Faith in Community: The Sacred Blueprint for SaaS Success with Lloyed Lobo

00:00:01:09 - 00:00:23:14

Ben Hillman

In the annals of human history, sacred texts and religious congregations stand as a testament to the power of collective belief. Pilgrims over centuries have journeyed to distant lands, driven by a shared faith, to commune with their deities and fellow believers. This profound sense of community brought together by a shared doctrine, creates a bond that transcends geography, race and time.

00:00:23:16 - 00:00:51:14

Ben Hillman

It's not just about individual salvation. It's about a collective spirit that uplifts and lightens and propels its believers forward. Your sass company is not a religion, but much can be learned from this concept. BTB Sass thrives on the relationships it nurtures within its digital congregation. This isn't solely about software or solutions. It's about connections, the shared experience of users and the value these interactions bring to the larger community.

00:00:51:17 - 00:01:29:19

Ben Hillman

This shared journey of discovery, learning and growth in the Sass realm is akin to the pilgrimage of faith, wherein the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Enter Lloyd Lobo, a post eye and author of From Grass Roots to Greatness. 13 Rules to Build Iconic Brands with Community led Growth. After talking to 1000 leaders, looking behind the growth of obscure ideas that went on to become enduring companies like Apple, Atlassian, CrossFit, Harley-Davidson, HubSpot and more, Lloyd's distilled his learnings into a comprehensive guide on how to leverage the power of communities to drive long term sustainable growth.

00:01:29:21 - 00:01:52:08

Ben Hillman

In today's episode, we're embarking on a journey with Lloyd Lobo exploring the transformative impact of community led growth on B2B SaaS companies and for those who yearn for deeper wisdom. Lloyd's enlightening book, From Grassroots to Greatness, is available now from Paddle into Protect the Hustle, where we explore the truth behind the strategy and tactics of B2B SAS growth to make you an outstanding operator.

00:01:52:10 - 00:02:14:04

Ben Hillman

I'm Ben Hillman, and on today's episode, Lloyd Lobo speaks with paddles. Andrew DAVIES about community led growth. After you finish the episode, check out the show notes for a field guide from today's episode. Then, while you're leaving your five star review of the podcast, tell us what resonated most about our guests Advice.

00:02:14:06 - 00:02:18:16

Andrew Davies

So, Lloyd, why don't you give me a quick bit of background on yourself and some of the companies you started?

00:02:18:17 - 00:02:45:18

Lloyed Lobo

Definitely. Quick background. Immigrant refugee turned entrepreneur and community builder. That's the quick one liner. Most recently, co-founder of Boast II, we bootstrapped the company to 10 million in RR. Then between debt and equity secured over 100 million in capital, predominantly the equity was growth equity where the founders who had been grinding for years making no money, eventually got to liquidate.

00:02:45:19 - 00:03:11:05

Lloyed Lobo

That was a function of bootstrapping. A company with less than 35 people or so and no marketing team is when, you know, when we had 10 million RR, we had no marketing team. It enabled us to create a good financial freedom for ourselves. Right? And most founders don't think this way, but when we did the deal with growth equity, we were able to cash out while also still maintaining nearly 40% stake in the company.

00:03:11:05 - 00:03:33:09

Lloyed Lobo

So de-risk in the short term and stay along for the long term. And so yeah, so that's been it's been a wonderful journey. Prior to boast, every other company I've been a part of was venture backed and they all failed and you know graduating from university, the first job I took was at a startup and only ever worked at startups and they say, Right, you become the average of the five people around you.

00:03:33:09 - 00:03:51:11

Lloyed Lobo

So it was natural when, you know, I felt I hit my ceiling at startups. Then I went on to start my own with my co-founder was my best friend since university. And yeah, so one of the things was when we started, I don't think it was a fundable business. We didn't think it would be funded. We were just like trying to make ends meet and, and get customers, you know, when you're in it.

00:03:51:11 - 00:04:09:18

Lloyed Lobo

Andrew It always feels like you're throwing spaghetti on the wall when you look back. Once you found success, it feels like, Oh, that was a profound framework that I should write about. That's a funny thing of life, right? Is like when you're in it, it's always like, Hey, is it sticking? Is it not sticking? But yeah, it's been it's been an incredible journey.

00:04:09:18 - 00:04:21:18

Lloyed Lobo

And I think we all I would recommend it to everyone. The media has perpetuated this addiction to unicorn porn. In reality, the world is run by horses, camels and donkeys.

00:04:21:18 - 00:04:35:11

Andrew Davies

Well, we've got audience here of supporters, many of who are bootstrapped. And so we love the bootstrapped community. So I'm excited to have you on today. But you give us a little bit more props about that journey on Boast. Before we dive in about your new book on community led growth.

00:04:35:11 - 00:04:52:17

Lloyed Lobo

Definitely, I think, you know, the journey I want to talk about is the journey to post first, right? I think that is very important because there's a few lessons there, which I think is invaluable to a bootstrap. Or so I spend my childhood in the slums of Mumbai. Childhood summers were spent in the slums of Mumbai. So I was born in Kuwait.

00:04:52:17 - 00:05:08:14

Lloyed Lobo

My parents are from India and they weren't really educated and the only option was go to the Middle East to work, make some money, which, you know, currency carries ten. And so working in the Middle East, the one thing you get is free round trip tickets back homes every summer. We couldn't afford to go to Europe or anywhere else.

00:05:08:14 - 00:05:31:16

Lloyed Lobo

My mum stayed at home to raise me and my sister and dad worked almost 24 seven so we would spend the summers in Mumbai in the slums there and my mum and her nine siblings grew up there and my fondest memories are in those slums because watching TV was communal, eating food was communal, puddles would turn into ponds in the summer when it was raining and even going to the restroom was communal because there's no restroom in the house.

00:05:31:16 - 00:05:52:07

Lloyed Lobo

So you're standing in line talking to people. It was so much fun and every time I'd have to go back, I would cry. Fast forward a few years. The Gulf War had Kuwait, and that day when I found out and went down the building with my dad, I witness probably the biggest miracle in the world in 2023. When we hear about problems, it just bit laborers and festers into new monsters.

00:05:52:07 - 00:06:09:14

Lloyed Lobo

We just like discussing and belaboring bad things. Negative news spreads and the social media platforms capitalize on it. But back then, as soon as everyone found out it was going on, they immediately started to think of solutions. Hey, I'm going to guard the building from this time to the other time. Somebody else is like, I'll join you in somebody else's, like organize food supplies.

00:06:09:14 - 00:06:26:01

Lloyed Lobo

Somebody else is like, Hey, if you have displaced family members will organize shelter and another person is like, Hey, I know somebody at the school. There's no school going. Maybe we'll situate your family members there. There was a time where there no phones, there was no Internet and security had completely lapsed. Every building became a sub community that communicated with the next building.

