Brian Graf (00:08.013)
there and welcome to B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks. I'm Brian Gref, I'm the CEO of Colungy and I'm here with Colungy's co-founder and Chief Centropy Officer Stein Hendricks, who's a serial SaaS marketing executive and ex-Microsoft product marketing leader. In today's episode, we're tackling a surprisingly deep question that impacts everything from brand messaging to go-to-market prioritization. What's the difference between Simon Sinek's start with Y and Colungy's own wow how now frame?

And how can you actually use them both together to craft a more compelling and effective narrative in marketing? We break down when and why you should use each framework, why they aren't mutually exclusive, and how aligning your messaging with your audience's state of mind can drastically improve signal quality and reduce noise. We also introduce a new prioritization method for marketing leaders that blends strategy with real world execution and fits neatly into a single Google Sheet.

If you're a B2B SaaS marketer trying to improve your content strategy, team execution, or brand clarity, this one's for you. Let's get into it. So I recently read Simon Sinek's Golden Circle. I've watched the Ted Talk that many, many, many marketers have. I was curious about the methodology, so I read the book and understood the framework of start with why, then go to how, then go to what.

which makes a lot of sense, but I was also trained in, you know, the T2D3 methodology of wow, how now, right? And they are in my mind, I kind of hit a, I don't know, a point of friction and it made me ask the question, right? They both, think can both be used to build really solid messaging, right? And both seek to differentiate your product, your company from the market, right?

via different routes. And I wanted to at least just get your thoughts on comparing the two, right? It sounds like to me, maybe I need to give a little background on each framework since we're in a podcast, but it sounds like to me, golden circle comes, inwards, starts with the inward and ends with the outward. And Wow How Now almost seems like it starts with the outside and brings it in. So anyway, I wanted to get your thoughts.

Brian Graf (02:28.696)
But maybe let's explain the different frameworks first and then we can jump into.

Yeah, even that, can you walk me through the inside out? Because I don't know the why frame... Yeah, As well maybe as you do.

Yeah, well, hopefully I do it justice. So the golden circle, what I got out of it is that you, you start with why, right? Like that's, that's one of his famous catchphrases, right? The whole point is that people don't care what you do. They care why you do it. And so if you start with why you start with the mission and the, yeah, the why behind what you do, people really latch onto that. And they're much more likely to resonate with.

a mission or a purpose than they are with a, even just a solution. Right. I've actually, I have switched some of my, in my selling of Columbia, I switched some of my pitch to follow this and it has actually worked really well. So you start with why you get people to believe in the mission. Then you go into, okay, here's how we do it. And then finally you go into here's what it is that we actually provide. So the how is the.

process, the differentiation, why you're, the way that you do things is unique. And then of course it's here's what we actually do. So it's almost, you start with your internal, like the deepest, the core, the center, right, of your company and why everything was built in the first place. And then you expand outward in your messaging versus the wow, how now framework from Colungi is more of first you are looking externally, right? You're looking, you care about the prospect you care about.

Brian Graf (04:08.93)
what their pains are, right? What they're experiencing on a day-to-day basis. You're trying to move them out of stasis, right? So you, you, you wow them by answering the question, why change? Right? And then once you've convinced them to change, you, you go into how, which is why with you, right? And then now why now? So they're, I feel like both are, they don't have to be exclusive of each other, but both kind of overlap in a little bit.

Anyways, I wanted to get your thoughts on one fundamentally starts by talking about yourself and the other fundamentally starts with talking about the prospect. I thought it was an interesting, two interesting and both very effective frameworks that were worth discussing.

Great topic, Brian. I think we have to start with even why you would use either of these frameworks. Because that would explain why for me they're not that overlapping. So if your purpose is to help build content and help build marketing campaigns or help go to market even strategies that drive prospects.

from being suspect to becoming prospects to becoming leads, MQLs, SQLs, opportunities in customers. If that's the problem you're trying to solve, just the why, then I would use wowhow now as just a framework that helps you think about what type of content will work in those stages of the journey. So it's not necessarily outside the inner, it's more about the purpose of the work that you're doing.

is to meet prospects, people where they are in this marketing slash sales journey. Right. And for that is just a very practical framework that says, Hey, if you meet people that are relatively early in that journey, they don't know yet if they care, then you have to make them care. So why should they change? Why should they care? The content that usually is very useful to do that is what I kind of group under this. Wow.

