Jason Cohen

After more than a year of labor, my book 𝘏𝘪𝘥𝘥𝘦𝘯 𝘔𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘪𝘱𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘳𝘴 has launched!

It's all my best ideas -- and best writing -- on how to grow your company with your existing budget and team.

And yes, I read the audiobook myself. :-)

𝗕𝘂𝘆 𝗱𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘁: You can buy cheaper bundles directly from me -- Kindle and Audiobook, or those plus the physical book -- from hiddenmultipliers.com

𝗕𝘂𝘆 𝗼𝗻 𝗔𝗺𝗮𝘇𝗼𝗻: It is available in paperback, Kindle, and Audible: tinyurl.com/hiddenmultipli…

𝗙𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗔𝗜 𝘀𝗸𝗶𝗹𝗹𝘀: Skills that implement the ideas in the book as well as articles, more added all the time, at skills.asmartbear.com

I'm so proud of this and grateful to the many people who helped along the way, reading early drafts, challenging my ideas, and encouraging me to do it, and the 750 people who preordered the book, trusting that it would be worth it.

All your feedback and ideas are welcome, as usual!

(P.S. You know this already, but 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝘀 and 𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗳𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗱𝘀 is extremely appreciated!)

What did Nusii founder @michaelkoper build to specifically thrill marketing agencies?

I asked.

He thought, then agreed: Nothing… the "verticals" on the website were just words.

But his heart is pure…

The whole session:

youtube.com/watch?v=_Dsbze…

What if you never had tech support?

What else would have to change -- the product, documentation, videos, etc?

It’s probably wise to do those things regardless.

longform.asmartbear.com/extreme-questi…

For 25 years (my career) the rule was that you could never get human budget transferred to the software budget, and that’s one reason why “saves time” was a bad sales pitch.

With AI that’s no longer true.

AI Spend Hit $177 Billion This Year. Only 22% of It Came Out of Software Budgets. The 4th Annual State of Enterprise AI Report from Menlo Ventures, (saastr.com/ai-spend-hit-1…)

I got 30 people to tell me they'd pay $50/mo for WP Engine before I had a company name, a website, a product, a co-founder, or an employee.

The price came first, because it was 10x more than most people were currently paying; because it was high, it immediately set expectations and affected the meaning of everything that came after.

The old "shared hosting" companies charged less than $5/mo. Our lowest plan was $49/mo.

If you charge 10 times the going rate, you can't be 𝘴𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘭𝘺 better. You have to be 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘴𝘵, and customers who pay 10 times more will expect that you are, and value that you are.

This is the pricing strategy I call "More for More": pay more, get more. As opposed to “More for Less” -- pay medium, get a good trade off, a good ROI, or “Less for Less” -- it’s the cheapest, so of course it’s not that great, but it’s better than having nothing at all. All three are excellent strategies, if all the other decisions at your company are consistent with that positioning.

Now picture the same market at $1/mo. You can't afford customer service, and the technology has to cost almost nothing to run. So the product has to be simple enough for customers to serve themselves, and you need a huge number of customers to make any money.

Same market, different price, different company.

Most founders build the product, write the positioning, and pick a price at the end. But the price decides who buys, how you sell to them, and what you can afford to build. If you pick the price last, you might not have a profitable or sustainable business.

In fact, almost surely you will not.

Price determines your business model:

longform.asmartbear.com/pricing-determ…