Office Hours with Shaan Puri, Co-Founder, Blab.IM
This episode kicks off a new series where we bring practitioners to CXOTalk so they can answer your questions.
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51:54 
This episode kicks off a new series where we bring practitioners to CXOTalk so they can answer your questions. For this episode we are talking with Shaan Puri, CEO of Blab.IM. Blab is a fast-growing video chat platform that makes public, interactive conversations easy.
To interact with us on Blab, check out this URL: https://blab.im/michael-krigsman-cxotalk-office-hours-with-blab-ceo-shaan-puri
Michael Krigsman:
(00:06) Well don’t you love technology.
Shaan Puri:
(00:09) How did you get it to work, what did you end up doing?
Michael Krigsman:
(00:10) You know, I don’t know. I just kept restarting and eventually the gods chose to smile. Actually at one point I unplugged my camera.
Shaan Puri:
(00:22) Okay there you go. Okay, so quick ground rules for this, people may jump in and they see office hours with me and say, I want to ask feature questions and I want to ask about Blab, I mean I’m leaving it up to you however you want to do this. I’m just kind of warning you so what are the ground rules here?
Michael Krigsman:
(00:39) You know, I think the ground rules are we should do whatever people want, we should have a good time and learn from you. you’ve got a lot of experience, you’re co-founder of this amazing new platform. You have your insight, wisdom, and experience and we should extract that out of you so we can all learn.
Shaan Puri:
(01:02) Okay, sounds a good idea. I would say experience is the one thing that I’m lightest on actually so I would say I have ideas, I have ambition. I have many things, but I would say experience is not one of them. I have experience’s but not necessarily experience.
Michael Krigsman:
(01:17) Well you have experience building this platform.
Shaan Puri:
(01:19) That’s true, I am one of the worlds renowned Blab experts..
Michael Krigsman:
(01:25) so tell us, so just by way of background, so CXOTalk has now being going on this is now episode, I forget, it’s about 153 I believe. And CXOTalk is any opportunity to talk at length with senior executives, often large companies but some small companies as well, investors, authors, industry analysts and really to have conversation with people who are shaping the future.
(02:00) So in this Office Hours segment, and the term Office Hours was your idea, the notion was to make you available to this audience and learn from your practical advice.
Shaan Puri:
(02:17) Cool, the reason I thought Office Hours was an interesting idea was because I don’t like generic advice because everybody’s situation is so contextual, right. like advice that worked for me when I was doing what I was doing is very hard to explain all the variables including timing, team, market conditions all those things. So what works for one person will not necessarily work for another person, so generic advice to me is not that interesting.
(02:41) But hearing, like workshopping an idea together or ripping off ideas together or asking critical questions and hearing what peoples answers are, and saying here’s what I think and here’s what my perspective is. That can be extremely helpful for people. So my goal for any of these things that whenever I try to make myself available and get my head out of the Blab you know day-to-day tasks, well cool. How can I chat with some people and be inspired by what they’re doing, but also help them and not in a way where I just say, ‘hey, I have all the answers. Ask me any question and I’ll tell you the answer and that’s it. That’s the definitive way to do something’, because we all know that’s not how it works.
Michael Krigsman:
(03:23) Well let’s start so tell us briefly what was the concept behind Blab, why Blab?
Shaan Puri:
(03:31) Why Blab? The honest answer of why Blab is that we wanted to do something very different that was out there. Very different to what we were doing at that time, because my company had existed and Blab was actually a pivot. It was a change in direction of what we were building, and when we knew we were going to make that change we knew hey, this experiment may succeed or it may fail but it’s definitely going to be different than what exists today.
(03:36) So we wanted to build something where it’s the most novel idea, that’s not really the case right. There are some other platforms where these features exist is that we wanted to approach it in a different way. So for example we looked at it pretty simply we said, innovation is the measure of change in people’s behaviors. So if you think you have done something innovative but is not changed people’s behaviour I don’t consider it innovation at all.
