Subscribe and leave a comment over on the YouTube channel to join the cool kids club :)
We’re going to let you in on a secret: It's possible to grow your SaaS company without spending any money on marketing – and it’s definitely not as hard as it sounds. With the right tools, methods, and strategies in place, you can easily build a successful business out of the gate!
To discover more about this, our guest Alex Sanfilippo, owner of PodMatch, will share his experience on how he grew his business by incentivizing his clients with special offers. This may seem counterintuitive at first glance, but this strategy has helped him scale his business and set himself apart from the competition.
If you're interested in learning more about this strategy, then make sure to check out this week's episode!
Specifically, this episode highlights the following themes:
Want to give your podcast the boost it needs to stay ahead of the competition? Check out honestpodcasts.com and take the first step toward achieving your podcasting goals!
And if you have a guest in mind who you think would be a great fit for this show, drop me a line at hello@honestpodcasts.com.
Subscribe and leave a comment over on the YouTube channel to join the cool kids club :)
We’re going to let you in on a secret: It's possible to grow your SaaS company without spending any money on marketing – and it’s definitely not as hard as it sounds. With the right tools, methods, and strategies in place, you can easily build a successful business out of the gate!
To discover more about this, our guest Alex Sanfilippo, owner of PodMatch, will share his experience on how he grew his business by incentivizing his clients with special offers. This may seem counterintuitive at first glance, but this strategy has helped him scale his business and set himself apart from the competition.
If you're interested in learning more about this strategy, then make sure to check out this week's episode!
Specifically, this episode highlights the following themes:
Want to give your podcast the boost it needs to stay ahead of the competition? Check out honestpodcasts.com and take the first step toward achieving your podcasting goals!
And if you have a guest in mind who you think would be a great fit for this show, drop me a line at hello@honestpodcasts.com.
Alex Sanfilippo 0:00
Get really good at validating the problem that you think you're going to solve. And then when you do that, the next step is focus on the most important thing you can do to drive the needle forward with that. Don't get into the nitty gritty, small stuff. I think that that's the best advice I could give myself because I tend to focus on the little things like, oh, let's do this real quick. But instead, just find the problem, validate it, and then focus on the biggest possible meal that you can.
Travis Albritton 0:25
Welcome back to the honest Marketing Podcast where you learn proven strategies to grow your business without selling your soul. I'm your host, Travis Albritton. And today, I could share a fantastic conversation with my good friend and software company founder, Alex Sanfilippo. We talk about his company PodMatch how it was launched, how it's grown, the marketing strategies, they have used to turn it into one of the dominant players in the space in his particular niche within the podcasting industry. We talk about how the product has evolved to really serve their members, their users, the people that use their products, and the uncommon marketing methods that they are using to grow PodMatch without spending money on Facebook and Google ads. So a lot of great stuff in this interview, make sure you stick around to the end, where I highlight my number one takeaway from the entire interview, something really super practical that you can take with you and implement in your company. But without further ado, let's dive into my conversation with Alex, one of the hardest things about creating a business that has a lasting impact. And high upside is product market fit, which is a lot harder to accomplish than just saying the word. So when you are creating PodMatch, and getting into the SAS space, specifically in the podcast industry. How did you know that that was the best pivot to make from what you started out, which was really focusing on you know, creating a brand.
Alex Sanfilippo 1:52
Yeah, it was it was an interesting transition, creating a brand. The purpose of that, more or less was for me to really learn how to become an entrepreneur, I came from the corporate world. And I realized a lot of the things I learned in big corporate didn't translate. And so I was like, Man, I need some help here. So I got some help and built up a group of, let's just call it community, we'll just call it a community of people that were really very smart, they were entrepreneurial. And they were also many of them podcasters. And that really like set me up for success in the podcasting industry, which happened to be my area of passion. And so when when I made that transition, it was me realizing, okay, I want to really not just use the podcast as a vehicle to learn how to start a business and to train others, I actually want to build a business in podcasting. And that's where the transition from creating a brand to PodMatch came into play was just me making that realization of this is a natural next fit for my own development. And where I can see that can really add value to people's lives.
Travis Albritton 2:47
And just real quick for anyone who's listening in isn't familiar with PodMatch. What is the service? What does it do? And who is it designed to serve?
Alex Sanfilippo 2:54
Yeah, so PodMatch is a service that automatically connects podcast guests and hosts together for interviews. It works very similar to how a dating app works. But we don't connect people for dates, we connect for podcasts interviews, uses an algorithm and basically looks at everything that you say that you'd be interested in sharing as a guest or host, and matches you with the opposite. So again, let's just use this example. Let's imagine a marketing expert. And I just kind of share my credentials, I build basically my media, one sheet as a guest, then PodMatch is going to look at podcast hosts, and I'm looking for a CMO of sorts, I'm looking for somebody that can share this expertise. And the algorithm automatically say this might be a good match. From there, you can message in the platform, you can schedule, you can never exchange an email if you don't want to. And that was kind of the idea of it to remove all the friction in finding guests and hosts and putting them together. And also streamlining the communication. And that's what we created pi match to do. And to this day, I believe it's doing a really good job serving the industry.
Travis Albritton 3:44
So have you thought about creating comparison. So this is one of the interesting things with marketing when you're trying to install a new idea or break into a different way of thinking about it connecting it to something that's more familiar. I doubt just knowing you personally that you want it to be Tinder for podcasters. Right. But are there other comparisons or links that you make to help explain the concepts to make it stickier to help resonate with people faster?
