Brian Casel
Founder
Designer
Builder
2021, a 'shake-up' year
In my 13 years in business, a few of those years stand out as “shake up” years.
“Shake up” years mark the end of a major chapter in my career and the start of my next one. To date, my “shake up” y...
December 28th, 2021
I sold my business, Audience Ops
Six and a half years ago, I started a productized service business called Audience Ops. Today, I’m proud to report that I have sold that business to my friend, JD Graffam.
I couldn’t be happier ab...
September 23rd, 2021
8 takeaways after 2020
I originally posted this turn-of-the-year post as a Tweet thread.
Here’s my ‘20/‘21 post. The takeaways.
Some (surprisingly) pretty good. Some progress. Some disappointment.
First the personal f...
January 1st, 2021
My customers' challenges
What's the point of exercise?
With practice and consistency, you get stronger. Then you can leverage that strength to move faster, feel better, and achieve more.
That's how I think about the pract...
March 9th, 2020
A product positioning story
Positioning a new product feels like an art.
Squishy, feely, gut-instinct kinda work. The kind that leaves you with a nagging suspicion that you're drawing the wrong conclusions and making the wro...
February 14th, 2020
Questions to ask customers
I’ve become a bit obsessed with the practice of talking to customers.
Yes, it is a practice. The more conversations you have, the more fruitful they become.
Asking the right questions is essential....
January 31st, 2020
Welcomed distractions
Here are a few that come to mind:
Twitter
Checking it every hour or so isn't as terrible as people make it out to be (usually, on Twitter). It's a breather in between shipping some code or in betw...
January 10th, 2020
Rewards and Incompletes
Around December/January of every year, many of us publish our year-end post, grading ourselves on how we've achieved or failed on the ambitious goals we set for ourselves a year ago, and set even m...
December 27th, 2019
Onboarding is everything
One thing has proven to be true across every one of the businesses I have worked on. It's this:
Improving the onboarding experience has made a more positive impact than any other improvement I can...
November 8th, 2019
Tomorrow's problems can wait
Refactoring in programming is when you take a bunch of code you’ve already written and rework it to make it more efficient. This makes it better at solving the problems you’ve uncovered while writ...
September 27th, 2019
You are not your job title
15 years ago, at the start of my professional career, I was hired at a web design agency as a “front-end developer”.
That meant my role was to take the finished mockups that the “designers” created...
August 30th, 2019
Falling Behind, On Schedule
When you’re rolling out a new software product (SaaS in particular), an interesting challenge emerges, seemingly all of a sudden.
I don’t think I’m alone in experiencing this. It goes something li...
July 12th, 2019