E12 w/ Tibo Maker: How can a $40K MRR SaaS be losing 20% of Its Customers

Jason Cohen (00:00) First of all, there's very little difference in the prices, which is very unusual for SaaS. You are much more expensive than Buffer on the small end.

Jason Cohen (00:07) Crazy cheap on the high end.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (00:11) I would never have this pricing. I uh…

Jason Cohen (00:15) The star of today's episode of Smart Bear Live is an internet famous solo bootstrapper who grew a social media cross-posting tool to $40k an MRR and 1,600 customers. But 20% of those customers leave every month. So almost every dollar he adds gets eaten by a dollar walking out the door, and that's created a hard ceiling on growth. And yet, between the time we scheduled this workshop and today, he has already restarted growth using AI marketplaces. So we're certainly gonna talk about that. Because after all, I just wrote a book called Hidden Multipliers that has all my best ideas about how to grow using your existing budget and team.

Jason Cohen (00:49) Oh look, Jack has it. That's great. These are all my best ideas that I had over the last 25 years from building to unicorn companies, but you can look at that later because joining me to help our star founder is the great Tibo Louis-Lucas. He co-founded TweetHunter and Taplio, sold them for $8m, and now he runs TMAKER, which is a studio with a whole portfolio of small SaaS products that makes Tibo an expert in everything that our star founder needs. In fact, I think you also have a competing product, but that's okay. So welcome Tibo.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (01:18) I do have a competing product but it's doing uh much uh worse I guess Jack is completely doing much better than I do so I'm so happy to be talking with him…

Jason Cohen (01:28) So together, Tibo and I are gonna help the star of the show, Jack Friks, with his company, Post Bridge. So Post Bridge schedules posts to multiple social media platforms from one dashboard. You've probably seen something like that before, but Jack's really being successful with it. Now, Jack, you've always been o honest and generous with sharing your journey with everyone online, including your metrics and how you're feeling and all that. So we all thank you for that, not just for right now, but just for doing that forever so that everybody else can benefit from even when you share your frustrations and pain.

Jack Friks (02:00) I mean I I'm happy to share it's fun and that's how I got started by seeing other people like Tibo share their stuff. Um and I think it just inspires more people to keep doing it so yeah for sure.

Jason Cohen (02:13) Yeah, and in fact part of why I started blogging is to be like Joel Spolsky and Eric Sink, who I learned so much from when I was coming up, so I guess we all have that in common.

Jason Cohen (02:21) So one of the things that we talked about before the call started is a couple of years ago, Tibo tried to buy Post Bridge.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (02:29) I was actually trying to find the posts, uh the DM. I couldn't.

Jason Cohen (02:34) Why did you want to buy Post Bridge? What did you see in it that you loved so much that you wanted to own it?

Tibo Louis-Lucas (02:40) It's obvious I saw Jack and I absolutely loved how he was navigating with social media the love that he put into his products it's it was amazing. I want a piece of that I…

Jason Cohen (02:52) That's how personal it is.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (02:54) Yeah, I think Jack, like given his personality and uh how it turned out, he was so right to say no. Uh and so I have no issue with that. I think it's a numbers game. Like I reach out to uh 50 people and sometimes I'm lucky enough that I can make one deal. Uh that's the game. Uh I'm so happy that Jack is having the success that he has right now.

Jason Cohen (03:16) So you wanted Post Bridge because of Jack, not really because of the code.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (03:22) I don't know. That's I don't think I put the reasoning that far, but uh I was hoping to get into social media again and I did by the way like I partnered with this guy Abdul, he's amazing too. Uh we were building um PostSyncer together, it's a direct Post Bridge competitor. Uh it's not doing as good as Post Bridge, but uh I think we have a great product too. Um it's more advanced, it's more complicated I guess to use, uh, but it does more too, so it's a trade-off.

Jason Cohen (03:55) I know you've gotten a pop of growth recently. So do you want to talk about that and then we'll go back to like, wait, what's really going on in the business that you need to fix in order to really thrive?

Jack Friks (04:05) It only lasted for about five days in all time high signups for the last two years of the company. Um and then it dropped off because it went away. It doesn't last forever, but that's really all that happened. It was a ChatGPT plug-in listing and that basically added like $10k MRR that week. And now we're back to normal.

Jason Cohen (04:24) Oh, that's too…

Tibo Louis-Lucas (04:26) So the pop in new subscription like because of the new ChatGPT plugin it happened like 10 days ago, uh a week or two, right?

Jack Friks (04:33) Yeah, yeah.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (04:35) And do you have any sense of how those users are behaving? Like is this the normal churn or are they more sticky because the plugin is there?

Jack Friks (04:46) It's kind of too new to tell, um, to be honest. Cause it's still really recent, so I don't know if they'll retain any better. In general, people who have the API add-on, which I used to offer, now it's just included, retain like way better. Um like twice as good I guess. Um so I'm expect expecting that they'll retain better, but I'm not sure.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (05:08) This industry is very hard. Like the churn is insane. On every of my social.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (05:13) It's like when I show the churn numbers to people outside of this industry They are just shocked like they think that the monthly churn I'm talking about is actually a yearly churn

Jack Friks (05:26) Yeah.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (05:26) because they cannot just imagine it.

Jason Cohen (05:29) Yeah, I see that too in almost anyone with an AI app. I mean most people are invisible, but when they're not invisible, it's easy to acquire customers. Like it's and they're like, Oh look, I'm growing and then the churn is ridiculous. Yeah, like I've seen stuff like six months, 90% are gone. Stuff like that, where it's just like, okay, so it's nothing at all. It's just easy to get attention for AI nowadays in various channels and um doesn't mean anything except for the few people where it is sticky. Whether that means the AI is not working or people were just messing around or whatever it means uh that's normal.

Jason Cohen (06:00) So it'll be interesting to see what your traffic will do. Thing you could do is lean into onboarding them. In other words, don't just let them sit there and hope that they stick around. Like reach out to all of them. Hey, what are you doing? How could I help? Is something missing? Is there a prompt I could provide? Is there a part of the API that's not there? Like get on all of them like crazy to try to see what is going on and what do you have to do to keep them?

Jack Friks (06:26) That makes sense, yeah. I do collect some feedback now through a few emails, but it's very soft touch. It's maybe one or two emails. Uh especially if they come from the agent side. They often don't even go into the dashboard, especially now that I have like widgets in the MCP so they can connect

Jason Cohen (06:41) Right.

Jack Friks (06:41) without even looking at the website. Um but yeah, that's a good idea.

Jason Cohen (06:45) Yeah, exactly. You don't want to wait for them to decide. I went to a dashboard and then I had a thought and then I clicked a thing and then I left feedback. And also, so many companies don't want feedback, so it's not obvious that you want feedback. It's not even feedback. That's not even what I'm saying. I'm saying you have to go in them and it's almost like you're selling them, not quite selling. I onboarding is really the right word. You are in there saying like I want to proactively make you successful, like whether you like it or not.

Jason Cohen (06:57) And anyway, it's not even feedback. That's not even what I'm…

Jack Friks (07:14) Okay, gotcha.

Jason Cohen (07:15) So like famously HubSpot found early on that people who actually went to their onboarding video setup where one person just literally one-on-one helps another person get going, those people had four times the retention. So HubSpot decided we're gonna force people to do that. Like if you don't want to go there, then you literally can't be a customer. You have to go to our setup. And as weird as that sounds, it worked. And their LTV's quadrupled and because LP LTVs quadrupled, it was easy to pay for that.

Jason Cohen (07:48) So I'm not saying you have to may maybe go that far, but the point is your attitude should be like that it's like I'm going to help you onboard and I'm going to make you successful, um, sort of whether you want me to or not.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (08:00) I think there's another component of that. I was wondering like why is Post Bridge not featured anymore by ChatGPT? And the answer I would have from this is that they they're probably analyzing all the conversations that the user are having when they are using the plugin and if user do not get the product right away, if I was ChatGPT, I would just remove this plugin and recommend another one. So it gives a much, much higher incentive for the founder to just make the product very easy to onboard.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (08:35) Is this something that's you have been considering Jack or…

Jack Friks (08:39) Yeah, even yesterday I was um basically adding widgets because MCPs a lot of them can have like an interactive widget now um to make it so they don't have to like they just click a few buttons um to make it better the connections.

Jason Cohen (08:53) But that's a really interesting point that the AI marketplace platforms know whether the plugins are being used because they can see the usage, because the usage still goes through their platforms. That's kind of fascinating.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (09:06) It's insane, like insanely valuable as an information for the platform.

Jack Friks (09:11) I think I know the Anthropic shares like you can see all the tool calls and stuff for your own plugin. Um and that is how it's ranked. Like it's ranked based on its usage. So I'm imagining that most of the marketplaces will kind of adopt that same mentality. Like the more tool calls that your tool has also the higher it'll rank by default. Obviously if it's a bad experience they're not gonna rank it. So like you said. But I feel like it's a black box again 'cause then we're diving into some unknown territories. But I think it's still useful.

