Welcome back everybody to another episode of Bootstrapped Web. Brian, my chair is broken. It's gonna make some sound during this recording, are you ready? Hey, there's a click. Are you gonna get to that? I don't know. I found like a piece of metal on the floor the other day that's clearly from the chair and I couldn't find where to put it back and I thought it was okay. It appears to not be okay, but I'll get a new chair. It's gonna be all right.
I'm sitting on the air on chair, which for anyone who, a lot of people love the air on chair, the Herman Miller, the hack that you need to do is go find an office that has laid off their whole office and they're just giving away or selling for very cheap, these used air on chairs. I'm sitting in one that's probably well over 10 or 15 years old and it's amazing. These things don't wear in tear and I've tried all the chairs, all of them.
I've tried the expensive ones, the cheaper ones. I've bought them, I've returned them. I come back to this and it works the best on my back and post-earn all that. So Brian says the air on is worth it. Okay. Yeah, but you can get it for like 300 bucks or 400 bucks. You don't have to spend a thousand bucks for it new. Like they are literally just as good used. Yeah, that's good to know. Unfortunately, there are still companies
going out of business these days. Yeah, I don't think things are going to get easier any time soon. This, my chair, is from the Card Hook office in Portland. It's just like a little IKEA conference room chair, but it's, I love it. It's so simple. My previous chair was just like that. Like very low back, like easy to find. Yeah, just a good shape. Yep. What's that we got our posture talk out of the way? Yeah, you know, we got going out today. I thought this week I would start to be a bit more
open about everything that I've like been planning and plotting. And I think part of the stress that I've had was like not being public about stuff. So I'm just going to go public with everything that I've been planning and like piecing together for my 2024 and everything.
So I always find that like I could tweak things in private. I could share them with a few friends in private, but you don't really know what's what until you put it out there and get feedback from a larger group of folks, but especially like potential, you know, buyers for a new thing. So that's, I'm up to that point now where it's like, okay, I could, I could stop like tweaking and just start putting it out there and then work from there
and learn, you know, great. Hopefully that feels liberating and not having a whole thing back. Yeah, some feedback. Hell yeah. I'll just get into it if you don't mind. I do not. So you know, I've been talking about clarity flow a lot and of course that's going to continue. We have no plans to slow down our efforts there. You know, got a bunch of good things cooking right now that are frankly just taking longer than I was hoping like our clarity
flow commerce feature is still in the works. I'm hoping sometime this month, we've got some marketing stuff, some like onboarding stuff that I'm trying to ship. But bigger picture, you know, I talked about this in the last few weeks, like it clarity flow is on its own runway. And in order to keep clarity flow sort of sustaining long term, like beyond its current financial runway, I'm going to need to figure something else out. And I've already
kind of ruled out the idea of raising more. I'm just not interested in that for multiple reasons. And I just don't think it's super wise at this point. So I need to find other ways to sustain myself and sort of stay in the game, but also ways to find to keep clarity flow running long term without the urgency of it, like getting through its limited financial runway. It sounds to me like all you really doing is shifting from a single bet approach
to a portfolio approach. That's well. Resources, time, attention, all this stuff. It's really like managing a portfolio of efforts as opposed to a single effort. That's exactly it.
You know, you articulated that perfectly because it's, I do, when I think strategically about things like this, getting, you know, if you rise above the products themselves and this metric or that metric or what you can do to improve conversions on this or that or whatever tactic, if you rise above all that, you have to, if you're an entrepreneur,
you have to think like an investor. You have to think about like, is this like continuing my investment at the level that I'm currently putting at risk because I'm not only putting like dollars in terms of like literally money from our savings into this business to sustain it. There's definitely that. But it's also years of my career. That's the other thing
that you're that that's actually different from investors. If you're the entrepreneur, if you're the founder, you are betting years of your career to make a business happen. Yeah. And when you put your bets that way. Yeah. And, you know, there's all sorts of ways to be successful in this, in this, you know, career path as a founder, right? And I feel like I've had a few wins. I've had plenty of challenges, plenty of fails.
