Last Friday, our CEO Dan was featured on Episode 20 of #ThePawdcast. This digital marketing podcast focuses on entrepreneurship, startups, creativity, innovation and more. In an overview of Dan’s episode, the hosts mentioned their favorite part of the show is hearing what makes people tick, what they are most passionate about and why they do what they do.
The show is hosted by Joshua Davidson, the 22-year-old tycoon that heads up ChopDawg, a marketing & design studio that helps entrepreneurs turn their great app ideas into reality. We had the privilege, nay the pleasure, of speaking with Joshua and Captain Eddie Contento (if you watch the episode on YouTube, you’ll understand why this is funny), ChopDawg’s Executive Branding Director.
The recording is a little over an hour, so we compiled a list of our key takeaways for those of you who would prefer a 10-minute read to a 60-minute listen.
Key Takeaways:
1. The best business models are the ones that are “Duh” ideas. If you have a brain blast moment, and when you share your story with people and they give you the “duh, why didn’t anyone think of this before?!” know that you are onto something big.
2. In order to build a business, you have to do three things: sell the product, build the product and support your customer. We hired a kick-ass VP of Sales, VP of Product and VP of Customer Success right away and then built a team around them.
3. How did Sigstr win its first customers? Dan called every marketer that he knew and pitched the idea. He asked if he went out and built the product, would they buy it? For everyone that said yes – when the product had been built he reached back out. He was able to gauge the interest of the ideal audience before making the investment in a solution.
4. A majority of big marketing technology purchases (think ESP or CRM) have a slower implementation process and a longer timeline to see success. Marketers are looking for “quick wins” that are impactful in a meaningful way. Sigstr is a quick win – we come in at a low price point, we can be implemented within minutes and we make a quick impact.
5. Email has, according to some, been dying for decades. But in terms of external communications, nothing has come close to replacing the need for email. Internally, we understand that Slack and HipChat are taking over the form of communication. This allows businesses to really focus on the most critical use of email – your communications with your prospects, customers, partners, investors and other important contacts.
6. At Sigstr, we change our campaigns weekly. We pump out new content constantly. While this is what we do, the rate at which you update your campaigns is dependent upon your content marketing strategy. What is most important to you? What provides the most value to your audience? Once you hone in on that, you can have a better idea as to what Sigstr campaigns you should create and how frequently it needs to be updated.
7. The number one most crucial piece of building a startup from the ground up is hiring the right people. Hire people you trust. Every single Sigstr employee to this point has been found through a referral. When you are an entrepreneur starting out on your own, you try to do everything. But ask for help with hiring – your people are your biggest asset and you want to get that right the first time.
8. Revision: Dan said that his biggest “failure” from his first venture was hiring a contractor because he didn’t know how to manage expectations, what was important to him, and the contractor wasn’t an equity partner. Upon further reflection, Dan wants to share how critically important consultants are at the right stage of a startup. It is important to understand your MVP (minimum viable product), the point in which your product is developed with sufficient enough features to satisfy early adopters, before you take the step to hire a contractor.
If you want to hear more from the guys behind this digital marketing podcast, follow Chop Dawg Studios, Joshua and Eddie on Twitter.
Need another digital marketing podcast to listen to? Here are a few others Sigstr has been featured on this year:
Zero to Scale Podcast: “Planning the Next Product Offering & Launching Key Integrations”
B2B Growth Show Podcast: “How to Get Started with Email Signature Marketing”
