Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Hey there. Welcome back to Rogue startups. I'm Craig Hewitt. Fantastic to have you here. Thanks for joining me for another solo journey. You know, I've been doing a lot of interviews and I've done a couple of solo episodes, and I gotta say to all of you who reached out after my last couple of solo episodes, thank you so much. Like, it really means the world to me to hear those of you who I've known for a long time and have been listening to this podcast for the last, like, I don't know, eight years, reach out and say, like, hey, that was one of your best episodes ever. Hey, thank you so much for sharing and kind of being vulnerable about where you are in the business.
[00:00:40] Those episodes are not easy to do, to share that, hey, things aren't always great, but that's reality, right? Nothing is ever always great in a business. And I think it's kind of my responsibility as someone who tries to share that the realness of growing a SaaS business is like, hey, it's not always sunshine and rainbows. And how I think about kind of navigating that, that part of the journey is really important to me and it's important to me to be transparent. So thank you for the comments and the messages. Really awesome. I hope you're enjoying it.
[00:01:12] But in this episode, I have great stuff to share and so I'm going to share all the good things that have been happening. And the first one is I have a goal to publish 200 videos on YouTube this year. So across the three places where I publish content on YouTube. So the Kastos YouTube channel, this has a YouTube channel. So YouTube.com ogue startups, please subscribe if you haven't already, watch my beautiful face for these episodes. Instead of listening just on the phone.
[00:01:40] Publish an episode every week. And in my personal channel, I have been publishing more about kind of sales marketing, go to market, and just kind of SaaS growth stuff as I have started doing some one on one sales coaching with other founders. So if you're a founder who is struggling with sales and go to market and you're like, hey, I just need somebody to talk to. I need a sounding board, I need a wingman. I'm doing this alone and it sucks. I don't know what to do. You know, I've talked on this podcast about how I've had a coach several times and I've had a coach for most of my journey, and it's been invaluable. I mean, the number of terrible decisions I would have made without a coach or just wouldn't have made at all because they help keep me accountable is. Is astounding. Um, and so just as an aside, my YouTube channel, all about kind of sales marketing growth. I'm doing some one on one coaching to help founders make better decisions, grow their business a little more sanely and profitably. And so if you're interested, you can head over to Craig Hewitt me. There's a page there to kind of share a bit more about kind of what I do and how we would work together. But if you're interested, let me know. I've been doing it for a few months, have kind of a handful of clients. Super rewarding, and I love it. Um, so if you're interested there, let me know. So, on my way to 200 videos for the year and just wanted to share a big learning that I've had recently, which is podcasting in audio format is really easy. You have a mic, you turn it on, and you talk, and you can have a Google Doc over here, and you can be in the car, and you can do it anywhere you want. You might not know this, but probably about half of the rogue startups episodes, um, back in the, like, early teens years, um, I was in the car, so I'd have an episode and a recording with Dave. I'd be doing an interview. I was on the road all the time for my sales job. Then back when I was in corporate, um, and, you know, frickin 02:00 would come, I'd be on the road, I'd pull over, I'd hotspot my computer to my phone, and I had a little headset I would plug into the computer, and I would podcast right there. Um. That's terrible, right? Don't do that. You don't have to do that. But the converse of that is my office set up here is really nice. I got these beautiful lights. I got a really, I got a $800 camera. I got a light behind me to look like I'm in some kind of gaming setup or something. Um, and the thing I've learned is video is really hard, right? I think it's no surprise. Um, I was talking with Spencer Hawes on this podcast, um, recently about how, like, he's pretty big into video. And if you know Spencer, you know, he's the SEO guy. Like, his whole niche pursuits brand is around. Like, how to identify niche content opportunities, build a site and monetize it. And to see someone like him saying, like, hey, man, I'm kind of, like, all in on YouTube. I mean, he's got writers to write content for his stuff. But I think if you asked him where his content focuses, it's all on YouTube. And so I see that, too. And so that's why I'm spending so much energy and effort putting my content hours into YouTube. But it's really hard. And so I had this 200 video kind of goal around the end of the year, and I spent most of February procrastinating and creating excuses in the form of gear fatigue and indecision. And I'll just share. So we had George Blackmon on the podcast again around the end of the year. George has worked with people like Ali Abdall, super amazing scriptwriter. And George kind of had me convinced that, like, for, for videos like this, I need to write an entire script out, which would take forever. I need to have a teleprompter in front of my camera, and I need to read the script to deliver this message. And so I spent about a month trying to do that, and it was absolutely horrible and I don't like it. And so I was trying to go down a path of creating content in a way and in a format and with a setup that I just didn't like.
