Customer-led growth | Georgiana Laudi (Forget The Funnel)

[00:00] The problem with funnels and pirate metrics and, you know, the favorites that I love to pick on are like MQLs and SQLs is that like, [00:07] Nobody knows what those mean. [00:09] It puts every customer in the same sort of buckets. It assumes that all customers and all products are the same. It puts businesses or they, I should say, puts businesses at the center of the business versus putting customers at the center. Right. It's about the values of the business, not the values of the customer that's being measured. [00:29] Also, it just kind of feels gross for people. [00:32] Right? Like this idea of pushing people to a funnel. And then probably a particularly relevant for SaaS companies is that recurring revenue businesses [00:42] You cannot think about marketing and growth and the business overall as ending an acquisition. Otherwise, you're not in business anymore. And the vast, vast majority of these models don't take post acquisition, [00:56] retention expansion all of that into account so yeah in a nutshell funnels are bad [01:04] welcome to lenny's podcast i'm lenny and my goal here is to help you get better at the craft of building and growing products [01:10] I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and scaling today's most successful companies. Today my guest is Georgiana Laude. [01:21] Georgiana, aka Gia, runs a consultancy called Forget the Funnel, where she works hands-on with SaaS companies to help them unlock and accelerate growth. As you'll hear, she often finds huge unlocks and opportunities, often doubling or tripling conversion at various points in their product close. In our conversation, she shares the exact process that she goes through to help companies figure out where their biggest growth opportunities lie and also how to execute on them.

[01:51] journey through your flows and set goals and then execute on your ideas. There's a lot of wisdom and some fun stories packed into this episode. And so with that, I bring you Gia. [02:05] I'm excited to chat with my friend John Cutler from podcast sponsor Amplitude. Hey, John. Hey, Lenny. Excited to be here. John, give us a behind-the-scenes at Amplitude. When most people think of Amplitude, they think of product analytics. But now you're getting into experimentation and even just launched a CDP. What's the thought process there? Well, we've always thought of Amplitude as being about supporting the full product loop. Think collect data, inform bets, ship experiments, and learn. That's the heart of growth to us. [02:35] to analyze experiments, use segments for outreach, and send data to other destinations. Experiment in CDP came out of listening to and observing our customers. And supporting growth and learning has always been Amplitude's core focus, right? Yeah, so Amplitude tries to meet customers where they are. We just launch starter templates and have a great scholarship program for startups. There's never been a more important time for growth. [02:56] Absolutely agree. Thanks for joining us, John, and head to Amplitude.com to get started. [03:03] This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I've been hearing about AG1 on basically every podcast that I listen to, like Tim Ferriss and Lex Friedman, and so I finally gave it a shot earlier this year, and it has quickly become a core part of my morning routine, especially on days that I need to go deep on writing or record a podcast like this. Here's three things that I

[03:26] with a small scoop that dissolves in water, you're absorbing 75 vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and adaptogens. I kind of like to think of it as a little safety net for my nutrition in case I've missed something in my diet. Two, they treat AG1 like a software product. Apparently they're on their 52nd iteration and they're constantly evolving it based on the latest science, research studies, and internal testing that they do. And three, it's just one easy thing that I can [03:56] Right now, it's time to reclaim your health and arm your immune system with convenient daily nutrition. It's just one scoop and a cup of water every day, and that's it. There's no need for a million different pills and supplements to look out for your health. To make it easy, Athletic Greens is going to give you a free one-year supply of immune-supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs for your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com slash Lenny. Again, that's athleticgreens.com slash Lenny. [04:26] over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. [04:33] Gia, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for having me, Lenny. It's my pleasure. So we actually met over a decade ago, I think, maybe just around a decade in Montreal. [04:44] I was working on my startup. You were helping companies with their websites, optimize their websites. Then you went on to lead marketing at Unbounds and a bunch of other great stuff. So just to set a little bit of foundation for listeners, can you talk about

[04:57] what you've done in your career in like 55 seconds. That's your time box. [05:03] Okay. So marketing for probably about 20 or so years, which sounds completely ridiculous when I say it, but I started working for my father's retail business very early in the early, early [05:16] probably 2000 actually, works there for a number of years and then eventually left and started freelancing, worked at an agency, terrible. And then, [05:26] Actually, probably around the time I met you, [05:28] I had this little like sort of catalyst moment where I joined Twitter in late 2008. [05:33] And I discovered the like tech scene and startups. And that was again, probably around the time. [05:39] that you and I met maybe 2010 ish. And that was, and then I, [05:44] What's that? [05:45] 2011. [05:46] 2011, see, there you go. So it was right around that time. And then late 2011, I decided to [05:52] the like. [05:54] supporting five, six companies at a time and their marketing and stuff like that, I was starting to get burnout. And I was doing a lot. And I was like, what it would feel like to sink my teeth into one brand. And so I decided to go in house and I moved out west and joined the team at Unbounce. And I was there for five years. [06:12] And then in late 2016, early 2017, I decided it was time to move on. And so I decided to go back independent and [06:20] just started working with companies and supporting them through marketing and growth and product marketing. And that's what I've been doing ever since. But I

[06:28] In mid-2017, I actually paired up with Claire Selentrop, who led marketing at Calendly, [06:34] And her and I have been working together since about mid 2017. That's when we launched Forget the Funnel and [06:39] We started pairing up on working with companies and married this like her customer research background and mine, like strategy marketing background. And we developed this framework that we now use when we work with predominantly B2B SaaS companies is who we work with right now. Awesome. So we're going to spend a lot of time on what you've learned working with companies through Forget the Funnel. Why did you call it Forget the Funnel? [07:04] because funnels are gross because I mean it's a really antiquated idea and it's not just funnels that you know we sort of take issue with it's [07:15] you know, buyer's journeys or even I remember actually at Startup Fest 2012, I want to say, Dave McClure was talking about pirate metrics and I was like, "Huzzah! Marketing has a role post acquisition. Everybody understands now." And it was like a real moment for me. But the problem with funnels and pirate metrics and the favorites that I love to pick on are like MQLs and SQLs is that [07:39] Nobody knows what those mean. [07:41] It puts every customer in the same sort of buckets. It assumes that all customers and all products are the same. It puts businesses or they, I should say, puts businesses at the center of the business versus putting customers at the center. Right. It's about the values of the business, not the values of the customer that's being measured.

