Continuing The Conversation About LeadSurveys With Gordan Orlic WPCP: 135

This week I continued my conversation with Gordan Orlic, my partner with LeadSurveys.

Like I said in the podcast last week, this has been a massive education for me (what that I’m loving) and each step of the way gets me more and more excited about LeadSurveys.

This week I wanted to talk about all the pieces that have had to come together, such as servers, payment gateways, payment processors, etc. This will probably open your eyes a bit to how this all works when it comes to the tools and apps you use in your own business.

We also talked about the branding and marketing, how that’s evolving and our “Name the Fox” contest! Yes, we have an awesome mascot that is a fox, but she needs a name.

Here’s the full conversation with Gordan (transcripts):

Kim: [00:00:25] Hey what’s up everybody. Welcome to the second official conversations of Kim. This is part 2 from last week. Listen to the conversation with Gordon Orlic and I am we are talking about lead surveys and and how that all started. We’re going to pick up that conversation today because we have a lot that we did not cover. Gordon what’s up. Thanks for being here.

Gordan: [00:00:46] Hey thank you for having me again.

Kim: [00:00:50] Everybody after after last week I’m putting the transcripts in and realizing we talked a lot. That was a lot of words that was fun. So today we’re going to go over. I think we’re going to start with the direction of getting started. So for everybody who didn’t listen last week I’d recommend going back and listening to how Leadsurveys came about. The idea of it. You know what we started looking at the different the different tools that we looked at but just what we wanted to do to differentiate lead surveys from other things in the market why we wanted to do this. All that good stuff. So that’s all in last week’s episode. So let’s kind of start with the next step which would be what needs to come together in terms of the different pieces. And obviously this most of this is going to in your Gordan. But there was a lot this has been such an education for me. But all of the things that needed to come together before we could even we meaning you get into coding and I’ll talk about the content and marketing and stuff so the different things that we had a look at

Kim: [00:01:58] We’re obviously merchant accounts but the processing of recurring payments in this space is different than say just a membership right. So what did you need to look at Gordon to get that. And can you share where we ended up.

Gordan: [00:02:12] Yeah sure.

Gordan: [00:02:13] So in essence today it’s infinitely more easier to take money from people legally obviously than it was five years ago.

Gordan: [00:02:28] You have Paypal and stripe and all of these different card processors. And just by glancing at things you would think that you can have things set up in five minutes. So just click click next next. Open an account give them your bank account number and you can start receiving payments. And that is true.

Gordan: [00:02:53] However as with anything in life if you have certain demands if you have certain things that you know that you need then all of a sudden you don’t have 22 things available to you. You have maybe one or two. And even with those two you’re going to have to make some compromises for us. One of the main things we decided from the get go is that we wanted to accept both paypal and credit cards.

Gordan: [00:03:25] So just by having those requirements you have cut off a lot of different possibilities. For instance a lot of companies that offer a processing of payments you Stripe. Stripe only accepts credit cards. So for us that would mean that we have to have two systems one system based on stripe to accept credit cards and another system where payment to Paypal sorry to accept paypal payments. So is that doable. Obviously it’s doable but then we have two systems. Double the maintenance double the cost double the processing fees. Not really a great way to start.

Gordan: [00:04:09] So we started looking into solutions that would enable us to process both PayPal’s and credit cards under the same roof and they are actually not many more or less, only Paypal does that or in our case we went with Braintree which is also a PayPal company. It’s just well let’s say it’s branded differently more it leans more towards developers and services such as ours.

Gordan: [00:04:40] Again depending on where you live this option may or may not be available to you. So once you have things down on paper of what you really need and what’s for instance acceptable for you to pay monthly for such a service you soon realize that you don’t really have much of a choice. No I would definitely recommend that you really do take a pen and a pencil and write things down because having an idea in your head is one thing but being able to write down five bullets is a completely different thing. OK so we in the end went Braintree first and foremost because it processes grade cards and PayPal. Secondly because the fees are. I would say the lowest ever but they are in the lower spectrum. Third thing. They are very developer friendly for think they are a PayPal company. Some people will take that as a big minus.

Gordan: [00:05:58] I guess I’ve also heard a lot of horror stories and read them personally never had any issues with PayPal or the ones that I had were resolved with two phone calls.

Kim: [00:06:10] So yeah me too.

Gordan: [00:06:11] I haven’t had any issue I’ve ever had with PayPal I get I can get some money on the phone and it’s been great so.

Gordan: [00:06:17] Far from what I understand when anybody you get into problems with paypal when you lie when you live in a country that’s not supported by Paypal and you do manage to open an account either via a VPN or a friend does it for you. And in a couple of years you know the truth gets out and now you’re in a pickle because you know you don’t live in France.

Gordan: [00:06:46] You’re actually in some other country. But if Paypal is supported in the country where you live and you actually gave them your real name. I don’t really see any problems. So hopefully to knock on wood we won’t have any problems either. Now the second thing that was very important to us was the ability of the processor to handle the recurring payments. In essence it may seem that doing a single payment or recurring payments is the same because recurring is just you know a single payment every 30 days. It’s not that simple.

Gordan: [00:07:30] These services in Braintree will make it simple for you. But in essence, when you go deep into it, it’s very very very complicated.

Gordan: [00:07:39] The first time the user pays. They don’t only pay you they give you permission to charge their card or Paypal account multiple times. So then that information that yes that please charge me again thing has to be stored somewhere.

