Coronavirus Marketing Series with Noah Kagan

00:00You're listening to the coronavirus marketing series on the Growth Manifesto, a Zoom video series brought to you by Web Profits, where we talk about how to drive marketing and business success through the COVID-19 pandemic. Today we interview Noah Kagan, number 30 at Facebook, number 4 at Mint, and founder of sumo.com. So let's get into it. Hey, hey Noah. How are you? Hi buddy, I can hear you dude. i'm good man i'm good you know every this is the worst advertisement for the airpod pro ever

00:36yeah man yeah mate uh definitely i'm seeing it it's it's wild out there it's you should say there's spiders and kangaroos all over the streets around here man what do you guys call bread you don't call it toast don't you guys have a cooler name for it we'll call it toast once you put it in toaster it's called toast before that just call it bread bread it's It's not called Doe. It's not called Doe. But hey, man, listen, let me just do a quick intro for you, just for the people that are listening. Alex, for you, anything. And I appreciate you being flexible.

01:06So we had a party. We just had a – well, do your intro, and then we can talk about the party I just went to. Yeah, yeah, cool. So today I'm speaking with Noah Kagan. And if you don't know who he is, he's a marketing genius, like in my opinion. There aren't too many people in the world that I can actually learn from. and Noah is one of them. He's number 30 at Facebook. He's number four at Mint. He's the founder of Sumo Group, which includes AppSumo, SendFox, KingSumo

01:37and probably the most successful product, which is sumo.com, which is basically a suite of products that enables people to expand their email database and to drive action on their website. It's highly recommended. It's something that we use across all our own sites and for all of our clients as well. Plus he has a podcast called Noah Kagan Presents, which is also highly, highly recommended. So welcome Noah. Thanks for coming on this series. Dude, I love seeing you.

02:09It's good to see you, man. It's been a little bit too long. You still look just like the profile photo. I know, I know. It's like because I shaved my head and because I've got the same glasses, kind of always look the same, you know? I know you look like in 60, you're going to look like this. You could be 60 now. I don't know. You could be 15. I could be 15. I could be 60. I'll take off my hat. I don't know if you're, but we'll do a bald thing. Is this going to be on video or is this just on an audio podcast? This is going to be on video as well. Yeah. So we're doing both. I apologize to all the people that want to see good looking men out there.

02:42Down underside. Well, you know, that bald, apparently it's in. To some segments of the world. it's kind of like when you have any issue you try to you know we're we're a species that loves to defend ourselves so when you're bald for some reason all these bald guys but all it says which just means we have really high testosterone and i was like that's not true yeah well look i don't know what the reason is it's a high testosterone it's low testosterone it's high estrogen low estrogen i'm not sure but but what i do know is that like if you look at

03:16the greek community like all of the men on my father's side are bald all the men on my mother's side are bald half the women on my mother's side are bald like so my genes are gonna be bald so my son he's gonna be bald dude pretty much you know you better date a date a bald woman you gotta find some girl you gotta date a horse you just gotta go marry a horse like someone that with that thick mane of hair you know yeah right yeah right um well that's probably the most um the most interesting intro um conversation we've probably had on this podcast um but um look this

03:54is a series um where we're talking about actually how to market and how to run a business through covet 19 you know like this is um it's unprecedented times right there's there's there's a lot of change happening right now there's a lot of fear there's a lot of people that are stuck you know and people just don't know what to do right now. And like I was there for about three days and then I was like, wow, actually, there's a lot of opportunity right now as well, you know?

04:25And I've been seeing some of the content that was on the Instagram page, I think, just from you. Yeah. Yeah, but we share similar kind of ideas and some similar thoughts. And so I thought I would start by kind of asking you, But how do you think this is, you know, like this COVID-19 pandemic, how is this going to change or affect the business side of things, the business world? Let's start there. Well, I think there's a few different things to consider.

04:56I think there's near-term business and long-term business, right? And so I think in the near term, the way it affects businesses is really, I'm trying to think of a good analogy. It's like if you're a very hot person, it's very easy to get by. And then when you get a little uglier, maybe, you know, in your 40s 50s people are like well does this person have the skill and so i think in terms of the business it's the same thing where in the near term that was a shitty joke analogy but i think in the near term i'm the worst at like analogies like a it's like a joke internally at web profits like i'm always like it's like this and i just fail so hardcore in any like

05:30analogy i make so that was like an excellent one like in my opinion thank you brother no so i think the thing um that i would i would say is i think in the near term it basically is like yo are you critical or not. And I think some people are being misled and tricked into thinking that their businesses, we all do. We're like, oh, I'm important. My stuff is important. But I think really what will happen in the next 12 to 18 months is that people are going to see how critical is their business. And so the reality with that is that if you're not critical, meaning if you're not oxygen, if you don't generate direct money or you don't generate direct revenue or your

06:04providers can't live without you, you're going to be screwed. I think in 18 to 24 months beyond, And, you know, things will, you know, regroup and we'll, we'll get back. And maybe it's, maybe it's longer than that. I don't know the exact time, but I think right now the opportunity is how do you start doing things that are more critical? So if you're a shoe business, right? Eight, no one buy new shoes often. They might be buying it and you might be 60%, 50% of your sale base, but what can you adjust your, cause you can do manufacturing and you have an existing customer base. What can you transition into that your customer base might be excited about?

06:36And so could it be something with home entertainment? Could it be something with a community? Could it be something with like stars or entertainers with that stuff? And so I think there is an opportunity there, but probably not in the existing thing. And so you have to kind of start adjusting for that, for that new future. Yeah, right. I think, you know, because we're having quite a lot of conversations as well with, with potential clients and with clients. And our conversations are trying to help companies find how they can be

07:08critical you know how can they try to pivot right like you could be part of the lucky but i say five to ten percent of organizations it's just like a random stat like like it's a random stat it's not at all um statistical right like um but there's a small percentage that because because of the covid um the covid19 pandemic have seen like an increase in sales that's going to be a small percentage, right? The home yoga routine sites, right? Like I think I've subscribed, right?

