405: lempire: From $1K Launch to $26M ARR Profitable SaaS - with Guillaume Moubeche

Gam welcome to the show thanks a lot for having me om it's our five years anniversary so it's a special date it is yeah I should say welcome back so you and I were just talking before we we started recording and uh we originally did the first version of this interview the V1 back in September 2019 and so we're coming up to five years and uh I think it's a great time to to get together again and and talk About everything that's been going on and um I think your story is very inspirational I think

also that you're very you're an open book that you talk about your you know the the the revenue and the metrics and all that stuff but also the struggles and uh my hope is that we're going to have lots of uh Founders who who are going to listen to this get some inspiration get some ideas and hopefully accelerate their journey to you know where they where whatever They want to get to so that sound awesome cool so let's uh I'm going to ask you the question do you have a favorite quote something that inspires or

motivates you that you can share with us a quote I love I think it's like the the best way to predict the future is to create it love that yeah and for me you know like what what it represent it's like uh usually people are are going to be telling you that you can't achieve uh some stuff just because you know they They believe that they know you but the reality is like most of the things that we thought were impossible to achieve were achieved by people who are just like big dreamers and optim optimistic

so if you have an idea if you want to go for it just go for it you know life is is way too short to to waste it on others people dreams this is a little bit of a challenge because most of the time I talk to Founders and it's like one business one product a very easy Conversation but you're now in a place where you're running lire and it's made up of five different products just tell us about what you know overall what does the business do what are these five products you know who

who are you trying to help so lampire is like a street of products that help B2B businesses grow so it's like pretty simple like we really focus on the how do you acquire customers from how do you find like a Potential Prospect to the closing so that goes through uh obviously like the outbound part with lmw and lemlist so lmwm is basically a tool that makes sure that your message lend up in the inbox rather than in the spam LM list allow you to find the right decision makers at any company and reach out on

multi- channel like emails LinkedIn and phone call uh and after that we have tap Leo and tweet Hunter which are like two tools that help you build an audience and build a Lot more trust So eventually the type of uh rates that you get when you're doing outbound will increase a lot when you have an audience and you can build more trust and at the end we have lmal that is a a competitor to C ly but that helps you reduce no shows because when someone books a meeting and don't show up it's really like

a pain and we wanted to solve that cool it's it's kind of funny that Tapo and tweet Hunter have kind of broken The Branding with LM something You know it's like I'm surprised you know taple is not LM linked which would be a terrible name I think but like so uh give us a sense of the size of the business where where are you in terms of Revenue size of Team customers yeah so we have like um we we're at 26 plus million dollar in annual recing revenue we are in more than a 100 countries

uh it's like tens of thousands of customers worldwide we target mainly like SMB our Mantra I would say like Internally is that we help ambitious businesses turn into big names so typically for example we have like some B2B businesses that are like brand of water and that are launching like internationally and we want to help them like become let's say the the new Avan or whatever water like that could be huge and we do that like in many categories where basically we we build product for Innovative teams and helping them like grow as fast as

possible um And in terms of team we are like very very lean so we're around like 90 people uh which means that uh at the end of the year we will be at like $10 million in EBD so like profit before tax if we simplify this you know I think what's what's kind of uh really cool about this story is that it all started with LM list back in 2018 2019 which you started that business with $1,000 right so super humble kind of you Know you know Scrappy start but before that you you had a

couple of other previous attempts at trying to build businesses which didn't go too well and and one of them was this this t-shirt business so maybe you can start by telling us you know that story and when you know why you you started that business and what you were hoping to achieve yeah of course like the the first fail business to be honest was uh was quite hard for me because it was a Business I started with with my dad so to give a bit more context like uh I don't come from money like my

parents they don't have degrees my grandparents are farmers and immigrants in France so so essentially like both my parents sacrificed a lot so my brother and I could uh study get a good education Etc and eventually like I became an engineer but my heart has always been into business so once I had my master in engineering my parents were you know What like if you want to study marketing now that you have an engineering background it's fine like you can do it so I I went on it but uh with in mind you know like

to be able to make money on the side so I was like okay like I'm going to to launch a business my dad basically like prints on fabric so I was like okay like uh let's start a t-shirt business you know it doesn't cost a lot of money we don't have much but I'm sure we can do something great so I built a Community around like Paris you know like art etc etc and I just thought that through that Community I would be able to sell thousands of t-shirts so I put a lot of pressure

on my dad on you know like uh printing as much t-shirts as possible but when we launched we actually only sold like 60 shirts now from I I can laugh about it now but six yeah six so yeah that was like the the worst conversion rate I think I had in my Entire life um I would definitely do things like totally differently if I had to start all over again because I think I spent like way too much time trying to develop like the perfect website uh the community was totally irrelevant with what we were

doing the t-shirts were too expensive I did not know like it was it was just like lots of learnings but uh eventually you know I I kind of got uh a bit like um the the relationship with my dad kind of like suffered because um I Think I was like young at the time and also like ambitious and you know I would put my own failures on my dad like saying like hey we didn't invest enough so that's why you know like we're not we we we don't have money to do ads so obviously we

