Hey, Rob, welcome back. We've got something special
today. Yes, we do.
We will see. I'm sure it will go well for
because we have guests, but I'm sure you and I will be a train
wreck because we've never had. Guests before.
Yes, we typically are. Yeah.
Why don't you give us a little bit of context and then I can
introduce our guests and yeah, we can Start learning about
their pool journey. Yeah, cool.
Yeah, so this week we're doing something special, which is the
Rock Salt team reached out with a case study on their
transformation from kind of push to pull.
And it's like, wow, this is this is cool.
This should way better than what I was going to write about
anyway. So I was like, all right, let's
just let's do it. And so we wrote a wrote a post
on it and going to going to chat about it here.
Yeah, and we get requests all the time for like real life.
What is what it what's the experience of founders like?
Can we do more case studies like how do we what what actually
happens when founders and when companies are implementing the
pool methodology and their sales process, especially early on.
And so I think this is awesome because we're going to get a
chance to see like in rocks waltz case, what changed?
How did it evolve? What what were they tactically
doing on a day-to-day? Are are there other things that
Rob that you would like? Who is this for and who is, you
know, what are some of the things that we might cover?
Yeah, I think and and the Rock Salt team can correct me, but I
think like what this story shows is some extremely competent and
effective people go at an early stage startup but had traction
not not at 0 early stage startup that's growing, that's doing
well. How pull thinking can actually
transform and help you grow way faster and like help make the
business a lot more more intuitive, have customers RIP
the product out of your hands and, and all those good things.
And so I think this will be helpful.
If you're at 0, obviously this this will be interesting because
you probably have an idea and are trying to find pull around
it. But if you're also growing and
just want to go vertical, I think this story will be really
cool too. Yeah, totally agree.
And we're going to we're going to hit choosing your ICP, we're
going to hit messaging, we're going to hit discovery, we're
going to hit maybe a little bit of unfolding like there's a
there's a bunch in here that excited to dig into.
Well, with with maybe it's no further ado.
Arjun and Anita were a brother and sister here, Arjun Morthy
and Anita Morthy, who are honestly that would terrify me.
I I could not Co found the business.
I'd love my siblings. I'm pretty sure it would break
my family like trying to start a business with with one of them.
But let me read a little bit of y'all's background and then I
will pitch it to you to give us some of the context on Rock
Salt. This is from Rob's Substack post
for for this week, which is titled Rock Salt's Journey from
Push to Pull. We'll put the link in the show
notes. The Co founders.
I'm reading from Rob's words. The Co founders, Arjun and Anita
are brother and sister power duo.
Both are brilliant and accomplished Waterloo computer
engineers, former consultants and MBA with decades of
experience in fast growing tech companies.
Arjen is a Graduate School of Business at Stanford alum and
was VP of Business Development and Channel Sales at HubSpot in
its early years and is a multi time founder with a previous
startup exit to Yahoo. Anita is a Sloan MBA and long
time marketing leader across a bunch of tech companies with a
computer engineering background. All right, I'm not going to try
to describe your company. Can you do that for us?
Sure. I'll take a shot at it.
First of all, thank you very much Rob and Robert for having
us on. Then hearing those BIOS, it
always, it's a little bit unnerving, I think, because it
seems like, OK, some of those things sound cool, but boy, if
you knew the story behind so much of it, you'd be like,
actually it wasn't that impressive.
By the way, you got very forgetting Lucky.
So it's anyways, it's whatever, it's ACV.
It's ACV. But if anyone's listening, it's
not as glamorous as that might sound.
And by the way, the part about working with my sister, just
because you brought that up, Robert, I think it's
interesting, Anita. And I've always been super
close. Like she's been my big sister
always. She is my big sister and she's
six years older. And so I think that each gap
plus the fact that girls are always smarter than boys, as we
all know. So then it was just like it was
much easier to just do whatever she said and then she would
believe me a little bit if I didn't so that I just did what
she said going up. And I don't know, we've always
worked really well together. It's also really good because
with siblings you can argue and then like two months later, you
just get back to it like nothing ever happened.
Because I mean, obviously we're trying to solve for the company.
It's not like we're trying to boost each other's, you know,
like break each other down because of our egos.
So weirdly, I think for us, it works much better.
If anything, I'd be terrified of doing this with my spouse.
Good Lord, that would break up the household.
But I think the sibling is kind of, you know, we go off to
separate houses at the end of the day.
I think that's probably a good thing anyways.
OK, so about rock salt. Yeah, we're a start up at the
Bay Area. We help CEOs and executives
raise their visibility in their industry.
Typically this is in places where their buyers hang out,
LinkedIn, Reddit, and increasingly AI search results
because those sites, LinkedIn and Reddit.
