The unfair advantage: Why every founder needs a brand

There's an unfair advantage some startups and companies have. It's a competitive advantage that can't be copied. And it's on you should build as early as possible - a founder brand.

In todays episode, we talk about our experience with building a founder brand, what we've learned from others and much much more.

• (00:00) - Introduction
• (01:47) - Building a Founder Brand
• (07:27) - You need this
• (08:45) - Blank page problem
• (11:11) - The Importance of Consistency
• (15:28) - Distribution and Trust
• (17:04) - The reason LinkedIn is interesting
• (19:33) - The other option
• (25:27) - What will you talk about

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Creators & Guests

Host

Mikkel Plaehn

Marketing leader & b2b saas nerd

Host

Toni Hohlbein

2x exited CRO | 1x Founder | Podcast Host

What is The Revenue Formula?

This podcast is about scaling tech startups.

Hosted by Toni Hohlbein & Mikkel Plaehn, together they look at the full funnel.

With a combined 20 years of experience in B2B SaaS and 3 exits, they discuss growing pains, challenges and opportunities they’ve faced. Whether you're working in RevOps, sales, operations, finance or marketing - if you care about revenue, you'll care about this podcast.

If there’s one thing they hate, it’s talk. We know, it’s a bit of an oxymoron. But execution and focus is the key - that’s why each episode is designed to give 1-2 very concrete takeaways.

