Under the Radar

00:00:00 ◼   ► Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development. I'm Marco Arment.

00:00:05 ◼   ► And I'm David Smith. Under the Radar is never longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started.

00:00:10 ◼   ► So today what I wanted to talk through is the broader concepts, but something that started from a

00:00:18 ◼   ► sort of my initial planning for getting ready to go and attend WWDC this year.

00:00:23 ◼   ► where one of the things that I was thinking about is the interactions that I tend to have

00:00:29 ◼   ► at the actual convention on the floor. And something that has happened several times

00:00:34 ◼   ► is I'll be walking around and I'll just randomly bump into somebody and start chatting, and

00:00:40 ◼   ► it's like as we start talking, eventually we get to a point where they're like, "Oh,

00:00:45 ◼   ► wait, you're the guy who did pedometer++? I love that app," or something like that,

00:00:49 ◼   ► where you have this interaction where it's like eventually

00:00:52 ◼   ► they do sort of, there's this discovery of a common ground.

00:00:57 ◼   ► - It's almost an accident.

00:00:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that accidental nature of it

00:01:02 ◼   ► is the problem that I wanted to talk about today.

00:01:05 ◼   ► Because what I've been thinking about is,

00:01:07 ◼   ► well, what do most companies do

00:01:09 ◼   ► when they encounter this kind of a thing?

00:01:11 ◼   ► It's like, if you walk around WWDC,

00:01:13 ◼   ► you will see people wearing like 1Password shirts,

00:01:16 ◼   ► and you know they work for AgileBits.

00:01:18 ◼   ► or you'll see companies with Omni shirts on or whatever,

00:01:22 ◼   ► and you'll know they work for Omni.

00:01:23 ◼   ► And so if you like Omni and want to talk to someone

00:01:26 ◼   ► who works there, you know how to go about doing that.

00:01:29 ◼   ► But it feels weird in some ways,

00:01:32 ◼   ► or at least initially it started feeling weird,

00:01:34 ◼   ► and I was like, should I make shirts that say,

00:01:37 ◼   ► it's like my apps and have like pedometer plus plus

00:01:40 ◼   ► or C plus plus or under the radar even,

00:01:43 ◼   ► or even just my name put on it.

00:01:46 ◼   ► And it's weird because it feels a bit like self-promotion

00:01:51 ◼   ► in that way, it feels a bit odd.

00:01:54 ◼   ► And the more I've thought about this,

00:01:57 ◼   ► I need to probably not think about it in those ways,

00:02:00 ◼   ► but it seemed like an interesting topic to talk about

00:02:01 ◼   ► because I struggle with this weird tension of,

00:02:04 ◼   ► it's like if I was working for a bigger company

00:02:08 ◼   ► and I was going to a convention and that company said,

00:02:11 ◼   ► "Hey, here's five t-shirts that have various products on it.

00:02:15 ◼   ► "We'd love it if you could wear them during the thing."

00:02:16 ◼   ► and see if that can start a conversation,

00:02:19 ◼   ► help a conversation along.

00:02:21 ◼   ► I wouldn't feel weird about doing that.

00:02:23 ◼   ► It'd be like, "Yeah, totally, I'm a team player,

00:02:25 ◼   ► "let's do this."

00:02:27 ◼   ► But when it's me promoting myself, it feels a bit weird.

00:02:30 ◼   ► And that tension is a strange thing.

00:02:33 ◼   ► I think in some ways it's unique to being an indie,

00:02:35 ◼   ► but I think a lot of people probably struggle

00:02:37 ◼   ► with this type of thing when your brand is more personal

00:02:42 ◼   ► rather than more corporate.

00:02:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, this is, I think a lot of this plays into

00:02:49 ◼   ► what I think would probably be like the stereotypical

00:02:53 ◼   ► geek personality that many people in our industry,

00:02:56 ◼   ► I think us included, have, which is,

00:03:00 ◼   ► you know, it's hard for people with this personality type

00:03:03 ◼   ► to self-promote.

00:03:05 ◼   ► It's hard for them to like brag about themselves

00:03:09 ◼   ► and promote their work a lot of times.

