everybody. This is Stelly, Ft. And this is heating shop. And today, on the side of chair, we're gonna talk about humanizing your brand and being the public persona behind your company. You like talking about more than your sales or market? We just want a bullshit and chat about business and life. I don't believe while we're doing that, provide along value to the business for people trying to get shit way. Don't want to give you feedback. That's bullshit. You want you to do your best, Eaten both You and I are pretty public people and are very closely associated with being kind of the humanized version off our companies, right? A lot of people that know close,

no clothes in connection with Stelly I lost L E f t yet been seen with and why? And Heating shot right? This is inseparable. And I had an interesting conversation recently with somebody that was asking me lots of questions on how I strategically decided to go down that route. What are the pros and cons who should do it? Who shouldn't do it? Is that good? Is it bad? Isn't just ego trip. I thought this actually a fascinating topic, and I thought it would be fun for the two of us to kind of quickly unpack this for people. So let me first ask you, you know, why is not the first company and product that you launch that you have been very closely as a human associate with versus just being a brand where people don't know who the people are behind the company. Um, pretty much every company that you've been involved with,

you have been a very kind of public face off. You've been building kind of your personal brand in conjunction with the companies that you've been building. Was that a strategic moves you like? Did you have a do research and then decide this is the best way to make a company successful Hands. I'm gonna go down that path. Was this kind of more random? How do you think about that? Kind of looking back. Why did you in particular ended up doing this in building kind of ah, pretty public profile and brand on your own?

Yeah, for me, it started out, particularly with, like wanting to do the best job I could with the businesses that we had and kind of fell into it naturally, actually fell into it by doing a ton of customer support for Crazy egg back in 2005. And I was mentioned as a line item by people when they talked about our product versus, like alternatives to our brother. And a light out of meeting like Eaton will respond to you really fast. You have a question, and I was just I just knew that particularly for that business we helped you. We basically helped you see what's happening on your Web pages by creating a heat map, and so is very visual representation of analytics data. And in the beginning there were a lot of compatibility issues with your website, so people would like right in and be like, Yo, it doesn't work with my website or its things off and I'm like,

Yeah, we're looking into it, You know, I have a year's work on it and then follow up, etcetera, and so anything that came up I was handling. So for the 1st 2 years of that business, I was a front line of customer support and you'd hear from me. So that's really how I fell into it. And then once Twitter came alone, I happen to have an earlier carried out under the 1st 5 out I was one of the 1st 5000 users and my following to screw because I was early and we're just trying to find people to follow. And Twitter may that really easy back in the day, I was never on the suggested you journalist, but they had, Ah, a sidebar that showed you different people on Twitter and then you click out of them,

follow them. So I ended up with, like, 10,000 followers, early art, and I was like, Whoa, I got this little audience here like maybe I should do something with it. And it just started sharing links because nobody was really doing that at a time on Twitter. And I found that I was really get finding stuff and then that built the following there. And outside of that, like I you know, I've been super super friendly with startups in general. Like when people e I'm sure people, let's say you know this by now, but people email I do my best to respond.

I've been over the years, I've definitely gotten a little bit slower at it, but I used to almost make it my full time job when I was in between company. So for me, I fell into it and it just feels right that that would be my response. I didn't study it. I didn't think about it too hard. It just felt like right thing to do. And it's still that

that's beautiful, I think, for needs. It's very similar, although might be more surprising to people. But really, there were two things that happened when we started close. One was we wanted to have a blawg, and we wanted to do a lot of content, marketing and me writing like I had a lot off stories, tactics, experiences that I

thought were worth

sharing. But me writing block host was just Ah, I was very slow. It it's it just took a lot of time. Eventually I brought on remain To Help Me was a good friend, is still part of the close team, and, you know, I would write a rougher draft and center. But even that took always forever until one day he was frustrated and asked me to just record like talking through the block coast of the idea and he would just write it. And once we did that, once or twice, I realized while talking through it It's super easy for me. And then I if I just recorded this on a webcam and if I stopped saying remains name and referring to it as on the block post, say this and this and write this is this. Then the video itself could be content. The audio could be continent,

and we could also turn into written content. And this was so easy for me that for the you know, once we could have discovered that recording video was kind of super easy. Didn't take that much time and effort for me. I just started creating a shit ton of them. I think for the 1st 2 years, that would do wanna date and the videos were 10 minutes long and it took me 10 minutes to do it because it would just like, think of an idea hit record, stop. No editing, no, really trying to be professional. And so I created thousands and thousands of videos over the use, and then eventually somebody saw some of these videos and invited me to speak at a conference and that as well it was no strategy. I didn't say, Hey,

I need to be on stage. Is public speaking would be a great way to promote my company. I just went to that one time because I was flattered. And I thought it would be cool to give a talk at the conference and people enjoyed. It s so much that they invited me to lots more and we saw a spike in sign ups and we saw a bunch of really good customers come out of it. So I was like, Oh, maybe this is a useful thing for my business and for me to do so just kept going. So kind of just stumbled into that without sitting down unnecessarily setting. This is a goal for myself now. Lots of amazing companies have built without the public persona, right? You know, the brand. But people weren't seeing the founder or CEO every single day, But then plenty of examples of great companies that we all know instantly virgin.

