#52 | A Whole New LaunchBay: Company and Product Update

Co-founder Sam Chlebowski provides an insider look at what's happened at LaunchBay over the last two months. Sam explains what the team has learned since publicly launching LaunchBay at the beginning of September, the powerful new features they've added to the product since then, and details some exciting internal company updates.

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A Whole New LaunchBay: Company & Product Update | Designing Growth #52

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[00:00:00] ​Intro Music Plays

[00:00:09] Sam Chlebowski:Happy Thursday, everybody. And welcome back to designing growth. Sam Chlebowskihere, host of this podcast and Co-founder of LaunchBay. Joining you again foranother episode. I have had the immense pleasure of having some awesome guestson over the last couple of weeks, our last episode 51 with system strategistCait Potter is a really great one if you are a business owner – or even asystem strategist of your own using things like automation and building systemsand processes to help you scale and grow your business. And then the episodebefore that episode, number 50 – as a side note, I can't believe that I've done52 episodes now after this comes out.

[00:00:52] Sam Chlebowski:But anyways, that episode is a really great one for anybody who does marketingin any capacity. If you are working as a part of a marketing team, or if youare a business owner looking for new ways to attract clients and grow on thatepisode, we talked a lot about newsletter strategy and social media, how it'schanged, all that stuff.

[00:01:13] Sam Chlebowski:So if you haven't listened, highly recommend you go back and check that out. Onthis episode, I'm going to be joining you solo to talk a little bit aboutwhat's been going on here at Launchbay and give you a nice little insider viewof what we've been up to over the past couple of weeks. The last time I didthis, I believe, was back at the beginning of August.

[00:01:33] Sam Chlebowski:I think that was episode number 46. And I talked a little bit about my rolehere at Launchbay. But for this episode, I want to give you some productupdates and really cool stuff we've been working on, as well as just zoom outand help you get the whole picture of like, what is our team working on?

[00:01:50] Sam Chlebowski:How are we doing this? How are we building this product? How are we trying togrow this company? So we're going to get into all of that. This.

[00:01:56] Sam Chlebowski:September was a very, very exciting month [00:02:00] for us because one of thegreat things that happened is our CTO, our chief technology officer, and theone who is actually building Launchbay, doing the coding. Zach came on fulltime and he's been full time for just over about two weeks now. This is reallyexciting for us because Zach had been working on Launchbay.

[00:02:19] Sam Chlebowski:io kind of like a nights and weekend type of thing whenever he could. And sincecoming on full time, the pace of the new features that we've been adding to Launchbayand the new things that we are releasing, it has just taken off. And it's beenreally, really exciting to be able to push all of these new updates out toeverybody.

[00:02:38] Sam Chlebowski:And I'm going to talk about those updates in a little bit.

[00:02:40] Sam Chlebowski:Another exciting update from our team at launchbay is we are getting an officeand we move into that office next week. We have been totally remote, the threeof us the past year working on Slack, meeting up in person when we can, butprimarily day to day we have been virtual. Uh, so we've got an office andthat's really exciting.

[00:03:02] Sam Chlebowski:It has been now. Oh gosh. Almost three and a half years coming up on four yearssince I've even stepped foot in an office because at the beginning of 2020,everything started to shut down.

[00:03:16] Sam Chlebowski:And then after that, I went to go work at two different places that were allremote. So it's been a long time for me since I've even had a office to go to,and it's really exciting. to be able to hang out, talk, product, talk. Whatwe're seeing is going to be, I think, really beneficial to our team.

[00:03:32] Sam Chlebowski:So we're all really excited about that.

[00:03:35] Sam Chlebowski:Another exciting thing, and this is where I'll segue back into kind of what'sgoing on with the LaunchBay product is that we are getting a ton of new peopleIO, talking to us, sharing their experiences, sharing their feedback and.Signing up to become paying customers of launchbay dot I O.

