[S1E5] Diane Wiredu, Lion Words: Not everyone gets to be the Liquid Death of B2B SaaS — and that’s OK.

How messaging, positioning and brand voice all fit together. (Not everyone gets to be the Liquid Death of B2B SaaS — and that’s OK.)

Find out more about Diane over at https://www.lionwords.com/

[EPISODE INTRO]

There can be no converting copy without messaging, and there’s no messaging without figuring out your positioning first. But how do they all work together – and how do storytelling and brand voice fit in? 

In this episode, we’re going to dig into those questions – stay tuned to hear more. Plus: tips on what you need to have in place before even considering turning your brand voice up to eleven and how industry changes make some of the messaging frameworks obsolete (or at least not as universally applicable as we might want to believe).

[START OF THE INTERVIEW]

Diane Wiredu  

I'm Diane Wiredu, I run a messaging consultancy for growth stage B2B SaaS tech companies called Lion Words. And I help them basically create messaging that resonates with their potential buyers. So they can get better results from their marketing efforts by website and product messaging.

Ekaterina (Sam) Howard  

So I'm sure that one of the most frequently asked questions for you is "What is messaging?" Let us flip that to what messaging is not.

Diane Wiredu  

What is messaging ... comes up a lot, actually. 

And I think, to be honest, it's probably always worth covering. Because I think there's a little bit of a, it's like a renaissance, I just feel like everyone is obsessed with messaging, but we're all talking about different things, there's not, you know, it's, I don't know, some people mixing up copy of messaging, which I differentiate, I do not sort of consider them the same thing. 

To put it really simply, I think of messaging as what you say about your product or your solution, and then copy as kind of how you say that messaging to just be as simple as possible. 

But beyond that, I think about messaging as identifying the most important things about your company, your product, your service, and then why that matters to your audience. 

So the messaging is going to be informed by, of course, your unique positioning in the market, where you will stand in terms of your company mission, your story, your goals, and everything. And then of course, the value that you provide for customers. 

But it's really like, what the heck do we say? 

And then when we get super clear on that, how do we transform that into copy? 

[TRANSITION]

But what about positioning – and how does it work together with messaging and, eventually, copy?

Those terms are not interchangeable, but the distinctions are not as straightforward as you might think.

Diane Wiredu

They are this kind of layer, right? 

You know, you have positioning as the foundation of the house, the company, and then your messaging sits on top of that, and your copy sits on top of that. 

And there's definitely these gray areas, between the two, I find, you know, the work that I come and do with clients, you have to have a clear enough or solid enough grasp on your positioning in the market for us to even work on your messaging. 

Sometimes I even consider my job to really be translating that positioning into something that the marketing and sales team can actually work with. 

I feel like some of the components of positioning feed into everything else, but it doesn't actually give you the messages and the words that you can go out and put on a website, for example.

Ekaterina (Sam) Howard  

Okay, so what does good enough mean?

Diane Wiredu  

I think with messaging and positioning, it's a constant flywheel. 

It’s never done. 

But you have to step away from this kind of analysis paralysis, and just kind of put a stake in the ground on something and move forward. 

I remember some of the early conversations I'd have with founders, I'd be like, cool. So what's your positioning? Either they didn't answer it at all, they had no idea how to answer it. Or they would say something, just basically we target, you know, SMBs or employees. And then I'd be like “Cool,” and then walk away with it. 

Now, one of my favorite frameworks for positioning is [that of] April Dunford. And I use that a lot in clarifying if my clients do have a handle on positioning. And I love the breakdown of these elements, because it feels a lot more practical than just having this fluffy statement of who your market is and what you do for them. 

It's a little bit robust. You know, maybe sometimes it's too robust for earliest stage companies. But I like that framework. And I'm not going to call out all five components because I might get them wrong, but some, you know, a couple of those are the market that you went in, or who were the competitive alternatives.

And so I like to look at that with companies: do we have a handle on all of these things? Can we talk about them clearly enough? 

If we can, and they feel right, they don't feel just like complete guesses and they're aligned with the company and the business strategy and it makes sense, that then it is good enough. Because again, you don't know if it's right, because you have to run with it. And you have to test and you have to get feedback from the market.

Ekaterina (Sam) Howard  

Okay, so let's go back to the “robust” [framework] point. So it sounds like for early stage, that makes sense – just scale it down, out of the five elements keep the ones that make the most sense, probably.

