Episode Transcript
Asia Orangio (00:02.112)
Hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the In Demand podcast. I have my lovely co-host Kim Talarczyk with me. My name is Asia Orangio and we work at DemandMaven where we work with SaaS companies on troubleshooting very slow, frustrating growth, especially if you are in the PLG or product-led growth context. So imagine you are in your SaaS business, you are trying to grow, you have thrown everything against the wall and nothing seems to stick. We are the people to call whenever that.
is incredibly frustrating and costing you millions of error. So thank you so much for listening and joining us today. We are going to dive into a topic that is very near and dear to my heart when it comes to go-to-market strategy and also just thinking about how to enter into a market and then take up space in that market. And it is related to copying competitors and also copying SaaS businesses that you are inspired by.
Kim Talarczyk (00:56.246)
Hmm.
Asia Orangio (00:58.558)
Which, yeah, go ahead.
Kim Talarczyk (01:00.714)
No, I'm excited for you to talk about this because it comes up a lot.
Asia Orangio (01:03.648)
It does. It does. There are a few scenarios that I can think of where we have worked with, we have worked with founders and their teams. And when peeling back the layers of why they've decided to make certain choices, a lot of it was either because, well, their competitors were doing it or because they saw another SaaS company do it. It seemed like a great idea. And they went, you know, full steam ahead on that idea.
We're going to talk about ways that you might decide to copy another company, but also when does it work and when does it not work? And we're actually going to start with why it doesn't work. But first, we're just going to unpack really quickly what are some of the ways that you can copy other SaaS businesses.
Kim Talarczyk (01:54.392)
Yeah, yeah, when does it come up? Because I know we hear people that get inspired by a website and they're like, I want to look like that. Or a competitor and says, well, if they're doing that, maybe we should do that. So yeah, what are kind of the ways that you hear that businesses want to copy?
Asia Orangio (02:16.724)
Yeah, totally. I think the first few are definitely correlated to the website in general. So the way that certain websites are designed, certain components of the website, particular pages, the way that things look and feel. Website design is one of the very first, like easiest places that you can kind of get really inspired by another company. And I would say this is mostly benign. Like this is pretty benign. Like I don't think this is like a bad thing necessarily.
a lot of design to me, it's an art. And of course, like there's a little bit of science too, when you get into like UX and things like that. But for the most part, like this doesn't surprise me or shock me. There's also copying or being inspired by another brand of like, oh, I like the vibes of this brand. And usually when people say or feel that, usually they're reacting to like the visual aesthetic of a particular brand. And sometimes they're actual core values. So for example,
Switch Yards is a startup founded in Atlanta and I am obsessed with their brand. Not just their design, but the things that they invested. It's a co-working space. Their whole thing is sustainable growth and a sustainable co-working space with a subscription-based membership. And it is one of my absolute favorite places to go. And the things that they do and execute,
and invest in are clear representations of their brand values. Now, this is something that is easy to copy in terms of vibes. Like can copy the visual aesthetic of anything because it's rooted in design. But when it comes to core values and actually executing against them, that's a different story. And I think that's much harder to copy. And this is ultimately why brand is notoriously difficult to just kind of lift from someone else. Like you really
Brand is about more than visuals. It's also about core values and embodying those values and not just talking about them, but your actions are louder than words. And so this is why it's so hard to actually copy someone else's brand like truly. But this I would say is also relatively benign. Like certainly you can be inspired by someone else's visuals. And I think like that for the most part is safe as long as you're not like literally copy pasting like their design. But to be inspired by something though I think is very different. And I think this
Kim Talarczyk (04:27.074)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Talarczyk (04:39.831)
Right.
Asia Orangio (04:44.116)
to me is also pretty normal.
Kim Talarczyk (04:47.394)
Yeah, I'd love for you to dig into inspiration versus copying, but maybe we save that.
Asia Orangio (04:53.044)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we can bookmark it. I think inspiration is ultimately saying, I see the light in this and I would like to shine my light in a similar way. And I think copying is saying, I like these colors, these words, these shapes, and I'm gonna use those exact ones for me.
Kim Talarczyk (05:14.061)
Right.
