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Well, in the terms of specialization, it's about narrowing the

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addressable markets who you're saying yes to, who you say no to.

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And I think we're all come prewired as entrepreneurs,

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people who want to start and launch a healthy business.

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One of the ways we get into business is just by saying yes to people.

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Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud.

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I'm Cory Quinn, and I've been trying to

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get this one set up for a very long time.

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Please welcome my guest, Cory Quinn.

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Thanks for talking to me, and may I admire you and your excellent name.

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Thank you, Corey Quinn, I am excited to be on the podcast finally.

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It has been years and we've been talking back and forth.

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Thank you so much for the invite.

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This episode is sponsored in part by my day job Duck.

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Bill, do you have a horrifying AWS bill?

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That can mean a lot of things.

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Predicting what it's going to be, determining what it

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should be, negotiating your next long-term contract with

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AWS, or just figuring out why it increasingly resembles.

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Phone number, but nobody seems to quite know why that is.

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To learn more, visit duck bill hq.com.

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Remember, you can't duck the duck bill.

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Bill, which my CEO reliably informs me is absolutely not our slogan.

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So I grew up with a very different name, and when I

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got engaged in 2009, I realized that I was marrying

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someone who was a strong feminist, uh, and a lawyer.

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So the last argument I won was, will you marry me?

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And we met in the middle on the last name issue, and we both picked a new name.

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It happened to be a family name on her side.

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But I became Corey Quinn in 2010, and it turned out that someone can't

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imagine who had the.com and all of the useful screen names everywhere.

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Uh, back in that era.

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My Twitter handle was not kidding.

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My amateur radio call sign, which is the sign of someone who's really

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got it going on and, and is great at dealing with adept business things,

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whether you have a bunch of line noise, no one can pronounce, but.

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We have been passing like ships in the night.

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We've been forwarding each other emails over the years of,

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from people who are confused about how these things work.

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And I think recently someone, uh, sent me a screenshot of me being

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described by Google's ai answer bot with a picture of you, and

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it's like, oh, I don't remember being able to grow facial hair.

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That would've been impressive.

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Yeah.

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What do you do?

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What is your story and what's it been like to basically

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be, uh, more or less a constant namespace collision with,

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as someone was once called me a, uh, prolific shit poster.

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Well, uh, first off, this is like a collision of two universes.

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This is so cool that we're doing this, uh, and, and great to finally connect.

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So what do, what do I do?

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So I've been in the, primarily the digital

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marketing space for the last 20 years.

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Uh, I graduated just prior to that.

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I was in wealth management.

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Prior to that, I was an entrepreneur and I started off in a sales role.

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I was basically the, the number one sales guy for a digital marketing agency.

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We sold.

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PPC and SEO to large retail brands like

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Lululemon re Max Hyundai, men's Warehouse.

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And uh, I was pretty good at sales.

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I loved it and made my way into sales management.

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And then most recently I was a chief marketing

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officer of a digital agency called Scorpion.

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And the interesting thing about Scorpion is that we grew revenue.

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When I joined in 2015, we were doing about 20 million.

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By the time I left, about seven years later, we were doing about 200 million.

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But unlike many engineers, you don't describe

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yourself as a 10 XCMO as best I can tell.

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I don't know.

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Uh, I, I've since left.

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I wrote a book called Anyone, not Everyone.

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It's my five step Process to help agency founders escape founder led sales.

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And yeah, now I work with, uh, directly with agency founders.

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I have just bought a copy of it.

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I will probably not leave it on the work bookshelf and to imply strongly

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that I'm the one that wrote it, but I'm also not gonna introduce it that way.

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So, you know, people can assume the things that they tend to assume.

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Your history's fascinating.

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I, I ca, my last real job was in wealth management.

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Before I started this place, BlackRock bought the robo-advisor I was working at.

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I started off doing sales.

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Unlike you, I was not spectacular at it.

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And I, I went in a tech direction instead aimed.

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More or less a well honed sense of cynicism

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and that that was an interesting ride.

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I mean, you're, you're in the Los Angeles area, you're

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the next neighborhood over from where I spent 10 years.

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We, we live in very strange circles.

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It is weird that we've never quite connected with a few people on

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LinkedIn in common that Oh, yeah, I remember the LA days from that.

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It has been a fascinating story.

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I, I wanna dive in though, what does it look

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like to grow 10 x from a CMO perspective?

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Because from an engineering perspective,

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oh, I, you're gonna grow 10 times the users.

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Well, okay, great.

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I can give you chapter and verse around what that scaling

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is probably going to look like if you do it right.

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Probably what it look like when you do it realistically, which is a polite

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way of saying wrong, but the marketing side of it is a bit different.

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It is.

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I think the twist here also is the fact that we're talking

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about a service-based business versus software or sas, right?

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Where adding an additional user is not necessarily incremental

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costs, maybe marginal costs, whereas you think of a service-based

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business, typically you see costs associated with revenue.

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If you have, uh, a hundred clients and you add an additional a hundred clients.

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You're in a pickle 'cause you have to hire a bunch of people.

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So the, the challenge is how do you create scalable service-based business?

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And I'll, I'll kind of paint the picture on what I stepped into back in 2015.

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It was a digital marketing agency.

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As I said, they, they were doing websites, P-P-C-S-E-O

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back then was, was the primary focus for attorneys.

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And it was, uh, it was about a hundred person company.

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They had a six person team.

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Uh, sales team, and it was largely founder led and the

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challenge was that the founder who had been the, the

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visionary behind growing this business had done a great job.

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He realized he needed to bring some, some external

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people to come and help him get to that next level.

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And so my job, my, my responsibility coming into this.

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$20 million company was to not just kind of nurture

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the business as is it was to grow exponentially.

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Yeah.

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It turns out the very few jobs have a description of Great.

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So you know that chair over there that's starting to cool.

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Your job is to fit and it keep it warm.

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Don't make any sweeping changes and send us a postcard every six months.

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Growth is sort of the definition of modern business.

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Yes.

