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This week you'll hear from Patrick Mackenzie (Patio11 on the internet), an influential member of the self-funded, bootstrapping community, as well as a high profile member of Hacker News. Patrick is a great guest: he's a great storyteller, and is always completely himself. (He does some great voice impressions too) Our topic was: how to market yourself, make connections, and promote that app, SaaS, or other product you've just built. Notable quotes: "I like to play League of Legends. The vast majority of people will never make a living off League of Legends. If you want to build your business on something like LoL, that's probably not the best things." - Patio11 "Self-promotion is not accepted by the community at every watering hole on the internet. Hacker News is a bit of an anomaly, because Hacker News is a community who are making or starting businesses." - Patio11 "I haven't submitted my stuff to Hacker News in years. I'm also really careful about what I publish. Before I publish a blog post, I ask: 'Is this post worthy of being in the top 5 of Hacker News?'" - Patio11 "The Hacker News launch is like a mini version of the Techcrunch launch. But I wouldn't bet the success of my business based on whether or not it gets to the top of Hacker News." - Patio11 "My first internet business launched to a total of 76 people the first day. You can build your reputation organically, by building awesome things over time." - Patio11 Show notes Patrick's email list Patrick's blog Patrick's book on conversion optimization Appointment ReminderA note from Justin: A big thanks to Patrick for being on the show! Cheers, Justin Jackson @mijustinPS: I'm writing a new book right now called Marketing for Developers. Click here to sign-up for updates (and get a sample PDF).
Show Notes
This week you’ll hear from Patrick Mackenzie (Patio11 on the internet), an influential member of the self-funded, bootstrapping community, as well as a high profile member of Hacker News. Patrick is a great guest: he’s a great storyteller, and is always completely himself. (He does some great voice impressions too)
Our topic was: how to market yourself, make connections, and promote that app, SaaS, or other product you’ve just built.
Notable quotes:
“I like to play League of Legends. The vast majority of people will never make a living off League of Legends. If you want to build your business on something like LoL, that’s probably not the best things.” – Patio11
“Self-promotion is not accepted by the community at every watering hole on the internet. Hacker News is a bit of an anomaly, because Hacker News is a community who are making or starting businesses.” – Patio11
“I haven’t submitted my stuff to Hacker News in years. I’m also really careful about what I publish. Before I publish a blog post, I ask: ‘Is this post worthy of being in the top 5 of Hacker News?'” – Patio11
“The Hacker News launch is like a mini version of the Techcrunch launch. But I wouldn’t bet the success of my business based on whether or not it gets to the top of Hacker News.” – Patio11
“My first internet business launched to a total of 76 people the first day. You can build your reputation organically, by building awesome things over time.” – Patio11
Show notes
A note from Justin:
A big thanks to Patrick for being on the show!
Cheers,
Justin Jackson
@mijustin
PS: I’m writing a new book right now called Marketing for Developers. Click here to sign-up for updates (and get a sample PDF).
Creators and Guests
What is Product People?
A podcast focused on great products and the people who make them
Alright. Here we go.
Speaker 2:Do you want to build and launch your own product? Justin Jackson here, and you're listening to Product People. I've gone out and found the world's best founders, developers, designers, anyone who's built and launched their own thing. I invite them to chat with me and then share those insights with you. Wanna get the full video interview?
Speaker 2:You need to be a JFDI member. Go to jfdi.bz and join the community of Product People listeners. This week, you'll hear from Patty eleven, an influential member of the self funded bootstrapping community as well as a high profile member of Hacker News. He's going to teach you how to market yourself, make connections, and promote that app, SaaS, or other product you've just built. Talking about marketing, I'm writing a book right now called Marketing for Developers.
Speaker 2:If that sounds like something you need, go to justinjackson.ca/marketingfordevelopers. Alright. Enough chitchat. Let's get to the audio version of my interview with Patty o eleven.
Speaker 1:Hi. Hi. Hi, from Justin's JFDI community. Nice to see you, everybody. And Yeah.
Speaker 1:Also, hi, hi, to the folks who are listening to this not live, but via recording.
Speaker 3:Yes. So I'm here with Patrick McKenzie, also known as Patio11 on the internet. I think you actually have one of the strongest personal brands because everyone Patio11 is kind of a it's a it's a weird moniker, right? But people know who you are.
Speaker 1:It's weird. It's kind of stuck with me, and it's almost totally a direct reflection of how the Hacker News software is set up. Yeah. If they ask you for a username when you start out and it doesn't display your real name by it. There's other forums where they'll put your real name that you put in your display field, and then parentheses username that you use to log in.
Speaker 1:Other forums I was on prior to that, everybody knew me by my real name, but Hacker News only displays your Nick, right? I just ended up as my Nick. And despite the fact that my username or sorry, not my username. My real name is not exactly a secret on Hacker News or anything since day one it's been in my profile. Yep.
Speaker 1:Lots of people call me Patio eleven, including in real life. So after a couple years of that, I was like, alright, I'll run with it. Whatever.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, that's the thing. Like, you meet up in real life, people just know you and think of you as Patio eleven.
Speaker 1:Can I tell you a funny true story?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I'd love to hear it.
Speaker 1:I was walking around, this has happened to me twice now, once in Mountain View, California and once in San Francisco, California. I was just walking around going about my business, and somebody came up to me on the street and asked, excuse me, are you patio 11? And I thought, ah. And the thing that came out, because my brain was kind of vapor locked, was, yes, but you realize this is kind of weird, right? And I didn't mean it to sound that brusque, like Surely it should've been.
Speaker 1:Oh, hello fellow checky. Yes, I am indeed that guy. My name is Patrick. It's nice to meet you. Yeah.
