#1 - Brian Kenny
Episode #1 - Brian Kenny on having a "chameleon attitude" to sales and marketing, and thinking deeply about the other side of the table.
Show Notes
On this first episode of The First 10 Podcast, I talk to Brian Kenny Founder of @MiniCorpHQ.
As Brian mentions at the end, do reach out to him. He is open to conversations and always willing to lend his smarts to new business ideas that come his way.
Key Points
Have a "chameleon attitude" to sales and marketing. Think deeply about the people on the other side of the table.
When it comes to the first conversations, do everything in your power to actually do them! Get over the internal barriers, use the "lollipop method", and do it again and again and again.
Do your homework! When approaching people, use all the free info that's out there before you send that email
Show Notes
Audience (B2C and B2B) research tools:
https://www.apollo.io/
Contact Details
https://twitter.com/MiniCorpHQ
- If you like what you hear on this podcast, make sure and sign up to get regular updates here. Also follow me on Twitter here
Transcription
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
customers, product, people, company, build, brian, learned, favour, understand, meeting, person, business, b2b, based, book, b2c, nurture, marathon, lots, tend
SPEAKERS Conor McCarthy, Brian Kenny
Brian Kenny 00:00
So identifying people and having a one-on-one conversation with them. And you would be really surprised how people want to help, as long as you make a genuine and you ask them in a really nice and transparent way. And if you get some no’s, you get some no’s. It's a part of it all.
Conor McCarthy 00:20
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the first 10 Podcast, where I interview Business Builders on their first 10 customers, who they were, how they found them, how they talked to them, and what effect they had on their business, so that you can learn what worked and what didn't. My guest today is the one and only Brian Kenny, founder of mini Corp, a digital product agency based here in Dublin. Brian is a fantastic guest to have on. Because not only has he started and built his own company, in mini Corp, but he also helps other people do the same. He is extremely ofay with the idea of first 10 customers. He gives them a great name that golden customers at one point in the podcast. So talk about a lot. We talk about the differences between b2b and b2c when it comes to the first 10. We talk about marathon running of all things and why that's important as you go about finding your first 10 customers, why it's a great analogy to have in mind. We talk about mentorship, and learning from others not trying to be others, but picking up the best bits that suits you and your personality. And I suppose the the kind of the inner game of what you're trying to achieve. And lastly, there's a couple of interesting analogies that Brian Bob said that are genius, and we will stick in your memory. And they're based around food. So keep an ear out for the lollipop method and tomato soup in this episode. So without further ado, here's Brian Kenny. Hey there first 10 podcast listeners. I'm here today with my friend Brian Kenny, Brian, first of all, thank you very, very much for taking the time to be here with us today. You're a busy man. And you want to tell us a little bit about your business story so far, and what you're working on right now.
Brian Kenny 01:59
Yeah, for sure. So first of all, thank you so much for having me on the show. It's my absolute pleasure. So I guess my my whole career really started out as God, I've always had a huge interest in technology and in building things. And from an early age had always got computers around the house and lots of things to tinker around with. And as my own career progressed, I really knew that I wanted to get into the field of building stuff with computers really started at the very beginning where I had to do really boring tasks like data entry and things like that. And then started to build some different apps and kind of really got into Xcode and building out a few different ideas. And so put together a couple of different applications and launched them in the world and seeing the community really react favourably towards that and give me lots of kudos and push me in the right direction. And then goes, you know, my first real job and technology was in a company called Black Knight, which was a or which is a wonderful hosting provider and a data centre, solutions provider from all different tiers of businesses. And then grew from there into finally launching my own couple of different businesses or different ideas. The first of which was, you know, the first real big one was around in flight entertainment, where myself and two other guys we got together and one of them had a really strong background in the airline industry. And so we came up with a reasonable solution on how to tackle in flight entertainment. So build a really as a financially viable solution to enable short haul aircraft. So the H 320s. And the Boeing seven, three sevens to become IFC, or implied entertainment enables all of the traditional movies, magazines, all of that wonderful stuff. But also, you know, we had a real strong pull towards connecting people with their destination. So if you're flying to Paris, what's in Paris, what's on this evening? What can I purchase? And what can you teach me about Paris whilst I'm flying over there? And yeah, once, once that company wrapped up, I then realised that I had a really strong pull towards products and product development, I think was in that company that I realised that it's not just computers that build things. It's wonderful teams that build things. And so I really wanted to build a product agents, product development team, where we would become the strongest team globally, where you can essentially give us any idea from the ideation or conceptual stage. And we'll really start to work on together with the domain. knowledge of the the team who's coming up with the idea on a strategy to design, build and grow that product over a period of time into something that's really successful. And that's currently where I'm at starting to look at all wonderful, different ideas and things for myself as well at the moment as well. So, yeah, having lots of fun.
