All founders are a bit crazy and psycho, but we chose to eat glass and jump in with the abuse. Yeah, so it's times like that when you realize, damn, I really have this one life. I really love the Jeff Bezos regret minimization framework.

Welcome to Where Are My Customers, brought to you by AeroChat and produced by Stridec. Hey, hi, Keith. Welcome to our podcast. How's it going, man?

Hey, I'm good. Thanks for having me here, Alva.

Really appreciate your time. Yeah, I love having you, you know, whenever we have the conversation, I love having that discussion about, you know, AI and tag and how you go about getting customers and so on. So, and that's why I wanted you to be on the show so that we can talk more and also take this opportunity to find out more about what you're doing with your product, right? But before we go on, you know, for the benefit of the audience who are new to you, can you do a quick introduction of yourself and what are you doing with your startup?

Okay, sure. So, hey, everyone, so I'm Keith. I'm the founder of C-Clarity. So, it's actually a tech company that helps you to generate inbound and outbound leads through LinkedIn, right? Through our platform. So, we help you to find inbound leads through thought leadership content. So, we have a content generation feature specifically built for LinkedIn and outbound leads by tracking engagement signals on LinkedIn. And prior to running C-Clarity, I was a product manager in a couple of companies. One of the more popular one is Grab, where I was working in the transport team. I was also a PM in the healthcare space, building a telemedicine product, a PM in the advertising space. So, building this product, right, helping people find leads through content, through engagement signals is really coming like a full circle for me. I even dabbled into blockchain as a previous startup about one year ago. So yeah, that's a bit about me. In my free time, I do a bit of long distance running. Every now and then, I do scuba diving. So, you know, any scuba divers here, hit me up, would love to exchange some diving sites. And once in a while, I'll do tracking as well. So some interesting places I've been to so far is Everest Base Camp. It was a life-changing trip for me and Mount Winjani, right? Super nearby in Indonesia, but way harder than Everest Base Camp. Super challenging.

You know, here's the funny thing, and I think that's the interesting part about being a podcast host, right? I originally invited you on to the show because I want to, you know, for my personal reason, I want to catch up with you. And of course, I also want to take this opportunity to learn more about your product, your business, right? But the interesting thing is, you know, and not just you and every guest that comes on to the show, right? And then I learned something totally new about you, you know, like I don't know about your... I mean, of course, during the research phase, I know that you were ex-grab and so on, but I totally have no idea that there's this adventurous, you know, side of you, you know, with the Mount Everest and things like so. It's gonna... I got a feeling that we are definitely gonna do more episodes. You know, probably one just on the highlight of, you know, how you go about with all your adventures and things like that. That's very cool. And the thing that I'm interested in is, right, because a large part of your career was actually in bigger companies, right? And then suddenly you jump into this entrepreneurial journey. So why that switch? Is it something that you always had in you or there's something that, you know, came across and it just got you in a paradigm shift in terms of mentality?

Yeah. So I always like to joke, right? Or actually it's the half-truth that all founders are a bit crazy and psycho, right? We decided to give up our, you know, we could have gotten normal jobs and nothing wrong with normal jobs. Yeah. But we could have gotten jobs elsewhere, lead a more predictable life. Again, nothing wrong with that. But we chose to eat glass and, you know, jump into the abyss. So for me, I think, so why I mentioned Everest Base Camp was quite a life-changing trip for me is, you know, it's really these different moments in life where you experience something and you really profoundly understand that we have one life, right? I think the line is so cliché. We have one life, live life to the fullest, but we often take the time we have on Earth on granted until something profound happens, right? And usually, it's unfortunately, it's usually something happens to our health or family members' health. So I had, you know, snippets of that as well. But I think the biggest one was being in Everest Base Camp, right? When I was there, I think the, you know, the short story of it is we had a lot of, you know, crazy times and walking through different parts where there was some landslides. But there was one particular area there where there was a landslide that recently happened. And it was the only path towards Everest Base Camp, right? Because Everest Base Camp is at about 5,400 plus meters above sea level. So that was the only path there. And we had to, you know, just go through the area that just had a landslide a couple of days ago. And while crossing that area, we suddenly heard a very loud crack, right? And when we turned behind, there was a huge as boulder that rolled down the hill, right? Bigger than, I think it's about three or four times my width. Huge boulder that rolled down the hill from the top of the mountain, the ledge somewhere. And we were like just, you know, maybe 50 meters plus away from where the boulder, the boulder's path. So if you were a bit slower, right, we would have been in the path of the boulder. And I don't know whether we'll be in time to jump away from it. So it's times like that we realize, damn, I really have like this one life, right? And it doesn't always have to be this kind of crazy adventures. It can be other scenarios as well. You know, then it hit me that, you know, if I only have such a limited time on Earth, what do I want to do that I would wake up when I'm older and not have any regrets? Right. So I really love the Jeff Bezos' regret minimization framework that he shares, right? A very simple philosophy. But it's essentially when you wake up when you're older, right? What do you want to have done that you wouldn't have regret? And it's usually things that we, we usually regret things that we didn't do more than the things we did. Yeah. So it's really from that experience and a few others, that I realized, oh, I got to do something with this limited time on Earth. And therefore, chose this very difficult path. Same like there. Yeah.