07:40But the Udemy's of the world, Zoom, like how happy would you be to be Zoom right now, right? There's going to be like some components that are probably increasing. I'd probably also say the sumo.com probably should be seeing an uptake right now because it's going to the digital side of things. But if you're not, how fast can you pivot, right? Because we're living in a world where it's not like a zero sum game. It's like a negative sum game right now, right? The world is not expanding.

08:10It's contracting. And so in that world, there's a fight. There's a fight for resources, right? And, you know, from the business's perspective, right? It's like, cool, so how good are you? And are you good enough to win right now, you know? And that's a challenge, I think, that like a lot of organizations are having to face, right? And so what would you say? to those type of arguments. How are you guys facing it? How are you guys facing it? Like, has your revenue changed? Do your customers respond?

08:41Like, what's going on with you guys? Yeah, look, I think, from my profits perspective, I mean, like, all our travel and hospitality clients stopped. They stopped overnight, right? Like, because there's nobody traveling. And all of the restaurant event clients stopped because all the events have been shut down right now for six months, right? And so there are some companies that overnight that had like a nine-figure, eight-figure company, they basically had lost all their revenue overnight, right?

09:16Because all the events were canceled for six months. So all the revenue that was booked are basically gone, right? So we ourselves have pivoted to help organizations to get through COVID-19, right? You know, we've created a product, the COVID-19 marketing response plan is like actually, of course, how do you respond from a marketing and a business perspective to win right now? Right? Because it's hard now. Like two months ago, everybody could kind of win.

09:48Right? Now, not everybody can win. You know, so how are you approaching, you know, this challenge, right? I mean, in terms of your portfolio of companies, but what's happening with you, Noah? I'm terrified. I'm terrified. I'm scared, Alex. No, I- Are you? I don't think it's- Are you? Well, I think it depends on the day. I mean, I think what I'm observing about my own emotions and about the people that I interact with

10:18and people I'm watching and people I'm just trying to talk with, I feel like more people are feeling what it's like to be an entrepreneur. that just everyone is feeling this way, which is the roller coaster of emotions. And maybe that's just what it's like to be a human. I don't even know if it's an entrepreneur. And what that means is you wake up and you say, holy shit, I'm still fucking stuck at home today. Or, you know, like you guys, if you're an agency, holy shit, this client just canceled or that deal we were about to close just canceled. And I've talked with a lot of people and there's another

10:49group of these people who are like, hey, I just lost my job. And, you know, I think with that being said, there's more drinking, there's more confusion, there's more lack of confidence, there's more anxiety, there's more uncertainty, more than ever. And I think we all need to figure out, you know, someone said this to me, someone said this in a text group last night, they're like, man, this COVID-19 thing happened, and I've got no control. And I think that's bullshit. That's loser talk. It's the idea that, hey, I'm going to let everything external control me. And I'm not going to take any responsibility for the situation, because it's not my fault. And I

11:22got screwed whenever someone says screwed i think that they're basically just straightforward saying it's not their responsibility and ultimately then i think all the the certain winners in australia in africa in israel in china wherever across the world america certain people men and women are going to stand up and say well what can i do about this because when this ends i want to be somewhere better than where i am today right and that that inspires the hell out of me i have a friend who lives in thailand he's a american dude his name's edmund and edmund is like he has a hostel he's got

11:5712 of them supposedly i think he's more got like six but let's just say he has all 12 that he says yep i like giving him shit for it you know his 12 hostels are almost empty yeah well i have to be empty right now yeah i have an airbnb for instance as well my airbnb is has been empty for almost three months. And so thank God it's not my main source of income. But the question then is, what is Edmund doing? Is Edmund sitting on his ass blaming someone, the virus? Is he waiting for the government to come fix it? No. What Edmund is doing, which I respect and I admire about him,

12:33is that he's hustling. The real hustle, not the hustle where I'm here to inspire you. It's like, all right, I'm turning off the podcast. I'm turning off the YouTube. I'm turning off the news and the WhatsApp groups, the Instagram bullshit. And I'm going out hustling. So what he's doing is he, he emailed me a few days ago and I was so inspired by it. So what he said was he has started a food delivery business in Thailand. That's number one, a grocery delivery business. Two, people that are trying to get in and out of Thailand need visas. So they're helping people get visas. His wife,

13:04who is Thai, started doing mango sticky rice. So now they're delivering mango sticky rice around in Thailand. Love it. And so they've done other things. So there's two ways to approach it, but I'm giving you some of the more tactical stuff. So grocery delivery, visa stuff. And this guy, you know, he was making good money. Now he's teaching English. He's using, you know, preply.com. I think it's preply.com and italki.com. He's renting out to the rooms in the hostel to whoever and whomever. He's got houses that he's trying to rent it out. And so I think the two ways to approach the situation is how do you put a plan in place

13:38to take back control. And in everyone's plan, there's two components and the components are number one, how do I get better defense? Which means like, how do I secure up my foundation and make sure that I don't have to worry about money? And how do you not worry about money? Reduce all your costs. Right. And then how do you get offensive, man? Like, how do you go out to your clients? Like, I love what you just said. That's inspiring. You said, how do I go to my clients? And I'll tell you a crazy story. I just heard a few hours ago that I love. How do I go to my clients offensively and say, yo, Oh, you don't have the coronavirus marketing plan. Like I've got a new plan for you. Or one thing my friend just said that I thought was so amazing. He is

14:14going to the cruise lines. Like everyone thinks the cruise lines are screwed. He's going to the cruise lines and saying, Hey, cruise lines, how do we get your customers even more than before? Yeah. And how do we actually do the marketing for you and approaching the people who are like, shit, I got no. And so it's not that maybe it won't work. Maybe it will. But I was very inspired that everyone's running away and he's running towards. Yeah, and I think that point there exactly is the way to win right now, I believe.

