Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Speaker A: Hello. Welcome back to Rogue startups. I'm your host, Craig Hewitt. Today I'm chatting with Rob Walling. This is not an interview like, y'all probably listen to startups for the rest of us, but this is a really intimate, honest discussion with Rob about, like, what makes someone successful. Rob has, like, really unique perspective in the business and startup space, both from running several successful companies and being the founder of Tiny Seed, where he's advising and investing in hundreds of startups.
And I wanted to talk to Rob because an angle that I'm in attack and a theme that I'm taking on this show is let's get in the mind of successful founders, because it's nothing. Do these three things to grow on LinkedIn, or this is how to write a great YouTube script, or this is what SEO is in 2024. It's like, how can you as a founder, be the best possible version of yourself to contribute as much to your company as you can? And I wanted to have Rob on because I know him pretty well and I'm able to have this really intimate discussion with him, but also, like, he's a stud and he's really successful. And so I can't be more happy with the discussion that we just had. It really was very enlightening for me and confirmed a lot of things that I think and believe it challenged some of them as well, in a really positive way. And I hope it does for you, too. If you're someone who's kind of struggling, looking for your way, and what the hell does this all mean? And am I doing the right things, I think you'll really enjoy this discussion. And I hope you enjoyed the theme of the show for the foreseeable future, which is like, how can we make you the best version of yourself as a founder? And it's not this growth strategy or this tactic or this hack or something, but it's like, let's get in your mind and make you the best version of yourself for your business and for your family and for your community. And I hope you enjoyed this first installment.
Cool. So, Rob, you're a bit of a crash test dummy here. First guest in the new direction of the show. So the show, obviously, folks who have been listening for a long time, kind of know for six years, Dave Rodenbaugh was my co host. We kind of chronicled our journey in building businesses, and that was really amazing. And for those of you looking to start a podcast, it was the easiest way because you just get on and you talk. And especially if it's someone interesting like Dave, they have a lot of stuff they want to talk about and a lot going on in their business.
Six years, Dave was like, hey, that's enough. I've had enough. I was like, cool. I really like this still.
I had never wanted to do an interview show because they're largely lame, I think.
And I want to really get at what makes a business great. And so we did a series on YouTube that was really popular. We just finished the series on LinkedIn, also really popular.
But I think those things are rarely the thing that make a good business and make a good founder. And that's really where this podcast, and I am going, is not the, like, here are the twelve tactics to dominate LinkedIn in 2024. But like, okay, here's the question. Why is Rob walling successful? That's really what I want to talk about.
[00:03:35] Speaker B: And I want to talk about why Craig Hewitt is successful. I think both. So we can compare and contrast. Cause they're different. And this is a question. When we were first, when I first pitched tiny seed to investors, when Aina and I started telling them, people said, how are you going to pick the companies? Like, what's your criteria? And so I wrote it all out and I have this big bulleted list. And if I break it, I have like 41 points in a document that I was kind of putting through my mind. But really, it's like the people. Its price sensitivity and its strength of product market fit. Three P's, right? The people is the most important one, period.
[00:04:10] Speaker A: Because I'm the jockey, right?
[00:04:11] Speaker B: Yep. Cause I've seen founders. Cause that's the other element of this is, you know, there are different approaches. Like there's, I'm assuming. Listen to your shows. Listen. I'm assuming listeners of this show know, like Ruben Gomez of Seinwell. And he has a very. He's successful by all measures, built two incredible businesses, mostly bootstrapped. He has a certain cadence in way he does things. It's very different than mine, which is very different than yours, which is different than Jordan Gaul's, which is different than Ron Galperin, who just sold controlling stake in gym desk for 32.5 million. So by all accounts, he's successful, but he's different than all of us. So that's the thing. There is no one. But there are some overarching traits that I think a lot of successful founders have.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: But you, like, what is it that you think you do well that has made you successful? Cause same, right? Like whatever. Four or five different things. Your podcast, your tiny seed, microconf, all these things.
I'm sure you do things that suck. Right, but that's part of it. Right. And how do you learn iterate, prevent those things from happening again to where you kind of largely are getting better?
[00:05:23] Speaker B: Yeah, it has been different over time. So in the early days, why was I successful 15 years ago? Starting a blog, having a portfolio of products, having a podcast, having success with.net, invoice, hit tail, all that. Why was I successful then?