But indeed, Enoh and I, from our earlier conversation, I understood that, you know, clarity isn't the first iteration of this entrepreneurial journey, right? When you first started, right? So, can you give us a bit more background about... So, you decided that, okay, you want to do something that... So that you have no regrets, and then you start out on your own.

Yeah.

What was that initial portion? What do you start building upon? And, you know, then how did it evolve or transition into, you know, what you have right now?

Yeah. So, I think for C-Clarity in particular, how it evolved was when... You know, actually, my most recent startup or company that I worked on is the blockchain startup. So, what we were trying to do back then, this was about one plus years ago, it was to use blockchain to build an e-commerce platform similar to Shopify to solve the problems of, you know, fake products, fake customer testimonials, and other kind of, you know, scams that's happening on e-commerce platforms that's not often publicized, but I think you know, because you're in the e-commerce space. And this is quite a common problem. And, for example, even Birkenstock put out of Amazon stores because of that kind of problems, like fake customers and fake reviews, or even fake products, selling Birkenstock on Amazon. So, we were trying to solve that with blockchain. And that time, the promise was, you know, very exciting. It was the blockchain boom. We didn't dabble in crypto by trying to build that. But all that crashed when the market crashed as well. Like 3AC happened, right? And then FTX crashed, and it caused our waitlist. We actually had some paying customers already, and we released the product. But the waitlist just died overnight because all the other founders that were building in the space also gave up. They couldn't sustain the product, and a lot of their customers left. Because we are B2B2C. So if the 2C leaves, the business part would leave as well. So we had a very pivotal and difficult point at the time, and we couldn't figure out what to do. So we did what most techies would do, which is start a software agency. So we did that along with thousands or probably hundreds of thousands of other software agencies around the world. Maybe in Singapore alone, there's a few thousand already. So when we did that, we relied on our WAMC network and relationships to get our initial field customers. So with all agencies, I think we were doing pretty well at the start. We were profitable. But I think as we all started to grow, most agencies' owners might resonate with this. You start to stagnate your network. Your network doesn't seem to be growing as fast because they're trying to balance both serving clients and trying to lead gen. And in the early days, the founder does everything. So then, our business started to stagnate and we didn't get new clients. And that was when I realized on hindsight, towards the end, where we decided to put a pause to the agency, we did not leverage our personal brand enough. We did not do enough active lead gen or we did not build enough trust with the people outside of our immediate network. Because me and my co-founders, my CTO there was also from Grab. So we did our network, we had that trust. We say, hey, we've built for us in Grab. There's usually a certain element of trust there, small or big, depending on who you talk to. But there's some trust there. But outside of the immediate network, we didn't have that kind of lead gen and that kind of thought leadership. People think of software agency, they wouldn't think of us, they'll think of someone else, just simply because we're not in their radar. As simple as that. So that was when I realized, hey, actually this thing is so important. We didn't lead gen enough, we didn't sell enough, we didn't share enough case studies. And I then started to realize that. And also at the time, I think to share a bit with the other introverted agency owners or founders out there, I also struggled with trying to lead gen because I am really someone who's quite introverted. So I will go to a networking event, I have to take a lot of deep breaths, prepare myself and then go in. And after that, I will need sometimes one or two days to recover. So being a founder who is of my kind of character to try to lead gen is always a struggle. We try to let our products speak for ourselves, let our delivery and our work speak for ourselves, but that's often not enough. So with that struggle on a personal level and with the acknowledgement that hey, sales and marketing, customers is the responsibility of a founder, what can we do to help more founders solve this problem? So that's where C-Clarity came about, which is, you are a great person, you've got great experience, how can we help you to leverage that in a simpler way, to share your experiences on LinkedIn, build that thought leadership. By the same time, there's this struggle of, if I have a younger account, if I just started out, it takes a long time, it's like SEO, it may take six months, nine months, three months if you're lucky, but even three months can be quite long if you're running an agency. So how can we then make this faster and help the founders and agency owners reach the right people, reach the audience who should see your content? So that's how we eventually arrived at building features that helps you to have this combo of inbound and outbound leads, thought leadership content, but also reaching the right people who you can help.

