In this episode, Lloyed Lobo, Co-founder and Board Member of Boast.AI and bestselling author of “Grassroots to Greatness” shares his incredible journey from economic hardship in Kuwait to becoming a successful entrepreneur. He emphasizes the importance of community, communication, creation, and consistency in building a successful business. Lloyed discusses how building strong relationships, effective communication, continuous creation, and unwavering consistency can lead to long-term success. He also highlights the significance of building a community of practice rather than just a community of products and shares his experiences in creating an audience through curated content and offline meetups. The episode explores the key stages that transform an idea into an enduring global phenomenon and encourages aspiring entrepreneurs to focus on community-led growth for sustained success.
Lloyed Lobo is a WSJ Bestselling Author and a Co-founder of Boast.AI and Traction. He’s a seasoned entrepreneur and community builder with a passion for taking businesses from 0 to 1. Lloyed has been involved in the U.S. and Canadian startup ecosystem for over 15 years, and he’s known for helping bootstrap Boast.AI to 8 figures ARR, a fintech platform that provides businesses with R&D and Innovation funding. Additionally, he co-founded Traction, a global community with over 100,000 entrepreneurs and innovators, where leaders behind fast-growing companies share their business insights via various platforms such as webinars, podcasts, meetups, retreats, and conferences. He’s also serving on the Board of Directors at Wishpond, a martech company, helping drive its success. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Product Launch:
- Lobo highlights that effective communication is vital for entrepreneurs, emphasizing the significance of learning to articulate ideas, build relationships, and inspire others.
- Building a strong community is essential for success.
- Consistency is key to achieving long-term success.
- Understand your target market’s problems, goals, aspirations, and circle of influence.
- Create online content to build an audience, but bring them together in offline meetups for community interaction.
- An audience evolves into a cult-like brand through the stages of audience, community, movement, and religion.
Resources:
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Quotables:
- 03:02 – “Literally there’s nothing that a small group of people who are united by a great sense of purpose that they can’t do right? They can literally move mountains. The other thing is the entrepreneurial spirit. I think as I was reflecting back and writing this book, like everyone asked me like, where did you learn to become an entrepreneur? Or like, did you always have it in you? And I think entrepreneurship is not something you’re born with. We’re not what we’re born with. We become what we’re nurtured through. We become the average of the people we surround ourselves with.”
- 17:35 – “So now your early days of a company, you want to build a community-led company. Where do you start? You don’t even have a target market. How do you figure out your target market? Again, four things to figure out your target market. Number one, do you have a passion for this audience or the content you’re creating? If you hate your audience, you’ll never be able to sustain. Building a community-led company or a business is a long slog. It’s a marathon of the heart and mind. If you hate your audience, you’ll never be able to sustainably create.”
- 35:05 – “People listen to you or buy your product, you have an audience. When you bring that audience together, it becomes a community. When that community comes together to create impact towards a greater purpose that’s beyond your product or profit, it becomes a movement. And when that movement has undying faith in its purpose through sustained rituals over time, it becomes a cult or a religion.”
- 35:45 – “If the influencer stops creating, they lose the audience. But if you build this community, it will sustain probably longer because it’s a human-to-human connection. And you know, we create so much content on all these platforms like LinkedIn and Instagram. If they change the algorithm, what happens? You’re done. So the key to sustaining for the long haul is community.”
- 12:20 – “If you can’t communicate, you don’t have an audience, you have an empty room. Clearly articulating your vision to excite and inspire people is something a founder needs to do day in, day out. It’s not a one and done activity because people who are energized and inspired can move mountains. If you want to communicate just to inform people, just send an email. But you want to energize people ’cause that’s how companies that are enduring are built on energy, on inspiration, on vision.”