310: Jessica Malnik — How to Communicate as an Indie Hacker
Download MP3Today on the Bootstrap Founder, I'm talking to Jessica Malnik. We talk about communication, how to talk to your customers, how to do marketing, how to hire marketers, everything in the context of speaking, sharing your message with the people that you actually care about. We go into great detail into how to hire the right people for marketing and what remote work has to do with all of this. This conversation is sponsored by acquire.com. More on that later.
Arvid:Now here's Jessica. Jessica, you published a newsletter called the remote work tribe, and you have a podcast with this project and you teach people and businesses to succeed in a distributed world. I find that super interesting working from home myself. I think I've been remote for the last 5, 6 years. So it's it's normal for me, but don't think it's normal for everybody.
Arvid:And I wanna know what's the mood out there now that this whole return to office stuff is becoming more popular. Do businesses still go remote, or is there a change happening there?
Jessica:Yeah. I love that question. And if I were to be totally honest, I started this, site, and originally, it was just a site, and then it turned into a podcast and newsletter basically, because I was frustrated that this didn't exist when I first started as a remote worker. So I've been remote since the middle of 2015, so almost 10 years. Love it.
Jessica:Originally as an employee, and now as an entrepreneur, I've seen all the ebbs and flows. I became a manager for the second time when I was working remotely as an employee. And I was looking up to at the time, this was, like, 2015, 2016, more like 2016, and I was, like, looking up to companies like Buffer and Zapier and other couple of companies that are just, like, OG remote. And I'm like, these are great, but they're very, very company specific. Why is there no, like, independent resource where I can collectively get the stories of a whole bunch of people?
Jessica:Saw on the sideline for a while. I'm like, okay. I'm an employee. I don't really have time for this. Then I went off on my own in the very end of 2018.
Jessica:Still didn't do this until and then I eventually figured out, okay. Like, this still doesn't exist. 2019 rolls around towards the end of 2019, I launched the site. Originally, this does a blog. Lo and behold, wound up with very good timing because about 3 months after I launched the site, a pandemic happened and suddenly a whole lot more people went remote all that time.
Jessica:So I kind of feel like to to go back to your question today, I almost feel like a lot, like, we're kinda going back to what remote work was before the pandemic, before so, like, the companies only more companies have embraced that. So, yes, there are definitely more companies that are utilizing, you know, a tighter labor market right now to go back to an office and almost, quote, unquote, forcing layoffs. But I do think the really smart companies, particularly companies that are smaller and maybe want to have a competitive edge, are staying remote, And they're going back and learning the principles of the companies like the OGs, like the Buffers, the GitHubs, the Zapiers, and starting to realize, okay. This is actually where remote work is. And what remote work was in 2020 worked, but it was very different than what works long term.
Arvid:Yeah. Yeah. What what is the difference? Because that is I find that first off, you are a prophet. Right?
Arvid:Like, you start this thing, like, couple months before the world changes. I was thinking about that. Yeah. You you got it the timing just right, but you also you keeping an eye on it now, and I I wanna know what the what the difference is there in remote work, what really crystallized over the last 3 crazy years, three and a half, 4 ish years, what that change is that empowers companies now much better than it used to
Jessica:before that. Yeah. I wish I could say I, like, knew that starting the remote work tribe when I did was gonna be the best idea ever. Had no idea. And if anything, I actually probably blew a lot of 2020 because I was still thinking it was more of going to be, like, an affiliate site.
Jessica:And when it really started to take off was when I actually introduced a newsletter in a podcast, but I won't go into that. What I would say in terms of going back to your original question, which was about remote work, and how it makes it work today versus how it was in 2020. In 2020, there was a lot of brands that were particularly larger companies that didn't really know how to work remote. So they just tried to adopt everything that was working in the office, from well, Evan was at home, and I'm like, a, that just doesn't work. Like, have you ever tried to be on Zoom meetings for 8 hours a day?
Jessica:Like, it is awful. Like, when you work remotely, it requires a different a, it requires having people who can do that because I'm the first one to admit not everybody should be working from home. Not everyone should be working remotely even if it's from a co working space, and 2, it requires a shift more towards what I call async communication. So, yes, you need meetings, but if you're gonna just try to adapt what you would do in office remotely, it just doesn't work as well as when it comes to actually requiring people who are really good, not only at being able to do meetings, but also really good at, like, being able to communicate asynchronously through Slack, through our project management software, through email, and and making sure people are all routed together. And you also have to have people who are, you know, able to self motivate.
Jessica:So, like, if you need somebody over your side effects, some people who's really struggled from my the people who I know who really struggled in 2020 were often the folks who weren't as good, like, you know, weren't as who are aren't necessarily as good at being able to be self directed or being able to be self motivated. Mhmm.
Arvid:Yeah. That I think that that is a big difference too. And I think it's just an understanding of management that motivation can come from the self. I think that's a new thing. Right?
Arvid:That people can actually be self directed and self motivated, and they they draw draw energy from their surroundings at home and not necessarily from constantly being surrounded by people in the office. Right? Like, it it it doesn't have to be people that provide that energy. It can be a location. It can be a situation.
