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Cam's SaaS has been struggling. Michele and Colleen try to help him think things through.
Show Notes
Send Cam some love and support! https://twitter.com/SloanCam
Check out Hopscotch: https://hopscotch.club/
Michele Hansen 0:01
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Michele Hansen 0:01
So today, I'm so excited we have a friend joining us, Cam Sloane. Hello, Cam. So we invited you on today because you had tweeted the other day about how you're kind of feeling stuck right now. And we're like, you know what? Maybe we like we can chat about it and help you get unstuck.
Cam Sloan 1:17
Yeah, that was, I guess, shout out to Aaron Francis, who kind of like just was like, Hey, bring him on. And, and I was like, Yeah, let's do it. That'd be awesome. And I think that, you know, just speaking that tweet, it really seemed to resonate with a lot of other people, like other founders who are trying to do this. And because I had an outpouring of, you know, comments and support, and DMS, from people I don't know, and people that I do know and invite stuff like this show and stuff to just like, it's amazing, the community that has reached out to kind of say, like, well, all sorts of things I'm sure we'll get into today. So it's been really nice to it's always nice to have that because sometimes you're just going at this and you feel like super alone. So for context, I just feel kind of stuck in like, you know, do I keep going do I switch to something else? Or do I? You know, yeah, like, I've contemplated like just doing contract work. And you know, just make money that way, because it's a bit easier. So all sorts of stuff that is going through my head over the past few months? Because it's just slow, slow going.
Colleen Schnettler 2:32
Yeah, Cam to get us started. Could you give us a little background about your product? And how long you've been working on it?
Cam Sloan 2:40
Yeah, definitely. That would be helpful for listeners. So yeah, I am working on hopscotch. It's a user onboarding tool, specifically focusing on product tours, and kind of in app messaging and guides to kind of, you know, when a user signs up for your product, sometimes you want to kind of hold their hand a bit to show them what their next step should be, in order to help prevent them from churning by actually showing them to the thing that they want to do. And so yeah, I mean, product tours, to be honest, like, it's not the right fit for every every business. But sometimes, there are really good use cases, like if you have a complex product that has, like you get in like a CRM, or like an analytics tool that has like 10 options on the top menu and 10 on the side, and your users just get dumped, or, you know, Landon, this page with no idea what to do next, then a really good way to show them is to guide them, you know, and kind of say, you know, here's, here's what your next step should be, so that you can see value out of the product. So I've been working on this for, I mean, about a year since the inception of like, actually like the idea, but really kind of steadily since January of this year in 2021. And kind of focusing most of my time on it. Because outside of that I do freelancing contract work for you know, larger companies just doing web development work for them. And that kind of helps me to stay self funded to do my projects like this and, and hopefully grow my own software business.
Michele Hansen 4:28
Yeah, so. So I kind of want to propose a structure for this conversation. So I've mentioned a little bit in my book, how the sort of core questions that you're trying to answer when you talk to a customer can also be used when maybe you're helping somebody think through something, which are what are they trying to do overall? Why? What are the steps in that process they're going through what if they already Tried, and where are they stuck? And so I feel like you've kind of you've started to give us a little bit of overview on the what you're trying to do. And why. I'm curious what led you to be interested in building an onboarding tool?
Cam Sloan 5:23
Yeah. So the, you know, like, as I don't know, if you did this as well, when you were coming up with, you know, what business to go into you like make a list, you're trying to make a list of ideas, and like, most of them are pretty terrible. And, like, I had maybe 50 ideas. And this was kind of one of them that I didn't really think too much about until I actually I met someone who I, who wanted to hire me to build to work on their software company, and just doing web development for them. And we actually ended up, I didn't work for him, it wasn't the right fit for taking on that contract. But we ended up like really getting along well, kind of both having founder ambitions. And he was almost like, in the position that I'm at right now where he was feeling a bit stuck. And so we ended up saying, Hey, we should like try and work on something together. And, and we were thrown, like, what ideas have you been having, and, and we both checked kind of our lists. And, and this was one of them. So for him, he was actually experiencing, like, the pain point more than I had previously. So really, he was searching around for tools. And like came across intercom product tours and other app cues and realizing like, you know, he's a bootstrap founder cannot justify the price at like, $300 plus a month, and was looking for a tool that was maybe affordable that that could get them up and running. And we kind of ran with that together. In like, just real quick summary. Like he ended up going and building another business. So I kept going on hopscotch. And, yeah, like, as soon as I dove into the problem, like I really enjoyed it, both technically, because like you're you're kind of embedding your yourself into another SAS product by default, like by the definition of what these tools do. And so there's a lot of like, really interesting technical learnings that I've had to had to go through with that, like anytime you're dealing with like widget, embed scripts and other people's code, it's, it's a lot of interesting stuff on the technical side. But then also just realizing like that, there's a lot of interesting stuff in the human and business side of this as well. Like, I started soaking in resources from Samuel Kulik, and like the user less team and, you know, anywhere that I could find people who are talking about onboarding and realizing like how crucial it can be to a business's success. Because, you know, if you can reduce that initial churn in the first month or two, then then it can have a wild impact on the like, lifetime value of customers and how your product retains users. And so it just kept me interested From then on, which is why I didn't like end up going work on something else. After, after he, like my co founder went to do something else.
Michele Hansen 8:23
So let's talk a little bit about where you are now. So you launched in April. Is that right?
Cam Sloan 8:30
or me? Yeah. So I think so. Time is a blur? Yeah, like I because I've kind of been doing, like, I did a lot of stuff with early access of just onboarding one on one, like people who are signing up for the early access list. And at one point, I kind of let people sign up on their own, which April sounds, it might be even a bit early, it might have been just a couple months ago that I finally made it so that people could self sign up. And so, yeah, I think a lot of the customers I was speaking to back in April, and May and June, like I was kind of doing just they would express interest, find the landing page, and then we would jump on a demo call. And and some of them would, you know, try the product, others would just kind of like ghost off and and so that's kind of where, yeah, like I probably had about 40 conversations, demo calls and stuff. And you know, I'm setting with just a handful of like really just one main customer that is like paying me and has the product installed. And I've like kind of done a white glove service to help them get up and running with it. And then I have a couple like I don't know, like almost just like friends and family supporters or like people who have like paid but not activated. And so I don't like really even count towards the bottom line. They're like There's not a lot that I can gain from, from them, except they're $20 a month.
Michele Hansen 10:07
So, what's your revenue out? Right now? If you're comfortable saying that,
Cam Sloan 10:11
yeah, I'm at like 150 MRR
Michele Hansen 10:14
and what are your expenses to keep it running?
Cam Sloan 10:18
A pretty low. Yeah, like, I'm paying like 20 bucks a month for server costs and, and then it's really just a matter of like, I am trying to pay, you know, just paying my rent and stuff out of savings. And like all of that I have, like, the way that I kind of manage my cash flow there is just by doing a certain amount of freelance per year and then saying, I have to make this much. And then that kind of floats me on that side of things. And so yeah, it's it's like really quite inexpensive to keep it operating like this. But I have thought, like, I have quite a bit of cash in the business bank account from doing the contract and freelancing. There's about 100 and 120k. there that is kind of, you know, just setting as runway, but I have also considered like, should I be deploying this more effectively? Like, if I'm ready to work on this business? Like, which, I guess is a big question mark, like, do I keep going or not? But like, do I want to invest more in, I don't know, maybe trying some ads, or trying to hire someone to help with the content and things that I'm not doing. So hopefully, that gives a bit of a picture of the financials and stuff.
Colleen Schnettler 11:38
Can we go back to the 40 onboarding calls you did? and talk a little bit more about that? I'm really curious. So you actually got on the phone with 40 people who organically reached out to you?
Cam Sloan 11:51
Yeah, I would say, you know, somewhere in that range, because I had about 100 people on my, like, early access list. Well, this was over the course of several months. And so as they were joining, I would kind of do the playbook of like, you know, as soon as they sign up, or maybe a day or two later, sometimes depending how much like I was working on product, or if I was in learning mode at the time, I would, you know, jump onto calls with them, I did come out with like, a really early version of this product and sent it to like a handful of customers, and then you know, got feedback, like, oh, but it doesn't do this. And so I go back to product mode and, and rebuild and say like, here we go. But then, you know, maybe there were other other issues that it wasn't solving, like a huge part of that just felt like, maybe it wasn't a huge pain point. Because I actually went back to a lot of these, like, people and I plan to go back and even speak to, like, send some more follow up emails, because just this week, I sent about five or six of them. So yeah, where I guess I'm, I've been speaking with, you know, quite a few customers that would be requesting these features. And then I would, you know, go off take maybe a week or whatever it took to go and build the smallest version of that come back. And, and sometimes that was not really enough for they would just kind of ghost at that point. And, and just, you know, it. I know, it felt like the right thing to be it felt like the right approach and like learn from the people who are going to be our customers and you know, go build what they asked for. But then, but then didn't really see results from it, I do think still like most of what they requested and was like super reasonable and like did improve the product to where it is. Today, like where I think that people signing up today like have a much more useful product because it can do you know, an example of that would be like segmenting your product tours to only show certain ones to certain demographics of users. Like if you have a new user that is, I don't know, an agency versus a small business owner, they may have more, they might have a better understanding of tooling in general. And so they you would just show a different thing. So you want to do segmenting within the app. And so that was something that I really do feel helped with making the product better, but then yeah, it still didn't like end up driving those conversions in the way that I was hoping for.
