How To Leverage Community In Bootstrapping Your Startup (feat. Lloyed Lobo)

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Hello everybody. Welcome to the Building Public Podcast.

I'm your host, KP, and today I am stoked to have Lloyd Lobo joining us from Dubai. Welcome to the show, Lloyd.

Thanks for hosting me from Dubai very recently.

We were just chatting about the Dubai tech scene and, you know, he was sharing some of his observations. Actually, maybe that's a good segue. What do you— having been in SF, having been in a couple mega hubs and also in Vancouver, now you're a, you know, Dubai resident, or at least, you know, you're going to be in Dubai for a little while.

What's your take on the Dubai tech scene?

Dubai is a great tech scene. But, you know, what they say, right, is if you want to Make movies, go to Hollywood. If you want to be in startups, go to Silicon Valley. There's still that Silicon Valley San Francisco vibe, and I moved to San Francisco maybe in 2011. So yeah, 2011, and it's been great. Was there 12 years, and it was a good experience for us. We still have our home there, and summers are going to be spent there. But I you know sometimes you want a change of environment and happenstance. I was born in Kuwait. My wife was born in Kuwait. We were refugees of the Gulf War. We have a lot of friends here. We've been coming to Dubai a lot. And we spent a month last year in Dubai in April, and we loved it. I think, you know, the thing about Dubai is it's a land of convenience, right? Everything from your doctor to your gasoline comes home, and it's affordable in the sense like it's— that service is available to all. And the whole concept of, you know, commuting an hour or 2 back and forth or like doing chores is not a thing. Everything is literally done for you. And so when you, when you have that happen, you get an extra 3, 4 hours a day. And if you had an extra 3, 4 hours a day, what could you do with your time? You would work out, you would socialize more, you would travel more, that sort of thing. Sundays are not spent doing chores for the rest of the week. Sundays are Sundays. You enjoy it through and through. And I see people socialize here every day of the week. It's a very community vibe, which is my jam. Like, my whole DNA is about community. I mean, my parents grew up in the slums of Mumbai. Yeah. And I was a refugee of the Gulf War. And when we bootstrapped the company to $10 million ARR, it was all community. And so for me, this is— I crave connection and bringing people together. So it's a good vibe. From a tech scene, it's a nascent but growing tech scene, of course, right? Good quality people. And what I'm seeing is a lot of people who are not from here, like entrepreneurs from Europe and other parts of the world moving here. So I think from a MENA perspective, Middle East, North Africa, Dubai is becoming the hub or has the potential to be like a Singapore. Mm-hmm. The thing is that the lifestyle is very good here, right? So like if you're a founder and then you also have kids, for example, You know you got to pick and drop the kids. You know you got to do everything for them. Then you know you got to do chores, and you got to make meals, and Sundays grocery shopping, and all of this stuff, right? You have just enough energy left after your business and looking after the family to maybe have one nice dinner a week. When you're in Dubai, though, think about it. Like, help and services are designed into the lifestyle here. So you can really focus on your business, and then the rest of the time socialize, right? Right. And so that's what I love it. All my life I chased success looking for happiness. When success came, I finally realized that, you know, success is nothing but freedom. If you get money and you're still stuck in the rut, it's no good unless you use the money to buy freedom. And for me, Dubai gives you a lot of free time in your day.

Yeah. You know, one theme you touched on earlier, which is the phrase community-led, you know, being part of community-centric, I think I've seen, you know, I was, as I was going through your bio and background, I feel like that was sort of like the overarching theme in the last 15 years of your career. So my question, I guess, going back to the early days of when you first had an epiphany around community, you know, when was the first time you really realized the power of community? Number one. Number two is, when did you think that you could be a community builder of some sorts?

You know, the first time I experienced the power of community is as a very young kid. My mom grew up in the slums of Mumbai. Okay. And she had 9 other siblings and they lived in this— I don't even know how to frame it, like what the word is, but this thing which is like really small, 4 walls, maybe made out of very rough concrete with like aluminum roofing. And every summer— I was born in Kuwait, so every summer we'd go visit the grandparents. And I loved hanging out there because it was like slum. You know, like if you watch Slumdog Millionaire, you see like slum, slum, slum, slum, slum, right?

Right.

And it was a community, people helping each other, people playing together. Like we would like, man, I would go and, you know, monsoon time, right? In India, in the summers, play in the gutter. Like, you know, the rain would create this overflooding and create these artificial pools and jump and come out dirty puddles like this. Those puddles would turn into like actually ponds, right? And then Everywhere in that slum area, there is a few things. There is like what they call a tabila, which is like a cowshed, right? Where cows, like, you know, there's cattle there and you go and pull fresh milk. So I'd go with my grandparents or my uncles and aunts who were very young at the time and bring the milk. One day I brought the freaking calf home and the guy let me bring it home because I was crying and I tied it to a small pole in their house, which was so small. So every summer I'd go visit. It was a community. I'd make friends. We'd hang out. We'd run around. We'd watch TV together. Because usually what happens is so poor, maybe 1 or 2 houses had a TV. Yeah.

So then everybody would huddle around it. Yeah.

