Founder-Led Content: A Secret Weapon for Startup Growth

Desiree:  Hey everybody, Desiree Echevarria here, joined by Steli Efti once again, and Steli, today we are talking about a topic that is near and dear to my heart. We're talking about content, because I'm a content person, you're a founder who's sort of known for content, and I just wanted to talk to you today about how we are seeing sort of this evolution of what used to be considered only founder led sales to sort of evolve and include the scope of founder content, founder marketing, founder branding, whatever you want to call it, thought leadership, whatever name you want to give it.

Desiree: It sort of used to be a novelty and now it's almost like table stakes. But you were doing all of that, all of the above before it was trendy. I'm not sure all founders know how to get started. They might be a little bit, you know, skeptical or a little, maybe just like a little bit cautious about it. So I want you to talk to me about how you built your content machine and your audience from the ground up. Because it played a really big role in Close's success story. So how did you get there? 

Steli: That's a good question. Well, I don't know. I don't know how to answer that succinctly because a lot of things contributed to it. I think for sure there were some things that were just a kind of natural assets, like I knew that I like to talk. I knew that I could be charming at times and entertaining to people. And because we had generated so much experience and expertise by running this sort of outsourced sales agency on demand for tech startups, we had gleaned in and, and, and acquired a lot of unique insights that not everybody else would have.

Steli: And we knew that a lot of these stories or these insights would be valuable to other founders and to other companies as well. So there was sort of a natural ability to communicate, to tell stories. And then there were these stories to tell and these insights to share. Then there was an opening in the market. I think when we launched in January, 2013, when we looked at the sort of blogs and videos and content that was out there, that was speaking specifically about sales to tech startups. We thought that all that content sucked. It was sort of super outdated, super corporate, sleazy, you know, at the worst, and we thought that there was a need to educate a new crop of founders, tech founders, to educate them on what sales was and what it wasn't, how to think about it in the right way to really help them succeed with it—technology and product companies. 

Steli: And so I went out there and I started sharing these stories and telling people my opinions. And it resonated. So we got the kind of feedback loop that said, yes, the market truly is interested in this. People really benefit from this. So we kept going for quite a long time.

Desiree:  So it sounds like it was a little bit of a mix of finding a gap in the content that was out there or “I know I could say that better.” And then also just leaning into whatever your expertise was, the little like hacks and tricks. Is that how you sort of decided which topics to talk about? Because I can imagine if I'm a new founder today, maybe I do have that same expertise. How were you picking your topics back in the day when you set up your webcam and your tiny little apartment office. 

Steli: Yeah. So it was a mix of things, right? One was a lot of stories came to me by my interactions with founders. So I would talk to founders all the time. I would try to help them with their sales strategy. So you make yourself available to your ideal customer. You hear what their problems are. You hear what they are struggling with. You see if you can provide solutions that they find useful and that generates a ton of ideas. A lot of the topics that I talked about literally were videos that I recorded right after a call with a founder, where they described a problem to me. And we talked about a solution that I've applied in the past and they were excited about testing it out and I thought, Oh, this Is probably something I should share with a broader world. Lots of other founders will have this kind of problem. 

Steli: So, and this, you know, at the beginning was sort of one on one interactions later, as I started doing conference talks and doing podcast interviews, the questions people will send me in my inbox on social media in person would feed sort of the, the content machine, it would generate ideas for what. What to share with the world, what to record that was one source of ideas. The other source was usually influenced by just things we were experiencing at the time or learning or had just experienced or learned. So, you know, when we started doing, when I started doing content. Around sales, I thought, what are some of the coolest stories in this area that we've gone through?

