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Episode 168: Flodesk Checkouts: Everything You Need to Know + Our Top 3 Tips
1.2k Plays2 years ago
We got early access to the new tool, and we've already created a demo sales page. It took Krista less than an hour to get the page up-and-running using Flodesk Checkouts (note: the page is only a demo—Designer Touch Sessions are currently closed, but you can join the waitlist here.).
Find it Quickly (in the episode):
0:00 Intro
4:17 Flodesk in Portugal, Paris, Germany, Lisbon, etc
6:00 Remote-first benefits
9:00 August in Europe
11:10 Flodesk Checkouts
11:37 Flodesk was created for small businesses
13:45 Break in flow to third-party website
15:18 Emails are the best converting sales channel
15:50 Launch a business without a website using Flodesk
17:21 Flodesk designs beautiful email templates
17:54 Many problems lie behind the work for launching a website
18:20 Flodesk checkouts is in early Alpha access stage
18:45 Releasing in Beta on September 13
19:19 Tips for making it effective
19:49 Flodesk provides bumpers
22:10 Success of Flodesk
22:52 Viral loop to create more Flodesk users
23:20 Customer-first approach
25:02 Remove barriers to support small businesses
25:16 Flodesk checkouts + current subscription or add on
26:38 Incentive to bundle during Beta
28:16 Customers showing creativity through Flodesk products
30:44 Lessons learned along the way
32:15 Mental health
34:01 Time off
35:40 Humility
Show notes and additional resources: https://daveyandkrista.com/flodesk-checkout-review/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Flodesk's Viral Growth Strategy
00:00:05
Speaker
Building an email marketing platform has a viral loop that is embedded and it's not something that we invented, like Hotmail had it. Essentially, you focus the entire company on making a new user successful, right? You're not focused on growth. You're not focusing on forgetting about your current customers to acquire new ones. You're focusing on making a new user successful because once they're successful and they send an email, their entire list gets an email and they see the result of the work that they did in Flodesk and then there's a footer that says, built in Flodesk.
00:00:36
Speaker
Welcome to the Brands at Book Show, where we help creative, service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients.
Guest Introduction and Flodesk Checkouts Overview
00:00:43
Speaker
I'm your host, Davy Jones.
00:00:46
Speaker
Flowdesk co-founder Martha Beatar joins me for a conversation about all the latest happenings at Flowdesk, specifically Flowdesk Checkouts, a brand new tool being released by Flowdesk to help people create sales pages and checkouts for digital products. I got early access to the tool and let me tell you, if you love Flowdesk for email marketing, you're going to love Flowdesk Checkouts.
00:01:08
Speaker
I've included all sorts of fun links in the show notes, including a link to a sales page that Krista created with Flowdesk Checkouts. So if you want to see what a mostly finished product looks like, you can head on over to the show notes and check that out. I've also included links to Flowdesk, which will get you 50% off a Flowdesk account if you don't already have one. This episode is a bit eclectic. Martha and I covered quite a few different topics, but I couldn't help myself. I had other questions I wanted to ask about Flowdesk growth and company culture and learnings that Martha has picked up
00:01:37
Speaker
over her time growing Flodesk. So be sure to check out the show notes at DavianCristo.com for the resources that we mentioned during the episode and we want to hear from you. Let us know what kind of content you'd like to see in the Brands That Book podcast as we move forward. To leave your feedback, just send us a DM on Instagram, at DavianCristo. Now, on to the episode.
The Impact of Portugal's Culture on Productivity
00:02:01
Speaker
So what has been your favorite part about living in Portugal?
00:02:05
Speaker
I think there are two things, one that I can't explain and one that I can't explain. So the one that I can't explain is this energy. It just makes me feel calm, right? And growing up in Mexico, having most of my career in San Francisco, there was always this like hustle energy that also exists here. But for some reason, I don't feel like I need to do more and I'm always behind and I just, I can relax for the first time in my life, which is really strange.
00:02:30
Speaker
But at the same time, I'm more productive than ever, which is also really strange and unexpected. So I'll have to analyze that later and get back to you with more detail. But it's just this weird, amazing commission. Actually, there's three reasons. Two.
