NOEL: Hello and welcome to Episode 27 of the Tech Done Right podcast, Table XI's podcast about building better software, careers, companies, and communities. I'm Noel Rappin. After you listen to the episode, you can join the conversation. Follow us on Twitter @tech_done_right, where you can get notifications of new episodes and tell us what you think. You can go to our website at TechDoneRight.io where you can leave comments and also see our full catalog of past episodes. We're really curious about what you like and don't like and who you'd like to have us on as guests in future episodes. So, please let us know. Also, if you want to help other people find the show, leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts is a great way to do that. We'd really appreciate your time. Thanks. Today on the podcast we're talking to Suzan Bond. Suzan runs BetOnYourself.com, a service to help technical experts build their careers. And also BetOnYourPeople.com which helps companies grow their employees' careers. Her clients include Sandi Metz and Avdi Grimm. She also hosts the Indiedotes Podcast where people who have built independent careers share their stories. On this show, we talk about how to build an audience for a project where you might be selling technical content or some other content. Suzan will critique my marketing techniques and we'll learn if it's possible for developers to be comfortable with marketing. Suzan's really great at talking about this kind of stuff. I really got a lot out of this conversation, and I hope you do too. Here we are with Suzan Bond. Welcome to the show, Suzan. Would you like to tell everybody who you are? SUZAN: Oh, hi. Thanks so much. Boy, these are always the hardest quizzes, like in an interview, tell us about yourself. It's like, oh my gosh. What? there's so many things. Okay, I'll see if I can do this. [Laughs] NOEL: Next, I'll ask you your biggest weakness. SUZAN: [Laughs] Right. Yeah, exactly. "If you were any animal, what would you be?" Right? Okay. So, I run basically two businesses. One called Bet On Yourself which supports technical experts around their career, and then Bet On Your People which supports technical companies who want to think about career development so that they can provide career paths for their folks. Help retain them and then increase developer or what I call technical expert happiness. NOEL: I'm not sure which of those I want to talk to you about more, because we do some cool stuff here for career growth. SUZAN: Oh, cool. Fun. NOEL: It would be very interesting to talk to you about. But there's a common theme there. In one case, it's people working to develop themselves and in another case it's a team working to develop their people. And the common theme there is personal growth. And what sort of things do you think that developers don't quite understand about what they need to do to grow themselves and grow their careers? SUZAN: It's a good question. Here's how I would answer it. I think the hardest thing is introspection. And by the way, I'm not bagging on developers. it's not just hard for developers. I think it's hard for everybody, right, to kind of take a step back from ourselves, take a step back from all of the busyness of our lives, everything we have to ship and get done, and to be introspective about who we are and what we want. NOEL: Yeah. So, I introspect and in that, my goal there is to try and figure out first of all, what my actual goals are. I often ask people in interviews and I often ask people in career development meetings, what is the most important thing for you to learn in the next six months? Is that the kind of thing that you're talking about, the place where people should start? SUZAN: That's a very important place, but sometimes I think it depends on where you are in your career. And this happens at many points where we have these inflection points where we're not sure what we want. So, I think a lot of times, we go along a path. So for example, I recently coached someone who had been going along the path towards CTO. And they thought, "CTO, I want to be a CTO. This is the path that I'm on." And then as they got closer to that path, they got around the sort of, like, Director/VP of Engineering, they thought, "I'm not really feeling excited about CTO anymore. Is this really what I want?" And so, that begun a period of introspection. "Well wait, what is it that I want? What do I want next?" because then that has a whole host of other things that go along with that, and can help them figure out all these other things that they need to do in their career. NOEL: Alright. So, you try to figure out what you want. And then I guess you need to figure out whether that's something that you can get at the job you are at currently or whether that's something that you need to look for. SUZAN: Right, exactly. And I think also it changes over time. For instance, this person thought they wanted something and then it changed. And so, I think there's a lot that career and personal growth intermingle. And like I said, going back to it, I think the hardest thing that lots of us face is taking time to be introspective and really understand who we are, what we're best at, and what we want right now in our lives, for, let's say the family situation, a personal situation we're in, financial, all of those things. NOEL: What do you