68. The 3 Questions every Entrepreneur needs to ask themselves: A Capsho Case Study

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If you're a Capshovian or even just on my email as a future capshovian hint, hint, then you would know that we have a lot, we've had a lot going on recently. We are just a few days away from celebrating our one year birthday, and we have already sent out hundreds of thank you packages to all of our capshovians that you can celebrate so you can celebrate with us. If you're a current subscriber, you would have gotten all we'll be getting our super limited edition one year CapshoBrian crew costar and a piece of her birthday brownie baked by none other than my husband and one of Capsho's co founders, Ash. We're also about to go live with Capsho's Creative Studio, and we are in the midst of reworking our plans and pricing to make it way more inclusive of the different needs that you were telling us about. We've just wrapped up our first monthly challenge to help you with one piece of your content marketing.

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It was LinkedIn for June and we'll be doing one each month to help you with all of the different parts of your content marketing. So the next one coming up is on social media, so definitely look out for that invite. So yes, we've had a lot going on that's been a lot. Some people have called us crazy, have told us that we're focusing on the wrong things, perhaps haven't been happy with some of the changes that we've made. But you know, what keeps us on track and knowing that we're doing what we're doing is us doing what feels right.

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You. Because doing everything we've been doing has time and again come down to two things that we are so passionate about here inside Capsho as a company, the two things are helping you succeed and hopefully delighting you in the process. Now, we'll never get it right. We will never get it right because as you know, we cannot please everyone. But if we can always aim to stay aligned to this purpose, then I know that we'll get it right way more times than we'll get it wrong.

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And what I really wanted to talk to you about today is with all the changes that we've been making, there was one thing that I really grappled with. And I know it's not sexy as a leader of a business to admit to high levels of uncertainty or going back and forth in my mind for making decision. Literally, I've had sleepless nights because it's just been on my mind time and time again. I've been unmaking the decision and remaking it again. It's so not sexy.

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It's way sexier to be the type of leader who can predict the future and get it right. Unfortunately, that's just not me. So I did do a lot of mind grappling, and the one thing my mind was grappling with is the decision to start to broaden out from just talking to podcasters to talking to all types of expert content creators and what this fundamentally means for how we continue positioning ourselves. Don't get me wrong, I love I love helping podcasters. You know, podcasting is my jam.

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Bob, what I've been realizing talking to you individually is that many of you don't actually identify with being a podcaster. You identify with being an entrepreneur, a coach, a speaker, an author, a consultant, a course creator, a service provider. You identify with those first, and you just happen to podcast as your main form of content creation. Just how others like you might use live streaming or video instead as their main form of content creation. And so I wanted to use this episode to talk with you about how my co founders and I approached this grappling and how we came out the other side.

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And hopefully this will help you as you're also going through your own entrepreneurial journey to know that you're not the only one who has to grapple with hard decisions where you will not know the outcome. You won't know. So struck a pin because you own for a wild ride on today's episode, you're going to get a direct insight into the messiness that is an entrepreneur's decision making process as we try to articulate what we considered and how we implemented a decision that may fundamentally alter the course of our business of Capsho. My name is Dee G. Shen Sierra and co founder of Capsho, the fastest way to market and boost your expert content.

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And this is the Grow my podcast show. Yay gosh. This is going to be an exciting episode and even more so because once again, I am joined by my co founder, Bona Rai. Welcome, Bona. Hello.

00:04:34
Stepping up to the mic. You really did. You should just really did a big lean out, lean in and to get to the mic. Working on my oblique muscles. Yes.

00:04:43
Okay, I need to address something quickly before we get into this episode. Okay. All right. I'm going to be having another team meeting on the podcast again. So a couple of episodes ago, one or so specifically episode 66, we may or may not have discussed how I really need to be keeping the topics of this podcast tight.

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Tight on podcast growth and content marketing. Yes, very tight and focused. You told me to right. I think we had this exact discussion where I was like, oh, okay. I get what you're saying, Bonnie.

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You're telling me I need to agree to keeping the topics of this podcast. Yes. I framed it as a we, but you were like, I know that feedback is for me. Yes, I did. I did.

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Okay, well, we are now two episodes in after that agreement, and I'm going to fail I'm going to fail that assignment already because this episode is not related to podcast growth or content marketing. No, it's very much just well, I mean, it's related to entrepreneurship. I guess it's just going to be one of those let's just say it's going to be an outlier on our SEO optimized topic list of episodes for this podcast. I think we can let a few slide it's. Okay.

