THE STARTUP CHAT

Steli:

Hi, everyone. This is Steli.

Hiten:

This is Hiten. On today’s episode, first of all, we’re being casual. We didn’t use  our last names.

Steli:

Yes, yes.

Hiten:

I think it’s because of what we’re talking about. On this episode of The Startup  Chat, we want to talk more about how we feel about the podcast. How about  that, Steli? Is that a good way to describe this?

Steli:

I like that, yeah.

Hiten:

And why we feel that way. I’ll just start out real quick. Towards the end  of last year … We’re in 2017, so the end of 2016, because it’s a  great time to review things in your life, at the end of the year, Steli  and I were, to be honest, a little lukewarm on, “Should we do this? Should  we keep doing this? What’s going on? Do we want to grow this podcast? Do  we still enjoy doing it?” I think there were moments where we were both like,  “I don’t know. Does Hiten still want to do it? Does Steli still want to  do it?” We were both debating that about each other, without talking to each other.  This communication thing we talk about a lot, Steli, I don’t think we were doing  it that well at that time.

Steli:

That’s true.

Hiten:

For probably a lot of reasons. Once we communicated, it all settled down. For everyone  listening, don’t worry. We’re not stopping the podcast any time soon, at least as far  as we know right now. As a result of that, we felt like doing this  episode and talking through what we’ve learned from many of you and what actually keeps  up motivated to keep doing it. Does that about sum it up, Steli? Your turn.

Steli:

Yeah, yeah. I think that’s really, really good. I think that the question for both  of us was, we started so casually with the podcast and kind of … Who  would have known? We didn’t know, when we were in that coffee shop and we  said, “Hey, want to do a podcast? Sure. Want it record it now? What should  it be called? The best business podcast in the universe. Cool.” When we started, we  didn’t know we would actually do this two years later. By the time that this  episode is out there, we will way surpass the 200 episodes, right?

Hiten:

Yeah.

Steli:

The thing that most people … To give ourselves credit, this is good and bad,  to a certain degree. We didn’t realize how big of a part of a routine  of our lives it’s going to be, in terms of almost every week in the  past two years, every fucking week in the past two years, we’ve recorded two to  three episodes.

Hiten:

That’s correct.

Steli:

That’s insane. That takes a lot of discipline.

Hiten:

It does.

Steli:

Hiten has like a million businesses going on. I have my stuff. I travel with  families, with children. To keep that schedule, and keep that regiment, and keep that churning  out episodes … In the beginning, it’s very easy, because it was so fun. There was so much to talk about. We were discovering ourselves, as well as what this  podcasting thing was about. I think after a year or two of talking about it,  talking to each other so much, it blows my mind that we still like talking  to each other.

Hiten:

Steli, I think it ends up being about 72 hours, once you hit about 200  plus episodes at about 20 minutes.

Steli:

That is insane.

Hiten:

So you’re talking about literally like three days of talking to each other straight.

Steli:

Non stop.

Hiten:

No sleep.

Steli:

Non stop. It’s literally with zero preparation. Imagine three days, 24 hours, somebody just handing  over, “Want to talk about ? Okay, churn.” Then you talk about it for 20  minutes. Then, they hand you over another card, “Talk about the death of your parents.  Okay, go.” It’s insane, to a certain degree.

Hiten:

That’s 72 topics a day, in those three days, if you want to keep doing  math on this.

Steli:

That’s insane. Eventually, the fun, and the excitement, and the novelty of it, it wears  off at some point. There’s something that replaces it with. It’s replaced by a deeper  connection. It’s replaced by a deeper friendship. It’s replaced by some level of intimacy, knowing  each other. It’s also replaced by commitment and sometimes maybe also obligation. We have listeners. We feel like we … Even if I don’t feel like it … Last week,  when we did the episode. At the beginning, you’re like, “How do you feel?” I  was like, “I feel horrible. I’m in such a shitty mood. I slept horribly.” Honestly,  I’m not like, “Yeah, I want to talk about things,” but at the same time,  I was like, “Hiten is going to put a smile on my face. I’m going  to feel better after talking to him than before.” We get to that phase where  we’re like, “Okay. Are we still growing as much as we did in the beginning?  Is this still as valuable to people? How can we make this also grow?” We’ve  never spent any time and energy marketing the podcast and growing it. We both are  so deeply committed to growth, personal growth and growth in everything we do, that we’re  like, “Okay, it’s great that we’re doing this. It’s great that people get value out  of it. What can we do to change, to improve, to try new things?” We’ve  kind of got a little bit in a rut, to a certain degree, right?

