DevReady Podcast

Understanding the subscription economy with Jonathan Callinan - Episode 66

On this episode of the DevReady Podcast, we talked to Jonathan Callinan, business coach, co-founder and marketing strategist at the Online Business Accelerator.
Jonathan discusses the subscription economy, why trust is better than “tribe”, and why you should be building your own communities.
Human behaviour and the world at large is moving toward lifestyles that favour a subscription model for consumer services, it only makes sense that all businesses that want to survive need to think about how to build that into their business plan.
At the heart of Jonathan’s message is the idea that people are drawn into opportunities for networking and community. He explains to us that because of this, your brands are more likely to succeed if they feel they are part of a community.
Topics Covered:
● What underpins successful subscriptions.
● People ultimately want to be connected in the community.
● Trade tribe for trust to be connected to like-minded people.
● Why businesses should be trying to create their own communities.
● The challenges of transitioning a free community to a high-value paid service.
● How to build communities around a target audience.

Close More Deals with SaaS DEAL Framework with Matt Wolach - Episode 65

On this episode of the DevReady Podcast, Andrew and Anthony speak with Matt Wolach, SaaS expert and former guest on the show.
During the conversation, Matt explains his philosophy behind The Perfect DEAL process and how to successfully scale SaaS platforms.
The key to a successful sales model is that it is easy to understand and easy to transfer to someone new. Matt talks about how a lot of early wins in the software space are a direct result of the passion of the founders, which is not a bad thing. But that passion isn’t easily transferred to new hires.
This is where the simplicity of the perfect deal process comes in. A repeatable process helps the sales team to grow seamlessly.
Matt explains that the DEAL stands for four key things that must happen on a sales call in order to close. He boasts a 63% close rate on his team after using the Perfect DEAL strategy.
The process is not intuitive, Matt repeats, but it is worth the time to help your SaaS companies really grow.
Topics Covered:
● The Perfect DEAL helps you sell and scale SaaS companies.
● Why existing sales models need to be moulded to fit SaaS.
● A repeatable process to scale your business.
● Getting prospects to feel bad enough about the problems that they want to fix them.
● Cater your SaaS products to specific customer needs and you’ll win.
● How to demonstrate expertise in your niche

A Perfect Space: Becoming Google of Film Scouting with Kate Tiller - Episode 64

In this episode of the DevReady Podcast, Andrew and Anthony welcome Kate Tiller, Chief Brand Officer at A Perfect Space. Identifying a niche within the entertainment industry, this experienced startup founder set out to develop a searchable database that eliminates much of the legwork involved in scouting film locations. But as with so many startup origin stories, there have been some painful lessons learned along the way to delivering this invaluable service to production teams across North America, Australia and Europe.
Kate generously shares her experience with bringing A Perfect Space from conception to execution, including the disappointments she suffered after partnering (more than once) with tech developers who made promises on which they couldn’t deliver. Short of industry regulation to ensure that coders perform to standard, it’s up to entrepreneurs to protect their vision and the large sums required to turn an innovative idea into a robust web-based solution. Kate explains why both business and tech sides need to be in sync with clear communication, accountability and mutually understood milestones. A Perfect Place couldn’t have realized its potential without a clearly defined, disciplined development framework – something Kate has learned is most efficiently established by hiring an effective CTO from the outset.
While A Perfect Space caters to a very specific sector, the lessons Kate has learned in building out, debugging and populating her platform are universally applicable. With candor and humor, she shares the journey to realizing her vision for “the google of location scouting” -- a searchable database designed to drastically reduce the travel, expense and spade work associated with identifying far-flung locales for all manner of film and television productions. Join Andrew and Anthony in exploring with Kate the many ways in which technologists and entrepreneurs must intersect on the way to turning a business dream into reality.
Topics Covered:
● The challenges associated with scouting locations.
● How specifically A Perfect Space streamlines the scouting process.
● Supporting tech is essential to deliver a disruptive vision.
● Millions of dollars lost and overstating of tech developers.
● Why Big-picture entrepreneurial goals are important.
● The value in creating a hierarchy of needs within a business model.
● Defining and targeting a given market drives the tech tools deployed to reach it.

