The Power of Video Content in Growing Your Startup with Adam Robinson

The machine will tell you what good content is so that you can turn around and put ad dollars behind good content. If you can't make good content, you have no reach and you can't put content behind, or you can't put dollars behind content that the platforms wanna show. So the point is posting, learning this, finding this content market fit, it's going to be a very long process. but you should start today because once it clicks, the doors that it opens are, uh, it, it, it opens the door to this, this radically efficient go-to-market that can't happen any other way.

I wanna kind of start a little bit because a lot of our audience, you know, are early stage founders, some are investors and stuff, but like, I think it'll be really helpful for the audience to know, like, like, let's go all the way back to your early stage career. Where you were like in banking and now you're this like tech CEO with like a great track record, but like you were like Lehman Brothers, you were doing some trading stuff. So like, can we just talk a little bit about that and like how'd you get into that and how'd you make the jump into Spanish? Get out? Yeah.

So yeah, the story there is like I graduated from university in 2003 and in 2003, like this dot-com bubble had just bursted and then 9/11 happened, which actually like really hit our economy pretty bad. And in 2002, when I was trying to get a job, like the tech thing was like, not, it wasn't like it was today where like, you know, people are building startups in school and like, you can go out and like sort of talk to your parents' rich friends and like get money to do stuff like that. Just wasn't even, it would have been a crazy thing to ask somebody, you know, it's like, it's just such a different world. So that's what I want to frame that. And like. If you were an ambitious person at that time, then generally there were two. Well, okay. So if you went to Stanford, maybe you like worked at Google, which was like very, very young at the time. Very like, you know, I don't even think Facebook was around. So there's, there was like big tech, like Microsoft or something like that. I wasn't interested in that. And then there was investment banking and consulting. Right? So like investment banking was like, if you get a job at Goldman Sachs or Lehman or Bear Stearns or like Morgan Stanley, whatever, if you were ambitious, you kind of would do that because the story was it opened a lot of doors for you. And then the other route is like Bain or Boston Consulting Group or like McKinsey or whatever. That was kind of the other track. That's what I actually wanted to do because I wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I didn't get one of those jobs. So I happened to get a job at Lehman Brothers. And then I happened to do this job called credit default swap trading, which was actually what brought down the financial system. And then, you know, whatever. So it was an amazing thing to live through. Well, okay. So then relating to the tech, the wanting to be an entrepreneur thing, I show up in New York and my roommates are people who are actually doing this thing, you know, that I, that I like thought I wanted to do. So I got to New York and the first day I got there, these 2 guys were sitting in a room building a website on Dreamweaver and it was this baby blue homepage and the top said Vimeo. What?

That's crazy.

Yeah.

That's insane. Isn't that crazy?

So, so all the while that I'm doing this like, uh, Lehman Brothers credit default swap thing, like I'm watching these guys on that journey, uh, which was insane. So, um, it planted the seed and then, you know, the financial crisis happened. I had this incredible good fortune that people doing the job that I had actually made a ton of money and like I was in my 20s, so I was able to save what for a single person in their 20s was enough money to say kind of when the music stopped and it wasn't an interesting job anymore, which is what I perceived it. I was like, well, I'm just going to like quit and go try to start a tech company, having no idea what that meant. Right. So that was in like, 2012. So I stuck around a couple years after the crisis and then it was very boring and I had enough money to quit and I had a couple bad years in a row and I was like, I just don't want to do this anymore. So, you know, I, I viewed it kind of like I was single, you know, the, the, the, it was just, it's just really weird to describe what it's like to be in like this exponentially increasing environment and then years later get paid 10% of what you did 10 2 years before with no prospect of that improving.

Wow. Right.

It's just weird when the only reason you're there is to make money anyway. It just doesn't, for me, it didn't make sense anymore. You know? So I was like, I'm just going to like take this money that I saved and then act like it's an MBA. I'm spending on an MBA or something and I'm going to go try to go make something work. Right. So that was how it started. And then, you know, 5 years later, literally from the day that I quit was the first paycheck that I paid myself. And it was what the business that ended up working— I tried a bunch of stuff, invested a bunch of stuff that went to zero. The business that ended up working was this email newsletter app that we called Brobly. And it basically, you know, got to $3 million ARR. And because we were like kind of sweeping breadcrumbs off of this really large company's table called Constant Contact. And when you're kind of doing that, when you're kind of copying and just like, you know, whatever, picking off from an industry leader, you will only do so well. That is not what a startup is, right? But by the way, like, I don't think it's a bad idea to start there because in doing so, you learn a bunch of lessons that will help you in your future, right? Like suffering through a lack of product market fit. For 4 years was one of the most impactful things in my life because I will never do it again. It is, you know what I mean? Like, like I will, like we tried to start another company, not RB2B last year. It wasn't really a company. It was just like an extension of retention.com. I got 50 beta testers on it and I was like, this isn't good enough. Turned it off. And then RB2B was like the opposite, right? Like it was, so, so it's like with the experience. You kind of know with retention.com, which was a spinout of Robly. It started as a feature in Robly and we spun it out. Like that was the first time I was like, wow. Like now I understand what all of this reading about product market fit is that I've been doing.

