Marketing Experts Reveal Top Strategies To

Arlen:
Welcome to the e-commerce marketing podcast everyone. My name is Arlen and I am your host. And today we have a very special guest, Lloyed Lobo, who’s an entrepreneur, podcast host and community builder, experienced the Gulf War as a young refugee in Kuwait, witnessing the strength of community in evacuating the population to safety. As the co-founder of fintech platform Boast.Al, he leveraged the Community-Led Growth model to bootstrap the company to $10 million in annual recurring revenue while also co-founding Traction, a community empowering more than 100k innovators through connections, content, and capital. Welcome to the podcast, Lloyd.

Lloyed:
Thank you so much. That’s quite an intro. I appreciate you looking forward to talking to your audience and hanging out here for some time.

Arlen:
Yes, likewise. And I’m super excited to talk to you and thank you for joining us today. It’s really interesting to be able to talk to entrepreneurs that have touched into so many different areas and from reading your intro, you’ve definitely had a kind of a unique background, which I think of course has shaped you to where you are today. But before we kind of dive into the topic of today, which is going to be community-led growth. Why don’t you tell us a little bit more about your background and specifically how you got into what you’re doing today.

Lloyed:
Definitely. I mean, I don’t know if I was destined into entrepreneurship, but I was definitely nurtured into entrepreneurship in a very unconventional way. None of my family members were entrepreneurs, but I was exposed to certain elements that lend itself to the world of entrepreneurship. Right. So if you look at entrepreneurship, what are the two most required things? Number one is taking an obscure idea to execution and impact. while dealing with extreme uncertainty.

Arlen:
Hmm?

Lloyed:
Number two, it’s all about communication. It’s meeting people, it’s evangelizing people, it’s bringing people together, right? And I view those two things as being part of parcel of my life growing up.

Arlen:
Hmm.

Lloyed:
So I was born in Kuwait. My parents are from India. Now they weren’t educated. My dad was a farmer in India. My mom lived in the slums of Mumbai. And because they weren’t educated, they couldn’t… move out west so they moved to Kuwait for better prospects as the currency translated more favorably when compared to India. Now, because they weren’t wealthy and all, we didn’t have like summer spent in Europe and fancy locations, etc. Right? Or America. I hadn’t even seen Disneyland, I think, till my late teens. When I moved. But our childhood summers were spent in the slums of Mumbai, which was like four walls made out of a concrete blocks and an aluminum roof. Now, what was really interesting is there was no toilet in that house.

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
And every four or five or maybe 10 homes had a TV. And my mom, my grandparents’ house had a TV because my mom worked in Kuwait and she could bring back one.

Arlen:
Okay.

Lloyed:
And… What was really interesting despite that was watching TV was communal. Even if you’re watching TV, everyone is getting together and hanging in and watching going to the bathroom

Arlen:
Right.

Lloyed:
is communal because you’re standing in line to use the toilet and

Arlen
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
even eating was communal. If you have a little extra, you share it with everyone. I still remember

Arlen:
Yes.

Lloyed:
like my fondest memories as a kid when puddles would turn the ponds. during the rainy season in the summer, I’d be swimming in them. And every summer when my parents would leave to Kuwait, I would like grab onto their feet and not wanna leave. Fast forward a few years, Kuwait was hit by the Gulf War. And it was a time where there’s no internet, there was no phone, security at lapsed in the country. I went down the building with my dad and I witnessed this marvel, where today you see people belabor on a problem and it festers and festers and gossips spreads over social media and it turns into new monsters. Back then, Like, of course, extreme uncertainty.

Arlen:
Right.

Lloyed:
The country is getting bombed. And people, rather than belaboring on the issue, they’re like, can we solve it? Somebody is like, I’ll guard the building from this time

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
to this time. Somebody else is like, I’ll organize food. And somebody else is like, I’ll help your displaced family members with some extra room. Others are like, hey, we’ll coordinate

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
and figure out, maybe there’s something we can house people at the school. So every building became a sub-community and communicated with the next building and the next building. And word of mouth spread. turned into

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
the largest grassroots evacuation movement that communicated and coordinated with embassies, with governments, and took people to safety.

Arlen:
Wow.

Lloyed:
And that day actually, reflecting back, I realized those two experiences in my childhood gave me two things. One is the joy of giving and helping others without expecting anything. And in turn, more importantly, the joy of bringing people together and being around great companions. And number

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
two is this entrepreneurial spirit, right, which we often associate with making money.

Arlen:
Right.

Lloyed:
But what entrepreneurship really is, what that spirit really is, is how do you take an obscure idea to impact while dealing with extreme risk and uncertainty? And there’s no bigger risk and uncertainty than the Gulf War.

