Today on The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about how not to get ahead of yourself. Sometimes we tend to get ahead of ourselves when things are going well in our business, and this can be a bad thing as we tend to lose focus on what’s working and get distracted by what we could be doing. In today’s episode of the show, Steli and Hiten talk about how to contain your ambition when things are going very well in your business, they share specific examples of how we can get ahead of ourselves and talk about why it’s a good idea to chill out sometimes and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About today’s topic 00:31 Why this topic was chosen. 03:00 An example of how we can get ahead of ourselves sometimes. 04:05 Why it’s a good idea to chill out sometimes. 06:24 Why you shouldn’t worry about scaling at the early stages. 07:17 Why being small is ok in the beginning. 08:19 Issues you’ll have once you start scaling. 09:12 The importance of thinking about how to make things work. 10:36 A specific example of how one can get ahead of themselves. 3 Key Points: Don’t let short term success turn into long term losses. When you find something that you can work on and make money on, just make more money first. Keep it simple! Small is ok in the beginning.   [0:00:00] Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti.   [0:00:03] Hiten Shah : And this is Hiten Shah.   [0:00:04] Steli Efti: And today on the Startup Chat, I don’t know what we’re talking about, maybe managing your ambition, managing your greed, taking it slower when things go well. I’m not quite sure how to frame this episode. I’m sure by the end of the episode, Hiten, you’re going to have like a killer title to use, but here’s what I want to talk to you about and what I want to share with the listeners. Last night a good friend of mine is visiting somebody that used to work for me and now he’s doing something on his own quite successfully and we had a long really exciting and great conversation about life and everything that’s going on. And at the very end he was like, you know, one thing, he had a question for me. Basically, you know, he did something entrepreneurial himself, put that on pause and then started doing coaching and consulting to founders, right, as a means to make money. He quickly realized that his skill set is really, really valuable and he’s able to make a ton of fucking money, right? More money than has ever made in his life being an entrepreneur or working for different startups. Right? And so he had now a few months of like really successfully kind of growing this coaching consulting thing that he’s doing. He has a bunch of clients that pay him every month. He makes, he paid down all his debt, he put up some savings. He made some investments and he is feeling fucking great. Right? The year’s ending, he was like, this shit is awesome. It’s fairly easy to do. I’m creating tons of value. I’m making all this money. I’ve paid all my debt. Like I feel amazing. Right? And now he was asking me, Steli, give me some advice. I’m struggling with this at the end of this year. I could keep doing this and I think if I make X, Y, Z improvements and additions, next year, he would make an insane amount of money. Right? That’s his kind of his assumption based on what he’s learned so far and I think he could do that fairly in a fairly straightforward fashion. But he said, but it’s limited. I could only make X amount of insane money and not even more, right? And now I’m thinking should I potentially instead of just doing this myself, should I start trying to build more of a business around this and hire a bunch of other consultants and coaches and kind of make this a much more scalable thing? And I looked at him and I said, if you, are you truly passionate about being a coach and a consultant and is this something that you would want to do the next 10, 20 years of your life? He’s like, absolutely not. No, I mean I like doing it and I’m good at it, but it’s definitely not what I want to do longterm. It’s just a short term moneymaking thing. Like if it’s a short term moneymaking thing, why the fuck would you want to change the mall? You’re just getting to a point where it’s somewhat working. You’re healthy, you look good, you sleep well, you know, You got back on your feet from some of the challenging things you did before. Why don’t you? And also he was basically thinking through this as if its already reached its peak potential and he’s way far away from it, right? He already thought through what he thinks maximally he could do on his own. He’s like, but if I reached this amount, let’s say a million dollars in personal income, well I could never reach two or three. So to do that. And they’re like, he, his ambition kind of and his imagination ran away with him. And I was like, wait a second. You haven’t earned a million dollars yet, right? You haven’t reached its full potential. You’ve not even done this a full year, right? You just did this for a few months now and it kind of working right now. Why don’t you just relax for a second and keep doing this and see how far you can take it, see if you can really, if you could really double or quadruple the personal income you’re generating or revenue you’re generating. You haven’t done it yet. Just because you think you can do it doesn’t mean you have already accomplished it. Make some more money, put some more savings, have some more fun, and then think through, maybe if you do this the entire year of 2019 and you still like doing it and you’ve proven you can make that much more money and you’ve proven now that these customers stay with you and you’ve proven all of these things, maybe at that point you can ask yourself, do I want to do this for another few years? Don’t I want to hire people and all that, but if you start hiring people, your problems will change. The challenges of running the business will fundamentally change. This will become a totally different thing. You’ll make a lot less money in the short and midterm, right? And it’s a much more of a longterm investment and don’t just trip and fall into something you’re going to be doing now for five, six, seven years that in hindsight, when you look back, you never wanted to be committed into this for the long term, right? Don’t, don’t let, don’t let this small town, small term success turn you into something really long term. And I have a lot of context on this person that I’m not going to share it right there. I couldn’t share the small example. So my advice was very concrete very quickly because I have so much context on him, but it made me think like how many people do this and I think we talked about this in the past of like the paradox of over committing to something and then many, many years later looking back and thinking, I never really wanted to do this for seven years of my life. Right? I just, it started as a small project and it kind of just like fell into doing this longer, longer, longer. So I wanted to talk about this. I felt like there’s maybe something here that is valuable to people that are listening to us and I’m dying to hear your completely different opinion or viewpoint or angle on how you’re gonna respond to this, but that’s the scenario. And I’m wondering what kind of advice would you give, what can we learn from this and what to tell others whether you disagree with me. Talk to me.   [0:05:39] Hiten Shah : I think of this as how not to get ahead of yourself.   [0:05:42] Steli Efti: Ahhh. See? That’s why I fucking love you.   [0:05:46] Hiten Shah : I was like, okay, we need a title.   [0:05:48] Steli Efti: We need a title.   [0:05:49] Hiten Shah : Steli gave me a challenge, here. And I feel like your friend is excited, legit, you know, and is having fun and is doing what he’s meant to be doing. That’s huge. That’s huge. Like that, finding that is a very special moment, right? I wouldn’t want him to ruin that. And to me like, you know, when you find something that you can work on and make money on, just make more money first, just make more money. Don’t worry about scaling it, growing it. Because he has a plan, he’ll probably make what, three, four times the money you made this year, next year, right? Is what it sounds like. Shit. Make more money and keep it simple. So my rules around this or how not to get ahead of yourself is if it’s about money and you have a way to make more money and you feel good about it, even if it’s on your own, make more money. And so this one’s simple for me and don’t get ahead of yourself. Keep it simple. Keep it simple is just like, look, he does more of this because he’s probably getting referrals and you know, puts up a website or whatever he needs to do to grow it because he has a plan in his head for that. He should do that first and not get ahead of himself and try to think through, oh, how do I scale this or whatever. It doesn’t matter. Small is okay in the beginning. Small is okay, year one, year two, year three. Like small is okay, period. But he will have capital and a better buffer when he does decide if he does decide to scale it with more consultants and whatnot if he just waits. And he’ll probably even learn more about the business. He’ll probably figure out how to do a little more marketing or figure out how to get clients or figure out a more systematic way to scale is time, blah, blah, blah. There’s probably a bunch of things he’ll figure out that if he just jumped into trying to scale it, he would have to figure out while he’s scaling it. So if I want to get really practical and say, okay, this isn’t just about your friend and his consulting business, let’s say it’s about anybody and how if something’s working, how not to get ahead of yourself, what I would think through is like what are the assumptions you’re making about the different ideas you have on how to grow the thing and how can you be smart about those assumptions and make sure that you’re able to address them in a timely manner and you also are going into it with a really good understanding of what you know is important and what you might need to address. So for example, if you start scaling it and try to get more consultants, there are a number of issues you would have to address in this business. Number one, more people, more problems, you know, like that’s one of my things, Steli, and I think I’ve probably infected you with that to some extent, but maybe not because you guys are hiring and stuff. I’m not. Anyway, so you know, he might not be realized that like when he has more people, if he tries to get consultants, well one, he does make less money per hour of work and not just his but like those consultants and is he going to be able to take a cut of their work? Right? Or how does that all set up? How is he going to find those people? How is he going to manage those people? How’s he going to make sure that people are motivated and stay with him instead of come off on their own? Right? There’s a bunch of components of this that probably get really complicated. And I like to think through the positive of like how do I make this work? But when I think about how do I make this work, I think about the considerations that are required to make it work. So for him to scale with more consultants, what are those considerations and how can you be very honest with himself about them? So I would just write those out and I would say that, okay, these consultants need to work with me in my firm. These consultants need to be willing to give up something, a hourly rate or some percentage of it or something in order for me to get the benefit from it, right? These consultants, I need to be able to find them. Right? So these are what I would call considerations and I would just think through what are the considerations that would make what you’re looking to do work. And are you ready for that? And if his goal and path is heading towards that, what I would do is I would continue on the path that he’s on where he can scale what he has and at the same time start understanding more about those considerations if he’s really honestly considering scaling it beyond himself.   [0:10:17] Steli Efti: Absolutely love it. Here is the thing I want to wrap this episode up, which goes back to like how not to get ahead of yourself. There was a moment in the conversation where he in his mind had already lived through 2019.   [0:10:33] Hiten Shah : Yep.   [0:10:34] Steli Efti: It was already 2020 and now he had reached the maximum of what the business could do. And he was solving the problem of mid 2020 like, oh well that doesn’t scale, so I need to hire more people and do this, that and that and preempt it. And it was telling him, dude.   [0:10:51] Hiten Shah : Common.   [0:10:52] Steli Efti: Right, how not to get ahead of yourself. But I’m like, dude, I can think through what it would take and feel like and how long it would take me to climb Mount Everest. But I have not done it yet and just because I’m thinking it through, I cannot then just pretend I’m the same as somebody that has done it and now I’m solving for what do I do after Mount Everest. Like just relax, go and make it happen and then solve the problems that are in front of you versus you know, running wild with your imagination and now solving today the problems that you think you might have in two years. Right? And this is the perfect way, the way that you summarize it on like how not to get ahead of yourself and fuck up your money or your health or your sanity or your business, right? Just one problem at a time and you summarized it beautifully where you can think ahead, right, that’s not a bad thing to think ahead and to prepare for what you think is around the corner and you know, to start thinking, well, if eventually I hit the ceiling, what would I do then? And how can I? What can I use? How can I use the time between now and then to prepare for that? Right? To run some of these assumptions, to learn more about some of the things that I’m going to have to learn so that by the time I hit it, I’m prepared to deal with those challenges, right, and it doesn’t catch me off guard. But thinking through and thinking ahead a little bit is different from acting ahead and getting ahead of yourself and pretending all these things have already happened and now you’re solving problems that have never come up and you are also operating as if. Like sometimes founders or entrepreneurs or like just beautifully insane in the way they think through things where they’re like, well, I know I could make millions with this, but, you know, and I’m really broke right now and I need money. But at the same time I’m not that passionate and I think that I’m don’t want to do this for the next 40 years of my life. So I’m thinking about something. It’s like, dude, you saying, I know I could make a lot of money is not the same as you’ve already made that money. Right? So, and a lot of people think they could do things, but, very few people do them. Right? So why don’t you go and do it and then come up with what to do next versus just go, I have the self confidence I could be doing this. So it reminds me of, I have a niece that’s twelve, so an Instagram post of hers that shocked me although it amused me as well where basically it was just a picture of herself being 12 and below that the caption was knowing that I could is enough for me. Right? It’s basically like ,I don’t have to actually do the shit I know I could if I really want to do. And I’m like, you know, yeah, knowing that you could and doing it is actually those are worlds apart. Those are not the same things. So it reminded me of this area. I know I could make a ton of money with us, but you know, what will I do afterwards? Like, well go ahead and do it then, Make a ton of money. Prove that you can, and then figure out what you’re going to do next. All right. How not to get ahead of yourself, I love it. Thank you for the title and the angle. I knew you’d come through as you do always. If anything that we said in this episode made you uncomfortable as a listener, you might have to double click on this and think about it more or listen to this episode again. If you know somebody that shouldn’t listen to this episode, share it with them. We all have friends that might get a little bit ahead of themselves. And as always, if you’ve not done it yet, go and give us a five star review on iTunes. We highly appreciate it. That’s it from us. See you very soon.   [0:14:19] Hiten Shah : See ya. [0:14:19] The post 390: How Not to Get Ahead of Yourself appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