14:44I think there's a lot of fear, right? And there's a lot of people saying, oh, let's just wait, let's just wait. And I'm like, well, yeah, you can wait, but what if it takes longer than two weeks? What if it takes longer than four weeks? What if it takes longer than three months? The waiting is just gonna be like an inevitable death to the business, right? Like that's the wrong, potentially the wrong word to use right now, but it's like, it's, it's kind of the end of the business. And so proactive action, proactive action, just to be proactive, right. And to take action is critical right now.

15:16And, you know, I think this kind of, this separates, um, the real businesses from the rest. Like, it's like, you know, like before you mentioned the entrepreneur life, right. this is what it is to be an entrepreneur. Like this is just kind of more pronounced right now because there's such upheaval in the world. But this is exactly the entrepreneur's life, right? And maybe there's some businesses out there

15:49that started at the beginning of the growth cycle and they just rode the growth, right? And that's easier to grow. It's way harder to be an entrepreneur when things are not growing. just when like it's survival of the fittest right because then you actually have to be better you can't just be the same but cheaper you actually have to be better like in every um across the board and i think it's easy now to be better because everyone else is so stuck just taking

16:20action like at this point like at least for the next a couple of weeks at least that action like is going to give you an advantage, you know? But I did ask you before, like how are you approaching the portfolio like at the moment, yeah? In terms of like your businesses. Because obviously like you've got a few and I'm sure like you advise on a bunch as well, you know, like, so like, how are you approaching it right now? So I would say the thing that we've done, it's the first thing we did is defense.

16:51And I'll tell you, I'll be very, you know, actionable. Yeah. So the first thing we did on defense is we did a thing called a 30-5 plan. And so what that means exactly is we said, let's say our revenue is $100,000 a month. We assume that our revenue is going to instantly go down to $70,000. So 30% reduction. And so if that goes down, the second thing is, well, how do we still make at least 5% profit? So 30 reduction, 5% profit. it. So if that happens, what do we need to change in our business to be able to be there right now?

17:24Cause we're not, we would be, we'd actually be, you know, losing a lot of money. So what we did is we went through every single thing to see what we have to change. And so I'll, you know, highlight it. Cause I think sometimes people want to get some, you know, inspiration or things kind of trickled in there. So what we did is we paused all commissions. We canceled all of our lunches. we reduced our server spending we reduced our ad spending we paused a lot of our contractors we asked certain people unfortunately to take a little bit of a pay reduction temporarily we pulled a lot of our affiliate marketing we reduced some of the facebook google marketing

17:59and so we ended up cutting a significant amount of money to get to that 30-5 plan and we did it immediately. And I think the key thing here is a lot of people in this situation need a plan to reduce anxiety, reduce anxiety, increase control, and take pro-action, take charge of the situation instead of blaming and waiting for the government to hopefully do something. For the people down under where you live, Rupert Murdoch is not going to save you, okay? People are not going to be

18:31helping you. Like, you have to take responsibility for yourself. I don't want to complain. I don't want to blame anyone. So reduce your costs across the board aggressively. And we immediately don't wait for it to happen to someone else. Don't wait for them to hopefully fix you or they can come help you with that stuff. And so we did that pretty much not right away, but we started talking about it. And so we set up that and we set up a plan B, which is like our red button. Don't even want to talk about it plan if things get really bad. And so number one, we just reduced all our costs

19:03we negotiate our costs, pause things. And so we were able to reduce, it ended up being a few hundred thousand dollars of monthly spend. And then the second component, which is almost as critical is how do you take advantage of this opportunity? And this to me is an amazing opportunity for people. And it's not that I'm here to sell snake oil. It's not there that I have nothing to even convince people to go do, but I think for the people that can go into the fear and go into the storm and go into the uncertainty, it's a great chance for

19:33them to actually create something. Because to me, I think if you can win in a downtime, you're going to be victorious in the uptime. And so in terms of the things that we've done, we looked across our portfolio and we said, all right, number one, where's ROI? So where can we put more people or more money that's going to give us a positive return? And so we've moved people around to different groups within our businesses. Number two, we said, how do we aggressively go? Well, if people are running away, how do we go into the storm? So we've changed and

20:04added affiliate program within SendFox. So SendFox, which is email marketing for content creators, we added an affiliate program, which is blowing up because it's saying, hey, you lost your job. Hey, you have an audience. Hey, you want to just go make some money. Now you can actually go sell this product, which is really affordable. And it's great for you and great for us and great for all of people you're selling it to. So that's one thing. We started, we've went from two articles a week on app sumo.com to nine. And it's not about just outputting more poop, but it's saying, Hey, people now more than ever are looking for certainty. That's actually what everyone's looking

20:38to. They're consuming a lot, right? Everyone's at home. I saw an interesting stat around that is that more people are consuming on their desktop than on their mobile. And why? Because they're not on the go anymore. They're stuck. And while they're stuck and while they're home, some people are going to take advantage of this. They're going to say, I don't want to sit around and just waste these six months. I'm going to waste this. Yeah. You know, at the end of six months, I'm going to say, I didn't waste it. Most people are 80%, 90% are, they're going to say, I hope someone gives me a handout. So, you know, for the people that are, we're trying to be

21:09supportive and work with them. And so started an affiliate program, created more content. We've gone out and increased our ad spend. So we pulled some of it back to see what's actually profitable. And then we've gone back out and said, all right, this is profitable. We're going to go even more into this ad spend. Uh, we've gone into sponsorships. So a lot of these influencers and marketers and business owners that are saying, man, my ad revenue dried up, my spend dried up. We're going to them and say, Hey, we'll sponsor you while no one else will, because we can get a better price. And now we're going to have these people who are loyal to us and we're loyal to them for a very, very long term. Um, with app sumo, it's also trying new things. I think this is,

