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Becoming an entrepreneur takes grit.
Deciding to do it solo takes courage.
This is 1,000 Routes, the podcast where we explore the stories of solopreneurs who have made the bet on themselves to build a business that serves their life. Every episode you'll hear about the lessons they've learned and the uncommon routes they've taken to stand out in a world that is purposefully trying to commoditize them.
Tas Bober [00:00:00]:
Being a solo or being a consultant is a lot of, like, all your invoices come in on one month and then you're like, at peak, and then the next month you're chasing after people. You may not get something. So if you're the person that lives at your means and you're going day by day and you're like, shit, I need, you know, whatever tomorrow, like, that's going to be very, very hard for you.
Nick Bennett [00:00:28]:
This is 1000 Routes. Every episode, a solopreneur shares how they're building, what they're building. We'll hear all about how they've made the bet on themselves, the uncommon route that they're taking to build a business that serves their life, and the reality of building a business of one. I'm your host, Nick Bennett. Before we get started, I'm excited to share a new program that I've been working on called Full Stack Solopreneur in partnership with my friend and legendary entrepreneur, Erica Schneider. Now, unlike other programs, Full Stack Solopreneur is a hybrid digital program for independent professionals who are too far along for another course to be really all that helpful, but not far enough to invest in a private coaching or consulting service. In here, you'll gain access to both the full curriculum and monthly group coaching clinics to teach you how to create a legendary niche offer, how to build a content engine and how to sell like a human. You can learn more at fullstacksolo.com that's FullStack S.
Tas Bober [00:01:25]:
O L O.com My name is Tas Bober. Tas like SaaS, aka B2 Beyonce. My backup Persona is Cardi. B2B. We're testing a few things out in the market right now. Just in case there are a lot of people getting canceled. I want to make sure I have a few backups. I help B2B SaaS companies with their campaign.
Tas Bober [00:01:50]:
Landing pages through paid ads like Google Ads or LinkedIn. Ads primarily is what they run. So anything that they're doing paid advertising through, if they're sending them to a landing page, that's what I help them with with my very, very niche consultancy.
Nick Bennett [00:02:04]:
I am a fan of the niche. The niche is the way to go. And it is like the absolute fastest way to get from 0 to 1. And some, for some reason, some people don't believe this or they just don't want to, they have a hard time wrapping their heads around it. So how did you land on landing pages as the thing? Or was it always the thing? Was there something else that you started with?
Tas Bober [00:02:26]:
It was not always the thing. So most of my career was in house As a B2B marketer, I was an AE roughly for three years. Hardest job ever. My ambitions were purely climb the corporate ladder, become CMO one day. That was the path. And then something weird happened in between. And at my last corporate job, I'm working away 50, 60 hours a week, burning out fast. My team's lost, no backfill, budgets are cut, growth targets are up.
Tas Bober [00:03:01]:
Same old story, we've all been through it and I needed a creative outlet. I went to school to be a writer. I started writing and did so on LinkedIn. Sharing very cringy personal development stuff and then pivoting to marketing after Anthony Pierri sent me. The first message of our conversation was in all caps, what are you even doing? And I'm like who is this guy? Because we'd shared comments back and forth. So I knew him and we were connected. But our first one on one conversation was him yelling at me and asked me what I was doing and I said what do you mean? And he's like well you're posting all the stuff but it's not marketing related. Why aren't you posting about marketing? You have all this background in digital and website.
Tas Bober [00:03:43]:
And I'm like, because I'm burnt out, I don't want to do that. He's like this is the most interesting subject in the world. That doesn't make any sense. I'm like well I wouldn't go that far. So I slowly started posting marketing stuff, saw some growth there and I was still in house during all of this. And then that following summer left an in house job. A week later, announced that I was going out on my own, decided to do what every single person did, which is I'm going to be fractional head of digital and website and do 600 things because my ego is so big I can't fit it into one tiny box. I can do so many things and it was fine.
Tas Bober [00:04:21]:
I had a few people in my network reach out. I got that first couple of roster of clients and then here comes Anthony again. We decide to have a networking call. He's like in a Panera or something and mouthful of food and. And he goes what are you even doing? And I'm like now what? What did I do wrong now? And he's like what is this? What do you do? I don't even know what you do. So he's like let me go to your website. I'm like don't go to my website. So then he goes to my website.
Tas Bober [00:04:50]:
He opens it up. He's like, oh, so you do everything? And I'm like, yeah, what's up? He's like, you really need a niche down. And I said, I am niche. I'm in the digital and website niche. He's like, how many things are in that space? Space? I'm like, oh, a lot. So then I start listing everything out and he goes, my best advice I can give you because I'm a year ahead in the journey, is to just find one thing. And I promise you, no one is going to think that that's the only thing that you can do. But it helps for you to own some mind share when they think of this problem.
Tas Bober [00:05:25]:
So I was super annoyed that this guy is telling me what to do. I'm like, great, thanks for mansplaining a niche to me. And, and then we're, we're sitting there and I said, what would I even do? And he's like, okay. So Rob and I have worked with, at that point, a hundred startups. They always ask us for campaign landing pages. That's not our area. We're product marketers. We're not demand gen growth digital.
Tas Bober [00:05:52]:
Maybe that's something that you could do. So it wasn't like I was super passionate about landing pages. He gave me an idea and I knew a ton of people on LinkedIn who were talking about ads, talking about campaign management, but there was not a lot of people, good ones anyway, talking about landing pages specifically. So that evening, I'm pissed off, annoyed, I decide to change everything. My website, my LinkedIn profile, all of it. The next day, I had two people reach out to me for two notable SaaS companies for landing page work. And I was like, what? And that was my first couple of inbound that weren't people I already knew in my network who had, I'd already worked with. And that's when the light bulb went off and I was like, dang it.
Tas Bober [00:06:41]:
I just really wanted him to be wrong because I wanted to yell back. But then I did that year and a half in and it was insane. My revenue like tripled by 4,5 times. The most growth I experienced on LinkedIn came from a lot of my landing page content. And now they call me the purple landing page queen. So here we are.
Nick Bennett [00:07:03]:
Anthony is like the standup comedian of marketing. Why did he take an interest? Do you know why he took an interest in, like, you doing this thing, in helping you redirect.
