How to run customer discovery (aka: surfacing PULL fast)

0:00 Speaker 1 Hey, Rob. Morning, man. How's it going? 0:02 Speaker 2 Good. How are you? 0:04 Speaker 1 I'm doing great, excited to talk about Discovery today, but we are also wrapping up PMF camp. You've got some interesting things going on with AI, Rob. Like it in general, like what's what's new, what's going on? 0:16 Speaker 2 Yeah, So a lot of fun things going on. I think I wanted to, we have probably some new people listening now. And so I wanted to share like a little bit about what the heck are we doing here because this is not like your typical podcast. 0:34 Like what we're doing here is I am trying through kind of all the things I do to figure out why customers pull products out of people's hands and like how product market fit works. And I'm kind of continually trying to develop a set of thinking, theory, practice, all this kind of stuff and kind of like ways to approach this. 0:54 It is not, you know, it's not complete, still very much in progress. And So what we do here and in the newsletter is try to figure out new things on that way. And so you are here to help me try to explain things that I am running into and things that I am writing from a, you know, otherwise I will like, go insane doing this myself. 1:16 And so so that's what we're doing here. And today, this newsletter, I think is kind of kind of interesting It, it covers a thing that I find a lot of people get stuck on, which is like, yeah, I get this whole poll thing. 1:33 I just can't figure out how to ask about it. I can't figure out how to surface it on a, you know, conversation with a potential customer. Wait, what are the exact words that you use and give me as many different permutations of it as possible and what am I doing wrong? And so hopefully this newsletter like gives you at least 30 different ideas and like, kind of like a, a pathway to follow. 1:57 Speaker 1 Yeah, I I laughed out loud when I read the title of this 137 Excuse me, 37 ways to ask about pull. It is not a hyperbole. You you actually do have 37 different ways to ask about pull. However, it's not as overwhelming as it as it first sounds. 2:14 And we're going to get into talk. We're not going to go like 1 by 1 by 1 unless we decide to. I'm we, we could, we could just go one by one. No, I'm just kidding. But what we'll do is discuss a couple different scenarios that founders might that might find themselves in and how the approach to really discovery to on earth and customer pool in a way that's helpful for you, that's helpful for the customer. 2:39 But why don't we, why don't we start by establishing a, you know, maybe a little bit of a point of departure I want to hit, you know, how do people, you know, what are some of the common failure modes or whatever that that people do today that you see? But maybe like before that, who is this one for? 2:57 Like what you know? Why is why is this one on your mind? 3:00 Speaker 2 Yeah. So this one is, it's just like the a thing that has bought been bothering me for a while and a bunch of sales calls that I've been watching. And I've actually gotten some feedback recently from people who were saying, like, I didn't actually know what the purpose of discovery was. 3:17 I remember someone was like, it's just the thing you do before you pitch your product. It's like you're supposed to make them comfortable or something like that. And so I find discoveries, sales in general is totally misunderstood. Discovery in particular is like this thing that I'm not sure why, Like I don't know what I'm doing with my hands in discovery. 3:39 Like it just, it's a, it's a thing that we don't really understand. And So what people tend to do in discovery is like, you know, in the beginning of a sales call, you're supposed to ask some questions and you're supposed to get some answers back. And there's like a list of questions online that you can ask, but it's not super clear what are you looking for? 3:59 What's the difference between discovery and qualification? And So what tends to happen is I, as founder, just like have a list of questions because I feel compelled to ask questions. And those questions are like, tell me about your current process. What maybe there's pain points, right? 4:15 And like, how would it ideally work? And we surface a bunch of things that sound like they are relevant and are actually not relevant because right, like you could have an inefficient process, but it doesn't matter if you're not trying to change. 4:32 And So what I found is discovery is what? What is discovery? It's about surfacing if they have pull and if so, what is it? What are they trying to do that they can't do that they need help with which sets you up to describe your product in a non offensive way to them in a way that they will actually RIP it out of your hands and you have to surface pull there. 4:58 Because if you're not even if it like most halls that I watch, don't even try. And, and so if you don't try to surface pull, well, it would be like the person would have to on the other end be like, yeah, I know you're asking about that, but like, can I just interrupt you and say this isn't super relevant. 5:15 What I'm actually here for is XYZ. And they're not just like not going to do that. And so there's a lot of waste. We we miss a lot of things. 