Steli: And, you know, two years or a year before launching Elastic sales. And then, you know, two years before launching clothes, we'd gone through this near death experience where we had to negotiate ourselves out of a deal, a contract with a large technology company. And I'd saved us almost half a million by just being, you know, Quiet and letting the other person negotiate with themselves, being so uncomfortable with the quietness that he kept talking until he said something he didn't mean to say. That was my sort of like a-ha moment. And I thought, Oh, that's such—you know, there's a valuable lesson here that, you know, being quiet sometimes in a negotiation can be very, very powerful, but it was also sort of a very entertaining story or inspiring story. And it was our story and recent story. So that's a lot of things. That we shared or that I shared where things that were just had learned, just had experienced. And we thought this is interesting. This is compelling, or this is insightful. It just happened to us. So let me just, you know, create some content around this and share this story with the world.

Desiree:  So yeah, you're just sharing what you know. What inspired you to start producing this content? I mean, you're a founder of a tech startup, you're a busy guy. What inspires you to do content and not double down on another marketing channel? What was the impetus behind that?

Steli:  I I think in the early days it was a real struggle even just, you know, because at the very beginning I tried to write blog posts. Right. And I love writing, but I'm not particularly good at it. And it was a very different sort of workflow from my all day long talking to team members, customers, investors, this, that, and the other.So when I would sit down to write my scheduled 30 minute first draft of a blog post, oftentimes it was a struggle. And many times it was postponed until like a week past or two. And I still hadn't written the first draft. I was working with somebody that was supposed to take my rough draft and turn it into a real post.

Steli: Once I realized that I can't be doing it alone, that writing all this was taking me too much time. And that worked a little bit better than writing everything on my own, but it still had me as a. Bottleneck. And many times it happened where this person was waiting for two or three weeks to get the draft from me. And I still hadn't sent it until one time, the person sent me a voice message and said: All right, asshole. Just hit record on your phone and talk me through the draft. And I was in the car when I heard that and I said, all right, I could do that. And I hit record and I talked through the post idea that I had and what he returned to me.

Steli: And his first draft was as good as if I had given him a written first version. And that, that was a big aha moment for me that moment. I realized I'll never write a first draft anymore. Why? Right. I could just like talk him through it. And then I thought, well, if I stopped referring to him by name on the audio recording, We could publish the audio recording as a podcast. And then I thought, wait, if I do it in front of my webcam on my laptop, we would have video, we would have audio and we would get the blog post out of it. And that sort of set up our content machine where for the next two years, I think almost every day without an exception, I recorded a video. You know, sometimes 10 minutes, sometimes 50 minutes, sometimes just five minutes, but it would record every day because it was easy enough for me to talk through these ideas.

Steli:  I think so that was the how and the sort of machinery and getting some of, over some of the friction points that would make this difficult for me. So I found a way to generate content consistently. Yes, the smallest amount of time and resistance possible, right? If this would take hours and hours of my day, I couldn't afford to do it. No matter how much I believed in it or wanted it. So that's one. The other part is the sort of what is the. Even underlying motivation to want to do this, right? Why did I want to do this? I think one part was believing that I, you know, this doesn't sound very humble, but I believed I had something to say that was valuable to people I cared about, which was founders and entrepreneurs, right? Like I, I loved those people, which was also our customers, right? Our ideal sort of target audience. I knew these people. I liked them. I cared about them. And I thought I had something to say of value, something that would help them succeed, something I wish somebody had told me.

Steli: So that was a big, I think, contributing factor to me being passionate about sharing. Content and generating content and sharing my ideas. And then the other thing was that I saw that doing that made people so grateful for what they had learned. And they, it made them feel connected to me and through extension to my company. And so it was a very successful channel to get people aware of our business, but not just aware, as in I've seen an ad, but aware as in. If I buy a CRM, I want to buy it from Steli's company, right? I've already learned how I closed my first customer because of a video I've seen from Steli. So once I start needing a CRM, I want to go to that, to his business first.

Steli: And we would consistently hear when we would ask new trial users, how did you hear about us? It was only two answers. Either a friend of mine recommended it that is using Close or Steli, right? I've watched Steli's videos. I read Steli's content. And so. I think seeing that it was working as a marketing machine for us and succeeding and feeling that we really had something to contribute to the marketplace. We're sort of the main drivers of even wanting to do this. 

