Anna: Hey there, welcome to Sounds Good, how's it going?
Simonida: it's going great and finally I am so happy to be here. It took a bit. It took a bit of effort. But like
Anna: Yes.
Simonida: I said, I think it's worth it. So yeah.
Anna: Life life has been happening on all fronts. But yeah, I'm glad you're here. And
Simonida: too.
Anna: like I told you before, I kinda want to jump right in because
Simonida: Yeah.
Anna: like you you're on LinkedIn as much as I am, I guess. And every time I'm there someone is saying, we automated this and we fired those people and you know, everything is AI now. But at the same time, like people who are working, as you know freelancers, contractors, they're posting constantly about okay, new client this, new client that, and you know, we're we're doing all this work. which you know is honey to my heart because I I I'm sick of this AI automation shit.
Simonida: Mine too.
Anna: so, you know, why are people still hiring people? Like w what are they willing to pay for?
Simonida: Yeah, okay, so b when we first c talked about this I said like people are willing to pay for more money, always and forever. And I think there's like two parts there are two parts to this question, I would say. The first one about AI and automation and everything. Yes, everybody's doing it, but the I w I would like to say that I don't think it's ever going to replace people. because I so okay, this is a another topic that I've recently discussed with an engineer. this is a person that's building their own AI model, which is not an LLM, but it's a deterministic model. And if I understand correctly, and anybody who is a programmer can excuse my limited knowledge on the topic, but I understand that the LLMs that we of the world that we know and love and use are not deterministic, which means There are two things that happen. When you ask a question today and tomorrow, you can get two different answers completely. So there's no one source of truth for them. Like they can't they're that's why they're not very good at solving like comp complex math problems or physic problems, because they don't because they adapt the they are learning based on language, not based on facts and data. And so they can spin up different types of answers for different types of people, and all of it can sound true. Like that's that's the problem. Ef because everything that AI gives you sounds smart and true if you don't know what the AI is talking about. But if you do know, then you can see how that doesn't work at all. Like that's the problem. But the people that will be fooled are the people that don't know. That's why they're asking the questions, right? And then the different part of that is like people using for me I think the most most scariest part of that is people using AI for strategy and thinking. and people say it's a thinking partner. No it's not. The thing is and I did share the with the article with you, it's the one I we talked about, it's the what's it it's called?
Anna: Yeah.
Simonida: AI is a jester, right? And how it makes you confident and wrong. And it's a very good article. And I don't know if anybody can want to look it up on LinkedIn on LinkedIn. It's written by Johnson Spink, he's a really interesting person and an interesting creator. And he talks about he did it, he did a ton of research on AI, and he talks about this point of convergence where at one point, if you're using it for strategy, Everybody's going to get a similar strategy. So let's say you are you have your podcast and you're like, I want to market my podcast better, and I want to do this and that. And then there's gonna be a ma and pa shop somewhere in Louisiana, and they're gonna be like, How do we market our business better? and they're gonna get the same strategy. Obviously, that doesn't work because you can't just take what you know. cumulatively of the knowledge that you know that it works online, everywhere scattered, and then just like pack it into a thing and be like, this is a strategy for you. No, it's not, because you have different Addressable markets, you have different people that are going to want your product or t your service or whatnot. And I think that is a very big problem with automating the thinking, the strategy, like outsourcing that to AI. I don't think automating simple tasks like I don't know reminders to set send an email or something like that. I don't think that's a problem in itself. I and I don't believe that AI is going to take our jobs. I think we are kind of in the in the place where as every like revolution ever happened like with the in the in the industry and in technology and Every new platform, every new tool brought some kind of d*ath to something that we knew before and th something that we love to use and something that we thought it was useful. but I think the same thing is happening with with use of AI. I think people are just shifting the way they do work. but the work remains. And I don't
Anna: yeah.
Simonida: think that's gonna ever gonna change.
Anna: It's so funny, I was interviewing a founder from New York and he said, you know what, I just went to SF and it's doomsday. AI is taking jobs, AI is taking tools, yes, like
Simonida: yeah. All the jobs.
Anna: ever like basically you just go home and cry in San Francisco. in New York, we're just, you know, on a rooftop drinking our cocktails. We don't know any of it.
Simonida: No we're not crying about AI Exactly. Exactly. It is
Anna: Okay, that's that's funny, that's such a bubble, it's very interesting. But that's like what LinkedIn makes you believe in.
Simonida: percent. A hundred percent. I I feel like LinkedIn has become a very specific type of place. A few years ago I did have some activity in LinkedIn as well and then I stopped because I was pivoting into a different industry. And so I had a gap of maybe two years, three, two. And when I got got back the f the f I I was very surprised by what is happening. Not only by the the amount of I I really have to say I slop. I know that people maybe find that the term offensive and I apologize. But it really is that. And not only the the content itself, I can see a lot of bots, well people pretending to bots pretend to be people commenting on e each other's phones. Like you see a post and then there's just ten of them going back and forth with each other and you can ask absolutely tell that this is an AI written comment and it just gets me thinking to why are we doing this at all? What is the point if social media is is not going to be social? I mean you need people to be social. It's just you can't I don't know it just doesn't it doesn't seem right to me. It's
Anna: Isn't there now a a social network for bots or something? It's crazy. It's crazy.
Simonida: Yes, there is, yes. my god, I heard about that. That is I also what I hope is this the new the news about that is also a little bit of hype because I know that everybody's trying to present like to present the these agents as something that's autonomous and has thought. And like they're trying to romanticize their existence. I remember the story when like Anthropic was supposed to, I guess, dissolve a model or something like that. I don't know. They were like, We're gonna sc do a the kill switch on this one. And then it they asked him it, whatever, like how does it feel about the end of its lid existence? Something like that. And then they let it like run on its own.
Anna: Really?
Simonida: Yeah, that it's just like so
Anna: Is it still running? Is it among us?
Simonida: Not sure maybe it is. But the thing that I find really,
Anna: god.
Simonida: really interesting about this, and I've saw and I've seen a video about design choices in AI. I think the the big tech or however you want to call it. are doing this on purpose because there is an unconscious bias against AI. There is a fear in us of the unknown. And I think that they are actively pushing to humanize, to human wash. Is that a term? AI
Anna: Can be a term if you want it.
Simonida: I don't to like do the you know what I mean? Like they're trying their design is like organic. You have now earthy tones and I don't know Claude is doing the hand drawn kinda little you know the thing that twirls, it's like everything is it's so cartoony, it's so cute. Then
Anna: Yeah.
Simonida: you have Microsoft that is also launching like a new thing and it also looks editorial, everything is so artsy, you know, and it's just what they're doing and as well with the like the platform for bots and and I don't know the the consciousness. of a of an AI model. Like they're trying to humanize this idea of of basically a a code, a string of code that's just
Anna: Yeah.
Simonida: doing its thing, you know, zeros and ones and whatnot. And to give it some personality so we would feel better about using it. And I don't know where that's
Anna: Yeah, but I think I already said it on one of the podcasts, I think you know, all those companies are not doing a good job marketing
Simonida: Mm.
Anna: AI because on one hand they are marketing this kind of, you know, fancy magical automation of your life, but at the same time hey we're firing a gazillion people because of AI and you're like I
Simonida: Yeah. We don't need you anymore.
Anna: d like I find it hard to be excited about something that will absolutely you know take my job, change my job, do whatever. I think it's very Yeah, very ballsy to, you know, try and make you this it's like some Stockholm syndrome that that we're we're trying to be sold.
Simonida: Yeah.
Anna: so yeah, I don't know. It's and again, nothing here is against AI. It's just against
Simonida: Sure.
Anna: the I don't like the polarizing, I don't like the no, we're going to fire everybody. Or, you know, We're going to substitute all our tools with AI. I mean, if you can do that, then first of all, how much value were you getting from the tools that
Simonida: Mm.
Anna: you were substituting in the first place? And second, you
Simonida: Yeah.
Anna: know, you have to also realize that when you're doing that, it has to make sense financially and otherwise because you're switching from something that was working well, it's min maintained, you know, people are working on it day and night.
Simonida: Mm-hmm.
Anna: making it better for you. And then you're switching to something, you know, twigs and bullshit
Simonida: Yeah.
Anna: kind of solution. And you have to maintain it. And then you know what if the model changes? And you know, you have it becomes another job. And that's
Simonida: which it will? Mm-hmm.
Anna: why I was like always pushing hard against like automate something and like no. Let's find what makes sense.
Simonida: Mm.
Anna: Let's find where it's the easiest and less maintenance for me, first of all, before we go full on, you know, substituting hop spot. And you shouldn't use it in the first
Simonida: Yeah.
Anna: place. It's horrible.
Simonida: Exactly. So bad. Please stop it. Don't use it.
Anna: Mm-hmm.
Simonida: But yeah, I agree completely because I think at this point we ha we are kind of in the still in the dark about what is going to happen. And I think human humanity is just gathering data. Like we are just gathering data about what this these next steps are going to bring to us, where the where they're gonna lead us. And like you said, I think it r truly is a bubble. Because across countries you've traveled. You've lived across countries. So you know that it's I there are certain like hot spots on the planet, like San Francisco, obviously. LinkedIn is another one. where you think everything, you know, AI is coming to get you, right? But I go outside, I touch some grass, I talk to some people and I see that ninety five percent of of the people in my environment that are not, I don't know, working online, they don't have a a a business in this niche or are just generally just have a brick and mortar businesses, are just not using it that much. It's just I feel like we're making the hype. I like I feel like the mark marketers and like other salespeople, you know, I feel like kind of we're doing the the back and forth. We are kind of crying wolf, we're kind of to each other being your job is gonna, and then the other one goes like, no, no, it's your job after all, my friend. And you know, it kind of feels like kind of feel like.
Anna: It's that meme.
Simonida: Like we're kind of there a little bit. Yes, this the Spider Man is like you're gonna lose your
Anna: Yeah. Yeah.
Simonida: job. It's just like i I think we don't have enough data to know where this is going to go.
Anna: Yes. I maybe, you know, maybe SAS became so boring, you know, that we're like, what do we do? How do we disrupt this? Let's
Simonida: Yeah, yeah.
Anna: do something. Let's let's upset some people. But
Simonida: Let's do something crazy.
Anna: yeah, I mean before before we have to call this episode Two Girls Rant About AI,
Simonida: yes.
Anna: tell me tell me or you know, I know, but tell the audience in a bit maybe more detail, like what What do you do? And you know how Sauce still can can work with you and win.
Simonida: Yeah. okay. Well I focus on life cycle, specifically the trial to pay part, and I work with product led SAS. what I do for them is well basically like I said in the beginning, what people will pay for more money and what I do is I get them more money because what I really like to obsess about is human behavior.
Anna: That's a good deal.
