What makes or breaks a SaaS founder

0:03[Music] Hello everybody. Welcome back to the factory floor. Today uh I am joined by the same two people that I've been joined by in every other podcast. So big shocker here. Uh I have Corey Haynes and I have Zach Stevens. The three of us make up Conversion Factory. Um, but today we're talking about something that I think um, we all definitely have some pretty strong opinions about um, because it's very personal I guess to us maybe. Um, and the topic of discussion are is basically the the things that prevent founders from being better founders or good founders. Um, and the reason this is near and dear to us is because we work with a lot of founders. We work with 50 plus different startups and a

0:56bunch of different types of people um on all sorts of ends of the spectrum. And so we actually have this like internal bible, you'll call it, of what makes good fit versus bad fit for founders, what makes really like, you know, high achievement founders and people that make it really easy to work with versus not at all. Um, so we're going to be talking about that stuff and kind of going through that Bible, uh, and kind of talk through some of those main points. So, uh, the first section of it is based on impact, setting goals, uh, and how we're able to achieve those goals, how they're able to achieve achieve those goals, excuse me. Uh, and so I want to kind of talk through that really quick. Um, Zach, this whole

1:41worksheet that we filled out or the whole criteria that we set up that we filled out was kind of your brainchild after long enough of working with people. So, I did want to let you take the reigns at the beginning if that's cool. >> Yeah. Um the as Nick said, the the the reason that we wanted to put this um together was because it's so easy to get wrapped up in the emotions of when you have a when you see a founder that you feel like, man, you could just be doing so much better if you let go of these flaws or just worked through them. Um, and it's impactful or it's important for us to recognize this because I feel like we're on the receiving end of sometimes it could be negative feedback. Um, and

2:28maybe even blame for when things don't go as well as they could. And so rather than having this all swirl around in our heads, I wanted to codify it and write down, well, what are the things that we look for in the criteria that we can objectively measure? Um, even if it's a subjective measurement, we can at least put in place. Here's what bad looks like, here's what good looks like, and here's what in between looks like. So, when Nick says impact, this is more about um when when a client comes to us, one of the things that we're looking for is how we are able to impact their day-to-day. Um, if we feel that there's not a whole lot of value that we can add, then we see that it's not a good fit. And then as a founder, it's your

3:10job to assess, well, is this person actually going to be able to help me or am I just going to be bringing more noise and confusion uh to an already messy process, which is a startup. So, if there's not a lot of visible, measurable, immediate change that an outside agent or actor can help you with, then there's not a lot of impact. Conversely, on the other side, if you're going to be doing foundational changes like the examples that we give are we're shifting our positioning, we are changing our branding, we are um doing drastic overhaul from the onset. That's a really good indication that impact is going to be had from working with this other vendor. And somewhere in the middle there, there's like, you know, a

3:56decent overall lift in quality. um but not necessarily shaking the foundations and really creating a massive turnaround for a problem, you know, and turning it into a solution. So, when it comes to impact, those are the key things that we're looking for. And it's your job as a founder to assess whether that impact is um a possibility or not. Yeah, Zach, I like what you've been asking recently on sales calls, which is how open are you to drastic changes? because you wouldn't it this seems a little bit too simple or too intuitive. A lot of times some some people will come to us and they talk about having these big goals but then they don't really want to do that much or change that much and they're sort of

4:40like afraid of rocking the boat too much. And it's like hey if you want to see some big results you got to make some big changes. And so if we can't come in and have a big impact on what you're doing, then our hands are tied a little bit. >> Yeah. I mean, we had a this shall remain nameless, but somebody said, "We want to 10x our revenue." And great um what kind of things we're going to be working on to do that? And we talked, you know, about all the potential stuff. And then as soon as we got into an engagement, they had us working on uh what was it like activation emails like you have a lot of bigger problems that you need to fix and this isn't really going to be something that contributes to that. Um so having that

