LaunchBay's Big Pivot (Formerly Motion.io)

Overview:

Following a month-long hiatus, Designing Growth is back in full force and publishing new weekly episodes. In this episode, Co-Founders Sam Chlebowski and Perry Rosenbloom sit down to explain the reason for the hiatus, the decision to completely overhaul the LaunchBay product, and detail exciting new features currently available and coming soon to LaunchBay

Resources from Episode 31:

• Listen on Spotify
• Listen on Apple Music
• Try LaunchBay for Free

Episode Transcript:

[00:00:00] Sam Chlebowski:Happy Thursday everybody, and welcome back to Designing Growth. As you may havenoticed, if you've been tuning into this podcast every week, we've been on abit of a hiatus the last month, and I will get to that in a second and kind ofexplain what we've been up to, what's going on with launchbay, and a little bitabout how we are.

[00:00:18] I'mdoing a slight change of direction with this podcast, not a major one, butfirst I am very excited to have my friend, my co-founder, Perry Rosenbloom,back on the show with us. Perry, how you doing?

[00:00:31] Perry Rosenbloom:I'm doing good, man. I think this is the first episode we're recording when I'mactually in my house. I'm still holding the mic up, so for everybody who'sseeing the videos and giving a few chuckles at me -- I'm still holding that upcause I don't have a boom or anything like you do.

[00:00:48]But, uh, you we are recording this and we are both in our home offices asopposed to where I had been like on the road for, I don't know, like fivemonths or so, uh, when we were recording last and super excited to, to letfolks know what we've been up to and some of these changes we're making.

[00:01:04]Feel like it's gonna be really, really valuable for y'all. So let's dive intoit. Huh?

[00:01:07] Sam Chlebowski:the Rosenblum family tour has concluded. Perry is back in his house. I probablylook a lot different. I cut off all of my hair and also had a baby, since Irecorded the last episode because I've recorded a bunch before I went away buthe's almost three months now and things are going good.

[00:01:21] Perry Rosenbloom:Sam, we gotta shine the lights a little brighter. We don't see the bags underyour eyes anymore.

[00:01:25] Sam Chlebowski:I was thankful to have missed the real heavy bags under the eyes period ofrecording new episodes, cuz I had so many done in advance. if I do turn up thebrightness a little bit, you would see those. so I wanted to get into it herewith you. It is a slight changing direction for this podcast, but I think it'sactually a pretty significant new direction for the launchbay product itself.

[00:01:47] andlet's just get into that. Perry, if I could ask you first, and I'll give mytake too, but I wanna talk a little bit about the problems. The first versionof launchbay, the one that we had talked about on this podcast previously, whatwe had built, what were some of the things that we saw that led us into thispivot, and we'll explain that in a bit.

[00:02:08] Perry Rosenbloom:Yeah, so you know, from my perspective, what we saw was that. People were usingLaunchbay in its first iteration as an effective onboarding tool and askingtheir clients to do things, and then it kind of just became a checklist oftasks for the owner of the project. And that whole checklist of tasks became amajor hurdle to actually using the product and all the value that people wereseeing was in the requesting a client to do something, requesting a client toupload something.

[00:02:45] Toprovide feedback on something, to make a decision on something. to write areview, so we saw all of the value people were getting out of it was in thiskind of like requesting of stuff and all of the hurdles to using it. Waseverything else we had built. Would you say that's pretty accurate, Sam?

[00:03:05] Sam Chlebowski:I would say that was spot on. I honestly wouldn't change a single thing withthe way that you put that We had built this project management solution, and Iguess this is the one thing that I would add, but the problem was, it wasanother project management solution. There were parts of it that took away fromthe aspects of Launchbay where people really were getting that value.

It was an easyway to get things from clients, to build a checklist of tasks and requests andaction items for clients and all the other project management stuff Ultimatelyended up getting the way, because everybody has a slightly different way thatthey use.

[00:03:39]Project management tools and to upend that and force somebody to use a new one,just to get value out of the parts of launchbay where they were getting valueis a big hurdle and ultimately made us wanna revisit kind of what we had builtso far.