think that people can do to -- do you think that it's incumbent on a company that's betting on themselves to give their team an opportunity to do that kind of retrospection? What do you think that they can do to encourage that sort of thought process among their team? SUZAN: Yeah, I think it's a really good question. I think there's a lot you can do in one-on-one's, encouraging and asking what I call, what coaches call powerful questions, like, "Well, what do you want?" I think even leaders or managers, whatever term you use, can begin to infuse their conversations, their career development conversations in those one-on-one's, which should be, one-on-one's should be much more than a status report. I think mostly that's true these days, but just mentioning in case. But I think that's a time where the leader or manager can ask, "Well, what do you want? What's next? What's most important for you?" I think that's one way you can infuse the process with it. NOEL: The question we ask here, and this is part of a thing we call Sticky Note Game which I think I've talked about on this show before, one of the things we do here is that the question we ask is, "What does success look like over the next six months? What would make you feel successful? What would make us feel like your six months was successful?" And what's nice about it at least in our context, we don't limit that to work necessarily, to project outcomes. Like, learning outcomes are a part of success. Personal outcomes are a part of success. And that framing seems to help people think about what they want. SUZAN: Yeah, I like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a little more limited to time and helps them narrow it down a little bit. It's really fabulous. NOEL: When you talk about people choosing to bet on themselves then, assuming that that's what they want, they come out of this introspective session and they're talking about betting on themselves or working on their own growth, what do people need to do as they start taking first steps towards building up their opportunities looking for growth? Where should people start? SUZAN: It's hard because there's so many different paths they might be going, right? So, they might say, "Oh, I want to be a manager," or," Oh, I want to be a tech lead," or, "I want to learn this kind of technology," or, "Oh, I want to go work for myself," right? NOEL: Yeah. Let's pick one and let's talk about in the context of doing this podcast sponsored by my company, if I say, "Let's talk about people who want to work independently," [Laughs] that's a little fraught. SUZAN: [Laughs] NOEL: No, but let's talk about that one, because I think that one, that one's interesting. And I know you've done a lot of work with developers who have built up independent, even if it's not independent full-time jobs, but who have built up independent projects. Where do people start? Let's say hypothetically that I'm trying to create some courseware or something that might be a side project on my own independently. How do people start to build that kind of project? SUZAN: Yeah, I think what you mean is, you don't mean from a technical perspective. Do you mean from everything else? NOEL: Yeah, so let's say I understand a certain technology and I would like to have some sort of project where I am delivering courseware on that technology. But I don't understand what to do once I have the courseware on the technology in place. What do you do with that? How do you start? SUZAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I feel like the developers are often fairly good at the technical stuff, because that's their job. But it's the other things that can be challenging. The first thing that I would do, so here's what I'm going to say. There are so many things that surround it, but I'm going to talk about a particular thing which is marketing it or getting the word out, promoting it, whatever language you want to use there. All of it makes developers uncomfortable, or some of it makes them uncomfortable. So, I would say it's about, how do you market or promote this product and yourself? Here's the place that people often start, again not just software developers. Where they often start is to see, well, what has everybody else done? And they think, "Okay, well I've seen people go networking and just shake people's hands and give out their business cards," which they think, "Oh, I have to do that." Or, "I have to do internet marketing in the vein of Brennan Dunn maybe," who is very popular with this, or Amy Hoy. And those are all fine methods, but they may or may not work for you and the situation you're in. and so, what I always advise folks is when you're thinking about, you want to get the word out on something you're working on, you need to start thinking about, well, A, what is that about? What is this project about? What might be some natural ways, who are the people who might be interested? And then also, maybe a little bit counter-intuitively, who am I? There is actually so many ways to promote your work and yourself that I think people miss and they try to do things that actually they don't feel comfortable. So for example, a developer came to me and they wanted to promote something and going on the speaker circuit. But there was just something when we talked that didn't sound, I didn't feel joy. I feel like Marie