How to Enter New International Markets, Hiring Locally, and the Content Approval Trap

I'd rather have the marketer focus on fewer things and go really deep and write like the definitive guide to X for your industry. Really well researched. Pair that with sales, start doing outbound and doing outreach. I think that's the playbook to get momentum going.

Right, but that's the whole, that's the whole thing, right? To get momentum going. You don't have momentum in every country. You have it in the country where you have built your momentum. And that's the big difference between US and Euro. If you build momentum in US, it can go pretty far into the country, into the nation. But if you build momentum in the Netherlands, in Dutch content, there is going to be zero momentum. So if you want to start selling in Germany, you have to build it from scratch. And you and I both know that building up momentum from scratch is pretty tough. You have to, like, really do the work, really do the unscalable things. That gives you traction.

Max, good to see you, man. Where, where are you happy to be here?

I'm in Amsterdam.

You're in Amsterdam. I've seen you. I've seen you. First time we met was Austin, Correct. Then I sat next to you. I sat next to you at Golden Hour. We hung out again, and you told me I needed to have you on the podcast and I agreed.

Nice. Yeah, we've been hanging out for a little bit. You, you're. You're coming over to Amsterdam with your wife and kids, I believe. At some point.

I would love. I would. I want to. Let me tell you, we, we went there. I went there when there was a. I got asked to speak at a conference when I worked at Drift years ago and I wasn't going to go. And then David, who was the CEO, was like, you got to go, like if we have opportunity to speak internationally. And my daughter was like, maybe one. And my wife and daughter and I, we went and I spoke at Sastock in Dublin and then we went to Amsterdam and it was amazing. And I haven't gotten out of the. I haven't gotten out of the US much, but Amsterdam could be the best place I've ever gone.

I mean, it's close. It's like a six hour flight.

Yes. Yeah, we flew. We, We. It was perfect.

We.

We figured while we were over there, we went to both places, but for somebody who loves, I love being outside. I love the sunshine. I think as a, as a dumb American, I thought Amsterdam was coffee shops and red light district. And we got there and I was like, oh, my gosh, this place is Unbelievable. Everybody's on bikes. Like it was just instantly where like I could totally, yeah, I could totally get used to this, this way of life. It's a beautiful place. And so yes, I would love to find an excuse to come back. And I know I have a good tour guide if I ever make it that way again.

I mean, I just had friends over from New Jersey actually. He visited Amsterdam with his fiance and I provided a bunch of tips. I told him not to go to the red light district and all that stuff and to avoid sort of the city center, which I call the shitty center because it is just not so much fun. You have to go a little bit more deeper into the city. Have to go a little bit to the outskirts. And that's where the people from Amsterdam actually lived. And I, I told him also to rent a car and to go to the beaches because we have a really good beach sort of layout. And he, and he was really happy about it. It's only a 30 minute drive and you're there.

We also spent like we went. I, I don't remember exactly where the, where the neighborhood was, but I want to say there was like a museum and a, just a big, big open field and everybody, it reminded it honestly felt like New York or Boston, but.

It was Museum Square. It's called literally.

Yes.

Because there's all the museums there. Like you have the Rijksmuseum, you have the Vincent van Gogh museum. Nice. How are you doing?

I'm doing good, I'm doing good. I'm excited to talk to you. The thing we wanted to talk about is basically marketing outside of the US Which I've not done a good job talking about. I live in a bubble and I have gotten to know you a little bit. I think you have interesting opinions about B2B marketing. Strong opinions about them. And so I thought who better than to be my tour guide and, and, and lead me around here than use. But first do a quick introduction on yourself. Who are you? Tell us about your business. Tell me how you got into this world.

Yeah. Max. 31 years old, I live in Amsterdam. Spend about 10 years working in tech. Started my career actually in sales, which was amazing. I worked at this sort of car leasing companies for, for electric vehicles. So mainly sold Tesla leasing contracts. And I spent so much time selling these cars to CEOs. And that's also like how I found out about this whole B2B industry. Because I found out that most of these successful entrepreneurs, they don't run sort of fashion brands and like well known Companies, they run quite boring companies actually, but they earn really good money doing so. So that was actually quite interesting and that was sort of my, my first look into the world of B2B and from there on I, I moved to marketing to product, worked at a B2B SaaS company and then about four years ago during the COVID pandemic, I started unmuted and my Company is a B2B SaaS marketing agency. We work with Dutch tech companies. We're about 15 people now. So that's, that's what we do.

