Colin understood that being an entrepreneur meant developing muscles you don’t have as an “employee”. Focus, commitment, resilience…
Dave Young:
Welcome to The Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not so secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young.
Before we get into today’s episode, word from our sponsor, which is, well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So, here’s one of those.
[Kooler Garage Doors Ad]
Gary:
Told you, Brian.
Brian:
Told me what?
Gary:
This is part two of last week’s episode.
Brian:
Oh yeah, and it was getting good.
Gary:
If you missed it, go back and listen to part one first. Take it away, fellas.
Stephen Semple:
Journaling is something that I will self-confess here. It’s something I’m trying to become better at. And often, I struggle with what should you do in the journaling. So I really like the tip that you gave there about, literally, writing down how are you feeling, why do you feel this way. And again, journaling, I do recognize as pen to paper, not typing. There’s something about writing things down in your own handwriting. And the fact is there’s a value to that slowing things down. It’s that forced slowdown, because we can only write so fast.
But the other part I though that was really interesting was this whole idea of in that storm talking to people, and purposely talking to people who are not business people or who are not in your industry. I don’t know about you, but this is what I found, is when I talk to people who have that little bit of distance, sometimes that whole forcing me to explain it to them actually helps me build clarity. And I’ve even found sometimes, “Okay. Yeah, I am thinking about this all wrong,” because now that I’m trying to explain it and I’ve seen the glassy eyes, I realize, “Yeah, I’m being a little nuts here.”
Colin Hodge:
Yeah, exactly. That’s a great addition, because so many times it’s in our head and it’s swirling around, and we think we have complete clarity about it. We understand this problem. And you try to explain it to somebody who has much less context on it, it absolutely uncovers that logical error you’re making or the emotional side that you’re not really acknowledging. It helps so much. So, I love that as well of just even if the person knows about it, explain it to them again. Explain it like they’re five years old even, and break it down on that simple level.
Stephen Semple:
And if you can’t explain it, you haven’t got it clear in your own mind.
Colin Hodge:
Yes, exactly.
Stephen Semple:
But what I love is the journaling and whatnot, think our challenge is in those moments of the world is crumbling around us, there’s all these challenges happening, the whole idea of giving ourselves permission to step away, stop. As you said, it goes, “I’m a firm believer that really great thinking comes from changing your environment.” Going to a different environment and actually taking time with all this stuff, I think, is hard for a lot of people to do because I think our natural thing is, “Oh no, there’s all these things happening. I’ve got to double down on effort.” I think that’s our natural tendency is to do that.
Colin Hodge:
It is. And I think part of that is building this as a muscle, just like you need to build your faith and your own resilience. As an entrepreneur, you also need to build your faith in this process, in giving your brain the right environment and the right space to work through the problem. And so, a simple way to look at it is if you’ve ever had a big decision, felt overwhelming, and then you slept on it and the next day it was so simple, much easier to just make that call, that’s what you’re doing, but on a bit of a longer scale. You’re giving your brain time to process it, and new inputs and things to shake it out of whatever the rut that it’s in.
Stephen Semple:
It’s really interesting about that time thing. And then we’re going to come back and talk a little bit more about down. But it’s funny, we even have this conversation with people around the creative process where we may say to somebody, “Hey, for us to come back with this campaign idea, we’re going to need two weeks worth of time.” Now you think about it, somebody goes, “Two weeks worth of time, you’re not going to spend 80 hours on it.” No, we’re not going to spend 80 hours on it, but there’s two elements to time. There’s how much time you spend on something and then there’s also how much time is spent between those activities. And I think a lot of times, people underestimate the importance of putting some space in between. That actually helps your brain be more creative, think things through, the sleep on it.
It’s amazing how the best ideas come when you park it. And we all laugh about it happens in the… I always feel like I need a whiteboard in the shower. It happens in the shower. It happens when you wake up in the morning. It’s always in those quiet moments where you’ve parked it, that the big mental breakthrough happens.