So the two, now, you talk about personal branding, and I think there's a lot of interesting deep dive into that. I'll come back to that later, but just on the product itself. So right now, you have built the product to be, the way I hear it is, it actually tackles both fronts. It's able to help with the content creation aspect, if I got it correctly, so that founders don't really need to think about how to write, and if they are not good at writing, the tool can help them with crafting the content. But more importantly, what you're saying is, because most tech founders especially, are not good at outreach, so your tool has that capability to help a founder do an outreach, like identifying who are the connections that they should make within the LinkedIn space. Is that right?

Yup, that's right. So it's to find active and relevant people that you should reach out to. Ideally, people who are problem solution aware, that's what we like to call it, that you know that, oh, they have a problem, they're looking for a podcast agency, or they're looking for a software agency. How can we find these relevant profiles to reach out to? So that, as an introvert, I get ghosted less.

No, but I was thinking like, you know, Justin, when you talk about the introvert, and it got me thinking, which is kind of weird, because a lot of the, you know, fellow startup founders that we spoke with, and I'm sure you know, you know, some of our common connections and friends as well, right? Like, actually, everyone is an introvert. Like, none of us are particularly outspoken, right? And yet we are in this founder position where we have no choice but to put ourselves out there, right? And then we have fine ways to break out of our shell. And because you're not, like, even just within the last two weeks, you're not the, I think you're the fourth of three persons who told me that actually I'm an introvert. I'm like, but you started this whole thing out on earth, are you introvert? Which is a very weird dichotomy, isn't it? Yeah, which speaks to, I think, and especially right now, there's this whole big personal branding side of things that I think everybody is just caught on to it. Right? What's your take on this whole personal branding journey? And seeing that a lot of people on LinkedIn are starting to be more expressive, for lack of a better word, or more intentional about the way they position their branding.

Yeah, I mean, you know, this is a very big topic, right? So we can always discuss. I would love to hear your thoughts as well. But I think there's a few ways to look at it, from my point of view, because we are obviously advocating for using personal brand and leverage that to grow your business, grow your network. I think the first thing to really understand is, if you want to grow a personal brand, there should be something worth sharing that you must identify first. Because there is a lot of noise out there about, you must share seven days a week, at least three times a week. But if you don't already have identified, and it doesn't have to be concrete or correct, it can be a hypothesis that you want to test out to see whether that content resonates. But I think the key point is to first understand what do you want to share that people will find helpful. That has to be first identified. Because personal brand, in my perspective, is very simple. It's nothing complex at all, even though as you peel the layers, but as humans, it gets, there's many variables. But it's simply, when I think of this industry, who do I think of first? Or if I think of Alva, what comes to mind? Is it, try that, try that? Or what do you do? Is it like a chatbot, right? To me, when I think of Alva, I think of the chatbot expert. So it's simply like that. When you're building a personal brand, it's to first identify what you want to be remembered as or be remembered by within your network. And then once you have clarity on that, you think of what kind of content can I share to reinforce that.

Yeah. Right. On that right, there are some... Recently, I went to some workshops and there's also this talk, like what you mentioned, to be known for something. And I think there is probably different schools of thought. One of them would be, you need to niche down. You need to be known for something. And I think, quite a fair bit of personal branding, you know, coaches or gurus, if you will, advocate that you need to be very precise, very intentional about being known for certain things. At the same time, there is also this thought that actually, you know, personal branding being yourself and a person, evolves, right, grows, and change along the way, right? So the brand itself should be able to expand, and be able to, you know, stack layers upon. So where do you sit on this spectrum?

