Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: Hello. Welcome back to Rogue startups. I'm your host, Craig Hewitt. Today I'm chatting with Wes Bush, the originator and kind of thought leader around product led growth. Wes had his first book, the product led growth book out about five years ago. He's got a new one coming out soon. And Wes walked me through, literally step by step through the playbook that they run with all of their consulting clients around how to implement product led growth within your business. You know, I didn't even kind of realize like the original book and kind of product led so far was just like, hey, this is a movement, this is a thing. And this is, you know, you should consider this. The new book that's coming out and it will have come out just the day before this episode goes live is really, this is how you implement it in your business. So, so for those of us SaaS founders who are like, oh, PlG, you know, I don't buy into it, you know, I still believe I have to do sales marketing stuff like this is the book. And the very end of this episode is where Wes literally walks me through how we could implement a PLG differentiatable and kind of moat motion and kind of set up within castos, within my business to set ourselves up for success over the next few years. And so Wes was super gracious to literally just walk me through that. And there's a lot that we all can take away from the kind of mindset and methodology of how he approaches implementing a PLG motion and setup within a business, even if you're kind of more towards the enterprise level within SAS. So I truly hope you enjoy this episode. It was great for me to finally meet Wes. We've kind of known each other online for a long time and he really blew my mind with how relatable and easy it is to set this kind of motion up in your business and set yourself up for success. I hope you enjoy the conversation.
Okay, so Wes, I want to start by maybe dispelling a very common like, misconception, which is the terms product led growth or PLG and self service SaaS are the same things like knee jerk reaction. What do you say to that?
[00:02:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I would say there's a lot of overlap, but there is very specific differences between the two. So product led growth to me is where you're using the product to acquire, engage and monetize users. And so it's like completely product led in that way when it comes to the sound of experience, getting to value and also pulling your credit card without talking to anyone so it's like building truly a product that could sell itself where, like, self serve is more kind of considered is like, okay, self serve revenue. Like, people can do that on their own. And so that's where, like, that full part of, like, the acquisition, engagement, monetization part gets, like, lumped in. It was like, that sounds very self serve, right? Yeah, yeah. Where it gets a little complicated is to do product that growth. Right. At least our belief at productbed is like, it's more than a free trial. There's more to it. And so it's also organizational thing. So, like, it should impact your company level strategy, should impact, like, the team you build, the capabilities you invest in, as well as, like, the product data, your growth process, and also, like, just your understanding of the user. So those are, like, all the kind of organizational things that I really look into to support PlG on that level.
[00:03:18] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. So I want to dive into that. Cause you kind of piqued my curiosity of, like, it will affect your organizational structure. Cause, like, one thing that I think about is, like, what does a great kind of SaaS team look like? And so, like, I'll just say we're kind of, like, low seven figures ARR. And we're a team of eight people right now, but I'm the only marketing person currently. We have, like, a product person who he kind of, like, crosses over a bit. Are you kind of saying, like, if we wanted to invest in marketing, people from here, a fair bet wouldn't necessarily be go hire a marketer who does, you know, fucking SEO or email or something like that, but go hire or maybe move our product person into, like, product marketing. Is that kind of what you're getting at?
[00:04:00] Speaker B: You could, if that's, like, a current gap in the team where you're like, okay, we're not getting enough signups. People aren't understanding what we're doing. Like, we've got to have, like, good product marketing. I guess what I was getting it more so is a lot of people think, like, PLG, it's just that free trial, free model. It's just like a call to action. It's just a marketing thing or it's just a product thing. And that's, like, we analyzed, like, 324 plus of our clients last year, and we were actually kind of amazed when we looked at the people who went through our programs we worked with closely. There's, like, this big group, like, 80% senior product execs, 20% of are, like, these founders and the product executives. They were just not that successful they didn't really have much success launching the PsGmotion. If they did, it didn't generate much revenue and it kind of got siloed. And then the founders, what they were doing, which was really about implementing as an organizational wide thing. And so that was actually for us, the big aha moment. Those 20% of founders generate 80% of the results. But why that was, it all went back to their implementing it as an organization wide thing. So back to your, like, do we move this person here from managing to, like, product marketing?
It would come down to your strategy. So, like, how are you going to win? And what does your business need to win? So, like, if it's, you know, a differentiated approach. Yeah, okay, sure. Like, investing in product marketing might make a bit more sense. So users will know what's unique about your product in that sense.
[00:05:32] Speaker A: Yeah. Gotcha. I want to try to differentiate between two other things, which to me is like a marketing channel. And you mentioned, like, how are you going to win in the market and PLG. Right? Like, is product led growth in the product just being amazing? And product have like viral loops and things like this, like the marketing channel, or is that independent of marketing channels that you would run kind of next to like a PLG driven company?
