Arvid Kahl: Welcome to The Bootstrapped Founder. Today, I'm
talking to Evelyn J. Starr. Evelyn is a brand building
expert. And we'll talk about finding the right niche, having
a community centric, long term perspective and how brands
change over time. Here's Evelyn. What is the biggest
misconception about building brands that you have run into
with solopreneurs or indie entrepreneurs? What have you
found with, yeah, being the biggest problem there?
Evelyn J Starr: The biggest misperception I've seen is that
there's a belief that a brand is just a logo and it's just
something that marketing creates and maybe they'll get to it,
maybe they won't get to it and don't realize that the brand is
really the whole business. So, you know, the reason that you're
in business is part of your brand. You, as the founder are a
big part of the brand, especially in the beginning when
it's just you. So you bring your personal values, you bring your
personality, and all of these things color, the brand and
people's mind, you know. My definition of a brand is that
it's the expectation of what you get when you deal with any
entity based on all your prior experiences and impressions of
that entity. And so you know, how I feel about the
Bootstrapped Founder is very much how I feel about our
interactions, Arvid because that has built the brand in my mind.
It's what I expect next time I talk to you. I know oh, Arvid,
he's friendly, he's really helpful. He's very interested in
brand issues and also building in public, all of those things
factor into what the Bootstrapped Founder is in my
mind.
Arvid Kahl: Do you think like the other brands in the space,
you would probably call them competitors? Although for me,
it's just like other people doing similar things that we can
empower each other in our community, at least. It's not
that much of a competition. Do you think these other brands
influence what perception people might have of my brand as well?
Evelyn J Starr: Not really, not really. And that's the thing
that the message I would send to a lot of entrepreneurs starting
out is, it's good to be aware of what the competition is doing.
But you don't define yourself by what the competition is doing.
You are your own brand. Hopefully, you've come to your
business because you've noticed a gap in the marketplace that
your competitors aren't filling. And so you're going to define
your brand and your niche along those lines. And so it's, like I
said, it's good to keep an eye out to see what changes happen
in the marketplace if they invade your space. If you see
something they're doing you think, aha, I can do this
better. You know, those ideas can come to you but you don't
define yourself by your competitors.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, generally a good idea is not to compare
yourself to other people anyway because you only see their
highlight reel while you see your full picture. And it's kind
of an unfair comparison to yourself, I guess. Yeah
Evelyn J Starr: Right, right.
Arvid Kahl: I do wonder in that regard because with competitors
around, you kind of that's why you do a lot of marketing is to
be able to differentiate yourself from your competitors.
And that's why I'm asking this question. Because if you have a
brand and this might be a very limited perspective on brands
that is similar to others, how do you give some kind of
substantial difference through your marketing to the people in
your field so they can see, okay, yeah, this is not just a
slightly different product, but the people behind it, the
mission, the vision behind it is different too? How do you do
that?
Evelyn J Starr: Well, you know, when you're first starting out,
sometimes you don't know the full nature of your brand,
right? Maybe you've seen a gap in the marketplace. And you
thought I can program that. I can fix that sort of like what
you did with permalink. And so you start very focused on a
product. But ultimately, if you're going to have a fully
realized brand, your brand is going to have a purpose that
surmounts a product. You know, maybe for permalink, it's to
help Amazon publishing authors make sure their books don't get
booted off, right? And so there may be other products or other
things you devise in the future, I'm making this up. But most
brands that are going to survive long term have a purpose that's
not product related. It's a bigger world vision. And I'll
give you a couple examples. Although these are not tech
examples, but well, actually, I can read you Google. Google's
purpose is to organize the world's information and make it
universally accessible and useful, okay? So there's the
word search is in there anywhere, right? There's no
maps, there's, you know, and it's what made them it's what's
guided them to develop a whole lot of products and then also to
ditch a whole lot of products. And when I wrote my book, they
had already killed off around 240 somewhat products that just
didn't adhere or fly. But that they thought might be a good
idea based on that purpose. So you differentiate yourself by
your purpose. You differentiate yourself by the values that you
bring to your business, you know, how you go about doing
your business and the values that you set for your business
guide how you want your employees to behave on your
behalf, if you're fortunate enough to grow your business to
the point where you have employees at your niche also is
a differentiator. You know, going after exactly the same
thing as another competitor, if you have a different method of
doing it or some sort of improvement might be a good
idea. But usually, it's better to find some space that very few
or no one occupies and use that to differentiate yourself. So
these are some of the brand components that help you stand
out. And the one last thing I want to say and tell the
conversation a little bit is that I want your listeners to
know that marketing is about relationship building. It's not
just about differentiation, that's part of how you do it.
But it's really what is your brand in relation to these
people and they relate to other people, so it's gonna be the
founder and your employees.
