Meeting Title: Uttam <> Nick—Call-#3 Date: 2024-04-11 Meeting participants: Uttam Kumaran, Nick


WEBVTT

1 00:03:32.890 00:03:34.870 Nick: Yeah, what’s okay? Yeah, yeah.

2 00:03:34.870 00:03:35.769 Uttam Kumaran: Are you?

3 00:03:36.150 00:03:37.239 Nick: Good man, how are you.

4 00:03:37.800 00:03:39.300 Uttam Kumaran: Good new background.

5 00:03:40.350 00:03:43.979 Nick: Yeah, yeah. I’m taking the the morning call from home today.

6 00:03:44.570 00:03:48.300 Uttam Kumaran: Nice. Where do you? Are you in a we work usually, or where are you at.

7 00:03:48.540 00:03:50.797 Nick: Yeah, yeah, usually, we work. There’s a.

8 00:03:51.080 00:03:56.639 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll tell by the so I could tell by the reflection that like. And then people are walking by. I’m like.

9 00:03:56.780 00:04:00.270 Uttam Kumaran: it’s like a lot of people in his house if they’re just walking by, like all the.

10 00:04:00.840 00:04:02.119 Uttam Kumaran: And then I could tell that you know.

11 00:04:02.120 00:04:02.560 Nick: Yeah.

12 00:04:02.560 00:04:05.650 Uttam Kumaran: Door that we used because I used to work there, and.

13 00:04:05.650 00:04:06.240 Nick: Yeah, yeah.

14 00:04:06.240 00:04:07.870 Uttam Kumaran: Like. I kind of recognize it.

15 00:04:08.130 00:04:13.470 Nick: Every we work has, like the same felt inside of the call boxes

16 00:04:14.418 00:04:16.329 Nick: like the same felt wall.

17 00:04:16.339 00:04:20.099 Uttam Kumaran: And they’re and they’re all like very. They’re all like way way, too dark in there. I think.

18 00:04:20.544 00:04:22.320 Nick: Yeah, yeah 100%.

19 00:04:22.960 00:04:28.740 Nick: So yeah, I got a couple by my house, that I kind of cycle between and then we’ll get tired of board of those. I just stay home.

20 00:04:29.210 00:04:36.150 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, nice. Yeah. I there, I feel like, honestly, the price points pretty good. Although the company is really struggling.

21 00:04:36.150 00:04:36.560 Nick: Yeah.

22 00:04:36.560 00:04:40.190 Uttam Kumaran: 30 bucks to go for a day, or I don’t know if you have a membership

23 00:04:40.370 00:04:45.129 Uttam Kumaran: like, if you compare options and Co. Working, you can’t really get that much less than that.

24 00:04:45.500 00:04:47.749 Nick: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I got

25 00:04:48.300 00:04:55.680 Nick: They they ran a black Friday deal around the same time that they declared bankruptcy.

26 00:04:55.830 00:05:00.459 Nick: and so I got a deal where it was like their full.

27 00:05:00.500 00:05:02.449 Nick: They’re full on

28 00:05:02.740 00:05:06.670 Nick: all access, hot desk membership, and it’s like a hundred.

29 00:05:06.670 00:05:07.050 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

30 00:05:07.050 00:05:08.759 Nick: And 80 bucks a month.

31 00:05:11.360 00:05:12.850 Uttam Kumaran: That’s fucking on me.

32 00:05:13.090 00:05:13.910 Nick: Yeah.

33 00:05:14.090 00:05:14.900 Uttam Kumaran: Async.

34 00:05:15.030 00:05:19.549 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that’s a great deal. And, Austin, I think the minimum you could do is like

35 00:05:19.820 00:05:26.089 Uttam Kumaran: 300, like at least, probably 400 or 500 a month. But again, you’d have to have like a Co. A longer commitment, basically like.

36 00:05:26.090 00:05:26.700 Nick: And Nisa.

37 00:05:26.700 00:05:27.770 Uttam Kumaran: One commitment.

38 00:05:28.040 00:05:37.580 Nick: Yeah. Yeah. So those like, we have the the offices here as well, like the single deck off deck desk offices. I was thinking of those I’ve seen a couple of guys on.

39 00:05:38.000 00:05:49.763 Nick: Yeah, a couple of guys on Twitter, one of whom he’s he’s like a content person as well. So I follow him and him and a couple of buddies from Toronto, all basically rented out

40 00:05:50.100 00:05:54.590 Nick: a big commercial space and like, put together their own kind of work area

41 00:05:54.941 00:06:05.120 Nick: so it’s not quite a Co working thing. But basically they just rented a bunch of offices. They’re renting out a few more of their friends, and they’re adding like a sauna and some gym equipment to the space

42 00:06:05.390 00:06:06.370 Nick: which I think is pretty.

43 00:06:06.370 00:06:10.950 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I I feel like people. Some people just want a place to go that is in their house.

44 00:06:11.464 00:06:15.580 Uttam Kumaran: Like, there’s a bunch of that kind of sort of thing in Austin where there’ll be like.

45 00:06:15.870 00:06:21.020 Uttam Kumaran: oh, I’m going to like this Co, this like kind of Co working spot, but it’s also like a coffee shop, but it’s also like.

46 00:06:21.020 00:06:21.600 Nick: Yeah, yeah.

47 00:06:21.600 00:06:29.730 Uttam Kumaran: And you’re like, but it also has, like a membership associated. But like you know me so like I you, I can get you in. And I’m like, what is this? And it’s like, Yeah, you are.

48 00:06:29.730 00:06:30.520 Nick: Yeah, like.

49 00:06:30.520 00:06:41.530 Uttam Kumaran: Just like a mishmash of stuff that people I guess like. And then you meet the people that run. And they’re like, Yeah, I used to have my company here, and then I let some of my friends come work. And then. Now this like, I’m kind of running this I’d have. We have another.

50 00:06:41.530 00:06:41.860 Nick: Yeah.

51 00:06:41.860 00:06:45.159 Uttam Kumaran: And so, yeah, it kind of just goes from there.

52 00:06:45.410 00:06:53.395 Nick: Dude. That’s the dream. I just. I want an excuse to like work in an interesting place, and we work as cool, but it it starts to feel sterile after a little while, and.

53 00:06:53.630 00:06:55.539 Uttam Kumaran: Totally. And there’s no community like.

54 00:06:55.540 00:06:56.690 Nick: No, no.

55 00:06:56.690 00:06:58.550 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, after, I think, like the whole

56 00:06:58.600 00:07:05.460 Uttam Kumaran: like business kind of tank, they used to invest a lot in like community event related stuff. Now it’s like

57 00:07:05.630 00:07:07.220 Uttam Kumaran: nothing’s free.

58 00:07:07.390 00:07:10.859 Uttam Kumaran: I still sneak in sometimes like cause they don’t really check.

59 00:07:10.860 00:07:12.600 Nick: Oh, they don’t check for shit. No.

60 00:07:12.600 00:07:15.360 Uttam Kumaran: So occasionally like, I’ll just go, and then

61 00:07:15.440 00:07:19.960 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll get. If they ask me. I’ll be like, Oh, no! And then I just pay 30 bucks.

62 00:07:19.960 00:07:20.380 Nick: Yeah.

63 00:07:21.440 00:07:22.140 Uttam Kumaran: beep, the.

64 00:07:22.140 00:07:22.560 Nick: I know.

65 00:07:22.560 00:07:23.030 Uttam Kumaran: But.

66 00:07:23.030 00:07:26.954 Nick: They don’t check for shit the one that I one of the ones I go to.

67 00:07:27.210 00:07:32.049 Nick: There’s they have like 3 floors of an entire building, and

68 00:07:32.100 00:07:44.700 Nick: when you come up through the elevator there are 2 hallways. One hallway is the glass has the glass door to get into the. We work with the front desk. The other hallway just goes into the offices.

69 00:07:44.980 00:07:50.169 Nick: and it just there’s all there is is a rope that says like, Hey, please go in through the door, and that’s it.

70 00:07:50.620 00:07:53.570 Nick: Yeah, so you can like they don’t check shit. They don’t care.

71 00:07:53.570 00:08:03.280 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, they don’t care at all. Before. It used to be kind of hard like, because there’d be 5 people up there. Now, there’s like 2 people, and they’re all everyone’s on their phone. And so.

72 00:08:03.280 00:08:04.499 Nick: Yeah, no, they don’t give a shit.

73 00:08:04.500 00:08:05.659 Uttam Kumaran: Security.

74 00:08:08.208 00:08:12.592 Nick: Are you working from home? Or just like

75 00:08:13.180 00:08:17.080 Nick: where, when you’re in Austin like, where do you primarily work from? Do you have a space.

76 00:08:17.950 00:08:20.509 Uttam Kumaran: Well in at my house. I have, like

77 00:08:20.840 00:08:23.159 Uttam Kumaran: a triple monitor like setup.

78 00:08:23.160 00:08:23.670 Nick: Nice. Yeah.

79 00:08:23.670 00:08:28.349 Uttam Kumaran: Living room, and the house is that the apartment’s pretty cozy, so.

80 00:08:28.680 00:08:37.330 Uttam Kumaran: It’s like, but then I kind of had to end and out like. When I first moved to Austin I was working at home. Then I got like really kind of birds out, and then I quit.

81 00:08:37.419 00:08:44.540 Uttam Kumaran: and that company and I kind of started this. I got a Co working spot kind of like when I was really really like in the depths of the company, just like where.

82 00:08:44.540 00:08:45.070 Nick: Yeah, yeah.

83 00:08:45.070 00:08:47.429 Uttam Kumaran: A ton, because that way I could.

84 00:08:47.520 00:08:54.480 Uttam Kumaran: I wouldn’t be like close to like a bed, or so far, a TV, basically. And I’m like I’m like 15 min away from

85 00:08:54.900 00:09:06.589 Uttam Kumaran: like my apartment, so I’d just be like locked in. Now I split. I kinda like 50 50 home, and then I. There’s like one coffee shop near me that I just abuse and they I could know everybody there.

86 00:09:06.800 00:09:10.990 Uttam Kumaran: and I just go and sit there for like 7 h.

87 00:09:11.540 00:09:18.409 Uttam Kumaran: but yeah, and I I kinda do that. And then I’m trying to have more meetings in town. But for the most part it’s just split between that one coffee shop

88 00:09:18.720 00:09:20.120 Uttam Kumaran: and the house basically.

89 00:09:20.550 00:09:26.385 Uttam Kumaran: If I if I can do meetings like while I’m like walking, or if I can like, get out of the house, I’ll try to

90 00:09:27.656 00:09:32.620 Uttam Kumaran: if I’m like, don’t need to be in front of the computer. I’m trying these days to just like, get outside

91 00:09:32.700 00:09:36.150 Uttam Kumaran: and cause I’ll just sit here for 10 h, like.

92 00:09:36.390 00:09:37.440 Nick: Yeah. Yes.

93 00:09:37.720 00:09:41.989 Uttam Kumaran: Typing, and I won’t like it’s it’s not good. So yeah.

94 00:09:42.480 00:09:48.199 Nick: No, I get that. Yeah, I’m the same way I try and like, I, I definitely try and get out of the house. I’m I’m actually not productive at all.

95 00:09:49.930 00:09:54.120 Nick: for very long, so I can do like an hour, and then I’ll start dicking around so.

96 00:09:54.120 00:09:54.900 Uttam Kumaran: It’s a.

97 00:09:54.900 00:09:57.170 Nick: We work one of the coffee shops nearby.

98 00:09:57.850 00:09:59.027 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

99 00:09:59.830 00:10:01.460 Nick: It’s a weird balance, though.

100 00:10:02.366 00:10:06.070 Nick: Awesome man. So you’re you’re in India right now. Correct.

101 00:10:06.670 00:10:08.620 Uttam Kumaran: I’m in Dubai, actually, right now.

102 00:10:08.620 00:10:10.400 Nick: Oh, Dubai, that’s sick. Okay.

103 00:10:10.400 00:10:14.525 Uttam Kumaran: I got in today. We’re here till I’m here with my cousin and

104 00:10:14.880 00:10:22.960 Uttam Kumaran: a friend of mine, actually one of one of me and Ritz a close friend in Austin. And he’s coming like tonight.

105 00:10:23.030 00:10:26.380 Uttam Kumaran: and then we’re here until like Sunday, and then I’m going back to India.

106 00:10:26.730 00:10:27.060 Nick: Nice.

107 00:10:27.060 00:10:29.259 Uttam Kumaran: Just just to visit some more family.

108 00:10:29.270 00:10:31.850 Uttam Kumaran: and then I’ll be back next

109 00:10:32.230 00:10:33.690 Uttam Kumaran: Monday.

110 00:10:33.690 00:10:34.599 Nick: Oh, definitely. Yeah.

111 00:10:34.890 00:10:35.180 Uttam Kumaran: That.

112 00:10:35.440 00:10:36.380 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, huh?

113 00:10:36.860 00:10:37.510 Nick: Incredible.

114 00:10:37.510 00:10:41.599 Uttam Kumaran: So yeah, quick. I mean, Dubai is kind of a weird place.

115 00:10:41.630 00:10:49.511 Uttam Kumaran: Did. So far, it’s like, Yeah, it’s really, it’s really just like, came. It seems like it’s like just got built. It’s like Vegas.

116 00:10:49.840 00:10:50.779 Nick: Like the end.

117 00:10:51.260 00:10:53.950 Uttam Kumaran: But minus like any drugs, or like.

118 00:10:54.330 00:10:54.670 Nick: Yeah.

119 00:10:54.670 00:10:56.219 Uttam Kumaran: Prostitutes are like.

120 00:10:56.440 00:10:56.890 Nick: Yeah.

121 00:10:56.890 00:10:58.460 Uttam Kumaran: Like crime

122 00:11:00.280 00:11:01.853 Nick: Is it kind of like a weird shopping.

123 00:11:02.060 00:11:02.810 Uttam Kumaran: 5.

124 00:11:03.030 00:11:05.910 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, kind of. But it’s also like

125 00:11:06.290 00:11:10.989 Uttam Kumaran: there’s different pockets of like, yeah, shopping and food. It’s just like all entertainment, like there’s nothing.

126 00:11:11.530 00:11:14.030 Uttam Kumaran: There’s no like real. It doesn’t seem like there’s real jobs.

127 00:11:14.370 00:11:14.790 Nick: Yeah.

