Jim Zarkadas (00:00)
Hey, I'm Jim, and this is the Love at First Try podcast, a podcast for SaaS CEOs and developers that truly want to learn more about design and care about it, but there are no designers that find it too complex. In every episode, we discuss how to design products that become sticky and unforgettable. We dive into the topics of taste, UX, growth, and conversions, and we share practical tips and frameworks you can add into your development process. Enough with the intro, so let's dive into today's episode.
Jim Zarkadas (00:28)
So yeah, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining me. ⁓ Really great to have you here. And as I mentioned in the past as well, that one of the reasons that I wanted to invite you is because I believe you have a great taste and this podcast is really about people with good taste. ⁓ So yeah, thanks for joining me. And we always start with a short intro of ⁓ who you are, what you're working on and what is the audience you're actually helping and supporting with your services in this case.
So yeah, let's do that first. Let's go through that.
Alex James (00:58)
Yeah, so I'm Alex. I am a messaging strategist for B2B professional services firms. I mainly work with marketing agencies and consulting companies who are doing like at least a million dollars in revenue per year and I help them ⁓ not just like you know capture the vibes and the values of what they're trying to say but more like generate like leads and close more clients.
actually put the messaging to work.
Jim Zarkadas (01:31)
I never asked you but what kind of a business, like what kind of service firms are you working with mostly? Is it let's say design studios or what do you have any specific industries or is it a mix?
Alex James (01:43)
Yeah,
I work with a lot of digital agencies, specifically, because that area has become very, very crowded and very, very competitive and therefore they need my kind of services more acutely. ⁓ I kind of come in when there's like a big spike in competition generally, ⁓ when like need to be able to stand out, you just need to be able to like have that edge. If you're in a non-competitive space,
Jim Zarkadas (01:48)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Mmm.
Alex James (02:11)
You don't really need me as much, I'm not that valuable, but when like there's a lot of people selling the same thing and saying the same thing and making the same promises, that's when your messaging really needs to be dialed in.
Jim Zarkadas (02:24)
Got it, got it.
Yeah, on this, it's a fully understand what you mean with digital agencies because in terms of my story, I'm not sure if I started in the past. Now we're building this product design studio called Love at First Try. We're specialized into SaaS product design and we stopped calling it a design studio. Now we're called as we ourselves in-house design team as a service because we're literally in-house and we're not an external agency. And people would always have this debate of like, yeah, but we're looking for somebody in-house, like a freelancer. We don't want an agency. And I was like, but we're the same. Why do you think that?
and I was realizing that it's really the name on that and why I'm sharing this is before I had a design studio with a friend of mine back in Greece where we come from and that was the exit also to move to the Netherlands where we were called B-Foolies and it was more of a branding
and marketing agency. And back then we were also this agency doing all kinds of things with no specialization or focus on an industry. I pretty much did all the mistakes that I'm not doing right now. It was kind of in my learning ⁓ chapter for how to do services. And
Alex James (03:14)
you
Jim Zarkadas (03:29)
What I remember from that time and I still see is that so many digital agencies try to differentiate with, in my personal opinion, I don't want to generalize, with stupid statements like, where are the digital agency for the companies that dare to dream? Or like you have all these kind of inspirational kind of statements that they try to look different, but like, guys, come on. Or for like the creative thinkers or the builders of tomorrow, I'm like, come on. It's like, just tell me what you do. And also,
Alex James (03:54)
Yeah.
Jim Zarkadas (03:57)
how is it different? Like everybody says the same thing and just tries to kind of communicate that we're really building the products of tomorrow. And then you look at the portfolio and just building websites, for example. it's a, yeah, I totally see the struggle in the industry that you need a unique angle actually, which is the next topic we're gonna discuss actually, which is, yeah.
Alex James (04:16)
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, well, the, every, you know, every single industry, everyone just kind of copies their competitors, right? Everyone's kind of just like, we don't know what we should say. What should we put on our website? Let's look at who we're aware of, who we might be losing work to sometimes and copy and paste them, right? And you just kind of get this facsimile copy of a copy of a copy. And it gets like,
Jim Zarkadas (04:27)
Hmm.
Exactly. Yeah, that's a good point.
Alex James (04:41)
You know, when you see a JPEG image that's been shared too many times, it has those like artifacts on it. That's kind of, you see like the language version of that. And it just like, yeah, it's all a bit corrupted. But where that like that starts is like people copying like the, the, the fancy like Madison Avenue creative firms. Like those are where those big inspirational messages come from. And they have the websites that have big kind of glitzy show reels and stuff. But like, unless you're selling.
Jim Zarkadas (05:02)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Alex James (05:11)
Super Bowl ads to Nestle, like that's not going to work for you. If you're selling to like small to medium sized businesses, they need to have like a direct differentiated message lodged in their brain to know why you're even worth talking to.
Jim Zarkadas (05:14)
Mm-hmm.
Good point.
Yeah, it's a beautiful insight. The type of the audience, which is like if they're SMBs or big companies and the type of service you're selling, because one of my favorite agencies that I'm also trying to get in the podcast is Raked Edge. Maybe you've heard of them. They're a brand studio based in London and they did their new brand of wine, that was called previously Transfer Wise, and they're really good. Their design, the taste is so freaking good. And they have this kind of a statements on the website, but they don't feel wrong because it's really...
actually you can see these statements into the work, even if they're more kind of aspirational and so on, you can really feel it. And it's really about the creative stuff that they're selling. So yeah, it's very true what you said is that the type of audience, the size of the companies and also the type of service, if you sell conversions or just websites or something around creative strategy and so on. So we're gonna dive deeper into this because that's what Alex is all about always, like the perspective and like how do you differentiate.
but before that I wanted to ask ⁓ about the concept of taste and the question is what is taste for you and how do you define it? ⁓ is, yeah, when I ask you this, what comes to your mind when you think about taste?
Alex James (06:42)
Yeah, such a good question. I think the only way I can think to define it is taste is how you want things to be.
Jim Zarkadas (06:54)
Hmm.
Alex James (06:56)
that make sense?
Jim Zarkadas (06:58)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm curious to learn more but I kind of, I think I get it. Yeah, it's like the vision you have in a way, the taste comes down to like the, what you're envisioning in a way you would say.
Alex James (07:13)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. mean, I have like, so like I started out as like a humble copywriter, just kind of doing whatever people would pay me for. And like I did a lot of stuff. was like writing the copy on like the back of like a pretzel snack company packaging kind of thing. I don't know why. ⁓
Jim Zarkadas (07:21)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Nice.
Alex James (07:36)
And so like, have a lot of like people who are copywriters who reach out to me and they're like, or, you know, people who are like, Hey, should I become a copywriter? And I go, But I think the difference is now that we are in this kind of AI world, it used to be an easy, like, yeah, like go for it, give it a go. But I think now, now that it's become so like.
Jim Zarkadas (07:45)
Mm-hmm.
Alex James (08:03)
automated and commoditized and like copywriting itself is no longer a that marketable of a skill. It's not really about developing or mastering the skill of copywriting itself. It's more about honing the taste. Like, what does good copywriting look like? And this is what I tell them actually now it's like don't master the skill hone the taste. If you have a good idea, then you can see it when it's generated and then you can start to use it.
Jim Zarkadas (08:18)
Hmm.
Hmm.
Alex James (08:31)
and get the results off the back of that. So I think it comes down to that. It's like, how do you want things to be? When it comes to something like copywriting, if it's like conversion optimized, how you want it to be is something that is persuasive and that will like, you know, convert people who are reading it. If it's something that's trying to like send a message or instill an idea in somebody's mind, how you want it to be is something that speaks to that, that creates like a logical argument and like gets people to process.
Jim Zarkadas (08:34)
Hmm.
You
Hmm.
Hmm.
Alex James (09:00)
information in their mind and reach the conclusion that you want them to reach. That's what good looks like. So that's my kind of weird roundabout way of defining taste. It's like how you want things to
Jim Zarkadas (09:05)
Mm.
I thought
we had adult and why I love this question so much and I ask every guest because there is no right answer for that. It's really personal. Like how do you personally define it? Like what does it really mean for you? So yeah, this one there is no right or wrong answer. It's really kind of a how it feels for everybody. On this side, I never asked you, do you do the design on your content on your own? Like the older branding and creative direction of your content? Is it you or do you have a team behind it?
Alex James (09:15)
Yeah.
Yeah, that's just me. Just me and Panda taking away.
Jim Zarkadas (09:36)
Okay.
wow. Okay. I would love to go a bit deeper because that's actually how I discovered you. I saw a beautiful carousel link. was like, ⁓ this guy has a really good taste. I need to learn more about him. And then I started following you so on. And one of my favorite carousels ⁓ that you published on LinkedIn is about, ⁓ the QK economist. What is his name? The Gary's economic guy, economics. Yeah.