5:30understanding of you know what what is the impact you're looking to achieve and then going full boore on it and having making the changes that will actually achieve that impact. Yeah, it feels like we I mean we'll talk a little bit one of the criteria we use is like expected results the result and so that this kind of like slightly overlaps with that a little bit when it comes to like setting goals and things but I think the main issue with this area is like there's these ideas of what they want and ideas of things that they want done and a lot of times they don't match at all or they've just like moved them slightly and it's like what okay no like this this is just mismatch matched in a way that doesn't make sense and you

6:13just need to like rep prioritize these which is why we use our three-phase approach and start at the the bottom and check all check everything all the way up until we hit the third the third phase. Um so I don't know I feel like that's that's kind of the biggest issue in this section is just the mismatched um idea of what should be done. >> Um >> I agree. >> What usually we like to talk about like work styles. Um I'm for us we have it listed as like async workflow but I think this goes a little bit deeper than that if I'm if I'm like reading into it a little bit more which is like just general work styles how feedback is given how um you know how often they're looking for like updates or not looking

6:57for updates um and how willing they are to adhere to a work style for people that like us who are we have a work style that works really really well and fast um And a lot of times people aren't as willing to like just dive head first and be like, "Okay, well, let me see how you guys do this." Um, but yeah, what do you guys what is your take on the async uh and people not being able to adhere to like async work styles? Well, the reason that this was included and and it's not just because it's a a preference of ours, you know, which kind of goes without saying, but I think that async workflow and our working style got included because the world's changed as far as work is concerned where you don't have to be in

7:44the same room with people to get a lot of things done. And especially when we're doing knowledge work, you don't get time to sit with your knowledge and creativity and spin things up if you're constantly on calls and jotting down meeting notes you're not even going to look at after. So we prioritize and emphasize this async workflow because it enables creative people to be creative and it also makes it imperative that when clients give feedback that they give it in a very distilled and thoughtout manner in a way that can be recorded and assessed and reference to later on. We're totally fine with having things like nuance and subjective opinion, but I feel like when people just jump into a call to try and

8:29solve a problem, they haven't actually thought through the problem yet and decided this is what is bothering me about this. So, I'm just going to get in and tell you something's wrong and then hopefully we can work it out together. But then it takes way longer to get anything done. So, it's more about the fact that the world of work has changed and that if you're unable to codify and succinctly articulate something that you think needs to be improved, then you're losing and you're going to hold everybody else back. >> Yeah. When I think about like why does why does workflow matter if you're a founder working with a service provider who's doing marketing or design for you? I mean really anything related to

9:15working within a SAS company whether it's like customer success or sales or product development engineering whatever it is this kind of like also applies to all those but I think that you you hit the nail on the head which is that if they can't write it down and communicate ahead of time what they're looking to do or questions that they have or things that they're thinking about. Then when we get on a call, they're just going to be like finding those answers along the way. And then the call by the end of the call is going to be like a halfbaked version of that, but now you just wasted someone else's time by coming to those conclusions on a call instead of by yourself. And um so really it's about like how

10:03good are you at figuring out what you want and why you want it and what questions you have for someone else that you don't have the answers to. For us that's really really important because I mean we did the math a long long time ago and we were like if we hopped on you know two 30 minute calls per week with each of our clients like literally half of our time would be spent just on calls with our clients and not doing the work. And what's the point of that if they can just do like spend that time without us and then we can go and spend all of our time doing the work. But I think there's a a even deeper rooted issue which is that those types of people who can't get their thoughts on paper um just generally aren't good at

10:51strategizing about what needs to be done in the first place. they're sort of like making it up as they go, >> which is hard for us because if someone is always kind of wishy-washy and doesn't really know what they want or why they want it and they're also not open to our feedback, then they're always going to be not happy with what's being done. But if they collaborate with us and they have, hey, this is like the road map. This is the things that we want done. And now we can flesh out all the like what each of those things entails. Um then they're going to be perfectly fine letting us go and do those things because they already know why they want it. Something else I realized as we were talking about this

