How Clubhouse Went Viral and Google+ Didn't — Colin Hodge

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[SPEAKER_01]: So much of being successful either in the dating industry as somebody running an app or being single and dating is applicable to business owners and to marketers who are just trying to win over other people, appeal to their emotions and find a way to stand out so that you find great fit for you.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Jason Mark Campbell Business Podcast where we explore what it really takes to sell, lead and grow a business, and ultimately live well.

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[SPEAKER_00]: In every episode, we go beyond tactics to discover how entrepreneurs and leaders across different sectors are growing with love, impact, and integrity.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Jason Markhamville podcast.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm very excited about the conversation we're going to have today, especially everyone here should pay attention if you're trying to grow your business, if you're trying to get more revenue, more clients, more conversions, marketing is something that's, ah, you know has to be done, but what is really working today and where can we find information on how to make it the most effective that might not be from the most intuitive places, because some industries out there are

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[SPEAKER_00]: really have so much energy and resources put into understanding the psychology of human behavior that as soon as you translate that into marketing, you get to win the game of marketing, win the game of attention, which is a focus of what you have to do in marketing now.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Part of my responsibility is of what I'm doing in the company, I'm currently supporting a lot, which is Somal Breath.

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[SPEAKER_00]: is, of course, how do I expand the reach, get our impact to grow and we do that through effective marketing.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So the conversation we're about to have right now, extremely relevant for me.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I hope it's going to be just as relevant for you.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And the guest that we're bringing on is Colin Hodge.

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[SPEAKER_00]: He's a startup founder, USA Today, bestselling author and co-owner of Down, which is a top 10 dating app in the US, built around these same psychology principles that we're going to be learning about today.

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[SPEAKER_00]: He's just recently published his book, Outrageous Startup Growth, uncovering the secrets of users' psychology to scale your business.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So when you start thinking about how we behave on dating apps, there is a lot of learnings that show you how you behave in your purchasing behavior, in your attention behavior, and I'm very curious to start unpacking that world, how it relates to the marketing world, and diving into this in so much more.

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[SPEAKER_00]: But the key thing here is making sure that we get to discuss marketing,

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[SPEAKER_00]: and maximize our impact.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So Colin, welcome to the show.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It's a pleasure to have you.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for having me and I think your listeners are going to love this because I like to say marketing is not vague.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It's an honest conversation with your customers and we're going to have a super honest candid conversation that's fun and covers all of those areas today.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you're starting right from the biggest assumptions that happen around marketing is that, you know, it's us broadcasting messages, spamming people's inboxes, just do things louder, do things bigger.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And if you're loud enough, you'll get a click and somebody will maybe buy.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It seems to be kind of the formula and to be honest, it's kind of the one I'll brag on if I need to drive revenue sometimes.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, I'm just gonna swing the hammer harder.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And I'd be curious to know what you're noticing as major trends in the marketing space, especially,

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[SPEAKER_00]: with the fact that well, everybody's getting tools to be louder in more effective ways, which is almost making people tune out more.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So what's the landscape looking like these days?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm feeling the same thing when I look out there.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It's so noisy, it's getting noiseier because of these tools, mostly AI driven, a lot of automation, most channels are getting saturated.

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[SPEAKER_01]: We're getting AI Slop.

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[SPEAKER_01]: We're also getting some really effective targeting tools and just massive volume of content and outreach and marketing.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So how do you compete with that?

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[SPEAKER_01]: I have struggled with that.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I've struggled with, you know, do I want to use these same tools?

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[SPEAKER_01]: How much can be automated?

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[SPEAKER_01]: How much do I need to keep myself as the human in the loop?

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[SPEAKER_01]: And where I've landed is the most effective marketing is going to leverage AI tools as the element that helps you be more productive.

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[SPEAKER_01]: That helps you to understand your customers better.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But you absolutely need that human element and that human empathy.

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[SPEAKER_01]: to reach the right customers with the right message instead of always bringing the hammer and seeing everything as a nail.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Because when you come in, like a surgeon, you're precise and you meet them in the moment for the mood and the person that they are.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It's almost like it's not even marketing.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It's just welcoming them, and it's a complete magnet, and it's a reciprocal and official conversation partnership relationship.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to wear my salesman hat just to play on the other side of the eye, because often, I'll put like salespeople on one side marketing on the other, and I'll tell you the assumption that comes to me as a salesperson.

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[SPEAKER_00]: As a salesperson, I always think I'm the having personal relationships with people, I'm having one-on-one.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm listening a lot, which is a big advantage that I get by spending time with an individual qualified prospect.

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[SPEAKER_00]: That's kind of the role of sales.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And assumption I easily make as a salesperson is I assume that because marketing cannot speak to people individually, you have to send out generic messages to kind of hopefully reach somebody because you can't individually know all the different people that might be receiving that message.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It wouldn't be

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[SPEAKER_00]: effective is kind of the assumption I come up with and so I'd be curious to know what do you think around the fact that marketing seems to be less personal than sales and you have to kind of just make more noise.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I get the instinct there and I think a lot of times it just comes down to how much time we have, how much effort we want to put in to making marketing better.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But just like when I talk to founders and product people about building the product

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[SPEAKER_01]: marketing that is built for everybody is going to be effective for nobody.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And so what I recommend is you really drill into what are the different segments of our customers that we're trying to reach with this marketing and how do we slice and dice it?

