20Growth: How to Scale to $30M ARR Bootstrapped through Content and Brand | The Ultimate Equation to Success in Sales and Why Most Founders Suck at Sales | Why You Should Overpay People and What That Means with Guillaume Moubeche @ Lempire

Summary

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Episode Summary

Episode: 20Growth: How to Scale to $30M ARR Bootstrapped through Content and Brand | The Ultimate Equation to Success in Sales and Why Most Founders Suck at Sales | Why You Should Overpay People and What That Means with Guillaume Moubeche @ Lempire
Release Date: December 13, 2024
Guest: Guillaume Moubeche, Founder of Lempire

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1. Introduction

Harry Stebbings welcomes Guillaume Moubeche, the founder of Lempire, which has impressively scaled to over $30 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) through a unique content flywheel and strong brand presence. The discussion delves into Guillaume's strategies for content creation, sales, scaling challenges, and hiring practices.

2. Scaling Lempire in a Crowded Market

Guillaume discusses his initial belief that being a unique first mover was essential for success. However, he later realized that entering a crowded market indicates existing product-market fit. As he states:

"Once the market is crowded, it means the product market fit already exists. If they're not paying, it means that something is wrong."
— Guillaume Moubeche [00:00]

He emphasizes the importance of outperforming competitors by leveraging better solutions and understanding customer needs.

3. The Sales Equation: Timing × Trust

Guillaume introduces his sales equation:

"Sales is equal timing times trust. Timing and trust is either equal to 0 or 1."
— Guillaume Moubeche [00:28]

He explains that effective sales hinge on establishing the right timing and building trust with customers. This principle guided Lempire’s sales strategies, focusing on relationship-building rather than mere transactional interactions.

4. Content Flywheel and Revenue Streams

Initially, content contributed minimally to revenue, with the first year seeing around 10-33% of revenue from outbound efforts and negligible inbound from content. Over time, as content strategies matured, inbound revenue rose to 70%, demonstrating the power of a well-executed content flywheel.

"Creating content is basically the same as pushing a super heavy ball. [...] I would say like the first year I closed around like 100 customers myself, [...] almost zero customers were coming from the content."
— Guillaume Moubeche [10:20]

5. Overcoming Early Sales Challenges

Guillaume recounts the struggles with low activation rates (10%) and high churn (up to 50%) during product redesigns. By simplifying the user onboarding process and making campaign creation more intuitive, Lempire improved activation rates to 45% and stabilized growth.

"We entirely rebuilt the campaign creation, making it like much easier for people to go from A to Z. And it changed pretty much everything at that time."
— Guillaume Moubeche [19:39]

6. Lessons in Pricing Strategy

In competitive markets, Guillaume advises regular price increases aligned with product value enhancements. He observes that:

"As your product evolves and as you're bringing more value, your price should increase."
— Guillaume Moubeche [22:51]

He also highlights the importance of adapting to market conditions and ensuring that enterprise clients utilize the product effectively to justify pricing.

7. Deciding to Launch a Second Product

Despite the success of Lemlist, Guillaume launched a second product when ARR approached $1 million. He acknowledges the risk of losing focus but believed diversification was necessary to meet broader market needs.

"Focus is my enemy. [...] It took me years of psychotherapy to realize it."
— Guillaume Moubeche [25:02]

8. Navigating Growth Plateaus and Hiring Mistakes

Facing a growth plateau at $13-14 million ARR, Guillaume opted against further VC funding, valuing profitability and EBITDA. Rapid hiring led to operational challenges, teaching him the importance of hiring experienced individuals and offering competitive compensation to attract high-performing talent.

"Pay people and create a package where people are extremely well paid for their role."
— Guillaume Moubeche [33:26]

He emphasizes hiring people who have previously scaled companies and trusting gut instincts during the recruitment process.

9. Building a Personal and Company Brand Through Content

Guillaume advocates for founders to engage in content creation to build trust and brand authority. He believes that:

"Putting yourself out there and creating content will help your business 100%."
— Guillaume Moubeche [45:43]

By consistently producing valuable content, founders can attract leads, foster relationships, and enhance their company's visibility without heavy reliance on paid advertising.

10. Personal Insights: Discipline, Health, and Entrepreneurship

Guillaume shares his personal discipline routines, including rigorous training for Ironman events, which parallels the perseverance required in entrepreneurship. He underscores the importance of physical fitness in maintaining mental resilience and consistency.

"Discipline is the purest form of self-love."
— Guillaume Moubeche [56:05]

His commitment to health and discipline has been instrumental in his entrepreneurial journey, providing the stamina needed to navigate challenges and sustain growth.

11. Reflections on Success and Personal Growth

Upon cashing out $10 million, Guillaume reflects on the freedom money provides, allowing him to pursue greater ambitions and support his family's financial security. Transitioning to a chairman role, he focuses on strategic growth and top-of-funnel activities, recognizing the value of delegating operational responsibilities to trusted leaders.

"Money can buy freedom and freedom is what I like the most."
— Guillaume Moubeche [37:48]

12. Final Thoughts and Advice for Founders

Guillaume imparts several key pieces of advice for founders:

• Embrace Sales: Sales is fundamental to business success. Founders should actively engage in sales to understand customer needs and validate their product's value.
• Iterate Based on Feedback: Continuously seek customer feedback and be willing to pivot or redesign based on user interactions and activation metrics.
• Value Over Volume in Hiring: Prioritize hiring high-quality talent with relevant experience and offer competitive compensation to build a strong, effective team.
• Consistency in Content Creation: Focus on consistent content output rather than chasing virality, understanding that sustained effort leads to long-term gains.

"Sometimes, you truly need to dream big and be unrealistic if you want to achieve something that very few have done in the past."
— Guillaume Moubeche [25:02]

Conclusion

In this episode, Guillaume Moubeche provides a comprehensive playbook on scaling a startup through disciplined sales strategies, effective content marketing, and strategic hiring. His experiences emphasize the importance of persistence, adaptability, and personal discipline in achieving substantial growth without relying heavily on venture capital. Founders can glean valuable insights into navigating competitive markets, optimizing customer acquisition, and building a resilient company culture from Guillaume's journey with Lempire.

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Notable Quotes:

• "Sales is equal timing times trust. Timing and trust is either equal to 0 or 1."
  — Guillaume Moubeche [00:00]

• "Creating content is basically the same as pushing a super heavy ball."
  — Guillaume Moubeche [10:20]

• "Discipline is the purest form of self-love."
  — Guillaume Moubeche [56:05]

• "Money can buy freedom and freedom is what I like the most."
  — Guillaume Moubeche [37:48]

• "Sometimes, you truly need to dream big and be unrealistic if you want to achieve something that very few have done in the past."
  — Guillaume Moubeche [25:02]

Transcript

[Guillaume]

When I first started, I thought that you had to be unique to succeed in a market and you had to be like the first mover in order to to really succeed. But later on I realized once the market is crowded, it means the product market fit already exists. If they're not paying, it means that something is wrong. If you want the equation of sales, sales is equal timing times trust. Timing and trust is either equal to 0 or 1.