Jason Cohen (09:41) So that might be a pop, and obviously that's a really good thing. So when I look at the charts over time, say if I'm looking at subscribers, so I see this big growth and then it plateaus. It's almost like uh two straight lines, as much as any real data could ever be. One line going up to about a little over a thousand users, and then it's flat. Um now I know that your primary way of getting customers is is your X account, right? Because you have a whole lot of followers, you're active, people love you there. So I wonder if this is your followers and that's how many followers you have. Um I guess relative to cancels. And then there's this and then here in I guess what is this saying?

Jason Cohen (10:16) 2,000 January of this year.

Jack Friks (10:19) Ja…

Jason Cohen (10:19) You take another trip up and then you level out again in the summer, but you add another 500 customers. Of course, I know you added more and then there were cancellations, but do you know why this happened?

Jack Friks (10:31) Uh, that was because OpenClaw. OpenClaw was like insane hype and I was using it myself to market my apps and like kind of documenting all on Twitter. It's all like out there, and then yeah, i it was OpenClaw.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (10:45) Yes, well wh why did it stop? Like the trend was so going up, why.

Jack Friks (10:50) Uh well churn caught up and then OpenClaw was not as popular anymore and I stopped making content about that. So yeah.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (10:58) What do you mean by you stop making content? Like so it's just something that you can just turn on, turn off, you think?

Jack Friks (11:05) No, I think like in general no one was using OpenClaw anymore 'cause there were so many other tools and then the hype wasn't as strong 'cause like when it first came out it was insane. Um and then also I wasn't using it myself, so I had nothing to post about it that would be truthful.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (11:19) Okay. But the hype went on because of all the competition that came with it, like Hermit, GrubBots, even my product like Squad.so, which is of course far better than all the other ones. But uh I mean with the agent usage it's obvious that your product is super valuable.

Jack Friks (11:38) Yeah.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (11:39) You absolutely want to be the greatest at one thing. You can be average at pretty much everything if you are the best at one very specific thing.

Jason Cohen (11:47) And so Jack, w what is that for you, do you think?

Jack Friks (11:51) I don't know.

Jason Cohen (11:53) Yeah, I think you've never picked, right? You've never decided, hey, here's what I'm gonna be best for. You're just like, it's it does some stuff, right?

Jack Friks (12:00) It were you can use this.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (12:03) So fr from an outsider, I saw it pretty much all your first tweets uh when Post Bridge uh was born and from the outside it was really that the markets because all the actors were getting very complicated because they wanted to support everything you came back to the basics like you came back for to yeah very simple scheduler that was very easy to do something the easiest scheduler to use uh because all the competitors that are have like very bloated UI and you don't.

Jack Friks (12:37) Yeah, that was the core ethos at the beginning. I think it's it still is, but then half the people don't even use the dashboard, which is where I put a lot of the effort into, which was just being simple. So I guess that would be what I do best or what I focused on most. the I'm not sure if those two are the same. Um…

Jason Cohen (12:53) Well but this you see, yeah, I mean, but in this era of AI, if it's through agents or at least APIs, um, is that even a thing anymore?

Jack Friks (13:03) That's why I've kind of fallen out of it,

Jason Cohen (13:05) Mm-hmm.

Jack Friks (13:05) 'cause I don't know if it is especially if I'm gonna go forward targeting that segment of customers uh that are using agents rather than the dashboard. Uh they don't care if it's simple because it's all the same at the end.

Jason Cohen (13:18) Yeah.

Jason Cohen (13:18) Obviously it's a good idea to have a CLI that with a good help screen so that people can make their own skills, and it's a good idea to have MCP that's well documented so people can plug that in. Those two things are obvious. So I think you have to do that no matter what if you're gonna compete in an AI era, and every product probably does. Um the next thing I think of is what LLMs are bad at is anything where it has to be precise and regular and exact. So for example, we do not replace GitHub with LLMs. Because it's important that files are checked in and then they get into a branch, they get merged, or there's PRs, there's an audit trail, maybe CI CD runs, whatever the hooks.

Jason Cohen (13:57) And it's important that be precisely right. It's also nice if it's efficient and fast and compatible with stuff. That's nice too. Which also LMs are not. So it would be silly to say I don't need version control anymore because I have an LLM. That's a dumb thing to say. So anything that's not like that, it seems to me, people will do themselves and skills and LMs and whatever and agents over time. So what is it that you can do besides sending the post out that you wouldn't want to do from an LLM, even if you could? Actually interfacing with all these different systems with authentication and all the little things needed to embed the image in an enclosure and make the video work right and do the polls or something like that, you know, whatever those weird things are.

Jason Cohen (14:37) Okay, that's certainly something I just want the tool to do, not the agent. What else though, besides sending it now or scheduling it? And so some things come to mind that I do, like, well, I have this evergreen content that like can fill a slot if I don't have something else to say. And so is there like a library of that it's going through and not duplicating stuff or at least it doesn't duplicate it for years or whatever. Um and so can you maintain that library? Because just a list of thousands of things to say, um I guess I could put that in a readme, but it doesn't really make sense.

Jason Cohen (15:08) I'd rather you just have it and you just throw it in there. Um, are there stats that come back out where again I would want you to say things like here's what's performing well? Um, or even analyze, okay, if your last thousand tweets, let me try to analyze things like time of day or topics or uh what was timely at the time or any kind of things.

Jack Friks (15:25) I mean, I would not want an LM to make um content for me, which is kind of against the what everyone else is doing. Um so that that's the only thing that I can put into my mind right now.

Jason Cohen (15:36) Well, I just listed some things.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (15:37) This is very interesting like because all the social media schedulers on the market are exactly doing this. Like they are implementing the AI feature. You can be the social media scheduler that have the true human voice and you kinda guarantee that all people using your product have this human touch it's more like if you are using Post Bridge you kind of certify the human touch could it be your thing it's not obvious that it is right now.

Jack Friks (16:05) I mean, people still will automate their own systems and then use Post Bridge, so I don't know if that's true. It's just not something that Post Bridge does. But um even going to what Jason was saying about um not doing things with LLMs, even the examples of like, you know, um evergreen content and scheduling are kind of picking things up. It's actually something I've already done with an LLM. Like uh with GrokBot. Like I've had it source my popular tweets and then repost them to all the platforms using Post Bridge, but like so then I'm having really a hard time imagining what do I not want to do with an LLM.

Jack Friks (16:40) I guess that's a hard question.

Jason Cohen (16:41) Well, you can't use that as an example because you're not an example of your customer.

Jack Friks (16:47) Okay.

Jason Cohen (16:47) Like your customers are marketers, right?

Jack Friks (16:52) Sometimes.

Jason Cohen (16:53) They're not marketers? What are they who are they?

Jack Friks (16:56) They are marketing their things for sure. They are I guess they are marketers.

Jason Cohen (16:58) Are they marketeers? Does their title at the company say marketer?

Jack Friks (17:01) No.

Jason Cohen (17:02) What is their title?

Jack Friks (17:04) I would say they're uh the business owners, so they're doing multiple things and one of them is marketing.

Jason Cohen (17:10) Are they software developers?

Jack Friks (17:13) Could be.

Jason Cohen (17:14) I know. Are most of them software developers?

Jack Friks (17:18) I don't know.

Jason Cohen (17:20) Well, I can tell you most people who post on social media are not software developers.

Jack Friks (17:24) Yeah, probably not.

Jason Cohen (17:25) I'm talking about the people that use tools like Post Bridge, which are I'm a marketer, I'm getting into AI, I don't really know what I'm doing. That's why I'm in a marketplace in the first place because I'm just like picking out something that kind of works. I don't really know what's going on here. Here I go. So for those folks, they're not capable of building these features.

Jack Friks (17:46) Gotcha. So and then having them in Post Bridge would just enable them to keep paying me because I'm doing it for them.

Jason Cohen (17:52) Yes, and if I have a database of a thousand tweets, especially if I wrote them by hand, like you said, man, that's I mean, okay, you could let me export it, but anyway, this is a reason to stay. Especially if there's something like, okay, I want to recycle them, but it might take years to recycle because I have a lot of tweets. So you're the one keeping track of when they've been sent and blah blah blah. So you're the one that knows how to recycle them. Maybe there's some combination of I want to recycle old ones, but only ones got at least five likes or some kind of threshold.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (18:20) E everything we're talking about right now i is really about uh improving the product or slightly change the positioning to um which in the end which w would more like translate into less churn. Or I do you think that a slightly different positioning could drastically increase acquisition.

Jack Friks (18:40) Not.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (18:40) I'm saying this because the churn number that I see they are very high in like compared to other industries but in this industry it doesn't seem that Jack is doing a bad job…

Jason Cohen (18:51) No no no no no no no it's terrible and my proof is Buffer. Buffer's churn is also terrible, but it's 7%.

Jack Friks (18:59) It's a lot lower, it's a lot…

Tibo Louis-Lucas (19:00) Yeah but they are targeting very big clients. They…

Jason Cohen (19:04) Win because it's small customers and it's 7% per month on the small customers. That still to me is ridiculously high revenue for B2B. Now I know it's small business, so I get it, but still to me seven percent's too high. But no, 20% is like three X higher than what it should be even with small people in this industry.

Jason Cohen (19:26) Anyway, the point is like, no, this is terrible and I know you know this, but it means you can't grow past the current size. Uh you know, it's because you add a customer and then one leaves. And that's what happens every month. And occasionally there's a little burst like this AI and we'll see if it sticks, but like whatever, this is not sustainable, right? Mm-hmm.

