Building a Founder Brand that Converts (and How Marketing Can Help)

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So our next speaker has launched onto the scene

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in an incredible way.

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Adam Robinson's the CEO at retention.com and RB2B.

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Bootstrap both businesses to help E.com and B2B brands

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grow and monetize their first party database

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through harnessing the power of identity.

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And his business is worth the session in and of itself.

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But what we asked Adam to tell us more about

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is how he's grown his company using an audience building

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motion on LinkedIn and activating his founder brand.

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So I asked Adam if he'd be willing to share his learnings

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with us.

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And don't want to steal any more thunder.

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So let's go ahead and welcome to the stage, Adam Robinson.

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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How many people post on LinkedIn regularly?

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How many people's CEOs post on LinkedIn regularly?

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How many people have a very significant pipeline

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operation going through LinkedIn?

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All right, that's pretty good.

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So I'm going to share with you what

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I have surmised from doing this for 18 months.

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And it's been kind of like a wild journey.

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And since it's only been 18 months,

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I think I still have this benefit of being sort of like a

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beginner mind at it.

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And I'm going to start off with how I see things.

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This is Chase Diamond.

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And he's a friend of mine.

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And he says this about himself.

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I think there's two competing models for approaching LinkedIn.

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One is being well known.

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And using LinkedIn is sort of an awareness platform.

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And then driving your audience somewhere else to like a

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newsletter or a podcast to build trust with them.

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And it can get you a big and very untargeted audience.

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But where I have fallen into, kind of by dumb luck, kind of

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by circumstance, is being known well and using LinkedIn as

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both the awareness and the trust building platform.

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And what I have found is that people actually feel like

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they're friends with me as a result of the content that I'm

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publishing.

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And I think this is like a vicious, incredibly

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powerful thing if you are your ICP and your ICP

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lives on LinkedIn.

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It takes a ton of effort.

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I wouldn't say that it's worth it if all of that is not

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aligned.

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But it happens to be aligned for me now.

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And I'm just going to share the entire journey of where I

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started, who I was working with, what I was doing, and how

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I've arrived at this place.

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And then how you can sort of nudge your CEO on the way and

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see if they get the content bug and want to pursue it.

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Because that's critically important to actually creating

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a quality product.

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So this is a map of my follower growth over time.

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And as you'll notice, there's a few interesting things.

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One, it started 18 months ago.

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Two, it was on a given trajectory.

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Then there was this unlock in aha moment.

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And it's step function up and growing at a totally different

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pace right now.

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And I have 75,000 followers.

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I get a ton of engagement.

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And the interesting thing is this guy named Peter

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conforty did an analysis on my audience.

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75% of it is actually in our ICP.

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85% are unique engagements, post to post, which I found

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really interesting.

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15% over 1,000 person companies, 27% CEOs, super valuable

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audience.

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So this is my argument for being known well.

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The well-known audience guys who are using engagement

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circles and all of that, they definitely don't have this

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quality in their audience.

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So let's go to my journey.

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Anybody heard of this company?

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Jasper.

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So I was sharing an office with these guys for two years

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before they started this company.

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And we were just some schmucks stuck at 3 million ARR.

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I had started my second startup, which was a 3 million

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ARR startup.

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And Dave Roganmoja, the CEO and I, we had come up with this

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plan that we were going to have a portfolio of 3 million ARR

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startups.

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And my company was ahead of the game at $268,000 per month

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at the MIR. On December 29, 2020, Dave wrote me, first

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bank customer, had the idea seven days ago, hopefully this

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is my get emails, which is now what retention.com is called.

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So that was literally about Jasper.

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And it's such an inspiring story for all you future founders

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out there.

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As a founder myself, it's like, you have no idea how big

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these things can be.

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When you start them, Dave was shooting for $250,000 a month.

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They went from 0 to $50 million in 12 months, faster than any

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company ever.

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And at the time, I had 12 million ARR and six employees.

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I was kind of running this insanely lean startup.

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And I was like, well, I can make a unicorn too.

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So how do you do it?

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You read this book by--

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it articulates the argument for creating a founder brand

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very well.

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Long story short, most companies are started for--

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[LAUGHTER]

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Everybody should read this book.

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I read it.

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I had the same objections.

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I'm sure all of your CEOs will have.

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I don't want to be famous.

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I don't want to get on the social treadmill.

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I don't want to post every day.

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I'm not going to start tweeting against the best people

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in the world, but I don't know what the heck is going on.

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I just don't want to do it.