Kondo right now. This task does not bring me joy. [Laughter] SUZAN: And so I said, do you actually enjoy speaking? And they said, "Not really." "So, why are you doing it?" "Well, isn't that what I have to do to build a reputation?" So, it's this idea, right? Maybe. My response was, well, maybe, but maybe not. So, it's this idea that we have to understand not only, there's a lot of be understood about what that product is but also who am I as a person. Does that make sense? NOEL: Yeah. One of the things that I said about marketing is that the stuff that I do that feels comfortable doesn't feel effective. [Chuckles] And the stuff that feels effective doesn't feel comfortable. SUZAN: Ooh, interesting. NOEL: And that's a problem for me. I have tried to sell books and things on the internet for nearly a decade now. And I honestly have no idea what is effective. What I mean by that is that being online and to the extent that I'm on Twitter or whatever, or being at conferences, that obliquely raises my profile and does things like that. And the part where I'm actually explicitly saying, "Hey, I have this thing and it would probably help you if you bought it," that starts to feel uncomfortable probably, which is my problem as much as anything else. But how do you deal with people who get caught in that, nothing I'm comfortable with feels like it's effective? SUZAN: It's hard. Because there's always a certain, here's an uncomfortable truth about promoting something, that for most of us it's often going to feel uncomfortable. There's going to be a little bit of discomfort putting ourselves out there. I think that that's just always partially true. It's hard. So, I'm going to offer some broad strokes [Chuckles], thoughts here. There's lots of specifics and variety in here that is going to be missed in that. But in general, I find that folks do best when they have to put themselves out there when they're doing something that feels more in their wheelhouse. So for example, one of the ways that I best promote myself is I just go to conferences because I love people. So, I just go and talk to people. I don't hand out my business card. Never. Hi, I'm Suzan. I don't even carry business cards. [Chuckles] I don't think I even have any that are current. But I just go and I talk with people. So, that's more comfortable for me. That's in my wheelhouse, rather than trying to do something completely out of my wheelhouse. So, you've got to distinguish those two things, between something that's in your wheelhouse and feels a little bit uncomfortable versus something that is just not who you are. NOEL: Yeah. And I think some of it just comes down to believing that the thing that you're doing has value and that other people -- SUZAN: Yes. NOEL: Will see the value in it. I actually have a funny brief story about business cards. SUZAN: Oh my gosh, tell me. What's your story about business cards? NOEL: I don't know, not funny, I don't know. One of the first Ruby things that I ever attended, Pragmatic used to do these things called The Rails Edge. They were what became basically regional Ruby conferences but they were hosting them in a couple of cities. And very shortly after I became a professional Ruby developer, they held one in Chicago and I went. And Dave Thomas, Pragmatic Press, Dave Thomas was there. It was the first time I had met him. I was already kind of a technical author, was very excited to meet him, really wanted to write for Pragmatic. And I had just gotten separately this metal business card holder that had my initials engraved on it which for some reason I thought was cool at the time. SUZAN: [Laughs] I had one of those, too. I thought I was cool. [Laughter] NOEL: And I went up to him and sort of babbled something about how I was a writer. And I didn't realize how Pragmatic worked and I was kind of suggesting that I might write for them. And I handed him my card in this holder and he gave me a look like, he looked at me like he had no idea what I was doing or why I thought this was a good idea -- [Chuckles] SUZAN: Aww. [Laughs] NOEL: In any way, shape, or form. He was very polite about it but it was clear that he was baffled by me, whatever I was saying, why I was giving him a business card, and why I was giving him a business card in this holder. I've never actually asked him whether he remembers that. And I probably never will. [Chuckles] SUZAN: We all have those moments I feel like where we're feeling awkward and uncomfortable and, "What are we doing? I'm not sure what I'm doing right now." [Laughs] NOEL: Yeah, yeah. But you know, if you feel like you have something to offer to people, the first start is you have to believe that it has value and that other people will see the value. And I say that as somebody who often struggles with trying to place value on the things that I put out there. SUZAN: Right. NOEL: The project that you're doing, the thing that you're doing, you need to believe in that first of all. SUZAN: One hundred percent. There is no substitute for that. If you don't, you're in trouble before you start it, right? It's going to be much harder to do. Well, and can I go back to something that you said for a minute? NOEL: Yeah. SUZAN: I'd love to go back to what you said about selling a book and maybe it doesn't sell as much as you want. I think, I just want to be clear -- NOEL: We'll go