#14 - Kareem Mostafa of tribetactics
#14 - Kareem Mostafa on pushing back on your customers, working with family and honing your questions.
On this episode of The First 10 Podcast, I talk to Kareem Mostafa, founder of tribetactics, the done-for-you content platform and also chopcast, which helps you make your existing content work even harder for you.
Key Points
"Whoever asks the questions, holds the power"
Don't frame your project as "research", instead tell your potential customer it’s up and running
Always be helping...it genuinely makes business sense
Show Notes
https://www.tribetactics.com/chopcast/features
https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/
The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon
Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross
From Impossible to Inevitable by Aaron Ross
Mark Wayshak's Sales Insights lab
Contact Details
Transcription
SPEAKERS Conor McCarthy, Kareem Mostafa
Kareem Mostafa 00:02
But what happens on the call Connor something that I would characterise as magical? Because sometimes when when people are speaking about a need that they have, and you're presenting them with what could be a possible solution for this, the reaction is not sure. Like, can I get this because I because I want this.
Conor McCarthy 00:22
Hello, everyone and welcome back to the first 10 podcast where I interview Business Builders up 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 my friend Kareem Mostafa, who's the founder of tribe tactics, the done for you content platform. And he also runs chop cast, which helps you make your existing content work even harder for you. Kareem came from a corporate background in LinkedIn and HubSpot, and took the plunge to bootstrap tribe tactics into existence with his brother Armin. In sharing this story, we cover how they refine their value proposition, how they positioned and pitched it, how they learned sales on the fly, and what it's like to work with family members. And of course, we talk a lot about content marketing, I found the part of the conversation where Kareem describes his customer development process really fascinating, and includes how they push back on their customers to ensure a good fit and develop a great relationship. Finally, Kareem shares a really short method of going about developing relationships on LinkedIn, and describes the power of a simple follow up. I've known green for a few years now. I'm genuinely always impressed at his growth mindset and the generosity in the work he does, as well as the amount that he shares with those random. He's the definition of a people person. And I always leave conversations with Kareem smiling. If you like what you hear here, Kareem is definitely worth getting in touch with. Without further ado, Kareem Mustapha. Hey there first 10 podcast listeners. I'm here today with my friends Kareem Mostafa Kareem, first of all, thank you very, very much for taking the time to be with us here today. Do you want to tell us a little bit about your business story so far? And what you're working on right now?
Kareem Mostafa 02:06
Yeah, for sure. Connor, thank you so much for having me. Definitely a dream of mine to be on the podcast. I have been following it. And yeah, my My name is crema stuff. I'm from Egypt, and I'm a co founder at tribe tactics. And basically, what we do is we help companies turn an hour of their time into a full month of content by helping them repurpose what content they already have, as such, very cool, I, I love this, because everyone is so pressed for time. And I've seen your work up close. We've known each other a while. And it's really phenomenal how much value you can get from I suppose what people regard as just just the stuff they know, or the things they say or you know, I don't think people maybe it's that classic thing of what's obvious to you is not obvious to everyone else. And you actually turn that into value. Yeah, 100% I think it's, it's funny, because sometimes when you okay, I used to work in HubSpot before this. So I come from, from the the corporate marketing world, if you will, and many times you know, you you, you can't help but notice certain opportunities. That may not be like as obvious and maybe because, you know, at first you feel like they they're, they're not obvious because they're likely not going to work. But then sometimes, you know, you know, you make a decision to to really like take that leap and see, you know, what would it actually look like if I actually gave this thing a chance? And how far could we could we possibly go with? So? Yeah, we have been pivoting a lot as we go. But But yeah, like, I guess, like from from the feedback so far, it seems like it is something that, you know, people find people find, you know, useful. So hopefully we'll continue to do that.
Conor McCarthy 03:47
Yeah, I love that as well. Because Yeah, your your corporate background, it must be so different going from, I suppose the way decisions are made about products in a corporate environment is totally different from the way decisions are made. When you're on your own or you know, your work to your brother. So, yeah, well talk about maybe about that difference a little bit.
Kareem Mostafa 04:07
Yeah. 100%. So yeah, it's, you know, me and my brother, and like, we pretty much set up tribe tactics, initially, as a marketing agency, and we were just like, just another marketing agency for about all of maybe maybe two months, and then we were like, wait a minute. First of all, if we even try to do that, you know, we won't be able to differentiate ourselves from all the other amazing agencies that have been there for years. And so we decided to try our best or at least fool ourselves into thinking that we're trying to create some form of a new category or some form of a new type of offering in that regard. But sorry to go back to your original question. Large companies just because, I mean, from my personal experience, they have access to so much data, so many customers, so many sort of opportunities, and I imagine it's always a struggle to really prioritise. Like, what are the things that are actually worth doing because for a company, that's much larger to really take on something, I mean, they have to seriously take on something. And they really have to give it like, there's a minimum, like, you know, resources and, and, and commitment that would go into pursuing something that's new, and so on and so forth. Otherwise, it wouldn't be worthwhile. And so yeah, I imagine that, you know, there's so many different things that they could do, but they have to be very strict in terms of what would actually add value to their current customers and, and to just their, their, their vision for the company overall. And even things that sometimes they really want to do, sometimes they just physically don't have the capacity for it. Because, you know, there's so many other, I suppose, like, implications and, and, and things like that.