21:43you know, in terms of the aggressiveness and offensiveness, when you have these limitations, Alex, this is the time to try the stuff you never tried before. This is the time that you said, Hey, you know, I've been thinking about that, but you know, it's never been the right time. That's now that is this instant. And so for us, it's trying to promote courses, trying to promote like zoom backgrounds, you know, that's starting to become a thing, starting to figure out, uh, you know, haul drop.com, which is, you know, there's all these physical products that are, people are trying to sell and they're struggling. They're not, you know, if they're not like, you know, prep food or gym equipment, they're struggling. And so

22:16we created a haul drop H a U L drop.com to say, all right, well, how do we help promote you? And so I think the key thing here is people are still spending money. People are still living. People are still eating. People are still watching shows. People are still entertaining. They're zooming and you know, FaceTiming, you know, watching whatever it is. And so how do you be a part of that wave? right and so a few days ago two days ago people were saying no let's start a business you're saying things are easy and things are amazing it's easy to talk about it it's easy to listen to this stuff and do nothing and that's the stuff that upsets me i want the i want the doers out

22:49there the doers come and join me the watchers go home so if you're a doer one of the things i did was i said all right well let me start a business in an hour and you can go on youtube i just put it up there i started a business in an hour and how i did it i didn't do magic i didn't do ads I didn't do a landing page. I didn't spend any money. I went out and reached out to some people just like anyone can not, I didn't use an email list. I didn't do any big promotion. And I said, Hey, does anyone need anything delivered to their house? Second thing I said is, Hey, does anyone need any gym equipment? Cause that's something that I need. I think you should always

23:20solve your own problems first. And the third thing I called, I cold called Instagram messaged and emailed a bunch of closed stores and said, Hey, your store is closed. Why don't I help you get online for free. And maybe if you make some sales, you can hit me, you can, you know, compensate me. And I started getting some responses. And in the hour of doing this channel and the show on YouTube, you can find it at youtube.com slash okay dork. I was able to make, I ended up actually making about $620 in revenue. Profit was around 40 bucks. And you know, what I learned from that is number

23:52one, making money can be hard. It's hard. Number two is that making money is that you have to find what people really want and people are still spending people are still breathing but it's just more it's more about what's essential now versus bullshit stuff like no one's buying new shoes yeah no one's buying more socks but they're spending on board games they're spending on online ads which is you know what your agency can help a lot of people they're spending on hey my website that was getting 10 maybe we can get 20 conversion and so i think you just have to be

24:25am i close to helping them make money or am i close to helping them save a lot of money and you know if you can go and do that you're going to be successful now and later man yeah thanks for sharing that there's there's quite a lot of parts there which i'd love to unpack i think um um just just quickly from a sponsorship perspective like could you just expand on just what you mean by sponsorship like like you sponsored let me just show you yeah can you show you and no that's the second part was the zoom backgrounds like what that sounds cool that's the first time i heard about that yeah so people are starting to create a bunch of zoom backgrounds you should sell those

24:58zoom backgrounds and you can actually create. And so I think what I'm realizing or what I've realized is that there are new entrepreneurs, there's how many millions of people are unemployed now? Let's say 30 million, 20 million. That's a lot. That means that's also a chance for those 30 million people to be their new bosses. Guess what? You don't have to kiss anyone's ass ever again and be your own boss. And so I think creating, what does everyone do? Everyone's on zoom. Everyone's watching Netflix. Everyone's doing board games. Everyone's trying to work out at home, be a part of the title waves and you're going to make a lot of money. Yep. And so this is an example. You can see my screen. This is a guy named Harry dry.

25:32He runs marketing examples.com. This guy is the future. He's me 20 years ago, but better than me. And so I reached out to him and I was like, yo, I want you to get on send Fox. I'm going to have it, give it to you for completely for free. I'm going to see if I can pay you some money and whatever I can do for you, I'm going to do for you. And because one, I believe in this guy, I think he's phenomenal, but two in the next few years, this guy's going to be the next generation and it's kind of like what Dr. Dre did with Eminem yeah this is my Eminem I mean I'm looking for a bunch of these guys because this guy's kind of more he's tapped into what I'm not

26:04and I think especially as you get older you get just you get disconnected from the new new because you're kind of old and you're in your own ways and you're comfortable and so you have to stay uncomfortable and find the people that are that are doing it and being around them and so anyways this is a guy that kind of been in touch with and so we ended up I think we're going to end up probably giving a few hundred bucks a month it doesn't have to be a lot yep and we're doing that with haul drop we're doing it with send fox we're doing it with app sumo we're at app sumo they're calling them athletes you know people that talk about apps and oh yeah so anyways yeah nice i think that's part one what was the second question you were

26:38zoom background so what's the zoom background thing yeah i mean i think part there is that in zoom you can have a zoom background so let me show you where i'm at the office so here's me this is at our sumo bar so now i'm at the sumo bar this is our bar at our office yeah yeah sure there's an opportunity where you can create this as if we're going to be using zoom for the next 50 years this is a pretty sizable market and the thing i think about starting businesses is it's never about where it starts it's about where it ends and the biggest thing is momentum so just get going find your first customer see what they need then get them that thing and then

27:09you can keep iterating and evolving through that i think a lot of people wait around talking about it thinking about it reading about it listening about it watching about it and not being about it and that's ultimately what's going to matter at the end of the day yeah right yeah right i think I think what's interesting, like just on that point there is the part about having conversations, I think critical, especially from the B2B perspective, right? You know, you're seeing so many companies that are doing like webinars right now, right? Now, it's a bit of like, like it could be seen like almost as like a bit of a joke, but because there's so many