can't sell so I would would find like a lot of excuses um and eventually like I stopped talking to my dad for about like uh almost a year so it was uh it was really tough uh we stopped the business and a friend of Mine at the time was uh show like seeing me you know like grind and hustle to try to like um have this business work and then he told me like hey I'm launching like a B2B business I was like what the [ __ ] is B2B and then he was like business

to business I'm selling leads and I was like okay can you tell me more about it and it's like yeah essentially we're doing like a cold email sales prospecting uh to book meetings with potential prospects for customers like Uh anywhere in the world so we started doing this and actually it work it worked out like pretty well like we started making like I would say like a bit of money uh so that was that was quite cool for me because I was like closing companies in the US in Australia Etc and uh I started learning

about sales prospecting about how to find anyone's email address how to reach out to people how to write you know like sales campaigns for different type of Industries different type of personas so it was like really really interesting uh but eventually as the the the agency scale because we were I think around like 10 people with like Freelancers Etc I started thinking you know like uh I want something that can truly scale and I love software so I think I'm just going to go and and start my own software and my own company okay so

so the idea for Lim lless came from what you were doing at the agency and you you Identified a a potential need um I want to get into like how you got started with that and you know built the product but the first question that sort of hit me was you know that that the experience you went through with with building that t-shirt business it wasn't just something you know a business that failed it caused a lot of problems between you and your father at least for for a while and how did you recover from

That mentally and get the confidence to go out and say okay I'm going to try and build another business to be honest I think like uh the more people started to doubt about like uh my capacity of uh becoming successful because the reality is like uh in France I did basically the best engineering school and the best like business school so people like they wouldn't understand uh you know like why I was not making money and trying to launch businesses and eating pasta so my Mom is Italian so for me eating pasta is like it's

my life it's still my life I love it so I was fine with it um but the the reality is like I feel the more people doubt about what I can achieve the more motivated I am and you know I would have like my parents asking me like uh you know during like family dinners like when are you paying yourself like is the project working like why don't you find a job etc etc So eventually I just like uh I stopped Talking you know like to a lot of my friends and family for about like

um a year and a half so I would I was just into like a Grind Mode I would work like a lot but my learning curve was like exponential I read like so many books watched like so many video tried so many different things and eventually when it started like working you know like I I knew I had like prove to everyone who doubt it that I could actually make it and I think that Was like the best reward you know the best reward is showing you know to people like what you're capable of yeah

yeah that's a great driver I think so H how did you get started and build a product because $1,000 to start a business is not a lot many people would say you know I I I can't do this I don't have you know I can't code or I don't have a technical co-founder or a whole bunch of reasons why they can't do this but how did you get started like did you Go out and do any kind of validation like did you build a product yourself you know what happened so the the first step is

uh was to find like people who could actually like ship the product um so what I did is I started helping out people for free so my goal was to get like the biggest Network possible so I would help out people on on growth strategies Etc especially after the agency where I come like I'd bu built like a lot of skills in acquiring Customers and eventually I started helping like uh two brothers who were like really like good at Tech and uh and I started you know like uh showcasing how they could grow their company

and all the things that they could do and eventually they were like okay like we love that but uh we're not going to be able to implement any of the stuff that you said it looks good but we can't implement it we're not like these guys and I say okay like uh we started Working a bit like together on side project projects and eventually like they were like okay like you said that you had an idea of a software our software is not working that well like maybe we can start building it and see how

it goes and that's how it started and very quickly you know like they they they they basically like saw that I could bring tens of customers uh even on a shitty product So eventually you know like it started building up and we got a Bit of traction and every month you know like from the start I think it took us like we started in January 2018 and the first paid customer like out of beta was maybe like in April so like four months and since then you know like we were growing at like 30% month

over month uh for about like two or three years like up to almost like 10 million in annual recording Revenue so obviously like they were like highly motivated to to continue like developing the the product When when they saw the results you you said earlier that you you decided to start helping people for free where were you finding these people uh so so it was a bit of a mix uh the I was a lot in like different Facebook communities at the time it was like a big thing I think it's still a thing like

on on some topics but I would go like to to communities on Facebook I would go to like reddits I would go to like uh is there like Indie hackers Where I Would S like people like asking questions and and just I would help out and uh and I would also do it like in Paris in a in a very famous like sterp incubator where people would be asking questions Etc and I would just like spend time helping out people but to be entirely honest I I still do this like if someone send me a

message or an email with uh like a very specific question I would always answer and spend the time to answer uh if you look at my WhatsApp I even have like a rule where people can send me like very specific like they give me like the the the problem with as many topics uh as they can and then I send them like a voice note in asynchronous that way I have time like to think about how I would do it Etc and for them to be able to ask me like other questions they first need

to take action on the advice I gave them and then they can come back you know with with more stuff and I still do it to be honest Like it's something I like I think it's it's cool to help out I wish someone could have helped me you know like that way when I was younger so yeah I do it as much as I can so I love love that and I love the fact that you you just started going out and connecting with people and just finding ways that you could help and you said