Diane Wiredu  

If this full scale positioning framework that April Dunford teaches feels like too much. Yeah, potentially take some.

One of the exercises, when companies are really early, or we're really struggling with this, one of the exercises that I do like to do, is this concept of finding your “only-ness,” or like what can you be the only of.

And I guess it does take some of these categories, which is the category that you're going to win in? 

What shelf in the supermarket, we're going to kind of pull you from? 

Which group of people are you serving, that have a very specific set of needs, again, which, of course, links to the value that you deliver.

But instead of building out this big framework, what we're actually trying to do is just simplify and reduce [it] into kind of a short sentence. 

And the reason I like that kind of  “only-nes,” exercise, I think it's because it bridges the fluffy, fill-in-the-blanks positioning statement, and the very robust framework that you're not sure what to do with. 

Because I do think that sometimes, even though this, like fill-in-the-blanks statement is actually kind of useless, the exercise of simplifying what the heck you do, who for and in which market, into something just small and concise is very helpful when you're at the foundations of a company. 

So I think if we're talking really early, if we're talking the opposite of robust and keeping things lean, I think that's an option. 

But it's not enough for bigger companies, companies that are looking to scale, grow, refine their messaging. 

For me, that's just kind of one tool in my toolbox.

Ekaterina (Sam) Howard  

Okay, so tell me a bit more about the growth stage folks – when they come to you, presumably, they have some kind of messaging in place?

Diane Wiredu  

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So most companies, you know, I work predominantly with B2B tech, and SaaS, but also wider B2B digital service providers,sometimes agencies and things like that as well. 

And I use the term and the label growth stage very loosely, very loosely. 

And it's mostly just to say that I don't work with super early stage companies, because I think growth looks wildly different. 

And I've worked at the company, we took them from, you know, took them to that first million, 1 million ARR revenue, and I've worked with companies that are beyond five and growth stage can can still be considered 10 million, right? 

It just depends on how you look at it. 

So it's a very loose term. But what I mean is that you have some sense of product market fit, you've got paying customers, you've got traction in the market. You have talked about your product in a certain way that has got you to this stage. 

But there is some type of realization that there are different triggers, some realization that “Oh, crap, this isn't quite right now, and it's not going to take us to this next stage of growth that we that we want to.” And it could be, there's a shift in positioning or a shift in the market, there could be a new product launch that's coming out, it could be changes of competitive alternatives, so now volume value propositions aren't really, really aligned with the market.

For example, across AI, there's a lot of that happening, which is like, “Oh, no, how do we update our messaging because everyone is talking about this thing?”

And maybe what was unique to us before isn't unique now. 

Or, I worked with a really great company last year, and they woke up after a couple of years and realized: “All of our customers love us. But then when prospects are landing here, like we're not explaining our value in a way that is actually true to what our product delivers.”

So yeah, growth stage is super loose, I actually kind of hate it. But sometimes we have to use messaging that resonates with our clients, even if we don't like it ourself. 

Ekaterina (Sam) Howard  

So do you approach messaging projects differently based on what the problem is: message-market fit versus “Wow, the market has changed. Now we need to update that.”

Diane Wiredu  

I have sort of devised and put together a process, a framework, a way of working with companies on their messaging over the years after working with so many companies on their copy, and seeing that there was this kind of missing phase of really understanding what the heck we’re saying before we work on an asset. 

And I think that that process can be applied to most companies that have different problems.

Because we still need to look at all of those different elements, the same thing with positioning yourself, wherever you're coming from, or whatever basis you have, you still need to have all of those elements and those blocks in place.

So we might need to focus a bit more on one area than another, we might really need to figure out and spend a lot of our time looking at that. 

How do we articulate the value propositions? 

And how do we bring to the forefront your differentiation?

Or it could be that we need to really figure out your story or bring to the forefront some of the culture and values of the company that's been lost along the way.

But I still kind of like to work through in a systematic way.

Ekaterina (Sam) Howard  

So let's go back to the storytelling part. For B2B SaaS, culture / value / story, I mean, does it matter?

Diane Wiredu  

Yeah, story sounds fluffy, doesn't it?

It sounds like, yeah, no, we don't want a bedtime story. We just want to know outcomes, you know, just ROI.

Surprisingly, story, or, again, whatever you want to call it as well, because I have also had a whole journey with how I talk about this stuff, whether we say story, whether we say category story, strategic narrative, we're all talking about similar things, but that kind of thread that drives your company, the mission, why everyone shows up, the change you're trying to make, is really important. 

