# How this $1M bootstrapped SaaS can expand into a new market. | Smart Bear Live 002 Jason Cohen · 2026-08-16 Jesse Schoberg's DropInBlog has 2,000 customers, 2% monthly churn, and a plateaued growth curve; hosts Jason Cohen and Rob Walling argue DropInBlog should deliberately push into BigCommerce businesses and agencies serving them. Schoberg says enterprise visitors were 5% of traffic but converting zero; after adding invoicing, audit logs, and white-glove migrations, $399/$499 plans began selling. They tell him to market engineers and marketers separately, pitch marketers on AI/LLM visibility as job security, use ads to learn messaging not just ROI, and build an agency channel because one agency can bring multiple clients. They also challenge his Laravel focus, argue BigCommerce is where the fish are, and advise giving each initiative an owner, separate metrics, and company-wide alignment. ## Questions this episode answers ### Why did DropInBlog choose BigCommerce over Shopify as its new market? Jesse Schoberg says the Shopify cohort is slightly larger but worse: churn is terrible, support is terrible, many signups are not real businesses. BigCommerce users are old-school real businesses; he says one seventh of their 37,000 people do over half a million dollars or $400,000 a year. If 5% converted to the team plan, DropInBlog would add 40,000 in MRR; to the business plan, 100,000 in MRR. [55:56](https://asmartbear.podhood.com/e060944c-4f30-4c54-abb2-fe603d9eefa7?t=3356000) ### Why should DropInBlog treat agencies as a major growth channel? Jason Cohen argues agencies give DropInBlog a multiplicative effect: one agency relationship can produce multiple sites, even dozens or hundreds, and Jesse later estimates one agency is about three customers. Because Jesse previously ran and sold a web-dev agency, he can speak credibly to agencies. Jason adds this is 'way better than even SEO' and a stronger growth model than flat brand accounts. [1:04:44](https://asmartbear.podhood.com/e060944c-4f30-4c54-abb2-fe603d9eefa7?t=3884000) ### Why would DropInBlog run ads if ads don't produce direct ROI? Jason Cohen says ROI doesn't have to be the reason to run ads; the second reason is learning. Ads can quickly reveal which positioning and messaging makes engineers and marketers click, while SEO is too slow to iterate on messages because changes and feedback take too long. With higher-priced plans, ads can also work for ROI, but the learning benefit alone can justify a budgeted test. [45:45](https://asmartbear.podhood.com/e060944c-4f30-4c54-abb2-fe603d9eefa7?t=2745000) ### Should DropInBlog use account-based marketing (ABM) in this expansion? Rob Walling says ABM means courting 20 or a hundred customers for years with events, sponsorships, dinners, and every channel. Jason Cohen says it is a whole world and may not be the first thing to try, but for higher-dollar customers, hiring someone who has built ABM before can save years and can be funded from the revenue it creates. [1:14:27](https://asmartbear.podhood.com/e060944c-4f30-4c54-abb2-fe603d9eefa7?t=4467000) ## Key moments - **[0:00] Intro** - [0:14] DropInBlog founder Jesse Schoberg runs a bootstrapped $1M/year SaaS as a digital nomad, with 2% monthly churn and a flat growth curve. - [2:05] DropInBlog drops a blog into any existing website and matches the site's existing style and layout, says Jesse Schoberg. - **[3:33] The plateau** - [3:47] Jesse Schoberg: DropInBlog started self-serve only, with approachable plans for smaller companies and product-led growth. - [4:15] Jesse: DropInBlog is very good at SEO, but the SMB segment stopped growing after they maxed out the channel. - [4:57] DropInBlog's best existing cohorts are course creators on Thinkific/Teachable and e-commerce on Shopify and BigCommerce. - **[6:03] Big-company signal** - [6:03] Apollo de-anonymization showed DropInBlog that 5% of its website visitors came from huge companies, says Jesse. - [7:07] Jason Cohen: 5% big-company visitors with zero conversions is not a validated market, and half the world works at big companies. - [8:47] Jesse: after the growth wall, DropInBlog rebranded, rewrote site copy, and launched higher-priced plans that started selling. - [9:58] Q: How did DropInBlog learn what bigger customers wanted? A: Jesse added 'book a demo' and asked them on calls. - [10:38] Jesse Schoberg: the enterprise add-ons that matter are invoicing, audit logs, and white-glove migrations. - **[12:17] Delight vs useful** - [12:25] Jason Cohen: invoicing and audit logs are table stakes, not delight — the DropInBlog pitch has no excitement yet. - [13:10] Jason Cohen: for big-company marketers, DropInBlog's LLM visibility story can sound like 'this keeps your job'. - [15:19] Jason Cohen: Linear proves project-management tools can delight through design and speed; DropInBlog needs that too. - [16:13] Jesse: DropInBlog could add 'Ask Analytics' via Google Analytics MCP as a delight feature for marketers. - [16:37] Jesse: big-company demo calls are usually with engineers, so it's unclear whether the marketer or engineer holds the wallet. - [17:46] Rob Walling: customers only give you table-stakes feature ideas; delight features come from your own innovation. - **[19:27] Going upmarket** - [19:27] Jason Cohen: DropInBlog's UX simplicity is a 10-year asset; don't let enterprise features ruin what customers already love. - [22:19] Jason Cohen questions how DropInBlog can show a $49 and a $999 plan on one pricing page without confusing buyers. - [25:14] Rob Walling: DropInBlog's $499 and $750 plans are too close; raise the anchor plan to $999. - **[25:53] Marketing and AI** - [26:20] Jason Cohen: marketing budgets are being cut and AI can write the same crappy corporate posts; LLM visibility justifies marketers' jobs. - [30:52] Jason Cohen: tell a marketer 'you'll keep your job' by getting the company into LLMs — that's the emotional hook, not useful features. - [32:35] Rob Walling: customers won't invent delight features; DropInBlog's team must create them like Linear and Superhuman did. - [33:22] Rob Walling: making DropInBlog a 'no-brainer' that saves a marketer's job is easier than reaching true delight. - [34:14] Jason Cohen: a vision of customers raving in Slack doesn't need 100% adoption to transform positioning and growth. - **[36:43] Engineer vs marketer** - [36:43] Jason Cohen: DropInBlog doesn't know whether marketers or engineers enter the funnel first; run ads to each to find out. - [39:37] Jason Cohen: don't rely on demo-call data for persona; build separate landing pages and messaging for marketers vs engineers. - [41:38] Jesse: paid ads can't profitably support DropInBlog's low-priced SMB plans because the buyers have to be in market. - [42:14] Jason Cohen: AdWords is for intent, not awareness; DropInBlog's past five-figure ad tests didn't target the higher-priced market. - [45:49] Jason Cohen: run ads to discover your message, not for ROI — a day of clicks beats months of slow SEO iteration. - [47:47] Jason Cohen: ads can be a temporary tool to hone positioning quickly; that wasn't the goal of DropInBlog's earlier tests. - **[48:54] BigCommerce** - [49:29] Jesse: DropInBlog is testing cold outreach to BigCommerce store owners and seeing early positive signs. - [50:20] Jesse: DropInBlog sponsors Laravel and attends Laracon because that's the community it already knows. - [51:19] Jason Cohen vs Jesse Schoberg: Laravel is comfort, not where the fish are; React is where the site-building engineers are. - [52:29] Jason Cohen: communities you love can be funded as fun/culture, but they shouldn't pass for go-to-market strategy. - [54:16] Jesse: after watching Smart Bear Live episode 1, he realized BigCommerce is DropInBlog's best new cohort. - [56:18] Jesse: Shopify cohort is slightly larger but worse — terrible churn, support load, and a noisy slop-filled app store. - **[1:04:31] Agency channel** - [1:04:35] Jesse Schoberg ran and sold a web-dev agency, giving DropInBlog special credibility when selling to agencies. - [1:05:36] Jason Cohen: agencies multiply customers and can bring dozens of sites over time; why isn't the agency channel primary? - [1:07:03] Jesse: DropInBlog's agency channel is only 'mediumly successful' because it's inbound-only, not an outbound motion. - [1:08:14] Jason Cohen: landing all five top BigCommerce agencies would be worth a lot; that's surround-sound marketing. - [1:09:13] Jesse: one agency averages about three DropInBlog customers, so you can spend 3x more to win an agency relationship. - [1:11:12] Jason Cohen: pitch existing agencies to reapproach maintenance clients with a quick blog project to get more customers fast. - **[1:14:27] ABM** - [1:14:46] Rob Walling: DropInBlog's BigCommerce push is account-based marketing — court 20 whales for years instead of relying on self-serve SEO. - [1:16:08] Jason Cohen: ABM is a whole new discipline; hiring someone who has set up ABM systems can save DropInBlog years. - [1:17:24] Jason Cohen: setting up ABM is different from executing it; a part-time expert consultant can de-risk and accelerate. - [1:18:50] Jason Cohen: $700/month customers can fund real sales motions; $400/month is too thin for account-based marketing. - [1:19:33] Jason Cohen: selling to enterprise people is not enterprise sales — DropInBlog isn't installing Workday for $10M. - [1:20:43] Jason Cohen: if DropInBlog does events, they should be BigCommerce events; Laravel moves to the 'fun budget' column. - **[1:32:36] Action plan** - [1:34:17] Rob Walling: if I inherited DropInBlog, I'd hire an ABM coach who's done zero-to-one and run the hustle myself. - [1:35:20] Jesse vs Rob: Is ABM really the first move for DropInBlog, or is it just hard for a self-serve founder? - [1:36:45] Rob Walling: "I always say build your network and not your audience." - [1:37:07] Jason Cohen: announce the expansion to the whole company as green shoots, not a pivot — 'and' not 'instead of'. - [1:40:17] Jason Cohen: frame the BigCommerce push as an expansion for the team, and set up owners and budgets so it doesn't get sidelined. - [1:43:29] Jason Cohen: if it were him, he'd trade the bigger-brand focus for agencies because agencies grow their spend over time. - **[2:12:16] Final thoughts** - [2:12:49] Jesse Schoberg: "I'm never going to take a demo call guy. Then we plateaued for a year and I was like, I can take a demo call." - [2:13:46] Rob Walling: "No plan survives contact with customers. Within a month you'll know some of what we said was right and some was wrong." ## Speakers - **Jason Cohen** (host) - **Rob Walling** (host) - **Jesse Schoberg** (guest) ## Topics SaaS Metrics ## Mentioned BigCommerce (company), MicroConf (company), Shopify (company), TinySeed (company), WP Engine (company), Apollo (product), DropInBlog (product), Laravel (product), Linear (product), Superhuman (product) ## Transcript ### Intro **Jason Cohen** [0:01] The star of today's episode of Smart Bear Live is a founder who's bootstrapped a $1 million a year business as a digital nomad. He's now looking at a flat growth curve and a potential new juicy market segment, but he's not quite sure how to go to there. So we're going to help him. And who is we, you might ask? I'm Jason Cohen, I'm known online as Smart Bear, I've run and founded 2 unicorns in the past 25 years, both bootstrapped and funded, and I've been writing about startups for most of that time. And joining me to help our star founder is Rob Walling. So Rob has more experience understanding and helping bootstrap software founders than probably anyone else on earth, because he's done it himself and then he's helped thousands of startups over 20 years. He's done it through his blog and then his podcast, Startups For the Rest of Us, which has about 80 billion episodes, I checked to make sure that number wasright. He's written 5 books, he runs MicroConf, which is definitely the best conference for bootstrap software founders, and then together with Einar Vølsted he runs TinySeed. He runs a lot of stuff, which is one of the very few funds that makes sense for companies that have the bootstrapper mindset, the bootstrapper culture, bootstrapper goals, but they want to take just like a little bit of money from someone who understands and can help. So I'm a proud investor and mentor at TinySeed and a proud speaker at MicroConf, and Rob was an angel investor in my company, WP Engine, and that did well. So we have a long history together, professionally and personally, and I'm thrilled to sit by him today. So welcome, Rob. **Rob Walling** [1:24] Thanks so much. It's my pleasure to be here. **Jason Cohen** [1:26] So together, Rob and I are going to help the star of the show, Jesse Schoberg, with his company DropInBlog. Now Jesse's living the life that a lot of people wish they had. His company makes over a million dollars a year, which he bootstrapped with 2 co-founders and runs as a digital nomad. He moves from Barcelona to Bangkok and maybe everywhere in between and maybe not, I'm not sure. I guess he'll tell us. He's got thousands of customers, so that's nice, with a low churn of 2% per month, so I guess that means they like it. And he's got a fully distributed workforce, which also supports his nomadic lifestyle. So he's got a product with high margins, people that love it, and he builds it while living anywhere in the world, so it's pretty badass. And so what is this great product? DropInBlog is exactly what it sounds like. It's a perfect name. You drop it in into any website. So say you already have a website for your product or service, and you want to add a robust blog inside the existing site style and layout for things like content marketing or AI visibility, SEO, stuff like that. And so you can just throw it in there. It's really easy. So it's a great idea. It's got 10 years of execution behind it, thousands of happy customers, and so of course what's the problem with that? Sounds pretty good. So the problem is that growth has been tapping out in the last few years in the segment of customers that got him to this point. And so Jesse does see a new cohort of customers that looks promising and might result in a stronger business model. There's been some pricing changes recently, but he's still not quite sure how to shift into that segment and make it scalable. So Jesse, first of all, welcome. And second of all, I just want to say out loud, it's brave of you to come out here as the star of the show today and put all your challenges on the table so that other people can learn or even commiserate with you. So thank you, and Rob and I will try to make it worth it by making a lot of progress today on that. **Jesse Schoberg** [3:06] Well, hey, thanks a lot for having me, and that was a very flattering intro. I feel like, I mean, that sounded pretty cool. I don't know if we need to do this, but yeah, appreciate that, and I appreciate both of you guys' time. This is great, and just looking forward to digging in and seeing what we can do for the next chapter of the company, which me and my co-founders and team are very excited to go on, and I think we got some ideas here. So after watching episode 1 the other week, I'm ready to get the punches in, so let's get started. ### The plateau **Jason Cohen** [3:33] That'sright, we got to start punching. Like enough Mr. Nice Guy. So actually, maybe you can start by filling in a little of the detail of the current situation, like who's this current segment of customers that makes up your current customer base, what's the new segment that you're seeing that you want to shift into, and stuff like that. **Jesse Schoberg** [3:47] You bet. So we started like most bootstrap founders, you know, we're self-serve only, and we've got these approachable plans for other smaller companies, very product-led, etc. And we did that. We're very good at SEO, kind of dogfooding our own product as well. And as usual, which of course we didn't know when we started, but now we do know because of friendly folks like the both of you creating content, explaining about things like running out of marketing channels and tapping out to max MRR, etc. Eventually, over time, that segment, which is fairly broad actually, our product does kind of work in many scenarios. I mean, it is a blogging platform that is, I feel like our only real differentiator is we're more targeted at business bloggers that are trying to actually do content marketing versus personal bloggers that are, you know, telling their thoughts or whatever. **Jason Cohen** [4:37] Because not all bloggers don't have a corporate website that they're trying to drop it into,right? **Jesse Schoberg** [4:41] Exactly. Exactly. **Jason Cohen** [4:43] But I bet there's some businesses that are better than others,right? Because like if I'm a restaurant, maybe I'm unlikely to even think about that. So I bet there's even better segments. I mean, even besides the, not pivot, but even besides the expansion you're thinking about. **Jesse Schoberg** [4:57] Yeah, I mean, our popular segments have always been course creators, so we do very well with like Thinkific and Teachable, and then also e-commerce, so we do well with Shopify and Big Commerce and Big Cartel and these, as well as like the general website builders, Framer, Webflow, this kind of stuff. And of course, like the custom sites,right? So this is kind of our quote problem is that we're tech nerds and we build all the stuff and we make it really great and whatever, but then we're kind of everywhere,right? But so then it's like in the new world, we're like building the React framework and we're building this and that and all of this kind of stuff. But yeah, eventually it's like still the same problem. SEO is the channel, self-serve coming in. And so I guess I could say briefly, a couple of years ago, we start to notice this, and what we decided is that. **Jason Cohen** [5:46] When you say notice this, notice what? **Jesse Schoberg** [5:49] Notice that the growth is tapping out and that the churn is catching up to the growth amount. But then at the same time, we were playing around with this product called Apollo, and there's other ones that do this de-anonymization stuff. ### Big-company signal **Jesse Schoberg** [6:03] So you put a script on your website and it says like, tells you who's visiting the site. It's not like the person, but it'll say like three people from WP Engine came to your website last month. And so we were looking at these stats and about 5% of our visitors were from like huge companies. And we had nothing to sell them because our largest plan was $99 a month. And all of our messaging was, you know, we're the friendly, small, like bootstrappy guys, you know, and. **Jason Cohen** [6:34] But what was the conversion rate on that 5%? **Jesse Schoberg** [6:37] Zero. That's the point. And so. **Jason Cohen** [6:39] But it's only 5%, and half of the people in the world work at a big company. That's a real stat. **Jesse Schoberg** [6:46] I guess. **Jason Cohen** [6:46] So half the people will work at a real company and only 5% come to the website and don't buy. That just means they're not good customers. **Jesse Schoberg** [6:52] But my thought is that they were just, there were people that were interested that were in this segment, and we had sold none. So then I was like, oh, and then it's like. **Jason Cohen** [7:01] You say people. Okay, it's 1 out of 20. Like, so who cares? **Jesse Schoberg** [7:07] Yeah, well, we did, because we were tapped out on the other one, and we were just trying to figure out what the hell to do. **Jason Cohen** [7:11] So you were tapped out because you feel there's no more opportunity in small business to drop a blog into a website. **Jesse Schoberg** [7:19] More the marketing channels we were good at. We were pretty maxing it out. **Jason Cohen** [7:24] And so therefore, a channel that's, so an opportunity that was only 5% of what you're currently getting was better than any other idea you had to also grow by 5% in some other channel for your existing base that you're actually good at. Like, in other words, if it's 5%, it's like, allright, we could grow 5% if we captured all of them. We could grow 5% more, which is not actually significant. And you're saying that would be easier to go to a new market segment that you're not successful in your brand or product in. It would be better to go there for a 5% lift rather than trying to just go to our existing customer segment where our product and brand isright and try to get a 5% lift just in marketing or sales or something. **Jesse Schoberg** [8:06] Well, I wasn't trying to get a 5% lift. I was trying to validate that these customers exist and would be interested in our product, which we could sell at a higher price point, which would open up new marketing channels that we weren't using. **Jason Cohen** [8:18] Okay, but you know they're not interested in the current one because there's zero conversions. So I guess what you're, if I'm trying to interpret what you're saying, you're hoping that that 5% wants to pay 10 times more for a different product than it would be 50% of your revenue, and now we're cooking. **Jesse Schoberg** [8:32] Yeah. And so that's what we did. **Jason Cohen** [8:34] But the current product they don't want, because as you said, it was zero conversions. That means I don't want it. **Jesse Schoberg** [8:39] Right. So let me finish then. So maybe you'reright, and we could have had this conversation then, and maybe I wouldn't