Every founder faces this eventually. You spend every waking second just trying not to fail completely, so when it's actually working, you barely recognize it and don't know what to do with yourself. That's where Patrik Inzinger is. appointmed is calm and profitable at €2M ARR, ~1% churn, and a team of 8 that no longer needs him day to day. Which leaves: who am I, and what do I even want out of life?

Cohost Dr. Sherry Walling and I dig into that question — and discover it was never about a bigger revenue number. It's about being seen.

A candid working session including:
- comparing yourself to other people's headlines
- is a calm, profitable company "enough"
- why hypergrowth isn't fun, it's fulfilling
- the hunger to be recognized
- the failure story he's carried for 15 years
- choosing the right mirrors, ignoring the trolls
- separating the company's mission from your own
- the "what would have to be true" growth test

ME ME ME!!!
Subscribe on YouTube
📘 Get my book 📘
My bio + 20 years of articles
Twitter | LinkedIn

STARRING PATRIK INZINGER
appointmed
Homepage
Slow & Steady newsletter
Twitter | LinkedIn | Bluesky

WITH COHOST DR. SHERRY WALLING
ZenFounder
Exit Strategy (book)
Touching Two Worlds (book and show)
Website | Twitter

REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE
"Momentum without a mission" — Patrik Inzinger
"Mission, Vision, poTAYto, poTAHto"
"Max MRR: Your Growth Ceiling"

TIMESTAMPS

Tiago Ferreira and João Amaro bootstrapped their AI podcast-repurposing tool Podsqueeze from zero to €16K/mo in less than a year, but then watched it sit flat for two years despite more features, better SEO, and free trials.

Cohost Craig Hewitt (Castos) and I dig into the real problem: the self-serve podcaster market is structurally brutal—most shows fade within months, so the product's value fades with them—and the real money is up-market, with agencies and media companies who barely churn.

A candid working session including:
- why "too expensive" is never the real churn reason
- pricing to value
- the 5x price test that proved they're nowhere near the ceiling
- enterprise vs. just-big customers
- positioning an all-in-one tool
- what a plateaued "sideways" business is actually worth when someone offers to buy it

ME ME ME!!!
Subscribe on YouTube
📘 Get my book 📘
My bio + 20 years of articles
Twitter | LinkedIn

STARRING TIAGO FERREIRA & JOÃO AMARO
Podsqueeze
Tiago's podcast, Indie Founder
Twitter | LinkedIn
Twitter | LinkedIn

WITH COHOST CRAIG HEWITT
Castos
More About Craig
Rogue Startups podcast
Twitter | LinkedIn

REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE
"Pricing determines your business model"
"How repositioning a product allows you to 8x its price"

TIMESTAMPS

• (00:00) - Meet the founders: bootstrapped to 16K, then stuck for two years
• (03:09) - Riding the GPT wave to 14K, then two flat years
• (09:03) - Podcast fade: why most customers quit within months
• (20:26) - Why 'too expensive' is never the real reason they cancel
• (26:50) - The Portugal B2B win, and why it won't travel abroad
• (34:35) - Enterprise vs. just a big customer: Joe Rogan isn't enterprise
• (49:43) - The 5x price test: they raised it and nobody blinked
• (57:33) - The Shopify model: how brutal churn can still win
• (01:03:40) - Charge for what grows as the customer grows
• (01:14:40) - Selling to agencies: why the demos never close
• (01:20:53) - Why enterprises take the meeting, then never buy
• (01:37:48) - The all-in-one bet: good enough beats best-in-class
• (01:52:07) - A homepage that's a mess because it talks to everyone
• (01:55:45) - The 500K offer they turned down: sell or double down?
• (02:02:16) - AI should kill the busy work, not make the content
• (02:18:42) - What your SEO traffic is actually worth
• (02:26:22) - Stuck in a bad market, and the path to a better one

DropInBlog's Jesse Schoberg has 2,000 happy customers, 2% monthly churn, a Bangkok-nomad life—and a growth curve that has plateaued. I and co-host Rob Walling tear into the real problem: a proven new cohort without a go-to-market plan. Two hours on pricing, positioning, AI/LLM visibility, the agency channel, ABM, and how to expand without breaking the business people already love.

====================
ME ME ME!!!
====================
Subscribe on YouTube
📘 Get my book 📘
My bio + 20 years of articles
Twitter | LinkedIn

==========================
STARRING JESSE SCHOBERG
==========================
DropInBlog
Homepage
Twitter | LinkedIn

==========================
WITH COHOST ROB WALLING
==========================
All About Rob
TinySeed
MicroConf
Startups For the Rest of Us (podcast)
The SaaS Playbook
Twitter

=============================
REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE
=============================
"Max MRR: Your growth ceiling"
"The Elephant Curve & the myth of exponential growth"
"The Seven Types of SaaS Plateaus" — Rob Walling, MicroConf talk
"How to Get Mentioned in ChatGPT (Data from 2,000 Sites)" — Jesse Schoberg, MicroConf talk
"The SaaS Playbook" — Rob Walling's book

Timestamps:
0:00 The $1M-a-year nomad founder who hit a growth wall
5:56 Big companies were visiting his site — and he had nothing to sell them
12:17 "Useful" isn't "delight": why nothing in the pitch excites buyers
19:27 Going upmarket without wrecking the simple product people love
22:19 How to price when a $49 and a $999 plan share one page
25:53 Marketing budgets are getting cut — sell them their job back from AI
36:43 Marketer or engineer: who actually clicks "book a demo"?
45:49 Run ads to discover your message, not for ROI
51:19 Stop fishing in the pond you like — go where the best customers are
1:04:40 The agency channel: land one, get many customers over time
1:14:33 Account-based marketing: courting a few whales for years
1:21:20 Run your own event to become the category expert
1:28:29 The seven types of SaaS plateau — which one is yours?
1:37:07 How to roll out a new strategy without scaring your team
1:48:44 Every big bet needs one owner who thinks of nothing else
2:04:13 What agencies want more than a kickback