Talking Too Loud with Chris Savage

alright here we are here we are you know you need to talk even louder than you i know we really need to ramp it up very excited here recording an episode of talking to loud the show with the loudest takes on building businesses top notch products and on building un beat grants so very excited to be heard inbound doing this my good help brendan with sylvia to see moving and we have a special episode today because actually si you're gonna be taking over and doing a lot of the questions you gonna be asking you youtube some very hard hitting questions about going from point solution software to a platform but first i have to ask because when i get excited look you tapped to mic yeah that happens yeah when i get excited i can't control the volume of my list oh okay talk way too loud about too many things and i need to know we'll start with you chris what has you talking too loud today oh my god well i've been saying lulu eleven pants a lot what you made before but i don't go i don't i don't hear i don't hate okay have you discovered on my pants yet oh yes i she's real earlier he just created were you really i not pants but we're with gym shorts lulu advance are like for ten fans they're so comfortable they look like they're not but they are and i just really swear by them right now but i think my my real answer is obviously we just to be reported a tons of episodes to talk to about here it's been super en merchandising super fun so decided to keep the ball rolling and do this one amazing and brandon schwartz welcome what happened your last quiet talker but thank you in general i guess this is a very in there detail maybe someone self serving but it this is an honest answer this morning we made a change inside wi so that after you edit a video we'll record a video or upload a video it will be ready to be played back instantly wait that's a big change it is a very big change yeah it's something that we've been working on for probably the better part of the year it's very like kinda behind the scenes thing but it is like going to save customers time this assumes you're jumping like governor chance or you're jumping the jumping i'm jumping the gun but it's the honest i've been so excited for this to happen i i think wash i was like you're like guys yeah i was beam that's a beautiful thing work you should be beeping that's what we're looking for well speaking of beam let's look back to w early days yeah what have you beam then what was your original vision or the company we're going there can do a start sure well just put them right go like how original you want of the vision like pretty original like you were like this was your company this would my job to start this company yeah what did you wanna do for people for customers well we didn't have any customers back then we wanted we sought to build a competition website for filmmakers okay that was earlier that mission lasted once we like one month yeah about a month a website for filmmakers okay like a competition website oh wow yeah we thought big brands would commented be like oh i'm ko and we want you to make ads and then like the ads would all be like good marketing for coke and if you a filmmaker new made an ad then like if coke used your ad is a like for real that'd be true career so that was like our idea and happened one month well brave basically we started we're like we have no connections to big brands like why are we doing this and we saw like something that looked like vaguely competitive and it scared us so we just wanted a different direction are we all do to yeah yeah yeah yeah i really don't know yeah that's so funny you don't know that but yeah that we stayed on the vision obviously of like we saw this huge change coming with video really early on it stayed on it and that all became true like it took us about a year to figure out helping businesses using video and i mean that's still what we do today so it's kinda cool that's very cool yeah anything you wanna add there feel like we got well you said we were beam from the start i think we had a lot yeah where you beam we are very naive okay and i remember that we we like had this idea and it was funny that we finally found our way to business and the first year of doing this we had like absolutely zero plan for how to make money which if you'd like to be in business it's helpful to have a plan plan i might wanna try to make a little casual cash yeah i remember when we first started connected with businesses and helping them solve their problems it was genuinely very exciting not only because you could be paid and earn a living and keep doing it for a long time but it was like a tight connection with you can build software you can see it help someone very directly so then you were meme then we were bm again we're back to beam i love it it is point the when your time with that it makes me think of we raised one like angel round yeah and we're running out of money from the angel round but we had customers and with that summer we gone from like thirty customers at the beginning of the summer like two hundred at the end so we felt like like figured out back the junk and then we got this legal bill that we were expecting it was like a forty thousand dollar legal build is was gonna eat like all our cash and we're were like oh man this is bad this is stressful right i remember the feeling because brennan and i would go play tennis every morning that was like our thing back then okay and i remember going to play tennis thinking to myself like okay this is bad like we're gonna run out of cash really quickly but like it is kind of amazing that these people are relying on us and it stands out to me at the moment it was like what right when we could've have gotten really bad made us realize actually we'd built something really valuable you know and so then we raised the money and you know that was last time we we ever had to raise capital actually but it was like that moment i think stress made us made it clear that we'd we'd actually built something cool so you were helping customers mainly with video hosting yeah when did you guys decide to expand to become a comprehensive platform with editing tools with recording tools what was happening in tech and saas that you were like this is this is the direction we need to be going in yeah i mean so our strategy for a very long time was basically to be the best like video hosting management analytics platform we could be and then integrate with every other thing so like integrate with every platform we possibly go and think like okay when you're building your stack of stuff like you wanna see the video host so you're gonna need a video host we'll just be the best in that thing yeah and because we were more or less bootstrap i think from them beginning the learn how important focus was for us and we really hey we still pride ourselves on building a really high quality product and so being focused allowed us to do that so that was exactly like why wouldn't we build this other thing maybe we couldn't do it as well we're gonna integrate with the person who we can do it or the company that can do it the best and we'll be world class at video hosting so we said no to a lot of things over the years okay i mean so and we we were basically on that strategy from two thousand and seven to twenty twenty one okay so an extremely long time with this exact thing staying focused getting bigger and bigger and bigger but we had got lots of requests for these other types of features for editing features recording webinar software and we we just didn't we thought it would get us too off focus and then covid happens and the big change that we saw there that was really clear is that people started to see their computer as a camera and the expectations for who should make video who should was like shifted very very rapidly so like in that moment and today right it's it's pretty normal to say to somebody like your marketer on your team like hey can you make a video to launch this product or put on this webinar to show off this thing or do this event or edit this thing like we say that really easily but it actually is like we're really early into this change and that change happened at that moment we saw that and we i mean we interviewed trying to get our like hands around this hundreds and hundreds of customers of customers of competitors of people who weren't using a a solution we basically saw the same thing from everybody and that convince us maybe this is the moment that we should really think about expanding the footprint of what is we do like knowing that the computer is a camera feels like a huge aha moment totally makes sense you mentioned that customers had for years been asking for certain features how did you then prioritize which features to introduce first yeah we so like the top of the list for us was live and webinar okay that was the one that we probably got asked for the most yeah maybe that editing and it's well it's funny i think the in addition to to see the computers a camera it also the video marketing space hadn't matured a bit yeah and so while we were like we're gonna be really focused on hosting customer expectations start to change so like chris said we interviewed hundreds of customers and people in the market and they're like we expect this to be together we want this together it's super painful to have these things differently and in fact for i mean the life of the company so many people would finish a webinar and upload it to wi and to help with the post event stuff and so the top of the list were webinar editing because again so many people said i would just like to take a small snippet of this could you please let me do this and we're were like we're just stay very focused i have that use all the time yeah it's very well flip well it was interesting instinct because like after we start doing that what the editing was the first thing we lost that the first one and i remember watching it the the honest truth is that it felt like embarrassing because like the version of editing that we put in at the beginning was so minimal it could trim the ends off video and i remember thinking like can we even make a video to like talk about this thing i even tell people this and we put it out there and the re response was insane it was like i've been waiting for this forever this is sa amazing oh my god blah blah and then we saw people instantly start to use it and that was the first sign i'm like maybe this really is right yeah that like putting this own one is gonna save people that much time yep and it's you know continued to be true since then can you share some behind the story behind the scenes stories about the product development process and were there any pivotal moments where you have to make some tough calls okay about the direction of the platform letter it i think one piece is when we decided on pursuing the strategy like we're going from a place where we had this extreme focus and we ended our team was not that big at this time is probably hundred people yeah maybe and then the product design and engineering team was half that let's say if fifty people yeah is pretty intimidating because we had we like new posting really well and we're obviously you know think highly of our abilities but to be able to basically we're an add editing we're gonna add recording we're gonna add live and we're to do it all at one time that was what we want to do yeah it's a pretty tall order and it's a lot to get right and so we and we're operating a place where we have a fairly mature product that's pretty polished and like chris is describing the moments where we launched editing and it's we're like we're not used to like yeah something that is like a really a first version or an mvp so when we decide on this we're like we're gonna need to invest a lot more that that was not a really scary decision yeah but we doubled the product design and engineering team in the course of about a year eighteen months and we hadn't ever hired at that rate or expand the team it's probably not surprising to say it didn't go perfectly i like we didn't you know we we didn't get pro velocity up for probably another year after that and it was like the really challenging time getting started and it was interesting though because like we lost like for a long time we'd always felt like i think everybody feels this when you're in a market that you think is a good market is like you can't keep up with demands of customers like and that's a good feeling it's a feeling of like they're asking you for more stuff because they like the stuff that you have yep and so we'd always had this excuse of like well our team is so small so like we can't go like this of course we're limited in how fast we can know and we kind of in that moment that we had so many more resources so many more people kinda lost on years of being under staffed and the interesting thing was we were no longer under staffed we thought and we're making progress but it was like slower than it should have been and this raised a signal was like well what else could we change and i led to a moment of realizing like hey what if what if how we operate and what if there's a cultural element here that is actually slowing us down mh and that was like really we did not to see that honestly i mean we thought we're like the shit like we thought ever there do great so you know or like look at us to we doing this so long as it's successful the ways that we work are good and people coming in see the way that we're working with and assume that's the way you should work but interesting things that were happening were like we would spend a lot of time on a road roadmap and trying to make the road map like perfect and so we'd have these big meetings and everyone would come with their road map and we'd we'd before them prepared to ask like our hardest questions to try to like is this the right order like is this the first thing on the list and what we didn't understand was that actually what was happening is that when a team would organize the road map they would kind of put the thing at the top that they felt was the least risky that was the easiest to defend had the most data often had the most broad usage but that that wasn't necessarily the thing they thought was gonna have the biggest impact interesting and sometimes the thing that's gonna have the biggest impact might even be something really small that has like a small amount of data on it and it's like number seven but high risk but high maybe higher risk because you don't have the same data and so we when we flip the culture base said okay road roadmap you own it like we're not gonna approve road roadmap what we want is just like we want you to ship every two weeks something value to the customer we don't really care what it is we believe you ship quickly it's going to improve and the shocking thing about this was the speed that the culture shifted so within like a month we had gone from feeling slow to suddenly feel like fast yeah i mean we had teams that said it's gonna take six months for us to do this and then it was done in two weeks it was it was insane the speed surprise you as well i think it it was a pretty humbling moment because we went for a decade or more in this basically where we had like fairly tight control over what was happening for a small team yeah i think we had to reached the limit of what we could achieve with that yeah like is what chris is describing and so there was a lot of having to let go of like the first version is gonna might be really good or it's gonna be perfect which spend a long time doing this you get better and you have instincts for how to do it as hud and you say in order to go faster and to get to a bigger scale like teams must just do like they must do and they will be judged later and they will learn and do that so like yes surprised by the speech like once we aligned on the culture that we wanted yeah i think was like pretty pleasantly surprised by how it quick it happened then we had almost list other problems so right like yeah it like first versions of things were pretty embarrassing and that's like like not the fault of the team like we said we really want the priority was shipping product velocity and learning i think that was the right decision and then that stuff you can use speed as a tool to get quality later but you can learn so quickly when you do it so it was a huge adjustment i'd say it was a big adjustment for me it was a big adjustment for still a big adjustment for the company yeah but it is is working really well and it's worth it's worth saying just some of the numbers which is like in twenty twenty two we had this bigger team we had twelve product launches that we told customers about we figured this out in like october of twenty two twenty three we had seventy three and and this year we're already at over a hundred and so crazy what's what's crazy is that it's changed so much about how we build in so much about how we learn and the truth is it also meant that like there was a huge ripple effect because once you start shipping really fast with customers then it's like how do you market it all this up well because you have tons and tons of things and like how do you pick and it's we've had to rethink how we do a lot of our go to market basically because of this yeah well that i was gonna ask you wrong about like you knew these questions giant oh i don't know i don't know that from a marketing and product marketing perspective what do you think has been the hardest thing about going from point solution software to a full blown platform how do you decide like we're gonna tell them about the editing tool or the live i think the hardest thing at and and we're still dealing with this is it takes a really long time to shift market perception so we've been a video hosting provider for more than a decade that is what if you've heard a whiskey that's probably what you i'm heard of and so i think it's been hard to be patient about some of that they were like okay we've launched live that we've launched these eggs they're like we we know it right because we've been talking about it internally for years and years and years but it takes a lot of repetition to the market and fairly simple messages and i'd say we historically we get bored pretty easily right so we're like we've told the story a few times so now i'm telling a you story but really we need to like keep educating and keep doing this because there's is just a huge lag in market perception i i think the other thing that's hard about it is like you wanna you wanna you have a story you wanna tell that like you see on paper that like makes rational sense to you and then there's the reality of like really what problems are people actually trying to solve today so we have this vision of all these things on one you've heard from the research this what people want then you go to the market there's some people who want that but most of the time ever everyone's just trying to do their job especially in b2b but you might have one discrete issue that you want help with and so we've shifted over time to really trying to figure out like what's the job to be done that each product can help with and just get someone in for that and make that really successful and if you do that it becomes really easy to expand from there with that again that's different because it's like the number of products we have is huge so it's just it's a very it mean to reference them earlier reps episode so we did today it's about really about capital allocation of the messaging itself yeah we should get new shirts that say we are a platform over and over and over again we're yeah yeah make no mistake though we are a platform looking ahead to next year what video problem are you most excited to solve for your customers one of the things that we're seeing really work in our marketing is atom analyzing content and taking a big piece at not just marketing at once but treating content like product to market it over and over and over again and doing all the different ways and recognizing that people wanna consume it in different ways like some people just want the the long form some people want the short form on tiktok or some people want the version on linkedin that explains more details behind the scenes and then still shows the clip and we're working on a bunch of stuff around atom randomization to make that a much easier process for one person to make many clips from video to find the right clips to edit them easily to to keep it on brand so there's there's a lot of stuff there that i think will really just flow into people's workflows really well yeah i think related to that so we've had our live product in market for two years now and we're just getting to the point where like the promise of having in a platform we can start to do some really interesting things so that's a great example of beams help you with the pre event workflow the live event and doing all of the post event stuff like atom analyzing it but i am i kinda said this earlier with my thing that has me talking to loud one thing i was nervous about we had to bring that i was waiting of doing this is is like losing focus right or you can go from something that works really well point solution to broadening your focus and then you know like you're like oh we do this well so we're just not gonna bother it because like that's the best so we'll just leave that alone and i think we have been very intentional about making sure we're investing in the core of wi which is video playback speed to playback speed of processing these assets like those are things that help all of these customer problems and so we've been investing that the whole way but a lot of things that we've had behind the scenes are gonna start to hit this fall and next year that are gonna make all customers lives better and that makes me very excited it's very cool what is the biggest challenge in the video space today i think the the biggest challenge is most people are like overwhelmed because every social channel requires different content your website needs constant at updating you need to refresh all things that are working and i think that a lot of folks are biting off more than they can chew and it is it's it's it's very overwhelming and so i think like trying to figure out which which channels to focus on how you're gonna have systems in place that let you actually continuously improve the videos on your site lean into one channel i think it's really really important because it's just it's so overwhelming otherwise it's a great answer i like that what's the biggest opportunity for video i think right now there's a a huge opportunity in in in b2b b that you're hearing about your ear back year but is like building personal brands like alongside b b brands inside of them work with people externally on it but the the personal brands do you mean like individuals at the company i mean either individuals at the company or like influencers that you have a very close relationship with we're just seeing like from a social perspective all the algorithms have changed a ton you to get tons of organic reach i'm like a branded account it's almost impossible to get any organic reach now you often have to pay to do it they're never gonna throttle individual reach because they're gonna kill all the content so they can't and i think that we're also so used to filter the world through like influencers and topics that we like that that is how we're building trust on that it's how we're deciding which brands to work with and so i think you have to figure out a way to do that alongside your brands and i think that's hard but i think that's i think that's we've seen massive success from that have you had to change who your ideal customer is when you made the switch from point solutions software to platform we have we haven't really and part of that was driven what what drove us from point solution to platform was interviewing our core customer base which is b marketers marketing teams at fifty to two hundred person companies and so a lot of that was born out of wanting all of that in one place because people are really strat for time they're super overwhelmed and having those workloads together so that was convenient for us because we felt like we knew that market really well right i i do think that the what we've realized is like people can start with something really small and make it really simple and easy for them to start and that might mean it's a start up it might mean it's often a small part of a big company but the the where they end up over time is very different so where before there was one thing they could get is they start to add all these other products together and they start to like leverage the benefits the platform the impact you can have as much greater and so you often end up dealing with more large companies we're basically doing all the things when they come in the door they're just looking to like save time improve their workflows improve their data and so that is the difference from where it was before but it's still it's still pretty much the same and i think there's a there's another thing in all of this which is like that kind of humbling learning is like we've been doing this for eighteen years so it's really easy to think that you're when you're doing something for a long time that like your market must be mature and run inside that on the hosting side it started to feel like the market's mature but the reality is like the chains that happened from seeing your computer is camera basically made our market early stage again mh and that has forced us to to work in a different way it's so like just getting comfortable with having things that are more rough to start right that's a of course you do that early research market right and shipping really fast and iterating really fast and not knowing where you're gonna end up early stage market makes sense mature market not as much and it's kind of this recognition of like the market doesn't care we've been doing it for eighteen years at all like market just give a shit it's just what they want is a better solution right now and so you'd have to lead into that in embrace and i think that's been at the heart of like a lot of the chain it kinda it kinda makes sense though with the age right you're eighteen you're kind of reinventing yourself again another stage of life congratulations to with you yeah thanks so yeah what is the secret to staying in a founder relationship and being best friends for eighteen years i would say more than eighteen right relationship first business second which is maybe counterintuitive advice but i think if you're in a you have a business partnership you're not gonna have that business partnership succeed unless you actually spend time and work on it and care about it and put that before the business and then the business will do better as a result yeah and i think when you work with people like when you work with your best friend or you work with people who are your friend or people you really like i think we've just learned that like you have to recognize that and say that out loud and then take get the benefits of it which is like when brennan and i give each other feedback we give each other the harshest feedback you possibly could out of respect for a friendship yeah which is like we're not gonna hold back and i think there's like you know in any company you're trying to build we know that like having trust as a basis for all relationships and decisions makes us make better decisions like people are more honest they share bad data all of a stuff when you have a trust environment all that stuff comes out if you don't have trust you you don't and so i think like our friendship has created that for us i and i think it is a part of the culture visit trickle yeah where everybody hopefully can be an environment where they feel like they really trust each other they can actually say the truth we get better decisions more quickly we're on the same page so if you guys survive with vibe there we go wildcard questions what is your go to karaoke song and can you sing it right now oh boy bat lip is it i haven't heard yeah that's with going out i'm not a big karaoke singer i sing billie e is song from the barbie movie every night to my daughter when she goes to sleep it's not a karaoke song know goodness this do you die as you're singing these are yeah i cry know all the time just thinking about and she also says daddy could you please play it from the phone because you're singing is merit who is your brand crush at the moment lulu lemon the decides yeah eleven who is the crush so you guys have a crush on yourselves it's i'm not gonna see that that's soon alright and i think that's that okay that's fine thanks so thanks

k ready yeah here we go smiles on smiles hello and we're to talk too loud with chris savage wait sorry i would just and i went just song i went into fine as you do that's okay k alright hello she gets out a smile i did again at that time at booth ruth and at i'm sorry that's truly it you are just something else today that's truly it welcome to talk to loud with chris savage i'm your host chris savage i'm joined by our podcast producer extra sylvia lu bow hey how are you what's going on sylvia i'm okay i've had better days i'm having a lot of computer issues it might be time for new mac for me i think it sure is that season take the season tis the season for new for new macs so so i i'll you android lovers out there i guess it's yes we have we have another episode today it's a special episode a little bit different than normal this gonna be a short episode than usual we don't have another guest other than the two of us we're here to enter engineering to just to educate just us and that is because we are gearing up to go to hubspot inbound conference next week and there's a lot going on so when this episode of dropping will be at boston convention center and we're gonna be recording an episode live there of talking to loud with brendan yep viral brendan and you know we hear we hear a lot of feedback that peep people love when brendan on the show we're able to do that the camera loves them the camera loves them the camera loves them and yeah we're gonna be talking about transitioning from being a point solution to a platform so we've talked a little bit about that here on the show but we'll be getting into more depth in that episode and we'll release that later so i one's gonna be juicy because i'm interviewing you guys i know i'm excited about that that's great put it on my personal instagram that's how excited i am you know i see i see your personal instagram is like quiet quiet quiet action and when the action happens you mean it you can i mean it it's sincere that's amazing i'm very excited it's gonna be fun and then we're doing a bunch of t detail shorts again which should be also shorts yes we have some great conference speakers and attendees who are oh i thought we're gonna go into the colors we've got khaki army green black yeah so so so bad but i wasn't expecting to get so it's so good so bad and so good the weirdest merch ever we've shorts for everyone yeah we've created cargo shorts and you're gonna love them you're gonna love the way you look i guarantee it and so yes the details shorts are gonna be shooting those there's a bunch of other whiskey stuff going on obviously we have a booth we have a bunch of sessions so if you are going inbound and you see this like if you woke up and you listen to this today come say hi say great it would be great to same person but first i go to what's going on in your world are you what are you talking to lot about oh yeah we we almost missed the most important question holy some smokes let's see oh you know what i am this is kind of dumb but i don't care so okay when this the safe space when spotify first came out i i was saving albums right but like liking every song on the albums so they were all in my liked songs playlist okay and at some point i figured out i can save albums and not like every song on the album i can just like the ones i like u yes so in my downtime over the last week i've been comb through my light songs playlist and deleting just getting it perfect getting it right getting it right because you've been organizing your digital life yeah yeah yeah i'm an adult now you know no congratulations but yeah that i do that type of thing sometimes you know what i do that with is contacts on my phone oh god i love a contact liam i because i utterly hate if you do yeah and you go to you go to siri somebody and it's like hey siri call brendan oh god my stuff's going and it's good hey siri stop stop it stop siri good it really did it but the problem is that what ends up happening is that there's lots of different people or you don't say the name exactly right and it's just so annoying not that i wanna call these to the people but just like there's a person you i wanna call them want to work it so the clear i find clearing out contacts speed delight it is a light here's a question i have for you mh i don't use siri like i barely use her mh do you think i am in the minority i have no idea i mean i you know that's a really interesting question because i use siri for very specific things so like calling i i use siri to call people like if i have my headphones listening to music and i think i wanna call someone i'll do it i use siri to take reminders a lot or set alarms so if you just say like remind me to do this tomorrow you can be pretty specific of time that is very someone gives me a task to i'll just speak it into my phone and comes back but i think the problem is that like siri over promised kinda under delivered and that's actually why they're big ios update that's rolling out later this month and next i month that's why people that's why i was excited it's like maybe it actually delivers this time like siri gonna be the siri you want her to be because they call it apple intelligence and it's going to be like able to work across your different apps that are integrated with it so you could say what meeting do i have at four pm or when's my next free time or things that you would be able to normally ask a person as all the details of your life and it's serious supposed to be able to give you an answer do you still say hey siri i think you can just say siri they're all going thanks she said mh yeah my dad my dad who like sorry i don't understand okay i you not a guest on this podcast anyone who's listening to this on speakers i'm sorry for what's happened you're this is un unharmed for anyone who's tune again yes but like we said it's a special episode yes different kind of vibe just us hanging the last thing i'll say on this is that my dad who's like not particularly tech e he's a lot yeah yeah i understand sure yeah he is he talks to siri all the time interesting he's always chatting away to then it that he's not a lot it look him he's like he doesn't google he's just is like siri oh really he's like yeah if we can't remember something and i'm like i'll google he's like let me talk to my b behalf of for that's amazing i mean it is interesting that like we all want different ways of interfacing with things and also we find things that fit in our routine at some point your dad must have like asked answer your question i'd like the answer that's totally right and then that's all it took that's totally right you liked yeah it worked for you no friction and then you that's you know what it okay i'd also wanna ask you what has you talking to loud but it also the other thing that i've been thinking of which relates and we have talked about it on the show is how long does it take for someone to adapt a new habit and if they adapt it quicker mh does it stick longer if it's like one and done like my dad did that with siri like answer now he's a is it just like it because it happened so quickly will he just be doing that forever well it's funny you should say that because you know our episode of noah k again he talked about atomic habits so much other things and it caused me to go back and read atomic habits and then it caused me to read a bunch of other my favorite visit so i've been out of biz streak over here i cute and actually i love a ton of cabinets was like a good read and the but the gist of it is that what you wanna do is find the smallest action you can take that is going to set you on the path towards creating a habit mh because it is much easier to create habits around small things that big things and then there's a bunch of stuff in the book i'm not gonna go through all of it but on just like how to get a habit to stick and what i found interesting about it is that like the author james clear talks about this progression from trying to do a habit to eventually doing a habit consistently to like advancing with the habit till it it becomes part of your identity mh and then you can't then it doesn't it doesn't feel like a habit anymore it's just like who you are who you are and what you do yeah and so the the big point of the book is like what is the smallest thing you can do to build to habit it and so an example is like let's say you wanna read every day and you're not reading but you're pretty good about making your bed your goal should be to every morning when you make your bed put a book onto the pillow and your goal is not to open the book the goal is not to read the goal is to get this habit of putting the book on a pill and eventually at some point you're gonna be like well i mean i'm holding the book on my hand when i'm getting to bed like you know what i mean and it is really interesting because a lot of times i think like it's the it is the smallest thing you can possibly do this sets you on the right direction is like des spark that starts the fire and then like as the fire grows it could become this completely different thing and it never felt that hard yeah so it's just like how do you anchor to things you already do how do make life life incremental yeah that's cool it's so incremental that like it almost feels silly i think is a good thing i think that's right you're like i have a effing book on my bed that's nuts like you're just tearing out a book on my freshly made bed every day every day day night when you get to bed the book is sitting there yeah and i think it's it is an interesting thought exercise and like what's the most minimal thing you could do and i've been trying to asking me that that's what was like helpful about the book i thought i was like seeing it and i thinking about i was like alright are there other things i wanna do are there what's the tiniest version what's the tiniest version you you know it's really funny so i start usually i keep like my myers countertop spray under the sink right the okay because it's on top yeah yeah cleaner it's clear and about a month ago i started leaving it on my butcher block yeah and i am i'm being way more consistent about spraying down those countertops i'm because i see it not hidden away yeah it well it's it's all wrapped together and like because i think it i've been tie it now into business because bring it i think like bring it back baby let's go because like i think that there's a lot of habits that we wanna do things that we know are good things to do and sometimes they seem hard and it might be like i mean an output of this would be like shipping product consistently but how do you ship it consistently how do you learn for label well it's like you talk to customers you see if they're like you see what's there you see what's it's missing you go back and you prioritize that and then you have like you're you're planning and is you're planning consistently getting better and a lot of the things we need to do is just like okay we're going in the right direction and then if i were to look at this week did i make improvements on last week at the most foundational basic things and at some point if you keep doing that you get really good and you get really fast and you increase your chances of things working and it's a very but it's a lot of times it's like kind of counterintuitive because you wanna go for the shortcut like totally it doesn't sound like a fun answer to be like just do the hard work every day like that doesn't sound very fun or sexy it's like i just didn't want hack and now my company's is growing like crazy but actually i think it is the utterly consistent things and improvement at those consistent things and so the question is am i working on the right things am i improving at the right rate am i asking the like is it a self learning and improving system and if it is i gotta let this thing compound so how many how many iterations can i do yeah i mean we've also talked about it from the marketing perspective too right like whether you're creator and you're just like posting content every day to get into the habit of posting content yeah i think the other thing is like you start to you start to ask yourself different questions like i've been posting for talking to loud channels now for a while yeah and i'm like posting on youtube posting on instagram posting on tiktok seeing what's happening but now i'm like how can i optimize for youtube like now that i've been doing it for a while and i have the rhythm how can i take this a step further how can i grow that habit it's like you've been picking up the book every day exactly that's it now you're gonna start reading now i'm gonna read the book chapter and you're like oh actually i like reading the chapter just fun yeah no know i think that is how it is i think that's how it is yeah wow yeah should i ask you what what's what what do what what little is should should i ask you what has you talking to well we were talking pretty loud going we were talking loud yeah yeah i i have like so many things today that i i don't really know which one to pick i am like really pumped on lulu lemon pants always and forever i cannot get over these things oh my god that's old news you've already talked to a lot about lulu yes hashtag should i love you yeah that's chattanooga lulu i am i'm really pumped i have some like really fun and i think we're really sick like brand stuff happening right now and so and but doing you we really do and honestly to me it feels like there was a moment we started to figure out how to scale brands right it was like doing wildly creative things and like asking big hard creative questions of like traditional ways of doing things and suddenly stuff worked it was like oh my god like this campaign is working and people are so pumped there's so many comments and and then the the key thing is how do you keep getting bigger and trying this the way to scale it is like to do the same thing kinda of what we're you're talking about but improve it to do it in a bigger way a way that still scares you a away that's like still really fresh and exciting and we've tried lots of different stuff but we have a new camp a a series of new campaigns that just kicked off a couple days ago and they're so fun and it's like i just i can't wait for people to see them you can see like a taste of it right now give taste okay there's a taste yeah if you go to wix dot com you can see you can see a taste today and the thing i'll say is like this is just scratching the serve the just scratching the beginning surface of something and i'm excited to to kind of like also go on the journey of this with our community because a lot of a lot of the genesis of this campaign actually came from feedback from customers and people who listen to the show and people who are engaging us on linkedin is like we tried a bunch of stuff that really seem to resonate and now we're ramping it up that's awesome that's amazing i'm super excited i think you know we should bid our viewers and listeners a do but leave them with the taste perhaps at the end of this episode maybe we maybe we show them oh you want show yeah let's show them alright let's do it right here you can do it right here it it pull it crush it get seal the deal and then it it it swap it it tell your boss fix sit find it it sort out you can do it here you can you can do it right here you can do it right here you can do it right here

you have a glow you have a photo today well might also be because we have a great today hello and welcome to talking to you that with chris savage i'm your host chris savage i'm joined by the one and only podcast producer for in our sylvia lu sylvia how are we pretty good pretty good good pretty good good that's great well we have a great interview today with megan kin anderson meg kin anderson is in charge of product marketing and comps for waters shed their sustainability platform helping companies understand their carbon impact get under control measure it and improve all that kind of stuff she used to be at hubspot she's been at some of our mini episodes and talking about and she is a great guest so i'm very very excited for this episode getting into product marketing positioning storytelling how to market something new finding the things that connect all that good stuff so we have a great interview coming up very shortly we definitely do we sure do thanks so for the affirmation we deaf you are correct sir but of course this is talking too loud so it'd be crazy for us not to start to show by asking the question sylvia what's got you talking to loud today okay today i'm talking too loud about nineties thriller i've been on a bit of a nineties thriller bender thriller i don't know if thriller maybe thriller is wrong suspense so i'm talking like the client did you ever receive a client i've never seen it what sorry i'm outraged you've never seen it i don't think so brad ren f season randy tommy lee jones oh my god i mean i i know who some of those actors are okay you have to see it really you have it's really good is it is it like the as good as the fugitive i so i knew you're gonna ask is it as good as it's not as good as the fugitive but it's it's high up there but would you consider the fugitive to be a nineties throat yes that's that's that's like a few good men i put in this right yeah yeah but this is like from this canon okay you never watches wow and then we have to talk to you loud about it in the future because i will wanna know what you think well i can't wait that sounds great i'm always looking for kids witness a murder oh boy then and then there's a client get help from they are to client they all the help from a lawyer okay but somebody's after them that's all i'll say okay oh what it wow very exciting very thrilling great pitch it's so thrilling we're here to do is pitch nineties movies to you all you know what we know you want the the hits what has you talking you loud you know i think i'm i'm gonna go with i'm doing a lot of zone one zone two runs these days mh what zone one what zone two it's like heart rate zones so like lower zones your heart rate is lower higher zones your our rate is higher but your body uses different fuel for energy when you're like if you're an all out sprint your body using carbs like blood sugar basically and if you're at a like much lower pace and your heart raise a lot lower you can use like fat for energy and you wanna you want your body to be able to use both you wanna be able to use you do zone one and two in the in the same run yeah that's like one to two yeah just did that range basically and i started doing them maybe like two months ago these like slower runs and for me to being in zone two is like i'm running like a fifteen minute mile you know i'm it's like so slow like i'm running i'm stopping and walking i'm running i'm stopping walking and it's very frustrating because like to get the benefit of this all this supposed to help with v two max it's supposed to help perform so thing that you got it and it's just so hard to do because it's feels so boring because they're just going so slow it's almost like i just spend an hour doing this like yeah and the other thing about zone two is that your body doesn't build it can clear the lactic acid that gets built up by your muscles so you can basically do it indefinitely and the cool thing is that it's been like two months and i i did one this morning and i'm really starting to notice a difference oh really yeah where like my pace is a lot faster even though my heart rate is the same that's interesting and i you know i love progress i love measuring things you but it's been interesting because i've tried this a a few times the last couple of years and could never stick with it consistently to actually see the improvement i was like this morning i was like i at this like the pace is clearly fast from i'm feeling really good and it's just i came out it was like it did it it was it was amazing that's a beautiful thing yeah so i think that's i'm just i'm talking to a lot about progress you have a glow you have a about vehicle today well i might also be because we have a great interview today with meghan kenny anderson so i'm jazz i'm excited and let's just you know what let's just jump on the interview right now megan so good to see you how are you i'm great it's good to see you too this is fun last time we chatted it was like a shorter episode in person so a little bit different today we're gonna do doing the whole thing the real deal and i can't wait here hear what's going on your rolled i know a lot has change since we last chatted blah but first i have to ask you you know what's got you talking to out today yeah well okay so one of the things that has changed is i've recently left defected i guess from the ai space to move into climate tech and you know it's interesting when you get into a new industry that you're unfamiliar with is kinda like little bit like moving to a new city and you're trying to know understand an entirely new language and meet a new set of characters and like find your space in it yeah and i think like historically i've always kind of like been hesitant to like look climate change like right on the eye because it's scared the out of me like it was really daunting and it felt big and it felt like we'd already lost right mh and i think the thing that i'm obsessed with right now like i thought when i got into this industry would be a continuation of that like you know doom and gloom and fear and guilt and i was like i am signing myself up for like yeah madness all the time yeah and you know like the doom clock in new york doesn't help right and i think like you know i think climate marketing kinda had to start that way because people weren't paying attention and i think they had to like jump scare them to get the pay but like what i'm obsessed with right now that i found as i've gotten into the space is like the space is now full of these like like pragmatic optimus in a way that didn't exist i don't think a few years back where these people who are like actually this is sol right like we can do this and it's hard but it's not that complicated anymore and so like there's this woman named doctor ion johnson who she's got a book coming out in september called what if we get it right she's a marine biologist she's got a podcast on this topic and like her tenor the way that she talks about this work i'm obsessed with and there's more that than just her there's like even like john jo who's from klein perkins he's an investor in waters shed he wrote a book called speed and scale that is about like how do you take this enormous problem and bring it down to a place where the answer can be written like on a napkin right and so like i think once i see a couple of like little like people here and there that are talking about a problem differently i get really really fixated on that and so my team hears me talk about pragmatic optimism a lot my family hears me talk about like oh that's an example of like this is a really hard thing that we can do and it's not this eyed idealistic you know let's let's hope our way to the solution it's like no like let's break down this problem into the component parts and figure out how to solve it i think that's a really powerful like marketing ten or two because i'd like to see this work shift from fear to p right i think the times come for that can you for people who don't know can you tell us like what is waters shed to start there yeah sure so so waters a sustainability platform that helps these like big global brands you know like sweet and walmart and major financial companies track their carbon their footprint and make a plan for reduction and so most of these companies are tracking for to begin with for the purposes of compliance i something get a lot more regulations that have rolled out that require you to share the impact that you're having on the environment but a lot of them are also tracking it because what can get managed and measured can get reduced right yeah and you can find efficiencies in your business outside of just like the do good of trying to help the environment out of that work right so there's really like economic reasons to to try to drive it so we offer a platform that helps you measure it and helps you kinda make those plans reductions because it's really really messy right like right now climate data is unlike other performance data and that it's built on a lot of assumptions it's built on like it's a blend of your business data and things like emissions factors for that you know screw that went into the microphone that you're holding right and so there's just a ton of transformation that has to happen to the underlying data to make it something you could use and so that's what waters ship does obviously you were in the saas space for a very long time and saw like evolving change and you know saw marketing change and i think it's interesting as you jump into this space and you see like a big you know potential messaging change and really overall marketing approach it like talk about what that experience like like why do you think this shift in p and optimism is happening why now yeah i've always been a big believer in like find the problem and that lays out everything else that you need about your marketing strategy you figure out like what's the enemy what are you taking down what's the problem you're trying solve and that will sort of define the rest of your marketing strategy and i think that that part is the same and i think that you know the reason why i i think it's time for like this not just waters but like climate tech as a whole to shift its tone and to shift its like messaging is because messaging on fear will get people's attention but it will also para them and if you can make that shift and you can d diversify a problem and make it simpler to understand say you know this thing that is big and hairy and and confusing and uses language you don't know how do we make that simpler for you so you can put your arms around it and then we can move forward on it like that i think is the the drive and the necessity of making that shift from like fear to p and so that's driving a lot of the way i'm thinking about like it's same old stuff it's like you've got something complicated break it down into his component parts and make it simple for people to understand my aunt patty should be able to understand this even if she's not the target market k let's go i wanna go further here because i feel like this is like this is really interesting to anybody who's trying to market anything basically it's like how do you break down the pieces and it's just like you're talking about a bigger shift that's happening but what like even what you just said like shouldn't we only just like think about personas like why is simple good like why should we make stuff simple why should we break it down that way like what if your aunt patty isn't gonna be the customer yeah i mean i think that's a i love that kind of deli elimination of it you always wanna like market to your core buy like you know our core buyer is the chief sustainability officer the chief es g officer sometimes either your cfo or your controller it's interesting because sustainability is like shifting into the finance office so our persona has changed yeah but the reason why you wanna make it as simple as possible is because those people that you are messaging to they then have to go message this to the rest of their company and so you need to give them the tools to take