have done this, but I didn't know what to do because we had maxed out. **Jason Cohen** [8:47] No, I understand. **Jesse Schoberg** [8:48] We couldn't move the needle. So we updated our brand. We rewrote all the copy on our website to attract more of this customer base. And then we created some plans that were for those people, and then they started selling. Not a ton, but they did start selling. And we also started doing demos for those. **Jason Cohen** [9:10] I'm glad they sell, but let me ask this. How did you know, given that the current brand and product they didn't want, and you didn't normally sell to them because even just the amount of traffic is only 5%, so you don't know anything about them other than they don't want what you had. How did you figure out what to say and what to sell at what price point? Maybe you did some research or something. So like, how did you figure out what it is that this new segment might want? **Jesse Schoberg** [9:34] Yeah, we basically started doing a lot of demo calls. And so before, we didn't do any demos. And that was, of course, back to the, we're the self-serve only or whatever. Well, that line starts flattening out, and all of a sudden, I can do a demo, you know? So we just put the button on and just said, book a demo. And then, of course, these types of customers are the ones who book demos, not regular people, because they don't want to. And then we failed for a while. You know, they would still not work or whatever, and then we started to learn what they wanted, and we slowly shaped that business plan. **Jason Cohen** [10:04] And how did you learn what they wanted? **Jesse Schoberg** [10:06] By asking them. **Jason Cohen** [10:07] Okay, so there was a demo, but although that's a sales call normally, you were treating it as like kind of a combo sales call. I hope I get this sale, but I need to learn from this too. **Jesse Schoberg** [10:17] Yeah. And then when they basically, then as we started learning what they would want, then it would convert more, or we would like hear their fears or whatever. And then, of course, I interviewed as many people as I knew that wasn't that many that knew something about the segment, so we started adding things more related to them, like invoicing and audit logs and stuff that these kinds of businesses want, basically. **Jason Cohen** [10:38] Okay, and so what were like the top one or two things that you think were the unlock with this segment? Like you just said, you just mentioned two. Are those like the key things, or what was like the really key things? **Jesse Schoberg** [10:50] Yeah, I think it's generally a combination of those, and then, of course, it has like more users and stuff. But I think. **Jason Cohen** [11:00] No, that's good for you because there's more seats to sell. My question is, what is it that you figured out, if I do this, they'll be super thrilled? So like doing invoices or POs instead of credit card, that's just, that's not thrilling them. That's just covering a bar that they have, which is great. And like keeping the audit trail. It's not thrilling them. It's just covering a bar they have. In the Kano model, you'd say it's just like night, you just have to have it. **Jesse Schoberg** [11:22] Yeah, I think the other one is that we're including white glove migrations for those guys. And they need that because they're worried about their SEO breaking and they have, you know, 300 posts or whatever. So I feel like, yeah, those three are kind of the big ones that kind of made them more interested in those plans. And then we kind of. **Jason Cohen** [11:44] Okay, so invoicing, audit logs, and audit of what? Like who edits the site, that kind of audit log? **Jesse Schoberg** [11:50] Yeah, yeah. It's basically just like a huge history of like who logged in and what IP and what they changed and stuff. **Jason Cohen** [11:56] Okay, so auditing themselves, not their visitors. **Jesse Schoberg** [11:58] Right,right,right,right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. **Jason Cohen** [12:00] And then the onboarding, whether that's migration or installation, but just onboarding somehow. **Jesse Schoberg** [12:07] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. **Jason Cohen** [12:07] And that's it. **Jesse Schoberg** [12:09] I mean, there's some more stuff. Again, it's still a work in progress, which is partial to the reader. **Jason Cohen** [12:14] So actually something, I mean, I'm not trying to solve anything, but just something for a side note. I didn't hear anything in there that's exciting or that would like light someone up. Everything you told me was like, I just have to have this. ### Delight vs useful **Jason Cohen** [12:25] I don't have a choice. Or it's useful. There's utility. Obviously, with onboarding, of course, like you're alleviating a fear. It's useful. Like that's great. Like there's nothing wrong with it,right? Like nothing you told me was like exciting. So for example, I think you've described one of the values of the blog is maybe this helps you get found by LLMs. So if you send something like, here's a big company, like they barely know how to do SEO, but they have such a big brand that they just sort of appear, but they do not know what to do with LLMs. And so we can help them with that. And they're like, oh my God, if I could tell my boss that, you know, me in marketing, I'm doing something to get in LLMs, even if like none of us really know how that works, but like if I can still tell that story, and I am trying, like it's true, I'm trying. Like I've solidified my job for the next year or two, by the way. That's what I'm doing from my marketing. Like if you told me that, I would say, if I'm a marketer at a big company and I want my job to not go away because big companies are, in fact, letting people go, aren't they? Like you just saved my job for freak's sake. Like that sounds like freaking good. You didn't say that. Now, maybe you should take that and say that. But that's what I mean is what I'm missing here. I'm not here, like I'm hearing useful stuff and that's great. But like where they're excited. **Jesse Schoberg** [13:38] One thing that was really confusing for me when we switched to these demo calls with these companies, these tend to be more with like the technical people because they're the ones like trying to solve this problem at the big company. **Jason Cohen** [13:47] Right,right,right. **Jesse Schoberg** [13:47] And like those features are more like success, you know? But like what was tough on those calls and we're still like trying to figure out is like all the features that we built for our self-serve customers, like the SEO stuff and the like these kind of nice-to-have-y things that are about the UX and things, a lot of times they don't care about that. And then they're like, but the blog goes inside of the existing site and it's going to match and the SEO is going to work. And we're like, yeah, that's like our core product offering. And they're like, okay, good, good, good. **Jason Cohen** [14:16] Okay, so it could be that the customer is technical and not the marketer. Even so, I would still ask, I mean, there's no such thing as a product that shouldn't delight a customer. **Jesse Schoberg** [14:27] Right,right. **Jason Cohen** [14:27] If we can't name even one thing. **Jesse Schoberg** [14:28] And that part does from a technical side, but of course we're trying to create this differentiating on the pricing. **Jason Cohen** [14:33] That's not the only thing they have. No, no, no, it does not. It's because they already have the SEO. All you're doing is switching out some tech and bringing them back to where they already were, which is useful, but that is not delight. They're not going and telling other people online, oh my God, this is so cool because of anything, an interaction with customer service. This brand is so neat. The design of this was just perfect. I can't believe how this was designed. Like linear, linear is just project management. You know, it's just like a scrum shit. Like, but people are like, oh my God, the design. Oh, it's so fast. Oh, the keyword shortcuts,right? **Jesse Schoberg** [15:06] Mm-hmm. **Jason Cohen** [15:07] Right? Like none of that, those aren't even feel like it does the same as Jira, maybe even less,right? But the design is like, oh my God, people just love it. So like there's no such thing as a product that couldn't delight people. So again, I'm not, this isn't like a huge problem to solve. Again, this is an aside, but as an aside, like we can get so far, especially with big companies, we get so far in like where we're just ticking all the boxes. And of course you should, and that's good. But I would also think, especially because your whole thingright now is like, wait, how do I really thrive here in this new space? It's like, okay, part of the life we want that we have. **Jesse Schoberg** [15:41] Yeah, the best delight thing. **Jason Cohen** [15:42] And not just having a product, but thriving is that generating that delight. I haven't heard that yet. So that's just something to consider. **Jesse Schoberg** [15:49] Yeah, the best delight one that we have in the mind is we've been playing around with, we currently have a thing that people do like, which is they connect their Google Analytics, and it shows a more easy-to-digest version of their Google Analytics in the panel. But then we've recently been playing around with the Google Analytics MCP. And so we were thinking if we already are connected to their analytics, we could have like an Ask Analytics like in the panel, and then that's delight,right? Like. **Jason Cohen** [16:14] For whom? For whom is that delight? **Jesse Schoberg** [16:16] For the customer? **Jason Cohen** [16:17] No, for whom? Which, the marketer or the engineer? **Jesse Schoberg** [16:21] I mean, the marketer. **Jason Cohen** [16:22] Right. **Jesse Schoberg** [16:23] And maybe you just told me you just told me, wait, you just told me you sell the engineers. **Jason Cohen** [16:27] That he's on the call. **Jesse Schoberg** [16:28] Yeah. **Jason Cohen** [16:28] So which one is it? Or is it both? It can be both, but like you just told me that my example wouldn't work because it's the engineer. So like what is it? **Jesse Schoberg** [16:37] Yeah, yeah. I mean, it is more the engineers for sure. Yeah. **Jason Cohen** [16:40] Okay. But maybe the marketer holds the purse. I mean, that's actually an interesting question too. **Jesse Schoberg** [16:47] Yeah, it's one of the complicated parts of it that we've found so far. **Jason Cohen** [16:49] Who actually approves the order? **Jesse Schoberg** [16:54] Hmm. **Jason Cohen** [16:55] Like you said, invoice. Who signs that? **Jesse Schoberg** [16:58] Well, like procurement,right? But somebody has to push it. **Jason Cohen** [17:01] On behalf of whom? **Jesse Schoberg** [17:02] Yeah, probably. It's usually, again, it goes both. It could be like the marketing manager, or it could be like someone in tech, CTO, or someone who's pushing this through. It depends on like whose problem this got brought in. Like if it's the marketing person who's trying to solve it, or if it's like the tech that got assigned to it, you know? **Jason Cohen** [17:21] Fair enough. Okay. **Jesse Schoberg** [17:22] Mm-hmm. **Rob Walling** [17:23] If I can jump in on the delight versus kind of. **Jason Cohen** [17:28] Rob, this is your show too, just to hit it. **Rob Walling** [17:29] Yeah. You're saying table stakes versus delight, Jason. You're kind of, you know, breaking these things up, which I think makes a lot of sense. And what I want to say, and I'm curious if this fits the rest of you, but, you know, are any feature that we ever built that was delight was usually came from us. It came from our innovation. Customers did not come up with that on their own. Like I don't think anyone asked Linear, the product team, "Hey, can you make it so easy to use and, you know, everything Jason described that Linear does?" That's fucking internal,right? And superhuman, same thing. Like that was the secret sauce. That's why we say when you talk to customers to get ideas for features, they're going to give you table stakes. They're not product people. They're going to tell you what WordPress has, what, you know, whatever the insert to other blogging platform. And it's like, cool. But to Jason's point, that's not delight. How do you get that next 10 to 100% of delight? It is going to have to be you, your team. Every once in a blue moon, some customer will say something accidentally that is like, "Ooh, that is actually a delight." But most of the time, it really, it's innovation, you know? **Jason Cohen** [18:32] Yeah. Okay. I mean, even with the current base, let's just think of one of your current customers that are not one of these, just the SMBs or whatever, you know, who love you the most. Why are they delighted? **Jesse Schoberg** [18:54] Probably just our general like UX and ease of use. Like once it's set up, then it solves all these problems for them. Because they're trying to blog in the crappy version of the blog that's in Shopify or in whatever platform they have that may or may not have something. And then they move to us, and we do have a beautiful product that is very easy to use and all of this stuff. So they are delighted that it's great, and they generally become raving fans and all that,right? Which is why we have a 2% churn,right? Like we do have a very well-polished product that is delightful to use. **Jason Cohen** [19:27] So one thing that comes to mindright away is that's incredibly strong. And I wouldn't lose, I wouldn't forget that. I wouldn't forget that that's your strength. That's something that delights people, or at least it's a big strength. It's a big asset that you've built up over 10 years, and it's absolutely true. ### Going upmarket **Jason Cohen** [19:47] It's easy with enterprise customers or even mid-size customers to think, "Oh, they're in a big company." That means they want it to look like Workday or look like Amazon. In other words, hideous, but it has, you know, whatever features they need. No, they don't. They're human beings. They still want it to be simple and delightful to use. **Jesse Schoberg** [20:04] Yeah, yeah, exactly. **Jason Cohen** [20:06] Now there's tech boxes they may need. Oh, you have to integrate with my login system because that's how we, you know, everyone logs in with LDAP or Okta, whatever. Sure. Because you have to, or there has to be roles and permissions because reasons. Okay. **Jesse Schoberg** [20:19] Yeah. **Jason Cohen** [20:20] These are, even they don't like that. Even they don't want that. They just don't have a choice. And it's part of the kinds of things you do in order to just make the sale and it be possible as an option,right? But nobody wanted that. I mean, as a user, nobody wanted it. **Jesse Schoberg** [20:34] Sure, sure. **Jason Cohen** [20:34] Security team wanted it. But I mean, as a user, they didn't want that. It's a hoop they have to jump through too. So if this is a strength of yours that it's simple and approachable and easy, you wouldn't want like, "Oh, enterprise has lots of needs and demands of various sorts." I guess we'll end up morphing away from this strength. I would really fight against that. It may be that there's some enterprises you can't serve because it would ruin your UI to do it. Probably not a lot of that, but I mean, just in case, then I wouldn't build that. But if there's something where, "Oh yeah, okay, the login has to be enterprise stuff." Allright, allright, whatever. Like, okay, after that, you know, then I would do it because you're preserving the strength that you have for the end users who will love it and defend you when the budget consideration comes up again next year, whatever,right? **Jesse Schoberg** [21:20] Yeah, yeah. **Jason Cohen** [21:20] And so I would keep that in mind and not allow yourself to be dragged into a like, "Because I had to add a bunch of features for enterprise, you know, now my design is worse." I wouldn't get trapped by that idea. **Jesse Schoberg** [21:33] Yeah, I feel fairly comfortable with that statement and like it seems to be something that we all kind of have in mind when we're building things. I mean, we do like to make nice things. I guess the trick, the problem here, which you're pushing on, which is like what we've had is like trying to make sure that they feel good about like I want them in the higher-end plans. I want to provide a value to them that puts them in the higher-end plans. Like we have this kind of barbell thing happening because we have the self-serve people and that, and we need to just make sure that they, I want them to land on the page and they will be delighted with the product, but I want them to be like, "Oh, well, obviously we have to go with the expensive one, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, because we can afford it and it has XYZ that we must have and that's it and done and done and done." Like it, and that's been sometimes hard. We're getting better with it, but yeah, anyways. **Jason Cohen** [22:19] It's hard putting both prices on the web at the same time. So how do you do that? **Jesse Schoberg** [22:25] What do you mean? **Jason Cohen** [22:26] Like if I go to a website and it says starting at $5 a month and also we have a $10,000 a month plan. **Jesse Schoberg** [22:32] Yeah. **Jason Cohen** [22:32] You know, you kind of go blink, blink, blink, blink, blink, and you go, "I don't understand. I don't even understand who this company is. I don't think I want either one." That's generally like, I'm just confused and I don't know who you are. And so how do you handle that? **Jesse Schoberg** [22:45] Well, so far we've tried to figure out like what our like differentiating thing was. And with the most research we did, the best we could find is the users. So that's our core like ladder item is the users. And then that's kind of what, yeah, seats. **Jason Cohen** [23:00] No, no, I'm just saying, I'm just saying I don't care how the plans are tiered. I'm saying if I go to a pricing page and it ranges from $20 a month to $20,000 a month on the page, I don't care how you've divvied that up. It's just I'm confused. That's not because things that are good for larger companies don't do that. And things that are designed for SMB don't do that. And so I don't know who you are. **Jesse Schoberg** [23:21] Right. **Jason Cohen** [23:22] Like sometimes people, for example, have different brands altogether or they'll have quite different pathways or they'll say. **Jesse Schoberg** [23:29] But isn't it pretty common to have a self-serve side and like a mid-market side? I feel like I see all the time things that, you know, it's $12 a month for this one and then we have a $700 plan by the time you get to the end of the thing. **Jason Cohen** [23:41] Maybe $700 a month, but not $20. So you're thinking it doesn't go up to something like $20,000. It stays around $700. **Jesse Schoberg** [23:48] Yeah. Soright now the top, we have two plans on the top. The one that we're really targeting is $399 if you pay annual or $499 a month. And then we have a $750 that has the SSO. That's it. So that's what we're trying to go after there. **Rob Walling** [24:03] Which makes it a little easier,right? Because if you have $49, if we do monthly, you have $49, $199, $499, and $750. If anything, I'm looking at your pricing page. If anything, you know, loose rule of thumb, if someone says, "I have no idea what to price things," I often say, "We'll figure out your lowest end plan, your entry level." $49, great. So with no other information, I'm like, "Then your next one is about 2X, sometimes 3, but like 2X, about 100. Next one's 2X, so about 200. Next one's 2X, about 400." Let's just start there,right? And that's how I would talk it through. You're at, I'm going to round, but you're at 50, 200,right? So that's 4X. Allright. If that's working for you, that's fine. We could talk about it. There's always exceptions. But then your next one is 500 and the next one is 750. 