128 00:11:14.790 00:11:19.300 Uttam Kumaran: This is only residentials, and like, I think, maybe in the city there’s a couple of like office buildings, but

129 00:11:19.771 00:11:25.550 Uttam Kumaran: everything is just like houses. Well, then, a question I have was like, What’s everyone doing.

130 00:11:25.550 00:11:25.870 Nick: Yeah.

131 00:11:25.870 00:11:28.039 Uttam Kumaran: I guess everyone’s tourists. I don’t know.

132 00:11:28.420 00:11:34.530 Nick: Yeah, I was gonna ask is, are are there a decent number of locals? Or is it just like a bunch of expats.

133 00:11:35.130 00:11:39.110 Uttam Kumaran: It’s all people. But the one thing that’s interesting is people from everywhere. There’s like.

134 00:11:39.110 00:11:39.510 Nick: Yeah.

135 00:11:39.510 00:11:42.430 Uttam Kumaran: From every country. You just look you’re like it’s like.

136 00:11:43.230 00:11:52.160 Uttam Kumaran: I see it’s like crazy. And again I would say, like few Americans that right now, like when I was just outside, it’s a lot of people from all over Asia, basically.

137 00:11:52.755 00:11:54.829 Nick: That’s wild, pretty, weird place.

138 00:11:54.830 00:11:57.323 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s cool. Yeah, it’s interesting. Place.

139 00:11:57.680 00:12:22.029 Nick: Very nice, awesome man. So let’s jump into this stuff here. Basically, the the plan for this call. It’s relatively unstructured. I’m taking some of the context you gave from the last 2 lot of the notes that I have here and and some of the documentation I already have written out and basically kind of backing into what a couple of potential strategies could look like. And this is really for anyone to execute on. So

140 00:12:22.030 00:12:30.240 Nick: the idea is like this is being written in a way where you know, if you were to hire someone tomorrow that they could kind of like read through this and pick up on

141 00:12:31.600 00:12:33.070 Nick: what you’re thinking

142 00:12:33.150 00:12:38.830 Nick: so few things that stood out to me from our last conversation about voice

143 00:12:38.870 00:12:47.771 Nick: was a common question that you get being, what is your focus? What’s your specialization? And that

144 00:12:49.330 00:12:56.079 Nick: education and sort of social proof seem to be a relatively large part of the sales process. Is that correct?

145 00:12:58.750 00:12:59.880 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, that’s right.

146 00:13:00.620 00:13:01.600 Nick: Awesome.

147 00:13:03.080 00:13:07.156 Nick: So just for a little more context here. What?

148 00:13:10.450 00:13:30.129 Nick: if if it’s sort of an ideal scenario with a potential client, if you’re speaking to your target client where it is, someone series A series B stage. Maybe they’ve got a bit of a data team. But you know not enough resources to allocate towards a special projects team. You were

149 00:13:30.160 00:13:36.099 Nick: speaking directly to the CEO who’s on board with this thing, or interested

150 00:13:36.549 00:13:45.990 Nick: and basically, you’re able to talk to the CEO as a point of contact. And they’ll get buy in from the data team, right? That that’s kind of everything we talked about is the ideal.

151 00:13:46.260 00:13:46.800 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

152 00:13:46.800 00:13:48.140 Nick: Target customer.

153 00:13:48.680 00:13:53.750 Nick: What kind of education is required on these calls

154 00:13:53.780 00:13:54.930 Nick: beyond

155 00:13:57.790 00:14:00.070 Nick: beyond just the the

156 00:14:00.410 00:14:04.510 Nick: hurdle. That is like the technical conversation.

157 00:14:04.900 00:14:05.749 Nick: If that makes sense.

158 00:14:05.750 00:14:06.730 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so

159 00:14:06.880 00:14:10.409 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, so commonly, it’s like an explanation of

160 00:14:10.520 00:14:12.370 Uttam Kumaran: like what the

161 00:14:12.380 00:14:16.229 Uttam Kumaran: like commons, the explanation of like what the most common stack is.

162 00:14:16.260 00:14:21.320 Uttam Kumaran: So people will say, like, Okay, like, what’s, how do you typically do this? And then I kind of explain

163 00:14:21.440 00:14:26.380 Uttam Kumaran: the decisions we make on what vendor to choose based on like their budget

164 00:14:27.060 00:14:34.970 Uttam Kumaran: time. So one thing is a little bit about process and how like our process works, and like how we kind of work closely with them.

165 00:14:35.476 00:14:39.129 Uttam Kumaran: Other pieces of like education are mainly just like

166 00:14:39.517 00:14:57.750 Uttam Kumaran: examples. So again, like, I try to quickly draw from what their business model is, or what their set of challenges are and related to a customer that we’ve had or we’ve worked with, basically and explain how we saw the problem. We worked with them to address it, and then the impact

167 00:14:57.750 00:15:16.499 Uttam Kumaran: and kind of like try to hammer them with a couple of us show that, like, we do have context about their side of the business. The other thing is like, I try to research, basically like the industry. So if we’re dealing with a bank kind of can understand a little bit about how their data may look like and their standards and their expectations.

168 00:15:16.828 00:15:19.689 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s something that I try to come in

169 00:15:19.870 00:15:27.530 Uttam Kumaran: with like a data side of Hey, you’re running this type of company. But you’re probably your data kind of looks like this. These are probably your key, Kpis.

170 00:15:27.840 00:15:31.069 Uttam Kumaran: and that puts me on a really level page with the CEO of like.

171 00:15:31.070 00:15:31.490 Nick: Lowest.

172 00:15:31.490 00:15:33.450 Uttam Kumaran: Dialog knows like how to measure

173 00:15:33.700 00:15:44.541 Uttam Kumaran: like a business, and generally understands like, okay, ours and key kpis, and how to do goal setting and things like that. So I try to speak like pretty much at that level.

174 00:15:44.870 00:15:45.470 Nick: Yeah.

175 00:15:45.660 00:15:54.080 Uttam Kumaran: And and and again, like one thing, and again, really try to drive towards like, what’s saving you money, or what’s gonna bring in money in the door.

176 00:15:54.660 00:16:02.020 Uttam Kumaran: And then either how to how we work with your team, or how we just kind of like solve those problems, head on

177 00:16:02.130 00:16:03.370 Uttam Kumaran: alone.

178 00:16:04.750 00:16:05.600 Nick: awesome.

179 00:16:14.330 00:16:15.640 Nick: I’ll check.

180 00:16:17.400 00:16:18.790 Nick: So

181 00:16:19.830 00:16:27.270 Nick: then. And and this is kind of a a, preference, thing, like, i’ll have a a few recommendations, kind of later on in this call. But

182 00:16:30.880 00:16:34.910 Nick: When we first started when we first began talking, one of the things you mentioned was

183 00:16:38.450 00:16:47.680 Nick: that you were interested in maybe building out either educational materials or case studies or repository of content. When you’re thinking about.

184 00:16:47.790 00:16:53.539 Nick: maybe how content can play into either a client education or promotion.

185 00:16:53.600 00:17:03.021 Nick: Are are you thinking about this in terms of a direct sales? Approach where you’re you’re putting stuff out that’s supposed to like reach potential clients? Or are you thinking more about

186 00:17:04.109 00:17:09.170 Nick: trust building and social proof? Once they actually arrive at your website or arrive like

187 00:17:09.230 00:17:11.269 Nick: once they discover you already.

188 00:17:11.960 00:17:13.593 Uttam Kumaran: I think it’s the first

189 00:17:13.920 00:17:14.560 Nick: Ok. Cool.

190 00:17:14.569 00:17:16.499 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t think we’re

191 00:17:16.689 00:17:20.269 Uttam Kumaran: at a price point, and even like at the size to

192 00:17:20.399 00:17:40.139 Uttam Kumaran: be expecting, like an audience kind of coming organically. I think, for the most part the audience is gonna come after speaking with me, or after coming after coming through referral, or after seeing some content that’s targeted towards them. Like, for example, if we make some piece of content, we run the Linkedin ad against it, they’ll click on the site.

193 00:17:40.259 00:17:56.029 Uttam Kumaran: They’re not gonna find like I I don’t see a world shorter term at all where we’re kind of building. We’re running like paid as sort of blind like sort of people there. So it’ll be. It’ll be people that have like heavy intent.

194 00:17:57.619 00:17:58.829 Uttam Kumaran: and yeah.

195 00:17:59.488 00:18:02.760 Nick: Yeah, that totally makes sense. So then.

196 00:18:02.980 00:18:14.650 Nick: so it would be. It would be then a little bit of both it sounds like, you know, you want to establish case studies to exist on the website. I I imagine the long term goal might be

197 00:18:16.664 00:18:20.370 Nick: content for the means of distribution, for like reaching people so content that reaches.

198 00:18:20.370 00:18:20.920 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, okay.

199 00:18:20.920 00:18:27.020 Nick: Like social content, blog, content, that, like just your personal writings. And then

200 00:18:27.030 00:18:33.730 Nick: social proof and client education that they can consume once they sort of arrive once they’ve heard of you.

201 00:18:34.820 00:18:44.600 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it’s also, you know, if you come like. So commonly, I thought myself going to a site like mine, or finding a piece of writing, and then going and looking at whatever that person else.

202 00:18:44.600 00:18:46.319 Nick: So the road, and then kind of like.

203 00:18:46.320 00:18:53.519 Uttam Kumaran: Going down a rabbit hole right? So that’s like, I think, a pro pretty common exercise for people that are gonna read these sorts of blog posts

204 00:18:53.580 00:18:57.530 Uttam Kumaran: there, I think if it’s compelling enough, they’ll read the next one. They’re gonna click around.

205 00:18:57.550 00:19:05.020 Uttam Kumaran: And so part of it is just like understanding that, hey? Someone’s interested. They’re clicking on a bunch of them. How can they just get in in contact with me?

206 00:19:05.412 00:19:09.397 Uttam Kumaran: Cause there’s there’s definitely intent on working now or in the future.

207 00:19:10.080 00:19:23.030 Uttam Kumaran: and yeah, I I think, like again, if people are reading those sorts of blogs, I think some people aren’t gonna read those. And they’re basically just gonna see a headline and be like, okay, this is exactly like what my company does. Let’s let’s talk. But some people might go and read a bunch of them

208 00:19:23.982 00:19:28.339 Uttam Kumaran: and then I also wanna convince them, or it’s like again. Someone may stumble on us.

209 00:19:28.840 00:19:29.260 Nick: You, yeah.

210 00:19:29.260 00:19:34.980 Uttam Kumaran: A little bit over time. And then at some point, be like, Okay, actually, I just saw your prom happen.

211 00:19:35.020 00:19:37.429 Uttam Kumaran: And I’ve been reading so. And so let’s just get in touch.

212 00:19:38.530 00:19:39.270 Nick: Awesome.

213 00:19:46.770 00:19:49.909 Nick: So if you were to

214 00:19:51.080 00:19:52.230 Nick: write.

215 00:19:52.560 00:19:58.050 Nick: if you had the time and the bandwidth to write on a weekly basis.

216 00:19:59.260 00:20:01.200 Nick: just about

217 00:20:02.600 00:20:16.089 Nick: what about what you’re doing on a day to day basis, or what you’re doing on a day to day basis, what you’re seeing, the problems you are facing the problems you’re seeing your clients face. What are some of the topics that you’d be writing about on that week to week basis.

218 00:20:18.460 00:20:19.540 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think.

219 00:20:20.670 00:20:33.549 Uttam Kumaran: I think one. It would be specifically on, like each domain. So we would go from marketing to sales to like inventory to customer service and talk about

220 00:20:33.890 00:20:42.250 Uttam Kumaran: like a problem or a need for data or a need for reporting how we implemented that and then kind of the impact.

221 00:20:42.760 00:20:43.150 Nick: Nice one.

222 00:20:43.150 00:20:46.600 Uttam Kumaran: Across each, like I would pretty much go domains the domain to domain. So from

223 00:20:46.730 00:20:58.140 Uttam Kumaran: top of funnel in a business all the way through to delivery of a service for product all the way towards like renewals or subscriptions or finance, or to a customer service

224 00:20:58.190 00:21:10.039 Uttam Kumaran: and refunds, and basically like, just have a story for each of those different categories. So that’s one thing. And I think those are really clear, because when you have a prom in one area you’re not so much interested in, like.

225 00:21:10.970 00:21:20.090 Uttam Kumaran: what like I would have done in the past, which is like, just write about tooling or technology you’re interested in. Like, okay, my customer service team is like inundated with requests.

226 00:21:20.330 00:21:25.460 Uttam Kumaran: I’m unsure about like which products are actually leading to the most issues.

227 00:21:25.961 00:21:39.720 Uttam Kumaran: And how to make a change. And I just like I’m I’m in a bind where I either need to make find some way out or hire more customer service people like, what should I do? And how can I use data to help me make a decision? So that would be like the problem statement.

228 00:21:40.536 00:21:46.360 Uttam Kumaran: Similarly it could be like, oh, as we’ve grown our company we’ve we haven’t

229 00:21:46.370 00:21:57.710 Uttam Kumaran: adjusted our shipping provider, and as as our company has grown so as our shipping costs. And we’re looking to negotiate. So how can we create a compelling

230 00:21:57.890 00:22:01.569 Uttam Kumaran: like data story and have enough backing to go to that.

231 00:22:01.910 00:22:10.539 Uttam Kumaran: you know, shipping provider or multiple and actually negotiate lower rates. This is something where, like nobody has written anything on that especially not

232 00:22:11.040 00:22:19.109 Uttam Kumaran: like, I think it’s probably like. It’s probably industry knowledge for people that are doing shipping like people that work in.

233 00:22:19.110 00:22:20.330 Nick: So it was like.

234 00:22:20.330 00:22:34.350 Uttam Kumaran: Fulfillment services. They’re probably like, yeah, that’s what you do. But like, nobody from the data side or from the CEO side, understands like that that’s possible. Basically, the shipping guy gets a call and is like, our prices are too high. Like, what should we do?

235 00:22:35.120 00:22:44.590 Uttam Kumaran: Basically, that person needs like at least a data sheet of like what our prices are, what our goal for them to be, what we’re forecasted it. And then you could go make phone calls.

236 00:22:44.908 00:22:50.379 Uttam Kumaran: and I think I don’t know. That’s where I find that I have a lot of a lot of edge. Is that

237 00:22:50.808 00:22:55.819 Uttam Kumaran: I’ve just succeeded. This sort of thing happen where there’s like some institutional knowledge.

