Navigating Chaos in Tech Communities and New Approaches to SaaS and Sales

Zach Stepek:
Zach Stepek here with Carl Alexander again for another episode. of our lovely show here. Um, are you all ready for some stuff and nonsense or mayhem? Whatever, whatever is going to happen today.

Carl Alexander:
Yeah, we’ve got, we’ve got extra no plans today, so it’s going to be like extra, extra, extra chaos.

Zach Stepek:
Yeah, you know, it’s, it’s always fun to just sit back and see where the neurodivergence brings us.

Carl Alexander:
Like my July to August feels like it was like, there’s a quote from DHH that I, that he, well, it’s a quote from somebody else, but DHH like keeps saying it, which is like, there are some weeks where decades happens and some decades where like weeks happen. And I feel like August for me was like, so much happened. Like, I’m just like, I was talking to a friend and I’m like, We haven’t talked since like mid-July and I’m like, I don’t even know where to start basically to tell you like everything that’s going on. So yeah, that’s crazy.

Zach Stepek:
Yeah.

Carl Alexander:
So this is going to be a chaotic episode for sure.

Zach Stepek:
I mean, that’s, that’s kind of the most fun.

Zach Stepek:
Um, well, let’s start out with, uh, WordCamp US just happened.

Carl Alexander:
Yeah. Neither of us went.

Zach Stepek:
So I wasn’t there. You weren’t there. I organized, but I did not attend.

Carl Alexander:
Oh yeah, that’s true. I forget that you were an organizer. Yeah. Um, I feel like it was going to be a difficult WordCamp, uh, just because of the timing, like the announcement, the time of the year that they picked, uh, the city that they picked to, um, you know, like I love Phoenix, first of all.

Zach Stepek:
Me too.

Carl Alexander:
So this is it. So I’m one of those crazy— everybody was like, Phoenix in August, you must be crazy. And I’m like, Phoenix in August is like peak. for me. Uh, I love the heat and I’m, I was there before WordCamp because WordCamp, uh, the first WordCamp after COVID in San Diego, the one in the resort, right, was in August as well. And I went and hung out in Phoenix before. So I’ve been in Phoenix in August. I know exactly what it is and I love it, but it’s definitely not for everyone. Like, I’m the crazy person that’s going to walk outside for 30 minutes to get to a coworking space to suck in the heat.

Zach Stepek:
Right.

Carl Alexander:
And also, like, you know, I’m from Canada and, you know, I need to get all that sunshine energy, that Sunbelt energy, before it disappears and we get, like, you know, the darkness of winter here. So yeah.

Zach Stepek:
And, you know, the thing is, they, they did a really good job of, um, they had golf carts available to take people to and from the hotel.

Carl Alexander:
I saw that.

Zach Stepek:
That was cool.

Carl Alexander:
I’m a big, I’m a big, like, Have cool shuttles, you know, between—

Zach Stepek:
yeah. And, and so you could definitely see that they had a lot of things.

Carl Alexander:
They had a plan.

Zach Stepek:
Yes, they, they definitely did.

Carl Alexander:
Also, like, Phoenix is not as internationally accessible also, like, so it’s diff— it’s also a difficult place for that as like a well-traveled person that I am, like, you know, like the US can be difficult, even though they, the US has an insane, uh, national airline system and tons of airline traffic for international travelers. It’s actually like difficult to reach certain cities, a lot of metros actually. So that’s also a challenge too.

Zach Stepek:
So, well, one of the things that I found interesting about WordCamp US from our standpoint, right, as developers who work in the WordPress space, Yeah. Was the way that they did Contributor Day this year. So I don’t know how much you’ve seen about this, but—

Carl Alexander:
Okay, what was special about it? I assume I know nothing. I assume I know nothing except a few tweets and stuff.

Zach Stepek:
So most of the time, right, Contributor Day is just the teams sitting at tables talking about open tickets and things they need to do.

Carl Alexander:
Yeah. That’s how I remember it.

Zach Stepek:
This time it was more like a hackathon. So newcomers were brought in with experienced contributors to turn ideas into projects. And so the goal owners pitched their ideas to the room. Participants selected what they wanted to work on.

Carl Alexander:
Oh, that’s cool. I love myself a hackathon.

Zach Stepek:
I love them too, right?

Carl Alexander:
So yeah, that’s very cool. That might mean I go to Contributor Day for the first time, like, because I’ve never done it.

Zach Stepek:
So they worked in 26 teams. There were 425 participants this year.

Carl Alexander:
Whoa. That’s actually like insane, actually.

Zach Stepek:
It’s huge.

Carl Alexander:
It’s like half the attendees of almost, you know, like.

Zach Stepek:
Yeah. And they opened 22 pull requests and shipped 21 contributions across WordPress. So the hosting team worked on test runner multi-environment reporting. There was an AI literacy survey and dashboard for creating AI literacy profiles and contributing anonymous results to a community dashboard. Learn.wordpress.org developed some educational paths, including contributors to development, or introducing contributors to development, design, localization, communications, community work, and event management. There were some fixes for PHPStan. Addressing static analysis errors.

Carl Alexander:
Cool.