build your network but you also mentioned that you know you had your parents you know constantly asking you You know why didn't you get a job when are you going to pay yourself how are you going to make money and so did you feel a lot of pressure there like in terms of yeah I'm going out and helping people but I'm not getting paid for that either yeah to be honest it's like um the reality is like for me I felt like when I was helping people in even in the early days I could feel

how helpful and useful I was and I felt like Uh I was doing the right thing you know I think like uh a lot of people you know whenever they say like hey like you're giving money to a charity etc etc I think like when you give money for for a charity of course like you do it to help people Etc but you in my opinion you're doing it for yourself you know it's like it makes you feel good to do good and U at that time because like a lot of people were doubting me

and I would feel bad about Like them asking all these question because obviously I had like my friend and my family but I also had like one girlfriend at the time who was paying the rent H we were living in like 28 M Square the two of us so you know like the the pressure was like real like it was a real struggle really hard and and uh and sometimes I just wanted you know like to be helpful and uh and to know that it was basically like a confident boost because if you help people

and you See like the the true value of what you bring you build in a lot more confidence in the skills that you have developed and you know that your project will eventually work and that you just have to put your head down and do the Reps and eventually like it will all work out so you you you team up with the two brothers who basically become your co-founders you build the first version of LM list how long did it take to get those First 10 customers on you said you got the first one in

April about 3 four months um after you launched yeah before that I would say we had like maybe like uh more than a 100 people on beta so we we had like different steps um first you know like uh I would really like reach to other person I had helped and then you know I would unboard them on the product uh so I would like be on COD and I would have them create an account on codes uh just so they sign up and they Actually like see the product and so I would really have

them create the pro like an account and what I would do is um back in the days I would charge maybe like $1,000 to $2,000 like per clients with the agency to like set them up their campaigns and do the entire like uh copywriting but with Lam list I would do it kind of like for free so that was kind of my trick to have as many people like get on the product and start seeing results because the product was buggy it Was like really [ __ ] like the the first version didn't have like

follow-ups you know and at the time even though it was uh maybe not the same industry it is right now like the expectation from people were high because we had already like tons of competitors so I would just like uh try to give more like the the human touch and you know like a lot of people believe that software is all about like Tech Etc but it's not like if you have an exceptional customer service And in that case that was me delivering like top notot service of course like people going to remember it and

of course people will pay will pay whenever you as them to so for me that was kind of the trick um and I would uh basically like use also our own product to do my outbound uh because this was the only thing like we were not paying so if you look at the on 000 like a bit of money would go to the server but that was pretty cheap because we could get you Know like AWS credits for startups and I think they give you like 12K for the first two years so for us it

was basically like free for for us and then after that we would just buy like data but it was also pretty cheap because I would go to data provider and say hey uh by the way you can get like a free Lem list account and we we do a trade off I would trade a lot lemlist against like the software I would use and people would be fine with it because what what What Founders don't like is like when you ask something without giving anything in return but if you go and you say hey you

know what like I have that product that does XYZ can we trade licenses like I don't have much money but I'm just starting but I love what you do like is that fine usually they give it to you for free and and you can just use it and and that was enough for me okay so one of the things you said was like Hey the product didn't do much It didn't have follow-ups it kind of was [ __ ] yeah a lot of Founders are really scared of that right they they don't want to get

a product out there and for they sort of feel like hey if customers experience this and it's a bad experience that's it I they'll they'll never work with me again and so I've got to make sure that it's really good and I've got to make sure that it has all these features so maybe I'm going to spend two years building building this This product and it's it's understandable right I mean I think you want to make sure that you get a good product out there you you sort of it sounds like you sort of balanced

that by saying okay I'm going to provide such great customer service and build relationships with these people that they'll they'll put up with some of the the the you know the issues with the product because you know they know me they like me they trust me That kind of thing but if if the product doesn't have the features or is doesn't isn't working well enough for them there's still a risk that people are going to churn right even no matter how much they like you know G they're going to say it just doesn't work so

how did you get over that how did you deal with that so so I think like uh I would take the problem uh in and split it like into two different options um option one you are In a crowded Market meaning like uh people's expectation are extremely high so that was the case with lemlist and for that even though you don't have all the Fe that your competitors have you need to have like one unique differentiator and what you said about like the product not being ready Etc like the only thing you need is not

like all the features it's that differentiator and this is how you validate like the traction and the Market in our case when I was running like the agency I would see that whenever we would personalize like the outbound with either like a video with the name of the person or like you know like adding the logo of their company Etc like it would really increase uh the reply rate So within LM list we built like this uh video feature and this basically like automatic logo pullout feature that was quite easy but it gave like the

wow effect and that was enough For people you know like to be interested in the product and at least testing it and the second thing is like if you're not in a competitive market in that case all you need is solving one specific problem so we launched tell another company you know that was uh like one of our other product lemir the gor was really really rapid because no one thought of warmup no one thought of having a tool that will help you improve your deliverability no one was talking About it but I knew it