[00:05:59] Speaker B: Yeah, great question. So the answer is it could be both, which is the confusing part. Right.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: If you're like an accountant, this is great.
[00:06:07] Speaker B: Tell me all the options.
So, yes, when it comes to BLG, like, you could make it a marketing channel, but that's not always a possibility. So I'll give you examples for everybody to kind of think about this. So mix Max is like an email tool. You could use it to book meetings and all that stuff. And it's really kind of cool what you could do when you share Mixmax inside your Gmail or something like that. And so when you're sharing it to somebody else, if I send it to you, Craig, you're going to see it and it's like, oh, it's powered by Mixmax. And you might be interested because it's kind of a cool, embeddable thing in Gmail. You check it out and then you're like, oh, wow, that's mix Max. I didn't even know that. I want that too. You sign up. So when I was talking to Olaf, the CEO of that company, he was like, our customer acquisition costs are zero. And he's like, this is fantastic. It just has this viral loop. It just, every user brings in a new user. At least it's got a really high viral coefficient. So that is like viral growth, and it's enabled by a product that grows motion. Now, when we're talking about like, let's say a workforce management tool or like an HR tool, there should be viral growth. But the problem is it's not external. Like, it's just internal inside the organization. So those products are a lot harder to grow with that PLG motion. And so that's why I think to your question, which is why I was like, it's actually a really good one. I don't just say that because I know a lot of podcasts get say that it is a common misconception that, oh, yeah, PLG, it just means it's a marketing channel where it's like, that's the independence part, is like, it could be if you have that barrel coefficient and your product lends itself well to that. But I've seen a lot of companies think that that's the case, go into it, and then they're like, trying to manufacture this growth loop, that it doesn't work because it doesn't naturally lend itself to, like, that kind of product.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So in your mind is PLG and kind of viral coefficients in this, like, you sharing your tool with someone else who then may, you know, it's the Dropbox or mix max, you know, calendly, canva, whatever type of model is that the primary way in which you see PLG working well is when you have this kind of internal to external growth.
[00:08:34] Speaker B: Loop going, I think it helps, like, anything like that. It would just help accelerate your existing growth and that's what you want. Does it have to be that case? No. Like, even with canva, although you could share your graphics and everything else like that, if you search, like, hey, how to make a poster, like, they're ranking first for that. If you search, like, how to make Facebook cover image or something like that, it's like they rank first for that too. And the reason why is because they know through a ton of research just what are people searching for before they need to design something like that? We just want to be right there. And so I think the ultimate hack here, like, for the marketing side, and this is like the lamest hack ever, is just get to know your customers really well. Like, we talk a ton about, like, hey, who's your ideal user? Pick one. Like, don't try and like, boil the ocean. Pick a bunch of people and then get really clear on, like, what's their end game? What are they trying to accomplish? And then you break it down into like these three kind of like gamified levels. And, you know, your level one is like everything the beginners struggle with. All that stuff, all those challenges, they can be, you know, covered in your products, but also in your content, in different resources you provide people. And that's where those marketing kind of ways of thinking about it, it's like, okay, yeah, we could use PLG for acquisition. And it's just solving those challenges faster in more creative ways, whether that's with your product or your marketing tools or content.
[00:10:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
So, castos, we're a podcast hosting an analytics platform. And we have, I believe, like a huge responsibility to educate our customers about podcasting before they get started. Because it's not like, again, we'll use mix Max, right? It's not like Mix Max. You just sign up and you put the thing in your email and it's done and that's it. It's like, fuck, there's gear and YouTube and audience and recording and editing and how the heck does distribution work? I think we find a lot of our content is literally around. They're just educating our market, whether they become our customer or not. Hey, this is how to become a good podcaster. And hey, we can help you. When you get to this point of needing hosting.
I think that we look at, we try to have a fairly strong product, led or, you know, kind of motion, but also we do have like a very strong content arm. Just because there is so much that needs to happen for our customers to be like ready to engage our product to be successful. Yeah, I don't know if you see that a lot.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: No, I want to double take on that and give it another example too, because this is the hardest thing that I think a lot of people underestimate is they think, okay, to get the user to value and eventually upgrade all on their own to have that self serve motion. Then it's like, okay, what do we have to do for that? And they just think about in the third head, like all these product things. And that's actually why it often fails. Like, you can make your products super easy to use as you can get all the g tube out. It's easiest to use. But does it get people to the success to really see value? So like one of our clients is userguiding.com and so they have like a really easy to use product adoption solution. And so what's fantastic about that? Like, it's easy on the product side, but I, let's say you sign up and you don't really know how to do like product adoption. Well, you don't know how to guide users to value, and you don't have a strategy behind that. Well, if you just give them a tool, are they going to do a great job or an okay job? And it's like, it's an okay job. At the end of the day, is it the product's fault? No, but what's missing here is two things. There's the skill gap, which is, are they lacking any skills to do this? Well, if you think about somebody who's like, they just run professionally. It's like they have different techniques, they have different ways of doing things that make them really good at what they do, make them faster. Then the other thing is knowledge gaps. So is there anything they just don't know that's actually holding them back from accomplishing that amazing free to pay conversion rate that they're after? And so those two things are some of the biggest ones. But it's like every. If you imagine it like a cake, there's like three layers. There's the product gap, there's a knowledge gap, then there's the skill gap. And, like, for your product, for instance, the product cap might be really small. It might be easy to set up and stuff like that, but you're like, you really have a lot in, like, the knowledge gap side to educate people on. You have a ton on the skill gap, but everybody has a different kind of formula, and it's like a combination code. It's like, oh, we got to spend a lot more time on knowledge stuff and skills stuff than the product stuff in general.