something that that they may be understand at a more level and and go deliver it to the of and the same thing was true you know an ai when i was a jasper you know we were marketing to the cmo but we knew that the rest of the company was gonna have like a lot of fear lot of t interpretation on one end and on the other end a lot of like un unrivaled enthusiasm about ai and we needed to give them a way to talk about what is the right way to bring this into our company so i think simplicity always matters even like if you think it's you've gone too far you haven't gone far enough in terms of bringing it back to like the core essence of like before after good bad you know like problem solution yeah you know making it making it real every company that i admire in marketing every company that i've worked at that has done you know grapple with this like they all go back to sort of the same mechanisms of like helping people find their space in a story and you know speaking in frameworks like that because they work and then you can build up all of the complexity on top of that i just think it's it's really interesting because i think it's a classic trap to fall into is like you you see your customers complex very complex needs and they probably are complex problem that you're solving and also if if they're senior you think they're dealing with complex just decision make all the time and so that people don't actually go to the simplest stuff they go to like complex stuff thinking that's what somebody wants to hear and i just like your example here and drawing that together of like it's not just about the buyer it gets about the people around the buyer it's about the organization understanding why you're making the decision is just very easy to forget and when you forget it yeah you don't do good marketing right like you don't do marketing that stands out yeah okay i also wanna talk about a shift that we've been talking about a little bit on the show certainly we're talking about a lot at wi which is the shift in like the data we have versus the data we don't have so fifteen years ago online marketing you basically had perfect data like i put an ad out and i saw this is the terms and this is who clicked it and this is how they acted and so yeah you know you could optimize like really well and we're getting less and less data mh on like the the the higher we go up in the funnel basically like we can see we're putting stuff out of the world but it's harder to track it and then once they hit our website or once they sign up we actually have perfect data again yeah how do you think about this challenge and opportunity like what do you think team should be doing to stand out like how should they incentivize that what types of people should they put on it how do you think about this challenge between you know really going from having very little data at the top having much more data when someone's like actually you know touching signing up like in your product yeah and it's a bit funny to see this like full swing happen because when i came into marketing it was like like but what gets measured gets done which means like if we cannot measure it we do not do it yep and so it was it's very like hyper focus on performance marketing seo ads and all of that data is starting to to slip away now those are still really good practices but to your point like we're not getting what we used to get from it we are getting data you know out of our customer base nope doubt about it acquisition like net new acquisition is getting about to and is already getting much much harder yeah than it ever was and so like with most things when you know one channel goes down another one will rise up and so as net new acquisition gets more challenging marketing to your existing customers to your the audiences that you know that are known to you and then i've opted to to be known to you that becomes not only easier but more important and so i think that's one of the fundamental shifts that's happening right now in marketing is like you see all these companies like shifting their focus to cultivating a known audience and then putting most of their effort into you know expansion in the customer base leveraging the networks of their existing customers you know building advocates out of them so that has changed a lot from this fix station on new logos new leads new contacts into the you know growing the growing the pie i also think this is going to create kind of a new era of some more experimentation in you know in brand storytelling and like a little bit more because we can't measure it there'll be more room for like alright well let's let's try it like and and see what happens ins and so i think like it's nice to fit cs go we kinda went to this place we swung the pendulum too far to where it was like we only do the stuff we can optimize and now i think there's a nice swing back to we're going to be okay with some marketing that is harder to measure it and go on like gut and feedback and kind of what we feel like it's right for the business have you seen anybody do the gut feedback risk taking stuff really well or is there anything that you have your your eyes and ears turn like tuned into that you're you think that others should yeah i mean i think like i looked to like you know anyone doing interesting marketing today is probably going on gut for a lot of it so like books shop dot org right they're a i'll turn they're an alternative to amazon right so you they've they've set up you know their enemy they're a challenger brand their enemy is amazon buying books through amazon because it's bad for authors it's bad for books sellers in their perspective and so they've set up a place where you can buy books online which is what everybody likes about amazon yeah but that that those dollars get back to the local bookstores or portion of them get back to the local in your building came out of the pandemic right and as a way to save local bookstores and then kind of grew they don't have the kind of like they're not advertising they're beyond like the book pages themselves are not doing seo they have like a really like savvy social tone and they've and they have really good relationships with partners and with their community and that has fueled their growth over the last few years so they you can go to like their you know they were one of the first brands i saw on threads and their tone on threads is really good they have a fan base that you know contributes content to them they have managed to get to a place through partnerships where like the new york times now when they talk about a bow will give you a link to amazon and we'll give you a link to watch shop that's crazy yeah and like that's how a it grow right yeah but that's not none of that is measurable even like the you know getting your links on new york times on like all the media publications on the publishing houses that's all like hard one relationship stuff and that can that you can't report on that on a monthly basis but they're doing well right and so i think that's a good example of you know consumer brand that sorta of leaned into that you gotta give cam props for the like the on stage enterprise security rap held battle help you know heard around the world yeah yeah like that's was just watching about this morning and that i was like absurd and you know had nothing to do with like not no way of measuring if that bet that was a big bet and no way of measuring if that was gonna take off or if it was going to you know sync and the reality is like at the end of the day it did both and that was okay right like they they had yeah you know eighty four million impressions of that video in the months after they you know launched it and so like things like that where there's just like we're just gonna take a we're we're gonna go on gut feel that that we can pull this off in a way that is self aware and funny and enjoyable and you know just skate that cringe line right people argue how well they do that or not but like they decided they can take that bet so i think those kind of examples are are what i look to to see like okay where are the fun places that marketing could go if we release the need to measure everything yeah i just think it's really it's really cool to hear you talk about those as mean especially the books shop example because i i hadn't heard that of that one i mean obviously the fact that we're talking about is a sign that it's working so like it's obviously resonated with you deeply enough to get you to talk of the about because but i also think it's just interesting because it's it is a it is a funny it is a big pendulum swing right like pre internet we had no data at all really you had like brand surveys and you had sales data and a lot of brand marketing takes a while to kick up like someone has to know your brand you have to stand for something it has to resonate and then once it eventually resonates you're seeing it perform but it could take time and so there was clearly this like unbelievable skill and approach it was built up by industries that were never online online everything think it's perfect data almost like it's kinda like some of that magic or that skill that science was lost yeah and now we have to refined it again and figure out how to balance it also at the fact that like if you're selling stuff online books shop dot org good example people are still buying the books they can see how people hit the page and sign up yeah convert and like they actually should be optimizing a lot of things and there should be a lot of performance in there it's just just how do you balance the two is is a yeah is an interesting i think thing for all of us to be thinking about right now i also think just to add on that like the ways that we go about trying to like measure brand i think are really flawed like we do these you know overarching like brand awareness surveys and yeah sentiment analysis and they're so far removed and they move when they move they move by like a percentage point yeah and you know we're we're of trying to like measure brand stuff on that when i think it should be much closer to like hey this customer that came in did they engage with that campaign or you know yeah i i i hear you on that so much like it's funny we've done a bunch of brand service and we've had numbers move but then it's like well we've had in some case numbers move a lot but then the critique is like these service are really for b we're not really at the scale at b b to know how significant the data is and i find myself going to the exact same thing that you're saying which is literally talk to the customers who signing up and be like yeah did to hear about this did you notice this like where where did you hear about us like a very simple question like do yeah do you know and if you do that might matter a lot because most people are not gonna tell us but it's again it's very hard it's i find it's so interesting because like on the product side at least for us like the customer insight and the customer research has become religion you know yeah so it's like we have all the data but they constantly showing things to customers there they're are constantly interviewing them just tote like huge blocks of text of like this is exactly what they like this is don't like i was like oh god changed everything what we're gonna do next yeah this just like loop and then on the marketing go to market side we're basically have the same data and it's not treated the same way and it's very i find it very odd and i think it's like the only thing that i i mean we're trying to evolve in that that's kind of why i asked question the first places is it's like this balance right is like hard to to to get right even from i think like a a personality perspective yeah i think some people's personalities gravitate towards each of these approaches totally and and dis that is also an interesting like opportunity and challenge although it's funny like i've seen now i've been in this industry for couple decades i've seen people who like used to argue vehemently against doing unimaginable stuff are now like yeah you know search is kinda done maybe we should do like yeah flash you know like i don't i don't know like yeah they're like they're advocating for it now too so i i think that you know i think the marketing is just it goes through phases and you make the best choices with the information and the avenues that you have in the moment and sometimes when an avenue is broken or is going through some trouble like performance marketing is right now you know it gives you some freedom to try to create new avenues into the company let's talk a little bit about storytelling so how do you think about storytelling how important it is for brands today i mean obviously you're doing a lot of things where you can't measure them potentially like what are the ways that people should be thinking about that and how are you thinking about that with waters shit yeah i mean i look i think there's there's no use in building the biggest audience in the world if you don't know what you wanna say to them at the end of the day i think it's fundamental to get the core parts of your house together around your message right like what is it that you stand for who are you fighting for what are you fighting against those things should be really clear and held by everybody in your company and then i think there are parts of storytelling that need to reflect the moment that they're in so if you take those same values that you started with and you put it in today's environment versus a you know twenty twenty covid era environment versus whatever the heck is gonna be the environment in you know two years aspects of how you tell that story need to shift and then i also think competitively as you change your story needs to evolve so a lot of companies will start off as was known as like a challenger brand where there's a dominant player in the market hubspot did this with salesforce right like dominant player in the market and a big piece of your story has got be about un seeding that dominant player but then fast forward a few years and if you're successful like suddenly you're the dominant player and you can't play the challenger brand anymore you've gotta find a new way to evolve that story without losing the heart of those values that kinda made up the architecture of it to begin with so i think it's a i think it's a science in an art and i think it is essential from a navigational standpoint in the company to make sure you're like making the right calls and building a brand people can stand behind aggressive nodding is happening for those who are just listening i mean i think what you're saying is if you don't have a story that stands for something and against something like you it's not gonna work and being really clear about where you are in the journey i think is really important like it's you can get out of touch like the story you're telling can get out of touch to your point the hubspot thing if they're like only talking about the challenger being salesforce like i think they might have more crm customers now than salesforce does i think i just saw that possibly yeah and so it just won't resonate the same way that it used to and so it's figuring out how to like evolve that positioning and evolve that storytelling but still figure out what you're for and what you're against is your point yeah and that context changes the story yeah yeah you really art i think helped define the product marketing at hubspot and figured out what stories to tell and also you know how to enable the teams to tell the store to each everybody tell their story in the right way in the wrong way and i i just think for prod marketing is something that a lot of startups don't start with they don't know that they need it because it's off like a shared responsibility and then it gets find and then it becomes like extremely extremely important what advice would you give for somebody who is looking at their business realizing i think i might need this like i think worth at the moment that we should be building on product marketing like what should they own what should they do yeah like what what should you ask of product marketing if you're kind of establishing it for the first time yeah i do think the product marketing looks different at different companies buying necessity right like different companies need different things out of product marketing i think that the thing that is universal to all product marketing teams is the role that it plays in building out the the way that you talk about your products as a collection right so building the architecture of this is you know what this thing is this is why it matters this is why it is unique in the field and differentiated from how everybody else does it and you know these are the kind of proof points against that i think there's it that stuff is should be done early as a company because it also helps in inform like when you can talk about something in a consistent way it will show you where the like anomalies are and it will show you where you need to sand down your product vision and it will inform direction right so if you're trying to decide do we go over here do we expand into this vertical i think a big test of whether or not you should do that is how well can you tell that story you know in a concrete way with your existing product portfolio so i would invest in it really early because i think it gives the company even internally just a hand to be able to understand what you're building right to be able to put voice to it that then translates to the sales that translates into what customers expect from you and so i think that's fundamental to product marketing then i think there are additional like bets that product marketing can take that will depend on what your company needs from a go to market standpoint so there are product marketing teams that are really hyper launch focused these are for like you know they're really focused on big announcements net new logos getting people into the top of the funnel like making noise if you're gonna be shipping a lot like making moments out of that for the sake of bringing new people into the company there other product marketers are more focused on like hey we have no problem at the top of the funnel what our problem is is that our you know our funnel is breaking down in the sales process and we are losing to competitors our close rates are ab and like in that world your product marketers is much more focused on sales enable objection handling like market research pricing and packaging trying to find a way to smooth out you know that side and so the strategically what you do i think the mix looks different but at the baseline there has to be this you know translator for the company of why you made that product choice and you know how it's gonna advance your customers so central the research and opinions by product by vertical and helping people like helping enabling people to make to advocate for like what should resonate the market what we believe should resonate in the market is that another way of saying it yeah yeah i think it's like you know your your pm your product manager will come up with hey this is what we think we wanna launch this year that's the direction we think we wanna have the product in product marketing should play a role in figuring out like alright well does that that's a great hypothesis like does that hold water in the market when we we talk to people about that idea is that a real problem to be solved so there's some amount of like market research that happens upfront that then informs product direction and then that same market research then expands to inform how do we message this thing and bring it to market and then there is an examination post launch of did all those things prove true or did we get something along the way yeah yeah i remember like at hubspot and i've told this story before so i hopefully they don't care like we launched a cms and early i know somewhere in the middle of my career there and one of the features on the cms was it could adapt you had what we called smart content it could like adapt based on who was looking at it and we thought that that was like the innovation like that was the thing that we were all about personalized marketing like it made a lot of sense there was a ton of like excitement when we talk to people prem market around that feature like they're were like oh that's really interesting i haven't seen that before but we miss mistook oh that's really interesting i haven't seen that before for oh my god that's gonna solve this problem that has been you know painting me forever and it was what what we thought was you know the the crux of our positioning was really nice to have and when we went to market we realized that like actually people are really still struggling at getting a page online and like the technical complexity of managing the cms and we haven't gone far enough to address that with this release so like those kind of calculations i think our the role the product marketing can play to to make sure that this thing fits with the problems in the market and that it you know has a shot at succeeding with the customer base i love that example thank you for sharing that because i feel like that's so you can see that happening so easily yeah it's like very thousand ai problems that are going after to right now like yep yeah having falling down the same way yeah exactly you do a thing you think it's really cool no one asked you to do it yeah you go and tell them and they it's really cool too like that and then they think it's cool that sounds really great and then they're like that doesn't really work because like this other really basic thing i need to do yeah this doesn't help you with at all yeah ai when when people like text to video for start coming out people are like oh my god i can make the motion picture like yeah i can like just by describing it they'll make this video and then like you get into reality and part of this was like the technology wasn't strong enough but the but i think the bigger issue is a real problem is people didn't need to go from text to video they needed to go from like video that they had shot to a thousand different formats of that video or they needed to like cut social pieces or they like so the problem yeah yeah yes exactly i i think with it all the time because there's certain applications of some of the like tech video ai stuff that i think is cool like we use it for we don't use it for anything that's i'm talking about wi personally in our marketing we use it for antibiotics so we use it to prove out a concept where we know the only people gonna see it is us and yeah is not representing our brand it's got like crazy stuff in it but it's it's faster often or more specific than like the stock footage that you would have to buy to like create the automatic yeah but i think about that a lot it's like looks really really cool but then it's like okay it's the same thing with like like cl yourself the ai avatars i think there's lots of promise there eventually and helping you in like editing and there's a lot of people using it for like sales stuff or whatever but the problem you have is if you like type something in and it spits out an answer but the intonation isn't right yeah which is like is a human being like we're very used to figuring that out and it's like yeah now try to instruct an ai to get the intonation right like it is you end up spending more time doing that a lot of stuff like i mean we could go on and on about ai over problems like there's this thing called auto pods do if you ever heard of this no it's like you take a podcast like this and it automatically edited it for you so it focuses on who it thinks she's talking and who should be on camera or whatever and i'm really blowing up their spot i'm sorry guys but we try to hear for talking to them and we're using for a while but what ended up happening was our editor who's doing with this would spend so much time correcting it to get it right yeah than he eventually is like it's not worth doing this like i'm just gonna do it the the way i know how because the corrections on the ai edit took longer than just editing it straight through and i think it's like this is the challenge with a lot of this stuff it's like how do you find the thing that actually delivers that is actually useful and is it the core use thing that someone's i'm trying to do or not and i think that's where we've seen so much ai stuff that's like popped and fizz and some of that is a technology limitation and you know it will get there right where it's like hey we actually this is actually the right problem to solve and kind of the right approach to solve it it's just not good enough yet that's one problem but i think what's more commonly happening is even if that if auto potter like that that technology were great and perfect even if text to video if runway came out and it was like perfect on day one is that the right problem to solve with this technology and is that where we need the focus that's i think where people go really wrong it's like what is it you know yeah so well just because you can doesn't mean you should like right like yeah it's and i think there's a lot of it's the thing that's interesting about like a lot of the ai gen ai stuff i think is like the speed with which you can make it so the barrier to creating the thing can become so low that we just see way more of it not working whereas i when the barrier was much higher before we saw less stuff in this vein it's almost like you have to train yourself and i i still play around with jenny stuff like base every day oh yeah i i'm fan constantly constantly trying stuff be like does those deliver does this deliver and there are things every once a while that are really incredible but it is when they are you know it's like it's a whole thing of like when it's deeply integrated into the right product you to use in the right way then it's like okay the core thing you're trying to do is still the same core thing and now you have the superpower and that's amazing but not everything like that i have one more example for you from from the world now that we're just knocking on companies i won't name them but there's there's a company as that will help sales reps make personalized videos so you make one video and then you you just like give it a list of names and it'll start the video with like yeah like hi chris yeah megan good to see you and here's what what stress me about that i'm sorry it gets up well and it it so here's thing the problem that is trying to address yeah is that it wants to bring more personalization into sales emails which have been like that's why you put someone's name in it that's why you do a personalized video but then is yeah yeah you're not personal at all you're just like automating the thing that you're trying to personalize so it's like counter two what the point was which is i care up about this deal that i'm taking time to record you a one to one video and what's gonna happen is it's it's exact same thing as when we started to be able to like insert first name into emails yeah it's it's gonna break it's gonna road trust people aren't going to be going to like trust that as a vehicle and then the whole thing will like not be useful right yeah it sucks yeah at the very beginning and then it's stops performing really well because everyone's doing it and then ultimately the trust is eroded and you have to go back to doing other things actually personalize are actually having people involved or whatever the things yeah marketing is full of these like scorched to earth practices where it's like it works really well for the first couple of months and then everybody does it and then the strings rebuild themselves and then that's burnt out and you have to move to the here's a question for you on that which is i one hundred percent degree i feel like i've seen that many times you've seen it many times do you think people should still try to do it or do you think they should assume it's gonna stop working like how do you how do you how should you balance that type of opportunity yeah i think you should do it if it uniquely fits the problem you're trying to solve in the audience and your skill set right like i think if you're doing it because it worked for them you're gonna fail at it so a better example than this is like podcast right like everybody jumped on board to make a podcast because he was starting to be a new channel and starting to break through like i think that it was right for everybody like see that as an opportunity but you have to figure out what unique thing are you bringing into that opportunity and how are you gonna be successful at it it's not you can't just expect to get into the vehicle and have it work right and so that's where it's like you have a to make a judgment call there's like like so many examples of that over the course of the history that like you i i i keep trying to give you examples and i'm like oh but i don't wanna that person off and i wanna like be me because i've done stuff like this too whereas like you know i've tried something because others have done it and it's worked for them this is and i yeah i don't knock that desire like that's curiosity yeah and i've made that mistake too and i think it's interesting because like the lesson you learn is that just because you see someone doing something doesn't mean that it works yeah for it doesn't mean that it works it doesn't mean that it works it mean it works for them like that's seriously there's been times i've seen other companies like oh wow they're doing this this is so interesting like they we should do this and then just like no they were doing a test they didn't know if it worked yet either so it would be a mistake to copy them and then also if it doesn't fit into your strategy in a way that it feels supernatural yeah it be it then it then i think it is like you know it's just it's like then there's constant friction and constant questioning and and all the the things on the margins you need to do to make it work end up not being there you know like and it's a it's a hard lesson i'll learn because i think it's like you see someone doing is something think it seems very easy and obvious oh i should do this that you you try to do it if it doesn't fit the strategy it usually doesn't end up working out yeah totally we're getting in there we also are running low time so we're gonna go to the rapid fire segment there cool okay first question what movie can you watch over and over again die incredible wow oh my god that was very quick i was z see two quick die three i really have not seen them specifically three yeah yeah i got i i just was the guy to act iron one again but i should i should also watch two and three yeah what's your go to karaoke song alright so i have like the perfect range for like nineties rock music so we green day yeah any kind of pop punk like that's that's my my safe space so that's i to and usually those are the ones that we've now reached a point where like everybody sing along to those stylish nostalgic in the younger kids so yeah so that helps is it's our time our time is is now for not rock what's the best book you've read this year i have read a lot of books this year i think actually the one that that's right next to me right now is really good there's this woman's za smith she wrote this coming out of the the pandemic called intimidate intonation rather just a series of essays on that moment in time and like i really love creative non fiction like i love essay sas i love science writing i'm really excited for a doctor johnson's book what if we get it right coming out so i'm drawn to those sorts of things that like it cool are based in reality but take a creative bend to it love that who's your brand crush at this moment and why let's see i there are like aspects that i like of different brands i don't think that any brand is doing it like perfectly across the top but i mentioned them already i think cam takes really good really like smart risks in their marketing and i think they're having a lot of like fun in their marketing which any brand that feels like it's having to fund right now after the last few years of just like dr i'm immediately drawn to there's a company called rose r o w i think it's rose dot com or rose dot ai they took a cool gamble where they replaced their homepage with just their product like basically if you go to their site it is as if you had just logged into the product there's no messaging on it they basically gave up on seo for the homepage and just said we're just gonna let people experience the product and you know at a certain point you log in you create an account but they kinda killed the website in favor of a product interface and i think that took some guts and that's cool i've kinda heard that that's worked out well for them i also really like companies that have kinda reinvented themselves over a period of time like i think that you know there are some big companies that you know should be doing well because they have budgets but like i i think that google done a nice job recently of like trying to surf this narrative around ai and they took some knocks and they came back from it and they sort of like found their their place in it so i looked to them for i've always looked to them for product videos i think their product videos are like beautiful so yeah i i pick and choose and then i put together like little transformer brand that love it that i like the most if you weren't a marketer what would you be speech writer speech writer hell yeah yeah love it that was the original ambition but there's not that many of them in the world well i mean it's like a small pool but i would love to be a political speech writer yeah it's this like a fun it's a fun style of writing that has its own rules and and so it's fun to you know i would i would get i would never be bored that again you're trying to take these really complex ideas and bring them down to a place where can be universally res and have a life of their own after the speech right like that's a unique challenge that's hard yeah but it's cool and i can actually see the connection tool we're talking about before in terms of telling the story and how you market it and simplify and all that stuff megan who's so good to see you thank you for coming the show where can people connect with you to learn more yeah so i i used to say twitter and now i'm not on twitter anymore as much so i would say linkedin i guess we've can moved the party over there you can also check out waters shed at waters shed dot com and we are gonna i'm gonna be in climate week coming up new york which she'll be a lot of fun so you can find me there awesome well good to see you this is fun and best of luck thanks so much there was so much in there so much in that interview like started with climate tech zoomed out to like what happens when you have to market sort of a new a new tone or a new idea talked about storytelling product marketing like i think there were a lot of takeaways in there yes i think so and i mean meghan is awesome and she's seen so much of this at different scales at startups and at like whole wow successful companies like hubspot and she's just really good at communicating things and breaking them down so it like i'm not eyes that we ended up with an episode that had like a lots of takeaways but i imagine if you're thinking about marketing in today's world there's you probably took some notes in there and i definitely encourage you to also ask her questions she's very historically she was very active on twitter is still very active on linkedin and she's just really generous with her time and so yeah it was really great to see her great to have on the show great to chat all about all that stuff and cool i think also to see what translates between her experience in saas and ai to climate because like it in one that's it's very very different in the other sense it's extremely similar yeah i mean there are things that definitely seem unique to this space that she's navigating now but like some very fundamental things about marketing that will always be true no matter of the industry that you're in so totally marketers everywhere no matter the industry take a listen or take a watch take a watch they should watch well i know what if you're watching this at the end thanks and if you're not just take this clip it's gonna be great episode you're gonna love it and share with somebody else who would find it interesting yeah that's that's that's it well that's it that's this week's episode of talking to too loud we'll be back with more episodes in the next couple weeks and of course please don't forget to rate and review the show wherever you consume it rating the show reviewing the show really helps us out to helps more people discover it please let us know where you're watching it comment if you like it on the platform you're on that's very helpful and of course if you have feedback guess you think you're have it on email us at t tail pod at wix dot com we'll see you soon talking too loud is brought to you by wi hosted by chris savage produced by me si lu bow along with adam day executive produced by w studios this episode was mixed by maria passing listen to talking to loud 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hello and welcome to talk to you loud i'm your host okay i lost my brother and i don't know what just happened but i think i just became a teenager again i have my voice cracked yeah that was absurd i was thirteen year old okay here we go hello hello hello is si hello what could i talk to that i'm your host for savage and i've joined as always by you si and also everyone listening and watching all of us with the gang all here the gang is here well thank you for being here we have another great episode i'm super excited because today we got to sit down with a non sharma who is the founder of gyroscope and gyroscope is a health app that i literally use every day i love this product i actually talk about it loud all the time i was just showing off one of the features to someone in person like ten minutes ago and so it's just anyway i think i love i'm super excited he came on the show and and really we got to pick his brain about like his inspiration behind the app how they've scaled their product with an insanely small team they're using so much ai in really cool interesting ways and also talked about the challenges that they're facing now with marketing and how they plant over the come them so it was a very very cool interview yeah unfortunately i was having some tech issues i didn't get to be a part of it but i listened i listened back you listened back you were there for part of it and then you started started getting really choppy and then you're i was back and then you're gone and then you sent me like the saddest times ever just like just go out with without this go on without me so dramatic it's true i tiered i cheered up yes that's ridiculous but you know this show is called talking too loud and i know we kind of already are but still me i have to ask you what's got you talking to you you help me talking too loud you know i'm sort of sad that it's the end of summer so i'm trying to pack in as much beach time as i can went out to the rock away last week had a had a lovely time you know ocean was just just a little chilly but it's starting to warm up but refreshing refreshing very refreshing and and a couple weeks i'm headed to maine so get to experience the ocean there i love maine that's i love saltwater i love maine i love brine saltwater yes main brine so so soaking and up that's great soaking at the end of summer that's what i'm talking to a lot about what that's great what about you what has he talking to a lot you know for me we're doing we've already started annual planning at with ci next year and we've i know that sounds early does but this this is how we do it and so the senior management team is altogether person for a few days and it's just been so fun and en and you know it's like i love this stuff so much i was like what are we doing next what aren't we doing like how are we focusing and there's there's exercises there's post it notes there's like very deep conversation late into the night and you know business is my sport so i i i i i live for this is your that's that's what what's got version of the olympics that's happening at your house and it's providence that's right we we did it here last year two as a way to kick it off and know it was really fun so decided to do it again here this time amazing but you know it's important when we have a lot of people together it's like what kind of food are we having and there's people who are going for runs there's people who are going for swim there's people who are lifting there's people who are just optimizing sleep how do you track all this stuff how do you know if it's working you need a product you need a tool today we're talking to a nod from gyroscope about how they help people do that so let's jump in ana thank you so much for joining us i'm so excited to have you here today i i have been using your product gyroscope for years it's a product to use every day and i'm just i'm so pumped that you're here so thank you thank you for being on the show thank you so much yeah excited to for here and thanks for inviting me and being one of our one of our great customers of course so obviously as you know because you're here this she go talking to too loud and that's because when i get really excited i can't control the volume of my voice i don't think there's a measure for volume of your voice and gyroscope but they're probably should be but we'd love to start our show by asking i guess what has them talking to loud so what has you talking to loud these days yeah see i don't usually talk very loud most of the time the what why one big pet peeve is mono based fonts and and when i see someone coding there's a nine nine point nine percent chance that they're using a mono based font from like the seventies and and i'd i've been trying for years to like educate people and i've just kinda given it up now but basically like tight typo and like seeing people doing these kind of things just based on inertia just gets me really it's really interesting questioning what like why yeah and i guess for for me i maybe like them the only person who like started out doing design before coding and so for me was like oh this spot is not not great let me fix that what i was like fourteen because i didn't know better and i didn't know the you're so you have to use like a mono space font because that's like traditional but i guess no one else like got that memo and just been like passed on in traditions for like decades and now it's like too late to change like i tried to change my friends computer he's like this feels so weird i don't like it and he lasted like about two two minutes so i've been every person i see i i try to tell them about it but but now i usually stop because then i start talking to a loud and then they you can tell you're externally bash because you are you do start talking too passionate too far from that i don't think anything gets me like really angry anything i'm mutual that's good pretty good well look i wanna start obviously i wanna talk you about gyroscope so you the founder and ceo of gyroscope for people don't know it's an app that lets you track and approve everything about your health all these different health data points i'm a very long time customer feel like i've using gyroscope for like seven or eight years it's a long time and i know a bit about your story i i know a lot about the companies i well the product's evolution i should say but i'd love for people who don't know can you tell us like what inspired you to start the company and what where are you today yeah absolutely yeah i mean it's it's actually i think we're just about coming on ten years now since first started originally it was it was more personal project so rewind ten years ago the living in san francisco building a start up with my buddy andrew learning tool for students called quiz and so a bunch of high school students would go on there and study for their test and do their homework every day so we're were building that it was fun it was growing we're i was like twenty three twenty two and so the things are like pretty good but like my health was not great i went went for like a physical and they're like hey you're your cholesterol is high and all these like issues and stuff and i wasn't like overweight but also not like quite as fit as i wanted i think most importantly i just didn't feel great but all this was kind of like on the back burner because it's like the website down i wanted need to fix it and there's like yeah important stuff sacrificing your health for the company basically yeah i mean stay up until like two three am every night which is fun i enjoyed it but there was a lot going on and then the big one of the turning points was i went like on vacation to hawaii and i wanted to go scuba diving and like i was like excited and then they like can need this like doctor's note to like do it and then i went and they're like they're like oh no have asthma like you're not a allowed to do it i was like wow okay this and so now then that was like that i think one of the first times were like i was like couldn't do stuff and like the health stuff was like starting and like actually you're like you know wow limitation and so that as was at that point i was like okay i need like figure this out so kinda started looking at it a little more seriously not really much stuff existed like i guess tin ferris had like just written a book or something on like you know what to eat for our body or something yeah or the one of the four hour ones four so four hours to do something yeah but but yeah so that was kinda of a starting point that was the original original mindset and basically built like a website or a dashboard to track all my stuff my blood levels and my walking and running and back then this was like all kinda hard to do or there wasn't really like you know app and devices to yeah like the app and stuff for example so you you you build this website it goes viral you know you have to scale it and you didn't plan on building another startup but now what makes you actually decide hey i should do this yeah i mean first of all i think it was just pretty fun to build it and so wanted to keep working on that and then also like once i realized like i was using this for myself and checking it every day and learning all these things and yeah like the idea of going back to it and not having this like this tool was like not great so i wanted to exist ideally if someone else had built it i would just be able to use in and relax but i like this needs to work and it needs to stay up and it's an important like infrastructure and so that you know can i just stop that because that's kind of amazing yeah that you like built something that now you felt like you can live without yeah it is it's really cool and it's funny because i remember i was looking at my email the first time i used gyroscope and i signed up in january twenty fifteen when did you yeah when did you start that was i think i was like when you found out our first batch of like my i think you're one of the one of the first it's it's so funny because i remember at that point we start wasting two thousand six so been i guess eight years and i remember realizing whatever you measure like that's what you manage like that's how you and so i i remember thinking myself i want to be in better shape i need some tool to do this and then suddenly i saw you i was this is so cool and then i had a similar experience when you did launch it to the world it like very quickly i was how else would i do this now i've there's there's no other way so it's just i because it's just kind of a remarkable moment and i think a lot of people when they're building companies don't realize that that's actually possible you can make something that really changes how you work or changes how you live your life in such a way that actually like you can't imagine life that so sorry i just think it's like i don't wanna breeze by that because it's like a sick it's like i think of if you're if you're doing your own startup and you're listening to us you're thinking about this like if you get to that point that's like an amazing point to be at but continue continue thanks yeah i mean i the hope was like okay by building this right then i could also improve my life and like my data like exists and stuff which is like a kind of a cool problem i like a previous company we're helping people like get better grades or something which is like kinda good important if you're or like other things you know well this will help you make more money but i think this is like okay how do you actually like feel better daily and like change like what's going on in your mind is like also an important problem right and like improvement there is just gonna really get a lot of benefits so that was that was like the starting point and also realized that this is like a whole new industry that was starting up like back that you know apple health kit hadn't even been in allowance or it just had been announced but hadn't been released yet and stuff so kind of saw that like this would be the a thing that people were gonna use like ten twenty years from now and kinda what we did and these like how we designed it would like end up shaping how this whole industry worked and everyone would kinda you know copy each other and stuff and so this kind of being like on the ground floor of like the internet or only these new things that's like right when it's starting so you know not wanting like similar of the sidelines but be like oh yeah i could have done that but then i didn't so that that was kind of some of the yeah initial starting points also i thought it would be pretty easy i think if i know how much of a payment out i would of like considered well that's how it goes but i feel like that's like a classic the classic like entrepreneur journey is like people are like would you start again and like if i knew what i knew now maybe not but like i've done it so might as well keep doing it it's like the amount of pain you can go through building something as like remarkable when you don't realize how much pain you're gonna go through yeah so at this point you're you do you have a c founder it yeah so if yeah first it was i just built this for myself and then once we started getting a bunch of emails of like hey how do is this an app like how do i get it and stuff i was like yeah i need gonna start doing it so a message of you i messaged my my buddy eric who's like one of the best programmers i i knew and for the first i was like hey can you how well how should i do this and stuff or and so then we started hacking on stuff together and hand ended up joining on like day one and we started the company together and so yeah and then we kind of hard yeah hired a few of my like smartest engineer friends i knew that that were around and we started like just building it so that was like day one just like all basically engineering focus how do you scale this thing up from just like me on this like with crunch or something that you know people can sign up for and store their data and stuff reliably so did it worry you that like apple had launched health or were you looking at that and you're like this is amazing because i think as a start up you know you're so small apple so big yeah did was that did you see that as a good sign as a bad sign how did you how'd did you perceive that change yeah i think for the most part it was good i think like anything there was exciting and and we tried to really position it again i think it was like any any new tool or hardware it's not really a competitor it's like and and we were we're not trying to build a competitor all these where it's like you don't hey don't use any of these things i think our our model was like a lot of people are gonna make hardware and there's good hardware companies out there especially apple but there's not really much good software and there's always gonna be demand for like better software and you know better tools and so we'll do that part of the things and we'll get the data from these things instead of everyone else is like making their own devices and stuff and so we're like we're just gonna do the software like hardware seems like a a hard problem and kinda going more broad instead of you know just doing one thing like hey we need you know we need like a hundred trackers and so if other companies are and trackers is that's good we like we want the our mission is like hey you should track things and so anyone who's like esp that and spreading that is like is good is good yeah so you you found a way to fit in with like the beginning of a growing ecosystem whereas like more ways to track your data better get into health kit and then apple health and then you can pull it into gyroscope and give you the insights in the context so like it's just all good basically yeah and health it wasn't like a scary thing that apple got into the game yeah it was i mean it's always a little scary i guess we're like oh but for the most part it was exciting and and and health has been really great for us the big then a big nightmare scenario for us was if there's like some company that just like keeps all your data super private and then we don't get access to so it was kind of this interesting like golden age of like open apis at the time mh which is now like no longer a thing so there's like a very interesting moment and in time where this was like possible because you have all these big companies and they have the data and then i'm like i want that and it's like okay cool and now we have it and you can do stuff with it and so we're able to build the apps that were as good or better than what like you know the biggest companies in the world we're able to produce we have the same exact information about human body and what's being tracked and stuff so you know if you're building the hardware you have like no advantage and but the nightmare scenario was like someone would just be like hey it's proprietary and you can't have it and they had built their own little mini ecosystem unfortunately there was like i enough a customer demand as well where it's like we want to have our data and and do that now it's not so much of a thing like all the apis we kind of originally like built that like v one on basically like no longer exist yeah either like the companies have shut in like half of their cases or they're just like hey we no longer believe in this you can't have the data anymore of like twitter and instagram and stuff we're using for like unfortunately not super important part of it of like just your photos and stuff they're were like nope no no api access and stuff so that's kind of evolved and now we've kinda have moved to like our own trackers and stuff for the stuff that's super important but it was cool to be able to like pull all that in and like have people people to do that that is very cool okay i really wanna get into where the product is now and what you're doing with it and you're doing a lot of really amazing stuff like stuff i haven't seen other products and apps but before i wanna frame that for folks so can you tell me like you've you've never raised venture capital right that's not we we actually raised a couple right when we started we raised like a seed round you raised a seed round from from true ventures and investors and stuff so that was like about seven seven hundred thousand okay so but you didn't raise a big venture you only ever raised on her fifty thousand thirty we we've raised we've raised like less than two million total so okay yeah which is very similar to us we never raised venture we raised our first angel round is six hundred fifty thousand that we raised eight hundred thousand or second angel round mh but we ultimately ended up doing a buy back a leveraged buy back later but okay so i think that's interesting and then for context for folks how big is the team today yes keeps pretty small we have three people full time about