Pipeline: Getting to 5-10 calls / week

Well, Rob, welcome back. Here we go. - Doing it, we're doing it, let's go. - We're doing it and we, this is like a woe-nelly kind of a conversation that we're getting in today. We're getting like real deep into Pipeline. Like we're gonna, yeah, we're diving into the deep end. - We are, and the good news is I called you earlier this week and I was like, yo, I never wanna talk about Pipeline again. And here we are, two days later. Yeah, the Pipeline conversation hopefully to end all Pipeline conversations. You closed this week's vlog by saying hopefully you never talked about it again. I have bad news for you, Rob. Like Pipeline's probably not gonna go away, but hopefully this will alleviate some of the constant pressure you get around Pipeline. We'll get into that here in a moment. I wanna start out this conversation though. Just like talking about what we're doing, I think your view on that has evolved and tripped in a little bit, but what are we doing here with your blog, with these conversations? - Yeah, so my goal with this is just to try to understand why and how startups work at the deepest possible level. I'm trying to kind of build a unifying theory framework how why do startups work, therefore what should we do as entrepreneurs? The reason I think this is important is because it does not seem like anybody has done this to the level that would have been useful to me as a founder. There's like a lot of interesting data points in different frameworks out there that are for a variety of different things, for processes, methodologies, and you know, there's so many of them, there's so much noise that I was just trying to get to the fundamental basics of like why does anyone buy anything? What do we build? Why do startups grow fast? And it turns out that as we've been exploring this, as I've been writing about it for years now, some kind of interesting foundational things have popped up like the repeatable case study, the case study factory, demand versus supply. All of these, I think are kind of foundational components. And what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to connect them and fill out this, I don't know, canvas that we're working on here of, how do all the pieces fit together and how should I be thinking about this? I just don't think, at least I haven't seen, theory get pushed forward in a very co-curant way. And so that's what I'm trying to do. What we're doing is, I don't know, we're hanging out once a week and that's awesome. And so we're talking and we'll see, you know, it's cool to get feedback on it. What we're trying to do in all of this, is we're trying to advance the kind of framework and theory that's underneath this and poke at it from a bunch of different directions. - Yeah, yeah. You combine kind of like a couple unique characteristics from my point of view, one of them is you're a founder, like you're actually like building stuff. Second, you are a voracious consumer of, but basically like the anthology of business literature, like I think you've made it through the majority of it. And you're also somebody who like just doesn't accept things at face value. While I was still stuck in the land of Agile is a great approach to building products here, you were very, you were like years ahead of me being like, yeah, actually, no, that stuff doesn't work, I've tried it. And you were observing, having been like your friend through parts of your founder, like I, we've known each other since you've launched your first business, seeing your, it's kind of like it was born of your frustration with there's all this, like these popular theories out there that they didn't work for you and that you didn't think we're working for others as well, but there wasn't a better alternative out there. - Yeah, it's, it's, yeah, I didn't set out to do this. I just set up to build a startup. And in the process of doing that, like we kind of suffered for two years in, in hell, just not figuring anything out. And then we went zero to four million ARR in two years, which was cool, but I didn't understand why it worked when it worked and why it didn't when it didn't, which is, you know, you pay 120 grand for an MBA and you know, you gotta, you read everything there is to read on startups and you kind of, you're like, I should, like, this should fit something that's in my brain and it just didn't. And so, right, like, so first, I just thought I was crazy and I went through this kind of existential crisis period. And then I talked to other founders who had also kind of like done that and they're like, yeah, it doesn't operate. Like, I thought I was crazy too. And so, so what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to take, but my sense is that most of what's been created out there has started with theory, has started from theory of like, what makes sense and then tries to apply that to startups. Or it looks at startups after they are successful and says, cool, why do we think they were successful because they're doing the things they do now? And what I'm trying to do is, I hit my head against all the walls of pre-product market fit. How does this work and repeat that as many times as possible to figure out what actually works in practice and combine that with like frameworks and kind of theory underneath it so that it is a full stack but practice to theory approach instead of ideas here. Yeah, and that's being refined as your building, you're like your next business or your current business. Who would you say that this podcast is for? - Yeah, so let me say who it's not for. There is a certain kind of founder out there who does not think very hard other than like, I just need to get revenue. So I'm gonna do whatever it takes to get revenue and I'll figure out everything after. Right, they're the people who do things and then make sets of them. That kind of person has already tuned out. Right, like none