Tas Bober [00:07:15]:
There's a part of me that's grateful for, but on the Other side. I'm like, was I just easy to bully? Like, I don't know why I was the target. You know, it was like the senior kid that's picking the freshman kid in the playground or whatever. And I'm like, I don't know why I'm grateful for it. We have a really good friendship, and businesses work very closely together. Now I know half his family. Like, it is very much expanded beyond that. And I don't know what it was that took him there.
Tas Bober [00:07:40]:
Maybe he saw me very early in the journey. He and Rob had just figured out how lucrative the niche situation was and then decided maybe we should see if this will work for someone else. But I know I'm not the only one that he's helped with this. He was. We actually. He created the Slack group called Niche down. And then he had a bunch of other people join as well. But I was probably one of the better students, like his grasshopper to Sensei, because I agreed to try a lot of things that he had suggested while other people were like, oh, I think this may be a cult, so I'm going to leave.
Tas Bober [00:08:22]:
But I was just like, yeah, brainwash me. I'm ready. I'm ready for the brainwashing. And so I decided to act on a lot of that. So there's a couple of us. He has another friend of his who he worked with at his product design agency, Riley. Riley did the same thing. He productized a niche down into, like, one very specific thing.
Tas Bober [00:08:41]:
I think it's like B2B webflow websites, something like that. So they partner. So there's a couple of us that really took the advice to heart and started working on it and giving him a lot of that feedback. So him and Rob were able to think about, oh, okay, this does. This didn't just work as a fluke for us. It's actually something that we can help. And it was funny because I had hired a coach kind of early in the journey, like a business coach, and then I just stopped doing that because I'm like, Anthony is giving me all this advice for free, and I'm seeing a lot of immediate results coming from that. And, yeah, so I just.
Tas Bober [00:09:18]:
I don't know. I. I honestly don't know. We should ask him. I'll ask him. I'll ping him during our conversation and see what he says. We can find out live.
Nick Bennett [00:09:25]:
Ask him right now. I want to know.
Tas Bober [00:09:27]:
Ask him right now.
Nick Bennett [00:09:30]:
Let's see what he says. Let's put him on the spot, and then we'll have him back for rebuttal again.
Tas Bober [00:09:34]:
Yeah, yeah.
Nick Bennett [00:09:35]:
Okay. So while you're doing that one thing I want, I want to understand. So you go out on your own, you make the decision. First of all, what was like the turning point for you that made you even think this was the move worth pursuing? Because this is what June ish of 2023, let's see, July, at some point.
Tas Bober [00:09:56]:
I can't even remember now, has it been a full year? Yeah. So I think six months after I went on on my own, that's when I niche down. And now it's been about a full year since I have just been the landing page person. And at first I like to do this thing where I'm like, okay, if you're going to try something, give it at least a full three months. I think it says like 66 days to form a habit, 90 to see any kind of fruition coming from the habit. And so when I first started posting on LinkedIn, I'm like, do it for at least three months. And then after the three months I'm like, okay, can you take it to six months? Can you take it to one year? Can you do whatever? And so even with the landing page thing, I'm like, here's the thing, we have the spotlight effect where we think people are watching us a lot closer than they actually are. They don't care as much as we care.
Tas Bober [00:10:47]:
So there's no harm in me trying this and knowing that I can always pivot back back or pivot to something else if it doesn't work. And so I decided to do it. And as it kept working, I just kept going in it. And what I did was I didn't jump in with both feet. So Anthony was like, you are going to niche down and that's all you're going to do is landing pages and you're going to see read this book. Built to Sell. And I read it and he's like, follow that blueprint. Exactly.
Nick Bennett [00:11:17]:
He told me the same thing. So I just picked it up.
Tas Bober [00:11:19]:
It's a good book. It's really good. And so I did read it and I'm just like, okay, I'm not in the mode of like trying to sell. I'm not like overburdened as like some agency owner. And I just want to be comfortable income wise and be a consultant and have a set of few clients and be happy. That was kind of the goal. And it still is to some regard. Like I'm not thinking about selling or what the next big step is.
Tas Bober [00:11:44]:
But in My mind, I'm like, okay, it's working. I'm going to continue to do that. And so this whole first year of doing just the landing page stuff, I used it more as an intro offer. So I talked about landing page stuff, identified a problem, companies would come to me for that problem. They'd get the good dopamine hit of having this quick deliverable that's very process driven. And then I call it the McDonald's secret menu where they say, do you do anything else? And I'm like, well, it depends on what you need me to do. But yeah, I have ongoing advising, I have more around the website stuff. I'm not going to do maybe email marketing or something, but I have a couple of these other things and I would retain a couple of clients over a few months.
Tas Bober [00:12:27]:
So I would say landing pages were only about 40 to 50%. And then the rest of it were these consulting gigs that were long term retainer based. Some of them was content, some of it was fractional. I mean, it was kind of all over place. And then I had a revelation last month where I'm like, okay, that's fine. But the thing that I enjoy the most is my landing page process. It's the fastest. The clients are the happiest because they get the deliverable.
Tas Bober [00:12:56]:
And then there's that like dopamine effect where it's like the dopamine lowers after you've worked with them for so long. And so if you keep a client on a retainer basis, at some point they go, someone's going to get complacent and things are going to fall. I just realized that I need to focus on what I want to do and make this process a lot better. And I can't do that when I'm being pinged about, hey, can you pull a report for this? Hey, can you build an email for that? Hey, can you look at this website? Hey, can you send this email? So I just realized I was getting so distracted with all the fractional type stuff where the scope could increase. I don't have a process for it, versus the stuff where I could just really build this into something. So this is the second podcast that I'm going to say this, but yours will probably come out before the other one does. So technically the first podcast that I'll say that I'm going to only offer landing page work starting January. I've rebranded, in the process of rebranding everything, hired Anthony and those guys to do my homepage messaging and pivoting, even the company name to be everything around landing pages.
Tas Bober [00:14:07]:
So it's going to be called the Scroll Lab. And optimizing for consumption. That's my whole pov. So the scroll and only doing landing page stuff and saying no to everything else, even though it's going to be super, super hard.
Nick Bennett [00:14:19]:
This was Anthony's dream. He was like, in a year and a half she will pay us to re to do her positioning. It was the longest sales process he's ever run. But he, he saw it, the light at the end of the tunnel to.
Tas Bober [00:14:33]:
Circle back on me. Asking him why he took an interest in me specifically, he gave us the most Anthony answer. Are you ready for it?
