Ep. #704 - Learning from User Feedback

Matt DeCoursey 0:00
And we’re back. Back for another episode of Startup Hustle, Matt DeCoursey, here, with Matt Watson. Hi, Matt.

Matt Watson 0:06
Hey, how’s it going?

Matt DeCoursey 0:08
Well, we got some feedback for you. But I’m gonna save it. So, yeah, overall, I mean, I really just want to tell you about, I think you’re a great podcast host.

Matt Watson 0:21
I definitely think Matt is the best podcast host, that’s for sure.

Matt DeCoursey 0:25
I agree. I agree. And you know, that’s what we’re going to talk about. Because I guess if you’re listening, and I am the host, or I’m listening in, you’re the host, and we’re the user. And if we have anything to say about that, we’re giving feedback. That’s what we’re going to talk about today. And it is part 36 of 52 of our 52 part series about how to start a tech company. Recently, we’ve talked about all kinds of things from getting your product launched to go-to-market strategies to how to adjust your marketing strategy. And this is a really important part of the process. Do you agree or disagree, Mr. Watson?

Matt Watson 1:05
What do you mean? I can just build whatever I want and not give a shit what my users think.

Matt DeCoursey 1:11
You can. It’s not recommended though. That’s usually if you’re if you’re going to turn yourself into your own user and subscriber and you’re going to pay for it the whole time, then sure.

Matt Watson 1:22
Sometimes it’s good to talk to people.

Matt DeCoursey 1:25
Yeah, and most speaking to talking to people, today’s episode of Startup Hustle is sponsored by Chatdesk. Does your business receive a high volume of phone calls, you can deflect over 10% of your phone calls to Facebook Messenger and save up to 80% on your support costs for Startup Hustle listeners Chatdesk is offering their call deflection service for free throughout the holiday season. Learn more at Chatdesk.com forward slash Shift, or just click the link in the show notes. It’s so much easier, go check it out. They’re gonna help you for free. Yeah, so my feedback on that is, that’s a good way to see if Chatdesk is a good fit for you. So, you know, Matt, when it comes to, to user feedback, I think that me, for me, personally, I think I’m way better at it now than I might have been, like, 10 years ago. For a couple different reasons. You know, user feedback is exactly that. And I think it’s golden. There are a couple caveats that come with it, meaning, you do have to consider that some of that feedback, or not all of that feedback is immediately actionable. So I think you can find yourself run down some rabbit holes, and also don’t take it personally.

Matt Watson 2:37
Well, you know, if we keep this in the context of starting a tech company, right, usually, we’re initially asking for feedback after we build like a minimum viable product, right? It’s like, we built this thing. And you’re going out to meet with people, and you’re asking them, like, tell me, my baby is ugly, right? Tell me how I can improve it. Tell me what I need to add, before you’re willing to pay for it. Right? And you got to be willing to take the feedback. That’s the first thing, right, you got to be ready to take, take the people telling you your baby’s ugly. But your point, it’s not necessarily all actionable. And you may have a vision to do something that people just also don’t understand. Like, they don’t understand the problem you’re trying to solve. They can’t relate to it, or they think you’re crazy or whatever. And maybe you’re crazy. But you might you might be trying to do something that it might be hard to get feedback on from people too. But the key is you need to meet with people that are your potential customers, right? People you want to pay for whatever it is you’re doing.

Matt DeCoursey 3:35
Yeah, and that was actually you must have been reading my mind. Well, first off, your baby isn’t ugly. I was at your house the other day. First of all, he’s big. And he’s cute. He’s got a big smile. I love that. So yeah, he’s growing up so quickly. But yeah, I think you’re right. You know, one of the things I was gonna say was, who’s the feedback coming from? And I think that’s where some people kind of swing and miss because as you mentioned, not everyone’s going to understand the problem that you’re solving or the utility of it. So, you know, in some cases, you know, well, you look at Stacker, fie. stacker fie is pretty specific and what it’s trying to do. And no, no offense to Mrs. Watson. But asking your mom for feedback on that might not be super valid, because she just doesn’t have have a strong tech background. Just son keep going. Right. Right. That’s about so yeah, so some of it when it comes to your target users or people I mean, sometimes, you know, honestly, Matt, when I want feedback, I will I ask my entrepreneur peer friends, a lot of times, even if they’re not experts on whatever it is that I’m doing, because a lot of times they spot things that are just, sometimes it’s just like, basic stuff.

