how cool this is.
Aaron
01:21:00 – 01:21:06
Yes. Yeah. I love that. It's everything is shaped like a pyramid, and the intermediates are way up here in
Jordan
01:21:06 – 01:21:06
the pyramid.
Aaron
01:21:06 – 01:21:18
Right? And so there are just fewer of them. Yes. And so our next our next pure database education experiment is what if we did an intro? Like, what if we just taught an intro to SQL course?
Aaron
01:21:18 – 01:21:21
Okay. Because there are tons That's right. Of those people. That's right.
Jordan
01:21:21 – 01:21:21
It's very
Aaron
01:21:21 – 01:21:32
So can we sell it for less? And, like, then is the is the burden of knowing me also quite quite lower. Right? Okay. Okay.
Aaron
01:21:32 – 01:21:36
Mhmm. And then I'll hit I'll hit you with one more. Yep. And then and then we'll get we'll get a a smattering. Yeah.
Aaron
01:21:37 – 01:22:03
So outside of pure video education, Steve and I talk a lot about this idea of, pointing many experiments or many projects or many ideas in the same direction. And so, our internal shorthand is are the vectors aligned on that? So, like, if you're imagining thrust vectors, we are a spaceship. Are all the vectors, like, pointing the same way such that we're making progress? Great.
Aaron
01:22:03 – 01:22:11
Right? We like Better off. Great. Yeah. And so, that doesn't, of course, mean that we always have to do video courses.
Aaron
01:22:11 – 01:22:45
That may mean there are products available in the video space that, like, our videos will help the product, our product will help the videos, our content helps all of it, and that can push us to the right direction. And so I think as we have been running this business for a year now I mean, last week, I guess. As we've been running it for a year, some product ideas are starting to emerge that are directionally appropriate for what we're already doing. It's not just like, hey. Let's burn down all this goodwill we have or just not even burn it.
Aaron
01:22:45 – 01:22:58
Just, like, leave it aside. Yeah. And try to build something crazy that doesn't apply to anything. Yep. And so those are kind of you know, we've got the studio, we've got the down market, and we've got the, forthcoming, products in the same space.
Aaron
01:22:58 – 01:23:00
So Yeah. Take your pick.
Jordan
01:23:00 – 01:23:06
Very interesting. I I like what happens, to all of us as we get further into business and and Mhmm.
Aaron
01:23:06 – 01:23:06
And a
Jordan
01:23:06 – 01:23:29
lot of these things that you really can't think about too much when you start you you do start start to digest and be thoughtful about your effort. What I heard in there, by far, by far, the most important thing was hiring someone else to do a course because that begins the journey toward making you less necessary
Aaron
01:23:29 – 01:23:30
Mhmm.
Jordan
01:23:30 – 01:23:44
And less critical. And I think that's where we wanna go. And you can be you know, Jason Fried is not necessary in his business at all. What he's doing right now is because he wants to. Mhmm.
Jordan
01:23:45 – 01:23:51
And I think the answer is not get out of your business so you can go sit on a beach and do absolutely nothing.
Aaron
01:23:51 – 01:23:52
Don't want to do that. But the
Jordan
01:23:52 – 01:23:59
goal is do what you want to do. And in order to do that, you do need to make yourself less critical.
Aaron
01:23:59 – 01:24:00
Mhmm.
Jordan
01:24:00 – 01:24:22
And so you can rise up toward the things that you love the most. Right? I think it's someone of genius would be the the term. So I I I think it's great. All within a year, you're identifying these vectors and where to put effort and starting to identify, hey, what what does it mean to be a studio to go beyond me doing everything and selling everything?
Jordan
01:24:22 – 01:24:42
So it feels like you're on the evolutionary path. You are going exactly where the business needs to go. Yeah. The distribution and making sure that you use that to the fullest extent possible Mhmm. And not start from scratch unless you become really good at building new audiences.
Jordan
01:24:42 – 01:24:50
Yeah. So I guess that transition toward, the lower part of the pyramid Right. Tricky. It makes sense. It makes sense.
Jordan
01:24:50 – 01:24:57
The the nice thing is that you do have the next step up ready Right. For them.
Aaron
01:24:57 – 01:25:16
Yeah. And that's something, like, that's something that, like, we we think about a lot is kinda like the portfolio thing. And so, you know, you'll you'll hear Rob, and I think correctly, Rob Walling will correctly say, like, don't do 12 startups in twelve months. And it's like, okay. Yeah.
Aaron
01:25:16 – 01:25:29
You know, that that's fine. And then you hear other people say, like, just throw everything against the wall and see what And it's like, I don't know. There's gotta be there's gotta be somewhere in the middle. And I think some of that comes down to personality. Right?
Aaron
01:25:29 – 01:25:45
So I think, like, Matt Wintzing, of whom we both know and love, is like, I am going to just keep going on this one idea, and I'm going to make it work. And then Peter levels is like, I made a VR flying game and also, you know, Nomad List. It's like, what's going on?
Jordan
01:25:45 – 01:25:46
Yes.
Aaron
01:25:46 – 01:26:15
But I think for Steve and I, we're trying to really think about the cohesiveness of the portfolio. And we want, like, every product to work well with other products. And so having an intro to SQL at 39 or 49 is good because then they can do mastering Postgres after that, Or somebody can stumble on mastering Postgres and say, I'm not I don't even know what Postgres is. Oh, these guys have intro to SQL. Let me do that one.
Aaron
01:26:15 – 01:26:31
Yep. And the same idea goes with the screencasting portfolio, which is like, you come, you take the how to screencast course. And then once you're done, you gotta, like, you gotta get better at your editing tool of choice. And turns out, you don't have to go anywhere. We've got courses for that.
Aaron
01:26:31 – 01:26:43
We've got six different courses on editors. And so instead of, like, you know, instead of trying 12 different things, we're trying to do portfolios of related things that feed on each other.
Jordan
01:26:43 – 01:26:50
Right. Even if an individual product inside of that portfolio isn't a standout hit, it contributes.
Aaron
01:26:50 – 01:26:51
Yes.
Jordan
01:26:51 – 01:27:14
And then it makes it more likely that when there is a hit, it also contributes to the larger pie in general. Yes. Yeah. We this reminds me of the experience that we are we are having right now since launching the premium UI and understanding how quickly people upgrade. What it's making me actually think is I should probably lower the price in the base plan.
Jordan
01:27:14 – 01:27:31
Mhmm. Because the more people that come in at the entry point, the now that we feel confident in upselling them and upgrading, not that different from yours. Right? You can you should not do a AppSumo deal with your core Screencasting.com.
Aaron
01:27:32 – 01:27:32
Correct.