Alex Sanfilippo 4:06
The biggest sticky words I use? I've used Tinder, I've used hinge. I've used all the dating apps based off what somebody uses. Usually if I'm in a one on one conversation, I like to use any dating app. So like, oh, yeah, I use hinge. I'm like, pod matches, like hinge for podcasters. Like, Oh, right. But more or less I just mentioned, it's like a dating app. That is the number one way that I've been able to just get people to have say that moment of like, Oh, I get it, it makes sense. You don't need to explain any more now knew exactly what it's doing. That's the only one I've really used. I used to try, like, really fancy words like aI driven matching algorithm. And although that's what it is. People were like, Hmm, so what does a matching algorithm do? Right, like but when you say it works just like a dating app, but it connects you for interviews instead of dates. People automatically get it. So that's been like my real big sticky one I've used I've really stuck to that because it's worked well. I am open to ideas if you have others though, so let's just put it that way.
Travis Albritton 4:56
Well, you want you want any kind of brand affiliation to be paused. Yeah, right and for there to be value alignment. So it's like Tinder doesn't have the greatest reputation, especially with the, you know, the 50% of the population there of the female persuasion. Right?
Alex Sanfilippo 5:09
So I didn't know that. So I've been married like you. I've been married too long to be on dating apps. And so I had never used one. So when people were talking about Tinder, some of my friends even I was like, oh, that sounds great. There meeting people off of it. I did not realize the reputation that had. So we used to say, Tinder, now we just say dating app. So whatever that means to somebody. But yes, it can have a little of a negative connotation still. But that's why I'm up to up to solutions, other solutions out there any other idea of how matching Could be? Could be done better? Anyway? That's kind of where I'm at.
Travis Albritton 5:38
Sure. Well, there's like what match.com And e-Harmony. But you know, you're a little young to be an eHarmony, spokesperson, right?
Alex Sanfilippo 5:45
I know. Formers only, I don't know, maybe we could be, maybe formers only.com.
Travis Albritton 5:52
So when you were making that transition, you talked about how PodMatch was an industry that you were intimately familiar with, because you had a podcast, creating a brand's shared the name with the website that you're building. And how much of that personal experience informs the product. And how much of it was based on objective feedback from people that you were connecting with and blissing to their problems? Because I know, as marketers, entrepreneurs tend to over index our own felt needs, instead of really getting objective feedback about what is the real problem you're dealing with? How much of your own experience informs shaping the initial products? And the marketing of it versus the feedback you were getting from people?
Alex Sanfilippo 6:30
Yeah, that's a it's a really important question. Because, like you said, I think so many of us we weigh too heavy on our own feelings, thoughts, expertise. I'm doing air quotes there, right? Like how great we are at figuring these problems out? The truth is, I didn't have that faith in myself, because I had damage it so many times before. And I don't say that to downplay myself, I had just failed as an entrepreneur many times leading up to this. And that's why creating a brand came into existence for me to really learn that. And I just discovered that at any point, where I just put more weight on my own thoughts and what I think is right versus validating the issue with the people that would actually be using it. That's a that's a downfall to me as a leader. So I learned that now I will say what what creating a brand did for me was get me on stages. So because my show did really well, I was able to get on podcasting stages, which made me a little bit of a name in podcasting, not not like one of the big names or anything like that, but enough that people would talk to me, and they'd actually share what they have going on as a podcaster. And so how I actually started validating the problem was using leveraging my stage. So I was speaking at, it was a podcast conference in Orlando, Florida, in 2020, before the world shut down, there's about 2000 people there. And when I got off stage, I just made it to vote like I devoted to ask everybody I could who would talk to me about what they're struggling with in podcasting. And I, as you know, Travis, I heard a million different things. But I found one really similar pattern, it continued to be the same thing. People were saying, I'm having trouble finding guests for my show. I'm having trouble finding ideal guests on my show, I can't find who the next person is. I'm worried about next week's episode, I'll have a guest yet. And I wrote that down 100 times people said that I got their information along the way. And that to me was validating the fact that there is a problem in this space. And that's how I originally even got the idea was just starting with the problem versus here's an idea I have let me see if I can go validate it. Instead, I found the problem and then allowed it to be validated by people that I've been testing the service later on. But one more thing I'll mention this when I first started creating a brand, I had this problem, too. I mentioned to you, I was a corporate guy. And so when I started getting into podcasting about entrepreneurship, I was like, Well, let me look at my my rolodex, let me look at my like, see who I know, my network. I knew three entrepreneurs. So I had all three on the show. Then I had all three back, and then asked all three to come back again. And they said, dude, go find some more friends. Right. So.
Alex Sanfilippo 8:47
But anyway, long story short, I had that same problem. So hearing them mentioned, it was also like, you know what, this was an issue for me. I just got really blessed or lucky everyone to look at it, my show did really well. So I broke that barrier faster than most people would. But in a normal normal circumstance, I probably would have just stopped podcasting. So anyway, that's a long answer there, but really did not rely on myself more so found the problem through talking to people in the space before even trying to create a solution for it.
Travis Albritton 9:12
So let's talk about how you launched and have focused on the growth of the product because it's a SaaS product, right? So people play a subscription every single month. I don't know if you offer annual billing or not. And like every single month are coming back to use the products. And so there is some relatively stickiness to that. But typically when you're launching something unless you already have a baked in audience you're trying to break out and get people to discover you that don't know who you are, what you're doing. What are some of the key marketing levers that you have used to help grow pie that match because you don't use paid advertising, which is pretty rare in the online software space.
