Alex Hillman: How your identity impacts your marketing

Small Efforts - with Sean Sun and Andrew Askins

In this week's special guest podcast, Alex Hillman (of Stacking the Bricks and 30x500) joins Andrew to coach him on early stage marketing at MetaMonster. They talk through Andrew's recent failed launch (and why not to worry about it too much), what he's doing differently now, and how your identity as a founder can impact your marketing. Plus, what pro wrestlers get right about identity and storytelling and how to create great content when you aren't an expert in your niche.

There's so much great info packed into this discussion, enjoy! By the way, check out Alex's description of 30x500 at the 12:11 mark for a masterclass in positioning.

Links:

• Follow Andrew on BlueSky: @andrewaskins.com
• Andrew's writing: https://www.andrewaskins.com/
• MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/
• Follow Sean on BlueSky: @seanqsun.com
• Sean's writing: https://seanqsun.com/
• Miscreants: http://miscreants.com/
• Follow Alex on BlueSky: @alexhillman.com
• Jumpstart your product empire in 12 weeks with LaunchFTW

For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.

Transcript:
00:00:01.42

Andrew

All right, so we've got a little bit of a different type of podcast episode. Usually it is me and Sean riffing on the things that we are building, but I'm super excited today because Alex Hillman is here to join us. So Sean is at a conference, so unfortunately couldn't be here today. But as I mentioned on the last episode, Alex very kindly took time out of his day to roast the shit out of my half-assed launch attempt. And then was even more generous and said, hey, I'll take an hour out of my day to come talk to you some more. Let's talk about this in public so that people can learn from this as we work through it together, is super cool. And for anyone who doesn't know Alex's background, Alex has been partnered with Amy Hoy on stacking the bricks and 30 by 500. They've been working on that for, you said 15 years?

00:00:58.53

Alex Hillman

15 years, yeah.

00:01:00.15

Andrew

15 years. I've been reading Stacking the Bricks for ages and really, really love all the content that you all have put out, have looked up to you and Amy for a long time. Still apparently didn't learn anything from from all of that reading, but i'm I'm trying to learn it now.

00:01:15.29

Andrew

So yeah, we're gonna get into it. But Alex, thanks so much for for being here. Just so appreciate you, man.

00:01:22.85

Alex Hillman

Yeah, i'm I'm happy to. This is going to be a good time. And, you know, I think the the common theme through all of this is and there's a lot of folks that read our stuff like our stuff and then willfully do the opposite or think that they did. what We told them and I go, I don't know where you got that from because those words never came out of my mouth. So I say all of that with, you know, with love and, you know, the the roast.

00:01:47.38

Alex Hillman

came from, from that point of view as well. You know, I think that there's, there's cool people doing cool things on the internet. And I know you're, you're a fan of the build in public, trying to eat those and mindset.

00:01:59.19

Alex Hillman

I'm a fan of the help in public. And so that's my thought here is if I can help you, whether it's through a roast on blue sky or a podcast, and there's other folks that that benefit from that perspective, then that's a,

00:02:08.00

Andrew

yeah

00:02:13.34

Alex Hillman

and at least three-way win. I win, you win, and and whoever listens wins. So really, really stoked to get into this.

00:02:18.10

Andrew

Awesome.

00:02:19.52

Alex Hillman

I think you're working on stuff that is common and and easy to get wrong.

00:02:25.03

Andrew

Yeah, appreciate that. Yeah, so to give folks some context, because I imagine there might be people who will listen to this episode who who don't typically listen to small efforts. So a few weeks ago, I sort of kind of launched a alpha-y type thing. Like I'm having trouble even describing it because it was so like half formed. But I basically like got in my head,

00:02:53.09

Andrew

we're okay I'm building this mailing list, I'm getting people on this list, I need to convert these people to you know potential paying users and we don't have a product yet so I need to like kind of pre-sell them but I don't want to actually ask them for money yet so I'm gonna pitch them on being a founding user and I sent out this this one email and basically said like Hey, I want you to be a founding user. You'll get a couple of things. And in return, I want a lot of your time. Click here to sign up. And I'm sort of being facetious, partially to protect my ego, because I candidly was like, once I realized like, kind of how bad I messed up, I was a little embarrassed. Like I had this feeling of like,

00:03:44.44

Andrew

I have run a business before. I thought I knew how to do content marketing and knew how to do some of this stuff. I've been reading your content for years and so um so um realizing that I was making a lot of rookie mistakes was a little embarrassing and so even now as I'm describing it, I'm catching myself using self-deprecating humor as a little bit of a shield.

00:04:04.73

Alex Hillman

that cushion

00:04:05.14

Andrew

hello But but i mean that's kind of that's that's the basic context. I tried to pitch people on being early adopters of some sort. It was a very half-formed ask.

00:04:17.85

Andrew

and and unsurprisingly, the result was kind of crickets. I got one person who responded to me and said, hey, I'd be interested. other than that, no responses. And so I tried to share about this on Blue Sky in that building public mindset and just be like, hey, anyone what what do you all see when you make these kinds of asks early on? And that's when Alex jumped in and was like, hey, tell me more. like what What was the context here? How much did you email these people and And so, yeah, why don't I kick it over to you and you can kind of give that initial context from your side and, you know, we can talk about some of the advice you got and then we'll get into what we're doing next.

00:04:57.12

Alex Hillman

yeah Yeah, I mean, ah you you know first of all, first of all like congrats on shipping anything. like for like to to not Not to backpedal the mistakes that were made, but you know the the making mistakes is is the result of of doing things and trying things. And one of the beautiful things about launches is that there's you know I think there's a myth of a single launch, a single chance.

00:05:22.14

Andrew

Mm hmm.

00:05:23.16

Alex Hillman

And the trut...