11:35>> if they aren't really good at writing their thoughts down either. They're not they're also not really good at listening and reading other people's thoughts because we've had this happen before where >> um it was the last client call that I ever took because I decided after this it was a complete waste of time where >> someone had asked a question and I answered it thoroughly in a written format and then they said we need to have a call and I said fine I'll get on the call and so I did and then they asked me the same questions and I pointed and said the answers that I wrote down verbatim And I said, "Oh, okay." It was the same answer. So, I think that having this async workflow, it's a test of your

12:17>> I remember that. >> Yeah. It's a test of not even not only your ability to articulate, but then can you read and comprehend and listen because if you can't, that's a way deeper issue. >> Yeah. >> Than your ability to get work done. And I think that the two go hand in hand, >> right? I don't think we even realized it like how important it was in the beginning. But I would say that like async isn't even just like a preference thing. It's like a mandatory test of like do you have what it takes to be a good client? Because if you can't >> Oh yeah. >> If you can't go without having multiple meetings per week, then you're going to be a night where a nightmare to work with in the first place. Like it's just

12:58the it's just like a symptom of a much deeper rooted issue. And I don't think that's just in working with us either. I think that would be working with anybody. You know, you're going to be a nightmare for a VC. You're going to be a nightmare for any kind of employee that you have because they're going to feel drained out and burned by >> um you consistently nagging them. And you I think the people that need to consistently get on calls have a hard time relinquishing control and they want to feel like they're inside everything and moving things along when you just need to get the out of the way and let people do their job. >> I feel like you can kind of see this like the early onset anti-async workflow

13:39in some of our discovery calls. You can kind of sense that early on like the disjointed scattered idea of what is wanted and then sometimes you get on a call and it's like these are the areas we don't know where what we're doing and we need assistance. These are the areas we have covered. So like we think this should be the next set of things that we take care of. We want you guys to do that. Great. that like you can kind of see that they're already like on board with this work style versus sometimes we get on and it's just like it's just everything said asks another weird question that's totally unrelated and isn't really relevant to where where this whole thing should be going and then that kind of feeds in if they end

14:18up deciding hey I do want to sign up I want to work with you guys we can kind of feel that as we go but um yeah it's interesting the async thing has become like it's funny you said test I feel like that's perfect. Like it's a test for them to and we kind of are like, "Hey, reminder, we're async. How do you feel about that?" Most of the time, honestly, people are really good with that. They prefer it. But sometimes you get someone like, "Ah, okay." You know, we'll see how it is. And it's always just a big red flag. >> Red flag. >> Red Dead giveaway. >> Okay, let's hit the next one, which is very fun, which is timelines. Um why okay so this is obviously we have opinions on this because part of our the

15:05way our model is set up is not project or scope based it's like retainer or internal uh you know like team based. So we don't really have timelines necessarily um that we work from. We have like rough estimates generally for how certain tasks get done and how long things generally take. Um, so what about adherence to strict intense timelines makes someone a bad founder? Apart from them being unrealistic, I think that what it does is it it puts a it measures the wrong thing which is either how fast it was in like that. I I understand that's important. I think that the more important metric is quality of the work and then impact of the work. And then also within that it's especially for creative work, it's

16:03it's always going to fall into one of two sides of a spectrum. There's very efficient work and there's very innovative work. You cannot have both at the same time. Innovative work requires creative mess. This is when you're doing things like a whole new brand identity and there's exploration or if I'm coming up with a name for a company, there's just a mess that comes with that territory. And if I try and cut corners and not focus on the work being good and getting time to marinate, it's just not going to pan out well. I can't do that kind of work efficiently. You know, it it doesn't exist. they're mutual opposition to each other and there's very effective work that we could do but this would be you know

