Transcript
WEBVTT
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Yeah,
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welcome back to BTB Growth. I'm dan
Sanchez with sweet fish media and I'm
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here with Claire Pena, who is the VP of
marketing at Stream Claire, Welcome to
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the show. Thanks dan, happy to be here.
I brought clear on today to talk about
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community building. I know it's a
popular topic but Claire actually has
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been doing something that I thought was
unique in the first time I heard about
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it, essentially they are hiring their
target audience to help them build that
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community. So as soon as she told me
about in our pre interview, I was like,
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oh that's it, that's what we have to
talk about this because I haven't heard
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anybody talk about doing this beyond
maybe like one subject matter expert or
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maybe taking somebody else in the
organization, so I can't wait to learn
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and I know the audience listening to
this will certainly benefit as well,
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but before we even talk about like why
hiring your target audiences worked for
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extreme. Tell me about how you define
community first and why it's been been
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a focus on your marketing efforts.
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Yeah, I think community is really just
uh organic space for people to come
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together and connect on a topic or
shared passion. Our audience has a lot
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of passion, projects, their developers,
product managers and that bleeds into
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the business itself, But more and more
B to B companies and B2B marketing
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teams are realizing that sometimes the
traditional playbook doesn't work,
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You're not talking to a conglomerate or
a business itself, but you're actually
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talking to an individual that often has
a really heavy influence on purchasing
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software and decision making in the end,
even if they might not have a c suite
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title or on the credit card themselves.
So community is is really just a way of
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helping people, enabling them with
their projects and really just
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fostering that connection and you know,
as we know it comes in a lot of
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different forms, especially over the
last year and a half. So it doesn't
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have to be in person. There's a lot of
different ways to create community. So
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why did it become a focus for Stream
specifically? Was there like a problem
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you're running up against? Did the
content marketing just not have to have
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a limit to it? Like what led it to it
being like, let's community, we need to
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do better at this. Yeah. So I was lucky
to come into a company post series a
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where the Ceo was starting to get ahead
of this already. His name's Terry and
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he really is one of those engineers and
founders turned Ceo that loves
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marketing and loves collaborating with
me in the marketing realm. So he
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started to realize that you can have
technical long form content. You can
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reach people for S. E. O. But that we
were missing a piece of really
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connecting to the human and having
people dedicated on our team to
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slightly represents stream, but really
more so just be themselves and
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introduce the product when the time was.
right. So this started with your
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typical one person, a lot of companies
call them an evangelist or something
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like that. But we took it like 10 steps
further once we realized how effective
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it was and We built out the team to
nine, not 10 people, I think we're
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hiring four more in the next quarter
and they're really dedicated to our
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individual SDK s and their specific
community. And so we hire someone that
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is already immensely popular in
something like the android community
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and we then just let him do this
particular person, we as an example, we
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let him do his thing. You know, we he's
involved in the engineering team, so
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he's very close to the product in the
engineering work. He's extremely
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connected in the android community and
then he's doing marketing, he's
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speaking at events, he's writing things,
he's weighing in on our strategy, he's
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doing campaign brainstorms and I just
don't think you have a replacement for
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that voice on your team. There's,
there's no other way for us as
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marketers to be that close to our
audience. Wow. So you started with just
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one evangelist who was already
essentially a bit of an influencer in
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the space that right? Yeah. And he was,
he was an engineer at stream that
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turned into this role. Okay, so he was
already working for the company already
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a bit of an influencer and you just
essentially made it more official that
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he represented the company? Yeah, it
was, it was made into an official role
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and then he started leading the team
and building it out. Once we all
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decided this is something we need to
put resources into. That's awesome.
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Tell me a little bit more about like
his a reach in the beginning. Like what
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did, what did he have going for them?
That you were like, hey, like you want
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to do that full time for us? Like what
did it look like already? Did you have
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a bit of a following on social? Was he
running a popular blog Youtube channel?
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Like what does this person look like?
Yeah, that's a great question. And I
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would have a different answer for each
of the devereaux hires that we have,
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there's some people that come on to
stream. We just hired someone from
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India that already has 150,000
subscribers on YouTube from his
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personal channel. So that's, you know,
a good example of something to look for
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this particular person. The best way to
describe it is as a marketing leader. I
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work with a lot of different
engineering teams and you can tell
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right away when the individual cares
about. Okay, so say you have a guest
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blog program and you have an engineer
right down at once a week. You know,
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sometimes like one out of 10 of those
engineers will contact you and say, hey,
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how many impressions did that get or do
we get any trials or revenue from that
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or you know, how many page views if I
had and you can kind of pick up right
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away when they're interested in the
business side and they want to be more
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involved in the community of engineers
that they're serving. So this first
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person that started the team was
showing interest in that and Terry was
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smart enough. Our ceo to really,
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you know, say, hey, well let, let's
make this full time thing, let's really
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do this, you know, in all early stage
companies and I'll B two B marketing,
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you have to constantly make bets right
and run tests and experiments. And so
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this is like a small bet, hey, what if
we do this? Um pull valuable engineer
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that may not be, you know, spending as
much time actually coding. But let's
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see what it has on the business impact.