Matt Watson 4:52
Well, and honestly, that’s actually one of the biggest problems in the community is especially maybe in Kansas City, even if you got that Midwest nice kind of people and it there, they won’t give you the negative feedback, right? They’re all positive, you’re doing a great job, keep going, this is awesome, whatever, instead of like, saving you a lot of time by telling you why your shit sucks and why it’s a terrible idea and why this isn’t gonna work. Which is.

Matt DeCoursey 5:20
Dude, it’s not uncommon for me to actually get a call, text, email, message any of it and be like, Hey, man, I wanted to ask because I know you want just tell me what I want to hear. I’m like the opposite of that. I’m like the antithesis of Midwest nice. And for those of you less than if you’re not around Kansas City, we’re right in the middle of the country. And we’re kind of just known for, for people are really polite, nice and not nasty. And but that but that doesn’t, that doesn’t lead to good feedback. Now, good feedback isn’t driven by being mean, it No, I think it’s driven. It’s critical and critical is defined as like, Hey, I’m noticing something here that? Well, good feedback is. So Matt and I are, are working on improving the Full Scale management system for the over 200 employees that we have in the Philippines that help people build software, go to full scale.io, to learn more about that. But with that, now, this has helped with a lot of the, you know, just trying to help and lend a hand when it comes to the build. So we will both have different types of feedback, but I will force myself into the sales role, or the client role and try to be critical, like you said, like, Hey, this is I shouldn’t have to go through five clicks to get here, or it’s not very easy for me to find something simple that I want. And those are the things that you often don’t notice that a user will because the user doesn’t just go in and click something one time. So an example is, hey, my staff members will have to use this function 100 times a day. So the fact that I have to click four times just to get to it means I’m going to have 400 300 unnecessary clicks a day. That’s, that’s user feedback right there that you can code or should consider.

Matt Watson 7:13
Well, and that brings up another another key point to this is for you and your development team, QA team, everybody, right? That is helping build a product, you know the product really well. You know how to do things and click around it and get around it right? And it becomes very different and very clear when you talk to users. And they and they point out some of the most dumbest things you’re like, Why do I have to do this? Why do I have to do that? Why is this so complicated, I can’t figure these things out. And as the people building the product, you just understand everything, you know everything about everything, right? It’s so different than you being in your kitchen. And you know where everything is in the kitchen, versus like some random person walks in your kitchen, they can’t find anything, because you’ve organized the most screwed up way possible, right? But to you, it’s totally normal. And when you’re building software, that that type of effect definitely happens. And the only way to figure those things out is to get user feedback. And there are by the way, we should also mention there are other ways to get user feedback without actually talking to them. And one of them is doing like screen recording type stuff like hot jar and other types of heat map tools and screen recording stuff. Where are you going to literally watch people use your app, and see how they use it, and what they click on, and where maybe they get confused. All that kind of stuff is important.

Matt DeCoursey 8:29
So what Matt’s mentioning, and you know, hot jar is a popular one, were putting that in, you can actually like he said, it’s a screen recording. And so it’ll imagine like a Telestrator in sports, right? Where they draw a line and they’re like, hey, the wide receiver went up into the right, except for this, well actually draw a line on the screen as well like where the cursor goes. And we did we did that we’ve done that at some point with different things. And you really can’t, you can see people like they go in and they’ll be like, click, click. And then they’ll sit there. And you just kind of see the cursor kind of wander around and you’re sitting, you know, if you could only have like a pipeline into what they were thinking. But you can tell where where, where the confusion begins, or where people land or where they get stuck and stuff like that. So for the inexperienced founder or someone that’s not taking feedback correctly, they say things like, I don’t understand why these stupid users can’t figure it

Matt Watson 9:29
out. Yeah. The art, like the

Matt DeCoursey 9:33
Yeah, if you’re not good. What’s our T? What’s art?

Matt Watson 9:38
Read the effing manual. And that’s one of my favorite things about developers is developers like, oh, well, yeah, the product is easy to use. You go here, you click here, you do this, you open the command line, and then you do this and you type this, whereas the user were like, Why is it so damn difficult and the developers like Well, that’s the way it works. Right and but that that whole mentality is, is not not very useful. But developers was absolutely do that. They’ll be like, well, you just do this. And it’s like some crazy harebrained series of steps, right? And the developers like, well, it’s in the manual, we documented to do this dumb thing, you just do it. But when you’re trying to perfect the product, feedback from the users, then you gotta go back to your developers like, hey, yeah, okay, we documented the dumb way to do it. But there’s an easier way. And you got to be, you got to be focusing on how to improve the product.

