What you learn from over 300 podcasts

Hello, and welcome to this episode of the creator. Come up podcast. This time around, I had the absolute privilege of chatting with none other than Omar Kahn. Omar is the host of the SAS podcast, as well as runs the SAS club. I know it's a lot of SAS for one man, but Omar seems to handle it pretty well. We chatted about everything from rebranding, all the way to getting out of the bunker as he likes to call it. And it looks like you're going to have to keep listening in order to know what I meant by out of the bunker. So in that case to not have you be waiting any longer without further ado, Omer con. Fantastic. All right, we're rolling. Homer. Thank you for doing this. Honestly. I really appreciate you doing this. This is a very, uh, very helpful for our end, as well as you know, I'm going to learn a couple things throughout

My pleasure and I'm sorry, it took so long for me to get my act together and schedule this.

No, you're totally fine, man. It's all good. You're a busy man. I totally understand it. Um, but I do have, I am going to hit you with one of your own questions to start with. It's the, uh, do you have a favorite quote, something that inspires or motivates you or just gets you out of bed every day that you'd like to share?

Did you like how on point I was with that too?

Yeah. And, and, um, there is, uh, a quote that I should know now, um, to who is it. I'll see if I find it later, but I would say the other thing that I, I would in terms of quotes, it's not a favorite quote, but just something that, um, I've learned to remind myself when my wife always tells me is like, follow your heart. And it's, it's a lot of the times we're very cerebral and we spend a lot of time thinking about, you know, what the mind is telling us. And the mind tells us a lot of crap as well. So sometimes I think if you just like, listen to what really brings you joy, what are the things that make you feel alive? You, you kind of end up going down a better path. I think so.

Well, it seems like you're a, you're embodying that in what you're doing and how your whole life story of what I've read on your, on your website so far. But we can get into that if you'd like to give it like a little quick elevator pitch of what you do, who you are and, uh, all that come from.

Sure. Uh, so I'm Omar Khan. I'm the founder of a SAS club, which is a community for early stage SAS, founders, people building services and software businesses. And I'm also the host of the SAS podcast, which I started in 2014. And I'm just about to publish episode 300.

Wow. Congratulations. 300 episodes. That's that's a lot. And, uh, do you do, do you post weekly?

Look at you. Wow. That's awesome. I'm going to, I'm going to have to ask you later about how you've, uh, well, actually it's a question here. We'll get into that eventually. Um, but the one thing I wanted to know is like looking at, um, I saw that you had a lot of, uh, computer programming and even event planning in your background. How did that lead into where you are now with doing a podcast? Do it like running a whole, the SAS club, whole business, uh, what, what did all of those things as a, as a kid and growing up, lead into this?

You know, I think as, as a lot, like happens to a lot of people, it was just all by accident. When you look back, you can kind of connect the dots, but I'm not sure it was a very intentional thing. Um, I, I used to like coding when I was a kid. Right. And, um, and then I met somebody one day who told me, you know, have you considered a career in this when, you know, you're older? And I was like, you mean, people pay you to do this. I was like, yeah, you can, you can get paid to write code. Um, and so I was like, great, that's the way I want to go. And I started my career eventually, you know, became a developer and, uh, spent some years doing that. And, uh, that eventually led me to getting a job at Microsoft, um, where I worked on a bunch of different types of, I was working for the online division.

So working on a lot of very scalable, very complex, um, software products. Um, and so I got one experience of that, of, you know, what's it like to be part of a team with thousands of engineers building, you know, super complex products. And then it sort of led me to wanting to go and still build products myself. Sure. And, um, I failed at several of them and that kind of, and also even in the Microsoft world, there was a lot of projects that didn't go very well. And so they just kind of kept me thinking about what is it, what is it about, uh, some projects, whether it's, it's kind of within some big company or whether it's of the startup, uh, that some people fail, some people succeed and, and there's no playbook, right? So people will say to you, oh, you know, the lean startup or customer development or whatever.