So, so can we just dive deeper into that? I'm not, well, super offshoot, but like PMF is something we advocate heavily here. And it's like, I remember on Lenny's podcast, I heard Ben Reese talk about that. He's like, hey, if you have to ask, if you have to ask me about product market fit, then you, you already know the answer to that. I'm curious to know, because you've done this journey several times now, how would you define that product-market fit? And all, you've also been on the other side where you don't have product-market fit several times.

Yeah.

So how do you define that then?

Let me tell you in the ideation, the ideation stage, what I look for. So like the best possible signal is if people are willing to pay you for something that doesn't exist yet. And the way you can increase your odds of success in building software more than anything else, but no one's gonna do it cuz they don't have the discipline, is to go pre-sell even before you start building. And there's people that have done this and they are very successful. It's just not what most people do because it's a weird thing to say and you have to frame it strangely. It's like, by the way, like Here's what we are building, but like, you don't have to be building it, but you can say that, you know, and be like, we're going to charge X for it. And if you buy, but you know, if you sort of buy it today, then like, we'll give you a 90% discount for like a lifetime membership. Any signal with money is the strongest signal you could possibly get. So that's number one. And then the only other thing that like really early on, um, I really try to focus on is, you know, the proliferation of video calls has been really helpful for this. Like you can tell when, so like everyone's, in my experience, everyone's going to be nice to you, which is not helpful at all, right? They're gonna take, if they take your call, they're not gonna just tell you you're an idiot and what you're working on sucks, right? Like most people don't have, It would be much more kind if they would, but most people don't have the fortitude to, or they're just kinder people than that, right? They're nicer people than that. So I look at people's facial expressions. When you are communicating something to someone, if they are visibly excited in their face, that is another very good indication that it's an opportunity worth digging deeper into. And you know, right? Like in between these, you know, Robly and GetEmails, one of the things I did, two one-year experiments that were total fails, wasted a ton of money on both. One of them, we tried to build a new email marketing app that was like above MailChimp. And, you know, we spent a year building it and then we went to this trade show and we went to launch it with this big stunt and everybody that I talked to about it, their eyes just glazed over, you know, like, like, and it was after the first day, I was like devastated. I'm like, oh my God, I've spent so much time on this. I was sitting in bed with my, my wife. She was my girlfriend at the time. I was like, no one cares about this, but I could just tell, you know, and I was being honest with myself because, you know, whatever. But I had heard that the core technology for GetEmails, which is now retention.com, it was I can resolve an anonymous website visitor to an email address even if they don't fill out a form, right? Like I would say that to people after their eyes would glaze over and all of a sudden like the antennas went up. They're like, what did you say?

Yeah. Yeah.

You know, like, so, so by the way, like I didn't even know how to build that. It took 18 months from that day to figure out how to deliver that product. Someone just told me me that it was possible and wouldn't tell me how to do it. But like, just based on that one reaction, I was like, I have to figure out how to do that.

Yeah, it always comes down to that one conversation, which is like, boom, okay, I got it. And it'll take you— like, we're doing some internal stuff at F5. I've been doing some customer development for 12 months, and I'm like, man, I've spoken to like 100 people and not one are interested in what we're doing, you know, on the corporate side. Had one conversation with one M&A person and he's like, dude, like, completely look at this. And it was a complete flip and we're like, oh, okay, wow. And now that's led to multiple more conversations like, okay, wow, like, you don't even have to pitch that hard. So I really do like that definition. Okay, we kind of bounce around just so the audience knows, you know, you did your banking days, you went over, you did your first startup, I think you grew to about $2 million ARR, that then you went and did nowretention.com. Retention grew very significantly. Now you're at our B2B and you're doing some really interesting things there. So I guess while we have the audience here is like, one of the things that you harp on is bootstrapping. Why? Like, especially from a banking, like a guy who's used to deal with money, is there like a, like a specific reason? And like, you've done this very, like, very, very interestingly where you're, hey, I'm gonna bootstrap this to a million, 2 million, like 10 million. And like, that's a very unique point of view, I have to say, especially in the startup landscape. So like, maybe do you wanna like talk a little bit about that? Like, are you just like, you don't want other people's money, like you want full ownership? Yeah, because, yeah, I have another follow-up to that, but I'll let you answer this.

Yeah, so like, I think that, and by the way, like I had money to start this company. You need to like, get money from somewhere, you know, other bootstrappers have sort of like run agencies while they were starting a SaaS or like they've sold info products to fund, like you have to like pay for food and like your rent and like maybe a developer somewhere or something like that. So, uh, but I just think that bootstrapping, um, man, so no matter if it's institutional capital. The person that gave you that money, they do not have their interests aligned with you. They are in the portfolio game and you are 100% concentrated on the success of this. Venture capital especially, they're looking for low probability, outsized outcomes. I don't want to be an entrepreneur in that portfolio because I am most likely going to lose, right? Like that's just what it is. So, um, the, so like, that's one reason. The second reason is I actually think that bootstrapping makes you a much more disciplined operator than when you have money coming in. Um, I think it makes you have a much higher bar for product market fit, a much higher bar for what is acceptable, uh, CAC versus LTV. Um, it basically, you're forced.