(04:43) I believe that innovation is something that makes people start to do things differently right. In my space, in the social space, say an easy example of this is like Slack, which is a tool right now that teams are using to communicate, and is definitely not the first team communication tool. It’s definitely not the first chat tool, it’s not definitely the first chat tool with many of these features, but teams are using it and when they use it they send less emails.
(04:48) So like my startup for example we send zero email within Blab, so they’ve actually changed people’s behavior. They’ve changed what people are doing, and they’ve put the features together in such a way that it got a different result. And so with Blab what we wanted to do is the same thing you know, there was facetime, there was Skype, there was many ways to do a video chat but it was always private. And we said what would happen if we made conversations public right. What if I had access to the most interesting conversations between the most interesting people in the world?
(05:16) So, if I’m interested in tech and startups I want to listen to something like this right. I want to hear a conversation between two people who are doing big things in tech. I want to hear conversation between you know; one of my favorite Blab shells is called Work in Progress. It’s a conversation between two CEO companies, Jason Freed, who is an author and CEO of Basecamp, and Nathan who’s the CEO of Highrise and they just chat about what is going on in their business, and that is a conversation I would have never otherwise had access to, but I get it now because there is a platform where they feel comfortable having that conversation in public. And that’s just one example.
(05:51) But for me, for each person there should be many examples or whatever they are interested in. I’m interested in tech and business, but others may be interested in totally different things.
Michael Krigsman:
(05:58) Okay, so Blab is all about the distinguishing feature of Blab is that it has engagement with the audience baked in from the ground up.
Shaan Puri:
(06:09) Yes, so right now for example if I was typing a message into the chat because this is not just a pre-recorded conversation, where you know me and you talked in private, we edit it, and we upload it and then others can view it in their own time.
(06:23) The fun of Blab is being able to let the conversation unfold spontaneously right, somebody just called in and I have no idea what he’s going to talk about, but I know the conversation just changed direction you know as we were going. So, if you’re not interacting with your audience you’re not really blabbing in my opinion.
(06:42) Most people who blab and just want to get a perfect recording, they’re not very interesting when it comes to Blab.
Michael Krigsman:
(07:18) So Shaan and I think what everybody wants to know is how do you get engagement, how do you get an audience, how do you build it?
Shaan Puri:
(07:29) Honestly, it’s not a sexy answer. So there is no quick, fast, simple way to get a big audience, but that is to be expected is it not? So when you do go live on Blab you do share it on to your Twitter, you do share it on your Facebook, so where people who are already interested in you will networks they have the chance to interact with you in a totally different way. So that’s the fastest way to get some audience, right. That’s how we’ve got 77 people so far into this room.
(07:56) But it’s going to get bigger and better the more you do it. The more regularly you do it, the more you add value, the more people will tell your friends about you and that’s how people end up joining. So like I just saw my buddy just joined just now because he probably saw this on Twitter or Facebook and he can let us know in the chat where he saw it.
(08:14) But we want to grow on the back of these social networks where people have already said, hey I want to follow you, hey I want to be friends with you, I want to know what’s going on in your life and Blab gives him a new level of access.
Michael Krigsman:
908:23) So in general if somebody wants to build an audience what are the steps that they should go through in order to become a social media star so to speak. Everybody wants followers.
Shaan Puri:
(08:35) I think you have first got to ask why are you doing it right, so if you don’t know your end goal then you’re not going to be very successful. So you have got to know why you’re doing it, right, I enjoy doing this because I enjoy putting my opinions out there. I do a show for example called Techbits every Thursday, where I just talk about me and somebody else we talk about you know the news in the startup world because that’s what I’m interested in.
(08:57) That’s what I like to do, that’s what I’m reading about and thinking about on my own anyway, so for me it’s an outlet for my thoughts. It’s a way to get it out there in the public without sitting down and writing a blog for an hour. And (b) I want to be more known for it, right, so I want to within the startup world put my opinions and my personality, and my ideas out there. So when I do I enjoy meeting new people. I enjoy who I am and what I think based off of that.
