A (4:09)

Okay, so when I am thinking about this top of the iceberg, it could also, you could also be talking about, you know, what the actual user is experiencing. Right. And then under the iceberg is everything that the organization is doing or the website is doing to support that user experience. That would be another way of looking at it.

B (4:28)

Yeah, absolutely. And like, for people that are familiar with like coding and all that stuff too is there's like, there's the front end of your website, everybody interacts with that. And then there's the back end which is like, how do you actually operationalize, make everything work? It's the same concept, just PLG is what people use, like you said. And then there's the back end of, like, how do we actually support that?

A (4:47)

Awesome. Okay. And so I know that one. When we look at this, like, holistic view of what it means to be product led, and it includes, you know, that top part of it and then underneath, below the surface, all of it as well. Can we just go through, you know, I know that you've identified nine components that make up this iceberg as a whole, and I think it would be helpful if we could just go through what those components are, because these are some of the things that you need to think about when you are transitioning to PLG or just scaling up your business, because it goes way more beyond a free trial, as we just talked about. So could you list off, you know, what those. What those main elements are that you need to think about?

B (5:32)

For sure, I'll definitely do that. But one thing I do want to touch on too, is when you think about, like, okay, that makes sense. I've heard of, like, a product, that organization. I've heard about plg. Okay, I got to do that. I will say it's not enough to just be really good at plg. It's not enough to just have a really good product organization. What you need to do is actually integrate these things together. That's really where the magic is, like, for those nine components we talked about is making sure they blend together, they all interact, they all help each other. Because everything you learn on the front ends does complement the back end in different ways. So that is really important. What we call that seamless integration of plg, plo. It's just simply becoming product led. And so that's really what we want you to do. And before I get into the nine components, I just want to touch on, like, why care? Why do this in your business? Because these are the core three reasons why you should actually care about becoming product led. Because it's actually not all about plg. When you become product led, there is some nuances to this. So the very first kind of core outcome of this is really what we defined as effortless ARR. So annual recurring revenue for those that don't know. And so the big question here is you got to ask yourself is, like, how can you actually build a product that sells itself on your business? And so what does that look like for your specific business? That should be. The main outcome is you're able to have people sign up for your application. They get to value, they can upgrade on their own without actually talking to you. The second main outcome of becoming product is really all about lean Scale. So that's how can you actually scale a big business with a tiny team that's really having like a high kind of revenue per employee business where everyone in the team, they're amazing at what they do and you don't have just a lot of extra people that they don't have as much of a purpose in that business. And so you really do truly have that lean team. I can scale fast with that. The third core outcome of this is just what I call evergreen growth. How can you unlock more profits every single year? And so in order to do this, you need to have a great strategy, clear understanding of the markets, the user that you're serving best, and what you're going to be giving away for free. And so all of these kind of three outcomes, whether that's effortless ARR, lean scale or evergreen growth, these are the outcomes of implementing these nine core components. So this is where we can kind of dig into now of like, what are those specific components, what that looks like if you want.

A (7:58)

Yeah, for sure. And yeah, sorry for jumping into it there, but I definitely think like taking a step back and looking at the outcomes is really important. Just to piggyback on this like effortless ARR. Can you explain that just a little bit more so that people who, you know, may not understand what effortless means, what that is?

B (8:18)

Yeah, for sure. So the first kind of like quip we always get when we hear effortless is always like, oh, it's not effortless to get that. Totally fair. It's not. But whenever you're thinking about, okay, like let's say I woke up today and you know what? There was sales made, that is effortless ar. When it's like you didn't have to do anything to do that, that user signed up on their own, they actually went through, got value all on their own and then they were able to pull out their credit card, make a buying decision based on the value they got and purchase your product without even talking to you. So that to me is what I call effortless and to recurring revenue could not get easier than that because at the end of the day, a lot of times when you hear about the sales at companies and all that stuff is like they might get the front end or something like that. Even with like, I don't know, ads or whatever, some sort of like scammy funnel, you might actually solve the front end of that of like getting people to acquire, then monetize. But then you still have to deliver and you still have to actually execute on that as A team. And that's not effortless. And so this is truly effortless because it's the acquisition, it's the engagement, it's the overall monetization of it. So glad you kind of double clicked on that because that's an important distinction is it's all three of those areas here go to Market Motion.

