PAT:
Welcome to this episode of Like a Glove, the startup podcast about product-market fit. I’m your host, Pat East, and we’re recording here in the podcast studio from The Mill in Bloomington, Indiana. Today’s guest is Chris Chasteen. Welcome, Chris.
CHRIS:
Hey, thanks for having me.
PAT:
Thank you for being here. So let’s start with a little bit of background on you. There’s two companies you’re leading. Why don’t you tell us about those?
CHRIS:
Yeah, so the first company is called Hi-Tec. Most of my involvement is through our e-com store called Silicone Depot. Pretty much, we sell silicone sealants and adhesives. We have a local team and products company. And then the other is Content Cucumber, which is a marketing company. We write content, mostly blogs, and I actually started that to help Silicone Depot grow. So that’s kind of where that came from.
PAT:
Cool. And so how long have you been doing both of those?
CHRIS:
I think we formed Silicone Depot about seven years ago, and I was pretty much involved from the formation of that and growing that. And Content Cucumber will turn two at the end of next month.
PAT:
How do you split your time between both?
CHRIS:
Yeah, I’m still working on that.
PAT:
Not very well, it sounds like.
CHRIS:
Yeah, calendar blocking is the thing that I like to try and implement as much as I can. It’s pretty much the best method I’ve found—the more intentional I am about my calendar, the better I am at managing what needs to be done.
PAT:
Sure. And is it a 50/50 split between both companies or 60/40, 70/30, what does that look like?
CHRIS:
So it depends on when the time frame is. Like a trade show week, that’ll be all focused on whichever company’s at the trade show. But then on an average working week, I’d say, it’s hard to say, but probably about 50/50.
PAT:
Gotcha. 50/50. But it peaks and valleys depending upon the specific activity for either company.
CHRIS:
Yeah. I don’t have a very good average. Weeks vary pretty differently.
PAT:
All the weeks are peaks or valleys. I got it. I hear you.
CHRIS:
It seems like that way.
PAT:
So one is a product company, one is a services company. Well, let’s dive into product-market fit a little bit. And so what’s your definition of product-market fit?
CHRIS:
So my definition of product-market fit would be finding a . . . basically finding the avatar, finding the customer that needs whatever it is that you’re selling.
PAT:
And so you find the avatar, the person that you’re really looking for. And so how do you know that you found them?
CHRIS:
I mean, with Silicone Depot, it’s fairly straightforward because it’s contractors and people in construction, people who would use a product like that. So we kind of understand that. With a product like that, you have to think of what the product life cycle is, like when it goes on the shelf and who’s going to pick it up and use it and why are they using it. And then you have to think about all those use cases and then who those people are and talk to them as much as you can.
PAT:
Gotcha. And so for Silicone Depot, it’s really, you have a product. I mean, every company sells a product, whether it’s a service or not. But in this case, that’s an actual real tangible product. And so for you, the kind of the use cases are a little bit more defined or the people that they use it are a little bit more defined. I mean, it’s people who are in construction that need silicone.
CHRIS:
Yeah. Yeah. And we try to target those people more so than the DIY people or something. Because we want to build a B2B business online. That’s the vision for that. And with Content Cucumber, we wanted to target e-com at first because e-commerce is who’s going to get the most value out of content–because with a good content strategy, for an e-commerce company, that means dollars in the door.
PAT:
And so Content Cucumber, the pain it solves on the market is what, would you say?
CHRIS:
In a broad term, it solves having a brand voice. It ensures that you have whatever it is that you want to say to the people who would want to buy whatever it is you sell. You have something to say to them outside of just an ad or just basic copy. It really develops more for someone to find.
PAT:
And so it’s, I mean, at its core, it’s a copywriting service, right? You’re creating content for your customers and the contents for social media, for blogs, for white papers, anything? Or is there a specific use case for it?
CHRIS:
Yeah, we try to get as many people into the blogosphere as possible because I think that’s really our bread and butter. But our writers can write a multitude of types of copy and we have done so. But definitely blogs are the thing that are most valuable.
