Episode Transcript
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Brian: Hey everyone and welcome to bright and early the podcast for people building early-stage startups.
I’m your host Brian Rhea.
I talk to entrepreneurs, product people, designers, and marketing pros to learn what works, what doesn’t, and why; giving you at least one thing to apply to your business first thing tomorrow.
my guest today is Georgiana Laudi also known as Gia. Gia is a SAAS marketing and growth adviser she has a long career in marketing but in 2009 switched her focus entirely to SAS working with companies like Unbounce ab qs and sprout social in addition to working with founders and marketers one-to-one she along with Claire Suellentrop who has been on this show also co-hosts forget the funnel a series of workshops for marketers in SAS gia thank you so much for coming on thanks so much for having me it’s it’s completely my pleasure I so anybody who’s listened to the episode with Claire knows that I’ve been following forget the funnel and the great work that the two of you have been doing for for quite a while so it’s it’s totally my pleasure so before we before we get into a little bit more of some topical things that I’d love to love to talk about can you give us just a couple of quick minutes a little bit more about your background and and how you came to uh how you came to be where you are right now mmm oh it’s long well can we look let me ask this think we just look about like your we share something in common which is that your intro to like the online like in internet world was working on your dad’s business like right yeah right out right out of university so by like I’m from a super small town in North East Texas Paris Texas and in the mid-90s my dad ran the ISP the internet service provider and so I I worked for him and one of the first sites we built was an online flower shop and so I am not and so can you talk a bit about your dad’s business and and all of that how you got into it yeah sure well when I was in university I studied communications and part of communications at the time there was like this whole department dedicated to digital comms and so we as part of our you know curriculum we had to build websites and so the first website that I could think of that would actually be useful in practice to somebody that I know we built a non-profit one to begin but then my second website I ever built was a website for my father’s business which is the fire business and as you likely know at the time flowers were and it may still be true I haven’t actually looked this up but at the time flowers were the fourth most purchased item on the internet behind like porn and books and I don’t even know what number three was but I’m very very competitive particularly for local businesses and like the the sort of mom-and-pop space was it was really really competitive then so I sort of have had this like cause of helping sort of get the family business to the top of the you know search engines and having like a great website and just sort of being at the head of that we were the first ones on social media and like we had a lot of that stuff because it was just like the timing was just perfect for me coming out of university with that so that’s kind of how I got started and what was the wait where was your dad’s business a pretty big city in in sort of relative terms so it was pretty competitive we were also in a suburb and not like in the down core so that was an additional reason why SEO outside of like like geo logo is a local sort of optimization was additionally challenging so there was a lot of focus on like top-level keywords and being really targeted in that way and it works I mean that sort of sparked a bunch of other things following that I started writing for like an industry magazine for other local forests to do the same thing yeah so that was that was your total entry into the entire online thing yeah that sparked it and then of course I mean it EKOS longer than that to I went on I went on to working in like an agency and I did you know I Belen a couple of things until I sort of landed on like software’s service and SAS sir it really helped by Twitter as well actually so when when joining Twitter in like late 2008 I became exposed to this whole tech community and startup community locally and not actually like along with the thankfully I had to online marketing sort of background I’ve been working towards for like you know already at that time about five six seven years maybe actually probably yeah about that and then I sort of tipped over to the sort of tech and SAS side of things and I like never looked back nice yeah yeah so my funny is forget which podcast it was that you’re on and you’re talking about your your family’s flour business and you mentioned that stat about number four and I mean it just I would cracked up laughing here doing the dishes because that that is the first e-commerce site I ever built in my life Wow was like you know a flower shop for this tiny little you know boutique and near like your Paris and like now looking back makes makes complete sense apparently there’s a lot of money to be made in flowers online so yeah yeah yeah so what is your what is your favorite podcast that you’re listening to or actually is there a book or a TV show that you’re obsessed with that you’d love to share I try to listen to podcasts as much as I possibly can but because I don’t commute I work from home I find it actually pretty challenging to