Hey bootstrappers,

Who knows (or should know) the most about your customers?

Your marketers? They ought to know who they’re selling to. Your customer support team? They speak to customers daily, so perhaps they’re the experts. 

The truth is if you want to grow your business quickly, everyone – from engineering to finance – must become customer experts. Why? 

Once your teams understand your customers, they learn how their work contributes to customer success and can work together to produce the best results. 

The alternative is engineers building the wrong features, marketers selling the wrong messaging, and finance drawing the wrong conclusions from the data. 

Do yourself a favor the next time you run a company all-hands and do a quick customer quiz. The results might surprise you.

Chris Roper

Managing Editor

How a Burnt Out Lawyer Breathed New Life Into His Profession and Helped his Peers Land More Clients

Lawyer turned podcaster, Robert Ingalls, beat imposter syndrome to leave the courtroom and engage clients with a mic and headphones instead.

Robert never thought of himself as an entrepreneur. He’d been a defense attorney working long hours, suffering anxiety and stress like many in his profession. Only when his wife suggested they start a family did he realize just how bad things had gotten. But what could he do next?

He’d always turned to podcasts to relieve stress and thought it might be fun to try it. His first few episodes surprised him: He sounded calm and engaging. Could he do this professionally? After explaining the benefits of podcasting at a law event, he landed his first customer.  

“You can speak directly to clients, give them answers but let them get to know you, hear your voice, and allow them to feel like they’re making a connection with you. Your personality comes through. They trust you before they even pick up the phone.”

Turning Points

1. Giving up a profession that hurt his mental health. If Robert hadn’t dared to quit practicing law, he’d have burned out and never have started his business.

2. Hosting podcasting tutorials at coworking spaces. Sharing his podcasting expertise eventually landed Robert a big client who asked him to produce several shows.

3. Offering his editing expertise in return for ads. Robert asked other podcasters if he could help edit their shows in return for them running adverts for his own.

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The Power of an Audience Persona: How This Founder Breaks Product Engineers Out of Their Silos

Harish Kumar helps businesses avoid the breakdowns in communication that occur when departments don’t align on the customer persona they serve.

After engineering products for over 18 years, Harish spotted a problem. Sales, marketing, and engineering departments often operated in separate bubbles, with one party blaming the other for failures outside of their control. Silos like these hurt businesses in the long run.

Harish’s answer is to help every department understand its target audience – and how their roles contribute to that audience’s success. Using social media, analytics tools, and other sources, Harish helps founders create an audience persona the whole company can get behind.

“Each department needs deep knowledge of the target audience to break through silos and provide the best possible customer experience. Regardless of your position, you need to understand whom your feature, campaign, or sales deck targets.”

Turning points

1. Starting CrawlQ as a service. Harish initially solved the silo problem manually to first test his ideas and methods before building the software product.

2. Launching on AppSumo for fast and frank feedback. AppSumo’s early adopters forgave his product’s failings and helped him develop a better version two.

3. Hiring part-time employees. Harish can expand or shrink his team according to demand, which helps manage costs and boost cash flow.

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Why This Non-Technical Founder Quit a Lucrative Consulting Career to Launch a Tech Startup (It Started With a Joke)

A well-paid consulting job was sucking the life out of ​​Gboyega Adebayo, and when his sister jokingly suggested he start his own business, he abandoned the 15-hour days for good.

When Covid canceled the only aspects of consulting Gboyega enjoyed, he turned to entrepreneurship as an escape route. His wife had given birth to their first child, so the timing wasn’t great, but burnout loomed, and if he couldn’t switch gears, he’d have little time for family.

Besides, he already knew what to build. Many people asked for his help finding document templates online, so would an online resource be popular? He shared the idea with college friends Len and Marc, and the trio built Yencil, helping doc creators monetize their content.

“We want to be the foundation of your side hustle and its growth. Our obsession is saving our customers’ time. For sellers, our product (and future products) will prioritize saving time as your side hustle evolves into a business.”

Turning points

1. Avoiding the niche trap. Most of Gboyega’s competitors were industry or software niches, so he added other document categories to attract a bigger audience.

2. Easing creator pain points. Yencil is an end-to-end service: Creators upload, customers pay, and Yencil shares analytics. Its simplicity saves creators time.

3. Starting a podcast. Gboyega advertised Yencil on his podcast and invited entrepreneurs as guests to learn from them and grow his network.

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