Today on The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about the dangers and the downsides of being overprepared. Sometimes we tend to overprepare for a meeting that we screw it, meaning we research the other party a lot, and go into that meeting trying to impress them. This can be a bad thing, and can be as bad as being underprepared. In today’s episode of the show, Steli and Hiten talk about how to overpreparing is a bad thing, why you need to chill out a little bit, they share some tips that can help you prepare for a meeting and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About today’s topic 00:34 Why this topic was chosen. 01:33 Why you need to chill out a little bit. 03:27 How we don’t like people that need to be liked. 04:21 An example of being over-prepared. 05:20 How VCs are good at evaluating people. 06:00 How you can be overprepared. 06:40 How most people are either over prepared or underprepared. 07:40 The cons of being underprepared. 3 Key Points: You need to chill the fuck out a little bit! We don’t like people that need to be liked. Be honest about your flaws.   [0:00:01] Steli Efti: Hey everybody. This is Steli Efti.   [0:00:03] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah.   [0:00:04] Steli Efti: And today on The Startup Chat, I want to talk about the dangers or the downsides of over prepared. Right? Yeah, here’s the reason why I want to talk to you about this. I had a friend recently who is applying for kind of a high level VP of sales position at some really amazing companies in the Bay Area. He has gone very far with one specific company that’s kind of the company that he’s now incredibly excited about. There’s so much alignment. There’s so much opportunity. It seems to be an amazing fit, so he’s super enthusiastic about the whole process. And he’s just about to take kind of the final step in the whole process, which is to meet with one of their board members, who’s a big, famous venture capitalist. Meet with him for coffee and have him kind of be the last person to evaluate the candidate before they say they’d make an offer, right? And so he called me to talk about that interview, that coffee meeting. And he wanted to get my feedback and advice and he was telling me about all the research he has done about that VC and his portfolio and his background and history and he’s watched videos and talks and really tried to like analyze and get a perfect sense for who this person is and how to win this person over. Right? How to make sure that basically the offer is not going to be taken back because this famous legendary venture capitalist doesn’t like him or doesn’t approve of him. And at some point listening to him and at some point I had to interrupt him and I just told him, “Listen dude, I love the research that you have done. I do think it’s a good idea to prepare well for these conversations, but you have to now get to a point where you relax, right? You do chill the fuck out a little bit.” And you need to be aware that this is not just a contest of you winning the other person over. This should be a mutual exchange, right? You are also trying to evaluate the company and you should see this as an opportunity to understand the company, the challenges, the founders, the investors. You should see this as an opportunity of learning for yourself as well and not just selling right? Not just trying to sell yourself to this person, but also try to learn, try to gain more insights. What are the things that this person could help you understand better about the company or understand a bit about how to do the job well and also don’t go in that conversation with an expectation to win this person over and make this person love you or like you. You’re setting yourself up for failure. One of the main things that we humans can spot from a mile away is when somebody is needy, needy of approval. When somebody comes around as like, I want to be liked by you people for whatever reason, we instantly go, fuck you, we don’t like you. Even before that person says anything else. It’s an instant emotional responsible. But we don’t like people that need to be liked. And so make sure that you go in there with, of course you know you’re prepared, you know things, but go in there with the expectation of just getting to know somebody, have coffee and talk about the business and talk about the challenges in the business and be honest about your flaws and get feedback if that board member how he or she evaluates this opportunity and who would be the right VP of sales and all of that. Just relax a little bit. And this made me think, and I’ve seen this in many, many other scenarios as well. Where in sales specifically or this could be in fundraising. This could be in big sales presentations with potential customers. This could be in many different areas where I’ve seen people over prepare and then they come into the conversation both with too hard of an expectation of how this meeting will go. Too hard an inflexible of an expectation or worldview of, I know who this company is or how this person thinks like you come into this with all these preconceived notions because you’ve done so much research and you then let the relaxation and the flexibility to be in the moment, right? And to have kind of a beginners mind and the way that you interact with people. And so I’ve seen this over and over again where people over prepare themselves to a point where they cannot perform well in the actual meeting or the conversation. And I wanted to bring this up because I thought it as always, you probably have something interesting or weird to say and you’ve talked to many founders and help them prepare for meetings with VCs and famous silicon valley people. So I’m just gonna stop here before I continue with some of the other stuff that I told him and just want to check in and get your reaction on this.   [0:04:51] Hiten Shah: I really like this topic. I think that there’s a couple of things here, the people on the other side, the VC, the investor is a professional people evaluator. That’s their job, they’re good at it. I got to say, especially if you’re talking about a top tier investor, I will say that if you’re not a top tier investor and you’re kind of like, it’s a little bit of a different story, but top tier investors their job is to evaluate people. Their job is to make decisions with money based on the people they meet. That’s really like a simple way to think about it because they need to predict what’s going to happen with this person and their business regardless of what size the business is today, they’re making a bet on the person and the person’s ability to create some kind of future outcome. And so that’s what they’re going to do when they talk to you. You might not notice it either. That’s where it gets interesting. So I think that you can be over prepared, usually they say you can’t over prepare no, you can be over prepared. And it sounds like that’s what your friend was kind of heading into. Be yourself and don’t put on that sales hat during that meeting, just talk to the person honestly, like you said, talk about the business, talk about those things. So to me, I think you’re giving good advice and it’s super critical when you’re dealing with people on the other side that have more experience than you in terms of not like work experience or anything like that, but doing what what they’re doing with you right there.   [0:06:25] Steli Efti: Right. I think that people to be in a skew, in one area of the spectrum, and I’ll share kind of as a final tip, the way that I approach these things. I think most people are either over prepared or under prepared, right? They either come into the conversation and you quickly realize that it doesn’t matter who the evaluator is or what the evaluation is, it could be a potential buyer, it could be a potential future boss. Whatever it is, right? A partner. If you come into the conversation and it’s clear you know nothing about the person you’re talking to or nothing about the context of company around them, you have not thought about what the important questions here are, and what the goal and structure of the conversation should be. I’m going to be, that’s not gonna go well, right? Because you’re lacking clarity. You’re probably asking questions that are not that thoughtful and are wasting time. Asking questions that you could have easily figured out anywhere else on the planet and on the web versus having to ask me directly. And so when you’re under prepared you’re making the impression that you’re clueless, right? That’s not awesome and you’re wasting people’s time. The exact opposite is what we just described, where you over prepare you come into the conversation and obviously humans has the need. If I’ve spent 10 days reading everything about your life and all your books, most humans will have the need to now do something with that knowledge, right? Or to impress the other person with their knowledge and research. And so they’re going to talk too much. They’re gonna say things like, “Oh, I read all your books and I know this about you and I know that about you.” Or, “I have done all the research on this market and I know your company has done this, that and …” Don’t try to impress me about knowledge about me and my company. Right? It’s gonna be very difficult. In most cases, especially if it’s generic knowledge. Now it’s different if you tell me I signed up, I visited one of your current customers and I spend the day with the users that are using your product and I did some research and here’s what I learned from them, or I used your product in these three scenarios and here’s how I broke down and here’s what my personal experience was with it. That’s interesting, unique knowledge. But if you just go on my blog and read my blogs and now you tell me about all the techniques you learn from me, that’s not really engaging or interesting to me. I already know this stuff. Right? So you’re not really impressing me with that. I think the ideal is the golden middle, which is kind of the model that I’ve always tried, which is I don’t know how to prepare to do a little bit of research, right? So I also tends to do very in depth research about people and things in general. And I’ll read everything and anything I can, I’ll do as much research as possible, I’ll do background references, I’ll talk to people who know that person. I’ll try to really cover all my bases and know everything. And then for whatever reason I’ve learned to let all of that go, right? Just like detach, like I’ll do a ton of research and then a few days before that meeting I’ll just detach, and just let go of it. And when I come into the meeting I pretend this is the first time I’m meeting this person and I’m coming into the conversation with an open mind. Hopefully I’m asking better questions. Hopefully I’m giving better answers, but I’m trying to figure it out in the moment. Like who this person is, what the buyer needs, what the right questions are, what the challenges are? I’m trying to figure that out in the moment, using all my research to help me make better evaluations or interpretations of the information given to me in the moment, but I’m not coming to the conversation with A, a need to show my prep or a very strict framework of thinking I already know what’s going to happen or I know this company well or I know this person well because I don’t, right? So I feel like, and that has worked incredibly well for me in terms of the real result I’ve been able to generate and so that’s kind of the model I’ve always been teaching and coaching people prepare a lot, but then take a few days to let go of that prep, relax, and then come into the conversation with a beginner’s mind again, as if it’s the first time you hear about them, the first time you hear about the person you’re trying to be in the moment, learning, exchanging from person to person. Don’t try to use your preparation. Don’t try to impress with research. Don’t try to come into the conversation with a preconceived notion of what’s going to happen, who these people are, and what the situation is, because you really don’t. You can’t just based on research, you have to talk to people in the moment and pay attention and truly listen to get the results that you want. And you need to relax. Right? It should always be a two way evaluation, and no scenario I can think of. It’s a purely one way street. It should always be a two way street, right? When people talk. So, yeah, that’s it. I think we’ll wrap the episode up with this little bit of hopefully actionable advice. Don’t over prepare it’s not going to really help you be your best self and get the results that you want. That’s it from us, we’ll hear you very soon.   [0:11:21] Hiten Shah: Take care. [0:11:21]   The post 389: The Dangers of Being Overprepared appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

Today on The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about how to define your identity. Trying to define who you truly are is one of life’s biggest struggles. Often, when we define ourselves, we tend to focus on the negative aspects of our identity or how we compare to other people around us. In today’s episode of the show, Steli and Hiten talk about how to define yourself, why Hiten tweet about this topic in the first place, they share some tips that can help you define yourself and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:27 About today’s topic 00:37 Why this topic was chosen. 01:26 What made Hiten tweet about this topic in the first place. 02:45 Things that shape your identity. 04:05 Why a lot of our titles are mostly just labels. 04:45 How to define yourself. 05:50 A core part of Steli’s identity. 06:53 How Hiten defines his identity. 08:15 How social media makes defining your identity much more difficult. 3 Key Points: Don’t try to find yourself, just define your self. There are certain parts of who I am and how I live my life that are core to me. The core part of my identity is that I am somebody that loves to teach.   [0:00:00] Steli Efti: Hey everybody this is Steli Efti. [0:00:03] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. And today on the Startup Chat we’re going to talk about how to define your identity. Oh man. Identity, what’s that? Who are you? Stel who are you?   [0:00:13] Steli Efti: Well, who the fuck are you? That’s a good question. It’s not easy to answer. I don’t know. It depends. It depends on who I’m talking to, right?   [0:00:22] Hiten Shah: Oh man, you opened a can of worms.   [0:00:26] Steli Efti: Well, you tweeted about this, so it’s your fault, right?   [0:00:30] Hiten Shah: Crap, I opened a can of worms. And you just opened, you just put another one next to it and said, “Let’s open this one too.”   [0:00:36] Steli Efti: Of course. You tweeted how do you find your identity? And I observed that tweet for a little while and there were all kinds of interesting replies to that. And then I was like, all right, I need to double click on this and we need to go deeper and figure out why did you think about tweeting it? What did you learn from the responses? And what is our answer to this fucking question? Which is obviously a big, can be as big and ambiguous and philosophical as we want it to be or more practical. And I don’t know where we’re going to go with this. So let’s rock and roll, but what made you tweet this in the first place?   [0:01:08] Hiten Shah: I like really hard questions. This is a hard question. What defines you? How do you define your identity? Who are you? What are you? And is it defined by the people in your life or is it defined by you and what you feel about yourself? Or is it different in every moment? So who do your kids think you are? A father, right? I mean that’s the construct they have.   [0:01:42] Steli Efti: Yeah.   [0:01:43] Hiten Shah: Right? You’re my father, okay. Now, when I think about that, I’m like, “Okay, well how do I identify with my father?” He’s my father, but I am his son. And what’s the difference between those two? That kind of philosophical question gets really interesting when you think about your relationships and how you’re identifying yourself in them and how the other person’s identifying you in them. And what dynamic does that create? So that’s one aspect of it. Another one is just much simpler, which is who am I and what do I want to be? What do I want to put out in the world? How do I want to carry myself? I mean, all these things shape your identity. Even the most fantastic thing. And I’m going into, I’m basically dropping a bunch of nuggets for you just to see what you want to pick up. But one other one that I always think about is this idea that, do I really know this other person or do I just know one aspect of them?   [0:02:57] Steli Efti: Yeah. I mean, this is a tough question and I’ve thought about this on and off this year in different situations where people would write, people, here’s an example. People would write a summary of who I am because I’m now an advisor or I am a speaker at the event or something, right? Something external where they want to advertise that I am involved and they write up something really impressive and everything they can think of who I am. And there was a moment I remember a while ago where I read all these things and like, it’s interesting, all these things are so superficial, right? Speaker, founder, CEO, investor, advisor, author, podcaster, whatever. All these things they sound really cool but they’re not that meaningful in terms of who are you truly? And just I don’t know I don’t want to sound cliche in terms of they’re just to “labels,” but they are. Two people could have author, speaker, investor, as labels and they could be completely different people, right? It doesn’t give me a really good sense of who this person is. It gives me a sense of some of the things they may be involved with and some of the work they might be doing, but it doesn’t really tell me who they are. And I don’t know. It’s a tough question and I think that … I come back and this is, so this is maybe the direction that I would take with us. I come back to this one quote where it’s like, don’t try to find yourself just define yourself. Right? I’m not sure in defining, I think how you define your identity to a large degree is determined by who you want your identity to be ultimately. As we go through life, we are some things of who we are and how people define us happen externally. And some of them, hopefully happen through deep internal work. Right? But I don’t know, dude. I don’t even know, like so let’s go through, let’s try this practicum and go through it with us, right? If you asked me Steli please define your identity right now, I would struggle, right? But I do think there’s certain parts to who I am and how I live my life that are very core to me. So I think being a teacher of sorts is a very strong part of my personality and identity. And that teacher personality can come out as a podcaster or a speaker or as an author, right? But those are just the different venues I used to teach. But the core part of who I am as my personality and how I define myself from an identity point of view is that I am somebody that loves to teach what he knows to others. Likes to share his knowledge with the world. Besides the teacher thing, entrepreneur thing is probably part of my personality, which is I like starting new things. I like starting companies is something that’s been part of my life forever. So it’s definitely very close to my identity. But if somebody asked me to use one word to define myself, I would go with teacher. Before I would go with entrepreneur. In a weird way, I think it’s more core to me to be a teacher than to be an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship is just a venue for my creativity and my trying to teach and create value in the world. And then it keeps going. There’s obviously when you’re a daddy you have children, being a father is a big part of being a friend, there’s many, many parts to my identity. But the core of it, of everything that I do in one way or another, is really trying to teach and share with as many people as possible what I learn. Well how would you define your identity if I asked you who are you and how do you define your identity? Do you have even an answer to that?   [0:06:50] Hiten Shah: I don’t really have an answer to that.   [0:06:51] Steli Efti: Yeah it’s tough, right?   [0:06:53] Hiten Shah: Yeah. I mean, anything I can come up with I could change in a moment’s notice for myself. I don’t identify with a lot of things that people might identify me with. Such as, like you said a podcaster or entrepreneur, founder, businessperson or advisor or, you know, honestly even father. Yeah I have kids, I love my kids a lot maybe more than life itself to some extent. But I don’t know. I mean, I want to be their friend. I don’t know if I want to be their father. You know what I really think about that. I’m like oh maybe be their friend’s better than being their father. Something like that. So I think this question is one that just with all the social media around us and the life that exists, where people are definitely proud of who they are. There’s a lot of pride and social media really pushes that. Whether it’s what people say on Twitter about themselves or just in general or things people are posting on Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat and this and that. Identity becomes something a lot more fluid, number one. Number two, it also becomes much harder to define for yourself. Back in the day, if you are a doctor, your identity, you’re a doctor, you’re a doctor. In fact, it’s doctor and then your name.   [0:08:22] Steli Efti: Yeah.   [0:08:23] Hiten Shah: Dude. Or it’s professor and then your name. It’s like, whoa, damn. Okay. I always find those very crazy where it’s like the doctor is doctor, and I grew up with someone who everyone called him doctor ’cause he’s a doctor, right?   [0:08:43] Steli Efti: Yeah. Hey doc.   [0:08:44] Hiten Shah: Yeah, Literally my dad’s nickname is doc. The closest people in his life call him that. His old friends from back in the day, doc. Hey doc, what’s up? Because where he was at, there was no other doctor, there was no other doctor that they can rely on. And he always loved helping people ’cause he’s a doctor, they call him doc dude. That’s his identity. He’s a doctor. I even say, him even believe that’s his identity. I don’t know. I haven’t asked him. So I think it’s kind of insane as to where things were with identity and where they might end up going, where we become a lot more fluid. Especially as we think through like, oh, a lot of people have side gigs, side hustles or are freelancers on top of their day job. They could identify with multiple things already as a result of that.   [0:09:35] Steli Efti: Yeah. I think what I’m getting to as we talk this through, out loud is that I think that defining your identity might be a problematic framework to begin with. That might be a problem more than it is a solution to anything. Right?   [0:09:52] Hiten Shah: Right.   [0:09:53] Steli Efti: I think the healthiest people I meet and the type of person or the type of life I want to live is one that is multifaceted, right? And rich and diverse. And so picking one thing over everything else that I’m involved with and that is part of my personality and the way I live my life in the way I manifest my thoughts into the universe. Picking one thing and putting that on as a putting that on my hat and being like, “This is who I am completely.” I think that’s not a solution to any problem, that is a problem, right? That is creating one dimension of people or creating humans that are too attached to an external identity of sorts, right? They want to be founder, CEO because they find that if they identify with that, that is giving them status, and significance in life, and that gives them external admiration and appreciation and status and if they lose that, if they are not that anymore, if I’m not the founder CEO anymore, then they are lost, right? Then they don’t know who they are and they don’t know how to deal through life and they feel insecure and they feel like they’ve lost something valuable. Versus understanding that founder, CEO is not who you are, it’s what you do. It’s your position right now and it could change, right? It doesn’t mean anything really. You could be, if you’ve been around the block as long as we have, people give themselves all kinds of insane titles that mean nothing, right? VP of marketing. And then it’s like, “Oh, how big was the marketing team?” “I was the only marketer.” What did you vice president then, right? A senior, senior director of all, right? Who were your managers? Well we didn’t have a manager. It was just me in that team. and it was my first job ever. So it’s like these titles don’t mean Shit. What did you do? And who are you is not an easy question to answer because hopefully you are many things at times in different contexts. You can be shy and certain surroundings and outgoing and others. You could be introverted in one area and extroverted in the other. You could be interesting in a and interesting in completely different topic B as well. You can’t just be one thing. And I think attachment to identity or trying to find an identity that you think will solve your problems or give you the worth in the world that you need or the recognition in the world that you need, I think is much more of a problem than it really is the solution. So that’s why I think when I was really young when I was like 14, 15 and I was struggling through life for many different reasons. If somebody had told me that one day next to my name, I would have some of these titles and I’d be like founder or CEO of Tech Company living in the US, author, international speaker. I would have been like, “Wow, it’s amazing.” That’s incredible. That’s everything I ever wanted to achieve in life. And now I look at these things and they’re meaningless because I’m like yeah it’s just the words that people use, but who I am is not defined by these things. And looking at these words that people attach to what I do is not what gives me pleasure or fulfillment or meaning in life. So I think that that’s really it. Maybe you should never really define your identity. At least not in a rigid one word or one framework way.   [0:13:13] Hiten Shah: Yeah. It’s not. It can’t be. I don’t think that’s the way the world is anymore.   [0:13:17] Steli Efti: Yeah. Alright, we’ll keep this one. We’ll wrap this one up at this point it was a philosophical episode. Those are my favorite ones. The ones that don’t have easy solutions sometimes. And practical, tactical six minutes, this is what you should do. This is what you should do. Avoid these mistakes. Goodbye. I’d love to hear if anybody had any thoughts on this episode, disagree with, if you’re listening to this and you’re like, “These guys don’t understand identity, let me explain it to them or I disagree. This is the way you should go about it.” Let us know. We want to learn. We want to be challenged with our ideas and thoughts. So shoot us an email, steli@close.io hnShah@gmail.com and tell us how you define your identity or why you should know what you should or how you agree to disagree with us. That’s it for us for this episode we’ll hear you very soon.   [0:14:02] Hiten Shah: See you. [0:14:03] The post 388: How Do You Define Your Identity appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about how to make increasingly better choices in your life and your business. Decision making is one of the most difficult things that a human can do. People often say that they find it hard to make decisions. Unfortunately, we all have to make decisions all the time, and this could range from trivial issues like what to have for breakfast, right up to make or break decisions like who to hire in your business and so on. Tune in to this week’s episode to hear Steli and Hiten thought on how to get better at decision making, why it’s important to figure out what you’re basing your decisions on, how to choices that make you feel happy about and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About today’s topic. 00:35 Why this topic was chosen. 01:06 A bit of background into how this topic came up. 01:43 How a lot of our choices are made out of the fear of missing out on something. 03:03 Why it’s important to figure out what you’re basing your decisions on. 03:47 How to make a choice that you feel happy about. 04:23 Why making decisions based on our emotions is really difficult. 05:06 A really inconvenient decision Steli made this year. 07:46 How to get better at decision making. 08:48 Why it’s a good idea to thinking about any decision you make. 3 Key Points: When you make a choice or a decision, you should ask yourself if it’s coming out of fear or trust. When you’re trying to make a decision, figure out why you’re leaning to that decision and make sure it’s not fear. People tend to make poor decisions when they make them out of fear.   [0:00:01] Steli Efti: Hey, everybody. This is Steli Efti.   [0:00:03] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah.   [0:00:04] Steli Efti: And in today’s episode of the Startup Chat we’re gonna talk about how to make increasingly better choices. This is another episode brought to you by a Twitter storm from Hiten, right? Hiten, your Twitter’s been on fire in the last few days. At least I really appreciate it. You ask this, you had a few tweets about making increasingly better choices in life and kind of a little bit of a framework. You got a lot of responses. I want to just unpack this topic of making good choices or better choices on the podcast. Kind of share how you think about this, add my two cents, and hopefully help people to improve when it comes to their choice making abilities.   [0:00:46] Hiten Shah: Yeah, sounds good. It was yesterday at like six p.m., so it was like recently from when we were recording this, not when the podcast release and I wrote, “Our choices dictate our reality. Find ways to make increasingly better choices each day.” And it got me thinking and the reason is I went on to talk about basically the idea that when you make a choice, you’re really making a decision and when you do that you should ask yourself is it coming out of fear or trust. And an example I gave is the idea of the fear of missing out and how a lot of choices that we make and decision we make are out of missing out on something. So, we just go with a decision, because we think if we don’t we’re going to miss out on something. You know, that was it. It wasn’t a long one or anything. Then I came to basically the point of saying you know, I felt like to needed to answer the question, “Well, okay. You’re saying I shouldn’t do it out of fear, then you’re saying trust is a better method. How do I make a decision coming from trust versus coming from fear?” And basically my answer to that is just when you make a decision or are considering making a decision, whatever the decision is that you’re leaning towards or wanting to make, figure out why. Make sure it’s not fear. And a lot of it has to do with trusting yourself. There is a thing. Like, if you’re making a decision out of fear, it’s coming from a lack of trust. Fear is a lack of trust, right? Like, if you fear you’re going to cross the street and get run over, you don’t trust yourself to cross the street.   [0:02:22] Steli Efti: You don’t trust yourself, yeah.   [0:02:22] Hiten Shah: Right. So, that was it. It was just a quick rant last night ’cause I was thinking and I was like, “You know, this decision making thing really bugs me in general.” I think people tend to make poor decision when they make ’em out of fear.   [0:02:40] Steli Efti: All right. So, I love everything you said, right? So, let’s unpack this a bit further. So, I think that one thing that’s important is asking the question of why am I making the choices I’m making or why have a made the decision that I’ve made. What’s my rationale? What’s the emotional state of mind that I’m making this decision out of? Right? So, I think that that is something that most people, this is basically a stepping back and evaluating the decision maker as well as the decision, right? So, evaluating yourself and why and how you’re making the decision you’re making as well as the decision. I think most people, we tend to just be ourselves, not step back. So, when we think about making a choice or a decision, we’re just thinking, “What is the right choice? What is the right decision? What is the best decision?” And oftentimes, honestly, especially when it’s emotionally hard ones, best really to me often translates to “most convenient”, right? Or the one that I’m most happy about.   [0:03:47] Hiten Shah: Right.   [0:03:47] Steli Efti: How can I make a choice that I’m gonna fell happy about? How can I make a decision that will feel good and feel easy to me? It’s not really … Like emotionally a lot of times we’re not really looking for what is the right thing to do. We’re looking for what is the right and convenient thing to do. And if we can’t find convenient, we keep looking for solutions, right? Well, ah, I can’t find the right choice here. I can’t make the decision. What to do? Why? Well, I don’t know. You know, I don’t know what the right decision is, it’s just oftentimes we really know. It’s not that difficult rationally, but emotionally it’s really challenging, because we’re looking for something that will make us feel comfortable going with, right? We’re looking for a choice that is comfortable. And unless it’s not comfortable, we keep looking, right? Or we keep going back and forth between choices. So, I think the stepping back and really analyzing what is my state of mind? What are the emotions that I’m feeling right now? What is the emotional state that I’m looking for when making this decision? Am I looking for comfort? Am I looking for security? Am I looking for excitement? Am I looking for easiness and ease, right? Is the right decision … I’ll tell you, I had a decision made you know, at the beginning of this year, and I knew a very specific thing about it, but if I had pulled through with it, I knew it would have been incredibly inconvenient to me, like, I basically was like, I know. Whatever. Option A’s the right option, but I also know Option A’s going to be very uncomfortable to me, because it requires me to change in all these ways I don’t want to change.   [0:05:22] Hiten Shah: Right.   [0:05:22] Steli Efti: So, you know, the thing I didn’t do and the mistake I’m not making as much today is I didn’t look for an Option B or C or D, right? I didn’t try to look for something that’s more convenient, but the mistake I still made was that I still was standing in front of Option A, door Option A, and was like, “I know I need to do this, but I’m not ready right now. I’m gonna do this tomorrow.” And then the next day I was like, “Not quite ready yet, but I’m getting there and I know I need to do this.” It just took me a bit of kicking it down the road until I was finally like, “Fuck it. I need to go through this door and kick the door down and walk through it and make the changes.” Then it felt great. Still looking back, I’m like, “Why did it take me all these weeks versus doing it immediately?”   [0:06:06] Hiten Shah: Right.   [0:06:06] Steli Efti: That sucks. That’s definitely something I want to improve. But I think asking yourself what is the emotional state I’m looking for when making this decision is a weird question, but I think can be enlightening if it’s like fear –   [0:06:21] Hiten Shah: I like that.   [0:06:22] Steli Efti: – right? Is it that I’m trying to not be afraid anymore? Am I trying not to feel left out anymore? Am I trying to feel comfortable or relaxed? Like, what is it that I’m trying to feel when making this decision? And that feeling that we’re seeking can be an indicator or signal for maybe going down the wrong path or looking for the wrong thing in terms of how you make choices. One question that I had for you on those tweets from that I was wondering about is … ’cause I asked myself this question, I was like, you know, am I making increasingly better choices each day? Right?   [0:07:00] Hiten Shah: Right.   [0:07:00] Steli Efti: And when I ask myself this question, I could not instantly … I did not have an instant answer, which made me believe probably no. I think if I said, “Do I make increasingly better choices every year?” I’d be very confident. I’d be like, “Yes!” I’m pretty confident.   [0:07:17] Hiten Shah: Right.   [0:07:17] Steli Efti: Like, when I look back a year from now at certain ways of how I made decisions, how quickly I moved on things, I’ve grown and I can point to specific examples where I’m making better choices today, but not daily, not weekly, not monthly. And it’s even weird the way I track this, right? It’s kind of wishy washy. So, I was just wondering to see if you have any kind of methodology? How do you think about even tracking if you’re making better choices in life? If you’re getting better at your decision making and your choice making process? Like, how do you know if you’re progressing there?   [0:07:53] Hiten Shah: Yeah. Man, like look. There’s this thing called metacognition, which means you’re thinking about thinking.   [0:08:05] Steli Efti: Uh-huh. (affirmative).   [0:08:05] Hiten Shah: And I feel like the only way I found for myself to get better at decision making, you know, some people would say, “Oh, you make a decision and you see what happens.” Like, did it work out or not, right? And then that’s one way to figure out if you made a good decision as you look at, okay, I made a decision, was it a good one? Then you make sure on every decision trying to figure out how do I determine whether it’s a good decision or not. Right? That’s one way to do it. What I’ve found is I want to get better at decision making in the moment of making a decision more than I want to get better at decision making after I make a decision. So, I just think about what you just said. I think about thinking. So, I think about why am I making this decision. I think about what is the emotion behind this decision. I think about that a lot. And I don’t mean I spend a lot of time on it, I just mean that when I’m going to make a decision I think about it, right? And I make sure that, like I even think about things like, “Is this a decision I can’t undo or is this a decision I can undo?” ‘Cause if I can undo it, why am I even thinking about it? Why don’t I just do it? I mean, another way to look at it too is I think when you put this is the business lines organizationally, are people making decisions that just don’t matter? Are they worried about all these things that don’t matter right now? And how do you help people decide what they should worry about? So, to me unpacking choices and decisions and all that is really important if you want to make better ones. It’s not about I made a decision, was it good or bad? it’s much more about which decisions are you making? Why are you even bothering making the decisions you are? Can you undo them? How fast are you doing them? So, to me, like, yeah. I think when you say a year passes and you know you’ve gotten better at decision making, yeah. That makes sense. But what you might be doing like many people do is worrying about decisions after you’ve made them in terms of was it good or bad? I’d rather think through the decision making earlier and even go fundamental and say should I make this decision or not? Does it even matter?   [0:10:11] Steli Efti: I love it. All right. Let’s wrap this one up. This was super useful. Thank you so much for listening. If you’ve not done this yet, do us a favor, please. Go to iTunes and give us a five star review.   [0:10:23] Hiten Shah: Yep.   [0:10:23] Steli Efti: I would highly appreciate that.   [0:10:25] Hiten Shah: Oh, yeah.   [0:10:25] Steli Efti: And as always, as always, you know, we’ve been getting a few emails from you guys recently. We always love to hear from you. You can always get in touch with steli@close.io and hnshah@gmail.com if you have feedback, ideas, or just some big choices to make and you need some feedback on how to make better choices, how to think differently about it, we always love to hear from you. That’s it from us. We’ll see you very soon.   [0:10:48] Hiten Shah: See ya. [0:10:48] The post 387: How to Make Increasingly Better Choices Each Day appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about the importance of sleep and rest. As a founder, a good night’s sleep is incredibly important for your health. In fact, it’s just as important as eating healthy and exercising. Unfortunately, the work and our environment can interfere with our natural sleep patterns and this can affect a founders performance. In this episode, Steli and Hiten share their thoughts on the importance of sleep and rest, their pre-sleep routines, why drinking water before going to bed is a good idea and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About the topic of today’s episode 00:35 Why this topic was chosen. 03:01 How many hours of sleep Hiten gets on average. 04:40 Why you should do what works for your body. 04:54 How many hours of sleep Steli gets on average. 06:00 Hiten’s habits when it comes to going to sleep. 07:07 Hiten’s best pre-sleep routine. 07:38 Some things Hiten does before he goes to bed. 08:00 Why drinking water before going to bed is a good idea. 08:45 Steli’s pre-sleep routine. 3 Key Points: Depending on the day, I get anywhere between 5 to 7 hours of sleep. I have a thing where most of the apps on my phone shut down at 11 pm. In my ideal world, I’d rather not use the phone before I go to bed.   [0:00:00] Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti.   [0:00:03] Hiten Shah: And this Hiten Shah and today on The Startup Chat, we’re going to talk about sleep and rest.   [0:00:08] Steli Efti: Yeah.   [0:00:08] Hiten Shah: Where I’m at, it’s 6:17 am. I actually have to drive somewhere and I’m doing this from my car, but don’t worry, I’m not driving, otherwise you’d head my driving, for sure. Because I woke up at 5:20 and so I’ve already been up for an hour, and I drove to where my next meeting’s going to be, that way Steli and I can do our podcast here. So here I am in Palo Alto parked, looking at some weird clock on some building, wondering why it’s 6:18 am. So, sleep and rest. What have you got?   [0:00:48] Steli Efti: Sleep and rest. Well, what I got is I had a glorious moment last night where it’s 7:40 pm. I was debating if I should go to the gym or if I should do more work or what I should do. And then I blinked and I looked at the time and it was like 30 minutes later, and I was like, “What have I been doing the last 30 minutes?” It’s just like, wasting life in front of my laptop, just clicking gon things, being undecided and indecisive. And then I decided something that I rarely do at that early time. I don’t know why, but it was just like … You know what, you’re tired. Just go to fucking sleep. Just see if you can do it right now. And you know, I went and brushed my teeth, jumped into bed, no laptop, no phone or nothing. And I was like, let’s see if I can actually go to sleep this early. And boom! I am proud to announce I was able to do that. It’s a big accomplishment. So I slept 12 hours: eight to eight. For me, I’m in New York right now, so it’s 9:18, so it’s 9 am. So I slept for 12 full hours. I don’t remember when the last time I did this. But it was glorious and it was the inspiration for saying, you know what, there is a lot that has been talked about when it comes to sleep, right? How many hours should you sleep per night, what kind of sleep do you need. Sleep habits with the modern way that we live where we bring our laptops or our tablets or our phones with us to bed and use them and how that affects sleep. And all that stuff. You know, sleep really impacts and influences rest, which is another interesting concept. Like, how should you think about resting as a founder, as an entrepreneur? I thought that would be really cool for us to just kind of go after this topic and see if there’s some best practices, lessons learned, mistakes that we’ve made in the past when it comes to too much rest or not enough rest and sleep. And so, let’s rock and roll and let’s see … I mean you are waking up early in the morning, but I assume you are going to bed early as well, right? Early-ish. Right? How many hours of sleep do you get, on average?   [0:03:03] Hiten Shah: It depends on the day. So I get anywhere from about five to seven. Sometimes on the weekend, I can pull of 8 or 9. That’s just how it’s been. I think for me, I like about six or seven. Some days, based on certain meetings I have … Because I have a couple meetings that are late sometimes, I end up having to wake up early again, just because I have a 6:30 or 7 am meeting the next day. So those are times when I’m sleeping about five hours. I don’t like doing less than five, although that little bit of deliriousness with less than five, like four, four and a half is always fun. I mean, I’m literally like way more short, not angry or anything, just short with people. It’s kind of fun. So yeah, of me it’s like five to seven hours is probably an average day. I think last night, I slept about … Even though I woke up early today, I probably slept a solid seven hours, which was good if I’m going to wake up early. So I slept till like 10:20 or 10:30.   [0:04:12] Steli Efti: Beautiful. Yeah, I think that … I mean there’s a lot of things that I’ve heard, like just in the recent month on podcast, from like you have to sleep eight hours. Anything less than eight hours, there’s all these negative impacts. But then, again, any time something comes out, even if it’s science-based, I always have some level of skepticism, because I’m like, yeah, was this science true 10 years ago? Will it be then true 10 years from now, right? Everything is relative and I truly believe that people are different. They’re fundamentally different. So listening to one’s own body and mind and observing what works and what doesn’t work for one specifically always to me seems to be the best guiding principal, rather than just doing something somebody else has said. Doesn’t matter how much of an authority they are. But on average, I do sleep around seven hours. I can’t sleep … It happens that I’ll sleep a little less once in a while and as yesterday, this is a big milestone, I don’t think I’ve ever sleep more this year than last night. I slept a full 12 hours, which is insane, but might also be part of the thing that I mentioned earlier to you that, since I moved from the Bay Area, I haven’t had like a full winter in 14 years. And it really does impact my mood and the level of energy that I feel on an average day. So sleep is a big thing. Let’s stick with it for another few minutes before I want to talk about rest more broadly. Do you have certain habits when it comes to going to sleep? Do you meditate before going to sleep? Read a book? Or are you just like on your phone scrolling through Twitter or watching a movie? Or is it like every night is something different? Do you have strict habits on what you do before you go to sleep and when you wake up? Or is it like pretty loose?   [0:06:05] Hiten Shah: I have a new thing. I forgot what the setting is on the phone, but I have a thing where most of my apps shut down at 11 pm. I think it’s called Screen Time on my iPhone and it’s called Down Time within the Screen Time area. So 11-6 am it’s off. If I try to click anything I can turn it back on, but it gives me screen. I actually Tweeted the screen about Twitter a few weeks ago with the twitter version of it. Because if you’re on a website, it’ll do that or if you go into an app, it’ll say you can’t get into this thing. Do you want to go around that rule for 15 minutes or for the rest of the time? I’ve been doing that. I only do that because it’s nice to have a blocker after 11 for me on just my phone, basically. So my chat’s open, one of my chat tools, but the email is not, because there’s some people I chat with that late. Everything else requires that. So that is a new thing I’m doing and I kind of like it, because I kind of like having that extra barrier after 11. In my ideal world, I would rather not use a phone for like a half hour to an hour before I go to bed. I don’t think I’m consistent on that at all, but this has really helped me a lot. Then outside of that, I don’t really have any other routine. I try not to eat too late, and honestly, my best routine is I actually try to drink a bunch of water before I go to sleep. And I take some vitamins. I take vitamins in the morning and at night.   [0:07:45] Steli Efti: Interesting.   [0:07:46] Hiten Shah: I find that I wake up a little more alert if I take vitamins at night, too.   [0:07:51] Steli Efti: Interesting, I’ve never heard that one. That’s interesting. I need to try that.   [0:07:56] Hiten Shah: I used to even try things like honey, like spoon full of honey. They basically say your brain’s still working, and if you’re waking up foggy, your brain just didn’t have enough energy to eat up during the night. Something like that. That’s one thing I read. So I was trying that out. But I like my vitamins at night too. So I take half of them in the morning, half of them at night before bed.   [0:08:16] Steli Efti: Interesting. Yeah the hydration thing is a big routine of mine. It’s something that I’ve read or seen, and it made so much sense to me where it’s like, well if you’re sleeping for seven hours, it means you haven’t had any water, any hydration for seven hours. So you’re totally dehydrated when you wake up in the morning.   [0:08:33] Hiten Shah: Right.   [0:08:33] Steli Efti: And that probably feeds into feeling groggy or feeling a little out-of-it.   [0:08:39] Hiten Shah: That was good. If you’re waking … As a tip, as a thought, if you’re waking up and your mouth is dry every day, try drinking a bunch more water before you go to bed. Yeah, you might have to get up to pee at least once or twice, but that’s okay. Just try it, because I don’t think you should feel dehydrated when you wake up, because that can ruin your whole day.   [0:08:56] Steli Efti: Yeah. Absolutely. I’ve never tried the honey or vitamins, so I’ll play with that. That’s an interesting one. That also kind of makes sense. I’ve been incredibly inconsistent over the last few weeks when it comes to when I go to bed, when I wake up, how I go to bed and all that. So that’s the fair disclaimer, to be honest. In general, I would always try to have like an hour of no screen time. So usually I would just try to read a book before going to sleep. But in all reality, oftentimes I would just be on my phone or on the laptop and then go brush my teeth, go to bed and maybe listen to an audiobook or some kind of a guided meditation. I would listen to something maybe for another 10, 15 minutes in bed and then fall asleep. So that’s something that I would do often. The one thing that drives me crazy is having any kind of electronic devices in bed, which used to be standard for me. I mean, this is like 10 years ago, but I used to have like phones and laptops and tablets, just everything. All the electronic devices, kindles, everything in the bed. And now I try to make sure that even my phone, I put it away actually pretty far away from the bed, so even if the apps are on, I don’t hear anything, I don’t see anything. I’m not tempted to really pick up the phone. And one thing that I learned traveling so much and trying to make sure that I always beat the jet lag is that no matter if I wake up at night or not or no matter … Usually I don’t have trouble falling asleep but if I do, I’m pretty disciplined about fighting the urge to pick up the phone. So during the night, even if I wake up, even if something happens, most of the time if I’m tempted to pick up the phone I’ll fight that temptation. I’ll rather be bored and have to turn around a few more times than get stimulated digitally in the middle of the night. And that has helped … That definitely has a huge impact on my jet lag. I’m usually able to beat it pretty quickly because I’m very disciplined. I’m like working out, being all tight, getting a lot of sunlight, going to bed at the right time even if I’m not tired, not using the phone or anything like that. That all helps a lot. But to be honest the last two weeks or so, my habits have been all over the place and I have used the phone even at night, once. The one thing that I wanted to bring up because it was something that I just recently have played with and toyed with and I wanted to talk to you about this is the concept of rest for founders and entrepreneurs, right? So sleep is a big part of that, but there’s other forms of rest as well, like when do you take breaks? How many breaks do you take? And all that. And one particularly interesting thing or thing at least that has been on my mind has been the concept of active rest. So for people that have listened to the podcast for a long time, you know I’m a huge martial arts fan. And I recently was watching an interview with a very, very successful martial artist, somebody that’s a world champion in many, many areas. And he was talking about how he changed his rest time. You know when you are a professional athlete, you train sometimes two, three times a day, and those workouts are really, really intense. So their nutrition has to be on point, but their rest has to be on point so their body recovers and is able to go back and train at 100%. And he was saying that back in the day, one of the biggest problems or shortcomings in his training was that he thought rest was just going on the couch and not moving, just watching television, right? It just was like, no movement. And then with the new trainer that he’s with now, they taught him that that rest is actually not good. It doesn’t recover his body. He needs active rest. He needs things that rejuvenate, re-energize the body. So now, instead of just being on the couch for two hours before he goes back to training, he will maybe go on a 20 minute walk. Just be outside, just walk at a slow pace with a dog or something, but walk, have fresh air, move the body so there’s circulation, the body can recover and re-energize. And he mentioned a few other examples that are very specific to athletes, but I thought about this myself where, in all my experience with founders and entrepreneurs where when they’re exhausted at the end of the day, usually many, many people will tend to rest in a way that’s really not giving you energy but it’s costing you energy over time. Watching a 30-minute show might be a lot of fun and give you energy, but watching a 30-minute show that then leads to you watching television for four hours is not really giving you rest or re-energizing your body and mind. And there’s many, many things like that … Or gaming. I’m not a big gamer, but I’m sure gaming is fun and playing games is fun, but again, when you go from a short period, like a half an hour or an hour of gaming a little bit and having fun to then it turning into three hours, four hours later, you’re still in front of the console and still playing, that’s not going to give you the rest for your mind, body, and soul that you need to wake up in the next morning to really attack all the challenges and all the problems that you have as a startup founder. So I’ve been thinking about that. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on resting and actively resting and how do you take breaks? How do you think about that for founders and entrepreneurs specifically?   [0:14:28] Hiten Shah: Yeah, I think many folks, I think it starts with recognizing you need to rest. And that’s probably the most challenging thing I’ve found with founders is that we don’t recognize when we need rest, which is some of the stuff you were pointing to, too. For example, are you just not feeling like doing some task that you need to do? You should think through why are you not feeling like doing it. Are you tired? Have you been … Another one that really gets me real good, is are you feeling like you’re waiting for something?   [0:15:10] Steli Efti: Interesting. What do you mean?   [0:15:12] Hiten Shah: Well this one’s top-of-mind for me right now. There’s a bunch of stuff I’m waiting on. A bunch of stuff. Usually for me it’s engineering. That can just, itself, make me exhausted because I’m waiting, so then sometimes it’s harder to move things forward if I’m waiting. So then I might just need to rest, you know? Because for me, at least, this waiting feeling of waiting on things, is not … I shouldn’t be waiting on anything. It doesn’t matter what’s going on. Right? There’s always something you can do. But if I have that, that’s an indicator, for me at least, that I’m like, aw crap, I’m waiting for all this stuff, or I feel like I am. And I’m just not able to do things. So I think there’s like these points or these feelings that actually mean you might be a little exhausted. So if I feel like I’m waiting, I’m probably a little exhausted, if not very exhausted, because I’m not willing to move forward. A lot of it has to do with what are you not willing to do. And if you can identify what you’re not willing to do, that can help you understand if you’re exhausted or not. Because we have a lot of things to do, all of us, not just founders. And there’s so much more that can always be done. But if you don’t have the energy for whatever your job is or whatever you should be doing, that’s a really good sign that you might be exhausted. And energy meaning it might not be something you consciously, fully are aware of, but if you’re not doing the work or the work’s going slower than it usually does or the motivation is lacking, oftentimes you could just be exhausted. Another one that’s just really stupid and really simple to figure out is, are you sleeping enough? Like there’s a lot of studies about sleep and how often you sleep and this and that, fine, or how long sleep. But I think if you, for whatever your sleep schedule is, if you feel like you’re not sleeping enough, that can be a big blocker, or a big sign of exhaustion. That’s one of the most obvious ones. Another one: are you waking up tired or groggy? That clearly means that you need to sleep.   [0:17:29] Steli Efti: Yeah, and I think that especially founders, when they are exhausted or tired, a lot of times what we tend to do is just try to power through it, right? So force function through it, either with willpower or with supplements. People will go and get the … Coffee is obviously a drug of choice that’s very popular. But, coffee, right? And maybe more extreme measures, but we’ll try to just force function ourselves through that exhaustion. Which, okay, there’s times when that’s going to be a good available option for what you need to do. But if that is something that you have to do every day, you’ve been doing this for like weeks or months, it’s not really sustainable. At some point you’re going to have to pay the price for that. There’s going to be some debt that you’re accruing in your body and your health that you’re going to have to pay for eventually. So recognizing that, as you said, what are the tasks or the work that are difficult for me to do? What are things that I don’t want to do? How easy or hard is it for me to concentrate? How do I wake up? Do I feel energized and ready for the day, or am I exhausted? All these things can matter. Now, also just observing, I think we talked in prior episodes even about nutrition. Once we, I think both of us had experimented with different diets and you had lost a lot of weight. And it was like when you change your diet, it kind of changes the energy … You change the energy source that you’re fueling your body and mind with and that can have a huge impact. A lot of people when they have these super-heavy lunches, obviously you are dipping then with your whole body and mind and have a very difficult time in the afternoon, which then they overcompensate with extra amounts of coffee to counteract that lull.   [0:19:17] Hiten Shah: We’re going to have to talk about coffee on one of these episodes.   [0:19:23] Steli Efti: Yeah, I’m curious to hear your thoughts. By the way, this is a behind-the-scenes thing. When you go to grab coffee with Hiten, he orders hot chocolate like a cute little 12-year-old. It’s amazing.   [0:19:39] Hiten Shah: Yep.   [0:19:39] Steli Efti: We’ll have to talk about that in another episode. But I think that, in general, understanding, even asking yourself how do I rest? What are my strategies to rest, and do I use active rest, things that truly give my body, my mind, my soul, re-energizing these things, refuel these things? Or is it just something where I become a dead vegetable and I do something that maybe feels a little good because I’m exhausted the first 20, 30 mins like being on the couch watching movie but three, four, five hours later I’m still on this couch, still watching something, and it doesn’t actually feel good. It doesn’t feel like I’m more energized or re-fueled so it’s not really a great strategy for rest if you have a very, very demanding life, demanding work. All right, I think that’s it for us for this episode. This was a special one, a little longer than the average one. Make sure to get lots of sleep. Make sure to rest up to be able to do all the work that you need to do and we’ll hear you very, very soon.   [0:20:41] Hiten Shah: Sleep well. [0:20:41]   The post 386: How to Sleep and Rest up as a Founder appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about holding on to people who aren’t working out too long. One of the biggest mistakes founders make is holding on to a non-performing team member for too long. Doing so can be bad for the business, the team and for the non-performing team member as well. So it’s important to let people go if it’s not working out and do it at the right time. In this episode, Steli and Hiten talk about why hanging on to a non-performing team member is a bad idea, when the right time is to let them go, consequences of hanging on to a non-performing team member and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About today’s topic. 00:39 Why this topic was chosen. 02:36 What made Hiten tweet about this topic. 02:46 Why it’s bad to wait too long to let go of a team member. 03:04 How Hiten started the tweetstorm. 03:17 Consequences of hanging on to a non performing team member. 04:48 Why you should speak to team members about issues. 05:07 Why it’s bad for the non-performing team member. 06:34 About giving people second chances. 07:36 How to handle non-performing team members. 08:00 Why it’s important that the non-performing team members knows the situation. 3 Key Points: Sometimes we keep hoping that someone who’s not working out is gonna work out Your company sucks more for it. If you’re basically talking shit about a team member and they’re not in the room, get them in the room.     [0:00:00] Steli Efti: Hey, everybody. This is Steli Efti.   [0:00:03] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. Today on The Startup Chat, we’re going to talk about a tweetstorm that I did, I guess, right?   [0:00:10] Steli Efti: Yes, yes, a tweetstorm that I think every entrepreneur, every founder should read, every person that works in a startup. I retweeted it telling everybody to fucking read it, but I’m like, not everybody’s following us on Twitter. This is such an important topic, I thought we needed to touch on this on the podcast. It’s the topic of one of the biggest mistakes companies make are holding on to people that aren’t working out too long, which means you have made the determination or you’re seeing that this person isn’t working out. They’re not successful within the company. They’re not performing the way that you expected them to. The moment you realize that, you’re not taking action instantly. You do what I would say almost every founder and every person that has hiring and firing power does. You postpone that. You try to rationalize things. You kick the can down the road, think, “Well, maybe if we give this one more month, maybe if I help them with more training, maybe I change my management style, maybe with this new campaign, it’s a fresh start and they can show themselves now.” Your just keep postponing, trying to rationalize, trying to give people more and more chances. Then once you make the decision, there’s all kinds of other reasons for not firing them. “Oh, it’s the Christmas season. It’s New Years. We have this big project. This would be bad news and would be bad for morale.” There’s all these reasons why to keep postponing that. I just ran through a shit ton of them really quickly. Now I want to pass on the ball to you, Hiten, which is why is it so bad to do this? Why giving people a bit more chances is bad. Why maybe waiting for the perfect time to part ways or fire somebody is that bad. Why is postponing letting go of somebody that isn’t’ working out, why is that such a bad thing? What triggered you to even tweet about this in a little tweetstorm?   [0:02:19] Hiten Shah: I don’t know. I think it’s just one of the things that people keep doing over, and over, and over, and over again. They keep basically hoping that someone who’s not working out is going to work out. I wish it was more complicated. I wish I had more to say, that, “Oh, it’s okay. You should let people stay in your company even though they’re not working out.” I know it sounds literally ridiculous. The way I started the tweetstorm was basically by saying one of the worst recurring problems that companies of all sizes have is keeping people around who aren’t working out. Yeah.   [0:03:06] Steli Efti: Yeah, go ahead. I just wanted to ask, what are the consequences of this? What is the real cost implied with keeping somebody around that isn’t quite working out?   [0:03:15] Hiten Shah: Honestly, your company just sucks more for it. This is stuff I can’t stay on Twitter, but I can say it to you on a podcast. Your company sucks more because of it. The thing I learned, I’ve done a few of these tweetstorms, is if I’m writing something, and it’s a tweetstorm, and it’s one where I can just keep going like this one, I’m angry about it. I’m just angry about it. Not at myself, not at anybody else. It’s just out of literally why do we keep doing this to ourself. I think that it makes your company suck. Your company sucks if you keep people who just aren’t working out because it sucks for everybody. It sucks for your team because they get invested in this person, or they keep seeing that this person sucks for your team and it’s not working out. It sucks for that person because they’re probably not going to be there at some point. They can move on to a place that’s better for them than where you’re at. It sucks for you if you’re the manager of this person because you’re sitting there talking about this person all the time. Think about how much time you’re wasting. The thing is, this is one I forgot in the tweetstorm, and it’s one of my best tips. I learned I the hard way multiple times. What it is is if you’re basically talking shit about somebody in the company between two people or three people and they’re not in the room, get them in the room. I think we’ve given this advice before at some point. Get them in the room and just figure it out. It’s not worth anyone’s time to go work in an environment that they’re not appreciated, and it’s not worth your time to work in an environment where someone’s there that you don’t appreciate.   [0:05:00] Steli Efti: It’s so important and beautiful even if it’s hard because the truth of the matter is that they also know. Consciously or subconsciously, they know that they probably are not performing that well, that they’re not killing it, that they’re not delivering the results that you are looking for. Even if you’re not saying anything, they will be able to sense it in your energy, in the way that you talk to them, that you are disapproving, that you are worried about them, that you have conflicting thoughts and emotions about them. They will know, so it’s going to build up internally in them as well. They are going to be unhappy, and they’re going to be uncomfortable, and they’re going to be stressed out. You’re not doing anybody any favors. If they don’t, if they think that they’re killing it, it’s even worse. The problem is even worse where they’re living in such a different reality than you that that is bad for them and bad for you now. What about the argument, Hiten, because I know some people will think about this. Some founders now that are listening to us are just going to go, “Shit, they’re right,” and they’ll have a person in mind, and they’ll know exactly what we’re talking about. In their hearts they’ll know, “Shit, I need to talk to this person, and I need to part ways with this person ASAP. I’ve been postponing it because I feel bad about it. But listening to Hiten and Steli, yes, I know I should.” There are some other people that might listen to us and go, “Well, but what about giving people second chances? What is somebody isn’t working out, but it’s still early? I don’t know if with more training, or more time, or putting them in a different project, if I’m going to be able to make them work out.” How do I differentiate when something …   [0:06:41] Hiten Shah: Okay, cool.   [0:06:42] Steli Efti: … Isn’t going to work out versus it is going to work out?   [0:06:45] Hiten Shah: Good, I got a tweet on that.   [0:06:47] Steli Efti: Ooh.   [0:06:49] Hiten Shah: I got two, actually.   [0:06:50] Steli Efti: Shit.   [0:06:52] Hiten Shah: This is what I wrote. I’m just going to read it, and I want your opinion. I basically said if you’re regularly speaking unfavorably about an individual on a team, it’s time to rethink their involvement in the company. The first time this happens, talk to the person directly. If the second time occurs, talk to them again. Don’t wait for things to magically improve. Then I say, look, the energy spent trying to fix someone that isn’t working out should be finite. Be direct with them. Give them clear and concrete examples of your observations. Make sure they understand what you expect from them. Set a timeline for improvements. Schedule the followup. Look, they call this PIPs, performance improvement plans, when it comes to larger organizations. I think startups have taken that on to some extent as they’ve grown. At the end of the day, that’s what I’m talking about, too. The thing is, if you have to go as far as to get someone on a performance improvement plan, they’re already out the door. What you’re doing is you’re documenting why they need to go. It doesn’t matter if you’re a smaller company. That’s important because you want the person to understand why it didn’t work out, just out of human decency. The thing is, don’t waste your time. To me, I want the person to understand why it’s not working out. I want to person to know that. That being said, I want that to happen as fast as possible.   [0:08:13] Steli Efti: I love it. I think that’s it. We’ll wrap this episode up. It’s tough. We’ve both been in this situation multiple times where it took us too long to part ways, hence why we’re speaking about this both with such, I think, empathy but also with conviction of this is just a terrible thing. Just get over it.   [0:08:35] Hiten Shah: That’s where the anger comes from, right?   [0:08:37] Steli Efti: Yeah.   [0:08:37] Hiten Shah: It’s like, “Oh, crap. What are we doing?”   [0:08:39] Steli Efti: Why is this happening again, and again, and again?   [0:08:42] Hiten Shah: There you go.   [0:08:42] Steli Efti: It’s such a costly mistake. The reason why it’s happening mostly is because it’s emotionally hard to do. We don’t like conflict. We don’t like letting go somebody. Oftentimes it takes such incredible effort to hire somebody in a position. Most likely if you are hiring, you are under pressure, you need all the help you can get. Now you’ve got somebody, and then you figure out it’s not working out. It sucks. It’s bad for morale. It’s bad for everything. It’s emotionally just the hardest thing to do as an entrepreneur is to let somebody go. You’re going to have the natural inclination to postpone it, to wait way too long, and to make the problem way bigger than it needs to be. Learning to act quickly is going to pay massive dividends even if it’s unpleasant. Dude, thank you so much for the tweetstorm. I think the entrepreneurial community owes you a big thank you. If just one founder out there is pulling through the decision quicker based on this episode, we made the world a better place. Thank you, everybody, for listening, and we’ll hear you very soon.   [0:09:49] Hiten Shah: See you. [0:09:49] The post 385: Firing People Too Slow Will Kill Your Startup appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about how founders can avoid customer development mistakes. Customer development is a four-step framework for discovering and validating the right market for your idea. It is used by founders to build the right product features that solve customers’ needs and much more. Customer development is crucial to the success of a product, therefore it has to be done the right way. In this week’s episode, Steli and Hiten dive into what  Customer development is, why it’s important, some common mistakes founders make when they do it and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About today’s topic. 00:35 Why this topic was chosen. 01:27 The biggest common mistake founders make. 02:56 Another common mistake founders make. 04:47 Why there are different types of product validation. 06:04 Why giving you money is a much stronger form of validation. 07:22 Another big mistakes founders make. 10:05 Why not being able to reach enough people is not an excuse. 10:44 Why you should never stop doing customer development. 10:59 Why product-market fit is not a static status. 3 Key Points: Customer development has nothing to do with your product. Founders will use different lingo to make their business look bigger than it is. Customer development never ends.   [0:00:01] Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti …   [0:00:03] Hiten Shah: … And this is Hiten Shah.   [0:00:04] Steli Efti: And today on the startup chat we want to talk about customer development mistakes to avoid for founders. So here’s the deal, like Hiten, you and myself, we talk to founders all the time, a lot of them are kind of early stage founders and they’re in the “customer development” phase, and they come to us to tell us that they’ve done customer development and they think they have product market fit in now they’re worrying about all the other stages that are, that are about to happen for them. And when we talk to them and ask exactly what they did in customer development, who they talk, what they found out, we realized sooner or later that they’ve made big mistakes in the way they think about customer development or the way they executed on it. So I thought it would be useful for us to share some of those kinds of biggest reoccurring themes and mistakes to avoid. So when kind of young founders or new founders are going out to do customer development, they avoid these mistakes and they don’t waste time, right? So, right of the bat Hiten. If you had to think about the biggest common mistake that most founders make when it comes to customer development, what comes to mind?   [0:01:17] Hiten Shah: It always, it always starts for me with their speaking to the potential customers and people the wrong way. So they’re introducing bias in what they’re saying. And so then when, when I talk to them what ends up happening is I just can feel the bias. I can just feel it so that they ask questions like, would you use my product instead of asking what’s the biggest challenge you have? And I think that’s a very distinct difference that many founders, despite all the material about customer development and how to talk to the customers before they are your customers and all that kind of stuff, people just gloss over and they miss and they think talking to customers or prospects or early, you know, talking to people early about your business has to do with your product. And in my opinion and the way that I learned customer development, it has nothing to do with your product it has everything to do with that person, their problems and their stories and everything you can learn about them with no information about what you’re doing or your product. And I think that’s like the biggest mistake people make, which is they focus in on themselves, their product and questions they want answered instead of learning about what people care about.   [0:02:37] Steli Efti: I love it. Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. That’s definitely, that is definitely the number one mistake. I think another one, although I would like to double click on this, I have 100 stories of telling people this exact faith like you. You just, you just went out there to prove yourself right and if you go into the world with that attitude, you know, it’s fairly easy to do actually. It’s fairly easy to see yourself being right, if that’s your number one goal. Right? But the other thing that I’ll say is that I’ll talk about the money piece sometimes. People, here is a pet peeve that I have. People will go out there, they’ll do “customer development”, they’ll come back and they’ll say, “Steli, we’ve done this. A bunch of companies or we have a bunch of early customers and so now we’re thinking about like how to scale this now to do x, y, and z.” And when I stop people, I always go, oh, so you already have paying customers? And they go, yeah, we already have some early customers. So what are they paying you? And here’s the most beautiful thing I hear almost all the time, if it’s very early stage. They go, well, they don’t technically pay us yet, and I was like, well motherfucker, there’s only one way of paying you, you know, this is like, what are we talking about here? There is a, they send you money and there is a, they have not sent you money. If they’re the, you have not received money from them camp, then those people are not customers. Right? It’s a very simple thing and so one of those beautiful things is that people will start using different lingo to make them feel like they’ve progressed a lot further than they truly have. Right? Which goes back to this bias thing, but they’ll say, “Well, we have 100 early customers,” and then you go, are they paying you? No. Well then you don’t have 100 customers yet. You really don’t. What they essentially have is they have 100 free Alpha users or Beta users of their product right? They’ve 100 people that said, “Sure, if you sent me a free link to sign up, I’ll play around with this.” But that’s not the same thing as having 100 customers. Right? It’s very, very different. So one of the things, especially in B2B that is like a big encouragement that I give to people, is to think about like all validation isn’t the same validation, there’s a hierarchy of it, right? So somebody telling you, I think your idea is nice. That’s useless to me that says that’s less worth than somebody telling me your idea sucks. That is more useful to me. So somebody just saying, “Oh, I like your idea. Oh I think that’s a really good idea.” That’s useless. Now somebody’s saying specifically, “You know what, this is so useful. This sounds so useful. So good. I think I would want to use it, or I would want to purchase it. I, we would need this in our company. I would want to buy this. Where can I buy this? How can I buy this?” Now, that’s a much stronger signal. That’s actually really truthfully useful. Right? Okay, this is strong validation, there’s a strong demand. Somebody practically without me even asking has offered to buy this or that they want this, cool. Then one level above that is when they actually do it, right? Even if it’s for a smaller amount, let’s say you haven’t built the product yet or it’s very early, if it’s some token amount, it doesn’t matter, but then giving you their credit card information or putting their hand in their pocket and giving you a dollar is much stronger than them just saying, “I would spend a million dollars with this, or I really, really like this,” like real money giving you real or if it’s an end consumer product, spending a lot of time. Like giving, you something that’s really worthwhile, which is their attention, their time or their money, that’s obviously a much stronger signal than them just saying they would do it or them saying they like what you do. And I think that most people, most founders, when they do customer development, what they try to do is they go, they talk to a bunch of people and all they’re looking for is people say, “I think I really like this idea.” Oh yeah, I think you’re right. This is a really cool idea. That’s what they think validation means and nothing could be further from the truth. That’s to me worthless. Like people, there’s a high cost in being honest, right, and very, very small reward to strangers and when you’re like a passionate founder, that talks excitedly about his or her baby and you look with your big eyes to this prospect or this customer and you’re like, do you think this is a good idea? It’s very hard for somebody to be honest and tell you this sucks. It’s much easier for them to just go, yeah, sure. Right. I think this idea might have potential, but that’s not really worth anything. That’s not really validation and that’s today unfortunately still what many founders will go out there and then come back and believe that they’ve gotten enough positive feedback that now their idea’s validated. Anything else that you can pick off that’s like a big mistake that people make during the customer development phase?   [0:07:19] Hiten Shah: Yeah. I think we captured like the key ones. I feel like, you know, I’m going to say something silly, but they don’t really do it. They just don’t do it. They just think they’re doing it because they’re talking to people about their idea. And you know, they come with a product and they think it’s great, but they don’t really have that many people who love it, and you know, they’re not talking to each and every person who signs up and they’re, they think that … But they think that they’re doing customer development or that they’re customer centric. So I feel like the biggest thing missing in terms of why these people, you know, are so I guess ill prepared in a way to do this and to do customer development, is that it’s become something that like, is almost like a checklist a or like a check mark on a checklist where it’s like, oh yeah, I did it. I talked to a bunch of people. But that’s not how it works. It’d be, it has to be in your DNA to be able to go actually, constantly be going back to the customer, or potential customers, or just a demographic that you want to go after, or a set of personas, what however way you look at it and literally learn from them. Even right now, every week, right now, there’s at least a handful if not more of customer development interviews I’m doing. I bought, two months ago I did about 51 in a 10 day period. And you know my businesses is very, some of them are really old now, and even for the newer ones I’m doing it, but we also have product managers that are also doing it right now. And that’s how we build product. That’s how we build our businesses, by learning as much as we can all the time from customers. So in the last, I would say two months, between three, three of us, we’ve probably talked to 200 different people in one way or another in order to learn from our customers. And talk means like, we’ve either had lengthy chats with them online, we had many email threads back and forth or we’ve run a bunch of surveys, but those don’t count in the 200 or we’ve literally spent 20, 30 minutes with them talking to them, and that’s customer development. Not, you know, acting like you did that. And you know, I’ve heard a lot of excuses like I can’t reach my customer or I don’t know how to go after them or find them, and I think that’s a big excuse too. You can Google that and figure out how to find customers. You can do Twitter searches for people that talk about the problem they’re having and try to tweet at them and you will get a response, you can go do Craigslist ads depending on your demographic and market and offer them 10 bucks a or a donation of 10 bucks to their favorite charity or whatever if they talk to you and people will talk to you. So I think the excuses are gaud in terms of not being able to reach people, but one of the bigger ones I hear is I can’t reach enough people or I can’t get to find people to talk to, which is bullshit.   [0:10:45] Steli Efti: Yeah, that’s crazy. I’ve never heard that one, that is insane. But alright, I love the point that you brought up and I’ll double click on that. You know, I think the idea that customer development ends at some point, product market fit is like a state that once you acquire it, you can hold onto it forever without doing anything more, is probably another really big fallacy issue. People think once they got a few customers, whew, now we’re done with customer development, now we’re done with product market fit issues, now all we have to do is raise more money and scale this up. But customer development never ends and product market fit is not a state that once you captured, you can just hold onto it forever. You have to recapture it every single day, every single month, every single year, because the world is changing, your customers are changing, your product, you are changing, your company is changing, things are changing. So your product market fit is not a static status that once acquired, you have for life, right? You need to earn it every single day and I think a lot of founders, they just want to rush through this “customer development” phase as quickly as possible to then get to the exciting and fun scaling phase. Right? And I get it, but I think it’s, if you have that kind of an approach, you’re going to run into problems sooner or later. All right. I think that’s it from us for this episode. Hiten?   [0:12:01] Hiten Shah: See you.   [0:12:01] Steli Efti: See you. Bye bye. [0:12:02] The post 384: Customer Development Mistakes to Avoid appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