But I'm at the point now where like three years in, like I'm still very motivated to hold and run and improve clarity flow long term. And we're going to continue doing that and giving it its small team, the resources that it has, keeping that going for as long as it can
sustain. But I'm, but I'm at this point three years in, like my calculation on my personal investment has has come to like a fork in the road where it's like I can't, I can't give it all, I can't be personally all in on this specific one singular, SaaS idea, you know. You know, it just didn't grow as, as, as much as I would have hoped by this point in its timeline. So, so that's going to be sort of like downgraded to sort of a side business
for a while and more of a portfolio approach. And the main thing that I need to get back to is like getting back to my roots of like bootstrapping, self-funded, self-funding, like a profit first mindset type of business. And you know, that is going to have to mean like not starting another SaaS business as like the main thing to try to depend on and build a profitable thing. So, I thought I could share a little bit about, I shared this
link with you. I passed it around to some folks in DMs this morning. It's at the site is instrumentalproducts.com. And this is basically the start of a new, I guess I'd call it just a new brand that I'll be developing over the foreseeable future into 2024. In a nutshell or in like a one-liner, I'm, and this is really needs like development over time as it as it starts to come together. But I describe it as this is going to be about
product strategy for non-technical and semi-technical founders. So, if we start there in terms of the focus, like this whole brand and company and products line around, you know, from, from this brand that I'm calling instrumental products, it's going to be about like, you know, helping founders with product strategy. And so, the one of the priorities here is like it has to
be like fast to start generating revenue and profit, right? So, it's going to start out with a coaching offer and what you'll see on instrumentalproducts.com is basically the first offer from this brand, which is my coaching offer. Like I'm actually, for the first time in a while, I'm going to open myself up for some private one-on-one coaching with some founders. And I mean, you can sort of see how I laid it out there. I'm
toying with different ideas on structure on this coaching thing. I have, I actually have one client right now and a second call coming up. And then, you know, if I can bring in a few more, there's going to be like limited spots that I can take on, but it's going to be mostly asynchronous coaching. Obviously, we're going to be using clarity flow for that. There's going to be an option where I'll be available for live sessions either with
you or even include me with your team. But I'm sort of hesitating, even calling it coaching, because I think of it more like I can bring, I can sort of plug in and collaborate with you and or your team on your product. So that can mean strategic planning on the product. That can mean technical design, architecture, planning, helping to make these like product decisions for your business. And if I'm, so if I'm working with like a non-technical
founder, I'm someone who I'm, I'm full stack. I'm, I'm a product person. I can build full stack and I'm a founder. So I can take these like technical product considerations and help to make business decisions off of those or maybe find shortcuts, find faster ways to bring a product or bring a feature to market. You know, tap mapping customer needs to actual features and, you know, shaping up road maps and things like that. That would
be like one general area where I can offer value. The other one would actually be getting sort of helping to like get my hands dirty in the actual design, the code, the, the UI, the architecture, not necessarily like being assigned projects or tickets or things to
deliver on that end, but I can help to coach advice. If you're trying to learn how to code and, and make the transition that I did, I can be the, the coach or advisor in that whole journey, which I really benefited from when I was learning and, you know, just helping people kind of like bootstrap and, and build their, their, their sass. So like there's sort of two focuses there, but the one that I've laid out in terms of the coaching is
more like the strategy and, anyway, that's, that's like phase one. Like that's like the, you know, because it, like the fastest way to start earning revenue would just be go direct right? Great. Sorry. So, service some sort of like. Coaching advising service right? Right. Handful of customers. Get to know them get to know the product gets another team. And value and, and right, I, I assume you don't want to turn that into like a cohort of
coaching, like that might be later on, but this is one out one on one. Yeah. I think this is more like, I wouldn't call it temporary. I think this will be sort of some sort some form of a long term offer from this. entity that I'm starting, but the coaching specifically, it's not like I'm trying to grow a productized service around this that will grow with a team. This is more of just like a step one in the evolution of what I'm looking to build here.
The other big piece that I'm thinking a lot about right now, and I want to start taking action on as soon as I can, probably in January, is just getting back to audience growth and building like a creator type business. You see that as directly linked as part of like a value ladder with this, right? Like the different entry points where free content then something smaller than something asynchronous and then ultimately.
Yeah, so coaching offers really a just to sort of bring revenue in the door, but be to start to really help founders and also for me to learn a lot about just I think there's a lot of things that I can learn by becoming like embedded in these in other people's product companies. So that's like the raw material, the early revenue generator, right? But then the then the audience growth is really about just getting back into the mindset of like taking that seriously.
I've sort of like backed off from audience growth the last several years. It hasn't been important to me as much as I was as I was focused on SaaS. I think now if I can build this like audience driven business, which is sort of like my roots, what I what I did years ago with like the productized course and whatnot. Now heading into 2024, I'm actually thinking a lot more about YouTube and going hard in that direction, putting a lot more effort into video based content.
YouTube has been something that I've been interested in for a long time and the last few years I thought about starting like getting serious about growing a YouTube channel, but I but I didn't because I didn't want to get distracted. I wanted to stay focused on clarity flow. But now that I'm looking at 2024 is like, okay, I want to get serious about growing an audience. I think I think I can grow an audience in this space. I already have a little bit of a starting point there.