[Harry Stebbings]

This is 20 growth with me, Harry Stebbings. Now stay on 20 growth. We dive into an incredible growth story. Guillaume bootstrapped Lempire from founding to now over $30 million in annual recurring revenue. And he did this through an incredible content flywheel unlike any other. He also built this incredible microbrand in his vertical and today he opens the playbook on content creation, content distribution, brand sales, the sales equation and so much more. This is a very tactical and granular show which are really always my favorites to do and Guillaume was incredible. But before we dive into the show today, one of the easiest investment decisions I have made over the last three years is investing in 11X. Their digital workers don't just automate tasks, they transform your business. With 247 operations, multilingual capabilities and human like intelligence, they're revolutionizing how work gets done. From Prospecting to closing, 11x is the all in one platform that allows you to reduce costs, increase pipeline and boost conversion rates. And that's why companies like Pleo, Handshake, Saw, Groff and more are customers and lovers of 11X. Check them out today at 11X AI. You will not regret it. And speaking of incredible products, when I spoke to Canva co founder Cliff Obrecht on the podcast last year, he touched on how visual content is fast becoming the fuel that's driving the modern workplace. And your team needs to create an engaging visual pitch deck to sell an idea. A product launch needs an inspiring video to excite investors and customers. It's a game changer for visual communication at work. Canva turns your team into to master visual communicators so they can get their point across with visual impact inside and outside your business. With no design experience needed with Canva, any team member and any company, whether you're a startup or a global organization, can design compelling on brand visual content quickly and easily. And that's why 90% of the Fortune 500 90% use Canva. Start designing [e-mail] designed for work and talking about growth. Let's dive into how Voyantis is transforming customer acquisition. As this is my growth podcast, I'M so excited to share with you the amazing story of the fastest growing company in my portfolio, Voyantis AI who isn't being asked by their board to improve unit economics. The Voyantis is the first and only company I've seen that has found the way for you to crack this nut. By not only leveraging your first party data to predict customers lifetime value, but truly coupling these predictions with a prescriptive layer integrating with and in influencing each and every step of your customers growth journey. Voyantis helps you acquire the right customers in Google and in meta, allocate incentives to the right customers via your salesforce and braze and trigger the right upsell option at the right time for each of your customers. Oh and check this out the best part. Voyantis are not only increasing ROI by 20 to 40% but they're also improving the quality of your customers. Their solution has already already improve unity economics for leading companies like Miro, Rappi, Moneyline and many many more. So if you want to improve your LTV to CAC ratio before your next board meeting, which I recommend, start by heading over to Voyantis AI20VC. That's Voyantis AI20VC to get a free value assessment.

[Guillaume]

You have now arrived at your destination.

Guillaume, Listen, I am so excited for this dude. As I was saying beforehand, you are one of the coolest guests to do prep for with some of the diligence material we got. So thank you so much for joining me today.

Thanks a lot for having me. To be honest, I'm super excited to be on the podcast. Big fan of everything you've done, so I'm sure it's going to be a fun conversation.

Dude, it's going to be really fun. I mean I don't get guests like you very often, so this is awesome. You've bluntly scaled lampire to 28 million in ARR. I think it is. How's the scaling journey gone? What have been the highlights? What should people know as an intro?

Yeah, I think like we started Lempire with Lemlist in 2018. So Lemlist is a sales engagement platform. Our biggest differentiator was essentially the personalization part. It was a very crowded market when we first got started. As we kept growing and having more product market fit, I felt like it was time a bit for us, you know, to start expanding the product line. So right now Empire is a street of like five tools that helps B2B businesses turn into big names. So we help them with customer acquisition from all sides. I would Say that it's been a hell of a ride, you know, with a lot of ups and downs. But the good thing is, like, we've been like, fully bootstrapped, so we will end up the year close to like 29 million in ARR, with 10 million in EBDA. So it allows us to have a lot of, like, flexibility in what we want to do and how we want to do it. It's pretty cool.

I mean, those are good numbers. As a venture investor, I don't normally see those numbers do. My first question to you there is, as a venture investor, I also go, oh, God, Guillaume, really? That's such a crowded market. That is difficult place to win. How do you advise founders who are told by investors, oh, that's a really crowded market.

You have two way to approach it. It's like basically blue ocean versus like red ocean strategy. When I first started, I thought that, you know, like, you had to be unique to succeed in a market, and you had to be like the first mover in order to really succeed. But later on I realized that once the market is crowded, it means the product market fit already exists. It might not exist with your own product, but if you try and succeed in being better than competition, you can win big. So I think for me, it's just a different kind of bet that you're making from the start. And I remember that when I first started, some people say that they are proud bootstrapper, and they were like hardcore bootstrapper from the start. And if I said that, I would be simply lying. When I first started, I wanted to raise fund. I just got rejected so many times that eventually, you know, like, I became a bootstrapper. So it wasn't really by decision at first.

What do you think you did differently because you couldn't raise money then you would have done if you had raised money?

First thing, we didn't have money. So I started the LEM list with only $1,000, so I couldn't hire anyone. The things that I would have done with money is obviously, like, hire people to do other things that as a founder, I felt like were not worth of my time, which was definitely a mistake. But typically, you know, like, I see too many founders because right now I've invested like in. In around like 20 startups. We. I mean, with. With Empire, I also cashed out $30 million, so made money along the way, et cetera. But I see that too many founders, you know, are afraid to do, like, sales because they believe that, you know, like, sales is a job like anyone can do, etc. But actually sales is the most important skills you need to learn as a founder. Because everything is about sales. It's about sales. When you want to hire like a top talent, it's about sales whenever you need to make your first dollars and understand like what people are really buying, what specifically they are buying. So the fact that I couldn't raise, I spent the first 18 months where I was doing pretty much like everything. So I would do like customer support, I would do like all the sales demos. I would also do like the marketing and websites. So I would write content and I, and I kind of start building, I would say like a very efficient customer acquisition engine, if I can call it that way. And to sum it up, you know, like, because our product, when you are in a very competitive market, you need to define clearly who your Persona is going to be. We started, you know, entering the market with the low end of SMBs. So mostly like founders. So people, we can basically act quickly and we're looking for the most innovative solution to have an edge. And by entering that market, what I would do is I would eat my own dog food. So use Lemlist to do sales prospecting. Then, you know, when I was in meetings with these founders, they would say, oh, I'm not sure if cold email actually works. So I would say, how the hell are we having this conversation right now? And then they would say through cold emails. And I was like, exactly. So I would close deals in that manner. I would test like different approaches, different industries in my sales prospecting. And every campaign that would work really well, I would write content about it. The content was actually unique because no one at the time was actually sharing the actual sales prospecting that messages that they would be sending. So that would help our user understand what's working and what's not. And at the same time I was also, because prior to launching Lemlist, I had the lead generation agency, so I was already like running tons of sales prospecting campaigns. And at that time I was basically onboarding customers and telling them, as long as I can do your sales prospecting campaigns for you, you will let me use the content that we create together with your own like results and sales prospecting messages and they were fine with it. So I also leverage our own customers stories to create a community. And from that community, you know, I got insights on how to get the better product, improve the product and then go again, you know, like start again eating my own dog food and testing like the new features, seeing whether or not they bring more or better results and so on and so forth.

I love the content Flywheel. What percent of new revenue came from content? Broad strokes versus outbound.

Creating content is basically the same as pushing a super heavy ball. There is a miss where he's like pushing this heavy, heavy, like rock on top of the mountain on his end. It always go back, but for us, you know, it's like you push, so it takes you a lot of effort. And the effort for me was like creating content and doing sales prospecting. So I would say like the first year I closed around like 100 customers myself, which is equal to around like 300 demos. So 300 demos, I had like basically like 33% conversion rate. So a hundred customers and for a year almost zero customers were coming from the content like or very little. And after that the content started like picking up. And then Lemlist became like a company where that was really like driven through inbounds. Basically it became like outbound represented. With the next years when we reached like millions in revenue, it was maybe 20 or 30% outbound and 70% inbound.

I want to go back to the early sales days that when you were selling and you were, as you said, they're doing 300 demos, 100 convert. What do you think of the biggest mistakes that founders make in the 0 to 1 phase when it comes to creating that first sales playbook?