Speaker 1:But my, you know, the whole fight or flight reflex was going through my brain, like am I going to get stabbed because he's a bit coin fan and knows I hate that with a burning passion or yada yada. It turned out to be totally okay. He was just a just another startup founder in San Francisco, but Yeah.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's funny. Hey, what on the subject of hacker news, what how do you feel about hacker news these days? I I remember last time we chatted you'd said that every Yeah. Forum has its peak and maybe hacker news is is past its prime.
Speaker 1:So, obviously, since I'm still there almost every day, I kind of it has a place in my heart for a bunch of reasons. I do notice that when I open threads these days, like my expectation of there will be lots of high quality comments here and very little else has declined markedly, particularly on certain topics.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:If you care about which topics those are, I can tell you, but that's outside the scope of this particular thought. So, like, these days, I open a hacker news thread and expect there to be a lot of, like, one line comments from people who are not giving the issue a whole lot of considered thinking. Yeah. Whereas three years ago, I would expect lots of two to three paragraph comments from folks who would say things like, I actually developed a system at issue, and blah blah blah, or I worked in this for twenty years. I'm not sure that the blog post is exactly on point with regards to the architecture issues at play here.
Speaker 1:Let me give you some background. Yeah. Yeah. But the the so good news, bad news. The bad news is there's a lot of like one line Reddit esque stuff and hacker news, kill this blog, lols.
Speaker 1:But the good news is that some some portion of the thread is often people who, oh, yeah. I have been a patent lawyer for the last twenty years. Here's the issue at at stake in the case, so I I can't quit it.
Speaker 3:It's still
Speaker 1:too useful.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Not
Speaker 1:that I would want to quit it aside from like Lent or something, how's for me.
Speaker 3:How's it changed, like, I I know that it's always kind of how can I basically, how's it changed now that people know that it drives a lot of traffic?
Speaker 1:That's a good question. So I like Hacker News. I like much of the community on Hacker News. I also make and sell software for a living, and I'm peripherally aware as for working with other people who make and sell software, exactly what the value of being on the front page of Hacker News for a day is for several companies. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:We tell you that if your primary concern is traffic generation or selling software, that being on top of Hacker News is not a priority for you in life.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And we will just throw that out there. Now, if for some reason, you know, getting 50,000 page views makes or break whether you have a good week or a bad week, then, yeah, that's a you know, being on the front page of Hacker News is a wonderful thing, and you should arrange to have that happen every week if possible. But very few businesses that I work with are described by that set of circumstances.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I actually know a couple of businesses who would prefer if like, if there was a button they could push and never get listed on Hacker News again, they would do it.
Speaker 3:Why is why is that?
Speaker 1:So people's, like, the way they go about valuing things is different. Right? Like, let's say you I know he said it publicly. Okay. I'll he said it publicly on Twitter, I'll mention, you know, DHH has said he wishes his blog post would never be on hacker news again because he thinks the comments they get are stupid.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And, you know, DHH, obviously, he's a he's doing pretty well for himself with that whole base camp thing and pretty much got the money issue solved. He's racing around sports cars and having a lot of fun doing it, so getting a lot of trollish comments on Hacker News is like a negative thing that happens to him for no possible upside, and he wishes that would never happen.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, I can kind of sympathize with that. Like, I do get a little, like, knot of dread in my stomach when anything I write gets to the top of it. If it's happy comments, then I'm happy. And if there's bad comments on it, even if they're balanced out 20 to one by good comments, then as a creator, that always I don't wanna say you only remember the bad trollish comment, but it does sort of have disproportionate weight. So, yeah.
Speaker 1:How did I get on that topic? But yeah, so Yeah. There's how it is.
Speaker 3:Well, there's a few different places I wanna go here. One is, I think we both know a few people, because this is a good segue into talking about maybe personality based businesses and just like stand alone businesses. We were talking before we started that you actually have both. You have a well known personality. I would say like the Patio eleven brand is conversion optimization.
Speaker 3:You've got a little book out about conversion optimization. You have a video course. You may have done some other kind of live events around that. So kind of things around the PattiO11 brand that people kind of know, conference speaking, etcetera. And then on the other hand, have appointment reminder, which a lot of people probably don't even realize is yours.
Speaker 3:And, you know, could literally I could I could start running it and it wouldn't matter in terms of, like, personality. Right?
Speaker 1:Right. So I've got, as of a week ago when I sent my last email, it was a convenient number so I remember it, there were 10,111 people, so all ones and zeros. I kind of like that number. People on the email list. They all know who I am and have some vague idea of what I stand for and what they wanna get out of being in a relationship with me.
Speaker 1:And I apologize in advance to everybody in the video who's going, personality marketing is totally BS. I don't love the term personal branding either, but be that as it may, there are some people who have an expectation of stuff that I know and am good at that they would like to learn from me, so they decide to be on my email list or follow me on Twitter or pay attention when my stuff shows up on Hacker News. So, anyhow, that disclaimer out of the way. So those 10,000 people know who I am. I also have ballpark it at several thousand people who have paid me money.
Speaker 1:Most for, you know, bingo card creator or appointment reminder or something else. And I'm listed on the website somewhere. Like, if you go to the About Us page, there's my smiling mug there and a little brief bio about Patrick. But I guarantee you that of the seven or 8,000 people who have bought Bingo Card Creator, the vast majority of them could not tell you, okay, if I gave you $500 right now for telling for telling me the first name of the guy who made that Bingo thing that you used, what is it? Like, I would probably have to pay out $500, maybe a little more than that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But, you know, not all that well known. Yeah. So this is an example. And so I sign the emails that go out for these businesses under my own name, but they're, from the customer's perspective, they don't have a really, you know, deep appreciation of who I am or where I'm where I'm coming from or my story or anything.