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
Few years later, we immigrated to Canada. I finished engineering, which is a funny story on its own. I didn’t finish high school. And without the diploma, I managed to graduate with a bachelor’s of engineering in software. So most people were like,

Arlen:
What?

Lloyed:
you don’t have a high school diploma. How did you get into engineering? And this is what I tell people.

Arlen:
Right.

Lloyed:
Most of what I’ve been through in my life, I call luck. People laugh at me. 

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
They’re like, oh, there’s no such thing as luck. I’m like, there is. Luck and risk are two sides of the same coin. The ones who get lucky, they never stop flipping. Keep flipping and flipping

Arlen:
Hmm.

Lloyed:
and flipping and sometimes several times a day. You’re flipping risk,

Arlen:
Yep.

Lloyed:
risk. And one day you get lucky. 

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
Now here’s the thing. How many kids would apply to university if they didn’t finish high school, don’t have a high school diploma? Not many, right?

Arlen:
Yeah, not many at all.

Lloyed:
I applied to every single university. 

Arlen:
Wow.

Lloyed:
Obviously nobody took me. One university, luck would have it, right? Luck and risk are different sides of the same coin. They said, hey, once you write the entrance exams, we’re still waiting for your transcripts, but let’s speed this up.

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
So I went and write it. Unlike in the US, there’s no SATs in Canada. So it’s like, it relies on the school entrance exam. So I wrote the math and English exam. And they’re like, listen, because I’d sent them the scores pre-diploma, so like from previous semesters. 

Arlen:
Right.

Lloyed:
So, we need to see our high school diploma and the scores. And but you did well on these tests, so we’ll let you start the semester in the interest of time so you don’t lose time. But if you don’t supply the transcripts by the end of this month, then you can’t continue. You’re gonna have to unenroll, right?

Arlen:
Right.

Lloyed:
I started the semester, luck would have it, they never followed up.

Arlen:
Oh wow.

Lloyed:
And I graduated an engineering degree. 

Arlen:
Okay.

Lloyed:
So that’s what I tell you always, like luck and risk are two sides of the same coin. Most people, they

Arlen:
Yeah,

Lloyed:
just don’t try, man. And you know, if you look

Arlen:
right.

Lloyed:
at it, every major success in the world, right, everything

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
that’s been obscure, that eventually became huge, they never stop. 

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
They just kept going and going. Look at Mr. Beast. He created the crappiest

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
videos in the early days.

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
But nearly 10 years of creating videos, and he’s an icon today, right?

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
Gary Vaynerchuk, I still remember, I would watch his videos in 2005, 2006 on WineTV. He did a program. on video creation on HubSpot’s InVent marketing program, which is where I learned

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
all of my sales marketing skills. He never stopped. He believed in video when nobody believed in video for business. And today he’s Gary Vee. Warren Buffett, the single

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
richest person in, I guess, investing in stocks, never

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
stopped, right? Compound interest

Arlen:
Mm.

Lloyed:
and consistency is what we call overnight success. Don’t stop. Luck and risk are different sides of the same coin. Keep flipping. And so

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
I graduated engineering. I was yearning this risk and uncertainty, obviously, because of the way I’ve lived my life, being this rebellious kid, community, people-oriented, Gulf War refugee. So

Arlen:
Mm.

Lloyed:
I graduated engineering and I didn’t want to go into engineering. And I applied to sales jobs and nobody gives me a sales jobs and luck would have it. Startup founder gives me a job cold calling. Now, most

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
people probably wouldn’t take that with an engineering background. I didn’t see it beneath me. I think I was making like 25, $30,000 a year. I take the job cold calling. My parents freaked out, Indian parents, our friends, kids are at Microsoft and you finished engineering a cold calling. But fast forward today, everything I am is because of that skill, right? I talked about consistency. The most important skill, the other most important skill is communication. Everything from convincing your spouse that you’re not going to bring money to investors to customers when you have no product to convincing employees When you have no money is communication So I’m

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
like, you know If I want to get better at communication and it’s such a big skill From what I understood talking to other business people Then I got to put myself in a situation that will force me to communicate day in day out and no better job than Sales, nobody would give me

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
a sales job. So I took cold calling a gig and I guess the first cold call I made took four hours to practice and I hung up the first time they picked Up the phone and everyone

Arlen:
Right.

