Founder-led Marketing

Welcome to REWORK, a podcast by 37signals about the better way to work and run your business. I'm your host Kimberly Rhodes, and as always, I'm joined for the co-founders of 37signals, Jason Preet, and David Heinemeyer Hansen. Well, if you Google the term Founder-led Marketing, all kinds of articles will pop up as this new buzzword, but Jason and David have been marketing as the founders for decades. So I thought we would talk a little bit about the 37signals philosophy around this.

So Jason and David, you guys are constantly marketing the company. Have huge followings on Twitter and LinkedIn. Kind of talk me through the history of marketing at 37signals.

I mean, I've never thought about what we do as marketing really. Right? So I think David and I share. We share our point of view. We share our opinion. We share our products. We share like differences between how we do things compared to other companies. We write books. Now this is all nowadays, I guess, considered Founder-led Marketing or Content Marketing or whatever. For us, it's just working. This is sort of what we do. We make stuff and we talk about the stuff we make.

And primarily because we don't spend a lot of money on traditional marketing. So if we didn't say anything, no one would know anything. Like we don't have any other major outlet really that reaches hundreds of thousands of people reliably. Then the following that David and I have built together, independently, we each have our own. But collectively, we can reach a few hundred thousand people in a matter of a few seconds on Twitter, LinkedIn, whatever it might be.

So we use those platforms to do that stuff. But the stuff we do is what we've always done when no one was listening at all. We're just going to share, teach, show, talk, sell, that stuff. So that's how we've thought about it historically. Over the past few years, we've experimented with other things. So we've experimented with, we've had a marketing.

We had someone before that. We've experimented with traditional billboards of experiments that with digital ad buys, we've experimented with podcast sponsorships and conference sponsorships. We've experimented with, you know, we're now doing some TikTok stuff, and some short, short clips and skit-based stuff. We did some really interesting stuff.

A previous person, Andy, did this. We built a dumpster that lit emails on fire, which was like a real interesting exploration into sort of taking email out of the digital realm and making it physical. And there's a lot of stuff we've played with there. But collectively over the last 25 years, I would say that like marketing is not a thing we've

thought about. And the stuff we're doing today is experimenting to see if we can find something else besides what David and I can do to attract people and to pull them into our orbit, basically. What's interesting with the timeline is that, as you say, now and in the last few years, the idea of founder-led marketing and cutting market in general really has gotten quite

busy, but that's the way to go. This is how we started it literally 20 years ago. And now we're doing, hey, let's dabble in and see like what can more traditional brand-based, company-based sources of marketing add to that equation. But I do think that there's something to the concept of founder-led marketing, which actually when you just mentioned it here at the top of the show,

there's the first time I've ever heard that term. But it resonates with me in the same way that I see the kind of work that Jason and I do on social media and our newsletters and elsewhere, does resonate that when a brand tries to be funny or tries to talk to you in a way that you can relate to, it's actually quite difficult. And you have to be either really, really good as a brand to be able to do that at a level that kind of moves something. I mean, if you're a

Nike or whatever you can do thing, you could say just do it. Not that that was easy to come up with that necessarily, but that has a Keshay to it. A lot of other companies, especially smaller companies, they don't have that. That brand, that company identity is just too weak. It's not far reaching enough. You can't do those kind of things, but individuals can. Individuals can have a sense of

credibility because they also have something on the line. It's your name out there. This is one of the reasons why some of the experiments we've tried over the years, I've had a very delicate relationship to, especially when it comes to writing because I kind of feel like almost anything we put out, I substitute my name for whatever the company says. And I feel like it's my credibility on the line, which really helps drive where are we going? What are we engaging with? How are we

saying things? Does it feel like it's our voice? And the best way to feel like it's our voices to you, Sharon, damn voice. This is why for me, Hey, world was such a breakthrough. We used to have signal versus noise, a block that ran for I think 19 years or 21 years, a long time. Great place that we have some wonderful pieces up there. But if you look at the volume of writing and sharing