PAT:
Gotcha. And so blogs are most valuable, and that’s where kind of you put most of your efforts on. That’s really where customers are hiring you for. And specifically, they want content on their blogs to rank or rank high in the search rankings, on the organic rankings, to just have content always put out or are those right? Or are there other reasons for wanting that content?
CHRIS:
Yeah, so there’s essentially two reasons. One is to be found more often, and the other is when they are found, there’s more resources for the user on the site to find. That could be sharing blog content and being found on keywords. It can be sharing more things on social media and having more assets for people to see and click on. That can also be, if you’re on the site and you want to learn more about the company, a blog is a nice way to have some more stuff to read.
PAT:
And then you said originally you came up with this idea because Content Cucumber solves the problem within Silicon Depot. And so for them, you wanted more content to be able to drive more sales.
CHRIS:
Yeah, exactly. We did exactly that. I mean, it worked. And I wanted to do it on . . . The way Content Cucumber works is a subscription. So it’s month-to-month service, and it’s like having a writer on staff. You get to just ping as many requests to them as you want, and they just do them each as one request at a time.
PAT:
And so this is the Design Pickle model, right? So the graphic design company where you pay them a flat fee every month, you get to queue up as many requests as you want in any given month, but they’re only going to give you so much time or so much output, and they’re going to continue working through that queue on a month-to-month basis.
CHRIS:
Exactly. Yeah. That was our inspiration.
PAT:
For e-commerce, let’s talk a little bit about why an e-commerce site needs content. I mean, the people that are looking for this, if they’re contractors, construction companies, don’t they know why they need silicone already? And so what do they need content to help them in that purchase process?
CHRIS:
One of the best questions that we rank for is, “What does RTV stand for?” It’s a basic question, a lot of people ask it. They just don’t know what it means. Also, “how long does it take silicone to dry?” That’s another common one. We wrote about that, ranked for that. It doesn’t dry, actually. It cures. But everyone searches it as “dry,” so we had to frame it the way that they framed it. And we answered that question. I was actually pretty impressed that the Content Cucumber writer knew that and went through that process of explaining how the chemistry works. That was cool. So it’s just questions that that they have.
PAT:
Gotcha. And so it’s not necessarily, “How do I use or what do I use silicone for?” It is, “I know I need to use silicone, but there’s a specific question I have.” And hopefully if you answer that question, you will become their source for buying silicone, right?
CHRIS:
Yeah, exactly. And another thing we rank for is the keywords that people would search for to buy something. So you have, you know, for your company to have the Google ads listings, the products listings, and all the ads. But then if you go down, you see the organic results. If you’re on the organic results AND the ads, that does increase your likelihood that they’re going to want to engage with you.
PAT:
When you came up with this idea, did you do customer interviews to figure out a product-market fit or how to ultimately shape the service offering? Or were you scratching your own itch and kind of figured it out on your own?
CHRIS:
I was solving my own problem, and through the process, I asked other people if this would be a valuable solution to the same problem. Of course, I felt like the best way to validate it was to get someone I didn’t know to pay for the service. I feel like that, to me, is validation. So until that point, it was really just putting the nuts and bolts together, making sure the product works. And I didn’t really think it was . . . the fit wasn’t there until we had someone that we didn’t know paying for it.
PAT:
Gotcha. So initially it was, “Yeah, let me validate this idea with some potential customers, folks that I know probably have the same types of pain that I do.” And then you started getting customers, and it was really at that first unaffiliated customer where you felt, “Okay, we’ve got product-market fit because somebody’s buying this because they really need it—not because necessarily they know me.”
CHRIS:
Exactly. Yeah, never met the person. So to me, that was a big indicator. And luckily the price to entry is pretty high. So even if I knew people, like, my mom’s not going to pay $500 a month for a blog service. So it’s not like a widget or something.
PAT:
Where she can just be nice.
CHRIS:
A $5 thing or whatever.