[00:13:12] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I think where we see that come to light most often is in the kind of medium term churn.
[00:13:21] Speaker B: Right.
[00:13:21] Speaker A: So for our type of product, and we're kind of beat a prosumer, amazingly low churn. Like, we're really proud of it, but it always happens between, like, one and three months. Like, that's our biggest cohort. It's not one month because people sign up and, oh, I'm going to go do this, and it's going to be fucking great. Right. But then they get in, they're like, well, this is really hard. Like, gosh, like, I don't know what I'm doing. And I did three episodes, and I don't have 10,000 listeners. Like, I'm out of. And so I think that's what you're talking about. It's like, the product, I don't think is, I'll say, the problem or the opportunity. Right. The product is great. It's whatever there's maybe both knowledge and skill gaps for us, which is why we're so into content.
[00:13:59] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think for products like that, it's also just being kind of real with like, okay, it's for like, say, the user's endgame here is like, okay, they're having this incredible podcast, amazing listeners. They can see the data and stuff and really know it's making a big impact. So that's the end game. And your product just does, let's say, the analytics side of things. And it's like, okay, what else could we do to empower them and support them along this journey so they could do that? And that's where it gets really fun. And they, whether it's the community, whether it's something else, like beyond the product too, that you could help them with, then it's really how you differentiate too. It's like we just help people the best and people are trying to copy your product, but you're like, actually, that's not one of our moats. The product is helpful, it's great, but it's these other things that really pull the weight. And your competitors will be like, I don't know how to copy this. And it's like, it's because we have a strategy to win.
[00:14:59] Speaker A: I love that. I love that. I want to go back to something you said. You talked about kind of the 80 20 of like the folks that you work with. 80% were kind of like product managers and the 20% were founders. I want to go within that 20% and talk about who PLG is best for because I think that's like, the thing in everyone's mind is like, are you telling me, like, I don't have to do marketing and I don't have to learn sales and I could just make a better product and it'll just go magically sell itself. And the answer may be yes. Like, I'm a bit skeptical, so we'll have to cross that bridge.
But like, if folks are listening and they're like, this is awesome, I want to do this.
Who is that person? So they can self identify and say, cool, I don't have to do marketing or sales anymore.
[00:15:43] Speaker B: Yeah. I would always say, no matter what, if you're in business, you're going to have to do marketing, you're going to have to do sales, you're going to have to delivery side. So it's just, how do you do that? That, I think is the interesting part. So when I say who is PLG best for, there's a little disclaimer in my upcoming book, I say at the very beginning, I'm like, if you don't have customers, don't read this. Like, don't worry about PLG yet, because what you should be thinking about is just, do we have a meaningful problem we're solving? Do we have traction? Do we have people that actually want to pay us? Solve those core, core problems first, and then once you start having 20 or maybe 30 customers, then you can start asking yourself the question of what is the most efficient way to scale this company. Now, if you have, let's say, like a really high annual contract value, like, let's say it's above $10,000 per year, you could say, okay, maybe this is going to look more like a sales led motion or a hybrid motion or something like that because we could afford it and people want to talk to us. We got to provide a lot of value on some of those calls as well. And so you might say, okay, sales ad motion works a lot of sense for, like, high annual contract value.
Now, if you out of those 23rd customers, they're like, you know what? For podcast analytics, people are kind of like, really getting upset if we charge any more than like, you know, a few hundred bucks per month. So what are we going to do for this motion? Like, how could we scale this? We can't afford to, like, hire someone in sales. Just talk to these people with churn and all that stuff. So then it kind of unpacks. Okay, maybe it is this product that motion ends. One thing I get at least a lot of flack for on the PLG side is like, painting this picture that it's one or the other. Like it's product led or your sales led.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: Okay, interesting. Yeah.
