 Hey, hey everyone, this is Carlos and the founder and CEO at product school today I'm here with another founder and CEO. His name is Lloyd Lobo Hello, welcome to the show Hey, thanks for hosting me just co-founder now I was co-founder and president at Boast AI previously and now Co-founder and board member at the company Let's talk about that that journey because I think it's fascinating especially for Founders to eventually find a way to stay really involved in their business Even though sometimes they can take more of a role on the board instead of having on the on the day today Definitely, maybe at the beginning of everything. I know you have a really interesting Experience and backgrounds planning what interested more about where does where does that back to create something come from? You know, I get asked this a lot and I have to look back so so far back To me being a kid and most people's childhood stories are like, oh, I did a lemonade stand or I did this or that or the other thing My childhood story Was was two profound moments one of them being I was a refugee of the Gulf War so I was I think eight or nine years old and we had just finished fourth grade summers that had hit and One morning my mother wakes me up and she says I don't think you can go to school anymore my first reaction was of excitement because I Was pretty sure I failed my fourth grade exam. I used to study very last minute I think I had a reading disability or something so I studied for a math exam. I show up It's a geography exam. So whole summer. I was stressed that I'm gonna fail and You know failing fourth grade is about the worst thing that can happen Especially in an immigrant family and we were in Kuwait and my mom wakes me up and says the war hits So you're not going to be able to go to school anymore and my first reaction is yes You're never gonna find out I failed but then when it sank in I started to see worry, right? Currency is invalid. The security in the company country has fully lapsed You don't know if you're gonna live or die. You can hear bombings people are screaming looting No internet no phones, right? This is 19. It's the 90s early 90s And so that day I go down my building with with my dad and I see a number of concerned faces and You know in 2023 when we hit We all belabor on problems, you know, you see how in the news all Problems belabor but that was a time where we didn't belabor on the problem very quickly People started to come together to form solutions that building became All guard from 6 to 12 somebody else is like, okay, I'll guard from 12 to 6 Somebody else is like I'm gonna organize supplies and there were other people saying hey their families have been displaced and And others are like, okay, we'll help organize shelter. So every building became a sub community Every building became a sub community communicated with another building another building and it became the largest grassroots evacuation movement that took people To safety and that day I developed the appetite for two things because what is entrepreneurship entrepreneurship is taking an idea To execution and impact while dealing with extreme risk and uncertainty That was taking an idea to execution With extreme risk and uncertainty and the other thing I Got to understand was the power of community and community led growth and how communities can drive impact Where a country that is fully displaced is now rescued by the community? We I mean word-of-mouth from building to building spread Coordinator with embassies and evacuated the people so it dates back there and ever since I left that experience I was always craving for more and more uncertainty And I'm sure there were a lot of learnings then one thing that came to mind as I and I say here your story Is that entrepreneurship is not just building a tech startup? Entrepreneurship sometimes especially in situations where it's about life or death It's really about building something that works so specific problem and all of these other factors around Road venture capital and long-term are very very important eventually But there has to be a fundamental problem that you are trying to solve and sometimes You don't even need to incorporate a company to solve that company entrepreneurship can be that type of mindset Exactly you hit the nail on the head, right? It is about Taking an idea an obscure idea to fruition to come to execution to impact while dealing with uncertainty ambiguity and risk and Bringing people together that is that is it and one thing that I noticed between founders and product managers is that in a way they product managers carry similar Interest for identifying a problem and fixing it Especially at the beginning like a founder is wearing that hat and I know that as a company evolves There is a need to to hire more and more product people those problem soldiers regardless of how we want to call them So I want to learn more about about your own journey. Let's say How do you first of all even before you started the company? I want to learn more about how you got that that first job And how you started solving problems for others Definitely, you know, I want to say that product management is One of my favorite jobs, okay, and it's it's probably one of the best skills you can learn Is to be in product management at an early stage company one of the best best best skills By far especially when I say early stage meaning all the way to if you have the opportunity to be a product manager under a founder There's no better skill than that because it'll it'll help you grow Beyond belief right because think about what you're doing. You're you don't have product market fit So you're talking to customers. You're validating the idea You're figuring out what to build your wire framing You're testing it and you're repeating the whole process and everything that you learn there because at that stage You don't have a product marketer. You don't have a project manager So you're doing everything yourself and you become so good at it that it helps you