Determining The Right Category For Your Startup

Greg:

If you’re playing the new category game, you actually have to accept that and know that that’s actually one of the biggest things you’ve got to do as a company, you have to make payroll and build software and make the leads and get the thing and do all that hard stuff. And Chris, maybe 50% of your time is telling people this is a problem. This is what it looks like. The thing that solves a problem is called Trainual. And it’s a blank. You actually have to install that in the world.

Chris:

What’s up everybody. I’m Chris Ronzio, founder and CEO of Trainual, and this is Process Makes Perfect. As always, we’re talking with experts in process creation, automation, and delegation. Basically, the people that make business easier, you just heard Greg Head. And this episode is all about the process of selecting the right category for your business. Greg is the CEO of Scaling Point, which provides consulting and workshops to early-stage tech companies. He’s also the founder of Greg’s list, a curated and up to date list of software companies and tech jobs in Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta, Boston, and soon to be many more cities. He’s had an amazing career so far with early-stage experience at ACT, the contact manager that millions of people used in the nineties. Then he co-founded sales logics, which was the first mid-market CRM software, which went public in 1999.

Chris:

And he was the CMO of Infusionsoft, where he helped them grow from 15 million to over a hundred million in annual recurring revenue in Arizona. He’s basically a legend in our start-up scene and I’ve been fortunate to learn a lot from him. What I liked about this episode is we talk in-depth about how to create a category, what that means, and examples from Trainual, because this is an active conversation we’re having right now about creating the category for playbook software. So listen in, you’ll get to hear me and Greg talking pretty candidly about what we’re doing and some advice for your business.

Chris:

Hey, everyone, welcome to Process Makes Perfect. I’m your host, Chris Ronzio. And as you heard in the intro today, we’re talking with Greg Head, Greg, what’s up?

Greg:

Hey Chris, how’s it going?

Chris:

Awesome. Thanks so much for being here. I was excited to catch up with you. Yeah, it’s been a while since we’ve chatted.

Greg:

It has.

Chris:

All right. So for anyone that doesn’t know, Greg, uh, I met Greg here in Arizona through Russ Perry. So some of you might’ve heard of Design Pickle. Uh, Greg, I remember seeing you at an event. I don’t remember what event it was, but Russ was talking to you, and I was so intimidated to walk over and talk to you because I knew you were a really marketing person.

Greg:

Oh my goodness. Yeah, just older.

Chris:

When I was launching Trainual, you were so helpful. Like the first month of launching it, we got on the phone and you really talked me through the difference between a lifestyle business and a true growth business. So it was very inspiring. Thank you.

Greg:

Yeah. And you’re an inspiring entrepreneur, so it’s fun to help you. So when you were talking to Russ, uh, when you met me, was he dressed up in his pickle costume?

Chris:

Not at the time.

Greg:

Oh, okay. Cause he goes around conferences and his pickle costume, and people have pictures of me talking to Russ who I know and I’ve ever before, you know, Russ before Design Pickle and everything. Uh, you know, I, we get to talking seriously and people take pictures of us. Cause he’s at a pickle out, you know, costume, like, you know, like a banana suit or whatever has pickles.

Chris:

Yeah. But it worked so for anyone that doesn’t know, Russ check that out in that story out. But Greg, so what we’re going to talk about today is category creation. I remember early on and Trainual. I was preparing for a pitch and you walked me through category being one of these things that you’ve got to nail because people don’t know where to put you as a business and they don’t know how to position you or who to compare you to. And so it was really helpful for me, something we’re still working through. So we’re going to get to the categories, but I know you’ve got the six points of a scaling system categories, one of them. So everyone listening, can you walk through that?

Greg:

Uh, through the system, through the six points? So yeah, so, uh, I spent 30 years in software running software businesses, product marketing and the rest. And, uh, there’s lots of nature that haven’t changed. These exist in our brains. And they were there before tech and after tech and it’s works for politics and everything else. And there’s books about all of these things, unique selling proposition category, your why and all that. And I kind of have a simple unified theory to work with entrepreneurs and create messaging and strategy and get through all those sticky decisions. Uh, I call it the scaling point system. Um, and you could find it at scalingpoint.com and the six elements that you can’t really take one away and you don’t need to add 10 more or 20, but these are the things that underlie everything a company does and every message they send out.

