Translating customer language 101

Hey, Rob, welcome back. Good to see you, man. Yeah, good to be back. Yeah. And I'm speaking with a world champion weightlifter. I hear that's what, that's what rumors on the startup street are. Yeah. I know. I know I hit my first 300 pound squat over the weekend, which to a person who doesn't lift weights, it's like, wow, 300 pounds. Sounds like a lot of weight. And then to anybody who lifts weights, they're like, wow, I can't believe you've never done that before. All right. So we'll, uh, when we advertise this, we'll try to get exclusively the part of your audience that is not into weightlifting to listen to this one. We'll all like not our heads and be like, wow, that's, that's probably impressive. I don't know. I don't think I could do that. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. We need, yeah, I need to be around the people who have never looked at, well, we, I met a friend out in Utah and he told me, yeah, I was like, how we have been lifting. I've been like getting a lot, I feel like a lot getting a lot stronger. And I was like, by the way, like you lift weights too. He's like, yeah, squat for 50 or I've squatted for 50 before. And I was like, okay, cool. I'm going to just never talk again. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I need, I need to be around people that make me feel better about myself constantly and are very impressed by my, uh, my neuro accomplishments. That exactly. Well, that's why you hang out with me. Well, today we're jumping into customer language 101 is the name of the sub stack. We'll link to it in the, in the show notes is a translation guide. Um, we're diving deep into demand hairballs into basically, you know, we've talked a lot about like what, or last week we talked about what's the sales script? How do you go through a structure or sale early in the call? You are almost certainly on many calls. You're going to run into a demand hairball, like which is basically, why did you take this call or what's, you know, it comes after an open ended question about what's, what's the project they're working on? Um, and then they, you know, they vomit out something and it's your job then on to like live interpret. And this, um, this week's, uh, post is helping us understand how to do that. But why don't rob, is there other contacts on why this is on your mind and, uh, who this one is best suited for? Yeah, this, and this is for basically anytime a customer talks, you have to interpret what they're saying. And it seems like a thing that you should be able to do fairly easily because you've been talking to people for like your entire life. And you've been interpreting what other people have said your entire life. And so what tends to happen is we think we understand what they're saying. And we don't. And so I basically had to create this new, I had previously called whenever a customer talks, you know, they often like do this kind of like long monologue. I had called that a demand hairball, which is funny because it is like a, they're just kind of like hacking up a hairball. I was like, Oh, that's, that's gross. Um, but the word demand in there implies that they're just talking in demand language. As if they're, they're literally just on the demand side, which is never the case. That is never the case. And so I don't like the term demand, hairball, I don't, I'm gonna stop using that. It's just a hairball. And it's customer language. And so, um, this post is hopefully going to be your translation guide to or the start of your translation guide to how to interpret the things that customers are saying. And of the things they are saying, what do they mean? And what should you trust? And what should you not trust? Yeah. Okay, well, uh, rest in peace demand hairball, you've evolved into your your second, your second version, which is just the customer hairball or the hairball or something like that. Um, let me, I'm gonna, I'm gonna read some of the day kick us off. I think that was a really good intro right there. But, um, this is what you wrote in the in the blog, customers do not speak demand language. They speak customer language, customer language spans demand, supply, and random nonsense. The scary part about customer language is that it sounds like our language. Imagine a foreign language that uses all the same words and grammar that we use. But the meanings of the words of the words and sentences are wildly different. Sometimes that's customer language. Um, let's maybe rob like when you tell us a little bit about this translation that you're talking about or like, why is this? Why is it not as simple and straightforward as listen to customer understand their demand? Like what's what's complicated about it? Yeah, the so I really, really like the the idea of two totally different languages that use all of the same words and sentences. Because then what's gonna happen is you're speaking those languages to each other. But in like, you're both forming some picture in your head of what is happening in the conversation. And the pictures in your heads are totally different. And so I think the challenge is that customers will talk about things that they're trying to give you context. They're trying to tell they're trying to communicate things and they don't have very precise ways to