Jack Friks (19:41) Yeah, and it has gone up even though the churn has stayed the same from like 20,000, but um then it just comes always back to the same problem, which is the churn is awful and it's making things very hard.

Jason Cohen (19:54) Yeah, and I'm looking at subscriber churn new paying subscribers. And of course the new paying subscribers moves around a little bit more uh because like you said, there's these different events or trends maybe that happen, which is okay, like that's fine. But the subscriber churn is just bad um and has stayed bad throughout that more or less. Um the thing about that too to me means it's a customer saying, I don't want this product. So like it has this financial effect, that's why we're talking about it. But also that means like very few people stay after s six months, which means they're not being in posting to social media using Post Bridge.

Jason Cohen (20:29) And actually you have some good data down here, this would be a good time to look at that.

Jason Cohen (20:32) This is great because you said here's what happened with a thousand cancels and uh what were they doing? And it's really interesting that it's like almost exactly a third, a third, a third.

Jack Friks (20:42) Mm-hmm.

Jason Cohen (20:42) One third is they were still posting when they churned. One is they never even posted one time. And the third category is they faded to zero and then left. And this is really good categorization, although you know, of course it doesn't tell us why, but it's really good categor categorization, especially since they're basically all the… Because when I see they were still posting when they left, to me it's like, wow, that's a person successful with social media, and they're telling you no to your tool. So that to me is the biggest most interesting category because that's someone saying I am in this market probably they went and used another tool or something because they're actually doing it but they said no to you that is the category I'd want to dig into the most what was missing from your tool now you could say well my tool's simple and they might say I don't want simple I want more features or something, like it we don't know what they were saying.

Jason Cohen (21:38) Do you have any idea what they were saying?

Jack Friks (21:40) I've only started collecting like um replies to like emails emailing people when they leave, um recently. And even the other times I were collecting it, there was never any like valuable feedback. I guess it's coming back to me not trying hard enough, me not annoying them enough, um to make it worth their time or you know, to onboard them properly, I'm kinda very hands-off I guess…

Jason Cohen (22:00) Yeah, that's right. Well let's separate it. So there's onboarding, but this is different. This is they were posting and they were active. They were onboarded

Jack Friks (22:08) Yeah, okay.

Jason Cohen (22:08) and then they left. And suddenly, because there's another category that they faded. So they didn't fade, they were active. So what this shows is like, oh man, you need to talk to people while they're active and posting, like there's nothing apparently wrong with them. But you still need to reach out and find out what's up. Because a third of the time when someone cancels, they were in that category and still left. So you have to find out what's going on there even when they're successful.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (22:34) Could it be the downside of the very simple approach that you had with like because the tool is very simple to use, you have this unique opportunity to attract uh beginners because they are uh they're not served properly by your other tool, no matter if they are successful or not, if they are not successful they would just stop and if they are successful they would want more from the tool they are using and they want a more mature and feature complete tool. Do you have any idea of like are you getting a lot of feature requests?

Tibo Louis-Lucas (23:07) That's your…

Jack Friks (23:08) No, I don't really get any feature requests other than like the same ones over and over that I can't serve, which is like adding music um to videos but yeah usually I don't get really any feature requests anymore I would say very rarely…

Jason Cohen (23:20) Ooh, that that's really bad. Because it means they're not engaged.

Jack Friks (23:24) Okay.

Jason Cohen (23:25) Right? Like customers who are like, I love this tool. Can you please add this one more thing? Right? It's when people aren't thinking about it and don't really care that they don't have feature requests. Now it could be that you're not prodding them and asking them enough. That could be. But generally apathy is a really bad sign. Even apathy of bad things that they don't like is a bad sign. So y you could at least proactively reach out about all this stuff and not just I want feedback. Um

Jack Friks (23:49) Yeah.

Jason Cohen (23:50) you know I have all these systems for inter interviewing customers, I have skills that help with that. You probably know that. Um so you could use some of those techniques, but use some kind of technique that you like to reach out uh for that. These three categories, they're important to keep separate because there's different things going on. Of course, we don't know what's going on. You have to go find out what's going on, of course. But they're different. So the idea that I'm still posting and then I leave, I'm being successful with social media posting and then I abruptly leave, that's different from faded to zero and then left. When I hear that, I think, okay, they tried social media, they decided it wasn't worth it, they weren't successful, whatever.

Jason Cohen (24:28) And so they sort of drifted away, and now they just aren't doing social media, or at least they don't need a tool for it. That could be wrong. So for example, it's possible that the fade it to zero people, that the action is more like when you see someone fading before they get to zero. Your system should trigger automatically. Oh, this is a person who's fading. We need to reach out with like, hey, um, do you need help getting a bigger audience? Do you need help making content? Uh do you need help posting on more platforms? Because maybe you're posting on one or two and you need to be posting on five. You haven't hit your best platform yet.

Jason Cohen (25:00) But there's all kinds of things it could be. Again, you two would be better than me at even saying what those could be. But whatever that is, it's time to reach out to them with a specific message of hey, I can see that you need a little help in getting successful on social media. And then you're there helping. Not mean you personally, but like whether it's advice or they should use some feature or whatever. Because that's very different from, oh no, I'm posting, I'm fine. I just decided to go somewhere else maybe for features or something. So that's the third category. And then the second category is they never even posted once.

Jason Cohen (25:31) Now that's an onboarding problem. Onboarding is more like you just signed up, have you done the next step? Maybe there's five steps they need to do. I just made that up, right? And so if they're on step one and they haven't made it to step two, how much time do you want to let pass before you proactively reach out? Again, this is all automated. You proactively reach out, hey, you know, the next step is this. I noticed you got here, but not here. Do you need a help? Do you want me to automate this? If you answer this question on email, I can go just throw this in for you. Right? Like there's all kinds of interesting things you could automate, especially nowadays with AI, to get them to the next step.

Jason Cohen (26:02) So WP Engine and at many places, you call that the happy path. The happy path is they do steps one through five in three days, or whatever the like ideal is um if they do that, they'll probably be successful. And so as soon as they fall off the happy path, which is again an automation question. You do stuff to try to get them back on the happy path. And doing stuff could be an email, maybe there's more to it than that. But um you do stuff to try to get them back on track so that they onboard. So each one of these categories is the same size, which tells me they're all worth your time in trying to fix.

Jason Cohen (26:35) So like the never posted once, that's a third of your customers are leaving every that you acquired, if you could just get that from, you know, a third of them leave every month or if you just improve that by 10 or 20%, that's a substantial growth burst. So if you got 10 or 20% better at each of these three categories… That might be enough to get to your goal of doubling the size of the company. That's why I'm so excited about this and why I absolutely won't let 20% go. You don't have to get the 7%, but if you can get that 20% to 15%, or actually to 10%, let's say, uh, by doing what I just said, you will necessarily find like mathematically, you will hit the goal you want, which is be over $1m in ARR by yourself.

Jason Cohen (27:12) It's right there in front. That's there it is.

Jack Friks (27:15) I feel like I've seen it there, but even then I've tried a lot of the things that you've said and I don't think I've maybe tried hard enough but also done them like right. Like I have emails, I have nudges.

Jason Cohen (27:25) Here's why I know you're not doing it. Because you don't know why any of this is happening. You can't tell me one thing about it.

Jack Friks (27:32) Yeah.

Jason Cohen (27:33) That means you're not engaging these customers. Mm-hmm.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (27:36) Do you have this case where uh you have uh people that just go through the subscription process, uh connect an account but just doesn't post?

Jack Friks (27:43) Yeah, well yet 30% of them don't post, I guess, is the truth.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (27:48) Do you have any idea about what's happening here? Like why did they just put their credit cards in your system and just don't do anything?

Jack Friks (27:56) I think a small part of it is like where I get my customers from, but then the rest top of my head, I can't say why it's deterministically like I can't.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (28:06) I think I have a different hypothesis from uh what Jason suggested and I think it's but uh…

Jason Cohen (28:12) This is the best part, is when you have a completely different way to go about it. Go for it.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (28:18) I think I was wrong assuming Buffer is attracting big teams. What actually I think is the truth is.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (28:27) I think you are getting a lot of customers through your build in public strategy. Um at least it was the case for a long time. And I think the strategy is way more a push than what Buffer would be doing by uh what I would call a pull. Meaning that you are pushing your product to people that may not be super mature on the topic and they see your post and they say, Okay, maybe I should start uh posting about uh anything to promote my product whereas Buffer would just receive all the people that have been thinking for a long time maybe they are already pushing social media posts and they're just looking for the best product and so the people that you get in your product are probably just trying out for a few weeks and they just then give up because they didn't have the success they were not very serious or not as serious as people are coming to Buffer.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (29:25) 'cause you have a pretty good product. It's like I have just did the onboarding flow. It's not like I have many small things to say but it's definitely good and so in my view the best way to fix churn is not to fix the product it's to change the acquisition channel.

Jack Friks (29:44) Yeah, it's that's kind of where I've landed in my like idea. But then I'm stuck at okay how? Like how do I get customers from other places? 'Cause everyone else is also trying to obviously get them from all these other places and…

Tibo Louis-Lucas (29:55) I have the same issue and it's.

Jack Friks (29:58) Yeah, I don't feel unique.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (29:58) Yeah, it's very not easy.

