In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about strengths and weaknesses. They define how to identify, if your mindset, is set to say “I am really good at this, I’ll keep doing it” or “I am bad at this, I am going to get better”. They also look at how strengths and weaknesses can affect your employees and business. While strengths and weaknesses, can be a useful tool to assess our own or another person’s skills. They are most useful, when paired in some way with an outcome. So if you want to be an athlete, you will have to train towards being the best and if you are in business you will have to hire to achieve your business outcomes. Tune into this week’s episode of The Startup Chat to see how strengths and weaknesses tie in to your life & business, If you are motivated to double down on one or fix the other. Steli and Hiten, also share some interesting insights into how to move forward from the strength and weakness paradigm within your business, to build and work with the best team possible. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:43 A question from a friend. 02:16 Defining the weakness focus. 03:10 Defining the strength focus. 05:02 Where to focus? 06:03 Interesting questions on strengths & weaknesses. 06:30 A system for working with employees. 07:52 About change and expectations. 08:43 Change within business. 10:21 In the choosing the right people business. 14:59 The difference between not wanting to and not being able to. 3 Key Points: No one can be good at everything. You are looking for that person who has that drive; on learning, on changing, on improving. Strengths and weakness are just the beginning, not the end. [0:00:00] Steli Efti: Hey, everyone. This is Steli Efti.   [0:00:03] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. On today’s episode, we’re going to talk about strengths and weaknesses and how to coach either yourself or somebody else on your team or even a friend about strengths and weaknesses. I think it’s a super fascinating topic. I know you brought it up, Steli, and we jumped right into it. Why don’t you give us some context on the framing of where this came from?   [0:00:25] Steli Efti: Yeah. A founder friend of mine, a very young person, very successful, hired his first few employees, and he sent me a WhatsApp message, an audio message, basically asking for advice because he hired this person that’s incredibly talented and has proven that he has amazing abilities in certain areas, but has some real weaknesses as well. My founder friend was basically saying, “Yo, Steli, what should I do here? Should I … The weaknesses are, they are annoying me, but I really love this person’s strengths and so I’m now thinking should I focus my energy on coaching my employee out of those weaknesses? Or do I just need to find work arounds or do I need to take that type of work off his plate and just focus on encouraging him to do the things that he’s doing really well even better? Basically, should I focus on my employee’s weaknesses or strengths? How should I coach him? How should I approach this situation?” I know that … It seems like an age-old debate. Should you double down on your strengths or try to make up for your weaknesses and be well-rounded? I thought it would be an interesting discussion to have between the two of us. I’m actually curious to hear what you say about this, although, I have a hunch.   [0:01:57] Hiten Shah: You know what? I think it actually depends on who you are and what your personality is like or what you really believe about yourself. There are some people out there that are like, “Oh, I suck at that. I’m going to get better at that and I’m going to get better at that just because I know I suck at it and I really want to get better at it.” That is a drive that I would say, a weakness based drive. Right?   [0:02:25] Steli Efti: Right.   [0:02:25] Hiten Shah: What drives you? Something where you’re weak or something where you suck or something where you really get that drive to make yourself better? I think those are … A lot of that is like the athlete’s mentality in a lot of ways because like as an athlete, you do suck coming in. You are a beginner at that point. I don’t want to say that the answer is “Oh, just always focus on one or the other” ’cause I don’t think it works like that in my experience working with people, working with myself, too. The other side of it is the people who are like, “Oh, I’m really good at this so what I’m going to do is I’m going to keep doing this and continue to be the best in the world at this or one of the best in the world at this and not worry about things I’m no good at.” Part of this, to be honest, I don’t bring this stuff up a lot, but it does matter. I think and I hate to believe this, Steli, this is one of those effed up things really, but I think that over time as every decade that goes by that you’re alive, you end up actually deciding that you should focus more on your strengths than your weaknesses. I don’t know if it’s ’cause you’re lazier. I don’t know if it’s ’cause you’ve spent so much time perfecting a certain skill set that you might have, but I believe that’s what happens to humans. Over time, they get less and less focused on their weaknesses and more and more focused on their strengths. I think that’s ’cause over time, you develop some strengths. You start realizing what gives you energy and what doesn’t. You start realizing what you’re great at and what you’re not. That’s why I didn’t want to say that hey, it’s one or the other ’cause there’s some people who are like, “My strength is that I can find things I suck at and get good enough at them really quickly.” That’s a strength in itself. Right?   [0:04:17] Steli Efti: Yep.   [0:04:18] Hiten Shah: But that means you’re finding weaknesses and getting better at them, but at the same time, it’s like, “How much is there possible that you can do in the world?” A ton. The possibilities are endless so then it becomes like, “Well, what’s a strength? What’s a weaknesses at the end of the day?”   [0:04:35] Steli Efti: Yeah. You push it to a very philosophical degree at the end of the day, but you know what I love? Is that I knew your answer would be “It depends.” In one way or another, I didn’t know how you would say it, but I was guessing that your answer would be “It depends.” That’s one of the reasons why I love you because most people would have a opinion one way or another. They would be like, “I think you need to always double down on your strengths. Strengths, strengths, strengths. Forget about your weaknesses. Who cares? Strengths.” And some people are like, “Well, you can’t afford to have … Really big weaknesses. You need to be well-rounded; generally good in many areas.” Context truly matters in this case. I do agree and I do think that over long periods of time, people tend to focus on their strengths. I don’t think that that’s necessarily a bad thing. It’s interesting to ask why that is. I think an easy and convenient theory would be just to say, “Well, people focus on their strengths because over time … They realize that focusing on your strengths pays bigger dividends in their eye. There’s a lot more upside potential in improving what’s already strong than in trying to fix all of the things that are wrong. Nobody can be good at everything, but I like the question of like, “Huh, is this because we get lazier? Is this because we’re less curious?” Maybe it’s because we’re less optimistic about our ability to truly change. We get more cynical as we accumulate more experience. We get more heartbroken because we try to fix all these weaknesses and failed at it so we just subscribe now to the philosophy that we should just ignore our weaknesses and focus and double down on our strengths. I think when it comes to … In this specific situation, my first response to this founder was “Well, first of all, it might be time to step back and ask yourself if you knew what you know about this employee today, if you knew that before you hired him, would you have still hired him for this position?” Because what he’s really good at and what he’s really bad at, it depends how much that matters in terms of what your company size is, what work really needs to get done. Maybe this person’s really amazing in an area that will be important down the line, but today, right now, where you’re just three or four people, it’s not that important. The thing that this person’s really weak at is the most important thing you need right now so it truly depends on what those weaknesses are and strengths are on what you have to focus on and what you can afford or not afford. The other thing is also what level of awareness does this employee have about his weaknesses and strengths and what willingness and motivation and inspiration does this individual have to double down on one or to fix the other? Because … The one experience that I’ve had, Hiten, over many, many experiences with people, coaching people, mentoring people, working with people is that changing people is hard. Changing yourself, I think, in the right moment can be really easy and I think a human being can change in a second. I don’t truly believe that it takes years to change. I think often times it takes years to get ready for change, but once you’re ready, a human being can change in a heartbeat, but a human being ready is not just about them being willing, it’s not just them wanting it, it’s them being ready. Often times, people want to change, but they just aren’t ready for change. In some cases, there’s decades of them being … willing to change and not ready. Just because you think somebody should change doesn’t mean that they want to change and just because somebody tells you they want to change doesn’t mean they’re ready to change. I’ve wasted a lot of time and energy on people that wanted to change, but they’re not quite ready yet. It can be a very heartbreaking experience for both sides and very frustrating experience for both sides. Today I’m much more cautious to be like, “Do I really want to be in the changing people’s business or do I want to be in the picking the right people business?” I’d much rather bring in the right people to work with then bring in people because I think they have “potential” and then wanting to change them so they become who I want them to be. That’s number one, but then also number two, if somebody comes to me and says they want to grow or change in one way or another and they want my help, I’m still, I believe in humans. I’m excited about their journey of growth, personal and with others, but I’m much more cautious to not just take their willingness as the only ingredient that’s necessary. There’s a lot more to it and I’m not quite sure what all those ingredients are to be honest, but a lot of this, it truly matters. Okay. You hired a person to do a job. Now you tell me this person’s doing some thing’s really well and some thing’s not. Well, if you knew who this person is, would you have hired this person three months ago? Are the things that they’re really good, are those the most important things in your business today? And the things that they’re really bad at not that tragic just inconvenient? Or vise versa. All that truly matters. If it is somebody that has strengths in an area that is not crucial today and has weaknesses that really bother you or that really hurt the business, I would part ways no matter how talented the person is.   [0:10:13] Hiten Shah: I think choosing the right people is the business you should be in. Always. I think that that could include somebody that you feel like can learn fast. For me, … I know this gets into strengths and weaknesses is really about people. Previously, we talked more about just yourself, right?   [0:10:34] Steli Efti: Yeah. Yeah.   [0:10:35] Hiten Shah: I think you’re really talking about other people, how you think about their strengths and weaknesses, which I love as a topic. It’s probably one of my favorite topics. My take is that especially when you’re looking at a business and hiring people, you always want to find people who can learn fast. It doesn’t matter if they can learn something new that they’re not … What I mean is it doesn’t matter if they’re in sales or marketing or product or engineering or any category or any part of your business, if they can learn fast, that single characteristic will make them successful anywhere, if they just can learn fast. I know that sounds really crazy and there’s a lot of other factors to someone working out well, but to me, it’s not about strengths and weaknesses when it comes to choosing the right people. It’s actually about can they learn fast? An example would be pushing them and saying in a interview like, “What are your strengths and weaknesses? How do you describe them?” What you’re looking to see is how they’ve overcome some of them. We need weaknesses and also often times, it means overcoming your strengths, too, because the thing that a lot of people do is their strengths is what they keep falling back to when they don’t know what to do and if those strengths are limited, then they’re going to fall back to a limited mental model, a limited mentality about how to solve a problem or how to do something. My take on this is it’s actually about can someone learn? Can someone change? Those things are so much more valuable when you’re choosing the right people than just looking at their strengths and weaknesses that exist today because, by definition, if they can learn and change, they will be able to learn and change. They will be able to augment their weaknesses and their strengths. To me, assessing strengths and weaknesses is super important to figure out where they might need to change and improve and learn and then making sure they’re someone who’s willing to change, improve and learn.   [0:12:41] Steli Efti: And how do you know? How do you determine that?   [0:12:44] Hiten Shah: You ask them. Straight up. I just ask people like, “I mean do you like to change? How do you feel about change? How do you feel about learning? How fast do you think you learn new things?” The answer is counterintuitive. Usually you want the person that says, “I don’t actually learn new things really fast.” And you’re like, “What do you mean by that?” Then they start telling you how frustrated they get when they can’t figure something out fast and you’re like, “Okay.” ‘Cause fast is a relative word. To me, the people who say they can learn fast, they tend to be actually, in my experience at least talking to people, they tend to be much slower at learning than people who say, “I don’t think I’m fast enough at learning.” ‘Cause you’re looking for that person that has that drive on learning and changing and improving. That’s my take on it because I don’t think strengths and weaknesses are as important as we put it out to be because you want people who can learn. You don’t really care so much about where someone is at today except for the fact that wherever they’re at today, you’re hiring them so they can get better. You’re not hiring them so they stay the same. To me, assessing their ability to improve, ability to change is so much more important. Strengths and weaknesses are a key part of that, but they aren’t the only thing. That’s why I hate it when people tell me “Oh, this person’s good at that and they stuck at that.” I’m like, “Yeah. Okay. That doesn’t tell me anything. That tells me what you think about them, but it doesn’t really tell me in the future, are they going to be able to improve those things?” ‘Cause that’s really what you’re looking to figure out. Can they get better at what they suck at today? Even in addition to that, whatever strengths they have, are they good strengths for the role that you’re hiring them for? Are they important? ‘Cause I have people I’ve hired, senior people, and I know them really well in terms of strengths and weaknesses often times better than they know themselves. Then what happens is you’re not putting them in certain scenarios and you’re asking them honestly like, “Do you want to get better at that?” And they tell you, “No. I don’t want to get better at that,” that’s awesome, as long as there’s somebody who can get better period. I have a person I work with, pretty closely. They tell me that they don’t want to do X, Y and Z, these things. “I don’t want to be manager.” That’s a good example, I think. This person tells me that. “I don’t want to be a manager. I suck at being a manager. I’m not good at being a manager.” I stopped this person right away and say, “Wait. You know if you wanted to be a manager, you can get great at being a manager, right?” They’re like, “Yeah. Of course.” I’m like, “Okay. Then stop saying that you’re a bad manager. You’ve never even tried it. You don’t want to.” Not wanting to get better at something you suck at is different than not being able to get better at something you suck at. Sorry for my rant, but like this thing’s like-   [0:15:42] Steli Efti: I love it.   [0:15:42] Hiten Shah: It just inspired me to think about like, “Oh, man. This is about hiring people and assessing people.” Strengths and weaknesses are just the beginning, not the end.   [0:15:51] Steli Efti: I love it. That’s the quote. “Strengths and weaknesses are just the beginning, not the end.” Boom.   [0:15:55] Hiten Shah: Not the end. There you go.   [0:15:57] Steli Efti: That’s it.   [0:15:57] Hiten Shah: There you go.   [0:15:58] Steli Efti: That’s it. There you go. There you have it. That’s it from us for this episode and we’ll hear you very soon.   [0:16:04] Hiten Shah: See you. [0:16:05] Quick note: Are you looking for a CRM for your coaching business? Close.io is an CRM with calling and emailing that coaching companies love! The post 289: Coach Your Team Members’ Weaknesses or Double-Down on Strengths? appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about the lies that startup founders and staff tell to make their company look better than it really is. They highlight that lying has been and remains a commonly accepted way to communicate, popularised by successful startups and founders. This social acceptance has left founders without the awareness of how damaging lies are for the very thing that they are trying to protect, their company. Lying is defined as deliberately making a false statement with the intention of deceiving the person receiving the information. We have all heard the euphemism ‘fake it till you make it’, but appearing to be perfect isn’t believable for any business. Many founders see lying as part of the ‘day to day’ of keeping their startup running. But the value of being vulnerable and honest, may be the missing ingredient to resonating with the people most important to your company. Tune into this week’s episode of The Startup Chat to explore the question ‘Why do Startups Lie?’ and why lying can damage your companies image. Steli and Hiten, show how all companies have things go wrong and most companies are struggling with something. They define the kinds of lies that founders tell and look at alternative ways of communicating. Time Stamped Show Notes: 02:02 The startup grey zone. 02:25 Lying popularized on the road to success. 03:40 Buying into the ‘Hero’s Journey’. 04:24 Definition of being a founder. 04:52 Why do founders lie? 08:19 An example of a lie that a startup may tell. 09:14 The pros and cons of lying. 12:14 The main reason not to lie. 12:56 The perception of lying. 16:10 The price of lying. 3 Key Points: There’s a difference between lying and framing your problems in a way that is productive for your company. You are paying the price for every little lie you speak, and the price just isn’t worth it. First, you have to recognise that you are lying then you have to stop it.   [0:00:00] Steli: Hey everybody this is Steli.   [0:00:03] Hiten: And this is Hiten Shah.   [0:00:05] Steli: Today in the startup chat we will talk about start up lies. Here’s why I want to talk about this with you specifically. In recent months there have been a few cases where founders that are friends of mine or founders that I’ve been advising … That have kind of uncovered or told me that they’ve been lying to either investors, their team members or their families. They’ve been lying for a variety of reasons and they didn’t say, “I’m lying,” just in my conversation with them I realized holy shit, he or she’s lying about X, Y and Z and I could get into some examples very quickly. The first time it happened it kind of broke my heart and it made me think wow I’m so glad I don’t have to deal with any of this in my life and it feels so distant like running a company where you have to lie to investors or ask friends to sign up and put in their credit card so you can in your next board meeting report some fake … Like just that type of shit but the recent example I had was again one where through a startup employee I basically learned that one of my … A startup that a friend of mine is running that they’re bending the truth in a way that I would call a lie to make certain numbers look good for the investors and I was like shit I need to talk to about this. Like this idea of a lot of startups think that … A lot of times do live in the gray zone right, there is black and white and all sort of do things that are sometimes not fully legal and do things that are slightly ethically questionable and there’s a lot of stories of founders getting away with it and becoming successful and never hurting anybody. So, I feel like a lot of the founders because of the pressure they get and because of the maybe all these stories out there of like I don’t know, Steve Jobs on stage pretending something’s working whatever it was I don’t remember the story exactly like some kind of interface working but it was really working. We know all these kind of stories and maybe startup founders in particular feel like it’s okay to lie or bend the truth to get to the next milestone or to survive or to avoid conflict or to not rock the boat with their employees and team members. I have strong opinions about this but I want to hear yours as well. I just want to talk about this. Is it okay, is it cool to lie, why do startups lie, let’s unpack this. Let’s talk about it.   [0:02:54] Hiten: Why do startups lie? Oh my god.   [0:02:57] Steli: Why do founders lie, I don’t know.   [0:03:01] Hiten: Why do people lie Steli?   [0:03:03] Steli: Why do people lie?   [0:03:04] Hiten: Let’s start with startups and founders I think that’s solid topic and the truth is I don’t think most founders when they lie know that they’re really actually telling a lie that’s going to hurt them. What I mean by that is excuse me, all the stories we hear are all about straight up like how successful these companies were or how much they struggled in the beginning and then they figured it out. I’m talking about like the best case stories of struggle and then they figured it out and I can give lots of examples but every single company has some form of that early like hero’s journey type of story, right?   [0:03:46] Steli: Right.   [0:03:46] Hiten: And so I think people have just gotten to believe in someone else’s story and the way these stories developed and so you know, the reason I’m mentioning that is like I just think founders get a lot of things in their heads especially first time founders about what being a founder is. My opinion is that what being a founder is, being a founder is being a business owner that’s it. Maybe it’s a different type of business owner because you have a lot more risk on your business and the product and what you’re creating but who doesn’t? Even a coffee shop owner who just opened a coffee shop in a corner or a restaurant owner whatever, these things that have been around before tech and before startups, what we call startups today, these are the old startups. They had the same as business and I think that people don’t realize that lying in business gets you in a lot of trouble and the lies come from the fact that you just want to look good. You want to sound like you’re always crushing it so part of this to me is like this whole crushing it factor like “Oh, I’m crushing it I’m doing really well.” Even if everything’s just hitting the fan all the time. Even some of the largest companies that are out there that are growing super fast, shit’s hitting the fan all the time and so I think there’s a difference between lying and framing your problems in a way that’s productive for you.   [0:05:13] Steli: All right, so let’s unpack that because here’s the bottom line from my perspective and I think most people would be surprised by that because I’m such a loud mouth and people are like sales guy probably has no ethical problems bending the truth all the way to a fool full on lie but actually-   [0:05:31] Hiten: They don’t know you so drop the bomb.   [0:05:34] Steli: I actually hate that shit, I’m incredibly uncomfortable with anything like it. I am not uncomfortable at all with giving you an edited version of the truth not when it’s again not when it’s getting to the territory of a lie but I can say, “Hey, we are offering you a limited access offer, we’re going to partner with 10 companies, now we’re currently talking to 20 and we’re selective who’s going to be part of it.” That’s all truth that makes it seem like there’s a lot of demand and very little supply, I make myself very attractive and I might be talking to you and I’ve said that I have a bunch of calls and conversations and they might all not lead to anything but that to me is very different from telling you, “Well we have already 40 companies agreeing to work with us and you could be one of them.” When in fact no company is agreed to working with us yet. To me there’s a huge difference between framing something in a positive way and in a strong way and outright lying about the truth.   [0:06:34] Hiten: People lie because they think it’s better to lie and they’re going to look better. In fact when someone catches you in a lie you look really bad and then they don’t want to do business with you, they don’t want to help you. I think like it’s almost like a psychological nuance in a way the difference between a lie and like you said framing something in a positive light. I just want to tell people not to lie but that’s very dangerous because I think people don’t know that they’re lying. It’s like this weird thing with founders especially where they want to believe that what already … Like their whole job is to create what doesn’t exist all the time. So, if you’re here trying to create what doesn’t exist there’s some part of you that has to believe it already exists. What do you do with that part of you, what do you do? My trick there, what I would say is, don’t ever tell anyone anything that doesn’t exist, just don’t but you can tell yourself whatever the heck you need to to keep going.   [0:07:43] Steli: You can tell yourself any lie that positively impacts your actions.   [0:07:47] Hiten: All day.   [0:07:48] Steli: All day.   [0:07:49] Hiten: All day. Do not speak that to anybody else.   [0:07:54] Steli: Yeah, we’ll talk about this for a second. I want to actually unpack why people shouldn’t lie instead of just keeping it conceptually is like lying is bad, talk about like real consequences. What are the pros and cons practically.   [0:08:05] Hiten: Yeah, but Steli lying is bad.   [0:08:09] Steli: Lying is bad but I want to talk about why but even another example recently I didn’t even realize it we were just talking about this, I need to be careful how I’m going to speak about this not to say too much but we’re partnering with many different companies right now doing all kinds of different cool marketing campaigns and stuff like that and just a recent example where a company sent over some copy of promoting something with us and that copy had facts in there that weren’t true. Saying specific numbers about something that just was not true yet and I was like why are we saying this and is this actually true? I don’t think so and our internal team was like “No.” They seem to be doing this. This seems to be common practice on how their team is promoting things and I was like well but it’s not common practice on how we’re promoting things and is lying in this email really going to bring massive success? I don’t think that this specific fact really matters as much so we took it out but it made me feel a certain way about that company and it is just a general thing I think when you’ve been around the block like you have and I have, we’re much more critical when we hear companies talk about how green their grass is and how amazing everything is they do, you kind of go, “Well maybe, maybe not.” I’ve seen enough companies behind the scenes to know that everybody is fucked and everybody has problems. I don’t know it was just another recent example of a company just being super comfortable. It’s part of the way that they market things, to just use numbers that are factually not true and seeing how uncomfortable I was with it although this is not like lying to investors, this is not going to really harm anybody, it’s just … It’s an inconsequential lie other than that I felt like it’s totally unnecessary to do that. I do think and we can go now into the consequences, I do think it matters a lot because the moment I speak up against that, the people on my team get reaffirmed that when I tell them things they can trust me because I’m not comfortable telling even a stranger a lie. I do think how can people within a company, how can my team members and everybody that works with me and my customers, how can all these people my family my friends, how can they trust what I tell them if they know I’m lying to other people. If I know that you’re lying to other people I will assume that you might not be trustworthy and things you’re telling me might not always be true and all of a sudden this is a tidy little thing but I think setting that example internally and going, no we’re not going to lie in this because that’s not what we do, sets either example of how you want your team members and employees to treat customers and to do marketing and sales and all that but it also reflects to them knowing, “Hey, when Steli says things they’re probably true because he’s not comfortable lying even in the tiniest least consequential way possible.”   [0:11:23] Hiten: I think it’s really important you reinforce things like that and it’s because you don’t want people around you lying either and you want your culture to be very honest. It’s like this, I think you have to really think about if you lie whether you can get away with it or not and I know that sounds weird because we’re talking about not lying but it’s like really if you think you get lie and get away with it, your ability to remember all these lies over time is not going to be very good and you will not be able to get away with it. I think it’s like it’s not … The reason you shouldn’t lie is so that you just make your life easier because otherwise you have to remember what you told different people all the time. You have to remember all those lies that you said that you probably don’t even believe and that’s when I think things go really wrong. People tend to remember these things that you say to them and so if you’re constantly making shit up and telling them oh I have a customer when you actually don’t, there’s this other level especially around sales and customers and all that where it’s like somebody and this is totally we’re talking about because this is what I mean by people don’t know they’re lying. Well if I believe that I’m going to close a deal next week, right Steli?   [0:12:54] Steli: Yup.   [0:12:55] Hiten: And say, “Hey I’m going to close five deals next week, I’ve already got them down the pipeline, they’re at this stage bla bla bla,” and I only close three. Did I lie to you?   [0:13:06] Steli: It depends. If you really believed you could close five and you had enough indication for it no, you didn’t lie. You just said wrong expectations.   [0:13:17] Hiten: See that’s interesting. I think that someone else could look at that and say, “Oh no you lied to me.” My whole point in saying that is if you’re not sure don’t say it. If you’re not sure you’re going to close the five don’t say it or because you could say it in a different way and say, “Look, based on the stages we’re at, it looks like five deals will close next week but Steli you know how deals work. There could be something we miss, we’re still early.” you know, if you’re early. So, I think that honesty is more about giving people context when you say something and that helps you not lie. That helps no one else think you’re lying. The reason is a lot of this is perception and that’s really the big problem with this. Like you said that wasn’t a lie. I agree it probably wasn’t a lie but if you did do it and you said you were going to do it generally that means you’re lying.   [0:14:08] Steli: It definitely means that you’re going to pay a cost in credibility. It means that I’m not going to take you as serious next time you say something or I will judge your character as somebody that is overly optimistic or doesn’t have good judgment on how realistic a deal is to close and come through or not but I honestly think that … I’m not even talking about these like being overly optimistic or having some kind of a slightly distorted view of the reality of what could be done or could be accomplished, I’m talking about people saying I have three customers when you don’t. I’m talking about people saying, “Hey, my 10 friends can you log in and put in your credit card, I’m going to give you that money back I just need to show that I had some paying upgraded customers in my next meeting with investors.” I’m like this is absolutely nothing to do with being overly optimistic. This is … You’re just lying to get over some kind of bomb crisis to look good, to feel confident when you talk, “This is my first customer I need to … When they ask me “Do you have other customers?” We’re just going to say “yes” because we’re afraid to say no. That shit like yes we have other customers, it’s not true. It has nothing to do with being optimistic and I think that oftentimes people do it I mean obviously they do it because they think they need … Because they either are afraid of conflict, of a confrontation that could happen, they’re afraid of the consequences maybe, “I’m not going to be able to close my first customer if I don’t lie to some.” Or maybe “I’m not going to be able to keep the investors to supporting us if we show them that we still have not gotten a single upgraded account here.” People are for “Maybe my employees will lose trust and not want to keep working with me as hard if they see that extra financing hasn’t come through.” So I’m lying to people to not have to deal with the negative consequences but it doesn’t matter if you can get away with a lie or not, I think honestly you know, ultimately you know you’re lying so it’s going to affect your mood, it’s going to affect your body language, it’s going to affect your spirit, your mind, it’s going to affect you. Other people in close proximity will pick it up even if it’s your co-founder and they’re in on the line. Now your co-founder knows that you’re willing to lie. If you’re willing to lie to somebody else you might be lying to them so how much trust can there really be between you. Your employees like … Even if the lie doesn’t come out and becomes a huge deal because you lied to an investor and the investor is suing you or kicking you out of the company, even if it doesn’t get to that extreme case of consequence, you’re paying a price for every little lie you speak and the price is just not fucking worth it. It is not worth it. If you can’t be confident while maintaining the truth, you’re just not cut out for this shit. I mean honestly you’re just not and this is coming from somebody, I’ll tell you I don’t remember like I thought about this not just to be preaching to others but I don’t know about you you seem like an incredibly honest person but I you know, growing up as a kid, I was a liar, I was lying quite a lot. Never really anything too big which is even worse like I would not say any gross, painful really significant lie but I would lie all the time about little things for no reason whatsoever just to make a conversation go smooth or to make myself seem more interesting. In a social setting I would slightly edit the truth X happened would add X+1 to make the story funnier or to make something more interesting and I don’t even know why I was doing that. All the way to my 20s I just lied about a lot of little things and I felt totally comfortable with it and I don’t even remember right now when the shift happened internally for me, when I decided no I don’t want to fucking do this anymore and when I completely stopped lying about anything whenever possible and this even goes to my children. I had a big debate with my mother the other day that lied to my two boys for little things. She basically said, “There’s no chocolate in the house.” They wanted some more chocolate from their grandma she’s like “Oh, sorry I don’t have any more chocolate.” Although she has more chocolate and then I went in the whole debate with her that I’d like to tell my children, “I don’t want to give you more chocolate because you already had enough, chocolate is not good for your body and I have made the decision that you’re not going to get any more,” verses telling them “Oh, we don’t have any chocolate any more.” Telling them these small little bullshit lies because I don’t like to lie to my children. I don’t like to lie to anybody and I don’t know when that shift happened but I think for many people that shift just doesn’t happen and they feel especially in like high stress situations, they feel like as a founder it’s okay for me to tell this lie to investors because we’re going to … The reality is going to catch up to it. Next week I am going to close these customers, I am going to get ten upgrades, I am going to catch up with that lie and then everything is going to be fine but it’s not, it’s not. You’re paying a really high price. It breaks my heart when I see founders lying to employees, to co-founders, to investors, to customers, it’s just a shitty thing to do and it’s going to be bad for you ultimately. We talked about this I want to shout out some episodes here. We talked about fire fighting in business in episode 84 and we talked about crisis management for startups in episode 128. Both episodes I think are super important for founders that feel like they need to lie, listen to those two episodes to hear why those other solutions to this as well.   [0:19:57] Hiten: You don’t need to lie. First you’ve got to recognize that you’re lying.   [0:20:01] Steli: First you’ve got to recognize that you’re lying and then you need to decide to stop it. You can be a successful founder without lying, you can get through crisis situations without lying, you can have confrontations and use the truth and still come out okay, you really can and if you the people that are listening to us right now if there’s anybody out there that’s listening to this and feels like we’re criticizing them personally and feel like they’re in a situation where they cannot be honest, send us an email and-   [0:20:35] Hiten: Yeah, let us know.   [0:20:36] Steli: At least we’ll brainstorm with you and see if we can offer you a better alternative to what you’re doing right now. Just shoot us an email at @gmail.com and the two of us will try our best to offer you another strategy, another solution and another way.   [0:20:52] Hiten: Yup later.   [0:20:54] Steli: Later. [0:20:54] The post 288: Startup Lies appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about hiring senior team members. They talk about different hiring strategies and how these strategies affect your business and the ability to achieve your businesses short and long term goals. Outcome driven hiring is a highly productive way to align your business goals with recruitment. This comprehensive hiring strategy not only allows for better communication between teams. It also gets rid of departmental silos which can create bottlenecks within the business. One of the main benefits is that everyone within the company has a clear direction. Tune into this week’s episode of The Startup Chat to learn about how to hire leaders for your business, how you can help them to succeed once they have come onboard and how to keep your business vision as the beacon which leads the way for your team. Steli and Hiten’s also speak about their personal experiences and give valid and actionable tips, for paving the way to help your new hires to succeed, on the way to achieving business success. Time Stamped Show Notes: 02:04 A new way to think of hiring for senior positions. 03:20 Reasons for traditional hiring. 03:40 Questions to ask to think differently. 04:36 What is outcome driven hiring 04:45 Hiring against outcomes aligned to the customer journey. 05:50 An example of outcome driven hiring. 07:50 How the sales team could be a good example of how to start. 11:27 Case study on hiring strategies. 11:35 How to get clarity for processes. 14:43 How to succeed when hiring senior team members. 16:10 Managing your hiring expectations. 3 Key Points: The best senior people come in, observe, orient themselves and then they decide what changes need to be made. When hiring be clear of the outcomes that you wish to accomplish with clear processes. You are being lazy of you think that you are going to hire someone to come in to solve all of your problems. [0:00:00] Steli Efti: Hi everybody, this is Steli Efti.   [0:00:04] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shaw.   [0:00:04] Steli Efti: And here’s what I want to talk to you about on this episode. I am currently looking to hire a super senior head of marketing for Close. And I’ve been pinging a few people for recommendations, you know asking them if they know anybody or who they’re looking up to in terms of vital marketing leaders that I should talk to and get advice from. And a good friend of ours, Patrick from Price Intelligently, he sent me an email back that was like well you should really talk to about his outcome based kind of hiring frame work. He was saying how they had some challenges hiring some senior people and you and Marie gave him some advice that really helped him think differently about it. And he felt like I should get that advice myself. And I was like, huh, I’m curious what that advice is. And maybe I’ll just bring it up and see if we can turn it into an episode to see if other people can benefit from that conversation as well. Do you know what he’s referring to?   [0:01:04] Hiten Shah: I do. Very, very familiar. So we went to SaaS Fest, which is Patrick Campbell, from Price Intelligently’s conference who you were talking to, and we were at … It was after the conference and Patrick, Marie, and I are good friends and there’s some stuff coming up that actually we’re gonna do together soon. Thought I should mention that since we’re talking about him and again big fan of his. He’s a pricing expert in not just SaaS but subscription businesses, which is such a big thing now. And he was just having some interesting thoughts around his team and hiring senior people. And I think I can get very philosophical about this so I am gonna spend a second on that. But it’s like when someone says to me today, ‘Hey I want to hire a senior person to do X.’ My first reaction is okay, how many senior people do you have right now? And how do you define a senior person? That’s a whole topic in itself. And this starts with my opinion, which I think we’ve shared a lot, both of us, around like I don’t think the way businesses look today, like large businesses, medium size businesses, are the way that these businesses are gonna look when your business as a smaller business, smaller start up, whatever, gets to that same place in the future. Because the world is completely different than how it used to be. And this idea of department and silos of departments and people being in marketing or being in product or being in these areas. I’m not saying they’re BS. I think there’s a ton of value of having those kind of definitions. But having it siloed so that the teams are working independently, that is where I think there is a big problem with how we think of doing business today. And so when you say I’m gonna hire somebody in marketing, and it’s gonna be a senior person, and it’s because I want to make sure we have more structure. We’re thinking strategically, and also tactically and we’re getting more organized and we’re ready to scale a team, I get all those reasons from a traditional standpoint. What I still don’t hear from most people who want to hire in those roles is, and this is what Patrick was talking about, what are the outcomes that that person is gonna drive? And is it that person? Probably not. It’s actually that team that’s gonna drive those outcomes. And then I go further and say, well look you have a company. Your company’s probably siloed in departments today even though it’s a relatively small company, what is it like 30 people now? Is that right Steli?   [0:03:50] Steli Efti: Yeah that’s about right.   [0:03:51] Hiten Shah: Yeah so it’s like 30 people and you’ve got departments or some kind of area of like product and engineering and marketing and sales and then a couple of executives or whatever you want to call it. But is everyone actually … Do they actually have a goal on their team? And how’s that goal aligned with the customer journey and what the customer goes through? Is it aligned? Probably not, right? So for me it’s more like in the extreme end of this and what Patrick, I think what really got him to get excited about what I was talking about is like this outcome driven process of hiring has everything to do with internally I would recommend to figure out how to have teams that have outcomes that are based on the customer journey. And then what you do is you hire against that. Instead of worrying about senior, not senior, you’re like okay now we’re running. And we’re running a certain way that is based on outcomes, that is based on goals, that is based on targets. And it’s across the company. I mean engineers are involved in this, product’s involved in this, sales is involved in this of course, marketing is involved in this. And everyone has their teams and their collaborating even across teams. But really they’re on a team and the team has to be aligned with the customer journey. I think sales is the easiest department or area of a company to make this happen. And sales is kind of organized that way but not fully because the collaboration between different areas in sales doesn’t always happen in a way to achieve an outcome or a goal. And it’s not experimentation based. It’s more like brute force hustle based in a lot of ways. And so I know that we talk about process and things like that a lot in every part of the company but I think it’s not as deliberate as aligning with the customer journey. Cause then what you would do is your marketing team is focused on a very specific goal of getting people from visiting the website to signing up for a trial or becoming a lead, depending on what you’re doing, if it’s a SaaS business. And there’s an outcome there that they’re targeting. And then your sales team is targeting an outcome from a lead to a closed customer. Then you might have the product team focused on retaining those closed customers. And that includes engineering and all this. And all of a sudden you have three teams. You might not even call them the same name that you call them today, but there’s outcome there. So that’s the easy way to flip this around. And I might not be saying anything novel to a lot of people, but the bottom line is I don’t see companies operating with an experimentation mindset. I don’t see these team collaborating within these teams, and then knowing when the other team gets affected. And how that kind of transition happens for the customer. Anyways that’s my rant on it.   [0:06:32] Steli Efti: Alright.   [0:06:32] Hiten Shah: And the hiring shouldn’t be about I need leadership, in my opinion. It shouldn’t be about I need a senior person. Cause I don’t know a single person who I ask that question to that can answer it until they have this kind of team structure. Cause then you might realize you don’t need a marketing lead. You need more accountability and ownership by each individual team members for the outcomes, which again a sales team is inherently is designed that way, right?   [0:06:58] Steli Efti: Yeah, so most sales teams I’ll agree with you are much more outcome driven than some other teams might be, right? Or the outcomes are less fuzzy often times, much more obvious, easy to track, easy to stand out versus some teams you know they might have a harder time to determine what the outcomes are that they should have. And it might be harder for other people in the company to easily, visibly, have a sense for how successful is the support team versus how successful is the sales team or even the marketing team versus the sales team is sometimes much easier. But let me ask you this … That all makes total sense to me. At the same time I know we’ve been, again, we had this discussion last time. At SaaS Fest when they did the second day in Boston, they did a small group of executives that were little panels and discussions but it was really like you know very like kind of brainstorming and open discussion between just … I don’t know how many people were there, 30 people maybe, maybe less 25. Like real operators that shared very freely between each other how to solve some problems or how to approach certain ideas. And I know that one thing that you and I agree with is that when people were bringing up a company structure that’s completely flat and that doesn’t have necessarily aligned leadership in its kind of like everybody’s self directed, and everybody follows a certain process, so there’s not really anyone in the company that is leading any specific team. I know that we both in the past at least have shared that we have some doubt how effective that really is as the company grows. So in my mind I completely agree that having these silos can be … It just creates a lot of misalignment and friction, right? The more the entire company knows what every single, what everyone is trying to accomplish and how everybody’s serving the customer on their journey, on their buyer journey and then later on on their customer journey, the more effort and friction is being created. At the same time I do believe that as you … you know as we are looking as a specific example, as we are looking in marketing and we see hey we have a tiny team, amazing, they’re doing a really great job in step one, two, and three on the buyer journey there is step four to ten nobody owns and we want to hire people to do these things But then I’m asking myself, alright we can hire all these individual contributors to help the marketing team accomplish all the things we want to do in terms of serving our customers, but who is going to be the person that is guiding and helping and coaching and even hiring and onboarding all these people? I know that I don’t want to be that person and I assume, my basic assumption is that it can’t just be that … You know we can have two people in the marketing team that are amazing and they don’t need a lot of management and leadership, but can we really do it with five, can we do it with ten? So that’s hence why I’m like well instead of going and hiring very specific people to create specific outcomes maybe I should bring in some leadership that then the outcome that that leadership is supposed to do, that team lead, is to find these people, onboard them, and then help the entire grown team to act better and to drive more results and coach and support these people. How do you think about that? Do I miss the boat here or what’s your response to that?   [0:10:42] Hiten Shah: My response to that is if there’s not someone on the team today that could manage these people to successful outcomes and the process for it, then you’re correct, you need somebody.   [0:10:54] Steli Efti: Yeah.   [0:10:54] Hiten Shah: But is that a marketing person? Or is that more of someone who can run across many of your teams? Or is that you or someone else in the company?   [0:11:02] Steli Efti: Yeah, so.   [0:11:03] Hiten Shah: Like that’s my critical question for you because it also depends on whether you’re willing to change the way the team structure is and how they operate across the company. That’s the bigger, stronger point I would make. And in Patrick’s case when I was talking to him he is responsible for a bunch of areas in his company and he wanted to reduce the stress on himself and the other managers on the team, cause there’s a few of them. And instead of looking to hire someone new, he just started changing the processes. And because of that he was able to have more clarity on how he wants to run it. See this is the other thing, we’ve talked this before where you want to run the process before you hire a senior person ideally. Cause then if the senior person comes in and changes things, if you know how this process is gonna run and you’re doing it for yourself, you’ll get a lot more clarity around what’s working and what’s not. Senior person can come in and instead of having to build process from the ground up, they can at least see what’s working and what’s not. The best senior people come in, observe, orient themselves around the whole situation, and then they decide what kind of changes are worth making and where they want to go with it. Even if they have that idea of where they want to go, they first look at what’s going on. If you have that a lot more buttoned up, or have certain principles that you and your company culturally really believe in before that person comes in, it’s gonna help them, it’s not gonna hurt them. And so I think this is a fallacy of like the senior person comes in and they change everything. And that’s how it should be.   [0:12:32] Steli Efti: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more with you. That makes a ton of sense. And I think in our case we’ve done this in the case of like the sales and success team, where I think we quickly realized that a sales and success in our case should really be one team at this stage. And there should be the person who was leading the sales team should also be helping the success team. So these two teams should be much more aligned in how they work instead of being as separated as they were. So we made the person that was responsible for sales also lead the success team. And we’ve been going through the same exercise of asking ourselves should that expand to support as well. And I have been thinking about it and this was part of a mini discussion we had at a bar in Boston. I’ve been thinking about should that person also … Should the marketing also be part of this. And so I’ve thought about this before and I’ve seen some success with just using somebody that’s already there and kind of rethinking how these teams are separated and putting them together and seeing it’s actually they’re much more aligned in what they’re trying to accomplish. So they can all be working closer together and being led by one person. And so I need to think about this on the marketing side. I think for our marketing team we have two people that are incredible operators but they don’t want to be managers. They don’t want to be recruiting people, interviewing people, onboarding people, and managing people necessarily. And so I’m doing a lot of that work on the marketing side, but I’m doing it with a very small fraction of my time since I’m doing a bunch of other things as well. And I think that’s also a big reason why I’m thinking about bringing somebody in to work with the team we already have in place and what we’re doing, but then also helps us to hire and grow the marketing team in a much better way than I am willing to do today. So that’s kind of the frame of thinking here. But I love the points that you brought up in terms of like first, let’s first take a few steps back and think about the outcomes and the customer and buyer journey. I think what we’re trying to accomplish instead of just thinking about hey I need to hire a head of success, a head of support, a head of sales, a head of marketing, a head of product, a head of engineering. Often times it might just not be necessary or you could do it just by realigning or changing the process internally as is.   [0:15:02] Hiten Shah: What do you mean by that?   [0:15:04] Steli Efti: I mean just what you were saying. So instead of just thinking you can hire somebody that comes in and figures everything out, you figure things out yourself first and then you might either grow somebody internally into it or you might just have one person that now is helping two teams versus one because they’re gonna be able to do a better job. Or even when you bring in somebody senior if you’re really clear on the outcomes you want to accomplish and you already have a process in place, they can come in, observe, help, support, and then maybe expand on it.   [0:15:40] Hiten Shah: Yeah, I love that. I wanted you to repeat that just cause it’s so important. And there’s a nuance in there of like you’re basically being lazy if you think you’re gonna hire someone and they’re gonna fix every problem you have.   [0:15:50] Steli Efti: Yeah.   [0:15:51] Hiten Shah: Period. Whether it’s a COO, replacing yourself as CEO, head of marketing, head of sales, any of that stuff. I have never seen the hire automatically, magically, solve the problem. I have seen great, amazing managers and leaders come into a company and change the company. I’ve absolutely seen that. But I’ve not seen these people come in and not do work. I’ve not seen these people come in and magically overnight change it. I have not seen these people come in and disrespect the organization and still be okay making it work. And what I mean by that is they look at what’s already existing. So you’re kind of a dumb ass if you go in there and say they’re gonna come in and change everything and I don’t have to worry about it. In fact it’s more of your worry when you bring someone new in and their whole goal and job is to change things. Like it’s way more of your worry because you have an existing team, you have existing people and there is gonna be a bunch of people that have some level of dissatisfaction or something come up that you’re gonna have to deal with just because there’s change happening. And as much as you and I love change every human on the planet has a lot of difficulty with change. Just in general, it’s just change. Change is something that is constant and yet something that we all struggle with all the time. And so I think this relates to this situation because if you can start some of these changes you know someone’s gonna do and you can just start, that’s gonna help you figure it out. And for me a team that is running really well is when every individual has a strong amount of ownership over what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and they have a very clear idea of what the goal is and their ability to contribute towards that goal. And if you don’t have that on your teams or in your companies, you need to think twice about how you’re operating.   [0:17:42] Steli Efti: I love it. Alright I think that’s it for this episode. We’ll wrap it up on this super crucial piece of wisdom. If anyone out there is thinking about, growing the team, hiring senior people, and you’ve been impacted by this episode and you now have even more questions than you had before you started listening to us, reach out. We always love to hear from. Ping at hnshaw@gmail.com and myself at steli@close.io. We’d love to hear your experiences, your experiments, your lessons learned, your failures and successes and I think that’s it from us for this episode. We’ll hear you soon.   [0:18:22] Hiten Shah: Cheers [0:18:23] The post 287: Hiten’s Outcome-Based Hiring Framework appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about mindfulness. They highlight how mindfulness can be used to benefit you in your everyday life and business. Mindfulness can be defined as the process of bringing awareness to your experience as it occurs in the present moment. Often linked to the practices of meditation and yoga, Steli and Hiten look at how it can be redefined and introduced into all areas of your life. Tune into this week’s episode of The Startup Chat to learn about mindfulness, having a positive perspective in reaction to challenges and how to remain present in your business and life. Steli and Hiten, also highlight how negative emotions, have the power to disrupt productivity in your business. They show how mindfulness, could increase your awareness of these negative patterns, and share some simple action steps to get you started on eliminating them. Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:01 What is mindfulness. 04:17 The importance and benefit of breathing. 05:23 Why mindfulness. 05:48 Benefits of mindfulness. 06:10 Steps to mindfulness. 07:20 Mindfulness for business. 07:36 The benefits of mindfulness for your business. 10:10 Mindfulness techniques to get you started. 11:43 Obstacles to practicing mindfulness. 14:50 The questioning technique. 18:02 The benefit of seeing opportunities in everything. 3 Key Points: If you think of a business challenge as a negative then you are missing the opportunity. When you have positive thoughts they manifest, When you have negative thoughts they also manifest. Everything can be viewed as either a problem or an opportunity, and both provide opportunities to learn. [0:00:00] Hiten Shah: The clouds are moving. It’s kind of nice. There’s a lot of dogs everywhere. It’s kind of funny.   [0:00:05] Steli Efti: All right. Well, this is going to be the topic of today’s Startup Chat. Mindfulness. This is Steli Efti.   [0:00:13] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. And today, as Steli said, we’re going to talk about mindfulness. What is mindfulness, Steli?   [0:00:21] Steli Efti: Well, you know, if I didn’t know, I wouldn’t have looked up the definition. I always love when you do this. You’ve . So, I just typed it into Google, and I just-   [0:00:33] Hiten Shah: It’s called “training”, Steli. It’s called training.   [0:00:33] Steli Efti: Yes, you have trained me very well.   [0:00:36] Hiten Shah: I’m just kidding.   [0:00:37] Steli Efti: I’m doing this, not just when I talk to you, but especially when I do talk to you, to be fair. So, all right. So, here’s the dictionary definition of mindfulness, right? “Mindfulness: The quality or state of being conscious or aware of something”. The second definition is: “A mental state achieved by focusing one’s awareness of the present moment while calmly acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations. Used as a therapeutic technique.”   [0:01:09] Hiten Shah: I like how it mentions the present moment, and then calls it therapeutic. I think people confuse mindfulness and meditation and relaxation and all these things almost together. So, I’m glad you started with the definition. It’s, to me … Like a lot of this, just to give my thoughts on it for a second is … I think we are very judgemental as human beings. Judgmental of each other, of course, but also judgmental of ourselves. For me, mindfulness is very much so about being what they call “the observer” to the experience of life, versus being so judgmental about everything. That’s what you’re developing as you become more mindful of everything. Things, whatever it may be, even a lot of the exercises. I’ve studied this for a while now. Even a lot of the exercises that are out there are very much so about becoming an observer. I can point them all back to that. In meditation, you’re supposed to observe your thoughts, at least that’s one approach and one way that people think of it. When you’re eating, there’s this thing called “mindful eating”. What’s “mindful eating”? Well, actually thinking about what you’re eating, not just chowing down. Even if you’re at a McDonald’s eating a burger, you can probably think about it a little bit. Maybe it will gross you out a little bit when you think about what it went through, you know, to get you to that place where that burger’s sitting there in front of you and you eat it. I think if you’re into salads, or even if you are forced to eat salads, or whatever. Thinking about the plants and everything that was grown and what came about it that, honestly, you didn’t have to do. To me, that’s an observation. That’s a deeper observation than most people would do when they’re eating. Those are the kind of practices that I associate with mindfulness of what I call being more of an observer. Even less of a participant, or less judgmental about things.   [0:03:16] Steli Efti: Yeah. To me, mindfulness is really about being an observer of your thoughts, your emotions, your physical sensations, and your surroundings instead of just being reactively going with the waves of those external stimulations, or even internal stimulations. So observing those, to then get “in touch with it”, to really just have a moment where you realize, “Oh. My body is very tense. Oh, I’ve stopped breathing.” Like, I have this … You know, I’ve learned … An example. We talked about this on a prior episode, where I was flying the fighter jet in Serbia. And one of the things I realized immediately, because I’ve practiced meditation and hypnosis and many, like, mindfulness techniques that have to do with breathing. And I’ve realized how much breathing affects our body sensation, and how our body sensation then affects our thought patterns, and vice versa. It was, like, the moment I got the stick to fly the fucking thing, I tensed up so much and I stopped breathing. This is something that a lot of people do. Even if I do boxing, or kick-boxing, when I get super-tired, or when people tense up when they box, they stop breathing. They just punch, punch, punch, punch, punch, and they just hold their breath, they’re tensing up their body. Well, when you hold your breath and you’re tensing up your body, you’re going to exhaust yourself very quickly. You’re going to be stiff instead of loose. It’s going to … A lot of negatives, and the best boxers are people that are really good at breathing, and relaxing in the middle of those exchanges, and staying loose. If you’re a really good fighter pilot, you need to stay relaxed and loose and keep breathing deeply, even in very stressful situations. Because that’s going to keep your mind calm. It’s going to keep your body focused, but also it’s going to allow you to go through some really physical pressures without exhausting and fatiguing too quickly. So, for me, mindfulness, when I stop for a moment, just living life, and I observe how I do it, and what life around me looks like, and what my thoughts are, and what my body is. A lot of times that observation allows me to pick up on what’s really going on. It’s like taking stock of life, and slowing things down for a second just to get back in touch with what’s really going on. Sometimes when you do that, it’s very easy to actually affect the quality of your life, or the quality of the things you’re doing because you realize that there’s maybe a negative thought pattern that you want to stop, instead of just keeping it going. Or maybe there’s a certain emotion that you’re carrying around with you through the day that’s impacting all your thoughts, and all your interactions, and how you talk to people, and how you think about things, and how you write emails. Then when you stop to be a bit more mindful and to get in touch with yourself and to observe yourself, you realize, “Holy shit. I’m actually so angry. I’m still having this emotional anger that stems from an argument I had yesterday. And I’m still carrying it around today, and I’m now screaming at people, and I’m angry at people that have nothing to do with this. And it’s affected me in a really negative sense.” So, I think that that observation is Step One. There’s many techniques to observe oneself, one’s emotions, one’s thoughts, and all that. But then the second thing is, once you’ve observed it, to realize, “Wow, this is what’s really going on with me and here’s what I want to do with it, if this is really what I want or don’t want.” Sometimes it might be that you observe yourself and you realize, “Wow, I’m really in a good mood.” Or, “Wow, I really have beautiful thoughts, and I love it, and life is beautiful, and I’m grateful for the good things that are happening and the well-being that I’m experiencing right now.” So, you have a moment of heightened satisfaction and gratitude and appreciation, which is a beautiful thing. To me, that’s kind of what mindfulness signifies. And I think mindfulness within the business world, a startup role, is just the idea that … I mean, at the end of the day, all challenges and all problems and all things in business to me are people problems, and people challenges, and people business. And if you learn to be more mindful, you’re going to be more effective. If you learn to be more mindful, you’re going to be a better negotiator, you’re going to be a better CEO or leader, you’re going to make better strategic decisions. You’re going to be less reactive. You’re going to be able to deal better with the stress, the highs, the lows, the crazy ups and downs of startup life and founder life if you’re not just always reactive. You know, kind of being thrown around in this storm of the world, but you are in control of your own mind, body, and soul, and your emotions. It’s going to make you a better human, and it’s going to make life better, at least that’s the experience that I’ve had. But in the context of this podcast, for business, it’s going to make the crazy startup experience a little more sane. And I think that can a long way.   [0:08:25] Hiten Shah: Let’s think about … I think there’s a lot of people that don’t know how to be more mindful, and don’t know how to start. There’s other folks that tend to have started, or thought about meditation, or walking meditation, or even being in silence for a few minutes and found it difficult to have a habit. So what I’m curious about is, what can we tell people, how can we give them something to do when it comes to business and being more mindful? Because I think the benefits, in general, are out there, there’s a lot of content on mindfulness. There’s a bunch of apps for meditation, and stuff like that. But, like, people-   [0:09:06] Steli Efti: Yeah, let’s give them some alternative techniques to be more mindful, right? Or practices that are not just meditating, which is something I’d love to talk about because I think there’s a lot of misconceptions on that as well. But, let’s put that aside. It’s something people have heard, learned, or can be exposed to in many other areas, and share some of our practices for techniques we’ve learned that help with mindfulness.   [0:09:27] Hiten Shah: Yeah. So, I think if we go that route … Sorry, there’s a very loud motorcycle. Okay, that went by. Well, I’m being mindful by doing this podcast outdoors, so that I can be more present in the moment. It’s working, except for motorcycles. Basically, I think one thing that I think about a lot is, and feel really, is energy. We’ve talked before about things that give you energy, things that don’t. I’m talking more about something that’s more of a nuance. Can you, when you’re talking to somebody, whether it’s on the phone or in person or just in general thinking about somebody if you want to go this far. What feelings come up for you, and how can you … ? The whole goal, here, would be just do some exercises to figure out what feelings come out for you? And if you’re alone right now, just think of somebody while you’re on this podcast listening, and think about what feeling came for you when you thought about that person. And then start feeling that. Start really understanding the difference between the different feelings that different people give you, that you might not be aware of. Or different thoughts give you. Anything, right? But, really, if you start with people, that one’s the one that’s very crisp and clear, at least in my experience, to start with. Then you can go further and think about even the space around you, and what feeling that gives you. This takes some kind of internal awareness that, like I said, when you think about the people you talk to, or the people … You know, just think about someone, and how that person makes you feel all of a sudden immediately. I think that awareness doesn’t really exist in most people, and that’s really a key for me on how to be more mindful, but also how to get out of your own head, get out of the negativity, and really push yourself to understand these nuances. Because a lot of the mindfulness experience is nuanced, and that helps this exercise of just , can really help you in so many different ways, but it’s one simple thing you can do.   [0:11:47] Steli Efti: I love that. I think one I would add to that is that oftentimes, when you do any kind of mindfulness practice, you’re going to see, or sense, an urge to stop and get distracted. We are so not used to stopping everything. You don’t … Close your laptop, no phone, no watching television, no listening to the radio, no talking to people. Just, like, sitting there, or walking somewhere and being in touch with your emotions. That can be very uncomfortable in the beginning. Actually, that can be very uncomfortable at any time, especially when you don’t feel well. When we don’t feel good about a person or a situation or in general don’t feel well, we don’t like to be fully in touch with that feeling. That’s why people go to drugs and alcohol and all kinds of other suppressants, right? Because they don’t want to deal with the emotion they are feeling, so they’re trying to find a way to get around, or suppress that, or ignore it. What I’m always looking for, and this is actually on top of mindfulness technique, what I’m always looking for is that, when I try to be mindful, how strong and how quickly will I have an urge to get distracted? And if I have a strong urge to being distracted, if I have a strong urge to keep noise and not have any quiet to be able to listen to my thoughts or feel my emotions fully, to me that’s a very strong indicator that shit is going in a bad direction in life. That there’s something I don’t want to deal with, that there’s something that’s uncomfortable and I don’t want to face. And so my advice is that when you feel that urge, instead of reactively giving into it and just going, “Yeah, I wanted to think how I … I wanted to sit here and see how I feel about studying, but I want to go Twitter real quick.” Or, “Let me open my Inbox real quick.” I mean, we have that urge. That’s the moment where you can learn something. That’s the moment to resist that urge, and go, “Well, I’ll push back. I might go to Facebook or Twitter or my Inbox, but not now. I’ll go in one minute.” See how long that minute can feel, and what you feel in that minute. Fighting the urge to get distracted when you’re trying to be mindful, is really part of the practice. It doesn’t make you bad at mindfulness, it doesn’t mean that you can’t be mindful. It is one of the most valuable things about mindfulness to me, is sensing that urge, seeing that urge, you know, “Wow. What is going on here? Like, something in my body or mind that wants to run away from something. Let me stay here for a second, let me fight that urge. Let me be a detective and explore what really is going on and how to deal with this, right? How to deal with this emotion or these thoughts.” To me that’s a really … That was a big key to making mindfulness a bigger part of my life. I love the just sitting down and seeing, “How do I feel when I think about a certain person?” It’s super-powerful. I’ll add something to this. A really simple practice and idea is to … I mean, going outside is a really good idea, all right? So, that’s why you are outside already, Hiten. But just like being able to leave your laptop, your computer, anything that can distract. Leave it wherever your desk is, or wherever your home is, go outside and sit down somewhere, or walk. And ask yourself the question, “I wonder what my next thought will be?” Right? That’s a really nice little mindfulness technique, a practice that I love to play with, which is just sitting down on a bench and telling myself, “Huh. I wonder what my next thought is going to be?” And then I just wait to see what my next thought is going to be, and it’s a funny question to ask. It kind of messes with your mind, because your mind is now aware that you have thoughts, right? You’re not thinking just reactively, you’re not thinking … You’re waiting for a subconscious thought to pop up, which is kind of a funky thing to do. Then whatever that thought is, I go, “Huh. I wonder why this is the first thought that comes up.” Like, just asking basic questions about my own thoughts and the things that are going on in my mind. It’s a weird thing to do at first. It might seem silly, but why not be silly at times? But to me, oftentimes, it leads to very powerful things or even more powerful questions on what is going on in my mind right now. What is really keeping me busy? Well, sometimes something pops up that’s just like, “Wow. I haven’t thought about this in years. It’s so interesting. Why do I think about this now? Maybe there’s a big opportunity here. Maybe there’s something I need to do.” So, just asking yourself, “I wonder what my next thought is going to be?” is a simple question, but a really funny and powerful mindfulness technique, in my experience.   [0:16:38] Hiten Shah: Yeah. I think that relates a lot to awareness. Even just being aware of your thoughts can help you instantly be mindful of them, right? This idea can spread to so many different things. What I’ve just generally found is, even if you’ve never thought about the things we talk about in this podcast today, you’ll probably take it away and start thinking about them. In my opinion and, Steli, I’m sure you’ll agree, that’s all we really need to do. That’s the funny thing about mindfulness. If you are given enough opportunities to think about it a different way than you are today, you’re going to start thinking about it more and more. The reason I say that is, we’re all interacting with other people. We’re all thinking about other people. And we’re all constantly just thinking about things. So, all you have to do is think about that thinking of just a little bit extra, ask some of these questions, and you’ll actually be on your way to starting that process of just being the observer, being more mindful, and being more conscious to yourself and your thoughts. And, honestly, over time becoming a generally happier person. And happier doesn’t mean you’re happier on the outside. I’m really talking about the inside, and the thoughts you have. Because the thing is, when you have negative thoughts, they tend to manifest. When you have positive thoughts, they tend to manifest. It’s that simple, and yet many of us are sitting here for minutes, hours, weeks, months, days, sometimes years, having way too many negative thoughts about things. This extends to business. Yesterday, I did a quick Q&A on Instagram Live, and somebody asked, “Hey, how do you deal with the sort of equivalent of ups and downs?” And for me, what I realized more recently, I know we’ve talked about this here and there, I don’t know what an up and a down is anymore. I’m not really sure if it matters. It’s just another thing.   [0:18:33] Steli Efti: People. Hiten lives in the upside down, all right?   [0:18:36] Hiten Shah: Yeah, the upside down. There you go.   [0:18:39] Steli Efti: That’s where Hiten lives.   [0:18:39] Hiten Shah: Yeah. Like, I don’t really … I wouldn’t consider a business problem a “down” anymore. And I wouldn’t call a business success an “up” because I really think about, “O.K., great. We achieved something. What’s next? What are we going to do next?” In fact, everything either can be viewed as a problem or it can be viewed as an opportunity, as many people say, right? So for me, if I’m down, and I think about a business problem as a “down”, then I’m not thinking of it as an opportunity to learn, an opportunity to do better, an opportunity for whatever. But definitely not a problem, and not a “down”. When I look at an “up”, if I’m looking at it like, “Oh, it’s time to celebrate, or it’s time to just take a moment, or anything, for me personally, the way I think about the world, it doesn’t help me. It makes me actually lazier. It makes me think, “Oh, I did something.” Instead, for me, it’s like, “Okay, we did that. Great. Now what?” You know? Immediately. And I know some people are, like, celebrating and partying, and this and that. That’s just not how I think about it. That’s not how I have learned to think about it, because as many people say and believe, the “ups” are high, and the “downs” are low. Like, very low. I don’t want to be either one, because then I’m imbalanced and I’m not ready. I’m not prepared for what’s going to happen next. And preparation, for me, isn’t like expecting it. It’s more like being in this even, mindful place where I can deal with it regardless of what it is. An “up” or a “down” is equally as … Is equal to me, because all of it is just an opportunity. An opportunity to see what impact I’ve had, whether it’s good or bad. Or what our team has had, and then learn from it. So, to me, I value the learning. That’s an “up”. And the learning comes either way. That’s the way I think about business and mindfulness, and where at least I’ve gotten to in this moment, in the present moment, Steli. Right, right, now.   [0:20:30] Steli Efti: Right, right now. I fucking love it. I’ll just say one thing, and then we’ll wrap this episode up. You know, when I think about the highs and lows the way you were describing it, Hiten, a lot of times founders and startup people think you need to be super-enthusiastic, right? You need to be super-excited about things, because it’s part of the fun. But then, because you play that game, you also tend to be super-crushed and depressed, or stressed, or fearful when things go really bad. So that makes that roller-coaster ride so taxing, emotionally. When I think of a great founder, the metaphor that I’m using in my mind today, is I’m thinking about one of these slackline geniuses that go up to Yosemite, and they have this little line that goes from one fucking mountain top to the next. And it’s unsecured, and it’s windy, and it’s like, I don’t know how high up, but you’re definitely going to get crushed and die if you fall. And they walk up there, and the line is going back and forth, because it’s windy, and they walk the line with perfect balance, right? That person, that person is not super-excited, emotionally, that person is not partying in his mind. “Whooo. I’m doing it. You know, I’m going to be fucking amazing and famous.” Because he would fall and die. Nobody would expect him to be celebrating, laughing, taking selfies, being super-excited. Or even taking in the moment from a, “Wow. Look at this view. I’m doing it. I’m a slackline …” Like, nobody would imagine them doing that, because you know the next image you have in your mind is them falling and dying. Conversely, when there’s wind or something weird happens, something … You know, the line shakes and the person has to rebalance and it’s a dangerous little moment, they’re not fearful in that moment. They’re not stressed, they’re not worried, they don’t start thinking, “I’m going to fall, I’m going to fall, I’m going to fall.” Because, as I told you, that’s what their inner … That’s what somebody was thinking, you knew the next thing that would happen, they’re falling. Right? What that person does is, they’re completely here. They’re present in the moment. They have to be positive, they have to be optimists. Nobody goes on the line, and goes from one mountain top to the next if they’re not optimistic about their chances of making it. Right? Most of these people are optimists, these people are adventurers, these people are skillful. But more than anything else, they are focused, they are mindful, and they are concentrated on the task at hand. Never too high, and never too low. Just focusing one breath at a time, one step at a time, no matter what happens. And to me, that’s what the model for the perfect founder, for somebody that is really effective in business, as well. Positive, optimist, enthusiastic, excited, skillful. But when you are going on that journey, you’re focused one step at a time. Nothing else really matters to you no matter how good something is going, and no matter how bad something is going. All right. With that being said, let’s wrap up this episode. Let’s take one last breath together, and let’s try to be a little bit more mindful today and see how much of an impact it can have on our life, but also on the lives of people around us in our teams and our business and in our families.   [0:23:39] Hiten Shah: Whatever you’re doing, do it with a smile. That’s what I’ve got. [0:23:44] The post 286: Mindfulness appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about discount pricing strategy. They discuss the pros and cons of offering discounts as a start-up and they also discuss how to refuse discounts requests from customers.   A discount pricing strategy is a key part of your product marketing because it has the ability to greatly impact the amount of sales and profit that you make. Choosing the right pricing strategy for your business will not only help to sell your products but also improve your brands appearance in the marketplace. While a discount pricing strategy may be useful for driving sales in the short term, this approach when used long-term could have some unexpected effects on your brand image and the perceived value of your products. Tune into this week’s episode of The Startup Chat to hear the exclusive discussion on discount pricing and why, how and if a startup should offer discounts to their customers, as well as Steli and Hiten’s advice on how you should leverage discounts to get the maximum return. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:40 Talking specifically about discounts; the why, when, how and If 01:10 Comparing the B2B and enterprise world pricing strategies 03:23 Discounting and branding overview 04:48 eCommerce discounting pricing strategies 05:20 Word of mouth and blanket discounting 06:05 Standardizing discounts on all offers and discount matching 10:06 Selling the value of the product and the brand 12:39 How to give discounts the right way 15:56 How to refuse discount requests from customers 16:02 Refusing discounts case study 3 Key Points: You must really understand the impression you are putting out into the market If you give a discount to 1 person the next person that comes along will expect the same discount. When you give a discount always get something in return   [0:00:00] Steli Efti: Hey, everybody. This is Steli Efti.   [0:00:03] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah.   [0:00:05] Steli Efti: Today on the startup chat. We’re going to talk about giving discounts to customers, why you shouldn’t do it, when you should do it, and how you should do it. So this is something … It’s crazy. We’ve now recorded way more than 250 episodes, but we’ve never talked about discounts. We talked about it a little bit here and there, mainly on the episode on negotiations. But we never talked about specifically why, how, and if startups should discount their retail pricing to customers. So I’ll start making a claim, and then I’m dying to hear your thoughts on this. So especially in B to B. I’m not that familiar in B to C to be honest, like that’s just not my world. But in B to B I am not the greatest of fans when it comes to discounts. I know that it’s, in B to B, kind of best practice to do that. A lot of companies are heavily discounting through their sales teams when they talk to prospects and they’re trying to close a deal. Sometimes they do it because they want to be competitive with another offer that a prospect has. Sometimes they do it just because the sales team thinks that if they can lower the price, it’s going to make it an easier purchasing decision. And all in all, I think it’s a really bad practice that leads to a lot of issues down the line. So I’m really against aggressively discounting in B to B, if you’re selling to small and medium sized customers. In the enterprise world, it’s a totally different ballgame. In the enterprise world, I think you have to add a massive margin, so down the line, once you talk to procurement, you can give the big discount because it’s just the way that larger organizations purchase things. There’s a whole department, the entire job they have is to save the company money when they purchase from vendors. So if you price your product without that in mind, you’re basically making it impossible for somebody in the large organization to make a living. So they will not be happy about that, and they will not purchase your product. So in the enterprise world, although it’s kind of a dumb game to price your product way higher than you think you’re going to sell it for so then you can give some kind of a fake discount down the line, it’s just the way things work, so you have to live with that reality usually. But in the SMB world, most sales companies are very aggressive on the discounts, and I think it’s a terrible idea, in most cases. I’ll riff on why I think it’s a terrible idea later, but I just want to hear your reaction. What’s your thought in general on giving discounts to prospects to convince them to become customers? Or maybe even down the line, when somebody’s a customer, giving discounts for them to renew. Or if they cancel, offering them a discount to stay. What’s your general take on discounts, and when they work well, and when they don’t. I’m dying to hear that.   [0:03:01] Hiten Shah: Yeah, a couple things. I’m just not a fan of discounts in general. And this is a general rule, but when I think of discount, I think of certain brands. So, in a simple way, when you think about discounts, just think about what brands come to your mind when you think about that. And do you want your brand to have that same association? So Walmart, Costco, Sam’s Club those kind of brands are known for discounting more than others. And there’s obviously the Groupons and all that of the world as well. And then there’s the idea of like Gucci, or Coach, and brands like that, that themselves tend to have very little discounting, and if they do, it’s because of a specific reason. And the reason could be like, this is out of season, or there’s only a few things on discount because it’s the last of our inventory, or things like that. I’m not saying those are good or bad reasons, I’m just saying that the volume that you give discounts at, the number of discounts you give, how often you do it can really lead to a certain brand impression that you might not understand that you’re putting out on the market. And another thing I want to say. Most companies do discounts in the E-commerce world as well as retail world, because this is where discounts came from actually, because of what’s called yield management. So they want to manage their inventory. They want to manage their revenue. They want to increase it. Also, with E-commerce the typical practice is if you get on their email list, they will give you a one time coupon to purchase the first time. And they know that when they give you that coupon, you’re more likely to purchase. And by what percentage? They know, so they know it’s worth it for them, compared to how much they’re losing by giving you that discount in terms of revenue and money. So my biggest piece of advice on discounting, regardless of what kind of business you are, is really understand what impression you’re putting out there in the market. Here’s the thing too. You could say, “Oh, I have an inside sales team. I’m SAS, If I give customer a discount, no one else is going to know.” Well, guess what? Word of mouth is one of your biggest drivers of business, period. And so if you give a discount to one person, that next person that they tell is probably going to expect the same discount. At least, you have to assume that, because you gave the discount to that one person. So that’s my general thought on blanket discounting. I think there are strategic ways that you can do it, and you should do it, but they’re very rare, and they’re very nuanced. I’m actually going to tee it off to you, because every time you rant about how to do discounting right, I learn something. So I’m literally going to tee it off to you, to rant about how to do discounting the right now.   [0:05:43] Steli Efti: All right, let’s talk about it. One thing I wanted to double click on, that’s an expression I learned from you, is the … Hey, when you do SAS, SMB and you give some kind of a discount to one customer, you’re like, “Nobody’s going to know.” You know? “We told that customer … It’s not a public interaction so nobody will know.” Well, the issue is not just, Hiten, when that customer refers other customers to you, they will have the same pricing and discounting expectation. The problem is also that often times, when SAS companies discount, their sales teams will give different discounts to different customers for very different reasons, right? A lot of times, companies don’t have a standardized rule set on how to do this. It’s kind of a, deal by deal basis, sales rep by sales rep basis. And then, one thing that I’ve seen many time happen, is that some large customer purchases, there’s really hard negotiations on what kind of a discount they can get. The company thinks they can close them at like a 15% discount, because they’re really, really eager to purchase, and there’s a lot of back and forth. And your statement to them, or your sales rep’s statement to them is like, “I went to everybody, the highest level, and this is really the best we can do, and I can’t give you one little piece more.” And the customer buys that, believes you, and says, “All right, I’m going to purchase.” And then three, four, five months down the line, they become friends, or meet, or talk to another customer of yours that’s gotten a 20% discount or a 22%. And that’s going to create such a fury, and anger, and bad reputation, and brand for you because then that customer is going to come back and be like, “Fuck you asshole. You guys lied to me. I have a friend who’s getting your product for cheaper, and you told me this is the best deal you can give me.” And rightfully so, they’re going to be really, really pissed. And this happens all the time when companies that have a very rampant discount culture, and lots of SAS companies do have that, unfortunately. So first, let me go through a few of the problems that you have to anticipate when you give a lot of discounts. And then I’ll tell you when to do it and how to do it right, in my mind at least or in my experience. So to me, besides the brand thing, which is big, which is what you mentioned, Hiten. Do you really want to be known as the cheapest option out there, or do you want to be known as the biggest value option, as the best option, as the best in class, as a product that’s really serious and a company and a brand that’s really serious. I really don’t like to be the cheapest option around. And we often tell prospects that come to Close, “If all you’re trying to do is get the cheapest price possible, then we’ll refer you to our competitors.” Right? We’d rather have you go to a competitor than deal with this. Because what we want to do, is we want to partner up with customers that want to have the most sales success. They want to have the biggest growth, the most value out of our solution, out of our partnership, and not just the lowest cost possible. So brand is a big thing. The other thing to me, is sales culture. It really creates a toxic sales culture. I’ve never seen a sales team in a SAS company that’s allowed to give discounts aggressively that has great sales people and sales people that create really great relationships. Because discount is such a cheap tool, that if you give it to sales people, they will abuse it, and they will just default to it as quickly as possible because it’s the easiest way to get to the sale. It’s the most transactional way to get to the sale. They don’t have to convince the prospect that they are offering real value. All they have to convince the customer is that the customer is getting the “best deal” quote unquote, or a cheaper option than the competitors offer. So it makes the sales team cultivate very poor sales skills, cultivate really poor relationships. But the relationship starts with, “I’m demanding the cheapest of the cheap for everything I want.” And us being like, “Yes, we’re going to give you everything you want.” That’s to me, an abusive relationship with the customer. And you’re basically building up the foundation of a sales team that’s never going to learn how to sell well and how to sell the value of your product, and your brand, and the service you can offer versus just trying to get to a price point that beats some other offering. So bad sales culture is something that, obviously, I hate. And that’s why I think discounts are the most toxic tool you can give to sales people, because they’re going to take that and drink that discount Kool-Aid until they become really, really bad at sales. And the other thing is predictability. It kills your business and your billing system at the operational side of understanding the amount of customers you have and how much revenue you’re making from that. It’s going to be such a mess once you grow your business, when your sales reps are able to create all kinds of individualized discount deals. It’s going to be impossible to track your metrics. It’s going to be impossible to track what type of customer is generating what kind of revenue. Or when customers churn or upgrade or downgrade, you’re going to be like, “Well, they upgraded three seats, but one of these seats was discounted by 60%. The other one seat we gave them for free. And the third one was full price because it was some kind of a special deal we offered them. And this other customer downgrade three seats, but they had no discount.” And It’s going to be a mess. It’s going to be so hard to predictably be able to forecast what your revenue’s going to look like, and what impact churn has, and what kind of customer is generating what kind of value to your business because your deals are all over the place. You can afford to have all over the place customize deals when those deals are worth millions of dollars and there are, a few, right? That you’re not having tens of thousands of enterprise customers and millions and millions of dollars of deals. But when you’re in the SMB sector or when you sell to professionals and end-consumers, if thousands of customers, hopefully, and if every single one of them can have a little bit of a different deal, it’s going to make predictability of your business and scalability of your business really, really bad. So having said all that and having that theme made out plain and clear that we don’t we don’t love discounts and we think it’s a really bad idea for most businesses, here’s the one … Well, I mentioned one reason why you might … One use case where discounts might be a good idea, or thinking about how to offering a discount is when you do enterprise sales, when you do massive organization sales, but even then. My number one rule for enterprise sales or in the SMB sector if you have a really large customer that for many, many reasons you want to give a discount, you need to get something in return. That’s the basic rule. When you give a discount, get something in return. Don’t just offer the discount for the discount’s sake. What can you get in return? Very simple, a pre-payment. If you’re a subscription business, the simplest reason to give a discount is to say, “Hey, if you pay us a year or two years in advance, all the cash right now, this is so valuable to us from a planning perspective and also from a cashflow perspective that we’re willing to offer you a better deal for that. So offering a 10% discount for one year pre-payment, or a 20%, or a 15% discount for a two year pre-payment, that’s usually a fair exchange. In some cases and especially in SMP, sometimes your customers don’t have the cash reserves to pre-pay for one, two, or three years in advance. So maybe you’re going to give them a discount if they sign a contract, if they do a long term commitment to be paying you every single month and not being able to get out of that contract or churn on a month to month deal. Maybe that’s a reason to give them a discount, and you give them a little bit less of a discount than if they pre-paid, if they have a one year month to month contract, or two year month to month contract. The other thing I like to do and I like to combine these, is ask them for a case study, or a referral, or some kind of a marketing benefit if they get a discount from you. So what we like to do is if you pre-pay for a year or you pre-pay for two years, you’re going to get a discount. If you do that plus if you are willing to work with our marketing team on being a case study and being published on our website, or being a reference on our website, or if you’re willing to do some kind of a co-promotion with us. So you can ask … If a customer wants to get a lower price point, they should always give you something in return. If they are telling you, “The only reason I want a discount is because I don’t see any differentiating value between you and a competitor of yours. All I’m trying to do is get the lowest price for one of the two of you, and I’m not willing to give anything back because I don’t see any value in that.” To me, that’s the worst kind of relationship and I would never do that. The things you can always ask for, back for a discount, is either a pre-payment long term commitment, signing a contract, being a case study, doing a co-promotion marketing, or/and with larger enterprise clients, asking for a specific number of referrals. “Hey, we could offer you this deal, but in return what we would want, because we would invest so heavily in this relationship. We’re going to assume that this relationship is going to be so strong that you’re going to be a reference and a referral customer, and you’re going to connect us with at least three companies in your space that you think could benefit from knowing about us. Who are the three CMOs, CEOs, CTOs you know in this industry that you could connect with us if we were to offer you this special deal. Always, always ask for something in return. You offer something of value. Ask for something of value in return. That’s the basic and very simple rule when you give discounts.   [0:15:41] Hiten Shah: What if the customer is asking for a discount and you don’t want to give it for any reason, how do you deal with that?   [0:15:55] Steli Efti: You say “No.” I’m actually, right now, in the middle of a negotiation, where basically we’re going back and forth. We jump on a call, this CEO is a very good negotiator and I’ve been knowing him for many years. So he’s calling me, and he’s basically talking to me. I listen very intently. I tell him that I understand where he’s coming from. And then I basically tell him “No. I just can’t do that.” And if that’s absolutely what he needs, then we might not be a good fit, and we can’t serve him. I think that we can be great partners. I think we provide a ton of value, and here’s what I can do, but I can’t give you a discount. And then he, he basically pushes me to go and talk to the team and see if I really can’t do anything, because they might have to leave if I don’t do it. And I said, “all right, I’ll see what I can do. But I don’t think I’m going to come back with a positive answer.” And then I hang up. And then, a few hours later, I’ll send him an email and say, “Hey, I talked to the team. I really looked into this, but no. I can’t do this.” You just say, “No.” You don’t have to offer somebody a special price for your product, you don’t. There’s nobody’s birth rights to get your product at whatever price they want. That’s not how business works. But you have to be okay with losing that customer when you draw a line in the sand. And that’s the question I always ask myself. If I say no and they don’t buy, am I okay with it? And when I answer that question, after I analyze, and think about it, and meditate on it, if I answer that question with, Yeah, I’m okay with them not buying. I really don’t think I can offer this. Then, I can come into the negotiation and feel really comfortable and relaxed, and they can sense that I don’t care. They can sense that I don’t care if they don’t buy. I want them to buy, but I’m not stressed about it. And that’s a very powerful energy to bring into a negotiation. I never go into a negotiation saying no without having thought if I’m okay with them potentially not purchasing. Because then I’m nervous, and that nervousness will translate into a conversation where I’m going zigzagging and going through a rollercoaster ride of emotions when they’re screaming at me, or telling me they’re not going to purchase, or they’re going to cancel. It’s going to make the negotiation really, really tough for me. But when I don’t want to give a discount and they demand it, I just say “No.” Many, many times, not always, but many times I’ve been surprised where customers told me verbatim, “I am not going to buy. I’m going to cancel. This is outrageous. I’m so disappointed. You will never hear from me again.” And then they went and purchased, and then they were a happy customer. It was as if we’d never had that discussion and they never screamed at me or told me they would never purchase. It’s so funny. This happened so many times. Not always, sometimes they truly go through with their word and they don’t buy, or they cancel, or they are really upset, but it’s not like 90% of the time. It’s kind of like 50% of the time. So if you don’t want to give the discount, just say “No.”   [0:19:06] Hiten Shah: I’m just processing that for a second. I think we should end on that note. If you don’t want to give a discount, just say “No.” You have nothing to lose. It’s just a customer, there’s many more.   [0:19:16] Steli Efti: There you go, we’ll end on that note. And just because they scream, just because they tell you how important they are, just because they say they’re going to write a case study of how terrible you are, just because they tell you that they’re going to drive to your mom’s house and tell her how bad of a boy or a girl you are. Just because they’re making a big fuss out of it; doesn’t mean that you need to feel bad, or you need to buy into that, or have to cave. You really don’t. There’s no birthright on getting a discount. You don’t owe them anything. So don’t discount if you don’t want to and if you don’t think it’s the right thing to do to serve your business, your customers, your employees in the marketplace. That’s it from us. If you are in the middle of a difficult negotiation, and you don’t know what to do, and you need an external negotiation buddy or even better too, Hiten and I have dealt with lots and lots of negotiations. And for you guys, we always want to be there for you. We always love to support you if we can. So if you ever need help on a difficult negotiation, just send an email to Steli@close.io and HNShaw@gmail.com, and we’ll try to be your negotiation coaches and help you through it. And that’s it for us for this episode, until next time.   [0:20:21] Hiten Shah: Later. [0:20:22] The post 285: Giving Discounts to Your Customers appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about taking the time to remember your journey. They also talk about how self reflection can be used as a powerful tool to gain perspective and gratitude on your entrepreneurship journey. As an entrepreneur, it can be easy to rush forward without looking back but self-reflection is an essential tool for personal and professional success. Self-reflection gives you the opportunity to recognise your personal growth and can be a tool to motivate yourself towards identifying where you are going. Positive self reflection should highlight what has inspired you, what actions have brought you to where you are today and where have you grown from the lessons learnt from past mistakes. We are constantly changing and evolving, recognising how far you have come can be a powerful tool to drive you forward. Tune into this week’s episode of The Startup Chat to reveal how self reflection can be used in your life to empower your vision and fuel your growth. As well as Steli and Hiten’s personal examples of how to actively use this in your life, on the path to success. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:38 The personal experience that introduced self reflection 04:10 Think positively, use self affirmations, stop negative inner dialogues and create self belief 05:25 The whole idea is to give you a prospective 07:35 The story of a 1,000 applications and the determination to succeed. 08:50 An exercise for transformation and self reflection. 09:32 Transformational opportunities for self reflection are all around us 10:36 A personal account of identifying professional growth 14:13 Take time to remember 14:36 Self reflection is not just for the end of the year 15:55 Practical benefits of remembering 3 Key Points: The gratitude to remember that we all start our journeys at a different points It is so easy to get caught up in where you are today and forget where you were a long time ago It inspires me to have hope in the future, as I can see I have grown   [0:00:00] Steli Efti: Everybody this is Steli Efti.   [0:00:02] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah.   [0:00:04] Steli Efti: And today on the Startup Chat we wanna talk about … I’m not even sure what we wanna talk about. I wanna share a little story … A little Uber ride story I was on.   [0:00:13] Hiten Shah: People like talking about more than just sales and Marketing.   [0:00:15] Steli Efti: We just wanna bullshit and chat about business and life, and hopefully while we’re doing that provide a little value to people.   [0:00:19] Hiten Shah: The world’s best business podcast!   [0:00:21] Steli Efti: Oh!   [0:00:23] Hiten Shah: Shit!   [0:00:23] Steli Efti: Shit! We got it!   [0:00:25] Hiten Shah: We’re people trying to get shit done. Yeah.   [0:00:27] Steli Efti: Done. We don’t want to give you feedback that’s bullshit.   [0:00:29] Hiten Shah: We want you to do your best.   [0:00:31] Steli Efti: And how we put me back to a time when I was just starting out as an entrepreneur. And when I started on my journey of personal growth. And I just wanted to share that with you, and explore that, and hear a little bit about some of your thoughts. And maybe transform you back to the day when you started with some of these things.   [0:00:50] Hiten Shah: Sure.   [0:00:50] Steli Efti: So the other day I was traveling and I got picked up at an airport by an Uber driver. And usually when I’m in a car I like to listen to either an audiobook or podcast, or music. I’m not really super chit-chatty, I don’t interact that much in the car ride. But this time something funny happened. I jumped into this car ride, it’s super cold outside, it’s like 11:50pm at night, I’m exhausted. I’m just about to put in my headphones and listen to some music or something, and the guy that starts driving the car has a CD in there and I hear Jim Rohn, I think. A super old-school motivational self-help guru. And it’s like a self-help tape. And as I was putting in my headphones, I took them out again. And I looked at the driver, and the driver seemed … It was obviously an immigrant, somebody that has probably not been living in the country for a long time. And I was instantly transformed back to a time when I was 17, 18 years old, when I discovered self-help and positive thinking, and I discovered entrepreneurship. And I discovered all these things through books, because I didn’t have any entrepreneurs in my life. And I remembered back when I read these self-help books, and when I started even discovering the idea of positive thinking, and how incredibly impactful it was back when I discovered it. And how it completely changed the way I was thinking. And thinking positively seems like such an obvious basic concept, but it was mind-blowing to me when I was 17. I’d never been exposed to any of that kind of thinking before. I was so nostalgic. On one hand, I was to the journey, when I was at the very beginning of my journey, when I was discovering these very easy concepts that were life-changing to me. I was nostalgic seeing that guy was younger and he seemed like somebody that has very little means, and is very hungry, and wants to make positive change in his life. And I was inspired by that and reminded of myself. For the entire ride, I didn’t listen to any music, I was listening to Rohn and to motivational things with him. I wanted to start a conversation asking questions and learn about him and instantly jump into helping him and giving advice, or helping in any way I can. But at the same time, I didn’t want to talk, I just wanted to listen and share the ride with him, and remember how it felt when I was driving to my customer visits listening to self-help, Tony Robbins books or whatever the hell else I was listening to. And I think oftentimes today some of the things that really changed my life, 15, 20 years ago, today I can’t listen to anymore because these ideas are not mind-blowing anymore, I’m not that attracted to them today. But I was super grateful to be reminded that everybody starts their journey at a different point. And for me back then, if you told me, “Think positively, use self-affirmation to tell yourself what you want. Atop negative inner dialogues, and create self-belief through positive thought.” These things were a big part of what helped me even believe that I could be an entrepreneur and start a business. They were a big part of why I accomplished a lot of things down the line, although today they seem like trivial things. And I don’t know. Maybe it’s like a remembering where we’re coming from, and how far of a journey we’ve taken. Maybe that’s gonna be the theme of the episode. But I just wanted to share that because it was a special moment and a weird moment, and see how we react to that.   [0:04:46] Hiten Shah: Yeah. I love that it brought you back, that experience. Because I think that it is so easy to get caught up in where you are today and forget where you were a long time ago. And so that reminder of hearing those motivational tapes or motivational words, and being brought back to a place when you really needed them, they were really helpful, you sort of gravitated towards them and they helped change your mindset. ‘Cause those are what those things are supposed to do. Right? They’re supposed to change your mindset, that’s the whole idea. Give you a perspective you don’t have, help you learn, in a way, about yourself, right? That’s why they call it self-help, right? Or motivational speaking, whatever it is. I guess my experience with this has always been … I off and on still listen to various things, I look for new types of motivational content or self-help. And I even have an opinion about the word self-help, but I’ll save that for another episode. I think we’re in a much different world than when those things were more popular. Or sorry, becoming popular, is the right way to say it, they are very popular. And the one thing I’ll say is back then there was only a few styles of self-help what you could hear. Now self-help honestly, to some people, on this podcast this is self-help.   [0:06:22] Steli Efti: Yeah.   [0:06:23] Hiten Shah: Right? To be honest, so we’re kind of motivational speakers in that way, if you want to really go there. I think there’s a lot of religious/spiritual content out there, not to bucket those two things together, but they kinda are sometimes. That’s also self-help. Sermons, church: these things, in a way, in a big way are self-help too. And some of us, all of us have been exposed to it in one way or another. In my specific case I think a lot of the motivation I got was actually from my father growing up. So with my father, I learned my own value system and my own, I got my motivation by the stories he’d tell. He loves to tell stories about himself, the people he’s helped, and experiences he’s had and how he felt about them, and how he described them. And a lot of those are still in my head. Even as I’m talking, they all just come up, and I’m like “Oh that time, and that time, and that time, and that time, and that time.” And I’ve heard some of these over and over again. They never really get old, it’s one of those things, ’cause he’s just great at telling them. And sometimes I ask him about certain ones, like … I was born in Africa, and when we moved, how did we actually get to America? And he’s got this great story about how he sent out a thousand applications, to be a physician at a thousand different hospitals, and finally somebody said yes. Right? And it’s true. And he’s got all these hardships around how things happened and I grew up with this. That was my first version of motivational speaking. What really comes to mind for me is the flavor that’s out there, Jim Rohn, and many of these folks, sometimes I feel like it’s a bit much for me. But my point is that this stuff is real, it really can help you. And whatever you gravitate towards, or used to, is just like a fun memory to have. So for me, my memory is more of my father and the stories he told ’cause he was my first motivational speaker that I ever heard.   [0:08:20] Steli Efti: That’s so beautiful, that’s awesome. There’s been like a theme, maybe also because I’m moving right now, so as I’m cleaning out the house and the attic and the garage, I find old business plans that I’ve never thrown away because they are so terrible that they put a huge smile on my face. Just like, transform me back to a time when I was at a totally different place in life. And I’ve given this advice lately to people of, “A fun exercise to transform yourself to go back to a time when you were really inspired and motivated, and a different place, is to ask yourself ‘What was first book you read that really changed your mindset or really inspired or motivated you?’ And then read that book again, or at least pick it up again and take a few minutes to look through it and read a few pages and kind of transform yourself back to an earlier time.” Sometimes it’s just visiting certain places right? Visiting a school or a coffee shop where you started working on whatever, your book, your blog, your startup. Just going to certain places can transform you, meeting certain people. For me it was listening to those motivational tapes in a car with somebody who seemed to be on a quest to change his life and to listen to this programming while driving to help himself mentally. And that transformed me back to a time when I was doing that. I think that we’ve all been inspired by different thing, different flavors, different moments. It might have been a book, a person, a place. And I think finding ways to transform you back to that time can be incredibly powerful as … It does a number of things all at the same time. In one way, it fills me with gratitude, right, and appreciation. The other way it gives me real perspective on the journey I’ve taken. And not just in the absolute of where I am today, but in the greater context of the distance I’ve covered, and the places I’ve visited, and the highs and lows I’ve experienced through all of it. And then another thing happened just a few days ago. We talked about this, where … With my first startup 11 years ago when I came to Silicon Valley from Europe, the first company I was trying to raise money for I had been rejected by every single VC, I didn’t know what I was doing. And rightfully rejected by all of these people. And then there was one investor that got so excited about me, and investing in me, and that investor shall remain nameless but is actually a very successful guy, really nice guy even to this day. And I got so excited about finally making my break in Silicon Valley in finding this really important investor that would believe in me and put money in me. And then that guy, that investor only had one condition: he wanted me to talk this kid that back then, this guy that I didn’t even know and was not really famous in Silicon Valley. But there was somebody he used as an advisor and he deeply trusted him. And I remember having a meeting with that advisor of the VC, who was an ex-CTO of a successful startup. And that guy basically talked to me and then accurately assessed that it would be a bad idea to give me money. It would be a bad idea to invest in my startup. So he advised the VC not to invest in me. And it broke my heart, but I never held any grudge against that advisor, and I actually appreciated some of the advice that he gave and I thought that it was really smart and thoughtful, and with hindsight I realize that he was right. So I stayed in touch for a long period of time with that advisor and that person actually became pretty famous in Silicon Valley, eventually, or much more famous than he was back then. And it’s funny, just recently the last year or so he’s been reaching out once in a while to ask for some feedback from me. And just recently he offered me equity in his new company, and I talked to you privately about this, right? And when he sent me kind of the offer to be a formal advisor for his company … That moment where I got the email, it transformed me back to that coffee meeting I had with him, where basically he told me that I was an idiot and nobody should invest in me. And I was like “wow”. It only took 11 years to go from “Please, nobody give Steli money”, to “Steli, I need your advice, and do you want to be an advisor in my company?” It put a smile on my face just because it was such a nice little full circle experience of like, wow, I interacted with this guy 11 years ago when I first arrived. And now, such a long time later, here’s how our relationship has changed and it’s evolved over time. It was just a funny little moment. It was just a nice coming full circle experience. As I said, it only took 11 years to get there. I cherish these moments, but I’m asking myself how to create more of them, or how to make this … Some of these things will always happen organically, kind of fall into place, but I’m wondering of ways to do this, to create this more … Or more proactively, of being able back to go full circle, or go back to a time where I can remember where I’m coming from, and where I can connect to the things that really changed my life or helped me or inspired me or motivated me. That’s been kinda the theme of the last few days. I’ve been thinking about it more, I’ve been playing with it, I’ve been talking to different people about that.   [0:14:11] Hiten Shah: Yeah, I think that you just have to take the time to remember. Sometimes it’s as simple as that and it’s beautiful when you get a trigger. Right? Those motivational, that motivational content, that Uber ride, was such a big trigger for you. And a lot of times I’m really of the belief that everything happens for a reason, right? And I think moving is a great time to reflect, so I’m super happy that you’re getting that time. We talked about this a little bit at the end of the year. People can sort of have that opportunity to reflect and things like that. I think we can do it all the time. It can really help us sort of stay grounded in where we are and realize … You know one of the most valuable things for me at least when I reflect is I realize how dumb I was back then. And how dumb I probably am today and how much further I still can go and will go. And it gives me a lot more hope in the future, so to speak, if you want to call it that, or faith. Because we all were different people, back whenever, 11 years ago, 2 years ago, a year ago. And we’re constantly changing and evolving and we often don’t remember or take the time to remind ourselves how far we’ve come. To me, that really helps drive me forward when I realize oh, okay. I can do better than I am today for sure. And then I’ll look back and really feel like I did: “Okay, let’s get to that.”   [0:15:41] Steli Efti: I love that. I love … I wanna underline or double click both on the taking time to remember. Taking the time to remember can be beautiful thing and can be a very proactive thing. It’s something I wanna do more. And then I can’t agree more with you. I think a big part of why I love to be able to remember and connect to who I was and how different that person is from who I am today is that he inspires me and motivates me to have hope in the future, right? To be excited about the future of and saying “Wow, I can become a for myself.” And that has happened throughout my entire life. So there’s a lot more to be, and there’s a lot more to become, and there’s a lot more to grow into out of. And that can be … Especially probably when you were in Iraq, and when things had been kind of like stalling, that could be a really powerful engine to go just back long enough where you had these trigger moments that changed your life and transformed you. And then remind yourself that there’s many more of them to be created in the future. I love that. I think that’s it for this weird episode.   [0:16:51] Hiten Shah: Yes, reflect back. That’s all you gotta do.   [0:16:53] Steli Efti: Reflect back. And if anyone who’s been listening to us had a moment of reflection, or had a moment of going “Wow, yeah, if I think back to this – wow, what happened in me life?” If anyone has any of these moments and you want to share them with us, we’d love to hear them. We absolutely would love to hear them and probably be very inspired by that. So please feel free to reach out to steli@close.io and hnshah@gmail.com, we always love to hear from all listeners. And ’til then, we’ll hear you all very very soon.   [0:17:22] Hiten Shah: Always. See ya. [0:17:23] The post 284: Remembering Where You Came From appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

