One of the biggest pain points for first-time founders is a lack of structure within their business. One of the most popular frameworks for quickly creating structure is the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), but does it really live up to the hype?

In this episode of In Demand, Asia and Kim do a deep dive into EOS. They break down its key components, where it works (and where it doesn’t), and why most founders should treat it more like a toolbox than a strict rulebook.

Got a question you’d like Asia to unpack on the podcast? Record a voicemail here.

Links:

• DemandMaven
• EOS Worldwide
• Traction by Gino Wickman - the book introducing EOS

• (00:00:25) - Rediscovering campaign anxiety.
• (00:06:00) - EOS overview: what it is and why a client recently reached out asking about it.
• (00:11:00) - “Right person, right seat” explained.
• (00:15:45) - Issues tracking.
• (00:20:00) - Where EOS can fall apart for small teams.
• (00:29:30) - The parts of EOS that Asia likes and uses.
• (00:32:00) - Rocks vs. OKRs: what’s the difference and when does it matter?
• (00:39:15) - SOPs vs. “The Way”: document your processes, whatever you call them.
• (00:42:15) - When are core values useful and when are they just performative?
• (00:52:00) - Picking and choosing from EOS: take what works, leave the rest.

Most SaaS companies know customer research matters, but too often, it becomes a one-off project or gets pushed down the list.

In this episode of In Demand, Asia and Kim break down how to make customer research a core part of your growth process. They share how their own approach to research sprints has evolved, what mistakes they made early on, and what they do now to consistently uncover insights that drive real decisions.

You’ll also learn how to structure a fast, effective sprint, when to run different types of interviews (from churn to win-loss), and how to turn interviews into strategy and not just documentation.

Got a question you’d like Asia to unpack on the podcast? Record a voicemail here.

Links:

• DemandMaven
• Bob Moesta
• User Interviews
• Respondent.io
• Wynter

• (00:01:00) - What Asia and Kim have changed about their original research interviews.
• (00:04:09) - How offering small incentives improved response rates and interview quality.
• (00:06:30) - Why letting clients watch live calls builds buy-in and alignment.
• (00:11:30) - Debriefing after every interview to map the four forces and pull insights from interviews.
• (00:15:15) - Going beyond the Jobs To Be Done research interview format to do UX interviews, churn interviews, and more.
• (00:18:55) - When does it make sense to use tools like userinterviews.com for interview candidates instead of going directly to your customers?
• (00:24:45) - Why gathering qualitative information is so important, especially for bootstrapped founders.
• (00:25:30) - What you can learn from churn interviews that you're missing with only a cancellation survey.
• (00:29:30) - Why win–loss and competitive intelligence interviews are underused growth tools.
• (00:34:10) - Budget-friendly recruiting tools to help you get started.

Asia just hit her 90th day as fractional CMO with a new company, and in this episode of the In Demand Podcast, she shares everything she's taking away from those first three months.

This episode is a behind-the-scenes look at how a marketing leader gets up to speed, creates clarity, and shapes outcomes. Asia and Kim cover everything from digging through legacy docs to building team structure and launching new systems.

Got a question you’d like Asia to unpack on the podcast? Record a voicemail here.

Links:

• DemandMaven
• OfferingTree

• (00:01:40) - What Asia focused on first: people, processes, tools, data.
• (00:07:30) - Identifying mission-critical gaps.
• (00:10:00) - Once you identify the gaps, you can start to find new opportunities.
• (00:12:55) - The first two artifacts that Asia created: CMO's Mandate, and a marketing strategy for the rest of the year.
• (00:17:15) - Month two: hiring new talent, refining workstreams, aligning on OKRs.
• (00:19:55) - Forecasting vs. budgeting vs. planning.
• (00:26:45) - Translating CAC and trial goals into action.
• (00:32:05) - Month three: getting executors executing .
• (00:35:00) - Relationship-building with product and sales.
• (00:36:30) - What comes next: aligning the ships, creating momentum, and scaling what works.

Welcome back to In Demand!

In this episode, Asia and Kim take on three topics founders don’t talk about enough: how to listen for insight during customer research, what it really looks like to run a fast-moving (but focused) marketing team, and the difference between great managers and great leaders.

Whether you're hiring your first team, navigating leadership, or trying to pull messaging clarity from customer interviews, this one will hit home.

Got a question you’d like Asia to unpack on the podcast? Record a voicemail here.

Links:

• DemandMaven
• Bob Moesta (Jobs to Be Done)
• Examples of great leaders:
  • Steve McLeod - founder of Feature Upvote
  • Josh Ho – founder of Referral Rock
  • Rand Fishkin – CEO of SparkToro
• The Captain Class by Sam Walker

• (00:01:00) - The difference in how Asia listens during customer research interviews.
• (00:06:30) - Your prospects might be comparing you to solutions you aren't aware of.
• (00:08:27) - Once you start noticing a pattern, look at the behaviors that the pattern is leading to.
• (00:10:45) - What’s a value theme, and how can you use them to attract better-fitting customers?
• (00:15:50) - How Asia turns research insights into actual team priorities.
• (00:20:30) - What it really looks like to operate as a fractional CMO.
• (00:24:20) - Inside a product marketing launch: managing briefs, ownership, and execution.
• (00:31:55) - Leadership vs. management: what’s the difference, and what are the traits of good managers vs. the traits of good leaders?
• (00:42:00) - What makes someone a visionary, and how does that fit into leadership and management?
• (00:46:00) - Personal examples: Asia’s mom as a bank manager, Kim’s thoughts on captains and coaches.

What happens when the market wants one thing, but you want to build something else?

In this episode of the In Demand Podcast, Asia and Kim unpack the emotional tension founders face when their product attracts a different kind of customer than they originally set out to serve.

