Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - How I Built a Cult Following | Yosef Martin - BoxyCharm CEO

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Lessons - How I Built a Cult Following | Yosef Martin - BoxyCharm CEO · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, explore how viral momentum emerges from deliberate community building
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  and product focus. Discover how coordinated engagement creates algorithmic lift,
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  understand why listening to loyal users reduces churn, and strengthens advocacy,
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  and uncover how founders gain an edge by avoiding noise and staying close to the trends that matter.
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  I want to talk about the virality that you created and some of the things that also come from
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  the virality because I think that that will help a lot of the other things you're trying to
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  accomplish if it's paid or if it's trending on Twitter or whatever it is, but you saw those
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  groups of 90,000 people. You took advantage of that, and that makes sense. But how looking back,
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  how would you reverse engineer somebody to try and do that and build that group purposefully?
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  That's what I think the magic is. You had this cult like following, but how do you get that
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  cult like following so that I don't I don't want as a company. I don't want to be forced to create
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  my own community. I want my product to be so cult like and I want people to be so passionate about
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  my product that they create their own communities. I think you said it's first to start with your product.
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  No one's going to get excited over what they say everywhere else. They have to get excited over
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  your then you can like it's a recipe. It's not one ingredient, but it's like you it was like you
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  were actually selling you were selling other people's products. Yeah, so it's like the product was
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  actually but it's your brain understanding what was what resonated. Yeah, that was the product.
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  Yeah, so exactly. I mean, I was the chief product officer until I had Christy that was working for
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  us and she was taking over and she was amazing, but it took me years to find that and then I was the
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  marketing guy behind this. But look, when you build the community, I guess a lot of a lot of the
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  elements is that when you trend, right, when you trend, you get to be seen everywhere, right?
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  And how do you trend yourself using the community as a utility? Alvinize that community you're talking
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  exactly. You're going and so the way I was doing every month, there was a spike when people received
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  their boxes on the I want to say around the say the 15th of the month, people get the box and there
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  was a spike. And I needed to kind of like and my problem was that if you look at the chart, it was
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  unlike the beginning of the month, a little spike when I would give them a sneak peak,
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  then it would go down after two, three days. And the discussion around boxy charm because they saw
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  the sneak peak if they came to our to our platforms and then eventually they start receiving the
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  boxes. There's another hype spike blah, blah, blah, blah, it goes down towards the end of the month
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  all the way to the next month. And I needed to lift it in those two, those two, I needed to kind of
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  be the market market maker. Yeah, I want to be the market maker. So I said, you know what, let's
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  do it this way. I'm going to go and introduce to a small group of people, but very, very loud,
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  what's going to be next month in the box during the dips. And I can go and do just those, those
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  two times. I'll take the two strongest items that will be next month marks. And on the first
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  dip and on the second dip, that's what I'm going to show that. And I'm going to do it in different
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  ways. But my point was, I would go on the forums and then say, is there any interest in the sneak
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  peak? I would always use the same phrase. Is there any interest? Eventually, I just said, is there
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  any interest? And that said, they would already know what I mean. And all of them would say, yes,
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  and you would see hundreds of comments, yes, of course, why are you asking this one? And then,
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  oh, well, it's just being funny, always that, that just telling me, yes, we can show it to us. And
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  it was just really, really fun. And then I would go in and say, well, go tomorrow, tomorrow at 3 PM
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  Eastern time, you're going to find somewhere. I'm going to post something about the sneak peak.
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  Where do you have? You have a couple hundred thousand members at the same time, searching boxy charm.
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  What happened with 300,000 people are searching at that time? Don't, don't, don't, if you, if you were to
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  spread it across 30 days, there would be no, it wouldn't trigger the output for, it wouldn't train,
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  but if it's over an hour or a couple, everyone, everyone's trained at the same time. Now, you would
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  go on Google Trend, and you would see in Google Trend, a spike, ball boxy charm, whenever there's a
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  spike in the trend, anyone that mentioned anything about boxy charm is going, is getting tons of
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  views. Anyone that mentioned their box, anyone that mentioned what to anything. So what happened is
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  they said that they trend when you do mention boxy charm, then they want to mention us more.
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  Now, they just created more variety concept for free. You just are, for funnily again, everybody
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  hears boxy boxy boxy boxy boxy, but you just manipulated the algorithm. You just use your community
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  to come in at the same precise time and you do it two or three times a month, and you keep the
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  discussion going, you get, you get the discussion going, and that's how you chase the cool factor.
