Detailed Notes
Stop overbuilding. In this episode of Building Better Developers, Samir ElKamouny shares a practical market validation strategy to prove demand before you invest months of dev time.
In Part 1, we cover: • Market research that actually reduces risk • How to test messaging fast (even with small ad experiments) • When funnels should educate vs convert • Why execution beats “perfect” planning
About Samir ElKamouny Samir ElKamouny is an entrepreneur, marketing expert, and visionary leader driven by execution, innovation, and impact. He’s helped scale countless businesses by pairing big ideas with strategic action, guided by values like Freedom, Happiness, Health, Family, and Spirituality.
Read the blog recap: https://develpreneur.com/market-validation-strategy-samir-elk
*Follow-us on:*
* [email protected] * https://develpreneur.com/ * https://www.youtube.com/@develpreneur * https://facebook.com/Develpreneur * https://x.com/develpreneur * https://www.linkedin.com/company/develpreneur/
Transcript Text
[music] [music] [music] [music] Hey. Hey guys. Hey, how's it doing, Samir? >> Good. How about you? >> Uh, doing good. All ready for a nice little conversation. Uh, once I get my camera >> Well, I feel bad because I'm kind of reviewing everything here and I'm not a developer. [laughter] It's okay. >> Um, yeah. and I'm reading the message my assistant sent and I'm like I have very limited amount of experience with developers. Well, that's okay. I'm I'm not uh [sighs] that's not this is not the first time we've had one of those kinds of things. So, uh looking at what you've got in your background though, um I think we will find ways to have a conversation. Apologies, I'm just moving some windows around. Um, the way we do it is, uh, we have a conversation. Uh, well, I'll introduce myself, Michael introduce himself, and then I'll toss it to you to introduce yourself, and we will have a conversation that typically runs an hourish. Um, what your uh, our our audience is developers and entrepreneurs, uh, people that are doing side hustles and starting businesses and things like that. uh as well as building um building out products and such. Uh I think what we'll end up talking about because this is something that we do touch on uh fairly regularly because it's outside of the scope of what some people a lot of the audience is comfortable with is the idea of like of advertising and how to figure it out and how to go you know make it a part of your your business. Everybody knows it's there, but how to do so. And then especially, I think we'll talk about how it may be changing as uh the landscape is changing out there as far as where eyeballs go and and ear ear holes go, I guess, now as as people listen to audio and and things like that. Um, so I'll probably go through some of your standard a little bit of your standard kind of questions. We'll just sort of see where it goes if that's all right with you. >> Yeah, that's cool. I mean, my first job ever was a QA guy for a SAS company. I worked at some SAS I mean, I got my marketing start at one of the most influential SAS companies in the space at the time. And I've marketed a lot of SAS clients and and I'm building out a massive web 3 platform now and have like a massive team of developers, but uh my CTO manages the majority of that. Um, so you know, I I guess I've had those a lot of experiences, but uh, yeah, not not a developer myself. [snorts] That's all right. We'll make it we'll make it work. We have had more than a couple times we've had people come in that are not really developers, per se, but uh, then we just lean more in the the business side of things. >> Okay. Yeah. I just wanted to be the most beneficial for you and and your audience at the end of the day. That that's really all I care about. I literally have nothing to sell, nothing to pitch. Like >> Yeah. I just want to add value. That's it. >> Perfect. That's That's the best kind. Uh am I coming through? Okay, Michael. Sound all good. >> Yeah, sounds good. How about me? >> Yep. So, all right then. Um we will get started here. Uh oh, actually, do me a favor, Samir. What is your How do you pronounce your last name? >> Samir El Camuni. >> Elamuni. >> Okay, El Camun. >> Pretty much how it looks. ish. >> That's always the worst because I'm like if it if it's like it sound if it's like it looks and I'm I'm like oh that's too easy. [laughter] >> All good. It's a tricky one. >> My wife I was like are you sure you want to change from four letters to nine? [laughter] >> All right. Here we go. I'm going to dive in. Three, two. Well, hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season of building better foundations. We are building better developers. the developer podcast. We are going to have uh once again we're going to jump into an interview today. But first I introduce all of us uh myself Rob Broadhead. I am a founder of developer also the founder of RB Consulting where we help you assess technology and build a roadmap for success in the world of good things and bad things. Good thing is it's one of those things. It's like I hate always having two sides of the same coin, but it is this week as we're recording it. It is Thanksgiving week. Uh enjoy our holiday specials that you probably are hearing in between these things. Um which is awesome. I get theoretically I get a couple days off, get a 4-day weekend. Uh the bad side is it's theoretically I'm probably going to end up like I'm just like, you know, all out to get to Thanksgiving Day and then probably will end up spending some of Friday and into the weekend making up for taking taking a day off on Thursday. Uh, but the guy that never takes a day off can introduce himself. Michael, go right ahead. >> Hey everyone, my name is Michael Malashsh. I'm one of the founders of Developer Ner. I'm also the founder of Envision QA where we help businesses build reliable software through custom development and expert testing. If you have software you need customized or you're just struggling with your current software stack, give us a shout at envisiona.com. Uh, good thing, bad thing? Uh good thing um again it's the holidays are coming in. I get to spend some time with family. Get to eat some turkey. Uh bad thing is we've got some bad weather coming in right now. Uh had some severe winds yesterday and uh yes I will probably be working most of this holiday. And our guest today is Samir [clears throat] El Camuni. and uh he is with well I'll let him introduce himself and uh who he's with and uh give us a little bit of your background. Well, appreciate you guys for having me. Um I these days just call myself a serial entrepreneur I suppose kind of doing a couple different things and everything I'm obsessed with these days is uh wealth creation and preservation. So for individuals, for creators, for brands, uh you name it, I've got some interesting solutions for for everybody out there. So, but uh yeah, lengthy background in marketing and and sales and SAS and and lots of interesting things. Now I'm heavy in crypto and web 3 and a bunch of fun stuff. Uh but regardless, I'm I'm excited to be here. Uh this week's been great so far. F1 was here last weekend. I'm in Vegas, so that was super fun. Uh great great great time and uh you know I've been having some friends been invited to some Friendsgiving stuff. Going to have some Friendsgiving stuff. Uh probably the only bad thing is I don't really eat that much meat. So all my friends that are going to come over for Friendsgiving are not going to have any turkey unless they bring it themselves. [laughter] Oh, you can get a lot of uh potatoes and such, I guess, whatever to to meet that. H was that's good to hear somebody that enjoyed uh that enjoys the F1 there at Las Vegas. I was there two weeks ago and uh all I got all I heard was complaints from the drivers about how the how it messed up all of the traffic and all the patterns and things like that. Every Uber driver was like, "Ah, I can't wait till this goes." And they said, "It's going to take another 3 months to tear it down." But it was fascinating driving around in the middle of I guess on the F1 track as it were as we were going around there. So, uh definitely good times there. >> Super fun. [snorts] Uh, I'm going to dive right in with uh one actually wasn't even on my radar as something to talk about when we first uh stepped into this, but serial entrepreneur. Uh, I love it. I sort of feel like I am one. I think there's there's more than a few people out in the audience that are that way where you're, you know, you're just constantly like you've got another product, you've got another company idea, you got another service. How do you uh