Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:07 Hello, welcome Rogue Startups. I'm your host, Craig Hewitt. Here. Each episode I'm gonna be sharing a nugget and a piece of wisdom that I'm learning from growing my business. Casto from seven to eight figures, and hopefully beyond, you know, business is tough. There's no easy button to push to take all the right answers in the shortcut to, to guaranteed success. But I truly believe that with the collective wisdom we have from this tech community, we really can do better and easier than we could alone. You know, I'm basing a lot of this on an amazing amount of help and feedback I've gotten from other podcasts and other founders and other YouTube channels, and, and this is my attempt to give back a little bit to the community to help you grow your business more sanely to a higher level, more profitably, to where you're having a better experience in this journey.
Speaker 1 00:00:51 I sincerely hope you like the new format here. If you want to connect with me, head effort to Twitter, I'm at the Craig Hewitt, and for show notes for this and every episode, rogue startups.com, let me know what you think. Um, you know, when I, when I think about like, I wanna talk to someone who's a really good practical marketing mind, uh, Reuben, you're, you're like the first person I wanna talk to because there's so much bullshit out there, uh, about like hustle culture and do this and optimize this. And I think it's really dangerous actually for like a lot of us as like, you know, what our solo founders and small teams, um, and I always find like our conversations the most enlightening about like the 80 20 of, of marketing. And so very selfishly, I'm thrilled to get a chance to, to <laugh> to chat today and, and I know it'll be like really valuable for, for everyone else. Um, yeah. So Reuben Gomez, folks who don't know you previously, currently still founder of Yep. Bid Sketch and founder of Sewell, uh, e-signatures for, for professionals, right? Yep,
Speaker 2 00:01:52 That's right. Uh, yeah. Um, always good to talk to you as well. Uh, been in the SaaS game for a while. Bit Sketch, when was that? Like almost 15 years ago, which is crazy in, you know, uh, in SaaS and software and, uh, Sewell now about four years.
Speaker 1 00:02:11 Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. Um, is Bit Sketch still going or,
Speaker 2 00:02:16 Yeah, uh, it's still going. Uh, that is, so, uh, backstory is real quick. SEMO was supposed to be version two of Bit Sketch, um, launched that. And, uh, there were eventually as separate brands, uh, and then they were supposed to be merged at some point. The market pulled us in a direction to where it just became clear, okay, this is a separate company, we're going in a different direction. And now I have, uh, two, but really most of my focus, most of the team's focus is on sidewall right now.
Speaker 1 00:02:48 Yeah. Gotcha. Gotcha. What does the team look like right now?
Speaker 2 00:02:52 Uh, small core team with, uh, you know, some contractors and, uh, small core team, some, uh, full-time people, and then contractors and, uh, a couple of agencies for, you know, extra stuff. So Core team is, um, 300 development side, uh, DevOps person as well as security. Uh, SOC two compliance. We're, we're moving into, uh, you know, bigger deals with, um, you know, mid-market really is what it truly is. And then a little bit touching on enterprise as well. But we do a ton of self-serve, and that's like where it mostly started and we're still doing that, so we're serving both of them, which is not advisable to do, uh, early on at least. Right? Yeah. Um, don't do both.
Speaker 1 00:03:38 Let, let's talk about that. 'cause we are in a similar boat. Like, uh, so, so we have two different versions of that one, like we have our very self-serve hosting product, and then we have our Casto production service, which is, you know, sales calls and, and, you know, selling thousands of dollars a month. Um, but even with a, with then hosting, you know, we closed actually this month, a couple of like thousand dollars a month customers. Nice. Um, yeah, really great <laugh>. Uh, we just gotta find more of those. Um, and that's the thing is it's like we, oh, man, we, we, we raised some money, hired a sales team, let's go after the enterprise, and, and we, we found it really, really, really, really hard to mm-hmm. <affirmative> proactively go find those bigger deals, um, to, to where we couldn't and we, we, we failed, I think arguably. Um, like does that stuff all come inbound for you? Or like, what does that serving those two groups at the same time look like?
Speaker 2 00:04:27 So, uh, because we, uh, so if you get enough volume inbound, you'll kind of get some of, uh, the enterprise, uh, depending on your market and category, you might get more of that, uh, than, than in other categories. But for us, we get some of that, but not enough for it to just be our, our only thing, uh, so part of the effort is yeah, just like, get a ton of volume and get a ton of traffic, get a ton of leads, a ton of everything, and build brand that way. And you will get, uh, you know, enterprise deals that way. But then there's another part which I'm starting to work on, which is we have to go out and get those. And that's a very different thing, and it looks completely different than, you know, yeah. To,
Speaker 1 00:05:11 Everything's
Speaker 2 00:05:12 Very different about that.