Lloyed:
laughed but I never stopped I kept doing it and got better and better and better and then my progression happened is as a function of working for a founder I got so good at cold calling because And I got good at understanding the workings as a startup. The next job was at a startup as well

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
and there I joined in sales and As I landed there, I realized they didn’t have a repeatable, scalable product or process. So I needed to figure it out. I needed to figure out what the customers wanted, how to translate it into dev requirements, and guess what? Had to build a website and collateral and everything else. Now, the second job I took was in the States because my girlfriend was in med school there and I went on a visa. I didn’t have the liberty of quitting this job because what am I going to do? Where am I going to go home? Right? 

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
I’m going to have to go right back. And I learned so much as a function of doing so many things and working alongside a founder. From there, I progressed to being a head of sales and marketing at another startup. And my best friend from college called me to start BOST. And I jumped at the opportunity

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
because I had felt like a natural ceiling in a startup. I’m like, where do I go from here? Okay, so let’s start our thing. And that tells you

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
another key learning here is… It’s neither the destination nor the journey. It’s the companions that matter the most, right? You become the average of the

Arlen:
Mm-mm.

Lloyed:
five people you surround yourself with. As a function of working with founders, it was natural that I would eventually start a company. 

Arlen:
Yeah,

Lloyed:
So that’s how

Arlen:
yeah.

Lloyed:
I progressed into entrepreneurship.

Arlen:
Okay, that’s, that’s quite a story. And that’s, um, yeah, I mean, I’m thinking back to what you said, as far as the risk, um, you know, that you’re taking versus the luck is on the same side of the coin, because, you know, you’re going back to your, your not even have graduated from a high school and then being able to, you know, go through college and then it just so happened that they didn’t ask for your transcripts and have been able to, to continue. I mean, I think a lot of the moral to that story just is you can’t be afraid to try things. You can’t be afraid to take that risk because you just never know how things are going to end up. Nine times out of 10, people are thinking, I didn’t graduate from high school. There’s no way I’m getting into college. And they’re going to stop right there and maybe pivot, go a different direction. But you were determined and you went forward and things just worked out. So…

Lloyed:
lot of people don’t try man

Arlen:
Yeah Excellent testimony.

Lloyed:
they psych themselves and you know what everything good is on the other side of risk and pain and suffering then you got to

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
try right a lot of people don’t try and if you don’t try you don’t stand out you don’t try to be different you’re just gonna be status quo

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
and then you know I mean like people keep doing the same thing day in day out and they complain they complain but I’m like what are you gonna do about it Just

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
do something, just give it a try, right? Like what’s the worst that’s gonna, your life’s not gonna be more miserable than it is right now if you try.

Arlen:
Right, right, exactly.

Lloyed:
It might just get into something better. And you know, like working out, right? 

Arlen:
Hmm.

Lloyed:
You go to the gym, if you keep living the same way, it’s day in, day out, you’re not gonna get bigger, you’re not gonna get stronger. That’s the reality. 

Arlen
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
Your brains are like that, your life is like that.

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
Pain is the precondition for growth.

Arlen:
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Well, excellent. Thank you for sharing that testimonial. Appreciate it. Now, kind of bringing it back to what you indicated in your, you know, in your kind of your story in the intro as being a young refugee during the Gulf War, and then just seeing how everyone just banded together as a community, got things done, were able to move on from that situation, get evacuated, you know, they didn’t even it seems like they just pivoted immediately. And that’s a huge, strong sense of community that I believe is from what you mentioned was just already there, was already part of the culture. And so, you know, taking this to the entrepreneurship, for those that are really just not familiar with community-led growth, which is I think a distinct model these days with many startups, why do you think it’s really been an increasingly popular growth model? you know, in startups, in the whole startup ecosystem.

Lloyed:
I don’t know if it is popular more than like people are seeing companies like Notion and HubSpot and Atlassian. You see Atlassian last year, the community came together to self-organize 5,000 events. 

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
You look at like Notion completely exploded. You look at HubSpot, right? You look at the number of community led businesses that are doing so well that have long term

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
modes and that’s nothing new, right? 

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
The general theme. is yesterday’s innovation always becomes tomorrow’s commodity. 

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
First came the internet, dot com company, then cloud, right? Then social, then mobile, blockchain, fintech. But we don’t say fintech, blockchain, social, mobile, cloud, dot com companies anymore, right? And so we’ll never say AI company as well. Every innovation becomes a commodity eventually. But the most enduring businesses are built on people to people connection. Until the day robots are buying from robots, 

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
the most enduring brands will be built on people connecting with people. 

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
And so when you look at these successes, people realize like Apple, like Tesla. And then why go in the last 20 years? Look at the 80s, right? Harley Davidson almost went bankrupt in the 80s. The management came out and rebuilt the company in the ethos of community. They went out and created rider clubs. Employees became riders, riders became employees. They rebuilt the company on the ethos of community. Community rescued the company, but also created movements to donate to breast cancer and autism. And it was all around the camaraderie and the brotherhood of riding together and the joys of riding. 

