Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:22:34 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[00:22:34] S1: And is the idea once you have this insight, say with this physical therapy company, you write it out through the pull framework to kind of pressure, is that, you call that the pull hypothesis, is Yep. That So talk about that. Just like say you have this insight, and I'm curious what you actually found with this physical therapy business and how to kind of start to think about it through the pull framework. [00:22:52] S0: Yeah, so you then take that and say, Okay, this is the kind of idea. I believe this kind of person is... This physical therapist is trying to cut some specific cost on their P and L. I can't actually remember what it was. Unavoidable for XYZ reasons, and their existing options of getting a consultant to come in and do this wasn't good enough for some specific reason. It was too expensive. It was too slow. Wrote out that poll hypothesis. And then what he did next was super important, which was he he showed it to that person and said, is this you? Person said, oh my god. Yeah. That's exactly the thing. He said, okay. Great. Would you buy something if I helped you get this done? Yeah. Totally. Okay. Great. And then he said, I need to go talk to five other physical therapists and just make sure this repeats. And then he did that, and they also pulled, which was the really important thing to make sure he wasn't just building a product for one person. [00:23:49] S1: What is it that he showed this companies at this, for the four bullet points with here's the project, here's why it's unavoidable, or is it something else?
00:23:49 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[00:23:49] S1: What is it that he showed this companies at this, for the four bullet points with here's the project, here's why it's unavoidable, or is it something else? [00:23:57] S0: Yeah, so I actually like recommend having two slides. One slide is basically the pull framework. [00:24:02] S1: You don't have to [00:24:02] S0: show them the pull framework because no one's gonna understand it. You could just say, here's what I hear. You're trying to do X right now because of Y, and you've considered this, but it's not good enough for this reason. You say, do I have that roughly right? And then the second slide is a conceptual overview of how I can help. So it sounds like you're looking for a way to cut this line item that's faster than a consultant. We could offer that for x y z with... Does that kind of fit what you're looking for? And you're looking for the first slide, them to say, oh my god. Yes. And the second slide, yeah. How does it work? How exactly... How do we move forward?
00:24:02 · Rob Snyder, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:24:02] S0: show them the pull framework because no one's gonna understand it. You could just say, here's what I hear. You're trying to do X right now because of Y, and you've considered this, but it's not good enough for this reason. You say, do I have that roughly right? And then the second slide is a conceptual overview of how I can help. So it sounds like you're looking for a way to cut this line item that's faster than a consultant. We could offer that for x y z with... Does that kind of fit what you're looking for? And you're looking for the first slide, them to say, oh my god. Yes. And the second slide, yeah. How does it work? How exactly... How do we move forward? [00:24:43] S1: What I love about your stuff is it's like very plug and play pragmatic. So we'll actually show a slide of the actual template you have people use to fill this out. So the phrasing, I'll read it from this slide too. There's a project on your to do, like this is the project in your to do list, and it's unavoidable right now, because of this, and options you looked into are this, and they're lacking for this reason. Amazing. I love this. So the idea is you have this little slide that you just create and to kind of run by people, and the idea is this is the hypothesis. And what does it look like when there's poll once you show it to them? Is it like they're ready to send you money? Is it their pupils dilate? What do you look for?
00:25:22 · Rob Snyder, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:25:22] S0: Yeah, you look for a couple things. The thing that really, really matters is that they actually try to buy. They say, okay, cool. How do we get started? And they will do that. I have a friend who was selling into... He kind of pivoted around for a while, but he knew he found pull when someone, an exec in pharma, before he had a product said, If you can do that, I will pay you right now. So, okay, that's the signal you are looking for. What you're looking for as well is they're leaning in. Wait a second, you can do what? What you're not looking for is kinda, like, leaned out enthusiasm. Okay. Well, tell me more. Well, let me... Yeah. We'll we'll think about it. Can you send more information so our team can review that? Like, you know, and and any of those kinds of things, anything that is not like, okay. How do we actually move forward on this? It's just not worth your life force going after. [00:26:13] S1: It's interesting how much body language and just, like, the physical experience of getting excited about an idea is is a sign that it is good. I just had Josh Woodward on the podcast, head of Google Labs, and he's similarly... Like, you see a twinkle in their eyes, and their eyes just light up. And it's so interesting that that's a sign of of pull. Yeah. Yeah. [00:26:32] S0: Yeah. Yeah. It's it's... What you're seeing is is it weird for them not to buy right now? Are they, like, are they behaving as if it's weird for them not to buy?
00:26:32 · Rob Snyder, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:26:32] S0: Yeah. Yeah. It's it's... What you're seeing is is it weird for them not to buy right now? Are they, like, are they behaving as if it's weird for them not to buy? [00:26:41] S1: Mhmm. Is... What's... Is there like a limp... Like a... You know, there's like the I will buy this. I do... Like, they say they will buy it versus a sign they will actually buy it. Is it the body language? Like, how do you know they're serious about it? [00:26:54] S0: So I call it, like, a pole shaped action. Not a good good term, but but a pole shaped action is like, need this right now. How do... Like, I am pulling it out of you. How do how do we move forward right now? It is not like a, oh, I could totally see us using this in q four kind of thing. That's a that's a not pulling towards me. That's a kind of pushing out into the future. [00:27:24] S1: Like the urgency of, like, I need this now. There's always this advice of solve your own problem, which is different from what you described. Is that a path you recommend, or would you recommend against that?
00:27:24 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[00:27:24] S1: Like the urgency of, like, I need this now. There's always this advice of solve your own problem, which is different from what you described. Is that a path you recommend, or would you recommend against that? [00:27:34] S0: So a friend, so like Emily, at a company called Clearly AI. She was in security engineering at AWS. And she found something there that she would have paid somebody to solve, but there was nobody out there. And so in that case, it's solve your own problem. Yes. A 100%. Where the solve your own problem falls kind of flat a lot of times is it's a thing that you wouldn't have paid somebody to do for you, but you just think should exist. Right? If it's... And so you have to be honest with yourself. I have done things where I've built things that like, oh, I think the world needs this. I ran into this problem. But if I looked myself in the mirror, I wouldn't have said, yeah, buy this right now. [00:28:20] S1: Along those lines, is this advice mostly for B2B SaaS sort of software, or is this applicable to, say, consumer app? [00:28:28] S0: So I am mostly in the B2B space, but I have seen quite a few people. I've been kinda surprised that a lot of people from the consumer space have have used this as well. And someone sent me the story of, like, Spanx, which was basically... She she did the same thing of of, like, selling one on one with people, seeing how they reacted to figure out all the different pieces of of what became Spanx.