Today, we're unlocking the secrets to efficient content distribution and showing you how automation can be your biggest ally in dominating the digital space. Join Andy and digital marketing expert, Cody Schneider, as they delve into innovative strategies and tools that will transform your content game.
This episode was packed with actionable insights for entrepreneurs and marketers looking to simplify their growth strategies and make the most of automation tools. Whether you're a startup trying to create initial momentum or an established business looking to optimize your growth, there's something in this episode for you.
Remember, growth is a game of attention and retention. By focusing on the right metrics, leveraging automation, and building an audience, you can set your business up for success. Join us next time as we continue to explore the cutting-edge tactics that are shaping the future of business growth and marketing.
00:00:00 - B2B Business Simplicity
00:00:28 - Ingenious Calendly Script
00:02:56 - The Ethics of Automation
00:05:01 - AI Taking Meetings
00:06:08 - Future of Automated Scheduling
00:07:24 - Podcast Outreach Strategy
00:09:01 - Swell AI for Content Repurposing
00:11:17 - Integrating Scheduling with Content Tools
00:12:22 - Lead Magnets and Audience Building
00:14:37 - Content Automation and Marketing Evolution
00:16:57 - Building Media Brands with Modern Tools
00:18:32 - The Impact of Team Size on Content Production
00:19:33 - Leveraging LinkedIn and Twitter for Growth
00:22:20 - Algorithm Exploitation for Audience Growth
00:24:43 - YouTube Ads for Channel Growth
00:26:18 - Instagram Ads for Profile Engagement
00:28:05 - Twitter Growth Strategies
00:29:04 - The Importance of Initial Audience Building
00:31:14 - Meta Ads and Lead Magnet Strategy
00:32:39 - The CFO's Perspective on Pipeline
00:33:52 - The Importance of Acquisition and Activation
00:35:00 - Calculating Customer Acquisition Cost
00:36:53 - Early Stage Focus on Acquisition and Activation
00:38:27 - Blended CAC and Customer Lifetime Value
00:39:44 - The CFO's Focus on Pipeline
00:41:40 - Sales and Marketing Alignment
00:42:33 - Misconceptions About Product-Led Growth
00:44:00 - Activation Funnel Optimization
Andy:It's very similar for those listening to B2B that never had like built anything, just for people listening, like it's similar to sales, right?
Cody:Exactly. Like you're talking about sales where it's the same thing as acquisition, activation, engagement, retention, right? It's just like different words for the same idea.
Andy:It's just the model, right? Like get people in, get them to sign up, make sure they use it, make sure they don't freaking try.
Cody:People overcomplicate this. It doesn't need to be. Like business is so simple. Do people want to buy it? Can you sell it to them? That's it. The game is done.
Andy:for you. He built a script that finds 100,000 Calendly links of your target audience and schedules times on their calendar. That is crazy. So somehow he's finding all the Calendly links.
Cody:So from my understanding how it works, and I'm gonna talk to him like more, but this was just after like, I got an intro from him from like friends of friends and this whole thing. And so anyways, he's young too, he's like 20, you know? And it's more just like, can I, could I do it? And so that's why he did it, right?
Andy:Yeah, he's like, no plan with it. Just like, is this possible?
Cody:So he he went, I posted on LinkedIn is going viral right now. The same, like literally the same like thing as the tweet, right? It's like a LinkedIn post. And people are like, I want this and I hate this. Like, you know, it's like, like, they're like, why would you? They're like, people like this will destroy your ICP. Like, they'll never talk to you. And it's like, I don't think it's about that. It's like, could I do this? Right? It was more the And it's like, yes, it works. So I don't know how it fits into the flow. But anyway, so the idea is that you can like take a business and how Calendly functions, like, sorry, the business URL, right? So like their website domain, and how Calendly functions is you can basically like look up anybody, like under that website domain. And then if there's a public Calendly link, they could find that and then schedule a time on it. So that's like the whole flow that he basically built out. And so anyways, I don't know, from a sales perspective, if it makes sense. I don't know personally if I would ever use this. But it's really interesting if you're like, Okay, hey, I'm a startup and I'm trying to meet anybody in this space just to create that initial momentum, which is so hard when you're just beginning. How do I start those conversations with people in the industry? So it's like if I can get on their calendars and have like, and purely like not from a sales perspective, but it's just like, I'm just trying to meet you type of like coming in from that angle. Um, what he told me is basically like, that is how they kind of approached it and got super good, like receptive feedback. Right. It's like, Oh, I'm not trying to sell you anything. Like I just wanted to meet you. Like tell me about you and what, you know, cause they're like, once you get on the call and somebody is like not trying to like force anything on you, they're like pretty open to it. Right. That's what I've seen. I don't know. Like, again, I don't know if I will use this or do anything with it, but I just saw it and I was like, this is the most I've seen in the last year.
Andy:I would be pumped just because if he told me how he did it and he did, like if he told me the story and that's how he figured out how to get a time with me. Totally. I'd be like, you can have my 30 minutes, man. Like tell me how you did this and like how you figured this out as a 20 year old and like what your game, because I would just want to hear how that, You know, it's just a it's an interesting move that I want to learn about. Totally. Totally. I'm with you. I don't know if I'd use it, but there's this comment.
Cody:It makes me uncomfortable, though. And like traditionally, anything that makes me uncomfortable in growth, like is good in some way. Like if it's like if it makes your stomach do a flip. Right. And this is just like, you know, it's like everything in life. Like if you're a little bit nervous about it, like it's probably the right it's probably the right thing to do.
Andy:No, not everyone's doing it, which means it's probably not a good marketing. Well, it is a, it's probably a good tactic because not everyone's doing it, you know, like.
Cody:And then we'll get blown out. Like there's, you know, it's like everything, like in the beginning it doesn't feel like marketing. Yeah. It feels like novel. Like it feels like a new idea, which is just kind of crazy. But I guess like if you show up in this meeting today, like to somebody else, it's not going to feel like that. It's just like, you're just in this meeting.
Andy:I bet most of the people if he goes through this are gonna be like, hey, uh, what's this meeting about? And then he's gonna be like, well, I just put it on your calendar.