So watching TV was a community thing in the evenings when they'd play, like a movie would come on or cable or whatever. So it was a community thing. And people who couldn't watch from the house would watch from outside, you know, the windows, the railings. Yes. It was such a community thing, playing games, eating, sharing food with each other. They had almost nothing, but they would share so much. And every time I would visit India in the summer, it was the best time I'd had in my life. Imagine being in the slum, right? And I'd ask my grandparents that, why do you have random people in your house? And they would always say— and my mom and my dad would always say, like, the only way to create abundance in your life is to help others without expecting anything in return. The people you help will never do anything for you, but the karma— will come back in ways you can't even imagine. And today, if you see all of those 10 siblings, them and their kids are all well off. They're not in that slum, obviously. But people have moved on to different cities and buildings. And maybe that same community vibe isn't there, the love, you know? Yeah. And so that was my first experience with community, like playing these games as a kid with people, being in and out of people's houses without any hesitation, everyone helping each other, coming together, celebrating Christmas. Eid and Diwali together, all the festivals. It was a blast, right? And then what happened was I was, I think, 8 or 9 years old. And I had this disgusting habit of procrastinating and studying last minute for an exam. So I study for a math exam. I end up going to the exam, and it was geography. So I knew I was going to fail. I'm like, geez, I'm going to fail this 4th or 5th grade. And I was stressed out all summer. And one day, my mom wakes me up, and she's like, I don't think you can go to school. We need to leave the country. I'm like, what happened? And she's like, a war has broken out. And my first reaction was like, yes, you're never going to find out I failed. But then when I looked around their faces, I'm like, man, there's some chaos happening here. Hmm. So that day I went down the building. And what had happened when the war hit in Kuwait is the security had lapsed, right? And it was chaos. I mean, Saddam and his army had taken over. And I went down the building with my dad and he saw other concerned faces. And that is what a community is, right? Like somebody has a problem or an aspiration, they put their hands up, others have also put their hands up and they do something about it. They come together and do something about it. And I saw in that building, just when there's no cell phones, there's no internet, them coordinating like, okay, I'm going to guard the building from this time to this time, and then you come down at this time. And people will keep their word. No one's coming late. No one needs calendar reminders in the world where we need text messages. People are there because they need— safety was at stake. And then somebody is like, hey, I'll organize food supplies. And somebody would organize You know, other toiletries or whatever that was needed, and every building became a sub-community. The word of mouth spread from building to building to building. It became a grassroots movement that coordinated with embassies and countries and evacuated people to safety. They made a movie on this called Airlift, right? Yeah. It was probably one of the largest grassroots evacuation movements.

Yeah. I feel like I've seen this movie. This was five or six years ago, right? Was it Akshay Kumar or something? Right?

Yeah, it was Bollywood movie. Yeah. So yeah, it was. It was a brilliant movie.

I actually didn't know much about Kuwait's story except for that movie.

They captured it well, minus some of the refugee camps and all. It was really deep. But as I was going from Kuwait to Baghdad to Jordan in that bus, refugee bus, on the Highway of Death where buses were bombed, and I looked around the faces of the people in the bus, my uncles, my aunts, relatives, friends, parents, They should have been stressed, right? Like, the currency is invalid. They don't know if they're going to live or die. But they were singing, man. They were playing the guitar. They were laughing. They were keeping everyone entertained. And I realized it's neither the destination nor the journey. It's the companions that matter the most. You could be on a crappy journey on the way to hell, but great companions will make it memorable. I mean, you could be having caviar with people who are toxic and just not want to be there. And you could be in a slum and having the time of your life. And so that was my experience with community is it doesn't have to happen with a bang. Sometimes a hug is just enough, right? And then years later—

This is so profound. I feel like you had such profound and very deep experiences even for a young kid. I'm wondering when it came to like business, right? When you come with this lens into a business, which you started, Right. Boost.ai. Was that your first big thing you did? That's just for this example's sake.

Yeah, for this example's sake, Boost.ai was the first thing that did well. I've only worked at startups. Yeah,

because what I'm wondering is, did this ever mirror back at you where somebody like, let's say, Jason Lemke, you mentioned Jason, or somebody like that, one of your early mentors said, you are different. You are different and unique from this lens, from this point of view, because you have that profound appreciation for companionship.

You know, nobody has like said it in those words, but those people resonate with me, right? Like Jason gave us free boots at Saastr in the early days. He really— wow. He wrote the foreword on my book recently. He, you know, invited me to join the board of one of his companies. But that relationship started as a community, right? Like I invited him to speak at a conference. He came. He was impressed that Man, with short notice, how did I pull together like the CEO of Twilio and Parker Conrad, Zenefits CEO, and Eventbrite CEO, and Slack CMO, and all these greats? And I gave Jason Lemkin— I knew he was a great interviewer. I asked him to interview Ryan Smith of Qualtrics, which was acquired for like $8 billion. So he's like, how did you pull this together? Where is the team? And I'm like, there is no team here. Like, it was cold emailing. Wow. And cold calling, and we built a relationship. And then I offered—I knew—I knew he was doing Saster, and I had immense respect for him and the content he puts out. And I think last minute he was hosting an event side. There was a side event, like a party for marketers and salespeople, and the person organizing it had backed out. And I said, "I'll take it on." And last minute notice, there were like I think 800 or 900 people who showed up to that party, and I just managed it and found the right sponsors and everything. And so we struck up a relationship, right? Is like you know one of my hacks in life is to reach out. to people that I really respect and want to learn from and offer to do free work for them. And now the thing is this, when you offer to do free work for somebody, if they're training you, then it's not worth their time, right? Like in the sense you have more to gain from the relationship than they do.

Yeah, it still costs them their time, which is valuable.

Yeah, so do free work.

I think Hormozi was saying this in a reel recently, on Shorts, I think. He was saying like, first of all, I was stunned that you said the exact same words that he said. Which is just reach out to the person that you admire and offer to work for free. However, like it may be free from a money point of view, but it still costs them some time. So it has to be like frictionless as well for them.

Exactly. So that's the thing, right? It has to be frictionless for them. It has to be where you don't— they don't have to train you, right? In the sense that I offered, like if I make it risk-free for you, what is— what are your odds? Right? Like, so I'm like, hey, you're doing a party. I don't need anything. Like, I'll sort it. Just slap your name all in and like run it. 800 people flowed through. It was a great experience and boom, right? Or like offer to help.

But you still need to train me.