(09:23) So I have two simple goals. I would say if you’re trying to do this, you’ve got to know why you’re going into it from the start. The guy who called in a second ago, he said he’s been on Blab twice and gotten 11 new clients. For him it’s about getting new clients and that’s what his goals are with the platform.
(09:40) But after that there are some pretty simple tips; Get a co-host so that you have someone regularly to talk with. Number two, figure out where your audience already is. So where are people who like this content, where do they already live and get it in front of them. Go and tell them about it, get embedded there. You know, partner with people and say, ‘hey will you promote this with your audience’. That’s the way to get started and then you just do it consistently. You keep doing that consistently then your audience will grow. If you are entertaining people, if you’re educating people your audience will grow over time.
Michael Krigsman:
(10:11) So you have to have a clear understand of your audience and what they actually want.
Shaan Puri:
(10:16) Yeah, and look this advice is not going to seem groundbreaking right. Like Charlene said in the chat, this is basic 101. But just like everything else in life it’s not about finding this new strategy or this new idea that nobody else has, it’s about executing on it right. I could tell you if you say hey I want to get fit, I would tell you, you should eat right and you should exercise regularly, and you don’t need a crazy secret solution to how to do that, you just have to actually follow through on what we know and following through is not always easy.
Michael Krigsman:
(10:46) Is there a difference between developing engagement and building a community?
Shaan Puri:
(10:54) totally, I mean what’s a community? A community is a group of people who share a common trait and common mindset, and so if you want to build a community you’ve got to really understand who you’re recruiting in and once you’ve recruited them you have to align yourself around some kind of value, some kind of principle right.
(11:14) So if you were doing CXOTalk for example let me ask you this who id the community for CXOTalk?
Michael Krigsman:
(11:19) Well our case it’s a relatively small group because it’s people who are very interested in digital transformation and innovation, leadership.
Shaan Puri:
(11:33) So what do those people have in common?
Michael Krigsman:
(11:35) They tend to be decision makers in an organization and tends to be from larger organizations and tends to be quite thoughtful about those topics as well.
Shaan Puri:
(11:48) Okay, so they’re decision makers in large organizations and like what do they want, why do they crave this content? Why do they take the time out of their day to listen to this?
Michael Krigsman:
(11:56) These are great questions. So I think the common thread is they are innovative, they’re open to innovation and as a result they recognize disruption around them and they’re looking for better skills and to share experiences with people who have faced disruption successfully.
Shaan Puri:
(12:20) Okay, so what I heard and putting that into simpler terms I heard, I’m a decision maker in a large company. I’m someone who’s on the way up and I want to know what the best you’re thinking, I want to know all the ideas out there. I crave any edge I can get, any content, any insight, any anecdote I may not have had access to because that just makes me better right. Because those learnings that’s how I learn, I learn through other people out there playing the same game I am, who are out there in this field as well. so that’s what I think, so that’s the shared thing of your community is you guys crave learning and you’ll never stop learning and you learn from each other.
(13:00) So that’s the simple value that your whole community can be based around, and for everybody they have to figure it out what it is for them. Like the Blab community is based around a really simple principle which is speak your mind right. People are here because they want to speak their mind; they want to say what’s on their mind and sometimes they’re just shooting the shit and they want to say what’s going on in their life. And other times it’s professional and they want to say what’s on their minds there, but they’re not afraid to put their ideas out there in the public, right.
(13:26) They know that, hey something good can come of this if I just put it out there in the public. If I say it to these people who are like-minded you know, agree or disagree the ideas are welcome.
Michael Krigsman:
(13:35) Yeah you know there are some great comments taking place in the chat as well. Mark Myer says the better question is who does CXOTalk serve, and I think that’s a really important point is which audience are you actually serving? What do those people want and what are you doing for them? What’s the value or the benefit that you’re giving these folks?
Shaan Puri:
(13:59) Are you asking me?
Michael Krigsman:
(14:00) Well I’m just making comment. He made this comment and I think it’s a fundamental point which is be clear about your audience but at the same time understanding what is it that you are giving to them, what is the specific value and I guess I’m just saying the same thing which you just said in a different way.
