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Hey there - it's Brian 👋

A friend of mine just sold his bootstrapped SaaS for $5M.

I asked him what he learned from building his business. What he said next blew my mind…

“I got my competitors to pay for my marketing.”

In today’s issue, I’ll tell you how he pulled it off, and what you can learn to grow your own business.

Let’s make your business an outlier: 👇

“Mark” and I lived together in Thailand

To keep him anonymous, let’s call him “Mark.”

A few months ago. I lived in a entrepreneur house in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Imagine 40 founders living together and helping each other build.

At the time, Mark is in the middle of exiting his SaaS. He’s stressed and excited all at once.

So we go to a local coffee shop to talk through his options.

The more he tells me about how he got his competitor to pay for his customers, the more fascinating the story gets…

How to get competitors to pay for your marketing

Mark runs a platform that connects people with group classes.

Mark’s competitor had roughly $3M in funding. But Mark was bootstrapped.

He didn’t know how he could compete without any funds.

He notices his competitor is focusing his $3M on marketing. So Mark decides to focus all his efforts on product.

So every day: he’d talk to customers about their experience, fix his product, and repeat.

He believed that if he understood the customer pain better than his competition he could win (even with $0 in funds).

But he never imagined how right he was:

His competitor paid for ads. Then, a bunch of new customers would try their platform.

Then, customers from both platforms (Mark + competitor) would show up to their group class.

In between sessions, Mark’s customers would talk about how much better his platform is.

And they'd get customers to switch!

Since Mark’s platform had the best customer experience, customers kept switching to his platform from competition (and he didn’t have to spend on ads).

A few tips from Mark (to make customers obsessed with you too)

I asked Mark to give me an example of how he was so customer obsessed. He told me:

He thought he was being clever by adding a new tech that made it seamless for customers to sign in to class. Big win(?)

Then, when he walked with customers through their journey, he found that this “seamless sign in” felt uncomfortable. Customers would walk to a new venue and not know where to sign in without asking the front desk anyway!

So he removed the tech and focused on how to make the human interaction with the front desk as comfortable as possible.

Customers loved it.

3 tips from Mark:

1) Step backwards to move forwards

Mark “took a step backwards” when he removed the tech he spent so much time and money building.

But when customers signed in with a real person at the door it made people feel much more welcome.

2) Referrals create a snowball (that’s hard to stop once it gets going)

The ultimate sign of incredible customer experience is that your customers refer other customers.

If you’re seeing more referrals, it’s a sign that you’re going in the right direction.

3) Talk to customers (in a way that doesn’t mislead you)

To get to know customer mentality Mark had to be careful with how he phrased his questions.

Customers don’t want to make you feel bad so they’ll hold back “negative” feedback. Negative feedback is what you need to hear!

To make sure you don’t get the wrong feedback (& build the wrong experience), I added a bunch of resources at the end. Interview scripts, common mistakes, and a book summary.

Check out the Outlier Links section at the end.

And that’s it!

If you found this helpful, please share this post with 1 friend or colleague. They'll appreciate you and you'll help grow the community.

See you next Thursday 👋

Brian
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P.S. If you liked this post, and don’t want to miss the next one, sign up for free:

🛠️ Outlier Links

Book summary: how to talk to customers (& not be mislead)

Don’t make these 6 mistakes when talking to customers

5 proven questions to ask at your next customer interview (from YC)