Remote Work Dynamics at Flodesk
00:02:44
Speaker
Florida has been a remote first company since the beginning, right? So our teams spread out all over the world and this is just a much easier time zone because they can wake up and then I can have an overlap with our team in Vietnam. Then I can have an overlap with our team in Europe. Then I can have an overlap with our team in the US and South America. And it's just amazing. I can just model my schedule after those time overlaps and have a little more control over that. And it sounds like I'm working all day long, but I actually take
00:03:13
Speaker
longer breakfast breaks, longer lunch breaks, right? So it has actually provided me with more balance. And then the third one is very specific to Lisbon. And it is that there is this really big craft culture. So whether you're going to a restaurant or a shop or just a gallery, wherever you go, there's this almost like permission for the creators
00:03:37
Speaker
to be really unique and very fearless in whatever they're making. And it's something that you don't see in a lot of big cities because it's more and more common to start seeing chains or even restaurants and shops and spaces that are starting to look a little sterile or maybe the same. So to see something that's got really weird design or in a really weird culture, really unique
00:04:06
Speaker
approach to how things are done is so inspiring. Yeah. So I have so many questions both about Flowdesk in, you know, even in Portugal and the tech scene in Portugal, you know, I'm interested in hearing a
Lisbon's Tech Scene and Flodesk's Small Team Strategy
00:04:19
Speaker
little bit about that too. I mean, I feel like when you think tech, you think maybe San Francisco or maybe Israel, but then more and more I'm starting to see tech companies pop up across Europe, you know, Portugal and Spain come to mind. Is there a tech community out there?
00:04:34
Speaker
Huge, huge. So actually I think Germany is leading number one with total volume of tech funding. I think Paris is leading number two. Lisbon has been growing a lot and attracting a lot of tech.
00:04:47
Speaker
The talent here is incredible, both for tech and design. Also operations, everything else. I was super talented, but those two areas are very big highlights. And yeah, you just have really smart, really entrepreneurial people. Crypto has been a huge interest for Lisbon, but you know how that's going right now. So we're still seeing a lot of movement, but yeah, it's been really great. I think.
00:05:11
Speaker
On one hand, you can still connect with your tech community. On the other hand, it's not like San Francisco where every single person you meet is in tech. I mean, not that every single person San Francisco is in tech, but just you keep, you were there, you know how it is. So you just meet a lot more diverse backgrounds and perspectives and just people with different missions.
00:05:32
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I'm thinking through some of the software we use, you know, like Chris, which is like a chat messenger type thing. I think they're out of France type form, right? Is that of maybe Spain? Okay. Yeah. Awesome. So yeah, it just seems like it's kind of everywhere. Spotify. Oh, Spotify European. Yeah. I didn't know that. And then Swedish, I think I'm pretty sure. What else? Farfetch is
00:05:57
Speaker
Yeah. So as far as being a remote first company, how's that been going? Because you all were remote first, even prior to 2020, right? Like prior to 2019. Yeah. And how is it running a remote company, especially a remote company that's not that small, right?
00:06:13
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Well, we're still a very small team. We're still under 30 and we love that because everyone knows everyone. It's a lot easier to form meaningful relationships at work. But also on the other hand, I think from very early on, we recognize that we are building a startup and there's a lot of hard work that is involved.
00:06:32
Speaker
But I don't think that Rebecca Trong or I, when we were creating FLOTUS, ever agreed with the idea that you have this split personality and you have one personality at home and one at work. And when you come to work, you have to leave all of your emotions at home and you have to just show up in this like most perfect package way. We just never really believed in that, right? So we were aware that there's this
00:06:58
Speaker
whole human that
Tools and Challenges in Remote Work
00:06:59
Speaker
comes into work every single day and shows up and brings everything that that human is. So I think with that in mind, it makes all the sense in the world to go remote because every person, and we're hiring adults, right? So every person is very well aware of what the top impact initiatives that they work on are. Every person decides how they're going to contribute towards those top impact initiatives.
00:07:24
Speaker
And they can manage their own schedule, right? So if Rebecca, for example, she's chief design officer and a big part of her team is the Barcelona. So she talks to her team and they figure out a schedule that works for them. And it's actually built for
00:07:40
Speaker
productivity and impact and not for face time, right? It's not a, I'm going to show up at nine and I'm going to show up at five just so I can be there the whole time and people think that I'm working, whether I'm actually productive or not. Like I just had Sheena, she's our content marketing manager. She's like me today. And she's like, Hey, I have a writing freeze. Doesn't matter how much, how many times I tackle this paragraph is not going anywhere. I'm going to go ahead and walk through the park and try to get some inspiration and then come back later.
00:08:08
Speaker
And it was like, Hey, always, and also no need to let me know, right? Like she knows how to manage her own schedule. So she's in flow state as much as possible. And then the result is that, yes, it's hard. I will tell you that it's hard sometimes to do synchronous projects. So we have to rely on a lot of the tools like ClickUp, like Slack, Zoom, Loom, even recorded. It's great. So we have to make a lot more effort to make sure that.