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And I was an expensive hire compared to, this was a homegrown company.

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The guy had hired all his best friends.

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The challenge was that all of the business that they had

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been acquiring was all from inbounds, which is awesome.

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And we love inbounds, especially warm inbounds ready to, you know, hire you.

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But that only is good to a certain extent that you can't control inbounds.

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There's not an endless amount of inbounds.

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It's, it's a, it's a finite resource, and you cannot

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scale revenue just waiting for the phone to ring.

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You are describing the last seven years of duck be where it

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started off as the Quinn Advisory Group once back in 2017.

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It had a Stylized Q is the logo, which looks

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disturbingly too close to the Q Anon logo.

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Had I not rebranded by the time that came

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out, I assure you I would've in a hurry.

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Uh, and it was all like I, I wanted to be the most notable voice in a space.

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So I niched down very tightly into.

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Fixing the AWS bill and it sort of ran away from me, but even now, over 90%

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of our customer base comes from me making obnoxious noises on the internet.

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The other 10% of it is recurring customers and

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word of mouth from other folks in the space.

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And we've never done an outbound program, uh, with any seriousness

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or rigidity now that we're building software and there, there's

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this established Go to Market sequence for a lot of these things.

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But yeah, my big challenge in the coming years is going to be how do

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I become the accelerator and not the pure engine behind all of it.

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But that's future Corey's problem, not today's.

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Uh, and I'm happy to problem solve with you if it helpful, but so.

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I remember when I first joined, it was a six person sales

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team, and the founder was brilliant 'cause he put this sales

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team in a separate room, in a separate building, uh, away from

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the account managers and all the other people in the agency.

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What he built was, was not a boiler room, but it was a sales

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floor, a proper sales floor with, uh, a big metallic gong

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that they, they would use to celebrate one call closes.

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It was this really fun sales environment.

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Calls were coming in, people are closing deals.

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It's great.

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It's great vibe.

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But again, we were stuck with this inbound, uh, lead flow.

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And so what did we do?

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My job?

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Expensive hire coming in, need to accelerate sales.

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Well, we maximized all the inbound sort of tactics, leveraging, you know, the

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HubSpot, you know, content marketing and, and landing pages and all that stuff.

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But that of course wasn't good enough.

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We weren't growing fast enough and so we had to do the same.

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There's no dial.

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You can turn up on that or, or it is, but it's great.

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I almost killed myself in the pandemic years.

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I was putting out 11 pieces of content every week, and it was depressing.

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I had no time to think about what I was writing.

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Just quick, generate more.

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It does not scale.

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And if you study kind of the, the topic of inbounds, we know that only.

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3% of any industry is coming inbound in any quarter, right?

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So it's a relatively small, really small percentage of the

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overall addressable market that you're trying to attract.

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They're coming inbound, and of course you're

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sharing those inbounds with all of your competitors.

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And so the next phase that we had to figure out was.

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How are we going to start doing outbound?

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And the dynamic again on the sales floor was that these

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guys were just answering phones and making dollars.

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They, they were very well paid, got off work at about 4:00 PM had a

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wonderful life, and we had to literally go into that sales floor and say,

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Hey guys, here's a, here's a list that we just bought from Dun and Bradstreet

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and you to start picking up the phone and start dialing these attorneys

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dial for dollars.

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I remember those days.

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Smile and dial.

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Of course, that didn't work.

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We tried a lot.

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We put a lot of pressure on them.

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It's also really hard from a services perspective because so much of that

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is based on, based on trust and relationships and with founder-led sales.

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Great.

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I, I can walk in and have an instant credibility that

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somewhat in a sales function does not necessarily have,

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because they, you know, didn't spend the last decade.

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Being obnoxious on the internet about a particular topic.

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Yeah.

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And, and frankly, to hire a sales rep to come in and be able to re replicate

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what the founder does with any predictability is basically impossible.

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So what we did, we figured something out.

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So we were selling to attorneys, and if you've ever sold to attorneys, Corey,

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you know, that they have a, uh, receptionist or an a, an office manager.

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I married an attorney.

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I would say it's probably one of the best sales jobs I've ever done.

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But, uh, also one of the hardest, I mean, this

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is not a commodity flying off the shelves.

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Let's not get ourselves here.

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You are quite a, quite a talented salesperson, clearly.

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Oh, I I must be.

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Yeah.

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Only when it matters.

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That's it.

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So what we figured out is that when we would call a, uh, a law firm,

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we would get shut down by the office manager by the receptionist.

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We couldn't get through.

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So what we did is we sent a gourmet box of cookies to the law firm.

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What we did is we put these gourmet box of cookies

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in a FedEx box, the overnighted it to the attorney.

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It would skip the, uh, front office, 'cause it's an overnight package.

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It'd go right to the attorney.

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They would unzip the, the box, they'd open it

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up, they'd pull out this amazing tin of like.

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World class cookies.

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Like if you, if you're not like holding the wall when you're

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eating these things, you're gonna fall on the ground like that.

242
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That level of just incredible, incredible moment.

243
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Those, of course, they ended up in the break room.

244
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All of the office staff would stand around eating

245
00:11:34,425 --> 00:11:36,285
these amazing cookies, drinking coffee, and they would

246
00:11:36,285 --> 00:11:38,865
say, well, you know, who brought the amazing cookies?

247
00:11:39,165 --> 00:11:41,564
And someone would say, ah, this company Scorpion.

248
00:11:41,564 --> 00:11:44,025
And someone else would say, well, who's Scorpion?

249
00:11:44,025 --> 00:11:45,770
Someone else say, I don't know, some company, da, da da.

250
00:11:45,944 --> 00:11:47,415
But before you knew it, the name Scorpion's,

251
00:11:47,415 --> 00:11:49,395
like bouncing off all the walls in the law firm.

252
00:11:49,665 --> 00:11:51,074
Of course, we call to follow up.

253
00:11:51,074 --> 00:11:53,385
We don't just send a gift, we call to follow up.