Greg:

And, uh, the first is category. That’s your first, that’s the, what is it a question? Um, the second is your target customer, which is the, who is it for question? So those, some, you know, those are product and market of product market fit. Um, and the third is benefit, which is different than category and target customer. That’s the, why should your target customer care about it? What’s in it for them differentiation, which you can be differentiated on benefits. You can be differentiated and category. So they’re kind of have to separate them and to play that out, um, purpose, which is a new thing for companies to be, and to communicate to the world. When we see Nike, we, and we wear a Nike shoes, we also are buying their purpose of caring about diversity and Colin Kaepernick, right. Which they seem to bet wisely on themselves, but not in 30 years ago, we didn’t put purpose in the, in the thing itself.

Greg:

Now the shoe has purpose and the last one is credibility, which is taken for granted, not considered, but in startup world, especially for new category, creators have a new thing. And nobody’s heard about it yet. And they’re small or whatever, which is where it all starts for all of them. That’s really important and it has to be managed. So I’m working with a big company software company that you’ve heard of right now. And we’re going through this process, uh, it’s especially powerful for early stage founders grilling out of startup. We tried a bunch of stuff. It’s starting to feel like there’s some shape to it. We’re kind of onto something. That’s the thrash before investors kind of show up and say, Oh, I get it. And you know, in scale, so there’s product-market fit and product-market fit and scale that goes in there. So, um, so it works for everything, but I have, what I do for a living is that therapy and, uh, intense, uh, consulting with entrepreneurs like you,

Chris:

I think consulting is entrepreneur therapy. So I assume when I was doing it. Yeah. Alright. So what size of a business are they touching each of these six? Is it, you know, the zero to one, one to 10 million, 10 to a hundred, are there different maturity points that you’re focused on each of these? Uh, not there. Um,

Greg:

They act out there, they exist a hundred percent of the time at every stage and in everything in every politician and every music and every idea and every device in every food and every, every, uh, stock, every book, you know, we, we play these things. Uh, what is the category? Who is it for? What’s in it for me, that’s just the, uh, people, cities it’s always there, but when you start a company, um, you know, generally as a startup, let’s call it tech startups. Generally, they’re doing an ADD experimental exercise. They go around and try a bunch of stuff, and they try this on and I can run around and see what’s working and the rest, uh, that’s, uh, kind of like lean startup. You’ve got to widen the aperture, try a bunch of stuff. Um, but between startup and scale, which is usually between 1,000,005 million for an ambitious growth company, you actually have to settle down and stop saying for you today.

Greg:

I’m that for you today on that? What’s your category. It depends. Hey, for you actually have to declare yourself. It has to be sharp and so forth. So that.dot all the companies that are growing fast or trends that are happening in the world that are moving fast are musicians that are gaining fame or hot stocks, whatever. Um, they’ve gone from that ADD to their OCD. We, we could be all these things. We’re just this now. Yeah. We, we could sell to everybody. We just sell to these people. And so that’s kind of a move that makes, it’s kind of counterintuitive. You’ve seen this, but you, um, you actually narrow your focus, what you are for whom as you grow. Yeah. And, um, yeah,

Chris:

So I want to dig deeper into category. Of course, that’s what we’re going to talk about. The process of building a category. And that’s the first point. So how often is someone creating a category from scratch versus fitting into an existing category?

Greg:

Well, that’s kinda the first thing. Uh, actually the first thing is categories are kind of hidden in plain sight. They’re in everything they’re in everywhere. It’s everything on Amazon has a category. Every restaurant in Yelp is categorized. Um, but we just don’t see it. So the first thing is to understand that categories existed, they’re important. And then you have to determine which category game you’re playing. So that was kinda my interrogation of you in the first day, which is, is it another one of these in an existing category? Uh, is it like what big companies do only it’s for small companies, so this category, but for different card customer, or is it really a new category? It’s like a thing that hasn’t existed before. And so, uh, it’s people get confused about those. So people don’t build that there’s categories, and then they’re playing the wrong category game.

