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The Factory Floor is hosted by the three co-founders of Conversion Factory, the marketing agency at the forefront of SaaS growth, marketing, and tech trends. Episodes are released on Twitter one day early, @coreyhainesco.
Every other week Corey, Zach, and Nick break down what’s working right now in SaaS marketing, share real-world lessons from the field, and give you the strategies you need to outpace the competition.
You can also find us on YouTube, X, and everywhere you listen to podcasts!
Don't fall behind. Subscribe. Like. Drop a comment. Or not. The ball is in your court.
Nick Loudon (13:47)
Let's do it. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the factory floor. Today I am joined by the same two people that I've been joined by in every other podcast. So big shocker here. I have Corey Haynes and I have Zach Stevens. The three of us make up Conversion Factory. ⁓ But today we're talking about something that I think ⁓
We all definitely have some pretty strong opinions about because it's very personal, I guess, to us maybe. ⁓
The topic of discussion is basically the things that prevent founders from being better founders or good founders. And the reason this is near and dear to us is because we work with a lot of founders. We work with 50 plus different startups and a bunch of different types of people on all sorts of ends of the spectrum.
And so we actually have this like internal Bible, you'll call it, of what makes good fit versus bad fit for founders, what makes really like, you high achievement founders and people that make it really easy to work with versus not at all. ⁓
So we're going to be talking about that stuff and kind of going through that Bible and kind of talk through some of those main points. So the first section of it is based on impact setting goals and how we're able to achieve those goals, how they're able to achieve those goals. Excuse me. And so I want to kind of talk through that really quick. ⁓ Zach, this whole worksheet that we filled out or the whole criteria that we set up, what we filled out was kind of your brainchild after long.
enough of working with people. So I did want to let you take the reins at the beginning if that's cool.
Zach Stevens (15:37)
Yeah. ⁓ the, as Nick said, the, the, the reason that we wanted to put this, ⁓ together was because it's so easy to get wrapped up in the emotions of when you have a, when you see a founder that you feel like, you could just be doing so much better if you let go of these flaws or just worked through them. and it's impactful or it's important for us to recognize this because
I feel like we're on the receiving end of sometimes it could be negative feedback and ⁓ maybe even blame for when things don't go as well as they could. so rather than having this all swirl around in our heads, I wanted to codify it and write down, well, what are the things that we look for in the criteria that we can objectively measure? ⁓ Even if it's a subjective measurement, we can at least put in place. Here's what bad looks like. Here's what good looks like. And here's what in between looks like. So when Nick says impact,
This is more about, a client comes to us, one of the things that we're looking for is how we are able to impact their day to day. If we feel that there's not a whole lot of value that we can add, then we see that as not a good fit. And then as a founder, it's your job to assess, well, is this person actually going to be able to help me or am I just going to be bringing more noise and confusion to an already messy process, which is a startup?
Nick Loudon (16:47)
you
you
Zach Stevens (17:05)
So if there's not a lot of visible, measurable, immediate change that an outside agent or actor can help you with, then there's not a lot of impact. Conversely, on the other side, if you're gonna be doing foundational changes, like the examples that we give are we're shifting our positioning, we are changing our branding, we are ⁓ doing drastic overhaul from the onset, that's a really good indication that impact is
Nick Loudon (17:15)
you
Zach Stevens (17:34)
going to be had from working with this other vendor. And then somewhere in middle there, there's like, you know, a decent overall lift in quality, but not necessarily shaking the foundations and really creating a massive turnaround for a problem, you know, and turning it into a solution. So when it comes to impact, those are the key things that we're looking for. And it's your job as a founder to assess whether that impact is a possibility or not.
Corey Haines (18:01)
Yeah, Zach, I like what you've been asking recently on sales calls, which is how open are you to drastic changes? Because you wouldn't, it seems a little bit too simple or too intuitive, but a lot of times some people will come to us and they talk about having these big goals, but then they don't really want to do that much or change that much. And they're sort of like afraid of rocking the boat too much. And it's like, Hey, if you want to
see some big results, you gotta make some big changes. And so if we can't come in and have a big impact on what you're doing, then our hands are tied a little bit.
Zach Stevens (18:40)
Yeah, I mean we had a this shall remain nameless, but somebody said if we want to 10x our revenue and Great ⁓ What kind of things are gonna be working on to do that and we talked, you know about all potential stuff and then as soon as we got into an engagement they had us working on What was it like activation emails? Like mmm, you have a lot of bigger problems that you need to fix and this isn't really gonna be
Corey Haines (19:08)
Mm-hmm.
