Roger (00:01.297)
Also, I don't need to do an introduction because I just recorded an introduction. So that means we can just jump into the meat of things. But why don't we just start with a bit about you in the context of where you started and where you are today.

Aleksandar (00:17.41)
Mm-hmm. So I started 2013, which is exactly 10 years ago. Um, I started with building my own agency, market performance marketing agency. Um, the reason why I started is because, um, for a while I wanted to create some kind of business. And my life brought me to a point where I wanted to travel. And so I traveled half a year around the world.

And it was not only just to have fun, but also to get business ideas, to find and meet people that maybe have some business, talk about their businesses. And yeah, when, when you're traveling, you find people who are traveling and are doing business. Um, I talked about, um, with a lot of interesting people without going into much detail about what type of businesses I met and people I met.

There was one person that I met who was a Google Ads expert. And he told me about what he's doing and how he's doing it. And I felt like, hmm, all the skills that I acquired in the past 10, 15, 20 years, they match exactly to what is needed to become good in Google Ads performance marketing.

So that was an idea that I carried around for a few months during my travels and when I got back home. And then at the end, it got on the top of my list of what I want to do. And then I found my first client quite quickly. And that client had a WooCommerce shop. So I started optimizing ads, Google ads, for his WooCommerce shop. And.

That's how the agency started, really. Not long after, I wanted to create, I wanted to measure the conversions better, not only how many sales it generated, but also how much value it generated. And there was no plugin for Book Commerce that did it at the time. So I thought, OK, let's develop something. Because developing and programming was a hobby of mine. Not a big one.

Aleksandar (02:43.63)
I did it from time to time. And I thought that's an opportunity to do something with my hobby again. And I have seen that big community on the WordPress repository. So I thought, OK, let's put it as open source into the WordPress repository. And the deal will be, I'll give it away for free, and they'll give me feedback for free. It worked. You know, more and more people.

downloaded it, I improved it, I gave support, and over time it grew and grew and grew. So at the same time, not only running the agency, but also that kind of the product business, I learned from both sides a lot. I learned what to look for and what to optimize on the technical point of view so that my clients will have a better value for.

in what we do for them. And also the other way around, I learned what clients are looking for from the agency side, what type of services and technical knowledge they need in order to not only succeed, but also be better than the competition, because it's always a little bit fighting also the competition being better than them and being at the edge of what's possible today.

And so that's what I've been doing the past 10 years, running my agency business. We have different kinds of businesses as agency clients, not only e-commerce shops, but also companies that generate leads over Google Ads. And OK, on the technical side, on the product side, most of them are e-commerce shops now.

And so.

Roger (04:39.289)
So you could say that your product has led you to become a specialist within your market as an agency. Is that how they usually work together?

Aleksandar (04:47.938)
Yes.

Aleksandar (04:53.854)
I think you're making a good point. We are like a boutique agency specialized on really performance marketing in a way. What we see is we like to see what our clients are giving us as an investment, their ads budget, and we try to not only make money, but profitable money for them. So if they invest $1, they want maybe...

to have a revenue of $3 on the dollar. Or if they scale it up, obviously, if you invest $10,000, you want $30,000 in revenue. So you have like $20,000 in profit margin. And you can do something with that. You can grow your company. You can hire people and so on. And that was a thing that I really liked about Google Ads at the time, that marketing suddenly has become very profitable.

profitable but measurable. And because of that, it was possible to suddenly make campaigns a lot more profitable by focusing on what's giving you value and whatnot. So we are not an agency that does everything, like creatives, video, and so on, but really focusing on investing the ads budget in a very profitable way for our customers.

Roger (06:20.93)
Nice. So you mentioned that you found your first customer rather quickly, and then it also sounded like the building of the plugin started quite quickly after that. Did you use your plugin to also collect customers from the leads, rather from the people that were using the plugin, or has those, how does that work?

Aleksandar (06:32.716)
Mm-hmm.

Aleksandar (06:40.67)
Um.

Good question. Looking back over the 10 last years, yes, we found a few customers through the plugin, mostly because I have two examples. So one, he requested support from us, and he said something is not working. And so I helped him. I got in a conversation. At the end, it wasn't our plugin that wasn't working, but it was some setup in his shop. But he was so satisfied with it.

how we dealt with it, that we stayed in contact. And over time, he became a very loyal customer of ours. And another client that was a similar story. So he wanted to have some tweak for the plugin to make something a little bit different. And first, he thought if he tries to reach out to us, he might not.

get successful and get in contact with us. So he tried to contact other developers, and he didn't succeed in making those adjustments. And then in the second step, he tried to contact us, and we replied. And we made the adjustment for him, and so the conversation started. And he's now also a very, very loyal customer since then. So in a very organic way, what we don't do is we don't reach out to...

Wijnand (07:47.996)
Thanks for watching!

Roger (08:06.296)
Nice.