Conor McCarthy 05:47
Hmm. It's interesting. It has me wondering, you know, you you know, what it's like to go out and find 10 customers for a new a new business. And are there any similarities in terms of launching something new between, let's say, a corporate entity, like HubSpot, and a solopreneur or someone doing doing a bootstrapped enterprise?
Kareem Mostafa 06:08
Yeah, I think it's interesting, because, you know, one of the things that I, that I was doing in HubSpot was basically working with some of their newer markets, the the emerging markets. So as I said, I'm from Egypt, and naturally, you know, they were like, Okay, well, you can, you can work with, you know, the MENA region, so Middle East and North Africa, which at the time, was still like a fairly new market for for HubSpot. And the, the the brand recognition that you would get from, let's say, a place like, I don't know, the US or UK, you know, some of their very successful markets where you just pick up the phone, you're like, hey, it's HubSpot, and like, oh, HubSpot, you know, great in the same way that someone would would call you up and say, hey, it's, you know, so and so from, I don't know, Google, or, or LinkedIn, or what have you. There was definitely that brand recognition piece in these markets, but but in some of the newer markets, it definitely felt very startup. And it gave me I suppose, a taste of like, what it's like to not necessarily be recognised by everyone who who would, who would pick up the phone on the other end, so to speak. So that's probably the closest that I've got to it. During my my time in the in the corporate world. Obviously, what we're going to be talking about today is, yeah, like, obviously, our first time customers from, from a startup perspective, or from a tribe tactics perspective, and I think this was probably the closest experience that I had, because sometimes, you know, they, they may have heard of it, but it's just like a fancy idea, especially on the on the corporate side, that is with, for example, the company like spot, if it's an emerging market, but when you're setting up something that you pretty much just started like, two, three weeks ago, you can absolutely guarantee that no one has heard of it at all. And it stays like that for a good few years. I think we're entering what year three, sort of year three right now. And yeah, I mean, we are, you know, unknown for like the, to the vast majority of people. And so we really have to, I suppose, you know, always put pressure on ourselves to think on our feet and figure out how do we, you know, make sure that our pitch or our value proposition or what have you, is compelling enough that regardless what the name of regardless whether they know of the company or not, this is a value proposition that's hopefully worth their time and attention as such.
Conor McCarthy 08:28
It's a great segue into the nuts and bolts of it now. Yeah. So the so tribe tactic starting off, and yeah, it's only three years old. I think I met you probably two years ago. So it was easy. It was very, very fresh back then. But yeah, so I mentioned a couple of things there about, you know, having a good value proposition, and a good pitch to talk a little bit about how, how the process was and coming to your current value proposition.
Kareem Mostafa 08:51
Yeah, absolutely. So I'll take you back to when we first started off, we basically so you know, we, I left my job thinking, Okay, we'll just do a marketing agency. Because I think we know how to do that, what I, what I didn't realise is just how difficult it is, to start something, especially in a, in an in a market where, you know, this is something that was, you know, very much it was very much a crowded market very much, you know, established with a lot of great companies already, what possibly could we do that was different. And I realised that, you know, not to be too hard on myself, but like, you know, I realised that we were essentially setting up setting ourselves up for failure. And unless we really start to think of a different direction, and one of the people that we used to follow a lot during this time was Gary Vaynerchuk, and a lot of other like, sort of, like marketing, you know, King fans and like influencers in the space. And, you know, one of the things that we really liked about the way he was creating this content was that, you know, he would create like a main piece of example, A video episode or a podcast episode, you know, similar to this one, and then we would see that once that episode is launched, you know, there's so many like micro content pieces. And as we understand that, you know, he obviously has a team, that that takes care of creating that content, we thought, you know, this is so cool and so effective. And it keeps definitely keeps his brand top of mind. But I wonder like, what, what would people do? Like, what about folks who don't have access to such a team? Or what if they have a team, but they're super stretched and super busy with other things? What if we could do something like that, but like, as a service, like it's a subscription service, it was completely accidental? And we thought, you know, well, it sounds a little bit more, you know, differentiated, maybe then just another agency, so to speak, especially because we didn't really know how to how to make that first play work. And so we pivoted into this new thing. And, you know, yeah, that, you know, we realised that it is something that is actually resonating with people. Over time, we started to really work in our positioning so that people don't see us as an agency, but rather as this subscription service, where people can pretty much just use us for like repurposing their existing content. And, and yeah, that's, that's, that was the start of it.