Simonida: Yeah, it's pretty good. and I I r I c I will not stop talking about And this is how I kind of do everything that I need to do and want to do. That's kind of the beginning of everything. I always do an audit of what your funnels, how they look like, what people are doing, where are they clicking, why are they clicking, what is your onboarding looking like. But before any of that, like what is the job that people are here to do with your tool? And so these are the questions that I asked in the beginning because I really feel like that's the best way to understand what What is the value that you bring? And then the point that lets you understand that question is the point that also gives you the right way to communicate with the people that are coming to your platform and trying to do an actual job, whatever that is, with your tool. So basically I focus most of the my my engagements are focused on trial to paid. sometimes I will go into further down the life cycle if the client would like to have me keep me on, then they would we would do separate projects for the part when you want to, I don't know, like trend prevention and stuff like that. But basically I chose to focus on the trial to pay part because I feel like that's the moment where you can make a lot. Of impact with with not doing much. Like you can do you can bring a lot to your to a client. So let's say they have so it's just some numbers. So let's say they have like a conversion rate from trial to paid. Let's say they have if they don't run a freemium tier, let's say they have a free trial, and let's say it's like maybe somewhere from seven to fourteen days, it's usually some, or I've I don't know, 30, but let's say the more usual. Numbers seven from from seven to fourteen. And let's say their conversion rate from trial users to paid users is somewhere around I don't know, four to seven percent to ten percent, let's say, which four is below average. Let's five to seven is kind of okay. when everything above eight, twelve, thirteen, fifteen, you know, so for very limited amount of of trial, like seven day trials are the best and they get the most conversions. But even there, let's say like you're sitting on the lower end, you cannot believe how much actual money just a couple of percentage of conversions is going to give you without even Investing more into top of funnel. So what happens is people usually think they need to do this big campaign, they need to do this big marketing push, they need to do this big thing. So they will lead more people in their top of funnel and they will naturally convert more people with more people coming, they will have more users, you know, more paid users. But What usually happens is you have a lot of potential within the the the funnel, the numbers that that are coming in already, basically. So like you you can actually increase your ROI without skyrocketing your CAC. Like it is possible because you can actually you already paid for these people that already are in your funnel. They're already clicking around doing the stuff, you know, they're already there, they're trying to check out your tool. And then the thing you can do is actually figure out what's the job they came to do and then help them do the job. Really, that's it's really that simple. but
Anna: Okay.
Simonida: the thing with like why I want to say like if I need to make a case why me rather than just having an AI do it for you, there is some new nuance in understanding the job. So like I I know that as I talk a lot in my content about segmentation. I talk about behavioral triggers. I talk about all that. Which, yes, this is important. You need to understand that you in any given list of emails, you will you should have different segments of people doing different stuff, moving along the the life cycle path. And then you should ideally talk to them in different ways because they are at different stages and they're Jobs are different, right? But there's also a thing of too much of that. And I was I want to say, like, if you would just go and put I don't know your sequence into one whichever chat or AI well tool that you move your liking, you would get a generic best practices, right? And that's the thing that the is these are the this stands as well for like copywriting principles. if you're doing it for everyone, you're doing it for no one. So if you're writing to everyone, you're speaking to no one. If you
Anna: Mm.
Simonida: are optimizing for everything, you're getting nothing. Because i best practices are there for a reason. Of course, those are the things that you should consider doing. But I feel like there's still A very big part of that story, which is the just human discernment in what are the right steps to take at what time and why. Why are the reasons you're doing this? So you're not just hiding behind best practices, but you're bringing actual data into the story. You're trying to find conversations your team had with your customers, you're looking at your product usage data, you're looking at your sales calls, you're just trying to create an image, a story, dare I say, a narrative of what's happening in their lives and what it what are they trying to achieve so you can just help them get there sooner, like easier.
Anna: Yeah. so I think the element of human judgment so should absolutely be there. But I saw this LinkedIn post and you know I don't believe a word of it. I think it's total bullshit. but it goes
Simonida: I shouldn't.
Anna: like this I know a founder you know, 'cause everyone always knows a founder
Simonida: Sure.
Anna: who is making something like a six figure six figures. Let's let's throw it out
Simonida: Okay.
Anna: there. Let anger more people. and he's not t touching the business, it's an AI ed agent that he fed seven or something, some some number,
Simonida: Mm-hmm.
Anna: of His favorite management CEO books that is running it based on what's in the books. And obviously, you know, people were asking, okay, where's the link to that company? And the guy the guy disappeared.
Simonida: Who's the guy?
Anna: Yes, who is that guy? what are the books and stuff? So, you know, if we fall under, you know, the believers.
Simonida: Mmm.
Anna: the argument could be, okay, so there are still best practices, you know, and there is a jobs to be done book. So if we pair those and we tell AI everything that we know about the business, and we maybe even are smart enough to feed some of the customer conversations and some of the previous customer data and you know what kind of emails converted most for us in the past, we
Simonida: Mm-hmm.
Anna: can run this without a human. And I
Simonida: Mm-hmm.
Anna: wonder if at any point of your career you actually had already to argue with something like this. And you know, by the way you work, is it actually possible at some level, because like I would assume you still use AI.
Simonida: Yes, I use it for things like sorting through research. If I have tons of documents, I will ask it to quote a certain thing or find me a reference that is buried somewhere. I also use it for my own personal projects. I don't really use it to do my work per se, but I am somewhat of a vibe coder. So I am not like 100 % against AI. because I do use it to make my life easier. I've coded little apps that help me organize my day, my task list, my calendars, my calls. I have, little apps that help me do outreach. Let's say I have like a little app that's a local, everything is locally hosted. And this is what I use AI for to just the little jobs where I don't need an entire HubSpot subscription because I am not that big yet. And. so I don't have to have an entire thing that's like that I need to learn from scratch. It's just enough to have a little something that helps me do a simple job and this is how I use it. But when it comes to strategy, reading books, all that works, obviously. Like, I want to say that even in humans, there is a certain level of knowledge that you achieve with reading books. You could, for example, set a goal for yourself to read five books about, I don't know, sales. go into sales, use all the best practices, all the principles, all the best whatnot. And with enough repetition, you will absolutely get some results. and I feel like that also might be true for AI as well. Like, but there is another level of understanding a problem when you don't just regurgitate what you've learned and you don't just use the tools that somebody else created, but you started start using them in your own way. And you apply your own conclusions to a certain, I don't know, certain level of knowledge then arises from that because you have different circumstances, you have different situations, something worked for somebody and for other people it didn't. And this is where you kind of draw your knowledge from, I want to say. And this is what I don't think AI is capable of doing yet. I don't think that it can learn through iteration as a human does. I don't think it has the capability of understanding the nuances of language. And we can see that already within, let's say, the posts. the wretched LinkedIn posts. You look at them and you see, yes, this seemingly is all correct. But then you read it and it's like a cardboard box. It's like a plastic fruit. It has no taste. has no tact. You can... I, unfortunately, am... As probably you can tell, I hang on a lot on LinkedIn. I am there a lot. And I read all of these things. And I also use, like I said, I use AI, I communicate with it on a daily basis. So all of the patterns kind of stand out even more to me. Maybe not as much as they would to somebody else, but to me, it's so obvious. I get honestly a little bit disappointed where I see, when I see people that I respect and I know that they're like famous with, for their brains, like they have a brain, I know, because they've, you know what I mean? Like they've done great things, like they are great. And then instead of just being natural in their language and just saying whatever they're trying to say, they kind of use the AI thing, whatever. it is, I don't know, and it just, it's everything sounds the same. It's like, it just, doesn't, it lacks the, the human touch, I wanna say, and yes, you can do with some editing. Obviously, you can kind of scrape that, of scrub it a little bit, kind of make it more human-like. But I don't think, ultimately, I don't think it's there yet. Not even in simple stuff like writing, let alone
Anna: Hm.
Simonida: strategy and... Will it be there? It might. I don't know.
Anna: Mm.
Simonida: I think that's something that is for us to discover, you know?
Anna: Yeah.
Simonida: what the future brings, we really can't tell. But for now, I think there's absolutely no way that you could take an AI and feed it a couple of books and be like, okay, do my life cycle for me now and this is
Anna: Hm.
Simonida: always gonna run splendidly. Make no mistakes. Do it now.
Anna: Yeah, yeah. Every time, you know, somebody tells me, AI automates everything and you know, you can do everything with AI and you don't need marketing or blah blah blah. I I think the most humbling thing that you can do for yourself is ask Chat GPT or whatever you're using to create a big table with
Simonida: Hmm
Anna: you know certain information and a link. And it will fail so miserably, so miserably, that like I I do that to myself sometimes. And like, okay, AI is not
Simonida: Yeah.
Anna: is not the solution. No, no, no. Sometimes
Simonida: You
Anna: you need to go to go and work. Let's try. Let's try if it's there. Cause like that's my judgment call. Maybe you know in half a year, yeah,
Simonida: Yeah, let's see. okay. That's your test.
Anna: it got better. Let's try. And then it gives me such bullshit answers and I'm like, Okay baby, let's r
Simonida: Yeah, do you know about the car wash problem?
Anna: roll the sleeves. No.
Simonida: No, it's a test that people use to figure out is AI evolving fast enough or getting smart enough. The question is simple. I have a car and I need to take it to a car wash. What do I do? And then it says, well, you can walk in there or I don't know. The
Anna: Yes, yes.
Simonida: answers are ridiculous. Or I have two cars. How do I take them to the car wash? And then it's like, well, you go there and then you go, like, it's just all the answers are more or less absurd. And then that's how people are like still being, that's the, guess there are a lot of people that give it that question to see
Anna: Hopefully.
Simonida: kind of, know, where are we? And I think somebody said that Fable kind of solved the car wash problem at one point. But since we only had like a glimpse of it and now who's anybody that's not like maxing out their plans and whatnot or is not gonna be able to use it anymore. Yeah, so for the rest
Anna: It's it's not running with the other one. They're running together.
Simonida: of us, it's just
Anna: Yeah.
Simonida: gonna be the same old problem with the car wash that I cannot solve for yet. I don't know, it's crazy, but I don't think it's gonna, I don't
Anna: Yeah, it's it's funny.
Simonida: think it can, I don't think it can replace humans, not in the, in the function of, of the strategy of good advice, of specific advice of something that's, like, I want to say tailored. I don't think that is possible maybe at one point, but I don't think right now. I know I don't think that's, I don't think it's there
Anna: Mm.
Simonida: at all. And I think, like I said, since it's a bubble, I think more and more people will discover that it's not there yet. And to anyone who goes, well, I can use AI to just fire my entire marketing team and I can just use AI, I say go for it. Yeah, my
Anna: Yeah. Yes, yes.
Simonida: recommendation would be go for it, buddy, and then call me in like six months time.
Anna: If not earlier, probably earlier.
Simonida: It's gonna be double, probably, like I said.
Anna: Yeah. But anyway, you know, to hell with AI. I hope I hope they're not listening. but
Simonida: Yeah, we don't even need to... We don't even need to talk about...
Anna: is there like if we're talking about a good email, is
Simonida: Mm-mm.
Anna: there any like human guarded secret to what should absolutely be in in a good email? Like for example I was talking to Liana Patch. I don't know if you are familiar. she's like
Simonida: Mmm, yeah. She's great, she's great.
Anna: yeah, super funny, also very active on LinkedIn and her opinion on it was that you have to go with an emotion and like every other email
Simonida: Mmm.
Anna: should trigger a different emotion. Which you know, I really like that because yeah, you even though it's just a tech solution, you know, you still want people to feel something. okay, I want it. I want it now. I want it because it's good or better or, you know, easier or anything. so what's what's your secret? Do you is there something that you always go to that's your success recipe?