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
And today…in 2023, not only this company is an iconic brand, but you can recognize a Harley fan merely by what they’re wearing. In fact, as I’m promoting

Arlen:
Thanks for watching!

Lloyed:
the book from grassroots to greatness, 13 rules

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
to build iconic brands with community led growth, I’ve been going to events

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
dressing up like a Harley guy, right, like

Arlen:
Okay.

Lloyed:
boots, still my knees, leather jacket. And everyone asked me, where’s your Harley Davidson? And I’m

Arlen:
Right,

Lloyed:
Like, see, see how iconic that is, that

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
kind of iconic level. is not built by technology, it’s built by human

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed
to human connections. And when you see a company like OpenAI, there’s so much buzz around AI, like one of the

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
most valuable companies, fastest growing companies. How did OpenAI come about? With the power of people.

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
If people weren’t giving them their data, their training data and contributing, there would be no OpenAI. 

Arlen:
Yeah,

Lloyed:
So this just tells you,

Arlen:
that’s very great.

Lloyed:
right, that every, like CPMs, look at it, marketing in 2023 is taking a bloodbath. CPMs are up. Generative AI has created a sea of sameness. You know now when people are copy pasting from chat GPT. 

Arlen:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Lloyed:
Consumers are tired of seeing the same old nonsense, 

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
like click baits, spam, giving personal data to access crappy white papers, and they’re tired and they’re checking out of the old marketing, and the best brands know this, and they’ve been building communities. Like if you see a Nike, they have their running club. You don’t have to be a member to join a Nike running club. Wherever you are, you can meet new friends.

Arlen:
Mm

Lloyed:
That is…

Arlen:
hmm. Exactly.

Lloyed:
Community is about bringing people together. And what’s interesting, Arlen, is as I was researching to write this book, talked to a thousand people, watched all of my community content over the last seven years, and looked at all these companies that have endured the test of time, I found something very interesting. Every obscure idea that eventually became a worldwide enduring phenomena from

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
Christianity. to crossfit every obscure idea that became eventually a worldwide enduring phenomena at four stages in common. People listen to you or buy your product, you have an audience. When you bring that audience together to interact with one another, it becomes a community. When the community comes together to create impact towards a purpose that’s far greater than your product or profit, it becomes a movement.

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
And when that movement has undying faith in its purpose through sustained rituals over time it becomes a cult or a religion. If you see this, a lot of influencers today have audiences, but the key to turn an audience into a cult-like brand is community. 

Arlen:
Yeah,

Lloyed:
Bringing people together is the first step.

Arlen:
that’s that is the key. Now, you know, a lot of the marketers and business owners that are listening to this, you know, have already probably been exposed to a ton of different growth hacks. You know, how do you grow the business? There’s a million in one different, I guess you could say, hacks or growth models, rather, if you will, to propel your business to the next height. And so I think a big question is then going to be. because we’re touting the advantages to community-led growth, but how does a brand actually know if the community-led growth strategy is right for them? And is it right for all businesses?

Lloyed:
Exactly. So, you know, the way I look at it is number one, you got to understand if you have the DNA of giving because the community is a labor of love is a marathon of the heart and mind. It takes a long time. So you better love your customer.

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
In general, if you’re building a business, you need to have the passion for the customer you’re serving. If you hate your customers, I don’t know how long you’re going to sustain them. You’re in business. I don’t know if you if you hate your ideal customers. How can you continue serving them? Or you gotta find somebody else who deals with them. Right?

Arlen:
Right, right.

Lloyed:
So one, you gotta love them and you wanna be able to help them beyond your product or service. You care about

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
their aspirations, not just the problems in your process, right?

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
Your profits. You have this, you draw joy from genuinely helping and giving, and I think that needs to be core to your DNA. So that’s when you can even think about it. 

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
Because a lot of the times people come and ask me is like, Hey, I wanna build a community, do I start a Slack group or a Facebook group and I tell

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
them, man, that’s like asking me, I wanna build a church but you don’t know what religion you belong to. Or I wanna build a home

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
but I have, I don’t know where I wanna live. And that doesn’t make sense, right? So it all starts with your customer. One, do you wanna give? Do you have the DNA of giving? It starts with your values. 

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
Then your customer, who’s your ideal customer? What are their aspirations? What stands in their way? What does their circle of influence look like? What is the white space? Where do they eat, breathe, drink, sleep? Once you understand your customer really well and the white space

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
and their pain points and aspirations, then you can start to create for them, right? Content,

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
value, basically you can create value for them. And then you can bring them together.