[08:01] Also, it just kind of feels gross for people. [08:04] Right? Like this idea of pushing people through a funnel. And then probably a particularly relevant for SaaS companies is that recurring revenue businesses [08:15] You cannot think about marketing and growth and the business overall as ending an acquisition. Otherwise, you're not in business anymore. And the vast, vast majority of these models don't take post-acquisition, [08:28] retention expansion all of that into account they also leave the problem stage out so like the world that customers are living in prior to discovering you [08:38] which is a really critical, like that context is unbelievably valuable, especially for marketing. [08:44] And so delete that out of the equation is [08:47] you know, big problem. So yeah, that's in a nutshell, funnels are bad. Okay, so I'm excited to dig into a lot of stuff you've learned, but a couple other things I just wanted to talk about to set the foundation. One is, can you talk about some of the impact that you've seen working with companies through the process that you've come up with? What kind of impact have you seen? What kind of numbers have you seen? [09:07] I would say... [09:08] far and away the biggest, most immediate impact of [09:13] the type of work that we do. [09:15] is realigning with that ideal customer, [09:19] generally the lowest hanging fruit outcome is like, [09:24] realigning around better positioning and messaging and identifying more resonant positioning and messaging that speaks to that context that I was talking about before, right? Before people

[09:36] discover they even exist, have that moment where they're like, oh my God, this has to change. This sucks. Ties that in, ties in what they care about, what is valuable about your product. And then also that desired outcome. I mean, for those in the know, jobs to be done is like a big sort of influence here. But if you can identify that type of information about your customers and get to know them at that level, then you're in a way better position to be able to not only position your [10:06] So typically what we do is we'll like identify those gaps of like, [10:10] almost i mean i shouldn't even say nine times out of ten 99 times out of a hindred [10:16] a company's website is not [10:18] doing as much as it can do. It's not being as effective from a messaging and positioning standpoint as it could. So websites tend to get update like we will do a lot of, you know, overhauls on messaging on a website and improve performance there. One of my favorite examples of that is a social media tool that we worked with where we did really very simple research for them, honestly. [10:40] identified two different jobs to be done, zeroed in on one of them, and then updated the messaging on the website. We shortened the trial from 30 days to seven. The conversion on a website went up with this new messaging by 89%. [10:54] But the thing that I love the most about that particular story is that we didn't even touch anything after the signup experience. We hadn't even gotten there. And the [11:03] Trial to paid conversion rate increased 40% and we didn't touch it.

[11:06] It was just because a more qualified, better fit customer was coming through the door. So there was more of them and they were better qualified. So that's a really specific example that is [11:17] very typical of this type of work. There's other examples though, like product adoption, and using that messaging and positioning past the website, even in the product onboarding itself. [11:27] you know, email, in-app, whatever, and just making sure that they're getting to and have the comms to get to the parts of the product that they care about the most, which can increase, you know, child paid or product activation. You know, with autobooks, the product usage, like the North Star product usage jumped by like, [11:42] 300% or something, then quite a short period of time after rolling out [11:47] email onboarding to support that product experience. I know SparkTror as well, which I think we might end up talking about again when we talk about the process, they doubled their trial to pay conversion rate when we worked with them because of post acquisition optimization to their messaging. I imagine people are listening to this and they're like, "This is what I'm waiting for, some kind of like huge win, some huge conversion." Yeah. [12:08] success. I'm curious, how often do you find companies have something like this, like a latent opportunity to double, triple conversion? Everyone's hoping like this. Yeah. What's the general hit rate? [12:21] So many. I would say pretty well every company we've ever worked with has learned something new. [12:34] about their customers that they can apply at some juncture of their customers experience whether or not it is

[12:41] in campaigns to reach the right people out in the world, [12:45] whether or not it's doing a better job with their messaging and positioning on their website or their go-to-market acquisition strategy on their website, using a sandbox account or a faux freemium account to let people pick the tires of their [13:01] of their product prior to getting on a sales call. That's something that could potentially happen. The post-acquisition experience like I'm talking about, it is so often an afterthought somehow, where that additional layer... I think part of the reason why it's an afterthought [13:17] is because on product onboarding in particular, [13:20] and you've probably heard this too, [13:22] it tends to be kind of like no man's land, like who owns that? [13:26] Is it marketing? If it's freemium, in my opinion, it should be marketing because freemium is a marketing tool, but not everybody subscribes to that, right? Not every... [13:34] company would necessarily agree that that's the case. A lot of companies might say, "No, it's a product." We end up seeing a messy middle there because there's no natural handoff. [13:45] pretty well every company that we've worked with has had an opportunity to improve, especially product onboarding and product activation. Awesome. So basically everybody will benefit from what we're about to talk about. [13:58] A hundred percent. Amazing. Great. All right. We've got wrapped attention. [14:03] As a way to maybe transition into your process, you told me that, so you were visiting us once, and I invited you to the Airbnb office. We were having a happy hour, and I give you a tour. And you told me later that something you saw while you're walking around the office transformed the way you think about growth and kind of informed the way you think about approaching this problem. Can you talk about that?

[14:24] Yes, this is one of my favorites. So it was 2013. So you and I might have met in like 2011. And then a couple of years later, I was in town for a conference. [14:34] And yeah, we toured the office, like HQ and everything. And of course, it was all stars in my eyes because what a beautiful office too, right? So it was quite like, I would have remembered it. [14:46] regardless. [14:48] But we went downstairs, very different from like the very polished upstairs. We went downstairs to where your working area was, where the product team was. [14:57] And there were [14:58] sheets of paper taped to the wall, like a bunch of row, [15:01] And it was kind of, it would have been easy to miss because it's kind of chaotic down there. But it was the customer journey of an Airbnb customer through to post. And what struck me, I was like, oh, that's interesting. Like I'm in the middle of building one out for us, right? Leading up Unbounce, leading, you know, marketing at Unbounce at the time. And I was interestingly with the customer success, Hem was also with me. So Brian Angley was there with me. [15:26] And it was the perfect sort of that him and I saw it together. [15:29] It was a customer journey that was focused on the customer. [15:33] So versus that pirate metrics problem or that, you know, the typical buyer's journey problem that I was talking about earlier, it was the complete reverse of that, right? It was illustrated there where, you know, it was like, [15:45] The emotional journey was part of it. The role that Airbnb played. [15:51] as a like direct touch points and also indirect like what was going on in the in the person's life that had nothing to do you know outside of airbnb which i thought was really interesting it's like the beautiful little like