Jordan
01:27:32 – 01:27:51
But you can do it with your 39 or $29 Mhmm. Course on on introductory SQL. Right. Because that starts to become a way to kind of grow your leads, which is what I'm identifying as our base plan. It's actually just for selling our leads.
Jordan
01:27:51 – 01:28:05
When when our investors challenge me and they say, what about the enterprise? What's going on up there? I say, well, look, there's different forms of enterprise. We don't want it. American Airlines and, like, Wells Fargo Bank, all of those miserable phone systems are all
Aaron
01:28:05 – 01:28:06
gonna be
Jordan
01:28:06 – 01:28:15
replaced with AI. Great opportunity. I want nothing to do with it. Yeah. There's a different form of enterprise, which is we're a franchise, and we have 800 locations.
Jordan
01:28:15 – 01:28:34
So we need 800 Rosie accounts. Can you help? So I also don't love the idea of going and hiring an AE and doing the sales process in that way. What we're seeing in our introductory base plan is that the individual franchise location signs up for that. Mhmm.
Jordan
01:28:34 – 01:28:44
And then we form a relationship with them and we identify as soon as they come in. Oh, That's different potential than the others because it's attached to a network of 800 locations. Right.
Aaron
01:28:44 – 01:28:56
And you you can't do that. You won't see that opportunity if it's too hard for them to get in. And so I think what you're experiencing right now is you you do have some of
Jordan
01:28:56 – 01:29:17
the best people, as customers. They they're they're influential. They their word-of-mouth has more strength than the beginners, all that. But if you're missing out on that bottom of the pyramid, you are not only missing out on this revenue that moves up your ladder, you're just missing out on opportunities that you just would not have come across. You just didn't know about.
Aaron
01:29:18 – 01:29:24
Yep. Yeah. So in in a sense, with your base plan, people are paying you to join the upsell funnel.
Jordan
01:29:25 – 01:29:26
Yes. Which
Aaron
01:29:26 – 01:29:28
is pretty crazy. Yes.
Jordan
01:29:29 – 01:29:35
What what they're really doing mathematically is they're helping us recover our ad spend, our
Aaron
01:29:35 – 01:29:36
CAC Mhmm.
Jordan
01:29:37 – 01:29:43
To to provide us with more opportunities that might be, you know, significantly higher than the average revenue per user.
Aaron
01:29:43 – 01:29:44
Mhmm.
Jordan
01:29:44 – 01:30:04
So, if we spend, you know, if we spend $50,000 in a month and it brings in 15 ks in MRR, that's great. But in the future, that MRR should be should expand beyond what it looked like in month one or two because of the upgrade path. So your business seems not that dissimilar.
Aaron
01:30:05 – 01:30:24
Okay. So let me let me let me throw this one at you. We in my in my opinion, my humble opinion, we've done the hard part. We've got we've got distribution. We've got these flagship intermediate courses that are, like, incredibly hard to produce because they it's just a freaking slog.
Aaron
01:30:25 – 01:30:52
And so we've done the hard part, and I think, I I think what I am learning now is we need to we need to do some we need to do some business. It's business time. And so what I spent last week doing, in addition to recording videos, what I spent last week doing was exploring checkouts, which I know that I know you're gonna start twitching, but I explored all the checkouts, and they all suck.
Jordan
01:30:52 – 01:30:54
Okay. Why are you exploring checkouts? How So
Aaron
01:30:54 – 01:31:05
let me let me tell you. Yeah. So, we are in this process of, editing all these screencasting videos. So we're gonna have a bunch of different SKUs on Screencasting.com. Okay?
Aaron
01:31:05 – 01:31:22
Historically, we've had, a SQLite course, single SKU, mastering Postgres, single SKU. We did do a guest course with, an instructor on Ruby on Rails plus SQLite. And at that point, it was like, oh, okay. We gotta get a bundle going, obviously. Yeah.
Aaron
01:31:22 – 01:31:40
And so we, like, you know, we kludged together a bundle on our payment provider, and it was like, yeah, it worked. But we noticed or we saw bundle pricing works. We're discovering things from first principles here, but we're getting there. Bundle pricing works. Now we're in this place where it's like, alright.
Aaron
01:31:40 – 01:31:53
Screencasting.com is going to have, maybe six, seven different courses. Also, it's going to have digital downloads. It's gonna have assets. So you can, like, hey. I wanna buy a plug in for Final Cut Pro that does this thing.
Aaron
01:31:53 – 01:32:25
And so we're at this point where we're gonna have, you know, fifteen, twenty products on Screencasting.com. Yep. And we need to be intelligent about cross sells, upsells, downsells, bundles, the whole thing. Because what I don't wanna do what I don't wanna do is, like, pour a bunch of people into the top of the funnel, and the funnel is just completely leaky and totally Right? And so we're going from click a button and you go to a hosted checkout with one product to click a button, you land on an interstitial.
Aaron
01:32:25 – 01:32:28
Hey. You might you might like these products too. And by the way, you know, we're 20% off right now. Right? Get them both.
Aaron
01:32:28 – 01:32:30
You'll need them to Yeah. Yep. Get them both. And then, you know, percent off right now. Right.
Jordan
01:32:30 – 01:32:30
Get them both.
Aaron
01:32:30 – 01:32:42
You'll need them to Yeah. Yep. Get them both, and then you're redirected onto the checkout. And so, you know, we're trying to figure out the engineering behind getting that to work. And Jordan, is is bleak.
Jordan
01:32:42 – 01:32:45
It's it's bleak. Still bleak. It's crazy.
Aaron
01:32:45 – 01:32:52
It's it's still bleak. Awful. Yep. So I I explored headless Shopify. I know that those are two words you don't wanna hear.
Aaron
01:32:52 – 01:32:56
I explored I explored Shopify headless. I see. By the way I
Jordan
01:32:56 – 01:32:58
see that as an oxymoron, but but continue.
Aaron
01:32:58 – 01:33:11
By the way, whoever's running naming at Shopify, I don't know what hydrogen and oxygen are. You're in your docs, and you're like, well, if you're using oxygen well, if you're using hydrogen, I'm like, give it a name. Like, I don't know what that means. At least
Jordan
01:33:11 – 01:33:12
make it a hyperlink. You know?
Aaron
01:33:12 – 01:33:23
Yeah. I know that it's like a play on liquid, but, like, it doesn't mean anything to me. So I explored Shopify headless, sucked. SamCart sucked. Bolt, couldn't even get anywhere with it.
Aaron
01:33:23 – 01:33:30
Like, had had to, like, have a call with somebody, and I went in there and there's no product. I can't even, like, add a product. Yeah. Yeah. Sucks.
Aaron
01:33:30 – 01:33:40
Yeah. It's Checkout page. I think it's just checkoutpage.com or something like that. Tried that. The very first screen that I got you on checkout page was a video from the founder saying, hey.