254
00:11:53,805 --> 00:11:58,545
And the energy went from traditional, you know, like arms crossed.

255
00:11:58,545 --> 00:11:59,354
No, I'm sorry.

256
00:11:59,354 --> 00:12:00,584
You can't talk to them too.

257
00:12:01,395 --> 00:12:02,234
Oh my God.

258
00:12:02,790 --> 00:12:05,490
You are the guys that sent those amazing cookies.

259
00:12:05,610 --> 00:12:07,950
Ah, those were too good.

260
00:12:07,950 --> 00:12:08,970
We ate all of those.

261
00:12:08,970 --> 00:12:10,440
Thank you so much.

262
00:12:10,710 --> 00:12:11,640
Let me put you through

263
00:12:11,845 --> 00:12:12,065
it.

264
00:12:12,070 --> 00:12:16,350
It feels like this is the sort of thing that as two, has two failure modes.

265
00:12:16,650 --> 00:12:20,250
One is as soon as people hear this idea, they think it's great and they

266
00:12:20,250 --> 00:12:23,220
start trying to do it themselves and it starts to get lost in the noise.

267
00:12:23,370 --> 00:12:26,430
The counterpoint is what you just said though, that follow up piece of it.

268
00:12:26,610 --> 00:12:31,800
There's a certain sense and a lot of, uh, marketing folks who.

269
00:12:32,355 --> 00:12:34,845
I don't wanna use the word crappy, but pretend I did.

270
00:12:35,085 --> 00:12:38,865
And they will just go ahead and spam this stuff out without follow up.

271
00:12:38,865 --> 00:12:41,655
And a sort of a cargo cult approach of, oh, well it worked for you.

272
00:12:41,655 --> 00:12:42,735
It must work for me.

273
00:12:42,885 --> 00:12:44,685
Without putting the work in, doing the

274
00:12:44,685 --> 00:12:46,965
follow up, becoming established, like what?

275
00:12:46,965 --> 00:12:49,425
We need to be able to send 10,000 boxes of cookies,

276
00:12:50,145 --> 00:12:54,015
try 50, and then do some calls and see how it goes.

277
00:12:54,495 --> 00:12:56,925
I'll tell you, so I've codified this now and I've

278
00:12:56,925 --> 00:12:58,935
started teaching it to my clients and others.

279
00:12:58,935 --> 00:13:00,705
There's really four things you have to get right.

280
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Number one to your point is the list.

281
00:13:03,000 --> 00:13:06,390
This is not a spray and pray spam, your tam type of approach.

282
00:13:06,870 --> 00:13:10,350
At Scorpion, we did a lot of that 'cause we started off with 50, but

283
00:13:10,350 --> 00:13:15,210
we scaled it up to, uh, 60 salespeople sending 250 gifts per quarter.

284
00:13:15,270 --> 00:13:17,670
It was madness, but we didn't start there, right?

285
00:13:17,880 --> 00:13:20,730
So we, what we wanna do is we want to build what I call your

286
00:13:20,730 --> 00:13:24,180
20% list, which is kind of think of like your, your Dream 100.

287
00:13:24,180 --> 00:13:29,400
Who, Corey, are those ideal prospects that you can't otherwise get in front of?

288
00:13:29,969 --> 00:13:32,849
Those VIP prospects that if, you know, if you got a meeting

289
00:13:32,849 --> 00:13:35,849
with them, you would build a relationship, you'd probably

290
00:13:35,849 --> 00:13:38,400
close them and it would be a lifelong amazing client.

291
00:13:38,400 --> 00:13:40,229
Like that's who you want to target with us.

292
00:13:40,469 --> 00:13:41,194
That's number one in the list.

293
00:13:42,089 --> 00:13:42,959
Which is great.

294
00:13:42,964 --> 00:13:44,430
I, I wish I thought of the cookie idea.

295
00:13:44,430 --> 00:13:46,800
Instead, I started an interview show where it's like, well,

296
00:13:46,800 --> 00:13:49,800
all right, how do I get a, how do I get to talk to people?

297
00:13:49,800 --> 00:13:52,140
I have no business speaking to where the immediate

298
00:13:52,140 --> 00:13:54,839
response is not get the hell out of my office.

299
00:13:55,290 --> 00:13:59,010
It worked, it, it took a little bit more work, and it was a

300
00:13:59,010 --> 00:14:01,290
little bit more flattering on the waistline if I could be so,

301
00:14:01,290 --> 00:14:04,979
so blunt for, in my case, where I, I'm fighting it constantly.

302
00:14:04,979 --> 00:14:06,660
It's not a dad bod, it's a father figure,

303
00:14:06,900 --> 00:14:09,660
but yeah, it's the I I'm dealing with now.

304
00:14:09,735 --> 00:14:13,455
Uh, that approach again, doesn't scale and no one is gonna,

305
00:14:13,455 --> 00:14:16,875
like, by the way, coming on this show when the entire

306
00:14:16,875 --> 00:14:19,755
before and after show are me pitching them on things.

307
00:14:19,905 --> 00:14:22,900
It's, it's build the relationship first, then see what happens.

308
00:14:24,045 --> 00:14:27,585
This episode is sponsored by my own company, duck Bill.

309
00:14:27,885 --> 00:14:30,795
Having trouble with your AWS bill, perhaps

310
00:14:30,795 --> 00:14:33,525
it's time to renegotiate a contract with them.

311
00:14:33,855 --> 00:14:35,985
Maybe you're just wondering how to predict

312
00:14:35,985 --> 00:14:39,225
what's going on in the wide world of AWS.

313
00:14:39,285 --> 00:14:41,925
Well, that's where Duck Bill comes in to help.

314
00:14:42,135 --> 00:14:44,865
Remember, you can't duck the duck bill.

315
00:14:44,865 --> 00:14:47,535
Bill, which I am reliably informed by my

316
00:14:47,535 --> 00:14:51,075
business partner is absolutely not our motto.

317
00:14:51,150 --> 00:14:54,569
To learn more, visit doc bill hq.com.

