283: From Unknown to Unforgettable - Content That Converts - with Jake Hurwitz

Matt Wolach: 0:10

Sometimes we know we need content, but we kind of shy away from creating it because we think it's going to take too long to actually get results. Of course, we've heard its content sometimes takes months to a year. So how do we make sure we're creating good content, but also getting quicker results than eight months to a year? Well, fortunately, Jake Hurwitz came in and he's with Thursday labs, and he shared exactly what he's doing, and also what he's doing with his clients so that they're getting content that's going to create an amazing brand, but also in the short term starting to see results really quickly, like four to six weeks. And so he's got some really interesting ideas and a lot of key action items you can do right away that are going to get you quick results and create a long term brand that you're going to absolutely love. Check this one out.

Intro/ Outro: 0:53

Welcome to Scale Your SaaS, the podcast that gives you proven techniques and formulas for boosting your revenue and achieving your dream exit brought to you by a guy who's done just that multiple times. Here's your host, Matt Wolach.

Matt Wolach: 1:09

And welcome welcome to Scale Your SaaS really excited to have you here. Thank you very much for joining. By the way if you are new, definitely subscribe to this show. We are going to give you all sorts of insight and ways to grow your company, including talking with some of the best people within the SaaS and business world. So definitely hit that subscribe button. We look forward to seeing you every single time. I am jacked about today's episode, I have Jake Hurwitz with me, Jake, how you doing? I'm doing great. It's been a good day, so far a great week. But I'm excited to chat with you. So let me make sure everybody knows who you are. Jake. So Jake is the founder and chief marketing officer at Thursday labs. This guy is a true visionary. He's a serial entrepreneur who's very passionate about innovation and connecting with people. Thursday labs focuses on organic thought leadership content for founders, really what they do they handle end to end content creation, video production, social media, website design and a whole lot more. Their focus is on measurable results, not content just for content sake. So Jake, once again, thanks for coming on the show. Soon to be here. Likewise cited happy to tell me what's going on with you lately. And what's coming up.

Jake Hurwitz: 2:18

Oh, man, well life lately. So you know, it's been a busy decade, I guess we can say. Long story short, you know, I started this agency. 10 years ago, I was just like, an 18 year old kid starting a marketing agency. So made all the mistakes, and got into tech through that started as a couple startups, most of them failed, we did sell one, which was pretty cool. So a little bit of money, and data going into venture capital for a while. And so I was like a VC at like 22 years old, and did that for about five years and woke up one day, and was just like, Damn, I'm a finance guy now. And that's never who I was and who I wanted to be. And made this evolution back into marketing. And I was the CMO for a year. And then come January, you know, the world seemed to really change really fast below our feet, like GPG came out. All these AI tools came out, the market changed drastically economically. And we had to even though we did a great job. growing the company, when I was CMO, we do about 300%, six months, we did have to shut down in January, like had a high burn rate can raise the next round, we were selling to a market that got completely decimated by economic tough times. And without skipping a beat was just like, there's this new model that I'm figuring out here. And it's working and the tech is there to make this super efficient. And that's Thursday labs. So I've been I've been busy really, really busy since February, really working with one company kind of figuring out the model, the case study and like what's the right offering? Where's the value? What's the pricing really in beta for about six months? And I assume he figured that out. And I put that out there, the new offering, you know, figuring out the pricing, figuring out the timeline, kind of the whole playbook around what what is the product. I put that out there about six weeks ago. And for anyone listening, depending on when you're listening, it's September 12. Right now, I'd say put that out, like right at the beginning of August. And within a week went from one client to six clients from this new model. And so now in the beginning stages with all these new clients, we've got a waitlist or 10 more. So I'm tired, I'm overwhelmed. I'm working and I'm also in a travel season traveling all over the world and moving in about two months. So if anyone's sick like wow, this guy sounds a little congested. Yamhill burns out and cognitive uphold doing my best to get good sleep these days. So long story short, that's where we're at.

Matt Wolach: 4:50

Very cool and so awesome that you were able to create something that generated a whole bunch of interest and getting going from one to six clients that fast that happened a whitelist of 10 more I'm sure that's a place a lot of people would want to be. I want to get into that in just a sec. But first, I got to know why Thursday labs, how'd you come up with that name?