communicate what they're trying to communicate. And so and sometimes they don't feel comfortable communicating what they're trying to communicate. And so they speak in a way that is kind of hard to decipher. It is it is seems to outwardly make sense. And each sentence is logical. The whole thing seems kind of logical when you look at it. But when you were trying to interpret it and like, okay, what do they actually want? What would they pay me for what what are they saying here? There are a million ways to look at it based on what they literally say that could lead you to quite often lead us to try to sell them the totally wrong thing that makes them feel like we weren't listening at all. Yeah. Or there are and like that can lead you to build the wrong thing. And so it's just we we we kind of like see what they are saying and interpret it our own way. And that is usually in my experience wrong because it misses the nuances of customer language where you know, as an example, if they're talking about like I want a CRM, right? What I'm looking for is a CRM or an alternative to Salesforce. That is like that I don't trust that. Yeah. So like we can we can get into it. But like certain things they say are not the are not actually what they mean. They're just using the closest words to them to explain something. And if you take what they say at face value, you're going to be wrong. That's it's making me reflect a little bit about like relationships. And it's like you you go through this like period of okay, when when she or he says this thing, this is the way I interpret that. And you're like the first way that you interpret you react to it is is wrong. It's just like it's always wrong. And there's confusion in chaos. And that's it. It's a different dynamic. Obviously one, because we're in a relationship with them and two because it's repeated. And so you can refine over time. And this is an art that you have to hone. How do I interpret live? Get it right? The first time that I interact and maybe the last time that you interact with like with a customer. Let me I think the interesting thing there is like each kind of like each person. I thought about going the like dating direction. But I was like, I don't think I can I think I could do that. A long time since you dated. Yeah. But yeah, or the spouse direction too, because you still, but like that's a one to one kind of thing. I think there are there are commonalities across all customer language. So every time a customer speaks, they all kind of speak the same language. Or they they're the same structures underneath the language they speak. Oh, interesting, interesting. Well, we'll get into that structure here in a moment. Rob, do we want to ground in the example that you embed in the in the sub stack? Yeah. So want me to I can I can read it for context, maybe just so that people yeah, I think that makes sense. So what what I want to do with this post is I wanted to give you an example that is it's kind of it's it's kind of a real example kind of not I tried to kind of blend it. So it's a little bit less less obvious what company it is and all that kind of stuff. But this is also in the book, not very blended. And so by the book, you'll see the whole thing. And so what I wanted to do is I wanted to give you this example. And what I want you to do is I want you if you're reading the post or if you're listening here, I want you to pause before we get into the translation guide. I want you to answer the questions. What does this person want if anything? Yeah. And is do they actually like do they actually are they going to buy something? If so, what do they want to buy? What should we pitch based on you know, I was I did that exercise. I've seen you do this like tear this down, I don't know five times like a bunch of times at this point and I was thinking about This one while I was reading it and I was like I know the answer to this and I still have a hard time like Identifying in like if there's so much information that's in it that it's It's hard to find but let me let me I'll go ahead and read this So this is that imagine that I'm yeah, what was the question that proceeded this like why did you take the meeting or like what are What's the context or something like that and this is the potential customers response Yes, so we've been struggling with Salesforce ever since I'd been here Which is wow going on like five years now crazy out time flies Anyways, we're obviously a mission driven nonprofit and Salesforce doesn't feel like it's built for us and what we need to do Managing volunteers and whatnot. I know other people who are in sales roles obviously and in tech or whatever and Salesforce seems like a great fit for them But for us we've had to get a bunch of consultants to come in and try to clean it up And we've had multiple rounds of that in my time here But it's it's just not reflecting our work to funders and now that we're fundraising and the In the current environment is what it is we need to fix that so basically my boss RCEO Asked me to look into alternatives to Salesforce sometime in the last year or two. I haven't talked to anyone yet though And There's so much that's going on going on in this right now and there's you know that one of the things about this is There's some words in there that were like our brains