Desiree: Yeah, it's the idea that people buy from people and, you know, otherwise, what are you doing? You're trying to figure out if this is the right solution for me based on some product pages on a website that have been optimized for conversion. And there's something very, like, sort of cold and lifeless, but also really daunting for a buyer is like, I have no idea. Is this the right solution? Am I being scammed? Are they selling me, you know, some smoke and mirrors versus like, Oh, I know Steli. I know his story. Your story is your strategy, almost. And you touched on the fact that like, you're helping people with their day-to-day. It's almost like you're invested in their success and that's why you're doing it.

Desiree: I noticed that in most of your content, you don't mention the product at all. Like you're just talking about sales, best practices. It's not product-centric. I'm here to sneak in a plug for Close necessarily. Was that on purpose and what was your thinking behind that? 

Steli: Yeah, it was because, you know, what I wanted to do was build a audience of people that are relevant to sort of the kind of business I'm trying to build and serve that audience in the best possible way and believing that if you connect with the audience, if you grow the audience, if you engage with, with the audience, and if you serve them, then you're They will build a relationship with you and then in extension with your business. And they, you know, people knew that I was running a CRM company, right? That was not a secret. So they knew when they needed a CRM, when they thought what CRM companies do I know, do I remember? A lot of them would be like, well, you know, I remember Salesforce. That's the biggest. And then I know maybe this other one.

Steli:  And then, oh, I'm, I'm watching Steli stuff every single day. I'll also check out Close. I didn't believe that pitching the CRM in the middle of the video in some sneaky or fun way would increase the amount of people that would sign up for the product, but I believe that it would decrease the value of the video to those people that were watching it, right? If I'm trying to figure out how to negotiate this big contract with somebody. And I'm watching a video from Steli about it. Then in the middle of the video, Steli is doing a whole pitch about like, if I need a CRM, this is why Close is great. It's just not the right time, right? Right now I'm trying to learn how to negotiate.

Steli:  I'm not trying to learn what the top five features are from Close. And so I didn't want to water down the message. I didn't want to sort of. Make people feel like a big chunk of what they're going to be watching is not going to be in their best interest. It's not going to answer their questions. And ultimately it's going to create a different relationship, which is. The relationship that most people had with my content was Steli is somebody I trust. Steli is somebody I like. Steli is going to encourage me. Steli is going to motivate me and he's going to give me a practical piece of know-how I can put into action immediately, right?

Steli: That was the relationship. If it would have been, Steli is going to help me with some things, but in exchange, Steli will demand me listening to pitches all the time about his product. No matter if it's relevant for me or not, I think it would have changed sort of how people felt about it or, you know, how they interacted with the content where they try to work around the pitch, right? They know it's coming. So they're just waiting to be able to like forward. And I didn't want to, I didn't want to do that because I didn't think it's. Ultimately, I didn't believe that that's an effective strategy. Now I'll say this, if you optimize on short term, right. If you sort of scale an audience massively as quickly as possible, and you want to convert as many of them as quickly as possible, and you don't care about the long term, all you're trying to do is get the short term results that you want right now. Then what I'm describing doesn't make sense and won't work right. Then you want to do something that's more short term optimized, but if you want to build a company over the next.

Steli: If you want to build a, you know, relationships in your market that lasts a lifetime, then what I say works really, really well. And, you know, case in point is that, you know, there's this famous quote from Maya Angelou. I don't know her name, I don't remember her name fully, but it's this quote of like: people won't remember what you said, how you dressed and what, but people will always remember how you made them feel. Right? And, you know, when we launched this series, the 0 to 30 million Blueprint and sort of relaunched Steli doing more content, my inbox filled in all channels, text messages, emails from people that were excited that I'm back in the world of content creation, and they were sharing stories with me of how important my content was to their success or their life.At some point. But they didn't say, Oh, this tactic or this video specifically was what was great. I watched one video of yours and it was this video that helped me in this specific way. They were describing what kind of a role I played in their life in one way or another, and that that role was meaningful, that they remember how they felt about it.