Arvid Kahl: That is very important. I've been very
focused on telling people the exact same message that anything
you want to do for your business that has any long term,
positive, beneficial effect has to be relationship based. It
can't just be like projecting something, it has to be building
an actual connection with human beings. I really enjoy the fact
that you say this because it's core to the message that I'm
trying to communicate as well. And in that regard, I'm thinking
of personal brand and professional brand. That's kind
of my distinction that I use, right? Personal brand is around
the founder. Professional brand is around the purpose that you
just described. Those kinds of terms are what I use for this
because a lot of founders in my space, who want to build
relationships, who want to become part of a community and
from within that community build products that people actually
need and have a budget for and all that kind of stuff they
struggle with, well, what is the core of what I'm supposed to be
a brand about? Like is it me as the founder? Or is it the
product? And the mission that I have? What would you suggest for
somebody who's a solopreneur, who doesn't have a team and
doesn't really want to build a big company out of it but does
want to build a business? What is the core of their brand? Is
it the person or the business? Or both? How do they go about
it?
Evelyn J Starr: Well, they overlap so much. They meld so
much that I don't really make a distinction between them.
Because if you're the founder and you're solopreneur and
you're interacting with everybody, you are the brand.
You really are. And so one of the things that I found really
helpful in my journey in the book that I sent you was to
scope out to actually set for myself what is my purpose,
right? As my brand as you start to see it, the name I came up
with in 1999 in a hurry when someone asked me to interview
for something when I decided to go out on my own, like ahhh, I
gotta find something. But so, you know, I sat down and
actually, I went through at one point, Simon's next, you know,
determine your why. And I did that first. And then I
determined my company's purpose. So my personal why and my
company's purpose are not the same, but they dovetail you
know. My personal why is to help someone find the aha moment so
they can move forward. Because I'm very analytical, and I'm
very big picture. And I can usually help somebody who's
stuck, find a way through that. But my business purpose is that
I help business owners make confident marketing decisions.
So that's a slice of the aha moment. So maybe that's a way to
look at the personal brand and the professional brand a little
bit. The other thing
Arvid Kahl: That's awesome! This is just intriguing to have this
kind of this is my whole purpose and the business is just a slice
of it. For me, I've always found like we all have these
overlapping identities as people, right? We're parents,
we're children, we're neighbors and all of that and this kind of
plays into the same overlap of purposes, right? We have the
full purpose as a person and the business is just one way of
fulfilling that purpose and maybe being a parent is another
purpose or being a woodworker in your spare time is the other
version. It's nice to see that you found this big purpose and
you have this specific purpose for your business, that is
really cool. Sorry for interrupting but that's
something that I find really cool.
Evelyn J Starr: That's great. And you know and for your
listeners, I really, you know, sometimes people like oh, I
don't have time to do this. I have to tell you, when you find
your purpose when you figure that out and notice how simple
it is, I help business owners make confident marketing
decisions, like eight or nine words, right? And but it's
talking about who I serve and what I do. And it's not product
specific. If your audience if you take the time to do this,
then you have something to run all of your opportunities by. It
becomes a litmus test and it becomes so much easier to make
decisions. Someone approaches you for a partnership or if
someone says, hey, can you add these three benefits to what
you're building? You know and you want to think, hmm, should I
bother? Or should I not? If you have your purpose, you have sort
of a lens to look at that and say, yeah, this fits or no, it
doesn't. It makes life so much easier in the long run.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, you talked about the niche that you picked
very, very early in our conversation. And I think niche
picking or picking your future audience or your market or
whatever you call it, right? That being specific about who
you want to serve and empower that conversation cannot come
early enough in a business journey. If you do this, when
you start selling things, you're already way too deep into it. So
let's maybe talk about the niche now, at the beginning of this
conversation as well because it's just a really extremely
important thing for any founder to consider. What's too big?
What's too small? That's one of the questions that I always get
from founders that I try to help as well. Like, when I pick a
niche, can I go too deep? Or am I too broad? Do you have any
kind of framework for this, how to pick a niche that is just
right, the Goldilocks kind of niche?
Evelyn J Starr: I do, I do. And I'm going to mention to your
listeners that I wrote a book called Teenage Wastebrand, How
Your Brand Can Stop Struggling and Start Scaling. And I
actually have step by step instructions on how to look at
niches in there. So if they're interested, they can check out
that book. But what I would say to you here is that what you
want in a niche is to be very specific, so you can talk to a
particular customer or a particular customers a
particular problem, okay? And it can be pretty narrow. You just
want to have some running room, so your brand can grow for
several years, okay? You know, if there are five people in the
world who need what you have, you're going to run out of that
audience or pitching to that audience really fast. But you
don't need hundreds and hundreds of 1000s of people. You just
need the right people and enough of them so that your brand can
continue to grow for a while and you can make a name for
yourself. And that is what's most important about a niche.
