Build Your SaaS

Are your SaaS competitors keeping you up at night?

Show Notes

In this episode Jon and Justin discuss talk about how you should think about your software product's competition.

Why you shouldn’t focus on the competition

  • It’s a distraction. The main point by many folks is: “when you focus too much on the competition, it means you’re not focusing enough on your customers.”
  • It causes anxiety.“Last summer, I stopped[reading industry news]. I had just reached the point at which I could feel an unhealthy level of toxicity piling up inside of me. I felt myself getting too involved, too absorbed, and a bit too anxious about what I was missing, and about what I knew or didn't know, but thought I should know. I was checking Twitter too often and reloading sites too often. If someone told me about something I hadn't heard of, I felt like I should have already known about it. Industry news was becoming an addiction.” - Jason Fried
  • It’s too tempting to copy features. “Copying skips understanding. Understanding is how you grow. You have to understand why something works or why something is how it is. When you copy it, you miss that. You just repurpose the last layer instead of understanding all the layers underneath.” – Jason Fried
  • It can lead to feature creep. company A is doing this, company B is doing that, so let’s do them all. also, paralyzing indecision and no real thought about why you’d be building a feature.
“I wouldn’t advocate spending much time worrying about the competition — you really shouldn’t waste attention worrying about things you can’t control — but if it helps make the point relatable, the best way to beat the competition is to last longer than they do.” – Jason Fried

Why you should focus on the competition

  • It’s a way of understanding your customers. You should be aware of why customers are choosing (or not choosing) the competition. 
  • It’s more competitive now. I wrote a post about this.  “It's getting more expensive to build SaaS companies and exits are weak.” Mattermark, 2016. “We're not building these basic CRUD apps like we used to be able to. The stuff's too competitive now.” – Rob Walling. "No one wants to admit it, but the old ‘your product must be 10x better than existing solutions’ trope is dead. I think this is one of the most hostile times for startups that we’ve had, really. Products are better, and competition is enormous." – Zach Holman
  • It’s a way of revealing opportunities. “Everybody's drilling for oil in the same spot because some other guy found oil there already.” – Nick Quah. What’s everyone else missing? Where’s the untapped well?
  • You’re stealing time, attention, and money from somebody, and it’s not always who you think!(Article) When Uber launched, they stole customers from the taxi industry. When the iPhone launched, Apple took customers from Kodak and the film industry.

How to think about the competition

  • SWOT. What are their strengths? What are their weaknesses? What are their opportunities? What are their threats? Do SWOT on yourself too!
  • User interviews. One of the best ways to do user research is to interview folks who are actively using the competition! What brought them to start using it? How’d they find it? What was going on in their life at that time? Why do they keep using it?
  • When people switch. If people switch away from you to a competitor, that’s a great time to ask questions. "The only two people who can give you real feedback about your product are people who just purchased it and people who just canceled.” – Jason Fried
  • Think about how you can outlast them. What are practices you can put in place that will help you outlast the competition? “Whenever a startup goes out of business, the first thing I get curious about are their costs, not their revenues.” – Jason Fried
  • Figure out how you can make things easier.How can you make your app easier to use than the competition?
  • Look for unmet desires. What are the unmet needs of users using competitors’ products? Search Twitter, support forums, etc for instances of people complaining. What are they complaining about?

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Show notes:

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Creators & Guests

Host
Jon Buda
Co-founder of Transistor.fm
Host
Justin Jackson
Co-founder of Transistor.fm
Editor
Chris Enns
Owner of Lemon Productions

What is Build Your SaaS?

Interested in building your own SaaS company? Follow the journey of Transistor.fm as they bootstrap a podcast hosting startup.

Justin:

Alitu.com has sponsored this episode. Again, alitu polishes brands and publishes your podcast automatically. And they've just released a brand new feature where you can record right in the app. So you can upload your normal recording from Skype or your computer, or you can record right in the web app, right in Alitu. It's a great service.

Justin:

Check them out. Alitu, a l I tu.com, and let them know that we sent you.

Jon:

Hey, everyone. Welcome to build your SaaS. This is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in 2019. I'm John Buddha, a software engineer.

Justin:

And I'm Justin Jackson. I'm a product and marketing guy. Follow along as we build transistor dot f m. Good to see you again, John.

Jon:

Alright. You too. You too. It's a sunny sunny cold day in Chicago.

Justin:

Weird. It's sunny and cold here in Vernon, BC as well. Weird.

Jon:

You just get you just get to enjoy the snow.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. We do have snow, but it is blue skies, but chilly. We're hope Yeah. We're hoping to get more snow soon.

Jon:

Nice.

Justin:

Today, I wanna jump right into it. This is this is something I'm testing, jumping writing right into the topic. Because this one came from quite a few people. In particular, this one, I believe, was from my friend. I just wanna double check because I don't wanna yeah.