00:03:11 ◼   ► And this is something I had to just get over

00:03:14 ◼   ► over the years, honestly, and I'm still not great at it, but it's really hard for

00:03:21 ◼   ► certain personality types to be willing to do that. And I think what helps to distinguish

00:03:28 ◼   ► here between times you should and shouldn't do that or when or where you should and shouldn't

00:03:33 ◼   ► do that is to recognize that there are lots of situations in which, like walking around

00:03:40 ◼   ► WWDC, tons of people there are wearing their own t-shirts. If there's ever a time and

00:03:48 ◼   ► place to wear your own t-shirt of the app you make or the company you work for, it's

00:03:53 ◼   ► at a conference full of other people doing the exact same thing. The cost of you doing

00:03:59 ◼   ► that, the risk of you doing that is absolutely lowest there during that week. There's also

00:04:06 ◼   ► situations like if you are at a tech meetup or any place where you know you're going

00:04:13 ◼   ► to be surrounded by other software developers or other people in your business who are probably

00:04:19 ◼   ► going to also be doing the same thing, that's totally fine. And in fact, not only will the

00:04:26 ◼   ► world tolerate your self-promotion during that time, but as you mentioned, for purposes

00:04:31 ◼   ► like starting up conversations or trying to meet people who make the apps you like, it's

00:04:36 ◼   ► It's actually helpful.

00:04:37 ◼   ► You're actually helping people find you

00:04:39 ◼   ► who want to find you or who are interested in your app

00:04:42 ◼   ► or who know who you are or who want to know who you are.

00:04:45 ◼   ► So you're actually helping out by being self-promotional

00:04:50 ◼   ► in certain contexts, such as those kind of real life

00:04:53 ◼   ► gatherings of similar types of people.

00:04:56 ◼   ► And it's just one of those things where

00:04:59 ◼   ► you just kind of have to think of it

00:05:03 ◼   ► from the other person's perspective of like,

00:05:05 ◼   ► if I wear a shirt that identifies me as the maker of this app or that or as the host of

00:05:12 ◼   ► the show or whatever is the other person more likely to think I'm being like an arrogant

00:05:17 ◼   ► jerk or more likely to recognize that for people who want to who are who are who are

00:05:24 ◼   ► interested in saying hi to me and and will and that'll make their job actually easier

00:05:29 ◼   ► and they will appreciate that rather than trying to guess wait is that underscore there's

00:05:34 ◼   ► just a line on a shirt, but that could be an underscore, or it could just be a line,

00:05:39 ◼   ► 'cause it's kind of hard to put your name on a shirt. So there are so many contexts

00:05:45 ◼   ► like that in which you're actually helping the other people by doing that.

00:05:49 ◼   ► >>

00:05:49 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's

00:05:50 ◼   ► It's an interesting thing too because I think about the tension you so like an example of a similar example

00:05:57 ◼   ► That's also a bit of attention is like the degree to which you talk about

00:06:01 ◼   ► Or like mention when people say nice things about your products, right?

00:06:06 ◼   ► It's like similar in this way where there's this strange tension around

00:06:11 ◼   ► You know, it's like if someone writes a nice review of one of one of my apps do I like, you know

00:06:17 ◼   ► put that on Twitter, put it on my blog.

00:06:19 ◼   ► But it's like, that feels a little weird.

00:06:21 ◼   ► Like retweeting when people say nice things about you,

00:06:23 ◼   ► like that's a little gauche, I guess.

00:06:26 ◼   ► Like it's not great.

00:06:27 ◼   ► But I think what I've been trying to work through

00:06:30 ◼   ► is why it feels weird versus what I'm increasingly

00:06:33 ◼   ► coming to grips with about being fine with,

00:06:34 ◼   ► of the like, it's good for people to know who you are

00:06:38 ◼   ► and to know what you're associated with.

00:06:41 ◼   ► And like that's just building a brand versus being,

00:06:44 ◼   ► it's like what kind, it's like then you start

00:06:46 ◼   ► get to the question of what kind of brand do you want to be? And that's, I think,

00:06:51 ◼   ► the more interesting place to—where I need to get comfortable with the first step. I

00:06:56 ◼   ► am a brand. I have a following online. I do things in a public way. I make apps that are

00:07:03 ◼   ► used by hundreds of thousands of people. That's an important thing, and I need to just be

00:07:07 ◼   ► okay with that. And then it's like, "Okay, well, what kind of brand do I want to be?"

00:07:11 ◼   ► even big companies have different brands that have different personalities to them. There's

00:07:17 ◼   ► ones that are very casual or very formal or very inviting. And even down to the things

00:07:26 ◼   ► like I'm thinking about, I'm working on the new one, what design should I have for

00:07:30 ◼   ► my shirt? And it's like, well, it's probably going to be kind of geeky. I'm going to

00:07:34 ◼   ► make something that's a little bit, that's not just a picture of an app icon. It's

00:07:40 ◼   ► going to be a little bit silly, and that probably speaks more to the personality of my company

00:07:46 ◼   ► and my own personality, and I think that works. But it's an important thing that I really

00:07:51 ◼   ► – it's kind of bad in some ways. I've been doing this for so long, but I still have

00:07:57 ◼   ► these basic elements of marketing that I'm just not really comfortable with or have really

00:08:01 ◼   ► thought through.