Arvid:I think that's that's what I found for myself and you probably too having done this for 10 years. Like, we make our little nest from which we operate. Right? It's this is our space, and this space gives us the energy to do what we do well, not the cubicle and the fact that there's a 10,000 cubicles around us. Right?
Arvid:But it it it also offers us something new, and I think you are doing this. You are a fractional head of marketing, and I think that fractionality works really well with the asynchronous nature of work. Right? All of a sudden, now you can batch work, and you can do multiple things at the same time. I wanna talk about this because I I find this exciting for as a person who for the longest time did not understand that hiring somebody doesn't mean that they have to work for you 40 hours a week.
Arvid:Like, I, for some reason, I had trouble with this. But now I see this, and there's a new wave of developments like fractional positions. Can you explain to me what you do as a fractional head of marketing and how that can work for startups or or founders who are just getting started with their businesses, how they can integrate that without having to hire, like, a big head of marketing themselves.
Jessica:Yeah. Absolutely. I would say in general I mean, if you're trying to hire a head of marketing or, you know, a head of product or, you know, head of head of sales, head of customer success or whatever, those are really all of them are really, really important roles, but it all comes down to I mean, unless you are fitterly rolling in VC funds, which I don't suspect that many people are who are listening to this, and if you are, awesome.
Arvid:Congrats.
Jessica:Ignore all of my advice. However, if you're not rolling in VC funds, you do need to, like, state out, okay, when does it make sense to hire all these possessions. And one thing that I'm gonna say is a little bit counterintuitive is, don't try to outsource marketing until you have product market fit, even if it's just in a really tiny vertical. I feel like I see a lot of companies stumble over themselves and or put a marketer in an unfair position. If you are brand new and you don't necessarily know your message, you don't really know who your ideal customers are, you have tons of churn, you, you know, haven't really quite figured out any of that yet, and you don't have time for a good day.
Jessica:I am the biggest believer that as a founder or as, like, you know, a cofounder, that's something that yeah. Yes. Lean on people like myself to give you advice, but, ultimately, it's really up to the founder at that point to figure out how to get part of your marketing fit. It could be in the tiniest vertical ever. Like, you could be whatchamacallit?
Jessica:What I'm gonna give a random example. You know, having a software to help underwater basket weavers and you figured out that you have this really tiny niche and there might only be 20 people, but you've gotten 7 of them, cool. You have product market fit. At that point, by all means, go find a mark go find a marketer. Go find a salesperson fractionally or in person and make that happen.
Jessica:However, if you don't have any of that yet, it becomes much harder to try to do that. It becomes much harder to try to hire someone, and then or I'm always a big fan of just hire someone first, not full time, to kinda help you figure out what you actually need. And then as you start to scale, then start bringing in these full time people.
Arvid:Mhmm. That's interesting. So it's it's and in the beginning, it's super fractional. It's like the tiniest fraction, and it just grows into a into a position. Is is that something that you personally want for yourself?
Arvid:Like being a fractional head of marketing, do you want to ultimately end up as somebody who works full time in a business, or do you wanna stay diversified? Because that's, you know, something that a lot of indie hackers, think about, like the small bets theory. A lot of small things and then see which ones work. What what's the psychology for you there?
Jessica:I love being self employed. I love have I love being I kinda like myself a solopreneur, but reality is I'm a solopreneur of a small team. I love the fact that I'm like I feel like I'm a little bit of a unicorn in the sense that I'm both a strategist who also still executes and still loves it. Like, my background's in copywriting. I still do a ton of copywriting all the time, and I love it.
Jessica:So I'm like and I love the fact that I can, like, work across many different products in any given time, and it kinda suits my personality, much more there so than having to be constrained to working with just one company 40 or 50 hours a
Arvid:week. Yeah. Exactly. It do will you cons consider yourself a generalist?
Jessica:Yes and no. I feel like I've become more of a a little bit more of a generalist since I've been out on my own for about 5 years now, but, like, my real background is all in marketing and specifically in copywriting.
Arvid:Mhmm. Okay. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. The whole thing between, like, specialist t shaped and m shaped and pie shaped.
Arvid:Like, there's all a comb shaped where we have a lot of different things. It it I think it's a it's a continuum for sure. But the interesting part is that you have had to be more of a generalist in building your own business. I think that's an important thing to notice here. Cool.
Arvid:I I love the fact that you come from a from a writing background. Because to me, what I've realized over the last couple of years is that writing is really just calcified thinking or thinking in a different medium. So, obviously, you would be a writer and a strategist because that kinda goes hand in hand. I love that. That's really cool.
Arvid:So how do you apply this? When you when you have a role like a like a head of marketing, that that sounds very cerebral, that sounds very strategic. How do you fit the actual work of writing, of making, like, choices on the word level? How do you fit this in in your work?
Jessica:I love that. And just go back to something you said there, like, I could not agree more. Great writing is actually just great thinking. I can go off on a tangent about AI, about why
Arvid:Please do.