Greg:

They think they’re creating a new category and they’re not, they’re just another one of these. And they got to compete in other ways, or they’re just trying to compete on, you know, selling, but people still aren’t clear what the thing is yet, and it’s not like anything else. And so you actually have to decide what game you’re playing. Generally speaking in tech and funding and high growth. It’s a new category game. Investors generally play that horse race. Uh, nobody’s doing it now some days everybody’s going to be doing it and we’ll have a word for it. Smartphone, rideshare, uh, COVID tracker water bottle, you know, uh, well, you know, like not all of these things that exist in our big didn’t exist. I’m old enough to remember when almost all the stuff I could see around here, widescreen monitor whiteboard, uh, noise, canceling headphones, just all the stuff we Google all day long, like didn’t exist. So it’s not, everybody’s playing that. Uh, nobody’s seen this before and some days everybody’s going to be doing it. It’s kind of strange. That’s why, you know, it’s not so obvious and it’s way harder than people think. So.

Chris:

It’s interesting. Yeah. So it’s either an existing category or it’s a version of an existing category for a different customer, or it’s a new category, a new word entirely. And you’re trying to figure out what it is. That’s correct. I know, I remember watching shark tank when they talk about a, I don’t want to invest because I don’t want to be the one to educate the market. So if you’re creating a category, how much do you pour into educating people on what the category is?

Greg:

Yeah. So, uh, if that, so that if that’s the game you’re playing, right. Uh, that, uh, and you gotta confirm that meaning I’ve got a new thing and I show it to people, and then you say, what do you call that? And they say, I don’t know what to call it. It’s not that it’s not this it’s, it’s not an LMS in your case. It’s not a Google Doc. It’s not just a folder with everything in it. Uh, it’s not a brain dump. It’s, it’s something else.

Chris:

And I want to get into that too.

Greg:

Yeah. So if you’re playing the new category game, you actually have to accept that and know that that’s actually one of the biggest things you got to do as a company, you have to make payroll and build software and make the leads and get the thing and do all that hard stuff. And Chris, maybe 50% of your time is telling people, this is a problem. This is what it looks like. The thing that solves a problem is called Trainual, and it’s a blank. You actually have to install that in the world, uh, quinoa? Um, COVID mask and N95 mask, whatever, like the crowd didn’t make this up. A crazy person said I’m going to install quinoa in the world. And they took the flag out and they told the story and repeated it over and over again. And Johnny Appleseed across the country and repeat and repeat and repeat. That’s one way to lose the game is, uh, not take category creation. Seriously. Either your category doesn’t get big or somebody else comes in and takes it over.

Chris:

Yeah. Yeah. So very timely. I mean, we’re going through this right now. We had a big conversation last end of last year. One of our 2020 initiatives was to really put the flag in the ground and define this category. And so when we looked at what people call us, you know, there’s LMS Wiki, knowledge-base intranet training management. It’s funny, actually, before I got on this call, I got a message from G2. The review site that we actually got rated, number one for SOP is a number one for training management, which defined, which for me is like, what we’ve always straddled is like this operation side in this HR side. So we’ve been calling it the playbook for your business playbook category. And I’m curious what you think of that.

Greg:

Well, that’s a great question. And so, uh, what the world doesn’t see, uh, is, and I’ve been part of category creation and several different companies and industries and markets, and that’s kind of the therapy I provide for founders. So will play the play the game here, uh, what the world doesn’t see is, first of all, the crowd doesn’t make these things up. They don’t get together and say, we’re going to call it this right. They’re crazy. People who push it out in the world, make up the words. I know that, you know, some friends of mine were in the room when the words CRM were made up, my Tom Siebel and his game. So like these they’re always made up by people in the rest. So I think you have to take into account. What, if you don’t create a category and get out there, they’re going to put you in the buckets that they see.

