The Transaction

TT - 037 - Scott Albro - Full Episode - V2
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Scott Albro: [00:00:00] Every founder has a story to tell. Otherwise they wouldn't have started a company.

The thing you're trying to do when you create content as a founder is you're trying to say smart things and you're trying to say them frequently.

I have this framework that I use. It's a tool to basically help founders figure out what story they want to tell.

There are three story types that I recommend people start with.

Produce content in the medium that is the easiest medium for you to produce content in, right? If you like to write, write. If you like to record voice memos, do that. If you like to record videos, do that.

There are all these little tricks to making content creation easier.

Look at Jensen and NVIDIA, Tobi and Shopify.

It shows how powerful this concept is.

Craig Rosenberg: Can we go back to the winter wonderland before we start?

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Scott Albro: what, you want more video?

Craig Rosenberg: No, but that is unbelievable.

Scott Albro: Yeah, I mean, that's, that's, yeah.

Matt Amundson: Is there any chance you have a one horse open [00:01:00] sleigh?

Craig Rosenberg: You know what, if that, if that,

Scott Albro: I

have been on one. I have been on one, actually. They do have those up here.

Craig Rosenberg: I'm putting that on the TikTok for sure. By the way, today I was talking to a guy about being a guest and I'm like, cause we've learned this. It's like, dude, honestly, if you're going to come on, you have to listen to the show first because we've had like, where it's like, if you don't know that Matt and I like to poke around in the start and then throughout, it's like, it can be a shock to the system.

They kind of get a little, they, they freeze in their tracks, you know? And I'm like, so if you're, if you're. Yeah, like we get on, we start making fun of each other and it's like, uh, and now we have Sam. So we can make fun of Sam, which is great. By the way, Scott, if you, if you, if you need to, if you need any moments

Scott Albro: I need a

Craig Rosenberg: and feel better

about yourself, yeah, just go ahead and, um, attack Sam.

It's

Scott Albro: Actually, that would be a great spinoff podcast for you guys, where you're just trying to get the [00:02:00] guest. You just try, just like,

Craig Rosenberg: You know,

Scott Albro: absolutely stop them in their tracks. Like,

Craig Rosenberg: dude, I love that because here's the thing about Matt. He's so like, he's so professional, but then if you talk to him like offline, His observations, particularly one skill you do have, Matt, lookalike. You're good at lookalikes.

Matt Amundson: what do you mean?

Craig Rosenberg: You're good at like being like, oh, is that dude or not lookalikes, like funny descriptors of people.

And, uh, it's

Scott Albro: Oh, that's good. That's a skill. That's a

Craig Rosenberg: That is, he's

Scott Albro: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: aware of said skill.

Matt Amundson: I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to be more aware of it.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah. All right. So, um, we're going to get going in a minute here. Uh, Scott Albro is a, how many return guests have we had?

Sam Guertin: This is the, uh, one and only.

Craig Rosenberg: He said that we've verified it. We had [00:03:00] Dixon and Orlob.

Sam Guertin: Oh,

Matt Amundson: is the third.

Scott Albro: All right. Well, I consider myself in good company on,

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah, dude. Those

Scott Albro: Oh, hang on. We're, we're just adding names. We went from wand and now we're at like 15.

Craig Rosenberg: uh,

Matt Amundson: mean, how many times Yeah, we had, yeah. Well, let's go for the third time guess then.

Scott Albro: All right. All right. All right.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah. It's as long as you're in the top five of anything you're doing well. So, um, but anyway,

Introducing Scott Albro
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Craig Rosenberg: a lot of people, uh, know Scott and I, cause we worked together for, you know, 15 some odd years, but, uh, now, um, you know, I'm doing [00:04:00] Um, my thing, and then, um, Scott is now advising, um, founders, um, through, uh, Founder Brand, Founder Go To Market, and other, um, sort of company building topics. I can tell you after 15 years, he's one of the best guys you could talk to. And so the last show was great, but generally speaking, he's an amazing guy to have a conversation with. We're known for Topo. We did three things together, actually. Uh, we did Tippett and then by the way, nobody talks about Focus and Ask Jeeves, but we'll keep that on the DL and then, uh, and Topo.

And so,

Scott Albro: We, uh, we actually did four.

Matt Amundson: Uh oh.

Scott Albro: Yeah. Covalent.

Craig Rosenberg: yeah,

Scott Albro: where we first met.

Craig Rosenberg: yeah. By the way, Covalent is an example of, Uh, product market fit because dude, the alumni from Covalent are some of the most successful guys I [00:05:00] know. And, and women, you know, guys is a metaphor for people. I mean, literally

Scott Albro: And, and the company, the company didn't work. Right. But the, but the diaspora is incredible.

Craig Rosenberg: The diaspora is incredible. Even the CEO found, I mean, John Jack is a legend, you know?

Scott Albro: legend. Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah, so it's amazing. But anyway, you're right. That's four. Um, cool. So,

Matt Amundson: before we read off too much more of this vocabulary lesson, uh, I want to, I want to, I want to pin Scott down on something. Now, obviously you guys have done four things together. Uh, I think for me personally, I first met both of you guys, well, I met Craig a little bit before Topo started, but mostly knew Craig and, and, and got to know Scott during their time at Topo.

Uh, I, I imagine that there's a very long list of this, but I'd love, I'd love a Craig story from the, from the Topo years.

Scott Albro: Oh, yeah. There's a really long list. [00:06:00] Um, but I, well, I'll, I'll try and tie it into like, well, what, what we want to talk about on this podcast, which is go to market stuff. Right. And I, I think one of my favorite memories of Craig is, um, He was so relentless when it came to customer acquisition, even though that wasn't his job at Topo, right?

Like Craig was our chief analyst.

Matt Amundson: ha ha

Scott Albro: But he would not stop going when it came to customer acquisition and, and you saw it in lots of different parts of the business, right? So Craig came up with this concept of he and I were the co founders and each of us had to go do five meetings a week. So we'd get our 10 meetings per week.

I think we've talked about that before and told that story before that was absolutely critical to the success of, of Topo. Um, another version of that though, was, Every year, Dreamforce was a very big event for us because we were essentially like [00:07:00] go to market research and advisory and Craig would set these completely unreasonable objectives for Dreamforce, right?

