Oct. 21, 2021

Don't Just Pay Influencers, Hire Them to Build a Team of Super Stars

In this episode, Dan Sanchez talks with Claire Peña who is the VP of Marketing at Stream about hiring a team of influencers to become your evangelists.

We cover:

  1. What they look for in an influencer
  2. Who foots the bill for the team
  3. How Stream helps them build their brands while they build Stream's.
  4. The outcomes of the program
Transcript
WEBVTT 1 00:00:02.540 --> 00:00:02.740 Yeah, 2 00:00:05.540 --> 00:00:09.240 welcome back to BTB Growth. I'm dan Sanchez with sweet fish media and I'm 3 00:00:09.240 --> 00:00:13.840 here with Claire Pena, who is the VP of marketing at Stream Claire, Welcome to 4 00:00:13.840 --> 00:00:18.720 the show. Thanks dan, happy to be here. I brought clear on today to talk about 5 00:00:18.720 --> 00:00:22.410 community building. I know it's a popular topic but Claire actually has 6 00:00:22.410 --> 00:00:25.220 been doing something that I thought was unique in the first time I heard about 7 00:00:25.220 --> 00:00:29.750 it, essentially they are hiring their target audience to help them build that 8 00:00:29.750 --> 00:00:33.230 community. So as soon as she told me about in our pre interview, I was like, 9 00:00:33.240 --> 00:00:36.560 oh that's it, that's what we have to talk about this because I haven't heard 10 00:00:36.560 --> 00:00:41.010 anybody talk about doing this beyond maybe like one subject matter expert or 11 00:00:41.010 --> 00:00:45.780 maybe taking somebody else in the organization, so I can't wait to learn 12 00:00:45.780 --> 00:00:49.520 and I know the audience listening to this will certainly benefit as well, 13 00:00:49.530 --> 00:00:54.340 but before we even talk about like why hiring your target audiences worked for 14 00:00:54.340 --> 00:00:59.260 extreme. Tell me about how you define community first and why it's been been 15 00:00:59.260 --> 00:01:00.660 a focus on your marketing efforts. 16 00:01:02.040 --> 00:01:08.030 Yeah, I think community is really just uh organic space for people to come 17 00:01:08.030 --> 00:01:13.650 together and connect on a topic or shared passion. Our audience has a lot 18 00:01:13.650 --> 00:01:18.610 of passion, projects, their developers, product managers and that bleeds into 19 00:01:18.620 --> 00:01:23.680 the business itself, But more and more B to B companies and B2B marketing 20 00:01:23.680 --> 00:01:27.870 teams are realizing that sometimes the traditional playbook doesn't work, 21 00:01:27.880 --> 00:01:32.150 You're not talking to a conglomerate or a business itself, but you're actually 22 00:01:32.150 --> 00:01:37.600 talking to an individual that often has a really heavy influence on purchasing 23 00:01:37.600 --> 00:01:42.300 software and decision making in the end, even if they might not have a c suite 24 00:01:42.300 --> 00:01:47.920 title or on the credit card themselves. So community is is really just a way of 25 00:01:47.930 --> 00:01:52.910 helping people, enabling them with their projects and really just 26 00:01:52.910 --> 00:01:57.680 fostering that connection and you know, as we know it comes in a lot of 27 00:01:57.680 --> 00:02:01.550 different forms, especially over the last year and a half. So it doesn't 28 00:02:01.550 --> 00:02:04.920 have to be in person. There's a lot of different ways to create community. So 29 00:02:04.930 --> 00:02:09.259 why did it become a focus for Stream specifically? Was there like a problem 30 00:02:09.259 --> 00:02:12.740 you're running up against? Did the content marketing just not have to have 31 00:02:12.740 --> 00:02:16.930 a limit to it? Like what led it to it being like, let's community, we need to 32 00:02:16.930 --> 00:02:23.740 do better at this. Yeah. So I was lucky to come into a company post series a 33 00:02:23.740 --> 00:02:28.590 where the Ceo was starting to get ahead of this already. His name's Terry and 34 00:02:28.600 --> 00:02:35.420 he really is one of those engineers and founders turned Ceo that loves 35 00:02:35.420 --> 00:02:39.790 