twenty total with contractors and other people on nutrition three people full time yeah that's unbelievable now i i'm gonna set this up so obviously i've been using your product for a very long time i track all my health data in it i used it you know was like there was moments of time when i was like using a lot than using it less than using a lot and in the last couple years you have done a number of things that caused me now to use your product every single day and you in i i camera remember works exactly when you introduced the health score but i really started to pay attention to it i talk about it to others the health score is basically it's like a composite all of your different health metrics so like are you weighing yourself like tracking your food or how active are you are you working out are you meditating screen type all these different things mine right now is like eighty eight oh so i tell people that i'm gonna diet at age eighty eight is that how i should use that score if you have it on strict mode then that's kind of like i do try to calibrate it to that so yes yeah i not guaranteed but that's i know but okay so you have the score that you add like native like nutrition tracking and stuff on us and then you add coaches and i've tried lots of different coaches for lots of different things like i use future i have like who builds workouts for me i've done that for years it's great i worked with my body tutor at one point i don't know if you know them like adam gilbert great guy and he's built this coaching practice around like nutrition and then i was playing around with your stuff and the ai that you've built in this product and the suggestions that you have is like the best implementation i have seen with like giving you suggestions and inputs a little moments and the speed that you are updating this product is unbelievable like every it's basically every single time i open it there's like something new in it that is all about basically getting me to change behaviors which is one of the hardest things to do so how the hell are you shipping so much stuff innovating so much in your product constantly making your product easier better faster leveraging ai so many different fronts the the breath of gyroscope is huge i can't believe it's like this decides the team minutes it so how are you doing it yeah good question i i think this past few years have been really exciting then like the new tools that are out and ai has really let us go a lot faster than we used to so stuff that would have maybe taken us a month or or two like in the old way like twenty eighteen twenty nineteen is now maybe like a day or two as well okay so explain that how do what is happening well how how are you doing things in a day that used should take your months so i think there's there's a few layers to it i mean one is just like ai being a tool that helps speed stuff up you whether for like a complex piece of code or something like that or when you run it into a bug you know it make two days of like let me fig figure this random ex code thing out whereas now it's like you get a thing back so i think there's that helps a bit a lot of it is we've spent like the first five six years building this infrastructure now where it's like the second time it's like the first time was like you know it took a year to build like this report but the second time i can just copy and paste that and like use that so i think a lot of it has been like we have this core framework in the app now where you have all this data already that then now like referencing it is like two lines of code and there's you know obviously all the previous stuff with like the that we have had like we're building on top of that so we're not having to build if we had to build it from scratch again every day that would like be more work so i think a lot of it has been that's been helping us and i think the other thing now the the the the big change also i think we've there's a major change in how apps are built or should be built can be built will be i don't know if anyone else has done this but i think it's the right way so i think it feels a lot like i in like two thousand five or something where people were switching from like flash was like cutting it like if you're professionally you make websites and flash and then there was this new thing called like css which like yeah and and teenagers we're doing i was like i don't understand how to do it seems too complicated so i'll try this like javascript thing and then you could just move much faster because there's like a better structure and easier but it was like a switching cost from like this old correct way of doing it so i think now it's like a kind of a similar feeling where basically it's a lot more like talking to people and managing a team of like interns rather than like writing code okay to like build stuff okay and and so and so you know used to you have to like predict everything and write code and plans stuff out and now i think it's like the way of you can build stuff since you have these new tools is like a slot more like talking to a person and like telling them hey i want you to like do this and go make this and make it happen like which tools are you saying no when you're talk like the app oh the app itself yeah okay okay like that you know like that's just how it works now like if you're you know if you're building ai like if you're if you're an ai product or just any like a product in general like that's just like how you instruct now like programming has changed so like writing essays instead of like you know writing code basically which can kinda go a lot faster with than be a lot more like flexible with then you have a lot less bugs and stuff so it's kinda taken a while to like get you that way of thinking and and working but it is yeah i think it is pretty exciting and if you do it right you get like much better quality and speed and stuff i mean i think what you're saying it's probably mind blowing for ninety nine percent of people who are watching this i mean you don't seem to be have your mind blown just my my mind was blown last year and now i'm like kinda i think you're okay covered but but yeah so now like you know we can have our coaches and stuff like program the workout builder by like changing like the instructions for like how to do warm ups and stuff fry instead of being like hey you need to learn crazy yes because like you will give suggestions in the app to me that seem impossible to get like i've gotten the suggestion which was like try not to try not to finish your kids leftovers or like have like late night snacking and i'm like oh man this is hitting me like this is hitting me hard like this is it this is the moment it's like i'm eating pizza with my kids and they're like give me their slice and it's like that's where i go too far you know what i mean from on my side like it is such such a remarkably different experience then it's i ever could have imagined and if you had a human coaching you versus the ai the human would not know all these details or necessarily give you this insight in the moment but in gyroscope i open it up and i get the insight in the exact moment and so it feels so different than really anything like this and i i have not seen another product of any of the products i use that has taken this approach that you have taken here yeah i think in next vix four five years it'll start to like be become a thing i it's right i think it's i think what you're doing is basically the future of wherever everyone's gonna go yeah i mean i think like if you already have an app that's successful it's gonna be hard to like delete all of it and like change it and stuff so i think it'll take a while for people to switch you over but i think for us it's been pretty pretty easy like or kinda made the jump earlier i think i was like on did to day one or like two days after you like we need to like switch and delete everything and it i think some people didn't like that but we're were kinda moving forward and yeah i think it it's it's we'll see i think it does the the amount of flexibility and personalization and stuff that's possible is like just it's unbelievable i think really important and have you seen this like really change the metrics of the business what do you look at there and what are you seeing change yeah i mean i think revenue and stuff hasn't really gone up yet i think we still need to do a lot more like marketing and get this out to people but like for our current users like the amount of engagement and stuff to go on like way up like people would like pre previous check like once a week or something and now it's like many times a day and so i think like once people are in like it's just much more sticky we used have a lot of issues with people log in their food and really have to like remind you and then like on like for one week like on january first like people would do it and then they would kinda drop off and now i think everyone's like pretty you know consistently doing that all year and has everything and and people have like it hasn't really been a issue so yeah a lot more i think data coming in as well as like people checking and daily getting more out of it so that's been really exciting to see i think we we we've mostly been focused just like on our current users and like getting them to like a really good spot and stuff so so internally i think yeah like our are that those numbers have improved i think we still need to figure out how do we like and this is kinda coming up next for the next few months of like okay how do we get explain this to new people who like haven't done this before and aren't familiar with that way of thinking and like convince them that like it's the right way to do it and instead that makes sense and that seems like the challenge right because it's like something that if you use all aspects of gyroscope you're gonna get a lot of benefit but to actually change behavior enough to use all the aspects since you trusted on all the different things could take someone a time and it's hard to explain and it's it's interesting because like we've had so wi we've gone through a huge transition since like twenty twenty one so mh basically the history of the business we were video hosting management of videos and analytics and like an amazing player really incredible analytics we had video analytics before youtube did we show you across the whole audience but person by person what's who's watching what if you have first party data you can tag that you can get real insights how to make better video is a great seo all that kind of stuff but very focused on that and then in twenty twenty one we realized that like everyone was seeing their computer as a camera now and it was changing expectations just like the iphone when they added video had changed expectations this is changing expectations again and so we need to broaden our platform to do more and that's actually what our customers were asking us for is was like hey we want you to do way more stuff and the history of whiskey from a marketing perspective has been we've basically a lot of our marketing has over the over the years has been around teaching people how to make videos how to light how to script how to edit which concepts where it should be it still comes up all the time so it's actually a really natural fit to start to build those features in so we built recording natively into wi then we built editing into wi and then we built a a webinar platform into the product and it's all just like javascript really seamlessly connected so if you do a live event the recording shows up instantly your account and you can edit it right then and we have you know use ai to create transcripts and all that kind of stuff you can edit the transcript to edit the video and then you can just quickly post on your site or you can follow up with the people who didn't show up with the webinar and all those things are so fast you save tons of time and so it's very exciting within the challenge is when you become a much broader platform figuring out how to market it because people don't know necessarily to look for an all one platform unless they already have that problem and so they're looking for discreet what we found is they're looking for discrete things so it's like you want a great video quarter or you want a really easy video editor or you want like a very engaging live webinar experience and then once we get you in on that we can help you understand this other things so it's it's actually really similar in that respect and and so it's a challenge but obviously if you have confidence that the product is you're killing it with the product makes so much easier yeah yeah but a lot a lot of similarities there we we're actually i think starting to do a lot more video stuff too so i i need to get more set up on cool with you but yeah a lot of it is how do you educate the people and so like you can have the tool but then it's like how do you actually use it and get people to understand how to use it and stuff that's kinda of been our big challenge i think early on we thought it was like oh this is more of a technical challenge like okay we just need to get it working and then everyone will come once they see like this insights are possible or something was like a kind of the naive view at the start but then i think we quickly realize this like actually no it's like more of a getting people excited to like improve their health or make changes and stuff is like the hard part and like the human parts of it like not you know not the engineering problems but like the human parts are like the the ones that we're like silly to figure out and like crack and stuff and i think for you all i think like the brand is very unique in app and i think if you can extend the brand out into your marketing and go do some bigger brand things and some really like i don't know if it's like creative health challenges or something of like mh there's there's a i feel like there's so many things you can do that will really get the word out there it's funny there's so much in gyroscope like meditation is another thing right like you have meditations you've had them for a while yeah i in my experience have gone through moments of time i got really into meditation i meditate daily for like five hundred days i used heads space to do that and then once i did that it's easier for me to do it and i don't do it as much but you have this new like thing the morning routine yeah this is brand say i'm i'm using stuff and i've had it for like a week and again there's it's like these are the things you should do is your morning chilling oh interesting and so i go to the meditations and it prompts me to just a text field what type of meditation do you like yeah and i put in like you know two three sentences of stuff then later you know i go in it says do you want do meditation morning routine i click three minute meditation and there's a voice talking to me and it's what i asked for is like a minimal guided meditation like oh not overly done and it's like good morning chris like you're gonna be doing blah blah and i can't tell you how magical that feeling was of like things that i had put in text showed up with a voice saying my name in your product and i'm saying this example because i i really want people to try it because it's it's so cool that on all these details it's all in there it's all easy it's all sticky it's like it to me it what you're doing feels like the future of where like most products and apps are like dreamed you get to thanks yeah because yeah that's like a the new custom meditations like a new thing we're trying i think we've like twenty people have used it so far but i'm i'm i'm excited about that i think like that's gonna really be powerful for people like well i think we have a we used to do all these things with humans right like earlier in our early version before ai existed we wanted to build this experience but it wasn't possible so we hired a bunch of humans to do like all the parts of it so i think that gives us like a lot of experience and preview of like what it could be like or what it should be like and you know having like a human meditation coach like on zoom like guiding you and leading in the meditation or in real life or something like really powerful right or but i think not everyone can afford a human coach or wants a human coach or or it's gonna have that with them twenty four seven right and so i think that's been our big road roadmap here now like how do we get these things that we used to have for like two hundred bucks a month that were awesome to everyone like twenty four seven real time and like fully fully personalized so we'll see if it catches on i do think yeah i think once people try it out though and like kind of experience that and see it's hopefully it's like kind of a magical experience and and you know can start to like really improve your daily life and like have better mornings and feel better and stuff every day so i think that you know starts to really compound it's not just like weight loss or something yeah that's awesome so what what is the vision like where do you like i know you wanna help people change your lives but for the company itself is it to stay an independent business is it like do you think about it like that is there one big goal or is it just the journey how how do what's the vision of the of the company yeah i mean i guess from the product focus you know we really wanna build a new operating system for the human body and give you full control over what's going on so that's really been driving it behind the scenes of everything we're doing and whether it's product stuff for fundraising or to actually enable that and bring that to everyone i think in the short term we're really doubling down on weight loss and that's like the kind of the thing like almost ninety percent of people signing up on like hey i need help losing weight or i'm mob obese or hey i wanna you know lose ten pounds or something so really and making that easy to do and guiding people to it step by step in a scalable way is kind of our big focus for like the next few years i think and and bringing that to everyone to have like massive health impact on the world and then beyond that there's plenty more in a road roadmap for like you know improving your mind and your stress and how you feel and and productivity and and things like that and so there's like a pretty clear roadmap of like issues with the human body that we wanna solve and like obesity and body compositions like the current one that's like i think pretty pretty big problem that'll take us a while to really really solve but i think we now have like all the pieces in place and it's more about like getting it out to people so i think yeah i think this year we'll probably like raise more money and grow the team more to be able to really scale up and and improve the quality and especially like reach more people i'll do more marketing marketing is not something i really enjoy so it's on the back burner of like you know few weeks here and there i'll i'll do it i think we really need someone like twenty four seven who's like we should talk to tell tell people sign up but yeah that's kind of the next the next phase here i think now that like we've built in and it's working well and a pre feel pretty comfortable like just taking someone's phone and mean installing it for them and like it's gonna improve your life and stuff i i'm curious to hear like more about your personality because i think there are like certain people who really seem to like gravitate to it and like like this approach and then there's i think others who were like i don't wanna be told what to do or they have like a different approach of life but i i think it's kinda skewed towards like you know like tech startup founders or ceos or people who are like already looking at dashboards and graphs and stuff yeah and like there are like doctors even who like chat that training of like okay i know how to look at numbers without getting scared and those solutions are here whereas i think casual people maybe like don't do that that's really interesting because i think i do look a lot of numbers and basically my assumption for most things like okay we look at a graph if it's bad and i pay attention to it and i figure out the inputs that i can make it better and then i when i get addicted to his progress so if i see i'm making progress on something and then it's much easier to keep doing it and i look at it is like behavior changes is hard so i to find what's the one behavior change i want to make that i think is going to impact this and then just start doing it so the fact that the triggers for the behavior change in the app is helpful i thanks for me oh yeah we we have gone a lot deeper on the behavior chain science in the last year or so which has been cool there was this like book about like yeah i basically like positive reinforcement and like how to train animals and and and dogs and stuff like that but really all animal like creatures and stuff and even humans are kinda of on the same like basic inputs and so basically like turns out like positive reinforcement like the number one method and like you when you do something it's like hey good job like you get your rewarded like a cookie or something or and then your brain likes like hey that's good i'd let me you know produce some dopamine and like reinforce this pathway and to do it again and it gets stronger and there's very basic stuff like that and you know the the the reward can get swapped out so you can have like symbols and stuff right like the clicker for like a dog instead of giving a treat because there's like too much gap between there and then your brain quickly realized and for humans we've have you know we've built one with call money that's like basically the global reward system right that drives our behavior and rewards and stuff but in the app we we we built a token system which is kinda also used to like make sure we don't go way over our ai bill because it's expensive but it's also uses those like a reward system so like when you do something good it's like here's a token and very quickly surprisingly quickly i mean it's kinda what all the studies and science say but it's cool to see it working where that really like drives your behavior and you know when you get a token it's like your brain and like your lizard brain it's like cool good like we'll i like to get we'll do more when yeah and and so that's i think really driven the behavior where like and it gives you like your control over your own habits and your brain for kinda maybe the first time for a lot of people of like oh i i wanna do this but it's not behaving and i think i think yeah this so we'll see how that works but so far it's been it's been pretty powerful so now now we're gonna also launch the like a new kind of of a game mode with levels and stuff so you can really level up and see your progress in like more fun fun interesting ways and like yeah making that more accessible to i think like a normal person like okay they probably rather play a game and like look at business metrics and charts and stuff that like maybe we might enjoy why as a game too so yeah so i i think it's similar but like making it even more exciting and and more more understandable and more more fun so use like you know that's cool get get these things right and on i wish we had more time but we're we're running very short i am gonna ask you some rapid fire questions k very quickly so try to give me short answers on these are you ready yep okay what's your favorite app right now mh can i say jar of course yes okay great if someone could do one thing to improve their health like what should they do oh man i would probably one would be eat more protein it really depends on the person though because so many people are doing different things wrong you like you know if you're drinking alcohol every day then you probably just fixing that would help or if you're not sleeping well then that would help but it's like different people will have really different things that would help them so really tailoring it you know like fine fine find one thing and a improve find the one there's usually there's one issue that's like really holding you back if you have your health score afterwards really obvious and just like you know focus on getting there right what's the best business book you've read oh i guess i like reading biographies and so i think like i really like a shoe dog oh yeah that's one of my favorites there's a there's a handful of those through surrender experiment i think guessing like how other people like built their thing and what the progress was and stuff like that i think to me that's been like the most instructive this one's close to my heart i'm a huge blockbuster movie fan i like watching like you know big popcorn disaster movies what's do you have a favorite like blockbuster movie like summer movie oh yeah let's see my favorite movie i saw recently was i'm gonna blank on the name everything everywhere everywhere everything everywhere all at once yeah it was i that was amazing that was probably like about a recent memory like the most like amazing movie that i saw in the that's a great one look thank you so much this is this is a delight where can people connect with you to learn more and where should they follow what should they do yeah so the gyroscope app is in the app store you can just search gyroscope g y r o s c o p e and then you'll also be in our newsletter and can email me from there i'm also april zero on instagram and twitter and linkedin and social stuff so that's apr r i l c r o my birthday his march thirty first so that's where that originally came from amazing i hope we chat again soon yeah thanks for having this isn't really fun chris so when i listen back to this recording i could tell you were just so excited to be sitting down with an on and talking about this app that you use every day that truly terri me but you know what he said something at the end and i feel like it's a really interesting point he was like people who tend to gravitate towards this app are people who are used to seeing data and graphs and numbers and like that's not scary for them that's like yeah insightful for them that's stimulating and vac and i was thinking like yeah i don't i don't know that i have that relationship to numbers the way that you guys do well it's it's definitely a personality type and it's funny actually like to go back to what i was talking to a lot about like the serial major teams altogether and we're talking about our yep and a non asked me about this he's like are you a three think you're great three is it's like an achieve person who basically just like is constantly striving to improve and like yes i am that and this is for me it's like i look at the numbers in they're bad i'm like i can make them better versus like it it just motivates me it motivates it it motivates you and i think for other people it para them yes and that's why i think it is interesting it's not for everybody yeah but like i think it's like if you can match it i don't know it makes me think about products in general of like sometimes it's hard to tell like why are these like three products all in this category mh and why are they all working i was like no they are actually slightly different in what they prioritize or what the differentiation is but sometimes i think it is like literally personality is playing a role oh it's totally my personality like is why i love sharing my stuff a hundred percent and other people would truly hate it and so it is it's just interesting because it's like you want the math between a founder and the company they're worked on you want the mastering and the customers and the product and i don't know that i mean it makes more sense in like personal health product or anything you're using yeah in your day to day life that personality is gonna show up more but i think it's a it's a often overlooked reason around why some things work for some people and not for others yeah and i guess it also makes me think about personalization as like a way to kind of mitigate that not not everyone is gonna have that same personality not everyone is gonna have that same relationship to numbers but through personalization you can kind of start to target different people differently i don't know it was it was really an interesting conversation when it comes to making making a product and really going all in on that product and then now the challenge for them is marketing and how do you get people to like to know about the things it's hard for everybody i think for people to know when is when is that the biggest challenge yeah if you markets something and people don't actually stick with it you're not a very good idea unless you're trying to get some initial folks to pay attention so you could figure out and sex with them so it is there's a lot of art and a lot of science like in building and scaling any product business any campaign and i think just admitting that you need both and try to figure out when to use them i think it's like the important part so anyway really fun interview so fun to have an on on and i'm sorry i'm sorry that we had technical difficulties that stopped you from joining the party okay i feel like i attended even though i wasn't there okay good well hopefully everybody else who listen to watch felt like they attended and after attending please let us know what you think please rate in the view of the show wherever you listen to it we are doing more to push video episodes out of talking to loud so they're available on youtube they're obviously available on wix dot com they're also available now in spotify so trying some stuff out there please comment tell us what you want more of what you want less of and you could also of course messages directly linkedin or email us at t detail pod dot com and any other announcements we need to make solving that's it golden well good to see you see and i'll see soon bye talking too loud is brought to you by wi hosted by chris savage produced by me si lu bow along with adam day executive produced by w studios this episode was mixed by maria passing of edit audio listen to talking to lab wherever you listen to podcasts and hey great and review us for every you listen and check out more content on w studios wi dot com at

okay ready he k oh wait wait wait you made like you made a face u i'm ready now i'm ready now i'm ready now hello and welcome to talking to you loud with chris savage i'm your host chris savage and i'm joined by the one and only si lu bow si we got a great show today great show great show we have kip wagner who is the cmo at hubspot he had an amazing career trajectory he lives in breathes marketing and obviously hubspot has been innovating in the marketing space for a long time so we cover a bunch of that we get into a lot of the head stuff around what's changing in the marketing landscape where do we think it's gonna change over the next ten years where it's gonna stay same we get into tactical advice when it comes to scaling teams i mean this is basically like a go to market therapy sessions so lots of takeaways i'm really excited for folks listening this episode but first si i have to know what's got you talking too loud it can only be one thing right now it's the olympics come on that's what it seemed like you love sports so let's go i am cheering i am crying i am laughing it's heroic what these people can do you know shout out to women's rugby i feel like they're getting a lot of love women's gymnastics beach volleyball happens to be a personal favorite of mine okay okay love the digs when so digs oh my god just like a dig for the ball when they like yeah like into the sand no they die got it yeah you don't think they're yeah digging diving oh that's digging digging digging okay like you yeah isn't that i got it no i understand they're digging the sand up and they hit the ball as a part and there's a ball involved right yeah and steve everybody knows steve who did the horse and basically cli the med the i haven't seen that much of the olympics i've seen the open ceremony opening ceremonies which were something else very insane yeah not appropriate for children with the marie antoinette that part and my kids were like what is going on what is spectacle it was a spectacle just headless like on forever whatever but i did see the pom horse guy i did see steve he was pretty great it's just i love the olympics olympics are fun yeah yeah what about you what has you talking to loud there's this trend we've talked about on the show of people launching ai products way before they're in your hands and another one launched just the other day called friend did you see this i don't know friend it's friend dot com spent one point eight million dollars by the domain name for this thing it's pretty it's dependent that you wear with you when you go around and then you tap it and it's always listing and it gives you like messages on your phone like you had a friend with you okay okay i do not think this will be a mess the target audience yeah like what i think they're the i think they're trying to be like people are lonely we'll make you less lonely because you always have a friend with you and it has this video that basically looks like a black mirror like episode it was actually created by a friend's sandwich beautiful video very eerie it's like really really well done for what and eerie erie beautiful eerie weird dystopian and it's going viral like the last time i saw and it came out yesterday got like fifteen million views so far it's probably gonna end up with hundred million views of this thing so i think yeah i'm talking too lot about that i think it's like kind of an interesting example of the times of people kind of you know over promising will they deliver i don't know got it got it well yeah i don't know if i'm looking for a dystopian friend at this point in my life right now but kip wagner feels like he could be a real friend a true friend does friend is like a real friend he's a genuine guy he's smart he's thoughtful and i think people are really gonna love this episode with kip so let's jump right into it well kip thank you so much for being on the show so good to see you here i'm talking too loud and as you know when i get excited i cannot control the volume of my voice this has been true for me since i was a kid i am often told this just happened to me yesterday's outside enjoying some fa and my brother said to me oh my god chris you're sellout loud like you're two you're too excited the neighbors are literally gonna hear you this is really this is who i am but chris i i want to interject here because i am that same person good so we're double the volume today is what i wanna warn people like every day i'll talk to my son and he learned sign language because he kinda spoke late in his life and he's like too loud dad too loud too loud over and over again and i have never been accused of being quiet in my do you ever have challenges at movie theaters oh yes in any place there's quiet it's like i don't have an indoor voice yeah can't go to libraries yeah the libraries i i struggle why don't struggle i love going to see movies i especially love like the popcorn kind of like summer blockbuster oh yeah and and i am also an easy laugh so like if there's something that's like designed to be a laugh like i will laugh and i keep going to things sleep with my kids and my daughter's always will like hit me on the like dead stop it can't stop it and and it's so funny to be loud and laughing in public and have my kid basically embarrassed because just makes me wanna do more i was i was at dinner a few weeks ago with my partner and there's was a gentleman laughing in the corner she's was like oh i found him i found the one person that laughs louder than you i was like thanks kids that's amazing looking out yes that's that's fantastic so i have to ask you that in general what's got you talking to loud today like what's got you excited oh first of all summertime i am just happy about some beautiful weather and i'm pumped about that we've got our big event inbound coming up in a couple months so i'm psyche about that i'm psyche about all things ai and technology and i'm psyche that we're kind of in this like era of outside of that zero percent interest rate world and we are focused on like grinding it out doing real work doing things of substance and like real thoughtful people are making good things and that is like a fun time to live in the world yeah it feels very different than two years ago very very different it is funny i we've been talking about that a lot because you know when i look at how our markets change like twenty twenty changed our market dramatically right like it made it obvious that your computer is a camera and i think up until that moment it was not as obvious and so a lot of expectations for who can make videos and how they make videos and where should make videos like changed and then i think as the market became obvious to me it felt very early stage again where it's like wow we are building brand new things that can work in totally different ways than we could before but that was all happening with like zero percent interest rates and now it's so different just two years later where what we see customers evaluating is like they they are looking for something that actually solves a problem they're looking something that actually works and i also feel like there's this challenge that has happened with ai that is like i in a way we're like fortunate that interest rates are what they are and folks are looking for real value which is like so it's too easy to like over promise and under deliver i think a lot of these ai tools and so i'm paying a lot of attention to which things are people like actually consistently using which things actually create value which things are gonna create lasting value versus like the promise is incredible then the product is actually deliver turns out growing too fast is bad it turns out not having constraints is really bad like constraints are a good thing to help you focus they help you do better work and everything you just said but those are healthy constraints like customers being very particular on what they're wanting and needing and demanding that like you make better products because of that for sure you're more focused you have to have trade offs exactly actually i guess that's an interesting question like for us i mean we're about two hundred people a little less mh and we're building a ton of stuff and we're constant with the trade offs do you feel that at your scale do you feel trade offs and what you're building and how you're marketing or do you feel yeah how does that for today for folks who are like not from familiar thought we're about eight thousand people now and it never goes away it turns out like one of my favorite articles of the last couple years is packing mccormick wrote a great newsletter that was i think the title was super intelligent abundance which is like what happens in the world like if if we had like really smart ai like would it take every everybody's jobs and all that is and he's basically like no it turns out that every moment in human history humans just want more more and more and their capacity to want and do more just expands with the ways that it becomes accessible and that happens in organizations right if you're are two hundred personalization two thousand ten thousand doesn't matter your aspirations expand to the scope and scale that you're operating at so you never like solve that problem it's just a perpetual problem or at where i had say like an opportunity to actually say hey we can do a lot and the question always is no matter the scale how much should we be doing what is enough but not too much and like getting that balance right is actually very challenging yeah i i think it it is challenging and it is interesting how the more you have the more you want and like at least for me hopefully like the more you understand the customer the more you can understand ways that you can help them like other things that you can tack all other challenges that they that they have where if you you know one plus one equals three if you build the right things and incorporate them into your existing product and all of that well i think what's so hard about the time we live in right now is that we're like coming off of this zero percent interest rate error where customers are very clear on what they want and they have a lot of real demands and then we're on this new technological advancement era of the era of ai the third generation of the internet where nobody actually knows what they want and you need to build things that people do not yet know they want so like you have to listen to your customers for some products and then you have to like dream what is possible and give them things they don't yet know they want with other products and so i think the figuring out how to spend time and money across those two groups of innovation is actually very hard and i think a lot of companies have over balanced one way or the other i i think of right now it's probably more like seventy eighty percent listening to your customers and what they want me hearing now and having that twenty to thirty percent that's like a hedge against disruption and future innovation and everything and i don't think you can over rotate to to ninety a hundred percent on either one of those two buckets yeah because i think you're you're right there's there's gonna be ways we can solve problems that we couldn't before correct but people don't know to ask for that because they don't know it's possible necessarily so like if ai is acting like a human being for little tasks and helping solve problems for you you can basically build solutions that couldn't have existed before but no one knows what they are so there's this inherent risk element in at which feels very early stage and i know i think a lot about like i was i was i think in fourth grade when we got aol and yes i was i felt like we're i remember being like do you have aol yet and i was so excited to have aol and like tell my friends like my screen what's your screen name i think it was this is important i i had a few but i think it was it was like chris s mb i went to school called moses brown so it's like just just nothing i had some others later that i can't get into there were gaming names but i think about like when that was happening in the nineties and then how long it took before it really felt like the internet was really changing our lives every day and i think that's the question my mind is like this stuff there's amazing stuff literally every day like yesterday there was like three major exciting generative video projects that launch mh but the question is when will it be that like it really is changing our lives and changing our work and i don't i don't know if it's gonna be two years six months or something's ten years like how long it will really take before it's truly changing things well i i think i'm somebody who's obsessed with the future like i am just really bad at living in the past or living in the present like i always want to live in the future and there's a bunch of great things and a bunch of terrible things that come with that but if you're obsessed about living in the future then you start finding the patterns and the principles that lead to make those things true and if you go back to that internet era it wasn't just like magic and time that made the internet change your lives is like they were very concrete innovations right we used the cable infrastructure sure of these this country to provide high speed internet right we created really good wifi f infrastructure we had three 3g networks that could make mobile internet actually scalable computing got fast enough and small enough that we could have really good mobile smartphones and do all those things like a bunch of things had to happen and so as we think about the next future like those same things are gonna repeat themselves right like those those video models you talked about for example like part of it is just a function of compute and how much compute and the cost of that compute and that's just gonna keep improving and it's gonna hit the cliff at some point where you're like yeah great anybody could make a great thirty second like a plus quality video for free to little money and we're just not there right now i think most of those really good videos are taking what like an hour or hour or two to render and they're not cheap yet and like they're we're not to the point of like consumer customization yes yeah totally i think your spot on that it is about those foundational changes and that like it's trying to figure out to your point which what are the limitations and one of the she's gonna change and how do you which world should you be building for you should you be building for the world that we're gonna be in for the let's say three years of transition to this stuff or should be building for the world that's like the post transition what it is is free and it is limited i think that's like those are really interesting questions to try to figure out and at least for me my my strategy is like use all the stuff like actively the be the early adopter and actually judge myself is this actually good is it getting better at the right clip do i believe like when do i believe these changes will show up as being the when will the technology be good enough to really change how we think about i i i think that's i think that's great advice i have like what is the simplest principle but tends to work very well that the second my time or capital allocation changes in a meaningful way we're here yeah right and and like i look back it's like oh i went from like spending no money on uber to like three hundred dollars a month on uber you know like a decade ago and it's like and that was my look back of like oh i should just like beg pleaded and steal for private shares of uber because like i i i knew at that point it was like a it was like a real a real thing same thing that happened with zoom it's like even prep pandemic it's like oh zoom thing i bought the ipo i'm like oh great this is like clearly how we're going to like transform how we work and how we communicate and it's just like if you're out there using everything then you notice like oh gosh i'm now using this thing like twenty minutes a day i wasn't using it at all like this is actually probably very very important technology i love that way of thinking about it and i think it's also interesting because behavior change is so hard very hard it's like the highest bar yeah think that's a really interesting question for people to ask themselves in terms like you're trying to use those new stuff like how much are you actually using it like and if you are using it a lot if you have changed behavior then the thing is probably coming yeah you you you're probably ahead of everybody else probably gonna get real adoption and it's gonna be a part of our society for some period yeah right wow we could just talk only about this and i have an instinct to but i have a lot of other things i'll ask i was told there real real question there's real much marketing advice questions i'm i'm here for them i just wanna talk a little bit so you've been the c cmo hubspot for nine years i but you've started right as a content marketer i do have hubspot i did writing blog posts and guys of stuff first of all that's an insane and amazing like so cool to see someone with your trajectory and to see what you're doing now is like awesome so congratulations thank you but also like i'm i'm wondering when you look on your experience i think a lot of people would love to have the career that you've had mh and what do you look at from that time like what stuff has stayed the same and what things have changed like what's what's what's changing for you yeah so folks i don't know if you've read it like morgan houses book that came out earlier was year same as ever i thought it was really good was all about the things that have that never changed right and so okay we can do a little same him as ever for marketing like one of the things that don't change in marketing turns out need know how to write never changes right like turns out having a deep understanding of what your audience slash customer is interested in once and like mapping what you wanna achieve to what they want like that never changes like you always have to figure out clever and creative ways to do that like that is very very clear turns out consistency never changes like gotta commit to doing things and doing things for a long time like people are like why have you been and see what up still long it's like because it takes really a long time to do great things turns out i turns out great things or not fast like it takes a really really long time to do great things and most people do not fail because they're not smart enough they fail because they're not enduring and persistent enough over a long enough time horizon and that has just never been more true in marketing will always be true in marketing is like if apa empathy is the enemy of all marketing people just not caring not knowing about you than the anecdote to that is like you show up you show up you show up you show up you show up and you you you beat people into submission of like hey you're you are going to know and have some form of care about me because i am going to be here and i'm gonna be a part of your life over and over and over again right i love that and could not agree more like something i sail at the time is like to solve hard problems you have to work on them for a long time and like the secret is a long time thing and like people action during and being persistent so love that i was nodding aggressively for those listening to the podcast during what kip was just saying how do you think about growth actually let me put it this way mh when you think about growth how much would you weigh searching for new levers of growth like new opportunities new channels versus nurturing compounding initiatives think i it's kind of a false choice right and to me what growth is if you're a marketer there there kind of a couple other same as ever is your job is to figure out i'm gonna go on i'm gonna give you a story and i promise i'm gonna it's gonna come back to it over the pandemic i was it was it was it was a dark time i was having a tough time i like everybody else and i wanted to like ob obsessed about something because that's kinda who am so i i was like you know what i know nothing about our i wanna ob obsessed about art and just like learn contemporary art and i took like eighteen months and learned like the entire world tip temporary art and i just cold call our dealers up and like talk to them for like half hour hour and asked them a bunch of questions and like figure out like how does pricing where how do these people do all these things and in that like i end up talking to this this interesting guy from london and he was like look anybody who's ever made a generational collection of art all they've done is bought art from their conte the people of their age like they started in their twenties they bought art from their conte they did it for twenty to thirty years if you get every like monumental collection of art in history of the world that's basically genesis of it across across generations the same thing applies to growth the marketing is you have to pick the opportunities of your cohort of your generation of like if you're starting a company today your marketing channels are gonna look very different than if you started a company five years ago or ten years ago and so part of it is like you wanna be early to channels because when you're early to channels like i love i love living in the future because i get vc vcs to give me like leverage of my life right like i a start up customers these vcs are supplementing my my consumption of that product because that product is probably under priced and a whole host of things same thing with marketing i want to be in a channel where it's the saturation is low and i think the potential is high and then if i've selected that chris then it is the comp like i then have to focus on grinding out and compounding that for hubspot that was google search hubspot started when google search was very early and so we compounded it over the course of fifteen years because like it was a channel of our contemporary of who we were and we built that and and we did that what i find where people go wrong if growing is like cool i'm a start up i'm gonna invest a bunch of my time in email marketing it's like look i can tell you to click the rate of your emails it's gonna be somewhere between one point nine percent and three point two percent right like i can tell you exact like you are fighting to be on the big end of that narrow spread wouldn't you rather go do something where the spread is much wider where you have the opportunity like the the beta is much wider that you can actually have real upside like i think of it as like your venture capitalist you wouldn't invest in like companies who are growing slow with small markets you would invest in oh these are companies doing new disruptive things in really big markets they're gonna create new opportunity that's where i wanna invest my money it's also kind of how we wanna think about my marketing channels or by growth channels you once i saw an interview that you did once when you're talking about how many channels you need to scale yeah and you basically said something i'm gonna para for it but it was like to get to fifty million in revenue you really need like one channel working to get to a hundred million you need to and then really to scale beyond that you need three and i remember when i saw that clip it really resonated with me because like we had had this experience of we had some channels are working we probably added too many mh and it does and we didn't double down on ones that were working and some of the simple things that we did to like move the numbers on growth one was just double down on stuff that worked before i assume you still believe this definitely do yeah can you explain better than i just did like how people should think about i think specifically when do you add more channels in like when should you broaden versus double down or can you or is the goal just to do both yeah so there's i'm gonna give everybody a few cheat sheets before i actually answer that specific question which is like most human beings think opportunities are much smaller than they are most opportunities are much bigger than people think most human beings think that the downside is really really really big and the upsides is very limited the opposite is almost always the truth the the downside is almost always less than what you think the upside is almost always a lot more than what you think and it sounds silly but changing your mindset around those two things is the leading indicator of answering that question that you just ask correctly right because you're like okay i have to have an abundance mindset versus a scarcity mindset i have to think that this is could be much bigger if i was one of the best people in the world at it because i what i believe in that one two three channel model is like that's all true if you're willing to be one of the best people in the world at those things right if you gonna to be average at those things you need ten channels but if you're willing to be one of the best people in the world at those things top one percent then you only need one two or three channels as as you kinda scale and so i i think kinda be original question here is like how do you think about when you need a new channel you need a new channel when either you lack skill and expertise to grow that channel anymore and that's actually the reason most people do where you have lost focus of the goal and p of what you'd originally committed to most people don't grow because they don't know how they just get bored or interested in something else like the people i admire most in this world are the people who will just put their head down and do the same thing for five