16:51stuff that's far more safe you know like uh I think the example that we always give is things like a like a demo page you know a demo page is pretty straightforward for the most part there are always edge cases where it could be very heavy on storytelling there could be some really interesting graphics and things we might do as far as forms and logic that require a little bit more mess and innovation. Um, but that's really that that's something that I've considered to be effective creative work efficient where okay great we're going to get it done in one to two days and it's going to look good. We know what we're doing. So I don't think that I think that when we have these timelines, it's hard for founders to put this

17:32perspective on it, which is we're doing something that's messy. Like this is it's creative work, you know, and the really the only thing that matters is are we moving the needle? Are we making you happy with the things that we are putting forward? Cuz I think that we move pretty fast as a as an agency in general. like there's very few people who can deliver the number of work or the amount of work that we do at the speed at which we do especially for the quality. Uh and I don't want that like I don't know how we would even get faster without compromising the quality. So I think that's what it comes down to is >> they fail to recognize the um the mutual opposition between efficiency and innovation and they often

18:26try and pick efficiency when they should be picking innovation and value creation. So I think that timelines just go hay haywire very quickly. >> Yeah. Yeah, I like what the the base guy the sorry I like what the base camp guys say about plans or like plans are guesses. Let's be real. Like if you make a plan or for like a product road map for the next 12 months, those are just guesses. But like you shouldn't be married to that plan. And I feel like it goes the same for timelines and deadlines. It's like these are kind of just arbitrary dates to be honest. These are just estimates. These are just um you know a a tool of reference. Normally when someone is asking us about a timeline, they're asking like basically

19:17how much does it cost? Because of our model being a subscription retainer, they're sort of doing the math like okay, is this going to take 2 months and it's going to be this amount or is it going to take 3 months and it's going to be that amount or is it going to take six months and it's going to be, you know, twice as much as I thought it was going to be. For most other people though, I've I've never really liked deadlines for big creative projects because uh what is what's the law where it's like anything fills up the time that you allot it? You know, it's like if you give yourself >> a year to write a book, you'll write a book in a year, but if you give yourself a month, you'll write a book in a month.

19:55>> Um some sort of law. It's like it's escaping me now. >> Parkinson's law. >> Parkinson's I I think I don't know >> I I had to look this up. We should just keep going. Forget you guys keep find it out. >> The point is that um you know someone and this has happened before with clients too where they're like uh well you know could we expect the the website to be done by this date? And we're like I don't know probably not like I don't know why why that date or they'll ask us to say we need this done by this date. We say why? No reason. It's just someone else said that that was the date they wanted it by. Where did they come up with that number? Do they know what it takes to get this work done and you know

20:39all the different cogs and and wheels that it takes to to make this happen? No. Like we're the ones doing the work. So why are they giving us the deadline? And why why would we put ourselves on the hook for a deadline that we could even get done faster if really, you know, potentially? Um the so yeah the the problem I feel like lies again with like they don't really know what it takes to do the work and in my opinion working with other marketing service providers in the past most the time a timeline or a deadline is given just to keep them accountable because they don't have any transparency into what's being done. And so if you actually provide transparency and know what's being done, you don't need a

21:24deadline because you see that it's on track. You see that things are moving along reasonably well. You see that things are taking the time that it should take. I mean, we've had like we've hardly made any real mistakes about like something taking longer than it should have. I would say 99% of the tasks that we take on we do in the time allotted or even faster. And so again, there's no like reason for a timeline if we're providing transparency into work that's being done and that work's getting done at a reasonable rate, >> right? Or it's extended for reason, you know, like and this is what I said with creative work, you know, it's a mess and sometimes you want to clean up a little bit during the the throws of the the