Is not help, right? Like, I'm going to run with it. I'm going to do this for you and I'm going to run with it because I've researched it. And that's everything. The other key learning for me is if you want to Build a network. If you want to meet all the cool people, be the kid who throws the cool parties. Don't be a guest at somebody's party, but host the party. Be the kid that hosts the cool parties, and then you'll meet all the cool kids. And that is a community builder. So we connected. And generally, I connect really well with people who are community-oriented, people-oriented, who think people over profits. I genuinely believe, right? And it sounds cheesy, but this is the reality of the situation, is people build companies, not the other way around. And your job is to build, inspire, and motivate people. Deliver is the lagging indicator in that equation. If you treat people with love and help them grow, they'll treat your business with love and your business will grow. And so for me, those 2 experiences were formative. Then when we— I'd only worked at startups through my journey, they all failed. And then been a part of founding teams of 2, they also failed. And those startups were mostly venture-backed. for the most. And so when we did Boast, it's not like we decided to do venture or bootstrap or whatever. We had no choice. Like, I don't think even if we wanted to raise money, anyone would fund a business like that. It was too niche, right? And, you know, my co-founder Alex, he is very set in a certain way of thinking, which is, you know, manage your destiny. Do not build somebody else's version of success. Hmm. Like, you know, control your destiny kind of thing. when you invite more and more people, basically you're bringing on more partners. You got to be sure, right, that those are the people you want to go on your journey with. And that was a smart thing. So when you bring on more partners, like when you bring on investors, they're more partners, like going into a marriage, right? So you better be sure that you want to go on the journey. And if you're not sure, then the best partners you can have is your customers because they'll pay you, but they'll not like, you know, it won't create other reporting things that'll bring you down. And so So it's a good and a bad thing, right? You can take investors if you're building a company that's investable. Most of the times you're not sure. What's happened though in the last little while is the media has perpetuated this addiction to unicorn porn. In reality, the world is run by horses, camels, and donkeys. And what does that mean is capital, like more— like I think it was Dave Packard said, more die of indigestion than starvation, right? Yeah. It's like if you ever watch Fast and the Furious, they switch on the nitrous oxide when they want really hit the last quarter mile, right? Taking funding to start with is like an addiction. It's like, basically, why? Why can't you build a company capital efficiently? In 2023, unless it's deep, deep tech and you really need money to get off the ground, if you're a first-time founder, my advice is figure out an underserved niche, learn everything about them, talk to 50, 100 of them. If you can't talk to 50, 100 of them, you have no business— Right. —going and raising money to build a startup for them. Go talk to 50, 100 of them, figure out a problem they have, offer to solve that problem as a consultant manually. By offering to solve it manually, you'll do 3 things. One is you'll get good at sales. You'll hone in your messaging because you understand the problem. 2, you'll get good at customer success because now you got to deliver the outcome. You cannot hide behind buttons and widgets. No outcome, no customer. And 3, you'll understand the exact workflow to deliver the service. Now that you understand the workflow, then you can use no-code, low-code tools to digitize that, right? And in that process, in parallel, build a community. And that's kind of what we did at Boast is— I don't know, we were automating research and development tax credits. Globally, there's hundreds of billions of dollars in tax credits to fund businesses who are doing product development. Hmm. It's a cumbersome application process. It's prone to frustrating audits, and getting the money takes a long time. My co-founder Alex did this for large consulting firms and Big 4 accounting firms, and he knew the pain associated with it. And we had been best friends since college. We worked on every project together. So when he asked me to join him, I jumped at the opportunity. When we started cold calling people, nobody would talk to us because imagine you're saying you're 2 guys out of nowhere saying you're going to get me this government money if I give you my product development data. Shady, right? Shady. Especially when big 4 accounting firms— so we kept doing the cold call path. And then we realized, let's hone in the ICP some more. We started going to every tech event. The journey is always this— visibility, credibility, and then profitability, right? You be visible. Start going to every tech event. This was a time where LinkedIn, as a social network, wasn't that prominent. Podcasts weren't really a thing. And all the conferences and events would talk about like 50,000-foot stuff. So we started going to events and swarming it, like events, like even like Startup Weekend. We went and created a startup at Startup Weekend just to get involved in it, to understand the ICP. And we realized, why do people want R&D credits? To fund their business, the R&D. Right. Why do they want to fund the R&D? To accelerate the R&D. Why do they want to accelerate the R&D? To drive ultimate impact for the customer. So we changed the mindset from thinking automating R&D credits to like, what is the purpose? Why do we exist? And this is, this is how great companies and communities are built or should be built is alignment on values. What is the purpose? Is enable innovators to change the world. Why? Because every dollar spent in innovation returns 20 to the economy. Vaccines, robots, clean drinking water is a function of innovation. Yet in the last 15 years, more than 50% of the Fortune 500 companies have evaporated and 90% of the innovations die on the vine. So our vision became to enable these people to accelerate innovation so they can change the world. Right. How do we do it? What is the mission? Is to give them the funding, the innovation funding, and the know-how to do it. And then our values became connection, purpose, right? Recognition, those kinds of things. Transparency.

And who was the first sort of ICP that was resonating with this when you made the shift?

It was the— when we shifted, it was just all tech founders. It was people like us. It was— we were the ICP. And so we were the ICP, so we knew exactly what to do. So we— because we started Going to events, we knew what we were doing.

How did you overcome the trust challenge? Like you said, like there's a trust deficit in the beginning, right?

There's a massive trust deficit, and the way we overcame it by first we started going and researching and talking and going to events, and we realized, hey, the white space here is there's a lot of events, but nobody's talking tactical stuff. Nobody's saying like, oh, this is how I got my first ten customers. This is not 2023; this is 2012 now. Nobody's talking how I got my first twelve customers. Nobody talks about how I raised this round of funding. Nobody's doing these things. So we said, everything was like.

Super high,

high level back then.

High level.

Yeah, 50,000 foot. So we said, you know what, rather than cold calling and cold emailing people and saying, hey, buy my stuff, why don't we start hosting events? The one thing as a function of being in and around startups, especially me being in San Francisco, is we had access to a lot of founders, right? And we said, we'll bring successful founders and we'll host meetups. And we'll say, hey—

Was that the genesis for Traction?

That was the genesis of Traction. So that was the genesis of community-led growth and how We leveraged the community to bootstrap the company to $10 million, right? So now I'll talk about this in terms of frameworks, right? So I said, yeah, figure out an underserved niche, identify their pains, figure out where they eat, breathe, drink, sleep, figure out their aspirations and goals so you can help them become better versions of themselves. Like literally your job is fall in love with your customer and make them successful beyond your product or service.

Yes. Now once you're singing, this is a song, man, because this is literally how my brain thinks. Like I have a slide in the Building Public Fellowship kickoff, I say, Like there's a little Mario and there's this big Mario. And then I say like, my goal is to see a better you at the end of the cohort. And that resonates so much with them. I've learned through sales and hundreds of hundreds of conversations with customers, the easiest thing to sell somebody on is a better version of themselves because everybody wants a better themselves, right? I love that. The only thing is that they have to trust you that you can get them there. Now that is a factor of of credibility, which is what you talked about towards the end. And so I'm like, oh, this is like, I wish we both met like 10 years ago, you know? Yeah.

