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Consumer Decision Dynamics with Justin Chen

Welcome back to Camp Content! In this episode, host Molly Ruland talks with Justin Chen, co-founder of PickFu. Explore the development of PickFu, tracing its growth from a modest initiative to a well-known consumer insights platform. Learn how PickFu enables businesses to make well-informed decisions on branding and marketing through intuitive feedback mechanisms. Understand the importance of consumer feedback in shaping business strategies and how PickFu supports agencies and small businesses to enhance client satisfaction. This episode is tailored for agency owners, entrepreneurs, or anyone interested in consumer-driven decision-making, offering valuable insights and industry experiences. A special PickFu discount code is also available for listeners looking to engage with the platform. Tune in for actionable advice on leveraging consumer feedback in business decisions. Connect with Justin: Justin Chen | LinkedIn Website: http://www.pickfu.com Sign up at pickfu.com and use coupon CAMPCONTENT for 50% off your first poll.

Episode Timestamps:

00:00 – Intro 00:00 – PickFu’s Evolution and Recent Pivot 04:43 – Global Reach and Customer Interest 10:40 – Design Agency Challenges 13:38 – Creative Directors’ Innovation 17:39 – Human Feedback and AI Accuracy 19:34 – Genuine Feedback for Business Success 23:11 – Data-Driven Mobile Game Brands 26:26 – Prototype Design and Collaborative Refinement 28:48 – Gratitude for PickFu Insights 30:03: – Outro

Quote of the Episode:

“Embrace creative freedom, challenge norms, and innovate boldly. Let curiosity drive you to unexpected success.” — Justin Chen For more insights and to book a call with Molly Ruland, visit Molly’s Calendly. Host: Molly Ruland, CEO & Founder Operations Manager: Matt Billman Powered by: Heartcast Media http://www.heartcastmedia.com

Transcript

Molly Ruland:

Welcome to Camp Content, the podcast where we explore the cutting edge of content marketing in 2024. I’m thrilled today to have Justin Chen joining us. He’s a serial entrepreneur and visionary cofounder of PickFu, an innovative consumer insights platform that helps businesses make informed, data driven decisions quickly and affordably. It’s a super cool product. I’m really interested to talk about it actually. With a rich background in electrical engineering and computer science from UC Berkeley, complemented by an MS in engineering management from Santa Clara University. Justin has revolutionized access to its enterprise grade consumer research, making it accessible for companies of all sizes. Gotta love that.

 

Molly Ruland:

From managing a global remote team to balancing his role as a devoted father, Justin’s journey is a testament to his entrepreneurial spirit and dedication to integrating work life balance. So, let’s jump right in and talk about how Justin’s expertise in consumer feedback is enhancing content strategies across the globe. So thanks for thanks for coming on the show today, Justin.

 

Justin Chen:

Yeah. Thanks for having me, Molly.

 

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. No problem. No problem at all. I am excited to have this conversation. I really like your product. I’ve been checking it out. And so let’s talk a little bit about your business. Let’s talk about PickFu.

 

Molly Ruland:

How many years have you guys been in business?

 

Justin Chen:

So we first built my cofounder and I first built it back in 2008. So it’s actually been around for a really long time. As you mentioned, we’ve run a lot of different businesses, and we built PickFu as a side project when we were building a different business because we had a need for some consumer research. So being engineers, we decided, you know, instead of going to a coffee shop to get feedback, why don’t we build a digital focus group so that we could sit at home and not actually talk to anyone? And so that’s kinda where it came from. And, we threw it up online, and we figured other entrepreneurs will get some benefit from it. And, you know, we slowly evolved it over the years as we are running our other business, and it started growing and it hit a tipping point where it made sense to pivot all of our attention over to PickFu, and that was probably about 4 or 5 years ago.

 

Molly Ruland:

Interesting. So we’ll pause on the company stuff real quick. What do you think caused that shift?