was a pain because in our community people were talking about it so I just decided to build a very simple version that initially was actually like something done with like Google spreadsheet Etc like something very like Scrappy and very quickly I started seeing people pay but the value was there and it was enough so what you need to validate is if you're in a crowded Market is your differentiator good enough for people to Pay if that's not the case it means you need to find another differentiator and two if you're not in a crowded Market

is like is the problem you're solving big enough for people to pay because the reality is like people talk about like product Market fit but if you're in a crowded Market the Market Fit already exist it's just like maybe people don't like your product or don't like what you build but if others are successful there's no reason for you not to be and The only reason why you're not successful is because your execution skills are not good enough versus your competitors in my opinion how did you figure out the differentiator for LM list was this

about you know did you go out like talk to to customers and figure out what what was sort of missing from the the other products was it just about your experience of looking at the market I just I just started like with the first Principle which is uh what's the main problem people face whenever like uh they they do like outbond and you mentioned it to me actually like just before we started the show so it was quite fun it's like when you start sending C emails the number one thing that people struggle with is

getting replies so I started from okay like the struggle is about getting replies and getting miting booked so now I'm going to look at all the things that could Help people get more meeting booked and that's the kind of product I want to build and I want to build my differentiator around that main pain point because every time you tell people that they can get more replies obviously there is like a light bulb and they're like oh yes that's that got my interest you know like how exactly am I going to get more replies I

love that what you just said is so simple but it's so uh I guess profound like cuz the goal For customers is not to send out emails the goal for them is to get a reply right it's like yeah exactly so so in those first few years like you know once you got those initial customers the it started to grow very quickly and I think you hit the first million in ARR like under two years yeah two years I think it took us yeah what what was driving that growth was it just this combination of

like you spending a bunch of time uh you know being the the Support the customer success guy and all of this stuff and just using LM list to just do outbound or were you doing anything else yeah so it's it's a bit of a mix so you know like uh I I started uh using lemlist for I would say the first 100 paying customers I would do outbound and I would test very very different like type of approach I would tast test like the very like straight to the point approach up to the one with

like very long emails image no image videos no Videos and I would receive like positive replies and I would also replies receive replies like [ __ ] off French [ __ ] like that's a really mail I started like receiving so to be honest like I went through all the ups and downs like sales rep can go through um and what I would do is for all the campaigns that would give me like a good reply rates I would document everything so I would start writing I would I was actually the first one to actually

Showcasing the email template I would use and the replies I would get because if you type like cold Emil templates online you're going to end up on like a HubSpot article that's been written by their SEO team who has like never done outbound in their entire life and if you start using these templates obviously it's not going to work out so I I would really like start from a pain which is everyone is looking for templates but the one that are online are not good and Because we all know that SEO is something that can

be manipulated eventually the results that people see are just not good and people it's basically super deceptive so I just saw a gap and I was like okay I'm just going to document my life I'm going to show the exact result the exact replies and eventually I started doing this like weekly so I would do like the the weekly uh template weekly C Emil template and it started getting quite a lot of Engagement and as we started having more and more customers I would start asking people like if they were willing to do the same

and that they would be exposed to our audience of tens of thousands of people obviously at first I I changed a bit the number because you know you have to increase it so it's worthwhile for people but eventually like people wanted to be part of what I call the LM Lister of the week so it would build a lot of trust because it's a social proof of People using your product then it shows that they are successful so more people want to be successful exactly like them and at the same time it actually shows you

know like the insights of someone who's really sending out some email so all of this was kind of like a a virtuous circle because based on people's campaign they would also come back with feedback based on the feedback they gave me I would also improve the product and change kind of like the road Map Etc based on the community feedback then with the new features I would eventually like launch new campaigns and showcase how to use it so more people would come from these features more people would get better results and so on and so

forth and uh and it got kind of like an exponential growth from there where were you um publishing this stuff was this all on LinkedIn or somewhere else at the time yeah I published a lot on LinkedIn I was publishing uh on our Blog also on the lless blog back in the days I would also publish you know like because we had a lot of Founders also in in our like customers in the early days so at the same time I would do what I call the the Marco Polo strategy so Marco poo you know

is like famous for discovering like the the Silk Road but the reality is like uh it did not Discover it actually like thousands of people discovered it before him but the reality is it was just like a merchant But he was the first one to actually document it and because he was the first one to document it everyone still remembers him to this day so my my idea was like okay I'm going to document you know like how did I get my first 10 customers my first 100 customers how did we reach $250,000 in annual

recing revenue how did we reach a million etc etc and I would document the highs and the lows the mistakes I've made be super Transparent about it and eventually you know like uh it built a lot of trust and um I I think you know like people over complicate any business but for me it's the foundation of any business is the Trust In B2B when you're selling like a product or a service you're selling a solution to a specific problem and for for people you know like to accept working with you they just need to

trust you because if you go back to like any work from an agency ass SAS or whatever You if you're in B2B you do two things either you help people save time or you help them make more money but essentially it's all about like a return on investment everyone wants to save time and everyone wants to make more money the only reason people decide to work with you versus another person is whether or not they believe that you'll be the right person to drive to the promise that you made and for that the trust in

my opinion it's like you take It it's like a triangle where you have like emotional connection so some people for example right now they're listening to the podcast and they might say oh la la like G with this French accent like I can't understand him I don't like him or they might say well he looks like a someone pretty cool like from France and is done quite some cool stuff uh so that's like emotional connection that's the thing that you don't actually decide sometimes you know just like your name Reminds them of someone they hated

