Alex Hillman: How your identity impacts your marketing

In this week's special guest podcast, Alex Hillman (of Stacking the Bricks and 30x500) joins Andrew to coach him on early stage marketing at MetaMonster. They talk through Andrew's recent failed launch (and why not to worry about it too much), what he's doing differently now, and how your identity as a founder can impact your marketing. Plus, what pro wrestlers get right about identity and storytelling and how to create great content when you aren't an expert in your niche.

There's so much great info packed into this discussion, enjoy! By the way, check out Alex's description of 30x500 at the 12:11 mark for a masterclass in positioning. 

Links:
For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.

Transcript:
00:00:01.42
Andrew
All right, so we've got a little bit of a different type of podcast episode. Usually it is me and Sean riffing on the things that we are building, but I'm super excited today because Alex Hillman is here to join us. So Sean is at a conference, so unfortunately couldn't be here today. But as I mentioned on the last episode, Alex very kindly took time out of his day to roast the shit out of my half-assed launch attempt. And then was even more generous and said, hey, I'll take an hour out of my day to come talk to you some more. Let's talk about this in public so that people can learn from this as we work through it together, is super cool. And for anyone who doesn't know Alex's background, Alex has been partnered with Amy Hoy on stacking the bricks and 30 by 500. They've been working on that for, you said 15 years?

Alex Hillman
15 years, yeah.

Andrew
15 years. I've been reading Stacking the Bricks for ages and really, really love all the content that you all have put out, have looked up to you and Amy for a long time. Still apparently didn't learn anything from from all of that reading, but i'm I'm trying to learn it now.

Andrew
So yeah, we're gonna get into it. But Alex, thanks so much for for being here. Just so appreciate you, man.

Alex Hillman
Yeah, i'm I'm happy to. This is going to be a good time. And, you know, I think the the common theme through all of this is and there's a lot of folks that read our stuff like our stuff and then willfully do the opposite or think that they did. what We told them and I go, I don't know where you got that from because those words never came out of my mouth. So I say all of that with, you know, with love and, you know, the the roast.

Alex Hillman
came from, from that point of view as well. You know, I think that there's, there's cool people doing cool things on the internet. And I know you're, you're a fan of the build in public, trying to eat those and mindset.

Alex Hillman
I'm a fan of the help in public. And so that's my thought here is if I can help you, whether it's through a roast on blue sky or a podcast, and there's other folks that that benefit from that perspective, then that's a,

Andrew
yeah

Alex Hillman
and at least three-way win. I win, you win, and and whoever listens wins. So really, really stoked to get into this.

Andrew
Awesome.

Alex Hillman
I think you're working on stuff that is common and and easy to get wrong.

Andrew
Yeah, appreciate that. Yeah, so to give folks some context, because I imagine there might be people who will listen to this episode who who don't typically listen to small efforts. So a few weeks ago, I sort of kind of launched a alpha-y type thing. Like I'm having trouble even describing it because it was so like half formed. But I basically like got in my head,

Andrew
we're okay I'm building this mailing list, I'm getting people on this list, I need to convert these people to you know potential paying users and we don't have a product yet so I need to like kind of pre-sell them but I don't want to actually ask them for money yet so I'm gonna pitch them on being a founding user and I sent out this this one email and basically said like Hey, I want you to be a founding user. You'll get a couple of things. And in return, I want a lot of your time. Click here to sign up. And I'm sort of being facetious, partially to protect my ego, because I candidly was like, once I realized like, kind of how bad I messed up, I was a little embarrassed. Like I had this feeling of like,

Andrew
I have run a business before. I thought I knew how to do content marketing and knew how to do some of this stuff. I've been reading your content for years and so um so um realizing that I was making a lot of rookie mistakes was a little embarrassing and so even now as I'm describing it, I'm catching myself using self-deprecating humor as a little bit of a shield.

Alex Hillman
that cushion

Andrew
hello But but i mean that's kind of that's that's the basic context. I tried to pitch people on being early adopters of some sort. It was a very half-formed ask.

Andrew
and and unsurprisingly, the result was kind of crickets. I got one person who responded to me and said, hey, I'd be interested. other than that, no responses. And so I tried to share about this on Blue Sky in that building public mindset and just be like, hey, anyone what what do you all see when you make these kinds of asks early on? And that's when Alex jumped in and was like, hey, tell me more. like what What was the context here? How much did you email these people and And so, yeah, why don't I kick it over to you and you can kind of give that initial context from your side and, you know, we can talk about some of the advice you got and then we'll get into what we're doing next.

Alex Hillman
yeah Yeah, I mean, ah you you know first of all, first of all like congrats on shipping anything. like for like to to not Not to backpedal the mistakes that were made, but you know the the making mistakes is is the result of of doing things and trying things. And one of the beautiful things about launches is that there's you know I think there's a myth of a single launch, a single chance.

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Alex Hillman
And the truth is, is nobody responding is kind of a gift in a way, because it means that for the most part, nobody noticed.

Andrew
Okay.

Alex Hillman
Like you could say they saw it and it wasn't enough for them to click, but odds are it just didn't register in their brain. I think what you did is what I'm gonna, I'm gonna like playfully coin as the Cosmo Kramer launch.

Andrew
okay

Alex Hillman
It's the way Kramer busts into Jerry's apartment with no, like there's no build up, there's no knock on the door.

Andrew
Yes.

Alex Hillman
It's like he's already halfway in the sentence before he's even got one foot in the door, right?

Andrew
Oh my god.

Alex Hillman
And that's basically what you did. And I think that's what a lot of people do. And it's ah ah really easy to do because you spend all this time thinking about your product, thinking about the user in the best case scenario, thinking about how they're going to use it.

Alex Hillman
And you are, in this particular context, mid-sentence, showing up in their inbox. And there's no reason for them to want to pay attention, didn't need to pay attention, to read, let alone take any sort of action. So so you crammer at your launch. That's okay. What can we learn here? that was the tack that I took when when you originally posted, you know, I had 150 subscribers on an email list, one response.

Alex Hillman
What did I, like, is this normal? so I think my follow up questions were like, I'd love to see that email. What else have you sent them?

Andrew
Yep.

Alex Hillman
If anything, think I also asked where the subscribers came from. And if you I didn't ask it, I think you offered it maybe somewhere else in the thread, which is if I'm remembering correctly, mostly from your landing page, uh, which is not the version that's up today.

Andrew
Yeah.

Andrew
Yep.

Andrew
Yeah. Pretty much all landing page. Yep. And then all, almost all from Google ads, like all of the traffic to the landing page was driven from Google ads pretty much.

Alex Hillman
Right.

Alex Hillman
Right. All right. And we can we can talk a little bit more about that piece of the equation as well.

Andrew
Yeah, I love that.

Alex Hillman
but But yeah, I mean, the the the bulk of the response that I gave is like, there's nothing here that would make somebody who's not you and not already bought in, be bought in.

Alex Hillman
The line that I like is you got to earn the sale before you try to make the sale, and you didn't do anything to earn it.

Andrew
yeah

Alex Hillman
So in that thread, we talked a bunch about A, how I would build up to the launch. The the other analogy I like is, I think of it almost like a slingshot, like an old school Dennis the Menace slingshot, where you've got to put the little pebble in the rubber band, you pull it back, you aim it, and when you let go, the pebble goes flying and hits Mr.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
Wilson's window. um If you put just put the pebble in the band and you aim it but you don't pull it back, it just falls out, right? Same sort of situation here. There's no pullback of the rubber band. There's no momentum. And when I think about a launch, what is a launch in in sort of a mechanical sense? People think it's when I ask for stuff.

