Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Speaker A: Hey there. Welcome back to rogue startups. I'm your host, Craig Hewitt. Today I am joined by Alison French. Allison runs a boutique sales and marketing consultancy all around, mostly b, two B SaaS startups. Allison and I dig into everything from ICP and go to market strategy to the challenges that Bootstrap founders have and, like, how we can all overcome those prioritization and delegation. And I love how Allison has been in the trenches as a startup founder before, is working with startups now, and really gets a lot of the pains that we all have. She has some really, really practical advice about, like, if I was just starting today, what I would do and how would I grow my business and what is arguably, like, the most competitive time to run a SaaS business. So I hope you enjoy this conversation with Allison. I had a ton of fun, and I hope you enjoy. So I saw. I saw a tweet today from Nathan Barry of Convertkit. You know convertkit, email marketing software. Yeah. Yeah. And he said something to the effect of what we were just saying, which is like, I have a ton of ideas for how to. How to grow convertkit, but really, it all comes down to execution. Ideas are cheap. Execution is the hard thing, 100%.
Why do you think we all suck at this? Because, like, everyone that I know is like, oh, we could do this and we could do that. And we've even had. We've even had people on our team who, you know, you should kind of be doing, like, personality tests on employees to make sure you have, like, an equal mix of, like, idea people and doers and people in the trenches and people who are connectors and all these. It's. It's more detailed than that. But, like, generally, why do you think, I'll say, like, zero to a few million a year really struggle with this? Because that's most people that listen to this show, like, why do you think we struggle with this so much?
[00:02:03] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think it's, like, the personality type that makes us a founder. It's why we all get into this. We want to be in torture bone destiny. We don't want to be, like, tucked into a box. But that's also why people never really grow out of that. We'll call it one mil ARR, maybe three mil. It's because they're just, like, comfort space. This is what I know really well. I mean, you get into Jim Collins and, like, hiring the right people on the bus and what seats are they in? And it's like that gap, I think, is where most founders get stuck. And in some ways, there's nothing wrong with abilities like consistent mil ARR, if that's what you're okay with. It's just recognizing, getting out of your own way and how to outsource. It's been my biggest struggle.
The gift of my previous startup was having to get really smart on what could you delegate, and even smarter this time around on how can you delegate cheaply? Because I'm trying to boost drop as well. Like, I just had kind of a bad taste in my mouth from a couple investor meetings last time where I had a plan, I knew how I was gonna get there, and they literally were like, okay, great, come back next week with like double the revenue and we'll give you twice as much money. I'm like, that's like, not the lifestyle I want to live. And so I, this time around, really want to bootstrap. And so how do you bootstrap? How do you get things off your plate in an economical way and still achieve everything you're trying to get at? And I think that is like the founder's curse right now for most people is who do you go to? Like, okay, upward. Great, good luck. That takes a lot of trial and error and trying to find those really consistent resources for execution so that you know how to easily get something off your plate.
[00:03:42] Speaker A: Cool. Let's talk about hiring, because I think that is, you get to a point, and this is everything is right. How can I hire people to, in my mind, do one of a few different things? One, take the shit off my plate that I don't want to deal with.
One is do the thing that I'm really bad at, that you could be better at. Or three, free my time up so that I can do something higher leverage.
But I mean, shit, even at a million bucks a year, take it you don't have that many hires to make to still have a profitable company. You have five people on your team. Maybe if you're going to pay fucking servers and taxes and all this kind of stuff, a million bucks just doesn't go that far.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: And reinvesting in growth and how you're going to get there, I mean, I feel like headcount is the death of startups. Like going too big, too fast, trying to get people in the business. Like, I'm a big believer in investing in subject matter, expert contents until you're calling it like three mil, five mil ARR. And so really leaning into gig economy and you're just saying like, okay, I'm going to invest in this one person who knows this, and maybe you have, I mean, my product manager, executive assistant chief of staff. I don't know exactly what her title is, but she does it all for me and she wrangles everybody and she keeps everything going. And it may, that's probably the one hire, I'd say, for every founder is getting that one person who's just really damn good at wrangling and making sure people are doing said they're going to do at the time they're going to do it, because economically it's a good hire. Like, the value I get out of her time and energy is exponential in the startup world. But I'm not looking at a six, seven figure, not seven figure, six figure salary where you get in that world when you're trying to hire a strategic marketer, a strategic salesperson, and that's really a hard investment. Like, I would much rather invest into growing the business business and bringing a bunch of people on staff, but then I'm also not a huge fan of managing employees. So I think that's my personal startup curse.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: Yeah, no, and I think a lot of people that listen to this show would align with that. It's like, hey, I wanna, and I do too, right? I wanna have a fractional marketing team. I think that's a great way to go. You can have three maybe subject matter experts in certain aspects, depending on what your growth pattern is. Um, and you act as marketing manager. That's kind of where I am these days. But, but let's, let's take, take a step back and. Right, you're designing the kind of dream team fractional marketing group. Like, what does that look like? Yeah, what does that look like? And then we might have to answer, like, how do you know which seats you need to fill after that?
