Lihong Hicken

Pierson Krass and I hosted a subscription workshop yesterday with some strong and growing brands in Utah. A few takeaways: 1. This format was more intimate, allowed for more questions, and a deeper understanding of how to better acquire and retain subscribers. 2. No matter the subscription platform you're using, brands are trying to figure out how to get more of them and enable the right sales funnels and retention motions. 3. In awe of Pierson talking to brands under $1m and over $10m in the exact same way. Whenever he recommended a tool it was completely sincere. Disclosed if he's invested in the app (or not). Recommended an app that wasn't his because it would work better for the brand that needed it. I love that. We will definitely be doing more of these! Thanks to those who came out and to our wonderful Utah ecommerce ecosystem. (Yes that's my food on the seat I was taking the pic!)

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Huge News...today, Contractor Commerce launched AI within the platform. That's right. We've been working behind the scenes for months to harness the power of AI to help contractors get EVEN MORE value from their online stores. Today we rolled out the first of several major AI enhancements with 5 awesome customers who wanted to pioneer this new layer of technology alongside us. Ecommerce for contractors is already working - turning website visitors into $$. But we're never satisfied. We wake up every day, listen to our customers, and invest in our platform to help contractors make more money and build thriving companies. We won't stop until every contractor has an online store....now powered by AI. If you want to learn more or supercharge your company website with AI-powered ecommerce, message me. https://lnkd.in/g2YzpAuc #AI #HVAC #ecommerce #contractors

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Employee terminations: they're a topic no one wants to discuss but that every company has to navigate. Thankfully, Melanie Naranjo and wonderful Ethena advisor (& Gusto's former People Leader) Jess Yuen are tackling this tricky topic for the next Ethena webinar. Register if you want to learn more about these topics: How to pressure test whether or not termination is the right course of action Best practices for communicating termination decisions How to minimize risk and choose the best course of action when things get tricky Critical pitfalls to avoid

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In sales, momentum is everything. There's nothing that signals "I will give you incredible value and care about your success" more than a company replying quickly to my messages. Is it me, or are most vendors I talk to are so slow these days? I've been looking for a few SAAS to help us scale. Two YC-backed startups that cold emailed me just stopped replying when I was about to swipe the company card. I even followed up TWICE! This is nuts! Companies spend tons of money on growth strategy, expensive websites, and great-looking products to get potential customers interested. This is such a waste if you can't serve customers quickly. It's the equivalent of having customers walk into your store but having no one to check them out. To all the founders/builders out there, especially in early stages, a reminder that people will buy you and your energy as much as your product. Momentum is everything. Let's build (and sorry for the rant)✌️ #startups #sales #marketing #growth

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Big takeaway from #gainsight #pulse2024: AI is going to free up CSM time to be “more strategic” I have heard some version of this 40+ times in 1 day. What does this actually mean though? I am asking because I really don’t know what people mean when they say “more strategic” I can hypothesize a lot, but I would like to hear from a broader group. What does it mean for CSMs to be “more strategic”? Also, what is the value to a business of CSMs being “more strategic”? Looking forward to hearing perspectives from others!

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Join this discussion (bit.ly/3UljG3Z) to understand how to build a revenue process that's focused on buying rather than selling. Learn how to enable salespeople to run the process and founders to evangelize and bring gravitas.

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If you plan to expand and open a new food truck, you might as well map out your approach. Food truck equipment can cost roughly $25,000 to $100,000 to furnish a fully operational mobile restaurant. And that’s quite an investment to consider. To help you trim down expenses, Menu Tiger - Digital Menu QR Code for Restaurants' expertise is at your service. With our QR code menu software, you can carefully strategize operations and create a food truck menu without requiring many specialized tools, saving money on unnecessary purchases. Here, you can streamline the ordering process, customize the menu in real-time, enhance customer experience, and integrate with payment systems—all using one platform. The benefits and opportunities await. Here are other tactics you can use to reduce unnecessary outflows: • Shop around for deals: Take time to shop around and compare prices from different online and offline suppliers. • Buy used equipment: Consider purchasing used but high-quality equipment instead of brand-new items to save significant money. • Negotiate with suppliers: Don’t be afraid to negotiate to secure a better deal. • Consider leasing or renting food truck equipment: Leasing allows you to spread out the startup cost while renting gives you the flexibility to access equipment temporarily to control your budget. • Focus on essential items: Prioritize spending on equipment for your menu and operations. • DIY and repurpose: Get creative and consider DIY solutions or repurposing items to save money on tools. • Leverage technologies: Advanced technologies can significantly reduce the cost of outfitting your food truck, reducing POS equipment expenses. Unlike other businesses, a mobile kitchen can house various equipment and supplies that jump out of budget. But it should not be a problem if you have excellent cost-saving tactics, like MENU TIGER’s QR code menu, which you can enjoy for as low as $17 a month. It’s a bargain for your budget. Visit the website now and sign up, or you can test out our freemium plan and get 10 QR codes in one store for free!