regularly listen to podcasts but when I do I try to catch SAS revolution show by SAS talk a lot the Sasser podcast - I enjoy the growth hub podcast SAS open mic UI breakfast there’s there’s you know there’s a few that do really I would love to you know do this every morning and listen to them every morning I don’t get to do it that often but when I do those whom I sort of go to and and then like non SAS related or usually podcast with my kids like stories podcasts and things like that oh nice folks you’d care to share yeah well recently I mean you know the one that comes to mind first and foremost this actually recently I was lucky enough to a preferred sent me an early copy of her book and so I got to read that a couple of weeks ago and it’s absolutely fantastic in this very top of mind for me right now and I I believe I don’t know when when this recording is gonna go out but it should be available like imminently very very soon if not already uh yeah I’ve really been looking forward to that one she is a great follow on Twitter so I’ll link our show notes as well do you know that the title of that book perchance obviously awesome obviously awesome sweet ok well let’s let’s get into a couple of topics I’d love to hear about from you so you you were a very early employee at Unbounce where you were there and you helped take the company from like 15 to nearly 200 and then an on the marketing side from 1 to 35 so can you talk first of all quick description for any listeners who aren’t familiar what what does not bounce do but then more importantly like what were those earliest of days like a ton bounce sure yeah so unbalanced when I join unmount it was actually just a landing page platform for marker now it’s evolved a little bit and there’s additional sort of features and capabilities there that actually go more towards like so that marketers can build better certain conversion experiences overall so our whole mo was helping marketers build better marketing experiences because there’s no excuse for crappy marketing anymore so that was our whole MO and that that drove us to do some incredible work I mean I was really passionate about that as a marketer obviously it’s always sort of fun to market to marketers but I mean it was it was just a really passionate group of people really genuine really smart I remember feeling I had gone from being a freelancer to being part of this team and when you’re a freelancer it often feels like you know when you’re working with clients really nobody understands me you know nobody knows I got a I got to do so much teaching and it it you sort of feel like you’re the only one in the room who sort of knows what you know obviously as that as the sort of hired gun would but when I flipped over to actually be working in-house at Unbounce I remember the stark contrast of feeling like whoa I’m working with a bunch of like geniuses and I’m gonna learn so much from and I was so excited to do that so it’s not a ceiling yeah it was really really great the sort of humans there are forever sort of in my brain as being like my favorite part of those early days it was a really incredible team but I mean early days is as you look how you would expected to be it was a bit of you know chicken with your head cut off type stuff there was a ton of opportunity not enough hours in the day it was chaotic but it was super fun do you do you think that that characteristic like running around chicken chickens running around their head cut off super chaotic like does that characteristic feel like that’s kind of a good thing in the early stages don’t try to over organize things and lose your nimbleness or his 2k out to too much chaos bad what was your experience of that like honestly for for us it came down to and I think it actually in every situation it comes down to the founders so if you know it’s okay to have uncertainty and it’s okay to work hard and it’s okay to be passionate about what you’re doing and work long hours if you are okay with that obviously you have to be comfortable in that environment don’t you know go don’t we’re gonna start if you’re not comfortable with a bit of sort of chaos so a comfort level with chaos is definitely part of the course I would say however I think that it’s really important that that be balanced by really sort of solid I need to say culture cuz I you know that kind of million less than a day but like the founders our founders were very focused on our professional development our you know healthy growth it was not a move fast and break things environment at all as as you know as hard as we work and as much hustle as there was in the room it was never at the expense of anybody’s like health or comfort level or anything like that we were largely bootstrap so I think that probably had a lot to do with it we didn’t have a ton of pressure coming from like you know the board to to grow beyond or to hit targets that were totally unattainable don’t get me wrong with a healthy yeah we had some pretty you know lofty targets definitely but it was a bit of a different environment we didn’t have that same level that maybe a VC that startup might which I think was a really good thing [Music] hey friends this is a great time to pause and let you know that bright and early is brought to you by transistor dot FM transistor offers you professional podcast hosting and analytics they host this very podcast that you’re listening to right now and my friends I got to tell you it could not be easier I can tell you from personal