Aaron
01:33:41 – 01:33:54
You know, here at checkout page, we're not you you don't actually add a product. You we don't have the concept of products. You just build checkout pages. And I'm like, well, that's not gonna work for me. I've got an inventory of products, and I want you to figure out how to upsell them Yeah.
Aaron
01:33:54 – 01:34:00
Based on what the customer is buying. Yeah. So it's super bleak. And you know what we did? We went down the stripe.
Aaron
01:34:00 – 01:34:05
The just the Yep. Raw stripe. And so we're just gonna build it all ourselves, which sucks.
Jordan
01:34:05 – 01:34:12
It it's tough. I I wish I I could even put you in the right direction because SamCart comes close.
Aaron
01:34:12 – 01:34:14
It does. It comes close. It's ugly.
Jordan
01:34:15 – 01:34:19
It's yeah. It's for marketers. They're actually great marketers to pay attention to.
Aaron
01:34:20 – 01:34:23
Yeah. They're I I noticed that. I read all the emails. They're very good.
Jordan
01:34:23 – 01:34:28
Emails, video sales letters, retargeting. They're all they're very, very good at it.
Aaron
01:34:28 – 01:34:32
And they've got all the in the big info product people Yeah. As testimonials. Right.
Jordan
01:34:32 – 01:34:36
Because all the big info product people are not technical, and so SamCart was built for them.
Aaron
01:34:37 – 01:34:46
And all they care about is, like, funnels. And that's where I need to get because I'm on the wrong side of this question right now. Well, depending on judgment. You wanna be calm. I'm on a side.
Aaron
01:34:46 – 01:34:47
You wanna be calm. A side.
Jordan
01:34:47 – 01:34:48
Of your checkout.
Aaron
01:34:48 – 01:35:01
I I do. And I wanna be, like, I wanna be super proud of the product. Like, I don't wanna just throw together, you know, some product and then do an upsell for $9.97. Like Yeah. And I need to move more towards, you know, pure capitalism.
Aaron
01:35:01 – 01:35:01
But
Jordan
01:35:02 – 01:35:03
Somewhere in between. Sure.
Aaron
01:35:03 – 01:35:04
Yeah. Exactly.
Jordan
01:35:05 – 01:35:21
Yeah. I don't think you're gonna do better than Stripe because Shopify is intended for physical products, and all of the logic is for physical products and trying to, you know, fit that square peg into a round hole around digital, and it's just it it rarely works.
Aaron
01:35:22 – 01:35:24
Yep. Sure didn't work for us. Nope. Yeah.
Jordan
01:35:24 – 01:35:25
No. Yeah. I
Aaron
01:35:25 – 01:35:40
Kind of kind of a disaster. So where we're at now is, I'm I'm building it all with Stripe primitives. And, basically, we've got a bunch of Stripe products, but we're not using Stripe checkout. So we've got a bunch of Stripe products in the Stripe dashboard. Okay.
Aaron
01:35:40 – 01:35:51
And then on our side, you know, we have a Laravel app. We're syncing them all down. So a user will click buy on a a course or something. They can click add to cart, but let's just go down the buy route. They'll click buy.
Aaron
01:35:51 – 01:36:06
They'll go to an interstitial page hosted by us that knows what they already have, what they're buying, and what else is available, and what offers are, like, we've configured on the back end. And it'll say, hey. Do you wanna add this on for this amount? Whatever. Yes.
Aaron
01:36:06 – 01:36:15
And then we redirect them basically basically to a hosted checkout, but it's using the Stripe payment links. Okay. Product instead of the hosted checkout.
Jordan
01:36:15 – 01:36:17
Or using element on your own page?
Aaron
01:36:17 – 01:36:24
No. No. No. It is, it is, the checkout is actually hosted on buy.stripe.com. Okay.
Aaron
01:36:24 – 01:36:24
But it's not
Jordan
01:36:25 – 01:36:26
it's not the Stripe checkout.
Aaron
01:36:26 – 01:36:36
It's not the customer portal. It's, like, here's a payment link that I have constructed via API that has these prices and this shipping, and, like, now go and check out on the stripe.com. It's so
Jordan
01:36:36 – 01:36:40
It's annoying that you have to do that because that's not the business that you're in?
Aaron
01:36:40 – 01:36:41
Yes. Exactly.
Jordan
01:36:41 – 01:36:47
I think I think what you're describing is learning what business you're in.
Aaron
01:36:47 – 01:36:48
Yes.
Jordan
01:36:48 – 01:37:05
And and the it's amazing that you have so much ready. You have all like you said, you have the hard part done. Yes. So I I do think you're you're right to look at it and say, okay. If we have the hard part done, maybe we should stop building hard parts.
Aaron
01:37:06 – 01:37:09
Yes. And That is exactly the conversation we had. Great.
Jordan
01:37:09 – 01:37:21
Great. We we have a different version of the conversation. We just know more about our business now than we did in the beginning. Mhmm. And what I'm understanding in our business is that we are, we're an onboarding company.
Jordan
01:37:21 – 01:37:34
Mhmm. We we are a gateway. There is an enormous amount of demand for people to solve this problem, and our job is to solve it for them in a way that they're actually gonna accomplish.
Aaron
01:37:34 – 01:37:34
Mhmm.
Jordan
01:37:34 – 01:37:50
So whenever I go to a competitor and I'm like, you know, you get that weird feeling in your stomach, like, is this something to worry about? Are they really good? Are they gonna are they gonna whoop us or whatever? And I go into their product and I see the first thing that says which which LLM do you wanna use, I'm like, not not a problem.
Aaron
01:37:50 – 01:37:53
Cool. I can log on. Yep. Not my problem. Yeah.
Jordan
01:37:53 – 01:38:06
Yes. And what we're understanding is that we are in order to do that, what we should focus on is none of the hard parts. We've identified our hard part. It's onboarding nontechnical people into an AI product. And geez, isn't it?
Jordan
01:38:06 – 01:38:12
The need. Stop doing the hard part. Don't worry about the LLM. I basically outsource everything. You're an AI rapper.
Jordan
01:38:12 – 01:38:20
Embrace it. Give it a big hug. You're an AI rapper. And there is a lot of value to add in the UI layer for non technical people.
Aaron
01:38:20 – 01:38:21
-Yes.
Jordan
01:38:21 – 01:38:36
-And and just solve the problem for them. And so in much the same way where I'm like, I don't I'm gonna yes. I understand the risk of us leaning on people for the transcriber and for the synthesizer and for the LOM, and I don't care at all. We're just gonna lean into that risk and get the advantage for it.
Aaron
01:38:36 – 01:39:00
So tell me this. Does Rock have any problems with that? Because I feel, as a developer, I'm like, there's some misplaced purity inside of me where I'm like, no. I need to teach 120 videos about Postgres because this is what the material demands if you want to be a proper user of this database. Right.