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[SPEAKER_01]: So find so direct so that we're

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[SPEAKER_01]: actually thinking about how is this going to hit them.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So I see a lot, you know, a lot of AI tools for instance, the outreach is automated.

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[SPEAKER_01]: They go and pull some info about your recipient even.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So this is hyper customized per person.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And where the AI usually lets you down, though, is it's still noticeably written by AI, and still noticeably a template.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of us, because we're getting flooded with all this AI sloping out reach and all the channels are getting noisier as a recipient of that marketing.

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[SPEAKER_01]: you're feeling overwhelmed, you're feeling frustrated, and you're feeling like they're not treating you like a human, even though if you had gotten that same email, that same ad wherever you're seeing it, 10 years ago, before this AI volume has increased so much, you would have felt like, wow, this guy Jason really did his homework.

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[SPEAKER_01]: He really knows about me and he checked my LinkedIn or he checked what I posted socially and he checked the status of

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[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But now, that's not enough to stand out because everything has gotten over zero.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So what is the missing element?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Taking that different segment, the different persona for all your segments and understanding with empathy, what are they feeling in that moment?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Are they the type that probably, maybe they did talk publicly about being sick of AI, being sick of all the same like embarrassing AI mistakes that are happening, then you can kind of wear that hat

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[SPEAKER_01]: for that type of segment.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't mean like a sales person, every individual actually has to get an individualized message that you're curating, you're crafting with your own hands every time, but it does mean that creating these segments is so important and then building personas on top of them enables you to always just be adapting to it rather than just blasted out, send it to thousands of people

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[SPEAKER_00]: I think this might get a bit too technical, but I'm going to ask it for myself personally, which is I love the idea of finding a particular call it an avatar or market segment, right?

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[SPEAKER_00]: How small or in precise do you typically recommend to go until point that it's like, well, now you become too specific.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, they need to be living in like that street in this town.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Like, now you're talking about like, okay, there's only five people on that street.

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[SPEAKER_00]: That's maybe a little too specific versus like, is there a magic number?

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[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think there's a magic number for this because it varies by your customer base size.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, how much you can tackle, how many people you're trying to cover, and their customer value.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So if you're running a business where landing one of those five on the street is gonna bring you thousands in lifetime value, lifetime revenue, then it's more, yeah, it makes sense to segment that small, right?

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[SPEAKER_01]: But if you're

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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, a company that has 10,000 paying subscribers and you're looking at how do you really just meet a lot more of them where they are.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Then you're starting to look at maybe a few hundred at a time.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And then of course, you also need to look at the channel.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So if you're conversion rate on that channel tends to be around 1% then you don't want to go so small that you're not going to even notice when there's a difference.

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[SPEAKER_01]: statistics game, the numbers game, to ensure that you can see when something is performing better or worse.

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[SPEAKER_01]: If I had, you know, you're going to pin me down and I had to give a harder fast rule, we generally look at, you know, a thousand is a good set of segment, and that's big enough to start running experiments with, to start looking at a smaller level.

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[SPEAKER_01]: That's based on my experience with a lot of apps and many of which have,

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[SPEAKER_01]: you know, at least tens of thousands of new users coming in every month.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So take that for what it's worth, but in general, I base a lot of it on data.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So look at the statistics and how you can start to get some separation between the different marketing copy, creative, whatever you're putting out there.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like there's two major personality types that get drawn towards marketing.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I feel there's a whole slew of people that are very data oriented and there's of these people that are very creative and humanitarian and really about understanding the art versus the science of marketing.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Do you lean towards more and the others and where do you see each of the roles play?

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[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm a tortured soul stuck in limbo.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I really feel like, you know, my instinct a lot of the time is to be data driven and being super logical, just hyper logical, almost to fault and annoyance, I think, to some of my co-workers.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And then the creative side of me wants to try out these awesome, the wild wacky, just out of left field ideas and comes up with these in the most random moments.

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[SPEAKER_01]: and is pushing my team to just get more wild and outrageous, let's say, with their marketing, because I enjoy both aspects and I've been able to wear both hats.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I think how I ended up here is I was an engineer when I was growing up, growing up when I went to college and all that stuff.

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[SPEAKER_01]: My first job at a school, I was programming, like, this is such a logical brain sort of job and career path.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And then at some point I realized, oh man, I'm kind of a mediocre engineer and a much better if I mix, if I like specialize and mix this engineering background and the ability to just

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[SPEAKER_01]: get shit done in terms of marketing and in terms of getting noticed.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So it's that weird combination that makes me maybe like an anomaly and probably an annoyance to my teeth.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Fair enough.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I've always found that you need a little bit of both if you want to be effective because sometimes you can be stuck in a data and if you have no creativity, you're just there there's no opportunity for some explosive growth or something that's completely out of the left field.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Now, in your case, you worked in an industry that I would consider some of the most hyper-competitive and data driven, dating is brutal.