And what people get wrong, is that the biggest fear founders
have is that they're gonna go too narrow, they're gonna leave
money on the table. If they're gonna say no to somebody,
they're purposely limiting their business. And that feels very
scary. You know, I call it in my book that my book, Teenage
Wastebrand talks about how there are sort of adolescence symptoms
to brands and I call it suffering from FOMO fear of
missing out, right? If I don't serve that person, you know, I
have this major, I'm missing the party kind of feeling. But
what's really the case is that when you target some specific
audience, whether it's by an attitude or a group of people
you're serving, you make a name for yourself in that arena. You
have to have something and this goes back to differentiation,
right? You know, permalink is one of the only services I know,
I think the only service I know that does what it does. And so
that was amazing to me, that was exactly what I needed. I saw it
on Jane Friedman's newsletter and I was like, yeah, I'm there.
So that was speaking directly to me and my problem. And I don't
know how many authors are worried about their books
getting kicked off of Amazon because the link goes bad. But I
think there are probably enough of them that your business is
growing because it's a big problem. So I would encourage
your listeners to choose an audience narrow enough that when
someone sees the brand and sees what it's about, they say, ah
that's exactly what I needed or oh, yes, they're talking to me.
You can't be that specific if you're trying to target
everybody.
Arvid Kahl: Have you found a good way of finding the places
where you can do this research? Like where do you go to look for
information on the size of the niche? Or if people are actually
having problems that you're interested in solving, how would
you approach that?
Evelyn J Starr: You know, it's an industry by industry
situation. You know, I'm a big secondary research person. So I
will put in my browser, all sorts of terms that come at that
this is where I would start with any of them all sorts of terms
that come out the problem I'm trying to solve, to see who the
players are. I would, you know, go to each of the players
websites. I would look at any public information or ask about,
look for reviews, look for statistics. And really what I'm
looking for in that case, especially I think I'll probably
a lot of your listeners are going after something that
either hasn't existed before or is fairly new. So you don't have
to have buttoned down numbers to justify what you're doing. You
just have to ascertain that there's enough interest and
enough of a market there that you could build your brand for a
few several years, right? That's all you're looking for, you
know, so you don't need to know specifically how many there are.
You just need to know that there are enough.
Arvid Kahl: Now you kind of validating a trajectory, right?
You don't necessarily have the precise numbers, but you know
that the vector of it is pointing somewhere upwards in
some capacity. I think that's great advice. I feel like
understanding that there are already players in a particular
field, but people are not too happy with them. That's probably
one of the best kinds of situations that particularly a
bootstrap founder can find themselves in, right? Because
you know that there's budget because people are already
paying for these other things. You know that there is interest
because otherwise they wouldn't even have attempted to build the
thing that they now are being paid for those businesses. And
you know, that there's a misalignment between the
products that exist, the solutions and the problems that
people still have. That is great. So yeah, I love that kind
of research. Like it's kind of free build competitive analysis
that is happening there. That makes a lot of sense. Are there
any other ways of figuring out this information?
Evelyn J Starr: Well, I wanna address something you said
before and maybe respectfully disagree a little bit. It is
optimal if you can figure out your niche ahead of time and
before you're selling, that is true. But if any of your
listeners are in a position, saying, oh, no, I'm already
selling and I'm keeping my language calm because no is not
the word that I would go to if I was listening and thinking, you
know, how did I do this wrong? You know, brands are
evolutionary. And sometimes you have to get into it to find
where you need to go. So let me give you an example. A lot of
people know Airbnb, right? That company, what a lot of people
might not know is they started with a niche that was too small.
They were targeting cities, areas that had conferences,
where the conference attendance exceeded the hotel capacity.
Okay, very specific. So like the national conventions in the US,
right? The Democratic National Convention, the Republican
National Convention, may be South by Southwest two really
huge conferences, where there was going to be a greater need
for accommodations than the supply the hotels had. And so
those were the situations they were serving. And there weren't
enough of them to keep the company afloat. But in the
meantime, people were pinging them saying, hey, I had a great
time staying in Austin at this, you know, I'm gonna go to
vacation in Austin. Do you have another location? And initially,
they were declining those and then a bell went off, you know,
maybe it doesn't have to be just for conferences. And so they
adjusted and widened their niche in the process of building their
brand. And that's how they came to grow so large.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, large and highly precarious in many ways,
too, right? Like when you look at these unicorns, I feel
particularly from the perspective of a bootstrapped
founder does not have access to that kind of capital, the
venture capital that's put into it. It feels like they over
expanded their niche. That's also something interesting
because we already talked about picking too smaller niche but
let's maybe talk about picking too big a niche because Airbnb
is essentially trying to take all of the hotel market and all
the vacation home markets and you know, all these markets at
the same time. And obviously, if you have like billions in
funding, that's fine. But if you have your savings, you know,
you're a couple of months of life savings. That's probably
not a good idea to invest that into trying to revolutionize the
hotel market either. So what is too big of a niche to start it?