[00:06:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, that's, and I think every stage of business is different, but I think getting really good content writers on staff is super important. People who know and can speak to the value proposition, who really share the same voice as the founder, even just good copy editing to make it easier. For a founder, I think that's really important.
It's hard to run a bunch of channels when you're growing a startup. And so it's what channel makes sense now and then. I mean, that's my whole approach to startup growth right now is like bite sized chunks. I had an investor tell me like, yeah, you can want to do everything, you can stack up the list, but you have to turn it over and think of it as a domino. And which one are you going to do first. And so I've heard you talk about that in your podcast, really leaning into what one thing are we going to focus on next? And I think that's a really big part of it. And who you bringing onto the team. And I think that's also why the fractional team works so well, because you can ebb and flow and you're not necessarily feeling like, sorry, you have to lay off this person because we're not going in that direction anymore. Yeah, I think getting someone who's really good, ultimately, overall, it doesn't matter what channel. In understanding the correlation between whatever marketing or sales tactic is and ultimately revenue, because that's actually a skill set that doesn't exist often. And people can tell me this, they can come at me, that's cool.
I would generally say that's like the, I've always said, like, I'm super passionate about the intersection of sales and marketing because I've been a marketer my whole career. But then when you become a founder, you have to sell.
And only then, and I'll call it five years ago did I realize, like, oh my gosh, now I understand why sales would say these leads are crap. Like, I did it convert like they interest, but that person is in the wrong department. They have no buying authority, or they.
[00:08:13] Speaker A: Convert and they're a shitty customer or whatever.
[00:08:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I get it now. And so I think understanding, no matter who a startup hires, does that person ultimately understand, like, the dollar we are investing in XYZ initiative needs to translate to sales and being able to pull back holistically and like, have that conversation and some of that's founder driven.
But like I said, I was a marketer for 20, almost 20 years before I really got clued into that's actually kind of a novel concept. And I mean, that gets into whole silos of sales and marketing. But ultimately, I got started in e commerce. I think that's what was so fun is e commerce is just straight. You're chasing revenue the entire time.
It's a longer sales cycle, so it's harder to correlate what you're doing as a marketer to revenue.
[00:09:06] Speaker A: Yeah, I struggle immensely with this because if you asked me, like, Craig, where do you get your host on their hosting, on our SaaS side, where do you get your hosting customers from?
I would tell you, I think we get them from content marketing because it's really the only marketing that we do aside from we have integrations and some partnerships and stuff that's set out there. But if we pull up our Google Analytics graph, it would show you that 15%, maybe, of our new trials in a month come from content directly. Someone lands on a blog post and then they go and they start a trial. And so I think I'm a liar in saying that our leads and our customers come from content marketing, but I don't know where else they would come from because we don't do anything else. Like, how do you, like, square that to say? Well, the data tells me this is not the answer, but I kind of say, I don't know what else it could be and how do I go figure it out?