eventually hire the right people as you scale So so I wanted to start by saying that so I studied engineering Okay, I studied a bachelor's in software engineering one of the few schools at the time when I graduated had a bachelor's engineering degree in software now I always had this appetite for risk and Just surrounded by entrepreneurs wanted to go into business So I asked somebody what is the best skill? I could learn if I wanted to be a business person someday and they said by far sales Sales is the best skill selling is everything and so my first job. I only apply to sales jobs and Nobody would give me a job as an account executive or a salesperson in any company I mean I applied to Xerox I applied you name it tech companies non-tech companies applied everywhere Is there like awkward engineer? Why would have given this job? so I begged my way to get an entry-level cold-calling job into a small company and My parents freaked out right my parents are immigrants and they're like our friends kids who finished engineering are at Microsoft and these other companies and You are Making cold calls for $30,000 a year is so embarrassing fast-forward today That skill Carlos I kid you not was formative to me Helping me not only in product, but helping me as a founder right if you think about it We often say we want to improve our skill in something we want to be a better writer or a better product person Yet we don't do the things that enable us to do that to get there The best way to become better at something that you suck at is to do a lot of it Keep doing it keep doing it because you start with volume. It's like it's like Carving a sculpture you start heavy and then you go fine and finding refined so you do it you do it you do it and I knew that communication and speaking with my Relative who's an entrepreneur that communication was the key skill is like that's why he said go into sales There's no other job that would let me Communicate as much right sales is the only job that'll force you to communicate and so I Think it's about like building and selling like when it comes down to like the most basic Skills for a business to continue growing You have to have something that people want and you have to be able to communicate that and and and close it Exactly Exactly and so it was the best skill I learned and so then the next job I took was at a startup and It was to do sales like moving from Cold calling to actually selling now when I joined there the job actually ended up being that Talk to customers figure out what to build Write down the specifications give it to the developers and also by the way do all the product marketing and build the website Everything else now I went to university in Canada and my first job was in Canada And so when I moved to the States, I was on a visa. So I'm like, you know, I can't do anything. So You embrace it and So the skills I learned in cold calling was very helpful because now I could Polish the messaging pivot on the fly Learn to negotiate learn to understand pain points And so I started meeting very big companies like Tiffany and company Armani Simon and Schuster and was the best experiences ever and the thing is a few months after I joined there was a COO Who was managing that whole product process that whole Department and he left and so they didn't fill that gap So it became a great experience for me going meeting these big companies then walking their plant floors walking their facilities It was a warehouse control system software company And so understanding their entire flow and then designing what to build now because I studied software engineering I knew you know user experience was a core software design was a course and Combined with communication which I lacked so much graduating now I could actually communicate to the customer and Pull their pain points and then distill it to commonalities and then also convey that through wireframes and Specifications to the developer on what to build. Yeah, and so that's how I transitioned The funny thing is also specific in smaller companies. Maybe there are no roles that specifically define what you're doing. They don't have the title product manager or Business analyst or account executive. But at the end of the day is like when I'm as a founder I look for people with potential and if I have problems I'm going to try to delegate and try to put the my best people in the biggest problems and it sounds It makes sense But it's also a little counterintuitive for that person saying, okay, like I'm busy Why are you keeping me busy or well because DC people or overachievers always find a way to make things happen Exactly and you know though I don't fault anyone because this was 2005 six Yeah, and I don't think product manager was a title back then. No I don't think so like there wasn't a title used but it was ambiguous like engineers. You have engineers You have analysts But in a small company or a startup it was ambiguous So the salesperson now I came and like I'll talk to customers figure out what to build and then sell it But then I learned the third important skill Which was crucial for me is I now needed to write the messaging build the website And do all the product materials and everything like you know, that was a time where It wasn't the world wasn't so digital in that sense And so I needed to learn everything about digital marketing and every piece of information that I could find online Was some hub spots inbound marketing community. So I was a big part of that inbound marketing community I took their inbound marketing certification Gary Vaynerchuk from who had it was a chubby guy back then he had wine TV and he ran a course on YouTube marketing So I learned all of that and launched the company's website and did all the product materials the brochures all of that stuff So the three things you learn right and and I think these three things distills to actually two key skills one is communication Written and verbal communication and the other is creation Yeah be a great couple