Meeting Title: GTM Planning + Kickoff Date: 2025-09-29 Meeting participants: Robert Tseng, Justina Spinn, Hannah Wang, Ryan Brosas, Rico Rejoso, Uttam Kumaran
WEBVTT
1 00:00:45.990 ⇒ 00:00:46.900 Ryan Brosas: Hi, guys.
2 00:00:48.110 ⇒ 00:00:48.890 Justina Spinn: Maine.
3 00:00:49.390 ⇒ 00:00:50.380 Robert Tseng: Ayy.
4 00:00:58.960 ⇒ 00:01:01.359 Robert Tseng: Sorry, I’m just giving it a minute.
5 00:01:01.750 ⇒ 00:01:03.190 Robert Tseng: In the middle of the day.
6 00:01:52.680 ⇒ 00:01:59.900 Robert Tseng: Okay, well, I guess Uten will join if he joins, but if not, no worries. I’ll kick us off,
7 00:02:01.480 ⇒ 00:02:12.750 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so a few things I want to cover today. One is we kind of redid our OKRs going into Q4, so I want to share that broadly with the team.
8 00:02:12.920 ⇒ 00:02:15.040 Robert Tseng: And then…
9 00:02:15.270 ⇒ 00:02:24.029 Robert Tseng: Yeah, we’re making some adjustments, for the team as well, so I also want to kind of talk about that broadly, and kind of how responsibilities will shift.
10 00:02:24.360 ⇒ 00:02:34.260 Robert Tseng: It kind of follows the OKRs, and then we’ll go through kind of just the regular reporting, from everyone to kind of just give their updates.
11 00:02:37.720 ⇒ 00:02:38.580 Robert Tseng: Okay.
12 00:02:38.770 ⇒ 00:02:41.269 Robert Tseng: So, let me jump into it.
13 00:02:48.960 ⇒ 00:02:49.550 Robert Tseng: 2…
14 00:02:54.970 ⇒ 00:03:04.560 Robert Tseng: Okay, so everyone’s more or less kind of seen this before. These were our Q3, OKRs, so I’ll kind of just, like, briefly read out kind of, like.
15 00:03:05.300 ⇒ 00:03:08.009 Robert Tseng: How we did on each of them, and then, like.
16 00:03:09.010 ⇒ 00:03:12.919 Robert Tseng: It’ll naturally lead into, like, why we made adjustments.
17 00:03:13.130 ⇒ 00:03:18.919 Robert Tseng: So, yeah, Q3 was the first quarter that we ran both marketing and sales, kind of, more or less.
18 00:03:19.710 ⇒ 00:03:23.810 Robert Tseng: as one team, we just call it go-to-market now, I think…
19 00:03:24.280 ⇒ 00:03:34.150 Robert Tseng: just… we’re still calling it sales and marketing, but, yeah, I guess, you know, functionally, we refer to it as… collectively as the go-to-market team.
20 00:03:34.440 ⇒ 00:03:43.389 Robert Tseng: So we have this ambitious goal of filling the pipeline with potential 300K MRR. I think we did not do this.
21 00:03:43.870 ⇒ 00:03:51.959 Robert Tseng: But then it was also, like, that’s not even really the best way to describe it. I think, kind of, issues with this were,
22 00:03:52.440 ⇒ 00:04:04.159 Robert Tseng: we would add new leads, and they would get stuck in the pipeline in their stage for more than one week, right? So, whether it’s, like, Hannah reading out her strategic accounts and, like, you know, weekly asking, like.
23 00:04:04.700 ⇒ 00:04:21.170 Robert Tseng: like, what do we do with this account? Like, are we doing… if we’re not actively following up with them, should they still be in progress or whatnot? And so, I think, we didn’t… I don’t think this objective really captures, kind of, the dynamic of, like, how leads stay within our pipeline.
24 00:04:21.410 ⇒ 00:04:28.729 Robert Tseng: So maybe, collectively, like, across every kind of contact we’ve touched, it might have been
25 00:04:28.730 ⇒ 00:04:50.259 Robert Tseng: you know, potential 300K, but, assuming that every deal starts at 5K, because we’re not really signing any deals under $5K anymore, that’s why every lead that we start, we just assume it to be 5K, so if you just think about that, that’s what, like, 60 leads? Like, did we add 60 leads in Q3?
26 00:04:50.260 ⇒ 00:04:53.749 Robert Tseng: Like, yes? Like, I think the answer is yes.
27 00:04:53.750 ⇒ 00:04:59.309 Robert Tseng: But the idea was, like, more that this needed to be active pipeline. It can’t just be, like.
28 00:04:59.520 ⇒ 00:05:09.630 Robert Tseng: I don’t know, 50 leads that were added, like, in the first month, and then we didn’t really do anything for, like, the rest of the quarter. Like, that wouldn’t really be a good way to measure it, so…
29 00:05:09.630 ⇒ 00:05:21.199 Robert Tseng: I think this objective had to go, like, it wasn’t the best way. Branding resonates with 5 million to 10 million revenue senior operators. I think that was a little bit too abstract. Like, what does resonates even mean?
30 00:05:21.740 ⇒ 00:05:25.999 Robert Tseng: I think we went to a few conferences in Q3, and…
31 00:05:26.160 ⇒ 00:05:31.190 Robert Tseng: I think our language… the language that we use resonates more. I think if you go into…
32 00:05:31.300 ⇒ 00:05:40.929 Robert Tseng: you know, our sales kind of notion. We’ve made a lot of progress on this. We have stuff like the AI Deployment Framework, which kind of, like, talks about
33 00:05:44.670 ⇒ 00:05:45.530 Robert Tseng: Okay.
34 00:05:46.170 ⇒ 00:05:53.519 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I think most of you have seen this before. We’re kind of just improving the way that we talk about, like, what we do, and…
35 00:05:55.330 ⇒ 00:05:59.049 Robert Tseng: So, like, this was relevant for the AI stuff, and then…
36 00:06:01.170 ⇒ 00:06:05.470 Robert Tseng: I like that I can’t go back, I have to, like, type in sales again.
37 00:06:06.000 ⇒ 00:06:08.440 Robert Tseng: It’s kinda weird.
38 00:06:09.860 ⇒ 00:06:19.370 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so, you know, there’s different types of messaging that we experimented with, and I do think, we did do better in having productive conversations with
39 00:06:19.370 ⇒ 00:06:30.930 Robert Tseng: folks that are in this range. Like, right after this call, I’m going to be talking to the, kind of director of digital, or whatever, head of e-com, whatever, at a brand called Honey Stinger, so…
40 00:06:30.930 ⇒ 00:06:35.329 Robert Tseng: He was somebody that I connected with at Shop Talk, and I pretty much just, like.
41 00:06:35.380 ⇒ 00:06:47.619 Robert Tseng: I just took the stuff that we had written before, and I kind of shared about what we do, and he was excited about it, and he might want to work with us. So, I do think we successfully did that, but it still is kind of just, like.
42 00:06:48.560 ⇒ 00:07:00.119 Robert Tseng: well, like, so what? Like, it didn’t really necessarily translate into opportunities. So, I don’t think this is an objective, I think this is really more kind of, something that we need to…
43 00:07:01.270 ⇒ 00:07:06.330 Robert Tseng: like, a result or a KPI that we need to have in order to reach the objective.
44 00:07:06.750 ⇒ 00:07:10.899 Robert Tseng: But it isn’t… it isn’t the end goal, so it shouldn’t be an objective.
45 00:07:12.360 ⇒ 00:07:23.420 Robert Tseng: And then we also had a third one for marketing, you know, scale co-marketed events, and outcome-driven offers. Outcome-driven offers, I don’t think we did a good job of. I…
46 00:07:25.470 ⇒ 00:07:31.360 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, like, we maybe put together a few offerings. We were like, you know, free AI workshop.
47 00:07:31.640 ⇒ 00:07:38.330 Robert Tseng: It’s not really an outcome, it’s just like… it’s like we’re giving away something for free, so I wouldn’t really say it’s an outcome-driven offer.
48 00:07:38.470 ⇒ 00:07:41.059 Robert Tseng: And then on the data side, it wasn’t like.
49 00:07:41.160 ⇒ 00:08:00.269 Robert Tseng: work with Brainforge, and you’ll be able to save X percentage of dollar, or you’ll be able to achieve blah, or whatever. Like, I don’t think we… we focused… we didn’t even get to that. So, I think that’s, kind of something that we… we didn’t… that we didn’t do well, so,
50 00:08:01.110 ⇒ 00:08:01.920 Robert Tseng: Okay.
51 00:08:02.100 ⇒ 00:08:15.050 Robert Tseng: Anyway, so that language is kind of getting brought into a new… a new objective, but… and I think it should have been decoupled a bit more from, like, the co-marketed events, because it’s not like we’re hosting events, and then, like.
52 00:08:15.090 ⇒ 00:08:21.540 Robert Tseng: pitching every attendee at an event, saying, like, Grayforce can help you accomplish XYZ.
53 00:08:21.540 ⇒ 00:08:37.609 Robert Tseng: Like, I think what we found was that the events, we were more just trying to be helpful, like, teaching, coaching, making connections, and then through that, kind of, like, being introduced to other people, or being able to continue the relationship elsewhere. So, I do feel like
54 00:08:38.090 ⇒ 00:08:45.010 Robert Tseng: we have not launched an event that… that was alongside an outcome-driven offer. Like, I don’t think that has happened yet.
55 00:08:45.150 ⇒ 00:08:51.409 Robert Tseng: So, yeah, anyway, I’ll just pause there, and just kinda…
56 00:08:51.830 ⇒ 00:08:54.500 Robert Tseng: Get a feel for, from the room, like.
57 00:08:55.020 ⇒ 00:09:07.590 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, would you agree with these assessments? Like, does the feedback that I’m kind of giving on, like, you know, I mean, obviously, I’m answering on us, like, on behalf of us, this is not, like, you know, pointing fingers at anybody. I think we collectively
58 00:09:07.690 ⇒ 00:09:16.480 Robert Tseng: didn’t meet some of these objectives, but also maybe have found that some of these objectives don’t actually make that much sense, right, is basically what I’m trying to communicate.
59 00:09:17.530 ⇒ 00:09:19.949 Robert Tseng: Yeah, any questions or thoughts there?