 

Justin Chen:

It was a combination of finding the right product market fit. So I think in the beginning, we were we were we thought it was gonna be other self funded scrappy entrepreneurs. Great. You know, we’re one of those where it’s a great audience, but, like, they don’t have a lot of money. Then we had a lot of authors, self publishing authors, testing book titles and book covers. Also, great people, not a ton of money, nor are they publishing a lot of books with a lot of frequency. So it wasn’t really until, ecommerce found us. So a lot of people are selling on Amazon where they are doing a ton of different products.

 

Justin Chen:

There’s a lot of decisions they’re making that have a lot of time and investment component to it. So, you know, before you order $50,000 of the product from China, maybe you should test the product design, the packaging, the branding, your marketing imagery, all that kind of stuff. So we really found the right customer that would have a very high recurrence of usage since it is a usage based product. And so that really started, you know, bending our growth curve until we started leaning much more into marketing to that audience.

 

Molly Ruland:

Super smart. Okay. So how many employees are there, or how many people work with PickFu?

 

Justin Chen:

We’re at about 18 now, fully remote all around the world. So I’m here in Los Angeles. My cofounder’s up in the San Francisco Bay Area, But we we have people all over LatAm. We have people in Europe, South Africa, Kazakhstan, like, really all over the world.

 

Molly Ruland:

That’s amazing. And what is your, like, user base or is it users or clients? How do you

 

Justin Chen:

Yeah. Users and customers. Yeah. It’s very interesting. And part of the reason we went so global was because we started seeing a very global usage. So probably about half of our customers are in the US, but the other half are in China and Europe and Latin America because when we started, it was a pool of US consumers that we were giving the feedback from. And so if you can imagine if you’re not from the US but selling into the US, that’s even more valuable to get that kind of feedback. And so that’s why we started getting a lot of usage outside the US.

 

Justin Chen:

We wanted to have a team that reflected the global nature of our customer base. Now we’re also, we have respondents in other countries as well, in Germany, Mexico, Japan, kind of all a bunch of different countries. And so we’re really trying to enable anyone in any country to get feedback from any other country despite any physical or language barriers.

 

Molly Ruland:

You guys are, like, the new United Colors of Benetton. You just connect the whole world out there. Yeah. You can use that. I’ll give that one to you. Yeah. I mean, that’s super cool because marketing is very different. Like, I live in Costa Rica, you know, part of the year, and, like, marketing in Latin America is wildly different from marketing in the United States, you know, or North America, if you will.

 

Molly Ruland:

You know? It’s very, very different. And so I would imagine that for international resellers, that’s, like, super important to testing because you know, what’s gonna work in the United States is not gonna work in Costa Rica. You know, it’s a whole different planet. You know? Fascinating. So let’s talk about what is PickFu for the people who are just logging in? Break it down. What is it?

 

Justin Chen:

Sure. So we say it’s a self-service consumer research service. You could think of it as a digital focus group where you could ask really simple questions to get feedback from your target audience. So we’re gonna go out and we’re gonna find the people. We’re gonna have them, we’re gonna incentivize them to answer your questions. So, the simplest use case that we started with was just preference testing, maybe 2 different logo options. And, you know, almost everyone can relate to that. So maybe you have a designer, maybe maybe use 99 designs, but you have a couple different logo options.

 

Justin Chen:

You wanna know which one’s best. So you put it up on PickFu. You say, hey. Which logo is best for a gardening service? Put a couple options. Our audience is gonna immediately come and vote on it. And more importantly, they’re gonna give you written explanations why. And that’s actually where the true nuggets of insight are because now you’re gonna understand maybe the font doesn’t resonate or the color or the imagery. And now you can go back to your designer and say, like, hey.