00:08:33
Speaker
things that are happening in different time zones keep moving forward. But on the other hand, the team is hyper productive all the time and has this incredible ownership mentality and accountability for every project that they work on. So it's worked really, really well. And I think a really big part of that is just hiring the right people. And then the rest kind of just happens.
00:08:52
Speaker
Yeah. Well, with the speed in which you all roll out new features and new, you know, developments within Flowdesk, I totally believe that. Tell me about August in Europe. I remember my sister lived in Barcelona for a few years. And one thing if I remember correctly, she told me that like August, it's like a ghost town, like people go on vacation, you know, it's like no one's at work. Is that the case in Portugal? Like, how do you like and balance that I guess, you know, working with Flowdesk?
00:09:18
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. So yes and no, right? It's very personal. We have a lot of people that are working from Spain and some like showing up and some like to take time off and both are totally valid. I think it's just a matter of communicating with your team. So if there's any dependencies, the team knows what to expect. For me, I'm going to go on maternity leave sometime in November. So I did take all of last week off for the record and that was brilliant and beautiful and partly.
00:09:45
Speaker
powered by powered outages and no Wi-Fi, so I had not a lot of choice. But for me, a whole month off is probably, I mean, as a founder, that this is, Clotus is my first baby, right? So I'm too enthusiastic about what we're building right now, especially with checkout launching so
Development and Features of Flodesk Checkouts
00:10:03
Speaker
soon.
00:10:03
Speaker
but also i'm not portuguese right i mean in mexican mexican very very different totally different topic but i don't have that habit right of checking out for the whole of august now our accountants here and our legal team totally off for the whole month and pretty cool they're just like hey this is the way it is and that's cool we just work around it it makes sense right i think it's part of being an international company you just recognize that not everyone does things the way that
00:10:29
Speaker
the US does things and things still work and get done and everything rolls. I think it's just fascinating. I just love that idea that like, you know, in August, everybody just goes on vacation, you know, it's just that's when people take holiday and
00:10:43
Speaker
Yeah, restaurants close to home up, like there's some restaurants are like, we're gone the whole month, come back in September. Yeah. And I just think how healthy that is, you know, like just that force time, not force, but you know, that time off. And it's just so interesting. I mean, I think we could go on and on about or I could go on and on just listening to your rhythms in Portugal, you know, that's so fascinating to me. And then also the culture stuff to what you're building at flow desk is also so interesting. But we are here
00:11:09
Speaker
to talk about Flowdesk Checkouts. I'm really excited to chat about that. And I've been able to jump in there. We've been able to build a sales page in there. But how about you fill us in on kind of everything that's been happening with Flowdesk and what Checkouts is and why you all decided to build it.
00:11:23
Speaker
Yeah, of course. So why we decided to build it? It's just as anything else that we build at Flourdes. It's based on what our customers are asking for. So this was by far our number one request. And the reason is because originally Flourdes was created to make it easy for a small business owner to
00:11:41
Speaker
have full control over how they grow their business, right? So if you think about it, a lot of small business owners are growing their business on social media, for example. And then if you have a big launch, like let's say I'm selling stress balls, right? And on the day of the launch, I post on Instagram and then the Instagram algorithm decides to only show this to a portion of my audience. That's not good news for me. It's a small business owner, right? Like it just takes so much control away from me.
00:12:07
Speaker
Another thing that happens with social media is that there's advertising, so I'm competing with people who have a lot of budget, maybe more budget than I have, probably more budget than I have as a small business owner, who are probably getting more eyeballs just by the fact that they're paying more for it. So the email list was the easiest way to level the playing field there, right?
00:12:26
Speaker
own your list, you're having your stress ball launch, you send an email to your list and you know it's guaranteed that these people are going to get your email. And then you have control over open rates and engagement and click rates. So it just gives you that power back. Another really cool benefit is that there's no advertising in email. So it doesn't matter if you're competing with Amazon and Amazon has all the budget in the world, they can't
00:12:49
Speaker
Fight that spot in the inbox for you, right? So that was executed very well. Our customers love it. I know you're using it. You're in Krista and we've gotten great feedback from you as well. But then one thing that we started hearing was, Hey, I've gotten really good at putting a form out there, whether it's on my website or publishing directly.
