- Duration: 34 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01JXDK0HB3R9GSR2WRA13WDH6K (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JXDK0HB3R9GSR2WRA13WDH6K)
Transcript
[Michael Houck]: I’m stressed a little bit because we’ve had some folks Churn, we had one guy turn this morning. So yeah, I gave us like like a month. It was crazy Content was good. I Guess he’s got a quick trigger finger or He said they hired a head of marketing and want to do more in SEO rather than content. So yeah, I don’t know hard to hard to know the truth, but I Yeah, just a just a rough couple weeks. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, it’s weird. [Michael Houck]: So that’s why I’m I’m pushing so much on the growth stuff. Because, you know, we had one we had Draper expand and one new client join in May, which was our lowest month of the year. And then we haven’t had anyone convert from Valley yet. And we’re a third of the way through June. So I’m just like, you know, I need to find time to hit the pavement and just do a ton of one-on-one with folks. But the more I just keep getting sucked into other stuff, it’s just hard to do that. So I just, you know, I’m investing time in these calls. [Blake Stewart]: So I’m like, we gotta, we gotta make sure that they’re, they’re leading to something. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. What, how are you tracking those calls? Like, so we’ve had, I’d imagine you’ve taken at least half, if not a lot more. [Michael Houck]: I think it’s more than that. I think it’s like almost 20, maybe 20, somewhere around there. [Blake Stewart]: OK. Do you need me to be sending follow-ups to try and convert people? [Michael Houck]: No, once we have the call, I get pretty aggressive with my superhuman reminders. And I just hand-to-hand combat it. So I think transitioning the Convo back to LinkedIn would be weird, right? I guess the only thing would be if we get to a certain point and they’re just not even opening the emails, then maybe they’re not getting the email and maybe they’re going to the spam or something like that. So at that point, it could make sense to follow up via LinkedIn, but I’ll let you know if that happens. [Blake Stewart]: Okay, um, yeah, I need one. Is there one that you think will convert soon? Is anyone kind of on the edge? Do you feel good about it? Or? [Michael Houck]: The thing is, it’s like, I felt good about probably five to 10, maybe like five to seven, five to eight of the calls. But like, I get nothing on follow up at all. And It’s it’s it’s odd. Um It’s like it’s not like other channels that we’ve run like most of the time, you know I’ll follow up once or twice and be like, oh, hey, sorry I’m still working through this or got to talk to the team or you know We’re doing budgeting or whatever and then they’re like, okay now I’m ready to to move forward um But it just feels like I’m not getting Either through or I’m not getting the full story from them or or something. [Blake Stewart]: So, um Yeah, I guess that kind of makes sense because the whole process is pretty cold. It’s a cold LinkedIn than a meeting. Um, which is all pretty just, you know, it sounds like your other clients have been a little bit more personal. There’s been other relationships there to kind of keep them attached. [Michael Houck]: Um, some of them, others, others have just been folks who, you know, read the newsletter or got referred by somebody and they don’t know me. Um, so I guess it’s, it’s colder than those channels, but it’s not like these are like personal relationships that I’m talking to on the other side, you know, it’s. Yeah. [Blake Stewart]: I still like, even with that, with the newsletter, like they’re still getting some sort of contact from you. Um, we need to either subscribe these people to our newsletter or have some other kind of like follow up of like, Maybe not a free offer, but something that kind of keeps it going a bit. Maybe tie in the LinkedIn profile audit or something. [Michael Houck]: I don’t have time to do 30 LinkedIn profiles. It’s 10 minutes each. Five minutes minimum each. And even so, it’s like, what’s the right next step there? We had the conversation. You know how much it costs. You’ve told me your problem. I offer to hop on more calls and answer any more questions. But I get wanting to lead with value. The problem is we can’t just send them free content that we create. I think part of it is just that we need better customers. This is something I was talking to Blake about. Like a lot of these customers are early stage startups and sort of the common trend that we’ve seen among the ones who’ve turned race with the exception of the one that turned today and maybe that’s just a unique case for the like, Going crazy on a SEO cuz now he’s getting a ton of stuff through LMS. Dot com turn with the others is that the business and the product just isn’t. Working well for them and so they’re just looking to cut costs and change up and try new channels and whatever. Quick finger. So I think that doing more of the VC outreach will be smart. Um, because I think those are inherently more stable clients, um, and like later stage founders. Um, okay. So I think we can convert the earlier stage folks. I just don’t think that they’re great. They’re great customers for like a multi thousand dollar agency offer. [Blake Stewart]: You know, sorry, the past three years for me. Yeah, no, I hear you. It was good to like jumpstart the agency, you know, cause we got to a million ARR that way. [Michael Houck]: But now as some of them start to be like, well, you know, we don’t have that much budget and whatever, and our product is crapping, uh, then, you know, we just have to, I think, use