How talking to customer can lead to full professional freedom...

0:11First of all, thank you very much for being here and I would like to before starting with the talk, I would like to ask you a question. Do you remember the the first time you heard your your recorded voice? How how did that feel? Did Did you like it? Can someone that likes that can raise a their hand? So, it it really felt strange to me and I remember the first time it happened to me when I was 10 years old and I'm my father recorded that on those tape recorders and I heard that back and I said, "Oh, looks pretty bad and I I've never I put

0:53that away." And I thought that there were some some issues with the with the recording, but a few a few years later, I recorded that back at CD quality, so I knew that it was okay. And this recording was completely different. So, that made me think that in in certain situation, what we think is the reality sometimes is someone else, something else. So, my reality for that experience was different from all the reality of all the other people in the world. And this happens technically because you are hearing your your voice not only through your ears, but also through the vibration of your bones

1:30creating a unique experience for you. So, the same thing for for me and I think for all of you that are single founders is uh happening with your with your business as well because you have um personal view of your business that is different from the view that kind of your your customers, your prospects or all the other people. So, there is um a gap between your experience and their experience. And if you are not aware of this gap, you can run into problems. And this is exactly what happened to me when

2:05when I started my my business. And how many of you are a technical founders, people that really that that build their product? Can you raise your hand? Okay. Okay, I see. So, quite a few. And I was a technical founder as well when when I started and I just used the the old-school approach. I I always been interested in automating things and

2:30I I wanted to build my my own thing. And I I I thought about what would be cool and what would what would I need and I ended up creating a um a text expansion software. I thought that if I needed that, other people would would need that as well. So, I just, you know, I didn't do any validation. I didn't do anything. I just

2:52started straight up coding. And I thought that other people would would come. So, once I finished, I put all the features that I thought were were interesting and then I put it online and then I thought that well, people would come, right? But that's that's not that's exactly what happened. So, once I put the the thing online, I I put that in a forum. I had no idea what what marketing was except for, you know, posting some forums or doing

3:18things like that. And people were were not coming. I get some some people that were um buying the software and I was averaging between three started with $300 per month and um went up to 800 a month adding more more features, but you see that this this graph is not exactly the hockey stick graph we we like to see. So, and this has been going on for for a few years and the only way that I knew to, you know, try to improve sales was just to, you know create a redesign or starting from

3:55adding features or something like that. So, you see that after 5 years this kind of thing is not you know very exciting. So, I was at the point where I was uh losing motivation and at the time I was um I was having a a day job so I was focusing more and more on my on my day job especially when I when I got um an interesting offer to to go and work

4:20in Singapore. So, I thought that at this at this point I was you know I I moved from I currently live in in Italy and I moved to to Singapore from 1 year in 2010. And I got a quite interesting job there and I thought that um basically my side project was you know was going to to remain a side project

4:43for me. But you know sometimes when when you expect some something to lease this is when when something that you don't expect happens. I don't know if I think that if you've been in in business for quite some time you can think of uh an event or um or someone that created a uh a big change in your life. A person or something that that gives you a a boost and where you can clearly see a

5:15before and after. And uh I have this person I'm sorry. I'm uh this guy um I met this guy in in Singapore. He's um a business consultant has been working in Silicon Valley. His name is Anton Tran and you can read up more about him at the his blog. And I met this guy by by chance as was I

5:45was going to work. And we we start we start talking and we see that we were going along pretty well. And the nice thing about him, he was working with with startups but had a very different take on on business. Uh I've seen people here talking about business and I always saw business as a way to uh you know, to make money, to get freedom. You know, things about myself,

6:16things about I could get for me. This guy was more focused on so a business as a way to help other people. And he was you know, he was talking about startups as a way to make people help other people to to solve problems. He was working social business and other stuff. And it was nice because we we had some we ended up trading business business consultation for

6:49Italian dinner. So that was very good. And as we were eating a homemade pizza and we I was talking about my frustration with with my business. He said something that really struck me. I was um concerned about not being able to to make sales. So I couldn't find enough customer for for for my business. And he said that it's it's not