Then it sort of comes down to like a decision between like which channel to get serious about. One thing that I've been doing a lot of like sort of learning in general about like the science of growing an audience is there are these discovery channels versus relationship channels. Okay, so a relationship channel would be like our podcast or my other podcast, open threads or my email newsletter.
Okay, and those are and those are relationship channels where somebody who already follows me is subscribed and we can go deep and gets to know me and my content and we develop this relationship. Right. It's unlikely that someone discovers you by typing in your podcast name into spy. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Discovery channels. Discovery channels are where you grow the audience. You gain exposure to more and more people at scale on a regular basis. And so okay.
And is that what we see people doing from their long form content and turning it into snippets and putting it into different discovery platforms? Yeah. I mean, discovery platforms are your social media platforms. So like Twitter, your board and your board and platforms Instagram and then YouTube is very. So when I assess all these channels, right, like I can go hard on Twitter or I can go hard on LinkedIn or I can go hard on like medium or or even like SEO and like blogging.
But YouTube is the one that I see has the most direct potential to to grow. And I think sort of plays to my strengths. I need a lot of like effort to put into it. It's a lot of time investment and a lot of work into quality and connecting with an audience. But the whole idea behind any discovery channel discovery platform is the more effort that you put into not only just production quality, but like topic and connection with a potential audience.
The platform rewards you with serving you up to their audience through their algorithm. YouTube does that. Twitter does that. LinkedIn does that. You know, it's just, it's just a matter of like which one plays to your strengths and which one do you see as the fastest way to grow audience numbers?
And this is what we see our friend Aaron Francis doing on Twitter and talking about it publicly and saying, okay, I'm investing effort, money, time into the production quality of my videos, how I do screencasts, what my camera looks like, my equipment, the background, because I see him sharing a lot of the results. He's actually focused on his YouTube channel, but he's talking about it on Twitter. Yes. Yeah. And that's sort of what I'm thinking as well.
The thing is I haven't started putting effort into this yet. I'm more in like the research mode, learning mode right now, but I plan to understand it before you start doing it. I'm not understanding. I'm, you know, I'm going to be investing in my office and everything and like, but you know, I do see a lot of potential on YouTube. I mean, it's nothing new. Obviously it's been around forever. But the like the creator economy or like algorithm system on YouTube just seems so optimal for growth.
If you can get really comfortable in video, which I've done some video work several times in my career and I've got a little bit of a starting point on my channel. It's not much, but I think it's something to build on. And especially if you can focus on topic and connection first and like how you package your content ideas. Okay. Is it, I mean, obviously YouTube is as wide of a channel as it gets when it comes to topics, but it doesn't need to match, right?
The topic with the audience like if I were a chef and I wanted to grow an audience around my cooking, TikTok and Instagram is where I should live. Maybe YouTube also, but do you feel a good direct connection between the people, the audience and the content and like the one who produce?
I do. Yeah. And I think that part of it is just going to be getting into the rhythm of producing videos every week and then as I get into more volume, then I can start to see where the points of what's resonating, what's actually tracking and producing results and then just keep iterating and improving on that.
But there definitely is already evidence of like there's a massive space on YouTube for like coding and programming and software development and design and tooling and building software products. That's a huge area on YouTube with a ton of activity. Same thing with like startups and business and bootstrapping and venture and marketing in general. That's also a big area.
But different pockets have like different gaps and I see, I've been doing a lot of research in these kind of spaces and that's where I'm going to be kind of focusing a lot of effort. So like one other concept that I'm getting kind of excited about as I think more about it is the idea of treating every single video or even every single like tweet if you will or blog posts. But I'm thinking a lot more about video right now. Treat every single one like its own little product.
Like every time you're planning a new video, even if it's a new one every single week, you got to think about it like who is this product for, who's the target customer, what problem does it solve for them, how do we attract them with a good thumbnail and a good positioning and a good hook, how do we keep them, how do we like activate them and keep them without hitting the back button, how do we, and then how do we actually deliver on the promise of what this video is all about.
That's how it needs to work when you're producing content as, like I'm thinking about it like if this were a full time job, what kind of like playbook would you need to run and that's what that would sort of look like. So anyway, that I think is where a lot of my effort and energy is going to start going into in 2024. It's like first, like get some coaching clients in the door, second, start to build, get the audience engine back up and running. That'll be sort of a long term ongoing effort.