00:06:26:01 - 00:06:49:12

Lloyed Lobo

The next building became this massive grassroots movement that coordinated with embassies and governments to eventually evacuate people to safety. And that day, you know, I realized two things. One, the power of people coming together towards a greater purpose. They can move mountains, they can make anything happen when people are driven by a burning desire towards a greater purpose.

00:06:49:12 - 00:07:06:07

Lloyed Lobo

I was, I think, eight or nine years old, and I felt like, you know, the Rambo movie was very popular. And through all this bandana and I was just running around and I was the lowest common denominator, but never did. Once anyone make me feel like I wasn't part of driving that greater purpose. The second thing I experienced was the entrepreneurial spirit.

00:07:06:08 - 00:07:26:18

Lloyed Lobo

Today, when we talk about entrepreneurship, it's all about, Hey, make money. Entrepreneurial spirit is nothing but taking an obscure or idea to execution an impact while dealing with extreme risk, uncertainty and ambiguity and no other riskier situation than a war. Fast forward a few more years. We emigrated to Canada. I got an engineering When I was graduating engineering.

00:07:26:18 - 00:07:45:03

Lloyed Lobo

I just didn't feel like coding or doing a typical job. I was just craving that rush of uncertainty and risk and community. So I started to ask other business people, how do I get into business? And the thing I kept hearing was communication is what you need to fix, right? You're an awkward engineer. You need to learn to speak better.

00:07:45:03 - 00:08:07:12

Lloyed Lobo

And I started to ask, How do I do that? And what I kept landing on was, if you want to get better at something, if you suck at something and want to improve, put yourself in an environment that makes you do that same thing over and over again. Because motivation is hard. Most of us are not self-motivated and so the environment, the system of being in an environment that requires you to do it over and over again will help you improve.

00:08:07:12 - 00:08:30:00

Lloyed Lobo

And so I started applying to sales jobs. Nobody would offer me a sales job. An engineer awkward, can't speak. I applied to Xerox to all the way to smaller companies. Luck would have it. I landed a cold calling job at a startup and that changed my life. Now my parents of Indian descent lost it, right, son? Graduating engineering goes and does cold calling for $30,000 a year.

00:08:30:00 - 00:08:47:11

Lloyed Lobo

Our friend's kids are at Microsoft and that. But fast forward today. It's the skill that served me the most ready pivoting on the fly. You're polishing your messaging, you're learning to negotiate, and you do it day in, day out. So when I took that first job, I think the first call I made, I practiced for hours. And when the decision maker shows up on the line, I just hang up.

00:08:47:11 - 00:09:02:18

Lloyed Lobo

People burst out laughing and then I just never stop. And then my journey from there graduated from there and applied to sales jobs in the States. My wife, now girlfriend at the time was in medical school in New Jersey, and if I needed to be with her, I needed to move to the States. So I get this ten visa.

00:09:02:18 - 00:09:21:15

Lloyed Lobo

I land a job at another startup in sales. I'm like, Wow, what a win, right? And this company sold to large enterprises like Tiffany, Armani, Simon and Schuster. When I go there, I realize what a startup is. There's nothing scalable, there's nothing predictable. So it's like, talk to these customers, figure out what to build, then present their requirements to the dev team and tell them like wireframe.

00:09:21:15 - 00:09:41:00

Lloyed Lobo

And basically the product management wasn't like a very wide known profession in 2004 or five, right as it is right now. And then, oh, by the way, you also need to figure out sales marketing, right? You need to figure out the marketing materials and the website and the video and all this product marketing stuff. I felt lost and I said to myself, I can't quit because I'm on a visa.

00:09:41:00 - 00:09:57:03

Lloyed Lobo

And if I want to be with this girl, I got to figure it out. Communication. I kind of knew how to talk to customers and it felt more comfortable and cold calling because now you're understanding their requirements and you're distilling it down wire framing. I understood from software engineering, I'm like, How do I figure out this website stuff?

00:09:57:03 - 00:10:19:11

Lloyed Lobo

This SEO? Like all these things were new and thousand four or five and everything I started Google searching was coming up from HubSpot. So after like the slum community and the Gulf War community, the HubSpot community became my next community. I learned everything from HubSpot inbound marketing, and I still remember Gary Vaynerchuk, who's known as Gary. We now had this wine TV video series on how sports inbound marketing and he was so bullish on it.

00:10:19:11 - 00:10:37:12

Lloyed Lobo

Right? It's just never stopped is this chubby young guy and he never stopped and that became my community. Fast forward a few more start ups and my co-founder from university he called me is like, Hey, I want to do a startup in the tax credit space. Hundreds of billions of dollars given in R&D funding by governments, but it's a broken process I'm working at a big four for it's so manual.

00:10:37:12 - 00:10:58:19

Lloyed Lobo

Let's do this. I jumped at the opportunity to work with him and then the rest is history. I mean, in parallel we did two other startups. We did a chat bot in 2013, which failed. Obviously we didn't know what we were doing, couldn't get it to work. We never had a problem getting customers and I'll share why. And then did an AI sales assistant, it was a Bessemer incubated idea, worked out of their office for two years.

00:10:58:19 - 00:11:25:04

Lloyed Lobo

That also failed and luckily we had boss going and that bootstrapping had taken us far enough that we sailed through. And you know, 2020 got to the 10 million RR and were able to sell half of the company and at least de-risk in the short term. So that's the that's a longer journey. But if I had to find three things that were paramount to getting to here, it would be communication, creation and consistency.

00:11:25:04 - 00:11:52:17

Lloyed Lobo

The ability to communicate is huge, is in everything convincing employees, convincing your spouse that I'm going to do failure after failure and not bring money on. Please believe in me. Convincing investors, early employees, customers. It's all communication. Your ability to create, especially in a product driven world, is everything. But if you're not consistent, you'll never get anywhere. Like you look at Gary Vee I talked about, or Jason Lemkin or Warren Buffett, who's the single richest person in investing or the single richest person in SAS being Larry Ellison.

00:11:52:17 - 00:11:57:18

Lloyed Lobo

They just never stop. They just keep going. Compound interest and consistency is what we call overnight success.

00:11:57:18 - 00:12:16:12

Andrew Davies

For someone who introduces himself as in the early days, needing lots of communication, skill and advice, it clearly is something that's a superpower now. Lloyd That's awesome. You've got this book, Community LED Growth. Now there's lots of different leagues. PLG, CLG, SLG Let's just define before we get into it, what what is community? How do you define community?

00:12:16:13 - 00:12:41:05

Lloyed Lobo

Definitely for me, community. And actually I'm going to take this in an interesting direction and route to do writing this book, I end up talking to about a thousand people or more like we have a large community with traction. I rewatched all our traction content and I also looked behind the scenes of all the iconic enduring brands, not just the startups that exploded, but the enduring brands like the Harley Davidson, the Apples, the brands that stuck around generations.

