Fiddling With Your Funnel
#53

Fiddling With Your Funnel

Jordan:

Hello, everyone, and welcome back. Another episode of the Panel Podcast. We've got myself and Brian and a special guest. Let's kick things off. As always, I'm Jordan Gal, founder at heyrosy.com.

Brian Casel:

Yeah. Good to be back. Brian Casel, founder of Build Your Methods. Welcome, Henry.

Jordan:

Thanks for having me. Henry Poydar, founder of Steady. Runsteady.com.

Jordan:

Awesome. Henry's been on the podcast in the past. It's good to welcome him back.

Jordan:

Thanks for having me again. Appreciate it.

Jordan:

It's a beautiful summer Friday. End end of the day for us here. So let's have some fun. Let's cover what's on our minds.

Brian Casel:

That's right.

Jordan:

A little bit of an agenda, but nothing too rigid.

Brian Casel:

It's been it's been a few weeks. I know that Justin is still on on vacation, so I I he'll he'll probably be back probably next week. But, yeah, it's been a been a few weeks since we've been on the air. So, I mean Where have you been? What been have up to?

Brian Casel:

Oh, I I, yeah. I I had a surgery two weeks ago, and I'm I'm I'm definitely in recovery mode right now, and it's it's the surgery went went well, but definitely painful, and and it's it's been an adventure to say the

Jordan:

least. Surgery. Surgery. Well, good to hear that things went well

Jordan:

as well as recovery.

Brian Casel:

I'm I'm limping around. I'm, you know, but I'm I'm still working. You know you know what I'm learned, like, this has always been the case for me. It's it's the compartmentalization of life and work. Because, you know, between the surgery, I also had, like, two two weekends back to back where, me and Amy saw some pretty amazing concerts.

Brian Casel:

We we went out. Yeah. One week and we, yeah, we drove down to Philly and had a had a nice, like, date night down there. We saw the band, Death Cab for Cutie. That was a really, really good show.

Brian Casel:

And then, in New York at Jones Beach, we saw Muse. That was last weekend, which is an incredible, incredible show.

Jordan:

Beautiful venue.

Brian Casel:

Oh, Jones Beach is the best. I've going there since I was a kid. You know, it's a beautiful outdoor, theater which is set on the water. So literally the the stage like comes out of the water. There's like boats that that come up behind it and stuff.

Brian Casel:

Yeah. Great great

Jordan:

place. Yeah. Good weather for that.

Brian Casel:

Beautiful weather.

Jordan:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've I've been there at a concert when it rained. Not not as much fun.

Jordan:

Right. Yeah. Alright. Well, I I wanna ask more about the compartmental ization, but let let's catch up a little bit on my last few weeks and same with you, Henry, and then let's let's get into that and maybe some some business updates.

Brian Casel:

Yep.

Jordan:

And we'll tackle some timeline topics.

Brian Casel:

That's right.

Jordan:

So I I did not have surgery. I went to the beach for

Jordan:

a while.

Brian Casel:

It looks like it on video. Yeah. Got I got Yeah.

Jordan:

I got some color, you know, put put some work in. Beautiful Outer Banks. Lot of fun on the beach with the fam, good time, and was reminded of how much I enjoy reading when I have a minute, and how many ideas come out of reading books. And and another layer to that was more active conversations with with AI. So it went from, like, read the book, have an idea, write myself a note in Slack to look at later, and then realizing, maybe I can just explore that idea actually instead of holding it for later and then going deeper.

Jordan:

So it's like a Kindle in one hand, my phone in the other with Claude open. It was kind of an interesting experience. We can get more into that. Just to make you feel a little bit better, Brian, I did not have surgery, but I went to a foot doctor today and he used the word arthritic. Okay.

Jordan:

That was the first time I don't know

Jordan:

if that's

Brian Casel:

good or bad.

Jordan:

It's not good. Was I like, I'm sorry. What was that meant for me? Is there like a 70 year old man behind me somewhere?

Brian Casel:

Right. So, yep. Here it goes.

Jordan:

Yep. Me me me and my my big right toe. Okay. Yep. Yes.

Jordan:

Henry, how about you? What you been up to this summer?

Jordan:

Yeah. So I along the lines of arthritic, I guess, I

Brian Casel:

Speaking of arthritic.

Jordan:

Yeah. I try and kind of, you know, my philosophy with like moving around and being physical and wellness and all that is to not put up a zero. That's like my thing. It's like, so every day there's gotta be something, even if it's just some jumping jacks or something, but I'm trying not to put up a zero. And I was not putting up a zero kind of hard at the beginning of the summer, like actually doing some weightlifting and I was running a lot and some biking and things.

Jordan:

And I woke up one day and I like couldn't move. My back was like so stiff and it had been that way for a while. And I was also kind of, you know how you guys get when stressed in a business situation and you're in front of your computer, you tend to like kind of tense up and not move for a while, even though your watch is reminding you and all that. I was like tense. And so I asked my son about it.

Jordan:

I was like, my back really hurts, and he's a rower. He's a competitive rower. And so he's always had these back issues. And he goes, well, you know, last year, remember dad, I slept on the floor. And I was like, oh yeah.

Jordan:

He said, why don't you try it?

Brian Casel:

Surprisingly helpful, right? I

Jordan:

mean, it took a little getting used to that we can talk about all the methods to do that. But I I will say the outcome after two weeks of sleeping on the floor is I am healed. Like, it is Can you It is

Jordan:

can you define sleeping on the floor? Like, you set up, like, a little mat or or really as flat as possible and then a pillow and a and a blanket?

Jordan:

Yeah. Well, the first night, I was just in such pain. Was like, I gotta try this. So I just went to the closet, ripped out the our winter duvet, like put it on the floor, put my pillow down there, you know, got settled and then my wife was like, are you doing? Like that's our, like what are you doing?

Jordan:

No conversation ahead of time? Can I, how do you, like roll off the mat next to me? Yeah,

Jordan:

I got used to it that way and you know, you're a side sleeper, I'm like a side sleeper, stomach sleeper, back sleeper, I switch during the night. Okay. So quickly you're getting feedback from the floor. Sounds like Brian, you might have some Yep,

Jordan:

tough on your shoulders.

Jordan:

Yeah. So you start to adjust and you figure it out. But, you know, there's just, I don't know, I was waking up refreshed. I was like, I don't feel like I should feel refreshed. It's like, you know, it's kinda weird.

Jordan:

You're like down on the floor, there's like, you know, the, you know, the electrical outlets. There's like light coming through the bottom of the door. That's a weird thing.

Brian Casel:

Yeah. I I don't know if I can do like a whole night on the floor because of that. I guess I'm I'm a big, like, side sleeper Yeah. Stomach and and, you know, but I am a big like firm bed sleeper like all my life and, yeah, like and anytime I had back issues, just laying on the floor for a while, it always helped.

Jordan:

Yeah, that

Brian Casel:

too. I did have like some pretty bad lower back stuff at times last year and I've and it found out it turned out to be like, what do you call it? Like like hamstring tightness and and abs like every once I started focusing on that like that stuff went away but like the last two weeks now with the surgery recovery what you were talking about is like just don't put up a zero every day. That's been one of the hardest things for me is because I I can't do anything right now. Like, it I had surgery in like the hip groin area and like, so I can't I have trouble walking, and even, like, standing up for for more than a few minutes.

Brian Casel:

So it's

Jordan:

Oh, that's tough.

Brian Casel:

It's been it's been brutal, like, on the body and the in the achiness of of just not working out on a regular basis because I I am, like, a I gotta do something seven days a week, but also just, the mental focus. I I I'm a big I I walk a few miles every morning that's, like, big for me for my work day. I need to get that out before I work, you know. That's been that's been a challenge.

Jordan:

Yeah. So I I think this kinda leads into your compartmentalization. The the the physical is really hard to compartmentalize.

Jordan:

Yeah.

Jordan:

If I Yeah. If I don't feel well, I don't have a good day at work. And if I feel, like, strong and, I don't know, my stomach feels good, everything kinda feels fresh, it's almost like I'm able to be more ambitious and, like, focused and energetic.

Brian Casel:

Yeah. I mean Yeah. I'm I'm dealing with some of that, and and there is I I I'm definitely going through, like, some some pain stuff, but it's definitely much ease it's it's the pain is eased when I'm chilling on on the couch. So I'm I'm actually doing most of my work, like, in, like, the recliner chair, not in my office right now, which works fine, you know, but it's it's not my normal routine, and that sucks.

Jordan:

So So is your is your sleep disrupted?

Brian Casel:

A little bit here and there. It's not too bad, you know, getting through it.

Jordan:

I'm reading a book called, The Stimulated Mind and it's all about how all this stuff ties into longevity and brain health and things like that.

Brian Casel:

Mhmm.

Jordan:

You know, headline, the mind body connection is real. Like if you're not getting good sleep, it's bad for your body and bad for your

Brian Casel:

For sure.

Jordan:

Yeah. But it's bad for your brain. It's like, you know, linked to dementia. It's it's Totally.

Jordan:

No. Thanks. You

Jordan:

gotta keep Yes.

Brian Casel:

Also, like, actually, like, kinda speaking about, like, like, books and, like, where do we get, like, inspiration and stuff, like, I also use my morning walks as the time for I I consume a lot of podcasts or I'm consuming books, audiobooks, but I also use that time for sometimes, like like strict strategy, like I do a lot of voice noting while I'm walking Yeah. Which which then goes into Claude and I have this this strategy conversation. Sometimes I do that on audio too while while walking. And, like, that's a whole, like, it's productive for my body, but I also use that time as my thinking and strategy time most days. And to have that, like, cut out of my schedule is is awesome.