Michele Hansen 14:29
Yeah. Did any of those people you talked like you said those were onboarding calls so had those people paid for the product?
Cam Sloan 14:37
And maybe I just like misspoke. It was more like demo calls I guess of like, you know, just people who had signed up for they would sign up for fill out the Early Access form. Tell me about like their use case. And then I would go and speak with them but you know, to be also just like, I don't know, just Be critical on that point. It's like a lot of these people who are signing up probably, were just following my journey of me building in public on Twitter and like, may not be like the ideal customer profile, either I have found that like, initially I thought hopscotch might be a great use are a great fit for, like, really small companies like originally was targeting like other solo founders, indie hacker types that, like, you know, to get them a tool that they could afford that they could use for doing onboarding, but really, like, you're not feeling the pains yet of having to manually onboard like hundreds of customers at that scale. And so where I'm now more leaning towards is like trying to target more companies that are kind of in the I don't know, maybe like two to three employee to 10 Plus, like 1015 employees, so they still, like feel the pains of like, apt uses too expensive, but they actually have like employees and revenue, and are probably feeling some of the customer, some of the pains of trying to manually onboard so many users. So I think it has, like, these conversations have been helpful to like, guide me slowly to where I need to be. It's, it's just slow moving still. And like, now I don't see as many people filling that pipeline by default, because I'm not really tweeting a lot. And so it's like, Okay, I got to go and like, chase my, you know, hunt my food, for lack of a better term, and like, go and, you know, either do some, you know, founder sales, like going and prospecting and doing cold outreach, or, you know, trying to work the SEO game. And, and this is kind of like, where I fall and get a little bit stuck of like, not knowing the next best steps, because they're, like, so many ways that I could go with this. And none of them show like immediate returns. And so and so I kind of get a little bit deflated, even, like, if you spend a week writing out two or three articles, or, you know, Docs or blog post type things, or like you go and fill out a bunch of Korra answers. And then there's not necessarily going to be immediate returns, these things kind of prove themselves over like 612 months. And and that can just be hard compared to I don't know, I'm sure you both can really have like, you know, going in coding a feature. And then you see that returns, like it works right there. So yeah, it's just, I feel like that's been the tricky part of where I'm at now.
Michele Hansen 17:32
Yeah, it can be really hard when you're at the point of making content investments, and you know, that it's gonna take months or years to pay off. But, like, investing in general, like, my head waiting for that payoff, and being patient is so hard.
Cam Sloan 17:54
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think that's what, like, I noticed yesterday with so many founders resonating on the same points, and some of them getting through to the other side was really inspirational like to read about and hear that, like, yeah, they just, you know, keep, there's like an element of keep plugging away. But there's also like, you can keep plugging away doing the wrong thing, forever. And, and I am like, really trying to like, since day one, I've tried to avoid like sinking many years into a startup that's not going to ever see traction. And I've always been like, at a certain point, I just want to have like a cut off trigger, like wearing like a kill switch, where I'm like, if I'm not making this much MRR that or you know, have this much act like engagement in the product, then like, I should maybe switch to something that is a bit easier to get people activated. I'm still not convinced that that's not true. Like, there's been a lot of encouragement to just keep going. But I do think that this is a bit of a slow moving industry, it may be a bit more of a vitamin versus painkiller type of thing in for some people, or at least that's the way they see it. Because when I reach back out to some of those leads, and asked, you know, how did you end up solving this problem? Like, which competitor? Did you end up going with? They like, so far the answers have been nothing like we are still like just thinking about this problem. And we'd be happy to you know, some of them are like, Yeah, let's do another demo call or let's do another, you know, something like let's talk about it again and reopen the conversation. And that's since April, however many months that is like five months or something like going by without actually moving on the problem. And so that could be just the again, the customer like that type of customer or it could just be the way that people buy in the space. It's a bit of You know, kind of, it's one of those things that's like sitting in the background, we should improve user onboarding, but then a lot of people don't because like, but they don't really realize that there's like this whole element of churn and like, and like, the bottom line is so closely tied to user onboarding, and improving that experience, that there's a disconnect there. So.
Michele Hansen 20:25
So let's talk for a second about what is working. I'm really curious about this customer that you have at $99 a month, you said, and I have a couple of questions about them. First of all, is this somebody who knew you from Twitter? Or is this as our friend, Mike buckbee calls and I believe I quoted him on this last week. And Mike, you're getting quoted again this week? stranger money. So good.
Cam Sloan 20:54
I think it's like I it stranger money, like I know this person. Yeah. Okay. And I don't remember exactly how they like came into the waiting list, but they did like, stumble on there. But they were really looking for like, yeah, some managed service, kind of white glove service there. So I've been helping a lot to do the implementation and planning there, as well, which is important to know, it's like, not just by my SAS, like, pay me 99 a month, it's like quite a bit of hands on work for for it as well.
Colleen Schnettler 21:27
Oh, that's interesting. I
Michele Hansen 21:27
noticed. Yeah. And I noticed in the end, all the people kind of chiming in on the thread and offering support and advice and whatnot, that I'm Jesse from bento jumped in. And he made the suggestion, I'm just gonna read it, throw a managed account offering 899 and see how many deals you can close with that I have a feeling many people would rather you do everything for them versus do DIY, at 49 to 99. It was a huge unlock when we were stagnant at bento, so much learning. And I was curious about your thoughts on that?
Cam Sloan 22:04
Yeah, I mean, I can see a lot of value in that approach, because you're learning about the problem by actually implementing but you know, trying to solve it for them as almost like putting yourself in the consultants, shoes, I guess, part of like, part of even why I've been, I don't know, like, it's kind of been draining to do that a bit from this other for this customer. But again, I'm only charging 99 a month. And so there's not like the return on on all those hours invested. But it has proven to give me some better learning and understanding of like, how people want to think through this problem, and how to solve it for them. Yeah, and I do think like, yeah, if I'm gonna be justifying outbound sales, if that's like long term approach to this business, then you need to put a higher price point on it, which like kind of goes and partially removes, like, why I started this business in the first place, which is like to make a lower cost solution that like, you know, can be more affordable for people to get into. So yeah, it's been a bit. Like, I like the idea. And then I just don't know that I want to run that kind of business long term of like having to basically do a productized service.
Colleen Schnettler 23:29
So what I'm trying to understand with this one client that you have is the time you're spending with them. Is that making it more hands off in the future? Like, are you working on integration pieces that makes them like kind of will streamline it for your future clients?
Cam Sloan 23:46
Yeah, like, for us, a lot of this has been for learnings like I kind of agreed to take it on, so that I could, you know, write some better documentation out of it, like, realize what questions they have been having in the process and what we need to do to implement. So it will both be like product improvements that come out of it, you know, like just yeah, tweaks to the product, when I'm implementing for them. But also, oh, what questions Am I asking the client? And and then turning those into like help Docs or articles that maybe can help other people get up and running? Like, what do I need? What information do I need about my customer to like, make a product tour that is going to be effective? Or what do I need to know about my product and the like, audience that I'm serving to, to know if I need to implement a product or not. So I'm taking kind of those notes along the way, using it as a learning opportunity. Hence, not really like charging a premium. I was kind of just like, well, I get to learn a lot from this experience as well. But the I did say like after this initial implementation, I'm handing this back off to you and your team will have to run with it. So it's yeah I'm not like signing on for a forever job at 99 a month. And I Deeley not doing that for each customer. Yeah.
Colleen Schnettler 25:08
So does this customer fit into your theory that you need to go after slightly bigger companies? Two to three, what do you say three to 10? employees with pretty significant revenue?
