5 ms·

Hiya guys. Feel free to ask any questions if you've got them. I'm generally happy to answer, to the best of my capabilities.

by patio11 14y ago

ernestipark 14y ago
Hey patio - awesome post, I really appreciate it. I wanted to congratulate you on getting married and was also curious as to how that has affected the general run of your business (outside of the obvious time off for the wedding and honeymoon). Do you find this independent lifestyle much more conducive to spending time with your wife since you have such a flexible schedule?
- patio11 14y ago
  I didn't know my wife back when I was a salaryman (9-to-11 PM days are fairly typical for male Japanese professionals). The best thing that happened after quitting that job and going "full-time" on my own stuff was that I suddenly had time to rediscover human life, including going to the BBQ with friends where I happened to meet Ruriko. (You might reasonably ask "How the heck are Japanese men supposed to get married if they're working to 11 PM?" and the answer is "Your boss will consider it his responsibility to arrange for everything you need to live the standard salaryman life, such as a salary, a wife, and an insurance card." Funny story about that, ask me some time.)
  - phreanix 14y ago
    Is it some time yet? :)
    - patio11 14y ago
      Oh alright. Boss: "So are you seeing anyone?" Me: "Ahh, erm, I appreciate your desire to look out for me boss. Us Americans are a little quirky with regards to finding young ladies -- we typically look for ourselves rather than getting formally set up by family or coworkers. I'm not seeing anyone at the moment but plan on finding her myself, so..." Boss: "Oh its not just a cultural thing. If you don't have a wife, you'll go back to America to find one, and then you'll quit the company. We can't have that now can we." Me: "Erm, I appreciate the concern, but maybe we can meet at the midd..." Boss: "Yeah yeah, whatever." 3 weeks pass. Scene is a Welcome To The Company party for myself and two other new employees. Boss: "Patrick, I've got someone to introduce you to. This is K-san, who sits two rows over." K-san is a young lady, about my age. Me: "Pleased to meet you, K-san." K-san: "Please to meet you, Patrick." The following is word-for-word translated from Japanese and is not exaggerated in the slightest. Boss: "Patrick graduated from a good school in America, is a bright engineer, and has a solid future with the company. How about an international marriage?" shocked silence K-san: "I have absolutely no interest in that." Now in a just world I'd be able to report that this was a little awkward but we can all laugh about it 5 years later, but a just world would have no Japanese megacorps in it. In the world we actually live in, K-san was given grief by many co-workers. (e.g. "K-san, do you want to come out to lunch, or do you have absolutely no interest in that?") My dimestore psychoanalysis is that a) she shot down the boss in "too brusque of a fashion" compared to socially optimal ways to decline things like "giggles Oh he's far too handsome for me." (or any of the 50,000 ways you could say "Yes" and mean "No") and at least in part because b) some people in my company genuinely believe, to some degree, that K-san should not have said no. If you're interested in gender relations in Japan, many scholarly books have been written on the subject.
      - recuter 14y ago
        Patrick, I have been reading your stuff for some time now and it is indeed interesting and useful and worth a lot of money to loads of people I'm sure. But goddamn man, for the greater good, forget this silly software racket and put out a comic book. Perhaps a live action television show, maybe a movie. Your anecdotes are always my favorite part. :)
        phreanix 14y ago
        ^what he said. Seriously, I wish you had the time for something like that.
      - alinajaf 14y ago
        > K-san: "I have absolutely no interest in that." If this is the Japanese I think it is, I would have had difficulty not laughing out loud.
        patio11 14y ago
        「。。。国際結婚はどう？」「まったく興味ありません。」 , but I trust my recollection of her response less than of his, since my brain was still reeling.
        minikomi 14y ago
        Oh man.. That is a cold, cold way to say no. Great story!
      - Joe_Knapp 14y ago
        Its not just Japan. Most of Asia. but I must admit that the best book I ever read explaining this Asian custom of saying yes when you need no, was Japanese. Asia is extremely complex culture compared to America.