So that's the thing, right? Like you gotta be visible, you gotta be credible. Now I'll give you the framework of how to build that credibility. Yeah. So in frames of both. So now once you have the ICP, on an Excel sheet, you can write down 3 things, 3 columns. This is my ICP first, right? But then the remaining 3 columns, like what services and tools do they pay for? This will give you a potential list of partners.

Yeah. Oh,

who are the influencers? Who do they follow? This will give you a list of people that if you're doing events, you can invite as speakers or as collaborators. And then the last one is what do they frequent? Where do they hang out? Right. And so this will give you like blogs, magazines, social platforms that they're prevalent. So you have the ICP. Now you figure out who do they fund? Who do they frequent? Who do they follow? And And think about it this way, using this framework, if you hosted an event, say you went to an event and I opened the door for you and there's garbage all over, or like you have to jump through hoops, you don't see the host, you meet random people, butchers, bakers, candlestick makers. You're like, what the hell? I'm going to leave. But say now you come to an event and the host opens the door, welcomes you, pours you a glass of wine, introduces you to somebody, and you're like, holy smokes, this is the CEO of Notion, for example. And this is like these 3 marketers that I know. And I meet some friends. You go in and you like see all these vendors like HubSpot and everyone. They're like stuff. I buy things from these guys. Yeah. And then you go in and you see like Jason Lemkin's giving a talk and you're like, dude, I feel like I'm right amongst my tribe. Yeah. So the thing is, if you don't understand your ICP, you cannot curate an experience that's tailored for them. Yes. So it starts with your ICP, number one, right? So, so that's what we did. We could curate now. And now then they felt it's their tribe. So now when we send emails, we're not saying buy my stuff. We're saying, hey, we'd like to invite you to an event we're hosting on this topic, like how to go from X to Y with speaker who has already gone from X to Y, who you recognize because influencer in your space. And we have only 10 spots. Do you want to come? Every time we did a meetup like that, more and more people would show up. One day, 200 people showed up at a coworking space. We had the CEO of Plug and Play and a couple other speakers, and the coworking space GM is like, dude, you can't run full-blown conferences here, like 200 people. Come on. Right. And it was funny. And that turned into eventually evolved into the Traction Conference. But what's interesting is, you know, there's a few things that stem from that, right? So now you've figured out your underserved niche, you figure out what tools and services they pay for, who are the influencers they follow and what other places do they frequent. Now you have this list, then you got to figure out the type of community you want to build. There's three types of communities you can build.

Okay.

The community of practice is a community all about learning together, right? This is not about your product. This is like you know I was an engineer. I finished engineering and I went right into cold calling, and I wanted to go into sales and marketing and product. I asked some entrepreneur like what's the best skill I could have if I want to be an entrepreneur? It's like sales.

Sales, of course. Yeah.

And so I asked. I reached out to everyone and applied for jobs in sales. Nobody would offer me a sales job. Nobody wants like an engineer. People no want an entry. entry-level sales guy to begin with, and let alone like someone with an engineering degree. So they just assumed I'm socially awkward probably and didn't give me. So I begged somebody to give me a job in cold calling, and my parents lost it from India, right? Like, son finished a bachelor's in software engineering and he's doing cold calling. Look at this one, son, he's at Microsoft, we're getting this kind of package, you're making $30,000. Fast forward today, I'm everything I am because of one of those skills, right? Like, it's like learning— Awesome. You pivot on the fly, you polish your messaging, You build relationships, right?

And to me, there's really only 2 meta skills, right? Like one is being able to build something, like some kind of product knowledge, you know, some kind of like all the sort of building skills, which is either coding or, you know, product or whatever. And then there's sales, which is recruiting, investing, like all of that stuff is, you know, convincing yourself.

It's all sales, right? Like recruiting, talking to customers, figuring out what to build.

Yeah, cold calling, everything, yeah.

Like I cold emailed you, right?

Yeah, I feel like even media is sales in a way, right? Except the timeline is so vast. I think the only difference with sales Like there is a decision CTA at the end of every piece of email or whatever.

You're moving things forward basically.

Yes. With marketing, you're just doing it like you're putting deposits and you're just kind of waiting for a 10-year period where you build a brand and then it like comes back at you. You don't even make— need to make the ask, right? The thing with, you know, Gary Vee and Hormozi, that's what they're doing.

But I think what you want to do is like basically stitch those 2 together where like Of course,

you need to get both. Otherwise, you

need to keep leveling up and moving forward. So one of the interesting things, so there's 3 kinds of communities. So I graduated, right? Community of practice. So when I graduated and I joined in sales, and then the next job was I ended up in a startup that they hired me as a sales engineer. But when I joined there, they're like, really, it ended up being a product job, but really it ended up also doing marketing because I needed to launch their website and do all the messaging, figure out what to build. So I became a hodgepodge of things because it's a small startup. Right? And it became a hodgepodge of things. And I'm like, oh, I got to learn now. Now this is 2005. There is nothing about digital marketing anywhere. Not really a thing. All brand marketing and offline. And all the content I found about digital marketing was from HubSpot. So I joined their inbound marketing community. Yes. They didn't really have much of a software. So now I became a part of the HubSpot inbound marketing community, went to their events, their local meetups, did all their inbound marketing certifications. It was great help. And over the years, the HubSpot content and community kept me there. that when eventually we had some money, it was natural like, hey, buy HubSpot, right, for your marketing automation. But so community of practice is learning together, right? People are coming to learn about a specific skill to become better at that skill. The next one is community of product. People are coming to learn about your product, to use it, basically turning your customers into evangelists. That's a community of—

Yeah, it's like a Notion meetup, for example, in today's world.

Exactly. And the last one is community of play, like your football club, your soccer club, your cricket club, you know, paddle, whatever it is. So community of practice, community of product, community of play. Now here's the thing. If you don't have product market fit, you should not build a community of product because you will, you don't have product market fit. Why are you building a community of product? Yeah. Right? And you're just starting out, you barely have any audience. If you don't have a significant audience, you don't have product market fit, focus on building a community of practice because it makes your TAM bigger, right? Yeah. Because even though people may or may not use, like Gainsight did, right? What Gainsight is doing was doing was they created a category around customer success, which is really proactive customer service. Customer service was broken, so they needed to educate the market on what customer success was. When they started, there were maybe like 50, 60 people with this title customer success, and they really expanded the TAM by educating people on how to serve customers better, customer success. So now once you have that ICP, you know the kind of community you want to build and you've talked to so many people. So you write down like 100 burning questions your niche has and maybe think about like, hey, if I had to write the ultimate guide to XYZ, what would be the chapters, subchapters, and topics? Now you can start creating content, right? To start building an audience. So like one interview, let's say you start a Zoom session, like an interview session, like one interview you do. Right. The long form can go to YouTube. The short form can go to Shorts. The highlights can go to— text highlights can go to LinkedIn posts. The audio can go to podcasts. Then you can turn a series of ebooks into like a certification, like a like a course. So all of this you can do. The key thing here is consistency, right? Consistency, like Jason Lemkin said on that on that book cover, is the secret ingredient that leads to big outcomes, right? So

why do you think more a lot of people struggle with consistency?