Cam Sloan 25:19
Yeah, I would say they operate mostly like with, yeah, contractors and freelancers helping them out, but they are Yeah, kind of in that range of company size. Definitely not the, you know, initial indie hacker audience, which I think Yeah, like, is an easy thing to learn, like we like, like, indie hackers don't have a ton of capital to be throwing at tools, and they would rather go build things themselves or spend like, a week like, making their own solutions. And, and it doesn't, yeah, it's just I think not having the access to the capital is like, is a big challenge there. So yeah, I've definitely learned to like, a bit about Yeah, maybe I should follow this. larger company size, at least, that's kind of where I'm at. Like, I don't know, if I want to, I don't know if maybe that ideal customer is actually a bit bigger than even what I said, maybe it's, you know, 20 plus employees. I've definitely had some companies reach out that were like 500 employees, but they tend to have much larger expectations, like, want to do NPS scores, they want to do surveys through these tools, they want to have the tours, they want to do checklist, like there's a lot of product gap, like there's a lot of big gap in what the product offers now that they kind of want a whole suite, because they're kind of nearing on like, enterprise, or like really like the larger business. So I'm trying to, like fit into this kind of smaller area where people might not have like such high expectations or like needs out of a product. And really, they're just trying to focus on this one part, which is like activation. And they can use another tool if they need to do like, survey and feedback type of stuff.
Michele Hansen 27:09
Like our sponsor this month reform, for example. Love it. There we go, Peter, um, I'm interested. So you mentioned you know, you have other customers who are mostly sort of friends and family and like, indie hacker money, and as you've kind of alluded to, basically this sort of irony of, you know, indie hacker world is basically that usually, we're like, we're not very good customers for each other, for the most part. But a very good peer group community. But I'm curious, this 99 a month customer, you did 30 demo calls, you probably learned a lot about what people were trying to solve within onboarding, like what their products were like, and, you know, these things about company size, and the sort of sort of corporate demographic questions basically, but also the activity they're trying to solve and, and how complicated their products are, and and what the, you know, basically, what the cost is to them of having a poorly on boarded user. And so I'm kind of curious, like, Do you notice any differences in the kind of product or those sort of goals or whatnot, that your $99 a month customer is trying to do? That those other customers are not, that might be a clue for you on the sort of customer that you should focus on from a sort of activity based perspective?
Cam Sloan 28:55
Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, yeah, the biggest learning I've had there is, you know, when you go into their product, there are multiple use cases for it, you may sign up for one thing or another, like you're not necessarily doing. It's not like hopscotch where you come in, and the single thing that you would like, use this product towards, but you come in, and there's a suite of products. And so when you have like this complex product that has multiple offerings, then you may want to guide the user to the next step. A good example of this would be like wave accounting software, but they also do so they have like, receipt tracking, they have employee like compensation, and they have invoices and all these things. And maybe you sign up and you only want one of those things like you may not need to know about every single part of that product and you may feel a bit overwhelmed when you come into a dashboard that has like 10 different options. Like completely different use cases. And that's where I'm finding that there's some, some good opportunity there to help, like with a product tour. And so for example, like this customer that I've on boarded, part of what we did is hooking to their onboarding survey to say, like, What are you trying to do with this product, which I think is really helpful for them segmenting what you're going to show them in a tour. And so, you know, if there so it's like an SEO platform, I won't get into too much more, I don't want to like, you know, just yeah,
Michele Hansen 30:37
that's fine. Yeah. But it's a it's a, it's a product that has basically multiple, different products within it that somebody has purchased. And maybe they know they need one of those but and they don't know what these other things are, that they're either they are paying for or the company would like them to start paying for. And so the value that you're providing to them in this in this case, is basically helping to introduce the customer to these other products and reduce, reduce sort of overwhelm that the customer might be feeling about coming into a complicated product. And the other the friends and family product, like those ones, were they more like single products without multiple products within them.
Cam Sloan 31:26
Yeah, yeah, more like single products, and actually just a quite a slight tweak on on the other one, because like, what users will actually do is come into this product, they'll sign up, and then they are, they may know what they want to do. But because there are so many options, they don't know what the next step would be to get to it. So instead of showing them the other options that they don't need, I'm actually guiding them more towards the one that they signed up and expressed interest for. So if they say like I need, you know, I'm interested in link building, whereas this other person might be interested in local SEO, then you want to guide them to that next part of the product that's going to be relevant to that so that they can take the next steps and see value out of the product there. And then going to your other point of introducing them to the other parts, like that is a great thing to do, like over time as people use like one part of the product, and then they come back to it, you can kind of use progressive disclosure to show things over time, Hey, did you know about this feature, hey, this, like, you know, and kind of like when you have software like figma, that maybe gives you a tip every week or something? And it's just like, Oh, I didn't know I could do that. But like, it kind of does some feature discovery is what it's called. And you can help users discover new features or features that they are not actively using. So So yeah, those are a couple use cases that that customers is using. So
Colleen Schnettler 32:52
ultimately, your product is about user retention, that's the value you're providing to your customer.
Cam Sloan 32:59
Yeah, I would say, kind of on the activation side, as well, where you're really trying to get them from, like, there's there's a couple elements, you know, but the very first, like the core part of the star is getting them activated and getting them to take that next step once they come into your product that's going to help them to get to the outcome that they want and what and so asking yourself, what is the like, what is the thing that your customer is coming in here to do, and then making sure that you can guide them right to that next step is like, is crucial. And so that that is more in like the activation world, and then retention, it can play a role in as well. But because if you don't activate them, they're not going to stick around as well. But yeah, there are also some other things that you could do like email drip campaigns. And like, yeah, like kind of knowledge draw, like kind of an email campaign that educates your users on how to do what they want to do. Like it makes us really well with that to kind of retain them. Yeah.
Colleen Schnettler 34:06
Right. So ultimately, though, when you say activation they've presumably like if I'm a user, I've already signed up for someone service because I wanted so when you sell it to the person I'm you know, assigned up with, you're selling it as we will reduce your churn, because they need to activate because if they don't activate, they're going to churn because they're not going to see value. Okay.
Cam Sloan 34:27
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's definitely like tied into that, I guess. You know, there are just some tools like I forget as it turnkey, is like one that is like specifically focused on like, the customers who are maybe about to churn out and then keeping them around or giving them offers. So this is like primarily, I guess there because there's a spectrum of like, you know, from activation to like retention that you may find custom like that you want to focus on within that whole experience, but yeah, but Like, it all kind of adds up, it all plays really like, together in, in giving a good experience to users that's gonna keep them around. And yeah, you're right like to really what I want to do is like help help my customers to show the value of the product to keep their customers around and get them, you know, activated and using it, versus maybe getting dropped into a product that is just so overwhelming, like Michelle said earlier where they don't know what the next steps should be. Yeah, I feel like that's, that's pretty much it.
Michele Hansen 35:39
So I used to work on a couple of products that had that we actually used hopscotch style tours for. And basically, the reason why we use to hopscotch it was I think we use a survey that then directed them into the proper hopscotch sequence was because the products were incredibly complicated. And we had limited ability to make those products less complicated. So it was a very painful problem for me as a product manager, who was tasked with driving retention metrics, but could not solve the foundational problems. And so we use hopscotch as a way to try to like, basically overcome the fact that the product is complicated. And kind of thinking about that, and thinking about what Colleen just said, of like, you know, what is the pain that you are solving for people, I just pulled up your website, and nudge your users to the aha moment. I like it, it's positive. But if you show that to me, when I was a product manager, you know, five or six years ago, that would not have been the problem I would have expressed to you. Right, like, reduce your churn, like, you know, your product is complicated. Your users don't have to be overwhelmed, like get them through it virt more trial, that type of thing, convert more trials, like what is that goal that someone is trying to drive that relates to what you're solving, or that's reducing churn, increasing activation, like, you know, stop losing users, because they're confused. Like, that's the problem. you're solving that people have value in their products, but because for whatever reason, whether those reasons are in their control or not, the products are complicated. And their users are, you know, their users thought there was value in it, but then they get to it, and they can't get the value back. And so like there's this mismatch, and speak to the pain, I'm not like, I'm not seeing I'm not seeing pain on your landing page.