of what I've said so far is interesting, doesn't matter at all, that's fun. There's a different kind of founder, which unfortunately is you and me and a lot of people who, you know, we come from corporate, come from consult, come from fancy schools, right? Where our entire lives, there has been a, I need to understand something before I do it. And startups are the ultimate example of where that runs you straight into a brick wall, unless you kind of like have the right mind around it. And so that's who I'm writing for. And mostly I'm just writing for myself to try to figure this out. It turns out a lot of other people, I would say most people are not as like mentally deficient in this way as I am. But to some extent, I find a lot of people are like directionally like that. - And knowing you with that first part about the first type of founder, that's actually, you say that with a lot of respect. Like the person that's just like, yeah, Seaball, Hitball kind of, you know, find revenue build around that. Like that is the right, the most useful instinct for a founder to have probably. - If I could, if I could buy some sort of surgery to just do that to myself, I would love, like if it's all about, I mean, I don't know what it is, but I would, I would sign up for that in a heartbeat. It is so awful to be in this brain. I would say like, it's just, I don't wanna have to think about this. I just can't not do it. - It's really funny. And then, you know, maybe one other thing to hit real fast is that there are implications for, with the way, like this is, this is messy, like some of it's messy. We might talk today about something and then you're thinking of all then and six podcasts down the line and we'll revisit it. Like you are developing this theory live. And that's what people that are, or the person who is listening, has to sign up for. And also, we want them to participate in this. Like the real experiences of founders who are selling, who are applying these approaches and learnings. When you're running into stuff that's not working, like tell us, like that is super helpful. Like there's no pride of ownership. We're not trying to defend a theory. We're trying to understand it at this stage. - Yeah, and if things don't make sense either. So I don't quite know how this applies to this situation. - Great, cool. Like let's, you know, let us know. We'll try to, I'll think about it for a while and then maybe I'll write about it for, or talk about it at some point. - Sweet, okay. And with that, Leiden, let's jump into the conversation today. We're talking about your newsletter, Pipeline MegaPost. Also, we're starting to publish these on like Thursday, Fridays, the podcast. And then on Saturdays is when your newsletter is coming out. And so if you're listening to this on Friday, the newsletter might not actually be out but if you wait till Saturday, it'll hit your inbox. I'm gonna start with one of the things that you wrote as to help ground this. Founders often come to me in product market fit existential crisis mode. And it turns out that they speak to maybe one to two potential customers per week. Which means their crisis is pipeline, not PMF. Give us the concept, the context on what is like going on, what you're seeing from founders. - Yeah, so what often happens is there's this kind of like rising existential crisis in Founders' brains when we're not doing that, when things aren't working and time is passing. And so, In that week, we've kind of been force fed this idea of, okay, if it's not working pivot, right? But it matters what specifically is not working. If you're talking to 10 customers a week, potential customers a week, and they're all like, yeah, this is the dumbest shit I've ever heard. Then it's like, okay, cool. Maybe there's a pivot opportunity. Maybe there's a chance to kind of unfold or change something about your product market fit equation. If you're not talking to anybody per week, you haven't earned the right to pivot yet. You're not having enough conversations to know. What most people think this stage is, well, I'm sending outbound with our value prop in there and nobody's biting. It's like, okay, cool. That doesn't work generally. And so, like, how, if you're pre product market fit, how would you possibly know what the right combination of words to send in an email or an outbound message about a value prop that again, you just haven't figured out yet. It would be weird if that worked. So obviously it's not going to work. You haven't earned the product market fit problem yet. You are just in the like, I need to talk to more people stage of things. And in the process of talking to more people, you might earn a product market fit existential crisis. Fun. We all go through it. But you're just not there yet. Yeah. Yeah. And you're teasing at it. Like we're going to we're going to hit that distinction really harder you do and the course of the blog about what happens pre product market fit, what happens post market fit. We've also we've talked about the toll booth. You've hit a couple of the terms that my favorite terms concepts that you talk about one is it would be weird. Like I'm sure we're going to talk about that. It would be weird if and how to apply that to pipeline. And then we'll hit toll booth. The other one that we're going to talk about is founder magic. And really you're the way that you divide this blog is like, okay, pre product market fit. Founder magic approach will get into that post market post product market fit. We're going to get into the toll booth concept as as like the most the highest leverage approach to generating pipeline when you really have pull. When you know the value proposition and how to communicate with customers. But why don't we let's talk about that distinction. Like why does it change pre product market fit and post product market fit? Do you want to try to say product market fit five times fast first? I