Start what is that sorry? Struggle with consistency.

Yeah. Why do you think a lot of people struggle with consistency?

When you look for instant gratification. And especially when you're not seeing results anywhere, it's very easy to stop, right? And the thing is you can't make 100 bets, especially as a bootstrap company. You can only make 2 bets maybe, and you need both those bets to play out. Yeah. And so for us, we said, we're not getting anywhere with sales. So we'll invest in the community. We'll build our own community and we'll go out there in the community, go to events and whatnot. So our sales team, after probably first year of me selling, then we expanded, hired salespeople. They also followed that same pattern, went and networked and shook hands and kissed babies and built relationships in the community. We hosted our own events. And so that one-two punch of community creating the goodwill and warming up the brand. So then when the salespeople reaches out, it's a warmer conversation. Consistency, I'll tell you, man, like think about it, like 10 meetups to thousands of people at the conference. And, you know, with brand names like the president of Atlassian, CEO of Twilio. Then the pandemic came and we had to cancel a conference. We moved everything to online. And rather than doing a 2-day virtual summit, which everyone was doing, we said we'll do weekly live AMAs, live webinars.

Nice.

So like this, but we invite the audience to come so they tune in, they listen, they ask questions. And that turned into 2 webinars a week. And our audience went from like 30,000 subscribers at the start of the pandemic to like Like in 2 years, probably around 120,000, which is where it's at, or a little more. Wow. So, that tells you consistency is the secret ingredient that leads to all big outcomes, right? We never stopped, man. Like when we switched immediately to webinars, I freaked out. But then like 50 people showed up. Then like it started repeatedly, few hundred, few hundred, few hundred. And, that's when you know that, okay, something is going. A lot of people do one and then they Yeah. It's when you want to get better at something, you just do volume, do volume, volume. So over time, the audience will give you feedback, you'll refine, and it'll get better, better, better. And then it'll start going.

That was my big learning as well, is that I thought initially, like maybe 10 years ago, I thought I had to be inherently good at something. And so in one rep, I had to get it. And over time, I realized that it doesn't matter. Nobody remembers the early reps. Actually, I personally don't know how your traction, you know, like first meetups went, right? And that doesn't matter today in your story. it's a footnote, like the first meetup that you had, right? So, but if you keep doing it over and over and over again, after like 800 or 1,000 versions of something, now you're natural, right? That's the irony of how people— external validation works too, because they call you a genius at the end. And in the first meeting, nobody shows up. So

consistency is the magic ingredient that turns small actions into big achievements. You know, Jason Lemkin, he wrote the foreword on my book, which is releasing in the next little while. We're doing the presale on August 16th, and then it'll go release on September 17th. But he wrote the foreword on the book. He's been a great mentor. And that is the thing. When Jason Lemkin started SaaStr, he was writing Quora posts like 2, 3 posts a day. Every day he wrote for 2 years without fail, rain or shine, he wrote it, right? And the buzz went around. And when he did a SaaStr meetup, hundreds of people showed up and that turned into thousands and now tens of thousands, right? And digitally engaged hundreds of thousands. And that is the thing, right? Go back to like Alex or Mosi or any one of these people. They are just Gary Vaynerchuk. Very I remember Gary Vaynerchuk from 2005 when I used to listen to HubSpot's inbound marketing. I'm like, who is this guy? HubSpot put in their inbound marketing certification program, and he was talking about creating YouTube videos when YouTube wasn't even like a thing for business. And he was saying like, you got to create content on YouTube. And he was like a little chubby. And he was, he was, he had the Wine TV, right, going. Wine Library TV. Wine Library TV. This is 2005. So that's what I'm saying. These people have one thing and one thing only is consistent, right? Learn your audience, post every day in the channels they hang out. So learn your audience, figure their pains, figure out where they hang out, post every day, every day. Now you got to distribute it. So send it to a few friends to see it, comment on it, and over time it'll, it'll start You know, here's the path, common path for all iconic successes. From Christ to CrossFit, from Christianity to CrossFit is a very similar common path. Audience, community, movement, religion. People buy your products, they listen to you, you have an audience. You bring that audience together to interact with one another, it becomes a community. Now the community comes together to create impact. It becomes a movement.

Nice.

So you, you see even someone like MrBeast, he's an influencer, he's an iconic brand. But when he does things like, let's come together to raise $20 million to plant 20 million trees, or let's raise $30 million to pull out 30 million pounds of plastics from the sea, what does that turn into? It turns your a community into a movement. And then how it goes from movement to religion or cult is when that movement has undying faith in its purpose. It's a religion. Look at every religion. It starts as an audience. Look at every iconic brand. It starts as an audience. It transitions to community, then transitions to movement. And then it's like if you argue with those people, eventually they'll cut you. And there are certain frameworks that they use.

It reminds me of Apple, right? Apple goes through— Apple is a great classic example of—

Bitcoin. Bitcoin.

Bitcoin. Yeah. Wow.