that position. We’ve built to leverage ourselves into better customers is my guess. [Blake Stewart]: Okay, yeah. And yeah, you mentioned doing kind of one-on-one VC outreach within the network. Where are you with that? Has it started? I haven’t started. [Michael Houck]: I have, like, this megaphone website is driving me nuts. It’s taking me so long to do. And then I have AI docs to build our system to try to cut costs there. But I might just push that And, um, it’s just, there’s, there’s been a lot of fires as well. I feel like, so my own content, I haven’t been good with outreach. I’m just behind on everything right now. And that’s why I’m like conscious of these meetings. Like if I’m doing 30 meetings in a couple of weeks and it’s not leading to anything, like I could use both the time, but also just like the mental energy on other stuff. [Blake Stewart]: So do you. Okay. Yeah, I guess you’re not ready for me to take some of these meetings either and kind of qualify maybe more. Okay. I did have some VC campaigns ready to go but Yeah, last we talked you wanted to wait on that. [Michael Houck]: Let me do my 1 on 1 1st, I have. I have a lot of meetings this afternoon, but then I have a free day, basically, with the exception of like 1 or 2 things tomorrow so. To be able to make progress on it tomorrow. [Blake Stewart]: OK, cool. That’s ready when you want it. Raina has officially taken over the Valley Conversations, which is great. Is she writing replies? She’s writing replies, yeah, and approving messages. So yeah, that’s good. And she asked me to ask you questions if she’s not sure on, OK. Yeah, she’s asked me a good amount And I, you know, I’m encouraging her to ask more. So, um, very open there. Um, yeah, I think. [Michael Houck]: Be, be the, be like over her shoulder a bit on the wise part, because, you know, she’s good and she does customer service for, for megaphone and she’s like in intercom and stuff. So she knows how to talk to our customer base, but, um, it’s different when you’re like doing it through a sales lens. Definitely. Yeah. She’s never done that before. Okay. [Blake Stewart]: Yeah, I figured some I’m turning that way. Um, Yeah, I guess the good thing is Valley. It’s mainly just editing the message like Valley already has everything kind of plugged in there You just have to kind of double-check that it you know, looks gonna make sense. [Michael Houck]: Yeah Yeah, there’s there’s subtle stuff that you would notice that she might not so at least for like a couple weeks I think just like be over her shoulder a bit there. [Blake Stewart]: I still feel good about that. But yeah, it’s still definitely a work in progress. The tweets and stuff, she probably can help out with that, too. [Michael Houck]: That sounds even easier than the Valley stuff, just time consuming, obviously. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Blake Stewart]: Yeah. Yeah, I’m still trying to figure out the best process. I mean, obviously, you got the steps down, but to do it daily, it’s kind of like, you know, you want to scrape a lot, get a whole big list, and then you kind of cut the list, you know, into days and duplicates. So we’re going to do that. So, yeah, I’m trying to figure out the best best part to pass off. Yeah, I mean, the location process is annoying. Like, we’ll scrape, like, I scraped Greg Eisenberg for the crowd surf, and like, that was 100,000 emails. And so I kind of, my process is, you know, filter A to Z, so all the locations are the same, and I could go through and delete, you know, like, hundreds of Israel and Turkey and, like, all these other things that are on US, but it’s still, Like it takes a long time to get through that. [Michael Houck]: So, um, yeah, I think any way that you can set up a system where, I mean, ideally Angelica can do it. Um, but if we feel like it, she wouldn’t be able to, then we can have Rena do it. Um, but yeah, I think just like setting that up, we’ll, we’ll save you a ton of time. Um, yeah. Okay. [Blake Stewart]: I mean, yeah, going back on that, passing it off, what did it like, I don’t want to tell Angelica to filter this and clean it up and it take her 20 hours to do. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: I mean, like you should build the whole process right to like, like a way for her to do it in, I don’t know, an hour a day max or something like that. Right. Okay. Like maybe a once a week process that she runs and then a daily process that she runs. Okay. They’re like different, different parts. So if you want to brainstorm on the best way to do that, we can grab some more time and do that. That’s fine. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: OK. [Blake Stewart]: I will put something together, and then I’ll send it to you to kind of help me with that. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, because I would do it now. I just don’t know what that process is like for you right now. So I think seeing that would help. Yeah. But the other thing with Valley, it made a lot of sense right away, right? This, I’m like, I don’t actually know. [Blake Stewart]: OK. Okay, and yeah going back to like try qpt like I threw in a list of like 40 000 lines And it filtered it in like two seconds, which was great. But once again I’m, hoping there’s no like hallucination hallucinations there of like We have the whole list is this fucked up. [Michael Houck]: So, you know, it’ll add a mark at a16z.com as It’ll be all my email next thing. I know i’ve got $10 It’ll do it even better, because it’ll do your main email, and then it’ll do like plus one, plus two, plus three. So you don’t actually get it that many times. So yeah, there’s still some concern there. [Blake