27:44that that's actually happening right now. But the CPMs on Facebook is super low. The conversion is super high if the topic is right now you may have like a business um that that actually um that can't support um like that basically um you can't sell its services right now um um but having like but to create like a webinar and to get the registrations and to ask them

28:15their biggest challenge right now. You can go out now and get thousands of people opting in for a couple of dollars each. And now your sales team, they can pick up the phone and just have conversations. And then because of that, you can actually create a service or like a pivot or something like that. Because the hardest thing I think for everyone is trying to guess what people want, right? It's really hard to guess what people want right now. Yeah, there's the obvious stuff that's at home and stuff. But from like a B2B perspective, you need that insight and i think you know like an awesome way is just to pick up the phone like

28:50and if you don't have customers you can start a bunch of conversations just by hosting like a webinar or doing some kind of like you could create like a lead magnet or something like that but yeah it's around having conversations right now like and that's how we kind of developed um the cover 19 the um the cover 19 marketing response plan was because we were having so many conversations where everyone's like, I'm stuck. I don't know what to say. I'm scared to sell. I'm scared of how I am going to come across. Like I'm going to be seen as opportunistic or

29:21stuff like that. And so we're like, okay, there's a real problem. And it's a real problem. So look, I do think that kind of those conversations are super, super important. From an entrepreneur. I mean, I think that's, you know, I was telling someone earlier, and I truly believe it is, I think that attention right now, attention is worth more than money. Attention is worth more than money. Just expand on that. If you can just like, yeah, I mean, think about this, right? Like what you just said, what did you say? You said that, you know, everyone's doing a webinar. Everyone's doing a YouTube live.

29:53Everyone is trying to go crazy on like, Oh shit, maybe our company's not important, but let's try to do something else. So I think, you know, if you have customers, you need to keep your customers as close as possible. Go talk to every single one of them, get them on a live chat call them up whatever you need to do and i think in terms of attention is that like we're distracted all day we have a lot of uncertainty we have a lot of people if you're a boss like yourself who has people that work at your company you have a lot of you know uh responsibilities and so i think at the end of the day it's like if you have customers and and if

30:27you're trying to grow something for the future it's how do you have attention of quality and trust so that people are looking to you for information and exactly they're looking to you for that certainty which you know i'm doing my best to share the things i'm learning and i think part of that is doing the you know doing the things that i think everybody else kind of needs you know like if you could give people stuff that they want like people will show up and that's the part i think and this is the part where i think um like in terms of the advice are the way

30:58giving our clients like and how kind of like like in terms of our perspective and um how we approach kind of the content side of things like in terms of you know these um style videos email marketing and stuff is kind of to say hey you know we're all in this together and here's what we're figuring out and we're sharing and we're kind of you know we're trying to lead the way like that and i think from a positioning perspective to be seen as the thought leader is the strongest

31:29in terms of that market but it's also the most challenging because you actually have to have something that people actually want to listen to right and like again this comes back to survival of the fittest like are you good enough to win right now because unfortunately not everybody can win yeah like all the companies that we're speaking with you know we can help them but they need to be good enough their service needs to be good enough their founders need to be good enough the team needs to be good enough they have to be able to sell like i think today more than ever

32:03you'd like the sales role is critically important because we're trying to sell people to take action like it's not even against the competitor anymore like you know we're trying to sell right now continue marketing because everyone's just like stuck oh i don't know what to do i'm gonna stop everything right and so the companies that can sell that can market and that can create like a um a product a pivot that's the ones that that um that can survive this thing and they can

32:34thrive you know as part of this challenge it's tough man it's it's it's easy to kind of you know I've seen a lot of people say this and almost every single person I've said, I've seen almost every single person who's listening or will listen. They've had some days where it's tough. Oh, horrible. And so they're tough. I'm sure you, I'm sure me, I've had it, you know, I have it pretty frequently. And so I think given that reality, it's how do I start building up some confidence easily that I can start.

33:07Oh my God, you're rich. I'm rich. I'm rich in toilet paper. it's toilet paper king here so no but i think what it is with that is how do you just get the momentum going how do you get out of the train station how do you start just and you know if anything it just helps someone for free and and that's a great way to start building up some of this confidence in people who it's been shook you know it's been uncertain it's been scary and i think some people are going to feel really confident and go out and ultimately in a few years if not sooner have a lot of success for it yeah for sure how do you see um the digital landscape

33:43changing as a result of this pandemic what do you i mean what do you i have a lot of strong opinions about that but what do you think uh i'm interviewing you but look i'm happy to share um some thoughts about it but i do but i'm interested um to hear what you say i think i'll start it then um i'm thinking um well a it's more important than ever to be digital i think like in terms of advertising all the out-of-home stuff at the moment is just gone because no one's out of their home so all

34:16the billboards like all the everything outside all the bus advertising all the taxi advertising like all the advertising is gone i think if you aren't online right now no one's going to find you no one's going to see the shop on the road right like they're not going to see like there's not a foot traffic anymore it's all kind of a virtual traffic right i think there's going to be more um more what's the word um consolidation in facebook and google they're just gonna you know be between them like an amazon that's pretty much going to be the world that everyone experiences

34:51right like that's going to be the locked environments now i think you know what we've been seeing in the last two weeks is email marketing performance is actually up so like it's been going down slowly over the years but you know but what we're seeing it's increasing now it's going to be good emails you know like i think i've unsubscribed over the last two weeks to probably about 400 companies that have just sent me just horrible like we're here we're still operating like if i want to give you money i'm sure you'd take my money like seriously like

