Episode Transcript
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Katherine Watier Ong (00:00):
Welcome to
the Digital Marketing Victories
podcast, a monthly show wherewe celebrate and learn from the
changemakers in digitalmarketing.
Great digital marketersunderstand that people are the
most challenging part of doingtheir jobs, and this show
focuses on the people part ofdigital marketing wins what
tactics or skills the guests useto align people with their
marketing strategy.
(00:21):
I'm your host, CatherineWatsier Ong, the owner of WO
Strategies LLC.
We focus on increasing organicdiscovery for enterprise-sized,
science-focused clients.
Thank you for joining me.
Let's get into it and celebrateour victories.
So today we're joined by LloydLobo.
(00:41):
Lloyd is actually a co-founderof Boast AI, the author of From
Grassroots toast AI.
The author of From Grassrootsto Greatness, the host of
Attraction Podcast.
He runs the Attractioncommunity of 1,200 members.
His experience as a Gulf Warrefugee, almost dying from COVID
and struggling with depressionand mental health issues is a
live demonstration of resilience.
(01:01):
That's what the show is goingto be about today.
All about how can you build yourresilience.
It's a soft skill that's goingto help you bounce back from
setbacks, adapt well to changeand endure hardships.
It's been shown to positivelyinfluence work satisfaction and
engagement, as well as overallwell-being.
It can lower your depressionlevels.
We're going to talk about whycommunity, potentially a social
(01:22):
media one, is crucial tobuilding resilience and how it
can help you build your socialskills, and how to start
building this community ofsupporters for the brands you
work for or yourself.
And I think this is absolutelyrelevant as here in the US,
we're seeing Google showing moresocial media posts and profiles
and search results.
I'm excited about today'sepisode, and you should be too,
(01:42):
Lloyd, welcome to the show.
Lloyed Lobo (01:44):
Thank you so much
for hosting me.
I'm excited.
Always a pleasure as apodcaster being on other
podcasts.
Katherine Watier Ong (01:54):
Awesome.
So tell all the listeners alittle bit more about you.
I gave a little bit in theintro but your background, how
you got to where you are today.
Lloyed Lobo (02:03):
Definitely, I would
say.
I tell people that I'm anaccidental entrepreneur.
My family members, parents,nobody's an entrepreneur.
Their definition of success isyou go to university, you do
postgraduate studies, you workthrough the ranks, you work till
65, you retire and that's theway to live, right?
(02:23):
That's society's definition ofsuccess.
But I did everything oppositethat I was a very rebellious kid
growing up and I didn't finishhigh school.
I missed all my exams, don'thave a high school diploma.
Now, most kids who don't have ahigh school diploma would never
apply to university.
I did the opposite, applied toevery university college that
(02:45):
there was, and this was inCanada and a couple colleges
reached out saying hey, can youwrite the entrance exam?
I sent the previous year'stranscripts.
Anyway, the entrance exams wentwell and one university said
hey, why don't you start thesemester?
And because we're in a hurryand we're getting started soon
(03:06):
and give us the transcriptswithin a month.
But if you don't, then you'regoing to have to on and roll.
I made up some BS excuse as towhy the transcripts were taking
a while.
Now, luck would have it, theynever followed up and I
graduated without a high schooldiploma, with a bachelor's of
engineering and software.
So the key realization is luckand risk are two sides of the
same coin.
(03:27):
A lot of people say I'm luckyand you know, tell me, tell me,
oh, you're lucky, and all kindsof things, and I'm like, yeah,
I'm lucky, but you know what?
Luck and risk are two sides ofthe same coin.
The ones that get lucky are theones that never stop flipping
risk, risk, risk, risk.
That never stopped puttingthemselves out there.
And I just did something thatmost people wouldn't.
(03:50):
They would be like, okay, I'mnot going to apply, I'm just
going to accept my fate, that Iwas a bad student and I did the
opposite.
Now, when I graduatedengineering, I didn't want to go
and do a nine to five job.
Everything I'd done all my lifesince childhood was against the
grain and said I can't worksomewhere nine to five.
And I asked a few people I knowin business that, hey, what's
(04:12):
the best skill I could learn ifI want to be an entrepreneur?
And they said, hey, you got tolearn communication.
You got to improve that.
Everything from convincing yourspouse that you're not going to
bring money to convincingcustomers that you have nothing,
but please buy me, buy my stuff.
To convincing employees to workon low pay, to eventually
convincing investors, media, etcetera.
(04:32):
It's all communication.
Now here's the secondrealization I had.
I knew I wasn't veryself-motivated All my life.
I jumped from thing to thing tothing like as rebellious kids
do, right?
And I said, hey, I'm not veryself-motivated.
And I actually believe thatself-motivation is the biggest
BS hoax that society feeds you.
(04:52):
We berate the people that can'tbe self-motivated and we're
like oh, you need to haveself-motivation.
It's not easy for most people.
If you want to fix something,get better at something, you got
to change your environment.
If you got a pantry full ofjunk, let's face it, you're
never going to get fit.
Okay, like, I don't care whatself motivation you have,
(05:14):
eventually you're going to cavein.
If you hang around with a bunchof drug addicts, let's face it,
eventually something's going tohappen.
Like, why put yourself in anenvironment that forces you to
cave in?
Right?
And so I knew that, because youknow, all my company was bad.
So I said, if I took a publicspeaking class, the chances of
(05:36):
me dropping out the first timethree or four people laughed me
off stage would be very high.
So let me find a job thatforces me to communicate day in,
day out.
Let me find a job that justforces me to communicate because
, nothing else, nothing else,like I won't stick, otherwise I
can't take a class.
And then five people laugh atme and I'm embarrassed.
(05:57):
And everything I researched wassales.
Like the only job that forcesyou to communicate day in, day
out is sales.
And here's the thing graduatingas an engineer, no big company
would give me a sales job.
They're like you know, this is2005.
Why do you want to go in sales?