Like, no, collectively as a company, We are going to have 200 meetings with people at Dreamforce that fit the ICP and fit the target persona. And he was so relentless. He, he, he would go do it, right. And he'd get other people to go do it. And that, that was another thing that drove a ton of success at Topo.

But probably my favorite memory and, and something that just showed how relentless Craig was when it came to go to market and customer acquisition was. When we would identify an account or a person at an account where we felt like we, we just wanted to throw the book at that account and engage that account no matter what, Craig and I would often end up getting on planes together to go see that account, right?

I mean, no, no surprise there. And so we'd end up in a place like Houston, Texas. [00:08:00] And stack meetings. I mean, we do like 10 meetings a day for three days or whatever, right? And Craig was so on in these meetings, but the minute you like got in the Uber to go to the airport or go to another meeting, I'd want to like debrief on the meeting or whatever.

And Craig Has already fallen asleep in the Uber. And he was like, you know how you read about these Navy SEALs or Delta force or whatever, how they can be in combat. And when you can just like sneak. 10 minutes of sleep. They, they just flip a switch. They go to sleep and then they wake up 10 minutes later and go do whatever they have to go do next.

Craig had these Navy SEAL Delta Force operator like attributes that way. It just, it just wasn't warfare. It was just go to market. So. Anyway, that's a very fond memory of Craig [00:09:00] and, and, and something I'll never forget because it really like personifies who Craig is. And by, by the way, I, I like sharing that story because I feel like, um, really good founders and executives who excel at go to market, they all sort of have that like relentless characteristic.

They'll, they'll do whatever it takes. Customers and um, so there are many memories of Craig. Oh, one other sleeping memory of Craig and Craig's not a sleeper, by the way, like Craig works until like three in the morning every night. But we used to host this big event that we called summit and Craig was always one of the keynote speakers.

And, um, there was like, I can't remember what it was called, like the speaker room where you, if you're a speaker, you wait there and then they escort you to the stage and you go up on stage and in Craig's case, he'd do his keynote. So one year, Craig's, it's like T minus [00:10:00] three minutes for Craig's keynote.

And I'm in the speaker lounge, I guess it was called, and Craig's in the speaker lounge and I look over and he's just asleep. Literally three minutes before the keynote and people are coming up to me going, is, is. Is this okay? Is this normal? You know, should we wake him up? And I'm like, no, get to like T minus 60 seconds and then wake him up, you know?

So anyway, I love that.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah, that is, that was a surprise. I, and by the way,

Scott Albro: I have a photo of that, by the way. I don't know if we can share photos in this pot,

but I do have a photo of that.

Matt Amundson: We're going to share the photo

right

here.

Sam Guertin: you could just send it over.

Craig Rosenberg: yeah, there was a less and by the way, the 10 minute sleeping thing. It is, I learned that from a dude at an airport gate who was in the military. And he said, I said, what's one thing you've taken from [00:11:00] your life in the military to the real world? He said, anytime you can sleep, even if it's for three minutes, you take it.

And I mean, I, I mean, I just be like, yeah, that's so funny. All right. All right. Let's, that was a good interview. Let's do this.

AI Adoption is Taking Us Down the Wrong Path
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Craig Rosenberg: Let's go to our main question that starts every podcast, which is, um, what's something that the market thinks you're doing right? It could be approach, methodology, tactics, et cetera, and they're actually wrong and they should be thinking about it differently.

And what, you know, what is that? And what should they be? You know, what should that new approach be?

Scott Albro: Yeah. I mean, I, I don't know, maybe this is a, like, um, I like to come up with things that aren't known or contrarian or whatever. Maybe this is like two path of an answer, but I, I, I feel like, um, this inbred, the adoption [00:12:00] of AI tools in the go to market stack is taking us down the wrong path and, um, most, most AI tools. Because of the nature of AI, which we can talk about, are built to automate things, obviously, right? And for most people, automation, at least right now, means quantity. Um, and so when I say people are headed down the wrong path, I feel like these tools and applications sort of automatically steer people in the direction of like Well, the thing that I do with this tool is I increase quantity. And, um, the problem with that is, is we haven't in the AI world really figured out the quality piece. I do, I am a believer that you can do quantity and quality at the same time. I don't think that's a zero sum game at all. Right. The problem is the tools just aren't good at quality yet.

Now they will get better over time, but that would be the one thing [00:13:00] I would just caution people against right now is like. Yeah, efficient growth is a thing. Quantity is not necessarily the answer or the solution for efficient growth. In fact, I think you could make the argument that quality is the answer, the solution for efficient growth.

The problem is we have a bunch of tools that sort of pushes in the other direction towards quantity over quality. And so I'm actually very bullish on sales tech right now because of AI. I haven't been in a few years, but. But like, I think there are things starting to happen in the market that make me a lot more optimistic than I was yesterday.

Uh, but we've got to figure out this quantity thing. That's, that's a real problem and we're sort of like walking ourselves into a trap. And I'm very concerned about that for most go to market organizations.

The Important AI Debates Happening Today
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Matt Amundson: So when you talk about the things that are actually making you excited in the sales tech space, let's double click there. What are those things? Mm

Scott Albro: I just think we're starting to ask the right [00:14:00] questions and have like debates about big things. And so, some of the big things that I'm paying attention to are, um, So, what, what, what approach is going to, going to win? Are we going to have swarms of agents helping us? Or are we going to have one general purpose co pilot?

I think that's a big question that people are debating right now. And I think that's a really interesting question. Another question that people are debating right now, you hear a lot of people talking about like, well, the old playbooks are dead, right? Like the old inbound playbook's dead, the old outbound playbook's dead.

And you finally were in people have been talking about that for a little while now, but I'm finally starting to see people talk about, well, what's new, what's, what's actually going to work. And so there, there are these big questions that we're starting to ask ourselves in the go to market world. And you might wonder [00:15:00] like, well, why would that make you bullish?

I have this belief that like when you ask big questions and vendors and buyers and the community start debating those questions. That's usually a sign that there's a transformation about to take place. And it feels like we're finally there with go to market and with AI. Previously, I, I, I didn't, you know, the last couple of years with AI and go to market, I didn't think anyone was asking like really big questions.

