Building an Iconic Brand: Lessons in Community Led Growth for Startups | Interview with Lloyed Lobo, WSJ Bestselling Author, From Grassroots to Greatness

Ryan Purvis 23:58:27
Hello and welcome to the digital workspace works Podcast. I'm Ryan Purvis, your host supported by producer Heather Bicknell. In this series, you'll hear stories and opinions from experts in the field story from the frontlines, the problems they face, how they solve them. The areas they're focused on from technology, people and processes to the approaches they took that will help you to get to the scripts with a digital workspace inner workings. So welcome, Lloyed to the digital workspace works podcast. Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

Lloyed Lobo 23:59:00
Definitely. So background, entrepreneur, refugee of the Gulf War immigrant founder. And that's how I would like to start because my journey as an entrepreneurship goes all the way back to the Gulf War. And I think that shaped my experience in entrepreneurship, I think I was like, nine or 10, I wake up one day mom says, You can't go to school anymore. The Gulf War is hit. And my first reaction is yes, I don't have to go to school. And then when it started to sink in, I go down the building with my dad, and there was a bunch of worried faces. And you don't know if you're going to live or die, the phones don't exist, the internet doesn't exist. And what I experienced that day, and through that time, was the biggest grassroots evacuation movement, every building became a sub community, coordinated with one another. And like, you know, in that building, when I went down the security laps in the country, right, and people were like, I'll guard, the building from top to six, somebody, it's like, I'll guard, the building from six to 12, somebody else's, like organize food supplies. And if somebody's family members were displaced, there was another person to give them shelter. And so every building became a sub community. And the word of mouth spread from one place to another another, coordinated with governments with embassies with the UN and became the largest grassroots evacuation movement. But the purpose was so big in the way that these people were communicating more leaders by any means. They were just taking charge of a situation I mean, difficult times, right, desperate times lead to desperate measures. But I felt as a kid, so connected to that purpose that I felt like a little Rambo, like whatever little I did was a big part of it. But it taught me two things, which shaped my life, what it taught me the entrepreneurial spirit. And you know, in 2023, we look at entrepreneurship as a way to make money. But the entrepreneurship spirit is nothing but taking an obscure idea to execution and impact while dealing with extreme risk, uncertainty and ambiguity. And that drove me because I was so pumped every day of those three, four months that we went through that the other thing that taught me was that the power of people in coming together to create a big impact, it was mind boggling how they were coordinating. And those two experiences shaped the rest of my life, those two, those two learnings. Because a few years later, we ended up moving to Canada, I studied engineering. As soon as I graduated engineering, I was craving risk and uncertainty, I didn't want to do a nine to five job. And I was craving community and like all my life, through the exit at boasts, I have only been a part of communities and I've been a part of chasing risk and answered.

Ryan Purvis 00:01:46
It's, it's quite an amazing way to summarize both those things. Because, you know, and maybe it's a it's a Middle Eastern African thing. Because community is very strong in those in those areas. And it talks because of your own tribal sort of things. And I'm not saying other countries don't have it, don't get me wrong, it's just what I've experienced personally. So that's why I can draw from it. There's probably lots of, you know, parts of the world where they have their own tribal things. But, you know, when I look at the stuff that we've been successful with, in what we've done, it's because of good communities of people that are like, not necessary, like minded in the sense of they all think the same way. But like mine in the sense that they want to solve the same problem or get to the same objective, and they willing to give up something to get the, to be part of the community or the tribe that does that. And then because of that kind of culture in in, in, in Africa, you call it Ubuntu to, which is I am because we are, you do get that multiplier effect. And it requires you being a little bit unselfish, for the greater good. And it's, it's just the way you've explained it. It's so true. And I think entrepreneurship is that as well. And I remember reading a very good book by Nigerian journalists. And the thing that he talked about, which was the really interesting thing was, in certain tribes, if you start a business, the tribe will come and buy from you even if they have nothing to do with what you sell. But they'll all buy one thing from you, because that gets you going. And then through that, you'll have your you build relationships to care about selling and working with your product, but I think it was the Jewish community that did that. And I wonder if that's something along the lines of what you've done, or if it resonates with you as well.