And as I realized over the last few years, there's no playbook. People will tell you if it was that easy that you could just say, Hey, all you need to do is these 20 steps and you'll build a unicorn business. Everybody would be doing it. Right. Correct. And so the podcast sort of started with me sort of thinking about how can I start to interview people who have had some success, have built some businesses and figure out what is it that they're doing that helped them to get to where they are, what mistakes did they learn along the way? And, and you know, what are the, what are some of the lessons that I can share with other people? And so that was generally like the way that, that sort of led me to the podcast. And, um, you know, like I said, you, you just learn a lot of surprises that people tell you, go out and talk to customers. And I was meeting founders who were saying, actually, I never talked to a customer, but I managed to build this really successful business. And it was like, well, how did you do that? So, yeah, it's just been a really fascinating journey and you realize that there's no right way to do it. What you really need to do is just learn principles, best practices, and then figure out how you can apply it to whatever you're doing to try and make some sense of it.

Yeah, no, definitely. Um, so what came, what, what came first? Was it the podcasts or did the, the SAS club come first? Um, I'm assuming it was the podcast, correct?

Podcasts came first. Yeah. I left Microsoft and I was going to go out and start doing some, some consulting work. And, uh, I figured that the podcasts kind of might be a good way. Not to not only just answer the questions that I had, but it was like, Hey, you know, maybe I can connect with people and figure out what are some of the interesting companies that, you know, maybe I could, you know, work with or, you know, whatever. And so I started to do that and I realized that I actually quite enjoyed doing the podcast itself, you know, just these, having these conversations, uh, uncovering a lot of, lot of really valuable information about not just the story of somebody's business and how they just had some weird idea and, okay, how did you actually turn that into a multiple seven figure business with X number of employees and whatever.

That was a really interesting thing to go through, but it just kept on kind of the onion kept unpeeling. You kept getting to different layers of all of this information. And it was like a really fascinating conversation to keep having with people. So it started with that. Um, honestly I didn't think anybody was going to listen to it. It was like, I thought I'd do it for like, you know, a couple of months and then move on to something else. And, um, the first, the first couple of years were pretty slow. Like, I don't remember what the download numbers were at the time, but yeah, it kind of didn't feel like many people were listening to it.

What did you Ah, promote on or what did you use to, to market yourself in that, in those times, in the early days? Um, to cause, I mean, obviously you have found a niche and in that market, um, so what did you use to, was it just word of mouth or did you kind of just post to your own socials or did you find a way to, to get the word out about your podcast?

Um, I didn't really have a very, you know, a great plan for doing this. It was literally I was recording the episodes, uh, making sure that the podcast was, was listed in every directory that I could. And so that was a matter of just, Hey, Googling, figuring out what are all the podcasting directories, how do you get your RSS feed submitted to those directories and make sure that's showing up where it should, um, sharing on, on social. Um, you know, even there were already some dumb things that I did, like I think for the first hundred interviews, I never asked the guests to promote the episode after we published it. And it was like a simple thing, just, Hey, you know, could you, could you share this as well? Um, some people did it anyway, but, um, a lot of them didn't and it's kinda like you have to ask. Yeah.

Um, I feel like it's one of those things, at least right now, uh, when your podcast doesn't offer a lot of people, some sort of like an immediate, uh, boost in their views or anything like that, it's kind of hard to be like, Hey, do you mind promoting me for you? You know, it's and that's kind of where we're sitting right now too, so, oh man. Do you mind promoting this, this podcast? That's amazing. That's wonderful. Um, so do you have a team that you work with or is it all just you?

Um, I have a team of virtual team of some freelancers who work with me. Okay. Um, and so, uh, you know, when it comes to like organizing the interviews, scheduling, um, editing all of that, I have help, I'd say probably like the first hundred episodes. I, I kind of did a lot of that myself, including all the edits.

Sure. Okay. Uh, and then when it comes to like your first, uh, I mean now you have access to a lot of people because you have a very successful podcast, but before was it, um, was your time at Microsoft and even, I think I saw Disney, correct. You worked for Disney for a little while. Did that give you access to some people that were very willing to, to sit down and chat with you? Was that like that environment, uh, allow you to kind of, do you think that environment allowed you to flourish in the sun, this market?

Uh, I don't think it was as direct as using my network from, from Microsoft to connect with people. Okay. Um, I don't think, I, I think maybe I had two guests of, of, on my podcast who were in some way had worked at Microsoft or work. I'd met through somebody at Microsoft. Okay. Um, so that didn't really happen. I'd say the benefit of it was that working at Microsoft, you just get so much broad exposure. So yeah.

Now explain what do you mean by that?