in your experience, how do you um I guess there's two things is how do you distinguish between uh if you've got you know more than one going on at a time and if not like how do you how do you find like a stopping point in stepping into the next one? How do you transition from one enterprise into the next one? >> Great question. Really great question. I appreciate that question too because I I I feel like I see too often gurus, let's call them gurus, kind of on opposite ends of the spectrum. Sort of one, let's build as many passive opportunities as we can and if you don't have 10 passive income streams, what are you doing? And then on the other hand, the guy, you know, the other ones are where just like if you just doubled down on the one thing and didn't get distracted by the five other things, then you you'd probably be 10x further along than than you are. And uh somehow I think I try to subscribe to both but I think it's really really really important to stay singularly focused on whatever you are really good at and bringing that to market or to the next phase or to whatever it looks like for you. And then from there, either hand it off, build systems, do something that allows that to either continue to grow, have other team members take care of it, become passive, whatever it is. And so for me, I definitely sort of take a little bit of the, you know, sort of crawl, walk, run approach at first, just, okay, dip my toes in this, make sure it makes sense. I love market research. I love obsessing over sort of who's the ideal customer profile, what are their pains and fears, what can we find out in the market, is there a good product market fit, how is this going to differentiate in the market and and stand out. Uh if I can't pull out those things, then it's just it's pretty much a non-starter for me. Um, I was raised by what I call an idea prneur as a father and uh, and so I learned from that that the best ideas in the entire you can have the best ideas ever. Execution is everything. And so that's really what I obsess over is making sure that that we are executing at the utmost degree that we can. And uh yeah, I just hire people who are smarter than me that [laughter] especially in areas that I'm not great at and let them sort of take the charge. And uh that's usually how I'm able to accomplish way more than I would either alone or me, you know, spearheading that charge. So is that really where it sounds like now that's like really your uh your life story a little bit is that you saw you know you had your dad you had that experience and he had a lot of great ideas but now you're in the whole marketing which you know very often it's like the best ideas are only best if people actually know they're out there and things like that which you know sort of is the simplified way of advertising and marketing is like how do you get people how do you go out there and and reach people and say hey this is out there and so does that actually I guess really into that first question. Does that leave you really sort of I guess for lack of a term sort of front-loaded in a company is really your what you bring in when you're you're starting an enterprise is is doing that market research. Is it valid? Is it viable? How do we reach to a market? And then it's sort of almost by itself once you can lay that in front of people. You say, "Hey, here's a road map. Go do it." And and you're ready to go on to the next one. >> Yeah. Yeah. Literally, one of the ventures I'm starting right now, I started it with a few dollars of ad spend just to test the market and see if I could produce some leads that would be interested in it or not. And it, you know, there's nothing to sell. There's nothing, right? It was just veryformational. Is this something that you feel like you need or it's there's something in the market? And also just had as many phone calls as I c could. And uh I'm a very good networker. Soorked with the appropriate people and high up positions to understand, right? I I I'm a musician trained, but I've been not in the music world for a decade, and I'm pretty much going after the music world pretty hard. And so I said, "Okay, let me let me find the appropriate people to ask these questions to that know the market way better than me, that have been in the market for decades, that work with some of the biggest artists. Is this a real problem or not?" Like, really tell me what's the what's really going on here? And uh yeah, no, you're absolutely correct. And so if I can do any kind of market research or market testing, I love that. And I think a lot of people shy away from that so often. They're like, "Oh, it's got to be perfect. It's got to be this incredible creative or this incredible, oh, my product has to be completely done." Or it's like, just test it. Spend five bucks a day. Run a couple tests. You know, ask people to leave comments of what they think or or you know, you don't have to send them to a landing page. You could you could do crafty different things to just sort of see is this messaging resonating with people. Uh, I just built a simple landing page by myself that I think anyone with any minimal no technical skills could do and just fill out a form if it's something you're interested in. And I was getting leads for $2. So I said, "Okay." And it wasn't just great marketing because it was very simple, archaic, just is this something you'd be interested in? So yeah, I've tried that approach many times in the past and I've had mixed results with that. So if how would you tell someone just trying to test the market the first time? How would you kind of guide them or give them the direction to kind of go through the AdSense stuff like throwing up a page marketing that stuff? It's pretty straightforward talking to people. But it's always kind of that digital marketing testing the waters there that gets a little murky. Uh even for me I have to kind of reach out to other marketing people I know to help me with I just can't grasp it. Can you simplify it for those that maybe don't understand it or just have a hard time un, you know, testing it? >> Yeah. Um, well, so for me, what I'm always looking for is sort of the benefits that I'm bringing to the market. Are those things that people really like need and are they interested in? and sort of always kind of ti maybe tying those benefits to some kind of feature or something like that to see if this is a solution that they're that they're genuinely interested in. And I almost test those as hooks. Uh I try to make them engaging of course and try to make them, you know, clickbay in a way. if I'm really going hard on the advertising front. But if I'm really just trying to test the idea or or or test the concept, you know, for this instance, it would you it's like musicians and and some problems that I thought were rampant in the music world, especially for people who are signed and then concerns people had who weren't signed. And so those are just questions I was pretty much asking like, hey, if you're an unsigned artist, I'm assuming you have these three problems. Is that true or not? And if you had a solution that solved that in this way, is it something that you'd be interested in? And if so, you know, grab the link, give me your email, and would love to chat with you. And so sometimes I think it's trying to be almost as straightforward as possible, but still being really clear about sort of the problem and the solution that that you're trying to solve. Obviously, you know, we've all watched Shark Tank plenty of times to know like they they love it when you're solving a real problem. Uh but it it it and I and I understand sort of the question that you're asking too, Michael, cuz I feel like if we, you know, a lot of times, especially as the developer or the person who created it, it's very difficult for us to even get the 20,000 foot view, right? We become practitioners of what we're doing. We become doctors and, you know, of this of this area. And so that's the sometimes the hardest part I find when I've worked with, you know, other entrepreneurs and other founders is that I just need to try to get them to come back to the 20,000 foot view to just come up with a couple different key points to then just just test in the market. And then that can be either having some call to action that I want them to do and then I could measure that call to action. Another one could be just getting comments and asking people to comment their opinion. That can be incredible. And then the other thing is just scouring the internet. Like go to Reddit, like go and read other reviews. Go and read other comments on other sim, you know, on the same kind of topic or problem. Reddit