60 00:09:22.200 ⇒ 00:09:28.350 Hannah Wang: Oh, I feel like for the last one, I think we tried to do that with the Blue People talk.
61 00:09:28.640 ⇒ 00:09:34.400 Hannah Wang: Or I guess that wasn’t co-marketed, though. But anyway, yeah, we tried it, but I feel like for that event…
62 00:09:34.820 ⇒ 00:09:40.899 Hannah Wang: maybe it wasn’t, like, the right ICP that came, because it was just an open invite, so anyway, yeah, we didn’t…
63 00:09:41.180 ⇒ 00:09:50.410 Hannah Wang: we technically tried, but, like, that wasn’t… I don’t really count that, I guess. And that campaign kind of died, just because we had other priorities, so…
64 00:09:50.880 ⇒ 00:09:51.230 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
65 00:09:51.230 ⇒ 00:10:02.709 Hannah Wang: Yeah, yeah, I feel like the marketing… like, whenever we go to events, it’s more so just making connections and not necessarily pitching to every person that we…
66 00:10:03.220 ⇒ 00:10:05.949 Hannah Wang: talk to, which I don’t know…
67 00:10:06.360 ⇒ 00:10:10.610 Hannah Wang: Should that be the goal, or should it be more so, like, just…
68 00:10:11.190 ⇒ 00:10:14.759 Hannah Wang: Making connections and being helpful, like you said.
69 00:10:15.310 ⇒ 00:10:21.360 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think that’s an open-ended question, we don’t have to answer that now. I do think that…
70 00:10:21.960 ⇒ 00:10:34.660 Robert Tseng: I think, yeah, we have… we should probably have an answer, like, what events do we go there, and do we, like, actually pitch? What events do we go there and don’t expect to pitch? I think, like, you know, we have something coming up with the corral situation, like.
71 00:10:34.660 ⇒ 00:10:42.620 Robert Tseng: we’re actually co-authoring, or, like, putting out this white paper, like, it’s very informative, like, I expect that to be a pitch. Like, they’re going to…
72 00:10:42.620 ⇒ 00:10:54.780 Robert Tseng: get a bunch of PE people who are just, like, you know, senior finance execs that are… that are going to, basically, they’re there to buy businesses, so, like, they’re not really going to be there to, like.
73 00:10:54.850 ⇒ 00:11:09.059 Robert Tseng: schmooze and, like, have a spa date like we did, you know, in Chicago. So maybe they will be more receptive to being pitched at, because that’s what they’re expecting. But for other events where we’re going in more as a peer, or just kind of, like, an industry
74 00:11:09.170 ⇒ 00:11:20.450 Robert Tseng: experts, that’s, you know, those are situations where we shouldn’t kind of have the same mentality. So, anyway, I think, the more events that we do, the better we’ll, like, understand, like.
75 00:11:20.450 ⇒ 00:11:31.539 Robert Tseng: what the outcome we should be going forward in these events. I think we definitely did, you know, host or kind of attend a bunch of events in Q3, and, you know, there’s something we can learn from that.
76 00:11:32.410 ⇒ 00:11:36.619 Robert Tseng: Okay, any other kind of feedback on these three, kind of…
77 00:11:36.770 ⇒ 00:11:40.469 Robert Tseng: Did you… what did I… did I miss anything from what I shared?
78 00:11:42.740 ⇒ 00:11:46.110 Hannah Wang: For the first one, I…
79 00:11:46.350 ⇒ 00:11:48.969 Hannah Wang: yeah, I kind of… I agree. Like, I…
80 00:11:50.270 ⇒ 00:11:53.009 Hannah Wang: I don’t know, maybe… it’s just hard to…
81 00:11:53.230 ⇒ 00:12:01.799 Hannah Wang: track, I guess, and I guess that’s where, like, the HubSpot stuff, like, hammering that down and making that better will help
82 00:12:01.970 ⇒ 00:12:06.260 Hannah Wang: with… I guess, filling our pipeline with active.
83 00:12:06.570 ⇒ 00:12:07.820 Hannah Wang: leads, but…
84 00:12:08.770 ⇒ 00:12:09.160 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
85 00:12:09.160 ⇒ 00:12:12.450 Hannah Wang: I was gonna say, like, I agree with what you said. Yeah. Yeah.
86 00:12:12.450 ⇒ 00:12:12.860 Robert Tseng: Okay.
87 00:12:12.860 ⇒ 00:12:21.319 Ryan Brosas: Yeah, for that third one, we tried to, like, target, some of these people, like the e-commerce leader, but
88 00:12:21.520 ⇒ 00:12:26.520 Ryan Brosas: that… Didn’t push out, because we are focused on the event.
89 00:12:30.870 ⇒ 00:12:32.449 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah,
90 00:12:33.220 ⇒ 00:12:48.119 Robert Tseng: I guess from, like, a campaign perspective, there are certain ICPs that we do target, but then when we have events, we’re kind of, like, doing promotions around the events, and it’s like, yeah, it’s a little bit… you know, we’re kind of going back to the idea, it’s unclear when do we
91 00:12:48.630 ⇒ 00:12:50.970 Robert Tseng: Pitch the outcome-driven offer.
92 00:12:51.320 ⇒ 00:12:57.970 Robert Tseng: It doesn’t seem like it should be in the same sentence as a co-market event. At least, that’s not how it played out in Q3, so… Yeah.
93 00:12:58.170 ⇒ 00:12:59.010 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
94 00:12:59.130 ⇒ 00:12:59.850 Robert Tseng: Okay.
95 00:13:00.620 ⇒ 00:13:09.839 Robert Tseng: Alright, I’ll just kind of segue into it. So, as Hannah mentioned, we had some, like, well, yeah, I think maybe something about this is, like, we didn’t really know how to measure this, so…
96 00:13:09.840 ⇒ 00:13:31.929 Robert Tseng: maybe that’s why we didn’t even frame this correctly. Obviously, having Justina here, and having more people kind of go into HubSpot and kind of build out some reporting there, and kind of start to operationalize the way we track leads. I do… I would say we accomplished this objective. This is definitely a much better place than we were at before the start of Q3, so, you know, I think… I don’t have to dig too much into that there.
97 00:13:32.490 ⇒ 00:13:41.809 Robert Tseng: Yeah, and then as far as, like, a MRR perspective, we did not hit 110. I think we hit more like 90 or something like that, so we fell short, but
98 00:13:41.870 ⇒ 00:13:55.500 Robert Tseng: you know, we still grew the business, I guess, by, whatever, 25%, like, in Q3, so it’s not… not a bad outcome, but yeah, definitely didn’t reach our goal. So I think just kind of having more thoughts around, like, how do we actually… how do we get to that?
99 00:13:56.190 ⇒ 00:14:00.330 Robert Tseng: And then this was basically borrowed from this objective, so…
100 00:14:01.420 ⇒ 00:14:07.300 Robert Tseng: Yeah, one last thing I’ll say here is, like, we have this framework of objectives and KPIs,
101 00:14:08.380 ⇒ 00:14:14.400 Robert Tseng: I actually don’t think that the way that I had set up the marketing sales,
102 00:14:15.130 ⇒ 00:14:22.420 Robert Tseng: this, I kind of set these up more as, like, key results, or, yeah, instead of key performance indicators. Small semantics, but, like.
103 00:14:22.450 ⇒ 00:14:35.509 Robert Tseng: you know, this sheet didn’t exist until, like, halfway through Q3, UTAB kind of centralized everything in one sheet. Remember, this was living in Notion. So, I think when you read these out, these are, like, specific results. You know, it was, like.
104 00:14:35.530 ⇒ 00:15:00.329 Robert Tseng: we are going to produce two new client-facing assets a week. That’s not really a KPI, that is… that is actually a key result. And there’s, like, two different management frameworks for, like, kind of how teams, like, run these, like, objective, like, cyclical objectives. So one is through the KPI framework, or through key results. I think for me specifically, like, I’ve always functioned better with key results and not KPIs.
105 00:15:00.330 ⇒ 00:15:00.940 Robert Tseng: Christ.
106 00:15:00.940 ⇒ 00:15:08.070 Robert Tseng: Because I would rather somebody tell me, this is, like, what you need to have at the end. You need to produce, like.
107 00:15:08.170 ⇒ 00:15:09.770 Robert Tseng: this. Like, you need to…
108 00:15:09.970 ⇒ 00:15:18.009 Robert Tseng: Yeah, whatever, like, yeah, you need to have one, you know, like, something very quantifiable, and then, for me, I can work backwards
109 00:15:18.420 ⇒ 00:15:26.240 Robert Tseng: and basically do whatever it takes to make sure that, like, this outcome is achieved. Like, that’s… that’s the way that I…
110 00:15:27.240 ⇒ 00:15:41.240 Robert Tseng: if I were managing myself, like, that’s how I would operate. But I don’t actually think that that’s how our team has been operating, so I think we kind of flip-flopped and kind of went more towards KPIs, which are just, like.
111 00:15:41.630 ⇒ 00:15:50.460 Robert Tseng: You could think of it as, if we’re, kind of doing these things, Then it should…
112 00:15:50.650 ⇒ 00:16:07.949 Robert Tseng: you know, if we set them up correctly, it should get us to our objective. So it’s less about, like, defining what the result should be, but more, like, kind of describing the rituals or, like, kind of the habits that we need to maintain in order to, like, get the objective. So…
113 00:16:08.060 ⇒ 00:16:14.670 Robert Tseng: I guess there’s a whole, like, you know, management science debate about this, you guys can read into it yourself if you’re interested, but, like.
114 00:16:14.750 ⇒ 00:16:28.130 Robert Tseng: I don’t know, like, I guess we’re just not as outcome-driven as we… as I maybe kind of originally thought. So, with all that said, we kind of flipped to some new OKRs here. These are still kind of…
115 00:16:28.150 ⇒ 00:16:35.380 Robert Tseng: not finalized yet. We’ll probably, like, share them out at, like, the team sync on Friday, but at least want to give you
116 00:16:35.900 ⇒ 00:16:51.930 Robert Tseng: a sense of, like, kind of where we’re headed with this. So, yeah, one thing… first thing I’ll call out is, have consolidated. Like, we’re not gonna have, like, 3 OKRs per, like, function. It’s… should really just be one or two, I think, just to kind of have more specificity.