are like triggered to Naturally like latch on to for example My boss the CEO has asked like that sequence As it turns out we'll get into that. That's not that's not really where the where the gym is in this but Rob why don't you You know or if folks want to pause and like think about it or Rob if you want to give a quick reaction how you would approach Untangling this one Yeah, so this is interesting This is a shortened version of what is usually a much longer and much kind of I tried to condense it up in Here, but the interesting thing if you just think about this this paragraph and how we usually approach Paragraphs and things is like there is some sort of almost like sequential structure you should expect But you don't get in classical language like I would expect right if they're if they're trying to say hey Here's what I need you would expect a person to communicate that clearly We are looking into this kind of thing and here's the details of exactly what we are looking into and why we are looking into it and instead What you get is you get this basically paragraph of text Where it's not clear what's a relevant or is it in it and it's not clear what the sentences mean some of them are helpful Some of them are counterproductive Yeah, which means you need a translation guide for it and and I don't feel like there's been really good translation guide Put out there for for what customers say Which is where we get started. Yeah, what Rob can you help me understand when you say translation guide? What do you mean like what is it like at that? Expand it as if I were like a dingo You know as Michael Scott's words explain it to me as if I were seven year old But like what do you mean by a translation guide here? Yeah, so okay There is a paragraph there It is in customer language, which means it looks like and sounds like something that you understand But you don't understand you need to translate that into your language and to translate it you need a There's there's this paragraph then there is some machine that you put this paragraph through and out the other side of that machine Comes something that makes you understand what this person wants to buy if anything and what you should pitch Gotcha perfect. So we've got what was it ending the enigma from the shame for more word to that's what we're developing right here amazing well youth and And basically using your frameworks this so we input the customer hairball we Run it through the translation guide and we output The structure here that you have is demand supply and irrelevant. Can you you know maybe break down like what are you looking for in each of those? Yeah, so it turns out Big shock the pull framework and the concepts of demand and supply can be that machine in the middle so that you can Take customer language translate it into something that is actionable and that you actually understand and that what's in your head is the same as what's in the potential customers had Which is cool But like the way I get there is I find it's very useful to separate the world into demand and supply stuff Supply stuff is stuff about products and solutions and tools and methods and all that kind of like the means by which we do things So it'd be things like for example Salesforce is we've been struggling with Salesforce, right? That's right Supply that I don't that's not working for me. That's on the supply side On the demand side it's not about product settles It's about what are they trying to accomplish in their job in their life? What are they trying to do? What are they trying to accomplish and it must not have anything to do with supply? Yeah, what would what would they be trying to accomplish if no supply basically Exist it or if you didn't exist if yeah, like what's what's going on agnostic to supply? Yes, exactly and so we have to yeah, but what you pull that up while you're talking is like we have to separate this So that we can know is there any demand here at all? And then there's like also when I put in the irrelevant category, which is stuff not related to demand or supply Yeah, so let me crazy how time flies you know sales forces for sales people. It's great for sale people Right, so it's like okay cool. That's not yeah, and it also they also might talk about somebody else's project like there's there's it's sort of And you know things that are are not or an irrelevant could be like Five-year plan like they're you know, there's all these other red herrings that can be irrelevant. They're actually And are easily mistaken sometimes for demand What you've got here I pulled it up for those on Spotify or YouTube and maybe someday will migrate to Apple video on Apple podcasts That's a new thing. I've got to figure that out but basically from the From the sub stack rob's broken down demands of flying irrelevant in the supply column. Let's talk about that before we get to Demand you've got struggling with sales force for five plus years seems like it's Not built for us had a bunch of consultants. That's another one. They brought up my boss to ask me to look into an alternative I'd like to get your thoughts on this one My boss to ask me to look into an alternative to sales force sometime in the last year or two But I haven't talked to anyone yet. Why is that last one? That one to me I Would have put that one in demand