Hey, Rob, how's it going, man? Good, good.
How are you? I'm.
I actually think I'm a little more alive than last week.
Which is crazy given that your, your daughter is like having
sleep, sleep issues. But I Rob, this is an epic, epic
post today. Like this is 1.
It's called the pull quick start guide applying pull.
We'll link to in the show notes. It's one for folks to bookmark.
It's it's kind of like I was thinking of.
I was like, what is this thing? And the closest analogy I have
to it is like, you know, orange juice concentrate.
It's just like everything like sort and then you add water to
it. This is like your writing
concentrate version and you know, there's a bunch of things
that connect to it, a bunch of places to go, but it's like if
you need the essence of like Rob Snyder's thinking and
understanding pool and understanding PMF and how to
deliver this, this is it. So literally like bookmark this
thing and come back to it every once in a while.
Rob, why don't, why don't you give us context on like what is
this thing and why is it on your mind?
Yeah. So we are almost done with
another round of PMF camp. And the thing that I keep
noticing and all right that I worry about is that people will
come through. There's, you know, 5 sessions
that cover kind of every single part of product market fit in
sales that is relevant to pull. And I come out of it worrying
that people have learned a lot of things and are applying a lot
of things, but that they don't have a quick start guide on or
like a, here's what's most important here are the, you can
take away a lot of different things from here, but there is a
almost like hierarchy of importance.
And so I, I actually wrote this as an internal doc for the like
PMF camp folks, but I was like, you know what, screw it.
I like I wrote it while on a plane just on my phone and I was
like, you know, this, this would actually be a helpful thing we
can put in a blog post. Maybe we can, we can just open
source it. And I think it will help
specifically one of the common error modes I see which is being
right about things that are downstream and wrong about
things that are upstream. And that is actually a massively
important concept that I think plagues basically all of
entrepreneurship thinking and a lot of business thinking as
well, which is that these are, these are we are very right to a
precise degree about something downstream that is irrelevant
because of what's upstream. Yeah.
Can you give an example of that? What, what, what could it feel
like to be right down? Or maybe it's even like focused
on getting something right downstream that's or downstream
that and while not fixing the thing that's upstream or
something like that. But what?
What does that look like with? Yeah.
So like the classic example is like being super, super rigorous
about your discovery interviews, whereas you're, you know, you're
doing this is what a ton of founders do, which is you've
been told to do discovery interviews.
And so you get a super detailed interview guide.
You do it, you like analyze it with claw, you do like a ton of
analysis on it and you get super good at discovery interviews,
which are irrelevant, are generally irrelevant because
they miss just a fundamental thing.
Why do people buy things? And given that that upstream
concept, you would not be doing discovery interviews.
It's like like if you understood that upstream thing, you would
not be doing this downstream thing.
Yeah, a couple areas that I've reading through this hierarchy,
I was like, yeah, I did that before.
I did the thing before it or the thing six things before it.
One was building supply, like overbuilding supply before, like
really understanding the ICP and and identifying pool, because
pool tells you what the supply is that you should build.
And then another one is there's like certain things that you get
kind of hung up on. It's like, how do I price this
thing when it's like, who cares? Almost like until you've, until
you've figured out what they're trying to accomplish and how to
sell to them and stuff. It doesn't, it almost like
doesn't matter. And you you articulated that in
this post in a way that was like kind of light bulb moment for
me. That's just one, one example of
that. I wish it would have been light
bulb 18 months ago, but you know, unfortunately it's light
bulb today. Let me let me give another
example to this. This is a.
This is one that I've seen actually very, very common and
in our world, which is, there's a lot of sales advice out there
and there's, you know, you have to be really good at sales,
which I, I don't disagree that you should be good at sales, but
being good at sales is downstream of something that is
way more important upstream. And so, like I, I, I wrote about
this this week online where it was, you know, the, I'm watching
a sales call, probably the worst sales call you have ever seen,
just unbelievable. You know, like any experienced
salesperson would watch it and probably vomit.