Zach Stepek:
The WordPress photo directory, built an importer plugin. The theme developer accessibility feedback team tested themes that were submitted for review. The notes activity widget. So they added an editor notes and recent replies to the WordPress dashboard’s activity widget. Tested replacing WordPress’s old concatenation system with prefetching and modern browser loading. Worked on WebMCP for the editor, which is pretty cool so that browser-based AI assistants can perform approved actions in the WordPress admin.

Carl Alexander:
Yeah.

Zach Stepek:
Developed some native SMTP settings, finally. An email test tool. Uh, and some checks for account password reset and recovery messages. Uh, improved the advanced administration handbook using practical feedback from people who actually run multisite. Uh, did some PHP unit test improvements. I mean, it, there’s a ton of stuff here. Like the, there were lots of teams. Uh, there was a team that explored a WordPress solution to help healthcare providers address accessibility.

Carl Alexander:
They were shipping. There was shipping happening.

Zach Stepek:
Yeah, it was, it was much more than the typical Contributor Day.

Carl Alexander:
I mean, that feels more motivating to me, you know, personally to, I feel like a lot of the Contributor Day was, uh, you kind of like did a few things and then if you were lucky, something shipped, you know, like, um, before felt, you know, it felt a lot more difficult to get stuff through. Yeah, that’s insane. I mean, I hope they repeat the format then, because that seems like a real winner to me.

Zach Stepek:
I think it was the biggest change this year, and it’s the one that I was the most excited about seeing happen because, you know, it was, uh, it was definitely, from everything that I’ve heard as feedback from the event, it was a highlight for a lot of people. So.

Carl Alexander:
That’s good. I mean, I mean, yeah, I, I’ve— I think I’ve talked a lot about the CloudFest hackathon that I’m just like, I get the same vibe from that because I had a ton of fun doing that.

Zach Stepek:
So yeah, I did too. I mean, that was a great day.

Carl Alexander:
And yeah, exactly.

Zach Stepek:
Yeah, that was fun. It’s what I like, like getting in and solving a problem.

Carl Alexander:
Yeah, exactly. And shipping it, you know, like, uh, you know, um I think that’s like the big thing for sure. Well, that’s good. That’s good. So good that you highlighted that.

Zach Stepek:
Yeah, I think, uh, that was the, the one thing I actually definitely wanted to talk about today was, uh, was Contributor Day. Um, beyond that, uh, I’ve been working on some fun stuff. How about, how about you, Carl?

Carl Alexander:
Oh my goodness. I, uh, I, I’ve done a few things.

Zach Stepek:
Yeah.

Carl Alexander:
Um, so I, I did my talk on neurodivergence, first of all, like, uh, that was at the beginning of— at the end of August, first of all, I like the week before my talk, I literally locked my back getting out of my chair, which is like old man fucking problems basically, which is Doubly frustrating because I have an Aeron, which is like a really good chair. But anyways, I was like, oh my God, I’m going to be a crippled old man for my talk next week. But, you know, saw physio and I already have experience from last year with my, my back stuff. So managed to like barely hitch it in time to, to have a straight back for the talk. The talk went awesome. Uh, the title, the title was, uh, Bob will be able to share it cuz I wrote an article for it, but, um, it’s called The Work No One Sees. So it was, uh, talks about like, uh, you know, my journey with neurodivergence and how I kind of architected my life and the, the things that I wasn’t aware. A lot of like personal sharing of stories. And then I closed out with, I think, what was— it’s funny because, uh, Wes Bos, uh, and I forget the other person that does Syntax.fm, but, um, came out with a poll like the next week about it. But it’s like, uh, the effect of AI on neurodivergence, basically. So, um, my final section was kind of open-ended around that because, you know, the way we work with AI changes so fast, but it was It was called The Next Way We Work. And yeah, so wasn’t a huge conference. It was kind of like a Drupal-ish adjacent conference, but the attendees loved it. Like we had some really good discussion after, so I loved it. Like it was just, it was really, really good. So I think that’s like the first thing I did. And then, yeah, there’s been some other stuff too we’ll get to, but you also have been working on stuff as well, right?

Zach Stepek:
Yeah, I’m, uh, I’m building a lot of stuff right now. I’m, uh, yeah, speaking of AI, so I’m doing some, uh, some fractional partnerships work with a couple of folks, which is nice.

Carl Alexander:
Oh, that’s great.

Zach Stepek:
But I’m also, uh, working on a couple of SaaS products that I’ve been building kind of in the background. And, you know, one is a platform for photographers like me. We’ve traditionally been given platforms that show the work, but they show them in a very bland and boring— you know, they show the photos in a very bland and boring way. Nothing that I would say is really life-changing or, you know, really fits the artistic nature of what I do as a concert photographer or what some of these other folks I know do as, you know, portrait photographers. Um, it’s really a lot of white backgrounds with rectangles on them, right? That’s been the tradition of, of photo gallery hosting. And then there’s the other piece of that puzzle, which is how do photographers make money? And so most photographers make money by selling prints of their work and by charging session fees to photograph the individuals or families or groups or artists in the first place. So supporting those 2 goals with a Stripe Connect powered commerce engine that sits on top of this gallery system, and then building in a crowdfunding feature so that if people want to offer like limited run prints, which is something I built for myself, I want to offer limited run prints of my work.

Carl Alexander:
Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah.