Greg:

Yeah. Like they, can’t not put you into an existing bucket, Chris, and they don’t know how to create your category for you. Right? So you actually have to say, I know you want to do this, but unlike this, we do this. It’s different than they have to nod their head. And you say, we call it X and I could see you’re moving through some axes. And then you have to install that. And then it has to show up on those review sites and in Google and the rest. So I’ve helped create words with companies that I’ve worked for and others that now were the words, people Google, so that, you know, that’s the mountain you got to climb. And generally speaking, the bigger, the VC investment, the more they’re saying, we’re buying a category that someday will be big and we’re investing in the leader. Who’s going to walk away with the price. Yeah. That’s the category again.

Chris:

So it’s a, it’s a crazy person that comes up with the word and the crowd doesn’t make that. But as you’re, if someone here is doing something new, you’re there listening to this and they’ve got something new and they don’t quite know what to call it. Are there places you can draw inspiration from? Like, where, where are you going to come up with this crazy thing? That in a way that sticks and it’s not just a vague, you know, boring term.

Greg:

Yeah. So there’s a couple of rules for the category game. So, you know, like, there’s way more structured to this game that people see, it’s not like, Hey, it’s creative and artistic. Like Steve Jobs was all structure. And it looked like he made it up on the flight, right? It’s very structured. So a couple of rules, like a category name, something that we Google and somebody says, Hey, I got this problem. And then everybody around us, the entrepreneur group says, Oh no, you’ve got to get X. You’ve got to get venture debt. You got to do coworking. You’re right. All these words were made up. And that was there for some of those. Like the here’s the deck, here’s the criteria, the rules. If you have a category name, first of all, it has to be practical. Sorry, Mike, by the way, you can’t say a new category name. And then people go, Oh, I totally get it. I’m on board. No, you have to then keep selling through that. But it has to be practical. Yes. Right. You have to start selling then has to be pregnant. Has to be true. Like people come up with these names that nobody would ever repeat. Right. Uh, we’re in the, we’re an entertainment. Uh, you know, we’re a happiness company. No happiness is your benefit. You’re a theme park.

Greg:

Look at that like Disney and all the magic and all the Brandon, all the super stuff. It’s a theme park. And by the way, like theme park, like who made that up? Somebody did so, so there’s this, but you know, we could attach to it. Those are words, right? Those are just words. It has to be generally descriptive. When you say theme park, it’s different than a, a roller coaster ride or a pool or something like that. Right. And the last one, it has to be kind of differentiated that says, we’re not like the other things, um, chicken sandwich, it’s not a hamburger. Right. And so, because you even say, Hey, we’re going to go for chicken sandwiches. Where would I go? And we are going to go to, you know, we’re going to Disney, you know, one other. And if you looked at other ones, you’d look Google thing park, right. Or, you know, hotels and whatever. So if you want to make something big, you’ve got to deal with the category game. So, so playbook to see if it plays that category, we’ll just do this here. Is it when people say this, Hey man, what you need is playbook. So, Hey man, I’m struggling with this. You need playbook software. Yeah.

Chris:

I said, I want a playbook for my business.

Greg:

Right. And by the way, people wouldn’t make it up. We have to teach him to say it. I say quinoa and smartphone. And that’s like, it’s been drilled into my brain. Right. Uh, and you know, the stuff we Google we’ve been trained and that’s what you call the thing. Oh, Oh yes. Okay. Right. Okay. So what do we call TikTok now the video social media thing. Is it,

Chris:

What do we call it? I don’t know. So I don’t know.

Greg:

Yeah. It’s but it’s a video social media. Now everybody’s talking about, I think we could call it. Yeah. It’s addictive or something like that. You know, short form, mobile videos they have on their website, you know, just get me in the neighborhood, all that kind of stuff. So, so you could see that, uh, let’s just play this game here. We have a little time. I’ll do a quick version. Okay. Great. Chris, where are you from?

Chris:

Boston. Okay.