238 00:22:56.195 00:23:13.140 Uttam Kumaran: That, like just is is in people’s brains on how to do these sorts of things. But or they never use data. So they kind of lose out. I think, in sales and marketing, especially if you’re using digital tooling. It’s very, very common to understand Cac Roaz.

239 00:23:13.380 00:23:13.900 Nick: Yeah, yeah.

240 00:23:14.719 00:23:24.289 Uttam Kumaran: And that’s more common. But in a lot of other parts of the business it’s less common. And those marketers also, they only live in like the marketing world. So.

241 00:23:24.650 00:23:48.690 Uttam Kumaran: Understand, like how your customer action cost plays with like your refunds, or how like the entire funnel works together, you don’t typically have someone outside of like a Co that’s like looking at that. So there’s interesting data pieces to kind of like, there’s interesting data stories across each domain. I think the second thing is also like, we talk to a lot of vendors in the space. Like I, I tried to be

242 00:23:48.750 00:23:53.449 Uttam Kumaran: like, I basically try to be someone who is like, basically the most

243 00:23:53.780 00:23:58.125 Uttam Kumaran: up to date person about what’s going on in data.

244 00:23:58.580 00:24:01.610 Uttam Kumaran: because one like that’s my business. But 2.

245 00:24:01.610 00:24:02.370 Nick: Yeah.

246 00:24:02.370 00:24:06.030 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t I? I have the wherewithal to go. Do that, and that’s what I want to bring the cloud.

247 00:24:06.030 00:24:06.810 Nick: Yeah, yeah.

248 00:24:06.810 00:24:15.690 Uttam Kumaran: So that that I think, really, I want to shine because people are not doing that like even the people around that are really in this doing data stuff

249 00:24:16.010 00:24:17.619 Uttam Kumaran: like they’re they’re not.

250 00:24:17.620 00:24:18.010 Nick: Yeah, yeah.

251 00:24:18.010 00:24:23.950 Uttam Kumaran: At the level that we’re doing in terms of talking to every single vendor that really something new really having our our like.

252 00:24:23.970 00:24:35.890 Uttam Kumaran: our finger on the pulse of like what’s going on. And then also understanding like which vendors are like making positive moves. What’s the new trends in the industry? And like, what are new technologies that companies should take.

253 00:24:36.150 00:24:39.749 Uttam Kumaran: you know. Take advantage of. That’s something where I think

254 00:24:40.200 00:24:45.360 Uttam Kumaran: again, like, there, I think we have a like. I particularly have a ton of stuff to write about.

255 00:24:45.570 00:24:45.970 Nick: Yes.

256 00:24:45.970 00:24:54.629 Uttam Kumaran: Really being written, but some of that stuff gets put out 6 months or 3 months later. But there’s a timeline aspect to that that I think may lend itself well to

257 00:24:56.340 00:24:57.949 Uttam Kumaran: content and posting.

258 00:24:58.214 00:25:04.320 Uttam Kumaran: because there’s stuff happening every day. And I’m telling you like I read like I read like hours of updates and product updates and.

259 00:25:04.320 00:25:05.140 Nick: Yeah, yeah.

260 00:25:05.140 00:25:07.190 Uttam Kumaran: Every day. So

261 00:25:07.480 00:25:16.649 Uttam Kumaran: that knowledge is is helping me for the business. And then I and then basically. Now, what I do is if, like a new startup comes down. They’re like we solve this problem. I can give them a call, and I get a demo.

262 00:25:17.490 00:25:26.750 Uttam Kumaran: And like, if if it the products good, I would love to just shout it out. And there’s even times where I I call them the products that I’m like, cool. We’re gonna implement it like the next week.

263 00:25:27.140 00:25:28.269 Nick: Yeah, yeah, I’m.

264 00:25:28.270 00:25:34.623 Uttam Kumaran: That’s like, that’s a process that we did like. I don’t. I don’t have to hesitate. If the products are are dope. So.

265 00:25:35.215 00:25:41.529 Nick: Have you ever established like any sort of affiliate arrangements for new projects that you find are interesting.

266 00:25:41.750 00:25:53.400 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, everyone I talk to. I’m like, what’s the deal? If I like close. Tell people like, what’s the arrangement? Everybody will sign swing with me. I haven’t yet, just because our volume is low, like.

267 00:25:53.820 00:25:56.450 Uttam Kumaran: For the big players like for snowflake and stuff.

268 00:25:56.590 00:26:02.030 Uttam Kumaran: They do have like certain arrangements that are pretty solidified for smaller startups.

269 00:26:02.406 00:26:06.669 Uttam Kumaran: It kinda they I can. I may talk to the head of sales, and that guy like

270 00:26:06.850 00:26:13.649 Uttam Kumaran: we’ll do whatever but again, like this is where, if I have a steady stream of leads, or, if I can, book.

271 00:26:13.650 00:26:14.009 Nick: Thank you.

272 00:26:14.010 00:26:35.480 Uttam Kumaran: More Demos with actual clients. Or to co-marketing. There’s tons of opportunity. But every single client of mine, I ask, like, what’s your strategy with working with agencies? If they don’t, would they be down to develop one if they do like what are? How is a typical working style? So I, I build relationship with the vendors, even if we don’t use them

273 00:26:35.530 00:26:41.090 Uttam Kumaran: today. But basically, like, I want to use you guys, you’re in my head.

274 00:26:41.350 00:26:41.740 Nick: Right and.

275 00:26:41.740 00:26:44.639 Uttam Kumaran: Find an opportunity to implement you in the near future.

276 00:26:45.018 00:27:03.130 Uttam Kumaran: Because I want. I eventually would like those people to send me leads right. That’s actually what I I like. I care a little bit about the cash on like signing a deal, but I would actually prefer them to have a client that’s like, Hey, I want to implement your tool. And they’re like, Well, we don’t do professional services, but like

277 00:27:03.920 00:27:05.540 Uttam Kumaran: so and so does like.

278 00:27:05.540 00:27:06.050 Nick: Yeah, yeah, like.

279 00:27:06.050 00:27:09.579 Uttam Kumaran: Implement. He’ll implement you pretty quickly. And it’s great like that’s

280 00:27:09.920 00:27:13.715 Uttam Kumaran: that’s the kind of part of sales relationship. I wanna try and scale.

281 00:27:14.300 00:27:22.600 Nick: Absolutely okay. So what’s the what? When you’re when you’re thinking about scaling and lead generation, what’s the duration of an average engagement?

282 00:27:24.568 00:27:26.242 Uttam Kumaran: It’s probably like

283 00:27:26.990 00:27:32.150 Uttam Kumaran: at least 3 months, if not like kind of indefinite.

284 00:27:32.462 00:27:33.400 Nick: Yeah. Okay, cool.

285 00:27:33.400 00:27:35.510 Uttam Kumaran: Couple of people, the couple of people we have.

286 00:27:36.010 00:27:38.010 Uttam Kumaran: I’ve just expanded, really

287 00:27:39.600 00:27:44.259 Uttam Kumaran: and we’ve like, I, I think, that people we’ve had that are short in that, basically.

288 00:27:44.370 00:27:46.710 Uttam Kumaran: we should have disqualified them before.

289 00:27:47.090 00:27:47.919 Nick: So he wasn’t.

290 00:27:47.920 00:27:49.859 Uttam Kumaran: It’s less. It’s less of like a

291 00:27:50.710 00:27:53.550 Uttam Kumaran: I think if we’re doing our job well.

292 00:27:53.650 00:28:02.639 Uttam Kumaran: then, they continue to keep us on, and we continue to expand business. If we’re if it is, if it is a very select project.

293 00:28:02.700 00:28:04.720 Uttam Kumaran: then it may just be at least

294 00:28:04.960 00:28:08.779 Uttam Kumaran: 3 months. But again. I just don’t.

295 00:28:08.950 00:28:13.269 Uttam Kumaran: A lot of this stuff really compounds. And this unlocks new value.

296 00:28:13.600 00:28:15.860 Uttam Kumaran: And so one thing I’m even thinking about is like.

297 00:28:16.330 00:28:26.140 Uttam Kumaran: I’ve been spending a lot of time this week speaking to people here and speaking some other people about kind of running these sorts of agencies. And the biggest thing is like, there’s different.

298 00:28:26.610 00:28:44.620 Uttam Kumaran: There’s like couple of things. So there’s this, there’s actually someone who’s doing sales. There’s people who are ride executing, doing engineering. There’s also like an engagement manager right? And there’s also like Project a project manager. The thing I I would like to do is everybody just needs to write incentives, and I’ve been playing around with like

299 00:28:44.660 00:28:46.930 Uttam Kumaran: me, doing everything. And then now we have.

300 00:28:46.930 00:28:47.250 Nick: Yeah.

301 00:28:47.250 00:28:58.360 Uttam Kumaran: We’re doing engineering, but the engineers don’t have a good sense of doing the engagement, too. So then I’m doing the engagement. But then, what I’m trying to do basically now is fill in someone in all those slots.

302 00:28:58.811 00:29:03.799 Uttam Kumaran: And we give them the right incentives. So, for example, the salesperson’s incentive is to close

303 00:29:03.960 00:29:25.579 Uttam Kumaran: like is to close like really good deals good meeting, that it’s like reliable revenue shop, just like random people. And so there’s probably incentive structure for them that, like, you know, there’s pays them out as the contract goes on. The second thing is like for the for the engagement manager. It’s very similar to how an Am. Gets comped which is on

304 00:29:25.650 00:29:27.630 Uttam Kumaran: retention and expansion.

305 00:29:27.710 00:29:31.980 Uttam Kumaran: So that person’s job is to make sure we knock it out of the fucking park.

306 00:29:32.050 00:29:34.849 Uttam Kumaran: and then we find other ways to work with them.

307 00:29:35.110 00:29:44.022 Uttam Kumaran: Right? And that’s their comp structure should be determined on that right. So I really think about incentives a lot on the engineering side. It’s the toughest part, because.

308 00:29:45.100 00:29:48.780 Uttam Kumaran: like there’s no bonus, there’s no like kpis

309 00:29:48.790 00:29:51.862 Uttam Kumaran: like they have in sales and marketing

310 00:29:53.150 00:29:57.540 Uttam Kumaran: and which is why typically they pay just a lot because there’s no variable comp.

311 00:29:58.193 00:30:05.946 Uttam Kumaran: I would prefer to comp the engineers on the retention and expansion to

312 00:30:06.900 00:30:12.280 Uttam Kumaran: But, like, I will definitely be playing around with that as we grow. Because I think

313 00:30:12.630 00:30:16.349 Uttam Kumaran: I want everybody to incent. Be incentivized monetarily.

314 00:30:16.540 00:30:16.860 Nick: Yeah.

315 00:30:17.655 00:30:18.450 Uttam Kumaran: To

316 00:30:18.750 00:30:27.260 Uttam Kumaran: for the customer succeed, and for the engagement to grow. I don’t want that to just be on one person’s hand. I want everybody to be thinking about like, how do we deliver and.

317 00:30:27.260 00:30:27.940 Nick: Yeah.

318 00:30:27.940 00:30:34.219 Uttam Kumaran: There’s a cash incentive associated with it. But I guess, like long story short, basically like, that’s

319 00:30:34.360 00:30:43.379 Uttam Kumaran: that’s how I’m thinking about. Like all the touch points for like somebody. And then, basically, that’s how I’m hoping that we really don’t have

320 00:30:43.500 00:30:44.710 Uttam Kumaran: a ton of

321 00:30:44.850 00:30:51.939 Uttam Kumaran: turn. You know. There, there, there will be some turn, and we’ll figure out kind of like what the average duration is. But.

322 00:30:51.940 00:30:52.480 Nick: Yeah.

323 00:30:52.480 00:30:54.939 Uttam Kumaran: These these things tend to just keep going.

324 00:30:55.350 00:30:57.716 Nick: Yeah. App. Okay, that’s cool.

325 00:30:58.960 00:31:03.499 Uttam Kumaran: Which is the nice thing. Right? It’s not like, we just design a website. And you’re done. These are like.

326 00:31:04.170 00:31:09.000 Uttam Kumaran: these are pretty, can be pretty healthy, like long lasting contracts.

327 00:31:09.820 00:31:13.219 Uttam Kumaran: And we continue to add services and people on top.

328 00:31:14.007 00:31:23.120 Nick: Yeah, and that’s good. I I’m thinking, I mean part of the reason for that question, too, was to figure out, you know how many stories or

329 00:31:23.654 00:31:38.859 Nick: examples you’d be able to get from a content perspective from each client. So if it’s just you know, I think it might be a little bit more difficult. If these are 6 plus month engagements you’re doing, you’re building one thing, and then just like maintaining that thing.

330 00:31:39.561 00:31:48.289 Nick: But if you’re building, you know, if you’re upselling the project or building new things on top of that, then you can create additional stories from from those.

331 00:31:48.930 00:32:00.539 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I would say, it’s a, it’s, it’s definitely well, everything I’ve worked on, even in. If it’s in a small domain, there’s multiple stories involved. Right? Even if we’re just work on financial data.

332 00:32:00.790 00:32:21.009 Uttam Kumaran: there’s a story to be told about like data cleaning or data modeling. Or I’m doing a bunch of like data buying right now, like, I’m talking to people who are selling me data on like residences in the Us. Financial data like that’s something that not a lot of people write about. And so there’s all there’s a ton of stories about like

333 00:32:21.388 00:32:23.690 Uttam Kumaran: these sorts of processes. And also again.

334 00:32:24.150 00:32:34.920 Uttam Kumaran: It’s typically not one person who’s involved in all that. So there’s never a cohesive story usually gets handed off between 3 or 4 people. And so there’s never like one person who sees it through.

335 00:32:35.100 00:32:36.820 Uttam Kumaran: Everyone knows the whole piece.

336 00:32:37.090 00:32:39.399 Uttam Kumaran: I’ll get an ask like, Hey.

337 00:32:39.540 00:32:57.529 Uttam Kumaran: can we get data on this, and I’ll go call 5 vendors, get pricing, get integration details, do and implement it, and then actually see the benefits. And that’s contained within us. Right? So we have access to that entire through line of how it was proposed, how we like executed on it, and then what what it resulted in

338 00:32:59.100 00:33:01.719 Uttam Kumaran: and we can write about it like, you know, we’re we’re not.

339 00:33:01.720 00:33:02.690 Nick: Yeah, yeah.

340 00:33:03.360 00:33:04.610 Nick: absolutely

341 00:33:04.770 00:33:11.630 Nick: cool. So the the approach for potential content strategies kind of coming together with this and

342 00:33:12.520 00:33:20.385 Nick: like, what I’m about to outline is basically what a a long term fully built out thing could look like. And

343 00:33:20.790 00:33:28.559 Nick: the cool thing about this is this is, I like, I treat these things more like sales pipelines than content engines.