Alex Sanfilippo 9:50
Yeah, that was the first suggestion I got and still to this day, get in truth be told. I just don't know that space very well. And the way we've grown it has worked really well for us. So I'll mention them when we launched again, those 100 people that I referenced as telling me there was a problem. I took down their information, as I told you. And what I did is when we launched into what was a very early beta, so the idea was like, official, I'd say on, it was the, it's funny, our dates get fuzzy after a while, right? It was March 10 2020. And on June 15 2020, we want you to this early beta. And when I did that, email those 100 people saying, Hey, you told me about a problem. Here's what I think your problem was, let's see how it works for you, and invite them on the platform. Now, the reason that I think I got so much grace from these people is because we didn't have a logo. It was basically text based, it did the bare minimum of what I said it would do. And I think the fact that didn't try to make it really polished from day one, and I was just really transparent with these individuals. I told them, hey, it's ugly. It's slow. is it solving the problem that you told me you have? And half of them responded with? Yes, definitely. But you should really get a logo, someone says too slow for me to tell, right? Like we got all these type of feedback. But from day one, we just decided as a company, and me as the lead of it, that we were going to be transparent with people along the way. And making that decision was, I would say difficult, because it basically breaks this this barrier that so many founders are marketers like to hide behind of like, Hey, this is kind of the wall in front of me, it's my marketing tactics. And then I'm behind that. And so we don't really have that connection. I took that away and just said, Hey, transparently, here's what we're working on, how can we improve it? And so from day one, when people started joining, saying, Okay, this is great, what I started doing is just talking to my friends in the industry be like, hey, these people really liked it, can you help me share it? Let's, let's just transparently say, Hey, we're about to get a logo, let's even get some more people on it before we do that, right. So we just kind of shared it that way. And it was very natural, and just asking individuals for help. And it again, it worked very well for us. And I'm very thankful for just the, I guess, the courage to step up and actually do that.
Travis Albritton 11:56
Well, and what's funny, and I don't know if this was intentional or not. But if you study, like the curves of like innovation, and customer consumption, and recognizing new products and new niches, it almost goes to your disadvantage to start with something super polished, because the people that are interested in testing something want it at like the earliest age possible. And so you have like innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority laggards. So you see this diffusion of innovation curve in the consumer market. And it's almost like if you start to polish, then you're appealing to someone farther down the curve than you are. So knowing where you are in the process of building something, and who you're trying to appeal to, it can actually play to your advantage to be like super unpolished in tech space and like hard to use. If that's the person who's trying to connect with first you can then become brand advocates to tell people about this thing that he discovered. But something that you mentioned that I want to touch base on is this idea of like sharing transparently about how you're building it. And specifically, I want to ask you about your personal brand. Because everyone online has a personal brand. If you have a social media account, you have a personal brand. And and using that as an opportunity to share about decisions you're making with the company about different stages that you're at and progress that you're making with the company. What was that decision like about deciding to start using yourself, essentially, as an advocate for the for the brand, and for the software that you're using, and the things that you decided to share? And then what were if anything, things you decided, you know, it's best to really not share these things
Alex Sanfilippo 13:29
The decision to really focus on my personal platforms as well, when it comes to social media was one that came out of what you were just sharing, which is me having that early adopter on and I love the way you framed it. I think it's better than we I could have said it, but just really talking about the individual who had give us the feedback when we didn't have a logo, right of like, oh, but the logo should look like this. And we should move this over here. And we can follow that data. As the company grew. I wanted to stay in touch with those people. And I'm a firm believer of doing things that don't scale. So having those one on one conversations, I think that's a really important thing. But at some point, it's hard to do that at Mass, right. And so I realized that and I was thinking about my personal social media at this point. Yes, I use it for creating a brand a little bit, but I also just kind of peppered in my own personal stuff. So hanging out the beach with friends like the normal stuff, right? And I'll give this disclaimer, because I think it's important, I was not an influencer. So this day, not so like there's never been a time where I'm like, Hey, here's my water bottle, you should get one too, right. Here it is for 40% off. Like I've never had any agreement like that. So I've never had like a true social media strategy. But as the company was growing, I realized that there would be value in that. So I remember the first time I sat down to actually post about something that was PodMatch related, and I actually just post like an official launch. So we kind of got out of that like early beta. So we got a logo, right and like, sped it up a little bit, invest a little bit of money. And I just asked my wife Mike, hey, well, you just posted a picture with me it will take a picture of us holding a laptop that has the logo on it. And let's just I'll just share like what it's been like the last few months trying to build this while I have a full time job. And so I just cared very transparently. And that post just still to this day that is like my most popular social media posts of all time. And I think it's because it was the first time that Alex and Sanfilippo ever shared, like what was really happening that was beyond just like having a good time at the beach, right or like, posted a new episode, it was like, this has been really tough. I know, I'm supposed to do it. And Alicia and I are really proud of what we've created together, along with our business partner, Jesse, and like posts, and it had a lot more words than that. It just blew up. And I realized the power of using my own feeds at that point. And obviously, figuring out like, what to share when to share is kind of delicate. And honestly, for me a little bit scary. Being somebody like I'm very transparent in person. I've always been that way. I've always been a little hesitant to sharing online, like, I'm just like, not like a super private person online. But I just have always been like, I don't want to turn to one of those people. That just is like, having trouble like with digestion today, right? Like, I don't want to become that person. We all know that person, right? We've all got an aunt or an uncle. That's like, Dude, stop, please. Right? Yeah. And I just was like, I don't want to be that. So it was a really scary thing for me. But I believe I figured out how to do it in a way that is very helpful for the business for me personally, and to keep me connected with our overall community. And maybe a longer answer than you're looking for. It's just something that I am pretty passionate about. Because I've I think I've really learned how to do this in a delicate way.
Travis Albritton 16:18
So what are some of the things that you post personally, that aren't necessarily self serving, because I think it's very easy to spot someone who's just posting something because it benefits them. But you do a really good job of sharing the story, and the why behind specific pivots that you make within your company. And kind of using that as an opportunity to basically do PR for the people that are following you to be like, Hey, you may or may not have noticed this, or we just recently rolled this thing out. And here's why we did it. How do you think about communicating on that personal level versus when you're writing up? Press Release to send over to pod news? Talk about a new feature or something like that?