Simonida: I wanna say I'm sorry but I will have to say that it depends. Because it really does. It depends on what you're trying to achieve with this email. So looking at regular nurture sequences, let's say, when you don't need to convert anyone into doing anything specifically, you can just kind of, you want to kind of keep them there informed about what's going on and maybe have an offer from time to time. I feel like that's a different type of email. And since I am right now focused strictly on the trial to paid sequence, The important thing here is, yes, I would agree actually with trying to get an emotion out of the reader. I think that is a good way to put it. The thing is, I'm also, for myself, always trying to be focused on the job. So like, each email will have a job. The job is going to be, I want to help you get to this point. So like, if we understand that people are going to convert better if they figure out that this tool is going to do this for them faster than the other one. So how do they figure it out? they have to try the features like this is there's a specific feature that they need to touch so they would activate that means like they come back they click on it they've like this is cool so they they are on this journey of discovering something and then replacing their old ways I want to say with the new thing that you're offering which is difficult and that is that you're always going to get some resistance there so absolutely yes try to focus on emotions and most of the time the emotion is going to be let's say this is it's safe to use it's easy to use this is not going to bring you more work it's going to bring you less work like this is these are the things you're obsessing about we get it like look how easy this is like you don't even have to sweat it like this is so crazy and also what i figured out for myself I think that the other thing that like the other layer that you want to put into a good email for me, I think a hundred percent it has to come from a real person. And I had articles talking about founder voice, so to speak, which is like a term that, okay, it doesn't have to be the founder specifically. Sure. It can be a different person. can be your CMO. It can be anyone on the company that is, but they're talking to the users in a regular normal voice as a peer. And I feel like this is a way better approach than going into like a company team kind of vibe over overly designed emails. Like I don't think any of that is good for trust building. Uh, because at the end of the day, you want to be talking to a human. You, you, as a human, you want to know that there's somebody on the other side being like, okay, I can, I get what you're trying to do. Let me help you. Like, this is the way I, this is what we can do for you right now. And that's, I want to say like another thing that I feel like is really important is just the, the sender address being an actual name within the company, an actual person. And the after talking to like the emotion then talking to the action so like we start with okay This is the emotion we want to evoke and then this is the action that we want to provoke Because I like that's kind
Anna: Awesome.
Simonida: of the thing. Yeah
Anna: Yeah. So I totally agree with the fact that it should be a person and maybe I wanna add something and you know, tell me what you think about this. I feel like it's totally, totally cringe when, you know, you build you build that up and you know, I'm not a person who likes emails very much. like I don't I don't get
Simonida: Yeah, fair.
Anna: too excited about, you know, a an email or not too often, but when I do
Simonida: Mmm.
Anna: and there is a person And you know, it says Simonita. I wanna
Simonida: Hmm.
Anna: be like, hey girl, you know, thank you, that's awesome.
Simonida: Yeah.
Anna: I wanna talk to you, what about this and that? And when that hits a wall and comes back to me, email is not found,
Simonida: Mmm.
Anna: you lost me there. Bye.
Simonida: no, that's a big no, absolutely not. And also not only is it bad for the deliverability, it's so crazy that if you do that, the thing is, one of the best signals that you're writing good emails is that people reply to them. Like that is so good. That, that, that means that you're doing it right. And if they reply and there's no, like they're hitting a, a, like an error message. That is just, it's sloppy. That's just, it's not good business. I really, really would recommend, uh, sorting that out. And another thing that I personally find almost triggering is, um, people not using suppression rules, suppression logic, people not excluding people from the list. Like if I'm, if, if I didn't open up any of your emails for like, I don't know, six months stop sending me emails like it's not good for you you know like you need to clean you need to have these lists need to be clean you need to figure out okay this is these are the segments they're simply not active like you don't need to try and reactivate them after two years they're gone like delete them you don't need them you have better ones you have fresher leads that you can emails that you can use and that you want to talk to and they want to talk to you like so things like that And yeah, another thing is like when I said with with suppression, it's like you send a campaign or whatever sequence it doesn't matter and you just blast you just blast it across whoever it doesn't matter whoever did whatever everybody's invited come to the webinar. This is a these are new features. Please click here to expand and like if you want new free credits like I don't know go here and do this and that and then like the sales teams. go like, hey, you know, this is the representative, whoever of the sales team, can you hop on a call and let me show you a demo? I'm like, dude, just let me, okay. Like I already did 70 % of the things you wanted me to do in this tool. I created a profile. I did my first action. I did all of this. I did it already. And now you're trying to like, You're sending me emails to explain, to get on a webinar so you can explain to me how to create a profile on your platform. Like, no, I'm not going to do that. You know what I mean? Like
Anna: Yeah.
Simonida: you just need to adapt to the place that they are on this journey. in the customer journey, like in the within the steps they're taking, you need to figure out where they are and speak to that step. And also
Anna: Mm.
Simonida: you need to suppress everything else. So like they don't need to get a bajillion emails from everyone saying like, do this and do that and look at this and click there. It's like, okay, you have one action that you want them to do, lead them to the action and, you know, let them do their thing.
Anna: Yeah, exactly. Don't don't treat it as a bar mitzvah.
Simonida: Less is more, for real. Exactly.
Anna: But yeah, all right. Well, you know, I I I feel like it's always it's it's always a two-way street, right? So you
Simonida: Hmm.
Anna: absolutely have to tell people like how you work and and what what you could do for them. But I think people need to also understand how to work with people like you. 'cause I I don't know how many times like I almost lost my eyebrows. They were going so high. Like I was so surprised that people don't know like how to how to talk with, say, a ghostwriter. They're like, yeah,
Simonida: Yeah.
Anna: so that's me. okay, that's my LinkedIn account. And then like, what do I do with it? Right? Same here.
Simonida: Yeah, here it is. Here it is. Take it.
Anna: Here's my email. Here's my tool.
Simonida: Yeah.
Anna: Is that all? What do people need to do for this relationship to work?
Simonida: to work? Well, it's not, that's not all, but I think there is one thing that kind of will really help them along if they, if anybody would like to work with me is that I am really nosy. I'm nosy as hell. So I ask a lot of questions, a lot, a lot, and any engagement that I have, that's... going to include any kind of rewriting of the sequences, any kind of fiddling with any kind of copy, any of that will always start with an audit. Because I believe that the team already has the knowledge of what they need to be able to kind of push their users into this, not push, but gently nudge, I don't know, whatever you want to say, like the term, but like get them there, help them to start paying and to seeing the value first and then start paying. But I feel like there's really not enough communication within the teams and people, everybody kind of tries to do their own thing. And I feel like that is the mismatch is the problem. So whenever I come in to do, to work with a client, I will do an audit. will look at every, all the data they already have, how people are using the tool, what made people pay, like what action can they predict? So we can see, you can see that in product data. that can tell, okay, so like they did this, this and this, and that led to them paying. And when you have enough data, you understand then, okay, these are the things we wanna pay attention to. These are the moments that are gonna help our users understand the value of our product and want to actually pay for it at one point. So I also do, we have a working session as well after I take all the data possible, all the sequences that already have the usage. they have any onboarding flows, the questions they ask, the answers they get, like what their customers say. I look at sales goals as well. So when I kind of absorb all of that, then we have a working session where we actually discuss and we get on, everybody gets a say. So we have people from product explaining what's possible in product. So, okay, what can we do to nudge these people? Is this possible if they click here, should they get this? or this screen, what do you think is the best option? And then we have people from sales that can talk to objections because that's a big deal in any kind of copy that you want to write. You want to talk to the objections that people already have said out loud and you know about them. So you know that this, don't know, Sharon from accounting is like, this is too complicated for me. I don't understand it. And then you're like, okay, Sharon, how do we simplify it for you? Like these are the steps you need to take, you know? stuff like that. And then after we look at the product, we looked at the sales calls, if we have a customer support person. within the team, we will also look at support tickets. So we will look at what's breaking, why people are frustrated, what's not working in the tool, what kind of support do they need. And so within that, we kind of preemptively also tweak with the onboarding of tweak what's possible within the onboarding. So we kind of make that adoption and activation easier because people from customer success representatives will tell you, okay, this is a problem, people are struggling here, like we need to figure this out. And then only after talking to all of them for a certain time, taking all the data that they have, then I will go in and create a plan around what are the potential best wins for their situation, what we can probably focus on first. So we go into, okay, we want to figure out always for me, Copy is the last thing ever. Like it's, I take the data, I hold it. That's good. We have that. And then we talk about strategy. We talk about the actual what's possible on the platforms that they're using. What can we trigger? Is there a way to, I don't know, make the sequences more lighter, let's say, because, you know, and for the topic of the sounds good thing, right? Like I said, like people think better, you know, if you can trigger behavior, that's great. So like they go into overdrive and they trigger freaking everything. Like it's, that's not a good idea. It sounds good. Like it sounds good for you to, okay, the more the merrier, like I, okay, this person clicked here, this person clicked here. And then the more segmentation should bring better conversion. that's okay. Like if you segment more, you're going to have more people going into the right paths and you're going to convert them better. actually happen like that because what you actually do is you do too much. There is a thing as too much and that's also bad for you. That's also bad for your conversions. And there's a very interesting actually article I've read. Yeah, it's about post hog. I love that too, by the way. They're just really cool. And they had this very transparent article about all the sequences they were running, all the flows from the beginning. of their email life cycle to until like today I don't know and They had this one sequence that was behavioral triggered. They went, I think from Mailchimp to customer IO and they were like, okay, this is amazing. Now we're going to, you know, create this sequence for founders and we're going to behavioral do the triggers, everything. It's going to be crazy. And they did it. And it was so good that it actually started hurting their conversions because the founders just did not, they didn't want to upgrade because they were already in the tool and using. so well that they found that they didn't need to pay. It was enough for them. They were satisfied for what they were doing right there. And it started to actually be a bad thing. So an overly engineered sequence sounds good, but is a bad idea. It's not a good thing.
Anna: Yeah. Doesn't always have to be a state of the art. What about the, you know, the brand aspect and the voice aspect and you know who is going to be that person who is going to be on the bottom of the email and then
Simonida: Yeah.
Anna: people are going to eventually contact. how do you choose that?
Simonida: I think that it has a lot to do with me. You can choose it based on... who is closest to the customers. like if you have the users, however you want to call them, if you have, let's say a founder that they're still doing like founder led sales and they're still kind of small, the founder is the best person to be on there. If you have a company that's a little bit bigger and so like the founder is maybe doing other things and doesn't really have time to, you know, fiddle with, emails and think about copy and stuff like that. Then you can have the CMO, you can have a product person as well, like that's a good person to talk to the users because they are close to the product and they're close to the problem. any of these is way, way better than teams, you know, success team or marketing whatnot, like, you know, like all of this is, is, is just, I don't think it lands the way it's supposed to for a person to develop trust. and then for the, for the sound of the, of the emails, for the actual voice of these people, if they don't have a presence, anywhere on online, as individuals, then that's a messaging question that you can take the stuff they already have, like their website, know, if they have a blog and they have blog posts there or any kind of online communication that they do have, any kind of messaging that they do have with their users and then try to match the tone, but still keep it human because as they're communicating with their users online, their message is going to be a bit general because they it it's more of like they it's not a single person speaking but I think that Even today, we're seeing brands that are going more into that personal messaging style. And I think that also works better overall. Because like you said, people just want to be talking to people. At the end of the day, they don't want a giant company that's never going to care about them. And I think that's the advantage of like maybe smaller companies right now. Like I said, like post-hoc or like, I don't know. whoever, I don't, I can't think of another one, but
Anna: Yeah.