Lloyed Lobo 00:03:25
Definitely, that's exactly what I felt right, and also my parents, so before that my parents grew up in India, and my mum specifically grew up in the slums of Mumbai. Okay? Oh, wow. Yeah, my fondest memories as a child, were spend every summer in the slums of Mumbai. And TV watching was a communal thing, because not every home had a TV, puddles would turn into ponds, and we'd be swimming together. And there, every activity was a communal thing. We were running and playing, jumping in from house to house, you know, the houses didn't have toilets in there. So we would go to the public bathrooms, and I kid you not. And then I spent every summer there. Those were my fondest memories as a child. Until my until we moved to the west. And every summer when that we had to go back home Kuwait, I would cry and not want to leave. And so it's been part of my life all through and what you said is right, right. And I'll give you an example. In modern day times, you know, forget about tribes. But a company like Harley Davidson that almost went bankrupt in the 80s. What did the company didn't, the leadership came and then rebuilt the company on the ethos of community. It hadn't direct oversight from the President, the execs had to go and start writer clubs, employees became writers, writers became employees, they created the Save hardly movement. But not only that, they now have run campaigns to donate to breast cancer and autism. They come together on a weekend like weekend warriors around the camaraderie of writers, right. And they come together to support causes. And you know, this company almost went bankrupt in the 80s. When the Japanese manufacturers came in, we're bringing motorbikes right, come on commoditize, electronics. And so the key learning there is technology comes and goes, right, we started with electronics being commoditized, and then the internet, and then the cloud, and then social and then mobile, and now AI. We don't say electronics company, or mobile company, or social or internet company, and we won't say a company anymore. But what will remain constant is human to human connection. Yesterday's innovation is always tomorrow's commodity. But if you build a community, you won't become a commodity. And that is that is a key key learning I've experienced in my life, as I wrote the book and talk to 1000s of people and looked at hundreds of companies. You know, what's really interesting is, as I was doing my research and collating this information, I found a four step path between every obscure idea that eventually became a global phenomena, interesting, more of horse stepped path that is common to every obscure idea that eventually became a global phenomenon. From Christ to CrossFit. That is huge when you say that from across. And that is people listen to you, or buy your stuff. When you have something to say, and you have an audience, you bring that audience together to interact with one another, and you have a community. Now, when that community comes together, around a greater purpose, that's far beyond your product, or profit or service. When the community comes together to create impact against a greater purpose beyond your product or profit, it becomes a movement. And when the movement has undying faith in its purpose, through sustained rituals, it becomes a religion or a cult. And that is true for every obscure idea that eventually became a sort of global phenomenon.

Ryan Purvis 00:07:14
So sorry can we break that down into the simple four steps, just because I struggled with these things, and there's, there's simple, so what would be step number one?

Lloyed Lobo 00:07:22
Build an audience. Step number two, turn that audience into a community. Step number three is find a greater purpose, align people and drive people to creating a movement. And then step one, number four is sustained rituals to build become a cult like brand. And obviously, the book is our four steps. It's 13 rules. So I distill that down. I even don't even mention this, I briefly mentioned this. But the goal was, if it's four things, and it's so heavy, it's going to wear you down. So turn those four things that learning some that is like 13 rules to build iconic brands with community led growth, because the key thing that takes you from audience to cult or religion is community. If you don't have a community in between, you'll stop at audience and you see, we're in the age of micro influencers and influencers most have audiences as soon as the influencer leaves or dies or vanishes, the audience is gone. But if as a community around a cause or on a purpose, then it sustains and it sustains and so that is that is the key thing, and we can dive into any any a number of areas here, but that was, I think, a profound learning. You need rails for making this happen, right? One is communication. Because if you can't communicate, you can't connect. And if you can't connect, you have an empty room, no audience. Second is creation. And third is consistency. If you can communicate and create with consistency, you can do something. A lot of people, what they do is they can communicate, they're super talented, they can create, but they stop, they stop. They just don't play the long game. And if you look at Mr. Beast, or you look at, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk. So what's really interesting with Gary V, is, when I graduated university, I wanted to go into business, although I graduated engineer, and I gravitated towards a sales job because the advice I got was sales is the best way to improve your communication that will force you to communicate day in day out, and it's the best route to entrepreneurship. Yeah, when I joined, I needed to learn a lot about sales and marketing in those days in the early first two, three jobs and everything I found was going to HubSpot inbound marketing community, so I joined that community and that became my next community. Probably after, after, you know, early adult. And I remember a Gary Vaynerchuk had a two hour video marketing course on inbound marketing certificate. And he was evangelizing chubby young guy, like evangelizing the power of video, he just never stopped, right. That's why he's Gary Vaynerchuk. Like, Mr. Beast just never stopped for Warren Buffett just doesn't stop or even in b2b SaaS there. He just doesn't stop beyond every visa share, because compound compound interest on consistency is what we call overnight success.