You get a lot of broad exposure exposure to, well,

You at Microsoft are very good at like giving you opportunities to do, you know, if they think that you have some potential, they'll give you opportunities to do things. Right. So, uh, for me, I was, you know, I've been working, I worked in teams where the product was very technical. There was a lot of AI machine learning type stuff. I worked on, uh, products, which were much more focused on, uh, you know, online products and building Dino media websites and stuff like that. And then I actually decided, I actually wanted to kind of learn more about the business. So I was able to move into, uh, running, uh, part of our media business for online video, where like I was running, I had responsibility for a P and L account. So it was probably about a 30, $40 million business at the time, which from a startup perspective is pretty good from a Microsoft perspective. It was pretty tiny, but it was my corner of the world where I had had some free rent and opportunity to learn more about business and sales and marketing and all of those things. So I think the point was that when you then go out and you talk to people, you can talk to them, um, at a technical level, at a product level, at a business level. And I think that was one of the biggest benefits from, from microphone.

So the, the conversations that you would have with a lot of these people able to get out of it, it was just easy conversation and it seemed to work well. So, um, having that connection was more partly the incentive to, to chat with you when it came to the,

Okay. And then I think some people, uh, agreed to come on the podcast because they saw, uh, you know, my background working at Microsoft and I, I guess they were like, well, I guess

He's something he might be okay.

It's not just like, oh, this random guy is emailing me to do a podcast. It's like, no, this guy has some background in something that I also have back. And, you know, that makes sense. Okay. Very cool. Very, very cool. Um, I did a little digging oh. A while ago and I found the conversion aid podcast. Is that correct? Now, did, was that what it was prior to the SAS podcast or is it something completely?

No. No. Um, so the podcast, okay. So the, the, the way the podcast started was I had decided I want to do a podcast. I had bought a podcasting course and I'd been, I'd been working through it for about six months and I was just procrastinating. Right. Like making spreadsheets of like what microphones to buy and stuff like that. And, uh, a friend of mine was like, Hey, let's, you know, let's one, both of us will launch a podcast and it's like, okay, great. Yeah. So I'm working through this plan and be working on like six months. I think I might be ready in another, like three, four months to launch this thing. And he was like, no, no, no, let's try and get a podcast launched in the next week. Yeah. Let's just do it. And, uh, he came up with some crazy bat, which I didn't want to lose.

So I was like, I went home that day and I was like, crap, how am I going to do this? And, um, I decided that like, I just to do whatever it took to get an episode showing up in iTunes. So literally I I'd written some blog posts some years ago. I used some crappy software already on my Mac, um, recorded it figured out how to create a podcast, how to register with iTunes and get it published. And I did it at about two days and, and the thing was, I wasn't all, I was, I was motivated by not losing this bet. And all I wanted to do was once it showed up in iTunes, I was going to take a screenshot, show it and then delete the thing. Right. Cause it was like, there's no way I was putting this out in the world.

It was crap, you know? And um, so I did that, you know, won the bet. Um, but good for you. It made me realize how easy it wasn't as complicated to launch a podcast as I thought it was. And so that got me, um, started all the ball rolling. Um, and so I was like, okay, like, don't try to perfect things. Okay. Um, what do I want to do? Well, I want to interview people who are running software businesses. Great. Um, what am I going to call it? I dunno. Well, I bought this domain called conversion a.com. Wasn't doing anything with, it might as well. No, one's going to listen to the podcast anyway, so it doesn't matter what it's called. So I just use that and I was like, yeah, I've got the domain. I can call it the conversion eight podcasts and got started.

And I started interviewing people. I don't know how many, it must've been over a hundred episodes that I just did as, as conversion rate. And the thing was, number one, it was confusing. Like people will go, oh, so you're about conversion rate optimization. I was like, no, there's nothing to do with that. Then why is it called that problem? Number one and rule number two, like in terms of finding listeners, it was people just didn't get what, what it was about. And it took me about the first couple of years to figure out what the podcast should be about. And I was like, you know, this is really, I'm just interviewing SAS founders. So this is really a SAS podcast. Just call it this. Why don't we just go on it, stop, stop trying to be clever. Like just tell people what it's about. Um, and then once I did that, it was like people say emailing me and saying, I've been looking for something like this for ages. Um, thank you so much for doing this. And I was like, you know, I'll been doing this for like two years. You're like, you're missing out. Nobody knew about it. And it was just down to me like, um, but again, it's, you know what, I've been better off, like spending a year, trying to come up with a perfect name. Perfect domain. I don't think so. I think it was better just to get started and figure it out along the way. Right. That's kind of the lesson we learned. Okay.