product manager. You need you need to and I and I agree with that third point That you added because especially at the very beginning You can get away by being the product and the salesperson you can go one-on-one have conversations with with people Get that feedback build deliver it gets to a point you need to scale yourself and your product and that third leg what some people would call marketing or Communication distribution however want to call it. It's important to be able to Communicate with people at scale when you are not the one having that type of one-on-one conversations obviously a copy on your website or Other types of ways you can empower people to relay message the right way so the user can Understand the product before they they decide to buy it's ultimately that type of flywheel And I think as as founders it's there's a lot of value in being the product first and doing a lot of things that don't scale and Eventually figuring out ways to scale ourselves Exactly exactly and if you don't do anything yourself It becomes very hard to figure out what good looks like especially when you're going from a startup to a scale up Right the way I look at it. There are four distinct phases in a startup You have an idea you need to validate it. Let's call it validation. How do you validate the idea? talk to maybe 10 talk to hundreds of customers or Create landing pages, whatever it is talk to customers Figure out their pain point Figure out if your proposed solution resonates and maybe get 10 people to invest their time or money to try it out You have validation you have message market fit Then you shift to product market fit and what is product market fit? Say you expand that cohort of 10 to 50 and let's look at it from a B2B sass angle Each is paying you 20,000 ACV What is product market fit effectively is you have high retention? Low-churn high retention people's at validation said I have a problem your message resonates I'm going to try it out at product market fit. They say every time I have this problem I'm going to keep coming back to you so the lagging indicator or the success metric is retention and the leading indicator is Engagement if I'm not using the product even if I bought your annual contract. I'm not going to Stick around and the third phase is product Channel fit where you figure out a repeatable scalable channel to grow the company grow the business to acquire customers And then the fourth is once you once you hit product channel fit Then you know hey I have one kind of customer who comes one kind of channel comes through one kind of channel and gets one kind of value Now at scale I'm putting 75% fuel on the fire and 25% I'm trying new things new products new markets new features Whatever it is you're scaling and that becomes a calm conversation now your journey as a founder also changes as you traverse that right at Validation your jack-of-all founder. You're doing anything everything at Product market fit maybe you hire two salespersons. Maybe you hire a product manager Right, you're still not a CEO or a president or whatever You're still founder a lot of people they immediately think they're CEO and everything is beneath them Or they immediately the president or the immediately C-suite so at that point when you hire two three people you become a manager You're still not C-suite at product channel fit You hire a manager to manage the individual contributors So now you've gone from validation individual contributor to product market fit being a manager and at product channel fit Now you're a VP you're still executing right and you hire You hire managers to manage the individual contributors At scale you become a strategist You become a C-suite and a lot of people don't make that journey or they jump to being C-suite and strategy too soon Well, let's let's talk about these these layers because I think there's obviously so many things you can acquire just by Failing by by doing but hopefully we can at least pinpoint some of those Learnies for you. I think when you have nothing to manage You are the product you are the founder you are everybody get to a point You are have you have a team and you are the direct manager for them, but eventually you are going to be in the manager of managers and Depending on how long that how big that company is some of those managers might be very very senior and especially when you raise money this is Intention to hire people who've been there who've done that who have this resume who've worked at a larger company who've seen This movie and are going to somehow solve the problem for you So you tell us a bit more about that experience kind of skating yourself and hiding those first managers of managers You know, you know, I'll caveat this by saying one thing, right? You have to understand your Genius or your expertise and where you shine and you have to fill the gaps What you hate doing ultimately if you don't find joy in the work you're doing You'll never be able to scale your scale a self or scale the company you'll get burnt out So one you got to figure out what am I passionate about? Am I passionate about product? Am I passionate about talking to customers? Am I passionate about evangelizing the company because when you're an individual Contributor as a founder you're doing many things and you fill your gaps number one number two, I think one of the key learnings I had is hiring people very specific to your stage number one and Hiring jack-of-all or Swiss army knives there's this fallacy that you need to hire specialists and I think a lot of mistakes we make is hiring specialists too soon unless you have a very specialized product for a very specialized need Specialists make sense in certain aspects but let's say You hire a head of marketing That only specializes in brand but You know you Need to flex in five different ways. You haven't figured out your channel yet. So how is the brand marketer going to help you? You need to you need to understand what are all the demand generation techniques? You need to understand