Stijn Hendrikse (06:18.616)
content that says these people, that makes them look up basically, right? It says, Hey, I should care about this. I didn't even realize this was an issue, right? So that's wow. And then the moment people have looked up and they're now listening to you, then the type of content changes into why should they keep listening to you? And that's where the how content is usually, it's more the evergreen content, right? You become the trusted guide that they keep following through that journey.

And then at some point you want to maybe to either buy your servers or to take an action or to show up for an event. And that's where now is kind of the word that really describes that let's get them to take action. why now? Right? So why change? Why would you, why now? Also very aligned with the funnel, right? And then pain claim gain is just another way of saying, what is the type of messaging that you usually use when you're in that earlier stage of the funnel where you're.

trying to make them care. It's either wow as in thought leadership or wow, this is actually a pain point. It's something I care about because it's something I am either afraid of. have my fears and my dreams, et cetera. So it's the wow part. And then the why would you, why is that usually the claim part, pain claim. Claim is all about what you do for them, right? What you claim to be your capabilities, your value proposition, et cetera.

And then now is really what do they stand to gain by taking action now instead of waiting till tomorrow, et cetera. So the wow how now framework in that sense is very much aligned with the funnel. And it only applies back to the why question. If the purpose of doing all this is to create the right content, to meet people where they are on that journey. That's the only purpose. This has nothing to do with how do you build the plan for a company or the strategy for a company, or how do you make people believe what you.

bring to market as a company because there's the Cinec framework is phenomenally strong for that, right? And he didn't come up, of course, with the concept of mission and vision and values. Those have been around for a while, but I think the way he put it into a framework, I think is being very useful for people who are building a company to sort of build that company from within those values, right? Why does this company even exist? What is our purpose? I'm having a mission to really

Stijn Hendrikse (08:36.721)
frame that a mission that's always of usually in the context of a vision that someone has. But I have a vision that the world is going into this direction, right? We have this now with Centropy that we're doing at Colungi. Brian, you know, I have a very strong opinion that in the way AI will influence what marketing does. A lot of people have different thoughts on that. I have mine. And for me, that has turned my thinking into a vision that I believe the market will end up a couple years from now.

In a world where humans and AI will have a completely new kind of way that we work together and that we create value. And out of that vision came the mission for Colungi that is now kind of adjusted to say, Hey, we need to become centropic marketers, right? Where we, if we, people who are part of a marketing agency, want to keep adding value, we need to be able to, to, to be that one in one is four kind of AI plus human superpowers being a lot more than some of those parts. That's our mission at Colungi right now.

And then how do we do that? We have our values at Kalungi, right? We think the way we do that is because we have values like leveling up together. We want to grow together as people. train each other. are teachers and we are students. Another value we have is that we want to work with purpose. So we don't want to make sure we don't work on things that don't matter, right? And that's kind of the how and the culture, et cetera. And then the what is like, okay, what do our OKRs look like? Right?

What is it that we're going to... So I feel that that framework, the golden circle, if that's kind of a good way to... It's very good for that, to build a plan as a company. But when I think about marketing, WowHornOw is just a little more practical. And when I wrote T2D, it was all about how do I give people tools that are relatively... That are not too academic, that are not too theoretical, that are relatively easy to apply.

And then I have to admit that I did copy the wow how now kind of the three words a little bit someone else who used them in a completely different way. So in T2D3, there are this framework that I used to describe the stages of that funnel, right? That your clients go through. But I've heard it before someone else actually used it to describe types of content. And this is completely different. And I think in the book I explained this a little bit, but I just don't want people to be confused.

Stijn Hendrikse (10:53.944)
that says, there's three types of content that you need in a content strategy. One is the wow content being more of the thought leadership, getting, taking a stand, having an opinion as a content marketer, right? Having something really to say. Well, how content is your evergreen content? That's more the educational content, et cetera. And then now it's what's called more the current events content, the content, right? The content that goes into your newsletter. Hey, what's happening in our space this week, right? So.