Hiten:

Yeah.

Steli:

I think that one route that we tried, maybe we talk about this a little  bit and then we share some of the reasons we keep doing it. One of  the route that we took, for a little while, was thinking, “Maybe we need to  find somebody that can help us make the podcast bigger, manage the podcast.” We’ve set  it up in such a lightweight way, that the good thing was that it didn’t  take a lot of time from us, but the bad thing was we couldn’t make  any of the changes, or any new things happen, because we spent no time beyond  the 60 minutes of talking on the podcast working. We just work in the podcast,  not on the podcast, to take the business metaphor.

Hiten:

Totally.

Steli:

We’re like, “Maybe we need to find some person.” Not saying that that would have  been a bad idea or is not something that we might do in the future,  but we tried that a little bit and we also realized that, in itself, is  also tough. Again, you’re hiring all these people and running all these different projects. I’m  hiring people, growing my company team. For us, again, to now invest the time to  find that right person was tough. It didn’t pan out until I think we finally  decided maybe we just have to create a list of things that we want to  change. Maybe we just need to, you know, you take one thing, I take one  thing. We start making small changes, versus trying to do these big changes. I think  that’s a good metaphor for most times when you want to change something in your  life. When you try to make too big of a change too soon, it’s difficult.  A lot of friction. You might be setting yourself up for failure. Maybe just ask,  “What is a tiny little change you can do?” That alone can make things more  excited. Make things feel like they’re progressing. That’s the tick that we’ve taken, or the  route we’ve taken, in the last few weeks. We decided to make a few small  tweaks. You took some. I took some. That’s the direction that we, I think, thinking  about moving forward in 2017, right?

Hiten:

Yeah. We now collect more emails on our website. That was a tweak that we  definitely made. I think we were both responsible for that one. That happened a little  while ago. We now send emails at least once a week, usually. We’re playing around  with it. That’s my job, mostly. We send you the episode that we have, so  it’s a good reminder for everybody on the email list. We’re also … This is  Steli’s deal, just to give people an idea of what we’re doing in baby steps.  We’re getting a little more structured about what we talk about. So instead of us  off the cuff making it up right when we get there, Steli spends probably five,  10 minutes coming up with some topics based on requests and old stuff. That’s been  working, so far, at least, creating a few baby steps. Now, I think we’re ready  for more. I still have your list, Steli. It’s all good. I’m probably going to  blow it off, but that’s a different story. We really wanted to talk about something  else, in a second, but one thing that I want to put out there, for  everybody that bothers to listen to this episode, is we’re going to do a lot  more experimentation with all of you. We’re not there yet. Steli and I haven’t really  talked about this, but my observation about podcasts, and this is a good segue into  what we want to talk about for the next few minutes, is there’s no way  to get good feedback. I might have said that before in some random episode, but  man, this really sucks. The reviews are good. We get some feedback there. Good meaning  good to get feedback. There isn’t a good way to get feedback. That’s really bugging  the crap out of me. It’s not just feedback. It’s also engagement with all of  you that are listening. We’re in your ears. You get engagement from us. You get  to hear us yap and talk about these topics that apparently a lot of you  are really excited by. It’s been helpful to you, which I know Steli has a  lot to share about, but in my case, when I think about this, I’m like,  “Where’s the engagement?” We’re going to level up the engagement, pre-empting for anyone listening. I  want more engagement. I know you do, too, Steli. We really want to have a  stronger experience with everybody that’s listening. Get to know all of you better. Do it  still in a way that’s super efficient for us, as well as useful for all  of you.

Steli:

Yeah. That’s a big one. I think we both were pretty surprised, when we got  into podcasting, how limited it is, in terms of the analytics and the intimacy that  you have with the audience. Back in the day of websites telling you just impressions.  All the analytics you have on podcasts is impressions, basically. You know how many downloads  you got. A download does not mean that anybody listened. Somebody listening doesn’t mean that  somebody listened to the whole episode. It doesn’t tell you what they like most within  an episode. They can’t listen more in one area than in the other. You get  nothing. You fly blind. All you know is download numbers. It’s back in the old  school day of website basing their success or failure on number of impressions. That’s the  only information they have. I think we were surprised by that. We want to be  much more intimate in our feedback loop and understanding why you guys listen. What is  the value you get out of it? What are your listening habits? What should we  do more or less of? How can we experiment? That’s something we both are super  interested in. One benefit I get, and this is something we wanted to touch on  a little bit on this episode … One benefit I get, because I do travel  a lot more than you do, Hiten, is that I get to meet Startup Chat  listeners around the world. I get to meet people that listen to the podcast in  Bay Area as well, but the reaction in the Bay Area, when I meet with  people here, sometimes they’ll tell me, “Oh, I also listen to the podcast. I really  like to the podcast.” The reaction is not as strong, because there’s this sense of  … It’s a, partly because of the type of people that live here. They just  get more exposure things. They know these people a lot more. It doesn’t seem as  exclusive to hang out with any one of us. Maybe with you, but not with  me.

