Excellence Expected, the inspirational business advice podcast. Hey, hey, hey, guys. Welcome to Excellence Expected with me, Mark Asquith. Now, you've heard the phrase, give the man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach the man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. But we're going to define challenge and conquer, whether that is the right approach in business. It's a really interesting point, and let me give you a little background to this, a little bit of context, if you will. A few months ago, I read, for the purposes of Business Book of the Month podcast, which is a very natty little theme tune that you should all check out.
So we set up a Business Book of the Month podcast with my good friends David Bain, Chris Marr, and Colin Gray, who you'll recognize from the Content Marketing Academy, Mr. Chris Marr, the podcast host, Mr. Colin Gray, and the Digital Marketing Radio, Mr. David Bain.
These guys are all geek podcasters like me. So for the purposes of Business Book of the Month, we read a book called The $100 Startup by Mr. Chrissy Gilboe. And inside that book was a really interesting phrase, give them fish, give them the fish.
And there was some context given, and the book went on to talk about that to a degree. And it was a concept that really, really interests me. And the reason I find it so interesting is that, look, we all love what we do. I love what I do.
I'm a real geek for startups. I mean, I love the startup space. I love taking ideas, validating them, and building them into businesses. And I also love web and digital and tech and, you know, people helping people.
And I just love business. I'm just that guy. And I'll be honest, I talk about it that much that I'm pretty sure that I bore 90% of people I come across. I mean, my wife, Mrs.
A, bless her, she gets the brunt of it. I talk about this stuff a lot. I mean, granted, all the time she tells them to shut up. And I do, as all good husbands will know.
That's what you do. But, you know, we talk about it. We love business. It's what we do.
We love what we do. Whether it's business that we love, whether it's that particular vocation that we love, you know, whatever it is, you love something. And the problem with that is that we can kind of dig in a little bit too deep sometimes for customers. And that's a really good thing to start with because, you know, let's assume that you're selling to someone.
Let's assume that I am selling, I don't know, let's assume I'm selling a web presence. In my guise as director at Hacks or the agency, I've got a new client in who wants a fantastic web presence. I can really get passionate about this because I love it. I love the idea of conversion optimisation, integrating tools that make your life easier.
I can talk about setting up landing pages that work really well and also tracking metrics right through from start to finish and making sure that you can create a cost per acquisition per customer. You know, I love all that stuff. The great thing with that is the fact that I love that comes across in these sessions. So if I'm pitching to someone, it comes across.
I love it. And yes, they're excited, which is really, really good. Really, really good. And we make the sale, you know, we go ahead, we go about our business and that's really good.
That's a great outcome. However, that's not so great if you are an entrepreneur who is looking at creating products, who is looking at creating either something technical. So maybe you're in the startup space and you're creating a tech startup. Or maybe you're a solo entrepreneur who's got a podcast, got a brand, got an online presence, got an audience.
And you want to create some courses, you want to create some videos, you want to create some paid for content. The trouble with getting so passionate about things at that point is that yes, we create things that are technically possible and technically amazing. You know, things that we are so proud of. And that kind of leaves us scratching our head a little bit, leaves us in a weird little limbo place where we've built this fantastic thing, we've created this fantastic product that we know is technically fantastic.
It's the only website builder that does this, it's the only video series that includes this, it's the only X that includes Y. You know, we do that. We've all done that. I'm sure you can think of an example that you've created and you've put something out there and it just didn't fly.
Just didn't sell. Just did not sell. And we wonder why. We wonder that this thing is amazing.
Look at all it can do. But we haven't validated that idea. And I'm talking about validation a lot on recent episodes. I spoke about it in the last episode when we spoke about the one simple question you can ask to make every single business decision easier.
Talked about it then, spoke about it in the productivity optimisation episode. And it's a really big thing for me at the minute, validation. You know, I think it's something that we don't really do enough of. And it's because we don't necessarily validate that we create the things that we think are amazing but yet no one buys.
So I'll give you an example. So in November 2014 I had the idea for podcast websites, which is an all-in-one WordPress solution for podcasters. So if you're a podcaster, you don't have to put up with WordPress anymore. You don't have to worry about all the compromise.