So wow, how now in that framework is more about, I have three types of content. I have my thought leadership content, I have my evergreen content, and I have my more sort of current events and newsletter type content. So again, different framework, same name. But I don't know if that helps Brian with sort of how I was a little bit thinking, yeah, how do these even relate?

is helpful. I do have a little bit to push on with just to use it in the, to compare the two in product messaging and messaging to the market. Because I still think that there's maybe I'm misinterpreting, but I still think that there are uses for both and you can, you can use them both very well in messaging to a market about a product. I, what I really like about the wow how now framework is the amount.

The amount of different ways that it applies to, mess like tactical messaging, in marketing, right? It applies to thinking about the funnel and how, you know, top to bottom, wow, at the top now at the bottom, right? It, applies to how you structure even like a marketing email, right? Of getting the hook up front, having, having credibility and then calling to action, right? It, it has all these different, it's a great framework all out.

or all around to influence the way that you as a marketer build great content that's really engaging. What I do think is that the golden circle can also be used as a framework to message a product where I would probably draw the line and where I was getting to with, with, within my notes that I was thinking about this episode is that the golden circle almost seems like more of a brand first approach to messaging.

Brian Graf (13:08.236)
Right? Like you plant your flag in the ground and the philosophy is that if you shout loudly and clearly enough, then people will come to you because you're taking that stance. Right. And the wow how now almost, I mean, there is that flag in the ground piece to it, but the wow how now is almost like I'm going to go find you because I think you're the best fit. Maybe I'm reading too far into it, but I'd be interested in your thought on how right or wrong I am on that piece.

And then I can go into more internal versus external.

I totally agree, Brian. I wasn't trying to say one is not applicable. The cold is not applicable to product messaging and to product positioning. It absolutely is. I was just trying to kind of more think about how, when you think of the inside art versus outside indifferences. Yeah. When you ask yourself, why are we doing this? Of course, that is a critical starting point of also being very genuine and having a great brand, right? And having some normal positioning.

And the way we, this is not related to the WowHowNow framework. We use it. It's related to some other things we do, right? We typically in T2D2, we use more of the set go-in approach. Where we ask what's it for and who's it for? And behind those is absolutely the why question, right? What's it for? Is it the core of what is it that we're doing that is actually going to change the world? Why is this? Why does this even matter? Right? Why is this relevant for the audience that we care to help, that we care to solve something for? That is all...

behind the why question. You can answer what's it for relatively specific, rather tactical, like the feature solves for this specific need, or you can really go at it very high level, which is we are here to really change something very impactful in the state of the world. And both are fine, but they're both basically answering the why question, what's it for? And then with who's it for, you're also very targeted in making sure that everything you do is probably more relevant for certain.

Stijn Hendrikse (15:05.432)
part of your audience than others and just being very specific in that. But I absolutely agree that that's an important starting point when you do any form of positioning or marketing strategy or go to market. You start with who's it for, what's it for, right? The why is your purpose layer is basically what's it for. The how in Cinex model is basically what is your narrative, right? What are the channel choices? How do you reach those people, which is then a function of who's it for, right?

And then the bot is of course the execution layer, the features, the assets, the campaigns. And then I do believe now back to Syntropy, doing it in that order will help you create a very strong signal. Because the further you go into the execution layer, the more risk you have to create noise. So the golden circle really helps with getting that Syntropic effect. Making sure your signal is really strong, which is more grounded in what sits forward than anything.

And then with who's it for, you make it stronger. then in your execution layer, you keep referring back to that. Are these features, are these capabilities still helping our calls? Right? Are they solving the what's it for problem?

Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. think it's funny. I feel like I've brought a bunch of different marketing topics to you over the past few weeks, episodes, et cetera. And it does seem like the further that we boil them down, it usually comes back to answering the why and knowing your audience. I think this is no exception. It does seem like it almost seems like the golden circle and wow, how now are just almost different angles of solving the same problem.

It is the better that you understand the why, your why, and also your audience's why, then both will work really well, right? It's really just a stylistic preference, honestly. But the core issue that needs to be solved by you as the marketer or you as the company trying to message yourself is all about that why and the signal.