Aleksandar (08:12.07)
all those shops and try to make them agency customer. Maybe we could, but this is certainly not our focus. I believe many of them, it would be good for them if they were working together with us. But it's not part of the business model for now, at least.

Roger (08:36.489)
Interesting. It sounds like it could be a great lead magnet for you.

Aleksandar (08:40.714)
Well, what I didn't tell is that the plugin didn't stay for free all forever. So I also created a pro version of it. Started to doing that in 2020 and started to sell the pro version in 2021. So there is now a free version and the pro version. So many of those people and shops who were using our free version of the plugin, they...

immediately jumped on the Pro version. And they are now, in a way, they are customers now, not agency customers, but the customers of the Pro version of the plugin. And that gives us also a nice cash flow.

Roger (09:21.849)
You have a very interesting profile as a business owner because you essentially have a product company and an agency that are somewhat separated. I mean, you do mention that you have some customers that came from the product and went to the agency, and I'm sure you have agency customers that are using your product, but strategy-wise you keep them separate. Are there lessons that you translate from your product business to your agency and vice versa?

Aleksandar (09:30.623)
Mm-hmm.

Aleksandar (09:48.574)
100%. Yeah. So what I learned in the agency business is that being a reliable contact for the customers is key, is super important. It's probably the most important factor in a relationship. So when they have a problem and they call us, you have to be there for them in time. Not.

not in the next minute, but let's say within 24 hours, you have to be there for them and acknowledge that you received their request. And you have to update them. If you cannot solve it immediately, then keep them updated so they know that you are taking care of their problem. And no problem is too small. For each client, his problem is always the biggest one. And

You also have to make them feel like, OK, you take care about their problem, no matter how big or small it is. And those clients, they stay clients for a long time, forever, because they like you. And you learn from them. Sometimes clients are very nice in their behavior. Others are more challenging. And that can be challenging for the relationship.

But I learned also a lot from them. So keeping them, trying to make them happy and fix their problems is as well as important, same important as for every other client. So yeah, your reliability is really important. And that is something that I try to transfer also to the product side of the business. So.

We try to give the best support that we can and it reflects in the reviews that we get on the WordPress repository. We get a lot of five-star reviews. Many of them, they mention that they like our support, that it's easy to get in contact with us and that we really try to help. So yeah, I think this is important and key for a long-standing relationship, no matter what type of client it is, be it agency client or product.

Roger (12:05.081)
Sorry, I was laughing just a second ago or a minute ago because you are a Swiss person saying that you need to respond in time. So true to your culture. So I was like, yeah, of course we're going to get this lesson today. And then from a product side, translating lessons into your agency, are there certain processes, certain...

Aleksandar (12:13.631)
Mm-hmm.

Wijnand (12:15.818)
Hahahaha

Aleksandar (12:18.463)
Yeah.

Wijnand (12:21.095)
Hahaha

Aleksandar (12:22.03)
Hehehe

Roger (12:35.489)
methodologies that you follow in your agency development that you've carried over from being a product developer as well.

Aleksandar (12:44.039)
I would say there are like two lessons. One is not like a major lesson, but more the experience in how to optimize the tracking measurement of campaigns. That is something that we transfer over to the agency part where let's say, as I told you, we have a few clients that are generating leads and.

We don't have a plugin for that, so what we use is the Google Tag Manager. And all the experience that we have technically with the plugin for conversion tracking, we can transfer that into Google Tag Manager setups, which sometimes are complex. There's 100 million ways how customers complicate their websites.

And then you need to have 100 million ways how to still track conversions and visitors. So yeah, that is like the technical knowledge one-to-one we can carry over to the agency side. And one thing, one lesson that I learned is having a good brand name that is easy to remember and to spell, that's also very important.

Roger (14:02.613)
Yeah, sorry. That's very close to our hearts and that's something that we've done very well historically. Obviously, we just changed our name from WPCS to Wildcloud. And I have to admit, it has definitely changed the way that many of our leads perceived us, because now I notice that they come into the call and they can actually recollect our brand name, whereas prior they would say something like, yeah, the WCP...

Aleksandar (14:10.012)
Mm.

Roger (14:30.125)
product, your WPCC platform is great. And I was like, we got to change that name. We have to be able to remember like, yeah, I get it completely.

Aleksandar (14:39.694)
Yeah. In my case, the product side is, it's called, the brand name is called Sweet Code. It's very easy to remember. And the agency's name is Wolf and Bear, like the wolf and the bear, you know, the animals. It has its story for itself, so I still like the name. But sometimes people would say, wolf and bar or...

Roger (15:05.687)
Right.

Aleksandar (15:05.838)
They would not know that this is an animal, and the bear is an animal, but like a beer or whatever. And then also, we have this and sign in the middle of the name. So how do you spell this? Is this a sign? Is this the letters? Or so a lot of complication, which if I knew that the agency side would also grow internationally, I never would have done this. But now I know.

