Episode 5: Updates + Competitors
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[00:00:00] James Sowers (Castaway): Hey John, welcome back to working sessions, man. Looking forward to diving into an update on editor, ninja and castaways. We usually write. I know we were kind of talking offline before we jumped on the recording here today about what we wanted to use for our icebreaker. And I think we landed on I phrased it as competitors.

[00:00:23] Good, bad or indifferent. So first I guess let's hear how things are going with you, but then let's jump into maybe something about competitors and how you look at them when you're building editor ninja or whatever else, your work.

[00:00:32] John Doherty (EditorNinja): Yeah, what's up, James? Good to see you again, man. I'm always look forward to recording these.

[00:00:36] I'm doing well. Yesterday, so we're recording this on Thursday, March 17th and yesterday, you know, There a lot of bad that comes with entrepreneurship. There's a lot of stress and I feel like I've been in the grind for about the last six months. And yesterday I think I had a six-figure sales day.

[00:00:51] So like committed revenue, not collected yet, but committed. And so it just felt really good to get a win. Right. I think I texted you and you're like, heck yeah. That's awesome. So, yeah, I'm doing, I'm doing well. You know, things are busy over here building up to vacation and, you know, Kind of move a lot of things around with credo and then with editor ninja building that.

[00:01:08] So got a lot of updates to give, but you know, one of those updates honestly is you know, I've been messing around with like sales funnels and messaging and that sort of thing. And you know, when it comes to competitors you, you said good, bad, or indifferent, like competitors or competitors, they are what they are.

[00:01:24] I think it's good to get into a space. I think we talked about this. Episode where it's good to get into a space that's growing. And where there are already established competitors simply because you know that there is a need. And so seeing what's already there in the market and what's working is great.

[00:01:38] So you can do the copycat thing if you want to. That's not really my style, but you can do it. I just use it as like competitive intelligence, right? Like I was thinking about pricing the other day and was. You know, I'm always trying to move faster and increase conversions and revenue and that sort of stuff.

[00:01:53] And I realized that I hadn't really looked at my competitors and how much they were charging. And also how they're kind of positioning themselves and messaging themselves. So, you know, a bunch of my competitors in the editing and just space they use a lot of overseas talent, right?

[00:02:06] Not like professional editors, that sort of thing. And so they're cheaper like one of my competitors, their minimum editing job is like $9 and 75. Something like that. And mine is. Basically 30 bucks is, is the minimum. The right people are willing to pay for quality. They're always going to be those that they're just like, whatever, get it done.

[00:02:22] Right. If it's pretty good, then I'm, then I'm good. But but like at our ninjas, like professional MFA level editors, so I'm like, alright, I just need to message a lot harder around that, that Hey, it's turned around fast is by professional editors you know, all of these things. Yeah. I don't take anything personally. Like I think, nothing in the world has ever knew. Right. Everyone is like copying something or, you know, as, as Dan Martell says, you know, R and D robbing and duplicating you know, I like to, I, I copy and. Right.

[00:02:49] I am upfront people ask me about editor ninja. Hey, what's behind the internet, your business model, or what is editing and gem you know, design, pickle. Yeah. Okay. Design pickle for copy editing and proofreading people like great. Right. I give credit design pickle. I give credit to Russ. You know, the founder and CEO over there.

[00:03:02] So I don't know. That's my take on competitors. What about you? What, what brought this up for

[00:03:06] James Sowers (Castaway): you? Yeah, it's a, I don't know. It's an interesting topic really because of. You know, we just published a book through my day job last year. And one of the concepts in the book is literally there's a reason that race horses wear blinders it's.

[00:03:19] So you don't look to the people or to the horses left and right. You, you just run your own race. Right. And so, I definitely ascribed to that. But you know, there are some times where like I don't. Keep an eye on competitors, because I always feel like if you do that, then you can only ever be a step or two behind them.

[00:03:34] You can't ever differentiate yourself and lead the pack because you're constantly like waiting to see what they do. So the way I look at it is I want to be the person that everybody's watching and copying, and that's a position of strength, right? That's, that's a good place to be in.

[00:03:46] But at the same time, you know, Castaway is the first time where I've kind of had like competitors kind of injecting themselves into my life. It's the weirdest thing. It's people will come to me and say, You know, Hey, I just got laid off from my job. And I'm thinking about doing podcasts, repurposing in a freelance capacity.

[00:04:00] Can I pick your brain about like how you're running Castaway and what tools you're using and stuff. And I'm like, I'm a nice guy. And my gut reaction is actually yeah, I want to open the kimono. Right. And let them know like exactly how I'm running things. And then it stopped for a second.

[00:04:12] But that's like, why would I invest time to do that? They're not bringing anything to the table in terms of like they did some legwork or anything like that. It's basically let me just lift and shift your model and do it under my own flag. And it's I don't know.

[00:04:23] It just feels weird to me to be so generous was something that like, I invested a bunch of time to figure out. Right.

[00:04:29] John Doherty (EditorNinja): Well, the way I feel about that kind of stuff is like hop on a call with them and see if he wants to do work for you. Right. Cause I mean, I think our, your update is going to be like, , kind of capacity and, you know, not really working on, certain things because like you need to scale up the team.

[00:04:40] So like maybe this is someone that you can scale up the team with, right. That can take a bunch of the project management off your plate. He needs to make some money as a freelancer, that kind of thing. You know, and if it's an in-house team and they want to learn. Teach him enough. Right.