[16:03] milestones really encapsulated in a sort of snapshot way such that, [16:10] anybody walking by it. [16:11] or anybody, you know, [16:13] being reminded that it existed to sort of understand at a glance, [16:16] what the goal was at each of those milestones. I was like, "Oh shit, this is completely different. This is completely through the lens of the customer versus the business. [16:25] and the grossness of the funnel [16:29] It's just so far removed from that experience that I was like, Ryan, I'm going to go to [16:32] Look at this. We need this. [16:34] And he was like, oh, yeah, this is good. I took a picture, can't find it for the life needs. [16:38] But we returned. [16:40] back to the office the following week and co-founder and head of product, head of CS, so Ryan, so Carter Gilchrist, who's head of product and co-founder, Ryan and I, head of marketing, the three of us sort of locked ourselves in a room for two days. [16:53] and made our own it was a circle it was like i mean looking back it's hysterical but it was sort of democratized to the rest of the team in a way because it had that buy-in everybody was like oh yeah okay this makes sense and i understand and it made everybody feel a lot better about what they were doing because it was about value delivering value at each of the points so that grossness sort of goes away and we're like oh cool like i don't want to be too kumbaya about it but it [17:19] it was a bit of a moment and also it made [17:22] communicating with the, especially the product team and the engineering team a lot easier for me. So we were using a shared language, you know, the, the, the rest of the company who aren't necessarily customer facing really understood, I think at a different level, you know, what we were all doing together and KPIs, yada, yada, yada. So it was, it was amazing. And honestly,

[17:45] I mean, I can't credit only that obviously to our growth, but it was a pretty impressive couple of years that followed that. And I think the alignment that that brought us was huge. Yeah. Anyway, that's the story. Sorry, that wasn't super short, but it was big. It was a big thing. Yes. [18:05] We're going to link to pictures of this in the show notes. Internally, it's called Project Snow White because it was inspired by Brian reading the biography of Walt Disney. And they needed to create the storyboard, basically, to create Snow White because it was so complicated to make that movie. It might have been the first animated film with storyboards. And so it was basically a storyboard of a trip on Airbnb and of a host and a guest. [18:35] from pixar to draw these key frames i think i did know that i was very grateful to to have seen it like i didn't realize at the time but [18:45] it changed the way, like you said at the beginning, it changed the way that I thought about marketing because it, [18:51] really made it obvious to not only me, of course, but to everybody that, you know, there is that customer experience layer. [19:00] that marketers are so good at. [19:02] has such an incredibly important role in driving revenue, right? Not just in building awareness, but in playing a major role in helping customers get value and catching them when they fall off and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, it changed a lot for us.

[19:18] Thank you. [19:18] And it informed the way that you approach your consultancy with Forget the Funnel. And so as a transition to talk about that, the way I'm thinking we approach this is imagine a customer. What is the process you go through? What are the steps? How do you go about helping a company figure out where they should invest, what they're doing right and wrong? I should also mention you're writing a book about this that's going to explain this whole process that's coming out later in the year. [19:41] And so we'll talk about that at the end as well. Yeah. I'll turn it over to you. [19:46] cool i mean if i go down a rabbit hole and you want to pull me out and have me sort of unpack something let me know so the [19:53] The process is pretty straightforward at the highest level the idea is. [19:59] Understand your best customers. [20:01] map their experience, right? Like we were just talking about, map their experience through the lens of delivering value to them, make it measurable. [20:10] and then evaluate what you're doing today that is out of alignment with that. Pretty straightforward. I mean, that's not... [20:16] That doesn't sound too hard of a job, of course, but research is a really important part of that. So the story that I was going to use to sort of illustrate this is there's a company that we, we work with from time to time. We've worked with them at least twice. We, [20:32] Yeah, arguably three times. So Ryan Fishkin, who was the founder of Moz, he's got a new product. It's an audience research tool. [20:40] called Svarctoro. And when they first launched, actually even pre-launch, Rand and Pacey came to Claire and I to sort of help with their positioning and messaging as they were sort of, you know,

[20:52] going forward to launch. I mean, Rand and Casey, they're both very, very thoughtful and they take their time with stuff. And so they were just sort of, you know, looking for that extra layer of like, [21:02] is this good enough to launch kind of thing. And so we helped them with their positioning and messaging and off they went. About a year later, they came back because though they were doing a decent job generating traffic and interest in SparkToro. I mean, Rand is no small fish, right? So he's got a good audience built in, which is fantastic. But those that were getting to the website, [21:24] And those that were signing up for the product, those weren't issues, but the people that were signing up for their free product, [21:32] weren't [21:32] converting to paid in the way that they believed they could and so [21:38] We decided to work with them and basically [21:41] go to the source and find out, [21:44] of you know spark tours from spark tours best customers what can we learn from them that we can then reflect back in the product experience and the customer experience for them so i mentioned it before but we are heavy believers in the jobs to be done theory which is basically this idea that people buy your product they buy the better version themselves yeah again i don't need to explain any of that but we use that to guide our research [22:07] And with SparkTour, we were in a position [22:09] And the purists will hate me saying this, but we were in a position to be able to run surveys. [22:14] So yes, interviews are ideal always, but we did think that we could learn a ton from surveys to then, if needed, double down with interviews. We didn't end up actually needing to run the interviews because the surveys that we ran were pretty decisive and clear in terms of what we learned. So

[22:32] What we did was we identified SparkToro's best customers. Now, what I mean by best customers is, [22:39] Those that get a ton of value from your product as it exists today, [22:44] pay, obviously, they're happy, they're low maintenance. And very importantly, they signed up for your product recently enough. [22:54] that they remember what life was like before. So generally we say that's like in the three to six months, [23:01] range, right? Because if you go to somebody that's been your customer for two years, [23:05] They're just going to fill answers with like what they think might have been going on in their life. [23:10] But if you ask customers who remember what life was like before, you're going to get a lot more interesting responses, right? A lot more accurate sort of depiction of what was going on. And so with that criteria, we went forward, surveyed their customers, you know, we're trying to uncover from them. [23:26] what was going on in their life when they were seeking out a solution, right? What happened? What was that trigger moment when they did start seeking a solution? You know, what did they go to? What did they talk with? You know, what were their influences, which PS, that's what Spark Pro does. This helps you identify those. But also, what were they looking for in a solution, right? What were the must haves for them versus, you know, what were some of the anxieties that they had, some deal breakers, things like that. So basically unpacking life. [23:53] What is it that was critical for them in their solution? [23:56] And then, of course, what is it they're able to do now that they weren't able to do before? So that desired outcome. [24:01] So out of that, we identified a couple of different options, like a couple of different jobs, customer jobs, and we have to prioritize one.

[24:11] Of course, because if you start right off the bat with like, "Okay, we're going to solve for all of these different customers' jobs," then you end up not being as resonant, you can't be as effective. [24:21] So we focused in on one and the way that you make a decision on which one you focus on, [24:27] is similar to best customers, right? [24:30] a high willingness to pay, [24:32] There's no question whether or not they would pay for a product like yours. [24:36] the handholding that they would need would be minor or less so. And I say that understanding full well the difference between product-led and sales-led. I'm not saying that sales-led is not good, but sometimes there's a decision to be made. If you're not set up today to support a sales-led or a high-touch, then you may want to opt for the more product-led approach. And the reverse is also true. If you've got a robust sales team, well then you might actually be better off leveraging sales [25:06] words at. But there's that criteria that [25:08] you know, you would think through. So willingness to pay, it's really obvious. Maybe the most important one is that they have an urgent problem. [25:16] So the whole painkiller versus vitamin thing, you always want them selling a painkiller. [25:21] So who has an urgent problem that needs solving, not something that they might have a problem with six months down the line? Who has a high retention or even expansion? [25:30] potential, [25:31] is also really advantageous for very obvious reasons. [25:34] So customers who would have a long-term [25:36] need for this type of product and even potentially have that need expand, right? Or change over time and evolve in ways that you envision the product can help them.