Steli: And that seeing me online made them excited and grateful and made them remember, Oh, it was cool when I was like watching this stuff from Steli. And it was at this crucial early days of my business, that emotional connection has obviously lasted a very long time, right? I haven't done a lot of content in many, many years and still a huge amount of people feel a certain way about me and my content. That can't be done if you do this sort of hyper, I'm going to do a bait and switch video that will go viral, but then switch it to an offer that will optimize as many people are watching it to fill out a coupon code that can get you great numbers in the short term, maybe, but nobody will ever remember who you were, what you did.

Steli: They will not build any relationships. You won't be meaningful to them and your brand won't be meaningful to them. That's ultimately what I really wanted to do. And what I'm still interested in doing is building a company that's long lasting and build hopefully relationships that are long lasting. And so taking a very long term view of the audience was what contributed to not pitching them constantly on signing up for my product.

Desiree: Even that approach is radical. Like I know that so many tech execs and CEOs are often reluctant to invest in content because it doesn't produce those immediate results. It's sort of a long term play, but it can be a lot more durable and, you know, as a content marketer, it's something I understand, but also it's always so hard to sort of convince executives: just be patient. So can you talk to me about the measurable results from your content on the business? How did your videos eventually translate into sales? 

Steli: Well, as I mentioned for many, many years, we would track sort of where our trials were coming from. And pretty consistently, at least for the first five, six years, where it was generating a lot of content, people were saying. I heard about Close because I was reading the, the, the email newsletter. I was watching the YouTube videos. I was subscribed to the podcast and, you know, so, so it wasn't difficult for us to realize that, oh, although, you know, for the first couple of years, we didn't have great attribution. We couldn't tell you just by looking at a dashboard. That this traffic was coming from Steli's content. We knew that the traffic to our content was growing. And we knew that when we would do these sort of tests of asking people that would sign up for a trial, how they heard about us. And when we look at some of the best customers we're acquiring, how did you hear about us the first time?

Steli: Pretty consistently, half of them would say the content, right? It's still to this day, a big portion, which is kind of mind blowing to me. I feel like I, you know, it's been at least four years, if not five years by now, where I didn't do a lot of content or no content at all, that still to this day, every day people tell our sales team, Oh, Stully stuff or the content from clothes was what I care most about or how I heard about clothes and why I thought I'd come and check it out, it's pretty mind blowing, you know, sort of how long lasting it can be, but we heard the results every day from our customer's mouth, so it was not difficult to believe in the ROI, although it's consistently, somebody in the company would challenge this and go: where's the marketing dashboard that proves that our content is really contributing?

Steli: And then we would look around and be like, well, there's no real proof. And then somebody would go, well, why don't we, you know, make sure to have our sales reps really been asking how people heard about us? No. Okay. Let's do another push for the next two weeks. And then we would do that. Collect information. And then it was still 50/50. We're like: oh yeah, it's still working. So for us, it didn't take months and months or years to see any kind of return. It was pretty, pretty consistent. You know, that we, that we saw that it's resonating with people and it's driving business results. 

Desiree: I think a lot of times, especially startup founders, they over engineer attribution models for marketing. They want to know exactly which is the perfect, precise channel to double down on and to optimize. But it kind of sounds like it had to be the source of leads by default, because that's sort of all, all you guys were all-in on content more so than like ads and, and stuff like that. So, just sort of keeping it simple, but obviously driving results, it's obviously worked, it's been 12 years.

Desiree: In a very meta way, this is a content series too, and like you said, people are still nostalgic for old Steli, like it means something to them. So it's like you could not possibly attribute all of that long term customer loyalty, customer value on a Google Analytics dashboard, but people—they're afraid to take that risk. 