And it's really, really because I was willing to grind and I would do a day job and then I would do three, four, 5 hours every night and stay up till 02:00 a.m. and it was, this is, you know, I always say hard work, luck and skill. Like, I can't control the luck, but I put in a fuck ton of hard work and I don't do that. I don't do that anymore. Like, I, I work hard while I'm working now, but I don't work the hours I used to and I really did schlep it. I think without that, I would never have had the success. But that's not, that alone is not enough. There's this skill or this knowing what to work on element. Right.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:17] Speaker B: And, and I had to slowly learn that over time. At first I just put in hours because I didn't really know what would move the needle. So I just did as much as I could. I just did everything because it was like, well, I'm going to do 50, 60 hours. I'm going to do a bunch of stuff that doesn't work because I just don't know what to work on. As I got further in my career, I started realizing, oh, this stuff actually moves the needle and this stuff doesn't matter. And so I am able to work less now and probably be as, or more effective than I used to be. I've learned that over time.
[00:06:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
So pulling back the curtain a little, I've been doing some one on one coaching with founders, and I'm advisor in residence at tiny seed where I get the opportunity to talk to 200 companies and founders almost. And in every single one of those conversations, it ultimately gets back to clarity.
Clarity is the thing that because we're all relatively smart people, we all understand how to work hard to varying degrees. But I think clarity and focus, and those are not the same things, are the things that folks struggle with, and I do even. Right, we're millions of dollars. Right. But I still struggle with it to an extent. And I do think that's the thing that separates most people, it is certainly the problem that folks come to me with within tiny seed or kind of outside in one on one, is like, what do I work on? And I'll speak for myself. It's like, you know, cas dose is growing. I'd like it to grow faster.
I show up at work, you know, 830. What do I do? Like, I legit struggle with that every day. Like, how do you.
How do you address this? And then how do you think people should address it if you're not. If you're not, you know, following your own preaching?
[00:08:04] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a nuanced problem. And it is so much easier when you have. When you can make a plan and look ahead and say, in the fall, for example, microconf is going to do a big push into LinkedIn.
And you could, and I have clarity about that. And when we do it, we are going to focus the shit out of our effort. We are going to do almost nothing else. I mean, we'll still put out some YouTube videos. Although if it's a clash between a YouTube video and LinkedIn, I'm going to not do the YouTube. You know what I mean? I'm going to pull the budget, pull the time.
So that's two things that you just said, clarity and focus. Now, why am I so clear on that?
I'm clear on it because I've been thinking about what is the next step? What is the next way to grow the audience? Because I guess this comes back to what is the goal of microcontroller? It's to educate people. It's obviously to make money. It's a seven figure business, but it's to help entrepreneurs. And the more people in the audience, the more people that we can interact with and help in the community is better because there are more people. So that is the top line, like KPI, if you will, is to grow the audience.
And so how do you do that? You and I can talk for an hour. Well, I don't know. How should we grow the microcomp audience? Well, Rob should write more books. We should have more YouTube channels or videos or more. We could just come up with. You could brainstorm 20 or 30 things. How do you grow an audience?
And we did, and we looked and we, at one point, we started looking at TikTok, should microcomp, go all in on TikTok? And we did a little. This is a thing. Yes, we did a little thing. I did not do a TikTok, but we did a bunch of research and we talked to a bunch of people. And we just tried to find anyone that was legit, that was having success on it. And it's like, there's nothing there. And the demographics are not what we need. And so we eliminated it. We spent about a month. I actually started recording some shorts. They were just gonna be shorts, right? It's like 60 seconds of me talk, and then we're gonna spruce it up. And we just decided, I felt clarity that that was the wrong call. And producer Ron and I decided we just eliminated it. We're not going to do that. And then it was like, six months later, I finally realized it's LinkedIn. It's LinkedIn, you know? And then spent months and months thinking about that. So the reason I bring up that example is, I think it's not magic, but it is. It's just logic. Like, it's just. And here's the thing. Here's what I'm committed to do. I'm committed to spending thousands of dollars, probably be five grand a month or something, ten grand a month in editing and all this stuff. And if I was. If it was me ten years ago, I would just do it myself. I'm in the position now where it needs to be someone else, but I run two seven figure businesses. I can't be editing my video anymore. I do. Just pay for them.
But I am willing to spend that amount of money and my time and everyone else's time for probably six months to see if it works. Because if it doesn't, well, what else would? It's my best. It's my best bet right now. It's my best guess. If it does work, it's asymmetric. If it does work, it does what YouTube did for us, which went from 10,000 to 80,000 subscribers in 18 months. And if I can do that on LinkedIn, this is 100% worth the bet. So I think I like clarity and focus as grounding factors. You heard. I just brought them up over and over and over, and I especially like focus. I'm going to let you talk in a second. But I especially like focus, dude, because on Twitter, everybody's talking about how not to focus and how to. Why don't. You know, why don't I do TikTok, LinkedIn and Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat and Reddit and Hacker? Why don't I do that and just see what sticks? Because it doesn't fucking work. Because I've never seen that approach work. It's bullshit, right? This brand. Pray. So that's where I think focus is critical, as you brought up, and the clarity is the harder one. I think everyone struggles with, and sometimes you do need a coach like yourself or an advisor like me to say, I think you should be clear on, you know, you have three options. I think you should do that one. And that gives them. You almost need an outside sanity check. Right. So what do. What do you think? I just did a big diatribe, but what do you think about that and that how it relates?