318
00:14:55,439 --> 00:14:58,770
And so that, and that's an interesting context in terms of this gift.

319
00:14:58,770 --> 00:15:02,430
This is not just you're pulling a a Yeti cup off off

320
00:15:02,430 --> 00:15:04,410
the mug and putting your logo on it and send it to them.

321
00:15:04,410 --> 00:15:07,020
This is a relationship driver.

322
00:15:07,020 --> 00:15:10,680
This is a relationship focused campaign where we're trying to break

323
00:15:10,680 --> 00:15:13,829
the noise, put something in front of them that is unique striking,

324
00:15:14,040 --> 00:15:17,699
leaves an amazing impression, and to your point, you have to follow up.

325
00:15:17,939 --> 00:15:20,280
You can't just send the gift and wait for your phone to ring.

326
00:15:20,670 --> 00:15:23,010
You have to follow up because we all know what it's

327
00:15:23,010 --> 00:15:26,220
like to receive an amazing email or amazing gift from

328
00:15:26,220 --> 00:15:28,650
someone, and then all of a sudden, guess what happens?

329
00:15:29,310 --> 00:15:32,700
The wife calls the, you know, the, the client emergency, you know,

330
00:15:32,700 --> 00:15:36,060
pops up and what, whatever that situation is, and we lose that moment.

331
00:15:36,060 --> 00:15:38,130
So we have to diligently follow up.

332
00:15:38,370 --> 00:15:41,310
And then the other trick to this, I'll let you, uh, finish your thought.

333
00:15:41,640 --> 00:15:42,450
Oh, please, please.

334
00:15:42,450 --> 00:15:45,270
This is, I just wanna point out how brilliant this is because it

335
00:15:45,330 --> 00:15:48,810
fa I don't, you have that spark of life in your eyes that implies

336
00:15:48,810 --> 00:15:51,780
you have not spent a lot of time at tech company conferences.

337
00:15:52,050 --> 00:15:55,560
But when you have, you get surrounded by all the swag, and

338
00:15:55,560 --> 00:15:59,280
I only have two rules for swag and almost everyone fails it.

339
00:15:59,580 --> 00:16:03,300
The first is you have to like the swag you're giving away.

340
00:16:03,745 --> 00:16:06,235
Even if it has another company's logo on

341
00:16:06,235 --> 00:16:08,005
it, because everyone loves their own logo.

342
00:16:08,035 --> 00:16:08,485
Great.

343
00:16:09,235 --> 00:16:12,535
And the second is, if this is the third one of these that I'm getting

344
00:16:12,535 --> 00:16:15,625
at a conference, it still has to have some utility because as soon

345
00:16:15,625 --> 00:16:18,715
as you find something good, everyone's gonna bandwagon onto it.

346
00:16:18,715 --> 00:16:21,805
And then it, it still has to have that value and resonate.

347
00:16:22,285 --> 00:16:24,805
But there is a difference between things you give to everyone who can

348
00:16:24,805 --> 00:16:28,225
fog a mirror and scan a badge at your booth and the strategic prospects.

349
00:16:28,525 --> 00:16:30,475
So I'm, I'm in complete alignment with that.

350
00:16:30,475 --> 00:16:31,255
It must be unique.

351
00:16:31,255 --> 00:16:32,635
It must be useful, and.

352
00:16:32,995 --> 00:16:35,094
Frankly, if it's expensive, great.

353
00:16:35,094 --> 00:16:37,435
Just don't bring 10,000, but bring a hundred.

354
00:16:37,435 --> 00:16:40,555
And then those a hundred people who get them, they'll remember that.

355
00:16:41,005 --> 00:16:41,635
Yes.

356
00:16:41,875 --> 00:16:43,525
And people like, well, it won't scale to every,

357
00:16:43,735 --> 00:16:46,074
every attendee at the 60,000 person conference.

358
00:16:46,425 --> 00:16:48,885
What will, it doesn't need to it.

359
00:16:49,305 --> 00:16:51,855
How many leads can you realistically nurture in a quarter?

360
00:16:52,035 --> 00:16:55,725
I have a lot of perspectives and strategies around how to maximize

361
00:16:55,755 --> 00:16:57,945
conferences, so we could talk about that maybe some other time,

362
00:16:57,945 --> 00:17:00,585
but I, it's a topic that I'm very passionate about because

363
00:17:00,855 --> 00:17:03,945
where else do you get in a room with all of your ICP buyers?

364
00:17:04,005 --> 00:17:05,475
Like face to face, belly to belly?

365
00:17:05,475 --> 00:17:06,285
It's mo, it's a very.

366
00:17:06,839 --> 00:17:09,300
Uh, amazing, powerful place to build relationships.

367
00:17:09,329 --> 00:17:09,510
But

368
00:17:09,839 --> 00:17:12,329
it is, especially when you have the complex enterprise motion

369
00:17:12,359 --> 00:17:15,629
where very often you have to build multiple relationships.

370
00:17:15,629 --> 00:17:17,520
You can't single track through someone because they

371
00:17:17,520 --> 00:17:20,849
tend to transition or leave or something happens.

372
00:17:21,030 --> 00:17:23,010
You, it's a longer process.

373
00:17:23,010 --> 00:17:25,170
In some cases, you intentionally wanna slow it down.

374
00:17:25,510 --> 00:17:27,370
But that's what you were doing at Scorpion.

375
00:17:27,400 --> 00:17:30,310
You recently have set out on your own, you've written

376
00:17:30,310 --> 00:17:32,710
a book, which is something that I very much want to do.

377
00:17:32,770 --> 00:17:33,490
I wanna be clear.

378
00:17:33,580 --> 00:17:35,380
I want you have written a book.

379
00:17:35,620 --> 00:17:36,815
I don't want to write a book.

380
00:17:36,815 --> 00:17:36,975
Trust

381
00:17:36,975 --> 00:17:37,095
me.

382
00:17:37,095 --> 00:17:38,015
You do not wanna write a book.