with, maybe doesn't sell as much, yeah. SUZAN: [Laughs] We'll go with 'maybe'. Air quotes over here. Here's what I want to say to you and to everybody listening, is books don't sell. We all say, there's always this desire to write then we see these success stories. But the reality is, they're incredibly hard side projects or projects to create and then to sell. They really are. I just had to say that so that, I don't want to say, "Well, if you had just done something different, Noel, you would have been much better off." No, I think they're really, really hard. [Laughs] NOEL: This seems like an excellent time to mention that 'Rails 5 Test Prescriptions' is available in beta at PragProg.com. SUZAN: [Laughs] You can get it today. NOEL: No, it's true. It is true. The economics of it are weird because as an author you are putting in all of your time upfront. SUZAN: Right. NOEL: At least in a traditional publishing model. You are putting in a lot of time upfront against a return, versus something where you're doing courseware or something that is released in smaller, more frequent chunks where you can get some feedback and course-correct. SUZAN: Right. It's hard. It's incredibly hard. I just had to mention that because there is this myth out there that I just absolutely want to dispel that, I don't know, is writing a book a good way to make money? And is it easy to do? I don't know that -- I mean, if you must write a book, absolutely do it. I don't mean to sound like a crank here. I'm just trying to dispel the myth and make sure, because I feel like there's a lot of people who are sitting alone who maybe have a thought. By the way, I'm one of them. I wrote a book and it didn't… it sold okay. Of course, it was 2005. It was way before e-books were like, there was no tools. But I think there’s a lot of people who have probably been in that situation and they’re wondering if maybe I’m just not good at promoting myself or marketing, and I don’t want them to give up on themselves. NOEL: I would say first of all, I absolutely did not have you on this podcast so I could get an hour of coaching time… SUZAN: [Laughs] NOEL: On how to sell my books. [Laughs] I just want to get that out. I just want to clear that up right now. If I get some good advice out of it, great. But… SUZAN: Right. NOEL: I also think, especially if you are a developer who is closer to my age, that’s a market change. When I learned as a developer, it was possible to make a much better living as a regular technical writer in the post-development, pre-internet era. There was a brief window. And I think that many people who came up in my age, I was just talking to Avdi about this when we had him on the podcast a little bit ago and we were talking about the books that we learned from. And I think that many people who are my age had this experience where these books were tremendously important in their own professional development and see writing books as, because of that, the way to contribute to that. And it’s not clear to me that that’s the best way to contribute anymore. In fact, it’s probably not. Maybe it is. For some things it is. SUZAN: Right. Things change. You’re talking to a really important context. Things change. So, I care about this issue because I don’t want someone who didn’t sell a book well to think they’re not good at marketing or that they should then never do a side project or never try something of their own again. And I think that happens too often. NOEL: So, how should we approach a side project? How should we think about the way… let’s say I have an idea or something that I have expertise in that I would like to share that expertise with other people. I would like them to give me money in exchange for it. How do you approach structuring that? SUZAN: First of all, I think the first thing to understand is that promoting something takes an incredibly long time. NOEL: Yeah, you hear about the 10-year overnight sensation. SUZAN: Exactly, exactly. There are very few things that have gone 'viral', I'm using air quotes over here, just truly, purely viral, with very little effort. So, I say that, and I say it because oftentimes when someone starts to work on a side project, they put their head down and think only about the creation of the product or the project, whatever that is. And I think that there's a time when absolutely you want to do that. But the thing that I see most often is folks wait way too long to begin promoting it or even thinking about, well who is this for and what might be the channels and how will I get it out into the world? So, the advice there is start earlier than you think you need to. NOEL: And start not just the technical content but also thinking about who is going to find value in this, and where do I find those people? SUZAN: Right, right, right. And along with that, a corollary is how do I present myself as someone who is credible on this topic? Sometimes, you might already have that built in because you've already been working for quite a long time. But sometimes, you're working on something that's a new area, maybe a public area, meaning like others may not know that you're interested or have experience with this topic. NOEL: Yeah. And I think that even if you have been working on something for a while, you still need to come up with a story of, "This is why you should listen to me on this