[00:04:53] Teach them enough to the point where they're like, holy crap, this is a lot of work. And we should just hire cast away, you know? So I don't know. It's, it's not really competition. It's more I think there, there are opportunities there for you. But I also get the yeah, the, you know, it never feels good when somebody just like copies you and yeah.

[00:05:07] And the reaching out to try to copy your process to build a competitor. Kind of weird.

[00:05:12] James Sowers (Castaway): So yeah, it is that I think that's really, that's a good summary of the feeling is more about confusion. Like I would never think to reach out to somebody and ask that question, but multiple folks have asked some version of it and I'm just like, okay, just a different approach on the water.

[00:05:27] Maybe it just comes from a place of desperation. If I got laid off, I'd be trying to find what. Pay the bills too. So to your point, I don't hold it against anybody and like ideas only worth so much at the end of the day, it comes down to execution. But yeah, it's just, it was just kind of confusing.

[00:05:39] Like really you're just going to come directly in and ask somebody to give you their playbook so you can run it yourself and cut out all that, like work and research and hard lessons learned or whatever. So yeah, but my general feeling on competitors is yeah, I keep an eye in the sense that like market research and what's out there and what are my customers weighing as alternatives?

[00:05:54] Like I think there's a fundable. Like level of awareness you have to have around the alternative options. And those aren't always like competing services that are apples to apples. Sometimes it's a software tool that does a lot of what you do manually, or it's doing it in-house versus hiring an agency.

[00:06:09] That's the competition, there is a full-time hire or whatever. So it's kind of this more holistic view. So I think it's like my recommendation to the listener is Watch competitors as closely as you need to know where you stand amongst them. Right. But don't ever default to direct copycatting.

[00:06:23] You know, I've even seen people like steal headlines, almost word for word and pricing structures and that kind of thing. And it's just I don't know, man. Like if you, if you can't innovate now, You know, have an independent thought around those kinds of things. And I'm just not super confident in your ability to run your business for the longterm because you're always going to be a step or two behind everybody else.

[00:06:41] Totally.

[00:06:41] John Doherty (EditorNinja): And yeah. And you know, I've seen this a lot with credo as well, where, we have a rotating bar at the top where it's find a SEO, PPC, Facebook ads, digital marketing company. Right. And it's like a rotating thing. That I forget who I saw that on is not someone in my space.

[00:06:56] I like, so I rolled that out. We rolled that out a couple of years ago, and then another company in our space rolled it out about six months ago and I'm like, they probably saw it on our site. And so then they rolled it out. Right. And so like th th that happens in these spaces, but I think it's more than broader of, are you just doing that?

[00:07:13] Right. There's like the looking for ideas and then they're just like, I'm just going to copy the whole thing and do whatever they do. There are people that have done that and they've done it very well. And they've been very successful doing it if it's a huge space. Right. I think about the guys in like Poland or somewhere that like copied Pinterest for Europe.

[00:07:27] Right. And they made a shitload of money but I also don't really respect them. Right. So, I need to read your book. I have it, but I need to read it, but I liked the idea of, I like the metaphor of, there's a reason why race horses wear blinders because they're not looking, you know, around them, they're looking at where they're going, but they do you know, but the jockey, right.

[00:07:46] And I don't wanna extend the metaphor too far, but like the jockey is looking around and see what are, what are my, you know, what are my competitors do? And literally my competitors running beside me, what are they doing? What moves do I need to make that kind of thing. So there's kind of that. It's a both and sort of situation.

[00:08:00] But I also agree that if you're the leader looking, what others are doing, how do you make yourself different? How do you differentiate yourself? Like I'm doing with editor ninja, with professional editing and you know, and then keep on running and don't really worry.

[00:08:12] Keep an eye on your competitors, keep an eye on who's around you, but don't really worry about what they're doing. Then you might get some good nuggets from them as well.

[00:08:19] James Sowers (Castaway): Right. Ah, cool, man. Well, what's the, what's the update. Speaking of editor ninja, what's the update over there?

[00:08:24] I know it's been probably a couple of weeks since we last talked. So, yeah. Other than the sales, I mean, we're going to have to increase the revenue target. If those things fully sign and start paying. I hope so.

[00:08:34] John Doherty (EditorNinja): Yeah. Yeah. I need, I need I need that conversion today. Like I'm sitting here, I'm looking at my phone as we're recording and hoping to see like a Stripe notification that, this new prospect, that committed is signed up.

[00:08:43] Yeah, man, lots been going on here, you know, I'm really trying to delegate a lot at credo so that you know, get myself out of a lot of the day-to-day there so I can focus more on editor ninja. Cause I feel like it's such a big operation. But some things that I've been working on recently. So, you know, within our product is a simple workflow product that I built.

[00:09:01] But we have a view, like the idea of a queue, right? So like a customer uploads, a document to their queue, and then our editors work through their queue based off of, you know, w when it was uploaded and the priority, and like some of those things, but primarily off of the date. And so it was like, it started on this date.

[00:09:17] It's due back on this date and. That's just how they do it. And I've had a card view, which is like pretty, and it's good looking, but it's hard to really parse the information there. And that was like our only view. And I've been wanting to set up like a table view, just like a simple table view, which we, I have on other kind of areas of the site.