Etc or sometimes it's the same name as their cousin that they love and it's already like a direct connection then you have like credibility which is like what have you achieved in your life that make you in a credible position to do what you're offering and finally reliability can you deliver on the Promises you've made and whenever you're building in public this is when you're basically like adding all this uh this three part of the trust Triangle and building like a lot more trust that will help you increase you know all your conversion rate on

all aspects whenever you're doing outbound or any sales I I think you've done a great job with this whole idea of you know building in public on LinkedIn you're still very active all the time I just looked it up you've got like 50 thou 55,000 followers on there and that has played a big part in you know continuing To to to grow this business and and get exposure to new people new customers what of the things that Founders are often reluctant to do with the building in public is I'm going to tell my competitors everything

as well it's going to benefit them in some way has that been an issue for you has that resulted in a whole bunch of CopyCat type products has that been a problem or just you're like whatever it's like let them do it to be Honest like uh yeah we have like a of copycats I think most of the the players are like the new players are copycats but in the end you know like it's a I take this as a compliment you know it's like it means that everything we've done is is actually great and

the reality is like you will never stop people from copying you you know like uh so whether or not we share our numbers it's going to bring like uh new people and the reality is like if people keep copying What you do they are you know educa the market for your product because you will always be the best version you know so it's for me it's like it's it's never a true problem and uh and in reality like I think people are a lot uh more scared about being copied than they should because the reality

is like even if I give you right now the best business ID ever uh and we have like hundreds of thousand people listening to that podcast I'm not even sure one person Would actually like spend the time to work on that idea so sharing things in public you know like people have their day-to-day life they might say oh yeah we must do this but eventually when it's time to take action usually people like don't take action yeah yeah it's a great Point super great Point okay so I want to get to the point where I

think it's about three and a half years later that um you guys cashed out um with the business just in terms of timelines were You still just working on Lim list had you created any other products in those three and a half years and and did tap Leo and tweet Hunter happened after that or or before yeah so essentially like uh we I think it was around like three and a half to four years um after you know we we started the the company so three and a half years after the first paying customers and

like four years uh since like first line of cod I would say uh we reached $10 million in unre Revenue with List and lemor um and we catched out $30 million at $150 million valuation before that we also had like a a side project called lampad that we grew to $600,000 and that we sold uh so at that time you know I was I wanted to call myself I guess like an exit SAS founder and it was quite hard to work on multiple project because I didn't know how to scale the team so we decided

to sell that project so another company could grow it but Eventually like uh I was like okay it was it was not a good idea I think I prefer like running you know like multiple SAS myself because I know that the benefit can be huge in the long term so yeah that was kind of like the the the time the vibe where we at at at that time yeah okay Ju Just for people who don't understand just explain what cashed out means and what investors actually get for that yeah so Cash Out is also called

sometimes the secondary So basically like an investor whenever you see articles like about fundraising they usually like put money directly on the balance sheet of the company so the the the money goes to the company's bank account uh which basically for us is pretty useless because we were already profitable and we don't needed like more money on the on the company's bank account however um you know at some point the the more you grow your business uh the more you know like Pressure you have because you kind of see the value of your business growing

but you as a fer don't get the same amount so let's say we were at 10 million in annual recing revenue growing like uh more than 100% every year so I was like okay technically that means the company should be valued anywhere between I don't know like 80 to$ 160 million dollar since we're profitable so I was like okay like that's a lot of money but uh we don't have this money You know as funders so the cash out is basically when founder when a gross Equity Firm or it's often like private Equity Firm they're

going to basically like buy shares from you directly and give you money to your own personal bank account instead so at that time basically like my my two co-founders left uh and uh and I stayed in the business and we kind of like rearranged everything but uh we each took a $10 million home which basically put me in a Position at that time where I was uh not in the need to work another day you know like in my life and I decided to continue because I'm passionate about what I do and I want to

continue helping as many people as possible yeah okay so now you're you I mean you're you're in a position where you're like hey we don't have to worry about money we actually got some of that so without that on the back of your mind I can now focus on this business and growing it even more And without you know these sort of pressures kind of you know keeping me awake at night and your two co-founders were like great but we don't want to work on this business anymore we're going to you know whatever decision they