And then third is like develop multiple revenue streams, right? So transition from just like coaching revenue into things that come about when you have a growing audience, right? So I think courses is the obvious one, but I'm actually less interested in doing courses. I'm more interested in maybe getting into some sort of community product, like a tight, small limited number membership group, maybe coupling that with like some small conference events.
So that that would be one potential idea for a revenue product at some point. Another one that obviously comes up comes about when you have a growing audience would be sponsorships, like direct sponsorships, especially on YouTube, that could be another channel of revenue, and maybe some form of courses, like technical teaching courses could come about as well.
I don't know when these things would come about, maybe later sometime next year, but it's like, again, like boiling a dialogue, step one, quick, fast revenue with coaching, step two, like focus on audience, step three, like expand into other revenue areas. You know, that's it. Okay. I'm interested. You're going to, you know, I have FOMO because I have no other option, but to focus on what I'm doing.
And I think these days, there's a lot of FOMO out there because there's just a bunch of interesting things happening. Yeah. The ability to build an audience, these different types of channels, different ways to monetize. I feel like I read a post about paid communities pretty recently, coaching tried and true, the cohort type of coaching. Yeah. Really interesting. I want to learn from you. I want to, I've been really going deep on J. Klaus's content and I just spoke to him on my other podcast.
Oh, I remember talking to him. He's really good at it. Yeah. Yeah. He's got his site is called Creator Science. Yes. That's right. I think like from a distance, a lot of this like creator content or creator education seems like, oh, that's so obvious or simple or not interesting. But like, I started getting into it, especially his stuff. Like he's really good at breaking it down and going and having like really more advanced insights and experts talking about how this stuff is together.
So I've been really enjoying his stuff. Yeah. I wanted to say one more thing. I guess like again, you were talking about like the FOMO and everything. Going back to like clarity flow.
Again, all this effort that I just described is really about getting to a place where I can keep sustaining clarity flow long term, you know, but removing the urgency and just and getting into like the opportunity to just build a more valuable business without without just resorting to like straight consulting or getting a part time remote job or something like that to pay the bills. Like that will be fine just to earn an income.
But like, I got to stay in the game and I earning an income is not enough. It has to be, you know, earn and earn profit now, but you have to be building for the long term. Like that can grow, you know. Yeah, that there's the portfolio type mentality or approach because some things are meant for immediate revenue and some things are meant for longer term value. Yep. Yep. Well, what do you got going on, dude?
So I'm very excited about a transition that is underway where I am going to be moving my focus away from the sales process, well, me being the sales process and being the AE and and and sitting in that seat and moving toward a combination of marketing and partnerships and investor relations, let's say. So our first AE is starting next week on Monday and then the second AE, AE equals account executive, basically salesperson starts on November 20th. So a week from Monday.
So within the next 10 days, we'll have two sales people on board and then I'll see the go to market team as complete in the sense that there are people in every seat. We have two people at the SDR seats that's to go out and generate opportunities. We have two account executives that do their own prospecting in addition to the SDRs and the goal there is they get so busy into the sales process that they stop doing their own prospecting and and then everyone can focus.
So the SDRs can focus on prospecting while the AE is focused on deals. We have a partnerships person. We have like a someone with customer success that has a lot of experience in the sales process and then we have like a sales leader in the consultant G and then all those people will be far better at those jobs than I am. So it makes sense for us to basically bring in professionals and then I can start to move my focus elsewhere.
So the last six months, it's it's really been at the individual contributor level of doing demos, doing deals, trying to get things closed, moving things forward and I am I'm not a pro at that. Yeah, that was a good breakdown of all the different roles. So is there like a manager or like leader of that whole like department of the business or is that basically you still like it's a combination of putting the people like the A's and the SDRs like in in the places and yeah.
So it did not make sense to me to bring in someone at the management level there because we need we need individual contribution. We need deals. We need prospect and opportunities and deals and partnerships and leads and all that stuff. And it is important for that team to be able to look up to someone for guidance, help, questions, coordination, communication, all that stuff and it's really a combination.
It's I'm the person they report to directly, but gee, the consultant has a lot more sales experience. So that's almost like their sales leader when they're like I like this approach. I think we talked about this like months ago when you were going through it a little bit but like the yeah, like like don't don't hire the manager first hire the frontline people first and then build the engine and then you know, bringing the leadership later on. Yep. Yep. And that was the leadership.
That's exactly right. So in the interviewing process, it was very, very clear that we are looking for people to come in because we met a lot of people who are very accomplished and much more suitable for like a VP of sales role. And some of them were really good and also very convincing that they can jump into the individual contribution role and do deals and then move up to management later. But I was worried to bring in anyone who hasn't like been actively selling, right?