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All right. So anyone? If you're listening to this, then you would know that one of the mottos that we always go by is do as we say, not as we do. We love being hypocritical. That's kind of our it's kind of our thing.

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Good at that. Okay. All right. Here's what not to do. Yes, we will show you exactly what not to do.

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And then you're smart, smart cookies, you'll make the decision yourself. Okay. But I do think that this is actually a very important topic, and ultimately, this actually goes to the heart of this mind grapple over who it is that we're speaking to specifically, because ultimately, at the end of the day, as I said before in my intro, we are speaking to entrepreneurs first and foremost. And this is an important episode because this is the stuff that we go through as entrepreneurs, which I think would actually be very helpful for other entrepreneurs listening to this. So it's not the most SEO optimized episode, but ultimately, at the end of the day, we still want to just provide value, and we want you to succeed.

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So whatever we can help pull the curtain back on some of this stuff, some of this harder, mind grappling, decision making stuff, then yeah, the more that that can hopefully help you succeed. That's kind of my my way of getting out of that agreement, for sure. I think. Also, just a little side note, all jokes aside, a lot of it, like you said, is about providing value. So SEO and being found on Google isn't the only way that we connect with our community.

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We like talking to our community, this space. I think this makes a lot of sense, and I'm excited. Awesome. Okay, great. We got the tick of approval.

00:07:24
I got bottom over the line. Okay. So what I want to start with maybe for this particular episode, because we are going to go into, I think because we kind of very quickly brainstormed a bit of a framework when we look back at the decisions, the conversations that we've had, I think there are certain things that we could anchor it in. But before we get into kind of almost those three steps, I want to talk, give context as to how we ended, where we started, and how we ended to this point of kind of making this decision. So back gosh.

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Well, we're about to celebrate our year. So a little bit over a year ago, we had a really tough conversation with one of our coaches, Kyle, who's actually a really good friend of ours, and we mastermind with him, like, almost every week. Hey, Kyle. So we were having a discussion with him when we launched the first iteration of Capsho. And back then it was one of those things where we were going to try to target all entrepreneurs and we were just not getting any cut through.

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And he told us that we needed to niche down very specifically. And he sort of started to talk to us about some examples of that or how we could think about it. He was like, look Deirdre, you just wrote a book. Do you want to talk to authors? Et cetera?

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And at the end of that, we knew that he was right. But again, podcasting is my jam. That's how we grew our coaching business. And so we actually made the very right decision to focus on podcasting. So we started in podcasting.

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And where that kind of landed us from a content perspective was things like Show Notes and it was really coming from the perspective of how do we make this process more efficient? Almost the process of the things that needed to be written to publish and promote a podcast. That's where we started. And that was awesome because back a year ago, we were completely in a blue ocean. We had carved that this out for ourselves.

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We basically created, what do you call it? Like part of the market. I don't know. We created this. Didry is doing a thing with her hands.

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She's creating a circle in the air, this industry segment. Part of the market, core of the market. Yeah, that right. Yes. This was pre Chat GPT, which I think is really hard to imagine a world without Chat GPT now.

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But this was pre all of that. All of that. Yeah. And that was great. But now and I've done a couple of episodes where I've really thought about our place in the AI field, reflecting on competitors coming into the market, et cetera, and more and more like that's kind of where everyone now, because I guess we created this corner of the market now.

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Everyone's kind of seen that and they're like, okay, I'm going to do that too, and I'm going to do it cheaper and I'm going to do it talk about their differentiators, they're going to do it that way. And so we've had to have a really it's kind of forced us to multiple times, time and time again, have a really hard look at what it is that we're doing and why we're doing it. And I think it was we talk about the humanes of Capsho and the humane editor with an AI. You guys human with an AI? Yes.

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H-U-M-A-I-N. It's not the most intuitive anyway. We'll make it a thing. So that was the starting point. More from almost the philosophy behind the technology perspective, but now this is almost talking about the philosophy behind, I guess almost our identity perspective, which is scarier to think about, right?

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Yeah. And I hope everyone's kind of following along this thread. If not let us know. Leave us a message. I haven't been getting any messages, by the way, which is very sad.

00:11:21
Maybe we need to remind people more to do it. Leave me a message. It's in the episodes website. There the link. Go there.

00:11:28
Leave me a message. Okay, so this is where we're at. So that was kind of our context. We were really targeting more the efficiency because AI can is there to help us be more efficient. But I think anyone who uses Capsho would know that the efficiency only takes you so far.