Jake Hurwitz: 5:10

It's a long and honestly not that exciting story I'll give you in 2017, I was going through my first and very difficult breakup. And I was really lonely. And I was living in Boulder, Colorado, and in the process of moving to Denver, and I just wanted to meet new people I wanted to meet. Just like new friends I wanted, I was young, I wanted to meet adults and like, just cool, smart people. So I started hosting a dinner party every Thursday. And I love that. Yeah, over the years, it grew into a company and that company was first called Blue Plate. And later during COVID obviously had to change things up a bit. But we relaunched and rebranded at one point called Thursday club. And it evolved largely over the years hosted like 200, some odd dinners all over the world, all over the world, because it was one that was overseas. So now it's global, but the rest were in all over the country. I guess it counts. Yeah. So we have to generate over the walls, and learn a lot about a lot of things through it. And when I was launching, relaunching my agency, my company back in the beginning of this year, I want to come up with a name for it, I was like, God, I've launched so many things that have launched agency, I've launched six of my own projects and companies, I've launched dozens, maybe hundreds of client companies. And like, I can't just keep being the guy who just like keeps launching new things under new names, we don't run out of names. So I looked at what I already had. And it was like, I've got Thursday club, and people know me for that for a lot of places. So maybe what I do is launch Thursday labs. And that's almost this like, de facto holding company or you know, umbrella company over different projects. And so launch that thinking that Thursday club would be almost a like division of Thursday Labs, which was our, you know, our networking events in our junior club and stuff like that. But then I just got so busy with the content production that I've been haven't hosted one dinner over the last. The last year I hosted was in January. And yes, it's been almost, what, nine months now, something like that, and just ran with a name. It's been like an easy name to remember people that have spell it. It creates a lot of optionality for fun branding stuff we could do like Thursday labs, Thursday studio, Thursday ventures, there's the club, all kinds of stuff. So that's the backstory. And Thursday is the best day of the week. It's like you're almost the weekend, when you're still grinding out stuff, you can like start to go out and do things. And it does have a bit of a soft spot. For me, I'm just like with Thursday's always representative, my wife,

Matt Wolach: 7:47

I love that idea of the whole, you know, coming up with a way for people to get together to host that dinner party good for you for doing that. It reminds me, my wife and I host something called Friday night meatballs. And the idea was, let's connect offline instead of online. And so we would invite people from different parts of our life to come together. And we'd have probably like 20 people over our house, we'd make up a whole bunch of meatballs, I would basically make 60 meatballs and make up just a whole bunch of spaghetti and meatballs and total casual, we're not going to clean the house just come over and hang out and people loved it. And it became a thing we do it about quarterly now. And it's amazing how much people want that interaction. Because we do have that online interaction a lot. But they also feel like they need the the offline. So it's been it's been really fun. I'm glad you did that. And just kind of reminded me of my own story. But I do want to know, we still have to have that online interaction, especially in a b2b SaaS environment. So content marketing is one of your passions. It's something you're really good at. But why is content marketing so important to b2b SaaS companies?

Jake Hurwitz: 8:52

Yeah, I mean, there's been this trend for I don't know, let's, let's really target it like three years now. But it has been around forever, of like people trust people more than they trust brands. There are literally like teenagers and people in their early 20s, who have more followers and subscribers than the largest media companies in the world. That's wild. And there's been this trend for, I want to call it. I mean, it's been around forever, but really been a trend in the startup world in the tech world for about three years, maybe four years, like people, people trust people more than they trust brands. There's there literally are teenagers and kids in their early 20s who have more followers and subscribers than the biggest media companies in the world, the biggest crazy publications in the world. And these are people that they're so freakin loyal. I mean, look at celebrities like anything they do or say or tell us to buy. We do it. And so we're entering this era. We've been in this era for a bit where founders entrepreneurs, the new rockstars, but yet the b2b founders are not putting out much thought leadership content and the ones who aren't doing it are crushing it. They're doing it really well. It's it's founder led growth. They're really, that is their number one catalyst for growth for their companies. Because the other day like, do we really care about another b2b SaaS company? Like, do we really care about other tech company trying to try to save us revenue, or make us some money or save us time, they're all doing the same thing, talking to their own their own people in their own way. And no one understands what they do. But yet the people behind them are like, that's who we want to be a part of their story is store we want to live. And so I've gone all in on that strategy. It's worked. I love it. And it's, quite frankly, had a massive impact on my life as well as yours in so many ways.