Cody:Exactly. Exactly. He's like, Oh, I just wanted to meet you. And so I don't know. I mean, he did it in a totally different way. Right? Like, again, he's like twenties, crazy good engineer. And just like, was like, I'm just going to put every beat, like they, they got, they scraped the list of VC emails or something, or like they, you know, they're all the calendars are basically VCs. And he's like, well, let me just see how many I can meet them. You know? He's like, yeah, I met like 150 different VCs. Right. And he's 20.
Andy:Just because his mind's like, yeah.
Cody:Just thinking about that. Right. Yeah. So again, I think raw, I feel like there's probably a refined version of this is like how I'm, how I'm personally thinking about this. Um, it's like, this feels very raw. I don't know if it will go anywhere, but there is probably a refined version of this. That's like more effective.
Andy:Yeah. Maybe, maybe what you could do is like, what if you can tie their email to their account, which you probably could if you got that.
Cody:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you got the confirmation that you like signed up for this thing,
Andy:Yeah, or if you tie the email to it. So if you have the Calendly, maybe you can get the email and then you can call the email with a system and let's say, wanted to chat about X. Is this your correct Calendly link? And then maybe throw it on there. I don't know. Maybe it's like that, that obviously you're not going to, it decreases your chances a lot, but like if you're. doing it for 100,000 people, I'm sure you'll still get some hits, right? Like even 1% of that is what? 1,000 people. And can you even still take 1,000 meetings? No.
Cody:I know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Andy:So maybe that's the route, right?
Cody:Dude, OK. So he told me what they're going to do. This was like V1, right? And then the next thing that they're building is they're going to have an AI that is a clone of them take all these meetings, right? Oh my god. And he's like, he's like, I'm just doing it to do it, you know? And I'm over here and I'm like, the degenerate in me is like, well, what happened? Like, I just, I just want to be, like, I just want to be involved in it to see what goes on.
Andy:Can we give this kid like a, like a YouTube channel or something? This is like. Totally.
Cody:Have him on the pod like next week and he's going to, he's going to talk about all that. I'm just going to like, it's, you know, just bring up all this.
Andy:It's like one of the internet AI bots on the pod. Dude, what if you just, here's another, what if you hit every pod with an AI version of you? Like I bet people are going to do that. Like you're just, that's actually a crazy idea. Like you call the email.
Cody:I just figured out how to scrape all of the podcast emails, by the way. This is a totally, we can go to here if you want, but there's basically this public index of every podcast in the like world. And they have URLs of the businesses that are like related to the podcast. And you can extract those URLs within like any categories. You can say like business or entrepreneurship or marketing. whatever, right? And then all those URLs, you can take them, you can put them into like Hunter or Snove, and you can find all of the emails that are associated with that business or with that URL that's related to the podcast. Like imagine you have a podcast that's like XYZ marketing podcast, right? And then their website is like XYZ marketing. And then I go and find, you know, John, Jamie, you know, Sarah at XYZ marketing or XYZ marketing.com, right? Yeah. And you can just like cold email them and be like, Hey, I want to come on the pod. So like this, this is this whole
Andy:Wow, no way.
Cody:I'm still experimenting with this.
Andy:Did you write a script for this or something?
Cody:It's straight up a database that you can extract from. It's super manual right now, but I found 330,000 podcasts that have published an episode in the last 30 days. And then I can get it down to category specific, where it can be any podcast category. But as a founder, this is a way that you can cold email your way into doing PR for yourself, basically. And then the pitch is like, Hey, I'm blah, blah, blah. I'm building XYZ. I want to come talk to you about ABC. Here's other podcasts I've already been on. Give them three links to ones that you've already been a part of. You bring the buyer and then they're like, okay, cool. But it's like, if I send, we'll just say there's 30,000 or say there's 10,000 business podcasts. right? And published in the last 30 days. And I find three emails for each of those. That's 30,000 emails. I could hit all of those in a month. And if we just get 0.1% of those to convert, right? That's huge.
Andy:It's still like crazy. That's a hundred pod episodes or however many. Public math. Public math. Public math.
Cody:I do that. If I get 1% of them to convert, that's 100 podcasts.
Andy:Overnight, you just want your brand.
Cody:You just built 100 backlinks. So it's funny. This idea came from another friend that's doing... They're calling it digital PR. It's this thing that's become more and more popular, but it's like... Can we pitch you to online... Not like Forbes, but like these other sites or podcasts or whatever. You as a founder basically getting you in these places. Wow. Sorry, I totally digressed away from that.
Andy:No, no, this is good. So what's your plan with this with Swell? Because Swell is your podcast product where you upload your MP4, and if I'm butchering this.
Cody:I'm curious to hear how you think about it.
Andy:Yeah, yeah, yeah. You upload your MP4 file of your podcast. The AI takes that and gives you everything you basically need from that podcast for your website, show notes, a summary, maybe a bio of the speaker you're talking to. And then now you added it, it creates clips for you or something, right?
Cody:100%, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Andy:in like Oprah's book or some shit like that?
Cody:Yeah. So Swell AI is more and more, I'm calling it a content repurposing tool. So you take an audio or video file and you can turn it into anything you want, right? So like we have a client where they write, you know, they write 21 tweets. So they have three a day for a week. They write five different LinkedIn posts off of the episode. They write a full length blog post. That's like 1200 words. They write email newsletter that they send out to their audience. They do a mid-roll ad. So they promote other episodes within the show. So they write a script, like a mid-roll ad script. And then they also make clips within it. So it's like we highlight sections that we think are the most viral, and then your team can go in, they select the part of the transcript, they hit Create Clip, and it makes a clip. And so for them, it's just like this content engine. How I use it as a founder is like, I podcast every week and I take that episode and that takes an hour of my time to record that. And I throw it in the swell and an hour later I have all the content that I would need for the week, right? So that's the whole idea basically behind it. But this is kind of, you know, the initial version of this and how we're thinking about it is like, it's just at the episode level. I want to go with this is like, okay, well, what about your whole back catalog of content live? Like, so every episode that you've ever published, or, you know, anything like, how do you upload that that whole catalog in and then from that I can repurpose it into anything, you know, so it just it creates a way for my content team to like, instead of having to like, they can just go mine our own data, right? And just pull out the things that are like, yeah, Like, okay, write me 20 tweets about telehealth, right? Or, you know, find me clips where they mentioned LinkedIn ads. And they can go and mine your own internal data, pull out that information for whatever content mark trying. Anyways, that's where we see we're going. That's kind of that's where we are currently.