117 00:16:52.480 ⇒ 00:16:55.150 Robert Tseng: And then, yeah, I think, like.
118 00:16:55.880 ⇒ 00:17:14.439 Robert Tseng: you know, it’s… like I said, it’s semantics. You may not be able to see the small… the differences, but, like, try to reframe, like, if we accomplish these… if we are maintaining these activities, like, then that should lead to our objective. That’s basically kind of the way that, I kind of rewrote these out.
119 00:17:14.650 ⇒ 00:17:28.380 Robert Tseng: And so, the way that I’m thinking about pipeline now, like, adding net new 60K in pipeline per week. That means 5 to 10 leads per week added to our pipeline.
120 00:17:28.910 ⇒ 00:17:45.220 Robert Tseng: think that’s very different from, like, having 300K in pipeline, right? Because, like, I think we would go in here and, I don’t know, like, we’d click on something and be like, oh, this is nowhere near 300K, like, what does this mean? Are we, like, doing badly, or whatever? And it’s… the answer’s, like, no, we’re not. Like, I think…
121 00:17:45.380 ⇒ 00:17:53.390 Robert Tseng: But if we are adding new pipeline weekly, then, you know, we have… then,
122 00:17:54.440 ⇒ 00:18:14.160 Robert Tseng: obviously, some will take longer than others to kind of close, and like, you know, I would expect this actual, like, in-progress deal amount to be, you know, bigger than 60, because this is going… oops… this is going to have, you know, deals that have carried over from last week, last two weeks, you know, some of these have been sitting here since
123 00:18:15.010 ⇒ 00:18:19.969 Robert Tseng: It’s actually not been that long. I don’t know, like, August, like, README, right? They, like…
124 00:18:20.230 ⇒ 00:18:26.599 Robert Tseng: They were about to sign, and then they ghosted, and then they messaged me last week, and they’re like, hey, actually.
125 00:18:26.660 ⇒ 00:18:44.499 Robert Tseng: your former stakeholder is gone, and here’s a new person, and they wanna… they wanna work with you again. So, like, you know, that stuff happens, and I just… I don’t think we were really accurately capturing, kind of, like, the… what we really needed to… what the sales… what the marketing team could actually be impacting in terms of pipeline. So…
126 00:18:45.330 ⇒ 00:18:47.690 Robert Tseng: Anyway, I think I’ll just kinda…
127 00:18:47.940 ⇒ 00:19:00.430 Robert Tseng: save that, so that means, you know, obviously locking into HubSpot, 5 to 10 leads. And then, from a partner perspective, yeah, I think, like, partner-led, leads, I think we have previously said something like.
128 00:19:06.340 ⇒ 00:19:21.480 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I don’t know, I think, like, close one partner source lead per month. The answer is, like, no, we did not do that. We did not come close. I think we closed to zero partner leads. So that, I mean, that’s clearly a problem, and
129 00:19:21.480 ⇒ 00:19:39.189 Robert Tseng: we already made some adjustments. I think, Hannah, you met with Holly, we brought Holly in, because we were basically like, Holly, like, we can’t get our partners to give us leads that actually close, like, please, like, help us better, like, have better terms with them, and put some pressure on them, or whatever. So, I think…
130 00:19:39.190 ⇒ 00:19:42.319 Robert Tseng: I’m less like… I mean, I always kind of felt like…
131 00:19:42.720 ⇒ 00:19:56.119 Robert Tseng: like, partners are gonna be nice and try to, like, pass us stuff, but they’re not a reliable source of leads. Like, we have to be able to go get our own business. So, because, like, sometimes, if we’re top of mind, they’ll give us stuff, sometimes they won’t.
132 00:19:56.370 ⇒ 00:20:10.449 Robert Tseng: So yeah, I think, like, rather than tracking partner-led leads, I mean, I think that’s still a goal of ours. We still, instead of two per month, you know, if we could still… if we could get one deal per month from a partner that closes, that would be great.
133 00:20:10.760 ⇒ 00:20:17.989 Robert Tseng: But at least, you know, with the co-marketing that we’re doing, like, these are partner-led, or partner-sponsored, whatever.
134 00:20:18.230 ⇒ 00:20:28.050 Robert Tseng: You know, we’re gonna… we’re gonna run these partner co-marketed events or campaigns that will generate pipeline, that we will then go and follow up ourselves.
135 00:20:28.760 ⇒ 00:20:32.059 Robert Tseng: So, I think this is kind of more emphasizing, like.
136 00:20:33.130 ⇒ 00:20:49.560 Robert Tseng: kind of, like, to Hannah’s point, the Blue People event happened, and then afterwards, what happened to the pipeline? Just kind of just dried up, or whatever, so, like, we didn’t really… what did we even do with it? So, the emphasis is more on, like, post-events, we have this pipeline of, you know, 30K is, what, like, 6 leads?
137 00:20:49.620 ⇒ 00:21:03.420 Robert Tseng: you know, at least, you know, 5 or 6 leads that we get out of these events that we will go and follow up and just kind of run through our own outbound process. At least that’s kind of, you know, those are some of the small adjustments that I’ve made to the language here.
138 00:21:04.840 ⇒ 00:21:18.610 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I know this is your first time, kind of, like, seeing all this, but… so I’m not going to read through each one. I think you can kind of look through it in your own time, and if you have suggestions for kind of how you want to fill it out, like, I would definitely take that feedback.
139 00:21:18.610 ⇒ 00:21:26.300 Robert Tseng: I think these ones are a little bit, kind of, you know, kind of pie in the sky for me, like, that’s why, you know, this is, like, kind of incomplete.
140 00:21:27.030 ⇒ 00:21:37.240 Robert Tseng: you know, Utem and I have been going back and forth on, like, how do we actually write this out better? Like, I don’t think tracking the number of campaigns that, you know, we’re running on the…
141 00:21:38.870 ⇒ 00:21:40.710 Robert Tseng: Campaign tracker, which is…
142 00:21:40.710 ⇒ 00:21:41.850 Hannah Wang: Marketing Hub.
143 00:21:42.020 ⇒ 00:21:43.280 Hannah Wang: called Marketing Hub.
144 00:21:43.990 ⇒ 00:21:46.310 Hannah Wang: I don’t know if you have it saved. Yeah.
145 00:21:46.540 ⇒ 00:21:47.200 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
146 00:21:47.640 ⇒ 00:21:52.130 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like, I don’t think, like, looking at the number of active campaigns is, like.
147 00:21:52.760 ⇒ 00:21:56.290 Robert Tseng: that entirely helpful, to be honest. Like, I think,
148 00:21:56.900 ⇒ 00:22:01.520 Robert Tseng: So I don’t really think that’s the way I want to measure it, but maybe there’s, like, a…
149 00:22:02.580 ⇒ 00:22:11.590 Robert Tseng: Well, anyway, so that’s… that’s something to think about. I don’t want to kind of spend the time here kind of hogging up all the space, brainstorming that. But anyway, so…
150 00:22:11.680 ⇒ 00:22:22.419 Robert Tseng: That’s that. The second OKR, kind of continuing on past the HubSpot stuff, yes, now that everything is tracked, we want to be able to kind of view this as, like.
151 00:22:22.420 ⇒ 00:22:32.569 Robert Tseng: start to manage the portfolio, right? So, not only do we have all these leads here, we now should be figuring out where are these leads coming from. Are they coming from the
152 00:22:32.580 ⇒ 00:22:44.409 Robert Tseng: Ryan’s outbound campaigns. Are they coming inbound from Upwork? Are they coming inbound from LinkedIn, like that one lead, like, last week? You know, so we want to, like, pay more attention to the attribution of, like, where they’re coming from.
153 00:22:44.410 ⇒ 00:22:59.089 Robert Tseng: And, you know, obviously, I think, you know, if we’re doing a good job from a marketing perspective, the leads should follow where our effort is going. And so, you know, there was this kind of, like, goal that I had told Futam, like, in Q2. It was like.
154 00:22:59.410 ⇒ 00:23:00.380 Robert Tseng: you know.
155 00:23:00.390 ⇒ 00:23:16.569 Robert Tseng: sure, like, and this is something we’ll give to the go-to-market team as well, but we want to, like, give the go-to-market team a budget. So, right now, we haven’t really been doing budgeting, it’s really just been, we just, like, count, you know, the headcount on the team, and, you know, that’s how much we spend on marketing.
156 00:23:16.570 ⇒ 00:23:29.909 Robert Tseng: But really, like, it costs money to throw events, you know, if… if Justina wants to add something to HubSpot, or, like, Ryan wants to use a new tool, or whatever, like, you know, that should all be part of the budget. So, you know, rather than us, like, kind of…
157 00:23:29.970 ⇒ 00:23:43.019 Robert Tseng: you dropping us requests, you know, you know, somewhere, like, a week or two from now, and then we’re just like, well, I don’t know, like, don’t really know how much money we’re spending. Like, I think, we want to just make that a little bit less seamless, and kind of give
158 00:23:43.090 ⇒ 00:23:47.530 Robert Tseng: That are more seamless and give the team, like, some more direction on, like.
159 00:23:47.650 ⇒ 00:23:51.780 Robert Tseng: this is your budget, I don’t care how you spend it, as long as, like, we’re, like, kind of…
160 00:23:52.040 ⇒ 00:24:05.469 Robert Tseng: you know, 40% of our leads are coming from events, because we’re putting a lot of attention to events. We’re doing, like, kind of… yeah, like, you know, and whether or not these are the actual numbers, like, they feel right for now, like, I…
161 00:24:05.630 ⇒ 00:24:07.580 Robert Tseng: I don’t really necessarily have the…
162 00:24:08.000 ⇒ 00:24:11.939 Robert Tseng: the data to back it up. But yeah, I think…
163 00:24:12.100 ⇒ 00:24:17.230 Robert Tseng: At least to me, like, the biggest group should be from event activations, just based on
164 00:24:17.610 ⇒ 00:24:25.639 Robert Tseng: Just the response rates on our campaigns, we can see that, like, a lot of outbound volume has been coming from events, and…
165 00:24:26.010 ⇒ 00:24:45.420 Robert Tseng: Yeah, you know, so I think that’s… that, to me, feels like it should be a higher percentage than some of our other channels. But yeah, anyway, so that’s… that’s kind of where the thought process is around that. So, we’re not just, like… it’s a given now that everything is tracked, but we want to, like, actually be balancing
166 00:24:45.540 ⇒ 00:24:49.380 Robert Tseng: Okay, if our port… if our pipeline is, like.