A (9:39)

Yeah, for sure. And then also just wanted to share a story about the second one, which is lean scale. What I just want to share is something that I think is really powerful that can help you realize that like we're not just kidding in this. So a company called User Flow, they were a company of three people and they just had a 60 million exit.

B (10:01)

Yeah. And their annual current revenue was 4,6 mil. So really incredible. I mean, super talented team too. Not everybody can pull that off, but it just goes show, like you can get to an incredible scale with a very lean team. And I did ask them, I was like, how many contractors do you have? They're like, no. I was like so disappointed I busted it. But now it's just really a lean team.

A (10:24)

Yeah, yeah. And that also makes things a lot more simple in the business too. Okay, so now that we got that out of the way, let's just, let's just get into those nine, nine components. Because I do think that they are. Maybe you're overlooking them as yourself, as a listener, you might not have thought about one of these components. So I'm, I'm excited for Wes to dive into them a little bit.

B (10:44)

Before you can even like dive into those nine components, you gotta understand like that there's actually these three levers that we just talked about that you have to like dial in and all of those non components are like tied into. How do you actually make that happen? So the first belief is you gotta understand like how you sell is just as important as what you sell. So one of the apps I signed up for a while back, Chess.com, super easy to use, love chess. And then I kind of signed up. I was playing somebody in India like within two minutes and they were actually like, it was a competitive game. I was like, wow, this onboarding is amazing. This is fun, A great experience. Eventually upgraded. Now I'll relate it to this other example, which is from Pitchbook. So I was curious about like what companies have recently in the SaaS space, got acquired, exited, merged, all that stuff. I just want to see like what data's out there. So I found this company called PitchBook. They did a good job on the acquisition side. Then I saw Oh, I can request a free trial. Let's do that. Sounds great. Filled out my form info and then it just took me to a sales call. I was like, okay, no thanks. I'm not that curious to understand what this is all about. And the pricing, sure enough hidden. I'm probably, it's going to be expensive, I don't care that much. So I never have gone onto that sales call. So why I wanted to share that is because a sales LED model is really all about like you acquire people, then you monetize, then you engage. Whereas your product LED model is all about like, okay, let's acquire, engage, provide value. And then it's all about monetization. So you can still have a free trial and be sales led in this kind of capacity because you're in that pitchbook example, it was just a sales process with a free trial label on it. So why I share that is because these three labels, the first one, magnetic acquisition, you gotta have that for your business. Then engagement is kind of the second lever you must have. And then there's monetization. And so if any of these are missing, you're basically going to run into some big problems in your business. So you don't have the acquisition side you to don't have, you're going to run into no demand for your business. You don't have engagement, you're not actually going to get the leverage you need for the effortless ARR, the lean scale we talked about, and then for powerful monetization, like if you don't have that, you're not going to have evergreen growth, you're not going to have actually lean scale in your business. And so each of those three key levers is needed. And so for these nine components, there's actually a strategic order you must follow to unlock each of those core levers. And so the very first one, which we can dig into here, is just all about building a winning strategy. So this is really like the bedrock where everything else is kind of built off of. And you really have to ask yourself some like really important questions about where your business is headed. And to truly dominate your market, you must be crystal clear on what you do best as a company and align your strengths with what the market wants and, and what the customer needs at the end of the day. And so a question for you to just think about when it comes to your strategy is how effective is your strategy in helping your company become the undeniable choice for your customers in your market? And if you're like, ah, we don't have a strategy. Okay. Rate yourself low on the spectrum there. And then for somewhat effective, like, you're kind of in the middle. If it's like very effective is like, people just know, like, hey, if you're looking for a team communication platform, Slack is amazing. Or if you're looking for, you know, team communication tool, go to Zoom or Google Meet. Like you're one of the top choices for people to go to. So that's really the first component you really need to dial in for this to work.

A (14:22)

And so this is no matter where you are soon, you're talking about like a strategic order of rolling this out. The first thing that you need to look at is your strategy. Does that mean that, like, no matter what you're looking at your strategy first, you're not going to touch your onboarding, you're not going to touch anything. You're going to make sure that your strategy is crystal clear?