Uh, now when you Made that switch, when you made that transition, cause like right now, our company is currently trying to do that with a lot of our marketing stuff and online, um, content as well. Uh, was there anything that you would recommend from your learnings of like changing it or did you kind of just change it over? And it was like, Hey, there we go. And it just worked out, um, for like rebranding and whatnot. Is there anything that you would, or any information that you've gathered from the past guests potentially, uh, for people trying to rebrand?

Yeah. I w I, I gained, I'd love to say it was kind of, you know, some big master plan and it wasn't, I just woke up one day and I was like, look, this isn't working. It's kind of dumb. Right. Just change it to something else. And then, um, I found, I found, I think it was like the SAS podcast.com was available cause SAS podcast.com somebody had already bought and they weren't using it. Um, and I tried to buy it and they wanted, you know, some ridiculous amount of money. I'm like, no, thanks. No one's going to listen to my podcast

Now worth hundreds of dollars.

And, um, so I would say, I think, and it wasn't, it wasn't immediate. It wasn't like I, I changed it and they all started coming and it just happens slowly. And I, I would say the main thing I learned from that was number one is get clear about who your listener is. Okay. Um, and that took me a while to figure out, cause I didn't really know who it was, but once people started contacting me, I started to figure out these are people who are they're building SAS, businesses, nearly all of them are early stage. So for me, early stages, somebody who's like at zero. And it has an idea and wants to get off the ground through to somebody who maybe has been building, uh, a business for, you know, a couple of years and have got some traction, maybe they're profitable. And they're trying to figure out how to get to their first million dollars or $2 billion.

So that seemed to be the range of people coming through these weren't people who were running, you know, a hundred person, 200 person companies and doing this or, or people who wanted to raise a series B or series C round. So I think it was, it was important to understand who is this podcast appealing to? And then what can I do to think about the name, the way I describe it? Um, the way I even titled the episodes, um, you know, you know, this, if you're writing a headline and you've got two different types of target audience, you can write the headline in very different ways to assure one group or the other. And, and so just understanding that person made it easier for me to just get the messaging. Right. Uh, other than that, I'd say, you know, people, people sort of underestimated a little bit about, you know, I spend a lot of time thinking about like, um, like iTunes, SEO, like, Hey, you know, if I searched for the word SAS, what podcasts are showing up?

Yeah. What, what is it that they have in their title, in their description? Um, what about each episode? What, what does the description show in? I choose why is I choose ranking these and not mine? And so I'd go back and try to tweak those and things like that because, you know, that was, that was a big way that people were finding it. They just go in, look for podcasts. I want a podcast about SAS. Let me see what I can find. And so I, I sort of focused on that. And so again, simple stuff, nothing major or massive, but it was these little things that over time, uh, helped to more and more people to find it. Now, in hindsight, I wish I'd be able to figure this stuff out. Did we just lose my video?

I think I just love it. Yeah. Oh, cool. All right. I was like, oh no.

Interrupt. Um, forgot what I was saying.

I mean, I have a question if that's okay. Yeah. Let's move on.

And then we'll, we'll

We'll we'll if it comes back, we'll, we'll, we'll jump back into it, but, um, it kind of has to, it has to do with this though. Uh, so is it important, is it more important to focus on your concept? Uh, when, when going forward or is it more important to focus on what type of audience you'll be making? Because you made a very, uh, very good claim of like, you gotta understand who you're talking to. Um, and then I think that there's like a, I don't know, at least for myself, a lot of the time when I come up with concepts, it's more of what do I want to bring to the market and how can I change it rather than thinking, like, what are people looking for? Or like what, or who am I talking to? So is there a balance that you have to find when it comes to, to like really starting to put yourself higher and higher on the SEOs? Uh, for the list?

I think most of us have to start with concept because, you know, unless you already have an audience, let's say you, you have a product, um, and you have a big email list or, you know, you, maybe you have a blog that you've been writing for awhile. You don't really know who your audience is. So you, you, you're going to start with the concept you're going to, you're going to have, okay. Here's who I think my audience is. Here's what I think would be useful. And so you start with that, but I think the important thing is to keep refining that and keep thinking about, as you figure out who who's actually to, what do they want, what do they try? Why, why are they interested in this? So then what, what can you do? And I think for me, when, when I sort of started to feel like I was getting this right, was when people would, uh, email me and say, I heard that interview.