Speaker 1:I'm just, you know, a person that they do business with, like they do business with many other people. Like, you know, you might do business with the guy who runs the laundry shop. But very few people who, like, go in every day, see the guy at the laundry shop, say, you know, you exchange pleasantries, and you get your laundry, and he does good laundry, and that's, like, kind of the extent of your relationship with him. Right? Where people will, like, you know, if I'm speaking at a conference or something, people will come up and talk to me as if we've been friends for years, because they kind of feel that, you know, from reading all my stuff, they have a, like, a read on me, and maybe we've talked over email a bunch, and, we know each other, right?
Speaker 1:And to an extent we do know each other, and then sometimes the level I actually know them is different than the level that they think they know me at, which can be interesting kind of Yeah. It's an interesting relationship kind of thing when you have a one to 10,000 or one to 100,000 kind of relationship with folks. I think folks who are several orders of magnitude more famous than me probably have a different take on that. But, yeah, funny stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Definitely have a have a business where, you know, folks interact with you directly and expect your personal interaction to be kind of key to that business relationship. And then you can have businesses where people do not expect the same deal of personalization within that interaction with the business. Even if, you know, the size of the business is still one, all of your interaction with the business is definitionally definitionally with the business owner. Yeah. But you're not really like relying on that for one of the types.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And so here's to kind of circle back to Hacker I know quite a few people that have started have gotten their start through Hacker News. And it was things like Nathan Barry and his books. A lot of his initial traction and list growth came from Hacker News. Brennan Dunn, a lot of his initial traction.
Speaker 3:And they all end up hating it in the future partly because it's difficult to maintain that traction. It's like, kind of like gambling, like pulling the lever on a lotto machine and hoping that something comes up. But it does seem like, especially for people starting out and for me, maybe people starting out just as a single person, it is helpful. Do you think that's the case? Like is it and maybe what I'm asking is, is that a good place to start if you're just starting a product business, is to start something around your own expertise and then go out to whatever forums there are, whether it's Hacker News or, you know, a knitting forum Mhmm.
Speaker 3:And building your initial audience there.
Speaker 1:Oh, that is a that's a core core of a question, and it like, there's multiple facets to answer the question with. Right? Okay. Like, it's complicated. Is business is building a business around one of your expertise is a good thing?
Speaker 1:In general, yes. As long as that expertise is, like, reasonably commercializable. Like, I love to do many things. And I'm very blessed by the fact that programming computers, making software, selling software is actually commercially lucrative. I also like to play League of Legends, despite the fact that there are there are, you know, 10 or a 100 or whatever people who make a living doing League of Legends.
Speaker 1:Like, there's a million people who think that they are just, you know, one day away of, like, YouTubing and streaming for making a living doing League of Legends, and the vast majority of them are wrong. Right? Like, league of legends is not a commercial activity for anybody who has not Riot Games or for the vast majority of anybody who not Riot Games. So, you know, if you wanna build your business on top of knitting, I might wave a red flag and say, that is probably not the highest and best use of your time. But, you know, if you're a programmer and you're thinking, okay, of the universe of possible things I could build, should I be building for other programmers or businesses who can consume software or that sort of thing?
Speaker 1:Or should I, you know, work on something that I have no pre existing knowledge or passion for? Then working on something that you do have pre existing knowledge or passion for has a lot to recommend it. Mhmm. Now let's talk about the community aspect. Yep.
Speaker 1:So let's say that there are some watering holes that we know of where the audience for the kind of thing that we're building hangs out. If you're a programmer, your audience hangs out in Hacker News. If think of a commercial niche that is not related to programming, that should not be hard, and yet I'm vapor locking at 1AM in the morning. HIPAA Consulting. So HIPAA is American health legislation that I have to work with and work some time.
Speaker 1:Let's say you're not a programmer, you happen to know a lot about health privacy legislation and how it interacts with the operations of hospitals and you want to go into consulting for that. So people who care about that are typically hospitals or somebody else who has, you know, a care like, some, interface with the health health industry, and they, you know, they don't wanna be sued into oblivion by the federal government. So they must have a watering hole somewhere. Right? Because everybody well, not everybody, but lots of people are online in a lot of different, varieties.
Speaker 1:You can even find there's actually a form, and it's fascinating for people who run banks. And you would think, what? The the CEO of Bank of America has time to, like, sit on a form all day? Of course not. But not like him, but, like, the guy who runs, you know, the first national bank of normal Bloomington, like, he might have enough time to troll a form all day.
Speaker 1:And so there's this, like, banker's form. I think it's actually called banker's form. And talk to each other about, man, this client came in today and had this, like, check that was written out to her mother, she tried to deposit into this, I think that violates regulation d. What do you think about that? And then, you know, the the forum denizen with the gray beard will say, well, actually, regulation d says, blah, we covered this last year, here's the thread.
Speaker 1:Man, I love the Internet. Anyhow, so there exists a there may exist a online forum about your commercialized interest should you bring your stuff there. Be very careful about that, because many like, self promotion is not, commercially some self promotion is not accepted by the community at every watering hole on the Internet. Hacker News is a bit of a weird case because Hacker News is a community of people who are making and well, largely a community of people who are either making and starting businesses or aspire to one day make or start a business. And so here's what I'm working on has a bit like, a bit of acceptability on Hacker News where it might not be acceptable on the, you know, somebody comes up to the banker forum, I'm thinking of starting a bank, will you give me money?
Speaker 1:Might not go over so well. Take read of the community before you do that. Also, like, and it'll depend on the community, but there's a line for how much value you can ask the community to give you without giving them corresponding amounts of value in return. I always try to stay way the heck on the side of the line where I was probably too active member of Hacker News for many, many years before I well, many weeks before I submitted my my own article. And then as a result of I could tell you my theory for why I'm popular in Hacker News, but that isn't useful for most of the people watching this, so you tell me if you wanna hear it.