Conor McCarthy 11:13
It's great. Because I think, you know, starting off, you have an idea. And this has been a recurring theme in the podcast, you have an idea about what the thing is that you have, and then you go out and you talk to people about it. And then your audience tells you what it really is. Is that fair to say about tribe tactics as well?
Kareem Mostafa 11:28
100% when we first started, you know, we were like, okay, so Me, me and me, we were very, we were brothers. Okay, so, you know, we, you can't help but like mix a bit of like, personal with the professional. At the start, it was a bit of a challenge. But right now we've, we have it down to a fine art. Simply put, personal stuff goes into WhatsApp and professional stuff goes on slack. So we can be like having a fight about something on slack. And then on WhatsApp, and the exact same minute we're sharing, like funny photos of like something that we saw. So we've we've, we've mastered that. Art, so to speak. But I guess like, one of the things that we were, you know, we really cared about is like, hey, this can't just be like an idea, we have to be able to demonstrate that we can make money out of this. And I mean, like me and him had zero experience when it came to fundraising. You know, and so we thought we can't just rely on like, making the most beautiful, like, you know, PowerPoint presentation, hope that's, you know, what's going to help us, we figured, let's just go straight to selling, because it's something that we were a little bit more familiar with. And we felt this would be the best way for us to prove to ourselves, number one, that we're not crazy. And number two, hey, like, it has that positive knock off effect of when we if and when we do speak to investors, you know, hopefully, it's something that they will, you know, see value in or be able to recognise as such. But still, you know, we had no brand we had, we didn't even have like a fully functioning service, we had like an idea of what the service would look like, if someone were to pay us to do it. You know, and we were just, it was pretty dysfunctional at the beginning. And we thought, you know, let's just do a bit of research on understand how do people like even get started when when they have nothing at all at the beginning. And one of the things that we came across was this idea of starting off with, of course, customer development conversations and customer development interviews, which, you know, in plain English is basically interviewing customers, potential customers, on what they may like to see if something like this were to exist. And to our surprise, the the first few conversations that we had, not all of them, obviously, but some of the first few that we had, and definitely part of the first time, you know, when when we were just talking about something like this. People on the other end will tell us, you know what, this is actually a serious pain point for us. And one of the things that we we did like, as as a way to really stress test the idea further, is to not we didn't frame it too much as a as like a research project. We said, we positioned it as Oh, yeah, we, you know, we're up and running. But we just wanted to get your feedback on what we're working on. And that was pretty much our outreach. So like speaking of tactical things, like we would reach out to people and say, Hey, given your experience, you know, and so on. So I saw that you weren't here in here, you know, from your LinkedIn profile. I never met before, but I'd love if we can grab like a, you know, 1520 minute chat, just to get your feedback on what we're working on. You know, whether we're like moving in the right direction, or whether it's something that could be relevant to you guys later down the line. And most people I would say, a good majority of people are of course happy to, to help and share advice and things like that. But what happens on the call Connor is something that I would characterise as, as magical because sometimes When when people are speaking about a need that they have, and you're presenting them with what could be a possible solution for this, they can't help, especially if it's a real need. They can't help. But just like, the reaction is not sure. Like, can I get this because I, because I want this, I this is actually something that we care about. And of course, as a salesperson as a as a co founder, like, the answer is yes. You know, and you will figure it out later. Yeah. And so yeah, that to be honest with you, like, I will probably dive into this a bit more in detail. But you know, you know, a big majority of our first 10 customers were essentially, customer research calls, were in the spur of the moment on the call, you know, they were like, are you guys actually offering this because we could really, like, use this, like, we could actually pay for this right now. And we're like, you know, matter of fact, we are, yeah, it's available. You know what I mean? And so we pretty much built it, we built the product, like in conjunction with their feedback, like in real time, almost. Obviously, now we're, we're a lot more structured. But at the start, it was very much like re mixing it as we go and really fine tuning it as we go, until we started to see some patterns. And we're like, okay, we've kind of come full circle here. Like, we're starting to see like a trend that we're starting to see people saying and asking for the same thing over and over again, let's start to build a process around this. Let's hire someone for this. Let's see how we can build this in a scalable way from like a standard operating procedure perspective. But yeah, it all started with like customer feedback, because we knew that we had nothing and like, we literally needed to sell what people are asking for. So we just gave them that initial Spark. And we wanted to see if it's something that would resonate with them. And, and again, like we're still, of course, fine tuning it as we go. But the general premise of what we were doing definitely resonated with folks and continues to do so. So. So yeah,
Conor McCarthy 16:59
that's brilliant. Thank you for all that detail. Because I think a lot of people who listen to this who are wondering, where do we even start? And, you know, who do I approach? And what do I say to them? And is it a deck? Or is it a conversation? You know, and there's, there's a certain amount of bias, I guess, that might creep in potentially group into conversations, you know, people might not want to hurt your feelings about your new idea. They might want to say, Yeah, it's great, go go build it. But the fact that people are almost like, please take my money, how soon can I get this? Because I need this. That's a huge booster for you. Did you like with the with the people you first talked to? They were pretty close to you, like, even professionally or personally? Where did you know them pretty well, that you can have an honest conversation with them?