And then it just took off from there.
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That makes a lot of sense. I find that
independent creators are usually not
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obsessed. I mean maybe in the beginning,
but they're usually fairly familiar
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with their metrics because they're
independent creators. They are
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essentially little business operations
in and of themselves as opposed to
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having a subject matter expert come and
contribute to a blog post. I mean they
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care more about the efficiency of their
code and developers case than really
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the impact of the blog post. But if
they're already independent creators,
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then we'll, they care a lot about it
because they're putting so much time
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and effort into it. So you went and
found them and then it was successful
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and you wanted to multiply it, what
what does success look like when you
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had them working full time? Success
looks like viral campaigns really to be
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straightforward. We get a lot of
revenue from this channel. I mean, it's
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revenue generating and it's very
serious. I mean, we just had a We just
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had a campaign that brought us over
1200 trials in 10 days from one
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campaign and I think 620 of those are
engaged, meaning they've done five or
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six hours of work and are contacting
our sales team and this, you know, our
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product isn't cheap, it's the return on
an investment of this type is immense.
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And it's not your typical paid
marketing channels, performance,
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marketing, you know, it's different,
it's, it's harder to measure, you know,
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it's, it's harder to measure success,
but it's like, it's one of those things
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that's marketing lee where you, you
know, you have 30% that you just have
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to know, You have to follow your gut
and know that you'll see results and
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it's a bit intangible versus the other
70% where it's like input, in I'll put
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out. um, if that makes sense. Yeah, So
it's pretty easy to know when we need a
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new hire and it does follow our product
a lot. So it follows our product that
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follows the, builds the SDK teams
building and stuff and on top of all of
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this a lot of times the engineering
leads will call out the devils in my
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team at all hands and give them a
recognition saying like hey they're
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really contributing to my team's work
too. So We make sure that as managers,
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we protect their time and have
boundaries where it's like 30%
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engineering, 30% content community
building on their own terms and then
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like 40% speaking engagements and
events and things like that. Hey
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everybody Logan was sweet fish here. If
you're a regular listener of GDP growth,
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you know that I'm one of the co hosts
of the show, but you may not know that.
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I also head up the sales team here is
sweet fish. So for those of you in
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sales or sales ops, I wanted to take a
second to share something that's made
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us insanely more efficient lately. Our
team has been using lead I. Q. For the
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past few months and what used to take
us four hours gathering contact data
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now takes us only one where 75% more
efficient were able to move faster with
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outbound prospecting and organizing our
campaigns is so much easier than before.
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I'd highly suggest you guys check out
lead I. Q. As well, you can check them
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out at least I. Q dot com. That's L E A
D I Q dot com. All right. Let's get
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back to the show. So you found one had
success with it. What did you start
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doing in order to scale it? Did you go
find already other pre existing
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creators out there? Did you try to
raise them up internally? A little bit
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of both? But almost all of them in the
last year and a half have been external.
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And to be honest, it's like so we have
an amazing deferral lead right now on
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flutter. You know, it's it's this new
community that's emerging from google.
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It's uh extremely up and coming.
There's a domino effect. So like he's a
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leader in the flutter community and
then he has other contacts in the
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flutter community that is very close
with and he brings them in and the same
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things happened on android and IOS. So
it's really just relying on really good
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people knowing really good people. It's
like community building community and
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then returning into recruiting and how
many do you currently have on on staff?
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10. With four on boarding in the next
quarter. Yeah, it's clearly working
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because 10, ten's a lot. And imagine
it's happening it's happening pretty
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well because they're bringing an
existing audience to you. Yeah, it's
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like engineering plus compensation
because it's a very rare skill set. I
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mean we often have, you know, it's
almost always referrals if we can't get
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a referral. Like if we're starting a
new devil team for a specific sdK. it's
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a head scratching challenge for
recruiting teams, I will say they are
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confused about what to look for. It's
not easy to find, it's a very specific
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skill set and personality, but if
you're into this type of thing with an
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engineering background for, for, you
know what my team needs, specifically
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Other B two B community building could
be entirely different profiles, but for
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what I need at stream, it's,
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it's a rare skill set and it's, it's
hard to find. Are they actively doing
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development or are they just
essentially now creating content? They
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are actively doing development as well.