Zach Stevens (19:10)
some of the contributes to that. So having that understanding of what is the impact you're looking to achieve and then going full bore on it and making the changes that will actually achieve that impact.
Nick Loudon (19:25)
Yeah, it feels like we I mean we'll talk a little bit one of the criteria we use is like expected results the result and so that this kind of like slightly overlaps with that a little bit when it comes to like setting goals and things but I think the main issue with this area is like there's these ideas of what they want and ideas of things that they want done and a lot of times they don't
match at all or they've just like moved them slightly and it's like what okay no like this this is just mismatched in a way that doesn't make sense and you just need to like reprioritize these which is why we use our three-phase approach and start at the the bottom and check all check everything all the way up until we hit the third the third phase ⁓ so i don't know i feel like that's that's kind of the biggest issue in this section is just the mismatched ⁓ idea of what should be done
Zach Stevens (20:18)
Yeah, I agree.
Nick Loudon (20:20)
Usually we like to talk about like work styles. ⁓ For us, we have it listed as like async workflow. But I think this goes a little bit deeper than that. If I'm like reading into it a little bit more, which is like just general work styles, how feedback is given, how often they're looking for like updates or not looking for updates, ⁓ and how willing they are to adhere to a work style for people that like us who are, we have a work style that works really,
well and fast ⁓ and a lot of times people aren't as willing to like just dive headfirst and be like okay well let me see how you guys do this ⁓ but yeah what do you guys what is your take on the async and people not being able to adhere to like async work styles
Zach Stevens (21:08)
Well, the reason that this was included and it's not just because it's a preference of ours, you know, which kind of goes with out saying, but I think that async workflow and our working style got included because the world's changed as far as work is concerned, where you don't have to be in the same room with people to get a lot of things done. And especially when we're doing knowledge work, you don't
Get time to sit with your knowledge and creativity and spin things up. If you're constantly on calls and jotting down meeting notes, you're not even going to look at after. So we prioritize and emphasize this async workflow because it enables creative people to be creative. And it also makes it imperative that when clients give feedback that they give it in a very distilled and thought out manner.
in a way that can be recorded and assessed and referenced to later on. We're totally fine with having things like nuance and subjective opinion, but I feel like when people just jump into a call to try and solve a problem, they haven't actually thought through the problem yet and decided this is what is bothering me about this. So I'm just going to get in and tell you some things wrong and then hopefully we can work it out together. But then it takes way longer to get anything done.
So it's more about the fact that the world of work has changed and that if you're unable to codify and succinctly articulate something that you think needs to be improved, then you're losing and you're going to hold everybody else back.
Nick Loudon (22:45)
Mm-hmm. ⁓
Corey Haines (22:46)
Yeah, when I think
about like, does workflow matter if you're a founder working with a service provider who's doing marketing or design for you?
I mean really anything related to working within a SaaS company, whether it's like customer success or sales or product development, engineering, whatever it is, this kind of like also applies to all of those. But I think that you hit the nail on the head, which is that if they can't write it down and communicate ahead of time what they're looking to do or questions that they have or things that they're thinking about, then when we get on a call,
Nick Loudon (23:26)
you
Corey Haines (23:26)
they're just going
to be like finding those answers along the way. And then the call, by the end of the call, it's gonna be like a half baked version of that. But now you just wasted someone else's time by coming to those conclusions on a call instead of by yourself. And so really it's about like, how good are you at figuring out what you want and why you want it and what questions you have for someone else that you don't have the answers to?
For us, that's really, really important because, I mean, we did the math a long, time ago. We were like, if we hopped on, you know, two 30 minute calls per week with each of our clients, like literally half of our time would be spent just on calls with our clients and not doing the work. And what's the point of that if they can just do the, spend that time without us and then we can go and spend all of our time doing the work. But I think there's an even deeper rooted issue, which is that
those types of people who can't get their thoughts on paper ⁓ just generally aren't good at strategizing about what needs to be done in the first place. They're sort of like making it up as they go, which is hard for us because if someone is always kind of wishy washy and doesn't really know what they want or why they want it, and they're also not open to our feedback, then they're always gonna be not happy.
Nick Loudon (24:38)
Hmm.