[25:47] And then there's other criteria too. So sometimes you might want to prioritize one customer job over another if those customers congregate in a way that make them really easy to market to. [25:58] That's an advantage. Or another advantage, and this was the case for SparkToro, [26:04] is you have an unfair advantage with this market in some way. [26:08] And so there were two different sort of customer jobs that were coming into SparkTor. One was more focused on marketing. [26:14] And service providers and marketing, the other one's more focused on like data and those, you know, data purists and those that really wanted, you know, verifiable data. Well, [26:23] SparkToro has an advantage on the marketer side more so than like on the data analyst side, right? So that was another thing too. So with that, we thought, [26:32] made the call to focus on one of those customer jobs. [26:35] Can I take a question here? Yeah, go. So there's kind of two parts of this. There's figuring out who you're going to go after and then what problem you're solving for them. [26:44] and which do you think is more important at this point because kind of step one in this process just [26:49] Zoom out a little bit is figure out your customer and what their problems are so that you can actually solve them well. And do you start with here's who we're going to go after and then here's the biggest problem. How do you kind of think about there's sort of there's sort of one in the same. So because we learned from. [27:04] SparkToro's ideal customers, [27:07] we already know that they're a fit for the product. They're happy, happily paying, [27:15] pry them out of their cold dead hands customers. They're the customers we want more of. So we've already validated that there's a demand from that customer base. Now, what I'm describing about choosing between two different customer jobs is really just

[27:27] you know, of those ideal customers, which one, which customer job do you want to lean into? It's not that you wouldn't necessarily still be able to solve for that other customer job. It's just not the one that you would lead with. [27:40] And I'm always cautious around this too, because sometimes with founders, what'll happen is, there's a sort of level set that just because we were prioritizing one customer job in the short term doesn't mean you can't serve that other customer job down the line. A classic example of that is like, [27:58] products that serve both brands and agencies, for example. [28:03] So the customer job for brands will be slightly different than agencies. And if you've got an advantage with one, you would just start with one and then you would go back after it. That's a bit of a level up after the fact. It's not part of the core process. It's what you would do after. But it doesn't mean you can't solve for the other customer jobs. It just means put one foot in front of the other, do a really good job on one thing first, and then we'll add that on later. [28:29] I don't know if that like 100% answered your question. Yeah. Yeah. [28:33] And the reason that you start here is [28:36] Basically, what you're trying to do is help SparkTour, in this example, grow faster. We were trying to help them figure out why [28:43] they're free to pay conversion rate was lower than what they wanted, right? That was the [28:48] challenge they came to us with. Our traffic numbers are good. Even our signups on our website are good. Our positioning and messaging on our website is clearly doing a good job. But once people get into the product, there's not enough of them getting to value.

[29:02] you know, quickly enough. [29:03] I mean, they still had healthy customer base, but they knew that that number could be [29:08] increase. So we knew what we were solving for. Got it. Okay, that helps. And so step one here is figure out who do you want to focus on? Because a lot of people would go at this problem like, okay, conversion is [29:21] whatever, 10%. How do we increase it? Let's look at this data. Let's look at their bouncing. Let's look at why people are confused. And your approach is, no, let's focus on the people we really want. [29:31] to get into this product and focus on making them convert and not as focus as much on the general case of conversion. [29:38] Right. [29:39] We would get to that though. Like that's a really important part of the process, but it comes after figuring out who you're even solving for. [29:47] Right. [29:48] But it's definitely important to look at those numbers. I mean, I'm not saying don't look at the data. Obviously, you have to. They wouldn't have identified a problem had they not been looking at the data. So the the challenge that happens so, so often, and I mean, this happens with a lot of teams, particularly marketers fall sort of victim to this like tactical way of approaching things. [30:18] so this is this is like [30:20] Zoom out for a second, figure out who is it that you even want coming through the front door. I mean, the social media platform tool that I mentioned, [30:30] The trial to pay conversion rate bumped up 40% because it was a higher qualified person comes through the front door.

[30:37] right and so that [30:38] It matters. So if you can zoom out, [30:42] and keep in your mind's eye that ideal customer job, that thing that you're solving for. We're not at personas. We don't care about personas at all. They're important when you start talking about advertising and targeting and that demographic data that you have to know when you're doing advertising and things like that. That is not [31:01] what I'm describing here at all. I find that jobs we've done to help sort of tie and bond marketing and product and customer success together a lot more, right? Because they, [31:13] all three of those teams or arguably four with sales should all be focused on the same customer. That's not revolutionary. So this is just a sort of helpful way to do that. And like, [31:23] Product teams know and subscribe for the most part to the jobs to be done theory. So marketers should follow suit and there's a lot to be gained anyway on the marketing side. So [31:35] Anyway, the short of it basically is that [31:38] because we knew we were focused on increasing that freedom to pay conversion rate. The next step after the job is the mapping, right? So it's identifying. [31:47] for this ideal customer, [31:49] What are those key milestones in their relationship with our product? What are those big sort of leaps of faith is how I sort of describe it. I mean, I don't need to explain the, you know, the Airbnb customer journey tells that story, right? Like, where's a value moment in this relationship? Where are they reaching value? There are some examples of that for folks that are trying to do this for themselves potentially. And then also how many of these moments would you suggest people have?