Zach Stepek:
And I, when I do this, they’re all going to be signed by the musicians that are in the photos, which is gonna be awesome. So yeah, you’ll be able to pick up a photo of, you know, somebody like, uh, you— your favorite, uh, my photos of Mudvayne.

Carl Alexander:
Oh my God, yeah, terrifying, terrifying, terrified pictures.

Zach Stepek:
You could get a 3 by 2 foot print of that to put behind you and, uh, have in your background all the time.

Carl Alexander:
I mean, everybody has their tastes. I’m not here to, to judge on anyone, basically.

Zach Stepek:
We’re not gonna yuck anyone’s mind, bro.

Carl Alexander:
Terrifying, terrifying pictures. Terrifying Picture, pure horror, basically, you know.

Zach Stepek:
But, uh, but being able to offer these limited run prints, and so I had to make some architecture decisions up front on how I wanted to build out a platform like this. And I, I chose to build it—

Carl Alexander:
Yeah, talk about that. What did you pick? What are you running on? Like, nerd us out.

Zach Stepek:
I chose to build it on top of, uh, the Cloudflare platform. And, uh, there are a couple of interesting decisions that came along with that. Probably favorite decision, uh, is that I’m using Workers for Platforms. And so Workers for Platforms is a managed environment and it deploys and runs code just like a normal worker does, but it allows you to allow your customers to bring their own domains. So when I’m building something like a platform for photographers, these photographers are going to have their own domain names they want to bring. And so Cloudflare already has the wiring to make that piece work. So everything sits on the edge, so it’s fast. Storage is all done in the Cloudflare way.

Carl Alexander:
So like R2 and—

Zach Stepek:
R2-D1.

Carl Alexander:
Yeah.

Zach Stepek:
I can use this to do everything compute can do, everything storage can do, uh, and then add in features that, you know, help for things like DDoS protection and rate limiting, the Cloudflare features that everybody knows and loves. But they have this really interesting stance on where AI is going. So There’s the ability to create stateful AI agents that run inference directly on Cloudflare’s network with pay-per-inference pricing, no idle costs. You know, it’s, it’s really pretty great. And you can use any of 50+ models close to your users in 200+ cities. So, you know, you can use anything via code, the OpenAI SDK or API. And you can run any of the AI models they have. So, yeah, and there’s a lot of them. You know, they have 85 models they currently support, everything from DeepSeek to Qwen to Kimi to Gemma. Like, they’re all there, right?

Carl Alexander:
Yeah. Yeah.

Zach Stepek:
So that’s really cool. And it gives me the ability to add AI-enabled features Like if I want to help photographers categorize their work, right? They can pay for an AI feature that uses image AI to categorize the work into suggested categories or write descriptions based on what the AI sees in the image. So really cool things that we can do to just make photographers’ lives a little easier. So the other piece of this, though, is the content management side. And because I’m already building on Cloudflare for, you know, using the Workers platform—

Carl Alexander:
We know where this is going.

Zach Stepek:
I decided that if I needed a content management system for this, I was going to use MDash. Yeah, it’s already— I was already building an Astro app for myself to do this. So I took a very 37signals Basecamp mentality to this. I built something I needed for me. And now I’m productizing that something into something that other photographers can use. And so the content management side is not going to be handling the photo gallery. Which is an interesting choice from what I’ve been told. But the photo gallery will remain outside of MDash, and MDash will be used for all of the static page content. So anything about pages, you know, the homepage, those things will use MDash. And then I’m building a bridge to the MDash media library that exposes all of the photos that are in the photo library.

Sponsor Announcer:
Okay.

Zach Stepek:
Cool. So, really cool stuff. It’s not anywhere near ready for consumption by the public yet, but it’s a neat thing that I’m building. And I’m learning a lot. You know, the Cloudflare platform is way, way bigger than I thought it was.

Carl Alexander:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s huge.

Zach Stepek:
Way bigger. There’s so much that they’re building there. Yeah, it’s really impressive to see what they’re doing with, with workers, with compute in general. For example, one of the problems I just fixed was doing import from Dropbox. So when I deliver photos to customers or to the bands that I work with, I, I give them a Dropbox folder that has all of their finished images in it. And I figured if that’s part of my workflow, Then why should my workflow change for my website? So I built an importer that uses the Dropbox API to grab my folder that I put all of the client folders in, and based on how they’re named and based on how they’re, you know, they are divided within that folder, they go into categories on my website. So the importer runs as a Cloudflare queue. And it will pull, uh, I believe it’s 50 images at a time right now is kind of the sweet spot that I’ve found. Uh, so it goes through and it indexes everything. It compares it against what it has already, uh, because every file in Dropbox has a unique identifier and anything it already has, it doesn’t reimport. And the unique identifier changes if the file changes. So that makes it really easy to pull down only changes. from Dropbox. And then my entire site at zsfotos.com is driven by this Dropbox importer. And it’s running on my platform, Emulsia, already. Which, you know, it’s tenant zero, right, in a multi-tenant architecture. So I’ve been able to be a little fast and loose with how it works. But the best part of this, the coolest thing that I get out of all of this is I can build a set of premade themes that people can use and They can build their own sites. But if I want to, you know, I can offer theme development as part of what I do. And the platform can sell that as a value-added service on top of the software as a service platform. And then I can bring in partners who want to build themes for photographers and they can make money on the platform as well, because in the end, it’s an Astro site. And that Astro site can be themed. So, you know, building a theme engine and all of these things to make that possible and building that on top of MDash so that the MDash theme controls what the photo gallery layout looks like and then building in all the commerce features. It’s been a really fun project and I’m excited to see it all come together.