And it so well explained everything, how you explain the concept of to be a framer, like how you frame a message and it's not about just the message itself, the importance of contrast. I'm gonna include on the podcast notes, like one of my favorite pieces of content ⁓ out there because it's so well explained and also the aesthetic, like the visual part of your content is really good. And I really like how it has a very specific direction. That's the thing that is hard to find on LinkedIn is proper creative direction.
content. People tend to add themselves in the post a lot, like a huge kind of a crop of themselves in the bottom right corner, like they look pretty cringy would say nowadays, a lot of LinkedIn car sales. And with you it had really, it was very elegant, that's what I like about your content.
it's warm, like it has a bit of a warm and welcome vibe. And I wanted to ask about the inspiration because I feel you, it brings me a bit of retro Apple ads, sometimes vibes from that. So I can see also from the photography, it brings me a bit of a, what is the Netflix series with advertising? Mad Men? ⁓
Alex James (11:08)
you mean like magic?
Yeah.
Jim Zarkadas (11:09)
Yeah, yeah,
it feels like you've got inspiration from that kind of era, but I'm curious to hear more about the story behind the direction and what is also an inspiration for you when you ⁓ design your content, because that's also related to taste.
Alex James (11:20)
Mm.
So like getting to that point was a really, it was a really like big trial and error process. And I'm like, I'm not a designer. I actually had to like kind of tree wire my brain to like think visually. ⁓ Cause I'm a word guy. I don't think in images. I think in like words, like it's weird. My inner monologue is like full sentences with punctuation and grammar and everything, which I thought everyone had, but apparently that's not normal. ⁓ So I...
Jim Zarkadas (11:39)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
That's interesting. ⁓
Alex James (11:55)
kind of went at it from a pretty logical point of view. It wasn't really like a, what am I feeling? It was more like, what is something that implicitly conveys value? And so the thing that I see a lot of people doing with the carousels on LinkedIn and the visual design is they kind of just emulate a, kind of looks like every SaaS website ever, where it's like, cool, this like, you know.
this sans serif font on this kind of soft gray and, you know, a random pop of color somewhere. And it's like, this all looks kind of samey and it doesn't, there's no implicit like conveyance of value. But what are the things in the real world that do? And so I actually started looking at like movie posters for like premium documentaries, like those like prestigious documentaries.
Jim Zarkadas (12:40)
Mm.
Yeah.
Alex James (12:49)
Like, okay, how are they like relaying this? So they're using like really like thin fonts and like kind of big imagery with like small text and like, it's all like very carefully framed. And that kind of then went into like magazines from the 80s. That's actually where most of the inspiration came from is like looking at like cigarette ads, like full page cigarette ads in 1980s magazines, looking at
just how they like their layout, their articles in those, those like in like Esquire magazine in 1982. It's got beautiful like document design. And so it was just really about emulating, was trying to capture that vibe. Cause that is like, I feel there's a coziness to this and I like it. And it also kind of harkens back to a time where people felt optimistic about the future. And that's always nice.
Jim Zarkadas (13:23)
Hmm
yeah.
Yeah, it seems like you have a good design talent, I wouldn't say that you're not a designer. Like, yeah, I'm selling design services and my content is not as good as yours. That's the reality. So who is the designer?
Alex James (13:54)
⁓
Yeah, but it took me so long, It took me ages. It took me months to get there because I just had to learn what even the process was.
Jim Zarkadas (14:00)
Yeah. Yeah.
I totally understand. It's like also with my content, now I'm in the process, like it's a bit of topic to the podcast, but I'm in the process of working with the new team as well and kind of trying to improve the visual communication on our marketing.
I just wanted to comment briefly on why I I took ages. It's so time consuming and so it can be also very expensive because in my case, I don't have the time to do it. I'm busy with client work. And yeah, it's like having great content, it's easy to say a name for, but to do it, it really takes a lot of effort and energy and can be full time to link the content. It's no easy.
Alex James (14:43)
totally,
totally. I actually have clients ask me like, how do you find the time to create this stuff? I'm like, I don't have the time. I just have to make the time. Like I just am carving out an hour here and there at the end of the day. Like you just make it work because distribution is everything. It's the only thing.
Jim Zarkadas (14:50)
Yep.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%, 100%. On this, another question that I wanted to ask on the taste part, how do you develop your taste? Or maybe how did you develop your taste? So let's not try to find a methodology for somebody to follow, but actually let's look into what you did. How did you end up having, in this case, this influence and also knowing where to look? So yeah, I'm curious about how do you feel that you actually developed your taste, if you look back.
Alex James (15:35)
That's a good question. That's a really good question and I don't know if I have a good answer for you.
Jim Zarkadas (15:40)
Yeah, there's
no good answer. Just think out loud. That's the vibe. ⁓
Alex James (15:43)
My house
is filled with like mid-century furniture. The music I listen to is all like from the olden days. Like I just kind of am already in that thing. Like I'm very uninspired by like, you know, like modern Apple design, kind of that really like sleek and minimal stuff. just don't, I like, I go to like the Browns and the...
Jim Zarkadas (15:48)
Okay.
Alex James (16:12)
the earth tones and like that stuff. Like I just vibe with it. I don't know how it develops. It's just kind of, I don't know, dude, I just am this. don't have an explanation for it.
Jim Zarkadas (16:24)
No, that's
great. And also what I hear from you is the environment. It's also like the environment can have a massive impact on the taste that you develop. ⁓ Like if we look at your case as well. And sometimes it also happens. Like it may happen that you're surrounded by this because let's say of your parents or whatever, like the environment that you grew up into and you get the influence. For me, for example,
Alex James (16:29)
Mm.
Jim Zarkadas (16:50)
I'm originally from Greece. grew up in Athens and I wouldn't say that Athens is a really well designed city. I mean, the old historic center is beautiful, but in general, Athens is just a huge piece of concrete, it's so fun or well designed. And I moved to the Netherlands and one of the reasons that I wanted to move to a country like the Netherlands was design influence. I wanted to be surrounded by beauty, structure, consistency, like that's something I really love with the old cities in Europe.
also like buildings that have history and they don't look like just a modern neutral kind of a design because I'm a big believer that the environment can have a massive influence on the taste. Like you're just kind of training your conscious mind. Like that's all the influence you give it and then suddenly the outcome is gonna be better. And the analysis that I always like to make on this is that...
Now with all the Netflix documentaries about health, it's very popular that the your what you eat, I think was the one of the documentaries that the energy you put in your body is going to define the energy that goes out of your body if you're going to feel happy and so on. And it's kind of the same with the creativity level, like what you consume defines the quality of what you create ⁓ so that the environment can have a big, big influence.
Yeah, ⁓ yeah, also what you said that you just vibe with it. Like what I hear from that is that taste is also something personal. Like you just like it, it's just you. Like it's not that you build it somehow, it's also part of who you are and how you're like, yeah, who you are actually.
Alex James (18:13)
Yeah,
I mean it's kind of interesting. I'm the kind of person who just like over intellectualizes everything but design and like my taste, I haven't over intellectualized that because I don't even know how. ⁓ But I do think that like there is a... that you used the b-word ⁓ of beauty and this is something that took me a really long time to realize.
Jim Zarkadas (18:21)
Mm-hmm.
Alex James (18:43)
⁓ cause I'm a words guy, but like there is a competitive advantage in beauty and creating something beautiful. There is a true competitive advantage to that. And once I realized that I was like, ⁓ right. It kind of like, and it's so obvious to, to you and designers. Like they're like, yeah, we've been trying to tell you this for decades.
But it just kind of clocked and clicked into my brain. I was like, of course, of course. There is like, it speaks to like ⁓ something that words can't actually relay, something that words can't capture. There is something deeper. There's another layer there that once you do present it in a certain way, there is some kind of magic that occurs.
Jim Zarkadas (19:21)
Hmm.
Alex James (19:32)
That's really hard to articulate that you can't articulate. That's the whole point. It's unarticulatable. I don't even know if that's the right word. But yeah, that when you tack, it changes it. Yeah. You know what I mean?
Jim Zarkadas (19:32)
Hmm.
I really love how you describe it.
yeah, 100%. And I wanted to add something on that actually is that how I see what you described is...