00:08:02 ◼   ► - I think it really does have a lot to do with the context.

00:08:07 ◼   ► As I said earlier, there are some contexts in which

00:08:10 ◼   ► people actually are being helped by your marketing.

00:08:14 ◼   ► And your example of do you retweet things

00:08:17 ◼   ► that are complimentary, in the context of people

00:08:20 ◼   ► who follow you on Twitter, who are going to see this,

00:08:24 ◼   ► they don't need that.

00:08:25 ◼   ► That is not really helping them to hear how awesome you are

00:08:27 ◼   ► because they already follow you,

00:08:28 ◼   ► they already think you're awesome.

00:08:29 ◼   ► They don't need to see everyone else thinking you're awesome

00:08:32 ◼   ► and you retweeting that and it just makes you look arrogant.

00:08:34 ◼   ► But if you have a page for your product,

00:08:37 ◼   ► like a webpage or even people who just use

00:08:40 ◼   ► the description field on the App Store for this purpose,

00:08:42 ◼   ► put endorsements there, put positive reviews,

00:08:47 ◼   ► like the way people pull out call quotes,

00:08:49 ◼   ► like people do on movie posters,

00:08:51 ◼   ► and put in the ellipsis so everything sounds good.

00:08:54 ◼   ► If prominent people or publications or anybody really

00:09:01 ◼   ► says something nice about you, maybe don't retweet it, but put it on your marketing page.

00:09:07 ◼   ► Because in that kind of context, that is not only appropriate, but can be helpful to people

00:09:12 ◼   ► who are visiting. To kind of see who else has vetted this app, are there any big publications

00:09:18 ◼   ► or names that I've heard of who have said nice things about this? That's actually

00:09:22 ◼   ► useful information in that context. So I think it's tempting to just step back and say,

00:09:30 ◼   ► "Well, I don't feel comfortable doing any of this, so I'm just gonna let people find my stuff."

00:09:34 ◼   ► But people won't find your stuff. Like that's not how this works and

00:09:38 ◼   ► that's that's kind of

00:09:41 ◼   ► It's it's almost a naive view of like how how this world works now

00:09:47 ◼   ► That it's very tempting to to think it's a very appealing notion

00:09:52 ◼   ► to think that you know, I can just put something good out there and it'll it'll get found people will find it and

00:10:00 ◼   ► Sometimes that does really happen,

00:10:02 ◼   ► but it really helps a lot if you can grease the wheels

00:10:05 ◼   ► a little bit, if you can get a lot more people

00:10:07 ◼   ► to look at it first.

00:10:09 ◼   ► And the way you do that is some kind of promotion,

00:10:13 ◼   ► some kind of telling people what you're about.

00:10:15 ◼   ► And I think the line that has to be drawn

00:10:19 ◼   ► is figuring out when such promotion

00:10:22 ◼   ► would be considered inappropriate

00:10:24 ◼   ► and not doing it in those places,

00:10:26 ◼   ► but then finding the opportunities where it is appropriate

00:10:29 ◼   ► or where it is even helpful,

00:10:31 ◼   ► and trying to focus your efforts there.

00:10:33 ◼   ► And that isn't always an easy line

00:10:36 ◼   ► for a lot of people to find,

00:10:38 ◼   ► and certain products make it easier or harder,

00:10:40 ◼   ► certain personality types make that easier or harder

00:10:42 ◼   ► to figure out where that line is,

00:10:43 ◼   ► but there are places where it is totally appropriate

00:10:47 ◼   ► to market yourself and to market your app.

00:10:50 ◼   ► And it isn't really, if you think about it,

00:10:54 ◼   ► it isn't even really that hard to think about

00:10:55 ◼   ► what those places might be.

00:10:56 ◼   ► Obviously there's conferences, there's in-person things.

00:10:58 ◼   ► And I would say anywhere where you're going to a meeting

00:11:01 ◼   ► and everybody passes out business cards,

00:11:02 ◼   ► that's not what I'm talking about.

00:11:04 ◼   ► That's just a waste of paper.

00:11:06 ◼   ► But-- (laughs)

00:11:08 ◼   ► - That is actually a thing I've been wondering.

00:11:09 ◼   ► It's like, should I have business cards?