Brian Casel:

Not Yeah.

Jordan:

You're you're dealing with a temporary shift in Yeah. Your preferred normal workday.

Brian Casel:

Yep. Yep. Yep.

Jordan:

I I mean, maybe I'm jumping the gun, we're supposed to talk about other stuff, but

Brian Casel:

Oh, no. We're ready.

Jordan:

You know it's fun when you say that Brian, you know I was one of those people too. Was like the strategy time was happening it was combined for me meaning like sometimes I've had my podcast, have like my little notebook and I, you know, I do it on a run or I do it, on a walk and things like that. But what I had to start doing was separating. Like, now on those walks and runs, I carry my notebook. I've got my watch kind of recording, you know, the the athletic part of it.

Jordan:

Right? But but I'm digital free on purpose. Mhmm. And that has been really helpful, to have the space to just

Brian Casel:

So no It's not No audio input?

Jordan:

No audio.

Jordan:

Okay. No nothing.

Brian Casel:

It's hardcore. Okay.

Jordan:

Doesn't really work. I mean, it works in the woods. I don't know if it works in, like, a city street, but it works in the woods.

Jordan:

For me, it's just the if I'm listening to podcasts and my brain is engaged in that conversation, I don't get nearly the same creativity and ideation as if it's music. And what I find is when I go in that direction, I I find myself just lowering the volume on the music. Yeah. So it doesn't, like, dominate my thoughts. It's just underneath them.

Jordan:

I just get so excited when I'm listening to music. Like, I'm into it, you know.

Jordan:

What kind of music you listen to?

Jordan:

I know. I listen to a lot of music, but but I but, you know, a good song comes on or something, and I'm, know.

Brian Casel:

Yeah. Like, on those on those walks or or the workout stuff, I don't really listen. Sometimes I listen to, like, hard music when I'm, like, lift like, strength training.

Jordan:

Yeah.

Brian Casel:

Yeah. But, like, the walking stuff is all either audio input, books or podcasts, or me voice noting. And then music is, during the day, only instrumental music while I'm doing, like, work sessions, you know?

Jordan:

Do you transcribe your voice notes right afterwards,

Jordan:

or do you dump them Apple

Brian Casel:

voice notes transcribes pretty quickly. So I just so I'll I'll do, like, a ten minute voice brain dump, in into that. Then, like, within a few seconds, I can I can grab the whole transcript, and then I paste it into Claude? Then it's like, what do you think about this? Give me your reflections.

Brian Casel:

Ask me ask me clarifying questions. What are my what are the gaps that I'm not thinking? Like, I'll ask some questions like that, and then it gives and then I list this is so weird, but I like, I listen to Claude's response, which which is off often pretty long. Like, it's almost like a mini podcast about my situation.

Jordan:

You you know Very relevant to your topic.

Jordan:

Yeah. Yeah. And then The honest caveat, the load bearing, the blast Exactly.

Jordan:

It's Yes. Funny. I I I wrote this note over the over the week while I was having conversations with Claude alongside reading this book. And I I I didn't make it to the agenda for today, but we're we're on this topic now. And what I've been finding

Jordan:

Closing the shade.

Jordan:

Yeah. What I had been finding is like a a personality mismatch between myself and Claude. It it and it depends on the timing. Like, there's a time when I want Claude to be skeptical. But I was having so many, like, brainstorm type of ideas and it would immediately shoot it down, like, when you're an entrepreneur and you have a conversation with someone who isn't an entrepreneur.

Jordan:

And they're just like, that'll never work. Like, bro, we we can get there in a minute. But let it breathe. I I know. Dude, I Yes.

Brian Casel:

Sorry. Go on.

Jordan:

So I I I felt like I had to I had to yell. I'd be like, look, I I hear you. But the negativity, the challenge, like, that's later. First, let's let this thing breathe and develop. And I got I got frustrated.

Jordan:

I was like, I want I want a new person. I want a new robot.

Brian Casel:

Know, I I I've been doing I've been doing this this, like, you know, Claude as a as a thought partner or coach thing for well over a year. And I actually ran into that exact issue sometime in the last couple of months where, like, there there were a few of those walks where it got, like, kinda contentious.

Jordan:

Yes. Like, are you

Brian Casel:

And and, and and, yeah, and and I think what happens is, like, one one thing that it leans on is, like, you've been talking about this this current strategy. Now you're talking about something new, so you are becoming unfocused. Don't don't, you know

Jordan:

Right. Like, this contradicts what we talked about

Brian Casel:

last week. That so but then, then I I ran into the thing where, like, I legitimately changed my my thinking on something. Like like some new information came my way and I'm like, okay, I know I was excited about this thing last week, but, I realized some new information that like makes me wanna change direction. And so then it it sort of like pushes back on the idea of changing direction. And then and then I have to like give it my reasoning for for why so at first it's like gives me like a strong argument for like don't change direction.

Brian Casel:

Okay. And then I give my my reasoning for why I want to change direction and then it's like you're totally right those are like like that change definitely change direction.

Jordan:

Like, I can't I can't trust you. This is just something to bounce ideas off of.

Jordan:

Yeah. Not

Jordan:

to look to as a guide.

Brian Casel:

I will say in general, like I switched over from ChatGPT to Claude probably about a year ago for this type of thing. Because ChatGPT was way too, what what do you call it? Like,

Jordan:

Verbose? Too too many words or too skeptical or what?

Brian Casel:

No. Like to, trying to satisfy what

Jordan:

whatever Psychophantic. Psychophantic.

Brian Casel:

Yeah. That that just became way too annoying, and and when I switched over to Claude for all my work related stuff, I find that it actually does do, like, a better job of of giving, like like, a balanced, like, being constructive kind of thing, you know. But but you gotta you gotta know, like, its biases.

Jordan:

You know? When you when you go back and forth like this and you have these kind of discussions and where does it get, canonized? Like, what what's the system of record? Is there a markdown note that then the agent goes

Brian Casel:

Sometimes I do a lot of yeah. Like, a lot of it, like, I just literally start off the conversation and say, like, this is a journal. Let's talk about it. And that is just free form. But I do keep it all within a project folder in Claude So that Okay.

Brian Casel:

Like, the project is called builder method. So if I'm ever talking about builder methods strategy, it all goes in there. And that's to focus its context window. Like, what it what it remembers from previous conversations. Some but I do a lot of other work in Claude, like, planning, copywriting for the for the homepage of a of a site.

Brian Casel:

Like, that I will, like, say, like, okay, let's let's lock in what we've come come here, what we've come to here in an artifact so that I can export it out and bring it into Cloud Code or something like that.

Jordan:

I I really like that feature. Like, okay, great story. Put this on to a Google Doc. I'm like, okay, now I'm done with that conversation.

Jordan:

So for you, it's it's Google Docs.

Jordan:

It's Google Docs for artifacts. Yeah. But I treat Claude like I treat my inbox. And that is to say I abuse it and just assume I can just search things later. And I'm okay with it being ephemeral.

Brian Casel:

Right.

Jordan:

I'm just gonna I'm just using it right now. It's not it's not it's usually not something I need put into stone and needs to be remembered, and the company needs it in a certain way. Yeah.

Brian Casel:

I I you know, Henry, you were talking about, like, like, a brain system. I am starting to migrate more of my work off of Claude and into Claude code, and I'm I'm doing that using FlyRight, my my new product. But part of the part of the thinking behind Flyrite is that I do so much of this type of work, like planning in markdown files. Right? And I was constantly going from Claude, export a artifact of that markdown file, and then copy it and paste it into a local repo where I can continue that work with Cloud Code.

Brian Casel:

Right. But but now I'm I'm I just have, more of that work in my file system, which I can just open up in Flyrite, so then I can easily shift between, and then I'm using Cloud Code for everything. Yes. Like, I I can use Cloud Code for all of those, like, non coding stuff where I'm talking about strategy or talking about copywriting for something or developing some content, because because then having it in in local files makes it much easier to pass the baton over to the next cloud code that's gonna be coding this thing or using it in some video or or whatever it is, wherever that's gonna end up, instead of having to copy and paste between claude.ai and my files, like having it all in in the file system is a lot easier.

Jordan:

Yeah. I mean, I've I've gone through kind of like the the you know, I've done the the the personal knowledge management system journey for, years and years and years and, you know, was in Evernote for a while and then I was in Notion. But now, and we did this at the company level too. Now we have a repo in Steady. It's called Steady KMS.

Jordan:

And it's a very, loose hierarchical structure, but it's got an AgentsMD on it. And it's pretty much because the way that Adam and myself and Giovanni interact with the world is through a Claude code. Now actually through Soul because like I was getting, because it's actually a lot terserer than clawed code.

Brian Casel:

Yeah. But then that too, it's like if you ever wanna switch out agents Yeah. At least you have all your documents in the same That's

Jordan:

right. And that was the whole purpose. Like, Okay. It's just these are markdown files. Now my agents can read it.

Jordan:

I can read it. Mhmm. And then when I'm doing something in Cloud Code, you know, I you know, I I have a tab or whatever in my terminal, and it's around that piece of task or project or something like that. But it's it's using that knowledge base and also recording back to it so that the rest of the team can get access to

Brian Casel:

it. Love it.

Jordan:

Henry, how much are you shipping as an individual contributor? When when I hear you both cover this topic and and talk about it, it makes me realize how relatively disconnected I am from individual contributor work.

Jordan:

Yeah.

