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What are the best brands doing to stay relevant, build trust, and create content smarter?
At Share Your Genius, we have the same questions, so we're tapping the best in the space for their answers—one voicemail at a time.
Join us each week for quick hits of insights from b2b marketers and leaders.
Rachel Downey (00:00):
Rachel Downey, how do you build trust when you're launching something new? When the product is still evolving, the market's still learning and everything. Every week starts to feel like a shifting or moving target. Those are the questions I was wrestling with. So I called Dustin Amerine. Dustin is the CEO and co-founder of Rev Cast, and he uses trust as part of his strategy, not because he can, but it's because of who he is. From leading global customer experience at Pendo to now guiding early customers at Rev cast, Dustin has built a career around honesty, transparency, and generosity. He's not afraid to tell a customer, no, we're not building that. Not because he's being combative, but because he knows where to focus. He's also the guy who'll make a connection just because he can, when he can, even when there's nothing obvious in it for him. For Dustin, trust is personal. Of course. It's one-on-one. It's about how you show up consistently every single time. And so with that, I call Dustin. How do you build trust when you're creating or launching something new? Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. At the tone, please record your message.
Dustin Amrhein (01:24):
Hey, Rachel, got your call and got your question. How do you create trust when you're building something entirely new? It's something I think about a lot, especially starting something new with Rev cast. But in my prior role at Pendo leading global customer experience for a company that had thousands of customers, we were constantly building new things. We had this really diverse customer base to support and trust. And transparency was a core value for us as a company. It extended beyond the walls of our company to our customers. A lot of that meant spending time with them, being sincere in receiving input and responding to input. Being honest about feedback, not just trying to make a customer feel good, but actually telling them that, Hey, this is not something we're going to build, or We have a different viewpoint about how this particular job should be done and this is how we're going to approach it.
(02:17):
So I think honesty was a big part of it then, and it's a big part of it now. Obviously with Rev cast being new and emerging in our market, building trust's much more of a one-on-one game with our early customers. I spend a ton of time every single week with our existing customer base, just truly learning how do you use our product and what's moving the needle for you? What kind of impact is it having? But let's be honest and real with each other. What's not working well or what are some closely related problems or pain points that you have that we can solve? So a lot of building trust is leaning in and building empathy for what that customer does. I have to be a little careful because I'm mostly talking to people that are in roles that I've done in the past. So I have to be careful not to project what I want or how I want it to tackle a problem and really show them that I'm listening and of course, where I can providing some expertise or some historical experiences and helping out.
(03:18):
But I have to show them that I'm listening to them and that I understand them and their problems and their pain points. And then I take that same principle that I had in my last role and I had at the company of trust and transparency to heart at Rev Cast as well. We're very honest with our customers about the problems that we're solving now and about the problems that are on our roadmap. Now, does customer input come in and maybe change roadmaps and change how we're thinking about things? Absolutely. But I try to be as honest and as transparent as I can be as we're going through the process of solving pain, pain points for them. For us, a lot of this is about building up trust through honesty and transparency. I think that's critical. And then the other thing I always try to do, and I think our team always tries to do as well, is we've all been in the tech industry for 20 plus years.
(04:07):
So you build up networks. Obviously we've all built up networks in our time in the tech industry, and we try to connect people that we believe could help each other even many times, Rachel, it has nothing to do with rev cast. It has nothing to do with me trying to sell them more. It's just I'm listening to your pain points, or I'm listening to your thought process. I'm listening to what you're trying to do. Oh, I know a guy or a gal that's done that 15 times. They do it very well. Let me connect you with that person. Building trust is about the honesty part, but it's also just about giving back. And I've had so many people give back to me over the course of my career that I enjoy being able to do that when I can. I still get help from others, of course. So I guess to sum it all up, it's honesty and it's giving back. Honesty, transparency, giving back is what helps us build trust and what's helped me throughout my career. Hope that helps. Would love to connect live. So just give me a buzz.
Rachel Downey (05:07):
Thanks for listening. Want your podcast to do more? Subscribe to Genius Cuts because it's never just a podcast. You can find it@shareyourgenius.com.