Like where is the niche so big that you can find your footing?
Evelyn J Starr: Well, so let me just on an Airbnb basis because
I think this brings up a really interesting point about niches
that your listeners might find interest in or get some benefit
from. So what Airbnb is doing now is they shifted from this
very specific, very narrow personal interest and through
their evolution several years in, did a whole bunch of
research and they changed their niche to or their purpose to
help people belong anywhere, right? To help anyone belong
anywhere. And so their niche is this market of people who travel
who want to feel less alien, less strange to a new place,
right? And they do that by going into someone's home instead of
going into a hotel room. And now that they've launched all their
experiences, they do that by signing up for something that
people in the know would have access to, right? So their news
is attitudinal, right? I want to belong in San Francisco even
though I've only ever been there twice in my life. And I want to
feel comfortable there and so I'm using their brand to help me
do that. So attitude is also an interesting niche to address.
But in terms of being too big, when are you being too big? If
your brand's not resonating with the people that you really want
to serve, if you're not being specific enough, you know, so
like my target market, I work with lots of people and some of
my clients are men, some are women, some may be non binary.
You know, I don't know all the time, I don't ask. But, you
know, for a long time, I noticed a pattern that there were, most
of my clients were men in their 40s and 50s who had started a
company who had come to it without a business education.
Generally, there were sports fans, they were married. And
they enjoyed American culture. And so if you read my
newsletter, which I publish, once a month, I write with that
person in mind. You know, I will make sports references once in a
while. I will make American cultural references. I think in
my next newsletter, I'm talking about Star Trek, but
Arvid Kahl: Very good!
Evelyn J Starr: Thank you. But so you know, when you can do
insider stuff like that, so that person doesn't feel like you're
talking, you're up making a general speech to hundreds of
1000s of people. But instead, you're talking to me, then you
know you're doing well with your niche.
Arvid Kahl: That's great. That is such a yeah, that is so
visceral to me because if I read a text that is written not for
me, I notice because it doesn't resonate with me and those
little things. But if there's a Star Trek reference in there,
you have my attention, right? And I know you did that on
purpose too like you did that because you wanna talk to me.
That's what I see in that kind of newsletter. That's very
interesting. And I feel let's talk about the evolution of the
brand that allows you to do this because we just talked about
Airbnb going from tiny niche to becoming this kind of
experiential, attitudinal thing, which is a great observation. I
think this is what many tech companies have figured out that
it's not about like being in that tech space. But being
something that aspirational for people, right? We want people to
allow themselves to become a better version of themselves.
And that is our purpose. But that takes a while to come to
that point, right? It takes an evolutionary process. So how
does that work for a brand? Like how do brands grow up? What are
the signs? Are they getting rowdy when they come into the
teenage years? Like how does it work?
Evelyn J Starr: Well, so what I noticed and the reason I came to
this as when I was serving all of those guys who were in
businesses, you know and I talked to them about their
business and marketing. And they really were very sheepish and
said, you know, I don't like marketing, I don't do marketing
because they really didn't understand it. And they were
afraid they were going to sink money into it and time into it
and not see any return for it. But the common trajectory of a
lot of their brands was that they would start off and they'd
find a lot of takers and it would go really well for several
years and then they hit a plateau. And when they hit this
plateau, it was mind boggling because they said, I'm saying
all the same things I was saying before. I'm talking to the same
people I was talking to before and all of a sudden, I can't
seem to get above this level, you know or I'm tapering off a
little bit. And what I discovered and the reason I call
it a brand adolescence is that brands evolve over time, right?
So that definition of a brand that I talked to you about
earlier, about being the sum of all your experiences and all
your impressions. You know, when you first launch a brand, when
on day one, if you're a founder, you get to tell the world what
your brand is, what you intend it to be. But once your audience
has a chance to experience it for a year or two years, they're
gonna have all these different interactions. Maybe it's still
all with you if you're a solopreneur. But maybe you're
lucky enough to be growing and they're having interactions with
your employees or they're seeing reviews online or they're
talking to other people who are using this totally away from
your earshot. You can't hear what's going on. And all those
activities factor into their impression of the brand. And if
they're finding that your brand is better for one thing that's
not what you launched it for, over time, you know, the
difference between what you said your brand was on day one and
what it is in their mind starts to separate, it grows further
and further apart. And when the gap gets big enough, your
initial marketing messages no longer resonate because they're
not speaking to the way that people think of your brand. And
so the way to deal with that is to stay in touch with your
customers, listen to how they're using your brand, listen to what
it means to them, you know, listen to their thoughts about
it so that you can stay on track with the way that it is
appearing in the world.