Ryan Purvis 00:10:05
No, yeah, exactly. I mean, we talked about this yesterday. You know, a friend of mine started a business, it's been a year, but there is an overnight success. Because they've been doing consistently the right things for a period of time and take a big risk. I mean, that that engineers spirit, they're taking the risk for a long time now starting to pay off. And I think that's what the problem with with the culture, to some extent is today, people don't, they don't see results straight away. Then they go, Well, it's not working for me, I'm just gonna stop or do something else. And they keep flip flopping between all these different things. And I think technology to some extent, you know, has has influenced that where you go watch a 30 second tick tock video, or an Instagram real or whatever these things are. And because it doesn't go longer than 30 seconds, I think everything should take 30 seconds. When we read it, read a really long, like, you know, one of them are the big masterworks, you know, it's 1000 page book, you know, that their books on something you read in a week, you read it in a couple months, because it's so long. I mean, I think he liked The Laws of Power, for example, that's a really long, detailed book, you can't read that in a in a short period of time, you gotta give it like a Law Day. Because it's just so dense. And that staying power, I think is an important, you know, skill or aptitude. That's my point, basically.

Lloyed Lobo 00:11:23
Definitely, definitely. And so So, you know, going back, I think those were some very formative experiences for me and billing company, and everything in everything I've done. And, you know, a lot of people say, Oh, you're just lucky. Yes, I am lucky. 100%. Luck and risk are two sides of the same coin. The thing is, a lot of people don't keep flipping, right? Flipping is consistency. You keep taking, you keep hitting risks, hit, keep hitting, failure, keep hitting, hitting, hitting, and then luck hits one that, right. But if you don't flip, you'll never get lucky. And a lot of people don't leave the house to create a network. They don't put themselves out there. And they just say you got lucky. Yes, I luck is the 10% that puts the 90% in your favor. But to be able to get lucky, you got to flip the coin, right?

Ryan Purvis 00:12:11
You got you got a backhoe and like, I mean, I used to play baseball as a kid, and I get a coach and he used to say, you know, you make your own luck by practicing, practicing, practicing. And looking at some situational awareness and cited scenarios and that sort of thing. And I think that's, you know, always been how I've approached life is that you've got to practice certain skills, to be ready for that situation. Like you're going to gym to train a muscle, you're going to train yourself for the different things you're going to see and have to handle. Which of the world that we live in today is become more and more relevant because you know, people as much as the technology progressing, it's still kind of the same thing. It's just making it easier to do certain things.

Lloyed Lobo 00:12:56
I love the gym reference you brought up right because everything great is on the other side of pain. Pain is a precondition for growth, much like in the gym. If you only lift heavier and heavier weights, you won't get stronger. So if you don't take on new challenges, don't challenge the status quo. If you if you don't expand your horizons, you're gonna be where you are. And you'll never achieve new heights.

Ryan Purvis 00:13:21
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I mean with what you've done over your career, I mean, what would be, could you have sort of inflection points that you think about? Like, you look backwards now and go, you know, this was a key thing for me. But I didn't realize at the time, it was a key thing for me.