Jason Cohen (30:00) One issue is you haven't decided who your customer is. Because when we asked like what is it that you're specializing in where you are the best tool for a certain subset of the market, whether that means what they're trying to accomplish or who they are, you said I don't know. So you haven't decided who you're targeting and if you don't decide who you're targeting, you can't possibly know how to find them. Because all you know is like, well, it's every marketer in the world is my customer. It's like right, well you can't target every marketer in the world. That doesn't make any sense. So if you knew you were targeting only indie developers, which you should not do, of course, then uh you'd know where to go.

Jason Cohen (30:34) X. Oh wait, that's what you're doing. And then your churn's 20% because indie developers do that. They're not serious, their projects end, they don't have any money. Bad market. Good friends, bad market. You could say I'm targeting solo marketing quote unquote teams. Right, 'cause if it's one person, is it a team? Now that could be it's a solo person at the company, so they do everything. It could be there's only three people at the company and one does marketing. It could be a restaurant where one person does marketing. Right? Like you know, it's so you could say that's what I'm doing, hence it being super simple.

Jason Cohen (31:05) And in fact, not even being that AI forward, because if I'm a restaurant and I'm doing marketing, I'm actually not using AI. Turns out. So that's my target. You could say, I'm not saying you should, but like you could say that. Um, you could say I'm targeting big enterprises doing whatever, but obviously you're not. But if you did, you would know certain places to advertise. You'd go to certain conferences, you'd advertise in certain periodicals, you would not use X to get to them, you would use LinkedIn. So if you don't pick who you're selling to, you can't know how to sell to them, how to target them, where to go to market to.

Jack Friks (31:40) Gotcha. And I guess right now I've kind of by not deciding and then posting on X I've attracted the people who are gonna churn the most as well.

Jason Cohen (31:48) Well, yeah, I mean they are churning, right? So this is actually a really important point about the quality at the top of the funnel, the marketing funnel, and people don't appreciate this enough. Um and this is what Tibo was saying, and in fact, in my book about this, I have a tweet by Tibo that essentially says this as well. But um um, Tibo was talking about price. If you raise your price, you get better customers because you get businesses instead of hobbyists. Um, at least I mean in the quote that I used in the book. Um, in this section, the idea was this if I sent you only shitty people at the top of the funnel who weren't really serious about social media, weren't really gonna work on it, weren't gonna spend the time doing it, then no matter what your website said, no matter what your product does, no matter how easy it is, no matter what the features are, no matter how good your onboarding is, those people will fail.

Jason Cohen (32:38) And most won't sign up at all and they'll churn high because they weren't good customers. So if the quality at the top of the funnel is poor, you're gonna fail no matter what. On the other hand, if I send to the top of your funnel, meaning sending visitors to your homepage, only the perfect customers for you and your product, which you have to define what that is. But let's just say a single marketer at a company who's dead set on doing social media for the next two years, they're super stoked to do it, they've read a bunch of stuff, they've watched videos.

Jason Cohen (33:09) They've got content ready to go. They love that it's simple. The price point is perfect. Those people are gonna sign up and stay. Even if your homepage isn't very good, even if the product's just okay, they're gonna come in and stay because they're the perfect customer for you. So think about that for a second. If I send shitty people to the top of your funnel, you'll fail no matter what. And if I send good people to the top of the funnel, you'll succeed almost no matter what. So the quality of the people at the top of the funnel is more important than everything else. Full stop.

Jason Cohen (33:41) So once you realize that, you go, oh, so if you're just scattering on X, you're not heeding that lesson.

Jack Friks (33:48) Yeah.

Jason Cohen (33:49) You have to ask yourself, well, for whom is your current product the best product now? Because whoever that is, that is your target customer. At least for now, you could say over time it's gonna change. That's fine. Because that's who you need to go get on the homepage, because then everything else will work out.

Jack Friks (34:08) I see.

Jack Friks (34:09) I think I have an idea like of where I want to go. I have it in the doc.

Jack Friks (34:14) Which is like someone who's basically the solo person doing the marketing and they're doing it, but they also kinda use the agentic tools to be able to do more with less. I think that's um the main thing. I mean you can kinda read it there. But I still never've committed, I guess, to either of these things. I just ran an A B test for agent side versus normal. And it's me not committing again and then the results were kind of nothing. Um it was a wash and then now we're here again, which I haven't…

Jason Cohen (34:41) So tests is not how you target a customer. See, if you're bringing in the wrong customers to the top of the funnel, A B testing doesn't help.

Jack Friks (34:50) Yeah, okay.

Jason Cohen (34:51) You see? So once you have this idea that, oh wait, I need the higher quality in the first place, it just changes how you think about things. You realize an A-B test doesn't help. You have to go target them elsewhere in the first place. Now you can use A B test, of course, on things like a Google ad or whatever to try to get their okay, yes. But once they come to their website, of course you can still A B test to try to improve conversion rate, obviously, right? But like you can't solve the quality at the top of the funnel through A-B testing on your home page.

Jack Friks (35:21) Yeah, that makes sense. I guess I wasn't trying to solve um that because it wasn't in my mind. I was just trying to see what converts better overall and like retain retains longer. Um but if yeah, if I had better people coming it wouldn't matter which version of the landing page they saw. They would

Jason Cohen (35:37) Right.

Jack Friks (35:37) if they were the right customer they would.

Jason Cohen (35:40) Tibo, what do you think about this definition of his ICP? But I'm not an expert in this, that's why I want you to say. I see things like she owns it, she doesn't have approval chains. Okay, that's cool, because that means a simple tool is good for her. I get it. But then it says treats posting as maintenance to minimize the cost of, not a growth engine. I would think that if you don't see social media as a growth engine, that's a bad thing. That's this person that doesn't value it and thus would stop. But maybe Jack, you mean yeah, but if this is gonna become a whole craft then they probably want a b a tool with more features.

Jason Cohen (36:15) Like I don't know, is that contradictory or does that make sense to you that those people exist and there's a lot of them and they'll continue paying even though it's just a maintenance engine? Like how do you feel about this ICP?

Tibo Louis-Lucas (36:26) I think you would be the same as me jack, but I think the fit b between the acquisition channel and the founder is more important than the ICP itself.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (36:36) I doubt there is something that both see social media as not a growth engine and would all the approval chain. Do you see what I mean?

Jason Cohen (36:47) Yeah, see that's what I'm getting at. It's like I it seems contradictory of like, wait, is this even a thing? You know?

Tibo Louis-Lucas (36:53) So yeah, yeah. I'm not here to decide if this ICP is good or not. Uh that would be Jack's job, I think. Um my point here is that it's very easy to define the perfect ICP and then realize that okay, this ICP I have no idea how to reach it. And in my opinion, I would do the job in the opposite direction. I would then first uh list the acquisition channel that I really know how to serve very well, I know how to work with them, and then define what is the ICP that both stick uh on my products and I can reach out to them based on what I know about the acquisition channel that I know.

Jason Cohen (37:33) So I agree with that and obviously for Jack that's X, right?

Jack Friks (37:37) Yeah.

Jason Cohen (37:38) I mean the channel that he's really good at is X. So given that his product is simple, but it's gonna be AI forward, and given that Jack is excellent at X, but also given that like indie hackers is it's not that he shouldn't have them, it's just he already does. Like whatever that is, he's doing that already. And so if he wants to go from his current size and l like you say, double the acquisition rate, let's say, but stick to X, like what kinds of people could he target?

Tibo Louis-Lucas (38:06) I have big doubts that Jack can um target any other person that uh his current customer base like uh he has his own way to market his product. He's very uh genuine on social media. He has a very strong personal brand. And so except if he goes in a completely different direction, I think uh the same kind of people are still gonna come into his product. And so if churn doesn't move, he needs to increase acquisition and that's the only any way to grow as a product. And if you want to go to $100k MR you basically need to double the number of new subscribers you get every single day and so if you do so you should be able to get there.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (38:47) The thing that I see on social media that works very well for me is affiliation and sponsorships. You have the unique ability uh because your customers are supposed to be having an audience. It's super important to both uh treat them well, use them as sponsorship um opportunities and work with other people on social media to promote your product. It's a win-win on so many sides. It's very hard, it's very time consuming. Um I have tried to make agents do that.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (39:22) Uh it I haven't found a way to do that properly. Uh but yeah, it's obviously something that can work.

Jack Friks (39:31) But then that would be just tackling the acquisition side and not the anything else.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (39:35) If you see a way to reduce churn just go for it. But I don't see these as a very easy move. Like it's gonna be very hard to change ICP, to uh change the type of customer that you get uh and do things completely different. It's gonna be very hard for you.

Jason Cohen (39:51) I was wondering whether these bullet points make sense 'cause I'm to me I look at this and I think, is this right? Like I get it that since the product's simple it's important that this person not need approvals. Uh you know, whatever they're doing has to be simple because that's part of what makes them right for a simple product. So that I get. But the part where it's like they don't see social media as being a craft or a growth engine. They don't care about social media really. Is that make them a perfect customer? Or don't you want someone that does care? Like if they don't care that much, won't they just stop using it? I don't understand.