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[SPEAKER_00]: You're talking dating, you're talking app, and like, there are so many apps out there, and when you talk about dating, like,

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[SPEAKER_00]: There are major players out there with huge budgets and you're trying to find yourself in a piece of the market So I'd be very curious about that whole journey first off.

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[SPEAKER_00]: You decided to go into a niche that's so competitive So what's the opportunity you saw to decide this?

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[SPEAKER_01]: I saw a completely broken user experience and I saw a huge, just visceral need that we all have as humans to make connections with others, to

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[SPEAKER_01]: hopefully find a partner that you can build something with.

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[SPEAKER_01]: You can have some sort of greater reward than just what you have inside yourself, you know, greater than some of your parts.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And when I set out, and I think 2011 was my first dating start-up that I created and, you know, things that was a while ago, things were,

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[SPEAKER_01]: much different back then.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And frankly, there weren't really big dating apps.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Even Tinder wasn't out yet.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Tinder didn't exist till late in 2012.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And Grindr was the only dating app.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And that didn't fit my proclivities.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So,

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[SPEAKER_01]: As I looked around and I used the dating sites, I just realized it was super broken and there had to be a better way.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And so like a lot of founders and business owners, I started to solve the problem for myself.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And it was kind of that blind...

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[SPEAKER_01]: naivety and just the passion about how do people need in understanding that psychology angle of it that drove me to wait into this industry.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I had no idea how competitive it was, I had no idea about the native turn issues in the industry, how users, you know, once they're successful, they turn, once they're unsuccessful, or they feel they're going to be unsuccessful, they turn,

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[SPEAKER_01]: There's so many challenges in the dating industry and I just blindly went into it.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And so when you start getting into this, like I know, for most people who think about dating apps, Tinder obviously is the one that comes to mind for a lot of people, and the whole swipe mechanism has kind of become synonymous for dating apps.

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[SPEAKER_00]: But what I know is you've put a lot of parallels into understanding how marketers can be affected by looking at the way these apps are able to get attention and make these decisions on a split second.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So what exactly is that parallel that you've drawn and how effective it is when you apply it to marketing?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so so much of being successful either in the dating industry as somebody running in that or being single and dating is applicable to business owners and to marketers who are just trying to win over other people appeal to their emotions and find a way to stand out so that you find right fit for you.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And when I'm thinking about how we market our dating app to potential customers, I'm not looking mass market.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not looking to attract everybody.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm looking for a very specific type of user for us.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It happens to be casual dating and people that really want to

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[SPEAKER_01]: paint with honest intentions.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So whatever you're looking for, and whoever you are, you get to express yourself fully rather than a more generalized mainstream app that really hides away and shapes off the rough edges of a lot of people.

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[SPEAKER_01]: and for us that direct knowledge about this is who our customer is.

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[SPEAKER_01]: This is why this appeals to them.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Really helped us to define our niche and create an organic growth engine that just keeps going each turning and takes minor tweaks obviously every year we have to take a look and

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[SPEAKER_01]: It's frankly, it amazes me that 13, almost 14 years later, the engine is still running and most of our downloads, most of our new users are coming from organic traffic.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So let me dive in and give you a bit about the specific psychological elements or cognitive biases that we lean into to try to help attract those users.

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[SPEAKER_01]: First is we know that people make a lot of decisions based on

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[SPEAKER_01]: how that product or service makes them appear or makes them feel.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So it's identity and ego-driven.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And so obviously when you're advertising the people you're marketing to people, you need to consider does this make you feel like you belong somewhere?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Does it make you identify as a certain type of person?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Does it make you aspire to be a certain type of person if you're marketing the personal growth?

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[SPEAKER_01]: And if you are, what type of person is that?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Is it somebody who is successful and just needs to save some of their time and have a leg up on the productivity angle?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Is it somebody who really has,

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[SPEAKER_01]: No, no time for BS and wants to get right into a solution.

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[SPEAKER_01]: You got to think about the identity involved and how you're brand and how you're marketing, and play to those because so many of our decisions, even in dating, really are affected by our identity and how we'll be seen.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And on the dating side, just real quick to tie it all together.

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[SPEAKER_01]: that if you think about how people a lot of us, we make our decisions on our potential mates based on how will feel around them and how will feel when we bring them to meet our family or our friends.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Well, somebody judges for being with them.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Well, they make us appear like, hey, we did pretty well.

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[SPEAKER_01]: They're attracting their well-to-view, well, that stuff.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And

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[SPEAKER_01]: for better or for worse, when you're thinking about that from a marketing standpoint, whether dating app or another business, you need to consider this sort of identity element because it's so powerful that it drives, it's like the underlying current that's driving so many of our consumer decisions.