Matt Wolach: 10:41

Yeah, and I totally believe in that it's yours. You're so right. People want to buy from people. It's something I train my clients all the time, and the people need to connect with those people. And I mean, it's crazy. You're right, teenagers having bigger brands, quote, unquote, than big brands. And it's, it's kind of nuts, but it's so true. And that's just kind of the day and age we live in. But if you're starting this, if you're if you're a SaaS founder, let's say, and you're wondering, okay, well, what type of content should I create? What can we put together on our side, that's going to actually convert because growing an audience is one thing, but if you're a b2b SaaS founder, what content should be created that actually converts into customers.

Jake Hurwitz: 11:23

So not just hard sell and pitch to my company right now. But that's exactly what what we focus on. So there's a bit of a story I'll share here. What I found, and I've been there myself, and is you've got all these founders who are like, I feel like I should. And that's kind of the key phrase, I feel like I should be producing a podcast and writing a newsletter and blogging and being on Twitter every day. And writing on LinkedIn every day, you should probably be dabbling on tick tock and all that. But screw that. And quote, like, so many founders are dealing with this and feel like that, because they don't know where to start. And it's a lot of work. And they don't have a strategy, but they know they should have a strategy to it. Why are we doing this, they don't stay consistent. It's slow to get results. And we're in a quick dopamine, like quick results type of era. And so you give up and so they just don't do it at all. And so what I, that's what we do with our company is we produce all that content for them. So we produce podcast for for our founders, we write their blog every week or on their newsletter. Every week, we run their social channels to distribute all that content in short form video blog newsletter, tweet threads, LinkedIn threads, and of course, the long form episodes on on Spotify and Apple and YouTube. So basically, it's like you show up for an hour a week as one of my clients, you record your episode, but then you get 150 pieces of content over the course of 12 episodes, across 11 channels. So anyway, I believe I mean, I put my whole career on the line for this, and I'm building a company platform for this, that founders should be, number one, do the podcast, right? Be a thought leader and ask great questions and like, build your network through interviewing and all that, but then use that content, to distribute it everywhere in many, many formats. And, you know, it's the Gary Vaynerchuk model that we've all heard this for years. But yeah, you can take 145 minute episode, and then write a blog about it and like pull up the clips. That was always very manual. Now, there are tons and tons and tons of tools, whether they're AI or not, I can just do this really quickly and automatically, for reference in the end of 2022 and early 2023. It was a full time job for me to create all this content and distribute it everywhere for one company. And then all these new tools came out and now I can handle like seven or eight at a time. And it's just continuing to get faster and faster. So it's like do it have a strategy in mind Make sure it is rooted in something is rooted in data and there's a wide behind each piece of content you're putting out and where you're putting it and who you're what you're what message you're spreading. But I think founders need to be everywhere in all formats every single day. And I take that to the grave.

Matt Wolach: 14:07

We'll be right back. scale your Sass is supported by Toro a. Lots of software leaders I talked to are looking to scale their SAS and I keep hearing over and over about one major struggle getting ghosted by buyers after the demo. How frustrating is it when you have a great demo? You're feeling good they like it. It seems like a done deal. And then crickets nothing reach out they're not responding to you at all. And when these software companies they asked me to dive in, I noticed that the sellers are following up the wrong way. Or actually I should say with the wrong medium. What they're doing is they're hammering emails over and over again. I got a newsflash for you. Email effectiveness is dwindling down and down every year. So why beat your head against the wall losing all kinds of business, start texting mixing texts, along with emails and calls and watch your conversion rate. rates go up. In fact conversion rates go up by about 50%. When you use texting as part of the follow up, people are used to it. And did you know though response rate on text is 98% 98%. So why throw emails into a black hole knowing that they're never gonna get returned text buyers and get results, but don't use your own phone all kinds of security and compliance issues if you do also none of that data is with your company. That's not good. Instead use this system Toro wave. Toro wave is designed for sales, it makes texting with buyers super simple and fast. And it helps drive more deals, deals that you've been losing until now for being a listener, you get 50% off your first month of using Toro away 50% off just go to Toro wave.com/scale It's t o r o wav.com/scale get signed up and start winning more deals like Tracy who closed $170,000 In three days after starting again, go to Toro wave.com/scale Catch up and win by texting with poor win. And we're back. I totally agree. I have people come to me. And they're like, Hey, we've done this content. It's just not working, I take a look at what they've got. And their last blog posts was like seven weeks ago, and I'm like, Okay, you're not committed to a content strategy. You need to be daily out there in front of everybody. And it's just crazy. The types of results you can get when you when you do stay consistent with it. And I think that that's something that a lot of leaders struggle with is okay, well, we know we want content to be great to have that. And that's nice, but they feel like it's a long term strategy, like it's going to take a long time to get results. And so what would you say to them when they think, okay, it's gonna be a long time. And so what happens is, they just keep delaying and delaying and they don't do it. They don't do it. They look at short term lead generation. But can't this actually get you some short term results?

