The Sausage Factory

Matt: Welcome to the Sausage Factory. This is our regular look at the world of content marketing. So we are gonna be celebrating the good and shining a light on the what could be better with the single aim of encouraging the world to make better content. So some introductions for you. I'm Matt Laybourn. I'm a performance marketer and founder of Rockee, the content feedback platform.

Mark: I'm Mark Willis, creative director, copywriter, and more recently collector of sausage related data.

Matt: So together we'll be grinding the good, bad and unidentifiable into 30 minute content sausages for you every single month. You may have noticed if you already listened, we've gone up very badly and very quickly from 20, cus we basically kept running over. So that's the reason we've done that. today in the factory, we're joined by Sam Dickie, a senior product manager at Skyscanner. So Sam's journey has taken, quite a path through project management and right through to lead product manager. Founder of Lightning at London-based startup studio, and there's a heavy dosage of side project built in there as well that we are looking forward to finding out about. So they include no code, filo, beta directory, and beta tester. So alongside the day job, Sam helps with, startup consultancy as well as publishing. The very popular and informative Creator Club newsletter, which covers all things around startups. No code, ai, indie hacking, and more. I almost ran out of centers there. That's, that's quite a lot. So we're gonna be talking to him about his journey in product strategy and getting a few tips as well for startup founders and covering a few things around content and how that has helped on the journey as well. And of course, as is now a customary, we'll be getting to share some examples of great content in Matt's bangers and the not so good in the infamous sausage of death. So first off, welcome to the Sausage Factory. Sam, how are you?

Sam: I'm great. Thanks guys. , it's absolute pleasure to be here. Like I mentioned before, this is my first podcast. I am obsessed with podcasts. Uh, literally have them in the shower as I'm walking around in my back pocket on loud, much to my girlfriends, just me walking, the dog running. Literally, they're on constantly.

So it's actually quite, quite fun to be on one and see what it's like behind the scenes.

Mark: Well, there's a very gentle introduction to the podcast. Before we get into the blend and the serious stuff of the, the interview and talking, content and, new products. we have the sausage quiz, which, like a meaty phoenix from the Flames has soared back into the hearts of our audience, having been on the verge of being canned for the last couple of episodes.

So, Sam, it's very simple. We have three questions for you about sausages, which will give our audience, unique insights into your personality and character. So are you ready to tackle some sausage based questions?

Sam: Let's do it.

Mark: Cool. So first one, what's your favorite type of sausage?

Sam: Well, this could be a controversial one. So, you know, true to being, Scottish, it would have to be what, others call the blood sausage. So it's kind of technically a sausage, I would guess we like to call it, black pudding. I could literally have that with anything.

Mark: Excellent. That's, we haven't had a black pudding so far, so this is, this will improve the data that we are collecting. no end. Leading into the next question, favorite sausage based dish, is that, is that black pudding related?

Sam: Well. I think I'll, I'll probably mix it up a little bit Actually. Favorite dish would probably be just a standard mash. Nice, rich gravy, rosemary, garlic, Cumberland, sausage.

Mark: I'm loving the attention to detail with that description as well, and it's just making me hungry, quite frankly. I haven't had my tea yet. is there, is there a preferred meat percentage for the sausages that you're having in delicious sounding sausage and mash.

Sam: That's actually quite a, it's a rare question to be asked. Um, and I, I dunno what the, I'm not what the adequate ratio would be. I, I would probably say hazard a guess it's 70 30, uh, 70% meat, 30% fat. I actually, weirdly used to have a pub fact about this. and there there was a, a percentage that you had to provide of meat content in order to call an actual sausage.

I can't remember what it was, but I do remember a particular. Supermarket did not reach that, so they legally had to call them meat cylinders.

Matt: Mmm, delicious meats on the barbecue.

Mark: I think that's definitely. The best answer we've had to preferred meat percentage so far, and adding in, a fun sausage meat percentage Fact. Love it.

Matt: So, um, Sam, that's the important sausage centric chat out of the way. Let's get into the, the good stuff. First of all, tell us a little bit about your journey as a product manager. You know, where did you start and, and how did you get to where you are now?

Sam: Yes. This is a, pretty different story probably to most product managers who, you know, tend to have a either like design, computer science background. I came in actually as a, a town planner. That super glamorous job that you hear about, and. Turns out actually it's nothing like the game Sim City, which I was led to believe, when I first wanted to get into this career.

it's just a bunch of people in suits sitting around and really talking, a lot of bureaucracy, trying to cut through a bunch of red tape. It's not that fun. I dedicated, you know, about five, six years now, including my university, um, doing that actually in London for quite some time and. I kind of found myself just trying to build online projects, uh, the kinda evenings and weekends, just little small businesses, you know, after reading the classic, Tim Ferris, the Four Work Week, I think that's kind of what inspired me to try and create some sort of passive income.