Jack Friks (40:22) I guess what I was trying to say there is that they're not going to come into the product, post a few posts, see no results, and then quit because they already have some type of growth engine and this is just like them checking out like kind of adding, hey, like we post a TikTok and we're doing really good on TikTok, but why don't we use Post Bridge and just like repost all these videos to everywhere else, Facebook Reels and Instagram. And it's not like a huge craft. I guess it would be a growth engine, Yeah, I mean that was kind of a i the point, you're right. It it's not a craft, but it is, I guess, still a growth engine.

Jack Friks (40:54) It's a growth effort. Um but my point was more that they're not coming here with nothing. They're coming here to expand on what they already have working.

Jason Cohen (41:04) Ah, that's a nice bullet point.

Jason Cohen (41:05) That thought you could add that if that's the case.

Jack Friks (41:08) Okay.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (41:09) I have uh maybe a side question. Is this ICP something that uh uh AI generated uh like as part of a bigger analysis maybe for this recording or is this something that you truly believe with your gut and you think you would enjoy going after?

Jack Friks (41:30) I think more of the first, it's less of my gut. Yeah.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (41:35) It feels like it when you read… It doesn't feel like uh something that the Jack I know from social media would go after.

Jack Friks (41:43) W when I'm trying to define it, I feel like I also um add too much. And I I'm thinking ideal, ideal, ideal, but maybe this person doesn't exist at all. Um when I think about like when I look at this definition because it doesn't all yeah.

Jason Cohen (41:59) Yeah, I mean one of the gates of the ICP is they have to exist.

Jason Cohen (42:02) If you're not comparing this to actual customers and actual markets that exist, then yeah, it's certainly uh not real. So okay, so let's follow what Tibo said. What is the customer that the Jack of social media would be excited to go after that actually exists?

Jack Friks (42:19) I guess the customer that I would want to go after would be someone, as I said, like posting to TikTok or Instagram themselves. Um and they've seen success. They're not just like, How do I do this? They're like, Okay, this is kind of working. Something is working. There's customers coming to my app or my product because of these videos I posted. And I wanna just expand this. So I want to post it everywhere else with like no extra effort. So I'm gonna use PostBridge. Yeah, I'm gonna have it post to all the other platforms I'm not already posting to, which are no extra effort at this point.

Jason Cohen (42:47) So what I like about that is it and I'm sure you mean this uh or you mean the same thing is because they're already posting somewhere and successful there, comma, they're gonna keep posting on social media anyway. Good. They won't be one of these people that fade to zero, right? Or right? And so then the question is, um or so they want to do more things. That's what you do, more things. Unfortunately, that's true of literally every competitor you have.

Jack Friks (43:13) Yeah.

Jason Cohen (43:14) So good start, because that is a different person than someone who's never published before or is just thinking about getting into social media. You've said that's not my target. Good. That's a good decision. But that thing you've defined is just step one because that's what every other competitor is. And so what else would you be excited about keeping Tibo's thing going? Where what else about them are would you be excited about that differentiates that from every other tool? The simplicity is something. So what about that simplicity is working for…

Jack Friks (43:43) I don't think I could answer that. I think that's problem. the…

Jason Cohen (43:47) Tibo, do you have any idea?

Tibo Louis-Lucas (43:50) Yeah, it's very hard to answer. I understand that. I would add that the thing that you mentioned earlier, uh there is a big problem with this like TikToker and Instagrammer that uh is already posting has seen what success like and wants to continue. Is that for us social media, there is this uh belief that um if you post through a scheduler, the reach of the post is gonna be lower than compared to um post on the native platforms and it's very hard to find true data about that so it's very hard to contradict uh and it might be especially true on Instagram and TikTok so it's something that is very hard to work around.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (44:32) The i if I were you and that's also what I do is uh working with LinkedIn, X, YouTube, I find it way easier because there is not this thinking.

Jack Friks (44:44) Facebook reels too. Even that and then Facebook reels even than I post them. Like they do like 100,000 views even through Post Bridge. And I have examples of all the platforms doing that, but like yeah, TikTok and Instagram reels definitely have more resistance scheduling through.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (44:59) Yep.

Jason Cohen (45:00) Okay, so that's actually a good one. So remember this is ideal. It's okay if they post a TikTok, like right, like this doesn't disqualify them. We're just saying who's ideal. So you're saying ideal is someone who posted things like Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, X, um, and doesn't think of Instagram and TikTok as primary.

Jack Friks (45:19) Okay.

Jason Cohen (45:19) Because for example, if LinkedIn is ideal, then one of the places you go to acquire them is LinkedIn.

Jack Friks (45:27) Yeah.

Jason Cohen (45:27) Right? Because if they're currently successful on LinkedIn and they want to go elsewhere, they're on LinkedIn. You just said that. And so you need to be on LinkedIn too, right? Um where at and but not Instagram. You don't need to go on Instagram. Again, again, I'm not an expert on social media. But I would think that LinkedIn would be your best channel. Because…

Jack Friks (45:43) Thank you.

Jason Cohen (45:44) LinkedIn is where professional people go to do shit. And there's a lot you can do there. A I don't know how many times I've seen a post on X of people saying y'all are sleeping on LinkedIn. can really work. Now Of course, it really works for certain things and not other things. We all know that. But LinkedIn is a great channel. A lot of marketers are on LinkedIn, probably more than they're on X.

Jack Friks (46:06) I have had that in the back of my

Jason Cohen (46:08) Yeah.

Jack Friks (46:08) notes that I should post on LinkedIn and the only thing I've really acted on it so far is posting my tweets using Post Bridge from Twitter to LinkedIn, like mirroring everything.

Jason Cohen (46:16) Yeah. And so maybe that's fine or maybe it should be something else. Go ahead.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (46:19) Yeah many people think they need a different style on LinkedIn but for me like everything that worked for me on X it worked too on LinkedIn the other way is really not true.

Jason Cohen (46:30) Yeah.

Jack Friks (46:31) Hmm.

Jason Cohen (46:32) Yeah. So I would do that. Um, but only because we're identifying this. Um

Jack Friks (46:38) Yeah.

Jason Cohen (46:39) so question, are they a consumer or are they in a business?

Jack Friks (46:43) Ideally, or…

Jason Cohen (46:44) Yeah, like people who tend to stay is what I mean. Today they tend to stay on the product because I don't want theory.

Jack Friks (46:51) Would they would own a business or be a part of a business almost always.

Jason Cohen (46:54) Okay, good. So it's not personal. Okay. Um again that says LinkedIn.

Jack Friks (47:01) Mm-hmm.

Jason Cohen (47:01) Another vote for LinkedIn.

Jack Friks (47:03) Ha

Jason Cohen (47:04) Right?

Jack Friks (47:04) Darn it.

Jason Cohen (47:06) No, no, it's not that you don't stop X. I mean, Tibo just said you could just cross post, right? Like yeah, like uh you're right. You could realize that investing more time in LinkedIn than today is wise.

Jack Friks (47:18) That makes sense.

Jason Cohen (47:18) Right? Or your LinkedIn uh integration ought to be really good. Like technically. Like support everything. Whatever LinkedIn can support, you should support. Right? Make the API super good because it's part of what your ideal customer probably wants to do.

Jack Friks (47:32) Okay.

Jason Cohen (47:33) You know, this is the kind of mentality. It's not changing everything. It's not pivoting. None of that. None of those words. Right? It's oh if this is ideal, then it's worth my time to invest in it. Not pivot, not change who I am but like, yeah, I should do more there because my ideal customers are either there or would want me to do it or would be more enticed if I did it, both in acquisition because they're there, but also in retention because it's important that work really well.

Jack Friks (48:00) Okay.

Jason Cohen (48:00) Like what they shouldn't think is, I need you to do this feature for LinkedIn and you didn't have it. If we know that LinkedIn is a critical channel for them, then that okay, that's a feature that is worth building. Okay.

Jack Friks (48:11) Mm-hmm.

Jason Cohen (48:13) So they're in a business, they post somewhere like LinkedIn, but it could be YouTube, Facebook, etc. Now they want to expand to more. Okay, fine. Um what else.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (48:24) Have you considered about doing YouTube?

Jack Friks (48:27) Like making YouTube videos, like long forms videos, you mean.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (48:31) Yeah. Well doesn't have to be long form but like 10 minutes updates from time to time that you could also cross-post on the X and LinkedIn.

Jack Friks (48:40) I did do that for a little while. Um…

Tibo Louis-Lucas (48:42) Yeah.

Jack Friks (48:43) Yeah, I kinda gave up on making the videos because they weren't doing anything at the time. At least they're building public ones on the other platforms. Like they wouldn't really get any traction.

Jason Cohen (48:52) But again a marketer I mean I'm just reading what we said right a marketer in a business they're holding this down they're not interested in you building your company right.

Jack Friks (49:02) They wanna build theirs I don't know if they're gonna be scrolling and watching short form. Like my ideal customer, if they're probably gonna be scrolling on LinkedIn and looking for ways to grow their company more than a short form video, I would imagine.

Jason Cohen (49:14) Shorts on YouTube is definitely not it. But like Tibo said, eight, 10 minutes on YouTube, that could be it.

Jack Friks (49:21) Yeah.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (49:21) I'm saying this because you have this very unique personality uh that um renders very well on social media like you are uh the nicest person ever uh helping people and building like truly genuine stuff and uh you like very rapidly created your own space on X and I don't see why it wouldn't work on other social media and your acquisition strategy is very tied up to that um it's very hard to go uh pursue other acquisition channel I find it much easier to just double down on something that works.