Lloyed Lobo 00:13:37
Definitely, I'll go through some inflection points, I think, which will formulate why certain things happen now, when you're going through it. Honestly, when it all feels like luck, even till today, now I'm no longer in the company. Yeah, so we dropped 52% We sold 52% of the company, cashed out, still own a good chunk of the company. But you know what, till today, I still feel I'm lucky man. Like, every situation I've gone through in life, I just, I'm thankful that that happened. Because I know a lot of people who work really hard, and they don't have those outcomes, and a lot, a lot of people will have even greater outcomes. So I think, you know, I truly believe in the in the power of luck. And of course, luck gets engineered, the more you put yourself out there. And the only thing I can say is we we tried and we tried and we never stopped and we kept putting ourselves out there. But nonetheless, you know, every inflection point looking back felt like like so I'll tell you a key part of my upbringing, my nurture because there's nature and there's nurture and nurture is what is 80% of what you are, was community now, I was fortunate to be in a situation where I experienced the camaraderie of the community with my mom in the slums of India. The Gulf War taught me resilience taught me community taught me the power of, of dealing with the risk and uncertainty that everything great is on the other side of risk and uncertainty. The Gulf also taught me something very interesting is as I was going on that rickety bus refugee bus from Kuwait, to Baghdad to Jordan, on the Highway of Death, where buses were bombed and Lane burns. As I looked around the bus, the adults were all laughing and singing and playing the guitar. And they taught me a very important lesson that, man, it's not the destination or the journey, it's the companions that matter, right? We all say, Oh, don't focus on the journey or focus on the journey. Don't focus on the journey focus on the destination. No, it's neither man, the destination of the journey will change. The Companions matter who you're with, can make you feel like a rock star or a peasant. I felt like a rock star every day of the week when I would visit the slums in Mumbai. And then I've been in places where I'm sipping wine and Napa and I'm just suffocated. Right. And so those were formulated things, then I came to Canada, I finished engineering, the status quo thing would be to get a nine to five job, not the status quo thing, but that's what everyone does. And I happen to ask a couple entrepreneurs, what's the best job, I could get the best skill if I want to be like you someday? Now, I could have you know, it's fortunate that those people happen to be there in my purview to ask those questions. And they said, sales, sales is everything selling is everything. Because a big part of what you need to do is persuasive communication, and nothing is going to force you to do that. Other than sales. If you want to learn a skill, the best way to learn is to put yourself in an environment that forces you to do it, because motivation is bullshit for 90% of the people, most people are not self motivated. The only way they'll get up to do something is if it is a system, right? If they were in an environment that requires them to do it. And that was so true. Because imagine I had to practice cold calling or communication, I would never do it in front of the mirror and never ever in a million years. But I took a job at a startup. And and the reason why I ended up in the startup is also in a way luck because I kept applying to jobs that like Xerox and other companies that needed salespeople, and nobody would hire me. So I took the first job and the only company that would hire me it was a small like small business startup, like a telecom product company. And I started picking up the phone and dialing in the first call, took me four hours to practice I got to the decision maker and I hung up right away. But then I need to make money. Now that was a great inflection point, because you learn to pivot your messaging, you learn to negotiate on the fly, you learn to build rapport on the fly, you polish your messaging, and really refine it. So those are some good skills. Now my girlfriend at the time now wife was in medical school in New Jersey. So I started applying to jobs in New Jersey. This is another inflection point. This is a key one is I get a job in sales. I'm like great man, a barely work a year doing cold calling, and I get a job in sales. And now at a tech startup that is very similar. And at the time, startups weren't a hot thing. Like it wasn't on my mind at ease, but nonetheless at a company that had raised venture. And now that I think back for you know what that was, that was good. I was fortunate to be able to work for companies that had raised money, because then I would know later in life, the value of bootstrapping. This company within a couple of months, the chief operating officer of the company quit. And really I wasn't selling, I was required to talk to customers to figure out their pain points, and then convey that through wireframes and specs to developers on what to build and then Oh, guess what? I needed to also launch the company's website. Then all the marketing collateral. Now what most people would do is I came to do a sales job. And now I'm like doing a little bit of product management. And I'm doing a little bit of sales engineering, I'm doing a little bit of sales, and I'm also running a marketing, what would most people do, they would quit. I'm making $50,000 not significant, they will quit. That problem is I went on a visa to the US on a TN Visa. So and if I wanted to be with this girl who Hindsight is the best decision of my life, I married her, she looked after the family and paid the bills that we could have an exit if she didn't pay the bills, I think I would be. She's that she's a doctor. And she supported me through her struggles when she was a resident making no money. So you know, I'm glad we did that. But that was the inflection point. And so I'm like, I have to stick with it. Right. And if you have to stick with it, and that's the problem all your life, you're, when you're an immigrant, in a country that's not yours, and your parents are not well off, you're dealt with a hand that you have to play with. That's it, you have no option. And I worry for my kids right now, because they have a lot of options. But I didn't right. And I was thrown on the deep end talking to Tiffany, Armani, Simon and Schuster, all these big enterprises are on the deep end, translating into into product requirements, they learned everything I needed to about marketing and ended up launching a website. So what happened in the six months I joined it, landed some big customers translated what product a bit, make sure the product was implemented. So learn about the customer success, and then launch the marketing side with videos on YouTube, that traffic is pretty high, and learn about SEO and everything else was the most invaluable, six, seven months a year experience. For me. The next inflection point was unfortunately, the 2008 recession. And, you know, my wife is a brilliant doctor. And you went to med school in second year of undergrad without MCAT or brothers or also, once a PhD once a doctor. And now both our parents are Indian heritage. Two days before our wedding in India, we've all flown in there. And my company has basically laid off everyone might be going under 2008 recession. And Lloyd is unemployed, the wedding gets called off. And the message relayed to my mother at the time was and this is a woman I'd been dating since my teens. Right. So the message we made was that, you know, your son doesn't have a master's degree. He's been bumbling around startups during the sales jobs. That'll Chester, yeah, our daughter is going to be a doctor and there's a set path. And, you know, we're just concerned that, you know, he's gonna just be living off her and not make anything out of himself. That day, my mom came to me and cried and she said to me, I gave up my career and never worked a day in my life to look after you. Did I raise you wrong? That formulated that was probably the biggest, biggest inflection point in my life because I started running then. And I never stopped then went out a couple years later went out and did startups on my own with my co founder Alex from the university who came up with the idea for Boast AI we came up with a couple other ideas didn't work out. Then we did an events company now you know, think about you can take a bad inflection point you can take rejection and rather than making it rule you you can let it fuel you. Me and my girlfriend now wife ended up getting married nine months nonetheless because we won't move back to the west and the parents will influence only last so long. She didn't want to plan her wedding because she was like distressed at the first wedding was called off. And so I planned the wedding. I gave her her dream wedding I learned to coordinate all event logistics were three 400 People piano 350 people or so. So now from from that experience I walked away with man I got really good at hosting events. So when we started Boast, literally all our growth came from building community. What is the key thing to build community host events, I got really good at events that multi 100,000 People conferences. And you know what's really funny is that one rejection drove me so much that we did a chatbot and 2013 that failed when joined the founding team of a company incubated by Bessemer which was an AI sales assistant. For for AI assistant for sales reps centered around the phone call. We could never get it to work. 6 million tank there in that time. So we also had to be there to make money did an events company because we were good at doing events. The third co founder ran away with a quarter million in profits had to sue him because he locked us out of our