And it didn't matter. It, it like, yes, they should
improve. Yes, I, I, I like, nearly
punched this person, but it did it.
It didn't actually matter because what was upstream was
that there was somebody who was so stuck that they would have
eaten dog food to buy this. Yeah, yeah.
Or it got through waterboarding or a boot camp with a like a
marine boot camp in order to purchase a a product.
You know, there's there, there's one thing I'd like to call it
before we get into the hierarchy.
I thought this is a really clear articulation of basically what
you're doing essentially. And it you you wrote, we don't
know what causes not PMF to PMF. So it's unclear what to do pre
PMF. This is what I call the pain
cave, where infinite things could work, but it's not obvious
what will work. We can live along in the pain
cave forever because basically every startup spends time in the
pain cave. And then this is the thing and
startups that escape the pain cave figure out one specific
thing pull. And that that connected a couple
of the things that you've written and that I've, I've been
around that maybe like intuitive, like sort of sunken.
But it was like, OK, the, the predictive path to getting to
product market fit is actually the pull, the pull framework,
which you've probably said that 15 times, Rob, I don't know why
it's, it's taken me this long, but you know what, when I read
that, I was like, oh, it's like it just simplified kind of
everything in that. And so this post is that as you
mentioned the hierarchy of things targeted at that getting
out of the pancave and like understanding pulls so that you
can execute on it and find product market fit.
Do you agree with that? I don't know if that is that a
fair characterization of it? Yeah.
Yeah, 100%. That's, that's exactly how I
think about and, and it's right. And so what's happening though,
as you're doing that, which is, which is really interesting
because, right, I've said this before, but I haven't, but
either I haven't said it or you haven't internalized it in the
stack in the hierarchy of things, right?
Or you put it somewhere lower in the hierarchy of things.
And So what I'm like, what I'm trying to do is figure out how
product market fit works, how to make startups take off.
And specifically that requires this hierarchy of what is most
important that nothing else is upstream of.
Yeah, because if you get something right that's
downstream or right or, or or worse that feels right but is
actually only true post product market fit.
It's a symptom of product market fit and taking off.
Then you're just going to be totally wrong in unpredictable
ways that will make no sense to you.
And so that that's the real, this is the real challenge of
this like stupid exercise that I've been on for the past
decade. It's like the it's, you know,
it's trying to figure out what is causal upstream and what's
the full hierarchy from there. And I just like you, just
shouldn't wish this on an enemy. It's so awful.
Yeah, you're, you're, you're in the like pink cave of
articulating the the causality and and startups.
Rob, why don't we let's hit that hierarchy and actually maybe
before that. I think this is right.
Basically all founders that are trying to understand how product
market fit works. It may be founders that are in
the middle of the paint cave or what's.
Not so it's interesting. I'm getting called into like
doing executive briefings on pole at like companies that are
big, which is interesting. And so everyone is trying to
understand this hierarchy and like the the, the why are some
of our products taking off and others aren't?
And why can't we seem to predict that in advance?
And so it is like this is a think of this as a way to boot
pull thinking into your brain in the correct sequence.
Love it, love it. I'm going to start calling all
of our meetings executive briefings for I was I was you
can start telling people I was in an executive briefing with a
with a kids and family media company.
And it was really like you and I were hanging out having a drink.
Anyways, so let's let's get into the list.
Let's take it from the top. Or how did you think about the
hierarchy before we get into the elements themselves?
How do I think about the hierarchy?
So what I thought about was first you actually need to
understand the theory behind it. You have to understand the the
pull framework. What causes a purchase and what
doesn't? What makes somebody weird not to
buy when everybody is like most of the time weird to buy?
And that's the like, there's and, and like what are the kind
of general implications of that? So you have to have that in your
brain. Otherwise you're going to be in
push mode in everything you do and you're not going to kind of,
you're not going to understand, it's not going to become
intuitive. Then the next step on the
hierarchy, I've, I've realized that the kind of like #1 step on
the implementation side is the ideal customer profiles, the,
the kind of who you serve. Everything is downstream of
that. All your sales tactics, your
like, your product is downstream like all of everything is
downstream of the person that you choose to serve.