PAT:
And how long did it take you to get that first unaffiliated customer?
CHRIS:
About a month.
PAT:
About a month. Oh wow. That’s super fast.
CHRIS:
Silicone Depot was client one in March. And then in April, we had our first three non-affiliated clients.
PAT:
Okay. Okay. So you started getting unaffiliated clients right away?
CHRIS:
Yeah, pretty much. I mean, we were very focused on getting customers. That was our focus because we already knew how to, because one of my co-founders was a writer. So it was just, “Let’s get the client.” With a service like that, especially if you already have the skills, one of the founding members, there’s not a lot to build. It’s mostly just sales.
PAT:
Gotcha. So for Content Cucumber, the way you started generating sales was you really used your own services initially to build up content. Is that right?
CHRIS:
Yeah, that was part of it. A lot of it, though—because it’s hard to get SEO rankings when you’re that new—a lot of it was networking with people. But of course we had to have a significant amount of content on the site, because you don’t want to go to a content writing services website and not see any content. So for us it was more of the branding position to have a good blog than it was the SEO help.
PAT:
And so it was more positioning yourselves once folks did find you. How did those initial folks find you? Did they happen to find you via search or was it some other method?
CHRIS:
In the very beginning, we participated in a lot of networking events and also in Slack network groups, so just entrepreneurs and business owners. And we kind of thought of, actually very early, we thought of our customer avatars as people. We call them Jimmy and Sally. We actually have names for them. We actually were going to create little Pokemon type cards for Jimmy and Sally. And anyway, so we kind of knew who we were looking for. So we just thought about where they would hang out and then we would just go hang out where they were hanging out. We would never sell. We would just talk and people eventually would be like, “Well, what do you do?”
PAT:
Gotcha. You’ve mentioned avatars a couple of times now–and so these are the same as customer personas, or are these different?
CHRIS:
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. We like to give them names and a personality.
PAT:
Gotcha. I understand. And so, for Content Cucumber, who’s your beachhead market?
CHRIS:
I mean, the initial idea was anyone that sells a product online. Any e-commerce store is going to get the maximum amount of benefit. And then we prefer to see end-users, people who are using the content to speak directly to their clients. We’ve done work for agencies where they sell our services. Basically what they do is they’ll figure out how much the maximum amount of content is, and then they’ll distribute that content to 10 of their clients or whatever. They tend to be the worst clients to have because they’re very intense and very hard to work for, and they’re using us as a cost-saving method, not as a money-making method. I’ve found that anywhere that I work, if you can help figure out how to make your product make someone money as opposed to save someone money, you tend to do a little better.
PAT:
And especially in those cases, if your client is an agency, your client has clients. If there’s problems with the client second-removed or whatever that connection is, all those problems are going to roll downhill ultimately to you, which complicates things. Right? That makes things more difficult for you.
CHRIS:
Yeah, and we found with a lot of those people, it was like an avalanche. So it did roll downhill, and by the time it got to us, it was a much bigger snowball than when it started.
PAT:
Gotcha. And so that would be bad product-market fit.
CHRIS:
That’s an example of where we learned our lesson, yeah.
PAT:
You can definitely service those clients, but really those aren’t the best clients and you want to not focus your efforts on getting those or serving those clients. You said initially your beachhead market was kind of everybody online, but then you quickly divided it into, okay, it’s folks that are not just online, but they have a e-commerce store. Not just that they have an e-commerce store, but they’re the ones that would actually consume your service or the ones that need to write content or have a need for more content. So you really kind of, yeah, you really narrowed your audience there pretty quickly.
CHRIS:
Yeah. Well, we had to because we learned a lot of painful lessons. When our first agency client left us, they were about the equivalent of seven accounts.
PAT:
Oh wow.
CHRIS:
And we had 10 accounts. So 70% of the business was wiped out overnight.
PAT:
Oh wow. That’s rough.
CHRIS:
So that was a lesson.
PAT:
And so everybody pays on a month-to-month basis, right?
CHRIS:
Yes.