Jack Friks (50:02) But then do you think the results would change, like compared to now? I guess I would have to do something different, obviously. I would have to spend time on LinkedIn or like I would have to actually format posts and think about posts other than a way that I do now. Because right now all I do is really post like what I'm working on and my thoughts. Like it's not meticulous at all. It's like a brain…

Tibo Louis-Lucas (50:23) Yeah I would not change that given how it creates this unique personality that you have.

Jason Cohen (50:30) Yeah, I agree with Tibo completely.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (50:31) Even if you…

Jason Cohen (50:32) Don't change who you are. I mean it's working, right? But I it's ironic. You make the tool that publishes everywhere. So you should do that. Right?

Jack Friks (50:41) I'm already posting to LinkedIn, like 'cause I have been like mirroring all my posts for a month or two, like what else is there to do, I guess, while remaining true to myself uh and just like commenting and replying. I know that's not something for you to answer, but…

Tibo Louis-Lucas (50:56) Seem like um the so I don't know you very well so maybe this is just me not knowing you uh but you don't want to go there and I don't fully understand why. Like it an effort issue or…

Tibo Louis-Lucas (51:12) Is this because you already tried and you think it doesn't work?

Jack Friks (51:15) I think it's a also a lot that I haven't defined that it's worth the effort enough to justify to myself to be like, why am I doing this? If I was going to LinkedIn. Like now talking through it now helps I think. Um but before now I just would be like, yeah, it could help, but I don't really know how much.

Jason Cohen (51:33) Right. Well this goes back to the knowing who your target audience is. So Tibo is right. So Tibo's saying that doesn't matter. You have to be yourself. And I'm saying it does matter because you have to know who you're talking to and where, because ultimately that is who you want to talk to. And everyone else you're talking to doesn't matter. Everyone else you're talking to will not help your business get to where you want. If you want your business to stay where it is, then don't listen to me. But since the subject of this call is how to double the business, right? And so we have to halve cancellation or double acquisition or some combination.

Jason Cohen (52:06) We're tapping one, half the other, which is pr to me probably more likely is and a good idea. But anyway, that is mathematically the only way to double it. So if we're gonna do that, some as you say, something's gotta change. And it starts with, Well, who are we freaking talking to? So you're right that without knowing that, it's not clear that you should go to LinkedIn and do anything. Why should you? I don't know. But if you say, Oh, it's people who are already successful somewhere, LinkedIn is one of the best channels, also they're in a business. And we're not done listing who they are because so far this is not specific enough. But when you flesh that out more, uh, then you can say, well, where are they then?

Jason Cohen (52:41) And what do they want to hear about? And again, Tibo's like, who cares about them? You gotta be true to yourself. And I would say it has to be both. If you're not true to yourself, your content will suck. You'll hate it, you'll resent it. And also, what's the point of living life, building the life that you want with this company if you're having to like do work you hate? So on that side, I completely agree with Tibo on that. You gotta stay true to all that. On the other hand, if you persist in saying, I don't know who I'm talking to, it's whatever, okay, well then you're gonna get this result, which is you know, the half-life of a customer is three months.

Jason Cohen (53:16) Half your customers just leave in three months. That's not good. That's not a good thing. Because you're not attracting the right people who actually want this product and will be successful with it. So you have to say, well who is, which we're doing. And then you have to like talk to them wherever they are.

Jack Friks (53:32) Yeah.

Jason Cohen (53:34) So getting more specific about who this is will help. Because even if it's just in the back of your mind while you continue being who you are, already I think that will help.

Jack Friks (53:44) Yeah, I agree. Especially because it's not something I've persistently thought about over the last year and that's why nothing's changed in terms of churn, like in terms of who's coming in and who's leaving. It's the same people, even though the company's grown.

Jason Cohen (53:58) Also, we don't know which of this churn is okay and which is not okay. In other words, let's say sometimes people from a big company sign up. Okay, we all know they're gonna churn, and they should, and we're not worried about it. That's fine. But if someone who matches everything you just said and maybe more comes in and then is successful for nine months and then churns. Then you go, damn it, that's who this is supposed to be for and they churned anyway? Wait a minute. No no no no I w whatever that is, I want to fix that about my product. I want to.

Jason Cohen (54:30) I'm highly motivated to because it is who I am. They it it's supposed to be perfect for who I actually am and they left anyway. Wait a minute, that I want to fix. So this is why we have to say who that it is so that you know okay that's the churn I should be worried about and want to fix, even just for your own pride and craft, not to mention financially. Those people, yes. Everyone else, no. Like it's fine that they churn. We shouldn't be chasing them. It's okay. And so what's the final churn amount we should expect there? 15%, 20%, 7%? I don't know. Actually don't know. But by defining who that is, we could start honing in then on like, well who should you try to be retained because it's not everybody.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (55:05) Something that I I've been wanting to do uh for a long time and may maybe that's the first thing that you should do out of this podcast is uh the huge advantage of working on social media is that once your customers drop their socials, it's very easy for you to just pull all their contents and to categorize them uh in clusters and also in audience uh sizes and those indicators like the audience size, um the topics they're talking about uh how big is the company behind it.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (55:37) It's something that you could put behind every behavior in the app, like subscription, cancellation, uh posting. And so it's easy for you to have churn numbers per channel or per customer type and to track the activity of your user per topic, per size, etc. I would start with this.

Jason Cohen (55:59) I like that a lot. Yeah, anytime you can segment along the line that makes sense, of course…

Jason Cohen (56:05) It's really good because something might just jump out at you. Yeah. And that might motivate you to spend more time in place one or less time in place two D when you see that, right? Because again, it's going back to like, well, what's already working, do more of that. What's not working, stop paying attention to that. I think Tibo and I are both saying that part of it.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (56:25) Yeah, uh I had this weird um feeling when I uh watched your preparation doc I saw that one of your goals was to not die, right? Uh like by you y you defined not dying like you were talking about the products but you define not dying by just keep growing and I was wondering if the $100k MR was actually a true goal because you are already very successful like this is not an AI product so I guess it's very high margin you're making $50k per month it's huge as a solopreneur um and I see some resistance with every new acquisition tactic and this ICP definition.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (57:10) So I was wondering: like, do you really want to grow more? Like, do you really want to put in the effort to just make this twice bigger? Or if I think it's completely fine to just say. You like it here and you want to enjoy life.

Jack Friks (57:26) I mean, I would say the real goal is not 100,000. Like that's the staple number and I think pushing towards it helps me stay where I am 'cause I don't think I'll stay where I am with 20% churn. Um and doing what I do now uh maybe I will, maybe I'm being pessimistic there. But also I think part of the goal is um making things exciting and like fun so like I can go work on the product and growing it can be fun. And I think it does sound a lot more fun when Jason puts it like um, you know, here the here's the person that we want.

Jack Friks (57:57) If they churn what went wrong. Like that's more fun. Um so I guess that's a big part of the goal too is figuring out, okay, who am I serving? W what do they need and what am I missing? And then like how can I close all these gaps to make a product perfect for this person? Like that sounds more fun.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (58:13) Yeah, you have built your brand around that like having fun while you work, breaking the wall between what's fun and what's work and… I love that and so yeah I would double down on that.

Jason Cohen (58:23) But Tibo, maybe he should be happy it's 50,000.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (58:27) No that's not really what I thought. I was just trying to see if um the growth was forced and so uh I am pretty much in this situation. Like I have reached some crazy milestones and I have two kids and I want to enjoy time with them and so uh sometimes I'm I feel like I see what I should do to grow more. And I just procrastinate so much that I just eventually realize that I just don't want to put in the effort that I should do to just grow uh one of my projects more.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (58:59) It's human I guess.

Jason Cohen (59:00) Mm-hmm. But on your deathbed, I don't think you'll be unhappy that you chose to spend more time with your kids.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (59:07) I think so. That's why I'm doing it this way.

Jason Cohen (59:10) Yes, I think so too. Let me switch gears a little bit to something else which again I think Tibo can help with and I really can't, which is um your pricing.

Jack Friks (59:21) Mm-hmm.

Jason Cohen (59:22) Because I noticed something really interesting about your pricing. I just pulled it up here. First of all, there's very little difference in the prices, which is very unusual for SaaS. So that doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong, but it suggests it might be wrong. And I actually have reason to think that the starter plan's too expensive and the pro plan's not expensive enough. And again, I go back to Buffer and it's pricing, where Buffer starts free and then it's $5 a month and stuff like that. And so you are much more expensive than Buffer on the small end. And again, I'm not saying whether that's good or bad.

Jason Cohen (59:53) You're like crazy cheap on the high end. Like…

Jason Cohen (59:57) 10 times cheaper on the high end. No limits, no account limit, no you know, unlimited posts. Um and so could it be that like all the pricing is incorrect? And so but I have no idea. Tibo do you have any.