[00:03:54] Perry Rosenbloom:So what did we revisit and what did we rebuild? Like what? What is Launchbaytoday, Sam?

[00:03:59] Sam Chlebowski:Absolutely. So Launchbay and where we really saw that, that people were gettingvalue out of it was that specific. Piece of a project and working with a clientwhere there are things that you need from a client throughout that project.There are no project management tools out there that facilitate thatinteraction and make it really easy for a client to do things like providedocuments, like to fill out an onboarding.

[00:04:27]provide feedback on a design, make a payment, give their signature. There areall of these things that clients need to do, and they're probably more than youactually sometimes realize, taking up a ton of time within your day between allof the follow-ups, all of the customizing emails, and.

[00:04:42]Writing up those emails to send them to clients, to hopping on a call when theydon't understand how to provide something, it can be a huge time suck. And wesaw a big opportunity with launchbay to really. Dig into that piece and makethe most effective possible tool to help you get the things that you need fromclients.

[00:05:02]ultimately gonna result in number one, happier clients, but also a morescalable and sustainable business where you are not buried in one task afteranother. And you can focus on providing that best client experience possibleand also other growth initiatives related to your business.

[00:05:19] Perry Rosenbloom:So if we're to kinda like summarize what we are today for folks, we've done alot of work on this internally, and I, I know this isn't the exact language wehave all decided on. We're still working. I'm gonna go ahead and give mysummary of it that, uh, I was just talking to chat g p t about, to kind of helpme understand, how an AI system would think of it.

[00:05:41] So,launchbay today is a secure platform that enables small businesses to easilyrequest track and collect documents, decisions, files, and feedback from theirclients in an automated and organized manner within seconds of signing. You cancreate a request. Request that file, request that decision, request them tofill out a form, send it off to your client.

[00:06:09]They'll get access to a client portal where they'll see that request, as wellas any other requests you have for them. And launchbay will automaticallyfollow up with your client until they complete the request, and we'll all livein a nice organized location for you to be able to access all. decisions.

[00:06:26] Allthose documents, all those files, all that feedback.

[00:06:30] Sam Chlebowski:Man, ChatGPT went off there.

[00:06:33] Perry Rosenbloom:that was me speaking of the ChatGPT there, that was our language there, man.

[00:06:37] Sam Chlebowski:Did ChatGPT give you the first part of that though?

[00:06:39] Perry Rosenbloom:No, dude. That was prompt.

[00:06:41] Sam Chlebowski:That, was all. Okay.

[00:06:42] Perry Rosenbloom:that was all my prompt, but you should check out Slack. you must have missedthat. I like posted it right before we started recording. Nah, dude, that wasmy prompt. you know, ChatGPT was able to take that and kind of expand, on itfrom whom would benefit from it.

[00:06:54]here, I'll tell you what ChatGPT said so I gave ChatGPT that description, andthen I said, so tell me what types of businesses would benefit most from thistype of tool? And here's what ChatGPT said launchbay DAO could be beneficialfor any type of small or medium size business that regularly requiresdocuments, decisions, feedback, or forms from their.

[00:07:16]However, it could be particularly useful for businesses that have a largevolume of clients, a need to keep track of multiple requests simultaneously.Examples of such businesses could include marketing agencies, virtualassistance, accounting, or legal firms, insurance agencies, and real estate.

[00:07:36]Additionally, any business that wants to streamline their workflow and automatetheir processes could benefit from using launchbay.

[00:07:43] Sam Chlebowski:The AI did a good job.

[00:07:47] Sam Chlebowski:You did an even better job with the first part of that, with the prompt itself.

[00:07:51] Perry Rosenbloom:That's a secret to ChatGPT, right? You gotta prompt it right.

[00:07:55] Sam Chlebowski:I love it. I love it. what ChatGPT actually spit out is a good opportunity forme to just talk real quick, 30 seconds about what we're doing with thispodcast. So this started as a podcast that was specifically focused on designbusinesses, brand and web designers, you know, brand strategists.

[00:08:12] Andwe're still gonna be talking about those things. Still gonna be speaking. Thosebus types of business owners, but we are gonna expand on that slightly. Andwhat we're turning this podcast into is really just a broader concept. That'sall types of small business owners, entrepreneurs who are out there in theworld growing and want tips and want advice from other business owners.