[00:00:00] Toni: Hey everyone. This is Toni Hohlbein. You are listening to the Revenue Formula with Mikkel
[00:00:05] and Toni. In today's episode, we
[00:00:07] discuss the unfair go to market motion people like Chris Walker, Adam Robinson,
[00:00:13] and David Cancel are using to accelerate their businesses.
[00:00:17] Before we jump into the show, today's is to you by EverStage, the top sales commissions platform on G2, Gartner, Peer Insights,
[00:00:27] and Trust Radius with more 2000 reviews from customers like Diligent, Wiley, Trimble, and more.
[00:00:35] Visit everstage. com and mention Revenue Formula unlock a personalized sales compensation strategy session with one of EverStage's RevOps experts.
[00:00:46] And now, enjoy the show,
[00:00:48] Mikkel: So I had a Christmas lunch Friday with a few folks. And I was really happy because Saturday we only had one thing in the calendar and it was at 1 to 3 PM kids birthday bowling. I was like, you know what? I can do two hours of torture in bowling. That'll be fine.
[00:01:07] And then just home, sleep, chill. I missed a part of the invitation, which was, and then we'll go to our place. And I was like, no. So, yeah, I was pretty dead yesterday, actually. And I think that's part of the, the big shift. It's not just, you know, us recording from home, figuring out all the gear. It's also the whole ritual we used to have around it.
[00:01:30] It's just been reset. You know what I
[00:01:32] Toni: going to work?
[00:01:33] Yeah, yeah, Being productive?
[00:01:34] Mikkel: No, the, just the commute when you're kind of mentally prepare and reset and all that stuff versus you texting me in the car. It's like, Hey, can I come to your place today? Because our place is no go. Yeah. Very different, very different indeed.
[00:01:46] But.
[00:01:47] One of the things we wanted to talk about is building a founder brand. Because there's a new playbook and we recently talked with Adam Robinson. Had a great episode with him. Definitely recommend you go back and check that out. He basically reveals his big churn problem. But We wanted to talk specifically about building a founder brand because that is kind of the emerging new playbook.
[00:02:09] Yes.
[00:02:11] Toni: And I think kind of to put this in the right like draw for everyone.
[00:02:15] so obviously there's a bunch of people that are doing this before they actually start the company. or while they're starting the company. Right. And I think our audience is probably
[00:02:26] heavier
[00:02:27] on the, Hey, we already at scale. We have five, 10, 15 million in revenue.
[00:02:31] And
[00:02:31] You know, how do we get to 100? So how does this founder brand thing, here kind of fit into this?
[00:02:36] I think it is not necessarily too late to start building something like this. Right. It's not.
[00:02:42] So maybe send this show to your founder.
[00:02:45] Have him or
[00:02:46] her listen to this. Yeah.
[00:02:48] exactly. And
[00:02:49] And maybe just learn a little bit, you know, what the people are talking about on LinkedIn when they say founder brand, how does it actually work, kind of demystify the whole thing.
[00:02:58] We're going to give a couple of examples and I think I think after this episode, I think people will have a much clearer understanding of what this thing is actually about and, and, and why they should probably be doing it.
[00:03:08] Mikkel: Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about what it actually is. I mean, it's the founder's brand.
[00:03:13] Boom, done. Next on the uh, no, it's so, so I think predominantly folks have focused on marketing the brand of the company. So think about a Coca Cola or whatever. You want to market that logo? And that product versus, Oh, there's a company that has a founder or a CEO. What would happen if we market that person?
[00:03:34] So I think one of the most universally known concepts in SaaS would be, of this would be Mark Benioff. Right? A lot of folks have seen him, especially when there's been some political change or legislative change. He's been out there commenting on it because he knew it mattered to his massive, you know, staff, basically.
[00:03:54] Right? So this would be on their mind, and he kind of had to.
[00:03:56] Toni: see it. And
[00:03:57] I think this is the very high level version. of a Right. And I think, like, oh, you know, just be like Mark Banioff and uh, and yeah. exactly.
[00:04:07] Or Mark Cuban, you know, that's, that's what I find. So yes, I would say that also qualifies as a founder brand
[00:04:14] by definition, because there's a brand, of the founder.
[00:04:17] But I think today we want to break it a little bit down and it's, it's a little bit silly to
[00:04:23] mention myself
[00:04:25] kind of after
[00:04:25] I mean,
[00:04:25] we mentioned kind of those three folks, But, but for example I did it in, we had Groblox at that, right? and then there, you know, where did we?
[00:04:34] Learn
[00:04:34] it From, you know, what did we copy? So to speak, we didn't come up with this.
[00:04:39] We
[00:04:39] actually copied Chris Walker
[00:04:42] we read literally the book called Founder Brand by Dave Gerhardt who was previously the VP of Marketing at Drift super early on.
[00:04:50] And now more recently emerged Adam Robinson,
[00:04:54] which
[00:04:54] is kind of weird on the show the other day. You know, again, listen to it. And, and, you know, while they're going through this churn problem, he also is revealing how the founder brand has been helping him to kind of figure out his churn problem, right?
[00:05:05] So there are some more down to earth versions of a founder brand than just be like Elon. you know, easy.
[00:05:12] Mikkel: it's also for me, it's a, it's when you have the founder being out there sharing his or her point of view on behalf of the business and also the mission and vision that they're on to attract basically the audience you're also trying to sell to, quite