Asia Orangio (05:15.224)
And that's for brand, you can, copying to me also is like, you you see someone execute a LinkedIn outreach strategy and you take the exact copy, the exact strategy, and you do that for yourself. Now, again, I think sometimes that's not a bad thing. Like for the most part, you know, we did that, I think as marketers, especially like we do that left and right. Like we were constantly copying and being inspired by other people's work. Like I think that's kind of part of the game.
But I think sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't. And most of time I feel like it doesn't actually. But there are other ways that you can copy. So I mentioned to copy, but you can copy other people's copywriting and positioning and messaging. You can also be inspired by those things. And I think sometimes this is kind of where the line blurs a little bit because you look at another company and you're like, my gosh, I love the way that they talk about themselves, about how they position themselves, their messaging points. And especially if they're a competitor.
you might feel like you need to do the exact same thing. So this again is where you might blur the line a bit between copying versus being inspired by. You might lift those exact words that they use on their page in the way that they use them. And this traditionally is a big no-no in the marketing world. So copywriters copying other copywriters, for example, and if you don't have a copywriter, then you're the copywriter. But copywriting other people's work is...
Copying other people's work, I should say, is obviously like a big no-no in that way. But I think it's possible to be inspired by the way that someone positions and messages and the way that they use copy to describe those things. And I think that's very different than like, I like how they say this. I'm going to say the exact same thing on my homepage or on my site, whether we're competitors or not or whatever. I think there are, you know, some copywriters feel very strongly about this.
But this is dangerous territory. So it's like you got to be careful about Just lifting other people's words off of a page and putting it on your own you really do because Especially if that person has a particular unique style and it's very identifiable So for example, I don't think Leanna patch would appreciate anybody copying her work Although she knows that people probably do but it's so common that it's like You know, it's like it's like, you know whack-a-mole like how much do you try to bat and combat this type of thing?
Kim Talarczyk (07:17.39)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Talarczyk (07:22.2)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Talarczyk (07:37.41)
Right.
Asia Orangio (07:38.443)
But again, I think there's a difference between copying this directly and then being inspired by something. And being inspired by something might be something like, I really like how intercom positions in the space. I want us to position similarly in this space, but not the exact same way. But how can we kind of stake our claim uniquely in our market? And that to me is more inspiration than just like, I'm gonna copy what they did. There's simple stuff too, like channel strategies, campaign strategies.
Kim Talarczyk (07:59.331)
Yeah.
Asia Orangio (08:08.232)
I think this is common left and right. You see someone run a campaign and you're like, oh my gosh, that's so smart. I want to do something exactly similar. So for example, you might discover that a competitor, the way that they got prospects to talk to them was sending pineapples to their house or their studio or whatever. And then you immediately call them up after they get the pineapple. And this would be called a direct mail campaign or an ABM campaign. And you're like, oh my gosh, that is so cool. I wanted the exact same thing. So then you go to the store and you're like, I'm going to go order pineapples.
and I'm gonna deliver them to people's front doors and I'm gonna call them like right when they get them. And we laugh, that sounds ridiculous, but like that's like the exact type of campaign copying that happens. And that to me is also pretty benign. Like I don't see anything wrong with that necessarily. I think that's how so many campaigns get created and people iterate off of them obviously. What makes this funny is it's not necessarily always gonna work like that for you. So we're gonna, and we're gonna talk about why it doesn't work, but.
Kim Talarczyk (09:05.248)
Right.
Asia Orangio (09:06.08)
But a lot of campaign and channel strategies, I mean, it gets copied left and right. don't think that that's, again, I think this is relatively benign. These channels and also campaign ideas are, is ubiquitous the right word? It's superfluous. Nobody hurts because you've copied a campaign. So I don't necessarily think that that's.
Kim Talarczyk (09:28.087)
Right.
Asia Orangio (09:32.413)
anything to worry necessarily about. But I do think people might hurt if you copy brand or if you copy even positioning. in that, it might actually be you who gets hurt and not the other company. But sometimes it's the other way around. And then I guess I will take a step back though because potentially the people who it could hurt would be the people who design or execute certain campaigns. And copying that perfectly
might hurt those designers or creators or what have you. So maybe when it comes to asset creation, copying those things literally might rob an artist of something, especially if you're not giving them credit. But that's, again, other territory. But I think the general idea of seeing a campaign get executed and executing it similarly is, to me, not necessarily, it's relatively benign. I don't see that as malicious in any kind of way. Big strategic bets. So this is where it gets,
Kim Talarczyk (10:13.56)
Right.
