Brian Casel: [00:00:00] Hey, it's Open Threads. I'm Brian Casel. It's my podcast. Welcome to it. Today, I'm talking to my friend Kalen Jordan, and we had a great conversation about maybe one of the favorite things to talk to founder friends about. And that is figuring out our next business idea. We spent a lot of time just kind of batting around ideas on what Kalen is going to work on next.

So it's not Kalen's first rodeo. He's built and sold businesses. He's run successful recurring revenue businesses of all kinds. And, but now he's, he's ready for something new. As, as you may know, I've been there multiple times. So, uh, so this was a really cool chat to kind of figure out almost in real time.

In fact, even today, when we recorded this, Kalen landed his very first. One and two customers for this new idea that, that he's [00:01:00] getting into. Um, but we, you know, battered around a lot of stuff. And if, if you follow Kalin on Twitter, um, you know that, that that's sort of what he's known for these days is like kind of getting into a lot of stuff.

And we even went on a side rant, uh, not rant, but side chat, talking about. Comedy on Twitter and how Kalen is actually kind of trying his hand a little bit at writing comedic material for, for Twitter, which is super interesting. And he's actually pretty hilarious. So you should give him a follow at Kalen Jordan.

We'll get it linked up. Anyway, here's a great conversation. We covered a lot. I hope you enjoy it. Jordan. Yes, sir. How are you doing buddy?

Kalen Jordan: Oh man, I'm pretty tired. I woke up at like 2. 30 in the morning. I've been like, sleep has been wild.

Brian Casel: Yeah, mine's been all over the place. I've got this old dog that constantly wakes up at 4 in the morning to go out.[00:02:00]

Which is a double wake up, right? It's four in the morning to let him out and then he hangs out outside for an hour and then he barks again at 5 a. m for me to let him in. So that's been my sleep life for the last several

Kalen Jordan: Oh, dude, when the dogs wake me up, I lose my mind because like, it's so frustrating.

We have some neighbor dogs that will wake us up. That's super frustrating, dude.

Brian Casel: So for anyone who's just listening to the audio, which is probably most people. You have to know that Kalen just looks so much more comfortable and relaxed right now than I do. I'm at my office chair in my, in my office here.

Kalen is on a recliner chair sitting next to a hammock.

Kalen Jordan: Yeah, it's the most non standard podcast

Brian Casel: setup. Is that a beer next to you? Like what's going on

Kalen Jordan: here? No, this is a sparkling. I had a beer on my last one actually, but this is an HEB sparkling water. Shout out to HEB. It's the best grocery store of all time.

Yeah, no, that's a sparkling water, but I decided to kind of just like embrace my. Weirdness [00:03:00] with the video is kind of my little man cave where I do my stuff. So yeah, dude, yeah, that's the deal.

Brian Casel: Well, I think in this episode, we're going to talk about my favorite thing to talk about with other founders, and that's business ideas, evaluating them as like new businesses.

I don't know about you, because I've been through a bunch of businesses as well. And I found that every single one that I've done was a reaction to the previous business. Yes. Like something, whether it was good or bad, right? Like either something worked well. So now I'm going to build that thing into a whole business or these things were major challenges.

So in my next thing, I'm going to do the opposite of that.

Kalen Jordan: It was like, let's never do that again. Yeah, let's

Brian Casel: go completely up the other direction. I mean, I can point to so many of those in my journey. I'm curious about you. I mean, first of all, if we do a little bit of history, this is not going to be your life story or anything.

I know you as you're entrenched in the e commerce world, especially [00:04:00] Magento, but I think probably larger than that. I think of you as e commerce and Magento. You're a developer. You're connected to many, many developers. You do things in recruiting and helping devs land positions, companies hire, hire Magento developers.

I know you're a podcaster. I know you have built and sold businesses in these areas. Can you like fill in some blanks for me in terms of like the big. Yeah.

Kalen Jordan: So out of college I got into development and then, um, PHP and stuff. And then at some point I became a project manager, was miserable with that, got into Magento development, and then I kind of dove into that, became a full time developer doing Magento stuff.

And then I had a couple of jobs in the space and then I built an email marketing, like abandoned carts. Kind of like triggered email type of thing called mage mail and I did that for a few years and I sold that and then after that I did commerce hero, [00:05:00] which the idea initially was kind of like to be like an upwork for Magento because I'd go to conferences.

I would know a bunch of developers. I was also involved in open source So I'd have like five to ten different open source tools or packages that I contributed to or created or different things like that And I'd go to hackathons Meet a bunch of developers. And I'd hear people like, Oh, I need to hire a developer, but I can't find one.

I'd be like, Oh, I know six that I'm just friends with. And they're all complaining about their job kind of a thing. And so then I made a couple introductions kind of organically. And then I said, Hey, maybe I could turn this into a business. So I started building that. And then it kind of morphed from like a project based Upwork style thing to people were like, Hey, I need somebody full time.

So I added like a full time checkbox to the thing. And then all of a sudden. I kind of pivoted a little bit and then I ended up doing man. I was like, well, I'll just manually, I need to find a developer for this client. So I'll go manually do some searching.

Brian Casel: So how did the business model on that? And [00:06:00] this is still active, right?

Like you're still running commerce here today. So still

Kalen Jordan: active. So this is my main, this is what pays all the bills. But literally it's been like six years now and I tend to not stick with things very long. But I think I've had this itch for like a while to do something new, but it's like, I wasn't quite ready to make the jump.

And I woke up at like 3am, like 12 days ago. And I was like, I got to do something new. So I decided that day to not to close the business. It's still out. There's still recurring revenue. There's still contracts in place for, because the way it works, you hire someone, you pay. Over 12 month period, a percentage of their salary.

So there's still active stuff. I've got runway, I've got recurring revenue coming in from, but I talked, I just made the decision that like, I'm just going to start ramping that down and then start going into the creation mode. Cause whenever I go into like a creation mode on something new, it's all public.