Colin Hodge:
Yeah, you need to give it a break. And I myself, I’m guilty of being… I would say, it’s this instinct to always want to be productive and make progress, push forward. So it feels like you’re pausing or, even worse, that you’re losing ground. But it is a good reminder for us that if we allow that time in between, then our brains can breathe a little bit. They can marinate on the idea. You can allow for that serendipity and those different synapses to connect and fire so that finally, those creative ideas that cannot be forced but need to marinate a bit can come out and come to fruition.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah, that’s cool. So coming back to DOWN, one of the things I really like about what it is you’ve tried to create is first of all, or not tried to create, what you have created, because it’s very successful, is you’re approaching it a little bit differently because it’s about the casual side. But the other part that I really like is the real key thing that you’ve focused on is this whole idea of honesty. So, I’d like to know a little bit more about how you’ve built that into the app and your approach because that’s the real origin. You were talking about your whole frustration about when you looked at it, that things just weren’t honest.
And I’m going to argue that the more craziness we’re seeing with AI and all these other things, I think more we are striving for that honest human connection. But what is it that you’ve done to make that happen inside the app?
Colin Hodge:
So, I realized that part of this is a never-ending effort because there’s always a new tool, a new tactic that dishonest people will try to use. There’s a new shift in the culture about some taboo, something that people don’t feel like they can be honest about. And so, it really does need to come from the company ethos, not just any one feature. And it’s an updating thing. So we start with from the very top of the funnel. And this is a dirty secret, I think, in a lot of marketing. You are choosing your users, you’re choosing your own customers, and that has a huge effect on how people behave in whatever app, product, or environment you’re creating for them, especially with social because they’re interacting a lot with each other. But even if you’re running an e-commerce company or anything else, you are selecting your users and how you market to them, and how you position your branding and your product really does determine a lot of their behavior.
So for us, we start with that pitch of, “This is a place to do honest dating, to be honest about your intentions, and to bring your true self that you’re willing to express with people.” And what that does is it self-selects a lot of our user base to be a bit more open-minded and a bit more ready to share all that stuff because they expect. They have that expectation that the other people are also looking for that. So we’ve done our surveys, we’ve done our user interviews, and we found that majority of our users are a lot more open-minded and appreciate… They’re the type of person who appreciates when their match is that straightforward about something, even if it doesn’t fit what they’re looking for right then, but especially when it does. Because when they find that match, instead of the hundredth match that they might get on Tinder or another huge dating app, they have fewer matches, but the ones they get are a lot more likely to be aligned with what they’re looking for and not going to waste their time as much.
So, it starts at the top of the funnel. Then through the onboarding process, we really coach our users and we dive into something or we lean into something that I call good friction.
Dave Young:
Stay tuned. We’re going to wrap up this story and tell you how to apply this lesson to your business right after this.
[Using Stories To Sell]
Dave Young:
Let’s pick up our story where we left off, and trust me, you haven’t missed a thing.
Colin Hodge:
So, good friction. And it took me a while to realize this, I was wrong about this, but good friction is absolutely necessary. And that means for us, we lengthened our onboarding process from something that was one of the quickest in the industry, thinking it’s a casual app, it should be really lightweight, and should feel just easy to get into the app and start getting action. We lengthened it quite a bit. And why we did that was we had this theory that our users, frankly, especially our male users, were not investing a lot or nearly enough in presenting who they are and putting in that work, showing the effort that they are there to actually genuinely meet people, and to go and meet them in person.
So, we made the onboarding process longer. We required more photos of them. We require face photos of them, not just edited, body photos, stuff like that. And we verify now, for the last two-plus years, 100% of our profiles. So when you log in and you’re going through the onboarding process, you turn on that live camera, take a video, you blink, and we compare that to the actual photos that are going to be seen. We don’t show that to anybody, those videos. And we can’t because a lot of them, frankly, are nude. But the profile photos, we make sure that they look like that live video, at least close enough to be the same person. That’s just the onboarding process. And then it gets even deeper from there, from adding highlight stickers. So we let you choose a very unique, very, I would say, on-the-nose ways of how you want to stand out to people, how you want to present your best self to people, what you think is your highlight, your down-for interest.