383
00:17:38,110 --> 00:17:38,560
Yes.

384
00:17:38,560 --> 00:17:39,280
Yeah.

385
00:17:39,280 --> 00:17:41,470
Every person I talk to with a couple

386
00:17:41,470 --> 00:17:43,090
exceptions is like, have you written a book?

387
00:17:43,090 --> 00:17:43,810
Like, oh, I will.

388
00:17:43,870 --> 00:17:45,280
That was the worst thing in my life.

389
00:17:45,280 --> 00:17:46,600
I never want to do it again.

390
00:17:46,660 --> 00:17:49,120
And then there's a small subset of deranged people

391
00:17:49,120 --> 00:17:51,040
who are like, oh, I'm, I'm working on my seventh.

392
00:17:51,524 --> 00:17:52,425
Oh my God.

393
00:17:52,425 --> 00:17:54,044
What, what is your life like?

394
00:17:54,044 --> 00:17:55,245
Are there windows in your house?

395
00:17:55,574 --> 00:17:55,844
Yeah.

396
00:17:55,844 --> 00:17:58,034
I've never been pregnant, but I've heard that you, you

397
00:17:58,034 --> 00:18:00,584
almost forget the, the experience of having a, a child.

398
00:18:00,584 --> 00:18:00,794
Right.

399
00:18:00,794 --> 00:18:03,584
So I'm actually in the process of writing a second book, which is,

400
00:18:03,885 --> 00:18:06,254
uh, I'm just the beginning stages and I'm beginning to remember.

401
00:18:06,379 --> 00:18:08,504
I, I did it the slow and expensive way.

402
00:18:08,504 --> 00:18:10,754
Like I, I took well over a year.

403
00:18:10,784 --> 00:18:12,915
I hired a lot of people to help me out and all these

404
00:18:12,915 --> 00:18:15,014
things, but I'm very, very happy that it's done.

405
00:18:15,074 --> 00:18:15,435
I tell you,

406
00:18:15,705 --> 00:18:18,344
you have recommendations from it for people like April Dunford,

407
00:18:18,344 --> 00:18:20,985
who I'm familiar with, like these are, these are folks who.

408
00:18:21,465 --> 00:18:23,775
Yeah, the book resonates and credit we're

409
00:18:23,775 --> 00:18:25,815
due to the folks out there in the world.

410
00:18:26,055 --> 00:18:28,065
I've only gotten a couple of random cold

411
00:18:28,065 --> 00:18:29,925
outreaches that mentioned the book I wrote.

412
00:18:30,165 --> 00:18:33,495
I don't know that they even are referring to this.

413
00:18:33,915 --> 00:18:37,065
I, it may just be their dumb template not working out well.

414
00:18:37,095 --> 00:18:39,495
'cause nothing sticks in your mind quite like great marketing or

415
00:18:39,495 --> 00:18:43,875
terrible marketing if the in between stuff fades in, it is well regarded.

416
00:18:43,875 --> 00:18:47,175
It talks about a lot of things that are

417
00:18:47,385 --> 00:18:49,245
just looking at the, at the outline of this.

418
00:18:49,245 --> 00:18:51,735
It, it's stuff that I've, that I've internalized

419
00:18:51,735 --> 00:18:52,935
that it wouldn't occur to me not to.

420
00:18:52,935 --> 00:18:55,635
For example, chapter four is titled Give a Damn.

421
00:18:55,990 --> 00:18:58,750
I can't tell you how many founders I talked to who are just trying

422
00:18:58,750 --> 00:19:01,420
to, well, I built a solution and now I'm looking to see what I can

423
00:19:01,420 --> 00:19:05,110
sell it to, or the grifter set who just want to make a quick buck.

424
00:19:05,500 --> 00:19:09,430
You have to care or nothing's going to work.

425
00:19:09,640 --> 00:19:12,580
So I'll tie this back to Scorpion because I think it's relevant to this.

426
00:19:12,580 --> 00:19:15,310
So, sure, you can be really great at acquiring new clients, but

427
00:19:15,310 --> 00:19:18,490
we all know that the real value in business is the lifetime value.

428
00:19:19,035 --> 00:19:20,715
Costs a lot of money to acquire a customer, but

429
00:19:20,715 --> 00:19:22,965
you need to keep them for as long as possible.

430
00:19:22,965 --> 00:19:23,715
Two, three years.

431
00:19:23,715 --> 00:19:26,205
Was it four times easier to sell to an existing customer than a new one?

432
00:19:26,565 --> 00:19:27,075
That's right.

433
00:19:27,075 --> 00:19:30,795
And so the thing that allowed us to keep our clients at Scorpion so long,

434
00:19:30,945 --> 00:19:34,065
we kept them three years, whereas our competitors kept them six months.

435
00:19:34,515 --> 00:19:37,725
As a result of that, we could pay a lot more to acquire our customer.

436
00:19:38,790 --> 00:19:40,800
The reason why that's, that's one point.

437
00:19:40,800 --> 00:19:41,790
I'll put it to the side.

438
00:19:41,795 --> 00:19:45,450
The, the, the reason why we were able to keep them so long

439
00:19:45,450 --> 00:19:49,020
was due to our specialization and one of our mutual friends,

440
00:19:49,020 --> 00:19:52,740
Jonathan Stark, talks about specialization far as far as you

441
00:19:52,740 --> 00:19:55,470
could either specialize in what you do or in who you serve.

442
00:19:56,490 --> 00:20:02,010
Or you can specialize in both what you do for, for a specific audience, right?

443
00:20:02,250 --> 00:20:03,210
It's counterintuitive.

444
00:20:03,210 --> 00:20:06,660
One of the things Jonathan Stark taught me many years ago is it

445
00:20:06,660 --> 00:20:09,300
seems like when you start out, uh, we put the consulting hat on.

446
00:20:09,300 --> 00:20:12,600
You are to be all things to all people, but that's not what customers want.

447
00:20:12,780 --> 00:20:15,090
The more narrowly defined your niche

448
00:20:15,090 --> 00:20:17,910
becomes, the higher the rate you can command.