[00:09:34] I use it for myself, for the assigning looking at new documents and signing it and, the way I operate. I don't go and build new things until we have new customers to merit it. So okay. I like building a table view. Isn't going to move the needle on getting new customers. So let's get new customers.

[00:09:51] Cause that's like the one thing that I need to be working on right now. And then once you know, this customer committed and they're like, we're in, it's going to be a good size customer as an agency. I'm like, all right, cool. Now I'll reward. By building this table view. I learned that from Chris lemma, he's like focus on the one thing, but know that you really want to do this thing.

[00:10:06] And once you've hit this milestone or gotten a new customer or whatever, did reward yourself with building a new thing. So I rewarded myself last night with building that and it's life and I'm stoked on it. So, so I, I got that done. And I've just been like formalizing some things on the op side, first of all my my lead editor is working on recruiting some new editors because with bringing on new customers, we need to scale up that side. And so, so that's great, you know, she's just working on that, which is awesome and feel so good to be building this company in a way. I didn't do with credo where I did everything.

[00:10:37] And so like actually having an early like kind of founding team is, is amazing. Like we're just, we're just able to move so much faster. But along with that, I've had to formalize some processes earlier that it took a while to do with credos. So like I got Gusto set up for editor ninja so that I can pay editors through there.

[00:10:54] So they get their w nine and that kind of thing, like automatically. So then I'm not. You know, having to go back and do that later, you know, like a year from now, my accountant's oh, did you send w nines? I'm like, shoot. So I'm really trying to formalize that stuff early on so a year from now, when hopefully we're like substantially bigger having to deal with that stuff when I really should be focusing on marketing sales, that kind of thing.

[00:11:18] So.

[00:11:19] James Sowers (Castaway): I think that's really smart to formalize that stuff early, cause like I'm probably going the other way and I'm just, you know, doing it all myself. Like I'm in here in Google sheets managing a very simple P and L just because I'm like, ah, should I go ahead and get QuickBooks set up or something equivalent to like I'm not hiring a bookkeeper yet.

[00:11:33] I'm just, I'm just not there. You know? And I wonder if that's just a little bit of the difference between. You already having credo under your belt and I'm curious how much of the resources from credo are you funneling to editor ninja? Whether that's dollars or people, time and attention. Cause it does seem like man, if I had something that was peeling off half a million dollars a year, like it'd be way easier to get Castaway off the ground.

[00:11:53] In theory, I don't know in practice, but in theory it seems like, oh yeah, you just take some of this money and you can operate. Even at a loss to some degree for a while, just knowing that you're setting up the systems, you're getting the team in place and stuff in six months from now, you're going to flip that profitability switch and gain it all back.

[00:12:05] But yeah. Is that accurate or is it more like you're operating these as two very independent entities? They are two very

[00:12:11] John Doherty (EditorNinja): independent entities purposefully, so their own LLCs own, all that stuff. Like the only things that I'm like cross-pollinating are Eder ninjas, like hosting

[00:12:22] It's under credos, Kinsa account, right? Lufkin stuff. Her hosting been through so many hosts. So like edit ninja.com is hosted on the Kinsa instance that's paid for by a higher gun LLC, which has created this official parent company. But you're you're right.

[00:12:36] And I was talking to, I was mentioning this to my wife that. I you know, credos paying me. And so and I get owner distributions and that kind of thing. I don't need those owner distributions for my day-to-day life. We do fine. So I'm actually taking a lot of that. I took some of it last year, I'm putting into my trucks just cause it's fun, but like stuff that's that I'm getting from credo now, distributions, I'm getting from credo now I'm actually putting, it's just, you know, it's a couple of grand, like a quarter I'm putting that into editing.

[00:13:03] But that's me, that's John founder funding it. Right. So it's like angel funding, just so I I'm using my income from credo as the funding for editor ninja, but it's not credo funding editor. Just like I used SEO consulting when I went on my own and was starting credo, my SEO consulting paid myself.

[00:13:20] And then I was able to boot shop in cell phone credo. So I'm doing that same thing. It's just like a slightly different business. But and then my lead editor at our ninja is also my executive assistant at credo. So there is that overlap, but like credo pays her for executive assistant stuff and like some other stuff that she does there.

[00:13:35] And then editor ninja pays her for the editing that she does at ETR ninja. So I very much, I'm trying to keep. Separate as much as possible just for future.

[00:13:43] James Sowers (Castaway): Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I was probably going to touch on this later, but like I'm to the point now where I'm like, it's more of a cashflow thing.

[00:13:49] It's like, when does this invoice get paid? Or can you take those dollars in your hand, these contractors, their money to do this work. And it's you get multiple projects at the same time. And you're like, it's easy to lose track of the profitability of an individual project because it's all just a bank account with a floating and then this cash is being passed back and forth.

[00:14:05] And it's like, when you're trying to do the bookkeeping yourself and run the business, it's, it's I don't have a clear grasp on If I'm being responsible about making sure that everything's profitable all the time and I'm to the point now where I'm like, do I just take 10 grand in my own money and drop it in that account and just.

[00:14:20] You know, basically seed funding, the whole thing, just so we don't have to like float and it's, it's not like we're hurting for money, but it's just, it's hard to keep track of every penny when things are constantly going in and out in multifarious ways.

[00:14:32] John Doherty (EditorNinja): The way I've set that up at credo. Like I, I review, I mean, I have a bookkeeper accountant, you know, basically fractional, like finance person there. And I review the P and L every month. And so I've taken a lot of the learnings from running that business over to editor ninja.