167 00:24:49.540 ⇒ 00:24:57.350 Robert Tseng: If our event-driven lead pipeline has dried up, and, like, everyone in this list is not from an event.
168 00:24:57.350 ⇒ 00:25:16.300 Robert Tseng: then that, to me, is a signal that, hey, we need to, like, really push for another event. Like, hopefully it doesn’t get to that point, and it’ll… it’ll be a little bit more proactive than that, where as this number drops down to, like, 30%, we throw another event, and it goes back up to 60%, or whatever, and, like, we’re constantly, like, balancing this portfolio.
169 00:25:16.400 ⇒ 00:25:26.899 Robert Tseng: And, like, that’s kind of how you… how the go-to-market team starts to think about, like, kind of, like, our… how we manage leads across our different channels.
170 00:25:27.340 ⇒ 00:25:35.660 Robert Tseng: And that gets… that helps us get better at predicting when we invest marketing dollar and attention into a particular channel.
171 00:25:36.280 ⇒ 00:25:45.529 Robert Tseng: Like, do we actually expect, you know, like, volume to go up, and, like, can we actually see that cause and effect relationship there? I think that’s the point of that.
172 00:25:45.930 ⇒ 00:25:57.029 Robert Tseng: And then… yeah, I think with the automation that we’re doing, we’re already pretty much close to this, but I want to keep emphasizing getting me and Utam out of, like, the first message and follow-up.
173 00:25:57.260 ⇒ 00:26:15.610 Robert Tseng: You guys are getting better at, like, sending that first message, doing the first follow-up, trying to basically push it to a meeting before we actually have to be there. So I want to keep emphasizing that that is one of the primary goals, because, like, we don’t want to get stuck, because Utama and I didn’t check their LinkedIn messages, or whatever.
174 00:26:16.140 ⇒ 00:26:23.199 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so that’s kind of how we’re orienting the marketing objectives for this coming quarter.
175 00:26:23.400 ⇒ 00:26:25.890 Robert Tseng: Any questions on this part?
176 00:26:28.790 ⇒ 00:26:29.480 Hannah Wang: No.
177 00:26:31.020 ⇒ 00:26:31.650 Robert Tseng: Okay.
178 00:26:32.190 ⇒ 00:26:50.180 Robert Tseng: Cool. Yeah, then I don’t want to hog up all the time, so I’ll wrap up in, like, 3 minutes. So on the sales side, yeah, you’ll see, like, the MRR goal is pretty aggressive. It’s still, like, it’s 130 instead of 110 now, like, and, kind of how I got there, if you’re interested, you can kind of go into here.
179 00:26:53.840 ⇒ 00:27:10.889 Robert Tseng: yeah, like, I’m not gonna go too much into this model, but basically I built this, like, forecast model to basically think about, okay, like, I kind of updated this at the start of Q3. We started around 60K MRR. I made some assumptions, I think some of my assumptions were wrong.
180 00:27:10.890 ⇒ 00:27:17.480 Robert Tseng: And we kind of ended up around… it was actually closer to 90, so this is actually not super precise, but you can just see
181 00:27:17.500 ⇒ 00:27:31.819 Robert Tseng: These are the different inputs as you kind of assume all of these variables, and then you project it out over 3 months, like, where do you end up? So, assuming that 15% of our clients churn, which I think that is actually true.
182 00:27:31.820 ⇒ 00:27:40.899 Robert Tseng: We assumed a higher attrition, we assumed 25%, but that wasn’t the case. We didn’t lose 25% of our business over in Q3, it was more like 15%.
183 00:27:41.410 ⇒ 00:27:58.630 Robert Tseng: And then we assumed, like, a higher projects per month, but it actually wasn’t. We didn’t really start that many projects, to be honest. And then our project size, some assumptions there, you know, all those got us to, like, 86,
184 00:27:58.730 ⇒ 00:28:05.059 Robert Tseng: And like, if we were to make some… some adjustments, like, where would we end up?
185 00:28:05.470 ⇒ 00:28:12.569 Robert Tseng: If we only, which I thought was interesting, if we only, you know, this new pipeline per week, this is, like, 5…
186 00:28:12.570 ⇒ 00:28:33.939 Robert Tseng: This is 5 new leads per week. If we just double that to 10 new leads per week consistently, and at our current close rate, and, you know, our project sizes have increased, we don’t do anything under 5K, our average retainer sizes have increased, when we renewed Insomnia, when we renewed Default, they were both around 15K. So, like, the value of our contracts is definitely going up.
187 00:28:33.940 ⇒ 00:28:43.179 Robert Tseng: But in order to keep up with the volume, like, the biggest way to impact this is just through new pipeline. If we stay at 30,000,
188 00:28:43.520 ⇒ 00:28:47.909 Robert Tseng: pipeline per week. We’ll still grow. We’re gonna grow to, like, probably around 100.
189 00:28:47.910 ⇒ 00:29:05.030 Robert Tseng: But, like, that’s… that to me is, like, no better than where we were before, because, like, what was the point of, like, hiring people and growing this team if we’re going to do the same output that I was doing before? So, the point of, like, you know, growing this team was so that we could at least increase this number to double
190 00:29:05.030 ⇒ 00:29:19.729 Robert Tseng: And hopefully higher, and assuming everything else stays the same, like, our close rates don’t change, you know, and whatever, everything else stays the same, like, that has a significant impact on our, revenue. It’s actually the biggest driver of revenue.
191 00:29:19.730 ⇒ 00:29:28.960 Robert Tseng: It’s simply just bringing in new leads to the top of funnel. Like, that’s… that’s the biggest… that’s the biggest way to move… move every… move our business.
192 00:29:29.430 ⇒ 00:29:30.630 Robert Tseng: If we…
193 00:29:30.740 ⇒ 00:29:39.769 Robert Tseng: Even if we, like, reduce our churn, so even if, like, the project management team does a really good job, and they reduce churn by 5%, you know, that has, like, a…
194 00:29:39.930 ⇒ 00:29:42.010 Robert Tseng: like, a 20K impact.
195 00:29:43.350 ⇒ 00:29:50.860 Robert Tseng: you know, less at a… it’s like a… it’s like a 5-10% impact on the business, so it’s actually not that high.
196 00:29:51.090 ⇒ 00:30:01.469 Robert Tseng: And, you know, we could keep raising prices, and we can, like, raise our prices, but even that, like, doesn’t really change our revenue that much. Raising prices isn’t gonna do it. So…
197 00:30:01.470 ⇒ 00:30:20.600 Robert Tseng: like, you can… you can see, like, these are all the possible levers that we can pull on the business, and the only thing that really makes the biggest difference, other than, like, close rates, let’s say we close at a… yeah, if Utam and I somehow, like, sell, and we just close at, like, double the rate that we were at before, then, yeah, our business grows, like, kind of…
198 00:30:20.670 ⇒ 00:30:33.479 Robert Tseng: pretty quickly as well. But, you know, assuming that we’re… we don’t get any better, and we just continue to close at this rate, the biggest way that the team can help us is simply just by adding new,
199 00:30:33.480 ⇒ 00:30:50.669 Robert Tseng: adding new leads every week. So, I think I just, like, wanted to show this model to you. It says, like, I don’t know, sometimes, like, business development seems kind of, like, abstract, but, like, I think this really clearly shows you, like, how… how the business grows, and,
200 00:30:50.980 ⇒ 00:30:58.940 Robert Tseng: I don’t know, like, maybe it was just helpful for me to view it this way, but yeah, I guess, any questions on this?
201 00:31:01.760 ⇒ 00:31:02.840 Hannah Wang: That’s powerful.
202 00:31:03.100 ⇒ 00:31:04.870 Hannah Wang: Thanks for showing us, yeah.
203 00:31:05.330 ⇒ 00:31:06.040 Robert Tseng: Cool.
204 00:31:07.280 ⇒ 00:31:13.349 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, you guys can see it if you wanna… if you wanna, like, ever kind of wonder about, like.
205 00:31:14.300 ⇒ 00:31:16.999 Robert Tseng: how… how that works later, I can… I can share it with you.
206 00:31:17.290 ⇒ 00:31:35.819 Robert Tseng: But, yeah, okay, so that’s pretty much it. I would encourage you to just kind of go into this, read through it. Yeah, pretty much by the end of this week, this will be locked in, and, like, this is what I’m gonna hold kind of this team more accountable towards, and, you know, these are the initiatives, the KPIs that we’re going to be running through every week.
207 00:31:35.820 ⇒ 00:31:42.279 Robert Tseng: when you do your weekly readouts, I’m gonna basically go down this checklist and make sure that we are kind of
208 00:31:42.280 ⇒ 00:31:50.500 Robert Tseng: hitting all of these targets, I’m not going to be talking about this every week. This is kind of like, if we maintain these activities, this should naturally happen.
209 00:31:51.840 ⇒ 00:32:10.999 Robert Tseng: And, you know, we may make some adjustments along the way, because, like you saw before, just because we set OKRs don’t mean… doesn’t mean that they’re the best, like, you know, we learn things along the way, so this is meant to be just, like, a way, like a goalpost for us to better understand how this team’s activity is actually impacting the business.
210 00:32:11.110 ⇒ 00:32:17.189 Robert Tseng: But okay, with that, I’ll turn that over to, kind of, the rest of the team.
211 00:32:17.900 ⇒ 00:32:23.429 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so I don’t know whoever wants to go first. Go ahead, kind of take it away from there.
212 00:32:28.110 ⇒ 00:32:34.230 Hannah Wang: Okay, I can go. Words.
213 00:32:35.510 ⇒ 00:32:38.799 Hannah Wang: I just have to share my whole screen, because there’s so many things open.
214 00:32:41.000 ⇒ 00:32:43.889 Robert Tseng: The wide monitor, you have to always share the big screen.
215 00:32:43.890 ⇒ 00:32:52.850 Hannah Wang: I’m literally… yeah, it’s just exposing my… all my work. Okay. Alright.
216 00:32:55.020 ⇒ 00:32:57.210 Hannah Wang: Okay, so for…
217 00:32:58.190 ⇒ 00:33:03.200 Hannah Wang: the campaign stuff, I know we wanna… well, actually, I don’t know how this changes based on our…
218 00:33:03.350 ⇒ 00:33:04.420 Hannah Wang: Okay, ours.