 

Justin Chen:

Let’s try it with something else. And it’s so fast, you know, typically 15 minutes that you’ll get, you know, 50 responses that you could sit down with your designer and just iterate throughout the day. And now when you launch, when you print that logo on something, you know that it’s gonna resonate. You’re not gonna offend anyone. They’re they’re gonna like the font. The colors are gonna resonate with your brand, and it just really drinks a lot of investments. So we like to say test before you invest because a lot of times, we get people coming to us to optimize marketing imagery. Let’s say you’re selling on Amazon.

 

Justin Chen:

You wanna improve your main image that’s in the search results, and you compare it against your competition just to get feedback. And a lot of times, the feedback that they read through is actually while your packaging is worse than your competitors or your branding sucks or your product just doesn’t look great or all these things that you probably could have gotten that feedback earlier in the process. But now that you’re just waiting till optimizing the marketing aspect, it’s kinda too late. Now you’re sitting on a bunch of products that’s not gonna move. And so we really try to emphasize this hypothetical testing as early in the process as possible so that you’re not getting negative reviews or you’re sitting on, you know, 1,000 of dollars of unsold inventory.

 

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. I mean, it’s funny because when you said that, it reminded me of this logo that I saw recently that was very Georgia O’Keefe-esque, if you know what I’m saying. And it was, like, toxic Avenger green and brown because it was supposed to be earthy, and I and it was, like, a women’s thing. And I was like, don’t even put my name anywhere near that thing. Like, are you kidding me? You know? And they put out a poll, and they were like, who wants merchandise? And then 2 days later, they were like, we get it. It was a resounding no. Oh, really? No one’s walking around. Like, I’m only supporting this because I wanna support women, but, like, I even offered to redesign it for them and everything because, I mean, you know, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

 

Molly Ruland:

But if you’re selling a service, you can let go of that beauty and think about what it is that people want, not what you want. That’s right.

 

Justin Chen:

Yeah. And I think more entrepreneurs or anyone doing their work need to have the humility to get feedback. I know that as creators, we can often be very tied to the decisions that we make, and that’s really the first step. It’s just being open to feedback. The next step is starting to find ways to gather the feedback. We had a funny story of an author who came to us, and he was actually working with an editor and a publisher. But he came to us because he really disagreed with their book cover design. And so he wanted to use us to prove that his design was a book about visiting every country in the world.

 

Justin Chen:

And so he had all these, you know, a collage of photos that he had taken, which, you know, you were all very dear to him. So he wanted this collage of photos to, to compete against the publisher wanted to just do, like, passport stamps, which are a little, you know, more tasteful. And he’s like, no. Mine is so much better, and I’m gonna use PickFu to prove it to them. And it is lost. And it kept losing. He kept trying to change it. Like, we’ve, like, blend theirs and mine.

 

Justin Chen:

And, like, he just kept trying to Photoshop it, and it kept losing. And so he’s like, alright. Fine. I’m just gonna use the publishers. And then it went on to become a New York Times bestseller. And so he’s happy. Ego may have been hit a little bit, but, you know, in the end, the market spoke and they didn’t wanna see his scrapbook of photos. You know, they wanted something a little bit more tasteful.

 

Molly Ruland:

You know, as you’re saying this, it makes me think, like, this would be an excellent tool for agency owners because I know all the time, I design beautiful things and Yep. You know, websites, logos, whatever, and then the client’s like, well, could you put a drop shadow on the you know? And you’re just like, oh, you know, kill me now. And, like, they build this beautiful responsive website, and they’re like, can you take out the movement and take out this and take out that? And you’re like, congratulations. You’re now the proud new owner of a Word document. You know what I mean? Like, super great that I’m working with you. You know? And it’s hard as a designer, especially in the corporate world. You get hired because of your design expertise, and then 12 different CEOs designed by Khazmetti just rip you to shreds, and none of them have any design experience. They have no idea what they’re talking about.

 

Molly Ruland:

So I know I can see how defeating that is for a lot of people in the corporate space. But as an agency owner, man, how cool would it be to say, hey. Listen. Just just for your fun. I I tested our version and your version of the logo, and this is what the people have said. And I because saying I’ve been doing this a long time doesn’t cut the bread. You know what I’m saying? Like, you’re like, trust me. Your vagina shaped logo sucks.