Andy:Yeah. And then with that, I've got like a couple ideas for you on that, right?
Cody:I would love the tweets.
Andy:The first is like the next step of that. I come from Taplio. We build Taplio scheduling tools. You should just build a simple scheduler to get out those tweets and then get them out on LinkedIn, right? That way they don't have to leave the platform. That's one. And then another one is like, I think a sick lead magnet that you could build in order to get people like interested in Swell and like aware of it. Cause I'm all about lead magnets obviously.
Cody:I know.
Andy:Yeah, is is you could do a few things for this, right? Like you could do like a podcast Headline generator, right like totally right like that's free upload your file Give you ten headlines boom that way people can easily use that to you can do a database of all the podcasts out there you can basically really and then show like what are the most active and then like You can even have an email database of all these people. That's something interesting. Dude, I had one this morning that this was on the fly. There was a really good one. And now I can't really think of, I totally forgot. I was like, oh, I should talk about that.
Cody:It'll come back to you. What's in our product roadmap right now is free transcription. Oh, nice. So you just upload a podcast episode. And we figured out how to do transcription really accurately for really cheap. So how I'm thinking about it is we just go on a road like Rev.com, right? Yeah. So anyways, long story short, you would just upload your mp3 file and it transcribes this. And we're building transcription streaming so you can visually be able to see it transcribing in real time. And then the idea is like, you know, like chat with PDF, like how it's like you have that. So imagine that interface, it's the same thing. It's just like chat with transcript. So it transcribes it and then you can chat with it. That's the lead method. We're trying to erode the lower end of the market. as well. This is a way to do that. So like tons of competitors and that are coming into this, right? Like everybody's trying to build everything in this. There's a free tool that I don't have to pay for. Am I going to go and use one of these other ones? Like even if they are cheap, like this thing will do the thing that I'm looking for, right? Like if I can have it where it's like, if it's a chat with PDF interface for my trans, like it gives me a free transcript and I can chat with it. I can go and make, you know, whatever pieces of content. Cause really like what Swell does and like, this is the thing that we're just starting to communicate like more effectively is like, Swell helps you build content templates so that you're not like chatting with the thing every time, right? How I think about content marketing is like, I'm trying to create a process that I'm doing every week or every day and automate as much of that as I can. And like, you're really good at this, right? And you could talk. But like what Swell is, is basically like, it's the machine behind that whole thing. So like, to get really specific now, Like I can build a template that's like, cool, like here's 20 tweets, here's five LinkedIn posts with key take, you know, about key takeaways from the episode. Those are pre-saved output that I can modify. Like I can prompt the AI to have it write whatever I want about the transcript, right? But then I can save those blocks for future use so that every time I upload something into it, it just automatically generates that output, right? Rather than me having to go back and like interact with the AI and I have to do 20 prompts to get all the things I want. No, it's just like, boom, I upload and five minutes later I have everything that I could want written about the episode, right? And so that's, it's a content repurposing tool. Like that's what this turns into.
Andy:Cause that's essentially what you do, right? Like you want to systematize it. If you want it to work, you got to systematize it in some way. You can say after each, like I'm doing that with this, right? Like after, after each. So when we're done recording here, I send it. to, you know, my, my editor, right. Person edits it. He's going to send it back. Then I'm going to get it on. I'm going to hit up my thumbnail person for YouTube. I'm going to base, I've already thought this out. I'm like, I haven't really done it yet, but then I need to put it on transistor. I need to get it out on the podcast. I need to get the thumbnail made so that I can put it on YouTube. And then I need to actually create the text for my newsletter so that I can send it out via the newsletter. So it's like, it's always the same thing. So automating that is, would be amazing.
Cody:It's like you do with LinkedIn, right? Like you're like an OG with LinkedIn. And what is your process? It's like find viral stuff, remix it. And like, I do that. I have my post structure of here's what I do every day. Right. And I'm just doing that same process over and over again. And that's like, that's how you do content. Like that's how you do marketing. That is marketing. Like that is cool. And then you analyze the data and you look through of course of course like all that still happens But like you can stop you can basically say I find like oh like no podcasts that talk about these things like yeah They go viral more. Why do they you know, what's the common thread between those? Oh, well, they all mention, you know this specific thing or they talk about this thing So like the next time I record an episode I try to steer the conversation that direction And then I also can have like swell or whatever your AI tool you're using. Like I can tell it, Hey, I want you to write, like always mention this thing when you write this. Right. So that it's like, so you can basically like, you can create these templates. Like I I'm thinking about it more and more like Notion, right? Like with Notion, I have like these templates that are like pre-saved blocks. Well, imagine a pre-save block that's an AI that can do a thing for you every time that I give it something, right? So I give it this raw materials and I'm like, okay, AI, go refine these raw materials and give me... I want these outputs and these formats with this tone voice style. You can pre-save that. And that's what we're building. That's what I'm obsessed about too and what we're not just being a profit about.
Andy:No, no, this is good, dude. And like the thing that makes me think about it, yeah, because yeah, you're just like automating what like an agency would do essentially, right? Like that's so crazy.
Cody:I'm watching these kids right now build these media brands. Like this is a whole other thing, but like I'm watching these kids where they're like probably 25, but they're just interviewing like founders and people that are making companies, right? And what you like, it used to probably take a team of five people to do what they're doing with Riverside. with Swell AI and with Descript as their editor or whatever. They're not even doing... They're just pulling it out of Riverside. So they're building these media companies. These media companies will be million-dollar companies. They're going to have 100,000 downloads a month and it's going to be founders listening to the podcast. They could go sell that CPM like so easily or if they sell their own product on the top of it. Like that's like, it's the same thing that we're doing, right? Like it's just a different version. But what I'm trying to say is that like content production, like the post-production has become easier than ever before. So now it's just like, how do I create raw materials? How do I build the processes that like repurpose all this and just let that machine run? And again, like when I was at previous companies, when I was working at Ventureback I had a team of 10 people that would do this, right? Like I would be writing articles and writing, you know, and making clips and like we'd have, you know, we'd be working with freelancers and this whole thing. And now it's like, oh, if you have one person that understands conceptually how all these fit together, you can get it 90% of the way there, like 90% good, as good as like if you had an expert on that thing. of course I'm gonna do that, right? It's way faster, it's way cheaper, and it builds this content engine. So I just think that this whole, the content marketing is, I mean, it's in an evolution right now. It's absolutely just, every day it's changing, so.