7:18how you sell, it's why they buy. And this is really changed the perspective because it's it's not being focused on yourself, on your product, but it's being focused on on the people that you are actually helping with your with your with your with your product with what you are doing. And the the point that he was making that you have a business because you want to help

7:47people in a in a sustainable way. Because if you don't have a business, so you you you don't get paid for that. You at a certain point you can no longer help them. So from from this um Sorry. I Having this conversation with him really changed everything about my business and I understood that um I was completely off with what with what I I was doing so

8:15far. Because I I didn't even know if if the product that I had was was really satisfying a need. I didn't know anything about that. So was that really useful? As he then saw, I was just driving blind at this point. And I also didn't know anything about the the audience that I was targeting to. So I I just, you know, thought about the idea, I just put it out, and

8:41that was it for me. So I needed to do something about that. And I decided that I needed to find out. And to find it out, I decided that I wanted to call my customer had cos- customer that had been returning to my that had purchased from me for for more than one time

9:00more than one time. And I decided that calling them, having a conversation with them was the best way to really understand what was going on. So I basically focused on three phases in in their journey when discovering my my solution. The first one was understanding what was the the the problems that they were having. I had no idea of what problems they were

9:24having. I was just thinking that they had to do things more efficiently, but that doesn't mean anything for them. And with with those calls that I made, I understood that there are a lot of doctors use my software, and that they very specific problems with the changes that are going on here in the US with the documentation that they are required to oblige. So, I discovered that they are using that to to create their notes and

9:48they are using templates. And that I was saving for for them up to 3 hours per day. So, that was good to know. The second important part is to understand what was the pain. Sorry, what what was the experience that they they were having with using the software. What was it easy for them to to use it, to get started, to to put it to work, to have it deliver the the information that the value that I was giving to them. And I discovered that it was not. Was way too technical and was very hard for them to And I discovered that when I've been talking to a few doctors and they were

10:30having a degree in medicine but also degree in engineering. So, I said, I must be off. And the the the third thing is to um define exactly what are the benefits that they were having. So, it's not just saving time or saving money. I wanted to understand what was the the um the benefit that they were bringing home. And for most of them was, you know, being able to spend their weekend with the family, not doing their notes, or getting more time to do things. And others told me that it was

11:08avoiding them from being sued as well. So, So, at this point I I gathered all this information from 20 30 calls of different people and I needed to uh collect all them and making them useful to to move things forward. So, this new um this started a a new journey and that was um, on two aspects. One was

11:34redesigning the the software. And the other one was recreating the the marketing copy. So, regarding the software, I needed to remove all the technical things and all the technical language that I I put in I I guess I see some people nodding. I I think some of you can recognize in that. And to make the process of getting started very very easy. And the other thing that was even more important was to being able on the on the website, on the

12:08marketing copy to resonate with them. Resonates means that when they get to your to your website, they see the solution that you're offering, and they understand that this is not uh, something that they can use or they they can adapt to what they are doing. But, this is something that was made just for them. And to to do this, I I found that the the the course and the books of of Joanna Wiebe of Copyhackers were really great, and she she talks about the the voice of the customers. So, you need to extract the information that the the the words that the customers use to describe the problem, to describe the

12:48solution, take it out, and reflect on that on on your website. Um, doing this uh, this change of focusing really on on the customer created a big change in the business as well. So, as you can see from from 2000 basically in 2011, I I work after redesign of of the website and the page. And in 2012, I get a significant

13:18improvement in sales and also in 2013. And I was basically able to 10x the Sorry, the business in a in a couple of years. And this has been done without working on acquisition, no paid advertising, no no no no nothing. Just working on the website and working on the message that I was sending to to people. And right now my my major challenge is to improve the the traffic on the website

13:49and get it in front of of more people. But even without much traffic I must say that this conversation, this mindset change has been a game changer for for my business. I was very worried about calling the customers and I never had done that before, but I discovered that when I called them they were very happy to to to to talk to me and they thanked me at the end of the call because they were able to explain what which are the problems they were having and I was able to to help them find a solution. So my final remark to to this is that if you

14:33are worried or afraid of calling your customers and you think that it's or you think it's it's a waste of time, I suggest that you you don't be because it's really the the best time I ever spent to to grow my business. So that's it. Thank you.