Wijnand (15:33.394)
Fair enough.

Aleksandar (15:34.67)
And so that's important for the listeners. If they think about working internationally, then it has to be something that's easy to remember and to spell. I think it can be like a five-letter word, sorry, a five-word sentence. That's what I want to say. Can be a long word. At least it must be easy to spell so that you don't make spelling mistakes. As easy as this. Yeah.

Roger (16:02.113)
I agree. It's a good segue because I was wondering what your ambitions are. From where you started to where you are today, what is going to be the strategy and the roadmap for the next five years? What is your ambition there?

Aleksandar (16:23.766)
not the type who makes business goals for the next one or five or 10 years. To me, it's like, keep growing. It's more like a, I would say, what brought me and my agency here where I am today is our methodology. So we look at the data, we improve, we adjust, we look at the data. It's like an improvement process all the time.

And

Wijnand (16:54.602)
And it also sounds like the balance that you're refining every time you go through that cycle is sort of when you were talking about the lessons you learned from the product side and the lessons you were learning from the agency side, it sounds like the product side is getting a lot from the personal way of actually interacting with people that you get from the agency side and the agency side is getting a lot of the technical chops from the product side.

Aleksandar (17:19.839)
Mm-hmm.

Wijnand (17:24.334)
And it sort of sounds like the balance that you're trying to get there between how technical are you, how personal are you, where do you spend your time? Um, that that's sort of the, the cycle where you're getting to a refinement of something. Do you think that also inevitably leads to growth in that sense? If you, if you manage to really nail that, that balance.

Aleksandar (17:45.566)
It does, it will, and that is something I'm looking for growing more. So I had a little bit of difficulty growing in the age on the agency part, not only because we didn't find the clients all the time, but also because I wasn't, I didn't like the model so much. We had larger clients, but always the risk that they're going to cancel their contracts with us. And then suddenly, you know, you lose a lot of cashflow. So I hated that idea. And my, my background actually is before what I started.

when I started doing this was I was working in finance. So cash flow is an important thing. And if that is always a little bit at risk, I have a bad feeling. And the product side actually is much more stable cash flow on the cash flow side. It doesn't give us that much cash flow as the agency side, but it's much more stable. So if 10 customers of a plugin cancel their

Subscription doesn't matter because in the same time, I have two new subscriptions or 10 new subscriptions. So what I want to say is now with both agency cash flow and product side cash flow in place, I think we have a really good basis to grow more. And everything bootstrapped, I'm a little bit proud of that.

Aleksandar (19:16.206)
And yeah, we're already looking into growing. So hiring more people for specific roles, which will help grow the business more. But what I wanna say is to your question, Roger, is what in the next five or 10 years, I think prioritize better what I wanna do in order to achieve the goal of growth. And growth is for sure our main goal at the moment.

and will be for the next 5-10 years for sure.

Roger (19:48.153)
What type of markets do you... And with markets, I mean geographical areas as well as certain feature roadmaps, certain value ads that you see your product or your agency can make. What are the trends that you're seeing currently?

Aleksandar (20:11.316)
Mmm.

I don't see really a trend in that type of market that we are in. Or maybe not from that point of view that I am in. I mean, we sell the product, the plugin worldwide into more than 60 countries so far. That might be even much more now. Last time I checked it was more than 60 countries.

mostly to the US. So I could say, yeah, the US is a strong market, but is it a trend? I think it was always the strongest market. And I don't see big shifts. And actually, the Netherlands are also quite high on the list, by the way, of agencies and customers.

Roger (21:02.521)
We love to track our stuff. Yeah.

Wijnand (21:05.259)
or endeavoring little people. So.

Aleksandar (21:08.73)
That was interesting to me. That's why I also have a translation agency who's doing translation into Dutch.

Wijnand (21:17.578)
Right, right, right. So when, because in that sense, when you talk about growth, right, you can do that on two sides, you specifically, because you've got two sides that actually support each other. Do you want to grow your product side more or do you want to grow your agency side more? Because the reason I ask is one is obviously way more scalable than the other. For an agency side, you need to also scale the amount of people you have. And

Roger (21:17.878)
Interesting.

Wijnand (21:45.27)
everything that comes with that. Right? Or am I mistaken in how you set that up?

Aleksandar (21:54.undefined)
I mean, I think I know what you mean, but on the product side, I also need more people, more workhorse power to enable, in order to be able to grow faster, at least.

Wijnand (22:08.43)
And that's like feature wise or is that, is that support people that you need?

Aleksandar (22:12.754)
At the moment, no, I have support. And we just recently scaled up a little bit. I'm doing that with an external agency that is also a great model. So it's outsourced. So when I need more support hours, I just tell them I need more support hours every day. And then they just scale up. So that's cool. It's just very little small lever that I have here.