So my Ceo and I talked about this a lot
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and it's, it's a balance because you
don't want them becoming detached from
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their own communities and especially
with developers, you, you don't really
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continue to gain credibility and
respect unless you're actually
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practicing engineering, it must be kind
of a dream come true if they were
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developing a channel and can get paid
to continue to do the work, but also
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get paid produced content at the same
time. So there must be a really win on
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both sides. Yeah, and we're big on like
letting them continue to grow their own
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personal brand. So like sometimes
they'll come to me and they'll say like,
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hey, I know this is like five K to get
me to, you know, Berlin and do this
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event, but I have 50 people there, you
know, that I've been talking to online
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for the last year and I really want to
talk about this subject and then he'll
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be wearing a stream shirt when he's
doing it and he's not pushy about it,
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but you know, it's, it's like very
subtle and that's, it's a really good
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brand awareness tactic for us. That's
fantastic when you're looking for these
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kinds of people. Like I imagine, does
it usually come through word of mouth
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or are the recruiters responsible for
finding them? Like I imagine your
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current dev team would kind of know
who's, who's who in the area, but how
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much are the recruiters responsible for
finding the person? I'd say one out of
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four or 5 rolls The recruiters are
responsible and the other four, let's
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call it r from word of mouth and
referrals. Do you find people are
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starting to wanting to come into the
fold now that you have like 10, they're
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like, Hey, like I have a channel, this
could work. Yeah. You know, it's funny,
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it's, it's definitely a lot easier to
get people in now. Even then it was a
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year ago. Um, what I hold as personally
responsible for is creating an
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environment that they want to stay in,
that they want to grow their career in
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and that they, they're really engaged
in. You know, it's really special group.
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It's a special channel for us. And so I
want, I always make sure that they feel
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supported and they're happy and engaged
and hopefully that means that they're
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telling their counterparts to come in
the fold,
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what's the reception been like, like
from the community or their audiences,
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have they noticed an increase in their
audience growth? Have they been
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noticing? Have they been getting better
at their content because they've been
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able to essentially spend more time or
essentially paid time now on their
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content? Like how has it been? It's
100%. Yeah, you nailed it. Um actually,
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we, we even track that. So we have a
little small metrics meeting every week
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on our team and, you know, we were
talking before about how you measure
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the success of this and one of the
things we do that's tangible from a
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metric standpoint is say, all right,
You have 100 and 20,000 subscribers on
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your Youtube page now. How do we get
that to 200 this quarter? And I think
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it's a win win because it's marrying
their own personal passion projects
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that they started outside of work
before they came to stream.
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And now it's just tied into their work
life and their professional goals,
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which I think is usually positive and
happy. You know, there's some quarters
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where it can get overwhelming sometimes
and I do my best to try to help
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mitigate that. But yeah, it's this
really interesting overlap of work and
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personal and, and that's definitely
something that you see grow each
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quarter, I mean, if it wasn't then they
wouldn't really be, you know, doing
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their job and we haven't had anyone
where it's like gone stagnant or
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decreased at all. So now I'm trying to
get an idea because clearly this is
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working and I'm like, okay, how do I do
this? Even internally it sweet fishes.
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I hire people almost wondering like,
how soon is too soon are like, how much
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of a percentage of marketing budget
should be allocated to something like
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this. So I'm assuming marketing
probably spends marketing pays for half
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there, their salary. Is that true?
Actually, what's, what's the allocation
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there between their dev work and the
content work? And then how does that
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get allocated between different
departments? Marketing pays 100
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Holy cow. Yeah. Really? Even though
they're doing active work, yep. Yeah,
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because ultimately, at the end of the
day, it's my call, it's my call what
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they're working on. And I see the dev
work is incredibly valuable uh to the
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marketing side as well. So, yeah, I
mean, at this stage of company we're at,
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it's not like we don't have battles
between departments on budget yet, you
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know, it's, it's software itself, as
everyone knows that's listening is
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there's so many interdependencies
between the department, So I'm a big
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believer and not having, I don't know,
not closing my doors like to other
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types of work just because it's just so
fluid. So, yeah, it's funny you ask
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that I've never even thought about it,
I mean fully fully pay for their
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salaries, fully pay for the resources
time off everything. Yeah wow. I mean
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that's that's great. I mean you could
consider the work that they do as just
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kind of development, right? Or research
development for content development,
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right? It's like all that kind of act
up ending paying back in the marketing.
