This episode tackles the highs and lows of Black Friday marketing and its relevance to SaaS businesses like Fireside. John, Kris, and Garrett discuss how customer-centric timing could outperform traditional holiday discounts, with ideas ranging from New Year podcasting pushes to conference-aligned offers. The trio also delves into the backend challenges of modernizing software, balancing Rails upgrades with visible customer improvements, and finding psychological triggers to help customers start and sustain new initiatives. They share insights on turning performance boosts into happy customers and why community-building could hold the key to podcasting success. Key Quotes “What if instead of discounts, we focused on lowering the risk for customers to try podcasting?” - Garrett “You don't have to go crazy and work a ton. You can you can achieve great success by turning a few levers. But sometimes it just takes a lot of work to figure out what those levers are.” - John "I'm just thinking about swag, but that's a discussion from another day." - Kris "I feel like that's the thing with SaaS in general. I'm sure some people have gone viral, new product just hit the sweet spot, nailed it, they knew exactly what they're doing, had a bunch of experience. But, on the other hand, every other SaaS app I've been involved in, it is nothing but just slow and steady constant improvements that are customer centric. And eventually at some point you've removed enough of the friction in onboarding, registration, daily usage, whatever it is, you know, either it combats churn a little bit or it increases registrations. And then, you look back three years later and you're like, it got there. But without that immediate reward all the time, it's definitely challenging to keep the faith." - Garrett
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Mar 10 202528 mins