Jake Hurwitz: 16:54

Yes, but it is a long term play. And I am not afraid of knowing again that you're right. And as long term, it's the same as dieting, or exercising. Here's what I say, and this is 100% true, every one of my clients, we're going to get results. I never gonna promise or guarantee what those results are gonna guarantee that we're gonna get some awesome results. And many of which we can't even begin to think about what those are right now. For example, I had a client that after we put out their first podcast episode, which is our Thursday, and they're based in New York, he went out on Saturday night with a couple people on his team and a few friends in New York City three days later, two days later, and one of the bouncers at a nightclub and you want to get into is like, Hey, man, I saw your podcast the other day. Can you skipped the VIP line? Like that's a pretty cool result of content, right? It's yeah, and that's, that's just one of the things that came out of it. Of course, revenue growth, they doubled their user base over the last six months. All of that has come from has been largely credited to content but not 100%. You'd have it? It's the same as dieting or exercising. Hey, look, anybody. Would you agree or disagree on the following statement, if you ate super healthy and worked on five days a week with a personal trainer for four months, is your life going to be better or worse, in four months, it's like, oh, it'd be better, how's it gonna be better, you're gonna look better, you're gonna feel better, you're going to have more confidence, you're gonna sleep better, probably make more money, you might get a date, he might have a better sex life with your spouse, he might feel more energy with your kids, there's so many ways that your life is better, but it's not going to happen overnight. You got to commit to it. But how do you commit to it? Well, you join a community of other people that are on the same path, you get a trainer, you get someone who looks at you, and studies you and has the science and creates a strategy and a playbook and hold you accountable. I'm like that guy. But I'm the content front, and I hold people accountable, I can just show up an hour a week, it's way easier than working out or go to the gym, you should do that, too. That's how I look at it. But I do understand that short term wins and short term results are necessary and just 2023 and the way humans are and the world we live in. And so we take that into our model. By the end of the first week, you're going to already have asked for people to be on your podcast. By the end of our second week, you're going to have already have your website up. And all your new social media pages up where the podcast is going to go. And you start sharing that with people to build your waitlist. They enter the third week, you have already recorded your first two episodes. And by the end of fourth week, we've already posted your first episode. So like, very short term wins that otherwise you just sat on for three years and didn't do anything. You just already are making progress really fast. And you get the feeling of progress. And you are making progress. But that's that's our model.

Matt Wolach: 19:46

Yeah, I mean, I feel like that is great progress. I love that you're you're letting people know, okay, it's a long term play and you're gonna get stuff. You're gonna get results in a while. But you can also see results quickly. I think that's fantastic, right?

Jake Hurwitz: 19:59

Yeah, yeah. up. And it's easier for a while just to kind of open the kimono a bit, we were pricing was really high. And that was one of the big barriers here. I mean, I was the price for this and a little bit more was $25,000 a month. And we had two clients doing that, right? Like, there was there was, there was a pricing mission mix and actually changed the model a bit and brought the price down to what it's currently a six grand a month. And it's now it's like wildfire, everyone's just different level of value. And so I bring that up one to like, share our pricing transparently with people and we're super transparent about it. But for someone to think, Okay, I need to put in an hour a week and you know, a month to start, like getting stuff out there. And it's a long term play. And it costs me to$300,000 a year to do this. Like, that's, I don't want to do it. But if it's for four months, it's like give this a try and take yourself from zero to 100, or we call it unknown to unforgettable for 24 grand. Yeah, why would I not do that the barrier to entry is so low. So the whole mission here is get more people as many people as possible millions of founders, sharing their story, putting their content out there, like building businesses off of this, this playbook, this whole philosophy, this thesis, going lives off of it. And it should be a no brainer. Why I want people doing this. So that's our big part of our motto.

Matt Wolach: 21:25

I love that from unknown to unforgettable. That's so that's a great piece there. It's so for, you know, something that people just attach on to it and align with I think that's a great tagline. So what are some of the mistakes, Jake, that you see SAS companies making when they are trying to do this on their own?