219 00:33:05.330 ⇒ 00:33:05.850 Hannah Wang: But anyway…
220 00:33:05.850 ⇒ 00:33:07.070 Robert Tseng: Please do me.
221 00:33:07.070 ⇒ 00:33:08.909 Hannah Wang: Yes, I know we.
222 00:33:08.910 ⇒ 00:33:09.490 Robert Tseng: Thanks.
223 00:33:10.010 ⇒ 00:33:18.350 Hannah Wang: focused, or last time we said we wanted to do 3 campaigns, per week. I don’t know if that number should change based on our new…
224 00:33:18.630 ⇒ 00:33:19.830 Hannah Wang: Okay, ours?
225 00:33:20.160 ⇒ 00:33:20.760 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
226 00:33:21.010 ⇒ 00:33:26.600 Hannah Wang: But… Yeah, I guess… so the ones that we focused on last week were…
227 00:33:26.790 ⇒ 00:33:30.500 Hannah Wang: the conferences that you and Utam went to, and then the roundtable.
228 00:33:30.870 ⇒ 00:33:34.420 Hannah Wang: the Shop Talk stuff, so… I guess…
229 00:33:34.560 ⇒ 00:33:50.050 Hannah Wang: like, how should we… like, to track this, should we just, like, go on your LinkedIn and see, like, the conversation threads from there? Because I did try to do that. I just want to close the loop on this, and then, like, mark this as done. So, I kind of just went through…
230 00:33:50.940 ⇒ 00:33:56.749 Hannah Wang: to the best of my knowledge, or LinkedIn, based on, like, how many messages we sent out, and…
231 00:33:57.010 ⇒ 00:33:59.030 Hannah Wang: I’m… I know, like.
232 00:34:00.480 ⇒ 00:34:14.250 Hannah Wang: like, I feel like I’m just gonna have to retroactively look every week, because, like, I know some people, like, follow up, like, 2 weeks after the event, so… Anyway, I… this is kind of up-to-date right now,
233 00:34:14.820 ⇒ 00:34:21.609 Hannah Wang: But yeah, should I… should I just, like, close this out, and we should focus on 3 new set of campaigns? Because this is technically done.
234 00:34:21.610 ⇒ 00:34:33.710 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I think that’s great, yeah. So, I mean, as far as, like, you don’t have to worry about retroactively doing… I would say just, like, two weeks is, like, that’s your cap. Starting out for two weeks, it’s done. But, like, for CES, for example, customer
235 00:34:34.070 ⇒ 00:34:37.439 Robert Tseng: meetings booked, it’s actually three. It’s not 0.
236 00:34:37.440 ⇒ 00:34:38.250 Hannah Wang: Okay.
237 00:34:38.760 ⇒ 00:34:50.309 Robert Tseng: So, you may not have caught it, but, like, Justina kind of sent, like, a follow-up. It was like, hey, sorry I missed you, would still love to exchange learnings. Three people were like, yeah, let’s talk. Okay.
238 00:34:51.199 ⇒ 00:35:03.409 Robert Tseng: great, like, what an easy way to book meetings. Like, I, you know, that’s… that should be a given for, like, any event that we do. Like, yeah, we were at zero before, but all of a sudden, got… had 3 people that are gonna… I’m talking to this week, so…
239 00:35:03.410 ⇒ 00:35:04.060 Hannah Wang: Okay.
240 00:35:04.460 ⇒ 00:35:05.170 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
241 00:35:06.170 ⇒ 00:35:13.620 Hannah Wang: And then, I think, Uten joined, I don’t know if you had any follow-up from the Reuters stuff that we did,
242 00:35:14.250 ⇒ 00:35:27.750 Hannah Wang: But if not, I can just look through your LinkedIn, so that’s fine. So, I’m just gonna mark these as completed, and then clean up the sheet later. And then I know you’re talking to the Honey Stinger person, I think he was from ShopTalk.
243 00:35:27.980 ⇒ 00:35:30.549 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I would say replies, I had.
244 00:35:30.550 ⇒ 00:35:30.880 Hannah Wang: Okay.
245 00:35:30.880 ⇒ 00:35:32.090 Robert Tseng: 5 replies.
246 00:35:32.370 ⇒ 00:35:33.080 Hannah Wang: Okay.
247 00:35:33.280 ⇒ 00:35:34.259 Robert Tseng: I mean, I just…
248 00:35:34.390 ⇒ 00:35:39.729 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like, meetings booked is 2, so, like, I don’t exactly know how you’re pulling your numbers, but, like.
249 00:35:40.010 ⇒ 00:35:41.309 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
250 00:35:41.310 ⇒ 00:35:45.150 Hannah Wang: Well, were they all from Roundtable, or were they just from, like.
251 00:35:45.150 ⇒ 00:35:46.920 Robert Tseng: No, they were from Roundtable, specifically.
252 00:35:46.920 ⇒ 00:35:53.450 Hannah Wang: Oh, okay, well, I must just be doing a bad job of keeping up with your LinkedIn, so I need to find a way… better way to do that.
253 00:35:53.450 ⇒ 00:36:00.580 Robert Tseng: That’s okay, you only need to do this once a week. Like, you should just do it, like, I don’t know, Friday, or, like, the day of this meeting, or whatever.
254 00:36:00.970 ⇒ 00:36:02.569 Robert Tseng: Okay. I miss it every day, yeah.
255 00:36:02.770 ⇒ 00:36:09.699 Hannah Wang: Cool, so, yeah, these numbers need to be changed, but great, meeting’s booked.
256 00:36:09.700 ⇒ 00:36:16.929 Uttam Kumaran: For Reuters, I was just gonna connect with each of the speakers, and we met two people.
257 00:36:17.070 ⇒ 00:36:24.319 Uttam Kumaran: I… I’m gonna go find them, and I can just send them a direct note. It wasn’t… it was maybe, like, 5 people total.
258 00:36:24.870 ⇒ 00:36:32.080 Uttam Kumaran: So I think you guys have, as part in under 925 Reuters, there’s a…
259 00:36:32.080 ⇒ 00:36:32.640 Robert Tseng: Bye.
260 00:36:33.970 ⇒ 00:36:35.650 Uttam Kumaran: We have the list of people, right?
261 00:36:35.650 ⇒ 00:36:36.310 Hannah Wang: Yeah.
262 00:36:36.750 ⇒ 00:36:37.550 Uttam Kumaran: Cool.
263 00:36:38.510 ⇒ 00:36:40.620 Uttam Kumaran: So I’ll go connect with folks directly here.
264 00:36:40.890 ⇒ 00:36:41.550 Hannah Wang: Okay.
265 00:36:43.380 ⇒ 00:36:43.960 Robert Tseng: Great.
266 00:36:44.220 ⇒ 00:36:51.249 Hannah Wang: Cool. So, what are the next three that we should focus on? I know… are you still going to the New York
267 00:36:51.540 ⇒ 00:37:02.250 Hannah Wang: advertising… week thing. That’s in October. That’s, October… 6 to 9.
268 00:37:06.310 ⇒ 00:37:12.569 Robert Tseng: Oh, I see. Yeah, I haven’t signed up for… did you sign up for it? I’m not sure if you didn’t, then I haven’t signed up for anything yet, but yeah.
269 00:37:13.470 ⇒ 00:37:15.860 Hannah Wang: Kind of for another thing, but not… not this one.
270 00:37:15.860 ⇒ 00:37:16.570 Robert Tseng: Okay.
271 00:37:18.590 ⇒ 00:37:25.160 Hannah Wang: Do you want me to sign up for… well, I feel like for this one, there’s a student discount, that’s why I didn’t know how to, like, I think…
272 00:37:25.520 ⇒ 00:37:27.579 Hannah Wang: Sign up or something, but…
273 00:37:27.790 ⇒ 00:37:34.550 Hannah Wang: Because I think the thread that I sent you is like, oh, you can get a discount if you’re a student. You can go for free, basically.
274 00:37:34.550 ⇒ 00:37:35.560 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
275 00:37:36.080 ⇒ 00:37:43.969 Hannah Wang: So, I can look into that and fill it out for you if I can, and if so, that can be the next one that we focus on.
276 00:37:43.970 ⇒ 00:37:48.889 Robert Tseng: Yeah. There’s actually a campaign that, like, so I went to a conference on Friday.
277 00:37:48.890 ⇒ 00:37:50.070 Hannah Wang: Oh, yeah, huh?
278 00:37:50.280 ⇒ 00:38:01.629 Robert Tseng: Yeah, it’s mostly, like, legal and government and nonprofit, whatever, but, you know, whatever. They gave me a pretty good list, so I might as well just, like, have you guys run a campaign against them, just to connect with them.
279 00:38:03.830 ⇒ 00:38:10.620 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so I think that that’s one that we can just tie up, because I had some… I had some notes that would be interesting to share with them.
280 00:38:11.850 ⇒ 00:38:15.989 Hannah Wang: Alright, so we’ll do that next week, and you’re gonna get us that list of.
281 00:38:15.990 ⇒ 00:38:17.809 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah. Okay.
282 00:38:18.430 ⇒ 00:38:21.690 Robert Tseng: It’s on the floor, I’ll pick it up in a…
283 00:38:21.850 ⇒ 00:38:22.570 Hannah Wang: on the f-.
284 00:38:23.190 ⇒ 00:38:26.700 Robert Tseng: like, I have a booklet, and they literally give you everyone’s email, so…
285 00:38:26.700 ⇒ 00:38:27.150 Hannah Wang: Oh, man.
286 00:38:27.150 ⇒ 00:38:28.800 Robert Tseng: I have it all, just, like, there.
287 00:38:28.800 ⇒ 00:38:35.669 Hannah Wang: Okay. And then, do we want to do any of the lookalike ones that we paused?
288 00:38:36.580 ⇒ 00:38:37.960 Hannah Wang: like, start those.
289 00:38:43.150 ⇒ 00:38:56.939 Robert Tseng: I’m, like, not that enthusiastic about lookalikes. I… I feel like we should be doing more ICP-targeted, like, ones, and less like, hey, we worked with, like, your competitor, like.