So we help these CEOs and executives find relevant
conversations that their buyers are already reading and having.
Show them how to be there, how to guide the industry's thoughts
with or their the industry's viewpoints by sharing their own
thoughts regularly. Just being out there, being more
visible, being more helpful. And the thesis behind this, in
case you're wondering, is that these days a lot of buyers, they
just don't trust most things that comes out of companies.
They're like, yeah, it's all a little too polished, a little
too AI. What they do seem to trust a lot
now are people and increasingly the people that really have deep
expertise or experience in a subject area.
So what we're saying to most B2B companies is hey, your best
marketing asset is probably your founder and your executives.
Get them out there. Get make it easy for them to get
out there. We know it's they're very busy.
And so that's really what Rock Sol was.
We said we'll make it super easy for you to get these amazing
founders and executives and subject matter experts out there
because that's who your buyers will trust the most.
So that's it in a nutshell. How do I do any?
You did very good, Arjun. Can I ask you a question because
you both have like, I feel like the perfect background.
Each of you has like the perfect background to come together and
build this company. Could you talk maybe about your
path to this thesis? I know Arjun, you're at HubSpot
early. You saw inbound Anita, you've
you are marketer, you are marketing, you are all of that
stuff. So I don't know, maybe talk to
me about like how this thesis came to be?
Yeah, I know that's a really good question and actually it it
will. I think it's helpful to have
that context. So basically I have been a user
like I'm a marketer and you know, in every company that I
worked with, worked in marketing was all about generating
awareness, trust and credibility at one level.
And then obviously sales enablement and helping sales
right on the first part of it, awareness and trust and
credibility. The the thing that I found was
the best way to build that is when I put the people who are
most credible and knowledgeable in conferences, on webinars, in
front of prospects, in a customer board meeting,
etcetera. There was instant trust and
credibility because you're speaking about the problem space
which you have in common with the customer rather than
speaking about the product that a salesperson might be trying to
pitch or a marketing person trying to push the company line
without really going deep into details.
So the subject matter experts I have always seen as the best way
for US marketing to help build credibility in the space, right.
So I have this in the back of my mind, but and when I saw the
inbound playbook of create great content, optimize it for SEO,
put it in Google, and you will have traffic start to
disintegrate because you can now use AI to pump out tons of
content. So there's an explosion of
content. And second, there aren't that
many people going to Google to search.
So I was like, Oh my God, like this huge part of marketing's
playbook, the inbound journey that HubSpot perfected, I was
like, I don't see how this is going to work anymore.
So that's where I was coming from.
And then Arjun obviously came from the platform side, having
seen how HubSpot build that that movement around inbound.
And he was like, that made sense in that world of Google's being
the dominant player. But how does, how is trust going
to be now established in this new world where content is now,
you know, dime a dozen and no one even believes it doesn't
anymore? And so, you know, his thinking
and my, my sort of background in, in being, in putting experts
in my marketing, whether it wasn't webinars or a Gartner
conference or whatever, was kind of the genesis of the idea
behind rock salt, which is that people will always trust people.
And so how can we make it easy for companies that don't have
huge budgets to be in Gartner conferences and all these big
plays to basically build credibility using their best
people? I'll add a little bit more color
to it as well. When I finished the last
company, the factual, it was a news company, brutally hard,
brutally hard. And we got lucky and and we got
a decent exit to Yahoo, but it wasn't like a home run, right?
Let's just be honest, it wasn't a home run.
It was like a single or a double in baseball prolance.
And so I I felt like there's a little bit of unfinished
business and honestly, I'd never want to do another startup.
It was so damn hard. I was like, this is a terrible
idea. And I wrote this blog post after
we sold. It's actually on Darmesh's site.
Darmesh is the Co founder of HubSpot.
He runs this blog Call on Startups.
So I wrote this and I said 5 mistakes that I made as a first
time founder still there, you can read it.
And one of them was not having a marketer on the founding team.
And I said it was a terrible mistake because marketing is
really hard. It's very tough for a founder to
do product and marketing. Marketing is not the stupid
mechanical stuff of like post three times a week and run this
performance ad and tweak this copy.
No, marketing is the damn strategy.
It's actually the most important part of making this thing work.
And I'm not that great at it. And so I said in his blog post,
I said, I never want to do another startup, but if I ever
do it, I am for sure getting a marketer as a Co founder.
I'm not doing this again without it.
And then when I was at Yahoo and I, I still had this like
unfinished business. Maybe I should do this one more
time. And then he was thinking about
what you do next. I was like, Oh my God, if I do
this, I'm doing it with her. I'm not no other way to do this.