Speaker 1:But let's say I have a theory for that, and, after I noticed that I was fairly popular in Hacker News and that virtually anything I made would show up on the top of Hacker News just by virtue of the fact that I made it. That made me, stop submitting my own stuff to Hacker News at all, basically. Like, I haven't done it in the last several years, and it makes me very careful about hitting the publish button on things, Partly because, like, I feel a sense of responsibility as somebody who transparently loves that forum to not, like, spam it up. So, basically, there's you know, on my checklist of things to do before publishing the blog post, You know, one of the last things I do before hitting the publish button is, if this post is not worthy of being, like, in the top five on Hacker News right now, do not publish until it is, because it's going there whether I want it to or not. And I'm gonna get, you know, people will tell me very loudly if it was not worthy of being in the top five, so, like, respect that respect that space, which is perhaps a, like, you know, me only kind of worry.
Speaker 1:I know I know a lot of people just getting started would be would fall over and die to have that, quote unquote, problem, but it is a problem for me. Yeah. Let's talk about another facet of that issue where the Hacker News launch is sort of like a mini version of the Tech Crunch launch, right, where you can't control if it happens or not. Well, you can, but if you're too effective at that, PG and a few other people will hate your guts. Mhmm.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, you know, like, I wouldn't build the plan for my business, you know, success or failure around whether I get on the top page of hack news at launch. Because, you know, maybe you hit the right combination of things and you do when you get 500 people to see your thing. Maybe you don't and you get zero people to see your thing or, you know, foresee it before it scrolls off the new page. If that kills your business, then that's sad. So I wouldn't bake that into your assumptions.
Speaker 1:A lot of people like and I'll tell you, you know, I didn't possess the magic I win the Internet button at the start of my business. It launched to a total of 76 people who saw it in the first day, and that was because of a different forum. So you totally don't need it to work. You can, like, you know, build up semi organically a reputation for producing awesome things over time, chiefly by cranking the wheel and then telling people about it one on one. And eventually, knock on wood, assuming you're producing the right thing for the right people, that will start to spread.
Speaker 1:The spread of it will be accelerated by you continuing to go out and promote your own stuff, which is a difficult message for many people I know to hear, but which is something that engineers need to be told more often. Like, there it is not a sin to write people an email and say, hey. I know you because of blah. I know your interests include this. I have just made something which is responsive to that direct interest, which I think you slash your audience will be really interested because, you know, sincere reason here.
Speaker 1:Here's the link. Tell me what you think. I wouldn't spam people with that, but, you know, assuming that you are picking the people you are sending that message to correctly, and that you are hopefully trying to engage them in a real relationship rather than just, you have a blog with a lot of readers, and I should send this email to you. Their response to that will be decent to pretty darn good for both of your perspectives. Yep, yep.
Speaker 1:Can I talk about that for a little bit? Because I think this is an underused art.
Speaker 3:For sure. For sure. And I think what we'll do This is exactly where I wanted to get to. Because I think the idea Like I mentioned before, I'm writing this book, Marketing for Developers, and I wanted to get into this with you about self promotion. And I think the maybe we can circle back to that, but there's this idea especially about Hacker News, for example, where the response I get from a lot of developers is like, I wouldn't dare post anything on Hacker News.
Speaker 3:Similar to you, but even further back, right? They're saying,
Speaker 1:I
Speaker 3:like, no way. And I'm thinking like, well, like I know these people have valuable things to add to the community, like actual good knowledge that they could share that would be helpful, but they're they're holding back. And meanwhile, a schmuck like me is submitting things partly because partly because I I just don't have that same fear, I guess. Mhmm. And and I'm not saying I'm trying to be a jackass.
Speaker 3:Like, I'm hanging out and I'm listening and I'm listening for patterns and seeing where the needs are and then offering things that meet those needs. But my threshold for contributing something to the discussion is way lower. So maybe, yeah, keep talking about kind of going where you're going and maybe let's just stay on this thread for a while.
Speaker 1:Threshold is a great word. So there's no one single scale for quality, right? So just to make it absolutely clear that we're just talking in very general terms, I'm going to assert that a particular article or blog post or video or whatever has a single number called awesome points. And I think the perception is that, you know, on a scale of, like, zero to a 100 awesome points that nothing deserves to be on Hacker News at below 90 awesome points. And somebody will think, well, even on a good day, can only produce 80 awesome points, so therefore my stuff should never be on Hacker News.
Speaker 1:I will tell you as somebody who is on that forum multiple times a day that, like, if you look at the the new post thing, the typical level of awesome points associated with something is zero to five. And if you look at the front page, there will be, you know, on a very good day, there will be five things on the front page that have more than 80 awesome points. And then there will be a lot of stuff which gets on the front page because it, you know, hits the zeitgeist of the day, or it was produced by a well known producer, like, you know, TechCrunch lands on the front page all the time, or, you know, yada yada. So don't think that you can never produce something that's good enough for the hackney's front page. That almost certainly isn't true.
Speaker 1:Now, should you post everything you create to the front page? No. Should you send emails personally inviting people to look at everything you create? Probably not. Like, I would exercise an internal filter, but don't don't set it too high.
Speaker 1:Can I give you an example of this? Yeah. Absolutely. The, like, self promotion thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I'll tell you right now, the single best thing on the Internet for a developer who's learning to send the email pitching something that you have created to somebody who has not heard of you yet is a post by Paldi from Balsamiq titled Balsamiq marketing Balsamiq startup marketing advice. It's from, like, 2009 or something. It has not been exceeded since 02/2009. It may never be exceeded ever. But he gives you basically, like, a script of here's an email which is sent by a human to a human that actually demonstrates humanity, and at the same time time says, you know, there's this thing that I created that you might wanna look at.