To—

in the beginning, everything is going against you as a startup. In order to bootstrap, you are forced to focus on the absolute maximum that you can get out of your resources at any given moment. And then you take what comes back and you just like plow it back in. And then eventually you like get some momentum. And I'm trying to create a religion around making it to $10 million bootstrapped, because if you can, A, the lessons that you will have learned from doing that will just help you no matter what you do. Um, B, if you can get to $10 million bootstrapped, you're— the world is at your fingertips. You can turn around and sell that business that day for $40 or $50 million. You could, you know, go hire a CEO to run it. You could go work 100 hours a week and try to like, you know, grow it yourself. You could go do a unicorn, raise $50 million and like try to take over the world. Um, you could keep bootstrapping it super lean and pay yourself $5 million a year in a few years. Like it's just the promised land. So. So yeah, and like, I think that there's just an amazing freedom in controlling your own destiny and not having another voice at the table that again, you know, A, it's like they don't have your interests aligned and they don't understand the game you're playing unless they're actually an operator today. Most investors, are rich and what being rich does to the psychology of a human being in a capitalist society is it makes them think that they know everything. So they will think that they know more about your business than you do, which is not, it's crazy. They don't, it's crazy, right? Like nobody knows more about what I'm doing than me. So when you bring a voice like that into the table, the best case scenario is they just slow things down. The worst case scenario is even if they don't have a controlling interest in your company, they can just exert this like pain upon you, right? This influence and like, I don't know. So look, it's not for me. You know, people always say there's certain situations in which you really need institutional capital. I will concede that, like, you're not going to like send people to Mars without it. But I think one of the rebuttals that I often get that I don't necessarily agree with is, oh yeah, you know, we want to win this market. So like we raised $7 million. It's like, Yeah, eventually, you know what I mean? Like, I just don't— yeah, I just— so that's a bad reason. And then the worst reason, I think, is we're stuck at $1 million and we want to go raise to get unstuck. Raising to get unstuck is the worst thing that you can do because it's not going to get you unstuck. What's going to get you unstuck is your product and just being better and more different and more disruptive and like whatever, right? Like the, so, so yeah, the, but the world is set up to make you think that you, you need the money, you know?

Yeah, I get that. Like it's very like, hey, we gotta go raise a lot of ton of money and stuff. So that's why I really like what you advocate for on the bootstrapping side. I, because just you talked about it and I was gonna bring it up a little bit later, but I think it's a good segue is like, talked about product. I especially think in 2024, product has changed so much, but like maybe when you started 10 years ago. So maybe do you wanna talk a little bit about that evolution where it's like, like I'll give you my opinion about it and maybe you can give your like perspective. 'Cause I think product has changed significantly. It's gone from this like, hey, like you can have a decent product and go to market with it and all that. But now I think the appetite and the expectations for a user, especially in SaaS, is just so high. Like, if you're planning to go PLG, like, there's just so much stuff that you need to do. You can't just, like, launch with a 1 or 2 feature product, right? Uh, like, 1 or 2 feature meaning, like, there's so much that's, like, in the front end and back end obviously happening, but it's just, like, there's one core feature, um, and all that, right? Maybe to start off with, like, it's good, but, but, like, because I've seen a lot of founders, they're like, hey, you know, Salesforce doesn't have this and we're going to build a feature around, like, like real-time notifications or data cleansing or whatever, right? And they just, they hit a local maximum and then they die out, right? So, yeah, would love to get your perspective on product. You've been doing this for 10 years, you've done it across 3 different companies, you've done, you know, really good products, really bad products, as you alluded to, and like now you're building our B2B and like that seems to be like a sprint every day. Like, so just maybe what are your, what are your 2 cents on product development and How are you thinking about it, right? Especially within 2024, right?

Yeah. By the way, I'm not sure if I sent this to Jesse, but I tried to drop our B2B metrics public dashboard in the chat.

Yeah, I pinned it. What I'll do is I'll show it on stage now so everybody should see it.

Yeah, yeah. That's one of my favorite things. This guy, Nathan Barry, who was in the email space, he did this like 10 years ago and I just like looked at it so many times. And I was like, so inspired by it. And then I go back and try to figure out what he was doing that was working or whatever. And he wasn't creating enough content for me. So now what I'm hoping to do is give people this like wildly inspiring dashboard and then they can go back and actually see exactly what I was doing to make that happen. You know, I think it's like the perfect combination and it's, by the way, the reason that I'm like, doing all of this. It's because 5 years ago, before I started retention.com and I was stuck at 3 million, uh, for 4 years, I would have done anything to see any of this, right? Not, not to say that it's directly applicable because it's not. Like, what's working for me isn't going to work for anybody else, but understanding why I'm doing what I'm doing and like my approach can be very inspirational. You know, like you can take some of it and apply it to what you're doing, even though the whole picture you can't copy, right? So, um, product. So like when I started coming from being 8 or 9 years a trader, like I didn't know what product was like, we just kind of copied this other thing and like tried to take their customers, right? Like, which again, like I get why I did it. It seemed I didn't appreciate that you have to be better, you know, like, like I just, this idea that like different and better is like so deadly in the world. And like, it really, it honestly, it took me a few years to even realize that. It probably took me like 4 years to stop copying people, which is embarrassing, but that's just the reality, you know? And I know some, earlier stage founders that are kind of doing the same thing. It's like, oh, company X are killing it. So like, we just like did it and, you know, cut them in half or whatever. It's like, okay, like that'll work a little bit, you know, but like, that's not— you're not playing this game for the type of result that that's going to give you. Right. Uh, but it's like hard to appreciate that until you feel the world pulling something out of you that is actually different in a way that people care about and better. Right? And it doesn't even have to be like more, it just has to be different and better. And it can often be, I mean, it almost has to be in the beginning, right? Like if you're, so like, I just know a lot about the email marketing and marketing automation space because I was in it for so long and I know a ton about email. MailChimp had won the game and they had like tons of features. And then Klaviyo came along.

