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Telling the stories of startup founders and creators and their unique journey. Each episode features actionable tips, practical advice and inspirational insight.
Greg Moran (00:02.172)
Welcome back to the Founders Journey podcast. Greg Moran, I'm your host with our co-host, Peter Dean. What's up, Peter?
Peter Dean (00:12.411)
Hey guys, how's it going?
Greg Moran (00:14.452)
Good, good. We are three days from Thanksgiving, so I wore my festive holiday sweater here. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, this is gonna be a fun episode for a lot of reasons as we go through this today, but our guest today is Jason Ferrara. Jason is the CEO of Full Circle Insights.
Jason (00:20.517)
That's very festive.
Greg Moran (00:40.788)
who really help marketers solve their attribution problem. And we're going to let him explain that in a minute or two. But Peter and I, we joke all the time that some of the hardest podcasts to do are when we actually know the person really well that we're interviewing. And we know Jason really well. Jason and I have worked together for a long time and as our CMO and...
Jason (01:03.726)
Yep. Yeah, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Fun to be back talking to both of you. Yeah.
Greg Moran (01:09.38)
in one of our last companies together. So nobody knows more about marketing and high growth companies than Jason does. So Jason, welcome. Welcome to podcast.
Greg Moran (01:24.824)
Absolutely, absolutely. And before we go on, the beard is like a work of art.
Jason (01:30.286)
Yeah. I've had a beard for a long time, so that's not new.
Greg Moran (01:38.856)
Yeah, but this is like a man beard. It's like a legit man beard.
Jason (01:41.422)
Yeah. It is, it is all, it is. My barber is the one. My barber is the one who keeps slowly grooming it longer. You know, every time she cuts a little bit less and that then it's, then it's, I look like Billy Gibbons.
Peter Dean (01:43.371)
What are you thinking his beard was like before, Greg?
Greg Moran (01:46.725)
No, his beard was fine!
Peter Dean (01:54.857)
Nice.
Peter Dean (02:01.655)
hahaha
Greg Moran (02:03.812)
I love it. Well, Jason, describe what Full Circle Insights does, because we're going to kind of get into kind of a broader discussion today of, we titled this Startup Marketing Bootcamp. But before we get into that, explain a little bit about what Full Circle Insights does, because I'm not sure people may not know what marketing attribution is and things like that.
Jason (02:16.257)
Sure.
Jason (02:20.111)
Yeah.
Jason (02:23.438)
Sure. Yeah. So thanks. So yeah, the way I talk about Full Circle Insights is as a marketer, you're constantly sitting around fielding questions like, how's our marketing working? What's the ROI? Where are all the people in the funnel? And the reality is most marketers don't know the answer to that question. And so it's really this uncomfortable moment. It's uncomfortable for the person asking the question. It's uncomfortable for the marketer who's answering that question.
You know, people hate that, right? They get that question. They don't know how to answer it. They go back to their team. Everybody's arguing. Everybody's bummed out because they don't know the answer. And the way I talk about full circle insights is we help marketers finally get that answer, right? We're a Salesforce native. So all the data that we're using is sales and marketing data that the company already has. We take it. We put it through a data management process. We apply attribution models to it and really help somebody understand. All right.
What am I doing that's having an impact on closed deals? What am I doing that's having an impact on conversion throughout our funnel? And it is, with our clients, it is so rewarding for them to see that and say, oh, I finally have that information. And it seems trivial, but it's not, because this is a problem, and you guys know as well as I do, this is a problem that's been going on, you know.
for over a century. I mean, this is like a big problem. I can't prove which where my marketing is having an impact. So that's what we do with Walter Cone Sites to help people understand that.
Greg Moran (03:57.665)
It's the old marketing adage, right? 80% of your marketing doesn't work, but you just don't know what 80% it is, right? Right?
Jason (04:01.558)
Yeah, exactly. It's a hundred percent. That's it's a hundred percent of that. Yes, exactly. And, um, yeah, it really is that. And it's, and it's very frustrating for marketers and, and it's, you know, it's frustrating for the CFO and it's frustrating for the CRO and it's frustrating for the CEO and like it. It's frustrating for the marketing ops people who are supposed to be responsible for that. So, um, it's really, it's really neat. It's really neat, uh, business and, uh, and a cool crowd.
Greg Moran (04:30.196)
Very cool, very cool. So let's jump into kind of the earlier stage, founder world, where you're kind of at the sort of, let's call it zero to maybe five million in revenue, right? What are the biggest mistakes that you see startups make when they're actually trying to begin to market either the product or the company? What are the biggest things to see them doing?
Jason (04:37.644)
Yep.
Jason (04:45.162)
Okay.
Jason (04:55.044)
Yeah.
Jason (04:58.806)
So, I've read, I recently read this, the Elon Musk book, right? The Walter Isaacson book. And, and he, Elon Musk keeps going back to these first principles of the business. And, you know, regardless of what you think about Elon Musk, he at least has this framework that's like, here are the first principles, we apply them everywhere we go and good outcomes happen. And where I see a lot of mistakes are with that set of first principles. So it's, you know, stuff as basic as who are we? How do we explain?
what we do seems so fundamental and for a founder who's between zero and five million, maybe they've done that and maybe they haven't. So that's to get your team together. Like clearly, what is our strategy? Who do we sell to? What do we do? Why do we do that? What does it look like when you've got winners? Like who are the winners when they use our product? What are the losers look like? You really want to get this clear picture of who those people are. So I think...
I mean, strategy is number one, absolutely. The second piece of that, I think is some combination of hiring and spending too quickly and then hiring and spending not quickly enough. So there's a balance there. Um, you know, you can buy ads and experiment a lot in a pretty flexible framework. I mean, I don't think you're going to make all your money off Google ads, but.
It's a great place to experiment and a great place to get information. Um, and that's a little bit more forgiving than hiring team members because, you know, people have emotions and it's hard to hire someone and then hard to let them go if you don't need them. Um, so I would say you got to spend a little bit to understand, understand that market and, and probably hold back on hiring until a little bit, until you're a little bit more uncomfortable than you thought you'd be and then find somebody.