experience as you also probably know podcasting is becoming one of the best ways to develop a closer relationship with your audience and so if you’re thinking about starting a podcast trust me look no further just visit transistor dot FM and if you decide to sign up let him know that Brian sent you was the company still pre product market fit when you joined and as you were growing the marketing department o product market fit I would not say so no I didn’t say that we were there was a healthy amount of traction I distinctly remember feeling like I missed the early bandwagon I like like there’s already so much momentum to have I wish I had gotten in earlier honey remember having that feeling when I I was doing my due diligence obviously on the company before deciding to move across the country to join the team which is obviously a big decision for me to make so I was doing a lot of due diligence and I remember having this feeling like they’re already on their way I got to get in there now like I feel like I felt like I sort of missed the boat somehow which is ridiculous in retrospect but it was a bit of the feeling that I had then I had I had the utmost confidence that this company was was going somewhere because of how their customers talked about them because of the team I think you know the traction they they were seeing I would say we were a definitely post product market fit if you know we had to flip a switch I’d say it was switch to product market bit but I you know I think we’re probably both in agreement that proud of markets that can be pretty fluid and it is definitely not something that you you know necessarily keep it can definitely you can definitely lose Parkington product market fit but we were definitely in a good space for traction when I joined and my you know I was entirely focused on what is the best use of my time what is our biggest opportunity how do I sort of prioritize the plethora of opportunity ahead of me because I just I the ideas were endless on ways to sort of grow and so I was very very focused on fueling the early traction that we saw if that makes sense yeah no it completely does so I’m curious your your process for deciding what were those things that you wanted to focus on it’s entirely contextual you know every different business at any you know life stay the things that you focus on her should change their going to is what what can you share about how you you know yeah make those decisions so a lot of it was about sort of evaluating what I had access to and what resources I could actually leverage relatively painlessly if I make sense so part of what I knew I could leverage it was a really great passionate writer about you know building better customer experiences and that Olly gardener was very passionate he was very well you know well-spoken and well-read like he he was sort of beloved by the marketing community and I was like alright you know if I’ve got this piece I’m just going to double down on that because I knew something that was working so I tried to think of ways to sort of amplify that and build it up into something that was measurable and that we could sort of test against and sort of build an engine around that so that was a big focus of mine another thing that I focused on a lot too in the early days was not depending on product or engineering to tee up opportunities for me and so that was a big pain that I felt early on which was like oh we just need to do this integration and then I’ve got a great excuse to reach out to you know insert mark tech software here you know there was an endless amount of software companies that I that I could have sort of sparked relationships with based on technical integrations and I you know as much as I would try to make the case and the business case for those types of product developments I couldn’t always do that right I wasn’t always in the position to be able to effect the product roadmap I know shocker as the head of marketing but what I could do was build relationships with other companies others words like-minded sort of you know friendly to us and I quote sort of companies and I did a lot of that so that was one thing that you know even if there wasn’t a technical integration with another piece of software if I could or another company and like-minded sort of brands like-minded customers then I could build a relationship with them even without that as part of their relationship or like it wasn’t the dependency of the relationship so there was a lot strategic partnerships were a big big part of how we focused on sort of leveraging the content marketing that was working we sort of that was another way to sort of amplify it and and come up with new new distribution strategies and getting you know getting buy-in and sort of mindshare for lack of a better expression with our target audience at another company another like-minded company so building those relationships was another big big part of it for us and so if I could if I could if I could pinpoint one of those opportunities I could prioritize that very easily over paid marketing for example yeah which we did not prioritize for a long long time actually and you know not to say that that was the right thing to do but I did not prioritize paid channels until much further along in the team’s development yeah what I what I heard you saying there was to leverage your existing strengths rather than try to to fill gaps that you don’t have if did you do you ever listen to or read the Farnam Street blog or