Unbound is a weekly podcast, created to help you achieve more as a leader. Join Chris DuBois as he shares his growth journey and interviews others on their path to becoming unbound. Delivered weekly on Thursdays.
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Looking to bootstrap your company? Today's episode for you?
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Are you a leader trying to get more from your business in life need to. So join me as I document conversations, stories and advice to help you achieve what matters in your life. Welcome to unbound with me, Chris DuBois.
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Andre Balu is a growth guy. He's worked as the first time marketing hire for two different companies leading them to six, seven figure arr. He's honed his skills in marketing through getting his hands dirty with content, SEO, social media and more. Today, he helps early stage startups go from zero to one creating a foundation they can scale from by turning chaos into order. And today, he's going to share how Andre welcome Don.
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Hi, Chris, thank you for the invite, I'm happy to be here. Let's, let's get this going. Yeah, and let's get going with your your origin story. Okay. As you mentioned, that sort of marketing choir, you know,
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learn everything from scratch, basically, start by doing it everything that's in mind, some then more going into paid media up to NBN. Recently,
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I've shaved my head, like multiple times by learning, but I feel like that's the way that you have to do it, you know,
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all these experiences, like, from our neon from social media, from content for like creating WordPress websites and stuff like that, they will lead me like into growth. I'm a growth guy. Now, you know,
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after I had those experiences, like I started experimenting more and more, you know, like in content in social media, in paying in payments, you know, and stuff like that. Eventually, I ran a growth department. And then at my last job, I was leading like the company before we were going up market into the enterprise space. And I was leading the ABF. What's the like, with the background growth, I also did, I also had like a job as a product manager. So I did the technical side, right, that would really help me like, understand, and links together, you know, different bits and pieces when it comes to a BIA. Now, I'm just working with Microsoft and clients of slides on to sign deciding, you know, what I'm gonna do next, enjoying Godbless with my family, you know, and that's
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awesome. So let's get into some of the benefits of bootstrapping. A lot of the companies you work with are taking that path to avoid getting the additional funding. Yeah, what are some of the benefits of approaching it that way? Yeah, I'm a fan of bootstrapping, like I had a company, a small company that was trapped by big waterfall, it was 13 stage startups that are going this route. You know, how they say, you know, entrepreneurs are willing to work 80 hours a week, so that they don't work 40 hours a week. So there is that as a big benefit. But given the environment, that would currently mean I think one of the main benefits of bootstrapping is that you can grow slow, and you can grow smart, you know, the key words that you hear now, if you want to grow more, and like you don't have at some points to have to let go of your 20% 40% of the company have the employees that are part of the team that you build, like, you know, so hard through the years, so you can take your time and going actually building bonding, you know, like creating a high performance.
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On the acquisition side, for example, have more freedom, when you're smaller when you're first bootstrapped, especially now with, like the founder led growth, where the founder is the face of the company, you know, so clients get to stick in before the sale, but they also get to interact with him after the central now, how can you the client, you know, we fight by the time that like, pass or stop by the ocean, and I don't get to see like the face of the company in water, because like, you know, I put the money and that's it.
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And then another benefit on the other side, once the sale is made, is like managing customers, because the smaller you are like, the closer you are to your customers, you know, you can build relationships with them, you can get feedback on based on their feedback, you can improve the product, you can improve messaging, you can improve positioning, you know, you know, what features it can build and deliver and so on. And I think that last but not least, like the biggest benefit is like the freedom you get, I guess that we're all here, you know, to have that financial freedom that gives us the possibility to work as we want and like if you want to add early on a Friday, you're free to do that.
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Cheers. I need to start ending earlier on Friday.