Cam Sloan 38:04
Yeah, I think in that the h1 doesn't fully address it. It's something that Yeah, like, the thread yesterday, and everyone reaching out after like, definitely gave me so many ideas of like, where to go, and what to focus on improving for hopscotch. Like, there's a lot. There's a lot, it's not like, I'm coming here, and like, I'm all out of ideas now. Like, there's nothing more that can be done. Like, there's so much more that could be done to improve the state. And so it's been like, what do I choose from that? But that's a pretty like, yeah, a no brainer, is like the positioning of it, and kind of better. Focusing on the outcomes. I think you're like, absolutely, right there. I have, like, let's see, I, because there were, I don't know, 20 people that sent me, like, it was so great yesterday, like 20 people sent me DMS, and like, had like, great conversations with some other founders. And then and then I had some other people that kind of just commented and offered their suggestions as well. And I've been trying to just, like, go through that and, like make a list of like points of like, what I could explore and take away from that, like so that it's not all just like me airing my grievances and Twitter, which actually like go and take something away from from it. And, you know, there there was, I guess some of the pieces in there include, like, what you just said is like really like, you know, you should be focusing on the outcomes more like and someone suggested like, you know, increased child conversions, improved feature adoption. And so there's more that I could do to like really? Yeah, like reduce churn to make that clear. I think there's a positioning element and and just like communication element that could be improved upon. There's also just like, number of people aren't are not coming through like there's not enough people that are Coming through my site and through the signup flow to even make, like, great. I don't know, decisions based on like data driven decisions, you know, it's if I, if we're picking it into this, like one or two customers kind of thing, it's like you need more people trying this, you need more people activating. And so finding ways that I can do that through, you know, people have given some great recommendations of like, how I can go ahead and like build like a sales campaign, or use AdWords and SEO tactics to kind of like, grow this, I guess a lot of it ends up like there's a ton of things that I have taken from that. From from that thread of like, good ideas, and now it's like deciding which things that I can do. And I think it will come down to like evaluating which are the easy ones that I can like make changes to right now really quickly like this, on a playing with the communication and wording on the on the site. And then some of it will be more like long term investment. Other things might be more immediate, like running some AdWords tests, like $10 a day and just like trying out some different headlines to see what grabs people and then using the learnings from that to maybe further update, like what my content game will be, or what my you know, what my wording on the website should be like, based on what people click on those ads has, like it's been, it's been really nice to get some of that information. And then and then other people even mentioned about the pricing, maybe not being accessible. But again, I have to take that with a grain of salt. But there's, you know, people who are saying the jump from a free tier to $50 a month, and then $100 a month is too large. And so maybe there could be a price in between that, that becomes more accessible if I am trying to target like, smaller businesses as well. And then there's like the other advice, which is go and add a price deer on the other side, that is like $800 a month and you know, do manage services. So that's Yeah, there's just been almost it's been overwhelming, like, get all this new knowledge and information overnight.
Michele Hansen 42:25
It totally makes sense that you're, you're you're swimming in ideas right now. And, yeah, I sort of just added one to that pile there. And I always I'm almost reminded of kind of the situation that Coleen was in after she first started doing user interviews where like, there was like, so many ideas coming at her from customers, and she was having so many ideas. And then it was like, where do I go from here?
Cam Sloan 43:04
Yeah, I remember hearing like those episodes. And when you did, like the live, you know, customer call, where Michelle interviewed your customer. And and then yeah, a lot of trying to figure out what the next step should be. It does feel a lot like that. Like, there's so many paths to go down. What's the right one? And I think, you know, a big part of it has even just been like, does it make sense to keep going down pass like down these paths at all, or try some, like, again, like, try a whole new thing. And I think that's why I was like, was then maybe am scared to even go forward with some of this stuff is like, does it make sense to keep investing the time in, in what I'm building now? if, you know, is it gonna help me see returns in a year or two years time, versus switching to something else? It seems like a lot of people think that it's definitely a good idea to keep going. And, and so I'm leaning towards that, I still think I want to have like, some kill switch, like, you know, to avoid running three years without any revenue kind of thing. And I need to see some positive signals at some point. But yeah, that's kind of kind of where I'm at. But it has given me a bit more hope of like, this is a normal feeling cam like you are allowed to feel deflated, you're allowed to feel like you don't have like, you don't aren't great at sales and marketing just by default, you know, you have to work towards those and put a lot of work in and so it's okay to feel like this and it's okay to like. Like, it's not just that the product is bad or that the market isn't there. It's just this is a part of the process. So just coming to terms with that. has been really helpful over the past day and gives me a bit more. I don't know, just like, like, a bit more of my like, desire to keep going.
Colleen Schnettler 45:13
Alex Hellman has a great article on this. It's about, it's about all of the developers who take his course and how when they get to the marketing course, they all freak out. Because when someone is excellent in their field, starting over is so hard. So there's a lot of things I feel like I heard you say today, and one of them, is it, I wanted to ask you, is it that you just don't want to do marketing? Because you're convinced it's going to fail? Or, I mean, what what is your thought, like, all of this? Or do you feel like you should be making more revenue now and you're frustrated? And that's where this is coming from?
Cam Sloan 45:53
I think, you know, I think that it's like it's a mix of like, Yeah, well, the marketing, see fruits at the end of like, of all that investment, because because just you know, going through 4050 calls and and then only coming out with like one customer that I'm basically doing it all for them at the end, like is that the type of business that I want to be growing? Like, do I want to do a sales driven and like hands on business versus something more like, you know, seeing what Peter has done with reform of like, really, people are signing up and get going themselves, maybe you have to have like higher numbers, but like, it's more. I don't know, like, it's, it lends itself better to self signup, and self serve, where you can do a bit more product lead, you still have to do marketing, but like, the way that the business operates, is not like hiring a sales team. It's investing in content and other other parts of the business, which is more maybe the type of business so it's been that like, question mark, about the business in general? Like, is that kind of where I want to go with it? And, yeah, I mean, there are all sorts of fears in there. I think a lot of it is also just a fear of like, yeah, it like, do I know what I'm doing. And I actually, I worked in marketing for five years, believe it or not as, like, scary as like, I worked in music marketing, for concerts, it was a much different thing. And this was like, six or so years ago. And so it's a much different beast, but then SAS marketing. But yeah, like, even with that experience, it's still just scary to go out on your own. And like, I don't know, just feel you feel back at square one again. So yeah.
Michele Hansen 47:39
Yeah, I mean, towards us that I think that's a totally normal feeling. And this feeling of like struggling and like, this isn't working. And then also you get some more ideas. And you're like, Okay, wait, where? Where do I go? Like, what do I do next? And, you know, I noticed, like, you posted that thread. And I'm guessing that you woke up that morning, not not feeling so great. Yeah, you're right. And I wonder how you felt waking up this morning. After getting all of that support,
Cam Sloan 48:19
today has been much different, like it's been, it's always like, Man, it's so amazing to see that people are gonna be there to lift you up when you're like feeling a bit down, I think. I don't know. I've had I've, like, wrote tweets like that, and then deleted them because like, it's very personal and just like very open and you know, you're like, our potential customers gonna read this think less of me for like, running a business then not knowing what I'm doing. You know, there's all all sorts of like, fear in that. And what I'm realizing is, like, there's been a lot of appreciation for this open approach. So I, I wake up the next day with like, just feeling very grateful to have like that, knowing that maybe I need to, like, yeah, rely on community more and maybe get more involved with like, talking to other founders a bit and ideating with them, because working alone is very challenging to like, be in your own head all the time and see, you know, things moving so slowly. But yeah, at the same time, like the next day, having 100 people reach out and I'll give you like many ideas has been overwhelming at the same time. For like, what to do next. But I guess like the core of what my challenge was, or is is not so much like what to do next, because all of these ideas, I'll put them in a list and work through them one by one. That's the only way to get things done. It's like one thing at a time. But yeah, just like knowing it's more figuring out, like the conviction around like Emma is this the type of business I want to keep working Because in a couple years, the efforts hopefully will, yeah, show fruits for the labor. And then also I keep using that term, which I've never used before. Like, I don't know why everything's bearing fruits today, but but you know, like that kind of thing of just like, really? Like, will this be the business that I want to build? And I'm making sure that I'm doing that. And I think that's been a big part of the fear that I have of, of moving forward. So I don't have an answer to that yet. But I do have a lot of people who have been like really kind of offering advice. And so I think there's still some chewing on this idea to be done. Yeah.
Michele Hansen 50:39
And I think that question of, is this the business I want to build? I think that's that's a question that only you can answer.
Cam Sloan 50:48
Exactly. Yeah. I've i that is one thing I've noticed, like as much advice as you soak in or people give you, you know, they could all be right, like in their own ways, but then it comes down to like a deeply personal decision on like, what, like how you want to approach things. So T, B, D.
Michele Hansen 51:10
I guess that's a good point for us to wrap up today. Cam. Thank you so much for your vulnerability, both here. And on Twitter. You know, I'm reminded of something I heard. Nicole Baldy new co founder of webinar ninja say on her podcast recently, Nicole and Kate can relate, which is true vulnerability is when there is personal risk involved. And I think your tweet and thread about that really shows like there was that risk involved, and you took it and and people jumped in to help. And I think that's what's so amazing about our community. But so I encourage people to follow along with cam. You are at Sloan cam on Twitter. Your product is hopscotch dot club. Thank you so much for coming on cam.
Cam Sloan 52:14
Thank you both for having me. It was such a pleasure. I love the podcast. And you know, I'm always listening and tuning in and love following along your stories, because it's really it's encouraging as well to just you know, hear what you're both, you know, working on and so that always helps me feel a little less like it's just me and having, you know, some help on the way. So thanks so much.
Michele Hansen 52:39
All right. Well, Colleen, talk to you next week.
Colleen Schnettler 52:42
Bye.