Speaker 1:Here's how you take a look at it. And so you get email like, I got that email from Pelti back before anybody knew who Pelti was, and it was great. And I told him I would take a look at his program, and I told him I would write a blog post about it. And I screwed the pooch on writing the blog post and didn't get that done, but we became friends later, so no harm done. But, and then his business totally, like, blew up and took over the world.
Speaker 1:So, like, his email is very was, you know, very effective. I perceived awesome stuff from getting that email despite not knowing Pelletier prior to the email. And then, you know, I get a lot of pitches every day from people who are you know, they read a blog post on copywriting or a blog post on on selling your stuff or whatever, and they try to send their variants of that email, and the the reception that they get is not nearly as as good because they're not as good as writing the email as Peltier is. Like, for example, I got this post by won't say his name, but we'll call him Bob, and Bob's title is Director of SEO, which is already strike one. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because if you're you are probably an SEO spammer if your title is Director of SEO. Yeah. And it turns out Bob is an SEO spammer. And Bob writes exactly like all SEO spammers write. And so he said, hello, Patrick.
Speaker 1:And that's like plus one for Bob. The fact that Bob, you know, spent enough time looking up my first name rather than dear site owner meant that, you know, he got through, like, my first wall of defenses. Because if it's dear site owner, it's either delete without reading or report as spam without reading. Because, you know, if you are not interested enough to figure out my name, I don't wanna talk to you ever. Because you're a customer.
Speaker 1:Occasionally customers do send in stuff like that, so I will, you know, give it the once over to see, is this customer? If not, delete or report a spam. Yeah. So he got my name right. And then he writes the first paragraph, which does not evince any knowledge of anything I have ever done or care about.
Speaker 1:And at that point, it's like, this email is done. I have no interest in it. But I took a look down at it and saw he was director of SEO, and a a friend of mine had just complained about these SEO spam emails they got. Reading the email, he didn't seem like a maliciously evil person. He just sounded like someone who was incompetent at their job of reaching out to people and getting them to act on those emails.
Speaker 1:So I wrote a really detailed response on, here's what you wrote me, here's what you should've wrote me written me instead, and I'll tell you what you should've written instead. It's like, in that first paragraph, when I'm when I'm reading with an open mind, you should connect with me that says that I am not entry 127 on a CSV of people who have blogs with traffic. I'm instead someone you actually know and have any degree of human regard for. Hey Patrick, I've been reading your blog for a couple of years. I particularly like when you write about conversion optimization.
Speaker 1:It's like, okay, an actual human has been involved in the crafting of this email. Like that's that's literally the minimum check. Yep. Now, since you are since you are interested in conversion optimization, I thought that this thing that I created about conversion optimization might be of interest to you. Then you have to do the internal threshold check, which is, is this going to be of interest to me or not?
Speaker 1:The thing Bob was pitching was why people get banned from app the App Store. And, like, Bob, here's why I don't care. Number one, I don't write apps in the, you know, iPhone sense of the word. Yeah. Number two, I use an iPhone like 200,000,000 other people, but no cons no, like, part of my portion of my business actually interacts with the iPhone app store.
Speaker 1:I never write about the iPhone app store. I never write about Apple's totally borked customer service policies. I write about Google's all the time, but they're totally different. Yeah. And, you know, I just can't, like, reason up any any what do you call it?
Speaker 1:Like, I just don't care. And if you knew me, which no part of your email has given me any evidence that you know me, but hypothetically, if this was a legit email between someone who actually knows what I care about and myself, you would know that I don't care about this at all. So let's say, okay, I have a good faith good faith belief, and, you know, I've followed you, Patrick, for a while. I know you like conversion optimization, so I will talk to you about conversion optimization. Is the thing I'm producing good enough quality to, like, take time out of your day to talk about it?
Speaker 1:And Bob failed at this as well, because if you said, this is the single best article on the internet on Apple's bought iPhone application review process, then that might be interesting to me. Not because I care about, like, iPhone apps in general, because I don't it's like, you know, figure skating or something I don't care about. But I am professionally obligated to care a little bit about heavyweights in the tech industry, and Apple is a heavyweight in the tech industry. So if this is, like, the definitive thing on something important to the tech industry, then maybe that's important. But it was not the definitive article.
Speaker 1:It was written by some person making, like, $5 an article who had no particular insight into it, whatever. So that's like strike 407. So, you know, if you're writing a an introductory blog post on, like, what is AB testing? Hey, Patrick. Do you wanna see this introductory blog post on what is AB testing?
Speaker 1:Probably not. Like, I'm kind of an expert at it. I know what it is. If it's going to be the same as the other 400 blog posts on the Internet about what is AB testing, then, you know, that is, like, beneath my radar. If it is the best introduction to AB testing ever, that's interesting.
Speaker 1:Like, although, you better be sure it's the best. If Yeah. It's this is the only way to to do AB testing on this platform that you use, that's interesting. If, Patrick, this blog post cites you with like favorably with regards to this thing you said here, but disfavorably with regard to this one recommendation, you can read the whole story at the blog post. That pings my radar pretty hard, right?
Speaker 1:Both because I love reading about my stuff because everybody loves reading about themselves, but also because, hey, I have worthwhile insight about something that you have demonstrated care about. Like, oh. Or if you had a suggestion to try this in a particular blog post, and so I tried that. Here is my write up. That's like, oh, total brain crack for me.
Speaker 1:Right? Yeah. So that would have been a very successful pitch, not pitching stuff about things I don't care about, which were kind of crappy.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So So when you, you know, create stuff, like one exercise, I think Peltie recommends this. If you didn't, I'll recommend it independently. Prior to creating the thing that you're going to be promoting, mentally script out how these emails are going to sound. Who will care? Is it going to hit that quality bar?
