Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello. Welcome back to Rogue startups. I'm your host, Craig Hewitt. Welcome back to another solo episode with Craig. If you've been subscribed for a while, you know, I've had a bunch of great guests on the podcast recently, and I've really been enjoying these solo episodes. I've gotten a lot of really amazing feedback from you about them on Twitter and email podcastups.com. And I really just wanted to take this time, we're doing these about every third episode now. I really just wanted to take this time to kind of check in, share a bit about what's going on with me personally, professionally at Kastos. And just to kind of give a bit of the back behind the scenes, because I think, unfortunately, what is true in a lot of interview style shows is you get the, you get the polished version a little bit, right? You get the sexified up version of it. And today I'm going to share, like I have in the last couple of kind of solo episodes, like the real stuff, right? And the realness behind what's going on with me and my business in my career. I think, first of all, a bit of a teaser, have a couple of amazing guests lined up. So if you're not already subscribed, please do. I have Dan Andrews from Tropical MBA, Jason Cohen, founder of WP Engine, coming on. I've already recorded them. They're absolutely amazing. And I know you're gonna love them. So if you haven't already subscribed and you're just listening to this as a one off subscribe, you're gonna love it. But let's dive into kind of what's new with me. So recording this last day of April 2024, and it'll go out tomorrow. So this is just in Time podcasting. But one of the things I've been focused on a lot this year is really the kind of long term sustainability of Kastos as a business. We're profitable for the first time in a very long time, which is amazing. It's a really great feeling. We did this a little bit the easy way and a little bit the hard way, the easy way being growth, the hard way being reducing our team size. So I can just say that it is something I never, ever want to do again in my life, and I hope I never have to. It is. It is a risk that you take when you raise money and you have a burn rate. And that is kind of just part of what I signed up for. Unfortunately, we didn't kind of grow fast enough to be able to kind of meet the burn rate that we had. We were growing and we are growing, but just not fast enough. So we did have to reduce the team size a little bit, really over the last kind of year and a half. That all is done now, which is amazing. We're profitable, which is really cool. I started implementing the profit first system. So if you haven't seen the book, read the book, read the book. It's amazing. Absolutely. Kind of life changing for anyone as a business owner. Think of it as Dave Ramsey for business. Right? You have envelopes, things go in there. You tell your money where to go. Speaking of Tropical NBA and Dan Andrews, Dan interviewed Mike Michalowicz, the author, a couple of weeks ago on Tropical NBA podcast. If you haven't listened to it, please do. It's amazing. But Kastos, you know, running really well, largely kind of product development, support, success all taken care of. Product service side of it all taken care of. My job really is sales and marketing, which is cool because that's really what I like and where I kind of excel. And the challenge, I think, is probably the challenge a lot of you are seeing is it's freaking hard out there these days, right? Companies don't have as much business, as much money. The zero interest rate environment that we all lived in, COVID and all this kind of stuff made companies spend like there was no tomorrow. And it's just not the case now. I heard the, the analogy like, you got to go punch your competitor in the face and steal their customer. And I think that's what we have to do. And so if you have the kind of business where you have this really amazing differentiator, maybe you can use like product led growth as a way to have the product grow itself. I think we have an amazing product at castos. We do a lot of inbound organic marketing. And I talked about in a recent newsletter, like, the difference between proactive and reactive or active versus passive marketing. And I think that's really the biggest shift I've seen this year, is we have gone from just doing content marketing and SEO to really try to get out there in the face of our potential customers and engage with them directly. And largely, this looks like cold email and LinkedIn these days. You might throw Reddit in there as well. If you listen to the interview with Adam Shaw, he talked a lot about how he and his agency help kind of companies and brands go viral on LinkedIn and Reddit, and they've learned how to game the algorithm, to engage people there, drive them to some kind of lead magnet, have them enter some kind of sales funnel and convert people from there.
[00:04:30] And that's what we're doing. So we're seeing the passive or inactive marketing of content marketing and SEO for us as largely saturated. And so we are taking the approach of, hey, how can we go out into the market, find our ICP and engage with them directly? Cold email, outreach, partnerships, things like that, without getting too specific, not because I don't want to spill the beans, but like, we're not doing anything special, right? It's all the same stuff you, you see on every blog post and LinkedIn influencer, but we're just trying to do it well. One thing we're doing is we are mobilizing our team to do some of this, especially with LinkedIn. So I'm not the only person posting on LinkedIn about stuff. Our team is as well, especially on the production side. So that's really cool. And on the cold email side, man, it's just, it's the same old stuff. It's Apollo or instantly or whatever it is. Finding your ICP, crafting a good message. I'll share the one kind of nugget that we found there that's been working, interestingly, is like, the initial message that we're sending is not, hey, is this interesting? Do you want to hop on a call? But like an opt in? Like, hey, we've been helping folks solve this problem. We have a really great resource or a guide around this. Could I send that to you? So instead of just asking for a call, essentially, right off the bat, it's like, hey, I just want to give, give, give. And then if you're interested, like, hey, I can help you, like, actually solve this problem instead of just giving you information about it. So a little tidbit. If you're running cold email, maybe don't just ask for the call, but just give. Resources, gain trust. A lot of reasons, I think it helps the email algorithms get you open and sent the inbox more often, but also is genuinely helpful. So that's what's going on with Kastos. Feel very lucky to still be growing, to be profitable, and frankly, like, life is pretty good in the business these days.
[00:06:13] Yeah, feel. Feel very lucky. On the personal side of things, I've been pretty steady both with this show. You'll see that episodes have gone out every week for like a long time.