00:12:41:05 - 00:13:04:07

Lloyed Lobo

And I found something very interesting, right? Every obscure idea that eventually became a global worldwide phenomenon from Christianity to CrossFit, every obscure idea that became a global phenomena had four things in common four stages. One, people listen to you or buy your product. You have an audience. When you bring that audience together to interact with one another, it becomes two way.

00:13:04:07 - 00:13:41:10

Lloyed Lobo

It becomes a community. Now, one, that community comes together to create impact towards a purpose that's far greater than your product or profits. It becomes a movement. And when that movement has undying faith in its purpose through sustained rituals over time, it becomes a cult or a religion. So you follow that pattern of audience. One way communication community, two way coming together, movement, creating impact towards a greater purpose beyond your product or or profits and then called or religion is undying belief in that purpose through sustained rituals, audience, community movement, religion or cult.

00:13:41:10 - 00:14:00:08

Lloyed Lobo

And the key thing in making it all happen is community. It's bringing people together. A lot of us today are focused on building, audience is on LinkedIn, on Instagram, on socials in general. Right? The thing that happens is if the influencer is gone, the audience is gone. It moves away because it's not a community. It's an audience, right?

00:14:00:08 - 00:14:16:05

Lloyed Lobo

If you don't have the emails, getting their emails and getting their contact information is the first step in actually bringing them together. But if you're not bringing them together by whatever means, it's going to be hard to sustain for the long haul. You can sustain for the long haul, but like if you lose energy and stop creating, you'll start seeing your engagement go down.

00:14:16:06 - 00:14:30:05

Andrew Davies

What do you also think about community in terms of its forum? I've heard community definitions. Meaning about, yes, about purpose, about interrelatedness, and also about having some sense of boundary or forum. So do communities have to have a line around them? Do they have to have a certain platform that they're sitting on?

00:14:30:06 - 00:14:48:17

Lloyed Lobo

You know, what's really interesting is I get this question a lot because, you know, we're one of the few community led businesses that leveraged not community of product, but a community of practice like HubSpot being the other one gained site. But the notion has a great community. But it's a community around the product. And I get past this by like voices and educate us on community.

00:14:48:17 - 00:15:03:20

Lloyed Lobo

And the first question I get asked by almost everyone is, Hey, I want to build a community. Number one, should I be on Facebook groups or should I be on Slack or Discord or what's up? And number two, when will I make money? This question is like asking This question is like asking. I think think about it, right?

00:15:03:20 - 00:15:19:07

Lloyed Lobo

I want to go build a church, but I'm actually not sure what religion we're going to practice there. So how do you know you need to build a church or a mosque or temple? And it's the same way saying I want to build a house, but I don't know what country I want to be in or anything like that.

00:15:19:07 - 00:15:38:09

Lloyed Lobo

Right. And so it's just it's like starting with the tools, which I hate. I think you got to start with the values and the vision and the purpose. Then figure out the customer and understand them, Figure out the customer's circle of influence and not only their problems and their goals. Problems and goals are good, but they're short term.

00:15:38:10 - 00:15:54:19

Lloyed Lobo

You've got to figure out their aspirations. Like this graphic. I think we all share a lot. Product marketing graphic is like Mario eats, the mushroom becomes Super Mario. Your product is not the mushroom, your product is Super Mario. Customers want an outcome. They don't want software. They don't want the next SAS tool. So how do you get them to that outcome?

00:15:54:19 - 00:16:15:07

Lloyed Lobo

So what is what is that aspiration they're looking for? Because your aspiration, your customers aspiration gives you your forever, your y, your purpose that exists beyond you. And then you, when you understand your customer problems, it pains the aspiration. What stands in the way where they eat bread, drink, sleep, Who are the people they follow? Who are the other tools they pay for?

00:16:15:08 - 00:16:34:19

Lloyed Lobo

What are the blogs and magazines they read? What platforms are they prevalent on? So you understand the customer really well. You understand their circle of influence. Then you can go down the path of then creating content that resonates around a white space and then start bringing them together, and then going down that journey. For example, like the world doesn't need the 100th slack.

00:16:34:20 - 00:16:39:09

Lloyed Lobo

Let me ask you this How many slack groups and WhatsApp groups you are a part of and what have you archived?

00:16:39:09 - 00:16:49:00

Andrew Davies

I went on a cleanup exercise recently. Lloyd So yeah, too many and I archived about 50% of them. So yeah, I'm probably down to the 20 rather than the 40.

00:16:49:00 - 00:17:08:02

Lloyed Lobo

Let me ask you this other question then. Right? The world is driven by two kinds of triggers or motivations. One is extrinsic triggers, which is I send you a push notification, I send you an email eventually, you hope every product, every community, every idea, hopes that it becomes an intrinsic motivation where the person wakes up and thinks, I want to go to this.

00:17:08:02 - 00:17:17:01

Lloyed Lobo

What communities or products or platforms are intrinsic motivators for you? Like you have to check in yourself. Is there a product or two like that for you?

00:17:17:03 - 00:17:26:01

Andrew Davies

Yeah, I mean, the one that firstly comes to mind as a community of CMO's that I learned from and got to create is I learn from it. I go to that WhatsApp channel to ask questions and to learn. I never wait for the ping to come to me.

00:17:26:02 - 00:17:47:16

Lloyed Lobo

Exactly. So you want to get to that, right? And so the only way to get to that and flipping the question you because you're a CMO and far more experience than me, I'm an engineer who bumbled my way into this. But what was it about that community that drove it? Because initially it's all extrinsic right? It's all like somebody had to invite you, you joined, you experienced an aha moment, you made an investment to keep coming back.

00:17:47:16 - 00:17:57:10

Lloyed Lobo

And over time, then it wasn't an intrinsic motivation. On day one, maybe it was, I don't know, day 30 or day 60. But what was it that made it an intrinsic motivation for you?

00:17:57:13 - 00:18:07:16

Andrew Davies

Two things. Someone who was in a crisis and reached out and I was able to help them and they were grateful for that. And then the reverse being true, where I had a problem I couldn't solve, I reached out and someone else helped me return.

00:18:07:18 - 00:18:25:03

Lloyed Lobo

Is the camaraderie, is the joy of giving. It's helping each other, right? Like it's like near L has this frame or like trigger action, variable reward, right? Every time you go in engaged, the reward you get is different. So it's like you don't know if it's if it's a static dopamine hit, then you can you can put it on the back burner.

00:18:25:03 - 00:18:46:09

Lloyed Lobo

But if it's different, then you want to engage and then you make an investment. You want to hope that that investment eventually becomes an internal trigger and you are now also inviting other friends. Right? Then it eventually becomes a ritual like CrossFit workout of the day, like Harley-davidson's Weekend warriors, right? Once it becomes that ritual, like once a core action that you do right, every product even has a core action.

00:18:46:14 - 00:19:03:12

Lloyed Lobo

And we often say that building a product with an old core action can lead to disasters because you're trying to now grow audiences that don't know why they're coming to your product. For every product should have a core action If your users didn't do this action, your product just wouldn't exist. And maybe YouTube has a couple of them.