[00:12:07] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Like, I largely agree. Like, um, I think. I think, yeah. What the one. One p whatever is that one. One person you're selling one product to in one channel, and there's one more, I think. Right, but. But, like, you can get to a million or more doing. Doing that thing. And I think the challenge, we literally had a call yesterday with someone.
They're on that path. They're at 50, 60 grand a month, growing a few percent a month, which is great.
And they're going to get there, and they are. They're like, hey, what about this? And what about this? And what about this? And I'm the same way, man. I'm exactly the same way. And I think that's the challenge, is maybe it's clarity, focus, and discipline to have the confidence and the conviction that the thing you decided in that moment of sanity is the thing, and you just fucking do the work. Put the blinders on and do the work for 90 days, and then come up for air and say, okay, let's evaluate some metrics. If it's a thing like LinkedIn, maybe that's early, like post impressions, not like tickets sold to Microconf.
[00:13:16] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:13:16] Speaker A: But I think that's the. Yeah, I think I'm largely on the same boat. Is like, make as good a decision as you can to have clarity and be able to focus on a thing. But then, just objectively, the challenge for me is like, and a lot of these folks, it's like, man, that's hard from there. That's when it gets really hard. It's easy to. And we're all smart people. We can say, yeah, LinkedIn obviously, is like the b two B customer acquisition channel these days.
But then the hard part, I think, a lot of times, is actually showing up and doing the work and making that the most important thing of every day of your work life.
That's where most folks falter. And I'm probably just talking about myself because I don't have a single thing that I make the most important part of every day.
And so I'm mildly successful, I think.
But I know it could be a lot more if I dead what we're talking about.
[00:14:16] Speaker B: So I think you're selling yourself short by saying mildly successful, but I have.
[00:14:19] Speaker A: A degree of success, but could be more.
[00:14:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I think. Yeah, I think that's true for any of us. I call what you're, what you're talking about. I call it relentless execution. And Sherry hates that term, my wife, because she's like, it's just so aggressive, you know? And it's like, that was not a very good sherry voice, but she says it's so aggressive. And I don't disagree with that. But for me, it's a motivating thing. Like, I was an athlete, you know, I ran track and stuff, and it was like the ones who won the races were the ones that practiced every day. And that, I think, is a work ethic that I bring to my work. I think what's funny, you said clarity. You said focus and then kind of discipline. And I think of it as execution, of actually getting it done and showing up every day. And it relates to the way Einar and I talk a lot about the successful tiny seed founders, which is they do a lot of things.
They execute very quickly, and they're generally right. That's it. Those three things.
That's everybody who's doing millions and millions of dollars, you know, they generally do that. And it really overlaps heavily with that focus, clarity, and execution or discipline. The thing that I've found, because when I was a solo founder with no employees and it was all contractors, I really struggled with motivation for execution because, right, I had no accountability. So this is what has changed it for me. I am accountable to my team, rather than the other way. Well, I shouldn't say rather. We are both accountable to each other. So my team's accountable to me because I'm like, get this done. Let's go to the audience. Everyone ship. And I want that to be on time. But if I don't record the YouTube video. We were recording a YouTube video. We were recording YouTube video every week and a podcast episode every week. It was brutal. I would be on the road two weeks a month for a few months in the fall. It was brutal. Like, it is some of the hardest I've worked in the last, probably since I sold thrip.
But I had to.
I never missed a deadline. And there were times when I was like, I have to leave for the airport in 25 minutes. I'm gonna record this YouTube video. It's not gonna be my best ever. But I have to ship because producer Ron's waiting for it, because the editors are waiting for it because it has to hit the channel on Sunday and we have all these people. So to me, it was a forced accountability that sometimes I really didn't like, but we always shipped it. And so that's what I would, I would toss it back to you of what's a way for you to get forced accountability? A forcing function. And you and I can both say, all right, what is it? Co founder, mastermind, an advisor, an investor, a coach. So, you know, do you have a coach that's busting your chops and saying, like, or do I need to start, will you? And I start. Need to start doing a stand up? Oh, man. Can you imagine?
[00:17:00] Speaker A: That's the last thing you need.
