Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] I have to apologize. I have not published an episode of this podcast in more than two months, and that's inexcusable, really. And in this episode, I want to share where I've been, why I haven't published, what's going on with me with this podcast, with the business, and what you can expect going forward. So I think, first of all, like, why the heck haven't I been publishing rogue startups? Because we're on episode three 31, and I've been doing this for 10 years, and I sure as heck should have published an episode. The reason that I didn't, aside from this, we're busy and running the business and blah, blah, blah, blah, is I haven't had a really strong conviction on the direction of the podcast of late. What I don't want to do is just publish a bunch of shit where I'm just talking and espousing about things that I think I know or interviewing other founders who maybe you just don't find, like, super interesting. And that's the last thing I want to do. So I think that for the first time, I've taken a really critical look at myself and my business and what I'm doing as a thought leader in air quotes and the show and do all of those things line up. And I want to make really great stuff. And I want this podcast to be really impactful and useful for you all and for kind of the entrepreneurial community as a whole, not just startups and not just SaaS. And so have done a lot of thinking about, like, where this podcast fits into that bigger picture. And I am coming around to an answer. I don't definitively have an answer right now, but I think for you all, as you're creating content and building your brand and building your business, I think, like, we don't always have to have the perfect answer before we hit publish. And this is especially true, like, in our working with podcasters. A lot of them get stuck in this kind of phase. I'm at just at the beginning where they're like, I don't know a hundred percent, like, what I want to do, I don't know 100%, like, what resonates with folks. So I'm just not going to do anything until I figure it out. And that's a trap I've gotten stuck in over the last two months, is I don't a hundred percent feel like I have this nailed. Like, I don't have product market fit, maybe between, like, podcast audience and my show and my perspective and my knowledge and because of that, I just didn't publish. And that's wrong. So I'm not doing that. I'm on this episode sharing with you that I don't really know, like, where this podcast sits. I don't really know where it's going. But I do know that I really like publishing this podcast and I'm going to continue publishing it until I figure out what's going on and where it's going and what the format is and what I'm going to talk about and what value we provide to the community. The short version of the update is I've had some anxiety about what the heck am I doing here? Am I qualified to publish this podcast and talk about stuff that I talk about? And I think the answer to that is yes. Do I know exactly what I'm going to be talking about on every episode and who this is for and everything? I don't know. And so that's the second part of this, right? I think, what can you expect going forward? I've gotten the most positive response from you as a listener on these solo update episodes. And I have to tell you, they're pretty intimidating because I turn on the microphone and the camera and talk about what's going on in my business and sometimes I don't want to talk about what's going on in my business. Sometimes there's not much to talk about because Kastos is 8 years old and we're pretty stable and we're growing and profitable and it's not revolutionary every day. So I might not have 20 minute episode to talk about every day and, or every week. And I think that's okay. So then we'll supplement that with. So there'll be some of that maybe once a month. And then we'll supplement that with folks who are in similar positions to probably you and I, folks who are bootstrapping companies, folks who are doing interesting things in business and on online and I think all across the spectrum from sales and marketing and ops, maybe even a little bit of product, even though that's not like my forte but, but like all of that's really important. And I think that one aspect that I really like to hear about these days are like the fundamentals of business. Not eight marketing hacks to grow your MRR. But hey, how are we talking about like SOPs and processes? How are we talking about running EOs in a three person business? It's the kind of stuff I get into with my coaching clients and the advising I do through Tiny Seed is like, hey, really fundamentally, like, who's our customer? Who are we talking to? Why is this thing valuable to them? And then how can we price this accordingly? Or where can we reach our target market based on those things? So I think, like, sticking with the basics is the short version of it. So sticking with just what makes a business tick, Whether you're a SaaS business or a marketplace or an agency or whatever. So I think that's what to expect. I hate to give this update without an answer, and maybe that's why I haven't published in a couple months. I don't have an answer for exactly what's going to happen with the podcast, but I will say it's here, it's here to stay. I like this podcast so much. It's my largest kind of body of work for sure, and I want to keep it up. And I just don't have an answer for exactly what the podcast means, but I just want to be transparent and share that with you.