So that was a big part of it. And actually, you know, for, for
folks that are listening, I have immense respect for good
marketing for this reason, because it, it maybe one thing
that HubSpot kind of inadvertently did is it made
marketing feel mechanical. Hey, just write some blog posts
and you do this nurturing sequence and landing page and
all these mechanical things. And, and yes, that's the Opsy
part, but don't forget that marketing is the strategy.
I mean, there's a reason why Apple thinks marketing is so
damn important that they marry marketing and product, right?
And so that that was like the big thing for me after the first
time is like, if I'm doing this, I need a really good marketer
and not like a mechanical person, someone that's driving
strategy and we're going to Duke it out on where to take the
company every day because that that's what I need is that
sparring partners. So that's why I think actually
the partnership works is especially because I think I as
a CEO the first time would have been terrible if I had the
marketer because I don't think I would have respected the
marketer the same way. But after having getting my ass
kicked publicly for six years, I respect marketing a lot more and
I think that makes it much better.
I love that. Yeah.
Can I? Can I?
OK, so we're at this point now where you're just getting drawn
back in. You're like, all right, I have
some unfinished business, Anita, and you have this thesis that's
developing. It's coming in and you're
you're, you know, you go, you raise some money.
Businesses like like talk me through businesses like you're
building product, you're doing the marketing things.
That's point A point B is you talk to me.
Can can we maybe, can you maybe walk me through the the path
from A to B and RC? We can we can jump to you or was
there something you want to? Do just just real quick before
we move on, I, I, I want to make sure like the idea for or the
way that I'm conceptualizing rock salt to make sure that I, I
understand it correctly. Like I think Rob might be kind
of the perfect example. Like he ran a web page, like
when you're talking Anita, he he ran his web page was basically a
Google doc for like months and hit almost all, almost everybody
who's listening to this, who's reading his who's his blog found
him because he was posting his own thoughts on LinkedIn.
And So what you're saying with rocks, with rock solid is like
that's the model going forward. It's like that new insights,
building your own audience, communicating authentically,
like no BS or like speaking directly to to what the ICP is.
You got it. You got it exactly.
And you know, every company has those people.
They don't always. They don't have to always be the
founder or CEO. It could be that like in my last
cybersecurity company, it was the VP of product.
He was a person that we would put in webinars and tell them to
go and speak in conferences. So he would have been the person
that we would say, you know, you're doing that once a year or
twice a year. Meanwhile, you have these
platforms where your buyers are engaging and active 24/7, 365
days. Why are you, why are we not
enabling these people to be in those discussions and building
credibility? Why are we not doing that when
we know it works? Well, that's the genesis of Rock
Salt. Yeah, maybe the one other thing
that's interesting about this, Robert is a good expert in a
company and I suspect Rob embodies this to some degree.
Isn't always trying to sell that at some level, they're just
sharing really good information and trying to be helpful.
That's the thing that builds the trust.
It's like, you know, a really good executive understand the
market's really big and the thing that I sell, it's good.
And if you need it, it's going to work like, but I don't have
to be there all the time bashing you over the head with the thing
that I'm trying to sell. And so I'm just putting good
information out there. If it's relevant, you'll come
and if it's not, you won't and, and we'll get on with it.
I think the good executives know that.
By the way, the good sales people know that too.
And So what we're trying to do is to say you have a bunch of
people that are so good at the thing they do, just get them out
there. That's it.
They're they're wonderful when they're on stage, on LinkedIn,
on Reddit, whatever. Do that regularly.
Be helpful, man. You'll build so much trust
better than anything else that you could put out, which is like
a sign up for my product thing. Like there's a place for that,
but your people have a lot more credibility to build.
Cool. I love it.
Rob, sorry to interrupt jump jump back in there with your
question. Through your question on A to B,
yeah. So The thing is we were at this
stage where we were have like we had just sort of come out of
stealth. And so we had a lot of attention
because we got funded by, you know a tier one BC.
So we got a lot of initial traction and we would talk to
people and we would like everybody would seem really
interested. We got lots of different types
of people and everybody was really interested and everybody
wanted to try the product. And so we were in this place
where we were having a lot of calls, having a lot of
conversations and even closing a lot of sales calls.
But then the usage would Peter off and then, you know, like
they would just fall off the, the sort of the map.
And we were trying to figure out why that is like, and there were
a number of different issues, but that was mainly the issue.
And I think Arjun and I being as close as we are, like, you know,
when you're founders, you think your product is the best and
you, you know exactly why you're building it and what it does and
the pain it solves and you just assume everybody just gets it.
And so, you know, I, I thought it would be helpful and at that
time that, you know, that's when Lightspeed had put out something
about Rob doing the sales coaching thing.