listen to the knowledge project okay Shane Parrish fellow Canadian actually or yeah and so this is one of the things that he hits on a lot is that a characteristic of most successful companies or people is to leverage their existing strengths rather than identify their weaknesses and then try to fill them and so I heard you mentioned that when you’ve got this great content marketer you’re like okay we’re gonna leverage this and don’t depend on future features like don’t try to sell people to say hey yeah we’re gonna do that in three months for reasons good and bad that may or may not ever be built and had finally strategic partnerships you know you use your existing strengths like where are you good and what do you currently have and and who would be interested in that strategically a hundred percent I had this dislike formula that I used earlier as it was literally in a spreadsheet and it was called like my it was my pita score my pain-in-the-ass score required dev resources it was like an automatic like it would be ten points would be deducted you know like it was like opportunity versus pain versus light and dev requirement was like its own column and just really had a massive impact on the things that I would prioritize because I mean look at the end of the day yeah you have to work with what you have and there’s yeah sort of sitting on your hands until you can get the dev resources that you need for this thing that you know would probably make a big difference but at the end of the day you still have to you still have to move forward and make progress and yes leverage leverage your strengths for sure is a big part of it so you you say on your your site like you you help post product market I mean again probably market fed you so you you help b2b companies scale for growth right and so for our for our listeners who are imagining themselves getting to that point one day right now they’re just still trying to find some traction and and position themselves for growth so what what do you see like what mistakes do you see people make or what do you see good things people do like that they that they could be doing today to set themselves up for success down the road and the good thing then I see folks doing I see a lot of founders doing an amazing job of now it more and more is prioritizing customer getting to know their customers and their their future customers their potential customers their existing customers and I mean there’s so much of that now way way way more than there ever has been before like customer research is like finally and I know I’m probably I’m free I’m definitely preaching to the choir with you you know as is finally sort of as seeing its day in the Sun in terms of even those fiercely product-focused founders or even engineering focused or tech focused founders as opposed to the you know CX or marketing sort of side of founders so I’m really excited to see that one of the one of the things that I think could probably be addressed sooner than later is hiring somebody to continue that once you’re too busy to do it anymore and to sort of be responsible for bringing that voice of customer into the organization any sort of steady continuous way and sort of maintaining that relationship with the customer long after the CEO for example isn’t able to do it themselves anymore so hiring for that role sometimes that role is marketing sometimes it’s a CX role sometimes it’s yes SCS rule but I see companies wait way way way too long to hire for that and then there’s a disconnect that sort of hits right because you’re so focused on customers in the beginning and you get into sort of product development based on that which is really solid and then at a certain point you know if you start to see a tiny bit of traction all of a sudden there’s no time to do that stuff anymore you quickly fall out of the amazing habit that you had at the beginning which was staying very close to customers and having that relationship and pulling those insights back to the team it’s not something that you as the CEO are able to do anymore at a certain point and so I see people wait too long to hire for that and also I mean too long to hire marketers sort of period so the customer research side of things the customer insight side of things and bring that back to the team but also the marketing side of like what is your brand story you know who where are your customers hanging out you know in maintaining that intimate relationship that’s something that’s that’s what marketers do right they they listen and they they find out where people are and what they’re talking about and what their needs are and how to bring value back to them and that’s that’s a marketers job in the early days and there’s you know I think founders are often they often wait too long to do that and there ends up being a sort of hole in the middle between being super close to your customers and then like Oh acquisition is like an emergency now quick let’s get a marketer in here yeah yeah do you have as you’re talking there something that occurred to me is you know if some some number of hires have been made hypothetically like development and and whatever development design are you do you have thoughts on the approach of everybody in the organization spends one week or a day or some regularly scheduled amount of time doing customer service or sitting in on customer interviews yeah if thoughts on that oh yeah that was that was part of adding a referencing Unbounce every single employee that