Conor McCarthy 05:21
It was that's it, that's super important. Yeah, you've you've had quite the background. I mean, going from hard, like hardware solutions and selling that through to Yeah, it sounds like you've had a bunch of insights along the way. And I've kind of followed your, your intuition about what you want to do. And I love that I like that idea of working with teams to build things. So I think you're, you're very good at building teams, and putting them to work in the right way on the right projects, doing the right things, I suppose. And so so, you know, with the idea of first 10 in mind, I mean, we could kind of get meta and talk about the first 10 customers that you brought on board Dominica, or, or under how you feel about it, like you could choose maybe one of the companies that you've helped build, and talk about their experience of bringing 10 customers on to their product or platform. So whatever, whatever when you feel like
Brian Kenny 06:14
yeah, so I think what what might be the stronger path here is really to, to talk about our history in mini Corp. So mini Corp is a product agency, we tend to work with lots of different companies and and founders who have an idea and understand the industry really well, but may not fully understand how to come at it from a digital product perspective. So that's that, you know, it can encapsulate quite a lot I can encapsulate and how do we first define what the core or MVP, the minimum viable product, what version one of the product should look like? And then how do we bring that product to market? And how do we attract some what we call golden customers to use the product and to provide solid feedback on how to grow the product into the future. And, and so what we tend to no use as a little bit of an analogy is tomato soup, which sounds a big buzz at the very beginning, if you're coming up with an idea. And essentially what you're doing is trying to create your own version of tomato soup. So you have lots of ingredients from tomatoes, salt, to pepper to Herbes, or whatever it might be. And you're in the kitchen, creating lots of different recipes, and a little bit of this and a little bit of that and trying everything out and taste testing and taste testing and taste testing. And you know, what recipe has been validated by a couple of people, and you now need to start looking at opening some restaurants and getting customers in the door. And then if those restaurants are performing really well, it's time to perhaps look at a franchise model or something like that. And that's where, you know, venture capital or investment money might come in a little bit more favourably. And so to go back to your original question of what to the first 10 customers look like, we always encourage our clients and have seen really positive reactions from trying to get your first 10 customers in no matter what. So instead of trying to make them, you know, pay or you know, close down the barriers, if to say, try to get them in the door without any hand holding or anything like that. We really encourage you to nurture those customers in the door as much as possible to almost walk them around your shop and to you know, absolutely stand back and listen to their reaction to how they're reacting to the product. But to have a one on one intimate conversation and try to get as much valuable feedback from those customers as you possibly can. I think it was, um, Brian chesky when he was starting Airbnb, and he was in the Y Combinator in Y Combinator. I can't remember who told her turned around to him but essentially that he was he was asked the question of, you know, why are you in San Francisco because your first set of customers are all in New York and you want to be here and he's you know of the opinion of San Francisco is where all the startups go and it's it's where the whole hive and the talent and the designers and all of that wonderful ecosystem lives. And the rebuttal was go go to New York hanging out with your you know, banging on the doors Say hello to your first Airbnb customers get to know them get to know what they love about the product and what they don't like so much. And I think if you read some of the the articles around that the the response from Brian was really That was some of the most valuable insights that we've ever gotten. And it's helped nurture the growth of the product forward from there.
Conor McCarthy 10:07
I love that. I love that story. It's, it's so it's such a great lesson in like, Okay, time to get out of your own head and time to get into the head of your customers. And there's, there's no better analogy than when you're on the west coast of the US. You need to go to the east coast literally. And figuratively, you know, it's, it's so important. Yeah, that's, that's fastly, I love the tomato soup. Cooking analogy, but but it kind of makes sense. You know, it's like this is there's so many products, I think that probably started in a very low fi way. And enough people have given feedback where the Creator has kind of gone Oh, actually, there might be something here. But it's it's getting something out the door. And yes, to handholding. I think in the in the age of a lot of positive press about unicorns and scale and massive growth etc. Like the very first customers, it's I think it's wise to do a bit of white glove treatment, to get them in the door and nourish them in the in the way you say. And what would you say is, from what you've seen, What's the hardest part about finding the first 10 customers?