within on signal versus noise, it was quite uneven. I would really think about like, is this a kind of thing I would put on signal versus noise because that's kind of like company outlet, even it solves my name versus now that Jason and I write more directly under own name, whether it's on social media or in Hey world, it feels like I could just use my own voice. And it's actually a lot easier to do that to some extent than it is to try to do this puppet thing. Like I'm going

to talk as me through this mask of a brand. That is an awkward way of addressing people in the way that feels authentic. Now, that also has downsides, of course, the fact that both Jason and I, like we write about a lot of different things and it's not always actually the majority of it, it's not directly in service of let's sell some more base camp, let's sell some more Hey, because that doesn't work either. Then you could burn out really quick and this is one of the

things I've seen with some people who try that's a strategy, right? Like let's say they, oh, final and marketing, let me look up at that. I got to do some of that because why? Because I want some more traffic because I want some more signups. Yeah, do you know what people can smell that? They can smell that instrumentalism. They can smell like you're not sharing because you feel like you have something to say you're sharing because you want something. And that level of transactionalness

is actually one of the things I really don't like about any of these terms. Before I found a little marketing, we talked about content marketing, which is a little bit broader term on it, but it was the same thing. It was a writing up articles where you didn't necessarily mean what you were saying. You were just like, this is a good keyword. We should be ranking on this keyword. Let me write about some shit that I have no special inside or position on. I just know that this

is what people are searching for. I'm highly allergic to that kind of engagement. And the only way that I know how to do it well is to write about things I really believe. And it's so funny because the audience and I mean broadly have become so skeptical of the fact that most or lots of founders use these as tactics that when they actually see someone saying something they truly believe,

they often don't believe it. Oh, you're just saying that because you want to whatever juice up excitement for a new thing or I'm saying this stuff because I can't keep it in my goddamn fingers. It's got to come out of that. And I think that's why it's worked. And some of it is also just like, all right, well, so how do you do that well? You got to develop a voice. You got to

practice and how long does that take? Well, 20 years in our case, not that it has to take that long before you begin, but you don't get it just because you read an article about funneled marketing or I want the content marketing. You you won't you have to start from do I know something that'd be interesting to share? Can I share something? And the good news is everything is interesting if you scratch hard enough. Everything like we've talked about this guy before I think on the

podcast. This guy to make saddlebags or a handbag. Do you remember what's his name Jason? Dave from saddleback leather. That's right. Yeah. And that to me was just such an illustration of like, I didn't know I cared anything about like how a buckle is stitched to a thingy. And you look at those videos and go like, this is fascinating. I now I care about how buckles work. And that's the power. That's to me is like, if I was going to take one shot of what is found in

the lid marketing, he is just a pinnacle example of that because it's not an hour category. And you look at that and go like, yeah, I want to know from Dave. Can Dave tell me some more? If you had just stuck in a higher puppet thing that we're talking from a brand perspective, first of all, it wouldn't be entertaining, right? Because it Davis is entertaining because he give it to your raw. He's not afraid of saying like why things the competition kind of sucks on buckles because

like they don't do the buckles, right? And you can feel that and you can connect to that. Okay. Jason, I want to go back to something you said. You mentioned that we don't do paid advertising here at 37 signals. Kind of tell me why tell our audience why we don't do that, which is not typical for most of them. This is really David's topic, but I'll David has some good ransoms. I mean, we have, so we have experimented with this,

you know, traditionally Google ad words, for example. And then we bought some other branded keywords, which is through Google. But in other platforms, there's two other search engines as well, plus buying billboards and whatever. David has some philosophical points. I'm sure he'll bring up. I'll just tell you like it doesn't work for us because the economics don't work for us. There's also some philosophical points of view that are maybe against the kinds of things we

want to spend our money on. But our economics like our products are very, very affordable. They're very low priced. All things considered, especially compared to the people we compete with in our field. So a lot of companies we compete with are selling, you know, 8,000 seats in 10 or 6, 5, 10, 20, whatever, $1,000 a month accounts. They can afford to spend $3,000 a trotting and customer or $600. Whatever they can do, like we don't we don't we don't play in that