00:11:11 ◼   ► I haven't had business cards in years.

00:11:13 ◼   ► - I think in our business, the answer generally is no.

00:11:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, but every now and then I'm like,

00:11:17 ◼   ► I wonder if at some point, I'll run into somebody

00:11:20 ◼   ► who would be important to be able to,

00:11:23 ◼   ► for them to reach back out to me,

00:11:25 ◼   ► and I was like, I have nothing to give you.

00:11:28 ◼   ► I can write my name on your hand, that's all I've got.

00:11:31 ◼   ► It's not great, but it's the same kind of thing

00:11:36 ◼   ► 'cause there are opportunities like that.

00:11:37 ◼   ► What you're just saying, it's like having those contexts

00:11:39 ◼   ► where it's completely appropriate to interact

00:11:43 ◼   ► in a marketing way and say, it's like, I'm this person,

00:11:45 ◼   ► here's my app, and I have something to hand to them.

00:11:48 ◼   ► If you went to a trade show and had a booth,

00:11:52 ◼   ► you'll have things to hand out to people

00:11:54 ◼   ► because it's a context where if someone wants

00:11:55 ◼   ► to receive that, you wanna be able to give it to them, right?

00:11:58 ◼   ► Exactly. And that's like, there are so many contexts like that in which your self-promotion

00:12:03 ◼   ► is welcome or helpful. And so, for instance, we talked in the past about pitching the press

00:12:09 ◼   ► on your app. This is a great example of this kind of thing where, you know, a website that

00:12:13 ◼   ► posts links to things and reviews things every day like Daring Fireball or Mac Stories or

00:12:18 ◼   ► iMore, these sites need things to post every day. You're not putting them out by suggesting,

00:12:24 ◼   ► hey, maybe check this out that I just made,

00:12:27 ◼   ► it solves this problem.

00:12:28 ◼   ► Like, that, you're not like, you know,

00:12:30 ◼   ► I mean you can do it badly in a way that seems spammy,

00:12:34 ◼   ► but if you just do it like a human in a respectful way,

00:12:37 ◼   ► it tends to be welcome.

00:12:40 ◼   ► And that isn't to say that they are guaranteed

00:12:42 ◼   ► to link to you, to cover you,

00:12:44 ◼   ► to give you a positive review,

00:12:46 ◼   ► but you have to at least do the first step

00:12:47 ◼   ► of like letting people know about your app,

00:12:50 ◼   ► because sites like that need things to post every day.

00:12:53 ◼   ► So by you promoting your app to them, you are not annoying them, you are helping them do their job.

00:13:00 ◼   ► So find places where hearing about your app will help people do a job in a way that is not spammy

00:13:09 ◼   ► or annoying. So for me, blind email blasts when people blast email all over me. I don't appreciate

00:13:17 ◼   ► that very much. And one of the main reasons is because the lists that people tend to,

00:13:23 ◼   ► I assume, buy often include bad addresses, things like overcast support address. That's not an

00:13:32 ◼   ► appropriate place to send promotional stuff about your service to make developers lives easier.

00:13:36 ◼   ► But if people run websites that review apps and there's a contact form there or there's an email

00:13:45 ◼   ► address there for like, "Hey, send your PR inquiries or whatever here." That is the

00:13:50 ◼   ► appropriate place for that. They're asking you to do that there. So find places like

00:13:53 ◼   ► that and use that to your advantage because honestly, in this business, you have to be

00:14:00 ◼   ► some degree of self-promotional because there's so much out there. There's so many other

00:14:05 ◼   ► apps. There's so many other services. There's so many other consultants. No matter what

00:14:08 ◼   ► you're doing in the mobile app development business, it's crowded these days. And you

00:14:14 ◼   ► have to stand out somehow. There are so many people out there who don't do any reasonable

00:14:20 ◼   ► amount of self-promotion, who can't do it right or who don't do it right. If you can

00:14:24 ◼   ► just do that correctly at all, you don't even have to be great at it, just be okay

00:14:29 ◼   ► at it. And that will put you in like the top 5% of pretty much everybody else out there

00:14:33 ◼   ► doing the exact same thing as you. So that helps a lot and I would even argue that if

00:14:39 ◼   ► you're the kind of person who was just really having a hard time with self-promotion and

00:14:44 ◼   ► who really can't do it, I would argue that

00:14:47 ◼   ► you're probably better off working for a company

00:14:50 ◼   ► than working on your own, because it's such an important

00:14:52 ◼   ► part of working on your own that if you can't do it,

00:14:55 ◼   ► someone else should be doing it for you.