Gordan: [00:08:02] It’s usually called a vault or some synonym of it and it’s basically a secure place where the information is kept. And if the user does a chargeback or says no I didn’t allow you to charge me again. You then have the ability to say that’s not true. You actually gave us your permission five months ago. What are you saying what are you doing. So there’s just one little part of the whole reoccurring payments thing. And if you have an idea or thing that you can code all of that or on your own and perhaps code things like the ability for pausing recurring subscriptions or basically anything in regards to recurring things you will soon realize that it will take you weeks. That’s why we also looked into a lot of services that act like middleman for instance with Recurly or ChargeBee. Those are services that are specifically created for people who only do recurring charges they give you advanced tools to look at for instance at your stats to be able to tell how much you actually earn per month. What’s your churn rate. What are the fee’s you’re paying. How loyal are your customers. But the reason we didn’t go with any of those services is because they didn’t have a very good connection with WordPress. In order for us to connect with those services we would have to write additional software.

Gordan: [00:09:48] So basically a plug in for a press to connect with them which is again not if I’ve met five minute job on the other hand us going with Braintree allowed us to use WooCommerce and their built in support for Braintree as a payment gateway. And most things came to life out of the box when or if I want to be more precise we didn’t have to develop anything. We just have to implement things. And whenever you have a chance to implement and not to develop that’s definitely the way to go because not only will it save you time and money. It’s basically a situation where when you’re doing something that others have done as well. So if you do run into a pickle you can google it and find other people with similar problems. If you’re however dealing with your own custom code there is not really a way to google that. You either have to resolve the bugs yourself or hire somebody else. So to make a long story short we went with Braintree and WooCommerce is going to be handling things on the WordPress end. And before you decide on the payment gateway you want to use definitely put down some requirements write them down. I did spoke on the phone with Recurly and all these other services. They have sales representatives. They will definitely answer any questions you have because by reading their manuals and you know what can they do for you when reading their websites. In general it’s not always absolutely clear what you can or can’t do because things really are complicated.

Gordan: [00:11:44] So take your time. It took us nearly I’m not going to say a month but it took weeks to decide because once you have paying customers changing the payment Gateway is borderline impossible. Now when I say impossible obviously it’s possible you can do it but you either end up with two pain and Gateway’s one for you or all customers and the other new one for your new customers or you have to tell your old customers please cancel the current subscription and please resubscribe on our new Gateway.

Gordan: [00:12:27] Now as you can imagine if you have a hundred customers and you ask them to do that you’re not going to end up again with a hundred customers because people just want to listen to. They want to do it. I wouldn’t do it either because you’re making me do something that you know why am I. Why do I have to suffer because you’re because of your poor judgment. You could have chosen the right gauge right from the get go. OK. So the gateway you choose you’re going to be stuck with it for some time maybe a year maybe two maybe five. It’s not something that you can change every day so if it costs five bucks more but you think that solution you chose it’s more solid. Really pay five bucks more because in the end you know you’re going to spend time maintaining things.

Gordan: [00:13:24] So if those $5 saves you an hour or two you’re already in the plus Don’t just look at the prices either a fixed monthly fee or a per-transaction fee.

Gordan: [00:13:39] That’s important obviously you know you’re here to make money. But please look at the other things as well because in the long run, it’s going to pay off.

Kim: [00:13:49] Can I jump in really quick. You know as you’re saying that I was thinking as you would share something with me with Braintree and this is the stuff that people probably don’t think about because I know I didn’t and it was when you start looking at the merchant processor and the different points that have to connect. So what happens when the credit card. Like you said pausing an account or the credit card is denied or they need to change their billing there’s like all these different things that need to be an automated process in case of stuff something goes sideways with their payment because at the end of the day we don’t. It’s like like you’re just saying it’s going to cost us time or money and it’s not something that I want to go in and update someone’s credit card for them or you know all of those things and you just don’t think about it as a user or as a customer. How many points of contact like all these things have to be talking together with right. And so I mean it’s like when I suggested Kajabi right I was like because we’re going to plot the training. Ideally I’d like to store all the training in a cat. It’s in a job site just for LeadSurveys. And I was like well let’s just use that. They’ve got recurring and stuff but you know your answer was they’ve only got two API.

Kim: [00:15:01] And I was like I didn’t know what that meant at the time but you know understanding that I think anybody you know who’s hearing this and is thinking well I don’t know I’m not going to do software but you also want to think about all of these points when it comes to whether you’re selling courses or you know a one-off digital products or a membership. There’s all these different elements that have to come into consideration it’s not just getting that buy now button setup and or setting up just a recurring thing through Pay-Pal it’s there’s there’s you kind of have to plan for not worst case scenario. But as many scenarios as possible too. So the customers have a better experience at the end of the day right.

Gordan: [00:15:38] Yeah. I mean obviously, if you’re doing a minimum viable product or you’re just testing a theory and you just want to smack that buy button in there ya go with everyone. In that case, I would recommend Gumroad. But if you end up actually using that system and it works out and all of a sudden you have a thousand customers Gumroad is not going to be good. So you end up in a situation when you need to do the switch. And that is not going to be painless. So you don’t sleep on it for a couple of nights and think Are you looking for a permanent solution or are you looking for a temporary solution just to prove a business idea. But then you are at risk of have to doing things all over again which is also fine if you, you know decide that.

Kim: [00:16:37] It’s just you don’t want to be moving a thousand customers down the road or attempting to and having everything break said.

Gordan: [00:16:43] That’s not gonna end you’re going to lose money in customers.

Gordan: [00:16:47] And that’s not going to be good.