Carl Alexander:
Yeah, that’s great.

Zach Stepek:
Wow.

Carl Alexander:
All this new technology land, but yeah, no, Cloudflare is huge. I mean, the number one problem with Cloudflare is they do a terrible way of marketing all the stuff they do, basically.

Zach Stepek:
Well, and I think they’re trying to get better about that. They’ve, you know, they’ve hired, uh, I don’t, I disagree.

Carl Alexander:
I’m going to, I’m, as someone that’s like pretty online and stuff, like, I feel like they’re really kind of going really hard on the AI stuff. And then even then they’re not really marketing all this. They have so many services. Again, everybody knows Workers, but you know, and the CDN, but I feel like, you know, R2, all the object storage stuff, D1, I hear even less about, you know, like, um, I’m not a heavy Cloudflare infra user. Like I love their CDN firewall product.

Zach Stepek:
Yeah.

Carl Alexander:
Um, but you know, I’m, I’m an AWS stan, you know, so, but I just think that they, they don’t do enough basically, frankly. Uh, and also like, I find that their, their marketing’s a bit distracted right now. Like, you know, like, okay, cool. M- and stuff. It’s kind of like funny. And, and, but that’s not your business. Your business is cloud infra. Like you should be—

Sponsor Announcer:
Yeah.

Carl Alexander:
Yeah, I should be hearing about cool stuff the same way I hear about PlanetScale and stuff like that, and I just don’t, you know, like—

Zach Stepek:
Yeah, I think there is a gap there in how they’re marketing. I think they’re, they’re starting to get better. They’ve made some strategic hires recently that I’m really excited about. You know, Scott Buscemi is there now.

Carl Alexander:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, Scott Buscemi is on MDash. But yeah, but again, mdash is kind of cool, but again, it’s not their infra business, you know, and stuff. So we’ll see. I mean, you know, they, I’m always paying attention to all the infra stuff, obviously, because that’s kind of my bread and butter. But, um, but it’s, it’s crazy how little I see it discussed in general, I find. And yeah. Well, that’s exciting.

Zach Stepek:
Yeah.

Zach Stepek:
Now, you’ve made some changes, uh, recently with Ymir that are pretty interesting.

Carl Alexander:
Oh my goodness. Uh, well, I think we need to step back one and be like, uh, I got absolutely like grilled by Jason Cohen, uh, last week, basically like a week ago today. Uh, So that, I think that’s like, again, I said like my August feels like a decade. Um, so a bit of backstory, Jason Cohen started a new podcast basically. For those who don’t know, Jason Cohen, uh, founder of WP Engine. Um, also kind of a business legend, mostly like his blog’s kind of like referenced everywhere and he has like ultra famous talks. business talks and stuff. And he came out with a podcast about, with this guy, Demitro, where his business was kind of stalled and just kind of did, you know, Jason Cohen style brainstorming and trying to unlock his business or find a plan. So during that whole thing, he talks about hosting as a business. And it makes me think of the stuff that’s going on with Buildfast and Vector. And then I just tweet at him and I’m like, oh, that made me think of stuff. And he was like, oh, if you own, you know, if you only knew somebody that you could just go on a podcast with. And I was just like, I don’t know if this is going to be interesting or whatnot, but I’m down. And, you know, but I’m, I’m, I, and then I’m like, I’m literally, I literally say I’m going to get destroyed. But we, we keep talking and then, uh, we start, we get into emails and stuff and we try to find, he starts, he pivots a bit his podcast. So he decides he’s going to bring a co-host from the second episode on, he brings a co-host.

Zach Stepek:
Okay.

Carl Alexander:
So the second episode, it’s about, it’s with, uh, Jesse. Oh my God. I can’t say his family name. I’m sorry, Jesse, uh, from Drop In Blog basically. So they, and he has Rob Walling on. But he brings a co-host. So like, so we brainstorm a co-host. So my co-host is Bryce from Metorik. So, so—

Zach Stepek:
Love Bryce.