Matt DeCoursey 10:30
So I’m gonna just go ahead and put this out there. And if your kids are listening, earmuffs, no one wants to raise your fuckin manual.

Matt Watson 10:38
Not me. No,

Matt DeCoursey 10:41
I want I can’t even read. There you go. But no, I can’t read. I can’t read your manual, because I’m not going to. Yeah, yeah, it’s kind of like we have faces made for radio, right? So yeah, but anyway, you can’t take the stuff personally. And, you know, so the question of how important is user feedback? I mean, it’s critical, because the, you know, if you’re a regular listener of the show, then you’ve heard me talk about listening for the echo. That’s what you’re doing with user feedback. So if you get enough feedback, and you’re listening for the ACO, so they echo is that resounding ring, the same thing. So you let’s say you get feedback from 20 people, and 17 of them say, I was really confused here. That’s valid. Well, what

Matt Watson 11:28
you can’t do is Chase every one of them, right, which is every one of them, it’d be like having a restaurant one person comes in, it’s like, Oh, it’s too spicy, it doesn’t. And then the next one’s like, it doesn’t have any flavor. And the next one’s like it doesn’t, it needs more salt. Next one’s like, it’s too sweet. You can’t solve every problem, right? At some point in time, you have to, you know, pick what you want to be and how you want it to work. But if every single person says it’s too salty, or like, maybe it’s too salty, right, but but the problem with software too is, is they can pull you off on these tangents. And all of a sudden, you’re like building features that weren’t really part of the original vision of the product. And next thing, you know, you never build the original vision of the product either.

Matt DeCoursey 12:08
But people that features don’t matter about what does matter.

Matt Watson 12:13
Like getting people to pay

Matt DeCoursey 12:16
the benefits that those solving the press, when they’re not going to pay if they don’t find that if they’re not getting if they’re not benefiting from the product from the you know, from from all of it. So, when it comes to user feedback, another thing that when I look at it, is it you know, if I do hear an echo, meaning like, people are asking for something, they’re on to something, but I was asking myself, I’m like, is this going to help me get more users keep more users? Or like, is this just something that I that I forgot to build? And if it’s not going to help you generate revenue, or keep revenue? It’s probably not that important.

Matt Watson 12:55
Add it to the list of shit you’ll never do otherwise known as the backlog in JIRA.

Matt DeCoursey 12:59
The icebox pretty much. Yeah, you don’t want to be in this. You don’t want to be in the icebox, Matt, it’s cold in like,

Matt Watson 13:07
a backlog. The list of ship that will never be done.

Matt DeCoursey 13:11
Yeah. So. So when I hear from people, they’re like, we’ve got 300 unused tickets, how many of those are backlog? Just delete them? If it’s 299, then maybe, okay, so no one likes to hear bad stuff about themselves or their products? And, you know, this is the handling the feedback and discussing it with the people that work with you, or around you or all of it. And what are some of your tips for handling that? Because like I said, people take shit personally.

Matt Watson 13:50
And then you got to be objective, right? And you can’t take it personal. It’s just business. And, you know, even developers have this problem where they think they’re their code is some kind of art or something. But then today, it’s just supposed to serve a purpose, right? And people have got to be able to take feedback and realize like we’re trying to solve a problem. And if there’s a better way to solve the problem, I’m all ears and just learning to go with it. And honestly, for some developers, that’s really hard. Because they they get so attached to like I built this thing. And don’t make fun of this thing that I built. I guess it’s kind of like when you buy furniture from IKEA and you assemble it and somebody makes fun of it. You like want to punch them in the face you’re like I built this thing that everybody read an article