Steli: Yeah, I mean, it is, it's not easy to take a very long term view and to act with conviction if you don't get immediate massive results that prove that what you're believing in is right. But I have come to believe this is not the way I operated forever, but I come to believe that your general strategy should be very simple and it should be things that are self evident and you shouldn't get distracted by any sort of shiny object or super complicated and sophisticated strategies. Just ask yourself: how do I buy things? How do I build relationships with brands? What are the types of content I consume? And then, you know, create the kind of content you want to read, create the kind of product you want to use, treat people well, and keep your word. 

Steli: And act with what we call friendly strength, right? Don't be a pushover that does everything and try to please everybody at all time, but also don't be so aggressive and arrogant and so selfish that all you're trying to do is take away as much and collect as much in the short term as possible for you.If you follow some of these basic principles, but you do it day in day out, and you don't waver, and you don't get distracted, good things start coming to you, and they come in compounding effects. But I also understand that, you know, if you're like 19 years old and you're starting your first business or your first online social media account, and you want to build an audience and be famous, that maybe thinking long term and acting long term doesn't sound very attractive, but it works.

Steli:  Once you've sort of done that for a long period of time, and you really put up things in the market that have an impact that people connect with, that make a difference in their lives. As I said, it might be, you know, be a decade later and people will still remember you. They will still, you know, stop you in the street and ask for a picture with you and want to know what you're up and want to work with you and help you.

Like even recently when we launched the 0 to 30 Million Blueprint series with a bunch of new hires in the company, senior, incredibly talented people that would share their story. And they would share: 10 years ago, I saw Steli at a stage and I was like, started reading all the blog posts and who would believe it that today I work at this company. So the goodwill that you create, the relationship, the brand—it can't all be measured in pennies and cents. It can't all appear in a spreadsheet. And you just have to have conviction that you put that much good out in the world good things will come back to you. And I, I'm definitely, every day I'm more and more convinced of that by sort of all the good that keeps coming back to us as a business.

Desiree: You said something there that I wanted to put a finer point on. You said something about trying to please everybody. I'm of the opinion that when you're creating content, If you try to please everybody, you end up pleasing nobody. So, your early content did a lot of things right in that regard. Obviously you had a charismatic personality, but you also gave really opinionated advice. And I think that's where you're persuasive. You had these really strong, differentiated convictions and you weren't afraid to ruffle feathers. And, you know, you would swear in your videos and that might be off-putting to some people, but all of it felt very authentic to you. And my question is what advice do you give founders who are struggling to figure out what their founder persona should be, especially if they're afraid of pleasing everybody?

Steli: Yeah, so I would say this, it's not about you, right? The most powerful moment that I had that really changed the trajectory of what kind of content I created and why I think ultimately worked was that I was invited to speak at a tech conference and my mindset. Up until that point, it had always been about how to make myself look as good as possible, right? I wanted to be on stage and just give a talk that was perfection and everybody would be, oh my god, so impressed. It would be all about me, me, me. I wanted to look cool. I wanted to sound amazing. I wanted to be like a professional public speaker. And there was a moment. Where something clicked in me. And I remember a friend that had challenged me once, he saw me give a little presentation, a little talk, and I thought I'd done so well.

Steli: And then he told me it sucked. And I was like, what? I, this is a perfect talk. And he said, yeah, but you were like a faceless persona on stage. You were a perfect public speaker, but I didn't get Steli, who I love. Your personality sort of disappeared. Your character disappeared. You just became a template of public speaking. So he's like, I really didn't like or care for your talk. And it broke my heart at the time that he said it. And I remember it before that really crucial speech that I gave and it switched the question in my mind from how do I make myself sound perfect to what does this audience need that I can uniquely provide and the answer to that in that specific case was, Oh, this is a room full of founders, a lot of them are daydreaming about building a business, but they're wasting their time doing things that don't matter.