Jordan:

Where my work in Claude is is not really connected to the product in any way. Mhmm. There's some design stuff that I hand over. It's usually just like a screenshot of, like, here's why I think this makes more sense and this copy and this but it's pretty siloed off. So I don't I don't feel this need to, like, have that connected to something else that can then be used by other people or or it can be switched in the future.

Jordan:

So, yeah, when you think about your work, how much how much of it is more directly individual contributor, shipping code, shipping designs?

Jordan:

Yeah, I mean there's there's what I'm doing now and what I was doing a year ago or two years ago or three years ago. And I think two years ago or three years ago or even a year ago, I was pretty hands off. You know, I would I would poke my head into PRs and things like that that were around road map stuff or I'd find something that I wanted to fab fix, so I'd go fix it. But I wasn't driving code every day. That has totally changed because I can I've been coding agents doing things for me just all the time.

Jordan:

There's another, you know, and I think you guys have probably covered this. There's just some psychology and weird thing going on in my life right now with these things, you know, purring away at stuff and the dopamine of like, is it going or not? I just find myself, first of all, the output is, you know, light years ahead of what I was doing a year ago or even six months ago. Now I'm doing it in other things like we ship this whole open source project that's like a giant Go project that would have been, you know, taken in the old world like a year to do. And now we just did it in two weeks.

Jordan:

But at the same time, and I'm sure you guys have seen this, like, I'm I'm constantly coming back to my computer to figure out, you know, where where it's at and what it's working on and things like that. And it's like I'm the compartmentalizing thing is like getting shattered, you know.

Brian Casel:

So you're, what is what is your human team look like right now? So like when you talk about like these features and you're managing these these agents, so so it sounds like you are sort of like the owner of these individual features being shipped or or is somebody else on your team sort of

Jordan:

Yeah. So so, you know, so Adam, runs product and so he is, a designer by trade. He's technical enough to know our our app is in Ruby on Rails. He knows enough to get around in there. Javon is head of engineering.

Jordan:

He is a Ruby on Rails core committer. Knows all that stuff cold. We are SOC two type two compliant, so Henry can't just lob in commits to the code base and neither can Javon. Like, we we have to we have to approve each other's PRs and things like that. So I guess that that answers your question.

Brian Casel:

Well, I'm actually curious because, like, I'm of of the three of us, like, I'm the totally solo person.

Jordan:

Yeah.

Brian Casel:

Yeah. Yeah. Clarity Flow is is I totally run by by other developers under my direction, but so that's different workflow. I'm I'm mostly giving feedback in like linear tickets and then they're they're touching the code base and I don't. But everything else I do, builder methods, fly right, I am a solo builder, right?

Brian Casel:

So everything I'm doing is all me and and agents. So but for you, Henry, I'm curious, like, what is the interaction between you, your head of product, your lead developer, and and you getting involved in the PRs and the code base?

Jordan:

Yeah. I I would say, like, it's been one of the most, like, even the last two weeks working on this open source thing, like, it's been some of the most fulfilling times that I've had as a builder and a creator, like, because, you know, I I've done a lot of solo stuff. I've been like you, Brian. I I know I know how that feels. I I haven't done it in an agentic world, which is different, but I think it's

Brian Casel:

super wanna get into that too, but keep going.

Jordan:

Yeah. But I think the the interactions that we have, I mean, we are we are disparate. We're not sitting in the same room like Adam's in Sacramento, DuPont's in Ann Arbor, Michigan. You know, we probably get on a Zoom twice a week. Most of our interactions are Slacks, pull requests, and going back and forth that way, but it but it I I would say like I I feel I feel the superpower of these things working with me and and, you know, it's lighting up my brain because I'm figuring out new ways to solve a problem.

Jordan:

That's what's happening Yeah. Which I've always been interested in. But I think it also, you know, it's exposing to me the shift that that I think is gonna happen at bigger and bigger orgs, is smaller and smaller teams.

Brian Casel:

Yes. I I agree with that too.

Jordan:

We are working so like, this is a good team size to do what we're doing. Like, I think

Jordan:

What's the team size?

Jordan:

Three on these projects. Okay. Including myself. But there's been a lot of talk about like the one pizza team versus the two pizza team, right? Like Amazon traditionally had two pizza teams And then like Coinbase did a reorg and now they're a one pizza team and like Block did their reorg and all these things.

Jordan:

But I do think it is the future, like, because effectively we're acting like a team of 10 or 15. Right? So Yep. Like the the that the output of a team of 10 or 15 is kind of an an what three people can handle from a strategy and judgment and perspective which is where we sit with our agents, right? While they execute.

Brian Casel:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I completely agree. I I even do see that in my own solo work but when I I I work with teams sometimes and like that's that's the general picture too. It's, like, even if you have a large team, it's more about fewer cooks in the kitchen on each individual feature because more Yeah.

Brian Casel:

Like, one person or one in or maybe a designer and developer type person can come together and execute an entire feature from from idea to execution. But to me, like, the work now for for better or worse, and there there are some downsides to this from a flow perspective, but for better or worse, I think it's basically all planning and architecture and basically management, but it's also like design direction or architecture direction, but all the production work is like I don't touch code anymore. I just want to give like a little snapshot of something that I worked on in the last week. This is a totally new product that I I think ultimately I'm probably not even going to launch it.

Jordan:

Oh, bummer. I saw the tweet about it.

Brian Casel:

I I'm I'm still fifty fifty on this. Okay. It's a it's a what what I wanna talk about here is like the this is a stark stark difference in what it looks like to be a solo builder, especially a bootstrapper exploring a new product idea. So anyway, like the it started as like a big, like, scratch my own itch, and and it's been an itch that I've had for like fifteen years and and it started with a tweet that went sort of crazy, last week where I was like, you know what? I think I'm gonna build this thing and it it it is legitimately like a product and I see it I actually do see a product opportunity in this.

Brian Casel:

It's a very big competitive category, and it's also a very big business problem that it aims to solve. I don't wanna talk about what it is because I don't think I'm gonna launch it, but, but it's a big it's a big hairy problem that like literally for fifteen years, I talked myself out of building it. Like, that's it's way too big, too competitive, so So

Jordan:

it's a scratch an itch thing?

Brian Casel:

Scratch my own itch.

Jordan:

Okay.

Brian Casel:

Frustrated with all of the known tools out there, plus they're all very expensive, and they get increasingly expensive the larger you grow, and, I hope it's photography.

Jordan:

So drove enough motivation to build.

Brian Casel:

So so I I definitely had the motivation to build my own version of this tool for me to use and I think that's ultimately what this is gonna be. Just just my version to use internally to solve my problem for myself. Great. I built that in three days from from last week over the weekend and into Monday, polished it up. I'd say right now it's like 95%.

Jordan:

It wasn't fun?

Brian Casel:

Fun. Yeah. You know, but like, but in addition to that, I also spent a lot of time in strategy conversations with Claude, hashing out like, what does this product mean? What could the value proposition be? Who is the ICP?

Brian Casel:

If I were to launch this as a product, what's the what's the positioning? How should I price this thing? You know, it it is sort of a complex product. So, like, how does this integrate with key components in a business and other tools? Yeah.

Brian Casel:

So, like and and then, like, it's like, how do how do I message this? What what is the lead benefit that I'm gonna put in the hero and and and copywriting and then the brand, like, branding, all of that. I did over the course of, like, five or six days of like really focused effort, but it's me like every hour or so, I'm dumping in a big a big direction, a big like, okay, now we need to build out 20% of the whole of the whole product in in the next two hours. Like, here's here's the brain dump and and I've already hashed out the specifics, go. Okay.

Brian Casel:

So now it's now it's cooking on that for two hours. I go out to dinner or I go work on something else, and then I come back in and it's like, okay, now now I want now we're gonna start to work on the marketing site for this thing and and here here's the here's the homepage copy now, like, design the layout, you know, and then go, you know, and then it's like, you know, just let it cook. And just a lot of little little, like, hour long sprints of, like, direction, let it cook, and then I go do something else,

Jordan:

you know. So what so that's or are you saying that that was

Brian Casel:

Well, like, what what's interesting to me about this is I I'm still on the fence honestly, but I but I'm leaning towards a no on like whether I'm even gonna launch this idea at all as a product outside of just me using it. But I've already come all the way to built the product, built the marketing site, figured out the pricing, figured out the positioning, figured out like the value proposition, even started thinking about like the delivery mechanisms. One one of the things that's, like, stopping me is, like, alright. The the the marketing plan for this would it it would be very difficult, and very competitive, and there's a lot of open questions about that and where where I wanna focus my energy on this thing, like, this really something that I wanna put a lot of sustained marketing distribution energy into or not?

Jordan:

Yeah.

Brian Casel:

I I do still think that there's an art There's there's also it's it's like a product argument and a and a big cost savings argument to it. It it's, it's it's like an unbut like an unbundling play. It's like Yeah. Taking taking out this, like, big piece of these big expensive tools and you can run it yourself.

Jordan:

Yeah. Where did the dream of commercialization kind of fade when did it no longer feel attractive?

Brian Casel:

What I wanna mention is that, like, a year or a couple years ago as a bootstrapper, like, you would not go you would not build any of that Right. But before you really vet out the idea is like, is it worth really building an MVP of this thing and and even that MVP is gonna be a super crappy version of this product. And to me, this this is this is a wonderful version of this product that I built in a weekend. So like, it you what this means is, like, you can you can create if you have the experience in the chops of, like, like, product chops and and, like, you can build like a fully formed startup in a literally like a week and then even and then even get to that point and and test it and say like, because I I have passed this link around to a handful of friends to say, what do you think of this? What's your first impression?