Jessica:I guess I'll do that instead, if you don't mind.
Arvid:Yeah. Sure.
Jessica:My opinion about AI just in general is, like, out of all of the amazing use cases for artificial intelligence, I feel like a lot of companies chose the absolute worst objectively worst line to start where it's like, oh, let's do let's automate writing. And I'm like, yeah. This doesn't work. Like, AI, in my opinion, is objectively terrible at writing, but it is absolutely amazing at a whole bunch of tasks related to it, particularly in the marketing side of things, and I can go off and do a tangent
Arvid:Yes.
Jessica:All about all of that. Yeah. Thinking. Feel like when it comes to writing, it's all about thinking. So, like, the reason why AI interest in my experience is it never produces really good content is because, like, you haven't done the hard work to actually think through what you wanna say, and the writing becomes easy once you do that.
Arvid:I love that. Oh, Hamed, that that is such a quotable thing. That is awesome. And I agree with you. Like, in my process when I write my my solo podcast episodes and all that, I I do a lot of AI work in the preparation of it and in the quality control of it, but never in the actual creative part.
Arvid:Right? I I I talk to a thing and it summarizes what I said. And then from that, I write and then I check. Right? But the writing itself is always in my mind because I am the only arbiter of my thoughts.
Arvid:The I can never guess what I'm thinking. Right? There's no telepathy in there just yet. I mean, once we have the chip, right, the the Neuralink chip in our mind, that's probably gonna be different. But until then, that's cool.
Arvid:Do you still use AI? And how do you use AI in your writing or in your whole process?
Jessica:Absolutely. I still use it all the time similar to you. Like, even to figure out a podcast like this, like, if I wanna take some of this and turn this into a blog post later on, like, oftentimes, I will take the transcript that I did for an interview. I'll put that into a tool to be able to kinda get it to summarize it for me and be like, okay. Start to tell and I'll start to ask it a bunch of questions.
Jessica:So I may be like, what did I cover, you know, at the very beginning? What are some of the most interesting quotes that you can pull out just to see what the AI says? And I sometimes it gets a little weird because AI will try to, like, hallucinate and say things I didn't actually say. Not all this is the case, but it's still really interesting to be like, what are the things that you know, and if they're asking me, I can be like, what are the gaps? Like, what did I miss here that I can maybe add on in a supplemental piece?
Jessica:And I'll come to you at the beginning, and then oftentimes, I'll take all those questions, and I'll be like, you have all this information. Write me an outline. And I'll just say, like, here's my outline, and then also I should be like, okay. This looks usually about 70 to 80% of what I would actually include in there. And then from there, I'll do the writing myself, and then I'll start to sometimes I'll feed it back in QAI at the end and be like, help me figure out where are the gaps in this piece of in this article.
Jessica:Help me figure out, you know, how do I make this almost, like like, that first step? Like, I still think, like, I work with editors all the time, but oftentimes AI is, like, my first level editor right now, where it's like, help me figure out the gaps, help me find the logic things that are missing, and then be like, make this better. And then I'll send it over to an actual editor who's, like, a human and be like, help me make this even better. And it just makes my work and it feels like it makes my writing clearer that way. And then oftentimes, when it comes to SEO side of things as well, I'll often use it at the beginning as an outline to be like to tell me what is the things that, like, is the most common advice on this topic, so I know what I have to include, but also tells me it's like, okay.
Jessica:This is the most common stuff. This is gonna be, quote, unquote, copycat content. Where do I what are some additional links that I can add that are, quote, unquote, originality nuggets so that this piece actually not only ranks well for Google if it's an SEO piece, but also are things that are going to actually convert better and build trust because I'm not just regurgitating the same twenty things that Google already knows about that topic.
Arvid:That's awesome. I love this. This is this is really, really human. Let me just say that. Right?
Arvid:Like, there's there's something to this approach that never loses the actual relationship between you and the reader. Like, you may use whatever tools. It's like writing in pen or writing, like, with a quill. Right? That's still a tool.
Arvid:Like, the thoughts come from your mind and they make it onto the paper. AI is just another a more established and maybe more powerful pen, but it is just that. Right? It's just a tool to transmit thoughts from one medium to the other. I think if people would understand this, the Internet would be a less less trashy place.
Arvid:That would be great. Right? Like, I've seen so many programmatic SEO people that just churn out automated content to be able to rank, and then they rank, and the volume of this just drowns out voices of people that actually have something to say. Like, what do you think about programmatic SEO? Like, things that are com completely automatically generated.
Arvid:I have a feeling where this might go, but I wanna hear it from you.
Jessica:I think programmatic SEO can work in very specific use cases. So if you have a SaaS that is horizontal in nature and you wanna create the landing pages to appeal to 100, 200, 300, 400, 500 different verticals where your SaaS applies. I think you can maybe create 10 of those pages or 20 of those pages yourself and then use programmatic SEO to do the rest. That makes a ton of sense, Assuming you've kind of done the hard work of doing customer research, putting that into, like, what are your value props and making sure your value props align to those main verticals that you really are going after. And then using programmatic SEO to fill in all the rest with your research makes a ton of sense.