If you're an engineer, youmight be a bad engineer.
That's why you don't go intosales.
Well, you can't communicateeither.
Now, luck would have it,startups was just starting to
(06:21):
come up as a thing right in theearly 2000s and there was a
startup founder in telecom thatneeded cold callers, and he
didn't care what my educationwas, he just needed to fill a
seat.
So I took a job in cold calling.
My parents lost it.
They're like your friends areworking at Johnson and Johnson
and Microsoft and you're likemaking minimum wage cold calling
.
I kid you not fast forward.
(06:43):
Today, everything I have isbecause of that first job,
because the first cold call Imade I practiced a few hours, of
course, when the decision makershowed up on the line.
I fumbled, I hung up all kindsof stuff.
But I needed to make money andmy environment was a bunch of
young people just starting outcold calling.
So that was the environmentwe're in we're just cheering
(07:05):
each other on.
And we kept practicing andpracticing.
You are what you repeatedly do.
If you look at Mr Beast's firstvideos, they all sucked.
He is like an icon today, right.
So it's like consistency is thesecret ingredient that turns
those small actions into bigoutcomes.
So I got better and better andbetter communicating on the fly,
pivoting my messaging.
(07:30):
It got really polished.
And then now, because my firstjob was in cold calling, my
girlfriend now wife got a medschool in New Jersey.
So I had to move, startedapplying to jobs in New Jersey.
I couldn't get any big companyto hire me, but another startup
founder hired me in sales andthen after that, the next job I
also applied to I only could get.
I went from like being a coldcaller to being in sales and the
(07:54):
next the job after that, whenshe got into residency at Drexel
in Philly, was running salesand marketing.
So my trajectory was very fast,because when you work for a
startup or a small company, youoperate in dog years.
Right, everything is movingreally fast.
You're forced to learn ifyou're one of the first few,
because you need to acquirecustomers, you need to build
product and you need to movefast.
(08:15):
And things are moving at a veryfast pace and iterating, so you
learn a lot more and you growwith the company.
So I had that opportunity, goingfrom doing cold calling to
being in sales and product, tobeing head of sales and
marketing for three startupsback to back in a very quick
succession.
And so when my best friend fromuniversity called me with the
(08:38):
idea for Boast, I jumped at theopportunity.
I'm like, why work for somebodyelse Like these?
They were all venture-backed,investor-funded companies.
I knew the risk.
I'm like, I knew exactly whatit takes.
I knew the risk because I workalongside the founder.
I jumped at the opportunitybecause I'm like, why take low
pay and work to build somebodyelse's destiny when I could
(09:03):
build my own?
And that doesn't come fromsomething you're born with.
It's not talent, that is yourenvironment.
If you hang out with fiveentrepreneurs, you'll be the
sixth one.
If you hang around with fivepeople who have a six pack,
eventually you'll be the sixthone.
Right, that's your environmentmatters the most.
(09:24):
Right, that's your environmentmatters the most.
So that's how we.
That was the journey of meending up with BOST Very
accidental, but came from youknow.
I think there's a lot of kidsout there who are rebellious.
There are a lot of people outthere who are against the grain
and they feel like, oh, theydon't fit in this box that
society creates.
Like, oh, you need to fit inthis to be successful.
Like today I wear a hat, I weara earring, I sit on the board
(09:52):
of a public company.
Eventually, I think if you justfocus on being consistent and
delivering value and beingsuccessful against the grain,
then nobody's going to questionyou.
Katherine Watier Ong (10:00):
Yeah, yeah
, it really reminds me anybody
listening who has a kid who'sdropped out of high school.
It's very possible that youcould go to my undergrad,
hampshire College in Amherst,massachusetts.
I believe they Well.
First of all, you don't get anygrades, tests or credits while
you're there, so they loveentrepreneurial type people and
I don't believe the transcriptis a really big deal.
You write an essay and you meetwith people and there's a whole
(10:22):
other process to get into intoschool.
So if you're, if you have a kidin that, in that environment,
there's another school optionfor you this is 2024, right,
this is like exactly 20 yearsago, like sats and all of these
things mattered.
Lloyed Lobo (10:34):
I don't think they
matter anymore.
I don't even think schoolmatters anymore, uh, in the true
sense of it, because the paceand the evolution of technology
and knowledge is so fast, right.
The amount of time it takes fora curriculum to get approved
through the regulation and makeit to the education system by
(10:54):
the time it's alreadyyesterday's knowledge.
Right, you can acquireknowledge at such a rapid pace
in this day and age that to mesometimes it feels and I have
this argument with my wife, mywife is a professor at Stanford
and she's a physician and I'mlike okay, for medicine maybe.
Right, of course, regulatedindustry.
But if you're not in aregulated industry like legal
(11:16):
accounting, medicine, what youdo and how often you do it, the
skill, matters more than a pieceof paper in the long term.
Katherine Watier Ong (11:26):
And
certainly so.
My undergrad required a thesisto graduate, so I did my first
thesis at my undergrad, whichwas hardcore.
Skills that I took into mycareer Also made graduate school
really easy.
But yeah, I often the kids onmy team at Ketchum would come up
to me and say, hey, do I needto go to graduate school for
digital marketing?
And I was like, well, afteryou've been trained on the
basics for me, no, just gostraight into another career
(11:48):
like skip the.
You know, I I don't know if I Ienjoyed my graduate program.
I was also build your ownprogram.
I enjoyed doing my thesis, whichwas first person, the first
researcher on wearable computersback in 2003, which was kind of
helpful to kickstart my career,but it was a lot of money.
I don't know in retrospect if Iwould go that way or not.
(12:09):
I don't know.
So let's talk a little bit moreabout your resilience, because
you've mentioned, like so, howyou got up to boost AI.
But I'm kind of curious aboutboth that your experience from
the Gulf War, your experiencewith COVID, this whole
adaptability to change piece,which I think is critical for
(12:30):
the crushing speed of ourindustry.