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[SPEAKER_00]: do you have any case that these are stories or any kind of example of what does it look like when a company doesn't take that into consideration at all and what happens for them when they try to make success happen but they've maybe we have their consciously or unconsciously have really haven't put this piece together.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah so I mean we've seen a bunch of fails that across many

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[SPEAKER_01]: basically, you know, if you look at some of the most successful social networks, a lot of them create this virtuous cycle of FOMO of fear of missing out.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I break down in the book how there's just really four elements of FOMO, and they're all somewhat related.

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[SPEAKER_01]: and they all be in force or tie into each other.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And so there's real quickly those four elements you can search for more if you want.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It's abbreviated at the acronym I use it uses USES and it's for urgency, social proof, exclusivity, and scarcity.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And when you have those four elements, and especially some of them are very strong, you can create this positive feedback loop of FOMO.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And the most successful social networks, dating apps included, includes some elements of FOMO, and drive this adoption.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Now, a successful one that I talk about in the book, even though they kind of flamed out, was clubhouse, the live audio app that really took off during COVID.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I break down how they leaned on each of these four elements.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But to your question about what happens when somebody doesn't do it, right?

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[SPEAKER_01]: I look at Google+.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Because anybody who remembers this train wreck of a product, yeah, go ahead.

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[SPEAKER_01]: What do you remember about?

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[SPEAKER_00]: Because as I mentioned it and you were talking I was like, oh, I feel like one of the ones that was probably a best case that he was Google plus that's exactly who I was thinking about and the fact that you're bringing it up because Google plus had all the best features It was like everything that would frustrate you about Facebook.

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[SPEAKER_00]: They had built better, but it's still sucked.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And it does the show you meant like you can build products with the best features or you can offer the best services and you'll still lose if you don't keep in mind if you don't consider and build for the emotions that your customers go through that they feel when they're dealing with whatever your product is and so what Google Plus really messed up was creating this idea of foam so they they started out.

22:16.280 --> 22:31.127
[SPEAKER_01]: with some of, you know, they were copying everybody else and we've all seen this sort of playbook, but they started out with an invite only system that they were, they said, oh, like, you know, they're inviting only the tech journalists at first and then you only have a certain number of invites.

22:31.787 --> 22:33.368
[SPEAKER_01]: But because they're Google,

22:34.411 --> 22:49.416
[SPEAKER_01]: probably felt that internal pressure about, hey, you know, they're gonna kill off our product if we don't get to scale to Google, to Google scale, not start up scale, but, you know, we're talking hundreds of millions of users going to billion plus.

22:49.856 --> 22:56.618
[SPEAKER_01]: If we don't get to that scale quickly, then this is a failure, and I'm just putting myself in this use what they probably felt, you know, but,

22:57.527 --> 23:02.729
[SPEAKER_01]: without that hyperscaling need, I think they probably would have done a lot better.

23:03.209 --> 23:12.491
[SPEAKER_01]: But they started out with some of the scarcity, some of the exclusivity on not everybody could access right away, not everybody's Google account added and enabled all that stuff.

23:12.771 --> 23:14.532
[SPEAKER_01]: But they very quickly lost that.

23:15.773 --> 23:21.815
[SPEAKER_01]: and forgot that they need to create an identity and appeal to the, for themselves as a product.

23:21.915 --> 23:24.936
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, who, what is this new network represent?

23:25.337 --> 23:26.317
[SPEAKER_01]: What is it good for?

23:26.417 --> 23:27.657
[SPEAKER_01]: What are you sure rating there?

23:27.697 --> 23:29.898
[SPEAKER_01]: Why, why would people wanna be there?

23:30.278 --> 23:34.020
[SPEAKER_01]: Like there's no clear messaging with that and then for the identity of the users,

23:35.020 --> 23:36.861
[SPEAKER_01]: they just completely forgot about that.

23:37.001 --> 23:40.282
[SPEAKER_01]: And so their users didn't have anything to identify with.

23:40.422 --> 23:42.663
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't like, oh, yeah, I'm on.

23:42.763 --> 23:46.385
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if you remember Tumblr, but Tumblr.

23:46.445 --> 23:47.245
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know.

23:47.465 --> 23:47.565
[SPEAKER_01]: OK.

23:48.425 --> 23:51.207
[SPEAKER_01]: So Tumblr, let's go to my space.

23:51.227 --> 23:52.887
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I think more people probably remember that.

23:53.087 --> 23:54.228
[SPEAKER_01]: So my space.

23:54.908 --> 24:07.738
[SPEAKER_01]: had a really good identity reinforcement because they let people express themselves so freely by kind of building their own looks and widgets and putting their favorite music on their page and all this stuff.

24:08.685 --> 24:24.315
[SPEAKER_01]: that everybody who went through that investment, something called the investment or Ikea effect, and built this page, they were so hooked on maintaining it and feeling a pride and being bought into that social network, they also connected their identity to it.

24:24.695 --> 24:31.879
[SPEAKER_01]: And so Google Plus had no identity as a product and provided no clear identity for their users.