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So I think there's two rebuttals that take care of all of it.

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Number one, it helps with literally everything.

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Literally, I just can't even articulate that clearly enough,

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being famous.

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And you're not really famous.

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Like, you're locally fit.

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I might be kind of famous in this room,

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but like I step outside and literally no one knows me.

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And then the second point is you don't

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have to start doing it yourself.

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In fact, I would recommend that you don't start doing it

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yourself, because you can sort of watch what a ghost writer does.

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Who knows the game, knows the algo, knows what's going on.

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And your CEO can get a sense as to whether or not

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they want to actually get into this game.

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And I met this guy, Tommy, who told me,

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you should start at LinkedIn.

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1% of active users create content.

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I can write for you, Daniel can boost your posts.

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You're going to crush.

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That's Tommy's LinkedIn.

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He's a ghost writer.

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He's got a great shop.

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If you want to get started, I'd recommend hitting him up.

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So my journey begins in September of 2020.

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And I spent 90 minutes on my first post

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trying to write my own.

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And it was about this weird thing that happened

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at a fireside chat kind of like this.

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I said what I did, and then this room harassed me for 45 minutes,

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and nobody else got to talk.

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So I'm like, this is a great LinkedIn post.

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I spent 90 minutes doing it, and literally 20 likes,

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five comments.

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Tommy puts this--

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I don't even know what this is.

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It's like a screenshot with a hashtag something.

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I don't know who this is.

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And it got 2,100 likes.

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It's like, OK, lesson one.

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To a large extent, the algorithm is your customer.

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I'm going to stand back, see what this guy can do, and observe.

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But-- and I think you can have somebody else do this for you

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in the beginning.

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And I got this feeling, and I hear this feeling a lot from people.

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I don't know exactly what this is doing for me,

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but it's doing something.

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And I think what that statement means

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is you start getting inbound that you wouldn't have gotten

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just by being alive on the platform.

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And it doesn't really take a lot to get to that phase.

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So this is where I would stop and say,

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if you're not in this perfect position than I am,

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where you are your ICP and your ICP lives on LinkedIn,

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it's probably still worth doing something like this

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just to get that kind of inbound, have people out there

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kind of learning about the values and vision of your company,

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like all that nonsense.

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So somebody else can do it up to this point.

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Now, I had this conviction from watching Jasper

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and what they did that there would

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be this like C of B minus crap content that would stop--

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start being everywhere.

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So I was like, how can I do something that Jasper can't do?

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That was basically my view.

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Knowing nothing about social, I'm like,

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Jasper's going to be everywhere.

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How do I be maximally authentic?

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So I just started trying stuff.

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And I wanted to use video because I was like,

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well, Jasper can't do video.

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I mean, now I kind of can.

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I started doing work in public stuff.

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I kind of had a remarkable situation in my business

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where it was like a lot of revenue, a little people,

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a lot of profit.

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I was willing to share financials.

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I was really willing to show vulnerability in a way

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that I think a lot of people are not on LinkedIn.

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But it still really wasn't working.

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And I've even met a docu-series.

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I declared that I was going to create a unicorn in a year

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and miss by over 50%.

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And I had some internal struggles with this first phase.

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Number one, I didn't really know why I was making what I was

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making.

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I was getting more curious and just letting

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the Ghostwriter do it.

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And it just bothered me.

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I'm like, I don't know why I'm writing this.

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Number two, I was trying to make content for Shopify store

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owners.

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And I wasn't a Shopify store owner.

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So I was conflicted about this.

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I'm like, why are they going to read my stuff

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and not Nick Sharman's stuff?

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And then I also felt like every post

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wasn't the best version of itself that it could be.

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And I think that's kind of what people

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find with agencies a lot.

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It's like they're doing their job.

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You're one of their customers.

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I was putting a lot of time and energy in it,

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because I was trying to do this video motion also.

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And I was just like, this could be better.

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So phase two is this guy Alec Paul.

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He works with B2B CEOs.

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And this guy is not a Ghostwriter.

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He's a consultant.

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He helps you with idea generation.

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Nail the hook.

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Nail the clothes.

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Nail the templates.

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And he's got a whole sales motion that comes out of this.

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So I had seen Sam Jacobs, who runs Pavilion.

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I thought his content just felt a lot better than mine.

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I didn't even have the vocabulary to know

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that it was because it was real thought leadership

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and not just soft stuff like I was making.

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So phase two content was aimed at Shopify store owners,

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but at least the posts were perfect.

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And the engagement went up a lot.

