← Success Story with Scott D. Clary
Success Story with Scott D. Clary
Lessons - How to Build and Scale Product-Based Startups Without Wasting Resources | Darren Lee - Product Marketing Strategist
00:13:03
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- [00:00]
A
In this lessons episode, discover how to stand out in a crowded market by embracing authenticity over flashy imitative tactics. Learn why choosing a unique customer centered approach builds lasting trust. And understand how assembling a high performing team fueled by shared values drives long term success. Because I think that's the concern that entrepreneurs have when they put something out and then they see their competitors being flashy and promising the world and they kind of like when you, when you play in a space, you know who's real and you know who's full of shit quite quickly but you get frustrated because you lose customers. So I want, I kind of want you to give entrepreneurs maybe some very simple or tactical tips. When you are launching a great product and you know it's a great product and you feel like you're being outmatched on the sales and marketing front by somebody that's shittier product but they, they know how to really say the right things or just show up in a way that maybe a product focused person doesn't understand how to show up. What is the, how do you compete that you don't devolve to these shitty sort of gotcha sales and marketing tactics that we're sort of talking about that creates this shitty customer experience where customers are buying, they have remorse, they want a refund, they're not getting it. You know that that's the average customer that goes to your competitors funnels dealing with. So what do you do?
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B
I think if you know how the game is played over here, you should be zigging when everyone else is lagging.
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A
You mentioned that a few times. I've seen your content. What does that mean?
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B
So if everyone is like running the same type of funnels of landing pages or some type of offers and you're familiar with that, it's good just to completely avoid it and do something completely new. So if they're running this specific landing page, don't have a landing page. If they're doing loads of sales calls, have no sales calls. Have a different approach to it. Right. There's different ways we can slice and dice it so that you are not becoming into that crowd. The biggest problem with this I find is that a lot of guys are trying to fit in. They're running agencies, they're running consulting, they're running coaching, they're running, they're running sma.
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A
But it's like a shitty copy of the other person.
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B
It's a rendition. Yeah. That's why like you know, people try always imitate others online. Whereas the category of one will actually Just have its own principle and process to this. So let me just show you how I walk through this process. So when we built the agency, in the beginning, there was a very common way to build agencies. But I didn't go through those programs. I didn't go through that process at all. I just intuitively worked off these customers have a specific problem. I can get to them this way through outbound, through outreach. Outreach doesn't really work. Maybe I could do something different. Maybe I could send them loom videos. Maybe I can show up their door. Maybe I could do something unique. I was basically utilizing my own intuition as to how to solve the same problem. Now we still have a good product, we still have a good way to do it, but you don't need to follow everyone else's advice. Give me give you another example. I was early on writing on LinkedIn around 2020, 2021. I was, I would honestly say, one of the first people in the entrepreneur community to be ready on LinkedIn. It was from Justin Welsh, where I learned from. He was like, first.
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A
And I remember quickly, by the way.
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B
I quickly learned that, like, okay, this is really sparking. When everyone said that was a bad idea, when everyone said it was cringy and it was woke and he should be on Twitter and on Instagram, I was still writing on LinkedIn. I still have a small audience, but I have a very engaged audience that people like, know and trust me. They see a lot of social proof and they come inbound. Most people that want to work with us come from that. It's a unique mechanism. I have a unique way of doing the same thing as everyone else. So developing that innate kind of unique identifiers is completely unique, right? Give another example. When everyone's running ads, we're running, we're recording podcasts, right? Some guys have just ads, businesses. We're doing something that's unscalable. I've had mentors tell me in the past that, you know, maybe you're recording too much podcast, but the intangible benefits of what we're doing today is you can't measure it, right? It's a unique way to do it. But at the same time, we're putting in a seven areas of trust that people can develop with us to work with us. They see that there's a unique way to work with us in the front end and the back end. Then to have that unique mechanism as well. I think it's down to the team, right? I've been very focused on building a winning team, an Excellent team. A team of people that get it, like it and trust it. And I think my one mechanism for building a team is that people must want it, they must get it and they have the capacity to do it. So this is from traction. Ideally the idea of doing traction is that you want people who are truly about it. So the guys that work that I've been hiring, not everyone works out for sure, but ideally they love podcasting, they're about it. They really truly love it that they're willing to upload the podcast at 2:00 in the morning, hit the client call at 5:00 in the morning, make the adjustments that majority of people won't do, and that's what becomes a category of one. Right. And it's also having a unique experience. And I'll keep going back to this point, but how we've been doing this in the beginning is that customers will actually stay with you even if you don't get that greater results if your experience is high. We give example. We work with some companies in certain niches that are a little bit drier. Okay, it could be real estate, multifamily, HR hero. Are they sexy industries?
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A
No, no, they're not.
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B
But we create an experience for our clients that puts, that makes them feel special. We do reporting, we do a lot of nice reporting, elegant reporting. We do a lot of coaching, lot of personalization. We make them feel which they are special to us and they help us and we help them. And I think that's a unique experience that most people the scalar bros. Will tell you not to do because it's not scalable, my friend. I literally will travel across the world to a workshop with someone who's not even a client, who's just a prospect because I love it, I'm about it and I'm willing to show them in person. I've literally sat in office rooms for hours for free because I'm willing to do the unscalable stuff that builds scale into your business, you know?