344 00:33:29.320 00:33:38.929 Nick: especially for services businesses like it. It depends on what your goal is, but it really sounds like the primary goal here is to establish. So for proof, drive new

345 00:33:38.970 00:33:40.450 Nick: inbound interest.

346 00:33:41.232 00:33:42.477 Nick: And so

347 00:33:43.160 00:33:56.820 Nick: what I like to do with large content strategies, broadly speaking, especially in the context of a pipeline, is to start with long form, start with the bigger stuff, and then chop it up and and push it downstream.

348 00:33:57.357 00:34:02.279 Nick: and so that it’s just one of the more efficient ways to go instead of like.

349 00:34:02.880 00:34:18.130 Nick: you know, posting like, if you’re on twitter posting 1020 times a day, and and then trying to back into longer form pieces from there. There are. There are plenty of like. There are people you’ll see on, on Linkedin and on Twitter. Who kind of have that

350 00:34:18.815 00:34:34.169 Nick: muscle? They’ve built that muscle, and they and they really enjoy using social media. And so they’ll post a lot. But when you’re trying to do like a formalized strategy, long forms a really great way place to start. So with all that being said, very, very top of the funnel

351 00:34:34.210 00:34:48.850 Nick: would be case studies for they can be used as a social proof on your website and sales materials during the actual sales process. And these are Case I I would say, more formal case studies. I’m kind of like

352 00:34:49.210 00:34:55.510 Nick: born about what I think about case studies, just because a lot of them are boring as shit

353 00:34:56.324 00:34:58.339 Nick: but I think that

354 00:34:58.750 00:34:59.639 Nick: in this.

355 00:35:00.090 00:35:09.739 Nick: when you’re you should have a layer, or you should have an iteration of just like normal standard format case studies. The reason being it’s kinda like reading a resume.

356 00:35:10.043 00:35:32.486 Nick: Everyone’s gonna wanna be able to just absorb the information very quickly. This section, you know. Who’s a client? What was the challenge? What did you do? How did it impact. And that can be used just because that’s oftentimes what people are gonna be looking for from a services business to sort of anchor themselves in the context of whatever it is you do, and with case studies as well.

357 00:35:33.290 00:35:40.010 Nick: with case studies. And then any educational material. What you might consider is what you might consider doing is essentially grouping it by industry.

358 00:35:41.280 00:35:41.940 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

359 00:35:43.570 00:35:49.580 Nick: Because what’s gonna happen is you’ve worked with so many different industries

360 00:35:49.620 00:35:50.880 Nick: that

361 00:35:53.420 00:35:55.190 Nick: even just visually.

362 00:35:55.650 00:36:06.010 Nick: it’s it’s gonna be overwhelming to see so many different case studies in so many different industries. Basically. Just, you know, stacked ranked in numerical order or something.

363 00:36:06.429 00:36:15.170 Nick: So one way to consider organizing. Your information on the website is if you’re talking about case studies and educational material grouping them by industry.

364 00:36:15.350 00:36:17.130 Nick: And maybe yeah, so.

365 00:36:17.130 00:36:24.240 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe I can. Even I can even show you like kind of what we have as the kind of design right now. And I think.

366 00:36:24.240 00:36:24.700 Nick: Yeah.

367 00:36:24.700 00:36:29.420 Uttam Kumaran: That way. I could even just take some notes, because basically what we were gonna do.

368 00:36:29.610 00:36:33.420 Uttam Kumaran: And again, even like anything specifically about this, let me know. But.

369 00:36:33.420 00:36:33.819 Nick: Yeah, yeah.

370 00:36:33.820 00:36:42.329 Uttam Kumaran: Basically, we were gonna have, I guess, like a case study page like this, which is like literally what the impact was.

371 00:36:42.380 00:36:45.071 Uttam Kumaran: Some sort of testimonial, and then.

372 00:36:45.820 00:36:46.230 Nick: Beautiful.

373 00:36:46.230 00:36:47.760 Uttam Kumaran: Kind of just like

374 00:36:48.340 00:36:50.350 Uttam Kumaran: this. I was like.

375 00:36:50.390 00:36:57.580 Uttam Kumaran: I wanna write like a a fucking paper. And then, my friend, who’s designing this was like, Don’t do that.

376 00:36:57.580 00:36:57.970 Nick: Don’t!

377 00:36:57.970 00:36:58.430 Uttam Kumaran: Have

378 00:36:58.860 00:37:00.569 Uttam Kumaran: these sorts of things

379 00:37:00.590 00:37:05.659 Uttam Kumaran: where there are pieces that people can absorb in different formats

380 00:37:05.730 00:37:11.099 Uttam Kumaran: like we can have either this sort of thing or an image with a caption, and then

381 00:37:11.592 00:37:14.830 Uttam Kumaran: very similar footer. And then this is

382 00:37:14.890 00:37:17.159 Uttam Kumaran: like, we just turn these out.

383 00:37:17.410 00:37:18.819 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, basically.

384 00:37:18.820 00:37:26.000 Nick: Yeah, I think that’s fantastic. That the way that that information is conveyed visually is very

385 00:37:26.410 00:37:32.890 Nick: efficient. Your eyes can kind of jump from the main points very quickly, and absorb most important points.

386 00:37:33.340 00:37:34.250 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

387 00:37:34.250 00:37:34.700 Nick: You don’t.

388 00:37:35.004 00:37:37.440 Uttam Kumaran: Have, like the icon, the iconography, like all.

389 00:37:37.440 00:37:37.870 Nick: Yeah.

390 00:37:38.190 00:37:38.510 Uttam Kumaran: Like.

391 00:37:38.510 00:37:39.040 Nick: Yeah, yeah.

392 00:37:39.040 00:37:44.730 Uttam Kumaran: No, but again I I I read a lot about like I read Ogilvy’s book kind of about like it’s.

393 00:37:44.730 00:37:45.409 Nick: First. Yeah, but.

394 00:37:45.410 00:37:46.450 Uttam Kumaran: Just about like.

395 00:37:46.640 00:37:49.890 Uttam Kumaran: just about like a text on ads.

396 00:37:49.990 00:37:53.280 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. And I was like I was in the Sauna reading. I was like.

397 00:37:53.540 00:38:02.410 Uttam Kumaran: I was like, I’ve literally put it down. I was like what the fuck like. This guy’s like fucking genius, and I really was like, you totally need

398 00:38:02.480 00:38:15.626 Uttam Kumaran: different, like different sizes. You need images versus text. And some people are more visual. Some people are not, and that like really was like, Okay, I I I kind of see it now.

399 00:38:16.980 00:38:18.230 Uttam Kumaran: so.

400 00:38:18.230 00:38:28.199 Nick: Yes, so the way this information is presented is fantastic, and there is and will be, a place for you to write out something longer form. So, for example, you could

401 00:38:28.922 00:38:45.237 Nick: you could write out, you know, a more descriptive, detailed accounting of events in a case study that you, you turn basically into a Pdf and information sheet, and you give that to your sales team to provide to people during the sales process.

402 00:38:45.740 00:38:54.180 Nick: where, if they’re, you know, if if a prospect is like halfway down the sales funnel, and they’re really like getting into diligence.

403 00:38:54.440 00:39:01.469 Nick: that is, that’s the kind of document that you could basically tell the CEO or tell the Executive to pass off to their engineering team.

404 00:39:02.043 00:39:06.289 Nick: Where you’re getting into some of the more details about ha! Like

405 00:39:06.430 00:39:17.890 Nick: how you actually went through the process and thinking for how you actually thought about the tech stack, how you applied it, and and how it drove a real impact. That’s something that doesn’t necessarily need to be on the website. If you want.

406 00:39:17.890 00:39:18.670 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, there’s.

407 00:39:18.670 00:39:23.200 Nick: Can be like a big button at the bottom. That’s like, you know, you want to learn more details about what we did.

408 00:39:23.400 00:39:27.470 Nick: Click, click this button. It’ll send you to the Pdf. For, like the full case study

409 00:39:28.027 00:39:42.009 Nick: but visually, I think this is fantastic, and it really communicates the information in a in a in an efficient way, and like the the way that it’s sort of visually arranged is is very appealing.

410 00:39:42.990 00:39:47.480 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. And then onto your next point is like, kind of how this is oriented. So this is where

411 00:39:47.610 00:39:51.080 Uttam Kumaran: I was. Just we just took like some random.

412 00:39:51.220 00:39:57.539 Uttam Kumaran: I think this may have been intercoms like format, but I guess your thing about

413 00:39:57.630 00:39:59.269 Uttam Kumaran: the organization.

414 00:39:59.310 00:40:01.449 Uttam Kumaran: So you mentioned to try to organize it

415 00:40:01.470 00:40:04.389 Uttam Kumaran: like, can you go? Can we walk through that again? Maybe with this? Yeah.

416 00:40:04.390 00:40:04.800 Nick: Yeah.

417 00:40:04.800 00:40:05.470 Uttam Kumaran: In mind.

418 00:40:05.470 00:40:05.800 Nick: Though.

419 00:40:05.800 00:40:08.890 Uttam Kumaran: I’m gonna literally adhere this exactly to that.

420 00:40:09.610 00:40:10.555 Nick: So

421 00:40:12.740 00:40:15.206 Nick: The blog thing is interesting.

422 00:40:17.660 00:40:20.399 Nick: blogs are typically chronological.

423 00:40:20.840 00:40:26.669 Nick: but they’re used in a very different way now than they were originally intended to be so.

424 00:40:27.153 00:40:31.999 Nick: Blogs are like, we’re sort of intended to be sort of a stream of consciousness.

425 00:40:32.529 00:40:40.829 Nick: Let me, you know, share this series of ideas over the course of several weeks. Let me give you an update like I’m writing chronological updates.

426 00:40:40.990 00:40:44.309 Nick: I I think that the layout for

427 00:40:45.510 00:40:47.719 Nick: and but what we.

428 00:40:47.890 00:40:56.779 Nick: what many people, will use blogs, blogs for now is to convey important information related to the company, and the challenge.

429 00:40:56.780 00:40:57.150 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

430 00:40:57.150 00:41:02.700 Nick: Is that it’s not well categorized. It’s not well organized. It’s not very searchable.

431 00:41:03.307 00:41:09.899 Nick: It’s it’s literally just. It’s it’s poorly structured. And so one of the

432 00:41:10.300 00:41:12.020 Nick: and I make a a

433 00:41:12.630 00:41:15.479 Nick: I want to specify the difference between like

434 00:41:16.540 00:41:22.169 Nick: a blog and let’s say an educational page

435 00:41:22.921 00:41:27.659 Nick: th, the reason being that the blog, I I would say, should be the things

436 00:41:28.350 00:41:33.459 Nick: that that are written directly by you or your team that you find interesting.

437 00:41:33.490 00:41:40.470 Nick: that are that are chronological, the things that are are. For example, here’s this new tool I’m exploring

438 00:41:40.520 00:41:54.618 Nick: and and here’s what I think. So far, here’s how we’re gonna fold it into a tech stack for this specific industry. It should be here. The trends that I’m seeing anything that is sort of

439 00:41:55.830 00:41:57.770 Nick: time sensitive or related.

440 00:41:57.770 00:41:58.390 Uttam Kumaran: And at.

441 00:41:58.390 00:42:12.376 Nick: To to the present when you wrote it is something that should be in a blog. However, if it’s evergreen educational content, I’m really, I’m a really big fan of basically

442 00:42:13.470 00:42:18.809 Nick: a an educational page. And so one of I’m just gonna send this link.

443 00:42:21.270 00:42:25.110 Nick: did. I am so bad with. There’s the chat. Okay, cool.

444 00:42:25.730 00:42:28.440 Nick: So have you heard of Airhouse before?

445 00:42:29.850 00:42:30.770 Uttam Kumaran: Now.

446 00:42:31.710 00:42:36.189 Nick: So they’re an interesting company. Basically, they’re a software

447 00:42:36.270 00:42:44.538 Nick: that was built to help connect new Dtc brands and emerging.

448 00:42:46.010 00:42:54.780 Nick: yeah, it’s mostly Dtc, sort of immersion consumer brands with one of the 10,000 plus 3 pls across the country and basically help

449 00:42:54.990 00:43:06.430 Nick: these brands figure out which kind of manufacturer, which kind of facility which kind of tooling is the best fit for their product category. And so what they’re doing is they’re bridging

450 00:43:08.240 00:43:14.740 Nick: an uneducated customer base, which is the Dd, the direct consumer brands

451 00:43:15.167 00:43:24.469 Nick: uneduc. They’re uneducated just in the context of how to go about this. And then technologically unsophisticated industry, which is like the 3 Po industry

452 00:43:25.126 00:43:36.230 Nick: and what it requires is a substantial amount of customer education on both ends. And so what they’ve done. A really great job of doing is they built out a help page.

453 00:43:36.340 00:43:41.818 Nick: or it’s it’s more of an educational page for both of those parties?

454 00:43:42.680 00:43:50.240 Nick: And you see that they categorize the information in a very visually appealing and sort of digest digestible way.

455 00:43:50.520 00:43:53.299 Nick: And basically what you can do

456 00:43:53.410 00:43:55.139 Nick: is establish

457 00:43:55.550 00:44:06.620 Nick: categories for this kind of educational content, and then just add new articles to each category as the the idea comes, or you know, someone asks for that kind of information.

458 00:44:07.258 00:44:12.831 Nick: And it it becomes less of a help page and more of this, like

459 00:44:13.970 00:44:16.789 Nick: like really educational document. It’s it could be

460 00:44:16.820 00:44:20.120 Nick: a really interesting place, for example, to share some.

461 00:44:20.120 00:44:20.610 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

462 00:44:20.610 00:44:33.419 Nick: Those industry specific insights that are locked up in the form of like data. Basically, the things that you learn from looking at the data that might not be common knowledge to the leadership you’re interfacing with.

463 00:44:33.870 00:44:39.769 Nick: And so your designer is going to be a much better person to kind of help you figure out how to.

464 00:44:40.040 00:44:41.639 Uttam Kumaran: No, but this makes a lot of sense.