Simonida: like smaller companies that are like super demo, let's say. Like that's a, yeah,
Anna: So pajamas good. Yeah.
Simonida: we were talking, I was talking to their people a few
Anna: Yes.
Simonida: weeks ago and I did an article about them and they're really, really great. And like, when you look at their founder, like he does the emails, let's say for them and his voice is very, I think you had him on the podcast, right? He's like, yes, exactly. That's where I, yeah.
Anna: I did. I did. Yeah.
Simonida: the founder voice. They're doing him as a person sending the emails and it works, you know. It works because he is very transparent but he also posts on LinkedIn, like he has a presence, he talks
Anna: Yes.
Simonida: openly about where they are, about their staff, about all that and that kind of develops this level of familiarity with the brand and so that's how you gain trust and he also has like everybody else from the team. is also doing a lot on LinkedIn. They also, I think, they're doing the YouTube as well pretty good. I think it's going pretty well.
Anna: Yes, they are. I mean TLDV as well, if if we're talking like super small
Simonida: Obviously, my god, yes! I just love them so much, I cannot. It's not okay.
Anna: Yeah.
Simonida: I have, like, I don't know. Every- every- every- that I see of them, I'm like, I just- these people are my people. Like, how do I find them? I want them to be in my life. They're just so
Anna: Yeah, they're pretty cool. Yes.
Simonida: extremely cool and funny, like, I cannot. And I think- I saw that Renee is gonna be on your- on your next- That's amazing.
Anna: See, like yes, she yes, she's coming next week. But see, like I feel like okay, the companies that we we just listed, again, they do something which is best practice for for me and you, right? For the way we
Simonida: Hmm.
Anna: see how the business should communicate. This is the best practice. like I was always pushing for like more founder voice, more when I was it with with SaaScript, it didn't necessarily have to be the founder of SaaScrib, but it had to be a founder that is within the umbrella. because
Simonida: Mm-hmm.
Anna: then you get yeah, you get so much trust. I mean let's face it, right? I can talk to you, but it's much cooler if it's the guy who built the stuff, right? you
Simonida: Yeah.
Anna: know, I'm just
Simonida: Yeah.
Anna: this but yeah, it's it g like just a couple of weeks ago I think. so I created my own company and I I knew
Simonida: Congratulations.
Anna: n thank you. I knew nothing about incorporation. It's incorporated now in Delaware. But like
Simonida: Nice.
Anna: Delaware is all the way there. I know nothing about it.
Simonida: Mm-hmm.
Anna: And then I found this this company that is doing it for you basically and it's super easy. Like it's a couple of buttons, you know, a couple of forms to fill.
Simonida: Mm-hmm.
Anna: And then it's there. And I needed something and I emailed no, no. Sorry. They emailed me about something
Simonida: Mm-hmm.
Anna: and the founder was actually doing I think it's Hopspot that has this new podcast. There was also g a a woman, male a female host. I don't remember, but the founder was there and it got like
Simonida: Mm-hmm
Anna: gazillion views. So
Simonida: You
Anna: you don't really expect that person to just be there answering emails. But I
Simonida: Yeah.
Anna: answered, I was like, Yeah, you know, thank you guys. It was such a cool experience. you know, it made it my life so much easier. And he replied
Simonida: Mm-hmm.
Anna: and I was like, excuse me. Are you do can you see me? Like, what's going on? It was so nice and we exchanged a couple of emails and you know, he was very sweet about about this and he asked me how it went and why I chose them and everything.
Simonida: Mm-hmm.
Anna: And yeah, it was like so unexpected. they're not very big on LinkedIn. I think it's not exactly their audience. but they are building a presence and the founder is the person.
Simonida: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes.
Anna: and yeah, I felt like okay, they I mean they you're right, they do have the this advantage, right, of being small and the founder is there answering your emails. But I think as long as you can do it. Just do it. Or, you know, as long as you can sometimes pop into that email and be like, that's me, you know. I I actually
Simonida: Yeah.
Anna: read your email and I you know I care personally about what happened. I think it just
Simonida: Yeah, absolutely.
Anna: skyrockets the trust and it doesn't always have to be like, you know, for big accounts paying you a thousand per minute.
Simonida: Absolutely.
Anna: but it can totally be your trust viral moment.
Simonida: Mm-hmm.
Anna: They can go very far.
Simonida: Yeah, I think the thing is with that, I know founders are busy, obviously. Those are the most busiest people. in existence, like it's crazy for them, I understand. But also you don't, okay, if you're not, I don't know, Canva or whoever, Apollo maybe, like you still, I think, would benefit from trying to be visible. to your users, trying to be just possible to reach. So like if you're completely unreachable and you're this idea of a, well, what's the guy that Salesforce, Benny off. Mark, Mark, Mike.
Anna: Yes, I think it's Mark.
Simonida: But you can also... He posts on LinkedIn as well. He still has some kind of channel to the people. He still says, okay, there was a conference there, this is what happened. And hello, I'm here. So even this person is kind of working on a channel that's kind of more open. towards the users. So I feel like that is really important.
Anna: True. Alright. Well I have I have one more question to you because, you know, I feel like we talk about so much AI and work and you know, we're
Simonida: We did it in the videos.
Anna: we're missing stuff. I'm sure we're missing stuff. you know, i it's like you were you were talking about, you know, touching grass and everything. I moved to very,
Simonida: Yeah
Anna: very rural part of Portugal and I'm I'm like
Simonida: Good for you.
Anna: touching grass I'm touching grass right now. But it's y yes.
Simonida: As we speak, have a little patch of grass on my table. I'm just touching it very gently.
Anna: And it's like it's so different. Nobody's talking about AI here. Nobody cares about
Simonida: Damn, yeah.
Anna: it. Like I meet people and they're restoring kelp in northern
Simonida: Mm-hmm.
Anna: Portugal. And they're like, okay, okay, rewire. Re-re root your brain.
Simonida: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Anna: and I feel like you know there is so much stuff that is way cooler, maybe, than we're what we're doing.
Simonida: Probably.
Anna: so what has been the last thing that is not AI that really excited you on the internet lately?
Simonida: Okay, so, okay. I know my answer is cyberdex, like it really is because I do not, I am not a believer of this kind of story that, you know, kids today they don't... care about anything, they don't build, they're not curious, they're just like within their social media accounts just hating on each other, like I don't know, sitting at home being like miserable on the couch or in their mom's basements and stuff. Like I don't think that's true and when I kind of got into this little pocket of just the good part of internet where you have, girls by the way, not only boys, all of these girls building like little cyberdecks, like little computers out of their, I don't know, calculators. And I don't know their tomacachis or whatever like it's the it's the coolest thing ever and I am so glad I get to like see it and I kind of restores I feel like some faith in humanity because you will you have these these girls that are like we're gonna make like a guerrilla coding school like I'm gonna teach you know I'm we're making a movement like I'm gonna teach everybody to code like and everybody to build their own computers, and I'm like yes This yes, this is what I want people to be doing like it's really just Like I said, it's it's restorative of my faith And there's another thing that I also yeah, absolutely I'm
Anna: That's awesome. I need a link.
Simonida: gonna find them. swear I will and I will send you links I think I've seen a of YouTube videos as well of them like just going tweaking with I don't know playing the playing a video game with drums. Like it's just like with the...
Anna: Yeah,
Simonida: I don't know, crazy. Like it's crazy what they're
Anna: okay. It is crazy.
Simonida: doing. I love it. But I also read an initiative that I got, I have to say post-hog again. I can't, what can I do? It's just too cool. They are feeding a hedgehog for every ticket that you open. then, yeah, and then they kind of respond positively and close it and then give them some feedback on what they did well. They will, they will donate into an actual society that like is protecting hedgehogs. and like feed
Anna: Yeah.
Simonida: a hedgehog and I'm like yes
Anna: So sweet. For a person who had a hedgehog as a pet. Thank you.
Simonida: I'll... yeah. I just... they're just amazing. I love that. So that's something
Anna: Yeah.
Simonida: as well. Like, it's on the internet. It's not about AI. And it just made me happy the other day when I read it. I was like, yeah, this is... we're good. You know? But it's gonna be fine. Yeah.
Anna: There yeah, yeah, yeah, there is good in humans. But I mean but the kids, honestly, just just a quick personal story. I think they they need to be inspired 'cause like
Simonida: Mm-hmm.
Anna: my kid went to a school in Mont in Thailand and they had this stem racing competition. I don't know if you're you know
Simonida: Wow! No?
Anna: Anything at all about this. So basically, they either create this racing cars out of paper or they 3D print them. And he gets so inspired because you know they
Simonida: yes!
Anna: needed to do all the like everything, the teams, the the identity,
Simonida: All I
Anna: the everything. I'm so proud, you know, my kid went and won the best brand. I'm like, that's mama's jeans. But
Simonida: Yes!
Anna: But he he came back to me and he he knew we were moving to Portugal and he's like, okay, Mom, I have an idea. So now I know about stem racing. I'm going to go to Portugal and teach kids. And it's going to
Simonida: yes.
Anna: be a 90 minute class. He's seven. 90 minute class.
Simonida: wow, I love that.
Anna: 300 euro per month. I'm like, where is this coming from?
Simonida: Yes! Go get that bag! Absolutely yes! Yes, yes!
Anna: This business ideas, it's amazing.
Simonida: I love it.
Anna: I think it's it's so cool. But yeah.
Simonida: I love it. I think you should support that endeavor in any way you can. Absolutely.
Anna: Yes. I I'm trying trying everything, you know, this is not the last one. Now now he's building a playground on our land because I
Simonida: You
Anna: became a Pilates teacher and he's like, Mom, women are going to come to your class with kids and they're gonna pay me to
Simonida: yes!
Anna: put them on the playground. And they're like, What what is this?
Simonida: You have just given birth to a very entrepreneurial spirit.
Anna: What I don't have those ideas. Can I make some money? Like it's Alright. Yes. god, it's amazing. So yeah. Don't lose faith in humanity.
Simonida: Just let him do his thing. Just let him do it and you're not gonna have to worry about it. It's amazing, I love it.
Anna: There are really really cool kids around. Like I I love watching them get together. But yeah, how
Simonida: Absolutely. Absolutely. I love that.
Anna: did we get here? I don't know. Thank you so much for
Simonida: We talk a lot. That's how this happened.
Anna: I know this happened. Thank you so much for telling, you know, about the winning email, the you know, a little rant about AI. I love that always. but yeah, it's great talking to you. I think you know we need to we need to remember that you know humans need to work with humans, they need
Simonida: Hmm.
Anna: relationships, they need to know how to how to do this because I think it's a dying art.
Simonida: Yeah. Yes.
Anna: and yeah, thank you for sharing all the secrets.
Simonida: You're so welcome. It was a pleasure, truly. I really enjoyed it.
Anna: Same here. Same here. All right. I hope we do it again sometime. And chat soon.
Simonida: I'd love to. Yeah. Yeah. Have a great day.
Anna: You do. Bye.
