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12: Building Process in the Process
Helpful links from the episode:
- UpWork
- Conferences: LocalU Advanced, Swivel, Content Jam
- Copper CRM
- Pipedrive sales CRM
- ClickUp
- Asana
FULL SHOW NOTES
[intro music]
00:11 Aaron Weiche: Episode 12: Building Process in the Process.
00:16 INTRO: Welcome to the SaaS Venture Podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins and losses, shared in each episode. From Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
00:40 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture Podcast. I'm Aaron.
00:43 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.
00:45 AW: And today, we are going to be tackling all kinds of things related to processes, building processes, why have processes, and how you do all those things while you're extremely over your head in the process of building the business as a whole. So that'll be a fun topic to dive into and one that's absolutely never ending in the business. But before we get to that, Darren, What is new with you since we last talked?
01:19 DS: What is new? What is new? Let's see. So our platform is really coming together now. I've probably mentioned this on previous episodes, where we're trying to integrate our software. We're building a new account system with Stripe and it's starting to really look great. We've had Nick, who's taken on a role as a product manager, putting together designs and thinking about user interface and user flow through the software. So now that the dev team has design-oriented development things are moving so much better. And it's a real wake up call for me actually to make sure we never... We have this problem actually at Whitespark where it's like, "Okay, I want you guys to build this thing." So I'll put together a scope document. I define it pretty well. And then they build it, and then it's a lot of back and forth with trying to fix up the user interface, and the look of it and the feel of it and all that stuff. So I want to never do that again now that I'm seeing the huge success with this design-driven development. And so, the platform has been a really valuable thing to build that way, and so we're pushing towards that. And it looks great, and it feels great to use. I'm just really happy with it.
02:33 AW: Now if I remember this right, this is your process of you're taking your tools from being siloed and one-off and bringing them all together?
02:42 DS: Yeah, and it will happen over a series of phases. So, the first thing is we need a new account system. Account means our users, our authentication, like our sign-up, sign-in, all of this like ordering any of our services and software, so if you sign up for anything it happens through accounts. So we're building all of that, and then same with our citation services, we're changing it. Like right now if you order citations, either audit and clean up or building, you're gonna have to give us a spreadsheet with your location data. So it's totally 1998 janky process. And so speaking of processes, it's terrible. [chuckle] And so, we're building what we call the location manager, where you'll just add your locations to the location manager, it syncs with Google My Business. And so that's phase one, just brand new accounts and a better ordering process for our customers.
03:37 DS: Phase two is pulling in all of the functionality so it just all happens in one platform. And so that's GMB management features, Google posts creation, GMB synching, GMB notifications, a lot of that stuff is happening in the platform, is being developed right now. And then things around listings, things around rankings, all that stuff will be pulled into here.
So rather than our rank tracker being a separate tool, we will still maintain that for people, but we're going to have rank tracking in the platform too. And it'll be location-centric, right? So you'll just be like, "Enable rank tracking for this location? Yes." And so you can just... It's like a new paradigm and slowly everything will be built within the platform and other applications will slowly die. People will move over to our platform, and we'll have incentives for them to do that.
04:32 AW: Nice.
04:33 DS: So yeah, that's coming around great. I had this really great success with Upwork this week. So one of our large enterprise clients wanted to do a big audit across one of the sites. I don't know if I wanna say this publicly. So we built a scraper to scrape the site and pull in all the listings. And I've been working with this developer out of the Ukraine on Upwork and I can't believe how well it's gone. The guy is sharp as a whip. He's got seven years of experience doing web data mining projects. He's been so easy to work with, he's been working lots of hours, and it's just been kind of a dream, and I'm like, "Man, I should do more of this." And so I've always wanted to have a side projects guy. And so I think that I'm gonna start putting more time into scoping up projects and putting them on Upwork and having side project development happen. So I was pretty happy about that.
05:33 DS: That happened this week and we're gonna start building some new stuff that way too. And then I'm just really busy getting ready for these upcoming conferences. I have one in two weeks. I have a series... Over the next four weeks, so starting in two weeks, I have three auto-dealer conferences that I'm speaking at. So fortunately I get to use the same deck and the same presentation, so that's good. But yeah, I'm busy with that. That's what's going on for me. How about you? What's up?
06:00 AW: Yeah. Yeah, I get to start there as well. The same conference season, fall and spring are always heavy there, and just speaking a lot, which is always both... It's fun, it's exciting, it's great to get out there, but as we were talking before we started recording, it's like when these come in one at a time, one request comes in in January, and then the next request is in March. But then, all of a sudden, they all line up 'cause the events are just all right on top of each other that following fall. So it's like the next six weeks, next week, Swivel and Bend, and straight to there to LocalU Advanced, speaking to a bunch of Kubota dealers.
One of our customers, I speak at their franchise e-conference, speaking at Content Jam in Chicago in the end of October. So yeah, just a lot of that. And the majority of these based on the structure, a couple of them are workshops. So it's a lot of...
07:01 DS: Oh boy.
07:01 AW: Like new slide deck creation. That's always the hard part as you well know. Presentations don't magically create themselves, and it becomes a job within itself.
07:15 DS: Well, you're a veteran. You've done how many events? I don't know, so many. But, yeah. You won't have a problem pulling it off.
07:20 AW: But it's a catch-22, right? Sometimes that makes me so confident 'cause I've done 100+ where it's like, "Oh yeah, I can wait", like, "Yeah, I'll get that done", and whatever. And then you push it up and then all of a sudden you're like, "Okay, I cannot say that anymore", right?
07:36 DS: Totally. It's hard to make presentations when you're busy running a company. That's the problem. And so, you end up doing all of this presentation work after hours. It's like kids go to bed, and then you spend another two, three hours every nig...