And the questions you asked, it was like, you were reading my mind. And it was because I started thinking about one very specific person for each interview. And I would say, oh, you know, so-and-so right. I spoke to him, this is, this is the stage they were at. And these are the things they, they told me they was struggling with. So if, if I was in their position, what would I be asking this person or this interview? So that's, that's all I tried to do. And, um, the it's in the early days I had a script and regardless of what the guests told me, I would ask the next question,

I'm down right now at my script.

I was like, well, what's next to him? And I'm like, look, it's like a very, very tough thing, but like, okay, keep going. I'm listening, I'm taking notes. Keep going. Yeah.

Um, and then, so I, I also, I'd been building an email list and again, you know, people say, Hey, you know, you can use build email list. You can use that as this is your audience. You can market to them, whatever it is, I didn't really have anything to sell. So I was building this list. All I would do is just email them every week and say, here's a new episode.

How did that work? That I work out well, like there were, did you get a lot of like, uh, unsubscribed?

No, I think, uh, right. I was getting, I was getting a pretty healthy open rate. Um, uh, not many unsubscribes. I think it's because I wasn't selling stuff. Like I was giving people content and I wasn't asking for anything. Gotcha. Okay. And I was like, oh, I'm going to figure this out at some point, but I don't know what that is. And, um, I do remember that I emailed people on the list once a day, asked for feedback, Hey, what could I do better? What kind of people could I interview? How could I improve the podcast? That was really, uh, a huge, uh, kind of milestone for me, because number one, I started to realize that people were listening, that they, that they cared, they cared and they would say, Hey, I listened to this thing. And I thought that was really helpful because it helped me with this. And then a number of people said, ditch the script. It's so obvious you're reading a script. Right. And I was like, oh yeah. And so I think eventually I was like, okay, I kind of generally know where I want to take this interview and I'm going to do that based on the conversation and what people tell me to, rather than, you know, painting numbers.

Also, you have a bit of a good background in it as well, so that you can play along with the conversation as it goes.

Yeah. Which want to see if you do get from your first episode, it's really hard. Right? You can't, you can't do an unscripted interview on your first episode. Well, you can, but you'll go all over the place. You'll talk about a bunch of crap. And as, as I did, and it, people will be like, well, uh, I didn't really, you know what it's like when you listen to an episode of somebody's podcasts and they just go all over the place and you're like, what is this about? Why should I listen to this? And so I think that took a little bit of time, but because I'd had the, the experience of doing it, kind of with this, the, the script as a crutch, um, when I kind of got rid of it, I already knew kind of intuitively where I was trying to take this.

Um, uh, one of the things that I I've, I I did was I created, uh, an interview flow page of which, uh, I got from, uh, uh, Jody Dumas, who does, you know, entrepreneurial fire. Okay. And it's basically a page which just tells people this, everything about the interview, this is the interview. This is how long it's going to last. This is the general structure. So I would tell people like, this is about the founder's story. So we're going to start off and I'm going to ask about how you came up with the idea, how you validated it, or didn't validate it, et cetera. And then we're going to talk about how you built the product that we're going to talk about, how you got your first 10 customers, your first hundred customers and so on. So even though it wasn't scripted, there was a structure and that was very helpful.

Gotcha. Okay. And like, did, did you find at any point that when you were in, in an interview that didn't have any sort of, I mean, do you still have like a bunch of questions that you look off of, or is it literally just that structure that you go off of right now?

Nope. I don't have any other than the, the lightening questions, which is like seven questions I ask at the end of an interview, which is, you know, like, uh, you know, book recommendations and things like that. Sure. Um, everything else it's just, just coming from here now. Wow.

Okay. And that, that definitely came after however long of like continuously doing this, knowing how it does it, does it come from a lot of like, you, you know, how the flow of a, of a conversation or at least an interview kind of works at this point, uh, and you you're able to pick out little things and just hold onto them as the, as the conversation goes, or I don't know. I'm just, I'm, I'm actually like genuinely intrigued by this. This is great.