Speaker 1 00:05:15 Yeah. I, we just, we, we, we couldn't make it work. Uh, we, I say we, thus far, we've not been able to make it work. <laugh>. I'm not, I'm not giving up hope, but, but just like in the, in the kind of previous incantation of, of our setup, like, it just, we couldn't, we couldn't grow fast enough. Um,
Speaker 2 00:05:30 Mean, you mean like going outbound for like, for podcasts for people who are, how do, how, how do you do that? Like, because how do you know if Right.
Speaker 1 00:05:38 <laugh> Yeah. I mean, well, so that part of the problem, the, the same, the same question maybe for you is like, how, how do you find people who have a, a problem with digital signatures today? Um, and, and like, yeah. Maybe a little different. 'cause like they have the rest of their business that's, that's kind of going on. But, um, for us it was like, uh, our outbound was more specific than that even was like, how do we reach companies who wanna start internal company podcasts and need a dedicated mobile app and need, you know, ss s o and need all these things. So we were selling Oh, gotcha. Like a need and a solution at the same time, which is I think the, the challenge, right? Yeah. Inbound is great because, you know, think about like, the stages of awareness of a customer, right?
Speaker 1 00:06:16 They're already problem aware. They may even be solution aware and, and just citing on you as the solution that that's pretty easy and we close those. But, but like you're talking about like being proactive, about reaching out to the market and saying like, Hey, have you thought about starting a podcast? Then you're asking someone, okay, uh, internal comms or learning and development or marketing person. Yeah. Uh, you, I, I want to add something to your plate, <laugh>, right? That's gonna take budget and your time and resources, and you gotta report it up to the C-suite and you gotta go down to get it adopted by the team. Right? Um, it's just a lot of, it's, it's a, it's a lot of stakeholders. Um, and, and I think that's why we, we've suffered, um, be because like tough, the rest of like yours, like everything is inbound for us, everything. Right? We've done almost no outbound.
Speaker 2 00:07:05 Yeah. That, that's really tough. Uh, especially with, with, you know, I personally, I wouldn't do it. Like, I, I wouldn't approach it that way. Uh, having the, both, both things. It's, it's about finding people who are, you don't wanna have to convince somebody to like, oh, you're not doing e-signatures. Uh, do e-signatures. Um, or maybe there, even for us, maybe there's, uh, we have, uh, companies that are larger that are, that have like largely paper driven processes or, you know, uh, through email and all that stuff, and that's an easier sell because they're already kind of, they're already doing the thing. It's just kind of changing how they're doing it and making it more efficient. Right? Like, like if you're talking about podcasting, if they're not, um, it's one thing to, you know, maybe be doing the thing that, that you're trying to convince them to do with podcasting, um, which is like, it's a podcast for what?
Speaker 2 00:08:03 Internal communication with all of their employees. Yep. If they're already kind of doing that thing, um, and, uh, they're struggling in some way, shape, or form, and you can kind of talk to and find out like what that looks like, what that feels like, what these companies are like, who they are, you know, what, like, uh, things that you can sort of target, um, based off of like their profile in some way, shape, or form. Then, then, yeah. Then you can start to reach those and, and pitch it sort of in that way. You're already doing this thing, this is like way more efficient. And like, that's how I would probably think about it. But if that's not happening, then, you know, I I wouldn't even like, try that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:08:44 Yeah. And I, I think that like the, that common thread that you're talking about is, is was, was like, and still is a challenge for us. And, and, um, I think, um, you had a conversation with our, our mutual friend Brian Castle yesterday about this is like, how do we go put gasoline on this fire and just get more of what's already coming to us? But, but how do we do that in like a targeted specific way? It sounds like you're saying the way you like to approach that is find the people that have the problem already and are solving it in a bad way or not, not your way <laugh> or, or maybe not solving it at all with
Speaker 2 00:09:19 An alternative or Yeah. With an alternative or doing it slightly different, right. Instead of like convincing them to Yeah, because that's, you're right. That is tough. That's super hard. Yeah. Like, I'm sure it's some, you know, uh, master copywriters and, and whatever, like back in the day can, can pull it off. But, uh, I, I wanna take the easier route.
Speaker 1 00:09:41 Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and, and so like practically, what does that, what does that look like? I mean, um, you know, we, we both talk a lot about SS e o and content marketing. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, like that, that's a big one. I know you've done a lot of, like, work with templates as mm-hmm. <affirmative>, like a, a form of content marketing and, and seo Yeah. Like y'all rank for, you know, different templates and business forms that people would want to use. Is, is that still like a, a big strategy and maybe let's, uh, let's take a step back. I don't want to ask you for your secret sauce <laugh>, but we always try to like, abstract the lessons that we're learning that apply to a lot of people. So just like, generally, if a person's like, I want to insert my brand name in the problem discussion for folks, like, how could we think about it?