could be your best friend. You could find pure gold in Reddit and really kind of find people's unfiltered, you know, opinions, if you will. And that can help a lot as well. And and you don't even it doesn't cost you anything obviously to to do those things or to reach out to someone or to schedule a call with someone to say, "Hey, can I just pick your brain on on this thing?" And you'd be surprised how many people will respond even really high ups that you thought would never, you know, CEOs of massive companies, you name it, they a lot friendlier than you think most of the time. >> Gotcha. So, you kind of went out and actually you do the social marketing, not so much the AdSense marketing. Um, so you actually go out. So, this is more of that. Yeah, that social networking where you're talking to people, you're uh getting engaged, trying to find your audience and figure out your if the problem you're trying to solve is a real problem that can that the market you're trying to address is something they need. Um I'm >> Yeah. Yeah. And and I think you could do both. >> I think you can do both. I think the social side is nice because it can protect you, right? It doesn't cost you anything necessarily and it could protect the brand if you're like, "Oh, I don't want anybody to know what I'm doing yet." Okay, totally understand that. Have some private conversations. But if you have the opportunity, right, I like I had some hypotheses that I just wanted to know, are these accurate or not? I want the market to tell me. And if I can get a couple hundred people to raise their hand, okay, we got something here. >> So, your company is uh Fetching Funnels. So, I guess we'll dive into that little part, no pun intended, I guess, of like how do you see uh because funnels have been a, you know, for those of us that a lot of us technology-wise have built, you know, have built funnels in a sense, at least the the apparatus without necessarily the I guess the content and and the branding and some of those kinds of things are part of a funnel. So, what do you see um what you see is sort of like uh the ideal structure of a funnel? Ooh, that's a loaded question. I feel like it's very dependent uh on the business and the business model and the product set and and whatever it is. I know, you know, there's a lot of developers that are potentially listening and a lot of software and uh yeah, a lot of, you know, let's call it digital products probably potentially more than physical products. um you know and and so at the I think there's usually two or three things is is the question is do you have to educate your client heavily or not? If you have to educate your client heavily, like they don't know that this is a thing that they don't know that they need, right? If if if if we're a CRM, everybody know, you know, if someone's looking for a CRM, they pretty much know they need a CRM now. They're just trying to figure out which CRM is the right solution for them and you know, the differences between them, etc. So then, you know, you right get get in front of them in that way. get comparisons and get really great way, you know, ways to to go about it, but you're you're doing lead genen at the end of the day for that or you're trying to book a demo or you're trying to do something like that, right? And so you're always trying to figure out what the conversion note is. And often, right, it is a lead or a call or a free trial or, you know, maybe someone signing up for the service. If the service is more than $1,000 a month, I'd very highly recommend enforcing a sales team or some sort of point of contact because it's going to be very difficult to get people to convert at that price point and you're just probably leaving a lot of money on the table. Uh so in that instance, it would just be trying to book calls and and and do instances like that, right? And so I think the the the the the place where we get stuck or a lot of people get stuck in sort of maybe funnel versus website is website feels veryformational and choose my own journey where funnel is more I'm choosing the journey for you. You could kind of only go in one or two directions that I sort of allow you to go in. So those you know creates opportunities to upsell or downell or to cross-ell or to do different things. And that's kind of what I think of most people thinking of as a traditional maybe online funnel. Um, what I think of as funnel is everything pretty much from the very first point of of of brand introduction to the conversion event that's happening, whether that's online or offline. And and then I'm looking for holes across that entire funnel. Where can I increase conversions, leads, anything, right? And click-through rates, you name it. And all I'm looking at is sort of what what is the conversion I'm trying to get at each point of of an event. So if it's coming from an ad, I'm trying to improve improve the click-through rate. Maybe if it's a landing page, you know, maybe I'm just trying to get them to go to the next page or I'm trying to get them to fill out a form. If it's a free trial, right, trying to get them to to sign up for the free trial, whatever it is. And so that's really the the the biggest points that we're always trying to optimize. And sometimes having a website that is superformational and they can choose their own journey sometimes can be a little overwhelming for people because we don't want to go read a bunch or figure it out. And so that is the biggest you objection you're you're usually trying to handle is just making sure that that they can cut through the noise. They can really see what makes your product or service amazing and why should I be interested in you? And if I can't figure that out in like 5 seconds of interacting with your brand, there's a problem that you sort of you need to solve. And uh and yeah, and so that's that's kind of how we're I'm usually really thinking about these things. And and if you if you take that 20,000 foot view, try to put those glasses on, sometimes you can find opportunities that are sort of bottlenecking the business, if you will. So where do you find our typical issues that um now you know a lot of this you've done so you sort of you're in there from the start but uh maybe with the you know other companies or other owners and entrepreneurs and such that you work with where do you are there are there typical failures that you see that they essentially they fail to consider as part of putting up a you know a funnel and building the brand and and that kind of piece or there's some things that are weaknesses that are uh I guess we'll like common holes that as a you know sort of cause allows people to fall out of the funnel. Don't copy Apple. Everybody always wants to be Apple and I understand they've got a beautiful website and they invented, you know, they were one of the first ones to do parallax and to do these cool website things, but you're not you're most likely not Apple [laughter] or Apple's size. So if that's the case, you have to you have to do the appropriate things that are necessary for your business. And I think that's a a problem I see time and time and and time again. And uh and it's it's rampant in the SAS industry where so often SAS websites are the most boring websites ever. Sorry for anybody out there that's got a boring SAS website, but there's opportunities to to to spice it up. And and I love the idea of always really taking a look at the customer journey and thinking of it in the sense of, [sighs and gasps] you know, your your website is a guide to their their journey. And if your website doesn't guide them through that customer journey, then that's sort of the biggest problem. and really making sure that yeah, you're you're not kind of falling susceptible to those, well, I just want it to look really pretty, but it's not, you know, but it's it, you know, there's just no clear call to actions. You're, you know, you're making it more difficult for me to just get in touch with you. And, you know, and you're like, well, I want to look bigger than I am. And that's sometimes the biggest downfall I see with brands so often. Uh, Kissmet Metrics was a was a really really big big, you know, brand that did this. Uh, I want to be careful calling them a big brand. They were a client of ours for a long time. They had more website traffic than almost any client I ever had, but it was all unqualified. They were incredible at marketing and incredible at getting the brand out there, but all this traffic was looking for things and reading and digesting content that had nothing to do with what they actually offered. And so while everybody knew their brand and everybody knew who