500 and 750 feel really close to me. You know what I mean? And maybe that's part, I guess I'm tapping in something else. Jason was saying having a $20 plan and $20,000 a month plan kind of looks weird. To me, just having seen thousands of pricing pages, this feels a little bit weird to me having a 500 and a 750. I think if you're going to go to the effort of having 750, it's $999. Like it's a thousand, you know? Again, without other information, unless you tell me, "Oh no, we have data and it's already working for us,"right? Do you have many people on the thousand or on the 750? **Jesse Schoberg** [25:22] That plan, we don't have a lot of data because it's just the main differentiator there is the SSO. So, and so like we have no, again, we're really targeting that business plan at the $499. So that plan, we can do whatever we want. If anything, it's trying to anchor that one a little bit. **Rob Walling** [25:38] Well, then I would, yeah, if it's an anchor, then I would bump it up even more. You know what I mean? I mean, that's the point of price anchoring. **Jesse Schoberg** [25:45] Yeah. So that one, yeah, no problem making any changes there. **Jason Cohen** [25:49] Yeah, you know, I agree with that. And ### Marketing and AI **Jason Cohen** [25:53] it's not clear to me what the budget is in a larger company's marketing department for this because marketing departments are quite strappedright now. They're always being asked to do more with less, like forever and ever. But I feel like if you were looking around and wondering like, where's the layoffs slash silent layoffs, you know, the ones where you like don't replace people who leave kind of a thing? And where's it getting hit the most? It's not sales, unless the company sales are low. But like generally, like sales team isn't, and even in engineering, there's a little bit, but also we need engineers to make stuff. Marketing is tough because the sense is like, well, AI can write that and I'm not sure a lot of this is working anyway, kind of a thing. And it is true that like if you're a great content creator, AI is not capable of replacing what you do. Like not only we, but other people and even in our industry and plenty other technical products have really great technical, like kind of DevRel, cool technical content relationship people. And oh my God, that's so personal and so amazing. And like AI is so far away from being that,right? But for the person that just generates random ads and ad words already, yeah, AI probably is just as good as that, as throwing spaghetti on the wall there, actually. Or writing crappy blog posts that honestly no one wants to read on a corporate blog. Yeah, AI can write the same crappy blog post because you were crappy already,right? And so AI can be just as crappy, you know, and in 40 languages. So marketing budgets are tightright now is the point. So on the other hand, people need to be found through AI and like that's a hot thing. Again, that's why I kind of go there. Like personally, I actually don't love talking about AI. I still don't write about AI or do social media about AI. Like I still don't do that. I just wrote a book and there's nothing about AI in it. So I'm probably wrong for that, but I just, I don't care. But yet here I am saying you should be talking about AI because I think that's how people keep their jobs now, especially in marketing. And so I think, again, you say they'll be delighted when they use the product. I would push back and say, this will be on the list of products that they don't hate. But almost no one loves any products that, any software that they use. Like the software has to be really, really good to love it. Usually it's just a freaking thing you have to do for work. And so I believe you that, yeah, but on the column of stuff I curse all the time and hate and the column of like, yeah, I mean, that's nice. Like you're on the nice column. I believe you,right? When I use the word delight, I'm trying to, I'm on purpose trying to keep the bar high there. And like maybe they'll be delighted, but probably it's just the next tool that they use that's better than the thing they absolutely hate. So relatively speaking, okay. But something like, I'm going to keep my job now because of you. Do you see the difference between the product? **Jesse Schoberg** [28:58] Yeah, I mean, and that's where this. **Jason Cohen** [28:59] So like that's what I would want to see from you on that. Like I get it. If engineers are coming in, it's different. Okay. Then maybe that's different. On the other hand, on the other hand, we could say this. But for the, you said there is a subset of where it is the marketer who ultimately wants this and is buying it. And they need their engineers though to vet it through the demo and make sure that it's going to work. And sometimes not, maybe sometimes it's just engineers. Okay. But for the subset where it is the marketers, I just feel like you could probably go in with a much stronger positioning and message to them. That's quite literally your job is on the line because AI and you're not writing content for them, but there's a reason why like can they tell a story that keeps their job or even solidifies a job that wasn't even their job before. **Jesse Schoberg** [29:47] Right. AI visibility stuff, tracking their mentions, showing how we connected that, et cetera, et cetera. **Jason Cohen** [29:53] See, I'm going, yes, you're now back to the how. How is it that they'll keep your job? Because they'll track mentions, because they'll get, you know, because AI will like mention them hopefully in the sort of AI SEO or whatever we're calling that. **Jesse Schoberg** [30:06] Yeah. **Jason Cohen** [30:07] That's the how. But I think the key thing is everyone in marketing, everyone's job is on the line now. AI is the primary reason, but, and lack of interest of like outsized performance is the other reason. So like you said it yourself, we're already running Google ads. We're kind of doing the best we can. So that's that. Right. So why would you hire another Google Ads person? And also maybe you can pay less or fire, have part-time Google Ads people because that doesn't really work that well anyway. So you just need to sort of keep it going and that's it. You see, that's someone's job going away or someone going to part-time or a full-time going away and like a part-time consulting firm showing up. You see, like you already are saying it yourself. That's what everyone's saying. If you can explain to the marketer in three words, you're going to keep your job because you're going to be this critical person who gets this company visible in LLMs. I mean, that's what I'm talking about. Not just like, you know, you won't hate this as much as you hate the current thing, which is true too. And important, you know, I'm not throwing it away. But like that to me, now we're talking like you, because the real question here is how do you get like a thousand of these customers? How do you get them super interested and bought in? To me, even on an emotional and personal level, besides the utility and stuff, which I agree. I think the utility of this is awesome. Like I said that at the top, I believe it. That's kind of why I'm glossing over it. Not because it's not true or not important. I just believe you already. You know, like going to the next step. Next step is, you know, how do we go way beyond it's useful to them and get them stoked about it? I want them to be on their, you know, they're a member of some random Slack channel of marketing people or whatever. **Jesse Schoberg** [31:56] Yeah. **Jason Cohen** [31:56] The alumni list of their last company. **Jesse Schoberg** [31:58] Like look at this shit. Yeah. **Jason Cohen** [31:59] Right,right. The alumni list of their last company with some friends. And I want them to say, dude, dude, dude, dude, I just went to my boss and was like, dude, I'm going to get us, you know, blah, blah, blah, your pitch. And I want other people in that Slack channel to go, oh my God, I have to do that. They're like, yeah, yeah. That's what, this is obviously a vision statement and not something you're going to track with metrics. But like how do we, if we can get thatright at the top positioning before the demo, not once it's all installed and engineering agrees and it's wired up to there, so then they won't hate it. Yes, but like how can the marketing be better than that? **Jesse Schoberg** [32:35] Okay. I like that. I like that. **Rob Walling** [32:37] Yeah. I was going to pop in earlier too, you know, Jason's talking a lot about how do you delight? And delight is a very high bar. And there's very few products that do that. I mean, I think we've mentioned linear and superhuman and we could come up with a few more,right? But then there are a lot of products that maybe don't delight, that you log in because you have to, but they save your job. And so, and those aren't the only two. We could go other things. Like if you're frankly a founder, an entrepreneur, and you're running a five-person company, well, I don't need to save my job, but what I do need is results. I need more leads. You can guarantee me, you know, virtually, or a promise, you know, the promise of the product. So we could go down all these categories that would lead to a no-brainer. What makes this a no-brainer? What makes this, oh my God? And not only that, what makes me want to tell other people about it? I love Jason's example of going into his Slack channel. It's exactly what I was going to say with the delight. Like how, why do we all, why do I keep bringing up linear? I've never used it, never logged in. Because Derek Reimer talked about, you know, he's a very, you know, experienced product person kept talking about it. And then I saw it on Twitter and everyone's talking about it. I've never used superhuman, never logged into it. Why do I know about it? Because everyone talks about it,right? So that's what we're saying. And again, delight is harder than it sounds. That sounds like, oh, just, it's like a form of virality. But the ability to get someone to save their job or at least to have that promise or that, you know, it's a, you're kind of, it's not positioning, but it is a promise is, I guess, what I keep coming back to. That's a thing that I would say is easier and a lot more products do that than. **Jason Cohen** [34:14] Yeah. And you might think like, oh, how do I achieve all of that? But this is one of those things. And actually, this is what I just wrote this book about. There are things where you don't have to be a hundred percent on that to make a huge difference in the company. Like it's not like unless, you know, either they're that stoked or you lose the deal. That's not true. Like even if, you know, that's the vision statement of, oh my God, they all feel that way and they all tell people on Slack. That's the vision statement. And it almost doesn't matter what percentage do what. Like it doesn't even matter. It just elevates everything and is far more effective. And some people actually will, in fact, live the vision. **Jesse Schoberg** [34:54] Right,right,right. **Jason Cohen** [34:55] And so it's okay. But like it's just keeping that, yeah. Because otherwise you just, it's so easy to stay in utility zone because it's true. Like you can find, oh, you need this and then I make that. And that's good. Like again, it's true that it's good, you know? And that's why it's hard and it's so hard to build those other things or be those other things. In the case of positioning, it's not even building. It's being. Like everything we just said is stuff that's in marketing. It's on the homepage. It's in ads. It's in content. It's going on marketing podcasts to talk about it. And you're using this story of like, I bet everyone listening to this podcast is worried for their job because AI, whether AI can actually replace them or not, like the company probably will, you know, thinks like that way. And so we all need ways to say, no, not only should my job be saved, but actually I'm the reason why we're going to leverage AI to be better at marketing instead of the other way around. And so here's how we're seeing our customers do that with our tool. And that if you went on marketing podcasts and told that story, like I just said, but, you know, but better because it's all with specifics and this person at this company did this and whatever is, you know, your one example. I mean, so much better. Like then we can get to like, oh yeah, and also there's categories and tags. Like, like that's useful, but man, is that, you know, you can see how, how, how much less interesting that is, you know, less effective that is. **Rob Walling** [36:17] And if you're wondering, Jason mentioned a book. It's at hiddenmultipliers.com. You can pre-order it now for $24.95. Not only will it delight you, it will save your job. **Jesse Schoberg** [36:27] Yeah. **Rob Walling** [36:29] Allright. Hidden Multipliers. **Jason Cohen** [36:31] That's really what's going on here. This is all an ad for my book. It's like, we don't really care about you, Jesse, at all. All this advice is nothing. It won't work. As long as it sells some books. Yeah. ### Engineer vs marketer **Jason Cohen** [36:45] So this, I think this question of the engineer or the marketer is really interesting and important. I still am wondering, and maybe the answer is you don't know, and this is actually a huge takeaway to go find out, but I wonder how much, like when you say 5%, okay, how much of that initial 5% is marketers coming in who then hand it off to an engineer for vetting and blah, blah, blah, blah, implementation? How much of it is, in fact, engineers coming in in the first place because they've already been told, get some kind of headless thing in there. And so they search for headless blogs or, you know, I'm not sure. And so it really is engineers from the jump who's looking at the ad and then coming to the homepage and then seeing the pricing page and then clicking demo and it's just engineers all the way, even if marketers prompted them from behind. **Jesse Schoberg** [37:29] It's very mixed. I can tell you that. Right now, there's not, it's not jumping off the page either. I'm just saying when we started doing the demos, we started getting more of the tech people than the, because the self-serve market was a lot of DIYers,right? Like a lot of like, oh, I've started a little course, I started a little e-commerce site, don't really know what I'm doing. And now we're getting like bigger customers that are more like, again, responding to the new brand and responding to the new product. **Jason Cohen** [37:56] I understand, but like how do you know when someone, is it because you ran ads specifically for marketers, targeting marketers? **Jesse Schoberg** [38:02] No, no, we don't run ads for marketers. **Jason Cohen** [38:04] And they clicked it. And then you did the same thing for engineers and they clicked it. And that's why you know it's both. **Jesse Schoberg** [38:10] No, we know from the demos on this side, just who's coming in the demo. **Jason Cohen** [38:14] No, the demos could be several clicks in,right? Marketer comes to website, marketer sees marketer's like, oh, I kind of like this. I'm going to need to get, now I'm going to ask my, you know, my developer who's on the marketing team, or maybe there's somebody in engineering who's their team is, you know, the internal development team or whatever, and they're going to go do the demo. It's like, it's vital because what you put on the homepage is not who has clicked on the demo. So it sounds like the real answer is don't know. And I think this is critical to find out. And this is part of, and Rob probably has some ideas, but the first idea is advertise to the two differently because the message to the marketer is going to be different from the message of the engineer. Engineers, well, you'll know better than I, but it's probably something like, you got to get that blog in there or you hate your current blog vendor, blah, blah, blah. So you need something that drops in so easily and just instantly integrates with everything. You never have to think about it. I'm not really sure, but something do, do, do, do, something about the implementation and ongoing management, how much of a pain in the ass that's going to be for them. And maybe the migration stuff, because maybe they're worried about that part. And for the marketer, again, we just talked about it. We don't have to beat the, as our CEO, Heather Bruner says, we don't have to beat a dead horse with a broken record. But, you know, there's some other message to the marketer that's compelling to them that has nothing to do with implementation and, you know, the tech, nothing to do with that. So you could start with ads. Like you just said, our channels are whatever. Okay, but you could go in with two different kinds of things into channels that are new, or I mean, it could be the same tech, but new targeting. And also, where's that going? Different landing pages, even different homepages, you could test things. So I understand that by the time it gets to the demo, but is, you know, and maybe the demo is the answer. I just feel like we don't know, but the way you position all the ads through the homepage, even maybe the pricing page, it depends, would be very different. And so I don't feel like just saying, but the demos often, the demos kind of mixed is a good, is like good enough. **Jesse Schoberg** [40:21] Enough data. **Jason Cohen** [40:22] Because your whole point is, I want to supercharge inbound and grow. I'm like, okay, well, like let's not, let's not just look at several ticks down the pipeline. That's not going to be the best data for how to grow. But I bet Rob has a lot more on this topic. **Rob Walling** [40:37] Well, my thought was on, you know, you said SEO is your number one channel. And when I think about an engineer searching for this product, I would put, you know, embeddable, iframe, which no one searches for anymore, but, you know, that type of thing. And I would imagine a marketer maybe searching for, what is it? It's like add blog to my website. It's a much less technical thing. Not that marketers aren't technical, but I'm wondering if it would be clear enough to do some categorization. It's not going to be 100%. If it's only 50%, probably not worth it, but, you know, can you get it above that and be like, ah, these are more technical terms? I would guess you as a founder have a sense at least of that, you know, of being able to categorize and split it up based on your organic. Because I like the ad approach, but of course, you don't run ads yet. And so then you have this whole learning curve of needing to figure that out. That's the cleanest way to do it, which I understand. **Jesse Schoberg** [41:30] And then we have the price point problem,right? Problem that like, you know, the ads support the higher end packages. They do not support the lower end packages. And we've always had the issue. We have done ad tests twice, like five-figure tests. And the issue, of course, that we get is that people aren't, you know, they need to be in market, basically,right? So like you can't really run awareness campaigns, which is, we're trying to find ways that we can do that where we can convince people to value now that they should switch from what they're doing, this kind of thing. **Jason Cohen** [42:08] No, I wouldn't do that. No, I wouldn't do that. **Jesse Schoberg** [42:11] What are you, what do you mean? **Jason Cohen** [42:14] So the point of AdWords is they have intent for something, and so you want to show them an ad, not awareness. You don't use AdWords for awareness unless you're a huge brand, and then sometimes you actually do, but like you're not doing that. **Jesse Schoberg** [42:26] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So of course we could run that again. We've done that twice. And, but again, now our prices are a little bit. **Jason Cohen** [42:32] Not really. **Jesse Schoberg** [42:32] Better. **Jason Cohen** [42:33] No, you haven't. **Jesse Schoberg** [42:34] Could be better. **Jason Cohen** [42:34] No, you haven't. Because you just told me that what you were doing was awareness, and I'm thinking you probably also didn't have a thoughtful message for a marketer at a mid-market company that you were putting in that ad. Who has intent? That's not what you just said you ran ads. So I doubt you have, in fact, tested this idea. **Jesse Schoberg** [42:53] I think it could be retested. We were doing, sorry, in that case, yes, when we were running ads, they were very bottom of funnel intent, high intent, but we ranked for most of that stuff. So it came out like, okay, but I understand that there could be more specific messaging on specific things, and we're in a different place. So I can definitely see that we could have a more intentional test there. And it wasn't like a screamer. **Jason Cohen** [43:17] Also, you weren't trying to get, you weren't trying to get large companies, or let's just say not SMB. So already, already whatever you were targeting was not what we're talking about. **Jesse Schoberg** [43:26] Correct. **Jason Cohen** [43:27] So you haven't tested this yet. **Jesse Schoberg** [43:30] Correct. **Jason Cohen** [43:31] Yeah. And my guess is you're not good at ads anyway. Like I bet it wasn't a very good test anyway. **Jesse Schoberg** [43:38] I didn't personally run them, but okay, yes. **Jason Cohen** [43:42] Well, the person that ran it, are they, did they have a long track record of being awesome at it? **Jesse Schoberg** [43:46] Well, I tried two different tests with two different groups of people, and one was very good and one was not. So I feel fairly confident. **Jason Cohen** [43:55] So the answer to the question, did they have a long track record of being successful with it, is? **Jesse Schoberg** [44:01] Yes. **Jason Cohen** [44:02] Yes. **Jesse Schoberg** [44:02] Okay. Yeah. Like one of the two ads guys that we had run the ads, I was very confident in their skills. And, you know, it was good. But again, all of your points are taken. And I think with the position we're at now, it's definitely worth running a more thoughtful test based on where the company currently sits. Makes perfect sense. **Jason Cohen** [44:24] The other thing is there's different reasons to run ads. And by the way, not like, you know, I don't really have any skin in the game, whether you run an ad or not, but one of the reasons is for conversions with a decent ROI. And as you said, with the SMB, that's probably impossible. And I would agree with that because this is probably a fairly contested space. I mean, I know something about advertising about blogs,right? And it's not like travel, which is like another 10X higher cost, but it's not cheap. So