PAT:
And so, yeah, you didn’t have much notice on that.
CHRIS:
No, they just said, “We’re hiring a full-time writer. It’s been great. See ya.”
PAT:
Yeah, “Thank you very much. We’re gone.” Got it.
CHRIS:
The guy at the head of the agency actually was an awesome guy. I’d still call him up, have a cup of coffee with him. I really liked that guy, but it was good for getting the company off the ground but not a good fit. And I think the two lessons we learned as far as product-market fit were: the first was how do we get anyone to buy it? And then the second was who do we say no to? And that’s hard to do when you’re hungry.
PAT:
And so initially, you kind of, like a lot of startups, you have to take on any customers that are willing to pay you. Pretty hard to say no at the very beginning. My philosophy is always say yes until you can finally say no. Right? If you subscribe to that philosophy, it was a good decision to take on the agency client, but then you learned some things. And so would you take on an agency client now?
CHRIS:
We have enough clients that as long as they didn’t exceed 10% of our overall account base, I would take on the client. We had a lead the other day who wanted some enormous amount of load, and I’m very cautious about taking that on because I wouldn’t want to scale up all of our writers, scale up our operations, and then they leave.
PAT:
And so in that instance, would you potentially modify your product, your service so that you could take them on? So if you don’t want to scale up because they might leave, maybe they need to sign a three-month contract or a six-month contract. Or do you just want to stay month to month and only service a certain type of client?
CHRIS:
Well, in our perspective, we feel like we’re going to have to service enterprise-level clients because it’s just, it’s going to be something that’s going to be valuable. But we want to scale the, what we call our on-demand service first, that month-to-month service, before we enter into too many of those. And we probably would start having contracts on those.
PAT:
Gotcha. And you mentioned to me a couple weeks ago that you have a large sales pipeline. So does that mean you have salespeople closing those deals, or are you closing those deals?
CHRIS:
It’s pretty much me and another founder, we’re pretty much the sales team. But yeah, we’re scaling up our ads pretty aggressively. So that’s been putting a lot more leads into the pipeline. We’re starting to pick up our growth rate again.
PAT:
And when you are advertising, what are the key benefits that you mention in your ads that really kind of attract the right type of client for you?
CHRIS:
We try to do two things at the same time. We try to be a little funny and fun to try and capture someone’s attention.
PAT:
I mean, the company’s called Content Cucumber. So yeah, there should be a little bit of whimsy in there.
CHRIS:
One of our ads is I’m standing at the edge of a quarry and I’m like, “This is your blog,” and I throw a little pebble into the quarry. Then I’m like, “This is your blog with Content Cucumber,” and I take this giant rock and just throw it into the quarry. And then Isaac actually jumps in after this giant rock and jumps in the quarry. We didn’t know he was going to do that, actually. And it says audience on top of Isaac. So it’s just kind of this funny, simple representation of what the service can do.
PAT:
And this is a video ad, it sounds like. And so these are pre-rolls on YouTube?
CHRIS:
Actually, mostly Facebook and Instagram.
PAT:
Okay. Mostly on Facebook and Instagram. And so when you’re targeting the demographics on those, I mean, earlier you talked about kind of the avatar of e-commerce. You have a need for content, you’re the end-user, you’re the one who consumes it. What does the demographic of that person look like? Does it skew male, female? What type of age? Are they in the United States, outside of the US? What does that look like?
CHRIS:
They’re typically 30 to 50, because usually if they’re under 30, then they’re not hiring. They’re part of the solution to whatever they’re working on. Not always the case, that’s just what we’ve found, that it’s usually director of marketing or entrepreneur. Those are the two. Jimmy is Jimmy the Jet, he’s a marketer. And Sally the Starter, she’s the entrepreneur. And so we find that a lot of entrepreneurs are really young, but by the time they’re hiring a $500-a-month service, they’re usually around 30. So we target 30 to 50. Right now, just mostly United States, e-commerce is an interest, director of marketing, these kinds of job titles we put in there. We strayed away from entrepreneur. When you type in “entrepreneur” in there, it’s half the country are entrepreneurs for some reason. So I don’t know why that happens, but—
PAT:
It’s a little bit of a generic term now. Some people get really focused on being an entrepreneur, not necessarily solving a specific problem. And so it’s more of a lifestyle. Right? And so maybe you don’t want to target those types of folks, at least with your particular product.