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But yeah, one of the and then like that huge benefit of just not having someone breathing down your neck, right telling you like, Hey, you gotta be growing faster, faster, do this where you potentially make mistakes. And so like everything
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You just said was about actually growing smarter, being able to talk to your clients, take your time, make sure you're doing it right. So I guess along that same vein,
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what should early stage startups be considering, like in regards to their initial growth, I feel that I'd like to think that you need to balance as an early stage startup, one in sales, and yet they're already sit back, because you need to sell the product. In order to get revenue, you need the company to get cash flow that will help you grow. And at the same time, he was being constant touch with the customers, you need to the problem that you're solving for them, learn about the user experience, see what's working in the product for them and what's not. Because, you know, you design something to design an experience, but most of the times like people take it for politics route, you know, you put that pop up in front of them saying, Hey, this is your onboarding step, why aren't they just close it and want to do stuff. So yeah. And
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then the more you learn, and their feedback, like the more you can adjust your sales speech the next time. So you know, you get because you can use their work with this is a trait that I'd like you can do position and messaging on your own, like, when you get real feedback from real customers, it's better to use their words, you know, because they're the, they're having the pain point. So it's better to use, you know, use exactly how they word it. And then like, you can go into you can like, get a
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better when, right when they're bringing new customers, you know, new sales and, and so on. But there's one thing I would mention here, that I feel that is very important, it's like, don't fall into the trap of doing everything a customer asked for. Because as Ford said, you know, if asked people what they wanted, they would have said, a faster horse, you know, so don't just go because there's the risk, where you're just gonna follow this and there without a logic or without, you know, your effort to go in too many places at once, and you're not gonna be able to keep that vision, you know, that idea that you started.
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Right now that scope creep starts to show up and you're doing something you never thought you would, would do with the company.
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So guess what,
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with an early stage shirt, right, if I'm not getting funding, it means I have to be very particular about where I'm applying these funds, is there like a specific sequence you kind of look at as you're working with early stage startups to ensure they're spending their money on the right things in the right sequence? Like the again is like balancing sales, but also like balancing the internal stuff. And because there are also the terminal pain points, especially for talking about like an startup that is just the founder, and all she has to do sales, he has to do everything. So if you're at some point, if you get to the stage, where you're flooded with emails, and like you cannot answer all the emails, it can be from Lee, they can be from customers. But if you have that point, at some point, you're gonna have to do something, because you answering emails is far less valuable than you talking to leads and so on now, like you can go, you can pay for a tool
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and get this fixed so that you get more free time on your hands. And then you can do, you can go and see something else, you know, and also about the sequence from what I've seen, it's not something specific. So it's not like, Hey, you do this, this and this, you know,
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I've seen a lot of people like focusing on let's move my website from water, but it's two weeks because that will six Michael Versa, right? And it will magically solve everything that's going on, you know, the same need to go and buy a CRM and pay I don't know what 100 bucks per month as a startup saying, hey, if I have everything here, this will work better.
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Probably it won't. You know, that are the hard problems that are like harder to accept that you have them. And they are like more complex because you need to find a way to solve them and you don't know where to start. Like you just spend the time and you really don't do that. Then you'll be able, you know, you'll win your time back and you'll be able like to do what really matters. Yeah, so let's go deeper on that. What I guess what challenges do you see early stage startups facing a lot?
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I see them like making a lot of mistakes. Because they're chasing everything and nothing at the same time. Like, I've seen people, let's say they launch a project and they say, I'm building a product that will solve this problem for SMB, you know, but like, if you go on the website there, they don't mention like SMBs or startups or something like that. And I'd like you to solve the problem for SMBs Why don't you mention that, you know, and they're like, Yeah, but what if a bigger customer
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comps on the website, I don't want him to get discouraged and not sign up. Right? That's partially true, but at the same time you are losing the SMBs. Because if you would say that this is for small companies, you know, small companies will see the message, you know, they will be like, Oh, this is for us, not for anybody without everybody. And you're gonna get more of the SMBs. You know? So I think to sum it up, well, I would say that the main challenge is made focusing on what's really important, and what can really drive revenue growth seed back to one.
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Yeah, shiny object syndrome.