And then that person who you hire, I think, you know, they need to be better than you are at that job. And I think that's hard as a founder because you think that you're good at every job because you're doing all the jobs. But you also know where your strengths lie. And that should be the key as a founder. I know where my strengths are. I know where my weaknesses are. I'm going to hire to really buttress those weaknesses. So you got to hire somebody who's a better writer, a better...
Jason (07:27.334)
Analyst, a better demand gen person, right? Just a better all around marketer, a better web builder, whatever it is. Hire people that are better than you.
Greg Moran (07:39.134)
Yep.
Peter Dean (07:40.378)
Yeah, so back to the first part of the question. I know this is a technical term, but I think most, maybe not all, but a lot of founders understand the concept of ideal customer profile. But is that kind of what you're getting at in the beginning, like really try to figure out what the starting place for that is, or is that?
Jason (07:52.078)
Mm-hmm.
Jason (07:59.354)
I think so. It's tough because, I mean, yes, you need to know who you're selling to and what that person ideally looks like. And there's a lot of customer information that you probably have or sales information that you have that you can start tearing apart looking at the people that bought, what was their path like, who did we talk to, and begin to build that ideal customer profile there. But there's also, you have to have
Peter Dean (08:13.362)
Mm-hmm.
Jason (08:25.994)
You have to go in with your eyes wide open too, because you may be selling to people that you don't think are ideal, right? You want to, you want to be selling someone else, but you're actually getting money out of a person you didn't think was your ideal customer. So you have to be willing to accept that analysis and say, here's where we're selling today and here's where we want to sell tomorrow. So what's the market today look like and what's the tomorrow market look like? Maybe they're the same, maybe they're not, but you have to be willing to have that conversation.
Peter Dean (08:34.047)
Mm-hmm.
Peter Dean (08:41.886)
Good point.
Peter Dean (08:52.283)
Mm-hmm.
Peter Dean (08:56.99)
That's.
Greg Moran (08:58.116)
It's so interesting. I just, within the past few days, had a conversation with one of our portfolio companies about this. When startups begin, you have this assumption about who our customer base is. This particular startup, amazing company, great couple of founders, goes out, they start running Google ads, they start testing the market, and suddenly the data starts coming back of where they're getting interest from.
totally different than where they expected to see. Soon the question becomes, I mean, the market's not wrong, right? But you can get yourself, I think, in a real bind by not listening to that customer information that's coming back to you.
Jason (09:29.023)
Yeah, it's all different. Yeah.
Jason (09:37.8)
Right.
Peter Dean (09:38.833)
Really?
Jason (09:49.45)
Yeah, I feel like there isn't enough that the marketers don't talk about current customer information enough. They don't talk about customer marketing enough. That's where all your information really is. And I try to make people that aren't my businesses say, this is prospect. Don't call it prospect to customer, right? Because customers, clients, that that's their own category and you have to go in and look at that data.
You can also look at prospect data. You can go look at search data and things like that. But that customer data is so important. And sometimes it's not programmatic data. You can go into Salesforce and look at it or whatever CRM system you're using. Sometimes you just have to pick up the phone and talk to the customer like, why did you choose us? Who did you look at? What do we do for you? Why do we do that for you? Where can we do better? Would you tell your friends and what would you say if you told your friends about this?
All that information is super rich in figuring out what keywords to use when you're buying ads or figuring out what your general strategy is. Maybe you thought your strategy, again, was over here, but you look and all your clients are buying it for a different reason. So that customer data, it's a gold. It's just absolute gold.
Greg Moran (11:08.148)
So where do you, if you're just beginning, right? You're in those early stages, you're really trying to figure out is my product, you know, do I have product market fit? Or, you know, I'm starting to market, maybe I'm not getting the same, the traction I want to. Do I have product market fit? Or do I have a marketing problem? How do you decipher between those two things?
Jason (11:32.838)
Yeah. Yeah, it is tricky because it's sometimes hard to believe the data that you see because you want it to be something that it may not be and so you have to like, okay, I got to believe data rather than believe myself. You know, I look at it again.
Greg Moran (11:39.789)
Right.
Peter Dean (11:41.927)
Mm-hmm.
Jason (11:51.566)
talking to your existing customers. So I'm making an assumption in this conversation that the company we're talking about has some customers to go to and talk to, right? And if it's a product-led growth type situation, there's so much experimentation you can do to figure out where the product fits into the market, right? And so if you've got customers, start talking to them. If it's a more enterprisey sort of hands-on sale,
Peter Dean (11:58.494)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (11:58.705)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Peter Dean (12:01.48)
Yeah.
Jason (12:21.042)
If it's a freemium model, product-led growth kind of thing, there are just, it's like lots of experimentation in short bursts to try to understand. You can test your marketing and you can test your product. I mean, I think those are two key ways to do it. You've got to get your team on board with those short bursts of activity. So the team has to be able to be willing to say,
a week of doing this, then we'll test it for a week, then we'll change it. Right? Um, that, that really has to be a part. I know that's not part of marketing. That's more of a company leadership thing, but that's gotta happen. Like people need to be on board with this idea of product market fit or marketing problem. Um, I would all go ahead. Go ahead.
Peter Dean (13:10.058)
And you mean like going through that, you mean like going through the process of like not falling in love with what you're doing all the time because it could be something that you're not doing later, like doing something totally different. That's really interesting because when you think about it, people are like, hey, I'm here to do this. And they get excited about it. But really, they're here to experiment when you're that early. Right.
Jason (13:35.114)
Yeah, it took me a long time, like, I mean, maybe more than 10 years of my career to not fall in love with things that I did. And once I stopped falling in love with the things I did is when it was much more, well, frankly, it was much more fun to do marketing, because then you're experimenting and you're like, I don't, I mean, I care what it says.
Peter Dean (14:01.863)
Yes.