Carl Alexander:
Yeah, Bryce, great. We had a great time. So, but yeah, so we brainstorm and we figure out a date with Bryce. It’s a bit tricky because for those who don’t know, Bryce lives in Australia. So it was just tricky to find a date. Uh, so we, we ended up doing it like last Thursday in the evening. So it was morning for, it was morning for him. Yeah, it was 3 hours long. Uh, it was kind of brutal. Uh, you know, like I, I’ve seen people talk about his podcast and they’re like, people I look up to and I’m like, oh, like they’re like, I could never, my ego’s too precious to go on. Uh, like, I mean, he, I You know, I’ve spent some time before talking with Jason. We had a great time. I have a picture of us at the end and we’re all like laughing and smiling, but it’s like, you have to know going in that like, you don’t get to build 2 billion dollar companies, you know, $2 billion companies without some sort of like, you know, roughness to you, you know, like, or some no bullshit, you know, like, uh, directness and stuff. So. There’s a lot of that in there where he’s just gonna cut you off and be like, this is important. This is useless. Uh, you know, shit happens. Uh, like, you know, like, and so people see that and they’re just like, oh my God, like pearl clutching and stuff. But I, I was just at a point with Ymir where I was just like, I need to figure out something else, basically. Um, I don’t really know. It’s very difficult for me. And this is like, we were pre-show and I was like, oh, I’ll have some stuff. Maybe we can talk on the show and share, ask you about it. But, um, there is value in this product. Uh, but it’s very hard for me to figure out how to find. And again, none of this is guaranteed, just to be clear. Like we just came out of that with a clear plan and stuff. But, uh, but my struggle is like, I don’t. I don’t know how to market and also like sell this thing. I’ve been doing this thing for 4 years and it didn’t work basically. So, um, so we needed something very drastic from it. And basically what ended up coming out of it was that ironically, we seem to be, it seemed to make more sense to lean into like, but make it serious and not call it Carl as a Service, but literally go harder on that. So I used to have different pricing, basically $39, $1,000, and enterprise, which made no sense, FYI, like don’t follow my advice. I knew it was bad basically, but it’s too much of a price difference. But I didn’t know anyway. So basically dropped all the self-serve stuff. It’s now basically $1,000 a month and you have to do a project with me. where I help you train your team and onboard your first application on the platform so that I can just do knowledge transfer. And so there’s a kind of services consulting tied to it, but it’s like, it’s more like enablement, right? Like I, there’s something to learn about this platform and then I can build like AI skills. Like that’s what I’m working on. next and stuff, like after I’m done marketing and doing the sales. But so that’s kind of what we fell on. And then today I sent my first price increase email to someone. So we’ll see how that goes. That’s scary because, you know, like that’s a 25x increase for them. But I can’t do it with everyone and, you know, but there’s some clients where I feel I need to do it, but that’s like the kind of thing that I’m trying to— I went into this like very vulnerable, but also, you know, I’m— if you believe in, in your thing, you have to find a way to make it work, basically. And also, like, business is changing. I think what got me started on that, um, I think a lot of our listeners will relate to this, but us also individually, is that everything’s changing inside, like everywhere. Like, it— I don’t You know, it’s easy to just put it like, okay, it’s just AI, but like, it’s just affecting everything. Like, you know, my consulting’s harder. Like companies are making less, like WordPress companies are seeing sales decline. Uh, like hiring’s harder, borderline apocalyptic. I, I, I have some insider like stories around that stuff, but you can find like reporting from, you know, you, you have people using AI to submit thousands of applications, but you also have like stuff like North like infiltrating job markets and basically like, there’s just like, it’s just insane stuff.

Zach Stepek:
Yeah, it’s hard out there right now. Very hard.

Carl Alexander:
But one of the things that I think for a bootstrapper build-in-public person like me is that I think largely everybody can agree that like SEO is just not working anymore. I don’t even know if it’s gonna, you know, it works in some respects in terms of like AI, but like, I, every plugin company that used like SEO as your main sales channel is struggling basically because like, I think the most public person is like Katie Keith, you know, like with Barn2, like she talks a lot about that because her whole marketing was SEO basically. Like, and so it just made me think that if you take a lot of Jason’s learnings and stuff, like I can’t sell a product this cheap and basically have money to do sales or try stuff, you know, on top of the fact that the value is just like not there. So it just made me think that I was like, you know, it was something I wasn’t willing to change before, but now seeing like how the environment and everything’s changing. So yeah, it’s a big change, you know, it’s a scary one. And it was really rough. being on that podcast. Um, because at first we, we couldn’t really figure out something, you know, it’s a, that’s why it took 3 hours. It’s kind of like more of a brainstorming session than something else. But, you know, we found something that seems to be aligned and, but now I have to do a lot of hard stuff, which is like what I was going to ask you about is like, I have to reach out and find like agencies.

Zach Stepek:
Right.

Carl Alexander:
To, to, to like, I have to learn founder-led sales. and stuff, you know, like it’s hard and it’s, it’s, it’s gonna be, it’s hard. It’s hard. So, and you’ve done a lot of that. So like, I was like, I’m thinking LinkedIn. Like, I don’t know. What do you feel like? What, that’s the question I was gonna bring up to you. What do you feel is better, LinkedIn or email?

Zach Stepek:
So I feel like LinkedIn is overly spammy these days. And so a lot of messaging that is intended to be genuine just gets lost in the flow of hire our offshore development company, let us do your marketing.

Carl Alexander:
Yeah.

Zach Stepek:
I mean, if I were to open up my LinkedIn right now and look at my messages, I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 sales pitches from folks in the last 5 days.

Carl Alexander:
Yeah.

Zach Stepek:
So it’s just— there’s a flood of it, right? So I think that first of all, the key to founder-led sales in any market like this is to participate in the areas where those people are. So find the forums that they live in, find the You know, find the events that they go to.

Carl Alexander:
Yeah, obviously CloudFest is going to be, you know, actually Jason thinks CloudFest is like, nope.

Zach Stepek:
Right. For, for trying to sell to agencies, it’s not the, it’s not the event in my opinion.

Carl Alexander:
Even, even in general, like the one, I mean, it’s a hard, I’m actually talking to him. I don’t know if you’ll be able to pull it true, but basically He was like, you should talk at re:Invent. I’m like, I would literally love to talk at re:Invent, but it’s like, you have, you, but it’s like, you have to have like somebody inside AWS tell you, decide that you should speak basically.