Stijn Hendrikse (17:03.918)
There's so many ways to look at these. the challenge with what we do as marketers, we try to keep things simple, right? And as authors of books as well, we try to come up with slogans with simple words and, and of course, if you make it small enough, the word, then it will have many different interpretations, right? Things get confusing. Another way to think of the golden circle is that the why is really the signal, right? The human or organizational pain that you're solving for, which are SaaS solutions, for example.

Into a neat little box.

Stijn Hendrikse (17:34.124)
And then the how is really the principles, maybe the values, the process behind how you solve for that pain, right? How you build your solution, which leads to also credibility often, right? How credible it is. the how you do it is actually, it adheres to certain principles. Maybe you're a more credible solution provider. And then the product itself, of course, is really what the what is, right? It's the proof point, right? Do your customers actually use it? Do they understand it?

Yeah. It's very cool with both of these frameworks how much, how far you can drill down or up with each and have them both be applicable. Do appreciate that on both. All right. Well, maybe.

If the answer to your question of why are we doing something, which by the way you can ask many different levels of abstraction, if it's not clear then you're producing noise, right? Which goes back to signal quality.

Yeah, there's no point in progressing forward if you can't answer that question. That is the number one thing you need to answer.

We have when we, we now running Columbo in a little bit more of a syntropic way. And one of the things that we ask people now is, Hey, if you, if you have to choose whether to do work or not, the first question to ask, should, should we do the work is the work important? That's the why question, right? What's it for? Who's it for? Yep. Once you've answered that question, the next question is.

Stijn Hendrikse (19:03.694)
There's this other book that I love that came out a couple of years ago. It's called Who Not How, which I think you read as well, Brian. So the next question that you ask is, yeah, even if this needs to be done, should we do it? Are we best positioned to do this? And what's really cool these days is that the answer to that question now should involve AI as an answer of a possible way to get the work done, right? If you basically have said, yeah, we know what's it for, we know who's it for, this work needs to be done. It's important.

Now next question is can my chat GPT agent do it? If not, should we do it or is there someone else better equipped to do it? It could be someone with a different specialty, could be a different cost level, whatever the reason is. And then only after you've answered those two questions positively, like it's important to do and we should be doing it, then you ask yourself, how do I do it in this in a syntropy way, right? How do I do it in a way that creates signal, that reduces noise, right? That is going to create something meaningful that adds value to the world.

that is going to have sustained effect. So yeah, it's that sort of sequence. Why? Who? Who not how? Syntropy.

123. That's a good progression though. you'd be, I guess you wouldn't, but you in general would be amazed at how many times I would, back in my CMO days, I would be reviewing a piece of content or a deliverable from a marketer that just wouldn't quite be it. It wouldn't be what I was expecting. And just by asking someone like, who is this for? What are you making this piece for? And they would answer it. Okay. What do they care about?

it they would answer it right and what are you trying to do with this piece of content they would answer say okay with those three things redo the content and then it would magically become much better and like all those those basic pieces of knowledge really take things to the next level

Stijn Hendrikse (20:52.91)
Yeah, and as we're in the business today in this episode of throwing out frameworks, there's another one, a stop framework. So what I just talked about those three steps is really answering the question, should we start? So should we start is really, do you know why? What's it for? Who's it for? Should we do it? Who, not how? Can we do it in a syntropic way? Why are we not creating noise? We're adding signal, right? Are we able to ship this? All those things are basically a syntropic questions. that's really only the first part is, should we start?

Second part is, when do we stop? Should we start and when do we stop? And stop for us is, should we standardize this, templatize this, optimize or productize? And so what you do with stop, you say, okay, we start this work, this is important. We know that we should be doing it. We have looked at it in a specific way, making sure we do this by creating more signal and doing it the right way. And now we ask ourselves, should we stop? And stop means we ask, are we going to have to do this more than once?

If the answer is yes, we as of stop, we should standardize the work. Then the next question is, are there other people who should also probably be able to do this? If the answer is yes, then we should not only standardize, we should also create a template, templatize it so that others can benefit from the work we just standardized. If others do use it and they use our template, then it's nice to get feedback from them. How do we make the template better? We call that optimize.