00:13:07
Speaker
and getting subscribers, right? I'm growing my list. We just talked to Anna and Kismus, husband and wife duo that do everything they can actually to empower small businesses to brand themselves beautifully. And they grew by 1500% within a few months of using photos. So we're hearing these amazing success stories, right? And like their list is growing. Everything's happening really well on the email marketing side, right? And they know that now in general, right? Our member base can send a beautiful email
00:13:36
Speaker
that converts, right, with a button that says Buy Now, and they can get their subscriber list to click on Buy Now. But then that's where the experience breaks, because instead of their subscriber experiencing the same beautiful form, consistent with the beautiful email that they received, right, they get sent to a third party site for the transaction.
00:13:58
Speaker
for the most important part of that flow, for the moment where they actually buy from the small business owner. Whether that's Squarespace or Shopify or WordPress or a cart system, there are so many options, but all of them break the experience. The hard thing is that it's really difficult to make them look on brand.
00:14:22
Speaker
wherever they go at the most important part of the conversion, that brand doesn't look the same and that decreases conversion drastically, right? And also it's not the experience that they want to offer to their customers. So that's the reason why this was the top request, right? So they were like, how can we keep that just that last part? We're already so close. You're just going to click a button and enter their payment information.
00:14:45
Speaker
Right? We're so close. How can we expand the experience just a tiny bit more so that our customers don't have to go and find a cart tool plus a landing page tool, plus a sales funnel tool, plus a website, right? And have like four different tools that they're paying.
00:15:00
Speaker
Hundreds of dollars were on the low end just so they can sell. So that's what informed the decision. If that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. You know, it's interesting. We have a high school intern this year for maybe the second time. I think years ago we had a high school intern, but I was, Chris and I were asking her, like, what do you think is the best converting sales channel? You know, and of course, you know, social media comes to mind for pretty much, I think anybody in high school, right? But we were like, no.
00:15:25
Speaker
it's email. It's kind of like a mind blown moment for I think, especially younger people, right? Just email really, but I mean, still the most consistent channel and I think every year now you see something is like, is this channel going to beat email? And it's like, I stopped opening those posts, you know,
00:15:40
Speaker
But anyways, going back to Flowdesk specifically and checkouts, I think one of the things that you're so right about is how many tools it takes just to sell a product. One of the things that was awesome about Flowdesk is that you basically could launch a business without a website, in part because Flowdesk is so beautifully designed. Even your form pages, you can make a very simple form, collect emails, and that could suffice, certainly for the time being.
00:16:05
Speaker
But yeah, there is that one missing piece of like, now you can actually sell your digital product using Flotus checkouts. You don't need another tool. And I think there's so many benefits in it being tied directly to your email platform, just in understanding, you know, even where sales come from and what actions people are taking. And I know down the road, you know, there'll probably be all sorts of tracking built in to better tell you what subscribers are purchasing and how much and so on and so forth. But yeah, I think that is just such an intuitive step to build something like checkouts.
00:16:35
Speaker
Yeah, exactly, because you're right. There's at least four tools that you need just to sell something online. And then there's at least two or three or four tools just to automatically add those customers to your email list.
00:16:50
Speaker
Right. And then if one of those tools gets an update, it breaks the entire connection and you have to, you're losing data. It's not redundant anymore. So yeah, I agree. And we're already starting to implement some of that feedback that you sent for analytics. Super helpful. So just bringing more transparency in terms of how much is this checkout specifically bringing in terms of revenue. And then we're already working on the rest of the insights as well. So yes, I mean that the possibilities are endless, right? Once these two tools are connected.
00:17:17
Speaker
Yeah, and that's super exciting. It also makes a ton of sense too. I mean, you can design such beautiful emails. I'm sure on a development, there's development work that has to make that possible for designing landing pages too, but it really was. So we just created a test landing page and I'll post it in the show notes for this episode, selling, we do these designer touch sessions where we clean up websites and stuff. So we created a Flotus checkout sales page using that. And it's just so seamless. I mean, it was like, you know, I think I asked Krista to do this one morning and like maybe
00:17:45
Speaker
By the time we had breakfast, you know, she was like, Oh, yeah, I finished that, you know, and I'm like, that's insane. Right. So for a lot of people out there, I think that's part of the problem is like, okay, well, you know, I mean, not only do I have to go out and find these tools, but then I have to build this page on my website, or I have to build this page, or I have to get a designer to build this page. But now basically, people can be empowered, you know, even using the templates that you have in the platform to just get started on their own. Exactly. Exactly.
00:18:13
Speaker
That's awesome. So as far as Flotus checkouts go, right now it's still technically in beta, right? Like it's still...