Justin:

Val Soapy. Soapy? He's, bootstrapping a new SaaS called Claritas. And he wonders, should you worry about the competition? And I I think that's a pretty normal pretty normal thing to worry

Jon:

about. I think that's a good good question to ask yourself.

Justin:

When I was getting ready for the episode, I thought, you know, in the old days, the idea was that you always worried about the competition. Like, if you think about kind of the business in the thirties and the fifties and the sixties and seventies, it was all about cutthroat competition. You were trying to destroy the competition. You were staying up late thinking about the competition. And then, you know, in the nineties and 2000, especially, I think because of thinkers like Jason Fried, but lots of folks in the startup space started to challenge that idea and say, well, maybe you shouldn't worry about the competition.

Justin:

And, I've included a bunch of articles in the show notes, saas dot transistor.fm/42, if you wanna see those. But tons of folks that have said why I don't stress about the competition. Does bootstrapping make you worry about the competition? When should you, you know, there's all these, the same questions.

Jon:

Yeah. Same questions, maybe different answers.

Justin:

Yeah. I mean, I think the conventional wisdom now is saying folks shouldn't worry about the competition. And I don't know about you. Where do you stand on this? Are are you on one side or the other?

Jon:

I'm not. I would say I'm I don't worry about it too much. I think it I still get a certain amount of anxiety about it, I guess. Like, I don't I don't really worry about it in that, like, it keeps me up at night, but I feel like when there's competition that's, like, announcing things or getting massive funding or saying they're working on something really cool that we're not doing Mhmm. I I certainly get a certain amount of anxiety from it.

Jon:

Yeah. And I'm like, oh, what? We should do that. How do we do that? We don't have enough time to do that.

Jon:

We, how do we choose which one to do first if we want?

Justin:

Yeah. Well and so you can identify with what Val is feeling, I think, because he is feeling like, you know, I'm bootstrapping. I'm just a solo founder. And I think he's in the project management space, and he's just feeling like there are some behemoths. There are some Goliaths out there that could crush me.

Jon:

I don't know if this is true for every market space, but it also doesn't seem like competitors these days are necessarily out to crush people.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jon:

Like, maybe within, like, the massive companies, like Amazon and Apple and and, like

Justin:

Oh, yeah.

Jon:

They're all they're all competing, and they're, like

Justin:

Jeff Bezos wants to crush Walmart for sure.

Jon:

Oh, yeah. Well, he wants to crush every business. I just

Justin:

He wants to crush us all.

Jon:

He's kind of ridiculous. But, you know, Apple may not say they are, but, you know, yeah, they're competing with, you know, Samsung and the phone market and all this stuff.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jon:

But I feel like, you know, Internet based companies, like software businesses, I don't know if they're necessarily out to crush people, like, crush their competition. There's also a lot of there's a big audience.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Jon:

So you don't need everyone.

Justin:

Yeah. It's true. It's true. And, actually, this reminds me of this is my friend, Jeffrey Bunn, says, you don't need to crush the competition. That's kind of demoralizing.

Justin:

Instead, ask, where is the untapped well in my current business? How can I zig while my competitor zag? How can I skate to where the puck is going, not where it is? Even more simplified, how can I think for myself? And, yeah, I think that's the yeah.

Justin:

There's folks and in some ways, that is the conventional wisdom now in startups. Like, don't worry about the competition. Just worry about the customer. And I think I fall in between, which is, you know, kind of a cop out. But I I I think there is a a a tension between both of these that, we should consider.

Justin:

And so in this episode, we're going to go through 3 main areas. Why you shouldn't focus on the competition, why you should focus on the competition, and how to think about the competition. So let's just start going through these now. Let's start. Well, let's start.

Justin:

I'll start with number 1 here. So why you shouldn't focus on the competition? 1st, it's a distraction. You know, when you focus too much on the competition, it means you're not focusing enough on the folks who really matter, and those are paying customers. Right?

Jon:

Right. Yeah. You're you're you're, yeah, you are ignoring your business. You're basically focusing your energy on someone else's business, which Yeah. Isn't really

Justin:

What's the point?

Jon:

How does that help?

Justin:

And I think you and I have actually, waffled a little bit on this because we have a a big competitor in our space called Anchor, and they offer free hosting. And, you know, the there is a temptation to go, oh, man. Like, they've got all this funding and they're building all this cool tech and, you know, they're free. When we focus too much on them and they're, like, our competitors, I'm sorry, our customers are already paying us. They've already made a decision to not use Anchor.

Justin:

And in in a lot of ways, it does us a lot more good to figure out, okay, what are the reasons people are choosing us over Anchor? Because that's interesting. Right? I mean, this is kinda like talking shit about your cut your competitors, but whatever. That we there is some stats that show that, you know, they have a lot of new podcasts are happening on Anchor.