Alex Sanfilippo 16:56
Right? Yeah. And so that's like one of the popular newsletters in podcasting. And yes, there are times when it's just straight up like, this is just a better press release. And this just seems to go out. First off, the number one thing is, is it boring. If it is I'm just gonna make it a press release, right? Like I'm gonna send out to new people. It's like, it's like they on boarded this, like, I can't spin in any way like, oh, 1000 people signed up today from this network. Unless it's like a friend of mine that can be like, hey, Travis has really been helpful for me. He's like, been a mentor to me along the way in this podcasting journey. And he and I just decided to partner up and do this. And he's like, helping bring all these people to platform, I just want to mention how much I love this guy. He's been a huge help, I probably just post a picture with you and doing that. That would be okay. But if it's like XYZ network that I don't know anything about, it's just like, hey, we're gonna start sharing this. I would that's a press release. So the fine line is, is it boring, right? Like, if it's not, there's a way I can spin it in a way that's interesting. I'm going to do it. And here's the thing, it's become part of my life. So I regularly will like when people are probably sick of this blue background that I have. So if anyone's watching this, I've got like, just this silly blue background basically behind me, and but I'll take like a selfie of me looking at the computer. And people can always tell that Alex in his studio, but it gets people to read because I'm like, Man, having like a really long day, here's what we just rolled out. And so figuring out, number one, is that boring. Number two, putting my personality into it. Those are both important elements. But three, does it actually benefit somebody to hear? So is it something that maybe you wouldn't notice, like, here's an example, a few months ago, we made the decision to delete 6500 People from our platform, that was actually more controversial. And I meant for it to be I didn't mean for it to be that way. But we just took people that were inactive, or really, maybe they were ill intent. And we were able to figure it out through abuse reports and things like that. And we, to me, I was like, Man quality over quantity, I don't care if we have 100,000 people using the platform, I'd rather have much less than that. But them all be really high quality. So I spun it that way. I shared it that way. And just basically said, Hey, we made this decision. No one made it like no one would ever really notice it probably even people we delete it probably had no idea. Well, we didn't realize drivers, this was kind of funny. We had that was like one of the largest signing days because people wanted to see if they made the cut, which I didn't I didn't expect. But that the people who didn't make it, they knew they didn't or they just didn't care. But like I spun it in a way of like, Hey, we're doing this because quality matters to us, the members that are trusting us, I want to say thank you for being there. And your your account is with us forever. We're excited to be partnering with you and helping get this content out there. And I just shared it that way. And yes, I got some bad press. Personally, people were like, wow, why would you do that you need to grow the company, not shrink it. But the majority of the community, the people that were using it, which in my mind is who these posts are for were congratulating us and saying thank you for keeping the quality up. Because that's what really mattered to them as well. They don't care if there's 100,000 people in a platform. They want the few 100 people over the next couple of years that they're going to work with and be really high quality. And so that gives you an example the type of thing that I've shared. Now, I'll mention it I'm nervous to post it every time I do right because I'm always like, am I sharing too much? What kind of backlash am I going to get? But then the day I go back to even just launching the company like Courage is being afraid and doing what you have to do anyway. And for me, I just know that it does serve the people that are trusting me and whatever the rest of the world thinks it's it's okay if they don't like it because I'm serving my members, my community.
Travis Albritton 20:01
So a couple things that I need to circle back on, because there was a lot there. Number one, whenever you think about growing your company, right, so typically, anytime you're marketing something, it's, you're trying to reach some kind of target, right? And you want that, whatever that number, that goal is to be meaningful in some way. And so I imagine you may have like internal targets or growth targets or, you know, retention goals or things like that. How do you use that as a filter? In a framework to decide when to do what or what voices to listen to, when you're making those decisions? Or is it truly just, we're at a place where everyone that works for the company is getting their financial needs met, we have some profit margin. So we're just gonna build something that we personally feel really great about, like, how do you mix those different priorities, which at times can be at odds, right, so the labor is a case to be said for, get more users versus, now let's just follow focus on the quality of the years that we have, or, you know, hey, we want to listen to this voice that saying you should grow because if you hit, you know, this MRR and you're at, you know, you start spending money, and you get this return on adspend. And now you have this multiple, if you want to sell it versus, we just wanna make something really special that we really care a lot about. Whatever you optimize towards, typically informs how you market and promote the business in the company. So internally, when you're talking with the team, even when you are making decisions about what you want to pursue, what's the heart of that, like? What are you really trying to optimize for with PodMatch and with some of the other things that you're spinning up?
Alex Sanfilippo 21:38
Yeah, so first and foremost, we have our core value set, like most companies do, and we do our best to keep up with these. The number one being one that we more or less took from Amazon, Amazon has what they call like, customer obsession, we just call it member obsession, because we like to think that you'll never hear me say the word client, or user or customer like those are not words I use, I use the word member and community. And so for us, we have like we just call a member obsession. So the first thing we do is evaluate our own internal ideas and objectives versus is this going to add value to our members? And even our future members? Is this going to add value. And so we this is something I personally say no, just really do my best to pour into the company, but seek to be a person of value, not a person of profit. And for me, personally, I've always found that profit does follow the value that you add. And so for me, I want to be on that side of it. Yes, you can chase profit, I'd rather just chase adding value. And I find that profit kind of follows along with it. And so with that said, yeah, we've got both internal ideas of what we want to do with the company. But also, we really take time to listen to our members. So the internal stuff I'll share very quickly is based off of data. So at this point, we have enough people that are using it, that we can look at the data and figure out okay, you know what, there's a breakdown right here. This is where we need to improve something. But once again, it's from the the understanding that this will improve the experience for our members. Now anything that's like growing, like, what if we add this feature, this feature this feature, I go out and evaluate. So we'll do things like very simple forms. But more important than that is the one on one conversations I have, and I referenced it earlier, doing things that don't scale, I think is such an important part of marketing. For a research perspective, what I'll do is I'll take someone who uses the product, it's very important to pick the right people, not somebody logged in once not someone who already hates it, they don't they've never been used it right, or like the ultimate power person has done like 3000 interviews in a year, right? Like, I can't learn a whole lot from them, because they either don't have the experience of too much. And they've just learned it really well. There's a middle ground with people I'm like, You know what they look like they're struggling a little bit, but they pretty much have got it down. They seem like they're pretty experienced, let me get on a call with this person. And getting on a call is you can't really scale that right. Your Your time is not unlimited, right? You have to be careful with that. But for me, it's really important to make sure I get on 1520 minute calls with these individuals, and ask them very pointed questions. And the questions you ask are really important. I can't just say what do you think of the product? They know that it's my baby, they're gonna say, Oh, it's beautiful. It's great. Everything's perfect. Like, I wouldn't change a thing. And I'm like, Oh, thank you. No, I'm gonna, what I ask is more of a question of like, hey, we need to make this better for future members. What do you think we could do that would add more value, I just pulled myself out of the equation. Now they can totally break my heart, quote, unquote, right? And it's not really going to break my heart because I can learn something from it. So again, it's for me, the way that we decide how to do new things. And to grow the business in a way that's going to really be meaningful, is get on calls with the right people doesn't scale. But while we're on that call, we ask them questions. That way, we can actually know that we're getting good feedback, good answers from and then from there, we'll create some sort of poll and blast it out to more people to see what it is that we should really be doing. And that's kind of how we design even our product roadmap, if you will.