Um, and then I just discovered this blog post about, , product management and didn't realize it even existed as far as I was aware, and I took the. I think I reached out actually to the person that wrote it, , and asked them a bunch of questions about it. They were really nice, got back to me trying to understand how to get into, into the industry.

But to cut long story short, I, I essentially obviously had no CV whatsoever, to get into product management. But I guess what I did have was a few kind of side projects that I had. And kinda use that as leverage and kind of showed them, it is possible for someone in my background to be able to make, these products, these kind of tech-enabled products.

Um, and took that to the interview and, and managed to kind of slightly hustle my way in the door. For a much smaller salary at the time. quite a bit of a risk, particularly living in London. But yeah, I managed to get my, my foot in the door, , um, a kind of startup studio, which was actually, founder enlightening, which was previously called, uh, eRate up to a few years ago. Just continuing on from there. It just, and then started to just learn everything, about, product management. Uh, that was like a bit of a mini MBA working for them. just exposure to lot of different startups, different founders. Trying to solve a different problem in a different vertical at a different stage, different types of funding.

Extremely varied. So worked there for the best part of five years and then, decided to move on. Jump on the client side, see what it was like on the other side of the fence, and worked for two kind of no code, uh, web app, building tools. And then most recently, just starting at Skyscanner.

Matt: So quite, quite a journey then, like any, you've also been doing your own things on the side as well, and I, I kind of mentioned a few of those in the intro. tell us a little bit more about those. Just quick ideas that you thought you'd go and execute or, you know, what, what did that look like?

Sam: it's funny. One thing about each of these side projects, the ones that I think I can make money from, and they're more deliberate because I see that as an opportunity to be able to actually just make some money. I've actually made no money with any of those, the ones that I just.

Came out of, you know, a shower moment, thought it would be fun, thought no one would be interested in them whatsoever, became the ones that actually caught on. and I've been trying to unpick that for a while. Right. But I think it's more just purely going in with the, the mindset of this is just a bit of fun.

It's a bit of a passion project. And really just trying to see what sticks. And I think like nowadays, it's never been easier to be able to create something. We're at that moment in time where really the kind of the bar, of entry to be able to build any kind of like, you know, small tech product is so extremely low and the cost, you know, is, is extremely low as well.

So, you know, most people can just kind of monkey about with different ideas. Chuck them out there. There's a bunch of places where you could get some traffic and then just see kind of what sticks. And I think another reason for for doing them is as a pm, uh, or product manager within each of these companies.

You've got a lot of constraints, about what you can and can't do. I mean, you're spending their money at the end of the day, so it's understandable, but you've got all these ideas, , and it's a way to vent, I guess, in the evenings and weekends. And just play around with these ideas that you've got.

Might as well just do them yourself. Is been great fun.

Mark: you've worked at and with lots of startups and you've seen many fledgling ideas come up with like, ideas yourself, can you spot the ideas that are gonna make it? Um, and do they have things in common in your experience?

Sam: Well, a million dollar question, and I would love to see. Because people are listening. You know, I'm, I'm great, been able to spot fantastic startups. I don't think I'm that great at it, you know? and I think that's been probably just looking back over the years and. Kind of looking at these startups that I thought would do great and the ones that I thought wouldn't stand a chance.

And there's been a few where I generally didn't see a market for it. I didn't really understand what they were trying to do. Maybe didn't necessarily see , the belief in the founders. And those ones have actually done extremely well. They're, they're still sticking around. and some of the others where I thought it was a bit of an obvious win.

Just haven't managed to, to really get much traction. So I don't think I'm terribly good at it. What I have, I guess the kind of the ways that I would try to understand, or I, the ways I would figure out or learn to figure out the, the kind of businesses that do well. typically comes down to, I guess, a lot to do with the founder, particularly in the early stages.

The founder, obviously at the later stage has less of a kind of, , Presence in the day-to-day. The early stage is where the founder is really got their sleeves rolled up. They're on the floor working with you side by side. At that point, I think it's really important that the founder is the person that obviously you, you look towards for quite a lot of the answers in the initial, stage.

It's their vision and if they can really clearly articulate their vision. The problem they're solving who they're, solving it for, what they're gonna do to get there. Like, that's, that's a fantastic sign. Um, it's what we looked at, you know, with a lot of the founders that, that we would work with in the startup studio.