if if next month am I going to spend money on ads or next month Am I going to spend money on on on SEO or maybe, you know, you're building a community so you what what bringing on a jack-of-all trades does is They can try different things and they may have expertise in one thing but they're not a Verse to executing or using their hands. So I love this Hiring jack-of-all like not specialists and stretching those specialists as long as possible Sorry hiring generalists and stretching those generalists as long as possible I think some of the biggest growth has come from hiring generalists who can flex in different directions because think about what you're doing You're making this journey from I From validation to product market fit to product channel fit in each stage There's an inherent risk and in validation You don't know if your message is going to resonate in product market fit You don't know if your product is going to resonate where they stick around so there is a risk of engagement Right or usage and in product channel fit. You don't know which channel is going to work. So you have a risk of losing, you know Exploding your cat or just, you know Burning through cash to get customers. I agree and I think that applies to all their area other functions I've seen this in product by definition product managers might come from a specialist area But eventually become generous because they need to be good enough engineering design data marketing sales I think the other part you mentioned is seniority or size of the company because I agree with you hiding generous that can flex and and figure things out is important Let's talk about the other dimension, which is okay. My I achieve product market fit. My company is is growing. I Have a good idea on what Needs to be done. So I'm going to hire someone to to take it from here Hopefully that person is better than you but how much experience or you know access to Larger companies that that person need to have So I'll give you a similar example to how we started the conversation in the in the green room, right? So you said you love your podcast to be tactical advice not high-level CEO platitudes, right? Not a high-level C-suite platitudes So think about it the same way if you're at validation bring on a leader Right at validation. In fact, you shouldn't hire any external leader if the founders can't do it then I don't know how you want to build a startup, but let's say you're at product market fit and You're roughly like maybe You know, you've raised a seed round. You have small MRR Let's let's call it like anywhere from between 10 and a hundred thousand MRR So like a hundred thousand to a million error. I would hire somebody who's made the journey from zero to five Right as as a head of you don't need to hire VP and you don't need to hire C-suite firstly delay hiring people with C titles, especially from big companies as long as possible Most of our mistakes came from there. Most of our genuinely most of our mistakes came from there So, you know how your product hits product market fit There's departments also in your company that hit product market fit, right? So let's say Again the same thing every department goes to validation product market fit and then scale So let's say Sales is your channel initially you were doing founder led sales Then you hire two people and they're humming really well Then you hired a manager and the manager hired four more people and now the sales department is doing really well So, okay, you're ready for a VP. You're ready to scale But let's say you're on the product team and you somehow stretch to freakin five ten million in revenue with founder doing product okay and communicating with the developers How can you now go from being a founder led product manager to hiring a Cpo from a large company? Because a Cpo from a large company think about a C level is execution is a strategy some execution VP is execution and and manager senior managers are more execution now as a founder who's mostly managed product from The idea validation stage to scale if you suddenly bring a Cpo from a large company It's gonna be friction because they needed to yeah, but it's so tempting right you have a problem You don't have time Do you see someone who buy the book checks the boxes speaks? Well comes from big company assume that oh my god that person probably saw this movie and they have a playbook I think there's a huge difference between Running a playbook at another company and being able to build a playbook no two Companies are the same and you hit the nail on the head Seeing the playbook is very different than building the playbook And so the way I look at it is if you're a product market fit and You need to bring on anybody whether it's head of marketing head of sales head of product It needs to hit two or three criteria criteria number one Is have they seen the journey from product market fit to scale? Were they early enough at a company that is like maybe 10,000 to 100,000 MRR that made the journey to 5 million 10 million ARR that's number one number two if they've seen that journey then they've created the playbook definitely right if you're 10,000 MRR And now your company is doing 10 million ARR. You have to have created the playbook. There's no other way number two Can they still execute? Can they roll up their sleeves? I have I Think these two skills are paramount to whoever you hire in products They need to have an eye for user experience Because everything is user experience the world is user experience Hiring a very technical product may a product leader doesn't serve you well if they don't understand user experience Everything the whole world this this interaction the world falls apart without user experience having great communication and great Creativity which to me is user experience. So those are those three things are really important Have they seen the journey can they communicate and and not communicate to inform because if you're communicating to inform You can send an email the job of a leader