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
I’ll tie this together, if I share like Harley and Apple and Nike’s examples, it’s gonna be like too much of a platitude to sink in.

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
So I’ll share both example, right? Both FinTech platform, we give companies money for research and development. We can sell to any company that’s developing new products or improving existing products. There’s hundreds of billions of dollars in government tax credits for businesses, but it’s a cumbersome process. that’s prone to frustrating orders and takes a long time to get the money. We automate that. And when we started

Arlen
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
the company in 2012, we naturally gravitated to what we knew, cold calling. So we started cold calling.

Arlen:
Okay.

Lloyed:
When you’re cold calling, who are you gonna call? Stable companies, right? You’re starting out. Coal, oil, and gas manufacturing construction. Nobody would take our calls.

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
They’d be like, what the hell is this? You’re gonna take our sensitive data, which is our. product development data and our financial data and you’re gonna give us some money and you’re two like guys we’ve never heard of, number one. Then

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
we started getting dejected and even if those people heard about these programs, they’re like, why don’t we just work with a big accounting firm? But we’re like, the accounting firm sucks because

Arlen:
Mm.

Lloyed:
they’re gonna do it manually and take up all your time and we’ll streamline this process. They didn’t care, credibility was a huge factor. Then we said, let’s go to their events. Let’s storm their events and maybe we’ll make some relationships in person. We just couldn’t relate. 

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
They were like the old cigar club and we look like two young guys that threw a hoodie on top of our or rather two young guys that threw a suit jacket on top of our hoodies. So dejected, we started going

Arlen:
Okay.

Lloyed:
to the startup events and it felt like our tribe.

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
Wow, we had great conversations. One thing led to the other. We’re having dinners and lunches with these people. We’re partying together. 

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
We are. participating in hackathons together. 

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
Through that, we found two white spaces, which helped us build

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
the first community, which is more than just subscribers, it is building stronger, deeper connections. 

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
The one white space we found was all the events for startups at the time were high level CEO platitudes. Bring like a CEO with 50 million value or ARR or whatever, like some big company CEO to

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
share inspirational stories to founders. Now, if I’ve already quit my job, and put everything on the line to do a company, and I’m at zero or one, and I wanna get to like one or five, why do I care about inspiration? How much inspiration can I soak in? I’ve already decided

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
to make the leap. I need tactics, not inspiration. So that was white space number one.

Arlen:
Yep.

Lloyed:
White space number two was the local media wasn’t covering startups. So we said, aha, this is great

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
So we decided to host our own meetups. And we served the immediate needs. So what was happening was all those events were held by event organizers, then they wanted to sell tickets. So they would bring the most popular speaker who could talk about inspiration and put butts in seats.

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
But, and you know, the startup market was very small. So people are not catering to that and they’re catering more to mainstream. So we started hosting like small events, five, 10, like, you know, 10, 15 people, bring a speaker who’s like got to 5 million, 10 million. to talk about specifically

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
how they got their first 100K in revenue, how they got their first 100K in funding, their first employees, yada yada, very tactical. And we did

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
it with a cadence. We never stopped, like, you know, just because 10 people showed up and we had free pizza and free meetup space at the coworking space, just kept doing

Arlen:
Mm hmm.

Lloyed:
it and doing it. And that grew. And

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
one day, like 200 people showed up to the coworking space and they’re like, you can’t

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
do this here anymore. You got to leave.

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
Right? And then in parallel, reached out to the local media and said, can we cover? Startups and they’re like listen, it’s not a priority.

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
So I went in to some like second tier not national media blog and I said can I cover a local event? They want they love the content. They’re like you just need content So I covered

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
some startups because I couldn’t talk about like how to build a start So I covered a couple startups and I shared it with those startups and those posts went viral got lots of tweets So I went back to the newspaper because I knew the newspaper was affiliated with the net It was a part of the national newspaper So I’m like, I have a website that has no traffic. What’s the best way to drive SEO for a new website? You get like domain authority from, backlinks from a high traffic website, like the newspaper highest domain authority.

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
You’ll get instant social proof because now you’re a writer for the newspaper. And this all this, oh, they’re two new guys gets washed away when you have the newspaper. and all these awesome speakers coming to your events.

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
It’s like the credibility bounces off each other, or columnist for the newspaper, or speaker at the event kind of thing.

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
And so I shared the blog with the editor. And the editor is like, oh, wow, this is greatly trafficked. And I’m like, we could bring the same traffic to your blog. And the newspaper is a dying medium for the younger generation. So you could liven it up, right?