Brian Casel:

And and like here I here I'm sitting like like saying like, you know what, I think I'm just not gonna not gonna go with it and that's totally fine. I only spent five days on this. Yeah. You know? And I and I learned a ton and I came out of it with my version of the tool that I'm gonna use.

Brian Casel:

So Yeah. Like, it's it's productive, it's it's a way to explore new ideas. Yes, it's not like I'm not saying like anyone in the world can do what I what I did, but a lot of people in our industry and a lot of people listening to this podcast can. Yeah. You know?

Brian Casel:

So, I don't know. I don't know what the like that that's

Jordan:

why mean, I think what you're describing is something that's a win win no matter what that a year ago or six months ago would not have been.

Brian Casel:

Yeah.

Jordan:

It would have been either a waste of an investment of your time, probably much more time, or tackling the hairy problem of like really stating it up in a way that would have to pay back the investment.

Brian Casel:

Yeah. And and it's like a big enough product concept that like maybe I could have even talked myself into like raising funding for this sort of thing. Right. And then and then I'm really committing years of my career into into this idea, you know. Yes.

Jordan:

It's cheaper to build, so it's I don't know the the decision is a lot lighter. Right. It's almost like practice. Like, you you you did a practice run. Yeah.

Jordan:

It just makes you better at your craft.

Brian Casel:

So And and, like, I've already built, like, so many internal tools. Most of them are just, they don't even make sense as out as external products. But occasionally, it's like, yeah, I'm scratching my own itch, and hey, this could be a product, you know, like like that was the case with FlyRight. It was like, yeah, I want this, but that's also a thing that I wanna start selling, so

Jordan:

I did.

Brian Casel:

Mhmm. Yeah.

Jordan:

So We need to add Vim support for that.

Brian Casel:

Right. It's on the list.

Jordan:

This feels like we're at a crossroads where we could we could talk about the the death of SaaS in the indie community. But before we go there, let's go the other way and and say, Henry, you just spent a few weeks building a project. Yeah. But with the with the intention of open source as opposed to commercialization, and it it sounds like it's part of the business strategy where it's directly related to Steady.

Jordan:

It is.

Jordan:

Yeah. What would you do?

Jordan:

So we are getting ready, you know, there's two there's two kinds of agents out there like single player, multiplayer. I think of single player agents as something that's tied to a user session. So all the things we're talking about are cloud code sessions. That's kind of like the, in my mind, the single player world. But what we're starting to see with our customers, they're doing that and they're they need coordination help because of that because developers are are going fast, much faster than they were before and if the outputs misaligned it's a it's a huge problem at this at this volume.

Jordan:

But what we're also starting to see is the notion of a multiplayer agent and that's where you've got a piece of software and I think like I've seen, Brian, you use OpenCLO in this way, where you've got it's a thing. It's running autonomously. It has a it has a job. It does it has a job title maybe or job description. It's not just a task runner, and it's and it's it's acting over here.

Jordan:

It's not it's on its own hardware or something like that. You might have like a support agent or some sort of like knowledge based librarian or something like that. That's what we have. So so we are we built we built into Steady what we're calling human agent features, and we're getting ready to roll that out so that we can have those types of agents participate in steady in the same way that people do and then then they're in the same coordination loops as people do. So for example, we have an agent called Product Pal and Product Pal's job is to take a look at our docs, take a look at what we ship, monitor drift, look at support conversations, make recommendations to the road map, fix little things with accessibility it's filing, PRs and like that.

Jordan:

It's basically a product management assistant. Right? But but in order for those things to work, they need to be dealing with fresh context all the time because we move fast. We're gonna change our priorities and our road map and stuff like that. So it can't just work with its, like, one shot memory of our road map from last week when we stood up the agent.

Jordan:

It needs to constantly participate in these loops. So we're getting ready to ship that kind of functionality into steady so that agents could participate in coordination loops just like people. And I think Jason at Base Camp, they were showing something similar I saw that. That they're doing. Like Marie is coming to Base Camp, and Marie can interact in Base Camp just like people can.

Jordan:

And that's that's what we're doing in Steady. A little more considered, I think. But Can can

Jordan:

you dumb that down for me one step and basically Yeah. Like, tell me how that works. So there's an agent that at certain times of the day has a few places that you wanted to look to gather more context and then run through some type of prompt or set of prompts that says, look at support, look at linear, use that to come up with new insight from today. Oh, okay. Okay.

Brian Casel:

So And and but the agent is also, like, a user, if you will. Or like

Jordan:

That's right.

Brian Casel:

Like, right? Like, it shows up as a person, quote unquote Yeah.

Jordan:

It shows up as a teammate.

Jordan:

Okay. So, like, logs into Intercom and, like, reads support?

Jordan:

Yeah, this helps you out.

Brian Casel:

I'm guessing Henry, so your team can message it or mention it.

Jordan:

Can message it. So like the other day it reported a blocker. Like I can't get into here because this feature flag or something like that. So Adam replied to it and said like, well, you know, we haven't released that thing yet. So check back again in a week.

Brian Casel:

Okay. That is huge. Like, because that is the the the that's the big problem. Right? It's like every individual person is just one to one with their own local cloud code.

Brian Casel:

Right. But as a team, all all being able to see the same agent and see the same like, even if like Henry, you were you were mentioned you were talking to the agent, someone else on your team can see your conversation with the agent and now they're

Jordan:

That's right.

Brian Casel:

They're now they're looped in and maybe they can contribute in and, you know Right.

Jordan:

Just like people would work together and we would have a stand up meeting and I would say I'm blocked and Brian would say I'm gonna fix it for you, that's that's the premise.

Jordan:

I I like the human relationship analogy because it helps me some conversations I want private. I I don't want the team to participate. I don't want them to read I don't want them to read my inner thoughts. Right. I don't want them to read Claude's responses, and I don't want them to read my responses to how I respond based on Claude.

Jordan:

But it it really it feels like Slack where it's like, this is just a DM with two people. This is a group of three people. This is an everybody channel. This is an everybody channel plus some outside contractors. So you can kinda decide where where these agents live.

Jordan:

Our point of view is that these coordination loops need to be structured for them to be effective. Okay. And so if you just do a thing where you add a Slack, where you add an agent to a channel, there's all kinds of ways that that could go south. You're like, who owns the agent? Who can participate?

Jordan:

Like how can I interact with it? What is the communication guidelines you've established? And maybe you're good at Slack and you've figured out exactly how people should interact across these channels. I've never seen a company have that down pat, right? Yeah.

Jordan:

So as soon as you add agents to the mix then it's really confusing.

Brian Casel:

Yeah.

Jordan:

And in particular the harnesses are built around chatting with them in order to configure with figure them, which I think is a big mistake. So like if I have like OpenCLAR or something like that, I have to like go to OpenCLAR and open up a TUI or open up a thing and like why didn't you connect with WhatsApp yesterday and send me my thing?

Brian Casel:

That's been one of the most like frustrating things for anybody trying to use an OpenClaw or I actually switched over to Hermes, which is like the same same idea.

Jordan:

It's the nightmare. So it's like literally

Brian Casel:

like

Jordan:

like

Brian Casel:

a patient operating on themselves, you know. Literally literally like they they can like open themselves up change one setting in their own configuration and then they and then they break and then they just stop responding and then you got to go in there manually.

Jordan:

Yeah. It's you know so so well, anyway, I'm I'm I'm coming around to where where what the original question you had, Jordan, which is, like, what what did you do for the past couple weeks on this open source project? So we are getting ready to stand up human agent teammates in steady as a feature. We're beta testing with some customers. We're gonna make it GA.

Jordan:

But our own agents are this because of Hermes, because of OpenClaw, because of all the things that we've tried, we're this giant brittle mess, like Docker instances with NemoClaw. Like, we're SOC two compliant. We just can't have, like, OpenClaw or MacMinis running. We have to figure this out. Right?

Jordan:

So so we were just we hated all the harnesses that we tried. The most reliable one that we had was Claude routines. So I don't know if you guys have tried Claude routines but basically it is a way that you're in Claude in co work and you have it run a routine at a certain time and it does things for you and it's very powerful. But it's tied to, it's still single player world, right? It's tied to me.

Jordan:

Like if it goes to Slack, it posts me. If it runs a PR, posts me. Like all these things because it's tied to my connections. So what we did is we built an open source project as one does called Open Routines. And the idea with Open Routines is that it is a simple, securable secure, and durable framework for running a single multiplayer agent.

Jordan:

So not a fleet of agents. It's not like a giant harness platform, but it's basically a, a Go repository, And you download GoPen Routines and you say, Open Routines agent new, just like you would with a Rails app, and it boots up a repository for you that is can be deployed in one click to Docker that is the agent. And within that, repository, you have what we call routines files. They're routine markdown files. They have little cron things in them, and they run stuff for you on a schedule.

Jordan:

They can be triggered too, but they run stuff for you to schedule. And then the memory is a separate branch within the Git repo. And so the idea is that you have this portable agent thing that is always being backed up to a Git origin and that you treat just like deployed software. If your company requires that your agent needs CI, you can put CI on it. If it needs to be locked down with no ports, you can do that too.

Jordan:

But and by the way, out of the box, there's no ingress to it at all. If I wanted to change what the agent was doing, I would like pull down the repo, change its routines by hand. I usually have to use coding agents to do it and then deploy it and it just keeps on working. So that's how we're running

Brian Casel:

That's a similar tag. That's a similar pattern to to how I've I have used Hermes and a little bit of that Claude co work, like, so running on this, like, dedicated separate agent Mac mini next

Jordan:

to my

Brian Casel:

main one, but it's been very frustrating and and come and, like, just funky to especially for that reason, like, whenever I wanna update the routines there, you know, the the recurring processes that I want my Hermes agent to do, those are just all in skills and I have to be able to push my skills to the repo that it then pulls down the latest version of those skills and that's a whole process in itself.