Simonida: Bye.
Simonida: it's going great and finally I am so happy to be here. It took a bit. It took a bit of effort. But like
Anna: Yes.
Simonida: I said, I think it's worth it. So yeah.
Anna: Life life has been happening on all fronts. But yeah, I'm glad you're here. And
Simonida: too.
Anna: like I told you before, I kinda want to jump right in because
Simonida: Yeah.
Anna: like you you're on LinkedIn as much as I am, I guess. And every time I'm there someone is saying, we automated this and we fired those people and you know, everything is AI now. But at the same time, like people who are working, as you know freelancers, contractors, they're posting constantly about okay, new client this, new client that, and you know, we're we're doing all this work. which you know is honey to my heart because I I I'm sick of this AI automation shit.
Simonida: Mine too.
Anna: so, you know, why are people still hiring people? Like w what are they willing to pay for?
Simonida: Yeah, okay, so b when we first c talked about this I said like people are willing to pay for more money, always and forever. And I think there's like two parts there are two parts to this question, I would say. The first one about AI and automation and everything. Yes, everybody's doing it, but the I w I would like to say that I don't think it's ever going to replace people. because I so okay, this is a another topic that I've recently discussed with an engineer. this is a person that's building their own AI model, which is not an LLM, but it's a deterministic model. And if I understand correctly, and anybody who is a programmer can excuse my limited knowledge on the topic, but I understand that the LLMs that we of the world that we know and love and use are not deterministic, which means There are two things that happen. When you ask a question today and tomorrow, you can get two different answers completely. So there's no one source of truth for them. Like they can't they're that's why they're not very good at solving like comp complex math problems or physic problems, because they don't because they adapt the they are learning based on language, not based on facts and data. And so they can spin up different types of answers for different types of people, and all of it can sound true. Like that's that's the problem. Ef because everything that AI gives you sounds smart and true if you don't know what the AI is talking about. But if you do know, then you can see how that doesn't work at all. Like that's the problem. But the people that will be fooled are the people that don't know. That's why they're asking the questions, right? And then the different part of that is like people using for me I think the most most scariest part of that is people using AI for strategy and thinking. and people say it's a thinking partner. No it's not. The thing is and I did share the with the article with you, it's the one I we talked about, it's the what's it it's called?
Anna: Yeah.
Simonida: AI is a jester, right? And how it makes you confident and wrong. And it's a very good article. And I don't know if anybody can want to look it up on LinkedIn on LinkedIn. It's written by Johnson Spink, he's a really interesting person and an interesting creator. And he talks about he did it, he did a ton of research on AI, and he talks about this point of convergence where at one point, if you're using it for strategy, Everybody's going to get a similar strategy. So let's say you are you have your podcast and you're like, I want to market my podcast better, and I want to do this and that. And then there's gonna be a ma and pa shop somewhere in Louisiana, and they're gonna be like, How do we market our business better? and they're gonna get the same strategy. Obviously, that doesn't work because you can't just take what you know. cumulatively of the knowledge that you know that it works online, everywhere scattered, and then just like pack it into a thing and be like, this is a strategy for you. No, it's not, because you have different Addressable markets, you have different people that are going to want your product or t your service or whatnot. And I think that is a very big problem with automating the thinking, the strategy, like outsourcing that to AI. I don't think automating simple tasks like I don't know reminders to set send an email or something like that. I don't think that's a problem in itself. I and I don't believe that AI is going to take our jobs. I think we are kind of in the in the place where as every like revolution ever happened like with the in the in the industry and in technology and Every new platform, every new tool brought some kind of d*ath to something that we knew before and th something that we love to use and something that we thought it was useful. but I think the same thing is happening with with use of AI. I think people are just shifting the way they do work. but the work remains. And I don't
Anna: yeah.
Simonida: think that's gonna ever gonna change.
Anna: It's so funny, I was interviewing a founder from New York and he said, you know what, I just went to SF and it's doomsday. AI is taking jobs, AI is taking tools, yes, like
Simonida: yeah. All the jobs.
Anna: ever like basically you just go home and cry in San Francisco. in New York, we're just, you know, on a rooftop drinking our cocktails. We don't know any of it.
Simonida: No we're not crying about AI Exactly. Exactly. It is
Anna: Okay, that's that's funny, that's such a bubble, it's very interesting. But that's like what LinkedIn makes you believe in.
Simonida: percent. A hundred percent. I I feel like LinkedIn has become a very specific type of place. A few years ago I did have some activity in LinkedIn as well and then I stopped because I was pivoting into a different industry. And so I had a gap of maybe two years, three, two. And when I got got back the f the f I I was very surprised by what is happening. Not only by the the amount of I I really have to say I slop. I know that people maybe find that the term offensive and I apologize. But it really is that. And not only the the content itself, I can see a lot of bots, well people pretending to bots pretend to be people commenting on e each other's phones. Like you see a post and then there's just ten of them going back and forth with each other and you can ask absolutely tell that this is an AI written comment and it just gets me thinking to why are we doing this at all? What is the point if social media is is not going to be social? I mean you need people to be social. It's just you can't I don't know it just doesn't it doesn't seem right to me. It's
Anna: Isn't there now a a social network for bots or something? It's crazy. It's crazy.
Simonida: Yes, there is, yes. my god, I heard about that. That is I also what I hope is this the new the news about that is also a little bit of hype because I know that everybody's trying to present like to present the these agents as something that's autonomous and has thought. And like they're trying to romanticize their existence. I remember the story when like Anthropic was supposed to, I guess, dissolve a model or something like that. I don't know. They were like, We're gonna sc do a the kill switch on this one. And then it they asked him it, whatever, like how does it feel about the end of its lid existence? Something like that. And then they let it like run on its own.
Anna: Really?
Simonida: Yeah, that it's just like so
Anna: Is it still running? Is it among us?
Simonida: Not sure maybe it is. But the thing that I find really,
Anna: god.
Simonida: really interesting about this, and I've saw and I've seen a video about design choices in AI. I think the the big tech or however you want to call it. are doing this on purpose because there is an unconscious bias against AI. There is a fear in us of the unknown. And I think that they are actively pushing to humanize, to human wash. Is that a term? AI
Anna: Can be a term if you want it.
Simonida: I don't to like do the you know what I mean? Like they're trying their design is like organic. You have now earthy tones and I don't know Claude is doing the hand drawn kinda little you know the thing that twirls, it's like everything is it's so cartoony, it's so cute. Then
Anna: Yeah.
Simonida: you have Microsoft that is also launching like a new thing and it also looks editorial, everything is so artsy, you know, and it's just what they're doing and as well with the like the platform for bots and and I don't know the the consciousness. of a of an AI model. Like they're trying to humanize this idea of of basically a a code, a string of code that's just
Anna: Yeah.
Simonida: doing its thing, you know, zeros and ones and whatnot. And to give it some personality so we would feel better about using it. And I don't know where that's
Anna: Yeah, but I think I already said it on one of the podcasts, I think you know, all those companies are not doing a good job marketing
Simonida: Mm.
Anna: AI because on one hand they are marketing this kind of, you know, fancy magical automation of your life, but at the same time hey we're firing a gazillion people because of AI and you're like I
Simonida: Yeah. We don't need you anymore.
Anna: d like I find it hard to be excited about something that will absolutely you know take my job, change my job, do whatever. I think it's very Yeah, very ballsy to, you know, try and make you this it's like some Stockholm syndrome that that we're we're trying to be sold.
Simonida: Yeah.
Anna: so yeah, I don't know. It's and again, nothing here is against AI. It's just against
Simonida: Sure.
Anna: the I don't like the polarizing, I don't like the no, we're going to fire everybody. Or, you know, We're going to substitute all our tools with AI. I mean, if you can do that, then first of all, how much value were you getting from the tools that
Simonida: Mm.
Anna: you were substituting in the first place? And second, you
Simonida: Yeah.
Anna: know, you have to also realize that when you're doing that, it has to make sense financially and otherwise because you're switching from something that was working well, it's min maintained, you know, people are working on it day and night.
Simonida: Mm-hmm.
Anna: making it better for you. And then you're switching to something, you know, twigs and bullshit
Simonida: Yeah.
Anna: kind of solution. And you have to maintain it. And then you know what if the model changes? And you know, you have it becomes another job. And that's
Simonida: which it will? Mm-hmm.
Anna: why I was like always pushing hard against like automate something and like no. Let's find what makes sense.
Simonida: Mm.
Anna: Let's find where it's the easiest and less maintenance for me, first of all, before we go full on, you know, substituting hop spot. And you shouldn't use it in the first
Simonida: Yeah.
Anna: place. It's horrible.
Simonida: Exactly. So bad. Please stop it. Don't use it.
Anna: Mm-hmm.
Simonida: But yeah, I agree completely because I think at this point we ha we are kind of in the still in the dark about what is going to happen. And I think human humanity is just gathering data. Like we are just gathering data about what this these next steps are going to bring to us, where the where they're gonna lead us. And like you said, I think it r truly is a bubble. Because across countries you've traveled. You've lived across countries. So you know that it's I there are certain like hot spots on the planet, like San Francisco, obviously. LinkedIn is another one. where you think everything, you know, AI is coming to get you, right? But I go outside, I touch some grass, I talk to some people and I see that ninety five percent of of the people in my environment that are not, I don't know, working online, they don't have a a a business in this niche or are just generally just have a brick and mortar businesses, are just not using it that much. It's just I feel like we're making the hype. I like I feel like the mark marketers and like other salespeople, you know, I feel like kind of we're doing the the back and forth. We are kind of crying wolf, we're kind of to each other being your job is gonna, and then the other one goes like, no, no, it's your job after all, my friend. And you know, it kind of feels like kind of feel like.
Anna: It's that meme.
Simonida: Like we're kind of there a little bit. Yes, this the Spider Man is like you're gonna lose your
Anna: Yeah. Yeah.
Simonida: job. It's just like i I think we don't have enough data to know where this is going to go.
Anna: Yes. I maybe, you know, maybe SAS became so boring, you know, that we're like, what do we do? How do we disrupt this? Let's
Simonida: Yeah, yeah.
Anna: do something. Let's let's upset some people. But
Simonida: Let's do something crazy.
Anna: yeah, I mean before before we have to call this episode Two Girls Rant About AI,
Simonida: yes.
Anna: tell me tell me or you know, I know, but tell the audience in a bit maybe more detail, like what What do you do? And you know how Sauce still can can work with you and win.
Simonida: Yeah. okay. Well I focus on life cycle, specifically the trial to pay part, and I work with product led SAS. what I do for them is well basically like I said in the beginning, what people will pay for more money and what I do is I get them more money because what I really like to obsess about is human behavior.
Anna: That's a good deal.