And like coming, you know, like another example is like, uh, of a big question is like, well, is AI going to replace humans or is it going to augment humans in the go to market salespeople and SDRs being the most odd, like that's a really. Great question. Regardless of how you feel about what the right answer, that's a great question for the go to market world to be debating and trying to understand.

And, and I think when we, [00:16:00] when we debate those questions in the go to market world, that's a really, that's a really good sign. It's usually a sign that some type of transformation is either already happening or is about to happen. Mm hmm. Mm

Matt Amundson: Mm hmm. Mm

Craig Rosenberg: that is, uh, that is really good. And by the way, I would just say, um, I think in the near term, this is just, uh, my take is the copilot. Well, I have two takes.

Where Co-Pilot AI Agents Fit into Go-To-Market
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Craig Rosenberg: The co pilot for me is the key to right now seeing AI success for an enterprise software type organization. Because, um, as you said, the quality piece hasn't, like, quality without humans Is not, is it's kind of elusive, right?

And, but mundane workflows and, and at least some cue up of either a template, you know, some message [00:17:00] that you can start with or, uh, ideas and insights that you might be able to use those things to me or co pilot plays that are. that can make a difference right now. I do think though, for like, cause like we have, um, you know, here at scale, we work with bland.

ai, which is a voice AI thing. And look, of course, right now, I don't think you would use that to go SDR into the CISO at GE, but there are tons of volume use cases, not in B2B, maybe, maybe in B2B, maybe like where you'd prefer people actually, you know, Because I, we have this weird contradiction, which is everyone keeps rolling around going the buyer's X percent down the buying cycle.

I can't believe we still use those quotes. I, I've banned, I, and when I was an analyst, I banned people from pitching me on that. But if that's true, then agents should work in that use case as a way to help them without [00:18:00] having to talk to humans. I, I actually, you know what I mean? And so they're. It's a, from an, from an agent, a pure agent perspective, non human touch perspective, there are, uh, there are use cases for that primarily like in, I see like volume, but also if you did like.

Inbound on the B2B side, someone coming in and wanted to do a demo. I don't, you know, uh, or even an inbound qualification play, those things, you know, you can see where a pure agent would work, but generally speaking for enterprise software and those things where quality is now required, you cannot win today.

Unless you have the product that's flying off the shelf, uh, then you, you have to have, in my opinion, co pilot. Okay. So that's one thing. The other thing, so I, we talked to Gottlieb, you know, Dan Gottlieb, everybody's a Gartner analyst. And, um, he made this really good thing, which is like, I think Gartner has like AI on the downslope of the hype [00:19:00] cycle.

Right. But one of the things, if you know, the, the downslope of the hype cycle is, Or just in general, these things get hype, but then there's no use cases, no enablement, like nobody, you still, that part is where things really start to, uh, to, to, to bring growth back into a market. Right. And like, in the case of AI, I just went to a rev ops dinner and you could see that, uh, people are, there's, there's too many different use cases being thrown out there and tried and what we need, like if you take sales tech, for example.

The sales engagement platform, that use case became clear after a while, which was you can send more trackable emails, right? I'm just making that, but like just a crude thing, but that use case. So then, you know, the market changed because people said, we need to send more emails. Um, and, uh, we don't have that.

Yet in AI, [00:20:00] and we need people to keep doing these things. And then, as you said, Scott, asking the right, there's the big questions and the small questions, right? And those things have to start to become consistent. And we, as a market, we have to start understanding these things. Then the thing sort of, uh, you know, uh, retakes off.

And so like, that's the thing for me is. Um, we still don't necessarily, I mean, I, you know, we, the last thing I'll mention, we did a study on AI and we did it across functions. It was really interesting. Product marketing was like 90 percent using AI and if you look at their use case, it makes total sense, those guys have to write all the time and if they could use AI to just accelerate that versus the grind that they live in.

It made total sense, right? Uh, that's a use case that's emerging. That makes sense, which is they can work at a better speed. What was interesting, the SDR [00:21:00] folks were testing AI, the RevOps They, they, they basically said, no, we're letting the various people and functions test it, not, no, no enterprise wide RevOps AI mandate yet.

And that is to me, to the point I was making, the RevOps people need use cases, man, and they need proof and they need, and then once they start to see those things, then, then they'll become sort of more active enterprise wide buyers. But right now they're just letting things happen. I think that is good.

Like if users are just using AI and people are doing and messing around, sometimes failing, you know, failing, et cetera, that's how we'll get to the use case, um, uh, portion of this new sales stack and be able to take off.

Scott Albro: look, I think that last point is right on it. Definitely. This definitely feels like a more AI feels like a market where we are going to experiment our way into the right use cases. [00:22:00] Because they're not obvious and, and sort of top down mandates when the use cases are not obvious, they just don't work, right?

You just have to go let the teams do their things and experiment.

And you can't have RevOps, you know, like command and control this thing. You can't have the CIO command and control this thing. You just have to let people go experiment.

Craig Rosenberg: You know, I, I, the big one I've been intrigued by Matt has been, I don't feel like we have a ton of momentum, not momentum, but like big storylines, except for signals. On the marketing side with AI.

Matt Amundson: Mm hmm.

Craig Rosenberg: Do you agree with that? I don't know. It feels like, you know, marketing always led the storylines for years on tech.

Matt Amundson: Yeah. Yeah. But I think, I mean, I think the most practical applications of a lot of this stuff ends up just being in sales. Whether it's like [00:23:00] retrofitting AI into, uh, an outreach or, or sales loft like interface. You know, like what Regie's doing. And, uh, my new place, we're a Reggie customer, we're using it.

Really effectively for our sales team. Uh, and we're starting to do some experiments with it for, for marketing as well. Um, I'll let you know how that goes, but I think there's a couple of things. One, I think. I've observed what you've observed, which is like product marketing is the biggest user of AI right now.

They're using it for ideation. They're using it for jumpstarting. They're using it for like, Hey, I have this idea. Here's like an outline. Can you start to flesh this out into an article or into a white paper or stuff like that? Um, so they are using it quite a bit. I think you could also say marketing's using it quite a bit.

If the BDR team or SDR team's a part of the marketing department, for sure. Um, And then, you know, I'm seeing some people do some experiment with it, uh, experimenting with it, with, with [00:24:00] ads. Um, not necessarily in the ad copy itself, but as, uh, people are clicking on ads and being driven to landing pages, some AI personalization there.