Zach Stepek:
Right.

Carl Alexander:
Right. Like he’s speaking at it and he was like, ah, I was like, well, you know, and then I looked it up after and I was like, yeah, this only comes from like, you know, account managers and people inside AWS that are going to be like, yeah, this person should Well, and Jason’s company is one of their biggest customers, I believe. Yeah, exactly. I mean, if they’re a big customer and he’s a known business person.

Zach Stepek:
Well, yeah, with everything he did with SmartBear that turned into him needing a blog that turned into him needing to host a blog. I mean, WP Engine was absolutely built the same way that 37signals built Basecamp, right? It was built out of a need that he had. And that’s, that’s how I’m trying to build Emulsia. That’s why you built Ymir.

Carl Alexander:
Yeah, exactly. But it, but it’s a challenge. Like, you know, like I, I’m not sure, like it’s a bit overwhelming, you know, to, cause the point of founder-led sales is like, you don’t shotgun basically, like you’re extremely personal and stuff. So LinkedIn DM seems like. Better than email?

Zach Stepek:
Uh, it is a little more personal than email sometimes. So the question becomes, where does that person post the most? Where are they interacting more frequently? And so you, you look at their social patterns, right? Are they on X more than they’re on LinkedIn? Then, you know, follow them on X, reach out to them there. Are they living on Facebook still?

Carl Alexander:
Oh my God.

Zach Stepek:
Some people are.

Carl Alexander:
Oh, I don’t want to open Facebook.

Zach Stepek:
Don’t be mean. Are they an Instagram person? So you have to figure out where is it that the folks you’re trying to sell to are hanging out.

Carl Alexander:
Yeah, that’s the Amy Hoy Sales Safari stuff. Like, I tried that with Ymir. Like, that’s— I tried that with Ymir. Like, that’s one of the challenges with, like, WordPress developers now is that there’s no hangout spot. You know, there’s no advanced WordPress group. Like, you know, Reddit’s kind of degenerating now. Like, it’s not— Yeah.

Zach Stepek:
Stack Overflow is barely talked about anymore, right?

Carl Alexander:
So it’s a very interesting— It, I don’t need to reach developers now. Like I need to basically reach, I guess, a CTO or a CEO of a like mid-tier agency, right? Like they need to have like 3 to 10.

Zach Stepek:
Or the agency owners themselves, right? Owner to owner.

Carl Alexander:
Yeah. But they need to be decently big, right? Because it’s $12,000 a year plus like a service contract, right? So it’s not, you know, a 2-person agency that’s gonna pick this up, right? So—

Zach Stepek:
I think you’d be surprised because there are a lot of smaller agencies that bought in on, you know, just for example, uh, the lifetime tier for GridPane. And that was not cheap when it was, you know, when it was happening. Um, and there are folks who are joining, you know, services like that today that are spending $1,000 a month to make sure that their client, you know, their customers have good hosting. Yes, it’s a high price point, and I think that’s honestly a good move based on exactly where your product is positioned, to be at that price point, to—

Carl Alexander:
Oh yeah.

Zach Stepek:
To have that premium price point, because you do offer a premium service, and you know, you are In my opinion, one of the most—

Carl Alexander:
Yeah, but that’s it. That’s the, that’s the reality, right, that I’m dealing with now, which is like, I wanted something that everyone would use because I think, you know, I believe in, you know, open source and making things accessible and stuff like that. But the reality was that, um, that didn’t work. Like, it’s just like, you know, there’s no point in not in being sad about it. Like, I gave it 4 years. If somebody’s like, you should make it cheaper, I’m like, you should go read like 100 reports that I wrote on like making it accessible and my struggles and trying to do that. Uh, maybe one day I’ll come back, but you know, for now I need to find something that works, right?

Zach Stepek:
There is nothing that says that you can’t open source components of what you’ve built.

Carl Alexander:
While already done.

Zach Stepek:
Exactly. While bringing the orchestration into a single UI works the way that people need it to work.

Carl Alexander:
Yeah. And that abstracts away a lot of stuff and solves a lot of little minor things that you don’t want to know about. Absolutely. You know, like I literally, we were talking like last week, I mean, it’s never happened and then it happened twice in a row, but basically like Last week I found 2 regression things or like clear, like problems in AWS, basically with like my test suite and stuff like that, that I had to like send upstream. Like one of them was like, basically like, I mean, classic Windows thing, but I was leveraging a bug that they fixed and then they didn’t say basically. So they were like, yeah, like this is, this was actually never intended, but, you know, and Uh, and then another one, which is like, they pre-released a new availability zone and it’s like breaking stuff basically. Um, you know, that’s the kind of stuff that you don’t want to have to worry about. Right. Um, so, you know, there is an expertise there. So yeah, that’s exactly what, uh, Jason and Bryce were saying. Anyway, it’s very scary for me to sell that and find that and figure it out.

Zach Stepek:
Well, just, just remember that there are a lot of these agencies that are, are in that growth stage that are. You know, mid-tier and approaching being large agencies that are spending $300 a month on something like HighLevel, or, you know, they’re spending $500 a month on their accounting software, or they’re spending, you know, so $1,000 a month isn’t a big ask given what it is you’re doing for them.