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And that's where the humaneness comes in because we are very and we still stand behind this. Everyone needs to be interacting with their content. Everyone needs to be editing it, they need to be structuring it in the way that makes it particular to them. Everyone needs to be making sure that it's not only accurate, but it actually reflects their thoughts and their expertise and context in the way that they want it to, right? In the way that makes them shine.

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Because AI cannot do that for you. I mean, yes, eventually I'm sure that we'll get to the point where we can make way further progress to help you that, but right now, as it stands, you should not be relying on AI. And there's a whole host of reasons why, apart from just philosophically, that should be the way of working. But as we know, the search engines, the copyright laws, all of that, the IP laws, it's going to mean that you need to be interacting with it. So anyway, but parked at this to the side, we're kind of going, okay, we're going to start with efficiency.

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And now we're evolving into that's. Actually not, I think where we where Captcho actually can help the most. And so I wanted to kind of start to break this down into almost the three phases, the three steps that we went to in terms of coming to this decision to try to work ourselves out of the knot that it felt like we've been in for the last few months. Yes. So we're going to do that just right after this short break.

00:13:22
Okay, so Bonna, let's talk about how it is that we have gone from where we started, Capshod 1.0 actually even Beta. Gosh, if anyone's been asked through that, and I know it's like, alejandra, you've been through us from beta. Trent, you've been us through from beta. Ray, Sean. Yeah, gosh, we could rattle off like Jerry, Adam, who else?

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Like, oh, gosh, ton of people. Yeah, we have a lot of people still from Beta. Early days when we were we would physically meet with everyone and virtually we have a lot of AGS. Yes. And thank you for sticking with us because we know this has been journey.

00:14:00
We've gone from 1.0 beta to 1.0 to 2.0. And then now with this latest launch that's coming creative studio as well, which we've just like affectionately called 2.7 and with a ton of changes around the plans and the pricing and things like that. Okay, so how do we land at this spot? What got us here? Let's talk first about identity.

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This is almost the step. Number one is identity. And this isn't actually capsho's identity. This is actually the identity of a Capshovian of you. What is your identity?

00:14:36
What does it mean to be a capshovian? This was a thing that we've been going around and around in circles in our minds because it's really funny. I talk about the story of how we landed, having that really hard discussion with our coach going, okay, we were going from all entrepreneurs, really, niching down to podcasters, which has served us really well. But now it feels like kind of almost like broadly back out again. Sorry, Kyle.

00:15:04
Don't shoot us. We are, but we're not as well. Yes. And I think this is a great thing about having started in the podcasting space and learning and iterating as we go and speaking to you all the time in terms of really honing in on what a Capshovian is, which is going to become our own niche, if that makes sense. A Capshovian is a particular niche.

00:15:28
Person, please jump in here. But I wanted to start with the more, I guess, easier to identify things when we're just brainstorming, right. Like a capshovian. We fundamentally know they walk the talk. They are probably a little bit self deprecating because life has made them.

00:15:52
So you realize that life has so many things that you can't control, that you can't help, but I think become self deprecating because it's almost a coping mechanism. And we are not at all talking about ourselves, by the way. I mean, capshovians in general, life in general. And then we started to really try to get deeper and deeper and deeper into, okay, well, that's great, but that's so general. That could be a lot of people.

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Anyone? Yeah. So what is the breed like? What actually makes a capshovian? And we do always go back to ourselves.

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I mean, not to be super egotistical about this, but we always have to start from somewhere. I fundamentally believe this. And we start from ourselves because there's no one that we almost know better than ourselves, right. And there's no other perspective. It's hard saying this because I know we all have empathy and things like that, but we also can't really know what it's like to be in someone else's shoes.

00:16:50
Truly, we can try because we've never been in those shoes. So it's really hard to really dig deep, for sure. All of the impact driven, successful companies, products, businesses out there. Whichever lens you use starts from someone feeling absolutely compelled to create a different vision, a future for themselves. Whether that's solving a very specific pain point, whether that is creating a different way of doing things.

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It always starts there. It doesn't mean that you're self obsessed but you just solve with people like yourself and then you realize oh wow, there's ten people, 100,000, 10,000, 100,000 people that feel the same way and want this problem solved. So I think that's absolutely where we should start. Especially want to have the impact and it's done in a genuine way versus just a cash grab to quickly sell something. Totally.