Kareem Mostafa 17:45
That's a great question. I would say it's a 5050 split of people that we did not know, whatever, pure cold approach. And then the others were just folks who are naturally in our network, where we basically told them, Hey, this is what we're working on. Is this something that could be relevant to you guys? And it's worth clarifying that it wasn't all, you know, rainbows and sunshine when we were speaking to those guys in the beginning, as well, because even though they might be interested, and I'd be like, great, you know, I'll drop the paperwork or whatever, and we'll follow up by email. And then, you know, you get ghosted for a couple of days, a couple of weeks. And, you know, sometimes, you know, sometimes it just disappears, just completely off the radar, like nothing ever happened. You start to doubt yourself, like, were you imagining things? Yes. As it turns out, unfortunately, this is just part of part of the process. Sometimes people do say yes, and then they just disappear, like, completely disappear. In other cases, they're like, Oh, yeah, sorry about that. I got distracted. Yep, I just paid now. Here we go. You know, so, so definitely there is that, you know, that, that, that that follow up piece, I think I saw a quote once that said, fortune is in the follow up fortune favours the follow up something like that. Yeah. And I, I always like to remind myself of that, because I can, like, if we look at our numbers and stuff, like I can, I can very confidently see that, like, a significant portion of it was was attributed to following up not not simply like, do you want to buy this? Okay, great. Here you go kind of thing. You know, we just we want to chase that initial, yes, or that initial? Yeah, that initial approval, but it doesn't mean that it's done right then and there. Now, as you can imagine, we're obviously trying to find ways where we're shortening the sales cycle so that when they do say, yes, it really is as like right now, like within the next you know, couple of days ideally, but sometimes it's a yes that only materialises after a couple of weeks. Sometimes a couple of months gone I'm not gonna lie. But but but it is all under the within the year though, so that's, that's good. At least, that's good. But But, but yeah, it's it was basically a mix of like folks who are who are completely Like, cold, and we thought this was the perfect way to test this. And then others who are basically, you know, just friends and colleagues in that regard. Yeah,
Conor McCarthy 20:11
I think it's a really healthy thing to do to not kind of kid yourself by just approaching friends and colleagues, again, because of that bias that I think it's smart that you went out and found cold, cold leads, who too did ghost you and who did commit and then disappear? Because there's, there's such a learning in that as well as, as well as the people who gave you valuable feedback. And when it came to, to the actual conversations, either with with people you knew or people you didn't, did you have a kind of a, like a slide deck? Did you? Did you go in and ask them first about their, you know, their experience of creating contents? Did you or did you? Did you pitch tribetactics straightaway?
Kareem Mostafa 20:53
So So yeah, that's a really good question. I guess in the beginning, we, we basically had all the information on our website, we wanted to make a habit of making sure that all the information is accessible. And that at least in our case, we were in an industry where people don't like to show prices. And they just want you to like, contact them, and have a meeting and request a quote and that sort of thing. So we thought, you know what, let's just publicly put our prices up. Obviously, there's many people who are doing it. But I, I think that most people, I can easily say, well wouldn't show their prices. For us, we want it to show our prices, just because we know that maybe people who think it's too I don't know, too expensive. They'll be like, Oh, yeah, I'm not even gonna bother with this. And then people who may think that, you know, what, this is more affordable than I thought, you know, they're more encouraged, hopefully, to take us up on that conversation. And then the same thing with, you know, the the value proposition and the information that we would share with them on the call. We, you know, I've never actually formally worked in sales before until setting up like trap tactics with with my brother and the rest of the team. You know, so we didn't have any sales knowledge. So I was just like, reading up a lot. I was even speaking to, like, past colleagues, Who, who, who did and continue to work in sales just to get their advice and things like that. So I definitely leaned on. Yeah, just like my network of people to just learn as much as possible. I got to a stage Connor, where the the feedback that we were getting on how to run the meetings, was at one point, completely, completely opposite. So like, not everyone agrees, not everyone has the same approach. And that's when, in a weird way, it confused me even more, but in a weird way, it also brought a sense of calm to the whole, because it made me realise Oh, so there isn't, there's no wrong answer, like there's, or maybe there's a wrong answer. But like, there's more than one way to achieve this. And maybe I could just lean into the thing that works for me the most. And in my case, like, I don't like hard selling or cold selling or like, you know, always be closing and all that. Obviously, I as a, as a salesperson, now. And as a CEO, and what have you like, of course, I want to always be closing, as long as I'm always helping as well, as long as it's something that it makes sense for that customer for a variety of reasons, like, morally, but also like from business perspective, like if they weren't convinced, then they're gonna churn, it's just a matter of time. So it was a waste of their time and our time and our resources and their resources. So for right, for a variety of reasons, we're very motivated to only speak with the people that we genuinely believe we would be able to help. And even then, like, during the conversation, we always try and lead with a set of questions that pretty much focus not on us whatsoever, but rather on the problem that they are facing. And I know it's a bit cliche, but