Speaker 2 00:10:23 Yeah. So you're talking about like building a brand is what you're asking about? Kind
Speaker 1 00:10:27 Of. Um, I, yeah. You know, that's, that's an interesting question. Uh, like to me, I'm, I'm more specifically saying like, how do you just get in front of a customer when they're having this problem so that, yeah, you could be their choice.
Speaker 2 00:10:41 You have to know, you have to talk to enough customers and sell in enough customers to know what that looks like to be able to do that. It, otherwise you're just guessing and it's really, really, really, really hard, whether it's sales or whether it's marketing, it's the same sort of thing, right? And like, I think we should separate like early stage, very early, like zero to one, right? Like the whole, like, you're not even at 10,000 m r r or whatever, and you're just grinding, right? Yeah. Like, you don't even have, let's say, even 10 customers, uh, and you're just trying to get, and like what marketing looks like then versus, you know, you're, you're, you already have, you know, hundreds of customers, maybe thousands of customers, and you're like, okay, how do I, you know, get into tens of thousands or, or maybe not, maybe like just the next thousand that's going to, uh, you know, two x three x five x our revenue, because we can charge them so much more, right? Yeah. Um, those are very different. So, um, I think
Speaker 1 00:11:39 Just for the folks that listen to the show, this second is probably more applicable, so, okay. Got it. Thousand of m r r a month to, you know, hundreds of thousands.
Speaker 2 00:11:48 Yeah. I think part first part, um, once you, once you have, have some traction, especially like later on, once you have a good amount of, of revenue, um, it's like if you've already taken care of the low hanging fruit, you've already liked the obvious, like do more of what's working, right? Something's working, do more of what's working, you've done that. Like, it's super, I won't say easy, right? You still have to execute it, straightforward, execute, but yeah. Yeah. It's a lot more straightforward, right? When there's, when there's, uh, room there and, and it's like, okay, something's worked and we just need to, with this, uh, doing this, uh, 10 times more effectively or more, or whatever look like, and, and you go after that. Once, once you've started to, once it starts to get a little bit hard and you're like, okay, let me look at new channels, or, uh, this is like, there's not much more room left in what we're doing.
Speaker 2 00:12:40 Um, which can, depending on how big your market is happen kind of early on, then it's like, I think, uh, it's important to look at objectively as you can, as objectively as you can. Like, how much more room is there in this market for the thing that we're selling and the way that we're selling it. You know? So if you're like, oh, well we could probably like, and some of it you can look at competitors and things like that, and like, what are the, how big are they? Are they really that much bigger? They're like two, three x, five x bigger. Like, okay, uh, that's not much more if they're a hundred, a thousand times bigger. Cus then, you know, you have a lot of room, right? <laugh>, so my my thinking is, uh, if it's kind of tight and you're like, oh, if we were doing pretty good and if we the best we could ever do, almost it looks like right now, uh, at least right now in the way the, the market our category looks like is, is like three x, four x, five x even.
Speaker 2 00:13:40 It's like, that's kind of small and that's not a lot of room to man to maneuver and, and get, I'd start to look at do it. So Intercom has chosen to, as a, give an example, Intercom has chosen to do it by adding more like products to the edges of their products, right? Like around the use cases. So that's one way, um, profit well, uh, took a very interesting, uh, approach. There're in SaaS, the, the category is kind of small. It's not that big for SaaS. Uh, so if you look at that category chart mogul, what they did is just, they just went premium and, you know, have, uh, the profile of a lot of their customers just looks very different than, let's say, barometric, which is like lower and, you know mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, they did re increase their prices, but, um, they're going more like truly mid-market enterprise. And then even chart moguls now added a new product, uh, c r m to their right. Yeah. Like this, this is the game, this is how it kind of works, right? And then, uh, profit well really took a different approach, which is like, we're just gonna give away the, the thing for the, for free. We don't even think it's that big of enough of a category. And then, uh, they upsell like crazy and like for individual, like, uh, you know, the retained product and they price very differently, a lot higher. So,
Speaker 1 00:14:58 And the upsell, upsell and annual product and Yeah. Right.