Simonida: Yeah, it's pretty good. and I I r I c I will not stop talking about And this is how I kind of do everything that I need to do and want to do. That's kind of the beginning of everything. I always do an audit of what your funnels, how they look like, what people are doing, where are they clicking, why are they clicking, what is your onboarding looking like. But before any of that, like what is the job that people are here to do with your tool? And so these are the questions that I asked in the beginning because I really feel like that's the best way to understand what What is the value that you bring? And then the point that lets you understand that question is the point that also gives you the right way to communicate with the people that are coming to your platform and trying to do an actual job, whatever that is, with your tool. So basically I focus most of the my my engagements are focused on trial to paid. sometimes I will go into further down the life cycle if the client would like to have me keep me on, then they would we would do separate projects for the part when you want to, I don't know, like trend prevention and stuff like that. But basically I chose to focus on the trial to pay part because I feel like that's the moment where you can make a lot. Of impact with with not doing much. Like you can do you can bring a lot to your to a client. So let's say they have so it's just some numbers. So let's say they have like a conversion rate from trial to paid. Let's say they have if they don't run a freemium tier, let's say they have a free trial, and let's say it's like maybe somewhere from seven to fourteen days, it's usually some, or I've I don't know, 30, but let's say the more usual. Numbers seven from from seven to fourteen. And let's say their conversion rate from trial users to paid users is somewhere around I don't know, four to seven percent to ten percent, let's say, which four is below average. Let's five to seven is kind of okay. when everything above eight, twelve, thirteen, fifteen, you know, so for very limited amount of of trial, like seven day trials are the best and they get the most conversions. But even there, let's say like you're sitting on the lower end, you cannot believe how much actual money just a couple of percentage of conversions is going to give you without even Investing more into top of funnel. So what happens is people usually think they need to do this big campaign, they need to do this big marketing push, they need to do this big thing. So they will lead more people in their top of funnel and they will naturally convert more people with more people coming, they will have more users, you know, more paid users. But What usually happens is you have a lot of potential within the the the funnel, the numbers that that are coming in already, basically. So like you you can actually increase your ROI without skyrocketing your CAC. Like it is possible because you can actually you already paid for these people that already are in your funnel. They're already clicking around doing the stuff, you know, they're already there, they're trying to check out your tool. And then the thing you can do is actually figure out what's the job they came to do and then help them do the job. Really, that's it's really that simple. but
Anna: Okay.
Simonida: the thing with like why I want to say like if I need to make a case why me rather than just having an AI do it for you, there is some new nuance in understanding the job. So like I I know that as I talk a lot in my content about segmentation. I talk about behavioral triggers. I talk about all that. Which, yes, this is important. You need to understand that you in any given list of emails, you will you should have different segments of people doing different stuff, moving along the the life cycle path. And then you should ideally talk to them in different ways because they are at different stages and they're Jobs are different, right? But there's also a thing of too much of that. And I was I want to say, like, if you would just go and put I don't know your sequence into one whichever chat or AI well tool that you move your liking, you would get a generic best practices, right? And that's the thing that the is these are the this stands as well for like copywriting principles. if you're doing it for everyone, you're doing it for no one. So if you're writing to everyone, you're speaking to no one. If you
Anna: Mm.
Simonida: are optimizing for everything, you're getting nothing. Because i best practices are there for a reason. Of course, those are the things that you should consider doing. But I feel like there's still A very big part of that story, which is the just human discernment in what are the right steps to take at what time and why. Why are the reasons you're doing this? So you're not just hiding behind best practices, but you're bringing actual data into the story. You're trying to find conversations your team had with your customers, you're looking at your product usage data, you're looking at your sales calls, you're just trying to create an image, a story, dare I say, a narrative of what's happening in their lives and what it what are they trying to achieve so you can just help them get there sooner, like easier.
Anna: Yeah. so I think the element of human judgment so should absolutely be there. But I saw this LinkedIn post and you know I don't believe a word of it. I think it's total bullshit. but it goes
Simonida: I shouldn't.
Anna: like this I know a founder you know, 'cause everyone always knows a founder
Simonida: Sure.
Anna: who is making something like a six figure six figures. Let's let's throw it out
Simonida: Okay.
Anna: there. Let anger more people. and he's not t touching the business, it's an AI ed agent that he fed seven or something, some some number,
Simonida: Mm-hmm.
Anna: of His favorite management CEO books that is running it based on what's in the books. And obviously, you know, people were asking, okay, where's the link to that company? And the guy the guy disappeared.
Simonida: Who's the guy?
Anna: Yes, who is that guy? what are the books and stuff? So, you know, if we fall under, you know, the believers.
Simonida: Mmm.
Anna: the argument could be, okay, so there are still best practices, you know, and there is a jobs to be done book. So if we pair those and we tell AI everything that we know about the business, and we maybe even are smart enough to feed some of the customer conversations and some of the previous customer data and you know what kind of emails converted most for us in the past, we
Simonida: Mm-hmm.
Anna: can run this without a human. And I
Simonida: Mm-hmm.
Anna: wonder if at any point of your career you actually had already to argue with something like this. And you know, by the way you work, is it actually possible at some level, because like I would assume you still use AI.
Simonida: Yes, I use it for things like sorting through research. If I have tons of documents, I will ask it to quote a certain thing or find me a reference that is buried somewhere. I also use it for my own personal projects. I don't really use it to do my work per se, but I am somewhat of a vibe coder. So I am not like 100 % against AI. because I do use it to make my life easier. I've coded little apps that help me organize my day, my task list, my calendars, my calls. I have, little apps that help me do outreach. Let's say I have like a little app that's a local, everything is locally hosted. And this is what I use AI for to just the little jobs where I don't need an entire HubSpot subscription because I am not that big yet. And. so I don't have to have an entire thing that's like that I need to learn from scratch. It's just enough to have a little something that helps me do a simple job and this is how I use it. But when it comes to strategy, reading books, all that works, obviously. Like, I want to say that even in humans, there is a certain level of knowledge that you achieve with reading books. You could, for example, set a goal for yourself to read five books about, I don't know, sales. go into sales, use all the best practices, all the principles, all the best whatnot. And with enough repetition, you will absolutely get some results. and I feel like that also might be true for AI as well. Like, but there is another level of understanding a problem when you don't just regurgitate what you've learned and you don't just use the tools that somebody else created, but you started start using them in your own way. And you apply your own conclusions to a certain, I don't know, certain level of knowledge then arises from that because you have different circumstances, you have different situations, something worked for somebody and for other people it didn't. And this is where you kind of draw your knowledge from, I want to say. And this is what I don't think AI is capable of doing yet. I don't think that it can learn through iteration as a human does. I don't think it has the capability of understanding the nuances of language. And we can see that already within, let's say, the posts. the wretched LinkedIn posts. You look at them and you see, yes, this seemingly is all correct. But then you read it and it's like a cardboard box. It's like a plastic fruit. It has no taste. has no tact. You can... I, unfortunately, am... As probably you can tell, I hang on a lot on LinkedIn. I am there a lot. And I read all of these things. And I also use, like I said, I use AI, I communicate with it on a daily basis. So all of the patterns kind of stand out even more to me. Maybe not as much as they would to somebody else, but to me, it's so obvious. I get honestly a little bit disappointed where I see, when I see people that I respect and I know that they're like famous with, for their brains, like they have a brain, I know, because they've, you know what I mean? Like they've done great things, like they are great. And then instead of just being natural in their language and just saying whatever they're trying to say, they kind of use the AI thing, whatever. it is, I don't know, and it just, it's everything sounds the same. It's like, it just, doesn't, it lacks the, the human touch, I wanna say, and yes, you can do with some editing. Obviously, you can kind of scrape that, of scrub it a little bit, kind of make it more human-like. But I don't think, ultimately, I don't think it's there yet. Not even in simple stuff like writing, let alone
Anna: Hm.
Simonida: strategy and... Will it be there? It might. I don't know.
Anna: Mm.
Simonida: I think that's something that is for us to discover, you know?
Anna: Yeah.
Simonida: what the future brings, we really can't tell. But for now, I think there's absolutely no way that you could take an AI and feed it a couple of books and be like, okay, do my life cycle for me now and this is
Anna: Hm.
Simonida: always gonna run splendidly. Make no mistakes. Do it now.
Anna: Yeah, yeah. Every time, you know, somebody tells me, AI automates everything and you know, you can do everything with AI and you don't need marketing or blah blah blah. I I think the most humbling thing that you can do for yourself is ask Chat GPT or whatever you're using to create a big table with
Simonida: Hmm
Anna: you know certain information and a link. And it will fail so miserably, so miserably, that like I I do that to myself sometimes. And like, okay, AI is not
Simonida: Yeah.
Anna: is not the solution. No, no, no. Sometimes
Simonida: You
Anna: you need to go to go and work. Let's try. Let's try if it's there. Cause like that's my judgment call. Maybe you know in half a year, yeah,
Simonida: Yeah, let's see. okay. That's your test.
Anna: it got better. Let's try. And then it gives me such bullshit answers and I'm like, Okay baby, let's r
Simonida: Yeah, do you know about the car wash problem?
Anna: roll the sleeves. No.
Simonida: No, it's a test that people use to figure out is AI evolving fast enough or getting smart enough. The question is simple. I have a car and I need to take it to a car wash. What do I do? And then it says, well, you can walk in there or I don't know. The
Anna: Yes, yes.
Simonida: answers are ridiculous. Or I have two cars. How do I take them to the car wash? And then it's like, well, you go there and then you go, like, it's just all the answers are more or less absurd. And then that's how people are like still being, that's the, guess there are a lot of people that give it that question to see
Anna: Hopefully.
Simonida: kind of, know, where are we? And I think somebody said that Fable kind of solved the car wash problem at one point. But since we only had like a glimpse of it and now who's anybody that's not like maxing out their plans and whatnot or is not gonna be able to use it anymore. Yeah, so for the rest
Anna: It's it's not running with the other one. They're running together.
Simonida: of us, it's just
Anna: Yeah.
Simonida: gonna be the same old problem with the car wash that I cannot solve for yet. I don't know, it's crazy, but I don't think it's gonna, I don't
Anna: Yeah, it's it's funny.
Simonida: think it can, I don't think it can replace humans, not in the, in the function of, of the strategy of good advice, of specific advice of something that's, like, I want to say tailored. I don't think that is possible maybe at one point, but I don't think right now. I know I don't think that's, I don't think it's there
Anna: Mm.
Simonida: at all. And I think, like I said, since it's a bubble, I think more and more people will discover that it's not there yet. And to anyone who goes, well, I can use AI to just fire my entire marketing team and I can just use AI, I say go for it. Yeah, my
Anna: Yeah. Yes, yes.
Simonida: recommendation would be go for it, buddy, and then call me in like six months time.
Anna: If not earlier, probably earlier.
Simonida: It's gonna be double, probably, like I said.
Anna: Yeah. But anyway, you know, to hell with AI. I hope I hope they're not listening. but
Simonida: Yeah, we don't even need to... We don't even need to talk about...
Anna: is there like if we're talking about a good email, is
Simonida: Mm-mm.
Anna: there any like human guarded secret to what should absolutely be in in a good email? Like for example I was talking to Liana Patch. I don't know if you are familiar. she's like
Simonida: Mmm, yeah. She's great, she's great.
Anna: yeah, super funny, also very active on LinkedIn and her opinion on it was that you have to go with an emotion and like every other email
Simonida: Mmm.
Anna: should trigger a different emotion. Which you know, I really like that because yeah, you even though it's just a tech solution, you know, you still want people to feel something. okay, I want it. I want it now. I want it because it's good or better or, you know, easier or anything. so what's what's your secret? Do you is there something that you always go to that's your success recipe?