I think people are afraid to do sales prospecting. Like they are afraid, you know, to put themselves out there. They're afraid to sell. So I think like the biggest mistake is one being afraid like that you're not going to sell, being afraid that your product is not ready. You know, like it's. There is always this thing. And for me it was the same, you know, like when, when you have to sell something that is obviously like not as good as competition because they've been working on it for like five years, you know, like so. So it's how do you find that unique selling points that's going to make the conversion easier. And I think it's kind of like it requires like a lot of trial and errors because you're going to believe that people are buying your product for X, Y or Z. But in the end it can be something totally different. So I think like people are by definition afraid of rejection. And what they love is to kind of like hide behind processes, behind. We have this product roadmap behind, like we're doing this and this. But I think the biggest mistake is not trying to sell. And if someone is not paying whether your product is ready or not. If they're not paying, it means that something is wrong. It means that the problem is not painful enough and that you should like continue digging, continue talking to them to understand what is the main problem that you are solving.

I'm so enjoying this, but I'm in venture where we have a lot of well funded companies and they say, Harry, we have a lot of design partners and design partners don't pay any money. How do you feel about design partners?

I think you shouldn't call someone design partner if they don't spend anything. You know, like it's, it's not a design partner. It's like it's, it's your grandmother being nice with you and telling you that you are like the most handsome person in the world. You know, like it's, it doesn't work out, it's not going to serve you. You know, in life like sometimes you need just a ground check, you know. And I think design partners are obviously like great because it's important to have feedback from key customers more than key customers. I would focus on some things that I called like the magnet Persona. So for me, and this is something people also like forget whenever they are like building a product. It's what's your magnet Persona? And the magnet Persona is basically the Persona that will attract everyone around. So typically if you take Apple for example, computers back in the days, they were like really for gigs. And then you know, it became like something that every company would add, et cetera. But Apple, they focused on designers. But why is it like a really awesome person at designers? Because a designer by definition is cool and everyone wants to be cool. So if your personal and if you're saying like Apple is for designer, what it means is like Apple is cool. And now everyone's using iPhone, everyone's on Mac and you have even studies that shows that you actually feel, I think it's like 30% more creative when you're on a MacBook versus a fucking PC. So I'm like, this is the power of a magnet Persona. So whenever you are like for us typically like to bring it back to software, it's what is the target audience for us in our space that is linked to prospection and sales, you know, so it was really like how can we define like within the sales teams, the Personas that's going to be the most attractive?

How did you approach that? Because sales isn't always the coolest. SDRs are basically cold email monkeys in a lot of people's Eyes, how did you identify who's the cool one that you want to be the Persona?

So for us it was actually like repositioning what sales is truly about. And for me, if you want the equation of sales, sales is equal timing times trust. Timing and trust is either equal to 0 or 1 because it's either the right moment or it's not. And it's either I trust you or I don't. There is not like I trust you averagely. No, it's if you trust someone averagely, you just don't trust them and you're just too polite to say it. So, so the goal was like, okay, on this principle, we believe that sales is all about relationship because sales is about, you know, like helping someone solve a very specific problem. And we want people to understand that sales is really about helping, that sales can be cool. And that sales rep should be enabled to have the right products to help them meet someone that needs help, you know. And by focusing really like on that Persona and bringing the cool factor and the relationship factor into sales, we basically tied our solution with relationship and with revenue. Meaning like if you build relationship, obviously you're going to make more sales if you make more sales. Lemlist is basically your go to tool because the ROI is easy to calculate.

How much money did you make in that first year from the first 100 customers? Broad strokes.

We started Lemlist first line of code January 2018. We started selling the product in April. So it took us like three months to have really like first paying customers. Then in December 2018 we had 100 customers. And I would say that year to year, so April to April we were at 250k ARR. So $250,000. Then after that we grew very quickly to like a million and then to 10 million, it was three and a half years in total.

Okay, so now with the benefit of hindsight, dude, you can look back and go, oh, these were the fuck ups that I made. When you look back at the first 0 to 250k that April to April, what are you like oh, we fucked up on that one.

Is, is really like something. It was quite harsh. But there are also some funny parts in it. Eventually, you know, I was really looking at how many visitors do we have, how many like customer are activated from the signups and how many are paying. So activation for us, it's basically like that one metric that you try to find in your software that's going to tell you whether or not people see the value of what you've built. So for us, activation rate was how many people who signed up actually launched a sales prospecting campaign. And that number was like really crap. At first it was like something like 10%. So I tried to interview people, but it was super hard because once people are unhappy with your product in self service, obviously they don't want to talk to you. So I was like, okay, trying to search and eventually I was like, we need to redesign entirely the product. So we decided to redesign from scratch the entire flow to creating like campaign. I remember pushing the new project like in production like it was a Friday night and I woke up Saturday and on the community we had there were like so many people like swearing at us. Like the support, it was insane. The amount of messages and people hated it, they hated the new interface, a lot of stuff were missing, et cetera. So it was crazy. We had the highest churn. Yeah, I think the churn that month was close to like 50%. So that was like huge. We fixed, you know, like a lot of the bugs and a lot of the things we try to improve. But when I looked one month after that, because I still believed at the time that it was the right solution, I still believe that the one, you know, who churned didn't use the product as it was meant to be and they were using it for different use cases. So at that time, you know, it's, it's quite harsh because a lot of people, you know, like they were talking to me on the chat and then they say like, I want to speak to a manager. And I was like, I'm the CEO, you know, like. But they believe the company was like much bigger than we were and it was just crazy how people would react. But a month and a half later, when I look back at the activation with the new product and the new design and new UX story, we were actually from 10% we went to close to like 45% and increased that month. Basically like the months where we had 50% churn, I think we were at basically like no growth at all because the acquisition kind of like brought it back to like zero. And the months afterwards we were at a growth rate of like 40% or something like that.

What did you change to take activation from 10 to 40% initially, the way.

It was built, you had to create like different templates, you had to create a list, you had to create like a lot of different things in different areas. And once you had created everything, then you had to combine everything into a campaign. But if you wanted to create a campaign and had not creating anything before, you couldn't. And that's why people were pissed off, because they did not understand that you had to be like, it was basically kind of like an engineer product. You know, like first you build all the building blocks and you are very well structured and this is. And then later on you combine it, you make test and it's much easier for you to do it. But in reality, people, they want, you know, like, you should take them by the hand and say, this is step one, then this is step two, this is logical and step three, and so on and so forth. So that's what we did. We entirely rebuilt the campaign creation, making it like much easier for people to go from A to Z. And it changed pretty much everything at that time.

How do you advise founders when they have 10% activation rates on their products or clear user dissatisfaction and they're just not sure whether they should keep going? What's your advice? Because we have two opposing schools, which is like, great entrepreneurs are persistent and just keep going. But then there's also a time when it's just not working and you should stop. How do you advise founders?

Activation rate and churn? For me, it's like two topics that you need to approach by considering two different routes. I would say the first route is, is it a marketing and acquisition problem? Because typically if I'm selling, like for sales and my product is meant for sales, but the only people I'm attracting are marketers and, you know, like, they're not going to use it in the same way, then maybe it makes sense, you know, that your activation rate is super low or that your churn is super high. So that's like the first thing is, am I attracting the right customers? I think this is a question you should truly ask yourself. And then if you are, and if these are the customers you want to attract, then the question you should ask yourself is, why is the activation rate so low? Is it because the problem is not pressing enough? Is it because of our software ux? And for that, I think you should really go through it with the right tools so you can use like, I don't know, like a hot jar or mix panel or whatever, just to track like all the events and understand what people are doing and how they're doing it. And I think this is the most important because especially if you're like, engineering background founder, you're going to say, oh, okay, I'm using all these tools and finding my answers myself, but this is not the best way. The best way for me, it's like, call people, and if they don't answer, call again and again and again until you get to a point, and it's fine, you know, like, it's your right. Like, someone signed up to your project, they didn't like it. It's your right to understand why. You know, like, you're an entrepreneur. You're like, you have your mission. You should be, like, driven, you know, like, it's super important. And for me, I think people just are just afraid to talk. And sometimes when they're afraid to talk, you know, like, they just don't get to the bottom of it, and they make assumptions that would have been proven wrong just if they had pick up the phone and talk for five minutes.