[00:08:35] Sojust a little tiny pivot there, and not necessarily as big as launchbay aospivot. I wanted to then talk about Perry, the things that we have launched inthe last month since deciding to go this new direction, with launchbay dot.

[00:08:50] Perry Rosenbloom:Yeah, totally. And a major shout out to our CTO here who in the span of a monthcompletely reconfigured launchbay do IO ripped out all the stuff that wascausing people headaches and relaunched it, to folks

[00:09:03] Sam Chlebowski:I don't know when he has time to sleep because it's like, we'll come in in themorning be like, oh, by the way, I have this new thing ready for QA. And thenlater that day he's like, this is ready for prod. we can publish it now. Areyou guys ready? And we're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

[00:09:15]Holy cow.

[00:09:16] Perry Rosenbloom:let's ship it. Let's ship. Go, go, go. All right, so let, let's outline what wegot right now, right.

[00:09:20] Sam Chlebowski:Yep, let's go. So since deciding to do this pivot with Launchbay ao, the firstthing that we wanted to do, and it wasn't really the perfect step for us, butit's what we had and what we could launch this client request tool with was ourvisual feedback. The tool. So that existed in the project management version oflaunchbay, but not in a way that was particularly streamlined and easy to use.

[00:09:44] Soour first step was we pulled that out it takes. 10 seconds for you to send adesign, a mockup, anything you want to a client and have them leave feedbackfor you. And then it automates the follow ups, cuz that was a part that wasmissing from the PM version of launchbay initially, was those automated emailreminders.

[00:10:03] Soyou didn't have to be chasing down clients to get that feedback from them.

[00:10:07] Perry Rosenbloom:Another thing that we've released in this version is content requests. So ifyou have a client and you need to gather, Are files from them. Let's say youneed them to upload their brand guidelines, or you need them to upload theirbank statements. If you're doing bookkeeping for them, you can make thatrequest and your client will see that request.

[00:10:26] Youcan write a custom message for them. They're able to upload their documents.Mark it as complete, and you are notified immediately that you now have thosedocuments you need to keep pushing that project forward.

[00:10:37] Sam Chlebowski:And I think that the content request is a really good example. Of the power of launchbayand what it can do for your business. Because on the surface you may be sayinglike, oh, a content request, all I have to do is email a client. They attach afile and send it back. But what makes launchbay so great and what makes itfaster than trying to do this by email is number one, the UPS are all automatedfor you based on the due date that you set for that client.

[00:11:05] Soyou don't have to worry about that. And then the second part, With launchbay,you can provide additional instructions for things that you want them toupload. They can upload from their Google Drive account. They can upload via alink. They can even, uh, with our recent update, upload from their phones photolibrary or their phone's file library.

[00:11:24] andfinally, It uses a magic link to send this request so your client doesn't haveto log into some file management portal. They just click that link in theiremail. They're pulled into the content request, and they can begin, providingyou those things that you need.

[00:11:38] Perry Rosenbloom:Another element that that makes us better than email for small businesses isyou're not gonna get lost in an email thread and then have to click through andsearch and try and find the right, communication for every single request. launchbayhas a chat box where you or your. Can write a message to each other and you areautomatically notified of that message and can reply to it.

[00:12:05] Andso everything stays as opposed to this threaded email conversation that youmight have to click through 30 threads and 30 different emails, opening andclosing them all to find the right message. It all lives in the sidebar of thatspecific request. So if you're requesting bank statements, for example, you andyour client are able to communicate about those bank statements, right?

[00:12:26] Inthat request, and you are able to understand that it's associated with thisrequest, so it makes it a lot more streamlined from a communicationsperspective as well.

[00:12:34] Sam Chlebowski:That's a fantastic point, Perry, and something I actually hadn't fullyconceptualized until now. But looking back, it was a huge problem for us atBrighter Vision, especially when we were building 200 websites for clients in amonth. Things were getting lost. All the time via email, especially things likefiles and feedback, which are things that you can do right now, uh, within launchbay.So with that, we have some really exciting updates that are like just over thehorizon this week, and I wanted to drill into those.