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
Tap into a new audience. So he said, sure. This is great. I’ll give you a blog. And

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
one lesson here is, unless you’re doing something illegal, Never ask for permission. 

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
Beg for forgiveness, because your life will go on asking for permission. So

Arlen:
Right,

Lloyed:
I’m like, what

Arlen:
right.

Lloyed:
do I call this blog? What do I call this blog post? He gave me one blog post. I decided to call it Startup of the Week. Now I did two things. 

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
One, in a place which the media wasn’t really covering, you get the national newspaper calling it Startup of the Week. They’re like,

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
oh, okay, this is like an award kind of thing, social proof for them.

Arlen:
Right.

Lloyed:
Two, it gave us instant credibility.

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
Three, some weird thing, like every so often, like sorry, every Monday morning, the founder would go to the newsstand and buy the print copy, right? Because

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
being in print is more legit. And so it gave us more credibility.

Arlen:
You’re right.

Lloyed:
And then we got a backlink every week, which

Arlen:
Okay.

Lloyed:
boosted our domain authority every week. Startup of the week written by Bost, Lloyd Loeb of Co-Founder of Bost. And what’s really interesting is when he gave me that first blog, it was one blog post. 

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
I didn’t know any of this other thing would happen. And I wrote Startup of the Week, shared it with the founder, and it went more viral than that first post I wrote for a second-tier blog. And the editor calls me, and I have missed calls, and I’m like, he’s gonna be pissed that I called it Startup of the Week.

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
But he called me and he was happy, and he’s like, listen, if you commit to writing it every week. I will give you a print column and I wasn’t getting paid. 

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
So I wrote that with cadence. So a few lessons that come out of here is one, understanding your ideal customer. Two, going after a market that you can resonate with and vibe with because it’s a long journey to spend time with them and you genuinely wanna give. 

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
Three, pick an offline medium and pick an online medium and let them play off each other. So

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
our offline medium was a meetup. I’d rather do small meetups more frequently through the year than one annual conference. And even when during the pandemic, we moved all of this online,

Arlen:
OK.

Lloyed:
rather than doing one big virtual summit, we were doing two live webinars, sessions

Arlen:
Mm hmm.

Lloyed:
like this, but the audience

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
would join and interact with other two live a week.

Arlen:
Okay.

Lloyed:
And that cadence of doing that took our audience to over 100,000 subscribers.

Arlen:
Oh, wow. Okay.

Lloyed:
So the point I’m trying to make is pick an offline medium and pick an

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
online medium. But whatever you do, pick a medium that allows you to own the audience. I feel

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
fortunate we were at a time where social platforms weren’t buzzing as much like LinkedIn wasn’t huge, podcasting wasn’t huge. And

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
so we were forced to do events and blog for a newspaper, which enabled me to collect email addresses. Now when you use social platforms, you can’t collect email addresses, right?

Arlen:
Yeah,

Lloyed:
So if you can’t

Arlen:
yeah.

Lloyed:
collect email addresses, how do you bring people together? You just

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
hope that they’d sign up from your social. Now when you go on your LinkedIn feed, how many things do you see?

Arlen:
Yeah,

Lloyed:
So then you’re not focused and

Arlen:
exactly.

Lloyed::
the attention is very divided. So we’re very

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
fortunate. And so what that newspaper article every week did was we put a form in there. If you wanna be in here, apply. People would

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
apply, our list started growing. And then we would invite them to our meetups. They’d come to meetups,

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
meet other people. And that combo of a regular cadenced online channel, whether

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
it’s a blog, whether it’s a podcast, whether it’s a live webinar. in combination with a regular in-person meetup, bringing people together,

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
helped us build and grow that community. And then during the pandemic, we added, we moved it all online. So now it’s two live webinars a week and it’s just more and more people are showing up and it’s growing.

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
And so that’s the trick, right? Like you don’t have to

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
do a hundred things. Like figure

Arlen:
Right.

Lloyed:
out your ideal customer, figure out their circle of influence, meaning who do they follow? So you have a list of people to invite to your events. What platforms do they frequent so you know where to distribute? And who

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
do they fund? Who are the people they pay and buy other services from so you can partner with them?

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
And all our salespeople then stopped being seen as salespeople, but they were out there going in the community, helping people, shaking hands, kissing babies, having conversations saying, how can I help you? Right? Okay, you may or may not need the service, but is there anything I can help you with or make a connection for? So

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
they became like essentially more community builders than

Arlen:
Right. Yeah.

Lloyed:
So that is the brass tacks of how we did it in a very quick summary.

