seanrrwilkins

Building this to help early stage founders that want to get hands-on and build a proper growth marketing foundation.

Looking for feedback on how to improve and dial this in.

Don't sleep on the benefits of DM. And automated DM remarketing like this is a killer touch for the high value bottom funnel prospects and returning customers.

A couple recommendations...

1. Get References: ask for references for previous employers/managers and coworkers. You'll want to focus those conversations around the potential co-founder's skills, work ethic, style, motivations and attitude.

2. Fear Setting: if you're not familiar, lookup "Tim Ferris Fear Setting." It's a good exercise to get all your fears and doubts and worst case scenarios down on paper so you can work through addressing them.

3. Operating Agreement: define and document a clear set of operating agreements outlining roles, expectations, separations procedures, etc. Hash it all out now so there's no confusion or guessing if things do fall apart.

4. Temp to Perm/Sweat Equity: if this person's truly motivated to be a cofounder with you, consider a short term trial period that's unpaid and non-equity with a clear set of tasks and goals. If they agree to it, and complete it successfully, they may have proven worthy to join.

I've been working on a UX/Conversion Optimization blog post and was doing some research on web design across different verticals and business types. As you start to look around, you'll see specific details emerge to meet the needs of different verticals and business models.

With every UX project, same applies to anything in sales and marketing, a little bit of audience research and understanding will go a long way to defining the best path forward for your design. Ask target users in 1:1 sessions to share the kinds of evaluation questions they want to ask of the product and their expectations. Listen for the hierarchy of the information, what's prioritized, and the specific language they're using. For an FS client project this research helped us define a simple decision tree to build into the site UX that led visitors down different paths based on their specific challenges/wants. It delivered 125% of target annual performance in the first six months.

I also recommend looking at several sites across categories to get a feel for how brands build experiences for different business models and audiences. The focus for that business model will come through loud and clear. Here are some examples to look at side by side:

CPG vs DTC: checkout traditional CPG sites like Church and Dwight or CLR and their associate brand pages vs DTC or more digital native brands like Trumans or Method Home. You see that the older CPG sites are more informational and drive to retail with the "where to buy" prompts. And the more digital native w/ or pure DTC brands put purchase paths front and center.

eComm vs Retail Clothing: another great example is ASOS vs Gap. ASOS, as a more digital native and eComm brand shows a much cleaner and focused UX to smooth the path to digital purchase. Gap however just feels more like a traditional retailer with the plastered coupons front and center, along with a general feeling that digital purchases are secondary to the retail channel.

Consumer Banking: take a look at N26 vs Chase or Wells Fargo too. You'll see a completely different UX from N26 as the digital native. mobile focused brand that's ACQ focused since they just launched here in the US. And the older traditional banks like Chase and Wells definitely have that more cluttered UX that's indicative of an internal tension for old vs new tech, products, customers, etc.

Software: this is one vertical where I think most people are up to speed with decent best practices across the board. I haven't found any glaring instances of horrible UX yet. Look at your top of mind software companies and you'll likely see very clear UX patterns emerge. This is especially true with homepages for new visitors and brands focused on heavy user ACQ. Personally, I like Webflow and Trello as consistent examples of good UX.

As for bad examples, agencies and restaurants have historically been consistent offenders with the worst UX out there. TBWA and Ogilvy are keeping the streak alive today.

Hope this helps. And feel free to ping me if you have other questions or want to talk through some ideas.

ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit and Klaviyo are all solid paid alternatives that provide a range of list CRM, marketing automation, audience insights and performance tracking.

ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign are more targeted to the software community, and I've seen Klaviyo used by more eComm and DTC startups lately.

A couple questions to ask yourself before your leave:

1. Why did you join this company? Was it a personal connection or admiration for the CTO? Or do you actually like the company/product/service you're working on?

2. Are you mostly unhappy with the working relationship with this one person, or with the full company? If it's with this one person, that's fixable with some effort and conversations with other leaders to restructure the operation.

3. What have you learned from this to take forward? If you decide to leave, what learnings are you taking from this experience to better qualify and understand the future roles and organizations?

1. Manage Up: no matter your level, there's someone you're going to report to or be accountable to. Get to know them, their function and focus areas, expectations, how they operation and how they judge value and success.

2. Network: regardless of the size of your organization, make a list of people you want to meet across different groups/departments. Make it a point to schedule 1:1 time to get to know them. Much like the guidance in Pt 1 above, get to know what they do, how they operate, what they value and how they judge value and success. Ask them about where they need help and if they see opportunities for you to help in your new role. And always ask them for referrals to other people you should meet next.

3. Regular Review Intervals: do this first for yourself, and try to establish a more regular progress and planning session with your boss. Quarterly is good to keep this somewhat informal as it will be outside regular performance review cycles, but regular enough to ensure timeliness and value. It's also important for your own sanity to keep a realistic view on how things are going and whether they map to your personal needs and plan. We all get bogged down in the day to day BS, so this forces a time to reflect and put things in perspective.