From Concept to Design: Launching a SaaS Product with Alex Pirouz - Episode 63

Launched in 2013, linkfluencer started initially as a service – an online course that helped users optimize business marketing and development resources available through LinkedIn. But ultimately Alex found that his customers required something beyond a three-step mentoring program.
They craved community, long-term strategy and, most importantly, support implementing sales plans and measuring for results. After identifying this pain point, Alex partnered with an experienced software developer to design Jayla, a powerful platform that helps SMEs and corporates manage marketing and sales opportunities generated through LinkedIn.
This episode of DevReady explores how Alex Pirouz has transformed an entrepreneurial idea from an online service into an end-to-end solution.
Topics Covered:
● Optimizing LinkedIn: How linkfluencer morphed from a service to a scalable software.
● The importance of metrics.
● Why 99% of entrepreneurs “suck at execution”.
● How a non-tech founder approached the development/build-out of his Jayla application.

How to Market with CX with Neel Bhattacharya - Episode 62

On this episode of the DevReady Podcast, Andrew and Anthony talk to Neel Bhattacharya, commercial software strategist and SaaS extraordinaire.
During the conversation, Neel describes what makes CX (or customer experience) unique from UX in the SaaS space, and why businesses should even care.
To understand how customers experience brands, businesses use a variety of tools to gather meaningful data. This data can then be used to help shape the whole range of customer experience, from tone in an email to the color of an app icon.
Customer experience plays a large part in customer retention, so businesses are keen to pay attention to the methods they can use to boost customer experience.
The customer survey is a popular metric for gauging customer experience. Questionnaires are infinitely customizable and simple to use for startups. These surveys also help to establish what are known as personas. Personas help an organization with the planning process. In the process, Neel says, they fix the marketing messages. In other words, businesses use personas to direct marketing campaigns, and if they are ineffective, they can use personas to figure out why.
Topics Covered:
● The differences between UX and CX.
● Understanding how customers experience our brands?
● Customer service vs customer experience.
● Key metrics to measure customer experience.
● The Net Promoter Score as a useful CX metric.
● Persona trees.

The Power of Voice in Digital Age with Ronsley Vaz - Episode 61

On this episode of the DevReady Podcast, Andrew and Anthony talk to Ronsley Vaz, founder and Chief Energy Officer at Amplify. During the conversation, Ronsley describes many of the ways that podcasting has helped his business and improved his own quality of life.
In the way of business podcasting, Ronsley explains that understanding who your market is is critical, and it won’t help to send the right message to the wrong audience, so locking in your target is key to business success. This even extends to product launches, which we should use to learn instead of making a profit. “It hurts the ego to have a failed launch, but you can learn so much and not hurt the bank account,” Ronsley says, speaking to the power of embracing failure.
Ronsley als talks briefly about why he thinks podcasting is intrinsically beneficial. He says that the institutions of education didn’t teach us to raise our voices, so there is some trepidation that comes along with this. But at its core, podcasting is about the power of the human voice—a power that we are evolutionarily predisposed to—and how it can help lift the voices of the unheard and give volume to the silenced. In a way, podcasts help amplify.
Toward the end, Ronsley describes what Amplify actually does, which involves bringing the right podcasts to the right people to amplify them. He hopes everyone interested in podcasting could find out how to use it as a platform to share their stories and build in connection with one another, because there’s nothing more rewarding.
Topics Covered:
● The science of creativity.
● The value adds of podcasting.
● How people make use of podcasting within their businesses.
● Reusing content versus intentional volumes.
● Why the Agile methodology works.
● Finding the proper MVP for your business design.
● What we owe to the freedoms of our ancestors.

How Thought Leadership is Changing Content with Robyn Foyster - Episode 60

On this episode of the DevReady Podcast, Andrew and Anthony sit down with former editor-in-chief and current content strategy entrepreneur Robyn Foyster to talk all things thought leadership.
Robyn is the founder of InProfile, a thought leadership agency that helps clients curate their online presence through a specialized content strategy.
In the current climate of personal brands and 24/7 news, we’re all thought leaders, no matter the size of our audience. Robyn believes having a strategy behind the content you put out into the world is key to attracting followers to your corner of the internet. Content has changed so much in the past 25 years, but as a former journalist and editor-in-chief, Robyn says she still uses that “gut feeling” instinct to guide content strategy and keep followers engaged.
The thing is, we’re all the editors and publishers of our own personal content brands, but just because we have that power, doesn’t mean we know how to wield it—that’s where Robyn and her team come in.
The episode wraps up with the three discussing how much is too much to share when curating your online brand, and the importance of creating consistent content for your audience. In the past, getting on the sofa for a talk show interview was the surest way to get your message out there, now we all have the ability to share our story through personalized social media channels. That power is available to us, but to truly become a thought leader in the online space, we have to create a consistent and engaging content strategy that compels people to stick around to hear what we have to say.
Topics Covered:
• Why Robyn started InProfile
• How thought leadership is changing marketing
• How to become a thought leader?
• The strengths of LinkedIn
• Tools to create weekly content
• Being the publisher and editor of your own content
• How content has changed in the last 25 years
• Personal branding versus business branding and the crossover
• Creating content to become a thought leader
• Creating consistent content for your audience