Andy:Yeah, two things on that. The first is, it's almost, more than one person these days with like running this content engine, is kind of almost slows it down. It's like deteriorate, like what's the, it basically makes it worse, you know? It honestly maybe slows it down after a couple people. I wonder what the threshold will be if you're using all the right tooling now, all the right AI that does all this and you're able to get it out, like where it starts to actually be of less value to add more people, right? You don't need them. Like you don't need it. And it's kind of crazy because you you're right. You see like I see it in B2B specifically, like there's creators, man. Like I'm a one man show when it comes to my content. Like I have my assistant basically help me push it out and like, you know, do some stuff. But like I'm writing the content, I'm doing most of the distribution and stuff. But like I'm a one man show and not me specifically, but like multiple creators in general, they're pushing out more content than 30 person marketing. Like it's insane. Right. Like it honestly blows my mind.
Cody:I'm watching this YouTuber right now and he like every day I swear it's like he's getting like a thousand subs and he's in the SEO space. And his name is Julian Goley. He did awesome content. Like it's amazing, honestly.
Andy:What makes it amazing?
Cody:It is so raw. It's like him on a loom talking through some like system that he made for like content production or link building or like it's like and he was on a podcast so he went on this other podcast and the guy asked him like you know how like what's your setup like if you have a team that you're using with this he's like bro I sit down for 10 minutes I record the YouTube video I throw it into the script I remove all the ums and ahs and it is live in an hour like in 30 minutes to an hour the content is up and exists right and like I'm over here thinking he's like and he's like well why don't you have a team like isn't that Like, he's like, it would take more mental energy for me to manage a team than it is for me to just produce it and use these tools now. And for me, it was like, there's a pick me like, like, yeah, of course, like, I agree to all these handoffs. And like, where, where is it? Where is it going? What's happening? And I'm over here and I'm like, yo, I can like, like, say this is my pod, right? Like we record in Riverside, and I have it out and I have it edited in 10 minutes. And I'm not thinking about like, you know, I It can be raw, like it doesn't need to be perfect. Like if it's 90% good, I'm totally chill with that in a startup, right? It's different if you're, you know, if you're whatever, like enterprise. Yeah, exactly. Because what happens is like, okay, cool. Then I go and I chop this up into like, you know, 10 different clips. I post it across all channels. We see which goes the most viral, that drives trap podcast. And like, they're already bought in because they saw a viral clip and they're like, okay, I want the whole context of that whole thing. So I guess what I'm trying to say, what I'm having more of a trouble with right now is like how, like all of it, but I know that I can't. So it's like limiting myself to being like, what are the few things that I'm focused on? I think I really have podcasting locked in right now. So it's like more of my energy is going towards that. And then it's like, if there are, but also I'm a growth person, right? So I'm like, I want to know how YouTube works. So I'm like how, I want to get over there and start getting my feet wet there. Because I've seen, my friends show me this, I've talked about this a million times, it's ridiculous. So, I'm going to start from like where all algorithms are going from the data we're seeing. So, all social algorithms are going to for you page content. What that means is it's content that's served to you based off of what they think you're most likely to stay on platform. So, you don't even have to know the person, right? Like this is how you go viral on LinkedIn, this is how you go viral on YouTube Shorts, this is how you go viral on Instagram Reels, this is how you go viral on TikTok, right? This is how you go viral on Twitter now with their For You page. All of this trying to see like what they're testing content against itself, like different content pieces against each other and seeing what's most likely for you to stay because they're like how they make money is you, they retain you, right?
Andy:It's your attention on the platform. More time for more ads, yep.
Cody:Exactly. So all the data we're seeing is pointing toward that. So what we've been trying to understand is like, okay, well, how are these algorithms actually working so that we can basically gain them? And what we've identified as the way to do this is that when you touch a profile now, you leave the platform and then the next time you come back suddenly in your Instagram feed, you get like serve a piece of content from that creator, right? And the YouTube short, it's the same thing. You come back and your homepage serves you other shorts from that creator. And then depending on if you click on that, that then trains it. Okay, every time they come back, we want to show them this thing. This is happening. It's the same thing. Why is it on LinkedIn that when you engage with somebody's profile, you start to see their comments everywhere? You start to see their posts everywhere, right? It's because they think that you like content that this person makes and so they're just going to serve that over and over again. They think like it's going to retain you more. Okay, so how do you game this now? So we've been testing this. Okay. And what we found is that like if I just go viral, like I'm playing this game of like I'm trying to go viral so people touch my profile so that they get into my gravity.
Andy:Yeah, they get into your funnel essentially through the algorithm basically.
Cody:I can pay for that same thing to happen. So I can pay for Instagram engagement ads that has a call to action, like go view this profile, like for more content like this, right? When they go view that profile and they touch your Instagram, You're getting them into the top of funnel. So as long as you're posting daily, you're going to start showing up in their explore feed and their discover page. You can basically gain the initial touch and create a larger amount of people that are having that first interaction with your social account. So, apply this to YouTube. They did this not even for shorts. This was for like long-form videos. My friend did this. So, they were like, you know what? We're gonna take our most viral YouTube video that we already had and we're gonna start showing the whole video length. It's like a 40-minute long video, right? It's like a tutorial thing. And we're gonna show that at the beginning of other videos that are related to it. Like, you know, imagine it was like chat GPT link building or something like that, right? And so they targeted videos that are about like link building with chat GPT. They put their 40 minute video in front of that. And so what they found is that people engaged with the profile because they're like, Oh, this isn't an ad. This is like a tutorial. Right. And it's relevant to the thing that I'm trying to do.