Carl Alexander:
I know. This is why it’s useful, like, to be fair, like This is for me, like such a useful aspect of like talking with people like Jason or Bryce or even you. It’s like, I’m such a, like, I’m stealing this from like, uh, Jesse Hanley from like Bento, but basically like I’m a cockroach, right? Like I’m a cockroach and basically I scrutinize so many things and I’m like, and I’m a developer and I have all these like preconceived things of like around value that are false.

Zach Stepek:
Yeah, no, absolutely.

Carl Alexander:
And because we were, I, it was lower at first. Like we were like, oh, I was like playing around with $200 and $500 basically. They both said, I ran it by a couple of people and they said yes immediately. It’s like too low. They said yes. They said yes immediately. It’s too low, like $1,000. And I was like, okay. Like, You know, and again, like Jason’s would know like how much an agency would pay, like, like, like out of everyone in the WordPress space, bar a few other people, like if Jason’s like, and this is worth $1,000 to an agency. And he’s like, I will believe him.

Zach Stepek:
Well, and the thing to remember is that the best price for a product is the one someone is willing to pay. Right. And so if at $1,000 you get significant traction, which I think you will, then that’s the best price. And there’s this other effect that happens with pricing. When you’re too low, people look at you as just a commodity. If your price is too low, they see it as not having worth.

Carl Alexander:
Yeah, exactly. And I’m aware of this too. Again, I think, you know, if I ever get through this phase to a phase where I’ve succeeded, I could talk about, I mean, I’ve talked a lot about it, but I think, you know, we’re all in open source and stuff like that. There’s like an ethos and a desire inside of open source, at least for me, which is like, you know, accessibility. And I’m such a financially anxious person that I think a lot about financial accessibility, you know, specifically. And that only works, you know, you can try it and you can fail trying to die on that hill, you know? Um, but if, you know, I also believe in the market. Like if the market says like, you know, I, it’s been a long time since I thought that this business model worked. I just didn’t know what to do. You know, like that was part of the thing of going with Jason. is, you know, if you have the courage, if somebody is listening and they’re wondering, like, if you, you’re, you’re not sure what to do, he will figure it out with you, uh, and give you an idea and he will like work through it because like, that was like my larger problem was like, I’m a technologist. I’m an at best mediocre business person. I don’t really know how to you know, to market this and package it and, and do it in a way that like you can build a business on top. Again, nothing’s guaranteed, but that’s like a challenge because if you’re in the bootstrapper space, all you see is like people doing a little SaaS and stuff. So it’s like, okay, you do the tiers and the this and the that, but like, I think, you know, even me figuring out the licensing business model took a lot of time and talking to people and figuring out that there’s other ways to to sell something. And, you know, that was one angle that I took, but, you know, talking with Jason was really helpful for that.

Zach Stepek:
I can imagine it was.

Carl Alexander:
But I’m glad to know that somebody like you also agrees the price is good, so it’s not, it’s not too expensive. So I’m just like—

Zach Stepek:
There will be people that will tell you it is, right?

Carl Alexander:
Oh yeah, of course.

Zach Stepek:
That’s definitely going to happen.

Carl Alexander:
And absolutely, I am 100% sure.

Zach Stepek:
Yeah. And I think that We’ve entered this space where the commoditization of everything is hurting everyone, right? So this race to the bottom, especially in hosting, the race to the bottom has damaged the entire industry. And so I think there is space for people who sit above that, above the commoditization. And the fact of the matter is that your platform is more capable Than most of these hosting companies are because they have, they have a ceiling and that ceiling is dictated.

Carl Alexander:
I mean, Jason never argued it like the entire time, right? Like he was like, he’s not like, we’re not here to talk about the technology. We know it’s good. Like this is not about it, you know? Um, but it’s difficult, you know? Um, but like. Patrick does a lot of great work. Uh, Gallagher from GridPane does a lot of great, great work also scaling. So, you know, we’re talking, it’s like, well, you know, if they wanted, they could just use me, right? Like there’s like, there’s a weird dichotomy, but there’s still, again, I don’t need a ton of them. Like I don’t need, I don’t need a ton of them. I just need something repeatable. You know, that’s like the biggest issue with me right now is that I don’t, there’s nothing. And we still don’t know, right? Like, it’s just, that’s the point of the switch. But yeah, it’s a big pivot. It’s, you know, like, I value your input a lot because like you’re a sales guy. Uh, so that’s why I was like curious, like, where would you go and stuff? Like, but again, this is all good stuff, like the sales safari, like find where they hang out. But I was like curious about like, where do you feel things are versus like email versus, uh, LinkedIn basically, for example, for for reaching people. But yeah, I get it.

Zach Stepek:
Yeah, I think so. If you already have an established connection with somebody and you reach out to them on LinkedIn, it’s a lot different than if you’re adding them and in the add, uh, the process of adding them, you’re pitching them immediately. Yeah, the, the cold outreach through LinkedIn seems really gross to me, whereas warm outreach to people who you already know doesn’t.

Carl Alexander:
Yeah. I mean, there’s a few things I want to try. Like I’m listening to some like founder-led sales stuff. Like again, like you’re not supposed to pitch like a demo or like a thing right off the bat. Right. Like you just, you know, like, I mean, that’s not how I work anyways either, but I’m just curious of how to, you know, where’s the best. I mean, for me, LinkedIn makes more sense than email. I feel like email is even more overwhelming. That’s true.