[00:03:52] Sam Chlebowski:Along with that, it's leading us to some realizations and some importantfeatures that we've decided [00:04:00] to build since Speaking with people andhaving them use launchbay is a critical part of their business to provide thisvery professional, very organized client portal that not only makes life easyfor clients and provides that premium client experience, but also makes lifereally easy for business owners and io because it streamlines yourcommunication.

[00:04:23] Sam Chlebowski:Allows you to have one place where all of your clients files, all of the tasks,all of the messages that you're sharing with each other's throughout projectscan live and is super accessible. 

[00:04:34] Sam Chlebowski:You can find everything right away and have easy access to that. Speaking ofcommunication, one of the big things that by the time that this episodereleases should be live on launchbay is Chat. In addition to being able tocommunicate with clients through tasks that you send them, you'll now be ableto have a dedicated chat messenger within all of your client portals.

[00:04:55] Sam Chlebowski:And anybody who is invited to a portal, whether that be clients or teammembers, is going to be able to communicate through And this is a really bigstep for us to Deliver on an even bigger feature which is offering more optionsfor recurring work and help desk style exchanges right now.

[00:05:13] Sam Chlebowski:A lot of what launchbay is really great for is. You're working on a project,whether it be a website, a brand redesign, it could even be things like PR. Wehave a company who is using us to do, press releases and social mediamanagement for the clients that they manage. but it works really great forthat.

[00:05:30] Sam Chlebowski:One of the places where We have gotten a lot of requests to build some morefunctionality is, Hey, what happens after I build this thing or design thisthing for a client? And they want to have me update it. our chat feature isreally the first step to making that a reality, and it's going to become morerobust over time. So that's super exciting. That should be out by the time thispodcast episode is released.

[00:05:53] Sam Chlebowski:We've been testing it all day today. Aside from that new feature, major partsof the launchbay. [00:06:00] io product itself have gotten complete overhauls.

[00:06:02] Sam Chlebowski:One of those things is a redesign of the client portals themselves.

[00:06:07] Sam Chlebowski:If you use LaunchBay, you're subscribed to our newsletter, you're familiar withthe product at all. You know that one of the most powerful features of launchbayis you're able to connect hundreds of different apps by embedding them in theseintegration tabs where you can embed them directly in your client's portals sothey can access all of the tools that your business uses without having to jumparound to different links or keep track of all of these different softwares.They can access everything right there through their launchbay.

[00:06:36] Sam Chlebowski:io client portals.

[00:06:38] Sam Chlebowski:What we started seeing is that people would connect a lot of things withinthese portals. And if you had a ton of them, it made the organization a littlebit funky. We have redesigned the client facing portals themselves. So insteadof having a list of tabs, Running horizontally across the client portals, thoseare now in a vertical sidebar, 

[00:06:59] Sam Chlebowski:this is really helpful because before the way that our portals work, it was alittle bit disconnected. For example, like previously as a client, if you had atask to schedule a time, you had to kind of navigate away from that task to goto that separate tab where a calendar was embedded. . Now, a client can seethat they have to schedule a time to speak with you 

[00:07:19] Sam Chlebowski:and while they are scheduling that time, quickly reference that task that theyneed to complete. big updates that you might have missed a while back that weremassive requests. Users the ability to add multiple people to tasks.

[00:07:32] Sam Chlebowski:You can now assign as many folks as you'd like to a task and give them allaccess to that. And you can also create multiple portals for your clients. Sofor example, if you have a brand redesign project that has a couple ofcomponents, let's say there is a website redesign component in there, a,

[00:07:49] Sam Chlebowski:Brand strategy component in there And then a official launch for the new brand.You could have three separate portals and your client can now quickly togglebetween them. So [00:08:00] that's really helpful when you want to kind ofcompartmentalize the different things that you're working on. So your clientdoesn't get overwhelmed or confused by just one massive list of everythingrelated to this project when it's really like three smaller projects.

[00:08:13] Sam Chlebowski:of the final feature that I will mention that we've added that is probablyhelpful to know about is the ability to share portal links with clients.