And it's important not because it's going to be the thing that you have to slap on your homepage hero, that's not why we need to work on it. 

But we need to work on it in the same way that we need to figure out your positioning, because it's the foundation, it's the foundation of everything else. 

And for some companies, it will show up a lot more than others. 

And as the story and how they show up within that category and their point of view will actually drive a lot of the marketing efforts and differentiation. 

And for other companies, it's a little bit less interesting, but we just need to figure it out so that we have this, this like foundation to build on.

It's where I always start every project with a client, with a company.

And it's one of the reasons why I always have to work with a CEO or a founder. If a company comes to me and they say, “Okay, I'm the Marketing. I'm the CMO, like I'll get, you know, sign off founders got signed off on this project, but they don't want to be involved,”I won't do the project because the founding story is so important to how a company shows up, why they're solving the problem that they're solving in the first place, how they're doing it, the growth goals, which also affects how we talk about the value that you're creating in the category as well.

So yeah, personally, I think that story is really, really important, you know, for B2B and SaaS and tech, and probably more important the more saturated the market gets, and the more that everyone is saying the same stuff, everyone is offering the same products and the margin for differentiation gets smaller and smaller. The margin for your product being objectively, way better than another's gets smaller and smaller and so yeah, having a strong story or a point of view, whatever you want to call it, or whichever angle you want to take on it, is becoming crucial.

Ekaterina (Sam) Howard  

So does it mean that we all have to be striving to be a Liquid Death of our category?

Diane Wiredu  

Oh, god, it's like, do we have to be Liquid Death? Or in the UK, do we have to be the Innocent Smoothies or the Oatly? Do we have to be really extreme, out there?

Ekaterina (Sam) Howard  

Does B2B *really* need to learn from B2C?

Diane Wiredu  

Yeah, yeah. Of course not. 

Ekaterina (Sam) Howard  

But if I really want to be the Liquid Death of my product category?

Diane Wiredu  

Then go for it! I'm trying to think now, actually, I probably shouldn't do this, I'm trying to think like, who could we call the liquid death of the B2B? Who is the Liquid Death of tech?

I'm trying to think who that is. I think I know who it is. 

I think the Liquid Death of B2B is lemon.io. 

I think they are the Liquid Death of B2B in the sense that they are, so if anyone doesn't know them, I don't I'm actually getting probably butchered their value prop. I don't even know what they do anymore, but I've looked, I've used them as an example so many times.

I think they're not a dev shop. But they outsource, like, outsource development. Maybe you can help me with this

Ekaterina (Sam) Howard  

I'm on their website right now. That is… a very creepy eyeball. First of all, I feel like I'm on Sauron’s website…

I think [their value prop is] “DELIVERING MIRACULOUS DEVS TO YOUR STARTUP.”

Diane Wiredu  

Yeah, so they are a B2B software development agency, right? So we're not in tech. Right now we're in B2B services. 

But what they are is an extreme example of how you can use story essentially, but not just story because they've taken story one layer further with messaging, tone of voice, visual identities, so if we've got a dial, they have turned the dial all the way up on every single element of your brand, from brand messaging, visual identity, to stand out from competitors in an extremely saturated market.

So I guess we can draw parallels between water – literally water is all the same, unless you're one of those people who actually think all water tastes different, but I don't. And Liquid Death is like cool, we're gonna put it into a can, there's a story behind it, changing the planet, having people buy it in a can, how you can show up differently.

But yeah, lemon.io are uncopyable. They've pushed everything so extreme that you can't, you're clearly just replicating what they do. And they're not offering anything wildly different. But they have used their story, the storytelling, tone of voice, the bringing the values to the forefront, bringing all of that to differentiate. So again, super extreme, but I know, we've covered a huge tangent now, because I'm almost contradicting myself now. 

Because you're like, do we have to be the Liquid Death?

No, you don't.

But if you do, and you do it really well, then look what can happen because lemon.io are actually killing it.

Ekaterina (Sam) Howard  

That kind of brings us back to the competitive industries versus a couple of competitors [industries]. So, do you think that this is a viable way to differentiate if you are in an industry that is beyond competitive, all the way to you are on your way to become a productized service?

Diane Wiredu  

And when you say this, is this a viable way to differentiate, you mean, the example of lemon.io in terms of like your tone of voice?

Ekaterina (Sam) Howard  

Yes.

Diane Wiredu  

I don't think it's, it can't ever be the only way. It's an extra layer on top. 