Jason (14:02.562)
But just get something out there so people can react to it, right? And then have somebody else react to it. Have somebody else on your team say something, try something, put, put a bunch of words into a hat, pull them out and put a sentence together and try it. Like it's a little more scientific than that, but that's the spirit with which you have to approach the opportunity.
Peter Dean (14:05.223)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (14:17.07)
Yeah. I think you hit a thing that I see a lot, which is such a stuff that we've talked about, but it's when people are like this paralysis of what this perfect thing needs to be like before they execute it and, and then it's executed and then everyone's emotional, upset about it to your point, like just, just start doing something. Right. Isn't that.
Jason (14:43.946)
Yeah, you got to start. I was at a startup and we basically built a new product for a vertical that didn't really need the product. And we spent tons of time marketing this thing and having no success. It was this conversation. Is it the market? Is it the product? I mean, the product worked.
Greg Moran (15:09.244)
Mm-hmm.
Jason (15:13.002)
You know, we could test it. We, like, it's like the product wasn't broken. Just nobody in that particular vertical cared to spend the money and cared to solve the problem that it was solving. And it was really hard to see through that because the push was grow, grow this one product. And finally, we got down to like, okay, after it was probably a year that we just, all of us were just driving so hard.
Peter Dean (15:25.194)
Mm-hmm.
Jason (15:44.182)
just stopped because we had been kind of beaten by that market. Rather than, here is a really simple product that we could test very quickly and just give it to as many people as we could and see how it was used. Would have been, even just with no marketing at all, would have told us more about that market than all the keywords you could have gotten. Just the conversation with them all.
Peter Dean (16:08.635)
Yeah.
Jason (16:13.418)
Tremendous lesson to learn, hard lesson to learn, but super important.
Peter Dean (16:17.85)
Yeah, I think.
Greg Moran (16:20.684)
Yeah. You see it all the time in the startup world, right? Where you're pushing that rock up the hill every single day and you're trying to fight this market resistance that's actually working against you. And I think one of the things that's really interesting, and I know you've been in successful earlier stage companies that went on to be much larger companies. You've been in once in that scenario where it may not have worked out the way you wanted it to. And we all, all three of us certainly have.
Jason (16:46.376)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (16:49.104)
There is a market momentum that is there, right? It's always there. That market momentum is either coming at your face, or it's pushing you, right? And I think that's one of the things that's so hard to try to...
Jason (16:55.327)
Yeah.
Jason (17:02.323)
Yeah, yeah.
Greg Moran (17:10.879)
try to talk to a founder about to say, man, if this is really that hard.
Peter Dean (17:13.826)
Yeah.
Jason (17:19.195)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (17:19.3)
It's there's something the market is actually speaking to you, right? And that's the and again, there's always these scenarios where you see like, you know, you're out there screaming from the rooftops and suddenly, for whatever reason, it takes hold. But the really rare right. And I think your advice of just get your product in the hands of as many people as you can within what you believe to be your target market and just start collecting information. Right. Is so important.
Jason (17:33.353)
Yeah. Because you know, absolutely. Because there are, if you get the right customer, you give it to the right customer and they use it and have great things to say.
there are lots more like that customer out there who will pay you. So I think that's the other concern is like, well, wait, I can't give away my product without making money because I got to make some money because I got a business I'm running and all that. But you know, there are more people out there who are willing to pay. It's to give it to some people for free or you know, whatever your version of free is. Um, we'll just, you'll get so much good data with so much good data.
Greg Moran (18:18.11)
Right.
Peter Dean (18:19.432)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (18:23.1)
Yeah, man, it is one of those things that makes me just want to smash my head against the wall repeatedly, right? When I talk to a founder who gets so wrapped up around pricing, right? Well, I can't sell it's too cheap. Nobody's going to value my product. No, actually, no one's going to know your product exists unless you get it out there and start collecting real data. Stop worrying about optimizing on those early customers.
Jason (18:37.802)
Mm-hmm.
Jason (18:47.019)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (18:51.603)
Mm-hmm.
Greg Moran (18:52.188)
around price, right? Or even having the perfect message or anything like that. Get it into the market.
Jason (18:56.894)
Yeah. Pricing is pricing is an excuse for a lot of inactivity and, you know, because you're like, I don't have the ideal price. Well, I don't know that any product has the ideal price just based on how many prices change and how much there is to do. I mean, at an enterprise level that the discount thing is insane. Right. And, and so,
Peter Dean (18:59.634)
Yeah.
Jason (19:25.45)
I don't think anybody's got it right, which is okay. It's just the faster you can learn, the better off we are.
Greg Moran (19:31.913)
Yep, absolutely.
Peter Dean (19:32.878)
Yeah. And just another note, when Jason was talking about, um, just getting it in the hands of customers, but also the messaging, I know you said at the end, but it's an important thing. Like you can learn really fast with messaging too. I mean, instead of getting that paralysis of what should we say, what, how do we say it? And then, then thinking that's the problem, like how we're saying it is wrong. Just saying something is right. Right. And then you learn from there. And
Jason (19:56.179)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (20:02.48)
They'll give you feedback too. You're gonna get feedback on that.
Jason (20:05.787)
That's right. And I, you know, I think, I think that most founders, so there's, there's a difference between saying something eloquently and then saying something that's wrong and most founders are probably not saying something that's wrong. Like I'm the way I'm describing my product is not correct. It doesn't, it probably factually accurate. It may be, it could be said in a more exciting way.
Peter Dean (20:22.28)
Right.
Jason (20:31.826)
And those are the words that are in the mouth of your customer. So you write down what you think you do and maybe you love it, maybe you don't, but you give it to people and they will say it out loud and then they'll say something back to you that maybe is rephrasing that or in the course of the conversation, they'll give you a little word phrase like, Oh, that's what I mean. That's what I mean. And so you can pick those things up and then test them.
Right? All that stuff is testable with, with keywords and, um, search terms, like all the, all those things, all those words are out there being used. So it's just the order in which you're going to use them and you can, you can find those things out.