Alex Hillman
And that's that's a piece of it, but I'd argue it's the smallest piece of it. The bulk of it is you pulling back the rubber band and aiming it so that when you let go, the thing you want to happen happens. And that's the part that you skipped.

Andrew
Yeah, I, when you shared that metaphor, it was like a, an awesome smack in the face moment of like. Oh, that makes so much sense. one of the things I love in a lot of the content that you and Amy write is you all like incorporate storytelling elements and like really talk about how so much of good marketing is storytelling. And think you said later in that thread and certainly said and you know have said in a lot of your content too that like In addition to pulling back the slingshot, which is an amazing metaphor, you know you can also look at any good story. And no good story starts at the climax. No one just drops you right into yeah the the ultimate fight scene. You've got to have that that build, that slow build, that narrative arc, or else you just yeah there's no payoff. It's not rewarding. It's not interesting or exciting. You don't know why you should care.

Andrew
And so, yeah, as soon as you said that, it was like, oh, duh. And then, you know, I started thinking about all the great like online marketers that I follow, like you guys, Rob Walling, you know, Heaton Shaw and shah and um bunch of these people. And, you know, anytime I've been on their mailing list, it's like,

Andrew
Oh, right. Duh, like a launch is never just this one little thing. It's, it's, you know, I'm hearing about it for weeks. Like, Hey, this is coming. This is coming. This is coming.

Andrew
Here's why it's cool. Here's why it's cool. Hey, it's about to be here. You're going to have this much time. Hey, it's here. Hey, do you remember that thing I told you about the other day? It's still here. It's still here. and yeah.

Alex Hillman
I think of it it's also helpful to like sometimes think outside of tech and be like, all right, there are a couple of people in this world who can drop an album or stadium tickets with no warning.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
And unless you're Beyonce or Kendrick Lamar or Taylor Swift, you like a lot of times it's it's phenomenal.

Andrew
Which, by the way, have you listened to the new Kendrick album? Because it's so good. It's so good.

Alex Hillman
But you think about you know the savviest musicians in the world. And in the and this is not a, know, a statement on their talent.

Alex Hillman
There are very talented musicians and musical acts and artists in the world that still recognize that if you don't build up momentum and then open up ticket sales, now you're in the middle of the ticket sale window and every single day is a slog to sell another batch, another batch, another batch versus

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
building up the momentum and getting to the point where it was like, all right, I know that the GNX tour tickets are going on sale on this day. And if I don't show up on ticketmaster.com, there's a good chance I'm going to pay extra.

Alex Hillman
So like, think about that as a context that most of us have experienced. And again, if not tickets to a show or an album, you can also think about books and movies and like these are

Andrew
You've spent any time on YouTube, you've run into the press gauntlet, you see start suddenly seeing actors showing up on all your favorite shows, uh, three days apart.

Alex Hillman
That's right.

Andrew
And you're like, Oh, yeah.

Alex Hillman
Yeah, these mechanics are tried and true. they They work basically everywhere and not doing them is a choice, right?

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
yeah Whether it was an active choice to self-sabotage or a choice an inactive choice to be lazy.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
and I mean, I can give a, you know, in the interest of

Andrew
yeah

Alex Hillman
Truly this happens to everyone Amy famously tells a story of it was in the first couple of years of us running thirty five five hundred which for those who are unfamiliar is a course that Amy and I have been teaching and evolving over the years that is really geared towards the

Andrew
Mhmm.

Alex Hillman
you know, folks who have the creator skills but don't have the marketing sales and business skills, but also were kind of turned off by marketing sales and business.

Andrew
Mhmm.

Alex Hillman
And so you want to learn how to do it in a way that feels honest and authentic, and doesn't feel like slimy and manipulative and and stuff like that. And so that's what we've been doing for a very, very long time. And and this an early version of this course, we were reliably selling hundreds of seats to a $1,500, $2,000 live workshop.

Andrew
hmm.

Alex Hillman
And we follow all of our own advice in terms of that buildup, the mechanics of the the launch and the follow through. And one time got lazy, or distracted, or both, and didn't, and just tried to, you know, Beyonce it and be like, buy now.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
And after selling hundreds of seats, sold one. And could have been like, well, you know, is my email program broken? Like, that's a big drop off, right?

Alex Hillman
I know it's possible, but the behavior change. It's because we left out a huge enormous stuff.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
And so Amy, in her infinite Amy-ness, just took the sales page down. restarted the launch the way we should have done it in the first place and sold out like we always do.

Alex Hillman
So we have our own A-B of our own in-house A-B test of just because it works doesn't mean you get to be sloppy and lazy.

Andrew
That's awesome.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
It's part of the job, right? And so that's, if I want folks to take nothing away, this is not a thing you need to do so that X, Y, Z. It's like, this is now part of your job and understanding these mechanics at any and all scale.

Alex Hillman
I even say, you know, launching things that have a lower ask, something that doesn't require to bring or for somebody to pull out their wallet, but does ask them to take an action or give it some other time, you will still likely get better results if you follow the launch arc model to launch

Andrew
Uh-huh.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
A survey, right?

Andrew
Uh-huh.

Alex Hillman
A lot of times people like drop a survey out of nowhere and then they're not super thrilled with the amount of response they get.

Andrew
Oh, a hundred percent.

Alex Hillman
Same thing. Hey, the survey is coming. Here's how the survey is going to be structured. Here's who it's for. Here's how you filling out the survey benefits you, not just me, right?

Andrew
Uh-huh.

Alex Hillman
Here's how we're going to process the information. Here's the insights that we're looking for and how we're going to give that information back to you and how that information being available to you and the entire population we're surveying will benefit from this survey existing in the world.

Alex Hillman
So this stuff is for more than just the very first time you're launching a product of any kind.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
I feel like launches are for everything and every day, everywhere.

Andrew
And that's I think that was one of the things that like I sort of talked myself into. This isn't a launch. like when When you first called it a launch, I was like kind of confused. I was like, no, no, no, I'm not not launching. In my head, I was making that classic mistake of like the launch is like the one day when the product is finally ready, which they never are.

Andrew
and And I am pushing this out to the world. And so in my head, I was like, oh, this isn't a launch. So it doesn't it doesn't need a whole lot of fanfare. I just need to like get something out the door fast, fast, fast. And so I think that's part of what was going on in my head. And, you know, what you're saying now is is so similar to what you say in your Like little mini course a thousand launches, which is like everything is a launch And that's good news and bad news.

Andrew
It's bad news because it means you need to work a little harder all the time It's good news because it means you get a one thousand chances And you get to keep doing this over and over again and keep improving your launch sequence and and all that one of the other things that

Alex Hillman
Exactly.

Andrew
I think I was fighting with that. I think a lot of your, your type of people that you, um, that resonate with you so much, probably struggle with as well as like, um, how do I, how do I phrase this? Like a fear that we're going to bother people, right?

Andrew
Like, like, Oh, if I don't want to email people too much, if I email people too frequently, then I'm going to annoy them and, and they're going to not, yeah they're going to unsubscribe and I'm going to lose them. And so I shouldn't send them five emails for a launch. I should just send them this one little email and just be out of their way as quickly as possible.