5:22 Speaker 1 Yeah. And I don't know where the prevailing theory of how to run discovery comes from, but I, I suspect some of it is, it's on the surface level related to the ICP. There's a lot of qualification and like somehow like and in particular some of the qualification stuff is basically irrelevant until you have your case study that you're repeating. 5:44 And I think what what I was doing with my early sales calls was I was trying to qualify based on like what I sort of thought the person would look like or, or the type of organization that would buy from me without actually knowing why they would buy from me. 6:00 It was like that. It was more like demographic level. And I've seen that in some of the some of the teardowns that you've LED as well with other founders making the same mistake. But you list, you know, three ways that people run Discovery today, all of which are basically incorrect. One is current state questions, another is ideal state questions. 6:19 And then you mentioned specifically qualification questions. Rob, why don't we, why don't we hit those real quick, not, not to go super deep in them, but how do you know if you're doing any of these things and and why are they in the wrong approach? 6:33 Speaker 2 Yeah. So I'll give a couple examples here, like current state questions are tell me about your process and your pain points and your team and your da, da, da, da, da. Like what is the current state? Ideal state is questions of how would you ideally like it to work? Like how would you ideally like your current state to look like? 6:52 And then qualification questions. Are, you know, do you have budget or, or things like that, right? Like are you have you, you know, what, what whatever the questions are of like, are you serious? The problem with current, we'll talk about current and ideal state questions is that those aren't the relevant questions to focus on What we're they can have an annoying current state. 7:11 They could have a very specific future state and have no desire to exert any energy to get from current to ideal state. And so in that case, you are, you are learning about like static versus dynamic, right? You are learning about like not you're not learning about what force they are trying to apply right now, which is what we're actually looking for when we're asking poll questions. 7:39 It's what are you trying to do? Where are you stuck? Where do you, what's the progress you are trying to make? And then on qualification questions, right? If you ask somebody about their budget before knowing what they are trying to do, before they can articulate that they're going to say my budget for what? 7:58 Like what are we talking about here? And so those it's, it's like super. So you're like there's bats and like medic and Med pick and all these kinds of qualification frameworks which often have like need within them. But but like the need is what causes the other things in the framework to be relevant. 8:16 And so you start with the need with the trying to change but unable to change right now. 8:22 Speaker 1 Yeah. And the, the current state questions, you know, some, some variations of that or, or permutations of it. Like it can be about the size of the organization, like channels that they're selling into, like processes that they run or software that they're using. 8:43 You know, an ideal state question has the feel, has the feel of like it. It's almost like you're asking that question hoping that they are going to describe your product and then you're gonna like pop out from behind the curtain and and they're like. 8:56 Speaker 2 Or there's like, oh, I didn't even include there's a category here of like gotcha questions, right? Where I'm trying to logic you into wanting my product or I'm trying to like devise a list of questions where if you say specific things to these questions, right? Is is blank a big pain point for you right now? 9:14 Wouldn't it be better if if like X right? Therefore you like it's it's you've basically logged a an argument there. And they can just be like, yeah, but also not trying to change here. Like thanks a lot. Peace out. 9:28 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. I feel like that's like every Hollywood sales script that you know, has the the pre canned like result of the person being like, Oh my goodness, like you're totally right if you buy that. Well, let's let's jump now. We've established what not to like what you know some folks might be doing. 9:45 And again this is mostly on the pre PMF like but I. 9:50 Speaker 2 No, no, no, no, no. I wish it was mostly pre PNF. Like I've been helping companies 1101520 million plus ARR and like they don't figure out what customers want in the call. Customers are often buying despite what's happening in the sales calls. 10:09 And so they have kind of like a list of questions you're supposed to ask. They don't learn what poll is. And so it's just like a, I don't know, like like there's a percent chance that people will buy based on people who have previously bought and I can't right. 10:25 It you it you just kind of like see, do they show up to the second call coin flip? Right? UN unclear because we're not actually surfacing the thing. And it's like, you can, you can, you can basically scale a sales team with like decent close rates, having no clue what poll is and basically being counterproductive in these sales calls. 