accounts and announced another conference with a different name. And he paid us 50,000 in installments over six eight months after lawyer fees right? So it's like you never can catch a break. And unfortunately most hit most was automating research and development funding, government funding for businesses that are developing new products and technologies and that head and the way we ended up getting the initial social proof and buzz and partnerships is cold calling to reach out to people and host events with influencers in the space. And that first event we hosted 10 People 20 People one day 200 people showed up with the co working space and the co working space guys, I like, man, you're running full blown conferences here is not a pizza night anymore, you got to get out and and that evolved into what Traction is today, with 100 plus 1000 subscribers. So in a way, Traction became our community at both right both serves entrepreneurs and innovators. And if we call it the Boast community, people would feel we're trying to sell them our service. So we set out to build a community around the aspiration of our ideal customers, what do they aspire to create impact to build big companies to get traction, so we call it Traction. And so you know, the key learning there is you can build three kinds of communities a community of practice, which is teaching people how to get better at something, the community, a product, which is educating people on your product, and coming together to evangelize your product or community or play like a Harley Davidson or like a Nike, which is coming together to have a good time, if you don't have product market fit, and no customers build a community of practice opening late don't build a community of product because people feel so cool. And so that was the journey. And what's really, really funny is that was such a big inflection point because it drove probably 80% of my resilience, those words from my mom, and the learnings from being able to host events, we got so good at hosting events that over time, we've hosted like hundreds of events. And if you add virtual, it's several 100 Our investors who bought the company came to an event we hosted loved it so much reached out and asked, Hey, can you be a venture partner? Can you join our venture partner network, we'll give you carry in any deals you set them. I said, Hey, we have a business to run. Can't do this. We do this just for fun to help entrepreneurs help our customers and our our ideal customers. They're like, what does your business do? And then they say, you're selling $100 bills for $20. You're automating all this funding. And this is your growth rate and gross margin, and you have no marketing team. And then they asked to invest. And we said, we don't need investment money. And they're like, we're not traditional VCs or growth equity. And using VC and PE, the money we give you, you can cash out, and you can keep enough equity to play the long game. So we do rescue in the short term. And you have enough stake in the company to play the long game. And so a lot of these things were little inflection points, right? Like, how do we not bootstrap the company, we wouldn't have been here. Like if we raised venture money, it's going to be very hard to sell 52% and still own 30% of your company. And while carrying out. Now, the reason why we we were never attracted to venture in the sense that we started Bootstrap. There's one or two ways you bootstrap, right. One is you raise a small amount of money. And it to me that's kind of bootstrapping. Right. But if you really want to bootstrap and you have no access to money or no money, the only way to Bootstrap is to sell a service. Right? This is how UiPath started. This is our base camp started. This is how Trello started. So we bootstrapped by selling a service when your services company, you're not attracted to any VC, and you barrel barrel through that. And then the first version of the product was some local using Zapier and, and Zoho Creator, and then it turned into, but by the time we'd hit there, we had line of sight to 10 million. So you know, a lot of these things you can say, looking back sounds like very deliberate insights that people can use it to build a business, it's a playbook. But when we were doing it, it just felt like throwing spaghetti on the wall. And we were launched every once in a while. Okay. That's what I want everyone to see is like, as entrepreneurs, let's not delude ourselves. Because the few frameworks that came, I can just give you like the five key frameworks, that that that as I think back I wrote in the book, one is, if you don't have any customers, how do you figure out who to target early is we picked up the phone and we're dialing for dollars. We were calling the stable companies like manufacturers construction, right? CPG oil and gas, nobody will talk to us two guys in a bedroom asking, Hey, give me your r&d data, and I'll get you money from the government sounds scammy. And even if it doesn't sound scammy big four accounting firms are doing it. So when we started, we started running around to startup events, and we found great camaraderie there. It felt like our tribe and so we started going deep there and started doing community work there. We went to the manufacturing and oil and gas events, but we could never build that bond. We're like, kind of like we were forced to wear suits. like who are these losers? So the key learning there is when you want to figure out a market as a as a product or a service. You got three things you need size of the market, preferably growing right. It can be small today, a lot of people focus on is the market large. Even if the market is small, it should be growing because we bet on a startup market and all the competitors are laughing startups never paid. That's why we don't chase after them, you guys are gonna go belly up, you're going to shut shop in six months. What happened today is that country and better the startup world is going to explode paid out very well for us over 10 years. Now, all our competitors, those accounting firms, law firms, recruiting startup programs, and it looks so fake, right? Like, because you want to serve them, but we were serving them and our message to the competitors were, we can't get your clients. And you don't want to serve these people. Basically, we are this audience, though, we have to serve ourselves. And we're serving that audience as a function. So large growing market propensity to pay and ease of access. It doesn't matter if you landed on the largest market, with the highest propensity to pay, you have no ease of access, you will lose your mind. In the beginning, you just need ease of access, take a few customers, right. The second thing was this framework around how startups are built in phases. Phase one is validation, get 10 people to pay you to try it out, talk to hundreds of people, and you have message market fit, your message is resonating, they have a problem, you have a solution you're solving. That's all you're optimizing for. Next phase is product market fit, maybe you expand from 10 people to 50. But now what you're looking for is higher retention, meaning anytime they have the problem they keep coming back to you. Validation is hey, I have a problem, your message resonates, I'm going to try it. Product Market Fit is man. Every time I have this problem now I'm going to keep coming back to you. So the goal is high retention. And the leading indicator is engagement. If I don't use your product, I don't care what annual contract I signed up for if I'm not engaging, I'm going to jump. So watch the Engage dip, then you get to a point of product channel fit, right you figure out a repeatable scalable channel to acquire customers pick one and nail it versus trying to do 10 things. And at that point, when you figure out one kind of customer coming through one kind of channel winning one kind of value, then you can look at scale where you're saying, okay, you know what, I figured out one thing that works, I'm gonna put 75% of my energy fuel on fire and 25% of the time, I'm going to try new things, maybe new products, new markets, but one at a time, new products, new markets, new channels, those sorts of thing. But don't go immediately scale, be methodical again, like let's validate it, let's get a few customers and see if they stick. Let's figure it out. If it's at a point of scale before you put fuel on fire. And as a founder also, you grow through that journey, right? At validation, you are an individual contributor. At Product Market Fit still you are an individual contributor plus plus, maybe you hire two people. And so you become a manager. At product channel fit, you become a VP, because now you have enough people and you've hired a manager to manage those people. And the key is to never abstract to being a C suite too soon. Because when your C suite, your strategy a lot, you're not execution, right. And internally, those titles won't matter to you. But for alignment sake, it matters because let's say you raise a big round of funding, and you hire big company execs. And then you realize, oh, I hired them a C suite. But they're not. They're only discussing strategy. They're not like, you know, they need to hire people to hire people to do job want to execute, but they're not executing. Because in your mind, as a founder, a C suite does everything. But really, when you go out there in the world and hire big companies, C suites or midsize company C suites, they're doing strategy. They're not brass tacks and execution. And so it's very important to think about that the other learning was making sure you hire making sure you hire Swiss Army knives, jack of all trades versus specialists in the early days, right? Because you need to adapt and you need to pivot. So a lot, a lot of those learnings that looking back, it was throwing spaghetti on the wall. But you can pontificate and say oh, it is great frameworks.