Travis Albritton 24:38
Yeah. And from the outside looking in, it's pretty obvious, at least from my perspective, that that tends to be your strategy is let's actually talk to the people whose opinion matters to us. People that have are using the product that are sticking around that already. We're on the same wavelength as far as like this is a problem we're solving. Right that it doesn't help you to talk to someone who's like that's a stupid problem, nobody has that problem. We'll talk about podcast SOP here in a little bit. Where we're I remember that being some of the feedback was, nobody has problems with this. And you're like, well, Spencer, you talk to, right? But you've created a product centered marketing plan, where the product itself is the marketing. Right? So rather than saying we're going to pay a bunch of influencers, you know, and we're going to do all these paid ads and paid traffic, and we're going to do X, Y, and Z, we're going to have, like, the super SEO, optimized blog and everything else, it's, we just want to create something so awesome. People can't help but talk about it. And we want to build relationships with people that know the kinds of people that would benefit from our product, and not incentivize it beyond like, you know, I don't know, if you have affiliates set up for certain individuals or not, but just making the product itself the marketing. Can you talk about like is, well, one is that accurate? is like my objective assessment accurate to to how you think about it? And then how does that inform the way that you attribute growth? Or is that even something that you track, like trying to get leading indicators of things you can do to grow into get users in particular opportunities?
Alex Sanfilippo 26:17
Yeah, I mean, your assessment 100% accurate? I'm glad you can see that again. I mean, honest marketing is the show here, right? Like, I do my best to be honest in my marketing. So the fact that you could get that is great, that you're not like, so you got you got all these other tactics and secrets in the background? No, we just do our best to build a great product that builds itself. And yes, we have an affiliate program, and everybody has access to that as soon as you join, you have a page, it says affiliate, you can set up your own custom link, we do payouts via PayPal, it's 20% lifetime reoccurring commission. And we did that because that was some of the early feedback. We were like, Hey, I know a podcast network, I'd love to share it with them. Can I be an affiliate of some sort. And so we just went ahead, and we actually created our own, it's completely custom, it's very easy to use, like you can set it up in probably 10 seconds or less. I mean, it's just like, it's very instant, we wanted to make it that easy. So that we could just make it so people could happily share what they have going on. Right. They're like loving the experience, remove that friction of them having any hesitancy to like not sharing it, right. So we remove that. And then everything we do, we build back into, into our own products and services. And that's like been my ultimate marketing strategy, if you will, is we try to keep the keep our name really hot in the industry. And you do that by adding a we changed the podcast, creating a brand with two podcasts Made Simple. Everybody posts about like all the podcasts and newsletters and stuff. It's like, oh, wow, this is a big show that is now transferred to being about podcasting. That's kind of crazy. And so like doing things like that, and then you wait a little bit. And as like the heat slows down, like calms down, a little bit cools off, then you post something else along those lines or share something else. And so for us, it's also been the form of other products, like little spin offs that have helped just reinforce the fact that hey, pod matches a product or service that you need. And we've even gotten into some of the education stuff, just the common questions were getting, and it just leads everyone back and everything we're doing. So I mean, I don't really, I don't use the word funnel a whole lot. But if you will, everything funnels directly back into everything else. And the idea is, hey, we're just here to offer solutions for the podcasting industry. And if we can get a really good at doing that, and reminding people, Hey, you're using this, we've also got these three things will help you out without doing so in a salesy way. It just kind of flows right into it. That's a big win for us. And it's an even bigger win for the people that are using the products and services that we have. Travis, I don't know if that exactly answers your questions, if you need to clarify that let me know.
Travis Albritton 28:31
Well, I'm curious how you determine what that cadence should be the difference between blasting everyone with the fire hose, they tune you out, versus going too long between opportunities to hop up and be like, yeah, we're still here. So So is that just like internal? That you just sense? You know what, it'd be a good opportunity to kind of blast out some more PR and get the word out again? Or do you have like an actual cadence or a monthly alarm set in your phone, like, Hey, make sure that you talk about something.