Greg:

Okay. Uh, if I were in Boston, if you and I were in Boston right now, and I say, where are you from? And you said Boston, they would probably think, but are you from, are you a Southie what kind of place? Kind of thing. So, so if we were in Boston, what would you say, Franklin. Okay. And if you were we’re at a bar and Franklin and somebody says, Hey man, where do you live? You’d say, I’ve live over there, done that neighborhood. Right. And if you’re in France and somebody said, where are you from? You’d say, probably say Boston, then kind of get it right. Something like that. So it depends. You’re kind of create a range here. And so your playbook is pretty good. It’s not LMS. It’s not all this corporate BS words, by the way, we hate all that shit. Excuse my French training and all that.

Greg:

Most people hate that stuff. Right. Do you have that feeling training is a training, right? It’s all that stuff in LMS that’s corporate-y words we want to be that not be that, but on the other side are more practical words, which I see you using your page titles around SEO right now. Uh, uh, right. Onboarding SOP. Yup. Uh, employee. Why don’t we say here employee handbook. So there’s some concrete examples. So, uh, a million times, and through the loudest mouthpieces, you can, you have to repeat the story. Hey, when you’re tired of, you know, what you want and what big companies have to get their employees up and running faster, um, and scale your business and get it out of your head. And it’s things like onboarding the rest. We call it playbook software. So you need playbook software, don’t get LMS, get playbooks software.

Greg:

It has this, this, and this playbook’s off playbook, playbook software. So, you know, that’s, that’s how that game works. And that’s a work. If somebody, if somebody won’t, uh, repeat it back to you, Oh, like I was there to help make up the words and take it to the world of contact management, which was different than sales automation. I was like, we’ve made up the words. We installed them. People said contact management, but by the way, it was about context management and you would describe, and they’re like, Oh, contact manager and I get it. So it’s not like your address book. And it’s not like big corporate software. It’s kind of take me management contact. And so that was act in the nineties and 4 million users. So the leader of the category create a category, be the leader of the category means you’re the educator of AngelList grow the category.

Chris:

Yeah. I love that. Well, for anyone listening, that’s trying to create a category. Of course look up every, all the content Greg has on this. We actually reached out to some of the software review sites and ask them what it would take to add our category to their list. And they just said they needed to see some validation of other examples. And so all year we’ve been collecting examples that we can get it.

Greg:

There’s the credibility game. Yeah. Cause like, you know, people say, Hey, here’s this new thing, man. It’s called a week. And we’re all like, no, we don’t want to do thing. Our brains are like, no, right. That’s what we do. Hey man, this is amazing. It’s a totally new thing. You should try this. No. Right. And then we wait for the crowd and all of this and we’re doing things we didn’t do 10 years ago. Uh, Zoom, what do we call these? Um, like we’re doing like, uh, uh, people, people are having fun with like the Zoom night, uh, drinking together. What do we call this? There’s a word for happy hour Zoom, happy hour Zoom, happy hour. Right. So like that didn’t exist, but you see how it’s descriptive. It’s different than just, you know, we’d say Zoom happier. Like we should have a Zoom happy hour people.

Greg:

My people say, yeah, what’s that. But now that, you know, we’re kind of over that like, Oh, do it. And so anything that like that going up, that product adoption curve and it’s big now it has to have simple word story. Can not do something at scale. Unless it’s simple. This is the most complicated device inside there in our brain. It’s just like Apple or Android, which looks better on me. I mean, simple like billions, it has to be so simple to scale. And that’s the thing here. So, so what have you tried before playbook you’ve had, um, what, what do you, what, what have we tried as categories?

Chris:

Yeah. I mean, uh, onboarding, training, training, management, knowledge management. Um, but all, all of them felt a little off and you know, it’s funny as we see our competitors are people that the market would compare us to. I see features that they offer that I don’t want to build because it’s not congruent with my vision for what a playbook is. And so it’s almost like you’re building something different. Yeah.

Greg:

Yeah. And so you actually have that concept and it’s real in your mind and right. And useful and all that. We just don’t know the word for it yet on the outside we have been playbook or whatever. So the second thing, so they’re asking you to be bigger. Uh, and by the way, that’s one reason why VC money can help. That is because it’s just an indicator that, Oh, this is real. Oh, it’s a thing. Now it’s just shorthand for, it’s a thing now. Oh, big VC funding. Oh, it’s a thing now. Whoa, what should it, should I do that playbook stuff? Hey, I think you need playbook software, Chris. I cannot tell you how many times we’ve gone from this. Let me take a half hour to describe it to you without using a category word. Right. All that early years of this and growing it and trying it on at this.

