Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - The Introvert's Path to Leadership | Chris Savage - CEO and Co-Founder of Wistia

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Lessons - The Introvert's Path to Leadership | Chris Savage - CEO and Co-Founder of Wistia · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  industry
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  I've let's know a couple of podcasts and you have a couple funny stories from when you were
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  starting out I think one of my favorites is when you're using stock photos to make your team
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  seem bigger than it actually was and you know this this is like a common trope with entrepreneurs
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  they always feel like they have to they have to feel like they didn't have to make themselves bigger
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  than they are I was speaking to Jan Bednar who's the founder CEO of ShipMonk and when he started
• 2:36
  out he was doing he was basically doing all the logistics from his house but then he had a
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  customer who wanted to get ShipMonk which at the time was nothing to do fulfillment so he rented
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  out a warehouse and then bought a whole bunch of shit on Amazon and put all the Amazon boxes
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  into this warehouse and that was like his warehouse where he does like 3PL from so I love this so
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  talk to me about like some of the most ridiculous things as an early stage entrepreneur outside
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  of eating shared food which is already it sounds like a lot of fun yeah um all the stuff that you had
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  to go through the lessons some of the the most brutal lessons that you learned including this
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  stock photo story which I think is actually just hilarious but yeah some of those some of those
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  things are always fun people to hear because I don't really realize the shit that entrepreneurs go
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  through and the stuff they do yeah well I mean when you say that I'll I'll say that story first
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  and I'll throw some other stuff in there but um yeah we we thought that we had to appear big
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  because we had these big customers who were signing up for us now one key thing I didn't even lose
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  in hides they very obvious but the moment was not they were signing we had no website
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  basically we had nothing and they were still paying us as signing up and we weren't realizing that
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  they were getting to know two two guys who were like 23 years old and they were signing up
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  and we thought they were signing up despite that and what I didn't understand is they're
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  signing up because of that right there's a lot of people who are looking for the newest thing
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  always and they're looking for an edge they're looking for the startup they're looking for the
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  new way to do things and we just got confused I think and we're naive and thought no we're a B2B
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  business now we need to look and appear a B2B so we got all these stock photos put all these
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  stockfos on the site to make it appear like we're a bigger company if you went to the team page it
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  said management and it was like at this point there's four people on the team each versus a very
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  long bio all the awards blah blah it was real stuff but it was there were only four people in the
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  company you know the employees were like really the manager was to everyone it was everyone and any
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  what I also didn't understand is anyone look at this would figure that out it's like really obvious
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  and it kind of all happened by accident where we'd hired two more people on the team
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  through it from four to six and we thought we should shoot some photos of the team and put it on
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  the website because we felt bad for these two new people to join the company they had nothing
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  they could show their parents you know to like prove they had real jobs and school he took a photo
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  in front of a whiteboard and what if we thought in front of a whiteboard meant business because we're
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  so excited to have a whiteboard you know what I mean lion die it's amazing yeah and so real whiteboard
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  or in front bit it's not even clean it looks horrible we're not even we're not even confident enough
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  for having up understanding to even really smile like so the photos are all like stayed in there like
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  looking like we think it was it was business like his business like yes a serious you know like
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  whatever that's just like personifying what business could be and then we took two goofy photos
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  and the plan was not to use them the plan was just the one serious one that's ongoing site
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  well my co-founder Brendan is putting this on the website is changing out this management page
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  to our team page and he has three photos it was one serious and two fun and he decides because
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  it's someone's birthday on the team that he's just going to and it's fun for him to do this
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  that he's going to put a little Easter egg and if you type dance on this page it's going to randomly
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  switch between the photos of each person so it looks like we're dancing right and he builds this
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  thing and he does this and there was this artist of the time called girl talk who would remix all
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  this I know girl talk yeah yeah I think we're like the same age I love me I thought awesome awesome
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  digit and and girl talk was remixing all this existing music so it felt like hey maybe we can
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  use the girl talk album I think maybe the girl talk album at that time was like totally free or
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  something yeah so if you type dance it would randomly switch to a play girl talk and he'd bad
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  he's lasers on the screen and we just thought this is so fun and delightful he's like happy birthday
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  Jeff like what I did and then what ended up happening is that that page won viral and we didn't
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  think that was gonna happen but it went on to the front page of like hacker news and it went on
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  the front page of Reddit both these things were new and we got a ton of traffic and then the crazy
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  thing that happened was two weeks later we had a two week trial at the time two weeks later
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  bunch of new paying customers and it was the most I'll never forget that moment of wait we just
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  were clear about who we actually are we don't look professional at all this is like a choke
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  and yeah we just got more paying customers than we ever had with any of the marketing we'd ever
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  done which was basically like look how great this video hosting is and it was like this lesson of
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  showing people the real people behind the scenes doing something fun and interesting doing something
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  that today I would just describe as good brand on doing you're having this really great brand moment
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  caused people to care enough that they figured out what Wistia was they saw it could be useful to them