Aaron
01:39:00 – 01:39:09
And what the market is probably saying is, I want one hour of a crash course so I could get back to my life, and I'm trying to square that circle.
Jordan
01:39:10 – 01:39:20
Again, if you let the key ideology guide you, the way Rock with two kids now, since we met, since he's children, he got married.
Aaron
01:39:20 – 01:39:21
Mhmm.
Jordan
01:39:21 – 01:39:26
And he has adopted my ideology, which is after tax money in our personal bank accounts.
Aaron
01:39:27 – 01:39:27
Yep.
Jordan
01:39:27 – 01:39:34
And the way to do that is make the company successful, and the way to do that is what the strategy dictates. Don't build. Don't build stuff. Make it
Aaron
01:39:34 – 01:39:35
very stuff.
Jordan
01:39:35 – 01:39:51
Right. Make it very reliable and good. So our we have a recurring experience, and this is a bit tricky. You get people coming into our product and then saying, I've tried all the others. Yours is so much better.
Jordan
01:39:51 – 01:40:03
Thank you. Feels amazing. Now, look, in reality, what we know is that when people go in that direction, you hear about it. When people go the other way and they leave you and they go to someone that they think is better, you don't hear about it. Fine.
Jordan
01:40:03 – 01:40:10
I don't care. I'll take the the the positive feedback. And so we are adding things to make it better.
Aaron
01:40:11 – 01:40:11
Mhmm.
Jordan
01:40:11 – 01:40:32
It's just that it's less of an engineer hard engineering challenge, and it's more of, like, a clever engineering challenge. How do we add our own prompts and our own rag system? And how do we make it more likely that the agent doesn't hallucinate? And how do we make it so that when she says, is there anything else I can help you with? That she doesn't say that four times in a conversation.
Jordan
01:40:32 – 01:40:46
That we have we have different versions to make it more human like. So it's not like there aren't challenges. It's that you do have to relinquish the hard engineering challenge that you might think of yourself as trying to encounter.
Aaron
01:40:46 – 01:40:47
Mhmm.
Jordan
01:40:47 – 01:40:51
So you have, like, this bar that you wanna meet around the content you create.
Aaron
01:40:52 – 01:40:52
Yes.
Jordan
01:40:52 – 01:41:00
I think part of why people are attracted to your content is because that bar is so high, and people are attracted
Aaron
01:41:00 – 01:41:01
to I don't wanna I don't wanna lose that. Yeah.
Jordan
01:41:01 – 01:41:12
I don't think you need to. But maybe you can be one touch more realistic. I'm gonna avoid using the word cynical with you because they they're like magnets. We don't like that. Yeah.
Jordan
01:41:13 – 01:41:17
But maybe you can look at it and say, I'm gonna meet my bar.
Aaron
01:41:17 – 01:41:18
Mhmm. And then
Jordan
01:41:18 – 01:41:22
I'm gonna strip away lessons one, two, and three, or we're gonna package that up for $19.
Aaron
01:41:22 – 01:41:23
Mhmm.
Jordan
01:41:23 – 01:41:49
Because that actually gets people the value that a lot of people need, and beyond that, they don't need. Right. And and we we can use that to subsidize our spend toward customer acquisition. And, no, we're not gonna make any money off that, but it puts them into our ladder. And because our bar is so high, more than usual convert to that higher tier, and so it's worth it.
Jordan
01:41:49 – 01:41:53
So what I would do if I were you is I would do what the Excel guys are doing.
Aaron
01:41:53 – 01:41:54
Tell
Jordan
01:41:54 – 01:42:02
me. People selling Excel courses are making millions of dollars because they're taking they're taking this little nugget that people need
Aaron
01:42:02 – 01:42:02
and
Jordan
01:42:02 – 01:42:05
they're putting it on TikTok and on Instagram and on Facebook deals.
Aaron
01:42:06 – 01:42:07
You think that's the move? Yeah.
Jordan
01:42:09 – 01:42:19
Yeah. Not not excel, but take the little nugget from the bottom of the pyramid. Right? The Excel course that the guy is selling is so sophisticated, I will never need it.
Aaron
01:42:20 – 01:42:20
Sure.
Jordan
01:42:20 – 01:42:26
But a lot of people need the most basic version, the one step up from I'm an Excel noob
Aaron
01:42:26 – 01:42:26
Right.
Jordan
01:42:26 – 01:42:42
To now I'm proficient at something. And and maybe that's what you're selling as an introductory for the bottom of the pyramid. And if you have to spend money, let's say you have to spend $5,000 a month on an agency that takes all of your content, clips it up into shorts and post it. I mean, there's a lot of tools that do this stuff, including
Aaron
01:42:42 – 01:42:43
Right. Yeah.
Jordan
01:42:43 – 01:43:07
That you really don't even need an agency. So you can keep the bar really high and use that as your secret weapon. And your secret weapon is actually my bar is so high that more than you would expect convert to that higher tier because of how good the the the quality actually is. You don't have to lower the quality. You might just need to change your assets and put them into a form
Aaron
01:43:07 – 01:43:08
Package them differently.
Jordan
01:43:08 – 01:43:12
Yeah. Package them differently and position them differently for more people to consume.
Aaron
01:43:12 – 01:43:36
This okay. So here's what this is making me think. K. This this is making me think that I would be so what I'm hearing from you and you and Rock is your focus is on building the business. And I think that isn't, like is worth saying because most engineers, their focus is on writing the code, doing cool stuff in the code.
Jordan
01:43:36 – 01:43:43
Building the product, making it amazing, reducing the number of bugs, nailing the development process.
Aaron
01:43:43 – 01:43:46
Making the queries faster. Like, we love that crap.
Jordan
01:43:46 – 01:43:46
Yes.
Aaron
01:43:47 – 01:44:07
Perhaps perhaps my focus has been on has been on producing content, which I think is good, right, and noble, but my focus needs to shift on that spectrum a little bit to building the business and not lowering the bar for the content, like you said, but changing how we present it, perhaps.
Jordan
01:44:08 – 01:44:12
Yeah. Yeah. It it's it sounds more like a packaging challenge than than anything else.
Aaron
01:44:13 – 01:44:13
Mhmm.
Jordan
01:44:13 – 01:44:28
And you're you're already when you left the job or were were asked to leave the job Mhmm. My assumption was that the journey that you're on right now, that you will go on and that it will end up in the right spot. And I think that's where it's going.
Aaron
01:44:29 – 01:44:31
That's good. You know? The the That's good. Yeah.
Jordan
01:44:31 – 01:44:37
The right spot is how do I add value, and then how do I expose a ridiculous number of people to that value.