  - packetslave 14y ago
    I think I can guess the answer to this, but I've often wondered: are the ridiculous amounts of hours worked by salarymen genuinely due to the amount of work to be done, or is it a "face" thing, e.g. "if I'm the first one to leave, I'll look like I'm not committed to the company" which results in longer hours for everyone?
    - mc32 14y ago
      AFAICT, it leans more towards face saving, altho not exactly that. If you leave before the little boss who leaves after the big boss, then your coworkers tend to think you're not dedicated (hrs-in = dedication). However, most people 'working' after 6 are not really working, or at least not productively. Lots of the people who are not IMing or chatting or surfing or whatnot are doing things manually (like running reports) which could have easily been automated --but the boss likes people to 'do work'... efficiency is sometimes seen with suspicion. That's anecdotal and not necessarily representative, but it certainly indicates that not all people are busy till 11. There's also having to go out with the boss and colleagues.
tkahn6 14y ago
Any plans for another podcast?
- yex 14y ago
  Please do more of these. There is such a shortfall of SaaS podcasts it almost makes me cry. It's like xmas morning when I see a new Kalzumeus podcast appear in my RSS reader!
- patio11 14y ago
  We do them every time Keith and I have both mutual availability and something interesting to say. Sadly, as of late we've both been very busy. Hopefully mid-January. (If you have a burning urge to hear my voice, I'm a guest on other folks' podcasts more frequently than on my own. http://productpeople.tv/ http://productpeople.tv/ has a recent interview about my business story and Amy Hoy should be publishing a long interview about infoproducts (like our courses), multi-product businesses, and consulting sometime in the next two weeks or so.)
  - mijustin 14y ago
    Product People has two episodes with Patio11. Part 1 has his complete back-story: everything from how he learned to program with graph paper to how he built his first product business with $60. http://productpeople.tv/2012/12/19/patio11-part1/ http://productpeople.tv/2012/12/19/patio11-part1/ Part 2 has specific tactics for building your own software business: http://productpeople.tv/2012/12/26/patio11-part2/ http://productpeople.tv/2012/12/26/patio11-part2/ Both episodes have full text transcripts, so you can listen or read.
TallboyOne 14y ago
How did you initially market bingo creator in it's earliest stages? Did you go after SEO, paid marketing, word of mouth, etc?
- patio11 14y ago
  I tried posting on the ad section of teacher forums (total bust), using AdWords ($1 a day until I figured out how to make it work profitably, which took about a year), and (overwhelmingly the most important channel for me early and still the source of ~50% of sales) long-tail SEO for niche bingo activities. The specific tactic for that is in the Greatest Hits section of my blog and covered at length.
  - johnnutcracker 14y ago
    which article exactly?
    - bmelton 14y ago
      A brief look at the greatest hits section of his blog suggests that this might be the article you're looking for: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/24/startup-seo/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/24/startup-seo/
icelancer 14y ago
No questions, just wanted to say thanks for writing your book - I found it amazingly clear with highly-actionable ideas. And this is coming from a guy who doesn't even write software anymore! http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/12/21/i-wrote-a-book-on-conversion-optimization-for-software-companies/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/12/21/i-wrote-a-book-on-conver...
danielharan 14y ago
FYI: s/Marquis/Marquee/
MattRogish 14y ago
Why "patio11"? Always curious about nicks. edit (to avoid comment spam): Thanks for the info!
- patio11 14y ago