Andy:And just to stop you there. So I go into the YouTube ad platform and I say, I want to do ads or, you know, I've never screwed it. So this is literally beginners kind of like mindset here. And then I go into the app. So I go into my YouTube channel. I go to the ads part of it. I go and I say, Hey, I want to create an ad. And they go, great, upload what you want an ad for. And you say, all right, here's my 40 minute video. And then you select your interest or whatever. And then you say backlink or whatever. And then you hit publish ad and you know, you put your price for per day or whatever. And then that shows up on other people's videos as a 40 minute video. And then they click on it. It actually goes to your profile.
Cody:Even if they just watch the video, that's like an engagement and YouTube's the eyes. So the data I saw, that's my friend's data. So they turn these ads on for a single video, right? And the graph for their entire YouTube channel just goes like this, right? There's this like ad goes on, but the whole YouTube channel, every video starts to pop off. And they're like, oh my God. Like all we're doing is we're introducing people to the brand, to the channel, and then the next, like at, okay, they're now introduced, they consumed, you know, whatever, 20 minutes of this thing. So YouTube is thinking, oh, this is like this person, this channel is a good, like the content from it is a good thing to keep them engaged. So let's show them this stuff the next time they come back to the platform. So that's just on YouTube, right? Apply that to every channel. You can grow these social accounts right now, just like ridiculous. And we're doing this, like we added like tons of Instagram. Like, so. How do I do this on Instagram?
Andy:How do I do this on Instagram?
Cody:I'll show you, I'll show you. But like the ad, so like just to talk through it so that the audience has it. The ad is you're doing an engagement campaign on Facebook ads. Yeah. And you're targeting only people that are on the Instagram platform that are in the discover or the feed, right? So like no, like no Instagram stories, et cetera. And then you have, what we did is we tested like 10 pieces of viral content against each other. And we have a call to action. That's literally like follow XYZ, you know, follow at XYZ account for more content like this. So a certain percentage of people click that, that app button. It's like literally the app URL, but on Instagram, it's like, it's a hyperlink. so it takes them right to the profile. A certain percentage click it, they then go and follow that account, introduces them to the profile, so you get this knock-on effect. As long as you're posting daily, they come back to the platform, they just get shown content from your account because Instagram now thinks, oh, this person engaged with it, maybe they watched a couple videos, like they probably like this. And that's how you create this for you page virality. So we did this for a friend and we saw like 30 cent follows. Wow. Overnight like 10x the organic impressions that were happening on the account not the paid impressions the organic Impressions because we were introducing more people top of funnel and they were posting daily Yes, exactly exactly and it creates more likelihood to go viral and it's a it's basically just a way to gain that initial piece Right, which is the hardest part. Like how do you get like on Twitter? It's like how do you get your first thousand followers? Once you get that, if you post daily, you're gonna be fine. Like you're gonna grow. Like a hundred percent, you're gonna grow. LinkedIn, it's probably, I'd say your first 10,000 followers. I would assume you probably know more than this. There's a tipping point with all of these platforms. Once you get past this, it just like starts to propagate itself.
Andy:But on LinkedIn, it doesn't matter. This is actually funny because everyone's, LinkedIn has always had the same type of algorithm.
Cody:It's ridiculous It's kind of crazy and they did it because it was like they they didn't have enough content. Yeah, do it That's the funny part with this is because like nobody was like like being a LinkedIn influencer didn't exist until like two years ago or something, you know, I And because nobody was posting on it. It was like, it was lame. But now, like, it was like, it's funny, because like, to me, how I how I do it is like, they had to do it because it was like a necessity to even have anybody engaged. But everybody has now come full circle. And they're like, actually, like, people just want to watch things that entertain them. So let's just put the most entertaining thing to them in front of them. Yeah.
Andy:And it's, it's, it's like coming full circle. Cause LinkedIn's like, Oh, now y'all are, everyone hated on LinkedIn. Right. And I'm obviously a LinkedIn, like, you know, like Maximus or whatever you want to call it. Right. I don't even know if that's the right word, but you know, English is my second language. So Spanish first, Spanish baby.
Cody:Yeah. Yeah.
Andy:We can do this all in Spanish. I'll tell you we're at the white road. Whatever that word is, obviously I love LinkedIn, but it's funny, that same thing you just described, I'm like, hey, you have, if you DM someone on LinkedIn and they DM you back, their shit starts to pop up at the top of your feed, right? It's like kind of crazy. So like, this is a little game that a lot of like ghostwriters in play is like, they just DM as many people that comment on their stuff as possible, because they know that compounds, because then that starts to show up on their feed. So it's not all, and maybe I never told you about this, but.
Cody:No, no, no. I, I, this is new. I mean, I post going viral right now. I'm like, I'm going to go DM 70 people.
Andy:Like, Hey, thanks for liking the post. How's it going? Right. Like literally that same thing.
Cody:Yeah. With no ass, no sales. Just like, what's up? How you doing?
Andy:That's the game, dude. Um, that's the game, right? Like, um, I actually need to do more of that and have my assistant. me out there. But yeah, dude, that's Twitter.
Cody:Twitter. It's it's go like if I start a new account, what I would do tomorrow is you go buy it. Go follow 5000 people over the span of like 30 to 60 days. It'll it'll just like you can only follow so many people at a time. Yeah. Like as long as you're following people that will like your content, you're gonna see a 20% follow back ratio. So if you follow 5,000, and that's the limit that Twitter will allow you to do on a new account, you're gonna get a thousand followers back. If you're posting five times a day, the account will naturally just start to grow because the audience, like as long as it's insightful and all that shit, right? Like that's the way to do it there. So what I'm trying to figure out is like, okay, well like how do we do this on YouTube? How do we do this on every channel, right? What is that tipping point that we can get these things to? And then that's how you zero to one brands, right?
Andy:Well, I started screwing with just so we can get through an example. I started screwing with some meta ads, right, for distribute. And what I'm doing now is I'm running ads, not to like straight up distribute, but to I'm writing an email course called a five day lead magnet challenge. Right. And so basically it's free. So basically we're getting the emails within that challenge. We basically sprinkle and distribute and you using distribute create the lead magnet. And that's basically, and I sent you a video on this because we're always chatting in the text threads. Totally. Oh dude, I'm trying this out.