Today on The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about email newsletters and why it’s important to your startup. In this day and age of social media, does email marketing still work? According to Steli and Hiten, the answer is yes and if you’re not sending out newsletters in your startup, you are missing out on a huge opportunity to connect with your audience and grow your business. In this episode, Steli and Hiten talk about newsletters, the value of them and why you should be emailing your mailing list consistently and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 – About today’s topic. 00:28 – Why we’re talking about today’s topic. 01:14 – Steli talks about one of his favorite Hiten Shaw quotes. 01:45 – Hiten talks about what great email is and tools you can use. 05:19 – Steli dives into what one-to-many emailing is. 07:41 – How to do newsletters the right way. 11:06 – Hiten gives a great tip on how to improve your email. 12:13 – Steli talks about how you should consume the emails that you receive. 14:00 – How to improve the content of the emails you send. 15:17 – Why editing helps take your emails from good to great. 18:31 – Hiten suggests how you can improve your emails if you’re struggling and putting in the work. Quotes: Good email is dead, great email more alive than ever. If you write great email, you’re gonna be crushing it. Learn how to tell a great story. [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 actually gonna talk about one of the most boring topics out there. And that topic is email. Were not talking about the Gmail you use, and the emails coming in your inbox, although we kinda are. We’re talking about the emails that you actually send. [0:00:20] Steli Efti: Yeah [0:00:20] Hiten Shah: And this is like, whatever you would call a newsletter. We’ve talked about this thing in the past about the value of them and things like that, today’s episode we actually want to double down, dig in deeper and talk more about kind of where we are at right now. You know and answer the stupid question, which is does email still work? Which I think we’ve answered before but I wanted to start a little light-weight. Yes, email does work. Yes, if you are a business of any kind, you should be emailing people. [0:00:52] Steli Efti: Boom. And then, I will double click on one of my favorite all time Hiten Shah quotes on the topic of email, which was, so good email, people say email is dead and all that crap, good email might be in trouble, great email is more well in the life today than ever before. If you write great email your going to be crushing it for your business. [0:01:18] Hiten Shah: Good email is dead. [0:01:20] Steli Efti: There you go. [0:01:21] Hiten Shah: Great email is more alive than ever. [0:01:22] Steli Efti: Boom. [0:01:23] Hiten Shah: Just to paraphrase a little differently, I don’t remember how I said it, thank you for that reminder. I almost forgot I said that. I don’t think we talked about what great email is. Did we? [0:01:36] Steli Efti: Let’s talk about it. [0:01:38] Hiten Shah: Okay. So well one, great email is using a great email tool. Let’s just start there. [0:01:45] Steli Efti: Alright. [0:01:45] Hiten Shah: I know there are a lot of them out them, and we don’t really necessarily promote one or another, but I am going to speak about it for a few seconds. There are tools like MailChimp. MailChimp is actually a very good tool. I do use it. They are not paying me to say that because I use it and I love it for my email newsletter. I also use SendGrid at my companies because we need to do transactional email that are more programatic and MailChimp’s features around that are less mature, at least in my experience, than SendGrid’s. So when an engineering team needs to mess with email, or a product team, we tend to use SendGrid and make it more programmatic if you need to program around it and things like that. That being said, SendGrid’s campaign management tools are nowhere near Mailchimp’s. And then we have a lot of the advanced category such as Campaign Monitor, which is a little more advanced in some areas, or Infusionsoft, which lets you do a bunch of drip campaigns and things like that; I kind of wanted to get the tools out of the way Steli because I think it’s important, because we have a lot more to say on this. And then another kind of new set of tools would be tools like Drift and Intercom, which are chat plus email, and they let you do chat and email, and the folks at Drift have actually started to connect the two in really powerful ways. The folks at Intercom kind of started that trend by saying your emails and your chats sit in one place. And now, even Zendesk has a lot of emailing, not for marketing purposes, but for chat and email they kind of try and combine that from a support standpoint. And then, of course, there’s Front. Front allows you to have a shared inbox and lets you take one email address like press@yourdomain.com, and share all those emails and manage them across multiple people. So, the category is huge, there’s a lot of email tools, I just spit out a bunch of use cases and a bunch of different tools. [0:03:41] Steli Efti: Hot fire. [0:03:42] Hiten Shah: Got that out of the way … Yeah? What’s up? [0:03:45] Steli Efti: I just said hot fire, you’re just like on a roll. [0:03:48] Hiten Shah: Heck yeah, I’m like an encyclopedia for some of these tools man. [0:03:50] Steli Efti: Yeah. [0:03:52] Hiten Shah: I’ve probably used all of them or have some kind of visibility into how people are using these tools, and I think email tools are amazing, and it’s one of the tried and true software. So on that note, I have to mention one more, is that okay? [0:04:06] Steli Efti: Yeah, go. [0:04:08] Hiten Shah: Mixmax. I think Mixmax is one of the most powerful email tools out there today. The reason is, it’s a Chrome extension and not, as long as you connect with your Google account, and you can send email and do lots of fancy things, like put a presentation right in the email, or set up fancy drip campaigns, or send bulk email through Gmail, and all you need is your Gmail and Mixmax and you’re off to the races. They also, one of my favorite things as we talked about in a previous episode, they’re a freemium business, they have a very generous free plan, and I’m a huge fan of that product as well. Again, none of these have paid me to say this, and I just got to spit it out, because these are all great products; And, one of the biggest questions Steli, about most of these categories that we talk about when it comes to software and tactics is what tool should I use? What tool should I use Steli? So you know what? We got that shit out of the way. [0:04:57] Steli Efti: There you go, boom. Check mark behind it. So the focus here is obviously not on one on one email, although a lot of principles that we’re going to discuss are universal, as we usually like to do, but this is about company email, one to many, typically. Back in the day the prototypical golden standard of one to many corporate email, or b2b email was the newsletter, quote unquote. The generic email that a company would send to all their customers, all the contacts they had in the contact database, informing them about all the great news there is: industry news, company news, any kind of news that might be interesting to the recipients. Today, I do see the traditional newsletter dying off. We still call that one to many thing, we typically call it a newsletter in the b2b context, but it’s not a newsletter in the traditional sense. You have newsletter, but it’s not really a newsletter, it’s not like a beautifully formatted html email with lots of news in there. It’s typically a very in depth, detailed story or strategy or learning that you share with people that have given you their email because they want to learn more about product and product development, that’s the newsletter you have on product habits. It’s called newsletter because it’s an email list, and they’re all receiving the same email at the same time, but it’s not really that outdated format of just having 8 different stories or news items or things in there. It is something very different, and more modern, and more focused for creating value for the recipient. You have an email at times, where you share different top articles that you find, there’s all these kind of articles that you read, you read a shit ton and are one of the best curators of content on the web and alive today, and so you curate an insane amount of content down to the best pieces of content that people could find in the b2b space, usually, and set it up. But again, it’s not really a newsletter in the traditional sense, and I want to talk about the one to many email that really moves the needle today, that really crushes it for businesses, for brands, delivers value to the recipient but also delivers or creates a ton of value for the sender, doesn’t matter who that is. So what are we seeing today that is really great … I don’t know, great newsletters or great one to many emails, I don’t know how to call this, but we’ll just use newsletters as a commonly used and understood term. What’s presently a way to do this in a great way, not just send out these bullshit, outdated corporate newsletters, which I see less and less; And we still did, we made that cardinal sin until nine months ago, we were sending these monthly generic emails, which I now am ashamed for, but we’ve changed our format drastically, and I want to talk about that with you. What you see, what’s working, what you do, what we do, and hopefully people can learn from that and utilize that. [0:08:08] Hiten Shah: Yeah, I … You know, I get so many questions about email now, it’s funny I get questions about email from people who are paying attention. And people who aren’t, I don’t get any questions from them. And I think that’s the first step … I don’t think you can write great email without being able to criticize other people’s emails. So the first step I would use is start asking people what their favorite email newsletters are, and sign up for those. And try to just understand what those people are doing. I promise I will say what patterns I have noticed, and why I write the way I do on email, and have spent a lot of time, especially in the last years learning how to do that myself. But the biggest thing is in your category, even if it’s not a great email, sign up for those too. So first thing is sign up for email lists that people say are great, because that’s word of mouth, right? [0:09:18] Steli Efti: Yeah. [0:09:18] Hiten Shah: So I think that’s great. Second, sign up for emails in your category, in your space, about your topic. I do that all the time, continuously. I sign up for so many I even have a separate Gmail account where I sign up for them, and I always get a ton of value just by looking at how other people are writing it, and also, honestly, being hypercritical of those emails. I have even friends that I’ll email and say “Hey this was a real shitty email, here’s why” if I know they’re in the category and someone’s written an email in their category. Or I’ll say “Hey this was a great email,” so I think you can even, if you want to go further you can even create a group of people that value sending email and kind of do that back and forth; It’s really powerful to get other people’s perspective and their viewpoint on how an email made them feel. I know I almost sound ridiculous, because this is a lot of depth on email, but if you want to write great email you have to be able to criticize email, and other people’s email. It’s one of the skills that I don’t see many people going after and getting better at. Emailing as well as just being able to criticize. The reason I say that is because the majority of writing is about editing, not about creating. [0:10:33] Steli Efti: Yep. [0:10:34] Hiten Shah: Right? So that’s why they say, just write. Yeah, I agree, just fucking write. And then start editing, and spend more of your time editing. You can’t do that unless you read … You know what, the way to get better at editing is by reading all the writing out there, and being able to critique it. And yeah, be an asshole. Talk about the stuff you didn’t like about it, really internalize what a great email feels like. That’s my biggest sort of perspective on email. The biggest tip I would give people is learn how to tell a great story. What I mean by great story is a story that is compelling to other people. If you just do that, and get good at that by email, you will do more than what most people are able to do when they write an email. They can’t tell a story. If you look at all the great people that are writing great emails today, storytelling is the number one reason their emails are great. That’s it. That’s what I got, on great email. [0:11:35] Steli Efti: Yeah, I was just thinking about this. I agree with you so much that I try to disagree with you at times, but I could not think of a single example … [0:11:45] Hiten Shah: Bring it. [0:11:45] Steli Efti: No. I could not think of a single example of the type of people … I can’t count the people or the companies in one hand … I don’t know if it’s six or seven, but it’s definitely not ten. So in less than two hands I can count on how many companies are sending great emails. And through those, I was parsing through my head, are any of them sending … Can I think of an awesome or great email that was not an example for great storytelling, and I can’t. I really can’t come up with that. So I think that storytelling is a really big part of that and editing is a really big part of that, so being a conscious consumer of email … We all consume a shit ton of email, but if you are in business and you are trying to build a business, and build a startup, and build a company, and grow it, you can’t just be a mindless consumer of email. You need to become a conscious consumer of email. You need to be looking at the emails that resonate with you, that make you respond, and you need to realize why. Why is that? Why do I like this, versus not that? Why am I not reading this? Why am I looking at this email and going “Oh my god this is so stupid,” what made me think and feel that way? And then you need to take note of these things and when you send email you need to run them through the query and go “Do I make the same dumb mistakes?” or “Are we making the same stupid mistakes as somebody else?” or “are we using the same awesome tactic of storytelling?” or “Shit, we have a really great piece of content here, but the email is not really great storytelling, how can we pull out a story and highlight that or tell the story better or make it more compelling for the reader to want to read more, want to read what we’ve sent to them?” I think that my one simple advice when it comes to one to many email is that although you might send some emails in bulk and to many people at once, the day of writing emails, filling it with lots and lots of disconnected content to hopefully have some piece of content in that email that will be compelling to some people on that email list that you’re sending out to … That kind of high quantity low quality approach is dead. That’s not going to work. So you need to start asking yourself “How can I write one story, or one piece of content that is so good it’s worth sending to everybody at once? That’s so compelling I think most people that I’m sending it to, even if it’s a big list, will love it, will read it, will get value out of it.” That’s the right mindset, it’s all about empathy, and its all about trying to understand even if it’s a big group of people, what is the common denominator; what is something that even two hundred thousand, five hundred thousand, a million people on an email list … What is the type of story or content that these people all will probably enjoy, because they all have something in common? Otherwise, they would not be on your email list, hopefully, right? There’s some commonality that needs to be there. If you take that kind of empathetic approach you can be … You can write great email and you can see amazing success. Our email list is a massive driver for our business, and there’s not a single day, seriously, there’s not a single day in the week, weekends included, where I don’t get multiple emails from people telling me … Thanking me for an email that we’ve sent them, and saying that … [0:15:15] Hiten Shah: Wow, that’s amazing. [0:15:17] Steli Efti: Seriously, like the … [0:15:18] Hiten Shah: Yeah, same here. [0:15:19] Steli Efti: Every day, and I know that you are getting this as well, I can assume that people are telling me that the emails we send out, “Steli the emails you guys are send out are my favorite emails, one of my favorite emails, I read them, I don’t read any other newsletters or any other emails I’m getting from other companies, but I always read yours. It’s always valuable, it has helped me x, y, z … ” The amount of value you can create if you do email great, the amount of business that can drive to you, is really tremendous and we are really a big example of that. But you’re going to have to put in the work, you have to put in the work. You have to see what others do and what works. You have to learn how to do storytelling. You have to … You can’t just send out emails … You said something about editing. [0:16:05] Hiten Shah: Yeah. [0:16:05] Steli Efti: Great writing is really great editing. There needs to be a kernel in there, like some good story, some good idea, something valuable, but then what makes the writing great is going to be the editing. Not in the writing part, once you have something, in the taking things away, and restructuring things, and rewording things, and working on the structure, and that’s … If you do the editing part well, and if you invest in … That’s really going to take good writing to great writing, or good emails to great emails. I was just reminded when you were saying this that every Thursday, Ramin who you know, who is working with us on the podcast, he’s like the invisible man in the background who helps organize a lot of things around The Startup Chat, big shout out to Ramin. He works with me in marketing at close, and on Thursdays I always get a first draft version of the Monday morning email that we send out. Monday always we send out to our email the most important piece of content that we’ve created. There’s always some back and forth between him, and myself and other people on the team … Editing the subject lie. Editing small parts of it … It’s a collaborative effort in the final mile, the Thursday/Friday before Monday comes is where really what we’ve created as a first version becomes a great email that people open, read, respond, click on and thank us for. So make sure that you have a group of people that help you on the editing part, to help you push a good email all the way up to a great one, and really invest in email. Great email is really well and alive as a very wise man once said. Most companies, think about it, I am consuming content all day long, Hiten is like this … The amount of company, the amount of email newsletters I’ve subscribed to and companies that have me on their newsletters is probably thousands and thousands of companies. And there is maybe six or so that I appreciate, that write really great emails. Six, out of thousands. [0:18:09] Hiten Shah: Wow, yeah. [0:18:09] Steli Efti: So putting that extra work in to become one of that one company in your industry that really is killing it with the emails, that can be a determining factor for a lot of success. It really is worth it. [0:18:20] Hiten Shah: It’s absolutely possible. [0:18:22] Steli Efti: Yeah. [0:18:22] Hiten Shah: Yeah. You’re right. [0:18:26] Steli Efti: Awesome. [0:18:26] Hiten Shah: Okay. So if you’re struggling with email, and you’re willing to put in the work, email us, and we will help you. We’ll point you in the right direction. You have to be willing to put in the work. It’s Steli, S-T-E-L-I at close.io or hnshah, H-N-S-H-A-H, which is also my twitter handle, at gmail.com, and we would love to help you out. We want to see people write great email and especially people who are willing to do the work. But it takes work, real work, I spent a lot of the time last year doing this work and it’s not easy, and I know you have to. [0:18:59] Steli Efti: Yeah, and if you guys are committed, even if just one of you sends us an email and shows us what their doing and is willing to work with us and take our feedback on board to take their okay or good emails to great emails, we will not stop until we’ve helped you write great emails and see a lot more success with it. [0:19:19] Hiten Shah: Absolutely. [0:19:20] Steli Efti: Alright, that’s it from us, we’re looking forward to hear you. Bye bye. [0:19:24] Hiten Shah: Bye. [0:19:24] The post 283: How to Create a Good Email Newsletter appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In this episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about the most common product mistakes startups make when developing new products. Tons of new products are being developed all the time. While some products may end up being great, it’s inevitable that bad ones will get developed. What may seem like a brilliant idea on paper, often turns out to be a terrible idea when introduced in the real world. In this episode, Steli and Hiten talk about some common mistakes they see that can kill a product, the best way to avoid them and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 – About today’s topic 00:55 – Why this topic was chosen 01:34 – Hiten gives a background about a blog post he made on the subject. 03:13 – Hiten talks about the first mistake he and his team made when they developed a product that failed. 04:20 – Hiten talks about the second mistake made in developing that product. 05:13 – The third mistake that was made in developing that product. 07:56 – Steli highlights a mistakes he’s made in developing a product. 12:15 – Hiten talks about his biggest challenge in developing a product. 13:33 – Things Steli is looking to change this year in how they develop new products. 14:18 – 4 main mistakes startups make when developing new products. Quotes: Developing a product is actually very challenging today. When developing a product, make sure to do user research. Do competitor research when developing a product.   [0:00:01] Steli: Hey, this Steli. [0:00:03] Hiten: This is Hiten, and today on the startup chat, what are we gonna talk about today, Steli? This was your choice.   [0:00:08] Steli: This was my choice, yes. (chuckles) We’re gonna talk about the most common product mistakes people make, startups make, and even some fucking mistakes that you made last year when it comes to building products, which you only did five of, right? So this is based on a talk that you and Marie gave at SaaSFest a few weeks ago, but also based on the I think most recent product habits e-mail. Again, quick shout-out for those that are listening to the podcast. Probably everybody has already subscribed, but for the new listeners, if you’re not on the e-mail list, make sure to go to producthabits.com and get on the e-mail list. Some of the most valuable stuff on the interwebs, and definitely one of my favorite e-mails I get from Heton. So the last e-mail two days was kind of an e-mail where you write in detail, in depth about the most common product mistakes you’ve observed other people make and other startups make. Those are some of those that you made, and I thought, “We should talk about this, because it’s gonna be super valuable to people,” so yeah, that’s what we’re talking about.   [0:01:18] Hiten: Yeah, I’ll give the background. We know everyone builds products, you know? Even if you’re not on a product team, we just know that, like, whether it’s software, hardware, even if you’re a services business, we consider you someone who builds product, and we consider the service a product. So what Marie and did was we got really excited this year as the year started to actually ask people on our list what their biggest product mistake was. And so we asked that question last week on Monday, and then — was that last week? No, it was this week. Holy crap.   [0:01:56] Steli: (laughs)   [0:01:56] Hiten: So we asked that question this on Monday, and we got a whole bunch of responses. They came in super fast, and people were telling us their stories — very elaborate stories, some of them — about the mistakes that they made ’cause we asked them to. And we said we’d share them. We even said, you know, we might use your name, if you want us to or not, let us know. We ended up not using anyone’s name, not because they didn’t say we could, we just felt like, “Let’s just keep it anonymous and more make ours not anonymous.” And this actually came from what you were saying, Steli, is her and I gave a tandem talk, which I’ve never done before, and we talked at SaaSFest 2017 about our mistakes that we made. And we went really in depth, so I’m gonna go through a few of them, at least ours because I think they’re very indicative of mistakes other people could make, too.   [0:02:46] Steli: Yeah.   [0:02:46] Hiten: And then I’m sure we could have a discussion about product mistakes and probably how to avoid them, right?   [0:02:51] Steli: (laughs) That’s a good angle, for sure.   [0:02:52] Hiten: That’s probably a good idea. So what we did is one mistake we made was we built shiny objects, and it was one specific shiny object. But we built it because we were really excited about it, but we actually didn’t dig in enough into the market and the opportunity and realize that we were gonna have a retention problem. And that means that we wasted a few months, in that case, of building the product, and honestly, it works. People love it, but they only use it once a year or twice a year. And these days, unless you have some other model like a services business or something that’s not software, it’s actually very difficult to create a product that people only use once or twice a year, and that’s what we built. I’m sure we could’ve kept iterating and figure it out, how to make it work. It was just one where we also weren’t as excited about the market after we dug into it after building the product. We feel like we could’ve went in to prevent that mistake and dug much deeper into the retention of the product and how often people would use it instead of just getting excited about the category. We were really excited about the category. Another mistake — I’ve got four of them here — but another mistake, so this is number two, so we took the code from one product, and my bright idea was to copy and paste it, which is a non-technical technical term that everyone understands, I’m sure. And our engineer said, “It’s cool. We can do it.” So it wasn’t my fault fully, and we decided to copy and paste it. And what we didn’t realize, especially with the things we wanted to add to it, is that it was gonna take longer than we thought, and it wasn’t as simple as copying and pasting, you know, in a Word document or a Google doc a paragraph and moving it around. Code is not that simple, is the learning there. And so we done more technical research, which means digging in to what it would take to copy and paste it, we would not have done it. That product probably wouldn’t even exist today. So, you know, another learning, another harsh one. Took a lot of time. Number three was we forgot to research our competitors. This one was good, though, because even though we forgot to research our competitors, we actually remembered early, partly because we made bigger mistakes before in that year and realized that we better catch them early, so we’ve been having more discussions about, “Are we doing the right thing? Are we focused on the right problem to solve right now? Do we have enough thorough research?” So what we realized is that we didn’t, and so we were creating a product in the document space. And so we decided to research and do competitor analysis on a bunch of the products in the space, whether it’s Google docs or Quip or Box, and those aren’t fully competitive products to us. But they are products in our space that we hypothetically could’ve been competing with, although we’re not going to. We found another opportunity, so we researched those after we realized that we almost didn’t. And that gave us such a unique perspective on the market that we were then able to share with the audience, ’cause all this stuff we’ve been sharing as we’ve been going, too. We haven’t been sharing it as mistakes. We’ve been more sharing it as we do stuff and we learn, so it was really nice to close off the year and share it like this and then start off this year and get everyone else’s stories. This has been really a fun year so far on that list and with that audience, and it’s just gonna get better. Another thing is we were actually afraid to run user tests, because we thought people were — you needed expertise, and I’ve been that with my companies for years, “I” meaning “our teams.” And always, it was a designer or a user researcher or a product person who had a design background and was very familiar with the tools of the process or a firm that we would hire to do it, and so we missed out on months, probably a whole year of learning, because we weren’t doing it. And now we have multiple user tests running all the time after we got over that hump and realized we don’t need expertise. Just figure it out. And I think, you know, the way I would say it is that, like, everything can be figured out. You just need to know that it can be figured out and get over your issues of expertise and experts needing to do things in most cases. Not all cases. And so those are the four kind of mistakes, and I think they’re very common in a lot of ways. And ours were very specific to our problems and the stories, but at the end of the day, the most common theme, even from the research that we did by asking people for their mistakes, is that people are basically really have a lack of focus and don’t know how to get focused, is probably the high-level mistake I see most people making based on their responses to kind of our question about this. So, you know, I would challenge you on this, Steli. What mistakes have you made on product in the last year?   [0:07:42] Steli: Huh.   [0:07:42] Hiten: ‘Cause I didn’t hear from you, bro!   [0:07:44] Steli: Yeah.   [0:07:44] Hiten: I didn’t hear from you.   [0:07:46] Steli: (laughs) Well, you know, if I respond to this, I’m gonna be very prominently highlighted, so I’m just gonna chill and talk to Hiten about this about podcast. So that’s a good question, what mistakes we made. I think one thing that stands out to me is that funny enough, like, at the beginning of last year, we hired our first success team, right? We started building a success team, and we said, “All right, so the first time — ” We have a pretty amazing support team, but we said, you know, “For the first time, we’re gonna be practicing investing and reaching out to our customers to help them get more value out of our product.” We’re super excited about that, and we put together a really awesome team. These, you know, gals and girls, they did a great job in, like, reaching out to customers, caring about them, championing them, helping them, but one thing that happened kind of by default and not by design is that, you know, when they looked at all the customers we have, they had to prioritize somehow. And the simplest way to prioritize was to say, “Hey, let’s start with our biggest customers and learn how to help them and make sure that they get the most out of the solutions, as they’re paying us the most money, and then work our down to the smaller ones and figure out more scalable ways to help the smaller ones as much as we do the big ones.” Totally fine, totally logical rationale. The funny thing is that as we started more practically reaching out and talking even more to customers, we started talking to a specific stakeholder of — we have customers. There’s multiple users and stakeholders when you use a CRM, it is the end user, the sales rep, that’s using the tool eight, nine hours a day, but then there’s the sales manager, you know, that tries to, like, keep track of a small sales team. There’s the sales executive, maybe the VP of sales that just checks the tool out maybe once a week or once a month and puts together reports and that type of stuff, and then you might have a founder, a CEO, other executives that might want to take a look. You might have technical team that use the PI to integrate it with other things. There’s multiple people that use the product, right? And different kind of personas, and our most important persona has always been the end user, the sales person. We always wanted to build the best sales tool for salespeople. Not for managers, not for executives, not for anybody else, but our number-one priority was always the salesperson itself and their productivity. And because our success team started reaching out to our larger customers, they started talking to the managers and the admins and the higher level-ups. They started getting more and more feedback from these people, and they started conveying that feedback very vocally, as they were really strong champions, back to our team. And without even knowing, we started focusing more on the use cases and the things that are admin users wanted and a little it less on our end users, our salespeople that use the product eight hours a day, and, you know, I think that we kind of lost a little bit of touch with our core customer. We developed I think a bunch of stuff in the product that are features that long-term, I still think serve our customers well and are things that we would have wanted to do, but it was not a balanced field. We did too much for the admin and too little for the sales rep, and it took us, you know, it took us like eight months into the year until we realized that, until we even started having internal discussions that were differentiated of talking about different users personas. Before that, we always kind of intrinsically knew we want to build the best sales tool for salespeople, but as we started growing as a company, growing as a team, and as we started building to the — creating the success team, the success team started reaching out, we lost our sight of that. And we had to kind of find our way back and get back in touch with our most important stakeholder, which is the salesperson in terms of what kind of features, what kind of products and innovation we develop, so that was the biggest mistake, I think, that we made last year. It was a very admin-focused year from a product-development road map, and I don’t think that was by choice. That was by kind of mistake, kind of just happened organically without us strategically deciding we wanted to go that way.   [0:12:06] Hiten: Interesting. Yeah, I think product is actually very challenging today, and I’m realizing that more and more as I build more products. And I’m also realizing that, you know, as they say in a lot of times, it has everything to do with team. So, you know, your perspective and kind of that mistake or that way to frame it, I think, is really valuable. For me, like, I feel like in product especially, like, if you want to talk specific to software because that’s what both of us do, for the most part — this is also a product, by the way, this podcast. And we always look for feedback, so if you have any, hit us up. We always tell you how to, so I won’t get into it right now. But the point I have is, like, I think setting up a team that wants to learn, setting up a team that keeps their eye on the right ball, those are the hard parts of products, and we’re just barely getting into a place where we can be very systematic about not making these mistakes. We can be systematic about learning how to do better all the time on product, so I guess my question for you, Steli, would be, like, are there things that you’re looking to change this year on product, on your team?   [0:13:27] Steli: Yeah. So there are a bunch of things. I think one thing was that we set a much better kind of year priority in terms of, like, some of the big innovation things that we’ve been wanting to do and haven’t prioritized enough yet, so that’s something that I’m excited about. But also, just, like, starting to track NPS scores based on different user personas and just doing a lot more research and being a lot more diligent in the way that we introduce things is, I think, the main goal here, and this is also what I wanted to say earlier. What I noticed — the four main kind of mistakes that you described last year making, funny enough, they’re all, like, research mistakes, right? The first one is, like, doing better and more product research. The second one is doing technical research, which is interesting. The third one is doing competitor research, and the fourth thing is doing user research, right? Usage research or whatever you want to — user testing, but it’s all just, like, research based on people using something and giving feedback. So it’s interesting as, like, those four levels of research, ’cause a lot of times, we say, “Oh, you know, before you launch a product, do research,” but what does that really mean? And I think we — people will mix some type of, like, looking at the market and maybe looking at a few users, but, like, thinking about it in very kind of categorized ways, especially the technical research is an interesting one that I think a lot people forget. And that can make a big difference in how the product then ends up or how late it ends up being developed or how unsatisfactory it is. All that is, like, just do your homework, and do it a lot more diligently than you think it’s needed. And for us, another thing that really was a big change that we do now, we see a massive difference in the quality of product we’re able to develop, is that, you know, we’re just — we used to develop features and new products and then literally test them as little as possible, you know, because we want to launch as fast as possible, and then just launch. Launch, see what happens, make a few improvements and adjustments, and then go on to the next thing, and now we’ve become much more diligent in, you know, A, testing internally really heavily, then releasing these new features in our company and having company-wide usage and testing, then selecting, you know, 25 to 30 customers we think are kind of diverse group but also the group that will benefit the most from that feature and onboarding them in a beta program and releasing the feature just to that group and doing research with them and checking in with them and getting feedback from them and building case studies. And then after we’ve done that, and usually that beta is that phase — like, the internal alpha phase is the one where you get a lot of easy bugs to figure out or easy problems to figure out. The beta one is the one that we really start developing the product and making it, like, really well-thought-out, really well-rounded, figuring out all the edge cases that are easy to overlook, and really, sometimes, you know, that beta phase might delay the release significantly. But it always makes a massive difference in how strong that new feature or product release is, how powerful, how thoughtful, so that’s something that we just started towards the end of last year, to just do that process very diligently. And that’s something that we’re committed to this year that is very different from how we used to build product and launch new features and things of that nature.   [0:17:14] Hiten: Yeah. You know, it’s funny you mention the research side. I feel like it just didn’t matter back in the day to do as much as research or even do what I would call technical or any of this stuff because we weren’t in markets that were super commoditized, and this is why what you hear right now is a lot of folks are talking about brand again, especially in software and tech. And part of the reason is — and I say, “Again,” because brand is always important, but it’s become something that people are just speaking about a lot. It’s because I think they’re thinking that brand solves all problems or that by having a brand, you can have an equivalent product to other things out there and still make it work, which there’s some truth to that, but I think a mistake — I’m gonna see I think a lot of companies make this here — is overinvest in brand and either under invest in product or not invest enough in product. And for me, there is no product without research. I guess that’s, like, probably the biggest statement I can make and my biggest learning from last year There is no product without research. I don’t just mean user research, I don’t mean competitor research, I mean technical research. I mean these things that we don’t even know to research sometimes.   [0:18:32] Steli: (laughs)   [0:18:33] Hiten: Right? Like, there’s so many aspects of it, and I know, like, sometimes, I say, “Research,” and there’s people that have been, you know, have PhDs and been to school and done research, like real, hardcore research. And they’re like, “Research? That takes a long time.” I’m like, “No, no, no. I don’t mean that word ‘research.'”   [0:18:48] Steli: (laughs)   [0:18:48] Hiten: But I mean the other word “research,” which is, like, actually do your homework. Like, figure out, like what’s going on in your market, what’s going on with other products, what’s going on with other businesses, et cetera. So, you know, for me, the solution to most people’s problems is actually figure out what kind of research you’re not doing today. Figure out where you’re not digging in in product and go do it. That’s it. That’s what I learned last year, you know? And I have many different sizes of products and companies and customer bases right now, and I can tell you — and types of businesses — consulting, product-based, software, you know, consumer product goods. I’ve seen so many of these things over the years. That one thing is what solves the problem. There’s a lot of other things that are helpful, but if you do research and do it fast and do it diligently, you’re likely to have better outcomes than other people.   [0:19:50] Steli: I love it. Amen. Amen, my brother! All right, we’re gonna wrap this episode up on that note. There’s nothing more to add to this. Make less product mistakes …   [0:20:02] Hiten: Please.   [0:20:02] Steli: … By doing more research, all right.   [0:20:05] Hiten: Done.   [0:20:05] Steli: Do your homework. That’s it from us, everybody.   [0:20:09] Hiten: See you.   [0:20:09] Steli: We’ll see you very soon. Bye-bye. [0:20:10] The post 282: The Most Common Product Mistakes Startups Make appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

Today on The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about why startups are allergic to processes and what they can do about it. A lot of startups have “process allergies” and this can be a hindrance to growth. The thought of building and setting up business  processes also adds pressure on founders. However, what they don’t realize is that every business activity is done through a process. In this episode, Steli and Hiten talk about “process allergy”, what it is, why most startups have it, and what founders can do to eliminate it. Listen until the end and get a chance to win a surprise from The Startup Chat! Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:28 – The reason we’re talking about today’s topic. 01:01 – What “process allergy” is and why startups have it. 02:23 – Hiten talks about what inexperience leads to. 03:07 – The general mantra processes. 03:59 – What a process really is. 05:17 – Why realizing you have a process is a powerful thing. 07:21 – The worst thing about creating processes. 08:54 – Hiten’s suggestion on how to develop processes. 11:17 – Steli talks about how to eliminate “processes allergies”. 15:26 – Steli suggests using Process Street and Asana Quotes: Every business has a process even if you don’t think you do. Repetition doesn’t happen without process. The way you do things is your process. We want to help you become more process oriented. For the first five listeners who reach out to Steli by email at Steli@close.io we will pay for a business pro plan upgrade at Process St. [0:00:00] Steli: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti.   [0:00:03] Hiten: And this is Hiten Shah . And today on the startup chat, we’re going to talk about why startups are allergic to process and what you can do about it.   [0:00:12] Steli: So the reason why I wanted to talk to you about this today is just in a recent episode, you dropped a Hiten bomb, which was saying that lots of startups has process allergy. They’re allergic to process. And that can be a hindrance to growth. So I made a mental note when you said that to come back to this. And to talk about it a little bit further in detail. So let’s start off the episode with the open ended question. We’ll go deep and deep in detail. What do you mean by process allergy? And why do you think startups have it?   [0:00:50] Hiten: Startups are usually started by inexperienced business people. And I don’t mean because of age, I just mean in general. It’s inexperienced business people. Maybe people that worked at companies cool, but they’re just inexperienced at starting a business. They’re inexperienced at thinking through team and structure and even things like how do you grow a business? What are the most important things to do? Even things like how do you raise money? Usually these startups, especially on the tech side are started by people who can build things. And so a lot of times, what I see … And this has been getting better over the years but is that people just get into it accidentally. And they just do whatever they can to get shit done. And so that’s the hustle mentality, the get shit done mentality. And at some point, whatever they’re doing starts breaking. And what I mean by breaking is, you have process whether you think you do or not. And that’s the key statement I would make, which is if you’re getting anything done, you’re building product, you’re getting customers, you’re hiring, there’s a process to it. You’re just not conscious to it if you think you don’t have it. And you probably haven’t written it down. And you don’t follow the same process necessarily every time. So a lot of times I think what happens is, inexperience leads to this idea that I have, that process is not something startups have. They don’t, and it’s because they’re moving so fast, or think they’re moving so fast that they don’t either need it, or don’t think about it. And then a point comes when things just start breaking. Usually the first thing that breaks is hiring. They don’t know how to hire. Well shit, it’s because they just hired their buddies. Right? Literally, that’s how it works. You start with your buddies. You start with your co-founder. You start with people you know. What the heck do you need an interview for? You know these people. You’re building a team, a culture of people that you want to work with. It’s very fucking simple to be honest in the beginning when you think of it like that. And that’s the common case. There’s the other cases. And so to me, it’s just an idea that process doesn’t exist because it doesn’t need to is kind of the general mantra early on. And then you don’t realize that you do have a process. There is a way this stuff happens. And it’s not documented. And then you have to scale it, meaning you have to go from five people to 20 in some amount of time. Either because you raised money or the business is doing well and you have needs that people can solve. That’s one aspect of it. Another aspect of it is if you want to repeat anything that you’re doing, whether it’s … Usually it’s because you’re doing it well hopefully, repetition doesn’t happen without process. Repetition doesn’t happen without something to repeat. So that’s my rant on it.   [0:03:37] Steli: Alright, I love it. So the thing I really love most that you said is that if you are aware of it or not, you already have a process in place. You don’t have to have it written down to have a process. You don’t have to think that it’s perfect for it to be a process. It just needs to be the way you’re doing things. The way you’re doing things are your process. I say this all the time, people are telling me especially in hiring actually. Startups will tell me, “We know we need to hire a few salespeople, but we don’t have our sales process figured out yet, so we’re waiting for that before we hire you. But we don’t have a sales process yet. So we’re trying to get to one.” I’m like, “Well how many customers do you have?” He’s like, “Well we have like 100 customers.” I’m like, “Well then you have a process. You have a sales process right now. It might not be an ideal sales process. It might not be the sales process you’re going to have a year from now. But you have one.” And I think that, that realization is key. I think most people think as long as I have not written it down, it doesn’t exist. Since we didn’t write it down, it does not exist. So we don’t have to think about it. And we’re not responsible for how bad it is since we haven’t written it down. It does exist. If you do something the same way or a similar way, more than once, boom, that’s your process. That’s the way that your company is doing certain things or your team is doing certain things. I think realizing that is a really powerful thing because when you realize that, process doesn’t become this thing, this burdenous thing that’s like, “We’re going to do the process shit once we’re really big, but we don’t want to be bogged down by it today.” You’d have to realize you already have it. The question is now, how conscious do you want to be? How mindful do you want to be about it? And how much documentation around it do you want to do? What is practical and tactical at this stage of your company? One thing that I’ll throw out there, to me, so this is one of the biggest realizations I had that I think is really key when it comes to process and startups. If you have it, it doesn’t matter if you’ve written it down or not. The second is, that it really doesn’t fucking matter how you write it down. It doesn’t matter what software you use. Oh, should we put this in a Google doc, an Avenote, should we write this on an email chain? Should this be a chat? Should we have a wiki? Where do we put this stuff, this documentation around our process? Where do we place all of this? All that doesn’t matter to me as much. But what really matters is that when you do it, the more important thing, the more valuable thing is not the doing part of it. Thinking about process like a product. And thinking about the first version … Thinking versions. I think a lot of times startups struggle with writing out a process for something that they’re doing or thinking it through because they think it needs to be perfect. It needs to be like you do it once, it’s perfect. It forever is useful and everybody will comply to it and use it, and we’re done with it. And they think about this in such a massive terms, that it’s daunting and they never have the time to do this 30 page documentation thing for something. Think about it in versions, the worst thing about any process documentation I’ve ever seen is that a team or a person will spend a good amount of time doing it, and then nobody’s using it. Nobody’s revisiting, nobody’s updating it. In six months, nine months, 12 months down the line, somebody does a completely new version of it, completely unaware that there was an older version a year ago that nobody ever looked at or used. So to me the biggest thing is, whatever you do, think on it in versions and just … If it’s worth having a written out process for something in your company, then just commit to revisiting it maybe every two weeks, maybe every once at least. Just taking 15 minutes or 20 minutes as a team or as an individual person. And giving it an update. Looking at it and saying, “Is the still the thing we’re doing? Is this still useful? Have we learned something or changed something that forces this document or this process that we’ve spelled out and written out to be updated or improved?” And if you do that consistently, even just once a month for 12 months, having a document that spells out a process within your company is more likely they’re not going to be really, really useful. It’s when you put together a 20 page document and nobody ever looks at it again. That’s when process is really, really wasteful in my mind.   [0:08:37] Hiten: Oh my God, you’re so right. So I think it’s like, you don’t want to force process like documentation for no reason. It’s not what I’m suggesting. What I am suggesting is that if there’s something you need to repeat, you start thinking through, how are you going to repeat this the best way possible? And usually it has to do with, “I need to hire. I need to do marketing. I need to do sales.” These are simple processes. And some of these categories like sales, you have to think through process in order to even do it once. You know what I mean? It’s just that if you didn’t write it down, or if founders are doing the selling, and then they want to hire somebody, if they haven’t written down the process or thought through that, then they’re depending on the other person they hire to do that. That is awful. That never works. If you’re doing something or if somebody in your company’s doing something and it needs to be repeated, it’s that person who’s doing it’s job to at least start writing something up about how it’s being done. So that’s what I mean by process. Write down what you’re doing if you know you need to do it again. And especially when you know someone else needs to do it again that’s not you. Because this is the core problem in a lot of business. Somebody does it, they do a great job. Does it, meaning any task in a company, any process, anything. And then all of a sudden, someone else has to do it. And then what happens? This is like the most common frustration I hear. That other person needs to do it. They just take it off. Pick up whatever tool, do whatever. There’s no process, no step by step written. They’ve had some output of that task, and the person who originally did it is like, “Oh they suck at it.” No. You fucking suck. They don’t suck. Because you didn’t tell them how to do it.   [0:10:22] Steli: Yeah. It’s always your fault. That’s another .   [0:10:27] Hiten: Oh I love that. There’s a whole episode on that. Save that one for sure. I love that.   [0:10:31] Steli: It’s always your fault.   [0:10:32] Hiten: Oh that’s my favorite. That is my favorite.   [0:10:34] Steli: It’s a core principle that we both share. It’s always your fault. I don’t care. Sorry, I love that. So let me throw out two shout outs and then we can wrap up this episode because it’s a really short one. I think if people that listen to this realize that they have processes in place, no matter if they’ve written it down or not, and that as more people on the team join, having something written up and documented, documenting your process might be incredibly powerful for them to be able to do their job really well, and to do it quickly and get onboarded quickly. And also, writing it out, another real big benefit of it is that it makes certain mistakes or certain things that are broken about the process so much more obvious. Writing it out highlights the good and the bad for everybody and it makes it transparent. It takes it out of your head, out of your email inbox, out of your funky way of doing things and it puts it on a piece of paper in a way that three, four, 10 people can look at it and go and ask important questions. “Why don’t we just jump ahead of this step? Why is this thing important? Why is this whole thing even the way we’re doing it? Can we approach it a different way?” It makes it transparent and when you have transparency within your company, people are going to make better decisions, but also mistakes, errors and areas of improvement are more obvious for all people to point out. And for yourself to see clearly. So I think that that’s one of the value points. And a lot of people think sales is not like … Sales people aren’t really process oriented people and so sales teams don’t really like that. Well one of the biggest things that I’ve always been advocating for people that know my sales content and stuff is to have a sales script in place and to have an objection management document in place. Objection management document is nothing other than the top ten objections your prospects have. The things you hear every single day. “Oh your product is too expensive. Oh we already use your competitors product for X, Y, Z.” Whatever the thing is that your sales team hears again and again and again and again, just write out what people will … What kind of objections your prospects will have and how to deal with them. And on that document, once every two weeks, once every month, you have a sit down with the sales team, you look at these objections and you reconfirm, “Are these still the main objections that we have to manage and to deal with when it comes to our prospects?” Yes or no? And then, “Are these still the best ways to approach managing these objections? Are these still good answers or good philosophies? Or how do we act or how to respond to these objections.” And then the team can come up with better solutions. Some sales person might say, “Hey, I’ve tried a different approach the last five times, and it’s working really, really well.” And that person can share within the team. And now we can update the document and then this new better way of dealing with something can now be applied throughout the entire team. Versus just for one person. The same thing is true for sales scripts. I’m not a big read word for word out of a sales script kind of guy or remember or memorize a sales script. I think that that’s dumb. But I do think it’s good to design a conversation mindfully and think, “Hey, the first time we talked to somebody or when we demo our product, what is the structure of that demo? What is the structure of that conversation? What’s the beginning, the middle and the end? What are really important thing to highlight? What are good ways to transition from one step to the next?” I think that those things need to be designed, improved, iterated and changed over time, and if you don’t write it down and don’t share within the team, everybody’s going to be doing something different. And some people are going to be doing things that are really bad and some people are going to do things that are really brilliant and your entire company is going to be missing out on learning from the great and avoiding the bad because everybody just does whatever the fuck they want. So writing these things out and going back to them consistently and making small incremental improvements, can make process a really valuable, really practical thing. I don’t like the theoretical part of it either. I don’t want to have a 20 page process document about some bullshit that nobody will ever look at. That’s wasting time and energy. That I hate. But doing small documentations for things that are really repetitive tasks that are really important, crucial tasks in the company is super, super valuable and important.   [0:15:06] Hiten: Well I think that’s a brilliant example of process. And getting it right and making sure that you’re not missing anything. So we should end with that. That’s a really solid example for sales.   [0:15:19] Steli: Awesome. So let’s wrap up the episode. I’ll give two quick shout outs though as well. One to our friends at ProcessRead. So for people that really want to get much better at, when it comes to process, sometimes a tool can make a big difference. I want to give a shout out to two quick tools. One is process.st for street. These guys have built a tool around documenting process, automating process. They’ve shit out really good templates on how to do certain things. They have really good content around that as well. So give those guys a look if you’re interested in that. And then the other tool is Asana, which is more of a project management tool than just a process tool. But you can do a lot of neat things. And we have one guy on the team, Nick, who is a big Asana champion and hero. And he’s really advocated and and there’s things that he’s done especially for repetitive tasks where you can set up things in Asana to make these repetitive tasks really automated as templates and it’s saved us a ton of time and it’s really increased the transparency in many different areas of our team. So I want to give a shout out to those two tools for people that are like … That want to have a tool to guide them and they don’t just want to use a Google doc. Give Asana and ProcessRead a look. It might be, one of the two might be something that you can use and that helps you document the processes in your mind anyways. Alright, that’s it from us for this episode.   [0:16:46] Hiten: Later. [0:16:47] The post 281: How to Use Process to Grow Your Startup appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

Today on The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about the pace of hiring at a growing startup. As a founder, one of your most important tasks is managing your workforce. It’s your job to make sure you have the right people – and the right number of people – to keep your company running smoothly, especially when you’re growing. In this episode, Steli and Hiten talk about the speed in which you should bring on new staff so that your company, what factors you should consider before hiring new people, the importance of getting the right person for the role you’re hiring for and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:44 – Steli’s reasons for choosing today’s topic. 02:18 – Why you should hire at the right pace. 03:58 – Hiten talks about “Just-In-Time Hiring” and what it means. 05:37 – Pace of hiring VS hiring the right people at the right time. 06:22 – Why you should use your outcomes to determine when to hire. 08:19 – The execution phase of hiring. 10:05 – Hiten’s gives his thoughts on the speed of hiring and the backend process involved in bringing on new staff. 12:29 – Steli shares a massive tip that works for his company, Close.io. 13:57 – How to decide on who to hire. 16:01 – Why founders sometimes don’t realize they need a manager. Quotes: Hire at the right pace for your business. It’s always a case by case basis. Sales is usually the number one reason for hiring people. Make sure the profile of the person you’re hiring is the same as what your company is looking for.   [0:00:01] Steli Efti: Everybody, this is Steli Efti.   [0:00:03] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah.   [0:00:04] Steli Efti: And, today, on The Startup Chat, Hiten, I want to talk to you about hiring pace. So, not just when to hire and who to hire, we’ve had plenty of episodes about that, but also at what speed to be hiring. When is too slow, when is too fast, what is the right pace of hiring? There’s a few reasons why I wanted to talk about this with you. One is that this has been a theme for us at Close. We started with not hiring at all for the first three years, and being just a tiny team of six people, just crushing in revenue wise, profit wise, growth wise, and loving it, until things became so big for my business, and the team was so tiny, that things started breaking apart and we didn’t take advantage of certain opportunities. So, we went from no hiring to very, very slow, and I think poor recruiting and hiring, to then slow and being pretty good at hiring, to then slow and being really, really great at hiring, I think. Now, we’re kind of entering the phase of trying to be a little faster, where we’re adjusting the pace of hiring because we feel like we’ve been doing a pretty good job growing the team and adding really amazing people, but we’re seemingly always two steps too slow versus just one. So, we’ve just increased the speed of hiring just recently, in the last quarter or so. So, that’s one. It’s been on my mind to talk about speed of hiring, ’cause I’ve had a company where I hired way too fast, and that’s a catastrophe. I’m absolutely against hiring too fast. Then I’ve had Close, where I’ve hired too slow, and if I had to choose one of the two evils, I’d rather hire too slow than too fast. But, ideally, you’ll hire at the just right pace. So, pacing has been on my mind. But, then, just recently, I was at a conference with you, and at one of the lunches we were talking to a group of founders, and one of the founders talked about mindset when it comes to hiring. He was saying, self funded, profitable startup, he’s like, “I’ve been in this mindset of the profits that my company makes and the money that we put aside, that’s my money, and hiring aggressively or even hiring at all is like taking money out of my pocket and my family’s pocket and my children’s pocket, and it’s a risky thing. So, I have this internal anxiety about it.” He was talking about the baggage of having his father being an entrepreneur, and his father made a shit ton of money and they were really wealthy, and then got really broke, and then nothing. So, he saw his father go through these ups and downs, so he feels like he has to have a nest egg and he has to be conservative because he has children and all that. He was talking about that transition of going from we’re going it all ourselves as a small team, to having to start hiring and having to start investing in people and into the business in a way that feels risky to him. So, we were talking about hiring and when is the right time to hire, and how fast is too fast and how slow is too slow, and all that. So, I felt compelled to bring it up as a topic for us to chit chat, and I felt obviously you’re going to have some brilliant thoughts on this. But, basically, how do you know when you have to start hiring, and how do you know that you’re hiring too fast or too slow? Let’s talk about it. Let’s unpack this a little bit for ourselves, but also for the listeners.   [0:03:44] Hiten Shah: I like just in time hiring.   [0:03:47] Steli Efti: Just in time hiring.   [0:03:49] Hiten Shah: I think that’s the way to think about it if you’re running a business. What I mean by that is it’s not about fast or slow. I think it’s about just in time, and just in time means two things. One, the framework I put on it is, is the business going to improve if we make this hire or these set of hires? The most obvious one is actually sales, to be honest. Because, if you want to grow faster in revenue and you have a sales team, hiring more salespeople does equal more revenue. If you disagree, let me know, Steli, but that’s a pretty simple rule, right?   [0:04:24] Steli Efti: Yep.   [0:04:25] Hiten Shah: So, just in time hiring, in that case, is like if we have everything in place enough to hire more salespeople, even money, ’cause money counts, then let’s hire more salespeople right fucking now ’cause it’ll make us more money. There’s a period of ramp up and all that good stuff, but I’m assuming, when I say that, you have a lot of that taken care of, or you are very conscious to where that’s going to break as you hire more salespeople. So, that’s the easiest answer. If it’s going to make you more money, do it. Same goes for marketing, to be honest, but less so than sales. If you have certain things working in marketing, such as content, and you’re writing it and it’s leading to results, whatever they may be, and this is an example, or even ads, as an example, if you hire more people in those areas, it’s likely they will produce more content, create more ads, for example, and you will make more money. So, to me, it’s very simple. That’s a simple lens, and that’s why I say it’s just in time. So, your pace of hiring is less important to me than are you hiring the right people at the right time. Then, velocity comes into play. Because, the thing is, you can say, “If we doubled our sales team, we’re going to make more than double the revenue.” Whatever, whatever way you want to look at it, right? But, there’s still a pacing to that instantly because you can’t hire … Let’s say you have 50 salespeople. You can’t hire another 50 overnight. There’s a pacing to it. But, then you have the pacing discussion, if you know that hiring more salespeople leads to more revenue, then you start thinking of it that way. So, that’s one, to me, very simple way to think about it, from a just in time perspective, instead of worrying about too slow or too fast. The other framework I would use – because not everything is sales and marketing – is still very similar, which is what are the outcomes you’re looking to get next year. Whatever they are. User growth, retention, customer satisfaction, reduction of some metric or problem in the company, or replacing people, any of that stuff. Then work backwards on how are we going to do that? Who do we need to hire? Where are our gaps? Instantly, I think the discussion changes around slow or fast, if you are starting the discussion with slow or fast. There’s a third thing, too, to me, which is another piece of just in time, which is where’s our bottleneck, which is kind of unrelated to the first two. ‘Cause sometimes bottlenecks don’t have to do with metrics, they have to do with someone doing 10 jobs when they should be doing eight or five. Then, it’s more of like, oh man, we’ve been under invested in this area from a headcount standpoint and we need to invest more in it. That includes hiring a manager, so to speak, or hiring more senior people, and things like that, because they can have a very big impact on a business if done well and done properly. But, the senior people and those managers don’t tend to be a pacing slow or fast thing, they tend to be a just in time thing. So, again, that’s my framework. Instead of worrying about pacing, I worry about just in time hiring, and this is the way I think about it.   [0:07:33] Steli Efti: So, I love that framework. Now, the one thing here that stands out to me is that it’s one thing when you decide that you should bring somebody in for a specific position in your team because now is the time or because improving this area in the business is a priority and you can’t do it with the people onboard, or maybe there’s nobody on the team that is tackling that kind of KPI or problem or challenge … That decision is one point, but then the execution phase is another. Sometimes there is a delay, especially for companies that are … And, hopefully, most companies are pretty deliberate about that, or the people that are listening to us. You don’t just post a job somewhere, get 100 applicants, and then you just hire somebody within a week or two out of that batch. Depending on the position, it might take three, four, five months to find the right person. Sometimes you might find the right person within a month or within a few weeks. But, there’s a delay between you making the decision and you finding somebody that is perfect for the job and perfect from a cultural perspective for your company. That also varies, right? If you’re looking for somebody that’s a manager or a leader, that might take a much longer time. It might take six months to find somebody that is a VP of sales, a VP of marketing, a VP of something, versus hiring a junior SDR, from a sales perspective, that might be a hire that you could make in two or three weeks because there’s just a bigger talent pool to pick from, or an easier talent pool to pick from. So, how do you think about the hiring speed in terms of how much time it takes a company to fill a position? Do you have any things that you’ve seen in terms of best practice? Do you think every position should be filled within three weeks otherwise you’re doing something wrong, or do you think, yeah, some position might take you two years to fill, that’s totally cool? How do you think about time to hire, from the decision we need somebody, to the time that you make an offer? What have you seen there, with your framework there?   [0:09:50] Hiten Shah: Yeah. Time to hire. Hire as fast as you can when you need the role, but not too fast. This is more on a role by role, case by case basis. Honestly, the thing I was actually thinking about as you were talking about that, and your earlier kind of thought about your personal changes that you’re making at your company around pacing, there’s something pretty simple, which is do you have the systems in place to make hires at the speed that you need to or want to? That takes a lot more thought than just saying, “I need to hire a marketer,” or, “I want to hire five more salespeople.” It’s more about, okay, if we’re going to hire a marketer, what do we need for them? What do we need to know? How do we vet them? All these things, honestly, the most startups, especially earlier stage, that I see, even later stage, even up to like 50, even 100 people sometimes, believe it or not, they don’t think about all that backend process. They don’t think about can we actually do it at that pace, or can we do it that fast, which are two different things. Pace is like one after another. Can we do it that fast is kind of your question, which is can we hire a marketer in a week? Which is probably not true, to be honest, in most cases.   [0:11:05] Steli Efti: Mm-hmm (affirmative).   [0:11:05] Hiten Shah: Unless you already have a pipeline, or you have a certain process. That’s why, for me, it’s kind of like experiments in a way, or testing, or optimization, where it’s like I just have to know I want to hit this goal. That goal can be hiring X amount of marketers or Y amount of salespeople. Then I work backward from there to say, “Hey, where are we screwed if we do this?” Meaning what are the things that are going to break if we want to hire those people overnight? If we had five great candidates tomorrow in sales, and we hired all of them, what would happen is one way to think about it, and are we already set up for that? Then you have all these interesting discussions about where everything’s broken or what you’re missing. The other aspect of it is what is preventing us from hiring those five people tomorrow? Then you’ll get into your whole pipeline and other sorts of things like that, that are going to help you figure it out. To me, I like being … You can probably notice from this discussion, I don’t like to just say, “We’re going to hire.” I like to really think through what’s going to happen as well as what’s preventing us from doing it right now.   [0:12:12] Steli Efti: I’ll give you … This is a beautiful point. I didn’t think about that part, but I’ll throw in a tip of one thing that has made a massive different for us, which is a lot of times … And we’ve talked about this before. Many companies are saying, or many people are telling you, that you need to write down and have a real clear vision of your ideal customer. Write down your ideal customer profile. Who is that person? Who’s that customer? The more detail, the more nuanced or the more niche, the better your idea who your ideal customer is, the better you’re going to be able to market and sell and product develop and build a business around it. I find that the same exercise is incredibly useful for hiring as well. A lot of times, when we wasted time, it was not because … It was mainly because there was not a fully aligned picture of who we were looking for. Often times, even three people on the same team that were saying we need to hire, whatever, XYZ, in the hiring process, in the evaluation process, in the writing the job description process, things would be misaligned, and then we would later discover that it took two, three, four internal discussions until we realized who we were really looking for and what the priority of that person’s profile was. We were too broad describing the person, and then we were discovering that different people in the team had a different vision in mind on who we were trying to find. So, now, what we try to do, is we actually will write out a profile. We’ll have a discussion, a very detailed discussion, to make sure do we understand who exactly we’re trying to hire. Do we all agree on that person? What are the strengths and the weaknesses? What are things we can make compromises on? What are the areas that are nice to haves, but if the person is lacking skills or experience in this or that area, that’s totally fine? Trying to really narrow it down and spend the appropriate amount of time to write a summary on who the person is we’re looking for, instead of just agreeing on a job title, has made a massive difference in speed and clarity, and also internal conflict. Because, sometimes people think we … Just like in everything else, you think you have alignment, but you describe the goal so broadly that there’s so much wiggle room, that people stand at different points of the room and all think they’re trying to accomplish the same thing, but they aren’t. So, that’s just a tip to throw out there. I love the question, the framework that you offer with just in time, of saying, “Hey, who do we think right now would add revenue and growth profitably ideally to the company? If we can add those people, let’s add them. Let’s grow the business.” And then what are some of the things that we want to improve on the business? It might be retention, it might be something else. Who do we need if we don’t have them internally already to do that work? But, then also asking what prevents us today from hiring these people. That’s a beautiful question I’ve never thought about before. But, the other thing I wanted to throw out is the tip of let’s describe in detail the profile of this person, and let’s make sure we all know and agree who we are trying to hire, even. That seems like an obvious thing, but I’ve found that it’s not in practice.   [0:15:38] Hiten Shah: Yeah. You’re totally right. That culture stuff matters a lot. So, I think, to me, that relates to culture in terms of profile. It also relates to what should the person be able to do, etc. A lot of times, people don’t realize they need a manager, but then they ask that question and then they realize, oh, we need a manager. What I mean by that is someone who enjoys managing people, just very specifically. Whether their title is that or not, there’s people they are responsible for, and they’re responsible for those people having work output in whatever ways align with your company. So, I think we’ve done a pretty good job being thorough here and giving a framework on fast/slow, which I disagree with on both of those, and going for just in time hiring, and pretty much gave people four questions to ask, to get to just in time hiring instead of worrying about fast or slow.   [0:16:29] Steli Efti: I love it. All right. So, that’s it for us for this episode. If you enjoyed it, please tell a friend, go to iTunes and give us a review and a five star rating. The more people discover the podcast, the bigger the family and community gets, the more value we’re able to create with it. So, we highly appreciate that, and we’ll hear you very soon.   [0:16:48] Hiten Shah: Yeah. It’s The Startup Chat by Steli and Hiten on iTunes. Give us a review. We want to see what you’ve got. Some of our friends at Seeking Wisdom, from Drift, their podcast, they say six stars, which I always find really funny. So, six stars only.   [0:17:05] Steli Efti: Wait, wait, wait. No. Let’s do seven then. Come on.   [0:17:08] Hiten Shah: Nice. Seven stars, yeah. Screw you David and Dave.   [0:17:10] Steli Efti: There you go.   [0:17:12] Hiten Shah: All right.   [0:17:12] Steli Efti: All right. That’s it from us.   [0:17:14] Hiten Shah: Later. [0:17:15] The post 280: How to Figure out the Right Pace of Hiring appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.