[00:17:37] Speaker B: When it comes to what is your first go to market motion, my belief is you should pick one and focus in on one and master that one because each of these are very different beasts. And trying to do both is like doing both really not that well. And once you, like, go beyond a certain point, whether that's 3510 mil, we feel like, okay, we've mastered that, then you could explore, like, some hybrid options and have, like, product led sales or something like that, too. So I hope that kind of answers, like, when does PlG make more sense? I think the only other, like, qualifier to kind of think about is are you solving for simplicity and, like, standardization, making things accessible? Or are you solving for, like, solving very complex, complex problems? And both of those are very different go to market motions. Like product led companies, they lean more towards standardization, simplification of things, where enterprise company, where they thrive, is solving these complex problems and advanced stuff that only less than 1% of your market actually struggles with. It comes down to what problems do you want to solve?
[00:18:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
In your experience, have you seen, I'll say, like sales and marketing driven growth or product led growth ramp faster or slower? Like, is there a velocity, like a growth velocity difference between the two?
[00:19:03] Speaker B: Typically, yeah, definitely. When you're looking from like a revenue perspective.
[00:19:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:09] Speaker B: So, yeah. For a sales led company, you will typically find they can get much more revenue a lot faster than the product company. And it's one of the reasons why I'm like, I feel like still to this day, when it comes to starting, like, whether it's a product led or a sales led company, the sales led business still has an advantage just in the fact that they can get higher annual contract values, usually a lot faster than a product led company, whereas a product led company, I would say it's a lot harder to get started because it's a lot more work, I'll be honest, to create that kind of self serve experience and everything else, but it's a lot easier to scale and you don't need as many people to scale that business. And so the first few years will feel like getting to your one mil in your recurring revenue. Like that takes a while, but once you are at one, it's actually not too hard to get to three or five and actually keep the same team, which is the craziest thing. I love always telling people about user flow. I know as been one of the founders and they were 5 million interoccurring revenue with just three employees. I think more people need to hear that.
It's fantastic.
[00:20:22] Speaker A: Yeah, that's good. That's good to hear. I think a lot of folks who I talk to and companies that I advise, they do a bit of coaching on the side are always like, what's the surest and quickest path to predictable revenue?
And I do echo what you say, which I think PlG in my mind, because we do a bit of it, we have some kind of virality within our tool, we have some free tools, which is something we maybe we'll talk about. But I do think that having sales or marketing approach that's external to PLG is the way to go at the beginning, because it seems to me like PLG is a lot more to figure out when it's very efficient.
But also you do need that kind of cohort of users to spin that flywheel.
[00:21:11] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think the long term question is, like, are you looking more for predictable revenue or effortless revenue?
They're different games. Like, you can get predictable revenue in both, I'd argue, but the sales led path is a faster way to get that, at least in the early days. But then if you're trying to get effortless in or recurring revenue, that's really hard. Like, to do any other way than with the product at motion where people sign up, get to value and upgrade without talking to you.
[00:21:39] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So, Wes, you mentioned, like, something you get a lot of flack for, but you have a very opinionated position in the kind of SaaS market.
What is something that you talk about but don't believe in very deeply? Like, if you had to kind of take back one thing that you stand on, what would it be around Plg?
[00:22:04] Speaker B: I never really thought about that because I'm pretty, like, if I keep talking about it, I believe it to a certain degree. It's like, I think where there's things that, like, I might say where I'm like, oh, yeah, I might, like, take that back eventually or something like that. It goes back to, like, when you mentioned, like, oh, you're responding to that like an accountant. And I actually think back to like, oh, God, am I turning into one of those people? Because there's being a thought leader and then there's being, like, always correct in every scenario and giving everybody, like, the if then or that scenarios. And I think as you gain more experience in any field, you start becoming that. If this, then that. And that's actually more boring to listen to than like, oh, just do that and just do reverse trials. That's the best thing ever. And it's like, sure, it might work for a good amount of people, but, like, let's think about the stage thing. If it's your first motion, don't try and, like, merge them together. How about just get one right? So the part I always go back to is like, I just want to be the give people the best advice for the best stage they're at. Because the world of a difference between, like, hey, this is good for zero to one mil and this is totally different game for one to ten.
[00:23:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I appreciate that because I have, I don't know if it's like a LinkedIn or Twitter post or a book or something, but I've had this thing in my mind for, like, a long time, which is like, don't believe your heroes because, I mean, you're a thought leader. I'm a very, very small thought leader. I work with some people that are very big thought leaders and 100% like, I don't know everything. You don't know everything. You know, Rob walling doesn't know everything. Heat and Shaw doesn't know everything. And they all, we all give advice that we think is, like, applicable to 90 plus percent of people in 90 plus percent of situations. But there's always this thing where, like, you're going to give advice, someone's going to hear it, and they're going to run with it, and they're going to run their business under the ground.
And it's not your fault. Right. It's their fault for believing carte blanche and something that someone on the Internet says without considering kind of the lens through which you say it and your experiences and the applicability of it to their business. So that's just why I wanted to ask. Like, maybe a better way of saying is, what is one thing you talk about that you think isn't really applicable to a large number of people?