Alex Hillman
that is so true. Yeah, I mean, people put all this work into building an email list and then are afraid to email people.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
It is and again, again, to your point, I get exactly where it's coming from. And I think also to your point about the way this is perceived within this community that is like mostly technical or technical adjacent creators is we've also grown up experiencing other people who send us tons of garbage and our inbox is a sacred place.

Andrew
Mm hmm. Yeah.

Alex Hillman
And so we apply our own philosophy of how the inbox should be treated to everybody else.

Andrew
Hmm.

Alex Hillman
which I will tell you having worked on multiple email centric products like I worked on the team at postmark for a while before and not before active campaign but like a decade ago when the product was still very young and i I ran up like an email discussion group platform for a while as well.

Alex Hillman
the range of truly bizarre habits and behaviors people experience in their inboxes, whatever you think yours is, it is not not necessarily singular, but ah ah applying it to other people is an at your own peril type decision.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
So that's number one. Number two is something I already mentioned, which is you know we're looking at this from the perspective that we get so much garbage email, we don't wanna add more garbage email to it.

Alex Hillman
And so the choice is to not send email, instead of not send garbage email.

Andrew
Yep.

Alex Hillman
Truth is is, people sign up for stuff with their email address but because they're being forced to, but a lot of people sign up for things with their email just because they get interesting and useful things in their inbox. And so if you are sending useful and interesting things to their inbox,

Alex Hillman
Could they unsubscribe? Of course, but like that's kind of why God invented the unsubscribe link in the first place, right, is to put them in control. So by not sending the email because you don't want to bother them, I think you're making this cardinal mistake of making somebody else's choice for them rather than giving them the best set of, it you know, inputs to make a decision.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
Oh, when I get stuff from Andrew or from MetaMonster, it's usually really good. It's interesting. its yeah He really understands because he used to run a company that's liked the company that I ran. He solves problems that are a couple steps ahead of where I normally do. you Yeah, we're going with this. And so like I think the purpose of sending the emails is not to bother them. It is to train them.

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Alex Hillman
through sending emails that when you send something, it's worth their while.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
And then, you know, there's a lot to be said about what goes into the emails to make that possible. But ultimately the goal here is not to send the fewest emails possible, it is to send the best emails possible.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
Emails that people want to open, want to read, want to forward, right? You know, somebody reading an email is, in my opinion, that's the table stakes. I should be able to do that if it's a if it's a match.

Alex Hillman
It's, can I write something so good that they like, I got to share a link to this in my Slack. I got to forward this to my boss or my co-founder. That's the high water mark I'm thinking of. And when that's the high water mark, I don't worry about bothering people.

Alex Hillman
I worry i feel sad for the people that aren't on the list yet because they're going to miss out on the awesome stuff that I'm sending. So total reframe there and going, if they signed up for something useful and interesting, send them something useful and interesting.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
And and in the occasion that they do unsubscribe, which is going to happen, it's the nature of the beast,

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Alex Hillman
I always remind folks that, in well, I guess there's two things about unsubscribes that are are notable. One is an unsubscribe is not an indication that that you sent a bad email.

Alex Hillman
It's not an indication of anything other than the fact that they unsubscribed, right? There's this great ancient Seth Godin post, and it's probably two sentences long because most of his are, that is is a list of all the things that no means

Andrew
Yeah.

Andrew
huh Yeah.

Alex Hillman
Besides, I hate you and I never want to hear from you again. Right? No can mean, not now I'm busy. It can mean I don't really get how it's for me.

Alex Hillman
It can mean, ah ah et cetera, et cetera, you see where I'm going with that.

Andrew
Yeah,

Alex Hillman
And so an unsubscribe can doesn't mean anything in isolation.

Andrew
yeah.

Alex Hillman
Unsubscribes are I'd say if they're an indication something is wrong, it's when you your unsubscribe rate changes dramatically. If you're used to sending emails and getting you know a 0.2, a 0.5, a 0.8 unsubscribe rate, and all of a sudden it's 2% or 3%, well, maybe something's up. But if you're getting unsubscribe rates anything underneath 1%, I consider that cost of doing business when it comes to sending good emails.

Andrew
Yeah, they're just saving you money on the size of your email list and you know a helping you avoid sending things to people who aren't a good fit.

Alex Hillman
That's right.

Andrew
Yeah, i again, like in the content that I've been reading since your

Alex Hillman
That's right.

Andrew
your roast as we've been calling it. um Yeah, that was another one of the things that like ah just that i that I really love that you all talk about a lot, which is like, you know you've got to change your mindset from I'm bothering someone, I'm annoying someone, what if they don't like me? you know This classic insecurity, insecure position to I'm putting in the work to create good content. And so, you know,

Andrew
It's valuable I'm, I'm doing the work and that only works if you're doing that work and if you're trying to create good content and that leads to It makes the question of like how often should I send content so much easier when you're not like, Oh, should I send content five times a week?

Andrew
Should I send content once a week? Should I send content once a month? Like this was one of the questions I, my co-founder and I were asking when I was like starting to put together my marketing plan. And it makes that question easy because the answer is like, how often can you create something worth sending?

Alex Hillman
Mm hmm.

Andrew
That's how often you should send things.

Alex Hillman
Mm hmm.

Alex Hillman
That's exactly right. I completely agree with that.

Andrew
Yeah, cool. I'd love to talk to you about what we're thinking now and some of the conversations my co-founder and I had based on on all of the advice and feedback you gave me.

Andrew
And then just get your thoughts on like, are we headed in the right direction?

Alex Hillman
Sure.

Andrew
What can we still be doing better?

Alex Hillman
Sounds great. Let's do it.

Andrew
Cool so one of the things that I think was really interesting that came out of your feedback was actually like my co-founder and I asked ourselves the question of like are we ready to launch like do we want to be making this ask to people because like one one response from your your feedback was, okay, let's go back and like create a better launch sequence for this founding user thing or this like early adopter alpha, whatever we wanna call it. Let's go create a better launch sequence and like let's let's work towards, like create that content and then try to launch again. And the first thing that was really interesting to me was we actually started talking and we were like, I think we're jumping the gun here a little bit. like i don't and don't think we like i'm I felt this need to push for conversions and we looked at like where we were

Andrew
in product development and like where we were and like marketing and everything and we were like, we don't need conversions yet. We just want to start building that relationship and start building that trust with people. We'll have plenty of time to ask for the conversion later. Like we're still building things. We're still figuring stuff out. We're not and really not quite ready for that. so that was the first thing that was just really kind of surprising and and interesting to me was we went, let's actually pump the brakes on this this feeling of needing to convert people and just go, all right, let's slow down a little. we don't We don't need to jump into that quite yet. And so you know the things I'm thinking about now are just for right now,

Andrew
How can I create interesting content that starts to build that anticipation and starts to build that trust with people? And so I'm looking at what kinds of things can I write or create and then share with our list that start to build that anticipation. And I'll share a couple of those ideas. And then in the future, I'm thinking of like, all right, when we do get to that point where we have an ask,

Andrew
let me follow Let me think more about like how do I build like pull back the slingshot for that specific ask and how do I make sure I have a good sequence of of content queued up for that ask so that it's not just the Kramer approach. It's it's a slow build and a comeback and ask again and like remind you know provide value and all that.

