Lessons - How to Build and Scale Product-Based Startups Without Wasting Resources | Darren Lee - Product Marketing Strategist

In this lessons episode, discover how to stand out in a crowded market by embracing authenticity over flashy, imitative tactics. Learn why choosing a unique customer-centered approach builds lasting trust, and understand how assembling a high-performing team fueled by shared values drives long-term success. The thing that's concerned that entrepreneurs have when they put something out and then they see their competitors being flashy and promising the world, and when you play in a space you know who's real and you know who's full of shit quite quickly, but you get frustrated because you lose customers. So I kind of want you to give entrepreneurs maybe some very simple or tactical tips when you are launching a great product. Do you know what's a great product? And you feel like you're being outmatched on the sales and marketing front by somebody of the shitier product, but they know how to really say the right things or just show up in a way that maybe a product focus person doesn't understand how to show up. How do you compete? You don't devolve to these shitty sort of gotchas, sales and marketing tactics that we're sort of talking about that creates a shitty customer experience where customers are buying, they have remorse, they want to refund, they're not getting it. You know that that's the average customer that goes through your competitors' funnels dealing with. So what do you do? I think if you know how the game is played over here, you should be zigging when everyone else is hiking. You've never met a few times. I've seen your content. What does that mean? So if everyone is like running the same level funnels, same level landing pages, the same level offers and you're familiar with that, it's good just to completely avoid it and do something completely new. So if they're running this specific landing page, don't have a landing page. If they're doing loads of sales calls, have no sales calls, have a different approach to it, right? There's different ways we can slice and dice it so that you are not becoming into that crowd. The biggest problem with this I find is that a lot of guys are trying to sit in, they're running HSC, they're running consulting, they're running coaching, they're running SMA. But it's like a shitty copy of the other person. It's a rendition, yeah. That's where people try always imitate others online, whereas the category of one will actually just have his own principle and process to this. So let me just show you how I walked through this process. So when we built the agency in the beginning, there was a very common way to build agencies, but I didn't go through those programs. I didn't go through that process at all. I just intuitively worked off. These customers have a specific problem. I can get to them this way, true outbound, true outreach. Outreach doesn't really work. Maybe I could do something different, maybe I could send them Loom videos, maybe I could show up their door, maybe I could do something unique. I was basically utilizing my own intuition as to how to solve the same problem. Now we still have a good product. We still have a good way to do it, but you don't need to follow everyone else's as a voice. Give a give a not example. I was early on writing on LinkedIn from 2020, 2021. I was, I would honestly say, one of the first people in the entrepreneur community to be ready on LinkedIn. It was from Justin Welsh to where I learned from. He was like first, and I remember quick hands that by the way, I quickly learned that like, okay, this is really sparking. When everyone said that was a bad idea, when everyone said it was cringey and it was walk and he should be on Twitter and on Instagram, I was still writing on LinkedIn. I still have a small audience, but I have a very engaged audience that people like to trust me. They see a lot of social proof and they come inbound. Most people that want to work with us come from that. It's a unique mechanism. I have a unique way of doing the same thing as everyone else. So developing that in a kind of unique identifier is completely unique, right? Give a not example. When everyone's running ads, we're running, we're recording podcasts, right? Some guys have just ads businesses. We're doing something that's unscalable. I've had mentors tell me in the past that, you know, maybe you're recording too much podcasts, but the intangible benefits of what we're doing today is you can't measure it, right? It's a unique way to do it. But at the same time, we're putting in the seven areas of trust that people can develop with us to work with us. They see that there's a unique way to work with us in the front end and the back end then to have that unique mechanism as well. I think it's down to the team, right? I've been very focused on building a winning team and excellent team, a team of people that get it, like it and trust it. And I think my one mechanism for building a team is that people must want it. They must get it and they have the capacity to do it. So this is from traction, ideally. The idea of an attraction is that you want people who are truly about it. So the guys that work that I've been hiring, you know, not everyone works out for sure. But ideally, they love podcasting. They're about it. They really truly love it that they're willing to upload the podcast at two o'clock in the morning. Take the client call at five o'clock in the morning, make the adjustments that majority of people won't do. And that's what becomes a category of one, right? And it's also having a unique experience. And I'll keep going back at this point. But how we've been doing this in the beginning is that customers will actually stay with you. Even if you don't get that greater results, if your experience is high, we have example, we work with some companies and certain niches that are a little bit drier, okay? It could be real estate, multi-family, HR, hero. Are they sexy industries? No, no, they're not. But we create an experience for clients that put that makes them feel special. We do reporting. We do a lot of nice reporting, elegant reporting. We do a lot of coaching, a lot of personalization. We make them feel which they are special to us and they help us and we help them. And I think that's a unique experience that most people, the scalar bros will tell you not to do is not scalable. My friend, I literally will travel across the world to a workshop with someone who's not even a client who's just a prospect because I love it. I'm about it. And I'm willing to show them in person. I've literally sat in office rooms for hours for free because I'm willing to do the unscalable stuff that builds scale into your business. You know, I think that's actually a really smart idea because doing this stuff that doesn't scale is the actually, in my