And the answer may be the same, but I think that's always helpful to check ourselves with.
[00:24:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I think for that. Part of what I say is I always want people to have a self serve notion. And the reason why is because if you do that, you're really bought into it completely.
I found that approach works best. But I'm also privy to the concept of okay, if you're sales. Like, I'm just start small. So I usually don't, like, start there because I'm like, okay, just like, are you all in or not?
I want to work with the people that are all in. So I tend to portray more of those extremes. But what I would say is if you're like a sales company, is like, you could start with, like, let's just say expansion and get people to expand or in product tours or something small, and start to get some of those ones under your belt and build up some more of that, like, credibility, that, like, product led can support your business. And so, yeah, if I was changing anything, I'd probably say, okay, yeah, start smaller, go for some of those quick wins. And the reason I guess I take the other stance of, like, just go full hog is because I do actually want to scare some of the CEO's away that don't fully get it, and they're just like, oh, okay. Like, this is a big pivot kind of thing. And so what we find works best is, like, taking more of that polarizing approach. Like, just go full hog and go all in from acquisition, engagement, monetization because it attracts people that are already at that stage that are much better. But yeah, that could change over the years, too.
[00:26:09] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. What do you think? So the skeptics out there, right, whether it's a founder or a CEO or something, and you go, or their head of product comes and says, hey, we're going to do this PLG thing. And they go, you're crazy. You know, Salesforce, where we can't do that. We're a sales led organization.
We can't pivot. Why do you think they're saying that? Like, what is it they're scared of?
[00:26:31] Speaker B: I mean, people just in general are usually scared of change. And so there's certain responsibilities, certain budgets and stuff they all have access to because of the current motion and it's set up for them. And if they're okay with that, then they might like it. Now, there's always the, in any of these change management kind of scenarios, there's always another side of the story where they're like, oh, yeah, I'm the one leading the PLG initiative or something like that. Like, I'm going to get a good chunk of the budget. I'm going to get a good chunk of the team and stuff. And so it's this fighting battle inside a company. And there's this book I love reading, a big history buff. It's called why nations fail. And in it there's this, like, these two words I always keep going back to when it comes to, like, what you need to do for a company to live long term. And it's, you must have creative destruction, and there is the creation of something new, but there also has to be the destruction of something old. And it's that friction that is actually very healthy when it comes to a company. And so why do people fear it is because there is something creative being born and something also being destroyed or underinvested in or something else like that. And so I don't think it's anything more than that. Is just being okay as a leader, being able to thrive in that creative destruction and being able to realign your goals, your support with where that new creativity is going and hopefully not getting caught on the side of, oh, yeah, we're just going to destroy your team.
[00:28:03] Speaker A: Right. Right. I want to pivot from kind of talking about PLG to talking about you and the business. And you mentioned working with clients. Like, what does that mean? Like, what does your business look like and who do you work with and how do you help them?
[00:28:16] Speaker B: Yeah, so our business is pretty simple. We have like a product led implementation program. So people like buy a new book, product playbook, and then that book will go through, like, hey, here's our overall approach to how do we believe, like the best way is to implement and scale up your product led organization? So there's like nine core components to it. The product led implementer will just work with them to implement each of those. So for instance, like they'll have a workshop and go through, build out their strategy. They'll have more workshops go through, identify who their ideal users is. The implementer can also do the user research, understand exactly who that ideal user is, and then we'll craft based on those researches, like what is the best free model for them? What does that look like? And so it's kind of like a tactical guide that you can hire to just go through and accelerate your PLG motion. And we found that works best because actually, back to your other question about the change management side. That is the most underrated value we provide.
There's the process and everything simple, but what we pride ourselves on is we bring everybody along for the journey to go through that. And that's how you get buying a lot faster.
[00:29:27] Speaker A: That's funny. I have two, a twelve and 13 year old at home and I always say it's my best sales effort is them managing them. What strikes me about this is you talk about PLG and are the PLG guy, but you effectively run a sales organization. Right. But you're just selling internally to these companies. You have the champion of PLG that comes to you and they need help shepherding this change management, which is really a sales job through the organization.
[00:30:01] Speaker B: I don't know if it would be sales or like facilitation. Okay.
[00:30:06] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, they have to sell it internally and you're probably helping them with that.
[00:30:10] Speaker B: Totally.
[00:30:11] Speaker A: It's not a slight. I think it's really cool. Like, I think the most powerful founders and companies I see are the ones that can cross these two things. Overdose.
Like do both like you're saying. So I think it's really cool.
[00:30:24] Speaker B: Awesome.
[00:30:25] Speaker A: Yeah. You mentioned the book. I know you wrote product led growth, like the first book five years ago.