Speaker 2 00:15:01 Yeah. So for us it's like, um, we have a lot of room <laugh>, like on both ends. Like there's, uh, we, you look at your category and you see how are people making money? And we, we, we did that and we're like, okay, these are the, uh, there's people making a lot of money on the just selling to self-serve. There's people on the enter, there are companies who are just enterprise. And we're, we're choosing now a path where we're adding enterprise and layering that on top, which is tricky, hard to do with self-serve
Speaker 1 00:15:31 For you. Let you guys, lemme ask
Speaker 2 00:15:33 You to like,
Speaker 1 00:15:34 Two questions to, and I'll give some context on where we are and I'd loved your impression of this. Yeah. Um, so within podcast hosting space, um, we could 15 times our size maybe to be one of the bigger players and the biggest player in the space,
Speaker 2 00:15:52 Pretty much the way that your product is and the like going after mostly,
Speaker 1 00:15:58 Uh, along that path, right? Just, uh, just launched our cast thoses ads product. We need a lot more bells and whistles and stuff there, but, but not like the alternative, which is, um, we take, I, I think our existing customer base and mm-hmm. <affirmative> expand the product to solve more of their problems. And, and I think there's two ways you, you mentioned, um mm-hmm. <affirmative> Intercom, that there's two ways you can do that. You can go vertical, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, and if you're a podcast hosting platform, you could do, okay, we're on squad right now, we could build a squad cast <laugh> mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and we could build a DS script and we solve the whole vertical kind of problem that a customer needs. Or you could say, our customers are creators. Um, instead of just solving the podcasting problem, could we solve the blogging problem and the email problem that literally all of them have, you know, every one of our customers does more than just podcasting. They do all these other things too. So I think those are the two questions that you could ask yourself if you go, we're not, there's not enough space in our niche, like you're saying, to grow, to, to be the kind of size we want. That's one question. And then if that's the answer is you have to go and expand, you expand vertically or horizontally,
Speaker 2 00:17:05 Uh, how are the people who are making the most money in your space making money?
Speaker 1 00:17:09 Yeah. Super interesting. Um, <laugh>, they all, all of the biggest players in our space make most of their money from ads.
Speaker 2 00:17:17 So why wouldn't you consider that? Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:17:21 So, so, um, <laugh> for the longest time, and, and still, I mean, no shit today, I just mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I know that like, if we stuck ads on this podcast, we'd make a dollar 50 a month and just annoy the shit out of every listener. And, and so I just am like, it's not worth it to me. Um, we're not a podcast that has 50 million, you know, downloads a year, and so we just can't make appreciable money, uh, from the show. And, but they make, and it's not like they, it's you mean it's
Speaker 2 00:17:50 Their own Peel podcast?
Speaker 1 00:17:52 Sorry? It
Speaker 2 00:17:52 It's their own podcast that they're, uh, putting ads on or what, um, uh, what's the model look like? So
Speaker 1 00:18:00 Some, some, there's definitely some of that tech, they're, they're developing, uh, shows in-house and, and you know, monetizing 'em directly. Okay. But more so they are selling the ad inventory to companies and then selling that inventory to podcasters and, and making money on impressions.
Speaker 2 00:18:17 Ah, so like ad tech.
Speaker 1 00:18:19 Ad tech, yep.
Speaker 2 00:18:21 Yeah. Okay. So that's its own category. Interesting. In podcasting. Yeah. Yeah. So that's different. You can do that in a, I mean, people are wanting this, right? Like, uh, the Yep. The people who are paying for it. Um, like the way that I would look at it is like, how are the biggest players making the most money? Uh, and then evaluate that opportunity and like, yeah, that would be a, that would be a really viable way that I'd consider, uh, like if it's working and it's working for more than one, you know, you almost kind of, like, for me, I almost kind of have to consider it, right? Like otherwise, like is, um, who's making money. Uh, so you list it two other ways, who's making money serving? And it's like, just because nobody's doing it doesn't mean you don't do it. Right? So I just wanna clarify that. Just more
Speaker 1 00:19:14 Risky,
Speaker 2 00:19:14 Arguably. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. There's more risk there, right? So if you're, you're going to go down that path, understand what the risk is, and then find a way to kind of quick, hopefully quickly like, uh, learn whether or not this is going to work and whether or not others have tried it and it kind of didn't work for them. And if it didn't, why didn't it work for them? Right? Hmm.
Speaker 1 00:19:37 Hey, it's Craig here. You know, while I love podcasting and long form conversations like this, also really love writing and really love email newsletters. I have a newsletter called Founder Insights, where every Saturday morning I share something I'm learning in my business that I think could help you grow your business sustainably and insanely and profitably as you go along this journey. If you're interested, head over to Craig hewitt.me/join to get Founder Insights my newsletter along with your cup of coffee this Saturday morning. See you there. Um, I, I think with, uh, like, kind of taking the thought from there, uh, one thing, <laugh>, one thing I believe is, uh, with, I'm not calling anyone out and, and I'm calling myself out, but, but the thought of, uh, blaming the product on our lack of growth is weak. Right? And, and I do it all the time, <laugh>, and, and I get after myself and I get after the team when they say, when X then we'll be able to do why? And, and it's just so rarely the case that this feature will unlock this potential that will transform the company. Like I think most likely it's, yeah,
Speaker 2 00:20:47 You, you guys are doing well. You've not found that, right?
Speaker 1 00:20:50 No, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2 00:20:51 I've not found that in either of my companies as well. Like, it just, you're right. Like it can happen, but it's not usually the case.