So we standardize the work if we need it more than once. We templatize if others can benefit it. Then if others do, we learn from those. We get the feedback loop going so we can optimize the template. And then if we get enough feedback and we've optimized it far enough, let's turn it into our product, the PN stop, right? So should we start? Ask why, who, how, signal quality. And then when do we stop? When do we standardize, templatize, optimize and potentially productize what we just

do you want to talk about, have the, the urge to ask you about prioritization and going into like the centropic prioritization. could make that a whole episode.

Stijn Hendrikse (22:57.25)
Yeah, I can actually share my screen with my template as well.

so on that note, we've talked about, we've started, talked about starting and we've talked about stopping and the stop methodology makes a ton of sense. But for those of people who are still, you know, the answering the question of like, should I start this and how to get into that can be pretty daunting for people. you have come up with this new framework to prioritize initiatives and really the, based on the importance and how much effect do you think that they'll have? do you want to share that with the audio?

Yeah, yeah, we could. So there's this sequence of... So let's say you run a team. I actually don't use meeting notes anymore. We just use this one spreadsheet. And the only thing the spreadsheet really does is ask, should we start this? And I'll share my screen here. You can see kind of what it looks like. And this is by no means...

And perfect, but it's a, it's a good kind of, uh, maybe tool that some people might want to explore and we're still improving that spreadsheet. Oh yeah. So let's talk about a Syntropic to-do list here. So let's say I have a new thing that I want to do. Let's say we want to, um, create a playbook for account based marketing. So someone in the team has come up with this as an idea, right? So we would say, Hey, it's just, it's just an idea. We have to evaluate.

There it is.

Stijn Hendrikse (24:25.614)
whether we should start this, which is basically asking what's it for, who's it for? I call that the start and stop status, right? Is this something we should actually start doing? And if we answer those questions, you have to fill out what's it for, who's it for, right? So you would say to standardize our ABM approach and who's it for for new CMOs learning.

So that's kind of, sorry, I slipped them around. This of course is the Who's It for.

So now that I've answered this, can kind of say, okay, it's worth doing. And now I'm sort of assuming this is a one-time effort. So I say I'll do it one time. Okay, we need to have an owner, right? So say it's me, I would have to do this work. I also always add the date here as a date that is the starting point plus basically 72 hours. So you can see here the formula. So I kind of like to say if we do something that's meaningful.

It's kind of nice to force ourselves to see what we can achieve in the span of 72 hours, because often when you don't cut up a task small enough to be able to do it within a week, 72 hours is equivalent of a work week if you want to do one single thing, it's probably either defined too broadly or it's just not meaningful enough. So you can see here, these tasks, these things that we track are things that you can typically complete in a week, sometimes in a day.

And if they're bigger than that, kind of say, let's just make it a little bit smaller. But let's see, have this thing that we want to do as a team. Now the next question I ask myself, okay, is this going to be adding certain Syntropy or not? I, and this is maybe a little over the top, so you can apply these columns to the level of detail that's useful for your team, is doing this creating order. Today we may do these engagements all very differently. So creating this playbook, yeah, it would create a lot of order. So it gives that a five.

Stijn Hendrikse (26:25.702)
Signal quality same thing and signaling creating order are a little bit related the signal quality really means you you really understand that you're Adding a lot of new insights into how you do something or what you should do or in what order do you do it? First is creating order is more about you acknowledging that right now We're kind of doing this in 12 different ways, right? There's a lot of kind of non-standard work being done So that gives it a five the fact that I'm giving this a five because I know that this playbook will also just provide a lot of

good new insights into in what order do we do things, how important are certain steps, et cetera, right? And then you can argue that noise reduction is maybe little overlapping with signal quality, but this is partly if you think there's a lot of waste right now in the organization that you resolve with this, those are a little bit different. So you could sometimes, in this case, I think they're very related to the boat relatively high, but there are places where you create a lot of signal if you're building something completely new, for example, where you're not necessarily reducing any noise because it's not something.

shipping is all about can I get this done in a reasonable amount of time and get it over the finish line. You want to prevent that you're taking on projects or tasks in your team that are going to be half done or that you just don't finish.