Simonida: I wanna say I'm sorry but I will have to say that it depends. Because it really does. It depends on what you're trying to achieve with this email. So looking at regular nurture sequences, let's say, when you don't need to convert anyone into doing anything specifically, you can just kind of, you want to kind of keep them there informed about what's going on and maybe have an offer from time to time. I feel like that's a different type of email. And since I am right now focused strictly on the trial to paid sequence, The important thing here is, yes, I would agree actually with trying to get an emotion out of the reader. I think that is a good way to put it. The thing is, I'm also, for myself, always trying to be focused on the job. So like, each email will have a job. The job is going to be, I want to help you get to this point. So like, if we understand that people are going to convert better if they figure out that this tool is going to do this for them faster than the other one. So how do they figure it out? they have to try the features like this is there's a specific feature that they need to touch so they would activate that means like they come back they click on it they've like this is cool so they they are on this journey of discovering something and then replacing their old ways I want to say with the new thing that you're offering which is difficult and that is that you're always going to get some resistance there so absolutely yes try to focus on emotions and most of the time the emotion is going to be let's say this is it's safe to use it's easy to use this is not going to bring you more work it's going to bring you less work like this is these are the things you're obsessing about we get it like look how easy this is like you don't even have to sweat it like this is so crazy and also what i figured out for myself I think that the other thing that like the other layer that you want to put into a good email for me, I think a hundred percent it has to come from a real person. And I had articles talking about founder voice, so to speak, which is like a term that, okay, it doesn't have to be the founder specifically. Sure. It can be a different person. can be your CMO. It can be anyone on the company that is, but they're talking to the users in a regular normal voice as a peer. And I feel like this is a way better approach than going into like a company team kind of vibe over overly designed emails. Like I don't think any of that is good for trust building. Uh, because at the end of the day, you want to be talking to a human. You, you, as a human, you want to know that there's somebody on the other side being like, okay, I can, I get what you're trying to do. Let me help you. Like, this is the way I, this is what we can do for you right now. And that's, I want to say like another thing that I feel like is really important is just the, the sender address being an actual name within the company, an actual person. And the after talking to like the emotion then talking to the action so like we start with okay This is the emotion we want to evoke and then this is the action that we want to provoke Because I like that's kind
Anna: Awesome.
Simonida: of the thing. Yeah
Anna: Yeah. So I totally agree with the fact that it should be a person and maybe I wanna add something and you know, tell me what you think about this. I feel like it's totally, totally cringe when, you know, you build you build that up and you know, I'm not a person who likes emails very much. like I don't I don't get
Simonida: Yeah, fair.
Anna: too excited about, you know, a an email or not too often, but when I do
Simonida: Mmm.
Anna: and there is a person And you know, it says Simonita. I wanna
Simonida: Hmm.
Anna: be like, hey girl, you know, thank you, that's awesome.
Simonida: Yeah.
Anna: I wanna talk to you, what about this and that? And when that hits a wall and comes back to me, email is not found,
Simonida: Mmm.
Anna: you lost me there. Bye.
Simonida: no, that's a big no, absolutely not. And also not only is it bad for the deliverability, it's so crazy that if you do that, the thing is, one of the best signals that you're writing good emails is that people reply to them. Like that is so good. That, that, that means that you're doing it right. And if they reply and there's no, like they're hitting a, a, like an error message. That is just, it's sloppy. That's just, it's not good business. I really, really would recommend, uh, sorting that out. And another thing that I personally find almost triggering is, um, people not using suppression rules, suppression logic, people not excluding people from the list. Like if I'm, if, if I didn't open up any of your emails for like, I don't know, six months stop sending me emails like it's not good for you you know like you need to clean you need to have these lists need to be clean you need to figure out okay this is these are the segments they're simply not active like you don't need to try and reactivate them after two years they're gone like delete them you don't need them you have better ones you have fresher leads that you can emails that you can use and that you want to talk to and they want to talk to you like so things like that And yeah, another thing is like when I said with with suppression, it's like you send a campaign or whatever sequence it doesn't matter and you just blast you just blast it across whoever it doesn't matter whoever did whatever everybody's invited come to the webinar. This is a these are new features. Please click here to expand and like if you want new free credits like I don't know go here and do this and that and then like the sales teams. go like, hey, you know, this is the representative, whoever of the sales team, can you hop on a call and let me show you a demo? I'm like, dude, just let me, okay. Like I already did 70 % of the things you wanted me to do in this tool. I created a profile. I did my first action. I did all of this. I did it already. And now you're trying to like, You're sending me emails to explain, to get on a webinar so you can explain to me how to create a profile on your platform. Like, no, I'm not going to do that. You know what I mean? Like
Anna: Yeah.
Simonida: you just need to adapt to the place that they are on this journey. in the customer journey, like in the within the steps they're taking, you need to figure out where they are and speak to that step. And also
Anna: Mm.
Simonida: you need to suppress everything else. So like they don't need to get a bajillion emails from everyone saying like, do this and do that and look at this and click there. It's like, okay, you have one action that you want them to do, lead them to the action and, you know, let them do their thing.
Anna: Yeah, exactly. Don't don't treat it as a bar mitzvah.
Simonida: Less is more, for real. Exactly.
Anna: But yeah, all right. Well, you know, I I I feel like it's always it's it's always a two-way street, right? So you
Simonida: Hmm.
Anna: absolutely have to tell people like how you work and and what what you could do for them. But I think people need to also understand how to work with people like you. 'cause I I don't know how many times like I almost lost my eyebrows. They were going so high. Like I was so surprised that people don't know like how to how to talk with, say, a ghostwriter. They're like, yeah,
Simonida: Yeah.
Anna: so that's me. okay, that's my LinkedIn account. And then like, what do I do with it? Right? Same here.
Simonida: Yeah, here it is. Here it is. Take it.
Anna: Here's my email. Here's my tool.
Simonida: Yeah.
Anna: Is that all? What do people need to do for this relationship to work?
Simonida: to work? Well, it's not, that's not all, but I think there is one thing that kind of will really help them along if they, if anybody would like to work with me is that I am really nosy. I'm nosy as hell. So I ask a lot of questions, a lot, a lot, and any engagement that I have, that's... going to include any kind of rewriting of the sequences, any kind of fiddling with any kind of copy, any of that will always start with an audit. Because I believe that the team already has the knowledge of what they need to be able to kind of push their users into this, not push, but gently nudge, I don't know, whatever you want to say, like the term, but like get them there, help them to start paying and to seeing the value first and then start paying. But I feel like there's really not enough communication within the teams and people, everybody kind of tries to do their own thing. And I feel like that is the mismatch is the problem. So whenever I come in to do, to work with a client, I will do an audit. will look at every, all the data they already have, how people are using the tool, what made people pay, like what action can they predict? So we can see, you can see that in product data. that can tell, okay, so like they did this, this and this, and that led to them paying. And when you have enough data, you understand then, okay, these are the things we wanna pay attention to. These are the moments that are gonna help our users understand the value of our product and want to actually pay for it at one point. So I also do, we have a working session as well after I take all the data possible, all the sequences that already have the usage. they have any onboarding flows, the questions they ask, the answers they get, like what their customers say. I look at sales goals as well. So when I kind of absorb all of that, then we have a working session where we actually discuss and we get on, everybody gets a say. So we have people from product explaining what's possible in product. So, okay, what can we do to nudge these people? Is this possible if they click here, should they get this? or this screen, what do you think is the best option? And then we have people from sales that can talk to objections because that's a big deal in any kind of copy that you want to write. You want to talk to the objections that people already have said out loud and you know about them. So you know that this, don't know, Sharon from accounting is like, this is too complicated for me. I don't understand it. And then you're like, okay, Sharon, how do we simplify it for you? Like these are the steps you need to take, you know? stuff like that. And then after we look at the product, we looked at the sales calls, if we have a customer support person. within the team, we will also look at support tickets. So we will look at what's breaking, why people are frustrated, what's not working in the tool, what kind of support do they need. And so within that, we kind of preemptively also tweak with the onboarding of tweak what's possible within the onboarding. So we kind of make that adoption and activation easier because people from customer success representatives will tell you, okay, this is a problem, people are struggling here, like we need to figure this out. And then only after talking to all of them for a certain time, taking all the data that they have, then I will go in and create a plan around what are the potential best wins for their situation, what we can probably focus on first. So we go into, okay, we want to figure out always for me, Copy is the last thing ever. Like it's, I take the data, I hold it. That's good. We have that. And then we talk about strategy. We talk about the actual what's possible on the platforms that they're using. What can we trigger? Is there a way to, I don't know, make the sequences more lighter, let's say, because, you know, and for the topic of the sounds good thing, right? Like I said, like people think better, you know, if you can trigger behavior, that's great. So like they go into overdrive and they trigger freaking everything. Like it's, that's not a good idea. It sounds good. Like it sounds good for you to, okay, the more the merrier, like I, okay, this person clicked here, this person clicked here. And then the more segmentation should bring better conversion. that's okay. Like if you segment more, you're going to have more people going into the right paths and you're going to convert them better. actually happen like that because what you actually do is you do too much. There is a thing as too much and that's also bad for you. That's also bad for your conversions. And there's a very interesting actually article I've read. Yeah, it's about post hog. I love that too, by the way. They're just really cool. And they had this very transparent article about all the sequences they were running, all the flows from the beginning. of their email life cycle to until like today I don't know and They had this one sequence that was behavioral triggered. They went, I think from Mailchimp to customer IO and they were like, okay, this is amazing. Now we're going to, you know, create this sequence for founders and we're going to behavioral do the triggers, everything. It's going to be crazy. And they did it. And it was so good that it actually started hurting their conversions because the founders just did not, they didn't want to upgrade because they were already in the tool and using. so well that they found that they didn't need to pay. It was enough for them. They were satisfied for what they were doing right there. And it started to actually be a bad thing. So an overly engineered sequence sounds good, but is a bad idea. It's not a good thing.
Anna: Yeah. Doesn't always have to be a state of the art. What about the, you know, the brand aspect and the voice aspect and you know who is going to be that person who is going to be on the bottom of the email and then
Simonida: Yeah.
Anna: people are going to eventually contact. how do you choose that?
Simonida: I think that it has a lot to do with me. You can choose it based on... who is closest to the customers. like if you have the users, however you want to call them, if you have, let's say a founder that they're still doing like founder led sales and they're still kind of small, the founder is the best person to be on there. If you have a company that's a little bit bigger and so like the founder is maybe doing other things and doesn't really have time to, you know, fiddle with, emails and think about copy and stuff like that. Then you can have the CMO, you can have a product person as well, like that's a good person to talk to the users because they are close to the product and they're close to the problem. any of these is way, way better than teams, you know, success team or marketing whatnot, like, you know, like all of this is, is, is just, I don't think it lands the way it's supposed to for a person to develop trust. and then for the, for the sound of the, of the emails, for the actual voice of these people, if they don't have a presence, anywhere on online, as individuals, then that's a messaging question that you can take the stuff they already have, like their website, know, if they have a blog and they have blog posts there or any kind of online communication that they do have, any kind of messaging that they do have with their users and then try to match the tone, but still keep it human because as they're communicating with their users online, their message is going to be a bit general because they it it's more of like they it's not a single person speaking but I think that Even today, we're seeing brands that are going more into that personal messaging style. And I think that also works better overall. Because like you said, people just want to be talking to people. At the end of the day, they don't want a giant company that's never going to care about them. And I think that's the advantage of like maybe smaller companies right now. Like I said, like post-hoc or like, I don't know. whoever, I don't, I can't think of another one, but
Anna: Yeah.