Justin:

Podcast host Anchors claims that the number of podcasts carrying ads doubles more. The company has also been keen to point out that they power 40% of all new podcasts. It's estimated that they have 70,000 shows. However, according to recent data analysis seen by Pod News, this is from Pod News, over 93% of anchor shows have already pod faded and haven't had a new episode in the last month.

Jon:

Yeah. I mean, it's not it's not surprising to me. Like, it's free. So you're the barrier to signing up is nothing. You're gonna record one show.

Jon:

Maybe it's you and your friend just talking about whatever or nothing. And and you're gonna be like, well, that was easy. I'm just gonna forget about my account.

Justin:

Yeah. Exactly.

Jon:

I mean, it's yeah. It's a classic, like, free free startup mentality.

Justin:

Startup thing. Yeah. And so Yeah. Does it really do us any good to focus too much on them? Of course not.

Jon:

Yeah. Because we're not yeah. We're not trying to get those customers.

Justin:

Exactly. You mentioned this one already. So why don't you read the next one?

Jon:

Yeah. Causes anxiety. Again, it's it's similar to it's a distraction, I think, in that if you're if you're just worrying about your competition and and how much funding they have and how they have a team of 20 people and they're all they're building 6 features at once. Mhmm. You know, it's, like, crippling.

Jon:

I mean, you could sit there and just worry about it all day

Justin:

Yeah.

Jon:

And be, like, oh, god. We're never gonna catch up.

Justin:

Yeah. And it it gets you focused on the wrong thing. Like, if you're just focused on, oh, we're never going to catch up. That is terrible self talk. Mhmm.

Justin:

Like Jason Cohen says, it's already hard bootstrapping. Don't make it harder on yourself.

Jon:

Yeah. I mean, it it's very similar, I think, in the in the engineering space itself where, you know, personally, I feel like I I get behind on technology and certain, you know, new new, new programming languages or JavaScript or whatever. And, like, yeah, I mean, maybe I'm not up totally up to date, but I can't sit there and worry about it and let it, like, get in the way of me actually getting something done. Yeah. It's like, I'll get to it eventually.

Jon:

Yeah. But but there's so there's so much new stuff that you can't keep up, and same with competition is, like, everyone's doing things at a different pace. And

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. I think the question there is, of course, like, okay. So they've done that. First of all, it doesn't matter.

Jon:

Right.

Justin:

And second of all, if it does matter, what are you going to do about it? Those are the only so if you have made it as a programmer, if you've decided that you were just going to ignore JavaScript at every, you know, at all costs, well and you get anxious that, you know, increasingly, that's like what people are hiring for. You can either change your attitude about JavaScript, or you can do something about it. Like, you got you. Those are your choices.

Justin:

Right? So Right. I think it's just sitting in stress and anxiety doesn't help. I think next up, it's too tempting to copy features. And I love this quote from Jason Freed.

Justin:

I actually have tons just because Jason's thought so much about this. I quoted him like a 100 times in our notes. But he says, copying skips understanding. Understanding is how you grow. You have to understand why something works or why something is how it is.

Justin:

When you copy it, you miss that. You just repurpose the last layer in instead of understanding all the layers underneath. What like, when you hear that, what do you think?

Jon:

Yeah. I I totally agree with that. I mean, it there's so much work and thought involved in coming up with a final feature or product that, yeah, you're just missing out on so much of what it took to get to that point.

Justin:

So much of the insight.

Jon:

Yeah. I think I mentioned this to you earlier that I I just finished reading that creative selection

Gavin:

Okay.

Jon:

Book. It's, like, by Apple

Speaker 4:

Oh, yeah.

Jon:

An Apple engineer Yeah. Who worked, on well, a couple of things. He worked on the team that created Safari and then worked on the, he was basically head of, the keyboard for iOS for the original iPhone.

Justin:

Oh, yeah.

Jon:

Like, typing on a on a touch screen, which, like, had that's a new it's they had to invent this stuff Mhmm. From scratch. Right? And he talks about the entire process of of all these different iterations and prototypes of, like, this keyboard and different ideas and, like, just the amount of work it took to get to the point where it is today or where it was, you know, in 2007

Justin:

Mhmm.

Jon:

Was crazy. Like, people just totally forget that that it you know, you complain about your keyboard and be like, ah, stupid autocorrect, but, like, even getting to that point is just amazing. I mean, it's, like, two and a half years of work.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jon:

Yeah. It's it's very I think it's very very similar. These other companies can just be like, oh, yeah. It's a it's a touch, touch keyboard. Let's just copy it.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah.