realm intentionally. And so the keyword mix in that whole world is just it doesn't really pay for us. And even if it did, it's like I don't really want to lose a year and a half. I know we'll break even after a year and a half. I don't want customers where I have takes me a year and a half to break even on them in that way. It's just not worth the pull and the spend and the effort and the tracking and all the stuff and the salaries and the spend and all the stuff just to I think there's

other ways to do it. So economically doesn't work for us philosophically. David will probably touch on that. And also it just it frankly, it's not that fun and interesting to try to like at least for us to rank for a keyword or to grab a customer that way. We have had fun with it though. Like there's this thing that I put this ad up, I don't know when this was a couple of years ago. Basically brands were bidding on our keywords on our brand. Sorry, other brands were bidding on

our brand. So if you search for base camp, like a sauna would come up or Monday or whatever. And it kind of just frankly pissed me off. It feels like a cheap shot. I don't I don't like that. And so we bought basically we tried to buy we bought a series of ads that basically called that out saying like we're being held ransom by Google essentially because Google's willing to sell our brand

to other to the highest bidder. And like this isn't cool. Whatever it was. And that ad, which was not about base camp, which is not about hey, I don't think hey was even out of the time, was not about any of our products. It was about a point of view ended up getting me on CNBC and you know, millions of views on the ad and on Twitter. And we partly that into a million different

ways. So it turns out that that worked in a sense. But it's it was sort of a in many ways like a revelation that like just advertising on your product is not really anywhere near as interesting for us at least and advertising on an idea. But anyway, I'll hand the soft on the baton off the David so we can rant on the the philosophical side of this. Yeah, I didn't know there was philosophical reasons for not spending on ads. Yeah, I'll start with them. It's not even ads

as a broad category. I don't have anything about against ads. A lot of most beautiful short films ever recorded in human history have been ads of some kind. If you're going to do 30 seconds, ad makers can do some incredible things, not often, but at the peak, it can be true. It can be moving. It's an art form. Great advertising as an art form. It is definitely. It really is. Yeah,

I remember we talked about the Volvo ad a few years ago. Volvo had this ad. You showed this whole life of I think a little girl who was about to get run over and didn't because the driver was driving a Volvo with all these safety systems and so on. I remember watching that whole thing and going like, do you know what after that? I kind of want a Volvo. I have no, like didn't have anything to be a Volvo is not necessarily the thing I resonate with. But after that, I was like,

wow, this is incredible. That's just truly moving stuff. So I don't have a problem with that. Where I have a problem is advertising on the internet. And it's usually advertising on the internet as it pertains to tracking that in order for this whole machine to work as well as it does for the Facebook's and Metas and whatever of the world. They have to build these incredibly detailed

profiles on everyone. And now you advertise against profiles, not against the content. And I thought, do you know what that's just a deep perversion of privacy of what the internet is supposed to be. Suddenly the worst slob of the internet in terms of content is just as valuable as the most highly produced stuff because you're not targeting the content you're targeting the reader. And I just don't like that. I never did. And that meant in part that we were competing with one

hand tied behind our back. Everyone else who's advertising in this game, they're using that stuff. They're using the hyper-tarking. They're cutting everything down into a tiny slice of they were only reaching exactly the kind of profiles that are most likely to buy their product. And just like, do you know what? I don't, I don't feel like doing that. But more than that, we've talked a lot about that philosophy of being against tracking and targeted advertising

so on. I also just have an aesthetic business position to this. And then it's the fact that a lot of those kinds of programs are all evaluated on the marginal dollar. So someone goes like, if I can spend $100 and make back $100 and 150, that's worth it. I get 150 back. I look at that and go like, wait a minute, you're telling me to make $101 and 50 cents. I have to give Mark Zuckerberg $100. That's not proportionate. You get $100. I get a buck 50. What the fuck? That's not a fair trade.