I totally believe that even the best AdWords person can't make a good ROI campaign for small. I believe that. But if the monthly amount is literally 10X more, and if the lifetime, and if also they stay longer, and so the LTV is more than 10X more, I actually do believe that while it won't be as like profitable over 10 years as SEO or something like that, like that it could be a very effective way to grow in a sufficiently efficient way with this. And so I would put a different cap on it like, oh, well, yeah, for SMB, of course, but like that's not what we're going to be measuring. If that's all it can drag in, then we're not going to do it. But so that's number one is with the ROI of the higher plan, that's a different mentality. And then how would you do that? Will you drive to different landing pages? You'd reduce your target space to certain people. Like you don't just go broad if you're trying to get to what you say is 5% of your,right? You're going to do something else. That's number one. Number two, ROI doesn't have to be the reason you're running ads. It could be to learn how to position in ways that really get people interested. So you could run the ads only long enough to get a sense of like, oh my God, this is how you get someone to click in four words. Because SEO is not how you figure that out. It takes too long. Changes take too long. It's very hard to say exactly what did what. And so SEO is great for on the long run and the long term. If the messaging is already good, then it's great. But it's bad for iterating and finding the message because you don't have iteration cycles, you can't really tell, et cetera. But ads are good for that. You can find out in a day, this gets clicked more than that,right? And so, and it costs money, but you set the budget. So in other words, you can also think of ads instead of ROI to sale. You can think of it as, I'm going to use this as a temporary tool in which it costs me a known amount of money to quickly iterate into the best positioning I can get for engineers on the one hand and marketers on the other hand. I will run ads, I will send them to landing pages, which also have messaging, and see how far, how much they get past that, either one. So that both of them can be honed from the hook, which is the ad, to the draw-in, which is the landing page. And that will allow me to spend X dollars, which of course you budget, to hone that quickly into freaking badass awesome positioning and messaging, which you can then use in any way. You may decide, oh, actually, I am going to think of this as an ROI move now, actually, you know, or no, I'm just going to use that for SEO and when I go on podcasts, I'll know what to say. I don't know, whatever,right? **Jesse Schoberg** [47:29] Yeah, yeah. **Jason Cohen** [47:29] But you will have spent. **Jesse Schoberg** [47:30] I mean, it could work, I think, actually as an ROI as well. Like again, in the new price point, but like you said, obviously for the learning makes perfect sense, all of that. Yeah, yeah. And it is on my list of things now that we're kind of playing in this space to be testing again at some point because it is totally different. And. **Jason Cohen** [47:47] Yeah. And so once again, when you said before, we tried ads before, I know you tried it, but with what I just said about using it to learn and hone in on something, that's not what happened before. **Jesse Schoberg** [47:58] Right. **Jason Cohen** [47:58] So, because, because, so anyway, I'm just saying like, like forget that,right? This is a different, different customer base, different purpose. **Jesse Schoberg** [48:07] Yep. Makes sense. **Jason Cohen** [48:08] Yeah. So, you know, that could be, that could be amazing. And I keep saying AdWords, but it doesn't have to be AdWords. I mean, maybe it's AdWords, maybe it's other things,right? There's, there's 50 marketing channels you could do something like this on. So maybe it's LinkedIn or I don't know. It's, again, I think more like, but where are the marketers? Are they on LinkedIn? Maybe, actually. Are they on Twitter? Maybe not. Are they on podcasts? For sure. So that's interesting. And again, like, it's not like you're going to get 800 sales from one podcast, but if the point is to learn and see things and maybe get some and start getting a brand out there, like, you know, maybe. And that's actually a good question is like, where should you even go? So that might be a good, a good type of thing to chat about. **Rob Walling** [48:54] Yeah. Do you have ideas of where you're expanding in terms of marketing channels? ### BigCommerce **Jesse Schoberg** [48:59] Well, as far as channels, I guess back to what we've been seeing very happy customers in the big commerce space, as I mentioned, we're pretty big in e-commerce in general. And big commerce specifically is an oddly happy bunch with our product. And so we've been looking at how to reach them and thinking about channels in that aspect of like focusing on them and pushing on them. And so far we've been testing, we are in the early stages of testing cold outreach to those store owners and we have a pretty good value prop for them. And the early signs of that are good, but it's still too early to know if that works. But then again, we're thinking about, okay, trying to like circle around that group and see, we're also testing out some partnerships with agencies that work in that space that will talk, et cetera, et cetera. So that's a possible option. We've also been lately getting some traction in the dev community that's totally separate from that. So like we built our product is built in Laravel. So we're like, you know, sponsoring mostly technical and we, you know, went to Laracon and like, you know, we're kind of like involved in that community a little bit trying to like see what the visibility there looks like as well. **Jason Cohen** [50:20] Why would you do that? Laravel's used to build apps,right? **Jesse Schoberg** [50:25] Yeah. **Jason Cohen** [50:26] So why would you do that in order to reach people to get a name for people in marketing? **Jesse Schoberg** [50:31] Well, no, this is for people, this is not, I'm just saying this is something that we've done for people that are on the technical side, because we do get a lot of signups, as we mentioned, from people that are solving a technical problem. They come in from the technical side. **Jason Cohen** [50:43] Yeah, but not with Laravel. That's not what they have. **Jesse Schoberg** [50:47] What do you mean? **Jason Cohen** [50:48] If I'm a marketer with a website and I have a tech team who maintains that website, and I want that tech team to put in a blog, or maybe the tech team thought of that, but they, I don't know why they would think of that. That website's not written in Laravel. So why are you doing that? **Jesse Schoberg** [51:02] Sometimes it is. **Jason Cohen** [51:03] Okay. What percentage of websites online, marketing websites are written in Laravel? That's a, come on. Why would you spend all this time there? I don't understand. **Jesse Schoberg** [51:12] I guess because we're getting traction with all of these React, people build their sites in React as well, all of this stuff, yeah. **Jason Cohen** [51:19] So why don't you go to React conferences instead of Laravel conferences, if that's what they're building in? **Jesse Schoberg** [51:24] I guess because we already, we already had our foot there. That's why. Because we already knew the community and whatever. **Jason Cohen** [51:29] So it's just some cost and it's not really a marketing reason. **Jesse Schoberg** [51:34] Yeah. It's just because of following what we knew. **Jason Cohen** [51:36] Yeah. That's not a good reason. **Rob Walling** [51:40] Yeah. I think what Jason's getting at is, is it comfortable and easy, or is it, you know, or is the real potential? And I think that's a real question. Is it real potential here? Yeah. Because Jason's pushing back on it and he's brought, you know, he's, I love that he's shaking his head like that. **Jesse Schoberg** [51:57] Oh my God. I mean. **Jason Cohen** [51:58] If you have 2000 customers or more, if I pulled them and said, how many of you identify primarily as a Laravel developer, it's not going to be most of them. It's probably not going to be even 5% of them. So I don't understand why you're fishing in the pond. I mean, I do understand because you said, so I'm being rhetorical when I say that. But like if you're saying it's the React people, because this is like, you can be a super duper React component, I would say, that sounds awesome. That sounds amazing. Go to the React conferences. I mean, yes. What are you talking about Laravel for? **Jesse Schoberg** [52:29] Fair, fair, fair, fair point. **Jason Cohen** [52:31] Now I will say this just to argue against myself. There's something to be said for like, it's who we are, we love it, and it gives us life. And I would say, I understand that. And then I would say, okay, then how much time and energy can you afford on things that you just love and give you life? And the answer is, well, not zero,right? **Jesse Schoberg** [52:54] Yeah. **Jason Cohen** [52:54] So fair enough, fair enough. But, but if you're doing that instead of doing that in a React world, I would say that's, that's bad business. **Jesse Schoberg** [53:05] Yep. **Jason Cohen** [53:05] But if you're saying, no, no, I have time to do that in the React world and in the Laravel world for myself, I would say, okay, just, you know, budget that time and energy and money so that it's part of your happiness, fulfillment, recharging, and just, just being the company that you are. Maybe it's even part of your culture or something cool. **Jesse Schoberg** [53:24] Yeah. Separate issue though. I get it. Yep. **Jason Cohen** [53:27] Yeah. But like, goddang it, that is, that is not where to, that's not the pond where the fish are. So don't, this is not helping. It's actually removing time that you could be spending developing relationships and brand and everything and trust where the fish are, just not relatable. **Jesse Schoberg** [53:45] Yeah. **Jason Cohen** [53:46] So either, either stop it or I get it, but like got to be budgeted way down. **Jesse Schoberg** [53:53] Yeah, that makes sense. **Jason Cohen** [53:54] So that you can, you can do this, because it sounds smart, but do this in theright ponds. **Jesse Schoberg** [53:58] Right,right,right. Which is again, why we've been trying to take these notes generally and where, you know, actually when I watched the last episode and the first part, which he didn't have an answer for, and then I was like, oh, I do have an answer. Like our, that's where I got to this big commerce cohort. Because we have so many cohorts, just like him. We have so many different people. **Jason Cohen** [54:16] Yeah, that's fair. **Jesse Schoberg** [54:16] And then that's kind of where I was like, oh, actually, like these are the best ones. Like. **Jason Cohen** [54:21] So I wanted to drill in on that. So big commerce is very specific, because of course Shopify is the biggest one. Big commerce is significant, but that's so curious that you have this, this like absent other information. If you said to something like, in general, in e-commerce, if you have a content area that's better for many reasons, I already know why, because, because at WP Engine we see that too, and we have tens of thousands of e-commerce shops on WP Engine. Well, actually we have hundreds of thousands, but we have tens of thousands that have significant GMV in the shop. So I totally get like, you want content, you want to be findable, there's SEO, there's also trust when you see the content. It goes both ways. I see a product, I want to see content, see content, maybe I'll buy the product. I mean, there's a million reasons, good reasons why that's effective. So check plus, I'mright with you on e-commerce. But absent anything, if you said, I'm in e-commerce, I would think, well, the biggest e-commerce thing is Shopify. So I would expect that to be your number one. And then WooCommerce is very popular, but it's WordPress. They obviously already have a blog. So like I wouldn't expect many of them to want your thing just because that's a, that's a weird special case where it's really a blog plus commerce. And so why would they need a blog? Okay. And then maybe big commerce is next, maybe not. I'm not really sure. Custom maybe next. I'm not sure. I'm not sure what I would think about what's next, you know? But you're saying like, yeah, we see Shopify, but big commerce is where it's at for us. I'm like, wow, that's so interesting. And as you may know, WP Engine and Big Commerce also have a partnership and we love them. So this is coming from a place of love. I just wouldn't expect that from the numbers. So explain what's going on. **Jesse Schoberg** [55:56] So, so yeah, two things. First of all, and while I'll say that, we still, I will say that the Shopify cohort for us is still slightly currently larger than the big commerce cohort, but it's just a way worse cohort, you know, like the churn is terrible, the customer support is terrible. There's so much slop competition in their app store. It's just like a mess. And half of the people signing up like don't really have a business yet. So it's just a lot of hassle,right? **Jason Cohen** [56:32] That's terrific insight. That's terrific insight. The number of people who say most of my customers in e-commerce or Shopify soon will do Shopify without the analysis you just did to say, yes, by number, but they're shit and I don't want them. That's so smart what you're saying. So okay, go ahead. I just want to compliment you since I'm bothering you the whole time. I got to give you a compliment. **Jesse Schoberg** [56:49] It's, it's, it's very, it's very like, so I think if we, funny enough, I think my bigger plan is like if we were to solve it with big commerce, then maybe we could apply that playbook to like the higher end Shopify people or something. But Shopify is just so annoying for all of those reasons. And then big commerce, I think like the reason why people are on big commerce is like they either left Shopify because it couldn't do what they wanted or they're still there from before Shopify. So like everyone on big commerce is like a real business that has real problems and they're old school and they're just trying to win the game and they're not chasing shiny objects. Like it's not all these e-com bros. It's like real businesses. And then I did the math just like you were mentioning with Dimitro and it's the stores one seventh of their 37,000 people do over half a million dollars or $400,000 a year, which apparently they consider a big store. And then we, I did the math back on if 5% of those, exactly like in the episode, if they were to be on, if half, 5% of those people were to convert to our team plan, we would add 40,000 in MRR. And if they were to convert on the business plan, we'd have 100,000 in MRR. Those are both respectable numbers that would move us to the next chapter and then we could decide what to do. So that's where that analysis led me. And maybe it's wrong and we could do the same math on Shopify, but it's, and the numbers would be probably bigger. I just know it's a disaster over there. And, and these guys, they're, they love us. We get tons of signups from them and they're happy and they don't churn and they're, they're, they're, it's great. Yeah. **Jason Cohen** [58:38] Yeah. I mean, it is true. Like as much as I focused on the market analysis in that episode, I also focused so much on what he's good at. And so similar here, everything you said about, it's just maybe there are more of those customers over at Shopify, but it's so much harder to weed through it and get to them. That is all just as critical. So I think you're, you're, I think you're analyzing it exactly correct to say, oh yeah, there may be more volume even in the good area, blah, blah, blah, blah. But like in big commerce, the fish are jumping in the boat. **Jesse Schoberg** [59:11] Right. **Jason Cohen** [59:12] In Shopify, it's probably there, but it's an ocean and we're dragging around all we see is krill that we don't really want. And so like you, exactly what you said, let's just, we got a fish where that, where we, where we're already being successful for whatever reason. And I'm still trying to figure out what that reason is. And I think you said the people at Big Commerce are serious, period. And they're maybe old school, maybe this, maybe that, but they're serious. And Shopify, it's, it's, it's, it's all, it's much more crazy talent and also a lot of serious people. It's just so much. It's so noisy. And so let's just go where we know how to go and we're already being successful and try to do 10 times as much of those. And maybe, and maybe not, we can take that playbook elsewhere. We don't even have to know thatright now to know that this is a good choice. It's optionality. And I totally agree with that, with that mindset. I think that's really smart. **Rob Walling** [1:00:01] Folks listening, the, when I think about it, and I don't think you should do this, but when I think about what is the Shopify equivalent, if you could filter down to successful larger stores, it's Shopify Plus. And Shopify Plus is two grand a month and up, I believe. Now I have no knowledge of that space. So I don't know if there's 10 or 10,000 of those,right? So that market itself may be very small. Obviously there's more than 10, but as Jason's saying, if you already have people coming and they're already happy and they're big commerce, you follow that. When I hear big commerce, I'm like, well, isn't that market shrinking? Like, isn't big commerce actually losing market share year over year? But here's the thing, how much does that actually matter? Because they're not going to zero next year. And if you can add 40K or 100K of MRR over the next few years, as long as those sites aren't going out of, you know, there's a difference between the actual stores going out of business where you're going to lose customers because a bunch of them are going out versus just the overall market share of a product going down, but the companies that are already on there are still going to need you,right? So I have a little, but what I'm saying is a little bit of a, it's not getting bigger and that bothers me. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:01:08] Yeah. **Rob Walling** [1:01:08] But if you are getting, you know, again, to Jason's point, you're having success with them. You said that, you said a sentence and I want to ask if I understand it. You said, they love us over there and they're, are they, is that big commerce? Like, are they specifically sending you traffic already? **Jesse Schoberg** [1:01:26] No, no, no. I'm talking about, I'm talking about the cohort. We have not had a lot of success working directly with big commerce. We have made a few attempts and it's unfortunate because their customer base does love us a lot and their built-in blog, they don't care about, they don't update it. It's the most basic thing ever. And we solve that problem and everybody goes home happy. So it would be a very nice partnership, but they've kind of held us at arm's length on every attempt. But, you know, we win all the SEO, we're in their app store, like blah, blah, blah, like, so, but they is the customers, not the brand. There's no problem, but they just haven't like, you know, thrown us any bones on any of our attempts to collaborate. **Jason Cohen** [1:02:11] Yeah, it's hard to make partnerships with larger companies. **Rob Walling** [1:02:16] They just don't care. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:02:17] There's usually not really **Jason Cohen** [1:02:19] anything in it for them. Unless, well, I mean, so WP Engine has a partnership with Big Commerce, but we're like in the same power of 10 revenue. So there is a lot we can do for each other in terms of number of customers and technology that works together and how much impact it can have and how much noise we can make and all this kind of stuff. And by we, I mean together. With a smaller company, like you can't bring them more revenue. You're not really going to move any needle. So the only time that works, I find, when it's a small company is when they have some, some pre-existing strategic mandate that they've made themselves of like, we have to get into this market or we have to have this story. Maybe because a competitor did it and they need an answer or they just want to enter this new market and they've decided that means these 10 things, you know? And that's where you see things like sometimes an acquisition, maybe a partnership, but like something where because of some strategic thing has nothing to do with like you and your customers and what you can do for them. It's like, no, no, no, they have their own reasons where they need to do a thing. Even with AI and all the spend in AI, a lot of that is boards, shareholders, the market, it depends on the company saying, what are you doing with AI? And they're like, oh, we got to invest in AI, whatever that means. Right? And like, are they really, is it effective? Like sometimes, sometimes not, but that's happening because of a strategic mandate that comes from somewhere. It's that kind of a, of a almost fiat type of thing where it's like, it's going to happen because reasons, you know? Then, okay, so like if there was some reason why it was like, we have to have a good blog, like, okay, we're part, we're, we'll do this or that. I mean, if Big Commerce was like, this is a key thing in the strategy, but if it's not a key thing, it's like, well, you're not going to help them financially and you're not part of their strategy. Well, they don't have time for anything else. Like all their time is whatever strategic and or whatever like gets them actually more money. So that's neither here nor there, but like it's no comment on whether it's a, you have a good product or whether they quote unquote should do it. I'm just saying in general, this is part of why like, you know, you're like, but your customers love us and we're in your store. Why won't you at least give us a gold star? And it's like, they don't even want to think about that shit, you know? But, but that's great anyway. I mean, you can do it anyway. The other thing is you've said, so first of all, I know you ran an agency,right? And sold it, isn't thatright? ### Agency channel **Jesse Schoberg** [1:04:31] Yeah, I did run a web dev agency for quite a few years. **Jason Cohen** [1:04:35] So you know this really well. You were successful at it and so on. So kick ass, great story when you sell to other agencies. So you mentioned that you were starting to think about that or that you were doing it. So I'm interested in that and in the interested, interested in that, in the intersection of that with Big Commerce. So in other words, you obviously can speak so credibly to an agency. I used to run an agency, so I get it. Anyway, I built this blog. I mean, this drop-in blogging software for people just like you who have built blah, blah, blah website and like you just want a good headless blog that's super easy for you to just integrate in and like it will just pick up all of your styles and stuff. So you're not worried about that. Marketers love it. Look, I've literally thousands of customers who love it. So don't worry about that. Your clients will love you. You don't have to worry about the blog. And the fact that you have a personal story to indicate why you understand their plight and everything. And so you can speak to them credibly. To me, that's brilliant. And so, you know, question number one, why isn't that like a, like a primary way that you're getting customers is to sell agencies who themselves have multiple clients. Therefore, what you land, let's say landing or having a relationship with, I'm putting that in quotes, whatever you want to call that with an agency could result in multiple sites, even dozens, and occasionally even hundreds of sites. That means customers for you. So you have this multiplicative effect with agencies. So you can afford so much time and money to get a successful agency, but even a freelancer that does one or two still probably pretty good because you're so credible. It's so much easier to find them. You can credibly speak to them. They can bring multiple clients. Like it seems to me this is way better than even SEO. So number one, why isn't that like a huge focus, whether it's SMB or not? And then two, and I don't want to pile up too much stuff, but so, so let's just stop there. But what I'm, but just to preview, I'm going to ask, there's got to be agencies that make big commerce sites. And if that's a sweet spot, holy moly. But even without that, what about, like you mentioned it, like why isn't this a huge major reason why you get clients now? **Jesse Schoberg** [1:06:35] Yeah. So we do have agencies on all the sides. We have some agency offerings that either we work a couple of ways where we either give them a commission or they get a discount and they rebuild our clients, this kind of stuff. So we, it's like mediumly successful. And I guess part of that is probably because we haven't put a ton of pressure on it ourselves to like be everywhere. You know, this is mostly inbound, not outbound for, and, and yeah. And so again, we've just started with this kind of big commerce idea. We're just testing. There are a few, not a ton. There are a few like kind of big commerce specialty agencies that we could push on these deals with. So yeah, I don't have like a good reason why we haven't pressed on that. I will say like, I don't, even all the, we have quite a few agencies that do, that do work for us and like they're not generally like runaway, like because the, you know, yes, they're building a bunch of sites, but then a blog is only on a percentage of those sites and like, so that they sell a few. Yeah. And it's fine. But, but it, it, I guess I get why it, why it works. And especially when I feel like it makes more sense in my head, actually, if we do do this pressure on big commerce, because at least then I have somewhere to focus. Because before, it's just like agencies that make anything like,right? But if then if all the five top agencies in big commerce are recommending us, then of course we have the surround sound marketing vibe going. **Jason Cohen** [1:08:00] Right. How much time and money would it be worth to get all five of the biggest agencies that specialize in big commerce or do a lot of big commerce sites to put, to, to know who you are and put you on at least some of their clients? **Jesse Schoberg** [1:08:14] Yep, yep, yep, yep. **Jason Cohen** [1:08:16] Yeah, probably a lot. Probably worth a lot. And then there may be a thousand other agencies that do big commerce sometimes that you could, you know, not get all of them, but like, you know, now. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:08:26] Or get on the radar. A lot of agencies probably did this only once. **Jason Cohen** [1:08:30] Still, what would you say the median agency brings you? How many clients would you say? Okay. And so the median brand that signs up buys how many copies of this? **Jesse Schoberg** [1:08:44] In the self-serve, one. In the ones that we do demos in the bigger plans, I'm going to say three. **Jason Cohen** [1:08:52] Nice. Okay. So that's another,right? That's another reason why it's worth a lot more. Okay. But, but even if you set aside the new stuff, which we shouldn't set aside, but look, just for, for half a second,right? So you already, you just said one agency is like three customers, just very roughly speaking. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:09:13] Yep, yep. **Jason Cohen** [1:09:13] And we're not even, we're not even trying that hard. Like we're not even intentionally going on getting them. So you see, like, well, wait a minute, you could afford to spend three times as much to go get them. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:09:26] Correct. Remember, they're not in market. They will be, but they're not. **Jason Cohen** [1:09:30] What do you mean by not in market? What does that mean? **Jesse Schoberg** [1:09:33] Like needing the productright now. **Jason Cohen** [1:09:35] Agencies? **Jesse Schoberg** [1:09:36] Yeah. Like they will need it soon, hopefully, you know, but I'm just saying that our average is like, again, three over years,right? So like, yes, if I do outreach to them, they now know we exist. And so. **Jason Cohen** [1:09:48] I understand. So what? **Jesse Schoberg** [1:09:50] So it's, it's, it's potentially a much longer sales cycle, I guess, is what I'll say. **Jason Cohen** [1:09:55] No, no, no, no. You're finding an agency who needs it now and you're willing to spend more time and money to get them now because it's probably three over time, not one. And brands won't be tripling their spend with you over time. Okay. The big ones, but again, I'm trying to, I'm just, you know, saying that complexity aside for a second. A brand you don't expect to be tripling their spend over the next two years, but an agency often does triple their effective spend with you or their, you know, what you say,right? Just again, being very rough. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:10:23] Yep. Makes sense. **Jason Cohen** [1:10:24] So you can afford to spend a lot more, not 10 times more, but you can afford to spend a lot more to attract them for this first site that they're ready to go. And by the way, the pitch is, yeah, do this now. And then like, you know, you have a bank of 10 or 20 existing clients. I bet for some of them, this would be a good addition to their website. And maybe the agency, in order for the agency to make money, the agency can go to their 10 or 20 clients that are currently in maintenance mode. And maybe two or three of those out of 20 would agree to a quickie new project where they toss in a blog for an extra couple of grand, you know, five grand for the agency and you,right? And it's like a little burst. Okay. It's just a burst. It's not okay. Yeah. But they, you know, and all of a sudden they're at three quickly because you planted this in their mind. Then maybe, as you say, they add a couple more over the next couple of years, all of a sudden they're at five because we're being intentional about it. Because you're asking the agency to do it. You're not just passively waiting around. You're being, you're doing this intentionally. You have an agency motion inside your business, even if that's one person. Okay. No worries. But you have this motion that's intentional, systematic, where you're going to the agencies you have now and saying what I just said. It's possible that you could get a median of one more client per agencyright now if you were intentionally going back to them. And also maybe you needed the relationship with them because it's cold now. So, but let's imagine you say, wait a minute, we should, I should be giving them a newsletter every month with just basic stuff about anything, about SEO, AI, SEO, like who cares? Like you're just staying top of mind with them a little bit and then you're suggesting this and blah, blah, blah, blah. And maybe a one-time thing like this to try to get a little bit more. But like this is, this is what I'm, when I'm thinking, why aren't you, when I'm asking, why aren't you spending time on agencies? I'm thinking about this entire thing that I'm talking about, an agency motion where not only are you trying to get them now knowing you can spend more time and money now to get even one site because of these reasons, but also you're nurturing this agency base. And of course, agencies that are bigger and bringing in more clients at a time, of course, you're nurturing them extra special. Then it's even better. And that's not the median, but it's, it's growth. It's like really, really, really good growth. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:12:30] No, I think that makes a lot of sense. **Jason Cohen** [1:12:31] Yeah. And so like, I don't understand why even setting aside the new motion, which we'll get back to, this is worth it on the SMB level because of the volume we're talking about and the fact that they can grow over time. It's worth it. So there's that whole agency channel idea. And then now we bring back in, okay, what about the bigger sites, bigger agencies, or the agency doesn't have to be bigger, but agencies targeting bigger websites, regardless of the size of the agency. In fact, smaller agencies that do bigger sites probably will do better for you. But anyway, and then you add in big commerce, which again, I know that's a Venn diagram, it's smaller, but also, oh my God, it could be so perfect. Like, and I bet you can find them is the other thing. Cause the other side is like, how do I get to them? But I, I bet you can find 10 to 20 really good agencies that also do big commerce sites because they advertise. So you can find them. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:13:22] Right,right. Yeah. They're trying to get to them. Yeah. **Rob Walling** [1:13:25] And, and going back to the point earlier of, you know,right now, Laravel, you're sponsoring a Laravel related podcast or you're sponsoring a Laravel related event, maybe attending it. I don't remember, but what would that look like? They're big commerce events,right? You know, what's the big commerce event? **Jesse Schoberg** [1:13:38] Push there. **Rob Walling** [1:13:40] That's the opportunity cost Jason was talking about earlier is if you just shifted it to this, even if it's more expensive, the results, I mean, you know what it is with, with cold outreach conversations and then they see you in person at an event and they're like, oh yeah, I've heard of you. Well, suddenly, suddenly this is, this is your ticket,right? It's going to be relationship building over time. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:13:59] Yeah. The interesting thing about this segment in general is they are kind of old school. So like, it's almost like trying to think out of the box a little bit about like what, like should we be like mailing these guys something? Like, you know, like that sort of like, these are the kind of businesses these guys are, you know, like, like, and, and that makes the space kind of different from where our heads usually sit in, in, in shiny object land,right? And so I think that that makes it fascinating as well. **Rob Walling** [1:14:27] This shifts you from, you know, there's, there's like sales motion where it's like, oh, I'm going to do cold outreach and we're going to do demos and we're going to close. And there's ABM, account-based marketing, where it's like, we have 20 customers or a hundred, it's a very small number, and we are going to court them for years and we are going to do everything. ### ABM **Rob Walling** [1:14:46] It's not just the mailing, you said, it's not just the sponsorship of an event. It's not just the attending event. It's you going there, participating in the dinners. If they're old school, that's what they do. They're closing a hundred thousand, $500,000 deals with old school, with general mills,right? And you know, in Minneapolis, where I'm, you know, and so, and they're flying into town. I'm not saying you have to do all that, but that's what they're used to. And so it's very much going to be a relationship thing. And it is, you can learn about it. There's good books about ABM. If you haven't done it before, it's a whole other, it's, as you said, it's very different than what we're used to, where we blog and then we get SEO and someone clicks a button and pays us. It's not that, but is the opportunity there,right? That's the argument, you know, I think Jason's making. **Jason Cohen** [1:15:27] Yeah, that'sright. And, and you know, your business is very successful. You still have a certain limited budget and what you can afford, especially with people. But the sort of, the sort of automatic advice here would be it is a whole world. You can get a book and learn it, but oh my God, you could save yourself a couple of years by hiring someone that knows how to do it. And anyway, it takes time. So anyway, you do need people to do it. Now you could do that by taking people that exist and repurposing them and training them. Okay. But it should be clear why that's not as quick or effective as being able to hire someone that just brings it in and goes. But that doesn't mean you can do it. I'm just, I'm just saying that out loud just in case. And we don't have to get into your budget and all that stuff. We can if you want to, but like, I'm just saying out loud, like this is one of those things where having seen the movie before, it's not that they won't make any mistakes and blah, blah, blah, but like someone who's set up ABM systems and run it themselves a few times, they just know a lot of things and they can just, they can get it going pretty fast. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:16:32] Like anything. Yeah. **Jason Cohen** [1:16:33] And since this is higher dollar, you can afford that, but maybe you can't afford it yet. And dah, dah, dah, dah. So I get all that, but just, so maybe it's not for a little while that you're comfortable doing that, knowing that you'll get the money back in terms of customers and therefore it can fund itself that way. So that's a whole calculus you're going to do. And of course, you're old hat in, in, in how to do that. So like, I know you know how to do it, but I'm just saying like, this is one of those areas where either first or at least as ASAP, you're going to, I think you should figure out how to fund that. Maybe not, maybe it can't be now, but, but like, and, and, and someone who, and it's a first in person, in other words, it's the person that figures how to build the ABM, which is a different person than the next 20 people at a larger company that one would hire to execute it. Right? Setting up the system is different than executing the system. And that's true in all sales, any kind of sales. It's true that the setup and the execution is not the same person. So it could be that you could spend some money and have a part-time super expert. Like there's consultants to set this up. And again, I'm not saying you must do this. Of course, look, look at how much you've done without having to do that, but you might, it might be worth spending some money in that fashion to accelerate and de-risk a motion that you're not, that you've never done before, and yet will be lucrative when doneright. It's probably behooves you to make some kind of an investment like that. So just something to consider. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:18:03] Yeah. And I'm not even sure that we need to, that that's would be the effective thing, this account-based marketing, but I just wanted to flag that the type of customer this is to see if that, you know, sparks anything in your guys' brains, because it is different,right? It's a little different than what we're used to and whatever. And I'm not even sure the price point exactly supports it, but maybe it does, or, you know, maybe there's a soft version, a light version of this that's somewhere in between that, that does support by the price point, you know. **Jason Cohen** [1:18:28] 700 a month is supports a lot. It would be better if it was bigger, then it would be comfortable, comfortable, but you can do a lot on 700 a month, especially if they stay,right? Especially if that's stacking up and they're not having to call tech support every month forever, just, just the beginning or whatever. You can afford, you can fund a lot on 700 a month. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:18:55] Can I fund a lot on 400 a month? **Jason Cohen** [1:18:58] It's okay. I wouldn't do ABM for 400, but you can do other things. You can afford to do demo calls and, you know, that kind of stuff for 400 a month. It's more like a thousand dollars a month. You can really like kind of do anything. I say anything in quotes. I mean, we're, because we're not talking about enterprise sales, which is a wholly different. And then, and then no, none of this is that, but that's not what you're doing. So it's okay. I know you're selling to enterprise, but it's very different to sell to a group in an enterprise than to do quote unquote enterprise sales, which is totally not what you're doing. Enterprise sales is, we're installing Workday for $10 million. That's not what you're doing. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:19:36] Yeah. **Jason Cohen** [1:19:38] Yeah, yeah. You understand it. A lot of people listening may or may not understand that. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:19:43] I didn't. I learned the hard way. Like, you know, hopefully your new book will give us all the tips and tricks on how to differentiate between whatever. **Jason Cohen** [1:19:51] That's actually not in there. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:19:52] Hopefully it will be a, hopefully it will be a, uh. **Jason Cohen** [1:19:55] But that's because there's so much room for so much better stuff. Okay. Yeah. It's actually, I take it back. It is in there now that I think about it. It is in there. It's kind of funny. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:20:04] Hopefully it will be a great companion to the other book I recently read. **Rob Walling** [1:20:08] Here we go. These are complimentary by two. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:20:12] A two for one deal. Which marketing channels can I now afford that at my price point has moved to? **Jason Cohen** [1:20:19] That'sright. **Rob Walling** [1:20:19] It's in there. **Jason Cohen** [1:20:20] The SaaS Playbook. The best part of the book is the, is the, the preamble, but anyway. **Rob Walling** [1:20:25] Because Jason wrote it. **Jason Cohen** [1:20:28] Yeah. So, so, yeah, maybe ABM isn't the first thing you jump into. I think that's, that's very fair because it's totally new. And so it's not the first thing you move, you make. But what Rob said about like, wait a minute, if we're sponsoring conferences and going to things and doing events and doing podcasts and going places, it should be big commerce. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:20:43] That should all be there. **Jason Cohen** [1:20:44] It should be big commerce and not, and not Laravel, or it can be both, but as long as you're very, as long as you're careful and you're, you're sliding Laravel into the, into the fun column and the fun budget. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:20:57] Yeah. We need to slide more things into the make more money column. Yeah. **Jason Cohen** [1:21:01] Yeah. Yeah. So big commerce. And then maybe there's more like agency stuff. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:21:05] Yep. Yep. **Jason Cohen** [1:21:06] Agencies of conference too. No, that might be harder and maybe less specific and therefore less effective. And so maybe that is a bad idea. Maybe. I, I think big commerce is a better idea because it's so much easier and a more obvious what to do there. Another thing that we did at WP Engine is we ended up making our own online conference and then inviting other people to be there. And then we, of course, talked about stuff and that was very effective. When it's, we, we actually did it in person and we switched to online during COVID and in person, it was just unbelievably effective, but it's also unbelievably expensive. So of course you wouldn't start with that,right? But once we went online, it was very effective and we had some really neat, really neat tricks, like we pre-recorded everything and that allowed even people that like didn't work at WP Engine to like record and edit and stuff, which is kind of nice. And then although you might say like, wait, if it's pre-recorded, that's kind of dumb for a live thing. But then what was neat is we would say, well, the speakers, since this is recorded, the speakers will be in chat. So we, the speakers will chat with you in real time about their own thing while it's going on. And that was actually really cool. So we kind of, we kind of spun the, it's recorded into a, into an advantage. And of course then there could be live Q and A. And that worked pretty well and wasn't as expensive as in person. Now all that still maybe is more money and effort that you want to spend, but what that does is it really solidifies you as the expert in a thing. So if you had an event that was like, here's how to get into, you know, this is about sort of blogging in 2026. And your message will be something like, in 2026, the blog isn't a separate website. It's just incorporated into your website. In 2026, a blog isn't just about SEO anymore. It's about getting into LLMs in 2026. And there's a third thing. And like, those are the three topics for the day. And it's a half day thing or it's, you know, four, four talk thing, you know. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:23:04] But are you saying as a general or as a big commerce specific? **Jason Cohen** [1:23:07] Well, I mean, that would be up to you to think about. I think adding a big commerce thing, maybe big commerce is, is a talk in it so that it can be more general than that and you can get more people to come than just big commerce people. But maybe one of the talks in there, by talks, it could be 20 minutes, it could be an hour, it's whatever you want. 'Cause people will drift in and out when it's online anyway,right? And so you could have one for big commerce so that you do advertise it as a thing in big commerce, but also just in your whole customer base. And so if, if in your 2000 customer base, you say like, we're doing this, there could be a lot of goodwill and bringing, bringing up as you're being the expert. And then all these agencies that have already worked with you, you invite all of them to that. Again, bringing up as a expert that you're then going to come after this event and say to those agencies, hey, so maybe some of your clients would be interested in some of that. All those are pre-recorded. You can get them on YouTube. And so I don't know if some of your clients would, would actually find that to be interesting, but like, maybe, maybe someone would want to do this and now there's something to point the client to because it's you talking, you know, or your company being, being the experts or something like this, or maybe you get an SEO expert to say that and say it about you, but it's under your banner so that you're bringing in that, that credibility and expertise from somewhere else too, and showing how you're all, you know, it's under your banner. So you're all this kind of a thing. And, and so, so it's an excuse to invite everyone to get top of mind with these agencies, especially maybe brands if they have another one, but especially agencies who might have more, more clients and also agencies you haven't worked with yet and try to cold them and be like, hey, we're doing this thing. It's online. It's easy to pop into. Maybe you'd be interested in, who knows how many of them will do it, but like, it's an excuse. It's an excuse,right? And so it's a lot of work and it's a lot of expense, but since you said like, maybe we want to do something a little more creative, you know, what could we do? And again, I was, I was just thinking like, how do you, you want to go to your existing agencies and new ones and existing big commerce and new ones and get you top of mind and maybe get another client out of some of these agencies 'cause that would boost your revenue a little. In the long run, getting a one-time boost is whatever, but if you can go from, you know, if you can, if you can increase growth, if you can get even a pop of growth, that's one time, but meaningful. And now you're top of mind in an agency that could do it again in the next year or two. I think that's very good. Like you could call it tactical and I would say, okay, fine. But like, that's a really good tactic and it's in your strategic area, which is more agencies, more big commerce. I think that's, if I had to, if I were setting your strategy with just this conversation, I would say it's more agencies, more big commerce, because agencies is how you get multiple clients per year and therefore internal growth. And big commerce is, is, is your best single way of getting the big growth. Now also there's the brands. So you could say there's a third leg here, which is the brand, bigger brand website. I would say, okay, fine. If you think you can, if you think you can focus on that many things at once, which I don't believe you, I would focus on those two. And then when the brands come along, you say great, and you sell them, but it's not your big strategic focus. That's what I would say. So I would say like your conferences is big commerce, but when the brand, the bigger brand calls for demo, of course you do that sale. You, you, you of course spend the time on that sale, but who are you making features for? Who are you building this webinar for? Who are you going and seeing? Who are you doing conferences for? I would say it's agencies and big commerce. If I were setting your strategy, because that's your super, super sweet spot. And again, that may be wrong. You might pick a different one and you may think you can do three of these at once. But anyway, that, that, that's a long, I mean, it's, I'm brainstorming here,right? But like, it'd be interesting to do, if that's your strategy, then tactics that give you significant bumping growth and also promote the strategy, that's a good tactic. Like a little more SEO, not that interesting, won't move the needle. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:26:59] Yeah. I mean, this is always we're trying to find. **Jason Cohen** [1:27:01] That actually are targeted, that could, that could permanently move the needle. So that, that's pretty good. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:27:05] We've been trying to find this kind of optimization versus growth thing. And you know, the, a lot of the things that we've been doing for the last few years are optimization and they're moving the needle too small. And that's where we, why again, we pushed into trying to create an offer for these larger businesses that are willing to pay, that are more established, that are longer LTVs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And that's where we landed there. But, and it seems like so far that big commerce are the ones that like those a lot and other just general larger brands, old school brands seem to be liking that offer as well. So that's, that's where we're pushing toward. Yep. And then, then seeing if we can sell some of those higher end plans to those kind of guys instead of these fly-by-night starting people kind of thing,right? Which is why we're trying to avoid this kind of very blankety, we're sort of marketingy sort of, you know, you should start doing blogging kind of content because it's a lot better to get somebody who's already doing it and we make it better for what they already flow that they have,right? **Rob Walling** [1:28:11] Something I want to touch on in the thought process here is SaaS companies plateau for different reasons. And I've seen folks online, on X, Twitter, and they're like, I plateaued, what should I do? And it's like, it depends, like, why are you plateaued? I can't answer that. So I did a talk at MicroConf, excuse me, I believe it's on YouTube and it's called like the seven types of SaaS plateaus. And I basically came up with them out of my own head. And then I went through all the TinyCeed companies and I posted it and then I posted on Twitter and I was like, what, every reason, let's figure it out,right? I gave the talk and I think I had all of them. I kept saying, I gave it twice and I kept saying, if I missed one, let me know, 'cause I want there to be eight. And if there are eight, let's get eight,right? Let's gather this for everybody. The reason I bring that up is if, if you're on social media and you see, especially indie hackers, but it's, it's folks who are early bootstrappers, it's like, oh, I've plateaued, so I'm going to now try this whole other new strategy, but they're at 5K MRR and you're like, what? Slow down here. You know what I mean? Like the, the odds are you should, like nothing's really working yet,right? And you're at a million ARR and somewhere north of that and you're plateaued. The, it could be optimize channels, add a little more to it,right? But that sounds like you've already tried. Exactly. And you've already tried that. And it's more of the, there Jason has a really good essay called The Elephant Curve and the myth of exponential growth. And it talks about how everything plateaus and then at a certain point you have to change strategy. Sometimes that's a new product, like HubSpot kept doing that. A bunch of Salesforce, a bunch of them have done it. For you, it doesn't sound like it's a new product,right? It sounds like it's a new strategic direction. It's a new customer type. It's another big marketing or sales channel. And that's, I'm calling this out for listeners who are wondering or who may hear us saying, obviously you're plateaued, so you should go do this big ABM thing that we're talking about with, with, with big commerce. It's like, well, but if you're plateaued at 5K and your reason is not the same reason as DropInBlog that you're plateaued, don't listen to this advice,right? Come on here and have Jason give you, you know, tailored advice, because again, there are at least seven, probably one or two more reasons that you could plateau. And each of those reasons, once you figure it out, it's like, okay, now that I know that the first step is just trying to truly assess why. And then it's like, well, here's the next step to do it. And all of those, it's different flow charts,right? It's different flow charts for. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:30:28] Yeah, that's, that's good. I, I do see that a lot,right? Where it's, and, and you know, we were trying to make sure that that was the case, which is where we really pushed like, you know, with SEO being our main channel is like, are we sure that we're, you know, getting every thing that we get? And then we started pushing hard, making sure we're ranking, moving higher up the funnel, you know, whatever. And then it clearly became, yeah, that. And then, yeah, then the max MRR comes in the curve and then, okay, now we need to start reassessing here. But then when we do see that bigger companies do want to spend more money with us, they do want the product, they, they're, they're, you know, the TAM is, is kind of insane. We just need to figure out what the most efficient way to get there is, I guess. **Jason Cohen** [1:31:11] Nice. Jesse, is there anything you feel like we haven't covered enough or that's on your mind or you're worried about? You just want, even if it's unrelated to everything we just said, is there anything else you want to cover? **Jesse Schoberg** [1:31:25] Well, let's pressure on this a little bit with the, it sounds like you guys subscribe to my push on the big commerce concept. And as I mentioned, like, okay, we're looking to like cold outreach, those we're testing that seems to be whatever, but like, you know, what, what, what's the normal, like, you know, when, if, if, you know, we're finding that this is the, like, like what are, what are the next steps that you guys would take if you're in this exact situation, you've identified this thing, you're trying to sell this 399 plan, you're, you're doing demos with them, it's going good, but like what, what are the main, you know, other things that we're not doing or that we haven't talked about that, that seem like might be the action plans for the next six months or a year or whatever on this idea? Or is it bad? Like, or should we be looking at like, you know, is it not this niche? Should we be staying broad or, or, or whatever? **Rob Walling** [1:32:25] Do you mean when you're asking this, do you mean in addition to or like outside of the big commerce kind of agency focus we've just talked about? **Jesse Schoberg** [1:32:34] Well, I mean like the actual like. **Jason Cohen** [1:32:36] You want an action plan? Like what do you, what do you actually should do next,right? ### Action plan **Jesse Schoberg** [1:32:39] Yeah. Like, okay, sure. We're targeting them. Like what the hell does that mean? You know, like, like, you know, like is it again, cold outreach? Is it advertising? Is it like what are, like again, you're in, you're in my shoes. This is you. You know the revenues, you know where we're at. Like, okay, what, what's the, what's the six month, like these are the things I'm going to put my energy into. 'Cause of course there's a million things we can all do,right? And as you, you so gracefully pointed out that, that we shouldn't be wasting our time on some of the things. And, and so. **Jason Cohen** [1:33:08] Maybe not graceful, but yeah. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:33:10] So, so, so, so cool. You know what, what, it's, it's your company now. It just got dropped in your lap. And, and it's, you know, this is your lifeblood and you, you want to win the game. So, so, so let's go. What are we doing? **Rob Walling** [1:33:25] I can tell you what I would do. So I've never done ABM myself. So I would either, if I had money, like Jason said, hire someone who has done it before, who has, you know, got it from zero to one. Now, in order to hire them, you have to know if they're good or not. So then I would probably try to work my network to find people I know who are good at it, that could give me advice in hiring. Okay. If I didn't have the budget for that, I would, I mean, I'm in the TinyCeed network, so I would, but let's just say you're outside the TinyCeed network,right? You're not, you're not a TinyCeed founder. I would look for a, either a coach, probably a coach to help coach me on how, what should I do to answer that question? And I'm saying this is me. Like you're asking, you are saying literally, I'm dropped in. I don't know how to do ABM. I can, I've read a couple books on it, but I would want someone like, you know, of Jason's caliber who knows ABM, if that makes sense. Like someone who's really smart and could just bust my chops once a week, twice a month. That's the cheap way to do it. And then I'm going to do the hustle and be like, this is the plan. This is a solved problem. We don't have to invent, you know what I mean? And even if Jason and I, I don't know if he's on ABM, but even if he and I don't have a plan for you, there are people out there who are screaming at their, at their speakersright now saying, well, you would do this, this, that, this, that, that's everyone. This is what works,right? I don't, I just don't know that answer. So I would find someone. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:34:44] Leave your point in the comments. **Rob Walling** [1:34:45] Yeah, exactly. **Jason Cohen** [1:34:46] This is where a seasoned YouTuber, not such as myself, would say, go to the comments and it helps grow the channel and then gently scrape the subscribe button or whatever. And so hopefully people already know that. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:34:58] Yeah. But that's so, but your answer then is do it in ABM style, not like all the other channels that you might know and love,right? So you're telling me that if I drop this business in your lap, your first thing to do would be ABM. I don't know if I, if I buy that. **Rob Walling** [1:35:15] Yeah. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:35:16] That sounds hard for you. **Rob Walling** [1:35:17] For me, probably. But yeah, and maybe I'm. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:35:20] So it might not be your go-to. **Rob Walling** [1:35:21] Yeah, maybe I'm, well, I would do, but I would do, see, I would do, whenever I do something. **Jason Cohen** [1:35:25] This is Jesse. Jason's going to have to rob it. Look. **Rob Walling** [1:35:28] Uh-oh. Suddenly I feel nervous. And look, anything I do, I, I like to try to learn the rules so that then I can kind of do it my way. And my way is usually has a tinge of Rob Walling to it. So my ABM would be, well, of course I'd probably start a YouTube channel and I'd start, I would run that in-person event that Jason Cohen talked about,right? I don't know why I'm using the last name, but the Jason talked about it. It's like, 'cause I run running or online or in-person events, like those are things that, that I'm good at. And so I would put my spin on it. And I am losing, I'm sorry, I am using ABM loosely because it's like, I'm sure there's a textbook definition of that and what I do, all of that stuff, probably not, but I would, I would take the pieces that I'm like, well, we have the budget for that. Well, I, I can, I can do that part for a while, even though I don't like it, but I'll try it for three months and then the rest of it is fun and I'm going to, I'm going to keep doing it. So yeah, I would do very in-person. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:36:20] So the first thing you're going to do is start a YouTube channel. **Rob Walling** [1:36:23] Don't do that. Don't do that. It was, it was a little. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:36:28] The company is shrinking now after I gave it to Rob. This is going. **Rob Walling** [1:36:31] Yeah. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:36:32] Really shrinking. **Rob Walling** [1:36:32] Rob started a podcast and a YouTube channel and yeah. No, but I relationship. I mean, this is the thing I would, I would want to be known. I would want to start being known in this space, whether it's known, 'cause I, I don't really want to build an audience. That's, I don't think that's helpful, but the, the network,right? I always say build your network and not your audience. That's what this is about. Like you're trying to build your network in the big com space and specifically if you can with, you know, agencies. **Jason Cohen** [1:36:59] Yeah, your network and brand. So, okay, so here's what I would do. First of all, I would gather the entire company together and say, we have a new strategy for the next, well, new strategy period, which means we're going to be doing some new things in the next six to 12 months. Now, by new strategy, I do not mean we're pivoting the company and forgetting our roots and going somewhere else and doing a new product. That's called a pivot or something. That's what companies do when they're in big trouble and last resort and all kinds of stuff. That is not what this is. So actually, I wouldn't start by saying we have a new strategy because that makes everyone scared. So let me roll that back. I'm going to keep all this in because it's useful to, I think it's useful to see the thought process. Because I realize, as I'm saying this aloud, oops, no, people are scared as soon as you say new strategy. So don't do that. I would say everything's going well. We are crushing it with our 2000 customers. There's very little churn. That's how I know we're crushing it. That's how I know. But we want to grow. And we have found that there's new growth areas specifically in larger customers with big commerce, as everybody here knows already, 'cause we've been doing these demos. Sometimes they're brands. And so there's these bigger plans. That's starting to work, you guys. It's starting to work. Like at first it was like, well, will this work? We don't know. We've never done demos before. You know what? Look around, look around. It's starting to work. And so we now want to do that intentionally. And you know what else is working? Big commerce. And I know everyone here knows that probably, but maybe not everyone does. Maybe somebody's got their nose in Visual Studio all the time and doesn't know that. So again, whole company. So some of you may not know this, but like we're doing really, we're actually seeing some really nice green shoots in these larger plans. Doesn't take very many of those customers to grow the company 'cause they're, they're 10 times as much revenue. And sometimes they buy three sites. Oh my gosh. And we're also seeing this in big commerce in particular, which is super interesting. We think that's because ABC is giving you, you know, getting just teaching everyone just enough that everyone understands. Here's what's happening. Here's why. Oh, this is so smart. Oh, this is based on stuff that's objective information. So everyone's getting excited. Okay. So here's what we, so we have a, a, a new strategy for the company, which leans into these things that are working, these new things that are working really well. Notice I did not say stop doing the thing that's also working, which is the 2000, you know, we're not stopping. It's and not instead of, you guys. So because this can be growth and we'll, that means we'll be able to hire more people again. So we can do and and not instead of, there may be in the future new things we're going to do for big commerce people, but we'll, we'll be able to hire people to do that and not let leave our, our, our existing customers behind. And there's stuff we're going to do to try to get more of those big customers, but since they pay us so much money, we can afford to do new things, whether that's spending, people, campaigns, whatever it is, because it gets new customers that pay us a lot. So this is an and this is an expansion of some things that are starting to work already that we want to lean into on purpose. So hence our strategy is not to move away from what we're good at, but rather to say, wait, and now we're seeing these green shoots in these mid-size brands and in big commerce. And so in the next 12 months, it's everyone's job to succeed in these new ways without leaving our old customers behind. Now we all have different roles. So what it means for all of us to do this is, of course, it's going to be different for each of us. It could be that we're writing code. It could be that we're making a feature. It could be we're talking to a customer. It could be we're doing a sale. It could be we're talking on a webinar. Who knows? Like there's all kind, all manner of stuff that's happening. We're all going to have our role to play, but that's what we are going to do because that's how this company's going to thrive in the next 12 months, because we're staying true to who we are, true to our roots, and expanding in these ways that we're seeing that customers already love what we are with just a little, you know, a little extra here, this and that for the different kind of customers. They love our product, but they also need SSO. They love our product, but they also need, you know, and so we're just going to, we're going to not forget what, why our product is beloved. And then we're going to add these things in for big commerce. And by adding, I mean product, but I also mean marketing, sales for big commerce and for these bigger brands. And that's how we're going to continue growing our company. And I'm not going to sit here and tell you like, we're definitely going to be at this revenue and this time. Like that, that's, that's not what we're doing here. We know this is an intelligent way for us to grow and thrive in this world with people who already love what we have, maybe with a little plus this, plus that, because of their special case, but basically already love us for who we are. And, and, and so everyone's going to do that. And you're going to see over time how we do that. And if you have ideas for that, if you see things like that, great. That's what's, that's what it is to be strategic here for the next 12 months is to add those on without forgetting who we are. And you'll cut what I just said down by a third because I just repeated myself a lot 'cause I'm brainstorming, but you see what I mean? You're bringing the whole company along into this, what we are doing. And so that's, that's the first, maybe not the very first thing I would do. You might want something of a plan. 'Cause then they say, okay, so not like what? You don't want to say, I don't know. Okay. So, so, and, and we'll talk about, and we all, and you ask like what, what should I do next? Okay. So we'll talk about what those are, but that's one of the things that I would do next, quote unquote, in air quotes. **Rob Walling** [1:42:23] Yeah. **Jesse Schoberg** [1:42:23] Right after, you know. **Rob Walling** [1:42:24] Align the team on the, on the, the adjusted, updated mission. **Jason Cohen** [1:42:29] Yes. Otherwise they don't know what's going on. Maybe they even fight for things or whatever. You need everyone on the same page. They'll have ideas and also just they're brought along. It's just nice to be brought along in the mission and strategy of the company. In fact, I would say the mission hasn't changed. The strategy of exactly who we're, what our sweet spot is in the market is expanding. I would say your mission's not changing. That's why the strategy's so good. It's an expansion about who we're serving without changing who we are, our culture, our mission, our goals. Like without, this is not an identity shift. This is expanding into areas of the market that we have seen has some green shoots and areright for us. That feels much more comfortable than we're changing our mission or something like that, which you're not anyway. So now I picked those two things because that's kind of what you said coming in. And I think it's smart and I think you could just do that. If it were me, I would trade the bigger brand for the agency. In other words, I would say everything I just said, except I would be making the case about agencies. Agencies build us into clients and over time there could be multiple clients. In fact, we're going to be communicating with them and asking who else in their client base. **Rob Walling** [1:43:42] As in broad agencies in general or big commerce? **Jason Cohen** [1:43:46] Yes. In the sense of the agencies, the kind of agencies that are already customers of your or indirectly customers of yours, that kind. I would actually say we're going to, we're going to make, we're going to have, we're going to be great for agencies and we're going to go after them and we're going to nurture them. So in other words, I would replace the big customer with that. I would still do all the big customer stuff, but I wouldn't make it part of my strategy because I think it will happen anyway. Like when you go after the larger big commerce, you will also get those other brands. And I think the agencies are your route into some of those things. I could be wrong about that. And you could say, look, look, man, I've got like, I'm, I've got these motions that are working with the bigger brands. Like that's silly to not be part of the strategy. So, you know, you will change this how you want. I just don't know that you can have all these different focuses. And I think agencies are a bigger, better business model for you than brands. Because an agency can bring one, you can tactically maybe get one or two more out of existing ones and over time they'll bring you more. So in other words, an agency sales effectively a thing that can grow over time. So as you accrete them, they're growing over time. And so your business model with agencies is a parabola of growth of revenue. Whereas with, because, because each agency at themselves adds, that makes a parabola as opposed to a brand that comes in and then it's flat and you never know how to get them to pay you more. Now maybe you figure it out, but in general, I bet they come in and never pay you more. Like actually your pricing indicates they don't. And now I'm rolling back a little there, but this is actually really interesting. I think when it's $50 and the next one's 200, no one's making that jump. I say no one, obviously. Okay. Three people did, but that's, it's way too much of a jump. Like if I'm just using it more, I can't go from 50 to 200. That's, it's a ridiculous thing to ask me to do. Imagine if my cell phone plan went 50 and then 200. Like it's, what are you talking about? Like just 'cause I get a little bit more traffic or something. That's crazy. That shows me segmentation. Like I'm not going from 50 to, to 750. That's a segment thing. You're segmenting the audience. That's not growth. So, so, okay. Setting, but setting that back aside. So, so brands are rough, roughly speaking flat and agencies roughly speaking can grow. That's a wholly different financial business model. And one of those is super strong. It means you grow over time automatically. Not automatically 'cause you're, you're doing relationships with the agencies, but like easily, okay. Naturally. And the other one is like, I have to fight for every one of them. And so I just think agencies is a dramatically better business model for you. **Rob Walling** [1:46:21] And do you think they should be incentivized financially or just supported? **Jason Cohen** [1:46:25] Either way, what I find is agencies vary in what they want. Some want a kickback and want that, and that's why they'll do it. Okay, fine. You're fine with that. But others are just the opposite, where they say, if my clients ever found out I took a kickback for advice that I gave, that would be the end of my relationship with that client and probably the, the beginning of the end of my whole brand. Because of course, of course, I'm not a fricking affiliate. I'm a high-powered agency. Like, are you out of your mind? Like getting a little kickback from you is worth, is worth that. That's crazy. Whereas with freelancers, often a kickback is a substantial amount of money compared to what they're charging. And it is actually part of how they have a livelihood. And by the way, I'm not judging anybody either way. I'm just saying both of them exist in large quantities. So that's why I'm saying. **Rob Walling** [1:47:15] And how do those offers coexist in, in my agency core? **Jason Cohen** [1:47:20] Because you're talking to the agencies. You just say like, hey, I've noticed some people, some people just want to work with us because we're awesome for them and their clients. Some people want a kickback. Some people are offended if I say kickback. So I know that. So just whatever you want to do is what we'll do. And that's what exactly what I, what I even said at WP Engine. I literally said that to agencies at WP Engine, like word for word. **Rob Walling** [1:47:43] And so what I would do, I did do that. **Jason Cohen** [1:47:46] That's what I would do. **Rob Walling** [1:47:47] And a question might be. **Jason Cohen** [1:47:48] So what would I do? I would say agencies is a better business model. We're hitting the agencies and, and, and big commerce. That's what I would do. Although I understand that you have the new prices and it's working. So even, even as I'm saying that out loud, I kind of, I can see not doing what I said and instead either adding in the big customers also, although it just sounds like too much to do at once at your size, maybe at any size, but certainly at your size. It sounds like too many things to do at the same time. **Rob Walling** [1:48:14] But they're the same, like the big commerce part of that push is that a lot of those are the bigger customers. **Jason Cohen** [1:48:19] Okay. So, so, so there you go. So maybe I'mright and it is a big commerce and bigger customers. And yes, you'll get bigger customers that are not big commerce. And of course, that's wonderful, but it just won't be your biggest, like you're not going to make a, you're not going to go to a conference for big customers in general, whatever that even means. You're going to go to the big con, you know, like, like when you focus on, focus your efforts that, so here's the next thing I would tell my whole company. So strategy, strategy. So here's what we're doing for the strategy. We're going to have a ZAR of agencies and we're going to have a ZAR of big commerce or okay, that's a crazy ass word. So maybe it's not ZAR, maybe it's a lead, maybe it's a, you know, whatever. Okay. Somebody, somebody is going to own that. They're going to get up and go to bed every day and all they're going to think about is how do we crush it with agencies or how do we crush it with big commerce? It's all they're going to think about. Now that person may have to be you. It depends on how your company is and blah, blah, blah. Over time, maybe you'd hire for that, maybe not. Over time, maybe you groom someone who's already there, who wants, who you think has the ability to think like a product manager, think more like a business owner, and you want to groom them to that. So maybe they get put over that, but you're holding their hand the whole time because they're not really ready to fly by themselves, but you want to get them there. And so it's a kind of combination of putting them up, but you're going to be propping them up a lot behind the scenes, but they're going to have a shot at this and they're, and they would be super stoked and they're going to work extra hard because for them, this is like a massive opportunity for them. So you may, so again, I don't know your company, so I don't know, but like maybe there's people like that or one of them's like that, or maybe you have to be that person, another one. And maybe there's times that we have a, you know, okay. But the point is like when you do a big initiative, someone has to be the owner and they're getting up and going to sleep thinking about only that. They won't be perfect at everything. They'll, they'll know more about engineering, less about marketing, more about sales, less about engineering. Like there's no, like that person's not going to be excellent at everything. That's not the point. Their role is that this, they own this. Okay. You're going to prop them up probably, but like this is their thing and this is all they're going to think about, all they're going to measure, all they're going to be brainstorming about, all the project management that they're doing of like all the irons in the fires is going to be this. And they're going to think about only this press for only this, prioritize only this. Now they won't be good at everything. So they'll need a team where you're helping or ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. They'll have some expertise 'cause they came from somewhere. They came from customer service, they came from marketing, they came from engineering. There's something where they do have it in the bag 'cause that's where they came from. And then everything else, okay. Eventually, as it's successful, you'll build a team around them eventually. Or maybe you realize you need a different kind of leader and they're, but they're part of it. Okay. So all kinds of things could happen. But what, what's bad is you say, what doesn't work to me is you say, here's this big strategic initiative, we're going to go after big commerce. And then everyone's like, okay, well, who's doing that? Like, I don't know. Like we'll just generally fold it into stuff that we're doing. That's not intentional enough. And what happens is, so not only is that going to be not organized and not effective enough, but also every time something appears for the rest of the business, the other thing will take precedence because that other thing is the existing business. There's existing customers tied to that other thing. There's an existing sale in the works tied to the other thing. So it will trump the new thing that doesn't yet have 2000 customers on it. That doesn't yet have millions of dollars attached to it. That thing will always get sidelined because there's always something in the existing business that needs attention. So you have to cordon off the new thing to say this person's running it and duh, duh, duh, duh, and it has this marketing budget and duh, duh, duh, duh. But also we're watching about, well, how much revenue are we getting from it? Like you're going to start breaking out your agency revenue from your big commerce revenue from everything else so that you can see what's up here and how much you should be investing. And you know, we can afford to hire ba, ba, ba, or pay for ba, ba, ba, ba, because the revenue out of this thing and the cost base of the thing is, well, because I broke that out now because I'm so focused on it. And now when it's like, well, the agency person wants to do this and the regular company wants to do that, you're like, okay, but I've set up my budget for costs and I've seen my revenue, so I can now make choices about when I steal from one to pay the other and when I should not do that,right? Because otherwise I'm not being intentional about actually focusing on this for real. I'm just saying I'm focusing on it. We sometimes do stuff, but I'm not really doing it, but doing everything I just, so you're going to tell the company, that's what we're going to do. We're going to split that out like that. Then maybe you'll already have it split out by then. That would be great. 'Cause how cool would it be to say, soright now, you know, a third of our company comes from agencies. A half of almost all our new big revenue comes from big commerce, which is actually only 10% of our revenue now, but it's going to be half in two years if we're successful. And you know, you see what I mean? You can, you can like start telling them that the shape of thatright now. And then, and then, and then of course the goal is for each of them to, to do theright thing to grow in their own way, which are very different. And that's another reason. I know I'm going on and on, but, but hopefully this is, this is actionable. All of this is actionable. The other, another reason you want to split it out is they're going to have different ways that they operate. Like with agencies, to me, it's like relationships. You're going to, you'll email them newsletters. You got to stay top of mind 'cause the whole point is ongoing stuff. I think you should do a tactical thing when you go into clients that they already have, but you may need to warm that up somehow with some newsletters or things, or maybe you do do some kind of weird event or something, or you join somebody else's event, you know, something where you kind of get that warmed up so you can do that tactical thing and maybe get a big burst of, of stuff that, that grows that segment a little bit and gets you top of mind. I think that would be amazing. And then there's probably the top end agencies that are worth you, like talking to them every quarter or every month as a relationship type of thing, you know, who knows? But like this is the point is like there's this whole mindset of like what should we do to nurture this? And then of course, how do we get new ones? That's going to be its own universe. And the way you get some small SMB to come in on SEO and how much time and money you spend is dramatically different from everything I just said. I mean, there's like nothing in common other than the product and at big commerce, again, there might be very little in common. There are little 'cause there's big commerce agencies. Okay. But you see what I mean? So when there's a, when everything is different, how we talk, what we say, what we do with current customers, how we get new ones, our positioning, if all that's different, it makes sense for that to be cordoned off. Not as a different business, different brand necessarily, but like different people that stay in this mindset that's very different than the people sitting next to them because it deserves it. **Rob Walling** [1:54:41] And reported differently so they can see that the needle actually moved on those things and these initiatives are focused in. **Jason Cohen** [1:54:47] Yeah. And how you, how you know if it's, if they're doing a good job will also be different. Like if they have a newsletter that has a pretty good open rate, they're doing that, that doesn't mean sales, but that part of it's doing well, but you don't have an equivalent of that somewhere else. Or maybe you should have a newsletter. I don't know. But like, let's suppose a newsletter for other people. **Rob Walling** [1:55:03] We do have a newsletter. **Jason Cohen** [1:55:04] Okay. So, so, but, but those will, okay. So, but those are still different and you might be asking, looking for different things there,right? You may have a newsletter for SMBs, but the goal is cancel is retention, not growth. But you have a newsletter for agencies and the goal is actually growth, like next client, next client. So you have a different way of measuring that. Or again, like I think you should segment your agencies. Here are the big ones that could go really far. Here's this long tail that doesn't, and we're going to treat them differently. Well, that's different metrics than you're going to use over then in the SMB brand side where they're not doing that,right? So, so just, you know, you will of course work out how to manage those different things, but the point is that the behavior, the metrics, what it means if we're quote unquote doing well, those are all going to be different, or at least they may be different. They're very, very often are different. And so having them cordoned off is helpful in keeping straight, which, you know, what good looks like everywhere here and what kind of people might I need to hire because we have this gap or. **Rob Walling** [1:55:59] Yeah, that all makes perfect sense. **Jason Cohen** [1:56:00] Yeah. Okay. So, so I would have, I would say, companies doing really well, here's what the green shoots are and why, and why it's a great business model for us 'cause they're bigger or they grow