You don't have to do any of the stuff that we have to do to hack together a podcast. You don't have to do any of that. Podcast websites does it all for you. So we've got so many different tools and incentives and so many different workflow improvements on WordPress just for podcasters.
That is the niche that we're in just for podcasters. And we gave the customers, the members, our early members, some amazing tools. And those tools still exist. We've got a fantastic page builder.
We've got a series of themes that are just absolutely, insanely customisable. You can build using builder and the customisable tools. You can build a website that looks nothing like anyone else's. You can build something truly unique using these tools.
Really fantastic. And when we put it out there, yes, we got some great feedback. But the feedback was only from about 50% of people. The rest of the people were quiet.
So I decided to do a little bit of research on that and just ask, What are you struggling with? What's going on? Tell me about this. In fact, the matter was, they appreciated the tools that we'd given them.
They understood how technically fantastic they were. You know, all this other cool stuff that makes me feel warm inside. You know, they love that. But they didn't want to use them.
They didn't want to bloody use the things. Why didn't they want to use them? Well, I didn't know. I had no idea at that time.
I could not fathom it. So I asked. I said, all right, well, tell me about your day. Tell me about, just tell me about what you do.
Tell me about when you're logging to your website. Tell me about the things that you do when you're online. Tell me about when you come to customise your podcast website. What's that process?
Tell me your particular process. And I listened. You know, I surveyed maybe 50, 60 people. Amazing members.
We've got a podcast website. They're so generous with the time. So thank you for that. And it turned out that although the tools were fantastic, these guys just didn't have the time or the willingness to use them.
They didn't want to use them. And the reason was multiple. Like I said, the time was a problem. Or actually, they wanted to just build their audience.
They wanted to focus on a show. They wanted to focus on building an email list or creating a lead magnet or creating a video course or a membership site. Ultimately, that design wasn't important enough to them. So that was kind of interesting.
So what I did was I created a little pilot, something called the Web Design Power Pack, which takes all of my knowledge over years and years and years and years of building things for people online, takes all that knowledge and wraps it in a package that doesn't cost thousands of pounds, doesn't cost thousands of dollars like a bespoke package would. It costs just a few hundred. Just a few hundred. And it gives you everything you need.
It gives you a complete design using our tools so that you can customize things. You can still build on this yourself later. But it creates a bespoke, world-class design for your podcast website. And, you know, that was just a very simple product.
It's got very set parameters. And I put it out to people. I said to them, OK, look, here's your problem, as you've told me. You've got time to do this.
You're not caring about your design to spend your time on it. But what if I gave you an option to improve your layout, to improve your podcast website tenfold, with a fraction of the time input required of you? Would you pay for it? Would you pay for it?
And the answer is yes, they would pay for it. Each one of them said a resounding yes, of course, they would pay for it. So we created the Web Design Power Pack, and now that's included in our onboarding process. So someone joined podcast websites, they're onboarded, they get a personal call with me, I chat to every single member, you know, the old Peter Thiel.
Is it Peter Thiel or Paul Graham? I forget. I apologize to both of you. I'm sure I think it might be Paul Graham, actually.
Do things that don't scale. The old YC mantra, Y Combinator mantra. Do things that don't scale. And, you know, that's what we start to do.
So you get an onboarding call with me, you get a welcome, hey, I'm Mark, great to meet you, you know, I'm the CEO and co-founder of podcast websites, how can I help? Great to meet you, tell me about your show. Then you get another couple of emails, you know, welcome to the Facebook community, join the Facebook group, there's a massive support network there, here's a little bit about your website security, just for your own peace of mind. And then about a week later, just when people have had enough time to work on the system, get to know whether they want to build it, or whether they want to have it built for them, they get an email.
Did you know that Web Design Power Pack exists? Here's exactly what it does, here's exactly what it costs, here's exactly how long it will take to do, and here's one big blue button that says, yes, I want to do that. Really simple stuff, but that's made its way into our onboarding campaign, and it works, it converts, you know, it works, people value the fact that you can get access to world class design, and world class, you know, in a very specific niche for podcasting, at very, very low cost in terms of value, it's just stacked in favour of the customer, which of course, it should be. You know, so that made me wonder, made me think about this a little bit more.