Greg Moran (21:15.42)
So this question's for both of you guys, right? Because again, we're talking about Jason as being one of the best marketers out there when it comes to tech, and Peter is as well. And I've had the ability to, right, yeah. I mean, I've had the ability to work with both of these guys for a long time. That's right. So to just kind of drill down on what you just said, Jason, this question's for both of you guys. How do you test? Like,
Peter Dean (21:27.402)
We've worked together many times.
Jason (21:29.682)
Yes, we have.
Peter Dean (21:31.442)
We've made mistakes together that we know better. At least a little better.
Jason (21:35.095)
You're right.
Greg Moran (21:45.024)
Tactically speaking, if you're a founder, you're trying to still kind of establish product market fit. You're trying to really understand where's the market for this. How do you specifically test?
Peter Dean (21:57.99)
I'm going to T up Jason for this answer, right? Cause if you're able to measure outcomes in different love, not just like simply, right? The more detail and again, early stage may not be able to be ready for this level of detail, but just trying to measure as much as you can, right? Around an email performance. Did this email do better than that email? And what's the headline? What is the, what did the landing page look like? And there's all these metrics you can get.
through Google Analytics, through all these tools that give you some feedback, right? And so when we get into who you're hiring in that process, like you need someone that understands some of this so that you can get that data back and then share it, right? And say, hey, I don't know why, but this piece of content is producing a lot of revenue for us. I'm not sure why. It doesn't matter. Like you just start learning what actually works. But again,
Jason (22:56.955)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (22:57.202)
What Jason's doing now is super important to really understanding what's actually happening.
Jason (23:04.238)
Yeah, you know, and I will address that Peter, because I think you're right. I mean, you have to be able to measure as much as you can. I just had a board meeting the other day and I gave so much data that the feedback was like, okay, wait, that's actually a little bit too much. Let's talk about what's important here. I'm like, okay, yeah, I get a little excited about sharing everything I had. But I think Peter, Greg, the first thing that I would do in answer to your question.
Peter Dean (23:09.107)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (23:21.626)
I'm confused.
Greg Moran (23:26.1)
Hahaha
Peter Dean (23:26.89)
Hahaha
Jason (23:34.638)
And I did this with Full Circle Insights when I got to Full Circle Insights. I sat down and pretty much for an entire day started Googling marketing attribution and everything that hung off of marketing attribution and just read and I got a whole page of notes just full with ideas and thoughts and things like that to understand what the collective voice
was saying about that topic. And that then went into my mixing bowl as I was thinking about, okay, how do I explain what it is that we do? And little phrases came out. So that's like a very tactical sit down to my computer and start doing that kind of thing. And then Peter's talking about something that's more advanced but as important, which is, I would bring it down to like the...
Peter Dean (24:05.895)
Mm-hmm.
Jason (24:33.422)
level of, I have this customer, when did they close and how can I track their path back up through the funnel and see what they did and who they talked to and what those notes were. Because I think that that's, and that's what you were teeing up for me, Peter, which is Full Circle Insights has that capability to find a close one or a close loss and track it back through the funnel.
But again, there's so much rich data in there. It's like, not just how they came into the business, but what happened their third, fourth, fifth steps in. Because if they're B2B buyers, their third, fourth, fifth steps in, we're not even talking to a rep yet. They were still out knocking around the internet, looking for stuff, coming to your website, looking for stuff.
Greg Moran (25:18.256)
Yeah. You know, I, one of the, one of the, uh, I think most impactful things that I ever did in my previous business, which all three of us were working together on back in the really early days of outmatched before it was even outmatched. It was checked.com is that
that mapping process, right? And Peter is the one who brought me through this. Like the two of us kind of sat down one day and he said, okay, like, let's just look at, you know, we probably had five customers, 10 customers at the time, right? And let's just look at what they did every single step. And this was totally manual that they went through. And what we came down to was this kind of discovery, right? Today, you know, you look at it and say, well, that was the big discovery that you guys came up with.
Jason (25:52.878)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (26:11.304)
I mean, the answer was yes, it was really big, which was we never closed a deal when there weren't more than three people involved in the buying process. And we lost in our data and we lost every single deal where there wasn't a minimum of three. That was it. That was the insight. Right.
Jason (26:14.67)
Yep.
Peter Dean (26:23.162)
in our data.
Jason (26:26.478)
Yeah, but I mean, so important.
Peter Dean (26:30.638)
And then the first thing Greg said was, show me all our open deals right now. So we went and tried to get that data. And there is a rep sitting next to us who was convinced that he was going to close this deal and Greg said, I'll bet you a steak dinner, you don't close it. Cause the data tells us you won't. And you can imagine what happened.
Jason (26:38.67)
Right. Right.
Greg Moran (26:41.173)
Great!
Jason (26:51.31)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (26:54.556)
Right. But that's right. Yeah. He still owes me steak dinner somewhere. Somewhere he's listening to this and I'm going to come collecting at one point. The but that's it right. It's those little insights that you can gain that you don't you know this doesn't have to be just you know super technical and it doesn't have to be hard.
Jason (26:59.598)
Exactly.
Peter Dean (26:59.794)
Hahaha!
Jason (27:05.39)
Exactly.
Jason (27:20.686)
Right.
Greg Moran (27:21.452)
Like you said, Jason, I mean, you and Peter has said this to me a thousand times. Like, number one, understand who your customer is and then test that. Right. Number two, just come up with a message and start talking about it and just see what happens. Right. And then start collecting some data. And this can be like you just said. I mean, here's a, here's a top flight marketer sitting here saying, what did you do on the first day, you know, on your first day of being a CEO? I started Googling attribution and writing notes on a piece of paper.
Jason (27:31.278)
Yeah.
Jason (27:47.598)
Well, and that, right. And what in the process you just described going through with Peter in the early days of check is now today called account-based marketing. And account-based marketing is a really expensive concept. And it is software heavy. And it is, and that's not all bad, right? I mean, it's...