their name was in the marketing world, I didn't know a single person paying for their software. And we had to figure out how to completely like reposition the entire brand and software solution to cut through all of the noise as being this amazing everything for everybody solution and just dial it down to like we do one thing incredible for one type of client. And then we were able to like 10x the lead volume, 10x, you know, the the the the demos that they were getting to the point where they had to hire more guys, you know, to to book more demos and everything else. And it was and we actually were reducing the traffic, [laughter] right, in that, but it was kind of cleaning it up in a way, if that makes sense, right? And just being really thoughtful about only retargeting key pages and key areas that we knew are more closely related to their their customer. And I think that's a problem that so many of us make too, right? Is when we do try to be everything for everybody. I've made that mistake myself. And so it is if you could cut through that noise, you know, add on features to them later, but just get them in for sort of like that one thing that you do better than anybody else. Well, that's actually a really good segue into um some of the some interesting changes in the in the market in the digital landscape as it were. uh let me get your thoughts on or the idea of sort of like that idea of being everybody and everyone or you know for a while everybody was like they just wanted likes they just want to like but likes don't do squat if it doesn't convert to something useful. Um and an interesting thing that uh is how uh [clears throat] the marketing landscape a little bit has changed when you look at things like you used to have like you know television you had a couple of stations and if you were on the networks and great you saw there's a lot of eyeballs and or if you were in radio there were a couple of huge markets that and still I guess you know they own a couple and you're everywhere or if you're on a website if you get on the Apple website probably a lot of people are going to see you you know at Google but now there's been this proliferation of uh you have your big tier um you influencers and stuff like that, your Joe Rogan's and all those kinds of people, but then you've got like this, you know, you got a next tier and then you've got this, you know, the what I'll call like that bottom third tier where you've got sort of what you're talking about is you've got these people that are, you know, influencers and they may only have, you know, a few thousand people here or there that follow them, but they're devoted. there, you know, it happens to be the influencer that does, I don't know, grape jelly and they they don't have a ton of people, but the people that are like follow the grape jelly guy and girl just are, you know, avid supporters. And so, how does this how do you see that uh changing maybe some of your approach? Uh, or does it or is it still something that's just sort of like that it may look different, but it's actually just the same thing, you know, maybe rebranded. I love working with influencers and and getting influencer marketing sort of what you're talking about, you know, working with with individuals that have some kind of influence, let's call it, right? They have some kind of follower base. Um, I'm looking at that in very specific ways though, and it's sometimes maybe a little bit less traditional than most people are really looking for those things. Now, what you're talking about is, yeah, there are very large influencers, very well-known influencers, and there's also micro influencers, sort of those ones that don't have a big following, but they are very influential. Um, I could give you tons of examples where we blew up brands only working with micro influencers because sometimes they do have a a stronger voice or more influence over less people. A good example was we did a campaign for Hunter boots and uh we reached out to a bunch of of young women [snorts] in college and sent them a pair of boots. Now they don't have a big following, but you know who their following is? All their other girlfriends in college, other guys in college, right? And so then they just they could get, you know, a dozen plus people to pretty much influence them to to purchase this product. One of was our best campaigns and we just ended up working with like a couple hundred really small influencers, if you will. Now in the tech scene, I think it's really interesting where often we can utilize an influencer almost more as like a PR push where PR very traditionally I'm not actually really looking for an ROI. I'm looking at how much can I leverage this PR later to then drive more, you know, either brand awareness, social proof, whatever it is, right? And so you'll see this a lot of times in the in you know I I I think all of us are are are geeks and and nerds here. So right I think good example is like computer gear where we see it really often where we see that new computer mouse or whatever it is and you go to the website and then all of a sudden it's like there's a video review from some in you know from tech YouTuber that we follow. I never saw that video. I didn't I didn't come to the website because of that YouTuber, but because I see that YouTuber on the website, it's giving more validation to me saying, "Oh, this is probably a really good product if so and so was talking about it." And so, you know, it's and so how you leverage that, I think, is the biggest piece of it. you know, very often in the brand world where we're, you know, selling physical goods, um, you know, what with direct to consumer brands and what have you, we want to work with influencers just to get user generated content and just get those videos to run as ads. It's not to get an ROI from that influencer saying, "Oh my gosh, this is the coolest product ever." Yeah, maybe we get a couple sales and that's great. But usually with influencers, I'm not looking for a direct ROI from them promoting the video or releasing the video because I think that time has sort of come and and gone. You still can make a lot of money and there still are opportunities to do that and make money. But I think when you're looking at it with that lens, it becomes more singularly focused and harder to get that ROI. And you may or may not work with an influencer that could have actually positively impacted your brand more uh you know because you're trying to really track an ROI from it. Uh but you know just getting good content sometimes can be the gold at the end of the day and you just kind of pay them you know you give them the software for free or you give them the tool for free you give them the product for free and uh in exchange you get this great video and you know and then how you leverage that video can sometimes just be a much higher multiplier than the actual you know oh I got a couple thousand views or whatever it is. >> And that is where we were going to pause our conversation with Samir. Uh it continues to go well. Uh as I say, pencils down. Uh but get ready your next episode cuz it's going to be pencils up. Time to take notes again. Uh definitely drops a couple of little uh products and tools and and some things like that. Uh little notes along the way that I think you definitely find uh useful. I will probably go back myself and catch a couple of these that I didn't write down the first time. Uh but we also will have links in the show notes where we can for these things uh particularly how to get a hold of him. Very helpful. uh appreciate so much his time and uh spend a little time with us and he just you know sometimes there's just people that are really good people that are trying to help everybody else wherever they can. Samir happens to be one of those people. So if there's anything here where you you know I'm sure he would love to help you. If there's any way you can help him definitely uh you know pay it forward where you can. That being said go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week and we will talk to you next time. >> [music] [music]
Transcript Segments
[music]
[music]
[music]
[music]
Hey. Hey guys.
Hey, how's it doing, Samir?
>> Good. How about you?
>> Uh, doing good. All ready for a nice
little conversation. Uh, once I get my
camera
>> Well, I feel bad because I'm kind of
reviewing everything here and
I'm not a developer. [laughter] It's
okay.
>> Um,
yeah. and I'm reading the message my
assistant sent and I'm like
I have very limited amount of experience
with developers.
Well, that's okay. I'm I'm not uh
[sighs]
that's not this is not the first time
we've had one of those kinds of things.