449
00:20:17,910 --> 00:20:20,070
Because billing by the hour is nuts, as he said for

450
00:20:20,070 --> 00:20:21,690
many years, and wrote a book with that same title.

451
00:20:21,910 --> 00:20:24,070
And the more differentiated you become.

452
00:20:24,190 --> 00:20:27,550
If I said that I'm the best cloud architect, uh, no one in this

453
00:20:27,550 --> 00:20:30,400
house is gonna let me get away with that because they're gonna

454
00:20:30,400 --> 00:20:35,680
argue for the title, whereas I'm the best at AWS billing in 2017.

455
00:20:35,680 --> 00:20:36,760
It's like, well, you can have it.

456
00:20:36,760 --> 00:20:37,690
Just sad bastard.

457
00:20:37,690 --> 00:20:39,520
Who would ever claim that if it weren't true?

458
00:20:39,760 --> 00:20:43,690
And it was a mix of pity and, oh, thank God I don't have to deal with this.

459
00:20:43,810 --> 00:20:44,170
It's not.

460
00:20:44,330 --> 00:20:47,210
Fun, exciting problem, that niche into a very

461
00:20:47,210 --> 00:20:49,730
specific, very expensive, very point in time problem.

462
00:20:49,970 --> 00:20:52,429
Uh, I more or less tripped over a gold mine, so to speak.

463
00:20:52,784 --> 00:20:56,385
Yeah, but you had the wherewithal to recognize it when you did trip over it.

464
00:20:56,475 --> 00:20:56,835
Well, no.

465
00:20:56,835 --> 00:20:59,835
I had the wherewithal to hire people like Jonathan Stark to help me, who then

466
00:20:59,835 --> 00:21:03,044
beat me over the head with what should have been obvious but wasn't at the time.

467
00:21:03,044 --> 00:21:06,465
And yeah, honestly, the ability to self-correct

468
00:21:06,465 --> 00:21:09,284
through various means is, is sort of a mark of success.

469
00:21:09,284 --> 00:21:12,044
Like can you surround yourself a with people smarter than you?

470
00:21:12,135 --> 00:21:14,655
Not that hard in my case, and then listen

471
00:21:14,655 --> 00:21:16,365
to what they're saying and said, ego aside.

472
00:21:16,865 --> 00:21:20,465
I didn't have a problem with that, but I, I've seen a lot of examples

473
00:21:20,465 --> 00:21:24,905
where people want to believe in their own mythos more than is warranted.

474
00:21:25,295 --> 00:21:29,975
Well, in terms of specialization, it's about narrowing the addressable markets

475
00:21:29,975 --> 00:21:33,185
who you're saying yes to, who you say no to, and I think we're all com pre-wired

476
00:21:33,425 --> 00:21:37,535
as entrepreneurs, people who want to start and launch a healthy business.

477
00:21:37,935 --> 00:21:40,845
One of the ways we get into business is just by saying yes to people, right?

478
00:21:40,845 --> 00:21:43,965
We, we, we, we serve clients, we over deliver on

479
00:21:43,965 --> 00:21:46,155
those first clients and that turns into referrals.

480
00:21:46,155 --> 00:21:49,035
And of course we wanna say yes to the referrals and becomes

481
00:21:49,035 --> 00:21:52,275
this sort of generalist trap, what I call it, right?

482
00:21:52,305 --> 00:21:55,755
It is a self-fulfilling kind of flywheel where you end up

483
00:21:55,935 --> 00:21:59,025
with a generalist agency or a generalist business especially.

484
00:21:59,415 --> 00:22:01,575
This is very common in the service based businesses

485
00:22:01,575 --> 00:22:04,275
because you can say yes and be flexible versus.

486
00:22:04,625 --> 00:22:08,525
Potentially less so in SaaS, but the thing that made Scorpion really

487
00:22:08,765 --> 00:22:11,975
powerful, and I think the founders, they kind of fell into this, not

488
00:22:11,975 --> 00:22:15,305
necessarily doing this intentionally, but it, it really worked, which is

489
00:22:15,305 --> 00:22:19,325
that we had a specialization in personal injury attorneys, and what that

490
00:22:19,325 --> 00:22:23,315
meant was we got really, really good at solving that expensive problem,

491
00:22:23,315 --> 00:22:27,185
which is identifying and helping them to get cases from the internet.

492
00:22:27,755 --> 00:22:30,485
As a result of that, we were able to charge a premium.

493
00:22:30,485 --> 00:22:32,675
We were able to keep clients for a very long time.

494
00:22:33,090 --> 00:22:36,720
And what we were able to do with that model is we went and

495
00:22:36,720 --> 00:22:39,330
we did repeated that with a couple of other industries.

496
00:22:39,330 --> 00:22:39,870
So it was,

497
00:22:39,870 --> 00:22:42,480
it's such a great positioning because the default for,

498
00:22:42,480 --> 00:22:45,150
I'm a personal injury attorney, I'm trying to get clients.

499
00:22:45,240 --> 00:22:47,220
Well, have you considered putting yourself with a

500
00:22:47,220 --> 00:22:49,650
dumb expression on your face at the back of a bus?

501
00:22:49,830 --> 00:22:50,550
Uh, like that?

502
00:22:50,550 --> 00:22:53,550
That seems to be the default approach these folks take.

503
00:22:53,880 --> 00:22:55,260
There are so many different paths.

504
00:22:55,380 --> 00:22:56,220
Yes, exactly.

505
00:22:56,220 --> 00:22:58,830
And, and in many cases they, they need a trusted advisor.

506
00:22:59,370 --> 00:23:01,980
Who can guide them on how to manage their,

507
00:23:01,980 --> 00:23:03,929
their presence online, all these great things.

508
00:23:03,929 --> 00:23:06,840
And so how that translates into the book, chapter four, you

509
00:23:06,840 --> 00:23:10,290
gotta give a damn, is that you can't just choose an industry to

510
00:23:10,290 --> 00:23:14,189
specialize in based on a spreadsheet, based on the total addressable

511
00:23:14,189 --> 00:23:18,300
market and some assumptions around penetration revenue and, and.