Jessica:Where it makes a lot less sense and what I call what I'm trying to call it, the McDonald's of content marketing is when you try to use AI to suddenly, you know, be like, hey. There's there's a famous example of this about 3 months ago where someone's like, I'm just gonna go on Ahrefs or I'm gonna go on Semrush, and I'm gonna go find my competitor. And I think it might have been like an Excel site. I forget what the name of it is. I'm not it's probably not even worth mentioning it.
Jessica:But somebody went in there and, like, I'm just gonna copy every single one of these pages, and I'm gonna write it all with AI. And they started to brag about how much traffic they were getting. Lo and behold, as you would expect, Google figured that out, and suddenly their site went from, you know, a 10 x traffic increase to now 5 times less than before they started all the a's. I asked that. So I think in certain use cases, programmatic SEO makes sense, but if we're just trying to create thousands 100 or thousands of articles each month, all mostly through AI and little to no editing, you're in for a bad time.
Arvid:Yeah. I I really appreciate this. There's still a creative spark. There's still a human that does the work, and AI might amplify it. Right?
Arvid:Like, that's what you said with the verticals. You still have to write 10 of these. You still have to understand 10 different parts of your audience, and the AI then infers from your understanding what else to do. That still makes you do the work, and I want that to happen. I want people to still be able to be able to do the work.
Arvid:That is great. That that immediately makes sense to me. And, I'm, like, trick trying to trick Google or trying to trick people for that matter is just does is not good business. Right? It's not a long term perspective.
Arvid:It's not a it's not a strategy. It's a tactic. Right? If at all. So I I I wanna talk about that, like, strategy in in general, but thank you for sharing this, this distinction.
Arvid:I think that just made clear to me that programmatic SEO is not evil. It's just, you know, badly applied in many ways. I I I think that distinction to any founder should be should be an interesting distinction to make. Because if it's useful, use it. But if it's cheating, don't.
Arvid:And it'll it'll come back to bite you. Strategy. I I wanna dive into this because you you earlier said something very interesting when you were talking about the the fractional nature of the the head of marketing role and how this should only ever really be considered after you found product market fit. And I can imagine there is a lot of good there are a lot of good frameworks to strategize after that point, but most people listening to this probably are not yet at that point. So I would like to look into finding a good marketing strategy for people who are still pivoting around trying to find, you know, the elusive product market fit or product founder fit or founder market fit, whatever you may wanna call it.
Arvid:Right? The the thing where you're not sure what you're doing or if the thing you're doing is right, that you have signals, some from the market, but maybe not enough to say we're we're fully there. Right? It's not 7 out of 20 underwater basket weavers just yet. So what would be a good approach?
Arvid:Like, do you have a couple of ideas that can help people find a a strategy that is not just tactics along that path?
Jessica:This is almost too probably simplistic, but I would just say in general, talk to your customers and get on a lot of sales calls. I feel like one of the biggest hurdles to kinda get over and where you will learn more about this and be able to build out a strategy is don't try to outsource your support or your sales too early. And I could probably make the case as someone who is way more comfortable marketing than I am selling, and I get it. Like, I mean, hey. Like, you know, if you're technical or you're a marketer or anything other than a natural salesperson, your natural tendency is to be like, okay.
Jessica:I wanna outsource sales. And, hey. I maybe you wanna outsource customer support, but if you're building something from the ground up, like, that time you are talking to customers and hearing their use cases, hearing their pain points, hearing their goals, that all should inform your marketing strategy down the line, and you'll speed up that process so much faster if you're talking to even just 5 prospects or 5 customers a week. Amplify that over a month, that's 20 people. Like, at that point in time, like, you're gonna get some insights, and then, yeah, there are frameworks you can use if you've never done an interview before.
Jessica:Like, my background and what I went to school for was journalism. Very quickly realized outside, like, you know, a year into it that I'm like, I'm not sure I wanna be in a newsroom. So I kinda fell into marketing, but I started somewhat good at it and stuck with it. So I have a little bit of a background when it comes to, like, knowing how to interview. But if you don't, there are so many great frameworks for it.
Jessica:So, like, following something like the jobs to be done framework is freaking amazing, and, like, a really, really practical version of that, is I'm blanking in the name, but the book from Michelle Hansen
Arvid:Mhmm. Deploy Empathy. Right?
Jessica:Empathy. Yeah. That's a really, really practical version where it's like if you've never ever talked to or interviewed a customer or interviewed a prospect before, following a framework like that is really, really helpful. Do that 20 times. I can guarantee you'll learn enough from that to be able to build out the building blocks of a marketing strategy, and then just start experimenting.
Jessica:The truth about marketing is it's really is when you're brand new or building out a brand new product, a lot of it is to think about it in terms of experiments. Another area where you can go wrong besides just not talking to customers is trying to run experiments too fast and trying to do too many too many fast. If you're just a founder, trying to be on 10 different marketing channels at once is a recipe for, best case scenario, just burning out. Worst case scenario, running out of money or just having nothing work. You wanna, like, run an experiment, and you wanna make sure it's running for at least 3 months.