00:18:19
Speaker
So actually it's not in beta yet. It's an early alpha axis. So I think people are starting to think that it's in beta because there's so many people that are using it and they're publishing right away. They're making money. We just had someone who published something and a few hours later she made $17,000, which is amazing because she was not expecting that at all. And it's actually releasing in beta on September 13th.
00:18:45
Speaker
Okay, awesome. And when it releases in beta, will it be open to basically anybody who has a Flotus account who wants to use it? When it releases in beta, it will be open to anyone who wants to use it who has a US bank account, because we're rolling out the US first. Okay, awesome. Just because there's bad limitations, there's legal pieces that we have to take care of, and then there's also stripe limitations before we expand to other markets, but hopefully other markets will follow shortly after.
00:19:13
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. So it sounds like people are already using it. What tips do you have for making effective use, I guess, of Flowdesk checkouts? Like what have you kind of noticed the people have already jumped in? What are they doing well, you know, to create a sales page and then make $17,000? Yeah. So one of the things that we do at Flowdesk that I am really proud of the product and the design team for thinking about is making, you know, when you're bowling and there's this
00:19:41
Speaker
little things that you have bumpers. Exactly. I need the bumpers. Otherwise the ball goes everywhere else. We build bumpers into product. And what this means is if you're a marketing and sales expert, you can build whatever you want. If you don't know anything, there's no way you can mess it up, right? So truly that you don't need to know best practices. You don't need to know how to sell. You don't need to know any tips. Just have fun, make something that you want to share and put it out there. And there is taking care of how. So for example,
00:20:08
Speaker
The flow is set for you already. You customize a sales page, you customize a checkout page, and you customize an instant delivery page.
00:20:16
Speaker
The sales page, every single button is hyper-optimized to lead people to the checkout page. You can't mess that up, right? Now, the number one conversion is make sure that any CTA, any call to action is leading people to that step that you want them to take. Bumpers. It's already built into the product. Second page, checkout. You can add a testimonial. You can add a bonus offer. No more. Everything else is hyper-optimized so that
00:20:41
Speaker
your viewer at that point in time just transacts, right? Everything is hyper-optimized to close the sale. Bumpers, you can't mess it up. Third step, instant delivery. At this point, they've already transacted so you can have a lot more fun with it. You can have fun for every step, but it's a little more flexible in terms of what do you want to do, right? Do you want to provide an instant download? Do you want to send your customers to a private access link? Do you want to follow up with an email that delivers the purchase product? Or do you want to do a combination of all of the above? Do you want to provide a bonus offer that
00:21:11
Speaker
people can even look at at that point and send them to a different checkout. So, but at every single step of the way, you're truly almost like going through a checklist and this is why you can build it so quickly. And this is also why it's hyper-optimized for conversion. Whether you know how to do that or not, that's taken care of.
00:21:28
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's key. Do you think that's why Flodesk in general has been so popular?
Growth and Financial Strategy of Flodesk
00:21:34
Speaker
What do you credit Flodesk success to? Because as we talked about in another podcast episode, and so for those of you listening, go and check out that because Rebecca and Martha share a little bit about how Flodesk started. And this is pretty early too. Like this episode probably had to be at least a year or two ago, right?
00:21:50
Speaker
Yeah, I think it was early 2020, which was probably six months after launch. I think we were still in beta as a company. Yeah, so go back and listen to that just because I mean, I just find the growth of your company so interesting and you know, obviously not the first email platform out there, but just become wildly popular. Why do you think that is? Okay, that's a good question.
00:22:13
Speaker
I think it's a combination of factors, right? One, and this is key, right? I mean, I would like to take credit for a big part of it, but also building an email marketing platform has a viral loop that is embedded and it's not something that we invented, like Hotmail had it. Essentially you focus the entire company on making a new user successful.
00:22:33
Speaker
Right? You're not focused on growth. You're not focusing on forgetting about your current customers to acquire new ones. You're focusing on making a new user successful because once they're successful and they send an email, their entire list gets that email and they see the result of the work that they did in Flodesk. And then there's a footer that says, build in Flodesk. Right? And that footer generates a lot more users. So that viral loop creates a lot of growth that is very sustainable.
00:22:58
Speaker
that is not growth that we have to pay Facebook and Google for, right? That allows us to focus on what really matters, which is making sure that users know how to use a product. Also, it's what has enabled us to bootstrap this company and not go out and seek funding, right? Which has also given us a lot of freedom in ways that we can build exactly what our shareholder wants and our shareholder is a customer, right? So it just creates a cycle where we have this sustainable growth and
00:23:25
Speaker
We can focus on empowering our customers and then we can focus on listening to our customers. Then we're building exactly what they want. Then we keep them happy. And then by this cycle, they also love using the product and they love being part of these. So they share it with their friends and their affiliate program has also been huge in this growth. And then all we have to do is focusing on what really matters, making them successful, listening to what they really need and providing it to them.