Um, but I haven't seen anything in market. Today where marketing teams are like, this is a game changer for us. This is, you know, this is unlocking something that we were never able to unlock before, or this is giving us a, you know, exponential growth in, in some, you know, important metric. I don't know if it's because marketers have always been, or sort of the prevailing thought from marketers was this scares me to the point of it being an existential threat to my, my career.

I don't know. But also I just. I haven't seen it. I haven't seen anything that just really rocks from an AI perspective with marketing.

Craig Rosenberg: By the way, I would say on the, you know, Regie, which by the way, noted is portfolio of the company, the venture firm I [00:25:00] work at, but Sri never bit on like the, the near term AI, like. A. I. S. D. R. Thing, you know, two years ago, he was always focused on and Matt and Sri. They focused on workflow and they really thought about two steps ahead on that.

And that I think from a particularly, you know, from a copilot perspective and the overall sort of mechanics and workflows of what things done was pretty smart. Um, and so, you know, Um, so Scott, what, uh, on going back, I'm trying to remember what you said first about AI. Oh, the big question. What's your, what is, what is your thought on the agent versus co pilot?

Like what, where are we headed on that? Or where are we now?

Scott Albro: Um, I don't know. I mean, To me, the, the, the all in one general purpose co pilot, the [00:26:00] promise of that is that, um, it, it, it sure sounds a lot easier than a, you know, a swarm of many, many agents helping you. I'm not sure that wins in the long run, but it, boy, when it comes to like buying something for your sales team or marketing, whomever the, the, you know, there's an argument to be made for the general purpose co pilot.

On the other hand, um, when you think about these sort of purpose built agents, That, um, do very specific things for you. Maybe that's the easiest way to drive adoption, right? Is to find a particular use case per what we were just talking about, invest in that use case and build or buy an agent that supports that very specific use case.

Given how things are going. I suspect that that agent approach will, will win, [00:27:00] right? Like it seems like that is the easiest thing to go by right now. And, um, now whether that means in five years, you know, a single AE's got, you know, 20 different agents helping them or whatever the case might be. I don't know, but finding these very, you know, what you guys were just talking about with Matt's marketing organization, it's like, you know, Okay, I'm going to go invest in signals, right, and I'm going to buy an AI that's just really good at, or, or build one that's just really good at helping me identify different signals, right?

And I'm just going to focus there right now. That, that seems to me to be where the market wants to go.

Matt Amundson: Yeah

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah.

Scott Albro: What do you

guys think?

Using AI on LinkedIn
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Craig Rosenberg: you do a ton of LinkedIn work. Like are people using AI to write their LinkedIn posts right now? Is that like prevalent

Scott Albro: I don't, I don't see many posts that are, [00:28:00] um, just like blatantly obvious, you know, some, some LLM just wrote the post. What I think people are doing is they're using it as a writing partner, right? To. I don't think people use it as much on the ideation side, maybe, but that, that would seem a little bit unusual to me.

I think people use it in terms of like editing, um, making suggestion, you know, what I would call like, you know, fleshing out content, right? Like I've got this idea. Can you turn it into, you know, a paragraph or a list of bullets? I think that's what people are using it for. The LLMs, in my opinion, still really struggle with original thought.

Like most of what you get back is like, You know, it's been said many times elsewhere. It's not original and it comes across and it comes across that way. So, you know, can it help you flesh an idea out and maybe add, not even flesh the idea out. It's more like, you know, take this sentence and turn it into a [00:29:00] paragraph.

Maybe, you know, or take this sentence and give me a list of bullets on like why it's true. Yeah, I think the most annoying thing on LinkedIn right now isn't the posts that are created by AI. Because again, I see very little of that. It's the, you know, the comments and replies and things like that, that are clearly AI generated where You know, and I, I don't know if they're tools for this or people are like copying and pasting the original post into the LLM and saying, write a reply to this or leave a comment for this.

That's like very obvious and, and, and really annoying And there, there are these repeat offenders out there who are on every, you know, They are liking and commenting on every post just using AI.

Craig Rosenberg: Is that right? Wait, by the way, Sam was shaking his head at you. Um, when you, during your, Sam, uh, feel free to unmute. Would you disagree that Scott's take that people are not using AI to write their LinkedIn posts?

Sam Guertin: Um, [00:30:00] I would say maybe you've cultivated a better, um, LinkedIn feed than I have, uh, because I would say it's much more prevalent,

Scott Albro: All right. That's good to know. Yeah.

Sam Guertin: than, than, yeah, and the AI comments are just awful.

Craig Rosenberg: What, what is that? Are

Matt Amundson: Yeah, so this is the first time I've heard this. we're

going to have to deeper into

This This is interesting.

Craig Rosenberg: have no, if Matt thank you for breaking the ice. Cause I'm pretending like. What what the hell is there an app for that Sam?

Sam Guertin: uh, I'm sure there is, there's a ton of, like, LinkedIn third party stuff, but I think it's Also, people are just copying and pasting, like Scott said, into ChatGPT. Um, and it's super obvious, and it's super cringy, especially when you look at someone's profile, and you can see all of their comments, and they're all, like, the same style.

Scott Albro: Yeah.

Matt Amundson: so we're talking about people who want [00:31:00] to sort of traffic jack other like popular posts and like that just plants like AI driven comments and questions on there.

Sam Guertin: Yeah,

Scott Albro: Go ahead, Sam. Yeah.

Sam Guertin: I was just gonna say, manufacturing, uh, touchpoints

Craig Rosenberg: Holy

Sam Guertin: certain key accounts.

Craig Rosenberg: Holy. Are you? Wow Scott?

Scott Albro: But it doesn't, it, it, it, it doesn't work, right? I mean, it, it, it, it, it's totally shooting yourself in the foot because it's so, it's so obvious. That it's an AI, that it's just AI content. Right. So

Matt Amundson: Oh my god. So like, uh, we're getting towards the end of the year. So if you're Big hypothesis for how you're going to have sales success in 2025 is I'm buying this AI tool that has my

my salespeople drop comments on target account posts. Please don't,

Craig Rosenberg: yeah, wow,

Matt Amundson: don't.

Scott Albro: exactly.