Kim: [00:16:50] All right so before we talk a little bit about the branding piece and our Fox the other thing that I’d love for you to talk about just a little bit because again I don’t know that as as users people take the stuff into consideration in terms of you know the servers and the costs and what needs to happen and kind of the the base of that. Just before we even have a customer and so can you share just a little bit of what you wanted to look for in terms of servers and companies and what they could manage. Yeah

Gordan: [00:17:24] sure. If you have a website with 12 visitors per month you can obviously get away with any kind of hosting. And I know it’s going around 5 bucks per month or something like that. There is there is not really much that a hundred dollars per month account will do for you.

Gordan: [00:17:49] That’s $5 per month won’t they maybe some difference in speed but for those 12 people that visits you it’s not that important when you start doing things a bit more seriously and you get more visitors and you start putting more content on your site then you start to see you know what’s the difference between a five dollars per month and a hundred dollars per month hosting. And at some point you have to move your site to a better hosting provider. Anybody who has ever moved their site knows that that’s a real big royal pain in your behind. You have downtimes files get lost you don’t know what’s where you have to hire somebody to do the move for you. It’s stressful. Now when it comes to a huge system like a SaaS or something that we building that move it’s even more complicated and it’s definitely not something that you want to do.

Gordan: [00:18:57] So you’re looking for a hosting partner that can support you from day zero when you’re nobody but they can also support you on and on in two years when you’re actually one of their prime customers. There aren’t really not a lot of hosting companies that can do that because most companies that you see are reselling somebody else’s resources. Their base basically just bulk buying and then reselling. And the people who manage the servers and the whole service their knowledge only goes so far. And if you’re on any kind of a complex service you soon realize that they can stand behind you after you outgrow them. So since our system is based on WordPress we were looking for companies that know WordPress that have done similar projects and basically somebody that we can call when we have a problem somebody that knows more than we do and somebody that we are actually we will be paying for the know how. We are obviously paying for it as servers as well. But in any kind of hosting environment when you get giving them $5 thats going for thats going for the servers. But when you’re paying 100 you’re basically giving them $10 for the service and 90 dollars for her to know for us that’s important because as we grow we need people that know how to scale things how to keep them as speedy as they were on the first day how to perhaps have servers on the in one on the East Coast one on the west coast one in Europe so that regardless of where you end up using lead surveys it’s always going to be as fast for you as it was the first day.

Gordan: [00:21:02] Now one of the things that you can do but I wouldn’t recommend it is just getting the servers lets say from Amazon or from they get dinged lotion. Those servers are on managed meaning that you are to one who is managing them. You have to install all the software updates you have to install all of the software yourself. You have to do everything yourself and there’s not a five-minute job. Now if you have a company of 20 let’s say and you have a system engineer on board that can hand those service servers.

Gordan: [00:21:41] Excellent excellent. he’s going to do that. You’re paying him by the end of the month.

Gordan: [00:21:48] It’s again not something that’s free because you have a man you know his full-time employee just to handle the servers. Now we don’t have that kind of a situation so we wanted the third party to handle things for us. Now we ended up choosing Pagely because they have a ton of experience with projects similar to ours. They’re not cheap.

Gordan: [00:22:13] When I say not cheap that’s neither good or bad.

Gordan: [00:22:17] It just it doesn’t mean that they’re not undermining their own experience and the service they provide. They have all of the infrastructure that we need and they will be able to follow our growth for years to come. If you go on Pagely with that comment you look at the prices. I’m not going to quote them but you’ll soon realize that we’re no longer talking about 5 bucks 10 bucks 100 bucks. You’re looking at tiers of upwards of thousands of dollars per month. Many will say well they’re robbing you know they’re not. It’s just that there’s a huge difference between your go daddy account and the thing that we need. So whenever you if you’re thinking about doing a SAS Please bear in mind that hosting expenses will be your number one expense. Besides what’s a support it’s not something that you can skimp on. You really need quality hosting. If it costs 100 bucks more per month let it cost 100 bucks more.

Kim: [00:23:32] Yeah. Well if he if you’re not going to set up the environment again that’s what’s been so interesting with this for me is at the end of the day it makes more sense to do it right from the beginning then just like you know having to move a merchant account or having to move servers at. God what a nightmare. Like you said I know what a pain it is too. Not that I’ve personally ever moved my sites but you know that’s a nightmare in and of itself. And then in terms of the servers too. So people need to take into consideration. I think we may have touched on this last week but just so there’s a base cost for having the servers and then every time you know people surveys are shown that’s costing us money every time a survey shows or loads or whatever. That’s where you know the cost comes in with the surveys site correct.

Gordan: [00:24:17] Yeah that is correct. Obviously, for that one surveys just a fraction of a cent but when you have millions and it’s no longer cents it’s real dollars and you know as time fly flies by and you have more customers and you have more leads and you have more snow and you have more of everything. Then moving becomes infinitely more complex.

Gordan: [00:24:44] And since as we said we are charging a monthly fee taking down the service for a day or two. That’s not cool. You know I mean if you’re paying for 30 days and I shut down for a day that’s three percent. No. That’s a considerable down time. I would be pissed if a service did that to me so I don’t want to do it to our customers.

Gordan: [00:25:14] And when you’re thinking about moving there will be downtime or there will be some time when the service is not completely up. So try and avoid that from day zero and generally try to find partners that will be able to support you down the road so that you don’t have to switch things in a month.