Jordan:

It's a whole yeah. So what's what's the like, help me connect. You you said you're you're pushing this into into product, into steady, but also spinning it out on its own so people can use Yeah.

Brian Casel:

Part open source, which part is part

Jordan:

of Steady. So sorry, you know, and it's this is like one of the the artifacts of being like too close to this thing is when you have to like pull up and explain it.

Jordan:

Yeah. Yep. That's right.

Jordan:

So so, yeah, I'll back up and I'll say, like, Steady is trying to accommodate multiplayer agents with a human agent set of features. So that's what's happening on the Steady side. Now what we realized is we weren't confident in any of the ways that an agent that is gonna participate in Steady can be run. Like we tried Hermes, we tried Open Claw, we tried all of these things and it was a big mess. It was like we wake up one day and Product Panel just, like, stopped working, you know?

Jordan:

And it's like, why? Go to Hermaze and, like, deal with that incredibly awful interface and, like, trying

Brian Casel:

to That's terrible.

Jordan:

Like, get around. And and, you know, those things are all Vibe coded. You can just see it. Like, there's not It's brittle. Just, like, packed stuff in there, and and it's and it and it's opaque.

Jordan:

So, like, from a security perspective, I'm like, what's gonna happen when the SOC two auditor looks at our product pal thing, which has access to our customer database in a sense? Like so so anyways, that what's what spawned building open routines, which is a separate open source project for running your own agent.

Jordan:

So you're you're using it internally and then also releasing it at the same time.

Brian Casel:

That's

Jordan:

right. Yeah. Very good. Interesting. It's all adjacent to the same issues and problems you're trying to solve.

Jordan:

That's

Jordan:

right. And I kept I kept, like, cringing in pain for you about SOC two compliance, but it also sounds like it's a very important element for you to deal with because your customers are gonna deal with it.

Brian Casel:

Right.

Jordan:

And so you're confronting the same set of issues that you would get completely wrong if you if you didn't have it in mind.

Brian Casel:

Think it was, I think I was I was tweeting with, with Tyler King, founder of Less Annoying CRM. He was on this show a long time ago, like a year ago or so, and long time friend, I go to Big Stone Tiny Comp with them, and he was talking about how how they just recently shipped was it SOC two compliance or or HIPAA compliance? I forgot which one. But, like, that's the kind like, it it was an example. Like, they're, like, a ten year old plus SaaS company that's been around for a while, big team, they've been doing well, fully bootstrapped.

Brian Casel:

But like they always like held off on like that because of the investment of going with with SOC two or HIPAA or whatever it was.

Jordan:

Right.

Brian Casel:

But they just shipped it like, last week, and I was asking about it, like, was the investment like? Did you have to do, like, a big, what do you like, credential, like, like, hire some company, and he's like, nope. Like, turns out, it's it's really just, you just figure out what's required, and it was, like, two developers in Cloud Code. We did it last week.

Jordan:

I mean, that's another story for us because what we did is we paid the way the SOC two type two compliance works is you have to have your stuff kind of, like, in all of these buckets in a way that an auditor can come in and take a look at it and say, over the past year, you yes. You've been compliant with SOC two. And so what happens, you have, like, the Drata and the Vantas of the world who sell you a thing that goes on your MacBook, that goes in your GitHub repo, that basically it's a bunch of performance there. It just gives your employees stupid security tests, like never use the word password for your password and stuff like that. And then compiles it, and then an auditor

Brian Casel:

Use comes password one.

Jordan:

Yeah. And the auditor comes in and looks at it all and says, okay. You're good or you're not. And then we found our audit this year, the auditor was was asking us so many questions, and they weren't I was like, well, we have all this stuff in Drata. What are you doing?

Jordan:

And, like, they were like, yeah, well, we need to so I was like, what am I doing with Drata then? And then I went to Claude, and I was like, how what would it take for us to have a a GitHub repo that our compliance agent, which we now have, dumps all of the artifacts into all the time so that it's ready for the auditors? So because the the Vanta and the Trada, you know, it's $12.15 grand a year.

Brian Casel:

This is

Jordan:

Just get rid of like that's Painful. Yeah, mean, there's no getting out of paying for the auditor. There's no getting out of paying for a pen test, the document, the evidence collection

Jordan:

This they're

Brian Casel:

gets into, this is a really good example, and I think it speaks to some of what's talked about on Twitter this week is, like, is is SaaS dead or where where are the actual opportunities anymore? Yeah. To to me, one of them or at least one direction or one shape that I find interesting now is unbundling. You know, these these big entrenched expensive companies, their their whole value propositions is like, that whole problem is big and hairy and complex and we have some like black magic that we figured out ten fifteen years ago, we're gonna charge a ton for it. But once you start to break it down into its component parts, it's like, you know what?

Brian Casel:

Like, at least 80% of that problem is software that can be built with Cloud Code now. And Yeah. Maybe 20% is is legitimately hard, but does the 80 need to to come with the 20 or can the 20 be broken off and you hire some company or you pay some other tool or person for that and then you build your own in house thing and like what's interesting about that as a like, how do how do you how do you take an optimistic view if you're a if you're a bootstrapper or entrepreneur or founder and you're seeing all these tweets fly by saying SaaS is dead. Like, what one thing that I'm sort of interested in, and this also relates to that idea that I've hacked on this past weekend is like, you know, I I do think that it's true that most small businesses will not just be vibe coding their own versions of every tool themselves. Certainly not.

Brian Casel:

Right. Like, we know that. But there is a world where product people, people who, you know, like us in our industry can build that 80%, that 70% product that and and, like, whether it's, an installed version that you sell to customers or, like, a provisioned instance of of your software, and then you can offer, a tacked on service that's, like, a custom fitting for each individual. Like, there there are business models that we can get creative with now that are actually totally doable, that that don't have to look like the the the traditional, like, SaaS, CRUD app Well box for every spreadsheet kinda thing. You know?

Jordan:

I you know, I I've been thinking about this quite a bit. The the notion of custom software versus an agent with a job, like, those were kind of separate things before, but I think they're they're coming together a little bit. So and I think that is the opportunity at the indie level. And and I'll I'll explain why. I think when you no.

Jordan:

I don't think that a business like the air conditioning place is going to replace their CRM with something that the one of the air conditioner guys vibe codes.

Brian Casel:

Right. But

Jordan:

I do think they are going to find an agent to do a job for them. And the footprint of that agent is probably gonna include some A

Brian Casel:

little a little piece of software that makes.

Jordan:

Right. So that's why I think, Jordan, you're, like, sitting pretty in this kind of in this in this world because that's that's the offering for them. It's like, okay, well, I'm getting this thing. It's answering my phones and it's also handling this list of customers or something like that. Like, I think that's where it gets sort of subsumed.

Jordan:

I think it's the opportunity it's I don't know how to best describe it, at the agent level or something like that. Yeah, mean, stuff might be vibe coded and you might be programming the agent in that way to do those things because it is gonna feel like custom software, but I think there's still gonna be a vendor.

Jordan:

Yes. Yeah. Like that's what Being that's kind where turns into.

Brian Casel:

Yeah. Being that vendor to me is the opportunity, especially for indies. Right. And it doesn't have to look like the old school, like, custom software agency where where you're selling these, like, 100 k projects to every,

Jordan:

you know So what is it? Is is it more flexible software instead of instead of handing over a tool that says, this will allow you to accomplish what you're trying to accomplish. It's handing over a tool that allows the user to describe the way they need something accomplished and then have it more proactively.

Brian Casel:

Probably looks like it depends on every every case, but to me, it it looks like build basically the tool. Build, like, the the base version of this tool, install it or provision it, instances of it in in every client's business. And part of the like, the other thing that I'm interested in now is this idea of, like, agent first design of of software. Like, yes, I'm building, let's say, a Rails app with a with a nice user interface. You can do all the things in in the app, but everything in the app also needs to be able to be done with my own agent, whether it's Cloud Code or Codex.

Brian Casel:

So, like, one of the sort of innovations in this tool I I built over the weekend is, like, it's not just a nice Rails app to do the thing, it's I could have Claude Code do the thing for me and do it in a really excellent way. I can even I can even bake in, like, special skills for the agent to be able to operate the software. So I can go into the business and say, okay, installed your software. We've set you up with hosting on this really trusted hosting provider. It's all it's all set up, and then here is, your your repo, and you can talk to Cloud Code and get what you want out of it, or if you need something more visual, you can also open up the the web app and and click around.

Brian Casel:

But either way, it stays in sync with your agent, and and then that and then it and then it's like the agent is how they can operate it. The agent is how they can get their own self support. The agent knows their own business and how they use it. But, like, as a business, I can I come in and sell them license to the software, I sell them my support, I sell them my installation fees, I sell them the, the custom fitting project, and, like, those things don't yes, like people hear this and like, alright, that's that's just a services agency?

Jordan:

Yeah. Was gonna say, it doesn't sound great. You know what I mean? As a business to run.

Brian Casel:

Dude, like there there are plenty of ways to streamline that and and automate a lot of it with with agents too. Like Yeah. Yeah. It's not gonna be like set it and forget it like, a fly away SaaS, but like that, you can you can easily build a life changing business on that, and that is and that is taking advantage of of, some some new just plain realities in in in what the tech where the technology is going, and I and I also just think that it's like that's how we future proof our new our new products that are starting today. Because if you if you just start up a competitor to, whatever QuickBooks or, you know, what pick a category.