[00:05:43] So this episode will go out the week after my conversation with Aaron Francis. Aaron is like me, where he's like, I don't script anything. I just kind of create some bullet points and then I shoot from the hip. It was really empowering to hear Aaron say that because, like, I respect the hell out of him. He's created several really big channels like his own and ones for his brand. And to hear someone say, like, I just don't script, maybe I'll shoot it twice, which is pretty interesting. But I don't script, like, was. Was really nice. And so, anyways, just an update on my 200 video journey. I've been creating three or four videos a week for the last couple of weeks, so I'm definitely still behind. Cause I basically did nothing for February. But I have a process now for how I'm thinking about creating these videos and I'm doing it. So, like, that's the biggest thing, is, like, I have two days a week in the mornings where I don't have any calls and I'm just shooting video content. And it's. And it's really important and really kind of powerful to me. I think if I get to this 200 videos in the year mark, I will see a big improvement in kind of transition in my brand and the Kastos brand and for this podcast. So hope you keep me accountable to this goal. I'll post a more specific update. I don't know exactly how many videos. I think I'm at like a dozen or so at this point. So I definitely have some, some way to go.
[00:07:10] But this is the goal and I hope that I make it. So stay tuned. And another thing, while we're on the content bandwagon is the format of this show. I've been doing a lot of interviews and I really, really like them. I like talking to interesting people, learning things. I've talked to some people who, frankly, I never thought I would get a chance to talk to through this podcast, and it's opened so many doors.
[00:07:35] The format of this show has been. Since Dave left the show last year, the format of this show has largely been interviews because I like doing interviews. That's how the show started. Dave was the third guest on this show and then became the co host for a very long time. And I like doing interviews largely. And then I contrast that, which is what I talked about at the beginning, which is I get way more feedback from you all listeners when I have solo episodes and talk about what's going on in my business. So I put this out on Twitter the other day, got a lot of feedback and a lot of interesting perspective. Some of it was, what about doing both, like a mini update at the beginning and then do an interview. I like that some was just do what you want, which was. Was empowering, but, like, not as specific and helpful. And some was just alternate and just do like a solo episode and an interview.
[00:08:31] What I've landed on is I think I'll do the latter, which is I'll have full on solo episodes like this, and then I'll have interviews. And because what I want is for you, as a listener to say, like, oh, Dan Andrews is on the show. Ooh, I love Dan in the Tropic club. Yay, I want to listen to that. Or, hey, I only listen to Craig's updates. I just want to listen to those. And so instead of mixing those two together, I'm going to do solo episodes. Probably not say, one in every three are going to be solo episodes. That feels like a good cadence. Once a month feels a little infrequent. Every other episode is too much pressure on me because then I have to come up with super interesting stuff to talk about. And to date, I don't get a lot of questions from y'all about, like, hey, Craig, how would you think about this? Or something like that, you know, rob at startups for the rest of us. I think a lot of his solo episodes are listening lists, answering listener questions.
[00:09:25] I'm certainly no rob walling, so I don't have a bunch of folks asking me questions.
[00:09:30] But if you have questions, send them over podcastups.com or hit me up on Twitter. I'm hecragh hewitt. Would love to answer them here on the show. So that's kind of in terms of like update on the format of show. Gonna be a mix of solo episodes like this, probably every third episode, and then interviews mostly because, like, I love talking to interesting people that are doing cool stuff. Everything is about sales and marketing, you know, from the YouTube series to I'm working on a sales series right now, talking a lot about, you know, mindset and entrepreneurism and growth and things like that. So that's what to expect here coming. And that's the decision as of today. Today's April Fools. So this is not an April fool's joke, but that's the decision as of today. And the last thing I wanted to share is a bit of founder minimalism that I've really tried to embrace recently.
[00:10:20] Kastos and the journey we went on is we started as a really specific product.
[00:10:25] We got a little less specific when we went from, you had to use WordPress at the beginning, now you don't. So you can use it for whoever we went, private podcasting and paid subscriptions and all this kind of stuff.
[00:10:38] I think this is the natural path of a horizontal product, is you're like, hey, I could do this, do this, or I could do this, I could do this. And that's alluring, right? Because you can say, like, hey, the path to growth maybe is just doing more stuff. So we raised money and we joined tiny seed and we did a lot of stuff. And some of it paid off and we learned a lot, right? So I think if nothing else, like, we learned a lot through those, through those explorations. But I do wonder, and the place we're at now is, I wonder if we just did one thing really, really, really well, would we be better off today just with how the market is and AI, and we are not raising any more money. We're operating as a profitable bootstrap company from here. We have to say, okay, we're going to be as focused as possible. And an interesting thing from that is we intentionally are developing less product, we're doing less marketing overall, and the results in the business are better than when we did a whole bunch of stuff. So we're growing faster than we were before.