we really try and do this as much as possible. We try and resist the urge of like, Oh, my God, just, you know, I can't wait to tell you about our pricing page. You know, we genuinely try and, you know, just take a step back and say, Okay, what is the problem here? And we almost try and play. Not hard to get, but kind of like devil's advocate in the sense that we try and put ourselves in a dynamic where they have to convince us that this really is a challenge for them. So sometimes they would say, you know, we tried repurposing before, but it just takes so much time, you know, and then and then, you know, sometimes I would say something like, Okay, fair enough, but I guess it's not really a priority right now. Because you know, you It seems like you move to something else. Like I'm trying to convince them not to work with us kind of thing. And they're like, No, no, like, we tried, I'm like, Oh, yeah, well, can you give me an example of that? Because, and you know, we're not playing games with them. We're really genuinely just trying to understand, is this something that would be worth our mutual time to continue exploring or not, but it's definitely a questions or questions based approach. I overheard one of the top sales folks in HubSpot say this and it just stuck with me that whoever asks the questions, and the conversation holds the power. I might be paraphrasing a little bit, but basically Whoever asks the questions in a conversation is the one who's essentially searing it, as opposed to just jumping on a call and being like, having them ask all the questions, obviously, they will ask questions towards the end. But it's important that going into these conversations, it was important for us to have a list of like four or five questions that we pretty much have memorised at this stage. And that pretty much asked them about, is there a problem? Yes or no? What's the severity of the problem? If possible, how much does that translate into into dollars or euros or whatever? Because if it translates into 100, K, all of a sudden, our 300 a month packages is not so bad, you know, so on and so forth. Hmm.
Conor McCarthy 25:37
That's it, that's a very brave approach is is my first thought to actually to kind of turn almost turn the tables from, oh, I hope this person if they need this service, I hope they buy from me to kind of go in, well, are you a good fit for the service, and pushing back almost to get a, I suppose you're kind of it's like you're moulding a hard problem versus like a soft, squishy problem. You're both non committal, like, you probably don't want to do that kind of work, and they don't truly need it. So it's just gonna be a waste of time. But those few kind of harder questions to ask where you're really taking a risky step out there. But if you get the response that you're looking for, that's, that's as good as a yes.
Kareem Mostafa 26:22
I mean, we genuinely try and push back. And I know it sounds sometimes it's like burst our heart. And sometimes we really need the money and stuff like that. But we always know that, like, you know, I'm not trying to sound like goody goody or like an angel. But like, we genuinely just did the math. And we're like, say we, we somehow tricked them into becoming a customer that we're gonna spend, because we cost us money to serve customers, obviously. And so, you know, and we don't break even until like, after a period of time. And so why should we go through all this, if we already know that this is not going to work out eventually kind of thing. And so, you know, many times, we would say, you know, what, I'm not convinced that this is something that we can help you with. And so in this case, here's like, a bunch of content, like we create a tonne of content, obviously, because that's what we offer. So, you know, here's a show that we created all about these sorts of questions, or, you know, here's a free, you know, product or a free tool that we have, that could that could be helpful. You know, we try and my point is, like, we try and keep them in our ecosystem in general, because even if they may not be a good fit, I actually. So we used to be based in, in huckletree, in, in Dublin, before I moved out to to, to expert, so shout out huckletree if they're if they're tuning in, but I remember one time I actually booked, booked huckletree is a is an awesome co working space in in Dublin and other locations in Europe. But basically, I remember booking like a meeting room, and just taking like one of those really big like whiteboards to myself. And I mapped it out that if we prioritise having a positive relationship with every prospect that we meet, as opposed to trying to say, okay, think of it this way, if we, if our goal is always be closing, and we just closed that one person, that's all well and fine. But if we force that when it's not really natural to do so, and rather focus on building a positive relationship, ie by giving value, helping them just genuinely being there for them in their best interests, let's say that on average, each person may know another three people. And if you give them no reason, or let me say this, if you give them every reason to think highly of you to think positively of your company, or brand, naturally, you know, those, let's say those, you know, figurative, like three people that they come in touch with, they will speak positively about you to them as well, if they even hint at content or repurposing or any of the buzzwords that we're trying to associate with as such. And you know, they'll have every reason to promote us. And it will be like 100 times more effective than us running ads or, you know, or even showing them content or anything like that, because it comes from a trusted source. And so rather than getting one customer we can get a potential three customers from those, you know, three, let's say positive interactions, and actually mapped this out on a whiteboard, where like, one circle can branch out into three. And then from those three people, each one could branch out into a further three. And I looked like a crazy person at the end of the session, because I just had a big whiteboard full of like, circles. And that's when I realised I should probably get back to work. But it just made me realise that it's all about, you know, like, yeah, prioritising those positive interactions.