Alex Sanfilippo 28:59
I wish I could say the latter. But it's actually, because that sounds like just me being a strategic person. That sounds way better. But really, first off, I'll mention this, I get hit up every day, multiple times to do some sort of JV. So some sort of joint venture where I email our entire database about product X, and they're going to tell their database about PodMatch and anything else that we're doing, right. And as much as I think that sounds cool, and can be tempting, cuz we were like, Hey, you're probably gonna make like 10 grand doing this. We've just refrained from doing that. I only email people when there's actually something important. So like, we I like to think that people open or we have a very high open rate. And I don't think it's because we're just that interesting, but it's because we when we do email, it is going to be something interesting. I think people have just been kind of tuned to know like, Okay, we got an email from from Alex. It's going to be something important. It's not just like, Hey, did you remember to sign in this morning? Right? Like, it's just, we're not going to do anything like that. And for me, it is more of a feeling which again, I'm more of like a strategic guy, but I just kind of sit back and watch the way that I kind of gauge that it goes back to actually a verse in the Bible talking about like knowing the condition of your flock. And that's like an old proverb that's always really stood to me like the best thing you can do, as a leader is know the condition your flock, when I feel like I'm losing touch of the condition, like I can just kind of realize, Okay, I'm getting less messages I used up last week I was getting way more or two weeks ago is going a lot more. And I'm not getting hit up as much. That's why I realize, Okay, it's time to get back out there to reassess the condition because people always will reach out when you do that. And sometimes it's as simple as a smaller segment. But sometimes I feel like you know what this is, in general, I think we need to blast out there. Because I can see in the data, certain things are kind of fallen off a little bit, let's get back out there and bring it back to where it could be, or where it should be. So it is more feeling driven. But it's from the place of me also looking at what's happening in front of me and making the decision off of what I'm seeing happen and realizing, hey, let's let's get our name hot. Once again, let's get back out there.
Travis Albritton 30:52
So it's something that we alluded to earlier in the episode, which isn't 100% true, if we're being honest, is that you have no marketing budget, you actually do you just choose to pay your members, as affiliates versus Facebook, Google. So talk about the impact that that has had, not just the affiliates, but also the feature you rolled out where you're paying members that are using PodMatch to source guests and to track the progress through PodMatch. What impact has that had on marketing, pod matching growing the user base? member base? Yes, I keep talking about member base users. You gotta you got to train me.
Alex Sanfilippo 31:27
Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. So our members, what we decided to do is call our pod value initiative that you're describing here. And basically, this came through the form of those one on one conversations. Because early on when I launched PodOmatic, Travis, I realized I was like, we have a serious issue. I told Jesse, which is my co founder, I'm like, we have podcasters, leaving left and right, like they are just disappearing so fast. And I was like, there's something wrong with our service. There has to be I'm like, I'm not getting that feedback when I talk to people. And maybe I'm asking the wrong questions. So I started actually finding the people that were leaving, and asking them, and there was, of course, the, I'll just called the 1%. That was like, Yeah, your product sucks, right? Like, of course, there were those people. But the 99% were people that were saying, Oh, I didn't leave your service, I stopped my podcast altogether. Like, we're just not going to do it anymore. And I continuously, like, dug into why and there was a few main reasons. But the biggest one being was just that it's a cost that me and my family can't take right now. And even though it's just sometimes $30-$40 a month, we're just like, I just can't, can't do that. I can't justify that right now. And so our pod value initiative, the idea behind it was can we put enough in creators pockets so they can offset their full production cost? So no one's getting rich using PodMatch with that deal was can we share enough of our profit, which is exactly we do to podcast hosts that are actually using PodMatch. And the way it works, I'll simply just kind of laid out is somebody is actually going through the whole process on PodMatch. So it's not like you're finding a guest, then message them on social media, like we have to actually track that you've used it for the whole thing. And then we're not paying you for that specific guests. We're just paying you because you're actually following the process. And again, we're just using giving a percentage of our actual revenue away. And at first people like me, my co founder, like, Are we okay to just give money away. And I was like, Man, I think it's in our best interest because it keeps people podcasting, it keeps them adding value to the people that are listening. So in my mind, it was like, a no brainer. And to this day, it remains one of my favorite features we do like last month was our first it's a newer initiative, it was our first time sending out five figures worth of revenue share with our podcast host, which I was like, thrilled to be able to do that. That's a really cool thing for me. So yeah, it was through feedback and just realizing that the industry had a need, and this was how we'd be able to fill it. But you're absolutely right, I have a lot of a marketing budget, and I don't let off on that too much.
Travis Albritton 33:35
So good, good call their jobs. Well, and what's really smart about that, beyond just serving your members, and continuing to make the product more valuable to them. Because then when they're trying to decide what are the things I'm going to cut, the more valuable you can make your product or service, the less likely they are to leave, which helps retention helps you, right, but also tapping into the network effect of the more people actually use it. If you have a good product, then the more likely they are to talk about it. And then if you can incentivize them, and kind of like match your priorities, and the things that matter to you, with the things that matter to your members are in many cases, users, clients, customers, right, I'll let it slide drop, that's good. Then then you can tap you can actually accelerate word of mouth, which is ultimately the biggest driver of business growth, even now, even with all the different things that you can do. And so, so being able to not just create an experience that's more valuable, valuable for your members. But now because they are incentivized to use every piece of PodMatch in order to get that revenue share. Now the guest is on the receiving end of that, and when they are talking to another podcast host because that's one thing that podcasters are great at is interviewing other podcasts is talking about podcasting. They're like, what is the service you're using? They're like, Oh, it's PodMatch. And actually, I'm getting paid X amount for using it to have this interview right here. And so like you create that network effect much in the same way that that Dropbox did. Where if you invited a friend, you got extra cloud storage, right, you're creating this positive feedback loop, just by making the product better for the people using it, and responding to a need they have. And then accelerating that word of mouth to just bring more people in, which this keeps it going.
Alex Sanfilippo 35:20
You know, it's funny, you mentioned Dropbox. When I was think about this idea. I don't, by the way, you can tell I don't reinvent the wheel. Like we pull this from dating apps, whether you want to call that Tinder or any others, right? Yeah. But same thing. I was like, Okay, who's done this? Well, and I actually went back to the how Dropbox got started, I listened to like, old interviews with the founders talking about that program. And that's exactly how we decided to launch it, which is just funny. No one has ever brought that up before. But, man, really cool. Thanks for having me on. It's in marketing. Now. Come on.