Brian Kenny 11:16
Wow, that's a that's a really good question. And just a break down. So I really like talking about my own experience, or you know, the walking the walk rather than me speculating. So what we've known in mini Corp in the European or Irish market is a lot of b2b based businesses, so businesses who are selling to other businesses, and then as we look more globally, the clients that we would have in the United Arab Emirates, or in New York, they would tend to be more b2c based. You know, so maybe b2b to see as in, they're invariably trying to target a customer at the very end. But there's a huge differentiation between how you launch a b2b product versus a b2c product. And, you know, the early adoption rates here in Ireland for b2c product is really low. And we tend to take a long time before we'll incorporate any new practice or new product into our lifestyle versus in the UAE, the the speed at which adoption happens is a lot faster. And you you tend to do advise, as best you can to your clients based on this. So when you're attracting b2b based products, or clients, you really need to plan this really well. So who am I launching to who is my target industry, and who on the team has a really good set of connections within that industry, because you need to be able to hand them, you know, not not a fully baked application or not a completed, you know, go to market product, but one that needs some validation. And the earlier the validation can happen, the better. So you want somebody who you have a good amount of trust with who knows the industry quite well, maybe they work for one of the companies that you're going to invariably try to sell to in the future, but to say to them, Listen, this is a concept and this is something that we're trying to work on. I would love it if you tried to refine this a little bit further with us and provide some good value valuable feedback to us. And so it can be really difficult to find companies or anybody within the b2b space, who will be the first 10 customers versus in more of the consumer or the b2c space, things tend to go a little bit easier. And you can see you know, that there's a bigger pool, a bigger target that you can attract. And so there's lots of wonderful tools and services that you can use there in order to get some early customers into your product as well.
Conor McCarthy 14:05
That's fascinating. Yeah, I hadn't thought about it like that before. So would you say in the in the b2b space? You mentioned there like having someone on your team who's who's connected to the industry? Well a for domain knowledge, I guess, but be they most likely have good relationships. I mean, is that is that probably the overarching, like one of the most important things to have?
Brian Kenny 14:25
Yeah, so if you, if you looked at what, you know, potential really solid team for any new product or company would be they would have the technical aspects as in, you know, a digital agency or CTO or somebody within the team that can grow and nurture the future growth of the digital product. And hand in hand with that is somebody who understands the industry and has the domain knowledge within the team as well. And if you know perhaps a person As a CEO, perhaps a person isn't. But also having somebody from a financial background that potentially has access or understands the investment realm really well. Those three aspects if they come together can do something really, really strong and powerful. And but the person who has a connection to the industry, you know, let's say you're launching a product for medical GPS, for instance. And so general practitioners or kind of family doctors here in Ireland, and if they have access to those family doctors, and maybe they know one or two or three of them, that they can go with a concept and say, Hey, listen, here's some early mock ups or UI prototypes or designs, what do you think, and those doctors can just hang out over a cup of coffee or something and provide some really valuable insight and say, forget about that feature? It's just something we'll never use at all. But all of the other stuff is really good. And you know, you've saved yourself so much time, so much capital by getting that early validation versus, you know, continuing to assume and assume and assume.
Conor McCarthy 16:08
Yeah, yeah, the assumption trap is a big one, I'm hearing that more and more on the podcast, just, it's so easy to do. It's because you live in your own head, and you think this would be great. This would be cool, especially as well as if your nature is as a builder, as a as a you know, product as an engineering kind of person. So getting out into the world getting out of the building, I think Steve Blank calls. Did you have any sales or marketing experience any formal sales and marketing experience over the years?