Speaker 1:Is it going to hit you know, the dead center of the target that they will really care about receiving this email? And if you can't identify anybody who will care and who will hit you will hit the bull's eye on, don't create this thing, like, create something else, right? So, you know, if you are thinking, you know, okay, I'm going to build something of interest to people who are in charge of marketing software. Alright? So it'll make up a, like, mental list or even a CSV file if you don't actually implement it like that of a 100 people who talk about marketing software all the time.
Speaker 1:And of that 100, I'm gonna, like, strike out 80 of the names as being not on topic for this thing I'm creating. But if you can't find anybody on the list who would care about that thing that you're writing, then don't write that thing. Write something else. So, you know, if nobody in the space of people who care about marketing software cares about, I don't know, naming decisions for software, that's a great example of something that sounds like it's important but actually isn't. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So what I just said is a controversial statement, but I will stand by it. But, like, pricing for software as a service applications, that is an interesting topic. So if you go down your list of a 100 people, I guarantee you that a 100 people involved with marketing software, some would, like, care very little about pricing decisions because it's out of their hands. Like, I'm you know, if I work at a big go, pricing is done in a different silo. I just have to market the damn thing.
Speaker 1:So not my not my issue. If you're me on the other hand, where I consult well, back when I had a consultancy, like, I consulted on that for a living or I have to do it for my own applications, like and I have previously said several times that pricing is one of the easiest levers you have for moving your business. If you have a interesting take on pricing, I would love to hear it. As long as there's, you know, a repetition of stuff that is widely available elsewhere on the Internet, and that there's, you know, some level of care involved, and there's, you know, a reason why I should drop what I'm doing today and read your thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Which and again, like many people who create things, I am a sort of hyper consumer of things that other people create. So, like, I keep saying the best thing on the Internet. You don't have to be, strictly speaking, the best article on the Internet. Like, if you're in you know, let's say I read I don't know. Let's ballpark it at 25 to a 100 blog posts a week, depending on the given week.
Speaker 1:So if you think you're one of the best 25 things I could spend my time on this week, that's good enough to, like, you know, hit the bar for dropping me an email about it. Particularly, you have good faith faith belief in that. Like, if I feel, you know, too busy this week, then either I won't reply to you, not because I hate your guts, but just because I didn't get to my entire inbox and sorry, that's my bad. Or I'll reply to you with, hey. Thanks for sending me the link.
Speaker 1:I'm kinda busy this week. I might take a look at it look at it later. If not, ping me. And that'll be the extent of it. And believe me, you haven't burned any bridges doing that.
Speaker 1:Or I will take a look at it, and if it was like, okay, I could see a good faith belief on their part that this would be interesting, but it doesn't, I would probably write you back, thanks for the pointer. And then, you know, because I'm writing an email, might add like one line of comment on
Speaker 3:that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Hit send, and I probably won't be like tweeting it out to, you know, 10,000 people or writing a blog post response to it. If on the other hand, it's like, if I write you back saying, wow, this has forever changed my thinking on software pricing. Thank you so much. That is one of the canonical best things. That would be a great time to write me back and say, wow, really great.
Speaker 1:You like it? Would you think about, like, tweeting that out, maybe with following language? And I just copy pasting the tweet thingy and would get sent on that. Very few people ever do that to me, but if they did it, it would be very effective. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Typically, I when I say this is one of the best things I've ever read on blah in my Twitter stream or whatnot, it's because that I independently came to that conclusion and then decided it was so important that I hadn't told tell Twitter about it. But if, you know, if I had just told you face to face as the creator, this is the best thing I have ever read on the sub subject of software pricing, that would be an excellent time to met mention, you know, maybe you weren't gonna, like, break out the Twitter client on your iPhone independently, but is that worth breaking out the the Twitter client? If it's the most important thing and something that's of heavy interest to software entrepreneurs, after, like, point o five seconds of consideration, I would be like, yeah. Chapter Yeah. Based
Speaker 3:Yeah. And let me stop you right there because I think what you've just talked about is pretty important and there's a bunch of stuff we could touch on. One is that this is about relationships.
Speaker 1:Yes, definitely.
Speaker 3:And I think, especially when we're talking to developers and technical people, one thing I hear back is, I want to stay at my keyboard and behind a screen. Mhmm. And also this kind of desire to stay, you know, to stay somewhat anonymous and things like that. And depending on how you run your business, you could probably do that to a certain extent. But if you want, for example, somebody, like you said, to share something that you've written
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:That approach you just described is exactly what you need to do. And the the first mistake people make that aren't practiced in that is they write an email that's all about them and not about the receiver, which is what you were just talking about.
Speaker 1:Right. You want to write it about the receiver and people who are, people who actively know they have an audience and care about that audience, which is presumably why you're writing to them. You you know, if you're ever making a pitch where you should share this to your audience, like, there should be something you know, an implicit or explicit statement that your audience gets something out of seeing this too. Yeah. Obviously, if I tell you that, I think this is the best article ever written about software pricing, and we both know that I care about software pricing a whole lot, and I have an audience of other people who make and sell software for a living, then it's implicit that they would benefit from knowing it.
Speaker 1:If connecting the dots is not quite so easy, you could say, hey, I think your audience of this would be a good time to demonstrate that you are not a brainless Internet spammer by describing my audience in one sentence or less. So I think your audience of software entrepreneurs and aspiring software entrepreneurs would benefit from this because it will help them get a career update upgrade, or it will help them negotiate their salary better, or it will help them it'll help them do customer discovery on their next startup. That's what that. Rather than it will, you know, it will help my hit counter increase by like 400 to 2,000 depending on how many people you can put in front of, because that isn't a compelling reason for me to hit publish, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah. What what I love about all this stuff is that it's actually great practice for marketing itself. Because marketing is really like a big email to an audience that you have to prove you whom you understand. You have to prove to them, I understand you and this is about you, it's not about me. And it is that is challenging because in our heads, especially as creators, we have all sorts of emotional needs, right?