And I thought especially because I have only a marketing
background and not a sales background, I wanted to, you
know, see if I could get some coaching on, on how to do sales
better. So that was really my initial
thought was I just need to do sales better because I'm a
founder and I'm going to be doing a lot of selling.
And so that's when I went. So it was a very simple reason
that I went to Rob first. But my very first call with Rob
made me realize that even before sales coaching, they were a
bunch of things in how we did the calls that needed to be
fixed in terms of the discovery, who we thought was the ICP and
the messaging that we were doing.
So then I pulled in Arjun and I said, hey, Arjun, I know you
have sales, you have more sales experience.
But I think ROK can help us to clarify and focus these three
things so that we can spend more time with the right people
rather than spend a lot of time with the wrong people, if that
makes sense. Yeah, that makes that makes
sense. I guess.
Let me let me then push this to Arjun, which is Arjun.
You worked at HubSpot. You're the head of some, some
fancy thing that had sales included in it.
You're like and also you're way again, I will repeat, you're way
smarter than both of the Robs on this call.
What are you? What was the kind of was there
like a mental blocker here? What?
What was the thing that I don't know, Maybe tell me about what
was in your brain at this point? So the truth is I was a little
skeptical. I'm skeptical of everything.
So it's not a reflection on you. I'm just skeptical of everyone
and everything. I think by nature.
And so when he was like, we should talk to Rob, I'm like,
yeah, OK, we'll see. And then.
But I knew that it would be good for her because like she said,
she didn't have much sales experience.
And I'm like, that's good. You should a third party is
always helpful, was helpful to me.
It's going to be helpful to you. The we got one expected benefit
and one unexpected benefit from talking to you.
The expected benefit was huge in that we kept going back and
forth between three different Icps.
They were CE OS, they were CM OS, and they were subject matter
experts. And all of them seem to like our
product. And when we get on the phone,
they all would kind of get it. And the CM OS especially,
they're like, I'm sold, I'm sold.
Like, we just have to get my CEO to do this.
But then when we talked to you and we went through like, OK, So
what happens after that call? And we're like, yeah, the CMO
usually chases CEO and often times he or she doesn't get on
it or is not bought in. And the SME, it's not critical
because they have other stuff, but they'll do what they want
to. And then it seems so obvious in
retrospect. But what you really helped us
figure out was, you know what, just pick the CEO as the ICP and
the rest of the stuff. Don't worry about it like
they'll figure it out. See CM OS especially, they're
smart, they'll see the copy, they'll get it.
But if you pick one ICP, then everything you can focus around
that ICP, the messaging will be tight.
Your outbound, if you do outbound will be tight.
The expectations around their lifestyle, how they'll use the
product will be clearer. Everything just sort of fell
into place. So again, it seems maybe very
obvious to people who are listening, but I found that very
helpful when you helped us eliminate 2 out of three people
that we kept talking to and said, no, no, no, just focus on
this one. The unexpected benefit that we
got. And I might be jumping a little
bit ahead in the story, but the pull framework, I thought a lot
about why that was working. And I think what I've come out
with is that it actually reflects the buyer journey that
Anita and I and Rock Salts kind of built on, which goes
something like this. Your buyers are finding out
about stuff all over the place, LinkedIn, Reddit, scrolling,
reading. And if they see something that's
interesting, they will go and do their own homework.
There's really not much you can do about it.
They're going to read more. They'll click on your profile,
they'll go and ask AI some questions, they'll Google you,
they'll read your site, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
They really don't want to talk to humans.
They just want to get on with it.
So when someone decides to talk to a human, they're probably
quite bottom of the funnel. They've done a lot of research.
They figured a lot of stuff out. Let's get on with it.
And Rob, I don't know if you recall, I shared like a some
call recordings before we started talking with you and
God, they're painful. And I would spend like the 1st
10 minutes telling people like the thesis of rock salt And This
is why we were funding. It's going to be great and
marketing change, sales changing.
And you asked you're like, why are you doing this?
And I'm like, I don't know, I thought wouldn't be like, that's
when they'll be bought into rock salt And you're like, I don't
think that's necessary. And you?
Were that's a surprisingly deep question.
It's like, it's like existential like insecurities sometimes with
founders, but. Anyways, I know, I know, like
why was I doing? But when Rob said it, even after
you asked it, Rob, I'm like, I don't know, is he right?
I think I should still say this, but what I came around to, and I
think this is really what the poll framework effectively
espouses is look, if you're on the call, that was huge friction
to already get to this point, like scheduling the call,
picking up a phone. No one's doing that unless we're
serious. Like let's get on with it.
So go let's figure out what are you trying to do and what's
blocking you from achieving that success?
And is the thing that I have going to help unblock you?
Do you believe it's going to help unblock you?
Then great. Then we're down to just
logistics and pricing and mechanics and let's and move.