Speaker 1 00:20:59 I, I think with the exception of probably what you're seeing with, like, talking about SOC two compliance and stuff, and with us, like abil the ability for podcasters to monetize their content, and we have two ways. One is with donations and cast US commerce Yeah. And then cast us ads like dynamic ad insertion. Yeah. It opens up a new part of the market. Yes. Right? That's great point. You being too compliant and hipaa, this and all this bullshit let's you sell that thousand dollars month customer, whereas otherwise you're charging whatever I pay you 19 bucks a month or whatever. Right. Um, that, that you have this world without, without some of these features. And I think, I think that's the only way that I convinced myself that, well, frankly, at this point, I mean, we're six years old continuing to build product only should be to serve sales and marketing from this point Mm,
Speaker 2 00:21:47 Gotcha.
Speaker 1 00:21:48 To un to unlock bigger opportunities in market. Right. Bigger opportunities or, or a bigger part of the market.
Speaker 2 00:21:53 Yeah. No, that, that's a really good point. And and that's true. Like, uh, uh, Rob with Drip, right? Like, uh Yep. The workflows and, and, uh, going in that direction, like if you're generally, if you're adding features and all that stuff, maybe that helps retention, that helps on board, like activation and things like that. But if you're talking about really, really, uh, especially if you already have momentum and you're growing pretty good, like it's hard to do that. Like to get a meaningful growth off of just that, you're just going to, it, it builds on itself. It's not a bad thing, but, uh, yeah. Features and things that will unlock new markets, but that's not enough either. Right? So this is the, the other part of it, like, that's just, it's almost like starting a new product in a way. Yeah. And that's kind of how I'm, I'm thinking about it.
Speaker 2 00:22:45 So yes, we have SOC two compliance and all that stuff, and yes, we, uh, some of the efforts from before are going to give us a little bit of revenue on that side, but I can't depend on that. So I have to think of it like, almost like this is a new product, a new thing, and now, uh, learn how to approach these types of customers because these customers look differently and they have to be sold in a different way and marketed to in a different way and all that. So it needs really like a completely different, almost completely different approach usually Yeah. In that way.
Speaker 1 00:23:24 And, and that's super scary, right? 'cause you're at pick a number, right? 20, 50, a hundred K a month, and now you're saying, okay, all all of that shit that got us here, we're going to back burner and we're gonna approach growth from a different perspective. Like talking about risk. Like that's, that, that's pretty scary to me. Say, Hey, we're gonna just not focus on growing this other thing that we did to get us here, but we're gonna focus on this other completely different thing that we might not have a ton of experience with.
Speaker 2 00:23:53 Yeah. So if you're, if it's not growing that fast anyway, there's not much of a risk there, right. Um, for us, we are growing faster than ever on that side of things. So it is tricky to do this. And I'm, uh,
Speaker 1 00:24:15 On the self-serve side, you mean? Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:24:17 On the self-serve mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So then approaching it from enterprise, I'm building kind of a separate team on top of it because, you know, to, to do both, right? Yeah. It's going to require that. And then I have to think about how to distribute my time and what that's going to look like. Uh, yeah. So it's not easy. Uh,
Speaker 1 00:24:37 You mentioned brand, a video, um, like brand is the, the drum that I'm hammering as hard as <laugh> as I possibly can with our production service. But would love to just like, hear, like, yeah, what, what are your thoughts on brand, like at the, the point you're at?
Speaker 2 00:24:52 So I, I feel like everyone talks, like when they talk brand, they always talk about it in this in the same way. Uh, and they miss a lot of like how it actually works a lot of the time. So they talk about it in terms of like, uh, first thing, like thought leadership, uh, content, and what are you doing for thought leadership, blah, blah, blah, and put yourself out there, you know, all this stuff. That's one way, uh, it's, uh, not easy. And I think you have to look at your strengths and, um, you know, think about like what gives you energy. Um, I don't think people think about that enough. Mm-hmm. Uh, and what you're good at on
Speaker 1 00:25:31 A personal level, you mean? Yes.
Speaker 2 00:25:32 On a personal level. Yeah. And the d n a from your team, the team a lot of times reflects the founder. Uh, and you have to think about that, right? So if you're, you're trying to do things that just don't match up, yeah. You can grow and learn and, you know, um, but how realistic is it? Or that's not a good phrase. Like, because, you know, we're, we're pretty, uh, as founders, we're, we're pretty good at like learning new stuff. And if we really, really, really wanna do it, we'll go through the pain of doing it and we'll, we'll, we'll get there. So I think that's fine. But are there better paths for you, uh, that can be considered, uh, in a way to where like, if you just open up the thinking for brand as multiple ways of doing it, doing it instead of just like, this is how it's done, then I think that's, that's a little bit more helpful.