Kim Talarczyk (10:26.51)
Right.
Asia Orangio (10:31.338)
hairy because I think this is actually much more common than we realize. So everything that we mentioned, for the most part, apart from positioning, messaging, copy, even copying exactly to the T, someone else's brand, most of these are benign for the most part. I don't think that there's, it's extremely common, superfluous, it's just so not worth the energy of, you copied me.
But when it comes to big strategic bets, I think that that's still probably true. But this is where I think it's actually more harmful for the companies that do the copying than it is for the companies that are being copied. And when I say big strategic bets, I mean things like you see another company go ham on community, or you see another company go ham on AI, or you see another company go ham on, we're gonna,
Kim Talarczyk (11:11.565)
Mm.
Asia Orangio (11:27.252)
build and scale a sales team and that's gonna be how we're gonna grow. And we call these like big strategic bets. Where it's not as simple as like a campaign or a tactic. It's like, is a big strategic initiative that we are going to invest in. And we're only doing it though because we saw someone else do it.
This is where I would say it is extremely dangerous and it's not gonna harm the other company. It's gonna harm you probably because it's not contextual or truly strategic. We're calling it a strategic bet, but is it actually strategic? Probably not. And this is where I wanted to get into why this doesn't work.
Kim Talarczyk (12:09.14)
Yeah, yeah. So it sounds like, mean, context really being the key issue. So yeah, why doesn't it? I mean, it's not a bad idea if your competitor is doing something big and maybe they're a bigger company than you, that you might want to make the same strategic bet. It kind of makes sense.
Asia Orangio (12:15.551)
Yes.
Asia Orangio (12:27.893)
Yeah.
Asia Orangio (12:31.914)
Totally. So you nailed it. Context is key in these scenarios. And context is ultimately what determines if a strategic initiative or a bet or copying something out of that list that we mentioned, and there are other things, certainly features, which we didn't mention, but context is ultimately going to be the thing that determines the success of that strategy, or does it make sense to actually copy this thing?
Kim Talarczyk (12:49.486)
Mm. Yeah.
Asia Orangio (13:02.312)
When I say context, because context is a big word, but what I mean when I say context is it is all of the things that makes your unique situation true. So when you think about who you're targeting in your market, when you think about your market, when you think about your software category, when you think about how your team is structured, when you think about your stage of growth, how much capital you have access to, what your budget is.
even down to who you are as a person and what your strengths and weaknesses are and what the strengths and weaknesses are of your team. All of these are highly contextual. It's unique and relatively individual to you and your context. But the thing is, and this is what people forget, is if your context is unique, that means that everyone else's context is also unique. Are there patterns? Yes. But the reality is that if things were truly...
homogenous, meaning everyone looked the same, then we wouldn't really have room for competitors. And I think that's what people forget. So for example, like if you're if you have the exact same context as someone else,
then you probably are truly direct competitors who are, you're basically fighting for the same revenue. But I think what's truer is that actually everyone's kind of fighting for their piece of the pie and it is always fluctuating. And it's not necessarily perfectly true competitors, even if two companies look very, very, very similar. So you think about like,
Kim Talarczyk (14:30.552)
Mm-hmm.
Asia Orangio (14:41.728)
Kroger versus Publix versus Walmart, for example. They're all technically grocery stores, but they all target different parts of the market. And while someone may shop at all of them, there are some who are more loyal to one versus the other. And I think, are you truly competitors? So maybe a more accurate comparison would be like Walmart versus Target. Technically both grocery stores, technically both offering very similar types of products.
Kim Talarczyk (14:56.876)
Mm-hmm.