Kim: [00:25:36] Yeah this is this has been an interesting journey. I learned so much more about this so let’s shift gears a little bit and let’s kind of talk a little bit about the branding because you know Gordon I was trying to think about when we were originally talking about the name and stuff too. I don’t know that there was a whole lot of that was a pretty easy thing it was. It was we both were new. It was made more sense to be clear like there’s no guessing what LeadSurveys is about right.

Gordan: [00:26:05] We talked about those funny quirky names but when we made that we decided that you know naming the company banana pride you know you have to have a tag line explaining that you do leads and surveys. It’s just it’s fun. It’s great. It would make for a great logo.

Gordan: [00:26:28] But it doesn’t really do much for you.

Kim: [00:26:32] No in it and forget like I wasn’t even coming from an SEO perspective and it’s it’s tough because I like this stuff. That’s clever. I really do. I like that. I like to be able to take a theme and run with it. But at the end of the day nobody is going to be guessing what the site what the what the services no one’s going to guess what the products about. And so I don’t know it seemed like that stuff was pretty easy and then I was I was surprised that even I was kind of surprised it was available and I know it’s a dot IO extension but I was kind of surprised because it’s the I don’t know. It just to me I was like This is a home run with the name. And so what we did is so initially we had a logo done and it was more of a I don’t know what the right terminology is going to be for this but it was a nice polished software logo kind of an.

Gordan: [00:27:20] Simplistic.

Kim: [00:27:21] Yet very simplistic very clean which I still think everything we’ve got is pretty simple and clean but it didn’t have a personality and so and. And you had said originally it like what about a mascot. I was like oh no no no like I was thinking it was kind of quote unquote dated for lack of a better term. And then where you know as we’re doing this research and looking at different tools.

Kim: [00:27:43] I loved the companies that had a mascot whether it was incorporated into the brand or whether it was incorporated into the onboarding. And you could pull in but all of a sudden I felt like these companies totally had a personality and there was this little I don’t know. It was it was just a notch above a bland software company because the other thing that I came across was I’m sure you can cross it too but just what was obvious to me is the companies that just felt like our software come a lot of those companies didn’t have a feeling of community around them they didn’t do a lot of content. They didn’t do a lot of customer outreach and training and those types of things that get me all geeked out and it was just like an other tool really that that’s kind of how it felt which I love all my tools but. So what do you remember the mascot came about. I think we changed the logo after we came up with the idea for the mascot right.

Gordan: [00:28:41] Yeah because originally we had the fox drawn. You know we asked for two versions of the fox one that goes with logo and the other one we gave to create creative freedom to the person who did logo. Because you know we we knew that the fox had has to go with the logo which is it’s actually a more complex thing to do than it sounds. You know you got to draw something that goes with something else while still keeping all of the requirements we had. So yeah we ended up editing the logo partially after we got the fox.

Kim: [00:29:30] And even the fox.

Kim: [00:29:31] I remember being on Skype and it was I just don’t know you’re so patient with me because we could have gotten ahead of this if I had jumped on it earlier. But trying to come up with the right mascot and it’s funny because my friend John Perez is trying to come up with a mascot now for his own brand and I think because of our Fox I’m going to go ahead and take credit for that. So sorry John but it was.

Gordan: [00:29:57] It can’t be a fox.

Kim: [00:29:59] No no it’s not it’s not. But but we were going back and forth like OK should it be you know robots are overused everywhere so we don’t want to do that and an inanimate object an animal like a little person and then we narrowed it down to an animal. And then I love the point that you had brought up like it needs to be smart. So we knew it couldn’t be a dolphin but not funny like you automatically can’t think of a smart animal which is it’s cool. But you know the fox landing on the Fox was just I don’t know. I got so pumped about the brand. As soon as we got that Fox back I mean it was just she nailed it right out. I mean there were two versions one was more I don’t know what the right differentiation her cartoonish right.

Gordan: [00:30:41] Cartoon Network kind of a 90s style outlined thing.

Gordan: [00:30:45] Yeah. It wasn’t bad but it really wasn’t bad.

Gordan: [00:30:49] But just this one went more with our theme.

Kim: [00:30:53] Well and pulling in the Google material design which you have gotten me completely obsessed about. To the point where I’m like I think my next phone needs to be a Google pixel. I’m not buying any of them. But you know and I’ve always had iPhones but to keep. So it’s like everything needs to feel cohesive and this sounds so obvious with branding. But you know and not even getting into the branding piece. I read a book and I included this in a post on ours it’s called “Hello My Name is Awesome” because when it comes to branding it’s like it’s not just find a name pick a logo it’s you need to do that. The pen to paper work and sort of drop down like names and what does this feel like and what do you want people to connect the brand with. And you know so all of those things came into play. And then looking at building out the site to support the because the Google material design which is going to be the admin and the surveys and all of those things it’s like well you don’t want the site to look so different. And then here we have this illustrated Fox so at first, it felt hard but once we got into it I just feel like that Fox makes the brand.

Gordan: [00:32:03] No the difference is huge really. Whenever we have any. I’m not seeing any whitespace. But when when you have seen spays that we don’t know what to put there bam you with the Fox. It’s good. So it really lightens up the place gives it a personality. And as long as we don’t overuse her I think people are going to love her.

Kim: [00:32:29] Yeah. And you know what’s funny is as I so just started putting some content out last week that and she was on I don’t know one of the social images or sending people to the site. That was one of the first comments I got. Love the branding. And she just nailed it. And so then you know it’s going to be an interesting process in terms of navigating when to show her when not to show us the first thing we’re doing. And I’ll link to this when this goes live. The page will be up so we’re going to do a contest. Name the fox and that because she needs a name so it’s not just Fox. And part of the action plan known as.