So, uh looking at what you've got in
your background though,
um I think we will find ways to have a
conversation. Apologies, I'm just moving
some windows around. Um,
the way we do it is, uh, we have a
conversation. Uh, well, I'll introduce
myself, Michael introduce himself, and
then I'll toss it to you to introduce
yourself, and we will have a
conversation that typically runs an
hourish. Um,
what your uh, our our audience is
developers and entrepreneurs, uh, people
that are doing side hustles and starting
businesses and things like that. uh as
well as building um
building out products and such. Uh I
think what we'll end up talking about
because this is something that we do
touch on uh fairly regularly because
it's outside of the scope of what some
people a lot of the audience is
comfortable with is the idea of like of
advertising and how to figure it out and
how to go you know make it a part of
your your business. Everybody knows it's
there, but how to do so. And then
especially, I think we'll talk about how
it may be changing as uh the landscape
is changing out there as far as where
eyeballs go and and ear ear holes go, I
guess, now as as people listen to audio
and and things like that. Um, so I'll
probably go through some of your
standard a little bit of your standard
kind of questions. We'll just sort of
see where it goes if that's all right
with you.
>> Yeah, that's cool. I mean, my first job
ever was a QA guy for a SAS company. I
worked at some SAS I mean, I got my
marketing start at one of the most
influential SAS companies in the space
at the time. And I've marketed a lot of
SAS clients and and I'm building out a
massive web 3 platform now and have like
a massive team of developers, but uh my
CTO manages the majority of that. Um, so
you know, I I guess I've had those a lot
of experiences, but uh, yeah, not not a
developer myself. [snorts] That's all
right. We'll make it we'll make it work.
We have had more than a couple times
we've had people come in that are not
really developers, per se, but uh, then
we just lean more in the the business
side of things.
>> Okay. Yeah. I just wanted to be the most
beneficial for you and and your audience
at the end of the day. That that's
really all I care about. I literally
have nothing to sell, nothing to pitch.
Like
>> Yeah. I just want to add value. That's
it.
>> Perfect. That's That's the best kind. Uh
am I coming through? Okay, Michael.
Sound all good.
>> Yeah, sounds good. How about me?
>> Yep.
So, all right then. Um we will get
started here.
Uh oh, actually, do me a favor, Samir.
What is your How do you pronounce your
last name?
>> Samir El Camuni.
>> Elamuni.
>> Okay, El Camun.
>> Pretty much how it looks. ish.
>> That's always the worst because I'm like
if it if it's like it sound if it's like
it looks and I'm I'm like oh that's too
easy. [laughter]
>> All good. It's a tricky one.
>> My wife I was like are you sure you want
to change from four letters to nine?
[laughter]
>> All right. Here we go. I'm going to dive
in. Three, two.
Well, hello and welcome back. We are
continuing our season of building better
foundations. We are building better
developers. the developer podcast. We
are going to have uh once again we're
going to jump into an interview today.
But first I introduce all of us uh
myself Rob Broadhead. I am a founder of
developer also the founder of RB
Consulting where we help you assess
technology and build a roadmap for
success in the world of good things and
bad things. Good thing is it's one of
those things. It's like I hate always
having two sides of the same coin, but
it is this week as we're recording it.
It is Thanksgiving week. Uh enjoy our
holiday specials that you probably are
hearing in between these things. Um
which is awesome. I get theoretically I
get a couple days off, get a 4-day
weekend. Uh the bad side is it's
theoretically I'm probably going to end
up like I'm just like, you know, all out
to get to Thanksgiving Day and then
probably will end up spending some of
Friday and into the weekend making up
for taking taking a day off on Thursday.
Uh, but the guy that never takes a day
off can introduce himself. Michael, go
right ahead.
>> Hey everyone, my name is Michael
Malashsh. I'm one of the founders of
Developer Ner. I'm also the founder of
Envision QA where we help businesses
build reliable software through custom
development and expert testing. If you
have software you need customized or
you're just struggling with your current
software stack, give us a shout at
envisiona.com.
Uh, good thing, bad thing? Uh good thing
um again it's the holidays are coming
in. I get to spend some time with
family. Get to eat some turkey. Uh bad
thing is we've got some bad weather
coming in right now. Uh had some severe
winds yesterday and uh yes I will
probably be working most of this
holiday.
And our guest today is Samir
[clears throat] El Camuni. and uh he is
with well I'll let him introduce himself
and uh who he's with and uh give us a
little bit of your background.
Well, appreciate you guys for having me.
Um I
these days just call myself a serial
entrepreneur I suppose kind of doing a
couple different things and everything
I'm obsessed with these days is uh
wealth creation and preservation. So for
individuals, for creators, for brands,
uh you name it, I've got some
interesting solutions for for everybody
out there. So, but uh yeah, lengthy
background in marketing and and sales
and SAS and and lots of interesting
things. Now I'm heavy in crypto and web
3 and a bunch of fun stuff. Uh but
regardless, I'm I'm excited to be here.
Uh this week's been great so far. F1 was
here last weekend. I'm in Vegas, so that
was super fun. Uh great great great time
and uh you know I've been having some
friends been invited to some
Friendsgiving stuff. Going to have some
Friendsgiving stuff. Uh probably the
only bad thing is I don't really eat
that much meat. So all my friends that
are going to come over for Friendsgiving
are not going to have any turkey unless
they bring it themselves. [laughter]
Oh, you can get a lot of uh potatoes and
such, I guess, whatever to to meet that.
H was that's good to hear somebody that
enjoyed uh that enjoys the F1 there at
Las Vegas. I was there two weeks ago and
uh all I got all I heard was complaints
from the drivers about how the how it
messed up all of the traffic and all the
patterns and things like that. Every
Uber driver was like, "Ah, I can't wait
till this goes." And they said, "It's
going to take another 3 months to tear
it down." But it was fascinating driving
around in the middle of I guess on the
F1 track as it were as we were going
around there. So, uh definitely good
times there.
>> Super fun. [snorts] Uh, I'm going to
dive right in with
uh one actually wasn't even on my radar
as something to talk about when we first
uh stepped into this, but serial
entrepreneur. Uh, I love it. I sort of
feel like I am one. I think there's
there's more than a few people out in
the audience that are that way where
you're, you know, you're just constantly
like you've got another product, you've
got another company idea, you got
another service. How do you uh in your
experience, how do you um I guess
there's two things is how do you
distinguish between uh if you've got you
know more than one going on at a time
and if not like how do you how do you
find like a stopping point in stepping
into the next one? How do you transition
from one enterprise into the next one?