Jon:

And see, you know

Justin:

And in some ways, that's why I think Microsoft's recent hardware releases have been so interesting because they've they're actually trying to have an opinion. They're trying to go through that design process themselves instead of just copying or imitating what Apple's done. And so now those Surface Books, you know, there are some things in there that are totally unique to Microsoft, and people like them. And it's a differentiator now. They're not just someone just, you know, doing a a carbon copy of what Apple's done without the understanding that, you know, happens underneath.

Justin:

So, yeah, this is a huge point. And you had added this one here at the end here. What's this about?

Jon:

Yeah. I think it can sometimes lead to, feature creep in your software. So, you know, if you have 4 competitors and they've all done these these amazing cool things, you're trying to, you know, work on the ideas that you've come up with.

Justin:

Mhmm.

Jon:

You're like, well, company's a company a is doing this. Company b is doing that. Let's add this to our list. We need to do that just to compete. Even though, like, your customers may not be even requesting this stuff.

Jon:

They're not necessarily leaving because these other companies have these features, but, like, it's all it's all related to, I think, the anxiety and stuff.

Justin:

Yeah. I think this one's huge.

Jon:

But, like, you know, I I we I think we've fallen victim to this a little bit in our in our project management software. We just sort of, like, throw in ideas, And then it just, I think, can lead to some fairly crippling indecision about, like, what to work on next or, like, starting something and half finishing it. And

Justin:

Yeah. So

Jon:

you never really get anywhere.

Justin:

Well, and think of how uninspiring that is. If you have a real human being that is using and paying for your software, and they're saying, listen, John and Justin, I love what you're doing, but this particular thing here would really help me make progress. And then if you hear it from another person and another person and another person, now you have these group of human beings who you're meaningfully connected to, and they become the inspiration for building that feature. It it's so much more motivating to to work on something like that when you know you're making a difference for some people whose faces you can actually see, as opposed to saying, yeah. Like, I'm just copying someone else.

Jon:

Yeah. You get to choose the feature to work on based on based on the potential success of of your customers as opposed to, like, the fear of your competitors?

Justin:

Yeah. Exactly. It's operating out of fear instead of operating out of something more substantial. Totally. So that's why you shouldn't focus on your competition.

Justin:

Now let's talk about why you should focus on your competition. And we just kind of highlighted this, but number 1, it's a way of understanding your customers. So you should be aware of why customers are choosing or not choosing the competition. It's it there is some, some analysis you can do there. And to just say, well, I'm not I'm not gonna care about that, I think, is a mistake.

Justin:

I think you wanna know, you know, if they chose you know, if someone chooses Anchor over Transistor, I wanna know why. And if it's just because it's free, then I can go, okay. Well, that we're not going to compete on that sense. But if there's something else and you there are many, many people hiring Anchor to do those jobs, and those are jobs that maybe transistor could do, I wanna know about those things.

Jon:

Yeah. Absolutely. And we've, you know, we've seen some of this. We've seen people leave because someone else, some other competitor was doing something that made their lives easier.

Justin:

Yeah. Or or that they aspired to have or they aspired to be. And aspiration is huge. I mean, if if, for sure, GMC is looking at why people are buying Teslas or at least they should be. And if GMC wants to serve a similar customer, then they should be aware of okay.

Justin:

Well, why you know, while they they like Elon Musk. Okay. Well, can we compete on that? Well, maybe not. They, you know, they aspire to have something that's good for the planet.

Justin:

Okay. Well, maybe we should build, the Bolt. Right? So the it I think it's okay to look at these things and go, okay. Why are people, you know, leaving?

Justin:

Why are people choosing the competition over us?

Jon:

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe as a way that even even, sort of figure out, like, common trends in the industry. Maybe, like, people are moving towards these other things because that's a trend and that's but it's it is a useful trend, but something that maybe you didn't necessarily pick up on or didn't foresee.

Justin:

Yeah. Exactly. And who knows? So, like, I think about hip chat versus Slack. And And is there anything that HipChat could have done?

Justin:

Because sometimes you're not getting enough information from your current users and you do need to look outside who's using and paying for your software now and figure out like, okay, why are people hiring Slack now instead of HipChat? What are the kind of underlying emotional needs or desires that we're not tapping into? And, again, maybe you maybe there's nothing HipChat could have done to win, but maybe there was. Maybe there's something they could have done Yeah. Maybe.

Justin:

To counteract that. Right? I I think another reason you should focus on the competition, and I'd be interested in your thoughts

Jon:

on this,

Justin:

but it is more competitive now. And there's all the Rob Walling has said, you know, we're not building these basic cred apps like we used to be able to. The stuff's too competitive now. And Zach Coleman of GitHub fame said, no one wants to admit it, but the old your product must be 10 times better than existing solutions trope is dead. And he goes on to say, I think this is the most hostile time for startups that we've had really.

Justin:

Products are better and competition is enormous.

Jon:

Yeah. I, Yeah. I think there's definitely some truth to that. I mean, this sort of goes back to me talking about how I feel like I'm getting behind in some technology.