[00:14:46] And so I'm getting them in place now. Like I don't have a bookkeeper on edit ninja yet. I'll probably use bench. Like I did early days of create. I'll probably use bench for that. But I now know I now have the process. And so you know, moving forward every like second Tuesday of the, you know, the second Tuesday of every month, I'm going to review credo, P and L I'm going to review review editor, ninja P and L.

[00:15:06] So th that's just because that's the level at which I need. I know that I need that level. So, I don't know, maybe a good learning for you with castle, but I, I don't know. I just don't feel like I need to know where every penny is going. Right. It's just like, all right, we're investing in this, we're investing in this, you know, are we like cashflow?

[00:15:21] Is cashflow coming in? You know, are people getting paid? That kind of thing. And yeah, some of it's going to shift around, but you know, it's interesting you say that because moving into sales and marketing updates really. I basically I shipped out a new funnel recently where there's a get your first dock done for 15% off.

[00:15:41] Right. If you want to like, test out the service before you commit to a subscription, just get it done. Here's a 15% off coupon. Right. And actually the customer that's converting the prospect that I talked to yesterday, that's converting in, you know, hopefully today, tomorrow they got three test documents done last week, and then I send them back to them and said, Hey.

[00:15:57] You know, if this was awesome for you, let's book a call, right. And talk about a subscription and they booked a call. So I feel like that funnel is starting to work. Just trying to get people to that wow, this is amazing moment that I had a few months ago when I got, you know, signed up credo and got documents back.

[00:16:12] I'm like, holy crap, this is amazing. I don't have to review this stuff. Sweet. So I'm trying to get people to that first value, but I've, I'm also playing around with a new pricing structure where instead of getting people to commit. Oh, yeah, we're producing, you know, a hundred thousand words a month.

[00:16:27] And so I need five lanes of editing, which is whatever, 1500 bucks, basically I'm doing like a base like platform fee. Everyone pays right now. Current pricing is $399. I'm probably gonna have. Everyone pays that. And that covers your initial X documents, right? Or like X, thousands of words. And then at the end of every payment period, and we bill every four weeks shout out to Alex Horn mosey there at the end of every four week period, we go, we're going to go back to.

[00:16:55] And see how many words they did above that, like initial, like number right. For their initial subscription. And then we build them for that after the fact. So they're not paying for stuff that they're not using. It's a much easier sale. It delays our revenue a little bit. So I'm actually, I am going to have to watch that, but we've, we've got a good, like I put enough cash into the bank account that like, we're fine.

[00:17:14] And it's basically just gonna be. Each month, there'll be a little bit, you know, it's just a little bit of delayed revenue. But it seems like it's a much easier yes. For people and actually shipped out the new pricing page last night, obviously still super early days. I have no data on it yet, but like I shipped it out last night, kind of streamlining, get a single doc, get a subscription.

[00:17:32] If you're editing over a hundred thousand words a month, let's schedule a call to talk. So, I don't know, making those changes, just kind of trying to balance like changing stuff too fast, versus you know, I've got enough data on this, you know, we've driven 5,000 people to the site and I got two demos booked, like something's off here.

[00:17:48] James Sowers (Castaway): That's interesting. What's the, what's the Alex Horn mosey bit about the four weeks. Cause that caught my attention. I've been devouring his stuff lately. And is one of those kinds of he's one of those personalities that feels too good to be true. You know, like I put him in the same bucket as grant Cardone and Ty Lopez right now.

[00:18:01] And I'm like, not, you know, like they're very polarizing. Some people love them. Some people hate them. I'm sure the reality is somewhere in the middle, but it's anytime somebody has that much confidence, the natural inclination is to like second guess them. And I'm not second guessing him, but I'm sure.

[00:18:15] Come at it with. A clean pallet or whatever, but what's his four week concept. I'm guessing they just bill every four weeks instead of once a month. And then you get more revenue that way because of the extra. Exactly.

[00:18:24] John Doherty (EditorNinja): Basically it builds in 13 billing periods a year instead of 12. And so you get an additional what's that 8% of revenue, something like that.

[00:18:30] People don't balk at it. People don't do the year. Like a calculation, they look at what's the outlay, right? What's the like monthly outlay and four weeks is close enough to a month that like they don't differentiate between it. So that, that's basically the thing is you're gonna have more profit in the business if you bill every four weeks.

[00:18:47] So. Yeah, that's, it's pretty simple. And I just started at her ninja with that and I haven't, I've literally had no one asked about it.

[00:18:55] James Sowers (Castaway): I think I landed on that by mistake with that with Castaway. Cause I was basically like this subscription is you pay me once a month and we do four episodes and that just assumes you do one episode a week for four weeks.

[00:19:04] But some. More some months have less, but it's, so it's kind of built in that way, but just not messaged in the same vein.

[00:19:10] John Doherty (EditorNinja): Totally. Yeah. And to Alex, like Alex is a great guy. He and his wife are in Martel's kind of orbit you know, they're both super nice, super smart, like super giving there. I don't, I obviously don't, I don't know, grant Cardone, I don't know Tai Lopez.

[00:19:21] Like I, I know who they are. I follow them. Right. Like at my let comes to mind, like a lot of those guys. Yeah. I mean, Alex is the real deal. So I respect him a ton you know, on the, on the business side, for sure. He's just been through a lot, learned a lot, teaches a lot, very eloquent. So,

[00:19:36] James Sowers (Castaway): yeah. Yeah.