Dimensions of an experience and what I mean is the following you have words
You have colors, you have the visual part, you have the sound. If you look at your senses, for example, like it's, it's like, yeah, you have the music that you can have. You can have motion. So the moment you go from words to actually something visual, static visual in this case, suddenly you introduce a new dimension to your content that can happen, that can touch different parts of the brain and the soul and the heart, let's say of the, of the reader in a way. And imagine what could happen if you also had sound and music and also video and so on. So.
really see it as different levels ⁓ and different dimensions that you actually ⁓ add into your content and people can interact with. And it's really the difference between the design and the words. Yeah, you explained really well. really have nothing to add on that one. I really love, I think like your my favorite conversation on this, the taste, because we started with a simple question, but then we kind of ⁓ went deeper, very organically. really, yeah, I really love what we've mentioned so far. It's really cool. ⁓
And it's always interesting just to reflect on this. Like many things happen because it just, yeah, it's what you said, like this is I am, it just feels right to me. But once you start reflecting on why did I do this or do that, it's a very interesting thought process as well to ⁓ this kind of reflection. ⁓ So now is what I have in mind to discuss is the next topic, which is more on the strategy side, which is the key message and the key topic. ⁓
that you're focused on, which is the following. Your perspective is your product, make clients care about what you say and not what you sell. So my first question on this is, could you explain it a bit further? What do you mean by that? It's pretty clear as a message, but I'm curious to hear about some more details from your side. How would you elaborate on that?
Alex James (21:44)
Yeah.
So I think we're at a pretty interesting point in history ⁓ from the business kind of lens because we've moved from everybody buying everything from faceless businesses and corporations to people
really like buying from people. Like people want to know who the CEO of a company is now. That didn't used to be the case. Like that used to be pretty weird. Like they would hide because like we don't want like billionaires used to hide and now they're very, they live life out in the open. It's a new thing. Right. And we see this on like the micro level, especially in SaaS with like the founder brand.
Jim Zarkadas (22:16)
Hmm
It's the other way around, yeah.
Alex James (22:33)
movement, this whole like cottage industry that's popped up. It's like a subcategory of the personal brand, the founder brand. And like, why is that such a thing now?
Jim Zarkadas (22:38)
Hmm
Alex James (22:48)
It's not because the founders are just like automatically credible and people want to hear from founders. Like if a founder comes out on LinkedIn and is like, know, thrilled to announce we've hired someone new, like no one cares, right? The founder brand that people actually care about is the founder that actually is bringing a new concept into the conversation.
Jim Zarkadas (23:11)
Hmm...
Mm-hmm.
Alex James (23:14)
And actually, if we look at like the reports of like the impact of thought leadership and how it's affected purchasing decisions in like 2019, 58 % of B2B companies purchased due to thought leadership. They purchased a product of some or a service of some kind. In 2024, that number was 72%. Like it's just gone up and to the right and it's not slowing down. Like it's...
Jim Zarkadas (23:40)
Hmm.
Alex James (23:42)
Such a key thing. And this is why founder brands are now like a thing, because it's like, ⁓ this is no longer an optional nice to have. This is like a big slice of the marketing investment that we're making. And so how do you make that work? How do you actually, you know, make that a viable investment of your marketing budget? Again, it's not by saying, hey, we're thrilled to announce. And it's not by sharing tips and tricks of like, hey, you know, I've written.
Jim Zarkadas (23:47)
Mm-hmm.
Alex James (24:11)
4 million landing pages and these are the five secrets of a high converting landing page that nobody will tell you and you click into it and it's like Have a call to action. Have a heuristic. Right? And you know, but like that's that's an extreme example. There are like tips and tricks that can be helpful, right? That can be useful. The problem is that if you're just sharing tips and tricks style content, then people
Jim Zarkadas (24:19)
Yeah.
Alex James (24:42)
and not assigning that to you. It's valuable, but it's not memorable. What's memorable are not tips, but tipping points. The moment where a belief shifted from one thing that you thought was true to, ⁓ a new reality, a new belief system. We were talking just before we hit record of like, you you were reading my content and you realized, okay, B2B SaaS and B2B services are not the same thing. And like somebody selling both, it's like such different skill sets actually.
Jim Zarkadas (24:45)
Mm-hmm.
Alex James (25:11)
Like that was a tipping point that was engineered through my content. That's what all of my content, like that's what I'm trying to engineer all the time. And when you do reliably engineer tipping points, then people assign that to you. They assign the belief shift, the mindset shift that they had to you. And that's actually what gets cut through. That's what the founder brands that are making it work, that's what they're doing. That's what Adam Robinson is doing. That's what all the successful ones are doing. So that's how you make people care about what you say, not what you sell.
Jim Zarkadas (25:15)
Mm.
Alex James (25:41)
And this really is like the future of how people are buying. This is what brand looks like going forward. It's not just selling a product, it's selling a perspective alongside that product. And so what that perspective is, is an argument for change against how things are typically done in your industry and for how things should be done. We're talking very theoretical here, so I'll give you a practical example.
Jim Zarkadas (26:12)
Yeah, okay, go for it.
Alex James (26:14)
So like HubSpot is a really good example of this in action. So HubSpot was founded by Brian and Dimesh. Brian was working in, this is before they met, Brian was working in B2B sales and he was doing all the right things of like going to networking events and sending cold emails and handing out business cards and he was really struggling to hit his quotas.
Jim Zarkadas (26:19)
Mm-hmm.
Alex James (26:42)
He couldn't even hit his quotas, let alone his targets, right? And so he went to his boss, because all of his teammates were struggling as well. Went to his boss, he was like, I don't know what's happening. I don't know why this isn't working. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. And his boss had like 30, 40 years in the game was like, I don't think you are doing anything wrong. Like this just doesn't work. And then he Dimesh. Dimesh had started up an online blog in an online community and
Jim Zarkadas (26:46)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm. Hmm.
Alex James (27:10)
he was getting clients in the door that were the exact clients that Brian was trying to get. Dimash was like fighting them off with the stick. And so he was like, okay, what are you, what's going on? How is this possible? Dimash was like, I'm just helping people. Like people buy from people who help them. And that's actually what sparked HubSpot. He was like, ⁓ okay, right. HubSpot is not just like a marketing automation platform. It's an argument against outbound sales.
Jim Zarkadas (27:27)
Hmm
Alex James (27:40)
and for inbound marketing. That was the perspective. The technology that HubSpot was putting forward already existed, right? Like that was already in market. They weren't actually bringing anything new to the tables of software. already like versions of that already existed, but people bought HubSpot because they bought into the perspective of inbound marketing.
Jim Zarkadas (27:43)
Hmm.
Hmm.
Alex James (28:03)
So when I say your perspective is your product, I mean it quite literally. People will buy your product if they're bought into the perspective that informs it.
Jim Zarkadas (28:12)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's pretty clear with the exam, even before that it was pretty clear. And that's why I love kind of your corner as well, because you don't say something very complex and then you try to explain it. It's already very interesting and clear, but then you just make it more clear. Right? Yeah. I can read the feed also on the way that you present and everything that works is really kind of your thing. Yeah. 100%. Let me think.
Alex James (28:32)
I'm a word guy, that's what I try to do.
Jim Zarkadas (28:45)
Yeah, I just have some thoughts. I was even taking some notes on what you mentioned. I've been thinking about this whole perspective. So some questions that I want to ask is, I've been trying to do this for myself, just kind of trying to define, okay, what is my perspective? And I wanted to ask you a question.
Is it just one perspective that you actually have or like many? Like that's always a challenge because if I try to answer the question myself, I'll just bring some examples so we can do how you can do a bit of a back and forth to, answer better. The whole concept is we have an in-house design team as a service, right? And why do I believe that this is great? Because building a certain example, building a custom, these
Alex James (29:16)
Yeah.
Jim Zarkadas (29:27)
hiring a freelancer is not enough to do a world-class design. So if you really want to do a world-class design, you need product design, product growth strategy, UX design, branding, and motion design. And this you cannot do with a freelancer. You have to build a custom team. Building a custom team is going to be very time-consuming. You're a CEO. You don't hang out with designers all day. You don't have access to the designer's network. It's really hard for you to find one. Then you need to hire a lead designer, and this person has to build a team. And...
This is very time consuming and very expensive. have to go into annual contracts. You have to wait for them to quit their previous job or you have to wait until they're available. It's very kind of messy. And in our case, we have a service where you just kind of start on Monday and you have trained specialized design team that cannot miss the mark in any case. So I have this perspective that the old way of building design teams is not great. Like there is a new way.
Is this a perspective what I just described or is this a sales pitch? That's where sometimes I'm getting confused. That's why I'm showing like personal examples to kind of do this interactive thing to define, to define a bit better of what, is the line with what is a perspective and what is not a perspective.
Alex James (30:37)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, such a good question, dude. ⁓ And one that people don't ask actually, but a really good question. So the answer is yes, you should have multiple perspectives. But really there are like a core, there's a core three. So there are three types of perspective. This is like all perspectives fall into one of these three categories. You've got
a mindset first perspective, which is like, okay, here is like the status quo belief in our space that everybody believes. That's like a false assumption. And then here is like the new thing that we want them to believe that we're bringing forward. Then you've got a method first perspective. This is like the protocol, the playbook, the standard process that everybody's following in our space and
versus the new process that we're putting forward, the new methodology that we want everyone to adopt. And then you've got the tactic first perspective. if the method is like five steps, the tactic is one of those. It's like the one thing, the one action, the one task that people are doing kind of out of habit, and then the new tactic that we wanna replace with. So every method falls onto one of these three categories and the...