Greg Moran (27:51.855)
I mean, it doesn't have to be hard, right?
Greg Moran (28:10.515)
Right.
Jason (28:17.23)
These are hard problems to solve, okay? And they do require some technology and money and all of that, but account-based marketing is a mindset. I'm selling deals, who's in them? Multiple people? Oh my gosh, okay, I now have a committee. Okay, let's go back into all our prospects. How many people are in that, as contacts in that account? Or how many leads do we have in that company?
And that's where you started with the, with the steak dinner idea is like, okay, well, if you don't have multiple contexts, it's not happening. And it is, and you have to get good at that kind of thinking because that's where you learn everything. I mean, again, the business side that I just left when I came to full circle, we, we spent a lot of money on account-based marketing and we didn't do it wrong, but it wasn't super successful for us.
Because we didn't answer the fundamental questions first, we just sort of jumped in with like, ah, that piece of software can solve our problem. Like I got sucked into that. You know, and so you can't, you have to like, what problem am I solving? What is my strategy? Who am I selling to? Are these really the people that are buying from me? Yeah, and Google it all right at that. I mean, like, that's the process.
Greg Moran (29:24.817)
Right.
Peter Dean (29:39.09)
It's yeah, Jason's saying just talking, going back to the fundamentals, like be, be diligent about those and then you can find success. Otherwise, you just have a bunch of tacking a bunch of things and you're like doing a bunch of stuff and nothing's coming out. Right.
Greg Moran (29:39.86)
Yep.
Jason (29:50.286)
when I was 10. Right.
Jason (29:55.662)
I was talking to the team the other day, we had an all company meeting and I was talking to the team the other day and I just felt like there are things that are just fundamental to how we do business. And that's why like go watch a high school basketball practice. It's boring because it's boring because they just drill the whole time. It's just all about fundamentals and that's what's winning the game for them in the end. And that's the same concept. Like that's what we're doing here. You know, who are we is like a first principle.
of the business. You've got to go back to that all the time. So that's that fundamental conversation.
Peter Dean (30:31.018)
That's really good advice.
Greg Moran (30:31.208)
So where, yeah, absolutely. Where do you start? And I think this is, and I ask that question because I think it's hard sometimes to figure out if you're just kind of getting going or you're at an early stage, do you start branding your business? Do you start with demand gen? Sort of where do you?
Jason (30:43.246)
Yeah.
Yeah. I developed this theory when I was working with you, Greg. And it was you start with demand generation because demand generation activities will end up being a
Greg Moran (30:58.693)
Once you think you've got this kind of a, you've got sort of a working assumption around your market and your message and stuff.
Jason (31:21.294)
notifying your brand will end up becoming part of your brand. But infrequently, will your brand activities drive a lot of demand? Right? So you need to drive, if you think you've got it, what that means is you need to test whether other people understand it. And so you need to drive them into the business and you need to see who's coming in and who's responding to those messages. And that's, to me, I would refer to that as demand generation. If you start with
Peter Dean (31:49.47)
Mm-hmm.
Jason (31:51.182)
big brand messaging that is not tied to a call to action, you won't know that anybody's seeing that message and responding to it. So I would start with demand generation. Now, that's still a pretty big umbrella. So then within demand generation, what do you do next, what do you do next, what do you do next, what do you do next? And where I would start are the things that drive people in with a relative.
Peter Dean (32:02.984)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (32:08.328)
Yeah, for sure.
Peter Dean (32:09.158)
It is.
Jason (32:20.27)
high level of frequency because then you can see who those people are like I said and you can start understanding how they're responding to your messages.
Greg Moran (32:28.668)
Yep.
Peter Dean (32:29.89)
I would, I'd agree. I think you're right. Um, especially early stage, I, many, many years ago, when I started doing this as an agency, I had a. Individual come to me and say, they're going to sponsor a NASCAR event. And they did as a startup and they're not here anymore. Um,
Jason (32:46.894)
Yeah.
Jason (32:51.534)
I'm surprised they got through the one year of sponsorship.
Peter Dean (32:52.772)
That didn't work.
Greg Moran (32:54.446)
That is so...
Peter Dean (32:56.85)
It was like a race sponsorship. That's, that was their entire budget. It's gone. You can only imagine what that costs, but they had so much visibility very quickly. And for one day, one day. Yeah.
Jason (33:02.734)
Listen, I can tell you that. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I, I look, I was at, I was at, when I was at career builder, we looked at a NASCAR sponsorship, right? I mean, why not? This is a consumer brand essentially, like get that name out and it's, it's a long logo, so we fit on the side of a car really nicely. Um, and, and just, we, we never did it.
Greg Moran (33:09.18)
Right.
Peter Dean (33:20.327)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (33:21.342)
Right.
Peter Dean (33:26.13)
Ha ha ha!
Jason (33:31.086)
because it was just too expensive. Like even as a relatively big company that could afford that sort of thing, we looked at it and said, well, what's the alternate use of this money? And the alternate use of that money was more target, I swear to God, more targeted demand gen stuff for B2B marketing. And it was like, okay, well, let's do that. And it was better.
Peter Dean (33:33.47)
Did it make sense?
Yeah.
Greg Moran (33:50.656)
Right. It's boring. It's sure.
Peter Dean (33:52.282)
Yeah. Is that how you actually got your budget? By saying, hey, we can do this NASCAR, or we don't, and I'll do all this. And now I got my budget I wanted.
Jason (33:59.47)
Say no to NASCAR. Yeah. Totally.
Greg Moran (34:02.046)
You
Greg Moran (34:05.332)
But I mean, it's boring as hell, right? Like, you know, it's way more fun to sponsor a NASCAR, you know, car than it is, you know, to go do more blocking and tackling demand gen. But you see it, and I think there's a shift, right? As you start to see the market, the venture capital markets are a lot softer now than they were, you're gonna, companies are gonna have to start doing a lot more with less fundamentals are gonna be a lot more important. They're not gonna.