have a problem with the non-seating is like in my podcast in career, I've found that I just have to repeat where like it's like really, really tough. So I mumble is when you listen to yourself the painful experience of listening to yourself. Anyways, pre and post product about whatever PMF got them. Yeah. Okay. So so let's talk about what is product market fit? Product market fit is the demonstrated capability to repeat a customer case study. That's what it is. So you have a customer who comes to you where they're trying to accomplish something they have demand. You offer supply that fits their demand. They buy they pull it out of your hands and they renew upgrade right works pre sale and post sale. You have that as the atomic unit of your business. You repeat that and it looks pretty similar every time you repeat that. That is kind of when you have product market fit and that's happening faster and faster. When that works, you have you know why people are buying and what they are buying. They sound like super simple, but until then you have you don't know. You have probably a bunch of different theories. It's kind of abstract and fluffy and you're just not quite sure. So after you have product market fit, you you have conviction, you have you data that demonstrates these people bought for this reason. They bought this thing. Therefore, I know enough now to know kind of what to do. To get them to talk to us around their demand, like based on their demand. Cool. Before then we don't know that. So again, anything we do is kind of like at that stage, it's spear fishing. It's like, do we? I don't know. Maybe they have this value proper work. Maybe this pain point will work and it never does. Yeah. And it's spear fishing like not in clear Caribbean waters. It's like spear fishing in the dirty Mississippi or something like that where you're you're really like poking around. You write one thing that resonated in the thing you or your block this week is like pre pull circularity and how it ends up like just preventing process. And that's, you know, the elements are your hypothesis is wrong because you haven't sold. You need conversations in order to fix your hypothesis, but you can't get conversations because your hypothesis is wrong. And so it's like the you're just stuck. Find yourself stuck, not able to talk to anybody, not able to improve. And that's like the, I don't know, what, how do you see? How do you see founders when they're in that moment? Like what are they? What are they going through? What they're usually doing in this moment is they're blasting out a bunch of emails, getting a 0.2% response rate. Then reading another blog post that says, Oh, actually, your email should be a high coup. Of course. And then they do that. And you just kind of repeat that with increasingly stupid things. By the way, I've done all of this. Like I'm the most guilty. And then you read something that's like outbound is dead. It's all about community now. And you spend a year building a community that doesn't do anything. Right. And so it's just a sequence of bad things is is typically what happens. And it's because you're trying to basically solve an impossible equation. You don't know what demand is. And actually, like a high coup might be so weird. That's that's approaching the samurai sword level of weirdness that might actually get you a response in that in that moment to break out of this like circular death trap. You talk about founder magic. Tell us talk a little bit about like what is founder magic and when do you when you use it? Yeah. Counter magic is basically saying cool. I have no idea the right words to use around pain, problems, value props, demand, anything like or even how to describe my product. So I'm not going to try what I'm going to do is I'm going to schedule meetings with people. Like by whatever means necessary, which is usually just like saying, I'm cool. Cool. Let's chat. Right. It's it's being so interesting or offering something that is so interesting that people would be weird, not to meet with you. That's your messaging early on. Eventually it can change to be more kind of value prop demand driven, but you don't know how to do it. So it's almost it's usually almost entirely like product agnostic in in this kind of messaging or like you're definitely not pitching the product. You might mention the product because it sounds cool, but the whole point of the message is to sound cool and interesting such that they would be weird not to talk with you. Yeah. And you you're about unfair advantage. When when thinking about how do you craft your own like your founder magic, if it's outbound, if it's on LinkedIn or if it's on email or whatever the outreach is that you're doing, you talk about find your magic or your unfair advantage. I find those to be really quite interesting because they everybody has something like that. If they spend enough time thinking about it, what how do you work with founders or like what do you how do you talk about like identifying their unfair advantage? Okay, let's do let's do yours for this because this because I think yours will be interesting because it's probably changed over time and and walking through how it's changed over time will help people see like what's going on here and how it like how the thing that makes them weird not to talk to you, you can get better and better ones as you kind of like build a business. And I think actually like as I think about this even more, the like message where they would be weird or the approach where they would be weird not to talk to you is the thing that you're doing the entire time. Just the content changes as you become cool or as your business becomes cooler right eventually you wind up saying, Hey, I'm Mark Benioff. You want a chat right and that's the message. And like, yeah, of course I want to chat with Mark Benioff right Sam. Of course, right. And so you get there eventually, but what it is early on is so with you media company doing right. You're initial messaging. I assume was and you told it. Yeah, okay. The messaging after I destroyed your initial messaging was was something on the lines of, Hey, I'm an HBS grad. We've built an we're building an interesting media company that's relevant to you. Would you be open to chat? Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's essentially and maybe for folks context, I have a on the side unrelated to refray. We produce children's podcasts in England, but bilingual podcast English and Spanish is called Cobra Media. And so a lot of my outbound early on. was to, I was reaching out to businesses to understand what does the sponsorship look like or who was interested in participating. I was reaching out to museums, other organizations that might be interested in our audience. My first outbound I would say was squarely in the does not work. Did you know that there's lack of equity in the children's access? Here's a very long description of what the societal problem is that we're trying to solve, which nobody reads. Literally just like nobody reads the system. Is this like what the hell is this? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then yeah, that changes to something. Actually, the thing that ended up, yeah, it became something closer to what you're saying, which is for me, it was, hey, we've been producing podcasts for like six years with a team between the United States and Colombia. We're doing this children's thing. I'd love to get your view on that. Some version of that based on who we were, who I was reaching out to. And that started to generate the conversations. Like, okay, like they've got some experience in children's media, interesting that they're across, you know, a couple different cultures or societies. And that was typically enough like people would give me 30 minutes of their time. Yeah. Okay. Do you have further to go with that or how it's evolved? And then yeah, the way that it evolved, I actually, I would say like I took steps back as we started to develop an audience. I would talk more about our audience. That was that did not work. Actually, like, you know, it was like the numbers didn't matter. And I would actually, I would use too many words in my outbound outreach, trying to show that we were like legit like that. It was like that. I was trying to be like, Hey, we are, I'm sure this came from like an insecurity on my part, but it's like you should pay attention to us because we're doing this thing that's both good and that's, you know, that's sizeable. And it just, I got very low response rates. You would typically ghost me, like it just didn't didn't typically work. What ended up working was like, Hey, we produce, we, what I am actually the first thing that worked was when we started, I would say, Hey, we've produced with some of your pure organizations like X. Could we, could we chat and see if this is a fit for you? And the first one, they end up not producing with us, but it was enough to get us on board with, with a couple others. And then now what that's evolved to is like, Hey, we produce programs for children three to 10 that they listen with their parents. If that's interesting, could we get on the phone? And that I get very, like very, very good responses to. Yeah. So let's like, let's trace the kind of like evolution there because at the end, you're at something that I would say is like, like pretty much a value prop pitch, but you've figured out what that is now to get people on call. And those words while they seem pretty obvious now were totally unavailable to you earlier on, because you just hadn't had the volume of conversations with people to know that specific pieces that work, right? And that's the point is, is when doing founder magic, you were initially just pitching like, Hey, we're interesting, we're, we're interesting, right? And, and I probably, if I had kind of had a hammer for your message even more, I would have made it, I would try to make it even more interesting and weird in the message, which is like, Hey, I just left my fancy job to build this children's media company because blank would like, would love to get your thoughts on it, right? Yeah. That is the structure of that message is just interesting to someone who's like, Oh, this person is interest. Let me talk to them. It's just a fascinating thing I haven't heard of before, right? And then like, Hey, I'm HBS X consultant that's now doing this crazy thing. Thought you might be able to provide some input, right? Boom, those people are all getting on a call with you, but you said something else that was sufficiently interesting. Hey, we're doing this kind of weird thing between us and Columbia. People are like, I haven't heard that before. Why not get on a call? This sounds interesting. I might as well, right? And so what you're pitching there is no product, no nothing. You're pitching just we are interesting. Yeah. So and then like what I would do kind of like moving forward as you get more and more legit. Okay, your audience numbers were never interesting to people, but maybe some of the partners were interested in people. So you go from being like this interesting person to meet with to kind of like this interesting organization to meet with. But then the thing that makes people weird not to talk with you, like it evolves because you now have a partnership with like PBS or something, right? That then people see that. Oh my, like, this is amazing, right? And then it becomes something else, right? And so what you see is like, I can just imagine in my mind a graph that I'm not going to make, but it's just like like, you know, like what percent of people are weird not to meet with you with your message, right? It should go up over time, right? Where early on it's just like literally I'm a weird, I'm like an interesting person. Yeah, some percentage of people