Greg:

And then the thing grows. And then people say, Hey, uh, I, you know, I’m certified in playbook software. They put on their resumes and it started to show up in Google searches and all that kind of stuff. That’s actually what you’re doing in the world. And people create this, the world doesn’t want more categories. So you actually have to fight upstream and make that happen. So, um, so the world is the year review sites and everybody else a category is when there’s a bunch of you. Yeah. If you’re the only one then, is it really a category yet? But if there’s a bunch and everybody’s doing it, remember social media management software when HootSweet, and you know, uh, all those came out and there’s a thousand of them generally. That’s how categories explode is. Uh, the, all of a sudden people, it’s a problem. I recognize a problem.

Greg:

People race and solve the problem. Then there’s a dozen of these. Right. And then what happens? Uh, then there’s two. Yeah. There’s iPhone and Android, Uber and Lyft, and you know, Coca Pepsi, uh, QuickBooks, and who else has the Zero? Zero. Okay. You know that right. You’re a savvy guy. Most people don’t even know the number two in small business accounting software. And the old days there was 25 small business accounting software. Yeah. And so, yeah. So, um, remember everything that exists that we’ve put a name on Republican Party, uh COVID-19 right. There’s a war for calling it different things and all that didn’t exist before. And we put names on it and the people think from the outside, the crowds do this, or it just happens or whatever. No, it is a battle to create that and to own it. And

Chris:

Hey, this was a little bit of a glimpse into the category we’re creating. So if somebody is listening to this years from now, you’ll be able to see where the playbook category was just emerging. But Greg, I want to ask you about something you’ve been working on too. That seems to be scaling really fast. And it seems to be simple and that’s Greg’s list. I see a new city popping up, like every week I launched the LinkedIn. Yeah. So it’s such a cool resource. So can you share just quickly what it is and why you came up with it?

Greg:

Yeah. Um, Greg’s list at Greg’s list.com is my curated list of software companies in local cities. It started in Phoenix, uh, when I was just helping a bunch of founders, uh, four years ago. And in a bet, you just after that, um, and everybody said, well, you know, can’t really do it. It’s not really a software town in Phoenix again, but like a mindset thing made up and, and, um, there’s no funding and talent and the rest of them, like I help to category creating companies get to a hundred million in Phoenix. One of them, I helped start it started. And, um, I don’t know who started this rumor. And then pretty soon I found a hundred software CEOs in town. And then as people started following me around for my Evernote list, and then I started publishing the list of all the software companies and I kept adding to it.

Greg:

I’d beat you, I’d add you to it. And I go to the pitch competition and the events and all of the people in my network and just built, there are 565 live active software, SAS companies on Craigslist, Phoenix. And there’s almost 500 in Dallas. It’ll go or 500 in Boston and a couple of months, there’s a lot more going on in Phoenix. And so you just can’t. So, um, so what is it? It’s a list. It’s a directory of software companies. So let’s say I didn’t invent directory, but it’s a directory of real software coming. So it’s free and go there. And it’s Phoenix. So you can’t find it on Crunchbase or LinkedIn or the rest of me. It may take you as long as I did it. And so investors, job seekers and founders and community leaders can go there and say, wow, here’s everybody let’s go help them. So investors are all over it. By the way, I talked to about 20 investors a month job seekers and all that

Chris:

I saw, I saw you added a jobs portion of it. So is that something you had planned to do to expand and outboards, or that just kind of was a, an opportunity you took advantage of?