Like the people that we hired like two weeks ago were selling somewhere else. Like this is what they do. They are at that level. They're hungry. They want to crush. And I mean, ultimately like what what's even like the thing that they would need from a leader is like market positioning like what you know about the customer and the product and the opportunity. And that's you. You know that. Yeah. Right?
Yeah. I feel like bringing in an outside leader and then you've got like the expertise in the process from G, but the bringing in an outside leader, I think would be more valuable after the ship is up and running and they can come in and find ways to improve. But and that's really the focus of the next 12 months is to prove that we have the ability to effectively pay sales people X and have them bring in 4 X in ARR.
That's effectively the argument to be made to the capital markets to investors is the product works. People stick around. They're getting value from it. We can go to market. We can close deals in this way with these numbers. Therefore, if you just add more sales people and more resources, then more growth and the enterprise value of that growth is more valuable than the dollars invested in. Therefore, good return. Now, there is a combination of things that are needed from those people.
A lot of it is for me, Jordan, where do we want to aim? We don't want to go from a million a year to a billion a year. And on every platform, no matter what, and say yes to everybody, that's like a recipe for a mess. So where should we look? Why? How is our relationship with Salesforce? So there's a lot of things there. Do we want to go after the marketing team? Do we want to talk to the tech team? Do we position this? What should our app on messaging say?
Like what should we experiment with next? But there are also sales situations that require experience. And that's where I'm lacking and where G is extremely useful. So sometimes you will get into a position where you kind of have to make a choice. You have to make a decision on what to do next. What does our proposal be? I remember this. I screwed it up with a great merchant. They were doing a hundred million dollars a year and I didn't quite know what to do.
And I felt good about the confidence to make a big offer. And I put out a big number. And it felt awesome that the company was at a place that we were willing to make that offer at that much money. What I didn't know because I don't have the experience is, you know what's much easier? Put it below 250K a year and you'll get approval much more easily. And you worry about getting to that big number two through years and today. I just didn't know that.
So there are a lot of things like that that come up that is really useful to have someone who just has a lot more experience than I do with enterprises. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. But what I'm excited about is the ability to focus on, you know, I say marketing, but it's really marketing with a lever. And that lever is this new marketing agency that we brought on. Yeah. You were talking about the content. Yes. What's happening over there?
Well, they are, this is the first time that we're working with a full service agency that has 200 people. So yes. So they, right, it's like good and bad, right? Like they're onboarding sheets. I sent them over to rock and he was like, tell these people to never ask us for a password in a Google Doc ever again. Like, you know, that's fair. That's fair. Yeah. So that's a fair criticism.
But it's also true that if when I go to them and I say, Hey, can you help us with X, their answer is we have a team that does that. Let me introduce you to the right person. So I am excited to be able to like flex in these different areas around like we're going to do a campaign around this new feature. Let's create a video, write a blog post and launch four ads on LinkedIn. I'll talk about the video that all leads back to a landing page. Can you build all of those for us? Yes. Let's do that.
Yeah. So they handle all the creative, all of that like yes. Yes. So then they're, they're, they're like an augmentation. So we have a great designer. And if we want to say, Hey, we'll, we'll handle the landing page. You do everything else than we can do that. Or we can just say just you just do everything because it makes sense for right now.
Are there like certain channels or like these campaigns like, Is there like, all right, this quarter we're focusing on this campaign or this channel and then. Are you going to organizing the experiments, if you will? Yeah. The organizing force is an account based approach. And so it really starts from our account target lists, right? It's not let's, let's go wide and see who comes into the funnel. It's not that at all. It's like these hundred accounts are perfect. Yes, where are they?
Where are they? Yeah. That's right. Here are these 6000 companies right between big commerce and Adobe commerce and Salesforce Commerce Cloud. And we, we are working with a company that does research. So we send that list and then they qualify like, is it what we think it is? Is it US bait? Is it US dollars? Is it predominantly e-commerce? Just to confirm that we're going after the right people. Then they'll go off and find five or six individual people involved in those companies.
And then that ends up as the basis for our marketing targeting. So in LinkedIn, you can upload lists of emails and say, these are the, these are the people that we want to see ads. And that's it. So it's an account based approach to the marketing because the only goal is to get them into the pipeline and into the opportunities and into the sales process. So we don't want anyone jumping into the sales process that makes no sense for us.
Of course, it will happen and some inbound and not a random stuff and you go to a panel on a conference and people will just come in. But the marketing dollars spent have a, like a finite circle that the, that the targets are all in. And like, I guess like the SDRs, they, they stay in sync with, with what's happening on marketing. Like, all right. So these, yes. This month, so they should be receiving some outreach. So that feels like where it is my job to coordinate.