[00:10:07] Speaker B: Well, I'm going to be the perfect example. I think I heard about you six or twelve months ago. I saved you to a Toby tab that I have called tools I want to explore one day. And so only once I decided I was ready to go into podcast world, what did that look like? I was like, you know, there's that thing I saved and so there'd be no way to track that. I heard about you on a podcast at one point in time. And so I think that is part of it similar to looking at brand. I think people discount brand immensely in searches. Oh, it's just brand search. I don't want to pay for brand. I don't want to do this. Yeah, but that's coming from somewhere and not paying attention to that. I mean, I would say if your only channel is content marketing, it's so easy to attribute it to content marketing. Like, that's just a handful. But when you start expanding and you're going to start looking at paid and you're going to start looking at Instagram and you're going to start looking at these different things, that's where it gets really, really complicated to figure out, is this worth my time and giving yourself a long enough sales cycle to figure that out? I mean, like, I could go back and check my Toby tab. Like, it's probably been six months since I've heard about it. Like, from an contribution window.
No traditional digital marketer is ever going to look at that. And so some of it is just like praying to the long tail gods and just hoping it works. But I think it's really hard when you start putting serious, serious dollars behind it. Like, forget what we were trying to do with like, test LinkedIn campaign to a specific audience, and it was like a minimum $150 a day. And you're like, okay, ten day test. Like, that's burning through some serious cash just to see if something's going to work. I don't know, I'd say you could say landing pages, I mean, all that. I think really it's a brutal attribution.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think where we are at this point is just kind of like on off tests. You know, we kind of say, like we're going to do a bunch of content and we're just going to see, like, we're just going to see how, what happens. But, but then there's like the long tail of it. Like we went through an enormous content push in October and November. We published probably 75 articles to our blog in two months and it was awesome, right? We have, we have a massive SEO footprint and all this kind of stuff and like, nothing happened, you know, and now, now trials are going up. So I'm like, is this from fucking four months ago that, like, it's finally paying off? I don't, I don't know, but yeah, seasonality.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: Like, I don't know if your business has seasonality, but I have a friend who used to be a colleague who now works at Walmart and she and I are having a debate on this type of attribution with long sale cycles. And she's like, I have a couple week window where I make decisions on my budget for the year. So if you miss me, you're going to be nurturing me for a year before I have the ability to come back and say yet. So it's like looking at sales cycle length too can be such a confusing metric for people because it doesn't take into account seasonality or your ability to actually purchase.
That will muck things up immensely when you're trying to see what works. I mean, I remember turning off influencer marketing once at a children's nutrition company and we can't get the attribution on it. And then sales significantly declined over the next six weeks. It was just like a very obvious, like, there is no correlation. But what gets hard is when you're starting to get into different channels.
Just trying to think of the different channels I'm running for people. Paid is more easy from like an immediate touch point. But look at cold prospecting. The one I'm pretty obsessed with right now is like, I have 540 ish prospects right now that are my prospects and that's who I'm working. And so it's pretty easy to see, like, if you flip it and you say, like, this is who I'm going after.
[00:13:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:55] Speaker B: Then it's a little easier to come back and say, this is what's working. But this, I don't love the concept in marketing right now for b two B. It's like, okay, LinkedIn, I'm going after these people in this audience, and then you roll over to Instagram and you tell them the same thing. And then you have your email list that you're trying to do and you have your SEO that you're trying to do. Like, I'm just kind of done with that because ultimately I know who I want to work with. And so I'm just going to play the long game and say that, like, okay, these 540 prospects really are people. I believe in their products. I love what they're doing. I think I can help them.
And at some point they're probably going to need some help. So why not just stay in front of the audience? Like, for you guys, for podcasting? That's such a complicated topic, though. It's like, podcasting is so broad. It's consumer, it's business.
It's a lot harder to lean into a super narrow ICP and then say hell or high water. I'm going to get in front of them.
[00:14:54] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think. I think the way we do that is just with content, right? Is we want to surround this topic so thoroughly that anything that you're looking at around content, around podcasting, we show up, right? It's HubSpot, surround sound idea, right? Like, we want to show up everywhere, reviews, YouTube, podcasts, paid, maybe, like, we don't do a lot of paid, but like, we, we try to show up a lot of places.
[00:15:19] Speaker B: God. But then you get into intent to purchase and that is like, marketing is. It's like, what is the intent of someone and where are they in that buying journey? And how can you make sure that you're focused your time on the right area?