Speaker 3:We want people to like us. We want the thing that we created to not get criticized and to be loved. You know, there's all these emotional needs, and I think
Speaker 1:Man, that is under talked about in our community, but so true. Yeah. Not just like you need people to act about you in a certain way, but as a creator, you want to have the experience of producing something which is beautiful or useful or unique or very I have yet to meet an entrepreneur who got into entrepreneurship because it's like, I love producing crap. It makes me feel so great about myself. We all kind of get into it because we have a burning need to do something awesome for some scale of awesome, or, you know, need to be validated.
Speaker 1:Like, if I was doing psychoanalysis on myself, I really have a deep seated need to be seen as smart and successful. So when I make things, like, if they don't cause people to reflect that, like, wow, this was made by somebody smart slash this was made by someone fairly successful, that, you know, I get frowning faces rather than happy faces when when doing with that interaction. So I would be aware as creators that you also have emotional needs and make sure those are being met. It makes life much easier when they are. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Talk about periods in my life where my job was not contributing to that and it sucked.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:But not on the topic though at hand. So yeah.
Speaker 3:And I think the other thing is to to remember is sometimes we get really obsessed with this idea of getting in front of the right person.
Speaker 1:Like Mhmm.
Speaker 3:You know, if I could only get this in front of Jason Fried, that would change my life. And the truth is, I've been lucky enough to hang out with those guys. Can email them and talk to them and I'm trying to build a relationship with them. Sometimes they've shared some of my stuff, which can be helpful. I'm not going to diminish that.
Speaker 3:There is something helpful about getting in front of an audience that could potentially, you know, become my audience and I could build a relationship with them. That's all good. But sometimes I've sent here's a good example. I sent DHH an email about something and he is so far ahead of me. He is so similar to what you said, like if you got an email about an introductory conversion optimization post, you'd be like, it's not really that interesting.
Speaker 3:But if I wrote a post like that and I found some people on Twitter that I'd been listening to and talking to that were at that stage And I sent five of them that link the day before I was going to publish saying, You know, I've just written this thing. I think it'll be helpful for people that are at our stage. Could you take a look at this and tell me what you think? And whenever I've done that, I think that's also a good approach, especially for building an audience and things like that. Because then you've got if you've got five people that are saying, Woah, this is incredible.
Speaker 3:I never knew this stuff. Whereas Patty eleven's going, whatever. And I think as a creator sometimes you're like, Oh, Patty eleven didn't like my thing. This must suck. But sometimes it's just about the stage.
Speaker 3:You know, it's just not appropriate for the audience of Patty eleven. But it might be perfect for this audience of people that are new to conversion optimization.
Speaker 1:I get where you're going there with the with the So I kinda feel like if I was to bucket myself, I'm much closer to the people in your audience than I am to, like, DHH in terms of public profile and whatnot. That said, like, it is a real thing that some people are extraordinarily successful and extraordinarily busy, and they have many people who are trying to demand their attention and that some people are have less people trying to demand their attention. For example, like, despite the fact that there's a couple of tens of thousands of people who have my email, you know, on a busy day, I get a 100 emails. And I guarantee you that DHH cannot remember the last day where he only got a 100 emails. So, you know, as a as a percentage of mindshare of inbox, like, any email sent to me is gets more of it than any random email sent to DHH.
Speaker 1:And that's, you know, that's something you could say about, like, a whole spectrum of people. Like, Beyonce wishes she had DHH's problem with the, oh, you only have a a million people who know your name. Neither here nor there. But in terms of, like, you know, who you should aim the majority of your effort for at pitching things, I would take people who are, like, one or two steps beyond you as opposed to, like, a 100 steps beyond you, simply because you're more likely to get their attention. So let's say somebody that Hypothetically, someone has a 100 people in their audience.
Speaker 1:They do not receive on a regular basis a comment that says, you know, what you wrote about x totally changed my view on x. That is that that kind of email makes their day. Mhmm. You know, if you multiply the impact Rails has had over the number of people it's had, and then filter that through the function of what percentage of them are gonna try to reach DHH, DHH has probably literally heard, Dude, you got me married. Thanks.
Speaker 1:Many, many times. Whereas if you are Bob who runs Bob File Format blog, like, has, you know, 10 RSS subscribers, and someone writing a sincere email that says, Bob, I follow your blog for years, and honestly, it's awesome. That's one of my favorites. Assuming that's sincere, that like, Bobble mentioned that to his wife that day. Hey, honey.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I wasn't totally wasting time on the Internet the last three years. This person said I really mattered to them. So if you can find the people who are, you know, still at the stage where somebody like you saying something positive to them puts a smile on their face, then you're likely to have a better chance at a more meaningful connection than just mailing the most popular person that you can think of. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And for example, like, I don't wanna say, you know, use me as a conduit. I'll be a gate gatekeeper into the wider Internet. But, like, that is, you know, not what I am. I'm a, you know, small businessman who runs a business that could get, like, lost in the cash drawer at a lot of them. But, you know, a couple people know who I am, and, yep, I read all my own email and respond to most of it, and, you know, do generally like when people email me a post saying, hey, I've got a got something you can read in twenty minutes and about something you like.
Speaker 1:So that would be it could get a pitch for that sort of thing. Yeah. And also, one of the reasons, like, working at, like, a ladder works like that is so if you were to play Draw the Social Graph a couple years ago, I would not have guessed that j random, smart person in the industry knows me. These days, they might. Who knows?