Aaron
01:44:37 – 01:44:38
Mhmm. Mhmm.
Jordan
01:44:38 – 01:45:06
And if anything, that I would challenge you on is to get exposed to other people. Right. Because right now, if you go on Twitter and you sell your thing, those are people that have been exposed to you and your quality of work, and that's why they buy. Mhmm. But if you want to be introduced to other people that are not in your audience that don't understand what it takes to do what you're doing and don't because of that don't have an appreciation for it, let them come in a different way.
Jordan
01:45:07 – 01:45:07
Mhmm.
Aaron
01:45:07 – 01:45:17
Yeah. Yeah. That's good because the audience that I have now has taken me ten years to build, and we gotta we gotta get new people in, and we don't have ten years to do it.
Jordan
01:45:17 – 01:45:31
It's almost like a top down process. They're coming in and being exposed to your best, to your tweets, to your thinking, to your podcast, to your like, the process of making the course. Right. And then when
Aaron
01:45:31 – 01:45:32
it's available to buy, they're, like, reaching down to give you a hundred or 203 hundred bucks.
Jordan
01:45:34 – 01:45:36
Hundred or 2 hundred, 3 hundred bucks.
Aaron
01:45:36 – 01:45:39
Mhmm. Yeah. I know. You're not wrong.
Jordan
01:45:39 – 01:45:53
Right. So they, like, love you to such a high extent, and then they're buying what what's made available to them. I'm sure a bunch would buy at the $25,000 level for you to help their company, but that's not the way your business is going. I don't think you wanna do that. Mhmm.
Aaron
01:45:53 – 01:45:53
So
Jordan
01:45:53 – 01:46:25
if you want it to go the other way, then you do need to figure out a mechanism for exposing people that don't know you or your content at all, but come from bottom up, from your $10, 20 dollar, 30 dollar offer, and then get exposed to, holy cow, this this studio is as good as I thought it was gonna be, as good as the original bread crumbs that I picked up on Right. On Instagram that showed this kind of basic thing but done in a very good way. When I get exposed to the rest of the content, I'm just gonna eat it all up. I'm just gonna buy the bundle because, you know, I'm impressed.
Aaron
01:46:25 – 01:46:39
See, I do I I it's hard for me to, like it's hard for me to internalize that, but I do think we have a competitive advantage in that our content is very, very good. I truly believe that as much as it's hard for me to say, like, our stuff is the best. No.
Jordan
01:46:39 – 01:46:40
I think that.
Aaron
01:46:40 – 01:46:42
I actually think our stuff is very good. Yeah.
Jordan
01:46:43 – 01:46:47
You know what I'm curious about? Remember Egghead? Wasn't that what is it?
Aaron
01:46:47 – 01:46:47
Oh, yeah.
Jordan
01:46:47 – 01:46:51
Right. That was a big, like, developer education platform?
Aaron
01:46:51 – 01:46:52
Yeah.
Jordan
01:46:53 – 01:46:57
How did they get so much traffic? I feel like I feel like they were a bit of a machine around
Aaron
01:46:58 – 01:47:19
Yeah. Did did they Yeah. I think I think back in their heyday, they had they had very high, you know, editorial quality standards as well pushed by, Joel Sure. Who is great has great taste. And I think they benefited a lot from the studio model, which brought in all these disparate audiences from all the instructors.
Jordan
01:47:19 – 01:47:25
Right. The instructor, I guess. Would basically sell their egghead course, and they had, like, this web. Yeah. That's that's pretty neat.
Aaron
01:47:25 – 01:47:29
Exactly. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So that that is a play for us.
Aaron
01:47:29 – 01:47:53
I don't think any of the instructors we have for screencasting have big, you know, stand alone audiences, but that is that is a play for us as well that we could, you know, we could move towards. And the model the model there would be AlaraCasts, which is like, they've got a bunch of guest instructors, and, you know, that is the destination. And I think screencasting could be the destination for video training, that kind of stuff. So Yeah. What do
Jordan
01:47:53 – 01:47:55
you got going on the rest of the week, my man?
Aaron
01:47:55 – 01:48:01
Alright. Have we done two hours? This this turning Yeah. We've we've done two hours. Hey.
Aaron
01:48:01 – 01:48:06
This is great. Yeah. Here. I gotta I gotta we can we can end on this one. I got one for you.
Aaron
01:48:06 – 01:48:13
Yes. You moved to a new city. Where where did you move from? From Portland to somewhere?
Jordan
01:48:13 – 01:48:16
From Portland to the Chicago Suburbs. There you go.
Aaron
01:48:17 – 01:48:20
You're an adult. So I'm at dinner. I'm at dinner last night
Jordan
01:48:20 – 01:48:20
Okay.
Aaron
01:48:21 – 01:48:30
With, the older set of twins. So two two, three and a half year olds. Just me. Sometimes, you know, we split them up to make everybody more sane. So I take the older ones out to dinner.
Aaron
01:48:30 – 01:48:42
And this guy and his wife walk in, and he waves to me. And I wave back. I'm like, hey, man. Local local restaurant. So I'm like, I feel like I know this guy.
Aaron
01:48:42 – 01:48:48
After he sits down, I remember that guy's got twins, and I've seen him at this restaurant before.
Jordan
01:48:48 – 01:48:48
Okay.
Aaron
01:48:48 – 01:48:49
That's how I know this guy.
Jordan
01:48:49 – 01:48:50
Perfect.
Aaron
01:48:50 – 01:48:57
And so I'm like, oh, okay. Good. I've placed him. Like, he didn't have his kids with him, so it kinda threw me off. But I'm like, I remember talking to this guy.
Aaron
01:48:57 – 01:49:05
And, you know, thirty minutes later, this guy walks over to me, and he's like, hey, man. You're twin dad. Right? These are your twins. I'm like, yeah.
Aaron
01:49:05 – 01:49:10
You were here, you know, a couple months ago. We talked. Right? He's like, yeah. I just wanna come over and see how you're doing.
Aaron
01:49:10 – 01:49:22
You know, we talk, exchange pleasantries for a little while. And then he does the bravest thing I think any adult man can do. And he says, hey. We're trying to make friends in the area. Can I get, like, can I get your phone number?
Aaron
01:49:22 – 01:49:46
And I said, absolutely. Like, his twin you know, his twins are the same age as our younger twins. And but I just put myself in his position of, like, I'm a grown ass man walking over to this stranger that I met one time four months ago and putting myself out there to say, hey. We're trying to make friends in the area. Can I get your phone number?
Aaron
01:49:46 – 01:49:56
Mhmm. And I was like, I can't imagine. I I consider myself a very brave person, but that was, like, next level. Making friends as an adult in a new place. Mhmm.