What tips do you have there?
What's your experience there?
Lloyed Lobo (12:36):
You know I'll go
back in the story but I'll start
with the headline here Pain isthe precondition for growth.
Anything great is a long,freaking slog.
It's a marathon of the heartand mind.
You might get lucky, but if youjust say, oh, you know what I
(12:57):
want to be in and out in twoyears, it's definitely not going
to happen.
It's a long slog.
So you better enjoy the process, embrace yourself for the long
slog and maybe you'll get lucky.
And the long slog doesn't endup being so long, right, but
anything good lasting, anythingworth doing, is freaking
(13:18):
difficult.
But think about it.
I'm going to give you ananalogy to working out to the
gym.
When you go to the gym, theheavier weight you lift, the
stronger you get right, becauseit puts load on your muscles.
Your muscles tear, then itrepairs and you get stronger.
And as a function of liftingheavier weights, you're better
for it, you're stronger for it.
(13:39):
The same thing is your brain.
The same thing is how you arein life.
Taking on the hard, challengingtasks makes you more resilient
and makes you stronger and makesyou prepared for harder
challenges.
So it's just a function of youknow.
(13:59):
Growing up to immigrant parents,my parents were not educated.
Growing up to immigrant parents, my parents were not educated,
both from India.
My mom grew up in the slums ofMumbai and my dad was a farmer.
They weren't educated so theycouldn't go out west and the
only option was go to the MiddleEast.
So my dad went to Kuwait and Ithink he started as a dishwasher
(14:21):
and learned to cook andeventually became a very
celebrated executive chef, butnonetheless very lower middle
class family.
My mom stayed at home to lookafter the kids because, of
course, you know, couldn'tafford a nanny, and that was
life right.
And so our summer holidays werenot spent in Europe or
(14:43):
somewhere fancy, they were spentin the slums of Mumbai.
And so what I realized is,though, the less you have, the
happier you are.
Every summer, I'd go to theslums of Mumbai where this house
that my grandparents lived in.
He had 10 kids shacked up inthis house, now grandkids as
(15:04):
well.
No bathroom, so you gotta lineup every day to go to the
toilets.
And no water, so you gotta lineup every day to pump water,
enough water.
Watching tv was a communalactivity.
Going in the bathroom was acommunal activity, so I
experienced that as a kid, andeveryone was happy, like you
know when you're a kid, you'renaive.
You don't know what's right andwrong.
Right, you don't know what'sluxury and what's not.
(15:27):
And I think everyone, whenthey're embracing a new career
and a new business, they got tobe naive because sometimes, like
, having too much knowledge justmakes you afraid of taking on a
risk.
Right, having being naive willmake you jump into things
because you don't know.
Like, say, I got a two-year-old.
I got three kids, 10, five andtwo.
(15:47):
My two-year-old he'll just doanything.
If he gets hurt he may bedeterred, but the first time he
won't be, and any kid for thatmatter.
Right, they're not deterredwhen they're new, but if it's
not as painful or they overcomeit, then they take on bigger and
bigger leaps.
Right, and the key is thatnaivety right.
(16:13):
And so for me, being in theslums was a great experience.
Every summer, when it was timeto go back to Kuwait, I'd grab
my parents by their feet and belike listen, I don't want to go
back, leave me here.
I had the best time of my life.
Then, a few years later, kuwaitwas hit by the Gulf War.
Wake up one morning and mymom's, like, can't go to school.
My first reaction, of course,as a young kid, is yes, I don't
have to go to school after along summer vacation.
(16:36):
But then it started to sink inthat, hey, there's worry on
their faces, something's up,currencies is invalid.
You don't know if you're goingto live or die.
But one thing was veryinteresting.
When I went down the buildingthat day, people were coming
together to just solve and findsolutions.
Hey, I'll guard the buildingfrom X to Y time.
(16:56):
I'll organize food supplies.
If you have displaced familymembers, I'll organize shelters.
Every building became asub-community that communicated
with the next building and thenext building and eventually
communicated with differentembassies and governments and
probably one of the largestgrassroots movements to evacuate
people from a war zone tosafety.
The security had completelyelapsed, and so that was a very
(17:18):
good experience.
And as we were going on thishighway of death from Kuwait to
Baghdad to Jordan and you canGoogle search highway of death,
you'll see buses bombed andeverything the adults should
have been worried or crying orstressed right, no currency,
don't know where we're going,not sure you're going to live or
die, who knows what's going tohappen.
But one thing that's veryinteresting is they were singing
(17:41):
and laughing and playing theguitar, and I realized that day,
as I was reflecting back on myjourney, is we often talk about
the outcome, the destination, orwe talk about the journey.
And I came to realize, I thinkthat day was a key point for me.
(18:02):
That trip from Kuwait toBaghdad to Jordan is it's
neither the destination nor thejourney, it's the companions
that matter the most.
You could be on a crappyjourney, on the way to hell, but
great companions will make itmemorable.
I mean, have you ever been inan environment where you just
toxic people and you want to getout of there?
Katherine Watier Ong (18:20):
I think
I've talked on the show about
how my agency experience hasgiven me some PTSD.
I think I've talked on the showabout how my agency experience
has given me some PTSD.
Lloyed Lobo (18:27):
So I guess we, we,
we all have that Right.
And then you're in aconversation with people pretty,
you don't know really well, butyou're vibing really good and
it's ours and you don't want toleave Right.
So I think your companionsmatter the most in terms of your
mental health, your physicalwellbeing and everything in
between.
And and for me, and despitegoing through all of this and a
(18:48):
few years after the Gulf War weimmigrated to Canada I never
felt anything was difficult.
Nothing felt like a hardshipOne, because I guess my parents
never made me feel like we'regoing through some hardship or
financial turmoil.
But, more importantly, therewere always people in that
situation cheering each other onlike everything's going to be
(19:09):
okay or like nothing evenhappened, like it was a normal
course of life.