Because in the ideal sense, SDRs, I just had the SDR stand up. It's like we have one on Monday. We have one on Friday. So on Monday, we say, all right, here are our goals on Friday. We say, how do we do? So on Friday, right now, I got some information that one of the campaigns is getting good feedback, which means responses. And it happens to be a campaign focused on offering a video. This is what we do.
Can I, would you mind it, or would you like me to send you a quick video showing you how your checkout would look? And people are like, okay, I'll see the video. You know, to me, that's, that's an experiment and it sounds like a little opening. All right, a little glimmer of light. Maybe we should walk through it. So let's just say, let's go with that example. Let's say that works. And next week, we do another few hundred emails about that and we get a 5% response rate.
And each video takes five minutes and it's not a big deal. And all of a sudden, hey, that gets people into the, okay, so let's just say we get that bit of information from the SDR team. That information needs to be distributed to the AEs so that when they're in conversation, maybe they should go forward with, hey, we'll put together a quick, you know, five-minute video for you.
And then what it needs to leap out of our company and over to the marketing agency and say, hey, this messaging is working. Let's run ads showing videos of other people's checkouts and then making the offer, do you want your own checkout video? Click here. Right. Random example, but like that coordination ideally all comes together. Like those resources are all like they're ready to, you know, ready to produce when you need them. Right.
And if, for example, it has to flow the other way also, if the linked in add that offers a very harsh critique of how awful old checkouts are, if that is resonating, then we should experiment with that in our SDR messaging as well because it's the same people. It's the same 10,000 people. So if we can find a right approach to our messaging and our positioning, then it should spread itself out through all of our efforts and ideally continue to work.
So that's like the general approach to the marketing. Nice. Yeah. I mean, since we've, like, niched down on coaches for clarity flow, the two channels that we have campaigns running in are one is cold email outreach and the other is SEO. And it just makes it so much easier when you know exactly who is a perfect fit for this product, you know, and what they look like and literally where to find them.
And we're doing a very, that example there is exactly what we're doing essentially with cold outreach is like, we have lists of coaches and we're sending them outreach messages. I mean, do you, do you want a quick video to show you clarity flow? And that's the funny subject. Yeah. But when I think of coaching, there's, there's, oh man, I don't remember the guy's name, Russ something. He's kind of a, I don't know how to describe it, aggressive marketer. Yeah, what's very, very good at it.
Client on demand or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Russ, something or other, but I, there's a lot to learn from his marketing. It's, it's really good. It's not like my style, but, but it's really good at it. Yep. Yep. Same thing with the SEO thing.
We've got a whole new approach, we're getting more into like programmatic SEO with, we've been doing stuff with AI and content now, we're really starting to dial it in because like, you can build like a tree of keywords that just stack down from like category to subcategory to subcategory plus specificity and then use case and job to be done and all these things like map to specific keywords that we can just sort of like generate a bunch of content around.
So we're doing a big effort there and working through like piecing together the engine for that so that I can hand it off to my VA to keep it running. Okay. It's been actually pretty like fascinating technically to see how that stuff, okay, comes together and that's, that's the current marketing product. Like the, the cold outreach is now up and running. So I'm not, my only input is just like checking the results on that.
The, the SEO is sort of the project, the marketing project that I'm like giving input on this month and next month and then that should be like sort of up and running with my VA by January. Yeah. So interesting. Oh, what else you see out there? Are you interested in buying an AI wearable? I, you know, I haven't, I haven't, everybody keeps talking about how ridiculous this video was and I haven't even watched it yet. I want to watch it. I didn't like the video.
It looks cool, but I'm, yes, I guess maybe I'm joining the criticism if anything. I like the ambition, but I'm a, I'm a little confused in general, but what I like is the new form factor. Like, so if you all I understand from a distance surface level, I haven't really looked at it yet. It's a pin that does, does it have, is it their own AI service or is it connecting to like chat GBT and the other ones? I, I think it's their own. It looks like a, it's like a wearable Alexa.
Look, I don't kind of see the point. Like you can ask questions like you can other devices, but what I like is the, is the, the interaction that happens on your hand. So you hold your hand out in front of you and it projects out an image onto your hand. So you show my hand on, on Zoom as if I knew it.
But on your hand, you can see, let's just say you listen to music like the pause buttons in the middle of your hand and then you can like move your right finger to go forward or your, or your thumb to like go back. So it is, it is interesting in that way where it is a new way to interact with tech that you're wearing and you're not on a screen and you don't click a button like that, that part's cool.