Check out Hopscotch: https://hopscotch.club/
Michele Hansen 0:01
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Michele Hansen 0:01
So today, I'm so excited we have a friend joining us, Cam Sloane. Hello, Cam. So we invited you on today because you had tweeted the other day about how you're kind of feeling stuck right now. And we're like, you know what? Maybe we like we can chat about it and help you get unstuck.
Cam Sloan 1:17
Yeah, that was, I guess, shout out to Aaron Francis, who kind of like just was like, Hey, bring him on. And, and I was like, Yeah, let's do it. That'd be awesome. And I think that, you know, just speaking that tweet, it really seemed to resonate with a lot of other people, like other founders who are trying to do this. And because I had an outpouring of, you know, comments and support, and DMS, from people I don't know, and people that I do know and invite stuff like this show and stuff to just like, it's amazing, the community that has reached out to kind of say, like, well, all sorts of things I'm sure we'll get into today. So it's been really nice to it's always nice to have that because sometimes you're just going at this and you feel like super alone. So for context, I just feel kind of stuck in like, you know, do I keep going do I switch to something else? Or do I? You know, yeah, like, I've contemplated like just doing contract work. And you know, just make money that way, because it's a bit easier. So all sorts of stuff that is going through my head over the past few months? Because it's just slow, slow going.
Colleen Schnettler 2:32
Yeah, Cam to get us started. Could you give us a little background about your product? And how long you've been working on it?
Cam Sloan 2:40
Yeah, definitely. That would be helpful for listeners. So yeah, I am working on hopscotch. It's a user onboarding tool, specifically focusing on product tours, and kind of in app messaging and guides to kind of, you know, when a user signs up for your product, sometimes you want to kind of hold their hand a bit to show them what their next step should be, in order to help prevent them from churning by actually showing them to the thing that they want to do. And so yeah, I mean, product tours, to be honest, like, it's not the right fit for every every business. But sometimes, there are really good use cases, like if you have a complex product that has, like you get in like a CRM, or like an analytics tool that has like 10 options on the top menu and 10 on the side, and your users just get dumped, or, you know, Landon, this page with no idea what to do next, then a really good way to show them is to guide them, you know, and kind of say, you know, here's, here's what your next step should be, so that you can see value out of the product. So I've been working on this for, I mean, about a year since the inception of like, actually like the idea, but really kind of steadily since January of this year in 2021. And kind of focusing most of my time on it. Because outside of that I do freelancing contract work for you know, larger companies just doing web development work for them. And that kind of helps me to stay self funded to do my projects like this and, and hopefully grow my own software business.
Michele Hansen 4:28
Yeah, so. So I kind of want to propose a structure for this conversation. So I've mentioned a little bit in my book, how the sort of core questions that you're trying to answer when you talk to a customer can also be used when maybe you're helping somebody think through something, which are what are they trying to do overall? Why? What are the steps in that process they're going through what if they already Tried, and where are they stuck? And so I feel like you've kind of you've started to give us a little bit of overview on the what you're trying to do. And why. I'm curious what led you to be interested in building an onboarding tool?
Cam Sloan 5:23
Yeah. So the, you know, like, as I don't know, if you did this as well, when you were coming up with, you know, what business to go into you like make a list, you're trying to make a list of ideas, and like, most of them are pretty terrible. And, like, I had maybe 50 ideas. And this was kind of one of them that I didn't really think too much about until I actually I met someone who I, who wanted to hire me to build to work on their software company, and just doing web development for them. And we actually ended up, I didn't work for him, it wasn't the right fit for taking on that contract. But we ended up like really getting along well, kind of both having founder ambitions. And he was almost like, in the position that I'm at right now where he was feeling a bit stuck. And so we ended up saying, Hey, we should like try and work on something together. And, and we were thrown, like, what ideas have you been having, and, and we both checked kind of our lists. And, and this was one of them. So for him, he was actually experiencing, like, the pain point more than I had previously. So really, he was searching around for tools. And like came across intercom product tours and other app cues and realizing like, you know, he's a bootstrap founder cannot justify the price at like, $300 plus a month, and was looking for a tool that was maybe affordable that that could get them up and running. And we kind of ran with that together. In like, just real quick summary. Like he ended up going and building another business. So I kept going on hopscotch. And, yeah, like, as soon as I dove into the problem, like I really enjoyed it, both technically, because like you're you're kind of embedding your yourself into another SAS product by default, like by the definition of what these tools do. And so there's a lot of like, really interesting technical learnings that I've had to had to go through with that, like anytime you're dealing with like widget, embed scripts and other people's code, it's, it's a lot of interesting stuff on the technical side. But then also just realizing like that, there's a lot of interesting stuff in the human and business side of this as well. Like, I started soaking in resources from Samuel Kulik, and like the user less team and, you know, anywhere that I could find people who are talking about onboarding and realizing like how crucial it can be to a business's success. Because, you know, if you can reduce that initial churn in the first month or two, then then it can have a wild impact on the like, lifetime value of customers and how your product retains users. And so it just kept me interested From then on, which is why I didn't like end up going work on something else. After, after he, like my co founder went to do something else.
Michele Hansen 8:23
So let's talk a little bit about where you are now. So you launched in April. Is that right?
Cam Sloan 8:30
or me? Yeah. So I think so. Time is a blur? Yeah, like I because I've kind of been doing, like, I did a lot of stuff with early access of just onboarding one on one, like people who are signing up for the early access list. And at one point, I kind of let people sign up on their own, which April sounds, it might be even a bit early, it might have been just a couple months ago that I finally made it so that people could self sign up. And so, yeah, I think a lot of the customers I was speaking to back in April, and May and June, like I was kind of doing just they would express interest, find the landing page, and then we would jump on a demo call. And and some of them would, you know, try the product, others would just kind of like ghost off and and so that's kind of where, yeah, like I probably had about 40 conversations, demo calls and stuff. And you know, I'm setting with just a handful of like really just one main customer that is like paying me and has the product installed. And I've like kind of done a white glove service to help them get up and running with it. And then I have a couple like I don't know, like almost just like friends and family supporters or like people who have like paid but not activated. And so I don't like really even count towards the bottom line. They're like There's not a lot that I can gain from, from them, except they're $20 a month.
Michele Hansen 10:07
So, what's your revenue out? Right now? If you're comfortable saying that,
Cam Sloan 10:11
yeah, I'm at like 150 MRR
Michele Hansen 10:14
and what are your expenses to keep it running?
Cam Sloan 10:18
A pretty low. Yeah, like, I'm paying like 20 bucks a month for server costs and, and then it's really just a matter of like, I am trying to pay, you know, just paying my rent and stuff out of savings. And like all of that I have, like, the way that I kind of manage my cash flow there is just by doing a certain amount of freelance per year and then saying, I have to make this much. And then that kind of floats me on that side of things. And so yeah, it's it's like really quite inexpensive to keep it operating like this. But I have thought, like, I have quite a bit of cash in the business bank account from doing the contract and freelancing. There's about 100 and 120k. there that is kind of, you know, just setting as runway, but I have also considered like, should I be deploying this more effectively? Like, if I'm ready to work on this business? Like, which, I guess is a big question mark, like, do I keep going or not? But like, do I want to invest more in, I don't know, maybe trying some ads, or trying to hire someone to help with the content and things that I'm not doing. So hopefully, that gives a bit of a picture of the financials and stuff.
Colleen Schnettler 11:38
Can we go back to the 40 onboarding calls you did? and talk a little bit more about that? I'm really curious. So you actually got on the phone with 40 people who organically reached out to you?
Cam Sloan 11:51
Yeah, I would say, you know, somewhere in that range, because I had about 100 people on my, like, early access list. Well, this was over the course of several months. And so as they were joining, I would kind of do the playbook of like, you know, as soon as they sign up, or maybe a day or two later, sometimes depending how much like I was working on product, or if I was in learning mode at the time, I would, you know, jump onto calls with them, I did come out with like, a really early version of this product and sent it to like a handful of customers, and then you know, got feedback, like, oh, but it doesn't do this. And so I go back to product mode and, and rebuild and say like, here we go. But then, you know, maybe there were other other issues that it wasn't solving, like a huge part of that just felt like, maybe it wasn't a huge pain point. Because I actually went back to a lot of these, like, people and I plan to go back and even speak to, like, send some more follow up emails, because just this week, I sent about five or six of them. So yeah, where I guess I'm, I've been speaking with, you know, quite a few customers that would be requesting these features. And then I would, you know, go off take maybe a week or whatever it took to go and build the smallest version of that come back. And, and sometimes that was not really enough for they would just kind of ghost at that point. And, and just, you know, it. I know, it felt like the right thing to be it felt like the right approach and like learn from the people who are going to be our customers and you know, go build what they asked for. But then, but then didn't really see results from it, I do think still like most of what they requested and was like super reasonable and like did improve the product to where it is. Today, like where I think that people signing up today like have a much more useful product because it can do you know, an example of that would be like segmenting your product tours to only show certain ones to certain demographics of users. Like if you have a new user that is, I don't know, an agency versus a small business owner, they may have more, they might have a better understanding of tooling in general. And so they you would just show a different thing. So you want to do segmenting within the app. And so that was something that I really do feel helped with making the product better, but then yeah, it still didn't like end up driving those conversions in the way that I was hoping for.