I think, again, the defenders that can, explain it really simply, you don't want to be in a 30 minute conversation. Someone's trying to explain what they're trying to build. They should be able to articulate it in a couple sentences, a paragraph. I think most of 'em are quite tech literate and they, but you don't necessarily have to be the cto, or an engineer to build, you know, really successful, tech startups.

I think previously I had always thought that you had to be the domain expert. To have a successful business. The more that I've read, the more that I've, I've understood from a lot of successful startups that we see today, actually there's a great sense of naivety that founders come with, which is good by the way, that come into, uh, a whole new industry without domain experience because they don't see the red tape.

They've got that naive kind of sense of like anything is possible where the person that spent 20 years in that industry would be like, no way. You can't do it. It's impossible. And they just wouldn't even try. And they come at it from a completely different angle than someone that has been in that industry for a certain amount of time because they've almost become suppressed, I guess, or kind of made a carbon clone, you know, of every other employee within the organization.

Matt: That, that's really interesting you say that. I think like we spoke about occasions ago, but like at, at the very beginning of the kind of the journey , we took with, Rockee is like, I, you know, I, the best course I found on. What do you need to, you know, launch a, tool or a product in, a particular sector is you need domain expertise. And that was something that Y Combinate to have. They've got their startup school like that free online course, which is an incredible resource, like so much valuable information in there. But that was a big thing for them and they kind of preach that is massive for investors as well, is I, you know, why you did a main expert on, on X, Y, or Z. So it's, I find it really interesting that you. Kind of have an alternate view there. And I, I

think that's a really good, valid point. You kind of go in there without the, you're not constricted by all the blockers that you've seen. If you've worked in industry all of your life, I really like that.

Sam: But there's some really obvious examples, and they're kind of like, you know, right in front of us, you look at, companies like, Uber, Airbnb, the founders there, the founders of Airbnb, for example. They weren't part of the Hilton Hotel group for 20 years and decided to launch Airbnb.

They were like art students. Right. , same goes forever. Wasn't working in the transportation industry, you know, before that I think he was in like finance, wall Street. And again, like, these are two, very well protected kind of industries where there's only a few, you know, huge big key players in them.

And they decided to kind of challenge that and disrupt it. These are the obvious ones, obviously. But I'm almost certain there's probably thousands of examples.

Matt: This, this is fascinating cuz if you can't disrupt an industry. If you've been living in it all your life, you kind of accept that's how things are and how things work. You, it's very difficult to come out with a completely different opinion. It's for kind of founders who are on that journey, what's the best thing a founder can do?

Very early on to. If you've got that idea, regardless if you're the domain expert or not, what are the best things you can do? Really early doors to validate what you are about to do before you get anywhere near, writing any code or, or any no code, for example.

Sam: I usually like to, to split it up in between like two very distinct phases. So the first phase would be what we tend to call problem validation. And then the second phase is solution validation. So it kind of sounds exactly, you know what it is. Essentially the kind of problem validation is ensuring you start with a problem and, the reason being actually is as most of us do, we all come up with an idea.

and that idea is always a solution, right? To something usually. We don't like stand in the shower and think about a problem all day. We instantly come up with a solution, and it's just a kneejerk reaction, right? It's just kind of think how we're, we're programmed. I think other people are certainly more programmed to do it than others.

Like the thing is PMs are as well, and that's kind of the what we shouldn't be doing necessarily. We should be understanding the problem first. And then, then trying to then explore solution to that problem. Because there could be like, you know, many different infinite solutions available to that problem.

Who's to say the one that you've just came up with after two seconds is the ideal solution to that problem? So that's why we start with pro problem validation. Trying to understand like, right, how big is this problem? How much of a problem is this? It's just something you encounter, once a month, once a year.

You could still encounter it daily, but it's just not a big enough problem that you're actively looking for a solution or willing to even pay for a solution. so that's kind of frequency side of it, but is there any other existing solutions out there to that problem? And then if there is, how well are they doing to solve, that problem?

, and when does this problem like be encountered? again, that's a really kind of good one to understand again, of the, just going back to kind of the frequency of it. So once you've understood, I guess you've got harvested all that insight, that information, you've spoken to people that have that problem, you've got a lot of answers to those questions.

You've got a nice kind of broad demographic of people that are kind of helping, feed into this. Then at that point you can then move on to the solution validation. now, like most people don't do this and I, I totally get it cuz it's the seen as a kind of unglamorous, boring unsexy part of building a startup is like the preparative research phase.

it's got a terrible name as well, you know, preparative research just wanna fall asleep.

Matt: It sounds so exciting, though. I don't

Sam: Exactly, exactly. So, You know, we wanna jump straight into the solution. But yeah, once you're, you've got, um, an idea of the problem, move on to that solution, and then really start to just get it out. Build that solution as, fast as you really can.