Shaan Puri:
(14:20) Yeah totally, I mean hey look, and we’ve got 25 more minutes of this conversation and what I want to do is I want this to be valuable to the people that are out there right. I want them to be excited that they chose to click on this Blab, and I think that one of the ways to do that for us it’s like let’s get to it, let’s make it happen. Let’s improvise, we’re live right now and if somebody actually is trying to go somewhere, if somebody is trying to move up right, like the CXO community if they are trying to learn, let’s learn, whether it’s a specific question somebody has, or they just want to share what they’re doing and let’s rip off of each other right. Let me ask you some questions and let that clarify your thinking because that’s how I learn for example.
(15:00) I learn by going to people who are smarter than me, or are doing things differently to me and I say, ‘hey here’s what I’m thinking, here’s what I’m doing. Ask me the questions, ask me the stupid questions. Ask me the things so I can say it more simply, more powerfully, more interestingly, that’s how I get better. So if anyone’s up for it, the seat is open.
Michael Krigsman:
(16:44) So Shaan, what about audience size, people always want to have a very large audience, but are the different qualities of an audience, you know a large audience where people are drive-bys versus a smaller audience that actually actively engaged on an ongoing basis.
Shaan Puri:
(17:05) Of course, right like for Blab we don’t register the total number of registered users, right, we care about how many people are active, how many people go in and actually watch a stream on a given day; that’s the only metric we measure. You can ask anyone on my team, they wouldn’t even know how many total signups we have because we literally don’t care.
(17:24) And so it’s the same thing with a blab right, what you want are people becoming loyalists, right, if you want to reach the most amount of people you would send out a tweet. Right, go and look at your Twitter impressions for a single tweet. You’ll realize that got in front of a bunch of people.
(17:37) Do they care, do they read it, do they know you better or are they more of an evangelist for you, are they interested in you, do they reply, do they join the conversation, now those are separate questions, so for each platform there’s a different way to use it. There for us this platform is an interactive platform so you should be thinking about, hey, how many people are interacting with me right. Are they watching for a while, are they chatting, are they asking questions, are they calling in. those are signals that you might be doing something right.
(18:05) We had a community organized party here, you know there are a couple of hundred people in our office – fantastic party by the way, but the main thing I was struck by was these people know each other; they’ve never met in real life, and when they came to the party it was like they knew everything about each other because the depth of interaction that you’ll get in just a couple of minutes will make you feel that you know that person.
(18:27) You will feel that you want to give them hug because you hung out already, you talked already, you’ve seen this person in action and it’s not a cold introduction. So if you’re doing well on Blab it’s probably because you’re interacting with your audience and probably because that they feel that they know you and formed some connection with you.
Michael Krigsman:
(18:41) So forming a connection is the key.
Shaan Puri:
(18:44) It’s always the key in everything in life and that’s not just a Blab lesson.
(20:47) We’ve seen conferences, we’ve seen all kinds of different things on on Blab because you only want to use technology if it removes a barrier. And when I go to a conference and I’ve got to fly there, book a hotel, by a conference ticket, and then try to sit in the room and absorb as much information as I can those are barriers. And if I can instead watch from my couch and not fly anywhere and watch on my own time, the replay for example, may be call in and ask a question where you know normally I can’t rely upon the stage and ask that person a question, those are barriers that you have removed. And it’s not necessarily better or worse is different, and it will work differently for different people.
Michael Krigsman:
(22:24) So Shaan how did you get Tony Robbins to participate?
Shaan Puri:
(22:30) We didn’t, he found it somehow. Blabs supposed to grow organically right, it’s a public system so it’s out there and people tell people they say, hey this might be a good way for you to do X, and in this case one of the users is doing an interview with Tony Robbins, so she invited him on, and he cleared it with his people, his people talked to my people and here we are he’s going to be on today.