is kind of like a weak demand But I don't but I you've got it over here on supply. So what's what's going on there? Yeah, it's it's You could put like boss pressure Yeah under demand, but that's not that's not a clear like thing. I'm trying to accomplish necessarily I that basically the boss told me to look into an alternative to sales force Alternative to sales force is like the key thing for me there that keeps it on the supply side. It's about a product It's about a And so what I'm what I'm doing here is I'm trying to basically separate Them talking about supply they do or don't like or do or don't want is like one huge category of Cont like things that they will say in customer language But just having them complain about supply is like there's the classic Bob must a quote which is bitching ain't switching They can complain in the supply category all the time and Not have demand. Yeah Yeah, that's that's a super interesting and I think that one and having watched you interact with founders around it Around this or a similar example that wasn't wasn't edited the way this one was The my boss asked me to is always one of the ones that Basically like flags as okay, this person has a responsibility But that the second half there is Sometime in the last year or two, but I haven't talked to anyone yet and You know that an interesting commentary about the way that you characterize that in this post was like if they haven't talked to anybody in the last year They can continue basically I think it was on this they can continue not talking to anybody about this like what it's not You know, this is that there's a There's a flag for like almost potential demand, but then they make gate that because it's obviously not something that is urgent if it's lasted, you know, the search has lasted somewhere between a year or two. Right. Right. Yeah. And if they've struggled for sales, for five years, they can struggle with sales force for 50 years. Yeah. Like it's not the default state. They could be in equilibrium, just disliking sales force. Yeah. And that's fine. Like that's just equilibrium state. There is no need to change. They can complain about it all day long, but they're like default is they're not going to change necessarily. And so the question is, right, and before we move on from here, right, like if you just take all the stuff in the supply category that we're talking about, we've been struggling with sales force, seems like it's not built for us. Had a bunch of consultants come in and try to make it better. My boss asked me to look into alternatives to sales force. Right. If you just take that column and say, what do they want? You're going to come up with something that sounds like, well, it's an alternative. It's a sales force for nonprofits. Yeah. And you're going to be wrong. Yeah. And build literally build a CRM like, you know, huge investment based on an incorrect diagnostic of what demand is, well, why don't we, why don't we jump into supply? I just let the screen here. Rob, do you want me to read this one? Yeah. I mean, we just, we basically just added demand, right? Where it's. And so it's like, okay, cool. We've now that we have this translation engine, we've been able to put most of what this potential customer says onto the supply side or onto the irrelevant side. Right. And, but we didn't fill out anything on the demand side. And that's the important side because that says, what's the shape of the thing they're trying to do? What's the, what's the thing? What's the project on there to do this? What's the priority? What's the, what's the content of what they're trying to accomplish? And well, it turns out there is one seconds hidden in that monologue. Yeah. Like towards the end, and it is, it was basically like we're trying to raise money and our current reporting for donors or funders is not cutting it. And is that something common that you see Rob that demand is hidden like that in the, in the middle or even toward the end? Like what, you would, you would think real demand would surface first, but that didn't happen in this case. Like why, why does that happen? Is that common? Like how, how should we think about that? Yeah. So sometimes it is, like sometimes it comes out the like first minute of the conversation and they lead with it and they walk through exactly why sometimes it shows up just somewhere, like somewhere random. And the challenge is like they are under no obligation. They don't understand this framework. They're trying to communicate stuff to you and they're going to just use their own language, their own way. And so we like each, each person could be different in the way they structure their sentences in the way they structure their paragraphs. And so they're not by default going to weed with here's the thing I'm trying to accomplish in my life. You're why my existing options like that sometimes happens. And I saw a call like that yesterday where the founder heard that filled out the pull framework in their mind and then just like, they're like, I don't know what to do because you just fill out the pull framework for me. There's like a five second pause while the founder was just like racing through everything. I guess we're checked off all the boxes here. But by default that won't happen. And so this is why we need this kind of like