Michele Hansen 14:29
Yeah. Did any of those people you talked like you said those were onboarding calls so had those people paid for the product?
Cam Sloan 14:37
And maybe I just like misspoke. It was more like demo calls I guess of like, you know, just people who had signed up for they would sign up for fill out the Early Access form. Tell me about like their use case. And then I would go and speak with them but you know, to be also just like, I don't know, just Be critical on that point. It's like a lot of these people who are signing up probably, were just following my journey of me building in public on Twitter and like, may not be like the ideal customer profile, either I have found that like, initially I thought hopscotch might be a great use are a great fit for, like, really small companies like originally was targeting like other solo founders, indie hacker types that, like, you know, to get them a tool that they could afford that they could use for doing onboarding, but really, like, you're not feeling the pains yet of having to manually onboard like hundreds of customers at that scale. And so where I'm now more leaning towards is like trying to target more companies that are kind of in the I don't know, maybe like two to three employee to 10 Plus, like 1015 employees, so they still, like feel the pains of like, apt uses too expensive, but they actually have like employees and revenue, and are probably feeling some of the customer, some of the pains of trying to manually onboard so many users. So I think it has, like, these conversations have been helpful to like, guide me slowly to where I need to be. It's, it's just slow moving still. And like, now I don't see as many people filling that pipeline by default, because I'm not really tweeting a lot. And so it's like, Okay, I got to go and like, chase my, you know, hunt my food, for lack of a better term, and like, go and, you know, either do some, you know, founder sales, like going and prospecting and doing cold outreach, or, you know, trying to work the SEO game. And, and this is kind of like, where I fall and get a little bit stuck of like, not knowing the next best steps, because they're, like, so many ways that I could go with this. And none of them show like immediate returns. And so and so I kind of get a little bit deflated, even, like, if you spend a week writing out two or three articles, or, you know, Docs or blog post type things, or like you go and fill out a bunch of Korra answers. And then there's not necessarily going to be immediate returns, these things kind of prove themselves over like 612 months. And and that can just be hard compared to I don't know, I'm sure you both can really have like, you know, going in coding a feature. And then you see that returns, like it works right there. So yeah, it's just, I feel like that's been the tricky part of where I'm at now.
Michele Hansen 17:32
Yeah, it can be really hard when you're at the point of making content investments, and you know, that it's gonna take months or years to pay off. But, like, investing in general, like, my head waiting for that payoff, and being patient is so hard.
Cam Sloan 17:54
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think that's what, like, I noticed yesterday with so many founders resonating on the same points, and some of them getting through to the other side was really inspirational like to read about and hear that, like, yeah, they just, you know, keep, there's like an element of keep plugging away. But there's also like, you can keep plugging away doing the wrong thing, forever. And, and I am like, really trying to like, since day one, I've tried to avoid like sinking many years into a startup that's not going to ever see traction. And I've always been like, at a certain point, I just want to have like a cut off trigger, like wearing like a kill switch, where I'm like, if I'm not making this much MRR that or you know, have this much act like engagement in the product, then like, I should maybe switch to something that is a bit easier to get people activated. I'm still not convinced that that's not true. Like, there's been a lot of encouragement to just keep going. But I do think that this is a bit of a slow moving industry, it may be a bit more of a vitamin versus painkiller type of thing in for some people, or at least that's the way they see it. Because when I reach back out to some of those leads, and asked, you know, how did you end up solving this problem? Like, which competitor? Did you end up going with? They like, so far the answers have been nothing like we are still like just thinking about this problem. And we'd be happy to you know, some of them are like, Yeah, let's do another demo call or let's do another, you know, something like let's talk about it again and reopen the conversation. And that's since April, however many months that is like five months or something like going by without actually moving on the problem. And so that could be just the again, the customer like that type of customer or it could just be the way that people buy in the space. It's a bit of You know, kind of, it's one of those things that's like sitting in the background, we should improve user onboarding, but then a lot of people don't because like, but they don't really realize that there's like this whole element of churn and like, and like, the bottom line is so closely tied to user onboarding, and improving that experience, that there's a disconnect there. So.
Michele Hansen 20:25
So let's talk for a second about what is working. I'm really curious about this customer that you have at $99 a month, you said, and I have a couple of questions about them. First of all, is this somebody who knew you from Twitter? Or is this as our friend, Mike buckbee calls and I believe I quoted him on this last week. And Mike, you're getting quoted again this week? stranger money. So good.
Cam Sloan 20:54
I think it's like I it stranger money, like I know this person. Yeah. Okay. And I don't remember exactly how they like came into the waiting list, but they did like, stumble on there. But they were really looking for like, yeah, some managed service, kind of white glove service there. So I've been helping a lot to do the implementation and planning there, as well, which is important to know, it's like, not just by my SAS, like, pay me 99 a month, it's like quite a bit of hands on work for for it as well.
Colleen Schnettler 21:27
Oh, that's interesting. I
Michele Hansen 21:27
noticed. Yeah. And I noticed in the end, all the people kind of chiming in on the thread and offering support and advice and whatnot, that I'm Jesse from bento jumped in. And he made the suggestion, I'm just gonna read it, throw a managed account offering 899 and see how many deals you can close with that I have a feeling many people would rather you do everything for them versus do DIY, at 49 to 99. It was a huge unlock when we were stagnant at bento, so much learning. And I was curious about your thoughts on that?
Cam Sloan 22:04
Yeah, I mean, I can see a lot of value in that approach, because you're learning about the problem by actually implementing but you know, trying to solve it for them as almost like putting yourself in the consultants, shoes, I guess, part of like, part of even why I've been, I don't know, like, it's kind of been draining to do that a bit from this other for this customer. But again, I'm only charging 99 a month. And so there's not like the return on on all those hours invested. But it has proven to give me some better learning and understanding of like, how people want to think through this problem, and how to solve it for them. Yeah, and I do think like, yeah, if I'm gonna be justifying outbound sales, if that's like long term approach to this business, then you need to put a higher price point on it, which like kind of goes and partially removes, like, why I started this business in the first place, which is like to make a lower cost solution that like, you know, can be more affordable for people to get into. So yeah, it's been a bit. Like, I like the idea. And then I just don't know that I want to run that kind of business long term of like having to basically do a productized service.
Colleen Schnettler 23:29
So what I'm trying to understand with this one client that you have is the time you're spending with them. Is that making it more hands off in the future? Like, are you working on integration pieces that makes them like kind of will streamline it for your future clients?
Cam Sloan 23:46
Yeah, like, for us, a lot of this has been for learnings like I kind of agreed to take it on, so that I could, you know, write some better documentation out of it, like, realize what questions they have been having in the process and what we need to do to implement. So it will both be like product improvements that come out of it, you know, like just yeah, tweaks to the product, when I'm implementing for them. But also, oh, what questions Am I asking the client? And and then turning those into like help Docs or articles that maybe can help other people get up and running? Like, what do I need? What information do I need about my customer to like, make a product tour that is going to be effective? Or what do I need to know about my product and the like, audience that I'm serving to, to know if I need to implement a product or not. So I'm taking kind of those notes along the way, using it as a learning opportunity. Hence, not really like charging a premium. I was kind of just like, well, I get to learn a lot from this experience as well. But the I did say like after this initial implementation, I'm handing this back off to you and your team will have to run with it. So it's yeah I'm not like signing on for a forever job at 99 a month. And I Deeley not doing that for each customer. Yeah.
Colleen Schnettler 25:08
So does this customer fit into your theory that you need to go after slightly bigger companies? Two to three, what do you say three to 10? employees with pretty significant revenue?