Like everybody in [00:07:00] my

Brian Casel: network. That's what I love about following you on stuff. You're so public and I can't ever. Figure out if you're joking or if something that you're posting

Kalen Jordan: is actually. I think I've started to watch different comedians a little bit more frequently, and I don't know if that's part of it, but I purposefully decided.

To start posting stuff online, Twitter, and LinkedIn, just like, because I think it's funny. And sometimes I'll post something that is sarcastic or

Brian Casel: whatever. Dude. I really think you have comedy chops. Like I get a chuckle out of most of your tweets and I could tell you're putting stuff out there for a reaction and I love it.

Kalen Jordan: I appreciate that. And actually I started, I guess a few months ago, I purposefully, like I have a process to it. I have like, I'll think of something and I have an air table where I'll draft it. And then I have a whole list of them. And then I'll. You're

Brian Casel: actually building material. Yeah.

Kalen Jordan: Yeah. I'm purposely building the material and then I was like, well, should I post them right when I think about them?

I was like, [00:08:00] well, it'd be better if I give myself a little bit of like a draft phase and then like give it a second look before I publish it. And then I just set up like a little air table automation. So there's a queue and then it posts them every four hours.

Brian Casel: Wow. All right. This is such a sidetrack, but now I'm fascinated with the whole, like, Twitter comedian thing.

I mean, seriously though, I am such a fan of stand up comedy,

Kalen Jordan: right? Are you a Tim Dillon fan at all? I've

Brian Casel: seen some of his stuff. Okay. Like, I'm big into like Bill Burr, and Trey Seinfeld, and just a lot of them. I just saw Chris Rock a few weeks ago live. No

Kalen Jordan: way! That's cool. Yeah. Are you a fan of like, Norm Macdonald at all?

Sure, yeah. Yeah. So I think what I'm going for is that style, like, you know, Norm Macdonald with like real dry. Yeah. I think that's a little bit of the thing I'm going for where people have no clue that I, and it's on Twitter. It's not even always delivered in person. So there's that uncertainty.

Brian Casel: I was going to ask, is your whole [00:09:00] interest in this purely through Twitter or do you ever do any sort of like live standup, like in person

Kalen Jordan: with anyone?

It's, I've never done actual stand. It's occurred to me. Cause I'll listen to these comedian podcasts and they'll talk about like, Hey, anybody can, and they'll talk about, Hey, like if you have, if you've ever made somebody laugh, then you, you kind of have a spark of what it takes and then you just have to work at it.

And I thought, man, I'm never going to do this. You know, I'm 41, but it's one of those things I think, well, maybe someday I'd give it a shot. Who knows? But this is my little kind of miniature outlet for playing around and then I find that as I'm focusing more on

Brian Casel: yeah And it's like its own medium It's a whole like stand up comedy on a stage at a club is its own thing But being funny on Twitter is like a completely different

Kalen Jordan: Right.

And I feel like I'm also just trying to be more like embrace my own weirdness and in terms of whatever that looks like, like my weird video set up and my sense of humor and stuff. And I feel like as I'm [00:10:00] doing that, I'm getting closer to just kind of being my authentic self.

Brian Casel: Yeah. Kind of finding your voice as a comedian, but it's still you.

Kalen Jordan: Yeah. And I find that like. As I'm going through this, like we were just hanging out with some friends that were in town or even if I'm hanging out with friends, I find that I'm more actively trying to get them to laugh and real and seeing that it's that thing in and of itself is like something I love to do is just to make people laugh.

So I find that I'm more focused on it than I was previously, where it was just every once in a while you make somebody laugh, but it's just ran

Brian Casel: super cool. There's some comedian behind these like Twitter accounts, right? Yeah. I'm sure you've seen these like, uh, board Elon Musk. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's that. And there's like a modern Seinfeld one, like just cranking out like, uh, premises for Seinfeld episodes. It's great. All right. Let's get back to business for a second. Back to biz. [00:11:00] Yeah. I gotta ask. I mean, it's interesting, you know, with commerce hero, it sounds like you're winding it down.

And the question that comes to my mind, I'm sure other listeners mind is why Wind it down. Why not package it up to be sold?

Kalen Jordan: Yeah, I think that it would be tricky. Like it's very tied to myself personally. Like a lot of the hires just over time ended up, it pivoted to where like, it was just really me personally going out and doing some LinkedIn outreach and things like that.

So it's not very packageable. I don't think.

Brian Casel: Or at least getting it to that point, like building processes and building a team to do what you do, that would just take a lot more work. That would be the way you'd rather just sort of start something new.

Kalen Jordan: I'm really bad at hiring people. Like, I think that's another thing I've kind of embraced.

I've tried it a little bit and I had thought in the past about hiring somebody to do what I do. But I always, I was always too nervous about them being spammy with the [00:12:00] outreach because. Every recruiter you've ever heard of on the planet is a punchline because of how bad they are. And I just am very particular about my process and not being spammy with it.

I'm just horrible at it, at hiring teams. And I think that that's one of the things I've started to embrace is that my sweet spot is doing stuff solo, working solo. I think pre internet, you know, you didn't really have the option. If you wanted to build a business, you had to manage people. And now because I'm able to, I mean, certainly if I was better at building teams, I could build bigger businesses, make more money.

That would be great. But I think I've just embraced like, Hey, this is my zone. If I can make a living this way, like it's not optimal from an ROI perspective per se, but I'm kind of just. Go with what's me.

Brian Casel: Yeah. But of course you could still build a great business solo, even a SaaS, right. Or even [00:13:00] something else.

Kalen Jordan: Yeah. Like you think about like the levels IO guy, you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. I think, uh, yeah, Peter levels, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's the guy. That's the guy. Yeah. I think I saw a post. I was looking at some of his tweets recently. I think he's like 2. 3 million in revenue, zero employees kind of thing.

And I think he's. The super successful version of me.