[32:13] So it completely depends on the product and the customer for that matter. I shouldn't leave that part of it. [32:21] Obviously, that's important. In general, though, what we would do is we'd break it down into a struggle phase, an evaluation phase, and a growth phase. Struggle phase is they're experiencing the problem. [32:31] Life sucks. They're using the old way. [32:33] something's got to happen they've got to solve this thing in general the struggle phase would break down [32:39] between like out in the world experiencing the problem for the first time [32:43] And another stage, which generally we call, so we'd call that problem, [32:47] And generally there would be another one called interest where it's like, okay, now they're starting to shop around. They're starting to, they're getting into solution seeking mode, right? They might be on your website. They might be on your competitors websites. They're, you know, reading product reviews, things like that. That's like interest stage. And then there's the evaluation phase, which generally breaks down. [33:05] I will say two or three. [33:08] milestones within the evaluation phase. I say two or three because [33:12] If you have a more complex product, more complex customer is the more likely scenario, then [33:17] there may be more leaps of space that they have to or more milestones, heavier lift for you to take. So we have worked with companies where the evaluation phase has been three or four milestones. [33:29] I would always default to as few as possible. So if I'm cutting it down to like Lowe's common denominator, I would say a first value would be the first milestone within evaluation. So you want to get them to that product activation really, really quickly. [33:43] And then value realization,

[33:44] is the milestone where you're solving that customer job so they reach a point with your product where they're like hell yes this is it and for the for the first time they reach this critical threshold of product engagement now what that product engagement is with your unique you know product for that specific customer is up for debate [34:06] But there still needs to be that moment. [34:08] And then there's the growth phase. [34:10] which is about the sort of continued value so getting to frequency of usage and that you know a healthy building that habit getting into a cadence that makes sense what type of you know feature usage and product you should should you want to see there and then what frequency becomes really important and then there's another milestone generally after that we're like okay cool they're they're in they're pro now what else do they need what else do they need from a product and also [34:40] them to, you know, either [34:42] start teaching our tool to other people. I mean, there's all kinds of things that can happen about growth, right? That's where the sort of the promise of exponential growth with SaaS sort of comes into play. And as people listen to this, just to maybe help if it's not super obvious, what people shouldn't imagine is like a little key frame, like a storyboard frame of like, here's something your customer is doing, right? [35:04] Yeah, we often talk about it and describe it as like the story of like how I met and fell in love with your product. Right. It's like this documentary of like being out in the world, finding it, realizing that like, hell, yeah, this might actually solve a problem for us. This might be it. Right. Getting that enough value to convince them to keep going to full value realization, to continue value to value growth.

[35:34] I even taught my product management course through Maven. Maven is a cohort-based learning platform where you learn alongside peers with a direct connection to your instructor. Maven's got a ton of courses for product managers, founders, and executives to help them level up in all kinds of ways. Over 10,000 people, from Airbnb to Coinbase to Google to Tesla, have taken courses from real experts and operators that have spent decades honing their craft. [36:04] There are over 100 new courses starting in the next few weeks. [36:07] Many of the people I've had on this podcast are teaching courses like Jackie Bavaro on product strategy, Ariel Jackson on startup branding, Emily Kramer on B2B marketing, plus Annie Duke on decision making, Nireal on behavioral design, and how to break into product management with Marilee Nika. [36:25] Check out all of my favorite courses and learn more at maven.com/lenny. Now, again, I'm saying that as if it applies to all customers and products, and that's not actually the case. Sometimes it's more complicated than that. But in general, that is what we have found. So that's what we did for SparkToro customers based on the research that we did. And there's. [36:47] The research that we do, we basically take all the responses, we identify the critical patterns, and that's how we identify the customer job. From those critical patterns, right, if we segment down just that customer job, we can look at responses, [36:59] and say, "Okay, here's what they're likely doing when they're out in the world experiencing this problem." This is how they described the pain of their current solution.

[37:06] And then here's what they say about how their search for a solution started. Here's [37:11] you know, what they told us about, you know, how they started to do that research or find a solution. And then there's questions that are asked in the research, like, you know, what was the moment that convinced you that our product was going to solve this problem for you? And the answers to that question are going to tell you what your first value [37:27] should look like, right? What should that first product activation experience, whatever language you like to use, what should that look like for them? What parts of the product do you need to push right up to the front of that experience so they can get to it really, really quickly after they sign up? [37:39] And then value realization obviously would be close to, if not the desired outcome, right? Of that customer job where you're solving that customer job. And then you've got all kinds of generally what happens, [37:52] when I'm going through this process with teams is that all kinds of ideas start to come up about what more they could be doing, even like post solving that customer job, right? Especially the product team gets really excited because they've got all kinds of ideas about where the product can go. [38:06] And so that really helps sort of tie everybody together too. And we, a critical part of that process obviously is identifying. [38:13] you know, we have to measure success along the way. There should be a KPI for each of those stages in that customer journey. [38:19] And for the most part, [38:21] they won't be a big surprise on the struggle side of things like, [38:25] People out in the world experiencing the problem, how are we going to know we're doing a good job reaching them? [38:28] we bring in new unique website visitors right in general that would be the measure of success for the problem milestone and then next piece of the puzzle like okay once they they

[38:39] discover that we exist, even if they are visiting, reading product reviews and visiting competitor sites or whatever. [38:47] We'll know we've done a good job of convincing them that we can help solve their problem and deterring the people that we don't want. Right. Well, no, we've done a good job when, you know, the conversion rate on our, whatever our primary CTA is on our website, whether or not it's start a trial or request a demo or something like that. [39:03] that's the generally the struggle phase is very straightforward in terms of measurement that's like marketers [39:10] Bread and butter, that's where they live and breathe all day long. Where things start to change though, generally when we're working with companies, [39:18] is helping them figure out how should they be measuring first value or product activation and how should they be measuring actual product engagement and generally what we do there is we can associate basically what they told us brings them the most amount of value with the product [39:35] attribute or parts of the product that [39:38] deliver that value. [39:39] and we try to tie [39:40] the KPI obviously to [39:42] some sort of meaningful product usage of that key part of the product or product attribute. Can you share some examples of that? Because that's really important. [39:51] Yeah, so for, I'll use Sforctora as an example just because it's the one that we started with. [39:57] So for SparkToro, the customer job, I don't remember the exact customer job statement necessarily, but for them, what they said were the parts of the product that gave them a ton of value was two specific features, lists. So being able to sort of organize their findings in a way that made it not only...

[40:18] easy for them to organize within their own files, but also share because a lot of them work with clients or stakeholders that they want to be able to share with. So lists were a specific feature that [40:32] Honestly, it was in there, but they weren't front loading the product experience with that. Right. So it was. [40:40] I'm not going to say it was hidden, but it wasn't front and center enough. So that was one feature that we could associate with like, [40:47] you know, being able to organize the data, being able to [40:50] continue to build on it and make it like usable over time and also share. [40:55] And then there was another feature as well, which was an exporting feature. Again, it's not that it was hidden, but it wasn't front and center enough. And so we tied KPIs to them making use of those features, coupled with, you know, obviously the core feature, which is searchability. It was like pairing. [41:13] the search functionality with the list functionality, and then pairing the search functionality with the list functionality with the export functionality. It's a bit abstract, me just like saying the words, it's easier with a visual, but the story is basically like, help them use the search functionality first, right after that, make sure that they're using lists. And if they don't use lists, let's help them get back to using it so that they get to that important critical sort of value moment. And then the same applies for [41:40] you know, the exporting features that we were talking about. Got it. And to be clear, you basically set a metric for each of these [41:47] Yeah, milestones. Miles, yeah. Just whatever.