Corey Haines (24:56)
with what's being done. But if they collaborate with us and they have, hey, this is like the roadmap, this is the things that we want done, and now we can flesh out all the, like what each of those things entails, ⁓ then they're gonna be perfectly fine letting us go and do those things. So they already know why they want it.
Zach Stevens (24:57)
Mm-hmm.
Something else I realized as we were talking about this, if they aren't really good at writing their thoughts down either, they're also not really good at listening and reading other people's thoughts. Because we've had this happen before where it was the last client call that I ever took because I decided after this it was a complete waste of time where someone had asked a question and I answered it thoroughly in a written format. And then they said, we need to have a call. And I said, fine, I'll get on the call.
Corey Haines (25:26)
Mmm. Yeah.
Zach Stevens (25:45)
And so I did, and then they asked me the same questions and I pointed and said the answers that I wrote down verbatim. And they said, ⁓ okay. It was the same answer. So I think that having this async workflow, it's a test of your. Yeah. It's a test of not even, not only your ability to articulate, but then can you read and comprehend and listen? Because if you can't, that's a way deeper issue than your ability to get work done.
Nick Loudon (25:59)
I remember that ⁓
Corey Haines (26:13)
Yeah, yeah.
Zach Stevens (26:15)
And I think that the two go hand in hand.
Corey Haines (26:15)
don't think, right, I don't think we even realized it, like how important it was in the beginning, but I would say that like async isn't even just like a preference thing. It's like a mandatory test of like, do you have what it takes to be a good client? Because if you can't, if you can't go without having multiple meetings per week, then you're going to be a nightmare to work with in the first place. Like it's just.
Nick Loudon (26:31)
yeah.
Corey Haines (26:41)
It's just like a symptom of a much deeper rooted issue.
Zach Stevens (26:45)
And I don't think that's just in working with us either. I think that would be working with anybody. You know, you're going to be a nightmare for a VC. You're going to be a nightmare for any kind of employee that you have because they're going to feel drained out and burned by you consistently nagging them. you, I think the people that need to consistently get on calls have a hard time relinquishing control and they want to feel like they're inside everything and moving things along when you just need to get the f*ck out of the way and let people do their job.
Corey Haines (26:49)
Yeah, right.
Mm-hmm.
Nick Loudon (27:16)
I feel like you can kind of see this like the early onset anti-async workflow in some of our discovery calls. You can kind of sense that early on, like the disjointed, scattered idea of what is wanted. And then sometimes you got on a call and it's like, these are the areas we don't know what we're doing and we need assistance. These are the areas we have covered. So like we think this should be the next set of things that we take care of. We want you guys to do that. Great.
Like you can kind of see that they're already like on board with this work style versus sometimes we get on and it's just like, it's just everything said asks another weird question that's totally unrelated and isn't really relevant to where this whole thing should be going. And then that kind of feeds in if they end up deciding, hey, I do want to sign up. I want to work with you guys. We can kind of feel that as we go, but yeah, it's interesting. The async thing has become like.
It's funny you said test. I feel like that's perfect. Like it's a test for them. And we kind of were like, hey, reminder, we're async. How do you feel about that? Most of the time, honestly, people are really good with that. They prefer it. But sometimes you get someone like, okay, you know, we'll see how it is. And it's always just a big red flag.
Zach Stevens (28:32)
Red dead giveaway.
Corey Haines (28:32)
flag.
Yeah.
Nick Loudon (28:35)
Okay, let's hit the next
one, which is very fun, which is timelines. ⁓ Okay, so this is obviously we have opinions on this because part of the way our model is set up is not project or scope based. It's like retainer or internal, ⁓ like team based. So.
Corey Haines (28:40)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Loudon (29:00)
We don't really have timelines necessarily that we work from. have like rough estimates generally for how certain tasks get done and how long things generally take. ⁓ So what about adherence to strict intense timelines makes someone a bad founder?
Zach Stevens (29:19)
apart from them being unrealistic, I think that what it does is it, it puts a, it measures the wrong thing, which is either how fast it was done. that. I understand that's important. I think that the more important metric is quality of the work and then impact of the work. And then also within that it's especially for creative work. It's.