And I don't care if I'm better off. That's some sort of homeless economic to his argument that like, I'm not that person. I'm not going to give you $100 if I get a buck 50 back. There's actually a really interesting line of studies on this where they do this. What is the trade off? When does someone feel like, well, I'm okay with you getting more if I also get something back. And there are

these, I think it's like 70, 30 or something. If you run these experiments, if someone is going to get less than 30 cents on the dollar, they'd rather forgo the 20 cents than to see you get 80. And clearly that experiment doesn't apply to companies because a lot of companies are run on just the marginal buck 50. I don't go like, I'll spend the one for, I get buck 50. And we don't run

that way because in some sense, both directly and at least philosophically, it's my $100. I'm opening my fucking wallet, taking out a $100 bill, giving it to Mark and he goes, here's a buck 50 back. Like a fuck you, Mark. No, we're not that. No, I'd rather be worse off. Okay. Well,

there's a clip. That's that's going to be a winner. So when it comes to you guys marketing yourselves, I'm curious where the line is between feeling like you're always having to like hawk your wares, if you will, to just being out on Twitter and just being yourselves on Twitter. Like, do you feel like you're balancing between those two? I can tell you that there's days when I

really don't like myself because I have to do some of those things. And whenever I start to feel that way, I just stop for a little bit because like there's times when I go and LinkedIn and I write

something up and I'm like, you know what? Like this advice is it's good advice, but it's also stupid. Why am I writing this? Like, what are my doing? Why am I falling into this trap? Or I'm getting in some argument on Twitter about something with someone that's like, why am I doing this? Who is this benefiting? Like what? And so when I find myself at that place, I do stop by step back and take some days away. I don't want to spend my time feeling that way. And you also, you can't

keep hitting people over the head with the same stuff. I mean, you kind of do for a little bit if you want to soak in, but then there's a point where it's over saturated and then people start to push back from you and don't pay attention. And then I also just feel kind of cheap, like just selling my wares all the, I just don't like it. So it has to be the right mix and I don't always

get it right. And occasionally I'll throw in a product pitch because like I actually something happened today where I use the product and I was really happy with the fact that our product does this and so I want to share that. But I don't have a calendar or something like every day I need to post something about this or post something about that or two days a week. I mean, you just say something about like none of that. It has to be very natural. And also the push back has to be natural.

That my sense of my respect for myself basically is what dictates whether I've gone overboard or not. That's kind of how I look at it. Yeah, I think it's a great point. And I think it is, I have such a hate love relationship with social media in general. Mostly I'm like, do you know what? I wish it didn't exist. I kind of, because I remember when it didn't, I remember when we were writing on Sicken vs. Noise prior to Twitter, prior to Facebook, prior to all these other things. And there's

a certain, not just nostalgia because that sounds like just rose colored glasses. But like, do you know what? That was a better, that was a better way. But you also have to accept the world you live in to some extent. And that is a sense of obligation as Jason said that sometimes feel just like do you know what this sucks? But, and I have the exact same emotional response that Jason does. And then sometimes I go like, all right, fuck it. I'm just not going to do it for three weeks.

And other times I have the other response that like, do you know what? Most people don't fucking like their job. I look at seven billion people on earth. Do they all get up in the morning? Yes! Time for work! Let me go crush it! And no, they don't. And sometimes I go like, do you know what? This is part of my job. Part of our job is to do this kind of awareness, be top of mind. We're not buying all these ads. There's not a thing that automatically pushes things out. If Jason and I just go,

as we actually did for a while, just go like, you know what? We're just not going to gauge it all. We're not going to spend any time here. The moving average of top of mindfulness just starts rrrr dipping. And you can go like, okay, whatever, you don't need to. Yeah, but I also feel like I have some obligation to literally the rest of the company at, you know what? Jason and I have a differential advantage here that we have large following. I can't hand this off to someone else.