translation engine because throughout we basically have to do a search through the conversation through all the words they're saying to pick out to pull out that one line which might be at the very beginning would be great, not going to happen by default or it could be at the very end or it could be you know, somewhere buried in the middle. And it's like, okay, cool. I need to pick out the demand type things because that's what they are literally trying to do right now. Like what are they trying to do right now? And then on the supply side, it's like, okay, why aren't there existing options or methods or tools good enough? Okay, cool. I need to understand those two things. If I understand those two things and kind of like the rest is kind of context or or totally irrelevant, but I like I have to understand those two things in order to fill out the pole framework and then be able to sit like play that back to them and offer them something that they will actually pull out of my hands. Yeah. And what do we I'm pulling up your your post here just so that we can look at the paragraph and I'll highlight, let's see. So we've got supply here. It's literally if you're if you're watching the video, I'm highlighting where it where it falls. It's it's a fragment of a sentence. It's not even the, you know, the like the the full sentence there at like four fifths of the way through this one. Rob, what is it in this? What did you hear? What flag to you like demand is is right there in that in that moment. Yeah. So like what am I looking for? I'm looking for what are you trying to accomplish right now? What and and and not related to supply not related to complaining about existing options. Like I'm just putting those in a different category. Like what's the thing that you are trying to do? And so right like you can complain about supply, but I need to know why do you need to change? What it what's different? What are you trying to do? What's going on? That's causing you to need to change and what kind of change do you need to make? And so here it's like, okay, I specifically wrote it this way too to make it feel like a throw away con like a throw away comment because it often comes across as a throw away comment where it's like it's just not reflecting our work to blunders. Now that we're fundraising and the current environment is what is we need we got to fix that. Yeah, right. And so what you can see there is, oh, okay, wait, now they are fundraising right now. And it's hard to fundraise. It's not reflecting their work to funders. They need to fix that now. Like there's a there's this thing. It's like there's something they're trying to do right now that has made their existing options no longer just good enough. We can cope enough with them. We need to fix that. That's what's happening on the demand side trying to fix our reporting. Yeah. Yeah. And and then the customer sort of layers camouflage onto it by saying, you know, look into our alternatives to Salesforce in the last year or two, which is actually a separate. It's an entirely separate thing like fixing the reporting again, agnostic of supply could be in Salesforce. Could be it doesn't really matter where it comes from, but fixing reporting for fundraising that is going on right now is the immediate priority supply is the sort of secondary consequence of that. Yeah. It's and so this is where it gets confusing, which is they're saying on the supply side, we're looking into an alternative to Salesforce. But on the demand side, they're saying we're trying to fix our reporting. So fundraising gets easier. What you might say is, okay, we are an alternatives CRM to Salesforce because it sounds like you want to look into an alternative CRM to Salesforce. We are an alternative CRM to Salesforce with better reporting, right? That is an option here. But when they're saying an alternative to Salesforce, that doesn't necessarily mean we want to rip out Salesforce, which sounds crazy. It sounds like they're saying we want to rip out Salesforce, but that's not it. They're just saying like Salesforce, we can trust more what they're saying on the demand side on the supply side. It's we can't trust it quite as well. We can trust what they don't like, but the supply they want is way less clear. So if they say, I don't like Salesforce because it doesn't reflect, it doesn't, it's reporting isn't good enough for our funders, right? That is supply I don't like. The thing I don't like about supply. If they're saying we are looking into an alternative to Salesforce, an alternative CRM, that is supply I want. And they don't get to, they're like basically they, they don't really get to shape the supply they want. We shouldn't trust them there. We actually have to discount that part because if you remember from forever ago, customer comes in and requests a specific feature, a permissions feature, they don't actually want the permissions feature. They want something on the demand side, which is I want to stop people, like I want to stop people from archiving projects. And also we should, we should ignore when they say, here's the supply I want. We should pay attention when they say on the demand side, here's what I'm trying to accomplish right now. And then on the supply side, here's why I can't do that with my current options. Here's why my current