465 00:44:41.640 00:44:46.860 Nick: Yeah. And this is this is something it’s funny, like, this is

466 00:44:47.810 00:44:52.210 Nick: this air house setup has been the thing that I recommend to

467 00:44:52.630 00:44:58.887 Nick: everyone I can who’s working in an industry with like some high degree of complexity. And

468 00:45:01.130 00:45:01.980 Nick: it’s

469 00:45:02.680 00:45:03.650 Nick: yeah. It

470 00:45:04.970 00:45:11.780 Nick: airhouse has been the best application of this. I’ve had very few people actually try and take this advice yet.

471 00:45:12.280 00:45:16.890 Uttam Kumaran: I’m gonna I’m gonna try. And so then you can find out whether it’s gonna work or not.

472 00:45:16.890 00:45:18.140 Nick: Yeah, I would love to.

473 00:45:18.140 00:45:20.969 Uttam Kumaran: Like cause. That’s the thing like I don’t have

474 00:45:21.170 00:45:25.309 Uttam Kumaran: like I I said this in the beginning, when we started working together is like.

475 00:45:25.310 00:45:25.690 Nick: Yeah, yeah.

476 00:45:25.690 00:45:31.640 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t have strong opinions about this, but I do have a strong opinion about doing it. The best way

477 00:45:31.730 00:45:38.750 Uttam Kumaran: that I could find out how to do it. And so you’re totally right on like the blog. And that’s why even I had a feeling of like.

478 00:45:39.080 00:45:41.600 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t want to do a blog that’s like

479 00:45:41.670 00:45:45.020 Uttam Kumaran: where we just have to post like SEO content every 5 days.

480 00:45:45.020 00:45:45.640 Nick: Fucking.

481 00:45:45.640 00:45:50.209 Uttam Kumaran: By like AI, no. And so I don’t wanna do that. But at the same time, like.

482 00:45:50.460 00:45:53.760 Uttam Kumaran: what is the case? Study content, then? And like.

483 00:45:53.970 00:46:00.099 Uttam Kumaran: I, yeah, I was having a hard time even thinking about like, how does that all get organized? But this seems like a much better way of like

484 00:46:00.390 00:46:06.259 Uttam Kumaran: this is just like we just have, like a brain forge, education page or something else. And then it’s again organized by

485 00:46:06.660 00:46:16.530 Uttam Kumaran: like domains or concepts, or, like again, even more. Basically, we just do like sales marketing, supply chain whatever, or like

486 00:46:16.580 00:46:23.660 Uttam Kumaran: saving money, making more money, picking a vendor like it could just be very, very basic concepts

487 00:46:24.340 00:46:27.350 Uttam Kumaran: that like we would just, we would basically just try to like

488 00:46:27.390 00:46:34.429 Uttam Kumaran: teach. And it could be links. It could be like a quick zoom, a quick loom for me, and like a very, very similar setup.

489 00:46:35.010 00:46:37.239 Nick: Exactly. And so something like this

490 00:46:37.860 00:46:41.640 Nick: serves as a very effective it’s

491 00:46:41.660 00:46:43.930 Nick: I love these things because

492 00:46:44.290 00:46:47.899 Nick: an educational database like this is built in such a way.

493 00:46:48.200 00:46:54.000 Nick: It’s built to be navigated the way that you navigate the the blog or newsletter of someone that you find interesting.

494 00:46:54.090 00:47:12.980 Nick: Someone sends you, or you discover, like an article that you find interesting, you then click into its source, and you see this whole backlog of a bunch of other pieces, and then you click into what you find most interesting or most relevant to you, and you fall into a rabbit hole of this person. Content, then you eventually.

495 00:47:12.980 00:47:13.390 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. Chat.

496 00:47:13.390 00:47:18.500 Nick: To them. That’s what this is intended to be. And what you’re able to do is essentially build this out.

497 00:47:19.410 00:47:20.220 Nick: As

498 00:47:20.300 00:47:25.289 Nick: either you get new questions. On on a sales call

499 00:47:25.638 00:47:39.761 Nick: you can build it out as you get requests from clients for for more information, or they ask you to write a piece or when you just have general thoughts or ideas like you just build on top of this and

500 00:47:40.570 00:47:52.029 Nick: it can be built for someone to sort of fall in that rabbit hole. So one of the things I mean, you can treat it basically almost like a Wikipedia page, so you can start cross, linking some of these documents as well.

501 00:47:52.290 00:47:58.790 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, no, exactly the way they had it, which is like the end is cross link and push them to go to the next one.

502 00:47:59.070 00:48:01.590 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I really like this, actually.

503 00:48:02.340 00:48:12.089 Nick: And so you’ll have to. There will be some trial and error in the way that you arrange the information and the way that you sort of categorize it. The last thing that you want to do

504 00:48:13.630 00:48:15.690 Nick: is make it look like an FAQ.

505 00:48:17.310 00:48:18.590 Uttam Kumaran: Yes, yeah. I know.

506 00:48:18.590 00:48:20.869 Nick: No one, no one wants to reach.

507 00:48:20.870 00:48:32.464 Uttam Kumaran: I know. I know there are some questions that I need to. People people do ask me like fuck. I just wanna just get I wanna just tell people like some of these. But even.

508 00:48:32.770 00:48:33.220 Nick: Yeah, see?

509 00:48:33.220 00:48:33.780 Uttam Kumaran: We.

510 00:48:33.780 00:48:34.320 Nick: Yeah.

511 00:48:34.320 00:48:38.099 Uttam Kumaran: We have an FAQ thing, and I’m I don’t like it, and like.

512 00:48:38.390 00:48:38.870 Nick: And wanted.

513 00:48:38.870 00:48:39.560 Uttam Kumaran: Got it.

514 00:48:39.830 00:48:40.420 Nick: No! So.

515 00:48:40.420 00:48:40.839 Uttam Kumaran: I think, yeah.

516 00:48:40.840 00:48:45.501 Nick: The FAQ you have is solid because you kind of want it.

517 00:48:46.020 00:48:47.409 Nick: what’s most important.

518 00:48:47.410 00:48:49.620 Uttam Kumaran: You almost want it, but they will read it. I mean.

519 00:48:49.620 00:48:56.820 Nick: Yeah. And that’s great. That’s great. You want it for the few people that are actually gonna click it. But what you’re gonna do is like

520 00:48:57.210 00:49:25.890 Nick: this, this educational repository is going to be a a rabbit hole through which some clients or some prospects can fall, and then it’s also going to be a source of knowledge and credibility for your sales team to fall back on. Whenever someone asks a question that might require some technical explanation. You can either create a document or have a document ready related to that. And the salesperson could say, actually.

521 00:49:25.890 00:49:43.329 Nick: our our CEO, is this prolific writer who has. You know, we’ve been asked this question before, and we explain it a lot. And here’s a a piece that he wrote related to your specific problem in your specific industry. I’m gonna send this over to you now. After our call, you can check it out.

522 00:49:44.980 00:49:45.590 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

523 00:49:46.580 00:49:49.350 Nick: And it becomes like there are a thousand different ways that you can

524 00:49:50.860 00:49:58.680 Nick: that you can leverage that kind of sort of educational repository. It’s your own personal Wiki, basically.

525 00:49:58.680 00:49:59.380 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

526 00:50:00.260 00:50:08.889 Uttam Kumaran: and people. And you haven’t had anybody implement this like, even after you show them this. Because I think this is the dope, even that. The way you articulated makes a lot of sense.

527 00:50:09.230 00:50:10.890 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

528 00:50:10.890 00:50:12.770 Nick: It’s just one of those things I so.

529 00:50:12.770 00:50:13.290 Uttam Kumaran: It’s hard.

530 00:50:13.290 00:50:14.827 Nick: Things where I

531 00:50:16.250 00:50:25.819 Nick: I I use it so I’m I’m building something a little bit similar for myself, but it’s hard to visualize, like. If I’m pitching it to you, it’s hard to visualize if you don’t already get it.

532 00:50:26.280 00:50:32.040 Nick: And so, for a lot of people, all they see is, you know, like a very large FAQ.

533 00:50:32.040 00:50:41.139 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. But but I mean, I already told you, like, there’s we have, we’re having the issue where there’s content that lives, and there’s content that lives forever. This content that’s like more timely.

534 00:50:41.460 00:50:53.539 Uttam Kumaran: There’s already. There’s also probably like me writing on sub stack, that’s like, probably like slightly associated. And so there’s like these different forms that they they need. They need different mediums like, I don’t wanna plug it all into a blog.

535 00:50:53.540 00:50:54.810 Nick: 100%. Yeah.

536 00:50:54.810 00:51:06.539 Uttam Kumaran: You don’t want to read like my recent thoughts from a conference next to like some deeper thing again, but the same time, like I don’t. I don’t see it done differently.

537 00:51:06.620 00:51:10.429 Uttam Kumaran: and I don’t like how it’s done. So it’s like, either you do it the way they do it.

538 00:51:10.780 00:51:22.358 Uttam Kumaran: or yeah, you kind of wait for something like this to roll around where it’s like, okay, this is a lot more of like, have these categories. And again. I’m not even. I don’t even know the product. And I’m interested in a couple of these things.

539 00:51:22.600 00:51:23.070 Nick: Yeah.

540 00:51:23.070 00:51:26.550 Uttam Kumaran: Like I wanna know how full storage works. I wanna know.

541 00:51:26.780 00:51:27.180 Nick: Yeah.

542 00:51:27.180 00:51:30.890 Uttam Kumaran: How barcoding works like I didn’t never knew how barcoding works and.

543 00:51:30.890 00:51:31.295 Nick: Yeah.

544 00:51:31.700 00:51:34.419 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I mean, like, that’s that’s great. Like, I think.

545 00:51:34.720 00:51:38.210 Uttam Kumaran: I really, you mean again, I know this is just even notion.

546 00:51:38.240 00:51:43.290 Uttam Kumaran: But like, I’m gonna send this. I’m sending this over the. I just sent this over the fence right now, and so.

547 00:51:43.290 00:51:43.779 Nick: Yeah, yeah.

548 00:51:44.014 00:51:46.359 Uttam Kumaran: Gonna kind of see what I’ll I’ll even send you

549 00:51:46.676 00:52:05.949 Uttam Kumaran: what? Yvonne is kind of working on the design on my team. I’ll send you what she sends over, because I’m sure it’ll be sick, and something like this would be perfect. And again, having also the cross linking, I think, is, is like amazing and easily measurable to like how many people are clicking on the next one, clicking on the next one.

550 00:52:11.070 00:52:16.929 Nick: and then that’s that’s just the beginning. So then, what you can do is

551 00:52:17.270 00:52:24.050 Nick: all of that, because it’s long form. All of that shit, especially the evergreen stuff. It takes a while to write.

552 00:52:24.380 00:52:27.760 Nick: and then, you know, you write it once it lives on the website.

553 00:52:28.440 00:52:38.189 Nick: But but you need to push it like you can no longer. SEO is no longer the strategy for most small businesses. It’s just we can’t fucking compete. And then.

554 00:52:38.460 00:52:47.779 Nick: you know, you can’t just sit around and wait for someone to show up on your website and hopefully navigate their way to the educational database. And then, you know, fall down that rabbit hole. What you want to be able to do is repurpose. It.

555 00:52:48.780 00:52:49.300 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

556 00:52:49.630 00:52:59.880 Nick: Several different channels in a format that is best optimized for that channel. So, for example, if I was airhouse, what I would be doing is, I would tell their CEO

557 00:53:00.267 00:53:06.140 Nick: write a thread on Twitter about how cold storage works it. And this is this is.

558 00:53:06.870 00:53:12.039 Nick: it’s not even related to the company like, what you’re doing is you’re tricking people into learning something new.

559 00:53:12.404 00:53:22.129 Nick: That’s that’s what any of this is. And that’s what a good content. Strategy is all about, especially when you’re driving towards conversion is like you’re you’re hiding your name in a genuinely

560 00:53:22.220 00:53:27.120 Nick: well written and informative piece that someone’s going to enjoy. And that’s kind of what we’ve.

561 00:53:27.120 00:53:31.590 Uttam Kumaran: Well, yeah, I mean, I’ve I’ve even. I’ve even tweeted recently, like, I’ll see

562 00:53:32.050 00:53:34.836 Uttam Kumaran: like product announcements or

563 00:53:37.730 00:53:46.870 Uttam Kumaran: like something that’s like a product announcement, and then someone will make a comment. And then, like, I comment on it. And then I and then I’m like it got like 10 likes. I’m like, Oh, interesting! And then I look at it.

564 00:53:47.154 00:53:47.439 Nick: Yeah.

565 00:53:47.440 00:53:49.697 Uttam Kumaran: A ton of people. Click my profile.

566 00:53:50.020 00:53:50.380 Nick: Yeah.

567 00:53:50.380 00:54:13.929 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, I just I just genuinely was like, that’s something I would text, somebody like a friend, be like, Yo, what are these guys doing like, is it? I wanna tell you this, or want to replace this? And it said, these days, I’m like, just put it into the ether and it’s even in my small network. It’s getting like people are liking it. And I. And it’s been fun to do it that way, because the contents like it takes like 3 sentences. So I’m like.

568 00:54:13.930 00:54:14.380 Nick: Yeah.

569 00:54:14.380 00:54:19.860 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, I I just did this for Exo. And so and we had the same problem like excited to see this happen.

570 00:54:20.180 00:54:20.550 Nick: Yeah.

571 00:54:20.550 00:54:23.149 Uttam Kumaran: It’s nice, because on in my world, on Twitter

572 00:54:23.260 00:54:25.229 Uttam Kumaran: there’s no engagement like.

573 00:54:25.230 00:54:25.830 Nick: Yeah.

574 00:54:25.830 00:54:30.559 Uttam Kumaran: The Ceos and the major product. Nonsense will get like 10 comments.

575 00:54:31.010 00:54:43.570 Uttam Kumaran: So there’s a ton of room for me to hammer those with really good content and actually make it. Then even on, I would say, Linkedin, there’s there’s more content, and it gets more

576 00:54:43.650 00:54:48.669 Uttam Kumaran: track, like there’s more comments and interactions, but still not not nearly as much as like

577 00:54:48.850 00:54:54.589 Uttam Kumaran: the common industries, especially like D to C or Ecom in data, there’s like.

578 00:54:54.660 00:54:56.360 Uttam Kumaran: there’s not a ton of

579 00:54:56.680 00:55:07.100 Uttam Kumaran: people interacting like, I think, I think even. And then I think, even if I just went and like comments on every Linkedin post like 2 weeks, we’d be boosted right? So.

580 00:55:07.100 00:55:08.339 Nick: You could. Yeah, absolutely.