opinion, the only competitive advantage that you have against somebody that's a $100 million dollar public trade company. Have you heard about Brian Chesky on that? I know, I know Brian Chesky, but I don't know his thoughts on. I know that the scalable are doing the unscalable. That's a Paul Graham. So so Paul Chesky has like this thing about he's a specific word for it, but it's about being in the detail. So he would be in the UX UI meetings about some random button on the customer success page and he would be there changing the color of the buttons for a two and a half errors that entire team. And like this is the reason why Airbnb is a size that is he's like obsessed with the tiny details. And I think we go back to, you know, what truly creates like a unique product, unique business is being in that detail. Right. That obsessed. Exactly. But being in the detail though, right? Because Eric Sue talks about this personality test you can do. He's got you personality or something personality you and he will give you a good idea of like where you were, what type of leader you were, what type of entrepreneur you were. But if you have a low attention of detail, this doesn't mean you just leave it. It means that you actively work on those things. I give an example. For myself, as like a leader in our company, I actually have a low level of empathy, but I've recognized it and I've been working on it. I work on my relationship. I've hired guys who have high empathy, low logic, so that these guys bring in a much better culture. Now you need to have that awareness of yourself. Now we're not a nine figure business but we're a seven figure business and we're doing well as a service seven figure business. At the same time, it's not just me and it's not just sales that will get to the next level. It cracks, it breaks, there's so many issues. That I think we all can spend more time looking at to try and improve. Right. We can all start taking much more inward look at ourselves, at our company, at our clients and think, am I building the right ship or am I building something that's completely non enlightenment, but who I am and who I want to be? I think that's, and I think that, I mean, like you, in one more point, just to reiterate how important it is, surrounding yourself with people that also champion that vision and that, in those ideals, I think is actually incredibly important. Because then you start to create this sort of this board of advisors or this group within your company that forces you to act in the right way and to be the right kind of entrepreneur. Those guys are about a war with you. Yeah. So you also, you don't want to let them down. That's a thing. So as a solo printer, it's very easy to make shitty decisions. But all of a sudden, when you have to justify it, these incredible A players that you've hired that are like, you know, high value, high moral, high ethics, high focus on customer, all these types of, these personality traits and makes for a good person. When you do have the opportunity to make that shitty decision, you're not going to make it anymore because you surrounded yourself with all these incredible people, which I think is just like a safety mechanism to make sure that all your decisions are aligned towards the right target. I love that man. I think as well that a lot of guys, you know, they, they have their idea with their business, they have the product that they have, but they don't really think about these small nuances, but this is what builds culture, right? When you're a company, the people that you have, these are people that you'll go to war with effectively and even some of our team members are quite young. But what if you can't, if you're in early stages and you can't afford huge A players, you can find guys that you can develop and give them so much of your own experiences. And I think a lot of people have worked, what else? They like it because I'll give them one, the one attention will have calls and so on to four and I'll teach them about where they want to go to and put them on a career trajectory. So I think there's different ways to slice and lose it. As a leader, you want to hire higher people that are great, whether you can afford it or not, and then offer them your own consulting and advisory. But then at the same time, if you're young and you're trying to get into space, I think there's nothing wrong with being an employee, right? If you want to partner with someone and work with someone, so be it. There is a lot of merit to doing that, especially smaller companies. I give an example that we have a lot of young guys who will become great entrepreneurs, but in the early stages, they love learning how all the parts of our business work together. And now that we've developed into more products, more services, they're excited about it. They get up and they're going to want to go for it. We are now doing much more things and they are doing much more things. So there's much more advantages than just showing up and getting a job done. Well, I actually think the best people to hire, I've thought about this a lot. The best people to hire are people that would be entrepreneurs in any other circumstance. For whatever reason right now, it's not in their stars, it's not the risk profile, whatever it is, but they could be that entrepreneur. It's just this is not the time for them to do that. So for whatever reason, that's an opportunity for somebody who is taking the risk, build their own company is an entrepreneur. So find a way to find those people and then also to your point, you have to know where they want to go so that they don't just flake on you like in two, three years because if they want to go do the wrong thing, that's fine. But you should be aligned and moving towards that target together. I like that. My last point I'll say on this is, you know, sometimes people don't know where they want to go, but you also want to enable them. So if you've ever read leaders eat last, talk about circular safety. So I've got 180 with this, who my own kind of leadership style, which was before I thought it was about getting worked on and working hard and all this stuff. Now it's about putting people in their best seat and allowing them to almost develop their own career with you. So I'll give an example. My CEO, who was recently promoted, young guy came from Goldman Sachs, knew his stuff, really knew everything. And for him, he wants to, he didn't really know where he wanted to go. So I wanted to help him see that he wanted to have a better career with us. So it's about creating that space, allowing him to do his best work and allowing him to develop as an individual to read. And maybe in a couple of years time, he'll want to go build something and that will be great versus this short term mindset that unfortunately a lot of our businesses are best off. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.