View all episodes
By Aaron Weiche
5
1010 ratings
Helpful links from the episode:
- UpWork
- Conferences: LocalU Advanced, Swivel, Content Jam
- Copper CRM
- Pipedrive sales CRM
- ClickUp
- Asana
FULL SHOW NOTES
[intro music]
00:11 Aaron Weiche: Episode 12: Building Process in the Process.
00:16 INTRO: Welcome to the SaaS Venture Podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins and losses, shared in each episode. From Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
00:40 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture Podcast. I'm Aaron.
00:43 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.
00:45 AW: And today, we are going to be tackling all kinds of things related to processes, building processes, why have processes, and how you do all those things while you're extremely over your head in the process of building the business as a whole. So that'll be a fun topic to dive into and one that's absolutely never ending in the business. But before we get to that, Darren, What is new with you since we last talked?
01:19 DS: What is new? What is new? Let's see. So our platform is really coming together now. I've probably mentioned this on previous episodes, where we're trying to integrate our software. We're building a new account system with Stripe and it's starting to really look great. We've had Nick, who's taken on a role as a product manager, putting together designs and thinking about user interface and user flow through the software. So now that the dev team has design-oriented development things are moving so much better. And it's a real wake up call for me actually to make sure we never... We have this problem actually at Whitespark where it's like, "Okay, I want you guys to build this thing." So I'll put together a scope document. I define it pretty well. And then they build it, and then it's a lot of back and forth with trying to fix up the user interface, and the look of it and the feel of it and all that stuff. So I want to never do that again now that I'm seeing the huge success with this design-driven development. And so, the platform has been a really valuable thing to build that way, and so we're pushing towards that. And it looks great, and it feels great to use. I'm just really happy with it.
02:33 AW: Now if I remember this right, this is your process of you're taking your tools from being siloed and one-off and bringing them all together?
02:42 DS: Yeah, and it will happen over a series of phases. So, the first thing is we need a new account system. Account means our users, our authentication, like our sign-up, sign-in, all of this like ordering any of our services and software, so if you sign up for anything it happens through accounts. So we're building all of that, and then same with our citation services, we're changing it. Like right now if you order citations, either audit and clean up or building, you're gonna have to give us a spreadsheet with your location data. So it's totally 1998 janky process. And so speaking of processes, it's terrible. [chuckle] And so, we're building what we call the location manager, where you'll just add your locations to the location manager, it syncs with Google My Business. And so that's phase one, just brand new accounts and a better ordering process for our customers.
03:37 DS: Phase two is pulling in all of the functionality so it just all happens in one platform. And so that's GMB management features, Google posts creation, GMB synching, GMB notifications, a lot of that stuff is happening in the platform, is being developed right now. And then things around listings, things around rankings, all that stuff will be pulled into here.
So rather than our rank tracker being a separate tool, we will still maintain that for people, but we're going to have rank tracking in the platform too. And it'll be location-centric, right? So you'll just be like, "Enable rank tracking for this location? Yes." And so you can just... It's like a new paradigm and slowly everything will be built within the platform and other applications will slowly die. People will move over to our platform, and we'll have incentives for them to do that.
04:32 AW: Nice.
04:33 DS: So yeah, that's coming around great. I had this really great success with Upwork this week. So one of our large enterprise clients wanted to do a big audit across one of the sites. I don't know if I wanna say this publicly. So we built a scraper to scrape the site and pull in all the listings. And I've been working with this developer out of the Ukraine on Upwork and I can't believe how well it's gone. The guy is sharp as a whip. He's got seven years of experience doing web data mining projects. He's been so easy to work with, he's been working lots of hours, and it's just been kind of a dream, and I'm like, "Man, I should do more of this." And so I've always wanted to have a side projects guy. And so I think that I'm gonna start putting more time into scoping up projects and putting them on Upwork and having side project development happen. So I was pretty happy about that.
05:33 DS: That happened this week and we're gonna start building some new stuff that way too. And then I'm just really busy getting ready for these upcoming conferences. I have one in two weeks. I have a series... Over the next four weeks, so starting in two weeks, I have three auto-dealer conferences that I'm speaking at. So fortunately I get to use the same deck and the same presentation, so that's good. But yeah, I'm busy with that. That's what's going on for me. How about you? What's up?
06:00 AW: Yeah. Yeah, I get to start there as well. The same conference season, fall and spring are always heavy there, and just speaking a lot, which is always both... It's fun, it's exciting, it's great to get out there, but as we were talking before we started recording, it's like when these come in one at a time, one request comes in in January, and then the next request is in March. But then, all of a sudden, they all line up 'cause the events are just all right on top of each other that following fall. So it's like the next six weeks, next week, Swivel and Bend, and straight to there to LocalU Advanced, speaking to a bunch of Kubota dealers.
One of our customers, I speak at their franchise e-conference, speaking at Content Jam in Chicago in the end of October. So yeah, just a lot of that. And the majority of these based on the structure, a couple of them are workshops. So it's a lot of...
07:01 DS: Oh boy.
07:01 AW: Like new slide deck creation. That's always the hard part as you well know. Presentations don't magically create themselves, and it becomes a job within itself.
07:15 DS: Well, you're a veteran. You've done how many events? I don't know, so many. But, yeah. You won't have a problem pulling it off.
07:20 AW: But it's a catch-22, right? Sometimes that makes me so confident 'cause I've done 100+ where it's like, "Oh yeah, I can wait", like, "Yeah, I'll get that done", and whatever. And then you push it up and then all of a sudden you're like, "Okay, I cannot say that anymore", right?
07:36 DS: Totally. It's hard to make presentations when you're busy running a company. That's the problem. And so, you end up doing all of this presentation work after hours. It's like kids go to bed, and then you spend another two, three hours every nig...