581 00:55:08.340 00:55:11.119 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s exactly like how I’m thinking about it.

582 00:55:11.470 00:55:20.170 Nick: That’s that’s another strategy, like all of its own as well. So you know, if you didn’t want to spend the time to like post and build an audience for yourself?

583 00:55:20.715 00:55:37.870 Nick: You could, you know, you would wanna make sure that you had some of this educational content and the blog content on the website itself. Just so people can gather context without having to talk to anyone. But then, yeah, you can absolutely go out and just like jump to the comment. Section. That’s that’s related to.

584 00:55:39.590 00:55:45.189 Nick: it’s really easy, because of the way that social media kind of puts you in

585 00:55:45.240 00:55:51.661 Nick: niches and bubbles. It’s really easy to appear sort of ubiquitous and very active.

586 00:55:52.120 00:55:52.680 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

587 00:55:52.680 00:55:53.510 Nick: Who

588 00:55:54.320 00:56:01.700 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, exactly. Cause if you’re commenting on things that get are, if you comment on things that are getting impressions, there’s only 10 comments. And like the

589 00:56:01.860 00:56:07.030 Uttam Kumaran: if you’re on Twitter, you’re going to the comments immediately, like something like interesting.

590 00:56:07.390 00:56:08.789 Nick: Do you know who Jason Cohen is?

591 00:56:10.930 00:56:11.650 Uttam Kumaran: No.

592 00:56:11.800 00:56:14.449 Nick: So he founded Wordpress.

593 00:56:15.000 00:56:16.600 Nick: yeah, he’s founder Wordpress

594 00:56:16.790 00:56:17.689 Nick: or Wpn.

595 00:56:17.690 00:56:18.579 Uttam Kumaran: Alright! That’s not right.

596 00:56:18.580 00:56:19.469 Nick: Wpnch. Oh.

597 00:56:19.470 00:56:20.530 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

598 00:56:21.375 00:56:27.290 Nick: Anyway. So he has this. So he he’s got a pretty large twitter following

599 00:56:27.380 00:56:31.150 Nick: his trick for Twitter. Specifically. His trick is.

600 00:56:31.210 00:56:36.390 Nick: he picks a dozen people within his industry that are

601 00:56:36.640 00:56:43.780 Nick: relevant to him or what he does, he turns on notifications for their post, and then receives notifications whenever they tweet

602 00:56:44.050 00:56:45.519 Nick: if he, if he sees them.

603 00:56:45.520 00:56:45.900 Uttam Kumaran: Really.

604 00:56:45.900 00:56:51.150 Nick: Within 20 min of that Tweet being sent. He jumps in the comments, says something, and then jumps out

605 00:56:51.180 00:56:52.690 Nick: so he doesn’t scroll.

606 00:56:53.070 00:56:54.359 Nick: All he does is respond.

607 00:56:54.360 00:56:55.019 Uttam Kumaran: Wants to listen.

608 00:56:55.020 00:56:59.049 Nick: Notifications. And he, like he has said in a podcast like.

609 00:56:59.250 00:57:06.300 Nick: you know, I get people, ask me all the time like, How are you so active like? How are you always on? Always in the comments?

610 00:57:06.370 00:57:08.100 Nick: And literally he just does that.

611 00:57:08.120 00:57:10.530 Nick: And this is, you know, this is kind of separate from.

612 00:57:10.530 00:57:12.609 Uttam Kumaran: Like. For like like this, for example.

613 00:57:12.620 00:57:15.000 Uttam Kumaran: like I don’t even know if I could see.

614 00:57:15.030 00:57:16.790 Uttam Kumaran: See. I can’t like.

615 00:57:16.970 00:57:20.039 Uttam Kumaran: Just come in and say one thing which is like, exactly

616 00:57:20.890 00:57:21.570 Uttam Kumaran: or

617 00:57:21.620 00:57:22.820 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, like.

618 00:57:22.820 00:57:24.090 Nick: Exactly. Yeah.

619 00:57:25.570 00:57:30.270 Uttam Kumaran: I mean, half of these are exactly, but yes, I see. I see what he’s trying to do.

620 00:57:30.270 00:57:33.510 Nick: Yeah, yeah. And it, it works because it’s just.

621 00:57:33.510 00:57:34.260 Uttam Kumaran: No, it. Yeah.

622 00:57:34.260 00:57:47.310 Nick: It’s ubiquity. And so, you know you can. You can comment. These sort of insightful stuff. I’d say Linkedin is a little tougher, and I’ll I’ll preface this by saying that I don’t use Linkedin very often. I ghost right for a lot of people on Linkedin.

623 00:57:47.953 00:57:56.206 Uttam Kumaran: Let me let me even show you some of the stuff in the in my data that, like people are doing. Let’s see

624 00:58:00.190 00:58:03.940 Uttam Kumaran: fuck. I mean the one time I get on here. Is there any like good data?

625 00:58:11.160 00:58:18.120 Uttam Kumaran: like, let’s see if I go to my friend’s profile. He has been on a tear just like conferencing and try to like, boost this shit.

626 00:58:18.230 00:58:18.825 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah,

627 00:58:21.280 00:58:22.380 Uttam Kumaran: let’s see.

628 00:58:26.730 00:58:28.908 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. So there’ll be a post like

629 00:58:35.170 00:58:36.370 Uttam Kumaran: let’s see.

630 00:58:38.570 00:58:42.569 Uttam Kumaran: like I mean, a lot of people do like congrats, or or there’s stuff where it’s like.

631 00:58:43.480 00:58:46.520 Uttam Kumaran: exactly, just like, just like literally engaging with it.

632 00:58:46.750 00:58:49.390 Uttam Kumaran: And but again, some of this stuff is like.

633 00:58:50.330 00:58:53.939 Uttam Kumaran: this is about like, Okay, it’s this is people being like.

634 00:58:54.480 00:59:02.099 Uttam Kumaran: So some fucking nomenclature is is like out of date, we should change some nomenclature, or there’s things like

635 00:59:06.900 00:59:07.710 Uttam Kumaran: like.

636 00:59:07.850 00:59:16.459 Uttam Kumaran: like, join us at this conference. Okay, I’m coming to that conference. Or here’s this thing about like some data comment. And like, I’m just gonna leave a quick reply.

637 00:59:17.052 00:59:18.409 Uttam Kumaran: Like, for example.

638 00:59:18.500 00:59:22.349 Uttam Kumaran: this guy Trevor Fox writes about Beta stuff.

639 00:59:22.610 00:59:26.660 Uttam Kumaran: Another week of data stuff. And then Clint’s like, yeah, agreed with blah blah blah.

640 00:59:26.990 00:59:27.479 Nick: Yeah, and.

641 00:59:27.480 00:59:32.079 Uttam Kumaran: And I called him. He’s like dude. I’m getting a ton of inbound from from doing this sort of this sort of shit.

642 00:59:34.630 00:59:46.039 Nick: That’s interesting. Okay, that’s good to know. I I yeah, I was, gonna say, like, I don’t interact on Linkedin. So I don’t know how successful that strategy is, but if it is fucking, go for it.

643 00:59:46.040 00:59:46.530 Uttam Kumaran: A lot of.

644 00:59:46.530 00:59:46.980 Nick: I’m.

645 00:59:46.980 00:59:51.810 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, I know he and he literally one day text me, he’s like dude. I’m I’m gonna become like.

646 00:59:51.910 01:00:08.049 Uttam Kumaran: cause he even go back on his stuff. He he wasn’t. But he. He’s running a company now, and he’s like, I’m just gonna become. I’m just gonna start doing this like every day just. And he’s like it’s actually working. We’re getting a shit. He’s like he’s tells me every time he’s like I don’t know why you are not

647 01:00:08.440 01:00:10.350 Uttam Kumaran: posting more on Linkedin.

648 01:00:11.245 01:00:11.840 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

649 01:00:12.000 01:00:15.360 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. And I think I think in my market, where

650 01:00:15.480 01:00:19.859 Uttam Kumaran: a lot of the Ceos I work with are not going to be on twitter.

651 01:00:20.850 01:00:21.350 Nick: That’s great!

652 01:00:21.350 01:00:23.470 Uttam Kumaran: The the d, the d to C

653 01:00:24.290 01:00:27.109 Uttam Kumaran: sort of like audience, and may might be.

654 01:00:27.810 01:00:28.780 Uttam Kumaran: but

655 01:00:29.690 01:00:40.160 Uttam Kumaran: these people are like Linkedin fiends, like the people are really, really like with the bags that I’m going after bigger enterprise companies. They’re on Linkedin, heavy.

656 01:00:40.660 01:01:01.159 Nick: Perfect. Okay, great. And so it’s, that’s the funny thing about a lot of this is that, like in the past, I’ve done a lot of work with Twitter. Every single one of my clients are linked in right now, and and it it works, and and I will say, like to Linkedin’s credit. I I shit on the the etiquette and and some of the sort of culture of the platform, but to its credit.

657 01:01:01.520 01:01:06.095 Nick: the way it they have built their algorithm in a way that it

658 01:01:09.020 01:01:10.450 Nick: rewards

659 01:01:10.950 01:01:19.730 Nick: thoughtful and longer form written pieces by virtue of the fact that they can survive for more than 2 h, so

660 01:01:20.000 01:01:32.459 Nick: you know, like some of the best performing posts I’ve written for clients are still getting comments. 2 weeks later. You can’t get that on like any other platform. And so, like I, I definitely am a proponent of of some channel.

661 01:01:33.380 01:01:50.984 Nick: whichever one your your target audience is on, if it’s on Linkedin perfect, you’ve got like you will have the educational content and the sort of timely trend related, content to to be able to thrive on that platform. And so you know, we’re, I’m going down the list here. We’re talking about

662 01:01:51.550 01:01:53.810 Nick: So you have the case studies on your website

663 01:01:53.900 01:02:05.189 Nick: and on on those case study summaries. You’ll have a button that says, like, read the whole long form thing right? Read the entire extended case study. Then you have the website blog.

664 01:02:05.340 01:02:06.540 Nick: And

665 01:02:07.100 01:02:17.049 Nick: this can be a newsletter, too. Newsletters kind of personal. Some people really like it. Some people don’t. I would say, if you’re considering

666 01:02:17.150 01:02:24.970 Nick: a newsletter as a means of distribution for the blog, you know, the only the only difference between the 2 is the blog, you know, resides in a single place, whereas a newsletter sent

667 01:02:26.950 01:02:50.319 Nick: If you’re considering a newsletter, I would recommend that you basically make it. You give it a Se. Separate name, so you don’t name it after the agency. It comes directly from you, so signed your name at the bottom, or written by you and you give it a personality of its own, so that it is literally the CEO of this agency writing about this thing

668 01:02:51.167 01:02:52.510 Nick: as the expert.

669 01:02:52.700 01:02:55.080 Nick: So you you sort of positioned it.

670 01:02:55.080 01:02:55.510 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

671 01:02:55.510 01:02:59.709 Nick: Project, and then, you know, you can copy, paste all of those.

672 01:02:59.730 01:03:09.255 Nick: If if you do the newsletter, you can still copy, paste all of the articles, put them on the blog and and give them the agency branding. That’s fine. It’s the same information. But if you are going to.

673 01:03:09.500 01:03:10.469 Uttam Kumaran: Do it that way.

674 01:03:11.063 01:03:18.910 Nick: If you’re gonna distribute through email no one reads a corporate blog no one gives a fuck, even if it’s the best information out there. No one wants to read that.

675 01:03:19.296 01:03:25.319 Nick: so put it under your name. Separate brands. Make it a pet project, you know your. The announcement is like.

676 01:03:25.510 01:03:33.930 Nick: hey? You know, I learn all this really cool stuff in my day to day. I don’t have time to share about it, or or like I don’t. I don’t have.

677 01:03:34.290 01:03:48.349 Nick: There’s so much extra stuff that is not like directly related to company affairs that I wanna write about that I wanna talk about. I’m gonna do it in this blog, like here all the trends and updates, because in my free time, like, I read product announcements and.

678 01:03:48.350 01:03:48.780 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.

679 01:03:48.780 01:03:51.309 Nick: No one else is going to be able to provide that information to you.

680 01:03:51.420 01:03:53.320 Nick: So you make it its own separate thing.

681 01:03:53.890 01:03:55.879 Nick: Yeah, that’s that’s all

682 01:03:55.890 01:04:20.581 Nick: blog or newsletter. All of that is gonna be timely. Anything that has either an expiration date or is related to a trend? Or is can basic. Anything that can be sort of stacked chronologically should be in the blog. Anything else that’s evergreen should be in the educational database, even if it is something entertaining and not directly related to the business like, How does cold storage work? Or how does

683 01:04:21.190 01:04:22.730 Nick: Yeah. Cold transportation?

684 01:04:23.386 01:04:25.810 Nick: How does that kind of thing work.

685 01:04:25.860 01:04:31.120 Nick: Put that in the educational database, because that’s that kind of content. One is evergreen

686 01:04:31.663 01:04:38.139 Nick: and 2. It is going to be one of those things that drags people into that sort of rabbit hole

687 01:04:38.170 01:04:40.669 Nick: so it can be a mix of

688 01:04:42.300 01:04:45.430 Nick: content is directly related to your product offering

689 01:04:45.560 01:05:02.750 Nick: and just general background, interesting information. That’s sort of tangentially related to to the services that you provide. And the cool thing is because you’re operating in so many different industries like the best articles are, gonna be the ones that are like. Let me explain to you this piece of insider knowledge

690 01:05:02.760 01:05:05.800 Nick: for this specific industry that you probably didn’t know about.

691 01:05:06.430 01:05:08.470 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, exactly. That’s one.

692 01:05:08.470 01:05:09.280 Nick: Then.

693 01:05:09.540 01:05:14.979 Nick: and then what you do. You take both the evergreen and the timely stuff, and you start repurposing it to social

694 01:05:15.473 01:05:24.156 Nick: and the cool thing is because you’ve done the work of writing the long form already. Repurposing to social is relatively straightforward. You can basically.

695 01:05:25.337 01:05:38.559 Nick: you know if it’s written long form on Linkedin, you basically chop it up into a shorter version and turn it to a long form post, create a really good hook for the first one or 2 sentences. Throw a photo on there. And then

696 01:05:38.640 01:05:40.379 Nick: you start posting those

697 01:05:40.450 01:05:43.490 Nick: you take your best, performing one and and like

698 01:05:43.820 01:05:59.850 Nick: post that again, like every 3 months. There’s there’s a cyclicality to good performing content like people forget. After a couple of months your audience grows larger, your reach gets larger, so you just reuse it. The whole name of like the content thing is like the whole purpose is

699 01:06:00.530 01:06:06.449 Nick: telling really good stories, and repurposing, like every scrap of information, into a different format.