So whatever you’re down to try, wherever you’re down to meet, we help you express that in an honest way so you don’t have to always just fill out a long bio and come up with that on your own. And then the liking, so if you know Tinder or any other swiping apps, it’s a yes or a no. For ours, we said it’s not always just a binary yes or no for people. Some profiles, you see because they’re really hot or the bio really stands out to you. You might be thinking, “Oh, they’re long-term material and I want to date them.” But others, you might be saying, “You know what? I’m in the mood right now. I would hook up with you. I’d have a casual relationship with you, but I don’t want anything serious with you because of whatever other flags I’m seeing in your profile.” And so we allow you to also say, “I just want casual with you.”
And what that does is, like I said, once you get a match, it’s so much more likely to lead to sparks, where you’re actually interested in the conversation and you’re going to meet people.
Stephen Semple:
Two things I want to dig into a little bit on this because I think I love the statement where you said you attract your users or other people may talk about their customers, because we often talk about here that copy, the words that you use, what you put out into the world is actually how you attract your customers. You don’t target through demographics and all this other crap, you actually target through messaging. If I do my messaging right, my messaging will attract a certain type of person. It’ll repel a certain type of person and attract a certain type of person. And the better you do it, the more you’re attracting, actually, the type of person that you want, because I think a lot of people don’t think about that. They just think, “Oh, it’s done because I posted here.” It’s like, no, it’s not where you’ve posted, it’s what you’ve said and how you’ve said it that basically connects with that person and attracts them.
And the more you think about your messaging being, “This is who I want to attract,” the more powerful it becomes. Now, yes, it’ll repel a whole pile of people, but that’s actually, at the end of the day, what you want. The other thing is, and I’m going to steal this word from you, good friction. Love that whole idea, good friction. Because yes, sometimes putting some friction in the sales process or the onboarding process or whatever it is, is actually a positive. We do the same thing. We won’t work with somebody until they hire us for a day, right? So we’ve got a number of onboarding things, but before we go to a full, we spend a day together. That’s a lot of friction. But what we found is that actually helps us really figure out whether we’re a good fit for each other. But I’ve never thought about the term as being good friction. I really like that because normally, when we think about friction, it’s just a negative. Although, sometimes you actually want it, and sometimes it actually makes for a better business.
Built the company, sold the company, built it back up, having great success with it. There’s two things I want to say that I really like about what you’re doing, and then we’ll just talk a little briefly. What I like is, and I can see where some of your success comes from, is we have this phraseology that we like to use when we’re working with customers, where you got to be thought of first and liked the most. And it’s thought of first for dating app, liked the most. And this is actually, a lot of times, people have a hard time framing it, but you’ve got it. Liked the most because of honesty. And I think that is a big part of where your success is coming from, is that you’ve put that stake in the ground.
And how I know you’re owning it and really believing it is you said, “Hey, we’re actually going to make our process a little bit more difficult to defend that idea of honesty.” So it’s not just a statement, it’s a belief. And how do I know it’s a belief is when you’re willing to sacrifice something for it. It’s a want otherwise, but it’s a belief because you guys went… One could argue that that friction has probably cost you some users.
Colin Hodge:
It’s spot-on.
Stephen Semple:
Of course, it has. But you’re willing to make that sacrifice.
Colin Hodge:
Yeah. We lost quite a few users, for instance, when we enforced 100% verification of profiles. You can’t imagine how many users we lost from that. But when we do, then that just creates this positive cycle that really can start to build, from the people that stayed, that better behavior, the better reactions, the better conversion later in the funnel. So it’s absolutely worth it, but you take these short-term hits with faith that what you believe in, that’s core to your values, and what you want to put out there into the world, that’s worth it. And for us, it’s striving to make dating more honest.