marketing and loves collaborating with me in the marketing realm. So he 36 00:02:39.790 --> 00:02:45.190 started to realize that you can have technical long form content. You can 37 00:02:45.190 --> 00:02:50.060 reach people for S. E. O. But that we were missing a piece of really 38 00:02:50.060 --> 00:02:54.560 connecting to the human and having people dedicated on our team to 39 00:02:55.040 --> 00:02:59.790 slightly represents stream, but really more so just be themselves and 40 00:02:59.790 --> 00:03:04.930 introduce the product when the time was. right. So this started with your 41 00:03:04.940 --> 00:03:10.200 typical one person, a lot of companies call them an evangelist or something 42 00:03:10.200 --> 00:03:14.950 like that. But we took it like 10 steps further once we realized how effective 43 00:03:14.950 --> 00:03:20.820 it was and We built out the team to nine, not 10 people, I think we're 44 00:03:20.820 --> 00:03:26.070 hiring four more in the next quarter and they're really dedicated to our 45 00:03:26.070 --> 00:03:30.000 individual SDK s and their specific community. And so we hire someone that 46 00:03:30.010 --> 00:03:34.050 is already immensely popular in something like the android community 47 00:03:34.640 --> 00:03:40.710 and we then just let him do this particular person, we as an example, we 48 00:03:40.710 --> 00:03:44.480 let him do his thing. You know, we he's involved in the engineering team, so 49 00:03:44.480 --> 00:03:47.740 he's very close to the product in the engineering work. He's extremely 50 00:03:47.740 --> 00:03:51.260 connected in the android community and then he's doing marketing, he's 51 00:03:51.260 --> 00:03:54.810 speaking at events, he's writing things, he's weighing in on our strategy, he's 52 00:03:54.810 --> 00:04:00.100 doing campaign brainstorms and I just don't think you have a replacement for 53 00:04:00.100 --> 00:04:04.410 that voice on your team. There's, there's no other way for us as 54 00:04:04.410 --> 00:04:08.550 marketers to be that close to our audience. Wow. So you started with just 55 00:04:08.550 --> 00:04:12.300 one evangelist who was already essentially a bit of an influencer in 56 00:04:12.300 --> 00:04:16.269 the space that right? Yeah. And he was, he was an engineer at stream that 57 00:04:16.269 --> 00:04:20.480 turned into this role. Okay, so he was already working for the company already 58 00:04:20.649 --> 00:04:24.850 a bit of an influencer and you just essentially made it more official that 59 00:04:24.860 --> 00:04:29.580 he represented the company? Yeah, it was, it was made into an official role 60 00:04:29.580 --> 00:04:33.700 and then he started leading the team and building it out. Once we all 61 00:04:33.700 --> 00:04:37.820 decided this is something we need to put resources into. That's awesome. 62 00:04:37.820 --> 00:04:40.530 Tell me a little bit more about like his a reach in the beginning. Like what 63 00:04:40.530 --> 00:04:43.850 did, what did he have going for them? That you were like, hey, like you want 64 00:04:43.850 --> 00:04:47.430 to do that full time for us? Like what did it look like already? Did you have 65 00:04:47.440 --> 00:04:51.260 a bit of a following on social? Was he running a popular blog Youtube channel? 66 00:04:51.260 --> 00:04:55.400 Like what does this person look like? Yeah, that's a great question. And I 67 00:04:55.400 --> 00:04:59.480 would have a different answer for each of the devereaux hires that we have, 68 00:04:59.490 --> 00:05:03.590 there's some people that come on to stream. We just hired someone from 69 00:05:03.590 --> 00:05:07.570 India that already has 150,000 subscribers on YouTube from his 70 00:05:07.570 --> 00:05:11.720 personal channel. So that's, you know, a good example of something to look for 71 00:05:11.730 --> 00:05:16.940 this particular person. The best way to describe it is as a marketing leader. I 72 00:05:16.940 --> 00:05:20.200 work with a lot of different engineering teams and you can tell 73 00:05:20.200 --> 00:05:24.610 right away when the