Today on The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about what makes you truly come alive at work and why are you working. This episodes is a special episode of the show. Today Hiten and Steli ask what brings you alive at your workplace. They share with us what it is that brings them alive at theirs. Listen to the full episode to hear what brings Steli and Hiten alive at work, why it’s important to share this insight with the world and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:27 About today’s topic 00:39 Why this topic was chosen. 02:14 What makes Steli come alive at work. 03:07 Another thing that makes Steli come alive. 03:55 What makes Hiten come alive at work. 05:53 The Hiten loves seeing things grow at work. 06:25 Thinking about what makes you come alive at work. 06:43 How to contact the hosts with your answer. 06:53 Why it’s useful to share these insights with the world. 3 Key Points: The bigger the change at work the more alive I become. The second best day is if I help somebody else change their mind. The ability to create an organization where team members are happy and working together is what makes me happy.   [0:00:01] Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti.   [0:00:03] Hiten Shah: This is Hiten Shah today we’re going to talk about a story that Steli experienced and that we’re both going to share more about. So go at it.   [0:00:15] Steli Efti: I think it’s an essential question, which is the question of like, what makes you truly come to life at work and why are you working? And I was at a dinner recently, somebody at that dinner there were a bunch of very successful entrepreneurs and one person at that dinner asked that question to the entire table. And at first people started answering that question in I think kind of surface level way. Well, I really enjoyed my coworkers. I love my customers, I really like doing new things. It’s kind of very surface level. And the guy that asked that question interrupted the first person that answered the question and said, no, no, no, no. Just think about last year, think about one or two times that you were most passion, most excited, most alive at work. What were those moments and what do they have in common? What’s the essence of what’s driving you to work? What’s making you come alive at work, not all the surface things the really deep rooted essence of what really drives you. And that changed the answers quite dramatically. Like people started becoming … First people started getting introverted and like really starting to reflect a lot more before answering like just knee jerk. People started going huh. They started being much more thoughtful and taking a lot more time thinking carefully through this before answering it. When it came to me, and what I want to do is I want to share my answer. I’m dying to hear your answer Heaton. And then what I’d love is to hand the mic to our audience, our listeners and have them share their, like take a moment and have them think about this and then share it with us. So here’s my answer, right? I had to think about this a little bit and I think what I discovered, what the essences of what drives me to work, what makes me really come alive is change. And change in twofold. The best moments at work to me are moments where I change, I change my mind, right? Or I change the way I do something. So if I have always had an opinion of how something has to be done or what the right strategies about something or just overall a principal that I had, the bigger it is, the bigger the change, the more alive I come, when I change my mind. If something happens that fundamentally changes my mind about a big topic or a big belief. Those are the days that I’ll remember. Those are the moments I feel most alive because I feel like I’m growing. I feel like holy shit, I really couldn’t do everything that I’ve done up until this point is now changing because I have this huge shift in mindset or in believe or in strategy in whatever. So if I change my mind, it’s the best day I can have. Second Best Day is if I help somebody else change their mind, right? Change their mind, change their life, change the way they approach something. So if I play a small part in having somebody else have like a really big aha moment where they change the way they think about things, change the way they feel about things, change the way they act about or work on things. I think change is really the thing that drives [inaudible] Me changing is the most exciting thing to be honest selfishly, and then helping other people change. That’s the second most exciting thing. That’s the essence that everything I enjoy has in common. I’m dying to hear what the answer is for you Heaton.   [0:03:31] Hiten Shah: Yeah. I really like your take on like going deeper and thinking about change and making it about change after you thought about it. I think you have an advantage here where you’ve had an opportunity to think about it longer-   [0:03:46] Steli Efti: To think about it yeah.   [0:03:47] Hiten Shah: -than I have which is great. So yeah, I think like if I were to really point out what really matters to me, it really does have to do with the ability to essentially create the organization in such a way where the people are happy and really productive and working well together. And the moments that I can think of that makes me the happiest about the business have everything to do with my ability to basically do that and watching the company do that or anything I’m involved. That organization become created and then the whole process around that. Of the people working together and then creating processes and them growing and learning things. And so to me it’s a lot more about those things. And kind of watching that progress in that journey happen. And just being able to get better every day. So there’s moments where I’ll talk to somebody and we’ll come up with something that moves the business forward just because we talked about it and they’re able to go do something about it or we’ll hire somebody and it’s a great hire or currently like to hire product people I have a process and I feel like I’m finally good at it after so many years [inaudible] the type of product people that I like hiring. Other people might not care about the process so I don’t share it or talk about it. But it excites me because it enables us as an organization to make progress. So if I were to pick a word like you picked change, I would pick progress and forward movement. But that comes from this idea that I love seeing the thing grow. Whatever the thing is, I love seeing it grow. And I know that it takes people to get it to grow. So the way that the people work together, knowing that the right people are working on the right things, all those kinds of things are really what get me going.   [0:06:19] Steli Efti: I love it. Alright change and progress, beautiful. Well, we want to hear from you, right? We want you to do … Well first we want you to take this episode and we made it intentionally short, right? So typically you would spend 15 minutes with us. Now we’re like, we’re going to end at like seven to eight. So you have a few extra minutes, right? Well, what we want you to do is just pause and take a minute or two and think about this. What really makes me come alive, what really motivates me, drives me to work. What are the best moments I have at work and what do those moments have in common. Then when you get to an answer, I think hopefully it’s going to be serving you well in the future, but also since we’re in this together, why don’t you just send us an email, steli@close.io hnshai@gmail.com and share that thing with us as we shared our thing with you. I think it’s really useful to share these insights with the world and we want to hear … The more we hear from you the more excited we get about sharing more of our insights and our thoughts and ideas on the podcast. So think about it right now, share it with us and with the world if you like to, and we’ll hear you very soon.   [0:07:28] Hiten Shah: See Ya. [0:07:28] The post 383: What Makes You Come Alive at Work? What Drives You? appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about how to hire people that are much more senior than you are. Sometimes when it’s time to hire new staff for your startup, you may be in a situation where you’re hiring people who are much more senior than you, both in terms of age and experience. It can feel intimidating when this happens, but it really shouldn’t be. Tune in to this week’s episode to hear Steli and Hiten thought on how to hire people that are much more senior than you are, how to manage this situation, how this could be an opportunity for learning and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About today’s topic. 00:30 Why this topic was chosen. 01:44 Hiten’s first response to the question. 02:43 How being a founder is management. 04:00 Why a big part of this struggle is a mindset thing. 06:01 Why hiring is no different than any other function of a business. 06:50 Why you shouldn’t put unnecessary pressure when it comes to managing this situation. 07:21 How unnecessary pressure can lead to bad outcomes. 08:01 How you can learn from senior people. 08:50 Why you consider every time you work with senior people as a learning opportunity. 3 Key Points: One thing to realize is that this is part of learning. Being a founder is management. A big part of the struggle is a mindset thing.   [0:00:00] Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti.   [0:00:02] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah.   [0:00:04] Steli Efti: And today on the startup chat we’re going to talk about how to hire people that are much more senior than you are. Right. So the reason why I wanted to talk about this is that a listener has emailed me a few days ago and asked this exact question. He was basically describing that he has never worked in a large company. He has never been an executive in a larger startup. He had a bit of solid experience as an intern and then he worked there as an individual contributor and now he’s started his own startup. They raised some money. They have I think a five to 10 person team. And he is not out there trying to hire and recruit some senior people. And he was saying that it was really hard for him to talk to people that had 10, 20 years of experience. That had been VPs and CXOs and in bigger teams than he is built himself. And he’s like, “How do you hire somebody that’s a lot older than you? That’s a lot more experienced than you. How do you A, deal with the intimidation and also the self doubt.” It sounded to me like he was doubting his own abilities to judge these people. So I thought that will be a perfect topic to unpack on the startup chat. And so thank you for the question for the listener and now throwing the ball to you Hiten. What’s your first response to this question?   [0:01:31] Hiten Shah: Yeah. Wow. Well, yeah, thank you to that person, thank you. I mean this is a topic that you don’t really see a talked about much in this way with a lot of honesty. And so I think this is a huge opportunity for us to share our thoughts on it. I’ve had to do this over and over again. And it’s not challenging. I think that I would first want to tell this person and whoever’s listening about hiring people more senior than you. So more experienced, older, and have done things you haven’t done yet. Oftentimes the one thing you’ve done, they haven’t done which is start a company. Oftentimes not all the time. So that’s something to remember and to realize. Another thing is this is part of the learning. So one thing I would say that has actually been in my mind a little bit is being a founder is management and management period. Manage Yourself, manage your family, you know, with your partner, manage your team and that means everybody on your team. And so that’s your responsibility. Even if you’re like, let’s say like a co-founder and not the CEO, it’s still your responsibility. You started the thing. I mean there’s a lot of weight there and you can contribute. And so I feel like hiring and hiring senior people is literally, it’s one simple statement which is like we’re all human. And we all have our own experiences and being intimidated by somebody else because they’re more senior than you represents I would say a situation like you’re an employee, but you’re not, you’re now a manager. And a manager of managers if you make it out of the 10 person company situation, which it looks like this person will. So you’re a manager. Managing means hiring. It doesn’t matter who they are that you’re hiring.   [0:03:53] Steli Efti: I love that. I love the first thing you said, which is why we like each other so much, which is like, it’s not that hard. Right. And this actually points to … This is a big part of his struggle is like a mindset thing, right? It’s like you-.   [0:04:10] Hiten Shah: Right. That’s why I said that.   [0:04:11] Steli Efti: He’s overthinking. He is making this a bigger deal than it is, right. Instead of looking at it matter of factly, he’s making this some kind of a big thing that intimidates and overwhelms him. And that intimidation overwhelment will play a much bigger role in potentially making mistakes then this situation or the lack of experience of it. Right? And so yeah, I think you said it brilliantly, the first thing that I thought when I read the email was like, “Well, you did all kinds of things for the first time and it seems to be going all right.” This is the first startup he ever started. Seemed that it worked. First people that he hired, he has a team that’s close to 10 people. That seems to have been working so far. Raised money. He didn’t say his first time he ever raised money, that worked out. So there’s a lot of things that he’s done for the very first time and funny enough, maybe for whatever reason he didn’t seem as intimidated. We all have our different reasons of what intimidates us or where we have insecurities. So he was able to do all these things for the very first time and accomplish them successfully. So why does this need to be different? Right? This is something he’s doing for the first time. It’s still like he can succeed. If you just goes back to what are the core things like hiring somebody inexperienced or somebody super experienced. There’s a lot of overlap in terms of looking for cultural fit. In terms of looking for is there somebody I’d like to work with? There’s a lot of more benefits because with experienced people you should have a lot more evidence of their capabilities. You should be able to look at a ton of past work that they’ve done to see if you think their work is great. You should be able to get a ton of references of people that can tell you how it is to work with him. So hiring senior people, yeah, there’s some differences, but there’s also a ton of overlap for hiring that is going to be true for no matter who you hire. And in hiring in general, you always have to be okay with potentially making mistakes. We all try our hardest, but it’s an impossibly hard task to expect to talk to somebody for a few times, look at a few emails and then know everything about them and have a guarantee that it’s going to be a relationship that will work out. That’s just an unrealistic expectation. You can do your best, you can optimize for avoiding some obvious mistakes. But if he has this, if you have the expectation that you need to get it right and I’ve never done this, and if I get it wrong, something terrible will happen. Then you’re now going to put yourself in the worst possible position to do this job right. Your job is to hire somebody senior or not, doesn’t matter. And if it’s senior then you should look at this as like, “Oh, this should be easier.” There should be a lot more evidence. This person should be somebody that I’m not going to have to do as much betting on their potential, but I can do a lot more. I could look a lot more at their past performance and their already realized potential to make a decision if they are who we need right now. So I think a lot of this is just mindset and fears and this creating unnecessary pressure. And that then oftentimes leads to bad outcomes. Much more so than you doing something for the very first time and potentially getting it wrong. If you’re not emotional about it, you’re probably going to, even if you make a mistake, realize that quicker correct, that quicker move forward quicker than if you’re trying to do this perfect.   [0:07:43] Hiten Shah: Yeah. I want to add one thing before we go and I would just say it, maybe it’s my tip on this. And it’s like those senior people, those are the people you can learn from. Those are the people that will tell you how to do something you might not understand how to do yet. Whether it’s managing a 100 people or learning the more, what an expert’s opinion is or how they think about a certain area, right? If they have some expertise, so to speak. So to me, I would consider every interview, every meeting, even every time you work with those people every day as a learning opportunity for you. And that can be one of the most powerful ways to think about it because we should be learning from everyone around us. If you’re intimidated by somebody, then start asking them questions about what they would do in the situation your company’s in. In fact, a lot of times that they’re like that because they want to understand the situation you’re in and you kind of want to almost treat them as if they’re on the job. And what you would do if they’re on the job is you’d figure out how to support them. And a lot of that has to do with learning about what they’re trying to accomplish and how they recommend doing the job.   [0:08:54] Steli Efti: I love that tip. And just to double click on that. Yeah, if you talk to these people and you just use a framework of maybe this is a consultation session, and you just share with them your hardest problems, and see how they would respond. How they would approach these problems. If they’ve seen this before. If they’d had to solve that type of problem before. That’s going to be a much more both enlightening and educational conversation, but also a much more productive for both sides. And that will give you a lot better data oftentimes if, “Yeah, this is somebody I want to work with on our hardest problems.” Versus “No, I don’t. I don’t think that this is the right person for this.” Versus just talking high level, what have you done in the past? And then they just run through all their accomplishments and all the jobs they had. Just talk about and not just talk about future potential of your startup and all the amazing things you’re going to do. But talk about the heart problems you have right now, you don’t know how to solve and see how productive of a brainstorm you can have with them about those problems. So I love that. I’ll end with one more tip before we wrap this episode up on my end. Which is a simple one that we’ve given many times, but it’s so important. I will probably never stop giving this tip for the rest of my life. Which is if you have a bad feeling about a person, if you dislike a person, if you have doubt, and I’m talking about especially like gut doubt. Your mind thinks you should like this person and this person is the perfect person for the role, but something inside of you doesn’t like the idea of hiring this person. Just don’t hire them. It doesn’t matter how impressive their resume is. It doesn’t matter how impressive their references are. It is so tempting to hire somebody with a shiny resume. Especially really senior people. They come from really prestigious places with the idea that that’s going to impress investors. That’s going to impress your teammates. That person might just solve all your problems, but if you have a bad feeling about somebody. If you feel like somebody isn’t a culture fit, no skill in the world ever will make up for that. It’s going to be a problem and more likely than not, it’s going to lead to you having to part ways with them and in the meanwhile them destroying a lot of value. So never hire somebody no matter how senior they are or how impressive they look on paper if you don’t think they are a culture fit. If you don’t believe them or don’t feel good around them or don’t want to spend time with them, right? The famous quote, “You don’t want to spend the rest of your life with somebody you shouldn’t.” Or if you don’t want to work for the rest of your life with somebody, you shouldn’t work with them for a single day. So keep that in mind, especially when you hire super senior people.   [0:11:33] Hiten Shah: Absolutely. Sure.   [0:11:35] Steli Efti: That’s it for us for this episode. We’ll hit you very soon later.   [0:11:40] Hiten Shah: Later. [0:11:41] The post 382: How to Hire People Who Are More Senior Than Yourself appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about how to do sales when you’re a self-service product. When done right, the self-service model can be a great way to sell saas products. Leads come through your funnel, sign up for a trial and upgrade to a higher tier without you lifting a finger or hiring an expensive sales team. In this episode, Steli and Hiten share their thoughts on what exactly the self-service model is, how to optimize your website for it, mistake that saas entrepreneurs make when it comes to optimizing for sales and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About the topic of today’s episode 00:40 Why this topic was chosen. 02:22 How sales is approached at FYI. 02:50 Optimizing for sales at FYI. 03:27 An example of how to optimize for sales. 05:50 A mistake that saas entrepreneurs make when it comes to optimising for sales. 06:41 Why treating a free trial like a freemium product is a good idea. 07:41 Best places to optimise for sales. 07:55 Why you should invest in copywriting. 08:39 The importance of having great copy on your website. 3 Key Points: You wanna find the opportunities of getting people to pay by pushing some buttons. The more incentivized they are in using the product, the more incentivized they are in buying it. Are there things you can provide people to accelerate the timeline of them paying you.     [0:00:01] Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti.   [0:00:03] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. And today on the startup chat we’re gonna talk about how to do sales when you’re a self service product. So we had somebody ask you that, is that it?   [0:00:15] Steli Efti: Yeah, somebody sent me an email and basically said that they’re a huge fan of the podcast. We love you back. Thanks for listening. And that he’s been reading a ton of my content and has been enjoying it. But asked basically, hey, can the two of us talk about how to think about selling and sales and how to optimize for sales, where you don’t have a sales team and you don’t want to reach out to customers. He has a self service SAS product that is very inexpensive, that’s kind of very focused on consumers let’s say. And he was saying, how does he use some of these tactics of sales in a way that’s more automated, that’s more self serving? And I thought A, it’s a great question B, I don’t have a lot of experience in this when it comes to the self service world but you do. So I have some because a fair chunk of close customers are self served, not all of them do we reach out to and have a sales conversation with, but I thought it’d be a fun topic to unpack and hopefully useful to him. So when you are building products Hiten and you I’ve never asked you, but FYI, is that a product that you envisioned at some point having a sales team or is this a full self service product? That’s what I would assume, right?   [0:01:38] Hiten Shah: Yeah, it will be self service for awhile for sure.   [0:01:40] Steli Efti: And so, yeah. What are some of the top level of thoughts that you have when you’re trying to optimize for sales when it’s full self service?   [0:01:49] Hiten Shah: While your interface is selling. So you want to find the opportunities to get people to pay by pushing some buttons essentially. And you want to do that in a way that’s super natural to them, not just upgrade button. So in the past you could have an upgrade button somewhere in the interface, usually like in the top right of the navigation next to your face and people would click it and upgrade, and you get a decent amount of upgrades from that. These days people are pretty numb to buttons that say upgrade. And so what you really want to do is think through how can you contextually give them more and an opportunity to get more once they’ve gotten some amount of value. And if your trial product the supplies and if you’re a paid product, the supplies as well. I’m sorry, freemium product, the supplies. And so what I mean by this is basically, I’ll give an example from CRM. Let’s say the CRM has, I’ll start with the free plan, has a free plan and you can have up to 100 contacts in the free plan lets say. And you’re getting value from it. You’re using the CRM as a user, and what you see as you see these CTA’s to help you do more in the workflow or in the process of the sort of tasks that you’re doing with the product. So if you’re sitting there and you’re adding contacts, you could always see a counter that showing how many contacts that you currently have and how that fares against the 100 limit and then you can say you want more contacts upgrade. Ideally it’s like you’re getting close to having 100 and then the CTA could change to say you’re almost past year amount of contacts in your current plan upgrade. That’s a really simple example, but we can get more advanced and say, in the interface, let’s say there’s a profile page for each contact or contact details. There could be a button that says call this contact and record the call, and then if you hit it, it could show a model that tells you about this upgrade feature and say, this is available on paid plans, here’s the value you’re going to get. You might even show the contact’s face and make it feel like they could almost do it. And then you would show a credit card form, if they said that they wanted it and then they would pay and then they’d be upgraded. So this idea of contextual in the product while someone’s using is the key. And the ideal way, and this is what people don’t usually tell you when they talk about these upgrades, is that you are making it so that it’s something that people want, that they might not be able to get yet or they can’t get yet. And the more the incentive, not even incentive but the more incentivized they are in using the product, the more incentivized are going to be buying it. And so the hundred contact limit is an interesting one. What would it be more interesting is if you let them somehow or got them somehow more value. So imagine if instead of saying, you’re hitting a 100 contact limit, you could say we’ve found 10 people you should contact based on the 100 that you have in the system or the fifth you’ve already added. And upgrade to get them in the system so that you can outreach to them. So that would be way better because you’re giving a very contextual CTA saying, we know something and you wouldn’t necessarily say that you know this or all that it’s just like new people to reach out to. So it’s almost like, okay, right now I’m using this product, I have to manually add all these people to the product and one of the features is that it will do prospecting for me, and find me opportunities and people that I should be contacting. So that would be a more contextual proper CTA. That’s also similar to what I would do on a free trial. A free trial is a little different because you’ve likely, at least signed up and you know that the time is going to run out. So what you’re really trying to do during a free trial before the time runs out is one, give people value, enough value that they want to upgrade, okay, that’s cool. But two, thing that I see people not thinking about is get upgrades from people before the trial is over and that’s a really powerful. So what you want to think through is are there things you can provide people to accelerate the timeline of them paying you? And are there features that are only available after they pay? You almost treat it like a freemium product in a way, or is there an accelerator or some boosts that you give them now? So again, the example I gave of here are contexts for you and prospects for you. That’s really cool. That’s something that I could see a free trial product offering to accelerate and boosts up the ability for someone to sell, and thus they would buy it. So it would increase the user’s likelihood of purchase in a shorter period of time than when the trial is over. That’s a little trickier, there’s a lot of nuances to that and that’s probably a whole podcast or blog posts or something. But that concept is what I would share about free trials which is, if you treat a free trial like freemium and your goal is to boost or accelerate the sale so that it happens before the trials over, that would be the key there. And it can be done in the same way as being super contextual about the upgrade prompts.   [0:07:21] Steli Efti: I love that. So most of the things that you said, I just want to highlight that, you can build these things where the product is basically prospecting and communicating an opportunity for users to upgrade and get more value out of the product at the right time, and in the right context. And do that in the product. You can additionally do that in email, you could set up drip emails that are contextual or behavioral. So based on what type of things a user does on your product, you could pre write emails that are basically a sales pitch of sword. And get sent to the customer telling them about new opportunities, telling them about what they’re going to get if they purchase, telling them about all kinds of things that you want to tell them. The same thing applies to your website. A lot of times, and this is actually an episode that have on the docket for us to talk about Hiten, which is good copywriting. Copywriting is something that I would advise somebody that has a self service product to read more about and learn more about. So not just how to make your website look really beautiful. I know that a lot of content marketing tips that out there today, especially in SAS, are more about building an audience and getting people’s email, so it’s much more about blog content and content on social media and stuff like that, video and all that. But what I’m referring to is the actual copy on your website that is trying to communicate to me what this is, why need this and why I should the next action, what the next action is. And in some cases, if you’re really smart, the copy might be prospecting me in some way. It might be saying things that will turn away that potential customers and that will draw in the right type of customers instead of trying to draw in everybody. So I think my final tip, Hiten you really crush it with giving people all these ideas on what to do with the self service part. I think my tip at the end of this episode, more generically would be, learn more about copywriting, read a bunch of books, read a bunch of articles, and really look at your website copy and see if this was a presentation, if those were words that a salesperson would speak to another human, how pervasive are these words? How influential? How convincing? And how focused are these words, not just on explaining everything but actually truly convincing and selling somebody of the value that you can provide to them.   [0:09:56] Hiten Shah: Yeah, now that’s really good. I think the framing and the value prop and copy, it has to speak to the people who are going to pay it. Right?   [0:10:04] Steli Efti: There you go.   [0:10:04] Hiten Shah: That’s important.   [0:10:06] Steli Efti: All right. That’s it from us for this episode. We’ll hear you very soon. [0:10:08] The post 381: Self-Serve Sales: How to Get People to Upgrade Themselves in Your App appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.