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What percentage of your budget goes
towards this program specifically? I
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know it's probably not did it to off
the top of your head but it's okay. I'm
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imagining my spreadsheet. I just went
over with finance this morning I would
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say 25% but it's still not as much as
like performance marketing in other
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areas. I mean you'd be surprised its
its its headcount and operations and
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they need things to do their job. Well
we pay for T. & S for travel not as
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much in the last year and a half but
still there's still some in person
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stuff going on, especially in the Eu
Yeah. Another another thing to point
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out is that we have like five or six
different time zones on this team. It's
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extremely international. It's yeah very
diverse and so that's that's also very
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helpful um to not pigeonhole yourself.
But yeah so I mean it's like this topic.
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It's it's funny. I I don't like
ruminate on it a lot. It's like such a
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no brainer for the engine. We have
going right now that it's it's just
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worth it. And we're gonna high growth
phase, you know, we're post series B,
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we're hiring like 100 people in the
next two quarters. It's it's full steam
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ahead. It might seem like a no brainer
to you, but I only heard this even as a,
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as I only heard of that, even as a
thing, maybe last january. And you're
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the first group that I've seen actually
executed with more than one person and
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actually going and hiring all the
influencers out there and then bringing
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them into the fold purely for marketing.
So Well done way ahead of everyone else.
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I've had a lot of conversations with
other B2B marketing leaders about
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wanting to do this. So lots of people
are thinking about it. You're probably
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the first that I've come across that is
actually doing it and not just doing it,
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but now now you're scaling it. So
that's, that's awesome. Yeah, I mean, I
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have to again shout out my my ceo terry,
I mean, he you can't do this unless you
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have buy in, right, and he's had faith
in experimentation and being creative
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and he's an engineer himself. So he
absolutely loves this team, He loves
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seeing the progress we've made and how
impactful it is. So yeah, I don't think
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I've ever gotten to know from him on a
new devra, higher, That's fantastic you
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have any plans for the future as far as
to how to get better at this. You just
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plan on scaling the team or is there
any other thoughts you have about
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building this program out? Yeah, so we
just did a revamp of a yearly planning
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for 2022 and we have a new kind of like
little superstar. He's um pretty
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incredible that he's done. I can't even
describe the impact he's had on our
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number is on the business. And so we're
making him like a lead, we're putting
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some new management in from a people
standpoint, it's pretty hard to manage
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all the different time zones and
different technical skill sets. So it's
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quite a challenge for the previously
the one director in place. So we're
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hiring new managers were promoting
people within and then we also just
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hired a lead for, this is kind of an
interesting spin, but we hired a lead
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for technical writing on that team and
he's building out the technical writing
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arm and the idea is for him to be on
the devil team and just be focused on
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the writing aspect to reach these
people in their communities. So
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sometimes the content can be produced
at a high enough level that we need for
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our inbound motion because of their
speaking engagements or like
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development commitments that quarter.
So we decided to kind of break that out
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and make sure that there is a steady
stream going on and I really like it in
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that group. I think it's working. Um we
only have one person in the door right
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now and I think he's excited about
building out his group and yeah, so
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it's a work in progress, I'd say every
corner, we have a new idea. Um and you
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know, this follows the business, so
Stream has two products that right now
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um we're going to continue to innovate,
continue to build, and that's just
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going to mean more whatever else when
that happens. Well, Claire, this has
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been fantastic. It's been fun to learn
about what's essentially what this
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could look like from somebody who's
actually doing it. I know we've been
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talking a lot about it internally, it
Sweet fish. Um and others are thinking
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about it too, so I can't wait to push
this out to our audience, but people
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want to learn more about what you guys
are doing, extreme, where can they go
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online to connect with you? Yeah, so
get stream dot Io is our website and
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then uh you'll probably, you know, if
your engineers out there or product
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managers, you're probably going to see
some stream influenced stuff in your
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sphere is going forward now that you
heard our name and what we're trying to
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do. Great again, thank you for joining
me on GDP growth. Thanks dan.
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Yeah. Gary V says it all the time and
we agree, every company should think of
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themselves as a media company first,
then whatever it is they actually do,
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if you know this is true, but your team
is already maxed out and you can't
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produce any more content in house. We
can help, we produce podcasts for some
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of the most innovative BB brands in the
world, and we also help them turn the
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content from the podcast and blog posts,
micro videos and slide decks that work
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really well on linked in. If you want
to learn more, go to Sweet Fish Media
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dot com slash launch or email Logan at
sweet Fish Media dot com.
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Yeah.
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Mhm.