will see that and be like, sure, why not? That's interesting. But over time, you become even more legit. And so that should like go up and the formula should change. Yeah, yeah, totally. A lot of that resonate. It was like NASA is actually the one that as soon as we we had featured NASA, it was like, oh, okay, like that, like there was such a high hurdle that like the backst around that one is that we actually featured somebody who was a cross country teammate of mine when like that. They're like, there's still like the founder magic part of that. Yeah. But as soon as NASA had produced with us other organizations with just like, it was like, okay, like they must, you know, they must have something going on if they're getting that kind of attention. And then now I think our next round we're producing with PBS right now. And so if our next round will probably involve like, hey, we've produced with PBS. Could we jump on the phone to see if we can work together? It's like, yeah, it gets way easier. I like, I wish I would have known what you said early on though about like, hey, just like what's interesting about you as a human being, not what's interesting about your organization? Because early on, there's nothing interesting about like it's very hard to make an uninteresting organization that has very little track record into something that's interesting enough for somebody to give you their time. Yeah. I have a shitty landing page I made on Loveable. You want to talk? Right? Like no, no. Yeah. You have to find something different. Yeah. Um, uh, let's, um, how about this? I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, you give a bad example that I think is a good one to spend a moment on because I think some of our, our listener might, um, identify with it. Um, and I want you to, I want you to tear this one apart like, it's a common template. Why doesn't it work? It's high brackets name. Um, you have an impressive background. I am the founder of Acme Co, working on the future of agentic agentic agentic workflows. We are working with leaders in the space who have significant pain points around their manual processes and have been able to prove significant ROI. Would you be willing to give your feedback? Why doesn't that work? How do that feel reading that out loud other than mispronouncing agentic reagent? Yeah, it's just, it's painful. Like I feel kind of like a robot. Yeah. And so like that's, that's the, the sets. If you read your out loud and you're like, wow, I would never say that to another human. You know, it's like, it's like, okay, there's something wrong here. Let's break it down. Okay. High name. You have an impressive background. So this stupidest thing to start with. And I see this in a lot of messages. Like there's nothing interesting in there. You're going to lose most people there because they're like, all right, this is a sales message. The only people you're not going to lose are probably people you don't want to meet with at all. Like people who aren't getting any messages. So that one is, it's what I call burying the lead. It's like, I have something interesting about me, but you're going to have to dig and you're going to have to read through four paragraphs to get there. And no one's going to do it. People are busy. So okay, cut that out. Then next sentence, I'm the founder of AcmeCo, working on the future of agentic workflows. Cool. I'm the founder of blank is like, I don't know, maybe interesting, maybe not, probably not the most interesting thing about you. So I would lead with that. The future of agentic workflows may or may not be interesting, depending on who you're talking to. If you're reaching out to, I don't know, owner of an HVAC distributor. Yeah. Be like, I don't know. Cool. I don't understand these words. This is not a message for me. If you're talking to people who are literally doing agentic stuff that might be interesting, but you might want to make it a little bit more specific and a little bit more interesting. Hey, I'm working on, I don't know, non-briddle agentic workflows in the A to A communication, right? Or whatever it winds up to. Like something like that. Okay. Cool. That's hence too. So again, lead with the most interesting thing. And like, know your audience. We're working with leaders in the space who have significant pain points around their manual processes and have been able to prove significant ROI. Just shoot me now, right? Like, don't. Don't do that. What that is, is that's just fluff words. It doesn't say literally anything. And so this is where you kind of, where it's like clear, the person, if they weren't before, they're like, I think this person's trying to sell me something. At this point, and so this is what I call the uncanny valley, where right on one hand, you have a sales message on the other hand, you have founder magic message. And you're in the middle of it here, where it kind of seems, it seems salesy, but it's not really salesy. And I'm just going to look at it and be like, what the heck is this? And not respond. Then finally, would you be willing to give your feedback? Again, there is nothing in this message that is interesting to them. It's just, you know, you're just kind of stating random things and what you want out of them. Instead, you want to flip it and make it cool for them to say yes to you. Yeah, I really like that. Like what's the, I was very guilty of bearing the lead. And I think 97% of the examples that I've seen come through our Slack community also bury the lead. Like that is, they never make it to the interesting part of your message because you waste time upfront and they automatically filter you. And just think about all of, if for the listener, think about the things that are in your LinkedIn inbox and the way that you read them and you roll your eyes and you archive it immediately or delete it or you market as red and you move on with your life. It's