is To build inspire and motivate a team to deliver deliver is a lagging indicator So how do you build inspire and motivate a team by communicating the vision? To drive excitement and energy because people who are excited and energized can move mountains and if you can't communicate like that your whatever it is, you're not a good leader and and the third thing is User experience right and so the other reason why communication is so important Carlos is when you're a new product manager Your first month if you don't spend time talking to customers then That's a bad signal right I come from an engineering background as well Thank you, and so I never really properly learned communication come from a world where you have to Do an exercise it either works or it does it there's no much great area And that that really threw me off or for the early stages of my career, and I don't think I was a great communicator Have to learn in the hard way and that's something that I kept in mind because when I hire leaders Either they're managers or managers or just managers of individual contributors Sometimes I over index on the ability to get things done UX design or Other skills because I know that if you are good at your job and you can prove it Maybe you can learn how to better communicate that maybe that's just my own bias of You know not being able to hire or failing at hiding some really good people Just because I thought they communicate so well that sometimes I didn't I'm pulling I didn't validate enough like how good they were So I found success sometimes hiding that lieutenant that number two at a company that maybe it's less polished And it's more hands-on because I know they still they probably most of the work And they still have the hunger to prove themselves in a number one position Sometimes that number one role especially larger company comes with too much, you know, like Things laugh. So anyway, what's your take on that? Definitely, I agree with that. So what I described is a unicorn, right great communicator and not communicating Pizzazz but communicating to evangelize right because a lot of what you do You have to convince your dev team to do this project, right? You have to convince customers that hi, I'm not gonna ship the feature this month But like, you know, you got to use this hack or you got to convince the CEO of the company that no I'm not gonna build this. I don't care how much you're in love with this idea and you think it's the vision But now is not the right time. So that is when I say communication meaning it's it's a skill not to like Create buzz, but it's a skill to evangelize people and influence them to your way of thinking So that I think that is important and the second one is ability to Execute with speed creation, right execution creation with speed and UX is a big part of that Urgency is a big part of that. So what I what I like to ask is Have you ever been in a situation described to me a situation where you had to ship a big feature Within a certain crunch time frame and what are all the things that failed? And what would you do better? But the the other thing what what I find is All our failures like kid you not man Came from hiring big company execs too early. I I Don't know how else to say and maybe I'm a data point of one But that data point of one is valid when I've talked to hundreds of other people But all our failures mean I say failures meaning hard lessons because the company is doing great with like, you know Since the funding we've doubled or more Has come from Hiring big company execs who don't understand the pulse of a startup So I think one of the key things there is hiring state specific meaning Somebody who has if you're trying to make the journey from one to five then somebody who's made that journey Who's created that playbook? Now if you're starting trying to go from 10 to 20 Don't hire somebody who's at a company that's doing a billion in revenue, right? Because they're their teams may be bigger than your whole company hire somebody who's seen the journey from ten to a hundred Who's written that playbook and a lot of the times when you hire companies? Hire people from companies that are at a billion in revenue big public companies that look so good in resumes But by the time they joined that company that company was way past a hundred million They never create the playbook. So you said it right the hire the people who create the playbook and it doesn't really have to be somebody who was who You know, you can be one down from the person who created the playbook with their part They actively experience creating the playbook They can communicate to evangelize and influence people to their way of thinking And they have a good eye for user experience. I even like the user experience skill across the Executive team minus maybe finance But even the marketing person even the salesperson leader needs to have some sense of user experience because It just brings calm right when you have this conversation Otherwise people are just gonna ask you like give me this give me a you need to have basic You should love products. Okay, if you love products, you'll understand user experience And I think they the misconception with user experience is that it's just associated with design and pure Exactly, it's not and then bringing this down to how actually things work It's it's what everybody I expect to have like an appreciation for For the product obviously as if you work in product You should understand from inside out But there's long gone are those days where sales receive something and says it and doesn't really care about how it's built Or marketing is just pushing a message, right? Like, you know, that's that's what I like about this this founder or product mindset She's like We all with all the product like how can we keep parts of that DNA that made the company successful in the first place? So when other people join they don't just Work on one thing or delegate the others and they really really care about what we are doing