Succeeding with Software Business with Stewart Marshall - Episode 59

On this episode of the DevReady Podcast, Andrew and Anthony talk to Stewart Marshall, commercial software strategist and SaaS extraordinaire.
Stewart covers everything from using software to solve problems and implementation. He says that most people just want their problems solved, but devs need to think about it in the context of the system as a whole. As a SaaS expert, Stewart also joins the podcast to talk about some of the hurdles that software services overcome in the developmental stages as well as in going to market.
This is Stewart’s guide to developing a business plan for any startup itching to deliver a tech solution:
1. Articulate the problem.
2. Understand whose problem it is.
Get it to a point where you can walk up to a person and say “here’s the problem we have and here’s how we’re going to solve it.” Then you have a business. But remember that technology on its own is not a solution but merely a tool.
A key takeaway from this episode is Stewart’s advice to founders about incorporating technology. He says it’s like looking at a jigsaw puzzle. The commercial side of the business will look at the picture, but the technical side will look at the pieces and how they fit together. When they work together, you get a really good outcome.
Topics Covered:
● How COVID has forced digitization on Australia?
● SaaS experts today and what they have to offer.
● Smart marketing to your target audience.
● Software is only a tool.
● Mistrust in the technology sphere because of pricing structure.
● The AI arms race of the future.
● The distinction between customer needs and the customer wants.
● Why UX & UI are inherently complicated?
● Need to be inquisitive?

High Performance Teams in the Remote-Work Era with Julie Starovoitova - Episode 58

On this episode of the DevReady Podcast, Andrew and Anthony speak with Julie Starovoitova, People Experience Lead at PaperCut Software.
Over the course of the conversation, Julie describes some of the key initiatives she has helped launch toward building high-performing teams. Some of these strategies include: 1. Making sure that all your values and principles are actually lived. This even informs performance reviews. 2. Job-swapping helps team members understand each others’ roles.
Julie also shares how PaperCut’s performance review questions reflect a desire to build high-performing teams.
The four questions for a PaperCut performance review (adopted from Deloitte):
1. General performance and cultural fitness
2. Performance around values and principles
3. Risk of low performance question
4. If at risk of leaving, what should be done to keep them.
Topics Covered:
● Controlling growing teams.
● Successes in transitioning to a remote work platform.
● Seeing team members adapt to working from home.
● What high-performing culture means.
● Investing in teams as pivotal to growth.
● “Anyone can talk to anyone” as a principle.
● Bringing transparency and openness to decisions like promotion.
● Real-life scenarios are more accurate than abstract performance reviews.
● Codifying the essence of your business.

Design Thinking & Architecting Enterprises with Darryl Carr - Episode 57

On this episode of the DevReady Podcast, Andrew and Anthony talk to Darryl Carr, enterprise architect and professional community builder. During their conversation, Darryl talks about enterprise architecture and how business can architect solutions that deliver results and scale to profit.
Darryl describes how he understands systems and community architecture. He talks about how businesses should work with architects early on in the development process to have them inform all stages. Architects can help businesses plan a software solution that will actually deliver value, empower investors, and scale. Among his most poignant pieces of advice is that understanding architecture is ultimately about scale.
A key takeaway from this episode is that businesses primarily need to concern themselves with creating solutions for real problems. A common problem with tech startups is that they try to create solutions for problems that don’t really exist. Avoid this trap by listening to your clients. Give them your honest ear that will allow you to hear their problems for what they are, empowering your team to develop solutions that affect meaningful change. And that’s the bottom line. Deliver value at the end of the day.
Topics Covered:
● How architecture fits into the agile movement.
● Don’t launch straight into the technology.
● Non-functional requirements.
● How to architect to scale your solutions.
● Advice for building a tight tech team.
● Your main goal should be to create value.
● We need to find problems that actually need solving.
● Why communicating drive and passion matters.
Key Quotes:
❏ “Architects help you make sure, when you’re building something, that it’s built well, that it will run well and that it will scale well.” (4:20)
❏ “Involve your architects as early as possible.” (6:15)
❏ “Architecting a platform, really, is understanding the scale.” (9:30)
❏ “Pivot toward something you can validate in the real world.” (19:45)
❏ “You can impact and create more value by listening.” (22:10)
❏ “What you really want to convey is how passionate you are about the problem you’re solving.” (27:50)