Can I ask, what's your biggest lessons on pricing in competitive markets? You've mentioned before about bluntly being in a very competitive market. How do you think about biggest lessons and reflections on pricing?

Pricing is really hard. What I can say is, overall, as your product, and this is like, maybe a good rule for every founder, as your product evolves and as you're bringing more value, your price should increase. And this is a rule that you should have. And, and I think, like, our growth has been. Has been driven also by price increase at some point, and it's. It's quite helpful. So don't hide behind, like, until the next feature or whatever. Like, increase your price every year at least, you know, and then it's also important to see where your market is heading. You know, like, we're in a phase with a lot of uncertainty. I think economically also people are a bit, like, more strict on what do they want to spend. I think a lot of people are suffering in this market, not so much because their price is too high. I just believe it's that people are realizing that if they're not using a tool, they shouldn't pay for it. And if you look at, like, the amount of enterprise accounts who've been sold onto 1,500 license or user or seats or however you want to call it, and actually only like, 15 people are using it. Yes. It's normal that the CFO comes in and say, maybe we shouldn't pay, you know, that price. You know, like, so. So for pricing, I would do, like, two aspects. One, it's like, increase price regularly if you're still delivering, like, a lot of value. And the second thing is look at your markets, because sometimes, like, pricing is. Is changing and evolving in a market, and you need also to adapt to what's happening.

Can I ask you, when did you decide to do a second product? You have Lemlist. It's going well. At what revenue is Lemlist when you do a second product?

The second product is a product we actually like sold. And it was I think a year and a half after Lemlist.

So what revenue are we at that like 500k?

I think we're more around. We're closer to a million.

Okay, closer to a million. Why do a second product? This is when you're just getting a community to be built, you're getting a brand. Why lose focus with a second product?

Yeah, that's a very good question. Focus is my enemy. I'm more like Mr. Chaos, but it took me years of psychotherapy to realize it.

I spoke to your team before this show. I'm not going to name who said this. One of them said you were unrealistic in your expectations. That was a challenge. Do you think that is fair? And to what extent is that good because it pushes teams versus bad because it creates challenging environments?

I don't think it as something really bad, to be honest. Because if you had say that in 2018 in a market where you have sales loft outreach were around for three, four years and then hundreds of other competitors who have raised like tens of millions, that a French company out of Paris would have like thousands of customers in the US be international grow to like 28 million in AR and 10 million in EBDA in like six and a half years. Yes, this is totally irrealistic. It's against the odds. So I think sometimes you truly need to dream big and be irrealistic if you want to achieve something that very few have done in the past.

When has being unrealistic hurt you?

I think I got cocky eventually or too confident. What hit me hard was growth is not exponential. When you have like an exponential growth, it's actually not mathematically, it's never truly an exponential. It's always a S curve. And the companies that maintain, you know that and that make it looks like an exponential are the one that were smart enough to plan for the next X curve. And we weren't. And we weren't because eventually I got too cocky. And I was so confident that everything we would do that our top up funnel and that our market was so big that no matter the core problem we had from the wrong targeting and the eye churn of certain segments, no matter what we would do, we would always find more and more customer like the bucket can be leaking. But if your top of funnel is always bigger, there is no issue. And this is when I got cocky, this is when it hurt us. And this is where we faced like a plateau. What happens specifically what happens is your company from a day to another start plateauing. You don't see this two digit, month over month growth rates. You don't understand why. You're like thinking that you're doing something wrong. You're trying to find, you know, like what's not working. And you don't understand. You don't understand no matter what you do. Because when you are very driven by, inbound, by content, by all of these things, you don't track, you don't track what brings what because you know, like there is a quote by Gary Vee that I like that says what's the ROI of your mom and what it means? You know, it's like obviously your mom, she gave everything for you, you know, like she was, maybe she gave you like the extra confidence. My mom is Italian, so obviously like she loves me a lot, et cetera. So, so it's like she gave me like extra confidence, she gave me love, she gave me like a lot of things. And how exactly do you measure that ROI in your life? It's almost impossible for me. Marketing is the same for VC backed companies. When you go and you are like at a board meeting, obviously you have to show that your marketing effort are bringing revenue. So what do most VC back companies do? They spend money and marketing money on ads, SEO, where you can track like the conversion of articles. Even though that's inaccurate. You try to build like a model that gives you like the attribution that is also inaccurate but everyone is fine with it because it looks good on slides, all of that. What we don't realize is the amount of money it requires to build that tracking team, to build that data team, to have like all this conversation with people on what should we do? Should we continue? Should we do xyz? And my approach to business is much more simple. For me it's like it has always been about are we proud of the content that we deliver? Is this bringing enough value for our users to be helpful in the problem that they are trying to solve? And if the answer is yes, then we continue to do it. So when you have this mindset, obviously when something is not working anymore, it's very, very hard because you're kind of like shooting in the dark. You don't know what's working, what's not working. And for us that was very tricky. And what we had to do at the time was start understanding the Core metrics for us. And that's why, you know, I mentioned Churn a bit earlier. It was understanding what is the Persona that is not churning, meaning what is the Persona we're bringing the most value to. And that Persona were actually like sales team over like four people. So when a sales team has more than four people, we realized that the net retention was over 100% monthly. Whereas when it's like a founder or a marketer or like the first employee of a startup, the Churn can be up to like 15% monthly. Because obviously these guys, by definition, sometimes their business doesn't work, sometimes they can't find customers. Sometime XYZ reason happen.

I think the biggest mistake the founders make today is as they approach a launch, they get more and more nervous that no one will adopt their product. And they expand the target market from sales leaders to sales and marketing to sales and marketing and early stage founders. And then you mean less and less to more and more people. And it doesn't resonate with anyone.

Yeah, I 100% agree. I think like the best companies for me are the ones, you know, who have like a very specific use case. And that's where we're heading right now. It's like we know that from, let's say 40, from, sorry, four sales rep to 100 sales rep. We know that we're the best tools on the market and we're building it right now. You know, it's like we're doing everything to build that for the current economy.

So when you had that plateau moment, that hard moment, how much in revenue are, then where's the business out at that stage?

At the time, I think we were around like 13 or 14 million in annual recurring revenue at this point.

Are we having VCs just massively inbound us trying to give us money?

Yeah, so I always receive because the thing is like I've been building in public since day one. So I share like revenue metrics, et cetera. And obviously that attracts some investors. But when you're high in Ebitda, like I had to learn about what secondary meant and what cash out meant because for me at the time the only thing I saw was like fundraising, meaning you take money and you put it in your company's bank account and then you spend it to hire more people, et cetera. But I felt like it was not the solution for us. I don't think that hiring more is always the answer to growing faster. And actually I think sometimes it's the opposite. Uh, I've seen too many times you know, like, you hire too quickly, you hire the wrong people. You can't keep like a high level, you know, like, and a high talent density. And eventually, like. But in some cases it's. It's really helpful. But in our case, it wasn't the right timing. So I had another investor approaching us and talking about cash out and secondary. And in that end I was like, okay, tell me more. And it's basically when the money goes directly to the founder. And I think this is really awesome.

Well, we're going to get into that. I'm just intrigued. Fundraising. I'm a venture investor, so I'd come back with a couple of things. It is my business, so expect me to sell. Would you not have benefited from being able to invest more in product, more in design, more in building out a content team? If the business had had more cash, you could have built much more sophisticated product growth and content teams.