[00:05:27] Toni: trying to
[00:05:30] sell to. We, we,
[00:05:34] were two commercial founders. And the product wasn't there yet. It's, you know, basically It was going to take
[00:05:41] it a
[00:05:42] while. and It ended up taking, taking, taking some time. And, you know, around this time, you and I also talked
[00:05:48] and
[00:05:48] we were like, well, if we can't sell a product, let's just let's just sell you.
[00:05:52] Toni. Right, that was literally,
[00:05:54] That was the conversation. And back then we were
[00:05:56] actually thinking about it more in a way of like, Okay. Why are our initial customers, customers of ours, well, they know us, they trust us, they know that we are capable, right?
[00:06:07] And they're like, well, you know, we're running out of people that we know by name, how can we expand this audience? And actually the idea then was like, well, let's try and use this, this founder brand
[00:06:18] process in order to achieve this,
[00:06:20] right. And that's literally, that's literally how it started.
[00:06:23] And then I think this, this is also a much more
[00:06:26] Tangible and reasonable way of how other people actually can get started.
[00:06:30] in this
[00:06:30] process, right? So let's,
[00:06:32] let's just maybe kind of one by one talk about these things a little bit. So the first thing for me personally you know, after having followed chris walker for a while,
[00:06:40] Just start posting on LinkedIn
[00:06:42] Like
[00:06:43] We're not going to talk about all of, you know,
[00:06:45] all those are the
[00:06:45] five things. And like, yes,
[00:06:47] Mikkel: Check him out. Check. Just search for a few of the, let's say LinkedIn experts and try and follow some and see what you're, what you'd like. There's so much advice on great content.
[00:06:56] Toni: And
[00:06:57] The,
[00:06:57] the only tip I want to give is just get going. to start, Just just,
[00:07:02] Start getting out there. And I think the, and I think this is probably also, you know, if I, I'm thinking kind of maybe a VP of sales listing right now. and You're struggling with building pipeline and you're thinking like, Hey, my CEO could maybe help me a little bit here. Yes, a founder brand or that CEO could help you right now.
[00:07:19] Right. To get this going after 10 or 15 million, it's probably going to be a little bit difficult, but it can totally be done.
[00:07:27] What, What do you think though Mikkel are the requirements you need to have in a founder? for that to even, for that to potentially even start to work?
[00:07:36] Mikkel: So I think if you don't have a point of view, which will be probably not the case when you have a founder, they will always have some kind of point of view out there that's relevant to the audience. I think that's, that's, if they struggle articulating that, it's going to be a bit difficult, but then if you're pre 10 million, you can basically help.
[00:07:53] Articulated by posting, but if you're post, you might not wanna do that.
[00:07:57] Just
[00:07:58] Toni: that. So point of view is really in a very specific opinion. About a problem that you're actually kind of trying to address, right? And trying To solve.
[00:08:07] For grow blocks as an example, right? We had the opinion that revenue operations should be more strategic.
[00:08:13] That was kind of our point of view. And then once we kind of, you know, started to, you know, gather around this point of view, it was also easier to. Push against the status quo,
[00:08:23] which then like, a system, you know, system admins, or CRM admins or something like this, right? So that, that we could try out, and we saw how it was resonating, it was like, hey, that works out, Let's kind of keep doing this. Right. For other organizations, those point of views might be completely different. And if you, if you don't have them, you really don't have a story to tell. But it is something you can develop over time. Yeah.
[00:08:45] Right.
[00:08:45] Mikkel: can definitely develop it. It's not like when we, you and I started, it was, Hey, our point of view is Revo should be system admins. I think we started first off with a blank page problem, right? What, what are we going to write about? And we just started, it was literally you and I every morning.
[00:08:58] pushing each other to post, obviously I had the agenda to get you posting to get the business grown. And I was just there as, you know, the, the person running along with you to make sure you, you actually ran, right? So, so like that was a mental trick. I think you can develop it over time. And as you post, you'll start noticing patterns in terms of what do people actually engage with?
[00:09:19] Who are those potential buyers and desired customers you want?
[00:09:23] And you'd also start following them. So I would lurk in. Every single Ruby operations community and you'll start noticing some of the that information you're picking up on Almost coalesce to the point where okay, they talk about tools all the time
[00:09:36] Toni: And I was about to say, right. Kind of, we were basically trying to get to know our buyer right through this process and
[00:09:44] You know, both of us were just so incredibly bored by, oh you know, this field and HubSpot or Salesforce with HubSpot or uh, you know, data cleaning or the sales forecast, We're so, we were so incredibly bored by all of those topics. that were like, okay, this is, this is what everyone is talking about, but we just really don't want to talk about it.
[00:10:07] Which then, you know, that, that very stupid, selfish approach to this actually helped us to figure out, well, that is actually our niche. And this is actually what we want to talk about. Right.