>> Great question. Really great question. I
appreciate that question too because I I
I feel like I see too often gurus, let's
call them gurus, kind of on opposite
ends of the spectrum. Sort of one, let's
build as many passive opportunities as
we can and if you don't have 10 passive
income streams, what are you doing? And
then on the other hand, the guy, you
know, the other ones are where just like
if you just doubled down on the one
thing and didn't get distracted by the
five other things, then you you'd
probably be 10x further along than than
you are. And uh somehow I think I try to
subscribe to both but I think it's
really really really important to stay
singularly focused on whatever you are
really good at and bringing that to
market or to the next phase or to
whatever it looks like for you. And then
from there, either hand it off, build
systems, do something that allows that
to either continue to grow, have other
team members take care of it, become
passive, whatever it is. And so for me,
I definitely sort of take a little bit
of the, you know, sort of crawl, walk,
run approach at first, just, okay, dip
my toes in this, make sure it makes
sense. I love market research. I love
obsessing over sort of who's the ideal
customer profile, what are their pains
and fears, what can we find out in the
market, is there a good product market
fit, how is this going to differentiate
in the market and and stand out. Uh if I
can't pull out those things, then it's
just it's pretty much a non-starter for
me. Um, I was raised by what I call an
idea prneur as a father and uh, and so I
learned from that that the best ideas in
the entire you can have the best ideas
ever. Execution is everything. And so
that's really what I obsess over is
making sure that that we are executing
at the utmost degree that we can. And uh
yeah, I just hire people who are smarter
than me that [laughter]
especially in areas that I'm not great
at and let them sort of take the charge.
And uh that's usually how I'm able to
accomplish way more than I would either
alone or me, you know, spearheading that
charge.
So is that really where it sounds like
now that's like really your uh your life
story a little bit is that you saw you
know you had your dad you had that
experience and he had a lot of great
ideas but now you're in the whole
marketing which you know very often it's
like the best ideas are only best if
people actually know they're out there
and things like that which you know sort
of is the simplified way of advertising
and marketing is like how do you get
people how do you go out there and and
reach people and say hey this is out
there and so does that actually I guess
really into that first question. Does
that leave you really sort of I guess
for lack of a term sort of front-loaded
in a company is really your what you
bring in when you're you're starting an
enterprise is is doing that market
research. Is it valid? Is it viable? How
do we reach to a market? And then it's
sort of almost by itself once you can
lay that in front of people. You say,
"Hey, here's a road map. Go do it." And
and you're ready to go on to the next
one.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Literally, one of the
ventures I'm starting right now, I
started it with a few dollars of ad
spend just to test the market and see if
I could produce some leads that would be
interested in it or not. And it, you
know, there's nothing to sell. There's
nothing, right? It was just
veryformational. Is this something that
you feel like you need or it's there's
something in the market? And also just
had as many phone calls as I c could.
And uh I'm a very good networker.
Soorked with the appropriate people and
high up positions to understand, right?
I I I'm a musician trained, but I've
been not in the music world for a
decade, and I'm pretty much going after
the music world pretty hard. And so I
said, "Okay, let me let me find the
appropriate people to ask these
questions to that know the market way
better than me, that have been in the
market for decades, that work with some
of the biggest artists. Is this a real
problem or not?" Like, really tell me
what's the what's really going on here?
And uh yeah, no, you're absolutely
correct. And so if I can do any kind of
market research or market testing, I
love that. And I think a lot of people
shy away from that so often. They're
like, "Oh, it's got to be perfect. It's
got to be this incredible creative or
this incredible, oh, my product has to
be completely done." Or it's like, just
test it. Spend five bucks a day. Run a
couple tests. You know, ask people to
leave comments of what they think or or
you know, you don't have to send them to
a landing page. You could you could do
crafty different things to just sort of
see is this messaging resonating with
people. Uh, I just built a simple
landing page by myself that I think
anyone with any minimal no technical
skills could do and just fill out a form
if it's something you're interested in.
And I was getting leads for $2. So I
said, "Okay." And it wasn't just great
marketing because it was very simple,
archaic, just is this something you'd be
interested in? So yeah,
I've tried that approach many times in
the past and I've had mixed results with
that. So if
how would you tell someone just trying
to test the market the first time? How
would you kind of guide them or give
them the direction to kind of go through
the AdSense stuff like throwing up a
page marketing that stuff? It's pretty
straightforward talking to people. But
it's always kind of that digital
marketing testing the waters there that
gets a little murky. Uh even for me I
have to kind of reach out to other
marketing people I know to help me with
I just can't grasp it. Can you simplify
it for those that maybe don't understand
it or just have a hard time un, you
know, testing it?
>> Yeah. Um, well, so for me, what I'm
always looking for is sort of the
benefits that I'm bringing to the
market.
Are those things that people really like
need and are they interested in? and
sort of always kind of ti maybe tying
those benefits to some kind of feature
or something like that to see if this is
a solution that they're that they're
genuinely interested in. And I almost
test those as hooks. Uh I try to make
them engaging of course and try to make
them, you know, clickbay in a way. if
I'm really going hard on the advertising
front. But if I'm really just trying to
test the idea or or or test the concept,
you know, for this instance, it would
you it's like musicians and and some
problems that I thought were rampant in
the music world, especially for people
who are signed and then concerns people
had who weren't signed. And so those are
just questions I was pretty much asking
like, hey, if you're an unsigned artist,
I'm assuming you have these three
problems. Is that true or not? And if
you had a solution that solved that in
this way, is it something that you'd be
interested in? And if so, you know, grab
the link, give me your email, and would
love to chat with you. And so sometimes
I think it's trying to be almost as
straightforward as possible, but still
being really clear about sort of the
problem and the solution that that
you're trying to solve. Obviously, you
know, we've all watched Shark Tank
plenty of times to know like they they
love it when you're solving a real
problem. Uh but it it it and I and I
understand sort of the question that
you're asking too, Michael, cuz I feel
like if we, you know, a lot of times,
especially as the developer or the
person who created it, it's very
difficult for us to even get the 20,000
foot view, right? We become
practitioners of what we're doing. We
become doctors and, you know, of this of
this area. And so that's the sometimes
the hardest part I find when I've worked
with, you know, other entrepreneurs and
other founders is that I just need to
try to get them to come back to the
20,000 foot view to just come up with a
couple different key points to then just
just test in the market. And then that
can be either having some call to action
that I want them to do and then I could
measure that call to action. Another one
could be just getting comments and
asking people to comment their opinion.
That can be incredible. And then the
other thing is just scouring the
internet. Like go to Reddit, like go and
read other reviews. Go and read other
comments on other sim, you know, on the
same kind of topic or problem. Reddit
could be your best friend. You could
find pure gold in Reddit and really kind
of find people's unfiltered,
you know, opinions, if you will. And
that can help a lot as well. And and you
don't even it doesn't cost you anything
obviously to to do those things or to
reach out to someone or to schedule a
call with someone to say, "Hey, can I
just pick your brain on on this thing?"