Yeah, I remember.

And they just made, they just made the best feature set for Shopify stores. And over that period of time, Shopify grew from like a $50 million valuation company to $300 billion valuation company, right? So what happened to Klaviyo? They went from nothing to like $10 billion, but like all they did was build for this like one very tight group of people. And in the beginning, they didn't have nearly as many features as Mailchimp did. They just had the ones that e-commerce companies cared about. So they're able to charge double, which is interesting. Like their pricing until a year before the IPO was literally what was published on Mailchimp times 2 at every price point.

You know what I mean?

Like, like it's just a really interesting thing. So, um, so yeah, but You know, I just can't say it enough, like, read as much as you can about product market fit. If you're listening to this call, you probably don't have it. Other incredible signs are once you get something that people are trying, if you take it away from them, if you like pretend that you have an outage or something and they complain a lot, that's a really good sign. If you turn your delivering of the service off and you don't hear from anyone, that's probably not a good sign. You know, another one is the last indicator. And this is like, this, this is like a product and marketing thing, I think equally, right? Like I have this view that look, product market fit is everything. What's another way to say product market fit? In my opinion, it's word of mouth. If you have strong word of mouth that is strong enough so that your company is growing organically on its own with very little help, right? It's like what you're doing is just speeding it up, but if you stopped, you know that it would keep going, right? If you have that, then everything that you do will work. If you don't have any, if you don't have any word of mouth, if you don't have like a tight audience in which people are telling them about this, then you'll be in the state that I was when I was stuck for 4 years with Robly, where I was just seeking as much information about what other people were doing that were growing, were doing. And then I would try what they were doing. Like, oh, you know, Facebook ads is like whatever. Then meet a Facebook ad agency. They're like, oh yeah, we run Facebook ads for Klaviyo and it works. It'll work for you. You're in the same space. And they're like, you run a Facebook ad and it doesn't work. It doesn't work because you don't have what it's like. Yeah, you're in the same space, but like, You don't have the product market fit that they do. Right? So, and that goes for literally everything. It's like, once you have the strong word of mouth, the problem you have is deciding which growth path will accelerate you the most because they will all work. And when you're just trying to will something forward, at least my experience was no matter what you try that I'm doing that is working, it's not gonna work. So then what do you do? I mean, you need to spend your time trying to improve this product or looking for other tangential problems that you can solve for this group of engaged people that you have, right? Like, which is what I was doing with the email thing, you know? Yeah.

Well, when you're trying to—

What can I do that— I kept telling myself, what can I do that Mailchimp isn't doing? And they weren't doing that, resolving an anonymous website visitor to a deliverable email. So I was like, wow, that's a great opportunity for me.

So you started with that, like, let's call it feature, and then you went deeper into it. But like, for me, like, we'll talk about our B2B, but like, it's like, okay, you have that, it's integrated with like Slack, it's integrated with Klaviyo, there's like so much more to it. So at what point does it become like feature parity then?

I think it depends on the space that you're in, you know? Yeah, like every business situation is so different that I think answering that question by saying something definitive would be a disservice to the audience. But I would just emphasize that your life is going to be so much better if— so like ideally you're in a situation where you've somehow resegmented a market where there's like a large group of incumbents who have already sort of proven the value of something like what you're doing. And there's something that they just won't do for a given set of reasons, right? Like that's the best situation because then, you know, you're kind of protected, you know? And like, if people are willing to give up features to come to your product and like the big guy won't do it because of whatever reason, right? Like for RB2B, it's data privacy. Like we, these big companies, the only reason they're not willing to do person-level website visitor identity is because who they sell to and who their investors are and the type of exits they're trying to, to have. They won't do gray area aggressive marketing tactics. It's just not a game they're in. But like, that's my brand story, right? I'm like, so long as this is compliant, I'm gonna sell it because it helps businesses. That's just not how these stuffy VC-backed companies who sell to enterprise think, right? So like, I'm relatively protected in that. And like, you know, okay, like little guys can come along and copy it, but like, good luck, you know? Like there's a lot of other reasons that, you know, it's working for me that it's not gonna work for them, you know?