Craig Rosenberg: idea man [00:32:00] That is it explains a lot. By the way, I had an AI text You know the people do the text and they try to get you to go on and buy gift certificates or whatever I don't know if you guys get these. I get like two a day. So like, so this, this person.

Matt Amundson: of the internet do you hang out on, man?

Scott Albro: What's

what form did you fill out?

Matt Amundson: ha ha ha.

Craig Rosenberg: Oh, by the way, I did, I filled out the form the other day and then I was like, Oh, I better go check. And I go on Reddit and it was like, This is a scam. The minute you sign in, they're going to get into your, uh, desktop. So I went and got Bob, the, the guy who runs IT, and he's just looking at me going, what is the matter with you? I said, no, no, I pulled out. I just did my email. He goes, yeah, but now they're going to look you up. Right. And they're going to figure out that you, you know, sold a company and now they're coming at you. And I was like, Oh my God. So anyway, I get this, this, this fake woman writes me a note the other day and [00:33:00] says, Hey, I noticed that your phone number was in here.

I think, uh, I don't have a name. Do I know you? What's your name? And so I used to just delete those and get scared. Now I write back to them and try to take it as far as I can. So I told her my name was Timmy.

Matt Amundson: Oh, okay.

Craig Rosenberg: Timmy, I, I, Timmy, I don't remember Timmy. Can you send me a picture? Here's mine. And it's clearly a stock, you know, whatever picture, not, not, not anything. And I go, oh yeah, I'm not sure. I know you, um, I'm not really comfortable sending a picture. And she said, well, do you live in the Bay area? Cause your phone number is the Bay area. And I wrote, I did in 1967. And she's like 1960. She just gave up on me with suck. I think she was looking for a young guy that would, you know, she would be able to milk me for money.

But anyway, those are AI. There's some AI in there because she wrote when I said, uh, I said something and she wrote this confuses me. Please [00:34:00] explain. Oh, my God. Anyway. All right. So nobody can relate to those, uh, those AI texts I'm

Matt Amundson: So far, we've identified some pretty interesting AI use cases that involve, uh, scamming people on LinkedIn, and then potentially scamming people into buying, uh, gift cards. So Oh, yeah.

Scott Albro: I'm seeing a podcast spinoff here, which is Craig gets ensnared in various scans and, and explains himself. Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: Oh, man.

Matt Amundson: ha ha. Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: It's, uh, I, that would be fun. That, I mean, that would TikTok and we, our TikTok account would blow up on that. Um,

and then I, so one other thing, Scott, though, that you, I think, uh, you brought up, I think, by the way, it's kind of Matt's pedestal too, which is quality. Um, and I think everyone talks about it.

A lot, but then I'm not sure they adhere

Matt Amundson: no, this is why, dude, here's the [00:35:00] thing. People have a lot of reasons why BDR or DemandGen, Programmatic DemandGen is broken. The fact of the matter is it all comes down to quality. It all comes down to quality. Everything that we have done, starting with the rise of marketing automation in the early 2010s to the boom of sales engagement, everything that's happening with Gong, everything that's happening with AI is to what Scott pointed out earlier, it's a rush to do more.

It's just do more, send more, call more, more social posts, apparently more social comments. Like everybody's trying to do more and yeah, more, more gift cards, more text messages, uh, more sugar daddies. The thing is, is. Nobody's trying to do better. And I think Scott, I think you absolutely nailed it with that point earlier is like, because the focus has been more, the emphasis has gone away from better.

And I think like we sit around here [00:36:00] talking about what is the next stage of the, uh, of the playbook. If we think the old playbook is broken, I think it's, it's pretty obvious. The next stage of, of doing really great B2B marketing is doing, writing really great emails, writing really great content, doing a higher level of production, being very thoughtful in the stuff that you put out, and maybe accepting the fact that you know, the product that you build or the content that you create isn't built for everybody, but build it for the right people and just do it exceptionally well.

That might be the answer.

Scott Albro: Yeah. Yeah. Totally, Matt. The, this is one of the reasons I think signals have a ton of promise. They have to be used the right way, right? But signals seem like the first step in the quality direction, right? Like if I can know more about my accounts, In a scalable way at the right time, right, et cetera.

That feels like it goes a long way to improving this quality problem that we have right [00:37:00] now. And, you know, if I had to pick an area and go to market, you know, AI or that I was most excited about that, that will probably be it for that reason. Like, it seems like that's not just a quantity thing. That's a real quality thing.

Craig Rosenberg: signals.

Scott Albro: Signals. Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah, us too. It's funny. We started, we hadn't talked about it in months. All right. So I like that, um, that, you know, if we had to look at anything, signals is one that, that, um, is really attractive from a relevance that tied with timing. I think timing, you just said, Scott, that triggered

Scott Albro: It's a big deal.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah, it really is. Uh, and you know, I'd have to, I was trying to dig up the data, but we just did a survey on signals. And it was really interesting that the, the people, the orgs that got the most out of signals use six or more or seven or more, I'll look it up. Give it, uh, that, that means that like when you [00:38:00] really sort of crack the nut on this, right, it's not one.

You know, it's multiple signals that can come together and allow you to deliver quality. Quality's hard. I was thinking a different tact with you. You produce, how

Creating Quality Content
---

Craig Rosenberg: are you still producing once a day on LinkedIn? And

Scott Albro: I'll just say I took a hiatus. Um, but I, I would say now I'm like three to four times a week, probably.

Craig Rosenberg: yours, your content is quality. It does seem like that's hard for a lot of people.

Matt Amundson: Sure.

Scott Albro: Yeah. I mean, I, I guess so. I just, you know, when it, when it comes to producing content for LinkedIn or anywhere else, I, I just, I, I believe. A few things help. One is like, are you an expert or authority in that particular area? Like write about the things you know, you know, don't try and go into other areas.

And a lot of people fake that on LinkedIn and other [00:39:00] social platforms. Two is like, Be genuine and authentic in terms of like who you are as a storyteller, right? So, so be an expert in terms of like your subject matter, but then just be, you know, like when you're writing a post or speaking on a podcast or whatever it is, don't try and be someone that you're not, like just be your, be yourself.

Be yourself. That's actually really important. That's easy to do like video or podcast or whatever, right? Because you just be yourself. Um, when you're writing, a lot of people feel like they have to go back to high school English and like write like, you know, whatever Mrs. So and so told you how to write.