Nick Bennett [00:14:40]:
Yes. Let's hear it.
Tas Bober [00:14:41]:
He said, hahaha. I'm pretty sure you took an interest in me.
Nick Bennett [00:14:50]:
Yeah, this, this adds up. This sounds about right. I don't even know him that well, but I just feel like that's the vibe.
Tas Bober [00:14:57]:
That's the vibe, yeah.
Nick Bennett [00:14:58]:
So the full RE launch to the Squirrel Lab, I love it. Even more niche down. Even though you've done this enough times and you know that this is the work that makes you the happiest, it seems like it's the most profitable, it's the easiest to deliver. You still have this apprehension or fear that like just going all in on it, like one layer deeper. There's still like a mental hurdle there. Like talk me through that.
Tas Bober [00:15:23]:
Yesterday I had a panic moment in the shower. Actually, the shower is where everything meaningful happens in my life. I came up with my entire process in the shower, all my ideas, content. I mean, it all happens in the shower.
Nick Bennett [00:15:35]:
This is a real thing though. This is a real thing. When you're not looking at the problem, your brain is just like rolling on the problem.
Tas Bober [00:15:40]:
Yes. I wish I could save all the drawings that I do in the shower because I come running out and I'm like, oh my God, I gotta write this down. But I had this moment of fear because obviously AI is here. It can do a lot of things much faster than perhaps I could. I think that's my husband's fear. He's obviously not in this space as much. He's only again, secondhand everything from LinkedIn. And he tells me he's worried about me and pigeonholing.
Tas Bober [00:16:14]:
Right, Right. So for people who are anti niche, it's pigeonholing and pigeonholing myself into this thing when I can do so much more. He really thinks that I need to push for the fractional CMO thing, which I'm like, I would rather die than be cmo. Right. Now that kind of thing. And so he's worried. He's like, well, you're doing this one very specific thing. AI can just replicate it and do it, and then you're obsolete.
Tas Bober [00:16:38]:
And there's a lot of that. That's true. I think maybe one day it could maybe do that. There's a lot of AI incorporated into my process to help with some of the research components and things like that. But I've tried to use AI to create an output, and those are the ones I get the worst feedback on. And so it requires so much human intervention right now that I think I'm safe for right now. That's kind of the big doubt in my mind. I think I'm over the.
Tas Bober [00:17:07]:
Oh, my gosh, I'm so scared to go a layer deeper now. I'm like, screw it. Should I just go all in? I think that fear, it took a year and now I'm over that hump. And the next hump is, okay, well, can someone steal the process, do it faster, do all of those things? And that's really the only doubt that I have. But I think the difference between that and us is if you're doing a lot of brand building on LinkedIn, you're doing a lot of this way. You become the face that's really hard to replicate. I always tell people the thing I'm least afraid of is AI replicating me because I have a very. If someone's like, what's your brand voice? I'm like, ratchet.
Tas Bober [00:17:49]:
That's like the first word that comes to my mind. I just think that there's a lot of that, that people are buying into you and not necessarily always the problem. There's a whole mess and nuance there. There are doubts. There's always the imposter syndrome. And every time I send a deliverable off to a client, I'm like, they're gonna come back and be like, what is this garbage? This is terrible. Which is yet to happen. There's always that.
Tas Bober [00:18:13]:
But I have to remember what is my own insecurity versus what is the truth, the objective truth? And if it is something where I'm getting bad feedback, can it be something I can improve on and control? Right. I always try to level set myself. The other thing is, when those doubts creep in, that's when it's so important to have like, as annoying as Anthony is and yelling at me and all of those things. When I have doubts and I have had them over time, I've asked and I'm like such a type A perfectionist and probably lots of childhood trauma. So when a client comes back with not even bad feedback, it's like, hey, I think I would say this this way. And you're like, oh my God, the world's ended. I'm the worst at what I do. This is terrible.
Tas Bober [00:18:58]:
I should just quit and go back to being an in house marketer or whatever. Right? And so I messaged him and I said, hey, have you ever gotten terrible feedback from a client? He's like, oh yeah, they fire us all the time. And I fire them because she's insane. And so that level of confidence too, that comes from hearing that other people are going through it and they just brush it off. Like it's not that big of a deal. Like, more than, you know, out of 350 startups they've worked with, they've not all been amazing clients. I'm sure they've been hard.
Nick Bennett [00:19:30]:
Yeah. They're not like, everyone's not a case study client.
Tas Bober [00:19:32]:
Yes, exactly.
Nick Bennett [00:19:34]:
That's a part of this that people don't talk about much though, because it's like you only see the wins and it's like everything isn't going to be a smashing success. But like, so I think that's a very important factor in all of this, which is like, sometimes it's just not going to work. Like, I've worked with dozens and dozens of solos and like some people are way more successful than others and, and the more you do it, you're like, what's the through line between the ones that did and the ones that didn't? And you try to like optimize for who you take on and how you deliver, but it's a moving target and.
Tas Bober [00:20:06]:
I think it's the same thing as getting feedback if you're an in house worker. I used to overthink a lot of my annual reviews and things like that. Because if you're naturally a person who likes to be a high performer and you want to give your best at work or whatever you're doing, any little piece of criticism, even if it's constructive, it's like a stab in the chest, right? You're like, oh, I did this, so sorry, I'm swearing. I told you the clock getting closer to lunch is like hangrier and more unhinged. So that's me. But you're just like, oh, this is terrible. But then one of the things and exercises I did and I used to tell my team is take feedback. Because the thing is we always take telling people how to take feedback or Receive feedback, but then giving it.
Tas Bober [00:20:51]:
You have to understand that, like, 90% of leaders have no idea what the fuck they're doing. And so when they're giving it to you, it's not like they're super great at doing that. So it's going to be mixed in with a lot of, like, feelings and opinions versus fact. What you need to do is take that away and divide it into these columns of, like, what is fair, what is, what is unfair, what can I actually work on? And it's the same thing when you're looking at clients. If a client's like, I don't like this, or there was one client who would only give me feedback and comments in. In the landing pages with like, three question marks, what the hell am I supposed to do with that? I'm like, do you have a question about this is a good bad. Do you need the source? So understanding what you can and can't take and not taking that part personally and separating the opinion, in fact, giving.
