We are hosting Lars Lofgren, CEO of Quick Sprout, to answer listener questions about SaaS, growth, and more.

What is a good content marketing routine for a solo startup founder?
Considering aspects such as: publish on own site vs guest writing for popular publications in the niche, ratio of educational/promotional flavour, or any other tips that come to mind
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Automatically Generated Transcript: 

We're live. Welcome to today's episode of MicroComp on air as always. I am your host, Rob walling. As every Wednesday at 1:00 PM, Eastern 10:00 AM Pacific, we live stream for about 30 minutes and we cover topics related to building and growing ambitious SAS startups that bring us freedom and purpose and allow us to value and maintain healthy relationships.

We believe that showing up every day and shipping that next feature, next piece of marketing copy or closing your next sale is a way to build a sustainable company. So thanks again for joining me today. It's been a couple of weeks last week was Thanksgiving in the U S. And so we, I gave producer Zander the day off.

And of course, it doesn't make sense for me to get on here and try to do it without the expert to lineage of, of producers, Andrew and his production. So tryptofan attic. I think it's, to crypto fanatic, do we have a typo in my lower third for those listening on the podcast?

Welcome every Thursday morning, we air these episodes on, the MicroComp podcast. You can head to microcuff podcast.com or search for microcuff in any pod catcher. And you can. Here are these here? These, these episodes producers, Andrew says, Tiffin is the chemical in Turkey makes you sleepy. That's right.

So I'm a tryptofan addict because things and all that. thanks. Thanks for that. Producer Zander got a great show too. I'm super excited to bring on a first time guest to MicroComp on air, but not a first time guest to the microcosm world. Mr. Lars Lofgren is a many time MicroComp speaker. He's also a tiny seed mentor and all around good guy.

He is the CEO of QuickSprout, which you can check out@quicksprout.com. He's a former director of growth at, I will teach you to be rich, where he worked with Ramit Sethi, and he ran growth for Kissmetrics and Lara's specialty is, has been content marketing and SEO for years and years. And he's one of the OJI.

Content SEO people that I heard about back in the day, if you recall, Kissmetrics blog was the leading blog. It was the example everyone looked to in our space in terms of a blog that was driving a lot of traffic, a lot of engagement. And just something that we, I think a lot of us tried to model our own content strategies.

That, and Laura's was the, essentially the man behind that, that effort. And so with that, I'm going to welcome mr. Lars Lofgren to the show. How's it going, sir? Hey, Rob, it's good to be here. Yeah, thanks, man. Good to chat with you again, Lars and I have known each other for years. I don't know. What do we think we met 2012, 2013, something like that?

Yeah. One of the really or micro cops in Vegas when I was actually living in Vegas, which is a whole other story every time. And every time we came to Vegas, I'd see you and be like, Hey, still like in Vegas. Cause you no, I can't stand it. Yeah.

Yeah, yes. It's a much better fit for my overall, immensely sunny disposition. yeah. Yeah, totally. when folks ask me about you, because it's something that a lot of people don't realize is we see some kind of more, I'll say celebrities, but it's just people who are popular, who either have their own podcasts or their own personal brand or their blog, or they could do a lot of podcast interviews.

And we just hear their names, a lot folks, you and I know and know I've spoken with at my recom, Jason Cohen, a heat and shot. Dan Martell, they're big names in the space. You have chosen not to do that. I think intentionally chop to do it in the success behind you, but you're an understated, like you're a tactician and you get in and you just wreck shit.

You get it done. You grow big things big really quickly, but you haven't been, I think, I am immensely self promotional or building like a personal brand. Was that Benadryl pretty deliberate choice on your part? Yeah, I think it's a, for a little while I entertained it. it gives, you can obviously do a lot of things with your career and you can, whatever you build, just having that personal brand and audience, like you can just get started so much faster, right?

It's there's so many advantages to it. And most of the companies that I was involved in and built marketing programs around, like there were personal, really heavy, really intense personal brands that were the foundation that we ended up launching off of. So I've seen that I've know exactly how that works, what it can do for a company or whatever someone's trying to accomplish.

But at the end of the day, I just, it's not right. I like the, I want to drive revenue. I want to go build stuff. I don't want to like, just run that and speaking. Circuit, I'm happy to do it. If people find it helpful and I get an invite, but like grinding that out and playing that game.

It's not that it's a bad game. It's just a different game. That is not as good as totally. Yeah. It's just not, it's just not your thing. And for, folks at home listening, you've worked with Neil Patel and he Shaw and Ramit Sethi and others, and. yeah, you've seen it from the inside.

That's the thing, man. I was on Twitter. That was probably about a month or two ago. And I, I just keep seeing the, Hey, build an audience before you build your product. And I think that's an amazing advice for info products. if I'm going to sell a course or a book or any of that stuff or a coaching, I'm going to, I know people got to know and trust me all that thing.

If I'm going to build a SAS set from the ground up and I don't already have a personal audience. I just don't think it's worth the time, and when I look at people like you and Ruben Gamez, and frankly like 80 or 90% of the SAS apps that I see get into the seven or eight figures, they don't build an audience from the start.

They might build a launch list. You build an interest list in the app, but it's not about the person, it's not about the story. it's about blocking and tackling, right? it's paid ads, it's content, it's SEO, it's cold email, it's sales. It's you know, all the stuff that you do to scale an app, And I just don't, I have enjoyed watching you succeed without having to, again, start a podcast or be a big personality, And it's true. I agree with all that. in fact, if you go to the personal brand route, Some businesses, you learn a lot of good lessons and it feeds into it really well. consulting, if you want to write books, info products, certainly like they tend to gel and actually are almost required. but for other businesses you learn a lot of bad habits and you end up, it forces you to go around.

That's not congruent with what the business model really needs a long-term. and I do see a lot of people learn those bad habits and then the business suffers later for it. SAS doesn't need any of the typical. personal brand stuff. It's nice. If you have it create early days can be faster, but there's, if you don't have it in, you're considering building that stuff from scratch, honestly, there's way more effective ways to get your first five customers, your first 10 customers to get the ball rolling.

And if you do that kind of the non-scalable direct route, you're actually going to learn way more about your Mar market. What the business needs and you're going to get a much healthier foundation. cause I have seen businesses go sideways because they've leaned on the personal branding and the audience love too much and they ended up delaying some really core, fundamental problems that kinda nipped them later.

Yep. Very cool. let's dig in. We've got a couple of, first I got a comment from mr. Justin Jackson. He says, Lara's miss arguing with you at the bar smiley face. So I'm sure he gets that. And then I have a question from  from feedback on site.co and he says, It's a bit of a long question. So I'll read it.

He says, what is a good content marketing routine for a solo startup founder? And then he adds, some, additional information thinking like considering aspects, like publishing on your own site versus guest posting for popular publications in the niche. And I would even add versus. Posting on medium.

Like a lot of people are doing these days, the ratio of educational to promotional flavor or any other tips that come to mind. So let's start with that. Maybe with the first general thoughts you have on as a solo founder, which a lot of folks, solo founder with maybe a contractor or two or solo founder with no guarantees.

that's what a lot of folks watching this are thinking, what are your thoughts today on how to build that up? Yeah, so I'm going to, my opinions or my method. There's multiple ways to win in this game, but I