24:32.459 --> 24:32.660
[SPEAKER_01]: So,

24:33.380 --> 24:34.741
[SPEAKER_01]: They didn't appeal to that.

24:34.901 --> 24:51.011
[SPEAKER_01]: And then on top of that, like I said, their phomo cycle never got completely built or robust because they so quickly got rid of the scarcity, got rid of the exclusivity and the social proof fell apart because they let almost everybody on and they didn't have the hottest people there.

24:51.031 --> 25:01.337
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it was just a mess when you look at a product launch because they were so fast to say, let's go 100 miles per hour instead of just doing it, right?

25:03.518 --> 25:06.000
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'd say it's not just an effect for Google.

25:06.020 --> 25:15.208
[SPEAKER_00]: I think everybody who's feeling ambitious and impatient probably cuts the corners on the things that you speak about, which ends up being fundamental and essential to taking you to the next phase.

25:15.869 --> 25:17.510
[SPEAKER_00]: And I almost feel like what you're speaking about.

25:17.610 --> 25:28.220
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like if a company starts and maybe has some initial like luck and success has their first few users without having figured things out, you can kind of get away with

25:28.920 --> 25:36.325
[SPEAKER_00]: not thinking concretely about creating this, but I feel at a certain point, you're almost forced to think about this or else you hit a cap.

25:36.765 --> 25:38.446
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that what you've noticed in the research?

25:39.827 --> 25:48.653
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, looking at my own career and the apps that I've worked on, a lot of my failures were because I was also trying to rush to the successful phase.

25:49.193 --> 25:57.239
[SPEAKER_00]: My first dating app that was successful and got attention and took off, we hit three, we hit a million users in about three months.

25:58.039 --> 26:00.401
[SPEAKER_01]: And just scaling very quickly out of the gate.

26:00.941 --> 26:05.604
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was a pivot from the previous one, which had less than 500 users.

26:06.145 --> 26:20.234
[SPEAKER_01]: So I was so excited, and we were getting all this traction, but I didn't realize at the time how important all this stuff was for customer loyalty and retention, for eventually monetization, for user success.

26:20.994 --> 26:21.174
[SPEAKER_01]: And I

26:22.075 --> 26:37.623
[SPEAKER_01]: Because of that, you know, that first app, that first successful product in the dating realm went through a lot of ups and downs and many more downs and ups, I'd say, and eventually when I sold the company and bought it back years later.

26:38.543 --> 26:40.464
[SPEAKER_01]: I resolved that I was going to do it differently.

26:40.544 --> 27:03.871
[SPEAKER_01]: I was going to run the company in a much more intentional way to focus on the fundamentals, to focus on our user's success and creating something that's better for them a product that I could be proud of, not just for the marketing that got it to stand out and got the users in the top of the funnel, but for the product and what happens afterwards.

27:04.611 --> 27:06.673
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was a big piece missing.

27:07.133 --> 27:11.977
[SPEAKER_01]: And then another app that I was part of, you know, it was very successful as well.

27:12.437 --> 27:14.218
[SPEAKER_01]: The top live streaming app in Asia.

27:14.458 --> 27:16.440
[SPEAKER_01]: And I helped to, I was the chief growth officer.

27:16.460 --> 27:21.904
[SPEAKER_01]: We helped, I helped to scale it to like dozens of countries and grew it in the US.

27:21.944 --> 27:25.126
[SPEAKER_01]: But we as a group were collectively now.

27:25.166 --> 27:28.529
[SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't running this plan, but like I can see in hindsight now.

27:28.789 --> 27:29.630
[SPEAKER_01]: We as a group were,

27:30.922 --> 27:41.584
[SPEAKER_01]: too rushed to try to get to liquidity, to try to get to an exit via IPO, a stocklist thing that it basically almost ruined the company.

27:42.425 --> 27:48.966
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, just rushing the phases and not building the foundation quite right, you know, all that stuff.

27:48.986 --> 27:52.607
[SPEAKER_01]: So multiple times in my career, I've seen companies and apps do this.

27:52.807 --> 27:52.907
[SPEAKER_01]: And

27:54.186 --> 28:03.657
[SPEAKER_01]: the thing that we all feel this, we all feel this pressure for one reason or another from investors, from the headlines that competitors get, from just our internal drive.

28:04.478 --> 28:12.547
[SPEAKER_01]: And we have to return to its process, it's something that, you know, you can't rush it, you have to

28:13.602 --> 28:17.186
[SPEAKER_01]: You can hurry it along, I guess, but if you brush it too much, it's going to fall apart.

28:17.206 --> 28:17.746
[SPEAKER_01]: It's going to fail.

28:18.287 --> 28:24.353
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's a hard lesson to learn, and I have to remind myself all the time the way I hear it is that

28:25.962 --> 28:48.523
[SPEAKER_00]: When you go out and you want to have that pop and you want to make sure that it's attracting the right kinds of users and you're bringing that initial growth, you have to have that design foam when you've got to build it in, you have to spend some time with your identity so then that you can have that kind of magnetism to your brand and that kind of gives you that initial potential to get to a pop or a virality that I know a lot of marketers are trying to chase.