00:19:03:12 - 00:19:21:10

Lloyed Lobo

Twitter now has a couple of them, and so every community has that to what is a core action. You want to have people keep doing. And if they don't do that, this community is useless. So I think it's about before you figure out the platform. You've got to understand the audience, you've got to understand the values, you've got to figure out the core actions you want them performing.

00:19:21:12 - 00:19:36:23

Lloyed Lobo

Then you can pick the channel, right? And the channel comes from where they like to engage. So if your audience is very active on WhatsApp, then why would you create a slacker? Because it's taking them somewhere else. That's how I look at it. But the home is very important. I think every community has a home and that home doesn't have to be a physical space.

00:19:36:23 - 00:19:54:11

Lloyed Lobo

It can be an online space. A home is home is key, right, for communities. I mean, like look at like church communities or, you know, Harley-Davidson, they don't have a home. But the whole meaning, the concept of a home is coming together to someplace to congregate and do something. So the Harley-Davidson community comes together on the weekend someplace, and they go on rides of the cross.

00:19:54:11 - 00:19:58:07

Lloyed Lobo

This community goes to the local gym. They call the box, and then they do the work out of the day.

00:19:58:08 - 00:20:11:22

Andrew Davies

You mentioned a couple of phrases that I want to dive in on before we get to the question, How do you build community? Because I can hear thousands of people listening saying, just tell me how Lloyd So we'll get to that in a minute. But you said community of practice and community of products, and I think you've also talked about community of play.

00:20:11:22 - 00:20:15:12

Andrew Davies

So could you quickly take a moment to define that, those definitions for us and how they differ?

00:20:15:12 - 00:20:33:02

Lloyed Lobo

Definitely. So once you think of building a community, right, there's three that you can build. One is a community, a practice which is bringing people together to learn about a specific skill or a craft like HubSpot, Inbound marketing community. I didn't even know HubSpot had software, by the way, in 2004 or five, everything I learned was from their community a practice when Gain site started.

00:20:33:02 - 00:20:48:02

Lloyed Lobo

I think Nick was just tooling these events around customer success. I don't even think they had software. We were all just learning on how to become better at that particular style or craft, and for me it was very valuable because I was a founder doing everything I needed to learn marketing and learn customer success, all of that stuff.

00:20:48:02 - 00:21:08:03

Lloyed Lobo

So that's a community of practice. Traction is a community of practice for innovators, helping them innovate faster, better. Now coming to a product is where people come to learn about your product, to build on your product, evangelize your product, like the notion community, like the Atlassian community in many senses, and a community a place where people come together to have fun like Harley-Davidson and Nike running club community play.

00:21:08:04 - 00:21:24:23

Lloyed Lobo

What I tell people is when you're starting out, if you don't have product market fit, if you don't barely have any customers, don't build a community of product because people will think they're being sold to boast, then barely had any customers. We had to build a community to get customers. And so if we built the most community talking about R&D funding, people are going to be like, What is this?

00:21:25:04 - 00:21:40:02

Lloyed Lobo

They're trying to sell us? Their sales is like a timeshare. It's not an event, it's a timeshare kind of thing. Oh, the only thing missing is they're not putting their contract at the end of the day, at the end of the event, you want that to happen. The other thing is, if you're not a product that's used very frequently, like there are some products which are awesome, right?

00:21:40:03 - 00:21:54:08

Lloyed Lobo

Like awesome in the sense you put it out there, it works in the background and it just delivers an outcome. People don't need to log in day in, day out. It just works. And so if people are not using a product, the product frequently, it's not complex, it's simple, then there's not much to talk about there too, right?

00:21:54:08 - 00:22:10:23

Lloyed Lobo

So think about the community you want to build based on the based on where you are as a company. Do I have customers or not? You can't just run sales pitches when you don't have product market fit because it'll it'll go south. So I think think deliberately there. The other thing I want to add actually before we go into how do you build a community is why should you build a community, right?

00:22:10:23 - 00:22:30:09

Lloyed Lobo

Because you know, you're in your CMO, you've done this all your life. You know, it's hard. Building a community is a labor of love. It's a marathon. The heart and mind and attribution, which is your name of the game, is very difficult. Right? And what happens with community is I face this because we went through the deal with the growth equity and it was very hard to explain how the community drove.

00:22:30:11 - 00:22:56:03

Lloyed Lobo

And then finally I put one chart that showed the number of events we did up into the right and the path to 10 million. And I'm like, I can't explain beyond this because somebody comes to an event and they have a good experience. They afford the recap link to a colleague. The colleague likes it, forwards it to another colleague saying, Oh, check this out, download this way, they download the white paper, Ping goes to SDR, SDR then goes and calls them and it gets attributed to the SDR.

00:22:56:06 - 00:23:18:06

Lloyed Lobo

We live in a multi-touch world, but multi-touch attribution is something that 99% of the companies I know can't do. Multi-touch attribution. So what happens is your community initiatives suffer, right? So I think it's really important to understand the values of the community. I was having a chat with Atlassian zero and Atlassian's case studies in the book. Their community came together to organize a 5000 events last year.

00:23:18:08 - 00:23:38:12

Lloyed Lobo

Self-organized, let's call it that. So what that tells me is they have 5000 superfans that went out and engaged on an average 100 people. So they touched 500,000 people last year. If Atlassian had to put two events team together to organize 5000 events, it would cost them an arm and a leg. And so, you know, I'll dive into what are the values that enable this to happen.

00:23:38:12 - 00:23:54:07

Lloyed Lobo

And it's important to ask yourself, are you cool with that? Great companies, great culture is great communities are built on alignment. If you don't have the values of community, it will be contrived and you won't sustain for the long haul. And you're better off doing direct response. Build an SDR team. Do PLG though. Do any number of things.

00:23:54:10 - 00:24:12:01

Lloyed Lobo

This community is all about giving. And so those values, as I talk to more and more and more companies, they had all kinds of values. But six values were common to community led businesses. I call it camper or the camera framework, and it's cheesy, but if you have a camper interacted in your company or implement in your company proactively, you'll have happy campers.

00:24:12:06 - 00:24:26:16

Lloyed Lobo

And so Kasi four says we're connection. People crave to be connected to one another. They draw energy from it. Autonomy. Again, when you look at the Atlassian example, if you say, Oh, don't stretch my logo this way, or you can't say this or that, volunteer is going to be like, Screw you. Like, I don't I don't care, right?

00:24:26:21 - 00:24:43:00

Lloyed Lobo

I'm not going to. Is this about mastery? People want to get better and better. And so Atlassian always gives love to their community members. The enable them. They give them tools, resources so they can self-organize. They don't make their life difficult, saying go and like die on this. Cross yourself. If you're super fans want to do something for you, enable them.

00:24:43:00 - 00:25:03:17

Lloyed Lobo

The other is purpose having a greater purpose beyond the profits. Fifth is energy. Great communities are built on great energy. I mean, you've probably been to events where you had a great camaraderie and connection and you have fun and then a speaker comes and the audience just like leaves. So energy is key in communities. And if you see some of the greatest movements of all times, those movements have massive energy.