Brian Kenny 16:38
No, but I can tell you a few stories. So well, I guess I, I kind of grew up with it. My, my dad was a sales and marketing manager for lots of really big companies in Ireland. And I would try to follow him around as a son does as much as I could to see how does the business world work and show me more and teach me as much as I can. And I tried to soak it up like a sponge. But I guess the the one big thing that I've always taken from that is this kind of chameleon attitude of, you need to do what you need to do in order to learn as much as you need to. And so first of all, let me preface this whole conversation with morals and ethics. Try to understand who you are as a person and understand what morally and ethically you stand for. As in, there's things that you will happily do, and there's things that you will happily absolutely never do and understand who they are and what you want to achieve there. The second thing is so much a business is very much strategy. And there's so much like a game of chess, where when you're trying to sit down with somebody for a meeting or trying to pitch them your new product or so on. So much of it is listening, trying to understand as you trow, a really handcrafted sentence into the conversation to see what their reaction is like and trying to gauge how they're really valuing or looking at your product. And, and one way that I've learned this, so so and so challenging, has been during the inflight entertainment company, I'll never forget this, we had to completely throw myself in the deep end. So just imagine that Brian Kenny is very wet behind the ears, very new to corporate sales, and definitely challenging himself a lot. So one of the goals or one of the prerequisites to getting the to getting the implied entertainment server and hardware certified for the aircraft is you need to get your first airline customer. And not only that, you also need to get them to give you the land or rent a plane or you know, provide you with an aircraft to go to the certification bodies like iasa, the European company, or IASA over in the states for example, and to prove, you know, to do the certification with your piece of hardware. So I'm there in a, you know, flying over to Frankfurt, and dawning my first ever real suit that isn't my dad's and sitting in a boardroom with like, you know, six or eight other airline executives feeling very much like I'm completely out of my depth and don't have a clue how to deal with this at all. But I just sat there and I, you know, we showed our presentation. I tried to read the room as much as I could. I listened intently into what their questions were, and I started to book us each person in that room into, you know, what did each person really want to achieve from this meeting? These can be things like, and Sandra would really like if everybody in this meeting recognised how skillful she is at her job, or just like there could be things that are completely unrelated to why I'm in the room or what the meeting is about at all. But understanding what each person wants to achieve, and helping them to accomplish us, whilst in parallel trying to get what you need to get out of the meeting as well. And really shows the the kind of chameleon attitude and this way of making sure that you build relationships and build a rapport with these people. That was probably the best thing I've ever learned in sales space.
Conor McCarthy 20:41
That is a fantastic story. Wow. Yeah, deep and learning is, is fascinating, and that I kind of got nervous just just sitting in a room full of things. And you know, what would they take your view at the same time, you know, because they're the ones holding the purse strings and the decision makers. But I think it's a really great insight to kind of step outside of I need, I need to sell this thing I need to I need to get them to do something for me. And to kind of look around and go well, well, wait a second, why is everyone here? I think that's an amazing approach to any meeting, even if it's a one on one, to kind of beforehand, take a few minutes and kind of go What is this person looking for out of this meeting? Is, is time well spent? That's great. Thanks for sharing that story. Is it? Is it good? Yeah,
Brian Kenny 21:27
I think there's, there's another part of that as well, where because email and text messaging can be very automotive, a lot of people tend to get it wrong, where when they're sending on a meeting agenda, they tend to send on a meeting agenda based on their own requirements, and saying, These are the things that I would love to get out of these meetings out of this meeting. And you know, this is what we're trying to accomplish, and blah, blah, blah. But it's really that they're focusing in on, here's what I want the meeting to go like, and here's what I would like the outcome of the meeting to to be, versus It is amazing what happens when you build advocates in these meeting rooms and to say, you know, Julie, I think that you're going to want x, y and Zed please correct me if I'm wrong and jump in at any point. Tony, I know that you were asking this in the last meeting? Is it correct to assume that you're trying to get there and really tried to cohesively bring the whole team together? And let them also, you know, fall on their own sword? If they don't rebuttal back to that email? Or if they don't respond, then, you know, they know that it was themselves and not you trying to be selfish and trying to guide the meeting towards your own favour.
Conor McCarthy 22:44
That is fascinating. I love that. I mean, yeah, constantly, especially now in in lockdown, like, the number of zoom meetings with agendas, and it is a case of right, this is what's happening. But there's often things yeah, that that I would want to get done that don't come up. And yeah, I love that. That's very, it's very enabling, I guess. Because then it's up to people to update of what of what the agenda is. Very cool. I love that. That's a good, don't call it a hack. Are there any books or videos that you can point to to help you gain that have helped you gain more understanding in this just specifically in this kind of early stage, or any ones that you've recommended to people to try and as well as to try and understand people better or to understand how to sell or market something better?