[00:15:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, at this point, like, we've written and covered all the bottom of the funnel stuff. We can. We have most all the middle of the funnel. And so, like, at this point in our content journey, there is quite a bit of, like, top of funnel low buying awareness or buying intent for our solution. But it's almost a brand play to say, like, fuck. I was searching for microphones and casto showed up in like reviews for like five different microphones. I was doing, oh, I'm going to go start a podcast, Gus. I saw them so much before. Like, I might as well, right? It's just, I mean, you see some of these brands, HubSpot, Zapier, you know, convertkit, like we were talking about. Like, they just show up all around the topic that you're searching for.
And so you say, gosh, I trust them for some reason.
[00:16:21] Speaker B: I think it's the bootstrapping part that makes it like extra excruciating when you're trying to take a dollar of profit to reinvest into growth. How do you know what you're focusing on? My mind is always on, like, I'm always laser focused on ICP. Like, who do I want to go after?
What does that look like as an individual human? Not like, okay, I want to target c suite executives that live in the California area, laser focused human.
And then trying to figure out how can I surround them. So like, there is a tool called versium. I don't know if you've explored it, but it is, it is mass audience media. So think of like retargeting, but proactively. And so if you can curate your content buyers and you're like, okay, who has great newsletters or who's doing great posting, like, you can build a prospect list and then proactively nurture that small segment, which is cool because then you are front of mind when they are getting ready to make that decision rather than hoping they've remembered you. I mean, honestly, retargeting is the first thing I tell every company to make sure they have on is because, and being really savvy with what you're putting in, retargeting to build credibility and education and not just running like a silly brand ad because ultimately people are telling you they're interested and just how long do you have to stay in front of them and being realistic in the metrics of performance for that? Because I think that's the other curse as founders, is when people get caught up in ROI and customer acquisition costs and oh, scale back here, cut that. And you're like, but those people came to your site from the exact initiatives you said you wanted and now you're just going to abort because you don't want to spend the $50 this week, that campaign, that makes no sense to me. But yeah, laser, focus on ICP. Like, that's my kind of sweet spot right now of just end long sale cycles. I don't know what your sales cycle is.
I would have no idea. I just know my personal journey in podcasting.
[00:18:22] Speaker A: I think one, like, I love the concept. I've heard it referred to as your dream 100. I think this is a Russell Brunson thing, like dream 100. Just build a list of people you want to work with and especially as you get more b. Two b. Two b is a spectrum to me. That gets really easy and smart. And the thing I love about it is you just put your blinders on and say, I'm not going to go write this random ass blind blog post. I'm going to go comment on their LinkedIn post and I'm going to participate in their webinar and I'm just going to show up and I'm going to add value and I'm going to participate in their world and kind of take an ABM approach.
Yeah, that largely doesn't work for us. Right. Because we are kind of a one to many. We can't spend that much energy or money on a customer for on the hosting side. But yeah, I think your journey is similar, is pretty representative overall, is I want to start a podcast. Oh, that's hard. I don't know all this stuff.
I got to go off and do my research, get my moxie up, and then you're ready to go and we need to be there.
I think that's representative.
[00:19:33] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what you're saying. Execution, it's just like in a founder, you can only execute on so many things. So what can you get off your plate? And that's just a huge part of it. Like, I would say, yes, you guys are one to many, but I would think you could build a pretty targeted audience, be it founder, job titles or whomever, that you could, in a very cost effective way, go after using some of this kind of like mesh audience tactics where you just know that your automation's in place. And I heard you talk about cold email on one of your podcasts, and it's true. Like, cold email sucks. I hate it. It feels authentic, but it works. But it only works if you're authentic in it. Like, I was doing a project for my kids dance school and it got the VP of SeaWorld entertainment reaching out to me and I was like, huh? If anyone tells me cold email is dead, like, this is the perfect example of how undead it is to get a blank email from the VP of events from SeaWorld saying, hey, we'd love to talk to you, but then I do it for work. And you definitely get the, like, I'm not interested. I'm like, of course you're not, but like half the fly. So we'll go there. I think there's just a balance of who can you go after in right time and right place. And I think a lot of businesses aren't prepared to play the long game. Like the real gritty.
[00:20:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:57] Speaker B: Twelve to 18 month long game. It's a lot easier to chase current revenue. And I think because we put interesting such.