This kind of product, it kind of gives the people the fish, they don't want to be taught how to fish, they want to be given the fish. And the example actually in the $100 startup is that, okay, you turn up to a restaurant, and you sit down, it's a really good example, you sit down in the restaurant, and it's you and your partner, and you're sitting down, you're browsing the menu, and the waiter comes over to you and says, you're into order, sir, madam, yeah, of course we are, okay, and you order, you proceed to order, you have a nice two courses, you have a start from the main course, and then the waiter says to you, well, super stuff, okay, I've got your order, follow me, I'll take you into the kitchen, and we'll start cooking together. What? You'd be shocked and amazed if that happened, wouldn't you?
I'd come to a restaurant, not cooking school, if I wanted to cook, I'd stay at home. And that's the idea, we pay for convenience, we pay for value, we pay to be given the fish. And there's a real challenge with that, because as entrepreneurs, as business people, as technical people, especially in tech startups, you know, I see this in tech startups quite a lot, you want to flex your knowledge muscles, you want to flex your development muscles, you want to flex your knowledge, and let people know just how clever you are. We've all done that, come on, we've all done that.
Look what I've made this do, look what I've achieved, look what I've managed to build, look what I've created, super, that looks fantastic, really, it's technically fantastic, like the Newton, Apple's Newton, remember that? It's kind of a precursor, really bad, an old precursor to the iPad, and it was a little personal assistant, but it had a stylus, and when Steve Jobs came back in from next, he'd been to Newton, and the reason for that was that it was a great idea, but no one wanted it, no one wanted this thing, this awful PDA, and I think, again, we do fall into that trap sometimes, you know, without a doubt, but at the time, Newton was a feat of engineering, it was, it was like every Apple product since then, most Apple products, most Apple products since then, and I think, together as entrepreneurs, we fall very easily into this, especially if we are solo entrepreneurs, you know, we sat maybe in our home office thinking, wow, this is a great idea, I'll just have an idea that's going to change the world, and then you realise someone else is doing it, you get distracted, you worry, ah, someone else is doing it, I can never do it now, someone else is doing it, well, of course you get stuck in this idea of, and we do, we do genuinely get stuck, you know, we find an idea and we stick on it, we stick on it without talking to people, and what we end up doing is creating a product or service that people don't necessarily want, that people don't necessarily need, or we solve a problem for people that frankly isn't big enough a problem for them to pay for, so as an example, let's say that you're creating some software to solve a problem for a business, if the business is coping fine by cobbling together little bits of Excel spreadsheets and all sorts of little bits of rubbish to make it work, and they're happy cobbling things together, but whilst you could solve the problem that they've got, and stop them having to cobble out reports on Excel, they won't pay for it, because they're happy with the solution, it's not a big enough problem, we know the problem exists, but they're not willing to buy it, and that becomes really prevalent as well in places like web design, so I think that's my early days in the agency when, so Hack's All the Agency now, hacksallstudio.com is the agency that I set up with a few friends a few years ago, a long time ago now actually, and, you know, in the early days we used to pitch design for web, which is great, everyone's a good looking web design, but it's not until you get to the point where people value design, they're willing to pay for design, so we operate out of a small town in North England called Barnsley, and it just, after a lot of mistakes, we realised that people in Barnsley just didn't value design, all they wanted was our website, because their mates got one, or even if they're a big company, a big corporate, a big industrial, they don't care, they don't care about design, they don't care about the difference that design makes, because perhaps their audience doesn't care, all they want is to download some spec sheets, and they'll have to log in and download an invoice, so I was going in and pitching on design only, and saying, well look, okay, we can do the same as everyone else, but our design is so much better, that's true, and it is a selling point, but only if the people want to buy it, is it a buying point, is it a paying point, because if someone's going to come in cheaper and do the same spec of work, but the design's going to be a lot worse, and they don't care, we lose the job, and we couldn't fathom that out for a while, we were wondering, you know, we want to put our prices at this price point, we want to be more expensive than the competitors, because we don't want to operate in their cesspool of just cheap rubbish jobs, and the only point of differentiation we had at that point was the design quality, and it took some thinking about it, it took some learning, it took some real searching and asking, why are you not buying, why are you, look at the design, look how good it looks, the truth is it just doesn't matter, it just didn't matter to these people, so we had to very quickly pivot on that, we had to realise, actually what do people want, yes, design is a factor, so we've got two choices, we either create other points of value for people, we actually understand their