I consistently no Richard Branson in sales for us, you know. You know Marc Benioff. There's like Mark Zuckerberg. There's many companies that have, like, humanized, you know, public face of the business, in some cases, multiple public faces. So it's definitely been a very successful strategy. Now let me ask you to get for if I'm like a kind of early founder and I'm thinking about starting my business and promoting it, how do I should I should this be a real decision that I make? Should I put myself out there a lot in order to humanize my company, my brand or shouldn't I?

And one other pros and cons? I do think that we both I'll go ahead and say that we both, I assume, would say that it can be an ego play. But in our case is maybe is to some degree. But in our case is not that we love seeing each other in videos or being interviewed for podcasts on like we. I always tell people that I'm I am already very sick off myself. But did you think it's an effective strategy to serve my customers, the market and my business employees and assume you feel the same way? But But how will we have by somebody early? Who's trying to figure out? Should I do this or not. And what are the pros and costs?

Yeah, I hope people aren't making this too complicated. There's ego involved in everything, all right, so let's not Let's not get that confused. Even even monks have ego. I mean, like, that's not I mean, there's ego involved in everything. I think, yes, your ego could carry you away with it. And you want to prevent that. But like, to me, it's like, Don't we could complicate it like if you are able to help your business, not even being a public figure. But by helping your customers

go do it, go

do it whether it's your current customers, your future customers, whatever it is like in your case that you did those videos. And I'm sure that that brought a lot of attention to your brand in your business. And I mean, look like you're a sales expert. Everybody knows it. I don't know if you are not Stelly, but like you are, you know, And that's because of those videos, right? Like that's how you establish yourself. You stumbled upon it right? And in my case, like I learned somewhere to you that like if someone asked me a question or if I'm talking like on a podcast or a video or a conference like people like what I have to say, meaning,

like it resonates with them and they, you know they like it. So I'll keep doing it because it helps my brand. It helps my business. I think you can go the other way and, like, just start wasting your time on stuff like that, Absolutely. So that's why I just go back and say, Don't overcomplicate it. Just do what's right for your customers. We're doing it because we believe that there's something there for our customers of value that helps us as well. That's why we're doing it. There's alignment there. If you don't have that or you can't find it, you're probably thinking about it the wrong way or during it. But for reasons that are not about your business,

beautiful, I don't think I could say it any better. I think if you see that it comes natural to you. If you see that it serves your customers, it serves the market. It serves your team members, your your business. Then it's a strength to help, you know, create value. Why wouldn't you want to use that, right? Why wouldn't you wanna doubled? Exactly that is working. But if you find that you are doing this because you like the idea of being famous or having your name on some you know on some outlet or or, you know, have people recognize you if that's the thrill that you're chasing and you're seeing that you're doing all these things and now you have,

like, all this public recognition, but it doesn't translate like your customers are not really consuming that information and are not really affected by what you're putting out in the public. Your team members don't benefit from it. Your business doesn't benefit from it. Then you need to think about it as a hobby. And you need to treat it as such and not confuse it as your main job because being featured in some media outlet or being speaking at some stage of some conference in and of itself is not equal to creating value for your business. It just isn't. It can, but it doesn't have to. So you need to track these things. And if it's something you do because you like to be famous. That's cool with me. As long as you treated like a hobby. Unless you see that it really drives results for your business. And I have to tell you,

you know what? One thing that people don't realize maybe especially with people like me, is I still at times have to be comfortable with that. Like, I still have some insecurities around this internally in the business. I don't I'm okay being on stage or being interviewed. All that is not making me uncomfortable but internally in the company. I'd like to, you know, stay behind the scenes much more. And I don't like to share at all anything that I do in public, and it always surprises went team members. I just had this conversation two days ago. So where I talked to somebody on the engineering team and I was like, What could I do to help Mawr? Anything that you would criticize?

Anything that you think I could do better These, like you know what? Any time I stumble over your content randomly on the net, I'm always happy and most excited. I know that every time we interview customers, your persona has really benefited of grand and benefited their lives. But you don't bring this internally. You know, I have to find that stuff. You never share that stuff. We really celebrate it internally as much as you like. And I think that maybe the people that have been around for many, many years and know you so well, maybe they're over it. And they know this is that cool. But with so many new people and they love to hear that a lot of them came because they were watching your content out there.

So you should promote that a bit more internally. And I was like both ladders, but also uncomfortable. It was a co year. You arrived mortified, like to me. If I if I was like, look, everybody, I did this pick new thing somewhere. I spoke here. What's the video? You know, I mean, secure about it like I feel like I'm a show off or something internally, like some kind of an idiot.

They want to promote himself into internally in his company, But it's interesting to hear that the perspective internally is so different sometimes. But I thought it might be valuable useful for people to hear this because I don't think yeah, people recognize to realize that even somebody that seems as attention hungry I am is uncomfortable, insecure. But where he shares thes thes things really fascinating. All right, I think that's it from us. If you have any experience, if you have any questions around this, any first attempt, so just need feedback or want help around this, we're always happy to hear from you. Send us an email h and shy gmail dot com Stelea clothes that come until next time You're very since later.