Nick Bennett [00:21:43]:
Feedback is an art. And I think from my time in corporate, 99% of people are fucking horrible.
Tas Bober [00:21:50]:
Oh, terrible, terrible. They don't know what they're doing.
Nick Bennett [00:21:52]:
I mean, receiving feedback, like you said, is also painful at times because, like, you don't want to hear a lot of the things, no matter how much you're like, I want to grow, it doesn't matter. Like, it's like you're getting stabbed in the chest. But you said something that I want to go back to, which was just this idea of, like, can people rip off your process? And like. And a lot of it is people are really buying into you. And I'm very passionate about. This idea of personal branding is dumb. It's a misguided attempt at what we're really trying to do, which is build a reputation. And I think that that reputation you're building around being known for killer landing pages and solving the landing page problem for people absolutely amplifies your ability.
Nick Bennett [00:22:33]:
So I'll give you an example. There's a bunch of consultants out there that are running a process that is, like, almost identical to mine because I've taught them and I showed them how to do it. I've given it to them. And I was like, go, run this play. Like, if you're struggling, here are all of my frameworks. This will help you. And they can launch with that. But it doesn't cannibalize my business or it doesn't have an effect on my business whatsoever because people are largely buying into me or they're in the same way, they buy into you.
Nick Bennett [00:23:04]:
So, like the process, like, you are.
Tas Bober [00:23:06]:
What make the process great and the process changes. I'm sure Anthony has mentioned that piece. And so in the beginning he would say, why don't you post audits? Why don't you post your frameworks? Why don't you? And I'm like, because I don't want people to take the stuff. And he's like, here's the thing. We give our frameworks away for free because the framework changes almost every few clients. And what I found, I don't have 350 like they do under my belt. But in the last year, about 20 or so, it's changed with every single one of them. And I'm like, by time someone tries to catch up, it's different.
Tas Bober [00:23:43]:
I've gotten feedback the way I do my process different and now I just show everyone. And I do plan to put it up on my website as well, so they could see the process, but the outputs of that are going to be significantly different if I did it versus somebody else. Right. It's like you have a recipe that doesn't make you a good cook. That doesn't mean it's going to come out like Mary Berry on Great British Baking Show. You may have the cookbook, you have the frameworks, you literally have all the steps written down. You're not going to execute it the same way as someone else.
Nick Bennett [00:24:14]:
This is what I have been beating this drum for so long because this is why you can't buy a book and be like, why am I not successful? This is why people feel so burned by digital courses, because they're like, I took this course and like, I still. I'm sucking at this thing. It's because paying you is. They're paying for the probability of success or the increased probability of success. Like paying tasks means that the likelihood of this being a successful thing is going to be almost guaranteed versus us trying to hack it together. From her LinkedIn posts, or read this book on positioning and stuff like that, or trying to hack together what other people say on LinkedIn with her approach to landing. There's a million different ways that you could do it and not be successful. So this is why, like, I'm very passionate about this idea that changing the sell from here's the deliverable.
Nick Bennett [00:25:05]:
Like, sure, this is the thing you're gonna get, but you're paying me because you would rather shortcut all the bullshit. I've done this dozens and dozens of times, if not hundreds of times, and now you're basically paying to shortcut all of that, circumvent and like clear all the hurdles really fast and say guaranteed success.
Tas Bober [00:25:23]:
The funny thing too is I would say guaranteed execution. Because if you're in marketing, you're going to fall down 9, you're going to get up the 10th, and the 10th time might be the time that you are successful. And especially with me in the landing page and testing space, I always tell people I'm going to give you the best first hypothesis that we're going to run with. And because you can sit here and try to optimize a landing page, that's shit. Maybe you'll get it from a 0 to a 1, but if you start at like a 6 or a 7 to get to a 10, it's a much shorter journey. That's that piece. Also, I work with incredibly smart marketers. Worked with calendly freshworks.
Tas Bober [00:26:04]:
I have huge marketing teams, very smart people. I don't even know if I would have gotten hired. They're full time, so I have to give them credit that sometimes the whole thing is they're doing 45 projects. So even if they could focus and execute this and do this well with the frameworks I gave them, they don't have the time, they don't have the mental capacity. This is all I think about all day long. This is what I work on all day long. And so I can look at the nuances and make space for that. Sometimes they actually like that an outsider is bringing that perspective in because they're too close to the product.
Tas Bober [00:26:41]:
Secondarily they know things suck. They just don't have the time. The triangle, right. It's like time quality. There's like a three tier thing.
Nick Bennett [00:26:50]:
It's like fast, good and cheap. Pick two.
Tas Bober [00:26:53]:
Yeah, something like that. And so it's like you can only pick two. So they'd rather spend the money and get a quality product rather than like them investing the time. So like what are you going to get in that triangle of like what are you going to sacrifice? So they don't have the ability to do it themselves Right now they could, but that's not all they're thinking about. They have goals to hit. They have thousands of campaigns that they're running outside of that, they have events that they're trying to put on. Then the leadership team is like, hey, we need thought leadership content because that's big now. Or somebody needs to build a personal brand.
Tas Bober [00:27:26]:
They're just doing too much and so they just need someone to just check something off the list for them quickly. And I think that's where a lot of the value also comes in. It's like, just get this done for me, please.
Nick Bennett [00:27:39]:
So I want to get into some of like the nuts and bolts of, of how you deliver because I think this is a huge mental roadblock for people. It's like putting together a productized program. So like how do you take people through this to get the output in, in a tangible way? Because sometimes people are like, they don't know what steps to go through and then it's hard to just to have people kind of for them to be reflective on their experience instead of reflexive. And so oftentimes they're like, well, I just create a landing page. And it's like, right, but if you were to break it down into steps and say, what do I need? What are all the things we need? And be reflective on that process to take them through it. So how did you kind of come up with your productized approach to this and what's process?
Tas Bober [00:28:24]:
So it's obviously been an evolution and continues to be an evolution. And so if you start with just the landing page, at first I was just doing audits and that's how it started, right? Give me your landing pages right now, I'll audit that and tell you where things are sucking. And then as I started to do those audits, I'm like, okay, here's a very technical product that's like bot management. How do I learn about bot management and the offering very quickly? I'm not an in house employee anymore where I have three months to onboard and do compliance and security training and product onboarding. I don't have that. So as an external consultant, to produce value very quickly, I have to get a very good understanding of the product very quickly. How do I do that without burdening the in house team who's already overburdened with stuff? They want me to come in and solve stuff, not hold my hand, not teach me about the product. So in the beginning I tried to do a workshop that was a disaster.