Bitcoin too, right? CrossFit. Try arguing with a CrossFitter that, you know, they'll cut you, right? And what I'm saying is there are certain things that happen. And that's the thing. I studied a lot of these communities, these iconic brands. And that's why the book is 13 Rules to Build Iconic Brands with Community-Led Growth, which is all centered around around the principles of people, right? Brands of yesterday were built on what they told the world about themselves. Brands of the future will be built on what the community says about them. This is even more important today with the rise of the micro-influencers. There are these 5 trends that are happening, right? Third-party data is going away. So Google is going to stop this cookie business. So you got to own your audience. No, generative AI has created a sea of sameness. You got to really stand out when, like, people can copy-paste from generative AI, right? Right. Like from ChatGPT. More and more people are listening to individuals than brands. Look at brand engagement on socials versus individual engagement. Rise of the micro-influencer. Short-form content has more engagement than long-form content. So more and more micro-influencers. It's easier to create short-form content. More and more short-form content, right? So Shorts, Reels, short posts, those are proliferating. That's enabling more and more people to become micro-influencers, get lots and lots of followers. And the commonality here is if you're just an influencer, you have an audience. If you die, that audience is gone. But if you bring that people together, you go from being an influencer to an actual brand. So what I'm saying is people are turning into brands and brands need to leverage this trend and harness its people and create micro-influencers. Otherwise, if you don't do that, you're gonna have to pay for it elsewhere. Right. You're gonna have to pay others, right? And, and so that journey of you got to think for yourself is like, how do you go from now having an audience to bringing them together to create a community, to then now supporting a greater purpose so the community creates a movement, right? And then through rituals and beliefs eventually become a cult brand. So a lot of that is what I talk about in the book now, from asking the same questions to hundreds of hundreds of hundreds of people and finding patterns in that answer. And that's the thing, you don't want to ask different questions because when you ask different questions, then you can't conclude a pattern. Right. And so that's, that's how we distilled the 13 rules. And it was a, it was a labor of love because my whole DNA has been community, right? Like, like I talked about the slums of India, I talked about the Gulf War, I talked about bootstrapping Bose to $10 million ARR. And then when we sold majority in the company, our investors, the growth equity firm that came, they also came to a community event. And that's how they met us. And they're like, who runs this? And then we talked and they're like, you know, we're like, listen, we don't want investment. They're like, oh, we're not traditional investors. Like, what does your company do? We explained, they loved it. And the rest is history. And then when I left the day-to-day of the business to make new room for new leadership, I ended up very depressed and overweight. And I'm like, you know, my identity was this company and I gave the baby away. And one day my wife's like, listen, if something happens to you, your family is going to be left holding the bag. You're in a good position to do anything. Why are you moping here? The glass is always half full. And I dusted the Peloton bike, which we had turned into a makeshift clothing rack for the last 2 years. I hopped on Peloton, and the instructor, I felt instantly connected to her because she was coming off maternity leave and couldn't ride. She was feeling weak. And then she yells out, like, self-pity is toxic. It's one crank, one shift, one ride out on the block. I am, I can. with Eye of the Tiger from Rocky playing. And that one ride went in seconds, right? And it turned to 2, into 4, turned into a streak. And next thing you know, I added working out. I added weights and other rituals like wake up, be thankful for the good that's in your life, bang out 50 push-ups, ride the Peloton. And it changed my life. And so when I look at my journey, like, you know, from that war refugee to bootstrapping to battling depression, there's a very constant theme there is community has been part of that DNA. Mm-hmm. So I wanted to Give homage when when I moved to Dubai, the community is why I have the freedom. And so when I have this free time and I'm doing nothing, I said the best thing I can do is to tell the story of community to the world and distill it to the world and why it will help you drive business. Because if you look at it, marketing in 2023 is taking a bloodbath. Like I said, right? CPMs are up. It costs twice as much to generate the same results from the same marketing channels. Generative AI has created a sea of same. People are tired of ads, pop-ups, and everything else. But if you look at the history of the world, right, Harley-Davidson is a great example of a company that almost went bankrupt in the '80s when Japanese manufacturers had commoditized parts, right? When like Japanese bikes were making its way, they rebuilt the company on the ethos of community. Community wasn't a marketing strategy. And this is where most companies fail because they can't be consistent because community And audience building is always a marketing strategy. It has to be a company strategy. It was a company strategy for Harley-Davidson. Employees became riders. They went and started riding clubs. Riders became employees, oversight from the president. They started a Save Harley campaign to save the freaking company. Today it's worth $7 billion. But more important than that, the weekend warrior concept became a ritual. The camaraderie and the brotherhood of riding They started creating campaigns to save people from cancer and autism and all kinds of things, right? That's how they turned it into a movement. Today it's it's a cult brand. How do you do that without the power of people? You cannot engineer that with just your employees. You'll build a great business. I'm don't get me wrong. You don't need to become an iconic brand or community to build a great business. You will, but the power of community will propel you that much forward. where it becomes your growth lever and your sustainable moat, right? Like, think about this,

right?

Yesterday's innovation is always today's option and tomorrow's commodity. GPS— you couldn't get your hands on it, then it became an option in the car, now there's CarPlay. If you build a community, you won't become a commodity. Apple probably has worse features than its competitors but always sells the aspiration to the community. It doesn't talk about— Right. See my features, see my pixels, right? And so that's how you become a cult brand is like you fall in love with the customer and follow the journey of their problem versus falling in love with your solution. Because people connect with their problems, with their aspirations. They don't connect with your features. They may in the moment, but long-term they care about themselves. That's the world. Yeah. Yeah. And by connecting with their problems, them with— by connecting your brand's purpose with their goals, you can build something big. Because in, in today's world, if you think about it, even with all these layoffs happening, people have infinite opportunity now, right? Lots of people are becoming solopreneurs, doing consulting, putting gigs on Fiverr, putting gigs on Upwork, Uber, DoorDash. You can make your living. And when you work as a contractor, you save on taxes. So it probably ends up becoming the same thing without having a boss over your Now for you to get up and go and work for somebody else, if that company doesn't have a greater sense of purpose, why would you do it? Right? Right. And that's why your purpose is really important in rallying the people. You can build a community around your product, but if you have a greater purpose and that can bring your community to create impact, you'll have a movement.

Yeah. So Lloyd, I got one, maybe like 2 more questions. How are we doing on time?

Doing great on time.

Okay. So one, like actually going all the way back, I know it's a little sort of out of sequence here, but one thing that you said almost at the very beginning that really touched, struck a chord was, you know, bringing partners, bringing some of your ICPs into a meetup and then, you know, also like one or two really relevant speakers. So if you were to kind of share, because the thing that struck my, you know, made me think about, this is an easy pitch for partners to come join a meetup that you're hosting, but how would you, what was your cold pitch for the influential speaker, right? Let's say the CEO of Twilio or whoever, before you had social proof, like what was the first cold pitch like to them? And they were talking about the world where you had trust deficit.