00:14:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think that's a great aspect

00:15:00 ◼   ► that I always need to remind myself about,

00:15:02 ◼   ► where just because, like I got into this business

00:15:06 ◼   ► to write software, to open Xcode and work in there,

00:15:10 ◼   ► and just because that's what I'm good at,

00:15:12 ◼   ► and just because that's what I like doing most,

00:15:16 ◼   ► doesn't somehow mean that the other aspects

00:15:18 ◼   ► of running a software business go away.

00:15:21 ◼   ► It's not like somehow, oh, well, that's what I do,

00:15:24 ◼   ► so I'm just gonna do that.

00:15:26 ◼   ► It's like, no, there are many aspects

00:15:27 ◼   ► to running a business that I have to do,

00:15:29 ◼   ► and some of them I can outsource.

00:15:32 ◼   ► So I have an accountant who files my taxes for me,

00:15:35 ◼   ► because that's a very vital, important part of my business,

00:15:38 ◼   ► but it's something that I really don't wanna do.

00:15:41 ◼   ► at something that she is way better at doing than I am.

00:15:44 ◼   ► So I have her have someone do that.

00:15:46 ◼   ► And so when I think about something like marketing,

00:15:48 ◼   ► which is really what all of this is,

00:15:50 ◼   ► like this is promotion and publicity and marketing.

00:15:53 ◼   ► It's a division within a bigger company.

00:15:55 ◼   ► Even if it's not something that I want to do

00:15:58 ◼   ► or feel qualified or skilled at doing,

00:16:01 ◼   ► it's still something that's important for me

00:16:02 ◼   ► to develop that skill, get better at, et cetera.

00:16:07 ◼   ► Because if it doesn't happen, it's not like that's fine.

00:16:10 ◼   ► It's problematic for my business, and in a big way, too,

00:16:14 ◼   ► it's key to having the mindset of that,

00:16:16 ◼   ► if I don't do this, then all the work I'm doing in Xcode

00:16:19 ◼   ► is in many ways kind of diminished,

00:16:23 ◼   ► because fewer people are gonna benefit from it.

00:16:26 ◼   ► Fewer people are gonna see the products I make,

00:16:28 ◼   ► and that's, I'm sort of shooting myself in the foot.

00:16:32 ◼   ► And so it's like, it has to be done,

00:16:34 ◼   ► and so it's like, yeah, it's these weird things

00:16:36 ◼   ► of having to really think about,

00:16:38 ◼   ► how can I get better at this?

00:16:39 ◼   ► How can I be okay with, and like, you know,

00:16:44 ◼   ► with marketing myself?

00:16:45 ◼   ► What are things that I should be doing that I don't?

00:16:47 ◼   ► You know, like a lot of my apps don't have good,

00:16:49 ◼   ► really great websites or social media presences or things.

00:16:53 ◼   ► Like there are aspects of them that I think about

00:16:55 ◼   ► that I'm like, should I be doing more in that?

00:16:57 ◼   ► Should I not?

00:16:58 ◼   ► Like does it matter?

00:16:59 ◼   ► And maybe in our business, like specifically,

00:17:01 ◼   ► in the App Store, I don't know the degree to which

00:17:04 ◼   ► you having a good website matters.

00:17:06 ◼   ► But it's definitely something that I know I have

00:17:08 ◼   ► keep reminding myself because my default is never gonna be,

00:17:12 ◼   ► oh, like, focus a ton on marketing,

00:17:15 ◼   ► 'cause that's not what I'm good at or skilled at

00:17:17 ◼   ► and got into this business to do in the first place.

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00:17:56 ◼   ► like uptime or changes.

00:17:57 ◼   ► Like Underscore and I, we used to run these checks

00:18:01 ◼   ► to monitor the WWDC site for changes

00:18:04 ◼   ► so that we could be the first to know when the new year of WWDC

00:18:07 ◼   ► tickets were announced and we could go buy them before the lottery system. It actually

00:18:10 ◼   ► worked really well, didn't it?

00:18:12 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, their ability to detect changes is way better than any other system I've

00:18:18 ◼   ► ever used. So, like when we were back in the day when it was this mad rush to get a ticket

00:18:22 ◼   ► to WWDC and, oh man, I'm so glad those aren't the days anymore. But yeah, it's like,

00:18:27 ◼   ► I'd get, you know, my phone would just light up like a Christmas tree every time tickets

00:18:31 ◼   ► were available for WWDC and I would know, like, within a few seconds of, you know, Apple

00:18:36 ◼   ► publishing the change, I knew about it because Pingdom's really on it and really responsive

00:18:41 ◼   ► to detecting these kinds of things.