individual cares about. Okay, so say you have a guest 74 00:05:24.610 --> 00:05:28.110 blog program and you have an engineer right down at once a week. You know, 75 00:05:28.110 --> 00:05:31.390 sometimes like one out of 10 of those engineers will contact you and say, hey, 76 00:05:31.390 --> 00:05:35.360 how many impressions did that get or do we get any trials or revenue from that 77 00:05:35.370 --> 00:05:40.110 or you know, how many page views if I had and you can kind of pick up right 78 00:05:40.110 --> 00:05:44.130 away when they're interested in the business side and they want to be more 79 00:05:44.130 --> 00:05:49.040 involved in the community of engineers that they're serving. So this first 80 00:05:49.040 --> 00:05:53.650 person that started the team was showing interest in that and Terry was 81 00:05:53.650 --> 00:05:55.360 smart enough. Our ceo to really, 82 00:05:56.540 --> 00:05:59.990 you know, say, hey, well let, let's make this full time thing, let's really 83 00:05:59.990 --> 00:06:03.540 do this, you know, in all early stage companies and I'll B two B marketing, 84 00:06:03.540 --> 00:06:08.370 you have to constantly make bets right and run tests and experiments. And so 85 00:06:08.370 --> 00:06:12.920 this is like a small bet, hey, what if we do this? Um pull valuable engineer 86 00:06:12.920 --> 00:06:19.110 that may not be, you know, spending as much time actually coding. But let's 87 00:06:19.110 --> 00:06:22.160 see what it has on the business impact. And then it just took off from there. 88 00:06:22.740 --> 00:06:26.810 That makes a lot of sense. I find that independent creators are usually not 89 00:06:26.810 --> 00:06:29.810 obsessed. I mean maybe in the beginning, but they're usually fairly familiar 90 00:06:29.810 --> 00:06:33.050 with their metrics because they're independent creators. They are 91 00:06:33.050 --> 00:06:36.650 essentially little business operations in and of themselves as opposed to 92 00:06:36.650 --> 00:06:40.490 having a subject matter expert come and contribute to a blog post. I mean they 93 00:06:40.490 --> 00:06:45.250 care more about the efficiency of their code and developers case than really 94 00:06:45.250 --> 00:06:49.240 the impact of the blog post. But if they're already independent creators, 95 00:06:49.470 --> 00:06:53.470 then we'll, they care a lot about it because they're putting so much time 96 00:06:53.470 --> 00:06:59.720 and effort into it. So you went and found them and then it was successful 97 00:06:59.720 --> 00:07:02.650 and you wanted to multiply it, what what does success look like when you 98 00:07:02.650 --> 00:07:09.870 had them working full time? Success looks like viral campaigns really to be 99 00:07:09.870 --> 00:07:14.120 straightforward. We get a lot of revenue from this channel. I mean, it's 100 00:07:14.130 --> 00:07:19.440 revenue generating and it's very serious. I mean, we just had a We just 101 00:07:19.440 --> 00:07:25.580 had a campaign that brought us over 1200 trials in 10 days from one 102 00:07:25.580 --> 00:07:31.200 campaign and I think 620 of those are engaged, meaning they've done five or 103 00:07:31.200 --> 00:07:35.510 six hours of work and are contacting our sales team and this, you know, our 104 00:07:35.510 --> 00:07:41.650 product isn't cheap, it's the return on an investment of this type is immense. 105 00:07:41.660 --> 00:07:46.530 And it's not your typical paid marketing channels, performance, 106 00:07:46.530 --> 00:07:50.820 marketing, you know, it's different, it's, it's harder to measure, you know, 107 00:07:50.820 --> 00:07:53.720 it's, it's harder to measure success, but it's like, it's one of those things 108 00:07:53.720 --> 00:07:57.480 that's marketing lee where you, you know, you have 30% that you just have 109 00:07:57.480 --> 00:08:01.530 to know, You have to follow your gut and know that you'll see results and 110 00:08:01.530 --> 00:08:05.610 it's a bit intangible versus the other 70% where it's like input, in I'll put 111 00:08:05.610 --> 00:08:11.990 out. um, if