If you take on a project here that's either too big or you don't really know if the people who have to do the work are able to do so, et cetera, your shipping score would go down, right? I feel very comfortable that this is a piece of work that if we actually put our minds to it and put the effort in that we can do this and we can get it done in a couple of days. I totally know that we can. So I give this a high shipability score, if you will. Flywheel is more of, is this something? And these are all going into what I call the Syntropy score.

Is this something that will have a lot of value over time? Right? Will it start compounding value? And I think it will, because having a really standard playbook that we then start using, because it's a template now, and that can then really be improved over time, will have a lot of flywheel effect. Maybe not as much as some other things, but I would give it at least a three. And then this is really an important one. The human factor. Right? Syntropy is all about, because if I can toss this to a chat.

Stijn Hendrikse (28:41.482)
GPT LLM, if I have a bunch of, let's say I have 20 existing ABM projects that we've done and I have a whole bunch of Google Docs that are basically the project plans and sort of the playbooks that we used for those. If I can toast those in a chat GPT and say turn this into one playbook, then I wouldn't really need a lot of human capability to do this work, right? So then I would score this relatively low. The reality is actually I've tried this, Brian, you know this, I was kind of looking for some of the playbooks in Colunga and sort of

trying to put them into an LLM so I can use some, and that was very hard. So this really does need human intervention. So I'm giving this a relatively high human score. So this gives me the Syntropy score. So now I'm basically saying, hey, if someone in the team actually does this work, and why is it not calculating? Because I didn't fill out the piece. not gonna, it just needs to be filled out. So now, hey, why is this not,

what the formula wasn't working. But the Syntropy score gives me a really good sense of if this work is going to be more Syntropic than maybe some other work that we can So it's more of a hierarchy of priority. The last thing I wanted to show is there's this column here where I also have these other stages, right? I think this is work that we will do once and then it will be the creation of the play, then it will be fine. It's not something we'll do multiple times.

The fact that this is a playbook, it's absolutely something we want to templatize, right? So we will templatize it, not just standardize, which is the first step, it's just templatized and probably over time even optimize it. And we may actually decide to sell it, right? This Columny has done with many of these things. So that's where you kind of think about, is this worth putting maybe even extra effort in to ultimately turn it into a product? Because when you're, when you think where we are today, if you're a professional services company like Columny is, we

holstered we try to productize as much as we can, right? So don't know, Brian, is this helpful, this kind of template and so walking you through this?

Brian Graf (30:39.874)
I think, just to probably need to describe this earlier, but this is just a simple Google sheet, right? It's not crazy software. It's just putting some columns into a sheet and forcing yourself to think through everything a little bit before and sharpen the axe before cutting down the tree, right?

Yeah, and the way I'm using it in team meetings is when you have meeting members here, this is basically the sheet that I go to when I have one-on-one meetings with everybody as well. Because if they're working on things that we talk about in our one-on-one, they shouldn't be on here unless they're very confidential, right? But most of should be on here. Try to prevent having other nodes outside of this, because this way the whole team kind of sees what everybody's working on. It's very compatible with using OKRs and things like that.

Yeah, I think, mean, it also, to your point, gives great visibility into team movement. The 72 hour rule means that like no product project can be on here and not be made. You know, you can't not make progress on something which can happen with a lot of like those quarterly goal items. It's just, oh, I'm not here. I'm going to get, it's not on the top of my priority list. I'm going to get to it next month, et cetera. So it's a really good day to day, week to week tool to manage a team. And just to make sure that

obviously all the time to prioritize work, which can be really tough in a hectic schedule, right? So I like it a lot.

I love to work every day on how do we work more in a synthropic way. Even this podcast recording, Brian, because the reason I just did the screen share, because I love that we have this video that I can now send to our team.

Brian Graf (32:12.546)
take that. Yeah, no, perfect. Thank you for sharing. think it's super helpful. Hopefully all of our listeners and viewers, guess, will help. We'll find it helpful as well. Anything else that I missed? It's pretty good. Okay. Well, thank you so much, Stein. That was a great conversation and a pleasure as always.

Thank you, Brian.