I can't go like, hey, other person at the company with a thousand followers, can you do some of this stuff for a month? It's not going to work. It's not going to have that kind of impact. So there's some obligation in it. And I oscillate between those things sometimes going like, especially for me, LinkedIn, LinkedIn to me has just such a odd, uncanny, everyone has this tight rubber mask under a fucking face, right? And sometimes I go like, that's really nice because people mostly are

very polite, but it also just feels fake a lot of times. I can't actually, I don't read any LinkedIn stuff, which it just makes it a good platform for me because I just go in there. I just post my own stuff and then I come up and I read very little of the feed versus Twitter for me has a little bit or not a little bit a large degree of addictive properties where I can get addicted to Twitter, especially when I post that's that's that's the hard part of it. Like if I don't post for like five

days, I can have a very healthy relationship with Twitter. Like, I'll check it one day for like 10 minutes, whatever. If I get into the rhythm of posting, the fucking thing, just like the claws go in and I got it now check it 10 times a day and I got to follow up and I got a direct outreach and that's also the magic of it, right? It's the retail politics. Like I'm directly talking to

individuals. Usually we're talking about interesting stuff I actually care about, but it's also just like yeah, there's some deep pace of self-loading that's available in that whole main where you just like, what the fuck is this? And you got to constantly calibrate like, am I me here? Or am I playing a character or what the fuck is going on? And then say the best way is just to occasion. Just go like, we said, we said three days away, five days away. I think the longest I

took was like two months one time. I should really do that again. Yeah. To David's point about like sometimes you just got to do your job because it is part of your job. One of the things I've been thinking about recently as a bit of a truth serum basically or whatever is like, if I didn't work here, would I ever spend another second on LinkedIn, the answer is no. So that means I really don't like that, but I do it because I need to do it.

Twitter, I would spend some time on, but a whole lot less. And I would change who I follow. So I would not follow any web business, see whatever's I just I don't actually enjoy talking business on Twitter, but I need to do it. But I wouldn't do it if I didn't have this job. And so I think that's like the real truth of the matter is that it's part of the job. It's part of some I enjoy it to some degree, but I also wouldn't do it in my spare time if I didn't

have to. And so I think that's the real honest answer. My Achilles heel is I would. I fucking love arguing. I mean, and it's such a funny thing where I'm like, do you know what? I just I enjoy the sport of the big. And that is a really dangerous thing to enjoy when you go on Twitter because so often I'll look at someone else who does have a large following and I'll look at them reply indignantly to some fucking Rando dude 905 in a PC tone. I'm like, dude, what the fuck? What are you

doing? What are you doing? Why are you arguing with this? Literally nobody about some stupid shit. And like I'll have that thought in my head and like literally five seconds later, I'm replying to Rando Smow 506 school and like, no, time script, bus sock. And I'm like, what? And it's I think it's this is why Twitter for me is more dangerous, even though I enjoy it more. It's actually that's the danger. Like linked into a much greater extent I can treat it like a job.

As Jason said, I'm just like, do you know what? Not my I wouldn't come here unless I was kidding literally paid to do it, but that also makes it easier to have that distance and that separation. Twitter, especially I actually say the freaking for you page has gotten annoyingly good. Like I never used to use the algorithmic sort of beat out just follow number people and I just follow that. That was a much better way of doing it. This is one of the ways where like the product

gets worse the better it is. And Twitter's algorithm have gotten substantially better not perfect. And then it just makes it more addictive. And it's just like, yeah, again, half the days I wish I didn't have to do it. And the other half I'm going like, what are we going to debate this morning? Let's bring it on. Let's do three different threats at the same time. I'm going to tweet 200 times. I mean, I actually just had that over the weekend. This whole I've been getting into limits and a bunch

of things. That's actually to me. That's the that's the best part of it. I like arguing with nerds about nerdy things because there's like sort of in soccer or talking about like you got to go for the ball, not the man, right? A lot of other domains, even some business-y domains, certainly all everything that touches culture. It feels like you do a play and instantly it's just full context sport like people are insulting each other left and right. And when it comes to technology,

there's a greater percentage of the time where we're playing for the ball. Like is this technology better than that? Like here's the thing that's good about it. Here's the thing that's bad about it. And I do think that you know what? At the best days, it does move the discussion forward. It does illuminate. It does lead me to discover things I wouldn't have found otherwise. There's not quite enough great days. Let me add one more thing. I know this isn't a session

about on Twitter necessarily. But like I used to think the four the four you feed was like a fun house mirror where it sort of distorted what I would I like. It actually is a very, very clear mirror and I don't like what I see. Which is when I go there, I see all these recommendations for growth hacks and growth tactics and business this and business that and do these 10 things and I bought this domain for this amount of money and look at how rich I am and like all this shit.

