Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Hello. Welcome back to Rogue startups. I'm your host, Craig Hewitt. Thanks for tuning into another episode. In this episode, I'm going to be talking about doing things that are as close to the customer as possible. Something I've learned recently that's really made a big difference in the impact I feel like I'm having in the growth of my business at least. Let's dive in. Okay, so so I think when it comes to marketing and sales in your business, there are a lot of things that we can do. And I think we're all guilty of doing shit in our business that really makes no difference. And I have been very guilty of this over time and a lot of people I've worked with have been really guilty of this over time. We chase things like vanity metrics or pet passions or projects or initiatives that we think are important but really make no difference to actually getting customers who actually pay us money that actually grow our business and move things forward. And I think this is especially alluring or we're in danger of doing this when we don't know what to do because the reality is doing shit that's way far apart from your customer and the impact that it has is easier because you're not getting feedback in a negative way and it kind of just doesn't matter. But you feel like you're putting in the work to create an output, but that output doesn't really then kind of feed back into the business. And so they think this is something that's especially dangerous for us when we don't have a lot of clarity over what things we're doing in our business that are actually making a difference is we go do a bunch. Of stuff that in the end doesn't really matter, but we feel comfortable doing it because we don't know for sure that it doesn't matter. And I think this is the danger. A little bit of things like brand, where you want to do things like social media or influencer campaigns that you think will move your brand forward and will ultimately help people buy from you. But you don't know, so you just do it and you feel good because you launched this influencer campaign, but you don't really know if that's resulting in customers because you're not talking to those customers. You're not doing things that actually have a business impact. And I think that being really kind of on the wire, if you will, is hard because what's going to happen is you're going to get a bunch of no's. And so the opposite analogy of this is like sending a bunch of cold emails, right? Yeah, send a bunch of cold emails and you get a whole big bunch of fuck yous, right? You get a whole bunch of people saying don't ever do this, you're spamming me, blah, blah. But then you're also going to get a bunch of people are like, oh, interesting, yeah, I'd like to talk to you because I have that problem. And what you're saying as a potential solution to my problem is interesting. And I think that would be valuable.
[00:02:49] That's just an example. But you spend this time to get the feedback really quickly and you know if what you're doing is making a difference or not. And I think this is the trap and why some people don't really like content marketing and SEO. Because it is a bit of that leap of faith, right? It is. I'm going to go spend six months writing content and filling out, fulfilling this kind of content map that an SEO person did for me. And I don't know if it's going to work or not, but I have confidence that the Google Gods are going to come through and help me out. I think product is a lot like this too sometimes, right? We think, oh, fucking, if we just have this feature, all of our problems will be solved. And the reality is that's almost never the case, right? I think there's only a couple of examples that I've heard of where we released this feature and it opened the floodgates and it changed our business.
[00:03:39] I'm sure it can happen. But what's probably more likely is you go super deep on a very specific problem. Why is it that people are falling off after 90 days in your product and you fix that and that gets to where people stay around longer and their LTV is higher. Or you optimize this one blog post that gets thousands of page views a month to where you get 20 new trials from that one blog post. That's going to make a difference. And I think the problem is it's fucking hard. Like doing those things are really hard. Whereas saying, and this is really bad, I'm going to do a podcast because it's great, and I'll improve my thought leadership, that's fine, but it's probably not going to have any impact on your business today or tomorrow or the next month. And so if you're going to go do a podcast or you're going to start a YouTube channel and I hope I don't seem like I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth here because up this actually is a pretty low priority for me. Which is why I missed a few weeks a while back. Because I just had more important shit going on in my business and in my life than doing this show.
[00:04:44] I got caught up and I got good on all those things, which is why I'm doing more content now. But this is not the thing that's going to make my business, probably. It's all those really hard, difficult things that your competitors are not going to do, right? They'd go rather launch this new fancy SEO campaign or this Influencer campaign or this new product or something like that. And all those things I think, are just glorified procrastination in the end, whereas you probably know in your heart, and I know in my heart that, man, if we just want to get like 30 new trials this month, there's like two things I can do to get us 30 new trials this month. And why am I not doing those? I think it's because it's hard. It's really hard sometimes. And it's easier for me to say, oh, that's just a one time thing, or a blah, blah, blah excuse. For some reason, I'm not going to do that, instead of rolling up my sleeves and having some guts and saying, pretty sure that the straight line between my input and the output of money in the bank account for the business is direct and known and has certainty. And so I'm going to do it.