Cam Sloan 25:19
Yeah, I would say they operate mostly like with, yeah, contractors and freelancers helping them out, but they are Yeah, kind of in that range of company size. Definitely not the, you know, initial indie hacker audience, which I think Yeah, like, is an easy thing to learn, like we like, like, indie hackers don't have a ton of capital to be throwing at tools, and they would rather go build things themselves or spend like, a week like, making their own solutions. And, and it doesn't, yeah, it's just I think not having the access to the capital is like, is a big challenge there. So yeah, I've definitely learned to like, a bit about Yeah, maybe I should follow this. larger company size, at least, that's kind of where I'm at. Like, I don't know, if I want to, I don't know if maybe that ideal customer is actually a bit bigger than even what I said, maybe it's, you know, 20 plus employees. I've definitely had some companies reach out that were like 500 employees, but they tend to have much larger expectations, like, want to do NPS scores, they want to do surveys through these tools, they want to have the tours, they want to do checklist, like there's a lot of product gap, like there's a lot of big gap in what the product offers now that they kind of want a whole suite, because they're kind of nearing on like, enterprise, or like really like the larger business. So I'm trying to, like fit into this kind of smaller area where people might not have like such high expectations or like needs out of a product. And really, they're just trying to focus on this one part, which is like activation. And they can use another tool if they need to do like, survey and feedback type of stuff.
Michele Hansen 27:09
Like our sponsor this month reform, for example. Love it. There we go, Peter, um, I'm interested. So you mentioned you know, you have other customers who are mostly sort of friends and family and like, indie hacker money, and as you've kind of alluded to, basically this sort of irony of, you know, indie hacker world is basically that usually, we're like, we're not very good customers for each other, for the most part. But a very good peer group community. But I'm curious, this 99 a month customer, you did 30 demo calls, you probably learned a lot about what people were trying to solve within onboarding, like what their products were like, and, you know, these things about company size, and the sort of sort of corporate demographic questions basically, but also the activity they're trying to solve and, and how complicated their products are, and and what the, you know, basically, what the cost is to them of having a poorly on boarded user. And so I'm kind of curious, like, Do you notice any differences in the kind of product or those sort of goals or whatnot, that your $99 a month customer is trying to do? That those other customers are not, that might be a clue for you on the sort of customer that you should focus on from a sort of activity based perspective?
Cam Sloan 28:55
Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, yeah, the biggest learning I've had there is, you know, when you go into their product, there are multiple use cases for it, you may sign up for one thing or another, like you're not necessarily doing. It's not like hopscotch where you come in, and the single thing that you would like, use this product towards, but you come in, and there's a suite of products. And so when you have like this complex product that has multiple offerings, then you may want to guide the user to the next step. A good example of this would be like wave accounting software, but they also do so they have like, receipt tracking, they have employee like compensation, and they have invoices and all these things. And maybe you sign up and you only want one of those things like you may not need to know about every single part of that product and you may feel a bit overwhelmed when you come into a dashboard that has like 10 different options. Like completely different use cases. And that's where I'm finding that there's some, some good opportunity there to help, like with a product tour. And so for example, like this customer that I've on boarded, part of what we did is hooking to their onboarding survey to say, like, What are you trying to do with this product, which I think is really helpful for them segmenting what you're going to show them in a tour. And so, you know, if there so it's like an SEO platform, I won't get into too much more, I don't want to like, you know, just yeah,
Michele Hansen 30:37
that's fine. Yeah. But it's a it's a, it's a product that has basically multiple, different products within it that somebody has purchased. And maybe they know they need one of those but and they don't know what these other things are, that they're either they are paying for or the company would like them to start paying for. And so the value that you're providing to them in this in this case, is basically helping to introduce the customer to these other products and reduce, reduce sort of overwhelm that the customer might be feeling about coming into a complicated product. And the other the friends and family product, like those ones, were they more like single products without multiple products within them.
Cam Sloan 31:26
Yeah, yeah, more like single products, and actually just a quite a slight tweak on on the other one, because like, what users will actually do is come into this product, they'll sign up, and then they are, they may know what they want to do. But because there are so many options, they don't know what the next step would be to get to it. So instead of showing them the other options that they don't need, I'm actually guiding them more towards the one that they signed up and expressed interest for. So if they say like I need, you know, I'm interested in link building, whereas this other person might be interested in local SEO, then you want to guide them to that next part of the product that's going to be relevant to that so that they can take the next steps and see value out of the product there. And then going to your other point of introducing them to the other parts, like that is a great thing to do, like over time as people use like one part of the product, and then they come back to it, you can kind of use progressive disclosure to show things over time, Hey, did you know about this feature, hey, this, like, you know, and kind of like when you have software like figma, that maybe gives you a tip every week or something? And it's just like, Oh, I didn't know I could do that. But like, it kind of does some feature discovery is what it's called. And you can help users discover new features or features that they are not actively using. So So yeah, those are a couple use cases that that customers is using. So
Colleen Schnettler 32:52
ultimately, your product is about user retention, that's the value you're providing to your customer.
Cam Sloan 32:59
Yeah, I would say, kind of on the activation side, as well, where you're really trying to get them from, like, there's there's a couple elements, you know, but the very first, like the core part of the star is getting them activated and getting them to take that next step once they come into your product that's going to help them to get to the outcome that they want and what and so asking yourself, what is the like, what is the thing that your customer is coming in here to do, and then making sure that you can guide them right to that next step is like, is crucial. And so that that is more in like the activation world, and then retention, it can play a role in as well. But because if you don't activate them, they're not going to stick around as well. But yeah, there are also some other things that you could do like email drip campaigns. And like, yeah, like kind of knowledge draw, like kind of an email campaign that educates your users on how to do what they want to do. Like it makes us really well with that to kind of retain them. Yeah.
Colleen Schnettler 34:06
Right. So ultimately, though, when you say activation they've presumably like if I'm a user, I've already signed up for someone service because I wanted so when you sell it to the person I'm you know, assigned up with, you're selling it as we will reduce your churn, because they need to activate because if they don't activate, they're going to churn because they're not going to see value. Okay.
Cam Sloan 34:27
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's definitely like tied into that, I guess. You know, there are just some tools like I forget as it turnkey, is like one that is like specifically focused on like, the customers who are maybe about to churn out and then keeping them around or giving them offers. So this is like primarily, I guess there because there's a spectrum of like, you know, from activation to like retention that you may find custom like that you want to focus on within that whole experience, but yeah, but Like, it all kind of adds up, it all plays really like, together in, in giving a good experience to users that's gonna keep them around. And yeah, you're right like to really what I want to do is like help help my customers to show the value of the product to keep their customers around and get them, you know, activated and using it, versus maybe getting dropped into a product that is just so overwhelming, like Michelle said earlier where they don't know what the next steps should be. Yeah, I feel like that's, that's pretty much it.
Michele Hansen 35:39
So I used to work on a couple of products that had that we actually used hopscotch style tours for. And basically, the reason why we use to hopscotch it was I think we use a survey that then directed them into the proper hopscotch sequence was because the products were incredibly complicated. And we had limited ability to make those products less complicated. So it was a very painful problem for me as a product manager, who was tasked with driving retention metrics, but could not solve the foundational problems. And so we use hopscotch as a way to try to like, basically overcome the fact that the product is complicated. And kind of thinking about that, and thinking about what Colleen just said, of like, you know, what is the pain that you are solving for people, I just pulled up your website, and nudge your users to the aha moment. I like it, it's positive. But if you show that to me, when I was a product manager, you know, five or six years ago, that would not have been the problem I would have expressed to you. Right, like, reduce your churn, like, you know, your product is complicated. Your users don't have to be overwhelmed, like get them through it virt more trial, that type of thing, convert more trials, like what is that goal that someone is trying to drive that relates to what you're solving, or that's reducing churn, increasing activation, like, you know, stop losing users, because they're confused. Like, that's the problem. you're solving that people have value in their products, but because for whatever reason, whether those reasons are in their control or not, the products are complicated. And their users are, you know, their users thought there was value in it, but then they get to it, and they can't get the value back. And so like there's this mismatch, and speak to the pain, I'm not like, I'm not seeing I'm not seeing pain on your landing page.