Arlen:
Yeah, that definitely makes a difference. Like you said, when your people are seen as not necessarily a salesperson, you know, they’re there to try to help you. You’re trying to engage with them. You’re trying to solve their problems. And you’re really trying to really be a friend or an advocate to getting them to grow. And then another key point that you made that I think is very true is that you guys kind of at that time, you reached out to kind of an underserved. market, you know, there were people that were fresh startup founders that were maybe they left some large Fortune 500 companies. They didn’t need the motivation. You know, they were making big salaries, but they needed actionable tips to move their brand forward. But, you know, they weren’t looking for the motivation and you guys came in and served them with a group that talked about, like you said, brass tacks. How do you get things done? What are some actionable steps? and tips and that’s what you have to do. You’re looking to serve them with actionable items. And so yeah, I think that’s a testament to when you’re looking to build a community, of course there’s tons of communities out there, but what are some underserved, or what are some communities that may already exist, but their needs are kind of not met? And how can you as a brand meet their needs by creating another community? And I think that’s really one of the things

Lloyed:
That’s key. 

Arlen:
that you want to look for.

Lloyed:
A lot of us niche up, right? We niche up. I think it’s important to niche down, like go like, you know, one level lower and lower, right?

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
It’s better to be an inch wide and a mile deep than a mile

Arlen:
Mm.

Lloyed:
wide and an inch deep, right? 

Arlen:
Yeah,

Lloyed:
You want to get

Arlen:
exactly.

Lloyed:
really, really be the best of the smallest thing and then expand

Arlen:
Yep.

Lloyed:
and then expand because,

Arlen:
Yeah,

Lloyed:
You know, 

Arlen:
that’s

Lloyed:
markets are massive now. If

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
you be the best at something, and this is what e-commerce entrepreneurs, I think, do really well, is

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
a lot of them, they sell these niche products, which they can really build a community around. Online combined with offline. Look at what Red Bull did. That’s kind of where they started with universities and colleges.

Arlen:
Yeah,

Lloyed:
But

Arlen:
exactly.

Lloyed:
as you’re thinking about communities, I want you to think about this, the one step I didn’t mention. And there are 13 steps in the book. which will take you from audience to cult. But nonetheless, the one step that I didn’t mention is in the early days when you’re thinking about community, there’s one of three kind of communities you can build. 

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
One is a community of practice, okay?

Arlen:
Yep.

Lloyed:
Community of practice is learning about a specific field. Like how do I get better at a specific skill, et cetera. Then there’s a community of product, right? Traction is a community of practice. We teach you how to become better entrepreneurs, better innovators, help Spot become better marketers. Then there’s a community of product, which is making you, turning your product users, turning your customers into evangelists. Like how do you use

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
the product? How you build on the product? How do you become an advocate? And the third one is a community of play where you come together to have fun, more like Harley Davidson or Nike Running Club.

Arlen:
Exactly.

Lloyed:
You gotta pick what kind of community you’d build. I’ll only urge you, if you don’t have a product that people use very frequently, or you have a new product that doesn’t have product market fit.

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
Don’t try to make your community about the product.

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
Make it about a practice where people can learn to get better or make it about

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
play like Red Bull was the community of play, right?

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed: 
It was a fun and then you have Red Bull as a function of it kind of thing.

Arlen:
Exactly, exactly. Yeah, it’s a very well said and true indeed. Well, Lloyd, as we get ready to wrap things up, aside from Red Bull, of course, is a great example. Example, you also mentioned that your brand, Bose.ai, that have led some great community led efforts and grew that way. What are some other brands that you can think of that have done some exceptional community led growth and have been able to propel your brand that when we can kind of look at as a model.

Lloyed:
Definitely Notion, Notion’s a great one.

Arlen:
Okay, yeah.

Lloyed:
Notion’s fantastic. I wrote right about these on my LinkedIn, right? 

Arlen:
Okay?

Lloyed:
So you can follow me on Lloyd Lobo on LinkedIn for business content.

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
And I’ll continue to maybe feature one community every week at least,

Arlen:
Okay.

Lloyed:
and one community led business and how they did it. But

Arlen:
That’d be great.

Lloyed:
Notion’s a great example. You know, if you look at Barbie, you know, it’s an iconic brand, but they built a massive

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
community, right? and the movies, everything what people talk about. Look at Lululemon,

Arlen:
Right.

Lloyed:
look at CrossFit

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
is a great example around the rituals of workout of the day.

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
So there

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
are a lot of these that you can take inspiration from, Gymshark, that kind of thing.

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
Like you gotta figure out, but it all starts with your customer’s aspirations. I can’t

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
say this enough. It starts with your customer’s aspirations.