00:17:38
And so when we were thinking about Capsho and the types of businesses that we look up to in a way around things like pricing and structures and who they're going out and how they're positioning and things like that, it was really actually interesting the journey that we went to. So I'll talk about a specific example because I think this will bring it to life. So we look up to businesses like HubSpot for example, super successful, seems to definitely from a content marketing perspective for sure. But they have been able to make a really hard and complicated conceptual like conceptually hard and complicated software relatively easy to follow, like to get into, to understand. And they've been able to also carve out a particular audience where that aspires to be their customer.

00:18:37
That makes sense because HubSpot for example is not cheap. It is almost apart from like salesforce likes of salesforce. It is one of the more expensive in the market. So we've always looked up to them. Now we weren't customers of theirs though because we decided to go with someone like Ontraport.

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Still not the cheapest. It was kind of like midway mid house but we were like okay, well, given what we think we need that they'll be able to meet our current needs. Yeah, our current needs, right. And very recently, and this is what was really interesting, we had the very hard decision we made the wasn't a super hard decision, but we had a bit of a conversation about this, about whether we do move from entreport to HubSpot. And it came down to a pricing discussion, because I think HubSpot's about triple about triple the price of Ontraport, which is not an insignificant we're talking in the thousands, by the way.

00:19:35
It's not an insignificant investment. And at that time we're still not like we don't think that we can actually maximize everything that HubSpot can give us. And so it's like well is that worth it then? Does that you know? But at the end of the day I think I forgot what I said but I was like well we can't think this stuff is not an expense.

00:19:58
This stuff is now an investment into our future, into what we want it to be. And the only way that that investment makes sense is if we can actually hand on heart ourselves, back ourselves to actually create that future. And that was really interesting because I say we take inspiration from companies like that who are steadfastly. They don't have a super cheap tier, and they're probably never going to because they are very committed to serving a particular type of business owner. And again, this was part of my mind grappling, which is we need to have a cheap because we kept hearing, you're too expensive, you're too expensive.

00:20:40
And yes, some of that might be because in that transition from 1.0 to A, we made a lot of mistakes. Maybe we didn't provide enough value or perceived value to some people. Maybe they were just the wrong people. There were so many things that was going on, but we had to stay committed to who it is that we were building for and what it is that we wanted to deliver to them.

00:21:06
I think this is where am I going with this? Essentially, and this goes back to what is a captchovian, is that based on even our experience, what I found was like, we made a really hard decision about an investment, or call it an expense, I call it an investment, but either way, you're spending some type of money. We faced that fear of, okay, we're going to be on the hook for spending thousands a month. Can we actually back ourselves? Can we actually trust ourselves to make that investment, to get an ROI on that investment?

00:21:45
Because it doesn't come down to the tool. Right? The software is just a software, a reflection, failing to actually level up to what that software, what that investment can give us, actually comes down to us and how we implement it and our view on whether or not we're going to succeed or fail in that. And it's so tempting to blame the tool or the software or the thing that's docking your credit card every month. Exactly.

00:22:14
It is so tempting to do that. But I think, again, what is capturing we're smarter than that. We know at the end of the day because we take full accountability of the fact that a piece of software or a tool can only do like we're the humans at the end of the day, right. We can only get out of it what we put into it. Yeah.

00:22:31
And so I think that's at the core of what it is that makes it capshoviian and capshovian. When we look at all of our super users, our power users, the people that we talk to day in and day out, this is what it comes down to, is that they choose to invest and they up level to that future version of themselves. I think that's such a powerful point because it's not about being the person that in this case is able to leverage, HubSpot or Capsho 100% from day one. I think, like you said when we had that conversation as a team, to say we made that decision, to say, okay, it is an investment because CRM is the lifeblood of what we can do with our customers. Then as soon as we made that decision, it flipped the conversation very quickly into, okay, how do we make the most of an investment?

00:23:19
I think that's the part it's not just saying, I'm going to blindly spend and something's going to happen where I'm going to transform tomorrow into this person that knows how to do all of these things. Because that's not Capsho. There is a lot in there. You can't do it straight away from day one, but then that switches a conversation to, okay, now how do we set ourselves up? So that means our schedules, our timelines, our priorities to make this a priority amongst its current in our current team, and how do we create the bandwidth?

00:23:47
Does that mean, hey, Bonna, you need to delegate more so you can step into this and do this part of HubSpot better? Hey, Ash, we need to document our current reporting manual things so that we can make the most out of HubSpot's reporting. Hey, we need to actually jump on onboarding calls with HubSpot to spend 90 minutes to set ourselves up. Right? It's all of those things because HubSpot provides that.