Jason (34:22.126)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (34:32.36)
You're not going to see as many companies really overfunded where boring is really going to be what's most important. Right. Boring and narrowing and narrowing and narrowing a market, not trying to go out to this mass is more important than ever.
Jason (34:45.422)
Right. Well, and this, and boring gets back to, okay, then when you're ready to hire people and you want to hire people that are better than you at this, the people that are better than you at demand gen marketing and B2B branding and all of that, do not think that topic is boring. Like, they, they jump into it and they're like, I love spending my time on that. I love solving that problem. I can be a...
30 second video that everybody thinks is so boring, but let me tell you what, the three people that watch this, they're gonna call us. You know, and like that's the other lesson is like, where do you start? Okay, well, when you start hiring people for that, they've gotta be the people who think that that stuff's the most exciting stuff in the world.
Greg Moran (35:20.52)
That's right.
Greg Moran (35:33.608)
Yeah, yep.
Peter Dean (35:34.618)
Yeah, it's a good segue. Who do you hire first? I know it's situational. We kind of talked about that before. But how do you solve who to hire for? And it obviously depends on the founder. But if you're a technical product founder, an engineer, you could be kind of lost in that. So what are some things I should think about for hiring?
Jason (35:41.486)
Thank you.
Jason (36:02.574)
Yeah, again, I go back to the go to market piece of it. So what is your go to market strategy? And do you have, if you already have a flow of people finding you, then maybe the right thing to do is hire a marketer who can do more demand gen so that your sales team has more people to talk to. Because they probably don't have enough people to talk to, right? So you're probably not gonna hire another.
Peter Dean (36:21.79)
Mm-hmm.
Jason (36:30.67)
salesperson on top of that until they're full. So then I would look at a demand gen marketer to do that sort of thing. And your early stage demand gen marketers are going to need to be people who can do multiple things. They have to understand the technical nature of it because if they get lost and they break something that's a collection of technology put together, that's a huge can of worms. And they have to be able to write a sentence.
so they're a little bit more Jack of all trades type person. I would err on the side there.
Greg Moran (37:01.344)
Yeah
Peter Dean (37:04.02)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (37:06.08)
Do you still need to write a sentence with chat GPT? Do you still actually need to write a sentence?
Jason (37:11.598)
I think you do. I think you do because I did. It's funny because I did. I did. I recently had an ex I use chat GPT for for something the other day and it made me laugh out loud. Like I'm like, it's not bad, but it is not at all what I expected or what anybody would expect. So, you know, I, I think
Greg Moran (37:13.916)
I'm sorry.
Greg Moran (37:32.437)
Run!
Jason (37:37.518)
With chat, you know, the interesting thing about chat GPT is I think it's a really effective first draft thing and then like to just kind of get it all moving. Um, but I, you know, I'm, I'm a good writer and I don't feel like I need them.
Peter Dean (37:42.962)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Peter Dean (37:51.066)
If you can't write a sentence, if you can't write a sentence, how can you know if that is actually good or not? And that's your job, right? So I think you kinda need to know a little bit about that.
Greg Moran (37:54.218)
Yeah.
Jason (37:58.478)
Yeah, exactly.
Greg Moran (38:05.02)
Yeah. So, so this is for both of you guys. So you, you just, you use the term like a jack of all trades to man gen. What does that mean? Like if I'm, if I'm a founder, what's my job description look like for this person? Because what you're talking about, you're talking about more of a doer here than you are like a CMO or something. Okay. So what's the job description for that person? What are the things, what are the, what are the five bullet points I want to be looking for?
Peter Dean (38:11.892)
Mm-hmm.
Jason (38:12.302)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jason (38:21.582)
Yeah, no, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Peter Dean (38:22.665)
Oh, big time, yeah.
Peter Dean (38:27.582)
That's the first one is what you just said. Cause I know, I don't know if I know a doer, like someone that actually wants to do the work, right? Because I know we've, I don't know if we've overlapped on people like this, but I definitely seen people that got hired that wanted to tell people what to do, but didn't really want to do it. And I'm like, there's no one here but you, like you're it. So you kind of pick what you do and then.
Greg Moran (38:32.564)
What's that? Not a CMO?
Jason (38:36.238)
Action. Activity.
Peter Dean (38:56.754)
We'll do the other stuff and then help you out. But that's, I think, number one. They have to be rated, do really interested in doing stuff and like curious in that way.
Jason (39:09.97)
Yeah, I think that the word I used is action. Like you need someone who is willing to actively get their hands dirty in the business. Well, a hundred percent. And that's why I think a lot of early stage companies are loaded up with engineering talent because engineers are like, yeah, I can solve that problem.
Peter Dean (39:31.538)
Yeah, they just do it.
Jason (39:32.27)
They're very positive about my ability to solve that problem. So that I think number one, um, number two, you've got to understand the typical marketing tech stack. So you really like, you have to know how to use this, whatever CRM system you want to use. You have to know how to use that. You have to understand how to connect different pieces of technology with different pieces of technology, um, and how to do the research to figure that out, because there, there aren't, there aren't a lot of people who have those answers and just kind of have.
So that technical angle, you've got to want to be technical like that and kind of get lost in there a little bit to really understand it. The third thing I had is you've got to have somebody who understands search. And that is SEO, that is paid advertising, that is search behavior, that is everything that's encompassed on how do I...
Google Analytics, like all of that stuff, I kind of put that all in that search category because that's where you're gonna find all the information. And then someone who's analytical. And I think that might go into the technology piece of it, but you gotta have somebody who's analytical, who's able to say, I want to find the answer and then use that answer to bring my solution to life.
Greg Moran (40:31.005)
Yep.
Peter Dean (40:54.194)
It's interesting because Jason described that more technical person. And then would you say like at that early stage for the creative stuff or someone like you're probably doing it as a group, but also like any actual ad creative or web creative web dev all, I know it's a technical person, but actually making it makes sense is the creative piece. Do you go outside for that or when would you hire for that?