And so when I use these examples, when I, you know, call them out  and I'm like, “Look what they're doing, this is great,” I'm taking for granted, it's table stakes that this is a valuable product that solves a problem for a group of people that actually have a burning pain or a need that needs solving that they can do it. 

That's pure table stakes, now we're kind of going into product market fit, which is why you need to have clear enough or some sense of product market fit to last and be successful in the market.

So yes, if you've got traction, if you've got paying customers and people who want what you want, there is some element of unique value that you deliver – and that doesn't mean we have this one unique feature – it's the combination of all these things that we do that we serve the market in a unique way, then yes, then this can be, you know, layering on, and really going deep and hard on one particular aspect of your of your brand identity. 

Pushing your voice into another realm can be a way to differentiate, but again, you have to be solving a problem. 

And it has to align. And I think that that's the challenge. So lemon.io, I think they're an anomaly and that's why you were laughing when you talked about Liquid Death. And then I mentioned Oatly and Innocent because there are these anomalies, we can't really aspire to.

Every SaaS company wanting to sound like Apple, and it's like, “Oh, god, okay, but you know, they're not, they're not the benchmark because of everything else that they've done. So let's look at what you can do.”

But it's still relevant.  I'm trying to think… There's another really great example now that we're kind of on this extreme messaging branding example. 

I can't remember [if it’s a] banking app or their budgeting app. I think they are a budgeting app called Cleo.

And their messaging and website…

Ekaterina (Sam) Howard  

The roast chat?

Diane Wiredu  

Yes. I love them. I absolutely love them!

This budgeting app, and I think that they're targeting  Millennials, right? More or less like my Well, my age, right? I don't know if it's maybe Gen Z… But they have as a part of the budgeting app, something that's like, “Okay, roast me,” yand they'll they'll use your data and be like, “Oh, well, how many times have you gone to McDonald's?” and just literally trash talk you to get you to use the product to budget better.

But it works. 

And again, that's an extreme level, but it works because it aligns with their value proposition with who they're targeting, with what their needs are. So it has to, it has to align. And it has to work. And it has to enable, I guess, it has to enable your messaging and your growth and your as a company and not cause friction, right? It has to not pull you back., it has to propel you forward and help everything else, rather than make it kind of a disadvantage that you're constantly working against.

Ekaterina (Sam) Howard  

Yeah, that makes sense.

Diane Wiredu  

But this is not a problem for most companies, because most companies are too scared to do something like this anyway. Very few companies are really willing to do the work to put their company on the edge of the map, because it's scary. It's really, really scary. And that's why we have very few examples of companies that pull it off.

Ekaterina (Sam) Howard  

Yeah, and to what you just said – sometimes you don't want to be on that edge of that map. If you're, if your decision makers are not into getting roasted, then they will not like you if you do it.

Diane Wiredu  

Yeah, precisely. Like don't do it. You know, if we just stay, in the banking again, this is not really like B2B services, kind of business to consumer. 

But that that's such an anomaly example. 

But if we bring it back down to earth, Wise, or TransferWise, when they turned into Wise, is a brilliant example of a boring industry – speaking to everyone but managing to use story to their advantage, like they said “Banking was bad. Here's why it was bad. We fixed it. We fixed it.”

That was the classic story structure of “Bbanking was terrible. This is why. Look what we've done now. You deserve better, a new banking experience.”

And if you ask anyone because I bank with Wise, if you ask people who bank with Wise what they think of Wise, they'll be like, “Oh my god, I love Wise.”

How many banks have customers that actually love [them]? It's crazy. No one loves their bank, banks, just as an industry, it's an experience that you hate. But somehow they've managed to, like get consumers invested.

And part of it is obviously a good product, because otherwise I wouldn't be raving about it. I wouldn't have  these different accounts with them, I wouldn't have set up my business with them. It has to work. 

But they're serving a certain group of people very well, who believe what they they do. So yeah, no, I'm going  back to stories, but obviously, I'm feeling passionate about story today. 

Ekaterina (Sam) Howard  

I can think of several companies that do a “blank is broken, we'll fix it for you, you're welcome” [approach] –  Basecamp comes to mind immediately.

Diane Wiredu  

Basecamp is another classic example. And I guess timing is right here as well, because we’re talking about examples that were not in 2023. But they told this story. So maybe that also leads into “Yeah, certain stories, certain storytelling structures work, but they can be overdone. They can be overdone.”