And I think a big part of thatresilience mentally, physically
is who you surround yourselfwith.
Now, in that same environment,if you're around a bunch of
people who are crying and mopingand just saying, oh, we're just
awaiting our fate and we'regoing to die, then that's how
(19:33):
you're going to behave, right,that's how your brains are going
to process it.
But if everyone's saying, hey,it's going to be okay, things
are going to be fine.
We're going to work through it,finding solutions.
That's how your brain is goingto process it and for me, I've
had those experiences ofspending the summers in the
slums of Mumbai where there wasnothing and the hardest of
(19:54):
hardships and the Gulf War andpeople were always solution
oriented.
And that was a key part of myenvironment, my nurture, and you
can call it resilience, you cancall it perseverance, any
number of things, but I think itwas shaped by the environment I
surround myself with and Ifound myself that through all
(20:17):
the hardships in life, nothingreally felt hard, because I
always was surrounded bycompanions who were hey, we're
here for you, everything's goingto be OK and if not, we'll work
through it, kind of thing.
The only time I actually gotdepressed and hit rock bottom
was after we sold half thecompany and I left the
(20:39):
day-to-day of the business.
It also was the first time Icame into any meaningful money.
I went from living on my wifepaying life salary being a
startup founder across two,three, three startups over 10
years to, you know, coming intomillions and I got depressed.
Actually, I hit rock bottom,became a drunk, insufferable
(21:03):
character and when I started toanalyze that.
I realized, you know, I feltlike I lost my tribe.
I lost my companions, right?
I built my whole journey of 10years in business around this
community.
So Boast was a community-ledbusiness.
When we got to 10 million inrevenue we had no marketing team
.
Marketing was the tractioncommunity we built and as a
(21:26):
function of that we did SEO andeverything else.
But it was all centered aroundentrepreneurs, who we bring
value to, and building thatcommunity and as a function of
that we would get featured onblogs and do events and webinars
and the whole gamut right.
But it was a very community-ledbusiness.
(21:47):
Our salespeople wereessentially glorified community
managers.
So when I left the day-to-day Ijust felt lost, right.
Because as an entrepreneur also, you're not very balanced.
You spend 90%, 95% of your lifeon the business and then if
there is anything left over,maybe it's for your family and
friends and health in some orderthereof.
(22:08):
So when you leave, you justfeel this lull, and so that's
what I experienced.
And then what uplifted me outof that was again joining a
community of fitness-mindedpeople, positive people.
A big part of my journey comingout of depression was actually
cutting out all negative energyfrom my life.
(22:29):
I don't listen to the news.
News happens right, but I thinkthe media perpetuates negative
energy because I don't know ifyou've noticed on social media
and on news, on any form ofmedia, negative content
perpetuates and festers andturns into new monsters.
People are more engaged.
Katherine Watier Ong (22:49):
Good news
it does engage people more.
It's just, that's thepsychology of it.
Lloyed Lobo (22:53):
Yeah, good news
doesn't carry on and
everything's filtered to the enduser.
Katherine Watier Ong (22:58):
So if you
click one negative stuff, you'll
end up getting potentially morenegative stuff.
Lloyed Lobo (23:03):
Yeah, I could say
like, hey, you won the Grammys,
right and.
And everyone's like, yeah, youwon the Grammys, yay.
And then it's not a discussionpoint three days from now.
But if it's like a negativething, like oh, somebody got
killed or you know there's somebad thing happening, then it's a
discussion point today and thentomorrow.
Oh, then did you hear about it?
Like, if you've worked anywhereright and been in the American
(23:27):
workforce, workforce around theworld every morning, I think,
like a conversation started outor did you see that on the news,
or did you hear about that?
Did you?
Did you see?
It's all negativity.
Very rarely it starts with like, did you hear a positive piece
of news?
And if it is, then thatconversation ends very quickly.
But if it's a negative piece ofnews, office gossip, whatever
(23:49):
it just carries on and carrieson and turns into cancer.
And so a big part of that wascutting out negative people from
my life, negative energy, thatsort of thing, and, and doing
that just changed my life.
And you know, I think when youtalk about resilience, there's
two key factors, and I was justactually just did a clip on this
(24:11):
on Instagram yesterday.
Most parents that I know, andeven growing up, especially the
Indian parents we praise andreward the outcome or the
results and we reprimand basedon the outcome or results.
Even in the workforce RightLike you suck because you didn't
produce the results, or what agreat job nobody appreciates the
(24:38):
effort, the process and I thinkespecially with kids, because a
big part of what you do is howyou're nurtured through your
journey is appreciating theeffort, the process.
Because when you just reprimandlike like a harsh reprimand or a
huge reward on the results,people then start to have a
fixed mindset and they're like,hey, if I don't get this result,
(25:01):
I'm going to get destroyed.
So then they have this fear offailure and that deters them
from taking on challenging tasks.
In reality, you know this inbusiness, in life, nothing is an
easy road, especially inbusiness or any endeavor where
(25:21):
you're on your own.
It's a journey of ups and downsand wins and losses.
The ones that are rewarded arethe ones that keep showing up
consistently and you know whatmay look like a big challenge
and a potential failure couldjust be a turning point.
If you overcome it, yeah, ifyou have this fear of failure,
you'll just like abandon andmove on.
Katherine Watier Ong (25:43):
Yeah, we
actually luck out because we
homeschool our kids, mostly dueto COVID stuff, but I've been an
entrepreneur and entrepreneurmy entire career and my husband
plays for the presence on marineband at the white house, which
basically those are topmusicians.
You have to audition for therole, um, and so both of us got
to where we are because ofgrowth mindset and practice,
(26:07):
lots of practice, and so we'rereally focused on making sure
with our kids, like the the mostimportant thing.
When we sat down and we saidwhat are we, what do we really
want to teach our kids?
And the big thing was growthmindset, definitely.
