I Made An Album That Teaches You Marketing [Season 1 Recap]

Yo, listen up, I got a story to tell. Wait. They're selling me solutions. That's just one of the...

The credit burn shows you the way. I made 45 marketing songs, one for every guest in the first season of my gross podcast. Don't let great get in the way of good. Who's really odd?

Who's really... over 12 different genres designed to get stuck in your head so you can't forget the frameworks. There's so much I could say about the difference between lining up facts and telling a story that grabs the attention of someone's heart and mind and dollars. Today I'm playing you the 11 most valuable lessons.

I spent over a month making them and they're all available on YouTube Music and Spotify and I guarantee that these will get stuck in your head. Let's go! Lydia Davey taught me why facts inform but stories persuade. So this is a really simple example but it's one I loved.

Here are two facts. The queen died, the king died, the queen died, the king died of a broken heart. And it goes from something that's kind of neutral that you don't really care about to something that you have some curiosity about. Whether you're writing ads or emails, look for ways to turn facts into stories.

Joe Wilkinson showed me how annual billing can hide product problems, but monthly billing actually uncovers the true retention. If you are just starting out and you want to do something a little crazy, but you want to actually build the best product, charge monthly only. That means users can leave whenever they want. and if they can leave whenever they want, everybody's going to be thinking about how can we get this customer to stick around.

So don't let annual plans trick you into thinking you have product market fit Use monthly plans to get faster feedback on your actual product stickiness Ryan Delk showed me why customer surveys sometimes lie but user behavior never does And I think in retrospect, that was a huge mistake because we could have done even more if we had raised our pricing and made more money and could have hired more people and not raised much capital and all those things. How would you manage the risk of if you raise your prices, there was a mass exodus?

Pricing is hard because it's like stated versus revealed preferences. no one is ever going to tell you, oh yeah, you should definitely raise your prices. Surveys still have a place, but prioritize getting real user behavior of how people respond to your marketing. Pete Sina showed me how to get to the emotional core of any decision.

You go to the depths of why, you often end up with the primal things that drive humans, right? Which is fear, greed, love. It almost always comes down to that. Pete talks about that grandmother's clock at five, taking it apart to see what makes it tick aloud.

That curiosity becomes your competitive edge when everyone's content to walk along the ledge. So when you're interviewing customers or even thinking things through on your own, use why to get to the true root cause. Steven Stouffer taught me the most dangerous phrase in startups. Just one more tweak.

Lead or perfection? Perfection is something that my team has always aimed for, but I always tell them don't let great get in the way of good because it will keep you from innovating and moving quickly. Don't let great get in the way of good. Ship it now like you know you should.

Because perfect is a moving target and someday never comes. Better to launch with something solid than chase the setting sun. So don't wait for perfect. Look for ways to iterate rapidly and move fast.

Sundar Swaminathan reminded me to resist shiny object syndrome. Throughout my entire career at Uber for the five years I was there, SQL and Google Sheets were the only two tools I used. Investment bankers, by the way, who are making multi-billion dollar mergers and acquisition deals are just using Excel. So you got to get over this idea that the tool is going to be the one that saves you.

If it works for companies like Uber it can work for you too So don let yourself be held back by the products you don have but use the products you do have to their fullest And we're halfway through, so if you're enjoying these lessons from season one, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss out on future conversations. Alexei Kamisarouk taught me that counterintuitively, sometimes adding friction can increase the number of purchase conversions. It is sometimes okay to add friction, so long as you are going to use that to improve intent.

The masterclass, at least when I was there, you couldn't buy it for less than $180 a year, right? Oftentimes, you'll show up because you'll thought, oh, there's an Aaron Sorkin screenwriting class. Love the West Wing. Let me go take the screenwriting class.

And you get there, you're like, 180 bucks. Like, yo, I don't know if I like that. But if, as part of the onboarding quiz, we tell you, hey, by the way, if you like Aaron Sorkin, we also have neil gaiman who's got a cool writing class and oh what are you saying you're sports well you know we have serena william we have steph curry and by the time you're checking out you're like okay actually like it's 180 bucks but i'm gonna watch at least like five of these classes if you're gonna charge more than 100 for a digital product customers don't know who you are until they've like landed on your website or even if they've only heard of you a little bit it really makes sense to like help them get more motivated building intent through elaboration frictions paradox frictions game what slows you down builds up your claim the quiz that tests before you buy makes you invested one to one removing friction is generally a good thing but think about where in your buy flow could you improve conversion by maybe adding some qualifying questions Sherry Jang showed me why spreading yourself too thin can kill growth.

like 50 views on 10 platforms is better to have like 500 000 5 million views on one platform Go on and make it count, yeah. Quality over quantity. So if you're failing at five different marketing channels, pick one and really just focus there for the next three months Andrew Littlefield taught me that much like baseball content marketing is a numbers game If you successful one third of the times you at the plate you're going to be in the Hall of Fame, right? You just need to get up there and take lots of swings.

Take your at-bats, take your shots Like the legends, like the greats If you strike out, that's okay Instead of trying to make a single award-winning ad, make a hundred and then see which of those resonate with your customers. Kevin Hsu showed me that you can't force customers to make new habits. What you can do is adapt your product to their existing habits. The main motivation for keeping it mobile only for so long was because I wanted it to be the bathroom.

I wanted people to create this habit of opening after hour on a break, in between meetings, on your daily commute, in the morning. Instead of fighting to create new behaviors, think about what existing behaviors can you join. Adam Miller taught me why network effects are the only moat that AI cannot destroy. AI is going to compete away a lot of advantages.

The one advantage it will most definitely not compete away is network effects. That's why marketplaces have this really unnatural advantage and this new AI-driven paradigm. When one person joins the marketplace, the value grows for every face. More riders means more drivers too.

More value flowing through and through. How can you change your product so that each new customer makes a product better for everyone else? Once you uncover that, you have network effect. All 45 songs, these 11 lessons, plus another 34 songs are available on YouTube Music, Spotify, Apple Music, or wherever you listen.

Give yourself an MBA by listening while you work. of my story, not the shoes upon my feet.