And you'd be surprised how many people
will respond even really high ups that
you thought would never, you know, CEOs
of massive companies, you name it, they
a lot friendlier than you think most of
the time.
>> Gotcha. So, you kind of went out and
actually you do the social marketing,
not so much the AdSense marketing. Um,
so you actually go out. So, this is more
of that. Yeah, that social networking
where you're talking to people, you're
uh getting engaged, trying to find your
audience and figure out your
if the problem you're trying to solve is
a real problem that can that the market
you're trying to address is something
they need. Um I'm
>> Yeah. Yeah. And and I think you could do
both.
>> I think you can do both. I think the
social side is nice because it can
protect you, right? It doesn't cost you
anything necessarily and it could
protect the brand if you're like, "Oh, I
don't want anybody to know what I'm
doing yet." Okay, totally understand
that. Have some private conversations.
But if you have the opportunity, right,
I like I had some hypotheses that I just
wanted to know, are these accurate or
not? I want the market to tell me. And
if I can get a couple hundred people to
raise their hand, okay, we got something
here.
>> So, your company is uh Fetching Funnels.
So, I guess we'll dive into that little
part, no pun intended, I guess, of like
how do you see uh because funnels have
been a, you know, for those of us that a
lot of us technology-wise have built,
you know, have built funnels in a sense,
at least the the apparatus without
necessarily the I guess the content and
and the branding and some of those kinds
of things are part of a funnel. So, what
do you see um what you see is sort of
like uh the ideal structure of a funnel?
Ooh,
that's a loaded question. I feel like
it's very
dependent uh on the business and the
business model and the product set and
and whatever it is. I know, you know,
there's a lot of developers that are
potentially listening and a lot of
software and uh yeah, a lot of, you
know, let's call it digital products
probably potentially more than physical
products. um you know and and so at the
I think there's usually two or three
things is is the question is do you have
to educate your client heavily or not?
If you have to educate your client
heavily, like they don't know that this
is a thing that they don't know that
they need, right? If if if if we're a
CRM,
everybody know, you know, if someone's
looking for a CRM, they pretty much know
they need a CRM now. They're just trying
to figure out which CRM is the right
solution for them and you know, the
differences between them, etc. So then,
you know, you right get get in front of
them in that way. get comparisons and
get really great way, you know, ways to
to go about it, but you're you're doing
lead genen at the end of the day for
that or you're trying to book a demo or
you're trying to do something like that,
right? And so you're always trying to
figure out what the conversion note is.
And often, right, it is a lead or a call
or a free trial or, you know, maybe
someone signing up for the service. If
the service is more than $1,000 a month,
I'd very highly recommend enforcing a
sales team or some sort of point of
contact because it's going to be very
difficult to get people to convert at
that price point and you're just
probably leaving a lot of money on the
table. Uh so in that instance, it would
just be trying to book calls and and and
do instances like that, right? And so I
think the the the the the place where we
get stuck or a lot of people get stuck
in sort of maybe funnel versus website
is website feels veryformational and
choose my own journey where funnel is
more I'm choosing the journey for you.
You could kind of only go in one or two
directions that I sort of allow you to
go in. So those you know creates
opportunities to upsell or downell or to
cross-ell or to do different things. And
that's kind of what I think of most
people thinking of as a traditional
maybe online funnel. Um, what I think of
as funnel is everything pretty much from
the very first point of of of brand
introduction to the conversion event
that's happening, whether that's online
or offline. And and then I'm looking for
holes across that entire funnel. Where
can I increase conversions, leads,
anything, right? And click-through
rates, you name it. And all I'm looking
at is sort of what what is the
conversion I'm trying to get at each
point of of an event. So if it's coming
from an ad, I'm trying to improve
improve the click-through rate. Maybe if
it's a landing page, you know, maybe I'm
just trying to get them to go to the
next page or I'm trying to get them to
fill out a form. If it's a free trial,
right, trying to get them to to sign up
for the free trial, whatever it is. And
so that's really the the the biggest
points that we're always trying to
optimize. And sometimes having a website
that is superformational and they can
choose their own journey sometimes can
be a little overwhelming for people
because we don't want to go read a bunch
or figure it out. And so that is the
biggest
you objection you're you're usually
trying to handle is just making sure
that that they can cut through the
noise. They can really see what makes
your product or service amazing and why
should I be interested in you? And if I
can't figure that out in like 5 seconds
of interacting with your brand, there's
a problem that you sort of you need to
solve. And uh and yeah, and so that's
that's kind of how we're I'm usually
really thinking about these things. And
and if you if you take that 20,000 foot
view, try to put those glasses on,
sometimes you can find opportunities
that are sort of bottlenecking the
business, if you will.
So where do you find our typical issues
that um now you know a lot of this
you've done so you sort of you're in
there from the start but uh maybe with
the you know other companies or other
owners and entrepreneurs and such that
you work with where do you are there are
there typical failures that you see that
they essentially they fail to consider
as part of putting up a you know a
funnel and building the brand and and
that kind of piece or there's some
things that are weaknesses that are uh I
guess we'll like common holes that as a
you know sort of cause allows people to
fall out of the funnel.
Don't copy Apple.
Everybody always wants to be Apple and I
understand they've got a beautiful
website and they invented, you know,
they were one of the first ones to do
parallax and to do these cool website
things, but you're not you're most
likely not Apple [laughter]
or Apple's size.
So if that's the case, you have to you
have to do the appropriate things that
are necessary for your business. And I
think that's a a problem I see time and
time and and time again. And uh and it's
it's rampant in the SAS industry where
so often SAS websites are the most
boring websites ever. Sorry for anybody
out there that's got a boring SAS
website, but there's opportunities to to
to spice it up. And and I love the idea
of always really taking a look at the
customer journey and thinking of it in
the sense of, [sighs and gasps]
you know, your your website is a guide
to their their journey. And if your
website doesn't guide them through that
customer journey, then that's sort of
the biggest problem. and really making
sure that
yeah, you're you're not kind of falling
susceptible to those, well, I just want
it to look really pretty, but it's not,
you know, but it's it, you know, there's
just no clear call to actions. You're,
you know, you're making it more
difficult for me to just get in touch
with you. And, you know, and you're
like, well, I want to look bigger than I
am. And that's sometimes the biggest
downfall I see with brands so often. Uh,
Kissmet Metrics was a was a really
really big big, you know, brand that did
this. Uh, I want to be careful calling
them a big brand. They were a client of
ours for a long time. They had more
website traffic than almost any client I
ever had, but it was all unqualified.
