Craig stresses the importance of putting out and optimizing marketing content that is effective on social media channels to grow the audience, make a positive business impact, drive trials, and expand/expose brand to equity. 

Andy is skeptical about social media. He encourages Craig to not force social media if that is not his strength. Instead, hire someone with the necessary skills to build authority for better results, consistency, and success. 

Andy rants about a tweet on product-led growth companies building products that sell themselves. However, Andy clarifies his thinking about how product-led growth does not exist. At best, it emphasizes the wrong part of the growth engine. At worst, it legitimizes the mentality that if you build it, they will come. 

Craig believes a lot of the same things and addresses the virality of product-led growth. Running a good business and having a good product is 95% of solving a problem and only 5% is the viral coefficient. The dangerous thing about product-led growth is that a great product by itself will never sell. It still needs marketing content or the company and product will likely fail.

Andy’s been busy leading up to and since the birth of his baby. He just can’t do everything at work and some things will not get done⁠—but his new assistant, Madison, who was found via Great Assistant, is holding Andy accountable. They work together to handle his inbox, and she forces him to respond to messages until more is delegated.

Craig thinks an assistant would be very helpful and has been looking at Zirtual. However, an assistant is only successful if he is willing to spend time or is forced to make time to work with them to delegate and be more productive. Also, Craig has been more active on Twitter and posts about business, marketing productivity, and delegation.

Craig shares how his company retreat went really well. They dedicated time to talk about and reflect on objectives and key results (OKRs) as well as gaining opportunities by focusing on one thing. The outcome for good ideas comes down to certainty versus effort. 

Andy is stressed out because he likes to control everything, but the countdown to baby due date is fast approaching. At the company, he is working on priorities and getting processes in place, but some things have to be postponed. Eventually, he wants to have a company retreat.

Craig wants to declare that he does not start work until 9 a.m. to drop his kids off at the bus stop and workout despite the little green dot in Slack or email tab in Chrome (refers to Atomic Habits by James Clear). Andy agrees that finding routines, establishing habits, and not making excuses should be a priority. 

Also, Andy and Craig explain their rationale for switching bookkeepers/accountants. Craig is over Bench and going with GrowthLab FInancial, and Andy went back to Pilot because of ongoing problems with handling books and lack of responses to requests.

There are stages that people go through to become a buyer. Andy has brainstormed and thought about focusing on marketing strategy, cohesive marketing, and content to make sure everything fits together in a funnel. 

Craig believes that every piece of content on his site is different and has a different job—not a one-size-fits-all approach. Content campaigns should be created to nurture, offer a lead magnet, and understand customer personas/segments.

After a weekend getaway to unwind, Andy is back to prep and quarterly planning before paternity leave. Focusing on the right things makes a big difference because it’s so easy to get off track.

Craig is planning a company retreat that will include strategic thinking, intentionality, shop talk, and making connections with coworkers. Also, Craig has been working with a business coach to help him avoid decision fatigue as a founder.

Andy’s stress level steadily increases as the due date nears for the birth of his baby. His mindset has shifted from creating new stuff for SaberSim to more productive tasks, such as planning and priorities to wrap up projects before he takes time off.

Craig’s management style tends to be very laid back and less stressful. So, his team met up for a retreat to lay out a more structured approach to feedback and reviews using the continuous performance management software, 15FIVE, and project management software, Notion.

Andy is focused on significantly shifting what he is working on and hiring an executive assistant and copywriter before the birth of his baby. Time is limited, so he may not be able to hire and onboard until after he returns from paternity leave. 

Craig provides an update on his business about hiring specialized attention, focus, and talent for what really matters and is most valuable to the company and customers. He has realized that he is too involved in services over product. Castos is now hiring a podcast coach! 

Andy views the acquisition/merger as the ProfitWell brand and team continuing to do what it has been doing, but what will happen to the leadership (i.e., Patrick Campbell) and liquidity? It takes money to grow a business, but don’t obsess over numbers you can’t control. 

Craig explains that ProfitWell’s product revenue is 80+ percent of the company. This is the path to take if you don’t want to raise money, start as a consultancy, build a product, revenue shifts, and roll over profit. That’s what Craig did, too.

Andy and his wife are expecting a child. So, he is wondering how he’ll handle being a father and founder. He needs clearly defined processes and know what’s most important to hire, onboard, and assign priorities/tasks. Andy, especially, wants to hire an executive assistant and copywriter.

It’s been years since Craig’s children were born, but he explains to Andy that he should not expect to travel for business or work a full schedule. Hire someone and put processes and expectations in place to take care of things that need to happen on a regular and timely basis.

Andy shares how a big release has been in quality assurance (QA) for about a month, which shows the shortcomings of the product process but pushes for better quality when released to the public as refactored, not redesigned.

Craig understands how the product process is never done. There’s always some metric or issue to track, improve, fix, and measure. Also, as the owner and founder of Castos, there’s times when team members are hesitant to push back or share their opinions on what can be done.

Craig announced that he decided to leave Bench and switch to GrowthLab Financial for bookkeeping services. Also, he has hired a new developer who will be starting soon at Castos and will attend the company’s upcoming retreat.  

Andy finds company retreats very helpful to have collaborative discussions and make progress. However, as the team gets bigger, the more a project/product has to be presented before getting feedback and input to save time and be less disruptive. 

Craig is not a minimalist. If he has fewer projects outside of work, then he can dedicate more of his mental energy to getting work done. He expects the remote workforce to become more regional. Nobody wants to commute to the office all the time, but most people do want to interact with people.

Andy’s house projects have made SaberSim’s issues more noticeable. New projects excite him, he makes progress and then hits a roadblock. If you start something, finish work-in-progress projects to move forward. There’s value in scoping out projects before starting something new.  

Craig enjoyed being around like-minded people and doing a fair amount of TinySeed stuff. The biggest takeaway for him was reconnecting with Andrew Culver, who launched Churn Buster and built Bullet Train using Ruby on Rails.
Andy attended April Dunford’s How to Craft a Story that Sells session, which solidified his ideas on how to cultivate sales and what most customers feel when buying most things. The person selling to them is not helping them make better decisions unless that person is the expert.

Craig mentioned how Castos presented the first annual Enterprise Podcast Summit on March 10 to show how companies can use podcasting internally or externally. Event partners included descript, SquadCast, Pocket Casts, and Content Allies. It will be interesting to figure out the summit’s business impact. 

Andy discusses how he has experimented with affiliate/integration partnerships and promotions but has not gained much traction or significant scale. It’s hard to get it to work and takes a lot of effort. Instead, maybe think about the big picture and relax!

Andy is preparing for MicroConf (April 3-5). Even though it corresponds to the opening day of baseball season, he is not needed as much at SaberSim. By following EOS principles and rocks, Andy still has priorities and plans to focus on what makes an impact on his business. However, doing more faster leads to burnout. It’s time to collaborate, stay calm, and slow down.    

Craig is heading to Minneapolis for MicroConf. Craig shares lessons learned when redefining company versus group-level key results to gain clarity, purpose, and accountability. Also, he discusses how those at Castos are getting to a calm way of working and feeling less stress by building, releasing, and refactoring small projects, fixes, and updates.