[00:19:37] I've listened to a lot of his interviews lately and yeah, just great, great story. And it's just funny, cause he'd just been in the trenches. What a decade or something like that, and is just now starting to build a personal brand and you watch the growth of his Instagram or whatever. And it's just yeah, the hockey stick and for good reason,

[00:19:51] John Doherty (EditorNinja): right.

[00:19:51] I've learned a lot from him about like delegation and like empowering other people to do things for you. Cause like I know, you know, I know who does his, like his Instagram stuff and all of that. And like it's, it's pretty, I've learned a lot about that for credo. Cause it's in a very different place than Edward ninja.

[00:20:05] What about you, man? What's going on at Castaway these days? What's.

[00:20:07] James Sowers (Castaway): Let's see operational side. I got my own project management system set up, which I was going to ask about yours earlier, but I guess I'll bring it up now. So we're using a sauna and I like a sauna because it has repeatable checklist.

[00:20:19] So you can make it has that card view that you were talking about the Kanban view or whatever people like to call it. But then you can have a template card with sub checklists inside of it. So for me, it would be. Here is the template for this show. And here is the step-by-step process for making the video clips.

[00:20:35] Here's a step-by-step process for making the blog posts, making the social media threads. You like, you need this many about, you know, recapping the conversation. This many about lessons learned this many about whatever gets me to get all that stuff. So I can just copy that card for every single episode and drag each episode as an individual card through the process, but they all have the exact same repeatable steps attached to them, which is.

[00:20:54] What makes my process efficient. So I like a sauna, but then when you talked about having multiple views in a database or a table view, and and the kind of the board view and that kind of thing that made me think of air table, which is what we use at my agency. And I really like it for like editorial calendar, but it doesn't really have a good way for those repeatable checklists that I've found yet.

[00:21:12] So I went with a sauna of our air table for now. And I'm curious about yours, was yours kind of a custom solution. Are you using a tool similar to.

[00:21:20] John Doherty (EditorNinja): So little known fact about John Doherty. I hate project management and I hate project management software with a passion like I've tried base camp. I've tried a sauna.

[00:21:30] We tried click up. They just don't work for my brain. I feel constrained by them and I have to learn how to work in their way. Like I work in my way, so I use Trello for my own you know, my own, like managing my own projects and that kind of thing, managing our, like our product roadmap, you know, that sort of stuff.

[00:21:48] But you know, I, I honestly think project management and like kind of repeatable stuff like that. Something that like both of my companies could bone up on really well. Like I'm going to try to hire an integrator at credo at some point, right? The EOS entrepreneurial operating system, vain someone trained by them probably.

[00:22:02] So like just an operator. It's, it's just not my jam. I'm not good at it. And it holds my companies back. So I don't use any of that. With Edmonton. I mean, it's, it's pretty simple. I built it myself. WordPress, gravity forms, gravity view, paid memberships pro like that's my stack. That's how I built the initial version of credo.

[00:22:17] It's how I built the initial birds, the NDP of veteran ninja. And it works. And, you know, I've just kind of built all these different views at ETR ninja where it's here's the queue of documents that like all the documents in the queue and the ones that need to be scheduled are at the top. Then when a document is returned it goes into the revision queue.

[00:22:34] And I have a separate view that I can see everything that needs to be like QA and returned once it's returned. It's out of that view. I log in every day to review it to QA. And then that's my workflow. And it works.

[00:22:45] It works well for now. Once we scale, once we get to you know, 250,000 words a week, like coming back, that's going to break, so we're going to have to bone up on that.

[00:22:54] James Sowers (Castaway): That's really cool. And it's nice that you have a single view of where it just kind of like filters out all the noise.

[00:22:58] Like you don't even see the stuff that's already done. You don't even see the stuff that's not ready for your attention yet. It's just like dialed

[00:23:03] John Doherty (EditorNinja): in right now. That's this is what needs to be handled to schedule. Now, this is the stuff that needs to go back. And then these are all the documents that come through.

[00:23:10] So I had those different views just to keep it, keep it straight in my own brain,

[00:23:13] James Sowers (Castaway): yeah, right. Cool. So then other stuff on the operations side for Castaway, I did find a really good video editor and I'm very affordable. I'm like, I want to pay him more, you know?

[00:23:23] Cause I think he's undercharging himself. He's got some geo arbitrage going on there. But the problem is he works full-time for another agency and has limited availability. So I did the whole like, Hey, do you know anybody like you? And he's ah, unfortunately I don't. So now I gotta find a way.

[00:23:37] Find somebody who's comparable and, but has more availability. And I have some ideas around that. I think that's going to be one of my action items for this week is basically like, how do I find this guy, but with more availability or, you know, some kind of duplication factor there. So, let's see. So then on the sales and marketing front, I sold another bundled offering.

[00:23:54] I talked about this on a past episode where somebody came to me and they're like, Hey, I don't have a podcast, but I have this process where I am setting. Prospects for my service and I'm interviewing them and they've agreed to let me use it as marketing materials, basically kind of a video case study for ways that we can serve them in a financial services capacity.

[00:24:12] And I was like, yeah, sure. We can do that. I mean, conceptually it's different, like down the road, I'd probably like to turn those folks away because it doesn't fit into the strict mold of the repeatable project I'd like to do. But right now, you know, money in the bank is worth something to me. So. So I did that, and this is kind of the same thing.