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I've, I mean, I think everyone's a victim of this, I started creating, like a formula so that I could actually weigh opportunities against each other. So that if I really felt like, Oh, this looks like something to show you. So I could compare it to something else in a way that's more quantifiable. So I'm gonna be like, Okay, this is worth it. Or like, Oh, that was stupid. I almost made a really bad decision. But even dad, like the subjective because like the issue use, let's say, is or some other framework, it's like, it's still you evaluating?
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You know, so like, yeah, I can write great did this hire?
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Like, if somebody from the outside would come and look at what you did? They're gonna be like, What is this? You know?
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Right. Yeah, it's hard to, to create objective,
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kind of metrics to look at the opportunity. So like, I'm guessing at an ROI, right, like, I don't know what this is going to produce. And like some of them, though, like, I also threw in, like, just my personal satisfaction, would this be more fun for me to do, because that, I gotta keep that in there.
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I'm not just gonna make myself miserable, because it means I went somewhere else. That that is also like the cost of opportunity. Because like, everything is like is a trade off Indian. So like, if you do something, you don't do something else. But like, I've seen, for example, a situation where I join in an early stage startup, and they were like, we want to do this onboarding email. And we really think that this will like, at least double our onboarding rate, so on, and I asked, like, how many people do have that arrow signing up, you know, and they're like, Well, we have around 50 per month, but some of those are our tests. And some, I was like, okay, like, if you do this, and you focus this, and you change from five people's getting through onboarding to seven, or to eight,
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you're not going to move the needle that much, you know, but you're gonna waste like a lot of time and effort. But that's like, Danny, the easy job, you know, they knew how to do the math, it was more than they've done before. So it was easy for them. But they were estimating like, they were going to have this huge impact, you know, with onboarding and with, okay.
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And it's inch, because it's not even like at that number, right, say, like, 50 per month, it's not even that large of a sample size to be able to actually test it out. But you put up those blinders, because you're like, This is the easy known that I have. So yeah, that's, uh, so let's, let's shift a bit, we're getting some of the challenges that startups have had, what are they positioned to kind of handle better, as just a non funded startup? I think it's the entire customer experience, I think, especially the smaller you are, the more you can play around this. And I don't see like an app startups doing this, you know, like, you have the good, the font that lead that he owns. Like, for somebody to be able to interact with the CEO with the founder of a company post sales. That's like a big thing. You know, I've heard startups that are now doing like millions, but the CEO is still like the main point of contact for customers that signed ordinaria. You know, he was like, I brought you in the company, I was your, that was there for you early on, I'm still here for you now, even if we're doing millions, even if we have a customer, success team, and so on now. So I think this overall customer experience as I gather building relationships, and so on, and I also think that they can move faster, like in a lot of a lot of ways compared to big data for enterprise governance, you know, and to give you an example of this, I think AI is like the easiest example since it's everywhere now. Like, if for small companies, you know, that you're solving a specific problem for a specific niche. Like you can bring in AI to do something like that. But let's say the outcome that people are getting your product, you're gonna be like, of course, I'm gonna do it, you know, it's gonna help me with acquisition because I can deliver more to me, because the following day, the media will not give him output and so on. So you'll get you're able to switch for
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personnel. But for a bigger company, managers have to get in meetings, they have to get aligned, they have to decide what to do exactly, then they have to put things on a roadmap that's already full, and they don't have enough space, you know, so that that's kind of tricky in their situation, because they cannot be like, so quick on the
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right, speed becomes a competitive advantage. So.