Conor McCarthy 29:38
Absolutely. I love that that's a really great metric, especially considering that you're in the content space. So the obvious thing would be like, let's just produce a lot of content to put it out there and you know, and get some some an inbound engine going. Whereas you kind of went for the personal the one to one, the prioritising positive interactions, which you could, you could probably patent that process. I think it's Really smart? It's It's It's a longer, it's kind of playing the long game. But it's a stronger game, I think.
Kareem Mostafa 30:06
Yes. And just to clarify, we do that in sales process or like, instead of always be closing, like we're always trying to follow like this sort of like always be helping approach because we just want to make friends like that's ultimately our goal. And again, it's not because we're angels or anything like that, it's because it's because we want to be nice, but also because it genuinely makes business sense. If I can build a positive relationship with someone, regardless of whether or not working with us, hopefully, they become, you know, an advocate for what we're trying to do over here. But we also create a lot of content as well to go with that. I know, I didn't talk about that much. But I was just focusing on like the, yeah, the hand to hand combat and like, stuff that we had to do at the beginning, which of course we continue to do right now. But I do have to say that our content has been helping us out greatly as well.
Conor McCarthy 30:53
Hmm. No, I and and yeah, like you fantastic content, it's, I suppose in the early days, it would have you would be correct to say like, you're better off focusing on the one to one interactions versus, you know, because content is out there. And it's a thing, some people kind of go, I need to create a whole bunch of content to put it out there. would you would you advise one way or the other?
Kareem Mostafa 31:16
Yeah. So I think I think it ultimately comes down to, to what works for for different people, ultimately, they have to make that decision for themselves. But the advice that works for me, is to actually fuse the two together. So if you remember, Connor, we had a podcast show that we that you were kind enough to come on, like two years ago at this stage, called the the spare room talks, because we could not afford an office at the time. And so I got permission from my wife that we could use the spare room and turn that into an office. And I was like, but do you have any tips on making it look like, you know, like, corporate like international office? And she's like, No, just just be honest, like, just tell the truth and call it what it is. And it'll be cool to document your journey. And I was like, fine, we'll just call it the spare room. And so the podcast then was spare room talks. And obviously, like, people can probably check out the episode that we did with you. I thought it was an awesome episode. But yeah, it was it was basically, in general, we thought that if we create content with awesome individuals, naturally, when content, I'm just being objective here, but like, naturally, when this content gets distributed, it's not just us distributing it, but we actually have partners who are naturally distributing the content, as well as the guests will naturally distribute that content as well. And you never know, who on the other side, may pick up content that might resonate with them. And so, you know, it was a nice way for us to ensure that you know, that we're building relationships, but that we're also creating content. And the beauty of creating content is that it's one to many, like it's scalable in that regard. The challenge for most brands, I would say, all brands at the beginning is that, if they're starting from scratch, nobody really knows them. And even if they create content, not everyone's gonna see that right away. So how do you fast track that without just resorting to the default, sort of like, you know, paying money for ads, because that takes time as well. You know, in our biassed opinion, because because we sell this stuff as well like creating shows and stuff like that. In our biassed opinion, the best way to do it. And you could do this for free to be honest, is to just come up with with some form of a show some form of an original series for your brand, where you're not putting all the pressure on yourself to just promote that show. Actually, it's something that the guests are intrinsically motivated to share and pass on as well. Obviously, once you put repurposing into the mix, you can create further content from there. But there's a lot of tools available, obviously, that allow you to create some form of a show some form of a podcast. And that of course allows you to build a platform for thought leadership. And and people just love that because you know, it's a great way to entertain people. And it's a great way to put that message out there. So on and so forth.
Conor McCarthy 34:01
I love it. Okay, that's really that's really good point. Just to go back for a second you you you learned sales on the fly. And I'm always curious, are there any books or people that had a significant influence on how you learned how to do sales?