Right. And that's where we go back. And the mvp, you know, is the first time we tried to build that kind of atomic unit of the product, the core kind of like product. we try and build that as fast as we can, uh, in a really lean manner. And we get that in the hands of users as quick as we can because all that kind of previous research is great.

It's given you signals. Cause you can test, as we know, we can test desirability in a million different ways. There's a bunch of ways we can do it with smoke tests. But again, like you're just getting signals, right? and what you're trying to do is get more, um, Stronger evidence to suggest this person actually, uh, is willing to use your product likes your product, who's willing to potentially pay for it.

So that's why we want to get something in front of people as quick as possible. And again, just with the validation side of things, just ensuring there's, in the surface area of the product, there is multiple feedback loops some founders tend to launch a product and they don't have any feedback loops in place.

And what I mean by that is they're basically sitting in a car with their headlights off driving in the dark, like they have no idea, what's going on. So you can't quantify success when you're in the dark. You need to be able to have a feedback loop to understand whether you're doing, you know, good or doing bad.

What needs fixed, what needs improved.

Mark: You kind of touched on like the evidence that that founders can look for. Like , what sort of signs are there of a good kind of product market Fit. Are there any things that, that founders should be looking for to give them the confidence they're on, you know, they're on the right track.

Sam: Yeah, absolutely. Like product market fit's one that I think if you ask 10 different founders, you'll get 10 different results. you also Google this online and just see the different, approaches, with what we call P M F. So there's a bunch of methodologies, in place and frameworks in order to, to try and quantify, P M F.

Uh, I think I, I'll give you a few of the ones that I, I would generally use to measure. And I think there, there was definitely, there is loads more. So I think this is probably quite contentious, subject here that could be challenged. The. Really obvious one, the one that you hear all the time, and I think it was Sean Ellis, who kind of, came up with this.

But it was the MPS score and it was a simple question that you would ask at your customers typically after the kind of complete, maybe like a core action within your product. You'd have that prompt, that kind of feedback loop in place and you'd basically be asking them, you know, how disappointed would you be if you could no longer use this product?

And then you've got, you know, at the top, very disappointed. Disappointed, somewhat disappointed, not disappointed at all. And they're looking for usually 40% and above to have answered. Very disappointed. Then I would also say a good signal is you're getting more customers. With, with less effort.

So you're spending less to acquire customers. And at that point, like I think you're getting more like referrals at that point as a kind of clear sign that you're getting more kinda like direct referrals coming to your product. you've got a good understanding of the acquisition channels, you know, you're not paying, to acquire people, and then you've got a lower lifetime value of that customer.

So essentially we're just kind of spending money, to acquire them. Long-term retention is definitely, I'd say probably one of the most fundamental ones. Um, and it really depends on the type of product, your kind of pricing plan model. If it's kind of like, you know, weekly, monthly, yearly, subscription plans.

But you're looking for, yeah, long-term retention. Are customers actually sticking around? You're looking for that kind of like in a diagram that the kind of flattening of the retention curve and it remains a kind of constant. And that's a really healthy sign. And obviously, you know, coupled with that as well is the, the level of churn and they kind trying to maintain that kind of healthy level of churn.

I think this is a tricky one because in the early stage, and again, it really depends on, on your kind of pricing models. I've worked in, startups where they've got a very generous, free plan and then it goes into a pay plans, you know, thereafter, you kind of need to like decouple, you need to do a bit of cohort analysis really to try and find that, kind of.

Attention curve in there because I think the, the free plans can create a lot of noise in, in, in the data set, to be able to understand that. so it's just, yeah. What, what one to, to notice. I think strong sentiments. Another, a great measurement as well that you get with the, with product market fit.

Like you're literally getting emails, people are sending you emails saying like they, they love the product. And they're giving you a bit of feedback there as well, right? It's not all gonna be like, this is amazing. but they, they're leading with fantastic product. But could I ask for X, Y, and Z, right?

Someone has taken the time to pull up their email, to, you know, write out something, to find that email address and to write something to you. They're clearly passionate about the product. They wanna see it stick around. and again, you can see in social media, there's a great company I'm looking at just now, right?

As a prime example, and this is for anyone to be able to check out and it's ARC Internet, and they're doing a fantastic, you can see that sentiment online. They just did a big launch, literally like two or three hours ago. On Twitter. You look in the comments, you just see like the excitement of people. You see how many people, have liked, liked and retweeted that.

That particular feature, the, I guarantee you by tomorrow there'll be newsletters talking about it and all these sort of things. Like it's kind of got that reality of like, everything they're pushing, people are just like, shouting for the rooftops. Really, really good sign. , of, of P M F, last two, , these are probably less so, but I, I just think they're, great to chat about the.

