Adrienne Barnes

Growth Insights

Founder

Best Buyer Persona

Have worked with various clients to understand user behavior. 

Effective and clear communicator
Project management for efficiency and completion according to predetermined timelines
Completes research projects with high-quality insights quickly 
Has experimented with multiple research methods, tactics, and resources and knows when to utilize which method, tactic, or resource
An empathetic interviewer that puts participants at ease to gather quality insights
Experienced in qualitative and quantitative research methods 
Plan, conduct, and analyze discovery and evaluative user research through both qualitative and quantitative methodologies
Establish a clear and documented approach to user research to inform product strategy
Utilizes consumer and marketing data to help inform  understanding of user behavior
Identifies emerging themes and trends across multiple research initiatives
Makes the voice of the user heard across the business
Implements ethnographic research methods
Journey Mapping
Buyer Personas
Audience Segmentation
Software and Tools			
Gsuite, Typeform, Miro, Asana, Notion, SurveyMonkey, Excel, Otter.ai, Grain, Fireflies.ai, Google Meet, Brand24, Reddit, SEMrush, Audiense, Sparktoro, Zoom, Airtable, Dovetail, 

Presentations and Writing
TaughtJTBD interview tactics to software founders at the Business of Software Workshop
Wrote about my survey design process for Discovery Sprints
Shared my process on the SaaS Club Podcast

Harvard Business School

Taught an MBA class on customer development and research at Harvard Business School.

Speaker

Business of Software Conference

Jobst to be done speaker

WebPageTest by Catchpoint

-Developed market research process that met organization goals and questions
-Assisted the Catchpoint team in developing a new paid product that aligned with the needs of customer segments
- Research informed new website design and copy

Persona and Market Research Consultant

Semrush

-Collaborated with the product marketing team to perform user research prior to a new product launch
-Analyzed data with 20 1:1 interviews, 131 survey responses, social listening, and digital ethnography
-Supported the team in the launch of two new products and understanding their potential user base

Market Research Consultant

HeadSpin

I led the content team at HeadSpin. I collaborated cross-functionally with product and sales to create sales assets, product marketing material, and sales enablement and case studies. 
I managed a team of writers, edited material, conducting thought-leadership interviews to showcase executive knowledge and expertise. 
I developed a content management system, developed the internal content library, and worked with product marketing to understand the competitive landscape.
I created positioning and messaging statements that informed wider content across the website, PR announcements and blog posts.

Content Team Lead

Stripe

I repurposed content for Stripe for use in their blog.

Content Writer

I help SaaS company's speak with their customers to unlock growth and profit. When a company builds community, it reduces churn, increases sales, and creates brand loyalty.
Community marketing is all about creating and nurturing a community around your company/product and finding the best ways to serve your customers. 
I've been a community builder for over ten years and recently shifted that expertise and combined it with my passion for inbound marketing to help SaaS companies identify their positioning in the market, help them actually understand who their ideal customers are, where they are online, and what issues their products solve, and the how to nurture them after they've converted.

SaaS Content Marketer I Content Strategist I Content Writer

Adrienne Nakohl Copywriting

Freelance copywriting with a focus on research, blogging, and article writing for small businesses and entrepreneurs.

Freelance Conent writer

Finding product-market fit can feel like an endless pursuit for early-stage founders. 

But what if I told you that it doesn't have to take 24 to 36 months to achieve it? At Growth Insights, we help early-stage startups create a product market flywheel that generates growth, boosts customer retention, and minimizes churn.

Our approach not only shortens the time it takes to achieve PMF, but also establishes the systems and processes necessary to support your company's growth. Say goodbye to the frustration of searching for PMF or losing it altogether. With our product-market flywheel, you'll always be in sync with your market's demands. 

If you need to find PMF faster free to DM or email me, anb at adriennenakohl dot com.

Hey LinkedIn, 
Can you do me a favor? 

I'd love to expand my network, but not in a cringy way. In a "Have you met Adrienne?" kind of way. 

I use to use the bird app to meet interesting folks randomly, but it doesn't seem to work the same way over here. 

So, I have an ask, if you know me, and think there's someone in your circle that I don't know, but should,  can you tag them in the comments?

And as an intro:
Hey, I'm Adrienne. I've been in the SaaS marketing/market research space for about 7 years, and have loved it all. We currently live on a 100-acre farm with pecan orchards, pigs, chickens, and a big garden I'm trying not to kill. 

I have a rule that if I know you, and you wrote a book, I buy the book immediately. 

I'm so excited to buy and read Georgiana Laudi and Claire Suellentrop new book Forget the Funnel! 

I highly recommend this to SaaS folks who are trying to figure out who their customers are and how you should market to them. 


I took a new founder's discovery call, here are the mistakes they made and how you can avoid them.

💫First, what they did right. 💫

I was their perfect ICP. They were creating an insurance platform/service for entrepreneurs, and we had just lost our insurance bc my hubs quit his full time job. Right person, right time. 

🛑They had three folks on the call. 
One guy introduced themselves, another asked the questions, and the other might have been taking notes, but him being there felt awkward to me. 

🛑 When they realized I was a good fit, they switched from being interested in me to only being interested in their product.

🛑 The interviewer went straight into sales. He demo'd his product, and didn't ask anymore questions about myself, struggle, or situation.

🛑 I asked for more info, for another call or even follow up information, and they never reached back out. 

Here's what you should do instead.

✅️ pick one person to do the calls. I know it's important, but recording the call and debriefing afterwards is better for the interviewee. This is supposed to be a friendly chat.

✅️ Stay focused on learning about the person. Never switch into sales mode on a discovery call. If it seems like they really are a good fit, and show interest offer to schedule a demo at a later date.