Brian Kenny 23:36
Yeah, so I guess I'm probably one of the best ways that I've ever learned has always been through watching others. So I've often told this story of the difference between myself my brother, and there isn't really a huge gap. There's only three years between us. But if I were to take the analogy of Kieran or myself being in a dark room, and the objective, our goal being to find the door and to get out of the room, and Kieran learns at an impressive pace, true books, and true sitting down and just studying and learning. And he would be in that dark room and he would probably, you know, in his brain go through all of the knowledge and education that I have the probability of the door being, you know, in that direction, is quite high, and he'll just make a beeline for that direction. And long and behold, you know, the door will probably be there and he will exit the room straight away. Versus the way that I've always learned is by trying to feel as much as I can. And in my version of that room, I would tend to feel the walls and get to understand all of the different objects and what else is in that room. And, you know, at some point I'm going to get out of the room. It's going to take me a lot longer. To get out of the room, but I will. And so Kieran gets time, you know, he gets to leave the room at an accelerated pace based on the knowledge that he's learned. Versus I get to understand what's in the room and the value of what the room is before I actually exit the room. So in any company, you kind of you really want both to be a part of the team. And so, to go back to how I learned, or how, how I'd recommend books or how I've deciphered information. I've tried to find mentors from a fire on YouTube or other people, where I listened to them on podcasts, or I'd watch them on YouTube. And I'd follow their journey. And it's not necessarily that I'm following the company in any structure or form, I'm just following the person and looking at, for instance, right now, I'm really interested in in William Ackman or Bill Ackman and how he's built all of the different companies and hedge funds and things, primarily from the, I really want to learn about the financial world as much as I can. And so I'll watch bill or I'll watch these people and kind of see how they do it. And it's not that I want to replicate it, but I'll take little pieces or pockets of information, in order to piece it together with my own compass, and then start to make my own decisions forward. And so it's very difficult to have a, let's say, a one size fits all book recommendation, or, you know, the the best way, for any group of individuals, I would say, it depends on number one year learning style. So if you learn well from books, do that as much as you can. But I would strongly favour learning about individuals, over learning about companies and more abstract terms like, this is how this business was built, or this is how that business is built. And the big ones that I would always recommend, though, would be the Satya Nadella book on Microsoft. And you know, Phil Knight, and the shoe shoe dog, I think was, you know, absolutely phenomenal. And the one takeaway that I took away from that book, more than anything, is the fact that he's, he's so close to zero every single time and getting punched in the face over and over again. And, and it's the one element that I'd say resonates strongly with entrepreneurship is get used to getting punched in the face, almost to a point that you like it. And I know that it's, it's something that said over and over again. But honestly, you have to because it's like that. And just before you're about to complete a marathon, the amount of people who bow out and say, I can't run anymore, that this is, you know, my body is rejecting this, and my body just telling me, don't keep going, this is silly. And the people who push through to the end are the ones that get to accomplish the marathon, it's very much, it's very similar, where you'll get punched in the face over and over again, and you need to grow to like it in a way. So yeah, that is an extremely long winded answer to your question.
Conor McCarthy 28:17
That is a brilliant answer. There's loads there. No, no, that's like, we could talk all day about books and videos, and I suppose inspirations. The to your last point there. Seth Godin has this saying, where do you put the tired? Like he has, he tells a story about like, you know, marathon runners on mile 21. And you are an actual, like, sub four hour marathon runner you, you know, this, and like, my 21 isn't like, this is great. This is easy, this is fine. It's like it's it's as hard as it is for them as it is for anyone. But his his, his assertion is that they they've decided where to put the tired at that point, I didn't know what to do with that feeling. Whereas people who let's say, Give up at mile 21 they, they they haven't a clue, they're kind of giving up mentally obviously in the physical thing as well. It's happening but I think it's probably a good analogy as well with you know, you bad things are going to happen is going to be speed bumps and you'll be close to zero and you know, Phil Knight that to dog so many times for so many reasons that almost fell apart. And but he I guess he had something in him that was able to carry him through he knew where to put those feelings or those those emotions and and to keep plugging away. So yeah, shoe dog is a great book for that. That's a really good recommendation.