[00:04:46] On the Casto side, if things are going well. We had our biggest growth month in a very long time last month in November, and that was great. And we're on track for a pretty solid growth month here in December. Our business is a little bit seasonal. We typically get more busy around the end of the year like this, so it's a bit to be expected. End of the summer just sucks, typically, and like in the spring sucks a little bit. But this is always a busy time of year, so for it to continue to be busy is a positive sign. And, yeah, my place in the business continues to be ahead of growth, figuring out sales, marketing, and we're in an interesting position that most of our growth has come through content marketing and SEO. And after being at Tiny Seed kickoff retreats for the last. Over the last kind of six weeks in Barcelona and then in Phoenix, and talking with a lot of folks who are doing content marketing, who are doing SEO, it's easy to say content marketing and SEO are dead. I think the reality, if I'm really honest with myself, is they're not dead, they're just harder than they've ever been. And that's like everything, everything just keeps getting harder because competition keeps increasing. And so for me to espouse, like on Twitter or whatever, hey, like, content marketing and SEO are dead. Probably not entirely fair. Probably a lot harder, right? SEO or AI has reduced the barrier to entry so that Anyone with an OpenAI subscription can create a ton of content. Oh, I gotta turn the bubble off. That's funny. Can create a ton of so if you're watching on YouTube, I didn't have the gestures turned off in descript, which is where I'm recording this. So OpenAI's reduced the barrier so much that anyone with 20 bucks a month can create a shitload of content that's pretty good. And so I think that's what's happening. But at the same time, if you create really great content and have really strong domain authority and site and linking strategy, you probably can still win. That's what's happening. We're also really looking at a paid acquisition strategy for Castos. I believe, and I have to believe that paid acquisition can work for us. We're seeing the very beginning kind of glimpses of it working some. And so the question here is, okay, we see it working a little bit. Attribution, of course, is a disaster. How can I get a little bit of help to understand what's going on a little better and accelerate that kind of as much as we can? And that's really where we are, is like, paid is working for us a little bit, both on Meta and AdWords. How can we refine that strategy a little bit more? How can we continue to optimize that and get as much as we can out of a paid acquisition budget? I love paid acquisition. And in fact, the episode that we'll be releasing next week with Jeff Roberts from Outseta talk about paid acquisition a little bit, and he's had some really solid experience with that in the past, hooked me up with an agency that he'll reveal in the. In the episode next week.
[00:07:30] And so really just like, trying to figure out how we can do that as best we can. We've taken some kind of feeble attempts at it before, but to layer a little bit of paid on top of an organic strategy like content marketing and SEO and YouTube ought to be pretty effective. So that's like the growth thesis for Castos these days. Podcasting is a mature, stable industry. Not growing like it was in the COVID days, but definitely still solid and growing. And we're looking at, hey, how can we keep this moving forward a little bit and continue to grow our revenue and our profit? So, yeah, that's a boring update for me for Kastos, like, really proud of the business that we've built and where we're at and are excited about the new year. I'm recording this on the 15th or 16th of December. The year is looking pretty solid and looking at, like, how we can continue on this path and accelerate into the new year. So that is the update from Me episode next week with Jeff Roberts from Outsetup. And for upcoming episodes, like I mentioned, maybe once or twice a month, get an update from me solo episode like this.
[00:08:33] And then we'll be chatting with folks who many of you know, but some you don't, who are in the SaaS space and are doing interesting things, and maybe even not in the SaaS space. Because I think it's healthy for us all to get perspectives from folks outside of our kind of immediate business model or kind of industry, because it's just a healthy perspective for us to get. So that's what's to come. Future episodes, I promise not to ghost you for another two months, ever. And if I do, please hit me up on Twitter and give me a hard time so that I don't do that. Thanks so much. Would love feedback from y'all on what you want to hear, more of what you're interested in. If there's any kind of themes, like we did the LinkedIn and we did the YouTube kind of series. If you want to do a series about something ops or sales or whatever, let me know. Would love to organize that. I think those have been really popular and I've got a lot of positive responses from y'all on those as well. So until next time.