Stewart]: But OK, I got a good handle on it, so I’ll just clean it up a little bit more, and I can get that going. All right, sounds good. So that’s good. That’s good. In line with all that, You said HubSpot emails or the new domains will be ready to go on the 15th? [Michael Houck]: Yes, so Monday we can begin that channel for Outbound 2. [Blake Stewart]: Okay, cool. So I’ve got some sequence ideas. And I guess as far as kind of like who to pull from, it’s going to be a little bit more manual. I don’t want to touch YCC. Level of, I was like that tiny startups, once again, it’s another conversation about that partnership, but like people who are just kind of launching, but have some ARR. So like on tiny startups, there’s people with like 10 K, you know, MRR. No, you’re going to give me a better filter. I don’t know. [Michael Houck]: Cause like, again, going back to what we were just talking about, like these, if they’re in 10 K MRR and they have a bad one, yeah. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Are they, are they really going to pay? [Michael Houck]: pay us 40% of their ARR for founder-led content? Probably not. So I would focus on, as much as you can, later stage founders. People who follow other ghostwriting agencies, or people who follow the founders of other ghostwriting agencies. Like Alex Lieberman’s followers, or Clifton Sellers’ followers, uh, the guys from alto studios followers, right like That’s what I would think of there. Um and then We could set something up for Like, uh, oh, there’s another one a thought leader Uh with no e at the end. It’s just thought leader with an r at the end. Um Their founder’s name is fernando fernando kao zhang um They probably they post a lot of content. So they probably have a couple accounts that we could we could pull from And yeah, I mean, I don’t know that’s a place I would start and then also We could use this to get emails for VCS who I don’t know to expand outside of that sort of network, but Okay, the better way to approach them would probably be the intro pads to them we could do would just take time. [Blake Stewart]: Might have just been an earthquake here again. That’s weird. Oh, shit. OK. [Michael Houck]: OK, that makes sense. [Blake Stewart]: And then, yeah, I kind of like some, I think an easier pool would be like companies that you just raised. So like, Yes. Yeah, we just raised a XML round. Mark, so there’s a couple. I could talk to Drake again. [Michael Houck]: I’m sure he’d give us a good a good friend of mine. [Michael Houck]: OK, so let me make a note to do that. [Michael Houck]: I’ll reach out to him today. I was just texting him the other day, actually. He has like other lists too, like, you know, who do I see back right now? Or, you know, who just graduated from Antler, right? Like we should be hitting all these. And, you know, we can structure it with this outreach, like trying to get them into our webinars rather than trying to sell them. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Blake Stewart]: That’s, yeah. All these, that’s kind of my, my biggest, I don’t know, thing is that like everything bleeds together, you know, like, yeah, these contacts are pretty good people to have for everything we’re selling. So it’s kind of like, Like, I don’t want to hit them with the like, Hey, we could offer 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 solutions for you, but we get them on the call and then we let it evolve organically. [Michael Houck]: But, um, yeah, I think let’s, let’s do that. So we’ll have the webinar event page up this week. Celine told me, uh, she’ll get the, the banner back to people on Thursday. So we’ll have that ready to go for Saturday’s newsletter. We’ll announce it then. And then we’ll host it the 26th. And so we’ve got a couple of weeks. So if you’re sending out cold emails on the 15th, like, let’s just fucking blast them. And we should try that through Valley, too. Like, let’s set up a product in Valley for this webinar and start doing outreach about it. [Blake Stewart]: And we can mention that we have the agency, too. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: But our priority is getting their email into the webinar. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: OK. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: All right. [Blake Stewart]: Set that up. And then, yeah, how is everything looking for the webinar? Pretty good. Just waiting on graphic. I like the title. I think that’s great. Yeah. We did a little brainstorming yesterday. [Michael Houck]: We were like, we could just do the same one we did internally, which is like algo and hook writing. But it’s not actionable. What are our target people actually care about? They actually care about growth. They don’t care about hook writing. It doesn’t matter, right? Yeah. Distribution is getting harder. Let’s do it that way. So we’ll run this one Then we’ll try to do one for x then we’ll try to do one for newsletters and we’ll see which one leads to clients Okay Cool Like I’d love to get to a point where we’re just running one of these every one to two weeks and it’s just part of what we do and we have these campaigns set up and then we swap out the focus and um We have email marketing emails going out to the people who came to the past ones or who didn’t come to the past ones too and you know There’s a whole system we can build around this. [Blake Stewart]: Yeah. I like that. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: OK. [Blake Stewart]: Yeah. All right. It’s on my list. I have the company evaluation for HFO, but it’s here on the template. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. I don’t know. They’re only inviting like 50 people, though, so I feel like I have to go. [Blake Stewart]: Even though the flights are crazy expensive this late, I feel like I have to go. [Michael Houck]: I mean, historically, it’s a good, you know, something’s going to be good, right? Yeah, something will be good. So it’s actually funny that you flied Co-Frame, because I actually know the founder of Co-Frame. Oh, really? Because we, I forget how I got connected with him, but we were talking forever ago. When they were super, super early. But yeah, he’s a good guy. At least one or two will be very interesting, I’m sure. So probably going to go out just for the 48 hours or whatever. [Blake Stewart]: I’ll let you know how they are, and then we can chat about which ones. [Michael Houck]: But it’ll probably be pretty fun. Which ones are the killers. Yeah. [Blake Stewart]: Especially if the founder isn’t pitching in person. Yeah. Yeah, because I didn’t get to dig into the team and the founder. I just kind of, I mean, once again, with this group, you could kind of assume that they’ve done their due diligence on who they’re bringing in. So it’s more, I was just kind of looking at industry and whatnot. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I think that’s smart. They let in like, I don’t know, way under 1% of applications. And so it’s like, yeah, you either like these, they’re picking or you’re not, you know? But, okay, well, I’ll let you know about that, but, and I’ll talk to Drake. But yeah, well, I definitely, I just need time this week to hit the pavement so that we can get some folks in the door Um, yeah, you know, we’re down like, I don’t know, somewhere between five and 10 K MRR from where we were a month ago. Right. Or six weeks ago or whatever. So it’s not, it’s not a huge deal. Like we’re still in good shape. We’re still, but if we’re looking to sell this summer or latest early fall, then like, fuck, like not the time to be having a churn moment, you know, definitely worth. Fixing gotta change the narrative. [Blake Stewart]: Yeah, OK, I’ll give more thought to Valley to just like pre qualifying these people or like I messaged as a message this morning and I was like, [Michael Houck]: A little concerned we’re doing something wrong. I like framed it like around us, right? I was like, hey, look, we’re doing something wrong. Here’s our stats and I was like, yeah, less than 1% meeting rate. Zero conversions, mind taking a look, basically. And so he said, look into it today and see if there’s anything obvious that we’re not doing or something. [Blake Stewart]: Cool. Yeah, two notes. One, the newsletter blog agent that I had using to pull some information kept pulling the wrong person’s name. And so it was referencing interviews that no one, the response would be like, That wasn’t me, like wrong Blake Stewart. I was like, oh, great. Okay. So anyway, they took off all that agent. They took off the agent from every campaign that we had set up. So that should be good, but we’ll worry about other ones. And then going back to like the dashboard and reporting, it’s like hard to track everything we’re doing. They have the dashboard of like total in-mail sent and total like connection sent. And I was kind of like manually putting them in because every time I go back it’ll be a different number for every date. So it’s like not consistent across profiles or the admin view of everyone’s campaign. So it’s like, yeah, I think the screenshot of the meetings, it’s like, Oh, we booked 18 meetings, but it says 29 here. So like, how, like, why is that a different number in the first place? [Michael Houck]: And which one’s right. Right. Like who even knows? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: I mean, it just seems endlessly buggy. And to be to be fair like zade’s previous two companies Like they weren’t software, right? So this is not like his core. He built two agencies and sold them. Yeah Not his core competency. Um But I think the amount of bugs plus the lack of results is just sort of Yeah, I know we’ve got time left with it. So we’ll keep we’ll keep doing it But um, if we don’t see at least a couple conversions come through in the next is it six weeks, then, you know, I wouldn’t renew today based on where it’s at. I don’t know about you. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah, no. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Blake Stewart]: If anything, I would pause for four months, six months, see if they fix it and then go back. Yeah. Especially, I mean, I, yeah, once I get a couple of outreach sequences going in UpSpy, if we get meetings in this convert, that’s going to be like a, Clearance. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: Like when you just scale up the number of domains and inboxes and go to town with that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, let’s, let’s see how that goes. Um, but I think we’re on top of everything, so just keep at it. Cool. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: All right. [Blake Stewart]: I mean, you know, I know you got a lot going on, so if anything comes up, let me see. [Michael Houck]: Um, going through my extended to-do list here. I don’t think so right now. There might be some stuff around setting up a writer pipeline for hiring writers. But don’t worry about that for now. That’s something we’ll get to either end of this week or next week. The rest of it, I think, is It’s mostly just stuff that I just, I can’t have anyone. I just have to be the one who is doing this stuff. So I wish that wasn’t the case, but it is. I will, I’ll let you know if that changes. [Blake Stewart]: Cool. [Blake Stewart]: All right. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: All right.