You know, ultimately it's a numbers game, it's selling. So I'll tell you the story, not of the meetups, because the meetups were small enough and you always, you always find somebody who's— this is the way I look at it. Say your ICP is at level 5. Right?

Yeah.

They will resonate with someone who's level 7. Okay? You don't need to bring somebody at level 10. No. And then you just level up from there. Now you, it's easier for you to access if you are at level 5, it's easier for you to access a level 7 or your level 4, level 7, not a level 10. So you bring this level 7, then you leverage their brand rub to get to an 8, 9, a 10, right? That's how you work yourself up. So through the meetups, we did a lot of that. And in the first conference we did, it's so funny. Traction is a community on its own separate from Boost in the sense it was co-founded with me and Alex from Boost and Ray Walia, who runs Launch Academy, is a nonprofit incubator because we didn't have the resources. We needed somebody to help with the logistics and everything else. And you want great partners to work with. Ultimately, it belongs to— if you're building a community, it belongs to the community. You can't just hog it, right? So you need a few different hands. And we didn't really have a So I was asked like, I'm like, hey, you want to do a— I'm like, we have to do a conference, right? The community's growing, but no real budget. We knew we wanted to do a conference on the tactical learnings like those meetups, right?

Right.

And no budget, nothing. So I'm like, who are the speakers that would resonate? And this was, I think, 2015. And I knew that, you know, all the content that would be relevant would be around how to get, keep, and grow customers, like growth tactics, product tactics. So build a list of 400 or so speakers and started cold emailing them. And

what's the summary of the pitch? Like, what's the gist of that pitch?

You know, I think I wrote it down. I did a blog post for HubSpot that you should reference because I did it a while ago.

Yeah, I would love to plug that in the show notes.

Yeah, I had written 2 other blog posts for HubSpot. One is how I script everyone's emails. I used Mechanical Turk. Now you can use Apollo.io or Hunter.ai. AI. But I— this is when I had no money, but put a script on Mechanical Turk and people were scraping it for like 5 cents, 10 cents, right? Then I wrote like how I did the first outreach. And then so here I dropped it, basically my 3 follow-up email templates that gets a 70% response rate from Silicon Valley execs. The nutshell is like, I'd say, hey, how's it going? And invite them to speak to an event. And I'd even write down who all I've invited, like 3 of the 4 of the highlights. Then I'd follow up if anyone's interested. I'd be like, these people are interested. Now what happens is like, um, a lot of people will tell you they're interested, then you follow up that these people are interested, right? People— what do speakers want? They want a big audience.

Yeah.

So it's like 500, 1,000 people will show up, we'll record everything, we'll put the content on YouTube. These other speakers are interested. Once one speaker confirms— and for us it was by luck because I would just say every time I'd email, be like, these other people are interested. Now sometimes it's probably luck in the For people to glance and be like, oh, these people are confirmed, and say yes. So the CEO of Marketo at the time was a big name. He confirmed. When he confirmed, reached out to the others, be like, Phil from Marketo is confirmed. Then Hootsuite confirmed. I know it's Twilio.

It's kind of like a domino effect. You need one domino to fall.

Yeah. So we got like 30 people, like folks from Dropbox, from Quora. It's 2015, hot tactical event. Then we're like, Hey, now we want to get a venue. Now my co-founders are like, how are we going to get a venue on such short notice? So we end up finding a giant EDM hall. And because my Ray, his family used to organize Bollywood concerts, he had a lot of connections, found an EDM hall. And there he plugged, you know, there was a stripper pole we needed to hide. The stage was like, it was like literally, you know, those nasty-ass backstage of the broken toilets. That's all we could afford. The giant screen, no AV, it was like this giant screen, the pixelated ones. Have you seen that in like big concerts with a disco ball? It had only 300 seats. So like 500, 600 people showed up, standing room. Like there was back, like, you know, there's a seating area and then there's the lounge area, right? You know, where they section off for booths when you get bottle service.

Yeah.

They jam people sitting in there. It was all, and then we're like, okay, you know what? I built a site on Squarespace. And put the Eventbrite widget and launch ticket sales. And we sold $50,000 in tickets to the community. And then we're like, you know, okay, now let's pay deposits on everything. Honestly, this is what I'm saying. In 2023, it's still that same Squarespace website, no changes, tractionconf.io. Okay. We still have a popular podcast. We still have like each session on YouTube gets thousands of views. Conference always sold Right? And so that was the experience around convincing them is like consistency, persistence sprinkled with social proof. Like you can't send like long— see, you got to be self-aware too. You can't send like these long-ass emails and like, you know, frustrate people. Short emails, you know, people are not going to scroll on their cell phone. Boom, right? Get their attention. I am driving at 100 miles an hour on the highway. What's the billboard that's going to make me stop?

Right,

right. It's like dating. You don't go to a bar and ask somebody to marry you. What do you optimize for? The first step.

Yeah, the next step, the next step.

Yeah, yeah. So the conversation, you optimize a conversation for the phone number, the phone number you optimize for, like they'll text back and the next date and then eventually. So it's like that. The subject line needs to be compelling enough that they'll open, they'll read the email, should have a compelling offer that they'll click. And then that's how you build the build the relationship, right? And then and then if the emails are like that, like short, compelling, what's in it for them, not what's in it for you. Then with consistency and volume and social proof sprinkled in, you'll get results.

Yeah, I think the thing that stood out for me in that example was that 400 you are ready to go volume there, right? 400 is a pretty a lot of people would do three or four emails and be like, yeah, maybe like maybe nobody wants to tell.

3 or 4 emails is not a thing, right?

Like— 3 or 4 contacts, right? Like you just, you gotta go with the volume, you know? And that's tough.

It's a numbers game. So this is an important lesson. When I was doing Speakeasy, Paytan Shah, who's the founder of Kissmetrics, very popular angel investor, he was an advisor and he comes by the office one day and he is like, show me your marketing plan. And I'm like, I showed him this marketing plan with all these channels like SEO content, like 10 different things. And he sinks in his chairs, goes blue in the face, in the face and he's like, fucking burn those slides down, you're gonna fail. And I'm like, what the hell? So embarrassing. He yells at me in front of like 10 people on the team. The whole freaking team is there. And I'm like, why? He's like, what's the one channel that's working? I'm like, cold emailing, but it's not really working, so I'm trying other things. He's like, how many cold emails you're sending a day? I'm like, 20, 30. He's like, jam more data, get to a critical mass. You can't say like, I'm sending 20, 30 and call it a day. How big is your TAM for ICP? I'm like, it's infinite. Then he's like, how can you say the channel's not working? Jam more data. And so that's a key learning, right? Like he's like, send more, be compelling, sprinkle social proof, what's in it for them, keep it short. And a few people will confirm.