(23:14) Truth be told we haven’t looked and for us we aren’t selling a service to a particular type of people. We look at this like blogging. We look at this like podcasting right. it’s just a medium and it’s going to be used, like blogging, there are teams who blog, there are CEOs who blog. There’s business who blog. There is really not a specific niche we want to target. That’s why we don’t measure which niche is it today, because that will give us the false illusion of that hey, these early adopters that’s who it’s for.
(23:43) We want to make it as open as possible where whoever want to have a conversation in the public this is a way for you to do it. So men, women, children, professional, non-professionals it doesn’t matter.
(24:27) One thing you might have seen today is Producthunt uses it, and they have a giant startup community on Producthunt and we power all their Producthunt live channel. So they embedded it on Producthunt dot com and they invite guests, everyone from Chris Socco, early investor on Instagram, Uber, Twitter he was on. They bring on the who’s who of makers investors, you know different people in the startup world, so that’s an example of people using it in the startup world but also an example of what you can benefit from.
(24:58) So like when Producthunt uses it they bring a ton of people to the startup platform. And now that’s a demographic that exists on Blab who might be interested in your show as well. So hopefully these audiences start to cross-pollinate and you know people who are interested in startup stuff will discover all the best people in startups.
Michael Krigsman:
(25:31) So Shaan can you give us a sense of the growth that you’ve seen
Shaan Puri:
(25:38) Rapid!
Michael Krigsman:
(25:39) Yeah very rapid it seems like it’s just gaining in popularity very quickly.
Shaan Puri:
(25:45) Yeah, I mean it’s one of those things where its spreading very organically honestly like, all growth is not created equal, also for example you can do a lot of paid marketing and your numbers will go up, but you have to know that is the source of it. So far are we were always curious does one blab creates another blab right, when you do this just like now and Bethany sees it and says this might work for in my community, and then she is going to go and create one and that’s how we grow. So we measure really specifically, does one blab create another blab and does the viewers of one create the next and so that is what we are most interested in, and we’re really just getting started with this and we haven’t even started optimizing that, but that is the next phase for us.
Michael Krigsman:
(26:27) and that’s essentially the definition of sharing and ultimately going viral as one begets the next.
Shaan Puri:
(26:33) Exactly, that’s the viral loop; one user creates the next user.
Michael Krigsman:
(26:37) What are your tips for running a successful blab?
Shaan Puri:
(26:42) Like I said get a co-host, make sure you have good Wi-Fi, have something you want to say, and I guess for me it’s read the audience, right. You’ve got a lot in concert going on in here and you want a pulse for when they’re bored or whether there excited, and do they have questions and do they want to call then or whatever it may be and use that as your guiding light, so use that to decide to wear next.
Michael Krigsman:
(27:22) So a lot of it really does come down to getting a feel for as you said what the audience is, and what are some of the tell-tale signs that tell you that you have the pulse of the audience or you need to refine it.
Shaan Puri:
(27:39) Well all the features should support that right, so right now you are getting props, that’s a signal that people like that question. Right, you want to get that immediate feedback. If I get it it’s a hey,, they like that answer, they’re laughing or whatever it may be. So the tell-tale signs are obvious and they should be in your face. If people are giving you props, people chatting, people asking questions, people calling in. People saying afterwards, hey that was great and can’t wait for the next one. People following you. Those are the signals that you are doing well.
(27:04) The opposite is also true, if you’re boring and you see people leaving walking out the door, that’s a good sign that it sucks.
Michael Krigsman:
(28:12) And if people are leaving what do you recommend? How do you adjust, what do you do?
Shaan Puri:
(28:18) You learn from it right, you figure out why and what was I saying before they left right. Did I not deliver very well, was my title not indicative of what actually was happening inside. You know, figure out who is your market, may be that just wasn’t the group of people who were interested in that type of thing that you were doing. So maybe you will say okay, let me recruit more people who are interested in the type of content that I’m providing.
Michael Krigsman:
(29:06) What are some of the interesting communities that you’ve seen on Blab?