290 00:38:57.340 ⇒ 00:39:02.219 Robert Tseng: I don’t know, like, I… I feel like that hasn’t been doing well, but
291 00:39:02.950 ⇒ 00:39:19.340 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so I think there’s a couple… and this may be kind of on us to kind of… I mean, on me specifically, to give you some more direction on the ICP stuff, because I spent some time yesterday kind of working through that. So, pretty much, like, where I settled on ICP,
292 00:39:29.850 ⇒ 00:39:37.199 Robert Tseng: I think, well, the stock is still kind of a mess, but I’ll just drop it in as, like, a forcing function anyway. Okay, so,
293 00:39:37.430 ⇒ 00:39:44.780 Robert Tseng: And brian… ACP, Docker…
294 00:39:52.060 ⇒ 00:40:00.069 Robert Tseng: Do we have any other campaigns that are kind of, like, that were paused before that we could just bring back into this week? I know these are all, like, net new things that we need to get going.
295 00:40:02.050 ⇒ 00:40:08.620 Hannah Wang: Well, let me know if you… we want to do the Adweek one, because that… that would be a big one.
296 00:40:09.770 ⇒ 00:40:11.970 Hannah Wang: So that’s, like, potentially one, and then…
297 00:40:11.970 ⇒ 00:40:18.749 Robert Tseng: I think we should just do it. Like, we should just do it, whether or not I sign up for it. It’s already happening in New York, and people came in.
298 00:40:18.890 ⇒ 00:40:20.700 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
299 00:40:21.770 ⇒ 00:40:29.700 Hannah Wang: Okay, cool. I mean, all the paused ones are, like, recruiting, or lookalike, or…
300 00:40:29.700 ⇒ 00:40:34.899 Robert Tseng: Well, we do have a recruiting one we need that to turn back on, so I don’t know, Tom, should they also just…
301 00:40:35.210 ⇒ 00:40:35.800 Robert Tseng: turn on.
302 00:40:35.800 ⇒ 00:40:44.199 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I guess, like, I don’t know, I think we should not do the recruiting ones here, like, I… I can handle that directly with Rico.
303 00:40:44.200 ⇒ 00:40:45.340 Robert Tseng: Okay, sure.
304 00:40:45.510 ⇒ 00:40:49.289 Uttam Kumaran: So I think we should just make this a completely sale. So, anything that’s talent.
305 00:40:49.580 ⇒ 00:40:51.170 Hannah Wang: Okay. Let’s just, like…
306 00:40:51.600 ⇒ 00:40:53.949 Uttam Kumaran: Whatever’s there, you can just leave it as, like.
307 00:40:54.710 ⇒ 00:40:57.669 Uttam Kumaran: completed, but I’m… I’m gonna work directly with
308 00:40:59.050 ⇒ 00:41:06.899 Uttam Kumaran: Ryan and Rico on handling that. The only thing we’ll need from you, Robert, is, like, we’re gonna have… I’ll have them run the campaign by you for filters.
309 00:41:07.280 ⇒ 00:41:07.930 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
310 00:41:08.110 ⇒ 00:41:12.700 Uttam Kumaran: That’s… we’re… I think we’re in a good groove on that stuff, so I’m gonna have to talk about it here.
311 00:41:13.250 ⇒ 00:41:13.640 Robert Tseng: Okay.
312 00:41:13.640 ⇒ 00:41:14.230 Hannah Wang: Okay.
313 00:41:15.230 ⇒ 00:41:24.219 Hannah Wang: I know there’s, like, some SME ones that are low priority, but we do have, like, these ready to co-sell.
314 00:41:24.430 ⇒ 00:41:26.550 Hannah Wang: with… .
315 00:41:27.360 ⇒ 00:41:32.649 Robert Tseng: Well, yeah, let’s run the… run the contextual one I saw this morning, or whatever, like that.
316 00:41:32.650 ⇒ 00:41:52.369 Hannah Wang: I feel like they had… their team hasn’t reviewed it, though, I think. I looked at Drake’s message from last week, but I don’t think they gave feedback on it. But the ones that we are… like, I guess the one with Troy, like, I think he approved it and everything, but I don’t know if this is, like… this is, like, a new vertical, so I don’t know, like, how…
317 00:41:52.900 ⇒ 00:41:55.459 Hannah Wang: Effective it’ll be, but…
318 00:41:55.820 ⇒ 00:41:56.600 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
319 00:41:56.600 ⇒ 00:42:03.619 Hannah Wang: Yeah, so I feel like contextual is better, but they just haven’t, given us feedback on it.
320 00:42:05.200 ⇒ 00:42:09.320 Hannah Wang: So, let’s see…
321 00:42:14.170 ⇒ 00:42:17.599 Robert Tseng: like, if we’re gonna do lookalikes, like, I would wanna do…
322 00:42:18.620 ⇒ 00:42:35.770 Robert Tseng: lookalikes of, like… like, CPG or e-comm direct sales, like, Q4 is not a good quarter. Everybody’s, like, gearing up for holiday, they’re not gonna be spending more money. Like, software… so, like, default lookalikes… so, like, the ICP focus areas that I had found, one is, like.
323 00:42:35.830 ⇒ 00:42:59.880 Robert Tseng: PE operators that are focused on CBG brands. I think they’re on a different deal cycle. They’re not, like, in the weeds doing, like, holiday sales, but this is also the time of year where they’re, like, making transactions because, you know, they’re trying to raise funds, whatever. Like, so, like, there’s… there’s kind of, like, that strategic angle. You know, Utam and I are working on a doc. I need to send it out. I’m trying to send it out today because I called this guy over the weekend.
324 00:43:01.320 ⇒ 00:43:13.790 Robert Tseng: But maybe this is, like, the time when we actually, especially since we’ve put together… we’re putting together that… that private equity white paper with Coral data, that’s a good template that we could use to basically roll out to private equity and other
325 00:43:13.790 ⇒ 00:43:25.989 Robert Tseng: in other kind of industries, so, like, I would like to do a CPG version of that. I think that’s a lot easier for me to write than the healthcare one, to be honest. Then we have, like, digitally native healthcare providers, because
326 00:43:25.990 ⇒ 00:43:42.130 Robert Tseng: you know, in our book of business, we have both a… we have a clinic, we have a GLP-1, so, like, we have a consumer products company, and we have a telehealth provider. We literally have, like, every, like, version of a health… digitally native healthcare provider in our portfolio. Like, I feel like that…
327 00:43:42.130 ⇒ 00:43:46.449 Robert Tseng: You know, says something about, kind of, our expertise there at this point.
328 00:43:46.730 ⇒ 00:44:01.879 Robert Tseng: And then just, like, all the SaaS, you know, SaaS companies like Default are, you know, they’re always raising money and, like, trying to hire people. So, like, going after more folks that are of the Caitlyn, ICP, like, kind of, I think, to me, those are, like.
329 00:44:02.690 ⇒ 00:44:08.110 Robert Tseng: better focus areas, because… anyway, so, like, I… that’s…
330 00:44:08.640 ⇒ 00:44:17.249 Robert Tseng: I know that that’s just, like, me talking, so we can, like, iron it out a bit more clearly, but that’s… those are the… that’s what I’m trying to give you this week.
331 00:44:19.040 ⇒ 00:44:21.900 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I think… I agree, I don’t think they look alike.
332 00:44:22.210 ⇒ 00:44:24.660 Uttam Kumaran: Any of the lookalike stuff has been performing.
333 00:44:24.940 ⇒ 00:44:29.539 Uttam Kumaran: At least for the last 2 weeks, so I may suggest we pause that.
334 00:44:29.860 ⇒ 00:44:35.799 Uttam Kumaran: I think that we have a couple of partner campaigns here, so this is where I think, Hannah, we talked… I don’t know if you…
335 00:44:36.750 ⇒ 00:44:40.140 Uttam Kumaran: sort of described it all, how our talk with Holly went this morning, but maybe…
336 00:44:40.140 ⇒ 00:44:40.670 Hannah Wang: -
337 00:44:40.670 ⇒ 00:44:41.660 Uttam Kumaran: we should loop.
338 00:44:42.660 ⇒ 00:44:49.699 Uttam Kumaran: whatever the outputs are going to be of that. So basically, Robert, Holly is working on sort of, like, what is our partnerships
339 00:44:49.800 ⇒ 00:44:55.470 Uttam Kumaran: like, kind of, like, program. Like, when we bring on a new partner, what are…
340 00:44:55.830 ⇒ 00:45:03.260 Uttam Kumaran: like, what are the rituals that we run with them? And then now, once we have that sort of framework, how do we execute that against
341 00:45:03.390 ⇒ 00:45:07.669 Uttam Kumaran: Sort of partners that we need to revive, partners we need to double down on.
342 00:45:07.930 ⇒ 00:45:10.239 Uttam Kumaran: And new partners that are coming in.
343 00:45:10.740 ⇒ 00:45:23.400 Uttam Kumaran: And so, sort of what I’ve instructed the team is I’ve given them, sort of, both a confidence and, like, hype, which is, like, what is the ceiling for some of these partners, and, like, what is our confidence to get deals with them? And we’ve also ranked by
344 00:45:23.940 ⇒ 00:45:26.070 Uttam Kumaran: How much business they’ve driven us.
345 00:45:26.260 ⇒ 00:45:26.990 Uttam Kumaran: forward.
346 00:45:27.450 ⇒ 00:45:38.490 Uttam Kumaran: Overall, my suggestion was the team was, like, I think between Hannah and Holly, I need to understand, like, what is our… given the program that we will run with the partner, right?
347 00:45:38.600 ⇒ 00:45:48.879 Uttam Kumaran: what is our max capacity, right? Can we only attack 5 partners per quarter? So, one, my question… that was my first question for them to come back with.
348 00:45:48.990 ⇒ 00:45:52.610 Uttam Kumaran: Second is, I want us to…
349 00:45:53.060 ⇒ 00:46:01.230 Uttam Kumaran: start to run that… execute that program for those 5 partners. So we should have that program done this week for approval.
350 00:46:01.290 ⇒ 00:46:08.750 Uttam Kumaran: Great. Which is… which is program, again, like, I’m just using a big word there. What I mean is, like, okay, we need to get in contact with someone
351 00:46:08.780 ⇒ 00:46:19.649 Uttam Kumaran: that is outside the CEO. So, like, who is our counterpart there? What are the things we’re doing on a weekly or biweekly basis to stay in front of them? What are we giving them? Like, is there… is there, like, a
352 00:46:19.650 ⇒ 00:46:28.989 Uttam Kumaran: content folder of stuff that we’re… we’ve delivered to them for them to leverage in their sales process, and also, like, I want to understand how we’re removing folks, like.