Aaron
01:49:56 – 01:50:03
What what how does how do you do that? Because I watched that, and I was like, good for you, man. Yes. You can have my phone number.
Jordan
01:50:03 – 01:50:08
Yep. That's impressive and admirable. And I sympathize. It's
Aaron
01:50:08 – 01:50:09
gotta be tough.
Jordan
01:50:09 – 01:50:14
Very much. Absolutely. My wife is good at it. Mhmm. She has made a bunch of friends.
Jordan
01:50:14 – 01:50:36
One of the reasons we moved here is because we had some friends in the area. Mhmm. We both went to school at Michigan, and a lot of people that go to Michigan are from the Chicago area and come back here afterward. And one of them was my wife's very close friend, her roommate in college, actually. And by insane coincidence, our house is 1116, and their house is 1115.
Jordan
01:50:36 – 01:50:37
It is directly across the street right there.
Aaron
01:50:37 – 01:50:38
No way. Right
Jordan
01:50:38 – 01:50:46
there. If you walk out my front door and walk along the path of the, street and then just go across the street and continue on the path, it goes to their front door. This
Aaron
01:50:47 – 01:50:53
Your wife's college roommate lives across the street from you. This is You you you have no answers. You got it easy. You got it easy.
Jordan
01:50:53 – 01:51:06
Relatively speaking, we have it easy. So, yeah, absurd absurd bit of luck. Like like, she vouched for me when I got set up on a blind date with my wife when we first met. Amazing. You know, amazing coincidences.
Jordan
01:51:07 – 01:51:10
Now because of that, she's had an entry point.
Aaron
01:51:10 – 01:51:10
Mhmm.
Jordan
01:51:10 – 01:51:23
And I have been left off to the side. And I'm gonna guess that a lot of husbands, dads, single guys listening have this experience. We're just not as good at
Aaron
01:51:23 – 01:51:23
it
Jordan
01:51:23 – 01:51:38
as as the ladies are in terms of getting together in book club and going to dinner and all that. Right? So I will go weeks without seeing a friend. And I if I stop to think about it, I care. But in the day to day, I don't feel that this need for it.
Jordan
01:51:38 – 01:51:41
Only in hindsight where I'm like, I should expand my life.
Aaron
01:51:42 – 01:51:45
Mhmm. So I've been thinking about onboarding a lot. I gotta get some friends.
Jordan
01:51:45 – 01:51:52
What am I doing here? So I I do use modern technology to overcome a lot of that.
Aaron
01:51:52 – 01:51:53
Tell me.
Jordan
01:51:53 – 01:51:58
I talk to my brothers all day, every day k. On WhatsApp with with my dad. We're very close. My dad actually just moved here.
Aaron
01:51:58 – 01:51:59
From the
Jordan
01:51:59 – 01:52:09
malls are amazing. Right? So now all of a sudden, he's, like, in our day to day lives. It's great. Between my brothers, my dad, my mom, and people online, and my my colleagues,
Aaron
01:52:09 – 01:52:09
Sure.
Jordan
01:52:09 – 01:52:11
The Rock is I mean,
Aaron
01:52:11 – 01:52:14
it's quick. I talk to Steve in both of my times a day. Yes.
Jordan
01:52:14 – 01:52:18
Yes. Jessica. Like, I know these people. I care about them. I know their kids.
Jordan
01:52:18 – 01:52:39
So that does fulfill a lot of this. But there are times when I mean, men need companionship Mhmm. In that way, and I am no exception to it. My problem is I am incapable of being inauthentic for long periods of time. Mhmm.
Jordan
01:52:39 – 01:52:45
I just don't have that much in common with a with a lot of men my age.
Aaron
01:52:46 – 01:52:46
Mhmm.
Jordan
01:52:46 – 01:52:49
I don't care about sports. I just God. I just don't care.
Aaron
01:52:49 – 01:52:54
You should move to Dallas. We could hang up. Oh my god. I just don't care. I just don't care.
Jordan
01:52:54 – 01:52:56
Chicago sports town. Dallas sports town.
Aaron
01:52:56 – 01:52:56
Sports town.
Jordan
01:52:56 – 01:53:04
So when a few guys get together and they start talking sports, then they start talking about, like, our kids' sports teams. I'm like, guys, what are we talking about here?
Aaron
01:53:04 – 01:53:15
Worse is, like, who we're gonna draft next year. Yeah. It's not even, like, what's going on in a league or or even my kids' league, I could probably care about. But, like Yes. Woah, man.
Aaron
01:53:15 – 01:53:21
How's the draft lineup looking? And you're like, brother, I have no idea what you're saying. No idea. No idea.
Jordan
01:53:21 – 01:53:29
Okay. So that we are in a category, like, that's a challenge. Yes. And and it's as much as I admire your new potential friend.
Aaron
01:53:30 – 01:53:30
Mhmm.
Jordan
01:53:30 – 01:53:39
If you get together and have lunch, which you should Mhmm. If he's all up in the sports and and works at w two, it's gonna be tough, man.
Aaron
01:53:39 – 01:53:40
It's gonna be tough. It's tough.
Jordan
01:53:41 – 01:53:53
Yeah. So I I just sympathize for myself, for you, for a lot of other people listening. If you work from home, you don't have an office, you can find yourself pretty lonely.
Aaron
01:53:54 – 01:53:54
Mhmm.
Jordan
01:53:54 – 01:54:09
Even if you don't actually feel lonely, but you have created a kind of a lonely life, So you gotta figure out ways to do something about that. Like, I'm going with my friends from college to see the dead in Vegas at the Sphere. K.
Aaron
01:54:09 – 01:54:10
Cool.
Jordan
01:54:10 – 01:54:26
I I probably went multiple years without doing anything like that. And and I'm trying to get better at it. I had a particular version of the disease that said, when you make more money, you're gonna do all this fun stuff. Yep. And I just pushed it off and pushed it off.
Jordan
01:54:26 – 01:54:38
No. I'm focused on work. And when I when I make a bunch of money, then I'll do all of that. And then a few years go by, and you're like, this is just what a career is. Like, stop, you know, pushing things off into the future.
Aaron
01:54:38 – 01:54:41
The the road the road expands before me. What is happening?
Jordan
01:54:41 – 01:54:56
Yes. Yes. And and then you do the thing where you look back five years, and if you had told yourself that you'd be here now, you'd be like, oh, so now you must be hanging out with all your friends and go to the dead shows and all that stuff. Okay. And then what I do is I'm just a bloodhound for entrepreneurs.
Jordan
01:54:57 – 01:55:07
I just I spot them and I find them in in the local area. As soon as I find one, I just gravitate toward are you thinking about the same things I'm thinking about?