CHRIS:
Yeah. And we find that people that are saying they’re entrepreneurs, a lot of times they’re actually freelancers, which now there’s a new term called “solopreneurs.”
PAT:
Right, right.
CHRIS:
Because, I mean, if you are a freelancer and you’re selling your services, you still have to do sales work. I mean, you operate like a business, but you’re probably not paying $500 a month for a blog.
PAT:
Gotcha. Gotcha. You’re trying to find some lower-cost methods to market yourself. Yeah. Got it.
CHRIS:
So that’s kind of how we determine. And then once we optimize, which we’re still working on, then we’ll do look alike audiences on the people who purchase on the site, which is what makes Facebook advertising really cool is you can do that.
PAT:
You’re a B2B service, but you’re advertising on what are stereotypically B2C platforms. And so it sounds like they work for you.
CHRIS:
One of my little things that I like to say is in marketing, it’s all person to person. It’s not business to consumer, business direct to consumer, business to business. It’s person to person. You’re marketing to people. There’s over a billion users on Facebook, and some of them are bound to want my service.
PAT:
Gotcha. So even though those folks are people, they’re people first, you’re targeting them as a business. And so they’re on those platforms because they are a person. But you’re hoping that, okay, even though I target you as a person, you’re on here on this platform because you’re a person, but I’m hoping to catch you with my ad for your business.
CHRIS:
Yeah.
PAT:
And that works.
CHRIS:
Yeah. Especially people who are entrepreneurs or directors of marketing because they live and breathe their job, a lot of them. So when they see something that’s related to their job, and I’ve actually done . . . I’ve experienced this, and I might just be projecting, but the idea of if you’re on Facebook for too long, and you see something that might be productive and help you, you’re like, “Oh, I can kind of write this time that I spent off.” Not monetarily, but in energy.
PAT:
In your head. Yeah. Gotcha.
CHRIS:
Like, “This wasn’t a waste of time.”
PAT:
So it sounds like you’ve had a pretty solid amount of success so far with Content Cucumber. It’s growing at a really nice clip. It’s two years old. Do you wish you had done anything different?
CHRIS:
I wish I would have started running ads sooner.
PAT:
Okay. And so what point did you start running ads? At what point in the two-year cycle?
CHRIS:
We didn’t really start taking ads seriously until January of this year.
PAT:
Oh wow. So we’re right at the end of February right now. So really just in the last 60 days is when you started doing ads?
CHRIS:
Yeah, yeah. We realized how hard we were working and how grueling it was, and it was kind of like, “It doesn’t have to be this hard.” What we would do is we got all of our leads through trade shows and then just continuously make sure and follow up with every one. Our growth pattern was kind of slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, insanely fast because we just did a conference. And then slow, slow, slow, slow, and then insanely fast. So we just had these ginormous peaks of getting a bunch of clients all at once. We decided we wanted to make it more scalable. That’s the decision I wish I would have made sooner.
PAT:
More scalable. And that sounds like because there’s less peaks, it is more scalable. Right? You’re not trying to digest everything all at once. It’s a more steady stream.
CHRIS:
Yeah, exactly. Yep.
PAT:
I mean, I guess you could say you’ve found a little bit of product-market fit in terms of how you market and what works for your company. You don’t want to have . . . I mean, some companies have to market themselves that way via trade shows and just digest all that business. But for you, having three founders, and do you have any employees right now, or is it still the three founders?
CHRIS:
So as far as writers go, they’re on contract basis, but we bring them into our ecosystem. We have about 20 of them. And then the lead editor and then probably about three other people that are non-writer.