[00:13:06]Actually like 30 minutes before recording this episode. published the clientportal, within launchbay io, and then we're just days away from releasing avery powerful form builder to do things like onboarding forms.

[00:13:18] Butbecause we just released this client portal Perry, could you share a little bitmore about that and what that will allow people to?

[00:13:25] Perry Rosenbloom:Yeah, so if you're working with. And you're onboarding them and you have abunch of things that you need from them. Let's say you have brand guidelines,you need 'em to fill out an onboarding form. You need them to, you know, make apayment. We don't have that yet, but that will be there soon.

[00:13:39] youmight need them to. make selection on colors. all these things can kind of beorganized in, this one section. And so if you're sending these requests to theclient, they need a way to see all of them. And so the client portal is a wayfor, for your clients to see all of the requests that are.

[00:13:56]Pending that they need to complete, and so they're able to go from one requestinto the other as well as for them to see all of the requests that have beencompleted from there as well, from from your perspective as as a businessowner, you're able to preview that client portal so you're able to, to see whatyour client is seeing.

[00:14:14] Andbe able to easily, understand and be able to easily reference, you know, thoseconversations, be able to collect those files after they've been uploaded,collect the form data after it's been filled out, and it's all gonna live inone really clean, really simple client portal area.

[00:14:31] Sam Chlebowski:And I think the coolest thing for me personally with the client portal, becauseclient portals in the in and of themselves are not really anything new, but. launchbaydoes that I think really changes the game in terms of client portals is it doesall of this for you. It assembles all of these tasks into a very simple, cleandashboard where that client can see, here's the things that I need to do withthe due date.

[00:14:55]Here are the things I've already completed, and then a message will pop up whenthere's nothing left for them to do, and it does all of that for you. There'snothing that you need to do to set other than creating. Tasks and requeststhemselves, which you can do in like literally 15 seconds, and it removes a lotof that kind of busy work from the admin side of your business as well, whilegiving the client this really crystal clear visibility into the things that youneed from them to keep that project on track and ultimately delight them with afantastic end.

[00:15:26] Perry Rosenbloom:Very well said there, Sam.

[00:15:27] Sam Chlebowski:So that is the client portal and that is now live on launchbay. You can go signup for free, try it out, see how it works. and then we are just days away fromreleasing a very powerful form builder. the long story short on that is we havebeen working on this now for what, two, three.

[00:15:45] Perry Rosenbloom:The form builder, I believe we started working on in early January. So it's a,you know, a solid three months. Now, by the time this gets released, a littlemore than that, it's solid four months,

[00:15:56] Sam Chlebowski:What's really cool about the form builder is that's gonna allow you a ton offlexibility, especially for things like onboarding forms where onboardingprocesses change from business to business. The onboarding process for a webdesign agency is gonna look completely different for a wedding and eventplanner, but you can still customize that to be able to ask the types ofquestions that are gonna help you expedite that project. Move it into the nextstage. it's gonna have all of the same automation and tracking features of someof these other request types we've talked about already, like the contentrequest and the feedback request. But you're able to build these customizedforms, that are going to be tailored to your business and your process.

[00:16:37] Sowe're really, really excited about.

[00:16:39] Perry Rosenbloom:And then we also have coming soon our request a decision, which. Is really agame changer in my opinion, for small businesses where, there's so many thingsthat you, when you're working with a client or or a vendor that. You need toask of them. You need to ask them to make a decision about something.

[00:16:58] So, for a wedding photographer, what location do you want your first look?Pictures, location, a, B, or C, if you're a website designer, which colorscheme do you like? Or which fonts do you like? Choose between A, B, C, or D.if you're a wedding planner, do you approve this expense or do you approve thischange to your budget?

[00:17:15] Allthese things. Are communications that you're having with your client, but oftenresult in a ton of follow up. It can result in a ton of, things slippingthrough the cracks. Decisions being forgotten about this keep. And what launchbaythat IO is gonna do is keep it all organized for you. So when you make arequest that you requested decision, you can choose between two to fouroptions, upload images associated with those options, and you can send it offto your.