Arvid Kahl: Hmm, interesting. I think a lot of that is also word
of mouth, right? Where people just talk to their peers about
your business and what you offer. And I know that a lot of
founders at some point, they feel they lose control of word
of mouth, obviously, because it's other people doing the
work. What is your opinion on that? Like, should people try to
cling to that or should they just embrace what people are
saying and kind of guided like, in a different way?
Evelyn J Starr: So there was a McKinsey study, McKinsey
consulting study back in 2009 that showed that two thirds of
marketing is happening outside the company. And it's because of
all the internet related, right? Because of reviews, because of
ratings because of social media, because of conversations people
are happening or having. So what I'd say to your founders is take
a big exhale and realize that a lot of the marketing of your
brand, a lot of the conversation is going to happen away from you
and you cannot control it, but you can influence it, okay? And
the way you influence it is by being consistent in the way that
you put it out in the world. And so, if you're a solo and you're
continuing to lead the brand yourself, then you need to find
out how the world perceives you and how the world perceives your
brand and be consistent with those. And that's another thing
I talk about in the book. Those are called brand attributes, you
know, so, you know, one attribute you might have, Arvid
is kind of technical because people know you from that's sort
of a common thread through your businesses. And so, when you
talk, you're talking to an audience who's coming to you for
things that are technical and you, you know, you're not
talking to me about, you know, how to bake doughnuts or
something. This is out of the wheelhouse. You're serving that
expectation and the voice and the language you use also
acknowledges, you know, that kind of technical bent. So
people need to find out how they're perceived, how their
brand is perceived and kind of stay consistent about that. And
when they do that, that will help the way that people outside
talk about them and think about them.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, I'm thinking about like, the difference
between a serious brand and an adult brand. I don't know like
if that makes sense to you, but I'm hearing you tell me like you
want to stay consistent, you should stay consistent in the
messaging and that kind of communication that you give to
allow people to have the opportunity to use that and talk
to their peers in the same way and have this kind of cohesive
narrative going on in the world outside of your marketing
activities because other people are doing it and inside of them
because that's just keeps it going. Now, over time, I think
many particularly in the tech field, people have this
expectation of things becoming more serious, more enterprise,
right? More business
Evelyn J Starr: Oh, yeah
Arvid Kahl: And that's kind of what I mean, the difference
between like a serious brand and a grown up brand, like where one
is just a little bit older because it's been around for a
couple years. And then there's the serious version, the one
that uses fancy words and jargon to communicate something. It
loses it's kind of personal touch. So should we aim for
that?
Evelyn J Starr: No
Arvid Kahl: Obviously, you know, can we be serious without that?
Evelyn J Starr: Oh, yeah, not only can you be serious, but you
know, that the problem with thinking, oh, my business is now
six or seven years old. I have to get very formal about it. Is
that the reason people came to you and the reason you are where
you are is the way you've been all the way along, right? The
voice you use, like, you know, Wendy's is a, you know, fast
food chain and they're really kind of snarky on Twitter and
they're known for that. They kind of have an attitude. They
go after McDonald's every once in a while. They tease them and
they're a huge, large, well established brand. And people
love the snark. They love the rebellious attitude. That's how
they're known. And so getting larger isn't a time to bail on
the way that your brand has been. I would say on the other
hand, it's a time to lean in. You know if you're talking to
your customers and they love you know, the casualness of your
blog posts and the ease of your manuals of use and all that
stuff. Don't ditch that, you know, lean into that. So that if
you're growing and you need to hire employees, you need to kind
of codify what your values are and how you want the employees
to represent your brand so it can be consistent. So you can
continue that not so you can become stodgy. Nobody wants
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, company culture doesn't have to be like
stodgy.
casual Friday, right? That's not what the culture is about. It
could just be, be kind, be friendly, be easy, be playful,
right? These kinds of things. And other companies might not do
that because I don't know they targeted the front market or
they just want to appear at the front in front of their
customers also fine. Just making a choice and sticking with it. I
like it. I like consistency. Generally, I'm a big fan of
that. Otherwise, we wouldn't be in episode 200 something of this
podcast at this point, right? So consistency is central for me to
build for building a business or immediate business or a brand to
begin with. And it's nice to hear that that is something that
will keep attracting people. I think that's the fear that so
many founders have, right? Oh, I am going for bigger businesses.
Their expectations are different, I need to change
that. And then they have this weird dichotomy where they now
want to change who they are for the people that they want to
attract. But in that lose the connection with the people that
they have already attracted. That feels like such a hard
balance to strike.