Ryan Purvis 00:32:34
I have taken so many notes. I'm actually I'm actually at saturation point. I don't even know what else what else I can learn from you in the last in the last 20 minutes. Because the reason why it resonates so much for me is as much as I do many things. They always on the sort of focus around delivering value. And that's why I created the value community. And it goes back to what you're saying about you know, having an audience but then becoming more engaged with them. And what I was finding is I was really frustrated with say, posting stuff on LinkedIn, and maybe having one or two people reply to it, when I really wanted to have a conversation. And I wanted to have a call for 20 minutes for somebody to discuss solving a problem. Because I love solving problems and and one of the things that came out of the sort of value community was value execs which is what you're saying it's not the sea level per se. It's that middle between operational end and sea level we can get involved in helping solve a problem, and not necessarily be part of the life's lifespan of the business, but you can always come back will be pulled back in if they need you to help them solve the problem or do the next thing. That way you are fresh. But you're also not in the depth of the running of the business, which, which I think is a sweet spot for many of us. Nowadays, we don't want to be involved in every business to the nth degree, we want to be involved just in the parts that we love to do. Which I think is greater what you're saying. And I think the community parts because of the technology that's existent now. And I'm talking beyond, you know, like, like we've Circled for our community, but there's, you know, WhatsApp, Telegram, those sorts of tools, you can be in contact with people all the time, and not in their face, per se. But you can also be in your face if you need to, because you can do a video call or whatever it is. And I think that's, you know, make communities a lot easier to be distributed and global.