The only thing I know, once we started making a lot of profits before we acquired another business, so we had like some cash in the bank that we used for M and A, but we use it, like for a different purpose. We started spending more on hiring. And I remember in six months at the time, we doubled the team almost, and we were like, maybe like from 30 to 60 people. I realized how bad hiring could really kill your company. And for me, you know, I have this feeling where when you feel the pressure to hire more, to spend faster, etc. If you're not skilled enough, it's going to be like really, really bad for your company and it can kill it. And in full transparency, I wasn't good enough at hiring for me to be able to handle like a fundraising.

What have been your biggest lessons on hiring then? Like, bluntly, it's the hardest thing a founder will do. But given that assessment, what are your biggest lessons?

One, you should hire people who have done it already. Literally, like, because bootstrap mindset, you know, it gives kind of the underdog vibe. So from the start, I kept this underdog mindset. Like, I'm gonna only find underdogs, the talent that no one knew they existed. And I'm gonna show them that we're the Avengers and we're gonna like, you know, like, be the rock stars. No resume, no schools, Like, a lot of great, lot of talent. And that works to a certain extent. But when you really want to scale your company and scale it, like, faster, having people who have done it in other companies who have seen what rapid scale is really, really helpful. Second thing, pay people and create A package where people are extremely well paid for their, you know, like their role, et cetera. And the reason you should do it is because hiring is extremely emotional. You know, like you get attached to people, you get, you know, like you have. It's something that everyone you know want, like scorecard and try to make it as an engineer, like, okay, how many points do they have for this skill, et cetera. This is bullshit hiring. You know, it's like, it's the same. You know, at school we teach you that there are only like 5, 5 cents. You know, it's like a touch, sight, taste, hearing and taste or whatever. But actually intuition is the sense that everyone should build. Your intuition, your gut feeling, this is like the strongest moment, the strongest things you know. And in hiring, you should always trust it. So for me, whenever you know you have someone with a really good package that you are paying extremely well, the reason it's helpful is because if they don't deliver, it's super easy for you to let them go fast and find someone who could. And really like paying someone maybe like 20% more than what they are offered usually help you find the 10x profile.

Why does paying them more help you get rid of them faster if they're not good?

Maybe that's my relationship with money. But it's like everyone, you know, like you're in a company, so it's basically a capitalistic model where every person needs to bring something to the table. And if they don't deliver and if they can't give a certain ROI on their salary, then it's easy, you know, like to just say it's not an investment anymore, it's a cost and it's a cause that can be, you know, like, just should be different, you know, it should be an investment and not a cost. Yeah.

What are the biggest hiring mistakes that you made that you look back on now?

One thing that I think would have helped me is like after an interview asking myself, do I see myself working for 10 years with that person? Like, do I like their energy or like these kind of things? I think it's super important. And sometimes it's not even that people don't have the right skills. It's not even that they're not going to be great at their job. If you don't get on well with someone, your job is not going to be as fun. And to be honest, it's so tedious. Like, you shouldn't, you shouldn't make desires.

Do you do one on ones?

I used to. Now I'm not, I'm not so much in the, in the operational anymore. This is kind of actually you. You come at a moment where this is a transition phase for me.

But yeah, because you're moving to a chairman role.

You're good, Harry. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I. I'm a venture investor. Dude. We see this happen a lot. Can I ask you.

[Harry Stebbings]

I would say that if you took.

[Guillaume]

Venture funding, you would have had someone, if you took a good vc, who would have been able to predict ahead of time the plateau and made your exponential growth stay exponential. Do you think that's true?

I think it's difficult, you know, like to predict because your mistakes are like a light that only light your own path. I don't know if this is the quote, but you know what I mean? You know, it's like your learnings are your own. So sometimes you just got to go through, you know, the mistakes. And having someone else give you insights on something might not really like you have to choose. You have to pick your battles. So for us, what we believe was like, it's not a personal issue, it's a product issue and we have a strong roadmap to fix it. So let's go. Let's iterate. And then we realized that it was not the. That wasn't the case.

You know, with expedition, you sold $30 million worth.

Yeah. So the company was worth 150 million. My two co founder left and we each took like 10 million. So now I own about like 70% of the business. I cashed out $10 million personally and I'm like the solo founder left since around like four years now.

How did your mindset change getting 10 million in cash? I come from a family of no money. Getting 10 million in cash is a lot of money.

Yeah, it's crazy to be honest. Like I was feeling so grateful like about it because it, for me, money, you know, it's like it has always been like a stress like lacking of money and this kind of thing. It's the fear of lacking of money is something I realized that will never go away. Just because it's so deep, you know, in the into like how I rise raised like looking at every, every item price in the supermarket, not going on holiday with my parents, like these kind of things. But what I realized is like money can buy like freedom and freedom is what I like the most. So I'm not someone, you know, who spends like crazy amount of monies on Lamborghini, et cetera. Like I love the simple things. Like I love to go hiking With a tent, on holiday. Like, this is my kind of vibe. But having the freedom to do whatever I want, go whenever, wherever I want, etc, this is like priceless. I think the best thing, you know, it's like one, when you get that much money, you realize that if you're not totally dumb, that money can help you like live your entire life without ever working again. Which kind of like gave me more ambitious, you know, like, it's not that I've done this. I feel like I can do something much bigger. I can take like bigger risk and I can be more ambitious for the company. And the second best thing is like, how can you help your parents retire? For me, that was like the best feeling in the world, you know, Like I. Everyone asked me, did you buy yourself crazy, something crazy, etc. And I was like, no. But I help my parents retire and I give them money and this feels.

Like just awesome, you know, That's a very special thing. I do have to ask, only kind of like it makes you more ambitious. Why move into a chairman role then? Like, why not like go fucking big, you know, Wolf of Wall street and like lead from the front with real like hunger and tenacity.

It's a very good question.

In full transparency, Europe is always characterized as like, we make a little bit of money and then we're like, oh, fuck it. Peace out. Don't peace out.

Yeah, this is not the plan because, okay, I think people see chairman as. And in most cases this is a case like someone would just like lay back and don't do shit and just like come to the board meeting. And it's just like giving his vision on strategy and the calls he had on my end. It's just that I need to focus on the things that I feel I'm the best at. And for me this is like the top up funnel. So it's, you know, like the conferences, it's like the creating content, whether it's webinars, whether it's like attracting like a different type of audience. And I think like the CEO is more like the person who's going to operate on the day to day and needs to be like in the trenches. And because I hired someone who's like extremely talented and skilled at that role for 18 months now, I feel like this is a time for him to have that role because he's definitely better than me. So, so, so it's really, you know, not about like me just like stepping down and just being away from the business, etc. But it's. I See, you're smiling. You don't believe me?

No, I believe you. I'm just like, if you're in America.

[Harry Stebbings]

You'D step up, you'd be like, I.

[Guillaume]

Can be the CEO that they want me to be. I can be the CEO for the next generation and I will surround myself with great mentors. But founder led companies is where enterprise value is created. Dude, you're like the most hungry, ambitious, like Iron man training, dude. Like you wouldn't quit a marathon at 24 miles.

Yeah, it's, it's a good question. I think in any case, like, I want to give it a try and see, you know, like, how it goes.

Dude, I totally get it. My question to you then is like, I totally see your superpowers of content, of inspiration, of motivation. We mentioned the media flywheel earlier. When you think about content creation, obviously it's my business too. How do you think about the creation process for you? Do you have a framework around idea, thought process, creation, distribution? How does that work for you?