Things are breaking, right? Like you're, you've got processes in place within, your startup and they're just starting to break. You're struggling to hire enough people to keep up with demand, right? These are like, that's a, I would say a leading indicator, of, of P M F. Like, like, you know, you can't deal with the load, , of people coming through the APIs, getting appetite, hammering, all these sort of things.

And then lastly, maybe this just one off the top of my head, instead of you going looking for investment investors, start knocking it at your door. So instead of camping it out at theirs, they're literally turning up at yours. so that's maybe another healthy sign. But again, these aren't all kind of, exclusive to each other.

You know, there could just be one or two of these. Would provide good science.

Matt: There's interesting things there. Cause I mean, even in the journey we're on at the moment , with Rockee, we are trying to look, you know, look at those signs and there's a couple of those ones that appear early on and you're like, okay, there's people asking for features.

There's, like complimentary stuff that we are seeing as well. But it feels so much of this as a journey, as the longer you go on, different things start to happen at different times where it's like, oh, now we're getting a bit of traction with the audience. And that's because of the marketing push as well.

Like there, there's more people talking about it on social. We're getting more emails and inbound inquiries, but there's still a huge journey ahead as well. Like, you know, how do you manage churn? How do you manage like the kind of feature adding and everything that goes along with it and picking the right things at the right time. I think the analogy I was kind of thinking of as you were saying those things, it feels like you were at a mixing desk, but you're not quite, uh, like Tiësto just yet. You are sort of like, I dunno, I'm still like Bob from down the pub and I'm, I'm kind of doing my best, but, um, you know, you're trying to, you're trying to mix as best you can, but you, you know, trying to figure out what the best of those quant and qual really is.

I, I found that fascinating what you're saying about kind of those feedback loops as well and how you use qualitative to. Sometimes like validate the quant side of things. Is, is that right? Kind of those tho those sort of fluffy feel good things that you might hear, like how much importance do you give to those bits and pieces as well?

Sam: Oh, that's it. I mean, you, we could sit and look at dashboards all day, and you can obviously interpret what they're telling you, but you've gotta layer on some, some qualitative, data into that and see if there is any kind of patterns, you know, emerging, between the two. , you can see startups are, you know, more comfortable, on the.

Qualitative side, and then there's other startups who, you know, they could hide buying a dashboard all day and make decisions. I think you're gonna have a healthy balance of both.

Matt: So Sam, like we are gonna do a slight about turn here. , I'd love to talk about, your experiences with content because like, what really struck me is like, I've been a subscriber to the Creator Club, which is your, your CK newsletter now Alpha, I think. I've only been on it for about five or six months, and it's really helped with my personal journey, just seeing what's out there, the different technologies, and I love the kind of experiments that you do as well.

And you've, built that to quite a good following now I think it's about 7,000, people who have signed up for it. So tell us all about it. How did it get started? What was the inspiration and, what's next?

Sam: Yeah. Well thanks for subscribing. That's fantastic. it was really, again, a passion project. I've been running probably newsletters for God knows how long, maybe, maybe a decade. All different types of newsletters. And I think, you know, when I saw no code doc tech. That had quite a big, newsletter, following about a lot of subscribers.

It was probably around about maybe like, I don't know, 10, 11,000 at that at that time. And at that point I had no newsletter and I was still reading content. I was still finding really cool products. I just wanted to show it from the rooftops and tell other people about it. just weird stuff online that I thought others would find interesting and I'd be like sending that to friends, colleagues, you know, in Slack or in WhatsApp.

And it just kind of dawn to me like, you know, why, don't I just actually kind of package this up nicely? Sticking an email and if there is other, you know, Nerds like me out there that find this stuff interesting, then, we'll find out. This isn't any, it's not any more taxing for me to do. So, you know, like I, I still have quite a, a rigorous regime of, of reading.

Like every single night I use like Stup, which is like a really nice RSS feed, and I really try and get to that inbox zero. Now I've got all my newsletters go, go through that rss. So I'd kind of treat that as like inbox zero. I want to read through all my favorite newsletters and I find little tidbits out there that I enjoy.

Then I've used like, Zapier in pocket. So if I add a label like newsletter, when I save it, it will then go to Airtable and it'll add it to the as big repository. And then from there I kind of go through that repository and kind of slide the, the ones alike. So it's kind of like a bit of a routine that's kind of been built.

It also acts as like a great forcing function, just to stay curious and learn. You know, as a PM you've, got to be, on the ball of the latest trends and what's happening. This is a great forcing function to do so. You've gotta show up every single month. And I think it was funny you, when you got, you know, your first, 15, 30, you know, subscribers.