Yeah, no, for sure. I do want to, so you did mention a little bit on the branding side and LinkedIn and stuff, so like maybe we'll segue into talking about how you built this, like what we call founder-led brand and everything. So I was telling you this backstage, like Adam Robinson was not in my feed like 12 months ago or less than 12 months ago, and now he's in it every day. So he's like really cracked, I don't wanna say cracked the LinkedIn algorithm and stuff, but like he's done a great job and like I think he's producing great content. That's the reason I'm engaging with, that's the reason he is on today's call. Like I'm like, hey, I think, you know, let's spread the gospel per se. But like, you know, can you just talk a little bit about the founder-led brand journey, founder, like the dos and don'ts? Because again, a lot of our audience are people starting out and you know, this is some stuff that they should be paying attention to is like, you know, I'm a B2B SaaS founder, I gotta be creating content and like it doesn't have to be like super crazy and stuff, but like I think that the cadence that you have is very, very interesting. So like do you just wanna go deeper into that? You kind of teased it in the backstage, but I think it'll be good to kind of reveal it to everyone on still in the audience today.

Yeah, so like I had, I'm not on social media in my personal life and in September of 2022 with retention.com, I was like, oh, this is gonna be unicorn. I was wrong about it, but I was like, what's the, the only problem I have right now is awareness. And I was like, what's the quickest way to spread awareness in 2022? I'd read Gerhardt's book called Founder Brand, which I would highly recommend to people. Um, and to me there was no question. It was like a person building up a personal social media profile. And then it was just a matter of like which platform to do that on. And we were selling into these big Shopify stores. They were all on Twitter, but Twitter's like a really competitive creator environment and LinkedIn is getting more competitive, but it's like, not like there's only like a couple percent of active users actually create content where that's very different on Twitter. So the idea was like post on LinkedIn, get 10 or 20,000 followers and try to go figure out Twitter. So that started. And it was like a, you know, for sort of someone who's very experienced at a craft, it's really hard. You could say this is maybe getting out of your comfort zone, but like, it's really hard to do something every day when you know you don't understand it. And that's where I was for 12 months, right? And like, I think that Uh, there's this idea of product market fit. There's also this idea of content market fit. And content market fit is so powerful because the value of creating great organic content is so much higher than the value of running paid ads that it's a superpower that you can unlock for yourself. And depending on the situation, it can be more or less value, relatively speaking. But like, there's no question in my mind that the reason that the Kardashians can sell lipstick and be billionaires is because they know how to create great organic social content that regardless of any commercial motivation they have, their people are desperate for it. You know? So like, um, You know, what do I mean when I say that? It's like TikTok changed everything with an interest-based algorithm. Now social media, instead of distributing content based upon who you're connected to, and like LinkedIn still does that to a large extent, but the thought leadership ad actually kind of makes it this other dynamic. The ultimate leveler is when Procter Gamble can have millions of followers, but some kid in their basement can create a TikTok video about something, and if the kid's video is better, 15 million people see it. And if Procter Gamble's video sucks, no one sees it, right? What's amazing about that is that the, the algorithm, the machine will tell you what good content is so that you can turn around and put ad dollars behind good content. If you can't make good content, you have no reach and you can't put content behind, or you can't put dollars behind content that the platforms want to show. So The point is posting, learning this, finding this content market fit. It's going to be a very long process, but you should start today because once it clicks, the doors that it opens are, uh, it, it, it opens the door to this, this radically efficient go-to-market that can't happen any other way. Right.

Out of curiosity, how long did it take you to get to that click moment?

12 months. 12 months. It was, yeah. And I think that was kind of fast actually. Like Russell Brunson, it was like 3 years or something. And he'd just sit there and talk, right? And he's like, look, start posting every day. You will get no engagement. You will get no deals. That's not the point. The point is you're building this muscle and you're finding your voice and the value of finding your voice over time is just so, so great in this world that we live in. Right? So let me just go back to like my kind of quick story of trajectory. So like I was focused on LinkedIn, then like 6 or 8 months in, we started trying to post on Twitter and it was, you know, so-so and After about 8 or 9 months, it was like, not re— so I was trying to write content for e-commerce stores, you know, cuz we were selling, we hadn't started our B2B yet. It was, it wasn't even really an idea. And it was doing a lot of cool stuff, meaning like, I was like, I'm not totally sure what this is doing, but it's like helping, right? Like it was the, the agencies all knew who we were and they recommend a lot of brands. It's like all the other tech vendors knew who we were, so like like, you know, when customers are talking to them, they like kind of knew who I was and like, you know, for recruiting, it really helped for partnerships. It really helped for sort of like influencers and affiliate, like really, really helped, but it just wasn't driving deals. So we got the idea that we might create a B2B product and Labor Day last year, I was like, I talked to a LinkedIn consultant. I was like, Alec, like we, I want to see if this, LinkedIn thing will work for B2B. He's like, dude, all of my other clients are B2B. And if you're selling into these salespeople and marketers and founders, you know, with what you're willing to share and how much you care about this, like I am positive it will absolutely crush. So I wrote this post, like a lot of people struggled. I'm not sure if people know, like 2023 was a really hard year for the traditional SDR/BDR function at SaaS companies for a lot of reasons. Spam filters got worse, automation picked up, and then everyone who was buying software was told to stop buying it. So like, you know, the amount of demos that got booked just like went down by 90% or something, right? So like, and it was unclear as it was happening, as the evolution was happening, whether it was here to stay or not. And so people had these like big BDR teams and it was like, you know, what do we do with them? So like, I wrote this post about how our VP sales quit. You know, we tried to scale up this BDR team. It didn't work at all. Our VP sales saw it coming. He quit. And then we, we shrunk our sales team from like 20 to 5 people. And it was, you know, before that I'd gotten like 50, 60 likes a post. This was like 3,300 likes.