22:09project. >> By the way, it is Parkinson's law. >> Okay. Genius works knows how to look up the computer on the computer. >> Work expands to fill time available for its completion. >> Yeah. >> Got it. >> Yeah. Exactly. >> Um I was just thinking Corey, it's kind of like that's the problem with that's why we chose this model, right? is the like traditional agency is like this big reveal with like one big it's like you're kind of just like wondering what's going to happen and then hopefully before the timeline that was set you get this email it's like boom your package is delivered and you got it okay it came early you know like or it came late like who knows you're just kind of like waiting to see what happens

22:51but the reason our model works better even without timelines is it's like a progress bar and you're looking you can see the prog progress bar the whole way. And you can even see like it's not just like, oh, it's at 25%. You can see it's at 25.57%. Like you can see every tiny little detail of the progress bar. So it doesn't really matter. You don't need the like estimated time of delivery, which is usually wrong by the way, even on like a a regular progress bar if you're downloading something. Um because you know every little piece of the puzzle that's going and you can see the rate at which it's increasing. Um so I don't know. I just it's so much better and I feel like I do so much better work

23:33when we don't have a timeline attached to something. When there's a timeline attached to something, I just have this little like pit of like, oh man, that thing like it's just it's always got to get pushed fur further further further. Even though it's like I would have just done it probably at a much healthier pace and it might have been better work without the pressure of a timeline. Um so I think we're pretty passionate about this, but we spend a lot of time on timelines unless there's anything One more thing is just uh I think it comes down to trust too even not having a timeline but if a founder is like hey is this done yet or like can we do this faster or what's the progress on this or if there's kind of this subliminal

24:12undercurrent of a feeling of like I want this faster I want to do more um or I want all this done by you know the end of the month for example it just kind of presents a message that like they feel like >> you think you know the work better than us. >> Yeah. And like that we're taking an unnecessary amount of time or that the estimates that we did give were not estimate or not true. Um and and it's definitely a dead giveaway. I mean, if if a founder comes to us and they're like, "Oh, I was hoping to get X, Y, and Z in a month." and we know for a fact that that's, you know, not possible, then it's going to be hard to make them feel good about getting X, Y, and Z in 2 or 3 months, which might be actually

24:57reasonable because they already have this expectation in their head and they're shopping around for someone who they think will promise that it'll get done within that timeline that they think. But if if we hear a founder say, "Oh yeah, the work takes, you know, I know this is going to be a long project. It might take 6 months. It might take 9 months." If it's a really extreme project like that, you know, music to our ears because that communicates, okay, they trust that we know what we're talking about and that we're not going to be dillydallying around and that they know that these types of things, especially involving a lot of creative work, do take a lot of time. You can't rush it. >> Yeah, definitely music to our ears.

25:37Um, let's uh I feel like the next category is expected results, which we kind of already touched on a little bit at the beginning. Um, but I feel like it's probably worth just like fleshing out all the way if there's anything else to say about it. But, um, the idea here is like there's some large result or very specific result that's expected um that isn't realistic based on what they want. Uh so like the example that we give is like they want 5x or 10x you know revenue without making large changes. Like they're like okay well can you just like build us a couple landing pages? Like we're trying to five or 10x our It's like just a couple landing pages is not going to 10x your business. I hate to break it to you but you are

26:25wrong. Like you're just wrong. Like you need your positioning's wrong. You need to change these things. You know you need to rebuild. Your site's all broken. It's slow. like there's there's all these issues and they can't they have these blinders on. Um so I I wanted to let you guys talk a little bit about expected results and some of the issues we see. >> I think it's a problem of self diagnosis, you know, where client says this is the this is the problem that I have. Um, you know, if you went to the doctor and you said, "I've been having headaches every day for 2 hours for 3 months. Um, I need stitches in my left hand." The doctor's going to say, "What are you talking about? This is not There's nothing wrong