Asia Orangio (15:11.968)
but targeting very different parts of the market despite them being like direct competitors. So I give that example because you might look at a competitor or another company that you're inspired by and you might think, they're making these money moves. We should do the same. But if you don't have the same exact context as that person or company, then it might not pan out for you in the same way. And typically it doesn't is what we find. Unless
you have the same or similar market contexts. And again, when it works, it's usually because you have a very, very, similar context while also being very clear about your differentiators versus others, while also being very focused on your buyer and not your competitor's buyer, which might be a different buyer than your buyer. But even then, it's still relatively risky because if everyone is zigging,
you might actually be better off zagging than continuing to zig with everyone else. Now, again, market forces are still like markets are going to market at the end of the day. And there may be scenarios where if everyone's adding AI features and they're getting all the money, then it's very, you might very well make a case for, well, we probably should follow the flock on this one. You might need to go with the flow. But what I find is
This isn't globally true all the time for every decision you come across, especially when it comes to these like bigger strategic bets where it's not just, you know, like a quick campaign that's, you know, it's not like a, this is not a make or break decision. This is a drop in a bucket. Like it's not that big of a deal when you think about it. But when it comes to these like larger decisions, we have to think about what is our context and what is the context of the company that we're inspired by.
or the competitor, whichever one. And if enough is not overlapping, it might not make sense for us to think about it that way. And there's actually a better way to think about it, but we'll get to that. I'll pause here though.
Kim Talarczyk (17:16.938)
Yeah. So what I'm hearing is like, you still have to say, stay true to yourself.
Asia Orangio (17:23.84)
that and you still also have to consider what might be their truth. They could stay true to yourself, but also what is their truth and why does it work in their context? And what version of that thing could work in mine? I'm going to give you a few examples because I know like we're talking in the abstract a little bit. I remember there was a time when everyone was obsessed with intercom, like everyone, like
Kim Talarczyk (17:30.562)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Talarczyk (17:38.593)
Right.
Asia Orangio (17:54.113)
It seems like every CEO, every head of marketing, every CMO I talked to, I have a beam of light right here on my face. It's pretty sunny. Maybe I can, I'm move out of the way real quick. Sorry, Ryan. Okay, this is a little better. Actually, I think I'm gonna move the camera over.
Kim Talarczyk (18:02.195)
Yeah
Kim Talarczyk (18:10.403)
You
Asia Orangio (18:21.263)
Okay, nope, other way. Here we go. There we go, okay, cool. I'm out of that beam of light. Sorry, that was really random. Okay, there was a time when everyone was obsessed with Intercom, like literally everybody. Like every CEO I talked to, every CMO I talked to, every VP I talked to, they were all obsessed with Intercom and they loved Intercom's brand. They liked how, at the time, Intercom, I don't know if they still do this, they used to do like beautiful content marketing. It was very like editorial and...
It felt like Intercom was like a journalism, like media company almost, even though they were like, I hate to put them in the chat box, you know, they're like the chat bot help, you know, support kind of tooling. but they were like, no, we are bigger than that. And that was like their whole brand, like vision. And they started making investments like a community and big content marketing investment, huge at the time. I actually don't know if they still are this way.
Kim Talarczyk (18:54.158)
you
Asia Orangio (19:18.976)
and also they had a very unique approach and a lot of this was based on jobs to be done, but they had a unique approach to how they thought about the product. And I also remember people really loved the website at the time. It's not this way. I don't think as much anymore, but at the time they had this like, like if you want intercom, there are three main parts to our product. And if you, if you buy one part of the product, you might not buy the others. That's okay. But it was basically something to the effect of like,
You can do support, you can do like more like email marketing automation, or you can do something else. I think it was more like chat type sales type stuff. I can't remember exactly what, you know, what the options were, but the way that they had their product kind of divvied up. So everyone was really inspired by that and they were like, Ooh, we should do the same. Like we should, we should like.
make our website kind of like this and we should maybe divvy up our product like this and maybe we can, maybe we should like really invest in community. Maybe we should do like content marketing, like they're how they're doing it. Cause they're, they really like double down on this, like journalistic style of content marketing and almost like it was like a media company and it, and it was very, he very big investment in brand, gorgeous visuals. Like I felt like people were sharing articles left and right back when we shared articles.