It's always going to fall into one of two sides of the spectrum. There's a very efficient work and there's very innovative work. You cannot have both at the same time. Innovative work requires creative mess. This is when you're doing things like a whole new brand identity and there's exploration, or if I'm coming up with a name for a company, there's just a mess that comes with that territory. And if I try and cut corners and
not focused on the work being good and getting time to marinate, it's just not going to pan out well. I can't do that kind of work efficiently. You know, it doesn't exist. There are mutual opposition to each other and there's very effective work that we could do, but this would be, you know, stuff that's far more safe. You know, like, uh, I think the example that we always give us things like, uh, like a demo page, you know, a demo page is pretty straightforward for the most part.
There are always edge cases where it could be very heavy on storytelling. There could be some really interesting graphics and things we might do as far as forms and logic that require a little bit more mess and innovation. ⁓ but that's really, that's something that I've considered to be effective, creative, work efficient where, okay, great. We're going to get it done in one to two days and it's going to look good. We know what we're doing. So I don't think that, I think that when we have these timelines, it's hard for founders to put this.
perspective on it, which is we're doing something that's messy. Like this is it's creative work, you know, and the, really the only thing that matters is are we moving the needle? Are we making you happy with the things that we are putting forward? Cause I think that we move pretty fast as a, as an agency in general, like there's very few people who can deliver the number of work or the amount of work that we do at the speed at which we do, especially for the quality.
and I don't want that. Like, don't know how we would even get faster without compromising the quality. So I think that's what it comes down to is they fail to recognize the, ⁓ the mutual opposition between efficiency and innovation. And they often try and pick efficiency when they should be picking innovation and value creation.
Corey Haines (31:59)
Mm-hmm.
Zach Stevens (32:15)
So I think that timelines just go.
hate wire very quickly.
Corey Haines (32:23)
Yeah, I like what the the base guy, the sorry, I like what the base camp guys say about plans are like plans or guesses. Let's be real. Like if you make a plan or for like a product roadmap for the next 12 months, those are just guesses. But like you shouldn't be married to that plan. And I feel like it goes the same for timelines and deadlines. It's like these are kind of just arbitrary dates, to be honest. These are just estimates. These are just ⁓
you know, a tool of reference. Normally when someone is asking us about a timeline, they're asking like basically how much does it cost because of our model being a subscription retainer, they're sort of doing the math like, okay, is this going to take two months and it's going to be this amount or is it going to take three months and it's going to be that amount or is going to take six months and it's going to be, you know, twice as much as I thought it was going to be for most other people though. I've, I've never really liked deadlines for big
creative projects because what is, what's the law where it's like anything fills up the time that you allotted, you know, it's like, if you give yourself a year to write a book, you'll write a book in a year, but if you give yourself a month, you'll write a book in a month. ⁓ Some sort of law. It's like, it's escaping me now, but ⁓
Zach Stevens (33:33)
Yeah, yeah,
Nick Loudon (33:38)
Yeah.
Zach Stevens (33:42)
Park... Parkinson's...
Nick Loudon (33:42)
Corey's law.
Zach Stevens (33:43)
Parkinson's Law?
Nick Loudon (33:44)
Parkinson's.
Zach Stevens (33:44)
I think... that... I had to look this up recently too. Forget... yeah. Keep going. You guys keep talking, I'm gonna find it out.
Nick Loudon (33:49)
We should just keep going. ⁓
Corey Haines (33:52)
Yeah. Anyways,
the point is that, ⁓ you know, someone, and this has happened before with clients too, where they're like, well, you know, can we expect the website to be done by this date? And we're like, I don't know. Probably not. Like, I don't know why, why that date, or they'll ask us to say, we need this done by this date. say, why? No reason. It's just someone else said that that was the date they wanted to buy. Where did they come up with that number? Do they know what it takes to get this work done? And
you know, all the different cogs and wheels that it takes to make this happen. No, like we're the ones doing the work. So why are they giving us the deadline? And why would we put ourselves on the hook for a deadline that we could even get done faster if really, you know, potentially. ⁓ So yeah, the problem I feel like lies again with like, they don't really know what it takes to do the work. And in my opinion, working with other...
marketing service providers in the past, most of the time, a timeline or a deadline is given just to keep them accountable because they don't have any transparency into what's being done. And so if you actually provide transparency and know what's being done, you don't need a deadline because you see that it's on track. You see that things are moving along reasonably well. You see that things are taking the time that it should take. I mean, we've had like,
Nick Loudon (35:03)
Mm-hmm. ⁓
Zach Stevens (35:04)
Mm-hmm.