Lloyed Lobo (26:19):
Exactly, and you
know that combination is
consistency a bias forconsistency and a bias for
urgency.
Velocity, action, whatever youwant to call it.
If you combine velocity withconsistency, you can build
(26:41):
something big, you can getsomewhere.
So I think a big part of thisis nurture and who you hang out
with.
If you hang out with people whoare just constantly putting
things off or, you know, justexiting at the first difficult
turn, then you're going to belike it's going to be normalized
for you and you feel like it'sokay.
It's like you know, youremember napster back in the day
(27:03):
?
Yeah, it was illegal, it was.
It was illegal, right, buteveryone was doing it.
Why?
Because if everyone's doing it,it's right.
So if the 10 people, fivepeople you hang out with all the
time are just like job jumpingor like quitting at every
difficulty, it's going to benormalized for you and you're
(27:24):
like, yeah, it's okay, right.
And so I think you got tocreate the environment for
yourself that will put you inthe best position to achieve
your goals.
Katherine Watier Ong (27:38):
And for
the SEOs listening to the show.
I've been in the industry foralmost two decades now and there
used to be a lot of negativityonline.
It was hard to find your tribeand people were pretty focused
on cutting you down.
I do remember, on purpose, sortof not asking for help with
questions in various forums, butall of that has shifted a bit
(27:59):
recently.
So I want to give you two tips.
So one I've plugged before.
So the Women in Tech SEO groupis amazing.
It's a Facebook group.
It's also Slack.
It's nothing but support fromother women who do SEO globally
Full stop.
So if you're female, join thegroup.
The second one is actuallythere's a different SEO Slack
group called, I believe, seoCommunity.
There's Google reps in there,which is helpful, because at one
(28:20):
point John Mueller answered aquestion of mine, but also it's
really focused on making surethat everyone's positive and
supportive and it has beenpositive and supportive.
So if you're looking for yourtribe and you're in SEO, there's
two free Slack groups thatwould be a great place for you
to check out.
Lloyed Lobo (28:37):
So that's a great
great resources there.
Katherine Watier Ong (28:40):
Yeah, so
so you've shared this traction
conference, so do you thinkconferences or sessions are a
good place for social skillsbuilding your community?
What have you seen from peoplethat attend?
I know we talked a little bitbefore we started recording
about how you've grown yournetwork with events.
Talk to me a little bit aboutthat and whether you've seen it
(29:01):
shift any in this COVID world.
Lloyed Lobo (29:04):
You know when we
started the company it's funny
when we started to boast Soastis a very obscure offering.
Right, we help businesses thatbuild technology or products or
services get money from thegovernment.
Globally, hundreds of billionsof dollars are provided by
governments, but it's acumbersome, broken process
that's prone to audits andreceiving the money takes a long
(29:25):
time.
So we automate that.
So when you start a business,your first thing is I need to
get some customers.
How do you get customers?
First, you need to understandwho you're going to sell to.
So we said, ok, let's sell tomanufacturing and construction
and oil and gas, because they'rethe stable businesses that pay
Reached out to them.
Nobody would talk to us.
It would be so hard to getmeetings with them.
So we said let's go to theirevents.
(29:46):
When we started going to theirevents, it just fell out of
place.
We looked like two young guyswho threw a suit jacket on top
of a hoodie.
They felt like the cigars clubright, totally visualize this.
Katherine Watier Ong (30:00):
Yeah, I
worked for a utilities telecom
at one point, so it's it's a lotof white, older dudes, not a
single female anywhere.
Lloyed Lobo (30:10):
Exactly so we we
just couldn't resonate, so
dejected.
We started going out to thestartup new business events and
we felt like we found our tribe.
They were starting out, we werestarting out similar challenges
.
We started spending more timewith them hanging out where they
do eat, breathe, drink, sleep,where they do host events
together, participate inhackathons together, and we felt
(30:31):
we found our tribe.
And when you're in the thick ofthings, it's always like I'm
throwing spaghetti on the walland God, make something work.
When you look back, when you'veachieved some success, it's a
framework.
So when you're starting out,the first step is I got to
figure out who my tribe is goingto be and the way I distill
(30:53):
that to four or five points.
One is do I love this audience?
Or the problem set, or thecontent?
Because, like we said throughthis conversation, doing
anything successful is a longslog.
If you hate your audience, youwill not sustain.
Do I love this audience is key,you will not sustain.
Do I love this audience is key.
(31:13):
And see, because I love thataudience, we built Post as a
community-led business.
Traction is still going,despite me leaving the data of
the business.
I wrote this book for the sameaudience on community-led growth
.
It's never left me because Ilove that.
It's my tribe, I love thataudience.
It's never left me because Ilove that.
It's my tribe, I love thataudience.
The second is is it a small butgrowing niche?
(31:34):
A lot of people they want tostart with the biggest niche
because they try to copy otherswho are already at a specific
destination, but don't followwhat they're doing when they're
at a destination.
Don't follow Airbnb today.
Follow Airbnb's struggles whenthey started at a destination.
Like, don't follow Airbnb today.
Follow Airbnb struggles whenthey started and what are the
steps they went through right.
(31:54):
And so if you follow somebody,just make sure you're following
the journey to where they gotand not the journey now right,
because it's not relevant to you.
And so we said we got a nichedown, so we didn't go after all
businesses.
We went after tech businessesand we didn't go for all
businesses.
We went after tech businessesand we didn't go for all tech
businesses.
We went after startups and wedidn't go for all startups.
(32:16):
We went after startups inCalgary, alberta, canada and
Vancouver.
That's where we started.
Eventually scaled across US andCanada Because my co-founder
happened to be living in Calgary.
And so when you niche down, youbecome very relevant to the
first 10, 20 people, and that'swhat your first tribe is right
Like.
Is it a small niche that caneventually explode?
You need to have conviction onthat, because when you are
(32:40):
connected with that small niche,you can make your content
extremely relevant, you can makeyour interactions extremely
relevant, you can make yourcommunication extremely relevant
.