options are not good enough. Then they jump into like telling you what product they want. That is basically where you customer language, having this translation thing is you just discount all of that. So let's, I want to get into the what to trust and what not to trust. What I think is a very practical framework that you gave. What happens as a result of this? Maybe like you've painted one picture, which is the the founder that's on the other side selling this could have said. I need to design an alternative to Salesforce that's for an nonprofit and has good reporting. Play that out. How does you've seen that not in this iteration? I don't think that's what they did, but you've seen that direction where you follow the customers request on supply. How would that have played out and then what actually happened and how does like how does the situation go? Yeah, so remember what they're trying to do is they're trying to fix their reporting. So if you say we are an alternative platform to Salesforce, an alternative CRM to Salesforce that has better reporting design for nonprofits, even if you nail that. But you get the supply slightly wrong. What's going to happen is they're going to go back and be like, oh gosh, that reporting would be useful. You will have good sales conversations, but the idea of ripping out Salesforce is like this massive new project you're putting on there to do list that they're generally just like not going to do takes a ton of work. And it's not real, even though they say they want an alternative to Salesforce, we know what they really want is on the demand side. They just want the easiest possible way to fix their reporting so that their fundraising gets easier. And so what winds up happening is you wind up having sales conversations that go well. They're like, wow, ideally it's that they go well. I'll give you kind of like a couple of different gradients of this, but they go. The most frustrating one is you have a bunch of sales conversations that go well. They seem like they get it. And then the sales cycles drag on forever. And worse, you're pricing because your competitive with Salesforce is tied to sales forces pricing. And so you have very long sales cycles pricing at sales forces level. And you have a massive mountain of features to build to get to feature parity with Salesforce. And then you have a bunch to maintain and all that kind of stuff. And that just doesn't like that is a total grind. The worst version of this though is that you totally miss into you miss the demand piece of it. And so you will have sales calls. What you'll you'll just hear the supply side is here that Salesforce isn't built for nonprofits. And so then you're going to say, well, we're building Salesforce for nonprofits. And you have sales calls where people seem to get it. But because their demand is I'm trying to fix my reporting. And you're showing them all the different parts of your CRN. At the end, they're going to say, cool, that's really the seems really useful. But I don't know why I would use it. Yeah, I don't know why it's it's not clear to me. It seems yes, it seems like it is built for nonprofits. But like that's great in theory. I'm trying to fix my reporting. And they're never going to say this out loud. It's just like minute 27 of the sales call. You're just going to get a weird question. And it's going to be confused. Yeah. Yeah. So true. It's like the that's probably another translation guide. What how to translate weird questions later on. It's almost never about the feature that they're asking about. It's there's something else that's going on there. Let's talk about what okay. What's the consequence of recognizing correctly recognizing what is demand in this case? Like what do you build? Yeah. What happens with the customer? How is that different from redesigning Salesforce for nonprofits? Yeah. So okay. So if you if you just focus on the demand side, it's I want a better I would need better reporting for funders. On the supply side, it's I don't like say like Salesforce hasn't worked despite us getting a bunch of consultants and spending a lot of money on consultants. So what you would sell then is not something that replaces Salesforce. You would just sell something that fixes their reporting for funders. That probably plugs into Salesforce. And so your you're like feature area is way small. You're really just focused on your basically like a donor reporting service or kind of like tool or whatever. And maybe it's cost time, maybe it's whatever. But it's you're offering a reporting tool specifically for nonprofits for fundraising. Surface area is smaller. They no longer have this project. to I have to rip out Salesforce to get the reports that I want out of this. And then the pricing options here are like way different because they're not comparing it versus Salesforce. And so it's right like it's what did you spend on consultants? Well, this is the same cost as a consultant per year, but it works, but it actually works. Right. And so instead of it being $5,000 or whatever a year for a nonprofit or a normal size nonprofit, right? Like it's $40,000 per year. And they buy faster. Yeah, super interesting how the you're actually you're promising less and able to charge more like in many ways like the you've at the state that reduced your