Tas Bober [00:29:26]:
So I do a workshop. I'd ask probably too many questions, but we would get stuck in the third question. And everybody on that team started to argue with each other because they all had different interpretations of what the product actually did, what it does, who we reach, all of those things. So the VP of marketing emailed me after and he said, I'm so sorry that was a disaster, but I have a lot of internal stuff I need to do with my team because clearly we all have different Ideas of what our company even does. And we're all supposed to be on the same team marketing the same products. He was just, he was like depressed. So I was like, well, this is not gonna work. So then it took two or three weeks before they got their ducks in a row before they came back to me.
Tas Bober [00:30:11]:
And then me trying to schedule another time. It was just a disaster trying to do it with all of these people. And now workshops, though work incredibly well for Anthony and Rob and those guys. They do these product marketing, these like positioning workshops and it works great. I went through their process, I'm like, oh, this is great. It works amazing. It does not work for the types of companies that I work with who are a little bit later stage. It's past hands a lot.
Tas Bober [00:30:35]:
The teams are larger, those types of things. So then I was like, okay, can I get the base information from just a few things that they could just provide me? I had a friend who was like, I just make them fill out this whole dashboard thing. And I'm like, I can tell you right now, if someone tried to sell me that and assigned me work, I ain't filling that out. And I'll blame you for it too when the work doesn't get done. I just asked for four pieces of information. Any ICP messaging, documentation that they might have, any competitor information, typically through battle cards, a sales pitch deck if they're more sales led, and then any product information that's more like internal. And they give me that. And then I run this research process and my whole thing, My step one is trying to map out all the things their buyer would collect, information wise, before they decide to engage with the company.
Tas Bober [00:31:33]:
So almost like the Champions business case, what is all the information they need to champion the product in house at the company? Right. Why don't we put all that stuff on the landing page? No one wants to. We'd rather hide and put a gigantic form on the page and ask them to marry us before they date us and all of that stuff, right? Like a bad Tinder date. And so I tell them, just give me that information. What I'm going to do is marry your internal perception of what you think your product is, what you think your company does, who you serve with, what the external perception is. And so we go into research mode. But then I build out this essential, I call it Buyer's Map. We're still coming up with a name, but like the Champions business case.
Tas Bober [00:32:18]:
So we look at the product, what it does. So here's a very notable example. One of My clients is security questionnaire automation software. That's what they call themselves, right? What people their ideal buyer actually looking for when they come to them is vendor risk assessment software. Totally different. So I marry that, I bring that over and I'm like, hey, they actually call you vendor risk assessment. We should try to test that on a landing page. So marrying some of that perception.
Tas Bober [00:32:47]:
So I collect all this information based on the research, I let them now react to it. So we have a 60 minute call where I say, here's all the information I found based on the internal and external information. Here's everything that I have. Agree, disagree, any inputs, whatever. They say, yeah, this looks great, let's test it, let's run it. Cool. I don't even start creating the landing pages until they've approved that. So once they approve that, I'm like, cool, this is great.
Tas Bober [00:33:15]:
I have kind of the base knowledge. I can use that same map to train my writers, train any of my paid teams. Whoever's helping me on this project, I can use that to teach them. Alternatively, the client can take that and teach any new consultants that come in about what they do, what they sell, what they offer, all of those things. And so it's just a very quick way to get everyone up to speed. And then I also have a partner who does like an audit for paid. So all of these components have lined up because I would find, oh yeah, we have rockstar landing pages. And then we'd launch them and something would go wrong and then I'd realize the campaigns weren't set up correctly.
Tas Bober [00:33:54]:
So I got a paid partner to come in who audits the accounts now so selfishly sets the landing pages up for success, but they find a lot of value in that. And so now that's kind of the first phase. Buyer's journey map, business case map thing, paid ads, audit. Make sure we're all aligned.
Nick Bennett [00:34:13]:
Cool. Cool.
Tas Bober [00:34:13]:
Awesome. Now we move on to this recommended set of landing pages and this second part. I just recently started partnering with writers to help me deliver that so I can do more. Because my capacity was only two or three clients a month. And now obviously I have four writers, so like, I can say yes to a lot more work. And then the third part is the testing and optimization piece, which again, I was just doing. I'll create five landing pages for you and then peace out. So I was doing like six to eight week projects were done and I had a number of clients come back and they're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, we don't know how to test this? We don't know how to measure this.
Tas Bober [00:34:51]:
Do you stay with us for a little while? Do you show us, like what, what happens? So I added a third component of testing and optimization. So first part is research. Second part is landing page creation. Third part is optimization and iterations.
Nick Bennett [00:35:07]:
There's so much I love about this one being like, you're like, oh, I learned something and I changed my process. Like a lot of people are very finite with what if this program isn't the thing? It's like it's not. What you're doing is not the thing. It's going to change in 20 minutes. And that's the point. Like you're going to do it and you're going to learn something. You're going to make it better. This idea of like rapid iteration is lost on a lot of people.
Nick Bennett [00:35:30]:
I also particularly enjoy that you were talking about like expanding your capacity beyond just yourself. And I'm, I'm guilty of this, of not wanting to bring in other people. Like, for some reason I've told myself this story that I'm, I have to do it all by myself. I know Anthony had told me this. Like, him rob, an admin and a copywriter and they're able to, to hammer out like something like 10 projects a month or something and they're doing it within like two to three weeks, something crazy like that, which is insane. But when did you realize you needed to add in more support? And how many people do you have now?
Tas Bober [00:36:08]:
I don't have any full time employees. Everyone is a partner or contracted out. So I think that was the other thing. Right. You're either a solo, you think you have to hire a full blown team, but there is an in between where you're not maybe liable for someone's entire livelihood. Which that was my biggest year. Yeah. As someone who has been laid off in the past, we've had 550,000 layoffs in tech in the last couple of years.
Tas Bober [00:36:34]:
Like, I don't want to be responsible for someone's entire livelihood. That's something that would stress me out. But there are people that I can hire who are very specialized in what they do. So it's almost like this matrix of niches that are coming together. I had to work through my process a little bit once I started seeing that I was turning down two to three clients per month and then I'd circle back with them, but then they've moved on. Right. Because every client wants things done yesterday. So there were a couple of points where I realized, okay, I need help.
