The Harder It Is, The Better

Justin Jackson (0:10)

Welcome to The Panel, where founders talk about building a better business and a better life. I'm Justin Jackson, co-founder of Transistor.fm.

Brian Casel (0:18)

I'm Brian Casel, I'm founder of Builder Methods.

Jordan Gal (0:21)

And I'm Jordan Gal, founder at heyrosie.com, and we have a special guest today.

Justin Jackson (0:26)

Corey Haines from Conversion Factory. Welcome to the show, man.

Corey Haines (0:30)

Yeah, thanks for having me.

I feel like a midget amongst giants, like you guys are my heroes. And so it's like weird to be here. I'm like, what do I chime in to say something? Like, I'm just only used to listening to you guys.

Justin Jackson (0:42)

Oh, dude. I don't know if you've ever stood next to Jordan Gal and myself, but I'm pretty sure you are a giant amongst midgets.

Jordan Gal (0:51)

Yeah, look, part of the reason we do this podcast, not in person, is so Justin and I can avoid that fact entirely. I remember when we first met, we were like, oh, another five foot sevener.

Justin Jackson (1:03)

It's true.

Brian Casel (1:04)

Justin and Jordan's personalities are a lot bigger than they are in person.

Justin Jackson (1:08)

That is my favorite thing about meeting someone in perfect. I'm going, I thought you would be taller in real life. I'm like, yeah, that's exactly. That's why I live on the internet.

Jordan Gal (1:17)

I'm probably a bit short. Corey, you have a very strong Twitter game. So I think your status, you do a lot of stuff. That's what kind of gets me.

And your post from Conversion Factory always has me like, should I reach out for a redesign?

Justin Jackson (1:31)

Is it time for us to do a redesign?

Brian Casel (1:33)

Yeah, I mean, that's what I wanted to wrangle Corey in here this week, because I think Corey, you're known as like the marketing guy. You've been that. Everyone has like a name plus like a thing that everybody knows them for. I feel like marketing is the word for Corey.

And we know Conversion Factory, sort of like your agency service, but you're doing a lot of other stuff. You've got marketing skills, which have blown up. You've got a ton of SaaS products, a whole portfolio of those. So I wanted to get you on here, because we're always kind of hacking around on like, what's working, what's not working, how is SaaS changing? We can get your thoughts on all that, but also just you as a builder. You're like a marketer turned builder. There's so many places we can go.

So I think this will be fun.

Justin Jackson (2:19)

Yeah. Well, let's start with this Brennan Dunn tweet. Right here. Remember back when every business marketing bro wanted a technical co-founder?

I mean, yeah, yeah, I can identify with this. Jordan, what's your reaction to this?

Jordan Gal (2:40)

I thought it was genuinely a spicy take.

Justin Jackson (2:43)

Yeah.

Jordan Gal (2:43)

Because it's a little rude, but has enough truth in it that, you know, it's tough to argue with. I do remember back to this because without a technical co-founder, it was just all talk. You could have as many ideas as you wanted, but you needed to figure out a way for one of these people who contain the secrets to the magic, to believe enough in what you wanted to do, to join you, to make it a reality. And it was, it felt like a very risky danger. First, it was very difficult to find the right person. And then you understood from the beginning that they held an enormous amount of leverage. And I remember this was like, you know, one of the foundational conversations in SaaS world, in MicroConf world, in anything.

And it's amazing how it's changed in, okay, in a lot of ways over the last two years. Yeah.

In other ways, in other ways, it hasn't changed. I'm continuously reminded at how unbelievably valuable and talented my CTO and co-founders are. So I'm gaining skills, but I still respect like the real thing. But it's interesting to see these hybrids. Corey, what was your journey? Like how technical were you beforehand? What got you into AI? I feel like you have one of like the most popular GitHub repositories for marketing skills. Like, okay, explain that. How did that happen?

Corey Haines (4:19)

I just learned not to do my own horn, I just learned, it blew my mind that marketing skills is the 481st most popular repo on GitHub in the world of all time.

Jordan Gal (4:29)

Wow. It's like, it's basically just DHH and yourself.