B (14:40)

Yes. And because everything is tied from that. And I'll give you an example from like a recent client. Like, they were very aligned. They all had the same kind of like, answer for like, hey, this is what winning looks like for our business. It's going to be building a hundred million dollar business. Um, and I was like, that's amazing. I love that. But it tells me no, like, direction about how we're going to do that. What market are we going to dominate first? It's just vague. And when it's vague, it's like, tell me how many ways you could get there. And if there is, like, every executive can come up with like the ten or a hundred different ways. It's like, you're not really clear on your strategy, are you? It's a way like the direction, but it tells me nothing about what is the best path. And I think that's the key distinction is like a great strategy. It lights up the path of like where you need to go and it just aligns everybody. Like, yeah, that is the best path. We should go there first.

A (15:37)

Yeah. And then so once you have your strategy and you're crystal clear on that, what's the next step that you should be taking?

B (15:44)

So the second core step is all about user intimacy. So how well do you know your specific user? User. And so in order to actually have that incredible demand, you must pick one, one, not many, one ideal user, and understand them better than anyone else in your market. So that's really hard to do because I know a lot of companies will want to be like, oh, we serve these people and these people, we have a Horizontal platform so we can serve everybody. And it's like, no, you gotta get specific on who you serve best. Even if you can serve multiple people, you just gotta get really, really, really specific about who that person is. So the question you gotta ask yourself is, how well do you understand your ideal user's problems, needs, and wants compared to the rest of your competitors? Say, if you're on, like, the low end of the spectrum here, it's like, we just don't know who our ideal user is yet. That's okay. Start there. Identify who that ideal user is. Somewhere in the middle is like, okay, we know them well, but we probably don't know them well or better than anybody else. Whereas, like, if you're really, really great at this for user intimacy, it's like, you know them better than anybody else. Like, you're unstoppable because you just understand this customer ideal user better than anyone. So just kind of ask yourself, where do you stand on that spectrum?

A (17:03)

And I will say that this is typically just from, based on my experience in our coaching calls, is like, there's a lot of pushback from. From founders who need to pick one ideal user. But the evidence has shown that once you do pick that ideal user and you know them inside and out, you will see your conversions increase because you are, you know, attracting the right people. So I just want to point that out. We have lots of success stories, and I'll link some below so you can take a look. All right, the next one is. The next component actually, is pretty fun for me because it's. It's that it's the one that everyone thinks they need to become product led. And obviously it is important, but it's not as important, I think, as. As you might think. And that is your. Your model, which is your free trial or premium offer, which, as Wes will tell you, doesn't actually matter which model you choose. So maybe you want to explain on that just a bit.

B (18:00)

Yeah, absolutely. And so the core thing here is, is you want to build an intentional model. Like, there's a lot of models out there where it's like, oh, yeah, we got a free trial, and the competitor had one too, so we thought it'd be a great idea. And then there's a lot of debates internally inside of companies where it's like, free trial, freemium free trial. Freeman and I go around discussion as, like, okay, we're debating the wrong thing. At the end of the day, I believe the model doesn't matter. What matters is what is the main outcome? We want to get our users to. And where are they in that user journey, and what do we need to give them in order for them to get to that next level? And so it's basically reverse engineering. What is the outcome? What do they need? Let's, let's give them that start. And so that's what's really important when it comes to that model. And what you'll find when you approach it that way is you don't give away too much, you don't give away too little. You give them everything they need to succeed at that next outcome. So that's really important. So the question I have for everyone listening is, like, how intentional is your free model? If you're kind of the lower end of the spectrum here? It's like, we guessed what to give away for free. Like, that's fine. A lot of people in that bucket. If you're somewhere in the middle, it's like, we know, like, what is the main outcome that users are trying to achieve, and that's what we're, we're doing. And, and then if you're like, high end of the spectrum, it's like, we literally give the user just everything they need to level up to the next outcome. And so really think about where you are on that spectrum, because there's, there's levels to this game for each of these components. So I want you to really question it. Think about where you stand on it.

A (19:39)

Yeah, good point. All right, after the model, we have also another really important one. I think they're all important, but sometimes I just like a little. I like some of them more than I like. So I will say the next one. Go for it.

B (19:52)

You.

A (19:52)

You see what the next one is.