Speaker 2 00:26:27 So, um, a couple of ways that I'm, that I'm considering, because with Bit Sketch, I approach brand a little bit more like the thought leadership sort of, uh, approach. And that was a lot of work, and it felt like grinding and it took a lot mm-hmm. <affirmative> of energy from me. Um, and not to say that you don't do any of that, just like where's, where's your focus, right? Like when you have limited, limited amount of money and time and, and people like, you have to focus, even if you're VC funded, you still, it pays to focus. Yep. So part of it for me is like the more, um, and I think this is massively overlooked. It's not easy though, but it's, it's just true. The more customers you get, the more volume you get of something, you build a brand in the process. Like it, that's just what happens a lot of times.
Speaker 2 00:27:17 And a lot of companies build the big brand. They did it because, uh, like the brand didn't exist first, and that's why everybody started jumping on there. Like, they started to get traction and momentum in these pockets that led them to get more customers, and then a brand was built, right? So, yep. Um, that's one way. And so that's leading me to, to say, well, we don't want to completely a abandon the lower self-serve, lower end self-serve part, because that brings us a other value, uh, through just, you know, that sort of, uh, brand name, uh, that we're building there, uh, in that sort, in that way. And, uh, the more people use our product, the more get exposed to, you know, the documents that are being sent for signatures and stuff like that. So that's one thing. The other thing that, that I was just thinking of, and I was having this conversation with somebody who's, uh, very early stage.
Speaker 2 00:28:11 They're, they're, they haven't released their product yet, but that really good strategy that just reminds me of, uh, back in the day, um, how, how, uh, some people like bloggers, I don't know if you've heard of Danny Ney? No, I don't know the name. Okay. So he is like, uh, back in the day, like Derek, uh, Halburn, Danny Ney, and like several of these like internet markety, uh, sort of Yep. Bloggers, right? So he, he, um, got popular really quickly and he was, uh, they started calling him, uh, the Freddie Krueger of blogging back in the day. And they called him that because, um, they said like, he, like Freddy Krueger, he just appeared he was everywhere. Okay. Wherever you looked, there he was, right. Okay. Okay. Uh, so then he, he had this course, which I bought back in the day, and it was, uh, about guest posting, and that's how his approach and how he did it.
Speaker 2 00:29:04 But, uh, it was really, it was actually really smart. Uh, the, the way that he detailed out, um, his approach was that he picked his sort of like, niche, uh, or so it's, he was, it wasn't that he was, he was in a niche and he niched down. It's just like for marketing, right? Like, I can have a very horizontal product. We serve all sorts of small businesses, but we, I can say, um, I can say, uh, education's really big for us, or, you know, or, uh, agencies of this type are really big for us. Let's focus a lot of our marketing on that. And that's like a really good way to, to go A lot of times when, when you're horizontal, it's just hard to just say everybody, anybody who has signature needs. So, uh, in a similar way, he said, um, he was doing guest posting and, uh, I don't remember like, something about inter internet marketing and like for, for, uh, let's say, uh, bus, uh, people who were, who were in the coaching space or something, which is, he, he does that a lot nowadays.
Speaker 2 00:30:12 Um, so he, what he did was like map out all the coaching blogs, and then he had somebody go through and collect a lot of the comments and put those on a spreadsheet, and then sort of just say like, what are the blogs that have the same comment, like the same people commenting on them. And so you map out this network and you say, okay, like these three blogs are really popular, like within, you know, the segment here, a lot of these commenters here and maybe these other blog two blogs there. So then he did repeated posts, guest posts on those. And as far as those people knew, like he was everywhere, right? Yeah. Like every blog that they read, he, there he was. So it's a similar sort of approach to where, um, you, for your buyers or your people, like you identify in, in whatever it is.
Speaker 2 00:31:01 Let's say we're, we're picking a, um, I dunno, the education space, uh, which we actually did, did some of this already. Uh, and identify where they hang out with, uh, hang out, like communities or whatever, like how they hear about stuff. And then, uh, figure out how things become, get word of mouth in those pockets in these networks. And you do that by just, of course, things like, you know, if they're sharing tools or whatever, they'll talk about Google docs or, you know, yeah. You, you ignore all the big brands. You look at the little brands, the stuff that no, kind of like nobody really knows about, but somehow becomes popular in these networks. And then see like, what drives that. So for us, we found that in education, I'll give away a little bit of, of, of what we found here. Secret sauce. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:31:57 Uh, we found that, uh, in education, there's, there are a lot of things that are a pain in the ass with education, uh, selling to education for us. Uh, you know, like budgets are low and, uh, a lot of stakeholders and all that stuff, but like, once you get picked up, it can actually be pretty good after a while. It's just, it takes a while. Uh, but one of the things that we found is like, because they, they have such a hard time getting approval for things and budgets aren't where they should be. Free tools and dis heavily discounted things or things that are special for education tend to like get word of mouth, like, Hey, I'm, this, this thing is sort of, uh, you know, there's this deal here, or Hey, you can use this for free, or whatever. So we did that and sure enough started like we start, you know, uh, hearing, hearing from, uh, other school districts and teachers and whatever, they start telling each other and you start picking up. So this is like the whole thing of like, it's not just focusing and picking a niche or whatever and picking, you know, that's like one part of it. It's like understanding it. Who are they? Yeah. Who do they follow? How does it work? Like how do, yeah. How, you know, how do, um, things get picked up? How do they become, how they become hot in that, in that, uh, segment.