00:25:03:17 - 00:25:25:12

Lloyed Lobo

And the last one is recognition. When you have a community led organization, you need to recognize people and appreciate them, no matter how big or small. When you proactively appreciate people, they feel. They feel like they're doing something of significance and they show up more and more. And until the day robots are buying from robots, it's going to be human to human connections and you can get away from that recognition.

00:25:25:12 - 00:25:30:01

Lloyed Lobo

And so this is this giving has to be has to be key. This camper. I'll stop that for a second.

00:25:30:02 - 00:25:43:23

Andrew Davies

You must have a framework for how you help other people build communities. Why don't you start off talking me through that question someone's come to you said, I've got, you know, the seed stage or maybe as a bootstrap business, got my first few customers, I believe, sealed. I've read the book. Loyd How do I go do it myself?

00:25:43:23 - 00:25:58:11

Lloyed Lobo

So I will give you the framework. Now I can talk in high level platitudes in terms of like, you know, the book has small communities and the book has big communities like the Atlassian and the Hubs was. The thing is, if I, if I share HubSpot journey or Atlassian's journey right now, it might be very hard to relate, especially to bootstrapped.

00:25:58:12 - 00:26:11:17

Lloyed Lobo

So I'm going to talk about both. Journey Okay. When I, when I started the conversation, I said, when you're starting out, it literally feels like you're throwing spaghetti on the wall. We had nothing figured out today. It feels like a framework which we we wrote down and I actually end up writing it down. It's just writing the book.

00:26:11:17 - 00:26:28:03

Lloyed Lobo

Thinking back to where we started most, we were in this obscure city in Calgary, like small city in Calgary, right? Calgary, Canada. I was in San Francisco. My co-founder was actually from Vancouver, but his wife was article in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and he had to move there. So we're like, okay, well, started the company. Our small market is good, it's easy, no competition.

00:26:28:03 - 00:26:44:15

Lloyed Lobo

We go there and the first step is like, Do what I knew cold calls. So I tried cold calling. Oil and gas companies, construction companies, manufacturing companies. People are like, Who are you guys? So I had two guys saying, Give me your R&D data and I'll get you money from the government. No dilution, no interest break. It's the best form of capital.

00:26:44:15 - 00:27:01:22

Lloyed Lobo

No, it sounds like a scam. And the ones that who knew about it said, Oh, I just do it with my big four accounting firm. So we start to get dejected. We're like, okay, let's start swarming the events of these companies, These people, right? These industries, manufacturing, oil and gas construction started going and we just couldn't resonate. It just felt like we weren't getting anywhere.

00:27:01:22 - 00:27:20:16

Lloyed Lobo

We looked like two guys who threw a suit jacket on top of a hoodie, and they were the old boys club. They just didn't want us there. So dejected. We started going into the startup community and started doing events. Now we're strangers in this community. We haven't spent any time. There were new. We don't know anyone. And the startup founders instantly became our friends.

00:27:20:16 - 00:27:37:09

Lloyed Lobo

They were so welcoming. It felt like a vibe. It felt like our tribe. Those people became our friends that we started hanging out with and having dinners with, partying with. On the weekends. We participated in a hackathon and we're like, Wow, we found our tribe. So I'm going to give you the first or maybe the second framework here that came out.

00:27:37:09 - 00:27:55:07

Lloyed Lobo

You don't have a customer or an ideal customer profile that you want to create for. How do you figure out who you should create for? Number one, is it a customer or a topic that you draw joy from? You're passionate about? Because you know, when passion meets profession, you can become Michael Jackson. If you hate your customers, you'll never sustain for the long haul.

00:27:55:07 - 00:28:12:04

Lloyed Lobo

The second thing is it a small but growing niche? Small. I like in the early days because you can find a white space around it and create for it. It's hard in a saturated market. Small but growing niche. In 2012, Startup Market was a small niche but growing. In fact, it was so small that a competitor to say, you guys are going to get bankrupt.

00:28:12:04 - 00:28:27:08

Lloyed Lobo

These startups never pay. And we we would tell them, Listen, your customers don't want to do business with us. You don't want to service startup founders like us. We're left to service our own. The third is a propensity to pay. Now, for us, it was it was easy in that we would only charge when we get them to money.

00:28:27:08 - 00:28:44:00

Lloyed Lobo

So there was no upfront cost. And the last one is of access is key. So you can have all the passion in the world and it could be a small but growing market that's going to explode and there's a propensity to pay. But if you can't access them, like manufacturing or oil and gas, you know, access for two guys out of a basement kind of thing, then you will fail.

00:28:44:00 - 00:29:02:04

Lloyed Lobo

Right? So it's important that you have that ease of access. So that's one number two was we talked about earlier understanding your customer. We literally we understood where they eat, breathe, drink and sleep. We spent so much time with them that we knew their biggest burning problems, their aspirations, their goals and what stood in the way. We just we just got it.

00:29:02:04 - 00:29:28:01

Lloyed Lobo

We could vibe with them now. Today it feels like a framework because back then we it was a necessity. The mother of all inventions. We were dejected, We went and we were embraced. And so they became our tribe. We learned from them. But today it's like, Oh, you know, this is something you should do very deliberately. And through that we were able to like, say, if I could write a book on the aspirations of this startup community, I could write all the headlines and topics and chapters and sub chapters.

00:29:28:01 - 00:29:47:18

Lloyed Lobo

Then it's about finding content. And then we said, you know, what is the issue here? Going to events? We found two things that were white spaces and so that's the key thing, identifying the white space. I'll tell you how we found the white space in going to all these events. What we realized is every conversation that was happening at these events were high level CEO platitudes.

00:29:47:18 - 00:30:06:17

Lloyed Lobo

You got founders in the room or 0 to 1. Listening to some founder in 2012 had like a 50 million revenue or a big Z. These big CEOs because big CEOs sell tickets right And the events were organized by event organizer. It's not helpful to me if I want to do run my business, I don't need inspiration. I already jumped in right down the deep end.

00:30:06:17 - 00:30:20:21

Lloyed Lobo

I've already quit my job, decided to do this. Inspiration is good once in a while, but I don't need that mental masturbation sort of thing. I need like how do I get my first customers? How do I launch my first product? How do I get my first angel investors? How do I do my first launch campaign? I don't know.

00:30:20:22 - 00:30:35:09

Lloyed Lobo

How do I do? SC I need like the things that I need to go from 0 to 1 and that wasn't happening. So we said white space, number one. White space number two was there was no media coverage for the startups in that community. None. Zero. And so I reached out to the local newspaper on, okay, there's no coverage.

00:30:35:09 - 00:30:53:14

Lloyed Lobo

I'm happy to write for free. Would you give me a call? And they're like, No, there's no coverage because, you know, it's not a priority for us. So starting what I did was started reaching out to other local blogs that were popular and asked them if I could cover some startups for them. And they were happy to because they all run by small outfits.