ten years where you're like no i know this works and i will like i will do this and this even if it seems super mono because the in payoff is going to be much much greater and i found that to always be true it's just actually very hard to practice then the third reason which is the only actual like tactical reason is if the economics of that channel are breaking and that normally is very specific to paid performance marketing right where you can build a fifty million dollar business off paid performance marketing because you can you can essentially get the cost structure to work but as you have to grow and you have to expand and why you're targeting the cost inflate so much that the unit economics and your return on ads spend just start breaking and then you have to go look for new channels and so the economics of your channel start to feel like they're breaking that's really when you have to get there because economics the break because i'm not getting enough volume and then that's a good reason to go do something else or the volume i'm getting is getting more and more expensive which is the case and paid and one of those two things is when you need to go get a new channel and do you think the other piece of the puzzle there is back to the world class thing of like looking at that through that lens to understand why maybe a channel isn't before the way you used to yeah so the for the first thing i would say is if you're like if you are going down the the path of like oh maybe this is not working anymore or it's limited in the way it's working i would i would ask myself a series of questions i'd to be myself am i completely in inward focused am i just completely my completely is the way we're doing this based on what we've done in the past and what i think and if so like that's a bad way to do things it's a bad way to live and if if and that answers normally yes like if things are not going well they answer to that question is normally yes and if that question yes then you would say alright i must now go and learn from some of the people who are the best people in the world with this thing to see where the gap is from where i am to where they are and so i can understand is that a small tiny of gap and i need to i need to be worried or is it a big gap and i'm like yeah this is my fault and i just need to change what i'm doing and so what i would normally do is find five to ten people who i think are world class of that thing and i would get on zoom or fly to them and i would ask them for an hour where i can just ask them questions and i'd in turn i would give them anything they wanted i'd offer to pay them whatever hourly owe rate they wanted i would you know i would offer to do a favor for them whatever to do that and coming out of that you then have like a very valuable set of data and information to go and bake an informed choice about like why you're not where you want to be with that strategy there's a lot of wisdom just dropped there i think and i use that word specifically because i think like you just said a lot of stuff that i think is very hard one that's it's like almost like not that hard to say but hard to recognize like the impact of it it's also very hard to do it's very uncomfortable yes it is it isn't uncomfortable how do you even like how do you get how do you both because both of you seem like you enjoy working on the same problem for a long time so how do you have that like internal trust and then like how do you inspire teams to also like go on this journey with you if they're not seeing like immediate payoff a media is very hard right humans we love a media you the flip flipside is if you're making no immediate progress you're also doing a bad job right like the the long grind is about making quick progress that you know that you can sustain for a long period of time it would be like cool i can i i was running a twenty minute mile now i'm running a twelve minute mile can i run a twelve minute mile for half marathon you know like that is like that's like a big step and a big improvement and you have to celebrate the winds along the way to help people realize that like actually making progress we're not just like putting a bunch of activity that's that's my perspective i don't know chris what do you think i mean yeah i i agree with you i think the other thing i would say is like whenever you're doing something new i i always try to look for the qualitative stuff first and that usually shows up first and so that could be surveys and stuff but literally like if we're doing something completely new we'll often say to the team like hey let us know if this come up in sales calls let us know if this come up and support or like let us know if you hear about something working or not and it's it's funny actually we just had our off site with the whole company in chicago a couple weeks ago and i was in this long conversation with son of the team for thirty minutes we're talking in their product strategy stuff like really really in there's stuff i'm loving the conversation and then he says you know i have a friend who just heard one of our ads on freak economics because we had like some podcast ever it hasn't going and like they mentioned to me that thought that was so cool and that was an interesting thing so it's like okay we turned on some new podcast advertising i haven't looked at the data yet he wasn't the first thing that he said and this person's what i wished you for years it was almost like back of his mind but calling that stuff up if you're doing something new and asking people the question like hey are you hearing about this what kind of impact is it having often you can see the impact of things there first and then over time it becomes by the time it's showing up many cases i think in many cases quantitatively it's been working for a long time right it's like the same thing of like if you wanna do ab testing versus user testing mh you could you could go do show a interface to twenty people and if they all love it it's probably pretty good but to get the statistical significance you need to prove that that interface is better it might take months and months and months and so the way to shortcut that off and is like do the user testing and then you feel like you have something that's really good and then do it in the the ab testing the the real the real kinda counterintuitive answer to that question of like how do you get people to follow you on a long hard journey which is which is i think the the root of the question is like do you guys know who phil stu is the famous psychiatrist there's a documentary on him on netflix yeah joe hill and everything he recently was on the ritual podcast and as a avid youtube consumer i was i was watching that because i like how rich poses his questions and and does everything and kind of in the opening like eight minutes of that podcast i thought he had one of probably one of the most valuable one minute i have consumed in a long time which he's like like i don't know that much about life but i know what i'm about to tell you is very true and he was basically like the way to success and and happiness in life is the opposite of what most people think most people think that you need to take action and if you take action then you can then you can build some confidence and then if you build that confidence you can have like faith in what you're doing and he's like it's wrong and this is me para it's like it all starts with faith once you have faith you can then take action and then once you take action that actually gives you a result that can give you confidence it's not that like you you need to have confidence to get started it is that you need to have faith to get started and part of accomplishing a long hard journey is that you yourself have to have faith and you have to give that faith to everybody else like if you ask me marketing is is at a crisis of faith right now which is like a very maybe controversial thing to say is like we've gotten so in love with like data and analytics and everything else that we have come to a crisis of faith of like oh don't we just kind of know based on some basic information that this will work and shouldn't we have faith in ourselves and our ability to actually do this well and that it will work and not have to like do all these mini micro tests to prove that this thing might work versus just like no this thing's is gonna work let's look let's just go and do it yeah you can't well you it's i i was funny i was sorry car showed someone yesterday about this and i was like most great things were not built by pe correct it's like and i think it's really easy to to tell someone why something isn't gonna work but actually if you believe it if you believe it could or should then you find the path to make it work right and so like there's a reason why people who build these massive things that are so successful or you know huge change in the world they're finding a path to make it work which is hard and i think to your point i i wouldn't have used that language exactly but i think that makes perfect sense of like you have i you have to have a strong belief that that that future is possible and that that thing will work and then look for the the evidence to like help you go on the journey faster and more aggressively pe get to be right optimus optimistic get to be rich not like that you know that's like that's one of my favorite quotes of all time damn i will have harvey be rich because like i think that's just it does does work out to be true most of the time yeah if you if you can there's always reasons why stuff is not gonna work right there's you can always come up with reasons if you anchor to those things and then yeah your stuff won't work it's very simple yeah because you you don't have faith you don't have belief like you gotta you have to be able to will something into existence that's what this world's about can you can you develop a sense of faith over time sure sure you can okay then most i think the most skeptical i think the most skeptical person can because faith is butt and exists based on principles and beliefs right so if you're willing to get a series of principles that you're like oh i would not be skeptic or negative if these things were true then you can say oh alright in this situation these things are true so i am gonna believe that this is gonna work right and it's kind of the the way to logic yourself out of your skepticism so what what marketing tactics do you guys have faith in over the next ten years i mean i you know i think we've been talking about a lot of the stuff that that kip is talking about and and saying like okay what what stuff works really well for us like what can we do uniquely well yeah what is uniquely different and it be that like opinions we can share the quality of the things we're making approaches to things and like what we've come back to a lot is like a lot of the stuff that has always worked pre internet era it's always worked his building really strong unique brands with like a point of view and so i think we've been we've been marshal the army horses this is an analogy we've we've been we've been basically corral corral the horse internally on like hey we're gonna do much bigger brand campaigns that are hyper creative lean into the stuff that wi does uniquely well and a lot of our biggest brand campaigns that have done really well have also like the product has been like in part of the scene like it's it's been it's been a part of the story and so like an example for that is the documentary we did one time one hundred where we you know different budgets and the link thing that was so interesting about that if you watched that documentary you had to know what soap box was like there was no missing that cool and so we've been looking at things like that also because to the point you're making kip of like a lot of the performance marketing we've gotten used to with all this like data where you know exactly how things are working as game it's just much harder to get you need more first party data and so my bet is like brand is gonna be even more important over the next ten years and i also think ai is going to erode general trust so is gonna be harder to earn trust but if you can earn it it'll be more valuable basically and so for me that's like going i think brand will be more important for us it's gonna be very product centric brand stuff and then i think actually connecting with individuals is more important and you know in a world of unlimited people ai and all that stuff you have to believe like okay kip i trust kip he always has great advice on these different topics i feel like i know kip like in that i think that can anchor us towards like i'm gonna trust the advice that kip gives more and the products that he has and all kind of stuff which i think was already happening but i think that the kind of influencer revolution has created that opportunity as well so those are those are two things i think are gonna become more viable the next ten years i generally agree i would say you know on the brand side people used to trust brands and now people are the trusted brands yeah right like that's the that's the switch that's happening so creators and individuals and even the individual's at a company are the most important part because it kind of is the vin diagram of the brand focus and the personal connection focus right and then you have offline events and other things that are part of that personal connection focus ai is essentially automation two point o it's you know it's essentially goal based automation with multi multiple steps versus rule based automation you know and so what you'll expect to see there is you should see massive improve improvements in conversion rates so like in the second generation of the internet most of your quantifiable gains that you could really direct really like report out on mostly came in how you acquired customers in and the third generation in it it's basically gonna be like how you influence and monetize the customers that you do pull in and then you're gonna pull in those customers through creators through brand through personal engagements through great storytelling things that you know were really good in the sixties and seventies that are like coming like fully back around in manifesting on different channels in a different way now okay i wanna ask an in their question that is kind there well i don't know basically i wanna talk about the difference between having a platform that you market and having like the different points solution this is a this is a real question this is something grappling with something kind of question oh yeah yes it is yeah and i wanna is i'll just be transparent i mean you know we made the switch towards being a broader platform in like twenty twenty two yeah and that's been great and there's been a lot of really good stuff on the product side we've been able to do say people huge amounts of time by having all these you know the ability to edit the ability to record the ability to go live in one place mh but there's a real challenge there of like okay how much do you market the point solutions themselves because that's often the custom problem that someone's looking to solve it's like hey i wanna put on a great live event okay then we need them to understand whiskey live why it's different yada yada but then there's also the ultimate connection of everything into the platform is where you can drive like enormous amounts of value that people aren't necessarily searching from that for the get so what advice do you have for me we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna do go to market therapy session the the first question i'd ask is what the motion to acquire the customer is and i'll ask this more generically to everybody at listening which is like you first wanna say like how are people coming in and buying my product initially it is rare unless you're a very big up market field an inside sales company where people buy the whole platform right off the right off the jump right and if that's the case then cool and there's some product or products that people are are coming to become customers up first and so you this is normally where people get frustrated they're like oh man these two products people buy these two products but like i want people to see this bigger story and i want people to buy this platform but i also would like to make money and if i don't make money and then people are never gonna see this like bigger platform in this big story right and so what you would say in this case is you would say great i'm going to the the the one other weird variable here is how different is the user and the buyer is the user and the buyer the same person is it there a one level removing the organization or they vastly different removed the biggest challenge with the platform versus the kind of point solution is the platform is normally a functional buyer or vp marketing vp sales something like that depending on your your software l or your product in general and then the product is normally you know a manager frontline employee who wants to go and use the thing right and so i would say the if you look at all the motions the one of the motions that tends to be the most successful is i acquire the user and get the decision maker involved in a one of my core products and then i have the right motion to expand and to expand and upsell those folks over time i can get them to see the value on those first products into these other products and i build the products in the way that they're kinda really connected and that becomes obvious that's the sales of marketing version that's not the positioning and you're like how do i position that and like at hubspot we sell a big customer platform it's got crm sales marketing customer success operations stuff all these things so it's like someone might come to us wanting to buy a marketing products one of our most popular products and it's like the salesperson is gonna say you know they will have maybe read some content gotten some email nurturing book of immediately with the sales rep and a sales rep gonna say like great before i tell you all about marketing a product i just want you to i just real quick i want you to know that hubspot we have a really robust customer platform these are the use cases and problems we solve across that customer platform and one of the great things about hubspot is that you can grow with us that we're not just about marketing we're bigger than that now i understand you're trying you're really focused on generating leads in your marketing right now so let me go and walk you through our marketing hub product and get a better understanding of your challenges and that way you're introducing that platform positioning at a rep level and you're also doing it probably at a brand campaign level on the product detail pages of your website you're kinda cascading that through because what you're trying to do is make that a long term game of inception you can't ask somebody to learn something really broad really fast it's just impossible and so what you're trying to say is like oh over a period of time on want people just slowly know that we're actually this different thing right and and not even a different thing but a bigger thing than how they currently think of us market so you're saying yeah and intercept them over time but really get like solve the frame what the long term opportunity is up upfront but give them like solve the exact problem they're coming in for that debt solve that initial pain make they get value and make sure that there's a clear integration between that solving that initial pain to the broader platform the bigger product opportunity they have to to be in partner with you all along that makes sense that's good advice for anyone who would need that advice yeah i don't know who would but that's yeah how how big is your organization hubspot like many people my marketing team yeah yeah i think we're like five hundred and fifty people something five or fifty people yeah how many sales reps are there oh two thousand i don't know two thousand yeah and are you like digging at your scale are you still digging in and saying like hey i wanna see the deck that the sales reps are oh yeah presenting total yeah yeah i think that's like a really i mean that's what i was picking up on in that answer but i think it's a really interesting thing that across where we're talking let's say twenty five hundred three thousand people you're influencing like how folks are thinking about like presenting to the customer day to day what the messages is and stuff like that is that kind of what you've how you thought it would be when you took on this role like nine years ago is that is that than i had no idea what i thought you're doing doing i didn't know what i was getting myself into i thought that no i think i think the common perception is just like oh this can be less top down and the reality is it can't like the reality is that like more people more clarity right like the more people you have involved in telling a story this could be people who work for you this could be ab advocates out in the world partners could be whoever like the the more clarity you have to pass them and clear the one thing i can ensure is true is that no clarity has ever come from a consensus committee nobody has ever done something super clear by consensus and by committee and so you have to be more top down and not like prescriptive but like clear on what the goal is and clear on how we're solving the problem and ultimately like a final decision maker on like this is the right messaging these are the right words that people are actually good to understand why they are the the way they are so you're making it clear like hey on this type of thing if you're if there's gonna be a big change like i need to know about it or like you need to bring me the data and that's how you're able to have like this very tight communication this tight approach is deep understanding of what's working even at the the scale that you're at is by having like the really clear like swim lanes of like hey when you're in this lane i need to know what's up i'm gonna get feedback we need this to be on point across the entire organization and we're gonna tweak it and we're you're gonna adjust it obviously over time it's just really interesting to me because i i that makes sense it seems like that's hard to do in practice with that many people but maybe it's not i don't know nothing that you think is important should be hard right it's just a priority just you have to you have you you it's like an imperative that it has to happen and so you figure out how to make it easy because it has to happen over and over again the other thing is i think it's hard if you're not a crafts person like if you don't understand the craft it's actually very very hard oh yeah like if you don't understand that like how the production of a youtube short works or how like the mechanics of an rs feed or all those things that are like it actually gets very hard or like how cms is work all those things like it that is very hard i do all that stuff and like the reason i you know karen and i do marketing against the gray and we have we do a two episode week youtube and show a podcast is so that it forces us to be really really good at understanding how everything works it's one of the many reasons why i think it's good because you have to understand how things like come to life in the world not just the decisions you're making well yeah it's just interesting because i've it's something that like i've certainly noticed is if you want if you wanna build a world class team and by build i mean specifically like you're gonna take risk some people you want them to grow you want them to like take you to places and themselves a places where they haven't been before people will need to be constantly growing and stretching and one of the challenges with like senior hires is sometimes you can find someone who can like talk the top but they can't get in the the weeds and like walk the walk and i think it's a really like common mistake that people make is like exact you as you said like being able to be the crafts person like dig in the details like you show a lead from the front and get into the details and show someone how to write great copy on something or mh give feedback on design or you know product manage whatever the job is and also to do it a scale to be a great manager communicator and you need both those things and i think it's just very i think it's a really classic mistake for folks that they don't they they miss the part where the person is actually like would be a world class i see that that's a thing it's like i i played golf with i believe our mutual friend dave ga her i think you'd did dave yeah and afterwards we were we were talking and then he was kinda like i think he was trying to see if i'm still still in the game and he was like you know he was like he's like alright tell me how to like fix my search traffic on exit five and and i was like i was like dave have remember she he's like oh you know x y and ceo i was like how many visits do you need oh like this and i was like you don't have public profiles for those members just ranking for their names would give you that many visits it'd be like it would be like one point seven visits per person that's easy easy on a monthly basis you know and it's like you have to be in the weeds of like how you would do that do those things at a very tactical level to like actually grow because that's the without that you'd never get anywhere like you have to be obsessed with like what's the goal and how do i back my way into like actually accomplishing it still in the game off ryan i'm trying and it's hard love it i it's hard some days but we're we're getting there okay we're gonna go into the last segment of the show which is a rapid fire segment so are you here we go so if you're hiring a marketer to join your team what's one of the first interview questions you ask them if you in a room with three hundred people what would be the one thing that you would be verify better at than those three hundred people you like that one sorry i like i could date mary kill with social media platforms tiktok youtube instagram i'm gonna marry youtube i'm gonna date instagram i'm gonna have kill tiktok because the regulators might kill it anyway there you go what's the last product you bought because you like their app oh gosh a lot of ones i'm sure i love marketers are the most influenced by marketing i'm trying to think what like a good i'm trying to think what's the what's the best example of this is i don't know if it's ads but like i bought the cane shoes which are like these recovery outdoor like foam shoes because they've been doing a bunch of good crater stuff so that's probably my last like marketing influence purchased the grade okay and you like them they're great yeah that's great what's a must read book for marketers well that's a hard question give you two i think it's og on advertising is is still great and then i'm mean gonna have to look the there's david sen from founders awesome dude awesome podcast if folks do not listen to the founders podcast did an episode on like it's a book called the history of the world and it's like this hundred page book that these two professors wrote about like basically how the world works and like the incentives and why the world is the way it is and if you're gonna be great at marketing you need to know that i love great kip that is it thank you so much for joining us this has been thanks for much super fun obviously could gone much longer much deeper and i could have asked for more direct advice which i'll do next time so that we'll we'll do it again sometime everybody before you hit stop on your media player you can now turn the volume back up because chris and i are off off your eardrum and where you'll be a little quieter or whatever you're listening to next yeah so really appreciate you being here where where can people best connect with you you can find me marketing at the grain which is on youtube and anywhere you get your podcast you can find me on linkedin at kit button on ex twitter whatever we're calling it these days and that's where you can find me awesome thank you sir nothing like a good old go to market therapy possession you know just really letting it all out there doctor was in the doctor was in doctor was in yeah obviously i love talking about platforms for point solutions hit very close to home yeah whiskey is having moment we'll try you know i'm always trying to learn i'm trying to and i'm learning publicly that's one of the things we're doing here on the show so that was just like so helpful and insightful to hear the way that he like thinks through that i also have found myself really reflecting on just the like where is marketing going and what are the implications here this one thing just keeps saying on my mind which is if you look forward you know would have been the trends of where we've been like brand is becoming more important because we have less data to track things so if less data until someone actually hits our website and is using our product and i think there's huge implications on that and the point that kit made around conversion how we should expect conversion goes way up and that's interesting because i think a lot of people are so used to numbers actually going down you know as like oh harder to track harder to see the idea that you're gonna have this explosion up is actually surprising and i think that it makes perfect sense and i do think it will happen and it's just this continuation actually if something that's been happening for ten years which is product taking on more commercial responsibility and having more data and more testing and innovation and ai is gonna accelerate that and the other side if you can't do things that are really interesting and stand out and get people's attention then you're gonna have a lot more trouble marketing in the future yeah i think related to that the other thing that really jumped out at me is something that kip said and something that i think you say all the time is that like people often underestimate how big the opportunities are yeah and yeah i don't know that just like it blows me a away to like have that perspective and like going into it with that like sort of expansive mindset it can really change the game it can really change how you like pave the way to success so i think that's exactly right it's like most people underestimate the importance of early customers and just what that means for how far things can go and it is like when you unlock that you seem you can seem a little crazy i think because like we see this a lot this is like the crazy thing of like well i have this smaller reviews this could be huge really it could be huge i just like well humans are actually pretty similar and like like the same things and like if you can save people time or delight them in some way or let them do something that you couldn't do otherwise and you can get a hundred people to do that or a thousand like chances are you can get ten thousand can get a hundred thousand you get a million it just might take a long time yeah well like like we said in the interview optimus get to be rich pe get to be right there you go hard not to end on that so i'm an opt and i say if you like to show like and subscribe to the show we've been broadening the platforms where you can see this so you could watch on with dot com on the talking to that page you can watch on youtube now you can also watch on spotify it's a big one it's a big one spotify is a big one please keep the feedback coming in particular if you have guests that you want us to chat with we love when you tell us about guests you could just message us on linkedin i'm i keep getting more messages from talking to loud listeners and viewers which is awesome you can also email us if you prefer email at t pod whiskey dot com and i think that's it is that it dolby that's all she wrote we've done it alright thanks everybody good to see you and we'll see you soon talking too loud is brought to you by wi hosted by chris savage produced by me si lu bow along with adam day executive produced by wi studios this episode was mixed by maria passing of edit audio listen to talking to lad wherever you listened to podcasts and hey great review us wherever you listen and 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okay ready he hello wait wait wait wait wait you made like a you made a face u okay i'm ready now i'm ready now i'm ready to okay here we go hello and welcome to talking july with chris savage i'm your host chris savage and i'm joined by the one at only si lube si we got a great show today great show great show amazing we have kip ba who is the cmo at hubspot he had an amazing career trajectory he lives in breathes marketing and obviously hubspot has been innovating in the marketing space for a long time but so we cover a bunch of that we get into a lot of the heavy stuff around what's changing in the marketing landscape where do we think it's gonna change over the next ten years where it's gonna is same we get into tactical advice when it comes to scaling teams i mean this is basically like a go to market therapy session so lots of takeaways i'm really excited for folks listening this episode but first s i have to know what's got you talking too loud it can only be one thing right now it's the olympics come on yeah that's that's what it's saying let's you love sports sports let's go i am cheering i am crying i am laughing it is it's heroic what these people can do i you know shout out to women's rugby i feel like they're getting a lot of love women's gymnastics beach volleyball happens to be a personal favorite of mine love the digs when so digs oh my god just like when they dig for they like yeah like into the sand you they shop you don't think they're yeah digging diving oh that's digging digging dig like you yeah isn't that it i got it no i understand they're digging the sand up and they hit the ball yeah does a ball right and steve yeah everybody knows steve who did the horse and basically cli the the metal for the i did i haven't seen that much of the olympics i've seen the open opening ceremonies which were something else very insane not appropriate for children with the marie antoinette net part and my kids were like what is going on it was a spectacle it was a spectacle yeah just had like onto whatever but i did see the pom horse guy i did see he was pretty great it's just i love the olympics and yeah are fun yeah what about you what has you talking to loud you know i'm gonna go with there's this trend we've talked about on the show of people launching ai products way before they're in your hands and another one launched just the other day called friend did you say that don't know friend it's friend dot com they spent one point eight million dollars by the domain name for the second and it's a pendant that you wear with you when you go around and then you tap it and it's always listing and it gives you like messages on your phone like you had a friend with you okay okay who's the i do not think was the target audience yeah like what's i think they're the i think they're trying to be like people are lonely will make you less lonely because we always have a friend with you mh and it has this video that basically looks like a black mirror like episode it was actually created by a friend's sandwich beautiful video okay very eerie it's like really really well done for what it is beautiful and erie beautiful eerie weird dystopian and it's going viral like last time i saw and it came out yesterday got like fifteen million views so far it's probably gonna end up with like a hundred million views in this thing so i think yeah i'm talking too a lot about that i think it's like kind of a interesting example of the times of people kind of you know like over promising will they deliver i don't know got it got it well yeah i don't know if i'm looking for a dystopian friend at this point in my life right now but kip wagner feels like he could be a real friend a true friend he friend tip wagner is like a real friend he's a genuine guy he's smart he's thoughtful and i think people are really gonna love this episode with kip so let's jump right into it well kip thank you so much for being on the show so good to see you here i'm talking too loud and as you know when i get excited i cannot control the vibe of my voice this has been true for me since i was a kid i am often told this just happened to me yesterday's outside enjoying some fa and my brother said to me oh my god chris you're so loud like you're two you're too excited that neighbors are literally gonna hear you this is really this is who i am but i chris i i want to interject here because i am that same person good and so we're double the volume today is what i wanna warn people like every day i'm i'll talk to my son and he'd learned sign language because he kinda spoke late in his life and he's like too loud dad too loud too loud over and over again and i have never been accused of being quiet in my do you ever have challenges at movie theaters oh yes in any place there's quiet it's like i don't have an in indoor voice yeah i go to libraries yeah library i i i struggle i why i don't struggle i love going to see movies i especially love like the popcorn core and kind of like summer blockbuster oh yeah and and i am also an easy laugh so like if there's something that's like designed to be a laugh like i will laugh and i keep going to things like with my kids and my daughter's always able to like hit me on the like dead stop it can't stop it and it and it's so funny to be loud and laughing in public and have my kid basically embarrassed because just basically wanna do it more i was i was at dinner a few weeks ago with my partner and there's was a gentleman laughing the corner she's like oh i found him i found the one person that laughs louder than you i was like thanks for kids that's amazing yes that's that's fantastic so i have to ask you that in general what what's got you talking to loud today like what's got you excited oh first of all summertime i'm just happy about some beautiful weather and i'm pumped about that we've got our big an inbound coming up in a couple months so i'm psyche about that i'm psyche about all things ai and technology and i'm psyche that we're kind of in this like era of outside of that zero percent interest rate world and we are focused on like grinding it out doing real work doing things of substance and like real thoughtful people are making good things and that is like a fun time to live in the world yeah it feels very different than two years ago very very different it is funny i we've been talking about that a lot because you know when i look at how our markets change like twenty twenty hr market dramatically right like it made it obvious that your computer is a camera and i think up until that moment it was not as obvious and so a lot of expectations for who can make videos and how they make videos and where should make videos like changed and then i think as the market became obvious to me it felt very early stage again where it's like wow we are building brand new things that can work in totally different ways than we could before but that was all happening with like zero percent interest rates and now it's so different just two years later where what we see customers evaluating is like they they are looking for something that actually solves a problem they looking something that actually works and i also feel like there's this challenge that has happened with ai that is like in a way we're like fortunate that interest rates are what they are and and folks are looking for real value which is like it's so it's too easy to like over promise and under deliver i think a lot of these ai tools and so i'm paying a lot of attention to which things are people like actually consistently using which things actually create value which things are gonna create lasting value versus like the promise is incredible and then the product is actually deliver turns out growing too fast is bad it turns out not having constraints is really bad like constraints are a good thing to help you focus they help you do better work and everything you just said look those are healthy constraints like customers being very particular on what they're one wanting and needing and demanding that like you make better products because of that for sure you're more focused you have to have trade offs exactly actually i guess that's an interesting question like for us i mean we're about two hundred people a little less mh and we're building a ton of stuff and we're with the trade do you feel that at your scale do you feel trade offs and what you're building and how you're marketing or do you feel yeah how does that for today for folks who are like not from familiar that's what we're about eight thousand people now and it never goes away it turns out like one of my favorite articles of the last couple years is pac mccormick wrote a great newsletter that was i think the title was super intelligent abundance which is like what happens in the world like if if we had like really smart ai like would it take every to everybody's jobs and all that he's and he's basically like no it turns out that every moment in human history humans just want more more and more and their capacity to want and do more just expands with the ways that it becomes accessible and that happens in organizations right if you're are two hundred organization two thousand ten thousand doesn't matter your aspirations expand to the scope and scale that you're operating at so you never like solve that problem it's just a perpetual problem or at where i i'd had say like an opportunity to actually say hey we can do a lot and the question always is no matter the scale how much should we be doing what is enough but not too much and like getting that balance right is actually very challenging yeah i i think it it is challenging and it is interesting how the more you have the more you want and like at least for me hopefully like the more you understand the customer the more you can understand ways that you can help them like other things that you can tackle other challenges that they that they have where if you you know one plus one equals three if you build the right things and incorporate them into your existing product and all of that well i think what's so hard about the time we live in right now is that we're like coming off of this zero percent interest rate area where are very clear on what they want and they have a lot of real demands and then we're in this new technological advancement era of the era of ai the third generation of the internet where nobody actually knows what they want and you need to build things that people do not yet know they want so like you have to listen to your customers for some products and then you have to like dream what is possible and give them things they don't yet know they want with other products and so i think the figuring out how to spend time and money across those two groups of innovation is actually very hard and i think a lot of companies have over balanced one way or the other i i think of right now it's probably more like seventy eighty percent listening to your customers and what they want me here now and having that twenty to thirty percent that's like a hedge against just disruption and future innovation and everything and i don't think you can over rotate to to ninety a hundred percent on either one of those two buckets yeah because i think you're you're right there's there's gonna be ways we can solve problems that we couldn't before correct but people don't know to ask for that because i don't know it's possible necessarily so like if ai is acting like a human being for little tasks and helping solve problems for you you can basically build solutions that couldn't have existed before but no one knows what they are so there's this inherent risk element in at which feels very early stage and you know i think a lot about like i was i was i think in fourth grade when we got aol and i was i felt like we're i remember being like you have aol yet and i was so excited to have aol tell my friends like my screen what was your screen name i think it was this is important i well i had a few but i think it was it was like chris s mb i went to a school called moses brown so it's was like just just not nice i had some others later that i can't get into there were gaming names but but i think but i think about like when that was happening in the nineties and then how long it took before it really felt like the internet was really changing our lives every day and i think that's the question on my mind is like this stuff there's amazing stuff literally every day like yesterday there was like three major exciting generative video projects that launch mh but the question is when will it be that like it really is changing our lives and changing our work and i don't i don't know if it's gonna be two years six months or something's ten years like how long it will really take before it's truly changing things well i i think i'm somebody who's obsessed with the future like i am just really bad at living in the past or living in the present like i always went to live in the future and there's a bunch of great things and a bunch terrible things that come with that but you're obsessed about living in the future then you start finding the patterns and the principles that lead to make those things true and if you go back to that internet era it wasn't just like magic and time that made the internet change your lives is like they were very concrete innovations right we used the cable infrastructure of these country to provide high speed internet right we created really good wifi infrastructure we had 3g networks that could make mobile internet actually scalable computing got fast enough and small enough that we could have really good mobile smartphones and do all those things like a bunch of things had to happen and so as we think about the next future like those same things are gonna repeat themselves right like those those video models you talked about for example like part of it is just a function of compute and how much compute and the cost of that compute and that's just gonna keep improving and it's gonna hit the clip at some point where you're like yeah great anybody could make a great thirty second like a plus quality video for free to little money and we're just not there right now i think most of those are like good videos are taking what like an hour or hour or two to render and they're not cheap yet and like they're we're not to the point of like consumer customization yeah i think you're spot on that it is about those foundational changes and that like it's trying to figure out to your point which what are the limitations and one of the limitations is gonna change and how do you which world should you be building for you should you be building for the world that we're gonna be in for the let's say three years of transition to this stuff or should you be building for the world that's like the post transition what it is free and it is limited i think that's like those are really interesting questions to try to figure out and at least for me my my strategy is like use all the stuff like actively be the be the early adopter and actually judge myself is this actually good is it getting better at the right clip do i believe like when do i believe these changes will show up as being the when will the technology be good enough to really change how we think about i i think i think that's i think that's great advice i have like what is the simplest principle but tends to work very well that the second my time or capital allocation changes in a meaningful way we're here yeah right and and like i look back it's like oh i went from like spending no money on uber like three hundred dollars a month on uber you know like a decade ago and it's like and that was my look back of like oh i should've just like beg pleaded in steal for private shares of uber because like i i i knew at that point it was like a what was like a real a real thing same thing that happened with zoom it's like even prep pandemic it's like oh zoom thing i bought the ipo because i'm like oh great this is like clearly how we're going to like transform how we work and how we communicate and it's just like if you're out there using everything then you notice like oh gosh i'm now using this thing like twenty minutes a day i wasn't using it at all like this is actually probably very very important technology i mean i love that way of thinking about it and i think it's also interesting because behavior change is so hard very hard it's like the highest bar i think that's a really interesting question for people to ask themselves in terms like you're trying to use those new stuff like how much are you actually using it like and if you are using it a lot if you have changed behavior then the thing is probably coming yeah you you you're probably ahead of everybody else it's probably gonna get real adoption and it's gonna be a part of our society for some period time yeah right wow we could just talk only about this and i have an instinct too but i i have a lot of other things on i was told there real real questions there's real questions marketing advice questions i'm here for them i just wanna talk a little bit so you've been cmo and have hubspot for nine years i have but you started right as a content marketer i did hubspot i did still writing blog posts and guys and all that kind of stuff first of all it's an insane and amazing like so cool to see someone with your trajectory and to see what you're doing now is like awesome so congratulations thank you but also like i'm i'm wondering when you look on your experience i think a lot of people would love to have the career that you've had mh and what do you look at from that time like what stuff has stayed the same and what things have changed like what's what's what's changing for you yeah so folks i don't know if you've read it like morgan houses book that came out earlier this year same as ever i thought was really good was all about the things that that never change right and so okay we can do a little same as ever for marketing like what all things that don't change in marketing turns out meaning know how to write never changes right like turns out having a deep understanding of what your audience slash customer is interested in once and like mapping what you wanna achieve to what they want like that never changes like you always have to figure out clever and creative ways to do that like that is very very clear turns out consistency never changes like you got like you gotta commit to doing things and doing things for a long time like people are like oh why have you been see what off for so long it's like it takes really a long time to do great things turns out i love it turns out great things or not fast like it takes a really really long time to do great things and most people do not fail because they're not smart enough they fail because they're not enduring and persistent enough over a long enough time horizon and that has just never been more true in marketing will always be true in marketing it's like if apa empathy is the enemy of all marketing people just not caring not knowing about you then the anecdote to that is like you show up you show up you show up you show up you show up and you you you beat people into submission of like hey you're you are going to know and have some form of care about me because i am going to be here and i'm gonna be a part of your life over and over and over again right i love that and could not agree more like that's something i sail at the time is like to solve hard problems you have to work on them for a long time and like that the secret is a long time thing and like people action during it being persistent so love that i was nodding aggressively for those listening to this podcast during what kip was just saying how do you think about growth and or actually let me put it this way mh when you think about growth how much would you weigh searching for new levers of growth like new opportunities new channels versus nurturing compounding initiatives think i think it's kind of a false choice right and to me what growth is if you're a marketer there they're kind of a couple of other same as ever is your job is to figure out gonna go and i'm gonna give you a story and promise i'm gonna it's gonna come back to it over the pandemic i was it was it was it was a dark time i was having a tough time i like everybody else and i wanted to like ob obsessed about something because that's kinda who am so i i was like you know i know nothing about art i wanna ob obsessed about art and just like learn contemporary art and i took like eighteen months and learn like the entire world tip art and i just cold call art dealers up and like talk to them for like half hour hour and asked them a bunch of questions and like figure out like how does pricing where how do these people do all these things and in that like i end up talking to this this this interesting guy from london and he was like look anybody who's ever made a generational collection of art has all they have done is bought art from their conte the people of their age they started in their twenties they bought art from their conte they did it for twenty to thirty years if you look at every like monumental collection of art in history of the world that's basically the genesis of it across across generations the same thing applies to growth the marketing is you have to pick the opportunities of your of your cohort of your generation of like if you're starting a company today your marketing channels are gonna look very different than if you started a company five years ago or ten years ago and so part of it is like you wanna be early to channels because when you're early to channels like i love i love living in the future because i get vc vcs to give me like leverage of my life right like if i a start up customers these vcs are supplementing my my consumption of that product because that pry product is probably under priced and a whole host of things same thing with marketing i want to be in a channel where it's the saturation is low and i think the potential is high and then if i've selected that chris then it is the comp like i then have to focus on grinding out and compounding that for hubspot that was google search hubspot started when google search was very early and so we compounded it over the course of fifteen years because like it was a channel of our conte of who we were and we built that and and we did that what i find where people go wrong if growing is like cool i'm a start up i'm gonna invest a bunch of my time in email marketing it's like look i can tell you to click the rate of your emails this could be somewhere between one point nine percent and three point two percent right like i can tell you exact like you are fighting to be on the big end of that narrow spread wouldn't you rather go do something where the spread is much wider where you have the opportunity like the the beta is much wider so that you can actually have real upside like i think of it as like your venture capitalists you wouldn't invest in like companies who are growing slow with small markets you would invest in oh these are companies doing new disruptive things in really big markets they're gonna create new opportunity that's where i wanna invest my money it's also kinda of how we wanna think about my marketing channels or my growth channels i saw an interview that you did once when you're talking about how many channels you need to scale yeah and you basically said something i'm gonna para for it but it was like to get to fifty million in revenue you really need like one channel working to get to a hundred million you to and then really to scale beyond you need three and i remember when i saw that clip it really resonated with me because like we had had this experience of we had some shelves are working we probably added too many mh and it does and we didn't double