Lloyed Lobo 00:34:22
Definitely, you know, ultimately think about this, if you don't take away anything, building anything. Last thing is communication plus creation plus consistency. Because it's like chiseling a sculpture, you start heavy, and then you refine it. But if the first time you start heavy, and you don't see results, and you stop, then you'll never get to the point where you can refine it, right? The same thing with content on LinkedIn or whatever. Initially, when I was posting, I was getting no reactions, but the last several posts are, they went into like, first I saw it boost into hundreds. Now it's boosting into 1000s. Right, like 5000, 8000 plus. And so but it didn't happen overnight. It took years, right. And I still feel I'm not consistent, like the last post I made was a week or so ago. But I want to write every day because I think if I write every day methodically based on a certain framework, which is to provide value and educate my audience around two or three topics, right, then I think I will keep building that up. So what are the key learnings there then if you you know, from from building audiences, building communities like traction is 120,000 subscribers today with events reposted where? See your Uber has come see your Twilio, it's got the key learning there is figuring out ICP, right? Once Once you can figure it out who to target based on ease of access, propensity to pay and growing market size, then nail down that ideal customer profile, where do they eat, breathe drink, sleep? What are their problems? What are their pains? But moreover, what are their aspirations? Right? Because their aspirations is what becomes a long term thing for you beyond? Because problems change immediate problems, what are their long term aspirations? What stands in the way of getting there? Then you write down their circle of influence? Who are the people they follow? Make a list of those? Who are the people that buy other stuff from make a list of those were the places they hang out? What blogs are we what magazines they with? What platform is the traveler not. Now this gives you the circle of influence, you understand the aspiration, and what gets in the way of getting to that aspiration, you research the market to understand the whitespace that exists towards helping them get to that aspiration, you build a circle of influence. So a framework now that can easily help you is now start creating content, right? Like how do you build an audience, insistently start creating content? And we were lucky at both because when we did it, it was at a time where LinkedIn and Insta for business wasn't so prevalent people were just using a LinkedIn like a resume factory, like adding each other basic social posts, Twitter was, but it wasn't great for you want to bring people together? So we found two channels that are particularly effective one is just host meetups, right, like, like I talked about invite the influencer? How did we know who to invite because we knew who they followed were the conferences and the events we went to were all high level platitudes from CEOs, which is not helpful to zero to one founder, a one to founder. So we brought people who were at five or 10, which were more easily accessible, and then leveled up from there using their social proof to the next one, the next one, the next one. But I said the social proof of those speakers gave us instant credibility with that audience we're showing up and down over consistency, had more and more and more and more and more and more people show up and show up and show up and show up and show up. Now in parallel, what we did was there was a time where blogging was huge, but online content sharing on like platforms wasn't as huge for business purposes. But we said if we blog ourselves covering and talking about startup challenges, it probably take a year to get this SEO sure consistency, but like we were bootstrapped and didn't have the money. So we contacted the local newspaper and said, Well, can we write a column for you? Right? And they said no, then went to a one down local blog, wrote there and got all our friends to share it. It got so much shares you could see back then right like the social shares, number of shares. We sent it to the editor, and the editor is like, wow, this is great. We'll give you a column online. The first column, we call it a startup of the week. And I gave it to the founder who I covered. And now what happens in a place where startups are not getting coverage, the local newspaper put startup on the week, they blast it out to their own network and all over the place. In two days, the editor calls me and says, Lloyd, if you commit to writing it every week, I will give you this as a print column. So now what happened was I got backlinks from a high domain authority site for two and a half years that I wrote. The next thing is the social proof that writer for the newspaper. Third thing is every morning viral factor, every Monday morning at 6am, this entrepreneur who is going to get covered, I send them a message saying it's coming out the goal, that they buy the print papers, take a photo and start sharing it, right. And so that one two punch of social proof from someone else. So social proof from a big blog, a newspaper, combined with social proof from an influencer, and we wouldn't have landed there. If he didn't understand the ICP, right? If you don't know the entrepreneurs, and where they hang out and what they read and who they follow. You won't come up with that. Right? So yes, looking back, it felt like it was a deliberate effort. I think this ICP understanding was more deliberate effort, but it was more like necessity is the mother of all invention. So we're like, okay, we need to host an event, who are some popular people, these people follow up, boom, boom, boom, we're What What channels do they regular monitor. So that was a more deliberate effort, but a lot of other things like we chanced on by just throwing spaghetti on the wall. But now to close this framework out, once you start creating content, right, just and you do it with consistency, let's bring it you know, not for 2012 times, but 2023 times, say you have this list of influencers, interview them on a specific topic. That is so niche for this audience that, you know, if it's building community, figure out the best, be the best community building, podcast, anything, right? Be very niche. And now you have this one piece of content that you can turn into video for YouTube audio for podcasts, then you can turn it into shorts, you can turn the text into LinkedIn posts, and your cadence might look something like this, like a daily post on LinkedIn, a daily tweet, a daily short inside TikTok. And then you got a weekly podcast release, you got weekly newsletter. And then you can take that further if you want to open it up and turn that audience into community. But watch how this is building. Now, the interesting thing is, we started with audience plus community because these platforms weren't buzzing for business, like I said, right in 2023. What happens is we start with building audience. And that's great, but you don't own that audience because you don't have their emails. Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I said, if the algorithm changes, you're done. The algorithm changes, you're done. And it happened with nastily, they had 21 million subscribers on Facebook, and initially 50% of the audience would see it. But then what happened was Facebook changed the algorithm. And this is what happens, they first show your content to your audience. As your audience gets hooked. Now your audience starts seeing content from other people. And then eventually sponsors. That's how these platforms grow. So you need to own your audience. And the fortunate thing for us was these platforms weren't prevalent. And so everything was a landing page to sign up for a meetup or an online event. And a lot of people are stopping to do that. And I encourage you to go back to the basics and say, having an audience is great. But if you don't have their contact information, can you truly build a community and bring them together? So layer on aspects where you provide value certain value, where they have to provide your contact information, so maybe start a sub stack? Maybe you open up these conversations as being recorded into live amas. I personally like in person and I talked about this in the book the senses, anytime you incorporate more than two senses, you build stronger connections where sound and sight you become taste, touch and smell. You shaking hands, you're kissing babies, the smell of the food, you stay longer, right and look at some of the biggest cult like movements, they were all having in person, elements done on a cadence. And so it doesn't have to be a complex like a Sastra conference or attraction with 1000 people where you spent a year planning, but it can be like, you know, identify your superfans, and give them some love and recognition and a soapbox so they self organize and host events atlassian $40 billion company last year their community hosted self organized 5000 events. How crazy is that? That means you have 5000 superfans at 100 a clip. you've engaged 500,000 without having your own marketing team. Then what you've given them is some swag and some love and some soapbox. Now a lot of people want to control the community and say, Oh, you have to follow our guidelines and this and that I can't control. If you want to build a community, you have to just give them some love and some values.