like, how do you get away from that? So they at least read like the two sentences. One other thing that jumped out to me while going through this one was somebody, they write these messages and they might even spend hours crafting it and thinking about, okay, do I call it a gentick workflows? Is it a, is it a manual process? Like what's the, but they miss like the broader problem with it, which is it's not interesting to a human being. And like that's the thing that you need to target before, before in that pre-particle market, pre-apartment, whatever stage. Yeah, and it's, it's interesting to the person you're sending the message to, not interesting to your founder friends, interesting. So if you're selling to that HVAC distributor, it's going to be a very different message than if you're selling two startups, or if you're selling two heads of HR or whatever, right? And so it's design the message and even your kind of persona as a person, right? Like if I'm sending a message to a YC founder versus sending a message to the CHRO at Fortune 500, the way I describe myself is going to be entirely different, both will be true, but I'll just be picking different things that are interesting to them. Yeah, yeah, totally. Let's, let's walk through one or two other things real before we get into like post-PMF with the toll booth. One is, let's take the LinkedIn example. What frequent they will happen is they will read your message, or just say you crafted a message well, they will then visit your LinkedIn. This is how I think about it. Tell me if I'm wrong about this. And then they'll decide, or they'll visit your website or something like that. How should people think about crafting the things around the message so that it supports and it doesn't hinder people responding to? Yeah, that's a good question. You should think about it exactly as you just described it. Right. Everything supports the message. The message is the first thing they're going to experience, or maybe they'll see your LinkedIn connection request or your email or whatever. And that's the tip of the spear. Everything has to support that. So if you're sending a message to, again, we'll just use our HFAC distributor, right? You're sending your message to them. The message works, then they click on your profile or go to your website, and they see a bunch of VC nonsense on there. They're going to be like, I don't know this person doesn't get it. Like they're not who I, who I was expecting to see. So you want to craft your profile and your website such that the right person, seeing your message, seeing your profile, seeing your website, would be weird not to say, yeah, this is kind of like all the chats out. Why not? Yeah, yeah, it for us. Interestingly, I do a lot of Instagram is like a big one for us because I can send very short messages. They visit our profile and immediately understand what our product is. And so for, you know, it can be LinkedIn. Like that's a really common one. I do for other types of people, I'll use LinkedIn for our production. Like our feature partners, I'll use Instagram because that's actually the best, the best outreach. But how do you think about, I would say like LinkedIn and email are kind of probably the two most common ones that folks are weighing. How do you think about those two? Rob, just where are people? LinkedIn email X sometimes depending on who it is. And so you choose whichever one of that. Like if I'm to rank them, right, LinkedIn is number one for me for B2B because they can see your profile. And so you seem legit. Whereas via email, anybody can send an email. Right. And so it's kind of hard to see behind the email. And so, and most people get a ton of emails. Often they're marked as spam and so of like, it's just harder via email. The upside of email is that when you figure it out, you can do a huge amount of volume, whereas on LinkedIn or X, you can't. And then X is X, right? Like if you're selling to a certain kind of person on X, it's relatively untapped there. But I've seen some people use, use things that help there. Yeah. And one other thing you've run into with a couple of founders that I've seen over the months and years is not everybody's on LinkedIn. Like there's some roles where they're, some roles where they're not. And so that might make it so that that's not the right platform you need to get creative about. Cold calling is another one that we haven't, you know, I didn't mention it, but that can also be a really effective one. Yeah, yeah. Cold calling is great. Like if you're good at cold calling, you know, a lot of people who've gone zero to a million, just via cold calling, right? And it's just, you know, often somebody will pick up the phone. You know, one of my friends companies went 500 K to 50 million ARR in like four years by cold calling because they were cold calling lawyers and lawyers always pick up the phone. Right. So yeah, super interesting. Let's see. Let's talk about. There's actually one other thing. I don't wait. We don't have time to get into it. You write about goblin mode. Everybody should read your blog and visit the link for goblin mode, which you call the human equivalent. the human equivalent of Zoomies, which is awesome. Which is good if you're having a hard time and pre-prem. PMF, it's just like do whatever it takes, fly somewhere, go do that, like mate, just do the non-sensical thing with a ton of enthusiasm and passion. Let's talk about. Let's jump into the toll booth. We did another post, I don't know, two months ago or something like that, specifically about the toll booth. But let's start with what is a toll booth, and when should you be thinking about a toll booth? Yeah, so a toll booth, I'll just like say, from memory of what I read about the first time, right, imagine that there is like a weird genie out there. And this genie says, "You, I'll give you one thing, because you're probably not expecting." I'll let you