  In first grade, we were given a pointless busywork assignment to test our handwriting skills. I hated writing (I did not have good physical control of the pencil) so I wrote the shortest possible answer to all of the pointless questions. The first question was "What is your favorite number?" I answered "1" My teacher, looking at answers like "1", "red", "a dog", "No.", etc, said "1 can't be your favorite number. Pick a harder number to write." I spitefully picked "11". (Too bad I couldn't write Japanese at the time -- for the same amount of work I could have picked 10.) In middle school, right when I was first getting involved with online services, my best friend was a Puerto Rican. He hated the hard "k" sound in Patrick and called me "pato" for about a day, but laughed at his oh-so-clever joke, so I asked him to change it. I can't stand "Pat." (There was a movie about a gender-ambiguous character named Pat that year. It was middle school and I was a geek, you can do the math.) He then proposed "Patio." We paled around often enough that it stuck with my family. When I needed a disambiguating number for e.g. AOL email addresses or Warcraft 2 handles, I naturally went with my favorite number, 11. I'm patio11 on just about every service that I use which I don't mind associated with my real name.
  - japhyr 14y ago
    That reminds me of a first-grade story. One morning I had a flash of brilliance and realized that if I didn't have an eraser, I would never make another mistake in my life. We had those big fat red first-grade pencils, so I spent all day making really dark circles and then erasing them as completely as I could. I was really proud of myself at the end of the day when my eraser was completely gone. I was really confused for a while when I made my next mistake.
    - meric 14y ago
      "Use the word 'people' in a sentence." -> "'people' is a word." "Do you know what does 'WWF'[name of a panda conservation organization] stands for?" -> "No." It really surprised and frustrated me when I got zero marks for perfectly logical and correct answers.
charleshaanel 14y ago
What's your perspective on other customer acquisition channels (via media buys) outside of search (PPC)? I'm curious about your take on mobile, CPI/PPI and display (outside of the google content network).
j45 14y ago
Can you delve more into how you develop and close your first few enterprise sales? Especially in a market that you haven't been in for a long time already. Apologies if this has been answered elsewhere.
- theoj 14y ago
  I think Patrick largely answered this question in an email he sent to the mailing list back in October (Selling To The Fortune 500, Government, And Other Lovecraftian Horrors). Will forward you the email.
  - j45 14y ago
    Awesome, thanks. I think I signed up for the mailing list after that one.
  - spoon16 14y ago
    I'd also like that email
  - infinite8s 14y ago
    I wonder if Patrick has an archive of old his emails to that list. I definitely signed up after he sent that one.
codewright 14y ago
You started out with product and then started doing consulting after a fairly large amount of time spent on a product. (I've been following your work for awhile, it's been inspiring.) I'm a programmer who has done consulting before with a keen interest in product and marketing. If I want to become self-employed (preferably in the form of working on a bootstrapped product), should I start by bootstrapping a product or by consulting? I believe that consulting would mean becoming self-employed sooner, but my concern is that I'd end up on a "get work, seek work" treadmill harming my ability to work on bootstrapping. Alternately, my concern is that if I focus on bootstrapping a side project while working a full-time job, that will also mean not getting self-employed again for a very long time. Sorry for the rambly comment, do you have any insights or suggestions to offer?
twinturbo 14y ago
Hey Patrick. Loved this post. Do you have any blog posts (or perhaps could write one) on handling consulting in remote locations? I know you're out in the middle of nowhere Japan. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Also what happened to the podcast? Seems to have got into hibernation. Cheers man.
QuantumGood 14y ago
I've noticed your emphasis on doing frequent and appropriate mailings. It's good advice! It works well for us. But what do you recommend for integrating a B2C CRM with email marketing? We do detailed segmentation of our mailing list and I can't find a good B2C CRM that integrates sufficiently with an email mktg platform. I'm currently looking into synching many more fields (needed for segmenting) from Zoho CRM to MailChimp via API with CloudWork/ItDuzzit/Zapier. Their defaults are useless (3-5 main fields), as we need complete contact info in order to segment well.

