The Cost of My Founder Brand Motion

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I have been getting asked ever since I went on this Nathan Lautka presentation

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are the rumors true do you really spend $12,000 a month on a LinkedIn coach who

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doesn't even write for you.

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The answer is yes and I do realize that's a lot of money which even crazy real

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spend another 15 grand on people managing our inboxes.

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It's like almost 30 k month in this LinkedIn operation.

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It was a lot when it was just me but now he's helping me, Santos is posting

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twice a week, Kyle is posting three times a week and then Pete is going to

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start posting twice a week so like 12.5 thousand go up so it's like I don't

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think anyone would have a problem with three grand on the coach.

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But I want to work with him because I thought he was the best and I wanted to

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be the best at this.

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If you look at my stuff before I was working with him like you know go to like

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August right and like look at before August and after you'll see what happened.

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I was making all of this content trying to generate awareness for my business

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and I felt like something was wrong because I felt like I didn't know why I was

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writing what I was writing and why I was making what I was making.

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I felt like every post was not the best that could possibly be.

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It's literally our entire marketing strategy for this new business we're

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starting and when you think about it in terms of marketing budget it's really

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not that much for what we're trying to do.

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Then the next question is always how much time do you spend on this and like

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how do you come up with what you're going to write or whatever.

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We do one one hour ideation session per week on Mondays where it's kind of like

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a review of how last week stuff did what we could have done better what did

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great and then it's a combination of things that are happening in the business

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combined with what audiences have we or haven't we hit a lot over the past

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couple of weeks.

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When I say what audiences like I have an audience of founders sales leaders

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high level marketers we know what to write for each of those those audiences so

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like if it's a post about you know I've gone zero to one twice and I'm about to

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do it a third time like startup founders are going to be all over that.

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If it's predictable revenue is dead, SaaS pipeline crisis, it's mostly CRO's

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sales leaders you know BDR leaders stuff like that.

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If it's something about ABM or demand based or six cents like the high end

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marketers are going to be the ones engaged with that.

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As an example of like what an idea might be a perfect example happened last

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week I had a conversation with Varun from Clay.

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I wanted to ask him about some issues we were having with our PLG motion namely

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that were like not converting one free to paid and then I wanted to talk to

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them about what this like Clay creators thing they were doing it was a super

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short conversation and I got a ton of information that basically like

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reinforced something that I really believe in but I had gotten away from focus

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is the most powerful thing you have until you understand your core business

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nothing else matters anyway and by the way if you're getting a thousand free

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signups in a week like you don't have an acquisition problem so like I'm not

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going to be able to get a lot of money. I'm not going to be able to get an acquisition problem so like give up on this

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community and influence or motion until you understand that if you sign up a

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thousand people 50 of them are going to pay you for these features or whatever

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and here's the type of people there.

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It was great advice turn into a great post but that's just an example of the

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type of thing that will come up in the ideation.

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It's like what's happening combined with what's working and combined with like

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who haven't we hit no while we over it and stuff like that.

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One hour how long is it taking to write this stuff most of the time I would say

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between one and two hours I do three posts a week sometimes for most of the

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time between an hour and a half and two hours to write the three posts if I

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really struggle that's two hours of writing

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an hour and a half or two hours of those meetings I want to add the video asset

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so we're spending let's say an hour a week on that I also consider trying to

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get on other people's podcast part of this.

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It's not work related to anything else I'm trying to do other than exactly what

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the purpose of this is and I'm just trying to do as much as possible we're out

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bounding people who have kind of revenue related podcast anybody that comes into

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me and says we be on my pod if it's kind of anything related to what we do I'm

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just trying to say yes to just tell the story to as many people as possible.

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Let's say that's another two to three hours a week let's say content takes up

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one eight hour day it definitely takes up more mind share than that I don't

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know how much mind share because that's a hard thing to think about but like at

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least 50% of my consciousness is related to trying to sus it's like I'm doing

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my job and then this 50% is watching me do my job be like is this a post or not

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You know so that's just a thing that's always happening it's expensive it's

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incredibly consuming which interestingly when I was still trying to figure out

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do it it was equally as consuming and we weren't getting as much back if you're

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in the exact situation that we're in it's there's nothing you could ever do

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that that's anything like it on some bullshit like Google fucking whatever is

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branded terms or whatever if you're just getting started I would say use a

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ghost writer don't even mess with this if you use a ghost writer and you see

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the potential and you're willing to become totally obsessed with it.

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Then take the next step and do what I did if not just let it happen it'll still

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be very beneficial to you over Labor Day I was in Santa Fe I told Helen and my

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friends I'm like I gotta go ride three LinkedIn posts it was like seven o'clock

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I was like I'll be back in your hour six I was like I'll be back in an hour and

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a half and I remember coming back at seven 30 and I was like I think those are

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killer posts if this is good than I understand what good is in they all crushed

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so I was like I can write these I know how mission accomplished.

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The hard work is not done that's not the right way to say it this feeling that

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I had of just like I don't know why I'm doing what I'm doing so something must

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be wrong totally don't have it anymore I feel like I understand exactly what

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this game is now

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took 12 months by the way there's no question that when I was writing it the

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best stuff I was like so proud of it like so I was like everywhere this is

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fucking money.

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This is fucking money.

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