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Okay, so
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it's like the Y Combinator, right, one of the they have a bunch of requirements before they're even gonna look at someone coming in. One of them is that at least one of the founders, I was recommended multiple founders for company, but at least one of them has experience within the industry. And I think you and I both agree that experience in whatever space you're working is probably important. But Why might it be more important? For like an early stage startup who's bootstrapping, it's more important because it will help you drive the initial sales, it'll help you get the initial traction traction that you need, you know, because if I go and I want to launch, I don't know, a competitor of sneakers right now. I have no idea. But b2b sales almost my entire life. I have no idea how to, you know, if I go and I want to launch like a b2c app, I'll have an idea. But it's still being you know, that I will still be adding No, because I haven't done b2c. And so if I go in, I like to b2b SaaS, and I know what I do. This is what I've been doing for the last 10 years, you know, like, I know, the playbooks I've been here, I've seen them, like, I have the connections, I know the people in the industry, you know, so like, we can create the product. And then okay, I need 10 People from SAS companies that have maximum 50 to 100 employees, I can go back and reach out that I can be like, Hey, man, now I have this product. Can you help me with some lead feedback or something like that, and you can get feedback, you can get traction, you know, it's easy to get sales and so on. You see, like a lot of successful founders. Like, that's why probably people at Mehta at Google, you know, when they move in, when they create something, they already have the relationship. And it's easy, like for them to break the law tech companies and get that structure now.
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Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
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Okay, this question comes up quite a bit. For me. It's around hiring, when do you hire the right people that you have? I've had the benefit of being the first marketing hire at a couple of companies. And so you've gotten to see those companies grow and how they they start adding hires?
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I guess, what considerations would you have? As you're going through and growing your company? What are you looking at, as you're approaching the hiring process? What of me I think I'm the kind of person that feels that skills can be learned.
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So what I look in a new hire, it's chemistry,
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no light, for me to have chemistry with the person that's sitting in front of me, and that will be sitting in the same office, or we're gonna do the same zoom calls, you know, from now on, because that is that something that you can buy, if you don't have chemistry, and I've seen this, you know, you go to the office, when we were going to the office, you know,
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a small off office, and you can speak to this, especially in a small office, if you don't have chemistry, it's like, some weird atmosphere where you're not Trinidad for that, you know, it's like, but if you come to the office, and they're like, five people there that you vibe with, and that you have the same energy, and you're like, Yeah, we're here. Come on, let's go, you know, today's the day we do that now. So that's one. And also, I just remember, I think it was Dr. Huber, when I think I saw Dr. Kuperman, that said that there is no better motivator than intrinsic motivation. So especially early on, like you need to surround yourself with people that want to be part of that journey that wants to good role, an early stage startup, you know, what a bootstrap, that are not expecting, like for them to have, you know, big media budget, and they can get into a detail campaign that saw, you know,
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and this is not I mean, when I say intrinsic motivation, it's not like I want them to work 68 hours per week, because that's not feasible. That's not doable. They're not productive, you know, but it's because you need people like to perform and to keep their best not just to be there, you know, I'm going to be like, just sitting in this chair for the rest of the day. No,
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no one will be as motivated as you as the founder. But light I think it was Jim Collins in the good book, great book. I think it was the name that that you need to get the right people on the path, you know, like have chemistry especially with early tires. Jetta writes people on the bus even if you don't have like the perfect setup for them right now. You will figure it out later, but your way, like early on, right
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and
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finding those in the biggest thing I can recommend for everyone at this point is like just interview one more person. Like when you think you found the person go interview one more, because I've had some hires that I thought were great. And then like it turned out, you know, a month or two later, they just didn't have that intrinsic motivation is I mean, it's like they, they're doing it for like, the meetings and like, showing,
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show me that they, you know, looked like they were going to be great. And then we actually sit down and start getting it done. It's like, Hey, are
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you sure you want to do this?
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So I think just finding those people who want mastery in whatever skill they're buying to, because those are the people who are gonna go out of their way to like, execute do things. So yeah.