Tas Bober [00:37:06]:
The first one is I'm drowning in the process because my fractional gigs, along with the landing page stuff, I'm just not able to take a lot more. I would sit down with the intention to focus on some kind of landing page gig. And then I get a ping like, hey, I need a report, I need whatever. And I'm like, okay, this is not working. I need that focus to do better. When I found that I had focus, the process would get better. So there was a small thing like one of my clients kept rewriting my headlines and I'm just like, ooh, but we're going back to this jargony B2B that I hate. How do I do this better? And one of the ways I came up with that was I gave them a list of headlines with different like frameworks behind it.
Tas Bober [00:37:50]:
I'm like, okay, what if you did a capability and the problem together or whatever, leading with a benefit, whatever, and gave them a list of headlines I was okay with. So they were choosing between the headlines instead of rewriting my headline. So just small tweaks in the process like that that made it better that I knew if I had the focus, I would be able to iterate even more rapidly. So that was one second. I was working way longer than my corporate jobs are just fine. When you're doing it for yourself, it doesn't feel like work. The problem is I have two kids, five and under, obviously married. I work three days a week because I want my son home with me.
Tas Bober [00:38:27]:
I lost a lot of time with my daughter when I worked my corporate job. I didn't want to do that with my son. I want my work life balance to be heavy on the life and less on the work without really compromising a lot on the work thing. I'm just generally a very ambitious person. But I was just like adamant about not wanting to expand that to five days. How can I work three days, expand my capacity? I mean, it's like this Rubik's Cube, right? It's like, how do I expand my capacity, work less, still make more money, still prioritize family. It's like trying to find this like unicorn situation. And then I had a conversation with a former client, the, the same VP who was upset about his team.
Tas Bober [00:39:10]:
He's ended up being just such a great mentor for me. He eventually left the company, but we had a one on one and I asked him a few questions like, now that there's no stake in the game for either of us, let me ask you some honest questions. And I want your honest feedback. Do you care that I'm the one running the entire process? He's like, no, I care that it's delivered to me fast. And I think that was the shift for me where I was like, oh, they're not even expecting me to do all the work. They just want the deliverable as quick as possible, the time to value matters more than who's doing it. If they're trained in your methodology, you trust them. It's not some chump off the street that you're just handing off to like a junior person do that.
Tas Bober [00:39:54]:
And then second, I was like, I just really don't want to be an agency. He's like, I wouldn't consider you an agency if you're hiring out for specific parts of your process. I would consider you still a specialized service. Like, okay, good, reframe. And third, my husband said, I want my wife back. And that was probably the one where I was like, the whole reason I'm doing this is to prioritize the life in work, life balance. And I'm not achieving that if my husband is saying that he wants me back. Because I was working every night trying to get the deliverables done.
Tas Bober [00:40:30]:
And I'm like, fuck this, I can't do it anymore. And so I just immediately, I posted in the Exit 5 community. I asked around on LinkedIn past copywriters that I met. I was on a roast with a really good copywriter. I knew that if I hired talent, it had to be top tier. Not trying to cheap out on that. Everyone I partner with has probably longer history of writing for B2B SaaS than me. They have their own success stories, their own kind of businesses, and I'm paying them well for it because I want them to be happy.
Tas Bober [00:41:02]:
And I can't tell you, Nick, the last three weeks of my life have been amazing. Since I started this business, I have been able to enjoy. I had my birthday recently. I took time off. I traveled for a conference for my first onstage talk. And just looking at the emails and seeing, seeing things continuously moving. I messaged a couple clients in between. I'm like, how are things going with so and so? All have been really good feedback.
Tas Bober [00:41:31]:
They're just happy. Things are moving versus stalled because of me. And that was the time where I was like, this is worth it to me.
Nick Bennett [00:41:38]:
Your story resonates with me greatly because when I first got started, I was working nights and all these things. And my wife said, as she said something similar to me, the answers you're looking for are not in your computer screen. Which was like her version of saying, like, I need you back now. Because I have two young kids at the time I had just one nine month old son and my other son's now four months old. And so, yeah, I feel you on all of that. How do you create the space in your life? And everyone wants this work life balance. And I completely agree with your approach to this, which is I'm actively trying to like unbalance these things in favor of my personal life 100%. There is no question about it.
Nick Bennett [00:42:15]:
I do not want to work more. I want to live my life more. I'm a hundred percent with you. And I'm glad. I'm glad that you have found that through this process. And the unique thing to me is like, you don't need to do it all. It's okay to not do it all. Like, being a solopreneur doesn't mean you have to be alone.
Tas Bober [00:42:35]:
Yes. And it's funny because I would get on discovery calls after I talked to him and I partnered with a few writers. I was in the process. I was just interviewing them and trying to see. But I also was testing the waters on the discovery calls to see if they had any objections to me in the process and me saying I'm going to hand it off to a writer. So I would say, here's the process. We'll do this buys journey thing. I will do that.
Tas Bober [00:43:02]:
And then my writers will then take it, put it in these landing pages. Not a single person has batted an eye. They've not said anything. They were like, yeah, cool, amazing. And they're like, so when's the delivery? And I'm like, two to three weeks after we have the alignment. They're like, oh, cool. And then I found myself also over explaining. So some of my existing clients who I was like, yes, we're in the middle of the process.
Tas Bober [00:43:25]:
I'm like, I got to hand off the middle of the process stuff too. It's killing me. Like, I'm burning out. And so I mentioned to them, I'm like, hey, I'm traveling for a conference next week. But I do have an awesome writer that is part of my business. They're going to help keep this moving while I'm gone. No one's bat an eye. And so I felt like I was over explaining, like, oh, they're amazing.
Tas Bober [00:43:44]:
They have all this experience in B2B SaaS. And like, what? And the clients are like, anyway, yeah, nice to meet you. This is where we are like, take the you know what I mean? They just don't care. They care about the work getting done and that it's good, quality work. And I train all of them in my process. They all are giving it to them the same way that I sold it to them. And so it's been better and fine. And now I'm like, okay.
