Forcing Functions
Craig and Andy begin by talking about the weather and what’s been happening during the past week. Craig says he’s finally feeling recovered from traveling, and Andy discusses the illnesses his 4-year-old has been dealing with for the past few weeks. He says that this has helped him focus on only what’s most important for him to do. He says he’s finally coming around to the idea that his value isn’t based on how many hours he spends at the computer working and that growth actually accelerated in October.
Craig and Andy discuss delegation and whether anything has changed for Andy on that front. He says it’s not so much that his delegation strategy has changed, as it is that he’s more accepting of the idea of delegating and focusing on several important things instead of trying to do everything. He says that he needs forcing functions rather than self-imposed ones. Craig points out that nobody wants to do a bad job; what happens is that sometimes people don’t know what “good” is.
Craig and Andy go into a discussion about delegating marketing. Andy says he thinks they’ve built about as close to a lead-generation marketing machine as they can get. It doesn’t run itself but runs well with clearly defined processes that they’ve got down. He says that he does pat himself on the back for his email copywriting, but it takes so much time, and he really needs to take a step back. Craig brings up that they’re looking at customer activation and trial-to-paid conversion right now. Andy talks about focusing on the customers who are a good fit, and Craig talks about the different paths that customers go down. Craig and Andy discuss which percentage of customers bring the most revenue and how to think about how that breaks down as well as what kind of scale they should be thinking about.