[00:17:02] Speaker B: That's the last thing you need. I'd be like, Craig Hewitt.
[00:17:04] Speaker A: Yeah, shape up, soldier.
So, no, I think that is a really good point. And I'm not unique in that. I'm a solo founder.
I am the best person to be doing a lot of the sales and marketing that we're doing. And so it largely does fall on me these days. We have a little bit of help, but, yeah, and largely feel pretty good about me being the person, kind of like you are for the podcast and YouTube videos.
So, yeah, what is keeping me from really like ten out of ten nailing it, I think, is a bit of that bottom up accountability because if you have a team that is kind of executing a lot of it, then you set the vision and give that key piece for them to go be successful.
I don't have that. Like, we don't have a big sales marketing team that I know if I don't show up and do that, they're going to suffer as a result. It's just we didn't have a YouTube video for the Castos channel this week, or I didn't. I posted on LinkedIn today, but I didn't do the 20 minutes of engagement beforehand to really boost the algorithm and stuff.
So I am 100% not alone there. I think that's the case for most folks is they are just doing it themselves and like, if they don't do it, there's no recourse, really.
And so, yeah, what's the answer? Yeah, a coach. But even like, I mean, in my coaching engagements, I'm not hounding my clients on a daily or weekly basis. You know, we talk every other week and it's like, hey, you know, what's going on? How's it going I'll get after them a little bit if they.
Several sessions in a row are not showing up. And that's just kind of healthy love, I think. I don't have an answer, is the short version. And I think this is where I turn a critical eye at myself, and I'm like, man, I'm kind of being a bitch about this.
It's kind of hard.
[00:19:05] Speaker B: Can offer an idea hard, but it's.
[00:19:09] Speaker A: Not complicated, but it's hard.
[00:19:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
I have a thought for you specifically, and I think, well, I have a general thought first for folks listening. And it's like, at different times of our life, we have intrinsic motivation in it. Other times, we need to be extrinsically externally motivated. And I have gone through cycles of those. I was very internally motivated when I was trying to quit a day job. I was very internally motivated when I realized, oh, I'm only making, like, 100 grand a year, and I need to make 150 grand on my own because I got to make the house payment, and my wife was in school and all this stuff. Right. So there was a real. I guess that was intrinsic and extrinsic, but you go through waves of it. I don't know of anyone who's totally intrinsically motivated all the time. Right. So how do you get through those moments where it's like, I just don't want to do it? Right? That's kind of what we're saying. And we've gone through, like, six examples, but you're saying, like, hey, coach, coach isn't working for you, or you don't keep people accountable. That's not your role as a coach. So if I were in your shoes, I would find another founder. Like a single founder. Like, for you, it'd be just tiny seat founder, probably. And I think of someone like a Derek Reimer, I. Or just anyone who's a solo founder who's probably 90% sure in the same boat that you are, because if I was a solo founder in your shoes, I would feel the same way. I do not have intrinsic motivation all the time. People will say this, like, rob ships so much stuff. He must just. And it's like, no, there are weeks when I don't want to record a podcast at all. But what's my motivation for startups, the rest of us? It's that I haven't missed a week in 14 years. I can't start now. I can't let myself do that.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:48] Speaker B: Anyways, that's two things. One is to get a streak, and once you get the streak, you don't want to let the streak die, but the other thing is to find another founder who's in exactly the same boat, who is willing to do, you know, is it two or three times a week in slack of, like, I'm going to do this? Is it two or three times a week on a quick zoom? Is it async using voxer? You know, or a loom of, like, this is what I commit, and I want you to bust my chops if I don't do this, in fact, I'm going to put $100 into the reelect. Whatever.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? And that's gonna. In the opposite. No, it's the opposite. You know, it's gonna go to the opposite party if I don't do this. Right?
[00:21:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:28] Speaker B: What do you think about that suggestion of getting a founder, another founder?
[00:21:32] Speaker A: I like that a lot. I like that a lot. And so you have PSA. Like, if you're a founder who wants to be part of this accountability, hit me up on Twitter. I'm Thecray Hewitt, or shoot a message podcast.com dot.
I'd love to become accountable to somebody.
And if we get enough folks, we can kind of create a little network of this.
Two things about that that resonate. One is I'm doing that on a health and fitness level. I signed up for my body tutor about six months ago, and it's amazing. Totally changed how I am accountable externally to myself and my body and my fitness.
I have gone through that has been such an eye opening experience with the internal and external or intrinsic and extrinsic motivation at the beginning. And this is just how I am at the beginning. I was like, fucking, hey, let's do it. I'm eating perfectly. I lost, like, eight pounds, which I'm not a big guy, so that's a lot.