If you want inspiration, read. If you want clarity, writes. So my goal is to always have an easy way to capture ideas, whether it's recording, taking notes and all these kind of things. And then after that I just put all my ideas in one place and then I rank them. And I think an idea is, it's kind of like a plant and a little seeds. Before it becomes like a tree or a plant, it needs time, you know, it needs like the right soil, it needs like the right condition, the right environment. So for me, like, all ideas are great, are all my seeds. But sometimes, you know, like I will decide to put more focus and attention on one and sometimes I need time to develop them. So the way I do it is I would write just ideas all over the place. And sometimes I just spend time on my ideas and I start writing about them and get the inspiration and I do something that's, that's typically pretty weird for, for people where people like focus. But as I say, I'm Mr. Chaos. Let's say I want to write like a LinkedIn post. Whenever I'm writing like a LinkedIn post, I can write maybe like, I don't know, 15 or 20 posts in an hour. And the way I'm going to do it is I'm not going to write one post at a time. I'm going to write like three or four posts at the same time. So I can write one sentence for one that gives me an idea for the third one and the first one at the same time. And then which is quite weird. But I think this is how my brain works in general. It's like I like to do like multiple things at the same time, and I always switch and go back to one and everything builds up in parallel. But I like it, especially when it comes to creating and writing and whether it's video or writing content, because while I wrote something, I feel like it gives me time to assess the idea a little bit later. And I'm not just like, you know, like smashing my head against the wall on one single things.

Do you do content repurposing? When you think about creating videos for TikTok, for YouTube shorts, you name it, do you see what works on other platforms before creating content that's repurposed? Do you do three different formats? How do you think about, like media packaging for different platforms?

Yeah, I think it's super important to repurpose your content. When you're a content creator, you usually create content because you like to teach and you like to learn. You started your podcast because you love to learn new things and.

No, no, I wanted a job. I really did. I wanted a job from an ambassador and I was like, if I meet them through a podcast. But yeah, I wanted to learn too. Sure.

And then it became kind of like this. Of course, like you have the fun aspect of meeting new people, but I think you're always learning things and it's exciting. And for me, you know, like, this is the thing, it's like content creators, because they are learning always new things, they're usually afraid to reuse content that worked well, but if it works well, it's for a reason. So when something works well, I usually like even my LinkedIn post. Sometimes I take the same post and I just rewrite it and again and again and again and again. And I'm going to post it multiple times and every time it's going to be a hit. And then, you know, you can do it like on a reel or a TikTok and see whether or not it's working well. And step by step like this, you can repurpose what's working, reusing it and, and learning more and more about your audience.

Do you find if it works on one platform, it works on all platforms?

No, I wish.

I wish quite a lot bangs on LinkedIn. But then when I take it to even Twitter.

Not really, no. On Twitter, if your name is not Elon Musk, it's hard to get rich these days.

Your strategy around content is still relatively novel for founders. How do you respond to founders who say Listen, Guillaume, I love what you do, but I'm just, I'm not that interpersonal brand. That's just not me. How do you respond to them?

More. More room for us. No, in full transparency. It's like, I think, like, putting yourself out there and creating content will help your business 100%. It will help your business because it will help you build trust. With more trust, it means slower sales, like, faster sales cycle, more leads, and more revenue down the line. As a founder, it's also a great way, you know, to meet a lot of interesting people. Because the truth is there are millions of businesses who have great stories to tell, but you've never heard about them because they don't document anything, they don't write anything. And when these businesses reach out, you're like, who are you? And I think, like, content is the easiest way to show. Hey, this is what I'm doing. If you think that I'm interesting, if you think that I'm someone worth talking after you watch my, my, my videos or my content, then let's chat. And this is the easiest way to have, like a window at someone's brain. And right now, when I do, like, self prospecting or when I just like, outbound someone for an intro, for a message, for just a networking call, the reply rate is huge. Which means that every single year I'm meeting, like, smarter, more interesting people and so on and so forth, which helps me grow, which helps me become like a better version of myself. And this is unique. So as a founder, creating content helps you become a better funder.

I remember we just raised $400 million for a new fund.

Congratulations. Yeah, I saw that. Congrats.

But we get on calls with endowment funds and suddenly like, the cio, the boss of the endowment would be there and they'd be like, I just wanted to meet you. And you're like, wow. Like, really? That's so sweet. Like, that is the power of content. Where normally you never get that. I worry that in my business and a lot of founders worry this. You cheapen the brand by being everywhere, by being too volume driven. Just a lot of TikToks, a lot of you. How do you feel about brands being cheapened by volume?

I think as long as you are, like, happy with the content you're making, it's fine. Like, I don't think that all my content is great, but my perception is that I'm getting better. I'm always getting better. I don't aim for perfection. I always aim for progress. And the only way I'M going to be like great at something is by sucking at it. At first I've came across all the haters in the world and for me it's like extremely like, you know, like it's super hard. Like from a confidence perspective when you have people like shitting on you, like it's super hard. But I think it's also builds your character and it builds that down the line you should do things for yourself and content. I think it's the best investment you can make because it's an investment on yourself or Mozi who says like SN me 500 instead of SNPs are 500, you know and it's, it's true.

I, I totally agree with you. I remember crying once to a billionaire found a friend of mine and he's like I never ever want you to call me up crying. You chose this life. You chose to put yourself out there. You get the benefits of it. You got to take the downsides of it.

Yeah, exactly.

I was like I'll call mom instead next time. Exactly.

Better for support in general.

I love you. You're the most good looking boy ever. Well done. We spoke about you posting building a brand. You have team members with thousands and thousands of followers. Most people would be a little bit worried that they are building credibility to leverage into other jobs to start their own companies. How do you feel about this?

I think this is like a two sided problem. One people will worry about it usually have trust issue. You know, it's, it's the same thing that if they date someone that is like higher number than they are that they're going to say oh she's going to dump me or whatever. Like this is a trust issue. It's not something you know like you can deal with unless you go to a therapist and you start working on it. But the reason why people leave a company, you know, it's not because they just get like a better salary elsewhere, you know, like it's, it's multitude of different factors. And your role as a founder is to make sure that the person in your team are maximizing their potential, learning new thing and also are in the right place. And sometimes the right place mean that they need to be elsewhere and in another company and you should always cheer for them when they decide to move on. And then the second thing is like maybe they're leveraging like your company to build a brand and then like do something else. Yes, but why is that a problem? Because why they are building like their brands, they bring also a lot of like positive leads to the business right now. Like, just to give you an example, we reach about like 10 million people every quarter on LinkedIn without spending a single dollar on ads just through like our networks. And that's like, that's like millions of dollars in revenue every year, technically. Like, I'm happy that I have trained everyone in the team to build a personal brand. I'm happy, you know, that I've created all this like trainings and coaching program just to explain how to people how to do it. And some of them have left. And when people go to their LinkedIn profile, the thing they will see is that they were at Lempire eventually, you know, and this is still like good for the brand, good for what we do.

And what do you know now about content creation and distribution that you wish you had known when you started?

I think like, what I. What I wish I knew when I got started is that it takes time because usually like people want instant virality. And I think right now, like everyone, you know, we spent a bit of time on TikTok, you know, had luck eventually and got like one reels that got like millions, et cetera. But if you want to build something in the long term, you need consistency and you need time. I got discouraged several times on Instagram reels like where I stopped eventually, et cetera, like in the early days and I shouldn't. I came back at it with another strategy that was based on outputs and not outcome. So this is an approach that I like. I call it like the 100 day rule. But essentially it's like the output is what you control because you can control that you're going to post one video per day or that you're going to post one LinkedIn post per day, but you can't control the outcome, meaning like how many followers you're going to get, how many like views you're going to get. So by just focusing on the output, I was like, okay, now I'm going to go for a hundred days and no matter what happens, I don't even look at the follower account. And you just do it. Whenever you do this for 100 days, once you realize that you are getting better each day, which basically helps you like build also a bit more confidence. Second, you start liking it because at first you suck and now you suck a bit less. So you start enjoying it a bit more and then in the long run you will see some results. It doesn't mean that you're going to become a superstar straight away, but you will start seeing Some results, and you start having some conversation. Something I've done also with my head of sales is I've been writing, like, all these LinkedIn posts for, like. Like, I basically wrote, like, around two months worth of content, and it generated, like, really good meetings, really good deals, step by step, you know, so it's.