B (19:53)

The next one's all about building an irresistible offer. And to build an irresistible offer, you must quickly communicate why your solution is better than the alternatives. The question I have for everyone is, like, is your offer 10x more compelling than the alternatives in the market? So low end of the spectrum is, like, not compelling. Nothing actually differentiates us. We're one of a kind in the sense that we're just a vendor in our market. Nothing really differentiates us. If you're somewhere in the middle, it's like, you know, it's somewhat compelling. Maybe there's some things in your product you do that are actually truly, like, compelling. But, like, it's not getting communicated. Maybe people just are kind of oblivious to, like, okay, this is really what's unique about your products, but it's not coming out in your coffee, your offer, or anything. Like that high end of this where you want to be is like you are the most compelling solution in your market. People can understand your value quickly and, and they can truly understand like that's what they want. At the end of the day, it's not just like, all right, we got this new feature AI something and you know everybody else does this so I'll pick on the AI folks. But it's like that's not compelling. What does this do? How can it help me tell me more, get more specific about the benefit versus the overall just feature.

A (21:10)

Yeah, for sure. And this one is actually going to be a lot easier to do when you know your ideal user as Wes had said the because of this strategic order of growth. Cool. So then the next one I think is what everyone jumps to first, but they shouldn't and that is onboarding your onboarding experience. So do you want to talk about that?

B (21:31)

Yeah, absolutely. So onboarding at the end of this, it's really all tying back to how do we like when we talk about effortless ARR, how do we make that happen? So we kind of dub this like how do you create that effortless experience for your users? And so to actually gain leverage in your business, you must make it effortless to sign up, get the value and upgrade in your business. And so the question I have for you to kind of think about is, is it effortless to sign up, get the value and upgrade in your business? And so if it's kind of low end on this is like it's just effortless to sign up. Like people can sign up for the free trial, free version of the product on their own. If you're somewhere in the middle, it's like you can do that, they can sign up easily. But then it's also effortless to get the value high end. Like where you want to be is the full spectrum effortless to sign up, get to value and upgrade. So think about where do you stand on that right now?

A (22:27)

Awesome. All right, the next one is what I think a lot of companies struggle with a lot which is pricing. And so yeah, chat about what, what pricing means and how as a to be product led, what is, what does pricing mean? How do you approach it?

B (22:42)

I think the, the core piece that you have to overcome for a lot of companies, especially if you're like going from sales that to product LED is transparent. Transparent and simple. Like if you could sum this up as far as like how to do pricing right. A lot of it all comes from those two words. How can we make this Transparent, simple people can understand quickly, less than five seconds to understand which plan to pick. So to actually get users to upgrade without talking to you, you do have to have that transparent pricing that is simple to understand. And so question for you to think about is how simple, transparent and then strategic is your pricing. So if you're low end of the spectrum here, like your pricing's hidden, nobody can find it unless they talk to you. And then somewhere in the middle is like, it's simple and it's transparent. People can go to your pricing page, learn like what they're going to get charged and, and it's fairly straightforward to understand what that looks like. Where you want to be though is it's everything that we mentioned before, simple, transparent, but it's also strategic. So as somebody starts using your product, if they start using a lot more of it, if you have the right value metric, you start growing that account and they just naturally grow as they get more value from your product. And so you consistently monetize more from each of those users depending on how are they using the product and how much value they're getting. So that's really important to nail that in for the pricing piece.

A (24:04)

Yeah, for sure. And then the next one is something that we've been talking about actually quite a, quite a lot here on the podcast recently, which is data. And I think a lot of data driven folks are going to really, really love this one. And I feel like what I love about your approach and with data is just how simple it really is and it really should be. So maybe you want to talk about that for sure.