Evelyn J Starr: Well, it's a hard balance to strike. And
also, I mean, it's sort of, you know, your brand, it's an asset
that you've built, right? You've worked so hard in the beginning,
in the first whatever it is. I mean, the tech world, your tech
world, it's like dog years, right? You know, a brand could
be, you know, an adolescent at two years old because it gets
adopted so fast and there's so many things that it goes
through. But you've worked really hard to differentiate
yourself with a brand personality, with the values you
bring to the culture, whether it's you personally or whether
you have a team, you know, so that becomes an asset that's
valuable. You don't want to throw that away, right? You want
to build on that. I mean, think of the early days of your brand
and the culture that you're building in the company as a
foundation, right? So you're not going to build stories upon that
by ditching the foundation, you know, by ruining it or putting
cracks in it. You're gonna need to make sure it's solid and then
just go up from there.
Arvid Kahl: I've also had the experience that your initial
customers, like the people who are your first believers, they
can play a pretty big role in you establishing that foundation
and then going from there, right?
Evelyn J Starr: Yes. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. They can
be your biggest fans, they are word of mouth and their
influence bringing you, you know, the first that like sort
of that second round of users is critical. And if you can make
them love you, you know, there are books that talk about them,
like raving fans make raving fans. And I think Kevin Kelly
the Technium had that a post years ago called you know, 1000
Raving Fans and basically saying, if you can get 1000
raving fans, you have a business. You know you're good
because they're gonna buy whatever you sell. So those
initial customers are really important.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, that Kevin Kelly quote came to my mind as
well because that's kind of how I personally approach this. I
mean, I have a couple more than 1000 followers at this point.
But I know that a true fan is still not just a follower,
right? Or a customer is not necessarily a true fan. They
could just be a user of the product that you offer. Do you
have any tips on how to find these fans like how to kind of
sift through the hopeful masses of people who you know, are
involved in using a product or hanging out with you on social
media and find the ones that really, really care about you
and then cater to their needs?
Evelyn J Starr: So what I would say is, sometimes when you're
starting a business, you're moving so fast and juggling so
much that you kind of put off responding to anybody who
connects with you, you know and I would say that the way to find
those raving fans is to keep your eyes and ears open for
someone who's engaging with you because the person who's taking
the time to engage, whether it's a Twitter direct message or an
email or however they're doing it, has gone through a lot to
sort of raise their hand and make that effort. And that is
the sign that this person could be very, very, you know,
important to your brand and has a lot of thoughts about that.
And those are the people you want to pay attention to. So,
you know, when I get comments on posts on social media or when I
get responses to my newsletter, I try to respond as fast as
possible and keep the conversation going. And that's
how I learn about, you know, the most engaged, you know, the
audience that I have because, you know, they're willing to
share their thoughts, they're happy to share their thoughts,
they'll also tell you where you're wrong. And there's a lot
of learning that can happen there. But also a lot of people
who, even if they say to you, I'm writing to you because you
messed up x, if you engage in the right way, not only do they
become a raving fan because you're willing to listen to them
and you're willing to learn from them. But they feel a connection
to you now, right? That goes back to the relationship
building, right? You want to build these connections and the
people who feel most strongly connected to your brand, are the
people who are gonna raise their hand and try to reach out.
Arvid Kahl: Yeah, people who care enough to even reach out,
right? Like that's already quite the indicator. I think many
founders, they think they can get people to talk about the
product, but just like working on the product and making it
better, like making it more exciting and more usable, which
is somewhat true, right? Like better product is something that
people will talk about more just because they have more reason to
talk about the product. But the product really doesn't matter as
much as you just helping somebody with their problem. I
had this experience building Feedback Panda with my
girlfriend. The people who reached out to us in the
beginning, our first couple of customers, again, initial
customers that reached out that had a problem, but one in itself
because they saw potential in the platform, I spent sometimes
half an hour chatting with them through the chat system on our
website. And those almost all of them became evangelists for the
product, right? They were just regular online teachers doing
the job. But they took the time out of the day to whenever they
saw somebody talking about a similar problem to one that we
solve, to kind of pitch us as a solution to that problem.
Because they were often saying, hey, these people, they will
actually help you when you have a problem. Because for some
reason, it is an outstanding capability of a business to
actually help people through their customer service at this
point.
Evelyn J Starr: Yes! Yes, it is. And it's the most important
thing because again, the definition of a brand is the sum
of all the experiences they had. And if they hadn't experienced
where, wow, I can't believe Arvid took a half an hour out of
his day to chat with me. And he's now considering the
suggestion I had for software. Now I'm invested in that. Right
now, I feel like I've contributed and I'm a part of
it. And I'm connected to you. And I want other people to know
how wonderful this is.
Arvid Kahl: That's right. I often would actually build the
features that people were asking about or suggesting while I was
talking to them and then kind of secretly pushing it to
production because it was very lean, very flexible approach.
And then it would tell me just refresh the page, check it out.