Ultimately, if you what you're talking about extending agreements or like preventing churn Upsetting those customers. It's only going to happen if your product is excellent You can just maybe you can fake the first deal. You can't you cannot fake an excellent customer experience You cannot and that's why I think it's really important that everyone to have some skills and you know, not everyone Needs to have the deep you like, you know, you can go 100% and everything that's not the goal, but you can if you have 80% is good, right? So the two courses I recommend and I took early in my time is there's a there's a good UX course on Coursera I think it was from UCLA, but there's a bunch now and there's a course by Janice Fraser on you to me called seven steps to building a startup and I Recommend to all early-stage founders to just take this course and and it's it's invaluable because It tells you so much about not only talking to customers But it tells you what to build how to how to prioritize the feature How to wireframe it how to craft user stories? And I actually recommend anyone to take it because it'll it'll take five hours of your life But not you'll know more than most founders, right? I'm gonna drop the link here I know you are very passionate about sharing your knowledge and that's why you started this community called traction back in 2014 So what you can say a little more about What it is and what other things you you do for fellow founders? Definitely. So this traction you know In a way, you can say accidental community, right because the name came much after but we've been running the community For a long time before so my co-founder Alex and I when we started the company boast boast is a fintech platform that automates access to Funding for product development and and research and development for companies like globally hundreds of millions of dollars are given in funding by Governments, but it's a broken application process. It takes a long time to get the money and you can get audited So we said we'll automate then streamline this process of companies can get access to non-dilutive funding from the government Faster for less time and risk and initially we started with streamlining the application process and digitizing it Then we raised secured a hundred million fund to lend to those companies And now because we have this unique data set of R&D data combined with financial data We're creating a new set of tooling around R&D analytics. So basically engineering R&D productivity So who should hire what projects you should invest in and so on and so forth now When we started the company nobody wanted to talk to us, right? Because imagine you got two guys in an apartment core calling companies saying buy my stuff and my stuff is hey Give me your product development data, and I'll get you money from the government. It sounds scammy, right? And then when you Google search these these things it's largely done by big accounting firms So the you know we were getting dejected because the larger the company We tried to target the harder it was and so we started running around in the startup community and meeting other founders and talking to them And this was 2012 this was a time when all the conferences Were like not tactical everyone was like big-name CEO talking about high-level platitudes And I started we started running around the community We participated in startup weekend events and so on and we wanted to learn for ourselves Actually, you know what how do we really get customers and so we started meeting and and in going in the startup community found We found that not only we found our tribe Who was like easy to communicate with compared to like going after manufacturing or agriculture any big industry But we also found that these people don't have the tactical knowledge to build their companies because we weren't getting any learnings So we said hey, why don't we flip the script here? Why don't we you know we as People as two guys who've been part of other startups before that have failed. We at least know good founders that we can invite So maybe not the unicorn guys, but maybe somebody who's like got to 10 20 30 million revenue So why don't we invite them and host meetups and ask them to share very tactical advice See this was a time where all the conferences were run by event managers So I don't fault them. They just don't know what to ask right? So you're a founder so you can ask me the right questions if you're not a founder You're gonna ask me my aspirational story and I'm not I'm gonna be 50,000 foot I'm not gonna talk about like how I did a BNC Yeah, so because we were founders we started hosting events and then our email went something like hey founder We're inviting X influencer to talk about why topic like why topic being how do you build your first product? How do you build your MVP? How do you validate your idea? How do you get your first customers very tactical topics, right? And we only have 10 spots. There's gonna be pizza would love for you to join we sold the 10 first 10 spots It was free The next time we did the event more 10 people more 10 people every time more and more people used to come One day 200 people showed up to the core working space men and the core working space guys are like listen This is not a meetup a pizza meetup now you hijacked all the tables and everything on the floor This is a conference and this was a time where you know podcasts weren't so prevalent and They weren't like saster and stuff wasn't there and And so that evolved then eventually into the traction community which today we host a big conference We host a podcast every week at peak We were doing two live podcasts a week so on YouTube and and on Spotify and webinar and And and then retreats every other quarter and then small dinners in different cities it evolved and now it's traction has about 120,000 subscribers But the funny thing is we build this community to educate ourselves. We built a community of practice And there's three kinds of communities you can