Oh, this is great. You know, someone's reading and, but again, you kind of just wrote without much care and then it started to creep up into 500, a thousand. Then I'm starting to be really critical about what I'm writing. You know, like I'm sitting there going, oh my God, this is, this is terrible. Like, would, would he find this interesting, like, They're as strange as I am, but like I find that funny, but maybe they won't.

And then they just be, you become so self-critical, like that number goes up, and your confidence is, decreasing, simultaneously. So it, I had to kind of get at that bit of a funk and not like, worry too much. , and then people start reaching out to you and they want to sponsor it. The stress and anxiety just continually increases at this point, right?

Cause you've set a deadline and I didn't really care much about deadlines before. The whole point in the newsletter was like, if I've got something to say, I'll share it. If I've really, if I've been on holiday and I've had my feet up, for the last two weeks, and I've got nothing to say, I'm not gonna scramble content together just to send it out, to meet that deadline.

But now I've got to, so I've gotta really stick to that kind of regime of, reading. And then, and put it together. I think just on the very last point actually, is another thing I guess that, did inspire me was. Having worked with a lot of founders, they would tend to have like a product or an idea.

And this doesn't necessarily need to be like their bonus startup could just be like a small little product that you've built. But unfortunately, they never had, they don't have an audience. And I didn't at the time either. So you come up with this idea and then you chuck it out into your five Twitter followers, and it's like crickets.

And you've not got distribution. And I thought, well, I don't have necessarily something right now, but I know for a fact that like I'm gonna be launching things in the future, coming up with other ideas, so why not build the audience now? And I've seen a few people do that in the past where it just started as a newsletter.

They weren't trying to sell anything to anybody. And eventually they just tastefully layered in maybe some of their own products because they had built that audience. And you ultimately wanna try and get to, I was just reading it the other day, you know, Kevin Kelly's, a thousand true fans.

Like, if no one's read that, you've gotta check that blog post out. It's just like a, a great idea of having just a thousand true fans and it seems so achievable as well, which is great. You know, at that point maybe you can monetise the newsletter. And it could actually bring, you know, a healthy amount of revenue.

And then lastly, I'm actually pretty badly dyslexic, and that was like a massive thing that stopped me from writing. I was just terrible at spelling. so managing, like just being, if you can imagine, right? You barely know how to spell. And you're gonna share your writing online with the whole entire world.

Like that was just like, you know, crippling. So I think again, when I, when I started to do that for like NoCode.Tech and started producing it, you realise no one cares. Like as, as long as the content, like the value of the content is great. I've very rarely got someone emailing me back, you know, , coming to me and actually saying, you know, this should be like that.

Or, it never happened, it's a blend of all those things.

Mark: Yeah, I mean the, the newsletter is, brilliant and it's clearly, doing very well and, and it's a competitive kind of space too. I'm just wondering, you know, in terms of, you know, how you try and stand out get attention, is there anything that you do there or is it just about kind of relying on the quality of the content and the reputation that you've, you've built up?

Sam: Yeah, it's a great, it's a great question. I think I've always looked at it where I kind of write based on my interests and like not for algorithms. You'll see, like a lot of writers are just, they're building their content around the algorithm. You can see it straight away, right? When they're trying to do it.

For instance, a lot of like CK writers, they've obviously got their, their newsletter followers, but it actually indexes extremely well on Google. So you can actually see that quite, quite a change, in people's writing style because they're also looking for, Seo, optimization in the newsletter.

Cause it'll published to people's inboxes, but also, index in the web. And I, there's nothing worse than reading something that someone has put together and, you know, you can see straight through it. They don't have a clue what they're talking about. But it seems like a cool, relevant thing and they've just consumed it, , consumed other content and reworded a bit and spat it back Like you can tell the passion, you can tell if someone's interested in something, you can see that in their reading. Like that's the stuff that, that, that I read. Like you get the kind of big faceless, like media companies that will write about something. You don't even see the author anymore, who even wrote it.

And I just don't find that content interesting. I wanna read from the specialist, the person who has actually done it, , is not just, you know, talking about it. And so I think just the authenticity, is probably something that I find interesting. And just the tone of voice as well. You know, you read stuff like.

Packy McCormick's uh, you know, not boring newsletter, uh, is one great example. Really relaxed writing style, but pretty complex stuff he's talking about. That stuff is so easy to digest. It's interesting, it's his personality stamped all over it. It's not gone through like 12 editors before. It's, he's, you know, publish has been hit.

He's written it, he's just clicked, publish and walked away.