I, I like, yeah, I like, I guess I'm excited about the innovation in terms of the interface, but I don't see the problem that it's solving. I mean, either, either you can hold the play button in your hand with your iPhone or you can do it from your Apple Watch or, you know, soon enough, it'll be much more like voice act, you can do it voice activated. Yeah. I don't, I don't know. Where's it going? I don't know. I don't know if they're business applications. I don't know.
And even like Alexa and I never use Siri, but like, you know, we've got a little Alexa and now it's sitting. It's been, it hasn't left our drawer for like two years. Like we just don't eat. All right, you can use it to like set a timer and play a song, but do I need AI everywhere in my life all the time? I don't, I don't know. You know. I don't know. I feel like the big opportunity with AI is in work.
Like I use it every day at work, like on my computer when I'm, when I'm looking at my computer, when I'm working in code or when I'm creating something, that's where AI is is a monster game changer. But like at that point, I'm already interacting with my computer. I don't need a pin to do that, you know? Mm-hmm. I don't know. I don't know. I have no idea where it's all going. I was on a panel last week. I went to Austin, interesting city. And every freaking question was about AI.
And I want to be like, guys, there is no AI. What are we doing here? What are we talking about? But I was up there with like people from like big corporates like Southwest Airlines and so on. They're just enamored, obsessed. There is an upset and I see it in every single product that I ever, you and I are talking right now on Zoom and I see a new little button. I just noticed it the other day. It says AI companion. I don't know what that does, but I'm trying to click it. See what happens.
So when I'll show us up, hey guys, like every single product is like, is trying to embed AI. And sometimes it's cool and innovative, but sometimes it's just like, this is like, I think every company is trying to race so hard to becoming like an AI tool that it's like, all right, it still has to be useful and it still has to fit my use case, you know, like it make it better. Yeah. And easier or effect something. Yeah, I called it a marketing arms race on the panel.
I was like, in software land, everyone just is saying the words AI and then if your software company that isn't saying it, you feel like you're getting left behind, but you know, there's no AI in route. It's not there. What are we talking about? Yeah. But we'll see what goes. I was looking at it. I opened up a Google Doc yesterday. And at the top of the Google Doc, but you know, it's a blank page at the top, it floats something like right into the middle of the page, like in the content area.
It was like, it was like two, it was two or three buttons. One button was right an email. The other button was draft or right meeting notes, make an agenda. And I forgot if there was even a third button. But I was sitting there and was like, I don't want to do either of those things. I want to write a Google Doc about something else. Like, why are you forcing me to use AI for some specific use case that like I did not ask for this, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Kind of hard. But here's the thing.
I just see examples of that everywhere now. You know, like, click the AI button to do this thing. That's all right. Well, I didn't really ask to do that. Okay, I'm just going to contradict myself. 180 degrees for a second. As I am very focused and very committed to rally, my FOMO, a lot of the FOMO is driven by the growth of AI companies, not the open AI. God bless them. You know, that's beautiful what they're doing. It's amazing. And I'm pretty.
I did watch the Sam Altman keynote and it's pretty exciting to me right now. To see this is the first company, I think since Apple and Steve Jobs, where everyone sort of pays attention to their keynote. Yes. It's like Google and Amazon and Microsoft, I'm sure they all have their own keynote events, but nobody cares. Old and boring and horrible and risk averse and all the things that you took.
This one, like everyone's excited to see what they announced and they announced some pretty cool stuff this week. Yeah. And it's not like this disappointing like role you're icing. Yeah. Right. But tell me about your FOMO. What do you want to do? Like that moment of him just like putting together a custom GPT in like four minutes. Yeah. Okay. That's what it's gangster right there.
So those companies were cool, but as like an individual like, you know, hanging out on Twitter in between work, the combination of like bootstrap, like maybe solo founder, that mindset combined with these AI tools is really freaking interesting. So I see, you know, speaking of creators, Josh Pickford still at it. Just just a fountain of energy stuff at the wall. I love it. I mean, right, he's going at it zero shame about backtracking this and I do respect it. I love it. I'm a yes.
Yes. So we talked about like the difficulty that you we find ourselves in once we start seeing things publicly and you want to like, you're worried about what people think. Josh is like fucking yellow. Just let's just go. And it's beautiful. So what he's doing with detangled, I don't know if it's going to work. I hope it really works. If it does work, these like one, two, three person companies are growing much faster than normal software companies.