10:44 And so I've kind of like actually been intervening in a couple of these where it's like, it's like, oh, wait a second, we don't need to be asking half of these questions. All we need to be asking is like this kind of question. And if we hear this kind of thing, cool, they're not going to buy. If we hear this kind of thing, they are going to buy. 11:01 And it's like makes everything way simpler. So I wish it was just freaky enough, but I have been. I assumed it would be, but I've been shocked at what happens in sales calls post PMF. 11:15 Speaker 1 I'm going to hold on. I've got some questions about the post PMF thing, but I, I think what's most helpful here is like, Rob, I want you to help like basically fix the way that I think about discovery. And there's, and what we're going to do here, like, let's just start at, you know, the, the highest level, like what, what we want to know is what are we actually looking for in discovery? 11:36 Like what's the, the ultimate objective? And honestly, like, there's probably there's, you lay out 3737 different ways to get there. Like everybody's going to kind of figure out the right combination that like matches them. But you know, you, you say that you're looking for two things. One, what are they trying to do the customer or the prospect right now, but they can't do with their current tools, methods, etcetera, such that they would buy something right now. 12:01 And then 2 is what would they do right now if there was, if there was a way such that they'd buy something right now. So both of them have this result of purchase shaped movements like as the, I don't know about aspiration, but like motivation, what, what, what is like going on behind these? 12:20 And can you actually help me understand the difference between like that you're that you're teasing out between the two? 12:25 Speaker 2 Yeah. So it's, it's this is probably just more of a difference in my own head than than than actually needs to be like spelled out in in a ton of detail. But basically we're trying to fill out the pull framework. We're trying to figure out what's the thing they're trying to do right now that they can't do with their existing tools, methods, options. 12:45 That's it. Yeah, right. And, and why can't they do it with their existing tools, methods, options, right. It's I'm trying to minimize the amount of time I'm spending on meeting notes for, for client meetings. And that's I'm unavoidable because if I don't take meeting notes, I'll be thrown in jail. 13:01 And, but like I have so many other things I would way rather do. So every time I take meeting notes, it's like a little part of my soul gets beaten to, you know, whatever. And and so that's that's that's pull and I can't use a generic AI note taker tools, methods options because it's like unclear if it's compliant and doesn't integrate with my CRM and da da, da, da da, right? 13:24 Like, and so you have we're trying to surface that kind of thing, trying to do X right now blocked. And there's kind of two categories of that that we've talked about before. It's the thing that is active. Like if I think of a Trello board, there's like the backlog on my Trello board of all the things I would like to do, but I'm actually probably not going to do. 13:43 There's thing I'm prioritizing right now that I am totally fine doing myself or with my existing tools, methods, options. Cool. Neither of those categories are relevant. There are two categories that are relevant, which is trying to do right now, but can't do with my existing options and and so I am kind of like grinding against them. 14:03 That's the like jump example. And then the other one is like would do right now. If only there was a way, right? But, but I don't have a like, if you, if you watch me, I'm not like it's it's the lovable example. 14:18 Like I wasn't making a website before Lovable because I just didn't want to hit my head against the wall with one of those like point and click editors. I have no design set. Like none of that will work. And so you wouldn't see that. But it was on my To Do List in this category of like, if only there was a way it was not such a hassle to make a website. 14:39 I was in both of these. You're looking for like the coiled spring, the person trying to do something or wouldn't try to do something right now, but existing options are not good enough. That's that's pull. 14:52 Speaker 1 Yeah. And importantly, pull is not the amount of pain that somebody is experiencing. It's yeah, it's not a problem. It's not a big problem. It's not, it's not a business case. Like I think there's, there's like a, you know, whether whether a founder or, or somebody uses the acronym pull. 15:13 Like it, we, we've seen folks that have an intuition about pull. It's like they're looking for something that somebody would pay somebody to, to do. And like you could, you can build a business off of that like kind of instinct, But the, you know, the popular dialogue around what, what, what are your biggest pain points that you're experiencing right now like that? 15:32 And if one of the pain points lines up to my problem, like there's this aspiration that that results in the purchase, like I think that's probably a common one. There's probably others as well. Let's talk about poll. You write something really interesting and you've been talking about it more with the founders that you've been working with in the last PMF camp, which is about the difference between sequencing your, I'm going to use the word interrogation. 