From internal conflict to organizational confusion, they explore how this misalignment can quietly stall growth and what it takes to move forward with clarity.

Got a question you'd like Asia to unpack on the podcast? Record a voicemail here.

Links:

DemandMaven

Dr. Sherry Walling

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Keeping Your Shit Together by Sherry and Rob Walling

• (00:03:00) - When your product grows in a direction you didn’t intend.
• (00:05:40) - The founder-product conflict: There is a new segment of the market that is growing and more important, but you’re not as excited to serve them.
• (00:11:30) - When you are serving multiple segments, you eventually face a choice on which segment you will focus your product.
• (00:14:40) - How this tension has shown up in the history of DemandMaven and how they've adapted to it.
• (00:15:11) - Start by mapping your options and the trade-offs of each. But if you want to move forward, you've got to make peace with the trade-offs.
• (00:19:00) - You can commit to one path and still pivot later. Decisions are not permanent.
• (00:21:40) - Not choosing a clear direction is what kills momentum. Committing to one path, even if it's not the best path, will almost certainly be better than thrashing between options.
• (00:24:25) - What keeps founders stuck: emotional attachment, ego, identity, fear, and discomfort.
• (00:28:05) - The conflict has to be resolved. Staying stuck drains time, energy, and growth.
• (00:31:00) - Resource: Dr. Sherry Walling’s work on founder emotional health.

When does it make sense to bring on a Fractional CMO, and what should you expect from one?

In this episode, Asia and Kim dig into the ins and outs of Fractional CMOs: what they do, when to hire one, how they’re different from heads of marketing or full-time CMOs, and the biggest risks and rewards founders should know.

Asia also reflects on her current work as a Fractional CMO and shares how she approaches structure, team-building, and strategy without getting stuck in the weeds.

Got a question you'd like Asia to unpack on the podcast? Record a voicemail here.

• (00:02:05) - Fractional vs. full-time: what’s the difference and when does each make sense?
• (00:03:30) - A CMO’s core responsibilities: budget, strategy, and team.
• (00:05:30) - You don’t need a team in place already to hire a CMO, but you do need budget and runway.
• (00:07:00) - Heads of marketing often get hired like CMOs, but they’re not the same.
• (00:11:45) - A head of marketing thinks in channels, whereas a CMO thinks in markets, products, and investment strategy.
• (00:13:45) - Product marketing, demand gen, hiring, retention, and outsourcing are important parts of a CMO's responsibilities.
• (00:16:15) - Attribution and analytics, even if it's messy, is something that a CMO should take ownership of.
• (00:21:30) - You might need a CMO if you’re making investments that aren’t paying off and no one’s connecting the dots.
• (00:23:15) - Trial periods are worthwhile when you're hiring for a CMO role since hiring the wrong person in a c-level role is costly.
• (00:26:50) - There are different types of CMOs, some are more visionary and others are more operational.
• (00:33:15) - The biggest thing to monitor with a fractional role is if marketing falls behind because there isn't a full-time leader.
• (00:36:00) - Less time can lead to more focus. A great fractional CMO will have a high level of clarity about priorities.

Growth isn’t just marketing. And if you’re stuck and growth isn’t happening, you’ll need to look beyond marketing and acquisition.

In this episode of the In Demand Podcast, Asia and Kim break down what it means to troubleshoot growth. They explain how growth work goes beyond campaigns and into retention, expansion, pricing, onboarding, and more.

Plus, they dive into how product marketing overlaps and differs from growth and why founders often under-invest in the real levers that move growth.

Got a question you'd like Asia to unpack on the podcast? Record a voicemail here.

• (00:01:44) - Growth marketing vs. head of growth: very different roles.
• (00:04:47) - A head of growth looks across the whole business, not just marketing.
• (00:05:40) - An early mistake founders often make is to focus only on marketing and acquisition when they are trying to solve growth problems.
• (00:08:07) - The moment Asia realized marketing wasn’t enough and how that led her into growth.
• (00:12:40) - Troubleshooting growth means identifying why growth is slow or stuck.
• (00:15:00) - Step by step on troubleshooting growth and benchmarks that matter.
• (00:22:45) - Troubleshooting = identifying root causes and giving you a clear plan to fix them.
• (00:30:30) - Product marketing overlaps with growth, but it's not the same job.
• (00:35:56) - Recap of what differences exist between a product marketer, a VP of growth, and a marketer.

Most SaaS companies hit growth plateaus, and too many founders assume the problem is either unsolvable or too complex to fix. In reality, that's rarely true.

In this episode of In Demand, Asia and Kim unpack how to shift your mindset from "This can't be solved" to "Who's already solved this, and how can I learn from them?"

They also introduce CUES, a prioritization framework that helps you focus on the right growth ideas instead of spinning your wheels.

Got a question you'd like Asia to unpack on the podcast? Record a voicemail here.

• (00:00:55) - Why founders often treat growth problems like they’re unsolvable.
• (00:05:22) - There are a lot of founders creating pain for themselves by trying to reinvent the wheel.
• (00:08:02) - Almost every single growth problem has been solved before, you just need to find the people who did it.
• (00:09:00) - Books, articles, and experts: where to actually look for answers.
• (00:14:10) - Learning enough to get started and putting your knowledge into practice.
• (00:19:15) - One of the things founders need to be able to do at a high level is understand trade offs.
• (00:24:00) - What does the process look like for troubleshooting growth?
• (00:25:00) - What net revenue retention tells you and how to find and use it in ProfitWell.
• (00:34:00) - Spotting the levers: activation, positioning, and pricing.
• (00:39:00) - Prioritization traps: why common frameworks like ICE often fail.
• (00:42:55) - Try CUES instead: Confidence, Understanding, Ease, and Speed.
• (00:55:05) - Recapping what was covered on this episode.