Matt: I love that. Like, Sam, you are fully allowed in the, club. You're a purist. It's like, I think the word we gravitate to is always around authenticity and then, and there is always an audience, like no matter how much of a niche that particular topic you might work in, is like, Don't let the kind of, the vanity metrics of like, have I got enough reach?

Have I got enough engagement on some of this? Because someone's watching, someone's engaging. And like, I think what you've done with, your own newsletter is a really good testament to that. A final point on that, when you are, when you're kind of making that content, cause I've noticed a couple of little tricks that you do actually.

How do you know, you're creating good stuff that. Your audience is enjoying, and how do you kind of help use that data to plan ahead as well?

Sam: Yeah, so the analytics, particularly in the newsletter, I mean, they're not, they're not the best, but what it does allow you to understand, there's obviously the kind of core ones that we, that we all use. Like, we've got the open rate, we've got the click through rate, right? Pretty straightforward. We can understand usually what, like, how's the open rate?

It's probably nine times outta ten because of the subject, title. So it's just trying to like optimise and play with that. Then I'm really trying to find out cus I share a lot of different content, , in the newsletter each month. And I can then see like what sort of content is being clicked on. So maybe every few months I'll just take a, CSV export, drop that into, a spreadsheet, and then start kind of categorising like some of the, the kind of maybe top 10 clicks of, of each month, put 'em into like quite distinct buckets.

And then you see the kind of like pattern overlay of oh, right. That sort of contents can like, get Clicked a lot and, and you can see that it's not kind of like a very kind of, I am surprised what I'm trying to say is like month on month because you do look at things like, I'm very aware of the fact that AI is all anyone talks about right now and the last two episodes I've done, , or issues that I've published, there's a lot of mention of AI.

I'm sucked into that hype cycle. And I actually think there's some really cool things to share. But then again, go back to what I said, like I don't want to be one of those thread boys on, like, on Twitter or I'm constantly just trying to force AI content down your throat. Right. So I'm keeping an eye, particularly in the next few issues, just to see, you know, like are people actually clicking on this?

Do they find that interesting? Are they absolutely sick of it? And, and they do wanna get, you know, back to some of the basics of what I've shared in the past. So keeping an eye on that is definitely, , one of the most important factor factors, for me. I've obviously got the polls as well. That's such a new feature cause.

I've only moved to CK I think since, January's issue, before that as a review. But, Elon decided to shut that down, from Twitter. So I, I kind of like forcefully got kind of pushed towards CK and. It, it provides the polling feature, which has actually been really good. Like you basically sticks and pulls out, every single, issue.

And I'm just trying to understand a little bit more about my audience. like who they are, what they're interested in, what they want more of. I used to do like a survey. I hate surveys. You both probably hate surveys. Like why would you complete a survey? , People did it, which is incredible. Like, I, I really appreciate it, but I know like if I see another type form, you know, I'm just gonna throw myself out the window.

Like I can't stand the thing. So, so just a simple poll. All you have to do is move the mouse, click on exactly. What option you're interested in and that, that's it. And they've worked extremely well. That's allowed me to kind of really kind of orientate, the, the content, around that. And then social media shares maybe there's been once or twice where content's done quite well.

But yeah, that's, that's pretty much, how I measure it.

Mark: , I think you've probably already given us loads of tips on, you know, how to, how to create great content. And obviously 7,000 subscribers is testament to, to that. But, if you were gonna kind of give a couple more tips to people, content creators looking to kind of grow their, their audience.

Have you got any that you can, you can share with us?

Sam: I would say what's worked actually recently quite well for me is, uh, cross promotion. And again, this is like nothing new. People have been doing this, bloggers have been doing this for, for decades, it is now quite prevalent , in newsletters. So I'll essentially find another, newsletter with a similar like audience, maybe a similar like size, but to be honest, it doesn't really matter as long as actually I generally think , they've got good content and you just reach out, to that, that creator, that writer.

And then you do a bit of a cross promotion and mention their newsletter, they mention yours, and you get that kind of nice cross pollination, of subscribers. So that, that's worked really well. Another one, actually, again, and I'm not a rep for CK and it doesn't, you know, there's a lot of improvements to be done to it, but 1, 1, 1 cool feature they've got now is.

They've got like a, a recommendation, screen that pops up. So if I subscribe , to Matt's newsletter, it'll pop up with other newsletters that are similar, to Matt's, or ones that he's recommended, , himself personally. I've actually got a load of a, a ton of growth, actually through that recommendation, side of, of CK that's worked actually extremely well.

So I've been taking that a little bit more seriously. You know, look at some of the other publications, maybe a bit bigger of an audience, start recommending them. They can track in their side how many people they're getting from me and hopefully they, they scratch my back as well at some point. That's the tactic.