00:18:43 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, and I have used Pingdom myself since April of 2007. First, I use it at Tumblr,

00:18:51 ◼   ► use it at Instapaper, use it at Overcast, and I use it for my own blog for during most

00:18:56 ◼   ► of that time as well. I still use it then. So I have been using Pingdom for longer than

00:19:01 ◼   ► then the iPhone has been out.

00:19:03 ◼   ► The first iPhone.

00:19:04 ◼   ► Like, so to give you some idea,

00:19:07 ◼   ► way before they were sponsored,

00:19:08 ◼   ► I've been using them for a long time.

00:19:10 ◼   ► I have a lot of experience with them.

00:19:11 ◼   ► They're great.

00:19:12 ◼   ► I strongly recommend that if you have any kind of website

00:19:17 ◼   ► or web service that you care about at all,

00:19:20 ◼   ► from a blog to a service that your apps depend on

00:19:23 ◼   ► to a marketing page or whatever else,

00:19:26 ◼   ► have Pingdom monitor it.

00:19:27 ◼   ► Because first of all, you'd be surprised

00:19:29 ◼   ► how often you have little outages at your host.

00:19:31 ◼   ► good to know when doing things like deciding what host to go with or what kind of host

00:19:35 ◼   ► to go with. And you can get things fixed quickly. I cannot recommend Pingdom enough because

00:19:42 ◼   ► here's what you don't want to happen. You don't want for you to be out all day and then

00:19:49 ◼   ► you launch your Twitter app and then you see that six hours ago people on Twitter started

00:19:55 ◼   ► telling you, "Hey, your site's down. Hey, your site's down. Hey, your site's down."

00:20:00 ◼   ► That's not good.

00:20:01 ◼   ► That's not good for your reputation.

00:20:03 ◼   ► It's not good for possibly your income

00:20:05 ◼   ► if your site is what generates your money.

00:20:07 ◼   ► It certainly does not look very professional

00:20:09 ◼   ► if you have to wait until people on Twitter

00:20:11 ◼   ► tell you your site is down before you realize it's down.

00:20:13 ◼   ► With Pingdom, you are the first to know.

00:20:16 ◼   ► It can check your site as often as once a minute

00:20:18 ◼   ► and it can text you, it can send push notifications,

00:20:21 ◼   ► it can send emails, it can do all those things

00:20:23 ◼   ► or some of those things, none of those things

00:20:24 ◼   ► or some of those things conditionally

00:20:25 ◼   ► based on how severe it is.

00:20:27 ◼   ► It is so great.

00:20:29 ◼   ► Again, I've been using it since 2007, strongly recommend it.

00:20:32 ◼   ► Check it out, go to pingdom.com for a 14-day free trial

00:20:36 ◼   ► and use code radar to get 20% off at checkout.

00:20:39 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to Pingdom for sponsoring us once again.

00:20:42 ◼   ► All right, so I think it's interesting to consider

00:20:46 ◼   ► all these marketing angles and everything

00:20:49 ◼   ► as what's appropriate and what's not.

00:20:52 ◼   ► Obviously, we can talk about this academically

00:20:56 ◼   ► And it seems like I have a slightly easier time

00:20:59 ◼   ► than you do, or at least I started earlier

00:21:02 ◼   ► on the path towards self-promotion.

00:21:04 ◼   ► - Sounds right.

00:21:05 ◼   ► - So as you know all the same things I do,

00:21:09 ◼   ► as you can think about the same things rationally,

00:21:12 ◼   ► what are the irrational pressures or fears or conflicts

00:21:17 ◼   ► that you feel about this that other people might relate to

00:21:20 ◼   ► and can you talk about, maybe just like the feeling side

00:21:25 ◼   ► this. Once you know what you should be doing, what still stops you from doing it, and what

00:21:31 ◼   ► might be a way that you could overcome that?

00:21:33 ◼   ► Yeah. The one that comes to mind the most, and I think this is at the core of so much

00:21:40 ◼   ► of these challenges, is that feeling of putting yourself out there. Every time I write an

00:21:50 ◼   ► and an email to the press.

00:21:52 ◼   ► I always have this feeling of,

00:21:53 ◼   ► like I can be so proud of my app

00:21:55 ◼   ► and what it does and how well it works,

00:21:58 ◼   ► and I'm sitting down to write this to somebody,

00:22:01 ◼   ► and I get nervous and worried,

00:22:03 ◼   ► and like, what if they don't like it?