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And we also tried to implement Alec's sales motion, which

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is like you make a big post.

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You get a bunch of inbound connection requests.

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You accept the ones in your ICP.

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You float them a little message.

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It starts a conversation history.

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You wait 60 days to get served your content.

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You're a celebrity by then.

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Then you ask for a demo 60 days later.

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And it's like an 80% accept rate.

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That's what he has going on with his other B2BCO clients.

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Problem was, it just wasn't booking demos

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for Shopify store owners because they're not on LinkedIn.

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So around-- now we're at this point.

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We were contemplating creating a person level website visit

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or identity product for B2B, which we now have.

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And Alec was like, oh, man.

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Like, we can crush this if you're actually

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selling to these SaaS revenue leaders.

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So the question was, do we pivot all the content to that?

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Or do we go half and half or whatever?

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And I was like, I just want to go all in.

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Let's see if it works.

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And then I wrote this post about BDR because last year,

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everybody was questioning this model,

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whether the predictable revenue thing was a live or not.

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It was so much bigger than any post I'd ever had.

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And I was like, that's really interesting.

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And it was just this aha moment.

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And I remember it like it was yesterday.

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I was sitting in Santa Fe on vacation with my friends.

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We had an 80-clock dinner.

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I'm like, I got to go write three LinkedIn posts before dinner

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at 6.30.

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I sat down, wrote them.

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And I walked back in and I was like, OK,

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if these things crush, I know how this machine works.

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If they do not, I'm still lost.

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And it was like the biggest three posts ever

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that I've ever had.

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And I don't even know exactly what I learned or felt or whatever.

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But it was like, oh, I get this whole thing now.

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And it was a combination of just feeling

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the type of emotional roller coaster

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I need to take people on and vulnerability I need to show.

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And then there was also this thing where

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I was now writing about my own tumultuous experience,

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growing in SAS and with sales and all that stuff.

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But it really just clicked.

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And the thing I want to highlight is that I was 12 months

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after my first post.

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And the people that I talked to that know how to crush LinkedIn,

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when I say that it took me 12 months, usually the response

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that I get was it took me around that time, too.

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So you have to have this kind of insane, long game view

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about this and just really a lot of faith

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to pursue it as intensely as I did, quite frankly.

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So why is it working?

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I think for the most part, for me,

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it's because I'm willing to say stuff

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that other people are not willing to say.

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People always ask me, like, how do you write about your business

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sucking quite frankly?

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And I'm like, I don't know.

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I hate doing it.

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But I just feel like I can tell from the comments,

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it's what people want to hear.

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They're going through the same thing.

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It's a weird thing to write when you have employees and stuff.

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But it's just why I think it's working.

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And now we're here.

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I call this a Chris Walker playbook.

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I kind of copy his headshots.

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I think when you put your face out there,

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it's like doing even more for this creating a friend thing.

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And this is actually driving real business.

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Some of you probably saw this close.

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It was just unbelievable.

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I kept using it.

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But I just dropped this at the end of the post.

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And it would drive anything we wanted.

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It would drive weightless signups.

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It would drive meetings with very high value people.

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It was just amazing.

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And Kyle works with Alec.

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This is actually in our PLG motion for this product.

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So if somebody signs up for RB to be their high value,

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they don't install a script in four days.

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Intercom will send him a message.

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And he'll reach out with my profile

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and be like, yo, can we help?

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Can you talk to Pete or whatever?

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And it's nudging people along this value journey,

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which is-- and another interesting thing--

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people will get on-- if I set a meeting with my profile,

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I don't have to be the one that attends it.

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And it like books at the same rate,

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and they show up at the same rate, which is fascinating.

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There's so much value in the scalability of this profile.

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But again, the only reason it works as well

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is because we're selling to people who live on LinkedIn,

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and I'm one of those people.

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So I just want to keep reminding you of that.

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And this is hard and expensive.

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I'm being super ambitious on this video part.

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I'm trying to-- I don't even want to explain it,

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but I'm just trying to make another version of this docu

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series that isn't episodic, and it's

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like these very contained stories.

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But I really do think there's something

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there that's contextualized for LinkedIn that can sort of be

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beyond the Chris Walker playbook.

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But it's really expensive, and I spend a ton of time writing

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this stuff myself.

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Luckily for everybody here, especially for your CEO,

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you can always start with Tommy.

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You don't have to go that crazy.

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But you can if you want.

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So that's all I got.

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Thanks, everybody.

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[APPLAUSE]