want to make that's right for them yeah no it didn't really happen like this it's yeah it's it's more that eventually like they they they had some like personal issues and from initially they were supposed to stay in the company but Because they had like uh personal issues that uh we kind of like discovered after the cash out like they decided like they were two brothers and they they decided like to leave but it was quite hard because it was very unplanned so from one day to another I had to essentially like manage all the

tech uh all these kind of things like making sure that all the projects were going well and you know like sometimes you you discover also like a lot of stuff afterwards that Were quite like tough and challenging um so yeah I I would say that I spent uh the 18 months after the catch out were extremely hard uh on a personal level um but eventually like uh yeah it it all it all worked out yeah okay so then let's talk about uh which was the first acquisition was it Tapo or tweet Hunter yeah we bought

them at the same time actually when did that happen and why did you make those Investments and I know uh from Reading one of your LinkedIn posts like even you know the critics were like it doesn't make any sense why you know why these companies right so just explain like you know why you did that and um what what the thought process was yeah so the first thing is like I've been a user of tap and twter like initially just like Twi Hunter because when we acquired Tapo it was like very small but it was

basically a copycat of twit Hunter for LinkedIn so I was a user of both and something I I I Always experiment like new stuff and something I tried was to essentially like uh because I post a lot of content I would want to engage with people who like interacted with my content like people who liked or commented my post so what I did is I took these people and I decided to put them uh in a in a like Google spreadsheet and filter them based on the ICP I wanted to have discussion with so let's

say VP of sales or like founders of company with more than a 100 People and then I decided to create like lless campaign and see the results I would get from reaching out to these people who basically like kind of know me or at least know the content I produce versus a very cool audience and the results were just like insane and because I had also trained my team to create content so if you look at all people in my team most of them are actually like creating content building audiences we decided to do the

same with A few other profiles and we got the ex exact same results and this is when I came up with like this warm outbound type of like process which is if you're reach out to people who are interacted with some content that you master and you also have an audience that can build trust basically like the results you get to your outbound are just insane compared to someone who's just doing like call call or called the outbound every single day so from that moment I Was like okay this is it I I haven't disclosed

anything yet you know because I didn't want the word to be out but I was like I need to acquire these companies uh so I had a chat with the founder uh we had like a lunch they were trying to sell the company they gave me the offer that they had but it was really like crap so I was like okay like give me 24 hours and I came back with like an offer and and then the the deal was made and then um you know what did You do there did you did you let

them kind of operate as independent businesses or did you get more involved in running and whatever because I think you said uh Tapo was fairly small at the time but it grew pretty quickly after the acquisition yeah but the reality is like as a team we were not super big on on Twitter uh I was just like trying out Twitter and I think I grew my profile pretty quickly but then it was a bit too Much work because I was handling like way too many things and I I I just focused a bit more on

LinkedIn uh but the team was really good on LinkedIn so essentially when we acquired it it was a lot easier for us to leverage our Network and also like all the influencers we knew to kind of like push the grow so I think iir Tapo it was at like 20 20K in monthly recing revenue and uh and it crossed like four or five million like recently so it's uh it's Quite insane in the in the annual recing revenue so you you've got the you know you've got a team of about 90 people now you've got

these five different businesses your co-founders moved on so you're basically the only founder of this business uh I see you on LinkedIn and all the stuff that you're posting and these videos you're creating and your YouTube channel H how do you how do you find the time to do Everything yeah I I I get this question ask a lot uh to be honest like uh I guess it's just a matter of uh you know I started doing it like since day one so for me everything is uh is easier now at first like uh if

you go back to my first YouTube video you know I was uh just I bought like a $115 iPhone kind of like uh you know like I don't know how we call this tripods uh and and just a microphone on Amazon and and I would do the videos I Would edit them myself so I could see like what I wanted to kind of like change and and eventually you know I did so many of those that it got better and better and better and at first it was really crap I can tell you and and

for writing it's it's more or less the same you know like at first you struggle to write eventually you're you feel confident about the tone uh I like writing the way I talk so for me it's like super easy and uh eventually you Know like I have a place in Tapo where I just like put all my ideas and from my ideas I would start like writing post and then I schedule them and and then it's fine you know like it's it's just a matter of like building that muscle so for others it looks hard

because they've never done it but if you look at the pieces of content I've created uh it's it's in the thousand so so obviously for me now everything is is a lot easier than when I got started and uh and I Just I just think it's about like building that habit that uh that will help you get better and faster at it so if there's a um you know Founders are listening to this and saying I I love the idea of building in public maybe I I should get more active on LinkedIn or Twitter but

you know they they have this reluctance because they think their content is [ __ ] or you know they're not very good at creating videos or writing or Anything like that what practical advice could you give them in terms of you know how they could just get started like some simple things that they could do I I would say there are two advice that I can give and that will help people maybe like uh start thinking about this in a in a different manner the first one is if you take like artists who in my

my opinion you like if you take painters for example they are The one with sometimes you know like a huge ego and they want to be like the most unique person doing their art Etc like or at least that's the way we picture them but they all have learned to paint the exact same way they took like a canva and they were looking at a painting that was done before them and they tried to reproduce it so in content it's exactly the same like list the people will you like the content will you like the