Aaron
01:55:07 – 01:55:07
Mhmm. Like,
Jordan
01:55:07 – 01:55:10
do you not care about this football game at all? And And you really
Aaron
01:55:10 – 01:55:12
have to go talk b to b sass over in the corner?
Jordan
01:55:13 – 01:55:24
Yes. So I found someone here who runs an AI consumer company that Amazing. Builds, like like, books for kids and makes the kid, like, the star of of the book.
Aaron
01:55:24 – 01:55:26
Love it. Love it. Love it.
Jordan
01:55:26 – 01:55:27
Let's go let's go get coffee,
Aaron
01:55:27 – 01:55:29
my man. So where did you find this person?
Jordan
01:55:29 – 01:55:40
At a party k. That my wife got invited to with and and I just go along and, you know, I'm like, yep. Like, I'm a husband. Mhmm. Let's see if I have anything to say.
Jordan
01:55:40 – 01:55:41
Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.
Aaron
01:55:42 – 01:55:42
And
Jordan
01:55:42 – 01:55:49
then as soon as we kind of identified, we're like, oh, you live in this town, which is not an entrepreneurial town, then we should hang up.
Aaron
01:55:49 – 01:55:49
Mhmm.
Jordan
01:55:49 – 01:56:00
It's really, really tough. Leaving Portland was hard because when I first got to Portland, I went to a MicroConf meetup. Uh-huh. And then we went to MicroConf, like, a month later, and we realized, oh, there are, like, 25 of us.
Aaron
01:56:01 – 01:56:01
Lot of port Lot
Jordan
01:56:01 – 01:56:14
of port MicroConf first. And then we started maybe I have the time to mix up. Then we started going to lunches. And then from that group of, like, 15 people, you know, you shrink it down, and those, like, five or six people, I still talk to in Slack all the time.
Aaron
01:56:14 – 01:56:14
Mhmm.
Jordan
01:56:14 – 01:56:30
And some of our families got close, and so Ruben Gammes is there, and Johnny Ewalt is there, and Jared, and, like, you know, so we have this thing. And that turned into real friendship. And I it's been three years here in Chicago. I I don't have it yet. So I I I got work to do.
Aaron
01:56:30 – 01:56:43
Well, you know, walk up to guys in restaurants and ask for their numbers. I can't see that going wrong at all, but it worked. It worked for Aziz. Aziz got my number, and we're gonna hang out at some point. So I just thought that was, like, incredibly brave.
Aaron
01:56:44 – 01:56:48
And I just I I knew that you had moved. How do people do this?
Jordan
01:56:48 – 01:56:55
Where do you put yourself on the scale of, like, one to 10 on, like, no. I have, like, a friendship life. Not like a social or, you know, you're married all that.
Aaron
01:56:55 – 01:57:17
I think I'm I'm I'm pretty high up there, but that's because, you know, I in Texas, I live in Dallas, went to Texas a and m, which is three hours away, then a lot of people came back to Dallas. Cool. And so and then we're also very involved in church life. And so we've made a lot of friends through, like both of those things are through, like, structured organizations. You know?
Aaron
01:57:17 – 01:57:25
And that's the thing that scares me is, like, once you're out there on your own, you don't go to church, you're not in your college town or a town adjacent to your college. Then what?
Jordan
01:57:25 – 01:57:29
Well, the I don't know. The office was was that other structure.
Aaron
01:57:29 – 01:57:31
And there's no office. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.
Aaron
01:57:31 – 01:57:33
So Yeah. No. I I feel I feel good.
Jordan
01:57:33 – 01:57:43
We don't belong to a temple because I'm I'm not religious at all. So and I've considered joining a temple more and more partly for that exposure of, oh, other people with
Aaron
01:57:43 – 01:57:44
structured serendipity. Something you
Jordan
01:57:44 – 01:57:46
can come in as an empty starting point.
Aaron
01:57:46 – 01:57:48
Yes. Yes. Exactly. Here's my question
Jordan
01:57:48 – 01:57:49
to you.
Aaron
01:57:49 – 01:57:49
Tell me.
Jordan
01:57:49 – 01:58:04
Do you know that there's a weekend coming up and that you should make plans for it? I I do not know. I'm just like, oh, it's Friday. And unless someone invited me to, like, what are you doing this weekend? I never think, hey, it's the weekend.
Jordan
01:58:04 – 01:58:09
I should do something social other than, you know, do whatever driving is required.
Aaron
01:58:09 – 01:58:11
Absolutely not. Yeah. Okay. That's Absolutely not. I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm
Jordan
01:58:12 – 01:58:13
get over that problem. Problem.
Aaron
01:58:13 – 01:58:15
That's No. No. No. No. No.
Aaron
01:58:15 – 01:58:21
Never ever ever never ever ever have I thought, oh, shoot. It's Thursday. I wonder I gotta get some stuff to move in for Saturday.
Jordan
01:58:21 – 01:58:23
At some point in our lives, we were like, what do you
Aaron
01:58:23 – 01:58:30
do with the weekend? And it was the fear life. It was but it was a fear of, like, oh, shoot. I don't have any weekend plans. Yeah.
Aaron
01:58:30 – 01:58:33
What's everybody doing? And you start texting like, hey. Are you doing anything? Yeah. We don't know what you're doing.
Aaron
01:58:33 – 01:58:42
No. We gotta do something. Yeah. No. So I have benefited a lot from, like, recurring, like, scheduled hangings.
Jordan
01:58:42 – 01:58:42
Okay.
Aaron
01:58:43 – 01:58:55
And so every month, we do a supper club. It's, like, four couples, and we rotate houses. And so every month, there's at least one time I'm gonna see Gonna see friends. Six other people.
Jordan
01:58:55 – 01:58:58
And a month goes goes super fast.
Aaron
01:58:58 – 01:59:02
Super fast. And so we're doing a no kids no kids dinner.
Jordan
01:59:02 – 01:59:03
Same for couples.
Aaron
01:59:03 – 01:59:07
Same for Different house every time. Different houses. And if you're
Jordan
01:59:07 – 01:59:08
You get to to cook for people.
Aaron
01:59:09 – 01:59:19
Yes. And if you're not cooking, you're not expected to bring a goddamn thing. So it's not like every month, it's like, oh, I gotta do a potluck. I gotta bring a salad. I gotta make a pie.
Aaron
01:59:19 – 01:59:25
No. Once every four months, you have to do the whole thing, and then you're off. So that's great. Huge. Love that.
Jordan
01:59:25 – 01:59:26
I like it.
Aaron
01:59:26 – 01:59:42
I do a guy's breakfast, every three, four weeks. We do that pretty regularly. Once a year, we do a, a guy's college reunion, like, twelve years in a row or thirteen years in a row, whatever now. Just solid. Eight to 10 guys every single time.