Brian Casel: Yeah, he did seem to, I think I heard him on my first million, which I'm sort of just getting into now. Like I've

Kalen Jordan: dabbled in that. Everybody I know is talking about that podcast. I hear about it.

Brian Casel: I've watched a couple of I've dipped in and out of it for the past year.

And now I'm like on a run and just going through a lot of episodes because those guys are just amazing. Just interviewing and like bringing, they do a crazy amount of research on business ideas essentially, or what other people are doing with businesses. So Well, with commerce here, so, okay, I get it now, like it's been six years, you're sort of on the hunt for something new and, but it's a nice business that gives you the runway.

It has some recurring revenue and by wind [00:14:00] it down, it basically means you're sort of not making an effort to land new projects or new positions, but the ones that you have will still pay the bills. Nice, so I mean, what are you thinking about? Like again, like you do this in public on Twitter, so I'm trying to understand like how much of these ideas that you're tweeting about are actually real ideas or

Kalen Jordan: jokes.

Okay, so the funny thing is that when we first talked about scheduling this thing. This pod at that time, I had no concrete idea. I was basically thinking of doing consulting with people. I know like, Hey, let's do like some, let me help you with whatever you need help with marketing, you need help with like most of the people, though, my background as a developer, and like you said, you know, me as a developer, it's like, I'm the marketing guy in that world.

And everybody thinks of me as like being good at. Content and marketing and things like that, which ended up itself is kind of weird. So I was talking to some people about that and then I've been iterating so quickly and I went [00:15:00] from thinking about doing some consulting, some like sales as outreach as a service, and I've had like six or seven different things.

And any given day I'm more focused on one than the other. Well, like before

Brian Casel: we get into the specific business ideas. I am really curious about this concept of moving from one business that you spend multiple years on to the next, right? Like, is there any set of criteria or big concepts like, like it's got to check these boxes, whatever the idea ends up being, like, it's got to be this and it definitely can't be that.

Kalen Jordan: Yes. That's a great question. So I'm sick of recruiting, even though I felt like I did it in a way that I was happy with the way I did it. I just, I'm just tired of it. Also the billing model for commerce hero, I think was kind of innovative for a recruiting thing, which was monthly. So you pay 12 percent on a monthly basis for up to 12 months.

Most of them just charge you up front for like the whole year of [00:16:00] salary or whatever. But it would end after 12 months. So after 12 months, they're done. And if they hire somebody else, then, you know, they pay, but I wanted something that is recurring. That was one of the, was one of the criteria. I wanted the payments to not end.

And beyond that, I think really beyond that, like, I feel like I've been in like a slow moving midlife crisis for like five years or so. And I've just been. Trying to figure out what I really want to do, what I'm excited about. And so basically the criteria is like, what's something I'm interested in?

What's something I'm really excited about. And it can be challenging when your interests can change from day to day, month to month, whatever. But I think I have a tendency to take an idea and run with it. And then a year later you go, do I even want to be doing this, but you got to keep doing it kind of a thing.

I

Brian Casel: really resonate with this. Everyone's on their own [00:17:00] journey and I know everyone struggles with different things, of course. I mean, I can't get out of my own head, especially these last few years. And I think that these transitions from one business to the next are a big part of that. I'm not saying that the answer is to focus on one business.

But what I'm saying is, like, I found myself, I don't know if you resonate with this is like, yeah, like, start something up. And it's actually pretty easy to get some first customers.

Kalen Jordan: I got my first customer today, literally today, first credit card. I'm so excited for a new thing, for the new thing. Yeah, we got

Brian Casel: to get into this, but like, then I find myself like, all right, well, this thing started to work, but then it kind of didn't work or then I'm running into these issues and maybe I'm starting to question whether I'm riding the right horse here.

And maybe I got to get off and ride a different horse. And that's really difficult because. It would be so much easier if this thing just flat out failed, but it kind of worked. Yep. What do you do with that?

Kalen Jordan: And I think I had a lot of moments as I was trying to get [00:18:00] to be more and more honest with myself.

That was a thought I literally had was, and I think I even tweeted something to the effect at one point was like, I kind of wish this just dried up. So I'd be forced to do something else that was probably a month before the day when I just decided, because like, when you have a family, you're providing for my wife, homeschools, the kids, you have a revenue, you have an income source.

Yeah, there's inertia. It's hard to let that go. And there's a level of fear with doing something new. There's the uncertainty there's like, well, I did it in the past, but can I do it again? Do I still have it? Do I still have what it takes? Am I. Are my skills completely atrophied? And then I went, I think from that thought to like, you know, I'm going to just choose to ramp it down.

It's going to be okay. Everything's going to be okay. Worst case, I can always fall back to ABCDE. Everybody's going to be fine. We try to keep expenses low. We don't live really crazy or anything like that. So that always helps. [00:19:00]

Brian Casel: I dealt with a ton of those same questions near the end of my run with audience apps.

I mean, I was almost every single month. Thinking about, I can be more open about it now that I've heard, but like just since. So I ended up selling it in the end of 2021, but I was thinking about selling it since 2018. Wow. And it was a really routine process of like, is now the time to sell it? Should I sell it now?

Cause I'm done with this thing. And it was constantly like, I need my next thing to reach whatever, like 10 K MRR or something close. To a livable thing before I let go of the thing that actually pays our bills. And ultimately it got to a point in 2021 where I was like, I got to stop waiting. I've got some things going and I had like ZipMessage and stuff going by that point.

But like, it's still not up to like paying a full salary. There's still one way to deal with, but I was like, it's been six and a half years. Like it's time for me to fully mentally move on. And [00:20:00] it is what it is.

Kalen Jordan: So you had a very similar thing. And I have to say, I was listening to your pod with the woman that did Edgar, I think was the one.

The founder. Yeah. Laura wrote her. Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Casel: Yeah. Yeah. And she also recently went through this transition.