Gordan: [00:33:09] Affectionately Miss Foxy Fox.

Kim: [00:33:10] Miss Foxy Fox. We can actually give her a name. With your help and part of that choice in doing this so you know let’s talk just a sec. GORDON And you know to go to sideways I was on this but this whole idea of contests and giveaways because you’ve just been through this and in my experience with like a contest or give away is what I have found is you would think the like giving away software and all these great products would be great. I honestly believe that because we’ve gone so digital in this in our current times or not people are missing. Like fun stuff in the mail. And so when we get like what I had done hustle free we send out this kit.

Kim: [00:33:51] And so I thought we need to send people swag like a T-shirt and you know a sticker and a mug and and kind of random stuff. There is a free account that’s coming with us but there’s something about the swag so we’re going to do this contest ideally for brand awareness to connect with our audience simply for fun right to get because this is where I don’t know how to say this but the marrying of so we’ve sort of got this whole front end thing happening of building the brand and ideally building a list and potential subscribers. And then you’ve got all the behind the scenes stuff that you’re working on and so this is kind of a it’s I literally I’m picturing like a scale with two you know weighing stuff on either side. But with with the contest and the giveaways. What did you find with the one you guys just ran for WPLoop.

Gordan: [00:34:40] The whole idea of the giveaway of WPLoop was no let’s have a huge prize pool. And let’s have people pick their own prizes because one quote unquote traditional give ways tell you, you know these are your five prizes this is what you get.

Gordan: [00:35:01] So I assume that out of those four three are shitty and you don’t want them. So I imagine you know let’s give you a list of 100 premium plans and themes and you can pick anything you want.

Gordan: [00:35:15] So in the end they got two twenty-five hundred dollars worth of prizes from which you could pick whatever we it it’s not that it ended poorly or. That it was ignored by people but it wasn’t a landslide that I expected. So the takeaway for me here is if we in a month or two or a year if we do give away that’s worth twenty-five thousand dollars which would be borderline impossible. I don’t think it would do any better in comparison to the twenty-five hundred one we just had. I don’t think that the end dollar value really matters that much to people. It’s just that as you said there’s all this free stuff lying around. So you know it’s really hard to get people interested in doing anything or you know making any considerable steps join the giveaway if they have to do anything more. And we that’s a burden to them. So all in all just doing a giveaway with some good or bad prizes it probably won’t be a landslide in most cases. So anybody who is considering that I would advise to you know think about the resources you have and how much you want to invest in this in regards to prizes and paid traffic and everything else because you might not get out of it as much as you think.

Kim: [00:37:01] Well in putting it pulling it all together you know is there’s a lot of time and energy that goes into pulling together what you did. And so I think when it comes to and I don’t know it could be the space too. I wonder I think there’s a lot of shifts happening in the WordPress space in terms of of a retraining of the free mentality.

Gordan: [00:37:25] Yea that word is cursed.

Kim: [00:37:28] Yeah yeah you know so I think there is some retraining going on as. As most companies, the quality products are premium products. Now the I think the zoo traction is you know you don’t see a lot of WordPress products in there anymore because there are so there are quality products in the marketplace that are supported and those people are in it for the long haul so you see a lot of that changing but I think in terms of you know lead generation tool a brand awareness and stuff.

Kim: [00:37:58] It’s you know this is I think what I’m finding is a little bit tricky is OK creating this content and trying to connect with people and build an audience before they can see the app. Right before we can say you do this and this so it’s coming from that perspective it’s been a really interesting journey. And so a lot of this is a testing to see what to see what sticks right in so doing the name the fox is. It’s just fun and she’s awesome. And so it’s a way to put the personality of the brand into the marketplace and get people to connect. Like again I see a huge part of our strategy is going to be this ongoing content and teaching and talking to customers and letting them know how to use the tool in doing case studies and you know this person generated you know 1000 leads last month because of their survey and then whatever so you know taking it a step further. But this is all really it’s always a crapshoot but it’s your best guess essentially right. I mean I know that there’s data but because we don’t have we’re using you know our own individual audiences to pull us into this and then obviously getting you know JVs and stuff on board. But while we do this you know it’s like we want to build webinars and all that stuff.

Kim: [00:39:13] But again until we’re able to dig into the app to show people it’s finding a way to connect with people about their struggles and challenges which you know that’s going to lie with me and I think I’ve said this so many times I probably should just you know I don’t know sign a contract or something. But I think doing Facebook Live like you know live streaming and talking to people about their frustrations with lead generation and where they’ve dropped the ball is going to help to tailor the content and tailor the training to what they need help with the most.

Gordan: [00:39:44] And hopefully the Little Fox will make them smile.

Kim: [00:39:49] You’re right there.

Kim: [00:39:50] She’s pretty awesome. You’ve got to admit so soon as she they will be sharing that. So all of that is so we’ve got this. You know the content is you know starting to get published on the site. The social is starting to happen. In the meantime, Gordon is building and digging into this so let’s address you know we talked before we started this recording you know we had a long conversation about possibilities because for somebody who is not a coder understanding that on one hand, it’s like need to build the best minimum viable product. Right. So we know all that at the same time you need to build it in a way that is planning for potential opportunities right.