that makes sense. Yeah, So it's pretty easy to know when we need a 112 00:08:11.990 --> 00:08:16.770 new hire and it does follow our product a lot. So it follows our product that 113 00:08:16.770 --> 00:08:22.110 follows the, builds the SDK teams building and stuff and on top of all of 114 00:08:22.110 --> 00:08:25.550 this a lot of times the engineering leads will call out the devils in my 115 00:08:25.550 --> 00:08:29.150 team at all hands and give them a recognition saying like hey they're 116 00:08:29.150 --> 00:08:33.570 really contributing to my team's work too. So We make sure that as managers, 117 00:08:33.570 --> 00:08:37.220 we protect their time and have boundaries where it's like 30% 118 00:08:37.220 --> 00:08:42.559 engineering, 30% content community building on their own terms and then 119 00:08:42.570 --> 00:08:49.070 like 40% speaking engagements and events and things like that. Hey 120 00:08:49.070 --> 00:08:53.740 everybody Logan was sweet fish here. If you're a regular listener of GDP growth, 121 00:08:53.750 --> 00:08:57.390 you know that I'm one of the co hosts of the show, but you may not know that. 122 00:08:57.390 --> 00:09:01.360 I also head up the sales team here is sweet fish. So for those of you in 123 00:09:01.360 --> 00:09:05.320 sales or sales ops, I wanted to take a second to share something that's made 124 00:09:05.320 --> 00:09:09.900 us insanely more efficient lately. Our team has been using lead I. Q. For the 125 00:09:09.900 --> 00:09:14.300 past few months and what used to take us four hours gathering contact data 126 00:09:14.310 --> 00:09:19.840 now takes us only one where 75% more efficient were able to move faster with 127 00:09:19.840 --> 00:09:24.720 outbound prospecting and organizing our campaigns is so much easier than before. 128 00:09:24.730 --> 00:09:28.870 I'd highly suggest you guys check out lead I. Q. As well, you can check them 129 00:09:28.870 --> 00:09:36.230 out at least I. Q dot com. That's L E A D I Q dot com. All right. Let's get 130 00:09:36.230 --> 00:09:43.840 back to the show. So you found one had success with it. What did you start 131 00:09:43.840 --> 00:09:47.680 doing in order to scale it? Did you go find already other pre existing 132 00:09:47.680 --> 00:09:51.570 creators out there? Did you try to raise them up internally? A little bit 133 00:09:51.570 --> 00:09:57.620 of both? But almost all of them in the last year and a half have been external. 134 00:09:57.630 --> 00:10:01.840 And to be honest, it's like so we have an amazing deferral lead right now on 135 00:10:01.840 --> 00:10:05.250 flutter. You know, it's it's this new community that's emerging from google. 136 00:10:05.250 --> 00:10:10.730 It's uh extremely up and coming. There's a domino effect. So like he's a 137 00:10:10.730 --> 00:10:13.590 leader in the flutter community and then he has other contacts in the 138 00:10:13.590 --> 00:10:17.590 flutter community that is very close with and he brings them in and the same 139 00:10:17.590 --> 00:10:22.880 things happened on android and IOS. So it's really just relying on really good 140 00:10:22.880 --> 00:10:27.110 people knowing really good people. It's like community building community and 141 00:10:27.110 --> 00:10:31.850 then returning into recruiting and how many do you currently have on on staff? 142 00:10:32.340 --> 00:10:39.300 10. With four on boarding in the next quarter. Yeah, it's clearly working 143 00:10:39.310 --> 00:10:43.750 because 10, ten's a lot. And imagine it's happening it's happening pretty 144 00:10:43.750 --> 00:10:46.950 well because they're bringing an existing audience to you. Yeah, it's 145 00:10:46.950 --> 00:10:51.500 like engineering plus compensation because it's a very rare skill set. I 146 00:10:51.500 --> 00:10:56.410 mean we often have, you know, it's almost always referrals if we can't get 147 00:10:56.410 --> 00:11:01.820 a referral. Like if we're starting a new devil team for a specific sdK. it's 148 00:11:01.820 --> 00:11:06.790 a head scratching challenge for recruiting