Kalen Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there was a couple of wild things there because when you said you sold it, what was wild to me about that is that, like I said, I'm super bad at hiring people in process, but that's your thing.

Like you're the process guy. So if anybody was going to have a business and have it run on autopilot, like it was you. And then when you said you sold it. I was like, that's crazy. And then you talked a little bit about why you did. And I was like, Oh, that makes sense.

Brian Casel: Yeah. I mean, there's a whole bunch of things that are sort of specific to that business that I was a little bit done with, but also, I mean, a big one though, maybe this relates to some of the stuff that you're thinking about.

Like I was done with running a people centric business. I mean, that was a productized service. [00:21:00] It entirely relied on building, keeping a growing team growing. And I have a team now, like a much smaller team with ZipMessage, but it's a software product. And I got so much more into the design and development of software.

That's the weird thing is like, people know me as like a product high service guy, or even like a marketing guy or like a process and team guy. But like, before all that, I was a web developer and designer. And so that's like, I always use the process and team stuff as just a way to build a business that can have a cash flow so that ultimately the goal was to have a business that can free me up to work on some software products.

And then in the last few years, I got much more into software, but it's, I've yet to build one up to a revenue level that audience ops had. So like coming out audience, I had zero interest in. Building anything that's like another productized service for me. The goal is SaaS. And now I'm on like attempt number, whatever, [00:22:00] three or four, I'm getting a SaaS to really work.

So I'm curious about you, like about some of these ideas, because you do have this. Sort of a similar mix of skill sets, right? Like there are people who are just totally technical and they have zero marketing chops or zero design chops or content. You are one of these guys who has a bit of everything, right?

Exactly. Which is, you can be dangerous, I think in a good way or a bad way. So what are you looking at in terms of like ideas? So I was looking

Kalen Jordan: at doing consulting stuff like that. And then I started to think about coaching, which. Was I still feel weird about the idea of coaching? You know, there's a lot of these coaches It's a little can be a little scammy in certain niches of the coaching

Brian Casel: world I'm deep on coaches right now because we were basically selling to coaches was yeah

Kalen Jordan: And I didn't realize that and when I heard your pod and then with Laura and I had no idea She had got into coaching because I remember thinking of her I had heard her on a couple of other podcasts And, you know, [00:23:00] Edgar is this great, like SaaS product.

And so I was like, wow, that's crazy. And then she started building a tool for coaching. You're building a thing targeted at coaches and I'm starting to connect different dots and different people. I know that are like, oh yeah, I'm thinking about getting it. So

Brian Casel: yeah, the thing with coaching with ZipMessage is sort of, you're catching me at a time right now.

We've already had lots of coaches on it and now we're starting to double down on that niche.

Kalen Jordan: Got it. Got

Brian Casel: it. But yeah, like what type of coaching are you interested in?

Kalen Jordan: So I had an idea to do like coaching. Maybe it's a e commerce agencies that want to market better, generate leads better. Maybe it's developers that want to grow their career or help them with a job search.

Maybe it's indie SaaS product. And things like that. And then from the coaching, coaching tends to go hand in hand with private communities. A lot of the time, a lot of times the coach will have one. That was an idea I've had for a [00:24:00] long time. Another thing I started actually seven years ago is a private slack for Magento.

There's like 600 people in there at the time. It was just a side thing I did. Cause I wanted to have a bunch of the like top people in that space in one place. So I created it. It was the free version of Slack, and I was very particular about let, I didn't want to open the floodgates in Lebanon there. And then, it's funny because I stopped really actively being involved with it, like, several years ago now, and I assumed it was just going to disappear.

Because there's an official Magento Slack, everybody and their grandma has a Slack chat, there's all discords. And then it's still chugging along like some of the, not that much, much fewer people are actually active, but a lot of people who I really respect are still active in there because they're like, well, it's not overloaded.

There's a lot of really smart people in here where you can get good feedback. And 1 of the things I've thought about over the years was to turn that into a paid community. [00:25:00] So that I could really focus my efforts on it and not just as like a little side thing. And so that's the main thing I'm most excited about right now.

And maybe communities

Brian Casel: are so valuable and it's almost like the smaller they are, the better.

Kalen Jordan: Yeah. And by the way, the other day I look up on YouTube paid community, first podcast to come up my first million. They did a whole podcast on all these different, interesting paid communities. It used some super expensive ones, some ones that one of the co hosts, uh, spun up.

Which is actually in the e commerce space as well. And so I got a bunch of ideas there and I think the paid community thing is kind of one of these growth trends that there's all sorts of different interesting ones. And I kind of got some ideas there. So what

Brian Casel: is your interest in this? Is it. You starting a small community and just making it a paid membership or starting a platform for communities or what are you looking at?

Kalen Jordan: So just an actual community, not a [00:26:00] platform. And I, I sort of have it. It's sort of there already, but we got to

Brian Casel: convert it on the free one that you have. Yeah.

Kalen Jordan: Yeah. And so it's funny because whenever I go into like, start a new business mode, like there's these threads that you've thought about for 10 years on and off, you know, like you go like, Oh yeah, that was a problem that I kept coming back to.

And you go like, what is it that I like about that? And then I go. Like, Oh, I, there's something about networking with people that it's been a thread throughout my life. I'd go to conferences. I'd go to hackathons. The commerce hero hiring was an extension of the networking. I think that the podcasting is kind of an extension of that.

I think that I really, there's something I just really like about that. Well, just

Brian Casel: to hear you say that, cause that clicks in my mind too, about. Anytime, because I feel like right now we're finally getting into something with ZipMessage where it's, this is not even live yet. We have features that we haven't built yet, but I've been [00:27:00] doing a ton of research with coaches and things are clicking in terms of like, oh, almost every coach I'm talking to is trying to do this, this, and this, but then thinking backwards to the last several years of talking to many coaches is like, oh yes, they were trying to do that.