353 00:46:29.130 ⇒ 00:46:35.540 Uttam Kumaran: What timeframe do we need to work with somebody to understand whether they’re gonna deliver us business or not?
354 00:46:35.770 ⇒ 00:46:39.969 Uttam Kumaran: And then, how do we slot them out of our total slots?
355 00:46:40.460 ⇒ 00:46:40.870 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
356 00:46:40.870 ⇒ 00:46:41.880 Uttam Kumaran: That’s what I’ve asked.
357 00:46:41.880 ⇒ 00:46:55.070 Robert Tseng: I mean, that’s what this doc was for. I mean, we were saying we would adjust it weekly. Weekly may not be the best cadence, but yeah, I think… I think that makes sense. Like, I wanted us to get to, like, a working, active list of partners that we’re work… that we’re, like, doing something with, so…
358 00:46:55.330 ⇒ 00:47:05.280 Robert Tseng: I mean, I already have opinions on most of these accounts, to be honest, and I think we can probably… you know, we were calling this strategic accounts before, but Hannah, we should really just, like, separate it out. One is, like.
359 00:47:05.860 ⇒ 00:47:08.719 Robert Tseng: Partners, and there should be maybe another tab for strategic accounts.
360 00:47:09.330 ⇒ 00:47:17.220 Robert Tseng: I actually went ahead and created an entry for a strategic account. I wanted to talk about that as well, if you scroll down on your list.
361 00:47:17.990 ⇒ 00:47:20.369 Robert Tseng: Or did it get edited out?
362 00:47:21.770 ⇒ 00:47:31.110 Robert Tseng: Ritual, yeah, so if you click into that Notion page, this was, like, an example of a partner-driven lead from Jody that, like, kind of came in, like, last month.
363 00:47:31.360 ⇒ 00:47:35.719 Robert Tseng: I don’t know what happened with it, it just kind of died, but, like, I was just kind of…
364 00:47:35.840 ⇒ 00:47:49.560 Robert Tseng: I’m just going through this exercise myself over the weekend, and just thinking about, like, okay, the appendix has the original email that Utah received, and then Jody was basically like, here’s a blurb about Brainforge, let me introduce you to UTAM.
365 00:47:49.560 ⇒ 00:47:58.140 Robert Tseng: But I’m like, why did this one die? Because, like, Ritual is a great target for us. They’re looking for a fractional, like, head of data. That’s exactly what we do.
366 00:47:58.140 ⇒ 00:48:18.050 Robert Tseng: And they already gave us, like, a few contacts in that email, which I kind of, like, if you scrolled up, I prioritized, like, you know, we could run the mutual intro campaign on Nigy or on Daniel, because I have a few different contacts there that could all intro me to that person specific… those… because those look like the two decision makers that Joni had already identified.
367 00:48:18.170 ⇒ 00:48:25.119 Robert Tseng: And then I identified, okay, there’s, like, two other people that I think would be our counterparts if we were to actually work with them at usual.
368 00:48:25.120 ⇒ 00:48:38.280 Robert Tseng: you know, they may not be the decision maker, but those are also folks that we should get interested. So this is, like, me kind of fleshing out, well, this is, like, what I was hoping that you would do with strategic accounts when you listed them on there. It’d be, like, kind of thinking about
369 00:48:38.280 ⇒ 00:48:41.239 Robert Tseng: Who are, like, the 3-5 people we need to connect with?
370 00:48:41.240 ⇒ 00:48:49.639 Robert Tseng: like, what’s the context, and like, how do we actually go and get in front of them? And, anyway, so I just kind of, like, did it for this account, because I’m, like.
371 00:48:49.710 ⇒ 00:49:03.029 Robert Tseng: I mean, I don’t know where the timing is now, like, we should probably figure it out, but, you know, if they already know about Brainforge, and they just need to hear about us, like, 2 or 3 more times, like, we should… like, that to me is, like, worth going after.
372 00:49:03.590 ⇒ 00:49:09.989 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so let’s extend this scenario. If you scroll down, I put what the update was, and this… we have a Slack channel with.
373 00:49:09.990 ⇒ 00:49:11.729 Robert Tseng: Jody? Oh, yeah.
374 00:49:11.880 ⇒ 00:49:29.149 Uttam Kumaran: But basically, they said… Minji said she backfilled the senior director role that they were trying to fill, and they basically couldn’t. But this is a great… this is a situation where they’re trying to get a senior director for someone that they need to actually just do basic work.
375 00:49:29.630 ⇒ 00:49:34.009 Uttam Kumaran: So my… my guess is that this person is either not gonna work out.
376 00:49:34.360 ⇒ 00:49:35.169 Robert Tseng: I don’t see them.
377 00:49:35.170 ⇒ 00:49:38.089 Uttam Kumaran: So… They’re probably gone.
378 00:49:38.500 ⇒ 00:49:44.419 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, so either this person doesn’t work out, or… they said the new hire’s joining in September, oh yeah, so…
379 00:49:44.420 ⇒ 00:49:46.359 Robert Tseng: Oh, I see, haven’t joined yet.
380 00:49:46.360 ⇒ 00:49:49.839 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, no, I think they should have joined by now, in September. I didn’t see it.
381 00:49:49.840 ⇒ 00:49:50.910 Robert Tseng: Anybody? Yeah.
382 00:49:50.910 ⇒ 00:50:07.850 Uttam Kumaran: So I guess this is what I’m saying, is my… what I told Jody is, like, look, they’re trying to hire for a role which is, like, a do-everything role. That doesn’t happen. And so you’re not going to find that person, or you’re going to find the wrong person. So you should bring us in. And again, we have the Eden use case. So, again, what he said was, like.
383 00:50:08.170 ⇒ 00:50:13.130 Uttam Kumaran: If it makes sense to reconnect after September, we’ll certainly reach out.
384 00:50:13.540 ⇒ 00:50:20.139 Uttam Kumaran: We’re about to September, we should just… we should do something, right? We should go to Jody and say, hey, here’s an email we would like you to send.
385 00:50:20.710 ⇒ 00:50:25.259 Uttam Kumaran: Or we should also run any of your mutual intro things, you know?
386 00:50:28.300 ⇒ 00:50:36.979 Uttam Kumaran: And find another way in through there, say, hey, we were, you know, we were on the hook to, like, we were… we were in the running on this, just wanted to check how it went. We were working with Minji.
387 00:50:37.460 ⇒ 00:50:38.220 Uttam Kumaran: You know?
388 00:50:38.850 ⇒ 00:50:39.500 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
389 00:50:46.230 ⇒ 00:50:49.910 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, anyway, strategic accounts here is more like strategic lead, right?
390 00:50:50.100 ⇒ 00:50:51.600 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
391 00:50:51.600 ⇒ 00:50:52.140 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
392 00:50:55.290 ⇒ 00:50:56.050 Uttam Kumaran: I see.
393 00:50:57.430 ⇒ 00:51:03.449 Hannah Wang: Okay, so… Thanks for doing that exercise. Sorry I haven’t done that for any of these.
394 00:51:03.660 ⇒ 00:51:04.909 Robert Tseng: No, no, yeah.
395 00:51:04.910 ⇒ 00:51:08.330 Hannah Wang: And then, yeah, we can reach out back to Jody.
396 00:51:08.600 ⇒ 00:51:17.160 Hannah Wang: Or run a mutual intro playbook thing for the sales, but yeah, going back to the campaign, I guess, is what we were talking about.
397 00:51:17.160 ⇒ 00:51:17.820 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
398 00:51:17.820 ⇒ 00:51:27.079 Hannah Wang: So I know we want to do, like, a partner-led one, probably, sometime. But yeah, I’m gonna meet with Holly this week, and then hopefully we’ll have something fleshed out, so…
399 00:51:27.260 ⇒ 00:51:37.059 Hannah Wang: Eric. Yeah, so… Maybe we can take this offline and pick our third one later,
400 00:51:37.720 ⇒ 00:51:45.460 Hannah Wang: But I just wanted to give an update on GigRadar, so I, like, crunched some of the numbers, and it’s in that thread that, Robert, you,
401 00:51:45.840 ⇒ 00:51:54.040 Hannah Wang: mentioned, but I… I don’t know, I just feel like it’s not really… Like, in terms of output.
402 00:51:54.240 ⇒ 00:51:56.510 Hannah Wang: Sure, like, we have…
403 00:51:58.270 ⇒ 00:52:05.600 Hannah Wang: like, 47, and out of those, we got, I think, 4 of them were viewed.
404 00:52:06.700 ⇒ 00:52:10.900 Hannah Wang: But I feel like that number’s kind of low.
405 00:52:12.070 ⇒ 00:52:14.039 Robert Tseng: Less than 5%, hey.
406 00:52:15.000 ⇒ 00:52:19.889 Robert Tseng: Is that including UTAM and me? What if… what if you filtered… what if you filtered out UTAM?
407 00:52:20.740 ⇒ 00:52:23.750 Robert Tseng: How do I do that? Okay, if you can’t, it’s fine, whatever.
408 00:52:25.100 ⇒ 00:52:27.899 Uttam Kumaran: Click on Proposal Setting Stats by Freelancer.
409 00:52:28.950 ⇒ 00:52:30.190 Uttam Kumaran: On the left.
410 00:52:31.610 ⇒ 00:52:33.009 Uttam Kumaran: By a freelancer, yeah.
411 00:52:34.590 ⇒ 00:52:36.900 Robert Tseng: It’s all Robert. I see.
412 00:52:37.200 ⇒ 00:52:50.250 Hannah Wang: I mean, Utam’s, we… we figured out, like, what’s broken, what’s wrong, so he is, like, we are auto-bidding on his account. I just feel like UTAMS is so bare that people are not looking at it, probably.
413 00:52:51.060 ⇒ 00:52:53.690 Hannah Wang: So… Yeah, we either have to, like.