Travis Albritton 35:47
We didn't talk about that before the interview
Alex Sanfilippo 35:49
We did not.
Travis Albritton 35:51
And I don't think we've ever discussed it offline either. So So now I want to pivot to a decision that a lot of companies are wrestle with, a lot of entrepreneurs wrestle with is, when is it time to add a feature? Or to spin off? Something that serves a similar customer, similar user, similar member? But is it different products? And how do you make sure you don't dilute your energy and your efforts and your team while also spotting opportunities? So tuck, talk to me a little bit about podcast SOP? And how, you know, with these products that you're spinning up, you've kind of evolved PodMatch into a bigger brand, pod pros?
Alex Sanfilippo 36:29
Yeah. So earlier, I was talking about how I was talking people and finding their the primary issues for people leaving podcasting in general. And number one is the the monetization, that side of things like they're not trying to get rich, they just don't have the budget for it right to be able to keep on going. The second thing was one that was a little bit more psychological, I first struggled to figure it out. But people were leaving because of the stress that was involved the amount of time they were spending on it. And Travis, you and I both know that. So we've been in podcasting for a little bit, it doesn't take as long as many people think, or, or that it should, right. Like some people like it takes me 10 hours per episode. And like, what, 10 hours per episode, what do you do after that episode, right? Like, what's happening to it. But the thing is, it's just a lack of systems and procedures. And what I found is I was talking to people they were leaving, because they were stressed out about it, because they were just keeping everything in their head. And I think that productivity expert David Allen says it best that your idea in your head is for having ideas, not for storing them. And so many of us are trying to store like what we're going to do with these episodes in our head. We've got sticky notes everywhere, whiteboards, Excel spreadsheets, 10 of them for one thing, right, like, it was too much. And then so when I started, I was like, You know what, I just got to recommend some project management software. So I was like, hey, check out Trello check out monday.com Like I was, you know, just to go check these out. And what I realized is if somebody had experience in those, they're like, oh, yeah, this is great, thank you. But the people that had no experience in those, they're already stressed out. And like, here's a new thing. You can use it as 20,000 different things, take a few years and learn it, you know, like and so that's how I was doing people like no, this doesn't help me, this is actually more stressful now. And I realized that there was a big need for us to create a very simple production solution. So for lack of a better term, and my co founder, Jesse hates when I say this, but it's a glorified checklists that you create for your podcast, it is each step of your release. And anytime you want a new episode, you hit Add new episode, at the title, the description, anything you have, and it'll automatically generate all of your steps when they're due. It'll add your notes, assign team members, if you have that leeway as to comment to exchange files, the whole idea was let's just make this really simple. And the learning curve on it, I like to think it could take maybe 30 minutes, we'd have to spend a really like figuring out how to use it all. And what we our goal with that was can we keep people in podcasting longer? The idea was can we go from because it's about 90% of podcasts or stop after before one year? And the goal was, can we make that 89%? Or 11%? Actually stick with it right? Can we change it by 1%. And what we found is people that are using this software, although it's not nearly the size of PodMatch from a member base, I can say that with confidence, it is keeping people podcasting longer because they have a strategy, a system, and they're not stressed about anymore, they've been able to figure out how to streamline it at a much higher level. And so for me, it was like looking at just the people that were struggling once again, right and spinning us off. We didn't do it right when we thought of it. Because we didn't have the capacity. At that time, we still had some outlying issues that were that were very serious, I'd say with PodMatch, like people saying, Hey, this is continues to be to Slowking speeded up. And we didn't say sorry, not now we're working on something new. No, we finish all that hit a point where we feel like you know what, there is a big want list, or a nice to have list, but nothing is urgent that we were looking for. Let's go and spin this up now. And then we'll do the same thing with a crock pot match people over and so let's test it with 100 of us and let's see how it goes. And that was kind of the flow of it. To me, it was just really sitting back and talking to our members and realizing you know what, we're in a good spot with this. Let's spin this one up and then come back to PodMatchbecause maybe we'll have something else to be working on. It's really important at that point. Does that make sense?
Travis Albritton 39:46
It does. How I explained that it does it because again, it comes back to there's always opportunity cost with everything right. So you can get all your you know, focus on one particular product or one particular offering or service. And then you can grow that. And typically you hit a threshold where your your growth kind of levels off, right. And it's not as explosive as that initially unless you have some kind of crazy, crazy like catalyst event. And so trying but trying to figure out the trade offs. And I think the way that you have done it is great, because you're you're always coming back to your why, like, why do we even why are we here? Are we here to maximize for profit? Are we here to help people podcast? Are we here to solve problems for podcasters? And so you know, so you've been super disciplined about making sure that you stay true to who you are. And I think that that resonates because then everything that you do, is in harmony with each other. Right? It doesn't feel off, it doesn't feel weird. It's not like you're trying to spin something off because you see an opportunity to do a new product, and it has nothing to do with what you've been doing before. And then it feels like disingenuous or you're not good at it right? You actually create something that becomes a boondoggle instead of a compliment to what you do. And now people are discovering you through podcasts SOP and then they Oh, what's this PodMatch thing, and vice versa. And so now they can play together and feed each other. So I think it's really smart. And but again, it's always about the trade offs of you can't do everything. So how do you decide what to do? And and what's the filter that you use to make those decisions?