Yeah.

You see, if your audience is a level 1 or 2, and you're a level 3 or 4, curate maybe a level 5 or 6 and then level up from there, right? Brand rub. All you want is brand rub. The brand rub of the person who's a little more influential than you. You get their superpowers, then curate the next one, the next one. That's how you keep leveling up, right? And so that's what we did from the meetups to the conference, then the conference to the podcasts and YouTube, and that's the way to go. But, you know, one key piece of learning there, although I said you can transform one piece of online content to so many different pieces of content in 2023, you got to realize there's lots of content out there. So, make sure what you're putting out is truly differentiated and great. And then, the second thing is I think the value of bringing people together in person is indispensable. So, curate good in-person experiences. You don't have to do a multi-thousand person conference that you spend 6 months waiting to host.

Right.

You can do a meetup, literally 10 person. Think about it. What is the value of hosting one dinner with 15, 20 people every week for 52 weeks, especially if you're in B2B and you have like $20,000 a year ACVs? Meet weekly, standing dinner, a little larger meetup maybe once a month. When you bring— when you— anytime you incorporate more than 2 senses, or sound and sight— imagine we were in person, would be taste, touch, smell— you start to build stronger connections. You stick out longer. You understand each other on a personal level.

You're inspiring me to try out a Build in Public meetup in Atlanta.

Yeah, you should. You

totally should think about it, but I haven't I just haven't done it, you know? Yeah.

Do it.

I do like the standing, like the, the just the 10% smaller intimate starting point and then kind of, you know, maybe do a big meetup in a month or something.

So do the small bring people together for dinners kind of thing casually. Whoever comes, comes. Now I'm in Dubai, right? We're not doing the big traction conference this week. We're releasing the book instead of the conference. Next year we'll do the conference. Now I'm in Dubai, Ray's in Vancouver. We do small 10-15 person dinners like every month,

right?

And that's that's the way to do keep it alive. You know, we're sending the newsletter every week. We're releasing the podcast every other week. We're launching. We're releasing on YouTube. So keep the audience engaged, but offer differentiated content. And if you can't offer differentiated content, which is very very very hard to do right now, right? Like that's why I put out the book on community-led growth. It's something that nobody has condensed into one Bible.

Right.

I can do a— like, it's a sea of sameness. Let me bring some differentiation. But if you can't offer differentiated content, curate a differentiated in-person experience. People don't want to sit and watch like a 3-hour, you know, 3 hours of content on stage, but they'll come together to meet friends.

Yeah. Who are—

make connections, but who are— as long as they're meeting highly curated people, who are their tribe, basically, you know, they like fun, frequent follow.

Yeah.

Like in the same sphere.

All right, so last question. What is exciting, you know, for you right now? What's the next chapter? What are you, you know, looking forward to in this year?

Man, the thing I'm most excited about is—

I think it's the book launch.

Is the book launch. And I can't think of anything else because it's exciting in the sense that it's been the labor of love, the labor of Lobo. I put a lot of effort, heart and soul. It's designed well. We've designed the inner pages. We've put a lot of thought into it. It's homage to the community that there's a different way to build a business that is beyond the profits, that's people-centric, and that's long-term and sustainable. So it can't be one or the other. You can build a people-centric business that's sustainable, long-term, and profitable, right? It's not one or the other. So that is the message. And brands of yesterday were built on what they told the world about themselves. Brands of the future will be built on what the community says about them. With the rise of micro-influencers and short-form content, you cannot get away from this. You just cannot. Just don't be left behind is the thing. And so this is the most exciting thing. And then hanging out with my kids. I've got 3 kids. I have all the free time in the world to spend with them, socialize. I don't know. I don't have the next startup idea. But I feel like because I didn't have the next startup idea, that's why I worked on I'm

sure it felt like a little startup, right? You know, with the whole process and everything.

Definitely. Launching a website, working with contractors, like basically, it's 0 to 1 again. And, that's my passion. I'm a 0 to 1 person. I love taking— I'm a pirate. I love taking things from 0 to 1. When it is more expanded and it's time to scale, it's not my jam anymore.

Yeah. Well, that self-awareness is key. You know, so you know which games you want to play in the future, right? Again, exactly.

So anyway, if I had to do something again, it would be in health or wealth because those are things that are everlasting. Basically fix financial literacy or fix not healthcare but wellness. Like through my journey, I've come to realize that we're proactive with everything except our health and our wealth. How do I make you proactive so you can Live longer and happier. So the goal is not to live longer and be dysfunctional. The goal is to have functional longevity.

Right.

So those are interesting problems to solve. Thank you so much for all this.

Yeah, we'll jam on that on a future session again. But yo, thanks for being here and thanks for sharing your insights and notes from the book. Looking forward to the launch. I know you DM'd me the link too, so I'm going to get myself a little presale thing. Yeah, absolutely.

The book is going to be on fromgrassrootstogreatness.com. If you want already tax-free credits for your business or government funding for a business, check out boast.ai. Our community is tractionconf.io. And lastly, you know, if you want to engage with me on social, I'm active on LinkedIn. It's Lloyd Lobo, Lloyd with an E, double L-O-Y-E-D. So funny thing is I got bullied a lot as a kid because my name is spelled differently, Lloyd with an E. Everyone's like, Lloyd, Lloyd, what is your name? And I always ask my mom like, why do you spell my name like this? Right? And she's like, I always aspired for you to be an entrepreneur. She'd tell me as a kid, you'll a businessman one day. There's a word Indian parents don't use— entrepreneur. You're going to be a businessman one day, and you will never be able to trademark your name, which is spelled without an E. So I threw it in there. It's called— that's called vision. That's also called like law of attraction.

She was manifesting this for you, you know. So shout out to your mom. Thanks for being here, and I'll see you in every future session again. Okay, thanks.

See you, man. Take care. Bye.