Brian Kenny 29:36
Yeah, I mean, there's um, in my mind Anyway, there's always been a little bit of a hierarchy. So the marathon or the the thing is at the very top. Underneath that comes the the training and preparation and strategy. And underneath that, again, comes passion and passion. Passion is something that's, I think, for me, it was is something that needs to be nurtured very, very carefully. And so what I try to instil in any company or you know, in many core, for example, is just before you feel tired, or just before you feel like, oh, I've had enough, close the laptop and walk away, and close it just at the point of, I have a longing, or I have a, I have a need and an appreciation and I can't hunger towards going back into this task tomorrow in four hours whenever it might be. But make sure that you understand that the minute that you go past that, and you, you get to this, I really can't get through this task, I flippin hate this thing, this is all going in the wrong direction, I'm crap, I'm you know, if you don't close the laptop at the right time, you're killing a little part of your passion, you need to stop it at a point where tomorrow or when I pick up this laptop, again, I'm fired up and I can't wait to get into it. Because I love engineering or I love designing or I love whatever it might be. That then creates a spark towards the preparation phase or the strategy phase. Where honestly, in order to run a marathon correctly, it's just about putting the time in, you know, the more time that I run, the more that I am ready to do a marathon. And then going up again, once you start doing the marathon, you've gone through it so many times in the training phase that you know exactly what to do with the tiredness or what to do with when my mind tells me to stop or whatever it might be. So I think really nurturing that passion and being responsible is probably a great way to put it and to who you are and making sure that you don't lose that spark is far more valuable than than some of the other items I've heard around this.
Conor McCarthy 31:57
That's, that's really interesting. I think I heard it was Hemingway used to stop writing when he was at a kind of peak moment. He didn't write till he was frustrated. He kind of wrote and then he put down the pencil, he would start the next time with that feeling of Oh, yeah, this is going here and there. And he would give himself the energy to keep going. So yeah, I love that that's a really, that's a good one, that that's helpful. And you are in the rare position where you have been in a lot of new companies first 10 customers, because you're, you know, most times you're building them for those people. And and it although you're biassed in that sense, What's it like being a first time customer on a new product or service.
Brian Kenny 32:42
So when when when we started with the product agency, we really went for the vanilla, we'll just design it and build this type of approach. As we started to uncover what was happening, as you know, products didn't start to, you know, attract customers or weren't getting noticed. Well, we pivoted mini Corp a little bit towards Well, how do we not just design and build the first version, but how do we and get the first, you know, 10 100 customers? And how do we also understand what those customers are telling us and iterate on the product forward based on that invaluable feedback. Those first 10 customers, I cannot I cannot shout loud enough how impactful they are to your business, even to a point that I've nobody say if you gave three people the exact same ideas and three months, and then you gave them three different cohorts of first 10 customers pending on their feedback would change the trajectory of that business and those products completely. There, they have a massive impact. And I think there isn't, I'm so glad Connor that you're even highlighting this as a one really relevant topic. The if we're to look at, let's say product development in general, usability testing is something that goes in and as a little bit of an afterthought, where in so many different cases people will say, Well, I know the industry I know domain knowledge, I know exactly how this industry works. And so we're just going to build a product this way. And you take that versus another company who says Well, let's validate and make make sure that the customer is actually wanted this way and so on. And the the attitude of the person who is so strong and believes that they have the right answer and that their assumptions are correct. They embarr they have to pivot at some at some point because it's it's not correct unfortunately. And versus you're getting 10 pieces of information or 100 pieces. have information in there at a really strong time when I've started to test products, and I've actually learned this habit more from Alan Huberty, our CTO at mini Corp is, when somebody asks you to test something, do them the favour of just sitting down with an iPad or a piece of paper or a laptop, and writing out every single note that comes into your head. Like, right out. Yeah, I think that that button should be over there, I think that there should be over there, or I don't understand what that sentence means or whatever, if you just do them, that one solid favour, I cannot emphasise enough how valuable that feedback is to the person number one, they feel heard. And number two, it's really strong feedback because you understand what that means to that person. And number three, the probability of their product becoming successful has just been increased based on 10 minutes of your time. And I think whenever I've pushed any idea, or given you any idea, Connor, or kind of opened up and said, Hey, we're thinking about launching this, what do you think? And it's the first habit that I've also gleaned from yourself where you use spend so much time percolating on the idea and researching the idea that you then come back with even more valuable information that really helps us to point the shift in the right direction. So thank you.
Conor McCarthy 36:25
Yeah, no, anytime I love it, I can't get enough of it. Because you get some pretty interesting ideas through the door, and you've built so many interesting products from those ideas. And that Yeah, it's great to, because there is there the first 10 is such a big point of leverage for all the reasons you said, you know, getting that kind of generous feedback can alter the trajectory trajectory of a company, in a very, very big way. And I just noticed the time, maybe just one last question, what would you say to someone starting out to find their first 10 customers?