And that's that's interesting from a not change the world, billion dollar exit thing, but to make a multi million dollar software company with a handful of people remotely work wherever you want. Like if that's the new version of the for a work week, sign me up that that's pretty damn interesting. I don't think like just putting a very basic rapper on on AI APIs is is enough to say like you're going to have a fast growing SaaS business. You still have to have distribution.
You still have to literally be solving a painful problem for a target customer. Like that has to be true. But I definitely don't agree with the with the widespread criticism of these like AI SaaS tools that you're seeing on Twitter. Like they're like, oh, it's just an AI rapper and an old chat open AI just announced some stuff. I guess they just killed off all these SaaS companies. Isn't that funny? Ha ha.
Meanwhile, those behind the scenes, they're they're growing like crazy MRR and like because they're because their customers don't know anything about Sam Altman's keynote. They just they're just lawyers who want to buy a solution to read their documents. Yes. Amen. And that to me sounds like a great opportunity. I always look at this stuff as a non technical person.
And in that scenario, you do want to take tech and translate it over to non technical people that don't know about open AI and don't care who Sam Altman is and don't care about some new feature in chat D.P.T. They just know that for 90 on box a month, their job is made easier and better. Yep. That's it. And then if the launch of features and the press around it generates more search for the same category, you still win.
Yeah. Maybe you're not venture fundable and it's going to be amazing and you're not you don't have a moat and all the other bullshit terms. You can make some money. You could. I like it. And you can even still build a small SaaS that has value in itself that can also be sold for for many founders a life changing sum of money. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say a lot of us forget what that means. I think people listen to this podcast. They know 5 million bucks change life. My friends. Absolutely.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And in terms of that that FOMO like for me, I don't wish that I was doing like an AI SaaS instead of clarity flow right now. But I do have the FOMO of essentially like what what Josh Pickford does and anyone else who has the financial space and freedom to be able to go tinker the exploration to be able to go explore and tinker at will. I don't have that right now because I have to.
Yeah. Currently, just a month I'm focusing on clarity flow but next year it's about like reestablish the income and get back on a good footing as an entrepreneur. But once you have that as a as a self funded bootstrapped entrepreneur and your technical and you and you can build products like you can you know you can take a take a week or two to go tinker with something and see what see what it's all about and put put out a little side project side product.
You know just for the hell of it because you have the time and space and financial you know sustainability to be able to do those things and then you never know like that. Like you look at someone like him and I I fucking hate these these debates over like oh you have to focus on one thing versus having a portfolio or splitting your focus this and that like I of course like you don't have to do anything but be like you look at each
person has their own history of like their own personal history of wins and losses and you look at something like Josh like one of his little side tinkerings explorations among a long list of them for him one of them turned into barometrics you know like and you
just never know when one of these things is going to sort of really hit a nerve at exactly the right time and putting all your eggs in a single sass basket for for the in the name of like oh you have to focus on one for you know like some of that is just so painfully obvious but it but it leaves out like personal experience and circumstance of where you're at and anyway I'll I'll snout that rant right there so I hear you.
Oh I heard homie it's time yeah Friday it's time for a time for a ploma yeah I'm going to get into the weekend I'm going to bring my my daughter to her first nicks game at Madison Square Garden this weekend. Oh that's that's fun. Nice we went to see Hamilton last week. Oh did you? So beautiful. Yeah it was fantastic. I only sell the one on TV and on Disney. It looked like it's awesome.
Yeah but that's beautiful because it I mean it's the play right it's not like some dramatization should movie thing it's really just the play. But seeing in person was beautiful it was the the antidote to all the horrible stuff that we are seeing in the world it was beauty and art and history and music and I was like I was in I was in heaven there with the kids. That's great.
I have so many like so many great memories of like going to MSG and watching the nicks in the 90s and like those are some of my favorite all time sports memories and and I I just think that that building is pretty magical for sports. Yeah I'm pretty excited. And she's like playing basketball and L.A. Yeah yeah. Oh that's fun. Oh yeah. When you have multiple kids the the experiences like one on one are rare. Oh yeah. That's a thing man. I you try to do like dates.
Yeah we do we do dates and we do. This one's just going to be a day trip into the city but we one thing that I try to do with both my kids at least once or twice a year is take each of them on an individual like overnight trip. Some of them. An outing. Yeah cool. That's fun. Yeah it's tough with three. Yeah it's a lot. We're starting to do once a week. Regan and I go out with one of the girls. And then the other two get to stay home and hang out and you know play video games.
So everyone's happy and everyone knows that they have something coming up like the next week. That's great. Tonight my wife is going out with her friends which means I get a party night with the girls. There you go. Get some take out and watch a movie. Yeah. It's nice to listen everyone. All right. Thanks Robspin.