Andrew
so you know, don't have specific plans for that yet because again, we've, we've sort of said, Oh, we're actually not ready. so instead, like what I'm looking at is, is just, yeah, starting to build that anticipation and trust. So, just this week, uh, you know, I sent out ah ah an email,

Andrew
and writing about our take on AI and how we're thinking about AI and why we think people are doing it a little bit differently. I think in y'all's framework, one of the frameworks that that I think Amy wrote about and and one of the things I was reading was like three types, three levels of E-bombs or are, you know, content, educational educational content, Spiller, Thriller and Pillar.

Alex Hillman
and good That's right.

Andrew
All right. Is that right? okay. So I think, I think this would be kind of a Spiller piece, like just something, something a little fluffy that's controversial.

Alex Hillman
you're You're putting it's you're putting perspective out there and it's not so I mean it might give them something to do but more likely it gives them something to think about and decide does that resonate with me or not that's what like the Spiller stuff is really geared towards like finding like helping people find resonance that will make them go I like the way

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
I like the way they think about this, or I hadn't thought about it that way.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
That's interesting. like That's what that level of content is very good for.

Andrew
Cool. So that was the first piece I sent out. and then And I don't know if this was the right thing to do, but I i just went ahead and bundled in that a little, we've made some progress on on the product, gotten to the point where, so our product helps people generate page titles and meta descriptions for their websites so that they can like speed up the SEO process a little bit. Really useful for ah SEO freelancers and agencies who are dealing with lots of sites, often sites with you know hundreds or thousands of pages and need to be able to you know get through this kind of repetitive work fast. It's not the highest value work, but it's you know it's a box they need to check so that they can move on to the more important stuff.

Andrew
So we got the generation piece done this week. So you can, you know, click a button and generate a page title, generate a ah ah description. So i I created just a quick screen share video of that and then just threw that in there. And then, you know, also repurpose that as another piece of, like, Spiller content, you know, shared that on Blue Sky on LinkedIn, stuff like that.

Andrew
So that's, that's what, what we did this week and then next up in the queue, a couple of things that we've got and I'll just share a couple and then pause and get, get kind of your thoughts so think I'd classify this as maybe like kind of thriller although it feels a little facetious or not facetious.

Andrew
you a It feels like a little bit of a stretch to call it a thriller. But I want to write a piece about how do you do this without us today?

Alex Hillman
Okay.

Andrew
do you solve this problem using the existing tools on the market? So specifically, that's a tool called Screaming Frog. And using a feature they have that I've realized not a whole lot of people know about.

Andrew
But it's kind of complicated to use. So I want to write a little tutorial of how do you do that today? And I think that's kind of fits into that Thriller piece because it's it's not just like opinion.

Andrew
It's something to help them. It's a small bit of value. It's not like a core you know skill they're building, but it's just that kind of middle layer of like, let me get a little bit of quick value from from you all.

Alex Hillman
Mm-hmm that sounds right

Andrew
And then the next piece that I want to create, which I would consider more of a pillar, I want to build a little free tool that'll do like a one-off page for you. So you can you know come here, try us out, just like yeah insert a link and we'll create a page title and a meta description or you just a meta description or something for this one page. And i I sort of see that as a pillar piece because that helps people repeatedly with this task that we've identified and then it's something they can come back to over and over again.

Alex Hillman
Yeah, I was going to ask if you had plans for like single like single application apps as marketing because this seems like the kind of thing that there's a bunch of little little utilities that are adjacent to the problem.

Andrew
It feels so obvious, right?

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
And so like this is interesting because like I I will be the first to admit that SEO is a massive weak spot in my, and frankly, our, me and Amy, like online universe, we we've kind of skated on the fact that the approach that we take to creating content it is inherent, tends to be inherently search optimized.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
But it's, you know, it's more at the, it's not like,

Andrew
yeah

Alex Hillman
It's by nature, the fact that a lot of what we're writing is in service of answering or creating is in service of answering your question. What do people type into Google? A question, the odds of the match being good are there.

Alex Hillman
And it's a lot of interlinked stuff and things like this.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
There's a natural advantages.

Andrew
Y'all are doing it the way Google wants you to do it, for the record.

Alex Hillman
Correct.

Andrew
They want you to optimize things by like nature of creating good content.

Alex Hillman
Well, and I'd go so far as to say like it's just it's not optimized, it just is.

Andrew
but

Andrew
Yeah. Yeah.

Alex Hillman
like it's search It's search native, but not search optimized might be the way that I think about it.

Andrew
Yeah. That's a cool way to think of it.

Alex Hillman
So you know i one of the things that I'm not entirely sure of is how, it sounds like the audience that this app is for knows the problem.

Alex Hillman
And often, I don't know if people are coming to them and going, we have this problem, or if this problem is detected as part of a larger, ah ah SEO audit or something along those lines.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
But I think about, you know I don't even know The little bit that I know about the app, and since the landing page has improved, I understand it better.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
And actually, you know the the video that was buried on a sub page, I was like, oh, this is really cool. But it also has and made me ask myself the question. I was like, I don't know if I need this. like Is there a pre prerequisite knowledge, or prerequisite discovery, or prerequisite pain point that I may not be problem aware of that you can help me discover through, whether it's content or an app?

Andrew
yeah

Alex Hillman
like It's like Screaming Frog ah does the analysis side of things, if I understand correctly. And then you're kind of taking the export of that and saying, all right, the site the pages that are are missing data or the data is improperly formatted, or maybe it's too long or is missing some other marks. We'll go in and detect that and help you create something that is more to standard. Is that accurate?

Andrew
Yeah, kind of. So we sort of fall into the bucket of like technical SEO or on page SEO. And so most agencies that you go to for SEO help, you know, the first step that they'll take is they'll do an audit of your site.

Andrew
in-house SEO who's you coming in fresh is gonna do the same thing. The first thing they're gonna do is try to say, all right, what's the current state of things? And the most commonly used tool, like, I mean, this this tool has crazy market share, it's wild, is Screaming Frog for these these technical audits. It's what's considered an SEO spider or a SEO crawler. so it'll crawl a site and give you just a million potential issues.

Andrew
Some of those matter a lot more than others. And one of the things that we heard in talking to people, mostly like SEO professionals was that like, one of the first things they start to solve when once they start to act on the audit is make sure the metadata on the site is is updated.

Andrew
So page titles, meta descriptions, you can get into a bunch of other stuff that is kind of metadata, image alt text, you know graph open graph like stuff, structured schema, all these things.

Alex Hillman
yep

Andrew
And all of this stuff, like to be honest, matters sort of. And this is like one of the things i've I've kind of been trying to figure out in like how we message and talk about MetaMonster is like The only reason this is a pain this is potentially a painkiller problem for these people is because they have to do a lot of it, and it's boring as shit. It's not necessarily that it is drastically valuable to do. like it it's It's one of those things that like is best practice. You should do it if you're doing all the other things. It it can help. Page titles matter more than meta descriptions.

Andrew
a good page title will influence your click-through rates on Google. Having keywords in there can help a little bit with ranking. It's not going to make as big a difference as backlinks and and really good content.

Alex Hillman
it sounds It sounds like the kind of thing that it may not have a ah ton of impact on its own, but having it eliminates the potential of having those things drag down the impact of the larger things.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
Is that accurate?

Andrew
Yeah, yeah, yeah, i think I think that's totally accurate.

Alex Hillman
Yeah.

Andrew
And I've almost been trying to like lean into that it's not the most important thing in our messaging to be like, Hey, there's more important stuff you could be working on, but you're spending a lot of time on this anyway because your clients are asking you to do it or, you know, it's part of your process and you're trying to like get it done.