[00:11:45] Our team is smaller, which is a painful transition for any founder to go through. But, you know, we had to make those difficult decisions and the business is a lot healthier. And so it's kind of a, an exploration and a journey that I think a lot of us have to go on is like, I want to do everything. I want to be everywhere all at once. And the reality is like, you got to have enormous pockets to do all of that really well. And it's a trap that I think a lot of us fall into is like, hey, if I'm trying to be on seven different channels and have a podcast and have a YouTube channel and develop three different kind of icps for my product that I'm going to go sell to, you're going to do all that really poorly. And that's probably a trap. And so I would just kind of, uh, encourage you to say, like, hey, am I, am I niched down in my focus even internally, as much as possible? Have I thrown everything that's not ultra important out and just focused on one thing? And so I think that we largely have at this point, and it's really empowering because I know to say no to almost everything. The team is learning to say no. And a feature request comes in and if it's not aligned with that one super specific thing, then the answer is just no. Or, hey, we'll put it in the backlog and maybe we'll get to it. But the default answer is no. It's provided a lot of clarity for, for the team because before they were like, oh, we got to do this and then we got to do this and we got to try to appease this person to where we just go like, look, we got one thing we're trying to do here, you know, and so growth and sales and product and success are all aligned on that one thing. So that has been, I feel like a mature thing to recognize for me is at the beginning, it's easy to just say yes to everyone. And actually my coaching and working with a bunch of other founders has really taught me this and kind of reinforced it is, you know, as I go to talk to other founders and they're like, oh, I'm doing this and I'm doing this. And the biggest problem is I just don't know where to focus my time. You know, frankly, I look back at those coaching sessions and say, wow, like, I'm guilty of that too. I ought to, like, look in the mirror and take my own advice and say, why are you doing all of this shit? Why don't you just do one thing and do it really well? And you probably can grow a few million dollar business from there. You know, if you want to be ClickUp or Facebook or whatever and be a bajillion dollar company, then you got to do a whole lot of stuff. But for those of us operating in this kind of micro SaaS business space, you just don't like. If you want a couple million dollar business, you need one thing that you do and you deliver it to one type of customer, usually on one channel, and do that really well and keep doing it over and over. Just be the best at that one thing. So, six years in, I'm finally realizing this, but hopefully sharing this spurs some thoughts and some light bulbs go off in your head about this, and you say, hey, that's cool. I should think about how I can reduce the world and the scope of things that I'm considering doing in my business. Do less, actually, and just do it better. The last thing I just want to update on is personal brand and social media again, talking with Aaron Francis about this and the episode that will have went out previous to this one. Aaron's got a really strong personal brand, both on YouTube and on Twitter, and it's allowing him to launch his new thing after getting laid off. And so I'll just say that, like, I've seen this over and over and over, that, like, the people with a personal brand and audience and reach, and that's everything from social to email to having a podcast like this are just playing by different rules than people who don't. And so, um, you know, for a long time, this podcast has been my personal brand, and it still very much is. I would say it is the thing that if I want to put a piece of content out, like, this is, this is kind of where it goes. Um, but I am using Twitter a lot more. I am using LinkedIn a little bit. Uh, and I'm building an email list. And so I don't. I don't have all the answers. I don't have a massive personal audience or brand. I don't, you know, this show is not going to have 20,000 downloads. That would be amazing. But, um, it is something that I look at as like, a bit of fortification and kind of risk management, right? Is like, hey, if I have a strong personal brand, my options are more open than if I don't. And then I look at like, hey, when I go to do my next thing, and that even could be within castos, like, hey, I want to go hire a person. If I have a strong personal brand and they know me already, which has happened within castos, we've hired people who knew of me through podcasting. That's awesome. Such a leg up. And so what I've kind of come to realize is like, a personal brand might not have any direct impact on you and your business, but it's probably going to have quite a bit of indirect impact, kind of just making the things you want to do easier.
[00:16:41] And so that's kind of where I am, is obviously putting more time and effort into this podcast because we've been really consistent. We're out about a month in terms of interviews that have recorded and doing solo episodes like this, doing content on YouTube, being more present on places like LinkedIn and Twitter, and really just kind of trying to say, how can I bolster myself in the online and entrepreneurism and SaaS world? Because I love it. I want to be here and I want to. I want to make my journey as effective and impactful as I can and kind of spread the word of whatever I'm doing as much as possible. And I think that's helping castos, it's helping, you know, growing my coaching side business and it's doing a lot to, to just kind of further the efforts that I'm putting in. So just kind of an update on kind of where I'm on personal brand. I definitely, I definitely kind of poo pooed social media for a long time, but have made some amazing connections there. And, and then those people ended up being on the podcast, or I met them on a podcast and then connected and reconnected through social media. So just to say it's a really powerful tool. I get that it's hard and we all burn out, but the season that I'm in right now is I'm pretty bullish on it and want to continue to foster really positive relationships and community across the content and the platforms that I operate on. So that's it for the solo episode. I hope this was interesting and helpful.
[00:18:12] You know, definitely a different tone than the last couple that I've had. Things are going well in the business going. Things are going well for me personally and just want to share through this kind of solo episode, like where I am, how I'm thinking about a few things, and kind of what the path forward looks like from here. So, as always, if you're enjoying this, please share this episode with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. If you're watching this on YouTube, please like, subscribe, smash the bell and we'll see you next time.