27:12with your hand." And why do you want me to give an unnecessary suture to a perfectly functioning body part? And I think that this is what happens with founders where they might have an assumption about what they believe is wrong and sometimes they're right, you know, where they've done a thorough amount of research, but it always helps to get a third party to vet that and getting a second opinion so that you can then establish a proper road map and prescription to fix your problem and really fix your problem. not just put a band-aid over it, but instead remove the freaking cancer from your body. And to do that, I think especially if you if you're expecting to have all those headaches gone, that's a magnitude of

28:01result and it requires a magnitude of change usually. So, it's matching your expectations with the efforts and uh actions that you are going to be putting in. and then getting a second opinion with someone who might know a little bit better than you because you're probably really great about building your product. You might not be the best person to talk to about design or marketing or website development. >> Yeah, I think it reminds me of your what you always say about the silver bullet that they're looking for a silver bullet and not a thousand gold BB's, >> which is what we do. We're like, "Okay, you you know, there's no silver bullet that we have in our gun that will 5x or 10x your ARR." No one has that. Um,

28:49unless you just get like hit the lottery essentially. And you shouldn't bank on doing that. You should start shooting your little golden BBs a million times until you slowly build up this 5 or 10x ARR. And here's a giant list of all the things that you probably need to do. And here's the the list of the things that we can do on that list. you know, it's like they're not even looking. >> I want to harp on that a little bit more. Um, just to expand the analogy because I think that what people miss is this. It's not so much the firing of those things, it's the crafting of them. Imagine you spend seven months crafting a silver bullet that you think is going to fix all your problems. You spend seven months and you get one shot.

29:33Whereas, if you craft a 100 gold BB's, you get to fire each one of those and test them and then move your aim a little bit further. It's still a gold BB. It's not a bad piece of craftsmanship. It just might not hit the target the first time or the third time, but it doesn't matter cuz you have a hundred of them. So, you can just keep moving your aim and firing. That's what the difference is between a silver bullet and 100 gold BBs. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we've we've literally heard people on calls be like, "Yeah, our goal is to 10x our revenue like in the next year or even sooner." And we're like, "Okay, unpack that for me. How do you plan to get there? What why is that your goal? What makes you

30:18think that it's achievable with the budget and resources that you're allocating to it today?" This is another like dead giveaway to me that they just have absolutely no idea what they're talking about from a marketing perspective because even as a marketer, like a professional marketer, it took me forever to even just understand the economics of like what's the relationship between setting a revenue goal and having a marketing budget? And like how do you know if if ads are profitable? you know, is it just because, you know, you're measuring like the number of conversions and the average revenue per customer and the revenue you're getting off of that compared to the revenue uh or compared to the ad the cost of the ads or are you

31:00actually looking at like your payback period and your cumulative lifetime value of your customers? And to me, when someone says we want a 10x ARR, that's such a lazy line of thinking. Like, >> yeah, I want to 10x my net worth too in the next year, but like do I reasonably have like the resources or like the budget or plan or path forward to do that today? Not really. Like what is achievable in front of me right now? And it's also just I mean like I don't know. It's it's so silly to me because again going back to the base camp guys, they're they're very anti- goals as well because it's like, oh, if you set a goal to 10x your AR in a year and you only 9xed it, does that mean that you failed?

31:50Or maybe you wanted to do it in a year, but it actually took you 13 months to 10x your AR. Does that mean that you failed in your goals? No. Like the goal is always to make things better. >> The goal is always to improve things. The goal is always to have more revenue, higher conversion rates, more traffic. Like, it's silly to try to put like such a uh huge number on it and then you're kind of just setting yourself up for up to fail. Now, it's a little bit different. For example, if you raised some money from a VC and let's just say you were given $10 million in a C series A and you know that for a fact you need to 10x your ARR within the next 3 years in order to hit your next milestone so you can raise