00:24:08
That's what you pay for. It's not just software. They give you all of that. And that's what we want to model ourselves off of as well. To say it's not just the software, it's all the tools and all of the resources and the support that's available.

00:24:18
So I think that's what time and again capshovians whether they started with us in day one of beta where they couldn't log into the software. Sorry about that. Still, the people that have stuck around, that has been the number one, I guess, character trait that we see is not only are they resourceful, so it's not that they're just putting up with all of our BS, but they reach out. They say, this is what I need. This is how I think the software can be better.

00:24:41
Hey, if you did this, that would help me because I'm trying to publish this blog post in this way. And we listen, right? The last thing to say is that we're perfect. And so our Capshovians is like, I think we grapple with our own imperfection every day. And then we say we decide to do something about it.

00:24:57
Yes, something, oneness is a little thing and that's how we make progress. Yes. And even on the flip side to that, because I think the great thing is it's a symbiotic relationship. This is the thing that we're so passionate about. So on the one hand, we always listen to you to see, okay, how is it that you're currently using it and how can we can definitely meet that or make that easier?

00:25:18
But then on the other hand, it's like, hey, we're going to give you things that you didn't even know that you needed or that you were even thinking about. And our capshovians, look at that and they're like, oh my gosh, you're changing the way that I'm thinking, which is exactly what's happening again with our investment in HubSpot. Like, we're changing the way that we are thinking about our journeys and how we gather duct data and how we communicate with our audience. We're actually changing that because of what it is. That because, again, we've invested in it and we're up leveling to that version versus, hey, we're just going to invest in something that quote unquote comfortable with and we're just going to meet that standard.

00:25:59
We're just going to almost I don't know if this is the right way of saying, but we're almost just going to fall to that standard because we're at least comfortable with being able to not fail. There maybe is what it comes down to, right? Because any kind of investment and a need to up level comes with the risk of failure, which is incredibly scary. And so a lot of us don't make that decision, right? We're like, no, we're going to go with the lower cost because we think it's smart when it's really not.

00:26:34
We're going to go with the lower cost because we're confident. Even if we don't do anything with it. Well, whatever, it doesn't matter. We can still feel good about ourselves because we haven't failed at anything there. And this is so important.

00:26:48
This really goes to the deep. We always kicked off this step around. Talking about identity was like, how do we just keep going deeper and deeper and deeper. We're really starting to get, I think, to what it actually means to be a capshovian, what it is that drives capshovians. We all have fear.

00:27:05
We're all human. We're all entrepreneurs. We all deal with uncertainty and there's so much of that. But we face into it anyway. We look at it.

00:27:13
We say, I see you. I see you fear.

00:27:19
But you know what? I'm not going to hide from it and I'm not going to try to put lipstick on it and call something else and whatever. No, I see you and I'm still going to give it all. I'm going to give it my all to face that fear and actually beat it because I trust myself. And not only do I trust myself, but I know that I'm also actually investing in others to help me through that.

00:27:47
And so we don't have a really two word thing to say what a capshovian is, but this is part of the thought process that we went through around, okay, well, what is the identity of a capshovian? And I hope that this resonates with you because if you are a capshovian, you can look at yourself and be like, oh my gosh, yes, it was freaking scary being on the hook for $99 a month or $49 a month or whatever it is, it's scary. I don't even know if I'm going to use all this stuff. But you know what? I'm going to face into that fear and I know that my future.

00:28:24
Self wants to become a content marketing whiz. Yeah, I want to be able to repurpose and I want to market my expertise in a way that is intentional and authentic, but still obviously with help because it's hard, which is why we created Capsho in the first place. But I know that with this investment, I'm going to create that bandwidth and I'm going to make it happen, not all at once. Yeah, that's important too, to know that you can't just invest in something and it suddenly flips a switch. But it's going to be a process, and that process might be, okay, I need to first figure out what are the actual platforms that I want to focus on right now, and Capsho is going to help me do that.

00:29:11
And then I'm going to maybe delegate that, and then I'm going to think about, okay, well, what is the next platforms and what's important to me? Do I want to be discovered in social media? Is it SEO? Is it search? And then you start to do that and then you delegate.