And then at a point, I was just like, I'm good. Fuck it.
And of course, I don't go to the gym. I eat crap, and I gain a few pounds. And so my coach, chris, is like, dude, like, what's going on? And so we changed how we communicate and how I'm accountable to him. So instead of, like, journaling every day and all this stuff, that's just not sustainable.
We get on a ten minute call every Monday, and then I text him a few times during the week. And it's great because that is what I need and am capable of long term to keep this thing going.
So that's one thing I think the other thing, as you were talking about, like, in the season, and we talk a lot about seasons at Casnos. Like, what season are we in right now? From a product and a business and a marketing perspective, the season of my life right now is, like, castos is growing a little bit. We're slightly profitable. I'm making all the money that I really need. Like, I don't have that hair on fire. Holy shit. This thing's gonna die if I don't give it 110% right now. And I think that I'm gonna give myself the break that, like, I literally almost killed myself for, like, five years to get to this point. And so to be able to step back a little bit and say, like, I can't do that anymore. I need to find the thing I can do that really makes a difference.
And again, talk to a lot of folks who are in that boat. They're like, I've been grinding super hard. I've been pushing, looking forward. Like, I'm not going to sell for $32 million like, Iran. But I also can't keep going like this. So I got to find, like, that thing that is sustainable, just like I did with my fitness, you know, journey. And so I think that may be part of it. And I don't. I don't think I'm being too much of a bitch like, like that to say, I am able to work pretty hard for a pretty long period of time, but I can't do what I did for the next five years.
[00:24:37] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:24:38] Speaker A: And that's. That's part of the calculus, I think.
[00:24:40] Speaker B: It's really good to know that. Yep. Is that called myfitness tutor? Is that what it is?
[00:24:45] Speaker A: My body tutor.
[00:24:46] Speaker B: My body tutor. So do you need my founder tutor? That's really what we're talking about.
Here's the thing. What are the parallels between fitness and what we're talking about here as a founder is? It's a thing.
[00:24:57] Speaker A: Mindset, focus. Yeah.
[00:24:58] Speaker B: Even. But at the nuts and bolts, it's.
I need to stay motivated in the now, in the short term, day to day to do something that doesn't show results for a long time. That's the problem is if you got results every day, if you lost. If you were like, I lost 0.2 pounds today, and it's like, if it was that or if, like, I did some marketing today and it definitely gave results, you would do it every day because you get the dopamine. But, yeah, it's two weeks. It's two months. It's four months. How do you stick through this? Right. That's really what we're getting at. And that's where we need to either make it fun, you either need to be intrinsically motivated for this period of time, or you need someone busting your chops or some external thing saying like, this is why you're doing this, because the marshmallow, you'll get to eat the marshmallow in an hour, you know, or two marshmallows when the, you know, referencing the psychological study. That's it. And this is something everybody struggles with.
[00:25:51] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
Okay. I think very appropriate segue, focus. You're a busy person running two kind of seven figure companies. You just launched a course. As of the time, this episode will go live.
To me, I was very fortunate to be the host of startups for the rest of us in a recent episode. So that was super cool. And we talked a lot about, from Rob walling, tiny seed microcomp perspective why you did that.
But from a founder to founder perspective, like, man, that's kind of a wildcard that seems a little bit out of left field. Tell me about how you said, okay, LinkedIn is the thing, but I'm going to do a course.
[00:26:40] Speaker B: Yep.
Specifically to that question of LinkedIn is a thing, but I'm going to do a course is we can do both because one is the course is monetization, the course is a product, LinkedIn is marketing, LinkedIn is audience building that we. I want to be doing multiple of those at any given time. Right. So, and we have the bandwidth, I believe it's. Is it five? I think microcontroller has five people plus me. And I'm like, I don't count because I don't work in the business, right. I advise and I'm the face of it, but like, so we have enough people that we can do both. So that's, that's why, that's why that.
The course, I resisted doing the course, man. Last course I did was 2009, and it was so much work. I was like, never again. I just can't even. Books are a lot less work than a video course like this. And what we realized was there is absolutely no good, all encompassing, all in one resource for early stage founders. The course is called the SAS launchpad. It's at Saslaunauchpad Co. And it's for folks who want to find an idea, who want to validate an idea, who want to vet an idea, who want to build a landing page and build an mvp and launch. It's the whole early stage idea to launch was an original working title for it, and I didn't want to do it because I knew it would be hundreds and hundreds of hours.
But we do stuff.