And it just was this like, it wasn't anything like anyone had ever seen before. It was new. Granted, there were companies that had done that type of thing before. We just don't really remember in the same way. We have a very short-term memory in tech. So anyway, I remember everyone was really inspired by Intercom. So every client that we worked with at the time was like, we wanna be like Intercom. And, and,
Kim Talarczyk (21:05.442)
Yeah
Asia Orangio (21:09.076)
Mind you, was after Intercom's, like just bonkers growth. Intercom is like printing dollars at this point. They are making bank. I do think that they hit a ceiling to some degree. And I think, if I recall correctly, one of the founders left for a while and then came back. And because people started to complain about pricing, which understandable, because I remember their pricing was ridiculous.
But all that to say, they've certainly had their rocky moments, but at the time, everyone was obsessed with Intercom. We all wanna be like Intercom. And the thing about Intercom is, Intercom has a very specific context. they are a, are they a bootstrap darling? I feel like they might be bootstrapped, but if they're not, they're definitely well-funded. And I don't think that's a question. On top of that, they have an exorbitant amount of users, huge. And think part of why everyone loved them is also because they had a,
Kim Talarczyk (21:59.436)
Yeah.
Asia Orangio (22:08.362)
choke hold, I feel like on the SaaS market specifically. So Intercom being a SaaS company, selling to other SaaS companies, I feel like anytime that happens, you already have this very specific brand experience. Notion is another example. Airtable, I would say, is another example. If you are a SaaS company that sells to SaaS companies, you already are a certain type of brand that people see you as.
I don't know how to explain it, but it just is the way that it is. And so I feel like when you are that kind of company, you have to be shinier than like all the other companies that aren't selling to SaaS companies, I feel like.
Kim Talarczyk (22:35.523)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Talarczyk (22:43.758)
Right. And they were focusing on brand in a way that other their competitors weren't at the time.
Asia Orangio (22:49.086)
Not at all. I don't even know if I could list, Drift maybe. Although Drift I feel like kind of pivoted away a little bit, rightfully so. Drift I think was the most I think well-known ones. But the thing about Intercom is that I don't think there are any real true direct competitors. There are plenty of like adjacent competitors. So for example, you could argue that like user list and customer.io like compete with Intercom technically. Even though they have
Kim Talarczyk (23:16.887)
Mm-hmm.
Asia Orangio (23:19.86)
dramatically different products and experiences. They have overlap, but it's not like a true one-to-one comparison. So if you're user list or if you're customer.io or if you're Drift, you don't probably look at intercom and say, we're gonna copy everything they're doing because their product is different, which means that their buyers are different, which means that the way that they show up in the world is gonna be different.
Kim Talarczyk (23:26.19)
Yeah.
Asia Orangio (23:49.963)
And that also might mean that you might not be able to show up in the world the exact same way. You can be inspired by certain things, but I think to copy directly wouldn't necessarily make sense. Now it's been a long time since I've looked at intercom competitors. There probably are some out there that are like, maybe they are like one-to-one competitors, but we just don't know about them yet because they don't have the market share like intercom does. But what's interesting about this is again, context is king. So if
Kim Talarczyk (23:54.616)
Mm-hmm.
Asia Orangio (24:19.764)
to be inspired by Intercom is to really say, like how they show up in the world. How can we show up in the world in a way that gets people talking about us, that makes them really love our brand? And it might not be taking the same exact actions that they've done. It might be looking at, again, how are they showing up in their world for their context? And how can we translate that to what we can do?
necessarily say, Intercom rebranded, invested in content marketing, big and heavy, and they started a community. We should do the exact same thing because again, your context might not allow for that. Your context might not support those strategic decisions and also might not actually get you where you want to go. I cannot tell you how many times I have seen companies invest in things way too early because they saw competitors or other companies do it.
that were completely out of their context and then regret it later because it's actually very expensive to do it that way and when it doesn't pay off the way that they think it will. And again, this is one of the just hallmarks of not so strategic, strategic decision-making where it's like, that was a decision you made, was it strategic? Questionable. But that's the type of thinking and questioning that we have to do when...
we're feeling the need to copy something directly is ask yourself, what are you actually inspired by? And does that actually make sense for you? And if you're inspired by it, cool, how can you translate it to what you feel like you should do instead? Or your version of that that makes it powerful. I'll pause here. I do have another example, but I will pause for a second.