I was like, Jesus.

Like, yeah. Like I didn't know about virality or whatever. I'm like, maybe that was just the one-off thing. And then, uh, you know, But I sort of thought I had tapped into something that was like interesting about social media. It's like I found something that was true among, and it was being talked about, 'cause I know, 'cause people were talking to me about it, but no one was willing to actually say it, you know? Right? So like, and then I went back and I wrote 3 more the next week and then it was like bang, bang, bang. Like they were all just huge posts. And after that I was like, okay, like, I know how to write these posts and now when I'm writing it, so, so what changed, right? Instead of writing for e-commerce stores, I was writing for founders and revenue leaders of SaaS companies, which I am, right? And therefore the problems that I was experiencing and the pain that I was going through was super resonant and just like went straight to the heart for these people. right? Like, um, all everybody had to fire people in 2023. Like everybody had to shrink their BDR teams in 2023. Right. I'm just the only idiot writing about it.

Right.

Like, you know, everybody like who, you know, grew parabolically, like all of a sudden they were contracting. Right. Good luck finding a single other post on LinkedIn that shows a SaaS company's metrics contracting.

Yeah.

Right. Cause that's like, that's like the death. That's a kiss of death. Right. But like, I'm willing to do that because I have no investors. Like, I know that's what, like, telling the real story is what people want, you know? Like, the hardest post I ever had to write was— I write a monthly post with our total revenue growth of the entire company for that month.

Yeah, I've seen that a few times.

I talk about the good stuff, the bad stuff, or whatever. Hardest post I've ever had to write in my life was April of 2023, down 4 months in a row. The 4th month was the hardest. We were down 2.3%. We'd shrunk almost 10% in 4 months. And I had to say, because it was true, I genuinely have no idea when this is going to stop. Right? Like, my chief of staff is like, why are you putting this shit out there? Like, our employees don't want to read this. Right? Like, I'm like, I'm like, look, like, I'm sorry. Like, A, I sort of disagree with you. I think they actually do. A, want to know what's going on and why, and that they're going to figure it out, that we're going to figure it out. And then B, they're not really the audience for this. And this is doing more for us than literally anything else that anyone is doing at our company. So like, I disagree, right? I'm like, I just have to keep writing it, right? And then like, lo and behold, you know, what is that? It was April, May, June, July, 3 months later, we're like, back through the highs. We started this whole other company that's blown the doors off. You know, the retention.com is not quite at the highs of retention.com, but like we've added $500K ARR, you know, and it's like people love to see that story, right? It's like the sort of, you know, hero.

I think what you're doing is very interesting. And, you know, I follow that guy Obaid as well. And like he talks a lot about building a media company. And I think what you're doing is very resonant of that. And like, it's very, interesting for you because you're the only one that I could think of that's doing it from B2B. Like, I could, like, when I was preparing for this interview, I looked up like, hey, like, what was Adam doing 12 months ago? Literally just scroll through your LinkedIn posts and like, oh crap, like this guy was doing this 12 months ago. And like you have that timeline, which is very public and very thing. It's like, guys, like this is me in the most transparent manner.

Yeah, so I wanna say one thing about that, by the way. So one thing that was frustrating about Nathan Barry is that you can dissect his metrics from the day he started ConvertKit and you can go into that dashboard and do it for RBB. B also. What's frustrating is he didn't consistently post about the work in public. So like, here's the thing about my work in public that I think is so valuable. Like 3 years from now, the fact that you can go read 5 posts per month about exactly what I was doing for go-to-market for RB2B, and then see what happened as you look at the metrics of our company, because you can go back and do it in Baremetrics. Like, that's an incredibly valuable body of work, you know, especially coming from someone who's already bootstrapped $22 million ARR. It's not as valuable for a first time. I mean, look, I still think first time founders who are just starting their company should build in public because it's just another reason for people to pay attention to you. And we're in an attention war and all of the things you're worried about are not valid. Startups don't kill startups. Your competitors are going to copy you anyway if you figure out something that works. It's just not a concern. Like you'll get so much more from the awareness than otherwise. But like the farther you get along and the more consistent you are at it, the more valuable it becomes. The value of it compounds, right? The status of, of you as an author increases the valuable, the value of every single word you put out as you go on gets higher.

So anyway, yeah, I know, I, I love the rants or like the monologues there because it's like, again, I've done a few of these interviews and like it's just very, very interesting. You bring a very unique perspective. I want to ask my final question, then I do want to go to audience Q&A because there's— by the way, we're at 142 people live, um, so this— so folks, there's a Q&A tab, just start throwing, um, questions in there. Um, but yeah, my last question for you, Adam, before we we do the transition is that like, I read your content, I've been in the B2B SaaS sales space for like 5 years or so, and I'm like, okay, like a lot of the stuff is resonating, there's an evolution and like how we've gone from cold calling to like multi-channel and a lot of this other stuff. And now you're advocating hard for inbound-led outbound, or, right? So like, maybe do you wanna talk a little bit about that on our B2B? But like where I really want you to, like my main question here is, like, what, where is the SDR of the future, like 2040, look like? Or 20, like, what does it all look like, right? Because I think with a lot of founders, they probably look at what you're doing, or even sales reps at SaaS companies would be like, man, like, this is a lot of work. Like, uh, and, and you publicly talk about like, hey, it does take a lot of time to, for you to put all this content together and put all these systems in place and stuff. So like, yeah, just to summarize, like maybe like what's that B2B vision or what does the future of B2B look like? Right?