Matt DeCoursey 14:37
that IKEA is having a hard time keeping their shelf sock right now with the supply chain problems, so maybe less people will have that argument. So when I think about feedback and and discussing it, the first thing I think about if I’m discussing it with an individual is I try to give a little bit of thought to what their personality style is because Some people, I mean, some people like me do give me your feedback like fine, like, I’m either gonna give a shit about it or I’m not I’ve been. One thing is is, is while it stings a little bit, sometimes I get over it really quickly. Now some people like you mentioned, like some developers, which developers are often a type B personality and and I’ve noticed that those personalities handle feedback a little differently, they’re going to often depending on how you address it. Now, if you’re like, hey, this just isn’t any good. They’re gonna get, they’re going to quietly sit on that for like three months before they finally like admit or blow up or get mad about it. And they don’t let it go very, very easily. Now a type A personality can take that kind of that kind of chatter, and they’re like, Yeah, okay, great. And they move on at the same time. So like, when I talk to a type B person, I mean, I’ll sit down, I don’t want my tone to be aggressive. I don’t want it to sound like I’m attacking them, or I’m being hypercritical. And I might say something like, Okay, so in the greater good of building the product, the way that the users will benefit from it most. This is some of the feedback that we got. And that’s not like now. I mean, when now when Matt and I talk, we can be like, dude, this sucks. And we’re like, does it you’re like, Yeah, I think it sucks. All right, well, what are we gonna do to fix it? You know, like, that’s it. So I mean, I think in the end, it’s a zero or a one, you’re either going to change it or you’re not. So that’s what you’re trying to get to your, your path for a ride in there might be a little different.

Matt Watson 16:43
You gotta you gotta go back to the team and be like, Okay, guys, everything you did sucks. No, don’t do that. You got to be like, Hey, you guys are doing a great job. But it’s just not good enough. Oh, no, don’t do that. Either. You got to figure out how to deliver that message.

Matt DeCoursey 16:56
Yeah, and well, so internally, we, Matt, you’ve heard me talk about the shit sandwich. Yeah. So there’s the let’s talk about shit sandwiches for a second because I think this is important. So first off, if you eat a shit sandwich to start your day, nothing else is going to taste that great the rest of the day. Yeah, eat it quickly. But, but you know, some of that you can carry it around for the rest of the day. Another thing too, is a shit sandwich is better if it’s bundled in the middle of like, two wonderfully tasty pieces of bread. So a shit sandwich might be when you’re talking to a team, it might be starting by saying, Hey, this is something we are doing a great job at. Now, on the flip side of that, here are some areas for improvement. And then you end it again, with something tasty, and we’re on

Matt Watson 17:47
the way to world domination and raising a billion dollars and we’re gonna whatever

Matt DeCoursey 17:51
it is Sunday, whatever it is, but you bundled, you bundle the doodoo in the middle. So, you know, it’s, I mean, that’s it. Now the thing is, though, is if you’re if you are a purveyor if you’re a shit sandwich vendor, you’re not real popular. I mean, no one’s like, hey, here comes the guy that sells shit sandwiches, let me get a couple of those. That’s not the way it goes. So, you know, take take the approach to it and just really in the end, Don’t be the person that if everyone that when you’re walking their direction, they’re like, oh my god, I’m gonna have to eat to shit sandwich. So, I mean, it’s some well placed optimism can bundle up a bad message and make it received a little better. I mean, do you do you agree or disagree there?

Matt Watson 18:37
Yeah, I mean, I’d rather eat a shit sandwich than just the shit. So I mean, I appreciate it if it’s at least as a sandwich.

Matt DeCoursey 18:44
Yeah, this still on neither one taste, tastes cheese, and mayo. It’s Speaking of things that aren’t shit sandwiches, Matt. Let’s take a moment to recognize chat desk for sponsoring today’s episode. You know, many businesses receive a high volume of calls over the holidays and chat desk helps companies reduce calls by over 10% by deflecting calls to messaging and self service. And their client list includes companies like Vera Bradley, BarkBox, thanx, and many more for a limited time. You can use chat desk for free Learn more at chat desk.com forward slash forward slash shift that’s hard to say chat desk, chat desk.com Ford slash shifts. Try Say that three times really fast

Matt Watson 19:27
chat desk slash shift chat desk slash shift.

Matt DeCoursey 19:30
Now you got to say the whole thing.com.com Shout desk.com try. Ready? 123 Go fast.

Matt Watson 19:36
Got desk.com forward slash shift chat desk.com forward slash.

Matt DeCoursey 19:40
See, it’s tough. It’s tough. I’ll have to bring that up. They’re found there. Yeah, there you go. There you go. Anyway, so you don’t even you don’t have to say you can just click the link in the show notes.