15:58 That's not right. It's like questions around pull, like constructing pull piece by piece versus a holistic question or a holistic discovery that unearths pull that is complete at 1 moment. 16:13 And you know, just real quick for if there's any new listeners. Pull is an acronym that that Rob came up with that we use to understand the circumstance in which a customer will purchase from you. And it's there's a project that's on their To Do List. It's urgent or unavoidable for some reason. 16:30 They are looking for options, but those options are lacking. We can, we can link to that in the in the show. That's if you want to dig deeper into it. But you know, one approach to that, Rob, is OK, what, what are the projects that are on your To Do List? Why, you know, choose XYZ project? 16:46 Why is that unavoidable? What are the options that you've looked into? Why, you know, why are you satisfied with those options? Like, why are they lacking? I've run, I've run calls like this. So I need you to help me understand Rob, why, why does this not work? 17:01 And then we can Orient to like what's a, what's a better approach there? 17:04 Speaker 2 Yeah. So, so the most common error mode I see in discovery is pull framework has four letters. So I'm going to ask about letter P, then U, then L, then L The challenge with that is that think of, think of a product teams road map for example, right. 17:24 They have a product teams road map is a bunch of projects they are going to do. There are reasons why each of those projects is unavoidable. They're on the road map, they have dates on them, they have specific reasons for them, but their existing options for getting basically all of those projects done are do it ourselves and that's good enough. 17:46 And So what you, what you realize when you look at projects that way and if you approach this sequentially is there are a lot more projects then there are polls like completed poll frameworks. And so if you just ask about projects or priorities, you're probably going to find something that has good enough options. 18:05 So what tends to happen is you ask about priorities, you find priorities and you find out they have good enough options. 10 minutes in, it's like, OK, what do we do now? Like I let me just Hail Mary a demo and see what happens, right. And so that's because you, you approach it as asking these questions sequentially rather than the opposite of this is not to ask about projects priorities. 18:27 It's about to ask. It's about asking about all of pull at once, which is not a what are your priorities? But it's kind of like, what are you trying to do while you're stuck and and your existing options are not good enough? It's like it you kind of fit the entirety of the the pull framework into each kind of question that you're asking to get something that is like, oh, OK, yeah. 18:50 So it's not just any priority. The thing I'm stuck on and haven't been able to find a way is X. And then we can fill that out in more detail. But what? But like the opposite version of that? Just asking about priorities leads you to not fill out. Let's leads you to find out that it's like our existing options are good enough. 19:10 No pull framework. If you just fill out PU and L and not the second L, guess what you get? No customers. It sucks. 19:18 Speaker 1 Yeah, and, and you build up, you know, we, we've talked about how we anchor on things and it's like if you head down a path, it's like, you know, increasing optimism that that is actually like, oh, I like, I, I found the thing. It's unavoidable and it's a project in particular. 19:33 And then, you know, you, you end up with the weird, the weird outcome of being ghosted or it's just like it kind of Peters out because you actually, you didn't ask about let's, let's talk though about how you surface it holistically. You know, you give some examples here that there's what we're going to do those I, you know, I feel like the one that you've consistently recommended that I use and literally 100% of my calls now is like, why did you take this call? 20:02 Which is like kind of a it gives them an opportunity to surface pull without you even really asking about it because they might just volunteer. I've been looking for this. You you propose something that caught my attention and it lets you dive straight into that project. 20:19 Is there is there anything else that's valuable to add on that kind of like the on the why did you take this? Why are you here? Why is this worth your time? Like what would you, what else would you add about that particular opening? 20:32 Speaker 2 Yeah. So, so again, what we're trying to do is we're, we're giving them space to explain their poll to us. What are they trying to do that they can't do that need need help with? And so the, the first, so I, I think of this, you're, you're trying to surface something pull shaped. 