I think that was the big unexpected benefit.
And actually what's funny is it's the thesis that we sold.
We told RBCS like no one wants to talk to sales.
Like you really need to have your experts out there, blah,
blah, blah. So I'm like, shit, Rob actually
did it better than I did. He's actually living this
thesis. And I'm just talking about the
thesis. I should actually just do what
Rob is saying. So that was the full circle for
me So. That's super interesting.
And I think you actually just described poll in that last
piece better than I have ever described it, which we're just
going to go back and we're going to go and, and, and take that.
OK, tell me about because I, I, I appreciate, you know, all the,
all the nice words here, but like what, what I actually want
to get into is like what specifically changed You
mentioned the ICP you I, I, you mentioned the structure of a
sales call. What changed and what was hard
about changing? I don't think it was hard
actually. I don't.
I mean, it was just we had to sort of build that muscle
because we were doing it differently wrongly before we
were talking to you, before we talked to you.
So one was I think Arjun came out of that first meeting.
He's like, that's it. Rob nailed it.
Like he just, it was an aha moment for him to say we need to
six, we need to focus on the CEO and we immediately when we
changed our messaging on the homepage to talk more to the CEO
instead of the CMO, we did a whole bunch of things.
And then so and then we also because of you, Rob built a deck
because so the discover the basically our call completely
transformed after we talked to you.
So first of all, we didn't start with this huge thesis and why
we're here and what we believe and, and asking a lot of
questions that, you know, we're not necessary necessary.
We instead went directly to what brought you to this call.
And when they said it, we started digging there.
You said this. OK, tell me more.
What exactly have you done there?
What is the pain? Whatever.
What have you tried there to really see if there was a real
need? So we just focus there and let
all these other things that we would spend the 1st 15 minutes,
20 minutes on fall. So we were, we became really
good at understanding if there was a real need and a buyer
intent there and then. And in that mode of getting to
that point, we also you told us to have this deck and I think I
can't remember how exactly it came about, but the deck was
really helpful. And again, structuring our
script, our sales, but we had a sales script by the way before.
It's not that we did not, we had a very good sales script which
resonated well with people. But it I think what as Arjun
said, it worked for a number of different personas.
And what the deck did was be very clear about who this is for
and who this is not for. And I think that was a big
improvement in in how we sort of did our discovery calls and how
quickly we were able to get to where we where we needed to go.
So, yeah, message, like the overall discovery call, like we
just were much more focused. We knew who we wanted as ICP.
We had this deck that was like really helpful and helping us
tell a very tight story in a succinct way without being too
wordy. And then yeah.
And yeah, so I think those are some of the benefits.
And like I said, we were very quickly able to see the
difference in the outcomes in, you know, where we spend time,
which ones we knew would close and being able to close them
much earlier. Like before we would have 2-3
calls, you know, they'd be like, oh, that's interesting, we'll
get back and then there's another one.
But I think after our sessions with you and making these
changes, we pretty much knew like the person would say, yeah,
I'm ready and I'd like to onboard after the first call,
first call. Yeah.
Can I, so then can I take that? Can I try to like put maybe my
top spin on this of like how what I'm hearing and then and
then I want you to react to it. So you had basically perfectly
engineered a sales deck and messaging that resonated with
many different people. And many of them would even sign
up and, and, and use the product and, and, you know, some, some
would continue, some wouldn't. And it was kind of, but, but you
had something that worked. Yeah.
However there were these issues after where some people were
using a ton and other people weren't using very much.
It wasn't clear exactly what to do.
And so the the thing that you realize is that while your
market people who the people who should want this would benefit
from this, like it's basically every B to B company should want
it would benefit from it. Who that has some sort of
subject matter experts. However, there is one kind of
person at least there's there's one kind of person who is crazy
not to buy it in in the present moment.
And that person is Aceo who's in a very specific situation where
they know LinkedIn is important, have tried to post on LinkedIn,
are trying to post on LinkedIn or whatever was Reddit,
whatever, but but they keep they can't keep it consistent.
And so they're just everyday they're just like, there's that
like thing in the back of their mind.
If I know I should be showing up, but I just and and that
person in that situation closes in one call and is successful.
Yeah. Yeah, am I missing anything
there? No, that's exactly right.
We defined a couple of attributes after the fact of
what that CEO looks like. So what is the behavior they're
exhibiting that says that's it, you're my guy?
I think maybe you, Rob said it or maybe I read it, that if your
ICP definition is really good, you should be able to walk into
a room with like 20 or 30 people.
And then a few minutes ago, oh, these three people, that's it.
Those 3 work. Everyone else is not quite ready
yet. And so for us, the behavior that
we want to see is that that CEO, usually CEO, is posting on
LinkedIn at least once or twice a month.