Ekaterina (Sam) Howard  

Or the industry just moved past it.

Diane Wiredu  

Yeah, the moves fast, the industry gets bored of it. 

Or the point is that you have to actually be solving something like you can't, you can't use a structure. You can't use a framework, it's almost like these Mad Libs, copywriting stuff. I hope that no one doesn't listen to this episode to go “Cool, okay, this thing was broken. Now we fixed it.”

But like, was it really broken? Because it actually has to be, you know.

The banking industry was terrible. For anyone like me who's dealing with multi currency accounts and moving money, it was terrible. And so they actually did something about it. They actually did something. 

So yeah, again, I think it comes back to this... What's the word I'm looking for? I'm losing all the words today.

Ekaterina (Sam) Howard  

Could it be critical thinking?

Diane Wiredu  

Yeah, I wasn't thinking that, but I'll take it.

Integrity, I think.

Ekaterina (Sam) Howard  

Integrity? Tell me more.

Diane Wiredu  

Just doing what you say you do. Not bullshitting your way. I think too many companies look at copy and messaging as a way to kind of bullshit their way to sales and growth instead of having a clear handle on actually understanding what we do, how to talk about it. 

And we believe in it. Because everything is so much easier – I'm sure you know, you've worked on so many website, messaging, copywriting projects – which were the easier ones, the ones that were like, “Oh, we don't really know what we're about. But let's try and tell this story,” or the ones that were like, “This is really what we believe in, help us draw it out, and tell it clearly, like this deeper value that we deliver, help us translate that into messaging “So I think that's why I said, integrity. 

Ekaterina (Sam) Howard  

You know,I cannot think of a project where it all clicked together for me. Because for me, it's really more like, “What are the assumptions that teams are making about the customers? How does that get in the way of the copy that converts? And how can I get the voice of customer data and re-align the messaging and the copy with what it is that prospects are looking for??

And if I think about my own business, I don't have a why. I like, I love this work., can I just do this work? And I don't know if this is a common thing for B2B SaaS, sometimes it's just like “We saw this problem, we solved this problem.

Diane Wiredu  

Yeah!

Ekaterina (Sam) Howard  

We don’t like this problem. We want it to go away. Boom!

Diane Wiredu  

And that's okay. And I think what I'm referring to is just the initial phase, just having that foundation and then what you've talked about, just now with the next steps, like that's where we really get into the meat of it. 

So we move away from, I don't really like to call story “why,” like I feel like I just draw some pictures of like Simon Sinek and the golden circle, and I want to pull out my hair.

So, no, you don't need a why. Solving a problem is enough.

Sometimes solving a problem is the basis of a story. 

But that's just the foundation. That's the beginning. That's the first step, now we move on to the next step.

And I think that the process that you have mentioned, is very similar to mine. Messaging, and particularly let's talk about growth stage who have, you know, have got messaging that's got them this far, but we have outgrown it, and want to make sure that we are articulating the value of our product in a way that's going to resonate for our current ICP and growth going forward, then the question then does become “Cool. This is what we're all about. This is what we're saying. These are the assumptions or how we want to come across and the things that we think we should be saying about the product, these are the priorities. Now let's go and validate that with our market.”

And I look at that from two phases, both actual customers, so speaking to our current customers, and seeing where this aligns and where it doesn't, what box do they put us in? What needs do they think that we're solving? What was their decision making process? What kind of triggers led them to buying the product? 

And then also figuring out within the market, because I believe that companies do need to look at their competitors, I don't think you should be constantly looking at them, but it's really important to see where you sit. So then I also look at what competitors are saying, and do kind of a competitor messaging audit audit. And then the main phase is now coming back and bringing that together, synthesizing those findings, looking for opportunities, and sort of matching across the board now, saying, “Okay, cool. Here some of our hypotheses were validated. It aligns with the story you want to tell cool, we'll keep that. And then sometimes it's, everyone was saying this whole other story. And that makes more sense. So we're going to bring some of those messages to the forefront.”

And then sort of narrowing down that messaging focus.

I think I do agree with you. We probably spent a lot of time talking about the story, but that's not what messaging is. It's just a really good point of departure.

And it's a good sort of… not a box to check, but it's a good thing that we need to do is a first step, because it does make everything easier. 

But yeah, validating messaging, with your customers, with your ideal clients and your target audience as well is key, because no company is just speaking to themselves.

It's all about serving your customers and making sure you do that in the best way, and making sure that your messaging resonates. And I think that's the only way to do that.