place a toll booth on any road in the world that people will have to pay you to drive through. So you're not going to, in that moment, you're not going to be like, "Huh, well, I think Siberia would be a great place for this." Like, obviously not. You're going to put it somewhere where there's basically a choke point for all the traffic, or for a ton of traffic to come through, so you can make the most money, obviously. Okay, cool. Well, we're going to take that concept, this toll booth concept and say, "Okay, let's kind of make it a little bit weirder, but when people have demand, right, they have a project that is unavoidable on their to-do list, and their existing option aren't good enough, right? They're in a spot where they have demand and they have bad options. And that's kind of like a situation that they are in. We can put a toll booth in a situation where we own that situation, where whenever you, whenever X is happening in your life, it would be weird if you didn't run into our toll booth. It would be weird if you didn't reach out to us. Come to our website, read our blog, whatever it winds up being. And so this toll booth is basically saying, "Okay, once I know what demand is the situation, who has it, I'm going to find a way to make it weird for that person in that situation not to find out about us." Yeah, and so you talk about two of them here. One is the situation in which the project is unavoidable. I'm actually going to pop up for our listener. If you're on YouTube or if you're on Spotify, you should be able to see this. If you're on Apple Podcast, you're just listening with headphones, walking around, you probably won't. But just visit the newsletter and you can check it out. Basically, what you have is on the left hand side, you have the pull diagram, which is they have a project, the project's unavoidable. They're looking for a list of options, or they've been considering a list of options, and then they're running into limitations for some reasons. I hadn't made this connection. I found it really insightful. The toll booth can target the top half of that, which is what you just described, which is there's a situation in which their project is unavoidable and you give some examples into that or it can target the second half of that in which their options are Unworkable. Can you can you talk about the difference Rob between like what why think about or why is this the right way to think about the types of toll boost? I don't know if this is the right way, but it's it's one way we might come back to this on a couple weeks and say actually I just know I think this is generally right because like Because when somebody has pull right this is when somebody would be weird not to buy your product and so we can either Target the situation that they're in so imagine I don't like we've kind of unintentionally done this with the term the pain cave Right, it seems like that term is its own form of a toll booth that is in a situation Right, and and it's when you're in this situation when if you're paying cave you see you see that you're like oh my gosh Finally someone gets it right and and that is when you would be weird not to hear about about me About us and so that is like owning the situation Versus you can own the like option that somebody has looked into and doesn't fit or has tried and doesn't fit right like I'm trying to think of another example here, but you know what I've seen from a lot of startups is you hire your first sales rep and it doesn't work out because you don't have product market fit right Another version of a toll booth would be you know You see that somebody goes from one sales rep to zero sales reps and you own that moment right and and Obviously, I don't want to do that, but but like that's an example of okay, you exist your options are unworkable Yeah, let's get into that option so I do have in a little bit farther you have this really interesting Example from Chris Cunningham. I'm gonna I'm gonna read this one out real quick and then want you to talk about it as a toll booth We couldn't afford ads early at early on it click up his Chris's startup So we built a tool that notified us when competitors got bad reviews every one star review on and then he listed them out equals Instant notification with the reviewers name and company. I'd find them on LinkedIn within minutes. Hey, I get why you hate company We hated it too. That's why we built click up And he says cost of build zero leads generated our first hundred customers Wasn't about you know no budget involved just gets crappy Well, how analyze this from your perspective rob on this toll booth? Yeah, so this is directly attacking the moment when Somebody realizes their existing options are not good enough or unworkable right? They are they are going in and leaving a one star review of a competitor At this moment if click up shows up and says hey They suck that's why we built click up as the alternative to that that's better for XYZ reasons right Then that person would be weird not to meet with us and we're not to bias by our product at that point right like they've just written a one star review Well, they're clearly unsatisfied and so by doing this they created a insanely efficient and effective Approach to pipeline that really make it like it makes the most sense when you understand it using the pull framework because these are our best fit customers who have just struggled with Direct competitors so clearly they're they're in that moment when they're trying to change but they're just not getting there with their existing options They would be weird not to meet with us. We're not to buy with buyer product You're they're kind of like outbound should have I don't know 50 75% response rates may be higher conversion to meeting and their meetings should have I don't know 50 75% plus Conversion to customer highly effective highly efficient very few moving parts And this is why