Speaker 1 00:33:20 I think that's really interesting. 'cause like I, I think we've heard a version of that from a product perspective a lot, right? Is, you know, I'm an email marketing provider and I wanna serve e-commerce stores. I I'll understand what what they need, but you're kind of more saying, um, if you're a e-commerce, you know, email marketing tool, you, or email marketing tool, you wanna serve e-commerce. You wanna understand how they buy and why and what's important to them from a buying perspective. Um, and then it also kind of ties into like, I know you and I have talked about the surround sound thing from HubSpot a little bit. Yes. Just like, instead of Freddy Krueger, right? Just like be everywhere, literally. And, and for everyone who, who doesn't know, like HubSpot's goal is to show up on the entire first page of Google. So like, the search results, the ads, the featured snippet, the YouTube video, the
Speaker 2 00:34:04 Image without, without creating the content themselves, right? Without having all those pages. Like they'll create some if they can, but then they'll also like, what are all these pages that are showing up? Let's get on there. Yeah. Let's get mentions on there. All the
Speaker 1 00:34:16 Blog listicles for best electronic signature stuff. All that stuff. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Totally. Totally. Yeah. And I think that, um, I mean we, we see that some, like I'll get on a sales call with, with folks and you're like, man, I just like, I see your shit everywhere, <laugh>. And, and those are, that's so great because then it's not like I gotta convince them that cast doses is right for them. It's just like, how much does it cost? And like, how do we work together? Exactly. Um, so yeah, I think
Speaker 2 00:34:40 It makes, it makes everything easier. So it's that same thing. So you've already done it, uh, for some pockets, some, uh, sub networks of like, you know, podcasting and you, like you said, you, you get that and people know your brand, but if you're like doing a new product or opening up a new market, you're basically doing that same thing all over again. Yeah. And it's figuring out like, how do I do this there and being delivered about doing it there?
Speaker 1 00:35:07 Yeah. And I, I definitely have never thought about brand from that perspective. I mean, I'm definitely a, I'm huge on brand, but it's more so generally across the board, not
Speaker 1 00:35:19 Niching down to brand of a certain type of customer or like type of problem that they have. And I like that. 'cause I mean, fucking brand is intimidating, you know? Mm-hmm. Um, like you, you talk about like, hey, let's make a brand, even with the, the assets and resources we have to be able to create a bunch of content. 'cause I actually really like it. And that's a big part of my job these days, and a team to do it for free, essentially <laugh> to, to create a bunch of audio, video, you know, social, you know, imagery, content. Like don't have to find all those people. Like we have the amazing people in house. It's still really hard. And, and, and we've been, we've been going hard at it for months now, and we're starting to see, uh, an improvement. But hearing what you're saying, I bet we'd see a much bigger improvement if I said, okay, we're gonna focus all of this brand energy on a customer, a type of customer with a problem and dominate that. And then you can go like concentric circle out from there. Exactly.
Speaker 2 00:36:13 FreshBooks did exactly that. Uh, a lot of companies do that. It works really well. It's hard. Like, you know, there's that and then, uh, not spreading your, because it's a form of spreading yourself too thin, right? Like totally going, like there's two ways of doing it. One, one is like just focusing on too many, like non-related, even though it's the same, all the same customer type, and you're like, oh, it's the same, but not really. Like, if they don't talk to each other, you know, then like you're just spreading yourself across, even if it's all like podcasters or even if it's all, you know, education for us, it's not like just going after everyone in education. If they, if they don't talk, like talk to each other, our efforts are, are spread out. Uh, it's that. And then also marketing tactics. Like if doing too many, the reality is for most businesses, like one thing works, it's like one thing works better than everything else. It's not like if you look at a lot of these, you know, businesses that like, you know, 10 x the size, uh, of where we are, um, or where we are now or even, you know, smaller than we are, it's the same thing almost all the time, right? Yep. Like, it's mostly one thing. And then maybe ano another thing that like is helping out as well.
Speaker 1 00:37:28 And I will just say to everyone, and I'm saying it to myself, <laugh>, as much as anything is, at some point that thing will stop working as well as it used to. Mm. And a hundred percent we've been there for about the last year is growth slowed. It didn't stop, but it slowed. And that, that's rough when you have a burn rate because it's just tough. Um, and we, we, you know, we got around that unfortunately. But, but what we're, what we're finding is it's easy to say, let's go find another channel. Um, kind of like, let's just go build more product to solve our problems. And both of those are absolutely the wrong answer. And, and the right answer is, well, this thing got us to a hundred grand a month, or whatever it is. Okay. An aspect of that is tapped out. Let's figure out how to tweak that a little bit.