topic." It helps to be able to explain that to somebody. SUZAN: Well, it does. And to think about a very light low-weight background way to begin promoting this, if you will, is to just start talking about the topic on Twitter or wherever, right? NOEL: Yeah, one thing I tell people is to start off by doing a short but regular blog series on a topic. SUZAN: Yup. NOEL: This is not necessarily marketing advice as much as writing or presenting advice, to find out whether you enjoy doing it. SUZAN: Mm. NOEL: And I kind of think that doing something regularly is a good way to build up an audience. If you say, "We're going to have JavaScript Wednesday." SUZAN: For sure. NOEL: And Webpack Wednesday, there we go. SUZAN: [Laughs] NOEL: Let me give you a Webpack tip every Wednesday. People sometimes ask me, they don't ask me how to market stuff because it's obvious that I'm a disaster at it. But people do ask me how to put courseware or something like that together. And the reason that I give that advice is that it gets you in the habit of doing something regularly and lets you find out whether you enjoy doing that and can do it regularly before you make a big commitment. SUZAN: For sure. And it happens to be good for marketing too. Doing something regularly can absolutely be a good piece to get the word out there about it. NOEL: Once you put something out there, you need to try and learn about the people who are finding it valuable. SUZAN: Yeah, absolutely. NOEL: Are there things that you recommend that people do in that step to try and understand more about their audience? SUZAN: Sure, absolutely. It's going to the places that are online and listening to what they're saying. You can do that. I think Amy Hoy talks about this as 'watering holes'. So, if folks want to research more about that. So, that's one way, absolutely, is listening to what your audience is saying. And you can do that indirectly by going to places where they're talking about whatever this particular issue is that you're working on, what problem you're solving, which I think is a reminder. We should all be trying to solve a problem, not just build something cool. Cool is nice, but if you want to build something that potentially makes you money, solving a problem is best. I think everybody knows that. But the other way you can engage with your audience is by doing what they call customer development and just interviewing and talking with people, specifically about what they're facing. NOEL: Yeah. When you start to have that information, what are some of the ways that you can incorporate that information into your planning and into your release and into your marketing? SUZAN: What I always look for when I do those kinds of things is I'm looking for themes and patterns. What's the theme and what's the pattern? I think also, if you talk to folks, you can use their exact language. So, I think one of the things, I was just talking with a team about this last week, there's a way in which we can synthesize what we think the problem is or the pain that someone is feeling. And we can synthesize it and in our own mind, the way we understand it or think about it, but what may not happen -- when it comes to marketing you need to make sure that you're speaking in your audience's terms. So, when you're interviewing people you can actually take down, and you should take down exact phrases that they use, the things that keep them up at night, and use those exact phrases. I'm trying to think of what an exact phrase would be off the top of my head. I can't find information or it's hard for me to extract information. NOEL: My tests are too slow. SUZAN: My tests are too slow. NOEL: I don't write tests because they're too slow. SUZAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So, using those exact words, then we can begin to reach out to those people more easily. They recognize, oh you understand my problem and you might have a solution for me. Because that's what drives people, right? I hate to say it, but pain drives us. NOEL: Right. And when people are looking for the kind of technical content that a developer listening to this might provide, they're looking to solve a problem. And sometimes that problem is abstract. "I kind of feel like I should learn React." SUZAN: Mmhmm. NOEL: But a lot of times, that problem is really specific. "I'm hitting this particular error message or I need to integrate this system with Webpack and I don't know how to do it." And the closer that you can mimic that language, the easier it's going to be for people to find you and understand that the thing that you're doing is the thing that they need. SUZAN: Right. When we talk to articulating what the pain of the problem is, it's not that we're trying to manipulate them, because there's a whole bunch of marketing and advertising that's just so incredibly manipulative. And that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about really helping to solve something and speaking to that pain so that they can recognize it and get that pain resolved. NOEL: Yeah. Alright, I'm using myself as a specific example again. Sorry, everybody. SUZAN: [Laughs] NOEL: But last year I had this book out that was about processing payments. it's called 'Take My Money'. And I've come to the conclusion that I really did a disservice in how we positioned it. And that one of the things is the