[00:10:15] Mikkel: I think, so it's just like you're building software that has to be differentiated, the point of view kind of also has to be differentiated and your audience also kind of has to care about it.
[00:10:24] So I think that's the requirement. Number one, you need in place. I think the second piece is you actually want to have a founder who does want to do it, period. I think you can bring a horse to water. But it ain't going to drink just because you do it, right? So, so for me, that is super critical. We've, you and I tested out basically have an agency, do a ton of the content on, on LinkedIn, and it just never was as great.
[00:10:48] I think, I think it's same when I would create some of it for you. It was never as great when it was just your voice, your insight, because you're the one out there talking with potential customers, potential investors and partners, et cetera. So you're the one who get the insight and can, can kind of,
[00:11:03] Toni: distill that online.
[00:11:04] There was one good thing about it
[00:11:06] which is, it did happen. you know, it ended up actually happening.
[00:11:11] I can see it just with myself, right?
[00:11:13] I had times where I was very consistent posting, and kind of now kind of tape it off a little bit. I'm kind of thinking
[00:11:18] about a lot of other things. But the, you know, the consistency is in many cases the more important thing. Right? Sure, you need to have a topic you want to talk about and so forth, but being there, showing up, making people, Almost expect that they're going to see a post of you.
[00:11:34] So if they engage with one post, they immediately get served the next one. Like this, this is really, this is kind of part of the whole thing. And I know for sure that not many founders are so super keen on that stuff. Like, you know, I think especially when you're 10, 15 million, I think they will probably see it as a waste of time.
[00:11:53] Like, Hey, why should I be doing this? There's so many other things to do,
[00:11:57] but
[00:11:57] also it's like, To a little bit
[00:11:58] of a degree, it's a little bit also of an excuse. right?
[00:12:01] It's So, so one, one particular example, and I think the agency we worked with, they also worked with him, which was the founder CEO of Clary. like the sales forecasting
[00:12:13] Mikkel: vendor.
[00:12:13] I don't know if that was public actually, but
[00:12:15] Toni: No, I don't think they told us. I think we, we, we pieced it together. ourselves.
[00:12:19] Mikkel: We've assumed.
[00:12:20] Toni: Because
[00:12:21] we
[00:12:21] saw their setup and then we saw his setup.
[00:12:23] it was like, it looks like the
[00:12:24] same setup here. So, So that's why, you know, I think we can share this because we
[00:12:28] figured
[00:12:28] it out. And the, the thing is kind of, he was, when he started this, he was already at a hundred million in AR.
[00:12:35] Let's just, let's just kind of, let's just sink the in. And I think one of the main reasons why he started it
[00:12:40] Was his VP marketing, later CMO
[00:12:43] Kyle Coleman
[00:12:45] Mikkel: also had
[00:12:46] Toni: who We also had on the show, he was basically, you know, while, while the CEO was a hundred million ARR Kyle was a hundred million, a hundred thousand followers on LinkedIn.
[00:12:55] And basically he posted something about forecasting and boom, they had a full pipeline. Right. And And basically kind of the realization was like, Hey, wait a minute. If we have like two of those producers, here, that would be that would be fucking awesome.
[00:13:07] Right.
[00:13:08] And I think In order to kind of make that step, you
[00:13:11] doesn't need to be LinkedIn. No, like you couldn't go on Twitter.
[00:13:15] You couldn't go on Instagram, wherever your, your
[00:13:16] your
[00:13:17] folks are. Obviously kind of, you need to find the place where they're hanging out.
[00:13:20] Chances are they're on one of those. One of those media platforms
[00:13:24] Mikkel: So I think if you want to sell this to the CEO, there's going to be so many objections. Ultimately, you want to navigate what is the most important thing it can help with. Is it going to be important for the business to raise money soon, or is it to fill the pipeline or something else? Because usually the founder brand will actually help with a lot of those pieces.
[00:13:40] If it's breaking into a market, guess what? It's helpful to have that brand do it, right? Now, the other reason, I'm just going to touch on it real quick because I think it's going to be a thing for folks here, but another reason could be, hey, I'm not comfortable or I'm not, I don't feel good enough to do, to speak on a podcast could be a thing.
[00:13:59] I just want to point out, there's an introvert out there called Damir Shah.
[00:14:03] Toni: Yeah.
[00:14:04] Who's that?
[00:14:05] Mikkel: yeah, who is that like co founder of HubSpot, you know, that small little SaaS company on the NASDAQ, right? So he is very active. He's very active out there. He's been building his personal brand for years. Sure. He's not comfortable being on stage because he's a massive introvert, but he is doing it because he, I think he understands what it can do for the business.
[00:14:27] Toni: But also
[00:14:28] and I
[00:14:28] think this is,
[00:14:29] probably,
[00:14:30] you know, what, what people, what stops people is, you know, he found his voice, like Adam Robinson found his voice. And You know, Dave Garrett has his voice with marketers
[00:14:39] and
[00:14:39] so forth. Once you find your voice, it's going to be second nature to post online and kind of get a good response. And
[00:14:45] yes,
[00:14:46] you want to push out your point of view, but you also want to kind of do it in the right way.
[00:14:49] And I
[00:14:50] think Dharmesh over the years just has been getting incredibly comfortable
[00:14:54] you
[00:14:54] know, posting on LinkedIn or on Twitter and
[00:14:56] and kind
[00:14:56] of pushing his, his, his.
[00:14:57] voice.
[00:14:58] Mikkel: yeah.
[00:14:59] Toni: And, And people know him by now and react to kind of how he's talking about things and it just works out.
[00:15:04] But those are all examples of people who have done this successfully, right?
[00:15:08] This is, this let me just say it the other way around. This is super helpful for someone that is just starting their business. Like We can talk more about Growbox and how we use it there. But this is also extremely helpful for someone that is already a business at scale and is trying to find additional ways to generate a pipeline.
[00:15:24] because that's I think what this is
[00:15:26] primarily going to be, about.
[00:15:27] Mikkel: right?
[00:15:28] Yeah, I was going to say before we unpack like what is inside the playbook then that we're seeing as At least what folks are using now for more modern go to market, I just have to say, like, the, the sheer amount of distribution you can get, which is probably the single most common reason businesses fail, honestly is lack of distribution.
[00:15:47] You need to build a product that actually works and you need to distribute it. And I just think, I think it's even in the zero to one by Peter Thiel, right? I think that's a massive, massively overlooked piece. And then yes, there's all the efficiencies like you and I were talking about initially.
[00:16:01] Once we started seeing the founder brand working, you didn't need to introduce yourself anymore, right? So the
[00:16:07] Toni: time saved on calls.
[00:16:09] Mikkel: more time pitching. No, but just like the,
[00:16:11] Toni: The
[00:16:13] trust,
[00:16:14] Mikkel: massive. And, and when you were talking about earlier, like the, if you're the VP sales, you should get the CEOs.
[00:16:19] It's like, no, you could also start posting
[00:16:20] Toni: yourself, right. That's very
[00:16:22] Mikkel: build trust around you. And I, so I think, you know, Just think a bit about the distribution you could get. Yes, employer branding, great, attracting VCs and press and blah, but I think this is, this is really how you should see it.
[00:16:34] Toni: I mean, the, the other thing is also you know, Kyle Coleman from Clari now at copy AI. Do you guys think there was a bit of a consideration from the copy AI folks to be like, should we take this guy as our CMO with over a hundred thousand followers? Hmm. Yeah. I think that was part of the consideration.
[00:16:52] Right. So, I mean, to your point if you're not the CEO founder, you should still try and build this brand, by the way. It will help you get employed for sure. for sure. And and yes, it will probably help you in your current position.
[00:17:03] where you're on as well.
[00:17:04] Mikkel: So I think we've talked a bit about LinkedIn.
[00:17:06] is
[00:17:07] part of this modern playbook, right?
[00:17:09] It is where many, many potential buyers are. If you're selling software, chances are they're going to be on LinkedIn, right? Why is LinkedIn the interesting network compared to all the others? Why is it LinkedIn?
[00:17:21] Toni: So I haven't really deeply thought about it actually, because for me it was immediately
[00:17:27] clear
[00:17:27] it's going to be LinkedIn.
[00:17:28] But it's basically. Rather a place for professionals to share professional stuff. Like Instagram is different, Twitter could also be Twitter is a bit broader, I feel. And that was kind of the reason for me, actually. Also, when we started, Twitter was still, I think, capped at 128 characters or something like this. LinkedIn, you could almost do blog posts, right?
[00:17:47] Mikkel: I, I, so I can also tell you the, the main reason many folks, if you're just starting out, you want to go for LinkedIn is, it's really difficult to Penetrate the networks called X. TikTok, Instagram, it is really difficult actually to succeed there because there's so many people posting content on LinkedIn.
[00:18:09] You have a lot of folks there who just go and lurk, look for some jobs,
[00:18:14] like, a couple of pieces, but aren't posting. So the, the, the ratio is very beneficial to be a creator on that platform, which is why that is definitely one you want to consider
[00:18:25] And and, and kind of go for. Right. So
[00:18:27] Toni: I think the other reason is you obviously have their professional credentials there, right? Because for many, many folks, LinkedIn still is not a network. It's like where I keep my CV updated, basically.
[00:18:41] But that gives you an opportunity to connect practically to those folks and you know exactly where they're working, the role that they're working, kind of their past.
[00:18:50] Mikkel: I'm not
[00:18:52] Toni: not so super familiar with X and Twitter, but you know, you have some of that stuff in the bio, but it's just not so super crystal
[00:18:57] Mikkel: have some of that stuff in the bio, but it's just not so super familiar.
[00:19:05] If you go for TikTok, well, then you better be comfortable on video, You
[00:19:10] know, so, so I think those are pieces, but fundamentally, it's just to say it's, it is a bit easier quotation marks to, I think, succeed on LinkedIn than some of the others. And then you can always start transferring the audience over, which, you know, we can talk about it if we can get a time,
[00:19:23] Toni: time. So
[00:19:24] This was kind of a mini, you know, which network to go for kind of intro. What, What else do we do? And what else is actually Dave Gerhardt recommending in the Founder Brand?
[00:19:33] Mikkel: Well, I don't know if he necessarily is recommending it, but we decided to create this podcast, obviously, right? And I think the rationale was, well, on LinkedIn, you can reach a lot of folks at scale.
[00:19:44] But I would constantly find myself having read an awesome post on LinkedIn. And then, oh, who was it? Because I really want to find it again. And I just couldn't, for the life of me, remember who wrote the dang post, right? So I was, I was realizing, well, While you get a lot of reach. In a very little time and effort, even, I would say the challenge is you want them to remember you and text is not as not necessarily the best format for that.
[00:20:16] So having something rich probably would be, so let's say. We reach someone on LinkedIn with a text post, but then they listen to 30 minutes of a podcast episode. Probably
[00:20:27] they will remember something, because also we're super weird in this show, to be honest. We say some crazy stuff, right? But
[00:20:33] Toni: But it's also, so our LinkedIn is for reach and then podcast is for for,
[00:20:39] basically trust,
[00:20:40] right? Building trust, kind
[00:20:41] of Getting to know us and so forth, which then helps with the reach out, which then helps with like, maybe purchasing our software. and so forth. Right.
[00:20:48] And, and I think you you can do it without, the podcast. yes, there are kind of plenty examples for this.
[00:20:53] But it does help you, you know, shape your POV instead of just writing it out.
[00:20:58] And the other thing, I think it helped with me a lot was you get invited to other shows,
[00:21:04] you get
[00:21:04] invited to webinars, you get invited to speak at conferences, you're included in press releases. I mean, the list goes fucking I
[00:21:12] Mikkel: Yeah, I just, I was just going to say
[00:21:15] one piece, if you don't do something like the podcast or something similar, by the way, it can be different, but.
[00:21:21] Then collaborating with folks who has the ear of the audience you want to reach, really difficult, really, really difficult. I remember when we were at Falcon Social, Falcon IO, then later Brandwatch, wasn't there when it was called Brandwatch, but pitching our CEO to speak at a conference or join a podcast even, what would always happen is the first thing I get back is, yeah, we can do that.
[00:21:49] You can get like a 15 minute slot. It's going to be 20, 000. And I was just like, well, how many people even attend this thing? On average, like 50. And I know that was bullshit. It was half, right? So it's like, are you kidding me? And it's just no way that was going to happen. I think with you, it was all of a sudden different because we had a show and we could just start by inviting the people we wanted on, which, you know, also requires some effort, obviously.
[00:22:15] Right. But that was the starting point. And then getting you on the shows all of a sudden easier because you were affiliated with. Kyle Coleman, Jacco van der Kooij, and all
[00:22:24] Toni: Yes. And I think another benefit of this,
[00:22:26] is, oops,
[00:22:27] another benefit
[00:22:27] of this is
[00:22:28] also, and we do this ourselves, you know, when we look for guests and we got lots of guests inbounds, right? we're getting all of those influencer managers.
[00:22:38] that are basically like, trying to place the CEOs on, on some shows. What
[00:22:43] we're always also looking for is like, Well,
[00:22:45] do
[00:22:46] they have a online presence?
[00:22:47] Have
[00:22:48] They spoken publicly a lot? Have they, do they have, maybe have a show? Because I can tell you, it's like, it's such a night and day difference between someone that has been doing this, I don't want to say professionally, but like has been doing this media stuff before, versus someone that, yes, you know, is able to talk to a crowd of people, but just hasn't, hasn't had this media training yet.
[00:23:09] Right. And you know, I, I still remember
[00:23:12] who
[00:23:12] was that. I think it was Sangram from uh, from go to market partners. And I think we were pretty either poorly prepared or just shitty.
[00:23:21] And we gave him questions But you know, when I listened to the episode, I was like, I don't, I don't think it was great questions actually, but he was such an incredible professional.
[00:23:30] that he,
[00:23:31] You know, took those mediocre question and returned awesome answers. Right. And
[00:23:36] and that, that is kind of the, the, the back and forth. you want to
[00:23:39] Mikkel: it's the same if you notice it,
[00:23:41] if
[00:23:42] you haven't checked him out, check out Chris Walker and just notice how he operates, especially when he joins other shows, because he has maybe, I would say 10 talk tracks per quarter that just goes on repeat, and I think he also knows the golden rule of marketing, which is You have to repeat the message up until the point where you get a little bit sick, right?
[00:24:00] You want to throw a little bit up and then you do it a little bit more, right? That, that's, that's the level you want to do it at. And so I think that's, you know, you know, I would definitely consider, I don't know actually if I would consider a podcast today. It's a lot of work. It's difficult. It really depends on whether you have the knack for it, whether you have the idea for how it's going to stand out, but definitely a great vehicle to start collaborating.
[00:24:23] Toni: out
[00:24:24] Of a thousand podcasts, 999 don't get
[00:24:29] to 20 episodes, by the way.
[00:24:31] Mikkel: So that's true. Yeah, that's true. And it's, but it's also because it's a big ask, right? It's a big ask to go to a founder, CEO and say, Hey, we're gonna publish weekly, is minimum gonna be half an hour episode, so I need you like for an hour every
[00:24:42] Toni: So the thing is then, well, you know, why, why do you need to do the podcast with, with a founder?
[00:24:47] Well, number one, obviously
[00:24:48] you
[00:24:48] want to build a founder brand, kind of
[00:24:50] He or she should be there. But also because it's the CEO, because it's the founder, usually those folks. end up, having really cool thoughts. and kind of Talk to
[00:24:59] really cool other people. And, And there's some interesting stuff there.
[00:25:03] And you don't need to sit there and have like content sessions on figuring this. Sometimes it's just a kind of we did Just prompting. You guys just prompted me with questions and sometimes it was a good prompt, sometimes it wasn't. And sometimes there was a great story coming out. It's like, oh wow, we can do a post from this.
[00:25:17] We can do an episode from this. We can do a newsletter from this. And when you have those subject matter experts basically in the company.
[00:25:25] this is then the way to, to leverage that.
[00:25:27] Mikkel: I mean, this is the whole other part of the exercise. We're going straight to the channel level almost, but it's like, what are you going to talk about? Right.
[00:25:32] And generally there's two approaches you can, probably three, but there's two approaches you can take. One is just to document what is happening at the business, which can be interesting in itself because the founder will be As you were saying, potentially involved in some very interesting conversation.
[00:25:47] The other is to share expertise, which can be tricky because it's the person really an expert in the field. When do you exhaust the theme? You will actually, you yourself, are you the expert? So can you interview the person, et cetera? The last option you can
[00:26:01] simplify things with is curate stuff, right?
[00:26:03] So just wanted to throw that out there real quick. If podcasting is not a thing for you, like I said, there's going to be a medium that is better for some people than others. Some people are great at narration. Like, think about Jacco. We talk about he's, oh, he's such a great orator. Like, he's truly great at telling a story.
[00:26:23] I don't know if he's a great copywriter though. Like, does he write a great blog post? Really? Truly? Does he, is he that person? I would probably say no. There's a few other people where I've read their posts and I've just gone like, man, this was great read. Like, truly a great read. Right. And I think, That's where you can lean into the strength.
[00:26:43] If you have a founder who's really great at writing, probably chances are they also enjoy it, by the way, then maybe a newsletter is the way to go. Because actually owning, owning the audience is what's unique about a newsletter. On LinkedIn, they could choose to change the algorithm today and make it fully pay to play if they wanted to.
[00:27:04] Podcast, same. The whole thing could just die if Spotify and Apple chooses to make some changes, but the newsletter, if people opted in,
[00:27:12] Then you can do whatever you want. I mean, almost do whatever you want, right? But
[00:27:16] Toni: thing is, right, that at least I'm seeing is
[00:27:19] Whatever the company does, if you have a strong founder brand, you
[00:27:25] are able to just amplify this so
[00:27:27] easily and so much more. right? So we had product launches. We posted it on the Growblogs LinkedIn page. Nothing happened. I posted the same thing. It blew up. Right. From that, we got interest
[00:27:39] from
[00:27:40] that.
[00:27:40] We got kind of inbounds.
[00:27:41] We used my LinkedIn following.
[00:27:44] to
[00:27:44] Basically have demo snippets that we kind of published you know, every Wednesday or something. There was a demo snippet. People learn more and more and more what the, what the product is doing without needing to go to the website and so forth. Right. There are so many benefits of having this megaphone and using it. And also from this coming from a reliable, believable, trustworthy source that, that
[00:28:08] I just want to kind of point out again, this is Even if you're at scale, even if you're at 10 million plus, this is, I think, a pipeline building mechanism. It is a pipeline building mechanism that that people just haven't kind of used yet, right?
[00:28:26] And and if you do, if the founder does that, actually, I think it can be extremely powerful,
[00:28:32] right? It,
[00:28:32] It's also for you as a, as a sales leader, go to market leader you know, a way to kind of lean into, like, we had you know, folks from, from our team go on demos and and it was so much easier even for them to relate.
[00:28:47] Because there was this thing already. right? So sometimes we were even sitting in the studio you know, doing the demo in the studio, where it kind of where we record it and people brought this up and then we just
[00:28:57] pointed
[00:28:57] the camera
[00:28:58] around and
[00:28:58] kind of showed the microphones, right. And people were like, Oh, this is, you know, and
[00:29:01] There's so many, you know, surrounding effects here
[00:29:04] that I think can really help you find another revenue stream.
[00:29:08] actually kind of, That's how I would see the whole thing. It's another way to generate cash.
[00:29:13] Mikkel: and I think Adam Robertson also made a really cool point, which is, well, once you've built the audience, you just need to figure out what are you going to Built for them to sell,
[00:29:23] Toni: So this is, this is a complete, you know, different approach, by the way.
[00:29:27] Mikkel: way.
[00:29:27] Yeah, but yeah, but it's also like what a lot of folks do is stealth startup. And I've always kind of hated it. I get that up to a point you don't want to announce when it's, if it's just. doesn't work and maybe today is slightly different to have something that's completely broken and go live. You can still do marketing,
[00:29:43] even though you're still, you can still advertise the problem, you can still advertise the founders, even the company, you don't have to show the solution yet.
[00:29:50] And I think that's the difference here that actually building that audience, you're wielding an immense amount of power.
[00:29:55] Toni: also I think
[00:29:56] this is a Seth Godin kind of thing. I'm not sure
[00:29:58] kind of how old this is
[00:30:00] now, but he was talking about the tribe.
[00:30:02] you know,
[00:30:02] tribal marketing or something like this.
[00:30:03] And he was talking about build the tribe and then build something for the
[00:30:06] Mikkel: and go to the, go to the bowling alley.
[00:30:07] Toni: And this is what this is. right? you build the tribe and then you build something for them? Which is,
[00:30:12] you know,
[00:30:12] you know, in funny ways, So, I mean, kind of, we bought the show, we're kind of using this. But also maybe you want to do
[00:30:18] something else,
[00:30:19] you know, Maybe get a real job or maybe, you know,
[00:30:21] start another business or something like this.
[00:30:23] This is an audience that we can, leverage for the next thing also. right? And, and this is kind of a you know, this is an asset that you as an individual have. Whether or not you're a go to market leader right now, or a founder, there's an asset that you have individually But
[00:30:38] you can also leverage, you know, next time,
[00:30:40] or,
[00:30:41] you know, next job, next venture, next whatever.
[00:30:43] right?
[00:30:44] Mikkel: It's transferable. And I also just, it's also like think about buying from someone in B2B. You don't buy from a brand anymore. Yeah. You, you're buying from a person. And therefore, it's pretty dang, dang helpful to have a person being front and center rather than a logo, just, and I, and I think it's just, I almost want to leave it at that because that's going to be immensely helpful for the entire team.
[00:31:08] Not just you know, it's not just an ego inflation boost thing. It is in fact going to help the sales team and also obviously it gives marketing a ton to do. All of a sudden, if the CEO is out there marketing the vision, marketing the solution, it gives
[00:31:20] so
[00:31:21] Toni: I mean to a degree right, you can send this episode to your founder our your VP marketing, because. you know, running this track with a founder, you know, if you do this successfully, this is a content goldmine for the marketing team. Like you're going to make their job so much easier. You can probably let go of five content writers and just have
[00:31:42] AI
[00:31:42] and someone else,
[00:31:43] do it,
[00:31:43] you know, basically taking all of that content stream and distributing it across all of the different assets you have.
[00:31:50] Right. So it's, I think I think the way people should more and more think about this is you have outbounds, you have inbounds, you have partnerships, and then you know, self prospecting or whatever, whatever I'm forgetting.
[00:32:04] Mikkel: then
[00:32:04] Toni: and then you have founder brand. I think that's, that's another thing you kind of need to think about.
[00:32:10] And the beauty is, almost everyone can do it. And the real reason, like, you're going to have this conversation with the CEO maybe, and he or she's going to be like, no, I don't have time.
[00:32:20] But The real reason why they don't want to do it is
[00:32:22] because it potentially is
[00:32:24] fucking embarrassing. Yeah. That's what it is.
[00:32:27] That's Like, they put something on LinkedIn, crickets. Like, nothing happens at all. And then it's like, ooh, you know, but I'm a hotshot CEO, but no one is listening. Totally get it.
[00:32:37] Totally
[00:32:37] get it.
[00:32:38] But that will be the reason why people don't
[00:32:40] Mikkel: And that's also like, even Messi, he had his first football game at some point. Probably one of the first couple of games was a bit embarrassing, you know?
[00:32:46] Maybe he scored an own goal, something like that. It's, you need to learn through
[00:32:49] Toni: think so. No, no, no.
[00:32:50] Mikkel: know, you
[00:32:51] Toni: think he just
[00:32:51] Mikkel: came out of the womb and then like, boom!
[00:32:54] Toni: That's, I think, exactly what happened there.
[00:32:56] But no, I mean, so, you know, I think that's the real reason why people don't do it. Oh, then there's, then there's one other reason
[00:33:03] We're not allowed to kind of mention the logo, but they do
[00:33:06] Crazy stuff.
[00:33:07] And
[00:33:08] you know what? They just have the
[00:33:09] luxury of not needing this.
[00:33:10] Mikkel: Yeah, they're crazy successful.
[00:33:12] Toni: that's the other thing. It's like, why wouldn't you do it as a founder? Well, sorry, I don't
[00:33:16] need that
[00:33:17] part of the pipeline that
[00:33:18] Mikkel: much.
[00:33:19] Yeah.
[00:33:20] Toni: Sorry. We're growing too fast already. We need to, you know, decline demos.
[00:33:25] Mikkel: in a billion.
[00:33:26] Toni: Yeah.
[00:33:27] Yes.
[00:33:28] Mikkel: I think that's it.
[00:33:29] Toni: it already. I mean, I think this was a bit like kind of a left field episode,
[00:33:33] actually,
[00:33:34] But honestly,
[00:33:35] folks.
[00:33:36] If you're struggling with pipeline, which you know, everyone is
[00:33:39] besides
[00:33:40] two people.
[00:33:41] This is another way to boost us.
[00:33:42] Mikkel: if you're RevOps who just want to become more strategic, right. This
[00:33:46] Toni: That's right. That's right. I mean, you know, lots of, anyway, different topic, different time. Everyone hit this follow button, the subscribe button. We really, we really love to see actually that, that count going up and thanks
[00:33:58] everyone for listening and have a good one.
[00:33:59] Bye bye.
[00:34:00] Mikkel: Bye.