[41:51] I mean, you have to. I mean, it always surprises me when a team is like, oh, yeah, yeah, you're right. We don't do that. I'm like, what? What do you mean? So it's, [42:00] at a given milestone unless they've reached that value moment you can't keep them on the train to something else like if they haven't even discovered that really you know to them most valuable part of their product you need to focus on getting them to that value otherwise like you can't just keep firing off emails and hoping they're gonna you know jump back into the product as if they're gonna care so a lot of what we do is actually if you're [42:25] proactive sort of customer experiences, whether or not in-app or email or whatever tool, to help them get to that moment within the product. And if they don't get to that moment, which is measurable, again, that's why it's a KPI, right? Then we can be [42:38] you know sort of reactive in helping them get back in and so [42:42] identifying like okay or not they would say this like he fell off the train [42:46] but just helping them nurture them back into the product and really discover that feature if they missed it the first time around. So it's like proactive and pushing them forward, but then also catching them if they fall. And the only way to catch them if they fall is if you're measuring something meaningful along the way. [43:02] So we have like a, [43:03] you know, that storyboard that we were talking about, we also have a map where it's like the experience to get them to a certain, you know, value moment, but then that win back experience to get them back in should they, [43:15] fall out for any reason. I mean, [43:17] people get hungry and get distracted. And like, there's a ton of reasons why. I mean, there's a lot of stats on it.

[43:24] I think it's like 70% of people log into an app, log into a product once and never come back. It's wild. So the fact that so many companies don't have some sort of win back or re-engagement always kind of blows my mind. So just to recap, and then we'll keep going with the process. Step one, understand what your customers are going through, figure out the most important customer and their biggest problem. [43:51] then map out the journey that they go through, the struggle they [43:55] go through before they discover your product, the steps they go through to evaluate, decide to use your product. And then once they use your product, [44:04] them continuing to use your product and using it more and more. And then once you've figured out these steps, and is a rough number like 10, 12 steps? What's a good number just to put out? Oh, no, I would hope it would be more like six. I'm always trying to bring it down. Lowest, only as long as it absolutely needs to be. I mean, that goes for all pages, landing pages, same thing for customer journeymasters. Okay, Airbnb had 12, I think, so you're involved. [44:30] I like that. OK. And then you've come up with a metric to tell you if that step is performing well. If they've gotten there. Did they get to that value? They've gotten there. Cool. One last question before we move on to the next step. Can you give like two maybe examples of like an actual moment, say in Spark to Rose case, and then the metric that they use to measure if they've gotten to that point? [44:52] Yes. [44:53] So the measure for success at the that tips somebody over into evaluation is performing their first search. So when you're on their website, it's you perform a search. It's not signing up for trial or signing for free, although it does tip you into signing up for free when you perform your first search.

[45:08] So getting your first search and seeing your first search results is that first certain measure. [45:13] And then following that, it is for first value, [45:17] It is using search again. So generally, I mean, this is very product specific, like I said, but generally a first search is like a kind of an experiment where you're sort of trying the tool on for the first time. Generally, searches start to get better when you do, you know, your second and third. So we try to encourage at least five plus. So that first value KPI is, I think it was five plus searches plus at least one list. [45:45] So it's the combination of those two things that have to happen before somebody's going to really see what this thing does. It's not that they won't get value if they don't use lists, but because we know. [45:58] that Spark Pro's ideal customers really get a ton of value out of lists. People can hang out in that stage all day long if they want to. [46:06] we're not going to worry about them. We're going to worry about the people that really want the actual functionality of the real, full, fully featured tool. So that was the first value. [46:17] That's how we would know that they got to product activation. And then the next one, as I mentioned before, is a combination of actually three things. So it is conducting a minimum amount of searches. [46:28] within a span of time, creating at least a certain number of lists. I can't remember exactly what it is. And then discovering exporting at least once. [46:36] And then that is they've reached a meaningful enough threshold of product engagement.

[46:41] and then value growth. [46:43] was that they do all of that [46:46] on a regular enough basis so that we know they're not like a flight risk basically right so that we know that they're getting continued value from the product and if they ever fall out of that [46:58] ongoing engagement sort of measure of success then we can you know trigger either [47:04] one-on-one outreach, an email, whatever. I mean, obviously it can't be an app, right? Because they're not logging into the app and can't reach them. But to help them back in and to say, hey, what's up? And can we help? And is there anything that we can do? And basically be proactive in getting them back in. And then value growth, I believe is, I think it was expansion or upgrade in their case. I can't remember exactly. [47:27] Cool. So you end up with these, say, six KPIs. I imagine this becomes goals you track, and then you probably pick one of these to focus on, say, per year, per quarter. Awesome. Yeah. Hopefully not per year. Okay. Per week. Hopefully short. Because I mean, I will say that with some of the KPIs, it's very straightforward, [47:45] New unique website visitors or the website conversion rate, that is, I mean, depending on who owns the website, [47:52] That's not something that should take you a year. You should never be focused on only your website's conversion rate for a year, hopefully. But these other KPIs and these other milestones, I mean, I have no disillusions about if it impacts the product, obviously there's a lot of implications there. And so, yes, generally... [48:11] once you tip over into that sort of in-app and more product experience, timelines vary widely, to say the least. Okay, cool. Let's move on to the next step.

[48:20] Okay. So after that point, we had, you know, a rich voice of customer document that came out of that research. We had a messaging guide for them to use not only in their marketing materials, but also through the entire, you know, sort of product experience and also identifying the parts of the product that were so meaningful. And actually, so their VP of marketing, the new VP of marketing, Amanda Matemidad actually rolled out checklist. They built a checklist, like a product onboarding checklist and also product onboarding email. [48:50] emails. [48:51] And their trial the paid doubled. Like we've. [48:55] We were like, okay, cool, let us know if you need any help or whatever. And they're like, oh, we're good. We got this. [48:59] and checked in two months later and their trial page had doubled. I feel like you skipped the important step of, "Hey, we got KPIs," and then you're like, "Oh, we gave them all this information, and so I'd love to spend a little more time on there." You came up with messaging for them, positioning stuff. What happens there? This is the thing. They have a team in place, right? They've got very highly skilled, and not a huge team, but highly skilled marketer there at the helm. I mean, not the least of which is [49:29] the CEO. So basically what we did was we gave them, it's like a framework. [49:33] So it's like, here's the, [49:35] Here are the bones of this, right? So got a messaging and positioning guide for you. Generally, they're... [49:42] you know, I mean, when we do them, they're like five to seven pages long, they hit on the value prop, they hit on the, you know, major competitive advantages, they hit on the major value themes that you want to focus on. Those value themes can be broken down by the emotional benefits and the functional benefits tied to the product attributes that derive that value. And so that document, and there's more that goes into it, but that messaging guide basically can be used as the baseline for