[00:06:24] And interestingly, I am looking for my very first sponsor for the podcast. So if you are a brand who wants to sponsor this very podcast and get in front of hundreds of B two b SaaS and indie maker founders every week. Get in touch with me. You can hit me up Twitter. I'm thecray hewitt or LinkedIn or shoot an email podcastups.com dot. We'd love to hear from you. We're looking for just one and one very, very aligned sponsor for this podcast. Because I don't want y'all to be listening to garbage right about some freaking mattress company or whatever. But you can imagine the types of people who would want to advertise on this show would be kind of martech sales, tech infrastructure, marketing tools, sales tools, growth types of things. So if you are one of those companies and your ICP are entrepreneurs and SaaS founders, let's talk. I would love to chat with you and see if we can make something work, but so I've been publishing this podcast consistently. I've been putting out my founder Insights newsletter very consistently. So that's Craighewitt me join. And that really is from in the trenches, one thing that I'm learning every week. So sometimes there's some crossover between what I talk about here and what happens that newsletter. But I find that writing is just a really great way for me to synthesize what I'm learning, take a step back when the camera's not rolling and the microphone's not on, and just kind of reflect on what I learned this week and then share it with y'all. So there's upwards of 300 people on that email list right now, which I know for a lot of you is chump change, right? We have 30,000 people on the castos email list. But for me, as a small kind of indie maker and brand, I'm pretty happy with it. And I think the last thing is I've been doing a little bit of one on one coaching with founders like you. And that has been really amazing and really rewarding and really fulfilling. I guess if you're interested in that, it's Craighuewitt me coaching. And they're just kind of letter to you there, right? So that'll explain everything that I do. But, but really what it is.
[00:08:29] I've had a coach for like almost my entire career in SaaS, and it's been so amazing at helping me avoid these giant mistakes and figuring out like what I should, prioritize, what I shouldn't, how to approach problems. And so I'm a little further on than some people in this journey, and I've learned a fair bit. And so I'm kind of sharing that and being a sounding board and kind of a wingman for a handful of founders at this point, so have a handful of clients, and it's really, really fun. So we meet every other week for an hour and really just talk through, like, hey, what happened in the last two weeks? What went well, what didn't, and then what, as you look to the next two weeks, what needs to be your biggest priority? What do you need to focus on in the business to move it forward to the next step? And really, that's how we all should look at our days and our weeks and our months and our quarters. And the benefit of having a coach is like, you get to verbalize that. You get to sit down and send an email to your coach the day before saying, here's the agenda of the stuff I want to talk about tomorrow. And then you got to show up and be accountable for it. And for me, it's awesome because I get to give back a little, but I'm doing some of it for free because I just really like the founders and really believe in what they're doing. Definitely charging for some of it, and it's a cool way for me to put the mirror out and have to look at it and say, shit, I just gave this advice to somebody and I'm definitely not following it. So, like, I gotta walk the walk. So it's been really super rewarding. It's just very much a part time thing at this point. Can I imagine it being a bigger thing in the future? Yeah, like, it's really cool and really rewarding. Yeah, you can probably tell. I just really like it as a thing. It gives a lot of value. I like doing some of it for free because there are some people that really need that help, that just can't afford it, and that's totally cool. If they get to the point in the future where they can afford it, that's great. If not, that's fine, too. But I mean, I have benefited so much from people like Rob Walding and Danone from Tropical NBA and Josh Pigford and all these people, all these people who have given advice and given so much time freely over the years. And I'm like, cool. This is my chance to give back a little bit. And even, like, the folks that pay, like, they just don't have access to a founder that's been doing this for eight years and has raised money and has had acquisitions, has sold things, and, like, I've got, if I take off my humble hat for a minute, like, I've got a lot of experience and while I haven't done everything. I've kind of seen a lot and have perspective on kind of most aspects of running a business. So it's been really, really rewarding and is something that I'm really keen to see where it goes in the future. I'll say that on the family side, all good here. Family's good. We are going to Europe for a week and a half in the summer, and that's going to be awesome. I am going to try very hard not to work the entire time, so we'll see how that goes. But really, as I look, we're at the end of April here. As I look at the rest of this year, you know, I kind of look at, like, I think everyone is looking for that growth driver. You know, that that's me talking with my coaching clients. That's me just in the community and having a bunch of calls with their founders. It's hard right now. So if you are flat or struggling to grow, like, it's not just you, right? So give yourself some credit, give yourself some grace, but also prioritize that, because growing is what a company should do. And if you're not growing, if you're not profitable or you don't see a path to becoming profitable, you got to figure that out. And you might have to make those hard decisions like pivoting or reducing your team size or taking a different tactical, trying different business model. Go up market, probably don't go down market, but. But like, maybe try something new, because I've. I don't want to feel old, but, like, I've been doing this a while and I've been doing it long enough to see a shift in just how business is done these days. And it really is quite different than it was, say, two or three years ago. And if we have not adapted to the new reality, then we're probably going to be left behind. And I just don't want that for you. I don't want that for me. I don't want that for anybody. So that's what I'm taking away is after April and really after the first couple months of the year said like, hey, we got to do something different. And if you're kind of stuck, too, you probably need to do something different. And if you want to chat about what that is, I'd love to help. I definitely offer, like, free consultation calls anytime. If you want to chat, just give me a shout. We'd love to see if I can help or just be a sounding board or just be a bit of a therapist and let you offload some of that kind of vial that's built up inside of us all as a founder, where, like, we got a lot of shit on our shoulders. And you're not alone. And if I can help, I would love to. That's it for me for this solo episode. I hope this was cool and fun and interesting, and if there's ever anything I can do for you, please let me know. Podcastups.com. Hit me up on Twitter, and best of luck growing your company, and we will see you in an episode real soon.