We do some things that are hard with micrograph of tiny seed that I know just need to get done. And this one for us also has an upside. It's not just free, right? I mean, we're selling it. And I think the biggest thing is we see, I see a lot of early stage folks who just, they're just not getting traction, they're just not making it forward. And it's like, how can we help them? So we started mastermind matching, right? And we have the YouTube channel. We have all the stuff that Microcomp offers. But like, the newer people, the aspiring founders were getting these masterminds, and it was the least, it's like the weakest product market fit of any microcomp product is masterminds for pre revenue people, because they get in there and they're all like, you know, I'm gonna try something. And then they just, they flame out and nobody, nobody has it. So we said, well, what if instead we actually give some instruction and give them a common vernacular to be able to do it? So then when we match them, they at least have kind of a loose curriculum of, these are the steps that Rob says, let's give these a try as a group. So that was really the motivation. And eventually my team convinced me, like, we need to do this. And they eventually, I was, fine. Tell me the day before and I'll be there, you know? And then eight months. Eight months later, so much work.
[00:29:16] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Cool. That's helpful. So Saslaunchpad Co.
Is the domain, folks. Go check it out. It will be live by the time this episode goes out. I know from talking yesterday it's $500.
[00:29:33] Speaker B: Yep, $4.99. And if you buy before September 30, there's going to be a live group Q and a with me talking all about, which is something I just don't ever do that. And I'm doing it for this course because I do want, honestly, I want to hear questions people have, and I want to help folks out who, you know, who get in early and are motivated to execute on it.
[00:29:53] Speaker A: Yeah. Where do you think about this as an asset and a path for folks in your world? If you can consider the podcast and microconf and tiny seed kind of as your world, where do you consider this to be? Like, adding an arrow in the quiver of, of the solutions that you have?
[00:30:19] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So that's interesting. So, people, the broadest audience growth or the. How do I say this like the early top of the funnel. Let's just use that term. The weird part is, you know, we talk about funnels in SAS and it actually kind of makes sense. The microcontroller tiny seed rob walling ecosystem is not a funnel. It's all over the place. Right. But really, let's say it's a circle. Yeah, let's say it's a big circle. Or like a target, you know, with a bullseye at the center. Let's just say what's the outer ring? Because there's a bunch of things. It's my books, like SAS playbooks about itself, 30,000, its 30,000th copy. And a lot of people who read that wind up then listening to the podcast and the YouTube channel or coming in and checking out tiny cedar microcom. So its books start small, stay small is definitely one thats also sold 30,000 copies, although it did that over 14 years.
So its the books, the podcast, and the YouTube tend to be that outer circle. Or maybe we could just say those are three at the top of the funnel. Whatever. Im mixing metaphors here.
Those are all basically free. I think a $10 Kindle book is effectively free. Or a $25 paperback. So those are the free resources anyone can consume. And then the next level down is usually.
Or the next level inward is. I mean, it used to just be, okay, buy a ticket to our event and that's a big step and fly somewhere.
[00:31:41] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:31:42] Speaker B: And so that's where we do have Microconf Connect, which is a subscription community.
And that is like $50 a month. And mastermind matching, we're going to start mixing that in with connect. But mastermind matching is a one time fee. So we have these other offerings, and people really pick and choose. This is where it's not. The funnel breaks down because no one does the same thing in the same order every time. But really the course, to answer your question is, I want the course to be a foundational piece that if you're in the microcomp ecosystem and you are early stage and you want to understand the concepts and have the nomenclature and have the, you know, it's like I have the framework, the stair step method. Like, if I say that you know what that is in your head, right. There are things, the two 2200 framework that I introduce and flesh out in the course. 05:00 p.m. framework. I go deeper on that. I mentioned a few times. It's like once you have that, now more of microcontroller makes sense. And more of what we do will make sense. So I do see the course is a pretty foundational piece. It just depends. I think that along with connect and masterminds is perhaps coming back to earlier topic of accountability. That's the trifecta is I'm trying to give knowledge with the course. I'm trying to give community with connect, which is Slack channel. And I'm trying to give accountability with masterminds accountability and guidance. Right. And I think it's those three things that really are certainly helpful and maybe not a requirement, but they definitely help you in your early journey.
[00:33:09] Speaker A: I know you talked on the podcast a little bit, about 30,000 copies of the book.
And I want to talk about kind of the business side of this. Right. Like the course, the goal is to, you know, help folks and all this, but. But to make some money to support a lot of the free stuff that you do, like the podcast, the YouTube channel stuff. Like, do you have a goal for how well this will do? Like what, what are you expecting?