I don't know if it's industry standards that have leaned so hard into measurement, like forms of measurement that prevent marketers from playing the long game, but it's like customer acquisition costs. I mean, that's just averages. You're just looking at how much you spent and how many customers you quiet acquired, and it's like, it's just an average people. Like, it's not some magic number and then drilling into different campaigns. And I just want people to be fully prepared for what it takes to get to that one prospect.
[00:21:40] Speaker A: So let's get really practical.
You are the founder of Kastos. You just launched your $1,000 a month Mrr. What do you do today to grow the business?
Listeners of this show are largely, like, bootstrapped or mostly bootstrapped b, two b ish, but not super b, two b. Like enterprise. Yeah.
And most need to mostly bootstrap it. So, like, what's your, what's your kind of go to game plan for growing a business these days?
[00:22:16] Speaker B: 100%. Say it starts with who your prospects are. Like, in your case, I would absolutely be going after founders and I would probably isolate that down into either a certain level of revenue. I love Apollo IO for data hacking. I think it's just a really affordable tool that gives you a lot of data. Go in and look at what marketing headcount do they have? Do you have less than two marketing people? What is their headcount growth over the past two years? Did they just get funding? What are the signals for your specific audience that would tell you these people are making some moves? Um, maybe it's content creation. Maybe it's looking through an SEO tool to see who is investing in content creation and putting out new pages on their website, looking at those companies and then taking those companies into Apollo and trying to figure out who those main leaders are and just offering advice. Hey, have you ever thought about this? Happy to have a conversation. And I know it depends on price point. Like, some people can't afford to have a conversation for everything. Yeah, but you can put a Vidyard video in there that speaks slightly more personal and you offer service. I think if you are able to laser focus into signals, Google alerts, that's where I get most of my progress specs. I start with Google alerts. I have a couple signals that I've looked at that I feel like are good fits for me. It's things that I feel good about and then that gives me my companies and then I'm going into Apollo to find my prospects and then I'm layering in. I mean, there's been times where I've layered in time zones based on my family's childcare commitments. So it's like, I love east coast clients because I can get my work done by noon and like prospect after east coast businesses and then you just keep laser focused. And then it's like, okay, here is my prospect list. And so now what? Like where can I lean into automation? Or where can I lean into some of this matched audience, media or other tactics to stay front of mind? And I think then it just becomes a knowledge of tech stack and recognizing you can't do it all. Like, that's probably the part I see, like client growing startup VP of sales, probably all in comp package of $200,000. But like, they're not willing to invest in $1,000 in automations and tech stack. They're like, oh, you can just figure it out yourself. You're like, do you really want that person to figure it out themselves?
[00:24:42] Speaker A: That's crazy.
[00:24:43] Speaker B: Not so. I think that is it too, is really leaning into like, where can you focus your time? Are you willing to get on calls? If you're not willing to get on calls, who are you going to bring in to get on calls for you?
And then what? That follow up cadence is, I mean, all the studies are right when they say people give up after two or three calls over it. And I think that is where it's hard for founders to turn sales over to anyone else is because no one cares as much as a founder on making it work.
If you're laser focused on your ICP and you know, these are the people I'm confident could benefit from me, it's really easy to stay in front of them over time. Maybe it's like, hey, new case study in your space, or it doesn't have to be as frequent, but it becomes a lot easier to add value to them personally. And since you've profiled people that are all kind of similar, you can do it on a mass scale. But I think the problem becomes, do you have the knowledge on tech stack? So if you're a technical founder and you don't know sales and marketing, where do you go? How do you get help? What help do you need? Like, how do you narrow down the tech stack that's fit for your business? How do you not end up with like tech stack bloat where you have five tools and they almost all do the same thing. Because this contractor said this and that contractor said that. That's like, the trickiest part I see small businesses growing, startups facing is, I know I need help. Like, cool strategy wise, high level. I get it. Like, I know I need help. I just don't know where to go for the help because I don't want to spend a fortune on, like, a full service agency. I don't necessarily want to hire someone in the house. That's just the hardest part right now.