Cody:It's actually really fun. I live for this also. This is half of why this podcast stuff is why I'm doing this. It gives me an excuse to talk to the people that I know that are just doing incredible things and be like, tell me everything you saw this week. Yeah, yeah, exactly. This last month. And teach me, like, teach me everything that's working. And then I'm gonna reciprocate and give you everything back that I'm seeing, right? And then this podcast, we just do it in public because then people are like, oh, well, I want to learn these things too that these people that are on the front lines are saying.
Andy:Yeah, yeah. And like, I hope everyone steals this stuff. I think a lot of people are like, oh, don't give away your secrets. I'm like, the amount of people that will actually go and do this is like... Dude, I have pre-spotcasting. I wish everyone would go do it. But like, you know, yeah.
Cody:I've been podcasting for the last two years for like B2B brand building. And I have watched two people out of the hundreds that I've talked to actually do anything with this, right? Like you are one of them. And there's one other guy. Yeah, exactly. And so it's like, it's you and it's Yone, right? Like, which is my buddy who runs the In The Growth podcast, or In Growth We Trust podcast.
Andy:Okay, okay.
Cody:Yeah. But anyways, it's like, it's hard. Like, it's still hard. Like, you can have the entire playbook, but you still have to do the fucking work. Like, everybody's like, oh, like, I bet that on the LinkedIn thing, you get this all the time. Like, oh, you have 170,000 followers. It's like, yeah, but I grinded for the first 30,000, right? It was an impossible problem.
Andy:It was probably the hardest thing ever. It was literally like you want to pull your hair out, dude. Like, it was one of the hardest things. Honestly, building an audience, dude, is one of the hardest things to do ever.
Cody:It is 100%. Like, I literally write 70 tweets a week. Yeah. Right? Like, that is my Twitter. But the payoff is that in the last 72 hours, I've gotten 1.5 million impressions on, like, because things popped off and went viral, right? Yeah. And you never know what it's going to be, right? 100%. But that's nine months of 70 tweets a week.
Andy:Like, That, that's crazy. That's crazy. Okay. I need to tweet more.
Cody:Now it's like, now it's like, okay, start a business. Right. And the zero to one is instant. Like this was probably the same for you with distribute. Like you have 170,000 people that follow you. You talk about it for like a month. Right. And you probably get your first customers or it's like, cool. We got to 10 grit, like 10 K a month or whatever. We are sustainable. That is why you build this thing. And this is also where I think founders are going. It's like founder-led growth. It's like founder-led sales, founder-led growth. But the founder-led growth now is like, Oh, you already have an audience. You have all this own media that's around you. And then it's like, whenever you want, you're just like, new company, plop. It just goes on the rails for distribution. And overnight, you zero to one this brand.
Andy:Dude, I had a, I had a buddy the other day that they had an idea. You know, you always have friends that are like have ideas and he wants to build this AI app. And he goes, dude, I want to get started on building it. Like, should I find like, can you help me find someone to build it? And I go, I could dude, but I wouldn't start building it yet. And he goes, what are you talking about? And I go, dude, what I would do first is learn how to build your audience and build an audience. And then spoon feed them some things to see if they would want this and actually build an audience first and focus there before you build any kind of product. And like for some people, I just think if you were to bet on one or the other or starting like a new app now with zero distribution or starting with trying to build distribution and figure out how to get people's attention, how to do all that, your odds are gonna be better if you were to place a bet. I bet your odds would be better in building an audience first than starting an AI tool. And there's anomalies to that, but if I was a betting man, I don't gamble. I can tell that story.
Cody:I'll gamble for you.
Andy:I don't care about the casino. I gamble with putting shit out and hopefully it sticks, right? Oh, the Facebook thing. Let's go back to that.
Cody:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go, go to the, yeah, sorry.
Andy:I keep, I keep pulling up. And like the question is like, is that good or not? Like, because again, I'm like an organic guy and I'm just starting to mess around with this pay. Like is 68 PA good for a $49 a month product?
Cody:So you need to look at the CAC. So basically, you work the numbers back. So like, how I think about it is like, okay, I'm getting a $6 CPA, say my customer lifetime value is $400, right? And my conversion rate from sign up to paid is 10%. So that would mean that if I wanted to get like one paid person, and it's 10%, so I needed times that by 10. So if I'm paying $6, that means I'm paying $60 to get a paid person. They may only pay me $29 the first month, but I know the customer lifetime value is $400. So I'm paying $60 to get $400 in total lifetime revenue. And that's the game you're playing. So it's like, okay, cool. And then you measure like, is that worth it for us? If I'm paying $60 to get $400, that's a return on ad spend of $6. Personally, I would be looking at that and I'd be like, yeah, that's It's like an ATM where I put $1 in and $6 comes out. I'm going to put as many dollars into that ATM as I possibly can until it stops working. When I think about paid ad spend, that's what I'm thinking about. You're getting $6 CPAs, man. Are they converting? That's the other question.
Andy:That's what I need to get figured out, right? That's 60 CPA for the challenge signup, which takes them through getting distribute the free trial. So I probably need to do the math on like, hey, with the conversion rate from those people that actually, it's actually, dude, really high. Like if I look at, I looked at the panel this morning, people that sign up for the free trial that then convert to paid is 40%.
Cody:That's insane. That's insane, Andy. Like ours is 10% and we think we're crushing it.
Andy:Okay. Well, my sample size is like 500 people or something like that. Still. And then they stay for like three months on average. Well, you know, we launched three months ago.
Cody:Yeah. I mean, you don't even know, right? We just got to a year's worth of data. So it's like our data is accurate, right? So like, but like literally the dashboard that we have is signups. Actually, it's homepage traffic, signups, and then we map like how long it's taking for that signup to conversion to happen. And our average is like 14 days. It's actually crazy. So like from them initially signing up to them purchasing, the average is 14 days. And so then we have this delay, right? Where it's like, we'll see a massive spike in traffic, which creates a massive spike in signups. And we know that 14 days later, 10% of them are going to convert or whatever, right? So we can set the plan around that. But yeah, you're just, you're just basically it's like working backwards, right? You're working backwards. It's like, okay, cool. Like my CPA is six. I know from the Nurture, this percentage end up in the free trial. And I know that 40% from the free trial end up actually converting. Okay, cool. So like I have, say I have a hundred people that I pay for to get to sign up for the Nurture. And so that costs me $600. And then we see that 10 of them actually signed up for the free trial. So that's 10 people. And 40% of that 10 actually turn into customers. So, you know, whatever that is, four people. It's $600 to get four people. So my CAC is 150. And then it's like, okay, if they're staying three months, basically what's the money I'm making back on that? So that's kind of the math that we look at.