[00:05:53] I talked in my last episode about how I've been kind of like floundering with new ways to acquire customers. And I don't fully have the answer there yet. But what I 100% know, and this is all due to my business coach, Mike, Mike del Ponte. Say hi, Mike.
[00:06:08] Mike is always asking me because he's a good coach, he doesn't tell me. He asks, he says, how much of a direct impact does this thing have on your business? And when he says on your business, he means like cash in the bank, not future projections or a hypothesis that I have. But if I do this unit of work, will it result in a unit of dollars for us? And I think for most of us, even at decent scale, the answer should be yes. If I do this thing, it's going to have a result of money in my bank account soon, like this month or next month. Otherwise, there's probably something else you can do. And of course, this podcast is kind of cheating a little bit. Like it's a passion project for me. I like doing this because I've benefited so much from other people who came before me who taught what they're learning, that I feel like I need to be doing this now to help everybody else. Because I've learned so much and I've been benefited so much by other folks who came before me that hopefully I'm kind of this next wave that's helping you.
[00:07:11] But I don't pretend that you're going to listen to this podcast and say, I need me some podcast hosting. I'm going to choose gastos, maybe. But there's almost no chance that that's actually going to happen. Rather, if I stop recording here and I go optimize the crap out of five blog posts that I think have a really good chance of converting website visitors into trials, that's going to result in trials now and customers by the end of the month. And so that's just what I'm focusing on is like, there's not this panacea, there's not this magic thing that's going to happen to unlock my business. I believe that's just where we are, but it's probably a series of hundreds of small steps that I'll take every day and every week, and over time, maybe some of those will compound, but surely they'll just add up, right? It's not an exponential thing. It's just a linear, like, I just want to step up like this and keep stepping up.
[00:08:05] Those steps only happen when the input and the effort that I have is on shit that actually makes a difference. And so just sharing that, if I'm really honest with myself, there's a whole bunch of crap that I do and other people have done that don't really matter. And that's a bummer because we all are really important, smart people and we only have so much time. And I guess it's just like a realization, but maybe a warning to, say, be really critical about the time you're spending on your business. Because you could go spend time with your family or your loved ones or on a hobby or at the gym or cooking or whatever.
[00:08:42] And try not to just do stuff that you think makes a difference, because there's probably only a handful of things that really, really make a difference in your business. And just do those. And once that's done, then you can probably look back and say, now I can do this one and this one's just like that other thing. And I know how to do it now, and I'm just going to go do it and kind of have some tunnel vision. And that's just what I'm trying to do. So I'm not telling you what to do. I'm just sharing my whole thing. I'm just sharing what I'm doing. It's working for me just from a mental perspective to say this is not going to change the world, but it's going to change this one thing just a little bit. And if I can do that one thing to change just a little bit and do that every day and every week, then over time, I think it's going to have a positive impact. Because the reality is it's not just this big red magic button that I'm going to push, and we're going to be a quadrillionaire, right, unless I win the Powerball, which is $100 million right now. If I win the Powerball later, Otherwise it's just like I got to fucking work harder and work smarter. Not work harder, work smarter on things that really matter. Not things that are so ephemeral and may matter in five years and are so disconnected from the customer journey to pay us money, right? So I think there are times when we have to have those things that we don't know if they'll pay off. I think there are times when we have to take that leap of faith, but I think it's less often than we believe. And so that's just kind of what I've learned and where I am and how I'm kind of living my work life. And I want to share that with you. So I hope this is interesting and helpful and important to you and your business and it has an impact. If so, drop me a line. Podcasteroguestaups.com, hit me up on LinkedIn or Twitter. Links are in the show notes below. And please, there have been handfuls of you who have reached out on social or email and said, craig really like the new way the podcast is going. Keep it up, blah, blah, blah. If that's the case, please let me know because staring into this camera and talking to this microphone is lonely sometimes. And I want to hear from you about what you like and what you don't like, what you want more of and what you don't want more of.
[00:10:50] Please tell me if you're on YouTube. First of all, just watch this on YouTube. It's way better because you get to see all my hand gyrations. If you're on YouTube, if you could please like and subscribe this. It sends all sorts of goody signals to the YouTube gods so that more people get this and benefit from the message in the way that you have. So if you have gotten some value out of this, please send a message to these platforms so that more can get this content too. Thanks so much. Chat soon.