Alex Sanfilippo 41:19
Yeah, that that can be a really tough one. Because as a, as a marketer, as a founder a whole that like the shiny objects are everywhere, right? And there's always temptation to be like, ooh, we could do this, right? Here's, here's the automatic No, if it is not specifically for podcasters, we're out as cool as it might sound like that. That's just that is the absolute line in the sand of like, this doesn't even need to be talked about among anybody else. Like it stops with any of our members. But every day, we've got people coming in and through social media, something I'll post, you're like, Ooh, you could do this, it'd be really cool. Like, one thing people really psyched about for a little bit, they're like you should do like a CRM, specifically for podcasters, I started looking at CRMs, I'm like, man, there's a lot of good solutions already that with very little tweaking would be great for exactly what you're describing. And it takes a level of discipline to know that no, that's just not going to be our lane. Like, that's not what we're going to do. But it does, again, takes that level of self discipline and just understanding who is actually using your product, and how everything you have connects. Because here's the thing, like if I, if I had a product, it was, I don't know if something in a totally different industry, I live near the beach. So it was something for surfers, if I start posting that on my personal social media. Now I'm diluting the power that my social media has, because it's all singular focus. Right now it is focused on my company, which is podcasting. But it's about Alex Sanfilippo. And all of his different businesses he's got it's got his hands on all these different things, I now diluted, my family might be interested in some of my personal friends, right. But like as far as a company, and being for podcasters, a lot of the hosts are like, I don't really care about surfing, I don't want to see that. So it's really important for me, I think, from a marketing standpoint, and from business standpoint to keep that singular focus going as long as you possibly can, right? Which for me, Will, I believe be forever, this is what I'm going to be doing. And I think that that just really adds the power because people know that when I post, they're like, oh, it's going to interest me. Because consistently for the last couple of years, everything he's posted has been interesting to me.
Travis Albritton 43:05
So I've got a couple of questions to wrap up. It's been great. Thanks for being so honest, transparent. Yeah, hopefully you've had fun as I have, in spite of whatever technical difficulties we've run into that did not make it into the final episode. So right, if you're listening to this, you don't even know what happened. A meteor, you know, struck my house. But the first question I would ask you is, is what is one of the worst pieces of marketing advice you've ever received? Because it's kind of like when you get married. Everyone wants to give you their two cents. Oh, well, this is what you should do to make your marriage awesome. And I imagine as a founder, as an entrepreneur, and as someone who's relatively social, so you're pretty well connected. You've heard some pretty terrible advice, marketing advice, not just in general, but also for what you're trying to build. And, you know, specifically, is there anything that pops to your mind is like, that was definitely one of the worst pieces of advice I've ever received. And I'm really glad I didn't follow it.
Alex Sanfilippo 43:58
Yeah, I've gotten a lot of outlandish, just weird stuff. But I'll share one that like, how about one that was like, tempting for me, because it person delivered it really well? Sure. But I knew I just knew it was a bad idea. Their idea was specifically to target Facebook ads, but to raise capital specifically to do ads. And the like, you know, it doesn't touch your business. It's just money that you're raising just for this one thing. And I was like, at first I was like, oh, that sounds interesting. Like they're saying, raise 100 grand. And then you can work really well and work really well get a media company that can do all that for you. And just drive a bunch of leads your way. And so at first I liked the idea. But then I started thinking about I'm like, Well, what if it doesn't convert, like I'm going to owe that money? What if they can't deliver? What if it goes too broad? What if it brings me like really low quality and it just hurts the reputation of this thing. And the only way I could ensure that wasn't going to happen was by actually doing that myself. And so for my company, that might not always be bad advice. But for me, I don't think raising capital one advertising is a good idea. I think it can if you're raising capital part of it can go toward a marketing budget, but it also needs to go towards other elements. Because here's the other thing that I that my co founder kindly reminded me of that if that really worked imagine brought those leads, we would probably grow too fast to keep up the development. So we'd need to raise capital to hire more developers as well. And then you run into this huge cashflow negative machine where it's growing so fast, you're trying to keep up with the demand. And you're just stressed beyond belief in not making money. And that was something I was like, Man, that's really smart. We're not going to do this. But I think a lot of people, it's tempting to grow really fast. But sometimes you're just not ready. And that's where my company, especially when, when I was getting this advice was that so I'd say that was that really bad advice I got that, again, might not be bad for everybody. But for our company where we're at it would have probably crippled us.
Travis Albritton 45:40
And then the last question I have for you is looking back at your entrepreneurial journey, where you are now the things that you've learned, what's one piece of advice you would share with yourself, when you were first starting out, knowing what you know now, and the mistakes you've made, and the things that were quote unquote, failures at the time, the things that have really moved the needle for you? If you could only offer one piece of advice, really help? Get yourself going? And on track to meeting your goals? What would that piece of advice be?
Alex Sanfilippo 46:10
Get really good at validating the problem that you think you're going to solve? And then when you do that, the next step is kind of twofold here, Travis, if that's okay, like after you validate that problem, focus on the most important thing you can do to drive the needle forward with that. Don't get into the nitty gritty, small stuff. And I think that that's the best advice I could give myself because I tend to focus on the little things like oh, let's do this real quick. But instead, just find the problem, validate it, and then focus on the biggest possible needle mover you can.
Travis Albritton 46:35
So there it is my conversation with Alex Sanfilippo. The number one thing that I'm taking with me from this conversation, I think is super relevant for anyone who's trying to grow a business and do it the right way is to reward your customers, reward your clients, the people that use your products and services, and turn them into your own marketing army. Even with all of the new strategies and things at our disposal as marketers, as entrepreneurs as business owners, word of mouth is still the number one way that people decide not only who to do business with but how they discover that those businesses exist in the first place. So any way that you can incentivize the people that already love your product and love your service, to share it with other like minded people, that really is the not so secret ingredient to creating a long lasting business that continues to grow and have a positive impact.
Travis Albritton 47:24
Now if you want to learn more about Alex and what he's doing, just go to pod proz.com. And you can learn about all the different software options and things that they're building over at pod pros, whether it's PodMatch, podcast SOP, or some other really cool stuff they have coming down the pipeline. And if you are not yet, make sure you subscribe to the honest Marketing Podcast, either on YouTube or wherever you're listening to this in your podcast app to get new episodes every single week breaking down the proven and practical strategies you can use to grow a business with in Tegrity Well, thanks for listening to this episode. Hope you found it super helpful. And as always, be honest.