teams, I will say they are 149 00:11:06.790 --> 00:11:11.820 confused about what to look for. It's not easy to find, it's a very specific 150 00:11:11.820 --> 00:11:16.530 skill set and personality, but if you're into this type of thing with an 151 00:11:16.530 --> 00:11:19.860 engineering background for, for, you know what my team needs, specifically 152 00:11:20.040 --> 00:11:23.750 Other B two B community building could be entirely different profiles, but for 153 00:11:23.750 --> 00:11:25.020 what I need at stream, it's, 154 00:11:26.040 --> 00:11:30.580 it's a rare skill set and it's, it's hard to find. Are they actively doing 155 00:11:30.580 --> 00:11:34.550 development or are they just essentially now creating content? They 156 00:11:34.550 --> 00:11:39.190 are actively doing development as well. So my Ceo and I talked about this a lot 157 00:11:39.190 --> 00:11:43.070 and it's, it's a balance because you don't want them becoming detached from 158 00:11:43.070 --> 00:11:48.870 their own communities and especially with developers, you, you don't really 159 00:11:48.870 --> 00:11:52.030 continue to gain credibility and respect unless you're actually 160 00:11:52.030 --> 00:11:55.360 practicing engineering, it must be kind of a dream come true if they were 161 00:11:55.440 --> 00:11:58.690 developing a channel and can get paid to continue to do the work, but also 162 00:11:58.690 --> 00:12:04.260 get paid produced content at the same time. So there must be a really win on 163 00:12:04.260 --> 00:12:08.590 both sides. Yeah, and we're big on like letting them continue to grow their own 164 00:12:08.590 --> 00:12:11.450 personal brand. So like sometimes they'll come to me and they'll say like, 165 00:12:11.450 --> 00:12:16.310 hey, I know this is like five K to get me to, you know, Berlin and do this 166 00:12:16.320 --> 00:12:20.850 event, but I have 50 people there, you know, that I've been talking to online 167 00:12:20.850 --> 00:12:25.900 for the last year and I really want to talk about this subject and then he'll 168 00:12:25.900 --> 00:12:29.100 be wearing a stream shirt when he's doing it and he's not pushy about it, 169 00:12:29.110 --> 00:12:34.480 but you know, it's, it's like very subtle and that's, it's a really good 170 00:12:34.490 --> 00:12:40.740 brand awareness tactic for us. That's fantastic when you're looking for these 171 00:12:40.740 --> 00:12:44.250 kinds of people. Like I imagine, does it usually come through word of mouth 172 00:12:44.250 --> 00:12:48.540 or are the recruiters responsible for finding them? Like I imagine your 173 00:12:48.550 --> 00:12:52.980 current dev team would kind of know who's, who's who in the area, but how 174 00:12:52.980 --> 00:12:57.030 much are the recruiters responsible for finding the person? I'd say one out of 175 00:12:57.030 --> 00:13:01.690 four or 5 rolls The recruiters are responsible and the other four, let's 176 00:13:01.690 --> 00:13:05.270 call it r from word of mouth and referrals. Do you find people are 177 00:13:05.280 --> 00:13:08.370 starting to wanting to come into the fold now that you have like 10, they're 178 00:13:08.370 --> 00:13:13.530 like, Hey, like I have a channel, this could work. Yeah. You know, it's funny, 179 00:13:13.530 --> 00:13:18.520 it's, it's definitely a lot easier to get people in now. Even then it was a 180 00:13:18.520 --> 00:13:24.380 year ago. Um, what I hold as personally responsible for is creating an 181 00:13:24.380 --> 00:13:27.760 environment that they want to stay in, that they want to grow their career in 182 00:13:28.640 --> 00:13:34.520 and that they, they're really engaged in. You know, it's really special group. 