[00:24:26] They, what they want to do basically is they want to do a series of interviews with CEOs. And then they want to use those interviews as proof that the client's CEO is a good interview. And then use that to get placed on other podcasts. They based on want to say, Hey, our CEO has done these six interviews.

[00:24:41] Here's all the marketing material around that. And would you like to have him as a guest on your show? And then that's there end service. So kind of an interesting use case and yeah, it's nice to get those lumps, some orders. It's not ideal. I'd love to have recurring revenue.

[00:24:54] I think everybody would, but you know, it's a place to start. So it's interesting that these other use cases continue to present themselves naturally without any kind of there's no landing page for that, right? That's not even an idea I had, my head is just. You know, they they've submitted interest form.

[00:25:06] I said, tell me about your show. They said, well, we don't have a show yet, but we have this idea. Can you work with that? And it's yeah, sure. We can do that for now. I think long-term, I'd like to not do that maybe, but you know, for now it's working it could be worth

[00:25:16] John Doherty (EditorNinja): launching page and you know, it's a lump sum thing and then you can turn them into it, like repeatable, maybe build a process around that.

[00:25:22] Right. If they're doing this constantly, you get them into a subscription, you know, or they buy a bundle right ahead of time. So you front load that revenue and then you deliver it over to.

[00:25:30] James Sowers (Castaway): Yeah. I am trying to fight against I, there are like six different landing pages I could launch for a little services like that.

[00:25:36] Right. Like when I was thinking about just this week, So you see it all over Twitter, or if you run a business, you probably encounter this. Anytime you're on a webinar, like people are always commenting and they're like, will there be a recording? Will there be a recording? And I just want to have this landing page for the hero section, a big headline that says, whether it be a recording question, mark.

[00:25:53] No, there'll be something. And then the deliverable there is instead of a recording, you get like a cheat sheet with the cliff notes, or you get a slide deck with the key points and a voiceover, or you get a YouTube video that summarizes it, or you get video clips of the most important parts. You don't have to watch the whole webinar.

[00:26:09] There's some kind of package on that. And just that hero sticking out my brain right now where it's like, whether it be a recording, no, there's gonna be something even better. And then it's here's what Castaway can deliver for you to make your webinar. More valuable to attendees because a lot of people don't attend.

[00:26:22] It's something like 80% of people that register for webinars just don't show up. They just wait for the recording. And it's can you blame them? Really? It's not, it's not the best experience unless you really have an interest in that Q and a session. So like, how do you take those webinars and repurpose them into something that is more useful and maybe more bite-sized and more contextual.

[00:26:37] I could see a little product offering around that. But yeah, I'm trying to I'm like, is that a distraction or is that something worth testing out right now? And it's kinda yeah, this wrestling between focus and also exploring new revenue channels. Right. So yeah,

[00:26:49] John Doherty (EditorNinja): I mean they're worth tests, right?

[00:26:51] There's no harm in launching the page and if it converts great, if it doesn't convert, you un-publish it. Right. You know, at this point, it's worth testing it. I don't know. That's my take. Right. I, and obviously I'm an SEO guy and I've built out a ton of these pages. Editor ninja for like document editing, copy, editing, proofreading, like that kind of thing.

[00:27:08] And it's all just like part of what we do. But you know, some of them convert, some of them don't, but they rank and drive traffic and all that. So I don't know. Yeah.

[00:27:18] James Sowers (Castaway): I actually, my my playbook for doing this in the past is literally a Google doc. Like I just write the landing page in a Google doc and I think of five people that I follow on Twitter, or that I have an email connection to from past work.

[00:27:29] And I just say Hey, you run a bunch of. Does this resonate with you? I'm not asking you to buy it, but is this something that for a person, in your position does it seem like an appealing offer and then just give me your unfiltered feedback on would you like to see more deliverables or different deliverables?

[00:27:41] Would you like to see a better pricing? You know, that kind of thing, like what makes this more attractive to you? And then, if I get enough positive signal from five or 10 of those, then, then I go do the landing page and then I fire off a tweet about it. And I just kind of escalate my involvement based on whether that feedback is positive.

[00:27:55] And there seems like there's some of them. Makes sense. Cool. Yeah. Cool. So I'll wrap up. Let's see the other updates here. Yeah, I guess this is kind of an update and a, an a challenge, I guess, bundled into one. It's hiring's a sticking point for me. I'm still in that phase. Doing it all myself.

[00:28:10] I think you mentioned earlier that the nice thing about editor ninja is this time around you're you're not, you're getting a team in place and delegation and everything like that. So I'm not there yet. I think right now it's like to maintain quality and reliability in terms of deadlines and stuff.

[00:28:22] I'm still doing a fair amount of the work. So I'm trying to get out of that though. And It's one of those things where like selling these bundles is great, but that revenue is not like long-term committed revenue for the next six months. So it's hard to hire against that. And it's also this kind of common thread that I've been bringing up in this conversation is do I just put 10 grand of my own money in there and just go ahead and hire and basically bet on yourself.

[00:28:42] You know, solve the chicken or the egg problem by going out and getting the sales to make that hire, you know, sustainable for years, not just weeks or months. Right. So I think that's kinda my, my biggest challenge right now. My biggest action item really is like one. I got to go find another video editor.