And that's like, that, that makes it really, really hard. And then, you know, the final thing that just makes it easier is like, um, produce content in the medium that is, the easiest medium for you to produce content in, right? Like, um, if you like to write, if that's the easiest thing, write. [00:40:00] If you, you know, like to record voice memos on your phone during the commute, do that.

If you like to record videos, do that. There are lots of, you know, like when I was doing my startups, I really would, you know, the first year of each startup, I would spend a ton of time on the pitch, a ton of time,

Matt Amundson: Mm-hmm

Scott Albro: most of that time was not in PowerPoint. Most of that time was in my car on it during the commute, talking to myself like, okay, here's how I want to say this.

And here's how I want to say that. And that was sort of the easiest way for most people might think of that as there's some crazy dude talking to himself. I thought of that as like, no, I'm creating content. Right. And that happened to be the sales pitch. It was very easy for me to talk to myself in the car and just work on the pitch for like an hour and a half every day.

And, um, that made it easy. Then, then [00:41:00] it's a lot easier to put that into a PowerPoint and whatever, cause I've got, you know, I've got the story, right? So

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah. Matt has been, um, yeah, I'm

Scott Albro: to himself a lot.

Craig Rosenberg: no, I don't think so. Matt, I, Guertin, I could see talking to himself quite a bit. I don't know about Matt. Often when I'm on a call with Matt in his car, someone will make a driving move he doesn't like. He'll often have commentary. I think that's to me. But although if he wasn't on a call, he

Matt Amundson: No, there's this incredible moment where, uh, so like one, I have a lot of, uh, poor personality traits. One of them is I have the worst road rage. It's just, I, I, I cannot help myself. And uh, I was on the phone with Craig and somebody cut me off and I just, you know, I just tossed it out there and Craig was, you, you know, whatever, uh, uh, and Craig was like, What?

Me? [00:42:00] What did I say? And I'm like, no, no, no. Some dude just cut me off or whatever. But yeah, I, yeah, but Craig also does call me three times a day. So he catches me in all kinds of different situations.

Craig Rosenberg: I used to call Scott like 10 times

Matt Amundson: Oh, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah,

Craig Rosenberg: I can't, I, I can't drive without being on a call. Um, I often get gas, do my shopping, all this stuff with Matt on the phone. Uh, but Matt, I was talking about, um, cause like, so I know we're kind of off a little bit off the AI thing, but as I just, this, this quality.

Scott just said something I think is really important that fell in line with something you've been talking to folks about, which is like, look, if, because a founder, let's say, or a thought leader that can't write all the time isn't always because they can't write. It's often because they're so meticulous that it's torture.

And so Matt's like, hey, dude, you know, like, Do what we do, like record it on, you know, once a week [00:43:00] and then chop it up. You can do text off that. And that falls with what Scott was saying, which is like, let's find the medium you're most comfortable with. And Matt's been kind of preaching that a bit just to help people alleviate the

Scott Albro: I love that. I love

that. Yeah,

Matt Amundson: I was just going to say, you know, working with CEOs, it's, you know, they'll write. A blog post and they will just obsess over making it perfect. And I get it. Like, that's the reason why they're a CEO of a company. Cause they're obsessed with perfection and doing great things. And they're just like, Oh, you know, I wrote it.

I don't love it anymore. I'm going to rewrite it and end up tearing it down and starting over and over and over again. And it's just like. Man, if you just record for 30 minutes, we can just edit the most important parts out of that and just load them into, uh, you know, into whatever medium is best for you, whether that's LinkedIn or Tik Tok, or Facebook, or whatever.

Um, and so I, I think that you're, you make such a great point there. It's create content in the, that, that's in the medium that's easiest for you to create because you'll, you'll just [00:44:00] do it. You know, if it's a, if it's a battle to do it every time, you're just not going to do it.

Scott Albro: that's right. I love that idea. I think another version of, you know, the, the, so, so talking's super easy for most people, right? So just talk. That's how I would characterize what you're describing. The other thing that's really easy for people is often just jotting down some notes. And the social platforms, it's like formality doesn't work.

You know, the per, the perfect. The perfect, you know, manifesto or whatever actually works against you in a lot of the social platforms. So just jot down some notes about what you've been thinking about, or that meeting you just had, or whatever it is, or what that, what that customer just told you. And those notes are probably five to 10 percent away from being publishable.

Like there's not a lot of work to get them published. And then Matt, it's interesting because I, I tell some of my founders, CEO clients, [00:45:00] like Okay, so jot down the notes, turn that into a social post, and then if you want to do a blog post or something longer, more formal, where like tone really matters and it's got to kind of be perfect, take that social post and turn that into the blog post or the whatever.

And so there are all these little tricks to making content creation easier. I will say this, all that stuff helps. It is still hard, like producing, the thing you're trying to do when you create content. As a founder or a CEO is you're trying to say smart things and you're trying to say them frequently.

And my rule is minimum three times a week. Well, saying smart things or producing content that says smart things three times a week is hard. I mean, it, it, it just is, it just Yeah. And you have to nail that frequency thing in this day and age, you know, if you just say one smart thing a month, it doesn't matter, right?

You're not in the stream. You're not [00:46:00] out in the market. And you got to be there and frequency is the thing that gets you there.

Matt Amundson: Yeah. Yeah. I think the one thing that a lot of CEOs don't, they sort of take for granted, is that their experience, whatever they have experienced, Is super valuable, super valuable. Whether it's, you know, when I was raising a rap, my first seed round, this is what happened. That's fascinating content for people, but for a lot of people, they just feel like, Oh, that was, you know, just part of the journey.

That was, uh, something that I went through or for a marketer. The first time I launched a website for the first time I sent an email, the first time I built some kind of complicated workflow, I think people think that we're. Beyond those things, because there's already been a lot of content that's put around that, but the, the personal story around how that happened, I think is incredibly valuable.

And I think for a lot of [00:47:00] CEOs, they feel the need to always be profound, to be forward thinking, to sort of set the market, to demonstrate subject matter expertise. And you should do that if you can, but like, you could be like, Hey, you know what, the hardest thing I ever did was I had to. You know, I had to unwind a company or the hardest thing I ever had to do was I had to tell an investor, no, and here's what happened.