Wijnand (22:38.807)
Yeah, for sure.

Aleksandar (22:41.974)
At the moment, I'm thinking about hiring some person that would help me with the PR marketing side for the product plugin business. And on the agency side, I think I need a salesperson. So it's maybe a little bit different type of people that I need, but on both sides, I need people.

Wijnand (22:58.618)
Right, fair enough.

Wijnand (23:04.246)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and in that sense, it also sounds like you're not going to actually grow via only one side, but grow both things at the same time, and then do whatever that side really needs to get that actual growth. I can imagine that in the end, what you'll have is a company that's

from both sides sort of generates the same amount of both labor and revenue? Or am I mistaken there? Is that is it one side is definitely financially more supportive than the other side?

Aleksandar (23:43.678)
moment it is that way, one is more supportive than the other, but I can imagine that they might overtake, like one is overtaking the other and maybe then the other way around, I don't know. I don't really look at that so much. I mean, it's good to know the numbers, I know the numbers obviously.

Aleksandar (24:08.706)
Both are difficult to grow. And maybe one side is easier for me to manage the growth than the other. I don't know, but time will tell. At the moment, I only had the agency business, which was generating cash flow for a long time. And now the product plugin business is also contributing to all of that. But at the smaller part, maybe it will take over. Maybe it doesn't. I don't know.

I don't know where the ceiling is, and I hope I never will find out. I hope that it will always grow and grow, grow.

Wijnand (24:44.774)
So what kind of challenges are you seeing there on either side? Because it's really interesting to me that you have sort of a firsthand experience in both of these models at the same time, like the product-led thing and the agency thing, where personal engagement is so much more important. So what kind of challenges do you see there where for growth on the product side and on the agency side?

Roger (24:45.145)
I have to say.

Aleksandar (24:57.986)
Mm-hmm.

Aleksandar (25:11.614)
On the agency side, for instance, one thing that was holding me up for some time was contracts with clients. So we started first with performance-based contracts. And that was difficult. Not only the calculation every month was a bit more difficult, it was also finding some kind of profit share, which was OK for us and for the customers. But then if we did our job really good,

Suddenly our invoices became much larger, and then customers thought, for that money, I can hire someone. Why do I need an agency? And then you're suddenly in a totally different spot. At the same time, there are also customers who don't pay or don't pay in time. And then there's dead risk, something I hate as well, because it's always uncomfortable discussions with customers when you talk about that.

And whereas on the other side, so this is a kind of a problem in the agency part. On the product side, you don't have that because they always pay upfront for the subscription. So either they pay for the subscription and they get their pro features or they don't pay and they don't get it. And so it's a different type of kind of discussion. You know, you discuss more with customers feature sets and the...

Are you going to implement it or not? Or how do you prioritize it or not? Uh, it's totally, yeah, it's different.

Roger (26:49.994)
I think it's very interesting.

just listening to you because what it strikes me is that you're a very chill guy. You make your decisions, it sounds like it, very much on the feeling of, I want to continue doing what I like. I'm going to refine the process that I currently have and not worry as much about the strategy or the goal of where I should be in five years.

If I'm correct in this, how did you arrive at that particular mindset? How did that come to be?

Aleksandar (27:30.286)
Hmm. That's a good question that I cannot really tell. Maybe I don't have really an answer to that. Maybe I do. I'll try to just give one, and maybe that is the answer. So I think if you do something very good and try to be good in it and improve on it, then there is value in it, and you can sell this to customers. You know?

I told you about the story how and when I created the agency. And I told you that I thought my skills are a good match. What I also thought is I think with my skill set and how I approach it, I soon very fast will be better than the average of agencies that are doing the same thing. Just because I know who I am, what I'm good in, and also know a little bit how other people are.

in that market. And, um, so that gave me already. Um, a confidence boost in a way so that I thought, okay, just keep doing that. Keep being focused on it and then success will come with it. It's like, yeah, one thing that I wrote down, um, for this podcast is, uh,

the success that you get is proportional to how much time and dedication you put into what you're doing.

Aleksandar (29:04.246)
So there will always come success. If you can monetize it is a different question. Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't. Maybe there's also a little bit of my background in there, which is finance so that I always have an eye on does it monetize or not. Yeah. So, and I like monetizing that because, you know, it, it lets you keep doing what you're doing the next day.

Roger (29:22.509)
Hehehe

Aleksandar (29:32.366)
the next five days, the next month, the next year, the next 10 years. So you never should get that out of focus. You always have to keep an eye on that. But if you do, you have a lot of freedom in trying things out. I never had an agency before, or I didn't work in an agency, or I didn't work with an agency. Many of my competitors here in Switzerland at least

who have an agency, they built their knowledge. They came from agencies. They were working there for like five years, 10 years, and then they suddenly thought, OK, now I'm building my own agency. So they had all that knowledge. Not only the knowledge, but also the connections. Very often, they would keep the same clients they had before in their old agency. I had nothing of that. And I just had the knowledge that if I

keep focusing on what I know and know well, that there will come success. Now, how long does it take for people until it does and does enough? It varies. Maybe if it's too slow, then you have to focus more and find even more niche markets for you to work out well and where you are good in. So never always keep the focus on it. Be prepared to pivot to.

new things.