[00:28:55] That's kind of my sticking point talent-wise but two, I gotta either go, go sell some subscriptions or get them pre committed to justify that higher, or just you know, make my peace with self-funding it for an indeterminate amount of time and go in and get the sales after.

[00:29:09] John Doherty (EditorNinja): Yeah. Yeah. Or you structure it where and this is something I have to think about editor ninja is, cause I don't have, I kind of think, do the same thing with like contract editors.

[00:29:19] We don't have enough work to bring someone on full time. None of us are full-time on it. And I there's this like little thing in the back of my brain. That's ah, if one of these like big you know, subscriptions churn. You know, am I going to have the work? And so I don't want to guarantee anything, but maybe it's like a, like every two weeks sort of like, Hey, I'm gonna need you.

[00:29:36] I know I need you for the next two weeks. Right. And guarantee X amount of pay, that kind of thing. But, you know, so then they can kind of like manage their time, like a little bit like longer term. I don't know. It's a hard one. I haven't cracked it either. Yeah. So what are you thinking with.

[00:29:49] And I know we were talking about the start, but like funding out of your pocket initially, or you know, betting on the pipeline or do you have a cash bank built up that you know, that you've got three months of runway, you know, in the bank or something like that? Yeah.

[00:30:03] James Sowers (Castaway): It's a little bit of both.

[00:30:04] We certainly have cash in the bank. Like we've probably got seven grand sitting in there just free flowing between we've already paid contractors and invoices haven't been paid and stuff like that. So it's yeah, we could float that.

[00:30:13] And the people I'm talking about. You know, I'm happy to hire domestically if I find the right person. Typically what I've found is that a lot of the best video editors for social media clips are actually like located internationally. That's just where they live. That's just kind of a specialized skill set that's available in Cambodia or Thailand or those kinds of places.

[00:30:30] And it's You know, you can, they are more affordable than somebody working in LA or New York or Austin or whatever. So, you can get somebody like that, at least from what I've seen it for two grand a month. And it's okay, well, if you only have seven, two grand a month is three months of runway.

[00:30:44] Right. So it's you know, but, but at the same time I also could take this approach where I don't necessarily put somebody on retainer or in some kind of an employment arrangement, but I just kind of say, Hey, can I keep you on the bench? And can I call you the next time I see. Project a bundle, a subscription, and then you jump in there.

[00:30:59] I could try that, but the problem is we kind of say, Hey, we've got a seven to 10 business day turnaround from the point you pay the invoice and give us the assets we need. And it's you can't expect that freelancer to just be available, like awesome. If they are. But you can't expect them to hold space for you unless you're going to pay to hold that space.

[00:31:15] Right. So it's that doesn't quite feel right to me morally either. So I think what I've landed on though, is this kind of hybrid model where it's like, what if. Go find this video editor and I pay them and I put them on a retainer for a certain number of hours or episodes or whatever. And it's okay, if we have enough client work to keep them busy, problem solved.

[00:31:31] But if we don't, then I'm going to do these things. Like I'm just going to call them like blitzes. And it's let me go find a show. And your job this month is to repurpose this show. That's not a Castaway client, but I'm going to send all those assets over to them. I'm just going to start publishing them myself and tagging those account or whatever.

[00:31:47] I'm going to somehow get that in front of those people. And, maybe they'll sign on, but maybe somebody who follows them will sign on. They'll be like, Hey, the clips they made for the show are really top-notch high quality, whatever. And maybe that'll drive business. So maybe it's kind of both, right?

[00:31:58] Like maybe it's, I'm paying somebody now and I'm kind of taking that risk, but yeah, but it's sales and marketing effort and it might drive new business and then you get the flywheel going. So that's kind of what I'm thinking now is I might have. Let's say I'm somebody on retainer, you know, for six months, 1500 a month, or whatever, pay it out of the bank account for as long as I can, knowing that I might have to dip into my own pocket, if things get bad or whatever.

[00:32:19] And then you know, if, if they're not engaged full time, then use them on sales and marketing projects and see if that drives business and takes care of itself. You know,

[00:32:27] John Doherty (EditorNinja): I mean, it's a little bit of a risk, but you know, also it doesn't seem like things are going to get bad. It seems, you know, you keep selling these bundles and you know, all that.

[00:32:34] So You know, that's, that's it seems to be a pretty safe bet. I think there's no, there's not no risk, but the other thing you could do, man, is, and I did this at the very start with editor ninja is I basically had a set of like 20 editors that like a doc would come in and I just email out.

[00:32:50] Whoever replies first availability gets it. So you could have five video editors that are all freelancers. And so in this case, you're just letting them manage their own availability, but you have enough that, you know, like someone is going to be available, right. That you can get it done. So you're not committed to anything.

[00:33:05] And you know, freelancers are used to a little bit of like spiky work and yes, it'd be nice, like from our perspective to, you know, give them that like consistency. But if you don't have that consistency, I dunno, my take is don't try to fit it in. Yeah. You know, I have consistency now with editor ninja, so I do have a couple of editors and I'm just like, kind of guaranteeing a certain amount, but it's also like 75 bucks a week, right?

[00:33:25] Like I can float 300 bucks, a month, right. 600 bucks a month. Like no problem for a long time, even if we had no documents coming through. Right. So it was like super low risk. So, I don't know. Th th that's how I'd go if I were you, but the get them on a retainer and use them for like marketing purposes, et cetera.