[00:08:21] Sam Chlebowski:For a quick refresher, Launchbay's client portals are completely login less foryour clients to use. That means they don't have to create an account. Theynever have to log in or you never have to worry about them remembering apassword. This was something that we did really early on. I think the veryfirst version of Launchbay.

[00:08:38] Sam Chlebowski:io that we launched had this magic link technology.

[00:08:41] Sam Chlebowski:Because we heard again and again clients don't want to log into a tool thatthey perceive as another tool. That was a big part of the reason why we addedcustom branding so you can upload your logo.

[00:08:52] Sam Chlebowski:You can customize your portals to reflect your brand identity. But moreimportantly than that, as it relates to why we did this magic link thing in thefirst place, is that clients don't like logging in or creating accounts onother pieces of software. So we've had this technology for a while now thatbasically allows you to just enter a client's email and it sends them an emailwith a link to their portals.

[00:09:15] Sam Chlebowski:But one of the things that we had requested is, Hey, you know, sometimes myclients don't use email. Sometimes Facebook Messenger or text. Is there a waythat I can send them the link to their portal? And now in launchbay, you can't,So all you have to do to send a link to a client now is go into the users tabwithin a portal and click the button with a little link on it. And you can sendthat magic link to your clients. However you'd like.

[00:09:42] Sam Chlebowski:Making it quick and easy if you use a different communication platform outsideof email, or if clients simply lose track of emails, because let's face it,despite our best efforts that happens all the time, I don't think it matterswhat type of business you're in, what type of industry, inevitably [00:10:00]emails will get lost or things will go unread, and this ability to share portallinks with your clients is a nice way around that when that does happen.

[00:10:08] Sam Chlebowski:Aside from those product updates, one of the things that I know that our teamhas found really exciting. And honestly, I think the best part of building thisproduct is finding out all of the different ways that people are using it, butalso the things that they're using it for. And oftentimes it's ways that wedon't expect.

[00:10:27] Sam Chlebowski:My co founder Perry, who's been on this podcast a handful of times, It'sprimarily the one who demos Launchbay for people. So if somebody comes inasking for a demo or if anybody listening in the audience out there wants ademo, it'll probably be Perry that you speak with.

[00:10:42] Sam Chlebowski:And he runs that sort of sales side of the business. Well, I am primarily onthe marketing side and Zach is developing the app.

[00:10:51] Sam Chlebowski:One of the big things that I've seen a ton of value in over my course ofworking in a couple startups whether that is you as an owner or a full team ofdedicated salespeople managing that process when there is synergy between whatyou can also do on a marketing side.

[00:11:06] Sam Chlebowski:And we saw a really great example of that this week. We had someone come inasking how to use Launchbay in their sales process. And Perry had asked melike, Hey, could you think you could make a portal example for what it wouldlook like to maybe run a sales process through Launchbay? And I said, yeah,let's give it a shot.

[00:11:27] Sam Chlebowski:I haven't done that yet. Most of the ways that we'd use launchbay were foronboarding. Basically once a client has already fully committed to work with abusiness, but I said, you know, let's take a, let's take a stab at it. Let'ssee how it works. And what we did is we worked together to build this clientportal example that has a couple of steps.

[00:11:47] Sam Chlebowski:It is a proposal that's embedded directly into launchbay.

[00:11:51] Sam Chlebowski:A contract And then finally, a invoice for them to pay as well as a calendarfor them to schedule a call. So what we did to [00:12:00] create this examplesales template that could be reused with this user that we were talking to.

[00:12:05] Sam Chlebowski:Is we created then a to do list in launchbay dot I O.

[00:12:09] Sam Chlebowski:So if this company brought in a new sales prospect, they would be able to checkoff to dues of view and sign their proposal, sign the contract, make thepayment, schedule your kickoff call. And all of those to do's were linked tothese custom integration tabs that we put in Launchbay and all of these thingsare kind of working in harmony. But what's great about that is the salesprospect. You want to remove as much friction as you possibly can there. And Ifelt that launchbay did a wonderful job at accomplishing that because now thisrepeatable sales process can be used for any new prospect that's brought in andany new sales prospects that now come in, they don't have to jump between,okay, I got to go here to this proposal software to view and sign thisproposal. Then I got to click this link, go into the contract Here to go paythis first invoice here to schedule my kickoff call.