PAT:
Gotcha. So you have 25 or 30 or so folks.
CHRIS:
Yeah, probably 25 people.
PAT:
Gotcha.
CHRIS:
Working on this.
PAT:
Gotcha. And so for these folks, these 25, 30 folks, it’s easier to have a steady stream of work versus hey, all of a sudden I’ve got these 10 clients I need to work on and let’s figure out how to digest them and work them into our normal workflow.
CHRIS:
Yeah. Although some of the writers really like it when they get a ton of work. But a lot of them are like, “This is too much.”
PAT:
If you’re like most people, yeah. You don’t want to have too much work at once. Yeah.
CHRIS:
I would say the average is we want to know what to expect.
PAT:
Gotcha. And so the ads on Facebook and Instagram are working well. These are video ads primarily, or do you just have kind of some regular promoted posts? Or what other types of advertising on those platforms do you do?
CHRIS:
Yeah, pretty much all video. We’re moving to do other types of advertising now. Actually, Google ads are another one we’re working on. That one’s fairly competitive in the content writing space, but we’re working on that as well.
PAT:
Gotcha. The space you’re in is competitive. Are there other services like you that do this kind of month to month, all you can queue up, right? You can have an unlimited number of requests, but not all of them are going to get fulfilled in a new month.
CHRIS:
There’s one other service that I know of that’s doing something similar, but their offering is a little more meager because I think theirs is a weekly 200-word blog or something and ours is a daily 400-word blog.
PAT:
So even though there’s really only one competitor to you and you consider your services better than theirs, which I would expect, the Google ad space is still pretty competitive for content creation services.
CHRIS:
It’s because of Upwork. Yeah.
PAT:
Ah, gotcha.
CHRIS:
That’s the entire reason is because of Upwork. And there’s other ones, there’s Scripted. Which Scripted, you pay $150 a month to get access to their network, and then you pay articles. Didn’t really figure that one out.
PAT:
You just don’t understand their model? Gotcha.
CHRIS:
Yeah. That would be like, “Okay, you pay me to be able to now pay me more.” I don’t know.
PAT:
I mean, if you can do it, it sounds like a great business. Right? Pay me to pay me.
CHRIS:
Yeah. But I think you just go to Upwork. I don’t know.
PAT:
Last question, what’s the single biggest thing folks can do to get better product-market fit?
CHRIS:
I think finding someone that would pay for whatever you’re working on, whether it’s already built or even if you’re building it, is the best thing to do. And get someone that would say they’re going to pay for it that you don’t know. One of the best ideas I actually heard was someone who was from a startup studio. He was saying that they’ll build these splash pages where you can opt in to say you’re going to buy the thing. It’s just not available in your area right now, but it will be. Will you buy into this? And get them to say even something like that, just to get the yes from people you don’t know. I think that’s the best thing you can do.
PAT:
Gotcha. And so in that case, you’d probably buy some Google ads or Facebook ads, right? And you drive some targeted traffic to those sides hoping to get some sort of opt in or an actual transaction?
CHRIS:
Yep. Ads are one way. And other ways are joining little networking groups online or in person too. It’s a little cheaper option. You can accomplish kind of the same result.
PAT:
Gotcha. All right. That does it for this episode of a Like a Glove. Chris, thanks for being on today. And if folks want to reach out to you online, how do they find you?
CHRIS:
Well, on LinkedIn, just Chris Chasteen. That’s probably the best way. You can message me there.
PAT:
And what are the domains of your businesses?
CHRIS:
Siliconedepot.com and contentcucumber.com.
PAT:
All right, great. That sounds good. Thanks again for being on, Chris.
CHRIS:
Yeah, thank you.
Like a Glove is a production of The Mill, a coworking and business incubator space in Bloomington, Indiana. Our mission is to launch and accelerate high-potential companies, and our vision is to become the center of coworking and entrepreneurship in Indiana. You can learn more about The Mill at dimensionmill.org. Thanks for listening, and be sure to check back every other Monday for new episodes.