Lenny Rachitsky: uncertainty

Transcript context

…Okay, awesome. And so what's hard about those three things? You said you want to scale the newsletter, you want to increase quality, you want to make the community awesome. What's hard about those things? Or what's standing in your way of doing those? I don't have the answer yet, I guess is the answer. I don't know exactly how to do this yet. You don't know how to do it. Okay. It's probably a service in this case, not a product. What if I was able to give you a service that said, "Lenny, you're going to be able to scale this podcast. We are going to help you find the 500 best guests in the world that are really excellent. We're going to guarantee they show up. You're going to have endless content on your podcast, in your newsletter"? What do you think about that? What do you think about that idea? I'd pay a lot of money for that. Okay. So that's an example of a wow statement. And you probably had in the back of your mind, "How are you going to do that? Is that actually going to work?" That's right. In my experience, that's a good thing and an exciting thing. If I'm pitching a product idea to somebody and they are like, "Wow, does that really work? And if that thing works, I'd sign up for the wait list today." That to me is like, "Okay, now I got to figure out how to build that thing, but I know if I am able to build it and deliver on that promise, they are going to want it." Or you would maybe say signs like you would demonstrate a behavior that shows that you're interested in. You'd be like, "Oh, Todd, can we meet again next week to talk about this?" Or like, "Hey Todd, I actually would love to show this to the people I work with. Can you send me the deck?" Those are the signs that I'm looking for. If you had reacted like, "Yeah, that sounds kind of interesting," that's a no, right? That is a no. The word interesting is a polite way of saying no, right? And so I'm either looking for wow statements or I'm looking for demonstrated behavior that shows interest. I then would probably, if I want to keep going with this, and this is all in the identifying extreme value, I'd ask you, "Well, what stands out as valuable here to you?" And I want to hear you answer quickly. You mentioned it's either going to make my products so much better, it's going to drive success for my business, or it's going to save me a bunch of money or something. Save me a bunch of risk." But something where you would very quickly be able to identify why that's valuable to you. So that part one is extreme value. Then I got to figure out ability to pay and willingness to pay. And for you, this is easy because you're not a 5,000 person company and you're the boss. So this is probably pretty streamlined. There's no procurement function at Lenny's Newsletter. So let's say I'm going after a bigger company. The questions I'd ask on confirming the ability to pay are: are you currently looking for a product like this? Or are you building something internally? This is the Ironclad thing where Jason was like, "Oh, you're looking for a CLM already." Another way I think about it is if a customer has a problem, and I really think they have a problem, and they know they have the problem and they're looking for a solution for the problem. Or they've even tried to build their own solution to it and failed, that's the best customer.…

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