Like, do you know it took us a hundred shows before we got a thousand plays? It was over two years before. I mean, that is. That is bad. Uniquely bad.

But you continued.

That's the best. 10 years. It's a game of who survives the longest. Says only 2% of podcasts make it past episode 50.

That's insane. Insane stats.

Okay, I want to talk a little bit about you, because I said at the beginning, you're like. Well, I mean, relatively, like, incredibly cool, but also fucking weird in some respects, which I love. I know, it's great. Like, it's so much more interesting for me, you know? You trained for a Iron man, then got hit by a car. Can you just tell me what happened?

I really wanted to do an Ironman in 2024, so I started training in January. Lots of ups and downs of the Ironman training, but I was really aiming for an actual, like, a really good time during the Ironman. And one week before the race, I was doing my last bike training, and eventually, like, a car came, just smashed my back. And, yeah, my bike was, like, cut in half. The car was also, like, really broken because it felt like a deer went on the side of the car, but the deer was me. I broke my ribs. I had, like, ligaments in my shoulder that were torn away, and obviously I couldn't race. But I finished an Iron man recently in California, so it took me, like, a bit more than four months to recover. But having a race in mind was really, like, the driver for me to recover a lot faster.

I believe that entrepreneurs who are fit and healthy make better entrepreneurs because they are disciplined and they are able to be consistent and they can control their mind even when they don't want to do something. Do you agree with me?

I want to say yes, because, like, I'm an entrepreneur. We do a lot of sports. I think, like, endurance training and entrepreneurship has a lot of things in common, because, as you said, you know, it's like. It's a mind game, you know, like endurance. It's from the Latin, I think, like, indurare, which is, like, harden. And I think this is what happens, you know, it's like you. You get harder and harder as you train because you have all these Battles with your mind, telling you, you know, that you can't do more, that you should stop, that it's not worth continuing. And this discussions I have with my brain when I train for many hours are exactly the ones that I had back in the days when I had failed, like two businesses. Before Lemlist, I had like no money left. My girlfriend at the time was paying the rent. We were living in like 28 meters square. It was really like, yeah, shitty environment. And everyone was telling me, like, why don't you take a real job? Like, why don't you? And this conversation, you know, I had them with myself also, like, why? I mean, I should stop. I should do something else. I should. And then, you know, it's about, like, how do you find the strengths and the discipline to just work on something step by step, look for your progress, focus on the things you can control. You know, it's like stoicism is similar to this.

Are you still with that girlfriend?

No, she lost out.

What do you advise entrepreneurs who want to be fit and healthy but say, hey, I don't have time to train? What do you say to them?

I would do a simple exercise. Let's assume they all have iPhone. You open your phone settings and you go in screen time, and then you tell me whether or not you have time. You know, like it's that everyone's. If you look at your phone, you're spending like two, three, four, sometimes five hours on your phone every day. And then people tell you that they don't have time. It's about like the discipline. It's about like self love. Because, you know, like, there is a definition of discipline that says it's the purest form of self love. And I love it because it's basically like sacrificing a current state for the future self. And life, you know, is. Is all about that. You know, it's all about like, what decision are you making right now that can help you build, like a better lifestyle? Having, like, live longer and all of these things, you know, like, they take energy and it's a battle. We live in an era where it's so easy to get distracted, but it's also so easy to build an online business. And for me, the ones who train their muscles for discipline are the one who are going to really, like, crush the game. We're definitely, like, I don't like too much talking about, like, weak and strong, et cetera, but I definitely feel that there are so many weak minds out there. Like, so many people would just, like.

I Think it's so easy to actually win today because most people are so weak. And I know you're going to hate that, but it's like everyone wants to go and watch a Netflix movie. And it's like, I really want to watch a Netflix movie too, dude. But instead I actually watch 20 minutes of a Netflix movie. And then I go back to work for the other two hours because I know that I can do two hours more a day. And across seven days, it's like two full days of work.

Yeah. That's insane. I agree. I think it's just like sometimes like people, they, they love, you know, to have this very complacent version of you need to be chill, you need to be like, to be caring, et cetera. And yes, it's good, but, you know, like, gross by definition is uncomfortable.

What do you have discipline around that is the hardest to have discipline around?

I'm not sure if it's. If it's an issue or not because I train a lot, but I love sweets and I love dessert. I know, like, sugar is not something like that I should eat as much, but I do eat, like shit, tons of sugar. Like, I love dessert. Like, I'm really, really bad at it. Like, if I don't eat a dessert after each meal, I'm sad. Like, I'm literally.

You sound like a six year old.

I love that.

That's so sweet. But on that, I heard from your team that you have the same meals every day.

Yeah, I do too. What meals do you have at lunchtime? I eat very often, like poke balls. So it's like a rice edamame. So like little beans. Then it's like carrots, tomatoes, and then a protein. It can be like chicken or like salmon or anything. So this is basically like what I eat daily and I'm happy with it. And then I also eat a lot of pasta and meat. Like pasta and meatballs. Like, this is for me. I cook this myself. But I really love it. And it's easy. It gets me all the calories, proteins, and carbohydrates that I need for training. So it's. Yeah.

Can I ask you, are you married?

No, not married. No kids. None that I know of.

Can I ask, when you reflect on what you've given up for work, everyone always says, are you happy with the trade off you've made? How do you feel about that?

It's a good question. I think, like, I am really happy in my life. I feel like I have an intentional life. I've been forced to Ask myself questions about life that few people are forced to ask themselves because I think we still live in a world where money is kind of like chains to freedom, because you have to work, you have to make money, you know, to, I don't know, just live simply. And I broke these chains, you know, when I kind of, like, became financially independent and took, like, a lot of cash. But at that time, you know, you ask yourself, like, what's the meaning of life? What's your mission? Where you put on earth and you go more towards, like, spirituality. And it's something, you know, that I struggled with. I was, you know, asking myself, like, why do I do what I do? Do I really love it? Am I in the right place, et cetera? And I think, like, when I reflected on everything, I feel like I'm so intentional about my life. I really love it, and I really love it. You know, it's like, I work with a team I love. I'm always learning new things, which I think is super important. I take care of my body and my health. I have, like, really good friends. What's missing is, like, the love of my life and a family, but something I'm. I'm planning for, but otherwise, I'm happy.

Yeah, well, now you're chairman, you have a little bit more time to do that, my friend.

Yeah, exactly.

Listen, dude, I want to move into a quick fire around, so I say a short statement. You give me your immediate thoughts. Does that sound okay?

Okay, let's do this.

Okay. So what do you believe that most around you disbelieve?

I believe that traditional media are totally, like, manipulating the way we think. Yeah. Very few people realize it because we. We were all raised, you know, with. I think our parents like, watching TV and. And these kind of things. And eventually we feel that this is the only truth. But down the line, I just feel like. And especially, you know, in the. In the US like, recently with the election and everything, I think we've realized, like, a lot of things can be manipulated. We should be careful with media.

You said Alex Hormozi earlier. Alex Hormozi says a great statement that I love, actually. He says the heaviest things in life are not iron or gold, but unmade decisions. If I were to ask you what unmade decision sticks in your mind most, what would you say it is?