actual problems and solve them, which we did, we created a lot of different products and services and different ways of pitching, and different ways of getting people excited about what matters to them, because each type of business has something different that matters to them, each business person has something different that matters to them, so we became equipped with all of these different USPs and all of these different benefits for people, and suddenly conversion went through the roof, and the second option was, move into a market where design does matter, move into a market where design does matter, give them the fish, don't teach them to design, give them the fish, give them the things that matter, give them the experience, give them the value, so we moved local, we changed our local targeting, we changed our geographic targeting, we sent people from within the agency to the right places at the right time to make sure the right people who want to buy design, it's really simple when you think about it, but god, we must be so daft because we miss it for a long time, and it's a huge learning curve, you've got to wise up to yourself and understand what you don't know, I think, I'm certainly one for that, I'm always learning, and I don't know what I don't know until I realise I don't know it, which sounds really obvious, but it really isn't, when you're sat down and you're busy working, you forget that you need to keep learning and get out of that comfort zone, so the point I'm trying to make is, unless you know actually what the pain points are for people, unless you know what people actually want to buy from you, what are the things that you can give them that make their lives easier, how can you give them the fish, don't give them the tools, give them an experience, an end-to-end experience, it's why walking into an apple shop is so immersive, I hate the place, it's so busy, but there's a reason, an apple shop is the most busy place, in a shopping mall, apart from the food aisles, if you're me, the reason is it's a great experience, people are giving us the fish, it's not like we've got to build a pc up and overclock the ram, it's not like we've got to build a pc up and change the graphics card or buy a monitor that's just so high definition, we've not got to change the mouse and the keyboard for gaming, apple give us the fish, apple say, it's closed operating system, sorry closed hardware, it's a closed system, here's the experience of an apple product, fantastic, fantastic, they're giving us the fish, and yeah of course some people will want to tinker, some people will want to overclock their pcs and tweak and add sd cards to their android phones but some of us like me and some of us like you we just want it to work we just want to be given the fish we want to turn up at the restaurant and have the food cooked for us we want to turn up to our accountants knowing that everything's done for us we want to turn up at home and see that the builder has done everything that we've asked him to do we want to be given the fish we don't want to be given a hammer and a chisel and told to chop out our own double socket we don't want that so it's a really interesting i think it's a really interesting topic because there are some there are some i guess behaviors that we all need to just start to adopt and i'm going to talk through those in the actionable tips which i'm going to move into in a second because i think that you know i'm not saying this is for everyone but for entrepreneurs like yourself like me that may be struggling with certain things or may have struggled with certain things and always wondered why always wondered why no matter what product i put out there nothing works let me give you three tips reaction tips that might help with that number one you're going to ask customers what they really want but don't pitch your idea again this is back to my favorite book at the moment the mom test by rob fitz you'll be sick hearing about that it's such a good book you've got to let them tell you about their problems you can't say to them hey listen what do you think about this i've got a website platform that allows podcasters to build podcasters to build fantastic websites you think that's a good idea of course i'm going to say yes because i don't want to rate your feelings what you need to ask them the way you need to ask them is hey mark you're a podcaster you see you've got a website there just how's that going tell me a little bit about that what's your publishing process talk to me about how long it takes you to publish your episodes talk to me about your design process talk to me about your build process how do you create your lead magnets how do you link up your airway bro your mailchimp or your infusion soft how do you do that ask them like that let them tell you what they want let them tell you what they want and ask as many people as you can to start spotting trends and keep it out of it stick in a spreadsheet stick on trello whatever start spotting trends you can use something like responcer if you want to do it more remote use responcer to create a fantastic simple quick survey of three or four questions so actionable tip number one ask customers what they really want but don't pitch your idea let them tell you about their problems actual tip number two learn whether they are willing to pay for it because there's such a difference between someone saying yeah this problem exists but i'm not willing to pay for it there's a big difference between that yeah sure take my money yeah we did that again podcast websites i'm sorry to harp on about it but we validated it we didn't build a thing we did a webinar myself and johnny dumas from entrepreneur on fire he's our business partner