Steli: What they need is a kick in the ass. What I would have needed was somebody to give me a kick in the ass with love, right? But a kick in the ass. And when I went on stage, I gave them a kick in the ass. And because I was so passionate and because that was sort of the mode that I was in to give that, to energize that audience to true action, instead of daydreaming, I started cursing a lot, but it was not pre planned. It was not part of how I was speaking every day to everybody. And it really, that talk, Sort of created the persona. Everybody responded very strongly to that talk. And then it informed every video that I ever did, every podcast, every talk, because I would always ask myself, what does the audience need?

Steli: Like, what do the people need That I can uniquely provide? now for me, that might be cursing and screaming and being very opinionated and energizing and encouraging people to take action, stop selling themselves bullshit and others for some other founder that will not be it. That will not be the thing that their target audience needs to hear today that nobody else can tell them other than them. Maybe it's more analytical, maybe it's more detailed, maybe it's a totally different thing. But I think worrying less about you and the persona you want to build and the brand you'd like to have for personal selfish reasons and asking yourself a more differentiated question of like, what does your audience really need and crave?

Steli: And how can I give them that, maybe in a way that nobody else right now can? I think that can lead to a more sustainably energizing source of motivation for you as a founder to do this, but also for two better results because it's going to resonate more because. The audience feels if it's about you or about them. And when it feels that it's totally selfish, people usually do this, right? They, they, they give you the middle finger either figuratively or they just click away from your stuff and go, I'm not interested in this. I oftentimes had that the first reaction, if you watch a lot of my public talks. I get on stage.

Steli:  People usually hype me up way too much before I get on stage. And then I'm there in a leather jacket and loud persona. And the first reaction that people would have, the first three seconds of me walking the stage, people would be like, I want to hate this guy, right? There's too much hype about this guy. This guy is too confident. He walks on stage with too much confidence. I want to shit on this guy. Right. I want to hate. I want to hate the, yeah, I don't, I don't want to hear this. And. And then within, usually within the, the first question that I would ask is who here knows about, has heard about me before? Raise your hand. And very few people would always raise their hand. No matter, no matter how popular I was, very few people raised their hand. I would always collapse and be like, ah, this is the, the painful dosage of humility I need to stay grounded. And people would laugh and that would usually be like, oh, maybe he's not that big of a douchebag, right?

Steli: He can laugh about most people here not knowing who he is. And then I think. As people listen to me, they could feel, you know, the hair, the cursing, the leather jacket, some might like it, some might hate it, but this guy cares and he's passionately trying to give me something like he's passionately trying to move this audience to do something that's good. That was what people were responding to and why they, they, at the end would be very energized and excited. Not. That I gave a particularly articulate speech or that I, you know, seem very, very cool that some people will be impressed by that, but the majority of people don't care. So I think making it about serving the audience and giving, not taking, purely sounds very lofty and sounds a little bullshitty, like the kind of thing you say, but you don't really mean. But I can tell you that if you take that approach, people feel it and they will respond differently to it. So that's, you have to ask yourself, what does the audience need and what can I give them? And then that should inform the persona and the way that you create the content, what kind of content you create. 

Desiree: Yeah, it just goes back to: people buy from people. Even though you're up there with your leather jacket and your leather boots and your, your gelled up hair, I mean, at the end of the day, you’re provoking something in the audience. You're engaging them emotionally. That's what they're going to remember. They're not going to remember the copy on the landing page of another CRM or whatever service you're offering. 

Desiree: I think this is maybe my favorite conversation we've had by the way, because I feel like this is the true, I don't think we've barely scratched the surface of Steli as like the content, founder led content, marketer guy. I know in your past, you were the sales advice guy, and I think people are probably really thirsty, probably for more content about, well, okay. What's the meta explanation of how you became the sales advice guy? And so i'm excited to start doing more of this going forward We have another episode coming later in season three of this series—which it sounds like it's a far far off in the future, but it's not it's like probably a few weeks from now—that's going to be talking about how all of the mistakes we made when we shifted away from your founder-led content toward SEO and AI generated content. Spoilers! But that's further down the road. This is the end of this episode. I'm calling it here. Steli, thank you once again for your time. Everybody until next time. Bye bye.