[50:11] all kinds of marketing, [50:12] collateral and material but also [50:14] email onboarding, right? So when they're writing their email sequences for whatever it is they're trying to solve for throughout that custom, whatever milestone they're solving for, they can use that as their baseline, like this is what we're going for. This is the goal here. And that messaging guide [50:30] rules up to the job to be done. So the job to be done is sort of like the top line. [50:36] And then we've got that messaging that serves that job to be done. And then we've got the sort of operationalized customer experience with those milestones and KDIs. And then you sort of zoom in on like, where is the experience most broken right now? We already knew that for SparkTroir. We knew that we wanted to influence that first early product experience. So that's where we zoomed in. [50:56] and decided on what programs they should sort of roll out. And email onboarding was a natural, as was the checklist. For folks that want to work on messaging, say, so you kind of just like, "Hey, here's a bunch of messaging advice." Any tips for how to [51:12] message well, how to think about messaging once you have a sense of your journey, maybe some goals, any just pro tips here you could share. [51:20] Oh, boy. I mean, that research... [51:24] And the voice of customer, I mean, I'm always going to go back to that. That's you can. [51:29] you can guess and you can do, you know, use your best judgment and you can use internal sort of [51:36] stakeholders and and you know the the internal team knowledge and i'm not saying that that is not valuable and that you shouldn't use that at all you can

[51:45] but it should never come before learning from [51:49] and listening to your best ideal customers and using the language that they use. You want to reflect them back to them, right? That is what is going to show them that you understand the problem that they have. [52:01] And that, [52:02] your product has exactly what it is that they need. And the hierarchy of messaging is really important as well. Right. So, I mean, there's the classic like, [52:12] sometimes it's hard to see the label from inside the jar. So it's really helpful to get out and be like, "Okay, how do customers [52:19] see us and generally you can identify the hierarchy of what is important to them. What is the thing that they say? [52:26] is most valuable about their product what was that you know aha moment or what was that first value moment or what is the thing that makes you stand out over everybody else and like it can literally be a numbers game if you take you know 100 100 or so survey responses you can break that down like here's the thing they send you know what's going on is most valuable about their product [52:44] they cared about most. Here's the thing they said they cared about second most and third most, not to be so paint by numbers about it, but there's art in the science, but in general, you want to reflect back what they said they care about, not what you think is the coolest thing about your product. That's obviously not the best way to go. And that's something that we all inherently know, but it becomes really hard when there's a lot going on and things are changing, [53:14] evolving and there's a lot of teams and people are coming and going. It's easy to lose sight of that, especially when you're just trying to get shit out the door. So that messaging guide is mentally like, okay, here we are. This is...

[53:26] This is where I'm [53:28] This is my baseline. These are my guardrails for everything that we produce. It's also really handy to hand off to copywriters, right? When you bring in, I mean, not just copywriters, lots of people, but particularly when you're producing copy, providing that messaging guide is like solar platter for them. [53:45] Is your book or is this available anywhere, the template that you end up sharing with a customer? Just like, here's a guide, the layout messaging recommendations? Oh, I've had so many. There's so many templates and stuff. Yeah, we can... [53:59] I'll include a couple links. You want lots of stuff like that. Yeah. Okay, great. A few final questions around [54:07] Jobs to be done. [54:08] Yeah. [54:09] So you said that they doubled their conversion from free to paid. Amazing. What was their job to be done in the end? And then I just have a few questions about the jobs to be done. I think it was when they're struggling to identify opportunities that aren't as obvious. So... [54:28] Generally, when you're doing [54:30] you know, marketing research, you'll end up finding the same things over and over again. And if you are a service provider, or if you're in house for that matter, and you're like tasked with always coming up with like novel and new and more, more, more, [54:44] you tap that pretty quickly and so what customers were coming to them for was like give me more i need i need to impress i need to impress here like i need more to work with i need to identify opportunities that i wouldn't otherwise be aware of actually that was exactly what it was i helped me identify opportunities i wouldn't otherwise be aware of and the so that so that the customer job statement is when i am in a certain situation help me which is filled in by what those the

[55:14] looking for those motivations so I can, which is the desired outcome. The help me was about, I believe it was like in a way that is organized, [55:23] and that is shareable and usable over time that I can build on and really rely on over time. And the desired outcome was about, I mean, this isn't going to be surprising, but it was about getting stakeholder money in and getting people on board with and sharing and looking good, looking like a pro, right? And doing their job more effectively and driving better results for [55:45] either their own team or for their clients. Awesome. We got there. We glossed a little bit over jobs to be done. I imagine many people listening have no idea what this is. So maybe... [55:56] as our final question. Can you just kind of explain what this framework is and how folks can learn to use it or any resources you recommend that comes to mind? [56:06] I mean, a heavy influence for us definitely is Bob Mesta, who's one of the original sort of architects of Jobs Be Done. [56:13] there are lots of materials online for jobs i am not the foremost authority in jobs at all there's i think it's gtpd.info is a good website there's a there's a bunch also bob mesta wrote a book called demand side sales that goes into it there's also [56:28] There's also a lot of books written about jobs we've done. When Coffee Met Kale is one that a lot of people love. [56:34] I digress, point being that [56:36] What matters is [56:39] identifying what it is that customers are trying to accomplish. So demographic data doesn't matter. The classic example is like, if you look at

[56:47] oh king charles now the example has changed you look at ozzy osborne and and it was prince charles the original but now it's king charles if you look at those two men [56:58] They're the exact same age and live in the same area. They both have a dog. They both love cars. They both, you know, they do. [57:04] from a demographic standpoint, they are identical. [57:07] But they obviously lead very different lives. What motivates them is very different. And so like that is where typically personas sort of fall down. And so what Jobs Be Done does is help you figure out like what is that, you know, desired outcome? What is that better life that customers are seeking out? You're just the vehicle to get them there. [57:27] And so, [57:28] That's all it is. I mean, there's so many tired analogies that I don't want to use them. Milk shakes, maybe. [57:35] What's that? The milkshake analogy. The milkshake one is the, it's not even the analogy. I think that was like the original, one of the original job stories that is the milkshake one. [57:45] Any other things you want to share about the process that you go through with the companies, things you've learned before we get to our very exciting lightning round? Yeah. One of the sort of [57:56] objections that we often get to this type of work is that [58:01] Research takes a long time. [58:03] And that research can often lead to more questions and can like slow everything down. You can end up in sort of like analysis paralysis, but it doesn't have to be that way. It can be very straightforward. Honestly, in a survey scenario, like with Sfartoro in just that scenario, I have lots of examples of companies where we ran surveys. It can be a couple of weeks. Like.