20:50 It doesn't need to be super specific at this stage, but it needs to be, Oh yeah, we're trying to do this, but but specifically stuck here. And, and then you can double click into it. So you're surfacing something pull shaped. And I think of it as basically like you have the ideally they say when they get on the call, they say, Rob, shut up. 21:10 Here's what I'm trying to do. Here's what like, and they just fill out the entire pole framework for you. That would be nice. But they have some reason in their head for taking the call And you want to surface that it might surface pole. If it does, cool, just like fill out the rest of the framework. 21:27 If it doesn't surface pole, then we have a set of fall back questions we ask. So it's like, OK, why'd you take the call? You reached out to me. Cool, that's not super helpful. Then. Then I'm going to take some some of the fall back questions here. 21:43 And so that's the way to think about it is like you, you have a couple different you have like a series of chances to surface something pull shaped and then double Click to kind of fill out the details of it. And so why did you take the call says is it? And I have like a bunch of different permutations of it. 21:58 Like I'm sure you get a bunch of people reaching out to you. Why'd you decide to take this call with me? Right? Like you can have a a couple different permutations of that question to see is there something pull shaped that it surfaces. 22:13 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. And after you do it a couple times, my experience is like you'll, you might cycle through a couple of those, like is there something you're help you're hoping to get out of this like and one of them will start to work like a little bit more frequently than than other ones. 22:29 Let's talk about some of these. There's, there's another template that you said I'm just going to, I'm going to read out. I love your reaction if there's anything you want to add, but I just thought it was really very direct. And there's, there's one thing in there I want to dive into a little bit. And you write, you know, this is for the example of somebody that runs QA or is selling like a product or service or software related to QA. 22:50 You, you, you offer this one as it relates to your QA process. Is there something in particular you're trying to solve right now that you're hoping somebody could help with and that actually has all of pull embedded in it? 23:08 Rob, can you talk us through like where the elements of pull are? They're just like elucidate that for us. And then there's also the framing, which I thought was really interesting, like as it relates to your QA processes or something like that. Why is that? They're like, can you just kind of break this apart for us and help us understand how to use it? 23:26 Speaker 2 Yeah, so, so this is so think of if they say if if you get on a call with them and you say why'd you take the call? And they say, I don't know, like I said, I had nothing better to do on a Tuesday. I'm like, all right, cool. Then you go to fall back one, which is to ask an open-ended poll question, which comes before a closed ended poll question, which comes before a hail mate, right. 23:49 Like there's there's kind of these fall back. And so the open-ended poll question is basically saying like, OK, here's roughly a pull framework for you, fill it out for me. It's an empty pull framework. And So what I'm, what I'm doing here is I'm trying to include all the elements of pull. 24:07 Is there something you're trying to do right now P and you thing you're trying to do is P right now is you that you're hoping someone could help with or that you're struggling with or that you're trying to trying to switch out vendors for or something like that, Right. 24:24 And that's the LS. And so we have PULL. But if you just say that broadly, is there anything you're looking to do right now that you're hoping someone can help you with? Right. That's a very broad question. I sell QA software or I sell whatever it is. 24:41 And so I kind of want to narrow it and say kind of anything within your QA process, anything within your accounts receivable world, anything kind of and you kind of you can get specific there and then you can always later if you get something there say. But OK, I know QA is like a tiny part of your job. 24:59 Is this actually a thing right now you're trying to do or is this right? And So what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to get something pull shaped in our domain and then I can zoom out and see if it's like actual pull versus not. But I'm asking a question with all of the elements pull in it. 25:16 Speaker 1 Yeah. OK. So let's say that or maybe one thing to add on there like that, you know, you talked early about you don't want to surface just priorities because they may not be looking at. I really like the second-half of that question that you're hoping someone can help you with like that, You know, immediately it like kind of flips the brain into like, oh, OK, there's like a potential transaction. 