I think toll boots are so valuable because usually you're just kind of like spamming out into the world Building a massively list cold calling everyone sending a bunch about bound and seeing what comes through this says You know what no, let's we know who would be weird not to buy this What's the thing? What's the like most elegant way we can approach? Getting in front of them at the moment when they would be weird not to talk to us and We're not to buy from us. Like how do we design for that? And I also love how just how direct and short like that that is such an easy Thing to respond to I get why you hate X or that like why we hated it too. That's why we built this Boom like it's just like it's it's just obvious It didn't spend a whole lot of time like hey and click off We have a product that does like bubble ball like really going deep into something that's like kind of boring It just like hits it hits it like on the head. Yeah, let's let's talk through the like levels of weird talk to here, right? At this point this person would be weird Not to buy our product We send them a message that they would be weird not to respond to at that moment, right? Like those are the layers here and when you do both of those you wind up with something that is massively effective and efficient and Like they say it got it to their first million AR. I'm sure they probably still do this at whatever they're at 100 million plus AR Let's take this down. I want before we wrap here Rob. I want to you know You draw a very clear distinction between founder magic early on and And the the toll booth later on and you say that frequently founders get those confused They're trying to do a tool which I think mostly means they're trying to do a toll booth too early Yeah, it's like they're pulling it forward Why why do we do that or when how should a founder? How does a founder know when it's like? Okay, I should move from founder magic into you know finding the toll booth. Yeah, I think I think it's like a pretty simple equation here Which is do you have five to ten customers who are basically the exact same case study and do you understand the mechanics of the case study? Underneath it like until then toll booth is not the right approach for you You just don't know enough to do it right you should keep going with founder magic But as you continue with founder magic as we've talked about I actually think toll booth is just a An unfolding of sound for magic if we're gonna like use that term Because remember you start out with a message you start out with a message that's like Here's why I am interesting to meet with right eventually you evolve that to say hey Mark Cuban just invested in us here's why we're interested I don't know if that's cool anymore, but like here's why we're here's why we're interesting. Okay cool, right in that that message evolves It over time it evolves and targeting evolves such that like you take an approach That again is still weird for them not to meet with you But you just have so much more information about what demand is that you can do something that is like Like a million times smarter and more effective at the toll booth state, but that only comes Later on like once you have demonstrated this kind of repeatable case study Five to ten times so you can compare and contrast the differences and then you're like you have a very strong conviction You know like what the mechanics of it are Yeah, very very very interesting We're gonna wrap here Rob practical things that founders should do that you would recommend yes Stop writing to me about pipeline now Listen to this podcast over no yeah first time you have a question rather than writing your rob listen to this podcast One look at how many meetings you have this week Do you need to think about this if you have five to ten meetings this week and you're gonna have five to ten meetings next week and your pre-product market fit Disregard you will find your bottleneck is downstream Second if you don't have five to ten meetings this week ask yourself a couple questions question one am I trying? It's not try question two What is my messaging right am I sending founder magic messaging or am I sending messaging that's kind of salesy kind of in that uncanny valley Usually it's the messaging's problem Fix that get to five to ten meetings per week now if you're at five to ten meetings per week and You're finding some combust customers are converting others aren't that doesn't mean you need to change from founder magic to toll booth It means you probably need to change something about your founder magic approach Perhaps targeted you just need to target people better who who are more likely to have to met and then once you're starting When's it kind of starts working repeatedly you have five ten case studies that are kind of like You're not even like written case studies. I'm thinking like five to ten successful customers who look pretty much the same came for the same reasons got the same thing or happy Then it's like okay, let's understand the mechanics of demand and figure out what our tool booth is Tested out and like go after it Love it Rob any parting thoughts before we drop. Yeah, I think that's it. I'd love to see some comments on this one if our list is made it this far. So that one thing we want to start doing more of is you know responding direct to the questions that we get in YouTube Spotify or or directly on your newsletter. If there's something that comes to mind, drop it in there. If there's a hole you want to poke or something to clarify, please do. Otherwise-- One last thing. One last thing. We got to comment, "Love your discussions, guys. You're helping us a lot. You seem to be good people too." Totally wrong at that last point, but we'll take it. Oh yeah. Yeah, like horrible human beings, but we're very happy that that is helpful for our for our listener. All right, we'll catch everyone next week. See you.