Corey Haines (35:18)
we've hardly made any real mistakes about like something taking longer than it should have. I would say 99 % of the tasks that we take on, we do in the time allotted or even faster. And so again, there's no like reason for a timeline if we're providing transparency into work that's being done and that's works getting done at a reasonable rate.
Zach Stevens (35:37)
Mm-hmm.
Right, or it's extended for reason. know, like, and this is what I said with creative work, you know, it's a mess. And sometimes you want to clean up a little bit during the throws of the project. By the way, it is Parkinson's law. Work expands to fill time available for its completion.
Corey Haines (35:48)
Mm-hmm.
Okay, nice.
Nick Loudon (35:56)
⁓ genius
Zach. Zach is so good. He knows how to look up the computer on the computer.
Corey Haines (36:04)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Nick Loudon (36:04)
Got
it. I was just thinking, Corey, it's kind of like, that's the problem with, that's why we chose this model, right? Is the traditional agency is like this big reveal with like one big, it's like, you're kind of just like wondering what's gonna happen. And then hopefully before the...
timeline that was set, you get this email. It's like, boom, your package is delivered. And you got it. Okay, it came early, you know, like, or came late, like, who knows, you're just kind of like waiting to see what happens. But
the reason our model works better even without timelines is it's like a progress bar and you're looking you can see the progress bar the whole way and you can even see like it's not just like oh it's at 25 percent you can see it's at 25.57 percent like you can see every tiny little detail of the progress bar so it doesn't really matter you don't need the like estimated time of delivery which is usually wrong by the way even on like a a regular progress bar if you're downloading something
because you know every little piece of the puzzle that's going and you can see the rate at which it's increasing. ⁓ So I don't know, just, it's so much better and I feel like I do so much better work when we don't have a timeline attached to something. When there's a timeline attached to something, I just have this little like pit.
Corey Haines (37:20)
Yeah.
Nick Loudon (37:24)
of like, man, that thing, it's just, it's always gotta get pushed further, further, further, further, even though it's like, I would've just done it probably at a much healthier pace and it might've been better work without the pressure of a timeline. ⁓ So I think we're pretty passionate about this, but we spent a lot of time on timelines, unless there's anything else to say.
Corey Haines (37:40)
What one more thing is just,
uh, I think it comes down to trust too, even not having a timeline, but if a founder is like, Hey, is this done yet? Or like, can we do this faster or what's the progress on this? Or if there's kind of this subliminal undercurrent of a feeling of like, I want this faster. I want to do more. Um, or I want all this done by, you know, the end of the month, for example, it just kind of presents a message that like, feel like,
Zach Stevens (38:10)
you think
you know the work better than us.
Corey Haines (38:12)
Yeah. And like that we're taking an unnecessary amount of time or that the estimates that we did give were not estimate or not true. and, and it's definitely a dead giveaway. mean, if, if a founder comes to us and they're like, was hoping to get X, Y, and Z in a month. And we know for a fact that that's, you know, not possible, then it's going to be hard to make them feel good about getting X, Y, and Z in two or three months, which might be actually reasonable.
because they already have this expectation in their head and they're shopping around for someone who they think will promise that it'll get done within that timeline that they think. But if we hear a founder say, yeah, the work takes, you know, I know this is going to be a long project. It might take six months. It might take nine months. If it's a really extreme project like that, you know, music to our ears because that communicates, okay, they trust that we know what we're talking about and that we're not going to be dilly-dallying around.
and that they know that these types of things, especially involving a lot of creative work, do take a lot of time. You can't rush it.
Nick Loudon (39:18)
⁓ Definitely music to our ears. ⁓ Let's, I feel like the next category is expected results, which we kind of already touched on a little bit at the beginning. ⁓ But I feel like it's probably worth just like fleshing out all the way if there's anything else to say about it. But ⁓ the idea here is like there's some large.
result or very specific result that's expected ⁓ that isn't realistic based on what they want. ⁓ So like the example that we give is like they want 5x or 10x, you know, revenue without making large changes like they're like, okay, well, can you just like, build us a couple landing pages like we're trying to five or 10x or it's like, just a couple landing pages is not going to 10x your business. I hate to break it to you, but you are wrong.
Like you're just wrong. Like you need your positioning's wrong. You need to change these things. You know, you need to rebuild your sites all broken. It's slow. Like there's, there's all these issues and they can't, they're having the blinders on. ⁓ so I wanted to let you guys talk a little bit about expected results and some of the issues we see.