Jessica:If you have no signal after 3 months, then burn it to the ground unless you just have no idea what you're doing. But if, yeah, you're trying to run 3 or 4 or 5 or 10 experiments at once, you're not gonna do any of them as well. But, like, yeah, just, like, take a hunch based off of when you're talking to customers, figuring out, okay, where are they hanging out? What you know, how do they hear about solutions like yours? Start there.
Jessica:Learn that platform well enough to just be able to start running an experiment. Once you have it kind of going on, once you have good signals and starting to work, then start to outsource it to either, you know, someone in house, like an in house employee, a freelancer, person like myself, an agency. Yeah. But you really wanna make sure that, like, you know, you're running those bets, but you're giving them enough time to actually work.
Arvid:Mhmm.
Jessica:Did that answer your question?
Arvid:Yeah. I think so. I I'm always thinking about if you wanna out outsource anything, you have to know what it is. Like, you have to actually know what you're gonna be outsourcing. Right?
Arvid:If you can just say, make me money, right, that's not gonna happen. Right? So, yeah, that this is great. I I, first off, I think deploy empathy is one of the few books where I actually have a signed copy at home. So it's it's a book that I really, really value and, have read as well and actually used in my most recent efforts for PodScan as well.
Arvid:Like, I've been really, really into customer conversation. I just recently had one with a customer that just booked a call with me from a link that I sent out in my regular trans what I call transactional emails that I have. So just, you know, like, the things that tell you, hey. You're on the last day of your trial or whatever, or you have this kind of thing happening. And they they they booked a call with me, had the most wonderful conversation with my ideal customer persona about their issues, what they were trying to accomplish, you know, the jobs to be done thing, and, where this fits into the larger workflow that they're in.
Arvid:That was incredibly helpful. Like, I went away from this with a full page scribbled notes, and I could immediately pivot certain functions of my product to towards that particular market much better. I could scrap a couple of things that I thought were important but were not because all of a sudden I knew, okay, this is completely irrelevant to the actual job to be done, and I could add a few things that I thought they may or may not be relevant to the this is highly important to these people list. It was so useful because I could I could finally ask them, so what do you use this for? Like, what does your boss want you to deliver?
Arvid:And then they told me, like, 4 things that I never thought about, but, obviously, that is their job. So those conversations are worth their, you know, converted Zoom cost and gold. It was really, really good. So thank you for bringing attention to this part of the process. I think that is one of the most high impact things you can do, and then take that and turn it into a strategy.
Arvid:I love that. That's a really good approach.
Jessica:Absolutely. Like, I cannot stress enough just, like, talking to your customers is the most important thing and the highest value activity, particularly on. But even if you have some level of scale and product market fit, find ways to get in front of customers any way you possibly can because you're gonna learn a ton, as I do every single time. And then the other thing I would actually mention that's a little bit probably a little bit less obvious, but I feel like I've learned the most from books about psychology and books about sales and books about negotiation. Because you can learn a lot of things about how to run an interview, how to kinda dive into what really motivates someone by those kinds of books, oftentimes more than, quote, unquote, business books or marketing books.
Arvid:Have you have you ever had trouble with this? Because I I felt, like, in the calls that I'm in, I always I don't wanna push people. I I don't wanna push them into buying. I don't wanna push them into giving up their secrets. Like, do you struggle with this too?
Arvid:And and if so, do you overcome it? Like, other than just doing more and more of this? Like, do you have any any approach to finding value in, you know, giving a little bit of resistance or in pushing a little bit?
Jessica:Absolutely. I struggle with this all the time, because I don't wanna be like you know, I wanna have a conversation like this, where it's a conversation and not an interrogation, but I also know that, like, sometimes, like, the best insights, and I have to always have to remind myself of this, often come when I'm, like when there's a little bit of an awkward silence and, like, when I start to embrace it. Like, when I do, like, for example, a case study interview, and when I'm, like, interviewing, you know, somebody for a case study, like one of my client's customers for a case study, oftentimes, I'll get the best insights. So when I'm like I ask my question, then I put myself on mute strategically, and I'll just kind of wait for 5 to 10 seconds.
Arvid:Nice.
Jessica:And you'll get really, really good answers doing that
Arvid:Oh, that's funny.
Jessica:By just wanting to, like, at least for myself, embrace that awkward pause.
Arvid:Yeah. Odd. It's I think that's a great psychology little trick there. Right? Where you where people cannot handle awkward silences, and then they just actually give you the the thing you want.
Arvid:If that feels slightly manipulative, but I think in a good way because it's information that is already I mean, first off, it's already if it's a question about their challenges, it's just real. It is their challenge. Right? They might not wanna admit that they have trouble, but they have it, and you can help them. Right?