I have a question. What, what brings you to the US so often to go to these B2B SaaS relevant events? If your focus is only Dutch tech companies, is it to. I don't want to answer for you. Why do you, why do you do that other than it's fun and you get to hang out?

It's a lot of fun for sure. I mean the US is fun. I've learned at a young age or early in my career, I'd say that if you want to stand out with a small budget, you have to do things differently. You have to do things other people don't and you have to sort of figure out the new ways or figure out the new channels before others do and sort of embrace or understand the new content formats before others do. And typically in the Netherlands or in EU in general where pretty far behind on what's happening in the us so I've always been sort of inclined to follow American marketers, follow American SaaS companies, join American communities to sort of learn what's happening out there before it enters my world. So that gave me sort of a competitive edge which is why, yeah, I've always been quite interested or sort of keen to hang out with people from the US just to learn, be inspired.

Yeah, I love that. I feel like that's kind of what I thought you were going to say and why I asked the question. I do feel like an underrated thing of anybody that has been successful, grown their career in marketing. I think the marketers that I like to be around are the ones who are super curious and enjoy learning and like treating this like a, like a craft. I actually just before I saw a post from Kieran Flanagan and he said he posted this chart that was the timeline of a marketing timeline of a marketing career. As you get more senior, your knowledge of marketing gets worse. This is a very common scenario in marketing. If you're, if you're an aspiring marketing leader, I urge you not to follow this path. Always practice the Craft. And he has like a chart that shows, like, as marketing seniority goes this way, your knowledge goes down. And that was something that I've always struggled with because when I was manager at a big, At a company that was growing, it was like, you get pushed to manage people and become into people and process when, like, the things that got me here was being good at marketing, understanding copywriting, psychology, being obsessed with treating marketing as a craft. And I'm like, I don't want to let that go away. I don't. I want to be a manager who still does that. And I like to be surrounded by people who do that. And that's why I'm having so much Fun Building exit 5 now, is because, like, I get to run the business and grow the business, but I still get to, like, treat marketing like a craft for you. Everybody that I've talked to, they were like, oh, you have the perfect background to start an agency. Start an agency. But then like 90 of people that I said, don't start it. Don't start an agency. You're not going to have any fun. It seems like you're having a fun time. What's been your experience in starting and creating a marketing agency?

I was, I, I was, I was always saying I would never in my life start an agency because it's like the stupidest business model. It's not scalable.

Also, every agency, every agency owner that I have ever talked to also says that.

Yeah, right. So you're always like, I hate agency people and they don't have good quality and they're just expensive and like, what are they doing all the time? And there's only junior people out there and they don't understand my business and all these things. So. And I had this background, like working in SaaS, working in growth and scalability and all these things. And I was like, okay, an agency is none of that, so that's not going to be my thing. And I always had these sort of ideas for SaaS startups, but I was comfortable in my job and I was thinking, like, I don't have, I don't know, 100k or 200k in the bank to just not have an income and build this thing from scratch. So it never sort of happened starting a business, so to say. And then during COVID actually, I was sitting at home like most people, I had a job and I was bored. And I read all these people who said, like, this is sort of the time to pick up that side project, to start doing something that you can look back on two, three years from now where like, okay, I'm happy that I spent this time not on watching more Netflix, but on producing something. So I thought, why don't I. I was really intrigued with Notion to like, Notion was just coming up, I don't know, four years ago, like big time. And I wanted to do something with Notion at my company where I work, we use Asana. And I was like, okay, I'm going to write down everything I know about marketing in this notion, and that's going to be my side project. So I created all these chapters to write down down my thoughts about copywriting, advertising, frameworks, all these things. And then at some point I had this sort of bible of my marketing knowledge. And it was great, but I didn't really have any sort of purpose for it other than just creating it. But just the minute I finished it, I started getting people reach out to me, asking for help with marketing because their sales teams, they couldn't go to conferences anymore and they still wanted to grow. And they saw me post on LinkedIn about sort of this digital marketing stuff that was possible. And from, from that point on I was like, okay, wait a minute. These companies want me to sort of help them with marketing and with growth. Why don't I just do something that I know I can make some money, do it for three to five years, and then who knows, I can start my SaaS company. So that's a little bit how it started. And then it turned out to be very useful to have created that notion because when I started hiring people, they, they could just use that resource to do marketing the way I think it should be done. So that's a little bit the start.