Kim Talarczyk (26:03.586)
Yeah. I'm curious if you have advice about, like, I'm just imagining, like, an inspiration board, you know? What's the best way as founders to, like, remind themselves what they're inspired by and, like, be able to look back at it and know not to copy it, but to do exactly what you said, translate it into whatever they might be doing with their own company?
Asia Orangio (26:32.18)
I want to make sure I understand the question. I feel like, sorry, say the first part again. I caught the last part.
Kim Talarczyk (26:37.996)
Okay, how, what is the best? Cause I see this, that you do it. Like you always have, I love this type of brand. I like like the copy of this, you know, company I love. Like you, you like curate for yourself. Like, so anytime someone asks, like you're like, yeah, I really love how this SaaS company like lays out their pricing or whatever. So if you're a founder, how do you...
Asia Orangio (26:52.586)
Mm, mm, mm.
Kim Talarczyk (27:05.882)
How do you have your own inspiration board that you can or I'm saying inspiration board, like I'm imagining like creating one. What would founders do to make sure that they are like seeking their inspiration and somehow keeping track of it and so that they can look back at it when they need it.
Asia Orangio (27:08.956)
Mm-mm.
Asia Orangio (27:27.776)
Got it, got it, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a great question. I think, you know, people talk about like swipe files or keeping a folder of things or a spreadsheet of things or a doc of things where as you come across stuff, you are documenting like, what is it about this that I like? Or, and what is it that I like? What is it about this that I like? And taking it a step further, doing two extra things, which is what's our version of this?
If we don't outright copy it, because you probably can't outright copy it, depending on what it is. You know, all the stuff that we mentioned that was benign earlier, like, sure, copy the channel, assuming it makes sense for you. Copy the campaign if it makes sense for you. But when we get to things like strategic bets, making sure that you are really clear about what is it about this that you like, what is it about their context that makes it work? And I think that's that's the step that a lot of people are missing is they're not looking at they're not looking at the business and saying like, what is it about their context?
Kim Talarczyk (28:20.61)
Yeah.
Asia Orangio (28:27.604)
that makes this work for them? Is it their funding? Is it the fact that they are attracting a type of buyer that makes this thing go like wildfire? I think that's a lot of what people underestimate too. So for example, I was working with a founder once and they were really inspired by the way that Notion, so if everyone's familiar with Notion, but they were inspired by the way that Notion did like brand ambassadors and community.
so the founder wanted to copy it, like one for one. Like we should do the exact same brand ambassador program. We should do the exact same community and have like a forum and invite our customers to it and it'll be great. And I really pushed back on this because I was like, listen, like I've talked to your customers. They are very different than product managers, which is who Notion really loves. Notion loves a product manager or a head of product or a designer.
Kim Talarczyk (29:25.505)
Mm-hmm.
Asia Orangio (29:27.976)
And so the way that they create community, product managers love to commune, especially online. Like product managers love communing online and they love finding other thought leaders in this space who they can look up to, people like Lenny Ratchetski. And that is part of their own culture. So the culture of product management naturally lends its way to...
an online community and also brand and bachelor ship where product managers also love to share products that they're using, tools that they're using to do their work even better, faster, stronger, et cetera. When I think about those truths and that context, that is not the context that this founder was in. Like these customers, his customers are not that way. They are, they really only get online when they absolutely have to. And they really only share brands when
Kim Talarczyk (30:18.766)
Mm-hmm.
Asia Orangio (30:23.338)
They really, really, really feel like they should, but for the most part, they're not sharing software brands. These people are not digital natives. They don't like being online really. They have to. They'd rather be doing their work, but they have to be online using your software. It's not like, I can't wait to use the product. It's a, have to use this product versus product managers who are the opposite. They can't wait to use products. They love products. Like that's what they love doing.
Kim Talarczyk (30:50.678)
Right, that's what they do.
Asia Orangio (30:52.788)
So, and mind you, this is a completely different industry. This is not even a tech industry. is, product managers traditionally are in tech slash, sometimes you get physical product managers, like e-commerce world, retail world. This is not that, total opposite. So that strategy doesn't make sense for his company. And when we talked about it when we broke it down, that's when he understood, he was like, I get what you're saying.