started at the company even if you were an engineer it doesn’t matter what department you were coming into even if you were in finance you would spend a week in sitting in the customer with the customer success team and responding to tickets and taking phone calls it was part of the it was mandatory onboarding into the company um so I mean I now I hear a lot more companies I hear about a lot more companies that actually do that I think it’s really really positive what did that continue on after onboarding like a regularly scheduled interval you know what that’s not a question I don’t believe so okay but the customer success team really what were I mean Unbounce is held in very high standing as I believe it should be in every company the the most customer facing those most intimately familiar your you know your internal experts on your customers need to be held in very very high standing they’re the closest to your customers and you should really be driven by by that and that team has a lot of value to provide the rest of the company and so though they may you know may be the the the finance guy might have not sat in you know responding to to support tickets you know in his second year but they you know we would definitely all be present for and very attuned to what our CS team was telling us about our customers needs that’s good I by proxy mmm-hmm essentially so if I had I mean I’m in the early stages and if I had zero budget to invest in marketing how would you recommend I spend that time you don’t have time such a good answer you know yeah I mean a you have to and I’m again I’m probably preaching to the choir here but I mean where are your customers hanging out I know what your customers are hanging out and hang out there and listen and be useful that is probably the most worthwhile way to spend your time and that’s like the tip of the iceberg obviously but that that’s probably the first thing that I would do and it’s it’s the first thing that I recommend the companies that I work with do and if I if I start working with the company it was actually you know post-launch are a little bit further along and they’re not yet doing that in some capacity or anybody on the team it is that is a must you’ve got to be there especially because you know if you if you want to be I mean keep your ear to the ground okay learn as much as you can early days obviously but in the later phases of a company those are the spaces where you want to make sure you’re returning to to provide a ton of value time and time again and sort of establish yourself as a thought leader in those spaces and build relationships with others and those spaces will never hurt you to stay engaged in that way and again I mean that is one one way of doing it there are a lot of other ways of doing it that’s just to me that feels like the lowest hanging fruit the lowest barrier obviously a close second would be get accustomed to get customers along with you yeah but in absence of that that would be the other thing that I would yes but find out find out where your customers are hanging out giving first teach first yep listen okay so and then let’s say now things have gone well and I’ve got some budget of you know ten thousand you know twenty-five something thousand like not not all the money in the world but we’re growing and we’ve got something to invest how would you recommend I spend my budget okay so I’m fortunate ly the answer to this is going to be it depends I thought it will what it depends on really is how marketing savvy are you and even on top of that do you is marketing something you enjoy do you enjoy learning about it and do you enjoy doing it and are you and good at it so basically what’s the desire and your part to actually continue giving marketing it’s fair it’s it’s fair sort of time and resources because too often it will be a founder who doesn’t have a marketing background who’s just like you know the the build it and they will come sort of scenario and they sort of they lean on that but you know savvy or founders know that they can’t afford to do that so if you are if you enjoy doing marketing then there’s a lot of things you can do I would say when it one of an easy thing to do would be like test your messaging so you know once you’ve done that listening and you’re you have some hypotheses around what sort of language your customers use or what they want to see in your product then you can you can test some of that stuff so we talked about that to Unbounce like test messaging on landing pages and spend a little bit of money on some paid campaigns to test some messaging and see what resonates obviously you cannot be can I swear you yes don’t be an asshole about it like don’t make promises or any of that but you can you can test messaging with some paid ads relatively easily that’s a that’s a a very compartmentalized way to sort of spend some of your spend some of that budget another thing that I would do even advance in advance of a product existing or your product launching would be to do something useful for your future customers so maybe that’s write a guide or put a piece of content together that helps them be more successful at what they’re doing and then get it professionally copy maybe maybe written or at least professionally copy edited or maybe even commercially designed but don’t put out um you know garbage it’s got to be really really good so it’s definitely worthwhile investing in a you know quality content and then at the end of the day if you are if marketing