Speaker 1 00:38:15 Take a route like you're talking about, okay. Brand for a customer type in a channel. Oh, like we can do that. You know? Um, and, and we're, we're doing that and it just took me for fucking ever to <laugh> to figure that out because the other, the other options are easy. 'cause essentially what you're doing is blaming product or blaming the market or blaming, you know, the volume of ss e o <laugh> with within your space, as opposed to just like doing the work to figure out how to get more customers roughly in the same way that you did, but, but with a slightly different twist.
Speaker 2 00:38:43 So, yeah. And, and, and I've been there too. Like you have to, the other thing, uh, which I'm way more deliberate about and think about more nowadays, uh, and have taken this approach with Sewell is to think ahead of, of all of these, um, you know, think ahead of where you are now. Like, you don't want to get to a point of where, like you've tapped it out. Yeah. You want to have already by that point have moved on and been working on the next thing, right? Like, whether that is, so now you're, you're still doing this, but then the next thing is what, like, maybe the next thing is, uh, adding that new product a, uh, offering or ad tech or whatever to like, you know, yeah. And you kind of have that going because that takes a while. Uh, and maybe going with slightly different, you know, a couple different people, like a consultant here or something. Yeah. Uh, that's gonna help out. So, you know, so you're not like having everyone on your team just focus on all sorts of different things.
Speaker 1 00:39:41 Yeah. It's tough, man. I mean, you're a small company. We're a small company. Like to, to see that coming, pick the right bet, execute on it mm-hmm. <affirmative> and get the feedback in a timely manner to where, you know, whether you did the right thing, whether it's execution or picking the bet or product or pricing or packaging or whatever. Um, yeah. That's tough. That's tough. I mean, I, I'm making excuses for myself there a little bit, but <laugh>, but, um, yeah, I think, I think that's really easy to say and probably hard to do, which is why it's so hard. Like it's, it's, uh, there's a challenge to get to a million, right? And then to get, to get to 10 million is like a whole different challenge because it's probably different than what got you to one in, in some small way. And that, that I gets exactly what we're talking about. Yep.
Speaker 2 00:40:23 Uh, us usually. Um, and it's, uh, but you know this because especially with what you've done with content marketing, you've done really well there. Um, it takes, it takes a while. Like when you're doing new things, you have to say, uh, you can't be like, oh, this, we're going to try this for, you know, a month or a few weeks, and our budget's going to be like, you know, we'll spend a few hundred bucks or a thousand or whatever. Like, you know, by the time you've gotten to, to that scale and you're now looking at, okay, what's our next thing? And you've, you know, done the work in research, right? Like these efforts, these things, because they take, they take longer. You have to say, okay, well this is gonna be like a six month thing, you know, minimum a quarter, and it's going to require this much money and this, so it's, it's a bigger bet because it is a bigger bet.
Speaker 2 00:41:16 Um, it's probably best to spend more time upfront with the research. Like when the betts are small and the experiments are smaller, uh, sure you do a little bit of upfront work, but because the feedback's so quick, it's like, it doesn't make sense to spend that much time, uh, on that. But because there's a more of a cost, uh, for these bigger betts of like a six month effort to go into, you know, like, yeah, I'm gonna talk to, uh, ex-employees of competitors, uh, that have done this. I'm gonna maybe try to get one to consult for us and help us out there if they had success with it. I'm going to, you know, do whatever I can to stack all like, everything in, in our favor and, uh, to, to make it successful and still know that it's going to be work. It's going to take a lot of time. Yeah. And all that.
Speaker 1 00:42:05 Yeah. That's why we get the big bucks, man, right? Because this is all hard and there's no, yeah, there's no single right answer.
Speaker 2 00:42:11 Right? Yeah. Yeah. Uh, at least for me, like, I don't know, everything that I've done has just been work <laugh>, like, yeah, I've made work, I've made it work. Eventually. A lot of the things, some, you know, not everything, but, uh, it, like, it just wasn't easy and it wasn't like, oh yeah, we got lucky and this big thing just worked out for us and cool. Right. It's
Speaker 1 00:42:33 Done. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Ruben, for for folks who wanna like, connect with you and follow along with, with what you're doing, where's the, where's the best place?
Speaker 2 00:42:42 Uh, Twitter, I guess, uh, earthling. Where, or it's not even called Twitter anymore for today. It's called like X whatever. I'm not even sure.
Speaker 1 00:42:50 X me. That sounds dangerous. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Awesome. And you are Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:42:55 Personally worked in, uh, yep. sewell.com if you need, uh, you know, uh, to get your documents signed or an a p i to automate, uh, electronic signatures.
Speaker 1 00:43:04 Awesome. Awesome. Ribbon Gomez. Thanks so much.
Speaker 2 00:43:07 Alright, thank you.