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So
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we've talked about early stage, companies, let's talk late stage bootstrapped companies, because I feel like this is something that goes like people don't talk about a lot. Like wait stage, Bootstrap, companies don't get a lot of attention. Or they get a lot of attention. But it's in like, wow, look at someone built, right, but not like, what are the challenges that they're facing? And so that's what I would love to get into you, or get into with you. Just like, what, what issues do you know, these companies generally face of that, from what I've seen, like, the common struggle is around processes and documentation, because that's not fun work. And that's not something that you do early on. But like, when you get to have the growth, and when you get to be on a trajectory, that's good. And you get to hire new people, because you need to, if you're at that point,
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if you don't have the processes, you're gonna be like, in a tough spot, because you need it now, you know, like, hey, we just need to onboard three people. But like, we don't have a proper documentation, we don't have a proper process. There's nothing like, you know, if we waited till now, if we bring in three people at once, like we cannot win them, we get with their you know, because they you will have more than 50% Things will be unclear, they will have no idea what to do, you know, they will make it tough for them. So, even if it's not fun workout, I feel that at some point, you need to start writing things down, you need to start writing some documentation, other big things work and so on, you know, just to handle it, and then you can build like later on, on top of it.
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There is there's so heavy here.
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Yeah, so the business playbook, by Chris Bronzino is actually really good for purchasing how to start with your processes.
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That's just a recommendation for everybody. That's like super simple for training like that playbook. So new hires have something to start from. And it's so simple. So you can like you can literally start it right now. So you don't get stuck in this position, where you're like, we have to do all of our processes.
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Yeah, I strongly recommend that one.
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Nobody saw me looking around on the bookshelf, because of the podcast, but
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so.
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Okay, I want to go back to the topic of growing smart, which we've talked about right at the start of this episode. But how do you say like, with the growth rate is probably the most important thing. I mean, I view it like, just personally, right? If I focus on my growth rate, and I prioritize my actual growth rate, I'm gonna get better at everything, just like it trickles out, right? If I'm just focused on how, how well Am I growing as a leader as a in my fitness, it's, it's going to help me in other areas. With the business though, if you start focusing too much on your growth rate, and not paying attention to other things, stuff starts to fall apart. And you're like you missed certain things that you should have paid attention to. What what are you looking at, to kind of ensure that a growth rate is sustainable, and you can kind of manage that?
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I think one of them is like, you need to pay attention to hiring. So that's one thing. Because like you do not want to hire, especially if you're a bootstrap, you know, like ETR VCT, like, Okay, we're gonna project this growth, or we're gonna hire 20 3050 people to handle the volume on acquisition or customer support, or whatever we know, like, it's a bootstrap, you do not have that luxury.
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And like, even if you project that route, like I always try to play it say, like, Hey, I think that we're gonna need three customer support people in the next year.
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Great, let's hire what? And let's see how it goes. You know, because especially when you're hiring, like the first person in a department, like you don't know what they need, you know, though, you don't know how you can help them as a father, you know, for them to have success in their position and so on. So like, you have to learn also, like, let's get somebody on board. I've also seen like great success with the nanometer work, everybody's working remote. I've seen great success with freelancers that are like hey, we need somebody. You can tackle the
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problem early on. So like, I have a lot of customer support emails, you know what I need help with paid media because our paid media and going to get a freelancer, that's what I felt like one hour, two or four hours a day, I'm gonna learn what they eat and how things are going, maybe I can document some of the processes, you know, around. And then like, I can scale it up, I need more, I can scale it up. And if at some point, you can get that person like to join full time that ideal because they already know the business and so on, you know, and then you're gonna know what the second person for the third person, you're gonna know. So
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I think that is it. I think there was one more, but I forgot what I wanted to say.
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That's cool. Because this next question is something that I feel like, I've been nerding out over thinking about this. And so hopefully, you're doing the same, just with the advancement of AI. Right? What's the future of bootstrapping look like?
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I think a
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there are good parts and bad bad boys. So I think that it's going to open like a lot of doors for a lot of people. And like, just a possibility, what in three to five years, let's say we have this new way of
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medium to big companies, you know, that have started now and that they were able to grow.