That type of stuff is actually what people want to know about. And it's interesting because I feel like, you know, people have not want to make LinkedIn personal and they, you know, they want to make it about business all the time. And I think where those two things come together, where your personal experience and your business experience come together, those turn out to be the most.

Uh, viral posts that go out on LinkedIn.

Scott Albro: Yeah. I mean, personal stories work. I,

Scott's Framework for Which Story Founders Want To Tell
---

Scott Albro: I have this framework that I use with my clients. It's a, [00:48:00] it's a tool to basically help founders figure out what story or stories they want to tell.

Matt Amundson: Mm

Scott Albro: And the coolest thing is like every founder has a story to tell. Otherwise they wouldn't have started a company. Right.

Like, I mean, and, but when, when you, when you try and pin these founders down on like, okay, well, no, what, what are, what are the stories? It's a, it's almost like a messaging platform, right? How, how a marketing org would think of a messaging. Okay. What are the stories we're going to, we're going to go tell.

There are three story types that I typically recommend people start with. There are many others, but these are the three basic ones for a founder in a startup environment. One is a story that shows that you understand your customers priorities and pains, right? And that that story really revolves around you can articulate how well you understand their priorities And you have suggestions best practices [00:49:00] solutions, whatever it is to solve those pains and priorities So that's that's one type of story Second type of story is really a transformation story.

Here's how this market is going to change, you know, over the next five years. Here's who the winners and losers are going to be. I'm a guide to help you navigate that transformation, right? That's the, that's what I call the transformation story type. And then the third story type is the personal journey, which is what you're talking about.

And those personal journey stories, they always resonate. By the way, what I coach people to do is to say, Hey, that those customer story, the customer priority stories and the transformation, just make those personal. Like the customer priority story, you can say, Oh, well, we have this data that shows the number one pain point in, you know, the manufacturing industry is X.

That's one way to tell that story. But the other way to tell that story, which is way more powerful is. You know, I met with the CIO of a manufacturer yesterday. Here's what they [00:50:00] told me. Right. And that's a more personal version of that story. So I totally agree. Those personal stories resonate. The other thing, you know, yeah, everyone's out there telling stories and there's so much content right now.

That's why frequency is important because the most recent story often wins. I mean, there are people I follow on LinkedIn and Twitter where I'm like, That's the most incredible thing I've read in the last month. And a month later, I can't remember what that was. You know, I don't remember what that was with all due respect to the author.

Right. It's like, because there's this stream of content, you just have to be in that stream all the time. And that's what back to the original point makes content production so painful.

Matt Amundson: Yeah. Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: Who is,

Examples of The Best Founder Brands
---

Craig Rosenberg: okay, guys, I'm going to ask everyone this, who is right now the, uh, well, not right now. It could be, you can judge this by all [00:51:00] time in terms of building founder brand through content. Speaking social or not, uh, whatever. Like who, like what, who's the best example or examples of that?

Scott Albro: I've got, I can go if people want me to, want me to go first.

Craig Rosenberg: Well, I mean, I didn't want it to call on anybody,

Scott Albro: Well, I'll go, I'll go, I'll go first. So I think about this stuff all the time. And I actually, I've got this little research project I'm doing where I'm just trying to catalog founder brands and stories and figure out like, what are founders doing, you know, like, and what's working and what's not. And the one, I mean, you can go way back and talk about like Benioff and, you know, no more software, the end of software, you know, that type of stuff. I mean, there are all kinds of great stories throughout, you know, you can look at Jensen and NVIDIA, you know, Tobi and Shopify, these are very, you [00:52:00] know. I think kind of obvious examples now, which, which is cool.

It shows how powerful this concept is. The one I'm really fascinated by right now is ServiceTitan. And, you know, they just, they just filed to go public. And, um, they built this incredible business. And the thing that I love about it is all those three story types we were just talking about, they nailed all three types, right?

So it's a deeply personal story about these guys coming from a family where You know, the, the father was in the trades, right? Like I can't remember what trade it was, right? But service type builds software for trade professionals, you know, like people come fix your HVAC or whatever it is. Right. And, um, so it's this really personal story and company and product for them.

And then because they grew up in that [00:53:00] world, in a family that owned one of those businesses. They understand the customer pains and priorities better, better than anyone else. Right. And then it's also a story of transformation, this realization that like a lot of these trade businesses, um, they weren't modernizing, right.

And there was a real opportunity to modernize these businesses and help these entrepreneurs, um, grow their businesses more, make more money, however you want to put it. And so they really nailed the three major story types. And I just, I just think it's super cool how they did that. It felt really genuine what they were doing.

And, um, that, that's my, that's my favorite sort of founder brand story out there. I have no idea what they do on LinkedIn or any, and I don't care, right? Like, you know, But, but it's a, it's a great story that sort of checks all three story types.

Matt Amundson: Would you say, Scott, that it's important to, [00:54:00] for the, the, the brand of the business to echo the personal brand of the CEO?

Scott Albro: Uh, that's a good question. And I'll be totally honest. I haven't thought about that, but let me just make something up on the fly. Um, so, um, um, I, I think, I think in an ideal world, uh, yes, that's, that, that would be helpful, but it's not required. I don't think. And, um, the, the other thing I would just say is like, um, if the founder brand is strong and effective and working, that's probably going to happen, right?

Like the, the company brand is probably going to reflect Thank you very much. The founder brand. So I guess what I, I guess I might maybe think of the question a little bit differently, which is like, Hey, when you see [00:55:00] corporate brands matching founder brands, is that a good or a bad thing? That seems like a, that seems like a really good thing.

Really good

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Yeah.

Scott Albro: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: Uh, does anybody want to follow that? Because that was an incredible example. Matt, do you have one that falls in the service or Sam too? What would you answer to the question? I,

Sam Guertin: Um, as far as a good example of a founder brand,

Craig Rosenberg: bro, he just did ServiceTitan. It better be an exceptional example. Good.

What's the matter with this guy? I honestly, all whoa, okay. Um, I was honestly going to go with the easy one. Um,

go easy.

Okay. Go easy,

Matt Amundson: the double mint twins? The double mint twins? Is that who you're gonna go with?

Sam Guertin: you got me. Uh, no, I was gonna, I was going to go with, uh, Adam Robinson.

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: He's definitely a modern,

Sam Guertin: one.