Shaan Puri:
(29:12) So we’ve seen the start-up community, we’ve seen the marketing community, we’ve seen the sports community, so ESPN uses us for example. We’ve seen a lot of stuff like just up-and-coming which is like there’s religious stuff that goes on right. So there are people who want to talk about religion or the absence of religion. There is you know a few that are related to like almost like mommy bloggers, so people are talking about parenting or whatever it may be.
(30:34) We look at it like a funnel, so there’s people at the top of the funnel who have come to Blab and not signed up, and the next step is they’ve signed up, and after that they have actually done something and entered a blab. And that’s when we start to pay attention, but we want to make the whole funnel just frictionless. So if you’ve signed up and haven’t done anything I would like to learn from you. We don’t count that as a win, we don’t count that as a user who is active, but it is interesting for us to learn from, and we care about that whole chain.
(31:01) Why are some people so addicted where they are on it 12 hours a day, and why are some people you know visiting blab but not actually doing anything. We try to learn from each of those cases.
(31:11) What we measure ourselves on is actually something called watch time. So what we measure internally, the big graph on our screen that we take a particular shot of that number when it is going up is watch time. So how many minutes a day do people spend watching a blab? That’s the metric we care about. That’s the biggest sign that they are getting some value out of this.
Michael Krigsman:
(31:32) So you are looking at watch time for the user, but then you must also be looking obviously at the aggregate number of users as well?
Shaan Puri:
(31:39) Yeah, the total and the daily for each user so the average per user, and the total for a day or a week or a month.
Michael Krigsman:
(31:50) And the total number of users?
Shaan Puri:
(31:52) Not so much the total of users. We look at that as a secondary thing. For us it is watch time first, and then when we notice that watch time goes up it’s often because there is a bunch of new users joining. But not always, sometimes it’s been a content and sometimes different things affecting it. So the number that we care about in the end is watch time, and everything else is just a way to get the watch time to go up.
Michael Krigsman:
(30:12) It’s interesting with CXOTalk I often use the similar metric of minutes watched
Shaan Puri:
(32:21) Yeah exactly.
Michael Krigsman:
(32:22) It reflects both having a broad audience, but even more importantly the depth of people. But the minutes watched per video. So I’m actually interested in both; how many people are watching. And out of that group which ones are spending a lot of time watching the videos, and who is just kind of a drive-by one-off and maybe they are there for a couple of minutes as opposed to watching for 20 minutes or half an hour or something like that.
Shaan Puri:
(32:57) Yeah, exactly like I think this is something that companies struggle with right, so for Twitter for example, they really have struggled with teaching the market of how to value them. So what they say is people are asking Twitter, how are you going to get your monthly active users to go up, and why? Because that’s the metric Facebook uses, and Twitter is not the same business as Facebook.
(33:20) And for us and active user is not the same as an active user on Buzzfeed, who skims an article and leaves right. For example, our user, our average daily user watches 65 minutes a day of content. So a user is not a user right, one does not equal one for different services so you’ve got to know, I mean the takeaway for you guys it’s not just you know this is very blab specific stuff, but you’ve got to define your metric, the key metric to make it the one metric, to make at the whole company knows about and the whole times. So for us it’s watch time, and everybody on a team knows about watch time. They know when it’s going up and they know when it’s going down, and that’s the thing we focus on. But then eventually you’ve got to educate the investors in the market that that’s the number we care about and here’s why, and that’s how you should judge us.
Michael Krigsman:
(34:04) Yeah explaining the reasons why. The fact that your average is 65 minutes it’s amazing. It’s very very high.
Shaan Puri:
(34:13) It is very high right. that’s why the investors love us!
Michael Krigsman:
(34:18) I mean it goes to the very heart of that you are really doing something that is really satisfying a need for these folks that they’re investing that much time.
Shaan Puri:
(34:28) You said it right, perfect.
Michael Krigsman:
(36:24) Somebody asked the question about notification. What do you think about notifications, it was a pretty vague question but how do you think about notifications and how does that work in Blab and what is your reason and logic behind how you do notifications.
Shaan Puri:
(36:51) So I think just because something is live doesn’t mean it has to be a surprise, so far are we would think about that as scheduling for example. You can schedule and say, hey we are going to have this conversation, hey we are going to have this life announcement in three hours. That’s totally fine, that’s great, that’s how life streaming should work in life in my opinion.