Brian Kenny 37:03
Firstly, I'd say do anything in your power to do this? So what I mean by that is, it can, it can seem like an insurmountable task to find the 10 customers, there's first of all your own internal barriers. And they are the product is not ready. And I don't feel that people should get to see this. Yes. And I'm going to be judged as a person based on handing this out to the world. Get over that mountain as soon as you possibly can. The next thing is trying to find the first 10 customers can also seem like a really difficult task. But if we're to pretend that the world is just built up of rules and regulations or walls, and we looked a little bit outside of the box, if you had a b2c based product, and you wanted to see how people would react to it, if you stood with a five year old box of lollipops at the top of Grafton Street, and you ask people for 10 minutes of their time, I would say you will get a good, you know, 50 or 100 people to give you some pretty valuable insight. And I think you'll also learn some sales tactics yourself of how do you get people interested? How do you hold the conversation? And how do you ask the right questions. And the more that you can go through that cycle, and the more that you will find tune your own product development skills, so overall bar the embarrassment or the challenge of going through something like that. And you do nothing but net win as a person by putting yourself out there. From a b2b perspective, there is a tonne of tools. So there's things like apollo.io, there's crunchbase, there's, you know, so many wonderful different websites, where you can search and filter for companies that you feel wouldn't meet the criteria of what your product is targeting. Try to communicate and nurture and, you know, have conversations with these people as a one on one. I cannot stress enough. Do your homework as much as you can. So what invariably normally tends to happen in this scenario is that you go and you say, I'm the best person that let's say, number one, identify mini Corp as a potential first 10 customer. I then go on to LinkedIn, I see that Brian is the CEO of mini Corp. I'm going to go and I'm going to send Brian a really vanilla email going, Hey, I'm Jessica and I'm thinking about building this product. I would love to get your insight Do you have time? And if you really did more research, you know what you do is you look at Brian's Twitter, you look at all of the other people who are within the company. It's a relatively small agency, who within that company understands product As as much as possible, who would be perfectly targeted within that company? And then you go, Oh, you know, Dennis, or Allen would probably be a lot stronger in this rather than going directly to Brian, because Brian is probably, you know, trying to run the company at the moment versus the other two guys are building the products and really close to the product development. So identifying people and having a one on one conversation with them. And you would be really surprised how people want to help as long as you make a genuine and you ask them in a really nice and transparent way. And if you get some no’s, you get some no’s, it's a part of it all.
Conor McCarthy 40:44
I've probably got no better way to close if you get some no’s, you get some no’s. It's part of it all.
Conor McCarthy 40:51
Yeah, but they're gonna happen. They're on the path there in the mail, as I say. That's fantastic. They are. Yeah, that that's really nicely summed up for anyone who's just starting to get the first 10, b2c or b2b. And we'll leave it there. Thank you so so much, there's you can tell everything you say there's like this such depth of experience. And I just, I keep wanting to dive into stories, more and more. But I really appreciate your time. And I think our listeners would appreciate your expertise and your wisdom on this. So thank you very, very much,
Brian Kenny 41:26
you're more than welcome. And I really appreciate both yourself and everything that you've helped me out with Connor. And also, you know, the fact that you're tackling this awareness around the first 10 customers, I'd also say, I'd like to be as obtainable as possible. So if any of your listeners would like to ask any questions, or getting contact, and I'm around on Twitter, and Instagram, and so on, please reach out. I'm always open to having a coffee or a conversation or zoom, in order to help anybody that I could, and hopefully they'll pass it on at some point in their future to
Conor McCarthy 42:08
absolutely, I second that, Brian is who should have said this myself. You are a brilliant person to reach out to and to have always a fascinating conversation, and you've got a great, great brain. And yes, so thank you again, and there'll be lots more details online.
Brian Kenny 42:22
Gentlemen, thank you very much.
Conor McCarthy 42:23
All right. Thanks. Bye. And that's a wrap. I really hope you enjoyed this episode, and that there was something in there that was actionable and insightful for your business. Do check out the show notes for more information on what we discussed, as well as ways to contact my guest today. Helping you identify and create those first 10 customers is what I do. So if you like what you hear on this podcast, please do get in touch at www.first10podcast.com, or on Twitter @TheFirst10Pod