Yeah, that's probably fair. And then and then I said instead, what's the version of that that you're inspired by? And at the end of the day, it was I want people talking about our product in the same way. I was like, OK, an online brand ambassador program slash community might not be the way that you do that. It might be more let's focus on how we build word of mouth and how we create word of mouth programs that are actually more akin to your buyer and not just directly copy paste what notion did.
that's not going to work for you. just not. That's not who your buyer is.
Kim Talarczyk (31:54.563)
Yep. Right. Yeah. This buyer maybe needs more face-to-face time there or whatever it is if they're not online. Yeah. So that makes a lot of sense. So the key there being collect your inspiration, but then really take the next step of thinking about what am I actually inspired by? And then how could that translate to my business and my buyers?
Asia Orangio (32:05.32)
Exactly. Exactly.
Asia Orangio (32:22.696)
Exactly, and I think the thing to remember, if there's nothing you get from today, what I want you to walk away with is when you look at other companies, especially ones that are big and that are successful, what you have to understand and absorb is that the way that they got where they are today are largely because of strategic choices. And strategic, all it means is,
how are they going to win within their context? And those are the choices that they're making for themselves at any given time. And they might not always make truly strategic choices. People make mistakes, companies make mistakes all the time. But what you have to remember is that is ultimately what you're seeing. And what you're seeing is also the culmination of hundreds of strategic choices made over probably years and a lot of money. So when you look at these big companies,
and you're inspired by them, just remember that five years ago, 10 years ago, however many years ago, when they were in your shoes, they were making different choices than the choices they're making now. that's exactly, because they were teeny tiny, exactly. So their stage of growth, their market context, the capital they have access to, all of those are...
Kim Talarczyk (33:30.082)
when you weren't noticing them because they were teeny tiny.
Asia Orangio (33:43.989)
contributing factors to what you're experiencing. And you just have to make sure that you're really, really, really hyper vigilant about not just assuming that what they're executing now is going to work for you in your stage. So all that to say, don't look at the billion dollar unicorn companies and be like, they're doing that. We should do that because they probably have completely different contexts than you. But I do think inspiration is different. And I think inspiration is about
translating what you're seeing into your version for your stage of growth for where you're at today. I think the same thing happens too. to give you one last example, this is more of like a regular real life example outside of business, but it's kind of looking at marathon runners and being like, I want to run a marathon tomorrow. But not maybe fully understanding or realizing that, okay, if you want to run a marathon, you're going to have to train. It's going to take some time. If you have
more work to do if you've never run a day in your life, it might take you a year. But where you're starting today is not like where they're at now, if that makes any sense. Like there's a gap there.
Kim Talarczyk (34:52.611)
Right.
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. You can still be inspired and run the marathon, but you can't do it tomorrow.
Asia Orangio (35:02.666)
And I think the other thing too is copying their exact training is also not going to work for you either. You've got to translate your, like, what is your version of marathon training that's going to get you off of your couch running every other day or whatever it is building up to tens and dozens of miles a week that doesn't look like theirs. Cause they've, they've been marathon running for like decades or something. And like, they could probably like wake up the next morning and still bust out 20 miles. You know I'm saying? So like,
Kim Talarczyk (35:29.272)
Right. And there's a difference between doing a marathon just to finish it or doing a marathon and trying to qualify for a bigger marathon. Your training is going to look different.
Asia Orangio (35:36.242)
Exactly.
Right, right, exactly. So that's the way that I like to explain this to folks. And instead, again, we push to translate this into what's your version for where you're at today. And instead of maybe copying directly, again, there are some things that you might be able to copy. Like you might be able to copy a campaign or a channel or website design, fine. But some of these like bigger decisions, that's where copying is dangerous and we need to actually get contextual and understand.
What is it that makes this work for them and how do we get strategic about what we want to do instead?
Kim Talarczyk (36:14.924)
Right. Yeah, it's good advice. Yeah. Yeah, thanks, Asia. This is great.
Asia Orangio (36:19.284)
I try. We try. All right, cool. Thank you so much for joining me. This was so fun. Absolutely. All right, cool.
