Knowing Your Brand and How To Get Funding | CEO of Levo, Caroline Ghosn

So I'll say something really provocative. If you don't have a brand, you have nothing, right? If I walk into a room and you give me $10 million to start a company, then everything I say to you is hypothetical. Everything, right? Hypothetically, this market. Hypothetically, we're gonna do this. Hypothetically, we're gonna do that. The brand is the first flag that you plant in the ground to show people that you're serious about creating a consistent vision and mission. And it is the most important thing you can do as a leader, is define what that brand is, what you stand for, what your values are. And when you do that, people, and you'll be so surprised by the caliber of people, people will want to be part of that. If they believe in it and if it resonates with something that they care about, they'll want to be part of that. So that's like my loosey-goosey answer to your question. My specific answer to your question is that at Levo, we have a set of values. We have a very clear mission statement. We know who we are and what we're here for and what we're trying to change in the world and how we're gonna do it. And we're clear about that externally and internally. So the way that it worked for us is that we started out with our current investors and our advisors basically, like, doing us favors, right? They did the first office hours, and they were willing to be mentors on the site, and they were willing to tweet about us and post about us and do whatever else. But then people like them and people in their network started to get interested in this because they saw that there was something that resonated with them. in terms of a brand. Or they saw, oh, wow, that's true. No one's talking to this group of people around their careers. And so they introduced each other. So we have never asked someone to do Office Hours, ever. All the people that we've had on Office Hours have come to us through someone else who's done Office Hours or someone else who's interacted with the site. And it might not be someone who's at their level in their career. It might be their mentee. It might be someone who they just casually interacted with at work. And so never underestimate the power of the referrals inside of a network, 'cause that builds everything. And your brand is your token of integrity. That's you saying, like, I know who I am. Here's who I'm here for. If you believe in that, then come on over, right? And I'm gonna treat you in this way because we're all in this together. And so you as an influencer feel more comfortable that you're spending your time wisely when you're faced with someone who you know knows who they are. So you need to know who you are as a company.

Let me ask you kind of a follow-up through what it looked like on your site. It's the avatar. There it is. So how do you make your money?

Oh, great question. Jugular. Let's go. Do I get a cocktail first? Let's get married. So we make our money in 2 ways, B2B and B2C. So on the B2B side, we work with companies who are really interested in better retaining and engaging millennial talent. And engaging can include understanding how to sell to, because we millennials are very fickle and we have very clear expectations around the types of brands that we'll put our dollars behind. Thankfully for us. And so we work with companies on the B2B side, both in their talent and marketing departments, to help them either better engage their employees. So if you're an employee of one of the companies that we work with, what you'll do is You'll go on to levo.com, and in addition to all the resources that, like, anybody will see, you'll have a dedicated space for your company. So you'll see the mentors at your company, the professional development resources at your company, the events that you can sign up for at your company, and so on and so forth, like the other people your age, and you can connect with them. So that helps you feel more engaged and more part of the network that's in your company, and it increases retention. And then the other thing that we do is, because of the number of users that we have, We have really interesting insights on millennial trends, and we can cut that in a number of ways. So if you're a marketer, then you want to better understand what the people that you're trying to sell to are thinking and feeling, and we can help make that clearer because we're using what we're seeing on our site to have companies better serve our users. And then on the B2C side, for now everything is free, and what we're experimenting with is are there boot camps or curriculum programs that we can sell people who want a little bit more hardcore curriculum than we can offer for free. Yeah. So think of it as a learning resource.

Which one's harder, the B2B side or the B2C side?

Well, B2B takes 14 to 16 months on average to close a deal. But when you close the deals, they're bigger. And so it's the difference between, do you want to talk to one person at a big company for 14 to 16 months? 16 months, like, let's just think about how long that is, okay, and get $500,000 when you're successful? Or would you rather talk to 500,000 people in that time and get $1 at a time? So it's just a timeframe thing. And there are, it's also a capability thing, because the skill set that it takes to be effective at converting a big company into paying $500,000 are very different from the B2C product marketing skill sets that are needed to convert 500,000 people to pay $1. I don't think either is harder or easier than the other. It's a matter of what your company's about and what you're good at talking about.