Again, very hard to do, but striving to make it more honest.
Stephen Semple:
But this is the reason why I’m saying what I really like, because a lot of times, businesses will say, “This is the thing we stand for,” but it’s not a stand for until you’re willing to sacrifice something for it. And you sacrifice something for it, so it means it’s a real core belief.
Before we wrap up here, do you want to talk about your book?
Colin Hodge:
Sure. So, I never thought I’d be an author. A few years ago, the 10th anniversary of starting DOWN was coming around, and I just felt like I wanted to tell the story. It’s a dating industry, so there are even crazier startup stories than maybe some. All sorts of fun parties and events we threw, the investor meetings, meeting other founders and having very odd and interesting interactions with them. The acquisition drama that I went through meeting, so many different players and all that stuff, and rejecting offers, and then buying the company back. So through that process, growing with the company I sold it to and then all those other apps that I helped on growing to over a hundred million users, I knew that I had to tell this story but I didn’t know where. I wrote an article. It went viral on Medium. And from there, I just started to get excited about writing a book. Maybe, I could be an author.
And when I wrote it, I started circulating it amongst some early readers, got some feedback. And what I really aimed to do with it was I didn’t want it to be a boring business book. So it is part memoir, part growth playbook for anybody who’s interested in growing their company in a more sustainable, a bit less stressful way, understanding people better through psychology, and really tapping into those elements to be a better person, a better founder, all that stuff. And I think the reviews are good so far. It’s a bestseller, and I really have enjoyed hearing the reader feedback. So if anybody does grab the audiobook or hardcover or the Kindle version, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I’d love to hear from readers and, definitely, am available for that as well.
Stephen Semple:
What’s the name of the book, Colin?
Colin Hodge:
The name is Outrageous Startup Growth. It’s kind of a callback to the original name, Bang with Friends, which was outrageous, of course. But also, the other meaning of the word, the other meaning of the word meaning, it’s so grand, it’s so impressive that it’s outrageous. And I think the growth that we’ve had with DOWN, the growth that I had with the hundred million users and all the ways we’ve gone about it, almost all with that core, the foundation being growing organically, not just dumping ad money into things is really, I think, something almost any builder, any empire builder, let’s say, can take away from it and apply to their business, whether it’s retail or digital or offline or physical.
Stephen Semple:
And I think that’s so true. And the one thing I’m just going to say, but it has to be something where it’s really, for you to grow organically that way, it has to be this real, solid belief, this stake in the ground that you’re willing to do.
This has been an awesome conversation. I’m going to go get a copy of Outrageous Startup Growth. It sounds like there’s a bunch of awesome, fantastic stories in there. This has been fun. And I particularly like part of the conversation we had around dealing with bad news, and inside the bad news, there’s opportunity. Because let’s face it, any entrepreneur growing a business, there’s going to be those moments, there’s going to be those days, there’s going to be those crisis that happen where you’ve got to sit back and be able to relax and think your way through it. So, I want to really thank you for taking the time. This has been a fun interview.
Colin Hodge:
I think you’re going to love the chapter. I open it with me sitting in the floor of my shower crying because it’s all about getting through those hard moments at bad news. So, a big part of the book is these lessons for you as a founder. So, it’s hopefully going to really speak to you. And if I could leave with one thing, I know you love the good friction thing. I wouldn’t be a dating app founder, especially casual dating app founder, if I didn’t say good friction is not only useful in the bedroom, it’s useful in your product and your business. So look into using it, and everybody will have more fun, yes.
Stephen Semple:
Love it. All right. I love how we’ve left it off on that. Thanks, Colin.
Colin Hodge:
Thank you, Stephen.
Dave Young:
Thanks for listening to the podcast. Please share us, subscribe on your favorite podcast app, and leave us a big, fat, juicy five-star rating and review at Apple Podcasts. And if you’d like to schedule your own 90-minute Empire Building session, you can do it at empirebuildingprogram.com.