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A
You know, I think that's actually a really smart idea because doing the stuff that doesn't scale is the actually in my opinion, the only competitive advantage that you have against somebody that's a hundred million dollar, billion dollar publicly traded company.
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B
Have you heard about Brian, sorry, Have you heard about Brian Chesky on that?
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A
I, I know, I know Brian Chesky, but I don't know his thoughts on. I know the, the scalable are doing the unscale. That's a Paul Graham.
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B
So, so Paul Chesky has like this thing about he's a specific word for it, but it's about being in the detail. So he would be in the UXUI meetings about some random button on the customer success page, and he would be there changing the color of the buttons for like two and a half hours of entire team. And like, this is the reason why Airbnb is the size that he is. He's like obsessed with the tiny details. And I think we go back to, you know, what truly creates like a unique product, unique business, is being in that detail. Right.
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A
Being that obsessed.
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B
Exactly. But being in the detail, though, Right? Because Eric sue talks about this personality test you can do. It's called you personality or something personality you. And it will give you a good idea of like where you are, what type of leader you are, what type of entrepreneur you are. But if you have a low attention of detail, it doesn't mean you just leave it. It means that you actively work on those things. I'll give an example for myself as like a leader in our company. I actually have a low level of empathy, but I've recognized it and I've been working on it. I work on my relationship. I've hired guys who have high empathy, low logic, so that these guys bring in a much better culture. Now you need to have that awareness of yourself. Now, we're not a nine figure business, but we're a seven figure business and we're doing well as a service seven figure business. @ the same time, it's not just me, and it's not just sales that will get to the next level. It cracks, it breaks. There's so many issues that I think we all can spend more time looking at, to try improve.
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A
Right.
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We can all start taking much more of an inward look at ourselves, at our company, at our clients, and think, am I building the right ship or am I building something that's completely not in alignment with who I am and who I want to be?
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A
I think that's. And I think that, I mean like you. And one more point, just to reiterate how important it is surrounding yourself with people that, that also champion that vision and that those ideals, I think, is actually incredibly important. Because then you start to create this, this sort of, this board of advisors or this, this, this group within your company that, that forces you to, to act in the right way and to be the right kind of entrepreneur.
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B
Those guys will go to war with you.
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A
Yeah. So you, you also, you don't want to let them down. That's the thing. So as a, as A solopreneur. It's very easy to make shitty decisions. But all of a sudden when you have to justify it to these incredible A players that you've hired that are like, you know, high value, high moral, high ethics, high focus on customer, all these types of these personality traits and makes for a good person. When you do have the opportunity to make that shitty decision, you're not going to make it anymore because you surrounded yourself with all these incredible people. Which I think is just like a safety mechanism to make sure that all your decisions are aligned towards the right target.
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B
I love that, man. I think as well that a lot of guys, you know, they, they have their idea with their business, they have the product that they have, but they don't really think about these small nuances. But this is what builds culture, right. Where you're accompanied, the people that you have, these are people that will, you'll go to war with effectively. And even some of our team members are quite young. But what if you can't, if you're in early stages and you can't afford huge A players, you can find guys that you can develop.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And give them so much of your own experiences. And I think a lot of people have worked with us, they like it because I'll give them one to one attention, will have calls and so on, so forth and I'll teach them about where they want to go to and put them on a career trajectory. So I think there's different ways to slice and dice it. As a leader, you want to hire people that are great whether you can afford it or not, and then offer them your own consulting advisory. But then at the same time, if you're young and you're trying to get to the space, I think there's nothing wrong with being an employee. Right. If you want to partner with someone and work with someone, so be it. There's a lot of merit to doing that, especially smaller companies. I'll give an example. Like we have a lot of young guys who will become great entrepreneurs, but in the early stages, they love learning how all the parts of our business work together. And now that we've developed into more products, more services, they're excited about it. They get up and they want to go for it. We are now doing much more things and they are doing much more things. So there's much more advantages than just showing up and getting a job done.
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A
Well, I actually think the best people to hire. I've thought about this a lot. The best people to hire are people that would be entrepreneurs in any other circumstance, just for whatever reason right now, it's not, it's not in their stars, it's not their risk profile, whatever it is. But they could be that entrepreneur. It's just this is not the time for them to do that. So for whatever reason that's, that's an opportunity for somebody who is taking the risk, built their own company, is an entrepreneur. So find a way to find those people. And then also to your point, you have to know where they want to go so that they don't just flake on you like in two, three years. Because if they want to go do their own thing, that's fine. But you should be aligned and moving towards that target together.
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B
I like that man. Last point I'll say on this is, you know, sometimes people don't know where they want to go, but you also want to enable them. So if you've ever read Leaders Eat Last, talk about circle of safety. So I've gotten 180 with this, with my own kind of leadership style which was before I thought it was about getting work done and working hard and all this stuff. Now it's about putting people in their best seat and allowing them to almost develop their own career with you. So I'll give an example. My CEO who was recently promoted, young guy, came from Goldman Sachs, knew his stuff, really knew everything. And for him he wants to, he didn't really know where he wanted to go so I wanted to help him see that and he wanted to have a better career with us. So it's about creating that space, allowing him to do his best work and allowing him to develop as an individual too. Right. And maybe in a couple of years time he'd want to go build something and that would be great versus this short term mindset that unfortunately a lot of our, a lot of our businesses are best off.
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A
Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.
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Sat.