Jim Zarkadas (31:40)
Hmm.
Alex James (32:02)
One to lead with actually depends on how warm your audience is that you're putting it in front
Jim Zarkadas (32:10)
This makes sense, got it, yeah. It makes sense, and where they are.
Alex James (32:14)
So if you're going to like... Yeah, exactly,
exactly. So if you're going to like a cold audience and like, you know, via paid ads, let's say, you actually want to lead with the tactic because that's something that like they don't, it's nothing too heavy. They can picture it. It's all very like immediate. So like a really good example of this is ⁓ Loom. Because Loom was like, they, when Loom started, it was just like these two guys and they started a screen recorder that was like every other screen recorder.
but theirs was a little bit more user friendly. And they were really struggling to like get any cut through. But then they had the Scott conversation and Scott was an early user. And they were like, cool. So which of the use cases are you using for Loom? Are you recording software demos or are you recording online courses? And Scott was like, no, I'm not doing any of that. I'm just sending project updates to my team because it's way easier than trying to organize a meeting. And that was like the spark and like, this is not...
a screen recorder, this is a meeting replacement tool. And that was the perspective that informed Loom, know, meetings off Loom on. It was just like, it was the same technology that already existed. This is a crazy thing, right? The same technology, but you layer the right perspective over the top of it, and suddenly there's demand for it. And so this is what Loom did. This is how they became the biggest screen recorder in the world. And all of their competitors were talking about like,
Jim Zarkadas (33:16)
Exactly.
Mm.
Alex James (33:40)
Lume only lets you record for five minutes, we let you record for 10. It's like, they don't care because they got non-techie users to use a screen recorder for the first time by not framing it as a screen recorder, but as a meeting replacement tool. So that was like a tactic first perspective. It was like, we're just going to isolate meetings and talk to that. And so that's why it worked so well. And that's what it worked for like cold audiences because it's like, great. I can understand it immediately. For something like method, that's actually where you want to have it like on your homepage.
Jim Zarkadas (33:46)
Exactly.
Hmm.
Alex James (34:10)
The headline should speak to like, here's the old way of doing things versus how things should be done. And so I'll give you like a, I'll give you an example of one of my clients ⁓ who, is like a full service marketing agency and they were like, they were doing a lot of things, but they were doing like on the headline, had like marketing, branding and public relations designed to your unique needs. Like,
And the founder was like, I know how generic our headline is. I'm so sorry. I'm like, yeah, it is generic.
Jim Zarkadas (34:45)
I'm so buttered about it.
Alex James (34:47)
But I was like, you know what, there is one thing that's interesting here. And like they were in, actually they were in dire straits. Like they were losing money every day because they couldn't, they weren't getting leads in and they had a team of 15 who were like twiddling their thumbs and they're like, my God, we're just bleeding cash. And I was like, yeah, know, marketing, branding, public relations, public relations is interesting because like most full service marketing agencies don't offer public relations. You guys do. What's the deal with that?
And the founder was like, yeah, actually not only do we do it, we do it better than most dedicated PR firms because like they just do the spray and pray press release thing. But he's like, I'm a former journalist. I've got deep ties to the industry. get our clients published in relevant publications. And then we actually have the marketing to capture the attention that is generated. It doesn't just like go into the ether like it normally does with the general, like a, you know, usual PR firm. I'm like, okay, cool. This is actually.
this is what we need to be leading with. This is your perspective. So kind of reposition them from a marketing agency that does PR to a PR agency that does marketing. And then that became the headline of don't just generate buzz, capture it. And that headline speaks to a methodology. Like, hey, we've got a new way of doing things and this is what we want you to be adopting. Like this protocol. Like even if you don't go with us, this is how you should do it. This is the process that works.
Jim Zarkadas (36:12)
Hmm
Alex James (36:14)
So that's like a method first one. And then a mindset first one is like HubSpot is a good example. Like inbound marketing is kind of like a mindset of like it captures a whole bunch of things. And so that's what you want to be leading with for like, that's actually what you want to be leading with in the content. So that's kind of the way I break it down is like for your content, your organic content, make that mindset first.
Jim Zarkadas (36:24)
Mm-hmm.
Alex James (36:40)
For your website where people are kind of in research mode, make that method first. And for your cold traffic stuff, make that tactic first.
Jim Zarkadas (36:45)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm, that's really enlightening, honestly, because like I get the core idea, but I'm I was really kind of missing parts of kind of a how to take it into action. That's really useful. That is not just one perspective. It's like a pyramid in a way. And like there are different levels and it's I said, it's depending on how warm or cold the audience is. If they if they're looking for a solution, if they already know you. So it's I feel like
If I have to describe it in a way like on how understanding now is like the whole thing of leading with a perspective is a communication framework is that you communicate with perspectives and the perspective I feel it's the why be it's the answer to the following question is why is this great? Why is this service great? Like what's special about it? And so about the feature is what is the thought, not the thought process, like what is the mindset that you build it with? I'll give an exam and you can tell me if it's a good one or if it's a horrible example. So I've been
It's a side project. It's not part of what we're normally doing. We are building the website for SerenClean. It's a cleaning business in the United States. And how come NSS products and studio would do a cleaning business website is because Stephanie, the owner, is a customer of Zenmade, which is one of our, of the best teams that we're working with, which is a SAS company. And we've been working with Steph for a long time now. She's part of the design, calls it a new website and we started working on it.
because yeah, I really feel like we would love to help here and we understand her brand so well. And we were doing a few weeks ago, the homepage, all right? Like we're doing the content outline. And the content outline that she has right now is that we're the highest rated cleaning service ⁓ business in Wisconsin, like the area where they're based.
And it was always leading with that were very highly rated and that you're gonna get an amazing clinic I was like, okay, but what's special everybody can say that they have ratings like what is special in the way that you're building your business What is something that you're really proud of and others don't really do and she started talking about how? They're focused on training their employees and that see one of your core values that I want to build one of the best places
for people to work in the clinic industry because cleaners are very stigmatized in general. that's also the...
treated in a really bad way from any cleaning companies. It's not a fun environment to work into. They really screw you in a way trying to make as many dollars as they can on you. And that she has a much different perspective and it's actually, she has made it happen. It's not just words, it's actually something that is already happening. It has all kinds of things from having the employee of the month, doing donations and like many benefits and so on for her team. A very structured training program that everybody goes through and many more things.
feel that the perspective that we came up with is that when... what was it? when... okay give me one sec to open framer... like it was when cleaners filled values, when cleaning... give me a sec...
it loading when cleaning takes full value they deliver the kind of service that truly signs so maybe the words are not great but it's
What if that was the headline of the homepage? Let's say it doesn't have to do with how good the clinic is or something, but it's a very unique perspective that if you treat your clinic technicians really, really well, they're going to deliver exceptional service. Because one problem that many customers have is that they just have a person that doesn't like to do this work. They just do it because they need the money and the energy is really bad. And with Stephanie, you get a very enthusiastic, cool team to work with that is always consistent, is always professional and so on. So this is something that kind of emerged. I'm not sure if that would be a good headline for the website itself, but I'm curious to
from you does this feel like an example of a perspective or is it till we miss a mark here?
Alex James (40:33)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
No, no, no, that's, that's definitely good. So it's like, it's definitely in the right direction. As long as it ties back to like answering the question of what's in it for me, for the customer. Right. And so I think you're, you raise a really good point of like, you know, everyone's had an experience with like a cleaner that's like, was just not really didn't want to be there and like,
Jim Zarkadas (40:47)
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Alex James (40:59)
just kind of checking in and like kind of doing the bare minimum and you're like, I just paid for this. So it's really good for people who have been burned by cleaning companies before.
Jim Zarkadas (41:12)
Yeah, exactly.
Alex James (41:13)
And that's not a small market. Like that's really good. that's like, that's, that's so it's, yeah, it's, the kind of perspective that will get somebody, yeah, somebody who's purchased in the category before. ⁓ but be, it would be less relevant to somebody who's never hired a cleaner before. And I think that's okay because I would imagine as well that you're, that this cleaning company is charging a premium, a more premium price.
Jim Zarkadas (41:30)
Exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
Alex James (41:38)
And so somebody who's brand new to a category will generally go for a cheap option and then learn the hard way why it's the cheap option. And then they'll go to the bigger, more premium option. That's like the natural flow, right? So yeah, think, dude, I think you're onto something.
Jim Zarkadas (41:48)
Yeah.