Jason (41:20.974)
Yeah, I, um, it's funny, Greg, that you mentioned chat GPT. So I don't know that I would use that to solve that creative problem, but I, what, yeah, but, but, okay. But there are a lot of ways to do that. Right. And the ways that, so at that size of a company, when I did that before, we had a little team of people that I kind of handpicked because I knew that they were literate, you know, like get in a room and let's talk about this. And, and that's where a lot of creative came from.
Greg Moran (41:31.074)
Yeah, I was actually kidding by the way. Yeah.
Peter Dean (41:35.335)
Yeah.
Jason (41:50.99)
Um, there are, you know, there are within my team is the first place I went outside, not like agency outside, but freelance outside is probably the next place I'd go. And then I'd look at the outside just because those are the, you know, yeah, yeah, like the most expensive to least expensive kind of alternatives. And if you're a startup, you're looking for the least expensive. Um,
Peter Dean (41:52.946)
So within your team, within that company, yeah, yeah.
Peter Dean (42:01.114)
Right. Yeah. Yep.
Peter Dean (42:06.986)
Costco up increment.
Greg Moran (42:09.777)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (42:11.271)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (42:14.57)
And there's really good town out there that you could get that maybe want to just do a few hours here and there. Want to keep their foot in the game. You know, there's a lot of people home with families and that, you know, and they want more of that flexibility. So it's not a bad thing right now to find some good town.
Jason (42:20.366)
Yeah, for sure. For sure.
Greg Moran (42:34.068)
Would you guys say, at least, and I'm asking this question from experiences that I've had, right? Would you guys say that it's easy to over-index on that creative side versus the analytical side? Because you look at where companies often hire, right? And there's this kind of prototypical marketer, you know? And it's not, but what you guys are really describing is it's actually a highly technical data analyst in a lot of ways.
Peter Dean (42:47.847)
Yeah.
Jason (43:01.358)
Yeah, I agree. I think that that data person, now I do think, I do think that marketers have changed even in the last 10 years. I mean, in my career, certainly marketers have changed. They were communications people. Now they're analytical data people. I mean, that's really how that has changed. And, and the value and the money is on that analytical side of things.
Peter Dean (43:01.659)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (43:24.144)
Yeah.
Jason (43:28.686)
I think more so than the communications side of things in general. Now, you know, there are lots of people at Coca-Cola who would disagree and agree and like, but that's, I think, where the tide has shifted.
Peter Dean (43:38.787)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jason (43:45.934)
Yeah, I think that's where I'd stop that comment. Ha ha ha.
Peter Dean (43:47.418)
I would say, so yeah, so to that point, like what Jason said is really interesting because he brought up Coca-Cola. So we've had a customer that we sold to Salesforce. Like the business got sold to Salesforce, we were part of it. We were still working with Salesforce. They looked at everything we did and they're like, you can't do any of this. Like the marketer for an early stage company is very different than a marketer for a big
Greg Moran (43:49.801)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (44:17.578)
built brand that's in market for a long time. And so just like the founder is a unique person, you need marketers that have been in that environment that can work with less and be resourceful and know, hey, I would love to do that, but we're just doing this and understand that, you know, one of the things we've told customers for a long time is like, you look at your website and you're upset with it and you think it kind of looks
Jason (44:18.446)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Peter Dean (44:47.838)
Dented and rusty and old and but we can race that around the track pretty well. We can get customers with it, right? So you have to have this comfort level that it's not perfect, but we're winning you could win with it right and you could win with something maybe not as perfect as What coca-cola can have right and the coolness that they can do because they have the time and the resources to do that so I think that's a big thing and that the kind of what Jason's
was talking about like is like, you know, use what you've got and you can still win, right? You can still win. You don't need to have this big creative agency come tell you how to say what you're saying. They're only going to do that based on the data that you tell them, right? That's what it's based on, right? So.
Jason (45:35.214)
Yeah. And that's, I mean, I would even now having just thinking through the examples of marketing, big and small companies, I now just am drawing almost every campaign I can think of back to the data, like even the moves that giant companies like Coca-Cola are making. It's all based on data. Even the moves that, that I'm talking about today with, um, just understanding some of the things that happened last week.
Peter Dean (45:56.125)
Yeah.
Jason (46:04.014)
I've got a list that I'm comparing to another list, right? It's all just based in that data. So like every thing I'm thinking of in terms of the context of marketing is all rooted in, rooted in the dataset somewhere.
Peter Dean (46:15.242)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely.
Greg Moran (46:15.996)
Mm hmm. Yep. So in our in our last couple of minutes, just to kind of sort of pull the all the pieces together, because you guys, I mean, both of you guys hit on a ton of the, you know, on a ton of pieces, I think that are incredibly important for startup. Just kind of summarize this for us. Like if you're a founder, we called this, you know, we titled this startup marketing boot camp. Just give me the three or four things.
You're a founder. Here's what you need to go do right now if you're struggling in this area.
Jason (46:54.446)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (46:54.918)
Start with the ICP, right? Start with figuring out your customers, right?
Jason (46:56.974)
Yeah, I would say number one is strategy. Who are you? Who are your customers? Who's buying from you? Two is start testing. Get comfortable with the process of testing. So that's the ideation and then the action to begin to run tests. And then based on the testing of that.
Greg Moran (47:06.022)
Mm-hmm.
Jason (47:25.614)
strategy into the market, your next phase is really a demand generation phase and like focus, focus there. So your test is going to produce a direction. That's your demand generation direction until you get to a point where it says, oh, got a test again, got a test again. So those are the, I would say those are the three pieces that I would look at.
Peter Dean (47:39.218)
Mm-hmm.
Peter Dean (47:49.122)
Absolutely. Totally.
Greg Moran (47:49.672)
Yep. So and then and see what you learn and go back to step one, right? I mean, if you're not seeing if you're not seeing the results, maybe you've got the wrong market. Maybe you're just talking about in a way that nobody understands. Right. Test again. Run through the same steps again. Right.
Jason (47:55.694)
Yeah.