[00:17:43] Andbe able to get them to make a decision more effectively. And again, we willautomatically follow up with them until those decisions are made and aselection is made.

[00:17:52] Sam Chlebowski:And what's especially cool about all of these request types that we are adding,Ocean Dot. I own all the things that you're allowed to do. You know, first ofall, it's a lot faster, easier than sending an email hopping on a phone call.But second of all, it allows you to have what we've kind of been callinginternally a paper trail of approvals.

[00:18:09] AndI know when you know, we were building brighter vision, growing that business,there were all of these times where a client would be like, well, why did youuse this? I didn't agree to that. And we would have to dig through our inboxesto say, oh, well you provided this information on the form. That's why weincluded it.

[00:18:24] Andit took forever. To resolve those situations, and now it's all right there. Butnot only do you have that information, but your client has that too, becausethey can look through these completed tasks in their client portal and see thatthe things that they requested you to do for them and see the decisions thatthey made and the approvals that they gave, throughout that project.

[00:18:44] SoPerry, we are approaching the 25 minute mark here. Do you want to just run downthe list of the other things that we have coming a little bit further down theroad with launchbay

[00:18:55] Perry Rosenbloom:yeah, totally. So, coming soon, and by soon, you know, three to six weeks orso, you're gonna be able to set a custom email cadence. So how often you want launchbayto remind your client, you'll be able to request an approval. When you'rerequesting feedback, you could also say, Hey, is this version good?

[00:19:13] isthis the final version? Do you have any additional feedback? If you don't, doyou approve this? Great. you'll be able to customize your launchbay that I owesbranding a little bit to match your. Business aesthetics and your brandaesthetics, both on the notification side and the client portal side.

[00:19:28] Andperhaps most importantly you're going to be able to link together multiplerequests to build complete workflows. So right now, all of these requests arekind of like siloed off. You have, request a decision, request approval,request a form completion. And in isolation that's effective.

[00:19:46] Butwhat's gonna become much more effective is when you can say, okay, request thisdecision. When this decision is made, ask them to complete this form. And thenwhen this form is completed, ask them to approve this file, for example. andyou'll be able to link together requests to create a workflow that you'll thenbe able to use regular.

[00:20:06]with your clients, a as you work through various projects with them, and thatshould really enable you to streamline your workflows, to automate yourworkflows, and to save time in your small business and make you more productiveas a business owner.

[00:20:21] Sam Chlebowski:I couldn't have said it better myself, and thanks for that rundown. And onenote, I wanted to just, you know, mention on that, Perry, having all of thesedecisions and all of these steps within a client process, those were thingsthat we. Did with software at Brighter Vision, but we had to hack all of thattogether.

[00:20:37] Ittook us, I think, the better part of, three to four years to have somethingthat worked really well and still, you know, it would break.

[00:20:46] Perry Rosenbloom:It was so brittle. Like if you made the wrong change, the person didn't knowwhat they were doing, it would all fall. Because we are hacking together thesedifferent tools, right? Nothing actually works well and allows you to,communicate in that kind of workflow process that you need.

[00:21:00] Sam Chlebowski:And with launchbay syncing those up will take seconds and it'll be superintuitive, super easy to do, and we're really, really excited about this newdirection. So with that, Perry, thanks for your time. Anything else before wesign off here?

[00:21:14] Perry Rosenbloom:Take it away, Sam.

[00:21:15] Sam Chlebowski:Awesome. this is a super exciting time for us@launchbay, and we'd love to haveyou try out what we've built . What's more is that if you've been listening tothis episode and hearing some of the things that we're talking about and yousay to yourself, well, I might try it, but it would have to already have thisthing that they mentioned.

[00:21:32] Wewant to know that. We want to know what things we need to do now and what weshould prioritize to have you use this with your business and with your clientssooner. So let us know. Sign up for a free account. You can go to just launchbay.Click the button anywhere on our site. It's all over there.

[00:21:49] Tryit for free. Sign up for an account. No credit card, no long-term commitmentsrequired. Launchbay is free throughout our early access period. With that,everybody, my name is Samuel Chlebowski, Co-founder of Launchbay. Have fun,good luck, and go crush it.

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