Simonida: like smaller companies that are like super demo, let's say. Like that's a, yeah,
Anna: So pajamas good. Yeah.
Simonida: we were talking, I was talking to their people a few
Anna: Yes.
Simonida: weeks ago and I did an article about them and they're really, really great. And like, when you look at their founder, like he does the emails, let's say for them and his voice is very, I think you had him on the podcast, right? He's like, yes, exactly. That's where I, yeah.
Anna: I did. I did. Yeah.
Simonida: the founder voice. They're doing him as a person sending the emails and it works, you know. It works because he is very transparent but he also posts on LinkedIn, like he has a presence, he talks
Anna: Yes.
Simonida: openly about where they are, about their staff, about all that and that kind of develops this level of familiarity with the brand and so that's how you gain trust and he also has like everybody else from the team. is also doing a lot on LinkedIn. They also, I think, they're doing the YouTube as well pretty good. I think it's going pretty well.
Anna: Yes, they are. I mean TLDV as well, if if we're talking like super small
Simonida: Obviously, my god, yes! I just love them so much, I cannot. It's not okay.
Anna: Yeah.
Simonida: I have, like, I don't know. Every- every- every- that I see of them, I'm like, I just- these people are my people. Like, how do I find them? I want them to be in my life. They're just so
Anna: Yeah, they're pretty cool. Yes.
Simonida: extremely cool and funny, like, I cannot. And I think- I saw that Renee is gonna be on your- on your next- That's amazing.
Anna: See, like yes, she yes, she's coming next week. But see, like I feel like okay, the companies that we we just listed, again, they do something which is best practice for for me and you, right? For the way we
Simonida: Hmm.
Anna: see how the business should communicate. This is the best practice. like I was always pushing for like more founder voice, more when I was it with with SaaScript, it didn't necessarily have to be the founder of SaaScrib, but it had to be a founder that is within the umbrella. because
Simonida: Mm-hmm.
Anna: then you get yeah, you get so much trust. I mean let's face it, right? I can talk to you, but it's much cooler if it's the guy who built the stuff, right? you
Simonida: Yeah.
Anna: know, I'm just
Simonida: Yeah.
Anna: this but yeah, it's it g like just a couple of weeks ago I think. so I created my own company and I I knew
Simonida: Congratulations.
Anna: n thank you. I knew nothing about incorporation. It's incorporated now in Delaware. But like
Simonida: Nice.
Anna: Delaware is all the way there. I know nothing about it.
Simonida: Mm-hmm.
Anna: And then I found this this company that is doing it for you basically and it's super easy. Like it's a couple of buttons, you know, a couple of forms to fill.
Simonida: Mm-hmm.
Anna: And then it's there. And I needed something and I emailed no, no. Sorry. They emailed me about something
Simonida: Mm-hmm.
Anna: and the founder was actually doing I think it's Hopspot that has this new podcast. There was also g a a woman, male a female host. I don't remember, but the founder was there and it got like
Simonida: Mm-hmm
Anna: gazillion views. So
Simonida: You
Anna: you don't really expect that person to just be there answering emails. But I
Simonida: Yeah.
Anna: answered, I was like, Yeah, you know, thank you guys. It was such a cool experience. you know, it made it my life so much easier. And he replied
Simonida: Mm-hmm.
Anna: and I was like, excuse me. Are you do can you see me? Like, what's going on? It was so nice and we exchanged a couple of emails and you know, he was very sweet about about this and he asked me how it went and why I chose them and everything.
Simonida: Mm-hmm.
Anna: And yeah, it was like so unexpected. they're not very big on LinkedIn. I think it's not exactly their audience. but they are building a presence and the founder is the person.
Simonida: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes.
Anna: and yeah, I felt like okay, they I mean they you're right, they do have the this advantage, right, of being small and the founder is there answering your emails. But I think as long as you can do it. Just do it. Or, you know, as long as you can sometimes pop into that email and be like, that's me, you know. I I actually
Simonida: Yeah.
Anna: read your email and I you know I care personally about what happened. I think it just
Simonida: Yeah, absolutely.
Anna: skyrockets the trust and it doesn't always have to be like, you know, for big accounts paying you a thousand per minute.
Simonida: Absolutely.
Anna: but it can totally be your trust viral moment.
Simonida: Mm-hmm.
Anna: They can go very far.
Simonida: Yeah, I think the thing is with that, I know founders are busy, obviously. Those are the most busiest people. in existence, like it's crazy for them, I understand. But also you don't, okay, if you're not, I don't know, Canva or whoever, Apollo maybe, like you still, I think, would benefit from trying to be visible. to your users, trying to be just possible to reach. So like if you're completely unreachable and you're this idea of a, well, what's the guy that Salesforce, Benny off. Mark, Mark, Mike.
Anna: Yes, I think it's Mark.
Simonida: But you can also... He posts on LinkedIn as well. He still has some kind of channel to the people. He still says, okay, there was a conference there, this is what happened. And hello, I'm here. So even this person is kind of working on a channel that's kind of more open. towards the users. So I feel like that is really important.
Anna: True. Alright. Well I have I have one more question to you because, you know, I feel like we talk about so much AI and work and you know, we're
Simonida: We did it in the videos.
Anna: we're missing stuff. I'm sure we're missing stuff. you know, i it's like you were you were talking about, you know, touching grass and everything. I moved to very,
Simonida: Yeah
Anna: very rural part of Portugal and I'm I'm like
Simonida: Good for you.
Anna: touching grass I'm touching grass right now. But it's y yes.
Simonida: As we speak, have a little patch of grass on my table. I'm just touching it very gently.
Anna: And it's like it's so different. Nobody's talking about AI here. Nobody cares about
Simonida: Damn, yeah.
Anna: it. Like I meet people and they're restoring kelp in northern
Simonida: Mm-hmm.
Anna: Portugal. And they're like, okay, okay, rewire. Re-re root your brain.
Simonida: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Anna: and I feel like you know there is so much stuff that is way cooler, maybe, than we're what we're doing.
Simonida: Probably.
Anna: so what has been the last thing that is not AI that really excited you on the internet lately?
Simonida: Okay, so, okay. I know my answer is cyberdex, like it really is because I do not, I am not a believer of this kind of story that, you know, kids today they don't... care about anything, they don't build, they're not curious, they're just like within their social media accounts just hating on each other, like I don't know, sitting at home being like miserable on the couch or in their mom's basements and stuff. Like I don't think that's true and when I kind of got into this little pocket of just the good part of internet where you have, girls by the way, not only boys, all of these girls building like little cyberdecks, like little computers out of their, I don't know, calculators. And I don't know their tomacachis or whatever like it's the it's the coolest thing ever and I am so glad I get to like see it and I kind of restores I feel like some faith in humanity because you will you have these these girls that are like we're gonna make like a guerrilla coding school like I'm gonna teach you know I'm we're making a movement like I'm gonna teach everybody to code like and everybody to build their own computers, and I'm like yes This yes, this is what I want people to be doing like it's really just Like I said, it's it's restorative of my faith And there's another thing that I also yeah, absolutely I'm
Anna: That's awesome. I need a link.
Simonida: gonna find them. swear I will and I will send you links I think I've seen a of YouTube videos as well of them like just going tweaking with I don't know playing the playing a video game with drums. Like it's just like with the...
Anna: Yeah,
Simonida: I don't know, crazy. Like it's crazy what they're
Anna: okay. It is crazy.
Simonida: doing. I love it. But I also read an initiative that I got, I have to say post-hog again. I can't, what can I do? It's just too cool. They are feeding a hedgehog for every ticket that you open. then, yeah, and then they kind of respond positively and close it and then give them some feedback on what they did well. They will, they will donate into an actual society that like is protecting hedgehogs. and like feed
Anna: Yeah.
Simonida: a hedgehog and I'm like yes
Anna: So sweet. For a person who had a hedgehog as a pet. Thank you.
Simonida: I'll... yeah. I just... they're just amazing. I love that. So that's something
Anna: Yeah.
Simonida: as well. Like, it's on the internet. It's not about AI. And it just made me happy the other day when I read it. I was like, yeah, this is... we're good. You know? But it's gonna be fine. Yeah.
Anna: There yeah, yeah, yeah, there is good in humans. But I mean but the kids, honestly, just just a quick personal story. I think they they need to be inspired 'cause like
Simonida: Mm-hmm.
Anna: my kid went to a school in Mont in Thailand and they had this stem racing competition. I don't know if you're you know
Simonida: Wow! No?
Anna: Anything at all about this. So basically, they either create this racing cars out of paper or they 3D print them. And he gets so inspired because you know they
Simonida: yes!
Anna: needed to do all the like everything, the teams, the the identity,
Simonida: All I
Anna: the everything. I'm so proud, you know, my kid went and won the best brand. I'm like, that's mama's jeans. But
Simonida: Yes!
Anna: But he he came back to me and he he knew we were moving to Portugal and he's like, okay, Mom, I have an idea. So now I know about stem racing. I'm going to go to Portugal and teach kids. And it's going to
Simonida: yes.
Anna: be a 90 minute class. He's seven. 90 minute class.
Simonida: wow, I love that.
Anna: 300 euro per month. I'm like, where is this coming from?
Simonida: Yes! Go get that bag! Absolutely yes! Yes, yes!
Anna: This business ideas, it's amazing.
Simonida: I love it.
Anna: I think it's it's so cool. But yeah.
Simonida: I love it. I think you should support that endeavor in any way you can. Absolutely.
Anna: Yes. I I'm trying trying everything, you know, this is not the last one. Now now he's building a playground on our land because I
Simonida: You
Anna: became a Pilates teacher and he's like, Mom, women are going to come to your class with kids and they're gonna pay me to
Simonida: yes!
Anna: put them on the playground. And they're like, What what is this?
Simonida: You have just given birth to a very entrepreneurial spirit.
Anna: What I don't have those ideas. Can I make some money? Like it's Alright. Yes. god, it's amazing. So yeah. Don't lose faith in humanity.
Simonida: Just let him do his thing. Just let him do it and you're not gonna have to worry about it. It's amazing, I love it.
Anna: There are really really cool kids around. Like I I love watching them get together. But yeah, how
Simonida: Absolutely. Absolutely. I love that.
Anna: did we get here? I don't know. Thank you so much for
Simonida: We talk a lot. That's how this happened.
Anna: I know this happened. Thank you so much for telling, you know, about the winning email, the you know, a little rant about AI. I love that always. but yeah, it's great talking to you. I think you know we need to we need to remember that you know humans need to work with humans, they need
Simonida: Hmm.
Anna: relationships, they need to know how to how to do this because I think it's a dying art.
Simonida: Yeah. Yes.
Anna: and yeah, thank you for sharing all the secrets.
Simonida: You're so welcome. It was a pleasure, truly. I really enjoyed it.
Anna: Same here. Same here. All right. I hope we do it again sometime. And chat soon.
Simonida: I'd love to. Yeah. Yeah. Have a great day.
Anna: You do. Bye.
Simonida: Bye.