 

Molly Ruland:

I don’t know how to say that in any other way than, like, what I’m saying. But maybe if people could just show data and say, hey. We tested this. It kinda makes you seem more valuable as an agency owner. It seems you’re really invested. And then you don’t have to push out some content that you really don’t like because at the end of the day, like, we take that personally as a reflection of us. Right? I cringe sometimes when I see some of the stuff my clients picked, and I’m like, take our logo off of that. You know? So I would imagine PickFu would be a great tool in that arena.

 

Molly Ruland:

Do you get do

 

Justin Chen:

you have Yeah. We do have a lot of agencies that use us. We in fact have an agency directory that highlights a lot of our customers at our agencies. But we hear them using it exactly like you said. Like, we heard of some where they’ll have a client meeting. They’ll start to pick whoop all at the beginning of the meeting just to show what they did, maybe against, like, the existing work or something like that. And, you know, halfway through by the end of the meeting, it’s already done. And it’s like, hey.

 

Justin Chen:

We didn’t there’s no magic here. Like, these were actually actual people. We didn’t game the system. And they’re all, of course, pretty much always choosing the agency one. Right? Because like you said, like, you know what you guys are doing and you’re more in tune with what the customer wants. So it’s a great way to prove to your clients or to your boss, who also may meddle and things like that, that they’re on the right track for sure.

 

Molly Ruland:

Super interesting. I I I hope a lot of agencies are using it. I know I’m gonna use you even for my own sake because I know sometimes there’s things that I like because I’m more of an artist, and then what people actually like is something else. And I’m like, well, jeez Louise, you know, there’s no hope for humanity, but I’ll give you I’ll give the people what they want. So sometimes you get it wrong too. Right? Like, you’re not always right even if you have been doing it a long time. You know, it just doesn’t

 

Justin Chen:

I think what’s been nice to see with a lot of creative directors and creative folks that use us, and I think the refreshing thing for them is that it allows them to try a lot of creative directions now, like, experiment and just see what hits. Because you also don’t know. Right? You’re just like, hey. I wanna try this crazy idea. Like, I know we’re always pink, but, like, why don’t we go, like, black with this one or something like that? And, like, hey. Maybe it’ll hit. Maybe it’ll just work, and you won’t know until you try. And you definitely don’t wanna live test that kind of stuff, because it may fall flat or, even, like, ads that are gonna be released.

 

Justin Chen:

I mean, we all see ads that are just tone deaf that that get launched and you wonder, like, did anyone get any feedback on these kinds of things? And so we’ll have a lot of agencies, ad agencies testing message resonance. Like, hey. What do you think about it? Does this message resonate with you? Like, what are your key takeaways of this from this ad? That kind of stuff. Because you wanna hear it privately before it starts going viral on Twitter.

 

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. That’s the last place you want the feedback coming in for sure. So I’m super curious. Like, when you started PickFu, did it always have the written element of the feedback? Because I would imagine. Right? You could just say, a, b, f, whatever. But the written feedback, that to me seems so valuable. So how do you get these people to engage and leave such valuable feedback? Like, how is that structure set up?

 

Justin Chen:

Yeah. Yeah. So we’ve always had the written feedback from day 1, and we wanted it because it’s an important way to gauge how, you know, earnest they’re doing the work. And so we tap into the same consumer panels that Procter and Gamble or Kraft might use when they’re doing their longer form market research. So they’ll typically use their internal insights team. They’ll engage with the market research consultant, and they’ll charge, you know, 5 figures and take, like, you know, 6 to 8 weeks to do something. We’ll tap into that same consumer panel, but we do it programmatically. And we have our own layer of data quality and audience targeting on top of all that.