B (24:29)

So for the like data component, this is all about really understanding the biggest bottlenecks in your business. So a lot of times it's easy to look at a lot of data and kind of get overwhelmed. Like, oh wow, like this number's underperforming. Oh wow, this one's also underperforming. And then you usually analyze it as a team or a leadership team and you're like, okay, let's solve this one. I think it makes sense. But, but the challenge here is you've already over complicated by tracking too many things. And so what we trying to work backwards is like, let's look at this user journey. What are the main steps and how can we truly break it down into six main steps? They go through each of these steps and we want to track each of them. And so to really unlock faster growth, you must always know like what is the number one bottleneck at all times in your business and where your Users are consistently getting stuck. And so my question for you is like, how well do you and your entire team understand what is the number one bottleneck in your business? Is it like, not at all. Is it occasionally? Is it like, oh yeah, all the time. We always know what the number one bottleneck is. Really think about that. Because at the end of the day, this is multiplier for the next component we're going to be talking about, which is just, hey, like if everybody was actually focused on solving this, what kind of impact would that have in your business?

A (25:52)

Exactly. So that's what I think I love about this next one is, is the growth process. And that component, I think really brings everyone together to, to really solve one specific issue. So I'm excited to hear how you think about that one.

B (26:07)

Yeah, for sure. So the growth process, what it is, is it's a like repeatable process. Every week your team would go through where there's a meeting that they go through to analyze like what is the biggest bottleneck, which should be hopefully from the data component, understanding what that bottleneck is. But then this is really where we tap into everybody's creative ideas as far as what experiments we should be running and how do we prioritize them, how do we launch them, how do we do a retro on them to understand what we should do to focus and actually integrate into the business. And so really pivotal, if you don't have this, we just have the data. I mean, this is actually doing stuff about it with your team, which is way more fun in my opinion. But to unlock this predictable growth, you must have a consistent growth process that churns out high impact experiments every single week like clockwork that tackles your biggest bottleneck. And so a question is, how effective is your team at launching high impact experiments that tackle the number one bottleneck? And in your business, if it's like low end on the spectrum, it's like they don't know what the biggest bottleneck is. And so what we're launching we hope is effective. It's a lot of like, we hope this works. At the end of the day, if you're somewhere in the middle, it's like, you know what? We occasionally launch high impact experiments. It's great. I mean, a lot of companies are here and it's a good place to be, but where you want to be at the high end is really like, we consistently launch high impact experiments all the time. They're always targeted towards the core bottleneck of the business. And we're streamlined, focused as a business and we're consistently growing month over month. That is like the biggest thing. It's like we're growing month over month. It's working. So that's really the growth process in a nutshell.

A (27:52)

I love that. And the best part about the growth process for the team is that it does bring a lot of motivation because you are going to see that growth if you're consistently doing it and, and hitting your, you know, what actually is your bottleneck. Which brings us to the very last one. And I have a love hate relationship with the last one because sometimes it can be really hard. And this one is your team. And so maybe you want to talk about why your team is so important to transitioning or becoming product led.

B (28:22)

Yeah, no, this one's definitely hard because at the end of the day you do have to realize like, if part of Lean scale too is having everyone is like a very intentional role, very intentional accountabilities and, and they are the right person, the right seat with the right skill sets to actually action on that. And so sometimes you do have to make those really difficult choices where it's like, okay, that doesn't make sense for right now. Maybe it did in the past, but we need to hire somebody else or maybe we don't need that role anymore. And so this is hard when you're kind of rebuilding out your accountability charts and accountabilities and making sure everybody's accountable for specific metrics and everything else. So that's the hard part. So I get it as far as what you were saying about that earlier. But to build a lean and elite team, you must hire as a last resort. So there's a reason why this is the last component of the product LED system is because you can actually solve the majority of your problems with the product and not humans. That all goes back to like what we're all about here at Product LED is like build your product to be the machine, not your team. The end of the day, the product should be doing the brunt of the work. When it comes to acquiring, engaging, monetizing users. At the end of the day, that's how you build something lean and scalable. So the question you got to ask is, how equipped is your team to build and scale a world class product LED business? If it's on the low end, it's like we just don't have the right people yet. It's okay. At least you know where you are. If you're somewhere in the middle, it's like we just don't have the right capabilities yet. So maybe you do have the right hires, but they're not trained yet or they need to be trained as far as how to do onboarding better, how to fix our pricing. All those things are capabilities you need. Each of these components is a capability you need to have in your company. And then the last one is we have an elite team that is world class at what they do. And each of these non components, we have core amazing leaders that can take this to the next level. And so that's really where you want to be as a company, but over time it's not something you just immediately have. And that's why we do this as a last step because you'll save a lot of those hiring mistakes by just delegating most of the stuff to the product.