And there are like the way you would typically make an ideal
customer profiles you'd write, you know, I sell to people named
Rob who live in Mexico City and do and, you know, like media if
you're. Honestly, if you're if you're a
Taco seller, that's actually a really good starting point for
for this. But it's, but so you're going to
define it in terms of just just kind of like static
characteristics and everything is going to break down straight
with that because you defined it in terms of static
characteristics. Instead you have to define it
based on pull. If you define your ICP based on
who has pull, who has a high probability in anyone given
moment of having pull, then it's like it's super clear.
Like everything downstream of that just like will work or is
relatively intuitive, is based on that because it's it's really
like everything is downstream of finding somebody who is stuck
trying to do something but blocked by their current
options. Yeah, that's interesting.
So if we need to contrast the 2A a traditional view.
So for my, my company, we, we, you know, we produce family
media and then we sell it. We partner with businesses and
stuff like that to that. Want to be in front of families.
I don't know that's like sort of a cell.
Is it not the right way of framing it?
But a previous way of of framing it in a more traditional route
is like we sell to mid sized brands that are trying or that
that sell to moms and dads in the United States, something
like that. It's like just a description of
a product or you know, and the a version of it that is aligned to
pull would be there is a brand marketer who is under pressure
to improve performance because Meta is declining and getting
more expensive. They're looking for alternative
creative partnerships in order to do that, but they're having a
hard time because XYZ reasons that we don't.
It's like they're am I internalizing the the the
difference? So so you can you can define
your ICP in a variety of different like.
So in your case, you could have defined it just like as a
general kind of like company attribute.
What most people will do is they'll do a step worse than
that because you've already kind of you already have the pull
framework in your brain. So you've kind of defined that.
The worst version of that is, which I think you've also done
before, is who do I want to sell to?
Right. And it's, it's great.
That's cool. They don't want to buy.
And then the second layer on it is who could we add the most
value for or who would benefit the most?
Who should want it the most? Who has pain points and problems
that we couldn't solve, right. And it's if you get, if you do
any of those things, basically nothing else is going to work
very well down the stream of that.
And so that's why the ICP definition based on poll is the
top of the hierarchy. Yeah, interesting.
Even even before like outbound or yeah, it feels like some like
some of that like kind of goes hand in hand like who you're
doing outbound to, to. Get on conversations with yeah,
or, or because this, this is going to determine what method
you're going to use to get in front of those people.
If the people with a poll are Fortune 500 CEOs who are stuck
in a very specific situation, you're not going to be doing
outbound necessarily. You're or you're going to be
doing a very weird approach to outbound, but maybe you're going
to get intros from some other like you're going to your, your
entire business approach and product approach is downstream
of this. Yeah, fascinating and I love it.
I I'm not, I'm not going to. I was going to say something
else. It's stupid.
Why don't we continue from the ICP down into you call it
product here actually, which which kind of like threw me for
one. I was like, I thought we talked
about supply, they said product and then in parentheses our
supply to their demand. You're right or actually before
I say that, why is that the second?
Why that it it's surprising that that was this high that product
was there. Why is product the number number
two thing here? We have to have something that
fits pull. If we don't have something or
some shape of a thing that that could unblock them, then it
doesn't matter. And then like nothing again,
nothing else matters. And so that's where the it's,
you know, you have to find somebody, you have to have some.
It doesn't need to be something fancy, it doesn't need to be
fully built, but you need to have at least the concept, the
high level requirements. What we'll talk about here to to
as something that you can at very least put in front of them,
show them or say the words to see if they actually pull.
It, it makes me, that makes me think of, was it cyberstarts?