[00:26:27] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I mean, you and I were talking about this separately. Is that like, in my coaching, about a quarter of the clients I get on discovery calls with say, I've done this before, I generally know what I'm doing. I just need help executing. And they don't need a coach, they need a consultant. They need a doer. Talking about what we talked about personality types before, I'm not the one to go run your sales playbook and get on calls and stuff for you at this point in my career, but it is super interesting that even for experienced founders, there is this barrier of, I know what I should be doing, but for whatever kind of, like, psychological reason, I'm just not doing it. And I'm guilty of it, too. I mean, we have.
I have this tab in my in chrome that has been sitting here for two months, and it's just like, I look at it and I'm like, fuck this fucking tab. This thing that I. I know I need to do and I don't want to do it. And I know it's important, so I can't just close it, but I probably will just close it at some point and just never do it. It blows my mind that I'm still after, like, eight years in this mental cycle sometimes, but I think everyone is.
[00:27:43] Speaker B: I know my chiefs of staff is expert on project management, so she gave me the, okay, here's your sauna. Here's your top three for the day. It's probably got 30 every day.
[00:27:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:53] Speaker B: And it just eventually all go through and be like, okay, I guess that's a next week, which probably means, like, two months, six months, never.
And, like, the part where I have figured out the only way I have got movement is knowing who I could instantly send a project to and be done and just be done. So I have, like, three reliable upwork contractors I use for different subject matter areas. Like, one's my, like, excel hacker wizard guy and one's my, like, research person. And so that part has been game changing is knowing that, like, I'm not going to sit here and try to figure this out myself or like, try to wrap my head around. I'm going to like, loosely frame a project, send it to them. It might be a couple rounds of revision, but at least it's done. So that part has helped me immensely. And then the other part is not being afraid just to post random stuff on upwork. As I'm like, I'm kind of struggling in this area.
I don't actually know what I need. But when you start to review, I mean, you'll get a lot of bad proposals, but when you start to review the proposals and drilling into who is responding, I just got this amazing semi retired man from Ireland helping me with DMarc stuff.
Google's big change was d mark in February. And I just had this idea and I was like, I want to know if of my prospect list. What? People don't have a DMarc record. So I can just nicely reach out to them and let them know, hey, you don't have a Dmarc. It'd be really helpful to do this. I'm like, there's got to be a way. Couldn't figure it out with my normal, like, hacker person. And so I just posted on upwork. The guy was so sweet. He got back to me in like an hour. He had it done by the end of the day. So I'd say that's probably it too. It's like, just throw it out to the universe and see what happens. That's been my biggest progress maker so far is like, I have my graphic designer who I adore and she does great work. And I'm like, no, I'm not gonna sit here on canva and spend an hour trying to manipulate something. I'm like, I'm just starting to send it to her now. And I think it's some of the, like, what our capabilities are, what we used to be good at. We tend to hold that and just say, oh, I can just get it done myself versus just letting go of that.
But, like, I'm sure you do, but like, I, you met Matt. I have a phone friend who I call and I'm like, shit, what's like, I'm stuck in this and then it gets me out. But upwork is probably as like solopreneur the been the greatest way I have figured out how to get out of that. Like, I need to do this, but it's just not happening. And can I take a 70% solution and get it good enough for now?
[00:30:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:38] Speaker B: And then, I mean, I've have two contractors I rely on regularly, are crazy affordable at helping me scale.
[00:30:46] Speaker A: That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah, I mean, that kind of geo arbitrage is still massive, even today. I mean, it's been going on for a dozen years probably, but it's still massive. Yeah. We have about half our team is overseas, half is here in North America. And it's amazing. I mean, it's half the price, at least, you know, a third if you consider taxes and benefits and stuff.
[00:31:05] Speaker B: It's. But the hurdle is just putting it out there, even if you don't have it. Like, yeah, nicely packaged in a perfect way. Because then you can find someone who can help you and get it going. And sometimes, and then I will say, the other part is, just as a founder, you're never going to find someone who can sell as good as you can. Like, ever. Like, ever. And that's just the reality of it. No matter how big you are, a founder will always have the credibility and the chops to sell.
So don't go out there looking for someone to sell for you go out there and look at how can you clone yourself through video and automation and other ways to add your value to people without having to fully remove yourself from the sales process.
I have this flow that it takes, I think, twelve touch points before I actually have to get involved.
[00:31:59] Speaker A: And it's awesome.