28:49.103 --> 29:00.533
[SPEAKER_00]: But it sounds like, you know, even as you remind yourself and for anybody who has had that initial success and, you know, you even reference clubhouse, which I haven't heard of that app in years.

29:01.034 --> 29:03.836
[SPEAKER_00]: But I remember that that had all of those elements.

29:04.216 --> 29:15.826
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it seems like there's a forbidden fruit or a temptation that exists once you've started scaling really strongly that you start forgetting the initial principles where it gets diluted and then it kind of implodes.

29:16.607 --> 29:28.470
[SPEAKER_00]: When you speak about having a reminder of self, are there certain clues that you should look for if you might be losing that touch with your identity or some data points that search suggesting like, oh, wait, wait, wait, wait.

29:28.490 --> 29:29.810
[SPEAKER_00]: We've lost that magic.

29:29.850 --> 29:31.610
[SPEAKER_00]: We need to go work on the magic making.

29:33.271 --> 29:34.431
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

29:34.991 --> 29:36.491
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, that's a really sharp question.

29:36.511 --> 29:42.953
[SPEAKER_01]: I think what we tend to look at is some of the standard stuff

29:44.818 --> 30:08.566
[SPEAKER_01]: You got to ask yourself, what is your North Star metric as a company, and then for team, your marketing team, your product team, etc., what are they putting at the top of their list, are they does it align with that North Star metric, you know, can you connect the dots to them, and are you incentivizing your team, even if it's just yourself, are you incentivizing your daily work?

30:09.286 --> 30:11.807
[SPEAKER_01]: to reach to improve that metric.

30:12.428 --> 30:21.953
[SPEAKER_01]: So when I talk to a lot of startups, a lot of them either don't have that all-important metric that is telling them exactly.

30:22.053 --> 30:28.357
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the thing that we are running toward aligns with our mission, it aligns with our current state of the company, all that stuff.

30:29.057 --> 30:49.993
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't have that North Star metric defined or they will say a metric like, oh, we're looking for, we want to hit 10,000 user signups or something that ends up just being a vanity metric and it's not connected to the reality on the ground with your product with your consumers, your customers.

30:51.038 --> 30:53.720
[SPEAKER_01]: of are they actually finding value in what you're doing?

30:54.481 --> 30:58.004
[SPEAKER_01]: And are they likely to then refer you to others?

30:58.945 --> 31:07.212
[SPEAKER_01]: Actually stick around for a long time and continue creating value and help you build the next iterations of what you're building to make it even better.

31:07.953 --> 31:17.781
[SPEAKER_01]: So I go back to doing that gut check on the metrics, what is the most important one in connecting the dots with all of them.

31:18.902 --> 31:21.727
[SPEAKER_01]: Is there a warning flag other than watching those metrics?

31:22.348 --> 31:31.985
[SPEAKER_01]: I would also say, you know, if you are doing any sort of user surveys net promoter scores stuff like that, then

31:33.523 --> 31:44.412
[SPEAKER_01]: you need to be able to identify who are your most important power users and what are their sentiments right now versus six months ago.

31:45.032 --> 31:47.694
[SPEAKER_01]: What are their sentiments going to be in six months?

31:47.794 --> 31:55.861
[SPEAKER_01]: Like look at that trajectory and make sure that you're returning to that because when you forget about who are your power users and just

31:57.283 --> 31:58.564
[SPEAKER_01]: Let it go by the wayside.

31:58.584 --> 32:04.250
[SPEAKER_01]: You get carried away with, you know, oh, we hit this 100% growth in the last quarter, that sort of thing.

32:05.030 --> 32:10.816
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so easy to lose sight of why you hit that growth rate in the first place.

32:12.697 --> 32:31.380
[SPEAKER_00]: you know I'm someone who is always observing the gaming industry video games because I think they're the cutting edge of the largest budgets of the largest media in the world and this is exactly what has happened for a lot of studios that at release a lot of games that were actually alienated their core audiences in the biggest of ways in search for new markets.

32:31.961 --> 32:36.023
[SPEAKER_00]: And I find that's been the way that it's caused the biggest types of implosions around brands.

32:36.724 --> 32:47.149
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, even in the way that, you know, in the company where I'm supporting, we have a whole amount of instructors who have been out there to advocating for our methodologies and we want to support for them.

32:47.509 --> 32:53.595
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's so easy to always be obsessed with like we need to acquire new sell new continuously grow.

32:54.275 --> 33:07.368
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, a big thing that we did is we started investing and updating our entire curriculums, our products and making sure that we're spending a lot of attention on them because there are existing users and thinking about how do we actually allow them to bring us more users and to me?

33:08.330 --> 33:17.078
[SPEAKER_00]: That's been a place where we had to be like, okay, look, we got to get this right because if we don't get this right, something that's just average at scales is a disaster.