title and some of the marketing was presenting the user's problem. Like, the title 'Take My Money' is the user's issue, not the developer's issue. SUZAN: Mm. NOEL: Whereas if we had called it something like 'Accepting Payments on the Web with Stripe' which is more boring -- SUZAN: But straightforward, right? NOEL: But straightforward, and people might have come to it more with an understanding of, "This is going to solve a problem that I was going to have." The failure from my perspective on that, the thing that I was unable to do as effectively as I'd hoped was to connect with the audience of people who were about to say, "This is a problem I have or I'm going to have and this will solve it." And for whatever reason, I think I really struggled with those people being able to find it. And I think because of that language issue, yeah. SUZAN: Well, it's hard. Positioning is incredibly important. And it's hard because a lot of times we have two audiences, right? Actually, admittedly as you said, 'Take My Money' is their user's problem. This is why promoting and marketing is hard because it's incredibly painstaking work and it's easy to make that mistake and many of us make that mistake, I think. NOEL: Yeah, and in this case, to me that was the kind of thing that became clear once it was too late to change it, really, which was unfortunate. SUZAN: Right, right, right, right, right. You're like, "Oh, yeah." I think a lot of people go through this. NOEL: And that's why working in smaller steps can be really effective. You put out a couple of three-email campaign or two blog posts. And then you can see, are people finding this? And what are they saying about it? My experience is that it's very, very hard, especially now to get people to interact with almost anything that's outside their existing context. SUZAN: Well, yeah. it's definitely a case where you could have done maybe a survey or A/B testing or even, I don't know if you already did, but talking with a couple of the folks who have that problem. I'm sorry. I'm not trying to Monday morning quarterback your -- [Laughs] NOEL: No, it's great. Go ahead. SUZAN: Monday morning quarterback and pile on. I'm trying to use it as an example. Do I know somebody who has this problem, can they look at this title and say, do you know what this is about? Do you know what this book is about? Would you pick up this book? Right? NOEL: Right. And we absolutely did not do that in any sort of systematic way, which was as much my fault as anybody else's. And because I was enamored with the cleverness of the title. SUZAN: Oh my gosh, writing is so hard. In writing we call it, we can't kill our darlings. NOEL: Yeah, kill our darlings, yeah. SUZAN: Can I make one point here, too? NOEL: Sure. SUZAN: Sorry, I get so excited. I get nerdy. NOEL: No, get excited. That's much more -- SUZAN: I'm nerdy, nerdy, nerdy excited about this stuff. So, one thing, it sounds like you did it but not in a systematic way. I think also the other problem besides the fact that we get so excited by our cleverness, which we all fall prey to. I will totally cop to doing this as well. The other thing is that we have to be careful of who we talk to about it. So, we need to be really focused on if this person has the problem and also, strangers are better than people who we know very well. Because strangers are more willing to say, "I don't get it," or, "I would never pick up that book," rather than someone who you like who's like, "Oh yeah, great. Yay, keep going. We want to cheerlead you on." NOEL: Right. The assumption that you need to break is the assumption that everybody who comes to this problem is going to come to it through the path I came to it. SUZAN: Right. NOEL: And everybody who understands this problem, specifically in the money book it was actually kind of an issue where people didn't even realize the problems they were going to have until they solved them. And by that point, they didn't need the book anymore. [Chuckles] SUZAN: Oh, interesting. NOEL: There's an issue of, not everybody's going to come to this with the experience that I came to this. Not everybody is going to understand the problem that you're trying to solve in the same way. And that's why it's a good idea to go out and find people and understand that way that they think about the problem. I've had this issue in trying to reach JavaScript developers who -- there are many, many different kinds of JavaScript developers who come to it with all different kinds of backgrounds and approach their problems in all different kinds of ways. And coming to them just in the way that I understand their tools is very limiting and very limited and makes it hard for people to see value in what I might be providing. SUZAN: Absolutely. Right. I think what you're getting at is we have to get outside of our own perspective, right? So, we have to make sure that we're not just looking at the world from our point of view. there's a way in which we need to be introspective when we're thinking about marketing and promoting something or even creating something. And there's a way in which we need to just divorce ourselves from that at some point and separate out and try to make it about the ultimate purchaser or the person whose problem you're trying to solve. NOEL: Alright. So, okay. I've gone off. I have identified my audience in a broad way, a