Zach Stevens (40:28)
I think it's a problem of self-diagnosis, you know, where a client says, is the problem that I have. ⁓ You know, if you went to the doctor and you said, I've been having headaches every day for two hours for three months, I need stitches in my left hand, the doctor's gonna say, what are you talking about? This is not, there's nothing wrong with your hand.
Why do you want me to give an unnecessary suture to a perfectly functioning body part? And I think that this is what happens with founders where they might have an assumption about what they believe is wrong. And sometimes they're right, you know, where they've done a thorough amount of research, but it always helps to get a third party to vet that and getting a second opinion.
So that you can then establish a proper roadmap and prescription to fix your problem and really fix your problem. Not just put a bandaid over it, but instead remove the fricking cancer from your body. And to do that, think, especially if you, if you're expecting to have all those headaches gone, that's a magnitude of result and it requires a magnitude of change usually. So it's.
matching your expectations with the efforts and ⁓ actions that you are going to be putting in and then getting a second opinion with someone who might know a little bit better than you because you're probably really great about building your product. You might not be the best person to talk to about design or marketing or website development.
Nick Loudon (42:13)
I think it reminds me of your what you always say about the silver bullet that they're looking for a silver bullet and not 1000 gold BBs, which is what we do. We're like, okay, you, you know, there's no silver bullet that we have in our gun that will 5x or 10x your ARR. No one has that. ⁓ Unless you just get like hit the lottery essentially, and you shouldn't bank on doing that. You should start shooting your little golden BBs a million times until you slowly build up this five or 10x
Zach Stevens (42:20)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Loudon (42:43)
And here's a giant list of all the things that you probably need to do and here's the the list of the things that we can do on that list, you know, it's like They're not even looking
Zach Stevens (42:54)
I want to harp on that a little bit more, just to expand the analogy, because I think that what people miss is this. It's not so much the firing of those things.
the crafting of them. Imagine you spend seven months crafting a silver bullet that you think is going to fix all your problems. You spent seven months and you get one shot. Whereas if you craft a hundred gold BBs, you get to fire each one of those and test them and then move your aim a little bit further. It's still a gold BB. It's not a bad piece of craftsmanship. It just might not hit the target the first time.
or the third time, but it doesn't matter because you have a hundred of them. So you can just keep moving your aim and firing. That's what the difference is between the silver bullet and a hundred gold BBs.
Nick Loudon (43:43)
Yeah.
Corey Haines (43:44)
Yeah, I mean, we've, we've literally heard people on calls be like, yeah, our goal is to 10 extra revenue, like in the next year or even sooner. And I was like, okay, unpack that for me. How do you plan to get there? What, why is that your goal? What makes you think that it's achievable with the budget and resources that you're allocating to it today? This is another like dead giveaway to me that they just have absolutely no idea what they're talking about from a marketing perspective.
because even as a marketer, like a professional marketer, it took me forever to even just understand the economics of like, what's the relationship between setting a revenue goal and having a marketing budget? And like, how do you know if, if ads are profitable, you know, is it just because, you know, you're measuring like the number of conversions and the average revenue per customer and the revenue you're getting off of that compared to the revenue or compared to the ad, the cost of the ads.
or are you actually looking at like your payback period and your cumulative lifetime value of your customers? And to me, when someone says we want a 10x ARR, that's such a lazy line of thinking. Like, yeah, I want a 10x my net worth too in the next year. But like, do I reasonably have like the resources and we're like the budget or plan or a path forward to do that? Today, not really. Like what is achievable in front of me?
Zach Stevens (44:55)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nick Loudon (45:02)
You
Corey Haines (45:13)
right now. And it's also just, mean, like, I don't know. It's, it's so silly to me because again, going back to the base camp guys, they're, they're very anti goals as well because it's like, Oh, if you set a goal to 10 X your ARR in a year and you only nine X it, does that mean that you failed or maybe you wanted to do it in a year, but actually took you 13 months to 10 X your ARR. Does that mean that you failed in your goals? No. Like the goal is always,
to make things better. The goal is always to improve things. The goal is always to have more revenue, higher conversion rates, more traffic it's silly to try to put like such a ⁓ huge number on it and then you're kind of just setting yourself up for up to fail. Now it's a little bit different, for example, if you raise some money from a VC and let's just say you were given $10 million in a series A and you know that for a fact,
Zach Stevens (45:45)
Mm-hmm.