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  Just in the cool factor, make everybody wants to like you emotionally. They look at you different
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  emotionally. I would say that also having a non faceless company does, does the trick, right? But
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  put yourself out there. Yeah, you put yourself out there, right? But being a face for the company
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  coming all the way from the founder makes a big deal. The fact that you don't take things too
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  seriously, you're being funny and you have those consistent words that you keep all the time
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  creates lingual around the community. Is there any interest and they would repeatedly use
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  the same words? It was ingenious. It's very easy. Nothing is a rocket science technically. It's
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  just easy to do. You know what? All you're doing is just paying attention, which is like it sounds,
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  it sounds like so basic. But I mean, how many companies don't pay attention? How many people don't
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  look at the feedback from their product and their users and they're just like, no, that's what it is.
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  I'm going to keep putting it out there. I'm going to figure out and optimize performance marketing
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  and I'm going to find a way to convert people that have never heard the product before and they're
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  not focused on people that are their biggest fans and their biggest evangelists and how do you
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  serve them? It's just like, find new customers, bring them in. This is a big issue with like
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  SaaS companies too. You always focus on bringing new customers and you don't focus on churn. You have
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  churn, you have churn in subscription boxes as well. You don't focus on churn. You have like a leaky
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  whatever, like the leaky yeah, like I'm trying to think of that analogy. Someone told me
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  really good analogy. It's like if you take the plug out of a bathtub and you let the water run,
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  it's always going to drain but try and fill it. Imagine like if you like plug that hole and you put
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  water and it's going to overflow with money and customers and all that. So you have to focus on
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  the churn. You have to focus on the customers that have already purchased your product as opposed to
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  just always bringing that new end and how do you focus on them? We just listen to the feedback from
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  the people that have already purchased. Good and bad. That's all you're doing. Yeah. When you make
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  decisions, when you run a business, you have a decision to make sure you're going to spend your day.
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  You can spend your day reading cohort data and put yourself in endless meetings that you have
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  created for yourself to follow up and reporting and ask everyone to go and think for you and create
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  strategies for you or you can decide to still be the technician. In a way, you're going to say,
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  well, I'm not letting that piece go until I find someone that does it like me or better. And then I
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  can always over seal what they're doing, but at least I know that it's in good hands. And this
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  way, for us, there was one meeting a week for our VPs and above. Just to follow up, we have to
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  call it a stand-up meeting. We have to talk only about what's absolutely important. That's it.
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  Nothing else. Not everyone needs to hear everything about everything. So when you have enough time
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  on your hand, you can be plugged into the consumer's discussion. You understand what they're thinking
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  about your product. You can maneuver. You're in touch with influencers to become your friends.
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  They'll tell you, hey, listen, you should go and jump on this feature right now. You're going to
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  blow up at that time. Every new feature is going to give you a new view. Okay. So guess what?
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  Boxy-chan would be the first to start using say IGTV at the time when you would get all the views
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  to IGTV because it was a supply and demand issue. They wanted to make sure that the adoption is
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  going to be there. So you did. But then you go in a month and a half, sooner than your competition,
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  you get a month and a half free time. By the time your competition came into a traffic gym,
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  you already created a gap. Then after that, you're going to reels and so on or other features and
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  reels. So you're plugged into the trend and you have enough time in a day to look at those little
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  things that can make you getting another little unfair advantage because you have the time to
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  actually do it instead of bearing yourself with meetings. And in many cases, that's what people
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  know. They just look at the business as a process process oriented business and all they have to
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  do is step aside and let the people work, make it smaller meetings, less meetings. I think a big
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  mistake that people are doing is big meetings. You see, we have a large meeting with 100 people,
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  but you have so many things to discuss. 14, 15 topics to discuss. You'll find those meetings
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  where most people don't even participate and they're from different departments and not everyone
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  from every department needs to hear everything about every department. They need to work and they
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  need to know only what they need to know at the time when it. If they want to ask questions,
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  come in, we'll tell you, but you do not need to contribute so much data for them for no reason
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  because one year out the other, it's not going to stay or adversely if they do a lot on a certain
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  piece of data, though, contacts, it provide incorrect information or they could get stressed about
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  things or what exactly. It's like my analogy was biblical analogy. When Moses came with the
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  10 commandments to the Hebrews, they only 10. He didn't go with the whole Bible decks of
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  explanations of the Bibles because it's useless. You have a lot of people, give them a little bit
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  of information, only what's important. You have smaller group of people, now you can go a little
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  bit more specific. It can retain more, depends on the group. So you start, if you have a big meeting,
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  kind of like a town hall meeting, everybody's there, two, three things everybody needs to hear,
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  don't overkill it. You have your 10 commandments. This is your 10 commandments. Don't go and
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  discuss everything about everyone to everyone. It doesn't, it's waste of resources in the
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  companies. You can find large companies being deployed poorly and then they're going to go and
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  lose for a smaller, more nimble competitor that just focus on what's important and urgent all the
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  time. And then they have enough time to always be tuned to the trend. Thanks for tuning in.
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  If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an
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  episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description
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  to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.