Andrew
You, you know, it's bad to like not do it. So like, just, just let us handle it.

Alex Hillman
Yep.

Andrew
And then you focus on the important stuff, which is a weird message.

Alex Hillman
Yeah. And I imagine, ah yeah, well, and I think it's, I think what you're zeroing in on is there is some drudgy tasks that, you know, and I, again, part of the question here, I wonder.

Alex Hillman
And this is something for you to know about your audience is like, is the person who's doing that drudgy work the same person who is empowered to make a purchasing decision about software at the agency?

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
Or is it the kind of stuff that gets passed off to junior level folks, in which case, like, this is going to save you time is not necessarily as valuable of a pitch as something again, that they are more expressly aware of.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
So a freelancer, if it's a freelancer, that they they are making the decision.

Andrew
The

Andrew
They're all of the above.

Alex Hillman
They're all the above and they're highly incentivized to do something.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
Well, actually that's not even necessarily true. they If they're billing hourly, what's their incentive to to shrink it down, right?

Andrew
yeah

Alex Hillman
So again, I think it's what like, what, it's not just what problem does this solve for the customer? Nevermind, if the customer and the end user are the same person, great.

Andrew
Yep.

Alex Hillman
And if not, and you got to consider both.

Andrew
ye

Alex Hillman
But what business problem does it solve for them? And because you've got kind of like layers here, I think that's something that you're gonna need to figure out by working closely with those representative agencies and freelancers.

Alex Hillman
So you know I think a lot of... Here's here's what my my initial thought is that you you know the thing you were pitching wasn't even the product. It was this founding user thing, which is the abstract and the upside ah ah for anyone other than an already enthusiastic early adopter is not really there.

Andrew
Yeah.

Andrew
Yep.

Alex Hillman
And I think if you were to change what you were pitching to something along the lines of like, hey, if you have an SEO project coming up, we'd like to come in, look at the way you're currently doing these steps and see if there's a way we can save you time or take things off your plate.

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Alex Hillman
And all like almost go so far as framing it up as a as a service offering where you're like, we're going to do it for you, but we can do that because we have software that's going to make it real fast and efficient.

Alex Hillman
So like, let us show you how a 14 step process that would take 20 minutes can become a one step process that takes 20 seconds. Like that's the kind of, if I think about you're demonstrating a side by side transformation here.

Andrew
Interesting, yeah.

Alex Hillman
I think having content that outlines, here's all the steps. But I think if you if you had ah a a page that just had a single text box in it and the it was like, put your link in here, click go, and we'll generate we'll we'll analyze and generate better title and meta and anything else that belongs in the page. I don't think that's nearly as compelling unless you show them, here's all of the steps you need to do in order to do this manually on your or that you're already doing on your own.

Andrew
Cool.

Alex Hillman
that really frames up the ease of use-ness of it. Because it's not that it's easy, it's that it's like, oh, it took a long multi-step process down to one.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
I'm interested now.

Andrew
Okay, cool. Yeah, and that's kind of. the the first piece of, the piece of content I'm working on this week is supposed to get at that a little bit. Like here's one of the ways you can do this now, but I love the idea of, I mean, what I'm hearing from you, maybe this is not what you're saying is like a case study would be really powerful here where you could go in and work with somebody and like look at their process, you know, combining this idea of like case study, free service offering, like, you know,

Alex Hillman
It also gives you something to talk about. Every one of these you do, whether it's a case study or ah just a story or a, you know, I'm working inside this agency and we were there to work on this very clear cut and dry problem.

Alex Hillman
But while we were in the middle of it, I noticed them spending all this time on this other step that I couldn't figure out. Well, I'm like, I'm making up a a fantasy here, but but I also

Andrew
Yeah, yeah.

Alex Hillman
that fantasy is rooted in some truth once you get inside other organizations and realize, oh, you're doing something in a way that I hadn't anticipated. So like, I i feel like, and this is possibly related to something you had mentioned on this podcast, you know, a couple of episodes ago, which is like that sense of kind of feeling like an imposter and those kinds of things is like, I, i it's tough.

Alex Hillman
I should say it's easy to feel like an imposter when there is a big gap between you and the people that you're actually able to help. Whereas if you're if you if you set a goal of helping one agency or a freelancer a week manually, do a thing, knowing that that will cost you time, but the benefit

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
is you will have learned something about their process that you can't learn through a survey or through an interview because they're not thinking about it. They don't observe themselves the same way that you do. They have the curse of knowledge the same way you have the curse of knowledge of your own product. Right. So I think it's like at the stage that you're in where the product is not done.

Alex Hillman
and But there is a guiding philosophy. I think you will learn a lot by doing the manual thing with AI-assisted automation or just coming in with doing it often enough to like have an adaptable workflow.

Alex Hillman
and then say, all right, here's how we can make this workflow just to be automated or or largely automated. And then you can go to that agency and be like, that thing that we were doing for you, we've gotten it down to the point where it doesn't even cost us any time.

Alex Hillman
And for X amount of dollars, you can like you can have that superpower, right? But you'll know that you have built a thing that solves a problem they have because you've already been solving that problem for them.

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Alex Hillman
not as a way to sell the product, but as a way to help them.

Andrew
And to learn. Yeah.

Alex Hillman
And to learn, and to learn, yeah.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
It was done not exactly the same, but there was an early phase of ConvertKit, where Nathan Barry, who, similar to us, was most experienced with email-driven launches of digital products, courses, and books, and things like that, and was finding some struggle in initially selling subscription software that way. And there was a ah bunch of things at play, some of the things we're talking about here.

Alex Hillman
A large part of it is it was not crystal clear who ConvertKit was for yet.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
But the the thing that Nathan did, and he only, I don't know how long he did it for, it couldn't have been more than a year or two, was he started selling ConvertKit as a productized service where you would pay X amount of, the assumption was you already have an email list of some kind, if you're an ideal customer for this.

Alex Hillman
We just want to show you how much easier it is to take your existing email automations or your existing library of emails and turn them into sequences.

Alex Hillman
And it's having a flat rate subscription service to do the setup, but it wasn't it wasn't sold as pay us to set up ConvertKit.

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Alex Hillman
It was sold as pay us to put your email newsletter on autopilot.

Andrew
Cool.

Alex Hillman
because that's what ConvertKit allows you to do. So I feel like there's a version of that in here that you can inch your way towards as you figure out how to help those people through a more like hands-on approach.

Andrew
Yeah. Cool. How would you?

Andrew
How would you make that ask? like the How would you approach someone? Would you do it one by one? Would you do it as a like sort of a launch sequence? would you like How would you actually make that ask to someone on your waiting list or in this community to say, like hey, i I want to help you with this thing?

Alex Hillman
Yeah, I mean, i if if the goal is to it's to actually get in people's workflows, I would treat it as a launch.

Andrew
Yeah. Yeah.

Alex Hillman
I would make the the offer as a service for them. you know At the stage you're at, and in this case of just like just having a couple of wins under your belt, offering the first couple for free,

Andrew
Totally.

Alex Hillman
makes it no brainer and then you know you get to learn what what can whatll what are the many things we can get out of this and determine how much time and effort does it take?

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
Does it actually give us those things that we wanted? Is it worth it? And if you're like, okay, this is actually very much worth it. And the impact on the business that we work with is now easy to describe because it's not made up.