Tas Bober [00:44:05]:
Now my brain's going, right? Because I'm like, okay, 20, 25, all landing page stuff. I will do the research component. The writer is going to do the writing component. And then one of the writers is. Was actually growth marketer, and she loves doing the testing component as well. So she's like, I would love to do the testing components. I'm like, hire out for that part of the process as well. And then eventually be able to tag team with someone else to do the research component.
Tas Bober [00:44:31]:
Because, to be honest, like, I might want to expand my family. I might want a third kid, because life isn't chaotic enough as it is. And I think one of the things in Built to Sell, too, that's true, is you need to have the business be independent of you. So it needs to be able to also run itself. The more you bring yourself out, the more of an asset that it actually becomes, because it is an asset, then that can transfer ownership at some point in life. Not that I plan to sell it or whatever, but just the. The more it looks like it's not part of you. And I think my brand is what's bringing it in.
Tas Bober [00:45:11]:
And I'm still the face and all of those things. When I hear that, it's not, oh, I want to sell, it's oh, I get more freedom. And that's what I want to optimize for, is my freedom.
Nick Bennett [00:45:22]:
Absolutely. I optimize for freedom is the best way to put it. Okay, so looking back, what is something you would have done differently?
Tas Bober [00:45:30]:
Not to give Anthony too much clout, but probably taking some of his advice.
Nick Bennett [00:45:33]:
We won't send him this podcast, we.
Tas Bober [00:45:35]:
Won'T send him this podcast, we won't send him this part. He's sick of it. I talk about it on every podcast because that really was the origin story, was he was just a big part of that. Probably give him too much credit. Things I would do differently probably would have. I think I hired at the. At the right time. I could have done it a little bit sooner, but revenue wasn't at the point where I was ready to do it sooner because it was painful to then have to let go of the cash.
Tas Bober [00:46:01]:
And now not as much. But I think that Now I need time to just do the things that I love, which is writing the content. And content drives my business, so I have to keep doing that. And right now was just sitting on the back burner the whole time and I'm like, okay, I need to do something different. But I love this. Like, I love podcasts, I love talking to people, I love posting on LinkedIn, I love networking and meeting people. And I feel like I want that to be more. My role is the business generator, and then the delivery is kind of its own mistakes.
Tas Bober [00:46:35]:
I don't know. Like, I feel like every single one, every fuck up, like, helped me optimize my process more. So I don't know if I'm learning from other people's mistakes because there were people who hired junior talent and they were like, oh, my God, this is the worst. And I'm not going to do that. I'm going to hire people who are probably better than me and can teach me a few things. I don't want it to be the other way around. So I think there's that. You get what you pay for when it comes to talent, consistently getting the habit and writing on LinkedIn.
Tas Bober [00:47:07]:
I took ship 30 for 30, the course. You familiar with those guys? Nikki Burshin. When I first started, that was amazing. Did all of the natural things right, like, did all of Justin Welsh's courses and the natural progression went into ship 30, Dickie Bush, all of those guys. So I felt like I got my LinkedIn training and then I was. I knew how to use the platform to write and get the word out there. So when I eventually niched onto landing pages, I already had the foundations of how to Write down for LinkedIn and then now I just had to execute it. And so a lot of that piece.
Tas Bober [00:47:42]:
So I don't know, I mean, I made a lot of mistakes, but I don't regret it. I built like a really good foundation of friends and solos that are like my chosen co workers, which is just way more fruitful and fun. So, yeah, I mean, it sounds really pompous to be like, I. I don't regret any mistake. I really don't. I just don't regret anything.
Nick Bennett [00:48:01]:
You're allowed to not regret. It's not about regrets. It's just like, hey, if I could have done it sooner or if I could have, like, you know, stuff like that. It's like if Anthony was telling you for months to like, do landing pages and you were rushing it off and you're like, man, if I just listened, like six months earlier, that would have been, yeah, I'm.
Tas Bober [00:48:18]:
I'm stubborn. Anyone will tell you that. But I also do respond to yelling really well because a lot of people have given me advice, but Anthony's the only one that yelled it at me, and I just responded so much better to that. Maybe that's like being raised by a boomer Asian mom. Am I allowed to say that? Is that PC?
Nick Bennett [00:48:34]:
You can say whatever you want. There are no rules.
Tas Bober [00:48:36]:
Okay. I just don't want to get canceled. I've said a lot of things that are cancelable offenses, but I think I do regret not doing it sooner. Like, when I was in house and just writing online and building a brand, I felt like the algo was, like, very unhinged. Someone starting now is going to have it so much harder than when I started. And then I had it a lot harder than when, like, Justin Welch started, when it was like, you could just post anything and it would go wild. I mean, Dave Gearhart talks about all the time. He's like, oh, when I started, Dave Gearhart had some incredible foresight for him to be, like, in house at Drift, and then a decade ago and was like, I'm gonna write on LinkedIn.
Tas Bober [00:49:14]:
I was not even in the universe of thinking about posting on social media.
Nick Bennett [00:49:21]:
When Dave Gerhart created the Dave Gerhardt Marketing Group on Facebook. I sent it to one of my coworkers at the time, and she was like, he's monetized his life. This is insane. What is this? Like, how. How is he doing this? And it's like, oh, no, that's just, like, status quo now. It was, like, so insane. We. We were, like, scratching our heads.
Nick Bennett [00:49:40]:
Like, this is nuts that this is even a thing. Even, like, I had John Bonini on recently, and he was like, yeah, I saw that Dave Gerhardt do this. And he was like, what the hell? Like, why not me? Like, I'll. Let me try something, and, like, let's see if I can pull this off. And he created a Patreon. So it's like, I think that approach rewired a lot of people's brains. For sure. People were paying attention.
Nick Bennett [00:50:00]:
And it's like, that was, what, 2019. I started in 2023. I was like, if I had listened in 2022, 21 would have been such a different. Would be in a different place.
Tas Bober [00:50:09]:
But probably not starting. Yeah, not starting sooner. But I will say this, which is you start at the time that you start. It's the right time for you. I always tell people to, like, if you are the type of person or you're in a family where you're living paycheck to paycheck, this is probably not the right move for you, especially if you're just beginning. You have to have some kind of, like, backup and stability type situation. You need to be able to plan appropriately for the future because you don't get that every two weeks there's like a stable line, right? Like, being a solo, being a consultant is a lot of, like, all your invoices come in on one month, and then you're like, at peak, and then the next month you're chasing after people. You may not get something.