Hiten:

That’s not true.

Steli:

When I travel, because people know that it’s not often that one of us is  in their country or their city, people respond really strongly. I used to get picked  up by the airport, and I still do, to be driven to the hotel by  people that listen to the podcast. Now, it’s just like the amount of people, they  come and they tell stories. It’s funny. I’ve noticed a trend. I was on a  travel trip recently. I was in Serbia. I was in Germany. I was in Mexico.  What I kept hearing from people … The last person actually, it blew my mind.  There’s somebody that hears that one of the two of us is going to be  in Mexico City and that entrepreneur actually took a flight from where they live to  Mexico City. He waited at the airport for five hours for my flight to land.  He told me he would drive me to the hotel. He actually doesn’t have a  car. He called an Uber and drove with me, with Uber. I met up with  him the other day for lunch, as well. We talked a lot. He told me  about his business challenges. When he was talking to me about the podcast, he said  a few things that I’ve heard more and more, which was interesting, which was that  he said how much the podcast means to him. He said he liked this episode  and that episode. He’d listened to it four times. He had all these more tactical  things to share about specific episodes and what we talked about, but the thing he  kept repeating, and the thing that I keep hearing, that means a lot to us  … He kept using the word humanity. He would say, “One thing I really appreciate  about Hiten and you, Steli, on the podcast, is that you really bring humanity to  the startup world,” or, “You really bring an honest, human side of discussing some of  these issues or these challenges.” Basically, the feedback, or the compliments that he was giving  us is that he felt that we were honest, transparent, and we did not just  care about growth hacking, or marketing, and sales, and closing deals, and raising money, and  being famous, and getting to the IPO, but that we really cared about the human  side of things. Like, are you happy? Are you healthy? What’s the right thing to  do? Is this an honest discourse? Felt that we were honest with each other and  honest with him, as a listener, as somebody who was trying to get advice. He  was saying that that honesty helped him through some really tough times, where he was  depressed, or where he was really burned out, or where he was really doubting, or  really challenged. More so than just the tactical advice was the feeling like he could  listen to us and feel like it’s okay for him to struggle, or there’s a  light at the end of the tunnel, or that we also struggle with some of  these issues. That’s a feedback that I get more and more. That’s something I know  that you like to hear. I definitely like to hear that more so than …  I like to hear people tell me, “Oh, I closed a deal and I made  this amount of money because I followed your advice.” That’s awesome. That’s really awesome, but  I also like … I don’t know. It touches me a little bit more, even  when I hear that somebody got through a really rough patch listening to us. That’s  awesome.

Hiten:

Yeah. That’s huge. That’s why we do it. We want to impact people’s lives in  a positive way. That’s really, truly why we do this. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have started  it. Obviously, we wanted to talk to each other and that’s great, but the reason  you continue to do something like this, where you’re literally … I don’t mean to  say this is how I feel about it, but this is a thing we’re doing.  We’re not making money on it. We’re giving our time. Knowing that people are impacted  by it in a positive way, in a human way, is really what is motivating.

Steli:

Yeah. I don’t know. I think that wrapping up this episode, I think that the  summary here really is that we’re committed to this. We’re excited. We’re really humbled and  honored that people even listen. That’s always awesome. That we’re able to impact people. The  other thing is that we want to do more. We want to hear more from  you. If you have anything to share, from what you like, to what you don’t  like, to the way you listen to us, to the reason why you’re listening, to  how you heard about us in the first place, whatever it is, send us an  email. Steli@close.io, hnshah@gmail.com. Share your story with us. We want to be closer to you.  We want to learn more from you, rather than just sharing what we have to  offer. We want to get you to share more back to us and complete the  cycle of feedback here, and interaction. If you want to share the reasons why you’ve  been listening to us and if you have anything to share with us, good or  bad, then I think this episode is the perfect invitation for you to do so.  We’d be very thrilled and super grateful for every single one of you.

Hiten:

Bring it on.

Steli:

All right. I think that’s it for this episode.

Hiten:

Later.

Steli:

All right. Bye bye.