183 00:13:34.530 --> 00:13:38.740 It's a special channel for us. And so I want, I always make sure that they feel 184 00:13:38.740 --> 00:13:42.910 supported and they're happy and engaged and hopefully that means that they're 185 00:13:42.910 --> 00:13:44.760 telling their counterparts to come in the fold, 186 00:13:45.840 --> 00:13:50.560 what's the reception been like, like from the community or their audiences, 187 00:13:51.240 --> 00:13:55.320 have they noticed an increase in their audience growth? Have they been 188 00:13:55.320 --> 00:13:58.040 noticing? Have they been getting better at their content because they've been 189 00:13:58.040 --> 00:14:03.670 able to essentially spend more time or essentially paid time now on their 190 00:14:03.670 --> 00:14:10.390 content? Like how has it been? It's 100%. Yeah, you nailed it. Um actually, 191 00:14:10.390 --> 00:14:14.470 we, we even track that. So we have a little small metrics meeting every week 192 00:14:14.480 --> 00:14:17.410 on our team and, you know, we were talking before about how you measure 193 00:14:17.420 --> 00:14:20.870 the success of this and one of the things we do that's tangible from a 194 00:14:20.870 --> 00:14:27.770 metric standpoint is say, all right, You have 100 and 20,000 subscribers on 195 00:14:27.770 --> 00:14:33.320 your Youtube page now. How do we get that to 200 this quarter? And I think 196 00:14:33.320 --> 00:14:37.420 it's a win win because it's marrying their own personal passion projects 197 00:14:37.420 --> 00:14:40.750 that they started outside of work before they came to stream. 198 00:14:41.940 --> 00:14:45.860 And now it's just tied into their work life and their professional goals, 199 00:14:46.240 --> 00:14:50.060 which I think is usually positive and happy. You know, there's some quarters 200 00:14:50.060 --> 00:14:54.060 where it can get overwhelming sometimes and I do my best to try to help 201 00:14:54.070 --> 00:14:59.030 mitigate that. But yeah, it's this really interesting overlap of work and 202 00:14:59.030 --> 00:15:04.330 personal and, and that's definitely something that you see grow each 203 00:15:04.330 --> 00:15:07.960 quarter, I mean, if it wasn't then they wouldn't really be, you know, doing 204 00:15:07.960 --> 00:15:12.260 their job and we haven't had anyone where it's like gone stagnant or 205 00:15:12.260 --> 00:15:16.180 decreased at all. So now I'm trying to get an idea because clearly this is 206 00:15:16.180 --> 00:15:20.550 working and I'm like, okay, how do I do this? Even internally it sweet fishes. 207 00:15:20.550 --> 00:15:24.730 I hire people almost wondering like, how soon is too soon are like, how much 208 00:15:24.730 --> 00:15:28.380 of a percentage of marketing budget should be allocated to something like 209 00:15:28.380 --> 00:15:33.960 this. So I'm assuming marketing probably spends marketing pays for half 210 00:15:33.960 --> 00:15:39.110 there, their salary. Is that true? Actually, what's, what's the allocation 211 00:15:39.110 --> 00:15:42.050 there between their dev work and the content work? And then how does that 212 00:15:42.050 --> 00:15:46.360 get allocated between different departments? Marketing pays 100 213 00:15:47.440 --> 00:15:54.640 Holy cow. Yeah. Really? Even though they're doing active work, yep. Yeah, 214 00:15:54.650 --> 00:15:58.570 because ultimately, at the end of the day, it's my call, it's my call what 215 00:15:58.570 --> 00:16:03.820 they're working on. And I see the dev work is incredibly valuable uh to the 216 00:16:03.820 --> 00:16:08.340 marketing side as well. So, yeah, I mean, at this stage of company we're at, 217 00:16:08.340 --> 00:16:14.170 it's not like we don't have battles between departments on budget yet, you 218 00:16:14.170 --> 00:16:17.680 know, it's, it's software itself, as everyone knows that's listening is 219 00:16:17.690 --> 00:16:20.610 there's so many interdependencies between the department, So I'm a big 220 00:16:20.610 --> 00:16:26.890 believer and not having, I don't know, not closing my doors like to other 221 00:16:26.890 --> 00:16:31.020 types of work just because it's just so fluid. So, yeah, it's funny you ask 222 00:16:31.020 --> 00:16:33.940 that I've never even thought about it, I mean fully fully pay for their 223 00:16:33.940 --> 00:16:39.470 salaries, fully pay for the resources time off everything. Yeah wow. I mean 224 00:16:39.470 --> 00:16:43.940 that's that's great. I mean you could consider the work that they do as just 225 00:16:43.950 --> 00:16:48.330 kind of development, right? Or research development for content development, 226 00:16:48.330 --> 00:16:51.490 right? It's like all that kind of act up ending paying back in the marketing. 