Secrets You Can Learn From Your Customers

**Michael Seibel** (0:00)
And some point during this coffee session, the guy was like, hey, oh, you want my notes?

**Dalton Caldwell** (0:03)
You want to sit by me?

**Michael Seibel** (0:06)
Would you like a gold mine?

**Dalton Caldwell** (0:08)
Yeah, all of my thoughts, all of my...

**Michael Seibel** (0:10)
Everything.
Hello, this is Michael Seibel with Dalton Caldwell. And today we want to talk about our secret for learning as much as possible from your early stage customers. One of the things that we have to fight a lot for these founders, early stage founders, we had to fight, is this idea that when we're started the company, we understand the problem really well that we're trying to solve. We understand the customer really well, we understand the solution really well.

**Dalton Caldwell** (0:39)
Yeah, we have it all figured out, right? Day one, we nailed it.
We have our next 10-year plan all lined up.

**Michael Seibel** (0:46)
And why would you start a company if you didn't have the plan? Like if you didn't know, right?

**Dalton Caldwell** (0:51)
It's true, overconfident foolishness is a key part of doing anything ambitious in life. So I do, you're right.
You gotta love that.

**Michael Seibel** (0:58)
You gotta start there, and then immediately switch.

**Dalton Caldwell** (1:02)
Wait, maybe we don't know anything. Is that possible?

**Michael Seibel** (1:05)
But you only switch after you burn the bridge behind you.

**Dalton Caldwell** (1:08)
Yeah, but you can't quit. You have far enough along, quitting's not an option before you realize you don't actually know too much.

**Michael Seibel** (1:15)
And then at that point, you have to learn.
And one of the things that we've seen, we'll give some examples today, is that the fastest way to learn what you need to know, both about the problem and how to solve it, is to care about your customers, right? If you care about your customers, and then as a result, you spend time with your customers, you can really learn what their problems are and how to solve them so much faster. You know, one example, and we talk about Airbnb a lot, but one example that came up when they most recently spoke to The Bash that really clicked in my mind was, they retold a story about how they were emailing their hosts, and they saw their hosts had horrible photographs on Airbnb, and they knew their hosts were listing their properties on other sites and they had horrible photos there too.
And they said, okay, we're just going to help them get better photos, right? We're just going to help them get better photos. We're going to email them, we're going to go to their homes, we're going to give them better photos. And I think what's interesting about that was that they knew that those hosts were going to use those photos in other places, right? They sure did. They knew that like maybe their company was going to be dead in three months, right? Yep.

**Dalton Caldwell** (2:21)
And they knew they were kind of losing money on the deal.

**Michael Seibel** (2:24)
Cause they flew. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
They 100% losing money on the deal.

**Dalton Caldwell** (2:29)
Didn't pencil up.

**Michael Seibel** (2:30)
Yeah, didn't pencil up. But they did it anyways. And they had empathy for the users. And they're like, you know, those photos suck. This is something we can solve for them.
And it's kind of human nature that if you do something nice for someone, they'll appreciate it.

**Dalton Caldwell** (2:45)
They remember it. They're trying to help you. Trust, like you establish some trust when you break down the barriers between yourself and the folks you're trying to serve and do something nice for them.

**Michael Seibel** (2:54)
Who knew?

**Dalton Caldwell** (2:55)
Something valuable. Who knew? And they weren't like, here's your invoice.

**Michael Seibel** (2:58)
Yeah, no, no, no, no.
And I think what was interesting was that when Joe tells the story, he talks about one host who after they took all the photos and they arranged the lights the right way and they showed them photos like, oh, the place looks great. The host was like, hey, do you want to sit down for coffee? And it was so funny because that was the moment in the story where I was like, a lot of founders would have said no.

**Dalton Caldwell** (3:22)
Yeah.

**Michael Seibel** (3:23)
A lot of founders would have been like, I have someone else on the list.
I'm just doing this to try to make my website better. I don't really like you. I'm actually kind of pissed that like you have shitty photos on my site. So like I got what I need. I'm getting out of here. And Joe actually cared about his users. And Joe was like, sure.