Gavin:

Mhmm.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jon:

Yeah. Products are better, and they're more competitive. And that's a lot of that's based on the technology that's being used. Like, even apps on the web are more interactive. They're more, you know, they're better designed.

Jon:

It's because we have years of years of this experience now and years of research.

Justin:

Mhmm. Yeah. The example I used the other day, I can't remember if I used it here, was in skateboarding back in the eighties. I mean, if you could if you could ollie and you could kick flip and you could run a mini ramp, you could be a pro. Right?

Justin:

But now there are hundreds of tricks that even amateurs need to know. Right? Just to just to be even competitive at any sort of baseline. Every single, competitive niche goes through this. At the beginning, you know, you can launch Basecamp, which is basically like a blog.

Justin:

Right? And then, eventually, things get more sophisticated and more complicated, and the baseline that you need to meet to compete is higher. Yeah.

Jon:

I mean, it's I don't know if it's the maturity of the Internet. Although, I don't know. Part of me is, like, at what point does it go sort of, like, reverse back to, like, simple?

Justin:

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I think then you start to get into the the simplicity that is complex. You know?

Justin:

Like, I think Right.

Jon:

It's like, yeah.

Justin:

I think it does get harder. I mean, I'm trying to help my kids with, like, grade 7 math now, and I can't do it because grade 7 math now is like grade 10 math in the nineties. Right?

Jon:

Maybe in Canada.

Justin:

But this is this is the march of of humanity is that as a society, the baseline gets higher and higher. This is just the way it goes. And so I think it it's, disingenuous to say, oh, no. It's just it's just like it used to be. No worries.

Justin:

You know? Simple still wins the day.

Jon:

Yeah. It's absolutely not like it used to be. I mean, simple might still win the day, but I think getting to simple now is more complicated.

Justin:

Mhmm. Yeah. Totally. It's naive to think you shouldn't be at least aware of the competition. And not that you should obsess about it.

Justin:

Not that you should get loose sleep over it, but have an eye on the competition for sure. Right? In the same way that I think, you know, if you were in in sports and you're you're running a race and you're thinking, okay. At the end of the day, what's gonna win me the race is my conditioning, is me, you know, putting into practice, is me focusing on my own journey. But I still need to have an eye on what the competition is doing.

Justin:

That would be ridiculous to show up at a race and not have any I mean, this is the story behind Rocky 1. He wasn't watching. Apollo Creed wasn't watching Rocky, and Rocky was, like, training hard. And so Rocky was taking it serious, and Apollo Creed wasn't. And we know how that ended up.

Justin:

Right?

Jon:

Wait. Didn't he lose in Rocky 1?

Justin:

He he he went the distance. He he he he well, he knocked he knocked Apollo Creed down and go watch Rocky again, everyone.

Jon:

Yeah.

Justin:

Another reason you should focus on the competition is it's a way of revealing opportunities. There's a great podcast newsletter you should you folks should subscribe to called Hot Pod. It's by Nick Qua. I think it's Qua. And he has this line where he says, everybody is drilling for oil in the same spot because some other guy found oil there already.

Justin:

You know, I think there is some if you can see the rest of the industry clustering around a certain area, that might mean there's white space somewhere else where you can go and compete. Right? So asking the question, what's everyone else missing? I mean, we just switched to Clubhouse for project management. What do you think they kinda tapped into that every other people were missing?

Justin:

What was the white space there?

Jon:

I think I'm still trying to put my finger on that. Like, I, I mean, it's well designed. It's not as rigid as we were using Pivotal before. It's not as, it's just, like, more yeah. It's not as rigid in its in its way as, like, it's not set in one it's it's very flexible software, I think.

Jon:

Pivotal is too Pivotal, all these other app, Pivotal, even, like, Basecamp, they're, like, they're almost too opinionated, which for some people is good.

Justin:

Totally.

Jon:

But

Justin:

And I I think there's also for example, you can look at Notion is getting popular, And my friend, Marie Poulin, just wrote this blog post. I'll put it in the show notes where she says, one tool to rule them all, and the intro line kinda says it all. I confess that I've been in productivity limbo for years. You know that awful gray area where you're in between systems and tools, You haven't quite committed to a single one yet. And, and then she lists, like, it's having Asana or Trello alongside half filled half filled paper planners, notebooks, digital to dos.

Justin:

It's hoarding empty notebooks because you're waiting for the perfect time to use one. It's trying out several planners at the same time because you're trying to find the one that works.

Jon:

That's yeah. That's, been there.

Justin:

Yeah. And so that's kind of the white space. Right? It's it's like, okay. If, you know, Asana is really trying to carve out this space, and everyone is going after what Asana is going after.

Justin:

Why don't we go over here where no one's really playing yet, and we'll, you know, we'll do something new in this space. So, yeah, I think there's you you, risk losing or not noticing opportunities when they come up.