Where it feels like dude, itfeels like we know each other
for long, and the same goes forlike SEO and any sort of
(33:02):
marketing you do out there.
The more relevant you are tosomebody and you land in
somebody's face, they just feellike, hey, this was for me.
I feel like this is speaking tome Because we're in the sea of
sameness today, right With thischat GPT, and I'm seeing I don't
(33:22):
know if you're seeing this, butI'm seeing, like LinkedIn
comments and Quora commentswhere it's so obvious like the
10 comments back to back aredifferent versions of the same
comment from ChatGPT.
It's ridiculous.
So how do people feel like youknow authentic, like an
(33:42):
authentic, genuine interactionwith you, your brand?
It's when you niche down andyou make it very relevant for
them.
It's better to be an inch wideand a mile deep than vice versa.
So we started with startups in asmall city and when you niche
down, you also find white spacebecause nobody else is providing
them that right.
Nobody wants to target startupsin Calgary, alberta, in 2012.
(34:06):
So we did and we found two bigwhite spaces.
One was they were not gettingany love from any service
providers or media.
Nobody cared.
And number two, all the eventsthat were happening for startups
were high-level CEO platitudes.
Right, it was done by eventorganizers who would be like
let's bring the most famedspeaker, but a famed speaker is
(34:30):
going to talk about high-level,aspirational stuff.
There's only so much Elon Muskyou're going to listen to when
you need to put food on thetable.
When somebody's starting out,they need to solve their
specific challenges.
The inspiration is good once ina while.
Listen to Elon Musk and AlexRamosi and all these guys are
great.
But how do I get my first 10customers?
How do I get my first employee?
(34:51):
How do I crack thatmillion-dollar enterprise deal?
That's what I want to know whenI'm starting out.
So we found those two whitespaces and we begged and
convinced the local newspaper togive us a weekly column, which
we call Startup of the Week, andthis is something a lot of
people don't do.
When they put their content outthere, they just hope that the
(35:12):
platform they put the content onor the blog they put the
content on will distribute them.
But what you got to take theextra step on is distribute it
yourself.
So when the blog went on thelocal newspaper, it was part of
the big national newspaper onthe Herald.
I went to everyone in my phonebook, my WhatsApp book, my
(35:34):
groups, my LinkedIn, everyone Iknew email, and I said, hey, I
wrote this column, can you giveit a retweet, a like, a share?
Instagram and stuff wasn't bigfor business back then.
Podcasting wasn't big forbusiness in 2012.
It was mostly third-party blogsand events that were happening
(35:55):
and I knew that if I tried tostart a blog on our website with
Neil Patel and all these guys Imean Neil Patel is a friend of
mine now but like all these guysout there, I would never make
it.
But getting backlinks from thehighest domain authority website
in the country every week to mynew website would do a lot for
(36:18):
it.
So I got everyone to like thatpost and then the editor called
me and was like listen, I'llmake it a recurring weekly
column.
If you commit to writing everyweek, I'll even turn it into a
print column.
Recurring weekly column If youcommit to writing every week,
I'll even turn it into a printcolumn.
So now what started to happenwas every week I started getting
(36:39):
people wanting to be featuredfill up our form.
I put a little form in therestartup of the week and we'd get
a backlink from the Heraldnewspaper to our website every
week and two guys who nobodyknew now went to getting some
social proof.
Hey, these guys are in thenewspaper, they're probably not
so bad, we should probably dobusiness with them.
And then everyone who appliedto be featured, we'd then invite
them for a meetup every week,for a standing meetup at a
(37:02):
co-working space, and we'dinvite a new speaker to speak on
a very tactical topic.
And the speakers we'd invitewere not people who are like
multi-billionaires.
We'd invite were not people whoare like multi-billionaires.
So if I'm just starting out, Iwant to listen to an
entrepreneur who maybe took hisbusiness to 1 million or 5
million, because that's going tobe more relevant and actionable
(37:23):
for me.
And we just did that withconsistency, day in, day out,
and that turned into a bigin-person community and it's
120,000 subscribers today andthat evolved into a podcast and
everything else.
So the key lesson here for thosewhether you're looking to start
a community or join one is gohyper niche which is closest to
(37:44):
your goals.
Right, it's better to hang outwith five, six people whom you
love and want to spend all thetime in the world.
Harley Davidson scaled thismodel and built an iconic
multi-billion dollar brand right, the Weekend Warriors.
And then they scaled from there.
There's a small group of peoplegetting together and getting
together, but your tribe is asmall group of people you can
(38:04):
get together with and then scalefrom there, or start very small
by nailing down your niche andI guess niching down as much as
possible and then grow fromthere If you want to start a
community or want to join one.
Otherwise, you're just going tofeel lost in the crowd, I feel
now, with so many events andconferences and whatnot
(38:25):
happening right, definitely.
Katherine Watier Ong (38:27):
So this
sounds like tips that you would
be getting from your book fromgrassroots to greatness, so can
you give me a little bit more ofa teaser about what you cover
in the book?
Lloyed Lobo (38:37):
Yeah, definitely so
.
One of the things I talk aboutright is every obscure idea that
eventually became a globalenduring phenomena.
From Christ and Christianity toCrossFit Went through the exact
same four stages.
People listen to you or buyyour product or service.
(39:00):
You have an audience.
When that audience comestogether to interact with one
another in a regular cadence, itbecomes a community.
When the community now comestogether to create impact
towards a purpose that's beyondyour product or your profit, it
becomes a movement.
And when that movement hasundying faith in its purpose
(39:21):
through sustained rituals, overtime it becomes a cult or a
religion audience, community,movement, religion.
And I unpack that throughdifferent tips and strategies,
but I'll go through really quickon some of the steps.
The first thing is you got tofigure out an underserved niche
which we talked about andidentify their pains.
Figure out where they eat,breathe, drink, sleep.