00:23:53
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome. And I feel like you've built in a lot of those bumpers into the email side of things as well. It'd be pretty difficult to go in and create an ugly email in Flowdesk, right? Because there are just so many great templates to start with that, as Krista jokes, even I can do it. I haven't seen a single ugly email created. It's just not
00:24:15
Speaker
Krista likes to say, Davey, you could even use Flowdesk, I think. I don't know what you mean by that, but thank you. I know what she means by that. I'm not going to. I don't know. That's just, I'm going to skip right through that because I think it's different, right? Because I don't think that we are protecting the world from people who were otherwise creating ugly emails. I think small businesses, we won't give them enough credit.
00:24:43
Speaker
They're creative. They're visually smart. They're financially savvy, right? They're technically savvy. So they know how to make a beautiful email. The reason why they weren't before is because the tools weren't making it easy, right? So I don't think that our role is to prevent the ugly email from being creative. I think it's to remove the barriers so that someone who can create a beautiful email can create a beautiful email.
00:25:07
Speaker
Yeah, that is, I think, is a beautiful nuance there, you know? So I like the lens in which you're looking at that through. As far as, you know, Flowdesk checkouts go, when people get started with this, is this going to be included in their current subscription? Is this going to be another tool or like a tool they can add on to their current account? What's that going to look like? Is there any benefit to getting started with it sooner than later?
00:25:30
Speaker
That's a good question. So it's a separate product. And the reason is because as a business, we have to make it sustainable, right? We want to make sure that we're here 15 years later, especially if you were building everything in Flotisk. One thing that we did have in mind is if you look at the competitive products, they're starting at, I think it's $197 and higher.
00:25:52
Speaker
We wanted to make sure that we keep it super formal, just like we did with email. So it's 38 per month with a 50% off discount is 19 per month. If you want just checkout, you can also get just email or you can bundle them together. So in terms of pricing, nothing much changes there really. We have.
00:26:10
Speaker
One plan, one plan only, unlimited everything. No tiers, no platform fees, no penalties for growing your list, right? Like the usual. You just choose the products that you need. So if you're happy with just email, great. If you're happy with just checkout, great. If you actually know that you're going to need both.
00:26:29
Speaker
then you just bundle them together and then you get the best pricing. So the question about whether there's an incentive in using it sooner than later. So we are launching a promotional campaign during beta, which will be live from September 13 to November 1, where you can get both products in an everything bundle. So the everything bundle is already 59 per month built annually.
00:26:52
Speaker
for 50% off for the entire lifetime of your subscription. So if you upgrade as a current customer or join as a new customer during this beta time, then you are actually locking in your subscription to that 50% off until you want to cancel. So I would say that's probably the best time to join because I mean, you're saving at that point about 500 and just the two products. And then if you compare it to anything else that's out there, you're saving
00:27:20
Speaker
like $1,400 a year at least. That is, even if you miss the beta, so if you're listening and you've missed the beta launch or whatnot, that is still an insane price for what you're getting to because it's not just, I mean, the checkout is awesome, but the sales page, just being able to build a sales page easily, beautifully, and it already be connected to the tool you're using for checkouts, I think is huge, especially when you compare it to comparable products like ClickFunnels
00:27:48
Speaker
lead pages or something like that. So that is a pretty insane deal. And I asked on purpose because I knew I had an idea of what the deal was going to be, but I'm glad that now people know. So good stuff. But is there anything else we should talk about when it comes to
Innovative Uses and Future of Flodesk Checkouts
00:28:04
Speaker
checkouts? I know it's still pretty early on. I'd love to have you all back on to chat more about kind of learnings from when you have more and more people going through it and seeing kind of what they're doing with it and
00:28:15
Speaker
I mean, do you have, maybe you've seen this with email, but as you build products, do people end up using them in ways that you didn't expect? Like, oh wow, I didn't even see that as a use case.
00:28:25
Speaker
We're already seeing that happen a lot with Lotus checkout. So we're seeing, so initially we thought, okay, this is perfect for digital products, right? And we figured physical products would be hard because there's inventory management, right? It's just a little more complicated. It's something that we'll do in the future, but we see everything from special crayon shops to a checkout that was all raw meat. And it's just pre-order your raw meat right now. And it's this.