Jon:

We're at, you're stealing time, attention, and money from somebody, and it's not always who you think.

Justin:

So I think about this all the time. This comes out of jobs to be done thinking. Because I love thinking about all of the industries that the iPhone disrupted when it came out. And the the one that I think about is how Apple took customers away from Kodak and the film industry.

Jon:

Yeah. I mean, it's absolutely like the number 1 or was number 1 camera digital camera.

Justin:

Oh, yeah. I mean, now probably Samsung is, but the the idea is that the iPhone wasn't just competing with Blackberry when it came out. It was also competing with camera manufacturers. I've even jokingly said it's competing with flashlight manufacturers. Right?

Justin:

Because you don't need a flashlight anymore. It's always with you. There you you're stealing time and attention and money away from somebody, and it's not always who you think. And I think you need to be not just aware of your direct competitors, but also your indirect competitors. The folks at Netflix have famously said, you know, our direct competition isn't just, you know, people doing other ways to watch movies.

Justin:

It's any sort of entertainment. It's any leisure time is competition with Netflix.

Jon:

Yeah. I I saw something recently, and there was they said that they're actually more worried about, whatever video game.

Justin:

Oh, Fortnite.

Jon:

They were more worried about Fortnite than they are HBO.

Justin:

Yes. Yes. And and Which makes sense. Yeah. If they're if they're thinking about that now, and those are smart people running that company, you know there's something there.

Justin:

Right? Yeah. And so I don't know. Can you think of any examples in the podcast industry? Like, who else are we stealing time, attention, and money from?

Jon:

A radio. I mean, at least for listening to podcasts. The radio, I'm I'm sure people listen to podcasts in place of music or reading even. I mean

Justin:

Yeah. Audiobooks is a big competitor for podcasts.

Jon:

Yeah. Yeah.

Justin:

And also if we look at it from our customer standpoint and them just being people that want to get a message out, we have lots of competition. Like, they could do traditional PR. They could do a blog. They could have a YouTube channel. They could you know, there are lots of channels that they could use in, social media, email.

Justin:

Podcasting is just one of the options they can choose. And if we're honest, you know, there are some options on that list that are higher priorities for sure. And so we are competing against those things. We we are trying to prove to folks, like, you know, you should prioritize podcasting because it's the best way to earn an audience's trust. It's the most intimate way to connect with a group of people.

Justin:

It is a different a completely different animal when you compare it to all of the other channels. It has these unique attributes that make it really enticing as a media form. But we're competing with these things. We're saying, you know, maybe you should start with a podcast and then turn that audio into text and make it a blog post, which is something I've been doing a lot lately.

Jon:

Yeah. That's a good that's a good point. Well, I think I think we'll have to think about that a little more for us, even what we're taking attention and time and money away from as as far as, like, working on new things that maybe people aren't doing.

Justin:

Can you can you elaborate on that a bit? Well, I mean, we we've

Jon:

had some short discussions, I think, about podcasting and the audio industry in general as, like, podcasting is part of the audio world. Yeah. And it's still a pretty small part of it. So, like, as a as a podcast host, are we also just an audio platform? Mhmm.

Jon:

More more generally speaking.

Justin:

Yeah. Yeah. If you have audio to distribute it to distribute

Jon:

It's not it's not just I mean, the the framework there is there for other stuff, I think, as well.

Justin:

Yeah. Exactly. I think

Jon:

we've really tapped into that.

Justin:

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. And and and also, I mean, we've seen Mailchimp do this.

Justin:

They started with email, but now, like, they they'll run Facebook ad campaigns for you. They do postcards. What does their homepage say now?

Jon:

Yeah. They're more like, yeah. They're doing something else now.

Justin:

Your business was born for this. Become the brand you want to be with smarter marketing built for big things. What you can do with Mailchimp. I mean, this is so general. This is the nice thing about being a big company.

Justin:

You see, you have the most general copy ever. And it it doesn't,

Jon:

right.

Justin:

What you can do, you can create landing pages, Google remarketing ads, Instagram ads. You know, you can do you can connect it with your ecommerce. You can automate things. You can use it as a CRM. You can use it for AB testing.

Justin:

So people go to Mailchimp for more than just, I gotta send this email newsletter out. Right? They're they're using it for other things. Alright. So now let's go into how you should think about the competition.

Justin:

If you are going to think about the competition, how should you be thinking about it? But before we do, let me give you a quick read for our friends at podcastinsights.com. They have continued to sponsor this show, making sure that Chris ends gets paid, and he can feed his kids. And so we're really thankful for them. And I want you to know that they have this how to start a podcast course.

Justin:

It's free. You're gonna learn all sorts of things. We were just talking about their equipment guide that they have. So many people wanna know how to sound better when they're creating audio. And this course goes through not just the equipment, but the recording and editing process, what software you'll need.