Tas Bober [00:50:57]:
So if you're the person that lives like, at your means, and you're going day by day and you're like, shit, I need whatever tomorrow, like, that's gonna be very, very hard for you. And then what happens is you make rash decisions when you're desperate. So you need to keep a cool, calm head. You need to be planful. If you're the kind of person that doesn't plan three generations down, like, you gotta start. And so there's a lot more stresses that come with this life, but also you get used to the chaos, and then you'll never make more money in your life either if you just keep going.
Nick Bennett [00:51:34]:
A lot of people I know will start to, like, write on LinkedIn the day they start their solo consulting business. And I'm like, that was probably not the right move. So, yeah, I 100% agree with you there. Okay, so let's end here. What do you want to build that you have not built yet? I know you've niched down deeper, one layer deeper, and you're going to go all in on this starting in January. But, like, is there something that you want to build that is lingering or something you want to do that you haven't done yet?
Tas Bober [00:51:59]:
Yeah. So I just posted today. I don't know if you had a chance to see it, but I said, I'm in a content rut lately, and it's not the opportunity for people to come out of the woodwork and sell me content services. But I reposted something Dave posted a few, like, a month ago or so, and it said, what is the one thing that could kill your business today? That's the thing you need to focus 80% of your attention on. And my attention has been maybe 20% on it the last six months because I've been drowning in delivery. So that's something I want to get back into. And that one thing is writing Content consistently, which I feel like I have LinkedIn down, right? Like getting back into the groove of doing it regularly. The things that got me my purple lady landing page lady fame, getting back to that, that's what people enjoy doing that.
Tas Bober [00:52:44]:
But one of the ideas that I had kind of a couple quarters ago. But one thing I want to do, I talked to Devin Reed about expanding my content footprint. Because they always say like, do one rented, one owned. And here's the thing, I see a lot of unsavory stuff on LinkedIn. Okay? I'm like the LinkedIn troller in the comments. So it's only a matter of time before they cut me loose. And then Devin's like, you gotta do like one rented and one owned. And I have a list that I've kind of slowly built over time because I have this like, hub that I give away for free, whatever, and I've just collected, but I don't do anything with them.
Tas Bober [00:53:21]:
But one of the things is I'm like, ah, I don't consume newsletters that much. Like there's very few that I will read and I'll skim them. And I'm like, okay, this is great. But most of them end up being noise. So I don't want to add to the noise. But I'm like, it would be super cool. Someone mentioned a concept of like, I think I was on a micro podcast. I'm like, oh, you know, it'd be fun to do a micro newsletter.
Tas Bober [00:53:44]:
Like a one tip once a week. Not a huge lift on my end, but I get to engage with people that want to engage with me. So expanding that. But again, once my bandwidth frees up and I'm out of my content rut, that is something that I want to do is just expand, expand into more content avenues and do more of like that hub and spoke type model where not too much stuff, but definitely getting in more of the content and being like the brains there. So micro newsletter maybe. Next step.
Nick Bennett [00:54:17]:
I'm into it. If you're not familiar with Erin Balsa, she runs House of Bold and she has a newsletter called boldface. And it, it is daily emails, but they're like super, super short and pithy and like, they're great. I love them. So something to check out as like some little inspiration. I. I love em. Cause I don't read a bunch of newsletters, but like hers come through and I know that I've been conditioned to open your emails because they're just short and I'm like, oh, I can read this in literally under a minute.
Nick Bennett [00:54:44]:
And I'm. And it's like, cool, like little. Little bite size thing.
Tas Bober [00:54:48]:
That's what I want to do as well. The like, low time investment. I think that's a huge thing. That's like a common theme in my business too, because I was so strapped for time and trying to do so much in house that I'm like, how can I take the burden off of the end user? So even the way I write my posts, like, they call it broetry. It's not super broetry, but I will format it in a way that's like they can skim and still get the information. The number of times, Nick, where I have people I truly respect on the platform. I love them to death. I love talking to them.
Tas Bober [00:55:20]:
But the style in which they write. And I'll send you one after we get off here. I hit see more and it's like a cortisol hit in my brain. Okay? Not a dopamine hit a cortisol hit. And I open it SSC more. And I'm like, who the fuck has time for this? You know when like, people are like, oh, this book could have been a blog post, I'm like, this is a blog post. It doesn't belong on a social media platform. I ain't got time to read this.
Tas Bober [00:55:44]:
So it's sometimes there are those posts where I will literally have like, Siri read it to me because I'm like, I don't have time to read it. And I just like, I'll be doing dishes while I'm missing. I'm like, get on a podcast or something. Go write a freaking blog post. Don't make me read this shit on this platform when I don't have that much time. So formatting and like writing the skim first, like, you're not writing for the user at that rate. You're just writing because you think this is like your daily journal or something, which is fine. Like, there are people who love that shit.
Tas Bober [00:56:14]:
I'm just not that person. So for me, I like quick punchy and that's how I want my brand to be. And I want, like, my content also is I want people to consume it. I'm the consumption queen, okay? My landing pages are all built for consumption. Like, I want people to consume. That is my thing. So what do I need to do to get there?
Nick Bennett [00:56:37]:
That's phenomenal. I'm like crying the cortisol head. I'm going to use that forever. Thank you, Taz, for coming and sharing your story with me. This has been so much fun. It's been a pleasure and I know more people feel seen on their own journey because of it. This has been a lot of fun. Hey Nick.
Nick Bennett [00:57:01]:
Again and thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this episode, you can sign up for the 1000 Routes newsletter, where I process the insights and stories you hear on this show into frameworks and lessons to help you build a new and different future for your own business. If you were about to board a rocket ship from Mars and leave Earth for the very last time, what would be your last meal here?
Tas Bober [00:57:30]:
Oh, that one's easy because it's also my death row meal. My husband and I have talked about this, but my mom is Thai and my dad is Indian, but my mom makes this insane omelette, this Thai omelette, and it has a bunch of, like, chilies on there and vegetables. It's really spicy. And we always ate that on a pile of rice. And every time I left home and I'd come home, that was the only thing I'd ask her to make me. So that is 100% the meal I would eat before I leave.
Nick Bennett [00:58:00]:
Spicy Thai omelette. Can she please start, like, a food truck?
Tas Bober [00:58:04]:
So good. And she can cook, like Thai and Indian food and she's just an amazing cook. So that would be my comfort food.