00:29:23
There's a process to all of this. And by the way, we're here to help you through that. But fundamentally, the only people, the capshovians that actually see that future for themselves, they're the ones who make the decision, who actually make the investment and face into that fear and make it happen. So, yeah, that was a long way of saying, like, when we talk about identity, this is where we started in terms of, okay, well, we know that we have to keep thinking about the future of Capsho and who it is that we want to serve. And we have a lot of competitors that coming in really low at low prices, and it's like, okay, well, we could try it, we could play the price game, but that's also not fundamentally who we want to be and what we know is sustainable for our business.

00:30:11
And so it's like, okay, well, there's a particular type of person that actually goes for the cheaper option. Why? What makes someone go for a cheaper option than like and fundamentally at it at their core, not just at the surface of like, well, of course it's smart, quote unquote smart to go for it, but it's actually not count intuitively. And I think this is talking to someone who I've struggled a lot with money mindset, a lot that I've had to work through, really, over the last and what I've worked out is that where my money mindset is. Coming from is all the things it's coming from a place of scarcity, but it's also coming from a place of like I just don't know if I can back myself to actually make a return to actualize my investment.

00:30:55
Yeah, and I think a lot of that, to your point that you made earlier, also is just growing trust in other people. And I'm not saying trust people blindly or trust companies blindly who are happy to take your money, but trust that even if they don't get it right, that it's also up to you a little bit to share what your needs are or what your expectations were. Or maybe it's about adjusting your expectations. Some people don't want to accept that either, myself included. When I say some people, it's all of us.

00:31:18
And I think it's just being more intentional consumers is how you go about it. So I think that's the thing. It's backing yourself, backing the people you've decided to pay. And I think all of that is ultimately backing your own judgment. And I think if we felt like we've had even enough instances where we've judged incorrectly, the tendency can be to go back in and say, okay, well, I'm just going to do the bare minimum in terms of spending.

00:31:43
But really, then what you're doing is you're doing the bare minimum for your future. Yes. Which is sad. So I think it's really recultivating that courage, thinking about what it is that going back to what your mission was in all of this and why that's bigger than yourself and then choosing differently, possibly, if you need to. Yeah, okay, awesome.

00:32:03
So if you're listening to this and you're capshovian, then this is who you are. And let me know as well, by the way, if you resonate with this, you are courageous. Do what Bonnie said. And by courageous, it means that you do face into that fear and you still give it your all, even with all of those fears, even with all of the doubt and everything telling you that you can't make it work or it's not going to happen, or whatever your self talk is telling you, you still are like, okay, I get it. I hear you, I see you, but I'm going to do it anyway.

00:32:37
And the reason why you're going to do it anyway is because you trust yourself. You trust yourself and the others around you to actually help you get to that future version of yourself. And you're going to up level you choose to invest in you up level to that future version of yourself rather than investing at the lowest that you can and almost falling to, therefore falling to that expectation of yourself because you've essentially given yourself an out right, by doing that. So, yeah, let us know. Let me know if we're on the right track.

00:33:08
When you hear this, when you hear these words and you hear even our story, does that resonate with you? Are you like, oh yeah, I never actually thought that that was who I am, but that is who I am because that's how I've lived my life. Exactly. So, yeah, that was step number one. And we're great, like almost 40 minutes into this.

00:33:26
So that's identity. And so step number one, even for you, as you're thinking about this for your own business, that's a really, really powerful starting point. What is the identity of your person, of your ideal audience, your ideal client? Okay, then step number two is how can you actually help to enhance that identity? So once you've kind of gone for us, it's an amorphous blog of an identity description.

00:33:53
We're still obviously working on it, but we have something that I think it really resonates with us and at least feel it. So we just really bring it to life and then it's like, okay, how can we actually help to enhance that? And I actually got asked specifically what our power user super users say about us, as in why they keep paying us, essentially. And one of the things that came to mind was that when I do talk to talk to you, what I hear time and time again is that what you love about Capsho is it gives you different perspectives to your content. Things like, I can actually do more with this.

00:34:35
I can create even more content. It's given me ideas for other topics, all of these things. And the more that I hear, I'm like, oh my gosh, this is actually what we're passionate about. We're passionate about how do we help to unlock or remove the blinkers that we sometimes have on what we talk about, on our content, on that expertise? How do we remove that and be like, actually you are, because again, this is what people say.

00:35:04
It's like, oh, wow, I'm actually pretty smart. Yes, you are all pretty smart. We're all pretty smart, but we don't see that because we are so blinkered with like, oh, well, I only know this one thing, or I only know this. But when you get it played back to you in the way that Capsho does, it's like, actually, you know a lot more than you thought that you did, and there's actually so much more that you can do with the content that you've created. And so how do we help enhance the urgency of a capshovian is really helping them to think more deeply about the content that they're creating.