build but community of practice is Bringing a community together to learn about a specific topic a community of product is To evangelize your product and become a specialist in the product And then there's a community of play which is coming together to have fun like a Harley-Davidson community or a Nike community but we build a community of practice because we were founders we wanted to learn how to grow our business and Coincidentally what happened was All those people that started coming to a community not only ended up becoming customers But other partners started showing up to the community and and so we built this great dynamic of a community where We were able to bootstrap boast with no marketing team to 10 million with the power of this community because not only we got Customers from it, but we got partners we built partnerships with Accountants bankers incubators accelerators that started referring us business and it gave us good social proof because think about it from two guys We're cold calling you from an apartment to say give me your data, which is Man you're giving your IP to somebody It requires a lot of credibility To now we're inviting you to events and you're seeing eventually like folks like Jeff Lawson coming to our events or uber's previous CEO Came to a meetup then we have the social proof I call it brand rub you associate with somebody who has significant social proof So you get credibility now if you do that repeatedly you follow in this path of Visibility credibility and then you make money so profitability. I think you and I have been living a Parallel life in that way because I also started the product community in 2014 for a very Similar reason and just wanted to learn from the best in our own industry and then from there Really finding value for the people not just for myself And then I think the consistency piece that you mentioned is critical But sometimes we look at this right now. I'm like, oh my god, there is a conference 100,000 members in your community Well, because you've been grinding for almost 10 years starting in very small places one Founder at a time and ensuring that those founders get value because otherwise I don't know just I don't want to recommend these to other people like I think especially when you're doing things in person Putting your name out there and for me to recommend Someone to come and spend their time or sometimes their money in this I'm only going to do it if I believe in it So how were you able to create that first group of? Evangelizers that were able to help you bring other founders to the community definitely so because we were not looking for anything right and we Started the call the community traction firstly initially it had no name So it was like all the boast guys are running an event and they bring cool people We were not selling and that's the thing, right? I'm not saying not to monetize if you don't monetize your community You will not sustain but there's a way to monetize, right? So this was a time when startups had no other support. Okay accountants bankers lawyers would make fun of us They're like, ah, we're gonna eat your lunch. Why are you going after this startup market? They're all gonna go out of business go after manufacturing. It's huge you know, you win in life by having a contrarian view and being right and We bet that this is in 2012 that the startup market is gonna explode and it's gonna drive our business and fast forward it did right and When you're helping and I truly believe this fall in love with your customer and Make them successful beyond your product or service Yesterday's innovation always becomes tomorrow's commodity right GPS You couldn't get your hands on it. Then the GPS became an option now. There's carplay. It's a commodity But if you build a community, you won't become a commodity because you have this constant feedback loop of customers of Product feedback of brand recognition and they want to help you. I'll give you a very good example of this In the 80s Harley Davidson Almost went bankrupt when the Japanese Japanese manufacturers and the electronics getting commoditized They started bringing these fancy sport bikes and the company almost went bankrupt And you know, it's a physical product, but nonetheless the example applies to us all and Harley Davidson leadership made community a company strategy not a marketing strategy They started sending the leadership out and starting rider clubs around the camaraderie of riders. They built a community of play and Bikers became employees employees became bikers and over time they create this ritual around weekend rides getting together weekend rides coming together and those riders Started the save Harley movement and not only they save Harley But today they run campaigns to cure cancer and autism and all of these things, right? And so that's what it does and and they leverage the community to get feedback to build future products And now they have this is one of the strongest iconic brands, right? You can recognize a Harley Davidson fan just by what they're wearing So I think I think that is that is the that is the key element is if you start by saying how can I make money from you? People are gonna be turned off. So there's like I said three kinds of communities Community of practice which is helping people together what you and I started There's a community of play which is like Harley Davidson or Nike's where you bring people to have fun Red Bulls community And there's a community of product, which is Git labs community you code together or Atlassian's community you learn to build the product, right? You you become a promoter of the product if you don't have product market fits Don't build a community of product because people think you're trying to sell to them. I think that's a great point Building community sounds great, especially when hearing it from a successful community leader but I think the story behind becoming successful is what is sometimes overlooked and Example, I was going to say examples of