Again, just going back to, what I mentioned before is just measuring what's working well and what's not. Like that's such an important thing. I speak about it in product, you know, day to day, but in a newsletter as well, like, you know, tailor it. I, I'd say for me, cuz it's a personal newsletter, like I take it with a, a pinch of salt.

If there's something there that people are requesting for that I have no interest and or no idea about, I'm not gonna write about it. I've got a bit maybe of a tougher stance in that side of things, but if it's something I generally am passionate about, people want more of it then Yeah.

Hell yeah. I'm gonna write more about it. That's, that's totally fine. I think just make it easy to read as well. Like, you'd be surprised like how many bad news letters are out there? Just terrible. Front sizes. Awful lines facing. And they've just crammed it with way too much, writing. They've not broken it up.

Horrible , color palette. Just really keep it nice and clean, and simple. Just one last tactic. I'd say it's worked for me, this is obviously quite specific to. Content, curation where I'm actually finding content that, that people have created and then, and put it into my newsletter.

, I find every single Twitter handle, and most, like nine times outta 10. All the products, all the links, and all the kind of general like writing content. I can find the creators of them, , and I'll get the Twitter handle. And then when I say that the issue has just been published, I'll tag in each of , those folk, and I hope that maybe just one of them has got, you know, quite a, a reasone following, will then kind of re-share that, , and then hopefully drive some, traffic towards a newsletter so that's all worked out, quite nicely.

Matt: Awesome. Love that.

Mark: I think we're gonna have a little pause now for some gratuitous advertising and, then when we come back, , we'll get to Matt's bangers and an example of great content.

Matt: So now is the time of the show, to go through Matt's bangers, and that's where we talk about a piece of content that our guest loves, and we find out a little bit of why they love it so much as well.

So, Sam, over to you. What have you, what have you brought to us today for, for Matt Bangers?

Sam: Ah, this is, this was a tough one. There was, there's quite a few that like, , in the end I ended up going for maybe an obvious pick, but, we'll, soon find out First Round Capital, a kind of prominent VC as you have an incredible blog and. The reason I've selected them in particular is it's long form content, when it needs to be long form right.

And there's a big difference there. It's not full of fluff, which a ton of content has. It's all very concise. It's quite like beg subjects quite deep, sometimes quite, complex. But they've been written by actual, experts. And they're front and center as well, so you know exactly who it is, their background.

Again, just the ui, like fantastic reading experience. I love these little subtle things like the. Progress bar. As you kind of scroll down, you can see, you know how much you've read. They've got really nice, kind of like sticky navigation. It sits in the kind of the left hand corner you can see the kinda table of contents, and it stays there as you scroll down so you can kind of snap and anchor to a section, whenever you like.

There's zero advertising on it, which is amazing. So full scream your estate to read in and not trying to check something in front of you just in general, like the value creation of each, piece that they, they've written Bang for buck is amazing.

Mark: that sounds great actually. And, for every Matt's banger as we know, there must be, a sausage of death. So a quick reminder where sausage of , death comes from, it's Danish slang for something that's really boring. , so Do's Pser is the Danish. Sausage of death is the English, and that's our nice uplifting way of finishing the show by awarding an internally dull piece of content.

That's P title. So Sam, do you have an s o d for us today?

Sam: Indeed I do. , it's General Business Insider. Our content, I can't stand it. It's fill of click bait titles. It's got zero value creation, no substance fill of fluff, loads of popup and ads. The worst mobile experience you can imagine. It could be written by anybody. I'm sure they're all cleansed there as far as I'm aware, in a factory.

Don't know any of the names, but they've all got the same writing style. It could be any, any one of them that is written it. So yeah, sorry for anyone that writes here, but yeah, it's, definitely, a banger of death, is that what we call it?

Mark: It's a banger of a sausage of death for sure.

Matt: That's, um, no, that was perfect though. It's, it's the clickbaiting nonsense that we wanna get rid of and, and anything that's on local newspaper websites is just seemingly the worst experience known to man at this point.

Sam: Yeah.

Matt: Thank you, Sam, for that example. So let's wrap this sausage up, get it packed and onto the shelves. In future shows, we're gonna be dissecting what , truly, great content looks like with a number of guest experts, and then getting more incredibly insights from people like Sam. So if you wanna get in touch, we'd love to hear from you and any of your contributions that you might have for Matt Bangers or conversely. The infamous sausage of death. And as always, we value your feedback. You can get in touch with us by messaging our Twitter handle, which is, rocky underscore io visiting us on LinkedIn or coming through to our website, which is rocky.io. So thanks again. Thanks for listening, and thank you very much to Sam for joining us this week. We'll see you again soon.