Kim: [00:40:33] Like we are talking about agency accounts and stuff so you know in terms of then saying OK we’re going to go ahead and build this like. Where do you start? You know I mean is it you know getting hurt or is it just the dashboard is that the surveys like where do you go about like this is all totally new to me.

Kim: [00:40:53] So in terms of building the product. Where did you start?

Gordan: [00:40:58] Well we are doing the most things were done months ago when you sent me your first where your wish list for version zero. Basically those features. OK some way ditched. Most. We kept those features decided. That’s what decides what gets built in version 0. So you know that’s our scaffolding. That’s what we see that’s happening immediately. Later on a month or two of our discussions of what we want to do in version one two three four five. And you know the possibilities that we want to have those to play a significant role because as much as I love minimum viable products. The thing is if you duct tape things together to have them as quickly as possible that’s not a good foundation to build things on later on. So what ends up happening is that at some point you have to rebuild everything either from scratch or almost from scratch. And we I personally don’t like that. So we took out that you know let’s initially take a month longer let’s say. But we will have a solid foundation that we can build things on. That still doesn’t mean that it will take us two years to build version 0 because that will be bad. It will take us a bit longer. Doing a minimum viable product but I’m hoping that we will have something that we can build upon later on said We don’t have to rebuild everything. Well basically when it comes to planning again pen and paper it does wonders because that email you sent me came from one of our talks and when we talked we obviously talk a lot.

Gordan: [00:43:11] When you get it down and bullets it’s different because then you can say to us to yourself oh my god I wrote hundreds and ten bullets I must be insane. You know we can’t have a hundred and ten features for version zero. So you cut it down to let’s say 50 or if you only write five bullets then you know well this is not really crystallized the idea I need to sleep on it a bit more. So really write down those bullets and immediately when you have them in front of you, you’ll be able to grasp how much of a clear vision you had of this product.

Gordan: [00:43:50] And then you can start thinking in technical terms you know and writing specs down.

Kim: [00:43:57] Well and coming back to one of our you know very clear intentions as this has to be simple. Right. So in looking at OK well yes there are features that are maybe a wish list than there are you know must haves. And then of course, the other ones that is this needed or is ever right. Is this just a bell and a whistle that people want because they think they need it. But again the goal is conversions and simplicity and getting quality leads and segmenting your subscribers. So we had to step back into that and look at how do we really do so. I want to talk a little bit about the pricing and launching the product because you know the other thing that we we discussed at length was you see a lot of software companies that do data runs forever. Now for what it’s worth you have so much experience in this space that like I’m just like take the lead and of course I’d rather not do a Beta because who wants to work for free. But you have so much experience in doing this stuff. And then we’ve also witnessed you know companies that do they simply they launch and they do X amount of founder accounts and you know they let those people in. And it’s not a scarcity tactic but they let them in and then they sort of close it but not for long. They look at let’s get let’s get the feedback Let’s get them in that let’s give the founders in a special pricing.

Kim: [00:45:31] You know the highest package whatever so I don’t know do you want to talk about it a little bit how we looked at doing the pricing and why we ended up deciding on the Founder accounts as opposed to you know beta testing.

Gordan: [00:45:43] Sure. Just briefly touching on the beta thing for anybody that thinks of putting out a public beta because they will get free feedback and basically free beta testers. And that’s quite a false premise. First of all properly testing software is quite a frustrating experience because in order to report a bug you have to write down the steps of how to repeat that bug so that it can be fixed. If you saying that somebody actually or customers will do that for free for you, you’re really mistaken. So this isn’t something’s not working. They’re frustrated they’re pissed at you. And now you expect them to write that down systematically and report it to you. I don’t know screenshots. Why would they do that? They have shut down that tab and they are looking for another piece of software that does the same thing as yours does. And even when you get a final version out they will still remember those first days when it didn’t work. And most probably tweet about it then. Blah blah blah.

Gordan: [00:47:08] Now I’m not I’m not saying that having a beta is something you should never do a public beta. But it really does the depend on the type of the customers you have. Our customers are non-developers right. They just want something that works. It works now. It works fast. It’s simple and they don’t have to have a Ph.D. to make it happen by giving them a beta version. Now I have to stress out that one may think we told you it’s a beta. What did you think? That doesn’t it. It’s not going to do any good. Yeah we told you basically doesn’t work. But people young people will ignore that because why the hell did you give it to me then in the first place. Don’t assume they know what a beta is. Right. So for all our customers who want they call it the simple end product. I really don’t see a Beira as something that would be good for anybody. For us it wouldn’t be good because it makes our brand look shitty and we wouldn’t get the feedback we need. And for them it would just be a waste of time because they try to use something that really doesn’t work. And what they spend 10 hours creating a survey that they can’t put on their Web site. So we basically stole money from them. So that’s why we won’t have a public beta.

Kim: [00:48:47] Well or the whole free beta thing to me. The same thing. It’s sort of like. I’d rather when I say we I mean you with a coding deploy you know, build it out correctly until it gets locked until we’re ready to sell it.

Kim: [00:49:02] It just doesn’t make sense to me to do that. And again you have so much experience in this it’s you know it’s not like just going. We just want to make money. It’s not let’s let’s get this right from the beginning.