[00:33:35] Speaker B: I'm honestly, I have numbers in my head and I just don't know because I haven't sold a core, a dollar 500 product in 15 years, you know, like a $500.01 time thing. And even that was a subscription back then. It was like 50 a month. The SAS Playbook surprised me. I thought it would sell like start small, say small sort again sold 30,000 copies over 14 years. And I was like, SAS Playbook is probably going to be a little better than that. Which is what, 2000 copies a year or something? That's not, you know, it's all front loaded and then it's a trickle. But that's what I thought. And the SAS Playbook has sold 30,000 copies in twelve months or 15 months. So it's just like totally different trajectory. So I have a tough time even projecting it will be. I mean, if the course, it's $500 pop. Right. So let's say we get 100 people to buy it. $50,000. Right. I'm doing math here live on the Internet. That sounds very do I think that with the microconf audience of 125,000 people across, you know, all the email and YouTube and podcasts, I think we can sell 100 copies. Yeah, if we. We don't sell 100 copies. Like, that is catastrophic. So basically, if we don't get six figures in revenue from this, we are under, like, our cost is six figures, you know?
[00:34:49] Speaker A: Right.
[00:34:49] Speaker B: It's like there's a lot of time. I'm not joking when I say it's like eight months part time, like multiple people. So in the first month, do I think we could sell a quarter million dollars? That's 500 copies. Yeah, it's reasonable. Will I be disappointed if we sell 300? You know, 300 of them may make 150k. That's probably my min. If I'm honest, I think 250 is, like, a nice stretch for the first month. And then.
And it might be more than that. I just don't know. Like, my Kickstarter with SAS Playbook surprised me. 108,000. I was like, oh, that's a lot of books.
[00:35:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:20] Speaker B: But then there's the. It's not just the first month, right? It's then the subsequent months of what.
[00:35:25] Speaker A: Will it settle in the drip campaign? And. Yeah, content points back to it. Yeah.
[00:35:30] Speaker B: So then can we sell 20 copies a month? That's ten grand in revenue a month. Can we sell 20 copies a month, every month? Basically, it's just like new people coming into the audience. I think so, yeah. You know, but I just don't know. This is one of those things where people say, how do you plan your quarter? You know, how do you plan this? It's like, I kind of wing it and stuff usually works out. I just make it really good and I know people need it. You know what I mean? It's like, it's a lot less planning. I couldn't defend the decision to make this course. If I was at a big company trying to defend this to, like, a VP, some SVP with TPS reports, I couldn't defend this. But I know it's going to be fine, and I know we're going to make a lot of money, and I know we're going to help a lot of people. That's being a fan. That's why I can't work for other people.
[00:36:12] Speaker A: Right.
[00:36:13] Speaker B: Because I do just enough on gut, you know?
[00:36:15] Speaker A: Yeah. It's also not a, like, I know you've talked about, like, reversible and non reversible decisions. Like, this is not the kind of bet that could sink the company. Right. This is like, yeah, if this doesn't work out. Bummer. Like, quite a bit of money and eight months of your time, but you'll be fine.
[00:36:34] Speaker B: It's a good way to put it. Asymmetric upside back to that. If this works, this will be a revenue stream that will allow us to hire one or two new employees, like, next year, because it'll be, I think, recurring and this and that, and if it doesn't work out, it's what you said well, that was a poor decision I've made. Those in the past didn't pan out.
[00:36:52] Speaker A: So now there have been some changes at Microconf in the last six months. Fraser, as you alluded to, is the GM of Microsoft. Now, as you're kind of someone who is not in the weeds day to day kind of managing everything, tell me about what he has brought that is different to the brand and the product, because I can imagine that kind of person is doing a fair part of setting the vision right. I know you're the visionary and you're like, the kind of way out there, but he hopefully is influencing that a fair bit of coming from this different perspective, and he brings this other kind of slant that you gotta contend with.
And having people push up in the organization to have you go a different direction, I think is largely healthy, or to challenge you in a healthy way.
Tell me about Fraser. Tell me about, like, how he has pushed you in different, uncomfortable ways and kind of, you know, what that's been like.
[00:38:00] Speaker B: Yeah, it was a scary transition because, you know, the former producer who was running microconf I worked with for ten years, and I was, like, terrified, like, do I have to come run this business? Is this a business that I can hire someone else to run microcontroller? So has my fingerprints, you know, and you and I both know it's not like some people have experience running SaaS companies. Some people have experience running whatever type of company you want to hire for. Who has experience running a microconf? Like an audience based event community? There just aren't that many.
I was really scared about it, but found Fraser. He is amazing, and he's been with us for, I think, four or five months now.