They've tried it, they're trying.
It's just sort of not working. But it can't be too much.
If you're posting 2-3 times a week, you're probably too far
off. Sometimes you can still find
benefit in rocks. All because we have this whole
bit about helping you find the right conversations and comment.
So in fact, some of our early adopters were posting a lot and
came to us for that benefit. But the bigger chunk is I'm
trying to post. I just can't get into a rhythm.
Once in a while I'll repost what have you, and the follower count
is somewhere between 2 and 10,000.
So they have something to say. Some people seem to like what
they say, they just aren't doing it correctly, rightly, etcetera.
And so, so much of it, this was, it became a really easy,
identifiable pattern. Anita, just look at Oh yeah,
you're our guy. Oh no, she's not ready yet.
That I think made it a lot easier.
So you can basically, that's really, you can tell most, most
people that I know, you know who, who go through this
transformation poll can tell them the first two minutes of a
call if this person's going to buy or not.
You can tell before they show up to the call, more or less.
Yeah, yeah, we know very well now.
And if you do the call right as I'm sure every salesperson tries
to do, you want to tailor the call immensely right from the
get go. So right from when we pick up
the call, Anita, and I've already read everything that
they've tried posted, what have you?
If we're asking a question, we probably have a decent idea what
the answer is going to be and we want to just double check
everything. So hey, we're doing this.
What's the thing that's working? What's not?
I see this, I see that. Is this the ICP you're trying to
use it? OK, let's this is what we can
offer. Is that good?
It's a much, much faster call. It's a sharper call and it
doesn't waste their time as much.
That's I think the biggest thing is I was wasting people's time a
lot earlier and I feel like I do that far less now.
Like if you're fit, we'll know real quick and you're not, we'll
get off it, but let's not waste each other's time.
And I just want to say, and I think we've kind of said this,
but I want to make this very clear.
You see, when we were doing the calls before, when we were going
from like the big, like, you know, here's what's happening in
the market and here's what's changing.
And here's and people were nodding.
They were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
What happened is we didn't get to their specific pain point
properly because we were here and they agreed, agreed and they
were like, OK, let's try the product.
We give the demo and then we gave it when we started going
with the poll and go directly to what brought you here.
We now like I now have, I now have segmented CEOs in buckets
based on their pain point. You see, like there are CE OS
for whom the problem is posting consistently.
For other CE OS, it's about the fact that they have no
visibility into the pipeline and they want visibility into the
pipeline. For others, it's actually not
posting consistently. It is what Arjun said, which is
I want to be commenting and expanding my network and
engaging in discussions that are happening on LinkedIn that I
just don't know about and I don't want to deal with the
LinkedIn feed. Those are three very different
use cases. And we got to that because we
were so much sharper to understand their pull rather
than sort of, you know, go at the very general level, which
everybody, all those personas agreed with and all the CEO's
agreed with. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
OK, Show the product, let's try it, right.
But we didn't get to their exact.
Now we do like. And the fourth case, by the way,
is I just have no time. I'm always darling, we have the
CEO, he's always travelling. So we have like this mobile
piece where they can just text rock salt and create incredible
post in 3 minutes on the go. We would never have got to
these, you know, very fine-tuned use cases or segments of our ICP
had we not been sharper in our calls.
What what was it? One thing that I can't remember
if it was Arjun or Anita, what is fascinating for because I'm
like, wow, you just checked all the boxes like on my side of
things. So maybe I'm maybe I'm the ICP
for rock salt in some ways. But but one of the questions I
had is, you know, you talked about like CMOS loved your
product early on, like they gave you glowing feedback.
They were trying to champion it. They were trying to push it.
Was there a signal or like what happened that you were like, oh,
actually the CEO, like what was there?
Did somebody buy fast? Was it?
You know, you mentioned some of the results, but in the moment
how did you recognize the 2? I think that's exactly right.
So we CM OS, we got tons of traction and then we, you know,
we those CM OS that many of them are fractional sold it
internally to their clients and then we got a bunch of clients
and again, many of those didn't work out in the initial days.
And then we had this one case where the CEO came, contacted us
and like now is one of our best customers and expanded it to
like tell 5 people in his team to use it.
And when we asked him like the journey he was, he had the use
case where he was posting consistently but wanted to
engage better. And what did he do?
He asked his fractional CMO. And his fractional CMO had heard
about rock salt and brought us in.
And so that's what clicked for us, that actually the winning
combination is not the fractional marketer or the
marketer on their own. And CE OS are hard to get
because they're not Googling and searching for these tools.
The winning combination is actually CM OS know about us and
they bring CE OS who want to be on LinkedIn and they're showing
some behavior that they're serious about LinkedIn like
posting regularly etcetera, etcetera.