700 01:06:06.450 01:06:07.859 Uttam Kumaran: Hmm, okay.

701 01:06:08.300 01:06:09.620 Nick: So you have.

702 01:06:09.830 01:06:11.580 Nick: you know, repurpose social

703 01:06:12.187 01:06:18.849 Nick: I would say on top of that, if if there was another escalation of commitment, it’s just day to day posting.

704 01:06:18.870 01:06:24.290 Nick: So my my best clients are usually my most successful clients

705 01:06:24.410 01:06:30.990 Nick: are the ones who post on a regular basis. They’re they’re typically the ones who are not

706 01:06:31.020 01:06:36.130 Nick: trying to offload the entire responsibility of a social presence to someone else.

707 01:06:36.870 01:06:44.499 Nick: Even if it is just like they’re firing off a random two-sentence thought once every couple days like that.

708 01:06:45.080 01:06:55.769 Nick: and engaging with the people in your comment section is is substantial, like the whole idea. And again, this. This doesn’t matter if you end up hiring a content person or not. This is just

709 01:06:55.940 01:06:58.980 Nick: the social part of social media is the most important part.

710 01:06:59.190 01:07:00.379 Nick: Seems like you can have it.

711 01:07:00.380 01:07:04.959 Uttam Kumaran: It’s also it’s also the ratio of like people that are. I think it’s becoming even more parent.

712 01:07:05.160 01:07:09.800 Uttam Kumaran: The difference of people that are absorbing versus people that are writing.

713 01:07:10.657 01:07:17.490 Uttam Kumaran: I I think honestly, that divide is probably getting worse. I think sometimes people think like more people are still writing content, and

714 01:07:18.010 01:07:24.089 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know. I don’t think the average like I don’t. I think, after moving to Austin, I met some of these Twitter heads.

715 01:07:24.160 01:07:31.130 Uttam Kumaran: but like otherwise I I don’t. I don’t think a lot of people I know are doing any writing and putting it out there

716 01:07:31.370 01:07:32.300 Uttam Kumaran: and

717 01:07:32.430 01:07:35.229 Uttam Kumaran: like, I think they’re just everyone’s just consuming.

718 01:07:35.290 01:07:38.940 Uttam Kumaran: So I think it does pay. If you can get in people’s years.

719 01:07:39.308 01:07:48.569 Uttam Kumaran: And you mentioned like, kind of the algorithm promoting. Or you kind of again putting notifications on the people that are getting a lot of views and commenting on their stuff.

720 01:07:49.369 01:07:51.965 Uttam Kumaran: I think, is like a really good strategy.

721 01:07:52.290 01:07:57.074 Nick: So in 2,019, there was a study. I was just trying to find this link

722 01:07:57.580 01:07:59.479 Nick: of behavior on Twitter.

723 01:08:01.460 01:08:05.400 Nick: 10%, 80% of tweets come from 10% of users.

724 01:08:05.550 01:08:10.240 Nick: And this is this is true. This power law is true across

725 01:08:10.310 01:08:31.949 Nick: basically every social platform. You’re you’re right. You are right to to think or to assume that there aren’t, that many people that are actually posting the vast majority of the Internet, broadly speaking, consumes. And so what that I mean? It means a couple of different things. One like it’s easier to break into like it’s easier to be a part of that top 10% than than you might think.

726 01:08:32.300 01:08:33.640 Nick: And 2,

727 01:08:34.130 01:08:35.700 Nick: when you think about.

728 01:08:35.830 01:08:38.689 Nick: you know the people that you’re trying to reach.

729 01:08:39.710 01:08:46.280 Nick: it may seem, even on Linkedin. It may seem that they’re not that active because you don’t see many posts, but everyone is lurking.

730 01:08:46.660 01:08:56.320 Nick: everyone is lurking. And so if you, if you are able to develop even the slightest bit of consistency, you’ll be appearing over and over and over in the feed

731 01:08:57.710 01:09:02.619 Nick: and you can become a top 10% user with relatively.

732 01:09:02.660 01:09:05.530 Nick: not low effort, but low, like a low volume.

733 01:09:06.160 01:09:09.280 Nick: It’s really just the consistency. That’s the differentiator.

734 01:09:09.763 01:09:20.996 Nick: And so that’s that’s the balance. And you know, a lot of what I’m describing here is like the full on long term, build out for an effective content strategy for for like an agency play

735 01:09:21.880 01:09:26.270 Nick: but that’s that’s really what it can be about. That’s what the funnel can be, which is.

736 01:09:26.630 01:09:30.509 Nick: you are the public face of this thing that you’re building.

737 01:09:31.064 01:09:46.140 Nick: You genuinely are inundated with all of this information and context and these learnings on a day to day basis. And you’re sharing that with other people in the industry that are passionate about the same thing. The end of the day like this is really all about

738 01:09:46.390 01:09:49.770 Nick: sharing interesting, entertaining, informative stuff.

739 01:09:50.277 01:10:07.530 Nick: And that’s what the most successful people end up doing. Now, there’s a way to systematize this to a certain extent to make it a little bit more efficient. But it’s that knowledge that experience and those learnings that you have on a day to day basis that are really going to make you stand out.

740 01:10:07.880 01:10:10.769 Nick: The pitch that I always give to people is that

741 01:10:14.290 01:10:18.980 Nick: people want to follow someone on social media just because they think they’re interesting.

742 01:10:19.340 01:10:20.400 Nick: So

743 01:10:20.440 01:10:32.410 Nick: I follow a lot of people in industries that are completely unrelated to what I do. And it’s just because it’s interesting to hear their perspective on current events, on the world, on what they’re working on.

744 01:10:32.450 01:10:34.940 Nick: simply because they are an interesting person.

745 01:10:35.433 01:10:46.080 Nick: And that’s what you have the opportunity to do through social. And it’s actually a phenomenal way to it. Turns out that being interesting is like a really great way to get new business.

746 01:10:46.900 01:10:47.500 Nick: Yeah.

747 01:10:47.560 01:10:49.429 Nick: And so that’s that’s what

748 01:10:49.540 01:10:52.600 Nick: all of this is. And so

749 01:10:52.740 01:10:53.530 Nick: you know, all.

750 01:10:53.783 01:10:55.049 Uttam Kumaran: I guess right now, yeah.

751 01:10:55.120 01:10:56.809 Uttam Kumaran: yeah, one thing is like.

752 01:10:56.900 01:11:01.340 Uttam Kumaran: if you can think about like your busiest clients or people that are like really

753 01:11:01.410 01:11:03.770 Uttam Kumaran: starting this from scratch.

754 01:11:03.900 01:11:10.560 Uttam Kumaran: Just like you said. The. The one thing I’m afraid of is very similar to like going to the gym is like the consistency piece.

755 01:11:10.570 01:11:16.820 Uttam Kumaran: So it’s also thinking about like what strategies you’ve seen, and people to actually implement this as part of their

756 01:11:16.840 01:11:26.289 Uttam Kumaran: schedule. And although I think, like for me. What that would look like is just like trying to carve out time. But if you found tactics or methods of like

757 01:11:26.610 01:11:37.870 Uttam Kumaran: like bulking bulk doing some of this work, or when to kind of do this versus event to post and like the editing process, anything like that would be super super helpful, because.

758 01:11:37.870 01:11:38.750 Nick: Okay.

759 01:11:38.750 01:11:42.029 Uttam Kumaran: Like that’s gonna be where I flub this

760 01:11:42.350 01:11:48.240 Uttam Kumaran: just cause I know I know me. And it’s gonna be something that I’ll do really head on. And then

761 01:11:48.320 01:11:50.969 Uttam Kumaran: if it’s not part of a routine

762 01:11:51.502 01:11:57.517 Uttam Kumaran: and then it’s it’s gonna it’s and there’s not like a feedback loop.

763 01:11:58.440 01:12:00.479 Uttam Kumaran: and there’s not some sort of like, do it.

764 01:12:00.670 01:12:11.469 Uttam Kumaran: edit it, post it, and then understand the feedback, and then do a next thing like it’s I’m gonna struggle. So that’s something that if you have any sort of tips or ideas

765 01:12:11.610 01:12:13.440 Uttam Kumaran: that would be really really helpful.

766 01:12:13.660 01:12:16.790 Nick: Okay, I will say

767 01:12:16.980 01:12:19.839 Nick: myself along with most other people

768 01:12:21.500 01:12:23.110 Nick: who who do

769 01:12:23.820 01:12:37.595 Nick: I? I? So I struggle with consistently, like everyone, finds consistency so difficult, which is totally fair, like I’m a I I have those tips. I don’t follow them myself. I’m a fucking fraud. But I’ll still share like.

770 01:12:37.940 01:12:53.370 Uttam Kumaran: That’s fine. But even even for you, it’s like during even it doesn’t have to be all the time. It’s just like, or it’s like during certain moments. Or you’re like, Hey, I started doing this. I have these 10 processes, and I’ll cut them down like free and like, this is kind of my process

771 01:12:53.470 01:12:57.020 Uttam Kumaran: that way. It’s like I just have something ideas to pick from, because I mean.

772 01:12:57.020 01:12:57.940 Nick: Absolutely.

773 01:12:58.060 01:13:17.569 Uttam Kumaran: And for me, it’s I’m gonna treat it like I do any writing which is just like, try to hold up and get it done. But it’s gonna be like pulling teeth. So a lot of the times in this sort of writing, what I do is I try to. I try to like outline, let it sit for a day. The brain will kind of process it come back, work on it again. So even if you have ideas

774 01:13:17.620 01:13:32.730 Uttam Kumaran: on that or opportunities again to like batch to batch some of these or, Yeah, that’s anything about the actual writing. And I’m I’m definitely gonna call some of my friends who are, who are actual writers, too, and just kind of like pick their brain. Everybody has this this sort of issues, but.

775 01:13:33.820 01:13:34.240 Nick: Yeah.

776 01:13:34.390 01:13:36.619 Uttam Kumaran: You know. Yeah, anything would be helpful.

777 01:13:36.960 01:13:38.949 Nick: Okay, cool. So

778 01:13:39.860 01:13:41.340 Nick: I’ll show you a couple things.

779 01:13:45.670 01:13:53.506 Nick: I’ll show you. So the first the first piece of advice first thing I found that works for me is

780 01:13:55.640 01:14:03.100 Nick: whenever you have a an idea like, I have a very basic system of classification myself for

781 01:14:03.250 01:14:06.129 Nick: for writing, and I’ll so that’s not it.

782 01:14:07.450 01:14:09.420 Nick: And I can screen share this real quick.

783 01:14:18.110 01:14:19.690 Nick: Okay, cool. Can you see this.

784 01:14:20.710 01:14:21.430 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

785 01:14:21.990 01:14:26.299 Nick: Okay, so I do some newsletter writing for for myself.

786 01:14:26.380 01:14:30.609 Nick: And this is literally my drafts folder. And what I do.

787 01:14:30.610 01:14:31.140 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

788 01:14:31.140 01:14:32.950 Nick: And and you can kind of like

789 01:14:33.010 01:14:51.929 Nick: you can build off of this if there’s a more efficient way that you found that works for you. But basically, what I do is whenever I have an idea, I just write it down for as long or as short as that idea is so the the rebrand of Chilean Cass. As an example like I,

790 01:14:51.930 01:15:13.350 Nick: some of what I write about is how narrative impacts the world around us. Chile and C. Bath. C. Bass was not always called that. There’s a really interesting story as to like how they rebranded it. One of the most successful selling fish in the world. This was just an article I found. I came across it. I knew that I would forget it immediately if I didn’t save it. So I threw it into this and and walked away.

791 01:15:14.616 01:15:17.080 Nick: There are other examples.

792 01:15:19.690 01:15:23.079 Nick: let’s see, I think.

793 01:15:23.730 01:15:40.610 Nick: Yes, okay. So another example of a piece, I’m writing about how Varda space using a photographer to document the landing of their first batch of space drugs. Is related to like memes and information.

794 01:15:41.005 01:15:50.789 Nick: I just like I had this thought, I, brain dumped in here. I’m gonna come back to it. And basically, what I’ve done is like, these are all ideas. And

795 01:15:51.780 01:15:58.259 Nick: I have, you know, like scheduled post dates for a lot of these, as I’m working them out.

796 01:15:58.642 01:16:00.759 Nick: And basically, what I’ll do is.

797 01:16:00.980 01:16:06.739 Nick: you know, if I’m getting to a point where I need to come up with an idea for the following week. I’ll just go through this brain dump. I’ll pick one.

798 01:16:06.740 01:16:07.400 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

799 01:16:07.400 01:16:17.312 Nick: I’ll then assign it. I’ll then begin working on it and basically assign it a published date. Now, this is for longer form stuff. This is for a strategy that’s a little bit less structured.

800 01:16:19.740 01:16:21.100 Nick: let’s see.

801 01:16:23.480 01:16:24.710 Nick: where did I put this?

802 01:16:27.150 01:16:29.180 Nick: A

803 01:16:29.250 01:16:30.720 Nick: calendar?

804 01:16:32.240 01:16:34.652 Nick: This is so. This is one of my clients.

805 01:16:35.220 01:16:40.433 Nick: this is for social posts. So I created like I I do everything in notion. So

806 01:16:41.508 01:16:48.200 Nick: you know you can use whichever app works for you, or whatever you use for organization. Notion is kind of my thing. So

807 01:16:48.210 01:16:51.299 Nick: that newsletter thing is for longer form pieces.

808 01:16:51.798 01:17:15.729 Nick: That require less planning. I can basically just pull an idea and then begin writing out of it like the only deadline or the only consistency I need to keep is like the posting date. With this one these are a little bit different, and so a everything here is unpublished. So the the orange ones are drafted. This is kind of like into the future here, and for this client I’m posting 3 times a week. We’re doing long form, Linkedin

809 01:17:16.295 01:17:21.299 Nick: and what I will do is, I think, for this one.

810 01:17:22.170 01:17:24.909 Nick: Have a note here about like creative distribution.

811 01:17:24.920 01:17:32.212 Nick: I’ve already chosen the topic idea, and like I’ve written notes on it, and that’s for Monday, Tuesday, or Monday, Wednesday.

812 01:17:33.420 01:17:37.019 Nick: I know that I need to fill out these slots.