does not come naturally to you or you are not you know you don’t believe you’re going to give it its fair time then I would definitely suggest hiring a marketer even if just a part-time marketer but somebody dedicated to thinking about these things that just don’t come as naturally to you okay we are we’re we’re winding down on time here so final thought that I’ve been asking asking folks is as you’re well aware working on startups can make you feel a little nuts we don’t actively work on maintaining your your peace of mind and your sanity are there any practices that you’ve found helpful that you would like to share this can be like anywhere on the spectrum from here’s how to do to-do lists all the way over to meditate what have you found helpful yeah I would love to be like get a hobby but I’ve actually always been really terrible at at like get a hobby being my solution to managing like stress especially now that I have children and it’s like not a thing so I am quickly taken out of a work environment when my kids arrive home and I’m like okay in a totally different land right now actually that’s helped me I have to say that’s helped me a lot so something that is hugely important in my life outside of my work was a big moment for me so and I now have that because I have kids so that my job is not the most important or most critical thing happening in my life anymore it’s my children so that has helped me a lot and the other thing that I would say and this is sort of in practice thing and it’s still definitely something I’m working on still mastering myself but I talk about this a lot with the companies that I work with and with students is building a plan and and collecting feedback on it and sharing it because it can be a it can make a huge difference to like shiny object syndrome and I find that shiny object syndrome can be the source of stress especially if you are let’s say a head of marketing or like not a founder even if you are a founder but if you’re not a founder inside of a start-up and it can be it can be very distracting intimidating you know call what you want when the founders like hey why aren’t we doing XYZ you’re like oh wait we should be doing XYZ I didn’t think about XYZ yeah okay new plan so what I found can really help mitigate that is that I mean call it okay ours call it a 90 days strategy call it whatever you want but building a plan for a month a quarter at a time I like a quarter because I can think about it in terms of like 12 weeks fans and sort of build plan for what do you want to accomplish in those in those 12 weeks draft something up bring an early draft to your stakeholders or other department heads and sort of get their feedback on you know on what you’re going to be focused on in the coming quarter if you can get what they’re working on in the coming quarter that’s even better but if you first share an early version then sort of refine and make sure you’ve taken everybody else’s needs into accounts that might be that might impact your upcoming quarter then you can search finalize it and and circulate it wid throughout the team so that when shiny and syndrome shiny object syndrome sorry sir rears its ugly head which it inevitably will your own and there’s you have a reference point you have something to sort of lean back on and say you know that’s a really great idea but this is what I we all agreed and what I you know decided I was going to focus on in this quarter and so I’m gonna put that in the parking lot for next quarter or what am I going to reprioritize so it was one thing on your 90-day plan or your okay ours actually doesn’t feel like the highest priority anymore you have to make it a concerted decision about what you’re going to throw the defense to the next quarter and that’s a decision that you can be made it’s not you can’t be inflexible but it’s a decision that has to be made and that it can be especially helpful for people who are maybe a little bit more mid-career or more junior where it’s it makes the conversation of Lake that sounds like a really great idea that sounds really important what do you think I should take off my plate in order to do that this quarter it’s just conversation is a little bit easier so it’s like a sanity saver a bit yep yeah does so so much good stuff in there I mean personally I don’t know what you mean by shiny object syndrome I’ve never struggled with that and other people’s problem yeah right hey gia how can listeners find and follow you on lines yeah well I’m always findable on Twitter hang out there a lot my twitter handle is an odd one could have had my first name didn’t grab it at the time but it’s GGI iaa is where you can find me on twitter also I would definitely say check don’t forget the funnel cuz that’s a good free content out in the ether so forget the funnel comm and then also Claire you talked for the beginning of that so who you’ve done a previous podcast with her and I are now doing essentially what I’ve been doing for the last couple of years with sauce companies which is working one-on-one so her and I are now working together in that way and you can find us at hey elevate calm my guest today has been jihadi Gia thank you so much for taking some time to talk to me today thanks so much Brian that was fun [Music] all right a couple closing thoughts from me here so you may have probably heard gia kind of chuckle about product market fit and not a coincidence that the book that she recommended was April Dunford I imagine that connection gia was