I'm forgetting the name of the VC firm that we, we talked
about, I don't know, maybe two months ago or something like
that. And they started with the first
one, which is an ICP. They had a very clear, they had
a, a very clear kind of persona, I would say, which was chief
security or information security officers at, you know, at, at
companies. And then their first step was
that first one, define your ICP. And they were essentially
filling out pool. And then they figured out
supply. And so it wasn't that they were
doing them at the same time. It was actually like they would
spend I think like 6 months or something like that, which ended
up being a formula that worked with.
Is that how you internal like interpret them?
It's like even if you don't, is that it?
It's not that the first thing is the ICP and at the same time you
need the product. The first one could actually be
understand the ICP and then start putting the product in
front of them in the form of like a description A1 page mock
up like it it doesn't. It doesn't necessarily mean I
need to code something and I need to be able to pull up like
an actual product. Yes, yeah.
Yeah, exactly. It's and it's if you define your
ICP in a way that fits pull, right, like you, there's not
actually product or service shape as part of it, right?
Like pull is product agnostic. It is this thing you're looking
for out there, which is I'm trying to find a person who is
stuck trying to do something which is not by ACRM.
It is I'm trying to organize my sales data.
I'm trying to, whatever it is, yeah, who is stuck because their
existing tools, methods, options are not good enough.
And they are so stuck that they will pull something out of your
hands. And then then we have to kind of
just say, OK, what's the something?
What's the shape of the something?
And and that's you have to have a rough shape of that for them
to say, yeah, that's that's what I'm looking for.
Or even just buy it. This, I think this is a spot
where founders get really uncomfortable.
Maybe companies in general get really uncomfortable around this
because it's like, how can I have these conversations if I
haven't built the thing? You know, that's something that
that's popped up with some of the, the founders in the last
couple weeks in the conversation.
And it's just like, how do, how do you talk with founders about
getting comfortable with, like your version of an MVP is so
simple. It's like, you know, you ran a
business out of Google Sheets. You, you know, it's like, don't
worry about coding something until you validated your ICP
and, and their pool. How, how do you, you know, what
do you tell founders when they're like, how, how could I
possibly go sell something before I have a like a, a
product that they could open up and go into a portal for
whatever it might be? Yeah.
What I, what I've typically done is write out the pull framework
with them and then say, OK, cool, If somebody's stuck in
this situation, what's the thing that they will RIP out of your
hands? And then, OK, can we just write
that on one slide and maybe mock up a visual of it or just a flow
chart of it? Yeah, and that's your MVP.
Yeah, yeah, that's, that's essentially under your tutelage
what I what I've been doing and. Golly, it's so much simpler.
Let's continue. You, you then go sales the vibe.
What do you? What do you mean by sales?
The vibe as a third most important thing.
Yeah. So it's, it's actually your
approach to sales. Your, the way you think about
sales is more important than literally anything you do in the
sales process, because if you get the approach right, you'll
intuit, you'll like intuitively do all of the rest of the things
and like downstream of that are tactics and whatnot.
And, and those are useful. But if you come at it with the
wrong way of thinking, the wrong theory of causality, of what
your role is on this call and what their role is on this call,
then you're just going to mess everything up.
And the, the ways that people mess everything up or, or they
try to convince people, they try to interrogate people.
They, you know, I don't know they we, we craft.
I've I've realized actually that most sales decks when I see them
first are are making a legal case for purchasing.
So like if you agree with this logic you will buy our product.
Yeah, I'm nilty of that. I think you've said that
verbatim to me. I got like a location.
Yeah, gotcha. I backed you into a corner.
You can't not buy byproduct now. Oh, you've agreed that you have
these pain points. Yeah.
Now I have unveiled my product and you have nodded, right.
And it's. And so if so, if and so if
you're thinking about that wrong, you're going to do
everything else wrong in the sales process you're in.
And it's and worse, you're not going to get the signals to
improve. You're not, you're going to
misinterpret what's happening. Would I have done?
And so you have to get, you have to get your mind right.
Yeah, and, and the way to get your mind right is in this case,
chill, don't do the legal case. You write show them the product
or it's basically like articulate, pull to them,
understand their pool, show supply that fits that pool.