Ekaterina (Sam) Howard  

Agreed. 

Diane Wiredu  

Agreed! 

Ekaterina (Sam) Howard  

Yay! 

Diane Wiredu  

Yay, we're done, complete!

{{BREAKOUT}}

Something that I think about a lot – and something we have already discussed on this podcast – is the bias towards action in the startup world. And especially for messaging, it’s not wrong.

To be clear: messaging exists to convert, and the only way you can find out if it converts is by testing it out there in the real world.

But at the same time, messaging-development-by-committee is also a thing, especially for early stage startups.

This is why our conversation is about to take a darker turn – when we talk about some of the ways messaging can start falling apart.

Ekaterina (Sam) Howard  

Okay, so let's talk about when this falls apart in real life, because in an ideal world, we have feedback loops. Everybody's gathering customer data, everybody's on top of what's changing in terms of competitor messaging and market it's and future trends. And all of our product decisions are based on customer feedback as well. And all of that feeds into changes in messaging and a copy and marketing strategy.

And then, the real world happens.

What do you see? What are the most common points where things start falling apart? And how to prevent that?

Diane Wiredu  

Yeah, that's a tough question. It's a tough question because I guess the point when I come in is almost when it's already fallen apart a little bit and I come in essentially as a fixer.

But yeah, I think the the key thing here is like you said, those feedback loops

I think there just needs to be a constant and better feedback loop within companies from customer success, from sales through to marketing and having this repository or there's a source of truth or conversations that are happening so that everyone is on top of it. 

The challenges that I see is often just misalignment from sales and marketing and not having access to the same amount of information, but one group is speaking to customers all the time. And that's just not getting fed.

So I don't have an answer for how companies can keep on top of that. I don't think there's one way. But that feedback loop is definitely key.

And it makes everyone's lives easier in terms of being able to communicate with customers and actually not getting to this point where  everything stagnates and having to do this huge project to kind of get up to speed, because you don't want that.

You want these faster feedback loops, and culture of testing and iteration and experimentation as well. Because I think that's key. Sure, you need things to stick, stick with a message, but you also need to test and evolve.

Ekaterina (Sam) Howard  

What I sometimes see is there's almost a conflict between the way the company sees itself and the way it wants to develop and the market signals, whether data on what is the way that folks prefer to consume the product, or industry conversations about where the specific audience wants to be and how they want the problem to be solved. This is, I'm not even sure this is a messaging and copy question, it’s more like… How do you reconcile this? Like the company vision versus the industry vision? Or is this the industry as it is right now?

Diane Wiredu  

Yeah, that's a tough one, because that sounds to me like the positioning and just the company's strategy bucket. 

And so, for me, I'm not going to come in and say – or rarely, right? – “We've got to take this, you got to take this a whole different direction.”

My role, and my job and where I put myself in is, how can we communicate this position right now for the next, whatever the roadmap for the next six months, for the next 12 months, in a way that will get you to that next stage, so that then we can shift?

Again, I think the challenge sounds like knowing that you want to make a shift, or maybe target a new group of people or move to a different category.

And so then there's, there's a point in time where you want to speak a certain way, but you're not right now.

So there's kind of some growing pains as you make that shift. 

But I think there has to be a bit of a bit of a balance, right? The same way, when you walk, you just have to put one foot in front of the other, you can't just leap up 12 stairs, and then your other foot is still behind you.

I think, small shifts.

Say we're targeting SMBs right now and then tomorrow, boom, we're targeting enterprise, we're gonna shift everything, we're going to speak completely differently, we're going to completely shift our model. You have to just kind of take those steps.

But yeah, it's challenging. But making sure that there's a foothold in the shifts that you're really trying to make, almost before really shifting your messaging to match that.

{{EPISODE OUTRO}}

Diane is one my favorite people to work with and it’s been an absolute pleasure to connect and talk about copy and messaging. Something I especially appreciated is a lack of definitive answers.

It’s definitely easier to talk about Liquid Death – or Oatly –  as the best possible way to differentiate in B2B SaaS.

And it’s just as easy to go with “in depends,” so I really appreciate digging into what “it depends” even means for early stage and growing B2B SaaS startups.

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By the way, if you don’t know what Cleo and the roast mode are all about, check it out. Some of those prompts (like “If you save 0 dollars…”) have become a part of our family conversations around savings (or lack thereof) – and even if my roast mode is not as effective as Cleo’s, at least we’re having fun!