[58:27] two or three weeks you can actually come out with [58:30] you know, something solid to move forward with. And you don't get stuck in this, like, the bickering or the sort of, you know, the [58:40] all those stakeholders with too many cooks in the kitchen. You can come to something decisive. You can get value out of that. The other objection we get a lot from founders in particular is because [58:52] they build products to solve a problem that they had. [58:55] which is cool and it definitely makes you one of the most knowledgeable people about your solution. But products change, markets change, customers change, teams change in a ball. Not everything can live inside of your head and there's a ton of value. [59:09] in [59:10] getting, learning and getting inside the heads of your best customers that like, you may have been really close to the inception of the product. But if any span of time has changed, you will, you'll always learn something new. I've never been in a scenario like this where a founder has not learned something new from their research and been able to leverage it in a way that makes their their product experience better. [59:40] But before we get there, we've gotten to a very exciting lightning round. I've got five quick questions for you. We'll go through them quick, whatever comes to mind. That's what we're doing. Okay. What are two or three books that you recommend most to people looking to get better at marketing?

[59:57] Thank you. [59:58] I very, very, very rarely read marketing books, but there's two that I think are [1:00:04] Pretty. [1:00:05] foundational in the recent so obviously awesome by april dunford i'm sure you've heard that one a ton it's kind of like required [1:00:11] reading, I would say, especially for founders. I told Ava when she first wrote, I'm like, I'm going to require every single founder I work with to read your book before we work with them, because it's like foundational. You have to know that. And then the other one that I really enjoyed, Flipside was Hooked by Near AL. So that one was great too. But like I said, I don't read many marketing books. The other one that I would be remiss not to mention is ours, that we're writing about the process, which is, you know, really about like, [1:00:40] the step-by-step [1:00:42] how to do this thing. [1:00:44] So as much as we love going through this process with companies, I sort of took a page from April here too. And that like telling the process and having people be able to rule this out and do this internally themselves has been like wildly gratifying. We do it with a training program. [1:01:01] And this is our next sort of step in that. [1:01:03] like, you know, getting out into the world even more. So you absolutely can do this stuff yourself. And so that process is laid out in that book. And then another book that I read recently, which has nothing to do with marketing at all, but was like really nice was 4,000 Weeks. I don't know. I'm reading that right now. [1:01:17] Oh, yeah, I enjoyed it. It was a nice sort of like coming back to like base a bit. I don't know if when I read it was just like I just finished it a couple of weeks ago. It was just the timing was perfect. I feel like what's going on in the world right now and how everybody's probably feeling right now. It's a good solid. It's a good solid read for for now.

[1:01:38] I'm enjoying it. I just started. I'm glad you will encourage me to keep reading it. [1:01:42] Okay, favorite recent movie or TV show? [1:01:45] I have young kids. I just bought a second property. We're renovating three houses right now. I do not watch movies almost ever. The only thing that I'm currently binging is YouTubers that do DIY interior design and reno's. Reason being, my partner and I bought a property with four very, very old cottages, like lakefront. [1:02:14] tiny little like [1:02:16] almost like tiny houses, like little cottages. [1:02:18] And we are slowly renovating each of them. So my sort of fill is learning about interior design and DIY home rentals. That's, yeah. [1:02:30] Who's had the most impact on you in your career? [1:02:33] This is the worst question. [1:02:36] I hate saying this, but it's probably my dad. I have to say my dad because he's like an entrepreneur through and through. And I remember very vividly. I worked for him for, I think, eight years early in my career. [1:02:54] And one of the things that he always sort of said was like, it was the joy of the business. Like he didn't care what it's like, it doesn't matter what you're selling. Like he could be selling anything, but it is the joy of entrepreneurship. And that really stuck with me. And so even when I was in-house, I always knew that I needed to do.

[1:03:13] you know, something on my own and be sort of in charge of that journey. And I, and, [1:03:19] His joy in it is... [1:03:21] has has impacted me a lot and he was the reason why i knew i was always going to do this other than that i would say i have an incredible network of women that i have been very lucky we're part of a group that we call shine crew i think i'm supposed to like copyright that to do or something to somebody because i think the term shine theory is what it's based on basically but i'm very very lucky to be like heavily influenced by [1:03:48] April Dunford, [1:03:50] Tara Robertson, Joanna Wiebe, Talia Wolfe, and then obviously my business partner, [1:03:57] Claire, you know, obviously changed everything for me. Having that like partnership in business, I don't think I would have. [1:04:04] I definitely I don't think I would have stood this long. So, yeah, definitely a huge influence for her. [1:04:10] What's one thing that helps you stay focused and productive during the day? [1:04:13] Definitely carving of time, like time blocking. I do a lot of time blocking like R in advance with like a little brain emoji of like, [1:04:22] Safeguarding my time. Something else that we also do, because we're a small team and we use Slack, obviously. Something else that we do to protect each other's time is we time... [1:04:32] not timestamp, but we put like a little code in all of our messages that's like either like, you don't have to listen to this before the end of day, or it's timely, or it's no rush, so that we know when we need to mentally process messages in Slack. So we can only we can drop in there just periodically.

[1:04:46] And the only other thing that I would say that I do [1:04:50] Maybe once a month or once a quarter. [1:04:53] is we're pretty buttoned up about our time tracking. [1:04:57] And so we go back. [1:04:58] and it sort of keeps us honest about how our time is actually spent. And then we can sort of like adjust and time block accordingly. [1:05:06] to sort of make up for like the shortcomings of our previous quarter. That was really clever. I haven't heard of that trick. What's the emoji for? You can do this later. [1:05:14] We actually just use no rush. [1:05:17] or EOD, [1:05:19] like for end of day or timely. We do have like the alarm emoji. [1:05:24] is the like now going to be dealt with ASAP. [1:05:28] Amazing. Gia, thank you for making time for this. Final question, where can folks find you online? How do they pre-order your book? How can they learn more? And then also just how can listeners be useful to you? Thank you for asking. Twitter is probably the best way. My Twitter handle is atrocious, G-G-I-I-A-A, is me on Twitter. I'm on LinkedIn every once in a while, obviously. My email address is [redacted email]. So if anybody has any questions, whatever, feel free to email me if you want any templates [1:05:58] show notes, just ping me. [1:06:00] No problem with that. And then forgetthefunnel.com, we've got a book page where there is a waitlist. We're going to do [1:06:08] pre-sale and then the published book, like the published physical book will be early in 2023. But we are going to do pre-sale because get it in those hands when I love it. Gia, thank you for being here. Thank you so much for having me.

[1:06:24] Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. [1:06:38] You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny's podcast dot com. See you in the next episode.