00:35:37
At the end of the day, we do not want to be. And when we start with podcasting and back then with beta and 1.0 and being an efficiency tool, in a way, when we limit ourselves to that, we became a transaction, right? And we're not in the business of turning your podcast into a transaction. That's fundamental. That's not going to serve you and that's definitely not going to serve us.

00:36:03
We're in the business of helping you turn it into even more. And not even from a that's from a tangible perspective, but then from an intangible perspective, how do we just unlock those blinkers in your mind? I was just thinking about that. That's so powerful. Almost just wanted a little bit of time to let that sink in because I think a lot of maybe even our own capshovians, other than the few who have given us this feedback.

00:36:29
Haven't really thought about it that way even. And we're users of our own product, obviously we wouldn't sell something we don't believe in. It's really interesting because sometimes when I'm reviewing the LinkedIn article or the blog post, you sort of catch these bits amongst all of it because there's so much content there, I'm not going to lie. So we feel your pain. And one of the pieces of feedback we got was, hey, could you just make the blog post paragraphs break up a little bit more?

00:36:55
I was like, yes, I have that request as a user too. But you just catch these things whether it's and for a lot of us, we have interview shows as well. So it might be the guest who's just kind of mentioned this little gem. And the more you get to know your content and further deepen your expertise, you realize what's already out there in your domain. And it's really those little gems that is a unique perspective that's really going to make the difference for your listener and that's what you pick up on.

00:37:20
So, again, this is just this broader, I think, challenge and opportunity we have as people who do content marketing and reach the people that need to hear our content in different ways. That's really going to be the next level for us. So that AI can actually and AI's role in that is to say, well, let me just be a really reliable little junior person on your team that has not just Chun Scott Cribbed, but really summarized for you what we think you should be focusing on. And one of the, I think the mini leaps that our Capsho bins have made is to say it's not about using everything, it's actually about finding those gems. Yes, and truly repurposing with intention.

00:37:56
And the people that have managed to do that really powerfully is like the software makes them look good, not because they never didn't know that information, they just know how to curate more effectively now. And I think that's the next level for Capshovians and all content creators out there because especially with the likes of Chat, GPT and all these other lower level tools, because they're very high level tools, but it's like the amount of content coming out is going to be so much more. Yes, for sure. Okay, so that's step number two is think about how once you know the identity of your person, how can you actually help to enhance that identity? Because more and more we want to help people face into that fear.

00:38:33
We want to help our Captchovians give it their all, trust in themselves, that they can make it happen, trust others around them, trust us to help them make it happen. At the end of the day, up to up level to that future version of themselves. Right, so how can we help enhance that identity? And that's a journey that we're going to continue to be on for sure, because we don't have it all figured out right now. But we have some things that are percolating in my mind already that I'm really excited about, about how we can actually keep helping people on this journey.

00:39:07
So that's that's step number two. Okay, how can you help enhance that identity? And step number three is kind of almost like by the end of this, it feels a little bit, I don't know, like, throw away, but it's really not it's working out. If at the end of that, going through all of that, which is a really hard and arduous process, does it actually feel authentic to you? Because this stuff is hard and it requires actually tapping into not only trying to, at the surface level, know, create your customer avatar and do all that, but it's actually also like you can hear it in this episode.

00:39:44
With us grappling like struggling with articulating words and thoughts around this is that it forces these questions or this way of decision making forces you to almost look at yourself as well, way deeper than you might have before. You may want to, and that you may want to. Yeah, but once you go through this, it's like, okay, well, where you've landed, does that actually feel authentic to you? And for us, when we look at where we started and where we end up now or where we're heading, is this is us actually going back to our content marketing roots, which I'm really, really excited about. Again, we are not here just to make a podcast efficient.

00:40:24
We're not here about to be. Yeah, it's not about podcast. Efficiencies. I mean, yes, that's a byproduct, but that's not our leading like, that's not our chair, as in, you know, we can do that, great, but that's not the thing that makes us want to get up out of bed every day. Right.

00:40:42
For us, we love I don't know, there's something about marketing, and specifically content marketing, that is like, so juicy and there's so many aspects to it that it's like and every time it's like whacka Mole. Like, every time you think that you've nailed one thing, something else pops up or a platform changes something or whatever, but there's kind of something really cool and dynamic about that. And so I think that's when we think about does where we're heading feel authentic to us? It's like it allows us to actually really go deep into our content marketing roots again, which is really exciting. Yeah.