35:25please don't tell me that like you're still there with nothing else you know or just to stay safe like seriously i'm staying safe right like it's cool you know what i mean you know what it is with that is that everyone is worried about themselves yeah so i mean a fried pickle i don't do they have fried pickles in australia i mean so you're in texas right yeah yeah texas has got yeah you got i'm sure there's some i haven't seen them i haven't even heard of them but you guys like frying stuff um you fry butter right you have yeah they do fried butter fried

35:59butter fried oreos all this stuff so in in terms of tech and all this stuff i think at the end of the day you know we've talked about essentialism and what's important um i think the the thing that i really like to look at is is very clear to me which is what am i certain about for the future yeah so alex do you know when this whole virus shit's gonna end and if you say you do you're full of shit but no no i you don't but i do think it's longer than anyone expects it to be

36:29personally i do think it's longer but i don't know at all i don't know i'm prepared that it's not going to change for a while you know that's how i'm approaching it i think that's a smart approach and i think the the thing that you have to do then is say what am i certain of what am i certain of am i certain that my agency clients might pull back yes am i certain that people are going to spend a little bit less yes are people going to spend more on different things yes and there's a bunch of other these questions are more people going to be at home

37:05thinking that they should start their own business or that they could try to do something eventually yeah for sure so the question then is how do you be in the right place so when that tidal wave happens, you're on your surfboard just cashing in. And I think all you have to think about is what do you know that you feel unique about that you know that you can then take action on? So if you think more people are going to be on selling e-commerce, then you should go and help Shopify stores. If you think digital is bigger, you should help AppSumo go be an affiliate or go get your product in AppSumo or go sell something digital on Gumroad maybe. And I think if you could be

37:40aware of what you're certain of and act on it, that's where the bets happen and that's where the rewards happen. And so for me, I think more people are going to try to start or learn how to grow online businesses. So if you can sell information, if you can sell tools, or you could be one of the people starting an online business, you're going to be successful or helping people transition to an online success business. I think more of these collaboration tools are going to be big. So I don't know which part of it, there's Miro, there's this, there's Tandem, there's Zoom, there's a lot coming and there's a lot that are already there. And so at the end of the day, instead of me telling, you know, everyone's got to think for

38:12themselves but what do you believe the future will be and then how do you say this is the stuff i believe let me go act on it interesting interesting um just quickly just like on the sass side of things right no no just on the sass side of things because you you have sass um you know a lot of people that have sass as well um like like quite a lot of sass founders and stuff how do you see sass going in a time like this because because obviously like in the past five or six seven years

38:44the amount of sass products has expanded so much there's so much sass out there but how do you see the sass world performing in this environment well i'll just tell you what i've seen sass is like a dangerous treadmill where you're kind of chasing and you're the treadmill over ends and so if you're trying to get new customers and some customers cancel, you're like running and you're running and running and running. And you're just like, holy shit, I'm on a treadmill. So it's hard to get off this thing versus trying to feel like you're building an asset or something that you're not sweating.

39:18And so I'm seeing a lot of success from businesses that don't have a subscription because when you are worried about money, the first thing you do is look at what subscriptions. And so within that subscription, you have to say, well, am I part of their critical subscriptions or non-critical subscriptions? And if you're in the non-critical, you are screwed. And you better figure out how you can take your customer base, which I think is an opportunity. Because if you have existing customers, you have an opportunity to help them do something else. And I think a lot of the non-critical businesses need to figure out how to adjust that very quickly. Because I've heard it churn is very bad.

39:50And if it's not bad now, it's going to get worse. And I think there's a lot of people building products in foreign countries that are very low cost of development and low cost of maintenance where they don't need to have a subscription. and i think jeff bezos said it very well which is your margin is my opportunity and so if you're having a subscription because oh that was the big thing and everyone now i have predictable income someone will come and eat your shit that not literally figured so i think you need to you need to think with that and so we've seen that with absumo absumo is growing because

40:22two reasons one you know absumo is the number one site for software deals people want to save money So they're saying, where can I save money? And two, people are saying, well, what subscriptions do I have that I can now find an alternative that's, if not better, and I only pay one time? And if you have a subscription, I would be scared. I think SaaS companies are going to start dying very slowly. Unless you're hosting, you're maybe Shopify or you help generate revenue or ultimately email marketing. Basically, are you helping them directly attributable generate more money or even reduce costs?

40:58Let me give you another example. We have a SaaS product called SendFox, which is a MailChimp alternative. And MailChimp and some of these other guys, like ConvertKit and some of these other guys, I think are screwed. Why? Because you're paying $200,000, $400,000, $500,000, $600,000 a month. And maybe you're making money, maybe you're not, but you're like, hold on. With SendFox or some of these other companies, I think there's a few other providers out there that are similar. I can pay $50 one time and never have to pay again? yeah maybe i don't need to keep paying these guys it's the most expensive thing and so

41:31i think that's happening across the board and everything's sass so i think there's going to be an evolution or an awakening uh in these businesses so i would be scared to be in sass right now unless you're a hosting provider and even hosting like people are starting to look for alternatives so definitely if you are in those positions i would try to say how do i get my customers very close to me during this kind of wild time right right i just quick one um just because like i've seen send fox um um um but i haven't just really just gone into it yet um we have a lot of clients who

42:05start off on mail chimp but now they've just started charging money for everything and they're like they're more expensive than a lot of the proper email marketing suites out there like like if you've got 10, 20,000 subscribers in there. So how does Kindless SendFox compare? So this is like the time to kind of pitch it maybe, but I'm just kind of interested. And I think that everyone on the call as well is interested as well. How does SendFox compare to MailChimp

42:36in terms of the functionality? So whenever you create any product, I think it's more about how, like what makes you unique? Yeah. I think that's what it is at the end of the day. It's like if you're spending and whatever, this is what I realized in like 20 years of doing internet business world is that every time I focus on the competitor, I don't do well. And every time I just say, Hey, what is it about this thing that I do want to do for myself that is unique for me? That's about us. And I believe that's beneficial for a certain type of people. We do really well. Yeah. Yeah. So send Fox is stupid,