Brian Casel:

If you just do another one of those, like, a, those categories are way too saturated to compete as a as a newcomer anyway. That's always been the case. And b, like like AI and and the like, that's just gonna make everything else harder. So, like, the more you can take a more of, an agent first approach that, like, you're you're just playing in the new game from the outset, you know.

Jordan:

Henry, were you gonna say something?

Jordan:

I was gonna say, I mean, effectively I think what you're describing, Brian, is these businesses, you're selling The business is not selling a tool anymore. And by the way, like, we used to say, what job are you hiring your tool to do? Right? That was a whole product management thing. But now it's really coming to fruition because I think there's a really strong business to be had with a system of record of some sort with any kind of way to access it, and that's what that's kind of what you're selling.

Jordan:

Right? So, you know, the vibe coding of a CRM, the vibe coding the the code is never the hard part. It's like the where's the data live? Who owns it? Like, what happens when it goes down?

Jordan:

Like, all that stuff. You could still sell that. But what you wanna be doing is is your mode is the system of record. It's the data behind it. Right?

Jordan:

As opposed to the tool or the way that you access it. So if you're just at the tool level, I think it's gonna be tougher than if you're at the agent sitting on the top of a system of record. And that's what we do with Steady. Mean, Steady, we have a great UI. We spend a lot of time at our UI, but at the end of the day, like now we have MCP, now we have CLI.

Jordan:

A lot of our customers just hit it with Cloud Code or with Cloud Cowork or whatever. They never see our UI. They never see the mobile app. They never see the iPad stuff. They never go to but they're interacting with the system of record behind it.

Brian Casel:

Yeah, like for existing SaaS, like the more you can go in that direction, that that's one of the things that's like, it's a good it's a good first step, but but a lot of them just don't go far enough in terms of like what what you make available to agents. What a lot of them a lot of like the the MCPs that that the established SaaS are coming out with, it's like, hey, you could do the basic stuff, but when it comes to, like, the most important and the most complex part of your app, like, yeah, you still need to go in in there and click around, like Yes. To me to me as a user, I wanna be able to literally have Claude code do everything. Anything I wanna do.

Jordan:

Makes me think of Jack Dorsey's new product, Buzz. Yeah. Right? And and the whole pitch there is, right? Agents are, what is it?

Jordan:

Like, equal citizens. Right? On on par with humans? The same I haven't really

Brian Casel:

seen like, I heard it I haven't really seen what what is the idea? Like, what is it?

Jordan:

I I think it's a bit like Slack in terms of a place to communicate, but but it

Jordan:

I think they're they're they're billing it like a

Brian Casel:

Slack killer.

Jordan:

Agent for Slack? Yeah.

Brian Casel:

I mean Yeah. That's the hack I keep doing.

Jordan:

Slack has done kind of, Brian, what what you're describing with old school things have done. Like, if you go to Slack right now, there's a weird thing. There's like apps and there's bots and there's agents and there's Yeah. They haven't they haven't figured out the paradigm. And I think what, and it's kind of a mess when you add an agent to Slack, it's a total, like, what am I doing here?

Jordan:

Is this a bot? And so what they're saying is, yeah, we were done with that. So we wanna have this thing that just works really well with I don't know because Slack actually has this functionality right now. I don't At most basic level,

Brian Casel:

it's just like, make it like bring your own agent. Don't make it like click our magic AI button. You know? Right. It's tough.

Brian Casel:

Allow anyone to just like make your your app and your interface and your database accessible to any agent.

Jordan:

Mhmm. Yeah.

Jordan:

I I think it's cool to watch the creative destruction. It's just something new comes along and and new companies, new products are genuinely better positioned than existing products that are trying to figure it out and have to rethink the the logic of how their product works.

Jordan:

Yeah.

Jordan:

Which is opportunity. And maybe a lot of the fetching on the timeline around, you know, indie hackers and and revenue going down and things becoming harder. It's partly just friction to a new reality, and it sucks to have to change. And part of it's also real that there's more competition. There's it's more difficult to find customers.

Jordan:

My worry about it is

Jordan:

mean, that's a real part of the problem that I that I've seen in some of these threads. Right? It's not

Jordan:

In terms of what? Finding new customers?

Jordan:

It's like they're they're these traditional funnels are just gone.

Brian Casel:

Yeah. Because so so many of them like dependent on like Google search positioning.

Jordan:

Yeah. I think that's a big part of it is that a lot of indie hackers found creative ways to find customers that didn't include a formula of how much money am I gonna spend to acquire a customer.

Jordan:

Right.

Jordan:

Yeah. And that was, you know, it's a beautiful thing to just put your effort and creativity.

Jordan:

You have

Jordan:

to find customers, the partnerships, and SEO, and and all of a sudden that just it just comes down to

Brian Casel:

Yeah. Because I I think the most common marketing channels for the bootstrapper, the self funded indie hacker, whatever whatever how you wanna call them, like, is like like Google search, right? Or you know, the other the other thing that is also kind of closing in is like platforms, right? Like being on like the Shopify App Store, which is like that's getting way more like untenable for most businesses

Jordan:

and

Brian Casel:

Apple

Jordan:

App Store. Same thing.

Brian Casel:

App Store. Yeah. Apple App Store. Like all of that, like, becomes more just not not really an option anymore. So then then it's like the the remaining options are like audience, like like big big persona, which is not very good for soft for selling software.

Brian Casel:

It's good for selling communities and courses and training and coaching and stuff, but it's not great for selling a SaaS. So, I don't know. Alright. So, let's shift gears and talk about the thing we always love to talk about here, of course, is funnels, like sales, customer acquisition, the pathway of like how let's do like some round of updates on like how do we look at our business from the standpoint of like, we we sort of know who we're attracting, what are the actual mechanics of what's the first interaction, where do they come in, how do they become a lead, how do how do we nurture them to and convert them on board, like what is that whole thing? Because like for me that's been a big focus in the builder methods department over the last, I'd say I've been really focused on this for about a month, maybe six weeks now, because the longer story over the past year has been like kind of like a lot of luck, like and I think that's a is a sign of like a lot of businesses that that get off to a pretty good start.

Brian Casel:

It's like they get off to a good start despite not having a dialed in mechanical funnel every step of the way. But I think a lot of that, a lot of those wins and a lot of the big spikes and the big kind of viral successes and stuff, that sort of start to come back down to earth for me over the last two or three months in in terms of traffic, in terms of YouTube views, in terms of sales, all of that kind of came back to a steady state and a little bit of a lower state than I would like. So that's when I started to say, like, let's look at it. Let's look at every part of the funnel and where are we dropping off users where, you know, what's inefficient and there there were a whole lot of inefficiencies. Right?

Brian Casel:

So that that's the that's the premise. I can get into the specifics, but why don't we do, like, a a big round on, like, what what are you guys thinking so far?

Jordan:

Henry, you mentioned earlier that you're getting an uptick of inbound. Yeah. What's what's going on there?

Jordan:

Yeah. I and and and actually, you know so I I would say, like, we are not dialed in on Funnel. We are don't have these mechanics down. It's a total moving target, and it's because our product is evolving so fast and where we show up is evolving so fast. So trying to pin that down is a real problem.

Jordan:

So, you know, I will do my best to ask about how you heard about us, and I'm getting, I am not getting a consistent answer on that. So it's really, really frustrating. I will say that when I think about Funnel, I think about probably the same way you guys do, which is what I want my funnel to be and how I want it to look and how I want product led growth to work and all of that. And I always try and optimize for that. And what's happening along the way, it's like everybody's got a plan until you get punched in the face, is that people are coming in at different parts of the funnel and they're in the product but they're still in like the awareness stage.

Jordan:

It's like the funnel is just not clean anymore.

Brian Casel:

Okay.

Jordan:

You know what I mean? And so so I find myself in product demos and in sales disco calls that are all over the map in terms of sophistication, in terms of using AI or not. Like, we are in little bubbles sometimes if you're on X or on Reddit and stuff like that with using these things. And the spectrum is really, really wide. I think there are metrics out there.

Jordan:

It's like only like 4% of people or something have used AI. I mean, we we're living in the

Brian Casel:

The the gap is so huge. Like, even with, like, professional, like, business like, people in businesses, if you are not in the tech industry, man

Jordan:

Not yet. It's an Yeah, you're not there yet.

Brian Casel:

It's so huge that the gap in like

Jordan:

But but but I think the thing that's interesting to me, I'm seeing amongst conservative, traditionally conservative sales leads, like financial institutions or things like that, they are wrestling with it in this you can end up with, oh, we like, I have a customer that's a big gaming company, and they have a no AI policy still. There's a no AI policy. And still, there's developers who are kind of doing stuff with their own credit card and their Cloud Code stuff. So that's kind of like a different

Brian Casel:

That's a big question. I I get that question a lot from from members. It's like, my company, like, have really strict security protocols, like Yeah. And we're really limited on what we're allowed to use.

Jordan:

Or like the later this year, we've we've called up, Anthropic, and we're all getting our cloud code, our cloud licenses, you know, with some token limit or something like that. Or they've got, and this happens a lot at conservative companies, they've got Microsoft there and everybody's got co copilot. Some salesperson sold them copilot, and they're just mercifully disappointed by it. And they think that's AI. You know?

Jordan:

So I have to, like, constantly tailor a pitch because I'm thinking about there's an education piece. There's where are you in the movie?

Jordan:

You can't make all the assumptions that you make in a conversation It's we're having.