Gordan: [00:49:12] No I do see a benefit of getting feedback from customers. But you know and those people who give you feedback they have to be able to do that. They do need to have certain skills and they need to be aware of the fact that they are investing time in something that may not pay off to them. So they are you know doing a favor to you basically and you’re promising to them that you’re going to give them a free account or whatever. But for people for who the web is just the tool they don’t want to be in love with it. It’s a tool. You know here’s five bucks. Make it work. I’m not interested in building it with you. It’s not a Zen experience for me as it may be for somebody else. Yeah. If I’m buying a hammer I don’t necessarily need to know where to handle came from. And you know it was a glorious piece of wood we took down to make the handle for you know I just give it to me I want to put some nails in. Yeah. On the other hand, if you’re talking with five other people who you no have factories that make hammers Yeah great then go into the details they can test the new hammer out for you. But in most cases that just won’t happen. You’re dealing with customers who want to give you money to have something useful giving them a beta. It’s just it’s not going to work out for them because their scenario. It may work in some cases. That’s the best they can get.

Gordan: [00:51:05] So it’s just not something they’re looking for. That’s why we decided to. I mean on board the first hundred customers and give them a much lower price in order to say you know thank you for believing in us. Thank you for being the first you know. Thank you for being here. Before others were here and we hope that people will appreciate that and we certainly will. And after that period is done well then the usual prices will set in will. I mean without this thing we can know if those prices will be good or not. Because as with most things there’s not really you can do it bad or good it’s always something in between right. There’s not a formula at price you can look at the competition you can think of the value you’re giving you all obviously have to think about your expenses because if you’re selling below what you’re investing in.

Kim: [00:52:16] You’re a charity.

Gordan: [00:52:17] No, you’re a startup. Yeah. And if we are not a startup. So pricing properly obviously takes some experiment. You know you need some time to dial that in. But again if you change prices too often it doesn’t really send a good message.

Kim: [00:52:43] Now. And you know what. I think it’s easier to you know on one hand you don’t want to price too low by it. You don’t.

Kim: [00:52:52] I look at it this way it’s it’s kind of like you know let’s say you put a house in the market knew you overprice it for the market then you got to keep dropping the price you lose a ton of potential buyers and money in between. So if you start at a price point that you have done you know your due diligence and say this is where because we’ll have three tiered packages.

Kim: [00:53:13] And so if you say this is what we’re going to start it’s a lot easier to gauge after running it for a little bit and raise a little bit to me without.

Kim: [00:53:23] You don’t want to lose people you know so people coming to the brand for the first time if they you know they see the new price that’s all they’re going to know. And obviously you don’t raise the cost for for existing customers necessarily if you can. So there’s a lot that goes into this. And you know also one of the things that we looked at with pricing is in looking at you know having you know three different tiers and this doesn’t include what we talked about off line with you know with agencies approach us for something custom that’s totally separate. But for the for the public when they come to the site and they say three tiers like you don’t want to just be paying more for more usage right you want some additional features and you know I again I don’t know what that looks like but it’s funny because I keep using CoSchedule as an example of. I just I love the way that they market and they stay in touch their customers. But even earlier this morning I saw an email where they rolled out some new features for the team accounts all those all started like 300 bucks a month. And for you know somebody that’s a solo entrepreneur at the same time you don’t want to say well I don’t need those. So offer pricing to me for those features right. So one of the things they had done was you know this upgraded analytics and when I reached out I was like they said oh no it’s only for the teams I’m like well that’s kind of stupid.

Kim: [00:54:43] So I think there’s you know it’s going to be something to learn as we go so that if we’re if the higher tiers have additional features can that be an add-on or is there a way to include that. I don’t know. And again I think this is a best guess until you have customers and start communicating with them.

Gordan: [00:55:01] It requires a huge amount of decisions that there are no bad answers here. I think you know whatever you do there is a market for that. But whether you’re going to be able to reach it or not is a completely different ball game. Maybe you can sell a thousand dollars per month. There are obviously services out there which charge you even more. But can you approach those people who have that kind of money and are willing to pay for it. That’s questionable. So it’s always some kind of a compromise between the resources you already have and the resources that are realistically available to you. Because I know I don’t know any people that would buy a space shuttle from me although now obviously there are there there’s a market for that.

Kim: [00:56:03] You know I know look it. Elon Musk Yeah yeah. OK.

Gordan: [00:56:07] Congrats to him. I don’t know people like that but I do know people that wouldn’t give me 20 bucks for ever press plug in. So I would rather stay realistic not shoot for the stars.

Gordan: [00:56:21] Pun intended.

Kim: [00:56:24] Well at the end of the day again I don’t know. I feel like we have had a lot of conversations about this and looked at a lot of pricing models and the goal is to you know really have a relationship with the audience and our customers so that we know where you know what they want what they don’t want. All that kind of stuff but at the same time, it’s on one hand. We’re keeping it simple. They have we don’t want to assume they’re stupid right.

Kim: [00:56:48] So it’s not about repeating quote unquote features that seemed like redundancies or using language that doesn’t make sense so that the user then doesn’t they just don’t ask right. So when it comes to the pricing and what you provide in each of those levels you do the best you can and you of course correct right as you go.

Kim: [00:57:06] You just continue to course correct and you can’t do that. And you know I preach all the time on the show like it’s through the doing that you get the answers you need. You can only you do as much planning.

Kim: [00:57:18] And best case scenario out of the gate and then it’s it’s go-time. You’ve got to go live.

Gordan: [00:57:23] Yeah you got to take the gamble. Yeah, that’s part of the business.

Kim: [00:57:29] So let’s wind up and we’re looking at. We’ll have a better. I would say within 30 days we’ll have a better idea of specific dates for people or ballparks right.

Gordan: [00:57:39] Yeah. We’re not going to jinx ourselves with any dates today within a month. We’ll yeah we’ll definitely have some dates and we’ll be able to tell people when they can expect the gates to open. Believe us we are doing everything we can for that to be as soon as possible.