Alex Hillman
It's based on actual experience you have and you can have even quotes and testimonials. Basically, like set sell it as its own thing.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
I think it's ah think the thing that we don't know about your email list is how qualified those folks are because they came from Google Ads.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
Now, there are other people who I think have other experiences I imagine it's some combination of luck and being good at Google ads, um um the latter of which I absolutely am not.

Alex Hillman
But in my experience, ad-driven email subscribers to a waiting list tend to convert much, much, much, much, much, much lower ah then the then than the content.

Alex Hillman
so like the

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
So someone who joined the email waiting list after they read Spiller thriller or pillar content, that person, the odds of them converting is statistically much, much higher.

Alex Hillman
And so like if I was running ads, instead of running ads on a landing page, I'd consider running ads on

Andrew
Cool.

Alex Hillman
content that is highly targeted.

Andrew
Love that. Yeah.

Alex Hillman
Or the hybrid, and you know you've seen our, it's called launch for the win these days, launchftw.com is like, that's one of our pillar content pieces.

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Alex Hillman
And it is a downloadable PDF roadmap of all the steps and decisions that go into uh leading and leading up to a launch day so that you've got paying customers on launch day at eye level and then there's an email course that kind of follows it along and helps you with the implementation has some interactive workbooks and stuff like that uh we have i don't i don't i don't take it personally it happens all the time

Andrew
Hmm.

Andrew
By the way, I think I, I think I am a subscriber to launch for the win and, uh, did exactly what you said drives you crazy, which is just willfully ignored everything in your email course.

Alex Hillman
it's It's that we're we're here now. We're working through working through it.

Andrew
Yep.

Alex Hillman
And you can go back and be like, oh, I did read that last time and just wasn't, I didn't internalize it yet. That's okay.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
You know, we have not with Google ads, but I have experimented with running ads for a free email course or a free download is more targeted than a wait list for a vague thing in the future, but is a

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
If you this thing sounds useful and valuable to you now there's a pretty good chance that the thing that we're gonna offer in the future is also. Interesting and useful and valuable to you as well so we were doing google ads we we're doing newsletter ads different kind of targeted.

Alex Hillman
And the truth is, is much like SEO is something that we're not very good at. Analytics is another thing that we're not very good at. So like I don't have good good data to say how well it worked or not.

Alex Hillman
I consider it an experiment, although in hindsight, an experiment that you can't tell whether or not it worked. I don't know how good of an experiment that was. I think it was more of a sniff test than an experiment.

Andrew
Yeah, fair.

Alex Hillman
but i think But I think if you were to you know to, if you're going to keep running ads and stuff, running it on things that effectively pre-qualify the subscriber in that way.

Alex Hillman
And I think your single serving apps fall into that category. And in fact, I think it's why single serving apps are such awesome marketing is because if it's because they are pre-qualifying by the very nature of what they are.

Andrew
yeah

Alex Hillman
And they demonstrate instant value to the person which puts you in you know the the the karmic alignment of though of reciprocity, which is another piece of the marketing equation.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
It's like, oh, every time I have that problem, I go to that single serving site. I always think of this. Next time I have the bigger problem, the trust is already earned. that

Andrew
Yeah. How much do you think about in this early stage marketing? ah ah about where in the funnel you should be targeting. Because like going back to the idea of like you helping some people for free, which I love and I'm going to do regardless, but helping some people for free, building some case studies, doing the education on the problem aware.

Andrew
hear all of that, but then I also, the questions popping up in my head of like, should I be going after people right now who aren't problem aware, or should I just be creating things for people who are already problem aware and, you know, going as low on the funnel as possible to start and then work my way up the funnel over time?

Andrew
How do you think about like balancing the height, the levels of content you're creating?

Alex Hillman
I think that i think that take take it from my experience with 3500 specifically that trying to create things for people who are not problem aware.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
or not ready to start. If the problem is not enough of a problem that they're thinking about it on a pretty regular basis, you are you are making things harder from for yourself than it needs to be.

Andrew
Yeah.

Andrew
Right.

Alex Hillman
So 3500 is an extraordinarily long sales process.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
And a part of that is because people think that this is a course for people who want to start a business. That is not entirely true.

Alex Hillman
It is. But what we've learned over the years is 38 by 500 is for people who have the skills to make a product business and have tried a bunch of things and none of them have worked.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
They are aware that the process that they have and the things that they've tried aren't working.

Andrew
Yeah. Of that, of that.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
and they're not And they're not ready to give up yet. The person's ready to give up? i can't I'm not going to make it my job to convince them to not give up, right?

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
By nature of us existing and our students being successful, I think we get a little bit of that spilling over.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
But the ideal person for 30 by 500 and for most of our content is actually not someone who is brand new to the idea of starting a business or who needs to be convinced that building a product business is right for them.

Alex Hillman
It's the people who already, that we need we want to affirm that it's right for them and why. But then we're going to tap into the pain of the last three things you launched, launched to crickets.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
You tried three you tried lean, you tried an email waiting list, and you tried a product hunt. None of them worked. Is it you? I mean, probably not. It's probably something in the systems. So let's analyze those systems and figure out why the result that you you got is relatively predictable. And how do we replace this system with something better?

Andrew
Cool. So just to dig into that a little bit more, that that lines up with how I've been thinking. It's like I shouldn't try to convince people this is a problem. you know i I've heard from enough people in our our early user interviews to be convinced that it's a problem for for a subset of people, not everybody, but a subset of people. And so I've been trying to think about like structuring our marketing to go after the people who are already aware of the problem.

Andrew
and just try to educate them on our our solution. and And so like one of the pieces of feedback that I heard from you when you were talking about the single use tool, right, of like put in, you know, I was thinking about, you know, it as drop in a link, generate a ah meta description. And one of the the way I heard your feedback was,

Andrew
Yeah, that's not bad, but it would be so much better if you could show them like how it's being done now. And so that they can see like this is how it's being done now, look how painful this is, and then boom, look how how it is how easy it can be. But is that sort of educate, is that type of content targeted more at people who, who like will the right people already know how it's being done now and already feel that and just be excited to have an easier way?

Andrew
Or do I need to agitate that pain again?

Alex Hillman
i was so i mean i don't no no no i know I think this is a great question.

Andrew
Or did I misunderstand you also?

Alex Hillman
It was a really, really good nuanced way of slicing it. so I think that the there is never any harm in reminding people of the pain they're aware of.

Andrew
Totally, yeah.

Alex Hillman
right so ah ah I wouldn't necessarily if you were focused on the more problem or folks, you can change the approach or even just the amount that you do it.

Andrew
Mmhmm.

Alex Hillman
But I think agitating the pain reminds them of the pain if it's not present at the moment, or it reminds them because it's the other thing is is like from a psychological perspective, we forget the pain.

Alex Hillman
either There's really only two ways that we remember pain is all of it or none of it, right? We bury it away because I cause i want to pretend it never it wasn't that bad or like just enough time has passed and I'm willing to to forget how annoying that was at the beginning of every product or whatever it is.

Andrew
yeah

Alex Hillman
Or it's a pain I feel all day, every day.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
Most pains are not pains we feel all day, every day. And this seems like a thing that like when it shows up, it's painful, but it is periodic enough that

Andrew
Yeah, that's probably right.

Alex Hillman
It's easy to have some distance from like, that's not so bad. And then you set you, or maybe again, you're not even the one doing it, but someone else is doing it. And you're like, Oh man, I forgot how much of a slog this is. So I don't think it's necessary to educate them so much as it is too useful to remind them.