making there is that April Dunford had recently I’ll link to this in the show notes but had a pretty interesting tweet storm that opens up with unpopular opinion product market fit isn’t a thing I’m not even sure it’s a useful concept for startups and later she says you know when we when we call product market fit a thing we trick startups into thinking that it’s just a gate to pass through and then they can go nuts and pour cash into customer acquisition etc so I mean it so that’s a provocative that’s a provocative opening line that product market fit isn’t a thing and may not be a useful concept and so I there’s there’s a lot to say about that I will I will definitely recommend that you follow the link here in the show notes I tend to say I think that product market fit has to be a thing and I’m sure that and you can see it you know if you if you dig in there April has some very thoughtful nuances to add to the whole conversation and no doubt if you if you read through this and apply your mind to it I’m sure you will walk away with some some new insights and thoughts as well and so I I kind of I chuckled myself as Gia was having that response because I’m sure it was fresh on her mind and and for what it’s worth one of those nuances being that as gia said at a different point in the conversation you can lose product market fit it’s not it’s not a gate that you walk through and then you’ve made it and it’s and and it’s home home free from their things things are constantly changing and moving and so that’s a that’s a useful insight and I’m sure that’s that is part of April Dunford’s I think issue I guess with wit the phrase or how it’s being used whatever I also thought that it was a great takeaway when when gia was talking about finding the things that you can leverage painlessly you know she recognized in her organ in her organization at that place and at that time it was difficult for her to get certain product or engineering resources I think it’s a it’s kind of its pragmatic it’s important to you know to look at that and not make a judgment call as to whether or not that is good or bad so much as that that is the state of things and and certainly one response you you could have to that is to spend some energy to change things what I am not saying that this is only what what gia did but what I heard and what I think is a great takeaway is she simply put her energy and in her mind into areas where she did have leverage and where her her team did have some strengths and she worked with those I I like that I like the idea of you know finding what you can leverage painlessly find where you have control that doesn’t mean do the lazy thing it means do the easy thing and I think there’s I think there’s something there I’m trying to try to tease that out in my in my own head if there’s something if there’s something there like you know I don’t think I don’t think many I think many people want to be lazy you know as in it as an ambition but isn’t it kind of true that that are our inner selves do kind of want to be lazy or want to do the easy thing or the way that water finds the path of Li resistance the way that lots of things in nature look for the easy way not because it’s lazy but because it’s easier and more and more efficient and in the in the case that Jia was talking about you know allowed them to allow them to have outsized impacts from from from their efforts and I’ve heard you have if you’ve probably also heard it said you know if I find the things that come easy to you find the things that to other people look like work but to you it will feel easy or it will feel like play uh yeah so I just I think there’s I think there’s something in there that I think is I think a strong take away I think finally you know definitely something that has come up multiple times here is is yet just this the the prioritization of customer research and customer interviews and you know the that’s just going to be better it’s going to lead to more effective marketing it’ll lead to a better it will it will lead to a product that is more likely to delight your customers and so that’s just something that continues to come up and up again and in that in that little segment I wonder if you picked up on it where where GSA I mean that that’s what marketers do is listen and I loved that I I think that for a very long time and certainly it continues today I think in certain in certain circles the stereotype as marketing as being interruptive marketing as a megaphone and so I I like that or I it gives me a lot of respect and admiration for Gia’s approach that for her yet what what do you mean Marc marketing is about listening marketing marketers listen and then use that messaging to you know to share it back out to folks who haven’t heard of you yet that is good marketing as opposed to you know running around the bullhorn and trying to convince everybody to to see and find the value and the thing that you’re that you’ve made so I like I like that that mental image a whole lot or that that phrase marketing is listening or that’s what marketers do is they listen but as always would love to hear what you thought what stuck out to you you can find me on twitter at b rh e a that’s b as in begonia ours and rose h’s in hibiscus he is an echinacea and a is an amaranthus is that a thing let me know what you thought and how I can make this podcast better it’s yours any topics I should cover guess I should reach out to please let me know until next time i’m brian ray thanks everybody