Peter Dean (48:08.666)
Yeah, and then what Jason said earlier, the one thing I'd add is talk, if you have customers, talk to them. Like don't avoid them, get them to help you. Like Jason said, tell them what you think and then see how they react to it and they're gonna tell you, they're the ones that actually put the money out to buy your stuff. So out of your market, they actually believed you, so.
Jason (48:08.974)
That's exactly right.
Greg Moran (48:32.476)
You know, I would go back, Peter, you and I were talking about this earlier today. I would actually add one thing to that, right? Which is not only your customers, because in the very beginning, you may not have a lot of customers, right? But it's the win-loss reviews, right? It's the losses too. It's amazing to me, I've actually had this experience very recently. It's amazing to me how much information, companies who don't choose you.
Jason (48:43.534)
Right, right.
Peter Dean (48:51.109)
Thank you.
Greg Moran (49:01.276)
will actually give you, right? To pick up the phone and say, hey, I'm Greg, I'm the CEO of this company. It's totally cool that you did. I'm not gonna try to convince you to change your decision. I absolutely respect your decision. Can you just help me learn what didn't resonate? What was it? Was there anything that confused you? Was there anything?
Jason (49:01.902)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah.
Greg Moran (49:29.188)
You know, when you look at kind of one solution for another, where did we fall short? It is amazing. I've often gotten more info, because there's like this little guilt factor, right? That actually works for you. I've often gotten more information. They do, and it's amazing. People will say, look, you know, here's what didn't connect for me. Here's what I was really confused about, right? And, you know, it could become really powerful information. Building that muscle of the win-loss review to get real data.
Peter Dean (49:39.598)
Yeah, well they want to help you.
Jason (49:40.078)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (49:58.12)
from real prospects or customers to say, here's what I bought, here's what I didn't buy. I think it becomes, it's either can really work for you. And because a lot of the, you know, just the reality of these things, you know, you're going to, even if you've got a great close rate, you're still losing 80%, right? That 80% is an incredible data source for it.
Jason (50:07.278)
Well, we talked about not falling in love with the things you create, the marketing that you create, being objective about that. Win-Loss Review, especially Loss Review, is exactly that. You have to be open to someone telling you that the thing you created did not meet their needs.
Peter Dean (50:15.188)
Yeah.
Jason (50:37.006)
And when a founder or anybody in your company is able to do that and learn from that, that to me is what being a business executive is about. I've taken that emotional level out of it to learn so that I can make positive change as we move forward in the business. It's just so powerful once you can rise above the emotional.
Greg Moran (50:37.022)
Right.
Jason (51:04.878)
and ask the question, get real responses to that question. So powerful.
Greg Moran (51:09.668)
Absolutely, absolutely. Well.
Peter Dean (51:10.506)
I think you nailed it. I think that's the best advice. Especially if you're a founder, you get so emotional about it. You built this thing, right? You have to let yourself go far from that to learn. That's the best advice we had today.
Greg Moran (51:26.972)
Yep. Love it. Well, it's a great place to, uh, that's a great place to end it. Jason, where can people find you if they want information on full circle insights or, uh, or if they, oh yeah, no, we, yeah, no, we actually, we should. Right. Peter and I will actually, Peter and I will pay for the Uber rides to Jason's house if you're, and just.
Jason (51:31.438)
Yeah. I put my home address on here. That's fine. People call me.
Peter Dean (51:37.146)
I have his home address, we'll just put it on there.
Peter Dean (51:42.029)
We can just share that.
I'm out.
Yeah. Want to talk to them anytime. Yeah. Just bring bourbon. Make sure you have some bourbon with you and it may work out. It's possible.
Jason (51:53.358)
That works. You can. Right.
Greg Moran (51:55.578)
Hahaha!
Greg Moran (52:00.658)
You can meet Jason at your nearest Jamba Juice. He'll be there.
Jason (52:00.782)
You can... That's right, I'm there. I'm there ordering extra supplements in my juice.
Peter Dean (52:05.165)
his favorite place.
Peter Dean (52:09.308)
Hahaha
Jason (52:13.646)
Oh boy.
Peter Dean (52:16.883)
That is not a question we're asking.
Greg Moran (52:18.167)
All right, quick, where do people reach you before this turns into a disaster?
Jason (52:23.342)
Yeah, you can email me at the world's longest email address, jason.ferrara at fullcircleinsights.com. You could find me on LinkedIn. And let's see, you can go to fullcircleinsights.com and send a contact. You could go to my website, jasonleighferrara.com, and we can talk about books and concerts and fun stuff like that.
Greg Moran (52:47.024)
Awesome. All right. Well, this is this is great. Enormously, I think, helpful information if you're if you're early. Actually, you know, I think at any stage, just going back to the fundamentals is so important. So so this is great. Jason Peter also, like I said, these two, I've had the ability to work with both of these two for a long time now and the two best that there is out there. So it's great to it's great to be able to get them on one podcast together
Jason (53:01.294)
Yeah.
Jason (53:12.43)
I'm not sure that I swore once.
Greg Moran (53:17.256)
get it back and forth going. So and this was much cleaner than I really expected this to be. No, no, and this is no, no. And normally, Peter and I get criticized because there's so much profanity, unneeded profanity in our podcasts, really, I mean, they just turn into just non stop f bombs. But for
Peter Dean (53:27.262)
There is no swearing in this episode.
Jason (53:29.838)
I don't understand that.
Jason (53:34.926)
Hahaha!
Peter Dean (53:38.65)
Apple re-rated us. We're in a special section of podcasts.
Jason (53:44.686)
Yeah.
Greg Moran (53:45.204)
no reason whatsoever. Like it's not even for effect. It's we'll, we'll insert a lot of profanity and editing. Jason, thanks so much for being with us. Great. We'll see you on the next episode of the Founders Journey podcast.
Jason (53:47.214)
We're bringing this one back.
Jason (53:53.774)
Excellent. Thanks, Greg. Thanks, Peter. Thanks.
Peter Dean (53:55.654)
in the