Kim: [00:58:02] Well and in the meantime. So you know and in terms of connecting with us you know I may be able to. I don’t know I’m just thinking out loud here. But like after we get the name the fox contest started and we announce our winner and what her name is the Fox I mean you know it might be fine to start doing whether it’s a live stream or are but really I want to know the frustrations and challenges that people have when it comes to lead generation or understand. Do people really get segmenting and how to talk to those customers and separate that stuff out. So while Gordon and the guys are madly coding you know I’m here to connect with you guys in terms of content and what you want and where is this going to help you the most. Because again this is not you know I out in inFusionsoft is listening to this so I do not want this to be like confusionsoft. You need to hire somebody to manage all this needs to be something that gets you results quickly and is like the ideal marriage for you for your autoresponder whenever you’re using and your site and that it’s a great experience for your visitors and your customers. So I think we covered everything ordinate any last words.

Gordan: [00:59:15] No it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of decisions now.

Gordan: [00:59:21] A lot of places to make mistakes but nothing’s written in stone. I think that you can pivot as you go. So as soon as long as you you know have some let’s call it passive income to sustain you while you’re investing time in this. I think you know you’ll be golden because it will take time for everything to sit into its place. This is not a couple of weeks of work. You know you’re looking at something. It’s going to take you at least six months for things to start taking a certain shape. And for the money to start coming in. So if you’re looking to do something quick over the weekend this is not the game for you.

Kim: [01:00:11] Well that and it also depends on where you’re starting in terms of an audience and all of that. So we’re able to leverage the audiences that we have right we’re able to leverage this podcast right and this you know I feel like this is a little bit self-serving at the same time I hope people understand the goal in these in this conversation with Gordon specifically as this has been so eye opening to me. It’s just been this whole massive education and where I’m never going to be the one doing any coding but understood it’s so imperative that I understand this and I think that as listeners because I think everything that we’ve talked about in both episodes according to a certain extent can be applied whether you’re doing courses or a one off product or even coaching there is this you know methodology and process to one pen to paper but also testing. I did this recently with the content strategy workshop I thought OK I’m working on this stuff for lead surveys I’m a fiend for content. And so you know why don’t I teach when I’m working on so in a way it was like a paid beta right for that for that little course thing. But it’s like I’m getting massive feedback from people on what would be helpful. And you know I’ve asked Can we get a template for this or how are you doing that or what’s the best way to go about doing this. Because it’s all in my head.

Kim: [01:01:34] And so in a way I think that everything that we have shared about building a Saas but it’s not just us as it’s a brand and we want to build a community with our customers so you can apply it and all these other areas too. That’s my two cents. Yeah.

Gordan: [01:01:47] And we are starting from scratch in a sense that obviously, LeadSurveys doesn’t even exist and we don’t have any customers. So we are starting from scratch in that sense.

Gordan: [01:02:00] But on the other hand pulling out all of the resources that we already have we are doing the best that we can with what we have and that wouldn’t be the case if we were building rockets because neither one of us knows anything about that. So you know if you’re starting something new Think about how you can utilize the things that you already have. Well other than being an audience or an overpriced plug in your what you wrote or something like that it will really help you because even with that and even with everything we already have it’s still a lot of work. A lot of decisions and a lot of brainstorming.

Kim: [01:02:46] Well and the other thing Gordan it’s like I couldn’t have painted a better scenario to be honest. And you’re sitting here like doing all this work on that side but because I am obsessed I love tools and software and stuff and I don’t know when I for oh, when I dipped my toes in a plug in development years ago. But again having developers that are overseas and don’t understand the market aspect of this the way you do. And then I’ve built up an audience that I can talk to communicate and I love doing the content like this was just this was ideal. You know so for people listening if if you have an idea and you don’t know how to get it this you know finding somebody who’s got the skills that you don’t is a way to make it happen quicker also.

Gordan: [01:03:30] Yeah because you compliment each other and you know then you fill the gaps because can. I mean obviously you can do things in five minutes but if you want to do something properly it will take time. And all kinds of resources.

Kim: [01:03:49] All right.

Kim: [01:03:49] I think we covered everything. On that note. You guys either go too. You know what we’ll do is I will put stay tuned just to the end. I’ll have the link to the name of the Fox contest page so that you can. There’s going to be there are five names that you can choose from or enter your own name. So there’s an other option for you there and that the fox as we’re calling it is you will get there is a free lead service account for a year you get a T-shirt a sticker a mug and I think I threw in a whole skin Journal on that too to go with our orange and a fountain pen so you can write. This is kind of fun since we just talked about putting pen to paper so that all worked out really well. So you guys stay tuned. I’ll have the link. As always thanks for listening. And you can always go to lead service. Know just to get on that early notification list. Until then we will talk to you next time.

Kim: [01:04:52] All right guys so there you have it. That is part two of my conversations with Kim with Gordan. And of course, we’re super excited about LeadSurveys.

Kim: [01:05:01] Now the link for the name the fox contest you can go to the W.P. checked duck com forward slash Fox contest. The easiest thing to do is go to https://thewpchick.com/foxcontest

Kim: [01:05:15] And as always guys thanks so much for listening. And if you haven’t I would love a review on iTunes. Appreciate it much. Have a fabulous day and we will catch you next week.

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Links from this Episode

The Story Behind LeadSurveys Part 1

Book: Hello My Name is Awesome

LeadSurveys