Aleksandar (31:05.074)
and keeping true to yourself. Maybe that is the answer. If anyone finds some inspiration in that, then I hope that was a good reply to your question.

Roger (31:21.025)
It totally was, and it was definitely very inspirational. And it's something that as a SaaS startup founder ourselves, you have these peaks and you have these thrusts, right? You have these moments where you're, um, where you're, where you're, where you're unable to enjoy a certain milestone or a certain piece of success, because you're always looking past the horizon where you want to be in your goal. And, um, at the same time, you must allow yourself.

to enjoy the little milestones, the little pieces of success that make you look back and say, hey, actually I was here yesterday and I'm here today. And that's something that I've definitely learned from being an agency owner is you get this almost immediate feedback from your customers, right? So it's something that I've carried over from being an agency owner to becoming a product founder is,

like you, we're also very focused on the customer service. But it's almost a personal interest for me, like aside from being able to, you know, create better experiences for people, it's also just being in contact with your customers and making sure that they actually also provide you the feedback that gives you the motivation to keep going. Because actually like a form and a questionnaire doesn't always give you that exact like motivation that you need to carry on.

And that I think is something that I've definitely used in my sort of determination and obviously also the product roadmap and whatnot. I was actually wondering, is there like, since you're always trying to refine the process, is there a certain business challenge that's currently on your mind that I think is something that we would be, you know, we could profit from if you would share it with us.

Aleksandar (33:22.506)
Like we, you mean your business or we the listeners?

Roger (33:28.073)
I would say we the listeners.

Aleksandar (33:32.646)
As I said, I'm looking into hiring new people for the product side and for the agency side. I'm not very actively doing that. I still have to refine what exactly, what profile I need. Is it one profile or many profiles? For instance, what I heard is a PR person is not a marketing person,

two people for that, you know, and I want to save money, you know, I want one for both. So there is a little bit of that I still need to figure out. And finding the right people is certainly a challenge. You have to educate them.

Roger (34:18.317)
That's something that I can, no, it's something that I can definitely speak on is so in our company, we have two commercial co-founders. We've got two technical ones and together we're four co-founders. And on the commercial marketing side, there's, there's me doing the, you could say PR stuff and there's Sebron doing the more technical growth marketing stuff. And we work together really well, but we don't.

Uh, like we couldn't do it all by ourselves. It's, it's definitely a division in not only labor, but also in focus where I'm very much focused on spreading more awareness and making sure that people know about our products, that we give value that we don't immediately re expect something back from, which is just talking to people. Um, like I just made a note that you, that you're looking for someone who does PR and I actually have someone in mind, so I'll connect you to that guy later, those are the, like the little things that help you.

gain a bit of reputation in the ecosystem, because that's, I think, what business is all about. It's actually something that Dutch culture is very much about. There's this word that we can't translate into Dutch, which you could describe as relationship-based business. And that's very much like the PR and awareness stuff, which is making sure that you are a contribution to your market and not only like trying to, you could say,

get the money back. But then on the other hand, once you have that awareness and once you have that brand reputation, you do need to make sure that you can actually monetize that, obviously. And being too focused on PR can sometimes make that disappear into the background a little bit. And then it's important that you have the right funnels and that you have the right tracking and that you have the right landing pages and lead magnets and CTAs in place to...

capitalize on the value that you're adding. And I feel like for me personally, and that's something that as a business owner, I was struggling with as well, is you're trying to give so much to your customers and at the same time, you also need to make them your customers. Right. So yeah, I'd love to be able to tell you that this is something that you can combine in a single person and if you meet that person, please let me know. But it's not something that I've been able to do yet.

Wijnand (36:38.844)
Hahaha

Aleksandar (36:38.894)
Okay.

Roger (36:45.217)
Let's see, let's, I actually want to dive into how you collect data on the product side and how you turn that into a roadmap. Is that something, do you have a certain model for that? Do you collect your feedback in a certain way? Do you, how do you make decisions in that sense? Yeah, sure.

Aleksandar (37:05.728)
Mm-hmm.

Aleksandar (37:09.716)
So on the product side.

