In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about competitor research and how you can do it without talking to another human being. Understanding the competition and how they do business is a crucial business activity for any startup or business executive. Unfortunately, most startups don’t do this because it can be very complicated and time-consuming. However, this doesn’t have to be the case. In this week’s episode, Steli and Hiten talk about a very simple and effective way to conduct research on your competition and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:39 Why this topic was chosen. 01:24 A simple way to do competitor research without talking to another human being. 02:58 Why review sites are a great way to do competitor research. 04:41 How to do competitor research with review sites. 07:13 When to do competitor research. 09:07 Who should do it and how much time to spend on it. 09:50 The benefits of competitor research. 11:10 One great thing about Hiten. 11:57  Why you should do competitor research especially if you’re resistant to it. 3 Key Points: The key to competitor research is understanding with people think about using a competing product. Don’t not do it. You learn about your competitors to understand your customer.   [0:00:01] Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti.   [0:00:05] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. Today on the startup chat we’re going to talk about something that’s near and dear to my heart, which is competitors. The specific part around competitor research and even deeper, how you can do it without ever talking to another human being.   [0:00:22] Steli Efti: Ooh. All right. So this is an episode that we actually had on the docket for a little while. Hiten brought this up many weeks ago in an email conversation about a topic that we should talk about. I want to dedicate this to and Ryan, two people that help us with various things that are happening on the podcast. They’ve been hounding me on bringing this up so I’m super psyched to talk about this. All right, so we’ve talked about competitor research before, but it always involves … some of the time we talked about how to talk to your competitors directly, to learn from them. We’ve talked about how to talk to your competitors’ customers to learn about your competitors and your customers. Today you say we could do competitive analysis without talking to those competitors. How do we do that?   [0:01:19] Hiten Shah: It’s basically online reviews. If you’re a B to B product, there’s a bunch of sites that help you do this. Trust Radius, G2Crowd, Capterra, and there’s a bunch of others. There’s another one I think called Siftery, so there’s a bunch of them. I forget all their names. What they do is they have reviews of basically products and people have reviewed them on there, and some companies have incentivized their customers in some way, just by asking. I don’t mean really incentivize, although some do, to go to G2Crowd or whatever and review. These are review sites. You don’t have to talk to anyone. You don’t have to talk to a customer, you don’t have to talk to the competitor themselves, you don’t have to talk to anyone, and you can go read the reviews of a product on there, which is essentially the key to competitive research. What do people think about that product? That’s a key part of competitive research, because then you can figure out whether to use this thing.   [0:02:21] Steli Efti: All right. Let’s unpack this …   [0:02:23] Hiten Shah: It’s all simple.   [0:02:24] Steli Efti: Well, here’s the funny thing. Most of the things that we teach are the podcasts that talk about, and we’re super light on this. Wasn’t the things that we talk about are simple, but still not so obvious that the majority of people would do it like … This is the type of thing that I know almost nobody does, including myself. I know that increasingly these competitor review sites have been becoming a lot more popular and influential because they’re now occupying or capturing a lot of the organic search traffic around certain categories. They’re this authority to say, “Hey, if you’re looking for a marking automation tool, then here’s our review site. We’re a independent party and we’re going to give you all this information about all these vendors in this space and you’re going to be able to see all these reviews, and should come in. We’re the best place for you to learn about all the options out there and find the right vendor solution for you. Really a powerful proposition and I know that more and more companies, especially in this ad space as well, are having to invest in their strategy of getting reviews and encouraging their customers to get reviews of improving their ranking of these sites. I know that a lot of companies are thinking about it and investing about it, but it’s always mostly from a, let’s make our profile look good perspective and almost never from a, let’s look at the ecosystem, let’s look at our competitors’ profiles and reviews, and let’s learn about them and about the customers that we’re fighting for, through that. So now let me ask you, okay, I go to a site, there’s a rich amount of information, let’s say a vendor at one of my competitors has hundreds and hundreds of reviews. What’s the process? Do I read one review at a time just myself, and see if something pops up, do I use some kind of a tool or use a freelancer or contractor to put these reviews in some kind of a structured format, in a spreadsheet, or something like that? How do you … What’s your process when it comes to doing competitive analysis and research by using these review sites?   [0:04:42] Hiten Shah: It’s deep, just like any other research I would do. We go deep. We make sure that we … I do want to mention one thing. If you have a mobile app, you can do this too. Because there’s reviews on every mobile app right in the app stores. If you have a book you can do it on Amazon, or even Goodreads and look at the reviews if they’re going to go write a book and you’re competing other books. If you have a product, like a physical product, guess what? Amazon. Walmart. All those sites, they all have …   [0:05:21] Steli Efti: Restaurants. Yelp.   [0:05:23] Hiten Shah: Right. So because of that, my thought here is that you treat this like any other research you would do. There’s a reason the word is research. You don’t go look at one review and say I know everything. You do literally spend the time to go in depth and dig in and understand. Literally what I would do, is I would go, let’s say I’m competing with Salesforce. I would go find all the reviews I can of Salesforce, put all of them in a document. Then I would read all of them and categorize them. Then I would find the patterns and write statements, and pull out quotes about those categories of things I learned. That will tell you exactly why people love Salesforce and exactly why people essentially hated it or disliked it, and also what features it’s missing. Some of these sites are really good. They have really fancy categorizations and things like that. Break down exactly the people have, and they ask some really smart questions. They ask users very specific about how it’s really in how satisfied are they with it. It’s a really powerful way to learn about a market I don’t see people doing it. They even asked me which CRM software has the best ROI. Which CRM software have the smoothest implementation. What the most usable CRM software? Which CRM software is the easiest to do business with? That’s crazy. Yet everything’s right there in front of you.   [0:07:14] Steli Efti: I love that. So now the next question is, when should I do this? Is this before I launch, is this after a launch, is this once a year, once a month? What’s the cadence, and then what do I do with that information? Let’s talk a little bit about that. When would you advise founders doing this type of competitive research?   [0:07:39] Hiten Shah: As soon as possible. Because if you don’t have the sentiment of how your customers think about any potential customer rated the landscape here, then it’s not going to work. For example, for my new product FYI, we’re not building a document creation tool, but we did a lot of research on all the document creation tools in this way. We looked at all the reviews. We wrote, them, put them into a doc, we analyzed them and we figured out the people’s, essentially the way I like to call it, their love and hate relationship with these products. You can do it, and we did that before we even built the product, because we wanted to understand what we’re with, because those are all the tools we’re going to integrate with.   [0:08:15] Steli Efti: That makes perfect sense right where you’re in the early days, you’re developing your product, you’re doing customer development, you’re trying to figure out a product market . You’re typically the entire team of the founders in heavy “research” mindset constantly, like reading, learning, researching, talking to people. Accumulating knowledge insights, trying to understand the market the customer better, the competitors, all that. What happens if you’re a year or two out of that early phase. You have a team now, five or 10 people, you have customers, you have a running business. When and how much time do you take for this type of competitive research? Who does it? Is this a founder responsibility, is this a marketing responsibility, is this a product responsibility? How would you do this for the listeners that listen to us and are like, “All right, I already have a company. We do already whatever it is, 100K, or 50K in monthly revenue, I have a small team. I want to do this research, but I don’t know who should do it, and how much time they should spend on it.” How would you advise a kind of up and running small businesses doing this kind of competitive analysis and research? Hey, Hiten, you still there?   [0:09:55] Hiten Shah: Can you hear me, I’m here.   [0:09:57] Steli Efti: Now I can hear you.   [0:09:58] Hiten Shah: Can you hear me now?   [0:09:59] Steli Efti: Yeah.   [0:09:59] Hiten Shah: Okay, cool. The way I would do this very tactically, is I would focus on competitors that my customers mention. And I’d go research those. I would do this either once a month, once a quarter, or once every six months, depending on how competitive your market is. That’s the tactical, deliberate way to do this. You usually have either your marketing or your product team do it, depending on where the skillset lies, and what you’re trying to learn from the analysis. The main thing I can say is don’t not do this.   [0:10:35] Steli Efti: Don’t not do this. I love it. I love it.   [0:10:40] Hiten Shah: So fucking do it.   [0:10:42] Steli Efti: All right. I think …   [0:10:43] Hiten Shah: We’re important. I used to hate doing it. That’s why I’m saying that. I used to hate looking at anything about my competitors used to make me so pissed off. You know what? Now I get excited, because I’m like all right, now we know where we suck, now we know where they’re good, now we know everything. Now we can figure out what decisions to make and it’s a key part of the information that informs the business.   [0:11:00] Steli Efti: I love it, and this is one of the things, this is one of the beauties of our relationship now, and this podcast, is that I’ve now known you for such a long time that I remember that when we first started becoming really good friends and talking about business and strategy in the market and all that, we were both completely on the same page of being like, ignore the competitors, focus on the customer. Then I’ve seen your transformation and growth, and I see why you change your mind, and how you apply and use it. Always still to understand your customer better. You learn about your competitors from the stand the customer. Your philosophy … And now you love it, and you’ve influenced me to change our culture generally in the company and be a lot more mindful and do a lot more competitor research that allows us that we used to do. It’s a beautiful thing, especially because when people as successful as you, they tend to be so rigid on their opinions and philosophies, even more so when they have publicly proclaimed it. One of the things I love about you and admire about you is that you are completely in the camp of like, I don’t fucking care what I thought … The idiot version of me thought last year, I’ve grown, I’ve learned and I have a totally new philosophy or an updated one today, and that’s why you keep being ahead of the curve, and so I love learning from you about competitive research, because it’s an area that I myself, I don’t think … I still think I would have been on this old school, my old way of thinking like saying I just ignore all of them and I don’t care about it at all. You’ve influenced me there a lot, so do not not do it, or whatever you said, or just fucking do it, is I think the … Just fucking do it, is the action item that we’re going to leave everybody behind, especially if you listen to us and you have this internal resistance to this idea because you are so bought in and sold on the idea that you should never do any competitive research. Maybe this is the podcast and this is the moment where you should be more open-minded and try something new and see if you’re really right or if maybe a bit of competitive research could go a long way in helping you do better in your business and serve your customers in a better way. All right, I think that’s it from us for this episode.   [0:13:17] Hiten Shah: See ya.   [0:13:17] Steli Efti: Bye bye. [0:13:18] The post 319: How To Do Competitor Analysis appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about why some entrepreneurs treat some of their worst customers the best. This comes after Steli’s observation that oftentimes, large startups give special treatment to demanding and unreasonable customers while ignoring customers that don’t complain. In this week’s episode of The Startup Chat Steli and Hiten talk about why you shouldn’t give in to demanding customers and what a fair system for customers looks like. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:32 Why this topic was chosen. 03:25 Hiten’s thoughts on the issue. 05:27 One way to better approach this situation. 05:59 Why you shouldn’t always give in to loud and aggressive customers. 06:50 How Basecamp approaches this issue. 07:07 How employees that negotiate better get better pay packages. 08:21 How to design a fairer system for customers. 10:04 Why you should address customer issues according to outcome you’re trying to achieve. 3 Key Points: I think it’s important to treat customers equally, regardless of how they are treating you. Your most vocal customers are not necessarily your best or worst customers. Just because a customer is loud and aggressive doesn’t mean you have to give in and give them what they want.   [0:00:02] Steli Efti: All right everybody, this is Steli Efti.   [0:00:07] Hiten Shah: This is Hiten Shah.   [0:00:07] Steli Efti: Today on The Start Up Chat I want to talk about why do we treat some of our worst customers the best, right? So here’s the concept, here’s the thought or the idea I want to throw out there and have a conversation with you about this. I have observed this over the last few years. In my company but also in many other people’s start ups and companies. And this has bothered me for a while, it’s been in the back of my mind as an idea that’s been marinating and I want to understand it better. I want to think about it more clearly so I want to talk to you about this today. What I’ve noticed is that often times, if you think about- let’s take a company that’s 1,000 customers- some customers will be very loud, very aggressive, very demanding, the squeaky wheel that gets the grease. They will demand certain features and they will send you emails constantly, they will tweet to you constantly, comment on your blog, they will be very loud, they will create a lot of noise. And with that they will create influence, it’s going to be top of mind for you. So all of the sudden now because one customer’s very, very passionate, champions very aggressively the start up will think this is something really important maybe we should do this sooner than later. Or another example is a customer will come back and very aggressively negotiate with you and go back and forth. And push and constantly come back again and renegotiate. Usually these customers they will push your team to the limit and get the ultimately absolutely best price for your product. There’s many other examples like that. And then there are these other customers, these beautiful souls and creatures that also have features they’d like you to have and they also would like a better price if that’s plausible but they are a bit more “reasonable”. They’re nice, they’re quiet, they’re just silently and patiently waiting for you to build these features they hope to see one day or they’re hoping at some point maybe the price gets more affordable or maybe they are richer or wealthier and they can afford it more. But they’re just not as aggressively coming to you and pushing you and demanding. And so they pay full price and they don’t get the features they want immediately although they might be super loyal and really positive and really empowering and really championing customers. And I’ve seen this model in many things in life and in the world but especially in the business context, the start up concept, I find it fascinating. Some employees- the employee that most aggressively negotiates for the salary will get the best salary and the other employee that’s equally as competent and is just is nice and never asks for a raise, doesn’t get it. Why are we sometimes treating not our best customers the best, giving them the best price, them a bigger microphone and listen to them more. But do that with our worst is maybe the wrong way but I’ll allow this to customers. I’m going to talk about that and just get your reaction on this thought first.   [0:03:14] Hiten Shah: Yeah, customers. I think it’s really important to treat customers equally regardless of how they’re treating you. So that goes for the most vocal one as well as the quietest ones. And what I mean by that is there’s a bunch of factors at play here. There’s the actual customer, and what they’re saying they need or want. Then there’s you and how you’re hearing it and what you’re asking them back to really get to the bottom of- which is often times hard. Then there’s your business and your business needs. And then there’s all kinds of other things but those three things I think are basically the way I think about this kind of thing when it comes to customers and why do we listen to the most vocal ones and not really pay as much attention to the quiet ones, etc. What we’re really trying to do is build the best product experience, the best business that we can. The best customer service we can provide our customers. And I think that what you have to is have to have a lot more balanced approach to this. And that takes a lot of work. Your most vocal customers they’re not necessarily your best but they’re also not necessarily your worst customers. Your quietest customers just keep using your products and don’t complain or anything like that, they’re also not necessarily your best customers or your worst customers. So part of it is attitude and the attitude we have is that we want to react. And that’s for that middle part of how you’re interpreting, how you’re reacting comes into play. I’ve had customers who seem very vocal who are vocal and I didn’t do anything for them except just talk to them, even though they wanted ten features. And by the end of it they didn’t want anything because I just kept pushing. And they said I need this, I need that, and that. And I said okay, tell me more, tell me more, tell me more. And eventually they convinced themselves they didn’t need any of it. I think this has more to do with the art of speaking to a customer and knowing more importantly, what you’re really looking to do with your own business and your own product and what experience are you trying to create. And making sure whatever input you add you’re not jaded by the volume whether it’s the quantity or the quality of someone communicating with you.   [0:05:48] Steli Efti: I love that. I think in many ways this is an important lesson that’s really hard for founders to learn is that just because a customer is really loud and sometimes very aggressive doesn’t mean you have to give in and give them what they want. And a lot of times that is what’s happening is that we react because somebody seems to have authority and dominance and we feel like in order to succeed we might just have to do what they want. But the flip side of that is I think when it comes to discounting one beautiful thing that I always remember base camp saying is that we have this super cheap, super simple price so that we don’t have to negotiate with anybody. We don’t have to give a discount to anybody, I mean they might have a pre-paid annual discount that is like flat and the same for everyone. So we can treat every customer is worth the same, and we treat every customer the same. And we even limit it in a way where even as you grow at some point you can’t give us more money. So you cannot rise in importance to us in a way that’s disproportionate that would have us have to cater to a few handful of customers and be dependent on our fate, on them liking us, or them keep paying us money. I always admired and loved that they created this business model that kind of created equality within their customer base in some interesting way. On the pricing and the negotiation side I think that’s an interesting one especially in enterprise sales but also even in B2B SaaS today even if it’s not listening and building feature based on whoever is the loudest. Oftentimes companies will give a little bit of a better deal to a customer that is a better negotiator. Or let’s take another example. Employees, right? I don’t remember the study but I’ve seen many articles and studies about employees getting more raises when they’re better negotiators. Or employees that go twice a year to ask for a raise on average get more raises and higher raises than people that only ask every second year. Or I even remember seeing somewhere, I didn’t verify this, that women traditionally in the past were asking less aggressively for raises than men, and hence men were getting more raises. And so how do you design a model, how do you think about equality for customers or for employees independent from who’s most proactive or is championing the loudest or is pushing the hardest. Or who’s the best negotiator or communicator around it versus the best performer.   [0:08:35] Hiten Shah: Yeah, a lot of times for me it goes back to the business and what are the business needs. That’s what we forget, we focus so much on individual feedback we’re getting, we don’t look across all the feedback. And then we don’t use that data across all the feedback to go figure out what the business need is. This is what happens with team members too. When you have a set of team members are you actually measuring their performance objectively? Are you actually showing it to them consistently? And are they able to understand how to make it better because I know the team member is a little bit of a tangent but I think it is relevant. And then what is that, how are you determining what that actual metric is or what that accountability thing is so that everybody knows how they’re doing and how other people are doing. And when it comes to customers using a similar framework, your filter isn’t the same obviously as team members. You’re not going to be super transparent with a customer about these are the ten things we think we’re going to build, what do you think. That usually doesn’t work. What you’re trying to do though is, you’re trying to focus in on what is most important to your business right now. And how can you take that feedback and align it with it. How can you use filter. For example if a lot of the features that customers are asking for are not going to improve retention but retention is your biggest problem in the business today, guess what, don’t build any of those features that aren’t going to improve retention. Find the ones in the feedback, or find the feedback that aligns with the features that are actually going to help improve retention. So it just goes back to what’s the outcome you’re trying to get.   [0:10:08] Steli Efti: I love that. Alright I think that that concludes the episode for today. This is an interesting topic if anybody that listened had some strong feelings or a story to share, a philosophy or something they’ve seen, a company do well or do really terribly bad, please let us know. We always love to hear from you. Send us an email at steli@close.io or hnshah@gmail.com and let’s keep this conversation going. I do think that more businesses have to learn how to not just react to whatever customers or employees or anybody else is throwing at them, and be in a super reactive mode. But really think about how to treat their customers, their employees, the team, in the best interest of the overall business and in a way that’s really fair and has longevity in mind. And that’s something that I think is missing and something hopefully we all can work on to improve long term.   [0:11:04] Hiten Shah: Yep, couldn’t agree more.   [0:11:05] Steli Efti: That’s it from us, bye-bye. [0:11:07] The post 318: Don’t Treat Your Worst Customers the Best appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about optimizing your funnel no matter what type of funnel it is. When it comes to acquiring new customers online, your funnels are a crucial part of the process. Therefore, optimization is essential if you want to increase conversions and sales. In this week’s episode of The Startup Chat Steli and Hiten talk about what a funnel is, how to optimize it to increase conversions and sales and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:32 What is a funnel. 02:09 How a funnel works. 02:38 Why every business has a funnel. 04:00 Why you should measure every step of your funnel. 05:01 How most founders look at their funnels. 06:07 How to analyze a funnel. 07:21 One thing that isn’t measured enough. 07:40 Why time is one of the key components in improving a funnel an entire business. 11:02 Why it’s important to figure out what percentage of people are signing up and dropping out. 3 Key Points: No matter what stage of business you are, you do have a funnel. Measure every step of your funnel. You need to know all the steps and numbers in a funnel to really understand what’s going on.   [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 Start-Up Chat we’re going to talk about optimizing your funnel, no matter what kind of funnel it is. So, Steli what the f*ck is a funnel?   [0:00:14] Steli Efti: Oh, that’s a really good question. Well, a funnel is a mental representation or a model of how to think about a customer journey with you. Or any kind of journey with you, like anytime you’re trying to take a business relationship from nothing to a conversion of something you could visualize that or create a model of it that looks like a funnel. Like something that is big at the top and that goes kind of narrow down, and at the end there is just a few things that will pop out. So as a simple example, the easiest example to talk about is probably a customer funnel. At the top of it you think about all the prospects that you are advertising to, sending cold e-mails to, e-mailing, cold calling, whatever the hell you’re prospecting at the top of the funnel, and marketing at the top of the funnel. And then some of these people and prospects will take the next step in the relationship and actually talk to you and entertain the idea and try things out, and consumer information from you, give you more information. That’s probably the qualifying part of the journey and then some of those people that are interested and qualified and conversing with you will take the next step to actually try out the product so they are not trial users and some of these trial users will go down all the way down to them making a purchasing decision and becoming a customer. And if we took every step as a step in the funnel, it typically starts with a very big number and the number goes smaller and smaller and smaller, every single step until somebody is converted to being a customer of yours.   [0:01:55] Hiten Shah: Great, that’s great. And the funnels work for mobile apps, the funnels work for sales, funnels work for a SAAS product, it doesn’t matter. We’re talking about just the step by step process people take to get from point A to point Z. Whatever your point Z is, usually a purchase.   [0:02:12] Steli Efti: Yeah, and you could apply the same thing for fundraising, right? But we’re going to talk about specifically for customers since that’s our kind of bread and butter and most of our listener’s interests. Alright, so I’m going to throw out my first tip or my first thought, and we can go back and forth on this. First of all what I want to say is: no matter where your business is or where your start-up is, no matter how early it is or how late. No matter how good or how bad things are going, you do have a funnel. I’ve heard people tell me: “Steli we don’t really have a sales funnel, or a customer funnel.” Like, no you do. Your funnel might just be zero, zero, zero, zero, zero. Right? It might just be zero prospects, leads to zero qualified prospects, leads to zero customers, but you have a funnel, right? You do have one, you might not be aware of it. You might have not designed it purposefully, but you have one. And most people don’t have the zero, zero, zero on most companies or founders, or many of them, they just have a bad one, or one they haven’t worked on as mindfully, so they think because they have not worked on a funnel; it doesn’t it exist. It does. And that’s my first piece of advice or thing I want to throw out there is: you have one, so sit down and or stand up, go to a white board, or take a piece of paper and write down what your funnel looks like today, and visualize it. So you know what the health and the state of health is of your business.   [0:03:34] Hiten Shah: Yeah, I love that. I think even a fundraising funnel, if your fundraising, you’re starting with meetings and then there’s a bunch of steps. Like, the second meeting, the partner meeting, and then eventually the terms sheet and then the close, right? What I, my tip here is, even things that are offline, like a fundraising like that? Measure it. Measure every step of it, even the small ones if you can, or if you can think through it. What I see a lot is people are just not measuring the steps of the funnel. They’re like: “Okay, I got an intro, and then I got to a partner meeting, and then I got a terms sheet.” Well there’s all these steps in between, and if you’re really in a fundraising process, it’s actually valuable to get a little more granular than that. The same thing applies to a sales process, and being able to measure not just every step, but every call. Or everything that happens in between and adding those steps in, because sometimes in a funnel there are pieces of that, that you have no visibility on in the beginning. And then when you realize where your sort of improvement opportunities are, where the drop offs are and things like that, you start needing to measure sort of the things that are in between.   [0:04:48] Steli Efti: Yeah, what I’ve realized talking to many, many founders is that usually I encounter one of two scenarios: Either the founders only measure the end result. The conversion, so you talk to them and you go, “How’s fundraising going?” And they go, “Well we had 3 term sheets, or we had one term sheet so far. We had two partner meetings so far,”. Whatever the last step in their conversion is, that’s the one number that they know, but they don’t know every step that came before. They don’t have real context on how fundraising is going overall, and I don’t know just knowing that number because I don’t know if they had one conversation that led to one term sheet. Or if they had a 1,000 conversations that led to one term sheet. Those are different situations. The same thing is true in sales, a lot of times it’s just like, “Oh yeah, well our team is closing about three new customers a month.” Okay, well what are all the steps that come before that? “Well, I don’t know we do lots of calls, lots of this lots of that.” So either they only look at the last number, the conversion, or they look at the first number and the last number. So they’ll say, “We pinged 100 investors and we got one term sheet from one investor.” Or “We made 100 cold calls and we closed one deal Steli, how do we get more deals closed?” And I always say, “I don’t f*cking know.” I need to know a little bit more about your funnel to know what to do to improve it, and where the leaks are and where the opportunities are. Again, if you do 100 calls, and you only reach one person and you close one person, there’s nothing I can do for you in terms of teaching you how to close better. You’re already 100% close rate. Your sucks, right? You’re calling 99 numbers you shouldn’t call, or you call at the wrong time, or there’s things that can be optimized in terms of why aren’t you reaching more people. But its not a ‘Why aren’t you closing more people’, because you close everybody you could close. You need to know all the steps in the funnel, the numbers, to really understand what’s going on. Where to fix things, or where things are broken. My understanding there’s three scenarios: One is people don’t measure anything, and then the other two scenarios is they either just measure the end or the beginning and the end, and they forget the middle of the journey. Which usually is where all the insights are, and where all the opportunity is, in terms of making improvements.   [0:07:06] Hiten Shah: Love that, so my tip is more about sort of measurement, and one thing I don’t see people measure in the to get from one step to another, can be a critical component to measuring a funnel that is just often not done. And the value of measuring the time is to help you understand how long does it actually take, and how can we speed up the time? Because improvement isn’t just about making more people do the thing, it’s also about how fast they do it.   [0:07:40] Steli Efti: That’s beautiful. So velocity, time is actually one of the main key components in improving all the metrics in your funnel and improving your entire business in a crazy way. Think about it, this is so obvious but still underutilized. It doesn’t matter how many deals you close in a vacuum. If you close 100 deals but it takes you a year to do so, and then close 100 deals a day. Are those two very different businesses? Although, we talk about the same result, right? Those are incredibly different businesses, and the metrics and the business model is completely different. So one big thing to work on, in terms of improving the funnel is to improve, and shorten the time it takes to go from one step to another. So I love that you brought that up, and I’ll throw, I’ll double click on this by throwing one very simple trick, and there’s many, many more. But one simple trick in terms of shortening the cycle, is just to cut down the wastefulness of time that you have. So instead of doing one-hour demos, or two-hour demos, do it in 15 or 30 minutes. Instead of taking three steps: an introductory call, a check-up call, a demo call, and a Q&A Call. Ask yourself: Do you really need 4 steps, or is one of those steps unnecessary? Could you merge some of them? Or make even all four steps just one step. Where do you have too much time and too little urgency? And the other thing is using the power of right the f*ck now. Many, many times people will waste time. Especially sales people, when they have somebody’s full attention and energy they will waste it. I’ll give you one simple example: you have a prospect on the phone, you talk to them, you qualify them. Both agree you want to have another meeting, and then you say, “Let’s hang up and I will send you an e-mail to schedule a follow-up call.” That drives me crazy. That is the dumbest thing ever. So you hang up, and then two hours later you need to remember to send them an e-mail to schedule a time. Then a day later they check that e-mail, and then they check their calendar and they’ll reply to you, ‘Sorry I can’t make that time but here is an alternative that would work for me.’ Then it takes you another day to get back to them that, that doesn’t work. Now you wasted a whole week scheduling when you already had them on the phone. When you have them on the phone and they say ‘yes, let’s have another meeting’, and you agree you need another meeting, just say: “Hey do you have your calendar in front of you? Yes you do? I do too. Let’s find a time right now. Can you do next Tuesday this time? No. Can you do next Wednesday that time? No. What time works for you? Thursday that time? Cool. I sent you a calendar invite can you quickly accept and RSVP.” Boom, beautiful we have the next steps laid out, there’s a bit of homework but we know next Thursday at 3 PM we’re talking. Now there’s no more homework, no more time. You’re not going to waste a whole week to schedule something that’s probably going to be scheduled for a week after. Now that took you two weeks of time to go from this call to the next call, it took you just three days or four days. Find places where you’re wasting time and cut that out. That can be a huge benefit. What other things can we do to optimize metrics in our funnel? Let’s maybe take another one or two and then wrap this up.   [0:10:58] Hiten Shah: Yeah, another one I really like to do, is I like to take a funnel and usually people look at the conversion rate between each step. And I actually like to literally do math and figure out how much for each step, how many people- what percentage of are continuing and what percentage of people are dropping. By actually looking at the numbers, it makes it much clearer where your opportunity actually is.   [0:11:23] Steli Efti: I love that. Alright, let me throw one last one on my end. In terms of optimizing your funnel; look for complexity and try to eliminate as much as possible of it. A lot of times when there is a lot of complexity involved going from one step to the next, it slows things down and it drops the conversion of things dramatically. And I’ll give one simple example: having a sales team that discounts things heavily or having an open policy when it comes to negotiating contracts or negotiating pricing with every single customer. The moment you give a sales team the power to offer any kind of creative pricing based on what they think the customer wants, needs, or demands, you’ve introduced a world of complexity in your funnel. Right now, the sales person, it’s based on their emotions, it’s based on how aggressive the customer is negotiating, it’s based on how good or bad the quota is going, what the price is going to be. Often times it makes these decisions much more complicated, the sales person doesn’t know, “Should I give in here or not?” There’s no framework, there’s no rules or guidelines, there’s no playbook on what we do and how we do it. Every individual does whatever they do, and so it will increase the complexity for the sales person to make all these decisions on their own. But it also will make your business model incredibly complex, because now every single customer is a completely different pricing. So it’s going to make it a nightmare for you to really understand how much is a customer worth? Because this customer gets three months free, and then full price. But that customer gets no free time, but 20% price discount now but after six months we go back up for 30 because then the fundraising is over- When you do these crazy things, that happen all the time especially in start-ups, in terms of your discounting you introduce a world of complexity in your funnel and in your business and it can make things incredibly messy. So make sure to look for complexity, make sure to look for friction in your funnel and eliminate it as much as possible. The smoother the steps are, the more stream line the steps are that a customer has to take to go from one point to the next, or your sales team or your marketing team to guide a customer from one step to the next, the more powerful your funnel is going to be. The more successful your business is going to be.   [0:13:48] Hiten Shah: Couldn’t agree more, remove friction.   [0:13:51] Steli Efti: Alright, that’s it from us, hope that has given you guys a few ideas on how to tackle your funnel, how to improve your funnel and ultimately improve your business. We’ll heal all of you very soon.   [0:14:05] Hiten Shah: Later. [0:14:05] The post 317: How to Optimize Your Sales Funnel appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk the idea of wanting to be an entrepreneur because you don’t want to work for other people. This comes after Steli spoke at an event for students about career hacks. Steli points out that the whole idea of working for yourself is an illusion as being an entrepreneur means that you not only work for your customers, you work for your staff, and even worse, you work for yourself – probably the worst boss in the world. Tune into this week’s episode of The Startup Chat to hear Steli and Hiten’s point of view on the subject and highlight issues that can come up when you’re an entrepreneur. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:39 Why this topic was chosen. 01:29 One of the questions that Steli asked at the event. 02:33 Why being an entrepreneur means that you’re also working for other people. 03:51 Hiten points out that everybody works for themselves. 04:46 Why we are all our own bosses. 05:01 The right mindset to have. 06:50 Why believing that you can’t work for other people is a wrong mindset to have. 07:40 Why you should choose the part that works best for you. 09:02  Why it’s ok to have a job. 3 Key Points: If you want that ultimate feeling of being your own boss, then start your own thing. Everybody works for themselves. I’m here on this planet to improve myself. [0:00:00] Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti.   [0:00:02] Hiten Shah: Okay, and this Hiten Shah.   [0:00:05] Steli Efti: Today, on the Startup Chat, I want to talk about this concept of not working for other people when you’re an entrepreneur. So here’s the deal, Hiten. I spoke at an event the other day, and this was a bit of a different event that I typically speak at. It was run by very good friends of mine, that’s why I stopped by to do this. Because the majority of the audience were actually students in their final year or so of study. But it was an event about career hacks, so a bunch of people that were quote-unquote successful came to speak about their career and what young people could learn from it. And I was like, “What the fuck do I do here? I never had a job or a career, and probably everything I’ll tell you is going to make these young people that want to go out there in the world and have these amazing jobs in large companies, probably make bad choices.” So one of the things that came out of that talk that really made me think and made me want to talk to you about, was that at some point … I was at the beginning of my talk just to understand the audience better. I asked the audience … I queried the audience on a bunch of things. So I’d ask for age and people had to raise their hand. I asked for interests. I wanted just to understand better who was in the room. And one of the questions that I asked, poorly formulated probably was, “Who here wants to work for other people,” right, versus wanting to work for themselves. And a bunch of people raised their hand and whatever. And then the first person that asked me a question was, she said, “Hey Steli, in the beginning you asked who wants to work for other people. I raised my hand, but I kind of felt bad about it, because I thought that you probably judge this. You know, you’ve been an entrepreneur your whole life. You’re a founder, you’re so successful. And so you look at me as somebody that just wants to get a great job and work for somebody else, and you look down on that. I sort of felt conflicted. So what is your opinion on people that want to work, have a real job, and work somewhere else? Do you think these people are not as ambitious? Would you advise me like to maybe change my mindset? Maybe this is limited thinking, and I should only want to work for myself.” I was shocked about the question and grateful that she asked it, because that was not really my intention. So, I talked a little bit about it being phrased poorly, but also the point that it doesn’t matter if you’re an entrepreneur or not, you always work for other people, right? Like just because you’re the founder and CEO doesn’t mean that you don’t have a boss. It just means everybody’s your boss. It means that all your employees are people you work for, all your customers are people you work for. You probably have even on top of it the worse boss in the world, which is yourself in many, many regards. So no matter if you’re an entrepreneur, or no matter if you are working for the public sector or work for the private sector, you’re always going to have to work for somebody and with other people, right? It doesn’t really matter. And then it reminded me that there are a lot of entrepreneurs I know and founder friends I have that will brag, “I could never work for somebody else. I never want to work for anybody else than myself.” And I’m like, “That’s kind of like bragging that, ‘I would never have sex with somebody else, I only make love to myself.'” That’s not that great of a philosophy to have. So I don’t know, I wanted to talk about this and unpack this a little bit more, this idea of wanting to be an entrepreneur or a founder, because you don’t want to work for quote-unquote, the man, or don’t want to work for anybody else, or think you can’t work for other people. Let’s talk about this, and if it’s right or wrong. I happen to think that it’s a little bit of a distorted reality and not really true, at least not if you’re successful or want to be successful and valuable.   [0:03:45] Hiten Shah: Oh man, I’m going to start by saying the key point I think you made for me about this is, “Everybody works for themselves.” And I think we all get it twisted. Founders get it twisted, team members in companies get it twisted. Freelancers get it twisted. I love that you said, “Hey we all have a boss,” right? And I think a lot of people like to hear that. They like to feel like a founder isn’t special in the sense of like … On one hand, anyone could do it. On the other hand, not everyone should do it. So I don’t think you’re wrong. I used to say things like what you said. I really did. I used to say, “Hey, I have lots of bosses or ” You know what, though? We’re all our own bosses. I think that that realization will just change the way you think about whether you’re an employee, so to speak, a freelancer, work for yourself in some way, or a founder. What I mean by that is like, there’s a mindset that people should have. That this is what I believe. The mindset should be that I’m here. Get real like woo woo, I’m here on this planet, right, to work on myself and improve myself. It doesn’t matter how I do that. For some of us, being founders is the best way we can do that. For other people, being part of a company is the best way they can do that, but not the founder. Right? There are some people that don’t want that stress of being a founder, and my opinion? I don’t look down on anybody. I don’t care who you are. I don’t care what you’re doing as long as you’re looking to improve yourself, I’m good . And honestly, even though it might not look like they are, they are. They’re here. They’re alive, they’re looking to improve themselves, all right? So, I don’t know, I know I took it to another place-   [0:05:50] Steli Efti: No, I love-   [0:05:51] Hiten Shah: … But to me like, I feel like it’s … Yeah.   [0:05:53] Steli Efti: I love that.   [0:05:54] Hiten Shah: Go ahead.   [0:05:54] Steli Efti: That’s why I like to talking to you, asshole, right? Because I’ll frame something-   [0:05:58] Hiten Shah: Yeah.   [0:05:58] Steli Efti: I’ll frame something in one way, and you’ll turn it around. And now, now it went from having one dimension to having many, right?   [0:06:06] Hiten Shah: Yeah.   [0:06:06] Steli Efti: Because I honestly, for me it was a little bit about encouraging people, like telling people, “Hey, a founder, an entrepreneur is not better than you.” But it was also … I think more importantly, who I had in mind emotionally were the douche bag founders I know that think they are better, because they would never work for somebody else. And I’m like, “You’re not better than them.” But what you did, which is more beautiful in my mind, is like you turned it around and instead of like, “We all work for somebody,” you made it, “We all work for ourselves,” which is a much more empowering way of thinking about it. So I fucking love that. I love that you take things and you put them another way.   [0:06:43] Hiten Shah: Even that douche bag founder needs to believe that they can’t work for anyone else. If you want to empathize with them, they need to believe that. You know why they need to believe that? They need to believe that they have no other option. They need to believe that the alternative to what they’re doing today does not exist for them. So they’re just saying that, because they don’t want that alternative to exist for them. And they’re saying it out of being scared of that alternative. And it takes a while for you to get out of that, if you’re now a founder all of a sudden, right? It takes a while for you to get out of having that cushion, having that feeling that I can just go do that. Right? Many people started like that, and they worked at a job, and then they decided to start their own company. And now they realize that they never should have worked for anyone, right? Some of us, though, are like, “Fuck, I don’t know if I could work for anyone, I really don’t.” That being said, I’m sure I could, and I’m sure I’d be great at it. But I think a lot of those people just say that ’cause it’s the fear. And it’s the fear of that being a possibility, when like in reality you don’t need to fear that. If you’re meant to work on your own shit as a founder, freelancer, or whatever and have that responsibility for yourself, then do that. If you’re not, and you’re not gravitating towards it, and you want a little more stability, a little more of your life so to speak, in many areas, not just work so to speak, then guess what? Don’t do that. So I would tell people actually, I would discourage them to be a founder. It’s not because they can’t do it, it’s because I’m not sure if they know what it means. I’d rather talk about what it means. And it means this almost ultimate realization of you being your own boss. So that would be the way I would go further and expand on what I said, which is like, if you want that ultimate feeling of being your own boss, so to speak, and like literally owning that, I think being a founder is how you’d get that. ‘Cause you’re just … I mean, the thing is a struggle. You have to manage yourself. You’re not managing anyone else. You’re not, like you’re not sitting there being managed either. You have to manage yourself and everything comes out of that. That’s the reality, and so no, I don’t wish it upon anybody, I don’t think anyone should do it, to be honest. I think it’s much easier to have a job. I think it’s okay that it’s much easier. It’s okay if you want a job. Like that’s okay, that’s good. We need you, too. We need you, because you’re probably way more emotionally stable than any founder out there.   [0:09:19] Steli Efti: Yeah, probably have much less of like whatever deficiencies maybe founders have, that they’re trying to overcompensate for by changing the world and building incredible solutions. I love that. Like we could take this to so many other different places, but I kind of don’t want to. I feel like what you just said and how you wrapped this up was a really beautiful, deep, and empowering and honest little message to send out there in the world. So I kind of just want to wrap this up in a red ribbon and send this episode off to the world.   [0:09:55] Hiten Shah: Let’s do it. How do we wrap it up?   [0:09:57] Steli Efti: We just say-   [0:09:58] Hiten Shah: It’s good. I get it.   [0:09:59] Steli Efti: We just-   [0:09:59] Hiten Shah: You brought up a good topic. Shit.   [0:10:00] Steli Efti: There you go, we just say thank you for listening. And as always, we’re always happy to get a five-star review on iTunes from you. We always love to hear from you if you want to work for somebody, work for yourself. If you want to talk, if something you heard Hiten or me talk about this episode touched you or made you think about something you want to share, we want to hear from you. We love every email we get, and we get many. Just send us an email, steli@close.io, @gmail.com. ‘Til the next episode. [0:10:32] The post 316: Don’t Wanna Work for Other People? appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about 1-1 meetings. They highlight how to set them up, the importance of these meetings, their benefits and how to do them efficiently so that your startup and your team get the maximum benefit. Your team is the lifeblood of the company so making sure that they are happy, supported and motivated only helps your startup in the long run. The purpose of a 1-1 is to give dedicated time to a member of your team. This meeting is an opportunity to motivate and support your employee, and to find out what they are experiencing while working at the company. 1-1 meetings must frequently be held and should focus on having open communication. These meetings are not performance reviews, project updates or status meetings. But meetings purely focused on active listening to the challenges, the successes or ideas that your employee has. Tune into this week’s episode of The Startup Chat to hear clear advice about how to get started with 1-1 meetings. Steli and Hiten highlight issues that can come up, and they also share their top tips on things to keep in mind when holding meetings with your team members. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:39 1-1 team meetings defined. 01:32 How often to hold these meetings. 03:35 Ideas for the best approach. 04:55 Questions to ask at your meeting. 06:10 Mistakes for 1-1 meetings. 09:52 Etiquette for 1-1 meetings. 10:05 The power of listening. 10:25 The drawback of responding. 12:02  Avoid problem-solving. 13:30 Treat the 1-1 like an important relationship. 3 Key Points: The 1-1 is their opportunity to speak, and it’s your opportunity to listen. The skill of listening is very important and not responding to everything you hear. How can you be as thoughtful as possible?   [0:00:00] Steli Efti: Hey everybody. This is Steli Efti.   [0:00:02] Hiten Shah: This is Hiten Shah, and it turns out in over 300 episodes we haven’t really talked about one-on-ones.   [0:00:08] Steli Efti: It’s crazy.   [0:00:09] Hiten Shah: And how to do them. Yeah, I think that this is going to be very interesting. Yeah, we’re going to talk about one-on-ones in The Startup Chat today.   [0:00:23] Steli Efti: First of all …   [0:00:24] Hiten Shah: Yeah?   [0:00:24] Steli Efti: First of all, what is a one-on-one? Maybe very quick definition.   [0:00:29] Hiten Shah: Okay. What is it, Steli? I mean, we’re doing a one-on-one right now, right?   [0:00:32] Steli Efti: We’re doing a one-on-one right now.   [0:00:33] Hiten Shah: I’m just kidding. What is a one-on-one?   [0:00:35] Steli Efti: A one-on-one is when you take somebody that works with you, usually it’s people that you are managing or you’re responsible for, and you have a one-on-one conversation with them, usually to talk about their performance, how they’re doing, or to hear them out. Challenges they have, problems they have, things they need from you. It’s a conversation that’s a lot about the relationship between the company and the person, versus a talk about a project or work. A one-on-one is not having a conversation with somebody you’re managing about a project you both are working on. It’s about the relationship, about people’s performance, happiness, fulfillment at work, that kind of stuff.   [0:01:18] Hiten Shah: Yep. Great definition. Okay, let’s start with an easy one. How often should it be done?   [0:01:22] Steli Efti: Such a good question. I don’t fucking know.   [0:01:25] Hiten Shah: Not an easy one, trust me.   [0:01:26] Steli Efti: Yeah. I don’t fucking know.   [0:01:28] Hiten Shah: Oh no!   [0:01:31] Steli Efti: When my team was both smaller and at the same physical place, when we had an office, I tended to do a one-on-one walk with people once a month. That was kind of my cadence, but I would have these casual conversations about people’s performance more randomly throughout the week, but I would have a more formal walk with people I think once a month. In the early days, maybe even more often because thinking about it, I do think that more of a high level of frequency at the beginning when you have a small team is probably not a bad idea. I don’t know. I do think that it has to be at least once a month because once a quarter or once a year’s definitely not enough, but you could make a real good argument to doing this more frequently. It really depends I think on how senior the people are that you’re managing, and so how much feedback and guidance they need and how much air time they need from you to air out their issues and their challenges. The more senior the people on the team are that you’re managing, in my experience, the less maybe productive it is to have a one-on-one every week or every two weeks. There’s just not enough to talk about. But it’s a good question. I don’t know. What do you say?   [0:02:55] Hiten Shah: Yeah, I think every two weeks.   [0:02:58] Steli Efti: Every two weeks?   [0:02:58] Hiten Shah: Is probably a good cadence. Then you get about 20 of these a year. I think it’s better than once a month. I feel like you don’t want that much time to go by. That’s just my sort of opinion and my experience. Also, it depends on your size of your team as a company as a whole, and size of your direct team and how much conversation is going on. I think that when it comes to one-on-ones, there’s so many different … There’s a lot of advice. This is one of those categories where the It Depends philosophy does really fall in, but there are a ton of best practices. I’m not sure if you and I should go through the best practices, but instead I think we should go through maybe what they are for and what they’re not for.   [0:03:39] Steli Efti: Mm-hmm (affirmative).   [0:03:40] Hiten Shah: I think people get that confused, and you already hinted at one thing, or really put it out there, which is they’re not about reviewing projects or what’s going on in terms of the tactical operations of the business or what a certain person’s working on and not working on. I’ll put it out there and say they’re not about that. What they are about is about the relationship that whoever you’re responsible for as a manager, the manager perspective, is the relationship the person has with you, since you’re responsible for them. Are you doing anything that they don’t like? As a manager, I think it’s really important to understand that because you might not understand that and the best managers that I know are actually tuning their approach depending on who they’re dealing with. Knowing how that other person feels about you and your approach and how you’re dealing with them is really important, so trying to get some good, bad, ugly out of them can be really useful. I think the second piece I’ll say before I pass it on to you about this is I think the way that I think about these one-on-ones, and I keep saying that on the I think because this is just a topic that I think you end up tailoring over time, and there are a lot of approaches. I’ve seen people do surveying and things like that, but really it’s about the person’s relationship with the company. That’s another big piece of it. It’s not just you. It’s how are they dealing with the people they work with? How are they dealing with the people in other departments? How are they dealing with random coworkers that they might not work with but have to deal with? How are they dealing with your boss, if you have a boss? Or even your counterparts in other areas. There’s so much to it, and I think that person’s relationship with the company’s really important and what I’ve seen people do is actually ask a net promoter style question, “From 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend somebody else to the company?” Then you ask them, “Why? What’s up? Why would you rate it anything less than a 10, and what’s the reasoning?” That can really get out of you, or out of the person, some really good, crisp feedback that you might not be able to get any other way. I’ve seen companies be successful with that one specific tactic, which I just found interesting not because I’m suggesting anybody do it, but more so you’re looking to figure out what is this person’s relationship with the company, and how can you as their manager, or whoever’s responsible for them if your company doesn’t like the word manager, what can you do about it?   [0:06:17] Steli Efti: Yeah. You know, I’ve made a lot of mistakes when it comes to one-on-ones, but I think one of the biggest ones was not being thoughtful enough in what I wanted to accomplish, and then often times what would happen is that the person that I would go on a one-on-one walk with, I would just ask, “What’s on your mind? What’s going on?” And instead of them talking about their relationship with the company and with me and about the things that were going well or not so well, having a really meaningful conversation about those topics, often times it would slip into them starting to talk about some problem with a current project they’re working on, and then it would just turn into a whole discussion about work and specific things in work, versus having a real one-on-one. I think that I’ve wasted a lot of one-on-ones just thinking that all I have to do is ask the question, “What’s on your mind? How are things going?” And then I let the person lead the discussion. I’m not against that, because I don’t think that you should be talking the entire time as the manager, if you are the manager, but I do think that it’s important to guide the person on what you want to talk about, and especially to stop them from potentially just going the easy route, which is just talk about something that’s like, “Oh, I’m trying to close this deal and this prospect told me this. What should I do?” I mean, that’s an important conversation to have potentially, but not the best one to have on a one-on-one, and I’ve done that mistake many times where I just let the conversation go in some kind of a direction, then afterwards I would feel like, “Shit, I still don’t know anything about how happy they are, what their relationship is with the company or with me.” We talked about all these things, but we didn’t really talk about stuff that’s important. I think that’s because we all think in kind of the day to day hustle and we’re all so task-oriented and project-oriented, so when somebody is asked to just go on a walk with you, they might not be prepared and spent time really thinking about it, so they might just be impulsively going to the first thing that comes to their mind, which is the project they’re working on right now. That’s a mistake that I’ve made. The other thing that I’ve struggled with sometimes, and that’s an interesting one, and I’m curious to hear your opinion on this, I think I’d read somewhere a long time ago that one-on-ones should be just about the employee talking to you. Just have them speak the entire time. It shouldn’t be about you at all. You should just ask and learn. I’ve always applied that, but then there were moments or times where I also had things on my mind that I really wanted to talk about with a person. Some problem, something in the way that we’re working that wasn’t working out, something that I wanted to bring to their attention, and because I started with asking them questions, it would be the entire conversation would be occupied with their problems, their challenges, the thing that they wanted to talk about, and then at the end of the walk I’d be like, “Shit, I wanted to talk about these really critical things and I didn’t get to it.” I didn’t get a good balance between them getting things out of their system that they needed to talk about, but then I still had some feedback or critique or things I wanted to talk about that I didn’t get to. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on that, on the … Like we talked about the purpose of the one-on-one is figuring out how the relationship between you and the person is going and the person and the company, but would you say the one-on-one is about their perspective on that relationship purely, or on both’s perspective? Or when you want to do that feedback, is that more of a performance review setup and not really good for a one-on-one? What are your thoughts on that?   [0:10:09] Hiten Shah: I like just to hear their perspective. I think it’s one of the hardest things to do as humans not to respond to criticism or feedback, and really it’s I think the person who’s managing’s responsibility to listen. That’s their opportunity to speak pretty much without you judging them, if you’re doing it well. The way to be a great manager is to listen. The key, in my mind, is to listen and listen really well. Sure, if you feel like responding, be very discerning about what you respond to because that’s also very critical. If you respond to everything you hear, then what ends up happening is the person’s not going to feel very heard.   [0:10:59] Steli Efti: Mm-hmm (affirmative).   [0:11:00] Hiten Shah: That’s the last thing you want. You want this person that you’re having a one-on-one with to not just feel heard, but be heard. I think the skill of listening is super important and not turning it into one of these things where you’re sitting there and you’re looking to respond to everything you hear. It’s easy to respond and make the person feel potentially in your mind good or make yourself feel good by the response, but really that doesn’t help either of you. This is their opportunity to speak. It’s your opportunity to listen and figure out what’s going on. Usually it’s not like you have one one-on-one. You probably have three or four one-on-ones with different people in sort of the same week or whatever, the same month. You can triangulate where the company’s sentiment is that way if you listen.   [0:11:48] Steli Efti: Mm-hmm (affirmative).   [0:11:48] Hiten Shah: If you’re just responding and reacting, you actually can’t do that as well. I’d be taking notes. I’d be thinking through this and I think you’re right, to me the reviews, when you review somebody and you’re doing quarterly reviews or monthly reviews or whatever it is your company does, bi-annual reviews, that’s your opportunity to get feedback and really get very prescriptive about what you’re seeing, but I would actually keep the feedback and all that to a minimum unless the person is asking for help specifically on something, because then obviously it’s your job to help them.   [0:12:17] Steli Efti: I love that. Alright, so let’s wrap this episode up maybe with a tip from both of us. I’ll hijack your last point to give my tip to the listeners, which is even when people … Make sure that the one-on-one is not about you solving all their problems or suggesting solutions to everything that they bring up. Not to say that you should never offer a solution if there’s a problem where there’s a solution, but to double click on what you said with listening, really often times if somebody maybe describes a problem they have with another person in the company, instead of you stepping in and solving and mitigating and mediating or telling them, like maybe you should just ask more questions to understand how their conflict has developed, what this person has tried, what this person would do next to solve this issue, and ask the right questions to help them potentially come up with solutions, or at least come up with a different perspective on a situation, versus you being the person that takes over. It creates that relationship where they come with their bag of problems because they know you’re going to take it away from them and just solve all those problems. A, it’s really hard to feel truly understood when you constantly are trigger happy with offering solutions to everything that they propose, but also it creates this relationship where they’re dependent on you solving their problems, versus you empowering them to come up with a different point of view, a different way of thinking, which helps them then go and solve a problem on their own.   [0:13:48] Hiten Shah: Yep. My tip would just be treat it like one of your, just treat it like a really important relationship to you. If you treat the people that you’re working with like that, and in the one-on-ones especially approach it like that, you’ll be a lot more thoughtful and I think that’s really the key, is how can you be as thoughtful as possible and actually hear the person and listen to them and process what they’re saying and take it as feedback for you?   [0:14:13] Steli Efti: Beautiful. Alright, that’s it from us for this episode. We’ll hear you soon.   [0:14:16] Hiten Shah: See ya. [0:14:16] The post 315: How to Do 1-On-1s appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about how to take care of yourself when you are not feeling 100%. They look at how to give yourself time to rejuvenate and recharge your batteries so that you can work optimally and get more done. When you have a heavy workload and find that you get sick or have other life challenges, sometimes it can be hard to decide to take a break to recover. But being overworked can create physical symptoms, taking some time to recharge is an essential factor in our health and well-being. If you are feeling under the weather, then your work will be impaired leaving you with an outcome that is disappointing and unsatisfactory. Taking breaks and time off has a considerable impact on our personal and professional productivity. Ensuring the quality of our work remains high, and our relationships with our team remain strong. Tune into this week’s episode of The Startup Chat to learn about the importance of taking care of yourself and your team. How to take care of yourself and maintain optimal outputs when you are working. As well as Steli and Hiten’s advice for seeing the big picture when it comes to the balance between work and well-being. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:27 Personal challenges in the workplace. 01:34 A common theme with personal struggle.   02:42 How to deal with personal struggle. 04:18 What is the company perspective?. 04:40 Mistakes to avoid if you have a life challenge. 05:20 How to support your team to take the time they need. 07:00 The disadvantages of being too hard on yourself. 07:18 The responsibility of managers and owners. 08:55 The importance of honesty. 09:30  Steli and Hiten’s top tips. 3 Key Points: Making sure that you are communicating, is a crucial skill to avoid struggling in the workplace. It is imperative that you take care of yourself and your family first. It’s vital for you to protect your employees to allow them to recover and regain their focus and energy.   [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 this concept where, or this idea where … How do you deal with things that happen in your personal life that are debilitating to some extent or that really cause you to have to focus on it, maybe in some ways cause you to really have to put a lot of your energy towards your family or your personal life compared to your work? And what do you do about it?   [0:00:36] Steli Efti: Yeah, the reason why we wanted to talk about that was that just recently I had a number of people, both on my team but also friends, going through personal challenges, right? Somebody’s father dying. It just started. A new team member, works with us for a month or so and then his dad passes away. And so that is obviously a super dramatic, personal life event that affects work as well. But also people with less traumatic things happening to them of, just like moving and how interruptive that can be to life and therefore also to work. The common theme that I saw in many of these situations was, most of the advice and most of the work and energy I had to invest in those people was all about giving them permission to deal with life and be okay with the fact that work will have to take a step back for a little bit. Just telling people, “Hey, it’s okay. Take care of yourself, take care of your family. Work will still be here in two weeks, in three weeks. It’s okay if you’re not on your “A” game.” Seeing how much people struggle with giving even themselves permission to be out of balance at times, to be struggling. We’re all gonna go through phases where we struggle, but how you deal with that struggle, if you’re giving yourself permission and if you deal with it with forgiveness towards yourself, or if you make it even harder because you create this pressure and stress of thinking, “Oh my God, I’m behind on work.” And creating this extra pressure and destructiveness that ultimately will lead to even worse results in work as well.   [0:02:33] Hiten  Shah: Yeah, I think it’s really about communication because remember, you’re not the only one on your team, so being able to communicate with your team, even if it’s a highly personal matter and you don’t wanna share what it is, you should say, “Something personal’s going on in my life and these are the …” You wouldn’t communicate it this way, but essentially, “These are the rules of engagement with me for this amount of time, until this is over.” Right? Or, “Until I get my head straight on this.” Talking about your availability, being vocal about it in a good way, and not being embarrassed, and making sure you are actually communicating. Because most of the time in your company, people are just gonna be concerned and they really care about your well-being. So it’s really important to communicate, regardless of what the situation is, even if you don’t want anyone’s help or anyone’s sentiment or anything like that, just communicate. It’s where I see people really, really screw it up, especially in those times when everyone knows, life happens. And honestly, family first. It’s super important to take care of yourself and your family. And when things happen, to be able to take the time. I haven’t found a company that’s actually not okay with that and not accepting, as long as you’re communicating. What happens is, when you don’t communicate, people just start guessing about what’s going on and that’s the last thing you would actually want.   [0:04:10] Steli Efti: Yeah, I love that. I think that’s super important. Flipping it to the other side, I think from a company perspective, it’s super important to not just say that you are accepting and understanding of somebody’s personal situation when that happens, but to be very proactive in helping the person, giving the person permission. Because in certain situations, one thing that I’ve found for instance, is that people that go through these life challenges, they are not very good at … They’re gonna be way too aggressive in the way they are estimating how much time potentially, they’ll have to be away from work. Let’s take that as an example. We had a person on the team that had to go through a surgery awhile back, and I remember that person saying, “Yeah well, I’m probably gonna not be able to work for Thursday and Friday, just two days after the surgery, but then I’m gonna be, after the weekend I’m gonna be back full time.” I had to step in and tell the person, “Hey, take a whole week, maybe one and a half weeks, and if you feel much better after the surgery, if you actually, really feel good, you can come back to work earlier, right? That’s awesome, that’s not a problem. But I think you underestimate how much of an impact a surgery like that can have and I don’t think it’s a good idea for you and for your team to be communicating, you’re only gone for two days and have all these scheduled meetings and calls and things to do. And then what if your recovery is not as quickly as you hope, right? Then you’re gonna create all this stress for you, the team and everybody. So why don’t we take one and a half weeks off instead of just two days and if you feel much better sooner, that’s awesome. And if you don’t, then that’s also okay. Everybody’s prepared, you feel okay about it.” And it took a lot of back and forth, convincing that person and then when the surgery happened, the person needed the whole one and a half weeks and was very, very thankful and grateful that that was the setup because otherwise she would have struggled a lot and she would have created a lot of stress for her. So I think sometimes people are … And I’ve had this situation with many people, where I have to step in and say, “Well, you think you’re only gonna need this amount of break from work. I think you should take more.” Or “You think …” Because people are just, they’re too hard on themselves and they are making these calculations or estimates that are just unrealistic because they don’t feel comfortable taking these huge chunks of time away from work at times, but it’s important. And you’re not gonna be working productively anyways, right? If you’re not recovered, it doesn’t matter that you’re working now. You’re not gonna be able to do good work and it’s just gonna create a lot of stress for you, so I’d rather have you not work at all and fully recover. But I feel like people are too hard on themselves. They don’t feel like they have the permission to do that. They feel uncomfortable asking for that, so I think it’s the responsibility of the company or the managers, for you as managers , to step in those situations and protect your employees, and make sure that you give them permission and that you sometimes even force them to take more time off or take it easy or take less projects onboard, on their plate so that they can recover and they can regain their focus and energy once the family situation, whatever the struggle is they’re dealing with, has passed.   [0:07:49] Hiten  Shah: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I think it’s important to be proactive in those situations as a manager in a company. It’s critical actually, because if you’re not, then honestly, bad things happen, right? People let you down, to be honest, and oftentimes people just don’t realize. They’re very optimistic about themselves and their ability to recover from things. So yeah, I think communication is key. I’ve had folks who have had tragedies happen in their personal lives and they were able to deal with it just by communicating and going offline, and being very direct about when they’re gonna be available and when they’re not. It’s that simple. I wish I had more to share on this topic, but you’re talking about the difference between work and your personal life, and both of your networks or the people involved around you in those scenarios, they both depend on you for many different things, so being able to be smart and cover that is really important. And cover it meaning be able to not let anyone down, at the same time be honest and be realistic. The best approach is, if you don’t know what’s gonna happen, then say you don’t know, and then talk about what the options are or what might happen then let the people around you know, very clearly. I couldn’t say that stronger because it’s just one of those things where it’s so critical to communicate. You don’t communicate, you end up causing a lot more trouble for yourself than you need to.   [0:09:31] Steli Efti: I love it. Yeah, I think proactive communication, asking for help, being transparent and then also from the team perspective or company perspective and management perspective, taking care of people and protecting them from themselves at times, and supporting them very proactively and not just saying, “Well, this person said they need this time off. That’s their decision, I’m not gonna push them for more.” When you are convinced that it’s unrealistic or not good, is also a really bad idea. Yeah, life happens. If you have, hopefully, a long life and you have a long career and you work for many years building companies or working in startups and teams, you’re gonna have life tragedies unfortunately, in most cases. There’s gonna be life distractions, there’s gonna be things in your personal life that’s gonna affect your work life. And forgiving yourself in those situations, for not being the perfect person in work and the beacon of productivity, and giving yourself the permission to take it slower for a short period of time at work so you can regain your energy and focus, you can take care of your life. And realizing that this is a marathon and hopefully this is something you’re gonna be doing for 20, 30, 40 years versus just obsessing over the project you’re working on right now or some kind of a short-term milestone or goal you’re trying to accomplish, over dealing with what’s more fundamentally important which is your personal life, your family, your health, whatever it is, I think that that’s super crucial. Being okay with, at times letting your personal life take priority and having work life having to slow down a little bit at those crucial times is super important.   [0:11:17] Hiten  Shah: Yeah, I totally agree.   [0:11:19] Steli Efti: All right. That’s it from us for this episode.   [0:11:22] Hiten  Shah: Bye. [0:11:22] The post 314: How to Handle Private Life Challenges While Running a Startup (Forgiving 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 handle working with customers who are dissatisfied and escalate dissatisfaction into abuse. They give you advice as to what you should do and the best attitude to have when facing such a difficult and challenging situation.   Angry customers can erupt with abusive behaviour and become acutely confrontational. ‘The customer is always right’ doesn’t mean that you have to take everything they send your way nor do you have to give them everything they ask for. ‘The customer is always right’ is something that we have all heard and try to abide by in an attempt to give fantastic customer service. But setting boundaries and learning to respect each other in the transaction of daily life and business is a much healthier approach. Tune into this week’s episode of The Startup Chat to learn how to set your boundaries and communicate them precisely so that those valuable customers that you would like to retain don’t cross the line and make your life miserable. Also get Steli and Hiten’s top tips for the mindset to support these challenging situations. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:27  Defining the context of abusive customers. 00:50 The mindset of dealing with challenging customers. 02:59 The social dynamics of Aggressive behaviour. 05:40 The distinction of challenging customers. 07:01 Firing Customers for the well being of the company. 07:40 How does self-respect help manage challenging situations?. 08:15 What rules do you have for relationships in your life and business?. 08:55 Why Customers get Angry. 19:43 The standards that we set for managing connections.   10:10 Steli and Hiten’s top tips. 3 Key Points: Don’t trigger them and don’t get triggered yourself. Respond from a place where you don’t get sucked into their emotional turmoil. Customers are usually angry and mad because they are not satisfied yet.   [0:00:01] Steli Efti: Everybody this is Steli Efti.   [0:00:03] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. And what we’re gonna talk about today is how to deal with abusive customers. Which is kind of the extreme version of it. But basically a customer that just is not treating you or your team well when you’re talking to them, responding to them, et cetera. But they are a customer meaning they paid you. Is that kind of the context you have?   [0:00:24] Steli Efti: Yeah they are a customer, maybe, I mean, maybe they want to be a customer right? So they are an abusive prospect maybe.   [0:00:30] Hiten Shah: Sure, prospect. Yeah. Sure.   [0:00:31] Steli Efti: Yeah.   [0:00:31] Hiten Shah: Okay. So, I’ll start with the first thought I have on that. I have seen more what we would label as abusive or you know, not so great customers, back off and even flip their opinion, become the opposite of that just by hearing them out, not reacting, not thinking that they’re are being abusive, instead just being like, “Okay, well you know, I hear you.” You know, it’s like dealing, honestly I put my, for lack of a better word, I put my parent hat on and I treat them like a child.   [0:01:09] Steli Efti: Mm-hmm (affirmative).   [0:01:10] Hiten Shah: And what I mean by that is, I realize that something might be going on, they might be emotional, feelings are usually involved when people get abusive or mean, or nasty, you know, which is totally cool. I don’t apologize though. I’m not a fan of saying sorry unless I really have to because that’s admitting I did something wrong. Most of the time when a customer’s abusive or something like that, you didn’t do anything wrong. And so then I just hear them out like, “Okay. Please tell me more. What’s making you feel like this?” And literally that’s a child, to me. Put the parent hat on, how would I, how would I, how would I deal with this if this were my child, and I was in my best mood possible? I would be balanced, I would hear them out. And I would do my best to make them happy, but I would not say sorry. You know? And I would not dig in to their abuse, I would not, I would not like trigger them more, you get what I mean?   [0:02:06] Steli Efti: Yeah.   [0:02:07] Hiten Shah: That’s the key, and I would also not be reactive. I think that’s the number one key, what I see people do the most with customers, clients, any kind of abusiveness, you know, I love that that word is what we’re using here, but anything where you feel like the client or customer is being negative, don’t trigger them. Don’t get triggered yourself, and these situations tend to work out just fine. And you learn a lot.   [0:02:36] Steli Efti: I love that. What I refer to this is usually, friendly strength. Like being a good parent or good doctor.   [0:02:42] Hiten Shah: I like that.   [0:02:42] Steli Efti: Right? So you, one of the biggest challenges is that just, social dynamics will dictate most of the time that when somebody, when I call somebody abusive it means that they are very aggressive. Right? Aggressive means usually that they come from a place of strength, right? It might be hostile strength-   [0:03:01] Hiten Shah: Yeah.   [0:03:02] Steli Efti: … Not sort of friendly strength. And what I’ll, the social dynamics often times will dictate that if somebody’s strong even if they’re hostile, you’re gonna act weak. Which is what you’re referring to is like apologizing. Right? Just because a prospect or a customer is angry and screaming at you, doesn’t mean that you have to apologize or act in a weak manner like basically caving in, telling them they’re right, I’m sorry, and then trying to cater to it all and any of their demands just because they’re a customer or prospect, just because they’re angry. Like if you haven’t done anything wrong, or if what they’re demanding isn’t reasonable, you should not act apologetic about it or give them what they want. Now there is an opposite reaction to that, most people will just cave in and be weak when somebody is hostile and strong. But there’s an opposite end to that, which is some people will be hostile and strong back to somebody that’s hostile and strong to them right? So you are an angry customer prospect, you’re screaming at me, they’re gonna start screaming back. Right? They’re gonna start getting angry and abusive back to the customer. That’s dumb as well, right? That’s not the right way, just like in your great parent example, if your child is hungry or tired or somewhat out of balance and start screaming at you, you should not scream back at the child, start argue with the child at an eye to eye level. That’s not good parenting, right? The perfect model is what you said, the friendly strength, the one where you want them to succeed, you want the best for them, you are though coming from a place of strength, confident, authority, and just because they scream at you and just because they act as if you are beneath them or as if you have to serve them doesn’t mean that you have to scoop to that level or cave into that dynamic. You know, you’re the parent, you’re gonna try to help them, you’re gonna try to lead them to the right solution but from a place of calm, quiet, happy, and from a place where you don’t get sucked into their emotional turmoil.   [0:05:04] Hiten Shah: That’s right. That’s the key, there’s an energy there right? When someone’s being hostile like that. And the key is not to let that come onto you and react and get triggered. Instead, take a step back, understand where it’s coming from. This is why the kids analogy is really good.   [0:05:22] Steli Efti: I think also, there is a distinction though that I would make between customers and prospects that are, let’s just say, unreasonable in the moment, or maybe too emotional right? Somebody can be really angry at me and I’m reasonable and I would not label them as an abusive customer. I would just say they are out of balance right now. So those are people that in general are pretty reasonable but just in the moment overreact to something, or are overly led by their emotions, or are impulsive and so they’ll demand something or they’ll get angry or they’ll want something that’s not fair or reasonable or long term. But they were just caught in emotions. But there is a, and that’s probably the majority of people. There is a subcategory, a small percentage, of customers that are not just in the moment emotional or angry or something, they are truly abusive. They will never get better. The way they are thinking, the way are going through life is one way, they’re gonna try to get as much from you as they can bully out of you. And I think it’s important to recognize the difference and to have a, I’m gonna try to help you be a better, I’m gonna try to help you and love you and guide you to the right solution, for the majority of prospects and customers. But when somebody is abusive I have a no tolerance policy towards that, just like the no asshole rule in terms of hiring and adding people to your culture and your team and company. There should be a no asshole rule, in my mind, when it comes to customers. When it’s truly abusive, right, when it’s somebody that is unreasonable and is gonna lie to you to get things. Or is gonna demand a relationship that long term will just be bad for you. I think that it’s important to realize and give yourself the permission as a company and as sales people and as founders, to not enter that relationship. I truly believe if the relationship in the beginning starts abusive it’s just gonna get worse over time.   [0:07:22] Hiten Shah: Yeah. Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. You have to just set, you have to set your sort of standards and your expectations. I think, you know one important thing before we graft this or not, is like it’s so important to respect yourself.   [0:07:38] Steli Efti: Yeah.   [0:07:39] Hiten Shah: Right? It’s so important to set you know, the word that came into my head I just said it is like, set the standard. So what’s your standard for your customers? How do you want them to treat you? And when they don’t treat you like that, what do you do about it? Because look, we’re all in a services business. We’re all of service to whoever’s paying us money, whoever is using our products, whoever is doing you know, interacting with our businesses including our team members. And so I think like when you create policies and rules around how you treat different types of customers, in different ways, not based on how much they pay or anything of that, that’s all standard and a lot of people do it, but more importantly, on how they treat you. What type of customer are they? You can switch that. You have to just understand and be conscious of what level is this customer at right now with us? And that’s where all the things like customer satisfaction and all that kind of sort of a thing, comes from. It isn’t just about just gaging the satisfaction overall or an aggregate of your customer base, it’s about understanding where each individual customer is at. With the idea of moving them up that ladder. Because their usually angry or mad at you, because they’re just not satisfied yet. Or they were satisfied and then something bad happened. And it’s funny, right when we’re talking right now, I have a text from a customer who is apologetic for bugging me. You know? And I’m like, I’m listening to you, I’m like this is ironic. This customer is lovely, she’s a friend of mine and she’s like, “I just can’t live without this, this thing is fucked up right now.” And I’m like, “Yeah, yeah. I know.” Like it’s gonna be fixed right now, I’m sorry, I don’t know when it’ll get fixed. I said I’m sorry because she’s a friend and she’s coming in, and you know, I broke my rule because she’s coming in and being sorry to me. And I’m like, “No. No. No. I am sorry.” This is fucked right? But it’s just funny, it’s like, I think there’s levels right? So yes I will, you know just to point this out, I have standards. Like if someone’s feeling bad about bothering me, I have to make sure they don’t feel bad about that. Right?   [0:09:41] Steli Efti: Yeah.   [0:09:41] Hiten Shah: So that’s why I will say sorry in that situation, because I don’t need them to feel sorry for telling me my shits fucked up. You know? I need them to tell me every time in case I don’t know. But like it’s funny, right? We set such, we set such weird standards for this stuff, you know? And we don’t know we’re setting them. So to me is just boils down to you want to fix this problem, you’re dealing with this, your company doesn’t understand how to deal with this angry customer or someone being aggressive or abusive, set some standards on how you want to be treated and then treat them like that too. That’s what it boils down to.   [0:10:19] Steli Efti: I love it. All right. That’s it. That’s what we’re wrapping up with for today’s episode, Set the Standards. And it doesn’t matter, sometimes people just think because it’s a customer or prospect, somebody that could give me money, I should just allow anything and everything to happen, and they can always dictate the direction of every conversation, the tone or how they want to deal with me and that’s just not true. Set high standards on how well you treat your customers and prospects, but demand high standards back. And that’s gonna lead to a stronger brand, better relationships and at the end, to more revenue, more growth and more success for you. You won’t believe it but it’s true.   [0:10:59] Hiten Shah: Yeah. See ya.   [0:11:01] Steli Efti: Bye bye. [0:11:03] The post 313: How to Deal with Abusive Customers appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about the power of headlines and the weaknesses of skim reading. They explore why you should be reading more than just the headline of an article and how sharing content without being fully informed can affect your startup. Almost 59% of people only read the headline of an article before sharing it. This phenomenon of not having the time or the attention span to delve deeper into the content that you plan to share has numerous implications. There’s no doubt that as a startup it is preferable to be in the 41% who make the commitment to be well informed before sharing content. Tune into this week’s episode of The Startup Chat to learn about the role that skim reading headlines and content can have on your business and why you should be committed to delving deeper into content. Before assuming that you thoroughly understand a topic. They also discuss the responsibility you have as a content consumer and creator. Also Steli and Hiten, share their top tips, for how to make use of the headline culture as a startup. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:43 Example of how skimming can leave you misinformed.   01:54 Realizations of misinformation. 02:42 The issue with the headline. 03:05 The power of headlines. 03:25 The headline culture. 04:07 Where headlines are found. 08:21 The influence of content.   09:04  Exploiting headlines. 09:38  An example of crazy headlines. 10:40 Core message for startups. 3 Key Points: Did you really read more than just the headline? Headlines are designed to peak curiosity not tell the whole story. Be more aware of not falling victim to the headline culture. [0:00:01] Steli Efti: All right. This is Steli Efti.   [0:00:05] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah, and today on the Startup Chat, we’re gonna talk about something that’s been in the news a lot, and there’s been some specific examples we can give, but the way I’ll say it, , is don’t believe everything you read.   [0:00:18] Steli Efti: Don’t believe everything you read, AKA, did you really read more than just the headline?   [0:00:24] Hiten Shah: There you go.   [0:00:25] Steli Efti: That is my big questions because today, honestly … Here’s why I wanted to talk about it, then we can dig a little bit deeper, but here’s an example that prompted wanting to talk about this. We have a common good friend, Patrick, from Price Intelligently and Profit Well. He had posted, recently, a blog post announcing a massive funding round, and they’ve been famous for being a self-funded or customer-funded startup, doing really well with it, so announcing a big VC led round seemed like big news. I saw the Twitter share of the blog post, the preview of the article. I was surprised and thought, “Wow. Really? I didn’t see that coming. I didn’t think that they would go out and raise that much money.” I copy and pasted the link, and I shared it with my co-founder. Then, we started having a little conversation about it, with my co-founder, and then I decided, in the middle of the conversation, to actually go and read the article, which then led me to realize that at the end of the blog post it was like a, “Psych. This is just an April Fool’s Joke. We didn’t really raise money.” That moment made me realize two things, one, I share … Like how many times I’ll a share a piece of information or news without fully consuming it just based on the headline. Number two, how many times I just look at headlines, and I’ll make up my mind or I’ll pick or remember a little, tiny piece of information without having context. Number three, I thought, “Huh? This is actually really interesting because I bet hundreds if not thousands of people will from now on and forever be convinced of the fact that Price Intelligently raised money because they never bothered to read the article.” You can make a joke or just share a headline, and people will never know the whole story. They will always remember or probably share a distorted view of reality because they never bothered to read all the information to really know. So we live in this world where headlines are really kind of the surface level of information that people consume, and that’s the information they’ll base their opinions on or their facts on, and I was just thinking, “Wow. This is so interesting. You can probably fuck around with this. You can play with this, but we need to be more and more aware of it.” That’s why I wanted to talk to you about the headline culture of today, how to make use of it as a startup, but also how it could harm you as an individual, as a founder.   [0:03:00] Hiten Shah: Oh, man. I just don’t believe anything I read. Being in content a long time, I know how much the headline matters. Working on content, I know how much the headline matters. The thing is, a good headline pulls you in to the content, but there’s a lot of headlines that, basically, are designed, today, to just tell you the whole story, so we’ve gotten trained to just read the headlines and then only dig into the things that we feel compelled to dig into. Here’s the problem. If I read five headlines, I dug into one story, sure I might have depth on that story, but I also read the other four headlines, and I think I know something. That’s where the problem is. These headlines are designed to pique curiosity, not tell the whole story usually, but when you think they tell the whole story, I think that’s when you have the problem. They just took a nugget out of a thousand word or more article and gave you the headline. I think it’s the culture we live in. Think about it. Every single item in your Facebook feed is a headline. Every single item in a Twitter feed is a headline. Every single thing on Instagram with an image and a few pithy words, it’s a headline. This is just the culture we live in, so I think it’s one of those things where we have to go against what we’re trained to do by everything that we are consuming, and that’s the key. The key is to just learn to do that. Learn to have more depth. Even today, Slack … Let’s talk about Slack for a second. I’m in Slack. I have long conversations with people in Slack, in, let’s say, a group channel with a bunch of people in it. Right away someone pings me at some point or I’m in person somewhere and we’re both in the Slack or whatever, and that person will be like, “Oh, my God. Blah, blah, blah.” I’m like, “Wait. Did you read the thread? Did you actually read the thread, or did you just read that last thing you saw or the thing that really jumped out at you? Did you read the thread?” I feel like an asshole asking that question, but the reaction I get tells me that the person did not read the thread. They didn’t read the thread. They read one line and reacted, but there was like 10 lines of a thread. There was literally 10 lines, and I don’t mean the threading feature in Slack. I mean literally a conversation in Slack that everyone can see, and there’s a reaction off of one statement in it that probably already got dealt with if you read the rest of it, higher up, lower down, whatever right. So I think we just live in this culture of impatience. We live in this culture of immediate gratification/think we know everything just by reading one statement instead of actually digging in and spending the extra few seconds to see what this is about. For me, when I see five headlines, I don’t just get pulled into one of them. I try to at least click through and just look for a few seconds ’cause all these headlines are designed around curiosity, so I think it’s about awareness, to me, to avoid this problem ’cause really what we’re talking about is how do you avoid the problem and waste less time? ‘Cause you’re wasting time if you read something that’s wrong.   [0:06:14] Steli Efti: Yeah. I think just the Delta X between how much information we used to consume and how much interpretation we used to add, I don’t know. I haven’t lived hundreds of years, but it seems like that ratio today is at an extreme level where we require very little real information consumption, and we will add a ton of interpretation on top of it, and we will act as if we are 100% informed about this. We’re gonna talk with it about … I guess the day before yesterday I had a conversation, casually, at dinner, where somebody brought up something horrible a comedian has done recently, and they’re in trouble now because of it, something super inappropriate. I asked, “Where did you get all of this information from? Did you hear a recording of this phone call and of these statements that this comedian supposedly has done?” The person was like, “No, of course I didn’t listen to the … But somebody … I read the article.” I’m like, “How long was the article? How well researched? Who published the article? How do you know that this …” If I don’t hear somebody say the words, it’s very hard to really know what the context of a conversation was. Who was he talking to? What were they saying before and after that specific quote? I think that people … I think today we’re more trained to take a tiny bit of information and then instantly fill an incredible amount of additional information that we didn’t really get anywhere from. We are very comfortable with having very little information and a ton of interpretation to it, where, back in the day, I think the ratio was much healthier. That’s not just important to observe with yourself, the way you consume information and data, the way you make up your mind about things and people, but it also is important in terms of the information you consume or take on board from other people on your team or other people you work with or friends and family, people that influence your opinion. When people come to me today and they’re like, “This company does X, Y, Z. They do really poorly with blah, blah, blah”, I don’t just take that as face value. I always go, “Where do you have this information from? How do we know that this stuff is really true?” Because you can’t just read two Twitter headlines and then come and give me a speech about what’s really going on with this company. It’s not enough information to make really, truly informed opinions or judgments about people. But I see this more and more. Now, I’m wondering the opposite end of this. And this might be a weird question, but I was wondering, “Will companies and marketing teams start exploiting this by saying things in headlines that they really want people to believe and then clarifying more details in the real article, knowing that nobody will read the full article?” I don’t know if this is a weird question to ask, but I was wondering, will we see people misinforming the public more and more just in the headline and then clarifying it with more context way down the line in an article, for instance, because they know nobody ever will get there, so people will think all these positive things about them that are not really fully true? Do you think people are gonna start fucking around with that?   [0:09:33] Hiten Shah: Yeah, check it out. This is TechCrunch right now, “Facebook Starts it’s Facial Recognition Push to Europeans.” “This Robot can Build you IKEA Furniture.” “Twitter doesn’t Care that Someone is Building a Bot Army in Southeast Asia.” “Square Acquires Corporate Catering Startup, Zesty.” Dude, I don’t know. Out of those four, I’m like, “Okay. The Twitter one.” ‘Cause it’s like, “Wait. Is that really true? That doesn’t make sense. Why would Twitter not care about that?” Do you get what I mean? It’s probably … I can already guess that there’s something weird going on with that one just by the way that it was titled, and I’m just opening up TechCrunch and this is what it’s saying. So I think you’re right. People are already doing this, though. They’re already getting these headlines out with the core message whether it’s hoping people won’t read it or clarifying what it really means after they click.   [0:10:33] Steli Efti: Yeah. All right. So I think the core message for us, or for me at least, exploring this, is to, A, be more self-aware in the way I consume information and use tidbits and snippets or previews of content anywhere online and on social sites, but also to educate and coach and check the people around me to be more aware and to be more mindful of how they consume information, how quickly they think they have arrived at, “I already know everything I need to know about this article by just looking at an image and a headline, and I don’t need to read more to now be able to go in to the world and tell other people about this news or this company’s recent issues or whatever the hell it is.” Just be more aware of not falling victim to a headline culture, which I think is really corrupting and destroying the way most people are now consuming information. It’s harder and harder for people to really go deep on what they’re reading and what kind of content they’re consuming, so if you make an effort to do that, I think you’ll really have massive advantages in your thought and in the level of context you have when you make up opinions about things in the world.   [0:11:56] Hiten Shah: Yeah. Couldn’t agree more. I think it’s definitely been an interesting conversation.   [0:12:03] Steli Efti: All right. That’s it from us for this one.   [0:12:05] Hiten Shah: See ya. [0:12:05] The post 312: Why You Shouldn’t Trust Headlines (And How to Use Today’s Headline-Culture for Your Startup) appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

Today on the Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about what user testing is, why it’s important, and some tips on how to do it right. This comes after a series of blog post Hiten and his business partner have been working on around the topic. After user testing products like Duolingo and Grammarly, Hiten shares what he’s learned from the process, including what works so well for those products and what could be done to improve the overall user experience. Hiten also shares some tips on how you can user test your own products the right way and, if you choose to, test those of your competitors as well. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About today’s topic. 00:44 Why this topic was chosen for this episode. 02:36 What user testing means. 03:43 Hiten talks about the user test he carried out on Grammarly. 04:19 How much the study cost. 05:10 Why it’s a good idea to user test your competitor’s products. 06:08 Lessons Hiten learned from user testing Grammarly. 10:40 Tips to help you user test your products or those of your competitors. 3 Key Points: User testing is the ability to see how people react to an experience. If you’re trying to figure out what your users hate about your product, you need to ask them. User testing allows you to understand what’s working and what’s not.   [0:00:00] Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti.   [0:00:03] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. Today on the Start-up Chat, we’re gonna talk about a series of blog posts I’ve been doing with my business partner Marie, around user testing and the value of it. It was a hard one for us to share, and we’ll talk about why. Steli, you wanted to talk about it, so I’d love to get your take, as always, because apparently you’re reading my crap.   [0:00:26] Steli Efti: Yeah, dude. You’re killing it with product habits. Again, for people that are listening. I’m pretty sure that people that listen to the Start-up Chat are already subscribed to Product Habits, but for those that are new that haven’t, go to ProductHabits.com and subscribe. I’ve been on your email list for a long time now, and the content you’re sharing right now is the best content you’ve ever shared, in my opinion. Really it’s-   [0:00:51] Hiten Shah: Wow, thank you.   [0:00:52] Steli Efti: It is killer. It is really, really fucking good. The emails that you send are really good. I know that you and Marie, you’ve kind of gone from a model of considering having a content team that writes these emails, to getting back to the two of you writing these emails, and spending a lot of time back and forth until you get it right. And it really fucking shows. It’s unfortunate, but there’s no shortcut to excellence and to greatness. You have to put in the work. I love the new format right now, the new thing that you guys do where you do these research studies on other companies, right. On their products, on their user onboarding. You do really deep dives and then you share the deep dives and the learnings that you have with brands that are pretty popular. And are teaching even how they could do things better. So I love that content. It’s incredibly insightful. I wanted to pick the last one you did on Grammarly, and share some of the insights you learned there. And then for people that want to learn more, they can just go to ProductHabits.com and read these user research or product research studies in much more depth and detail. But let’s talk a little bit about user onboarding and what you’ve learned through doing these deep dives so far. What are some of the key learnings that you guys took out of it as takeaways?   [0:02:16] Hiten Shah: Yeah, absolutely. A couple things. One, for those of you that don’t know what user testing is, it’s the idea that you can get videos of people walking through an experience, like a product experience, a website, a prototype, an app, and talk about their experience. The key to it, and like Stelli said, they’ll be content on ProductHabits.com. You should subscribe to the newsletter, too, because we share a lot of stuff privately in the emails that we don’t share on the blog. But overall, what user testing is, is this ability for you to see how people react to an experience. That’s the way I like to describe it. It doesn’t have to be something you created. It can be someone else’s. What we did is we user tested Grammarly, Mixmax, and also Duo Lingo. And we’ve done very thorough write-ups about it. What we do is we watch five videos. We ask a bunch of specific questions to the people as they’re going through the experience. And we learn a whole shitload of stuff about how people feel about the experience. Now I’m not gonna get into the whole, of is five people enough, and all that, because just trust me it’s more than enough, especially if you read the write-up. You’ll learn right now about the learning. Grammarly is a really popular product. It’s a Chrome extension. What it does is it helps you with your writing. It’s popular in the sense of it’s had 10 million downloads of the Chrome extension and it has almost seven million active users. Daily active, I believe. They built a brilliant product and a brilliant business. They raised money after being self-funded for a long time, so they have another near and dear place in my heart, and I’m sure Stelli’s. And so, we did these five user tests. Basically it was a user test set of sessions. We did five people walking through the onboarding experience, and we learned a shitload about their onboarding.   [0:04:07] Steli Efti: Let me quickly highlight this. You are paying for this, right?   [0:04:11] Hiten Shah: Yeah, we’re paying for this. Each session costs, I think like $25 to $50. I don’t remember anymore. We’re on the Enterprise account.   [0:04:16] Steli Efti: And let me highlight this again real quick because people are used, and know the concept of buying user research for their own product, their website, their own shit. What nobody does, except you, as far as I know, if go to other people’s product and go, “I’m gonna pay a bunch of stuff to do user research on their product, so I learn from what they’re doing really brilliantly, and what they’re not doing so well, so I can learn from all these things for myself or for other things.” You’re the only one that does this with other people’s products, as far as I’m concerned, or as far as I know.   [0:04:52] Hiten Shah: Yeah. It’s not a popular thing. I think it’s absurd. It’s like, we’re building a Chrome extension coming very soon, and we need to build an onboarding for it. Why would we not just … Why would we, one most people just go copy what other people do as best practice, right?   [0:05:08] Steli Efti: Yep.   [0:05:08] Hiten Shah: Okay, cool. Go copy them. That’s better than making it up yourself, but what’s even better is understanding what works and doesn’t work for other companies that are doing it supposedly well. Think about it. We already know these companies that are doing it supposedly well. Think about it. We already know these companies that I mentioned, have some amount of traction. What we don’t know is what’s working well and not working well for them. And so, the user testing allows you to do that. And these products, they’re not even competitive to what we’re building. They’re just what I would call, what we believe today are best in class experiences for Chrome extension onboarding, or in Duo Lingo’s case, a lot of people rave about their product. So I wanted to understand, “Okay, what does that really mean? How can we learn from it?” I was blown away. Marie and I were blown away by how much we could learn from it. In Grammarly’s case, I’m just gonna go off a little bit. When you go through the experience, one of the things that got me really, really excited about one of the learnings was this. On the home page, if you scroll down a little bit, you get this brilliant demo. It’s this demo where it’s like, here’s a spell checker that you’re used to, and here’s Grammarly and what it can do for you. It’s like night and day. All you have to do is go to Grammarly.com and scroll down a little bit, and you’ll see this brilliant demo. What we learned from the user testing is that people love that demo. And it wasn’t a video. It wasn’t a gif. It was a little more different, and it really caught your eye. You’re like, “Oh. The spell checkers don’t catch any of these mistakes that I’m making, but Grammarly catches these 50 mistakes in this two paragraph piece of writing that I wouldn’t have caught if I use anything else.” People were super highly motivated after seeing that to sign up for the product. Then they start signing up for the product. And they have this thing called personalized Grammarly. It asks you two questions, which is, what do you want to use Grammarly for, or what are you writing for, is actually what it is, and what do you consider your writing level. And after you put that information in, which was very straightforward for people, there’s a next screen that still says personalized Grammarly and it tells you this information. That information, people thought was actually personalized. The truth is, there’s only like nine combinations you can get, because there’s three options for the two things they ask you before that, and you get these nine different options, but everybody only saw one. Honestly, I can be a little more colorful on this podcast, so I will be. It felt like people hated it because they were confused and they didn’t know what it meant. They thought it was analyzing their data because they had already installed the Chrome extension by then, and they were like, “Oh, it’s analyzing my usage.” It’s like, “Actually no. They’re just doing some very basic things and calling it personalization,” but it’s almost like people didn’t care about it. It was almost useless for the experience, but I know from a Grammarly standpoint, it probably helps them highly personalize the things they do for people, the emails they send, and the things like that. I’m almost like, “Why don’t you tell people that? Why don’t you tell people,” and I know I’m going to solution, but why don’t you tell people why you’re asking for the personalization? Honestly, they never tell people why they’re asking for it and what it’s gonna do for them. Instead, they try to tell you, “Oh, this is probably where you’re at because you chose these two options.”   [0:08:32] Steli Efti: Yep. You know, I was going through the Grammarly onboarding as you were speaking, so this is a cool experience for me.   [0:08:40] Hiten Shah: Neat, neat.   [0:08:41] Steli Efti: I was like, I selected the work and whatever the middle level of writer, and then I’m on the personalized Grammarly thing, which shows me now some stats and some stuff with how they can help me. And you’re so right. The first screen I was like, “Oh this is neat. I’m writing for work and yeah, I’m not a pro writer, but not a beginner either. Somewhere in the middle. Cool.” And then the second screen, I was looking and I was like, “All right, this is useless. Whatever.” I didn’t think that this was based on my writing. I didn’t think they were that sophisticated to go and be able to fetch my writing from the past, but I was like, I don’t know, 3.8 mistakes per word typically for a person like … All this is meaningless to me. I was very tempted to just keep … click continue to save your settings and move on with life. So that’s so interesting to hear you describe it as I was going through the different steps myself.   [0:09:34] Hiten Shah: That’s pretty awesome. Yeah, see so you get the sentiment and you’re like, “Crap.” They’re world class at this. They have a ton of active users, but they have a lot of missed opportunity still. And I know, I’ve met some of the people on the team there. These are some of the … I have a high level of respect for the team at this company, and they’re still missing these things because probably they’re not doing this, to be honest with you. Again, not a criticism. It just goes to your point that people don’t do this. I would say that I have a ton more to share, but I’ve shared it on Product Habits. If you have another question, let’s go for it, but people should just be doing user testing. I convinced the UserTesting.com folks to give me a coupon code, so you can get some savings. They give you, I think, three credits for free. And it’s ProductHabits17 is the code. So if you’ve never done UserTesting.com, go to UserTesting.com, use that code. They’re not paying me for this. I just want everyone to build better products, you know.   [0:10:32] Steli Efti: Nice. Nice. I love it. Let’s wrap this episode up with one tip. And then for people that want to know much more, they can go to Product Habits and read the three user testing studies you’ve published. But for people that are like, “All right. I want to do user testing for my product, or for my competitor’s product, but I’m overwhelmed.” Thinking, “How should I go about this?” I mean, you mentioned five interviews is enough. Is there any other tip of what to do or not to do, to be able to get started easily and do this without overthinking it and over-complicating it?   [0:11:06] Hiten Shah: Just do it. I have instructions. Read my instructions and go do it. And even if you don’t read my instructions, just literally go in there, set up a test, and ask people like, “What do you hate the most?”, or, “What confuses you the most?” Make sure you tell them, “Please tell us what confuses you the most about this experience. You will not hurt our feelings. In fact, we want to know what you hate the most. We want to know what confuses you the most because we’re looking to learn from you.” If you just tell them that, in terms of the instructions, that’s all you really need to do. If you want one tip, it’s really about you’re trying to figure out what people really hate. You’re trying to figure out what confuses them. And they tend to not tell you unless you ask them very specifically.   [0:11:48] Steli Efti: I love it. All right. That’s it for this episode, everybody. We’ll hear you very, very soon.   [0:11:53] Hiten Shah: Bye, bye. [0:11:54] The post 311: How to Get User Onboarding Right appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about persistence and how it can benefit your life. They introduce us to a persistence technique called HUCA, which is simple, free and can work wonders for you if you follow it. “You can’t beat the person who never gives up”. Persistence in work and life is one of the most important characteristics to have because persistence can open doors when it appears that there are no more doors to open. Persistence is the ability to continue trying to achieve something even when faced with resistance from other people or circumstances. The art, of not taking no for an answer is the key to breaking through to a world of possibilities. Not just to get what you want but also to train your mind to find the way to creatively solve challenges, when it appears to everyone else that there is no hope. Tune into this week’s episode of The Startup Chat to learn about what is possible when you apply and activate persistence techniques into your life. As well as Steli and Hiten’s top tips for how to get started. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:30 What is HUCA? 01:45 The power of HUCA. 03:00 Where using HUCA can actively help you. 04:17 How does HUCA apply to opportunities. 04:42 The limitations of making assumptions. 05:45 HUCA case study. 07:03 The power of moving forward against challenges. 08:01 How to apply persistence in all parts of your life. 09:50 Ideas for where you can use HUCA in your life. 10:31 Self reflection to improve your persistence and application of HUCA in your life. 3 Key Points: Kids use HUCA really well. Just because 1 person at a company says no or tells you it can not be done, doesn’t mean you can not approach someone else. Ask yourself, where I could be more persistent?. [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 in today’s episode of The Startup Chat, I wanted to talk about an acronym I just learned recently, which is HUCA. H-U-C-A. And it stands for “hang up, call again.” And I feel like there’s a lot of lessons that could be learned for founders and startups in that little philosophy approach. And it’s funny because I learned it from my co-founder, Thomas, who is the most engineering mind I know. We call him AI, just to give you a sense about his character. We’re still working on upgrading his human chip. But just like a brilliant developer. He’s not a sales guy, he’s not like a super, outgoing, hustling type of person. But he is a travel hacker. He travels a ton. He knows more about the travel industry and flight companies than most people that work in that industry. He can tell you all the little tricks, how to get all these flight upgrades, everything for free, how to use points. It’s insane. He’s really a genius when it comes to that. And so I had a problem recently with trying to rebook a flight and I had to call the airline hotline, whatever, and try to figure out if somebody could help me change some details on my flight. And I was slacking with him and chatting with him “Hey, how do I approach this?” Because I know he’s so good at it. And he was like “Well, what did the agent say?” I’m like “The agent told me it can’t be done.” He’s like “Well, just HUCA.” I’m like “What does that mean?” He’s like “Just hang up, call again.” He told me he typically does this three to four times before he gets an agent who can get done what he wants them to get done for them. And that blew my mind and I talked to him about this afterwards but the basic concept of saying when you talk to somebody at a company and they tell you that they cannot help you or they cannot give you a solution, it doesn’t mean there’s no solution and nobody can help you. It just means you’re talking to the wrong person, so just hang up and call again the same hotline. You get rerouted to another agent and you just try again. And he’s like “Sometimes it’s with the first one, but at the worst it took me four to five times and the fifth time I got an agent that did the thing I wanted them to do.” Whereas everybody else was telling him that it can’t be done. And I don’t know, that hang up call again metaphor to me feels like one that could be applied in many different areas, but I wanted to share this. I don’t know if you knew about this, if you had heard this, if I’m the only one that has never heard about this acronym before. But I thought it might make for a fun episode to chat a little bit about it.   [0:02:43] Hiten Shah: Yeah, I’ve heard it before. This is especially important when you’re talking to a call center. And you have many different levels and different styles of people that might be on the other line. I think the interesting aspects of this are when you start applying it to your life in general. And I think you’ll see kids do this. So what kids do is they’ll ask one parent something. If that parent says no, they’ll go to the other parent as if they never asked the first parent they asked, right? And so I think they knew the HUCA technique really, really well. And that’s probably a good example of in life, what you can do.   [0:03:28] Steli Efti: Yeah, I love that. I didn’t make the connection to children until you brought it up, but it’s brilliant. Because you’re right, they’ll ask both. But if there are more people available, let’s say it’s a birthday party and they want to do something, they ask the mom. The mom says no. They ask the dad, the dad says no. Then they’ll go to the grandfather, to an uncle, to the neighbor. They’ll go to any adult until some adult says yes and then they’ll have their permission to go do the thing. So they don’t really care about that. I was really thinking about this very much from a perspective of business development, sales, press, PR. We’ve talked about this quite a bit, even on the podcast, my life philosophy of following up and following through and going again. But that’s mostly following up with the same person. Or trying again with the same kind of person. But what I realized that I haven’t talked a lot about is that sometimes when you deal with a company, approaching different people in that company to get what you want to get done is something that a lot of times people don’t think about and it’s not that complicated, but they’ll just ping one writer. Let’s take the press example. They’ll ping one writer at a big publication. That writer will ping them back and say “Sorry, not interested.” Actually, yeah, not interested. And they just think, oh, the publication rejected me. They are not interested. But they didn’t have an all hands on deck meeting with every single employee at that publication looking at your proposal and all together in unison rejecting it. It was just one person that said no. So you ping somebody else and they’ll say yes and I was wondering when I brought up the press example, I was like, as I was saying let’s take the PR example, I was thinking to myself, why am I choosing the PR example. And while I was speaking, I realized probably because I just did this. I’m a little bit hungover today, so I might be slower than on the average episode. But we just had this with Forbes where I pitched a story to one person over long periods of time, followed up, followed up and then eventually we started having a conversation and she rejected the story. And then we found somebody else and we approached the story with a little bit of a different angle because it was a different writer with a different focus, and that person just emailed me back this morning saying “Yes, I’d love to write about this,” and was totally interested. So that’s probably subconsciously why the PR thing popped up because it’s like just because one person at a company says no, or tells you that something can’t be done or something isn’t an interesting proposition for that organization doesn’t mean that you cannot re-approach the org and find somebody else. Hang up, call again. Try somebody else and see if that person is gonna be a better fit or maybe more open to your suggestion or proposal. And I don’t think most of us think that way. Most of us think when somebody rejects us from Company X, we have been rejected by that organization, by Company X in general and we just leave it alone.   [0:06:43] Hiten Shah: Yeah, it’s really funny that I’m talking to you about this, mainly because I’ve learned persistence from you. So it’s like hey, just be persistent. So I think HUCA is another sort of form of that and it comes from that whole idea of if they won’t give you the answer you want, keep going and keep asking people until they give you the answer you want, or do the thing that you want them to do. And I think the same applies to many aspects of life. The PR one is really great because that’s such a common thing that happens with PR. That people are inundated with stories and not every single person is gonna be right to tell your story, basically. Because that’s what PR is. You’re telling someone else’s story if you’re writing or something like that. And so I love that example and I think it’s really powerful. I wish I did it more, to be honest.   [0:07:41] Steli Efti: Man, I wish I did it more. I’m doing this quite a bit in my life, but part of it is probably in my DNA, but a lot of it was also just learnt and practiced. But in this example, this is such a … Maybe it was such a powerful example for me, so eye-opening, because this was in a context where I would have never done that. In the context of calling a hotline, for instance, and asking an agent for help, I would never think to hang up and call again and talk to another agent about the same problem. I had never done that before. And to me, it was always like if one service report agent told me “No, we can’t do this. The policy is XYZ, sorry.” I would just accept that, which is hard to believe. But often times, I’ll just be like oh, okay. And accept it. And when he told me that he would call three or four times until he gets an agent that can get the job done for him. I was like holy shit, here’s a whole area of my life where for the last 35 years, the last 30 years, I could have solved so many problems if I was just a bit more persistent and if I didn’t take a no for an answer in those kind of situations. And I was like I always took no for an answer, in that context. Different in sales, different in many other areas in my life, but that made me think, and I think this is maybe gonna be the call to action for this short episode for people who are listening, it made me think or ask myself the question “What other areas in my life are blind spots where I could be a bit more persistent or just have a better attitude about not accepting the first no or not accepting whatever is given to me as truth or reality or limitations? What are areas where I’m too easily accepting of limitations or realities or push-backs or no’s that I could apply the hang up, call again philosophy, the persistent philosophy, the re-approaching philosophy, to get more of what I want in life and to get more done?” And there were a bunch of things that popped up in my mind. So this is even for somebody like me who is known for the only thing I’m good at, which is persistence, I don’t have any other talent, so that’s the thing people know me for, even I … There’s probably so many areas in my life where I don’t do this. This was a big one where I was like “Holy shit. I would have never ever thought to do that.” And the person I was talking to was telling me no and then I called again. At the second call, I got somebody that solved the problem, got me the rebook, got everything done for me. And I was mind blown because shit, I would have never done this. I would have never called again and ask somebody the same question from the same kind of airline company. So it’s such a simple life philosophy, but I think that if you feel like you need to be more persistent and kind of re-approach, retry, then maybe today’s the day. Just ask yourself what’s one area, what’s one thing you’re trying to accomplish. And end the episode by taking an action of following up or re-approaching, re-pinging, hanging up, calling again, whatever that means in the metaphor for that thing. But if you feel like you’re doing really well, maybe you can ask yourself, like I did, what could be an area where I could be doing better? Or what could be a blind spot area where I could be more persistent or less accepting of the first no, the first rejection or obstacle. Yeah, HUCA. Hang up and call again. Blew my mind. I hope that some people listening today are gonna be inspired to take that little bit of an attitude into their startup, into their work and life and accomplish a lot more with it.   [0:11:33] Hiten Shah: HUCA. Hang up and call again. Don’t forget to do that. It’s key everywhere, all the time. Alright. Till next time.   [0:11:43] Steli Efti: Till next time. Bye guys. [0:11:44] The post 310: HUCA (Hang Up Call Again) appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.