(39:41):
Figure out their pains andtheir aspirations too.
Their pains and goals will giveyou maybe product one or two
right, but their aspirationswill give you multiple content,
ideas for the long haul, andthat changes over time.
So you got to keepunderstanding your audience.
Once you have that ICP nailedideal customer profile or ideal
(40:04):
community profile nailed, writedown the three Fs around them.
Who do they follow?
This will give you a list ofinfluencers you can either
invite as speakers to yourevents or you can interview on
your podcast.
It gives you social proof as afunction of their brand rub,
right, then who do they fundMeaning, what other services and
tools they pay for?
(40:24):
This will give you a list ofpotential partners somebody you
can co-host with, somebodyyou'll sponsor.
And then where do they frequentMeaning events, magazines,
platforms.
This will give you a list ofplaces you need to distribute
your content or be present.
And so what happens then is,let's say, you do an event and
they see the influencers theylisten to all the time and they
(40:48):
see the partners that you'veinvited that have booths.
There are tools they pay foralready.
They feel like they've enteredtheir tribe.
It's their circle, right.
But a lot of this you can justengineer by nailing down an
ideal customer profile and thendrawing their circle of
influence and then buildingrelationships with that, and
then from there you start bycreating an audience through
(41:13):
content, because I think doingevents today is a little more
expensive endeavor unless youhave a free co-working space.
I still love the in-person,because anytime you incorporate
more than two senses, you buildstronger connections.
We're sound in sight.
If we were in-person, we'd betaste, touch, smell, kind of
thing, and would stay longer.
Right, I mean, we've seen thiswith people you meet in person.
(41:35):
You just build strongerconnections with.
But, nonetheless, if you don'thave the budget or you don't
have a free co-working space,start by creating the audience
online through content.
Right, you can either be acurator, so summarize content
from experts, or a niche, likeby interviewing on a podcast.
You do a podcast like this.
You can record the audio andthe video.
The audio, you put on all thepodcast channels.
(41:57):
The video, you can put the fullon YouTube.
Then you can slice it intomultiple short form content and
put it on YouTube shorts, put iton Insta shorts, put it on
TikTok, and then the text youpull out from it, and there's
tools to do all of this.
Right now, you can turn it intoa thoughtful LinkedIn post and
a Twitter thread.
The key is, though, doing thisvery consistently, and so you
(42:18):
can, and then you can summarizeeverything and start a
newsletter, subscribe, substacknewsletter, for example.
Right, and over time, you'llstart to build this audience,
and now the key is can I turnthis audience into a community
where they're interacting withone another.
If you want to do it online,maybe you open up some of these
sessions.
You make it live andinteractive.
(42:38):
So you maybe do a 30, 40interview and then you open up
for audience interaction withthe guest or with one another
and do it on a cadence.
We were exclusively offlineuntil the pandemic.
When the pandemic hit, I'm likewe got to do something right.
We can't do a big conferenceanymore, we can't do events.
(43:00):
So I reached out to all theconference speakers and asked
them if I can interview them onZoom every week and we'll invite
the audience.
So we had a live audience.
That one week live webinarturned into two and over time I
think entering the pandemic wehad 30,000 subscribers and
(43:21):
exiting it we had 100 plus.
So I think that consistencybecause now we're getting the
social proof of the speakers andit's like a TV show.
Every Tuesday, thursday,they're tuning into the traction
live at 11am.
We don't do that anymore SinceI left the day to day, but that
was a big lift right.
People are joining, they'retuning, they're interacting with
one another, they're learningand those are things you can do
(43:43):
very easily.
Now people will be like oh, howdo I drive audience Email?
Email's not dead.
Email's the biggest converterof everything I've done in my
life.
You know your ideal customerprofile.
Reach out to them.
Look at your phone book, lookat your email contacts and send
them an email saying hey, xyz,we're hosting a webinar or an
(44:07):
event on this specific topic.
Here's top three things you'lllearn.
Very tactical, If you've nicheddown and you understand your
audience, you'll come up withthe content that's relevant for
them.
Would love for you to join andgive them a link to sign up.
And if it's a good speaker,they'll join right.
Or they'll come.
And I think you know if youwant a hundred people to show up
(44:30):
, you got to email maybe athousand people.
If you want 10 people to showup, you got to email a hundred
people.
But don't think that you canjust throw something out there
and it goes viral on its own.
That's very rare.
You've got to seed it.
You've got to seed it and thendoing the rest of it with
consistency and a lot of peopleare like, oh, I don't have
content ideas.
Well, do this.
Write down a hundred burningquestions that your niche, your
(44:53):
audience, has right.
So think about.
If I had to write the ultimateguide to X, y, z, what would be
the chapters, subchapters, thetopics and the tactical
takeaways it would include.
Katherine Watier Ong (45:07):
Well, I
don't think there's any excuse
now for not knowing what thosequestions are.
So Mozcom has got free.
I think it's 50 queries a month, so you can spin up a keyword
research account and go aheadand start brainstorming some
questions.
And two ChatGPT is great forthis.
It's in Bing and free.
You can totally give Bing yourpersona and the topic and it
(45:30):
will actually tell you questionsand subtopics that your persona
is interested in.
Then you can ask it what arethe uncommon ones?
I mean there's a thousandprompts.
Y'all know I've got a promptdatabase, but there's no reason
that you can't come up withthese questions in today's day
and age.
You know you've got abrainstorming partner now with
AI and if you know how to promptit well, you're going to have
plenty of ideas.
Lloyed Lobo (45:51):
Definitely.
Katherine Watier Ong (45:53):
So let's
talk about a little bit more
about.
We've talked about thecommunity bringing success to
you.
I think the only thing we sortof haven't covered which is sort
of new maybe to some folks thatare listening is influencer
outreach.
Only because we've got here inthe US with the perspectives and
then just plain old search.