 

Justin Chen:

And so we pride ourselves really on data quality, and we kick out a lot of the respondents that come through. As you can imagine, if you incentivize anything on the Internet, it’s gonna try to get gained. And so we spend a lot of our effort trying to make sure, like, are you paying attention? Are you doing this? Are you just, like, trying to go really quickly through this? Are you copy and paste? And there’s a lot of different things that we’re looking for in addition to actually evaluating the actual written response. And so if you look at any of our responses, you’ll see that they’re quite in-depth. I mean, we’ll have some people writing, like, a paragraph, like, explaining why they like this font over another font. And so, you know, you get a lot of value just understanding their thought process there. And so we we spend a lot of effort trying to curate that pool of people to make sure that it’s it’s the best people who are doing the

 

Molly Ruland:

job. So I feel like it’s pretty clear how large companies we, you know, would find your service very valuable. They have so much to lose. They’re spending huge dollars. But at the same time, for small businesses, a $500 ad could be just as much as a $50,000 ad for a Coke or Pepsi. Right? You know, it’s lab bread. So what is it like, once people are using PickFu, what do they do with that information, and can they continue to work with you to get more guidance, or are you guys just, like, data analysis?

 

Justin Chen:

So we try to make it very self-serve and as low cost as possible. So we start at a dollar per response. So you could go as low as 15 responses on something for $15. And so the way that we’ll see a lot of people using it is iterating on any kind of creative that they’re working on. So whether it is a product design or a marketing creative or an ad campaign and they wanna just, like, try different things, we’ll see people run a few different polls in succession using the feedback as, your written feedback as a feedback loop. You know, sometimes they’re doing AI generation, and they wanna get actual human feedback. Because at the end of the day, it’s not robots buying your stuff. It’s actually still humans.

 

Justin Chen:

So even if you’re gonna use AI to generate the content, you should still get actual human feedback. So we’ll see a lot of people using it in that way, and they’ll use it throughout whatever business they’re doing. So, like, whether it’s ads, maybe now they’re working on, you know, like, a backdrop for a booth they’re gonna have for something, you know, or maybe it’s packaging, marketing collateral flyers. You know, there’s once you start getting into the data mindset of, you know, it’s not just I shouldn’t just be asking my team or myself, like, what looks good. If we’re starting a Slack conversation about something, like, we should probably just run a pick FUPA. So, one of the customers that we have is DuckDuckGo, the privacy search engine, and they use it on all of the different things. So billboard ads, UX, marketing copy, like, anything that someone has to make a decision on that you should have some feedback on. You know, just run a pick loophole for it.

 

Justin Chen:

And because they’re very data driven. And so this at least you have data points. And you don’t always have to choose the winner. Right? Because it’s still your decision. You’re still making the executive decision on something. But at least you have feedback. Like, okay. I know this loss, but, like, you know, I’m fine with all the objections, but that’s the direction we want to go.

 

Justin Chen:

Cool. That’s your decision. Right? You’re going in with your eyes wide open.

 

Molly Ruland:

I mean, I’m definitely you know, I was thinking about using it for podcast logos and things like that, but I’m really thinking about ads because, like, I’m not an admin. I have no idea. I can make beautiful videos. I can write a good copy, but, you know, ads are like this delicate balance of the image and the headline and this, and that is not my jam. That is not my jam. Right? But I definitely have seen certain things work better than others, but I’m not an ad person. So I like the idea of, like, even if I’m gonna post a webinar. Right? Something so simple, like, test a couple different cover art or, you know, invites or whatever.

 

Molly Ruland:

I mean, it just seems brilliant to me, especially in this age where it’s so hard to get feedback, you know, because it’s like your friends and family will either not understand what you do at all or be way too nice about it. You know what I mean? Like, there’s, like, no middle ground, it seems like, but you shouldn’t really trust them when it comes to business on either side of the table. Right? And so you do you want real data. How are people going to receive what I’m putting out there? Because, that’s the one place you gotta let go of the ego. Right? Like, your ego should be focused on, like, the quality of the work that you do and the quality of the service and how your customers feel after and not like, you know, the logo is orange even though you want it blue. It’s like, you know, give the people what they want, man. You know? It doesn’t always mean it’s what you wanna give them, but that’s the market.