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  and they side up and became paying customers and if you go back and you trace when Wistia started
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  doing like wild brand things and wild content and putting a face onto the brand and all it all
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  started with that with that moment which is which is crazy to me because it was such an unexpected
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  report that's bank on yourself dot com slash Scott bank on yourself dot com slash Scott and you've
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  carried that through for the past 17 years is just like the thesis for how you market whatever we
• 9:51
  have made a mistake on our marketing it has been what we didn't care it though
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  it's so interesting you know maybe just a thought on this because we're not going to solve every
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  business is marketing problems today but I find that people still fall into the trap of being
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  scared shitless of of being themselves online and they they write the most boring LinkedIn posts
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  or they put out the most boring corporate updates and it's not just corporations it's not like
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  big companies do like the small companies try and act big kind of like exactly replicating what
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  you were doing when you first started out what's your advice what's your what's your one thing
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  that you could say to a founder to really like drive this home like how do they get out of their
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  shell and let like be a human online because I I'm bought into this word you know kindred spirits
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  on we believe this I believe exactly what what you're saying but a lot of people don't know I'm
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  speaking inbound about this too like five years later after I started posting about being
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  yourself and being authentic I LinkedIn and now everybody speaks about being authentic but nobody
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  does it yeah so why not what do we do I think it is fear of failure is so crippling and I think
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  people look at it the wrong way and what I mean by that is you don't want to put a ton of
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  work into something put yourself out there and then no one sees you know it's just no one sees
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  it didn't work what if being myself doesn't work that's pretty scary idea yeah that is and I think
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  what I've learned in this is because you know there's many different moments that you need to be
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  comfortable being uncomfortable is if you are yourself and it doesn't work no one saw it and so
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  there was no downside the worst thing you can do is spend a huge amount of time on something and
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  no one saw it but if you're actually being yourself is not that hard to be yourself and so
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  it's how do you can you get comfortable enough that you can put a lot of things out to the world
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  and know that most stuff isn't gonna work and that's normal but if you do that and you are paying
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  enough attention you will learn the things that are working and that resonate and like actually as
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  human beings like you and I can only get to know each other so much in this podcast there's a lot
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  more to each of us right that we could ever put into an hour long podcast and I think that that's
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  what people miss is that there's so many parts of your life that are going to be interesting and
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  compelling when you bring it in with your business and that's just how it's always been like we're
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  just we're just wired to connect with other human beings that's what we want and so it's really
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  about getting to that place of comfort of saying hey if I put this out there no one sees it that
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  means nothing bad happened yeah not like it failed it means nothing bad happened like having
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  something go viral for the wrong reasons it doesn't usually happen and even then if it did give
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  out for the wrong reasons I think you can almost always get out there and try to you know give your
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  full take and story to try to like turn it around from like a negative into a positive but that's
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  there's it's it's it's really actually just like can you see it through can you get a night
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  I'm learning you know um but that seems to be what stars people it's just this fear of like well
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  fire release and no one's going to see it I was like and also people think that their opinions
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  are way more um controversial than they actually are like the the the wrong reason for going viral
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  is when you tweeted something explicitly racist like 10 years ago and that's why you're going to
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  get canceled but having an opinion on anything business related no one's going to cancel you like
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  like really people have better things to do in their day than to go find somebody that has a hot
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  take on AI or like post a picture of them walking a dog like that's not gonna get you canceled
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  so I think it's just oh I know yeah and I think that I think that you're exactly right and I think
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  that there's I mean we were talking even before we're recording today of Laya having a conversation
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  just getting going you're like we got a record because we both knew and this happens all the time
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  it's like when you have a conversation with your friends and you're talking through some idea and
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  you're willing to let ideas rip and you're pushing back to that that's normal and then you get into
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  a podcast like well what can I actually say can I be myself and what you start to notice is that
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  the podcasters is an example who really builds a real audience and follow their they're
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  closer to being their cell themselves than a lot of other folks right and like they're willing
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  to put ideas out there and we're smart and like you and I could disagree on a bunch of stuff and
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  that's fine but like being comfortable being in the public disagreeing is is a different
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  thing and I understand why people need to get comfortable doing it um that that's why I think it's
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  like a lot of it is you know how not how do you do one or something but how do you do a hundred
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  yeah I think about that a lot is like all right if you assume it takes a hundred attempts of
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  something before you start to figure it out what are you gonna do I love that yeah yeah that's by
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  way it's not just my idea I've seen that around but it I I really do feel that it is true
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  and so you have to look at things that way and once you look at it that way that first a second
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  the tenth the 20th not not so scared thanks for tuning in if you found this valuable don't forget to
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  hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode and if you want to dive deeper into this
• 15:04
  conversation check out the links in the description to watch the full episode see you in the next one