Does that answer your question? Yeah, Rob, I love your your
reactions that like does that mirror like when, when other
founders that you work with have found their ICP have like really
found the one with the poll? Like does that story is that you
know something that you hear often?
So I think I think like Roxalt has a very special case of this,
which is that like their messaging resonates broadly.
Their thesis is, is basically something that it would be weird
if you disagreed with, which means everybody nods when they
hear the story there. That's not always the case.
That is a that is a useful thing to have because it means you
know you're going to start with these CE OS and then other thing
you're going to expand beyond there and you just can expand
basically forever on on different kinds of case studies.
That's great, but it's also a uniquely challenging situation
to be in when everybody agrees in the thesis, but doesn't act
in such a way as to pull the product out of your hands and
keep using it post sale. And so I think there's like a
unique case here where it's it's a unique kind of challenge, but
it's not an uncommon one of right.
Like when I pitch, I'm just, I'm saying words, they are agreeing
with the words and then stuff afterwards isn't going how I
expect it to go. Like that's a very common sign
that you are pushing something onto a market that's not pulling
and it's not obvious obvious why.
Yeah, I like that a lot actually.
And by the way, from a product standpoint, it's interesting
because Anita and I talk about this.
You can do these things in products to gamify your product
and encourage adoption and regular usage and engagement and
all kinds of tricks, notifications and emails and
stuff like that. And a little bit of that is a
push, but if you really are solving a problem, that's
important. Unless the product sucks and is
really hard to access, people probably just use it without you
bothering them too much. You do need some amount of
reminders, a little bit of habit formation.
You don't have to go crazy over it.
And so it's one of the reasons why we do have some of that in
the product. But I, I hate the verb even
gamify because I feel like I'm tricking my users like your
streak is on, keep the streak alive.
Like piss off. Like you have you, you would do
this without the streak. You're doing it because you're
trying to make your business successful, streak be damned.
And so really, I think what you said, you know, like people
would agree with the thesis and then afterwards things wouldn't
go the way that we expected. What it was saying is that we
weren't really doing a good job of figuring out, did they really
need this? Like, it's good.
Do you really need it? What are you trying?
Like, if I wasn't here, what would you do tomorrow?
Like, would you just die? Would you just be like, yeah, I
guess it wasn't that important. So what, what happens if I'm not
here? And I think we got better about
asking that. And actually, Rob, you're
totally right. The problem is everybody likes
the damn thesis. Yes.
So it was like hard to be like, well, So what we're going to
say, no, I mean they want to give us money, take the money,
but you take the money and you do some onboarding and then like
a month or two later they weren't using the product and,
and what, what was the point anyways?
So now we're just better about saying, yeah, I mean by all
means you, you might find value, but we are much better at
figuring out you, you will find value and I'm going to spend
time with you because you will be successful.
And a year or two from now that ICP definition will change,
it'll be broader, it'll be different.
We will keep changing this every year as the market matures and
expands, etcetera. But right now, for the next 9 to
12 months, I think it's exactly what we said and that's what I
think you have to zero in on. That's super cool.
Let let me just like zoom out and and give some reflections
there and then we could we could probably wrap it as well,
because I want to be mindful of your time you've got like this,
This has been super cool. So the thing you just said there
is really, really interesting in how pull and understanding who
is basically blocked from the thing they are trying to do that
informs your sales pitch, but it actually informs the product
that needs to exist to deliver to help them accomplish that
thing to unblock them. And if you find that you have to
Polish your product a ton, if you find that you have to add a
bunch of nudges and stuff to be like, and if you find that
you're doing a lot of work to like on board them.
And hey, just following up, did you did you use it?
I didn't. I haven't seen you use it.
That's a sign that you there's something wrong.
And it's probably not to do with the product.
It's probably to do with who you are serving and whether they had
pull in the first place. And the analogy I would give
there and maybe you can tell me, tell me I'm I'm totally wrong
here, but I recall in Hubspot's early days and tell me if I'm
totally off base here, but the product wasn't always this
magical awesome product that that worked all the time, that
was great. I remember before I think the
performable acquisition, it was, you know, there were Hubspot's
product was pulled out, like people were ripping the product
out of Hubspot's hands. Everyone was coming in back,
they were using it and the product like actually had, you
know, that might have had some issues here or there or whatever
and people didn't care. They loved the product.
They raved about the product. And so there's something about
having having to perfectly Polish and put all the
notifications to have all the features and have everything
like perfectly done. Obviously we want that, but
there's a very good sign when that's actually not needed.
That means we know exactly what we're helping them accomplish
something unblocking them in such an important thing that
they're like, yeah, OK. Like in my, in my case, I'll
just leave it from zero to 1,000,000 AR.