25:39 Like what do I actually value? It makes it so that it's it's more worth your time and their time. And you know, like a broader comment about this is like that we've talked about in the past, we haven't visited lately, but it's like sales calls should be helpful and they they should be focused on helping the customer achieve something that they're trying to achieve but but can't rather than the, you know, I'm trying to like maximize revenue. 26:04 Like at its at its heart, done correctly, you know, these it should be like, oh wow, like you can actually do that. Like that. It should be almost like a relief if there is pool that you that you match and that let's hit the you mentioned that the case study poll question. I think you just referred to it as the closed, closed ended question. 26:23 I'll, I'll read an example here and then Rob, how do we, how do we use this one effectively? And when is it the right time to use it as something that's on my, on my mind because it's, it's a more complex question delivery. What you wrote, the example you give is usually when I talk with CT OS, they often say they're trying to get E to E testing off their team's plate, but winding up with an engineer, spending a ton of time in Claude plus playwright. 26:49 Is that not something on your mind right now? I don't know what that is. I put that at least just to just to see you read it. All right, Rob, thanks for teeing me up for success right there. Anyway, so you're going to I I know what Claude is 1 for two. 27:07 Speaker 2 Yeah. So what we're doing? So, OK, So what we do first is we give them an empty pull framework and say fill this out for me. Is there anything here that you can fill out for me this time? If, if we don't get anything from that that's useful, they say nothing. 27:23 That's on my mind. Just kind of curious to hear what you're up to, right? OK, cool. I have nothing in the pull framework. Then what I'm going to say is, OK, cool. I gave you the I gave you the empty pull framework. You did nothing with it. Let me give you a full pull framework and you tell me thumbs up, thumbs down on this. 27:42 And So what we're doing is we're asking a question that gives them a full pull framework and seeing how they react to it. And most of the time they're, if you get here, they might say, Oh yeah, that's exactly what I'm trying to do. Cool. Tell me more. Let's fill out in more detail for you. 27:58 Or they might just say yeah, I guess more or less, which means no. 28:05 Speaker 1 Yeah. What do you what do you do in that or I guess is that that I move on to the Hail Mary. Like if you're still, I mean, can you can you run through let's say that ideally we've talked about this. You have one case study. Frequently founders will have a couple case studies that they're they know exist. 28:22 They might be running after one particular anecdote or, or but but they know that a couple people have used their product for different ways. Do you just like, oh, OK, like that doesn't sound like it. Here's another. Here's like another thing that a CTO bought for me for like you just kind of like hit a couple of them and see if there's something where the light bulb goes off. 28:41 Speaker 2 Yeah. So you can, you can like if they surface something that is totally irrelevant to you, you're like, oh, that's new or like, oh, we don't do that. You can then use the case study question to say, OK, that's super interesting. We usually hear this other thing from CT OS. 28:58 Is that actually not relevant for you? They say no, that's not relevant because XYZ and it's actually this other thing and then you can decide what to do about it. 29:06 Speaker 1 From there, yeah. And you know, just one thing from I had an interaction yesterday with the potential customer that a thing that I had to find myself resisting was arguing basically where they, it's like I have to like access this like Zen mode part of my brain that just accepts, even if I sort of disagree with with their general approach or their conclusion, you just have to accept that in their, in their mind, like they're the software, it's totally fine. 29:38 And so like you're just kind of like looking for the theme where wherever they are, as you, as you talk about it, like applying force against the status quo or they're looking for other options, whatever it might be, something where they're they're actively not satisfied. Let's hit real quick the the Hail Mary. 29:54 Is there anything that you would pay someone right now to help you solve or accomplish that might be like the scariest, like most awkward question that you, you know, recommend we put out there. Rob, could you like, why is that even a question that's worth asking? 30:11 And when is that the type of question that you that or maybe if you could give us an example of like how like where that works? 30:19 Speaker 2 Yeah. So there are variants of that question. This is usually something we're in kind of break glass in case of emergency territory where we haven't learned anything yet in the conversation and it's getting to like 1011 minutes and and like it's kind of starting to get awkward. 30:35 And So what you can do here is you can just like ask this is this is like the just in case I, I think of this as like Yolo territory where, where we're entering now, which is, you know, if I don't ask this question, I'll feel bad about it, right? 