over time, whatever the reasons are. And, and so we're setting up now, maybe you have to run all those now. I would hope there's some people that you can groom and bring up in your company and you haven't hired only people who are incapable of having some responsibility. But again, that's that, you know, that I don't, we don't need to get into that obviously, but like here, but how can you organize that in the team and then say, okay, so we're doing this, here's who's running these things, and maybe here's a couple of things we're going to do. So like in the agency side, it could be, we're going to start a, we have our newsletter, we're going to have an agency specific one, which maybe reuses all the content, but adds agency stuff, like whatever. But like we're going to have an agency one 'cause it's a little different for them. For example, agencies need content they can then turn around and give to their clients to sell for us, whereas a brand doesn't need that. So that's an example of something we're going to be doing over on the agency side. Like, so you don't need to give everyone a super duper detailed plan of everything, but like if you just have an example, like on the agencies we'll have a special newsletter on the agencies, we're going to do a campaign where we see, we asked, do you have another client? And also we're going to get the material for that. That's an ex, and you could, and you could just say, those are examples of some of the things we're going to do in the next three months, which PS, that's what I would do, what I just said over there. And there'll be more stuff like that, but that's an example of what we're going to do next to try to like start nurturing and, and, and getting some growth from that channel and for theright reasons. Then over in big commerce, you know, we've been at Glaravel a lot and we should, it's our roots and we love them and they love us and like we love it. But the truth is that marketers aren't there and the engineers that build websites don't build them in Glaravel nearly as often as other things. And so what we've realized is, oh, you know, big commerce is doing so well. This attitude we've had in Glaravel, which is so wonderful, we're going to bring that to big commerce, part of the community. And what does that mean to be part of a community? Oh man, events and making content for it and practically doing stuff. And maybe there's podcasts and maybe whatever,right? And now again, this is now on you to decide, and we're going to shut down the Glaravel thing 'cause we don't have time. Or, hey, it's not that we're going to forget about Glaravel, it's just we need to rebalance our efforts a little bit since Glaravel is, is, is great for us and so we're never going to stop, but we need to rebalance how much time we're putting on Glaravel versus how much time we're putting in now big commerce. So we want to, we want to have that presence there too. And so we're going to be rebalancing that. So that would, that would be a way of saying, okay, I'm not, I'm not shelving it, but you should expect us to do a little less there in terms of time and money, a little bit more over here instead. And of course, as big commerce grows, we can do more of both, by the way. Like as big commerce grows, you could elect to put more budget in the fun stuff, of course, and, and still do a lot in Glaravel. Like you can do that, but like, let's, let's go build up some more profit so we can do that,right? And you don't have to tell everyone that level of detail. I'm, I was just saying that for you,right? But like, you know, that, that, that's, that, that's what we're going to do. And then, and again, what else would you do in big commerce? Of course, in both agencies and big commerce, there's all kinds of specific marketing you could do. You have all these channels that exist and new channels that didn't exist. Would you do SEO and stuff? Sure. But we all know that's just okay and slow burning. That's not going to help immediately. You want to get some more results in the next three to six months. SEO probably isn't the way to get results in three months. So, well, you'll probably do that 'cause you know it. Again, I would go back to the ads we talked about and, and either in an ROI sales perspective or in a learning and positioning perspective, or maybe it's both, or it starts as learning, turns into ROI, something like that. That's what I would do. Where would I do the ads? Like Rob said, I think I might, I might try to get some advice from people who do a lot of ads or have done ads in this area who might be better at that or even in the area of blogging or market, or I should say marketing stuff for big commerce. What is working there? Is it AdWords? I mean, it might be, but it might be LinkedIn. It might be other things. Okay. There might be podcasts people listen to. I think that's, that's interesting, especially to get going. Maybe podcast is more of a branding thing. Okay, fine. But still, like that in, in the early days, that might be useful. And so I would use that to learn how do I position? I think with the agencies, you know how, because they already are here, they already kind of get it. And, and, and it's a motion now, a go-to-market motion of how do I sell through agencies, not how do I change my positioning entirely for agencies. So that's probably not it. But with big commerce and the marketers, like we talked about, again, your, your core value, I, I know, but like we talked about how do I, how do you position things certainly for utility in that area? 'Cause for e-commerce specifically, okay, it's going to be other things. Your case studies are going to be about big commerce customers. So you're going to put that together for, for that track. And, and again, like where's that super delight that's, that's just over and on top of the utility? And I think you can do it, but that's going to take a little bit more work. And you may not have that for your big announcement to the company, but like we talked about what that could be for marketers. There might be a similar thing with big commerce. I don't know that, that the marketer at the big commerce company who is old school and who doesn't understand AI and who is scared, like that sounds like a pretty good, you know, direction. So, so testing how do I position for that, that really gets them going emotionally and personally. That I, that is what I would do in the first three months. I might use ads to try to do that quickly and also calls and stuff. I would use these various tools to try to do that as quickly as I could 'cause SEO's not quick and not really much of feedback either to be, to be honest. And anyway, it's declining. Like it's just weird. Like SEO's weird, weirder and weirder, I think, as time goes on and not that helpful for that. So I know it just gone on and on, but, but, but hopefully that was a useful and also useful for people listening who are thinking like how do I do anything new at my company and get everyone along? But 'cause you have a dozens of, more than a dozen people there. That's a lot of people. And, and you want everyone to be very comfortable that like, wow, we're, this is cool. This is a, this is a cool future. We're leaning to stuff that's working. We have a couple things to do. Obviously, we're going to figure out a lot. Like it's early days and you can say that like we just started these green shoots. It's smart to invest in this. And we have, we have a couple of things to doright now, but obviously over the next two years, we're going to learn a ton. We're going to learn a ton about what to do. So a lot to come, a lot of learning to come, but we know what we're going to do next and we know why these are theright things. And, and like this is going to be really, we're going to bring what everyone loves about us and we're going to motivate agencies to, to do it with us at, at bigger scale. And there's these, these bigger companies that with big commerce who see the value and, and, and in fact they see even more value as evidence by they want to pay us more. They see more value. And we say, great, I love that you're getting more value. How can we give you even more value? And that's going to be a blast to do. **Rob Walling** [2:03:10] That's good. I think, well, at least now, yeah, there's some, some like actual tactical things in there that I think were a little less broad than some of the other parts of our conversation. So that's helpful. And this like kind of random how to kind of position this with the team is quite helpful 'cause I definitely don't consider myself an expert team leader. So those tips are always useful. So I appreciate that. A while back there, Rob, you had something in your head. You might've lost it by now, but, but I would love to, to hear. **Jesse Schoberg** [2:03:41] I was just going to say, can you tell Jason has run big companies before? Like when you said, so what should I do? And I said, hire someone or go do it. And Jason's like, allright, you're going to sit everybody down. And it's like, oh yeah, I guess you have to do that too. I just don't, I don't tend to run big companies. What was the thing I was going to say? Oh, the thing I was going to say. **Jason Cohen** [2:04:00] Have, have someone else. I love having the different. **Jesse Schoberg** [2:04:03] Totally. The perspectives,right? **Jason Cohen** [2:04:04] Perspectives. **Jesse Schoberg** [2:04:05] It's like, it, it, it all needs both things areright. It's just the order. It's the, you know, how you handle it. The thing I was just going to add, I know, I know we're wrapping up, but it was if you give a kickback to the agencies, then they get the money. If you don't give a kickback, the question is, well, then why are they do it? What, what, what's in it for them? And the what's in it for them is you are no headaches. You have their fucking back. What does an agency want? They want you to show up on, maybe on a call with a client when stuff's going sideways, that you make them look amazing, that you support the hell out of them. No, you know, no hassles, return phone calls, blah, blah, blah. They want premium level support. That is worth way more money to them than 20% commission. Now, all of them won't know that, but that's, that's it. I mean, we could, I'm sure Jason. **Rob Walling** [2:04:54] I will say I have heard that. I have heard that in some of our conversations where I, where, you know, I'm leading with, oh, you could add some, you know, bottom line. They're going, but like, no, no, no, I need you to answer like my emails. Like I want to, I want your email, like that kind of, you know, and I'm like, oh yeah, sure, of course. **Jesse Schoberg** [2:05:13] Of course we can do that. But you know, we have our partner Slack channel that you're in, that the agencies are or whatever, you know, I mean, we could go all, Jason, I could probably talk for 20 minutes just on how to provide value to agencies, but the, I, the, I, the thought there was just 'cause you're not offering them money does not mean there's not a lot that you can offer them. **Rob Walling** [2:05:29] Yeah, yeah. I was just more curious. Yeah. How to position that and how to offer it or not offer it. But like, yeah, what you guys said makes sense where you can say like, it's there if you want it, we can talk about it, but if that's not, you know, here's all the other, this is, yeah, helpful. **Jason Cohen** [2:05:41] Yeah. So basically I would just say I've found that, and again, I, I wouldn't, it's not that I would say what, what I actually did say many, many times, I've found that some agencies want a kickback and some are offended if you talk about a kickback. And so I just say, hey, whatever you want, like, you know, we're here for it, you know, like no matter what, we're going to be partners and just everything Rob said, exactly that. And, and also the agency wants to make money off their client. So adding a blog is a project that makes them money. So you're an excuse to go back to a client and make and have another project or a way to win a client that's against something else. And because they'll have this better blog because they can inherit your features as part of their RFP or maybe they're cheaper 'cause they can do it this way instead of building the blog themselves. Whatever the reason is, you know, that's what they, that's of course what they want is to make more money with their client in the way they normally make money. Right? And so again, when I, when if it were me, when I was going, when I go back to my existing set of agencies that have worked with me before, that's the pitch I would make. Hey, I bet you have other clients where it really would be better for them to have a blog. Like they should be doing content marketing. They need to get in those LLMs and this is how to do it. And you could tell them that and you could, you could show them that and then, and then together you could do it this way so that it's affordable enough, but you can charge them whatever to drop a blog in, the coin of phrase. And, you know, like get a couple, get, you know, get your clients going here and, and of course making money for themselves. So that's the pitch I would make. You know, it's a, it's a new project for them to make money. And maybe it's a kickback. Yeah. Yeah. And it's good that you've, as you talk to them, of course they'll tell you what they want. Like that they, they will definitely do that. **Rob Walling** [2:07:31] And then tactically, you think, what is this cold email to let's have a call? I just want to tell you about what this can do for you. Is this like what, what's that for new. **Jason Cohen** [2:07:41] For a new agency or an existing one? **Rob Walling** [2:07:42] Yeah. New, new. Like what's the, what's the path to getting on all these guys' radar? **Jason Cohen** [2:07:49] Well, it's, I mean, I mean, to one extent, it's the same as how do you get, how do you sell anything to anybody? There's lots of marketing channels. So that's the answer. **Rob Walling** [2:07:56] Yeah. **Jason Cohen** [2:07:57] Now, at WP Engine, we had the advantage that WordPress has an incredible community of people that do things like go to word camps physically and chat online a lot. And so by literally going to word camps and talking to people and then chatting online a lot, we were able to quote unquote get to agencies, really meet them,right? And they could meet us personally. So we were, so in the big commerce world, that might be possible to get to know people in, in, in mass and quickly through some kind of online or offline thing with agencies generally that may or may not happen. Like I don't know if there's, if there's more general marketing agency stuff, there might be. But you mentioned even stuff like React, like there may be other excuses to get into places where the marketers are already going. Podcasts can be another, I know I keep saying that, but podcasts nowadays are a place where there are places where lots of people, lots of marketers listen to the podcast, you know? So if you, if you're going to need something interesting to say there, but hopefully of, you know, that's probably a good idea anyways, but you know, that's a possibility to, to, to start. **Rob Walling** [2:09:06] So I need to start like marketing for big commerce owners podcast. **Jason Cohen** [2:09:11] Oh yeah. On that side for sure. **Jesse Schoberg** [2:09:14] I don't know that I would start a, I wouldn't start a podcast though. **Jason Cohen** [2:09:17] No, not start a podcast. **Jesse Schoberg** [2:09:18] Yeah. **Jason Cohen** [2:09:19] And go on. **Jesse Schoberg** [2:09:19] You look for the ones that are existing. Yeah. **Rob Walling** [2:09:21] Yeah, yeah, yeah. **Jason Cohen** [2:09:21] Yeah, yeah. You need stories that to take there to those podcasts, but people who run a podcast are, are often looking for something good for, to, 'cause they got to, they got to do it,right? So if you have something good. **Rob Walling** [2:09:30] And I mean, it's very actually quite easy now because we can talk about this AI visibility mentions. Everyone wants to know about that and we have lots of information about that, et cetera. **Jason Cohen** [2:09:39] Yeah. **Rob Walling** [2:09:41] Please see my recent talk at MicroConf on Rob's channel. **Jason Cohen** [2:09:43] That'sright. Yeah. So, so like that's, yeah, to some extent it's, it's the same answer as how do I market to anybody? There's all the normal channels. That's, you know. **Rob Walling** [2:09:56] Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but it's, it is different though, because like for example, we market to anybody with SEO, they're, they're solving a particular problem, blah, blah, blah. That's how these agencies already found us. But if we're trying to build these relationships in a different way, it needs to be a little bit more intentional, I feel like. **Jason Cohen** [2:10:12] Yeah. I mean, usually the answer comes down to where do they already go and how can you be the, what's a, what's an actually genuine good excuse for you to be there? **Rob Walling** [2:10:21] Mm-hmm. Yeah. **Jason Cohen** [2:10:23] It's often just the answer to all the, I mean, it's a generic answer, but it's often is true. It's like, well, they all listen, these are the top 10 podcasts that, that small agencies listen to. I was like, okay. Well, you need a couple of topics that are actually interesting that you can add something actually useful, which you do have,right? So, so fortunately you have it, but one needs things to say that are interesting and a little bit different. So you can go on, so you have a good excuse to go on there. And that's one answer 'cause that's one of the places they're at. It could be LinkedIn, there could be referral fees,right? Like for the agencies that like referral fees, okay, well, agencies refer stuff to each other all the time. **Rob Walling** [2:11:01] Yeah. **Jason Cohen** [2:11:02] Okay. There's even affiliates. Again, I don't know that that's a good place for you, but affiliates are another example where you pay for traffic. Now, normally they give you pretty rough traffic. So it's probably not a good idea, but I don't know if there's affiliates in the agency space. That could be an interesting combo, but I don't think that's really a thing. **Rob Walling** [2:11:24] No, I think more some sort of agency to agency referral, but I think this, yeah, showing up where they are, whether that's podcasts or particular subreddits or et cetera, et cetera, you know. **Jason Cohen** [2:11:39] Well, good. Well, we've, we've, it's so funny. So the, the first episode went over two hours and I thought, uh-oh, that's too long. And then a lot of people are like, eh, at least put it in like a podcast or something like that so I can pause and resume. But actually it was full of meat and I liked it. So I was thinking like, well, this go that long, maybe we'll just do an hour and then no, but I feel like we, we did a lot, we said a lot and we covered a lot of good ground. And so I'm happy and we'll just see if everybody else likes to, likes to hear two hour episodes again. I had a lot of fun and Jesse, was this, was this helpful? Do you have a better idea of what you want to do next? **Rob Walling** [2:12:16] Yeah, I think I have a lot of takeaways and I appreciate the putting the, putting on the pressure and, you know, calling out some of my, my stuff. That's great and helpful and good to hear both your, like sometimes contrasting perspectives. ### Final thoughts **Rob Walling** [2:12:31] I appreciate that. And yeah, it's awesome. Looking forward to, for me, this is all uncharted territory,right? Like it's, it's, you know, I'm like many of the, the MicroConf crew, the, the product led, like blah, blah, blah. I'm never doing a demo call. And like the thing I keep getting quoted on is the, you know, I was the, I'm never going to take a demo call guy. And then we plateaued for a year and I was like, I can take a demo call. **Jesse Schoberg** [2:13:00] That's usually what happens. **Rob Walling** [2:13:02] Yeah. The ethos change, changes quickly,right? So now I'm still, you know, been in this exploratory phase about like, you know, how I know that, that we have so much more headroom, I just don't know how it works. And so this is part of that exploratory process. And I, yeah, I appreciate you guys helping me, helping me out. And I look forward to coming back on a similar episode in six to 12 months with our amazing new bending of the curve, you know? **Jason Cohen** [2:13:31] That'd be cool. I want that. Rob, any, any last words here? **Jesse Schoberg** [2:13:35] I had a great time. Thanks for having me on, Jesse. I know that no plan survives contact with customers. So the moment that you do anything, you're going to be like, well, what they said, what Rob and Jason said was kind ofright. And you're going to learn. I mean, that within a month, you'll know some of the stuff we said wasright and some was wrong. And that's the part of being a founder,right? Hard decisions with incomplete information. And it's gathering the data to then two, three months down to pivot, not pivot, but to just, just course, just course. So that's, that's it. **Rob Walling** [2:14:02] Yeah, yeah. **Jason Cohen** [2:14:03] That's, that's really good advice. Let none of us forget who's in the arena. --- This library is powered by PodHood (https://podhood.com), the podcast website platform.