They were incredible at marketing and
incredible at getting the brand out
there, but all this traffic was looking
for things and reading and digesting
content that had nothing to do with what
they actually offered. And so while
everybody knew their brand and everybody
knew who their name was in the marketing
world, I didn't know a single person
paying for their software. And we had to
figure out how to completely like
reposition the entire brand and software
solution to cut through all of the noise
as being this amazing everything for
everybody solution and just dial it down
to like we do one thing incredible for
one type of client. And then we were
able to like 10x the lead volume, 10x,
you know, the the the the demos that
they were getting to the point where
they had to hire more guys, you know, to
to book more demos and everything else.
And it was and we actually were reducing
the traffic, [laughter] right, in that,
but it was kind of cleaning it up in a
way, if that makes sense, right? And
just being really thoughtful about only
retargeting key pages and key areas that
we knew are more closely related to
their their customer. And I think that's
a problem that so many of us make too,
right? Is when we do try to be
everything for everybody. I've made that
mistake myself. And so it is if you
could cut through that noise, you know,
add on features to them later, but just
get them in for sort of like that one
thing that you do better than anybody
else. Well, that's actually a really
good segue into um some of the some
interesting changes in the in the market
in the digital landscape as it were. uh
let me get your thoughts on or the idea
of sort of like that idea of being
everybody and everyone or you know for a
while everybody was like they just
wanted likes they just want to like but
likes don't do squat if it doesn't
convert to something useful. Um and an
interesting thing that uh is how
uh [clears throat] the marketing
landscape a little bit has changed when
you look at things like you used to have
like you know television you had a
couple of stations and if you were on
the networks and great you saw there's a
lot of eyeballs and or if you were in
radio there were a couple of huge
markets that and still I guess you know
they own a couple and you're everywhere
or if you're on a website if you get on
the Apple website probably a lot of
people are going to see you you know at
Google but now there's been this
proliferation of uh you have your big
tier um you influencers and stuff like
that, your Joe Rogan's and all those
kinds of people, but then you've got
like this, you know, you got a next tier
and then you've got this, you know, the
what I'll call like that bottom third
tier where you've got sort of what
you're talking about is you've got these
people that are, you know, influencers
and they may only have, you know, a few
thousand people here or there that
follow them, but they're devoted. there,
you know, it happens to be the
influencer that does, I don't know,
grape jelly and they they don't have a
ton of people, but the people that are
like follow the grape jelly guy and girl
just are, you know, avid supporters. And
so, how does this how do you see that uh
changing maybe some of your approach?
Uh, or does it or is it still something
that's just sort of like that it may
look different, but it's actually just
the same thing, you know, maybe
rebranded.
I love working with influencers and and
getting influencer marketing sort of
what you're talking about, you know,
working with with individuals that have
some kind of influence, let's call it,
right? They have some kind of follower
base. Um, I'm looking at that in very
specific ways though, and it's sometimes
maybe a little bit less traditional than
most people are really looking for those
things. Now, what you're talking about
is, yeah, there are very large
influencers, very well-known
influencers, and there's also micro
influencers, sort of those ones that
don't have a big following, but they are
very influential. Um, I could give you
tons of examples where we blew up brands
only working with micro influencers
because sometimes they do have a a
stronger voice or more influence over
less people. A good example was we did a
campaign for Hunter boots and uh we
reached out to a bunch of of young women
[snorts] in college and sent them a pair
of boots. Now they don't have a big
following, but you know who their
following is? All their other
girlfriends in college, other guys in
college, right? And so then they just
they could get, you know, a dozen plus
people to pretty much influence them to
to purchase this product. One of was our
best campaigns and we just ended up
working with like a couple hundred
really small influencers, if you will.
Now in the tech scene, I think it's
really interesting where often we can
utilize an influencer almost more as
like a PR push where PR very
traditionally I'm not actually really
looking for an ROI. I'm looking at how
much can I leverage this PR later to
then drive more, you know, either brand
awareness, social proof, whatever it is,
right? And so you'll see this a lot of
times in the in you know I I I think all
of us are are are geeks and and nerds
here. So right I think good example is
like computer gear where we see it
really often where we see that new
computer mouse or whatever it is and you
go to the website and then all of a
sudden it's like there's a video review
from some in you know from tech YouTuber
that we follow. I never saw that video.
I didn't I didn't come to the website
because of that YouTuber, but because I
see that YouTuber on the website, it's
giving more validation to me saying,
"Oh, this is probably a really good
product if so and so was talking about
it." And so, you know, it's and so how
you leverage that, I think, is the
biggest piece of it. you know, very
often in the brand world where we're,
you know, selling physical goods, um,
you know, what with direct to consumer
brands and what have you, we want to
work with influencers just to get user
generated content and just get those
videos to run as ads. It's not to get an
ROI from that influencer saying, "Oh my
gosh, this is the coolest product ever."
Yeah, maybe we get a couple sales and
that's great. But usually with
influencers, I'm not looking for a
direct ROI from them promoting the video
or releasing the video because I think
that time has sort of come and and gone.
You still can make a lot of money and
there still are opportunities to do that
and make money. But I think when you're
looking at it with that lens, it becomes
more singularly focused and harder to
get that ROI. And you may or may not
work with an influencer that could have
actually positively impacted your brand
more uh you know because you're trying
to really track an ROI from it. Uh but
you know just getting good content
sometimes can be the gold at the end of
the day and you just kind of pay them
you know you give them the software for
free or you give them the tool for free
you give them the product for free and
uh in exchange you get this great video
and you know and then how you leverage
that video can sometimes just be a much
higher multiplier than the actual you
know oh I got a couple thousand views or
whatever it is.
>> And that is where we were going to pause
our conversation with Samir. Uh it
continues to go well. Uh as I say,
pencils down. Uh but get ready your next
episode cuz it's going to be pencils up.
Time to take notes again. Uh definitely
drops a couple of little uh products and
tools and and some things like that. Uh
little notes along the way that I think
you definitely find uh useful. I will
probably go back myself and catch a
couple of these that I didn't write down
the first time. Uh but we also will have
links in the show notes where we can for
these things uh particularly how to get
a hold of him. Very helpful. uh
appreciate so much his time and uh spend
a little time with us and he just you
know sometimes there's just people that
are really good people that are trying
to help everybody else wherever they
can. Samir happens to be one of those
people. So if there's anything here
where you you know I'm sure he would
love to help you. If there's any way you
can help him definitely uh you know pay
it forward where you can. That being
said go out there and have yourself a
great day, a great week and we will talk
to you next time.
>> [music]
[music]