[00:32:01] Speaker B: It's my reminders. I mean, I sent that to you the first time I messaged you. I was like, your automation process is fantastic.
I think it's. A lot of people don't recognize, because it's not an area of experience, how much they can lean into automations or tech stack to slowly remove themselves from the process of selling and not run the risk of $150,000 salary plus commission. And, oh, guess what? You're still in every freaking call because people want to buy from the founder.
[00:32:36] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
I was on a call with a prospective client a couple weeks ago, and they were pretty small, still looking to raise some money to hire a sales team to figure out sales.
And there was like an advisor on the call, too. And I was like, you know, biting my tongue because, like, as a coach, I'm finding, like, you're not supposed to just say, that's fucking dumb. You're supposed to say, oh, interesting. Like, what do you think the implications of that would be? Or, you know, what kind of sops and playbooks do you have and how repeatable is your sales process and all this kind of stuff?
And turns out like, no, no, that none of that exists. And he, and he, you know, I get it though. Like, he just wanted to hire away the problem. He wanted to abdicate kind of the problem. Like he say, fucking 200 grand, figure it out.
[00:33:33] Speaker B: It's going to follow you forever. I just had a client that I was listening to sales calls and they wanted to hire people. And I'm listening to sales calls and I'm watching people's language on the calls, and I'm like, we don't have product market fit yet, and there's something wrong with pricing. And guess what?
A, no matter how senior salesperson, they will never be able to close those deals unless they have, what's the word? Like the gusto to like, go for it. Because I think most people want to check with the founder first. Hey, do you mind if I manipulate that? You can't do it in real time. A founder in real time can be like, ooh, they're missing something. I'm going to on the fly correct this, get the deal, and then re rinse and repeat for the next time. And so I think every time someone tries to hire a way sales, it's like, okay, well, let's hire away the initial demo call, and we're going to insert some videos that talk about your product and who you are and all about the value. So you get the perceived value to price out of the way, and we're just going to really lean into the good stuff of what you're offering.
And then when the founder gets on the call, maybe it's only one call that they have to be on, or maybe it's just like missing call. But I think just walking away from sales is just so dangerous.
It just one problem to the next.
[00:34:57] Speaker A: It's hard. I mean, we tried to do it and largely failed.
And interesting, we didn't have a sales process or a product market fit problem. We had a lead velocity problem. We weren't generating enough leads for the salespeople to be on five calls a day and closing deals. So that was our learning was we had product market fit, we had a sales process. A lot of it was documented. We onboarded the reps pretty well, but we didn't have a way to scale leads from me taking the calls, a handful a week to two full time people that all they're doing is sales and they're not a founder and the marketing person and all this kind of stuff at the same time. So that was our lesson. And that's what I told someone recently. I was like, they want a different person. Like, hey, I want to go hire a sales team, blah, blah. I'm like, cool, just make sure you have enough for this new mouth to feed. This new mouth, right? Because otherwise, like, a terrible thing I see is like, oh, we're just going to go hire an AE and they're going to prospect too. And I'm like, yo, dog, like, you want this person to have one thing they do, which is like, get on the phone and close a deal, right? So you want, like, pipeline leading up to this point, and that's like a SDR or whatever you call it, BDR, uh, or marketing, you know, product qualified leads, whatever it is. And then this person that gets on the phone and closes them. And then success, right? Implementation, onboarding, whatever. But, like, this person should only have one job.
[00:36:31] Speaker B: I know. Or you look at, like, hours in the day and it's like, okay, four to six of your hours on calls every day. Cool hires.
[00:36:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:41] Speaker B: Like, what's your so far? Three. Cool. Hire someone for the first call and, like, work your way backwards. But I think it gets down to the execution we were talking about earlier. Like, at some point as a founder, you're like, damn, I'm sick of wearing all these hats. Like, if I could just this off my plate, it would feel so much better. And I think that's where it's like, the grittiness and the grind and, like, really recognizing client is telling you about. It's like, you know, they've been at it for four years. He's been grinding for four years. And they have some traction. They're gonna change the world. I mean, it's, in healthcare, they're doing amazing things. They will change the world when it comes to helping support cancer patients.