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Alex Hillman
And if there's a little sprinkle of education in there for the person who's not problem aware, and that brings them on board, consider that, you know, you scored some bonus points.

Andrew
Yeah, cool. The last thing that I'd love to just chat on, we've already touched on it a little bit, is there's so much in this early stage. so

Andrew
I'm sort of scratching my own itch here. I have been a content creator online for years. i you know This idea originally came about because I could never remember to add internal links to my content when I was creating it. and i was like I know this is important. I know everyone says I should do it, but I never remember to do it. I wish it could just be done for me. And then as generative AI i got better, I was like, oh, maybe this could be done for me. And then I started doing user interviews and I heard from people that, like, yeah, internal links are important, but they're also hard to do right. And there's all this nuance to it. and

Andrew
There was the subset of people who had to deal with metadata and were like, those people were saying, oh my god, I hate this. It's taking me months. It sucks. And I was like, OK, maybe we start there. And so like I'm sort of scratching my own itch. But like realistically, I am not an SEO expert. I'm like an SEO enthusiast, maybe, and a bit of an SEO nerd. I've always wanted to be good at SEO. I'm not great at SEO.

Andrew
And so one of the things that I've been struggling with in deciding what content to create and and all of this is struggling with that feeling of identity. and like I think you heard this on that last podcast episode and called it out. And it's been on my mind this week. And I feel like I'm starting to frame it in a way that is helpful, but I'd love to hear your advice for people who are struggling with that. And then we can talk just real quick before we wrap up about yeah how I'm starting to see it.

Alex Hillman
yeah Yeah, it was such an interesting thing. was yeah I'm sure you've had that moment where you're listening to a podcast or like watching a show and you used to yell at the radio. And I was like, I don't remember what the thought that I had was, but I wanted to yell into the conversation. So so yeah you caught me in in that way. So again, I think that imposter syndrome of I'm not an expert of this space. I'm self-taught. I'm curious.

Alex Hillman
but i have I feel a way about positioning myself as an expert or positioning myself as, you know, as it being my identity. So a couple of thoughts. In no particular quarter, one is And this is much easier said than done, but I think unbundling the identity stuff and going, you can do this stuff without it being your identity is probably a healthier way to approach stuff in the world in general.

Andrew
What?

Alex Hillman
So you don't need to be an SEO in order to be knowledgeable enough in SEO to help somebody.

Andrew
You're starting to sound a little like my therapist, but okay, continue. ah yeah

Alex Hillman
So, I mean, that's not not a bad thing. um So so that that's that's that's part that's part number one.

Andrew
No, No, not at all.

Alex Hillman
Part number two is I think the first person I heard describe this, at least so succinctly, was Patrick McKenzie, patio 11 on the internets.

Alex Hillman
And it was that while everyone talks about, you know, like riches are in the niches and silly aphorisms like that, Patrick pointed out, and I think he's very right, is that the real opportunity is actually in the Venn diagram overlaps. And so you are not the expert-iest expert in SEO, but of agency or service business owners who has experience in doing this, you have an above average, like in that over, in that vendor overlap, you have an above average amount of knowledge and experience.

Alex Hillman
Doesn't take a lot to put yourself ahead of the others. And so when you speak, it's who are you speaking to? Are you speaking to other SEOs or are you speaking to other agency owners, right? And if we speak another agency owners, now we're back into a territory where it sounds like you're, those are your people.

Andrew
yeah

Andrew
Those are my people. Yeah.

Alex Hillman
And so,

Andrew
I can talk to them for hours.

Alex Hillman
And so like selling yourself as an SEO tool puts you in a place where you now have to defend your identity of being an SEO versus positioning yourself as an agency tool or a tool for agency owners that solves a problem that happens to be a technical problem in the SEO space.

Andrew
Interesting.

Andrew
Hmm.

Andrew
Interesting. Yeah.

Alex Hillman
and then and And then not only it like kind of undoes the the emotional tangle that you have going into this, but it actually plays into a unique strength because I imagine there aren't.

Alex Hillman
a lot of people who are a former agency owner who understands not just how an agency runs, but also like back to business. Like what is the business value here?

Alex Hillman
You ran an agency. I don't know if it was other people besides yourself. So you understand sort of like how a busy agency owner makes decisions about small, grindy, but relatively important tasks.

Andrew
Yep.

Alex Hillman
We're now in a domain where you not only can speak confidently, but you can speak from actual experience.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
And I think that reframe will help you not only bust through the imposter syndrome, but a actually help you resonate even more deeply.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
you know the The version of the landing page that you've revised since the original a conversation that we had brings the audience identity into it more than it was before.

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Alex Hillman
But it's one of those things where like, if you actually chose to lean into it even more or lean into it with this light adaptation, the person, when I think about a sales page, you know, the the the sp sales page is effectively, its job is to be the salesperson in the room when you can't be the salesperson in the room.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
And so the very first step before you can even ah offer something, before you can even ask them anything about themselves, is to tell them something about yourself that makes it clear, hey, you're in the right place, right?

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
And calling somebody out by name or by the identity that they have that is relevant to the exchange that you're having is one of the best ways to reliably do that.

Andrew
Cool.

Alex Hillman
as you can match match that in your marketing content and have it feel like it's coming from someone who understands agency stuff and understands the technical side of SEO because you had to rather than somebody who that's all that they do.

Andrew
That's super interesting. Yeah, I i love that. i I'm going to need to sit with that for a little bit and digest it and like figure out, just give that some time to play out in my head. The Venn diagram metaphor is so great. ah ah That is kind of already what I'd been thinking about. And I thought about the agency piece a little bit, but I i don't think I thought about taking it as far as what I feel like you're describing, which I love.

Andrew
yeah One of the other Venn diagram intersections I've been thinking about playing with is you know ah ah SEOs are sometimes technical, but often more from a marketing side of things, whereas I have more of a technical background and like While I'm not an AI expert yet you know we're going to be learning a lot about how different models work and stuff as we get into this, this building the tool we're starting to get into that right now. So I've been thinking a little bit about like, okay, maybe I can be.

Andrew
You know, live in and that little Venn diagram slice of like, hey, here's what SEOs need to understand about ah these AI tools and how they work and how to how to integrate them and and use them in ways that are that are effective. Been thinking a little bit about that. Another thought that I've had that I feel like came back to me again as you were talking earlier about the idea of helping people through a service and developing case studies was just like in areas where I'm not the expert, don't try to be, but like draw on the experts, highlight them, make them the hero, you know, try to, yeah, try to like interview people, talk to them, you know, hype them up, make them look, look cool.

Alex Hillman
Great plan.

Alex Hillman
and and And you get to be the the proxy for the person who is more like yourself because you have questions you you you have a good idea of what questions they have because you were a lot like them.

Andrew
and

Andrew
Yeah.

Andrew
Yeah. Yeah. So i I think I want to play it with that too, of like, you know.

Alex Hillman
A hundred percent.

Andrew
being honest about my level of skill and and trying to hype up the people who are more skilled than me and like make them put them front and center. And then one last thing just on the identity piece. I was chuckling as you were talking about it because genuinely I've had so many conversations with my therapist as I'm sure many entrepreneurs have, which is like,

Andrew
you know, I tend to wrap up my entire identity in my business. And so when the business isn't going well, I'm miserable. And when the business is going well, I'm on top of the world. And, you know, he's only been telling me for six years, separate those things if you want to live a happy and healthy life.