43:09basic email marketing for content creators. So if you're not looking to spend a lot of money and you want to email your audience once a week, if not a few times a week, you should use another provider. But what I wanted personally was I want to make, be able to create emails really easily. So help me, give me ideas for emails, which we're launching pretty soon. Don't charge me prices. You're charging ridiculous prices. It doesn't make any sense to me. And then just make it simple. Like I don't need to do my Facebook ads and all these other things. I just want to send communication to people that I want,

43:42that are my active audience. And I think that's kind of where we started differentiating, which is we also don't care about your email list size. Everyone talks about email list size. What I actually think is more important than your email list size is of that email list, who cares? Who is your active audience? And so we're really pushing hard now on how do we help you really develop and find and develop your active audience? And that's what matters. okay i would say that's probably what's becoming the the one of the different interests among many

44:13for sendfox so sendfox.com right it's sendfox.com right yeah i think our main differentiate yeah sorry to cut you off no no you think the main no i'd say originally our main development is it's simpler and it's cheaper it's more affordable and how hard is it to transition from MailChimp to SendFox? Is it just export the list, import the list? So we built an API tool, so you just hit connect to MailChimp and we automatically import everything in. Here's what's actually really interesting about that.

44:45For the past year, we've had that. We've really struggled getting people to import their list. Why? Because they're like, ah, you guys are 50 bucks versus, you know, 50 bucks a month. We're 50 bucks once versus 50 bucks a month. It didn't matter. but now that people are a little bit more cautious with their money people are swarming over to centfox and so that we've been fortunate that we believe that something more affordable made more sense and then now we're starting to say how do we increase our differentiation to make a product that's even higher desirability for these people yeah that's great that's great um

45:19and we're profits um if you're listening which you all should be listening um let's try send Fox out for some clients that are looking to save some money for sure. So that sounds pretty cool. And I know like I've got some side ventures that I'll be transitioning away from MailChimp because we're, because I just actually had a question just from our co-founder saying, should we just cancel MailChimp right now? Cause like the shop's closed, you know, like, yeah, we should, and we should move to SandFox. So that's cool. Actually I'll help you. I'll introduce you to Stephanie and our team,

45:50or Samantha, excuse me. And she'll just move everything over for you for free. You don't even worry about it. Perfect. That sounds great. And then because we use all the Sumo bars and stuff, I'm assuming it just integrates straight into Sumo so that the subscriptions go straight into SendFox. Is that right? Yeah. So we have a connection with SendFox. So if you're using Sumo.com, you can easily just one-click connect with SendFox. And if you're not using Sumo.com, you should be using Sumo.com. So just go there right now. Dude, I love you, Alex, man. It's good to see your face. It's been a few years since we've hung out in person.

46:21Yeah, I know. For sure. You're doing okay, though? how are you mentally and you know physically and all your stuff um look it's been a difficult month you know like i was actually like um kind of like because like i've been basically like i've started actually in my marketing a database every single day just talking about our experience and kind of helping organizations kind of um just to get through this thing um and it's challenging um

46:51But like yesterday, like I wrote like an email just saying 23 days ago, the company was in the office still, right? Like we were still in the office. Man, that looks good, man, that thing. But like, yeah, like three weeks ago, like was a whole different world, right? It was such a different like world. And so it's been challenging to pivot this fast. You know, we've changed all our marketing. We've changed our service offering. we've gone out to every single client we've we've you know we've launched like like a bunch of

47:25webinars we've changed our whole content strategy we've had to make some hard decisions internally it's been pretty stressful um this week this week was a positive week um last week like like as in we've got a system now to scale up in terms of you know some lead generation in terms of a content strategy in terms of a product that we can sell. Three weeks ago, we were like irrelevant, you know?

47:58Did you feel like you, what's the difference between now and three weeks ago? We were selling stuff three weeks ago that people wanted. 22 days ago, they didn't want it anymore. Oh, sorry. 19 days ago, they didn't want it anymore, right? And so it's like, it's overnight. You've got like a company that is like, you know, it's relatively like in demand. There's a system in place.

48:29There's like a business that's operating. There's a status quo. And then overnight, that status quo is gone. And then you need to pivot everything internally to be relevant, right? Because overnight, the leads start- So what were you selling before? And then what have you started selling differently? And here's the thing I wonder too, is how do you make sure you don't overcorrect? Yeah, sure. Well, before we were selling kind of, well, it was called fluid marketing, right? And it's basically outsourced.

49:02It's like an outsourced team that can support your growth, right? And so, you know, we'd do all of the channels, the funnels and all that type of stuff. And basically, you know, we'd sell it to specific audiences. We'd sell consulting and we would sell growth and we would sell kind of the channel-specific services and we'd sell creative services and all that type of stuff, right? And then overnight, no one wants that anymore. They're just in survival mode. And so we had conversations across every client and we understood that everyone's stuck.

49:37Everyone's stuck in marketing, right? So kind of the back end is the same. We've still got the growth teams. We've still got the approach that we can help organizations scale up. But now we've just changed the message. We've changed the service. We've changed the first part. We've changed actually how we can help an organization. The team's the same, right? The process is the same. The application's different, right? The marketing is different. We changed our whole website literally in three days across three regions, right?