It's very clear, and I've got, like, nightmares just thinking about it, but it's buying Bitcoin in 2008, 2009, to be honest. I should have done it. This is a decision I should have made you look at it. It's something that I identified very early. For some reason I felt like, yes, this is definitely the future. I understood how money works. What was money, the essence of money, the essence of trust, inflation and all these kind of things. Everything made sense. But I didn't invest because I wasn't investing in anything and I didn't have money. But it's not an excuse, you know, even if I had bought like 100 bucks.

Do you have bitcoin today?

Yes, a lot.

Well done.

Yeah, I've been buying bitcoins for the last three years, like heavily. So now it's, it's been a good year for me on that.

Tell me, what would you do if.

You knew you couldn't.

Wouldn't fail?

This is something about like school in general, you know, because like I feel like schools, we never ask ourselves like, why exactly. Like schools have been built because we believe, you know, like that in the middle age, people that had the exact same school, etc, when you look at movies, this is how they represent it, you know, like everyone's learning, you have teachers, etc. But it's totally untrue. Like schools, they were truly built like in the 1900s and for a reason that was simple. We needed to have like little robots that were employees for a big corporation. And we need people, you know, to fit in a box. So if I knew I couldn't fail, I would build like a totally new education system that pushes people towards finding like their true passion and what they're good at and not just fit in a box where we want to take them, you know.

What have you changed your mind on in the last 12 months?

Yeah, you need to train slowly to go fast. This is important because typically I've always been like, I've done sports my entire life. I've always been very competitive. I've done a lot of basketball at like a good level, etc. When I started training for endurance, the trainings, you know, it's like you train and after that, like you need to build the foundation and the power of your heart and to build the power of your heart, you know, you have different heart rate zone and you need to spend a lot of time in a, in a low heart rate zone which doesn't feel like you're actually exercising. So it's like you run basically like slowly. But for me when I was doing this, I was like, this is not training, you know, like if I don't feel sore, if I don't go faster, like it doesn't Feel like training, but because you're doing so much volume down the line, this build up a lot of strength and a lot of speed.

Are you masochistic? I enjoy that. I, you know, can't run any more sadly because I fucked up my knees. Because David Goggins tells you when you feel pain, keep going.

Yeah, don't, don't listen to that.

But like, and I enjoy the like bleed at your desk style mentality. Are you masochistic? In a way?

Yeah, of course. I have like a relationship with pain that is, that is very like uncommon I would say. But it's. Some people like when they feel pain they believe, you know, that it's, that it's the moment to stop. And for me I feel like this is a moment, you know, I'm growing and, and there is this quote I like which is pain is weakness leaving the body and this is how I perceive it. You know, every time it hurts I feel like, yeah, I'm getting stronger. So it's positive in my mind.

I love that quote. What's your favorite consumer brand and why them?

Apple. I think what they're doing is just, is just insane. I love this graph where you see like AirPods revenue versus any software company and you see that just the AirPods are making like more revenues than any software currently on the market.

If you could be CEO of any other company for a day, what company would you be CEO of?

Like most people, I think I would say like OpenAI just so I know like what they're cooking at the moment. Like where they at in term of like new models. Knowing like I would go there and I would say okay, like what's actual, what's the actual plan that Sam told you? Because this guy is like so like I don't trust him like a second. He's been changing his mind like so many times. He's such a, like you know, like he came to the Senate and started saying like I don't make money out of OpenAI. I've made enough money in the past this is a non profit. And then like just after it's like now it's for profit actually you were paid by Microsoft in the meantime when you were like CEO but through like another company structure. And now your entire team is gone out of nowhere because they tried to fire you. There are some shits happening there and I want to know like what's happening? I want to know the truth.

What concerns you most in the world today?

There is no nuance anymore in the attention war. We live in it's all about being as polarized as possible. It's either black or white. Gray doesn't exist. So it's like you either pro X or pro Y. You're either against that person or pro that person. And I think humanity right now because of social media and the fact that super short form content are the one that works the best. We lack of depth, we lack of nuance, and we keep taking, you know, like bits and bits of content out of the context. I just feel like it's killing slowly, like humanity in general, you know, it's like that scares me a lot, the fact that everyone needs enemies.

Can I ask a weird one to finish? You mentioned your relationship with your mother. I'm very close to my mother. What was your biggest lesson from your mother?

Hard work doesn't always pay off, but you should enjoy working hard for yourself because like, my mom typically, like she grew up on a farm. Like she had to take care of her, like brother and sister. Her dad like tried to kill himself many times. Her mom died, like she has like the toughest like life ever. They immigrated, like from Italy to France, like had like lots of shits happening and she couldn't like study yet, you know, like, she worked super hard. She was the first in the office working for like tax office but not making like a lot of money. She was really, really working hard but not being rewarded for it because she was potentially doing too much work for others, etc. But eventually, you know, like when I asked her, okay, like, you didn't make any money, like you worked really hard. Do you regret it? Like, do you regret not doing something else? And then she said no. You know, it's like she works hard for herself. She works hard because she likes when the job is well done. And if you always work hard to get something in return, you don't get it always, you know, and it shouldn't be like it's something that's out of your control, you know, so. So sometimes I just feel like when I look at what I want to do and how I want to do it, I don't truly care, you know, if, if something happens from it. As long if I'm happy, you know, with, with the effort I'm putting in, then, you know, I think it's a good decision.

10 million always does help though, doesn't it? Let's be honest, I. I've loved your content for a long time. Thank you so much for doing this and this has been a lot of fun.

Yes, thanks a lot, Harry. I had a great time.

[Harry Stebbings]

I absolutely love doing that show. Also, if you haven't seen the video of this episode, you must watch it on YouTube. Guillaume has the best setup I think we've ever seen. Check it out on YouTube by searching for 20VC now before I leave you One of the easiest investment decisions I have made over the last three years is investing in 11X. Their digital workers don't just automate tasks, they transform your business. With 24. 7 operations, multilingual capabilities and human like intelligence, they're revolutionizing how work gets done. From Prospecting to closing, 11x is the all in one platform that allows you to reduce costs, increase pipeline and boost conversion rates. And that's why companies like Pleo, Handshake, Sauce, Groff and more are customers and lovers of 11X. Check them out today at 11X AI. You will not regret it. And speaking of incredible products, when I spoke to Canva co founder Cliff Obrecht on the podcast last year, he touched on how visual content is fast becoming the fuel that's driving the modern workplace and your team needs to create an engaging visual pitch deck to sell an idea. A product launch needs an inspiring video to excite investors and customers. It's a game changer for visual communication at work. Canva turns your team into master visual communicators so they can get their point across with visual impact inside and outside your business. With no design experience needed with Canva, any team member and any company, whether you're a startup or a global organization, can design compelling on brand visual content quickly and easily. And that's why 90% of the Fortune 500 90% use Canva. Start designing [e-mail] designed for work and talking about growth. Let's dive into how Voyantis is transforming customer acquisition as this is my growth podcast. I'm so excited to share with you the amazing story of the fastest growing company in my portfolio, Voyantis AI who isn't being asked by their board to improve unit economics. The Voyantis is the first and only company I've seen that has found the way for you to crack this nut by not only leveraging your first party data to predict customers lifetime value, but truly coupling these predictions with a prescriptive layer integrating with and influencing each and every step of your customer's growth journey. Voyantis helps you acquire the right customers in Google and in Meta, allocate incentives to the right customers via your salesforce and braze, and trigger the right upsell option at the right time for each of your customers. Oh and Check this out. The best part, Voyantis are not only increasing ROI by 20 to 40%, but they're also improving the quality of your customers. Their solution has already improved unity economics for leading companies like Miro, Rappi, Moneyline and many, many more. So if you want to improve your LTV to CAC ratio before your next board meeting, which I recommend, start by heading over to Voyantis AI20VC. That's Voyantis AI20VC to get a free value assessment. Now stay tuned for an incredible episode coming on Monday with the one and only Reid Hoffman. Such a special show there.