tone and if you agree with One post that they have been writing rewrite it in your own words so you take the entire post you copy paste it and then you rewrite it rewrite every single line and try to make it your own if they have posted something you disagree with take that exact same post rewrite it but saying the opposite and just do that to create your content at first that way you will start you know like learning the muscle of rewriting something and you don't start from like a a blank Canvas the the

second thing uh I want to say is focus on the output not the outcome so the outcome would be getting millions of views and the output would be writing one LinkedIn post you don't control the reach that you will have but you can control how many posts you write and what I always tell my team because I've coached essentially like in my team maybe like 30 people to write content and you can see like some of the profile in my team have even like a bigger Audience than I have now and the reality is like

the what I always tell them is like it's the rule of a 100 for 100 days you need to post each day and you don't have to write every single day but write in batches but you have to do it every day you have to make that post because at first it's not going to be great but eventually it will get better and after 100 days I can tell you that you will have build that muscle that makes you kind of like like writing content Because you would see the Improvement and it's the same thing

with everything in life like if you want to start playing guitar at first your fingers are going to be in pain like it's going to be like so painful Etc but as you start getting it you know like you will see like oh I can actually like make chords it looks a bit nicer now etc etc and after 100 days you would see that you're much better and you have a lot more confidence so for me it's like build That muscle build that confidence focus on the output not the outcome I love that I love

that and I think that you know I've seen some of the people on your team who have been active on LinkedIn as well because I think when you engage with their posts I see a lot of those and it's one thing to look at your your um following and say oh you know G kind of has been doing this for a long time and he maybe you know he you know either got lucky or He's just good at this this or whatever but then to repeat it you know over and over with people in your

team it shows that you know there's some principles here that if you can learn and you can apply and you can build that discipline then you can also repeat you know that success to to some level in addition to creating content you know we often hear about especially on LinkedIn like hey you got to spend time like engaging with other people's Content and commenting and and all of that stuff is that that something do you think is also just as important as creating the content and would you recommend that Founders also spend time doing that

I think it depends where you at in your journey if you're like in the you know like early days of your journey I think it's uh for a lot of people it's actually a great way to build confidence because you comment on something that someone has created so it's a lot easier You know to comment on something rather than create something from scouch so I would say like yes because most people when they comment they they don't spend a lot of time commenting it's not like very sful so if you spend a bit of time

you will stand out and your comment will be seen by a lot of people So eventually what I would advise is yes you can comment so spend time when you comment like don't just put a heart or like exceptional post or these kind of things But what you can do is uh write something pretty long if you have something to say or engage with other people comment because if you engage with people who have commented you engage basically with people who are active on commenting on LinkedIn which means that when you post these people will

know who you are and also engage with your content so that's kind of like an easy way to build the the early traction and eventually afterwards uh You don't really like need to do it anymore but you can it's it's kind of like up to you personally like I don't have the time to do it so I I don't do it unless you know I see something let's say like I'm uh in the bathroom and chilling on LinkedIn and I want to comment because I'm seeing something but otherwise uh no yeah I mean it's something

that I've been trying to do as well like I I never really spent much time on LinkedIn and I guess about five Five months ago I just said okay I'm going to start posting you know four five four or five times a day um you know my following is about like 10% of yours probably even less than that I think right but anyway the the thing that I really enjoyed was the part about creating content hearing people talk about problems and and trying to find something that that might help them the thing I've always hated

is this thing where people say uh you know I Spend every day leaving a 100 comments on other people's posts and and to me it was like it it doesn't feel genuine it doesn't feel authentic you know if I leave a comment on somebody's post i' I'd like to do it because I I like the post or I or I wanted to share something um and and it's just I think there's just this there's this web kind of system I think some people are trying to use to sort of game this game how how LinkedIn

Works that um it it it sort of put me off a bit right it was like oh if I have to do that to to be able to do that I'm not really sure I want to spend that much time on LinkedIn but it's good to hear you say that I know a lot of people who've been like super successful with without commenting so it's like uh to be honest it's it's really like up to where you at in your journey but in your case because of all the great content like You can create I

would just like focus on creating content rather than on commenting I think your time would be like a a much wiser investment on that end to be honest well now that now I've got your approval that's that's the strategy I'm going to take unsolicited advice sorry about that no no no no I think it's great appreciate it yeah look I would love to keep talking I I I could happily talk with you for hours and hours uh but you know it's uh we should Wrap up so let's do the lightning round you've you've done this

before um I'll go back and compare the questions to see how they've changed since the five years go okay so what's one of the best pieces of business advice you've received I think to be honest was uh to build in public like I haven't invented that but for me it's like no matter what happens you know like to your company and sometimes company fail for things that are totally outside of their control but Who you are what you stand for your brand and the community you've created is something that you will always keep with you

so if you do it early you know like uh you you're building basically like an eternal asset like tomor for example if all my companies are dead I could do like Consulting for like I don't know $1,000 an hour you know that would be like pretty easy uh so it's like build it because it's uh it's something that will keep your entire Life what book would you recommend to our audience and why I I think I'm going to do like a non- business book I love the The Alchemist from uh Paulo quo because it's like