And I didn't quite realize it. And I've seen that with like other businesses where it's like, when it clicked, I can backtrack the history. And it's like, at the time I didn't catch on to this pattern, but once it clicks, it's like, Oh, this pattern was there all along.

Kalen Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You kind of almost reverse engineer it.

And it's weird. So like, I've been talking to a ton of people cause I've been like, basically pitching my idea, starting with like consulting, and then we go, well, what about this and what about that? And then somebody will bring up community or whatever. And then I keep making these little micro pivots.

Every time I talk to somebody, who is

Brian Casel: the first customer that you just signed up? Is that for this community or for coaching?

Kalen Jordan: Yeah, for this community. So it's a buddy of mine who has been in the [00:28:00] chat for a while and. He had pinged me like a month ago, this is when I was super not active at all in it. And he said, Hey, I want to add some people to Slack.

And I was like, you know what, dude, let me just make you an admin for seven years. I hadn't basically met anyone else in admin, but he's somebody I respect a lot. And I know he kind of gets the ethos of it. So I, and I was like, and it was kind of that letting go process. Cause it's weird. Cause now I'm full on with it, but it's almost like I had to go, you know what?

I'm going to let go. I'm gonna give somebody else the keys to this. And so then he did that and then he pings me a couple weeks later and he goes, Hey man, maybe we should make this a paid thing so we can get the message retention in Slack when you upgrade. Cause when you're on the free version of, you know, and stuff like that.

And so then that was a few weeks ago and then I talked to him recently. About it. And he was into the idea and I said, Hey man, would you like to pay for it? I'm thinking about 20 bucks a seat, kind of a thing. And he's like, yeah, sign me up for five seats. And I'm like, sweet. [00:29:00] And then I threw that up. And that's the

Brian Casel: other thing with communities.

It's like making it paid. In itself as quality. It's a filter to bring members in,

Kalen Jordan: right? It's been fun to be back in a, like a sales mode, which is weird. I feel like I say the word sales, which means different things to different people, but I just talk to people. I try to figure out what they're actually interested.

Like when you talk about, when you describe how you're talking to coaches and you're figuring out what they want, you're kind of finding the product market fit. I've been heavy, heavy in that mode since I started this because once I decided to ramp down Commerce Hero, I was like, shit, man, I got to do something quick because the last several years Commerce Hero has been so autopilot and I've been pulling back from, I kind of go into a hermit mode.

I pull away from social media quite a bit. I don't really talk to people on the phone. It's like I have my family and like one friend and that's it. And it's like part of me wants community and connection with people, [00:30:00] but then the other part of me is like hermit mode. I think it's just kind of a guy, it's like a guy thing, you know?

I totally relate. But sometimes it's good to be forced into, because it's funny, like I'm like five conversations deep. I'm like, this is more phone calls than I've done in like four years. I mean, I'm exaggerating, but it's like, and I'm talking with them and I'm pitching my idea, but we're also just shooting the shit.

And, and I go, why don't I do this more often? This is so fun.

Brian Casel: So what is your process right now for kind of vetting this as a business idea? Like, should I continue to invest my time and energy into making this a revenue generating business or not? Like, how are you going about getting like a confident answer to that? Like for me, like with ZipMessage, it is going through this pretty big iteration over the next several months, this movement toward coaches, and we're going to be building a lot of stuff for coaches.

But like, it's taking me a ton of effort to like, [00:31:00] talk to so many coaches on calls, do these research, analyze all of our current users, analyze what all these support requests, and just like put all the pieces together to build up the confidence level that like, okay, this big change is the right one. And I'm not screwing this up.

That's what I've been deep in, but it sounds like you're a little bit more casual with it. Like, what are you thinking in terms of this business?

Kalen Jordan: Yeah. So like, for example, the initial idea I had was I want the individual developers to pay for the community because a lot of these communities, like for example, the one they talked about in the, my first million, he recruited a bunch of e commerce store owners.

Got them into the site for free, but the vetting was that they had to have a certain revenue level. And then he found a sponsor to speak at the thing once a month, sponsor paid, I don't know, 10 grand, something like that. Right. And so, but then I was like, but I don't want to have, and that's how conferences generally work.

You have sponsors and I've observed that in my ecosystem and [00:32:00] others for a long time, but the problem then is that you can't be honest about is, do we actually like this product from this sponsor or not? So you're kind of biased. I said, okay, that was the idea is that the individual developer has to pay.

So I talked to a couple of people, talk to one buddy of mine, who's a developer. And I pitched the idea. He's a believer. He's a big thing. And developers don't want to spend money. So I was like, what do you think about 10 bucks? And he's like, uh, and I get it because I'm cheap. Like when I have my, like, I'm an individual person hat on, like as a developer, you want tools to be free,

Brian Casel: 3 app.

I

Kalen Jordan: don't know. Exactly. So then I go, so I had that call. Right. And I go like, oh man, this is not a good sign. That was only one call. And so then when I talked to, um, the guy who signed up, my buddy PJ, I think he was the one I was talking to him. He's like, well, yeah, you got to get the companies to pay. And I was like, yeah, but part of what I wanted to be a component of it was job stuff.

I wanted people to be able to talk [00:33:00] about the job market to, to the kind of thing people talk about privately at conferences like, Oh man,

Brian Casel: I was going to say like a private sort of like safe space to not be afraid of someone from your company hearing you talk

Kalen Jordan: about a job search. Yeah. But then I was like, well, it wouldn't really be ethical to have that going on if the company's paying for it.

So, but then when I talked to him, I kind of went, well, what if we don't focus so much on the jobs thing? And we just kind of focus on everything else around. Your work life and purse, everything within this community and get the company to pay, because I asked him, cause he's a business owner. He has an e commerce agency.

I go, would you pay for this? He's like, yeah. So it was like, cool.

Brian Casel: Meaning the, the company or like the, so the founder or someone at the company is willing to pay for their employees to get access to this community. To have the benefit of a community with like minded people in

Kalen Jordan: exactly, because we were talking about how, you know, remote work is doing a number on everybody's, [00:34:00] everybody is in all these slacks, but they don't want to do another zoom call.