Yeah. So it's a great question. I think there's like, I, one of my core theses and based on my personal experience of like what happened to us last year, um, I think there's like a mega trend happening. That's a big change in go-to-market. Uh, the way we got GetEmails, which is now retention.com off the ground is literally just by following Aaron Ross's Predictable Revenue Playbook. Except instead of having people in the US, we had a team in the Philippines and all they were doing was list building and cold emailing, you know, off our primary domain. It just worked for longer than I could believe it worked. There's a mega trend in response rates that is making that approach for startups, which used to be the way, in my opinion, that you did it right. Like it's just making it really hard to do. Um, so that it just raises the question then, how, right? Like, if not that, then what? So, um, I think before that was a thing, you generated awareness from activities that were more tightly associated with marketing, right? Like You know, maybe you were like in the field at a trade show. Like if you read an old book about start— this is the best book, I think, Four Steps to the Epiphany, right? Like if you're actually trying to like generate awareness, they say to do things like go to a trade show, like try to, try to like make a speech somehow to your target audience. Even if like, you know, it's like really old school stuff that like maybe you could figure out how to do a more modern version of today. But like, what that was doing was it was creating a signal of intent or interest for you to then follow up with somebody, right? For a while there, sending, you know, just sort of, uh, creating a list of ideal customers and then blasting emails to them. Was working for years, right? It was an arbitrage at the time. Now I don't believe that that's the case. So it's almost like, in my opinion, the only outreach that will work and is worth doing given the state of, you know, every inbox being ruined from people getting prospected by everybody and LinkedIn's like kind of the same thing is like, you know, Someone needs to show you that they care about this somehow. And if they do, they're worth following up with. So like, what do I mean? It's like if you ran a LinkedIn Live event and, you know, the title is like Outbound is Dead, you know, 5 strategies to like, you know, you know, reach out to people, you know, off of inbound or whatever, right? For me, Everybody who signed up for that event cares about that, right? Like in my, it's like you wouldn't say that you wanted to go to that event. So you put, you know, you like, you could make an event that has some provocative headline that is very related to what you're talking about. And then you, LinkedIn has the ability to like hone down on your ideal customer profile and then put ad spend behind promoting that event. And then you can see who has signed up for the event and then follow up with them. So like, that's what I'm talking about. It's like, that's like the new way of doing what this like old hard work was in the real world. By the way, you can like, it's so horrible, but I've just been here a few times. Like we would go to eTale and literally Diana and I's plan was like, we're gonna sit down at tables at lunch and talk to people about GetEmails. I think about how hard that is compared to what I'm doing with our B2B right now. It's so hard, but like, that's just how you have to do it in the beginning, right? Like, like in the beginning, it's so manual in the beginning. And then, you know, what is the future like? I'm 1000% confident that, and a reason why I think finding your voice on organic social is so important. Russell Brunson puts it this way. If you are in a position where people will pay you to give them advice, then you can sell literally anything to them. And that's kind of like the point, the reason you want to become a thought leader in what you're doing. Uh, it's a well-articulated explanation of what a thought leader is, right? So, um, you know, uh, uh, RB2B is an incredible product. It's very differentiated as a disruptive pricing model. That's all sort of. Got there because of my experience as an entrepreneur, and this is my third time. The real reason that it's working is because people like you found out about me through my content starting 9 months ago, and I've just been relentless in creating with it, creating it. And my, my ambition is so high, right? Like, now I'm getting so much back from it that, like, I think that it should be my full-time job, and I should be— I should be spending 80% of my time on it because I just think that's how people are going to buy in the future, right? It's like, it's like, it's like you create this tribe, you know, like I want to create a religion. This sounds crazy. This is not what most people who are in ideation phase can have the luxury of being even humoring this. But like, I want to make a religion around bootstrapping $10 million ARR because I think if people fend If they stayed away from venture capital until then, then they would be much happier and they would be much richer in the long run. So like, I think I'm in a position to do that because of like where I sit in the ecosystem of founders now, because of all of this content that I'd be creating and my track record and, you know, how my current company's doing. Like, clearly I've figured this thing out, right? So, you know, I can go about. Trying to spread this gospel, so to speak. And in doing so, people are sort of learning slowly about what I do, what I'm all about, and what our products do, right? Like, that to me is like the future vision of all of this. And like, we happen to make tools that as people are learning about you, it gives you their information to follow up with them. But there's other signal too, right? Like, you know, As cold outreach response goes down, you need to like do more kind of whatever you can do to sort of get people to go learn more about you and then that's who you should follow up with, right?