Hiya guys. Feel free to ask any questions if you've got them. I'm generally happy to answer, to the best of my capabilities.

by patio11 14y ago

Hiya guys. Feel free to ask any questions if you've got them. I'm generally happy to answer, to the best of my capabilities.

ernestipark 14y ago

Hey patio - awesome post, I really appreciate it. I wanted to congratulate you on getting married and was also curious as to how that has affected the general run of your business (outside of the obvious time off for the wedding and honeymoon). Do you find this independent lifestyle much more conducive to spending time with your wife since you have such a flexible schedule?

patio11 14y ago
I didn't know my wife back when I was a salaryman (9-to-11 PM days are fairly typical for male Japanese professionals). The best thing that happened after quitting that job and going "full-time" on my own stuff was that I suddenly had time to rediscover human life, including going to the BBQ with friends where I happened to meet Ruriko. (You might reasonably ask "How the heck are Japanese men supposed to get married if they're working to 11 PM?" and the answer is "Your boss will consider it his responsibility to arrange for everything you need to live the standard salaryman life, such as a salary, a wife, and an insurance card." Funny story about that, ask me some time.)
- phreanix 14y ago
  Is it some time yet? :)
  - patio11 14y ago
    Oh alright. Boss: "So are you seeing anyone?" Me: "Ahh, erm, I appreciate your desire to look out for me boss. Us Americans are a little quirky with regards to finding young ladies -- we typically look for ourselves rather than getting formally set up by family or coworkers. I'm not seeing anyone at the moment but plan on finding her myself, so..." Boss: "Oh its not just a cultural thing. If you don't have a wife, you'll go back to America to find one, and then you'll quit the company. We can't have that now can we." Me: "Erm, I appreciate the concern, but maybe we can meet at the midd..." Boss: "Yeah yeah, whatever." 3 weeks pass. Scene is a Welcome To The Company party for myself and two other new employees. Boss: "Patrick, I've got someone to introduce you to. This is K-san, who sits two rows over." K-san is a young lady, about my age. Me: "Pleased to meet you, K-san." K-san: "Please to meet you, Patrick." The following is word-for-word translated from Japanese and is not exaggerated in the slightest. Boss: "Patrick graduated from a good school in America, is a bright engineer, and has a solid future with the company. How about an international marriage?" shocked silence K-san: "I have absolutely no interest in that." Now in a just world I'd be able to report that this was a little awkward but we can all laugh about it 5 years later, but a just world would have no Japanese megacorps in it. In the world we actually live in, K-san was given grief by many co-workers. (e.g. "K-san, do you want to come out to lunch, or do you have absolutely no interest in that?") My dimestore psychoanalysis is that a) she shot down the boss in "too brusque of a fashion" compared to socially optimal ways to decline things like "giggles Oh he's far too handsome for me." (or any of the 50,000 ways you could say "Yes" and mean "No") and at least in part because b) some people in my company genuinely believe, to some degree, that K-san should not have said no. If you're interested in gender relations in Japan, many scholarly books have been written on the subject.
    - recuter 14y ago
      Patrick, I have been reading your stuff for some time now and it is indeed interesting and useful and worth a lot of money to loads of people I'm sure. But goddamn man, for the greater good, forget this silly software racket and put out a comic book. Perhaps a live action television show, maybe a movie. Your anecdotes are always my favorite part. :)
      - phreanix 14y ago
        ^what he said. Seriously, I wish you had the time for something like that.
    - alinajaf 14y ago
      > K-san: "I have absolutely no interest in that." If this is the Japanese I think it is, I would have had difficulty not laughing out loud.
      - patio11 14y ago
        「。。。国際結婚はどう？」「まったく興味ありません。」 , but I trust my recollection of her response less than of his, since my brain was still reeling.
        minikomi 14y ago
        Oh man.. That is a cold, cold way to say no. Great story!
    - Joe_Knapp 14y ago
      Its not just Japan. Most of Asia. but I must admit that the best book I ever read explaining this Asian custom of saying yes when you need no, was Japanese. Asia is extremely complex culture compared to America.
- packetslave 14y ago
  I think I can guess the answer to this, but I've often wondered: are the ridiculous amounts of hours worked by salarymen genuinely due to the amount of work to be done, or is it a "face" thing, e.g. "if I'm the first one to leave, I'll look like I'm not committed to the company" which results in longer hours for everyone?
  - mc32 14y ago
    AFAICT, it leans more towards face saving, altho not exactly that. If you leave before the little boss who leaves after the big boss, then your coworkers tend to think you're not dedicated (hrs-in = dedication). However, most people 'working' after 6 are not really working, or at least not productively. Lots of the people who are not IMing or chatting or surfing or whatnot are doing things manually (like running reports) which could have easily been automated --but the boss likes people to 'do work'... efficiency is sometimes seen with suspicion. That's anecdotal and not necessarily representative, but it certainly indicates that not all people are busy till 11. There's also having to go out with the boss and colleagues.

tkahn6 14y ago

Any plans for another podcast?

yex 14y ago
Please do more of these. There is such a shortfall of SaaS podcasts it almost makes me cry. It's like xmas morning when I see a new Kalzumeus podcast appear in my RSS reader!
patio11 14y ago
We do them every time Keith and I have both mutual availability and something interesting to say. Sadly, as of late we've both been very busy. Hopefully mid-January. (If you have a burning urge to hear my voice, I'm a guest on other folks' podcasts more frequently than on my own. http://productpeople.tv/ http://productpeople.tv/ has a recent interview about my business story and Amy Hoy should be publishing a long interview about infoproducts (like our courses), multi-product businesses, and consulting sometime in the next two weeks or so.)
- mijustin 14y ago
  Product People has two episodes with Patio11. Part 1 has his complete back-story: everything from how he learned to program with graph paper to how he built his first product business with $60. http://productpeople.tv/2012/12/19/patio11-part1/ http://productpeople.tv/2012/12/19/patio11-part1/ Part 2 has specific tactics for building your own software business: http://productpeople.tv/2012/12/26/patio11-part2/ http://productpeople.tv/2012/12/26/patio11-part2/ Both episodes have full text transcripts, so you can listen or read.