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At I think that it will help AI existing companies like it will be able to like to improve outcomes, dribbling productivity, you know, into generate more likely to save if I've been nerding. Around the for the last week also or so. And I can tend to like just for like creating content and things that are around content, because I feel that right now, that's like the main use case for AI. Like, I think you can save like 50 60% of the time you need, like, create one article. And I'm not talking about like just throwing something out, but like one, high quality article editing, and so on, not to mention the programmatic SEO where you can go and you can just do stuff, you know.
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But to go back today, I think that's the good part, you know, where it will be able to improve outcomes in entry through improved productivity, it'll help like solo founders do more, like even like, new apps like superhuman or k that are helping you with your inbox to make it more clear, you know, to help you stay focused, and so on. But, on the other hand, that which is the bad part, from my point of view, I see that it will open like the floodgates of mediocrity, you know, like, a lot of people will just go to Chad GPT. And we'll say I want an article about this, this will be a prompt that, that words, they will get the article, they will put it on the website and that, you know,
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and that also kind of opens like an opportunity, because it's your, you can put out great content, it's gonna be easy to be different now, people will notice you. So we'll see how it goes. Right. So I think one of the key benefits of marketing, right? Especially today, like someone can go out, and they can find information anywhere, and it's gonna be generally the same stuff. And that's what AI is gonna be doing, it's gonna be creating more of the same stuff. And so I think what people are looking for are those insights that only you as the expert in that space can bring. And so if you can figure out how to use AI, but also add your insights layered on top of that.
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I mean, you're golden. Like, you're now you're going way beyond what the competition's doing. Yeah. And I also like, this is something that I've seen in the past, like in bigger companies, like where you go in, and you'll, you'll see that they have Google Analytics, are they using mixed bag? Are they using whatever, and they have the data. But like, if you're looking at what they're doing, you know, it has nothing to do with the data that like, you have the data in there. You know, like the data is saying that 50% of your people, like, they sign up and they don't get to do anything. Like, why don't you work their way? Why do you have on the roadmap products, the features that have nothing to do with that, you know, by getting insights out of data that's already like a challenging situation, you know, challenging, I think.
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Yeah, agree. All right, Andre, this has been a great conversation. I want to go into my three closing questions with you. With the first one being what book do you think everyone should read?
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That's a tough one.
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In my in my 20s Like, I read like a lot of business books and a lot of self development books and so on. And I think they're great because they're teaching you like the principles
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And, but at some point, like, you'll see like the same principle, just that it was applied differently because the father was in a different situation, you know, and so on. Now, for example,
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big on books that helped me discover that helped me learn about myself, you know, and she had, like, I'm talking about books, like five languages, or the hours that for example, you know, and
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these can be helpful for a founder, because like, you can learn the business basics. But at the same time, for example, The Five Love Languages will help you learn what makes you tick, you know, right, if you know what makes you tick, you'll know how to approach things with others. And at the same time, if you learn that, you will look at that at other people, it also like, Hey, I know from the book, these are the five things, I know that for this person, you know, I have to say nice things about certain I have to praise her every time she does a good job and saw, you know, which that will make her think. So I feel that helps you both professionally and personally. And I giving you like, making your life easier, and better. And then like that, in return will give you like the energy you need. When you wake up in the morning at 7am. You know, to start up your
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tears.
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Next one, what is next for you professionally? I'm not sure right now. So right now I'm doing almost with my family, enjoying the last month and I'm working like with a couple of clients, you know, consulting, so like I'm keeping myself busy. But
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we'll see. I like being in the trenches again, like with the early stage startups and putting in the work. Yeah. We'll see what happens in the next month and how things really work. Awesome. are looking forward to see what happens. Where can people find you? It's easy, LinkedIn. And that's it. No fancy website or anything else.
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All right. Well, again, thank you for joining me. It's been awesome. Thank you, Chris, for that discussion. It's been fun.
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If you enjoyed today's episode, I would love a rating and review on your favorite podcast player. And for more information on how to build effective and efficient teams through your leadership visit leading for effect.com As always deserve it
Transcribed by https://otter.ai