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
And without that, there’s nothing. Like, I mean, look at Minecraft. There are

Arlen:
Yeah,

Lloyed:
so many,

Arlen:
yeah,

Lloyed:
right?

Arlen:
they’re very true. Yeah, thank you for naming those. And those are some great models that we can all try to follow. Well, Lloyd, this has been an awesome conversation. You know, I definitely appreciate you coming on. I’ve learned a lot as far as community building. And I know there’s some great takeaways for all of our viewers and listeners for sure. But I always like to switch gears here before we close things out, just so our audience get to know you a little bit better. So yeah, if you don’t mind sharing one closing fun fact about yourself that you think we’d be interested to know.

Lloyed:
Fun fact about myself, I don’t know what’s so fun about it, but I’ll tell you all my life I chased success looking for happiness.

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
And when I found success, which is other people’s definition of success, which is money, we sold half the company, came into some money, and I left the day to day of the company, I ended up depressed, and I hit rock bottom. And eventually I joined a fitness community, I came back to good health,

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
which actually propelled me on the subject of the book, which is community. And as I reflected back from spending my childhood summers in the slums of Mumbai, to being a refugee of the Gulf War, to learning everything about marketing from the HubSpot community, to bootstrapping boasts with community, my whole life was surrounded by community. The one time where I came, and I was pissed poor, the one time

Arlen:
Hmm.

Lloyed:
I came into money was when I felt I was going to lose my community because I left the day to day of the business.

Arlen:
Okay,

Lloyed:
And

Arlen:
wow.

Lloyed:
then what brought me back to good health was community. Loneliness is the number one killer in America. There are five places in the world where people live functionally towards 100. Functionally is

Arlen:
Mm.

Lloyed:
key because longevity without functionality is useless. And they’re

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
called the blue zones. Four or five out of the nine traits have to do with social connections and community. And that’s why

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
I decided to write the book about the community to educate the world that whether it’s business or personal life. It’s never the destination or the journey, but it’s the companions that matter the most. Like two key incidents here on the Gulf War, during the Gulf War, as we were going from Kuwait to Baghdad to Jordan on the highway of death in this wickety bus,

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
currency invalid, bombings, etc. Adults should have been scared and worried, right?

Arlen:
Yeah,

Lloyed:
I’m a nine year old or so.

Arlen:
For sure.

Lloyed:
I look around the bus. People are laughing and singing and playing the guitar. 

Arlen:
Mm.

Lloyed:
You could be on a crappy journey on the way to hell. Great friends make it memorable. Great companions make it memorable.

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
Another incident is when I came into money, I got COVID, Omicron, I almost died. I was hospitalized on oxygen.

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
Because it was Omicron, even my wife wasn’t allowed to see me and I freaked out. I’m like, man, what good is all this money? I’m gonna die a lonely death.

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
It’s not the money in your bank. It’s the people around your tombstone that matter. What brings

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
you happiness is companionship. I’m not saying money is bad. Money is good so long

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Lloyed:
as you use it to buy something else. And that something

Arlen:
Right.

Lloyed:
else is experiences with people, it’s companionship,

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
it is freedom. Freedom to do what you want, where you want, with whom you want, when you want, in your time, in your prime. If you

Arlen:
Yeah.

Lloyed:
keep chasing, it’s never gonna be enough and one day you realize, what did I spend, what good is all of this if I don’t have the energy or the functionality to enjoy it? So I’ll

Arlen:
Yeah,

Lloyed:
leave you with that.

Arlen:
for

Lloyed:
The book’s

Arlen:
sure, for

Lloyed:
on

Arlen:
sure.

Lloyed:
from grassroots to greatness.com.

Arlen:
Okay, awesome. Well, that’s very well said, Lloyd. I appreciate you sharing that. And aside from the book, if anybody else wants to connect with you, what are some, what are some of the best ways for our listeners to connect?

Lloyed:
LinkedIn

Arlen:
Okay.

Lloyed:
is the best way. I don’t like being on multiple platforms.

Arlen:
Gotcha.

Lloyed:
And so LinkedIn is the best way. Lloyd, double L-O-Y-E-D, Lobo. And I’m that on LinkedIn.

Arlen:
Okay, awesome, awesome. Well, that’s great. We really appreciate you coming on, Lloyd. It was an awesome conversation and thank you for joining us today on the e-commerce marketing podcast.

Lloyed:
Thank you so much. Take care.

Arlen:
All right, you too.

Lloyed:
Bye.

Podcast Guest Info

Lloyed Lobo
Co-founder of Boast.Al