30:54 And, or, or like I'll, I'll learn nothing on this call. And so you can preface this kind of question with like, I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't ask, which is a great preface to be able to ask literally anything, right? Like can I date your daughter or like whatever it lines up like you, I've always wanted to say that, but but what we're doing here is we're basically just saying, OK, cool. 31:21 Open pull framework, nothing close. Pull framework, nothing. Tell me if there's anything you want to buy right now. Is there anything you're trying to buy right now at all? And you can ask that a variety of different ways. When did you come to this conference to buy that you haven't found? 31:37 That's a great question. There's also like the inverse of it, which is OK. So it sounds like there's really nothing you're looking to solve or buy right now where you need help. And so, but like these, these are like, and, and I've actually seen these questions have led to kind of like massive pivots that have caused start-ups to take off when they feel like they've been pushing you just like you're just going down the wrong path and you're like, OK, cool. 32:02 Is there anything you're looking to pay someone to solve? And I know like, I, I can name like 3 start-ups that have gone zero to 1,000,000 RR where they started. Like they, they asked this question and the person was like, oh, thank you for asking. 32:17 This is a thing. This is the thing. And that thing happened to repeat. 32:22 Speaker 1 Yeah. And it's actually, you know, with your first startup, the customer like gave you the answer to that question which you weren't asking, but they were like, would you, if you would have said, is there anything you would pay me to do? They would have said exactly what you just alerted, like, Oh my goodness, like, yes. 32:40 But instead what they did is they got tired of waiting for somebody to ask that question. And they said, can you build this thing for me? And and then that's when you know your your story of 0 to 4 million error in two years. But hey, Rob, there's two other things I want to hit real quick. 32:56 One is you haven't surfaced anything pull shaped yet. You've gone through, you know, you've gone through that kind of like 4 part or four step thing. It's like, oh, you're not sure what to do. You say that founders can either use inversion or playing dumb. 33:12 Playing dumb is the is a little bit more, you know, obvious. It's like, OK, I think I don't understand what's it's they've surfaced something pull shaped. You don't understand why it's unavoidable. You don't you're you're like, it's like be skeptical rather than resist the urge to be optimistic about they're going to buy. 33:30 It's like have the customer prove to me that they will actually follow through on this, that this is really something that they're looking to transact around. And so playing dumb is the way that you talk about doing that. Like, OK, I don't get it. Like, why is Claude not good enough? Why is playwright? We're just going to bring that one right back in. 33:47 Good enough for whatever, you know, in my case, in the in the media world, it's like, OK, like, why do why do programmatic advertisement campaigns like not work for you? Why does why does meta not meta ads not work for you? Let's you know that one is just like the get them to say in their own words very more explicitly than you probably are comfortable doing, like why they can't continue doing the thing that they're currently doing. 34:13 Let's talk about inversion, though. How do you what is Inversion and how do people successfully use Inversion? 34:19 Speaker 2 Yeah, so, so playing like one of the I I just remember of how to conversation where he's like, yeah, it like I asked him why playwright or why Claude wasn't good enough and they didn't give me a good answer and so I just moved on. 34:36 It's like, no, you need to know. Like if you don't know why it's not good enough, you don't have a pull framework filled out that's a legible to you and you don't know what to do about it. You don't know how to describe your product. You don't know how to position it. So, so these tactics are after you've kind of got something that feels pull shaped, fill in the, it's a way to fill in the details to be like very specific. 34:58 And so playing Dom is one way or just like being curious, like maybe I must be missing something here. But then inversion is like, OK, why is this urgent right now? Is is a kind of like 1 version of a question. The other version of the question is, is this something that actually needs to happen now or is this something that could just wait, right? 35:22 And so we've inverted it from having them give you a positive reason why it's urgent now, from having them kind of like basically try to convince you that actually, no, it is something that is urgent now. 35:34 Speaker 1 Yeah. And the way I did this and a recent one just as another example was like honestly, if it, if it sounds like they're all set, just like call that out. It's like, wow, that sounds like you've you're like totally set. You've got the expertise on on your team. 35:50 I don't really think that we can help in my do I understand that correctly? And sometimes we'll be like, yeah, I think that's kind of the case. In which case you're not trying to push something on to them that they obviously don't need or they might say something that's more surprising. Like actually there's this other thing we haven't talked about, like they're not ready to let you go yet because there is something that's that's kind of like on their mind that they that you might be able to help them with. 36:13 It just hasn't come up yet, but you know, it's it's almost like like a push them away a little bit and see if they come see if they re engage like see if they chase you a little bit like or do something that's like kind of chase shaped and then understand like what's going on going on there. 