Corey Haines (46:12)
you need to 10 X your ARR within the next three years in order to hit your next milestone so you can raise more money and continue on that train. Cool. All power to you, right? You better be ready to spend all $10 million of that, right? The problem is that people come in and like, want to 10 X ARR Um, and, but we only want to spend $50,000 doing that. Like, okay, so you, you don't have any idea about the relationship between
how well your marketing works, you know, like what your marketing spend turns into revenue dollars. ⁓ so whenever I hear someone say like, you know, we're just in the pursuit of better, we would like to increase our growth rates. We'd like to increase our conversion rates. We're just looking to, you know, make some swings, experiment, iterate. Though that, that to me is a lot better line of thinking. And that's actually how you 10 X your ARR. You don't 10 X your ARR by like,
saying it and then it just like manifests. You do it by like inch by inch slowly, one step at a time, one brick at a time, building a marketing engine that gets you 10x ARR.
Nick Loudon (47:23)
Corey's spittin' right now, dude. We're good.
Zach Stevens (47:25)
Mm-hmm.
Corey Haines (47:27)
Kids will say, them cook.
Nick Loudon (47:28)
You yeah, let him cook dude low key. Yeah Okay, we're running out of time so let's hit the last one really quick and then we'll go from there ⁓ The last one that we're going to talk about today is taste So we'll let zack talk a lot about that. But basically this is you know, ⁓ a lot of times we have founders that they wrote all the copy on their site or they You know, they've had their sister-in-law make a logo for them and they are like this is my logo and they've like gone all in on all these different brand assets and they're just
Zach Stevens (47:30)
Period. Period.
Nick Loudon (47:58)
very maybe very protective or they have really strong opinions about the taste of certain things but they don't have any ⁓ reason for that if that makes sense so Zach given that you're the one who takes the brunt of these bad fit type founders let's let you talk about it
Zach Stevens (48:24)
This is a hard one because...
I understand the position that founders are in a lot of the time where you just have to make something. It's not going to be perfect. It's not going to even be really good in many cases. And it's not your fault. You you were not, you didn't go to design school for four years. didn't spend tens of thousands of hours.
Mulling and pouring over figma and Illustrator and Photoshop files. You didn't spend hours studying typography. You didn't spend months studying art history and All the things that I had to do just to get my foot in the door like when I started doing design myself a shit I had no concept of Yeah, it was really bad. Nick was there. He wasn't there, but you can ask Beth Weeks You can ask Scott Wiss you can ask Dave Phobes you could ask
⁓ All of my professors at San Diego State you can ask my boss at the entrepreneurship center burn Schroeder my work was garbage when I first came in and That's to be expected because I hadn't put in the effort to actually know what makes good work I might have a good taste like I can see that there's a a ⁓ better Version of the things that I'm making but I have no idea how to make it because it's hard
And I think that founders gloss over that reality that writing copy is hard. Doing design is hard and it takes effort and practice to become really, really good at it. So when you're doing all these things yourself, I think that you have to have the humility to understand that it's not good. The problem is if you think it's, if you think it is good and it's not because your taste is not there yet.
And so when founders come to us, one of the things that I'm looking after is do they fall into one of these three categories? A great fit client, admittedly not a designer, not a marketer, not a copywriter knows they need help because this isn't their strong suit and they have other talents that they would rather allocate the resources to. Middle tier. They did some of the work themselves and they just dislike the results or they hired somebody else and they weren't stoked.
The reason that's a middle tier is because there's still some, ⁓ retain retaining of judgment and like that they know that it's not good, even though it might be this, especially if this isn't their domain of expertise. The third tier, which is giant red flag is I did all the design and copywork myself. I think it's great. I don't want to change it. Big problem because clearly you have problems and you want to fix them. And you think that you're.
Nick Loudon (51:09)
you
Zach Stevens (51:13)
past solutions and ⁓ concepts were correct and they're not. Otherwise you wouldn't be in a position where you weren't happy with your current status.
Corey Haines (51:26)
Yeah, again, I think it comes down to trust. like, can they let go of their baby? Can they admit that their design is not that good or that their copy is, you know, not great or it's a bunch of gobbledygook? Go ahead, Zach.
Nick Loudon (51:26)
you
Zach Stevens (51:43)
Well, I've got to, there's something that I've been thinking on with this as well, because this has been something that I've had to learn as we've grown Conversion Factory and we've taken on other people who are not me doing the design work. And the way I've come to think of it is like this.