Jordan:

Okay. It's really hard to build a funnel on that particular, I don't wanna say we're in Blue ocean category territory, but we are kind of like offering a coordination system for people and agents that didn't really exist before, you know? And so I have to explain all of that, like why this helps you. You don't need to have agents for Steady to work for you. So that's a thing I have to deal with because now I'm like positioning the website in different way, you know?

Jordan:

So

Jordan:

Your conversations with VCs versus customers must be

Brian Casel:

very big gap. Very big gap.

Jordan:

It's a big gap.

Jordan:

Here's where we're going, I'm not even gonna tell the customer where we're going.

Jordan:

Yeah. I don't know, but you guys have different thoughts. But if you're asking me like about funnels, like I am not a good person to tell you

Brian Casel:

Okay.

Jordan:

What to do, what's not to do. I hope to learn, I hope you guys

Brian Casel:

Well, I also think that the reality of most funnels really is like you have a funnel. It's like whether you really know what's happening in that funnel or not like because you have customers, you have plenty of tons of demand coming in.

Jordan:

Yeah.

Brian Casel:

People are buying, so, like, every individual customer has some funnel that they're going through. It's like, it it is really hard for us to know. I I have a super hard time understanding. Yeah. But I'm obsessed with that question, like, did you even come to my video?

Brian Casel:

Why did you come to my website? Why did you take out your credit card? I am obsessed with that question, and I never really know the answer. You know?

Jordan:

I I was looking at this product called Stanley today, and it's like some another marketing product. But their onboarding is basically you scan a QR code and you interact on messaging, right? But but onboarding is it's not top of the funnel, but, like, when you're getting in it. But I think when I Adam and I talk about this a lot, like, we wanna bring our onboarding, like, closer to the top of the funnel. We're not big fans of the, like, put a chat interface on the top of your website kind of thing.

Jordan:

Mhmm. But there needs to be something to give an IKEA effect to to to build a thing that so that you can start to put together the pieces of value in your head rather than us just telling you, which is a lot of I

Brian Casel:

tend to think that, like, most if if I if I could generalize this in a way, I I think most of the time, we are we are too close to our products and we overthink it, usually usually ultimately the motivating factor in our customers minds is so much simpler than we realize, you know, like it's something so basic.

Jordan:

My friend told me to try it.

Brian Casel:

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Or like or like benefit number one of eight was like you had me at one.

Jordan:

It's like yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. Interesting.

Jordan:

It sounds, Henry, what the picture that comes up in my mind is like you you need to build your funnel with temporary structures because you don't know where it's gonna end up. So it needs to be able to flex and have different entry points and just have a general direction that leads into a conversation and a process, but you you can't build the exact path, very structured, exactly what you want people to do, first step, second step, third. So, like, that's that's much later on. Just hasn't solidified yet.

Jordan:

Yes.

Brian Casel:

Yep.

Jordan:

I will say, though, on the topic of onboarding, we are overhauling onboarding, and we are doing it in just an entirely different way than that would be traditionally done in the past where it was very deterministic and you knew all the inputs and outputs. I think and these tools kind of make it so that we can be flexible in this way and make kind of concerted calls to LLMs to help us along and get the customer to value as fast as possible.

Brian Casel:

Like is it more free form? Let the customer do stuff and take some actions and then we can react off of that?

Jordan:

A little bit of that, but also we want to make it maintainable for ourselves. So like the dream for us is like some we're thinking about a specific persona,

Brian Casel:

and

Jordan:

we would have a YAML file that kind of described what their journey would be to get to this activation moment. And that that would be a thing that we could test and and iterate on and just deploy, like, change the YAML file deploy, change the YAML file deploy. So, yeah. And I think there's there's more opportunities to be to have, like, the some probing and get some more information about the customer and to distill that information faster and getting into

Jordan:

Well,

Jordan:

like a a wholly personalized onboarding flow.

Brian Casel:

Like one one of the, moments in my funnel, that I had over the last week or two, Well, like, so so I I again, like, over the past six weeks, I've been on this big, you know, adventure to to try to get my funnels really figured out and, like, more mechanical. Right? And I landed on the idea of, like, two flagship free workshops, eight, like, recorded workshops. So one of them is is has been available. The other one is coming.

Brian Casel:

But, like, all my videos are pointing to one of these two workshops, and all my emails eventually get you to these. And then if if you watch the sixty minute workshop for free, then you're gonna get a sequence of emails, that, you know, reinforce the workshop and then nudge you nudge you and try to sell you on joining Builder Methods Pro. And I Me and and Claude, like I I The first of those workshops I've had out there for like two or three months, but it had no follow-up after. It was just like this free thing and like eventually you'll figure out that like Build A Rethods Pro is like worth buying, right? And you're you're getting these other emails from me like every week or so.

Brian Casel:

I send a manual like newsletter broadcast and you see my YouTube videos. So like like there's a I've always felt like I'm putting enough out there that like people will eventually come around and that was working for a while, but then I put these email sequences live like two or three like two weeks ago, they started sending which means over that ten, fourteen day period, people start hitting, people who saw the workshop even multiple weeks ago, they start receiving like email number two, and then five days later, they're seeing email number three and email number four, and and I'm putting, like, a a special, like, coupon code in some of these things and, like, what do you know? Sales start rolling in. And it's, like it's, like, literally, like, like, could, like, visibly see the uptick in daily sales once these emails started hitting. And it's, you idiot, people read their email, you know, like just like just just put these mechanics in place, because I I I had like tens of thousands of people on my email list that were like sitting idle, non buyers yet.

Brian Casel:

They have taken actions that indicate that they are very interested in this material, but they just have not had that nudge

Jordan:

Right.

Brian Casel:

To to come in, you know.

Jordan:

You gotta ask for the cookie.

Jordan:

But this but the load bearing piece for you. Right. We said, you guys should have a podcast where you're only allowed to use the phrases from. You're absolutely right. Honest That

Jordan:

changes everything.

Jordan:

Yeah. But the but the m dash. But you but so it's the top of the funnel is the YouTube video.

Brian Casel:

Like 99% of people are finding me on on on YouTube. Yeah.

Jordan:

Yes. You you, Brian, you almost have, like, like, an experience funnel. Like, they need a certain amount of information, certain interactions. Right? It's not like a dashboard with onboarding that you need data to get set up so you can get to a certain point.

Jordan:

It's like, what information, what videos, what offers do they need to see, which emails So like

Brian Casel:

Yep. The way that I look at the top of the funnel now, it's definitely YouTube. I I really want to expand that out. I wanna do more shorts. I wanna I've done zero on like Instagram and stuff.

Brian Casel:

I've I've started dabbling a little bit on LinkedIn, but I really wanna do I I really wanna branch out in terms of like top of funnel exposure, but right now it's all focused on YouTube. And every YouTube video points to one of those two workshops that I talked about. Because even like before a month ago, all my older videos, it was just like, I've got this really cool weekly newsletter, you should join it, right? And there's no actual value and did bring in subscribers every day, which eventually lead to sales, but now it's much more like, you want a free sixty minute workshop where I go deep on the step by step process, here here it is, and it's literally about the same topic that this video is about, you know. And so so that's happening now, and but then the other thing that I have is a collection of free tools.

Brian Casel:

This gets to like the open source thing. Up until recently, like two weeks ago, all of my little free frameworks, there there's one called Agent OS that is still popular for some reason, even though I don't really use it anymore. Design OS is still very popular. I've got a newer one called PRD Creator, which sort of runs my whole current process. These used to be just freely available.

Brian Casel:

They they are available on GitHub, if you wanna go over there. But on my website, they used to be just like, here's the docs, here's the link to download, but now I made it behind an email wall. So if you stumble into it from my website or if I tell you about it on my YouTube video, I'm gonna point you to my website where you can get that and you'll enter your email address to at least get

Jordan:

But then they're in the drip.

Brian Casel:

Then there now I have sequences that seems like, here's your PRD creator skill that I just made for you, and and then over the next coming coming days, then it's like, I see that you have not joined my free workshop on become become the builder. So you can click here and get instant access to that. And so now you're into that fourteen day sequence,

Jordan:

you know. So talking about Just like And I know, Jordan, you've done this too. But but, you know, the the builder buy thing, like, you thinking about that at all for these kind of funnel mechanics, like your email systems, how all that works, how the loops work, the sequences work? Is there a vendor you're leaning on that you're replacing with Brian stuff? Like how do you think about that?

Jordan:

Yeah. Are you a consumer Or or

Jordan:

Jordan. Like are you considering, know, that, is a SaaS that's going away, in other words?

Jordan:

Not not for us. I don't know about you, Brian. Maybe you have more specific needs, but we we use Drip, and it's good for us.

Jordan:

We use Drip. Yeah.

Brian Casel:

Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm still as of today, I'm still on Kit, formerly ConvertKit, which has been fine, but it it definitely to me has some challenges on in the, like, the automations department.

Brian Casel:

I've been looking closely at at switching over to Bento, and Jesse from Bento has been super helpful, and they've got a great product over there. I would say they do probably a better job on, like, the automation stuff, and they also do a better job on the agent accessibility stuff that we were talking about earlier. So that's a contender for me. I'm still considering it, but I'm also, you know, I've been in this rabbit hole over the last couple weeks building my own version of that too. Like, that's that's a real option for someone like me.

Brian Casel:

So to make it to make it, like, to to just remove all the paper cuts, to to make the automations and the logic work exactly how my business needs them, if I can build that and install it and run it myself, that's

Jordan:

Well, I think the the larger point is, talking about Funnel, exactly how your business needs it seems to mean my business is gonna need it a different way every day. Like, I'm gonna have to

Brian Casel:

like, I need to be That's my big thing right

Jordan:

now. It's compromises constantly.