36:30 Let's let's talk just like maybe I know this is a long one. Sorry about that everybody, but how this changes post PMF is also in the blog. And this is basically you've got a case study, you're growing quickly, you give some examples of different start-ups that are post BMF and the discovery changes, it becomes way more direct. 36:51 It can even become supply focused if you're targeting is is good enough. Like you give the example of one company that's I guess they developed AI agents and they just list what the AI agents can do and see if one of those like the the customer pulls it. 37:08 But you have to have the, I think the risk here is that you, we want to jump to the post PMF flavor of discovery before we actually have PMF, before we have a really strong sense for pull anything that you would add on the on the kind of like how it changes and when it's the right time to move to a post PMF approach to discovery. 37:30 Speaker 2 Yeah, it's basically when you can predict with like almost 100% of certainty that this person in front of me will buy and you know what the cause is, What what are they, what are they saying? What are they doing, what's happening in their world that is going to basically cause them to buy. 37:45 Then you can change your approach because you understand causality now and you can just go straight for it and you can ask some more specific questions or do kind of like different things. You can do a variety of creative things. Most people here are not in that stage. So I just like lay it, lay out a couple of examples so that you like the the important thing to know here is that once you've found pull, like a lot of the things that we talk about are methods that are that are kind of like the principles carry over post product market fit, but the the methods themselves are kind of throw away there there. 38:19 There are things you Jessen once you find product market fit and you design for like aerodynamic fit to pole and to maximize the volume through your case study factory. And so after you find product markets that after you can kind of like really know OK, I know exactly who's going to buy exactly when your approach will the specifics of your approach will change while the underlying we are surfacing pole and testing it is, is the same. 38:46 Speaker 1 Yeah, and, and there I've made the mistake before of mistaking having a strong anecdote or a strong belief in a hypothesis for having product markets that basically, and I've, you know, I've directed my discovery questions at identifying if they align to an anecdote before, you know, you, you put a very high bar there. 39:06 Do you know, with like basically 100% certainty that they'll buy if something's true. And, and I've jumped to something that was more yeah, like a post PMF approach to discovery. So I I too early Rob, you know, maybe just like a real quick recap, because I think that it's like for me, what I take away from this is know basically like how I'm going to walk, how I'm going to get through discovery to try to to try, try to unearth or surface what pull actually is. 39:38 You know, you, you give like if if somebody just like basically goes through your blog and chooses like, OK, here's like the four questions I asked this one doesn't work. I asked this one, it doesn't work. But they're, you know, I have having a sequence that you understand and what you're trying to do. If if pull is not surfacing, how else would you say founders should use this this post or like use or rethink reimagine their approach to discovery to have it be effective at surfacing pool? 40:05 Speaker 2 Yeah, I think the main thing is like 1 actually look for pull, 2 ask about all of pull and there these are methods and different top tracks and different approaches in here that you can do to do that. But if you have those two things in your mind of I'm actually looking for pull and I'm looking for the whole thing first and then filling at it, filling in more detail about it, then you're going to be generally OK. 40:30 And everything in here is like my suggested tactics based on what I have seen work, which is the why do you take the call and then all the fall backs if that doesn't work. So yeah, just like take, take this as a the, the, the strong recommendations are look for pool and look for all of pool at once. 40:49 The kind of, you know, do whatever you want on the how you would actually actually make that happen. Yeah, but but actually look for it. 40:57 Speaker 1 Yeah, awesome. Well, we will leave it there. Any final messages that we we have for folks I. 41:03 Speaker 2 Don't. 41:04 Speaker 1 Think so? No. Awesome. All right, we'll catch everybody next week. See y'all.