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I think Parker Conrad of Rippling is an all time great product builder and visionary. But I think he was dead wrong last week when he said "I don't think anyone wants to chat with their HR software". We use Rippling at Optech, and when I needed to pull copies of employment agreements for due diligence, I really wanted to just tell support "find and send me copies of our employment agreements". Instead I spent an hour trying to navigate a thicket of slow and complex UIs. The promise of AI in customer support extends beyond resolving the questions your customers have today. It doesn't matter if you make something self serve in your product *in theory*: if customers don't need to use it often, they're not going to find it buried in your menus, and they're going to contact support anyway. When they do ask support, they don't want an explainer of where to self serve it, they just want the solution. That's where Optech's customers are already going: when AI makes support powerful, scalable and chaper, then we can use it to help customers the way they want to be helped, instead of sending them into UI mazes. We're excited to talk to more forward-thinking support and product teams who want to see how conversational AI can supercharge product value as well as supercharging support.

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The idea that your company needs to "start a movement" seems too vendor-centric to me, particularly for B2B. Businesses are struggling to make money. They want technology that can help them meet their goals. I don't believe prospects want to join "the AI Accounting Revolution," - they just want accounting software that helps them meet their goals (and like, doesn't suck). I think sometimes marketers can get a bit of main character energy when it comes to this stuff. In B2B, our goals as vendors don't belong in the center of our positioning. The value we can deliver for our customers needs to be the core.

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Super honored to have been interviewed for "Scaling Through Chaos" by Index Ventures, where I discuss some of my hardest lessons learned in leading and building teams through my high growth seasons at companies like Porch Group, ClassPass, and Skyscanner, and others. Scaling Through Chaos covers how to build, structure and run a high-performing team. In it they distilled over 200,000 career profiles from more than 200 startups. It's packed with frameworks and case studies from 60 top founders and operators, and offer stage-by-stage guidance on how to make the right decisions across every part of your business. Sometimes I look back on the last two decades and I often wish I could have journaled every day to distill the nuggets of hard lessons learned (I mean whoa, it's been wild, am I right?), luckily this book basically did that - across dozens of operators. Massive thanks to the Index team for their amazing work on this. Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/eS5ungfX #entrepreneurship #growth #author

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Last week on Jason Bay’s webinar Mark Kosoglow called BS on my idea of Inbound-Led Outbound. He said, “Adam, do you REALLY think anything you are doing is new?” It was a fair question. Here's my response: What do I think? - Each individual thing I am doing is not novel in itself - The combination of all of it together is not only unique, it’s tough to replicate Here’s the breakdown of my Inbound-Led Outbound plan, point-by-point, and how it’s new and different: 1. Be the #1 Founder Brand on LinkedIn. Mark said, “Everybody is saying I need to do what Adam’s doing, so it’s going to stop working like anything else.” Frankly, I don't think “everybody” can do what I do. Here’s why: - Few have the patience to learn the craft. It took 12 months of zero results - Few are comfortable sharing what I share. They have investors, etc - Few have the capacity to dedicate their life to it. They're CEOs of scaling co’s. - Few can spend the money on the team and production with ZERO connection to business results. Founder brand is not new. I believe the way that I am approaching it is. 2. Have a crazy freemium offer that drives insane word-of-mouth. My obsession with Mailchimp is ultimately responsible for our insane pricing. Having a free offer is nothing new. I believe that the REASON I’m doing it… Designing a business model that THRIVES when outbound response rates literally go to zero… ESPECIALLY in the product category that we’re in… Makes this unique and different. 3. Get a guest slot on EVERY podcast in the B2B space. The idea of a Podcast Tour is also not new. The issue is that no one wants you until you have a large audience! What’s new is that all of a sudden I can actually get ON all the podcasts. 4. Drive visitors to the site. If they don’t sign up, personalize automated outreach. Retargeting is not new. Person-Level Website Visitor Identity with RB2B IS new. Running visitors through Clay to determine ICP and send a message written by chatGPT IS new (and it converts at 11%!). TAKEAWAY: Mark is right. There is nothing new about any individual thing that I’m doing. I know to some, it just looks like marketing. But I believe that the combination of it all… And the WAY we are doing it… Everything together IS new and different. Everything together is Inbound-Led Outbound.