Andrew
And it's funny because when we were talking about identity, my approach was to make this more a part of my identity, not less. like um I've been slowly adding SEO into my by bios online on like LinkedIn and Twitter. And it was funny how much of a shift I started to feel. And like just by doing that, like I did start to feel like, oh, maybe I can call myself... I didn't call myself an SEO expert. I called myself an SEO nerd, I think. And so it's like,

Andrew
Okay, maybe maybe this is part of me and maybe I just need to be vocal about that. But probably the advice to separate to separate the identity and the and the business so is the healthier long-term thing.

Alex Hillman
Yeah, I mean, it yeah, I mean, I think yeah there's more than one way to approach this, obviously.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
And and at the end of the day, like I don't think that you will feel like the way you feel about it before you do it is rarely a useful indicator of how you will feel about it afterwards.

Alex Hillman
So it's like if I'm going to do it, do it and see how I feel and then use that to make a decision. It's also the kind of thing that like is a it's it's a two way door versus a one way door is like if you just you try it on like a costume and if you're like not into this costume, you can always take off that costume and put on the old one or try on a new one.

Andrew
Mm hmm.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
You know, I think that there's a this this is a very, very unusual comparison. However, I think it's a really cool one. Many, many years ago, in the early days of co-working, we ran a pre-COVID 100% online conference because we're insane.

Andrew
Love it.

Alex Hillman
And the focus was, you know, I was going to all these industry conferences for, for co-working space operators and, and, and stuff like that. And for folks who don't know, that is my and sitting in, uh, Andy Hall is a co-working space and community in Philadelphia, one of the, the first, uh, in, in the country and in the world. So I've been doing the co-working thing for even longer than I've been doing the stuff we've spent this entire call talking about, very active in the conference space and, uh,

Alex Hillman
recognized that going to those events, it was, you know, co-working operators talking to co-working operators about operating co-working spaces. And there was never the voice of adjacent industries that we could learn from or members who we could learn from. And so we put together an event that was meant to highlight all of that. And one of the speakers our very first year is a professional wrestling promoter.

Andrew
Whoa, that's so much fun.

Alex Hillman
who had given this really cool talk that I saw where he talked about the the power of kayfabe in storytelling and just sort of like having alter egos and stuff like that.

Andrew
Interesting.

Alex Hillman
And it was one of those things like, I don't remember if it's something he said or something I took away, but we got really attached to this idea of ah of of like prep pro wrestlers literally have a costume that they don't go in the ring unless they're wearing the costume.

Andrew
Mhm. Yeah.

Alex Hillman
And I think a lot of us have costumes that we don't consider ourselves at work unless we are wearing our costume, but we don't think about it as concretely as a wrestler does because it is such an intrinsic part of the profession.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
And so the call to the the audience of this talk was basically to like take a step back and analyze What is the costume that you're wearing that makes you feel like you're at work or not? And is that serving you? Is that helping? There's really another interesting way to unpack or or take some agency over the identity conversation and make it ah ah a less of a internal intrinsic who I am what is inside of me and more of like I'm just trying on a costume today and see how it feels and I felt stronger or more powerful or smarter or people took me more seriously or I took me more seriously a costume can do that and and I'm using the word costume in the most broad sense of the idea it could be a term in your blue sky or your LinkedIn bio and those kinds of things like try those costumes on it's okay like

Andrew
Yeah.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
It's not good to lie.

Andrew
No,

Alex Hillman
Don't lie. But if you're going to try on the costume, that also means you've got to act like the person who's wearing that costume would act. So give it a shot and see how it feels.

Andrew
I love it. I, I, I've heard people starting to talk a little bit more about like. pregame rituals and some of the things that people in other professions do to like get in the space, the head space to do their best work.

Alex Hillman
Yeah.

Andrew
this is a new one that I haven't, I think I've heard the costume metaphor before, but not not in the wrestling sense and not not quite like this. And I love it. I love that idea of we can try on these costumes and they can give us superpowers and like help us be a different version of ourselves.

Andrew
And that can be a way to keep your identity that that story of this is a costume can also be a way to make my therapist happy and like keep keep the identity at bay because it's like i'm i'm putting on this identity this still isn't me at my core that's okay i'm putting on this costume for this work that i need to do

Alex Hillman
Yeah, it's true.

Andrew
And so for a while, I am going to be this person, but I don't have to be always. i Yeah, there's so much there that I i really, really like. It's super fun.

Alex Hillman
Cool.

Andrew
Yeah, cool.

Alex Hillman
Glad it helps.

Andrew
Alex, this has been awesome. I've genuinely had so much fun. Time has totally flown by. Before we go, anything else that that you want to plug or or just shout out or or any like parting wisdom you want to want to leave?

Alex Hillman
No, I mean, the the biggest takeaway, I want to sort of go back to the beginning and like, you know, mistakes were made. They are among the most common. They are not fatal. I'm super, I will say you're not only taking notes extremely well, which not everybody does, you asked for them. As a rule, I don't give advice that hasn't been asked for.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
learned that lesson a long time ago. You took it very, very well. And more importantly, like very quickly had demonstrated, I'm going to sit down and do the work. And so like, I love that. That sends such a strong positive signal that you are in this to grow and learn and adapt. And that's like, there are and very few, like 100% works all the time rules that must be followed all the time.

Alex Hillman
That's one of them, right, is you got to be ready to adapt based on learning new information. So that's very cool.

Alex Hillman
And then, the you know, the second piece of it is to, you know, just to remind folks that of that realization that you were spending so much time thinking about launch day, no one is spending as much time thinking about your launch day as you are.

Andrew
Yeah.

Alex Hillman
part of the job is making sure they're thinking about the launch day before the launch day, so that when launch day gets there, they have a reason to care about it. so that's i'd say like um Of all the the the little ideas that we've got, that's the big one here.

Andrew
yeah

Alex Hillman
As far as stuff to plug, we talked a little bit about launch for the win. I would encourage folks to check that out at launchftw.com. totally free, take it for a spin. The workbooks in particular I find are useful for helping folks start to think through a set of questions that need to be answered before you create something that people will want or buy. And often people don't think about answering it until after they've made the thing. And so even if it's just as a practice, not on the existing thing you're working on, but on the next thing you're working on, to sit down and try that series of workbooks as an exercise of like, can I answer these questions? If not, am I ready to move forward?

Alex Hillman
Not ready is not even a good term. Am I prepared to move forward? The answer is you may be ready, but you have not prepared. So do the preparation work and it pays off.

Andrew
Love it, man. You're such a pro. Thanks so much for doing this. One last thing. I think it was at like the 30 minute mark, but I hope anyone listening to this scrolls back and tries to find it.

Andrew
The very first time you mentioned 30 by 500 was like a master class in elevator pitches that like get the pain across. like You talked so succinctly about who this is for and the pain.

Andrew
And so I hope people go back and like listen to that again. I'm going to go back and find it. I'll try to link it in the show notes, the the exact timestamp. You're a pro.

Alex Hillman
Many years of practice is what you get to see on display here.

Andrew
I so.

Alex Hillman
So something something you can do. any Anybody can learn.

Andrew
Yeah, I appreciate you man. This has been a blast and let's do it again soon.

Alex Hillman
Awesome. Sounds good. Good luck. Happy holidays. And I'll see you on the other side.

Andrew
Thanks man. Appreciate you.