We've got social posts showingup in search and in perspectives
(46:15):
, we've got all this social feedand video and TikTok and
whatever, and so suddenly, ifyou want to appear for your
topic in the US, you mightactually need to be out reaching
to an influencer who couldproduce that content for you
potentially, or talk about youas they're producing their
content, because most of myclients are starting with a
social media profile of likezero or tiny.
(46:37):
So what are your tips forstarting some influencer
outreach?
Lloyed Lobo (46:44):
You know, I think
first, in parallel, try to build
your own influence.
It's so hard to reach out toinfluencers the big ones anyway
because why should I talk to you?
Yeah right, if you don't have avery expensive gym membership
or don't hang out where thesepeople hang out, like?
I have the fortune, goodfortune, of living in dubai and
they launched the influencervisa and I keep running into so
(47:06):
many of them, but nonetheless,um, if you are not, don't have
one of a few things to give.
They don't want you eithermoney or any influence, right?
And a lot of people don't havethe money or the budget to spend
on influencers.
So then there's anothercategory of influencers and
(47:28):
those are micro-influencers 10to 100,000 followers on LinkedIn
, on Instagram.
You can reach out to them, butall of these people actually
want money.
I'm a big fan of spending thetime and energy to create your
own influence.
If you don't do that, you'regoing to have to keep paying for
somebody else, and the way todo that is to just keep creating
daily.
Put a camera, like we do have,right in front of us, stick your
(47:53):
phone under a ring light.
You have those 100 burningquestions, record 30, 60-minute
shorts.
Use something like vidyo,videoai, or like Latte Social or
Opus Pro, or use CapCut to editand throw captions and put it
(48:13):
on Instagram.
The thing is, you won't haveanyone view it the first time,
the second time, the third time,the fourth time.
You got to do this for 100 days.
Commit to doing this for 100days.
Identify ideal customer profile, provide very specific
knowledge, value to that niche.
And the third thing whichpeople don't do is reach out to
everyone in your contact listand ask them to follow you.
Katherine Watier Ong (48:35):
Right
Leverage your own network that
you already have, which is theother benefit of being in some
of these communities.
So the Women in Tech SEO groupactually has an Amplify section,
which I try to go intoregularly, where I amplify other
people's smart thinking onLinkedIn or Twitter.
So you've already got this sortof community that wants to
amplify smart female stuffrelated to tech SEO All right,
(48:57):
so this has been super helpful.
Just about out of time.
Lloyed Lobo (49:10):
So what kind of win
or resource do you have that
you could share with ourlisteners today, other than,
actually?
I don't know if the landscapechanges regularly.
I still believe in 2024,.
Seo is all about.
(49:30):
If people are looking for apiece of content, google polls
the worldwide web and sees, whenthis content is being talked
about, who is the most relevantperson they're talking about.
I don't know if that's changedor not.
There's all kinds of hacks andeverything else, but ultimately,
if you Until AI becomes, untilthe search generative experience
(49:52):
becomes live.
Katherine Watier Ong (49:53):
That is
sort of the basics of how Google
pulls stuff.
Lloyed Lobo (49:56):
Yes, yeah, and I'm
worried now what happens is
where does this go if Googlesearch turns into a chat
GPT-like interface?
Right, where it's giving youanswers and not links.
Right, and giving you a seriesof links?
It might change the experiencein a little bit but nonetheless,
you guys know where to go, youguys are the experts and you got
(50:19):
Catherine here to guide you, soI'll give you a lot of soft
skills.
One of my favorite books to readand I read it every so often is
how to Win Friends andInfluence People by Dale
Carnegie.
It's a fantastic book.
All I've learned eventuallystarted there, got its roots in
(50:40):
there, as this kid who couldn'tcommunicate coming out of
university and needed to learn.
So that's a great book.
Influenced by Robert Cialdiniis also another book, very good
book, similar and this bookcalled Spin Selling by Neil
Rackham.
A lot of us we think marketingand sales is separate.
(51:00):
But what does marketing existfor?
To accelerate sales, right.
And if you can't communicate,not just to educate and educate
but also convince people toconvert, then what is the point?
And that book actually has agood questioning framework that
you can adopt into your style ofwriting for convincing people
(51:24):
to convert kind of thing,convincing them to buy into your
solutions.
It's a lot about framing thesituation, then framing the
problem, then framing theimplication of the problem and
then framing the payoff sopeople feel bought in, kind of
thing.
So a lot of what I talk aboutis advice, is learning from that
(51:46):
perspective.
Alex Ormosi's book 100 MillionOffers and 100 Million Leads his
podcast is really good, andthen Stephen Bartlett's podcast
also is very good.
So some resources here that asyou're walking, as you're
thinking and as you're thinkingum and have a spare time, just
tune in.
I listened to everything on twoX.
Katherine Watier Ong (52:12):
I'm not at
two X yet, I'm at 1.5, but I'm
there with you.
It's in my ear constantly.
Um, so how can people learnmore about you?
Lloyed Lobo (52:20):
Definitely.
Just I've taken, I'm on aLinkedIn sabbatical and so you
can follow me on Instagram.
Double l o y e d l o b o.
I'm trying to be active there,posting some nonsense every day,
whether it's life, whether it'sfitness, whether it's business
kind of thing.
And I'm on LinkedIn, lloyd Lobo, and then my website,
(52:40):
lloydlobocom.
Just have the book right now.
We'll have a bunch of resourcesprobably in the next couple of
months there.
All the podcast appearances anda workbook for the actual book,
I think.
Katherine Watier Ong (52:52):
Awesome,
well, so this has been amazing.
Lots of great tips forlisteners.
Thank you so much for being onthe show.
Thank you so much for having me.
Thanks so much for being on theshow.
Thank you so much for having me.
Thanks so much for listening.
To find out more about thepodcast and what we're up to, go
to digitalmarketingvictoriescomand, if you like what you heard
, subscribe to us on iTunes orwherever you get your podcasts.
Rate us, comment and share thepodcast please.
(53:15):
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