00:30:53:16 - 00:31:11:12

Lloyed Lobo

So they gave me a blog, I guess, posted a couple of them, and I featured a few entrepreneurs who were before starving for PR, so they socialized the hell out of it. It got like hundreds of retweets. I took that as social proof went back to the newspaper and I said, Can you give me a column? I mean, I check the coverage that check the reach this has gotten.

00:31:11:14 - 00:31:30:12

Lloyed Lobo

I'll bring the same reach to you like fine, we'll give you a blog this and I'll give you one blog posts. Now, I truly believe this. Never in most cases, as long as you're not doing anything illegal or criminal, don't ask for forgiveness. They don't ask for permission, beg for forgiveness. So I call that that first article Startup of the Week, I created this frenzy and apply, etc. with it.

00:31:30:12 - 00:31:47:09

Lloyed Lobo

And I got a lot of email addresses through that. And the first entrepreneur end up covering socialized ten X and everyone in the community thought the local newspaper is launching this column called Startup of the Week, which they words you know what startup of the week has a notion that you're of significance. You're a startup of the week by the newspaper.

00:31:47:09 - 00:32:05:05

Lloyed Lobo

It got so socialized, so widely socialized that the editor calls me and he's like, Listen, if you commit to writing this every week, I will make it a print column. And that was like the aha moment, right? Because everything when you're starting out follows this pattern of visibility, credibility and then profitability. How do you get credible when you just starting out?

00:32:05:05 - 00:32:26:19

Lloyed Lobo

You need to be visible with people of bigger influence, more influence than you. You need their brand up. And so now being in the local newspaper gave us three things we could have blogged on our website. The CEO would probably take two years. We got a weekly backlink from the highest domain authority in the country. It's a newspaper back linking to us for a specific I put our keyword anchor texted keyword.

00:32:26:19 - 00:32:42:10

Lloyed Lobo

Usually if you do it from spammy websites, Google doesn't like it, but if it's the anchor text, that keyword is coming from the highest domain authority website, like the newspaper, Then you get we got credibility as being columnists on the newspaper. We had a wolf on there saying apply if you want to be featured. So we started collecting email addresses.

00:32:42:10 - 00:33:03:02

Lloyed Lobo

And then the fourth thing was this weird dynamic started to happen every Monday at six or 7 a.m. entrepreneurs were storming the newsstand to get copies of the print and take photos and share it. Shared with family members, shared copies of family members pics on social. And I think even today there's so many blogs, but actually being in a print column of a newspaper is makes you makes it feel more legit.

00:33:03:03 - 00:33:21:09

Lloyed Lobo

Now we lose leverage those email addresses to host our own meet ups because was volume of emails were coming and we started hosting our meet ups and the messaging went something like, Hey Andrew, we're bringing Patrick to talk about how he got his first million in our hour and he's going to walk through this step by step on how we validated the market and the channels used exactly.

00:33:21:09 - 00:33:37:16

Lloyed Lobo

We got ten spots and free pediatric co-working space. We couldn't afford space, right? Pizza was like 999 for ten people back then. And so ten people showed up. Now, the key learnings area, as I said, was communication and creation and consistency. We just never stop. Ten people showed up. We kept doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it, kept writing Startup of the Week.

00:33:37:16 - 00:33:56:03

Lloyed Lobo

I wrote that column for free for two and a half years. When I stopped writing it, the column stopped and so our email database started growing. Our meetups started growing. And one day we did this meet up by the co-working space where 200 people showed up, 200 people showed up. We had to hijack the aisles, rent a makeshift like projector for $50, really cheap from down down the road, some electronics store or whatever.

00:33:56:03 - 00:34:10:22

Lloyed Lobo

And then the co-working space guys are like, Listen, this is not my you know, this is not a meet up. We can't do this here. You, like, disrupted the whole space. You know, you got to get out of here if you want to do these kinds of events that evolved into eventually becoming traction. Com and then became a conference and community and all of that.

00:34:10:23 - 00:34:34:19

Lloyed Lobo

So the key learning there was figure out your channel right once once you understand your customers figure out the whitespace and do two things and online channel to build an audience and either an online or an offering often to offline channel to simultaneously build that audience, to bring that audience together. So you building the audience through the startup of the week, people are reading, people are applying, and then you're bringing that audience together through in-person meetups.

00:34:34:19 - 00:35:05:13

Lloyed Lobo

Now I like meetups. Doing those meetups by 2020 took this to about 30,000 subscribers. So there's something to be said about the dynamic of meeting in person. Any time you incorporate more than two senses with sound insight. So Andrew, if we're doing this in person, we're probably hanging out a few more hours, right? You CMO, I don't know anything about marketing, but like I'm a student of marketing rather than an expert in marketing, so I like to we will probably jam for a few hours and we get to know each other personally, etc. So anytime you incorporate more senses, you build stronger bonds.

00:35:05:17 - 00:35:18:17

Lloyed Lobo

And so that dynamic was having the online offline thing. And so going consistent on a channel that creates your audience and then going consistent on a channel that brings your audience together. That one two combo made it explode.

00:35:18:18 - 00:35:35:00

Andrew Davies

As you're talking. I'm scanning some of the some of the topics in your book because for those I'm going to get is from grassroots to greatness. And there are 13 rules you talk about here to build iconic brands with community LED growth. And I know some of the things you've got here fit into it. There's a whole bunch of things here that go beyond what you're talking about here in much more specific.

00:35:35:00 - 00:35:49:22

Andrew Davies

So given that we've got a whole bunch of people on this call, you know, hopefully a whole bunch of them will go by the book and read it in more depth. How would you like summarize what you think are the most impactful learnings from what you've gathered together from these thousands of people you've spoken to? So now let's go beyond those those tips to start out.

00:35:49:23 - 00:35:52:23

Andrew Davies

What are the things that you really think are the takeaways from from from the reading?

00:35:52:23 - 00:36:19:14

Lloyed Lobo

I think one of the key things is figuring out and starting small, right? Once you understand your audience, once you've nailed your audience to every startup, I talk about communities in this book in the sense of building a startup, not like some broad little idea kind of thing, like, not like a club, right? It's about providing value, keep injecting new value, and then eventually you'll start to monetize either by subscribing, getting people to pay for it or people to buy your product, right?

00:36:19:18 - 00:36:32:00

Lloyed Lobo

So I think a lot of people what they want to do is try new flavors of the or the blog. Do I do a podcast, pick one, I want to build an audience. What's the one thing you're going to dominate? I want to build a community. What's the one thing you're going to dominate and just be consistent and go deep?

00:36:32:02 - 00:36:48:09

Lloyed Lobo

The other thing, you know, I want to share more tactics is people think they're just going to throw something out there and the platform will distribute it for them. That's not going to happen, right? You have to see it in the beginning. Honestly, if email then exist, I wouldn't be here. Many businesses wouldn't be here. What people don't realize is the value of email.