33:18.899 --> 33:19.480
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.

33:19.540 --> 33:22.482
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, if it's average, it's not going to survive.

33:22.903 --> 33:32.311
[SPEAKER_01]: So you need to eat average and really hone in on making it amazing for those core users, not pleasing everybody.

33:33.420 --> 33:37.763
[SPEAKER_00]: If somebody's listening to this and they're like, I've never really spent time around the identity.

33:37.803 --> 33:40.164
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I've just been doing like, you know, paid advertising.

33:40.344 --> 33:41.685
[SPEAKER_00]: And I look at like pain points.

33:41.725 --> 33:42.425
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw the pain.

33:42.465 --> 33:52.531
[SPEAKER_00]: I convert what some of the first steps you would suggest for someone who's just listened to this and wants to start applying some principles for a quick win or at least a quick assessment.

33:54.575 --> 34:04.604
[SPEAKER_01]: I like to do two different methods for empathizing with the users I have and part of that is understanding their identity.

34:05.445 --> 34:19.777
[SPEAKER_01]: And the first one is called the method mindset technique, but if you're familiar with like how a lot of actors get into their character, they are doing method acting and they are living as their character in their daily life when they're

34:20.518 --> 34:21.519
[SPEAKER_01]: playing that character.

34:21.659 --> 34:40.679
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I like to do the best I can with that with the target segment that I am thinking about so that I better understand what is their identity, what are they dealing with, what's going to affect their ego, what sort of status symbols and elements do they care about.

34:41.500 --> 34:42.641
[SPEAKER_01]: Where do they spend their time?

34:43.102 --> 34:54.252
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you start from that point, then a lot of the identity stuff just starts to fall into place because you start to immerse yourself in their sort of world.

34:55.182 --> 35:06.606
[SPEAKER_01]: Starting there is good and then starting to look at when you segment your users and you hone in on, okay, these are our power users, these are the ones that I want to understand their identity better.

35:07.246 --> 35:17.369
[SPEAKER_01]: You want to start to look at what sort of hooks, because you've already run ads, you've already run marketing, what sort of hooks, what sort of content and messaging actually is hit with them already.

35:17.709 --> 35:18.890
[SPEAKER_01]: So turn to your data.

35:19.650 --> 35:27.475
[SPEAKER_01]: and start to make sense of it, and you can breeze through a lot of this, make it a lot easier with AI to help you analyze it.

35:27.735 --> 35:33.559
[SPEAKER_01]: But when you do that, you'll start to notice, here are the different types of hooks that appeal to them.

35:33.639 --> 35:37.461
[SPEAKER_01]: For instance, some people tend to be see themselves.

35:37.581 --> 35:40.543
[SPEAKER_01]: Their identity tends to be somebody who is more

35:42.204 --> 35:59.786
[SPEAKER_01]: and they want to stand out from the crowd, they don't want to do the same thing as everybody else, and appealing to them as like, hey, this is the hottest thing and everybody's on it, is actually not what you want to do, because that creates a bit of a talent, you know,

36:00.286 --> 36:08.050
[SPEAKER_01]: So, if you identify that with some of your hooks, then in that performs better, then you know, okay, they might be more contrarian.

36:08.110 --> 36:10.732
[SPEAKER_01]: And you can do a bit of research.

36:11.112 --> 36:16.375
[SPEAKER_01]: It's definitely out there and look what sort of professions, for instance, tend to have more contrarians.

36:16.935 --> 36:21.398
[SPEAKER_01]: What sort of locations might attract more contrarian mindset?

36:22.378 --> 36:26.322
[SPEAKER_01]: So start to look at stuff like that, the different types of personality types.

36:26.902 --> 36:46.781
[SPEAKER_01]: I also instruct people to start to look at the different, you can use Myers-Briggs or any other personality type, sort of categories, and not that they're perfect in all that, but they do give you a nice starting point for thinking about, all right, what type are power users, what type of personality types might fit in there?

36:47.341 --> 36:55.249
[SPEAKER_01]: And then how do we start to test out with some of our ads or marketing things that would appeal to that personality type?

36:55.690 --> 37:01.796
[SPEAKER_01]: The opposite obviously of a contrarian is somebody who wants harmony and wants to go along with the crowd.

37:02.136 --> 37:05.400
[SPEAKER_01]: So you would definitely appeal to them in a different way.

37:05.440 --> 37:09.984
[SPEAKER_01]: That's all about, you know, this is the proven choice, safety and all that stuff.

37:10.665 --> 37:14.629
[SPEAKER_01]: So start with those two or three different ideas.

37:15.449 --> 37:27.080
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you're AB testing, make sure that you're not just running a general AB test for all your users, but you're trying to segment as best you can with those sorts of parameters.

37:27.140 --> 37:34.427
[SPEAKER_01]: Because again, if you're trying to make marketing that works for everybody, it's going to be mediocre for everybody as well.

37:35.462 --> 37:40.286
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's definitely one of the actions I plan to take so that it can become more effective in the way that we market.