Arvid:It's just an unearth a lot of necessary information. I love that. I think that's the kind of manipulation that I have to actively convince myself to be a good thing because it is. It's kinda you know, it feels like you're pulling strings that you shouldn't be. But I I think a lot of introverts, like, I I would assume both of us, we are, you know, somewhat introverted in many different ways.
Arvid:A lot of indie hackers from a technical background certainly are. Like, we struggle with these interviews because we we don't wanna, you know, be confrontational. We don't wanna talk to people that don't wanna talk to us, that don't wanna give up their secrets. But in the end, the fact that you can even land an interview with a customer means that they have something they want from you. Right?
Arvid:And if you can pull it out from them what they need, then you can actually deliver it. That's kinda my my self talk that I have to allow myself to ask these questions and even ask them, so do you wanna buy this? Right? That is so it's such a hard question for me to ask because it's like, I I don't wanna hear the no. But the no is a good thing because if they say the no, then I understand what they actually need and they can tell me.
Arvid:So, you know, like, that's that's one of the tricks that I use to convince myself. I do you have any more? Like, do you have any more kind of self talk that helps you with this?
Jessica:Yeah. Absolutely. I can definitely relate to all of that as an as another introvert. Like, totally, totally get it. I would say 2 things that help.
Jessica:1, that I probably should've even processed at the beginning. Don't ask the hardest question upfront. Give them a couple of questions that make them like, that they're really comfortable with. So I always like to ask, be like, so tell me a little bit about, like, you know, what does your day to day look like? Or, you know, do something like, a, how often the answer will grant something really interesting, and there kind of informs follow-up questions.
Jessica:But, b, it gets them really comfortable so that when I ask a question that might be a little bit more difficult, or something that, like, feels a little bit or maybe difficult is the wrong word. Feels a little bit more awkward for me to ask. We already have about 10 minutes or 15 minutes of report, so it feels a little bit more natural.
Arvid:And
Jessica:then the second thing is is I'm making the biggest fan and probably do this too much of, like, being consultative being like a consultant as opposed to a salesperson. So, like, I wanna be like if I'm on a sales call or even if and especially anything where it comes to, like, jobs to be done, I wanna be the adviser or the consultant. I don't wanna be the salesperson. So, like, I often will, like, stray away from being like, the question is, like, do you wanna buy this? And I put it in other ways where it's like it still gives me the insights I wanna hear, but I'm much more helping somebody get to that point themselves because you want them to feel like they're ready to buy instead of you being that pushy salesperson.
Jessica:And I know that was probably one of my biggest mistakes when I first went up into business on my own where I'm like, I thought I had to be the pushy salesperson and, surprise, surprise, didn't have much success on sales calls. But when I stopped and started to just advise being the consultant, adviser, and helper, it became a lot easier.
Arvid:Yeah. That's a great reframe. I love this because that's also how I do that. I I just wanna help people. Like, that's what general my my inclination is to be supportive and to give them the tools that they need to move themselves.
Arvid:So if I can do this the way I'm I'm generally doing it anyway, because I'm also a consultant. Right? I consult a lot of people. If if though if those the same methods, the same frameworks work, then I just embrace it for my own interviews. You know, you're already helping me a lot.
Arvid:I hope that people listening to this get something out of this as well because this is really, really useful. I I love this. That's really nice. Thank you for sharing all these insights. I think it's it's one of the scariest thing in business, particularly if you build a software business or anything in the virtual world, is to talk to real people.
Arvid:Like, I don't know what it is, but they're scary. Right? It's not ones and zeros. It's complicated. And and I think giving people the tools, the mental tools.
Arvid:And you mentioned burnout earlier too, so that's an interesting thing. Like, the the mental health tools even to stay in business. That, that is a good thing. You you you talk about this in on your website too. You have the in the remote work tribe, you have, like, a a little section that also talks about burnouts, that also talks about mental health.
Arvid:Is that, is that a topic that that is important to you? Like, in in the the whole context of, you know, both remote work, people being isolated at home, and people just solopreneur their way through life, trying to figure out everything by themselves. Like, what what moves you to talk about this topic?
Jessica:Yeah. I think it's a topic that, especially before 2020, wasn't talked about enough. And I even think today it is not talked about enough. And when I talk about it in the remote work tribe, I talk about it more from the level of making sure that your team isn't burning out. Because if one person burns out on the team, it trickles down.
Jessica:And even if nobody else burns out, like, it affects everybody else. So, like, as a leader showing up, it's in your best interest to make sure every nobody is completely burnt out because that actually has a ripple effect across the entire team. And then, also, just, like, from my own experiences as an employee, having burned out about 7 years ago, no. And, again, like, I was able to kind of recover, just a little bit of therapy and, like, feel a little bit more strategic about making sure I was taking vacations because I loved what I was doing at the time, still loved what I was doing even after being burnt out. But, like, knowing that, like, there weren't great resources back then, I wanted to help more people.
Jessica:And I also just knew just from pretty much anyone who is an entrepreneur for the most part, anyone who's a remote worker has literally at least had some thoughts of being like, am I burning out? Even if they don't even wanna admit themselves. So, like, being a little bit more open in talking about that side of things, particularly as a leader, if you have even just one other person on your team, like, that stuff's important.