[00:33:41] That's intriguing. I had never thought about that. So yeah,

[00:33:44] James Sowers (Castaway): it might be worth a shot. That'd be cool, man. Well, before we hop off, do you have any other, I know I just shared like kind of a challenge I'm facing. I don't know if you have anything like that or like my commitments for the next time we talk,

[00:33:55] put a job listing out there for a video editor and just see what comes back and try to get you know, a price point or a level of involvement that they're interested. Maybe they're totally flexible. Right. But I want to get out into a couple of the popular marketplaces and see what comes back. And then you know, as we wrap up some of these ongoing projects, I want to reach out to those clients and try to get some video testimonials and add some of that social proof to the website, because I know it's easy to go a long time without actually doing that.

[00:34:16] And I know it can be a big boost in pushing somebody over the finish line to actually sign on with us is to see real. Saying nice things about us. So I'm going to try to get that done here in the next week, or so, as we wrap these projects up,

[00:34:26] John Doherty (EditorNinja): especially since you're talking about video, right. And you do you do video editing and such, so can you get, I don't know if you could use like testimonial dot two or, you know, something like that.

[00:34:34] There are all these things out there that you could use. I think that that would be very effective for you. For me with editor ninja you know, at this point I don't really have any major challenges. It's just a matter of. Keeping focused on increasing, audience, increasing traffic, increasing knowledge of the space, right.

[00:34:50] Of the, of my company. Just to get more demos in and you know, and get them closed. So, Yeah, I just need to stay focused honestly. Cause like I know that I'm going to go and, you know, futz around with stuff on the site. Like I did a bunch of SEO things this past week and some you know, try trying to do like conversion related stuff.

[00:35:06] Like I put the Calendly, embed, demo requests on every single light, main services page. So seeing if that works to increase demos, otherwise I've got some other tests that I might do. So like I'm trying to let some of those just keep on going and not futz around with. Breadcrumb links anymore for services, pages, and that sort of stuff.

[00:35:22] Like I find that I'm good at doing busy work, but it's not necessarily the work that is going to move the needle, which is audience, outreach, that kind of thing. So that's what I'm, that's what I'm trying to do. So basically what I'm committing to is I am going to One is, is really trying to get this, like this new customer on board and really make them happy and get their first stuff out.

[00:35:44] A second one is going to be delegating the assigning of documents to my lead editor, because I'm going on vacation in two weeks. Okay. I'm going to check in every day, but I don't want to be like, you know, 9:00 AM, you know, every day in Mexico you know, logging on to like assign documents and QA documents and that kind of thing.

[00:36:03] So it was kind of the next level that like, can I build these processes so that other people are running them? So that I can, yeah, I can focus on what I'm best at, which is the business side, the sales and the marketing and not have to be like in there operating. So that's, that's what I'm really working on at this point.

[00:36:17] And just challenging myself to get into that mindset early on, instead of yeah, I can do all the things, right. Cause I, as you said, I am building this company in a very different way than I built, you know?

[00:36:28] James Sowers (Castaway): Yeah. Yeah. And if you try to do it all yourself, oftentimes that's slower than you know, helping getting other people to help you out.

[00:36:34] It might be more affordable, but it's like, what's more important to you, the speed of execution or, you know, making a bunch of money right out of the gate versus investing for the longterm. That's I'm wrestling with that too. It's do I, am I willing to work on this for six months and basically make no money from it personally for a bigger long-term outcome?

[00:36:50] Or do I want to do. Go slow and steady and just take some cash out now. And it's yeah, I don't know. I don't know which one's the better option, but yeah,

[00:36:57] John Doherty (EditorNinja): I think the way, the way I did that, at least with credo was I just kind of built up to it. Like I paid myself nothing from credo for the first nine months.

[00:37:04] And then I wrote myself a check. It was for like four grand. So like basically like 400 bucks a month for the previous. You know, nine months, but it was something I haven't paid myself, anything out of editor ninja at this point. But I was also talking about this with Chris Limmer recently.

[00:37:18] And he was like, you don't have to you've got a day job, you've got your other business, right. For you. You've got your day job. That's paying you. We should live within our means on those. Right. And so there isn't really that pressure, even though yeah, it feel good to pay myself, but at this point, yeah, I don't need it.

[00:37:33] So might as well reinvest and you know, really get this thing to a steady state to then, you know, at some point, be able to say yeah, now I'm not paying myself $2,000 a month or something like that.

[00:37:44] James Sowers (Castaway): Yeah, that's kind of my mindset too, is I'm not expecting to take any money out of it until maybe the end of the year.

[00:37:49] Right? Like maybe I get a nice little Christmas bonus from all this, but I'm basically planning to reinvest everything back into the business, but it does make it harder. At least for me, when I'm mainly working nights and weekends outside of kind of a nine to five arrangement, it's like doing that for free for a long time can get a little old.

[00:38:03] So, yeah, just something I'm remaining aware of. Right. Because I know those feelings can creep in, but Cool man. Well, maybe we'll wrap it up there and we'll leave some food on the table for the next time we get together. Before you go on vacation there, we'll catch you one more time and then you can fully unplug and yeah.

[00:38:18] Congratulations on that big sale. I hope it, I hope it comes through. I hope that the cash is in your bank account here before too long. And then you're trying to figure out how to put it back to work.

[00:38:26] John Doherty (EditorNinja): Thank you. That's that's the plan, man. We'll keep rocking and rolling. Good to see you as always James we'll catch you all next time.