down on ones that we're working and some of the simple things that we did to like move the numbers on growth wars was just double down on stuff that worked before i assume you still believe this can you yeah can you explain better than i just did like what how people should think about i think specifically when do you add more channels in like when should you broaden versus double down or can you or is the goal just to do both yeah so there's i'm i'm gonna give everybody a few cheat sheets before i actually answer that specific question which is like most human beings think opportunities are much smaller than they are most opportunities are much bigger than people think most human beings think that the downside is really really really big and the upsides is very limited the opposite is almost always the truth that the downside is almost always less than what you think the upside is always almost always a lot more than what you think and it sounds silly but changing your mindset around those two things is the is the leading indicator of answering that question that you just ask correctly right because you're like okay i to have an abundance mindset versus a scarcity mindset i have to think that this is could be much bigger if i was one of the best people in the world at it because i what i believe in that one two three channel model is like that's all true if you're willing to be one of the best people in the world at those things right if you're gonna be average at those things you need ten channels but if you're willing to be one of the best people in the world at those things top one percent then you only need one two or three channels as as you kinda scale and so i i think kind of the original question here is like how do you think about whether do you need a new channel you need a new channel when either you lack the skill and expertise to grow that channel anymore and that's actually the reason most people do where you have lost focus of the goal and p of what you'd originally committed to most people don't grow because they don't know how they just get bored or interested in something else like the people i admire most in this world are the people who will just put their head down and do the same thing for five ten years where you're like no i know this works and i will like i will do this and this even if it seems super mono because the in payoff is going to be much much greater and i found that to always true it's just actually very hard to practice then the third reason which is the only actual like tactical reason is if the economics of that channel are breaking and that normally is very specific to paid performance marketing right where you can build a fifty million dollar business off paid performance marketing because you can you can essentially get the cost structure to work but as you have to grow and you have to band and widen you're targeting the cost and inflate so much that the unit economics and your return on ad spend just start breaking and then you have to go look for new channels and so the economics of your channel start to feel like they're breaking that's really when you have to get there because economically the break because i'm not getting enough volume and that and then that's a good reason to go do something else or the volume i'm getting is getting more and more expensive which is the case it paid and one of those two things is when you need to go get a new channel and do you think the other piece of the puzzle there is back to the world class thing of like looking at that through that lens to understand why maybe a channel isn't performed the way it used to yeah so the for the first thing i would say is if you're like if you going down the the path of like oh maybe this is not working anymore or it's limited in the way it's working i would i would ask my myself a series of questions i'd it be like myself am i completely in inward focused am i just completely my completely is the way we're doing this based on what we've done in the past and what i think and if so like that's a bad way to do things it's a bad way to live and if if and that answers normally yes like if things are not going well they answer to that question is normally yes and if that question is yes then you would say alright i must now go and learn from some of the people who are the best people in the world with this thing to see where the gap is from where i am to where they are and so i can understand is that a small tiny of gap and i need to i need to be worried or is it a big gap and i'm like yeah this is my fault and i just need to change what i'm doing and so what i would normally do is find five to ten people who are the who i think are world class of that thing and i would get on zoom or fly to them and i would ask them for an hour where i can just ask them questions and i'd in turn i would give them anything they wanted i'd offer to pay them whatever hourly rate they wanted i would you know i would offer to do a favor for them whatever to do that and coming out of that you then have like a very valuable set of data and information to go and make an informed choice about like why you're not where you want to be with that strategy there's a lot of wisdom just dropped there i think and i use that word specifically because i think like you just said a lot of stuff that i think is very hard one that's it's like almost like not that hard to say but hard to recognize like the impact of it it's also very hard to do it's very uncomfortable yes it is it isn't uncomfortable how do you do you how do you get how do you both because both of you seem like you enjoy working on the same problem for a long time so how do you have that like internal trust and then like how do you inspire teams to also like go on this journey with you if they're not seeing like immediate payoff a media is very hard right humans we love a media you the flip flipside is if you're making no immediate progress you're also doing a bad job right like the the long grind is about making quick progress that you know that you can sustain for a long period of time it would be like cool i can i i was running a twenty minute mile now i'm running a twelve minute mile can i run a twelve minute mile for half marathon you know like that is like that's like a big step in a big improvement you have to celebrate the wins along the way to help people realize that like we're actually making progress we're not just like putting a bunch of activity that's that's my perspective i don't know chris what do you think i mean yeah i i agree with you i think the other thing i would say is like whenever you're doing something new i i always try to look for the qualitative stuff first and that usually shows up first and so that could be surveys and stuff but literally like if we're doing something completely new we'll often say to the team like hey let us know if this coming up in sales calls let us know if this come up and support or like let us know if you hear about something working or not and it's it's funny actually we just had our off site with the whole company in chicago a couple weeks and i was in this long conversation with son on the team for thirty minutes we're talking in their product strategy stuff like really really and there's stuff i loving the conversation and then he says you know i have a friend who just heard one of our ads on freak economics because we had like some podcast advertising going and like they mentioned to me they thought that was so cool and that was an interesting thing it's like okay we turned on some new podcast advertising i haven't looked at the data yet he wasn't the first thing that he said and this person's what i wish here for years it was almost like back of his mind but calling that stuff up if you're doing something new and asking people the question like hey are you hearing about this what kind of impact is it having often you can see the impact of things there first and then over time it becomes by the time it's showing up many cases i think in many cases quantitatively it's been working for a long time right it's like the same thing of like if you wanna do ab testing versus user testing mh you could you could go do show a interface to twenty people and if they all love it it's probably pretty good but to get the statistical significance you need to prove that that interface is better it might take months and months a month and so the way to shortcut that off is like do the user testing and then you feel like you have something that's really good and then do it in the the ab testing the the real the real kinda counter intuitive answer to that question of like how do you get people to follow you on a long hard journey which is which is i think the the root of the question is like do you guys know who phil stu is the famous psychiatrist there's a documentary on him my netflix yes joe and everything he recently was on the ritual podcast and as a avid youtube consumer i was i was watching that because i like how rich poses his questions and and does everything and kind of in the opening like eight minutes of that podcast i thought he had one of probably of the most valuable one minute i have consumed in a long time which he's like it's like i don't know that much about life but i know what i'm about to tell you is very true and he was basically like the way to success and and happiness in life is the opposite of what most people think most people think that you need to take action and if you take action then you can then you can build some confidence and then if you build confidence you can have like faith in in what you're doing and he's like it's wrong and this is me para it's like it all starts with faith once you have faith you can then take action and then once you take action that actually gives you results can give you confidence it's not that like you you need to have confidence to get started it is that you need to have faith to get started and part of accomplishing a long hard journey is that you yourself have to have faith and you have to give that faith to everybody else like if you ask me marketing is is at a crisis of faith right now which is like a very baby controversial thing to say is like we've gotten so in love with like data and analytics and everything else that we have come to a crisis of faith of like oh don't we just kind of know based on some basic information that this will work and shouldn't we have faith in ourselves in our ability to actually do this well and that it will work and not have to like do all these mini micro tests to prove that this thing might work versus just like this think is gonna work let's look let's just go and into it i was funny i was sorry a car conversation with someone yesterday about this and i was like most great things were not built by pe correct it's like and i think it's really easy to to tell someone why something isn't gonna work but actually if you believe it if you believe it could or should then you find the path to make it work right and so like there's a reason why people who build these massive things that are so successful or you know huge change in the world they're finding a path to make it work which is hard and i think to your point i i wouldn't have used that language exactly but i think that makes perfect sense of like you have you have to have a strong belief that that future is possible and that that thing will work and then look for the the the the evidence to like help you go on the journey faster and more aggressively pe get to be right optimus get to be rich you know that's sounds like that's of one of my favorite quotes of all time yeah i will i'll be reach because optimus but like that i think that's just it does does work out to be true most of the time yeah if you if you can there's always reasons why stuff isn't not gonna work right you can always come up with reasons if you anchor to those things then yeah your stuff won't work it's very simple yeah because you you don't have faith you don't have belief like you gotta you have to be able to will something into existence that's what this world's about can you can you develop a sense of faith over time sure sure you can okay then there's most i think the most skeptical i think the most skeptical person can because faith is butt and exist based on principles and beliefs right so if you're willing to get a series of principles that you're like oh i would not be skeptic or negative if these things were true then you can say oh alright in this situation these things are true so i am gonna believe that this is gonna work right and it's kind of the the way to logic yourself out of your skepticism so what what marketing tactics do you guys have faith in over the next ten years we've been talking about a lot of the stuff that that kip is talking about and and saying like okay what what stuff works really well for us like what can we do uniquely well yeah what is uniquely different and it be that like opinions we can share the quality of the things we're making approaches to things and like what we've come back to a lot is like a lot of the stuff that has always worked pre internet era it's always worked his building really strong unique brands with like a point of view and so i think we've been we've been marshal the army horses what's an and we've we've been we've been basically corral corral the horse internally on like hey we're gonna do much bigger brand campaigns that are hyper creative lean into the stuff that wi does uniquely well and a lot of our biggest brand campaigns that have done really well have also like the product has been like in part of the scene like it's it's been it's been a part of the story and so like an example for that is the documentary we did one time one hundred where we did you know different budgets and the thing that was so interesting about that like if you watched that documentary you had to know it's soap box us like there was no missing that cool and so we've been looking at things like that also because to the point you're making kip of like a lot of the performance marketing we've gotten used to with all this like data where you know exactly how things are working is getting it's just much harder to get you need more first party data and so my bet is like brand is gonna be even more important over the next ten years and i also think ai is going to erode general trust so it's gonna be harder to earn trust but if you can earn it it'll be more valuable basically and so for me that's like going i think brand will be more important for us it's gonna be very product centric brand stuff and then i think actually connecting with individuals is more important and you know in a world of unlimited people n ai and all that stuff you have to believe like okay kip i trust kip he always has great advice on these different topics i feel like i know kip like in that i think that can anchor arrest towards like i'm gonna trust advice that kip gives more and the products that he has and all kind of stuff which i think was already happening but i think that the kind of influencer revolution has created that opportunity as well so those are those are two things i think are it's gonna become more viable the next two years i generally agree i would say you know on the brand side people used to trust brands and now people are the trusted brands yeah right like that's the that's the switch that's happening so creators and individuals and even the individuals at a company are the most important part because it kind of is the vin diagram of the brand folk us in the personal connection focus right and then you have offline events and other things that are part of that personal connection focus ai is essentially automation two point o it's you know it's essentially goal based automation with multi multiple steps versus rule based automation you know and so what you'll expect to see there is you should see massive improvements in conversion rates so like in the second generation of the internet most of your quantifiable gains that you could really direct really like report out on mostly came in how you acquire customers in and the third generation in it it's basically gonna be like how you influence and monetize the customers that you do pull in and then you're gonna pull in those customers through creators through brand through personal engagements through great storytelling things that you know we're really good in the sixties and seventies that are like coming like fully back around in manifesting on different channels in a different way now okay i wanna ask an in their question that is kind of well i don't know basically i wanna talk about the difference between having a platform form that you market and having like the different points solution oh this is a this is a real question this is something grappling with something kind of question oh yeah yeah yes it is and i want is i'll just be transparent i mean you know we made the switch towards being a broader form in like twenty twenty two yeah and that's been great and there's been a lot of really good stuff on the product side we've been able to do save people huge amounts of time by having all these you know the ability to edit the ability to record the ability to go live in one place but there's a real challenge there of like okay how much do you market the point solutions themselves because that's often the customer problem that someone's looking to solve it's like hey i wanna put on a great live event okay then we need them to understand with live why it's different yada yada but then there's also the ultimate connection of everything into the platform is where you can drive like enormous amounts of value that people aren't necessarily searching from that for the get so what advice do you have for me we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna do go to market therapy session the the first question i'd ask is what the motion to acquire the customer is and i'll ask this more generically to everybody listening which is like you first wanna say like how are people coming in and buying my product initially it is rare unless you're a very big up market field and inside sales company where people buy the whole platform right off the right off the jump right and if that's the case then cool there's some product or products that people are are coming to become customers up first and so you this is normally where people get frustrated they're like oh man these two products people buy in these two products but like i want people to see this bigger story and i want people to buy this platform but i also would like to make money and if i don't make money and then people are never gonna see this like bigger platform spade story right and so what you would say in this case is you would say great i'm going to the the the one other weird variable here is how different is the user and the buyer is the user and the buyer the same person is it there a one level removing the organization or they vastly different removed the biggest challenge with the platform versus the kind of point solution is the platform is normally a functional buyer or vp marketing vp sales something like that depending on your your software oh your product in general and then the product is normally you know a manager frontline employee who wants to go and use the thing right and so i would say the if you look at all the motions the one of the motions that tends to be the most successful is i acquire the user and get the decision maker involved in a one of my core products and then i have the right motion to expand and to expand and upsell those folks over time if i can get them to see the value on those first products into these other products and i build the products in the way that they're kinda really connected and that becomes obvious that's the sales of marketing motion that's not the positioning and you're like well how do i position that and like at hubspot we sell big customer platform it's got a crm sales marketing customer success operations stuff all these things so it's like somebody might come to us wanting to buy a marketing hub products one of our most popular products and it's like sales the salesperson is gonna say you know they will have maybe read some content gotten some email nurturing book of b with the sales rep and the sales rep is gonna say like great before i tell you all about marketing hub product i just want you i just real quick i want you to know at hubspot we have a really robust customer platform these are the use cases and problems we solve across that customer platform and one of the great things about hubspot is that you can grow with us that we're not just about marketing we're bigger than that now i understand you're trying you're really focused on generating leads in your marketing right now so let me go and walk you through our marketing hub product and get a better understanding of your challenges and that way you're introducing that platform positioning at a rep level and you're also are doing it probably at a brand campaign level on the product detail pages of your website you're kinda cascading that through and because what you're trying to do is make that a long term game of inception you can't ask somebody to learn something really broad really fast it's just impossible and so what you're trying to say is like oh over a period of time on want people to slowly know that we're actually this different thing right and and not even a different thing but a bigger thing than how they currently think of us marketing inception yeah intercept them over time but really frame what the long term opportunity is up upfront but give them like solve the exact problem they're coming in for that debt solve that initial pain make sure they get value and make sure that there's a clear integration between that solving that initial pain to the broader platform the bigger product opportunity they have to to be in partner with you all that makes sense that's good advice for anyone who would need that advice i i don't know who would but be how big is your organization at hubspot i how many people my marketing team and i think we're five hundred and fifty people something like five or fifty people yeah how many sales reps are there oh few thousand i don't know few thousand yeah and are you like digging at your scale are you still digging in and saying like hey i wanna see the deck that the sales reps are yeah that totally yeah i think that's like a really i mean that's what i was picking up on in that answer but i think it's a really interesting thing that across where we're talking let's say twenty five hundred three thousand people you're influencing like how folks are thinking about like presenting to the customer day to day what the message is and stuff like that is that kind of what you've how you thought it would be when you took on this role like nine years ago is that is that what think i had no idea what i thought gonna do i don't know what i was getting myself into i thought that you know i think i think the common perception is it's like oh we can this can be less top down and the reality is it can't like the reality is that like more people more clarity right like the more people you have the involved in telling a story this could be people who work for you this could be ab advocates out in the world partners could be whoever like the the more clarity you have to pass them and clear the one thing i can ensure is true is that no clarity has ever come from a consensus committee nobody has ever done something super clear by consensus and by committee and so you have to be more top down and not like prescriptive but like clear on what the goal is and clear on how we're solving the problem and ultimately like a final issue maker on like this is the right messaging these are the right words that people are actually good to understand and why they are the the way they there so you're making it clear like hey on this type of thing if you're if there's gonna be a big change like i need to know about it or like you need to bring me the data and that's how you're able to have like this very tight communication this tight approach is deep understanding of what's working even at the the scale that you're at is by having like the really clear like swim lanes of like hey when you're in this lane like i need to know what's up i'm gonna give feedback we need this to be on point across the entire organization and we're gonna tweak it and we're gonna adjust it obviously over time it's just really interesting to me because i i that makes sense it seems like that's hard to do in practice with that many people but maybe it's not i don't know nothing that you think it is important should be hard right it's just a priority just yeah you have you have you you it's like an imperative that it has to happen and so you figure out how to make it easy because it has to happen over and over again the other thing is i think it's hard if you're not a crafts person like if you don't understand the craft it's actually very very hard oh yeah like if you do understand that like how the production of a youtube short works or how like the mechanics of an rs feed or all those things that like it actually gets very hard or like how cms is work all those things like it that is very hard i do all that stuff and like i be re the reason i you know karen and i do marketing against the grain and we have we do a two episode week youtube and show a podcast podcasts is so that it forces us to be really really good at understanding how everything works it's one of the many reasons why i think it's good because you have to understand how things like come to life in the world not just the decisions you're making if you wanna build a world class team and by build i mean specifically like you're gonna take risk some people you want them to grow you want them to like take you to places and themselves a places where they haven't been before people need to be constantly growing and stretching and one of the challenges with like senior hires is sometimes you can find someone who can like talk the talk but they can't get in the the weeds and like walk the walk and i think it's a really like common mistake that people make is like exact you as you said like being able to be the crafts person like dig in the details like you show a lead from the front i get into the details and show someone how to write great copy on something or mh give feedback on design or you know product manager whatever the job is and also to do it a skill be great manager communicator and you need both those things and i think it's just very i think it's a really classic mistake for folks that they don't they they miss the part where the person is actually like would be a world class i see that that's the thing it's like i i played golf with i believe our mutual friend dave ge i think he'd did dave yeah and everything with him recently and i afterwards we were we were talking and he was kinda like i think he was trying to see if i'm still still in the game and he was like you know he was like he's like alright tell me how to like fix my search traffic on exit five and and i was like i was like dave have remember you he's was like oh you know x y and see he was like how many visits do you need oh like this and i was like you don't have public profiles for those members just ranking for their names would give you that many visits it'd be like it would be like one point seven visits per person that's easy easy on a monthly basis you know and it's like you have to be in the weeds of like how you would do that do those things at a very tactical level to like actually grow because that's the without that you'd never get anywhere like you have to be obsessed with like what's the goal and how do i back my way in to like actually accomplishing it still in the game no awesome i'm trying it's hard love it hard it's hard some days but we're okay we're gonna go into the last segment of the show which is a rapid fire segment here we go if you're hiring a marketer to join your team of what's one of the first interview questions you asked them if you went a room with three hundred people what would be the one thing that you would be verify better at than those three hundred people i like that was i like i can tell you though date mary kill with social media platforms tiktok youtube instagram i'm gonna marry youtube i'm gonna date instagram i'm gonna have to kill tiktok because the regulators might kill it anyway there you go what's the last product you bought because you liked their app oh gosh a lot of things i'm sure i love marketers are the most influenced by marketing you're trying to think what like a good i'm trying to think what's the what's the best example of this is i don't know if it's ads but like i bought the cane shoes which are like these recovery outdoor like foam shoes because they've been doing a bunch of good crater stuff so that's probably my last like marketing influence purchase the great day okay and you like them they're great yeah that's great what's a must read book for marketers well that's a hard question give you two i think it's og v on advertising is is still great and then i'm mean gonna have to look at the there's david sent from founders awesome dude awesome podcast if folks do not listen to the founders podcast did an episode on like it's a book called the history of the world and it's like this hundred page book that these two professors wrote about like basically how the world works and like the incentives and why the world is the way it is and if you're gonna be rate up marketing you need to know that i love that it's great kip that is it thank you so much for joining us this has been next for help super fun obviously could gone much longer much deeper and i could have asked for more direct advice which i'll be next time so cool that we'll we'll do it again sometime time everybody before you hit stop on your media player you can now turn the volume back up because chris and meyer off off your eardrum and where you'll be a little quieter or whatever you're listening to next yeah so really appreciate you being here where where can people best connect with you you can find me marketing its the grain which is on youtube and anywhere you get your podcast you can find me on linkedin at kit on ex twitter whatever we're calling at these days and that's where you can find me awesome thank you sir nothing like a good old go to market therapy possession you know just really the doctor was in the doctor was in doctor was in yeah obviously i loved the part of about talking about platforms for point solutions hit very close to home yeah whiskey is have moment i'm always trying to learn i'm trying to and i'm learning publicly that's one of the things we're doing here on the show so that was just like so helpful and insightful to hear the way that he like thinks through that i also have found myself really reflecting on just the like what where is marketing going and what are the implications here this one thing just keeps saying on my mind which is if you look forward you know would have been the trends of where we've been like brand has been becoming more important because we have less data to track things so have less data until someone actually hits our website and is using our product and i think there's huge implications on that and the point that kit made around conversion how we should expect conversion goes way up and that's interesting because i don't i think a lot of people are so used to numbers actually going down you know as like oh harder to track harder to see the idea that you're gonna have this explosion up is actually surprising yeah and i think that it makes perfect sense and i do think it will happen and it's just this continuation actually if something that's been happening for ten years which is product taking on more commercial responsibility and having more data and more testing and innovation and ai is gonna accelerate that and the other side if you can't do things that are really interesting and stand out and get people's attention then you're gonna have a lot more trouble marketing in the future yeah i think related to that the other thing that really jumped out at me is something that kip said and something that i think you say all the time is that like people often underestimate how big the opportunities are and yeah i i don't know that just like it blows me a away to like have that perspective and like going into it with that like sort of like expansive mindset it can really change the game it can really change how you like pave the way to success so i think that's exactly right it's like most people underestimate the importance of early customers and just what that means for how far things can go and it is like when you unlock that you seem you can seem a little crazy i think because like we see this a lot this is like the crazy thing of like well i have this small number reviews this could be huge feel like really it could be huge i was like well humans are actually pretty similar and like like the same things and like if you can save people time or delight them in some way or love them do something you couldn't do otherwise you can get a hundred people to do that or a thousand like chances are you can get ten thousand you can get a hundred thousand you get a million it just might take a longer yeah well like like we said in the interview optimus get to be rich pe get to be right there you go hard not to end on that so i'm an optimal learn i would say if you like to show like and subscribe to the show we've been broadening the platforms where you can see this so you could watch on wix dot com on the talk to about that page you can watch on youtube now you can also watch on spotify it's a big one it's a big one on spotify is a big one please keep the feedback coming in particular if you have guests that you want us to chat with we love when you tell us about guests you could just message us on linkedin i'm i keep getting more messages from talking to loud listeners and viewers which is awesome you can also email us if you prefer email at t tail pod whiskey dot com and i think that's it is that it's dolby me that's all she wrote we've done it alright thanks everybody good to see you and we'll see you soon

do you think that's gonna make it in i love do you think that's gonna make it in as like the new hook hello and welcome to talking to loud i'm your host chris sap and i'm joined as always by si lu si what's up how's it going battle lot of energy today how's it going i've basically been creating chaos for si since before we started recording so i hope she put up with me for this one yeah no i'm here i'm with it okay got it amazing great well we have an amazing episode today our guest is noah cake in no is a founder of apps sumo which the platform that helps entrepreneurs and small businesses grow by offering them handpicked hand deals like this on digital tools and software but noah and i go way back i've known for a very long time and this is really a fun interview to do because we hadn't caught up in like three years and like a lot has changed and that meant me like really you know you're gonna hear us catch up about like longevity and life and noah wrote a book and he's becoming a dad soon and just all this stuff so i'm really excited and i think this will be a different episode but a cool one yeah it's almost like more raw raw ra super raw like wwe raw that what you mean that's what i mean i told you we're coming hot today what what's going on because i can't use the ac when we record oh i forgot dig your literally are so i'm too hot these heat waves they're getting you they're getting me so i mean other than your ac so what's guy you talking to a lot oh man well i'm going on vacation tomorrow oh where go into the dr which will also be very hot but there will be pools there will be ocean there will still be pools exactly hopefully not your pin cola yes i'm very excited i'm bringing pickle ball paddle with me is the first time i've done this bringing them with okay they have nets there good good i'm ready what about you what house you talking to loud i think masonry been doing some amazing rework yeah around the house not myself obviously but you know after we finished rebuilding our basement that was flooded we're like i have to prevent flooding and you're building up window wells and stuff and then you you don't appreciate just like when you get this stuff done right how great it looks how preventative it is and i just think it's underappreciated undervalued thing and i just i'm very passionate about great masonry right now wow you heard it here first how you build things matters okay the craftsmanship the quality what goes into it the planning and you know i think this interview with no we talk about what it takes to build a company what it takes to show up as a person leading that business kinda the same thing so we'll let the interview take it from here no good to see you buddy thanks for coming on this number one chris savage fan noah c here dude it's been too long i'm so glad that you're here before we even got recording you said man i can't believe you and i've been doing this long i mean how long have we known each other like fourteen years thirteen years so i've met you something like that right yeah yeah crazy well look there's a lot of exciting stuff going on your world but i wanna start this show is called talking to loud because when i you know when i get excited i can't control the vibe of my voice the first thing i wanna do is i wanna know what's got you talking to that what's got you excited today i i think of talking to loud as kind of cove it's like a get short for complaining and i'll tell you here's what's it's to it the prices of things these days it's out of control it's just unacceptable for instance we're having a baby we're having a baby shower super excited i told my wife yeah look yeah every penny i've ever earned is for you and our baby i don't even like showers but spend it on the best baby shower that we could possibly do so we go get these balloons they get these balloon things you see them all over instagram mh how much is a balloon half you like a half u thing oh i mean hundred bucks a hundred bucks i'm gonna say more than that but you know nice hundred dollars hundred bucks that's it crisis is right thousand no thousand for thousand dollars you can have whiskey you for the entire life of your your existence you can own whiskey you as a product a thousand and you know what after you spend the thousand they take the balloons back it's a rental it's a rental and it's a rental balloons i i try to order food at a restaurant and it's like i don't know how it's like minimum a hundred dollars yeah like i'm not going nice places dude i'm not going nice places you know me i know you yeah yeah yeah you treat yourself for once a while but yeah just a so my wife is actually starting a balloon business she's tested she did it i was like i love this one that's why i'm married yeah i love this but it's just out of control yeah they're out of control is she starting it purely because you have this experience with the thousand dollar rental or this is already in the works she's a computer programmer and for my book million dollar weekend that's what i'm supposed to say it seven times i think you should hold it up again so i had a book launch we did a book baby birthday and it was six hundred dollars for the balloons which we both thought was insane and then for the baby shower a thousand and she has more time so she's like she looked up amazon for balloons it was like fifty bucks for all this stuff so now she's gonna rebranding table balloons she rented the balloon she's gonna hire someone to support her to actually build the balloons and see if it's what she wants to do when she has the baby there you go that's great it is crazy though i mean i think about this all the time when i went to shake shack before a movie and i haven't told you the story have i si i don't know this story and so my wife and i were going to a movie we're like go to shake shack first and i go ordered two sandwiches and it's like ten bucks and i'm like wow look at this ten dollars too sandwiches shit like you're price what a good deal blah and then they brent they're were like oh things ready one sandwich like i just missed it and i was like calm on yeah we we get the second sandwich and of course then i get like a mini shake as well and it's like twenty six dollars and i'm like how is this food about to eat the same price that it is for whiskey a month like i was just like in that moment so i think about that was just so crazy to me absurd it's crazy okay look i've known you for a long time and when i think about you noah i think about someone who is like afraid to talk to anybody like unbelievable at like figuring out how to build real relationships with people and also like una afraid to fail it's interesting because you and i probably been caught up in like three years or something but when i look at where you are today and the stuff you're doing to me it's like oh when i first met noah he's the guy who'd would go up to anybody at an event he was afraid to get any conversation and like i feel like your book and all the stuff you're doing is like trying to it just seems like a further continuation of you is that true is that what's is that what your world is like today that's really nice thank you you got weren't expecting that no as i'm older i'm i'm more impressed left less with starting and more with longevity yeah so just anybody who sticks with something it's definitely something i i'm admire like you guys and what you've been you and brandon would have done i don't know man like it's been an interesting thing monday through wednesday i felt really un you know i think sometimes in in a good way business is a great way to feel worthy because you can either fill with money you can feel it with customers you can feel it with helping out the person it's a good way to to feel worthy but then there's there's definitely an attachment to that outcome there's an attachment to the sale attachment to the revenue attachment to the views yeah and so you know i think especially having a kid soon and you know this book thing that came out i think lately i'm trying to how do i just feel worthy regardless of an outcome and i think a lot of my years it was chasing that it was it was like how do i get more attention to finally feel worthy in these ways and i don't know the fear of asking these people i think i'm still afraid of asking i just i don't know sometimes the upset ask is so high i have the opposite problem lately if i'm honest lately i have to stop myself from i'm asking for everything example wednesday night i went mountain biking i'm buddy ian and we got we got a little cup of ranch and i was like one ranch is enough just be happy with one ranch and i was like i just can't and i told ian i'm not gonna do it and then the person come and i said i'll have another ranch i just i was like can i i was like oh my god no ask now i'm a compulsive ask and i don't know just this i i think it all comes from curiosity chris whereas it's let me that i'm kinda curious about you have a nice house how'd you get it or you're doing something how'd do you do it and a lot of it comes from my mom you know but like your show on youtube when you're going and asking these people who are you know very wealthy how they got their house or their car or like life advice and all's kind of stuff you're asking questions that a lot of people are afraid to ask and i know you're curious but you've somehow crossed the chasm to be able to do it do you think there's some reason why that is is that just how you're wired is that just from your mom i think we are products are our environment and so i grew up in a environment where you know having an immigrant father he didn't know that he's not supposed to ask for everything mh she just didn't know and so i'm seeing embarrassed as a kid and now i'm that embarrassing dad and i think my mom as well is is a very persistent which is a trait most people don't do enough of yeah what advice would you give for somebody to somebody who wants to have the confidence of the curiosity to ask more questions say a few things you ever noticed that someone will ask you something and you don't understand it and then you just don't understand that's the moment to be i really understand and i think in college i was i didn't feel bad about not understanding you didn't feel bad yes no especially as a ceo like you don't wanna look dumb so if you don't understand you looked but i'm like i just don't get it and i think that's okay to just make sure you understand something so i'd start with that i think there's skills like you guys heard the coffee challenge it's a million dollar weekend chapter two but basically you go and ask for a ten percent discount when you buy a coffee and the point is not getting a discount the point is you ask and then you get rejected and after you get rejected you realize that asking is not so bad and that's what business is can you be a whiskey a customer can you come on my show will you come work for me will you be my wife they're all asks and it's a skill to develop just like anything and there's not you know knocking on doors if i go to your door chris and i say hey what do you do for living you're like what do you have a camera who are you when you knock on the door you have to shift how you ask and so i say oh my god i love your house i love your house i'm doing a documentary in your area this house is so amazing really yeah yeah han who built it what did you build it oh that's so great so what do you do for living this is such a cool area i love it out here oh and then that kind of so what's this video oh yeah i do these to share what the young people does it do you see us it's the same thing just two asks and it it's a skill you can develop over time and i think as people start practicing it more they start getting what they want instead of getting what they get right you know what you get if you don't ask for it and i think that the fear of failure the fear of rejection or embarrassment stops people from asking and i think it's also i mean i definitely used to have a lot more trouble asking and then running a business you realize i crave the feedback so bad because if you get the feedback you can actually improve the product or improve the service or figure was not working and so if people who do ask and they say why isn't this work this way or can i have x y z is like really helpful information where to the point of like if you get something that you ordered a restaurant and it's not what you expected or isn't good you act if you tell them you're actually doing them a favor over the long term if they wanna listen right but you have to ask and i think it's i think that just a lot of people have an emotional hurdle to get over there for even just like advocating for themselves by asking hundred percent i mean i think two things that everyone can do today everyone can ask for feedback about something you can ask a customer hey how'd do you like the product would you like i like i asked someone this morning i said oh you bought the book where did you hear about it from i watch one of your youtube videos okay thanks for that i asked my wife how i can improve last night i asked i said how would you rate me one through ten as a husband i swear to god i swear to god i asked her for the feedback because that's how i'm gonna get better and she i thought i was doing like an eight point five she's like you're doing nine nine point five and i was like that's amazing i i thought i was lower like is there anything you'd like me to keep working on she's like well you're on your technology too much i think she's nervous when the baby comes i'm gonna try to hire people to do the work like a good leader if she wants me to be that person i'm joking i'm joking and she just wouldn't be concerned with that and that's i can just imagine maybe born this crew shows up you're gonna be the sw you're gonna be changing diapers okay you're gonna be taking care of me so anyways was the the feedback with the the relationship part is an example where if you're in a business and you you're not making sales go ask a customer why they're not buying i had a meeting with nick who runs our growth on tuesday and i was really meeting in the meeting at the end the meeting i said this meeting sucked donny like yeah i'm like can you tell me how i could have done better for our next meeting great and then the other part i i was saying about this whole feedback and asking which is really the part of the elements of success is realizing that the rejection is kinda fun and it's never as painful as the upside of getting what you want i'm still getting rejected i'm trying to get dave port my podcast i've been trying for like a year someone asked me yesterday what's interesting a entrepreneur and an entrepreneur the whole thing is just not yet that's the only difference and not yet is because you ask and you ask and you're ask and you're ask and eventually it works out but the rejection never stops right because it's just a different form of someone not wanting it and that's okay someone else will i wanna go back into talking about like identity and having your identity tied to a business and how you kind of navigate that like you've had your identity attached app for a long time you've built up like you know your blog you have now the book the channel how do you think about identity and tying it into business and like how do you find balance there there's times where i feel like i i should be more famous there's times where i feel like this book validated me and then there's times where i'm i feel pretty like like i can't help any of these people there's a lot of different feelings around my own identification but i i think are very normal and i think acknowledging that is okay i think the biggest thing i'm trying to acknowledge for myself is at least i'm doing the things i wanna do because i wanna do them and just being more attached to that that center better and what i'm noticing from people with this is that some people are like hey i wanna do my thing but no one's responding to it and i think what you have to find in this in this existence from a professional standpoint is that you feel good about what you're doing and people seem to respond to it because i think we we generally get further away yeah so i i don't know i have great answer for you on all this stuff i think lately it's also what kind of person what example am i setting for my daughter i think that's the identity i'm trying to be well i mean i think that's awesome i think your point on should you follow your passion or not and i think actually what you wanna do is try to find things you're really good at that people want and then usually if you can do that you can get passion on it and like success right if you're being successful and your the numbers are going up and people are enjoying the stuff it's much easier get excited about that then like wall off in a lane where no one cares but it does still take trying stuff and putting it out there and being comfortable that it might not work i think people attach me maybe they're worth to these outcomes too much like if my book sells ten copies versus a hundred like why should i feel different right it's kind of an interesting thought process for each of us and then i i think it's a really good experiment in our identities and our identities should evolve right like if if i'm forty year old noah identifying like a high school behaving like a high school or you know maybe that's not the right identity for this phase of life and it's kind interesting to think about what parts of our identity have made us feel good about who we are in the current time like what are these identity identity moments like i had a great identity moment this morning where i said i would work out and i did it and i was like i like that identity i'm gonna do more of that and you know even with content it's a struggle because the stuff that's popular or the stuff that i think people were resonate with not also the stuff i wanna do or doesn't align to me and it's also being able to accept that too which is tough you're saying in that case like accepting doing things that you believe will work but that you don't you're not actually as excited about versus like also on the other side you know the working i was like i wanna be someone who works out every day and you work out and you feel good you get the dopamine hit after and you're like i did it i'm living that identity yeah i think it's identifying those things in our life like i take pride in brushing my teeth twice a day and i have an identity that's like i i'm a person that cares about hygiene and i take pride in being on time that's part of my identity now and my twenties is i to be like i'm five minutes late you're five minutes late we're both late even though it was just me late in in terms of you know this content part i'm going through an evolution a transition right now where it was interesting when the book launched the youtube audience that i built and facilitated they didn't give it about me which is kind of interesting they just cared about some guy knocking on doors yeah and so which is okay that's not bad but i i wanted to have a connection that they they're more i'm more connected to who they are and miss stuff and so we're shifting the content to more me sharing my own stories and i think i've probably been shy even though it might not seem like it i've feeling shy sharing myself versus others like you been playing a role giving creating a type of content that fits a formula that people want but that's a very small slice of your life and who you are and so like even though that's like a thing that people want they'll keep going and connecting with it's not who noah is yeah and i i think in all this stuff for everyone who's listening you know for their own businesses it's i think it's great to be public i think what i'm noticing is like building brand and being public is probably one of the best things in business one you meet cool people like yourself you gotta learn how to do marketing and you get build the business out of it whether it's this business or a future one and it's finding the content that is effective so like for instance the team wants me to put out a lot of content about like how do we get to a billion dollar business like this year we'll do almost a hundred million in gross revenue i don't give too about giving a billion i just it doesn't do anything for me like i care more that are we have a new site called five taco dot com we're trying to get it to like ten thousand views like that i'm like yeah let's try to get see if this has product market fit that i get excited about and so i think it's being authentic that i'm not gonna do a billion dollar content piece with how do i make content similar to that that's as popular within areas that matter to me i wanna talk about consistency so you are somebody who i when i think about know i also think about consistency you find something you stay on it you do it like have some sumo is a great example but even you're branding around tacos is like been since the very beginning i think about like adam gilbert who's start my body tutor who yeah dude he's the most he's the most consistent person i know yeah but you introduced me to him he changed my life in terms of consistency you know i've been doing this will be eighteen years in june still at it and i love it i look at the whole thing now is was like what does it take to make a great business or get in shape or do anything it's just find the simple things that are obvious like you wanna get in shape it's like eat right workout sleep right that's basically it the hard part is a consistency and so i see that in you and all the stuff you're doing and how you put yourself out of the world the content you make and all that what advice do you have for people about consistency how do you get consistent how do you build routine is that how you think about it to you know a lot of people think hey i'm not consistent but i think let's separate that out consistency is where success happens like