Zach Stepek:
But again, like it’s not, it’s.

Carl Alexander:
Again, I wouldn’t try to, I don’t think the solution is like, like you said, I think people are a bit, it’s overwhelming everywhere, right? So like the point is just like, is to have like a good personalized message when connecting that’s like curious, basically. Like, I don’t know if they’re a good fit. Like, that’s the thing. I don’t like, I want to go in. I don’t know if this is good sales or not, but like, I want to go in. I don’t really know if this is good for you or not. either, right? Like, I just want to know a bit more about what you do and, and whether it actually even would make sense to have a discussion around that, right?

Zach Stepek:
Well, and when I say to, to hang out where the people are, right?

Carl Alexander:
Yeah.

Zach Stepek:
Uh, that’s communities like the Admin Bar. That’s, you know, Troy Dean’s community at, at Agency Mavericks. That’s, uh, the Bureau. That’s You know, places like that where agency owners are already, those are the places where you go and you participate and you add value. And by participating and adding value without even having to sell—

Carl Alexander:
Yeah, exactly.

Sponsor Announcer:
Yeah.

Zach Stepek:
People start to ask what it is you do. And then at that point, you, you bring it up, you talk about it, and then that opens the door. So participating in those communities, Gary Vaynerchuk used a boxing analogy for how he approaches this. He’s founder of VaynerMedia, which is a huge, huge agency. And he wrote a book about it called Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. So in boxing, you use the jab as a quick way to wear your opponent down. And once you’ve worn them down, you go in for the right hook. Marketing is, is very much the same way, right? You add value with these little jabs, these little things that you can provide that don’t cost you much, but add a ton of value to your target market. And then once you’ve hit enough jabs, then it’s time for the right hook. And at that point, you know, you can land that right hook a lot easier than if you hadn’t worn the opponent down. Yeah, of course.

Zach Stepek:
Uh, so that’s, that’s kind of what it is, you know. It’s, it’s a matter of taking a look at, uh, how you approach that. I, I really think that, you know, Gary has been correct in his admonishment over the past decade to just add value everywhere you are, because anytime you do that, it helps your personal brand, and that helps your business. So, you know, those are the things that I would say are, you know, what would be on the top of my list is getting into those environments where agency owners live and participating. If as a developer, you’re looking to understand the agency process a little more, these are great places to go and just listen and learn. Because What the business development side in the agency world does is pretty remarkable. And it— there are a lot of things that you can learn from just observing it. Yeah. So, well, I think that, you know, we didn’t have a plan going in here today, but—

Carl Alexander:
I knew it was going to be crazy. I was like, yeah, we’ve gone on a journey. I don’t know. Did you have more stuff?

Zach Stepek:
I opened a podcast studio. Uh, that was fun.

Carl Alexander:
Yeah, that’s true.

Zach Stepek:
So I have a physical podcast studio now. Not a lot else going on other than, uh, continuing to try to merge my, my worlds together into projects that blend everything. So, uh, doing some music technology related things to blend my music photography and, uh, and tech worlds, blending my photography and tech worlds by building Emulsia. I’m actually working on starting a couple of additional podcasts that are completely unrelated to tech.

Zach Stepek:
So a music podcast that will be called Feedback and Fury, co-hosted by Taylor Roberts, the guitar player for the band Taproot and founder of Riding with Killers, He also plays guitar for a band called Izzy Rain. Lots of, lots of good stuff.

Carl Alexander:
I mean, that’s fun. Like, I like bringing— I mean, that was like my first startup idea was like, it’s basically been 20 years about right now that I started like weightlifting basically. Um, and my first startup was like gym software and stuff like that. That’s what I wanted to do, but Talk about a difficult fucking market. Um, that was a 1-year experiment that ended, uh, but you know, I’m all for trying to, uh, get those ideas together.

Sponsor Announcer:
Yeah.

Zach Stepek:
You know, it’s, it’s always fun when you can pivot something that you enjoy into something that, you know, you can make money off of. And I’ve, I’ve got to try, right?

Carl Alexander:
These, Yeah.

Zach Stepek:
SaaS plays that I have right now are all about trying, trying something different, trying something new. And, you know, I would encourage anybody listening to this podcast, if you have an idea that you haven’t taken to market because you’re scared or worried or don’t know how it’s going to end up, by all means, jump in. You know, feet first, dive into the opportunity, explore it, test it, validate it, and try. Because the worst thing that can happen is you fail and pivot and do something else. And if you’re going to live your entire life afraid of failure, you’re never going to accomplish anything. So I think that’s a great note to end this on.

Carl Alexander:
I was like, I was like, this is the perfect place to end.

Zach Stepek:
Yeah.

Carl Alexander:
Words of wisdom from Zack. Great. Send them off.

Zach Stepek:
We will see you all next month. As always, if you have any feedback for us, any questions, any ideas, any things you’d like to hear about, use hashtag BugBob.

Carl Alexander:
Also, if you want to come chat with us too, BugBob.

Zach Stepek:
Yeah, absolutely. Come. Yeah, we would love to have anybody come in and talk with us as long as you’re not trying to pitch us your latest product. just come in and talk about technology and the world we live in today. We would love to have you. So with that, we will see you all next month.