And on this actually I really like how you describe it because it goes back to what you mentioned before depending on where your audience is, how cold they are or not, like what is the previous experience they have.
this is gonna define if that perspective is gonna resonate with them. So maybe it could be good for home page, maybe not, maybe it could be great for like a campaign, like an advertising campaign, let's say. yeah, it's man, the perspective kind of a thinking, it's a new world for me and I really love it. It just kind of makes everything more interesting and it doesn't feel like you just make another thing. There is some kind of a secret sauce in it. And I also love the word secret sauce when it comes to coming up with a sales pitch, because there is...
Yeah, like these secrets that restaurants have that you're like, but what do they do is, yeah, like I like it as an hours that there is a very unique perspective in the case of a service because it's not an ingredient per se always that makes it so special and so good.
Alex James (42:47)
Yeah, I mean that's it. So like a perspective
is really just like it's it's an expression of the differentiation of the business and I get a lot of people like coming to me or they'll inquire about working with me and be like they'll say Alex we're not really differentiated we kind of do what everybody else does and 100 % of the time they've been wrong like if people are hiring this business instead of another business there is a reason for that there's always something
Jim Zarkadas (42:54)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly.
Really? Okay.
Alex James (43:17)
there's always something there, they're just, they can't see it, they're too close to it. You can't read the label when you're inside the jar, right? But there's always a differentiated thing.
Jim Zarkadas (43:28)
That's so like you see me kind of a smile like a nut in because I've been through that. I'm going through that. I'm actually, I'm on the process of trying to improve our sales pitch and kind of the core messaging and everything. And one exercise that I did was to literally sit down with my clients and ask, why me? Why don't you fire me tomorrow and go to somebody else? What is kind of a holding you back from doing this to try to understand kind of the value? I'm not sure if it's like the right question itself, but it was one of the questions that I was trying to extract.
what you just said is like if they chose you over another company or another freelancer whatever that could be there is a reason for that and you just need to go deep and find it out.
Alex James (44:07)
Yeah. The tricky, the trap there,
just as like a heads up, the trap there that people fall into a lot. I'll tell you the story of Kevin, who's one of my clients. Lovely guy. COO of a big like financial firm. And in order to like figure out like what is our differentiation, he hired this research firm, paid them 40K to go and interview a bunch of their clients and get feedback from them.
And the feedback that they received was lovely, but it was useless for a marketing context. Any guesses what the feedback was?
Jim Zarkadas (44:46)
Mmm.
Any guess what the feedback was? What was the industry that Kevin is into you said?
Alex James (44:57)
It was
a financial planning thing.
Jim Zarkadas (45:00)
Okay.
What I can assume from my experience with trying to ask the why on the customers, because it's a tricky question where you sometimes it feels like you want them to give you the messaging, but you have to come up on your own, is that it's a bit kind of a superficial. It's like, yeah, sometimes for example, in case of products, they may mention features or prices, and then you have kind of the same problem and you need...
what I've seen sometimes that you need a bit of a conversation to ask more kind of a why and go a bit deeper and deeper but that would be my guess ⁓ that it was more kind of a superficial and based on features maybe or not.
Alex James (45:34)
Yeah.
Well,
yeah, exactly. But it was like, you know what, they've got great expertise. They always go above and beyond. They're really great to work with, like really lovely feedback, right?
Jim Zarkadas (45:47)
Yeah, the classic
stuff, yeah.
Alex James (45:51)
But it turns out that those are valid as features, but there's two types of features in the service space. You've got retention features and attraction features.
Jim Zarkadas (46:01)
You had a newsletter on this, right? Now I feel like I've heard of this before. It was maybe on a post or a newsletter. I think on your newsletter I read this. Yes.
Alex James (46:06)
yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't know that you're on my mailing list.
But yeah, I wrote a big ranty email about this. And because you just see it all the time where people are like, we've got great customer service. That's a retention feature. That's the kind of thing that's going to keep clients from not churning or to keep them coming back. But it's not an attraction feature. An attraction feature is like, we build your website in three days, not three weeks. That's the thing that's going to get them in the door in the first place.
So what you need to find is like, was that trigger event that actually got somebody to choose you versus other people, not why they stayed. That's the differentiation.
Jim Zarkadas (46:46)
That's a really good one because if I look back at the example that I shared of what I've been doing like last month is I'm asking for the retention parts. Like, why don't you fire me? It's actually, why don't you turn? Which is the retention. But why did you chose us in the beginning is a different kind of a question like the acquisition part. Yeah, that's super useful. And I feel like...
Alex James (46:58)
Exactly.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jim Zarkadas (47:07)
like if anybody that is going to this podcast and they're into the service, I feel like these apply also to, to SAS in terms of mentality, it comes down to selling something. I feel like we've come up with beautiful examples and practical, like it feels like it's has become really practical through the conversation because of the examples and all the back and forth on this one. It's a, one question that I had in mind to ask was what is the different between selling a SAS product and a service? That's something you, before we started recording that I mentioned that was enlightening from you.
like when you wrote it down, I was like, okay, now that I'm looking to build my marketing team, I really need to find people that specialize into services. And it really made sense the way that you described it. But yeah, I just want to go a bit deeper into that and explain a bit what is the difference between these two from your point of view.
Alex James (47:54)
Yeah. So there's, I mean, it's, it's so, the more you think about it, the more the differences reveal themselves. And it comes down to like the purchasing mindset that a potential buyer has. So when you're selling like B2B software, what you're really selling is a product. Like this exists, that code exists. And when they are buying it, they are unlocking access to it.
When you're a service, sir, you're not selling a product, you're selling a promise. You're selling the promise of a positive situation in the future. Like, hey, work, and like, there's no free trial, there's no seven day thing, there's no like, the best you can do is like a money back guarantee, but you can't, you know, refund the time lost and the energy and all of the, you know, everything. Like, it's a very high risk thing to buy a service, which is why people try not to do it. Like, people hate buying services.
Jim Zarkadas (48:21)
Yeah.
Hmm.
Hmm.
Alex James (48:51)
It's way uncomfortable. It's really scary. It's awful. Because it's such a gamble, right? It's a risky, risky thing. And so when it comes to services, the uncomfortable truth at the core of it is that it's not about how skilled you are, it's about how skilled you seem. It's a game of perception, not proficiency. And you would know firsthand, like if you've got competitors who are
Jim Zarkadas (48:58)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Alex James (49:19)
you know, what are less competent than you, but are more successful and charge more and, you know, are celebrated more and get more clients. It's, it's, if it was just about competence, if it was just about the product of the service, then that wouldn't be the case, right? But it's, it's about perception, not proficiency. And that means that the purchasing mindset shifts as well in the buyer's mind. So for a product, they're kind of vetting, but for a service, they're vetting. So,
Jim Zarkadas (49:34)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Alex James (49:49)
What it really requires is not just being an expert. You have to be an expert at conveying your expertise. For a B2B SaaS product, for instance, it's just about making the value really, really obvious.
Jim Zarkadas (49:49)
And you're good with words.
Alex James (50:08)
It's about being really clear about like what the features are. And as long as the features are valuable and hard to get elsewhere, then like, you just have to be like clear about that. You just have to, this is why I so much of the copywriting stuff that you see on LinkedIn. It's like, just be clear, be clear, be clear. For services, it's kind of different. can't just, you have to be clear, but you also have to be compelling at the same time. And that's like, it introduces a whole layer of complexity.
Jim Zarkadas (50:36)
That's very true. That's very, very, very, very true because these are strikes that I'm also facing like in my content where you want to like when I'm selling the promise, it's very easy to sell the promise, not to actually make the sale, to make a promise. It's easy not to sell it because sell it is the hard part.
And like you have all these bros on X mainly, and on LinkedIn as well, like kind of a promising that I'm gonna 10X your conversions and all these things. I'm gonna make the new landing page and you flow, leads are just gonna flowing and you're gonna become a millionaire. And it's also a very tricky situation nowadays because I'm not sure if it's like.
my kind of accounts or if more people are experiencing it, but I feel like more and more people pop up with fake promises and overhyping the hell out of everything and like what's going on wrong with the internet? And it's usually, you see that it's young kids actually, especially in the design community, man. Like I hate the design community nowadays. It's really people posting about money and fake revenue. Many of them have fake revenues, well, screenshots online. I'm like, yeah, this is not a nice place to hang out. And what I wanted to...
Alex James (51:28)
you.
you
Jim Zarkadas (51:44)
to ask on this is making a promise very easy. And what makes it tricky to sell it is that it needs to be believable that you're in position to actually make it happen. That's something I realized. you can, everybody can say that we're gonna attend next, let's say your conversions, like proving you can do it. And maybe also like with the promise, finding the right promise to make is a very interesting thing. I'll give a personal example of this, like just a personal sort of what I'm going through as well.