Brian Casel: That's really interesting actually. Cause like companies will have their own slack, right. Which has its own culture. And you're only talking to other people who work for the same company. And then there are these like industry slacks where you're sort of talking shop and comparing notes and learning.

What's working for us and what's working for you and and that kind of stuff. And so it's almost like a company getting the benefit of, like, getting this, like, outsider perspective that you would get from, like. Going to like a micro comp or something like

Kalen Jordan: that. Exactly. And like, if they need to solve a problem, let's say they're trying to architect this in e commerce solution and yeah, they can Google stuff, certain things you can Google, but certain things you can't, like you want to talk to somebody who's done something.

And you can talk, really talk shop with somebody that really like

Brian Casel: on searching for really anything business related, but even just like some technical stuff, I go to my communities first

Kalen Jordan: before Google, that's it, that's it, because Google is in a [00:35:00] way, I mean, there's still a lot of stuff in Google, but in many ways.

It's getting worse and worse. I mean, every search result is SEO and things like that. I use

Brian Casel: Google to find a Stack Overflow thread. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'll go to a couple of small tight knit slacks that I'm in to get like, how should I think about hiring a marketing person right now?

Kalen Jordan: Yep. And so that's exactly what I want to create.

And I feel like also just the socializing aspect of it, like traditionally your coworkers, you're in an office. Those are the people you socialize with. Now everyone works remotely and the socializing component in a way is kind of decoupled from your job. You're working at home. You can be socializing with your coworkers in one slack.

You can be socializing water cooler, like the water cooler. Is not just within a company. The water cooler is distributed now in a way. So basically [00:36:00] that was kind of the idea there. And then I go, I can get companies to pay for this. All like a developer doesn't want to pay 10. I can get a company to pay a thousand dollars without blinking an eye.

You know what I mean? Like, okay, this is going to make my team more productive, more happy, more satisfied with it. And by the way, there's an existing community and I can say, Hey, by the way, your team member X, Y, and Z are already in here and getting value from it, and you can talk to them about it and they'll tell you they're getting value from it

Brian Casel: and almost like.

A big value to a company with their people are their network effects, right? Especially people in like sales and biz dev and things like that is like, how much can they leverage their network to bring opportunities to the business? And a company buying this for their employees is almost like buying a network.

Like a company makes their employees more networked.

Kalen Jordan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a similar, I think, value prop to when you send an employee to a conference, they're going to learn, you're going to learn from formal talks. They're going to learn from [00:37:00] networking with people. They're going to be pumped that you sent them to a conference.

So it's kind of a simplified version of that.

Brian Casel: All right. I want to get back to the core premise here, which is like figuring out, cause you said it like a couple of minutes ago that like. You're always unsure of whether this is the right business for you to spend your time on. Right. So how do we know that with this idea?

So how do we game this out? Right. All right. You got customer number one. Maybe you'll get 20 more companies to pay for it. Now you've got some, like, A start, like some recurring revenue. What does it actually look like to run this as a business that gets up to, or surpassing your current revenue

Kalen Jordan: from commerce hero?

Yeah. I'm so glad you're asking me this because these are the things I think, and I never verbalize and like. I go up and down. I think this is maybe the personality of somebody that's entrepreneurial. I go up and down all the time. Like this morning when I got that glorious credit [00:38:00] card and then right after I got that one, I pinged another buddy of mine and then he signed up.

So I had my second for second one. Anyways. So I was so excited in the world. It's the best feeling. I mean, customer number one, I'm like, this is it. I did it, it's gonna go, I can see it, and then, we had some friends in town, so we went out to lunch, we got back, I was exhausted, I laid down for a bit. When I walked into the office.

I had this thought occur to me that, oh man, what if I hate this, you know, like what, like, uh, I got to like deal with the whole group of people, like hurt, it's going to be like hurting calf. And I think like, I just always, you kind of always go up and down.

Brian Casel: Like, like, like how do you, I know you're, this is sort of in the moment.

Cause you got your first customers today. But like where my mind goes with that sort of thing, like, okay, audience [00:39:00] apps that go back to 2015, right. I'm sitting in a hotel room in Vegas at microcom and the idea for audience apps, just like slaps me across the face. Like, duh, like I can get recurring revenue and sell this service to people who need help with content.

Right. And my first thought was like, what if I can sell this? Like, I don't want to be writing articles as a service myself. I never wrote one article. So I started like, all right, well, we'll need to hire these people and it would need to work out this way. And like, then it started to click. But for me, it was like, the only way this business works for me personally is if I am never writing articles for clients myself.

And if I am, then I absolutely don't want this business at all. Like, is there anything like that with this idea? Yeah.

Kalen Jordan: I would say, I think that. You know, it's funny because like as a developer, you build stuff and I feel like I think that I was good and I haven't actually actively coded. It's funny because [00:40:00] you're probably a significantly better developer than me right now, since you're doing it day to day.

I haven't coded for a while, but even when I was active, I think I was good at prototyping stuff, but then getting it to like scale it, maintain it, build a team around it. I was not as good at. And one of the things I'm super excited about, and a similar thing happened with commerce hero, where I started out building it as a platform.

It was about the Upwork. It was about making it self serve. It was about. Getting, scaling it as a self serve model for hiring. But then I was too controlling about not wanting people to contact each other, unless I personally reviewed the match and made sure it wasn't weird and that they weren't trying to cheat me.

And well, it sounds like

Brian Casel: maybe these first customers could actually sort of be first team members, right? Like you made them an admin, right? Like it's someone that you. Personally trust. And I've heard that before from other communities. Like they were just active in the community and then they became a moderator and then be right.