Speaker 1:But if you want to probably draw the social graph, the people who are three steps ahead of you, read the people who are two steps ahead of you. The people who are 10 steps ahead of you, read the people who are nine steps ahead of you, who read the people who are eight steps ahead of you, who read you. So okay. I'll use myself as an example.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 1:There's there's, like, 20 people who I who have a reputation to me of consistently producing awesome stuff. And absolutely everything they produce, I will read. And absolutely anything that they said, this gets my stamp of approval, would immediately go to the top of things that I am reading that day in my, like, time that I carve out for reading as opposed to making things and sending customer support email and that sort of stuff. Many of those folks who have, you know, less profile than I do, and I'm not
Speaker 3:you know,
Speaker 1:I don't exactly get, like, recognized on the street and ask for autographs or anything, but I have a certain bit of Internet profile. These folks have less. But they've previously demonstrated that they have, you know, some level of insight into that, so they're, like, kind of my like, I use them as filters for the, you know, 5,000,000,000 things that get published on the Internet every day. So if you were to approach one of them who, you know, they don't get a 100 emails a day, they might get, like, two related to business. You approach one of them, and they endorsed you saying that, like, gets a you know, that gets you on my radar if being on my radar was important to you.
Speaker 1:And that sort of thing works for people at, like, any level of success, trying to approach any people at any level of success. So, you know, if you think, man, it would be absolutely awesome if gatekeeper x heard about my thing. You play Walk the Social Network from gatekeeper x to somebody that they trust but does not have x's profile and pitch them instead. And then after you have a relationship with them and have convinced them that you know, you are a, not some sort of crazy internet stalker and b, not a bozo about your topic of expertise, you can ask them, hey, would you mind introducing me to x? And that works fairly decently.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. I've actually used that same approach with sometimes busy people have an assistant or a co founder that may not be as well known and I've sometimes set, you know, I've I maybe pitch them on something first and then you know, through the the grapevine it's gotten to you know, the people up the up the stack.
Speaker 1:Yep yep. That's one of the all the sales techniques in the book, but they don't teach it at engineering school, and they really should. And then, you know, you you aren't being manipulative or anything like this. You're can we can we hammer the word genuine again? Making genuine connections with people?
Speaker 1:Like Yeah. I usually call I call people who I know socially, but not close enough to invite over to my house for dinner if they were ever in Ogaki my Internet buddies. So I've got hundreds of Internet buddies, But, you know, if you wanna be an Internet buddy, my email address is widely discoverable. Start talking to me. I'll talk to you.
Speaker 1:And over the course of a couple of weeks or a couple of months, we're Internet buddies. Yay. Yeah. And if Internet Buddy reaches out to me about, oh, I produced this thing, then I like to see hear that because I love when my inner I love when Internet Buddies have success, and I like helping them out. And if it's, you know, a mutual fit between between their needs, my needs, and my audience's needs, then I would, you know, love to put a solid in all three columns at once.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Yeah. If that makes sense.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Exactly. Well that's probably a great place for us to stop, Patrick. I want you to be able to get a good night's sleep tonight. Mhmm.
Speaker 3:But I really appreciate your time and everything, the stories you've shared, the insight you've shared. Every time I talk to you I get a lot of I learn a lot and, the people that we're gonna share this with are, I think are gonna get a lot too. So thanks so much.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, thanks very much Justin and thanks folks for watching this. If you ever want to get in touch with me, my email address is patrickanydomainaccontrol. One of them is calzumius, k a l z u m e u s dot com, although it's all the same inbox. Feel free if you produce something you think I might like.
Speaker 1:You know, don't be a stranger. If worst thing that happens is I get busy that day and don't write you back, that, you know, I'm not gonna hate your guts or anything. So, yeah, drop me a line.
Speaker 3:Perfect. And so just again, you can find Patrick. This is appointmentreminder.org, that's the SaaS product we were talking about. This is his excellent blog, calzoomius.com/blog. I also want to just highlight, right up here at the top is his email newsletter.
Speaker 3:I'm not just saying this because Patrick's a guest. His newsletter is one of my favorite newsletters. If you want to learn how to write a great newsletter that there's just a you'll learn a lot by reading Patrick's newsletters. There's a lot of his personality in there and there's always something of value. There's always some tools that I feel like, Oh man, I can't believe I can't believe he's giving it to us for free.
Speaker 1:I gotta say, put 90% of my effort in writing these days into the newsletter rather than the blog, so, yeah. Yeah. Recommend it myself
Speaker 3:and not
Speaker 1:just because that's useful for me.
Speaker 3:It's really, really good. And then, he is patio eleven on Twitter and, he's also patio eleven on Hacker News, of course. So thanks again, Patrick, and we'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1:Alright. Thanks very much, Justin. Talk to you and the rest of the guys later.
Speaker 2:Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful. Nobody can tell a story like Patio eleven. Thanks so much to Patrick for coming on the show, sharing all those insights with us free of charge.
Speaker 2:He just did that out of the goodness of his heart. It's amazing. Like I said, if you want the full video interview, you need to become a J JFDI member. You can do that at jfdi.bz. And
Speaker 3:if you're a developer
Speaker 2:and you're building an app, SaaS product, or anything else, and you wanna bring your marketing to the next level or you're just confused by it, check out the book I'm writing, Justin Jackson dot c a slash marketing for developers. As always, you can write me at productpeople@bizbox.ca. You can reach me on Twitter at m I Justin, and, you can follow the show on Twitter too at product people TV. If you want it to really help the show out, leave us an honest review in iTunes. Just go into iTunes, search for product people, click on the five star rating.
Speaker 2:Turns out we were just on, what's hot for iTunes in The USA. So thanks to everybody that have been downloading and rating the show in iTunes. This show would be nothing without you, the listener, and the community that's kinda come around the show. So thank you. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you. And I will see you next time.