the gym one time you know get results the gym ten times you'll results the business one time doesn't get results the business ten years gets results a lot of people think is they're not consistent but i will i will say that every single person listening to this has been consistently breathing their entire life they're very consistent breather so let's just start there like they've been breathing they keep breathing i don't know why they're good it but they keep doing it now the question is everyone's consistent in something and so how do we build better habits what are other areas that we can practice it in that will help us maybe in five years i think that's the part that's a little hard and what i've observed in consistency i saw a guy on twitter yesterday like i launched my product i haven't gotten customers i think i'm gonna give up and i think giving up on the business is fine but not giving up on the trying and being consistent with that and so a few things i would think about for consistency is number one think of consistency as a practice versus like a final destination so a practice like you fail at practices that's why it's a practice i'm practicing trying to figure out how i wanna live my life these days now that i'm shifting into father and i wanna work less and be more present with my family so i'm practicing it i think if you practice consistency you'll start realizing like hey i'm not doing good but okay i can fix that tomorrow that's been a a huge shift in consistency i also think if you you're not good at consistency have someone else do it for you you know i haven't run absolute for all fifteen years you know i ran it for four years then anton ran a year amy ran at five years and then i'm back running at three years so if you can't do it that's okay find someone else who could be consistent you know it's funny i think it there is interesting about identity i i think i used to not think of myself as a consistent person think i used to think of myself as a flame out so hard on yourself yeah yeah i know but yeah i am i'm not really sure exactly because my brother's even harder on himself than i am i guess my mom's heart on herself my mom she's seven years old almost goes to gym five days a week she's like i know i done two a days so yeah have other people do the consistency and i think it's you can start identifying yourself in areas to be consistent and the last part of this is as you're doing consistency like two parts of it i think one is that when you're not consistent maybe have a little bit more gentleness in the inconsistencies so i've been back to apps ceo for three years and for a year i did this very strict morning routine it was like okay wake up you have to drink a bottle of water with element tea you're gonna have a come your coffee you're gonna journal you're gonna read and then you could you know check your phone it was just like and i like journal on mondays now and i didn't get to do it this week until wednesday and i think in the past i would just be so like oh you suck you're not consistent and i think there's the more that we can reduce guilt and give grace to ourselves in these areas like hey i wasn't consistent today but i have another chance tomorrow i think that's been out change and i'll i'll leave it with one last thing we built a free tool there's no sales no nothing called law of one hundred dot com and so if you're trying to do something post content go on sales go on dates it's literally just a site where you can check off to do something a hundred times and just kinda makes an easy reminder to to try something me a hundred times because then it's easy to build a habit it and consistency and also then make informed decisions whether you should quit something sorry one last thing be around consistent people i don't hang out with people who are late all my friends they show up on time and i was like damn you're on i'm like yeah of course if you're around a bunch of inconsistent mop that's the okay that's acceptable so find people around you that are consistent i used to tell people you ever do this hey i'll call you later and then i didn't call him later i don't know it's just a phrase yeah and they said no you literally said call me later i thought you're gonna call me later i you know it's something i've worked on and been around these people and all this stuff it's cool that you brought us on that journey because i think it is so hard to get this stuff right but we know that it adds up right like there's so many different elements to what you just said there del to the right people surrounding yourself by the people who you wanna become i think the rule of one hundred thing is something that sylvia and i have talked about on the show love of one hundred of just like you need to do something a hundred times versus ten or one to like actually see it through yeah it's just it's funny because this is the hard stuff right it's like oh i wanna do product research and figure out what's working my product what's not like well the secret that that's is just doing it continuing to do it even when your products really good right like it's like if you get complacent and you stop being consistent that's when you're gonna have a problem versus if you make it a norm in the business you're gonna you're gonna keep doing it and i think it it flows through so many things and it's i don't know i thought i just i'm on this kick of like believing that a lot of the stuff that we want like the answers are actually pretty simple this is really hard to add it's like that's how so much stuff is like i mean parenthood same thing it's just like you wanna be a great dad like you gotta spend time with your kids consistently you gotta find a way to it's okay that's it then how do you actually fit it in how do you actually do that in your life and how do you save time for your partner how do you save time for work and all the stuff it's like it's the consistency part that's hard yeah i think to what you're i like what you chris which is if you know that the benefit of consistency is something really desirable it makes it easy with the days you don't feel for being consistent like hey you wanna have successful business you wanna be a successful parent you wanna be successful husband like do it over for a period of time the one thing that i will say i've done and i'll i'll do it at you know in the next hour is i do a consistency review at the end of the week really yeah so i have a slack bot comes friday weekly review no okay it comes at two thirty pm central and my number two question is were you consistent and it's number one is sucked number five i don't know how to get fan ta i don't know about who gonna mean word i grading on brand it's all lord of the rings themed that gets a secret to know okay is that it's fantastic lord to the rings i don't know i was like wait is i don't think i don't think anybody else rings is overrated lord the rings boring it's like the most boring movie ever like a few of these movies i'm just like i don't not know how they're been so anyways though i rate myself each week and this week with like nick i was really a pup poo head but i can i can improve i think that's as important because i i noticed at work if people don't know what to expect or if it's like you're hot and cold it's a very it's not an ideal person to work with not a great you know leadership example yeah especially because so much of leadership is like mimicking right it's like people working with you a little bit and like oh this is the way noah is like that's and so it's like if you are inconsistent it really can throw people for a loop you love to start things you love to build new things like you're just tired i just gotta get ten thousand views on this like where do you get your inspiration for new ideas and how do you stay creative so in terms of creativity number one read the artist way by julia cameron that's the book that's the bible i think twofold but primarily i just try to think about what things are problems i have that i'm interested in and and that's where i really then we'll spend a lot of my my time just like what are those areas like for the book i was like i've never done something that's gonna take four years like everything you know business is kinda like day eight but quarter or yearly or three year and was i a long project and so that was an interesting one i think you know we launched a thing called breeze doc dot com and it's because i i was signing up for doc sign and hello sign and then i was using it to sign an agreement and then i would cancel it to save the twenty dollars a month i was like this is just ridiculous how is this twenty bucks a month like it's it's twenty twenty four like let's let me sign it so david and our original team built the product i think we built it in sixty days or less and now it's out and now we're using it and now it's already you know it's doing like almost a thousand a day it's pretty cool and i was just like it was something that we wanted for ourselves and we liked now i think one of the ways to be more creative is not being on a computer and doing more things outside your space so i don't go to art museums but i think you go to art museum maybe it's going for hikes a lot of the creativity comes when you're not looking at the same things over and over so are you looking at architecture are you going for walks i think hikes are kinda cool a lot of my best ideas i when i'm not working that's such a hard disconnect like i i saw a jeff bezos talk about thing called wandering he goes wandering and i think it's how do we even have more consistent wandering in our lives that's tough because i think we measure ourselves by like direct transactional output but if you can give that that space especially i think as leaders that you're not in your normal environment you get a lot more creative so you know i went an rv trip four weeks ago we just went to florida for two weeks doesn't mean leaving your city just means leaving your environment or even leaving reading different material like have you at un untrained by glen and doyle oh i know glenn doyle but i haven't read the book you know her personally no oh i know of to glenn okay and anyways it's like a woman empowerment book and it's just so inspiring and i loved you got so excited that's the most excited are you telling you no glenn doyle it thanks no i don't know just like get outside the i mean a lot of the success of apps is because we found something outside of apps one of our biggest drivers of the business was giveaways is still is giveaways and i saw it in a women's magazine and i was like browsing wig the magazine i like i was kinda interesting and then they did a giveaway away and i was like we should try that out but i i'd say the the other part of creativity is it's hard to measure creativity if you measured by the success of other people liking it that makes it feel like hey this is not creative if they didn't appreciate it because i've had videos that i've put out that i'm like this is the best video i've put out no one watches and other videos that you know i put out that i did that a lot of people so i do think you have to come back to you know are you proud of what you put out regardless of an an external outcome of of the work and a lot of the work i will say like i i don't know how many videos now few hundred in the past three years or tweets you know i've sent an email for ten years almost every single week and you know you have to realize like not every one of them does amazing i there's i was also just thinking myself of like you know most people are not pushing their own thinking often like it's hard right to like learn from people that you are not the target audience of or like learn for people that you might disagree with normally but it seems like that's something that you're consistently doing funny i seeing the opposite option i feel like i mute people probably way more than most really most people i block or mute because i find like it's like negative creativity i i think jealousy and negativity only suffer is is it's actually productive in some doses but i think too often were letting negative exposure and influence us in all account like i follow i think fifteen people on instagram and that's because i don't wanna be influenced in those ways same with like twitter like i see these people here's how i'm rich blocked here's my six different holding company businesses muted here's another newsletter muted so there's not not hate on any of that i think the reality is that you're in control of your inputs and so how do you get like positive inputs when you're seeing when you're going there you're like oh this is benefiting me same on youtube these same with the people you interact with like i hang on you don't remember my buddy neville yes yeah i saw him when i was in austin for our off side yeah i just you know i'm around like someone like him like give me more of that influence nick gray give me more of that influence i want these like you know weirdo you know i i try to make sure i get all their notifications so i think it's like declining the the ones that make you feel bad or not good and annoyed and then the ones that are just you know double down on them can you talk a little bit about the book so just for people who don't know it what is the book and then i'd love you could also tell the story of how you chose the cover i had a dream in life to write a book one day i never thought i i would do it everyone has a book in them every single person i hope everyone it that's listening in your lifetime you write a whether you make it public or not is up to you i also think when you realize that you can write a book about your life you can be the editor of it you can change it like you don't like how things are going you can change it you're like oh it's going great keep that chapter make it that chapter longer four years ago in the pandemic and i was like i think it's time i try to think about what what i wanted to write about i emailed this agent who's james clear agent her name's lisa and it's said lisa i wanna write a book and she's like yeah you're joking right because i i put together a proposal like a two page word doc and she rejected it she's like well if you're serious come back so i hired a professional named david mo he's james clear proposal writer and we spent a year okay working on the proposal a year oh wow and then i went back to lisa and she's like okay you're serious i'll take you as a client now and it was nice to get that rejection in the beginning because i wasn't serious i think in life all we have to do is just commit commit makes everything better really does committee makes everything better so i committed to the book and it's been an amazing journey the book is basically like everything i've learned and how you i've been able to start businesses very quickly in a weekend you know how i start apps sumo and how i did ga and how i've done tidy cal dot com even this new breeze doc products i did it in a day i validate it in twenty four hours and now it's on track to be a seven figure plus business and i will say promoting a book is much harder than promoting software software courses this that stuff's easy getting someone to buy a book is like the i i can't believe how hard beg do no one buys books like i've sold millions of dollars like literally hundreds of millions of dollars of software you know selling ten thousand books is harder that's like like my mom barely bought one of them with she's like i'm just gonna inherit your money i was like what are you talking about mom so that's funny the number one thing with million dollar weekend is this book is hyper tested like it's literally tested at a singular granular level for every single word and what i need by that is two thousand eleven i put an article about how i start businesses went viral then i did a course sold millions of dollars about how i did it then i started opening putting out tweets all of them certain tweets do really well and then from there then systematically work with a thousand beta readers read every single word then i had someone live with really yeah then i had someone live with me no joke of a stranger that he applied but i don't know him then i had six months of five people each weekend reading the book and all that feedback then led to where the book is today and what i'm trying to say there is that if you have a great product all this marketing stuff makes a lot easier that's bar none and i think people miss out on that they don't solve problems that are important and you're saying they they underestimate how important i a great product is a million percent and the work that goes into making a great product did all this work for ten thousand copies you know like no i i'm very proud of i'm very proud of this like here's a test for everyone out there go use your product i'll tell you i've probably read this book more than anyone else i love my book i know that might sound strange if people like go this guy weird which is good i'm okay with it i love it it's one of my favorite books of all time and i hope for whiskey in si when you put out this episode i hope you're like that was best episode we ever did i did the best editing of i cut out noah completely and it's only chris talking and there's different elements so how i run apps how i built the book is how i teach others to do it where i didn't spend years building it knowing no one wanted it i knew people are gonna want it because i've validated it but then i wanted it to be as successful as possible so is working backwards from number one how i make a great product and someone who doesn't have a business can they read this book and have a business and answer is yes now your question on the marketing which i think is just as fascinating i think there's a lot of nuggets in there for others number one go interview successful people about how they do it or just go look at how they do it so i went and interview james clear so james clear told me his cover they did three hundred versions of atomic habits do you know that unbelievable well yeah that's crazy so i this is a part chris that people miss people think james like how did this james guy get a successful book it's crazy yeah james wrote articles for ten years he built up a two million person email list he systematically tested every single thing in his book it's not a surprise he's the number one best selling book of the decade it's not and i think people think it's a surprise that's the the difference yeah because they see the last part they say the part when the book comes out and everyone gets it they're talking about it and you can't miss it it's in the airport and they'd see that part but they don't see everything else tony wrote don't tony well he stole it from someone else so i won't give him credit but success leaves clues tony robbins has nothing original i'll just put that everything he said is from jim ro he said success leaves clues but i know tony didn't come up with it i can't give them the props when i know he's not original all of my stuff is from someone else look at bi yoga it's all rearranged i know people don't say that stuff publicly but what i'm trying to say here is success leaves clues so just work backwards from success consistency of success now in the book world same thing so what i did is i went and read the thirty most popular books in categories as i was competing with and i did full book reports so i highlighted the phrases they had i had i had their layouts photo this is me i just did it myself and then i was like okay cool i've studied the best how do i take all those things to make it better than that and so a lot of the elements in the book and i interview those people as well so i interview james clear he did three hundred different covers so i tested using facebook ads as well as qualitative groups as well as twitter polls as well as email polls email clicks to eventually get on this bright green cover and i i can get into a little bit more about that but i i think what i'm really trying to get people to think about is like sometimes success is not as much as as luck surprises as we think like even in james book like people don't know this but james intentionally if you read the first chapter there's three takeaways go read it if you check out atomic habits there's like the leave the shoes thing out there's the one percent better and i don't remember the other one and most books it's in like the third fifth no james yeah down that no one got to that point you put in the beginning and so there's a lot of these elements for million dollar weekend which i think you know it's part of having fun but a lot of it's it's not surprised that it's working like the cover itself we tested i don't know if tested for about two months every single thing on the cover the font the size the color the subtitle i i think the biggest surprise was that the publisher literally sent me down they're like we do not support you doing in a green book they were like because no books are great no business zero business books are green yeah but they're a color of money and now i think you're gonna see more of them i think it's pretty good i really love it but but the point was is that we did a lot of these tests on facebook ads to see where people would click and we we tested it with my email list we tested with polls i tested with what i what preferred i even did these mock and i and i brought all this data to the publisher there they're like no no one does green in business ever if you wanna do it it's your call we don't wanna do it but it was just so obvious with the data that none of them no one else is doing anything different so i feel very confident and now it's almost like i don't know i think the book's is better than the cover but you know if you have a crappy cover no one gets to find all the good stuff that that's disappointing we spent probably two months testing just the cover to get to this point and what happens is good success people get tired and they get tired at the most important part we spent four years almost writing this book and it's exhausting you're like okay just can someone read it a little bit yeah yeah but like this last part where it's like going on shows getting the cover right getting all the marketing consistent getting a launch plan ready sticking with it afterwards too it's that's hard but my mom always said this and it was a good quote it's like the last mile is the most important because you'll you'll forget how hard you're ran after i've always kinda stuck with that like that's amazing and i also think it's a great way to end this show so noah where can people connect with you i mean you've said a few of the places what where where should they connect with to you to like learn more buy the book all that stuff they can find me everywhere online i mean go check on my podcast cake presents grab the book if you wanna start a business or just i think people are reading the book and just feeling more confident in finding out who they can become if you want great tools at great prices with you you were on there too long ago maybe we need get you back app zoom dot com you can find me just search noah o cake anywhere awesome thanks dude good to see you you know what's it's cool about that interview with noah is that i've known that guy for such a long time and he is the same person in so many ways than he was before and so much of like the arc of his career his company makes sense when you see that person it's just it was hard to see it first exactly how it show up and now it's obvious yeah and it's just really cool to see that when you see somebody you know them long enough afternoon like oh of course he's out there asking questions of random people and of course he's completely transparent and honest about like where he's at associates it's really cool and i is fun to see that yeah i didn't know him before this interview i mean like i knew of him but i didn't know him and he is unequivocally himself and there's something that's very like disarming about that and liberating about that and the other thing that struck me is he talks so much about consistency in life and business and i feel like that's sort of like a drum that you beat as well and why is it so hard to be consistent i guess is my question why is it so hard what's the secret to consistency what do you two drink that i don't drink oh well i think you're pretty consistent bunch ice okay this wasn't meant to be there such but you like to go there sure no let's have another half hour on this what what do you think what has helped you be consistent really yeah really i think whatever you're trying to build a habit it it is finding something you're already doing and then anchoring the change to it and recognize recognizing you can't change too many things at once that's i think probably the the for me was the biggest unlock is like hey if i wanna like sleep better and i wanna meditate and i wanna eat right and i wanna run every day was like okay you guys great that way i'll do those things if i try to do all those things every day from starting tomorrow like i you can't it's impossible overwhelming but if you could say let's pick something smaller let's say actually a real one i decided i wanna put sunscreen on every morning mh and i'm like how am i gonna do this and so i realized oh wait i'll get a sunscreen has a moisturizer i'll put it next to my toothbrush and when i get up the first thing in the morning i'm gonna do is brush my teeth i'm gonna put it on i am adding i can do have it but i'm anchoring to something i'm doing already right and honestly it it's like easy to do now i do it every day and need to find like a a pairing system yeah and you might have a long list of things you wanna do and the other advice that i've heard is like if you can do it for two weeks it it not there's no longer hard to do it it doesn't take any well willpower it's just a the habit of what you do so you kind of layer things in two weeks at a time and i think at least for me that's what works i love that noah does morning pages it's really cool it's like a thing that let tons of people aspire to do and you read it you know i wanna do it how you do it it's like you gotta anchor you got you gotta to find some place to put it into your routine and then it doesn't take willpower to do it that's it they got that simple everybody well look thank you for joining us please rate review the podcast slash show wherever you consume it if you have feedback for us or questions potential guest you can email us a t tail pod whiskey dot com you could find sylvia and i very active on linkedin somewhat active on twitter slash x but there is also almost forgot the talking to a lot channels on instagram tiktok youtube so check us out on all those platforms and until next time stay cool enjoy that pool sylvia thanks talking too loud is brought to you by wi hosted by chris savage produced by me si lu bow along with adam day executive produced by w studios this episode was mixed by maria passing listen to talking to lab wherever you listen to podcasts and hey rate and review us wherever you listen and check out more content from wi studios at wi dot com

okay and continue i'm this episode is going to destroy me i am so screwed by this episode you're to get famous here again the all on hello and welcome to talking loud with chris savage i'm your host chris savage and we are here shooting a very special episode today we are shooting our one hundredth episode i can't wait it's to be so exciting and si i know she's made amazing plan so si s there you are here i am i'm my get here magic magic thanks for being for being here in my home my home studio it's great to be back we great happy did an episode here a long time ago yeah many moons ago many moons ago but we're back we're back baby and we have a whole big thing planned for you for your tundra have no idea you have no idea idea you've been kept in the dark yes but we thought it would be fun mh since you're always interviewing guests mh on the show mh we wanted to put you in the hot seat we wanted to ask you one hundred questions for our one hundredth episode and take you to a few locations that are guaranteed to get you talking to you look well that sounds great and sounds good a little terrifying but sounds great sounds great i'm gonna start things off okay i'm gonna be your first interviewer that's thank you yeah you that's so nice and these are some softball balls okay date mary kill with social media platforms we've i've done this one before tiktok youtube instagram i'm going to marry youtube plus too much good quality content on there you know rivals netflix if you're looking for the right comedy shows i'm going to date instagram tech tiktok and gonna kill tech tiktok and i actually did kill tech tiktok for my phone because it was too much for me you know when an algorithm was too good you know you have you must we're just training for the future with like a super ai in front of us you know just turn it off i i try to stay away from tiktok it's it's a vortex same reason yeah okay it's a vortex i will be on there for hours and hours okay if you could have any celebrity guest on talking too loud who would it be i like i've said this before but the rock be i i think i'm gonna tell you why though because i think i think he really has had a pretty amazing career for they about where he started yeah he's always been an entertainer but he actually had these like incredible businesses he's built up a lot of them he works with his ex wife and has just built this beast of an engine and there's too many interviews i've seen that i've actually ended up like genuinely inspired because he was like so authentic and so real yeah i don't know i think the rock that's just to pick me up really yeah throw you rock that's really what we're mentioning yeah okay what's your favorite emoji the rocket chip oh nice mh i like this one that's nice yeah wings smile yeah okay dad just to be clear and is the wings smile what's the most creative thing you've ever done well i like this question well good for you nice job to start off quickly complimenting yourself oh who did this soon i do genius came up with this the most creative thing i've ever done i put building a business in a category of being creative and so it would be wi you a hundred percent but i've made some pretty fun videos with my kids and these nephews that are i'm i'm proud of so yeah those have been very creative nice and i've painted a few things that's are still hang up only in my home and only in areas where other people can't see them maybe we'll put those on instagram yeah i hope sure that's people like to see there has me some wine somewhere and i might try at these paintings they're not allowed if you could only shop at one clothing store for the rest of your life what would it be fe what's that so are these shorts are from fe is it kind of like a cool surfer brand and surfer brand it's like everything is like really like such a so chill but i have a lot of shorts of severity i have a lot of shorts they have comfortable gear is it men's only clothing no no you know what they have they have oh god what it's called it's they have this flannel that's like a jersey s flannel and it is like the most comfortable thing like in the fall i gotta check this business we've been surfing all day and then like then need put the flannel on i like your california surfing a watch persona yeah what's your latest ai obsession well i'm not actually using this yet but i'm i'm very excited about the apple intelligence which they just announced in ios eighteen yeah mostly because i feel like there's been so many different applications of ai that are fun but you don't use them every day and i think there's an opportunity with this of like hey you ask your phone when chu for the airport and it checks your email and it checks your calendar checks the location checks traffic and it says usually in five minutes and that that to me feels like the combination of all of these really personal things so i'm dying to test that but i'm also terrified to install the ios beta because i once lost like a huge amount of data on my phone because of that is a tragedy i'm gonna have to wait which is really hard for me calm down stay patient okay thanks don't talk to a lot of people but what's your favorite whiskey of video so we did the recap for a long time usually at the end of the year there'd be like wrap up with a rap song that i that dan would make and those have a special place in my heart and then it also makes me think if there's this one time we did we were announcing whiskey fest mh and we had like a musical intro and that video was so absurd that we thought this is a good idea and it was so great and so funny and so earnest i i think those are up there for me something i'm very curious about if you could be an extra on any movie set what would it be my brain goes to like something that has like an epic number of extras like something that's like really a really sure doing would be a perfect example yeah a huge number of extras is huge set yeah like something that if you know you're like you're part of movie magic if you're there i think dude is the is a great one yeah due to cruise control have you ever won a contest yeah in high school i did the stock market club one year and i came first in the state whoa yeah that's a big deal it was i we're the best investor yeah and i was not expecting it let me tell you but you better believe when i was planning a colleges that was on there best investor in rhode island well was come to this thing and i was like okay and then they're like and up next is this team when it was like me and these two other guys and like i don't really need to get into how good we were about we're very good crushing crushing it yeah summer or winter olympics summer hell yeah okay that's the right hand just swimming come on so it so exciting it is exciting yeah it's very exciting although i i actually as a more thinking but that i might switch to winter man i my awful on i knew the more you thought about it you know because ever nice winter more you're just looking for more people to get on the summer side you know hit board with summer olympics if you could play one sport professionally what would it be oh come on this is an easy one for you race carter or whatever yeah yeah actually though i don't know if that's true really yeah because it it's very fun to be in the sam it's very fun to race certain fun all but it is kind of dangerous oh just a wee bit and and hot and it's so sometimes it's really hot so maybe curling that's that's not hot that's not up that's not ice mh alright what was your favorite subject in college film man film mary star stars and start i've loved film what was your least favorite subject in college i took a class that was supposed to be a gut course called like the biology of the ear i think it was like i think it was just like just studying biology was yeah was just studying biology of the ear i'm i that might be incorrect i don't i hope that's what i was remember it as i i remember being the year's is very intricate and it's very important yep and it's supposed to be a gut class and it it didn't feel like one what's your favorite streaming service right now i i mean the truth is i think it switches right does because it's switch betting on the show and right now i would say apple tv plus because i love dark better i don't know you love it also i love it yeah it's i'm gonna catch up really good so but it it will probably quickly switch yeah because the bears is coming back so when that comes back at think cool do yeah do you believe in ghosts no hard now yeah i definitely do i'm not idiot so you're not operating on the highest plane u mh i could tell you some stories okay please do if if you could live if you could live to be a hundred u what's one thing you'd wanna accomplish in your lifetime if i could live to hundred i wanna have a good life at a hundred and so i think for me that would be about like spending time with my kids and grandkids and you know like being able to be quote active with them at a hundred that would be the goal so pure mh have a good life well we're about to have a great day i cannot wait in this good life yeah are you ready i'm ready let's headed to our next location let's go it's a bit of a drive really just a bit you really i really wish you trying to schedule in front surprise breath so we're here at flower bakery okay forty erie street and you purpose it chose a heat wave for this right oh yeah yeah what you what are we at right now or like we're at eighty five so far but we're gonna be going really going up great so going it up i don't think like a white shirt to just swim through as we walked around in the heat wave i'm so glad i knew what we were doing better than it sound last year that's true that's true why why first episode how we're gonna have you talking to joanne chen came on for the first episode to talking to loud she's very gracious to do that in the middle of pandemic when she basically couldn't have people into her stores and so it's all takeout out and we talked about you know how she was make doing all this social media of the bake it looks so good caused me to constant order things so yeah i love back very fondly of that and joan the best well we're gonna head into flour get some treats and see what else is in store sounds great okay it's really odd be very description okay right now alright alright to flower bakery look at this cute logo it's bustling in here got a good crowd going oh my god and wouldn't don't you know it frank our social media manager is here let's look at this look at this wow this for you sir oh oh this is for me thank you so much thank you so much sure we have to know what has you talking to loud right now doing this i have i have some thoughts i have some i thought so do you have do you have a favorite talking to too loud episode and and why that is really hard because i think there's a a bunch of different episodes that stand out like different moments in the show i think episodes that i go back to are ones that i didn't either i learned a lot and i've taken the advice or i was so surprised because like the vibe was so good so you've been you guys have been at this for a while now so what advice would you give to someone starting their own podcast i think pick a topic that you actually care about because like just like anything that's hard to do it takes a long time we've learned i feel like through this to that what works is when we can actually like take our filters off and i be ourselves which is also not tiring it is like you it actually gives you energy to quiet just being yourself is not tiring if you haven't done this a lot if you haven't put it out there and like your different thoughts and opinions and the way that you talk the mistakes you make and all stuff it can feel so tiring to try to stay on the message you want to have and i think it's been really freeing to instead like let it let it rip you gotta go with something that like you you love talking about and then it's just gonna it's gonna flow there yeah you mentioned a minute ago that some of your favorite episodes were the ones where you learn something yeah what's maybe the most surprising thing you learned since starting talking too loud oh my gosh i that is such a hard question i'm not here for softball balls no i know look at his shirt yes that interviewer ever i it it's great don't they don't just give these out you gotta earnings i think the surprising thing is that a lot of people find their way to kind of the same like habits and approach like a lot of success looks the same and it's like that like the people who are doing the thing that they're successful at like they they actually enjoy it i know i understand that but i think it's real they are unbelievably like consistent so many of these people who have do very different interesting things in very different fields like they love what they do they stay on it for an extremely long time often at the beginning you don't see a lot of progress and i think like that is what trips everybody up and i think like you know i feel like that's my story and it's been surprising how much that story is the same that's interesting the consistency across yeah that it's often like you know start on something you stay passionate you stay focused on it you get better and better and better you can't see the progress very easily at first mh and that's often the hardest part and that that's not unique that that is actually what a lot of success looks like can you share a memorable moment or funny anecdote from like behind the scenes i feel like a lot of our bts moments actually make it into our cold opens mh because they're just us laughing i think when we recorded on club house yeah yeah i i was like having a full blown panic attack yeah i'm the seat yeah and you were just like keep it together and i was like my internet isn't working i'm freaking go yeah this isn't gonna work and you're like it's gonna work it's gonna be fine yeah and that club house is kinda gone it's kinda gone alright pete but but that was actually a great example of something that's like like even going live like there's been a bunch of times we're going live and you're prepping and you're really stressed yes and then the truth is like if you're talking to your friend and they make a mistake they fix it or whatever you go down a tangent it's fine and like i think we don't realize how much that's actually what we want yeah and so that's back to like over time i feel like when we put more of the behind the same stuff in the show yeah we're we'll record something well so he'll be like that was crazy you're notorious for whenever we get a guest in virtually he'll just hit record and like what are you doing nice and he's like this is gold right here because we get well gotta of times we start catch up with some start time so i'm like that's exactly what i talk to you about in the show nice i need you to talk about it like the fe like to have it be fresh basically so it is a funny have you ever been nervous for trying any i guess i'm sure i have whenever i feel under paired or not in the more like not in the right frame of mind yeah that's that's when it gets me maybe this is related to them what's been like the biggest production challenge that you've you faced i mean when we transition to video that was hard for me i'm i am like allergic do you have like a pump up song or like a couple pump ups song so you can narrow it down to two or three i really want you to have pin ball wizard that's a great one that's a great one do you have a guilty pleasure tv show what how guilty how how how vulnerable do you wanna be i know podcast guess i feel more guilty about the video games i play than the context i mean historically has been fortnite okay mh and then recently it's been grand prix mo and f one twenty four it's spending far too much time okay just trying to hit lap times which is just so silly because but i feel like it's translated into my driving real life side that is good i'm excited good good i'm excited to be in a car with you yeah exactly i know you're listen to a a a good number of podcast mh what's your favorite other than this one obviously my favorite podcast on this son is take your shoes off with rec glass comedy podcast and he's just extremely funny and surprising and actually part of what makes it fun is that he's constantly editing it in a funny way and so he can like see the edits of his mind there's animations whiz around and it's like awkward funny sharp humor have you ever thought about like if you weren't in this career what would you what else would you be doing like you've been doing this for eighteen years obviously making action movies alright that's like my that's like my one of my other dreams is like to make like a smart action movie like my favorite ones are like the first born identity is okay okay and like yeah just something where you actually believe that the characters are doing making smart decisions but there is a lot of action like i love that type that's like a guilty pleasure for me this might be something from talking a lot might not be but what's the best piece of advice you've ever received the best piece of advice i've received i think it's for my dad and it was that early days of wi he asked me what the dream was is like what are you trying to do with this i'm like dad the dream the dream is to make sixty thousand a year in revenue and if we do that we'll brendan and i each make thirty thousand and we're gonna be good that's it that's the dream and he was like you might wanna prepare for success more and like figure out what happens if this is actually successful and like try to spend time thinking through what would happen what we need to change but like what would it take to get there and i think that that's something that i think about a lot which is like running through the scenarios of how to make something successful it helps you create the path to try to get there mh and i think it's easy to not do and so i i think that's probably been the the the advice that's like had the the biggest impact i mean on the face of it's kinda counterintuitive intuitive because you think like prepare for the worst hope for the best but like prepare for the best prepare for the best you have to prepare for the best yeah plan for the best right yeah yeah yeah that's nice yeah i've never felt like that i love that yeah today's is the day you gotta turn it around yeah flavor the best blame playing for the best that's it if you had a time machine what moment in time would you wanna visit two thousand six okay specifically yeah i'd just like to see me starting with you oh that's so stupid it's no that's it's not nice no that's nice yeah do you have favorite holiday probably thanksgiving good answer i feel like it's like less stressful and my family we saw wear christmas but it's less stressful next not getting all these not to us other stuff yeah and it's just like let quality eating and family time let's rest one and unless you're the one preparing the meal maybe yes now if it was me preparing the meal i yes to july fourth okay there you go yeah i'm happy bro i'm happy to me put on a shelter the meal that day that's my that's my meal yeah i got angry i mean dogs and burgers oh what's your hidden talents sleigh of hand yeah yeah i mean you know a little magic i have a few tricks of my sleeve yeah i did not know that i didn't either i so expecting a trick today so what we can do okay this i mean this whole thing is magic so i mean honestly this is this is my last one what's your favorite thing about your job i think my favorite thing is just like working with really smart people to work on hard problems like i i love trying to creatively solve problems in ways that haven't been before and often that's also where you get the most benefit and so that that for me is i think what makes me love it so much that's great that's right that's a heartwarming answer that is i love that it's a nice genuine yeah yeah thank you for joining me you wanna to have a bite yeah go for it yeah you you too have your overnight oats please i'll i'll i'll bite it to this oh you're real for taking the night very good thank you flour so much thank you thank you flo thank flower we're here at the w studios with your c cofounder brendan schwartz in a get up that i've never seen him in before in beautiful child like a child yeah it's it's great oversized reminds me of when we first met basically sure was that i mean i feel like you were hap back then i do not look good in hats but did you wear them did you wear one that's sure we're the golf party baby it could be i i remember used to wear a visor i sure did no it's really have fallen out of fashion i think sure have i was i'm mean freshman year ever in fashion no but briefly when limp biz was very a prime i think that was your which is right around that time and they're back now yeah they're back baby have you seen fred recently yeah he's aged has he ages but he's aged you know i mean his was so his look was so specific it was he looks like a different person like i said you're in the hot seat today turning the mic back to you mh and brandon has come up with some pretty hard eating question he has yeah i'm known you for wait what are we determine twenty three years twenty four twenty three years so i've been saving you know for than for today you know like i just need to know the answer to these questions if well let's see what's your favorite candy close are you ready what is your dream vacation destination dream like okay so you want me to sci diversify on this you know just like oh yeah if i think i'd like to vacation in the year like twenty four hundred oh time travel i think it's time travel vacation i think at that point we will have unlimited abundant energy we'll live in a very green world everything will have been solved equipment itself and they'll be i mean no they'll will still have a this exact same no problems we have today but those problems be solved i think it'll be easier to go to space probably go to space for lunch space lunch there be a lot of space lunch lot space lunch well you think about it you know you go to the top of like the the space needle right and you have lunch so why i go space for lunch like a truce space yeah yeah real space that's great answer you don't think that's gonna happen i think gonna happen for sure i love that the space elevator do you think i'm serious do you think probably he's like brandon us you're a space elevator yeah i've heard about those yeah yeah your brother likes to talk about that a lot joel yeah never heard him talk really oh yeah he he's told me all about it joel has a lot of like offline count yeah we'll see about space elevators and i never heard him once space already but it doesn't surprise me yeah this next question is about my brother i mean we're right right on task care today yeah if he could have any superpower what do you think my brother superpower would be this about i'm just kidding what what superpower would you like i mean joe would like unlimited strength and i would also like that okay great okay twins you're very strong though so you want even more that's true it's wanting take boys one of our advantages always song more what is your favorite childhood memory oh man real oh i know hard pivot i mean it has to be like waking up running down the stairs on like christmas morning and like seeing the presents and ripping them shreds that and just so so excited it was so wholesome i mean ripping them open i don't need limited strike with unlimited his strike yeah with my superpower fully intact that is a nice memory the magic of christmas mh that's beautiful if you could swap places with anyone for a day who would it be and why i think probably one of my kits whoa yeah which one just get a chance i really goes zoe go with the older one but she always asked me these questions that are like i mean kids just do this but like that are kinda out of nowhere and like how did your mind get to that and like i would like to i would like to relive that experience i know enough about her life that the perspective i think would be very interesting but what's the best concert you've ever been to oh my gosh was i there seven dust oh i was there for that wow at lupus and providence yeah that sure what you know it's gonna get in the crew it start to laugh what was no i just remember that being so memorable and so like i mean i just we'd listen to the music but i really had no idea what scene the band was gonna be like and it was like so we saw this as this little venue called lu it was like pretty small room pretty grimy okay extremely grimy crazy sweaty mo pit utterly like insane but it just sticks out there as like it was so it was such a unique experience mh from like the our day to day that it was like so fun how old are talking in early two thousand's hard rock here yeah okay we were probably nineteen yeah oh my god eighteen yeah around there what's the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning get a commentary coffee sit on the couch it's very good yeah good plug yeah thank you so much i do have a referral code to get at one of those come to your coolers what's your most embarrassing moment what's way to this is a is a heavy one do you want i do you get embarrassed yeah the most embarrassing moment that i can probably talk about is that's work appropriate the work appropriate is like when i spoke at robin camp do you remember that was this in providence no it in it was in cambridge wow ramen camp it was like we're pe so profitable there used to be yes i do people would say like your goal is to get ramen profitable which is basically like the business makes enough money you can just you can survive off of ramen but like package ramen not like great ramen okay so the culture shift because how it's like ramen is not necessarily cheap and i remember i had to give a talk about like the ten ways to like drive sales or something and we were maybe like five years in as the first talk i ever had to give and i remember i was like waking up at the middle of night stressed about it for like months getting ready for this thing and i'd practice my talk but i went up there and my talk was supposed to be thirty minutes that i didn't in like eight and i remember my mouth got completely dry and i knew they all knew i was so nervous i was like i'm like i have a watered out got it was i was so devastated and it just felt like utter failure than i remember walking into the hallway and someone had just seen the talk that i knew that i didn't know they in the room sky tj j and teachers like hey chris i was like hey it's like you know i think this of your saying is it's actually pretty good like once you do this enough and you kinda get over the fear like i look at a good talk once you've put in twenty two work i was like you tell was nervous i you don't it just put that embarrassment sat with me for a long time yeah and it honestly wasn't till like two years later i met some ran into someone some start event and like hey you gave that talk about how to drive like ten ways to drive sales i was like hey like i took your advice and it worked and i was like wait and what no you're not really me and they're like yes and it was this moment of like realization of yes i was so nervous so embarrassed i like my mouth got dry like i could barely complete the thing i i just sped through everything so quickly and yet some of the content was actually valuable and it was like i need to reframe my thinking about like focus on that and there's a lot of moments that like you know they're embarrassing for you but for everybody else like they're not yeah it's not the same level of thing yeah if you could be any fictional character who would be any fictional character i didn't you say it later i don't know fictional fictional you're gonna pass this one you can pass oh you you hear that i mean my first in six with han solo there great instinct yeah oh your yeah yeah who is your childhood hero or a hero is childhood in so dark neo that that movie hit hit at the right time yep perfect time you were i just see a pirate copy of it you're in adolescent to boy in the late nineteen nineties alright what's your guy broken open the matrix are you kidding me it's incredible can't favorite book of all time elements of style nice answer or how to win friends and influence people not classic or hitch got to the galaxy what is the greatest prank you've ever played on someone i'm gonna bring you into so i'm not the only one was when our friend dave david was he goes by now yeah he goes now we knew him his dave the prank was he said he introduced himself david and we call him david for four years old for year long day no we for some reason thought it would be very funny when he was out of his room and college are in the same suite to like epoxy everything in his room to every surface no so he came back in it was like the deodorant epoxy all the coins in his drawers are pockets that was the worst one the coins and drawers yeah what's your go to dance move robot robot that's i'm really true does your go to dance move different