Like

Kalen Jordan: that. Right. I think that could be part of [00:41:00] it. Although I've embraced the idea. I'm just going to work solo. I get weird about equity. I get weird about partnership percentages. But the thing that I'm excited about is not having a product that I have to build, it's just slack. And so then it's really all going to be about the network, the people vetting the people and the, you know, selling it, right?

Like doing the outreach around it. And as I think about that, I go, you know, maybe that's more of my sweet spot is like. Not trying to build the product itself.

Brian Casel: Yeah. Just build the activity. And this is something I've been thinking about lately is like, cause I have this habit. Where I sort of go a little bit too far in the other direction, where I try to game it out in super high detail months in advance so that I'm like, all right, this is the roadmap and it's all mapped out every single time I get [00:42:00] to step two or three in the roadmap, it's like, okay, well, everything has changed now.

Or like these realities are different than what I expected. And so I'm trying to become more comfortable with like, yes, doing some research and making smarter strategic decisions. But then just start to take action on something and let's get from point A to point B, and then let's see what things look like there.

And then we can

Kalen Jordan: reassess, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I seem, yeah, I wish I was better at planning at time. I tend to be kind of chaotic with things.

Brian Casel: You know what I do? I haven't really shared this publicly too much because you were saying a couple of minutes ago about trying to make the case for this.

Right. Like in verbalizing it, I've had a journal thing that I write in mostly like business ideas and trying to think through decisions and stuff like that, but then I started going more toward this audio journal. And so I am in some groups, some private small groups where we actually have like a private podcast and we do like [00:43:00] private, like mastermind style messages to everyone in the small group and it's sort of like present an idea, let them tear it apart and give feedback.

And I do those from time to time with them and I seek feedback and I'm in a couple of masterminds like that, but then I started to record sort of journal entries as if I'm presenting to them, but I don't actually end up presenting it to them. I just record and then I listen back to myself and it's like an exercise and like, all right, let me try to make the case for this thing that I think.

I want to do, but try to not sound like an idiot when I, when I, when I, and then I'll listen back and then it'll either be like, okay, that sort of makes sense or yeah, that's total bullshit. That's been like a weird habit that that seemed to help anything else that you're weighing this. So you've got this community idea.

I like where this is headed. You got customer number one and two today. Are you jumping around to other ideas too, right

Kalen Jordan: now? I am dude. I literally like another, so along the sales lead [00:44:00] generation for people direction, I had talked to people about doing some consulting. I was like, Hey. Maybe I can do some stuff for you for a couple thousand bucks a month.

And we were like thinking about it. And then I was like, ah, I don't always prefer to have a very cut and dry value prop, right? Like give me X percent of the sales I generate, give me X percent of the whatever, so that it's not tied to time. And so we had had those discussions, but didn't really go anywhere.

And then this one guy was building this really interesting hosting solution for Magento. I was talking to, and then I was talking to this other guy and he. Asked about exactly the thing that this guy has built, which is like a really good auto scaling. And I go, you know, I think I know the guy that's done exactly what you want to do.

And so anyways, I said, Hey, what if we do a referral agreement here? Like 25%, 20%, whatever. Another one of these ideas I've had from time to time also feels a little weird. The idea of like doing affiliate referrals, but [00:45:00] it's a, it's a product that I genuinely. Believe and a guy who I believe is brilliant.

And so we agreed to it. I said, cool, made the intro and we'll see. So that's another little iron in the fire is that, you know, and if that

Brian Casel: it's almost like a procurement thing, right? Like where like a company. Hires you like they have a need and they hire you to vet out all the different solutions and find the right one for them.

Kalen Jordan: Yeah. Well, more so just like the flip more so just like doing sales or lead generation for. A product, if like, I really believe in it and it's relevant to that, my network, then I say, okay, cool. I'll tell people about it or introduce you to people or whatever.

Brian Casel: That sounds like a revenue channel for the community idea, right?

Yeah. So you grow this community. And if we game that out again for a minute, like, yeah, companies could pay for membership, but other companies can pay to get their products in front of [00:46:00] your community.

Kalen Jordan: Yeah, that's true. It's tricky though. Yeah, I'd be a little concerned about introducing like a bias there because another one of the aspects I want to have to the community is that another one of these weird ecosystem dynamics, like an e commerce is that like, there's all these partner programs.

And so if you're in a partner program with an email marketing solution or a shipping tool or Shopify or a thousand different things, you're not going to really criticize them publicly. So then again, it's like there's certain things that you kind of only find out privately, peer to peer, like, is this thing really good?

Or like, what are you paying for this thing? Like, I was talking to a guy, he was like, looking at some tool, talks to the sales guy, they go, it's going to be 30 grand. And then he talks to his friend, he goes, we're paying four grand. So things like that, yeah. So I have this idea of maybe baking into the community as we're getting really valuable [00:47:00] feedback about what are the plugins you're using for e commerce?

What are the things that you're using the services to get some really genuine feedback on things and have that within like a private database where that I feel like that could be another cool little tie in to the community. So that's another random one. I always had thought like, if there's a product, it kind of goes back to the idea of like, maybe I'm better at the networking and the out marketing side of things.

So if, if somebody is building a product and I go, and I think I'm also good at recognizing talent. So like, if I go, this guy is kind of like the best at this thing, then I go, I want to help him get that out there. Cause he's good at building the technology. It's early enough. He has like five customers.

It's early enough. He doesn't have a,

Brian Casel: there could be something there for you with your skill as a podcaster. All right. So I'm going to brainstorm ideas for Kalen to build here. Okay. That fit your [00:48:00] criteria.

Kalen Jordan: All right. This is a lot easier. You tell me what to do because I'm a mess. Yeah. All right.

Brian Casel: So I know you as a very skilled podcaster, as you're all listening to right now, you're comfortable on the mic.

You can present. Right. You have this community, you have the formal community that you're building, but you're also very well networked in this whole space, especially Magento and e commerce. So a developer or someone with some rockstar skill who is unknown, you bring them on to some sort of podcast or just like a one off like video interview where you're essentially interviewing that person and bringing it out of them publicly.