00:22:05 ◼   ► What if they hate it?

00:22:06 ◼   ► What if they are gonna reject me or be mean to me

00:22:10 ◼   ► or whatever?

00:22:11 ◼   ► You can have these various, like,

00:22:12 ◼   ► you know, sort of visceral feelings about that.

00:22:15 ◼   ► And I think around marketing

00:22:16 ◼   ► and a lot of these kind of like self-promotional things,

00:22:19 ◼   ► There is certainly an element of that, of this,

00:22:21 ◼   ► any time that you are sort of really sort of

00:22:24 ◼   ► putting out your name in a public, obvious way,

00:22:28 ◼   ► intentionally drawing attention to yourself,

00:22:30 ◼   ► it's like you're also setting yourself up

00:22:32 ◼   ► for the possibility of someone not liking you.

00:22:36 ◼   ► And I think the thing that you have to,

00:22:40 ◼   ► at a certain point, come to grips with is A,

00:22:42 ◼   ► like there's always gonna be people who don't like you.

00:22:45 ◼   ► Like no matter how likable you are,

00:22:46 ◼   ► there's always gonna be that.

00:22:48 ◼   ► And there's a certain amount of just,

00:22:49 ◼   ► you have to be okay with that

00:22:51 ◼   ► and not get your value from other people.

00:22:55 ◼   ► If I look at something I make and I think it's good,

00:22:59 ◼   ► then that at a certain point has to be enough.

00:23:02 ◼   ► It doesn't have to just be validated externally.

00:23:05 ◼   ► But then it's also just being aware

00:23:09 ◼   ► that that's probably also not what's gonna happen.

00:23:12 ◼   ► The number of times I've had the negative version of that,

00:23:17 ◼   ► can remember them because that's just the way human nature is, that we think the impact

00:23:22 ◼   ► of the negative is disproportionate to the impact of the positive. You know, a hundred

00:23:26 ◼   ► people can say a nice thing and one person can say a mean thing, and you remember that

00:23:30 ◼   ► mean thing. But overall, that's not my experience. But it's having to overcome the emotional

00:23:39 ◼   ► part of that, of that feeling of just that nervousness and that shyness. And it's the

00:23:43 ◼   ► the same thing that happens in life. I remember we talked about this a couple weeks ago with

00:23:50 ◼   ► going to WWDC, and it's that same feeling of when I'd see someone that I'd recognize,

00:23:56 ◼   ► it's like, "Oh, should I go say hi? I'd love to meet them." But being nervous about

00:24:01 ◼   ► that, and being nervous how the conversation will go, and all these types of things, when

00:24:04 ◼   ► in reality it goes fine. That's just not the reality. People are generally very polite

00:24:12 ◼   ► and very nice, and it'll go well. But that certainly is a genuine feeling to overcome,

00:24:18 ◼   ► of that feeling of, "Is this good enough? Is it going to go well?" And so anytime

00:24:23 ◼   ► you're drawing attention to yourself, that's just part of it. But there's definitely

00:24:28 ◼   ► that kind of irrational feeling of, "Oh no, what if people don't like me?"

00:24:32 ◼   ► Oh, sure. I mean, and there's not… I mean, that's hard for… I would expect a lot

00:24:39 ◼   ► of people who like computers who are roughly our age probably had a rough time socially

00:24:45 ◼   ► in school growing up. I sure did. And a lot of those pressures come right back to feeling

00:24:50 ◼   ► like you're in high school again or middle school again and getting socially rejected

00:24:55 ◼   ► or romantically rejected. And there's these deep-rooted scars that so many of us have

00:24:59 ◼   ► from growing up in that kind of situation. And so it's really hard to overcome that

00:25:04 ◼   ► feeling but the good thing is, as you mentioned, people are generally nice and polite because

00:25:09 ◼   ► you know what? We aren't in high school anymore. Everyone around us now is an adult

00:25:15 ◼   ► and usually they're a lot like us who had a similar background as us. And so the chances

00:25:23 ◼   ► of getting really scarred and rejected in the ways that we're all like consciously

00:25:29 ◼   ► are subconsciously afraid of, I think are pretty low. We're adults now. We're in

00:25:34 ◼   ► an industry now where we won. We won the world. We don't have to worry about all those emotional

00:25:42 ◼   ► pressures anymore. And in this industry and the way things work both in person and online,

00:25:48 ◼   ► you're not likely to get rejected. The worst that you can generally expect is to be ignored

00:25:56 ◼   ► or to be lost in the shuffle because there's just so much out there. And that's, you