Andy:Yeah, yeah.
Cody:So that's when you're like looking at a specific channel. I think more and more about what we like. I call it blended hack. I mean, everybody calls it blended hack, but like this is how I reference it. There's different names, but blended hack is the most general. So the idea is basically like your cost per signup from everywhere, including organic. And what you're trying to do is like have a downward trend of that over time, right? Yeah. And like, so you're basically looking at, okay, like, and that, you know, that's why we do remarketing. That's why we do organic social. That's why we do all these other things because we're basically saying like, Hey, we think that like we can decrease our, our blended cap over time and increase our customer lifetime value over time as the product gets better. So. If those two things... We're trying to... Both of those... That customer lifetime value over time curve, we're trying to make that go up and then we're trying to decrease blended CAC over time. Those are the metrics where I'm like, is this company healthy? I look at those things and you can instantly know, okay, cool. They're going to survive. If those things are in those directions, that's all the signal you need. Basically, this thing is going to work.
Andy:Yeah, that's the, well, that's the interesting part for me. Cause it's like, it's so early. Right. And so I'm like, like, I don't have like really an LTV. Right. Like what's your, you don't have it. So you're kind of like, and that's where you work backwards from. And so you're kind of like, well, I think it's going to be this. So it's super interesting. So I think you just gotta keep going.
Cody:I think in those early days too, it's focusing. So I work off of the acquisition, activation, engagement, retention, growth model. So basically what that is, is here's all the things that you need to care about to make your company grow. So it's like acquisition, you get people to sign up. Activation, you get them to actually use the product and pay you for it. engagement, they're using it daily, they're using it weekly, they're using it monthly, whatever that number is. And then retention, they don't churn. If you just focus on those four things, you can make your company grow. But the engagement and the retention piece, I don't even think about those until I've solved acquisition and activation. Until I've got that And especially when it's this early, like 90 days, you don't even know. We know nothing. It's better to just get more people in the product, as many as we can, as cheaply as we can. And then just basically try to get them to activate. And I don't know, it's B2B, right? You know this shit. We're working off of shit data. It's never, it's never the full picture. You're just like making decisions off of like, well, like I have a little bit of data and my gut is telling me this. So I think we're going to do this. Right. That's, that's always how it is, especially in the beginning stages. Yeah. Cause it's just, it's just so expensive to do it otherwise. Like if you wanted to go and actually track all this and like set up segment and like, you know, add like title to mix panel and add to every user and like create a, you know, a first person cookie, like all of these things, like you, the amount of engine that talent you would need to do that. It's just not worth the price. So it's like, cool, you're going to have to work blind and be comfortable on that. That's more the audience. You already know these things. You've done this before, right?
Andy:So I said anyway. Well, I mean, it's very similar for those listening to B2B that never have built anything, just for people listening. It's similar to sales, right? If you don't get your prospecting from a B2B outbound perspective, if you don't get your prospecting down, then fixing stuff mid funnel and later in the funnel, it doesn't matter. You gotta fix up here first before you're trying to fix down here, right? Because if you can't get people in the door, then none of the other stuff really matters, right?
None:Exactly.
Andy:Long term. Exactly. Someone really made this stick. I was at a party in Austin, and I was like, all right, so you're a CFO. You've been a CFO of all these sick companies, like awesome, cool, great brand companies. What really matters at the end of the day? What keeps you up at night, really? And he's like, honestly, pipeline. He's like, I'm a CFO of all the shit that these people know as CFOs and all the financial things. He's like, pipeline. He's like, that's it. He's like, I'm pipeline. Cause if you don't have that, nothing else matters. So he's like, that's what I'm obsessed with as a CFO. Right. And I was like, an amazing one. And you're like, shit, like that really that in this guy knows financial as a company. So that shows you that this whole activation part, I mean, you got to get that down before you get anything down, right?
Cody:A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And people focus on all this other stuff, man. It drives me crazy with product. People like that are like, the product will grow itself. I'm like, no, it will not like that. Like Airbnb, they're like Airbnb grew itself. It's like, no, Airbnb went on Craigslist and they direct message people to list on Airbnb. Like they use, they cannibalize another platform, right? What did Uber do? Like every one of them have done, they take an established thing and they launched themselves off of that other established thing, right? So it's, it's, it's ridiculous to me. They use these examples like it, PayPal is another great one. They launched themselves off of eBay. They didn't just come into existence. The product is less important in the beginning. Your product has to be good enough that you can get people to sign up for it. That's pretty easy. That can be a landing page and some like, here's the benefits you get from this thing. Then it's like, how the hell do I get traffic? How do I get them to give me their name and email? And how do I get them to actually have that aha moment as fast as possible? Like, as soon as like, it kills me how many I was just talking to a friend about this yesterday. He's building this thing in the cybersecurity space. It's like this AI tool, but he's like, dude, we're getting signups, but like, we're not getting them to activate. And I was like, cool. Let me look at the funnel. It was seven landing pages before they got to the actual aha moment. Like they're like giving them they're asking all this information and being like message your colleagues and all like no no like it is sign up form Immediately after show them the thing that is like that you the job to be done that you automated Automated show them that thing. Yeah, and You can ask them for all that other information later, but you're just like you have their attention span for like 60 seconds You have to convince them in 60 seconds when it's self-service, right? You have their attention span for 60 seconds like you have to convince them and those 60 seconds that this thing is gonna solve the problem that they're trying to solve and Cause at no other point in the, in the sales cycle or the activation cycle, like, do you have that much focus on your thing? So, I mean, it's just like sales. All of this is the same. Like everything is the same. All the frameworks are the same. It's just remixed for the different things.
Andy:Yeah, it's all remixed, right? Like it's in a different packaging, essentially.
Cody:Exactly. Exactly. Like you're talking about sales where it's like you're doing prospecting and then you're doing active, you know, it's the same thing as acquisition, activation, engagement, retention, right? Yeah. It's just like different words for the same ideas.