 

Justin Chen:

Yeah. Exactly. Right. Yeah. It’s funny that you mentioned their friends and family thing, because that was part of the reason we built it. It. We had already been running our business for other businesses for a couple years and, you know, you kinda tap out of the goodwill also. Like, I think they just get tired of giving you feedback.

 

Justin Chen:

And then, like you said, they’re just like, oh, like, you already know. Like, you’ve been doing this. Like, you’re gonna make the right decision. Like, well, that’s not helpful. Like, I actually wanted some feedback.

 

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. Rip it out there.

 

Justin Chen:

Probably not even your target audience. So, like, you

 

Molly Ruland:

know, whatever. Exactly. So this is really cool. I would, I was thinking too. I would love a job like that where I just got to, like, anonymously give feedback on things because I feel like I give too much unsolicited advice. So an outlet for that might be helpful for mostly my friends and family, to be honest. So you’ve got a lot of employees there. So I’m gonna ask you a couple, speed round questions.

 

Molly Ruland:

What are your favorite tools for productivity, especially managing so many team members? I know you said Slack. What, how else are you driving that engine over there?

 

Justin Chen:

So our big ones are Slack, Asana, and Notion. So that’s a pretty good combination. We try to keep all the work conversations and things in Asana. So, you know, task related. Notion’s great for just documenting things so that everyone in the team can see it, especially remote. You know, you want it easy. There’s there’s Google Docs and things like that, but I think Notion is a little bit

 

Molly Ruland:

easy to browse and discover.

 

Justin Chen:

Things get really lost in Google Google Docs a lot of times.

 

Matt Billman:

Yeah.

 

Justin Chen:

So, yeah, those are the main 3, and then, you know, we’ll have calls with Zoom and things like that.

 

Molly Ruland:

Right on. I’m a big fan of Asana too. Oh, wait. Asana no. No. No. I’m a Trello girl, but it’s all the same thing.

 

Justin Chen:

Yeah. It’s similar.

 

Molly Ruland:

It’s all the same thing. I just found a CRM for Trello, though, called Crumble. That’s $6 a month. And I’m like, that’s pretty cool because most CRMs are, like Yeah. Yeah. 1,000 of dollars a month. I was like, hey. That’s cool.

 

Molly Ruland:

Alright. What is, can you name a brand that is using consumer insights effectively, like the gold standard in data driven decisions?

 

Justin Chen:

Let’s see. So well, DuckDuckGo is using it really well. We’re one of our customers. A couple other brands that that use us really well are, Mary Ruth Organics. I don’t know if you know them. They, they’re like an up and coming, direct to consumer supplement brand, but very, like, a very beautiful brand. And, like, their products and, like, the imagery that they put out are great, and they do use PickFu to to test a lot of those types of things. So, there’s a lot of really interesting DTC brands that are, you know, I think when you come up digitally native, you’re much more data driven than some of the more traditional brands.

 

Justin Chen:

And so that’s what’s really catapulting, I think, a lot of the new brands are that they’re kinda like mobile games. We have a lot of mobile game customers also. And I think the difference between mobile gaming and kind of traditional console games, like the, you know, the old things you used to buy from Nintendo or whatever, is that they have to be data driven. So they’re constantly looking at, like, their customer acquisition costs and, like, the engagement of their users and all that kind of stuff. And so that translates into how they pick their app icons. Like, they’re using PickFu to test out different app icons and app store screenshots. And even as they’re developing characters now, we have a lot of game characters that are test game companies testing characters. Like, should the Viking’s beard be big or short or should he have an ax or a sword? And so a lot of this stuff is so fine tuned now.