depending on the company yeah depending on the which company i'm at yeah like wi or you know you're a b b you b it's completely different u is there a dance move that you'd only do at home in in front of your kids or with your family that hasn't yet been debuted it's more just genuine i mean i like really a robot oh old no i'm just like with my kids like they really had complete freedom and then it's like you know you have some filters you put on you don't do the warm in public anymore like know water yeah it's twenty twenty four so i four around here we ain't got time for that yeah and what's your favorite pizza topping sun tomatoes i think really no i tomatoes have fallen way out of fast i do really like a sun dried tomato on a pizza i mean i love a little like brat little fresh mozzarella on there pepperoni you know i don't think i've seen you eat a sun i gotta keep an eye i feel like sun dried had like peaked when the matrix was in theaters well etcetera there's a trend in all of this whatever's is peaking when you're like eighteen like sticks back yeah makes sense well you've answered all of my questions i know that you've been obviously working these questions for years but than working there for years i i believe i didn't know your favorite pizza topping i i feel embarrassed that is this could be my most embarrassing moment lucky you it's a good one we're on a d u have you been on the d before i have not been on this specific boat i've hit the boat from other drop off points lovely been a long time though but a very long time it's up been a duck boat well i can't wait to talk too loud on this boat with you okay let's do it so that you can put the horn if you want here you go that road rage job who's your favorite sports team the ferrari f one two of of course what's the best halloween costume you've ever worn there was a year probably twenty five that our twenty four twenty five when i lived in the house so we started with the end and we all dressed up his character from super mario but brothers oh that's was such a fun group costume who are you i was worry that's right i do that yeah it fits you knew it yeah the hat fits what's your favorite way to stay active lifting how much can you bench we're getting into this no no gay three hundred three hundred yeah three one right back doing in the dead left two forty you wanna get the squad about four twenty okay no big deal what is your favorite amusement park ride you know what right now i would take anything that splashes you because it's so hot so so that's all i can think about is water yeah so splash mountain that's the one okay what's the best party you've ever been to my wedding what an answer where was it it was at old stu village which is know it but i like the sound no it's just a place where usually kids go to learn about the eighteen hundreds it's a historic village it's comprised of a number of homes and shops taken it from different places to create a fake historic village to establish with eighteen hundred is like and we got married there because everyone could stay at the same place and we had a barbecue roast night before or so but it's just like your wedding is the best it's just like every all your favorite people are in the same place at the same time so that was epic what's the most unusual job you've ever had i briefly in high school was a transporter at a hospital and so i would you know basically they would call and say like we need blood and need plasma or whatever the transport of the people who bring the stuff around the hospital okay so i did that and i was like mostly lost so it felt actually really stressful like where does the blood i felt like i have to get this to this place now this the job is was like we need whatever stat you know and you're like shit like i i'm doing this step what if i hit the wrong button on the elevator is very stressful sounds yeah incredibly stressful what is one of your nickname i mean i could called savage lot i was just telling on the other day that i did used to soccer camp when i was like probably like fifth grade sixth grade and for some reason i don't know why i insisted wearing hiking boots to play every day so jet of the summer and i was wearing hiking so the severance are called me boot and so there's was a while they boot boot they can't boot boot is a good nickname it was pretty fun it's a terrible decision that you made i don't know why i think i was just trying to be your i also wore a bed in you got you know love being different let's let's go okay what's your favorite breakfast food croissant what's the one thing you worry about most as a ceo oh my god what's your favorite breakfast food now was the one that you worry most as ceo i think basically making sure that we have the right capital allocation across the business to align for what we're trying to do this year and also in many future years oh sorry i was a terrible back to that question that's fine but you got it if you could invent a public holiday what would it be national blockbuster movie day and everybody goes and sees like it's you know free popcorn oh my goodness just you see the biggest most like pop corny blockbuster movies that exist somebody during the middle of the day because there's not there's an for me there's almost no greater joy than seeing a movie like that at like eleven am if you had to eat only one thing for the next one hundred days what would it be breakfast sandwiches what's the funniest thing you ever witnessed during a zoom meeting oh i mean i'm not sure this is a zoom me we were we're recording up episode talking to you loud and someone was so excited they broke a vase right yes that was jeff charles charles also ramp name something you're lo good at cone construction and you guys maybe to see my i'd like to did you break a cup did that just happen too maybe a vase that was amazing that was was like it was like you know it sounded like a fake sound effect you know it was like it was like yeah it's was like did that just and he just kept going i he was utterly on facebook that guy is an animal so that was on brand for him that was an amazing moment that i will never forget okay last one what's your favorite arcade game like that you can only play an arcade yes the simpsons game done great wrapped we've done it it's like an oven here oh my son yes it is me one famous formula one driver charles cook i'm ferrari of course the best part of this cs to the accent is unbelievable yes it's really me one of the youngest drivers in ferrari history and i got formula good to see you thanks for coming very good very pleased to be on your show christopher but how you say first time long time chris oh god i missed this gag so much is this some fast have you been pinned to the middle all day long yeah it's been put out there you know you know yeah when i face extreme extreme heat in my formula one part you do face that yeah i like to stay hydrated christopher i've been staying hydrated we haven't doing a good enough job yeah tell you that normally hydrated you must drink your fluids si you look a little par very part yes well in my hometown of monaco i know the heat i know it well i know i know the heat i know it is my toasty out there you can how you say fry an egg a rumor has it you have some questions for yes yes yes yes i do have some rapid fire questions for you for savage are you ready yeah gentlemen and ladies start your engines christopher if you had to hire one person from succession to work what would it be and why what are their names what liking a handle schiff rome rome ram roman not cousin craig okay what's a job that you'd be truly terrible at any kind of financial forecasting financial forecasting got that okay now what's one are your favorite ads advertisements butt budweiser oh the budweiser are frogs yeah yeah oh the frogs yes looks like the heat is really getting to you do today i booked air conditioning in that green room is nice and cold now chris if you can work on any in house creative team who's who would it be and why probably work at west oh bam rise surprise now one of the three things you'd put inside of your time capsule i know my three but i wanna know what you're too times like hold on it's gonna be buried and it'll be une earth in one hundred years my ins first instinct is to bury my phone with the gyroscope apps so someone can see if their prediction was right about when i would die morbid thank you so much mh secondly i would probably get some scientific samples for folks i would her seal maybe ocean water or the so tomatoes and current tomatoes so they could go back and see what things are like and the third thing a photo album that's nice yeah thanks that's very nice i'm not sure that iphone battery would last a hundred years but here's hoping okay what object do you misplaced or lose the most my like car fob not your air odds your car fob okay now what's your favorite condiment what condiment are you mustard these days mustard okay that was that was rapid yeah si i'm gonna go what's mayo i'm gonna go mail wow very nice okay now what's the hardest thing about running a company chris savage you know i i think it's just like balancing priorities over the right timelines mh mh yes and and what's your favorite thing about your c cofounder brendan schwartz his sense of humor sense a humor built whiskey mh okay now are you more head or are you more heart i'll say heart in my short time with you christopher i have to agree now if you could roll in the clock back ten years what advice would you give to your younger self in big hard decisions like lean your instincts even more because like when you make big hard decisions and you don't trust her in sick those those are the decisions you ultimately regret i'm i'm nodding aggressively because of the deck book i'm nodding too you just can't see it now what's a rookie mistake you made at the beginning of your career there was a a lot of a lot of times we actually had we we're making progress on something but it was the numbers were so small so early it was hard to see or believe that like the progress could grow as much as it could so i i can think of a few times when we were on a project and then stopped before we should have like we should have actually kept compounding the wins as opposed to being like this thing hasn't completely isn't taking off super fast like we should give up and i look i can look back on a bunch of projects that action hindsight say were extremely successful that we just didn't compound the impact on we have a few more rapid fire questions and i just wanted to acknowledge that was a beautiful answer i think we finally gotten your guard down after being so intimidated by talking to me yeah well i appreciate that oh i'm feeling good you really relax me charles look clear i try to do that anyway what's your favorite catch phrase think you think you're so great no and on any game show what would that be family feud i don't really watch it i have to admit okay you that sounds fun doesn't it yeah yeah i don't you with another family i mean that sounds great yeah now two more questions christopher savage if you could master any instrument what would it be piano white and black keys sir final question for me i believe this might be question one hundred if you were to write a book what would it be about i think probably about the psychology of what it takes to like scale a business sign me up i would love to go to your book signing oh that's great well we're looking for people to can help endorse when happen so i'll keep you in mind well chris and si i have drank way too much water myself and i need to make a pit stop that's just a little one humor for you but in all seriousness before we wave the checkered flag on today's festivities there is just one more thing heck in the studio so put the pedal to the metal christopher or it's me charles the cook signing off okay alright bye bud savage yes we've come to the end of our journey okay i have one worst of ra okay great are you ready i guess we're gonna walk back into the studios okay oh my buddy cheryl yes wow si that was a whirlwind of a day and then the the surprise party went away put a way to end those so nice i it was like we had come off of that duck boat hot as ever straight into the cr interview and then we had cake we had cake you know i took that cake home and i ate the whole thing listen that as you should it was a big deal a hundred is a big deal yes it was just look great to like get everybody involved and and see the thing come together it was so great it was so nice to so people involved i was so surprised that we were like in these locations it was really great yeah it was a full circle moment with flower yeah yeah now now what i guess is the big question what's next well i i think it's obvious we have to we have to do it their hunter let's go let's go and i mean we have to say thank you to the locations to flower to the duck boats to twist you to my home office to our special guests frank on social media brendan i'm gonna thank you again as being interviewer i'm gonna and i not have to thank cheryl aka cr that was just a a delight you're face alright alright well that's it it see you guys next time bye talking too loud is brought to you by wi posted by chris savage produced by me si lu bow along with adam day executive produced by wi studios this episode was mixed by maria passing of edit audio listen to talking to lad wherever you listened podcasts and hey great review us wherever you listen and check out more content for misti studios at wi dot com

it's been a little while i think last time and i hung out was in scotland scotland which very scoring best which is very fun scotland great vibes i like great vibes there was that an accent did you just do an accent who me now i thought one of you did an accent did i i would dare did i hall a scotch and the first i would not attempt it in minute in years okay sweet well we'll bought back sylvia is fun to do it now yeah still yeah okay i didn't do it was that was solid all done hello and welcome to talking to that with chris savage i your host chris savage i am joined by the extraordinary the thoughtful oh the yeah antagonist oh s bow our producer here she is you're coming for me you know you just look so happy that i i also i had to go in some other direction so i'm sorry you're not a antagonist you're great i just you know it's i need i i am so for some kind of reaction you know just trying to try to get you going just poke in the bear so we have a great interview today joanna wee who is the founder of copy is here talking about how to write copy that resonates how to do in a world where it's like really confusing what people believe what they know it's this is a very cool one and it got me i mean i'm sure you were noticing during the interview i kept like looking up just like thinking of the implications and we've worked with joanna in the past to full disclosure like many moons ago and she's really great i was like oh man look should we look at this you look at that those interviews i kind of love because it's like i'm actively taking notes while we're doing of things we change and so that's what we have coming in store for you but first the show's called talking to loud because when we get excited we talked too loud got that decimal meter going what's got you talking too loud selfie oh man i was trying to think i am trying to think okay so the thing i'm talking to lot about is if you go out on a friday night and then you get to just like hang at home on a saturday night the winning combination for that saturday night is chinese food and a movie like there is nothing better it is pure heaven this might happened this week this is what just happened i saw a c show on friday night oh wow that's that was amazing okay but the thing that i'm really talking but i was sitting at home next night yes yeah when you're just like also kind of like the combo of out on friday home on saturday it's it's like look at me i'm dynamic i can be honest give it up for give it up for it's just like a chill chill yeah keep it chill keep talking this the dis wait just wait our listeners are gonna write in and they're gonna be thanking me for sage advice but the question is what movie did you watch on saturday reptile it's a it's a crime movie kinda noir style i really liked it actually i you know sometimes netflix cranks out some pretty bad originals so like comparatively i thought this was great and then in the crime movie genre i thought this was pretty good ben del toro oh he's in there okay cool that's that's breeding man that's right you always love it chinese food you know that's important too don't sleep on that what guy you talking too loud i thought i broke my toe that's it i think that it yeah and it was like thursday night and i was just walk out of my office and i just jam right at chair and i saw i saw white for a second you know my god vision went bleeding pain yes and then i did one of those big inhale i was like i did nail again don't hurt yourself yeah and then was alexander my wife like she heard the inhale and she goes oh my god are you okay and my and then you know you're at the doctor and there's x rays and it's not broken so that's the good news but it was did you crack your sesame bone was there anything about your sesame okay i don't know what the hell that is i don't know if like this chick p like bone in your toe which that's how i broke my toe crack mind no they told me nothing was broken just extremely swollen so i've just been like h raw big toe yeah and then basically like i'm h around using all these other muscles i don't normally use so like my s sore my ka and i'm just kind of like it's like put me in a bad mood honestly and i was like the first the second half i was like i'm fine it's just fine i'm gonna live in the moment it's painful right now it's painful in this moment don't think about the future i was like trying to use all my tools yeah yeah manage this and then eventually i was like this sucks this is terrible sometimes you just have to you just have to feel the pain you just have to say i'm i'm mad the stinks but you know toes it's funny they all work together like teams need to work together around copywriting interesting segue i like it yes the words need to work you need to put the problem out there like the big toe ag agitated to like the second toe whatever that's called and then you have your copy that's gonna convert well look we don't know what we're talking about but joanna wee who our guest stay shirt does so let's jump into that interview with j hi guys it's me frank the that guy the customer journey is complex but with service hub hubspot all in one service and support platform things can get a whole lot easier from customer health scores to an ai powered help desk service hub makes it easier for you to support strengthen and grow your customer base learn more at hubspot dot com slash service putting on a webinar shouldn't require a master's in javascript that's why we created whiskey alive whiskey alive makes creating webinars a breeze customize the registration page engage your audience with polls and live q and a tools then measure performance you can even create clips for social with our ai tools it's that easy learn more at wi dot com slash live join us so good to see you thank you for being coming on the show today thanks for having me here you know this show is called talking too loud because and when i get excited i cannot control the volume of my voice something i've lived with my whole life it's a huge problem and it's a huge opportunity and so love to start to show by asking our guests what has them talking too loud so what's got you talking to loud these days oh gosh man i mean i've been thinking given the topic here you know we were talking there's so many things so so many things i feel like everything i have an opinion on and i was actually thinking about this like i need to have fewer opinions that kind of has me talking too loud like stop talking so much joe you don't need an opinion on that but chris you emailed me with the fires that were going on here yes in colon corona and what got me talking too loud was the freaking nonsense on twitter about everything going on there and the polarization around wildfires it's got my backup can you tell our audience who doesn't know what happened and then you know just set the stage and then and then we can get into this yeah so here i live in colon corona colon corona is beautiful that's why you move here and there are fires pretty regularly but these were particularly bad fires and so this is happening and then you know you go on twitter like an idiot to see what people are saying about this surely it's all gonna be support and love yes like not a lot of weird thoughts and ideas so since since that time i've been kinda got my backup about how something is obvious as like fires burning houses to the ground can be like politicized i don't want this episode to political but like when did it become a thing where you can have an opinion on a fire burning in front of you and whether it's like a legit problem or not it's confusing to me yeah so basically devastating wildfires people losing their homes smoke in the air bad air quality there i mean i emailed you because i was like i know you and a couple other people who lived there was worried about it you all just checking in yeah and that's what you would think but would that's what you would think people would be concerned about and you're saying instead it's even like a debate as to whether or not the wildfires are a problem or like who is responsible for them or is that what you're saying yeah that's that's what it came down to that it's it's not a problem because forests have fires like duh like yeah we know that of course course have fires but like these are not the same thing and so it's just like disappointing you know and it's always this like minority i get it but what's going on what's going on yeah why can't people just being compassionate yeah yeah and just like if you don't know what you're talking about just shut the hell up for a while yeah just make me try that for a while yeah try learning yeah i think the thing that it makes me think about is like it's pretty amazing how much the algorithms in social media have changed everyone's perception of what's happening yeah and so like you can look at your feed and almost a hundred percent of people are on something where it like in this example would be like a hundred percent of people being like there's always far why are these people freaking out like they don't need more like aid to help them or whatever and it's like a tiny little niche but there's enough people in that niche and they they have a little really different world than everybody's sitting next to them yeah and this is this is sound like every front it's like unreal right like even entertainment education yeah how we spend our time how we learn like politics it's the differences are so extreme and so it's definitely not going away so in a world like that how do you write a message how do you tell a story that actually stands out that people connect with i mean segue for the win there chris well done but we practice we practice you know like how do i get this girl to talk about coffee no no no scary getting no it's it's fair and it's difficult like i think that's part of the problem is obviously algorithms we all know like what's up that everything going on there that we don't understand we don't know we just know like some things a miss here but how do you then get a message out that's legit and even i think even believable like even like breaking through today given that it's so hard to believe anything what do you do that's kind of a thing that i think it's a it's a good point to segue to that because it does make our jobs very very difficult when it's so hard to believe what people are saying online unless it's truly like polarizing and then somehow you do believe like if it's neutral maybe you're less likely to i don't know but how is it that i could share something that seems based in no sense of reality or science and somehow would still get shared out and like people believe it do we even need to have an honest message or like can you say anything and as long as you take a position you'll build a following behind you and if that's the case that changes everything for how you message as a business in market it does seem like that's what's happening right it's like if you don't take a position yeah or you have a nuance position people are like i don't have time for new nuance no one wants nuance people want extremes and there's like the line between like entertainment and education has like shifted where it's like oh assume i will be entertained and yes they're probably joking and i'll probably be able to figure out what percentage of the time they're joking and what percent of the time they're being genuine yeah just to really tied into the other hop button ai we're having to get used to this world i think where you can't just believe what you see right like you have to look and like well this might not be true but then like what are we supposed to do as people you can figure it out because you can just opt out if you're like just too annoying but as businesses i've tried opting out and like it's not good you're not like allowed to opt out there's no alternative there's no other it ends up hurting you if you fully opt out it hurts you right like you're missing the opportunity so yeah i'd love if you could just kind of we can dig into this from like the hard copy writing angle but like how how should people start as they think about this problem or like how do you start as you think about this from yeah i mean traditionally this is what we would do right would start by listening to what the customers have to say so existing customers customers that you would most like to have so if they're not the ones you already got have okay well what about your ideal prospects what are they saying you would take that voice of customer data and you would plug it into a framework a copywriting framework problem meditation solution desire obstacle solution these sorts of like frameworks and that is a really solid way to go about it v though typically for a lot of businesses v or voice customer data comes from going out and listening to people with the understanding that they are talking honestly and unbelievably about the real experiences we know that when you do like review mining as a way to find voice of customer data you're gonna be sorting through some fake reviews there's not gonna it's not all legit that's fine you know that going into it you like take it with a grain of salt triangulate your data that's how you would do it that's how every podcast i go on and talk about conversion covering every stage i get it us it's that do that but that's assuming that one your inputs are based on something true and real but two that people need something true and real and that the things that they're saying are i guess true and real still to keep using that phrase but if people just want to buy into something without any form of like nuance then we kind of i don't what to me it feels we kinda get back into really old school copywriting so much of the writing that we do today is like it sounds good and like it flows you know it might be based on voice of customer but you still go in there and you make it sound good so website looks like a website a homepage looks like a homepage but what if like what's not where we're going what if you need an old school yellow highlighted red bold long form sales page because that's like kind of how the world is moving right toward shout at me for a while and then i might believe you but is that the world or is that just like the rare exception but if you can get those people that could still be ten percent of the population of your market which could still be major for your business i'm stuck in this world right now and how to communicate you can't be polarizing actually as a brand if you are that's to be polarizing kind of with a sense of humor like death water right called death water like liquid death liquid death thank you haven't bought it myself come up a lot on the show a bet dev because yeah they're valued at like a billion dollars or something where ridiculous kills now for water and again i'm very impressed with what they've done here but yeah so that's taking a position as a brand like you're really pushing your brand really far you might not be taking a position like we kill thirst it's not a position necessarily but you've done something that's so breakthrough that people who are really powered by our lizard brains today more than ever like your thinking brain is not to be discussed your thinking brain cares about science way later yeah and you're saying like it seems like especially you're getting dopamine hits all day scrolling right getting like yeah thing after saying living in your bubble like if you don't give them a dopamine hit also in your marketing probably it's not gonna work yeah i would say that i mean i wanna look at like examples of clients that we've worked with more recently so lemon dot i io o is this company that came to us they help you find a developer like an outsourced developer or a development team and they came to us and they were like obviously this is a crowded market and it's hard to differentiate but here we would like you to write our copy so that we sound like a cult like an actual cult and wear were like a cult that's what they said yeah yeah a cult oh was really like that it is gonna be fun yeah that a weird aspiration it's a little cool that they said that though they did yeah and they had this like weird stuff going on with their icon geography and everything is cool i got so did and you wouldn't implement everything well they've updated some things this was two two years ago that we wrote the original draft so as you know their business has changed a little bit they're now targeting different things like they mentioned p g now which we didn't mention before but yeah it's like seek the light of lemon dot io all these other like silly things but you wanna believe the number of times there alexander is his named their founder he forwards me emails constantly that are like dude love your website love it how do we do this and he's like i hope you're open to more business which no but it stands out right like it's something it is a bit of a dopamine hit a little bit it's doing something different for your brain it's different you're narrative yeah so i get that this dopamine thing but then how do brands actually do that today i think is the is the tricky part to figure out because or do we all just like come up with some crazy thing to say some bananas very different yeah yeah i was also wondering what you think about like it feels to me like almost you know there's all this research that everyone wants to route research things before they buy right like they research more and more and more every year before they buy the by time you're talking to them they already know everything about you and they've looked at your reviews and they've they've done their research on the price and all this stuff and so it's you're dealing with them in a different moment you have to market to them earlier and i also wonder if it's like do we need to market smaller things like smaller moments smaller wins because people are so busy there's so many different things they're looking for like i'm not gonna expect you i don't want you to spend three months researching before you switch i wanna give you one discrete small thing that's gonna help you now and then once i do that i you know we'll have a direct connection then i can like tell you more and more things over time so explicitly breaking up the process trying to get in front of this basically and saying like yeah like example for us is someone's like how do i look good on my webcam it's like alright let's mail that specific thing yeah and if we nail that specific thing and like wow that was delightful then they're like what else do you do versus like waiting for them to say like i want a platform that lets me edit and record and host my videos and you know ties my analytics into my map and blah that's just like so you don't know to even look for it but you do know to look for your webcam you know yeah which is really interesting because i've been doing this research for a book which is turning into seven hundred books now on money words and bad words are part of money words i talked about money words at touring fest you didn't attend my talk don't worry about it chris i'm not offended in any way positive so sorry i kidding just kidding so in this like money words a bad world out call all out that's still the favorite thing call them out that's awesome i'm sure yours but no big deal did come to mind thank you so much i appreciate but a bad word in this world of money words is end the word end and joins multiple ideas together and creates lists and means i'm shoving more at you to read instead of choosing like you're saying chris just just tell me one thing but so many like when i look at the software companies that we work with in any way so many of them are trying to go with the we're the all in one we do all those things now and i get being a product that can do all of those things but it's very very tricky for marketers in particular to say no not end let's just focus like you're saying on one thing and maybe that's just in maybe it's not on our page but at least in our social posts in blog posts and other like authority building content just the one thing and you know studies would support that as like always having been important it's always been like you want to avoid interference and we tend to interfere with our own messages so you'll say i do this and this and this and this for you when i really can only handle i do this for you that's all my brain has ever been able to handle but we've been shoving all of these messages at people and it hasn't been working so maybe it's a good turn of events that people are proving right now that they just need one quick hit that's it yeah it's i also we start to get deeper down this i wanna zoom back out for one sec oh yeah and i just wanna set the stage can you just talk about what is conversion based copywriting oh in general like what do you do yeah we'll do that midway right midway through the episode here we go yeah i can where we start but so conversion copywriting is i've been doing this for twenty years i started out as creative writer that was on my business card there were business cards in my first job it was a creative writer and that meant you just write things as that make it sound good and then i got hired at intuit tech company to be their copywriter writer for the global business division that's when i started to get involved in ab b testing and all of the things that come with conversion rate optimization and performance marketing and things like that and with that i started to say like oh wait so most people look at copy as you make things sound good just make it sound good i would have some marketers would say one said in particular here's some copy go fluff it up i like what the hell does that mean what are you talking about so it would get me mad that i was talking too loud a lot at the time about this ridiculous concept that all you do is put words on the page and then you somehow get results like there's a lot of disconnect between words on the page and getting results like connect them for me please make that happen shorten that path and so then i started studying direct response copywriting the really old school stuff john cape jean schwartz all of the old tiny ones that really tested and knew what they were doing in talking to one person in days before design was a big deal but still went like copy led your ad it was copy first kind world and to get really good results so we started taking that i called a conversion focused copywriting until i got really lazy about it and didn't wanna keep writing out focused and just stop saying that part and then called it conversion copywriting where the idea is at the words that you put on the page should move people to say yes like you need to have an offer for the person you are trying to turn into your customer and then you need to think about how to message that offer in such a way that they buy in they want it that's conversion copy it might not always sound good sometimes teams don't like the way it sounds in the end i but it performs yeah okay and then so i missed your talk in scotland i'll forgive you can you talk to us about magic words money words you money words sorry money words see i missed it priorities chris i usually think about sleigh of hand magic a lot so you know that's i it's just magic that's all you know okay so yeah so the idea with money words is once we're through like the conversion copy is list offer copy you guys i'm still wise heard to him saying that he thinks about magic a lot but i'm good money words money words words money words no all good i love it list offer copy is where we start with conversion copywriting copy is the least important of those three things but when it's time to work on copy it's important to think about the right words to use on the page because conversion copy is like yes you can use words to convert people however you can also use words that totally turn people away or that make everything worse for them and suddenly you are definitely not the option for them so money words are things like you you is a money word it performs consistently well in split tests in other ways of validating if a message is working so lead with the word you and basically anytime you see the word we or or your brand name on the page think of it as like a portal to hell like it opens the gates it opens bats come flying out when the word we appears on the page it's the way to like let bs run the show right because you're talking about yourself not about them so you is a money word but then there are the bad words as well the anti money words and i wrote an article on first round review it just came out a couple a month ago maybe on these exact things so where and is a bad word because it's going to combine too many messages making it hard for me to say yes and a way i go i just ignore you from this point on or at least until you come back to me with one message that i could probably handle yeah so that's what we're talking about with like money words the actual words that you use are you using the right ones and this goes to like studies i mean the studies that have been done on word choice that none of us in marketing are paying any attention to so there was a study done years ago in massachusetts i think on what people would give the thumbs up to for insurance so basically people were asked hey here there's this one would you support insurance covering this thing and they presented three different options it was infer fertility disease infer disability or infer fertility condition out of those which one do you think got the most thumbs up that we should support insurance covering the cost for that disease disability or condition condition disease disease disease was number one then disability then condition but like his condition not true ambiguous yeah i think and that's what everybody calls it though that's like when you're going through medical everything you can go through harvard website or whatever it was for infer and it's condition it's never disease it's never disability and so shockingly a lot of states i think it's forty eight states don't have support financial support for people who are going through infer fertility disease so it's one of those things like none of us know that right none of us know that that's a word that could actually cost you twenty thousand dollars per ivf round that you do and the average person or couple does eight rounds of ivf it's a hundred and sixty thousand dollars later that you have invested because the word disease isn't used when talking about this thing that you're going through so if that's true for health care where there are a lot of people who could use that knowledge how many things are we missing out in marketing where we're just like randomly throwing words down that sound good but in fact are actually working against people moving forward with saying yes really can come down to just word choice getting people to take that action that she want them to even though it seems like how important could it be and it's like it's actually hugely important the things that we're just guessing at and like walking away from those are money words those are money words yeah yeah wow and you know as you're talking about that i'm just thinking about how many pages we have on the website how many things we have to manage like you know new people joining all the time like it's hard to actually implement this on every front i think yeah how do you move through that implementation process you know i wish marketing ran more like product because product has rules for things right like you you wouldn't just release things without them being at least you know i know we do copy reviews and stuff like that but there's so much that goes into building a product and there's not nearly as much in my experience that goes into like building a customer like how which i think marketing is responsible for you're supposed to create customers out of people wandering around you just have to like now make them into a customer but we just don't we don't and they're i think it's completely fair to say well but new people come on board and all of these things happen and it's like well you can have you know a message map but the more we try to like control these things the worst they typically perform you could have a message map with like here's our key message and here's how to say it it would inevitably come down to here's how to say it i can't tell you the number of times i like we can't keep reusing this headline for when i was still in house most like well that's what's on the message map so use it like well it doesn't work here this is not working but like especially if you have to say things in more interesting ways then you need to have an empowered team that gets the foundations of copywriting conversion copywriting direct response how to build a customer and everybody has to be on board with it have the same playbook but also be empowered to write a different thing in that moment for what the audience needs right now which is different from building a product so i get that it's not the same but wouldn't it be nicer if we could find a way to apply as the same rigor and resources to marketing as we do to building a product or updating it or building a new feature for it or whatever that thing might be we just don't then you end up running a whole bunch of av tests or you're like forget it ab b tests don't work like we never implement what we learn anyway so just throw stuff up there and then again wonder why it's still converting at two percent on a good day it's not a message of hope i apologize but it's real obvious it's real dog yeah no but i think it's like i kinda like getting in shape right like you know what you're supposed to do but actually doing is hard it's like i like what's what you're saying is like you wanna do this right like you gotta use the right words you gotta make it about them not about you you need to speak to the pain you gotta be willing to educate them over time you need to like think about copy that actually converts which is gonna take a lot of work yeah i think it's also confusing sometimes to folks when it's like something that is on a page that's a very well worn page lots people are gonna see it you know it it has a one specific job to do versus like a wild campaign that like might have a very different intention and that like a big broad in person or out of home campaign like the copy obviously matters but it's trying to do a very different thing yeah and like you know the button on the page where you sign up yeah yeah and that's fair but i i i do think that part of the place where people get stuck and what i wish was the case is like you know you you build one product and even if there are offs shoots of it you build the product the core product loom is loom there's stuff that comes off loom wi is wi there's other things right but it's you've got the core product there's really it's very hard to get marketers and really the whole organization on board with like let's just build one customer first let's just like just one let's get really really good at this one because otherwise we start talking about well this campaign is for this group and be really being really specific about the tar customer yeah just two was one make one actually happy to say yes to you in a short period of time and i know we're always trying to do this but it's so soft and it's so lacking in like again rigor any sort of real system process like here's how to actually do it and know that you've done it and it just ends up kind of falling apart into hey we had this ad perform really well that must mean that our our audience loves this message so we should plaster that message everywhere which is in my experience it is not as productive as having a better strategy out of the gate on who we're really going to turn into a customer for the next year as long as it takes to build that customer and then once you've got that customer which is one standing in for many right many people look like this customer then we move on that's typically not what not what marketers do not what teams do yeah well i think it's hard for people to be long term you know like that's it's like you have with the product right like you have to a product but it's like on the marketing side it's like well but can we really think about what's gonna happen in the second and third quarter or like next year and so people like i just have to do what i think is gonna work right now and then everyone does the same stuff and they don't you know we're back to the beginning of the conversation they're searching for that one thing that's gonna go viral versus like yeah all the points that a customer could ever interact with you that are not viral that like actually if you move the needle on those it's gonna add up and have a real impact yeah can you talk about so we've been talking internally about speaking to emo the emotional needs of the customer and instead of just saying like this is what this is and it's for you really talk about like marketing the pain and a solution and i feel like it's an interesting thing because when you really speak to the pain it might actually resonate with more people than your target customer yeah and it seems like a really big unlock for that reason yeah but i i think it's also like hard for people to totally wrap their minds around what that mean but you just talk about that a little bit definitely and it's it's the hardest thing to commit to also as a marketer because it can be a little bit scary to talk about a pain or a problem but if you're going to sell a solution there's gotta be a problem that it's solving marketers in my experience they don't like to put it on the page they don't like to say here's your problem because they feel like i know in my experience there's the sense of like you're fear mon now like just because you mentioned the problem they're experiencing that's what's going on yeah now you're like a bad marketer you're not elegant enough it's too noticeable and then people come in and with the whole good design you don't notice good design and so shouldn't you not notice good copy and this copy made me feel something and i paid attention to it and we kept all these people replied to the email that we sent and said they had things to say like i know we we did very emotion and problem based emails for doodle the calendar solution years ago and one email in particular i think we got thirty times the support tickets out of it people just hit reply and commented things like they were sending back their notes somewhere like this is dumb don't send me this ever again and others were engaging others were tracking the support team was like and this stop sending this email but it also raised conversions like a healthy amount of paying customers came out of it so the cmo was like no we're running it we're running it yeah god bless them for doing that but it's tricky it's scary so what we have seen is yes problems when you lead with the problem that's the real felt problem that's your target customer is going through that's where magic happens so a good example we bring up i bring this one up a lot because we've published it and you can go find a blog post on it to read the whole thing is for this e commerce company called sweat blog sweat blog helps people with hyper so not just like so you sweat a lot like you're sweating in your arms and backs of your knees and like sweat pouring off your bummer the developers conference yes yes yeah sadly yes he could have sweat block yeah yeah so you're sweating in this like it's very it's aggressive it's a so it's a real solution to real problem and most solutions are solutions in some way to real problem so put aside anybody who's listening going like well ours isn't really a problem maybe it's more of a vitamin or something just like stop just like okay fine in this case it's just a vitamin sorry i i i didn't heard that voice limit it i had to do that don't you use the voice yeah the problem agitation solution we wrote we rewrote their homepage to go yeah open with the problem ag agitated it that's that's the tricky part and then get into the solution solutions they've tried and then your solution so the problem that we opened with came from voice of customer data it was it doesn't even have to be hot out my arm pits are always wet first person headline in quotation marks followed by all of these agitation points so what are the things that might happen when you're sweating uncontrollably like what are some problems you'd experience you can't confidently high five at an event you can't raise your hand in a classroom to ask a question right you can't stand at the front of the room and present man i feel for these sweaters so feeling for them this is too real for it's too real feeling i'm feeling a lot of pain for them don't sweat it it's just get oh sorry i know i know no they driving in from voice of customer right like these are real lived experiences that was the stuff that's always the stuff that gets cut that's the part where you're like cool in the first draft and everybody is on board this is working this is so great and then everybody gives it the weekends and they come back and it's monday or tuesday and they're going into the google doc now and they're editing out that partly like i don't think we need that people will get it people out of fear why is that i think it's a honestly i do think it's fear don't wanna say lack of courage because i'm sure they have courage around their messaging but it is it's i'm afraid to make people feel something can't they just remember it by them people don't wanna remember their pain yeah but do not go to your website hoping that like they're not sitting there thinking oh i have this major pain here's how it's lived in my life and here's they might go there sometimes in the moment when it just happened but particularly for trying to ignore the pain right they're mostly trying to ignore it yes yeah so our job is to ag educate it yeah what does the agitation do like what's the benefit of agitation yeah to make them feel it so i might go there i might land on this site i know what sweat block is i was i'm not surfing the web i'm not like i know what i've landed here for right it's to help me with my hyper okay fine so you might think as a marketer well they already know so that's why they got here it's okay we don't have to tell them anything they already know to show them the product they'll buy it and if you show them a discount or that it's bundled that's even better which is like pump the brakes that works like good that's good but it's too soon for it if we just said it doesn't even have to be hot my arm are always wet and then we jump to by now it we and we tested it it it wasn't as good as adding those agitation points that's where we get people nodding along that's where you actually do see copy act like a real salesperson like we'd say copy is your online salesperson but like people still just like write whatever the hell they feel like anyway wonder why it's not selling this is moment where they're nodding along with you going like yep that was me that was me that might not be me but poor guy who had to deal with that and that one's me etcetera so this is where they're nodding and then if you can just keep them nodding this like it's not tricky just do that thing and then by the end they've been nodding with you so long you'd have to pull back away from the momentum of saying yes they're already on their path to saying yes no you can just like close them but people at people edit that part out again because yeah makes them feel weird okay so i should've have asked this earlier which is you know you're talking about this thing that clients do that basically water down the work they make the work less likely to work right mh removing agitation as an example what other things do people do that is making their copy less effective that you see across your client leading with design and then asking copy to just fit in there so here's our template especially for email here's our template we're gonna have an opening image like this and then you've got these two lines and then we're gonna have another button and then we're gonna have a video embedded below and i'm like what do i do with two lines like what am i supposed to do with two lines so i can't work with you now so letting design go first copy and art worked together in old school agencies they were the creative team and i think that's part of the problem you hand to copy doc over to a designer and this is often copy getting in the way copy gets approved and then it kinda gets thrown over the fence to the designer who you should have been working with the whole time and the designer goes this is too long but the designer wasn't included in most of the conversations and designer hasn't been trained on conversion copy writing and so they go around cutting it and i've had hard conversations with clients who are like joe we implemented your copy and it's not getting results and i'm like hang tight you did not implement my coffee and then we have to go through it and see like where did this whole section go you can't just willy nilly pull stuff out because it's not working with the design you have to work harder on that thing so editing out good stuff because it doesn't work in the design goes a long way and ultimately then there's also just letting the room vote on what they like having feedback that says i like oh i really like that you shouldn't doesn't matter it doesn't matter actually if you don't like it it might be more likely to convert it might be saying something yeah oh boy that's good you're hitting you're hitting in there that buttons like buttons buttons phone no these people think that they're gonna vote them what they like no that's not how this works that's not okay not in my world so i wanna transition to rapid fire questions yeah i have five questions for you them this this rapid fire section is gonna be about email etiquette oh first what are the worst email openers hi see that's my answer okay hi thor is first his name high first name and then like a dash or comma out of the gate you're selling me something nope it's not happening no my coworker workers don't say that hi first name comma enter enter okay i'm looking gonna stop talking no it's good i was good oh that's sorry down i got a my whole email outreach yeah somebody's got a big problem okay i did a lot of high what's the best email closer best email closer like best way to close an email oh okay i thought it meant like to convert and i'm like don't try in the email well not really you know it depends sadly i have seen that the best emails are those that most closely mimic a real one to one email it has to look like it's coming from somebody that you know so the closer is like your shortened signature with your actual email signature below it yeah just close with your name make it look normal yeah it shouldn't look like marketing or it's gonna feel like marketing okay what are three words that you would always avoid putting in a subject line the problem is if you have more than three words you're probably too long with your subject line in the first place so i'm like cut everything other than three words but what should you not put in there re if it's not an actual re definitely not forward if it's not real that's that's all does take short make it real this is a theme we're seeing her yes are you yay or nay on emojis in subject lines or anywhere anywhere in subject lines i'm curious i'm yay cool which emoji would you suggest not the celebration emoji that one's so over overused i feel like it's too like my aunt uses it and so it can't be used anymore okay final rapid fire question what is the favorite email that you've received from a b brand in the last month or two and why i've got swipe for this man b to b oh shoot there's this like it could be b c okay so my favorite email or subject line did you say chris email email my favorite email i will go b if you're cool with that because yeah go for out to me it's i u t is the name of the i know how to pronounce it hugh hewitt it i don't know yet i don't know but they do denim they do jeans and they send out emails that walk you through the latest denim that they've brought in like they talk about the fabric itself and they show you it and where it was made and what makes it so cool and how many pairs are gonna be able to make out of this but they don't do it it's long form but they really lean in like they have big gaps between their sentences like they're asking you to scroll and they're like depending on people who like this denim will scroll so that's like it's it's cool they're doing cool stuff for like a small shop that sells jeans that's very cool yeah joanna thank you so much this has been really great been sounds fun where's the best place for people to connect with you to learn more to follow you where should they go yeah so we have lots of free training on conversion copywriting over at copy hackers dot com i have a newsletter on money words on subs called joe and c so that's a good place to just like learn about what word you should not be using or you should use more of amazing thank you so much thank you it's fun it's me again frank the that guy and this month's podcast shout goes out to success story hosted by scott d the show dives into the playbook mindset and success stories from some of the top business leaders check it out at hubspot dot com slash podcast network or wherever you listen to podcasts and now back to talking too loud well you know we start heading we get into the very very tactical in there copy advice i like these episodes when we go through such a breath of things yeah yeah when we started i was like how are we gonna get to copy and you boom me away with your segue awesome so hats off to you thank you thank you i think what's what's cool about how we started this episode is that like so many people so many businesses are facing that same challenge of like what message is gonna get resonance in today's climate do people want something polarizing can you convey nuance can you believe the data that you're like getting from customers it's really it's kind of the thing that we're all contending with it's confusing i think it's more confusing than it's been a long time and obviously we're all still human beings and so like a lot of these basic things should work the lizard brain and the rational brain and all these different things like tapping into this things should work but when we're programming ourselves to how we consume content in a very different way it stands to reason that the messages that we put out there how people buy is gonna keep evolving and it's gonna keep changing and so it's like a very interesting topic because it's so in the now and as things are changing so much and you know i couldn't help at thinking through this also is like the implications on ai so like you know if you have ai that's trained on the past and you did to a very different thing for the future how will it do it this stuff is hard because you need human beings ultimately taking bets and guesses and understand yeah and it's like the art part right it's basically what it seems to me is that the art part of marketing is becoming more important mh and that is like really exciting if you like to do really creative work and it's really exciting if you like to take those types of risks and if you trust your instincts but if you don't it's gonna get harder and harder and harder i think that's really true this will be good stuff to think about si you know yeah i'm like i'm like heavily taking it in literally sitting here no i like science like yeah well just i mean i also i write you know creatively i i do b to b copy as well it's just it makes you think a lot about words and how you convey an idea and how you i'm just i'm yammer but i'm lost in the sauce in a good way you're in there you're deep well if you're still with us and you're lost in the sauce please don't forget to rate and review the podcast wherever you listen to it subscribe if you haven't subscribed first episode subscribe join us a fun join the party and of course you can always email us a tail pod at wix dot com thank you so much lots more great episodes coming soon talking to too loud is brought to you by wi hosted by chris savage produced by me si lu bow along with adam day executive produced by w studios listen to talking to loud wherever to podcasts and hey rate and review us for wherever and check out more content from w studios at wi dot com