Kareem Mostafa 34:14
Yeah, I think the biggest influence hands down for me to learn sales was that I went from getting X amount of salary and HubSpot to zero overnight and then from zero into the into the negative and I've been trying to work my way up since then. So so that was a very natural motivator that prod Yeah, yeah, simply put, like if you if you don't learn this, you you won't eat very simple equation. But in terms of so that would be the first one by far and I'm trying to make a point with this, which is that as scary and risky as it is, I was not able to get anything off the ground when I was doing it like part time as such. I really had to take the full plunge and I came to terms with myself. Well, my wife First of all, who gave me her blood And number two, myself that worse, what's the worst case scenario? Worst case scenario? Is this all goes terrible, I go bankrupt, in which case what would I do? Well, I have this amount of experience, maybe I'll just go apply for another job. And I was like, Okay, I could live with that. And so because I managed to, like, look at the worst case scenario, and I came to terms with that, now, I spent all of my my my day hours really figuring out how to avoid that, basically, me and my team, of course. And so along the way, of course, there were definitely some there many people and books that I that really helped me out. One of the so there's, there's, there's a lot, there's a lot, in no particular order. There's a great book called The Challenger sale. And that talks about this idea of almost challenging prospects, and, you know, basically, challenging them not not to be annoying, but to like to, like, get create a dynamic, where they're proving to you how big this problem is, and how much it matters to them. Psychologically, this is great, and helps them realise how much they need something or don't need something. So the challenger sale was a great book on her and then another one would be Predictable Revenue. And then there's one called from impossible to inevitable, Predictable Revenue, and and from impossible to inevitable are both written by the same by the same author, Aaron Ross. And, you know, there's other than that, just like, you know, listening to a lot of like salespeople on like YouTube, like some of them have great channels, one of my absolute favourite people is a guy called mark, way Shaq and I can, I can give you his name, like his channel name afterwards, if you'd like to share that. But Mark way, Shaq is an awesome salesperson, he has an awesome sales channel where he talks about how to create sales experiences that are beneficial for you, but also make the customer feel great. And everybody comes out really well. comes out well off from it. But yeah, these are just to name a few.
Conor McCarthy 37:03
Okay, cool. Yeah. Thanks. So definitely look for that link from you. If you were to if if, if everything went away, that you'd built so far, and you had to start again, tomorrow, what would you not do in the process of finding your first 10 customers?
Kareem Mostafa 37:17
What would I not do? I would not waste time, I would realise basically that, like I would have started even sooner with our customer development process and just reaching out to people cold, just to understand, like, what are the things that people really care about, so that we can factor that into our product. Also, we would not have built as much as we have built without justifying, you know, that against like, maybe a feed a piece of feedback, or a comment or something that we learned from an interview, basically, everything we built would be, should be, and would be traced to something that we heard in a customer interview call. And so everything is justified, as opposed to creating some because I think it's cool, like me and my brother were very creative people, you know. So sometimes we just want to create something because it's cool, because it's fun. And of course, this is there's a difference when this is your livelihood, like you have to make sure that it's all like data driven.
Conor McCarthy 38:15
I realised that asking that it might be it might be very similar. But if similar question, what would you say to someone starting out to find their first 10 customers?
Kareem Mostafa 38:24
Okay, so first of all, there's going to be a lot of like advice out there. And there's a lot of different things that the good news is that there's a lot of different ways that work. There's a lot of different methods that work. You know, one of the things that worked for us, and I'm happy to do it to detail it out here is simply Step one is to get LinkedIn Sales Navigator account, they are available for free on a trial if you wanted to. It's just kind of it's kind of like LinkedIn, but on steroids in terms of like being able to search for people. And then the second thing is to simply build out your ideal customer profile. And even if you don't know that based on data, I know everyone talks about data. If you don't have data, just guess, guess what you think is going to be the target, the target like company size, the target, job title, the target, you know, what have you. And probably this process could be replicated for b2c, but I'm speaking from my experience, which is, which is only b2b. Basically coming up with a list of these people and then connecting with them on LinkedIn, building up that relationship, in the form of like commenting on stuff that they posted, just following their content. And then after giving it some time, basically reach out to them for advice. So again, you're not selling at all, you're simply asking for their advice, given their experience. And when you ask for their advice, you have to make sure that it's personalised and that it's related to something that they posted, or, you know, something that their company did, like there has to be a reason. Otherwise it's going to feel very copy paste it and even even if you didn't copy paste it, like people get inundated with messages like that. So you have to really do your due Your homework to make sure that it's person, a personal and genuine outreach. And you're simply asking for 15 to 20 minutes of their time to which hopefully they will, they will graciously accept, especially if, if they accept, it's a good sign, because usually they will check your website out, they will check out your profile, and they'll make sure that this is something that could potentially be of benefit to them as well. Especially, you know, especially in business, obviously. And so, and then the next step then is after you have that call with them, which you could obviously do using