Jack Friks (01:00:12) This is new by the way. This pricing is new, like a week old.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (01:00:15) I would never have this pricing. I uh so this is one of the things that I think uh Jack should uh totally change. So in every single one of my A B tests, the less choice, the better it is. And so the starter plan is very close to the creator plan, um it makes it very hard for me to choose because there is a real hesitation. Um in one of my products, Outrank we went as far as just removing all your choice. You have only one way to start one subscription and it converts much better just having one.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (01:00:52) And then you can upsell and upgrade with uh other possibilities inside the app when you have already a subscription. When we really wanted to push for multiple plans…

Tibo Louis-Lucas (01:01:04) What we did and it's converting even higher than uh the one plan page from Outrank is that the most expensive plan is very expensive on purpose to just make the other plans look cheaper. Yeah. And we have the two first plans at the same price, which makes it obvious the plan you should go for. And so that's my entire um mindset with pricing. It should be obvious the plan you should uh go for.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (01:01:36) And so either I have just one plan or if I have multiple plans I just make it obvious.

Jack Friks (01:01:42) I guess this is something I've kind of been stuck on the last month is the pricing because I've kind of played with it twice now in the last month and I think now that whether you guys show it on screen and ridicule it it's obvious that it's not right. But I didn't get that until now.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (01:01:59) I think the one mindset is just no choice don't have choice it's just every situation of choice it's frustration for users and you will lose some.

Jack Friks (01:02:08) Gotcha. Okay.

Jason Cohen (01:02:10) Yeah, having to make decisions is a huge blocker in any sales. I mean, even in a grocery store, there are these studies that show when there's like three jams to pick from, people will buy a jam. And when there's like a whole wall of jam because you're in a cool specialty store, people buy less jam. Like they see all these choices, they're like, I don't know. Maybe I'll get something else. Or maybe I d I just have a block to buy it. So um yeah, it's a general cross industry human thing that choice is…

Tibo Louis-Lucas (01:02:38) A winning strategy for Tesla too.

Jason Cohen (01:02:40) For beginners you're more expensive than the competition and for people at the other end you're less expensive I if that's selecting for your ICP then it's good to do that it's good to be differentiated from the competition if it's selecting for the ICP but if it's not then it's bad so for example on the starter, you know, Buffer has a free plan and then a $5 a month plan. Um And then after that it goes to a $10 a month plan.

Jason Cohen (01:03:12) So their third-tier team plan is still a third of your starter. Now i if you did that on purpose, I would say cool, but then I wouldn't call it starter. And I wouldn't say best for beginners. It's not. It's not good for beginners. Pr free is good for beginners. $5 a month is good for beginners, right? And anyway, this isn't fair because we just decided this, so, but if I'm taking our current conversation and applying it you said the ICP is already posting or already successful. Great, then they're not a beginner. So what could you say that would be starter, that would be this first tier, except you're actually talking about your ICP?

Jason Cohen (01:03:51) So that'd be one way to think through what would be the right way to price, what should I put in there and so on. Or you could take a different uh strategy altogether, which is the following. You could say, no, the center tiers for my ICP. The center one is. The first tier really is for beginners coming in because although that's not my ICP, I do want to bring some of those people into the fold so that maybe they become the ICP over time. I would say, okay, but then $20 a month is wrong. It should be free. Or, you know, free for one can account or you know, right?

Jason Cohen (01:04:22) Like it should be something that lets that actual beginner come in, because this is not good for beginners if that's what you meant. Right.

Jack Friks (01:04:29) Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:04:29) And then same kind of argument on the high side, so I don't have to repeat it all, but it's the same as on the high side. Is do you even want those high customers? Is that your ICP? If not, what is it that you're trying to say there? And so on. Why is it a fifth the price of Buffer? Does that make any sense? Probably not. So I would apply that logic of like who is each of these tiers for? Who which one's for the ICP or an advanced one? Is it starter? And then what does that person actually need? What makes sense for them? This, I don't know that it makes sense for anybody. Or at least I think what it says it's for doesn't match the price and things underneath it, I guess is what I would say.

Jack Friks (01:05:08) Yeah. I think also it's a bit more broken right now than it ever has been in a sense because making this pricing kind of leaning towards everyone to the pro that I want like my ICP wise, um who I thought was my ICP at the time. I'm not exactly sure if it's right anymore, like talking in this call things my brain has been a bit scrambled now. Um but like originally it was hey how can I get the people who are posting on like, you know, 15 plus accounts into like how do I get them.

Jason Cohen (01:05:38) Yeah, no, you can get them, it's just they expect to pay $500 a month.

Jack Friks (01:05:42) Yeah. And not 50.

Jason Cohen (01:05:45) So Tibo, can you explain I don't understand this growth thing with the same prices hobby. I don't understand.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (01:05:52) What what's the issue like what is hard to understand like.

Jason Cohen (01:05:55) It's just a trick to say, I want you to anchor off of hobby so that you think growth has a lot of value, because if I didn't show hobby and I just had growth at 39, I wouldn't understand that it's giving me a lot of features.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (01:06:08) It actually looks like a bug. The i it's um replicate of this uh famous pricing strategy. I think it was from the New York Times uh a while ago where you could get the paper version for a certain price but for the same price you could get the paper version and the neurocar version and so you would obviously go to uh the price point where you would get the most

Tibo Louis-Lucas (01:06:36) and we try to replicate this exact thing and it works actually best.

Jason Cohen (01:06:42) And also I would note, Jack, see it says hobby?

Jack Friks (01:06:45) Mm-hmm.

Jason Cohen (01:06:46) Yeah, so Jack, your ICP is not doing this as a hobby, right?

Jack Friks (01:06:50) Mm-hmm. Right, correct.

Jason Cohen (01:06:52) So this would work for you too. Right? Because you would set up, there's this cheap thing that's for a hobbyist. Then there's this thing for a pro. Right? So in my mind I'm like, oh yeah, I'm a pro. Now you could also use this pricing thing, the same trick. You could do that too. I know Tibo agrees with this, but the price that you charge determines the type of customer who you get. And if you make it free, you get a bunch of garbage. If you make it expensive, well you have to live up to that expense, but you don't get garbage. So that part I like about the low starter.

Jason Cohen (01:07:25) What do you think about that, Tibo?

Tibo Louis-Lucas (01:07:27) I agree completely. Yeah.

Jason Cohen (01:07:29) Do you think you should just copy your pricing system here? Or what?

Tibo Louis-Lucas (01:07:34) Well I like a lot that it's um so i in case of Post Bridge uh I think I would test having just one price and no choice at all. I think like many people force the three card pricing page because they have seen this everywhere and they assume that this has to be like this, but it's really not the case for Outrank. We didn't do it like this. And so since you have a per social account pricing, uh why would you not say you display a big uh $1 per account?

Tibo Louis-Lucas (01:08:11) That's the price with a minimum of 30 per month and you just start.

Jason Cohen (01:08:18) And in fact, if part of the your positioning is Post Bridge is simple, if that's like the main message, Post Bridge is simple, then how would you reflect that on a pricing page? You would have simple pricing.

Jack Friks (01:08:33) $1 per account and then a minimum. That does make lot more sense.

Jason Cohen (01:08:36) Or whatever. Yeah, something simple.

Jack Friks (01:08:38) Because this is like uh why is this only $10 more triple account, so what it is confusing.

Jason Cohen (01:08:44) Yeah, simple.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (01:08:45) I don't think you will have a few questions, but uh the $1 per account if you double down on the agent use case, your target accounts are gonna be people with 30 accounts that want to do I don't know like I would want to run a fleet of social accounts.

Jack Friks (01:09:02) Yeah, that makes sense. That sounds fun…

Tibo Louis-Lucas (01:09:05) And by the way, you it's gonna be confusing for the people with two accounts because they might don't understand why they pay uh 30 because they have two accounts,

Tibo Louis-Lucas (01:09:15) but you don't want them, they are not URCP, so that's fine.

Jack Friks (01:09:19) That's very true. And now I have to do a third pricing change in one…

Jason Cohen (01:09:24) Well look, it's better to change the price for the third time in a month than to have the wrong price.

Jack Friks (01:09:28) Yeah, yeah, no. For sure.

Jason Cohen (01:09:30) Is this why you're so adamant that Jack never change what he's like online? Because for you, when I asked why were you interested, it was that. And so if he changes that, he loses kind of the main thing.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (01:09:42) Yeah and I truly believe like that um it's pretty rare to have such a strong personal brand and Jack nails that and I always think it's just way easier to double down on something that works compared to just change strategy and do something that you are just not comfortable with. It might always seem so easy to do something else, like what others are doing, but when you actually start doing that, it's painful and you just give up after a few months.

Jason Cohen (01:10:12) Yeah, totally agree. So if you did own Post Bridge right now, and it's exactly the way it is right now, uh, let's just say you wanted to bring it to $100k in MRR, so a reasonable growth goal. We're not even putting a time frame on when it would get there. We're just saying, like, yeah, that it should be able to get there. What would you actually do? And now you're not Jack, so that doesn't mean Jack should do it. But like, would you go to LinkedIn? Would you have different kinds of content? You wouldn't stop doing what Jack's doing, but like would you add on other things? Would you add features? What pricing would you do?

Jason Cohen (01:10:43) Like what would you actually do? Now I know you don't know if it would work, but like what would your next attempt look like?