in this we held a webinar we said listen guys here is what problems you have told us you've got now here's what we intend on doing but for this to happen you have to give us some money you have to pay for this service up front and we will activate your website within three weeks if you validate this using your wallet if you vote with your wallet this will be with you in three weeks and people did we got 124 people paying a discounted rate it's currently set at 97 per month at that time it was 47 so we had 124 people paying 47 a month not much not much by any stretch but it was enough it was enough to validate the idea so actionable tip number two ask people if they're willing to pay for a solution to the problem that you've identified from actionable tip number one and then actionable tip number three is give them the fish give them the solution don't teach them don't consult on it don't make your time the thing that you charge give them the solution whatever that is give them the solution and help them with that teach them how to use the solution not how to build the solution teach them how to make the most of the solution not build the solution teach them how to take the solution implement it make it a success not how to build the solution you build the solution you give them the fish you give them the fish because you've already asked them look tell me what problems you have you've already learned that they're willing to pay for it so all you now need to do is give them it i know it sounds so simple i mean that's really it's a really simplified version of that but in principle that works you know that really it really works ask people around you start asking people you know all of the biggest businesses i can think of start out by solving a very specific problem for a very specific set of people and then scaled up if i remember correctly google was a way of referencing university texts that sounds right if i remember correctly very specific solving one problem for one set of people really important to just nail that down just give a subset of people the fish and then if you want to expand later do the same same exercise so we validated podcast websites we gave them the fish people pay to it we're up to hundreds of members because we're giving them the fish and then we validated the web design power pack by asking if people would pay for it and they said yes and we gave them the fish and people do pay for it so try and think through that try and you know step out of this podcast i'm gonna wrap it up in a second so i want you to right now take some action head into your office or go for a walk or take the dog out or go for a run or go to a gym just go into a space that suits you where you can think you can let your mind run and start saying to yourself okay what set of people do i know that i can ask the question of tell me what you struggle with who do i know you don't need an audience for this you just need to know people who do i know so there's a great start to be in london for example who will tell you what meals to eat if you want to hit certain macronutrients if you're training for something so if you're bulking up or you're trimming down you have to have certain macronutrients carbs protein and fat and they will tell you the meals to eat that will include that and you can just basically drag some slides around say that you want another 20 grams of protein in this meal it will give you all the quantities and you just buy the ingredients and off you go you make it that solves a problem for people in gyms and it's a really simple problem so that's what i mean you don't need an audience you know so many people say you need this audience to start but it's chicken and egg it's like when you're 16 and someone says to you have you got a job well no i've not got a job so everyone asks to give me a job says you need experience we can't get experience until i get a job that's such i remember those days wow they were hard days and creating a business for a product is very very similar yes you need an audience to be able to continually sell of course you but you can't create an audience until you've got something that people want whether it's content or product whatever that is so ask people what you can do for them but specifically ask what problems do you have what problems do you have and then just listen figure out what they want ask whether they would pay for it and then give them the fish guys give them the fish i'm gonna stick a pin in that i've really enjoyed this i'm enjoying these solo episodes so again i've asked this on the last two or three if you like them can you just give me some feedback if you hate them can you just please give me some feedback if you think i should do a mix of episodes give me some feedback i'm all ears i want to know exactly what you want from me so that i can help you give them the fish so thank you for spending this 30 minutes with me i'm gonna drop in again like i did on the last episode i'm gonna be speaking at new media europe in london this year which runs in june so listen i'd love to see you guys there i say every time and i genuinely mean this i know a lot of good places to eat and drink in london so if you guys are there let's get together let's shoot some ideas around let's see how we can help each other and let's just get together over in new media europe i'd love to see that and also i'm going to see your podcast movement as well in chicago on july 6th to 8th over in chicago so i'm really looking forward to seeing you guys there really looking forward to it and thank you so much you spent nearly 30 minutes with me again and it's so so appreciated and don't forget guys the more you expect from yourself the more you will excel you you you