4. Plan A Vacation: whether you have something booked or not, block a vacation for sometime in the next 6-9 months. It's easy to get approvals when you're starting out, if you need that, and it gives you a purpose to find something meaningful to fill that block of time so you have something to look forward to.

Absolutely, happy to help. Feel free to ping me if you have any more questions.

Both journaling and business writing these days. Trying to be more intentional with writing to get in better practice, refine my skills and work through shaping clearer points of view.

Hahah. We’ve used lightly electrified mat a couple times. Now if we put it at the door the cat just sits quietly across the hall. Don’t even need to turn it on now.

Zoom: it's the only video conference platform that just works without any hassle

Google Apps(Docs, Sheets, Slides): these win over MS Online b/c you can actually work live in the docs with a team.

Figma: I've come to love this, after a steep learning curve, for sharing design ideas in an open collaborative space.

Phone: it's still the best way to break through the noise and get someone's attention right away. With all the messaging apps, it gets noisy and messages get lost. Phone cut right to the top.

7 AM: wake up, no alarm most days thank to one very persistent and hungry cat that likes to jump on my head or scratch doors to make noise.

7:02, feed the cats.

7:15, make a cup of coffee at home and have a light breakfast of yogurt, fruit and granola.

7:15-8: is breakfast, coffee and listening to The Daily and UpFirst podcasts

8-10: writing. I need to get writing done in the AM while I'm fresh and other distractions don't leak in.

10-11: shower and work email check-in, get rolling on projects and client check-ins.

11-3: deep client work and/or business development, depending on deadlines.

Got tired of building businesses for someone else and decided to finally go out on my own.

Agree with @buboard below that academics likely aren't the right target audience.

Before giving up, I recommend testing two paths to validate whether there's real opportunity or not.

1. User Research: if you haven't already, reach out to your user base to get real input and guidance from them on how they use the tool, the value they see in it, how they would promote it and what $ they would pay for it log-term. I recommend doing this a 1:1 conversations on a platform like Zoom so you can chat live and record the conversation for further review. You'll likely uncover some gems on positioning, utility and organic marketing opps. You'll be surprised how much people love to participate in these kinds of sessions as it's a validation for them and stroked the ego a little bit.

I would lead with a personal email invite asking for the time. If that doesn't work you can always default to a survey.

2. Rethink the solution. Take academics out of the picture and strip back to the basic functionality, features and solution you provide. What are other verticals or user audiences that could benefit from it? What are competitive companies doing in that space that you could improve on or offer something totally different?

3. Bonus thought...look back at your competition. What are they doing that's driving their success? Sure, they make have an inferior product from your POV, but they're doing something right to be winning. What are they doing that's winning? Can you emulate that at all as another final validation on the vertical and audience?

Good luck!

Our bed. Seriously.

I never paid much attention to my bed and typically bought a less expensive mattress. My last one was a quite firm memory foam mattress that was definitely firm, but I didn't think much about it and just thought I was generally a light sleeper. I also really looked forward to sleeping in hotels for the nicer bedding. I just didn't know better.

When we moved earlier this year we spent some $$$ and bought a new king mattress, mattress pad, pillows and sheets. It's made all the difference. I sleep through the night with less tossing and turning, and I'm less achy and stiff in the morning. It's been a whole new world and I love the new bed.

The only downside is that it's ruined me for hotels now. I'd say 90% of hotels I've stayed in this year don't even come close to our bed at home. Even in the higher end places like the St. Regis or Edition.

Spend the money and buy a nice bed.

I recommend reducing the equity stake to something like 5% now, with an expiration of 5 years.

This should be small enough that it won't effect him or the bottom line for the business, but provide value to you in the long term if the business does sell or raise significant money.

If you want to retain a working relationship with Jim, and keep some interest in this company moving forward, it sounds like the responsibility is on you, based on the way Jim countered.

Otherwise, it might just be that you walk away and take a hit, but you gain a valuable lesson for next time. Always have a written operating agreement to define how you will both act in situations like this. Codify the ins and outs from the beginning, get it on paper and take the emotion out of the process should you need to separate later.

I'm in the same boat right now. Our first is due at the end of October.

Generally, my wife and I feel as prepared as we can be. We've been fortunate to see most of our friends have children over the past 5-6 years. Like @Lastofus mentioned below, we saw a huge variance in both the children and the parenting styles.

For me, the best things I've learned come from our friends that are teachers. We've seen a level of patience and consistency with them that we haven't seen in others. They also made a concerted effort to regularly engage with questions, quizzes, reading and playing music. It did a lot to keep the kids engaged and learning early.

We've also been happy with how supportive and generous our friends have been. Definitely lean on them with questions as you're prepping. And they'll also likely have a ton of stuff to pass down, so take advantage of that. Just trying to pick a baby seat is one of the most confusing exercises, and our friends saved us hours of hassle with some simple advice and recommendations between two.

Good luck to you!