communities of product could also be like Figma or Mura some of these successful products Definitely with strong product market fit that have a ton of users and those products are so flexible That allows so many different use cases than even the core company can't come up with So they they are able to empower community Makers like people who are users to share templates to share stories help each other I think that could be a good example a community of product for a lot of product leaders out there thinking Okay, if I were to to create something maybe a community of practice, it's Too broad for a specific product. Maybe a community of play. It's also like very deep It's hard to come up with and you need a really strong brand recognition But I think Everyone anyone who's in that post-product market fit face could spend some additional time Figuring out how users are using your product and if that leads to a community and you can put customers to talk to Customers that is fascinating Definitely definitely exactly right like notion like Canva That's that sort of thing so you've described it right But when you don't have product market fit and you're just trying to build an early community Then you know like HubSpot did this right I said in the early days everything I learned about Marketing and product marketing and sales or some HubSpot's it bound community HubSpot didn't really have much of a product So I started searching Marketing sales product marketing I started learning all these things join their community They didn't they had a community of practice how to make people better marketers better digital marketers gain side also in the early days They had the pulse customer success community They didn't have a product right but then now that they have a product market fit as they got product market fit got like You know 50 100 hundreds of customers then they created a sub community within the key community around Community of product and I and I like those points HubSpot gains I because at the very beginning they didn't push product. It's really tried to become that community of practice by Learning best practices regardless of the product eventually obviously as you as you had get product You can you can find ways to evangelize monetize your community, but I think Being clear on like a community is it's not just a sales mechanism Otherwise, it's not a community. It's it's an audience and that's fine Like not every company should have a community But I think if you want to create something bigger than yourself bigger than your company There has to be value for the users beyond your product Exactly, right. That's why I keep saying fall in love with your customers and make them successful Beyond your product or service. I'll give you one very key example Right. So, you know, as I mentioned, I'm writing this book From grassroots to greatness 13 rules to build iconic brands with community led growth for that I talked to about like a thousand leaders in the community. I joined a number of communities I joined like nas daily, which is a big youtuber with 20 million followers. He has a creator community I joined that I was already a part of a bunch like saster My community I joined on deck I joined many communities and then I talked to leaders from community led brands and I found not only 13 common rules When I was asking the same questions over and over again, but I actually found four distinct phases that every obscure idea Which became eventually a worldwide phenomena that went went through that four distinct phases from Christ to crossfit Every obscure idea that became a worldwide phenomena went through these four distinct phases People listen to you or buy your product or whatever it is. You have an audience When you bring that audience together to interact with one another, it becomes a community When that community comes together to create an impact an impact that transcends your product or your profits an Impact that's tied to your purpose. It becomes a movement and Then through rituals when the movement has undying faith in its purpose It becomes a cult or a religion and you think that through right and you look at like I said Christianity to crossfit But look at the journey of the most iconic bands is audience community movement Religion or cult and it's the same thing. They people start listening to them. They bring them together There's an impact and you said it right, right? You have to help them beyond the product or service To build that community you take that next step that leap and that's when you actually can become a movement That's why Harley Davidson became a movement. That's why mr. Beast I mean a non tech product is a movement because you know helping Raise 20 million to pull out to plant 20 million trees or 30 million to pull out 30 million pounds of plastic Is a movement and then you start forming these rituals like Harley Davidson has the weekly rides Right Then you crossfit has the workout of the day A lot of tech products have different rituals imbibed in them where You know initially they force you into the ritual rather through triggers right emails push notifications Eventually what happens is you get so invested in the product ritual that It becomes a habit and niriyal talks about a lot of this as well But it becomes an internal trigger because you get some variable reward And then you make an investment and it becomes an internal trigger That internal trigger once it happens over and over again that core action you can elevate to being a ritual And if it leads to a greater that ritual tied to a greater purpose beyond your product Or profit will help you become a cult like brand is what I started discovering Well, it's been a pleasure to spend time with you and discuss community executive hiding playbooks Your story uh cold calling and and building Business as both and also community as extraction. Thank you so much for your time Thank you so much great pleasure and look forward to hosting you on the traction podcast a couple weeks from here