Ryan Purvis 00:43:41
I think you're spot on. I mean, that's, that's going back to what we're doing. That's exactly the kind of stuff we've we've done differently is we've we get the point, we're trying to get the people in the community, to be empowered to do what they think is the right thing. One of the guys asked me yesterday, like how far can I get involved as and as far as you want to get involved? Like, if you want to run the marketing, run the marketing, like, you know, work with the rest of the people, to help us to grow the community? You know, it's because it's got to benefit everyone. You know, to to get the sort of progress that you want. You've got to have people in power to grow it. Unfortunately, Lloyd, I've got a run a little bit over and I've got a person that I need to chat to. Can Can we do a part two? Maybe?

Lloyed Lobo 00:44:25
Yeah, definitely. We can do a part two, for sure. And meanwhile, you know, just to close it out. Here's the book. From grassroots to greatness, I put it for 99 cents, the digital copy so everyone can access it. I wrote it because I wanted to tell the story that the biggest innovations eventually become a commodity. But in the age of generative AI when all this talk is going on as someone who built an AI company that did well and is continuing to do well, it was powered by human to human connections, the world's biggest enduring brands are powered by human to human connections. And this is the theory more to do it from grassroots to witness.com Get it for 99 cents. So you want the colored collectible.

Ryan Purvis 00:45:07
It is it's it's beautiful. Yeah. I was trying to I was trying to order it off the Amazon. UK store but it's not there yet.

Lloyed Lobo 00:45:17
Yeah, you know what, send me a send me your address. I'm going for a best seller campaign. And when when that happens, I will ship you a signed hardcover. The front is embargo.

Ryan Purvis 00:45:30
Yes, looks amazing. I'll do that for sure.

Lloyed Lobo 00:45:34
All right. Take care, man.

Ryan Purvis 00:45:35
Sounds good. Thanks. All the best say.

Thank you for listening to today's episode. Heather Bicknell is our producer and editor. Thank you, Heather, for your hard work on this episode. Please subscribe to the series and rate us on iTunes or the Google Play Store. Follow us on Twitter at the DWW podcast. The show notes and transcripts will be available on the website www.digitalworkspace.works. Please also visit our website www.digitalworkspace.works and subscribe to our newsletter. And lastly, if you found this episode useful, please share with your friends or colleagues.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai