The Power of Community with Jared Robin

Speaker A: Hi everyone and welcome to the European Startup show, where every week I talk to exciting startups in Europe to learn more about the challenges and strategies they use to scale their business. Before we get into the podcast, a word from our sponsors of this episode. Chargebee is the leading subscription billing platform that powers some of the best SaaS startups such as Hopkins, Spendes, Livestorm and Team Leader. The platform is powerful for startups to navigate complex tax compliance, invoicing and billing regulations. You can. You can also experiment with different pricing models and localize pricing and checkout experience. Check them out@chargebee.come residency is the digital gateway to the Estonian startup scene for foreign founders and entrepreneurs. The birthplace of Skype, wise and bold, Estonia has many advantages for early state startups for doing business remotely. 90,000 E residents have already joined. Read more about what they offer on their website@eresident.gov uh, EE and now let's get into today's episode. So community led marketing is fast becoming the new untapped organic channel for B2B businesses. What is community led marketing? Is it hype? Is it real? And how does it exactly work with other GTM strategies in the age of generative AI? These are some of the questions I'm curious to find out more about. My guest today is Jared Robin, co founder of Revgenius, a thriving community of 45,000 revenue professionals. While other people are grappling with how to build a thriving community, Jared has built this incredible community in just three years. Jared also hosts the Revenue Today podcast, advises several SaaS companies like Hockey Stack on community driven GTM strategies, and also invests in visionary founders who are passionate about community AI and gdm. Um, I'm very happy to have him on the European Startup show, so welcome.

Speaker B: Thanks for having me, Anita. I'm so happy to be here.

Speaker A: Great. So, Jared, I was reading through some of your posts and you said something that struck me and I thought I would start there. You said community saved me. I wondered what that meant. Especially because you are not from the community world. Your path is very interesting. You had an early career in sales and then you got around to building Rev Genius. So I'm curious if we could start off this conversation with. With you telling us about your journey to building Revgenius.

Speaker B: Yeah, and I love that line in that, uh, post. Why wasn't I from? My question to you is why wasn't I from the community world?

Speaker A: That's a good question. I guess I don't think of sales as community. Like I think sales and Salespeople generally are very. They have their own way of doing things. I don't think of them as being part of a community. So maybe that's why. And maybe I'm wrong for sure.

Speaker B: But no, I, I get it. And it makes some sense. And I'm not sure there were community roles when I started it professionally. And also, I just want to point out community is associated with movements which in general haven't been in the B2B world. Right. Like Black Lives Matter movement, community. The community around giving women the right to vote in the usa. Uh, and through many major, major things, desegregation, like all that and community. And B2B is relatively new. Ish.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: So I didn't really have that option. But I just want to preface it by saying that. But my community journey and why did community save me? There's so much importance behind that and in meaning to me. So I was in sales. I was in Fortune 100 sales. I didn't really feel connected to the organization, but I did pretty well. I worked for FedEx and then I went into technology sales. And at the time I didn't really have any connections that helped me. I remember having some friends that worked for LinkedIn and I was trying to get an interview. I don't even think they got me an interview, let alone get me a job. What friends? Right. And I worked with them at FedEx before. Um, and maybe I deserved it. Right. Like, I've matured quite a bit. I've grown quite a bit as a person. And just because I quote unquote, did really well or crushed, it doesn't mean everyone was my friend. And I just want to acknowledge that. But so I went to early stage tech sales because it was the only thing I could find. I had to take a pay cut, wasn't getting paid on time and all of this. And. And I decided I need to build something. I want to build on the side. And it ended up being a, uh, fashion magazine, a digital fashion magazine with my best friend at the time. And, uh, we didn't know anything about fashion, but we built it. And what I remember is we used to throw these killer magazine launch parties. He was a club promoter in New York. I was also about 11 years younger when I started this. Not saying that I'm old, but 11 years ago I was more into that than I am now. And I just remember all these people showing up to hang out. So even though we were like a digital fashion magazine, the glue behind it was like really phenomenal and drove so much Passion. And this wasn't any fashion. In the beginning I thought let's create this fashion magazine. But I'm like looking around and I'm um. And so the original reason why we started this, we're like, what do we like? And we said fashion, fitness and fun. We're like, okay, what does that look like? And he's a club promoter. We're like, what? A personal trainer meets a club promoter meets fashion. I said, what do we like the most out of all these three? We said fashion. We're like, okay, I'm not getting an entry level job at 30 years old in fashion because entry level in tech pays. Entry level in fashion pays 50% less.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So I'm like, huh, awful. Didn't sound like I would be able to like even live with a roommate at that rate. Stayed in tech. And we're like, let's just create a blog, a WordPress site. And in the beginning we were just going to write about fashion brands we loved. Which were the brands that most people have heard of at the time was like Givenchy, Balmain, Balenciaga, etc. Mainstream brands.

Speaker A: Hm.

Speaker B: Whether they're cool or not, there's a little bit of cliche ness to them. Ten years ago they were less cliche, but you get the idea. And we're like, everyone else is writing about. I'm like, why are people going to listen to us over Vogue?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And. And then I had an aha moment which led to. It really opened up community because like I love talking to people. I was in salespeople, old school sales, new school salespeople in tech, they just love selling and process driven. But the old school people were like relationship people. Right. So they actually did love people. I'm not convinced tech sales people love everybody. They'll say they do, but I digress. And so we're like, what's different? We walked into the store in the West Village of New York in Manhattan and. And I'm like, wow. There was like avant garde garments. Avant garde to the listeners in tech mean like against the grain.

Speaker A: Literally.

Speaker B: Yeah. Edgy. Think Rick Owens. If you don't know who Rick Owens is, listeners Google Rick Owens and you'll find out. Years and years ago, but like different brands that I never heard of. I'd heard of Rick Owens and I'm like, wow, these are really interesting. I haven't heard of any of them. I bet not many people have. So we went down like the Google rabbit hole as I call it, found stores that sold some of these and realized there was more Brands that I hadn't heard of. And I'm like, why don't we just create something for emerging, uh, designers only and like Vogue or whatever doesn't have any of this. And these brands are really cool. Let's just make them curated. So we had our niche.

Speaker A: Interesting.

Speaker B: We had our niche and these emerging brands, we defined it as like under five years in the limelight. So these are people that like, were way more accessible to and they didn't necessarily have the budget. So when we featured them in our digital magazine, and that was reviewing different lookbooks, the garments of the season, but also shooting editorial with them, bringing models, photographers, hair, makeup, stylists together, videos with them, getting really good photographers eventually, because our style was pretty badass. And we're building this network and this community informally. M all connected with this idea and this movement that emerging brands were being overshadowed by big ones and they needed a space. And the reason why wasn't just because of them, but because. Because it was like a good thing to do, but because these were the coolest, dopest, most interesting brands and they would push the whole space. So we built it. I built major relationships with Parsons, uh, School of Design, which is unarguably a top two fashion school in the world. And so when we threw these magazine launch parties, going back full circle and lines around the corner, it represented a movement and a community. This is what I did as a side hustle. So when I say community saved my life, it goes deeper. What I tell you before, my day job wasn't paying me on time. I think I mentioned pay cut. I didn't mention. But we had no product market fit. But now at night I have passion, I have people, I have love. And, and that saved me. And then the second part where it saved me revgenius I had no job, I was living at my dad's place and it literally gave me an income. Um, so the first time I wasn't making any money through it, I was paying money, the typical web hosting type stuff. And. But now I, I made money and I had a team of seven.

Speaker A: Nice.

Speaker B: That work with me. So community saved me out of life two times directly. But I was also like leaning into this LinkedIn thing, realizing it would help me get a job by me being a little more vocal and ended up finding LinkedIn friends who ended up being the first community members of Rev Genius. When I saw that there was a gap in that space and the gap that I saw was at the time there was no. I, uh, use the word true. And that's a slap on the others and it's not intentional. But there was no empathetic spaces for everybody that were free. That allowed both senior leaders as well as individual contributors in. I thought this was important because if you remember four years ago, the proverbial glass ceilings were at a height. Right. There are these spaces that allow senior leaders in and charge for them. But do they realize that women and black people can't necessarily become a senior leader, so by association they can't come into your space. Let me just, Let me fix that.

Speaker A: It sounds to me like what community is from listening to you is about getting together a group of people that identify with a, uh, passion. Is that the common core? Maybe it was the emerging brand as, uh, something that people felt they wanted to support and were passionate about. And then in the case of revge genius, it was the passion of being there to support and help each other. Those people that were not being catered for by the general process in the B2B. Would that be right?

Speaker B: So I think yeah. And I think so many products want to form communities because the product wants to build a community, not because the people need it and they think about it in a way to hit goals versus to help the people.

Speaker A: Yeah. Okay.

Speaker B: And that's key and that's core. What products think about it to help the people. Let's use Nike as an example. Right. Nike's ambassadors. What typical company, their ambassadors promote their product. Yay. Nike's ambassadors promote the nonprofit movements Nike supports.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: They ride bikes on Sundays near their local shop to support women athletes. Right. At any given time, there's a handful of nonprofits that they vehemently support that that go with tend to be like areas or people that sport is big in. Right. So whether it's wrongly incarcerated people extra on diversity and inclusion, uh, whether it's them formerly supporting black girls who code and other things like that, uh, every so often I look to see who their core focuses are. That's big. And that's how they build community.

Speaker A: Yeah. That's so interesting because that was one of my questions. It's should Everybody in the B2B world be thinking about how to build a community? And nope.

Speaker B: But everybody should be thinking about how to help people in the space that may be able to use their product.

Speaker A: So is there something people m in a company should ask when they're thinking about should we go and build a community? What should they ask themselves?

Speaker B: I would take a step back and say, like, why are we doing this period?

Speaker A: Reason to be like, what's our reason to exist.

Speaker B: Let's say you have a product. There's two reasons why you have a product. Either making a better something or you're making a different something. Sure. Maybe you're making the same something because. But let's assume, like you have grandiose visions. Give me a third reason. Uh, fine. Nonprofit. Got it. But stick in the profit. You're either doing a better something, I'm making a better widget, or I'm making something different. And what did Salesforce do? They put pictures of software and they cross through it. No more software. We're doing something different. Yep. And that's category creation. Right. And that's big and that's potent. So first thing to understand what you're doing and you probably now you want to do the category creation thing because it's even more. It's not easy. But you need to evangelize a problem that you're solving. Um, my. I'm going through this exercise right now with a newsletter I created. What problem is the collab? That's the name of the newsletter. Solving. So we're not just at the growth at. At all costs. We know that's, uh. Everybody's using that. Like we're past that. We're in sustainable growth. We're at the growth at the lowest cost. And not enough people are saying that more profit. That means we have to fire you. We don't care.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: That's not getting out there. That's not a bad thing. It's just a real thing. So let's be real. The collab helps you find people to collaborate with part time. 1099 and both parties actually want this. We have the fractional movement's pretty well documented. The creator movements becoming well documented, the influencer. All this. And startup founders don't want to do W2s. Let's be real. If you're in 0 to 1, you don't want to do it. So I'm evangelizing this problem and showing how to solve it. Now how easy would it be for me to put a community together now of fractionals and founders? If I had the time, they would just like, pop. And why? It's because I took a couple steps back and I was being deliberate and evangelizing the problem m and helping people find a solution. What's the product I have? It's a newsletter I could put in any product and these people will trust me like around this. So, like, product I'm thinking about is why don't I just be like a headhunter? Connecting fractional talent, and not just fractional leaders, with early stage founders.

Speaker A: Cool.

Speaker B: That makes sense. I'm, uh, like, literally helping solve the problem, putting money in the fractionals pockets, but also giving the founders access to talent that they might not have been able to afford full time.

Speaker A: So this is a good question, because the colab is something you're just working on Revgenius you've been doing for a while. And I'll come back to it. But the colab, you opened that initial stages.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah.

Speaker A: Tell me again, uh, just for the audience, which comes first? You helping the fractionals and the founders. And then the collab came. Or did the collab come first? And then you're like, here's my audience and they can do this?

Speaker B: No. So I, I came up with a manifesto first. I'm doing this all by the book. I have a wonderful mentor who I haven't spoken to recently enough. Shout out Cary. She works at GTM Partners. She's wonderful. And hopefully this prompts a reconnection. But, uh, we looked at the future of community. Right, Because I'm in this community space. Or like, what is commute communities becoming cliche? Like, why are people active? Or why aren't they active? Um, and it got to the point where people are active because you're tapping them on the shoulder. Do people really want to be in most of these communities or why? Like, how many communities is the average person in? And, and it's like, way over one. It's more than one, because. And what's the number one reason? It's because of fomo. Like, it really is. Like, I, I, I did a presentation, and over 40% of the people said they're in more than one because of FOMO, not because their needs weren't met.

Speaker A: Interesting.

Speaker B: And I'm like, okay, I took a step back, I said, what's working in the space? I saw HubSpot and Salesforce in particular, and I'm like, the people that are there, Evangelists are like the agencies making money from them. And I'm like, okay, let's be really real. The people that are the most active in the communities are, uh, the people that are making money from being there.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Okay. So you look at a rev genius or you look at a pavilion, and the people that are the most active tend to be the people it's against the rules to promote. But they are the ones that, um, got the most leads or whatever. And it sucks. But that's the case. It's not that it sucks, it's just that it is what it is and you have to look at it like it is. So we're like, okay, what if we could just call this out and create a space that this is collaborative growth. Yeah. We're both side and why is it hard to collaborate working for one company at the same time? If two people work for the same company, the company wins and the individuals don't necessarily win. And I believe that's contributing to people leaving jobs after 14, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 months. We have another problem here. Yeah. Because they're getting opportunities with more money or more flexibility or whatever. So there's a forcing function also that happens when somebody works with a 1099 person and 1099 for those that listening independent contractor. That doesn't happen with an employee. There's a lot more flexibility. There's a lot more equity in the equation. So we have these two dynamics going. Like communities evolving. There's overkill in communities. It's creating a challenge, but like also an opportunity. And people are like side hustling beyond belief and nobody can afford a CRO anymore. And I'm like, huh, huh? And evangelists and influencers and now communities becoming paying somebody to post on social media for them.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: Take it as it is. Maybe there's an intersection between all of this that we should just talk about and it's collaborative growth. So, uh, that's how it started. And then I'm like, okay, how do I tell the people about this? Obviously I could create a community, but who has time for another community?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So I'm like, why don't I just create a newsletter and tell some stories about companies leading into collaborative growth and then obviously a community makes a lot of sense. But I'm not doing it to sell a product or anything. In fact, if I create a product, I'll create a community to reward people that use the product versus get them to use it. I, I got a newsletter and I'm just telling some like really great anecdotes of companies that are using creators or fractionals or evangelists. Was this week's one. Some of which I am a creator, fractional or evangelist for and why it's working and, and working with such great success. So like the future of community or community le growth is collaborative growth. If you take a step back, the web3world predicted this already. How do they predict this? They gave everybody equity in different communities. It's attributable y like people want part of the pie.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: They don't want a Pie that they can't benefit from financially. There's two reasons. Financial is number one, and reason two is whatever directly leads to financial.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I should. I don't know if you already know this, but there was a guest that I had on my podcast. He was the CIO of Estonia, the government, and he had several.

Speaker B: I was going to say the whole country.

Speaker A: Yes, the whole country. And he. He's now the founder of a company called Koos K O O S IO. But the whole idea is to create a platform that rewards people, the community and the supporters that help you do whatever it is that you're trying to do. Whatever goal you have, the platform helps you to reward the people that are involved in helping you achieve that goal.

Speaker B: So I love that. And I do think in B2B. In B2C, they're wonderful at this.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So I. In B2B, people need to get paid because people or a social impact cause. B2B doesn't do this. Really.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Social impact cause that's close to their heart. Needs to be some needs reported vehemently.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And that's a key word. Yeah. We're throwing a webinar and 10% of the proceeds are going to go to this. Okay. People will like that. But that's a, uh, PR push. That's a tactic. As soon as you stop supporting this, they're not going to trust.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: They'll trust you for a short period of time. And it's not that they won't trust you, it's just that they see right through you. People in B2B are myopic, boring, lame. But B2C, like Toms and stuff. Buy a pair of glasses, give a pair. Or shoes or whatever. Warby Parker. All of that is super interesting.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's true.

Speaker B: But, uh, buy a CRM, give a kid a college degree. It doesn't. That'd m. Be cool.

Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know about the US College degree. I don't know how many can afford that anymore.

Speaker B: Margins would be cut.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. So, again, so much in the conversation. Jared, I want to go back now to Rev Genius for a second because I'm actually very much what you found out from your poll. I'm in a lot of communities, like six or seven. But the honest truth is I don't have time to actually go into any of those communities. I may be active in one community, and even there I feel like I make an effort to contribute and be a, uh, good member, like to help other people, but I find when I'm really busy. I'm just going in when I have a need, when I ask for something. Right.

Speaker B: And sorry I said sad. Yeah, well shared. Yeah. Um, yeah.

Speaker A: And my problem is I see the immense value in communities and actually everything that I'm doing, which I'll tell you about at some point, is all about wanting communities to be thriving because I find so much value in it. But then I think about how I use it and depending on how busy I am in my day job, what happens with my own behavior and I wonder, how do you actually maintain thriving, healthy communities?

Speaker B: Yeah. That's even more than a million dollar question. That's like a big multi billion dollar question.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, as like Quora's dying on the vine and all these like massive ones.

Speaker A: What have you seen that works? There must be something done. Yeah.

Speaker B: How social media platforms are doing it is. They're building technology and to get more engagement and, and there's various levels of success there. I think at the core you need to understand what's going on in the space, what people want to learn as a whole. And that's from being in the space yourself as well as periodically gauging the temperature of your community. Whether it's by asking questions or just talking one to one to people or just listening into what people are talking about or combination thereof. Constantly put out great content. That's killer. And that's going to be great and relevant content. I think it's also being a thought leader in the community space where people need to tune in even if it's not being active every day. They need to check in because this is like a massive space and, and they're getting fomo. Uh, by not knowing what's going on in Revgenius. Yeah, I think that's big. I think rolling out new programming or member matching or things like that, as there's more communities and somebody has one tactic and it becomes repeatable by anybody, it becomes less effective. Less effective for sure. So I think I, I think it's important that to stay relevant, it's a comp. It's continuing to be a thought leader and offering like lots of value. Now what is lots of value mean? And I don't necessarily think we're the best at this. And Frank, frankly I'm not sure anybody's good at this. We've gone in a hundred people jobs a month or whatever. Great. So if you need a job, you come back. But like what do you do? The. Okay, cool. Like figure out the two or three things that you could We've got in a hundred people, new clients every month. Everyone needs new clients. Maybe that's good, but maybe you're not satisfying other things. I, I think that's big. Where I'm drawn to now are accountability groups as well, which I have in my personal life, text chains as well as, um, I'm evangelizing sidebar, which is a wonderful accountability group. But it's. Anita, it's hard. Like oftentimes you join a community to take care of an immediate need or, and, and, and then you don't come back until you have that need again or you just, uh. It's. It's continuously evolving. So to say that there's a tried and true formula would be myopic and just not honest. There's. You just have to feel what's going on and create new solutions at a regular cadence for the market and for your members.

Speaker A: And maybe we just need to reset our expectations that. You know what, that 90101 rule that everybody throws around in communities. I don't know if you agree with it, but you know that 90% are lurkers, 10% are, uh, whatever. Active. 1% are actually contributing or something like that. I don't know if you've heard that statistic. It's probably, maybe, maybe we should just reset our expectations and think that is fine. It is fine. Because everybody has so many responsibilities and so distractions and so many commitments. It's fine. And what you need is just enough of a critical mass so that at any point in time that 10 and 1% is enough to help the others who are coming in. So. Yeah.

Speaker B: And keep in mind, you might not need a community.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: If you're just like trickling along, like, why is that? Uh, is it because you don't have the time to give the value to the people? Is it because the people don't care enough about the problems that you solve? Is it a combination thereof?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Make a newsletter.

Speaker A: Y.

Speaker B: Make a newsletter. You could solve a lot. I'm, uh, not launching a community with my side project yet. I don't have the energy to make it pop, even though I sense it could do very well. Let somebody else fail at that. And when I'm ready, I'll come in.

Speaker A: Yeah. Let's just clarify that you don't always need to build a community.

Speaker B: No. Especially if you're. And going all the way back. Especially if your goals are like self centered. My board expects this or that. I get it. And you have to appease that. But if you try to appease that with that is the top priority versus a member centric goal is a top priority. That's going to be a leading indicator to hit your goals. Two different conversations, same potential results though.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's a really nice segue to ask these two questions and I think you're hinting at. So maybe we can go into it which is what do companies get wrong when it comes to community led marketing?

Speaker B: Yeah, that phrase, community led marketing is very much a uh, one to many to get people into your funnel or to buy your product. And community is people being fully people. You could put them together. But if you're just trying to get people under the guise of community to be in your funnel, your pipeline, your closed one without first helping them away from your product, that's what people are getting wrong. So let's look at products like Notion which help created a phenomenal community and templates, whatever. How do they help people away from their. They help people make money from selling their product on gumroad. They helped people build businesses and new product lines. I'm saying closer to that money thing. Right. Like Notion agencies. Salesforce did that too. HubSpot did that too. Not just sell your product to them. No, it's much more. They're partnering networks. Big small companies. Well we don't know. Clay is crushing right now. If you've heard of clay.com, uh, they're expert. People are building clay agencies. That's cool. And they're putting money in people's pockets.

Speaker A: Is that the only way any other way

Speaker B: that comes to build a community or that so that if you're putting your product front and center.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Help them make money with your product. Otherwise help them do things easier. So Salesforce made it so that you didn't have to download uh, clunky software genius helps people get jobs, helps people network with other people and all of this. And we don't sell people anything really. The sponsorships are a business model and sponsors come to us as a result. Apple has a community that's helping people design stuff and use their products in a really beneficial way.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's like they're creating an ecosystem.

Speaker B: They are. They are. An ecosystem is a great word.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. This is all at the uh, border of I think something that I've been hearing a lot which is really reimagining go to market in the B2B world. It's not the way it used to be. Inbound, write a bunch of content, Google search and it lands on your website. That playbook is not working anymore. It's outdated Gen AI is coming. I, uh, want to shift the conversation a little bit to who do you think are some of the most innovative thinkers in this space of go to market in the B2B world?

Speaker B: And why people that believe trust is at the center. Also, community is the future of AI. Uh, and the reason why you have all these people building AI, like learning from each other.

Speaker A: What do you mean by community is a future of AI? Tell me a little bit more.

Speaker B: Yes. I read an article from like Stack Overflow that stuck with me and it was just around the idea that as the cost for making AI decreases, more people go into AI. And we've seen that. Right. Like you can't tell me I'm wrong. Last year, how many more multipliers of founders and people went into AI? AI has always been here, but the cost has gone down.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: So when you have more people in the space, there's more people in the space and building community and stuff around that. So that's super interesting and intriguing. Um, the minds of gtm, there's so many. I think the category creators are some of the most interesting. The HubSpot Salesforce have done exceptional MHM in that realm. Salesforce I'm pretty sure built SaaS, right?

Speaker A: Yeah, true.

Speaker B: Like software was downloaded on your desktop before it was in a web browser. I'm pretty sure they're there.

Speaker A: Yep. I used to read Forecast, so I know

Speaker B: the newer people AI's still being figured out. AI has the potential to be the most important thing that's happened to technology in our lifetimes. And I believe it will be realized. I also believe it's not there yet. So we're going to see where it goes and how it impacts people.

Speaker A: Yeah, but what about in addition to AI? I'm thinking just about how to go to market, how companies, uh, think about going to market. Like Community. We talked about Community as being one way potentially not necessarily for marketing, but for building brand and building an ecosystem. Who are the people that are thinking like the next wave of how to do that?

Speaker B: So I just listened to uh, my first million podcast today with Sean Pury and I'm closest to his business partner Ben and he said in the past used to have a business or sales co founder and a tech co founder. Now you're gonna have an audience co founder, meaning a technology person like to go to market and you have a big following and like big following of people that trust you. You're going to be so much more potent to move so much faster than a good marketer. With all typical resources and your CAC is going to be significantly lower. So I'm really intrigued with that. And influencer marketing touches on that for sure. Um, um, it can, but I'm talking at the top, go to market as like audience builder. Like Justin Welsh starting a technology company and with Dickie Bush he just started one. The example Sean Pury gave was one. One of many. But support shepherd, which just had a uh, a major exit to uh. It was valued at 53 million, 27 million was purchased. A controlling share was purchased by Nick, who's a big Twitter influencer. I don't know if you're familiar with him. And uh, this whole business is just hiring like virtual assistants from the Philippines. But it's not just that, that's important, really important for e commerce businesses to get like inexpensive help to scale.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: It's not necessarily a revolutionary idea per se. The reason why it's going to work is because of all the people that are using it and the co founder or the person with a big trusted audience and the founder of the Hustle is now an investor. Right. And, and all of this and oh my gosh, who would you rather be? The CMO or CEO like the founder of the Hustle. Assume like in the brand they bought or a uh, typical. Have your pick of a 400k a year marketer. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, yeah. Uh, bye. We're going with him.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: I think that's massive and I think that's the new community, the new collaborative growth as well. I think it's super interesting. So it's not just hiring an influencer for X dollars. I think that can work. We're figuring that out and I think that we're going to continue to figure that out and creators as well.

Speaker A: And.

Speaker B: But I think a co founder being this person with a trusted audience is like really meta and it's just like skipping to the front of the line. And that's what's going to happen quite a bit. Not just a big following, a trusted following.

Speaker A: I love that. I think that's a good place to bring the formal part of the podcast to a close. A trusted following trust at the center of your go to market is the key. Whether you build that with community, whether you build that with evangelists. Having that trust is the way to differentiate your brand versus another. Because marketing can be copied. Salespeople you can hire, you can copy technology. The only thing that is hard to build and retain and differentiate is trust. Okay, I'm gonna go to the end of our podcast I have a quick rapid round and then we'll finish with that. And I usually start with what's a book that's influenced you, that has made an impact that you would recommend to the audience?

Speaker B: The Presence process. I'm reading for, like, my 10th plus time.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: It's about integrating fears. Uh, you could argue that it didn't work the first time, but it's a continuous journey. Right? Like, inwardly, I'm on week six, meditating twice a day. I haven't drank or done any toxins like that in years, but in the past, I would take a break for this anyway. Presence Process by Michael Brown, version 1. Because no matter what marketing knowledge or sales knowledge or whatever you have, um, we will always be our own biggest limiters.

Speaker A: Yep. I love it. Okay. As I told you, this is a European startup show. So I always ask about your, like, a favorite city. I don't know how much of Europe you've been you've traveled.

Speaker B: Not enough. And I told you the trip I'm most looking forward to, and I haven't been to either of these cities. Shame on me. Is Paris and Barcelona.

Speaker A: Oh, you're gonna love it. You're absolutely gonna love it. I think, Jared, you might even just move here with your m. With whatever it is.

Speaker B: There's no doubt in my mind that there's a better world out there, and it might be in Europe.

Speaker A: What about a productivity tip or a hack or a tool that you use to keep you productive? And this was one of the questions I was gonna ask you as well. Like, you are into so many things. You have sidebar, you have GTM leaders, you're advising companies, you're doing rev genius. You have the collab. How do you do this? What's your productivity tip?

Speaker B: The presence process book.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Getting out of your own way. So the truth is, I most likely have ADHD undiagnosed, clearly. Otherwise I would know I am the easiest one to be distracted in all this. The quick and dirty tip throughout the day is to time block and stick with it. That's worked for me. But, uh, having so many things it's really easy to book on top of. So it's just. It's understanding what your priorities are and. And, um, getting those and understanding where you could fail throughout the day. You're not going to be able to do everything.

Speaker A: Lovely. And the last one, do you have a quote? It could be your quote, it could be someone else's quote, but something that you say to yourself or to your employees that means a lot to You?

Speaker B: Yep. And I'll pull it up. All right, so there's two quotes. One I have right here.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: At my desk. And let me just. And this is the man in the arena quote. I don't know if you're familiar with it. I'll read it. My quotes. The quotes I like are the long ones. It's not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the woman or man who's actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes up short again and again because there's no effort without error and shortcoming. But who does actually strive to do the deeds? Who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. So that one is one that sticks with me. And then, uh, Calvin Coolidge's Nothing takes the place of persistence. I saw my dad's desk as a young kid, and this is pretty much this. That one's fun and. And I love it. But this one's like my daytoday. Like, nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not. Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not. Unrewarded. Genius is almost a proverb. Education will not. The world is full of educated derelicts.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. And then this is about the slogan, Press on has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. So both of those, as smart as I may have been, or here or there, I'm not the smartest. And. But I know there's more in my control that could help me through life, and that's a warm feeling.

Speaker A: I love that. Jared, what an inspiring quote. Both of those quotes are so inspiring. I hope one of the goals of this podcast is I want to really inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs. Europe has fantastic talent, just superb, very in deep talent. And one of my objectives in starting this show was to showcase incredible entrepreneurs and hope to inspire more people to take that on versus going into the standard fintech. Europe is big in fintech, and I think the big is luxury. Brands like those are the two that have a lot of gdp. So, yeah, so that's very nice.

Speaker B: I'm humbled to be invited on here and willing to take, uh, mentee or mentor, whichever direction that goes, because I like that mission.

Speaker A: If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review. Don't charge guests to be on the show and the ratings and review of the show stay live. Thank you very much for listening, and until next time, keep building.