Jake Hurwitz: 21:42

Yeah, there's a lot, the number one mistake I see is this no strategy, just like content for content sake. So you know, a couple times a week when I feel like it, I'm just gonna go talk to the camera about a thing or write a write a LinkedIn thread. Look, it's better than not doing anything. But you're honestly just wasting time, in my opinion. So you have a strategy, you got to work backwards, you've got to hold science to like, who are we reaching? When are we going to reach them? How are we going to reach them? Who are we going to interview and get on our podcast and feature in the blog and the newsletter in order to show our audience that like, we have good thought leaders that we partner with and we activate their audiences. And there's, there's a whole science behind this. And so looking at content, as a data backed endeavor, as a research endeavor to learn more about your customers is really important. I mean, that's, that's the solution to these mistakes. It's huge. And then the next thing I'd say is huge mistake is. And this is just kind of classic. Founders getting on and basically just talking about themselves, because they want to be a thought leader. They want to show the world that they have smart things to say. So they get out and share. Here are five things that you should do to increase your productivity. According to me. I just ran a Spartan Race. And here are six things that I learned about leadership. According to me, I ran sparks no one cares about. They care about themselves. And so it's challenging. And there is a balance to strike of like how do you make stories, write stories and share stories and that others while people still thinking like, You're brilliant, and you're a thought leader, and you're someone to follow up? Really good example is from this book, story wars. And I recommend every founder, every marketer read that book. And the example is, it was George Bush running against John Kerry in early 2009. Karen was all about herself. George Bush was all about America. And for anyone who was alive and able to understand that at the time will probably remember Oh, yeah, he was just like, I'm this guy. I'm this Democrat, I was hockey player, I'm this guy that will solve your problems. But then George Bush came out. So this is about America, it's about us. It's about you. It's about we anyone, a lot of reasons for that, and not necessarily bring politics into this. But like, from a storytelling standpoint. It's not about you, it's about the audience. And so being a thought leader, I think is largely about being a publisher, and a curator, and a distiller for lack of a better word, of taking lots of things to other people and simplifying exam for your audience and being the ones to spread a message and a story from from from many different places. And we've got a strategy around that as well. I never, we never put out podcasts with our clients that are just like about our company or about our products, testimonials. That's ads, and people hate them.

Matt Wolach: 24:37

It's so true. And it's something that I preach to my clients over and over. They don't care about you, they care about themselves, they care about the results they're gonna get. And so if you're doing that, definitely stop. Follow Jake's advice here. I think it's really important. And I totally agree those stories are crazy powerful. And one of the things also that I see that why people see you as a leader. See you as a thought leader see you as You know, one of the subject matter experts, even if you don't really talk about yourself, because on the shows, if you get like you said, you go have a target list of guests that you have on your show, and you have somebody that is recognized as a thought leader, well, then when you put that out, people see you on the same level as them. If you're interviewing them, then they feel like you're on the same level. And they start associating you at that level. That's pretty amazing. I've had it happen myself, I've had big time people come on this show as well. And people see you as that. It's pretty cool. And so I totally agree, Jake 100%,

Jake Hurwitz: 25:35

it's starting a new brand. And you want to like quickly get to that echelon of trust in the network, or within the community or the market that you're in, that's really the best way to put it. We'll just go build a table, a metaphor, a table and get the people who are already trusted to come to your table, and you're at the table with them. Now, here is your shared table. You're at that level, and you can be there in 60 days. But if you're not willing to do this 60 days, I'm like, don't even bother any of this.

Matt Wolach: 26:04

I love it. I think that's a great one to close on. It's something that you guys can take away and learn from. But Jake, this has been awesome. Really appreciate you coming in. How can our audience learn more about you?

Jake Hurwitz: 26:15

Yeah, absolutely. These days LinkedIn is my is my battleground for content. I test a lot of strategies and ideas on my own pages. I've been sick the last couple of weeks, so I haven't been out as much in the last two weeks, but LinkedIn is the best place Jake Hurwitz, Hu, RW cheesy or check out our website, which is Thursday. labs.co.

Matt Wolach: 26:37

Love it. We'll put all that into the show notes for everybody listening. Go ahead and check that out. But he's Jake Hurwitz Thursday labs. Everybody, go follow him. Jake, thanks so much for coming on the show. Thank you, my friend. Absolutely. And everybody out there. Thanks for being here. Definitely make sure that you subscribe. You do not want to miss other amazing creators and innovators like Jake coming up. So hit that subscribe button and then we will see you guys next time. Take care.

Intro/ Outro: 27:03

Thanks for listening to Scale Your SaaS. For more help on finding great leads and closing more deals go to Mattwolach.com