Am I upset at how they did the work or am I upset at the result? Because if the result is still good, but it's not how I would have done it, then I need to let that go because the results still there. The how doesn't really matter to me. And I think that that's something that founders should be willing to take on as well. ⁓ I, it might not be how I would do it. It's still got done.
And it doesn't mean that it's bad. It's just not how I would do it. So I'm trying, I'm really trying to gauge the quality of the work, not how it was done. Like, and that gets really nuanced. might be things like, you know, I probably might not have chosen that icon, but it works. It's not a wrong choice. And that's the problem with creative work is that there are infinite number of right choices.
And that's just the crux of the issue. There are 20,000 different things I could pick that would be a good logo for you, but we only get to pick one and that's it. it's, I feel like taste is your ability to discern when something hits a good point and being okay with the how, distinguishing the how from the end result.
Corey Haines (53:24)
Yeah, there's a lot of like taste feels very subjective, but I think taste is actually pretty objective because like you said, if you're just after having a good, better end result, then you don't really care about what it is or how someone got there necessarily. You just care that it is an improvement for the copywriting side of things. For example, ⁓ like we had a client who, we did a lot of great work for, and I think was very successful with.
but were very particular about the copywriting style and tone and word use and wanted to make sure that everything fit their tone of voice and their style directly. And for what reason?
I don't know. There is no objective proof that their copywriting tone or style or word choice was better or superior. And so I always like when people are willing to say, Hey, I'm open to anything you can try. You can AB test any headline. You can test any, you know, tone of voice or style of copywriting. All I care about is that it converts better or that it works better or that it resonates with our customers better or that it makes more
sense that and like that's what I care about too. I don't care about the tone of voice. It gives me like so tripped up when people are like, oh, but like this isn't how we would talk. I'm like, I don't care. Who cares about how you would talk about it or not? The customer doesn't care about how you talk about things. They just care if it makes sense. Why are we so up in arms about like the brand voice and oh, we wouldn't, we wouldn't say it this way. Well, who said that that was the best way?
let the numbers speak for themselves, right? And that's kind of the objective tastes that I think is good for founders to have of they know the areas that they don't have good subjective tastes. And they're also willing to pit their own subjective tastes against maybe the objective taste of what a AB test would say or what customers would say in their survey response or fill in the blank of however you want to measure that and test it.
Zach Stevens (55:27)
Mmm.
Yeah, there is a I think there is a fine line that's there and I know that we're going a little longer and I thought I was thinking about this last week where There's I think there's two kinds of transformations that can happen One is where you are getting very granular and seeing what is an improvement This is where you're trying to move the needle point five percent one percent two percent however, if you are at five percent
It's pretty easy to see the difference between a 5 % completion and 80 % completion. So I think that founders have a, like they have a really hard time seeing that gap of, are we doing a granular nitpick or does that even matter right now? Because we're doing a massive jump forward. You know, I think, cause...
Corey Haines (56:26)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Zach Stevens (56:33)
Full disclosure, I have conversations with GPT trying to come up with social posts and have it battle test my thinking. And something that it had asked me was around the concept of A-B tests for design. And I said, well, A-B tests don't matter until you've at least got.
85 % completion because at that point you're spinning. You're like you're obsessing over details where you haven't even launched yet really, or you're you're you're trying to refine garbage. Why don't you just instead get something that's really good out first.
Nick Loudon (57:04)
You
should probably put A out before you start A-B testing.
Zach Stevens (57:07)
Yeah,
well, and make sure that your A isn't, you know, drawn and crayon and, and something you can actually, that you're actually proud of.
Nick Loudon (57:11)
Yeah.
Corey Haines (57:11)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Loudon (57:18)
⁓ Okay, so we've talked about a bunch of stuff ⁓ And there's actually a couple categories that we will keep under the conversion factory lock and key So just know that we will be judging all of you, but we won't tell you by what criteria we will be doing that No, I'm just kidding ⁓ No, I feel like this was really good. ⁓ So that way hopefully anybody listening can kind of maybe gate try to gauge themselves By all this stuff and see if there's ways that they could improve or you know, we do the same thing
Corey Haines (57:19)
Okay.
Nick Loudon (57:48)
But anyway, ⁓ gentlemen, thank you guys. And ⁓ thanks everybody for listening to the factory floor. We will see you next time.