We're selling design, right? But the thing is we're selling strategic product design. What does this mean? Is that
Many designers you can hire out there are just going to do the visual stuff. You can ask them to improve your onboarding and they're come up with beautiful visuals, but they won't think about what questions should we ask about the account setup and how are these questions being used? For example, are they used to personalize the experience once somebody signs up on the product? Are they used from the sales team to identify who are the high value accounts and low value accounts that they can prioritize their work after? Like there are many departments and also the users that...
could have a big impact this field zone. They won't think about these things. They will think about the visual. In our case, we first always think about growth strategy and user experience, and then about the visual. So we say that we combine growth and delight. This is something like special that we do that you cannot find easily out there. I used to feel that the promise was to do is that you're gonna work with us and we're gonna triple your retention rate or like fix your onboarding and so on. And the thing is,
When I did this in the past and I'm trying to do it less and less, it feels like I'm lying for the following reason. I cannot promise you I'm going to fix your onboarding. I'm going to do my best to have the right onboarding experience for the product, but I cannot control if the leads are high quality. I cannot control if your marketing sucks or not, and I cannot control if you have a good product vision and strategy. So I cannot promise you that I'm going to make you rich. What I can promise is they're going to create the foundation that you need from the design side so that design will never
Alex James (53:23)
Bye.
Jim Zarkadas (53:45)
a blocker for you. If you do the other pieces of the past right, I can promise you're going to grow with us, but I cannot promise you're going to grow for sure as a company. But the thing is, this can also go through as an insecurity sometimes, but I have the belief that if the client is really mature and they know what they're spending on, they will appreciate this kind of a level of honesty. with the promise that you mentioned with the services, I just wanted to go a bit deeper and discuss kind of this part where like, where do you draw the line and where is like the line between promise and over-promising actually.
Alex James (54:08)
Yeah, I think so.
Let's talk about it.
Yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah awesome question So you've actually hit the nail right on the head where The promise that you're making always in order for it to be believable. It has to be something that is actually in your control
Jim Zarkadas (54:18)
You
Alex James (54:33)
So if you're like, hey, I'm going to 10X your revenue, that's not something that somebody can promise about somebody else's business. Like that's not actually in their control. And that's why it's like so unbelievable. And I'm pretty sure that like all the kids that are selling that are just like selling it to other kids. Like it's all just kids selling back and forth. So that's actually how you make it believable is that you anchor it to something that you actually can measurably deliver against and control.
Jim Zarkadas (54:51)
Yeah.
Alex James (55:03)
This is going to be different guaranteed after this. Now, when we go into, we're going to be delivering like design and delight. I can't remember what the exact words were, but the trap with that is.
is that it tells them what you do, but it doesn't tell them what they can do because of you.
Jim Zarkadas (55:29)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Alex James (55:31)
So we do need
to focus on the impact of what that combination of design and delight actually looks like. And that impact has to be anchored to a believable outcome that is within your purview of control. That's how we generate problems.
Jim Zarkadas (55:45)
Hmm.
Yeah, it's like we,
I said that we're gonna, we combine growth and delight, but what that really means like it's easy to answer for me where I'm a designer, but what that really means is that we're gonna make your such grow and convert better, but we're gonna make it stand out and have a great taste as well in a way, like something more visual that they can actually see on their product. That's the, that's a really good one. Yeah. Yeah. Like focus on the impact, not, not what you do because one it's
Alex James (56:12)
Yeah.
Jim Zarkadas (56:15)
bit of topic, but kind of related at the same time. Harry Try is my other favorite human when comes to copywriting next to you. ⁓ And ⁓ with the marketing examples, and I think it was on David Perot, like the podcast episode that they made, there was a thing that he was mentioning that really stayed with me, the power of writing copy that can be visualized.
Alex James (56:38)
Yes.
Jim Zarkadas (56:38)
that people can see. And also
in the case of design, on what you said that focus on the impact and not what you do in this case, when you focus on the impact, also people can see it. If I tell you make your SaaS stand out, let's say, or make your SaaS beautiful, it's something more visual compared to we combine growth and delight. Yeah, what does it even mean? Like for me, it's very clear because I do it, but somebody that is buying this, they don't really understand. They cannot visualize it. They cannot feel it. ⁓
Alex James (56:55)
Yeah.
That's
something I say all the time, is like, they can't picture it, they won't understand it. You have to be painting little images in people's minds in order for them to grasp it.
What's the other thing I was going to say? Yeah. when it comes to like, yeah, growth and delight again, yeah, growth, as you said, you can't, you, can't actually control whether they grow or not. What you can do is set them up for that. It's really, you're, you're making the, their SaaS as attractive as possible and attractive in both ways of the word, right? In both definitions of like, is visually attractive, but it's also more magnetically attractive.
That's actually what you can control. That's a promise that you can make and it's a promise that you can keep.
Jim Zarkadas (57:59)
Yeah, and I really love how well you describe it is that we're going back to the question, which is where is the line between promising and over promising is defining what you can control and doubling down on that. ⁓ Actually, instead of like promising things that you cannot control.
That's a really good way, kind of a very practical framework to think with. And also what you said, like if they cannot picture it. I have a question, it's more of the copriding on this. And I'm curious if you have an answer for that. Why is it so hard to write words in a way that is visual? Like what you just said makes total sense, right? And when we read text like that, it just feels so good. Like I had this experience, I remember when I read my first novel. ⁓
but as a kid.
I remember reading the book, literally the experience that I had and not exaggerating was as if I was at the cinema. It was like this deep flow state where you don't realize you're reading words. It just kind of goes really fast and you kind of, it's like watching a movie. It was a very unique experience. I had it like a few times in my life. And it's like one of my favorite examples of what good copy can look like. It doesn't feel like copy. It doesn't feel like words. It feels like something else because you can visualize it. But my question to you as a copyright is why is it so hard to write this way?
trying to write code myself but it's so freaking hard somehow you end up always with technical stuff that you think is great but nobody understands
Alex James (59:26)
Yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the quickest way to paint a visual image in people's minds with your words is to use a metaphor of something that they are already familiar with. And so the thing to always kind of go back to is like, okay, what would be like in either nature or in mechanics? Like people can picture a tree, they can picture a flower blooming.
And that means that if you're like, okay, cool. So we're going to be building your sass and we've got to be making it way more attractive. You've got the roots there, you've got the stem, but the head of the flower that needs to be attracting the right attention from the right bees. so just like that, you've pictured this in your mind, right? And now know how to take your product, what you're selling. I can visualize it. And the same thing for like mechanics. And I can't think of like a good example of that right now, but like it would be
Jim Zarkadas (1:00:12)
Mmm.
Alex James (1:00:24)
Think about like a bicycle like is there something in the way that the gears turn or click in together that you can point to as a visual metaphor for what you're trying to convey. Does that make sense?
Jim Zarkadas (1:00:38)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally, totally. And I realized like now with what we're discussing is that, yeah, like maybe it's not a great example, but even the words that we use, like I feel like when we're, like me and you are experts, like in different fields and we have all these technical jargon that we're using. Like for example, in my case is leads, trials, ⁓ users, customers, customers.
is the only thing that kind of people can fully understand. Of course, like people in the industry cannot say what a trial means, but you cannot visualize a trial, feel like it's, it's yeah, maybe you can, maybe it's not the best example, but I'm not sure if you get what I'm trying to say is that like all this technical terminology, it's something that kind of a...
makes everything more complex when you try to simplify something because when you're an expert, you live into these terminals. Like you spend days like reading about these things. So the reading into your brain and stepping back and kind of a simplifying and humanizing how you communicate can be a big, big challenge, which goes to my next question. It's like in that case, that's when you need Alex. ⁓ Actually. And one question, because we're heading to the end of the episode,
is let's say I'm listening to the post-cast, I'm super hyped about Alex, I'm like, I need to work with this guy, he's amazing. What are the ways that you help businesses? Like, so this is a bit about your services and methodologies. So right now, yeah, what are the offerings that you have actually and the structure in general?
Alex James (1:02:15)
Yeah, so I, like I said earlier, like I started out as a humble little copywriter, and what I would do is get somebody to give me money, and then they would send the brief and I would crawl into my cave and type type type for a week and then send it back. Be like, cool. I hope that you like it. And weirdly, that doesn't work that great for anyone. Because then they have to do like the revisions and then they just basically have to end up
rewriting what you've written and you're like, ⁓ no, but it was that way for a reason. So I had a big ⁓ pivot actually when I had this one client who changed my life, Craig, who, you know, went through that usual process, sent him a Google doc, here is your copy for the landing page. And he sent back like an old cap saying of like, what is this? Give me my money back. I'm going to sue you. And I was like, God, I better do something here.