227 00:16:51.500 --> 00:16:56.220 What percentage of your budget goes towards this program specifically? I 228 00:16:56.220 --> 00:17:00.190 know it's probably not did it to off the top of your head but it's okay. I'm 229 00:17:00.190 --> 00:17:03.830 imagining my spreadsheet. I just went over with finance this morning I would 230 00:17:03.830 --> 00:17:08.569 say 25% but it's still not as much as like performance marketing in other 231 00:17:08.569 --> 00:17:14.560 areas. I mean you'd be surprised its its its headcount and operations and 232 00:17:14.560 --> 00:17:18.790 they need things to do their job. Well we pay for T. & S for travel not as 233 00:17:18.790 --> 00:17:21.579 much in the last year and a half but still there's still some in person 234 00:17:21.579 --> 00:17:25.980 stuff going on, especially in the Eu Yeah. Another another thing to point 235 00:17:25.980 --> 00:17:29.170 out is that we have like five or six different time zones on this team. It's 236 00:17:29.170 --> 00:17:34.520 extremely international. It's yeah very diverse and so that's that's also very 237 00:17:34.520 --> 00:17:40.170 helpful um to not pigeonhole yourself. But yeah so I mean it's like this topic. 238 00:17:40.170 --> 00:17:44.290 It's it's funny. I I don't like ruminate on it a lot. It's like such a 239 00:17:44.290 --> 00:17:48.960 no brainer for the engine. We have going right now that it's it's just 240 00:17:48.960 --> 00:17:52.780 worth it. And we're gonna high growth phase, you know, we're post series B, 241 00:17:52.780 --> 00:17:57.500 we're hiring like 100 people in the next two quarters. It's it's full steam 242 00:17:57.500 --> 00:18:01.870 ahead. It might seem like a no brainer to you, but I only heard this even as a, 243 00:18:01.880 --> 00:18:06.440 as I only heard of that, even as a thing, maybe last january. And you're 244 00:18:06.440 --> 00:18:11.730 the first group that I've seen actually executed with more than one person and 245 00:18:11.730 --> 00:18:14.830 actually going and hiring all the influencers out there and then bringing 246 00:18:14.830 --> 00:18:21.660 them into the fold purely for marketing. So Well done way ahead of everyone else. 247 00:18:21.670 --> 00:18:25.580 I've had a lot of conversations with other B2B marketing leaders about 248 00:18:25.580 --> 00:18:29.000 wanting to do this. So lots of people are thinking about it. You're probably 249 00:18:29.000 --> 00:18:33.220 the first that I've come across that is actually doing it and not just doing it, 250 00:18:33.220 --> 00:18:37.560 but now now you're scaling it. So that's, that's awesome. Yeah, I mean, I 251 00:18:37.570 --> 00:18:42.470 have to again shout out my my ceo terry, I mean, he you can't do this unless you 252 00:18:42.470 --> 00:18:49.680 have buy in, right, and he's had faith in experimentation and being creative 253 00:18:49.680 --> 00:18:55.590 and he's an engineer himself. So he absolutely loves this team, He loves 254 00:18:55.600 --> 00:18:59.690 seeing the progress we've made and how impactful it is. So yeah, I don't think 255 00:18:59.690 --> 00:19:03.950 I've ever gotten to know from him on a new devra, higher, That's fantastic you 256 00:19:03.950 --> 00:19:07.040 have any plans for the future as far as to how to get better at this. You just 257 00:19:07.040 --> 00:19:10.780 plan on scaling the team or is there any other thoughts you have about 258 00:19:10.780 --> 00:19:16.600 building this program out? Yeah, so we just did a revamp of a yearly planning 259 00:19:16.600 --> 00:19:21.850 for 2022 and we have a new kind of like little superstar. He's um pretty 260 00:19:21.850 --> 00:19:27.110 incredible that he's done. I can't even describe the impact he's had on our 261 00:19:27.110 --> 00:19:31.940 