Matt Watson 19:52
So we talked about feedback. One of the things that I definitely want to mention is how to collect feedback, right and So one of the popular ways to do this is with ideas, portals. So like user voice.com is one of those. And I’ve also used the one from Aha. And I’m sure there’s like 50 clones of these things by now, where they’re just simple ways that you can tell your users like, Hey, thanks for the great idea. Please go to our, you know, ideas portal, and you can add your idea, and you can vote for everybody else’s ideas. And those things are great. They work well. But honestly, a lot of times, they kind of feel like a cop out, because you’re like telling your customer like, yeah, okay, thanks for that. But let me redirect you to the place over there to go leave your idea that nobody will ever look at. Because that’s really what happens. And the problem with those ideas, portals, by the way, people, if you’re going to have one, you’ve actually got to manage it, and do the things that people vote on. It just turns into more problems. So that’s my tip of the day for you. Then people just because you don’t actually listen to their ideas.

Matt DeCoursey 21:03
Alright. Well, I mean, much like anything, you have to, if you’re gonna put it out there, it’s like, same thing you talked about, like, You got to have someone to receive the other stuff, because you’re gonna get feedback that you can’t take feedback. By the way, that’s valid feedback for a lot of people that need to hear that. So yeah, I’m kind of sitting here and staring off into space and thinking about, like, so many times that I’ve given. So is it fair to say that I’m a, I’m a fairly direct person? Yeah, you can be okay. And I’m not always because I’ve learned over time through feedback, that that’s not always great. But, you know, with that, sometimes I offer feedback when it’s unsolicited. And, you know, that doesn’t always go over well, but I was trying to, I literally have gone through like, one of those almost like movie type sequences where I’ve just gone through like 15 years of like, the looks on people’s faces when I’ve given them feedback. Now, one of the things that kind of has come with being me or being us and I know you get the exact same thing as people literally, multiple times a week, ask for my feedback on stuff. So I’ve learned that before I give it because I do appreciate that someone’s thinking about me and cares enough about my opinion to ask, but I always tell him up front, I said, Look, I’ll give you my feedback. But there’s a couple of things here. One, I don’t want to I’m not going to have a debate with you afterward about whether I’m right or you’re right, like who’s right or wrong. And I need you to tell me that you’re not going to get upset if I don’t tell you what you want to hear. Now. I think that is that’s the attitude you want to have from people that are willing to give you feedback like if you if you get caught in a yes culture feedbacks worthless. So how do you how do you know how do you know like how do you know when someone’s just floating your boat giving you a shed or they’re just and you know what, some people will just try to sink your hopes like there are some people that just suck like they are they are if you are what you eat, they are shit sandwiches.

Matt Watson 23:17
Well, now you know I have all that but paste that you pictures of in the Startup Hustle chat, forbade you to join, you need to join us on Facebook. You do

Matt DeCoursey 23:27
and go to Facebook and type in you know, let’s take a break now because that’s get some feedback from our users and Facebook chat. And then just go to Facebook and type in Startup Hustle, fun Startup Hustle chat. There’s a couple of 1000 people in it. But recently, Matt, when I was at your house, I noticed that you had a tube of toothpaste on your desk, which I just figured as an entrepreneur that was probably why you had it. But I did I did post a picture of you in chat and I asked for the crowd to caption this. I was really excited about the robust response that we got, so let’s let’s let’s read a few of those before we move back into this let’s see what the feedback was on you. I actually said all entrepreneurs have days where boots rose but paste is the solution. Chris Owens of got barnwood.com said that your facial expression indicates that you have extreme satisfaction with the product. Is that true?

Matt Watson 24:30
Yeah, it really it really fixed my butter.

Matt DeCoursey 24:34
Okay. Brian Kellogg’s set simply said another satisfied customer. Here we go. Justin Crestridge. He was he was our guest for either the best or the worst episode we ever had about food trucks. Yeah, he said on my way to see the tax man. My friend my my friend Alan WABC said for When you just left a Nickelback concert Sorry, that was my favorite. Charles Hansen, my former business partner at fitness delivery experts said getting ready for that sleepover with Matt DeCoursey.

Matt Watson 25:20
Don’t even know

Matt DeCoursey 25:24
for those of you listening, these are the important moments on the podcast and you know, we try to take this too seriously. This gets Graham dodge, the founder of SEC weather less filling tastes great.

Matt Watson 25:37
Now, is that true? Yeah, it tastes delicious.

Matt DeCoursey 25:41
Andy Callen back the CEO and founder of lending standard and multifamily debt.com So he wants to make it a jingle. So I’ll try to sing this. Boudreaux rose but pace makes Matthews but feel bad. And then what may be the best one vol. Dan Schmidt says, ah, it looks like you’re getting ready to go raise capital.