Yeah, no, that's super, super insightful. We're about 10 minutes in, sorry, 10 minutes left. I do wanna have some audience questions in here just to make sure they're there. So let me pull this up. Where is David's question? So David, David from Philly is asking, you know, at FYI, we always kind of emphasize like, hey, always go there, always be pitching, always be selling. And you really talked about this in the start, but he's like, hey, I feel awkward, like I don't wanna sell something with vaporware, right? So like, and you said this is the best product market fit indication, like get customer dollars in, and I 100% agree with you. I think Noah Kagan also talks a lot about this. So maybe like, you know, for the audience members who do feel like they're introverts and they're shy and stuff, like, what's your advice to them on this front?

Yeah, so that, that's a hard one. And I mean, all I can say is, is I've been there. There have been parts of my journey when I perceived the thing that I needed to do, but I really in my core was not allowing myself to do was like literally get on the phone and start cold calling people about this thing that I was trying, you know, more or less. Right. And like, um, all I can say is I hate that. Like, I hate cold emailing. Like, but like, as an entrepreneur, you, you, you kind of always are doing some type of selling. Right? It may not be the selling that you're thinking of, right? But like, the, the sad reality of it is there's no other way to get past vaporware other than to get people who you think you're solving this really painful problem for using your vaporware and telling you why it's vaporware. You have your guesses, they will have real answers that are actionable. So, um, I don't have a great answer other than, uh, you, you know, my buddy Andy Mooborn, he is also a big LinkedIn guy. I had him on our live event on Tuesday and he's very much still in like a pre-product market fit kind of pre-revenue stage. He is cold emailing people, subject line feedback saying, you know, I built outreach.com, now I'm building like a competitor to Seismic and like whatever, like, you know, could I get your honest, you know, could I get your brutally honest opinion about like what I'm working on? P.S. I'll give you a $100 gift card. Like that's what he's doing and he's just like kind of sending, he's using RB2B and he's got a big newsletter and he's like driving traffic a lot of different ways and you know, sending cold email out too. But like, you know, that should feel a little bit better just asking for feedback than like literally trying to be like, you know, there, there's, there's stages, right? Like probably if you have vaporware, no one will be willing to pay you for your thing. You need to start getting feedback from somewhere. So maybe asking for feedback is like a little easier. And then as you get farther along, like be like, yo, would you pay $50 for this $500 lifetime or whatever. So yeah.

No, I definitely agree with the feedback. I know we're just hitting on time in 2 minutes, so I'll give this last question because I think it's be a fun question. Saber from Quebec, Canada is asking, could you talk about a turning point or key decision that significantly impacted your business's growth? And we talked a bit about this, but maybe talking about that, the specific decision to go from retention to RB2B and you kind of like, Touched upon it a bit, but maybe like, let's go a bit deeper. Like, was there something very, very specific that like, hey guys, let's do this?

Yeah. So like two things with RB2B. Number one is like, uh, my content started resonating so unbelievably well when I started writing to this B2B audience. The state of the product at the time was actually very underwhelming. We had a beta-tested product that we had like maybe 25 people on that was just a pixel they put on their site and it was sending them a spreadsheet of leads every day and that was it. And people were like, meh, but the content was so strong that I was like, even if this product isn't lightning in a bottle with this distribution, like it's worth pursuing basically, you know? And then there was this real magic moment when we built the Slack integration and I could show people like on my phone, this like, LinkedIn link and a headshot. And I'm like, this person's on my website right now.

Yeah. Yeah.

It was, it was like this, it was so different than the spreadsheet. It was like, wow. And then, um, you know, we sort of came to the conclusion that, uh, the original plan was to have a sales-led model, $30K to $50K ACV, go from in-market and like experience like a revenue growth that way. But then there was this, it was like, I was, there was so much benefit of scale of the content that if we had a free offer, it would also have this benefit of scale of just everyone using it and it being everywhere. So I think that was like another big decision. It's like going freemium like Mailchimp, but I'm so obsessed with Mailchimp because like they're so incredible. And then, and then the last thing I'll say about RB2B was like the decision. I don't know if anyone on this call knows this, but like if you follow me on LinkedIn, you might. I got a cease and desist from this company called Sixth Sense, who's the industry leader. And the decision instead of what they were demanding that I do, which was to say sorry, I instead took the cease and desist, posted it on LinkedIn, and then rewrote the shitpost that they cease and desisted me for. That literally put us on a trajectory that we've never looked back from.

Yeah, I had a couple questions.

I would be careful with stuff like that, but like that was, that was the turning point for this thing. I mean, wow.

Yeah, very, very innovative stuff. I wish we had you for another hour and so, but I want to be respectful of the time, folks. This has been awesome. We have 137 people here live. We're gonna wrap up here. Adam, thank you so much. Everyone follow him, it'll be life-changing hopefully. Uh, but you know, thank you for so much for your time. We'll wrap up, um, we'll open it up for networking. But Adam, any last piece of nuggets you want to drop before you head out?

No, just, you know, check out rb2b.com if you haven't already. It's US only in terms of the traffic that we can resolve on your site. And then follow me on LinkedIn, you know, hit me up if you want to email, it's adam@retention.com. I'll try to respond. I get a lot of inbound, but I'm pretty good at responding to emails. So thank you everybody for listening. I hope it was valuable. 100%.

All right. Thanks everyone. We'll wrap up now. We'll open up for networking. Um, and yeah, you'll get the recording within 48 hours. All right, thanks everyone. Later.