number is on the business. And so we're making him like a lead, we're putting 262 00:19:31.940 --> 00:19:35.560 some new management in from a people standpoint, it's pretty hard to manage 263 00:19:35.560 --> 00:19:39.470 all the different time zones and different technical skill sets. So it's 264 00:19:39.470 --> 00:19:44.760 quite a challenge for the previously the one director in place. So we're 265 00:19:44.760 --> 00:19:49.080 hiring new managers were promoting people within and then we also just 266 00:19:49.080 --> 00:19:53.930 hired a lead for, this is kind of an interesting spin, but we hired a lead 267 00:19:53.930 --> 00:19:58.800 for technical writing on that team and he's building out the technical writing 268 00:19:58.800 --> 00:20:04.660 arm and the idea is for him to be on the devil team and just be focused on 269 00:20:04.660 --> 00:20:07.890 the writing aspect to reach these people in their communities. So 270 00:20:07.890 --> 00:20:13.550 sometimes the content can be produced at a high enough level that we need for 271 00:20:13.550 --> 00:20:18.140 our inbound motion because of their speaking engagements or like 272 00:20:18.150 --> 00:20:23.490 development commitments that quarter. So we decided to kind of break that out 273 00:20:23.500 --> 00:20:28.080 and make sure that there is a steady stream going on and I really like it in 274 00:20:28.080 --> 00:20:31.250 that group. I think it's working. Um we only have one person in the door right 275 00:20:31.250 --> 00:20:36.520 now and I think he's excited about building out his group and yeah, so 276 00:20:36.520 --> 00:20:40.570 it's a work in progress, I'd say every corner, we have a new idea. Um and you 277 00:20:40.570 --> 00:20:44.530 know, this follows the business, so Stream has two products that right now 278 00:20:44.540 --> 00:20:47.890 um we're going to continue to innovate, continue to build, and that's just 279 00:20:47.890 --> 00:20:51.600 going to mean more whatever else when that happens. Well, Claire, this has 280 00:20:51.600 --> 00:20:55.460 been fantastic. It's been fun to learn about what's essentially what this 281 00:20:55.460 --> 00:20:58.170 could look like from somebody who's actually doing it. I know we've been 282 00:20:58.170 --> 00:21:01.980 talking a lot about it internally, it Sweet fish. Um and others are thinking 283 00:21:01.980 --> 00:21:06.050 about it too, so I can't wait to push this out to our audience, but people 284 00:21:06.050 --> 00:21:09.160 want to learn more about what you guys are doing, extreme, where can they go 285 00:21:09.540 --> 00:21:16.310 online to connect with you? Yeah, so get stream dot Io is our website and 286 00:21:16.310 --> 00:21:21.930 then uh you'll probably, you know, if your engineers out there or product 287 00:21:21.930 --> 00:21:26.530 managers, you're probably going to see some stream influenced stuff in your 288 00:21:26.530 --> 00:21:29.690 sphere is going forward now that you heard our name and what we're trying to 289 00:21:29.690 --> 00:21:34.560 do. Great again, thank you for joining me on GDP growth. Thanks dan. 290 00:21:37.740 --> 00:21:43.520 Yeah. Gary V says it all the time and we agree, every company should think of 291 00:21:43.520 --> 00:21:48.560 themselves as a media company first, then whatever it is they actually do, 292 00:21:49.040 --> 00:21:52.830 if you know this is true, but your team is already maxed out and you can't 293 00:21:52.830 --> 00:21:57.220 produce any more content in house. We can help, we produce podcasts for some 294 00:21:57.220 --> 00:22:01.150 of the most innovative BB brands in the world, and we also help them turn the 295 00:22:01.150 --> 00:22:06.180 content from the podcast and blog posts, micro videos and slide decks that work 296 00:22:06.180 --> 00:22:09.560 really well on linked in. If you want to learn more, go to Sweet Fish Media 297 00:22:09.560 --> 00:22:14.050 dot com slash launch or email Logan at sweet Fish Media dot com. 298 00:22:15.140 --> 00:22:15.520 Yeah. 299 00:22:16.740 --> 00:22:18.550 Mhm.