00:36:48:09 - 00:37:12:04

Lloyed Lobo

All 90% of our initial conversions came from email, inviting people, personalized emails, sending them. Now you're not saying buy my stuff, you're inviting them, personalize the thing. So you got to see it. If you have a blog post, you've got to see it. You got to share it with people so they share it. But once that initial buzz takes form, like even on LinkedIn, right, Like if within the first 30 minutes, 20 or 30 people go and engage on it, comment on it and you come in back on it.

00:37:12:09 - 00:37:24:19

Lloyed Lobo

If you seeded like that, it'll start exploding. That's literally how it is. That is the number one thing. A lot of people think, okay, I'm going to do these tactics and then I'm just going to throw it out there to an Eventbrite ring and I'll put a post on LinkedIn and like hundreds of people register. Never happens like that, right?

00:37:24:19 - 00:37:41:19

Lloyed Lobo

You got to you got to see it. That is one. The other thing, I'm flipping through the chapters in terms of what would be valuable is, you know, try not to be an inch wide in a sort of a mile wide and an inch deep in the early days, be an inch wide in a mile. So pick that one, one, one kind of customer, one kind of value, one kind of channel will take you really far.

00:37:41:21 - 00:38:02:01

Lloyed Lobo

Every startup goes through this journey. Every community goes is only phase one is validation. They have a problem, you have a potential solution. They put faith in you to give you a chance to try it out by paying you, by investing their time, money, whatever Phase two is product market fit, meaning now you've expanded beyond the I got ten unaffiliated people to pay me to try it out to more people.

00:38:02:01 - 00:38:20:06

Lloyed Lobo

I'm going to bring into the fold 50 people, 100 people. And now the goal of product market fit to me has always been retention. Do they keep coming back? The leading indicator of retention is engagement. Do they keep using it? Do they keep using it to the keeping? If you can sell whatever annual contract you want, if customers don't use it, they'll cancel.

00:38:20:09 - 00:38:36:05

Lloyed Lobo

Now, some people get by by selling like these $10 products, gym memberships that people don't notice on your credit card. But the minute they notice, they're going to be like, I never use it. I never got value. So it's like deliver value, make sure you drive engagement, and then they want churn. The third phase is figuring out a repeatable, scalable channel.

00:38:36:09 - 00:39:01:15

Lloyed Lobo

I call it like community channel fed or product channel fit, where you figure out one repeatable, scalable way to acquire people and right to bring people in at once. You're at that point you have one kind of customer getting one kind of value coming through, one kind of channel. Then you can focus on scale. And scale is all about spending 75% of your energy on throwing fuel on the fire and then 25% of your time trying new products, new markets, new technologies kind of thing.

00:39:01:20 - 00:39:21:20

Lloyed Lobo

You know, I've seen so many communities and, you know, I don't want to name names. They will all go unnamed. But recently there was a massive community that exploded during the pandemic on the scene. Now they had an initial early stage founder community going that was highly valuable, but in no time there is a lot of money and they created a community for every possible function in the company they created.

00:39:21:20 - 00:39:38:20

Lloyed Lobo

What happened in the last six months was when the unicorn porn buzz died and reality hit the fan. When people are like, You know what? We can't overspend. They had to lay off a lot of people and bring back their focus to the one or two things. And this key right when when you you can dilute it in the early days, you got to do things that don't scale.

00:39:38:20 - 00:39:52:16

Lloyed Lobo

Doing things that don't scale enable you to treat people with love and put focus on that and make it better and better. If something is not perfect, the worst thing you want to do is try and other things. I encourage people to think that way because a lot of folks, they say, okay, I want to create a community.

00:39:52:16 - 00:40:10:12

Lloyed Lobo

I'm going to go to you all full blown on YouTube and then I'm going to go on LinkedIn. I'm going to go everywhere and they spread themselves too thin. You got to understand if you want to do that, Technology enables us to do that, right? You we do this interview, we can cut it into YouTube, we can cut it into LinkedIn, the tech sector, LinkedIn, we can cut the shorts, you can distribute it everywhere.

00:40:10:12 - 00:40:32:08

Lloyed Lobo

But as a small team or a solo team, building an early community, distributing, everyone is fine because it's easy to cut with AI and technology. But you need to focus on one channel, right? Because you need to seed that channel. You can beg all your friends to go and be like, okay, Like my Instagram paused and then like my YouTube and comment and like my LinkedIn and show up here and sure, they're going to be like, Go to hell, right?

00:40:32:10 - 00:40:52:06

Lloyed Lobo

You need to seed something and focus something your love on in the beginning. So I think that focus is really key. The other thing what I like to talk about here is creating an exceptional experience, a great aha moment. A lot of people focus on retention and they say retention. Retention, yes, the retention is key. If you don't have retention, you are product market fit.

00:40:52:06 - 00:41:08:19

Lloyed Lobo

But what they don't do is they don't peel back the onion to figure out what is the leading indicator of retention. It's engagement. Now, what is the leading indicator of engagement? It is onboarding, right? So it's akin to saying, I invite you to my house, you show up and you are swimming through some garbage, you meet some random people.

00:41:08:19 - 00:41:24:10

Lloyed Lobo

I'm not there to greet you and you meet Randos and you're going to bounce versus I invite you to my house. I greet you at the door, I pour you a drink, I introduce you to three or four people who are like CMO's in your same category, you meet some influencers, like maybe you meet Gary Vee and you're like, Wow, I'm staying here.

00:41:24:10 - 00:41:43:10

Lloyed Lobo

I'm like, not leaving, right? And something like that then eventually turns into a Burning Man. And so that is very important is like, how what do your initial community experience is? Is it think of your community like a product? Basically, if you want people to stay, you want them to pay, you want them to keep coming back and then also invite their friends.

00:41:43:10 - 00:42:02:08

Lloyed Lobo

Think of your community like a product. Not this thing that sits in marketing. And I'll tell you one perfect example to encapsulate this Harley Davidson almost went bankrupt in the eighties. Okay. You know, we always talk about technology yesterday. Innovation is always tomorrow's commodity. In the eighties, you know, we talk about A.I. commodities and everything, but in the eighties, what happened?

00:42:02:08 - 00:42:26:08

Lloyed Lobo

The Japanese manufacturers were commoditized electronics. Harley faced almost near bankruptcy. Their leadership said, We're going to build a company on the ethos of community. The leadership went out there and deliberately seeded riding clubs. What do you think? The Riding club just came out of nowhere. They went and ceded it. Employees became writers. Writers became employees. They said, Community is going to be a company strategy with oversight from the president.

00:42:26:08 - 00:42:42:20

Lloyed Lobo

Not in a marketing strategy is another thing that people do is like, Oh, we need a community. Let's hire a marketing intern or a community manager and dump them in marketing. Come on. Like as a founder, if you don't go and spend time with customers with your audience, then this marketing person is not going to be able to carry your vision forward, right?