I've been back and forth as an FTE and contractor for the past five years, and it's been nothing but beneficial. I use the contracting to gain a variety of experiences with different companies and screen them over time to evaluate whether I want to work with them full time.

The variety of experience is key as you'll hone your problem solving skills in a more valuable way than in your F500 gig. You're forced to get scrappier and deliver consistently in a tighter timelines. It just forces you to be better.

And as a programmer the world is your oyster these days. Do the work to zero in on your specific skillset and language/product focus so you can better target you outreach.

Starting with an agency can be easy, but they'll take 20-30% and limit your opportunity for a direct relationship with that client. You could ease into this with a few months of side work while you keep the safe F500 job. Build a couple clients in your portfolio and break out when your personal pipeline equals, or beats your current salary.

1. Why do you cook? Is it to save cash or is it recreation? Or something else?

I cook as another creative outlet, as a way to relax and a way to put a break between work and personal time. It's a nice ritual to come home and cook a quick dinner, or take the time to make a big meal on a weekend and try something new.

Cooking for myself is also much cheaper most of the time, especially this time of year when we get so many great vegetables in season.

2. Do you plan ahead? Like a weekly meal plan?

I tried to do a weekly plan, but it just didn't work for me. I like to buy groceries for 2 days at a time, at most, and I enjoy the trip to the store to see what's looking good and inspires me.

The only real planning I do is to keep a well organized list of posts and recipes in Evernote that I want to try at some point.

3. What kind of things do you cook usually?

This summer I've been cooking a TON of fish and fresh corn succotash(like a cooked corn salsa). In the cooler months I love making a universal broth for ramen, braising greens ,etc and have it on hand for a couple days. And lots of simple roasts with a primary protein like chicken or pork and a ton of vegetables.

Food52 and Saveur are my go-tos for great recipes and a little inspiration. If you're looking for something simple and jsut starting out, I recommend sidechef.com for great beginner recipes and tips from start to finish.

4. Do you follow any diet? Atkins, Slow Carb etc.

I like the slow carb foods and naturally gravitate towards that without having to follow a real plan. Beans, lentils, proteins and a ton of vegetables are always staples on my plate at home.

5. Do you have any life hacks, tips to be more productive as a cook?

Just like exercise, reading, social time, it's all about how you prioritize. Cooking can be a quick 10 minutes to make a simple frittata, or several hours for something more elaborate on a weekend.

Personally, if I'm working from home, I schedule a break to start cooking dinner in the afternoon. And I usually cook enough to have leftovers to play with for another day or two. It saves time and money to make larger batches.

Other hacks are focusing on one-pot dishes and the slow cooker in the winter. I love putting a bunch of stuff in the slow cooker in the AM and coming home to a done meal at the end of the day with no additional work needed.

Sign-up for Mattermark. It has all the info you want, and also links to Angel.co, LI, CB, etc. all in one place.

It's expensive, but they have a free month trial. I've been using it for a month, and it's my first filter for all startups now.

It's true, defining what "branding" is can be all over the place. But the simple way to look at brand is it's the mix of identity(logo) and story(content). Your #1 job is to make the story clear and actively promote it. Over time you'll be able to train your audience to use this story to share with their network.

From a Lean POV(not sure that this aligns 100%) I have a couple notes for you on the structures I've used with previous clients. It's the simple path of hypothesis, test, iterate, optimize.

The end goal here is to gather real "data" in the form of your users'/target audience's own words to help clearly define a core brand story/positioning statement they can internalize and share with their networks.

Hypothesis: Company X is a (what/label) that (why/benefits) by (how/features).

I use this as a general guide to get the core keywords of the brand story.

Audience Testing: the goal is to test the hypothesis and answer two basic questions. 1) Is this compelling? Do people give a shit about this and would they buy it? 2) Is this clear? Do they quickly understand the statement and internalize it? Or do they have follow-up questions?

Data Sources: This is the footwork. Gather feedback on that statement to from random samples of your target demo on the street. Ask them to repeat it back? What words do they use? Do email surveys to your network and contacts, always include an opt-in at the end to note if they're okay with a follow-up call for more direct input. Phone calls/interviews, some paid FB ad testing. I say FB b/c it's generally been cheaper and quicker for feedback for me than AdWords.

Note: I try to record as much of this as possible, and have a partner to take notes if I'm on a call or interview. The unfiltered verbatim comments are what to use in your revisions.

Iterate: based on the data gathered, make revisions to the core statement and retest. I typically go 3-4 rounds before getting solid on something. Expect about 30-60 days to execute depending on your resources.

Core Brand Statement: once you've tested and finalized, you'll have a compelling and clear brand statement that effectively uses your audience's own words. It's time to actively work this into the balance of your marketing across your site content and other channels.

Don't just sit back now. Actively tell that story. Use it to share al your marketing, PR, brand-aligned partnerships, etc. And keep testing. New data sources will be A/B LP testing, content metrics, social engagement metrics, etc.

If you've got other questions, I'm happy to chat. Email is in my profile.