I have achieved something that is parity, let's say, like feature parity or almost feature parity to what the competitors do. If I go technically deeper into the product, I think Pixel Manager is my main product, is technically a lot better in many, many ways. It has a lot of fallbacks for.

a lot of features and if it doesn't work on one shop, then there's a lot of fallbacks for other shops. Because WordPress and WooCommerce diversity is big. Every possible way to make it work differently is being taken and so we have to be prepared for all of that in a way, more or less at least. But what I also found out is that

Our customers don't see that too well. You know, from a technical point of view, I would say ours is much better. But you don't see that. So what they see is what they can, all the clicks they can do in small boxes, in the user interface, the more you have, it looks richer. So what I've tried to do.

in the past few months is to add more tracking pixels so that it supports now more than all the other competitors that we have. That's more features. But I'm not sure if that's going really to help, because the main features or tracking pixels are Google and Facebook. And then,

Aleksandar (39:07.598)
There's a few more, but most people just use those. If they now use provider 25 and provider 175, it doesn't make much of a difference, I think. But that is an experiment that I'm running, so we are going to build more of those into the plugin, and we'll see. And then the other thing is how approachable our documentation is.

Until now, I've written a lot of documentation, which is mostly written and with images. But it's become huge, really big, because our plugin is quite complex. It has a lot of things in it. And so that users can use it the right way and get most out of it, there has to be documentation. And what I recently started,

And only because I found a cool tool to do it with it is to also add video explanations. And I found a tool with which I can do this really, really fast and in a really nice way, in a way that, like, visual quality I like. And it doesn't take too much time of my time to create it. So this is something that I'm going to add. And I think when they have more.

videos to watch, then documentation to read. This is going to help as well. So this is another kind of experiment. So the tool is called Screen Studio.

Roger (40:37.517)
So please share, what's the name?

Aleksandar (40:48.03)
Screen Studio, and it simply is a screen recorder in a way, but it has a few nice features. For instance, it automatically focuses to the point of your mouse pointer. So you don't have to add this after you screen recorded everything. You don't have to go through the entire video file and do it manually. There are other tools that can do that, but you have to.

Roger (41:02.746)
Oh, nice. Very helpful.

Wijnand (41:04.178)
It is nice.

Aleksandar (41:15.358)
go into the file and say, from second five to second 10, I won't have a zoom at exactly this point in the screen. And this tool does it for you. You still can adjust it, but a lot of that process is simplified a lot.

Roger (41:31.489)
That's a great tip, man. Um, do you have any other tools that you can share? Because I like, this is, this is my, my main obsession to get better tools to become more productive.

Wijnand (41:33.006)
Yeah, that's a good one. Ha ha ha.

Aleksandar (41:40.734)
Yeah. So one tool that maybe is not for everyone, but in our case, it made a lot of sense is for writing a nice documentation and blog and so on. What I started to like is using Markdown a lot, because Markdown, writing Markdown makes it easy for me not to look at the formatting anymore. So I spent too much time in WordPress to format everything the right way, in a way.

But if you have everything set up and just write in Markdown, everything is formatted for you automatically in the same visual way. And I use now DocuSaurus for it. It's a React platform. And it allows me to write very fast and iterate the documentation very fast and keep the quality high. And it can. Oh, cool.

Wijnand (42:13.802)
Yeah, it's awesome for documentation.

Wijnand (42:29.948)
Can confirm we also use dark users

Aleksandar (42:34.35)
So this is a great platform. And I've write a blog post in Markdown. And if I need, I still can add additional HTML and JavaScript modules in wherever I want in the page. So this is a fantastic combination. So that's one thing, one tip for businesses that have a little bit of a larger documentation. It makes a lot of sense using DocuSours. And then.

What I recently found out is another tool that I like. It's called GetCody.ai. What it is, it is a chatbot, an AI chatbot, which you can place on your website. The cool thing about this is you can feed it with all your documentation. So what you do is you let it crawl over your website, over your documentation website.

And then when you start chatting with it, it gives you relevant information that is written in your documentation. So when I look at chats that have been done in the past few days and weeks of people who were using it, I see a lot of questions that usually would have come to us to support channel.

But now they don't, because they're simple answers. The chatbot easily answers them, sometimes even better than I could. I'm surprised. I'm really surprised how well that works. And they only started, I think, beginning of this year. So this is only going to be better and better over the past, over the next months and years. So I'm really looking forward to those improvements. At the moment, it doesn't.

Roger (44:09.849)
Well, that's great.

Roger (44:24.269)
Can it also go on?

Aleksandar (44:26.302)
At the moment, it doesn't recrawl the website. So yeah, I have to do that manually, but this is a feature that is coming. So.

Roger (44:33.837)
Can it also interpret videos? Because you mentioned you wanted to add videos.

Aleksandar (44:39.003)
I don't know

Roger (44:40.929)
be sick if they could do that.

Wijnand (44:42.436)
Hahaha

Aleksandar (44:42.51)
Well, the thing is, since I write everything in text first, there's always an image. So it has all the information it needs from the texts I write. But yeah, if it could also interpret the video, that would be great.

Roger (44:47.351)
Bye.

Roger (44:59.149)
Interesting. I love that. Go on.