And that becomes sort of like a portfolio item that that person can go use. Cause think about it. Like the way that I know some of the most talented people is because I've heard them on a podcast. I got to know them through a podcast or a YouTube video, or they put themselves out there. That's why they are known as someone who is really good at [00:49:00] something.

So if someone who is not naturally putting themselves out there, just don't have, doesn't have that exposure. You have a, the platform, but also like the skill to like wrap it up into a solid interview. So I don't know if there's anything there, but the idea is like, it wouldn't really become like somebody pays you to interview them, but it's almost like you're a talent scout and you seek out someone great and you highlight them and bring them to the world.

I'm kind of thinking out loud here

Kalen Jordan: on the air. Yeah. What I like about that, it's another one of these, the inverse of recruiting type of a model. Which I keep thinking of, I'm so sick of the recruiting that I keep coming up with ideas that are the same thing, but inverted, and I liked that idea. You, maybe you're also with a private community interviewing some of the members, well,

Brian Casel: okay.

About recruiting. I mean, getting back to again, like the original. Premise for me. It's always like, all right, there was some big thing [00:50:00] with my previous business that I'm trying to solve for in my next, so like what, what is that thing with commerce hero or the recruiting game in general that it's like, that's the thing that sort of burnt you out on it, or was it just the sheer time, six years, you're ready for something

Kalen Jordan: new.

That's a good question. I think about going back into my routine and reaching out to developers. I saying, Hey, I have this company hiring. And there's just something about it that I don't even know exactly what it is, but I'm just like, I just don't want to do that thing Yeah, that's a great question when you're doing recruiting You are looking to find the people who are available for a full time job within a certain salary.

So that Is not necessarily the same and oftentimes very different from what is the group of people doing the most interesting work, [00:51:00] right? Because A lot of times the good people doing the most interesting work are not looking for a job. And if they are, they're looking for 30 minutes and then they're hired because everybody knows how good they are.

I've got a new business idea for you. Here we go. Let's do it.

Brian Casel: So a company tells you that we have this pretty important need in a potential new role in our company. We need to find a rock star when it comes to X or Y or Z. And like you're saying, the best people are never available. The company hires you to be their talent scout and you essentially build a small short list of the best people in the industry.

You know, you've got this person working over here at this company. There's that person working over there is that person who's got a solid consulting thing going on and you start to keep tabs on them and you [00:52:00] start to do like the long term outreach and long term relationship building with these people and, and the company has you on retainer to just have that as like an ongoing touch point.

So that one of those a, B, or C people become available. You're swooping into to make the connection and put them in. And you get 10 or 20 clients like that, putting you on retainer to be like, they're like a and R

Kalen Jordan: scout, right? Yeah, I kind of like that. And I actually, I sort of, that was one of the consulting models I pitched to one or two people.

They hit me up about hiring. I was like, Hey, you know what? I'm not going to do any more active recruiting right now. But I said, I'm open to the idea of doing some consulting either around, they were also looking for partners within the e commerce world, either part, either that or, uh, recruiting. And I like that.

And this ties into the other thing is that not only on both sides of the equation, like on the talent side of the equation, you're looking for the people that are [00:53:00] available, not necessarily who's. Doing the most interesting work on the company side of the equation. You're looking for the ones that for whatever reason are interested in paying for your help, not necessarily the e commerce agency or the company.

That is the. strongest, right? And many times there's a reverse correlation. So a lot of the strongest companies don't need to, or have any interest in paying for help because their team is so well networked and respected that they don't need it. Right? So that's one of the things that I really like about this idea of referring business to these products that I truly feel.

Are the best in what they do is, is that I can do a similar thing where I can get a little percentage, but I can just purely focus on. And I can honestly say for this problem, you're trying to solve. This is the best right here. Right? Whereas. I can't [00:54:00] tell, like, if I'm doing recruiting for a company, I find developer, I can't necessarily say this is the best company in the ecosystem.

I can say they're a cool company. They look pretty solid. You know, they look like, and I don't work with companies that are like super wacky, but they're cool. They're friendly. They're not sleazy, but there's something about, Hey, this is the best company at doing X that is exciting to me.

Brian Casel: That's a really tough two sided marketplace problem to figure out.

Right. It's like. A great opportunity for the employee and a great opportunity for the company. And it's got to check

Kalen Jordan: both boxes. Yeah. And there's been different phases with commerce here. There was a time where one company in particular, I had a really great relationship with, we did some hiring, we ended up doing a ton of hiring.

And they were, I believe at that time, basically kind of the best e commerce agency in our little ecosystem or whatever, top three, top four, whatever, however you want to say it. They had an amazing team, an amazing culture. They were hiring remotely [00:55:00] all over the place. At that time. A lot of people were only US only or whatever, and there was this magical moment for a year or two where I got them like 34 hires, and every single person that went there was like, oh my God, like, because they were like, oh my God, I love this company, and it was just amazing.

Right? Then they ended up ramping down, or you got acquired and stuff. And so it hasn't quite been, yeah, it goes, cause it's a weird business. Like, it's not a thing where somebody uses your product and if they like it, they're going to stick with it forever. It's human resources. It's just, it's the nature of the beast.

So that's another one of the things I don't love about it.

Brian Casel: I can go all day with this conversation. We should probably, uh, we should probably wrap it up here, but there are so many other topics that I want to get into with you at some point.

Kalen Jordan: Me too, man. I'm really enjoying this. It feels a little bit like therapy, which is always [00:56:00] like that's what it's all about.

Yeah,

Brian Casel: yeah, open threads. You never know what's going to happen on the couch over here at open thread. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Good stuff. Well, thanks. I mean, people got to be following you on Twitter. If nothing else, it's entertaining, but you might even find out what Kayla's

Kalen Jordan: next business is actually.

All right. I love it. Good

Brian Casel: stuff. All right.