complexity and of implementing of selling and increased the like the price range that you have. This is and this is the physics of startups just like this is like the perfect example of the physics of startups. They are trying to accomplish something. If we fit that well, they will buy faster. And the pricing is determined by the value of the thing they are trying to accomplish versus the alternatives there. Right. Like this is just again, another lesson in the physics of startups, which is your product breadth is not relevant to the pricing. That's a that's kind of a push mindset. The pull mindset is that pull dictates what they want to buy, what they are willing to pay for it, and the bounds that you need to fit so that they will rip it out of your hands. Yeah, fascinating. You know what? And my little company where we're I'm running into this with this week, it's been like, Oh, okay, I've been actually framing it from or improperly defining it. Like what what the demand is much closer to is storytelling that involves our product so that it is embedded. What I've been thinking it was was your product in front of customers. And that's they're they're very they're separate approaches with a similar media product. It's just a slightly a different way of talking about it that I'm seeing like much faster, shorter time to light bulb goes off and head to like, Oh, that's something that you can do that feels natural in your in the context of your media. And so here's the here's the frustrating thing about this because this is this is the thing that bothers me and bothers I think everyone, which is that the unlock is almost always a messaging unlock. But if you approach it as a messaging problem without this translation guy without this kind of foundational framework without the physics of startups, you wind up just playing whack a mole with different messaging options. And they're all guaranteed to not work, you know, because there are infinite words you could use all of which will make a logical sentence, but they have to connect to demand in the customer's mind. And that you need that way of thinking about it to have any chance of getting the right words and concepts that will unlock that are so simple, but make that light bulb go off in their brain. Yeah, I love that. Let's hit Rob before we wrap the what you write about what you can trust and what you can't trust. And you've you've alluded to this on a couple, but I do want to make it more explicit. Yeah, here I'm just going to read this and then Rob would love your would love your commentary on it. Now that we have a translation guide for customer language, but we need one or excuse me, now we have a translation guide for customer language, but we need one last step as we interpret the things they say using this framework. What should we trust on the demand side? Trust, they kind of know what they're trying to do or accomplish, but often need help articulating it concretely. They often use the language like our donor reporting isn't landing on the supply side. Trust that they can complain about existing tools and methods they don't really like, but don't conflate, disliking supply with having demand. And then you go on, don't trust when they say supply they want. because that will lead you astray. For example, looking into an alternative to Salesforce will literally steer you into the iceberg. Rob, what would you add maybe on the on the demand side to like what to trust when they say it? Yeah, I mean, what I've generally seen is that somewhere in the hair bowl is somewhere in the monologue, they actually do convey demand. It is actually just, and they convey it roughly, often if they say like, our donor reporting isn't landing, you need to unpack as Bob Milo said also said, like you need to unpack the word landing. I don't know what landing means. But they'll often convey it and it's more of a finding it problem for you. And you should trust it because they kind of know what they're supposed to be doing in their job. They kind of know they have like a rough sense of what they're trying to accomplish. And they often need help just kind of explaining it a little bit more to us. So that is pretty good. They also are pretty good on the supply side of knowing why their existing tool isn't good enough for that thing they are trying to accomplish. Why their existing options aren't good enough. And they say like Salesforce, the reporting doesn't really work. We've tried consultants to fix that and they haven't worked either. And like, yeah, that's pretty rough, but we can say like, what does work mean there? Like, what do you mean? It hasn't worked. But that's roughly right, like being kind of trust that that's them pushing against their existing supply. We need to and we need to take those two in combination though, because if we don't, then we get a laundry list of complaints on the supply side without understanding which of those are actually relevant that they are that fit what they are trying to accomplish. So those are the pieces there. And then the danger zone is when they talk about supply they want. That is a note. You can say, what I don't like about my existing options, that's the negative. I don't like about my existing options. XYZ. That's okay. That's roughly okay. You have to just connect that to the demand