Wijnand (44:59.994)
So, yeah, I was actually curious about the thing you were talking about before, the feature parity and how it's hard to convince people that your product's actually better, even though you get the same clicks and checkboxes and input fields. Because we sort of have that same problem at Wildcloud, right, what it looks like is you get WordPress and you can get WordPress at any other hosting.

So how do you explain what is better? If we can't really show you like what's under the hood, right? And a little sort of thing I've been thinking about the last couple of weeks, because I've been looking at cars. I've been looking at buying a car. And one thing that I noticed about cars is they sort of have that same problem. They sort of also have that idea of

There's all of this stuff happening, but in the end, you're just sitting there with a big wheel in front of you. And, you know, the point is drive and try not to crash. But there's so much happening behind the dashboard and under the under the under the hood, like in the actual engine. Right. So I was thinking, like, what do car manufacturers do to show that this vehicle is special because there's like, I don't know, a special type of injection in it or a special type of break or whatever. Right.

Um, and it turns out they just sort of say it everywhere, like everywhere, right? If there's a special thing with, for example, airbags in the, in the, uh, in the doors, then that door is just going to say airbags like everywhere. Right. And I was thinking, would that also work in software? Like, what do you think? Would it, would it work if, because you say like the fallback mechanism is what makes your product special, right? Like you. And that.

Aleksandar (46:31.383)
Mm-hmm.

Wijnand (46:55.834)
means a sort of freedom for people that they can actually also fall back on other pieces of software to do the same thing. Do you think it would just help to just say that? Just say like, yeah, these are the same checks, these are the same boxes, but we have this.

Aleksandar (47:14.202)
There are two viewpoints. One is when you have not just five features, but like 100. So which one are you going to talk about? Are you going to talk about all of them? So you can. When you have like 100 videos you have to create, 100 pages you have to create. And then suddenly there's a lot of noise. People don't know really what to look at and what to look for. On the other side.

and you decide to talk about mostly about five features, then are those the features that people are mostly looking at? So I think maybe it's a combination, so you have to find out the five most important ones of those 100, and first talk about them and mostly, but also talk about the other 95, for sure. So it's a combination, and again, you know,

prioritize if you don't have the time and resources to do all at once. And you don't know which are the five most important ones. You just guess, and you learn. And that's essentially what I'm doing now that I have a large documentation. I started now additionally to create those videos because I believe this will help to some extent, at least. I like it also to have those videos a lot. I personally like it more to be able to do

to watch those, although I don't like listening to my voice. It still, it feels like it's more approachable for more people who we are in a different, you know, I grew up in a time where we didn't have YouTube videos to explain how to do things. So we had to read the manual. So it was, I still read the manual, but if it's like 10 pages today, I wouldn't read it anymore. I just Google if I find something on YouTube.

So this is really the way to go. We have to have a video for sure.

Wijnand (49:17.374)
It's a different era in that sense. Like I'll either want to have a stack overflow answer that is super short and super to the point, or a video that I can put up maybe also in the background and just sort of scan it as a word, see if I actually get the answer to my question. And I'm like, when you're talking about length also, like suddenly, because I also remember times where the things I wanted to do were not really on YouTube.

Aleksandar (49:31.572)
Mm-hmm.

Roger (49:35.257)
Before we, uh...

Wijnand (49:46.55)
like the pieces of tech that I wanted to use were not really on YouTube yet and I Was I was back then I was also honestly not really willing to read like ten pages of documentation But somehow I am willing to watch a video. That's like an hour long

Roger (50:02.649)
Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe

Aleksandar (50:05.065)
Yeah, I see. I got to. Same here.

Roger (50:08.193)
Hey, Wendel, you have me curious though. Um, like where do you stand right now on the whole car and promoting the stuff that makes you special in software thing? Like where do you stand? What's your

Wijnand (50:21.646)
Well, so I mean, in that sense, the in that sense, cars seem to car manufacturers seem to like in their in their general messaging, they go for exactly what you said, Alexander, they go for the for the main aspects. So that is basically, you know, if it's a if it's a if it's a Honda fit or something like that, then they go for this is a very safe and reliable car.

And if it's a bit faster thing, then they go for raw horsepower on the wheel. But then they sort of funnel it in, as it were. That's actually a wrong term, probably. So what they seem to do is, with everything, every action that you perform within that car, they explain to you why this specific action is actually special. They start going into this whole...

You see like this little logo there when you do X. And that means that this car actually has this great new technology. And I think that sort of. It doesn't necessarily mean that the driver that the user is going to get why this car is special, but they are going to get that this car is special. And I think that's a big thing there that, that car manufacturers sort of have the luxury of explaining the magic of an engine.

by just explaining that it's magic. Ha ha ha.

Aleksandar (51:50.654)
Yeah, I remember that they counted once how often...