Yeah. Yeah. I, um, I D I tend to, so I know the structure of the interview. I, I know generally the kind of questions I'm going to ask the, um, you know, like how they came up with the idea. Um, but beyond that, I just kind of explore and what they tell me, you know, I still make notes along the way and I'll be like, oh, that was, or why did they say this? Um, the other thing I tend to do is always be thinking about the, the, the, the listener. And so if somebody says, oh, I did this and it helped us do that. And I'll be like, well, if I was a listener, I would think that sounds too easy. Right. So I'll take it to them. I was like, Hey, if I'm listening to that, I kind of think, well, that's super easy. I'm struggling. I've been trying to do this thing for the last 12 months, and I'm not getting a breakthrough and you make it sound like you kind of got it done really easily. And was it really like that? And then people, well, actually, no, it wasn't. And there was a bunch of things we had to deal on the way, and it didn't work the first time or the second time. Um, so again, going back to having, you know, an audience in mind, a person, um, I think it really helps.

Okay. Well, I mean, having an audience in mind, thinking about how you started this whole thing and got into the podcast game, where did it branch from that into SAS club? Because, I mean, obviously at some point you had to think, now I've got to start a team. Now I gotta start creating content. Uh, where, when did that start and how did you go about doing that?

So somebody emailed me and said, excuse me, somebody emailed me and said, uh, be listening to the podcast. I really like it. I'd love to get more content I'd love to know more about behind the scenes or, um, you know, being able to ask questions and stuff like that. And if you had something like that, I'd pay you for it. I was like, oh cool.

I might as well.

Yeah. And so I started researching and I kind of came up with this concept of a membership, right. So, you know, charge people a subscription and build a private membership where it's either content or community or coaching or whatever. So again, like I'd been spending all of this time talking to these founders and repeatedly telling people, don't, don't go into a bunker for a year or two years to build a product and then realize nobody wants it. Start talking to your target market, your target customers, as soon as possible before you've built a product to figure out what they need. And so what did I do? I went into a bunk of a six months to figure out how to build

Membership. You don't take your own advice.

And then six months into that, I was like, dude, it's just like, what are you doing?

This is, you know, it's like the spreadsheet all over again.

It's a spreadsheet. Uh, so I just emailed my list and I said, Hey, I'm thinking of starting this membership site. Uh, I don't know what is going to be in there. Um, what would you like, but are you interested in joining? And I remember I had 12 people who agreed to that. They were interested and I was like, great. And I, I, um, told them how it was going to be, it wasn't much, it was just, it's kind of like a Netflix subscription or something. Sure. And, um, you know, 10, $15 a month or something like that. And, and I had all 12 people sign up. Um, I was like, okay, great. So there's definitely something here. Now I've got to figure out what to actually deliver. And so those 12 people were like super helpful in, in providing feedback on initially there was nothing. So I would just get on zoom calls with them and I would just talk to them, this questions, what help do you need?

Uh, what are you working on? Uh, oh, you know, I heard this episode or I recorded this episode while back, maybe you should listen to that and that could help you with this problem. Or, um, you know, that problem you're dealing with right now, I I've heard three founders talk about that same thing, and here are the three different ways they solve that problem. Maybe you can kind of try and do those things. And so we just do that. And then eventually I realized, okay, you can turn that into content and you can sort of scale it more and, you know, help more people that way. Uh, but yeah, it just started once I got myself climbed out of the bunker, it was sending an email, ask people if they're interested in and then just talk to them to figure out what they need.

They got a $50 consultant consulting session.

Didn't they I'm telling you. It's, it's exactly like that. That initially I heard there's a guy called, uh, Alex, her mosey, somebody recommended his, his book to me is called the a hundred million dollar offer. You can get it on Amazon for like 99 cents or something like that. Okay. Um, so this guy's from his background is building gym businesses. And, you know, he's now running 30, $40 million a year business do all kinds of things must be nice. And, uh, he, he said something similar where he was like, you know, people tend to optimize for a whole bunch of things. Like, you know, well, I'm not really sure I can do this cause it's not really going to scale to 50 people or a hundred people. And he was like, he gave one example where he's like, I talked to this guys like, dude, do you have any customers? He was like, no. Well, why you worried about what problems are you going to have with 50 customers or a hundred customers? You have zero. Yeah. Um, and so yeah, you end up doing a lot of things that, that don't scale, but that's, that's perfectly fine. And I don't mind if people were getting $15 a month.

Yeah. $50 a month consulting. That's amazing. Wow. If only now with the amount of people that you've talked to, you've probably heard quite a bit of, quite a bit of stories and also a lot of similarities. And I kind of want to go into the similarities of like, um, are there certain traits or things that you've, you've come in contact with with a lot of these people that you've talked to, uh, that is kinda the general consensus of a lot of people, like more of like a, if you get what I'm going at of like more trends, like if people tend to do the same thing and it works out well for them, are there anything that like really stands out to you that you've seen work for a lot of people?