[00:30:34] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:30:36] Speaker A: Okay. And so product led playbook is coming out when?
[00:30:39] Speaker B: This is coming out October 8.
[00:30:41] Speaker A: Oh, right on. Cool. So that will be, that will come out the day before this episode goes live. This will go up live on the 9th. So sweet. Awesome.
[00:30:52] Speaker B: Good time.
[00:30:53] Speaker A: So it's kind of like how is this book different from the original book and who is it for? Not for.
[00:31:00] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'll go back to what you said about, like, okay, what we're really doing is selling people on some things because this analogy will fill it in. So what I identified is that there's actually three sales we need to make before we even get a customer. And this actually applied to, like, every, hopefully most of you listeners. If you don't, if you find yourself in a non commoditized kind of industry, so something you're like, creating a new blue ocean as an example. So for the first sale for us was always like, are people bought into PlG? Do they get it? Do they want it? That's the first kind of sale we have to make. And so the first book, product, life grows. That was that. That was like, hey, learn about it. Some of the questions you asked me, like, how do you understand if it's right for you? Like, the book covers all that, and then the next book, or like, the next sale we have to make is like, so if we're bought into PLG, what is the best approach that we need to make, and what does that look like? And do we resonate with that? And so this next book, product playbook, is like, hey, here's our system. This is what we've helped 400 plus companies go through, and we found it's insanely helpful to have a roadmap to go through this. And you can be our own judge. Read it, see if you like it self implemented if you want. But this is what we're hoping you're going to align on and say, yeah, this approach is great. We want to do this if we want to build a product business. So that's the second sale. The third one eventually is like, what is the best way to do this and to implement this approach? And that's really where it's like, hey, we are hoping, fingers crossed, this book will eventually be our own little PLG case study where it's like, because the book converts, you know, people like the approach, then they'll eventually want to work with us to implement it. And so that's really the kind of lay of the land as far as, like those three approaches. And so kind of like what you were talking about with your podcast tool as well. It's like the first sale might just be like, should you do podcasting? Why is podcasting the best approach? And, like sale two, it's like, what's the best approach? You know, all the other tools out there, they don't give you good at analytics. You're missing some core things. Our approach is different because X, Y, and z. And this is why it's the best. And third, sales, like, are we just so happy to have the tool that does all that?
Brilliant. Okay, so I think breaking down those three sales is you have to have that. And what we were finding before this book was we were just trying to jump from one to three, and we were trying to make this jump from like, oh, you like PlG? Work with us. It's a pretty big jump, and people got to be committed to you. And when you fix that second piece, the approach, what actually ends up happening is you become uncopyable because people are bought into your approach and they like your approach. And that's why I was like, one of our clients was in the course creation software space at really big company, and I kept going back to the CEO. I was like, what's unique? Why should people do this? I mean, people create on demand courses. We all know the stats. There's the mavens out of the world that say cohort based learning is the best. There's the circles of the world that say community is the best. And it's like, we gotta have an opinion. The world of SaaS and everything is way too commoditized. Hold an opinion. Not everybody has to agree with it, but some will. And that's how you get people committed to what you do beyond just your product.
[00:34:33] Speaker A: Yeah, I like that. I mean, kind of behind the curtain with us a little bit. Like, we're podcast hosting. We're pretty commoditized. Probably have 15 or 20 competitors that do literally the exact same thing. Like, we have a little bit of this and a little bit that. We have an integration with WordPress, which as of today is like a big old pile of who knows what. But I mean, literally, the interesting thing is, for probably 80% of our customers, our tool does the exact same thing as fucking buzzsprout and captivate and transistor and all these things. Like, you just want to publish your podcast, get a little bit of data on who it is, and it'd be reliable. You know, this is one of the things I think about a lot, and maybe you have a perspective on this, is I think there are. There are transparent and opaque products. Ours should be very transparent. You don't want to be in our product a lot. You want to go on Tuesday and publish your episode, and maybe next week you'll get analytics or something. But, like HubSpot, right? You want to be in HubSpot all the time. And I think that, like, whatever. That's just a differentiation. I don't know if that plays into PLG for you, but.
[00:35:33] Speaker B: No, it is. And part of the research we were doing, too, is, like, we put companies into, like, four buckets. And, like, what we realize is, like, most of the market is just in the commodity zone. That's where it's, like, hard to compete, is buying basically on price. Then there's, like, the next run up is you are actually a contender. And in order to do that, you got to complete, like, phase one. Just like build a foundation, have a strategy or something like that. That's actually unique, different. And that strategy could literally just be the difference between, like, I was thinking about this on, before this podcast. I was like, man, every, like, podcast I've done it for the last little bit has been on Riverside. They're really kicking butt. But the biggest difference between being on this call versus a Zoom call, you know what it is? It's really just the ideal user is different. This is just targeting podcasters. And now they do a bit of other stuff. But it started with podcasters, and it's the kind of same tech ish, but they have a couple little things that are really specific to what the podcaster needs. And so now they just create this incredible opportunity, incredible business, all that stuff. And so, shad, you could literally just be that easy to become a contender. But then there's like, contenders. Next level is you become on the cusp of your market. In order to do that, that's where you need to unlock self serve customers, build leverage into your business so you can eventually move to the final stage, which has become the obvious choice where it's like you actually just can have this exponential scale in your business because you've actually got most of the market on that stage. So, yeah, that's hopefully kind of helpful as you're thinking about the four stages of the market, too.