side when they say, here's the supply I want. Absolutely. Like, no, that is don't trust that at all. Take that as actually probably likely to steer you in the wrong direction. And that's just because like they don't, this is where it comes where customers don't know what they want. That's what they're talking, they don't know about the specific instantiation of the supply that they that fits their demand. That's your job as a founder is to design supply that fits the pull that they have. They're going to just they're basically just going to kind of their throwing concepts. Yeah. Because that's the best they have. They're trying to articulate this thing that's fairly complex for them to articulate. And they have no idea if you're picking up or not. So they're just throwing out things at you. But that that piece in particular is the dangerous piece. Yeah. Fascinating. Rob, what should founders do with with this now? Like what's the actionable next step? Use it. Translate. That's it. Right. This is a translation guy. This is your Rosetta stone to what customers are saying. Yeah. And it's the start of it. It's not complete. It's not complete. There's a bunch of other things that I need to include in the translation guide and a lot of kind of stuff. But maybe that's another book in the future. Yeah. I love it. I'm going to run the recent call through the translation guide and see what comes out on the other. Because I suspect it's going to be different. I think I may have been feel like nearing or being attracted by the song of the sirens, which is this is the supply I want. And there's there's probably it's really hard to resist that because it feels so simple and clear and straightforward in some ways. And sometimes Rob, tell me if I'm wrong. Sometimes actually I'd be right. Like the thing like there's there might be some customers that can actually articulate the supply that you should build in order to satisfy that. Yes, but unless you understand the demand and basically pull framework, yeah, you won't know what success looks like to them. So you won't actually know what to build. You'll know like roughly what to build may be, but you won't know why you won't know what it needs to accomplish for them. And so you just wind up in this awful state with a product you're they're onboarding to you don't know what success is. They may or may not know what success is. And so that's a terrible situation to be. Yeah, good point. I like the drawing it back to the system approach or of thinking about a startup that replicate in case study and the factory and the way that it's not just the cell, it's what you deliver afterward. And the clarity that comes from knowing what demand is. Why don't we hit one mill bag real quick? This one came from Dominic. Dominic, I'm sorry if I'm just missing this for not saying that. He said, Hey Rob, been listening to your podcast reading your blog, if you're going through the Harvard Innovation Labs, the path to PMF slide deck, a light bulb went off suddenly, I could grasp the difference of the demand framing, which was incredibly valuable. I of course also made the mistake of building first, but with the demand framing and emotional shift happened. Instead of trying to sell my product, I checked, I check if the prospect has demand. The key difference for me is that when trying to sell supply, prospects can only say no to your product, which sucks. But by seeing if they have demand, they're not rejecting you or your product, they're simply telling you about their reality, which I find easier to deal with. What what jumps out to you is not really a question, but would love your reactions to that. Yeah, I think it's it's an awesome point. And it's one that I think when you understand the physics of startups, this the sense that if you are just pushing your supply, if you think it's all about the product, then they're just rejecting the product or rejecting you, which means you're going to wait to sell, you're going to suck at sales, and then you're going to have an existential crisis when people don't know when people don't buy and you're going to misdiagnose why they're not by. And it's just this terrible, terrible loop, we're all down because we're not doing that separation between demand and supply. Yeah, I as a the delicate flower that I am, this is definitely home on just how like emotionally painful selling and rejection can be, but how it's it's almost like an out of body experience a little bit because you're no longer it's no longer about you. It's about understanding them and that is not felt bad in a sales conversation in a long time because I actually like embrace like I just don't care. It's they're telling me something. Why should I take it personally? But it's not about me. I love it. I'm going to tear at some day, you know, my inspiration is to be an emotional robot in some ways, but I'm 300 and you'll get there. Just a body of muscle for there's no more room for emotions in there. Well, also, Rob anything we want to add founders at another way of doing the translation. If you're working on that running into a wall, Rob helps founders with that translation and he's got a bunch of practice at it. Rob anything you would add on working together or anything like that. No, reach out. I got to run. All right. I have a good one Rob. Later.