Tibo Louis-Lucas (01:10:49) Um that's a good question. I would take the position that Jack has right now. Uh I so Jack has this unique opportunity that he's a founder, he's serving founders. So um I would double down on the personal brand, uh put it on LinkedIn, on YouTube and try to show the lifestyle of Jack and sell the dream of you can be like me if uh you start your own product and it's actually a dream that's came true for many people, Jack included, he said that he joined thanks to Marc Lou.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (01:11:22) And so I would do exactly this and show that by doing this you can have the same kind of successes and uh using Post Bridge is one of the way to reach that level.

Jason Cohen (01:11:33) Cool. So sell the entrepreneurship dream kind of in its own path, because that's where you obviously have credibility and excitement about. And then what would the pricing look like?

Tibo Louis-Lucas (01:11:41) I would do exactly what we discussed earlier. I find it so cool, like $1 per account minimum 30.

Jason Cohen (01:11:46) Cool. I like that. That's neat. Um if I'm answering it, and I'm very much not like Jack, so it almost doesn't matter, but it's fun. Um I would go to this notion of my best customer is someone who is serious about social media. My job does depend on it, and I'm being successful right now, and I need to expand it. But I'm at a small company. So any big company stuff, not doing. I don't need SOC 2 compliance. I don't have a big team. Like you said, I don't have approvals. I'm running it. I'm still scrappy, but I'm at a company and it does matter.

Jason Cohen (01:12:20) I can increase leads. I can increase the growth of the company if I'm successful with social media. So I'm highly motivated to stick with it and make it work. I care whether it works or not. And so but I want a simple tool because I'm not a developer. I'm a marketer. I wanna keep it simple so that I understand it and I love it. And I think there's millions of marketers in the world that fall into that category. And so where are they? Not sure. Probably LinkedIn. So I would go in LinkedIn and say, like I'm gonna crush it there. And since I don't know anything about LinkedIn, I would try to partner up with somebody who does.

Jason Cohen (01:12:52) Maybe someone who already has a huge following that could literally be a partner in my company or some kind of thing where they're making a lot of money if they help me. Someone that could like single-handedly triple, quadruple the size of the company by themselves, that's a person I would give 20% of the company to if that actually happened. Again, I'm not talking about raising money. I'm staying bootstrapped, right? I'm very much more like go find the market that exists and go get it. But I think ultimately having gone through all that, I still kind of go back to what Tibo said. I don't like the market of indie hackers. I only sort of like the market of you could be an entrepreneur too because that kind of self help will keep you at 20% cancellation because it doesn't work.

Jason Cohen (01:13:30) Most people will not succeed there. So most of your customers will fail. I personally don't like running a business where I know most of my customers will fail. So for me that's not a market that gets me excited. But I have to go agree with Tibo on like, but you have to stay true to yourself. You have to and you have to… Amplify what you already are. Let's say… That I think we're maybe all in agreement. That it will keep you happy. It's where you're strong. You should double down on that. You should do more of it. And in a way that you're excited about.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (01:14:02) I was just gonna say that it's also a great way to just align interests. Uh yes, it's harder to take people that might uh probably fail in the future, but so your goal is to actually make them successful. And you will just work every day toward this goal, which is

Jason Cohen (01:14:18) Yeah.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (01:14:19) quite nice, I think.

Jason Cohen (01:14:20) It is quite nice, but it will mostly not work. Like one of the unfortunate things about making a book like about a diet is that most people who tried the diet will fail. Now that's okay, it's just how dieting works. But you just have to be okay with that. And so, you know, it just unfortunately in life, everything comes with consequences and trade offs and nothing is perfect. Right? So you have to decide what pile of consequences and trade-offs you want. Right? Um, you've already decided some of them. You want to be a solo founder? You want to grow, not shrink. Okay, well solo founder closes a whole bunch of doors.

Jason Cohen (01:14:53) But that's great. It also opens and makes clear a whole bunch of things. Perfect. That's great. But okay, there's certain things you're not gonna do. Right. All right. So picking your ICP, picking ha you want to do with acquisition. It it's all doing that. It's all closing doors, opening doors, right? Picking your bag of stuff you're willing to do. So it's hard, but man, it's you've built something like look, Tibo's really good at this and he's like, Man, we're not doing nearly as well as you. There you go, you're doing great. So you should be really proud of that. Um and uh yeah, I would just say uh I mean obviously you have a lot to think about, but it's gonna be really exciting to see since you're so open.

Jason Cohen (01:15:32) It's gonna be really fun to see you wrestling with this and then doing whatever you're gonna do, let's just say, for the rest of this year and see where the year ends. That's gonna be really fun to… How are you feeling about this? Like it's a whole lot of shit. How are you feeling right now?

Jack Friks (01:15:46) Um I feel like I definitely have to try a few new things. Well obviously staying true to myself, but um the pricing's exciting to me 'cause that makes a lot of sense. And then everything else is a bit blurry still, I think. The ICP part especially's always been hard for me and that's like gonna be my real challenge. Um I think it's exciting. Why is it hard?

Tibo Louis-Lucas (01:16:08) Is it because it's the most marketing-ish marketing, right? It's about human stuff, it's not deterministic.

Jack Friks (01:16:17) I just think defining it is hard because um even though I know that narrowing in actually expands, it doesn't feel like that ever and I can't get around that.

Jason Cohen (01:16:27) Yes, this is the answer that almost everybody gives. And I feel the same. Every bullet point you put makes the market smaller. You're saying no to people. And it just feels like, no, but I don't want to say no. I don't want to make the decision to say no and exclude. And it's so hard to see that you're not saying no. You're not excluding. You didn't put on your homepage, if you don't satisfy all this, you should leave. You didn't say that. Right? What it does is it it's in your own mind. So that when you go to a plan, you don't write starter for beginners.

Jason Cohen (01:17:02) You don't write that in the first place. You're thinking, wait, what does my ICP want me to say? This.

Jack Friks (01:17:07) Mm-hmm. I guess the other side of the coin is that um I'm afraid of getting it wrong

Jason Cohen (01:17:13) Mm-hmm.

Jack Friks (01:17:14) and then the person I do actually want this isn't their ideal landing page, but I didn't get it right, so I've…

Jason Cohen (01:17:22) Right. But right now you're definitely getting it wrong.

Jack Friks (01:17:25) Yeah, it's clearly, yes.

Jason Cohen (01:17:27) It's definitely wrong now because you're not saying anything. So you're right, but at least you're trying something. And then you'll have better data after that. And so this is part of why I keep going back to who already is it perfect for? Who already has high retention? Because that is who it's perfect for. We're not guessing at this point, right? Like who has high retention, doesn't ask a lot of questions in tech support. What is that? And you might have to interview them to find out. Right? You're not talking to people enough. You need to go interview them so you can find out.

Jason Cohen (01:17:59) Then you'll have much more confidence. Okay, I talk to the people that are already definitionally right, and here's what the things they tend to say. Now, when I write that down as bullet points, now I'm confident. Because I know who they are. They're in my mind. They're like the actual people are even in my mind. I want more of that, you know. So that kind of thing will get you more confident in it.

Jack Friks (01:18:20) And then even when you say like asking them, it could be in any media, it doesn't have to be like a call, it could be like offering them incentive to respond through an email or something like that. Like.

Jason Cohen (01:18:31) I know you don't want to talk to anybody. You will not get good data that way.

Jack Friks (01:18:36) Gotcha.

Jason Cohen (01:18:37) So you don't have to do it. Just like Tibo says, you can say, well, screw it. I want to have fun. I know. But then you will be less certain about who they are, which is okay. It's okay. Just a consequence of I don't want to talk to anybody. Okay. Then you won't really know. And that's okay. You can still make an intelligent guess and uh change things like pricing and positioning around that. That's okay. But if you want to be more certain about it, then you have to find out who they are.

Jack Friks (01:19:05) Yeah,

Jason Cohen (01:19:05) Yeah.

Jack Friks (01:19:06) it makes sense.

Jason Cohen (01:19:07) I'm so on my hobby horse on things like ICPs and blah blah blah blah that even though the final chapter of my book is 100% about finding out who you are and then setting the strategy according to that. Still I feel like Tibo pulled us in that direction more than I usually do, and that's really good. It's really good. Like Tibo feels like being true to yourself is more important than picking the right ICP or getting cancellations down. And I tend to be on the other side. And it's really good for me to be pulled over there like, no, it's really gotta fit, right?

Jason Cohen (01:19:40) Yourself, I mean, right? You know. And you know what's good is the market of people who post on social media is so like infinitely large that surely if you're just yourself whatever that is a big enough niche. Surely. So great. Let's just maybe try to say in better detail what that niche is, not change what it is. Just what better put our finger on what it is so that you can be do that intentionally everywhere else. Like you're already doing it in social. It's done already. But could your homepage say it better? Could the pricing be for them better?

Jason Cohen (01:20:12) As the product evolves, could you have features for them better? Yes. And if you don't encode who that already is, it'll be hard to know what the price is, hard to know what the features are. So that would be my argument for like keeping 100% to what Tibo said, but then saying, of course these other things do have to align with that, right?

Jack Friks (01:20:31) I mean that that's helpful and exciting to aim towards something other than like, you know, a number, but actually like defining it and then narrowing down and focusing and iterating.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (01:20:42) It's the first time of the pod that we see Jack smiling.

Tibo Louis-Lucas (01:20:46) See Jack smiling.