[00:13:00] Sam Chlebowski:No, it's all right there in their portal. They don't have to go digging throughtheir emails and they can clearly see what they've completed and what theyhaven't. And I think even more powerful with the way that I look at it is theseare all external tools and each one is being used for a different Purpose, butit all works in harmony directly within launchbay.

[00:13:20] Sam Chlebowski:io. So that was exciting to see. And I feel like we're stumbling upon new usecases and even new types of business that are using launchbay every day.

[00:13:30] Sam Chlebowski:even outside of the creative space, designers, web developers, digital adagencies.

[00:13:36] Sam Chlebowski:We've had people start using Launchbay who work in things like insurance, andthat's been super, super interesting for us.

[00:13:43] Sam Chlebowski:Our primary focus right now and kind of where we started this product wassupporting creative agencies or creative businesses. And that's where all threeof our collective backgrounds are. But I think that that speaks to theflexibility of launchbay is that it can not only slide in seamlessly [00:14:00]two different businesses within the same industry, but can also work in otherindustries outside of that.

[00:14:05] Sam Chlebowski:And I will admit that that can be something that's challenging sometimesbecause it can be tough to build messaging around that and have this very laserfocused vision of who you want to target through your messaging and yourmarketing content.

[00:14:19] Sam Chlebowski:When you've seen your product can work with all of these different types ofpeople.

[00:14:24] Sam Chlebowski:And I realized that I probably even sound like a little bit of a hypocritebecause I put out a YouTube video based on my experiences working in a webdesign agency of the top tips for getting clients, and I broke it down into,you know, here's what you do in your first month. Here's what you do in monthstwo and three.

[00:14:42] Sam Chlebowski:Here's what you do in months for up to your first year. One of the big piecesof advice I gave on that was like find a niche. It's tempting to be everythingto everybody, but don't. And it's just so funny how that stuff comes backbecause it's like now I look at it and io working with all of these types ofbusinesses.

[00:15:00] Sam Chlebowski:It makes me say like, well, do we have to niche down? Do we have to find thatspecific segment?

[00:15:06] Sam Chlebowski:So it's something we've been thinking about a lot and talking about a lot.

[00:15:10] Sam Chlebowski:But at the end of the day, we want anybody who we want anybody who is lookingfor a central hub for all of their client communication files.

[00:15:20] Sam Chlebowski:Tasks and third-party software can live and we just want to learn from you. Wewant to learn what's working, what's not, what we need to add to get even morevalue out of that. And I think that the more of those conversations that we canhave from the wider number of businesses and industries, the better it's goingto equip us 

[00:15:38] Sam Chlebowski:to build the best piece of software that we possibly can.

[00:15:41] Sam Chlebowski:So with that, if you haven't tried out LaunchBay yet – head to our website,sign up for a free account. Just click the button. Try it for free. It'splastered all over our website. And let us know what you think. Schedule a callwith us. Have us walk you through things. 

[00:15:55] Sam Chlebowski:We'll even build you a portal template because we do have portal [00:16:00]templates now as well, where you can create one portal and then quicklyduplicate it and reuse it for as many clients as you'd like. We'll set it upfor you. If you're willing to spend 15, 20 minutes with us telling us aboutyour business and what you need to succeed and develop these scalable processesthat are going to help you grow, help you save time, help you delight eachclient.[00:16:21]

Sam Chlebowski:With that – Sam Chlebowski Signing off of this episode of Designing Growth.Hope you enjoyed this kind of peak behind the curtain at LaunchBay and we'll beback with another episode next week. Until then, everybody have fun, good luck,and go crush it. Bye bye.

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