Arvid:Oh, man. It's it is it is probably one of the most important things you could do in a business is to make sure your people don't, like, hate their job or hate themselves for hating that job. There's so many layers to this. Like, to to me, burning out has always been a very internal thing. Like, all mental health is internal, obviously, and and something you kinda keep to yourself because you don't wanna show weakness or whatever.
Arvid:So how do you make sure that you actually track this? Because it is it's it's often hidden. Right? Like, mental health problems are often kinda suppressed and never make it to the surface. How do you how do you make sure that your team is on the right track?
Jessica:It's hard because it's people. Like, everything in when it comes to an interview of leadership and managing a team, it's all about, and, like, there's a lot of people who are way more experienced to this than I. I've never managed a team of more than, like, a half dozen people. So, like, I don't necessarily know who like, I'm not gonna give advice for someone where it's like, if you are a department lead and you have a team of 10 or 20 people, my advice probably that I'm not sure is not gonna be helpful. But I would just say in general, like, making sure that you're having one to ones on a regular basis and getting to know the person as a person and not just a cog in the machine.
Jessica:Because and, again, like, don't expect somebody in particularly if you have a global team like many of us do, like, it's gonna be different based off of the individual, based on their culture, based on their background of how much they're gonna be willing to share. But, like, if you've worked with someone for a year or 2 years or 3 years, you're gonna start to and you really take the time to actually understand and get to know them and build a relationship with them as a person and not just a cog in the machine. You'll start to be able to intuitively figure out. It's like, oh, you seem a little off this week or whatever, and they'll probably start to bring it up by being a little more comfortable and then just encouraging people to, like, take breaks from work. Like, if you have a culture where suddenly everything's on fire and you require people to work 50 or 60 hours every single week for months on end, yeah, your team's probably gonna burn out, and they might not necessarily be comfortable telling you that.
Jessica:However, if you have a culture where, like, you maybe have worked really hard for a month and you'd be like, hey. You did a great job, during all this, make sure, like, why don't you you haven't taken a vacation in, you know, 6 weeks in 6 months. Go take a week off. That's right. Being a good leader or whatever and just kind of encouraging that and also just being able to take ends from in those 1 on ones as you get to know somebody when things might be a little bit off.
Arvid:I I think the the one on ones and building the relationship, that's at the core here. Right? That's like you you have to actually have a relationship with your employees. They're not just email addresses. They're not just, like, Slack names.
Arvid:They're people. You have to really understand them. And I think you're in a in a globally connected world as well. Right now, you've and you mentioned this very eloquently. Like, cultures deal with these things differently.
Arvid:I I read this book a while ago called The Culture Map. That was extremely helpful in just understanding that some cultures talk about stress in a way that it is completely irritating to somebody from a different culture or, you know, stress or success or needs or requirements or interpersonal challenges. Like, people talk about these things or even notice these things completely differently depending what culture and what part of the world they're from. I think that's a I think the culture map should be required reading for everybody trying to build a global business. I I definitely highly recommend that book because it it opened up my eyes to, like, how I talk to people.
Arvid:And if you wanna build a relationship with them, you should know what they expect from you or what they expect a conversation about a a topic that is kinda problematic to look like even. Right? So that's that's pretty cool. Do you have a, like, a globally distributed team, at the moment right now? Like, is it is it quite global?
Jessica:First of all, I really wanna make the culture map. I've heard really good things. I have not actually read that book yet. And, yes, like I said before, I'm a solopreneur for a really small team, but, like, my team is spread out between Eastern Europe, and the US and Canada at the moment, but I've hired before and worked quite closely with people in the Philippines and and other parts of Southeast Asia. And, like, this is the where I'm gonna give the example, which is in, like and I've done a lot of traveling in Asia.
Jessica:Love places like south love places like Thailand and Vietnam. But, like, in Asia in particular, it's like a really, like, high context Mhmm. Culture.
Arvid:Yes.
Jessica:So, like and it's always appropriate. And for the most part, like, people default to the group instead of individualism, which is very different than America and in Canada. So it often means that you'll get some, like so, like, I am gonna tell the story that I had where I had a VA in the Philippines for a while, and they literally just disappeared one time. Like, just completely disappeared and apparently didn't realize at the time. It's actually really common, and that's because they are like, this person kind of internalized from within their own culture of not being very confrontational, of not being of just being very, very, very conflict averse, so, like, instead of saying, like, I quit, they just disappear.
Jessica:Again, that's an extreme example, and that was like about 3 years ago, but like, it kinda opened my eyes to be, okay, like, there's actually nuances about the fact that like, oftentimes, particularly, if you have somebody that you're working with in, like, the Philippines I'm just gonna give that example. Like, you really need to pay attention any way you can to, like, the nonverbal cues and the body language because it was in my experience that will tell you way, way, way more than what they're actually saying.