A (30:31)

Yeah, and I, I, I really love that too, that the product is the machine, not the people. I think that's important. What I love about this when you look at the system as a whole. So I'm just going to recap all the components because I think that will give a little bit more clarity for everybody. So we can, we've got got your strategy, your user, your model, your offer, your experience, your pricing, your data, your process and your team. And all of those make up a very what we call the product ledge system. And it's a holistic way to scale your product led business. And I'm really excited because in a couple of months in August, Wes is going to be launching a new book that's actually going to break down this entire system and into little pieces that you can act on yourself so you can implement it yourself. And you know, he'll go into detail, he goes into a lot of detail in this book about just how each component works and how it all integrates together. And so maybe you want to talk just a little bit about that and why this book, this new book that you're launching is different than the original one that you had launched a couple of years ago. Because I know that a lot of the listeners here have read your old book, have probably read Bramley's book Product about onboarding and just want to know, you know, why? How is this one a little bit different than those other two?

B (31:55)

For sure. So hopefully like from listening to this podcast, you can understand like some of the reasoning behind this. This whole book kind of came out of the process of we were helping a lot of companies become product lad when product led growth was booming. And then we realized like what actually separates some of the companies that see truly great success with plg. And the ones that failed, like somewhere along the process they, their leadership team killed it or it didn't work. They just consistently got lackluster results, even despite their team being really gung ho about it. And so we just analyzed all the unsuccessful companies, we analyzed the really successful ones and this is really the result is we realized actually they're missing the yin to the product led growth yang, which is the product led organization. And so if you don't have that backbone that supports plg, that's really not going to set you up for success. And so that's really what makes this book unique, why we decided to write it and how it's different than product LED growth is. The first book is really just like product growth is the intro. Like, think about it as like, hey, this strategy, here's a good take on it and see if it's right for you. If it's a check, yes, read this book next because at the end of the day this is going to give you the step by step blueprint you need to actually do it. And when it comes to you're going through the experience component, if you want a really great deep dive on onboarding, you have to check product LED onboarding as kind of that next step of like what does that look like? And learn some new ideas from Ramley on that one to really dive deep into onboarding because each of these nine components, like in this overall kind of product LED book, we're going to go somewhat deep but more high level so you can understand the whole holistic picture of how to operate and build and scale a product LED business. But yeah, product LED onboarding is definitely more a deep dive on that one component. So that's the, the overview difference of that. And if you want to kind of join the waitlist, get the first three chapters of this for the book for free. Just head on over to product led.com and more importantly too, the question I always like to ask folks at the end of this experience when you're like, okay, I've listened to this, this sounds interesting. I always like to ask is like, how much faster do you think you would be able to scale your product LED business if you dialed in each each of those nine components? So as I was asking those questions about like, hey, like are you on the low end of the spectrum somewhere in the middle or like really like dialed in? Imagine if everything was dialed in, like how much easier would it be to, to grow faster? So if you're interested, we actually do have a program coming up in May where we're actually going to implement this with other software companies. And this is your opportunity where if you want to actually work together, implement this inside your business and start growing a lot faster. This is like one of a kind kind of opportunity. We're not going to do this that frequently. So you can head over to our website and just click on coaching and you can learn more about that as well.

A (35:01)

Yeah, for sure. And I'll, I'll add those links to the bottom here in case you're interested. But I definitely think that reading the first three chapters is a great place to start. Just to give you like reinforce more of what we were talking about here. Because that whole holistic and product led organization and product led growth to become product led it is sometimes like a little bit difficult to grasp and reading it, I don't know myself, I think reading is a little bit easier to, for it to all sink in. So I'll, I'll drop that in below as well. But any final words for today, Wes?

B (35:33)

I, I think for this to work you have to approach this like stop thinking about PLG is like a product tank and start focusing this on like, okay, product led growth might have been what you came here to want, but what you actually need is to become product led, which is the integration of plg. Plo. PLG is not enough. It's only half of the story. So becoming product led is way more the direction where you want to go. And in order to do that, you need to get the rest of your team bought into this because it's, it's not just hopefully living within the product department as an initiative. It should be a company level thing that we race because to do it right, to build the right capabilities, we need to approach this as a team thing.