Jordan:

Right. That For sure.

Brian Casel:

Because because I've already seen firsthand the benefits of having my website and my membership platform be custom. Buildermethods.com is a Rails app that is not just the marketing site that you see on the front, but every customer who buys is coming through my custom built application where I not all, like, yes, I'm delivering all my premium content through there. I've got a library over like a 100 videos in there. There's like a members directory in there. So that But then there's a back You did build.

Brian Casel:

Then there's a back end just for me. Yeah. And in there I've been able to build custom analytics dashboards. I have funnel analytics dashboards. I have my source of truth for all of my customers.

Brian Casel:

It's all it's it's my own database that I control. Every every one of those funnels, every one of those forms, I can I've custom built the integrations with Kit, and and the tagging logic of, like, and, you know, I'm tracking all of it. And track every, like, video view that you make, and I'm tracking every page view. I have surveys everywhere, like how did you find us? What's your goal with this?

Brian Casel:

What's your motivation? All that stuff gets logged into my own database. So I can, like, I can build these I'm not I'm not even leveraging all all of it, but I have it all in my database that I can literally in in twenty minutes, I can ask Cloud Code, spin up a a Funnel Analytics dashboard for me for builder methods, and it literally did that last month, you know. So, like, the benefit of, like, not relying on, whatever, pick your learning management system or or pick your CMS or your WordPress or or whatever it is, like Sure. Because, like, like, yeah, like, I could I could grab one of those off the shelf, and then I could spend hours, like, trying to customize it to fit all of my exact needs, and then I can try to wire it up to a Mixpanel or a Google Analytics or a traffic thing over there and, like and my Stripe data, and then I gotta build a custom built integration.

Brian Casel:

It's like, what am I doing? Why don't I just why don't I just build my own thing and have it all Right. Controlled with Cloud Code? Like, that that that has been the case for my website and my membership. Why why shouldn't it be the case for how I communicate with customers?

Brian Casel:

Like, that's that's my thinking on it now.

Jordan:

So Yeah. You've been evolving basically your your CMS CRM platform together.

Brian Casel:

And that's why another one of these, like, product shapes that I think is interesting and and I think there's opportunity. Again, this goes along with like unbundling, but like, yeah, like I'm not interested in becoming a sender of email. I'm not interested in becoming a Stripe to manage the credit card processing. I'm not interested in becoming a server provider like a a Heroku or Cloudflare or Cell or whatever you use. DigitalOcean, I'm not going do those things, but those are infrastructure.

Brian Casel:

I'm happy to pay whatever the infrastructure things are. When it comes to software and interface and business logic, I want that. I want my I want my hands on it. I want my cloud code on it. Like, you

Jordan:

know Well, that's why I think, like, the this this notion of a business where you are selling kind of custom access to a system of record means, like, you're as the customer, you are owning your business logic because it can be a 100% custom. But again, like,

Brian Casel:

don't Yeah.

Jordan:

I wanna own my business logic, but I don't wanna buy a server. I don't wanna be in a data

Brian Casel:

Exactly. Yeah. Exactly.

Jordan:

Yeah. Yeah. I I worry about the size of the market for that, but that's a different conversation.

Brian Casel:

I agree. Yeah. Like, and and that's actually why I stopped short of, like, launching this idea that I came up with over the weekend.

Jordan:

Okay. Like, some people who, you know, want it will love it, but doesn't necessarily mean to it'll make a great business.

Brian Casel:

Yeah. Like, how many people in the world are exactly like me? Yeah.

Jordan:

Yeah. That's right. Alright.

Brian Casel:

So why why

Jordan:

don't we why don't we take this home? I'll talk about my my funnel update, and then I'll talk about the book, so I stop teasing And then and then we'll call we'll call it a weekend, is what we'll call it.

Brian Casel:

We'll call

Jordan:

it a kickoff of the weekend. So I am on the other side of the spectrum from the two of you in my funnel. My funnel's I I was about to say dialed in. It's not that it's dialed in, it's that it's dial in able. Right?

Brian Casel:

It is I think it's way more dialed in than

Jordan:

I mean, it's it's working for like 18 Yeah. So so it's relatively dialed in, but you you can tweak every part. And I've switched advertising agencies recently. Very interesting and a big focus because that's where everything starts. That's the top of the funnel.

Jordan:

And the a few weeks ago, I talked about some sign up experiments. I was extremely excited about the results of one experiment that had a huge positive impact in one direction, But we're now maybe six, eight weeks in to these experiments, and we've this is the most and the fastest we've ever experimented. Like, we are really just like, alright. Give it two weeks and, like, switch where the credit card is. Switch how the sign up flow works.

Jordan:

And my conclusion after all these experiments, I would sum up to say that there is no free lunch. We can't just move around where someone creates an account or puts a credit card and everything gets better. It's just doesn't work that way. There are just trade offs and in many ways, it's like the people who are most motivated, who really want the product, it's basically the same people that end up buying anyway. And so it it's really helped us come to terms with the fact that, okay, if that's the case, then how do we want our funnel ideally?

Jordan:

So where we are right now is we want to allow people to create an account right away instead of the extended sign up flow because we lose a lot of people there. The most motivated people continue on, but it also means we lose a lot of people who would create an account and be in the admin that aren't there. So overall, like, one of our, like, not rule, but one of our conclusions is all things being equal, we prefer more people in the admin. More people with accounts, More people with their emails on file and the real people and they're interacting with our actual admin. And then you are just faced with the fact that you gotta make your onboarding better.

Jordan:

It's not about the sign of flow and where this thing comes in and that comes in. It's no. You gotta put yourself in the user shoes.

Jordan:

Yeah. And you

Brian Casel:

got And this thing just needs to click.

Jordan:

It yes. And you need to think about their psychology and their experience and where the moments are and where the breakthrough is and where the value is. And that that is difficult. As the product matures and as the product expands, it becomes more difficult. And so we are really we're moving over from, like, sign up flow experiments to, like, onboarding experiments.

Brian Casel:

Mhmm.

Jordan:

And so I'm looking forward to giving another update in, another month or so as we figure that out. It feels Is

Brian Casel:

the difficult thing like the challenge I've always had with that sort of thing, like in like in Clarity Flow and stuff has always been like, there's like two or three big jobs to be done in this product, and I don't know what each individual customer wants to prioritize. So where do we start with like, it's not a linear every single customer is gonna follow step one, two, and three. Some customers wanna start with step three. Yeah. We Like, how do you

Jordan:

So we we still have in mind that the person signing up wants a phone agent to answer their phone. So we we we've we're kinda leaving that assumption alone for the time being. Our product is expanding. We just built CRM integrations. We now have web chat.

Jordan:

We have texting over a website. We just launched integration with Facebook and Instagram. So if you get a DM there or someone, you know, pings your account on like, hey, where's my order? That can connect to our Shopify app. And so, like, it it keeps expanding out.

Jordan:

So it's more it feels more dangerous in terms of entry point. So for now, we're still keep the assumption in place. People are coming in for the phone age. And that that at least makes it digestible. Okay.

Jordan:

So that doesn't mean we have to, like, show them a crossroads as their first part of the experience. Which direction do you wanna go? Because that sounds like the worst possible thing to be forced into into doing. Mhmm. And and from there, we still think there are there are these moments.

Jordan:

We we I think of it almost as like refilling the the fuel tank, the the the demand fuel tank or the excitement fuel tank. So you come in, you create an account, right, you're at one version of a high. And then before we had a decent amount of steps before you can get to calling the agent on the phone. And all of it for us is aimed toward what percentage of accounts created put their credit card on file. Because that that for us is the the tip.

Jordan:

That's the it's basically showing enough intent that we we can clear the deck and say, hold on a second. This person needs everything because now now this is a real potential customer. It's not just an account, and we convert an absurdly high percentage of people who have a credit card on file. So it's really, like, the determining factor is have we built up enough trust and excitement with this product for you to determine that not only have you created an account, but you're also gonna put your credit card on file, which is the gate to being able to take phone calls from the outside world. So you can test all you want, but when you want the agent to answer real phone calls from real customers, that's when you need to put your credit card on file.

Jordan:

So we kinda just happen to find a a point in time in the experience that's directly related to trust and confidence. It also happens to be cord line up perfectly with when we start spending real money on you because the phone calls and the and that cost more when it's Yeah. So it's almost like we're optimizing for that more than anything else.

Brian Casel:

Very nice. So I also like the idea It's good. Of like

Jordan:

It always feels like we're a few clicks away from from breaking out into the next level. Alright, Henry. It's up to you and I to bring this to a conclusion because Brian's computer has too many agents running, one of them has broken through and muted his ass. Right. Cool.

Jordan:

So let's have a great weekend. The Predator's Ball, that's the name of the book. I would like to talk more about it. I'm still in the middle of it. It's a it's about Fiction?

Jordan:

Non fiction?

Jordan:

It is non fiction. The Predator's Ball is the name given to a party that was put on every year by Mike Milken and his know

Brian Casel:

this book.

Jordan:

And Drexel. Right? It is an older book.

Brian Casel:

Yeah. Yeah.

Jordan:

Okay. Just super fascinating. It almost retaught me finance in some ways. It talks a lot about capital structure, debt and equity, and junk bonds, and corporate rating. Just like fascinating.

Jordan:

So I'd love to get into more of that next week. But for now, Henry, thanks very much for joining us.

Jordan:

Thanks for having me.

Brian Casel:

Appreciate

Jordan:

it. You're very welcome. On behalf of Brian and myself Yeah. Thanks everyone for listening. Talk to you next week.