The product was me in a spreadsheet.
And I kept apologizing to our end customers like, I promise
I'll I'll get a login for you at some point.
And they're like, I don't care. You're you're solving this for
me. I don't care if I have to login
or not. Like all I care about is this.
Yeah, I think that's right. Prior to the Performer
acquisition, the product was not particularly polished or even
consistent. It had all kinds of weird
limits. Like a hilarious one was you
couldn't send more than I think 5000 emails a month with any
account which you know today a marketer be like, dude, that's
like a Mickey Mouse product, but it worked because it was solving
something that nobody else was solving at the time.
It was clunky. It had all kinds of issues, but
no one else had it. It was great of the all in Yes,
what performal did when they came in was David cancel an
incredible product. Guy basically said, OK, we need
like a serious revamp and the architecture and all that.
He did a total rebuild. But what he also got and what
really the whole team got right is that we're kind of still like
a we're like a fringe, not fringe.
It's like a it's like an avant-garde marketing thing
like, oh, inbound, like, OK, that's you know, it's it's cool,
but what does marketing actually do?
Most days we send goddamn emails.
Like you can talk all you want, but we send emails and your
e-mail thing locks out of 5000. That's pretty much useless.
So David and really the whole team, like from Brian on down
said we're going to make the middle of the funnel product
offering, MOFU offering be very strong.
And that was e-mail and marketing automation, stuff that
we had historically stayed away from because it was a little bit
too competitive. David built a great job of that.
It was wonderful. And then he fused it into the
rest of product, which is now much more consistent.
And now we had something that was both avant-garde and no one
else had, plus the block and tackle stuff that we do
everyday. That's when the product really
took off. And that's when, yeah, like
people were just delighted because it's like, OK, now it's
actually doing the thing I have to do every day.
And yes, you could do this better and that better.
Like our initial workflows were terrible, nothing like we have
today. Hopspot today is so good on its
workflows. Back then it was Mickey.
We didn't have branching and we said I, I, I can't even believe
I said this. I'd go around town people.
If you have to do if then statements are bragging logic,
you've already lost the market. OK, you don't have that many,
like just linear and I see it with a straight face.
How did I do that? It's terrible.
And then over the years we added it.
So, but The thing is, the base product worked for the thing
that people really need it, which is I need to send emails.
Does this work really well? Does it look pretty good?
Great, I'm in. And then everything else is
extra. So yeah, I love that.
Well, cool. Well, I'll let you.
Is there anything you that we haven't covered that you want to
make sure we cover any any things you want to mention?
I and we do not need to say any more nice things about me.
You've already said like way too many and it's made me
uncomfortable. So we could we could any other
things on transforming from push to pull or anything else?
No, I, I, I don't think so. You know, it's look, a lot of
your listeners are going to be other founders.
I feel like sometimes if you look at the headlines in some,
you know, it's like, oh, great, you know, narrowing on the ICP
again, will they do like get your message invite?
So it all seems like the same thing, but my goodness, is it
really important. And then of course, everything
shapes up. The product shapes up, the
website shapes up, the outreach shapes up.
Everything sort of falls in line.
Yeah. I think it's just it's a really
good exercise to do with or without Rob Snyder.
Like, you should do this Like it's a, it's an important thing
for every founder to go through this exercise and hopefully with
Rob Snyder. But if you don't like, it's
still a really good thing to do. Yeah.
And I would say, I think with AI and the explosion of startups, I
think a lot of people are going to be in the place where we are
where your value proposition resonates with a lot of people.
And so honing in on your early adopter understanding who feels
the most pain that we want to RIP it out of your hands is
critical in making sure that your product strategy and your
company strategy actually are successful.
So I think it's really important.
Yeah. Love it.
Well thank you. Thank you for reaching out.
This is cool. I hope people like it.
If they do comment, let us know. If you don't, also let us know.
But I don't know how you couldn't like these two.
They should be hosting the podcast anyway.
How can folks find y'all? Thank y'all so much for coming
on, but how? How can folks get connected to
you and find Roxhall? Easy peasy for me.
It's on LinkedIn, I'm Arjun Morthy, and on Twitter I'm Juice
Morthy. It's my old nickname from
college. OK, Anita.
My LinkedIn is a Morthy and Twitter I think is Anita
Morphy's the full name no spaces and rocksol dot AI is the the
website and you can reach us at Anita at rocksol dot AI or Arjun
at rocksol dot AI all. Right, perfect.
And I'll, I'll make sure that those get in the show notes so
people can people can find them. Rob, anything else you wanted to
add? No, it was great.
Thank you all for no this. Is this is super interesting.
Thank you all so much for for joining us.
Great, and thank you for making this happen.