My Friends Don’t Care About Tech. Or Startups.

I’m not saying my friends still use typewriters or that they ask me “how to enroll on Twitter” – it’s just that they don’t have the same level of interest in it as some of my startup/tech enthusiast (virtual) friends do. By that I mean, if Jeff Bezos announced tomorrow that he’s leaving Amazon or that the Smart or even Globe LTE launch isn’t actually happening, none of them would bat an eyelash. It’s like me finding out about Snooki’s pregnancy. Who’s Snooki? Bahaha.

But yes, I bring this up because this topic seems to have been following me around for a couple of days now. Last Thursday, I met up with Paul Rivera of Kalibrr (will do a separate post on his team soon) and we were talking about how difficult it is for Filipinos to embrace startups. Here, you either become a lawyer or a doctor. Okay, so you may have had more options (accountant, engineer) but you know what I mean. Starting your own business isn’t usually encouraged (unless you come from an entrepreneurial Filipino-Chinese family).

“It’s not stable.”

“How long will that business last?”

“What about your future?”

Then yesterday, I attended Peter Cauton’s Juan Great Leap event and they were basically saying the same thing but this time added things like lack of investors, the startup community being small, the government not being supportive, etc.

This may be obvious to some but seriously, there are times when it becomes so easy to get trapped in this bubble I will call the “TechCrunch bubble” (maybe I read that somewhere, don’t accuse me of plagiarizing!). It’s when you think everyone and her grandma is using Path or is upset that Twitter is being such a bully because it’s all the tech sites talk about (and your favorite Twitter client is in danger).

At work, we talk about it. On Twitter, we tweet about it. We read it on blogs and tech news sites.

For those who are also in this bubble, it’s easy to forget that the rest of the Philippines doesn’t care what will happen on September 12, much less care about the crazy people working for or on a tech startup.

Oh yes. They exist.

Those Newsletter Subscription Popups? They Work.

This is a classic example of how just because you think you know almost everything about what you’re doing, doesn’t mean you can tell other people who you think  don’t know as much as you do, to shut it. After all, how can they know any better, right?

It’s embarrassing but this was me.
 

True Story

See, with all the webinars, white papers, articles, and case studies I’ve read on email marketing, I seemed to have been so convinced that I was a semi-expert (expert level would be if I charged people to let me talk about it) on this subject. It’s easy to get caught in this state of absurd arrogance knowing that not a lot of people (at least in the Philippines) invest time in doing the same thing.

One day, a team member asked me, “Now that we have our newsletter set up, maybe we should have a popup screen asking people to subscribe?”

Within just 5 seconds, I looked like this:

Oh dear. I was quickly coming up with ridiculous reasons as to why we cannot possibly do that. What have I turned into! My teammate had the WTF look. “Yeah! WTF?”, I asked myself.

It was a humbling experience. More than humbling, it was mortifying.

“Why can’t we at least TRY it?” was the next line I heard.

I was so full of myself thinking I’ve read it all that I didn’t even think that those case studies and best practices might not necessarily apply to our company! (A mistake I think all of us at one point also made. Bah. Look at me trying to drag everyone into this.)

I changed my rage face to something more amiable.

Then I went back to my desk and started looking at possible solutions and if they really did work.

I found Padiact, met Claudiu Murariu, their wonderful and very helpful co-founder, and the rest is history. We installed it on our site and almost a year later, we’re now at 10k subscribers. We were and still are, seeing about 2-3% conversion rates each month. What a waste it would have been if I insisted that I knew everything.

 

Lesson Learned

My newsletter popup story might not work for your company or for your website but what I can guarantee you that will always work is this: having team members who are brave enough to call you out, to experiment, and to make sure that it’s not just your business that is growing, but also yourselves.

Claudine Barretto, Raymart Santiago, and Now Blair Carabuena: How Social Media Makes Us All Contestants on MTV’s Boiling Points

If you never went through that period in your life when MTV was still the popular time suck and not 9gag, here’s a quick recap of what that show was all about:

Boiling Points was a prank reality TV show way back in the early 2000s where random people (including Stefani Germanotta before she became Lady Gaga) were subjected to extremely annoying situations. The goal was to basically exhibit ginormous amounts of self-restraint and not give in and lose your cool. If you could stand being in that situation for 2-20 minutes (the boiling point), you’d get $100. If you couldn’t keep your cool, well, sucks for you. No $100.

Fast forward to 2012 and we apparently have our own version of it. In fact, we might just have 3 of the most famous Filipino contestants of the year. Losing $100 cannot be compared to having viral YouTube videos of themselves in attack mode.

Case #1: Guy Loses Cool Over Traffic Rules, Goes Crazy on Enforcer

Case #2: Celebrity Couple Loses Cool Over Luggage Issues and Paparazzi

The main difference between actual Boiling Points contestants and these more recent participants is that the latter resorted to the hell-naw-oh-no-you-diint of the interwebs: violence. And boy did they feel its wrath.

Social media is strange. You can suddenly become a semi-famous fashion blogger or suddenly have your personal number and home address passed around so people can send you hate messages.

If you’re one of those rare people who never gets mad, good for you. For the rest of us, it’s always good to know that one outrageously disrespectful act can get you to lose your job, embarrass your family and friends and be the internet’s most-hated person… until they find a replacement.

The next time you encounter someone really really annoying (in public at least), imagine yourself on camera being watched by a couple hundred people.

Because you just might be.

That thought should give you enough willpower to… check yoself before you wreck yoself.