And so I set up a call, was like, let's get them on the phone. Got them on the phone. And rather than like trying to like defend anything, I was just like, let's just go through it. Like here is exactly why this page is written in the way that it is. Here is the logic behind the structure and the sequence and the information hierarchy and the flow. And we got to the end and like, he was like, ⁓ could we do another project together? And I was like, no, because the vibes were like way off, but like that.
change something in my brain, was like, ah, right, I shouldn't be working in isolation, I should be working in collaboration. And so everything I do now is fully like live and in the moment. And we're doing like a lot of like, you know, a good amount of like strategy work upfront, like, how should you be positioned in the market? What are people comparing you to? And what is your perspective on how things should be? Like, we need to like actually extract like how things are typically done in your industry and how you think things should be done.
that then informs what the messaging should be. And then we'll typically apply that to whatever like the highest priority touch point is for the business. Sometimes that's like a sales deck, sometimes it's a homepage, sometimes it's a thought leadership strategy, like whatever that is. But again, like that all happens live in workshops. And so yeah, I kind of have that kind of series, this kind of flow that I've just been fine tuning for years and years and years. You know what I'm talking about? Like you're just like...
Jim Zarkadas (1:04:38)
Yeah, it's like a service like a product you need to keep iterating
Alex James (1:04:38)
keep making the part. It really is.
All the time. You can't stop iterating. So it's just been like five years of pure iteration and it's pretty nice and streamlined now. So yeah, that's kind of how it works.
Jim Zarkadas (1:04:54)
So it's series of workshops and I love the story. I really love the story because it really speaks to me as well on the... There is a big trend that I want...
I want to make a quick comment on that. There is a big trend in the design industry, like the industry that I'm into, with design subscriptions, right? And they say, there are many, many agents out there say, we're a design partner, let's say for early stage companies, and they do cool designs as I want. And you look at the pricing and the model, and it comes from like a popular designer that I'm personally not a big fan of, but that's another story from Brett, where it's about a sync request. So the whole pricing model is, you send us a request and we do
the design and you're to have a 24 hours delivery time and can have as many requests as you want but it has to be one at a time so you can add to it as much as you want and it's a subscription of let's say 5,000 and I never really it got a huge hype because of course he started posting scripts about the millions that he's making and all the details like oh want to be a millionaire so I'm going to do the same thing like bread is the god of design and so on it's a typical kind of a thing that happens on twitter with everybody and
I never really understood it because I'm like, how can you make a great design without talking with the team behind the product? Like the role of a product designer is to understand the vision of the company, the perspective and the unique approach on how they're building it, compared to the competition and take all this knowledge and mindset and put it into a UI. your case, you put something like this into words. In my case, it's a functional interface that I to design. How can I do this through a trailer board where they send a request? This is maybe...
If I design banners for a marketing team that exactly knows what they need and they just need a bit of graphic design, sure, I could do that. Like it's more of a factory kind of a design service, but you cannot do deep creative strategic work with no calls. that's why I wanted to show this example because it's a big trend on the design industry that I don't get. And it's funny because they say we're product design partner, but then you look at the portfolio and it's a bunch of logos and websites because these are the things that people just need a quick delivery, like a bit of visual design.
Alex James (1:06:58)
Yeah,
yeah, I'm pretty sure that guy is ⁓ a genuine scammer. Like, I don't believe him. Because if you are, if you like crack the business model that is making you millions with like apparently very little effort, you don't tell people about that. You keep that to yourself. You don't introduce competition into the field, obviously, right?
Jim Zarkadas (1:07:06)
Same. ⁓
Right?
And yeah, the story is always, I want you all guys to be successful. Come on. Like that's why I'm selling a course on how to do this business. Yeah. I mean, you said it out loud. I had it in my head. But yeah, I have the same feeling. He has good design skills, but I don't get it, man. You cannot have 50 clients and also do all these cool 3D designs that he starts on FigMind, spends so much time on marketing. It's just pure logic. If you're a freelancer, you can understand.
Alex James (1:07:28)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nice.
No, definitely not. No.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. mean, it's a commodification of design that he's really propelling forward with that kind of model and with that kind of mindset, right? It's telling people to devalue design, that it's just a factory-like thing, and that there is no special strategic thought that goes into it, right? It of ignores a lot.
Jim Zarkadas (1:07:56)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Alex James (1:08:09)
And that devalues everything as a whole. it was just kind of bad, right? Cause it means that you have to fight against that now. It's like, but, and I could rant about this guy forever, but I've just, I've seen a lot of people try and adopt that business model. I've yet to see it pay off. I've yet to see it truly work in a sustainable, profitable way for any businesses. And I've seen a lot of businesses try.
Jim Zarkadas (1:08:24)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's good for us that we understand that it doesn't work because it means like, I see these kinds of things as distraction, like distraction for the people that are building because yeah, somebody can go and buy the service. They're going to have like a bad experience if they're not looking for exactly what he's delivering and then come to people like us where we understand like the core kind of how a service truly, truly work. And it's a service. Also like a quick comment on this is that I feel sometimes
And yeah, I know we're a bit over time, but I promise it's my last comment. Because like we're really in a good flow on the conversation on the ⁓ yeah, a big topic and I realized that I had from the previous agency that I tried to build is the following.
And that comes from, I don't remember his name, but he's a CEO of a SaaS company that was trying to hire me. And we had an interview and he said, Jim, for me as a CEO, how is he successful? Hire is the following way. You have a personal strategy, a personal goal, and you have a company strategy, company goal. When these two align, that's when cool things happen. We need, I need to make sure as the CEO that your personal...
growth and our company growth and grown are going to align so we can grow together. It's like, man, this makes so much sense because many, why many people live from companies because they're not growing anymore and they want to grow further or because the company's toxic, which is a different kind of story. And if we change the people in the, in this formula and talk about the client and the service provider, one is ⁓ in order to have a very successful collaboration, you need the
the client goal, like the client growth to be aligned with the agency growth, let's say. And that's why I'm a big believer that a great business starts from the core business model. It's not about the market and all these things. Of course, these add up, but it's about the foundation. It's the business model and...
If you look at the design subscription and so on, it's very egocentric. It's very kind of a revenue centric for the agency, but not good for the client because the clients, if we're talking about the product design, they need the collaboration, they need something else, but it's not scalable. And they want to have like one request, they want to have a trailer board, they don't want to do video calls because they just want designers to design all day as fast as possible to create designs. ⁓ And it's not aligned with the success of the client. And that's a big topic that I've been thinking about is that my...
role as the founder of this company is to make sure that always our growth is aligned.
with the growth of our clients and success is gonna happen organically because we just, both we want to succeed and we help each other succeed. And that's why, for example, I've been thinking about like equity, to buy equity from companies that we work with if they're open to that because we do long-term partnerships, we really help them and we can understand if they're doing well or not and we have faith and it will be interesting to explore different types of partnerships as well in the future. And that's the, like when you're willing to spend like, let's say 100,000 to buy a bit of equity,
on a company, that's the ultimate kind of a way of saying, you know what, we really kind of are here to create value for you and we want to invest money in you, let's say. So yeah, it's a very interesting kind of a framework of thinking like this concept of having these two types of strategies and that you need to make sure that they're aligned actually.
Alex James (1:11:44)
I really like
that. I really like that. I'm going to think about that because I think that's spot on. mean, think a mentor once said to me, like every, every relationship, professional, personal, every type of relationship is a series of escalating commitments. You start, you'd like, and this is the big mistake that a lot of service providers make, which is like going in with like, cool, here's our full big thing, like a 12 month contract and all the bells and whistles. And it's like,
Jim Zarkadas (1:12:00)
Hmm.
Alex James (1:12:12)
Whoa, that's a big commitment and we've just met. That's like, it's not a value proposition. That's a marriage proposition. ⁓ but when you like Peter it out. And so this is actually what I do.
⁓ is like I have my like here's the process and we're really just talking about this first phase of like let's get the home page really locked in with your new perspective but even with that I've got like an intro offer of like cool let's just do the first workshop let's do differentiation discovery workshop together make sure that we work together well and that's like you know that the the fee for that gets credited to the full thing if we do
Jim Zarkadas (1:12:47)
Hmm.
Alex James (1:12:49)
It's building that and it's also kind of creating that alignment as well of just making sure that we are the right partner for each other in a way that actually works.
Jim Zarkadas (1:12:50)
it.