50:10We changed our service offering. Like we created like a service, we expanded it out, we outlined it all and we executed it across, you know, basically all our clients in a couple of weeks. Right. So we just changed everything instantly. Right. That's massive stress internally. Right. But that was done in two weeks. And that's exactly the service that we're offering now. The company's out there that are stuck. until we did that we were like in this place where we we stopped having the right kind of

50:44conversations externally right you said we didn't have any leads right we didn't have something that that we could sell because the thing that we could sell that wasn't talking to the need of now and so that's a really scary place to be because you've still got all your stuff you still got like a bunch of overheads yeah we basically started off like in the defense mode right we can't like as much as we could without stopping what the engine right um but then we quickly were like

51:15of course how do we be offensive right now right and how do we attack right and that took a couple of weeks but now we've done that settling and now we're getting leads there's a bunch of conversations uh the marketing is hitting like it's on point um and we're there to help and there's an actual need that we're solving it's not like before because we were like trying to create the need to fill it right it's like yeah you could do marketing you know and spend because 500 bucks on facebook ads with someone but you really kind of have to have a team that's

51:50experience across all the channels and a funnel approach because the world is shifted like it's like an education process to sell like your service now there's no education process it's like there's a need and basically we've created something that can fill it and so that's why i'm saying it's now positive again like it's still very hard times right but it's still there's something that is expansive not contraction you know like contracting if that makes sense um

52:23yeah i mean i feel way better now because of it right like because because i get scared when there's nothing to grow i'm like there's only one way then is to shrink and i hate shrinking i love growth i'm sorry i cut you off now no you're great man no it's good to hear i think there's a balance of not over correcting yeah like you don't want to go and like all right we're gonna only sell you know coronavirus kits right because in a few years people probably won't need coronavirus kits but i think the reality is putting a plan in place and taking decisive action which is what you've

52:56done so good for you man look i think um look look on that point um in terms of over correcting i think there's a reality that like quite a lot of organizations are gonna have to face is like if no one is buying your stuff you need to over correct as much as possible because the conversation i'm having is that hey guess what like if it all kind of becomes okay you can just reactivate all your old campaigns again that's super that's super easy to do you just make them all live done and then it's back again right but if it doesn't what are you going to do

53:28you know so any final points noah you know because like we've got about five minutes left like i don't want to be talking a lot of final points man oh no we can keep talking if you want man but like i'm trying to keep it efficient for you because um because i know you're busy and i really appreciate it like the time today you know you know it's funny no it's one it's always great to see you and i always make time for you yeah uh it's a well you know i think everyone's at home i think one of the most amazing things about coronavirus and i talked about this with my fiance who's also eating fried chicken how's the fried chicken you're making me want to go out and

54:03get some fried chicken man i'm saying like sucking the bones i'm like so i think one of the things that's amazing about coronavirus and i don't know how long it's going to last no one does yet i mean maybe some government officials maybe some scientists but personally i don't and so the reality with that is given that we don't know how long it's going to last what are people doing about it right i don't know how long it's going to last and so ultimately I'm kind of very excited to be like, who's going to stand up?

54:37Who's going to say, Hey, I want to go and do something about this. And I think that's going to be a really exciting time for, for those people who can face a little discomfort, can face a little uncertainty, go out and start some new stuff, see where they can help people. There's a lot of people that need help right now that are scared. So that part gets me motivated as hell, man. I'm excited about it because I love seeing that it inspires me. And I think what people need to figure out is like throughout their day because we're all going to have some ups and down days is in these up and down days figure out how do i maximize putting myself in the place whether i have a day job whether i'm an employee

55:08whether i'm a teammate whether i'm the boss that the majority of my day is around people or doing things that that give me that energy yeah awesome that's awesome cool no well mate thank you so much for your time today you're my mate no appreciate you having me i love talking to you i'll talk anytime you just let me know yeah no for sure now again everyone um who's listening who's not on sumo.com, you should go there right now, install it actually on your website. You'll just be building emails if you get any traffic at all. And yeah, check out sendfox.com as well.

55:40And if you want some good deals on software, then make sure to check app sumo.com as well. You know? Dude, you're the best. I mean, I think in terms of email right now is that if you have a business or you want to start a business, get your customers as close to you as possible and talk to them as often as they want to hear from you. So if it's via sendfox.com and you email them or it's via phone call or if it's via like Skype or whatever it is, you know, go and figure out what inspires you and kind of tap into what you want to really be doing right now. This is a great chance. That's what I was saying earlier is that I think that this is

56:14the great equalizer of the world. Yeah. Because all these athletes and all these celebrities and all these famous fucking people are sitting in their house doing nothing. And this is a chance for anyone out there who said, you know, like Noah, you weren't born as good looking, as good looking as tom hanks i mean i think i'm pretty good looking at tom hanks but let's just say i'm not this is a great equalizer this is a chance for anyone who's wanted who's been an underdog like me to rise up and take over and so i'm recruiting i'm recruiting all the underdogs to

56:45come with and how do people get in touch with you if they want to they don't need to what they go to okdork.com and subscribe to the newsletter right it's an awesome newsletter by the way as well like in terms of marketing advice um and kind of alternate ways of thinking smart i would highly recommend okdork.com um there's some fantastic information in there too like i said too like because like like i don't really talk up that many people because i don't really learn from that many people but like but but i get like a bunch of fantastic ideas from you mate so um

57:21you're always so positive yeah i i appreciate it man yeah i i'm just feeling everything going on And I feel like, you know, if I have to end with something, it's that if right now, I think I have so much more energy and more confidence and more optimism than I've ever had in my life. And if I have more than that right now, then I need to be giving it to whoever I can do and whoever I can help. And if you have a little bit less and you're got fired or you're a retailer or whatever is you're struggling, there's a chance that you need to just ask for some help. Ask Alex, ask me. There's a way.

57:52Everyone is down to help right now. Everyone's equal. And there's a chance where we can all help each other. All right, Noah, mate, thanks so much. Fantastic talking, man. Yeah, cool, brother. Yeah, same to you, man. And yeah, we'll chat soon, bro. See you. Have a good night. You too, man. Bye, bye. Thanks for listening to the Growth Manifesto podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please head on over to iTunes and give us a five-star rating. For more episodes, please visit growthmanifesto.com forward slash podcast.