And their minds were blown, right? That's just that moment
of actually mattering as a customer in the lifetime of a
product that was so novel to all these people who were just using
these gigantic like Google products, right? If you go to
Google Drive or use Google Sheets or whatever, you probably
won't impact the business direction of that particular
product with their customer service. But if you do that to a
SaaS product built by an indie hacker somewhere, it's quite
likely that your suggestion is going to make the feature list,
right? So that is something that most people that we served did
not know before because they only ever use these gigantic
products or really care about you. But
here's feedback Panda, they seem to really care. That was super
strong of a differentiator that we used. We wrote that wave like
most of our marketing, if not all, was word of mouth with that
business. We did try paid customer acquisition at some
point, didn't really work. Didn't need to because people
were already talking about our product and we just amplify
their voices.
Evelyn J Starr: Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's a long standing
comment in marketing, which is a truism, which is that people
have to know like and trust you before they'll buy from you. And
so anything you can do to get along that continuum, where
people get to know you, they like what you're doing, where
they like who you are, they like the way you're treating them.
And then they trust you to do things in a manner that warrant
their money and their attention. That's the precursor to you
having a customer.
Arvid Kahl: I think liking is an interesting verb here like to be
liked. I think most people in the indie hacker space and I
might be overgeneralizing, but a lot of them they're introverted.
They're trying to you know, just do a thing, be technical, built
a product and, you know, not to do too much with people. And I
think particularly because I'm such a person myself. I always
felt ugh, if I reach out to them, If I talk to them, they
might not like me and by extension, the brand, the
business, the product that I represent. So I always felt the
kind of hinderance that I put in myself so it was just a mental
blockage. But you know how people are, right? Our brain
often fights itself in many ways and trying to encourage people
to talk about my product felt desperate or needy on my end. I
know now having done it and having understood that it's not
that, that that was just, you know, a construction that my
mind put in there to, I don't know, protect itself from change
or whatever. But for an introverted founder who's having
trouble understanding that marketing or encourage word of
mouth is not desperate or needy, how would you help them overcome
this particular blockade in their mind?
Evelyn J Starr: Well, I would say most people wanna help,
especially if they've reached out to you, but most people
wanna help. And so for me, you know, because I come across as
an extroverted personality, but I definitely have an introverted
part to me, also. And what helps me and what I would suggest to
you is, think of it as just a one to one interaction. Don't
think of it as you are broadcasting to the world. If
you're reaching out to someone, it's just two people having
conversation, you know, and the worst that they could say is no,
right? And so, but you know, my dad has a wonderful saying. He's
like, give yourself the option, you know, because you don't know
if you don't ask and so I would think about that is, you know,
maybe no doesn't feel good. But most of the time, you're gonna
get a yes and most of the time, you're gonna get an answer. And
that feels so good. And so far outweighs the shyness, you know,
the the aversion to being in contact. So that's what I would
say focus on to one to one conversation. And that's all
that's at stake right now.
Arvid Kahl: That's great. I also, I think, people saying,
no, that's just a regular part of life. And if you can separate
this kind of this identity of the business from yourself as a
human being, right? Like, even though you might be the person
behind the business, the only person behind the business, you
start conflating the business with yourself, but a no to the
business is not a no to you. They don't hate you as a person
because they don't want to use your software. Like to tear that
apart and see the no as a business decision on this side
of a potential customer that still thinks you're a great
human being that could probably help you with approaching them,
right? In a conversation to deconflict deflate, I don't know
the word for that. But you know, like taking these things apart,
that certainly helps me. Because if somebody doesn't want to, I
don't know, sponsor this podcast or you know, my newsletter or
you know, buy my book or whatever it is, I don't see this
as an attack on myself. I see this as somebody's budgeting
choice. All right. And it's all about what they think is good
for their business as a tool at this point. It's not about my
personal likability.
Evelyn J Starr: That's entirely true. And you know, I'm a
writer. And so writers are really used to a lot of
rejection because more often than not, we get a no. And what
you learn over time, is that the no rarely has to do with you. It
often has to do with what's going on in the person's life,
you know, to whom you're making the request. It has to do with
budget strings that are beyond their control, it has to do with
so many things. And I will tell you, there's this great, I'm
gonna I don't know how to pronounce his name, I'm gonna
say Jia Jang. But he did this experiment called 100 Days of
Rejection. And so he tried, he said, I'm going to try and get
rejected 100 days in a row to thicken my skin. And if you
Google or you know, search for 100 Days of Rejection, you'll
find his videos, they're hilarious. And what you see is
he learned, it wasn't about him, it was often about the people.
And a lot of times when he tried to get rejected, he actually got
a yes. And so it's just very entertaining. And it also kind
of helps you get out of the mindset. It's not about you. It
has to do with the circumstances in the moment.