The biggest thing we realized was that Microconf used to be an events company, and now we are a. We're essentially a product company. Like, we are a digital information knowledge product company. And that evolution started once I kind of went full time. I went full time on Microconf and started hiring full time people about four years ago. Maybe it was five. I think it was like five. I think it was 2019. And we started being like, well, two events a year is not enough. What else can we do? When we started rolling stuff out, I've already mentioned it. Microgram connect, and mastermind matching and all that stuff and those things. What we found is, a, they help more people, because way more people are going to match with a mastermind than will ever attend an in person event in Croatia. B, they're so much more profitable, lucrative, there's just no cost. The cost of goods sold on an event is like 75% of your ticket or 80%. Like, it's crazy. Yeah, it's bananas. Any event we run crazy. Yeah. So I think if we, I believe, like, if we sell a ticket for a think our cost, hard cost to a hotel and everything is between 700, $5800.
[00:39:51] Speaker A: That's crazy.
[00:39:52] Speaker B: Isn't it crazy?
[00:39:53] Speaker A: That's crazy.
[00:39:54] Speaker B: Yep. So we sell $250,000 worth of tickets.
[00:39:58] Speaker A: And go stroke a check for 200.
[00:40:00] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. But then, you know, there's sponsorships, there's other stuff. Right. There's other revenue streams. Anyways, what we realize is when we do mastermind matching and let's say we do $50,000 worth, like, there is no cost other than someone's time. So with that said, this was the time as we were having this transition was not to hire another person who runs events, but to say, we're a digital products company who knows how to package, how to copyright, how to market, how to build funnels, how to build email sequences. You referenced trip sequences earlier. That's what we went after. I said, I want someone like that with management experience.
Fraser had managed 17 people. He was CMO or head of marketing at his prior thing. I was like, I think he can manage a seven figure budget as well. That's all a GM is. Can you manage people? Can you do the day to day work or manage people to do it? And, you know, can you handle it? So that's the transition. It turned out really well. Your question was, has he pushed back and has he kind of sharpened, have we sharpened each other's swords, you know, as we've been doing it? And, yeah, he has, because he has his own experience and it's. I came up through startups, but kind of info marketing, you know, is where I. Information marketing and Internet marketing.
[00:41:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:41:10] Speaker B: And he came at it a different way. And I don't honestly know his path. I just know that we think we're both good marketers, but we think about things differently. And so the good thing is much like he's a collaboration partner for me, and hopefully I am for him, but like, Anar and I are the same thing with tiny seed. Derek Reimer and I were the same thing with drip, where we get in a room, it's a zoom room. Now we try to find the best answer, not the ego answer. I never say my answer. I will say I have some ideas. What do you think? And I genuinely, he respects my opinion, but I heartily respect his opinion. So I think that's been the big thing, is he has totally pushed back and been like, I think we should. He was the one that was like, I think the course should be more expensive. I was like, well, I don't know. Like, I think course 200. 5300, three. And he's like, rob, this is a $1500 course. You know what I mean? That's what he kept saying. And, like, it was. That's the kind of thing where I'm like, all right, I'm gonna trust you on this. And I think he's right as well. Sometimes you need to take your talk about having accountability. Someone had to bust my chops to be like, you should charge more for this course. It's worth that.
[00:42:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:12] Speaker B: And similar. There's a landing page we're designing, and he's very opinionated about it. And I'm like, this is awesome. It's slightly different than I would do, but I'm gonna let you run with this because he has ownership of it.
[00:42:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:23] Speaker B: You know, it helps when you hire really smart, senior people and you can trust them, you know?
[00:42:28] Speaker A: Yeah, that's cool. I'm glad to hear we have those people. We have had those people. And it is really different to work in a company where you have that kind of a player leader pushes you as a founder.
It is a really different experience than just an order taker.
[00:42:50] Speaker B: That's right. And I specifically hired for someone who would be autonomous or would push back on me. I did not hire a yes person because I knew that wouldn't be good. Because I don't want microconf to be limited to my view experience. Like, I want to have input, but talk about self limiting. I want smart. I want people who are smarter than I am doing the things they're doing.
[00:43:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:14] Speaker B: And that's. That's what this was. That can be hard. You know what? I don't know if I could have done that ten years ago. Probably not. My ego is too big of, like, I know either I know best, or I have to prove to myself that I'm actually this smart, or I have to prove to the world that I'm this smart. And I just. I'm done with that. You know, I've hit that age or whatever it is. The level I think selling drip was a big thing for me, of, like, okay, cool. I don't need to prove anything anymore, and so I can bring in people that are going to push back.
[00:43:38] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Cool, man. Super fun chat for I think folks know how to get in touch with you. Microconf startups for the rest of us, podcast Microconf, YouTube channel Saslaunchpad, co for the course if you're an early stage founder. Anything else?
[00:43:56] Speaker B: That's it, man. Thanks so much for having me on.
[00:43:58] Speaker A: Thanks, Rob.