stick right here because here we go and know stick right here because here we okay here we go again hello and welcome to talking to loud with chris savage i'm your host chris savage and i'm joined as always find my producer jordan si lu bow si hello hello hello hello we do in a pass i don't know a lot of head nods coordinating well we've got a great episode for you today because the thing we're talking too loud about this week the question we've been kicking around our old dogg is do start founders have to be a little bit crazy to start a company what do you think i pizza so think just a a hint to crazy just a hint of crazy yeah yes and to answer that question in more detail we've invited joe mayer who is a cofounder of rocket book and we went deep with joe on how an idea to create a microwave notebook that is erased in the microwave it's just yes this a crazy idea went on shark tech all this stuff grew into a fifty million dollar business that was recently acquired by bi and so joe's story is pretty crazy while then and we're gonna get into all of that but obviously first sylvia i have to ask you what's got you talking to lot you know what i just did the day thing and i have to say i've been re rewatch curb i was never like a regular watch as kinda like a handful here and there okay and now i'm like back to the beginning really all the way back all the way back okay things look so dated they look ancient yes but it is so funny and larry david just gets himself into scenarios that i'm like how how but then some are very relatable like i watched an episode where he went to a party mh went to the bathroom of party love party yep no lock on the bathroom mh so he's trying to like hold the door with one hand pee yeah and i feel like i've been in that situation you gotta tell situation you got watch you gotta weight outside the door so some of these things are just really they're cracking me up and some of them i'm like sir you need assistance you need help but yeah too much help because then then we wouldn't have the show wouldn't have no show so i've seen some interviews with him recently he was on like conan show and some other ways and like he is so funny like and it's and a lot of them a lot of interviews are like so you have permission to like be this guy on curb now right and he's like yes i do it's like you played a character that it changed like in his life he gets yeah he gets to get away with all his stuff now before he couldn't so it's like larry david yeah so who i am now yeah it's good what's got you talking dol you know i think for me right now it's do you remember i got flooded last summer you're always talking about floods on this ship and we're building back building back better and they're building back better building back about to be done any day now and i cannot wait so excited to go back down into the play room and just watch some actions movies of play laid out really loud that's like what i wanna do is just like be there in this new space that looks early like the original and just be done with construction it always seems fun now let's remodel this thing and it's like you know what just like anything hard there's a lot of decisions lot of complexities a lot of trade offs lot of coordination there's budgets there's shortfall there's other things there's all this sits it's a lot so i can't wait to be done and that will be happening any day now i can't wait i i want the fugitive to be the first movie that you watch even though i know it's gonna be san andres it's well it's not it's not going gonna be sandra okay can't break take it it's an amazing idea though i mean such i haven't seen them i mean so long it eats every time it hits it hits i me mean if you haven't seen the fugitive future of go see it and if you're ready for a great interview with joe stick right here because here we go hi i'm frank the ad guy frank the ad guy these days it feels like the marketing playbook is constantly changing it's hard to know what actually works and what doesn't so luckily there's hubspot twenty twenty four state of marketing report it's the all in one guide for what's trending and marketing this year and how you can leverage today's strategies to build awareness increase engagement and boost growth so don't get stuck in the past make marketing work for you now visit hubspot dot com slash state of marketing to get your free copy of the report looking to harness the power of video for your business whether you're hosting webinars onboarding new customers or creating a sp landing page video is key to making an impact and that's where wi comes in with our complete video marketing platform we help you create host and shared videos that not only get views they also get results and the cherry on top w in analytics and handy email for forms they're the perfect tools for lead generation and understanding your audience so if you're ready to level up your capital v video marketing strategy head on over to wi dot com slash t that's w i s t i a dot com slash t t and don't forget to follow at on social media for more tips tricks and video treats and now back to the podcast hey joe what's up man how are you for savage what's up on man i'm excited to have you on the show and thank you for having me on your brand new podcast can't waiting for that to come out yeah yours is gonna be a great episode we had a great chat there so hopefully i can return the favor that was really fun you gotta match the vibe gotta match the vibe gotta match the vibe and for people who don't know brand new podcast what's the podcast called it's called eating glass so it's a reference to what some people have said that creating startup is like eating glass and staring into the abyss and i definitely found that to be the case sometimes and i i i felt like you know the i've always consumed a lot of startup up related media to help me sort of have the right mindset but i've always found it to be a little bit you know disney in a way so i wanna get into the more gory details some of the pain some of the drama so that the glorious ending hopefully is even more satisfying perfect well you know we're gonna make sure in this episode that not only are we talking to a lab but we get you eating a little glass hold on for the crossover so first of all obviously it shows called talking a loud because i mean even when we were doing the setup right now so he's like hey savage like turned down your microphone you're screaming because when i get excited i cannot control the volume my voice still out so we'd love to start the show by asking you our gas joe like what's got you talking to louder i what's got get you excited today oh today well today i wrote a post on linkedin it's kinda provocative which is alright you might think it's kinda gross or weird but i've stopped using soap on my body alright meaning i let's yours soap has like it's really a salt made of fatty acids which has a hydrophilic head and a hydrophilic tail molecular so grabs on to you know dirt and stuff but oils mostly and then the hydrophilic head makes it wash away so it's like it's very effective it's stripping you completely of oils and even your good bacteria bacteria which you really really need and i stumbled into this weird practice out of necessity for myself so the last couple years i got insanely into ji which is this really gross practice of waking up every morning and sweating over other gross men for hours at a time as we attempt to wrestle each other oh ji did soon yeah you got it yeah i got it and yeah you know you get you get these like little micro tears in your skin because you're you're wrestling and you're in a pathogen rich environment as well and so you think that just washing yourself a lot before and after we do the trick and we have defense wipes which are anti antibacterial and all of this and the loan behold you know like i kept getting these little staff infections and you don't want them to become big oh god scared of those really scary stuff and and so i take oral antibiotics so i've taken like four or five doses of these things in the past year or so but i'd also got to thinking you know the big legends in the sport that are actually good at the sport had actually spoken out like their gut is demolished they've yeah by the i almost died by some of their antibiotic use and so it got me thinking and i heard a little bit others doing it like what if i just stop using so entirely you know take showers regularly of course right put reserves so for your and your hands right that's u that's what we should do right i think the rest of it we need to keep the the oils on our skin it protects us there's other forms of bacteria that are super important to crowd out the staff aurelius which are the really dangerous stuff so once you strip yourself of all of your other bacteria your microbiome that like leaves a lot of opportunity for the for the bad staff to to come on onboard and since i stopped using soap all over my body i've stopped having staff infections and my skin is better so and i like posting about linkedin because it gets people upset it seems like something that you would never say linkedin that which just why i'm sure it works that's amazing yeah and they're you product in who knows for of the reason i'm was like good so no so so you know that's it but like you had a post today which was about you know sometimes why you've got a great idea and it doesn't take off because habits are incredibly hard to change so this would take a lot of it evan to actually get somebody to change our habits but i'm hearing from people onesie z two is are you're saying that they're gonna try not using so free while we'll we'll see if that turns into a movement and that's my next move well it's interesting because like even if people are not using so most of people wouldn't dare say it you know where do you fall on deodorant are we yay or nay i use it sometimes but i don't use the ammo products right like the anti par yeah like the anti first so classic that's interesting yeah the anti person was definitely it's funny i cannot believe him talking about this right now damn at joke but like it's funny i tried searching from like anti a person to not to just deodorant and it worked better yeah it's interesting don't know what the toilet tree industrial complex has us going through but it's a little bit much i think it's not natural so i'm trying to figure that up that's what happens maybe when you're when you're unemployed a post technologist they're unemployment sa but i do think it's a strength because we're talking about like unconventional ideas right like we're exploring an unconventional idea which is like hey maybe what if it's better for you not to you so which actually brings you back to where you start in the first place in a sense so you start rocket book very unconventional idea can you tell the audience like what is rocket book why'd did you start the business man i might have to break the length of your podcast format i'll try to fine don't worry nope i'll start with the product that's well known for today it's a reusable pen and paper notebook right there's no hardware in it it's not a notebook like a computer notebook it's pen and paper right but the pages are synthetic they're made of a a special polymer with a nice coating so it's a nice writing surface but need a little bit of water and presto it all comes off perfectly so it's this infinitely reusable paper and pen notebook but that wasn't our first product mh not not by stretch going back to the original idea that it got me set off on this was i'd like to say that i had like some problem that came up first right you're supposed to have something for p r that's really shortened in the suite and ours was this i was in a meeting and it was so important and i had prepared a lot and i reached into my notebook and grabbed my notebook and i had the wrong notebook with me it's not exactly the truth but made for a tidy story the truth was that i was a tech guy try not i i was setting on a plane i had just used the uber app to scan a credit card in for the first time and i had sense to myself well what else are at the device is now doing computation of photos that it's taking and then doing some computer vision awesome and i once to sleep on a plane and like woke up and i was just like wait a minute the whiteboard problem which was a problem that i was v buy and what that was was like sometimes i'd have to jump on a plane as a software engineer just to get in a room with a whiteboard with somebody and i thought maybe we could come up with a solution that only uses your device so you just open up what was called the rocket app and you pointed at your regular whiteboard and it would see the whiteboard and basically stream it to a web page so anybody with a web link could follow along with what you're writing on the whiteboard because we've all been there when we're like in a meeting room writing on a whiteboard but there's like one person on the phone who can't see so i was like trying to fix that and i thought making an app to do that would be just a simple solution that could come in handy a lot of the time i sorta of got it to work i was working on a part time nights and weekends while i was at my day job at salesforce and i made a pretty good video he was hosting on list legit and at the time you guys had published some code of how to like have your backdrop of the web page be a video that just like kinda turns on as soon as you landed it and i just stole that code and made by own landing page so you saw a video of somebody using a whiteboard then a device picking it up and then somebody else looking at it remotely so was there's a very quick storytelling thing and then you could press play and see the whole video and demo put your email address right there and once it got up on product hunt i got like twenty thousand sign ups and i felt like this is really good like you know when you're getting like five hundred email addresses every day like wow people really want this at least according to the video so that was my mvp you know just getting positive feedback i was developing the product it sort of worked enough for me to like quit my job and say i have to do this full time meanwhile like i had three kids at the time and you know i had a real job but i decided this is really i wanted like make something right and my only ambition was to be able to work on a product that i thought was really cool and make enough money just to be able to you know send my kids to college and keep my house and not go completely broke i didn't have like necessarily huge ambition i was psych to quit my job at a corporation so i started to to work on it but what happened is the device would even get really hot because i'm doing streaming and computer vision and all this so like churning customers like crazy over the course of three or four months and i was running out of my own personal savings very very fast too because i also had some developers who i had hired to help me with it and so as i'm i probably only had like three or four months left of runway left and it clearly wasn't going to work fast enough for me to like be able to ride up those three or four months and be able to sustain so i was kicking myself and saying how could i turn this into a product that i could monetize faster mh and it was like another situation where i was just kinda like woke up with an idea after i had been mu over it you know a lot and i was like i got it a notebook i can take this scanning technology that i've sort of built this software and have it scan a page of a book but instead of just be scanning it app it should do more stuff and the book should have proprietary stuff on the page so i can justify the sale of a notebook which i was excited about because i was also obsessed with the idea of crowdfunding funding at the time you know kickstarter was doing some pretty interesting stuff was still pretty interesting back then in like two thousand fourteen still is but it was really interesting then so i i had it i was like i'm i've got this notebook i'm gonna sell it it's gonna scan things in and then i start to think well if i'm scanning in the pages perhaps i can make a reusable notebook since you know copies are already kept so i started investigating different types of pens i i was gonna launch with a whiteboard style notebook where the pen would just be like a thin whiteboard marker but i had some other ideas as well at the time jason cal who some people in startup up circles i know really really well he's a sort of famous angel investor was doing a launch festival and he tweeted out a request for stealth startups and i sent them a little video of it was like the worst little video ever of this new product i was thinking of called rocket book and he loved it he's like i'm i i write with a pen i'm using these digital pens they kinda suck like i'd love to see a new solution can you get out here to california in a few weeks and launch this thing on stage with the other starbucks ups at my festival i'm like cool i go out there i rehearse with him which is mandatory one thing he said was like you cannot do this demo alone you have to bring somebody with you right so i was like solo founder at the time so you you've pitched him like to just so i understand you've done the whiteboard at this point you're now evolving towards a notebook you wanna have the provider notebook you're investigating like should this be a whiteboard notebook or not basically yeah you see him and he says he's doing this event you're like i should pitch at this thing he invites me you get there you get there by yourself yeah ready to pitch and he's like you can't do this by yourself exactly and i didn't know that before i out there i had no idea that i couldn't demo this phone he's like no you need have a demo guy and a pitch person right that's that's crazy yeah there's a little scrambling to to find somebody to go out with me to pitch this thing so i called up bunch of friends but one of them was this guy jake epstein who i knew you know i went to school with his brother and he was always kinda tinkering with some startup up stuff and we always kept in touch and i and i called them off he's how's that rocket board thing going i'm like well i'm onto to a new thing called rocket book and in the next twenty minutes i'm gonna try to convince you to fly out to me to california from boston to to launch this thing on stage he's like that sounds really cool i'm kinda busy got a job and i'm working on my own smart helmet thing and i'm gonna launch a kickstarter and all of this stuff too but i'm super busy but you know we got to talking and eventually he was like you know what it let's go i'll go there and help you you gotta help me with my video too for my product and we just had like this little startup up boot camp for a week where we rented an airbnb i rented a nice ones so we can make some nice videos we just got ready for the launch festival i had another rehearsal over with jason cal and one of his friends who was like a mock judge who who's a su sequoia capital partner said something like cool so like you got this book you're gonna sell some books but like what's next and i was vague i said well we've got some digital enhancements and we have some physical innovations planned as well that i'm not ready to to announce yet and jason said stop who the do you think you are you think you're the elon musk of notebooks i the sequoia capital partner just asked you about your road roadmap don't be vague i said alright well i explained a bunch of things but he stop me here when i said and i also have another idea for the physical notebook when you wanna erase the whole notebook instead of wiping the pages down you take it and you pop it in the microwave for a minute in all the races and then you can reuse the notebook and that's when he said stop again and he's like you're not allowed on my stage unless that's your product that's awesome that's the only good thing you've said all day and you know that's gonna be your product you're gonna be on the cover of wired magazine that's gonna that end a paper and you got all excited about this yeah so i went back to the airbnb i was like jake do you think we could look what i've committed to this all of am mind you we're we're a few days away from launching on stage we're also launching an indie go campaign which is the big crowdfunding funding campaign that i wanna launch and get some money in the door and we're just like well we've got some prototypes that sorta of kinda to work we'll figure this out let's do it let's launch it on stage let's launch yeah the the the micro version is the product changed the video we changed everything in a few days we launch it on stage we show it with a with a microwave everyone thinks it's kinda like quirky weird and cool and i stay at the end like alright who here wants a a rocket book and you know there's a few hundred people in the audience so peep you know maybe fifty people raise their hand i'm like excellent go here and get yours now for you order it on indie go and you could hear jason go oh man like he did not think that that was like a classy way to launch your product yeah but i i pulled it off and we got you know maybe five thousand dollars in one day and seven thousand dollars the next day but then saturday came along and indie put us in our newsletter and that little notification that happens every time a a contributor pre purchase of a notebook from you it just went crazy on our phones they was like bing maybe maybe maybe we thought our phones were broken or something and we did ninety nine k worth of pre sales in one day and i just like looked at jake and i was like this is real like you wanna through my c cofounder founder and build this this thing we're gonna figure out this micro wave thing make sure we can do this and we gave ourselves like six months to to deliver this thing we thought it was plenty of time and so in this moment you now have been on stage you've pitched this vision of the thing that doesn't exist yet but you think like you think chemically this or scientifically she be able to pull this off yes and i know was yeah knew how to pull it off right did there was already you how how'd you know how to pull it off okay because when i was looking up reusable you know eras pens right one came up that was really interesting made by pilot and i have one right here and the way it works is you write on the page and the ink turns clear at a hundred forty degrees fahrenheit right okay it just looks like weak c vale bond so if it gets a little hot it turns the ink turns clear and they engineered an eraser so when it erase it creates an enough friction to get it warm and then instead of just rubbing around the ink it it gets warm and erase it so i had said to myself that's really cool could i erase a whole book by warming the whole book maybe putting it got in oven or on a hot plate but of course microwave sounds like perfect right so i piggyback off of this existing pen and it just like made a notebook based off of like this became a yeah beautiful something and i just love the idea of you being like we're gonna make the book it's reusable and it comes with the zone twister you put right it just disappears and then can one yeah okay so then this whole time you're like taking unconventional approaches and you're just taking it as like of course i can figure this out right like the soap thing is actually really similar which is just like well i see like soap kills bacteria and it's killing the wrong stuff basically so i wanna not kill the wrong stuff and then in this example it's like heat kills the ink yep why can't i just heat it a different way this seems like so obvious yeah those it seems so obvious right it's so easy but here's is the problem with the product and we figured this out after we launched the the pre sale and after we pre sold like thirty thousand units to people all over the world but hadn't yet delivered if i take a notebook right in it with the special ink and have you put it in your microwave maybe it'll all all race and then it put it in my microwave for about a minute maybe only half of it will erase and then put it in si microwave and the burst microwave who know just toaster you got a toaster but someone else's it may burst into flames right because every microwave is different so this that us for a long time we thought of all of these different ways to construct including synthetic materials we spent a good amount of money on product development firms to kinda help us solve this too and help us get it over the goal line by having more people test more stuff i mean we tried every paper from every manufacturing company in the world including plastic papers right which kinda led to an another product and we're like running out of money and we finally cracked the nut and the way we did it jake really kinda devised this system i gotta give him like the credit for it but the way we would slow everything down so it wouldn't burst into flames was you'd had to put the little mug of water in the microwave with it and that slowed everything down and then you knew him was done when the little logo on the front went from blue to clear because it was a thermo logo that we applied on the cover and between those two new designs that would make it pretty universal so that it wouldn't get too hot too fast in any place and you'd know it was done before it burst into flames no matter how powerful your microwave was and that allows us to like press ship right we're alright now we figured it out let's book build thirty thousand of these get them out to people ship them etcetera and then we like ran out of money before we got about half of them shipped to people so we're completely broke we're about four hundred k in the hole in order to be able to ship the remaining product out to everybody and that's when we decided to take like kinda swim upstream and break a rule a little bit so we went over to kickstarter which is the place where were only allowed to launch brand new products and what we did was we were just basically launched the same thing on kickstarter but the way we avoided violating their terms of service was we said okay the rewards are the same what someone gets is the same but what we're funding is a completely different project we're gonna fund a slack integration and a trello integration and a dropbox integration and that's the product that were that's the project so kick kickstarter got in touch with us after after it was successful was like i think we're gonna pull the plug on your campaign you violated our terms of service i explained it to them and they're were like oh clever not cool but clever we're not gonna so we're in the dog house with we've done for a while but we you know we didn't technically do story isn't insane absolutely you got good guy so that's how we got out of bankruptcy the the there and then so then you get out of bankruptcy and then what about shark tank yeah then we were invited to shark tank at first i said no i'm not ready for that because we only had crowdfunding funding sales and i i knew they'd like you know really dice us up asking us about like what what our sales were and they weren't like real in store sales so i said no for a while but then once we had real shopify sales real amazon sales for a couple months we said yes we'll go on right but we didn't know if we'd be taken seriously but we said no matter what we wanna get attention on tv so we decided just to like really him it up give a crazy demo where orange astronaut outfits and you know i can't really talk about all the behind the scenes stuff because i'm you know i'm not supposed to talk too much about shark tank but it's a great episode you should check it out at season eight season the finale you know we did not get a deal and we're basically laughed off of shark tank essentially but we came back and we said we need to launch more products right we just decided we needed to launch more we had told the sharks we've got a whole suite of products coming along and we didn't know what that would we didn't not i know we have this say but just wait for what's next yeah exactly right we didn't know when this episode was gonna air and it really didn't air until like nine months later right so had all this time where we wanted to do stuff and show that we were doing well and have success now during that whole micro thing we when we tried every paper in the world we had tried some synthetic papers and we noticed that with a le dye which is a thermo dye it all came off with a little bit of water and i said there's a product there but we need to deliver this microwave of stuff first but there's another product there that'll be fun to launch so we just decided to launch basically the very similar product it was still a rocket book but now with a a moisture erase element to it and today this is our core products because as soon as we got this up on kickstarter it went banana as it did well over two million dollars in crowdfunding on on kickstarter and beyond and you know and it really builds the company that we have today it starts to make our company you know completely sore by the time that we aired on shark tank our company was like growing by leaps and bounds because this product had really delivered on its promise of great and people just loved it it was really well reviewed on amazon and that's when we were off to the races we were at techs stars at the time we were thinking we might need to raise some money but except for taking a little bit of money from the techs sars program which was a hundred and thirty k we raised no other money and we just we just grew off of our own gross profits you know got it up to you know about fifty million dollars in revenue just based on you know the profitability of the company and crowdfunding we continue to do crowdfunding funding campaigns it helps for inventory planning and things like that but mostly just to have like an excuse to have a party for nerds all the time yeah can have new product launches and get people excited basically that's amazing amazing that you didn't raise more money to do this too it seems like you'll be so hard to build physical products and deliver them and all the costs associated with it and the fact that you just like kept figuring out the next way forward super inspiring i wanna jump forward now in the story because you know there's so much we could talk about but i i wanna jump to the acquisition so you guys sold the business and bi bought you right which is not pilot that you're using pilot pens but bi came in they're competitive and decided to buy the company yeah and i'm wondering if you'd feel comfortable just sharing kind of like what actually happened like i know you can't say all of this like there's so much like confidential private stuff but there's a lot in what you did i think to make this deal happen that's just really really interesting and that we we don't hear stories at all and so if you could bring this into that as much as you can i think that'd be really amazing yeah sure yeah alright so we got the deal signed and got you know most of the money for the deal upon signature in december of twenty twenty but really it it took good i think we first heard from bi i think it was like three years prior so we really took three years to get the deal done from first to end i don't know if we were intent on selling so much as we were just curious to see if we could sell the company we owned you know jake and i and some employees owned a lot of the company and it would have been millions of dollars to us so you know let's let's see if we could sell it right it's we would be life changing money even when we're you know still pretty young so we got in touch with our corporate lawyer who's done a lot of m and a and i would say to anybody who who's looking to sell a company probably the number one thing you gotta do is not just use any corporate lawyer but link up with a corporate lawyer who does a lot of m and a you're gonna spend a lot of money with them if you do get a deal done but if you do it's gonna be worth it and then i got in touch with him and he got us in touch with a few investment bankers to look at who we interviewed like five investment bankers picked one who we just you know kinda clicked with and got his process but just that process was educational having them say here's what we think we could sell your company for based on what's going on the market you know and just going through that process super interesting so we sign on with when we're like well let's see what you can do and so they go through their process of putting together a deck with us putting together a one pager emailing you know all of these private equity people all of these family offices and seeing what interest they can drum up we ended up getting interest from you know some private equity players somebody who wanted to buy like forty nine percent of the company but he'll keep me and jake involved and things like that all types of deals kinda per up but the one that that came up was from bi who is the competitor of the pen that we include in every book right which was really interesting and pilot did not make a bit on us at all which i was really surprised at but you know had to accept and we never really had a very close relationship even though i was selling you know millions of their pens every year and influencing perhaps tens of millions of their pens every year but they just never really took us seriously as a as a product to or our partner they just looked at us like a customer so i'll get that to that later that becomes interesting but bi did get touch and here's why so when you buy a rocket book off of our website or like target or walmart we get a lot of people's email addresses because they use our app right and so whether you buy us off of a shelf or of our site we still have a direct to consumer relationship with our customers no matter what and we have like five million email addresses and that is more email addresses and very active email addresses in terms of opens etcetera then all of these you know consumer product goods who sell pens combined it was highly unusual we're also very profitable but bi if you remember they also sell razors so they witnessed something happened in the razor market mh which is this company dollar shave club came up yeah made these crazy videos that that were very great ads great ads right very influential to me and jake when we put together these and how we talk to our customers and they also had a direct to consumer model and they really were disruptive in the space right so they saw that play out in their razor market and they kinda saw us as a potential for that that type of thing to play out in the stationary market so they were really aggressive about being interested in us now keep in mind we still had to use pilot pens because they have a patent on this technology we couldn't swap it out for a bi pen so it's a little bit weird that they were buying us right we also had a supply agreement with pilot that said upon a change in control they would need to approve you know a redo of the of the supply agreement that got really awkward i signed the deal with bi saying i can figure this out with pilot and you know made overt chairs to have the conversation with pilot hey we're being bought by your competitor you chose not to bid on us they were not happy about it but i didn't think that they would be that difficult but they basically just like wouldn't take a meeting with me they wouldn't get it done they wouldn't approve it they would didn't weren't saying no but they also weren't saying yes and i'm saying like nine months ten months eleven months have gone by while we're in the middle of a deal and assign terms you need this right you you need this to get the deal close i needed to get the deal closed bi even said we will not buy the company unless you get them to sign off on a new agreement to be cool with it because if they just decided to stop supplying as pens our business would be like over right or we'd have to come up with a new game plan to make sure that that was in case it would be very very disruptive bi wants buy you have to get pilots to sign off can you tell the listeners and the viewers like what you actually did to get the meeting with pilot yeah so they they wouldn't meet with me right they just the the ceo of the us division like just wouldn't take a meeting with me and we were stuck and just completely stuck so i i had talked to with one of my contacts and they said dennis the ceo well he's leaving for japan for a while on friday and i was wait a minute like now we're never getting get this thing done so i was like guess what i'm gonna be in your office tomorrow in your lobby and you're just gonna have to figure out whether you're gonna get me a meeting with dennis or you're gonna call the police because one of the two is gonna get me out of your offices and they're like alright i hear what you're saying don't do that we'll figure something up but do not do that i'm like no i really am gonna do that i'm gonna do that and so they're telling me not don't do that don't do that of course i book a ticket i show up and i i show up in their lobby and they they didn't call the cops they did take me to a conference room they were mad at me everyone was mad at me and was just like upset that i showed up and insisted on a meeting but got a meeting with the ceo and he was not thrilled but i just explain to him like what was going on that we were still committed to our partnership with him that were gonna continue to buy his pens and not substitute them out his acquisition was gonna help rocket a book grow a lot and was gonna help our business with him grow and just you know basically convinced him and had him understand what was going on and alleviate his fears so that he would then you know tell his legal team alright move on this let's get this un stuck and help rocket book out and that's essentially what we did if i hadn't done that i don't think we would have gotten the deal done right and just the ability to just see if that was an impediment and just like show up and do something that was like highly awkward and highly uncomfortable to to try to get a deal done and sometimes you just you know and i i learned that you know in doing enterprise sales for a long time there there'd be stories of sales guys like showing up at a customer's office and this big bold thing that they did to get a deal done right and i was like i get to pull off one of these maneuvers right now and i just sensed it when you decided to do that emotionally what state are you in when you're like in the the lobby are you are you like hell yes it's gonna happen are you like i don't this is gonna happen but i have to try like bring us into your mindset in that moment yeah i was i i was it was one of these things where i like this has got a thirty percent chance of working right but if i don't do it then i'm always gonna kick myself and be like there was one thing i could have done and i didn't do it and i knew that i it was just haunt me forever so i showed up in like my rental car and you know got into their lobby and there was like nobody there and so i just started drinking coffee and making myself like more nervous which i it should not have done and then a contact in marketing who i had developed a relationship came down to talk to me it was cordial but very t with me and said okay you're here i get what you're doing and i went up got into the conference room and other people started coming in and i tried to make small talk with them but they like were not having it they were just being very they're just pissed that i was there and they're like you're like this is woman outside of how we operate yep adam okay not okay but they also didn't kick me out and when dennis came in the room you know i was like you know i hope you'll i think that this is really good for all of us and that's why i'm hearing and he's like stop it this is good for you you're just here to get yourself rich because you wanna sell this company and i was like this is for me this is really important to me but i believe if i explain this to you you'll see that it's good for pilot too i think it's a good use of all of our time to be here and you know apologies but also sorry not sorry here am let's get it done and you're selling a lot of pets so like at this point too they must have been thinking like well we don't need because they could just ignore right like they don't have to he doesn't have to meet with you so there must be some this too i don't know leverage i had but i had some leverage is one of it's probably some amount of leverage more even information as where it's like while i gotta meet with joe so i understand of what bi is trying to do well are you guys one of pilot's biggest customers do you think we weren't as big as like a walmart who probably buys tens of millions of pens from them every year but we bought you know single digit millions of pens from them every year so we were substantial yeah so we weren't like managed like a strategic partner but there was some salesperson who has a quota and would be hurt if we went away right yeah so we we got that deal done and you know it was it was i think a good deal for for everyone involved i think it was a smart deal i was happy with it i do think that two and a quarter years for a founder to stay on at an acquired company without at least without major skin in the game and huge you know huge equity or upside or something like that i think that's too long you know i think one year is good and that's the the one takeaway i have from our earn out duration that you know over over one year is probably too much you gotta bring bring in the new leadership and get them engaged sooner rather than later when you look back now on the acquisition that seems like one of the obvious takeaways what are the other lessons for you that you would tell anybody if they're going through the acquisition process yeah i would say it's similar to enterprise sales i don't think you really have a deal unless you've really identified a strong champion somebody in that organization who's gonna go to bat and says we need to buy this company here's how it meets with our strategic objectives and if you don't have that you might initiate a deal but i don't think you'll get it done because there's always these ups and downs and intense parts during a major acquisition and you need somebody on the other side you know or a group of people on the other side that are highly motivated to get the deal done and so for a big multinational you know multi billion dollar corporation to buy someone who's much smaller there's gonna be some strategic imperative and you gotta like understand that and help that champion make the case over and over and over internally so you're basically you're partnering with somebody inside the organization bringing them into your organization and helping them go back with many talk tracks and talking points so they can help get the deal done here's why we're doing the deal here's the strengths of the deal here's some cool news that they have and they now the champion needs to get other people excited in their organization to get a deal done they've got a a legal team they've got a finance team they've got an integration team and operations team they've got a board of directors who you're never gonna meet but your champions are gonna meet them so you just need to basically train them how to sell your company inside the acquire i'd say what's really also great is to just make sure you have a lot of good news and give it out bits at a time right every month every few weeks hey we got some good news this just happened hey we had this this promotion and it was awesome hey we just launched a product and people are really liking and it's really well reviewed right and just have a cadence of good things happening during the deal i think that we did that well and i think that without that i don't know how we would have gotten the deal done that's awesome and what are you doing now what's next for you oh man so i am officially unemployed right now give myself at least like six months to do nothing whatsoever not network but fore both myself from like even thinking of ideas or networking or anything like that just spent a lot of time with my kids and had an amazing summer and got out in the water a lot and just kind of recalibrate as a human being because you know this rocket ship ride was a lot of chaos and adrenaline and i needed to like just kinda settle down now i'm helping a lot of entrepreneurs and just spending time with them and i'm investing in some startups ups as well and have invested i'm not spending a lot of time applying soap to my skin though that's a amazing joe thank you so much for kind of the show and sharing the story know it's like a very raw very real story that we don't always get to hear about so really appreciate hearing about the takeoff and the landing yeah where can people best connect with you to learn more for linkedin i i try to be sort of active most days on linkedin happy to be helpful to especially any the entrepreneurs who are going through anything where it could be helpful amazing thank you sir yeah thank you buddy hi me again frank the guy and this month's podcast shout goes out to this old marketing hosted by joe po and robert rose to content marketing experts this show dives into the latest content marketing trends and shares ideas for how businesses can use content to attract and retain customers check it out at hubspot dot com slash podcast network or wherever you listen to your podcasts and now back to the show no soap surplus not so no soap anywhere i mean he's an unconventional thinker is i mean that whole interview the takeoff the landing my jaw was off the floor for most of it that was crazy i cannot imagine going up on a stage and like not having every single answer that you're hit with and just being like we got it and then making some promise and being like we get it like that yeah is what is that because you have that too you have is it optimism is it crazy is it what is it you know what what's interesting is i was thinking about that too i i think it's like he he knew something that nobody else knew right like he knew that these pens when they were at a certain temperature that like they would erase right and like that's a known thing about the pens or whatever whatever so i think in it seems like he saw it as like pretty simple really which is just like i'm just like almost like you're getting away with something like i know this works and you don't dial it like you have to invent you have like an as up his sleeve yeah yeah that's kinda what it seems like to me because i think it's it's funny i feel like i have that some ways but i can't make it up like if i don't feel like i know that there's some aspect of it that we can deliver that i can't do it like i can't pitch a thing i don't believe in yeah but he believed he believes say yeah he believed even if they didn't know the answer that they would find the answer and that to me is such it is a quality that that i do think a lot of founders possess and it's and and it always leaves me pretty au but a lot of it is like at least for me at the beginning it was like being naive i'm like this can't be that hard and then eventually at some point in time i was hit with the reality of like oh my god this is really hard yeah yeah and then even later i was like oh it is hard but i know that on this certain class of problem we can deliver we have the expertise we understand what it takes i have enough evidence to sea like whiskey will crush it and if we went too far field there was a part of me that would say you can't do that like it's too far filled maybe you could learn how to do but it's it's too far afield from where you are today so it's interesting because i think it's like somehow he knew and had enough belief rash rational or not that he could pull it off which is cool i mean it's like it's really cool to hear that and it's also so interesting that the beginning and the end are so similar actually yeah of like i'm gonna make this yeah yeah yes i'm gonna make the impossible happen mh and you know even going to the meeting is not that different yeah from getting up on the stage and pitching the brand new thing that came up with the day before totally and i think i guess the other thing that's jumping out at me is someone who's willing to take big swings also has to be willing to have big misses and like being laughed off of shark tank and being able to like get back up from from being so vulnerable like that's another the i'm not even finishing my sentence that's that's just another skilled that i don't possess that many founder seemed to you know it was really interesting at inbound when we interviewed brian hall and he said something that stuck with me which was you know we're talking about what it was like to be ceo of hubspot which he no longer is right chairman now but was for a long time and he said well it's two steps four one step back every day and i thought about that because like it's so simple to say that's so easy to say that but that is what the story is and you know you look at these charts of like growth and they if you if you smooth them out they look like you know like a whatever exponential curve if you're lucky but then like usually it's like up up down down down up up up down up up down and i think that that is a different thing to deal with at some point you believe you can get through it because you've been through enough doubts but it's interesting because so much in life is like that and there's so much you can't control i also think this is at least for me meditation has been important and being really present because you're not as stressed about the future or like worried about the past you're just like in it and that is easier to deal with to like let it wash over you than to always worry about like what's next man no man to live inside your brain i'd like to do that wonderful someday someday we'll won't we'll melt the minds the next product gotta pitch it i don't know if that's our next product but rain swaps alright well that's probably it then when you get to brain swaps you know the episode ended so thanks for joining us please don't forget to like and subscribe wherever you consume talking to loud sign a 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