TallboyOne 14y ago

How did you initially market bingo creator in it's earliest stages? Did you go after SEO, paid marketing, word of mouth, etc?

patio11 14y ago
I tried posting on the ad section of teacher forums (total bust), using AdWords ($1 a day until I figured out how to make it work profitably, which took about a year), and (overwhelmingly the most important channel for me early and still the source of ~50% of sales) long-tail SEO for niche bingo activities. The specific tactic for that is in the Greatest Hits section of my blog and covered at length.
- johnnutcracker 14y ago
  which article exactly?
  - bmelton 14y ago
    A brief look at the greatest hits section of his blog suggests that this might be the article you're looking for: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/24/startup-seo/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/24/startup-seo/

icelancer 14y ago

No questions, just wanted to say thanks for writing your book - I found it amazingly clear with highly-actionable ideas. And this is coming from a guy who doesn't even write software anymore! http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/12/21/i-wrote-a-book-on-conversion-optimization-for-software-companies/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/12/21/i-wrote-a-book-on-conver...

danielharan 14y ago

FYI: s/Marquis/Marquee/

MattRogish 14y ago

Why "patio11"? Always curious about nicks. edit (to avoid comment spam): Thanks for the info!

patio11 14y ago
In first grade, we were given a pointless busywork assignment to test our handwriting skills. I hated writing (I did not have good physical control of the pencil) so I wrote the shortest possible answer to all of the pointless questions. The first question was "What is your favorite number?" I answered "1" My teacher, looking at answers like "1", "red", "a dog", "No.", etc, said "1 can't be your favorite number. Pick a harder number to write." I spitefully picked "11". (Too bad I couldn't write Japanese at the time -- for the same amount of work I could have picked 10.) In middle school, right when I was first getting involved with online services, my best friend was a Puerto Rican. He hated the hard "k" sound in Patrick and called me "pato" for about a day, but laughed at his oh-so-clever joke, so I asked him to change it. I can't stand "Pat." (There was a movie about a gender-ambiguous character named Pat that year. It was middle school and I was a geek, you can do the math.) He then proposed "Patio." We paled around often enough that it stuck with my family. When I needed a disambiguating number for e.g. AOL email addresses or Warcraft 2 handles, I naturally went with my favorite number, 11. I'm patio11 on just about every service that I use which I don't mind associated with my real name.
- japhyr 14y ago
  That reminds me of a first-grade story. One morning I had a flash of brilliance and realized that if I didn't have an eraser, I would never make another mistake in my life. We had those big fat red first-grade pencils, so I spent all day making really dark circles and then erasing them as completely as I could. I was really proud of myself at the end of the day when my eraser was completely gone. I was really confused for a while when I made my next mistake.
  - meric 14y ago
    "Use the word 'people' in a sentence." -> "'people' is a word." "Do you know what does 'WWF'[name of a panda conservation organization] stands for?" -> "No." It really surprised and frustrated me when I got zero marks for perfectly logical and correct answers.

charleshaanel 14y ago

What's your perspective on other customer acquisition channels (via media buys) outside of search (PPC)? I'm curious about your take on mobile, CPI/PPI and display (outside of the google content network).

j45 14y ago

Can you delve more into how you develop and close your first few enterprise sales? Especially in a market that you haven't been in for a long time already. Apologies if this has been answered elsewhere.

theoj 14y ago
I think Patrick largely answered this question in an email he sent to the mailing list back in October (Selling To The Fortune 500, Government, And Other Lovecraftian Horrors). Will forward you the email.
- j45 14y ago
  Awesome, thanks. I think I signed up for the mailing list after that one.
- spoon16 14y ago
  I'd also like that email
- infinite8s 14y ago
  I wonder if Patrick has an archive of old his emails to that list. I definitely signed up after he sent that one.

codewright 14y ago

You started out with product and then started doing consulting after a fairly large amount of time spent on a product. (I've been following your work for awhile, it's been inspiring.) I'm a programmer who has done consulting before with a keen interest in product and marketing. If I want to become self-employed (preferably in the form of working on a bootstrapped product), should I start by bootstrapping a product or by consulting? I believe that consulting would mean becoming self-employed sooner, but my concern is that I'd end up on a "get work, seek work" treadmill harming my ability to work on bootstrapping. Alternately, my concern is that if I focus on bootstrapping a side project while working a full-time job, that will also mean not getting self-employed again for a very long time. Sorry for the rambly comment, do you have any insights or suggestions to offer?

twinturbo 14y ago

Hey Patrick. Loved this post. Do you have any blog posts (or perhaps could write one) on handling consulting in remote locations? I know you're out in the middle of nowhere Japan. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Also what happened to the podcast? Seems to have got into hibernation. Cheers man.

QuantumGood 14y ago

I've noticed your emphasis on doing frequent and appropriate mailings. It's good advice! It works well for us. But what do you recommend for integrating a B2C CRM with email marketing? We do detailed segmentation of our mailing list and I can't find a good B2C CRM that integrates sufficiently with an email mktg platform. I'm currently looking into synching many more fields (needed for segmenting) from Zoho CRM to MailChimp via API with CloudWork/ItDuzzit/Zapier. Their defaults are useless (3-5 main fields), as we need complete contact info in order to segment well.