Um, I mean, I've definitely, I would say it's not about what works for a lot of people. I'd say I figured out a lot of the mistakes people make. Okay. Um, I, so go back to what we talked about earlier. I don't think there's a playbook where you can just say, step one to 20, and then you can do this, but it's like, Hey, when you do step one, here are the six different mistakes you could make. And here's how you can avoid those and figure out how to get to step two. Once you get to step two, here are some of the mistakes that commonly happen and here's how you can overcome those. Um, so I think it's that kind of model that has, has been helpful. Like, don't go into the bunker and instead do this, or if you're doing marketing and, uh, don't go and spend $20,000 on an ad campaign when you haven't even figured out how to sell one license of your product or,

Or even how to shoot a video.

So, so I think that that's been, uh, the most helpful thing, because again, I talked to one person and say, oh yeah, I, I was successful with this because I did a hundred interviews. And that really gave me clarity on the target market to be able to build this right product. Great. And I say, okay, do a hundred interviews. That's the way to do this. And then I talked to the next person, he'd say, well, actually I didn't do I didn't zero interviews because I just intuitively knew that this is the kind of product that needed to be built and this person's succeeded. And then somebody else would say, um, I did zero interviews because I am the target customer like this. I was building this for myself and I had already had those pains. So I knew exactly what to go and solve. Okay. Be the target customer. So again, it was like three, as an example, they like three different people taking very different paths, getting the same outcome. Sure. And it's really hard to say, Hey, this is the right one for you, but there are patterns there. And I think understanding the patterns is really important.

Are there rates of people like the, the certain types of people that you see tend to see a lot of like certain, uh, motivation structures or anything that like you, I don't know, personality traits that you see that tend to do well in the, in the business market?

Yeah. I mean, I, I, this is one of the things I ask at the end of my episodes, like what's one characteristic or attribute of a successful entrepreneurial founder. And I would say that most of the time it boils down to resilience. So whether you call it resilience, grit, persistence, whatever it is, it's, it's the ability to get knocked down and get right back over and over again, and to get up and keep going. And I think that's the one thing that I've seen over and over again with the people who've been able to, um, find success. However you define that is, is by, um, not necessarily being the smartest or having the greatest idea or building the best product, but just getting up to keep going. And I would say you got to balance that with, um, probably flexibility, right? Because maybe you really have a dumb idea and maybe it's never going to succeed, but as long as you keep going and you keep listening to what the market is telling you, you're kind of pivot along the way and, you know, tweak your idea. And it might just be a simple change that you can make. That's going to help you to figure out how to start selling it and finding more customers.

Wow. That was the most sentimental ending that we can have to this, this podcast. That was amazing. I just want to meet some quotas real quick. Um, number one, uh, what, what kind of equipment do you use? Uh, just a technical side of things. What are, what are you using to, to record your podcasts and to do everything? If you, you know, the names of things,

Um, where should we start?

So hardware, I've got my Heil PR 40, which I've had from day one, thanks to my Excel spreadsheet. This was the only good thing that that's served me well for seven years. Um, I've gone through a whole bunch of mixers, um, just kind of for my it's an XLR mic and you need to go into something and then come into a USB connection. Um, right now I'm using one of these focus rights. Scarlet's, that's what I got right here.

Wonderful. It's, it's the simplest thing and it works so well and I've probably got three or four other mixes here around here. Like, I mean, I bought, I bought one with like, like, I dunno, you could put like four XLR connections into it and all kinds of things. And I was like, when are you gonna use that? I never interviewed to be in person. Why do I, when did I do this is overkill. Um, and then it just comes into my computer and pretty much I record everything, uh, in Zencaster now

Gastro too. Okay, cool. Yeah. Neat. All right. Um, well to finish it up, where can people find you? Probably, they probably know you more than they know us, so, but like where can people find you if they want to find you,

You can go to sass club.io, uh, or you can just look for the SAS podcast.com, um, to get to the podcast. You could try conversion hate.com. I don't know.

You'll find something there. Wonderful man. Well, thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate this. Uh, this was, this was a good conversation. I really, I really enjoyed this. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, of course, man. Um, maybe we'll do this again sometime. I'll be on yours.