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CS teams NEED to start "managing up" with execs and the board by talking about REVENUE. Yes, you can keep talking about sentiment and feelings, but start with the $. Don't lead with churn- Bottom-line-focused execs don't like that headline, so you need to tell the story better. An informal poll had CS teams owning over 50% of the revenue of many SaaS companies. Lead with this and have it be your first talking point. From there you will be able to get more things done with other departments, as your requests will be revenue-focused Need to get a Customer Success Platform as you scale? Point to revenue and the potential to lose revenue without efficiencies Need to hire more to prevent burnout? Point to Revenue potential with renewals and upsells Talk in the language your execs and board want to hear.

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Work at a natural pace. In Cal Newport's new book "Slow Productivity" he walks through 3 components to accomplishment without burnout. 1. Do fewer things 2. Work at a natural pace  3. Obsess over quality Working at a natural pace is an area I'm focused on as I transition to whatever is next in my career. Most of my career's natural pace was driven by anxiety, coffee, HIIT workouts and more caffeine - which I'm pretty sure isn't what he means. In my late 40's though, that just doesn't work anymore. Nor do I want it to. It's a tricky philosophy though because if you're in the startup world I don't know how you build something meaningful and work at a natural pace. I've never seen it happen. It appears this is a philosophy that needs to be applied to a specific time and place vs. everyone, everywhere. Anway, I don't have the answers, I'm just exploring different questions. What I do know is working at a natural place seems to be more appropriate for where I am today. 

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I partnered with Kyle Poyar this week to uncover 10 PLG plays that can enhance your customer engagement, streamline processes, and drive revenue growth. Even if your company doesn't identify as Product-Led Growth (PLG), these are strategies from PLG that ANY company should be incorporating. Full post in today's GTM Newsletter by GTMnow, I’ll pop the link in the comments. The TL;DR: 1. Interactive demo on the website 2. Replace hard feature gates and paywalls with soft gates 3. Incorporate a usage-based component to pricing 4. Leverage product data to drive customer outcomes 5. Offer trials for new features 6. Correlate product usage with revenue growth 7. Automate resource-intensive processes with AI 8. Implement smart email nurture cadences 9. Build and leverage power user communities 10. Offer starter packages or proof of concepts ✍️

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A few months ago someone told me they would never consider 'a fractional COO because it's basically a lazy VP Ops' 😂 I really appreciated the honesty! But let me clarify a few things: 1️⃣ A Fractional COO is 𝒏𝒐𝒕 for everyone. For example, if you have a very aligned, organized, and strategic founding team, or if your founding team has worked together successfully in the past. You may not need a COO as you are able to replicate what you did in the past to drive performance. 2️⃣ A Fractional COO is 𝒏𝒐𝒕 a COO or a VP Ops. For the most part, we don't work day-to-day in the business. We don't own responsibilities fully end-to-end (for the most part). We come in to solve a specific problem. For example, you just raised a big round and your investors want you to scale at the speed of light. A fractional COO may come in to design your hiring plan, implement a new tech stack, and map out more efficient workflows. 3️⃣ The title COO is very vague. It can mean so many different things, and that's the same with a fractional COO. Some focus more on optimizing your financials, others on structuring your GTM. For me, 𝐦𝐲 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐬 𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐦 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞. 4️⃣ The engagements vary as well. As mentioned above, we generally don't work in the business day-to-day, but sometimes that happens. We can be full-time, part-time, or project-based. Sometimes that changes over time as well. Many fractionals I know end up building very strong relationships with teams and join them full-time. But mostly, we're more than happy to hire our replacement and end the engagement. For some people, it's not ideal that the role of a fractional COO is so unstructured, but for others, that is exactly what they need. When you have a team full of people with defined roles and responsibilities, in times of growth it's ideal to have someone who can move around, be flexible, and slot in wherever is needed. I hope this helps clarify this a bit, and if you're interested in learning more about hiring a fractional COO, shoot me a DM 📩