Justin:

And it's completely free. So podcast insights.com. If you do end up talking to anybody there, let them know that we sent you. Here's how to think about the competition. The first is basically the only thing I learned in my 4 year business degree that has any value.

Justin:

And that's the SWOT analysis. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. And, traditionally, people do this on their own business, and I think you should do it on your own business. But you should also do it on your competitors. So what are their strengths?

Justin:

What are their weaknesses? What are their opportunities? And what are their threats? And so, you know, there are some podcast hosting, apps in our space that their strength is they've been around forever. If, you know, they've got tons of backlinks, they've got tons of, you know, they've been on just being around longer on the web often helps in terms of being top of mind.

Justin:

What are their weaknesses? They have terrible user interface. Their, you know, podcast websites are ugly. They haven't kept pace with modern technology. The UI is not intuitive.

Justin:

So these are things that we can go after, especially if we want folks to switch from their platform to ours. Right?

Jon:

Mhmm.

Justin:

So I think this is really helpful. And it's something you can do right now. You can just write, you know, s w o t on a piece of paper. And then on the top line, just have all your competitors and just go through, okay, what's this person's strength? What's this one's strength?

Justin:

What's their weakness? And it'll give you a really nice outline in an afternoon of, you know, some things that maybe you can think about.

Jon:

Mhmm. Place to focus your energy.

Justin:

Yeah. And I think it could also sometimes putting pen to paper reduces anxiety, because now you can see it in front of you. It's not just kinda jumping around in your head. It's actually written out. And, actually, this might be a good technique if you can't sleep one night is just to write this out.

Justin:

Because then you've got something on paper that you can you've kind of expelled from your system. So this is something you and I have talked about for a while. I it's called user interviews is what I've said, how to think about the competition. And, you know, you had mentioned that you talked to some folks, who are using our platform for in different ways that we hadn't considered before. And those conversations are so helpful.

Justin:

Yeah. And so you can't you don't just have to do user interviews on your own customers. You can also do it on people who are using a competing product. So you don't have to be embarrassed if you're at a a meetup or something. And, you know, if someone says, oh, hey.

Justin:

I'm using your competitor. I don't have to be embarrassed about that. That's like a huge opportunity to say

Jon:

Right.

Justin:

You know, what brought you to start using them? How'd you find it?

Jon:

Right.

Justin:

What was going on in your life at the time? Why do you keep using it? What don't you like about it? What could I do that would make you switch? Those are great questions.

Justin:

And, if you have an opportunity to meet with folks that are using the competition, at a conference or whatever, those are the conversations you wanna have.

Jon:

Yeah. So long as you don't go back to trying to copy the features.

Justin:

Yeah. Right? I Yes.

Jon:

You use use that knowledge to, like, come up with come up with a your own kinda way to do something that that's missing.

Justin:

That's right. You wanna you wanna figure out what is the underlying motivation. Where do they want to get to that they can't get to now? Or that you could help them get to better or faster or easier? And this kind of dovetails into the other point, which is, you know, when people switch away from you to a competitor, that's also a great time to ask questions.

Justin:

And you'd mentioned this. We've had this happen a few times already. People have switched from us to a different platform. And again, that's not a time to be embarrassed or to, like, you know, go, aw, well, just or be upset.

Jon:

Yeah.

Justin:

It's a great chance to say, okay. Well, people will often ask what could we have done better? But I think a better better questions to ask are, like, oh, like, what made you switch? What what what are you going there for? How do you think they're gonna be a better why do you think they're a better fit for you?

Justin:

Right.

Jon:

Something something pulled him away.

Justin:

Yeah. And, this is another famous Jason Fried line. He said, the only 2 people who can give you real feedback about your product are people who just purchased it and people who just canceled. Meaning, like, when those moments happen, those are big moments. When you finally sign up for something and take out your credit card and pay for it, that's a big deal.

Justin:

Like, if Clubhouse interviewed us about our decision to switch from Pivotal to Clubhouse, we were essentially going from, like, a free product. I don't know if you're you were paying for Pivotal before, but No. So free to paid. Like, this is a big deal for us.

Jon:

Yeah. It is.

Justin:

And so what forced you and if they went through that interview with us, they would hear, you know, Justin was unhappy with Pivotal. It was just too messy. It was just too it wasn't inspiring to go in there and wanna work on things. We just needed something different. And they would and, you know, what factors motivated the change?

Justin:

Like for me, the big one was hearing you and Mike talk about it in Portland. Yeah. That's what motivated me. I was like, woah. Okay.

Justin:

Well, what am I missing? Like, if you guys enjoy it so much, then and Mike especially was like, oh, I love it. Like, it's changed everything. Well, that instantly made me feel like, well, what am I missing out on?