But four years in, you're like, I'm ready to have this off my plate. And the reality is, can you. And what risk do you take as a founder by trying to outsource it versus.
But like, to your point about lead problems, that's a real problem. Like, how do you leads when you're bootstrapping and how do you find people? And then, yeah, SEO takes six months to kick in.
[00:37:46] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'll just say, like, at this point, I don't think I would ever do this again because it's really hard. Like, a SaaS business, especially, like a kind of high volume, low price point. SaaS business is hard because I can't do the dream 100 very well. So it's just mass market. Uh, I can't spend a ton of time in the sales process, which is, like, where I'm best is, like, talking to humans and selling them on. On a solution. And if you don't have a bunch of money, then you're fucking doing everything, you know, like. And it's just like, I was, I was chatting with a founder the other day, and they were like, it's been this long, and we're at this point, and I'm trying to figure out, like, if this is a good business or not. And I was like, yeah, man, like, I get it. Like, I have been there and in some respects still am. Like, my business is a pretty good business, right? But it's not.
[00:38:40] Speaker B: I know, but it's not amazing.
[00:38:42] Speaker A: And so you got to kind of say, like, for its warts, it's pretty good.
[00:38:48] Speaker B: And I'll take the more authentic about, like, where you're going and lifestyle. Because I think, yeah, I think at least in my network, everyone has gotten so hungry to chase the VC money, and it's, like, glamorized, and I've landed this or I've done that and I'm chasing, and I'm like, okay, well, I'd much rather have a $1 million business that I own that I can eventually sell, or I have three little kids. It gives me the flexibility to be the mom I want to be and help support my family because San Diego is not a cheap place to live. Like, you need two incomes. And there's an element to that that I think founders forget is that, like my grandfather used to say, like, you go to work, you get paid, you come home. And I think sometimes it's easy to flip that because it's like, oh, if I can sell this for $100 million or this or that. And it's like, yeah, but you are paid to show up every day. And then it's a matter of, at what point do you say, I'm done, and, okay, time for the sale. I'm done. I'm burnt out. I'm ready for something new.
[00:39:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:51] Speaker B: And that's the next hurdle, because I don't know many founders who can just sit and be like, okay, now what?
[00:39:56] Speaker A: No, no, I don't. Like, no, never.
[00:39:59] Speaker B: Yeah, neverthat's the part where I say, like, I think we all need to have that, like, gratitude for the journey in the space that we're at because it's really easy to get caught up in the, like, oh, I'm not making as much as I could, or I could have x acquisition or that.
Some of it's lifestyle. Entrepreneurship is fabulous. Lifestyle. If you can make it work.
[00:40:21] Speaker A: Right? Right.
Yeah. And I'll just kind of end that thought with.
I think, as founders, sometimes we're guilty of letting the tail wag the dog of, oh, the company needs this, or the team needs. I love my team. Right. But, like, I have definitely.
I have definitely been guilty of me not deciding what happens, but the company and the team and the customers decide what happens. And, like, it's my business, like, if I say we're just not gonna do this anymore, like, we have some investors, but they can't really tell me what to do. But, like, I think we all paid a wage, right?
Yeah. Like, we're a little overly sensitive to that, I think. And the way I frame this that I love is just, like, if private equity bought your company today, what would they do?
And that's probably, like, if we're on a spectrum, like, we, as bootstrappers are over here in the pretty sensitive area, and they're kind of way over here, and they're just like, shark area. But, like, there's probably this happy medium in between where, like, we all probably could be a little more objective in how we make these decisions, and we would be happier and the business would be better.
[00:41:33] Speaker B: I couldn't agree more.
[00:41:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:41:36] Speaker B: Know where you want to go and, like. Yeah, let that guide you.
[00:41:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Love it. Love it. That's a cool place to end. Allison, where is the best place for folks to reach out and engage and learn more about what you all are up to?
[00:41:50] Speaker B: I'm definitely on LinkedIn. I'd say that's the primary place I spend my time nowadays. I'm Allison joy french on LinkedIn. My company is joinlto.com. So either one of those places, but LinkedIn is probably the place I'm the most active right now.
[00:42:04] Speaker A: Amazing. Awesome. Thanks so much for being on the show. I appreciate it.