Like this is reflecting back what it thinks I want based on my clear intentions clearly. So it's actually a crystal clear mirror and I don't like that and it reminds me why I don't really like being there even though I don't like being there most of the time. There are moments when I really do and it is a fantastic product. But I've realized it's not a fun house mirror. It's a clear mirror and that's maybe where my disgust is coming from to some degree like wow is this is this how I'm

reflected to others. It may be a little bit too too much truth in that. That's interesting. I also think it's funny that you say David LinkedIn feels like everyone's putting on a mask because I know even with the podcast internally David I remember sending you a ping like okay so we're not going to say fuck on LinkedIn but it's okay on Twitter right. So it's like we're making those decisions on how we're presenting ourselves in this podcast and the two of you which clips we're

going to put on which channel which is probably why it doesn't feel as authentic. But it's also this is why I'm so conflicted about it because I also think there's something good to that right.

Like I've really come around to the idea that it was not free that we all went like oh just I've talked about it endlessly like be yourself all the time just like where wherever's comfortable swear as much as you like in all contexts it's all times just be like your raw unfiltered self. I was more into that idea in the past than I am today even though I'm still that person right. I am still prone to swearing and I don't wear suit to work and whatever.

But to some degree there's some part of me that wish I liked LinkedIn more because there actually is at the quorum there's like that's not appropriate to say here sir this is a context of business and would you know that'd be better if we had a little more at the quorum. I mean Twitter is the complete opposite right like you're literally talking to some rando and like in a split second you're just hurling insults at each other and like interesting but also good.

Not so sure but this is this is directly to Jason's point it is a straight mirror like if if if I'm still there even though I recognize all these things do I do I like that is it is it just bringing out all these sort of just I was about to say violent that's not what it is

but contentious forms like I just I like the wrestling like why do I like the wrestling why do I like wrestling with strangers over shit right like I mean literally meme insert touch grass but that's why it's interesting right like it was just like this is just bad and just it's just good we could just choose to good and not have any of the bad. Twitter is just like what if you just took our huge glass of good and a huge glass of bad and shoot it up like you're not going to

separate those two things again they're just not they're just in their own mixed. Okay last question before you wrap it up do you guys imagine a world in which you cannot do what you're doing where the company can build and grow without you having to be the boots on the ground marketers if you

will. I mean this is the ego-stroke question but I'll say I mean we have seen that when we haven't done this stuff as David alluded to earlier mine share went down traffic went down I mean for better for worse this is the company we've built doing it the way we've done it and we have a

reputation that is about this so by the but at the same time I'm absolutely certain that there is someone and some team and some other CEO who could pull that off but we couldn't be around it I would say like I'd have to like exit myself from the situation in a sense to let someone else run

it that way because I'd have a really hard time I think watching that even though there's no question my mind that someone could run it better if they really knew that playbook and they did it their way and they weren't opposed to all the things we're opposed to and they were willing to give it the time and the money and the whatever because many companies have done it just fine so like it can be done I'm not here to say we are the geniuses because we're not but if we're going to continue to run

the company way we've run it and and how we've been running it and why we've been running it the way you've been running it we have to continue to do this I think it's pretty clear that that's that's the outcome unless we you know again running to some surprise breakthrough on the marketing

experiments we're doing but as of yet nothing would replace this that we've tried so far David anything to add before we wrap it up you can say no no I think that was great plus two and okay rework is a production 37 signals you can find shunuts and transcripts on our website at 37signals.com

slash podcast full video episodes around youtube and twitter any of you have a question for Jason or david about a better way to work and run your business it was a voicemail at 708 628 780 you can also text that number we just might answer your question on an upcoming show.