wholesale kind of way. What are some techniques or what are some tools that are available for trying to actually really connect with people who might be interested in my thing? Or once I've found a person, holding onto that person's information so that I can then reconnect with that person when I actually have something to offer them. SUZAN: Yeah. NOEL: I'm trying to walk through the steps here. I've had the idea. I'm proving the idea with people. Now that I've proved the idea or laid the groundwork for it, how do I start to build up an audience in a more explicit way? SUZAN: I think in early days, just even -- technologists probably usually laugh at me for just saying this, but I love spreadsheets. Even simple spreadsheets in the beginning can be helpful. But I think also building some sort of email, along why you're doing this process, and someone's interested. Obviously you want to ask for permission, but you could start building an email list. Because that's the way in which you can disseminate information to people who you know are interested in what you're working on. So, it's creating a simple landing page. Or even when you're doing, let's say you're doing a customer development interview as they talk about in the 'Lean' world, in the Lean development world, starting to ask if they want to be on a mailing list to hear more about things. So, I think those are some simple things. Beginning to build that email list is the best way, because you have, this is going to sound horrible, you have control over that list. You have control over those people. It's great to build folks on Twitter. It's great to build a following on Twitter, but in a way you don't really have control over that channel, right? But you have more control over an email list and how you stay in touch with those folks you've identified. NOEL: There's definitely an increased engagement I see in people that I can contact in email versus Twitter. Twitter or Facebook, both of which have become very, very difficult channels to connect with people. SUZAN: Right, absolutely. NOEL: I've identified my problem. I've talked to people. I'm gathering an audience. I've sort of built the thing, I guess, or I've started to build the thing or got the first part of the thing. What are some things that I can do to re-engage or get people's attention now that I actually have something for them, something that I'm offering for them? SUZAN: There are some pretty simple ways. If you begin to have that email list, if you already have created that, you can just send updates. Or what I love to do is engage people on the process. Hey, I've got a working beta. I'd love to get your feedback. And then ask them a few very specific questions. I know these probably sound very simple. But a lot of this stuff is actually, it can be very simple but sometimes we step over those things or we think, "Oh, well that's not going to be very useful." But I think people are incredibly engaged if they think you want to get their opinion. It shows respect and also it helps your product. It helps your marketing. I think it's incredibly engaging and beguiling for folks. When someone wants to ask my opinion, I'm always willing to offer it. NOEL: Is that the kind of advice that you would give to somebody who's trying to increase engagement or increase awareness of an ongoing project, to try to engage people in the process, to get people's opinion? Are those the sorts of things that will help to build a longer term audience or a more engaged audience? SUZAN: I think it can absolutely help. I think, obviously for asking for someone's opinion, it needs to be authentic. We don't want the disingenuous [Chuckles] "Tell me your opinion, but I'm not really going to listen." I'm not saying you're suggesting that. But there's a way in which -- it's not a technique that you should always use. You know what I mean? I think it's more helpful in certain phases of development. NOEL: All of these techniques that can be weaponized start from a sincere place. And as long as you stay in the sincere place you're probably okay. SUZAN: Right. It's a great point, actually. I have to say those things because I think a lot of developers are probably rightly so a little jaded about marketing. Because a lot of it has been sort of weaponized, you know what I mean? In a way that doesn't feel comfortable or good. So, I'm always trying to be careful about that and mindful of that. Because obviously that's where I come from, too. And everybody I've worked with, all the folks I work with, are very much coming from that place, but not everyone does. NOEL: As long as you're asking people's opinion or engaging with them and offering something of genuine value in email or offering an opportunity for people to really have an effect on the product, I don't know. It seems like that's more effective. But it's harder. SUZAN: Right. It is. I think the other thing that goes after that, once you have a sense of the audience and the way you want to position and talk to them, then really a ton of marketing is actually about educating them about what you've learned. Also about your solution, but what you've learned and other tips that might relate to the problems that they face. And I think that's a really great way to engage with your audience. I'm using air quotes over here, "promote yourself". Education is a way to