Right.

Any other questions?

Yeah.

In terms of getting those big B2B deals, I'm sure businesses that are large are kind of wary about putting that money in startups because they're not sure if they're going to be around in a few years. So how do you convince them, like, we are a product that's going to Yeah. You're really gonna get a return on your investment.

So you can't convince them upfront, and that's why it takes them 14 to 16 months. What you have to do is start the conversation with your vision and your brand, and then come back to them every time you have more data to prove that you do what you say you're gonna do. And the more times you show them that you do what you say you're gonna do, the higher their level of confidence that you're gonna do that with them as well. And that's why part of that sales process is why it takes so long. Versus a consumer, especially if you have a young consumer, a consumer is willing to take a leap of faith based on what they see is readily available to them today. And you can change that tomorrow or after tomorrow and make it better. And so you always have these new opportunities to get better and better at talking to the individual user versus if you're talking to a big Fortune 500 company or Fortune 100 company, you're probably gonna set up meetings every, like, 6 to 8 weeks if you're good at it. And those are, like, the intervals of interaction that you have. So the best thing you can do is show progress every time you talk to that person. Yeah.

Yeah.

Hi.

Hi.

Wondering about the comment you said about branding.

Yeah.

What do you think makes a solid, what are the components to make a solid brand?

Yeah.

And then how do you get there?

OK. Have you guys seen a brand placemat before? OK. So a brand placemat, oh, you've seen one. Yeah. What does it include?

It's basically like an overview of everything you're gonna find in the brand and key points that you're gonna be able to recognize.

Exactly. So if you haven't already, I would recommend making a brand placemat. The first one you make is gonna be awful, probably, and that's okay. The point is that you're starting by putting something out there. And the brand placemat needs to include 3 things. It needs to include what you're trying to solve. Like, our mission is to... Enable millennials to navigate their careers, and focus primarily on the millennials who need it the most to begin with.

Great.

Then you have this line that says, we do this in 5 ways. And here are the 5 ways. We connect you with jobs. We connect you with advice. We connect you with mentors. We connect you with each other. And we connect you with inspiration so that you don't give up halfway through this journey. And then the third piece that I love, and was actually the hardest for us, is 5 words that describe who you are. Like, if your brand was a human, what are the 5 words that would describe them? Are they generous? Are they stingy? Are they passionate? Are they stoic?

Right?

Are they analytical? Are they dreamers? Figure out what those 5 words are, because when you start to enroll other humans on your team, everybody's gonna have a slightly different interpretation of what the ethos of your company is, but this helps everyone stay on the same track so you can scale the organization in a really consistent way. We have 75 ambassadors in our different cities who are volunteers around the world. They need to all be able to create the same experience for any member who's coming into Madrid or coming into Boston. And the only way to do that is to have a unified thing that's, like, extrinsic to your brain that explains who you are and why you exist.

What are your 5 words?

So our 5 words are generous, optimistic, I'll have to think about that, 'cause I haven't seen this in a while. Generous, optimistic, relentless is another one, vision-driven, and digitally native. Those are our 5. Technically, I know that digitally native is 2 words, but it counts as the same one.

One last thing. You were talking about conversions.

Yeah.

And I just missed a few points. So I think 3 points, how to get— Greater conversion rate. And one of them was changing the product, evolving the product to fit the consumers within there. Are there 2 more? Yeah.

So I think the point I was trying to make was that you have to start bottoms up with the product market fit and talking to the people inside of your market consistently. It is a much less expensive and much more effective way of driving conversions to your business than anything else that you can do. The first and most important thing that you can do is Talk to people. And you as an entrepreneur, you're probably creating something that fits a need that you've had. And that's your biggest strength. Because you're probably young. You haven't had 30 years of business experience. If you're a first-time entrepreneur, you haven't started a company before. But what you do have, and what is super powerful— and if you look at the data and you look at billion-dollar IPOs and the types of people who lead them, there are a lot of first-time entrepreneurs because they have empathy with the people they're trying to serve. So that is your greatest strength. Use it all the time. And talk to other people like you to understand what— how they're using it. And if you're not using it all the time and you're in the target demo, there's a problem. So just start there. Start bottoms up.