Arvid:That that is that is wonderful. I I love this because I literally, my situation is not obviously, I don't have this problem, but I have help from people in the Philippines as well. And communication I'm trying to be very careful and very clear in how it communicates to be able to jump the over this context barrier because you I don't I don't think you need to read the culture map. You just kinda mirrored back the most of the contents of this book, Like, the high context, low context culture difference. That is one of the part like, the the main parts of this book to explain this difference, which for some people doesn't even exist.
Arvid:But for somebody coming from Europe, like, there's way less, for me at least, there's way less context here in in Canada, but way more context in in Southeast Asia. So it's it's nice to kinda know the gradients, the the whole, the whole spectrum of this kind of communication.
Jessica:Also, in as an American, there's even just, like, different nuances when it comes to where you are in the country and, like, what your background is. So, like, I grew up kind of in the South, and, and there's a lot of people that, like, how you communicate with somebody in southern Georgia is going to be very, very different than how you're communicating with someone in New York City who was raised in New York City or in San Francisco. So, like, there's just nuances even just from, like, locations within your same country.
Arvid:Yeah. Man, it it it people are just way too complicated. Sometimes I just feel like, oh, man, communication. This is always kinda hard, but it's absolutely worth it. And I I think we we went through several different ways of communicating with people today.
Arvid:Like, we talked about writing. We talked about actually talking to them. And now we're talking to talking about it and and to our employees. Think we covered a lot of communication in this little chat we had here. Is I'm I'm really, really happy that you invited me into your your approach to all of these things.
Arvid:That is extremely helpful. I think I learned a lot today, and I bet people listening to this want to learn more. So if people wanna find out more about you and the things that you do, the products that you have, the businesses that you run, where would you like them to go?
Jessica:Absolutely. So, like, the easiest way to find me, if it's on social media, would just be to follow me on LinkedIn or on Twitter or on threads. I believe I'm the same exact username in all of them, just Jessica and Malik on LinkedIn, on Twitter or Twitter x I'm still gonna call it Twitter.
Arvid:It's never gonna be us.
Jessica:And threads. And then if you wanna follow me a little bit closer, you can go to theremoteworktribe.com, or newsletter dot theremoteworktribe.com, and we release episodes and new newsletters about 1 to 2 times every single month.
Arvid:Yeah. And you have those amazing there as well. Let's talk about that too. Right? Like that, if if people wanna learn more about remote work, people who work in this, people who are experts in this field, they get to enjoy that podcast as well.
Arvid:I have it in my podcast list, just telling you, because I think it's cool. And as much as I'm trying to stay a solopreneur, I know that over time, my businesses will turn into remote businesses. Right? Remote SaaS, b to b SaaS businesses. So, obviously, I wanna follow you and your knowledge in that field, so that's why you're in my podcast player.
Arvid:Thank you so much for sharing all of this today. That was extremely insightful. Thanks again for an amazing tour of how to communicate.
Jessica:And thank you for having me.
Arvid:And that's it for today. I will now briefly thank my sponsor, acquire.com. Imagine this, you're a founder who's built a really solid SaaS product. You acquired all those customers, and everything is generating really consistent monthly recurring revenue. That's the dream of every SaaS founder.
Arvid:Right? Problem is you're not growing. For whatever reason, maybe it's lack of skill or lack of focus or applying lack of interest. You don't know. You just feel stuck in your business with your business.
Arvid:What should you do? Well, the story that I would like to hear is that you buckled down, you reignited the fire and you started working on the business, not just in the business. And all those things you did, like audience building and marketing and sales and outreach, They really helped you to go down this road, 6 months down the road, making all that money. You tripled your revenue and you have this hyper successful business. That is the dream.
Arvid:The reality unfortunately is not as simple as this. And the situation that you might find yourself in is looking different for every single founder who's facing this crossroad. This problem is common, but it looks different every time. But what doesn't look different every time is the story that here just ends up being one of inaction and stagnation. Because the business becomes less and less valuable over time and then eventually completely worthless if you don't do anything.
Arvid:So if you find yourself here already at this point, or you think your story is likely headed down a similar road, I would consider a third option, and that is selling a business on inquiredot com. Because you capitalizing on the value of your time today is a pretty smart move. It's certainly better than not doing anything. Acquire.com is free to list. They've helped hundreds of founders already.
Arvid:Just go check it out at try. Acquire.com/arvid, it's me, and see for yourself if this is the right option for you, your business at this time. You might just wanna wait a bit and see if it works out half a year from now or a year from now. Just check it out. It's always good to be in the know.
Arvid:Thank you for listening to the Bootstrap founder today. I really appreciate that. You can find me on Twitter at avidkar, a r v e r I k a h l. You find my books and my Twitter course tattoo. If you wanna support me and the show, please subscribe to my YouTube channel, get the podcast in your podcast player of choice, whatever that might be.
Arvid:Do let me know. It would be interesting to see. And leave a rating and review by going to rate this podcast.com/founder. It really makes a big difference if you show up there because then this podcast shows up in other people's feeds. And that's I think where we all would like it to be.
Arvid:Just helping other people learn and see and understand new things. Any of this will help the show. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful day and bye bye.
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