Craig Rosenberg: yeah, modern [00:56:00] knife fight, like in a way that is, it's, it's remarkable to watch

Sam Guertin: Yeah, and he's also, as far as like, openness, just like, I had to fire 40 people yesterday, uh, and it sucked. And now I'm gonna, like, write about it in this post. Um, that is really compelling. And that's, that's that kind of personal journey, um, side of things.

Scott Albro: Yeah. That's a good one, Sam. I think what Adam's built is really remarkable. I, I, you know, that's an example for me. The big lesson from Adam is. Your brand has to reflect, I don't know Adam, but, um, your brand has to reflect who you are. Like can you imagine doing what Adam does online unless like that's just who he really is?

I mean, it's, it's all engrossing. It's brutally honest. It's sometimes really cringy, right? But he [00:57:00] just, you know, he just embraces it and goes for it. So he's just being true to it. You know, that brand strikes me as like extremely genuine and there's a ton of power in that, and that's why it sticks out.

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: That was a good one, Sam. That was an exceptional one.

Matt Amundson: Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, um, uh, good. I don't want to give him too much credit. Uh, I got one last question for Scott. So Scott, the year

that you how Matt didn't answer the

Craig Rosenberg: Oh, it was

Sam Guertin: Yeah, just a little

sidestep

Scott Albro: Like you bagged, you, you, you bagged on Sam and then you pivoted to one more question for Scott. oldest media trick in the book. That's PR 101. Go for it.

Matt Amundson: I'm the marketer. So, uh,

The Impacts of Scott's Shoe Game on the Market
---

Matt Amundson: so the year that you guys, uh, had summit and you had the, uh, uh, the documentarian from Icarus.

Scott Albro: [00:58:00] story. It uh, I mean, that was honestly. Still the, like I've been to so many B2B conferences. That's the one that like, I can remember everything about the room. I can remember the keynote. I can remember everybody who was in the room that day.

Matt Amundson: And there's a very specific detail that I want to get into. Uh, I can't remember what year that was. Was that 17 or was that 18 that you guys did

Scott Albro: sounds about right. I, I

Matt Amundson: Sounds about right. So there was, there was Scott on stage, uh, uh, introducing, um, and. You got your sort of, you've got your vibe going and, and you were wearing a pair of Adidas superstars and I was like, I Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's white and black. She toes baby. And like fast forward seven years, Adidas everywhere. And like on that day I was like. I haven't seen a pair of shell toes in a minute. How does it feel to have [00:59:00] influenced an entire generation of, of, of young people who are all running around in these Adidas now all because there you were on stage, not seven, seven or eight years ago, just

Scott Albro: Well, it's all planned by my, I don't get any of the credit. That's just all planned by my wife. Like what I wear, what, yeah, I have nothing, nothing to do with it. But my, actually my wife didn't like those shoes. She didn't, she didn't like the, she didn't like the, is, were you calling it the shell toe?

She didn't like the shell toe on those shoes. So now I only wear Stan Smith, so I'm not allowed to wear, I'm not allowed to wear the superstars anymore. So I've

Matt Amundson: Yeah. But I thought, I thought it just, the, the look was so kick ass. And then I was like, man, Adidas, I hadn't really thought about it. And then bang, here it is. It's everywhere. You cannot go anywhere and not, yeah.

Scott Albro: seven years later, I mean, a broken clock's right [01:00:00] twice, right? Like

Matt Amundson: Hmm, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

Scott Albro: Yeah, yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: That is, that, that does, Matt has always remarked on your shoe game. Like we, you were, you were coming to a meeting. He was at Everstring. I was there early. And you walked in and you were in vans.

Scott Albro: really, I was

Craig Rosenberg: did not stop talking about it, dude.

Honestly. And, um, it did look pretty fresh, dude. You walked in, you're like the CEO, founder of Topo, big deal.

And you're just rocking the vans. And it was like, yeah, big time. All right. Well, we're, we're over time. Oh, by the way, I'd answer you, by the way, I think

Scott Albro: Yeah, who do you think?

Craig Rosenberg: remarkable storytelling exercises was Nick Mehta at Gainsight and it wasn't all social.

It

Scott Albro: Let me ask you this, uh, did, did you think Nick was telling a story or creating a category?

Craig Rosenberg: he was while he's creating a mission. I'm not sure about the, I think the category keeps saying, I, I think he created,

Scott Albro: [01:01:00] yeah. Okay.

Craig Rosenberg: yeah, a whole new way to think about things, but, uh, so you're right. Maybe it wasn't the story, but he took kind of, yeah, I'd have to figure out if it fell into a category in your methodology.

Scott Albro: But it's still a founder brand, right?

I mean, it was remarkable. His founder brand, like, I had to go This year, I wanted to hire a CS, help hire a CS person. Who did I go to? Nick. I needed some metrics on CS, who did I go to? Nick. So you're right. This is a little bit

No, it, it, it, it is a story. It is a story. It's the second story type. It's a transformation story, right? That's what it is. It's like, Hey, there's this new function, right? And every company's going to have it. And we just happen to be the company gain site that you come to if you need help with it. Um, that's a powerful story.

And Nick, Nick's personality, I mean, Nick is just Nick, right? He's, he's capable of telling any [01:02:00] story he wants to tell. He has a really, really strong personality. I mean that in, in the best way possible, a really strong, compelling personality.

That's a good one. yeah. All right. Great show. Um, Scott coming in hot from a winter wonderland. Um, and, um, but this is the transaction now, like this is the stuff we want to do. We want to tell stories, we want to give examples and that's what we did today. So it was killer. Also welcome Sam back. We got to a make fun of Sam and he added value.

Craig Rosenberg: That's, that's a win

Scott Albro: Well, not according to Matt, but yeah, I thought you did a good job. I thought you did a good job, Sam.

Matt Amundson: I thought it was good. I also think that this, today's podcast was the first time someone said the word double mint and twins

back to back since like 1988. Oh, diaspora too. Yeah. We, we started off strong with the vocab lesson.

Scott Albro: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: I'm going to have to, I'm going to go. My buddy's an English teacher and every time he uses a fun word, he sends [01:03:00] me a text. I'm going to get them.

Matt Amundson: Yeah. Yeah. You are.

Craig Rosenberg: All right, guys. Good work.

Matt Amundson: Amazing.