813 01:17:37.460 01:17:46.850 Nick: and whenever, like him and I are talking, and I have a content idea that I think will work for one of these designated slots. I’ll throw it in there and then come back and write it out.

814 01:17:47.190 01:17:48.360 Nick: dot com, and

815 01:17:48.560 01:17:52.560 Nick: the other thing. And and again, you don’t need this like complex system.

816 01:17:52.570 01:18:00.269 Nick: What you want to do is remove you want to avoid decision, fatigue and remove contact switching whenever you’re doing this kind of thing.

817 01:18:00.883 01:18:08.819 Nick: And so and that’s kind of just to build a muscle like. So that’s to remain, Con, that’s to keep consistent while you’re still building the muscle.

818 01:18:10.870 01:18:12.499 Nick: the last. Exactly

819 01:18:12.680 01:18:16.599 Nick: that I recommend doing. That’s just really easy is like.

820 01:18:16.910 01:18:33.979 Nick: pick a day of the week, pick a couple of days of the week, and then just designate that day for a certain kind of post. So, for example, I have some clients where every Friday is like a a strictly and overtly promotional post. So it’s not like thought leadership or something. It’s just.

821 01:18:33.990 01:18:46.020 Nick: you know. Here’s what we’re working on. Here’s what our teams doing. Here’s an interesting product Update that way. Again, you’re removing some decision fatigue by predetermining the category of thing that you’re gonna talk about.

822 01:18:46.980 01:18:47.700 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

823 01:18:47.700 01:18:55.470 Nick: And that makes it really easy. Then I can just like go into my list of topic ideas that a and just pick one that’s related to the company.

824 01:18:55.799 01:19:04.159 Nick: So categorizing day of the week with type of the posts type posts helpful and it’ll feel weird to kind of do this at first, because

825 01:19:04.625 01:19:11.799 Nick: you know, I I think for many other people. When you read what they’re posting it, it feels like it’s very organic. It’s off the cuff

826 01:19:12.100 01:19:13.607 Nick: which it is

827 01:19:14.200 01:19:18.039 Nick: for those people they have built that muscle, or they are.

828 01:19:19.720 01:19:31.810 Nick: there’s a certain there, there’s a certain level of insanity and mental illness to like addicting yourself to social media. And then, like, you know, those guys, those guys do it for the love of the game. They’re they’re out of their mind.

829 01:19:31.810 01:19:32.300 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah.

830 01:19:32.300 01:19:34.680 Nick: And and they found

831 01:19:34.900 01:19:38.400 Nick: they found a reward mechanism that that

832 01:19:38.540 01:19:40.449 Nick: just so happens

833 01:19:40.860 01:19:57.929 Nick: to to have a positive effect, like they would be posting whether or not it was making them money. Whether or not it was generating new business. They do it for the love of the game. They’re out of their minds. You can build the muscle and the feedback loop will come. It, like the hardest part, will be the first 3 months. The first.

834 01:19:58.810 01:20:05.440 Uttam Kumaran: So that’s the thing is like I I wanna, I think, backing in from the long form to short form. Well, at least give me like.

835 01:20:06.550 01:20:10.850 Uttam Kumaran: well, at least be like, okay. If I have nothing else, I could just post that.

836 01:20:10.850 01:20:11.080 Nick: Yes.

837 01:20:11.310 01:20:14.299 Uttam Kumaran: And then, if you do have these like spur, the moment things.

838 01:20:14.300 01:20:15.640 Nick: Exact. Get that out there, too.

839 01:20:15.640 01:20:24.750 Uttam Kumaran: And I do have those all the time. And I basically, I’m just talking to people in Dms about those things. So and then again. I I even also have a notes app

840 01:20:24.780 01:20:26.830 Uttam Kumaran: like note, just filled with like.

841 01:20:26.830 01:20:27.539 Nick: Perfect. Yeah.

842 01:20:27.540 01:20:36.920 Uttam Kumaran: Like this, this, this, this, this, so absolutely so this that that helps a lot that they could think it through. Think through it that way. Okay.

843 01:20:37.460 01:20:40.730 Nick: And that’s why the evergreen stuff is cool, too, like if if

844 01:20:40.890 01:20:49.050 Nick: I always feel like writing long form and writing evergreen topics in long form is is easier to do like social media can be pretty

845 01:20:49.379 01:20:56.400 Nick: intimidating like when you’re when you’re just like you’re trying to put out a couple of posts for the day. You’re just

846 01:20:56.840 01:21:00.519 Nick: so. The evergreen stuff is cool just because it works whenever

847 01:21:00.790 01:21:01.370 Nick: it’s always and.

848 01:21:01.370 01:21:01.840 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

849 01:21:01.840 01:21:10.170 Nick: It’s easier. It’s almost easier to write and research a lot of times when you’re doing the long form for the first time. And you can always sort of rely on that.

850 01:21:11.074 01:21:20.710 Nick: But I mean, you’ll begin. The cool thing is this is literally like as your audience gets larger. It genuinely is the process of just like addicting yourself to the the validation.

851 01:21:21.440 01:21:44.770 Nick: It it it works the the fee. You will find that feedback loop. It’s just that it takes them. It takes a minute to build that momentum, and that momentum comes from consistency, and I wish it were any other way. It’s the worst part about all of this. But unfortunately, like consistency is the way, and especially on Linkedin Linkedin algorithm, more so than others like Twitter actually

852 01:21:44.810 01:21:49.100 Nick: will begin to boost and prioritize content. If you’re posting every day.

853 01:21:49.560 01:21:59.570 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah. And I wanna run the Linkedin stuff is where I think I can actually run some ads like, run some money against. And it’s actually worth it.

854 01:21:59.740 01:22:00.400 Uttam Kumaran: like I don’t.

855 01:22:00.400 01:22:01.345 Nick: Have you checked?

856 01:22:01.930 01:22:02.200 Uttam Kumaran: Plastic!

857 01:22:02.200 01:22:03.020 Nick: Pm’s.

858 01:22:03.240 01:22:04.100 Nick: If you take Cpi.

859 01:22:04.100 01:22:06.809 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t know what the Linkedin Cpms are. I don’t.

860 01:22:06.810 01:22:18.000 Nick: It’s fucking bad. I know very few people that actually run ads on Linkedin. I you I think you’ll have to check Cpms for your target audience. But Linkedin is obviously expensive, like

861 01:22:18.260 01:22:20.460 Nick: triple digits in the hundreds. Sometimes.

862 01:22:20.460 01:22:23.290 Uttam Kumaran: No way. I thought it was.

863 01:22:23.290 01:22:23.780 Nick: So.

864 01:22:23.780 01:22:25.280 Uttam Kumaran: To be like, okay.

865 01:22:25.610 01:22:31.569 Nick: And and it depends on who you’re trying to reach in the audience. But Linkedin knows the value, the enterprise.

866 01:22:31.570 01:22:31.980 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.

867 01:22:31.980 01:22:42.229 Nick: Of the captive audience they have, and they price that accordingly. You would be, I think, much better off either doing the posting yourself and building an audience, or honestly, just like hiring someone to build north.

868 01:22:42.230 01:22:42.730 Uttam Kumaran: For sure.

869 01:22:43.045 01:22:43.360 Nick: It’s.

870 01:22:43.750 01:22:44.049 Uttam Kumaran: Share. Yeah.

871 01:22:44.050 01:22:48.630 Nick: There are. There are a bunch of different trace of Linkedin, and we can talk a little bit more about that kind of

872 01:22:48.970 01:22:52.950 Nick: after after I get these documents written out, and you know we run through.

873 01:22:53.351 01:22:59.280 Nick: We. We talk a little bit more about these strategies like there are other small. There are other smaller things that you can do with Linkedin, but like

874 01:22:59.400 01:23:06.429 Nick: building an audience is easier to do on Linkedin than many other places, and it’s like a highest leverage place that you can do it if if your target customer is there.

875 01:23:06.885 01:23:11.239 Nick: So I would even like I would challenge you today.

876 01:23:11.550 01:23:16.670 Nick: Just write a 2 or 3 sentence thought about what you’re working on, what you’re doing fired off

877 01:23:16.890 01:23:21.740 Nick: like it for for 2 weeks. Just post dog shit. Just just.

878 01:23:21.740 01:23:22.070 Uttam Kumaran: Yes.

879 01:23:22.070 01:23:24.810 Nick: Word vomit. It doesn’t matter. All you want.

880 01:23:24.810 01:23:25.240 Uttam Kumaran: I do?

881 01:23:25.240 01:23:39.739 Nick: Honestly, all you wanna do is just like Fluff, the engagement algorithm. So you know, after a couple of weeks you’re ready to post something genuine that you’ve spent a couple of minutes writing and and it will be the the algorithm will be more

882 01:23:39.820 01:23:44.100 Nick: crimes to to push your stuff further, because you’ve been posting every day.

883 01:23:44.770 01:23:55.039 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, yeah, I’m basically now, like, in the next 2 weeks, like the new site should come out. And then I’m basically gonna be in a mode where, like I’ve

884 01:23:55.190 01:24:00.910 Uttam Kumaran: there was some internal changes, and that almost everything is kind of like running mo

885 01:24:02.100 01:24:02.970 Uttam Kumaran: post.

886 01:24:04.170 01:24:13.590 Uttam Kumaran: So you allow me for at least this month and next month I should pretty like I’m I’m kind of like ripping myself out of the equation. So all my time is, gonna be.

887 01:24:13.590 01:24:14.090 Nick: Do that also.

888 01:24:14.090 01:24:20.609 Uttam Kumaran: On like outbound stuff. Basically. So that’s that’s kind of what I’m hoping is that like the.

889 01:24:21.530 01:24:21.940 Nick: That’s.

890 01:24:21.940 01:24:31.989 Uttam Kumaran: I’m like pumped to kind of start doing this. And like again, like, have the website up, write the long form and like right like again, just blast through like 5

891 01:24:32.200 01:24:35.050 Uttam Kumaran: to 10 case studies, or like.

892 01:24:35.050 01:24:35.470 Nick: Oh, yeah.

893 01:24:35.470 01:24:44.240 Uttam Kumaran: Same things, and then just have, like at least one month or 2 months of just like small things to put out there and then, just like, run through your playbook.

894 01:24:45.920 01:24:48.170 Uttam Kumaran: Basically for the upstream

895 01:24:48.910 01:24:50.869 Uttam Kumaran: and and so.

896 01:24:51.610 01:24:53.510 Nick: Hold on! You’re cutting out a little bit. Can you hear me?

897 01:24:55.820 01:24:56.869 Uttam Kumaran: And I really don’t

898 01:24:57.950 01:24:58.740 Uttam Kumaran: like.

899 01:24:59.920 01:25:00.640 Nick: Jeremy right.

900 01:25:02.220 01:25:04.350 Uttam Kumaran: We get to, you know

901 01:25:09.140 01:25:10.090 Uttam Kumaran: you hear me.

902 01:25:12.130 01:25:13.230 Uttam Kumaran: I can hear you now.

903 01:25:13.650 01:25:16.719 Nick: Okay, cool. Yeah. You’re cutting out for like the last 20 s there.

904 01:25:16.900 01:25:17.980 Nick: But you said you wanted to be.

905 01:25:17.980 01:25:18.549 Uttam Kumaran: You know, I just.

906 01:25:18.550 01:25:20.290 Nick: And run my playbook right.

907 01:25:20.510 01:25:29.730 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, basically, like, everything is kind of prepared. And then I run through some of the bigger articles and then basically on Twitter and Linkedin.

908 01:25:30.280 01:25:37.030 Uttam Kumaran: just chop it up and and run exactly like what you’re saying. So that’s I’m sort of starting. I’m starting basically from like

909 01:25:37.170 01:25:44.109 Uttam Kumaran: the far back, which is, get the website done. The longer form stuff sitting there waiting for the click.

910 01:25:44.970 01:25:50.769 Uttam Kumaran: That funnel kind of figured out. And then then that way, when the traffic comes, it’s not like

911 01:25:50.800 01:25:57.229 Uttam Kumaran: there’s like so much shit that they’re like, Oh, these guys are already, this guys like a literally legit people. That’s the feeling.

912 01:25:57.230 01:25:58.049 Nick: Yeah, absolutely.

913 01:25:58.050 01:25:59.884 Uttam Kumaran: They wanna establish like? It’s not.

914 01:26:00.500 01:26:01.820 Nick: Trust, right.

915 01:26:01.820 01:26:02.990 Uttam Kumaran: Other way around.

916 01:26:11.280 01:26:14.780 Nick: There we go. Okay. Sorry. I lost you again for a few seconds. I think we should be good.

917 01:26:14.910 01:26:24.509 Nick: amazing man! Fantastic. I gotta hop in a couple of minutes. Do you have any other thoughts? Any other thoughts or questions related to to this segment, to the strategy? Specifically.

918 01:26:28.180 01:26:28.590 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

919 01:26:29.360 01:26:31.990 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t have any thoughts or questions. I think I’m pretty

920 01:26:32.970 01:26:36.910 Uttam Kumaran: good. Just let me know if you need anything else from me.

921 01:26:37.260 01:26:38.719 Nick: Yeah, yeah, definitely, will.

922 01:26:40.500 01:26:43.859 Uttam Kumaran: Maybe my wi-fi is like on its last legs.

923 01:26:46.530 01:26:47.599 Uttam Kumaran: Bye, bye, now.

924 01:26:49.242 01:26:50.699 Nick: I can hear you. Can you hear me?

925 01:26:51.610 01:26:52.420 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, yeah.

926 01:26:53.080 01:26:54.330 Nick: Okay, amazing.

927 01:26:54.630 01:26:56.490 Nick: I was just gonna

928 01:26:57.630 01:26:59.869 Nick: alright amazing. Then I think we’re good.

929 01:27:02.280 01:27:03.060 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.

930 01:27:05.250 01:27:11.162 Uttam Kumaran: Alright. Let me know. Yeah, let me know if you need anything for me. Oh, and then I’m gonna I’m gonna hit the invoice today. Sorry.

931 01:27:11.390 01:27:12.460 Nick: No, you’re fine!

932 01:27:12.680 01:27:14.200 Nick: You’re you’re totally fine.

933 01:27:14.778 01:27:22.740 Nick: Alright fantastic! Well, shoot me a text. Shoot me a message if you need anything else, otherwise I’ll keep you up to date on the status of the write ups.

934 01:27:26.390 01:27:28.365 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Alright. Perfect. Thanks.

935 01:27:28.860 01:27:29.600 Nick: Later man.