✅️ Follow up if they ask you to. While this isn't a good time to sell, but it is a good time to build relationships, and do what you say you're going to do. 

Hope that helps a bit if you're in discovery phase. 

If you'd like to learn about finding product-market alignment, you might enjoy my newsletter, Growth Insights.  
New issue publishes in an hour. 
You know where the link is. 😄

I'm editing next week's podcast episode, and I just heard myself ask an awful question. It's honestly embarrassing. 

Just a half-asked, little rambly, and not fully focused question. 

It's also one of the first eps I recorded, so I'm cringing at myself from just a few months ago. Which shows some growth, so there's my silver lining. 

P.S. Despite my rambling question, I'm chatting with Georgiana Laudi and she is an amazing guest. The nuanced conversation we had is one you won't want to miss! 

The episode publishes on Tuesday!

You will never, ever find product-market alignment if you don't understand your customers.

And it's pretty darn hard to understand folks you don't hang around and talk to. 

How can a SaaS startup differentiate its product and be 10x better than the competition?

Unless you’re intentionally paraphrasing, the quote really is 10X better than the status quo, not 10X better than the competition.

What this means is, for a particular job-to-be-done, can you be 10X better than the current way they’re doing it. This used to be a LOT easier in SaaS when competing against either no-software, or excel-sheets :). Not so easy when competing against other software, or other SaaS.

Consider Tagalys.com as an example. For e-commerce merchants who create category pages on Magento, creating a page (say diamond rings between $1000-$4500) usually takes 20 minutes, to pick the products, etc. Instead Tagalys let’s them do this within 2 minutes. This is a 10X improvement in time spent. Not just that they even provide SEO optimization.

Another example is iZooto. On Shopify Plus they provide some customers with 10X increase in CTR.

Or consider Gong.io - no human sales manager can listen to all their sales teams sales calls. But with Gong doing transcription, ML, to figure out key interventions, now the manager can coach sales executives on specific improvements. Essentially they are 100X better than status quo, and they have results to back it up.

So to sum up. Can you be 10X better than status quo, despite all the software out there? YES.

Find the bottleneck in your customer’s business where you can be 10X better, for which you need to understand their business better than they do. I’ve found that Theory of Constraints helps with this (read Goal, Necessary But Not Sufficient).

And if you get to 5X better or 7X better, that itself will give you a tremendous advantage in the market.

The market wins despite what you've got going on internally. 

Read the tweeted quote in Lenny Rachitsky's substack today and love how he explained finding a market for bootstrapped vs venture funded businesses. 

So how do you make sure you build for the right market?

1. Solve a problem you understand for people you know.

2. Make sure your market is big enough to scale. How many folks could buy?

3. Be realistic about the amount of pain you're solving. So often I hear from founders that their product is a Tylenol and meets a huge pain, but the market responds differently. (it's ok to be a vitamin, we need vitamins to be healthy.)

These are first questions you should answer while building. 

The answers will never suggest you shouldn't build, but can help you understand the type of business you *could* build. 

Founders, hear me out.

Your business does not have to kill you in order for it to be successful. (yes, I saw this advice)

You can find Product-Market alignment while delegating and using resources to your advantage.

You can find product-market alignment while taking a vacation.

You can find product-market alignment while enjoying evenings with your family.

This is why, as a concept, PMF is good for investors, but terrible for founders. 

Keep working on your product and learning about your customers. You'll get there. 💪

#productmarketfit #productmarketflywheel



"Should we be doing X at this stage?"
I've been asked this question a few times in the last few weeks, so I thought I'd share my answer here.

Some context: It's early-stage folks trying to decide if they should peruse fun marketing ideas like- community, brand efforts, or thought leadership that doesn't tie directly to a conversion. 

I agree with Matthew Wensing when he was on 'Break Through the Stall'. At an early stage, every effort needs to "start at the cash register". 

Meaning, put effort into the things you know are going to bring revenue in quickly. Community, brand, thought-leadership are all valuable marketing assets, but they are long-long game plays.

 If you're still trying to find PMF, and get your product-market flywheel in motion, you don't have time or the resources to dedicate to tasks that don't have a payoff. 

I highly recommend this episode! Matt shares how Summit broke its stall and has gained a lot of momentum in growth. Full ep linked in the comments, or listen wherever you hear your podcasts! 

"Founders are the ceiling."- Johnny Page.

I chatted with Johnny yesterday and when he said this it really stuck with me.

A founder's beliefs, knowledge base, network, and skill is literally the ceiling of growth that can be accomplished for a start-up.

This is one reason why I love helping founder's with a growth mindset. 

Here are three ways to have a growth mindset and get out of your own businesses way. 

1. Don't let fear stop you.

I've spent a lot of time working founders through their fear of failure. It's so hard to experiment and test if you think every iteration has to be perfect. 

At this stage, open yourself up to failure and learning. Stalling for perfection is only going to slow you down. 

2. Gather other's insights and opinions, but don't weigh them more than your own. 

Often, founders I work with have a large support network (which is amazing!) but everyone in their network has an idea on how their business should be run. But without all the nuance and understanding of the founder. 

So, be open to taking advice, but treat it like nostalgia.

3. Keep your business at an arms length.

If you consider your business to be your baby, you'll be emotionally attached in a way that's detrimental. 

I spoke with a founder this week who was clear in her objectives and knew exactly at what point she would need to pull the plug. If you think it's your baby, you won't see these moments with clarity. 

I'd love to hear from you.

What ways have you kept a growth mindset for yourself to improve your business?

If you want to learn how to grow your business and learn the best ways to go-to-market in just a few minutes a week, sign up for my newsletter. New issue is going out tomorrow! You know where the link is. ;)

 #founders #growth #learning #mindset 

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