I really love it. like a really good analogy is like, think about like a partner, right? Like if I think about Pepe, my wife, like you don't start like first name, but like, Hey, do you want to get married? Do you want to marry me? Like, this is not how it goes. Like you meet, you go for a drink, you go for a dinner, you feel the vibe of each other. You communicate with mates and so on. Like, I really like this analogy because it's what you said is like levels of commitment that, that happened kind of organically. ⁓ And this applies also to the service provider client relationship.
hiring and I think that I wanted to share briefly on this is I'm growing the team now we're looking to our product designers and one way for me ⁓ to test if somebody is a good fit I actually pay them for a few hours to do collaborative design sessions so it's not a design exercise that you have to design this in a day to see if you're good at or not I just want to join me
for three design calls and design together. Maybe invite them into client calls as well and see how is the vibe and they really like it so far, like with the people that have tried it because I give them the space also at the time to explore if it's a good fit for them. It's not only about me that I'm investing the money, they're also investing their time. They wanna grow, they have other things to do as well. It's both sides actually. So think about this that it comes with levels of commitment. I feel it can be life-changing as a mind-setting business as well.
Alex James (1:14:22)
in.
Jim Zarkadas (1:14:24)
Good stuff. Really, really nice conversation, And the... Yeah, same. The flow is really, really, really nice. I'm, yeah, fully on the same page. So in terms of the podcast, the last question that I have is, what is your favorite SaaS product and why? Yeah, I'm not going to elaborate. I just want kind of your genuine answer on that. What comes to your mind?
Alex James (1:14:26)
I could talk to you forever. I could talk to you all day, easy.
You know what comes to my mind is I don't know if I have one. I don't know if I have a favorite SAS product.
Jim Zarkadas (1:15:00)
Top three, maybe?
Alex James (1:15:01)
I know it's kind of the opposite of like, I asked is like a necessary evil for me. That's extreme. I take like that's that's a lot but I'm not
Jim Zarkadas (1:15:04)
Mmm.
Okay.
I love it. I want to go deeper into that.
Alex James (1:15:17)
What I found works for me is not trying to optimize my workflows. And SAS is at its core a workflow optimization category.
Jim Zarkadas (1:15:31)
very true.
Alex James (1:15:33)
And I like to, I like, if I had like, I could just imagine like, I like to sit down and open up my, like I have Notion, but I hate Notion. I use my Notes app on my thing. And this is like, my Notion is just like the Apple Notes app that's on the desktop, like on the computer. And I sit down and like, I just write everything there and.
Jim Zarkadas (1:15:54)
Mmm.
Alex James (1:16:01)
I don't know, I just live in a very manual kind of unoptimized kind of, I live a kind of unoptimized life. And so, yeah, I have SAS tools, but I don't really think about them as like my children, more just like, yeah, like you do this.
Jim Zarkadas (1:16:06)
Hmm
That's cool.
Okay, so I hear that the notes app is one of maybe one of your favorites or also like you feel that it's not a SAS, it's more of an app in this case.
Alex James (1:16:25)
Yeah. It's an app. Yeah. It's not a SaaS. It's an app, but it would
be hands down my favorite one. Yeah. Yeah.
Jim Zarkadas (1:16:34)
I love it. Why would you say that? Why would you say, mean, what makes it your favorite in a way? What are the things that you like about it?
Alex James (1:16:43)
It's it's lightweight. It's snappy. It's easy to search. ⁓ Like all the categories of things, like it all, can categorize everything easily. Like I think I've become a bit of a power user with, with the notes app, ⁓ with the Apple notes app. It's actually got a lot of
Jim Zarkadas (1:16:53)
Hmm
Alex James (1:17:11)
good little features once you get versed on it. It's very simple, it's to the point, doesn't try and do anything. Notion makes my, it's hungry, it's like a chuggy, hungry beast. And I tried to move my writing stuff and everything and all my thoughts to Notion. And then I went back to the Notes app. was like, no, we actually had it here. This is great.
Jim Zarkadas (1:17:12)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
I hear you. Yeah. Yeah. I totally understand what you mean. I'm using Knows and I'm also using Coda, which Grammarly recently bought them. But I'm also using the Notes app and there is something magical in it, like the simplicity of it. And it really feels like a notepad. It doesn't feel like a workspace. It feels like a notepad.
Alex James (1:17:44)
Mm.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Exactly. There's nothing we like in
focus. Yeah.
Jim Zarkadas (1:18:02)
That's yeah, that's okay. That's really cool. I mean you're a writer also it makes sense that it's it's the notes up Have you tried a a writer? This is more like for authors, but have you heard of it?
Alex James (1:18:14)
AIA writer?
Jim Zarkadas (1:18:16)
It's a I is it I a writer. Let me check. I think it's yeah, I a writer it's like a very popular one where You write in markdown and it's literally no noise. It's just like a white window where you just type So it's very especially if you're writing, let's say a book. It's really the whole idea We declare everything so I can focus on the core in a way and it's one I'm not using it because I'm not a good fit for the audience but it's a product that I deeply appreciate in terms of the
Alex James (1:18:30)
Thank you.
you
Jim Zarkadas (1:18:46)
⁓ the perspective in this case that they have. And the whole perspective really kind of on the product strategy is a really big thing ⁓ also, like it goes back to what we discussed today as well, but the unique perspective on how you see what is like the right product to build.
Alex James (1:18:55)
and
Jim Zarkadas (1:19:05)
has a massive impact on the product strategy. Like Knowledge All is a team that we're working with and it's a knowledge-based software. So it's like, yeah, you just build like an internal or external help center, let's say. And their core kind of a proposition and values that we want to give authors the power. So now that we're discussing about AI, there is this perspective that we want to...
give power to the authors, we don't see AI as a tool to replace them or something. We see AI as a tool to help them kind of get rid of the tedious tasks, the things that they don't want to care about, let's say, or to help them like brainstorming, be more creative. So it's like the whole thing of what you've been saying that your perspective is your product, I strongly feel that it...
it's very relatable in the SaaS world as well, and especially in the topic of product strategy, because the unique perspective, the unique view you have on the market is gonna define the version of the product you believe that is great to build, Yeah. ⁓
Alex James (1:20:05)
Totally, totally. I actually think it's becoming
more more relevant in the SaaS space as like all of the obvious tools have been built and adopted and everything that's coming out now is like, it's necessarily disruptive. It's not just like we're digitizing something manual. It's like, no, no, no, you're already using software that achieves something like this, but we have a totally different approach to doing that.
Jim Zarkadas (1:20:12)
Hmm
Hmm.
Alex James (1:20:33)
And to get people bought into that new approach requires a perspective.
Jim Zarkadas (1:20:34)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah.
100%. Yeah. With AI now with so much noise, 100%. I'm really curious how SaaS is going to evolve. There is a new community that I figured recently I found it's called vSaaS. So vertical SaaS companies. ZenMate is an example where they focus on a vertical like cleaning businesses. We started working with another client that is a pet care scheduling software for pet care businesses. Where it's like again, a very specific industry. And I feel that's where we, yeah, one of the perspectives with vertical SaaS is that
Alex James (1:21:04)
Yeah.
Jim Zarkadas (1:21:09)
If you build a software that serves 10 different industries, it's gonna be complex. But if you do one for only cleaners, it's entirely different. And I've seen it between pet-yard businesses and cleaning businesses, entirely different industries, even if both just provide a service. And in theory, they just have appointments and invoices. It's way more complex than that, and the way that they operate internally. There is a check-in, check-out in the pet-yard. There are so many different things. So, yeah.
Alex James (1:21:30)
Yeah.
Totally, totally.
I think that's it. think, ⁓ you know, we can look at like, I like to compare like MailChimp and ConvertKit, because MailChimp is very much trying to be like, where for everyone, if you need to email to a mailing list, MailChimp. But then you've got the ConvertKit. I think it's just called Kit now. Like they were just built for creators and they're like, we've got like 20 % of the features that MailChimp has, but you don't need all of those other ones. Like you just need these core ones.
and they built for readers specifically. And there you go.
Jim Zarkadas (1:22:04)
Hmm.
That's
a great example. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because Meltzib used to be the fun and cool guy in the room. Now it's just a corporate company from A to H. It's so sad. Like I used to be in love with Meltzib.
Alex James (1:22:16)
So I
know, I know, it's so bleak. And you look at the headline on their website is like, generate more revenue with emails or something like that. And it's like, there's an example of a promise that you can't keep. it's.
Jim Zarkadas (1:22:33)
Yeah, that's a great example actually. Yeah, of like what we mentioned before. It's like, yeah, okay, I can sign up for Mailchips or sending emails and I guess I can make money. Problem solved. Yeah, it's literally if you kind of translate kind of the heading, it's literally what I just described in it, which makes no sense. Yeah.
Alex James (1:22:41)
Yeah.
makes no
sense.
Jim Zarkadas (1:22:55)
Cool. So yeah, these are the questions that I had for today. Really, really cool episodes. I have this gut feeling that I'm going to do another one in the future, but I will have to pick a different topic. But yeah, we have many interesting things to discuss, honestly. So big thanks for joining me. I hope you had a fun time as well.
Alex James (1:23:13)
Blast dude, thank you so much.
Jim Zarkadas (1:23:15)
Yeah, time man, end time.