00:28:53
Speaker
The most beautiful sales page for Romy, they use this gorgeous like burnt orange kind of like almost at the red color scale and with these gorgeous
00:29:06
Speaker
raw meat pictures, images, right? Which like you never think that if you're showing a leg, you know, I mean, it's like, you never expect this to be so. You know that I farm now, right? You know that I farm and I sell. So this is right up my alley. It's amazing. It's like, it's the most beautiful page I've ever seen. And it's just, it's delicious. That's the kind of level I'll have to send it to you. So yeah, we're seeing really interesting, we saw
00:29:35
Speaker
I don't know how to say this in English. It's the horse riding. It's a horse riding workshop by one of our members and it's just gorgeous and it's just beautiful to see.
00:29:51
Speaker
their creativity just adapt the product to exactly what they need and then tell their story in such a beautiful way. So yeah, we're already getting a lot of outside of the initial scope type of uses, but also this is great because it informs where we need to go in the future, right? I think one of the best ways to make future product positions is just to see what we're already doing.
00:30:12
Speaker
Sure, sure. I have one other question for you and we can talk anything. If I didn't ask something about Flowdesk that you want to share, I definitely want to get to that. I have one other question that I meant to ask earlier on and it's just, I feel like I'd be remiss not to ask it, but I wanted to know just something interesting that you've noticed since launching Flowdesk, like just a lesson, you know, observation, but I'm always curious about that because it is such a journey building something.
Lessons Learned and Culture at Flodesk
00:30:36
Speaker
Just one?
00:30:37
Speaker
Oh, whatever you feel like is just top of mind that you're like, maybe it's unexpected, I don't know.
00:30:43
Speaker
Oof, there's so much. I think one thing that we didn't get right from the beginning is admitting when something was not ready or when we were doing something and we weren't super put together. And I think this is mostly at the founder level. I think this was very early on at the beginning where strong Rebecca and I were still new to working with each other. And we just wanted to, went at the trust of the other founders above all. And if something wasn't,
00:31:13
Speaker
ready we wouldn't say hey i'm sorry this wasn't ready anymore time or i'm not sure how to do this and i'm just going to take a bit of time to learn we're just like trying to make everything perfect for me and not admit that we didn't know and it didn't last long because when you do that there's going to be problems and problems arrived and very quickly we said okay
00:31:34
Speaker
We are new to this entire building a start-up thing right and there are a lot of things that we don't know and that's okay and just admitting that and coming in with this learning mentality of I'm not going to know everything and I'm going to go and consult others or for higher experts or.
00:31:53
Speaker
talk to customers when I don't have an answer is totally okay. So this dissolution of ego, I would say, was one of the biggest lessons. It's not about what we want to build, it's about who we want to serve, and it's about doing it right. And that takes a lot more humility than you initially think about or that you have associated with the image of the founder. So I would say that's probably one of the big lessons. Another one has been mental health. And this comes in so many ways. But I think there's a true mental health crisis that is impacting
00:32:23
Speaker
the whole world and our team is not exempt from that. So being hyper aware of what kind of trauma team members are coming in with, what kind of background they've experienced or context in previous organizations, what specifically they need and then really truly empowering them to say what they need
00:32:41
Speaker
in the most blunt way, right? Without feeling like they have to sugarcoat it or they have to say it in the appropriate way, right? And just being open to talk about what they're going through and what they need is so important. And I think it also keeps the team very real and it keeps you from getting exhausted from always trying to be something that you're not. It's a really big conversation, but also it has like recognizing this has informed a lot of the decisions that we've made, right? Because it's a remote company also, you don't have these
00:33:11
Speaker
Culture building opportunities where you have like the water cooler and you're sitting next to a colleague, right? So
00:33:17
Speaker
It's been informing a lot of how do we create activities where people can get to know each other without feeling like we're forcing interactions, which nobody really wants. But then how are we actually encouraging people to, again, speak up about what they need, speak up about what they disagree about, speak to each other about anything from salaries. It's just crazy the world that we live in. It's frowned upon for two team members to talk to each other about what they're earning.