414 00:52:54.440 ⇒ 00:53:08.450 Hannah Wang: that’s why I was like, oh, maybe we can get, like, a client testimonial from Yvette, and then, like, put it in Upwork, and so it just builds authority in that way, because otherwise, I feel like no one’s gonna work with us, because we have zero reviews, and for Utam’s account, at least. So…
415 00:53:08.490 ⇒ 00:53:18.699 Hannah Wang: it’s all still Robert, kind of leading everything, and I… I see there’s, like, an AI one that… is this the client that you talked to over the weekend? The lead, I mean?
416 00:53:18.700 ⇒ 00:53:22.799 Robert Tseng: Yeah, he even responded to me over AI. I was like, alright, sure. Yeah.
417 00:53:22.800 ⇒ 00:53:27.699 Uttam Kumaran: The alternative is to, like… I don’t know, how does their pricing work? Like, are they priced by seat?
418 00:53:28.510 ⇒ 00:53:29.560 Uttam Kumaran: Do you remember?
419 00:53:30.720 ⇒ 00:53:35.159 Robert Tseng: For our gig radar? Yeah, I don’t know how much we pay for them. I feel like we’re paying, like, 500 a month.
420 00:53:35.160 ⇒ 00:53:36.830 Uttam Kumaran: 400 bucks a month.
421 00:53:36.830 ⇒ 00:53:42.540 Robert Tseng: Oh my goodness. For 40 leads? Dude, it’s not… it’s not worked.
422 00:53:42.680 ⇒ 00:53:45.380 Uttam Kumaran: It’s not 40 leads, it’s 40 applicants, applications.
423 00:53:45.380 ⇒ 00:53:48.529 Robert Tseng: Oh, yeah, not even leashes. It’s like 4 leash. Yeah, it’s like…
424 00:53:50.110 ⇒ 00:53:56.940 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, well, I mean, this is where, like, I think your account is still working, right? So maybe I’ll just, like, see if I can get us a discount.
425 00:53:58.190 ⇒ 00:54:01.089 Uttam Kumaran: And then we just cram everything into your account.
426 00:54:01.390 ⇒ 00:54:02.180 Robert Tseng: Hmm.
427 00:54:02.540 ⇒ 00:54:08.870 Hannah Wang: Like, I already tried to add AI stuff, I think, into Robert’s account, I think.
428 00:54:08.870 ⇒ 00:54:14.459 Robert Tseng: It won’t work. Mine’s too, like, analytics-focused, like, that’s why I wanted Utom’s to be, like.
429 00:54:14.690 ⇒ 00:54:19.290 Robert Tseng: we’ll go all in on AI for him, but what he needs is he just needs to get… we need to.
430 00:54:19.290 ⇒ 00:54:20.389 Hannah Wang: You want, like, one client.
431 00:54:20.390 ⇒ 00:54:24.790 Robert Tseng: He needs to work the $5 deal that I did to get started.
432 00:54:24.790 ⇒ 00:54:30.649 Uttam Kumaran: I don’t mind doing that, but like, yeah, we should just do that. But we did lower. I asked the team to lower the bids.
433 00:54:30.650 ⇒ 00:54:31.209 Hannah Wang: Yeah, we did.
434 00:54:31.210 ⇒ 00:54:36.699 Robert Tseng: Like, he should just be bidding on anything AI, and just, like, whatever, if it’s $5, like, just go and, like.
435 00:54:37.140 ⇒ 00:54:44.180 Robert Tseng: a couple of those, and, like, that’ll get him on his way. Like, yeah, he just needs something on his account.
436 00:54:44.950 ⇒ 00:54:48.489 Hannah Wang: So should we just set the minimum to, like, 5? And then, like…
437 00:54:48.630 ⇒ 00:54:55.959 Robert Tseng: Yeah, we should just drop the minimum, and just… he should just lowball every… every deal, just to see, like, are people gonna bite on that, like…
438 00:54:56.240 ⇒ 00:54:56.680 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
439 00:54:57.260 ⇒ 00:54:59.009 Uttam Kumaran: Behind the… behind the floor.
440 00:54:59.600 ⇒ 00:55:00.240 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
441 00:55:00.610 ⇒ 00:55:04.960 Robert Tseng: But again, I think we should just try to get, like, a win on his account or something.
442 00:55:06.350 ⇒ 00:55:11.089 Hannah Wang: Okay, we can lower it, we can get rid of the minimum. I know our renewal… I forgot.
443 00:55:11.090 ⇒ 00:55:21.300 Robert Tseng: The other thing that I can do is I can go on my account and hire Utah, pretty much, and, like, just give, like, kind of just artificially inject, like.
444 00:55:22.290 ⇒ 00:55:27.199 Robert Tseng: Just go create, like, a job description, whatever, and then tie it to his account.
445 00:55:27.200 ⇒ 00:55:28.990 Uttam Kumaran: I still have an account for Pungo.
446 00:55:28.990 ⇒ 00:55:30.159 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I do, I do.
447 00:55:31.890 ⇒ 00:55:40.300 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so we just, like, keyword load that job description, like, make it sound amazing, that’s, like, really loaded for AI, and then just, like.
448 00:55:40.400 ⇒ 00:55:54.489 Robert Tseng: whatever, we’ll lose, like, 20% on it, because that’s what… that, that Upwork will eat it, but at least that’ll put something on his… on his account. Like, yeah, this is the hacky stuff that we gotta, like, try. Can’t just be just, like.
449 00:55:54.780 ⇒ 00:55:58.839 Robert Tseng: Sending 30 proposals a month and getting zero replies.
450 00:55:58.840 ⇒ 00:55:59.590 Uttam Kumaran: So I think that’s…
451 00:55:59.590 ⇒ 00:56:03.750 Robert Tseng: That’s two key things we could try, you know, like, what’s the other price even further?
452 00:56:03.850 ⇒ 00:56:12.529 Uttam Kumaran: Okay. Because ultimately, like, it’s up to us to accept, so I feel like, let’s just… let’s just even lower it further, and then try to just be the…
453 00:56:12.980 ⇒ 00:56:13.720 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah
454 00:56:13.990 ⇒ 00:56:21.959 Uttam Kumaran: And then second is, let’s… maybe you can ask, Hannah, you can ask Ryan to try to figure out this, like, can we… can we get an artificial…
455 00:56:22.400 ⇒ 00:56:23.690 Uttam Kumaran: testimonial.
456 00:56:23.910 ⇒ 00:56:24.920 Hannah Wang: Yeah.
457 00:56:25.200 ⇒ 00:56:25.810 Hannah Wang: From Pungo?
458 00:56:25.810 ⇒ 00:56:30.689 Uttam Kumaran: to my account, yeah. And then it’ll be, like, a couple hundred dollar project or something.
459 00:56:30.830 ⇒ 00:56:31.200 Hannah Wang: Yeah.
460 00:56:31.200 ⇒ 00:56:33.290 Uttam Kumaran: We’ll get the testimonial and everything on there.
461 00:56:34.550 ⇒ 00:56:38.450 Hannah Wang: Okay, yeah, we’ll do that, and then I’ll… we’ll monitor.
462 00:56:38.450 ⇒ 00:56:45.409 Uttam Kumaran: If we… actually, you know, if we even want to go deeper, I can ask Ian to do it, or someone else to do it too, Robert. Like, if you want to be safe.
463 00:56:46.670 ⇒ 00:56:47.570 Robert Tseng: Oh.
464 00:56:50.500 ⇒ 00:56:51.000 Uttam Kumaran: using those.
465 00:56:51.000 ⇒ 00:56:51.440 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
466 00:56:51.440 ⇒ 00:56:52.000 Uttam Kumaran: Nope.
467 00:56:52.000 ⇒ 00:57:03.000 Robert Tseng: I think I would… if you have somebody else that would be willing to do that, that’d probably be better. I just, like… if my account gets flagged, like, there was this one month where I was, like, blocked on Upwork or whatever, right? I just, like…
468 00:57:03.320 ⇒ 00:57:08.089 Robert Tseng: I don’t know, it’s just… there’s higher risk if I don’t… if my… my account gets flagged for something weird.
469 00:57:08.090 ⇒ 00:57:08.730 Uttam Kumaran: Okay.
470 00:57:09.020 ⇒ 00:57:12.530 Uttam Kumaran: Okay, let me, yeah, let’s just put that as a task, Hannah. I’ll… I have…
471 00:57:13.000 ⇒ 00:57:14.130 Hannah Wang: Okay. I don’t have a lot of…
472 00:57:14.250 ⇒ 00:57:17.390 Uttam Kumaran: I have a lot of friends that are just nice friends. Yeah.
473 00:57:17.590 ⇒ 00:57:19.110 Hannah Wang: I know you have to drop, is there.
474 00:57:19.110 ⇒ 00:57:19.729 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I’ll drop.
475 00:57:19.730 ⇒ 00:57:23.279 Hannah Wang: to ask other people, because I hogged up the entire time.
476 00:57:23.280 ⇒ 00:57:26.460 Robert Tseng: Yeah, no, I think,
477 00:57:28.520 ⇒ 00:57:36.720 Robert Tseng: I guess just… Justina’s going to basically transition out at the end of this week, so we’re gonna have to figure out, like, how…
478 00:57:36.720 ⇒ 00:57:48.649 Robert Tseng: to kind of, like, share… I know you guys have shared looms and whatever, so my ask is just for people to kind of consolidate training things to go back into the Justina doc, and so we can kind of prepare for the
479 00:57:48.730 ⇒ 00:57:50.779 Robert Tseng: You know, as when we go find
480 00:57:50.960 ⇒ 00:57:55.590 Robert Tseng: somebody else to kind of backfill her, pretty much. Okay. That’s… that’s the…
481 00:57:55.720 ⇒ 00:57:58.069 Robert Tseng: more urgent thing that I wanted to share.
482 00:57:58.250 ⇒ 00:58:00.560 Robert Tseng: And then, yeah, I mean…
483 00:58:00.800 ⇒ 00:58:07.260 Robert Tseng: I guess if anyone else has, like, other stats to read out, like, just send it in Slack, but I’m gonna… I’m gonna hop.
484 00:58:08.910 ⇒ 00:58:11.980 Hannah Wang: Alright. Okay. Thanks, everyone.
485 00:58:12.280 ⇒ 00:58:13.350 Uttam Kumaran: Thank you.
486 00:58:13.350 ⇒ 00:58:14.520 Ryan Brosas: Thank you.