[00:37:10] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure. I think the thing I was getting at and I know is taking the very long way, is differentiation and having an opinion and a hypothesis and trying intentionally to stand out and in a lot of cases, say no to a whole bunch of people by your messaging and your positioning, but saying very much yes to some people. And frankly, we're eight years in and we're just kind of going through that right now because we've largely played on like, hey, we just do a great job and blah, blah, blah, blah, and we've grown to like a level, and that's fine. But I think what we are realizing, because folks coming to me and they're like, hey, why castos?
I want to be able to say, because we fucking rock, like video podcasting or whatever that thing is. And then it's so clear. And then ten or 20% of the market just goes like a magnet towards you.
So that's a tough thing to see. I actually have a friend who runs a service to get feedback from users.
And for a long time, they were general, right, anybody can use it.
And they just pivoted to only catering to video game companies.
And they're similar. They're like seven or eight years. And so Steve was like, we're going to make this pivot and it's a really big deal. But they'd done the research. They knew this was the best cohort of customer types for them. And so that's amazing to see that you see that often, like, early in the life standards business, but to see it seven or eight years end is, is a pretty big deal.
[00:38:38] Speaker B: Well, I mean, I could echo that too, like, at product. And I would say, like, the first, like five, six years of business, we didn't really have, like, very intentional strategy on that end, like we were targeting. We thought like, okay, senior product execs, but when you run the data, it was like, oh, it's the founders that are more successful. So once you learn that unique insight, it's like, well, why do you think we target and serve SaaS founders? Because it's like, okay, we know this part of the market best. We can help them the best. And now we just gotta align everything we do do to serve them the best. And so if you want, we could kind of workshop on the strategy side of things which might help other listeners to go through. Like, how do you actually build a winning strategy that could make your business kind of stand out as, like a contender? Like, move out of that, like, commodity land. Would that be something you want to do?
[00:39:27] Speaker A: Yeah, that'd be great. I hate to be selfish, but, yeah, let's do it.
[00:39:31] Speaker B: And we can, like, apply it to what you do as well. So there's like five questions you got to go through and ask yourself. The first one is, like, which market could you become the obvious choice in? And, like, absolutely dominate. So just like getting super clear on what does that look like? And as an example for us, a product that we decided, okay, we're going to be the obvious choice for B, two B SaaS founders who want to build and scale a product business. So it's like, it's not a crazy one liner, but it has to feel like something where you're like, okay, we could potentially do that on that end. And so what would you say that is for you?
[00:40:06] Speaker A: Yeah, I think I'll use the example I used before, which is it's one of our contenders internally right now is cast as is the obvious choice for podcasters who. For video podcasters who want to thrive on YouTube.
[00:40:20] Speaker B: Interesting. You see that is already way more specific where it's like, oh, video podcasters.
[00:40:25] Speaker A: Yeah, interesting.
[00:40:26] Speaker B: And tell me more, because, like, oh, you're not just one of those normal podcasters that just do audio. Like, it's so much wasted potential. That also leads into your approach, too, which is really fun. So I love that. Now the next question is like, where do we play? And the problem with a lot of companies is they're like, oh, yeah, we serve a lot of different people, all kinds of podcasters, but you would actually say no to other people where it's like, hey, I know you could use capture for a lot of these other things, but here's where we work best. We work best with the video podcaster, and this is why. So you'd pick that as your ideal customer. The channels you might choose to kind of market to them might actually be YouTube, as an example. They're already on YouTube, so we're going to use YouTube to market them because that's where they are. And so that's kind of the where to play part. But then the next part is like, how are we going to win? So I love picking like at least two to three modes where I'm like, oh, this is going to make us really hard to copy. So it could be just differentiating. Like, on some features it could be, which in your case, I think that would make sense. Like, here's all the video podcast specific features that you care about. Just like Riverside with podcasters. Like, oh, yeah, you got good quality audio, all that fun stuff. But then think about, like, what are those other things? Can you think of like, any other specific ways that might help you win? It could be pricing could be like super generous, free mode could be something else. What would stand out to you?
[00:41:59] Speaker A: I think just generally, like, features and like, technical stuff is not a great moat because it's relatively easy to beat.