Jon:

You know? Yeah. It's like yeah. That one in particular was one of those ones where you're like, you don't really you can't really nail it down. It's just like a feeling you have almost.

Justin:

Yeah.

Jon:

Oh, man. This thing is but when you think about it longer, you can definitely come up with some some reasons.

Justin:

They don't all have to be practical reasons either. They could just be emotional. And so Clubhouse could tap into that emotion, which could be like, do you just feel bogged down in your current software? If you do, come to where it's fresh. We've got this fresh new app and people like it.

Justin:

And, you know, like, it might just be a feeling that you tap into, but identifying it is the important part. Another way to think about the competition is figuring out how you can make things easier. How can you make your app easier to use than the competition? What do you think about this one?

Jon:

Yeah. I mean, I think some of it is competitive analysis sort of, like using their product and or even talking to folks who use it. Yeah. I

Justin:

think I I wanted you to say that because it's a little bit, a little bit controversial. I think, personally, it is okay to use your the competition's product. Now, obviously, you gotta be careful. You don't wanna copy things. Right.

Justin:

Right? Yep. For all the reasons we just mentioned. But it's okay to go and use something and go, oh, wow. Like, this is this is what's hard about this.

Justin:

One thing I've I've felt a lot is, like, you sign up for a product and you just want that first win. And, you know, you're you're going through the onboarding, and then you you hit a wall where it's like, oh, I don't I can't move forward until I do a bunch of other steps, and it just overwhelmed.

Jon:

Or what what is the next step?

Justin:

Yeah.

Jon:

Yeah.

Justin:

And so it's okay. Like, go and use the competitors products. Go and use other apps that are outside of your industry too and just notice those things that make things difficult and then aspire to make things easier for your customers. And finally, I think we've already kinda said this, but look for unmet desires. So if you search Twitter support forums, a lot of companies support forums are public and you can like go there and see what people are complaining about.

Justin:

You know, those are great insights. And if people are kind of in a very natural way complaining, like, oh, I just can't stand this. That's a great opportunity.

Jon:

Right. I I would pay I'd pay a 100 I'd pay 10 times the price for something that did this. Yes. Like, oh, well

Justin:

And people complain about that stuff all the time on Twitter.

Jon:

Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. It's the Internet. People complain. That's most of it.

Gavin:

Right? I

Justin:

also love how you can get so much context. So, like, if someone's complaining on Twitter, not only can you read that tweet and think, oh, that's interesting. But then you can dig into their other tweets and see what kind of person they are and decide whether you should listen to them or not. You know? There's a lot of, like, interesting qualitative information you can get from doing this kind of thing.

Justin:

So, yeah, I think I think that's basically it. If you folks have ideas on, you know, whether you should look at the competition or whether you should not or how you think about the competition. Reach out to us on Twitter at transistorfm or John is at John Buddha and I am at m I justin. The letter m, letter I, Justin. What else do we need?

Justin:

Oh, we're gonna we got a lot of feedback last episode about how to pronounce Worcestershire Worcestershire sauce.

Jon:

Although we have it spelled here.

Justin:

Well, maybe actually

Jon:

Well, I there's I don't know. There's multiple spelling.

Justin:

Worcestershire. Worcestershire. Confused. And, I I just think that now every episode, we should have different people from the UK pronouncing, Worcestershire. So here we have Colin.

Speaker 4:

Hey, guys. You were asking on the last episode, how to pronounce, Worcester sauce. And that's how you pronounce it, Worcester sauce. There's another Cester Shires, don't worry. Although we do spell things really weird in the UK, so I understand the confusion.

Speaker 4:

But anyway, that's how you do it. Worcestersauce.

Justin:

And here we have Greg.

Jon:

So this is how you correctly pronounce Worcestershire. Worcestershire.

Justin:

And that's how they pronounce Worcestershire. Yeah. I think that's hilarious. John, why don't you take us out with our Patreons?

Jon:

Yeah. Thanks to thanks as always to our Patreon supporters. You know, you're helping helping fund this show and pay for our wonderful editing Mhmm. By Chris. We have Colin Gray, atalitoo.com.

Jon:

We got Darby Frey, Samori Augusto, Dave Young, Brad from Canada, Kevin Markham, Sammy Schuckert Schuckert?

Justin:

It's German. Schuckert. I don't know. I don't know if that's how you say it, but I I that's that's how I think you say it.

Jon:

Maybe the t is silent. I don't know. Brand Shouter. That's not a real name, is it?

Justin:

No. He's he's getting his he's getting his name in there. That's a company name. Well done. That's called native advertising.

Jon:

Yeah. That's great. Mike Walker, Adam Devander, Dave Junta.

Justin:

Junta.

Jon:

Junta, and podcast insights dot com. Thanks again, everyone.

Justin:

Thanks again, everyone. We will see you next week.