512
00:23:19,230 --> 00:23:21,270
What you have to do if you want longevity.

513
00:23:21,270 --> 00:23:24,629
My perspective is you actually, if you're going to specialize,

514
00:23:24,629 --> 00:23:27,570
which of course I recommend that you identify a vertical

515
00:23:27,570 --> 00:23:31,649
market that you have some kind of connection to, whether it be.

516
00:23:32,475 --> 00:23:35,294
Familial professional, somewhere that you are,

517
00:23:35,685 --> 00:23:37,635
for lack of a better term, a bias for that.

518
00:23:37,635 --> 00:23:42,165
You would like to show up every day, spend time in their conferences, speak from

519
00:23:42,165 --> 00:23:45,584
their stages, get to know them, solve their problems at a very profound level.

520
00:23:45,645 --> 00:23:47,294
If you can't start there, you need to be able to get

521
00:23:47,294 --> 00:23:50,324
there quickly of being able to speak with a sense of

522
00:23:50,324 --> 00:23:54,614
expertise of having a gravitas and authority in that space.

523
00:23:54,854 --> 00:23:57,284
Nowhere is this more obvious than on social media where.

524
00:23:58,649 --> 00:24:02,760
You have these folks who are, they're just grifters, where

525
00:24:02,790 --> 00:24:05,340
Oh, they're terrific experts on blockchain technology.

526
00:24:05,340 --> 00:24:07,860
AI comes out, they can retool their grift pitch and

527
00:24:07,889 --> 00:24:09,720
way faster than it takes to actually learn things.

528
00:24:09,899 --> 00:24:11,370
And suddenly they're experts on that.

529
00:24:11,370 --> 00:24:12,990
And this week they're experts at international

530
00:24:12,990 --> 00:24:16,014
policy and it goes on and on and on, and it's.

531
00:24:16,590 --> 00:24:18,210
They're not adding insight.

532
00:24:18,210 --> 00:24:19,560
There's no value here.

533
00:24:19,560 --> 00:24:20,580
It's just noise.

534
00:24:20,730 --> 00:24:21,060
Yeah.

535
00:24:21,060 --> 00:24:21,990
It's very thin, right?

536
00:24:21,990 --> 00:24:23,280
There's no, there's no depth to it.

537
00:24:23,280 --> 00:24:26,460
Now, the what The folks who did specialize in a vertical

538
00:24:26,460 --> 00:24:29,010
market or in a, in, in solving an expensive problem.

539
00:24:29,490 --> 00:24:32,190
AI is a gift for us because now it allows us

540
00:24:32,190 --> 00:24:34,950
to magnify and multiply exponentially are.

541
00:24:35,760 --> 00:24:40,290
Versus someone who's just, you know, leveraging generic sort of best practices

542
00:24:40,440 --> 00:24:41,160
used correctly.

543
00:24:41,160 --> 00:24:41,940
Absolutely.

544
00:24:41,940 --> 00:24:43,560
Human in the loop is important.

545
00:24:43,560 --> 00:24:46,530
I, I've also found that if you start diving into a topic you know well with

546
00:24:46,530 --> 00:24:51,030
ai, it doesn't take long for it to start absolutely falling apart to custard.

547
00:24:51,270 --> 00:24:53,910
And the trick is to remember this, when you're asking about things you.

548
00:24:53,965 --> 00:24:55,375
Don't know super well.

549
00:24:55,375 --> 00:24:58,375
It's, there's a, uh, I, it's a, a galman amnesia, I think is

550
00:24:58,375 --> 00:25:00,715
what it's called when we're reading a newspaper article about

551
00:25:00,715 --> 00:25:03,324
something we know well, and it's clear the reporter has no idea

552
00:25:03,324 --> 00:25:05,875
what they're doing, but like, oh, they, this guy's an idiot.

553
00:25:06,024 --> 00:25:08,095
But you completely forget that the next time you read

554
00:25:08,095 --> 00:25:10,975
about, oh, middle East politics or something, and Oh,

555
00:25:10,975 --> 00:25:13,405
yeah, clearly he must know exactly what's going on here.

556
00:25:13,764 --> 00:25:16,074
We forget that we're all dealing with.

557
00:25:16,310 --> 00:25:19,460
Brushes against things that are very deep, almost sarcastically.

558
00:25:19,460 --> 00:25:19,640
So,

559
00:25:19,910 --> 00:25:20,900
yes, exactly.

560
00:25:20,900 --> 00:25:24,800
So that's effectively what, where I focus now is helping

561
00:25:24,800 --> 00:25:28,435
founders who have built some level of generalist approach.

562
00:25:29,399 --> 00:25:31,919
And as a result of that, they're struggling with retention, with

563
00:25:31,919 --> 00:25:35,070
marketing, standing out positioning and helping them to become

564
00:25:35,100 --> 00:25:39,360
specialists and then find ways to scale up revenue in a profitable way.

565
00:25:39,659 --> 00:25:42,750
Help me disambiguate what you mean when you say founders, because you're

566
00:25:42,750 --> 00:25:46,290
talking about, again, with this audience that people will hear automatically

567
00:25:46,290 --> 00:25:49,439
startup, and then you're talking about things that are anathema for startups.

568
00:25:49,439 --> 00:25:51,990
Like are you talking about agencies, are you talking about service companies?

569
00:25:51,990 --> 00:25:53,580
Are you talking about tech startups?

570
00:25:53,580 --> 00:25:54,510
Are you talking about all of the above?

571
00:25:54,929 --> 00:25:58,679
My, my primary domain of expertise is in the agency

572
00:25:58,679 --> 00:26:01,860
space, which is a service-based business, but I've also

573
00:26:01,860 --> 00:26:04,889
worked with clients who have a SaaS-based offering.

574
00:26:05,399 --> 00:26:08,850
The reality is, is that a founder is the most passionate person in the business.