(37:10) Notifications are similar where I don’t think we do a good job today. In fact I think we do a very bad job today, so the question is how do you do notifications right for life stream platform. Some think we are thinking about a lot, and something that we have in the pipeline for where I can’t reveal exactly what it is yet, mostly because we haven’t finalized it but, we think notifications are supercritical right. You have to be able to tell you audience, hey, I’m talking about this right now, come on in and join the conversation.
(37:40) For me notifications is not an notifications, it’s an invitation to participate. It’s an invitation to say hey, do you want to talk about this to, or would you want to be a part of this, and so we need to think about it that way, and there is definitely notification overload in many cases for people who are following a bunch of people. So we need to be able to intelligently notify you about the stuff that you are going to like, and not bombard you with notifications that you’re not responding to from people may be who you follow, but you actually don’t want to go to all of their blabs.
Michael Krigsman:
(38:08) It’s interesting that you say it notifications are actually invitations to participate.
Shaan Puri:
(38:13) Yeah, because in every other product that’s not the case. A notification means something happened and check that out at you all leisure. The reason the blabs notifications should be exciting is because you can actually join in. You can actually not only hear it but chat, ask questions, have access you know call in. Notifications are an invitation for us.
Michael Krigsman:
(38:34) Great, you know I think we are just about out of time. Any final thoughts Shaan you would like to share about what you are doing and the logic behind it, the reasons, the underlying reasons behind what you’re doing and what makes it successful.
Shaan Puri:
(38:50) Look I think the people who are here are already sold. The people who are in this room listening right now those are the ones who are already sold. So I don’t want to sell to what is already sold. I think I will share a thought with you and it’s a thought I had this morning. It has nothing to do with Blab.
(39:05) This thought was just about lying, and I noticed the other day in a blab that people were using language that was softening what they really meant. So they would say something like, ‘you know, I’m sure he’s a great guy but’, and then they would say something extremely negative. And the reality is you actually not true he’s a great guy, he’s more than like being not a great person if that’s what you actually mean.
(39:30) And so I was just thinking about this the other day, how can I be more clear, more honest in what I say and not using language that just softens it for softening sake. And that’s what I’m going to do from now on. I encourage you guys to keep track of the words you’re using and see if anything interesting comes of it. If you find that you either communicate more effectively or less effectively and there is a reason to soften all of these statements.
(39:50) So, that’s what I will leave you with Michael, it is a random thought I had this morning about how we often try to soft and something and actually turn it into a life. And it we just should say it how it is, and say what we really mean.
Michael Krigsman:
(40:12) Yeah, it’s an interesting point, when you soften something then perhaps the listener may not be turned away, or to put it the other way, if you present a hard truth to somebody you may turn off the listener, and so the communication ends. And yet on the other hand on the other extreme, as you say if you present a thought that is overly filtered and the point of that communication may be lost entirely.
Shaan Puri:
(40:42) Exactly.
Michael Krigsman:
(40:44) And that thank you so much Shaan Puri, who is the co-founder and CEO of Blab for taking the time and sharing with us today.
Shaan Puri:
(40:55) Thank you all for being here, and hopefully that was entertaining. It was a lot of fun, and let me know what you think as always, put it in the chat, Tweet at me, let me know what you think. I use all of these just as a learning experience, so good conversation Michael. Good hanging out with you.
Michael Krigsman:
(41:10) Thank you so much, okay everybody have a great day thanks so much, bye bye Shaan.
Companies Mentioned on Today’s show:
Basecamp https://basecamp.com
Blab.im https://blab.im
ESPN www.espn.com
Facebook www.facebook.com
Facetime www.apple.com/us/ios/facetime
Highrise HQ https://highrisehq.com
Producthunt www.producthunt.com
Skype www.skype.com
Slack www.slack.com
Twitter www.twitter.com
Shaan Puri:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ShaanVP
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/shaanpuri