Matt Watson 26:08
There you go. That pretty much sums it up.

Matt DeCoursey 26:13
For That’s it for today’s edition of hey, option this. Yes, the matt Watson

Matt Watson 26:19
well, but what I was thinking to me is like, sometimes you’re gonna give them people user feedback, right? Like, you know, they’re gonna get butthurt by it. And I think you got to give them a paste when you’re done.

Matt DeCoursey 26:30
Well, and that’s why we wanted to go ahead and you know, if you’re if you work for Boudreau is, but paste, please send some new supplies because we are entrepreneurs, which means that we’re, there’s always going to be in need there. So yeah, so my feedback for the chat group there is that was great feedback. So thank you. Also, you can see very important stuff like me finding hidden Chinese stars and my desk. Yeah. I didn’t know those were in there. So anyway, join us on Startup Hustle, Facebook chat, we try to have some fun and learn a few things at the same time. So all right, back to the episode, Matt. So what do you think about stuff that, you know, like, we’re in this like, AI and machine learning? chatbot kind of world? What do you think about tools like that when it comes to collecting feedback?

Matt Watson 27:21
Hmm. I don’t know. I mean, unless they can identify some patterns in the feedback, I guess.

Matt DeCoursey 27:28
Yeah, I think that’s right. I think I think that, I mean, for for the the prosumer level knowledge I have related to machine learning, I feel like you’d have to have a hell of a lot of feedback for it to notice anything. So if you’re starting a tech company, or your startup, or you’re gaining traction, I mean, you know, it’s like the same, we have the same issue. So you know, Full Scale, I mean, we get a ton of leads, but it’s not like 1000s a month. So if we want to try to see what’s working, or what changes are, are effective or not with some of our stuff, like it might take a little bit, because you can’t really I mean, machine learning isn’t meant for a sample size of 13 or whatever. No,

Matt Watson 28:14
no, there’s got to be enough to be statistically relevant.

Matt DeCoursey 28:18
Correct. All right. So I mean, overall, when it comes to, to all this, man, I mean, like, Okay, what some shitty feedback people have given you.

Matt Watson 28:30
They don’t like the color.

Matt DeCoursey 28:34
Yeah. Like have a button or something?

Matt Watson 28:38
Yeah. Can you make our logo bigger? That’s always my favorite.

Matt DeCoursey 28:44
When I get Yeah, I think that, you know, it’s really funny is, is I’ll get feedback from the, you know, some you show someone your site and like, like, I think he should consider a different logo.

Matt Watson 28:59
I’ve told him really for them.

Matt DeCoursey 29:01
Well, I mean, maybe, but that I mean, but when you’re leading with that, when that’s like the thing, I mean, that’s not like, that’s not helping my user experience, you know, it’s like, Oh, how about a logo rebrand? I’m like, Oh, my God. Why? I mean, your logo inherently isn’t having an effect on. You know, it’s not having an effect on the the usability of your platform, most likely. So what’s some of the better feedback that people have given you?

Matt Watson 29:33
Just learning how they use the product, right? And sometimes they’re, they’re solving problems with it that you wouldn’t expect. And that’s always really cool to hear. You know, for example, at stack fie we had, we had somebody who wrote some kind of script, or whatever, they could run in the browser that would like automatically export data out of our system. They’re like, I need to export data and you guys didn’t make a way to do it. So I wrote a program to do it. Like it’s interesting. bool people can be really inventive, I guess, at least developers in the race. They know how to work around the system.

