I'm a designer who turned into a writer who turned into a startup CEO. My mission is to help creators earn a living. Subscribe for essays on building an audience and earning a living as a creator.
Are you playing offense or defense?
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Hey Reader, Tell me if this resonates: You're working harder than ever, and your team is busy, but growth has slowed. The reason for this tends to come down to focus. As companies grow, they tend to start focusing too much internally instead of externally. Jason Lemkin, one of the top SaaS growth experts, noticed this pattern with founders. Whenever they don't know what to do next, he tells them to start with the basics: First: talk to your customers. Not surveys or data dashboards. Actual conversations. Customers love talking to the founder, so take advantage of that. Those conversations will tell you things no metric ever could. Second: use your own product. This sounds obvious, but it's easy to lose touch with what your customers actually experience. It's one of the fastest ways to recognize problems you'd never see in a meeting. Notice what these two pieces of advice have in common. They're both external. Not “How do we fix our meeting process?” They're about getting out and engaging with what you've built and who you've built it for. This is offense versus defense. Internal work is defense—and it's necessary, but it doesn't drive growth. External work is offense. At Kit, we've seen what happens when you lose external focus. We built our company around showing up in person. That meant things like events, customer meetings, and getting in person with creators face-to-face. So when the pandemic hit, we had to pivot to digital versions of everything. We kept building and shipping, but we lost that direct connection with customers. We didn't realize how much it cost us until 2022 when we saw the impact on growth. It goes back to what you see with people like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs. They had an obsession with the product and how users reacted to it. They weren't in meetings about the meeting process. They were using the product, talking to customers and staying connected to what they were building. Creators fall into this trap too. You do things at scale and miss important feedback. Your only input becomes the metrics: What are the views on this post? How many downloads? Or maybe someone replies to an email and tells you your work changed their life. That's great, but it's not enough to understand what your audience actually wants. Stay close to the people who follow you. What do they want? What are they struggling with? Are you invested in understanding them or are you just watching numbers? Get out and talk to your customers. That’s the biggest thing. I’d encourage you to book 10 calls over the next two weeks. Ask what's working and what's frustrating. Listen to what people say they wish was different. I guarantee they'll surprise you. And then the other thing is to use your own product. Go through your onboarding like a new customer would. Try to accomplish something you know your customers need to do. See where it breaks or feels clunky. Start with the external work. The internal stuff will always be there. But if you let it take over, don’t be surprised when growth slows down. PODCASTThe Secret To Scaling a $10M+ Business Broken Into 3 StagesChandler Bolt is one of the most operational founders I know. When I was in Austin, we sat down to unpack how he thinks about scaling and systems. He has so many insights on building an effective sales team, attracting talent, and building team culture. In this episode we break down:
Watch or listen to episode » ARTICLEThe production functions of smart and successful peopleI came across this analysis of Tyler Cowen's podcast where someone pulled advice on what drives success from dozens of his interviews. He distilled it down to 16 groups of quotes and takeaways. Here's a brief summary of 3 of the groups, but check out the article for the full thing.
Have a great week! —Nathan |
Nathan Barry
I'm a designer who turned into a writer who turned into a startup CEO. My mission is to help creators earn a living. Subscribe for essays on building an audience and earning a living as a creator.
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Hey Reader, Have you ever spent a whole day on something almost nobody saw? It's painful when the whole reason you worked hard was because you wanted to reach people. If you teach a workshop in person, you reach the 20 people in that room. But if you record that same workshop once, you can keep teaching for years on autopilot. This is the concept of leverage, and it's something I talk about in my upcoming book, The Ladders of Wealth (you can pre-order it now). A lot of people will look back...