Cam Sloan 38:04
Yeah, I think in that the h1 doesn't fully address it. It's something that Yeah, like, the thread yesterday, and everyone reaching out after like, definitely gave me so many ideas of like, where to go, and what to focus on improving for hopscotch. Like, there's a lot. There's a lot, it's not like, I'm coming here, and like, I'm all out of ideas now. Like, there's nothing more that can be done. Like, there's so much more that could be done to improve the state. And so it's been like, what do I choose from that? But that's a pretty like, yeah, a no brainer, is like the positioning of it, and kind of better. Focusing on the outcomes. I think you're like, absolutely, right there. I have, like, let's see, I, because there were, I don't know, 20 people that sent me, like, it was so great yesterday, like 20 people sent me DMS, and like, had like, great conversations with some other founders. And then and then I had some other people that kind of just commented and offered their suggestions as well. And I've been trying to just, like, go through that and, like make a list of like points of like, what I could explore and take away from that, like so that it's not all just like me airing my grievances and Twitter, which actually like go and take something away from from it. And, you know, there there was, I guess some of the pieces in there include, like, what you just said is like really like, you know, you should be focusing on the outcomes more like and someone suggested like, you know, increased child conversions, improved feature adoption. And so there's more that I could do to like really? Yeah, like reduce churn to make that clear. I think there's a positioning element and and just like communication element that could be improved upon. There's also just like, number of people aren't are not coming through like there's not enough people that are Coming through my site and through the signup flow to even make, like, great. I don't know, decisions based on like data driven decisions, you know, it's if I, if we're picking it into this, like one or two customers kind of thing, it's like you need more people trying this, you need more people activating. And so finding ways that I can do that through, you know, people have given some great recommendations of like, how I can go ahead and like build like a sales campaign, or use AdWords and SEO tactics to kind of like, grow this, I guess a lot of it ends up like there's a ton of things that I have taken from that. From from that thread of like, good ideas, and now it's like deciding which things that I can do. And I think it will come down to like evaluating which are the easy ones that I can like make changes to right now really quickly like this, on a playing with the communication and wording on the on the site. And then some of it will be more like long term investment. Other things might be more immediate, like running some AdWords tests, like $10 a day and just like trying out some different headlines to see what grabs people and then using the learnings from that to maybe further update, like what my content game will be, or what my you know, what my wording on the website should be like, based on what people click on those ads has, like it's been, it's been really nice to get some of that information. And then and then other people even mentioned about the pricing, maybe not being accessible. But again, I have to take that with a grain of salt. But there's, you know, people who are saying the jump from a free tier to $50 a month, and then $100 a month is too large. And so maybe there could be a price in between that, that becomes more accessible if I am trying to target like, smaller businesses as well. And then there's like the other advice, which is go and add a price deer on the other side, that is like $800 a month and you know, do manage services. So that's Yeah, there's just been almost it's been overwhelming, like, get all this new knowledge and information overnight.
Michele Hansen 42:25
It totally makes sense that you're, you're you're swimming in ideas right now. And, yeah, I sort of just added one to that pile there. And I always I'm almost reminded of kind of the situation that Coleen was in after she first started doing user interviews where like, there was like, so many ideas coming at her from customers, and she was having so many ideas. And then it was like, where do I go from here?
Cam Sloan 43:04
Yeah, I remember hearing like those episodes. And when you did, like the live, you know, customer call, where Michelle interviewed your customer. And and then yeah, a lot of trying to figure out what the next step should be. It does feel a lot like that. Like, there's so many paths to go down. What's the right one? And I think, you know, a big part of it has even just been like, does it make sense to keep going down pass like down these paths at all, or try some, like, again, like, try a whole new thing. And I think that's why I was like, was then maybe am scared to even go forward with some of this stuff is like, does it make sense to keep investing the time in, in what I'm building now? if, you know, is it gonna help me see returns in a year or two years time, versus switching to something else? It seems like a lot of people think that it's definitely a good idea to keep going. And, and so I'm leaning towards that, I still think I want to have like, some kill switch, like, you know, to avoid running three years without any revenue kind of thing. And I need to see some positive signals at some point. But yeah, that's kind of kind of where I'm at. But it has given me a bit more hope of like, this is a normal feeling cam like you are allowed to feel deflated, you're allowed to feel like you don't have like, you don't aren't great at sales and marketing just by default, you know, you have to work towards those and put a lot of work in and so it's okay to feel like this and it's okay to like. Like, it's not just that the product is bad or that the market isn't there. It's just this is a part of the process. So just coming to terms with that. has been really helpful over the past day and gives me a bit more. I don't know, just like, like, a bit more of my like, desire to keep going.
Colleen Schnettler 45:13
Alex Hellman has a great article on this. It's about, it's about all of the developers who take his course and how when they get to the marketing course, they all freak out. Because when someone is excellent in their field, starting over is so hard. So there's a lot of things I feel like I heard you say today, and one of them, is it, I wanted to ask you, is it that you just don't want to do marketing? Because you're convinced it's going to fail? Or, I mean, what what is your thought, like, all of this? Or do you feel like you should be making more revenue now and you're frustrated? And that's where this is coming from?
Cam Sloan 45:53
I think, you know, I think that it's like it's a mix of like, Yeah, well, the marketing, see fruits at the end of like, of all that investment, because because just you know, going through 4050 calls and and then only coming out with like one customer that I'm basically doing it all for them at the end, like is that the type of business that I want to be growing? Like, do I want to do a sales driven and like hands on business versus something more like, you know, seeing what Peter has done with reform of like, really, people are signing up and get going themselves, maybe you have to have like higher numbers, but like, it's more. I don't know, like, it's, it lends itself better to self signup, and self serve, where you can do a bit more product lead, you still have to do marketing, but like, the way that the business operates, is not like hiring a sales team. It's investing in content and other other parts of the business, which is more maybe the type of business so it's been that like, question mark, about the business in general? Like, is that kind of where I want to go with it? And, yeah, I mean, there are all sorts of fears in there. I think a lot of it is also just a fear of like, yeah, it like, do I know what I'm doing. And I actually, I worked in marketing for five years, believe it or not as, like, scary as like, I worked in music marketing, for concerts, it was a much different thing. And this was like, six or so years ago. And so it's a much different beast, but then SAS marketing. But yeah, like, even with that experience, it's still just scary to go out on your own. And like, I don't know, just feel you feel back at square one again. So yeah.
Michele Hansen 47:39
Yeah, I mean, towards us that I think that's a totally normal feeling. And this feeling of like struggling and like, this isn't working. And then also you get some more ideas. And you're like, Okay, wait, where? Where do I go? Like, what do I do next? And, you know, I noticed, like, you posted that thread. And I'm guessing that you woke up that morning, not not feeling so great. Yeah, you're right. And I wonder how you felt waking up this morning. After getting all of that support,
Cam Sloan 48:19
today has been much different, like it's been, it's always like, Man, it's so amazing to see that people are gonna be there to lift you up when you're like feeling a bit down, I think. I don't know. I've had I've, like, wrote tweets like that, and then deleted them because like, it's very personal and just like very open and you know, you're like, our potential customers gonna read this think less of me for like, running a business then not knowing what I'm doing. You know, there's all all sorts of like, fear in that. And what I'm realizing is, like, there's been a lot of appreciation for this open approach. So I, I wake up the next day with like, just feeling very grateful to have like that, knowing that maybe I need to, like, yeah, rely on community more and maybe get more involved with like, talking to other founders a bit and ideating with them, because working alone is very challenging to like, be in your own head all the time and see, you know, things moving so slowly. But yeah, at the same time, like the next day, having 100 people reach out and I'll give you like many ideas has been overwhelming at the same time. For like, what to do next. But I guess like the core of what my challenge was, or is is not so much like what to do next, because all of these ideas, I'll put them in a list and work through them one by one. That's the only way to get things done. It's like one thing at a time. But yeah, just like knowing it's more figuring out, like the conviction around like Emma is this the type of business I want to keep working Because in a couple years, the efforts hopefully will, yeah, show fruits for the labor. And then also I keep using that term, which I've never used before. Like, I don't know why everything's bearing fruits today, but but you know, like that kind of thing of just like, really? Like, will this be the business that I want to build? And I'm making sure that I'm doing that. And I think that's been a big part of the fear that I have of, of moving forward. So I don't have an answer to that yet. But I do have a lot of people who have been like really kind of offering advice. And so I think there's still some chewing on this idea to be done. Yeah.
Michele Hansen 50:39
And I think that question of, is this the business I want to build? I think that's that's a question that only you can answer.
Cam Sloan 50:48
Exactly. Yeah. I've i that is one thing I've noticed, like as much advice as you soak in or people give you, you know, they could all be right, like in their own ways, but then it comes down to like a deeply personal decision on like, what, like how you want to approach things. So T, B, D.
Michele Hansen 51:10
I guess that's a good point for us to wrap up today. Cam. Thank you so much for your vulnerability, both here. And on Twitter. You know, I'm reminded of something I heard. Nicole Baldy new co founder of webinar ninja say on her podcast recently, Nicole and Kate can relate, which is true vulnerability is when there is personal risk involved. And I think your tweet and thread about that really shows like there was that risk involved, and you took it and and people jumped in to help. And I think that's what's so amazing about our community. But so I encourage people to follow along with cam. You are at Sloan cam on Twitter. Your product is hopscotch dot club. Thank you so much for coming on cam.
Cam Sloan 52:14
Thank you both for having me. It was such a pleasure. I love the podcast. And you know, I'm always listening and tuning in and love following along your stories, because it's really it's encouraging as well to just you know, hear what you're both, you know, working on and so that always helps me feel a little less like it's just me and having, you know, some help on the way. So thanks so much.
Michele Hansen 52:39
All right. Well, Colleen, talk to you next week.
Colleen Schnettler 52:42
Bye.
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What is Software Social?
Two indie SaaS founders—one just getting off the ground, and one with an established profitable business—invite you to join their weekly chats.