Jordan
01:59:42 – 01:59:45
Good for you. We we fell off. Do you go to the same place every time? Do you go back to college, or do
Aaron
01:59:45 – 02:00:01
you We go everything. We go to the same area. We go down to the Austin area, but out in the Hill Country, but it's a different Airbnb every time. Always river adjacent. So all we ever do is we get Yetis full of beers, and we go sit in the river and just laugh and throw rocks at sticks and be like, hey.
Aaron
02:00:01 – 02:00:05
Do you think you can hit that? And that's all we do for, like, Three days. It's tough. Hell, it's good
Jordan
02:00:05 – 02:00:06
that is.
Aaron
02:00:06 – 02:00:18
Oh, it's awesome. Yeah. And then, of course, we have, Sunday morning church is not a place where you'd meet a ton of people because it's like we got four kids in tow regular thing. But it is regular. Yep.
Aaron
02:00:18 – 02:00:32
And then we have a Wednesday night bible study, and that's more that's kid free, and so that's more like we Jennifer and I take turns because we're not gonna pay for a babysitter every Wednesday night. But that's still another Interesting. So we have a lot of we we have a lot of scheduled scheduled goods.
Jordan
02:00:32 – 02:00:36
The the more structure, the better on that front. If it's left up to me, you know,
Aaron
02:00:37 – 02:00:39
you'll Yes. It it will It goes three years, and you Yes.
Jordan
02:00:39 – 02:00:40
It will
Aaron
02:00:40 – 02:00:40
be that you have
Jordan
02:00:41 – 02:00:45
over here to my right on the floor that will literally stay there for twelve months.
Aaron
02:00:45 – 02:00:47
Yep. Yep. Yep. Feel that. It's not Yep.
Jordan
02:00:47 – 02:00:52
Not good. Okay. Alright. I'm motivated. I'm motivated toward my ideology,
Aaron
02:00:53 – 02:00:53
toward making
Jordan
02:00:53 – 02:00:55
content, toward making more friends.
Aaron
02:00:56 – 02:01:07
Aaron, thanks a lot. If if if your ideology combines with your going back to temple, keep the ideology down a little bit. You don't wanna walk into temple and say, I pray to the god of capitalism. No. No.
Aaron
02:01:07 – 02:01:08
No. Separately.
Jordan
02:01:09 – 02:01:28
You know, one one, I'm I'm not religious, at all. I I was raised to not not go to temple, but that side of my life has made itself more of a priority, since October 7 than in the past. Yeah. And and I like it. Good.
Jordan
02:01:28 – 02:01:33
I I like it. It's a it's a feeling of more meaning
Aaron
02:01:33 – 02:01:34
Mhmm.
Jordan
02:01:34 – 02:01:40
And less isolation. Yeah. So I in in many ways, it's just in my head, because a lot of my actions haven't changed that much.
Aaron
02:01:41 – 02:01:41
Mhmm.
Jordan
02:01:42 – 02:01:43
But that doesn't matter.
Aaron
02:01:43 – 02:01:58
There is, obviously, I think there are very, very good things about religion. But another good thing about it is you're a part of a group of people. You're a part of a group of people, and it there's, like, a sense of belonging, and I think that's very powerful.
Jordan
02:01:58 – 02:02:07
Yeah. I I I not dismissed. Maybe I avoided or or ignored that because I didn't have it. I moved here as an immigrant. Mhmm.
Jordan
02:02:07 – 02:02:18
Not religious. Didn't join a temple. Went to school, and then just kind of you know, Judaism just didn't have much of a role in my life, and I feel isolated as an immigrant. To begin with, all my family's back in Israel. Sure.
Jordan
02:02:18 – 02:02:28
And so I I think after the Sabbath, I I was like, oh, I think I actually need, not want. I think I actually need some feeling of belonging. And now it feels more more balanced in that way. It's nice.
Aaron
02:02:28 – 02:02:34
Yeah. Well, I'm sorry, obviously, about the the circumstances, but I'm glad you feel a little bit of balance there.
Jordan
02:02:34 – 02:02:35
Thank you very much.
Aaron
02:02:36 – 02:02:38
Yeah. Alright. Yeah. It's been great. Howdy.
Aaron
02:02:38 – 02:02:44
Yeah. Ian, we we did two hours just for you so you can listen to this while you're waiting in line at Disney World or whatever you are.
Jordan
02:02:44 – 02:02:45
You are you a Disney hater?
Aaron
02:02:45 – 02:02:51
Come on. I'm a I'm a I'm not a Disney enjoyer. Yeah. I'm a Disney skeptic. Fair.
Aaron
02:02:51 – 02:02:57
Yeah. Ian has tried to talk me out of it. It just feels like an expensive way to wait in line, but I could I could be wrong.
Jordan
02:02:57 – 02:03:10
My my hat is Disneyland in California Okay. Not Disney World. Yes. Yeah. And I was as skeptical as you, and I went with little kids, and it it overcame my skepticism.
Aaron
02:03:10 – 02:03:18
I am sure that my point of view will change when they hit five, six, seven, eight, and we go. Mhmm. But right now, there's no chance
Jordan
02:03:18 – 02:03:19
you couldn't get me there.
Aaron
02:03:19 – 02:03:19
There's no chance. That's
Jordan
02:03:19 – 02:03:27
when I went also. I think when kids were, like, you know, five, seven, and nine, and even the five year old is a bit young. Aaron.
Aaron
02:03:27 – 02:03:29
Alright. Where can people find you, Jordan? Oh, yes.
Jordan
02:03:29 – 02:03:40
Okay. If you are an SMB owner and need an AI voice agent, go to heyrosy.com. If you wanna talk, more directly, I'm on Twitter at jordan gall.
Aaron
02:03:40 – 02:03:43
Except for next week when he's in Hawaii. But otherwise, he's on Twitter.
Jordan
02:03:43 – 02:03:47
And keep an eye out for for my threads. And Oh, boy.
Aaron
02:03:48 – 02:03:53
Oh, boy. For my upcoming podcast. Yes. Oh, I can't wait. Dude, this was to
Jordan
02:03:53 – 02:03:54
join me for an episode.
Aaron
02:03:55 – 02:04:02
I would love that. This was a blast. Thanks for giving me two hours of your time. This is so much fun. So thank you all for listening.
Aaron
02:04:02 – 02:04:07
You can find everything at mostlytechnical.com. Thank you to the sponsors for making this possible, and we'll see you
Jordan
02:04:07 – 02:04:08
next week.
Me

Thanks for reading! My name is Aaron and I write, make videos, and generally try really hard.

If you ever have any questions or want to chat, I'm always on Twitter.

You can find me on YouTube on my personal channel or the Try Hard Studios channel.

If you love podcasts, I got you covered. You can listen to me on Mostly Technical.