And if it if it works, they'll pull it out of your hands.
And most upstream of that is like, again, if they have
pulled, they will pull. You have to chill the heck out,
calm down, stop trying to convince them.
See like. The goal here is to see if they
need help. Yeah.
That's it. Do you need help?
In what form do you need help? And what ways are you stuck?
How could I possibly unblock you?
And you, if you're approach it as like, I'm here to see if you
need help. If you don't need help, I'm not
bothered. Yeah.
It's a just a totally different mindset than coming in like I
need to convince you of this. Yeah, yeah, which is loading
yourself with pressure over something you really don't have
control. A sales call like should be 0%
stressful. Yeah, Yeah, I'm, I'm still in
the in the path to achieving that.
Rob, how do we want to keep going to this list?
Do we? Are there a couple ones that we
want to make sure that we hit? No, I mean, I think the the then
it's like, OK, cool. I'll just talk through the
hierarchy of the rest of the things.
So, OK, so once you have the kind of like vibe or approach to
sales, right, then it's like, OK, cool, how do you execute a
sales call? Well, discovery is you have to
fill out their pull framework. And there's like some tactics
that you can do there. You can't, you can't pitch and
demo effectively until you actually know this person's pull
framework. And so that comes downstream
then if it's like cool discovery demo, this seems like a fit.
Your approach should be, OK, let's optimize for velocity.
Let's not try to sell everything at once.
We're trying to just get something done relatively
quickly because we want to optimize for learning.
We won't and we can only learn once we've delivered and see how
to see what happens post sale. And so that's what I'm kind of
optimizing for a sales process takes form based on that.
And then like, OK, cool. Then there is, and I wasn't
quite sure where to put this in the hierarchy is how do you get
people to talk to you? Yeah, again, that, that I think
is still, I think that's downstream of the kind of like
sales process sales. It's definitely downstream of
the thinking about sales. Because if you think your job is
to convince people, you're going to send terrible outreach like
you're going to do, you're just going to make a massive butchery
of the English language in your in your messaging.
And so like and and there's people pre and post yeah, yeah,
you're going to offend people and feel gross when you when you
do it. And and so yeah.
And so there's pre before you figured out poll ways of getting
people to talk to you and after you figured out poll ways of
getting talk to you. This is again super important,
but also you can just get warm intros.
You can't just go places. And it's like if you can't do,
if you can't like figure out what people want and offer,
offer something that fits. Again, you can do tons of
conversations and it doesn't. Really matter.
Yeah. Yeah.
Interesting. I'm glad you hit that one One.
There's a couple other gyms in here we won't spend a whole lot
of time. And I actually hope you'll write
about some of these. I've got, I've got a writing
list while I was reading this and I was like, Rob should
expand on this. Rob should expand on this.
Yeah. And if you're, if you're one of
the three people listen. Actually now people have.
I had multiple people reach out claiming to be the listener.
So either I've never looked at the analytics here, it's an.
AI, it's an AI persona. That's it.
That's. That's impersonating multiple.
If there are pieces in here and I'll write this in, but if there
are pieces in here you want me to expand on, let me know.
I, I, I have plenty of things that I could write about, but
yeah. Yeah, Yeah.
A couple of my favorites are how about how to work with the
champion and deal strategy where what you write there about
pricing, I think was was very insightful and actually is
something I've been thinking about lately and making a a big
mistake on and the way you articulated that was was
illuminating. Anyways, Rob, what should
founders do with this? Follow the hierarchy you you if
you're not. If you haven't defined your ICP
as it relates to poll, do that. That will inform everything
else. Yeah, yeah.
Awesome. Well, like I, like I mentioned
at the start, this one is called the Pull Quick Start Guide,
applying Pull. It's bookmarked on for me.
It'll be out on on Friday. I highly recommend not just
listening to this podcast, but like take 10 minutes and
actually read through it. There's going to be something in
there that jumps out to you. And if there's nothing else
wrong, we can let folks go. All right, awesome.
We'll see you next week.