 

Justin Chen:

By the time it hits you, you’re like, that’s a cool character. Like, it’s already resonating with me because it was gathered with, it was iterated with feedback.

 

Molly Ruland:

Man, so there’s really no business that couldn’t benefit from using PickFu. I mean

 

Justin Chen:

Anybody right now, like anyone that is doing anything towards consumers, yeah, could benefit from using PickFu. We need to focus our marketing efforts as a small team. So we do focus more on ecom, Amazon, and then, a bit on gaming as well. So we do have a bit of mobile gaming focus. But, Yeah. I mean, we can’t boil the ocean, but we’re focusing on those two areas that have really good adoption so far.

 

Molly Ruland:

Well and it’s like you said, you know, repeat customers, repeat users if you’re looking for somebody who’s gonna use it quite a bit. So I would imagine, like, graphic designers, you know, from a smaller perspective, you know, that could be really helpful. Brand agencies. Yep. That’s right. Why not test stuff before you put it in front of a client? Even smaller agencies, podcast agencies. Mhmm. Yeah.

 

Molly Ruland:

Anybody designing stuff, I think, could if you’re a designer and you design stuff on a regular basis, that’d be a great application for a small business.

 

Justin Chen:

Yeah. I mean, especially now that it’s so easy to create designs, like, even for people who aren’t designers. Like, you people are using Canva to like, I don’t know anything about designer colors, but, like, I can make something in Canva. Now it may look horrible. And so, like, I need to test it with Figma because I have no idea, you know, what the color should be or anything like that. And so as things are easier to do, like, you kind of need more testing actually because, like, you don’t have as much expertise or or sense necessarily of what the audience wants.

 

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. There’s a website called place it dotnetor. Mhmm. Yeah. Dotcom. And, like, you could literally type in things, and it, like, generates Yeah. It’s cool. Yeah.

 

Molly Ruland:

It is pretty cool. A lot of those logos are not great, but it’s a good place to start. Right? It’s like some iterations, and then sometimes I’ll do that, and then I give it to the real designer. And then he makes way, way better. But it’s just it’s like instead of me being, like, a little circle next to the big circle of, like, what are you what are you talking about, man? So I’ll just run them through that. But it’s wild how especially for podcasts, it’s wild how many resources there are. And just like AI, just because it can create something doesn’t mean it’s gonna be good.

 

Justin Chen:

But I think, what you just mentioned is a great process because now anyone you know, you should still use the designer to create, like, the final version to what’s pixel perfect, but now we could all iterate on, like, different directions. Right? Like, hey. Do I want something that has really blocky characters? Cool. I can just mock that up in Canva or something, and then I could just see, like, what people like. When I want to go with the one that I’m gonna print on, like, a 1000 bottles, like, I’ll probably get a real designer to, like, create the high high quality, high fidelity, like, digital version. But, like, now you can just anyone can experiment and see what’s gonna resonate.

 

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. Because I find for me, like, I’m the CEO, whatever, but, like, I’m I’m doing the onboarding with clients, and I’m a designer myself. I have a vision. I I know what I want. And so but I’m not a designer. Like, I don’t know how to use Photoshop. You know what I mean? I’m a Canva girl. I’m not trying to say I’m something that I’m not.

 

Molly Ruland:

You know? But I could definitely mock something up, and then my in-house designer runs with it. But then I’m also not wasting his time when he sends me 5 things. I’m like, none of those were what was inside my head. You know? Like, let me just Let me just

 

Justin Chen:

show you and just drag some blocks around. Yeah.

 

Molly Ruland:

Let me just give you a really terrible version of what I’m thinking, but it saves everybody a lot of time. Me and him, even though it seems counterintuitive if I’m out here making mock ups, but those take minutes, you know, minutes compared to if he was in Photoshop making 5 different drafts. That’s company time. That’s a waste of time. Well, Justin, I really appreciate your time today. I think Pic Fu is super cool. I’m gonna definitely check it out. I know we have an affiliate link in the comments below.

 

Molly Ruland:

I think it’s camp content. They get, 10% off, I think is the,

 

Justin Chen:

50 percent off your first poll with the coupon code stamp content. So, yeah, just sign up for free. So it’s free to sign up for an account. And, there’s even a free onboarding poll so you can experience what it’s like. And then when you go to run your actual one, you could use camp content and get 50% off your first poll. Never any subscription needed, so, you know, use it whenever you have a need to test, and it’s all pay as you go.

 

Molly Ruland:

That’s pretty cool. You know, the savvy business person would say, I should white label this for other people. Right? Like, I’ll test your designs. Yeah. Yeah. Right? You know, they could be running it through and give you results. Interesting. Interesting.

 

Molly Ruland:

Well, Justin, thank you so much for coming on the show. This was really fascinating. I’m definitely gonna check out PickFu for some ads. I’ve been wanting to run a couple Google Ads because they work well, but I have no idea what I’m doing, so I’m feeling a little bit more empowered. I’m gonna go run a couple on PickFu and check it out. And the 50% offer is super generous as a first timer, so, you know, thank you for that. I’m sure some of the audience will take you up on that.

 

Justin Chen:

Cool. Thanks, Molly.

 

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. Absolutely. Before we go, what’s the best place for people to find you?

 

Justin Chen:

LinkedIn is probably the best place. I’m pretty active there, so feel free to follow or DM me there. And then, of course, go to picfu.com, picfu.com to check it out.

 

Molly Ruland:

Awesome. That sounds great. Well, thanks again. Thanks for tuning in to Camp Content. Hope you found this content valuable and gave you some insight on how to test your ideas, products, designs, ads, and everything else on PickFu. Don’t forget 50% off. You can’t beat that. Can’t content gang gang.

 

Molly Ruland:

Until next time, be excellent to each other, and I’ll see you on the Internet. Alright. Alright. Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of Camp Content. This is Molly.

 

Matt Billman:

And this is Matt.

 

Molly Ruland:

And we are Heartcast Media, AKA Camp Content, and we appreciate all of your support. If you found this content valuable, please comment on social media, LinkedIn, wherever you find us and we will make sure to comment back.

 

Matt Billman:

And be sure to go on and subscribe and like on your favorite platforms, Spotify, Itunes, YouTube, you name it. Leave us that subscription. Give us that good review.

 

Molly Ruland:

We’ll love you forever. So until next time, be excellent to each other, and we’ll see you next week. Produced by HeartCast Media. Thank you for tuning in to Camp Content hosted by Heartcast Media. We are a digital content agency focused on content marketing for businesses and brands. If you’re looking to save time and be more consistent with your marketing and need a little guidance on what to say and how to say it and where to say it, we got your back. Book a discovery call today, and let’s talk.

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Molly Ruland did an excellent job producing 25 audio and video episodes of my “Crisis Ahead” podcasts in 2020. She was professional, easy to work with, provided great advice and guidance, and quickly answered all my questions along the way.
Edward Segal
Forbes
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We have been working with Heartcast Media for about a year now. They have been our go-to source for podcast and webinar production. A professional team that makes producing these marketing asset easy, quick and seamless. While podcasting was new for us this last year, we were pros at webinars. However one stop shop allowed us to up our quality and internal efficiency, and having a team that helped us identify opportunities to elevate our game - well, they're hard to come by. Great partner - highly recommend.
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Excellent experience(s) working with the Heartcast Crew. The level of experience and industry knowledge is on a level unlike most. What’s even better, is it’s nestled here in the DMV. Look forward to future projects and couldn’t possibly recommend Molly and the crew more.
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Founder & CEO
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THE company to trust is you need professional content. I have used them for corporate videos for UMD and have attended the classes to benefit my (event planning) business. Not only is the pricing the best in town across the board, but you receive quality products and services.
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