32:36more money and continue on that train. Cool. All power to you, right? You better be ready to spend all $10 million of that, right? The problem is that people come in and like, "We want a 10x ARR." Um, and but we only want to spend $50,000 doing that. Like, okay. So, you you don't have any idea about the relationship between how well your marketing works, you know, like what your your marketing spend turns into revenue dollars. Um, so whenever I hear someone say like, you know, we're just in the pursuit of better, we would like to increase our growth rates, we'd like to increase our conversion rates, we're just looking to, you know, make some swings, experiment, iterate, th that that to me is a lot better line of

33:22thinking. And that's actually how you 10x your ARR. You don't 10x your AR by like saying it and then it just like manifests. You do it by like inch by inch slowly, one step at a time, one brick at a time, building a marketing engine that gets you 10x RR. >> Cory's spinning right now, dude. >> Mhm. >> The kids would say, "Let him cook." >> You Yeah, let him cook, dude. >> Period. >> Um, okay. We're running out of time, so let's hit the last one really quick and then we'll go from there. Um, the last one that we're going to talk about today is taste. So, we'll let Zach talk a lot about that, but basically this is, you know, uh, a lot of times we have founders that they wrote all the copy on their site or they, you know, they had

34:08their sister-in-law make a logo for them and they are like, "This is my logo." and they've like gone all in on all these different brand assets and they're just very maybe very protective or they have really strong opinions about the taste of certain things, but they don't have any um reason for that if that makes sense. So, Zach, given that you're the one who takes the brunt of these bad fit type founders, let's let you talk about it. This is a hard one because I understand the position that founders are in a lot of the time where you just have to make something. It It's not going to be perfect. It's not going to even be really good in many cases. And it's not your fault. You know, you were

35:00not you didn't go to design school for four years. You didn't spend tens of thousands of hours mulling and pouring over Figma and Illustrator and Photoshop files. You didn't spend hours studying typography. You didn't spend months studying art history and all the things that I had to do just to get my foot in the door. Like when I started doing design, my stuff was Like I had no concept of Yeah, it was really bad. Nick was there. He wasn't there. But you can ask Beth Weekes. You can ask Scott Wis. You can ask Dave Phobes. You could ask uh all of my professors at San Diego State. You can ask my boss at the entrepreneurship center, Burn Schroeder. My work was garbage when I first came in. And that's to be expected because I

35:47hadn't put in the effort to actually know what makes good work. I might have good taste. Like I can see that there's a a better version of the things that I'm making, but I have no idea how to make it because it's hard. And it I think that founders gloss over that reality that writing copy is hard. Doing design is hard and it takes effort and practice to become really really good at it. So when you're doing all these things yourself, I think that you have to have the humility to understand that it's not good. The problem is if you think it's if you think it is good and it's not because your taste is not there yet. And so when founders come to us, one of the things that I'm looking after is do they

36:36fall into one of these three categories. A great fit client, admittedly not a designer, not a marketer, not a copywriter, knows they need help because this isn't their strong suit and they have other talents that they would rather allocate the resources to. Middle tier, they did some of the work themselves and they just dislike the results or they hired somebody else and they weren't stoked. The reason that's a middle tier is because there's still some uh retain retaining of judgment and like that they know that it's not good even though it might be that this if especially if this isn't their domain of expertise. The third tier which is giant red flag is I did all the design and copy work myself. I think it's great. I

37:22don't want to change it. big problem because clearly you have problems and you want to fix them and you think that your past solutions and uh concepts were correct and they're not. Otherwise, you wouldn't be in a position where you weren't happy with your current status. Yeah. Again, I think it comes down to trust. It's like, can they let go of their baby? Can they admit that their design is not that good or that their copy is, you know, not great or it's a bunch of gobbly Um, go ahead, Zach. Well, I've got to there's something that I've been thinking on with this as well because this has been something that I've had to learn as we've grown conversion factory and we've taken on other people who are not me doing the