00:33:43
Speaker
trying to break these habits and encourage team members to just do what they need to do so they feel good has been a really big journey and a really big lesson and it's something that we'll never stop learning and we'll never stop being committed to improving right and then also it has informed how we do like time off so for example this is a very clear example we are a startup and we like many other startups have
00:34:09
Speaker
unlimited time off and we know very clearly this is not a secret that the reason we startups do unlimited time off is because it's just so much easier right when it comes to filing and taxes and policy right it's not because you're actually encouraging your team members to take a limited time off right so everyone knows these and what happens is that it creates this environment where people feel really guilty about taking time off so
00:34:36
Speaker
That's another really big one that we've been working on and it's, okay, we actually do have a limited time off because we want to encourage you to take time off when you need to take time off. And you don't have to give any explanations and it doesn't have to be called a personal day or a sick day or a vacation. It's just take time off, right? And if something's happening in your personal life and you just need to be away from work,
00:34:59
Speaker
you're encouraged to do it, right? Just communicate about it and make sure that you talk to your team about expectations when things can be expected and then like go and do what you need to do, right? So I think that's been another really big lesson that just like, oof, it's almost like an activist, right? It has like arms going into almost every aspect of the company, but it is recognizing that mental health is kind of at the core of this culture and
00:35:23
Speaker
that we are already at a disadvantage because we're breaking the corporate understanding of how things currently happen in startups that are not always to the service of the team members. Yeah. And what you're talking about too, I mean, they're just such tough challenges, you know, especially I think that because they require humility, you know, and humility, I think is hard for all of us.
Addressing Unlimited Time-Off and Future Plans
00:35:44
Speaker
And, you know, like you said, with you and your partners, and I run, you know, all my businesses are with partners.
00:35:49
Speaker
including Krista, you know, so but it takes a lot of humility to say, Oh, you know, I was wrong about this, or I thought this would work and it didn't, you know, and just being honest about that. And then even on the team side of things, I think it takes a lot of humility to share how you're feeling, you know, truly like about something or, you know, tell somebody what's going on. So
00:36:07
Speaker
Those are admirable challenges that you all are trying to tackle for sure. Totally get the unlimited vacation time thing. I think the thing I struggled with with unlimited vacation was, well, how much is acceptable time to take off? Do you know what I'm saying? I almost crave the days of being a teacher where it was like, well, you get your 10 days. Because it's like, you get those 10 days. They don't roll over to another year. These are the 10 days. And so I can do that guilt-free. So I think, again,
00:36:33
Speaker
all animal things to be working on the stress right that's like a very minor thing that happens but just figuring out how much time is acceptable that creates so much stress and so much anxiety like the question of am i actually taking too much time off am i not taking enough right like not having that clear or should i check in today or i know i'm off but like maybe i'll just check my email real quick or
00:36:56
Speaker
And it's so exhausting, right? And it's just like, so sometimes it requires having more conversations. Sometimes it requires having fewer conversations, but it's just being aware of these and how it's actually impacting the day-to-day of our team members. So, but this is something that I would say the team members take the credit because they're the ones that are informing what needs to happen, right? So they're very brave, very outspoken, and we're really grateful for that.
00:37:20
Speaker
Well, Martha, I always enjoy talking to you. I just think, you know, I mean, the business that you're building is so interesting. But in general, you've, you know, it's obvious that you think about a lot of different things when it comes to team culture. And I really appreciate that. And I enjoy those conversations for sure. But really excited about Flittest Checkouts. Is there anything else that you wanted to share about that before we wrap up here? I don't think so. If you think of anything else, let me know. But other than that, thank you for your time today and for this conversation and for all the feedback that we were already gotten from you. So yeah, thank you.
00:37:50
Speaker
Well, and that's the thing. I mean, even when I reached out and for those listening, I'd reach out just with a couple thoughts after Martha had sent it over. And I probably opened your email within like five minutes of getting it and then jumped in, you know, and then it sent feedback by the end of the day. And you responded right away. And I just, again, I admire that too. Just, you know, when, when Florida says that they're actually listening to their users and listening to the feedback, you know, I think it's totally true. So, and I don't think it's totally true of every company.
00:38:16
Speaker
So I really appreciate that. I'm going to include links to all things Flow Desk in the show notes. So for people who want to check out Flow Desk checkouts, you can go and do so there. Also make sure that I link to a sales page that Chris has built. If you're interested in seeing what a finished product can look like, so you can check that out too before giving it a shot on your own. Martha, thank you so much. Really excited too for the months coming up and a little one on the way. That's really exciting times and hope you have a healthy pregnancy through the rest of the year here.
00:38:46
Speaker
I appreciate it. She keeps punching me from inside. She just responded to her wishes and she's really happy about it. Thank you. Well, I'm excited to be here one day. I can't wait. Thanks so much, Davey. Thanks for tuning in to the Brands That Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to daveyandchrista.com.
00:39:19
Speaker
you