I think what it probably means for us is we want to be kind of the epicenter of their content. And so we are that place where all of their content happens, then it gets distributed all your places from there. But I think that's it that comes back ultimately to product and technical things. But it's more of a mindset thing of like, all of my shit is here.
If someone uses a platform like Kajabi, all of their stuff is in Kajabi. Like, they can't, they're not going to go layer on convertkit and webflow and all this kind of crap, right? Like, it is everything. And so I think that that's part of it. And we want to say, like, you can create amazing video podcast and we can do everything for you.
[00:42:50] Speaker B: Totally. Okay. So it's the, like, on one product side of things. And then I would just try and think of like what are maybe like two or three, like other modes. And in the book, like we cover like the top 15. It could even be something as well as like your founder brand, like what you're doing on this podcast. Like that's, you just think about like, wow, Craig has the best podcast ever. I listen to him all the time and it's like, how does he do that? Our product, duh. But you set the standard for video podcasting and those two most together become unstoppable. And the next one is, fourth question is, what's winning look like? What's that winning picture? We don't have to go super deep into that one, but the last one is really important, which is just what strategic choices must we make to actually go into this and like execute on the strategy? So for your where to play, that might be, you know, we only work with video podcasters for now at least. We only target them if other people sign up. Yep, we'll take their money, but we're focusing on like delivering features just for these people. And then the other strategic choices might be like, okay, for how we're going to win. What if we're going to do that founder brand Moat as an example, we're going to invest majority of our marketing spend in that. And that's really what we're going to level up. And so when you have that strategy and you lock it down, it helps you just move on to become more of that contender and you actually gain the confidence that, hey, this is going to work. But just having a strategy on its own won't like make or break anything. It's like you got to have the conviction and then like the commitment follow through on it. And that's the hard part, too.
[00:44:26] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I think, I think, you know, on the last point, one thing that I really like, and I think it applies to everyone, is, well, one, use your product. I think that's the best marketing to show how other people can solve the problem that they have. And I think Ahrefs does, like, the best example of this with their content, especially their YouTube content, is how do I do x with Ahrefs? How do I do keyword research? How do I competitive analysis? And so I think that, like, in terms of what that looks like for us is, yeah, probably like doing really great at video podcasting and being a mini kind of J. Klaus or, you know, someone who just really, really dominates that, that would be a very defensible.
[00:45:06] Speaker B: Mode because other people, too, that like, hey, listen, we'll let the top podcasters or something will transform your audio podcast into a video podcast. And you could like make this a whole new revenue stream or something like that. And those people are like raving fans. And they're like, because when I think of Riverside, what actually started that kind of borrow grossly, in my opinion, I don't know, but it's like everybody who knew what they were doing with podcasting has kind of started to use them. And then they're like, oh, I don't know what I'm doing. And they're like, I guess I'll use them, too.
[00:45:38] Speaker A: I was on a podcast and so they were Riverside and it was fine. I guess I'll use it. Yeah, yeah.
But to answer the question before that of what does winning look like is really specific for us, and it is. It would move average revenue per user up because video just more expensive. And so that would be just like the distribution of plans currently because we see the vast majority of our customers are on our lowest plan, which is a bummer. But it would be that moving over time to our higher plans that support video.
[00:46:08] Speaker B: But one thing I'll double take on here, too, is in every market, there's one obvious choice you think of, like one canva is like one Dropbox, although maybe that one doesn't even count anymore because it's Google Chat, all these other things. But like one mural and stuff like that, too, where you're like, okay, what am I going to use for these specific tools? And so, like, video podcasting setup is like, you're the only one I know, Craig.
So it's like youre already won. And it's like now if you can get the majority of the market to find that out, too and become the best, you really become the most recommended solution in your space. And that's where you unlock like this automatic profits, where it's like, oh, what tool are you going to use? I'm just going to use this one. And you get that viral cross of working for you at the end of the day.
[00:46:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I love it. I love it.
Dude, this is awesome. I really appreciate your time. So the book is out product led playbook. Folks can find it on Amazon. I assume if there a website to go to to get it, get you a little more money in your pocket than paying the Amazon people.
[00:47:10] Speaker B: Yes. So if you do want like any format, you could always check out product led.com forward slash playbook. But we are big on giving away things for free. So if you listen to podcasts like this one, you can also check out product led podcast and we're going to give it away for free over the next, I think, twelve to 14 weeks. And so listen to it there for free too.
[00:47:31] Speaker A: Yeah. Love it. Love it. Very cool, man. Well, Wes, thanks so much for coming on the show today. I really appreciate it. I learned a lot. I think our audience will have as well and we really appreciate it. And best of luck with the book launch. I know that's a big deal.
[00:47:43] Speaker B: Awesome. Well, thanks so much for having me, Greg. This is great.
[00:47:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