Aleksandar (51:59.819)
in the Apple iPhone presentations, how often they mentioned the word awesome.

Roger (52:07.993)
Heh. Heh heh heh.

Wijnand (52:09.591)
Right?

Aleksandar (52:09.61)
And now this awesome feature and now that awesome feature. And this is awesome. So I have you repeat it so many times. It sticks in a way.

Wijnand (52:18.826)
It really does. And if you can also make it in such a way that you can just, that you don't have to understand it any further than awesome, then I think that's probably the path you want to take there, right? What I mean by that is if you don't need to explain any further why a functionality works in order to be able to work with it. For example, an airbag or a

you know, a door that opens on its own, stuff like that. If you don't have to explain any further, like technically how to actually deal with it, then you can just call it awesome. And people are like, yeah, it's awesome because it's a door and it opens all the time. It's awesome. And then I think then you can actually use that little sort of quirk of probably human nature where you just call something awesome and magic and then people say like, yes.

Hahahaha

Aleksandar (53:17.282)
When you have a presentation and you're presenting 10 features, maybe some are easy to understand, and people understand, yes, this is awesome. And then there maybe are some features which are technically more difficult to understand. And when you still tell them it's awesome, they are going to conclude, well, the other things also were awesome, so this must be also awesome. Yeah.

Wijnand (53:38.568)
By extension, yeah. For sure.

Roger (53:40.969)
It's interesting. We're entering into the realm of product design. And I feel like we're definitely on the verge of talking about usability almost, because if it's easy to use and if it's sticky, then you can call it awesome. And if it's something that where the added value is not immediately apparent and you keep calling it awesome, that people are going to be, I think even put off because they're like, okay, I'm sure it's awesome, but I can't use it. It's very hard for me. So, I mean, you were making the comparison with a door just now. I mean, the door just opened.

Right? Like, there's really nothing much more to it. But then there are definitely features in my car. Like, for example, I can never figure out how to blow the air into the screen when the windshield is fogged up. I'm always trying to figure out which one of the settings it is. And I would hate it if they called it awesome, just the way it is today. But if they did make it into a single button, and it just works, and it would always unfog my windshield,

For sure, that would be an awesome feature. So it definitely depends on how easy it is and how well it actually works once you press this single button. And I think going back even further to the notion of the airbag, it says airbag, but it doesn't really serve much more of a purpose than to let you know that you're in a safe car. For example, just knowing that there's an airbag in your door.

won't help you at all when you do get into an accident in the sense of being able to prepare for it, like leaning more towards it, because you're not gonna do that. The whole idea is it's gonna work for you no matter what you do, no matter how hard the crash, it's going to work at that moment. So just be safe or rather be comfortable because we've got you, because it says right here. I think that's, it's a very good comparison. I mean, cars are definitely one of the, you know, most well-researched and most

Wijnand (55:26.386)
Exactly, exactly.

Roger (55:36.085)
well-developed products that anybody can have. I mean, for some people, the most expensive things they'll ever buy other than a house, if they can get a house in these economic times. So yeah, no, I think there's a lot of effort that goes into designing the product well. But come to speak of it, I would definitely appreciate a button that just unfogs the windshield. Like, right? That would work for me.

Wijnand (55:58.386)
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah

Roger (56:04.693)
All right, well, on that note, I think it's almost time to wrap up. But actually I would love to wrap up Alex with, if you want to at least, like a quick few second pitch of what your product is, or rather the one product you want to promote, because we've been speaking about it and I'd love to include, I'd love to end with a bit of a pitch on why people should use your product.

Aleksandar (56:04.854)
Sometimes, yeah.

Aleksandar (56:32.206)
OK, so I would pitch the Pixel Manager. It's a suite code Pixel Manager for WooCommerce. It's a plugin that helps you install all those tracking scripts that help you track visitors and conversions, Google, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, and so on. And

Why this is better than using others is, I would say, the opportunity cost is the smallest. It has so many cool features that help get most out of those campaigns for you. It has a lot of advanced features that other similar plugins don't have, which

Aleksandar (57:25.73)
When you compare the cost of the subscription for the Pixel Manager and how much you can get out of it through running campaigns more successfully, it's worth every cent. And that's what we do, we optimize for value.

Roger (57:40.969)
I loved it, especially since you mentioned opportunity costs, because I already see a next podcast in a while taking place because I want to zero in on what you just, like how you see that and how people can leverage that in their marketing. But let's end it here. Why don't you've got anything to add?

Wijnand (58:01.734)
Try Wildcloud. It's awesome. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Think about that button maybe. Exactly, exactly.

Roger (58:06.706)
And car manufacturers, think about that button.

Roger (58:12.713)
All right, cool. Well, thanks a lot, everybody. Let me just end it right there. Thanks.

Aleksandar (58:16.802)
Thank you, Roger. Thank you, Reinend.

Wijnand (58:18.886)
Thank you.