00:41:20
And just with that Mackamall thing, the other thing I was thinking was the good thing about content marketing is that it also diversifies your risk a little bit. So because social media platforms, especially, love to change things around all the time, at least if your blog or your other long form content is doing its thing, you feel less pressure to not be beholden to whatever change is coming but yes, it's whacka Mole, but also some safety there. Saint whackamole. That's what we're here. Okay, cool.

00:41:44
Yeah, it was helpful for everyone. I don't know, even as I was talking, I was like, oh man, I feel like I keep going back and back. But that process is helping me in my own mind sort of fight to be a human conversation too, I think. I don't think this would be and I'm just hopefully speaking for the listener here, but I don't know if it would be as powerful if it was a fully just worked out, scripted thing that someone just delivers as a presentation. I think the struggle and the grappling of the mind and also just how this, I think, transcends to our identity and how we live and have lived to date comes about as well.

00:42:22
Because in going through this, I think, process, we've identified some self limiting beliefs and behaviors in ourselves as individuals and as entrepreneurs, which was translating into our business. I'm sure the person listening to this would feel the same way, or maybe it's and other parts, sorry, I should say, has reflected the really growth oriented things about how we live, have lived and continue to live. One thing that came to mind was one of the mantras, if you will, that my dad drilled into me growing up. And the family was like, you have to make generosity a part of your growth strategy. And there were parts of it that I really understood very literally.

00:42:59
But I think it's the same thing here where it's all about if you have an aspiration beyond yourself, it's just going to automatically filter into your financial goals, into your goals, around how far you want to push yourself, right? So I think this is the thing. Our person, our capshovian, I think has generosity as part of their growth strategy because whether it's because they had a spiritual experience or they had some sort of emotional experience, they've made a decision to do something, even if they can't fully articulate it clearly like we are struggling right now for something bigger than themselves. And part of that includes being generous around changing the mindset from expense to investment, understanding that things take longer than we would like, and being patient with ourselves as we work through that process of learning because you want to do it the right way and not just the fast way. Giving ourselves and each other grace.

00:43:53
So I think one thing about Capsho is, like we said, Capsho is so imperfect. There are people we've lost in the community that I think we definitely can win back because we've improved ourselves. But the people that have the time and the grace and the patience and resilience to give us feedback, right, those are all elements of generosity in your spirit and mostly with yourself. We're on this journey. We've just had our one year.

00:44:19
It's been a tough journey, like a lot of things that aren't spoken about. Personal sacrifices have been made. There's been some tearful, stressful, horrible, terrifying moments which don't really come across in our light hearted, fun emails. There's no GIF to express that, but it's a broader resilience and generosity that really drives that. Right?

00:44:39
So I think that is almost the human thing that we're looking to just share at scale. And we'll do it imperfectly, but hopefully this sort of really imperfect and human episode, which doesn't fit into our SEO strategy. People will relate to that. Yes. I love that.

00:44:57
Okay, so this is yeah, we're about to turn one, which is super exciting. We have gifts coming. Gift gifts, and gifts coming for everyone, if you haven't gone yours already. Definitely for our capshovians. So look at all our emails, please.

00:45:12
I know we send out a lot, but just start or go back for at least a couple of weeks because there's been some changes to plans and pricing, of which, by the way, our existing capshovians all win. You all win from these changes. You just become Oprah, but you just everybody wins. I know. I think I'm pretty sure that we've used that gift where it's like my face on Oprah going like, you in, you in.

00:45:35
We're not handing out cars, just so everyone knows, this is a metaphor. But yeah, definitely. If you've missed out on our comments the last couple of weeks, please go back and catch up on them all because there's some really, really exciting things coming down the pipe. And if you have given us your address, you would have gotten something in them mail. So please take some photos and send it to me, even if it was via email.

00:45:59
I'd love please just communicate. Just talk to me. Please be a human. It is humans on the other side, on the other end of all of the things, of all of the emails and in LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram, it is another human. So please also be kind when you communicate.

00:46:19
That's just so fun request. Let's all be kind to each other. And I hope you enjoyed this episode. It's a long one and it was a very inarticulate one, but I think it definitely helped me in my process. Thought out Diary episode.

00:46:33
Exactly. And hopefully it helped you too. Thanks for listening. This is Deirdre Tshien and Bona Rai from Capsho on the Grow, our podcast show. Stay awesome.