Matt DeCoursey 30:06
With Giga book, we learned a ton by seeing how people were using it, we’re like, oh, wow, okay. You know, they kind of you mentioned, like they kind of hacking together little solutions or just seeing, I mean, I think that’s you can give yourself feedback, if you have the ability to see how people are using your stuff. I think that’s also that kind of self created feedback is important, because you can also see what trends so like, in the case of giga book, we were able to identify certain types of industries or businesses that were using the product and seem to be really successful with it. And some of that helps you like in a case study kind of way, share with other people like and you know, when at Full Scale. We do a lot of that. So there’s, there’s a specific approach to the way some of our clients build their teams that, you know, and it’s not proprietary or anything, it’s just kind of like, Hey, this is what some of our more successful clients are doing as practices to build the team. Yeah, and these are some things that people this is where people win, this is where people lose. You know what I think if I look back at like, you know, it’s funny, because every time I’ve, I’ve started a business that ended up making a shitload of money, I always remember the people that gave me terrible feedback. In the beginning, they’re like, this is never gonna work. You should quit. How are you? How are you ever going to make any money doing this? And here’s the thing, if I had listened to those people, it wouldn’t it worked out so well. So, you know, I think another thing too, is, I think you have to create a culture and and around your business that that is open for feedback. Yeah, we did a, we just recently divided our marketing team up into two different groups. And we did our so one of them is the Startup Hustle team. And we did our first meeting the other night. And that was one of the things we talked about, we’re like, we are we we win as a team, and we lose as a team. And what we’re not going to do is hide our feedback, be afraid to give it or you know, if we make a mistake, we want to just ask ourselves, why, like, you know, why? Why did this occur? And what can we do to make it better? It’s not about being critical. It’s about well, it is about being critical. It’s just but it’s not about being mean. It’s not about being accusation, all. And that’s one of the things that I think in some organizations, if you if you don’t, if people feel that, you know, hey, here comes the user feedback, or any feedback in general, and they’re like, I need to sweep this under the rug, because it’s going to make it look like I did a shitty job. That’s not good. Yeah, that’s not good. I mean, that happens a lot, man, because people don’t want it. They feel like it’s their work. That generated that. And I mean, I think a lot of that occurs a lot of it. So we’re gonna do a quick wrap up here in a second. But once again, today’s episode of Startup Hustle was brought to you by chat desk, Matt Watson will give you the call sign for that three times very quickly at the end of this ad reads, so get ready for that matter. Now, chat desk helps you reduce the number of phone calls coming into your business by over 10% By shifting calls over to Facebook Messenger and other channels. You get started in just a few minutes in the service is free for a limited time, be sure to check out now.

Matt Watson 33:40
Chat desk.com/shift chat desk.com/shift chat desk.com/shift to talk to you did it. I did it.

Matt DeCoursey 33:50
And folks, and that is how you use feedback to get better now. Wow,

Matt Watson 33:55
I even added a little dance there. Yeah.

Matt DeCoursey 33:59
And for those of you listening that can’t see it, it was it was pretty tight. It was pretty solid. So. So I mean, as we wrap up part 36 of the series now, I mean, what are your takeaways from some of this? Like, I mean, I think that, you know, what stood out? What’s your feedback on today’s

Matt Watson 34:20
you know, what, you know, as I said earlier, like, You got to be able to take feedback, but you’ve got, you’ve got to look for the patterns in it. Right. But I guess the thing I’ve seen it about in my head as we were kind of wrapping this up is it’s sort of like being in a marriage, right? And you’ve got to listen to your spouse and be able to have a critical conversation with them about what you like they do what you don’t like they do and you conversely, right like them, being able to tell you like I don’t like it when you never do the dishes and I don’t like that whatever, right? And be able to accept that feedback and grow from it and improve and get butthurt about it and just fight about it all the time. Right? It’s, it’s really kind of similar. And if you do get butthurt I recommend Are they about paste?

Matt DeCoursey 35:04
Yeah. And hopefully you’re you that’s a new stream of revenue for us here on the show. Because I mean, one thing I do know is all entrepreneurs, we seem like the perfect sponsors for it have needed that. I mean, I think when I look back at you know, I think about today’s episode topic in general, I mean, encourage feedback, ask for it, I think your users are going to move you towards a better, more finished product, product, and projects quickly. And remember, they’re the ones paying for it. So if you want to keep your users and your clients, you need to take the feedback seriously. With that, be careful to not just chase or chase down a bunch of one off stuff, just because someone gives you feedback doesn’t mean you need to stop everything you’re doing and sprint towards making that change. There are situations in cases where you might need to, you know, like that might be a real critical thing. You know, you kind of look at it is like, is this urgent? Or is this important? And, you know, like, I’ve seen a lot of people get down the rabbit hole, I think I’ve, I’ve, I’ve crawled down it a little bit myself. You know, I think we all have, but also if you realize you’re down that rabbit hole, get back out of it. Get back out of it before you’re buried. And, you know, overall, if you’re not collecting feedback, if you’re not giving feedback, then your level of health and communication is not great. So that’s all I got. Now, that’s my feedback about the episode about feedback.

Matt Watson 36:39
Always be learning. That’s the thing. Always.

Matt DeCoursey 36:42
I’ll see you next week. See you guys.