37:40.426 --> 37:46.812
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like the AI and the algorithms make it so that whatever you write in your copy, whatever you have on your landing page, automatically fine.

37:46.832 --> 37:54.318
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's kind of the ways that I know you can do targeting way better by just how you're actually speaking to that individual.

37:54.378 --> 37:58.181
[SPEAKER_00]: So I feel like this is a very important step I want to bring to the marketing team immediately.

37:58.241 --> 37:59.703
[SPEAKER_00]: So we can take that away from you.

38:00.263 --> 38:09.288
[SPEAKER_00]: For everybody who's listening in his curious about growing themselves as a startup wants to get better at marketing, outrageous startup growth uncovering the secrets of user psychology to scale your business.

38:09.308 --> 38:27.978
[SPEAKER_00]: The book just came out and one of the questions I want to ask you is that you know I know how much effort in time it takes to write a book and so it takes a willpower and it takes a why and I'd be curious you know what is it that motivates you to put this book together and with the ultimate outcome you want to see from a lot of the people will get a chance to read it.

38:30.432 --> 38:49.857
[SPEAKER_01]: I started to think about what do I want to, what's the impact I want to have on the world beyond the apps that I'm working on and a big part of that was I wanted to help other entrepreneurs create these sustainable, successful businesses that are helping some their segment of users.

38:50.863 --> 39:00.987
[SPEAKER_01]: and they don't have to do it with the most funding and aim to be a decabillionaire, deca unicorn, sorry, and they don't have to raise money from all the VCs.

39:01.527 --> 39:07.269
[SPEAKER_01]: I wanted to just multiply and amplify all of those types of marketers, entrepreneurs, and

39:08.229 --> 39:16.151
[SPEAKER_01]: I really do see it's fallen into place in the last few years, but I really do see that more and more people are going to need to be entrepreneurial.

39:16.831 --> 39:32.415
[SPEAKER_01]: Whether they call themselves entrepreneurs now or not and running your own business, being a freelancer, piecing together multiple jobs to pay the bills or to create some lifestyle freedom where like you live in Bali, me, and Thailand,

39:33.172 --> 40:00.458
[SPEAKER_01]: you can do so much with your life if you have these principles and you understand how to create a more sustainable business and that's what I wanted to give back to because I didn't have that when I was growing up I had some really nice mentors and others along the way but I didn't have the playbook and I wanted to create that for people and just to still a lot of the lessons that I've learned along the way and of course it's fun to tell the story too because in the

40:02.298 --> 40:03.139
[SPEAKER_01]: pretty wild ride.

40:03.419 --> 40:05.520
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's some fun stories from there as well.

40:06.841 --> 40:07.701
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure there is.

40:07.922 --> 40:10.063
[SPEAKER_00]: And honestly, thank you for your time.

40:10.163 --> 40:11.664
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for sharing the wisdom today.

40:12.104 --> 40:20.870
[SPEAKER_00]: I know for me, you know, just on the verge of releasing our own app, there's definitely a lot to take away, especially when it comes to the segmentation and the identity being so crisp.

40:21.270 --> 40:26.994
[SPEAKER_00]: And I feel that scale exposes the cracks in the business become chasms in scale.

40:27.414 --> 40:30.356
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think getting reminded to focus on those things before

40:32.477 --> 40:37.620
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can really make sure that you can scale, you can sustain, and then you can continue making that positive impact.

40:38.180 --> 40:42.222
[SPEAKER_00]: Colin, thank you so much again for coming on the show and sharing the wisdom for everybody tuning in.

40:42.502 --> 40:45.083
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to put a link to the book, so you can grab yourself a copy.

40:45.384 --> 40:48.485
[SPEAKER_00]: For those of you who want to scale, get more users, maximize your impact.

40:48.505 --> 40:54.328
[SPEAKER_00]: This will be the resource you need, and I'm super excited for all that are going to be out there and doing some great things.

40:54.448 --> 40:58.510
[SPEAKER_00]: And making businesses with integrity, which I know is very important to you and your business partners too.

40:58.570 --> 41:01.772
[SPEAKER_00]: So thank you for being a force for good and an ally to the show as well.

41:02.974 --> 41:08.157
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for having me on and I just one last thing I am starting a mastermind group.

41:08.217 --> 41:25.585
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you're a leader out there, you're running your business and you want a dedicated group of people to really just get real with and grow with and hold it each other accountable and learn from then check out my website or hit me up on LinkedIn and you can apply.

41:26.990 --> 41:27.310
[SPEAKER_00]: perfect.

41:27.330 --> 41:29.933
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll make sure there's a link directly to callinhodge.com.

41:30.294 --> 41:32.937
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll be able to just get more about the mass-marin and all the work that you do as well.

41:33.397 --> 41:34.318
[SPEAKER_00]: So thank you so much.

41:35.299 --> 41:36.220
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much.

41:40.545 --> 41:45.491
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for listening to the Jason Mark Campbell business podcast and of course, keep selling with love.