zoom or Google Hangouts or whatever, just come prepared and ask like a set of four or five questions that focus not on your solution whatsoever, but rather on the problem. Because once you've verified that there is a problem, that's when you can then realise that they're ready to hear a solution, but there's, you know, specifically in b2b, like, people aren't going to buy a solution for something that they cannot match to a problem, because they have to justify that purchase decision to their boss later on. And the best way to define a problem is to simply tell them, because again, like it like, kinda like, if you tell me For example, to to take a blank piece of paper and draw something, I might find that task very difficult, because there's so much that I could draw, or at least attempt to draw. But if it's on the Korean drug picture of a car, you've just made it so much easier for me, because now, like, I can just focus on drawing a car. Similarly with the problem, it'd be a bit weird and redundant, if you tell them hey, so what problems do you currently have, will have all sorts of problems, you know? And so, if you tell them, Hey, you know, we, when we speak to people, we generally see that they have problem A, B, or C, and you have to come up with these problem statements early on, like we find that they don't have enough time to repurpose their content, or they we find that, you know, they are creating a lot of content, but it's not really effective for them. Or, for example, numbers, see is that they're getting, for example, leads from content, but those leads are not really high quality leads for what they're after, which one of those resonates with you? And usually they'll say, oh, A or B, or you know, what, all three of them actually. And it's so funny, because many times they'll say, you know, what, all three of them. And then. So that's the first question like, you know, these are your problem statements. And then after that, it's really, okay, well, can you give me proof of that? Can you give me an example of the fact that you have problem A or B, or C, you're almost interviewing them? You know, in job interviews, they say, Tell me about a time when you did bla bla bla, it's the same exact thing. Tell me about a time where you've experienced this problem. It's like, oh, last week, blah, blah, blah, happened? Oh, okay. What was the impact of that? You know, what was the emotional impact of that? What was the financial impact of that? Oh, I don't know. Would you say like, 100 k or so? Oh, no, maybe like more? More? Like, you know, 50? k? Okay, cool. That's good to know. So sometimes when people say, I don't know, you can just throw out an answer. And they will help you adjust them. So that's something that we learned because previously, they would say, Oh, I don't know. And I'd say okay, but now we realise you have to just give them a prompt prompt. definitely helped a lot. And yeah, last but not least, is to try and basically get them to a stage where they realise how big this problem is, and to make sure that they realise that and then and only then could you then get their feedback on on what you're building. So sorry, Connor, for the long winded answer. But I did want to give something that
Conor McCarthy 43:32
might help people too long winded answers are the best, because that's, there's there's lots of detail in there. It's and I think that's what people like to hear how exactly do you do it? So the way you do you talked about there about approaching people on LinkedIn, specifically, about kind of building relationship over time and and taking an interest in what they do and seeing if it's a good fit, and then reaching out to them for some time? Have you ever been approached in that way yourself?
Kareem Mostafa 43:58
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It's funny, because the people who do their research, definitely stand out. So, so yeah, it's funny, because it's a good question. Because it's something that when you see how it works on you, you realise, you know, you want to you want to treat people the same way that you that you want to be treated as well. Because similarly, like when people you know, copy paste stuff, like you can tell, I think all of us have in our have, like PhDs when it comes to like, determining what's the copy pasting because I was talking with my wife about this the other day that like, regardless what, what anyone does, you probably have to do a bit of email at one point. And so everyone has a lot of experience with that, you know,
Conor McCarthy 44:45
yeah, that's a good point. We all have PhDs in that. Okay, that's been that's been really, really great to talk about all that. Thank you very, very much for the detail. Really, it's you said a lot of things in there that were surprising to me and I kind of went on I made An awful lot of notes during that call. So, thank you for your time. I'll obviously include all the details in in the show notes. I know you're also working on chop cast to talk about that
Kareem Mostafa 45:11
Yeah, for sure. Um, so, you know, one of the things that that we decided that we realised early on is that not everyone necessarily wants to repurposing service. Sometimes people just want a product that they can sort of like lips, selves, and it just makes it makes their process makes their life a lot easier and faster when it comes to creating content. So we're very happy to say that we have built this product, it's called chop cast. And it's completely free to use. It is a seven day trial. But if someone reaches out to us and quotes this episode podcast, we'd be more than happy to give them an extension from there. And yeah, hopefully people can can use that to promote the content that they're creating to, to reach larger audiences and hopefully have more meaningful conversations.
Conor McCarthy 45:57
Yeah, I think job cast is genius. And it comes from that place of of discovering a hidden need, like all your work on tribe tactics, one of the new products you've built from from the right place from a strong foundation is chop casts pretty, pretty cool to see that in the world.
Kareem Mostafa 46:11
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Conor McCarthy 46:13
Thank you very, very much for your time and your smarts. It's great. It's great to catch up and talk about everything. All the details, be in the show notes and have a great day.
Kareem Mostafa 46:22
Perfect Conor, thank you so much for the opportunity, always great to reconnect, and hopefully people benefit from this episode today.
Conor McCarthy 46:28
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.