Andy:Yeah. It's like, it's just the model, right? Like get people in. Exactly. Like get them to sign up, make sure they use it and make sure they don't freaking turn.
Cody:It drives me nuts. I mean Like people overcomplicate this it's it's so it doesn't need to be like business is so simple It's do people want to buy it. Can you sell it to them? Yeah, like, yeah, that's it. That game is done, right? Yeah. Now, when we expand on that, it's really fucking hard to do that. Yeah. But like, at its core, it's every business, like, if you look at over the, you know, the last 200 years of, you know, capitalism in the US, like, it is the same thing. They had a thing that people wanted to buy, they could make it and they built it, and then they could sell it, right? But if those two sides of the coin weren't like functioning, you just don't have a business. That's all it comes down to. And like the AAR is just a more complicated version of that. But at the core, it's just that same thing.
Andy:Yeah. And similarly, I kind of tell people this, like when they're wanting to build something, they want to build this like, you know, product that like is, you know, the next SpaceX or some shit. Let's just say that. And I'm like, no, dude, take something that already exists and make it 10% better. I don't want to throw shade, but that's basically what Distribute is. I took something that I know solves a specific issue. And I'm like, people do not like that product. It's in a B2B SaaS world, right? It's not self-serve. You can't sign up for it. And then when you do, it's expensive as hell implementation. I implemented this last product. It took us like six months to implement it at our company. I'm like, six months to implement a product like this. This is insane. And I'm like, there just needs to be a modern day version. I'm going to make this 10, 20% better. Right? Like that's it. I'm like, I'm not, I have, I have PMF because I know that I'm one building for myself. And then two, there's something that exists that I know it can be 10 times better.
Cody:Content repurposing like swell swell AI is the same thing like people have been doing content repurposing Since the beginning of time right like I'm a journalist. I go interview people and I write an article that is content repurposing Yeah, yeah taking raw materials and I'm putting it into a thing like all we're doing is just that but with like a modern stack It's the same thing like the tool is AI now, though We can like deploy this junior employee to do these tasks for us. Yeah, and that's that's I mean, it's the same idea and I It's crazy to me also that it was crazy to me is like yeah, you want to go like you want to you may have this huge vision That's awesome. But like there's a smaller thing you can do right now That is gonna be way higher likelihood to like just improve your quality of life and get you to that thing, right? Yeah, like it also half the time like people like yeah, I want to do this massive thing the sacrifice you have to make to do that massive thing is insane like you Don't have a love life. Yeah, like I You are constantly fighting loneliness. You're like in, you know, inferiority complex, like, you know, whatever. Like, you go down the list and all these people, it's all, they have the same, like, you have to really weigh, like, is that actually what you want? Because there's all of these things that you have to sacrifice basically to get there. And in reality, for most people, it's like, nah, man, I want, you know, I want a seaplane and I want to be able to see my family more. Cool. Like, that's, that's really what it comes down to.
Andy:Do you actually want a seaplane? That's pretty badass. You're right. That's really what it is. It's like ultimate freedom. And I hate airports personally. I love traveling, but I hate airports. I hate that part of the process.
Cody:Totally. Totally. But I think it's classic entrepreneurship, right? Why do we do what we're doing? It's freedom. It's like, where I want, when I want, with who I want, doing whatever I want.
Andy:Like, it's like... Make your own rules, basically, right?
Cody:Yeah, exactly. And it's like, I haven't figured out another way to do this, to get those things, right? Besides, like, building companies. Yeah. And so, it's like, I'm just gonna keep... If there's a better way that we figure out later, awesome. I'll probably do that. Right now, this is the only way that I can see forward.
Andy:I think it's one of the best. If you look at all the sweaty startup people they're talking about, some of them are my friends are great, but a lot of them realize that Like all this other stuff I was doing, once they see what software can do and the way it can scale, they're like, yeah, let's do software.
Cody:Totally. Totally. Also with software, it's like, it's also like, again, if I, if I was 20 and I had no money and I had to start over, what would I do? I would go build an agency that does a thing. Right now, if I was 20, this is exactly what I would do. I would go and I would start making clips for podcasts, and I would cold DM every podcast that I could find, everywhere. It's free, right? Make a LinkedIn, make a Twitter, go cold DM them. Do that, charge unlimited clips for like 500 a month. or something around there, right? And you basically just mine their podcast and pull out clips. You don't even have to do any like fancy editing. I'm just talking like it's just captions over it, right? You find the viral moments and you give them that. I'd go get that 10k a month and then I would go and I'd build a Chrome extension after that. Something that's super simple, right? Like it scrapes data from some platform, right? And then I would grow that up to 10 K a month. And then at that point I would probably stop consulting and I would just go all in on, you know, stop the agency and I'd go all in on the, on the Chrome center, on the, on the software stuff. Yeah. Like that is how I would do this if I was, I was, I was young and it would, it would a hundred percent work. Yeah. Agreed.
Andy:It's I'm glad I kind of fell into this like right after college or young, you know It's just man like at the time you didn't realize but this is the long-term play, you know Like luckily was fortunate enough to like have someone tell me like study engineering and do this software thing It's gonna be like the future like you like apps and shit like do that You know, uh, whoever pushed me that way, um, I was naturally always, you know, doing building shit on the internet anyways, but like, I'm just glad I had the freaking means to do that. And like, go that route. Totally.
Cody:Did I started out drop shipping? I was like, how do I make money online? And then of course, this was 2000 and like 12 and I'm like, all right, well, there's this drop, there's this turn on demand thing. Let's like do that. Right. It was just like drop shipping. And so, and then somehow that led to B2B, like it's, it's the same path, right? It's like sell things on the internet and then you naturally end up in B2B SaaS if you're really good at marketing your sales. That is the trajectory.
Andy:Yeah, it really is, man. It really is. Well, dude, it's been great chatting, man. This has been a freaking amazing episode. All right, man. Well, dude, good having you on, man. Well, I'll probably be texting you later today about something. I'll talk to you soon, brother.
Cody:We're always doing something.
Andy:All right, bro. I'll talk to you soon. Later, man.
None:Later.