promote yourself but it's very low-key. NOEL: Yeah. And it's a way to offer somebody something, a small something of value. And hey by the way, if you like this, you might also be interested in -- SUZAN: Right. I want to say something here as it comes up. It came up into my mind as we were talking. I think there's this belief that we bang somebody over the head like, "Buy this now," flashing lights. Buy it now. But it now. We've seen all these bad examples. And I do think that there's definitely, we need to have calls to action. Those are calls, the "buy now" things. I think there's also a way in which you can educate and offer value to folks without selling them every 2 minutes or selling them very often. For example, Paul Jarvis who is a designer and now does a ton of stuff around solo business owners, his list, he writes every single week, provides value. I look forward to it. I have a Sunday dispatch. Obviously it's on Sundays. And I think he "sells", again using air quotes over here, twice a year. I don't think he has very many -- unless he's releasing a new product. And he's incredibly successful. Does that make sense? NOEL: It's like the pledge drive model. SUZAN: Mm, mmhmm. NOEL: We're going to provide you value all year and then once a year we're going to come in and tell you we need your help paying for it. SUZAN: Right. Now, I don't know. You might want to sell more frequently than that and all that. But I guess it's just this idea. One of the mistakes I see a lot of folks make when they first begin to promote themselves or something is they go a little too far on, "Buy now. Buy this thing. By the way I have a book. Did you know I have a book? I have a book. I have a book." You go on a podcast and you're like, okay, we get it. You have a book. [Laughs] NOEL: Yeah. Okay. SUZAN: Not talking about you. [Laughs] NOEL: Again, this would be a fantastic time to mention... SUZAN: [Laughs] NOEL: No, I know completely what you're saying. I completely know what you're saying. And it starts to feel -- first of all, people tune it out. There's only a limited amount of times, for example, there are only a limited amount of times that I can mention on Twitter that the book is coming out or is out or something like that -- SUZAN: Right. NOEL: Before people just completely start ignoring it, which is worse. You don't want that. SUZAN: Apathy is worst. NOEL: And when I was started at the beginning talking about marketing things that feel uncomfortable, repeating yourself about that kind of thing, at least for me, feels uncomfortable, even when I believe in the value of what I'm saying and believe that people will get benefit from it. Repeating it over and over again starts to feel fake. SUZAN: Well, right. And I think that the way that you can get around that, because that's a natural feeling, I totally get why you feel that way. The way to get around that is to offer value. It's exactly what you've been saying. Offer value. Educate. Write articles. I will tell you that I rarely do "Buy now." I don't mention my stuff very often and people come to me. I don't go look for business. They come to me. And I'm not patting myself on the back here. What I'm saying is that I know this works because it's what I do. NOEL: Yeah. And there's a certain amount of faith you have to have in that process, because it starts to feel very diffuse. I do a bunch of things and eventually people come and buy my stuff as a result of the things that I'm doing. But it's hard to draw a direct line in that case, at least for me. SUZAN: Well, right. Obviously. We are not talking about things like Google Ads and SEO. There's all sorts of other kinds of marketing, techniques that you can use to bring folks to your page and to highlight that awareness. We're really kind of focusing more on personal branding or what I might call more the reputation aspect or directly going out. Plenty of other things we can do to bring attention to our work. NOEL: So, if people want to find you online or listen to your podcast, where will they find those things? SUZAN: Oh yeah. By the way, I do have a podcast. I didn't even mention that. [Laughs] NOEL: See? I mentioned my book and Suzan did not mention her podcast. SUZAN: [Laughs] I didn't even notice. [Laughter] SUZAN: So, I'm on Twitter, @SuzanBond. My website is BetOnYourself.com. I'm at BetOnYourPeople.com. And the @TheIndiedotes on Twitter. NOEL: Okay. Thank you very much for being on the show. It was great to get a chance to talk to you. I apologize to everybody for the parts of this that were just about me. I hope you all, I hope you all got value out of it. It was great to get a chance to talk to you, and thank for being on the show, Susan. Tech Done Right is a production of Table XI and it's hosted by me, Noel Rappin. I'm @NoelRap on Twitter and Table XI is @TableXI. The podcast is edited by Mandy Moore. You can reach her on Twitter at @TheRubyRep. Tech Done Right can be found at TechDoneRight.io or downloaded wherever you get your podcasts. You can send us feedback or ideas on Twitter at @tech_done_right. Table XI is a UX design and software development company in Chicago with a 15-year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Find us at TableXI.com where you can learn more about working with us or working for us. We still have several job openings open as I record this. Thanks.