575
00:26:08,850 --> 00:26:11,730
They should be the closest to the client, and eventually they become their

576
00:26:11,730 --> 00:26:17,280
own bottleneck in terms of their growth, and when that becomes a hindrance

577
00:26:17,280 --> 00:26:20,520
to getting to whatever outcomes or milestones they're looking to achieve.

578
00:26:21,060 --> 00:26:24,090
That is typically when a question about specialization

579
00:26:24,090 --> 00:26:27,480
might be a way to relieve them from a bottleneck.

580
00:26:27,480 --> 00:26:32,699
The reason why is that, especially in an agency where one day as a

581
00:26:32,699 --> 00:26:36,179
generalist, you may be doing a website and SEO strategy for a plumber,

582
00:26:36,179 --> 00:26:39,300
the next day you're doing an e-commerce website for, you know, a

583
00:26:39,300 --> 00:26:42,510
widget maker, and the next day you're doing an influencer strategy.

584
00:26:42,689 --> 00:26:46,020
Like every day is different, and so you have all this context switching.

585
00:26:46,230 --> 00:26:49,439
There's no way for the founder to truly step away from the sales role.

586
00:26:49,844 --> 00:26:53,235
Versus if you are selling an attorney a solution to help them

587
00:26:53,235 --> 00:26:57,314
to get more cases, that sale by nature is much more repetitive.

588
00:26:57,314 --> 00:26:59,925
You're selling effectively a productized service.

589
00:27:00,104 --> 00:27:02,665
As a result of that, there's ways to step out, step away from that sale.

590
00:27:02,750 --> 00:27:04,455
The more productized you become, the easier it is to

591
00:27:04,455 --> 00:27:06,495
replicate and sell and teach other people to do it.

592
00:27:06,524 --> 00:27:09,044
When I took on Mike, my business partner, I was convinced

593
00:27:09,044 --> 00:27:11,294
that what I did was so bespoke that no one else could

594
00:27:11,294 --> 00:27:13,725
ever do it, and he's like, oh, I bet you're wrong on that.

595
00:27:13,725 --> 00:27:16,875
And spoiler, I was good to know it worked out.

596
00:27:16,875 --> 00:27:18,465
I'm glad I believed him on that.

597
00:27:18,840 --> 00:27:20,070
It, it's hard though.

598
00:27:20,070 --> 00:27:23,340
It's very often the more specific you get, the better.

599
00:27:23,460 --> 00:27:26,970
One thing I often say I got wrong is that I, I fixed the horrifying.

600
00:27:26,970 --> 00:27:28,980
AWS bill is not a complete positioning.

601
00:27:29,220 --> 00:27:31,710
Smarter move would've been, I fixed the horrifying

602
00:27:31,710 --> 00:27:34,530
AWS bill for SaaS companies in the Bay Area.

603
00:27:34,660 --> 00:27:38,080
You want people to hear themselves described in, in your Go to Market.

604
00:27:38,290 --> 00:27:41,080
I would just happen to be noisy enough in an unpopular enough

605
00:27:41,080 --> 00:27:43,870
space for a very specific problem that I was able to skate past it.

606
00:27:44,200 --> 00:27:45,100
Yeah, you figured it out.

607
00:27:45,100 --> 00:27:45,700
That's for sure.

608
00:27:45,700 --> 00:27:48,130
And I do agree people want to work with people who've

609
00:27:48,130 --> 00:27:50,290
already solved their problem for people like them.

610
00:27:50,350 --> 00:27:50,960
So the more you can.

611
00:27:51,794 --> 00:27:54,044
Project that into the market and say, Hey, I understand

612
00:27:54,044 --> 00:27:56,985
your specific flavor of this common problem, the more

613
00:27:56,985 --> 00:27:59,324
you'll be able to stand out as that authority and expert.

614
00:27:59,955 --> 00:28:00,105
Yeah.

615
00:28:00,105 --> 00:28:02,264
I, I really wanna thank you for taking the time to speak with me.

616
00:28:02,385 --> 00:28:04,965
If people wanna learn more, where's the best place for them to find you?

617
00:28:05,445 --> 00:28:06,315
Oh, you'll love this.

618
00:28:06,315 --> 00:28:07,575
Corey quinn.com.

619
00:28:08,175 --> 00:28:10,485
I wondered who was squatting on that and

620
00:28:10,485 --> 00:28:12,015
we'll, of course put links to that in the show.

621
00:28:12,015 --> 00:28:12,285
Sorry, not

622
00:28:12,285 --> 00:28:12,495
sorry.

623
00:28:13,095 --> 00:28:17,355
Nor should you be, I, I am looking forward to the mass confusion

624
00:28:17,355 --> 00:28:20,085
from people who just skimm this and are convinced that we made

625
00:28:20,085 --> 00:28:23,235
a terrible editing error, but it's going in this show notes.

626
00:28:23,385 --> 00:28:25,365
Corey, thank you so much for speaking to me.

627
00:28:25,365 --> 00:28:26,205
I appreciate it.

628
00:28:26,595 --> 00:28:28,155
Thank you, Corey, but real pleasure.

629
00:28:28,155 --> 00:28:29,445
Looking forward to speaking again soon.

630
00:28:30,150 --> 00:28:35,160
Cory Quinn, a author, a founder, and oh, so much more with an excellent name.

631
00:28:35,220 --> 00:28:38,490
I'm also Cory Quinn, cloud Economist at Duck Bill.

632
00:28:38,790 --> 00:28:41,250
If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five

633
00:28:41,250 --> 00:28:43,379
star review on your podcast platform of choice.

634
00:28:43,379 --> 00:28:46,320
Whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five star

635
00:28:46,320 --> 00:28:49,560
review on your podcast platform of choice, along with an angry,

636
00:28:49,560 --> 00:28:52,800
insulting comment that shows you were only half paying attention.

637
00:28:52,800 --> 00:28:55,320
'cause it's not even clear which one of us you are ranting at.