Arvid Kahl: That's probably one of the biggest reasons why
people fear marketing is the moment you talk to other people,
you don't have this kind of clearly defined, I don't know,
programming API that will either tell you a yes or no reliably on
the input that you put there, right? You don't know what's
going to happen. And I think lots of people are afraid of
that moment. So I'm glad that you're kind of teaching people
with this, that it's fine to be rejected or to feel rejection
and it's actually a strengthening moves. It's kind
of what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but put into you
know, interpersonal relationship.
Evelyn J Starr: Well, and then also, you know, if someone says
no, instead of risking that you're gonna go and feel, you
know, like you've shrunk into a tiny, tiny thing. You could also
muster your courage and say, okay, I understand. Could you
tell me why? And when you hear the reasons that will often
defuse your chances of feeling awful because then you see that
it's not you. You know, I don't have the money or corporate just
asked us to cut our budget by 10%. And I can't add anything
new or you know, this doesn't exactly fit my need, but I think
what you're doing is really great, get messages like that.
And it kind of saves you. So if you can muster the courage to
ask why could save yourself a lot of angst.
Arvid Kahl: I like that because when I'm thinking about
validation and all varieties of product validation, market
validation, solution validation, whatever problem validation too,
I'm always reminded of the fact that no theory can ever be
proved. You can only just prove it, right? You can add more
evidence for it to maybe be true, but the counter example
might just be right around the corner. And you never know
because it could always happen. So the only thing you can do to
any theory is to invalidate it. And getting a no and the why
leads to so much closer to a potential invalidation than a
yes. Even though the yes is great for your business. But you
haven't learned anything. The only thing that we've learned is
okay, this is yet another kind of argument for what I'm
currently doing. But the no and the why will give you much
clearer insight into why what you're currently doing may not
be the perfect version of itself just yet. So there is value in
the no maybe even more than in the yes.
Evelyn J Starr: You do learn a lot from those.
Arvid Kahl: Well, yeah, think I'm what I'm glad about in the
indie hacker founder community is that failure isn't demonized.
I think like failing or making mistakes, that's just accepted
as a regular part of doing something that nobody else has
ever done before, right? That's just what entrepreneurship is.
It's like building something that did not exist in this
particular kind of state ever before. Of course, you're gonna
make mistakes might just as well embrace them.
Evelyn J Starr: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And you
need to give yourself the space for that because it's gonna
happen over and over again. And the more resilient you become,
the quicker you can recover and just keep moving forward.
Arvid Kahl: And in terms of personal brands, that is part of
your journey, that's part of the whole that you then present to
the world, right? You trying stuff not working out, but you
persevering, and still building more things that do eventually
work out. Now, that's quite the story, which is why building in
public is such a great thing. I love that. I love watching
people making little mistakes recovering and then coming out
on top, that's just the most enjoyable thing that you could
possibly see.
Evelyn J Starr: And there's a lot of compassion out there, you
know, people relate to because it's so human to fail. Everybody
can relate to it. And so when you share that in public, like,
okay, I put all my resources into this avenue and I hit a
dead end. And so now I'm going to try the other way. People,
you know, feel for you. There's an emotional reaction of
compassion there.
Arvid Kahl: And compassion and just being relatable. That's
just built this relationship, right? That's what connection
needs. I really enjoy them. Well, thank you so much Evelyn,
for sharing all these things. Like that was a wonderful, brand
building masterclass today and I love the fact that it's so
relationship centric because I think we can all just improve
everything around what we do by making it more about building
long term, positive win-win relationships with other people.
So thank you so much for sharing everything you shared. Where can
people find you, find more about you and your work?
Evelyn J Starr: So my website is estarrassociates.com and starr
is spelled with two R's like Ringo. So they can go to my
website to find out more about me, to find out about my book,
Teenage Wastebrand, How Your Brand Can Stop Struggling and
Start Scaling. They can also find that on Amazon or
bookshop.org or anywhere you buy books, you can find it. And then
the other thing is, you know, if you kind of like what I have to
say, but you you know, I'm not ready or to share any funds or
you're building in public and need every penny for what you're
doing. Penny because I'm in the US. I would say you could also
at my websites sign up for my Varsity Marketing Newsletter,
which is only once a month. I don't stuff mailboxes and
includes a brand story every single month.
Arvid Kahl: That's awesome. Yeah, very, very highly
recommended all of this. Thank you so much for being on today.
And I would like to close this with, live long and prosper.
Evelyn J Starr: Live long and prosper.
Arvid Kahl: And that's it for today. Thank you for listening
to The Bootstrapped Founder. You can find me on Twitter
@arvidkahl. You will also find my books and my Twitter course
there. And if you wanna support me and the show, please
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(http://ratethispodcast.com/founder). Any of this will truly help the
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day. Bye bye