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If you haven't launched your GTM content function, highly recommend learning from teams * actively * shipping great work. Some of my favorites right now: 1. Default - esp impressed by their technical product marketing 2. Rho - live example of best-in-class video content execution 3. beehiiv - top drawer B2B socials (well documented by Tommy Clark) 4. Causal - custom benchmark reports paired w/ social proof are crushing 5. Attio - incredibly well written case studies and customer testimonials 6. FERMÀT - killer example of a team building in public w/ clear use cases 7. Hampton - consistently producing lead magnets + benchmark reports

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Posting a few HC roles that are live in case anyone is thinking about making a leap or wants to take a look. 1. CEO of a middle market PE backed services business with an extraordinary, long term, permanent capital partners > Would need to relo - ideally someone who's an up and comer (former consultant, banker turned startup / PE operator) 2. Multiple principal / jr partner level roles for venture funds between $30-500M 3. 2 CFO Roles - (1) series B ($15-20M ARR) (1) Series C ($40-60M) ARR - the former has a solid growth rate, the latter more of a turnaround but high upside / mgmt carve out, etc with GREAT investors 4. CEO for seed stage company ($500k-1M ARR) in food & bev SaaS 5. VP of Rev Marketing for a series D+ company in SaaS (solid growth, massive balance sheet, ability to 2-3x last valuation in 2 years if multiples stay compressed - if they expand, 4-6x) 6. VP/Director of Sales - Need an enterprise seller (Deep understanding of brands, retail, CPG) that ideally wants to be a player / coach - $10-15M ARR 7. CTO for a series A company partnering w/ a strong commercial founder 8. Global SaaS company (based in India) looking to expand into the US looking for a GM ($30-40M ARR) < Ideally spikes in an enterprise sales motion, strong talent following, knows how to build out channel and can manage the P&L 9. (2) Head's of Digital Roles for larger public companies focused on innovation i.e. building out and executing on the strategic roadmap for all things build, buy, partner, etc 10. Multiple marketing, eCommerce and retail sales roles for (Director/VP) for recently public CPG. They make a few of my favorite products in the world!

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Don't invest in a community for your business. Especially because the ROI is so hard to define. But the same should be said of hiring SDR's or marketing agencies or hosting conferences. If you know the exact value your marketing efforts brought in last quarter, good on you. But if you're like the rest of us, here are a few benefits to consider about investing in digital communities: 1. Increased customer investment + constantly learning from consumers = Greater CLV 2. Happy customers will give you new ideas on how to improve existing products. They just might tell you what products they'd pay for too (as long as you know how to listen for it). 3. Consumers care more about social change than meeting your company's bottom line. External voices remind you to align with what matters more than your company would on its own. It's an increased accountability to care for the world, for one another, and even for your staff. 4. It's way more fun than traditional market research. Memes. Jokes. New friendships. It's a win-win-win. 5. It opens up the door for more collaborations than you would have imagined or seen possible. Communities are where ideas are shared. And the smartest communities are those who put some of those wild ideas into practice. Not every brand should invest in communities. But those who want to enjoy their work a bit more should consider it. Not to mention, they will profit significantly from doing so as well. Want to add to the list above? I'm all ears. 

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I’ll be diving into the power of Generative AI for Modern Sellers at an upcoming Colorado Tech Sales Professionals meetup. Here’s a brief look at what’s in store: 1️⃣ What is Generative AI? Understanding the basics, free from jargon. 2️⃣ Framework Application: How to integrate GenAI seamlessly into your sales processes. 3️⃣ Real Examples, Immediate Impact: Tactical examples to boost your productivity across 6 use cases you can apply immediately. Date is TBD, but coming soon. Stay tuned for more. In the meantime, here's a sneak peek at the slides. Send over a comment if you'd like a copy of the prompt examples. #Sales #GenerativeAI #ProfessionalDevelopment

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