00:42:42:20 - 00:43:05:02

Lloyed Lobo

They're just they're starting here. Your vision sits here. You've got to evangelize it. And so over time, those rider clubs started coming together. It became rituals and they created movements and not only same Harley Davidson, but donated breast cancer and autism. And today there are very few brands that are iconic to the level of Harley where people tattoo the logo on their body or as a moniker promoting this book.

00:43:05:02 - 00:43:26:12

Lloyed Lobo

I've been literally going to conferences and events. I went to a big event yesterday and I wore the Harley boots and like, you know, tight pants and like a leather vest and people can associate. They're like, Dude, why do you why do you dress like a Harley person? Because it's chapter one in my book which says, if you build a community, right, I'm going to I'm going to be clear that if you build a community, you won't become a commodity.

00:43:26:12 - 00:43:46:08

Lloyed Lobo

So those are some key things that I would encourage you to to think through. Actually, one more thing, which is really, really key, and I have a very recent example to give on this as well, rewarding a champions we talked about earlier your culture should embody recognition, reward, rewarding your champions is really key. A lot of people, what they do is they'll do events and they'll be like, Oh, this is the volunteer crew.

00:43:46:08 - 00:44:04:10

Lloyed Lobo

And they sit outside like a bunch of glorified slaves, right? I hate to use that word, but like, it's like they're sitting somewhere on the side. Last year, attraction, what we did was we went to all our volunteers and we found the ones that really wanted to, you know, had the passion for speaking and all of that. And we gave everyone we broke our conference of courses.

00:44:04:11 - 00:44:23:18

Lloyed Lobo

Everything is like pre lounge, post lunch, etc.. So we gave every volunteer a chance to emcee. Startup Grind also does this right, and I never hogged the stage. I don't even moderate any sessions. I think last year was the first session I ever moderated on stage. We invite like folks from TechCrunch and other good speakers who are volunteers to moderate sessions.

00:44:23:18 - 00:44:47:17

Lloyed Lobo

Treat your volunteers with love and respect. What happens is every community has this dynamic of 1% Are superfans, right? They'll explore your word of mouth. The 9% are casual contributors and the 90% on lurkers. You want to elevate your superfans to community leaders. People are not just volunteering for love and fresh air. They have some innate desires. When they go to a community, they want brand recognition.

00:44:47:17 - 00:45:05:23

Lloyed Lobo

Maybe If they're outward facing, they want brand recognition. They want to build their businesses. They want some profile, they want some connections. Let them go and hang out with speakers backstage. As long as you know, there are some basic guidelines that, hey, don't like go and try to oversell them something. Or there are people who are not outward facing as much and they just want to learn, enable those opportunities for them.

00:45:05:23 - 00:45:27:08

Lloyed Lobo

Right. I'll give you a very good example because I didn't get a chance to write about in this book and I wish it had happened like few months before this came together. I would have totally written about it. But LinkedIn reached out to me and be like, what? Like your content? And I think they were recommended by my buddy Melissa Kwan told somebody idling friend at LinkedIn and they were looking for good creators and they were running this LinkedIn creator mentorship program.

00:45:27:13 - 00:45:47:23

Lloyed Lobo

Hey, we're we like your content. We're putting a small cohort of creators that we think are going to do well in the future to give them some coaching and some guidance on best practices. So they had like a four week program and they gave me so much love and I got to meet so many cool people from like tech and startups and other industries and I'm like, Wow, now, wow.

00:45:48:00 - 00:46:11:09

Lloyed Lobo

Like, this is the way to elevate somebody who's creating, like, you know, And see, I'm still a casual contributor on LinkedIn. I have I've kept my last post as a book, but before that I post like once, twice a week. They all do like foreign press likes, but nonetheless they appreciated that. They appreciated the content that featured a couple of them in their LinkedIn newsletter and they invited me right there and they invited me and now they're connecting me with people that giving me resources.

00:46:11:12 - 00:46:32:13

Lloyed Lobo

It's like camper framework in fire on fire, right? Recognition this immense energy in their right mastery. They want me to get better autonomy of course, because they're not saying post exactly like this, leverage this framework and post and will guide you the connection, the camaraderie they created and the greater purpose of changing lives through content. And so that was a great example.

00:46:32:13 - 00:46:44:18

Lloyed Lobo

I would have totally included it in the book. But, you know, I wanted to share that as Elevate your superfans. If you don't do it, you're missing out because your superfans will turn your casual contributors into into more superfans.

00:46:44:18 - 00:47:04:15

Andrew Davies

That's an awesome place to end. I love how you are not just a instigator and host of communities. You're also someone who has you. You are participant. And on LinkedIn, in the example they unleashed come from you. So it's a lovely way to close the loop. Lord, We had Carrot Top Toki for ages. We've got more than enough here to fill loads of loads of, well, more than one podcast.

00:47:04:15 - 00:47:17:05

Andrew Davies

We will wrap it all up into one. I really appreciate it. You make it so super easy. Anything else you want to make sure we land with? I've got all the links. I've got everything from your doc. I think we went through loads of stuff. There were that we'll write up as a field guide and link out to you and I'll make sure we promote it as well.

00:47:17:05 - 00:47:18:11

Andrew Davies

Anything more we can do will.

00:47:18:11 - 00:47:33:23

Lloyed Lobo

Have a accompanying Notion workbook with deeper, more academic templates and videos from some of the interviews I conducted. So it's all in one place and then then all the podcast interviews, I'll put it on the website late next week. This book was meant to be more stories. I had a learning disability, I guess I never read a book cover to cover.

00:47:34:03 - 00:47:49:07

Lloyed Lobo

It was all audio books, so I did write it in a way that was digestible to me. So it's a lot of stories. It'll be an easy read on academic read, and then the academic stuff will be on the Notion workbook, The book is $0.99 on from grassroots to great NASSCOM get the digital. I want it to be accessible for everyone.

00:47:49:07 - 00:48:07:06

Lloyed Lobo

I could have made it free. Then I have to distribute it. If it's $0.99, it's a verified purchase. The more reviews I get, Amazon starts distributing it for me. So thank you so much. I only leave you with this right. Brands of yesterday were built on what they told the world about themselves and brands of the future will be built on what the people with the community says about them.

00:48:07:06 - 00:48:30:15

Lloyed Lobo

On another call to people here like a lot and a lot of companies are chastising their employees from creating personal brands on LinkedIn. If you discourage your employees from creating their own audiences and their communities, eventually you'll be paying other people to do the same for you. The micro influencer categories and an absolute rise. If you build a community, you won't become a commodity.

00:48:30:17 - 00:48:46:08

Ben Hillman

Shout out to Lloyd for being on the show. Make sure to give Protect the Hustle a five star review and tell us what lesson from today's episode was your favorite. Thanks for listening. Subscribe to and tell your friends about Protect the Hustle, a podcast from Battle Studios dedicated to helping you build better SAS.