00:26:01 ◼   ► can't really, if that happens, and it will, it happens to all of us, you can't really

00:26:06 ◼   ► take that personally because it's probably not for personal reasons. Like, you know,

00:26:10 ◼   ► if Apple doesn't pick you to be featured or if a website doesn't pick you to write

00:26:16 ◼   ► about or doesn't pick your app to review that week, it might be because they didn't

00:26:20 ◼   ► like it and they looked at it, but it's probably not because of that. It's probably

00:26:23 ◼   ► because they got too much stuff,

00:26:25 ◼   ► and yours slipped through the cracks,

00:26:27 ◼   ► or whatever yours did, that's not the kind of thing

00:26:29 ◼   ► they were looking for that week.

00:26:31 ◼   ► Or there's so many other reasons that it is generally

00:26:35 ◼   ► due to, if you do get ignored or passed over

00:26:40 ◼   ► for something in this business,

00:26:41 ◼   ► that it's probably not personal,

00:26:43 ◼   ► it's probably not about your app,

00:26:44 ◼   ► your app might not have even been looked at.

00:26:46 ◼   ► That's the reality of getting rejected

00:26:49 ◼   ► in this business today, is that it's generally due

00:26:52 ◼   ► to people being overwhelmed, not due to anything personal against you. And so the risk of putting

00:26:58 ◼   ► yourself out there is pretty low, really. And I think it's also that one of the most impressive

00:27:06 ◼   ► things is confidence, and whether that is true confidence or kind of like more of a "fake it

00:27:13 ◼   ► 'til you make it" kind of thing, but that's something that I think universally people find

00:27:21 ◼   ► and impressive, like going back to high school or whatever. The kids who were confident,

00:27:26 ◼   ► even if they're confidently strange, are still cool, in a way that is the thing that

00:27:37 ◼   ► we're in many ways, and this is what I'm striving toward, is being confident in what

00:27:43 ◼   ► I make, being confident in the person I am, and being able to be authentic about that.

00:27:50 ◼   ► And it's like, that's something that's attractive.

00:27:52 ◼   ► That's something that is interesting and engaging and will start conversations and will open

00:27:56 ◼   ► doors and those types of things.

00:27:58 ◼   ► I mean, in some ways it's being—even just having the confidence to ship in the first

00:28:03 ◼   ► place is a huge thing to have accomplished.

00:28:06 ◼   ► And in marketing, there's that same type of thing.

00:28:09 ◼   ► It's like when I run into somebody and they ask me what apps—and they'll be like,

00:28:13 ◼   ► "Oh, what apps do you use?"

00:28:14 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh, what do you do?"

00:28:15 ◼   ► "Oh, I make apps."

00:28:16 ◼   ► "Oh, have I heard of any?"

00:28:18 ◼   ► It's like not being like, "Oh, probably not."

00:28:20 ◼   ► the non-confident response.

00:28:22 ◼   ► Where it's like, "Oh, I make an app called Podometer++."

00:28:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, start with that.

00:28:27 ◼   ► Don't even start with, "I make apps."

00:28:28 ◼   ► Start with, "I make this particular app.

00:28:30 ◼   ► "Here's what it is, here's what it's called,

00:28:31 ◼   ► "here's what it does, here's why you want it."

00:28:33 ◼   ► - Exactly, and having that confidence that this is something

00:28:35 ◼   ► that they were gonna be interested in,

00:28:37 ◼   ► and maybe they are, maybe they won't,

00:28:38 ◼   ► but it's way better, and it's gonna come across

00:28:40 ◼   ► so much more appealing in a much more appealing way

00:28:44 ◼   ► if you start with that confidence,

00:28:46 ◼   ► versus being like, "Oh, well, you know, I do stuff.

00:28:49 ◼   ► I kind of make stuff.

00:28:50 ◼   ► That's not appealing.

00:28:51 ◼   ► That's not that you're not promoting yourself and you're doing your work a discredit as

00:28:55 ◼   ► a result.

00:28:56 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:28:57 ◼   ► All right, well that's all the time we have for this week.

00:29:00 ◼   ► WBC is coming up really quickly now, so we'll be talking about that probably more next week,

00:29:04 ◼   ► I would imagine.

00:29:05 ◼   ► Everyone listening, thank you for listening, and I will see you at WBC wearing my own shirt.

00:29:11 ◼   ► Nice.

00:29:12 ◼   ► I hope you do too.

00:29:13 ◼   ► All right, see you next week.

00:29:14 ◼   ► All right, bye.

00:29:15 ◼   ► [BLANK_AUDIO]