38:13design work. And the way I've come to think of it is like this. Am I upset at how they did the work or am I upset at the result? Because if the result is still good, but it's not how I would have done it, then I need to let that go because the result's still there. The how doesn't really matter to me. And I think that that's something that founders should be willing to take on as well. Am I It might not be how I would do it. it still got done and it doesn't mean that it's bad. It's just not how I would do it. So, I'm I'm really trying to gauge the quality of the work, not how it was done. Like, and that gets really nuanced. It might be things like, you know, I probably might not have chosen that icon,

39:04but it works. It's not a wrong choice. And that's the problem with creative work is that there are infinite number of right choices. And that's just the the crux of the issue. There are 20,000 different things I could pick that would be a good logo for you, but we only get to pick one and that's it. So, it's I feel like taste is your ability to discern when something hits a good point and being okay with the how um and distinguishing the the how from the end result. >> Mhm. Yeah. There there's a lot of like taste feels very subjective, but I think taste is actually pretty objective because like you said, if you're just after having a good better end result, then you don't really care about what it

39:56is or how someone got there necessarily. You just care that it is an improvement. for the copyrightiting side of things. For example, um like we had a client who uh we did a lot of great work for and I think was very successful with but were very particular about the copywriting style and tone and word use and wanted to make sure that everything fit their tone of voice and their style directly. And for what reason? I don't know. there is no objective proof that their copyrightiting tone or style or word choice was better or superior. And so I I always like when people are willing to say, "Hey, I'm open to anything. You can try. You can AB test any headline. You can test any, you know, uh tone of voice or style of

40:49copyrightiting. All I care about is that it converts better or that it works better or that it resonates with our customers better or that it makes more sense. That to me and like that's what I care about too. I don't care about the tone of voice. It it gets me like so tripped up when people are like, "Oh, but like this isn't how we would talk." I'm like I don't care. Who cares about how you would talk about it or not? The customer doesn't care about how you talk about things. They just care if it makes sense. Why are we so up in arms about like the brand voice and oh, we wouldn't we wouldn't say it this way? Well, who said that that was the best way? Let the numbers speak for themselves, right? And

41:26that's kind of the objective taste that I think is good for founders to have of they know the areas that they don't have good subjective taste and they're also willing to pit their own subjective taste against maybe the objective taste of what a AB test would say or what customers would say in a survey response or you know fill in the blank of however you want to measure that and test it. Yeah, there is a I feel like there is a fine line that's there and I know that we're going a little longer. Um, and I thought I was thinking about this last week where there's I think there's two kinds of transformations that can happen. One is where you are getting very granular and seeing what is an improvement. This is

42:15where you're trying to move the needle.5% 1% 2%. However, if you are at 5%, it's pretty easy to see the difference between a 5% completion and 80% completion. So, I think that founders have a like they have a really hard time um seeing that that gap of well, are we get are we are we doing a granular nitpick or does that even matter right now because we're doing a massive jump forward, >> you know? I I think cuz full disclosure I have conversations with GPT trying to come up with social posts and have it battle test my thinking and something that it had asked me was around the concept of AB tests for design and I said well AB tests don't matter until you've at least got 85% completion because at that point you're just

43:08spinning you're like you're obsessing over details where you haven't even launched yet really or you're you're you're trying to refine garbage. Why don't you just instead get something that's really good out first? >> You should probably put A out before you start AB testing. >> Yeah. Well, and make sure that your A isn't, you know, drawn in crayon and uh and something you can actually >> that you're actually proud of. >> Um, okay. So, we've talked about a bunch of stuff. Uh, and there's actually a couple categories that we will keep under the conversion factory lock and key. So, just know that we will be judging all of you, but we won't tell you by what criteria we will be doing that. No, I'm just kidding. Um, no, I

43:52feel like this was really good. Um, so that way hopefully anybody listening can kind of maybe ga try to gauge themselves uh by all this stuff and see if there's ways that they could uh improve or you know, we do the same thing. But anyway, um, gentlemen, thank you guys and uh, thanks everybody for listening to the factory floor. We will see you next time. [Music]