it's I think this is the meaning of life you know like life is all about the journey uh we we all Focus especially with like press and things like that that are showing you know like overnight success and the get rich quick type of things and all these short form content that makes you Believe that life is easy and that you're going to get something that will make you happy eventually the reality is like all the things that you believe that will make you happy in the future like the fancy car uh the the the

model the the nice house Etc they W uh it's all about enjoying the process so make sure you're actually on the right track and on the right process because life is about the journey and and this book is a is a beautiful reminder of it I I love The Alchemist I think it's an amazing book but actually I'm going to make an unsolicited recommendation as well the the book that I that I love even more now after reading it I don't know if you've read it is like manuscript found in Acra which is also by

Pao oh nice I'm going to type it yeah I will type it it's it's it's a very similar but but a very kind of a different take on on the same sort of ideas but uh yeah uh what What's one attribute or characteristic In your mind of a successful founder I would say like discipline because like discipline for me it's like the the purest form you know of uh of self-love uh because it's basically like you you sacrifice uh your current state for your future State discipline is all about you know like doing the things

that you don't feel like doing because you know that in the long run it will pay off and if we want to be scientific about it we can all look at the studies about like Delay gratification or what people call like the marshmallow Theory where you know like they they've tried you know kids where essentially like they would give to kids two options option A it's like you can eat the marshmallow now or if you wait for 15 minutes you would get another marshmallow and all the kids that will actually wait for another 50 minutes

so have like mastered delayed gratification they are tremendously more successful in life than all the others And for me this is like the quality of a Founder because you're going to be struggling you're going to go through like the toughest time but if in your mind you start like enjoying these tough times because you know it's part of the process to be successful and you know that you must go through all this hard things to get to where you want then you'll be successful like there is no way you won't be successful I I I

love that I I I love this idea of like you Know purest form of of self-love that's awesome what's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit I would say it's a habit and by far like the most efficient one it's like to sleep eight hours like I don't put alarm anymore and to be honest like I know that when I'm well rested I'm a 100 times more efficient and more productive and it's better than any tool any app or whatever that I've used in the past I I read um a LinkedIn post from somebody in

your team I can't remember who it was and she said that it was a story about how she uh overslept and was late for work and and and her CEO said well that means you you you're you know you didn't you're not getting enough sleep right and and was was that about you was that a real story yeah yeah it was me yeah yeah it was a true story she came home and I she came like to the office and it was kind of like yes she was notle sleeping enough and I just told her

like no stress like If you want to come like I don't know to the office at like 11: or whatever like just sleep you know like it's a what's a new new what's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the time I think if I had the time and it's on a totally like different topics it's uh it's basically like a sports app um I I do believe like uh Sports is uh the foundation you know of Health like exercise like super super important and I don't think there is

a nap right now That's like good enough to be like your your life coach on how to have fun in creating like super cool exercise to train work out and achieve your goals and set goals also like for you that are quite ambitious I think like uh if people you know like uh would set up some physical goals like I don't know it can be some stuff simple you know like running 5 kilometers or these kind of things uh the fact that you can easily see the progression and the Transformation that is both like physical

and mental when you do Sports I think it gives you a super strong foundation for everything else in life and I think like people underestimate the power of sports in our day-to-day life and I think it's it would be a great way to impact like people's life and do also like a fun project yeah that's awesome uh what's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know uh I think very few people Know that I traveled the world for a year with almost like zero money and the only way I did it

was using like social network to stay at peoples for free so I would use like a coucher thing woofing Tinder any communities about traveler and I would just like hack my way through to people's home and uh and just like document like a bit of it I I don't know if we kept the page because I did that with my best friend and at some point we were like okay maybe we we will Not keep all the info but yeah it was really fun love love that and and finally what's one of your most important

passions outside of your work um I'm currently training actually for an Iron Man so that's trathan is taking a lot of my time and I love like music or spending time with friends also like that's that's the thing I love G thank you so much for joining me and coming back for this uh fiveyear anniversary I appreciate you making the Time uh congratulations on on everything that's happened I think when we talked in 2019 you it was still pretty early in the journey right it was like you you you'd got to seven figures but you

know I had no idea what was about to come right just just around the corner me neither yeah so so maybe instead of waiting five years maybe we we do a V3 in a couple of years because of the way you guys are going maybe there'll be even more interesting story to tell um If people want to learn about all the products uh we'll include the links to all all five products in the show notes for now I would just say maybe they just go to ly.com yeah ly.com is good and if people you know

like uh have questions uh you take my first name Gom lm.com and you can send me like specific questions and I'd be happy to uh to answer and help you out in the in the best way I can and he means that right it's like you Actually do that which is awesome J thank you so much it's been a pleasure great to catch up I congratulations again on everything and I wish you and the team the the best of success in the coming years thanks a lot om it was really fun my pleasure cheers