Greg:

Well, it was kind of like Greg’s list. It just started because of the conversations I was having with people. So, uh, mid-March uh, third week of March, people were calling me friends of mine calling me saying, as in the marketing event management software or travel software, we just had a major layoff. I’m looking for a job. So all of a sudden a players and leaders were looking for jobs and, you know, these are all hard people to find is, you know, so, so, uh, we published a list of the talent and we started posting jobs like, Hey, you could go over here. So over 30 people in Phoenix have found jobs because people found them on Greg’s list. So it’s Greg’s list is a free community resource, uh, meant to help the entrepreneurs get access to the resources they need to grow up. And we know, I know how hard it is to grow a business. And so you’ve got the hardest job, buddy. So thanks for doing it. Well, thank you. I like the word needs your playbook software and then Phoenix needs a big software company. And like that’s, that’s [inaudible] yes.

Chris:

And it’s a great resource. So whatever city you’re in, check it out. I’m sure it’ll Greg’s list will be in your city pretty soon. So Greg, as we round this out, we’ve got the double-tap five questions, just rapid fire, whatever comes to mind. So first question what’s a brand you think has perfected its process that you admire.

Greg:

Well, I don’t use the preferred process with brands, but I sure love what Zoom did. They weren’t a category creator. They came at the benefit, their target customer, and they took over video conferencing this year and exploded it. So, um, Zoom has the word video conferencing equals Zoom this year and that’s, that’s the that’s winning the Super Bowl. They’ve become Kleenex. Yeah. And they didn’t invent it by the way. They did it better. They came out of nowhere, punched everybody in the face, and walked over.

Chris:

Uh, who’s someone that’s coached or mentored you,

Greg:

Uh, in the last year. Uh, another guy in Phoenix, their marketing leaders named park Howell. Do you know, park, uh, uh, business of story. He’s an expert at, uh, narrative, uh, storytelling and marketing and branding. And, uh, he’s helped me a ton. And, uh, and it’s a good friend of mine.

Chris:

Uh, your favorite book or podcast,

Greg:

Uh, the podcasts I choose most often if I have to choose one, uh, is this week in startups, Jason Calacanis. So I get to, I get to hear in, he, he talks to founders and investors and, you know, accelerator leaders and all kinds of people, very fast, very useful. He learns a lot and he’s doing what you’re doing. He’d learned in stop on every podcast. And, uh, yeah, it’s totally fun.

Chris:

That’s great. A similar, most entertaining person you follow online.

Greg:

I don’t really follow celebrities or entertainers, but I would have to say Elon Musk is the most entertaining. He is a master of his game and, and, uh, you know, he and the president of United States know how to play the narrative game. Uh, you know, that’s for sure.

Chris:

And last one, what’s one app you can’t live without.

Greg:

Well, let’s see here, uh, during the COVID crisis, it was the Chipotle app. I could just press a button and then walk in kind of thing. But out here in Dallas, I got used to 23 years in Phoenix to not paying attention to the weather, but I moved to Dallas, and the weather changes. So the AccuWeather app that you could push in, like literally see where the clouds are that are coming through because it changes rapidly here. And you’re just as likely to get a big storm or something out of nowhere here. So it’s pretty great.

Chris:

I love that. No one’s ever said weather or food, so you’re keeping it simple. It’s a big category is people need weather, people need food. So I appreciate that.

Greg:

Those are the two most interesting ones. I use all the standard ones, everybody.

Chris:

Awesome. Well, Greg, thanks so much for your time. This has been great for everyone. That’s listening. Look up Greg Head, go to scalingpoint.com, check out his resources, learn more about the six points. Learn more about categories and see what you fit into or what you’re creating. Just like I have. Thanks again, Greg.

Chris:

Hey, thanks for listening to Process Makes Perfect. If you’re listening on your earbuds on a run in the car, we also have a version on YouTube. So if you want to see this in color video with me interviewing all these great guests, check it out on YouTube, just search Chris, Ronzio, and you’ll find my channel on there. If you found this helpful, we’d love for you to leave a review or rate the podcast. If you found the information valuable, please share it with a friend, a family member, or anyone else you think could benefit from the information. Remember to connect with me @chrisronzio on all social media platforms or the company at Trainual. That’s Trainual like a training manual, everywhere that you want to follow us. Thanks again for watching or listening. And we hope to see you next time.

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