Yeah, it's a great question. This is where the onions, you know, the different layers come in really. So totally agree. I think as humans, like you said at the start, right? Now, you know, I do scuba diving and tracking, and we haven't even got to you yet. I'm sure there's so many things about you that I would love to learn, and there could be some overlaps and some similar hobbies. So everyone is like that. So that is one part. And then, like you said, the other part, even professionally, there's so many different experiences that we can share. So yeah, it's all these different, you know, experiments and phases that it's totally okay to try, right? Because unless you are on LinkedIn to have a very clear objective, okay, I need to close sales, I need to sell. Let's say I'm a coach, I need to sell my coaching program, right? Then there's a very clear objective and agenda. But if it's to, let's say if it's a, I'm a senior executive, I'm a CEO at a medium-sized company, 500-man company in Singapore, and I want to build my first-known brand within the medium businesses space. So it's totally okay to start with a topic or a pillar, and then expand from there because no one is that one dimension. We all have different aspects. We all have different points of view on various different topics. So that is the topical part of it. The other part of it would be the timeline in phases like chronology. I'm sure you've heard that the other schools of thought is, we like to do business with people that we enjoy spending time with. So there's also another aspect of that. Like if I keep sharing things about how to do sales, how to grow a personal brand, it gets very technical, it gets very dry, it gets very transactional maybe even sometimes. But people would also want to know why I got into this industry. Like you asked earlier, other personal aspects about me that they can relate to. Maybe they might not be my customers today, but we could be friends or in the network simply because we enjoy running. And in the future, that relationship transcends into something else. So it's also the aspect of, from a chronological standpoint, how do you build your personal brand in a way that people know about what you do, but they also can start to build this relationship and like you. Because it's like a co-networking session. I'm seeing you across the room. In case I'm seeing you on their newsfeed, I don't know who are you yet. We haven't chat, we haven't had coffee. So how can you make someone want to even follow you and know more about you? To make it such that you are relatable and... That's right, the word is, the password is always authentic, right? But I think it's really about being relatable, so that people can know, oh, you're a person, you're not here to just close me, sell me something. And then we can build that relationship and, you know, build that personal brand and network from there.

Yeah, I think what you said is very powerful. And I think you chose a better word than authentic. I mean, people just, you know, flash the word authenticity, authentic around. And it sort of got a bit stale, you know, in its impact and meaning. But you mentioned relatable. I think that's a more powerful word, right? Because you can be authentic, but you can be authentically annoying.

Yeah, that's true. It doesn't relate, right?

So I think relatable is more powerful, it's stronger. And you probably come across as well, because especially within the Singapore LinkedIn community, right? A lot of LinkedIn connections are creators themselves, right? And I'm sure you come across where you bump into some of them in some of the local networking, and you bump into them physically for the first time. But it's as if you've known them for a while, and that's because you have seen what they wrote on LinkedIn and then you've got a sense or got a flavor of their character, right?

Correct.

And the moment you physically met them for the first time, and when that interaction is also identical or similar to how you envision them to be online, then that relatability gels.

Correct.

Exactly. Otherwise, if there's a mismatch, then it breaks apart.

Correct. Exactly. Something will click. Like I've already known you for a while, and finally we're meeting.

Yeah.

I can share a very interesting story that I've also learned from my time in blockchain. Because I built the blockchain company during the time where NFT was a big thing. It was a boom market there.

I was about to go in, and then what do you think?

I'm glad you didn't. I lost quite a bit of money there. But I think it's a university fees that I have to pay. But I think one thing that we can all learn a bit, maybe even a lot from the NFT space, which I've observed, is... You know how when... What's that project? The project with the monkey that is very famous, bought it, you got the AYC, and they started this trend of you buying an NFT and then you have different trades, like I have a hat, I have a cigar, and then there's a limited amount of trades in the entire collection. 10,000 pieces of NFT in total. Maybe only 500 has that unique cigar. Another 500 is another trade, and another 500 is maybe a very unique hat, and it's all in limited quantities. And they randomize it. But what's really special that I observe when I go overseas for these NFT events, because NFT founders are our potential clients. NFT founders use our e-commerce platform to offer rewards to their NFT holders. So when I go to these NFT events and I meet the NFT founders and their communities, what's crazy is they can meet two people from different sides of the world, for example, US, Singapore, Dubai, UK. They can meet at an event totally cold, they don't know each other, but simply by sharing or flashing the NFT in their phone, in your wallet, they will become like new best friends. They will be like, hey, I have this cigar too, I have this trade on my NFT too. And then they actually form subgroups, like a subreddit in a sense, like a subgroup within the NFT community. They group together and work together simply because they all share this same cigar. Sounds a bit silly, yes? From a character, from a design point of view, there's no comp similarities there. But what we can understand and learn from that is, if we can find certain overlaps in our network, like if today I know Alva, you also do tracking, for example, then that's one very strong point that we can check when we meet up outside of the work topics already. And that's where we start to become friends outside of work. You're not just another network or business contact that I know. Got it. So that's something that I've learned in a very interesting story. Like Total Strangers, just because we have similar cartoon design, we can become new best friends.

Yeah. I mean, I totally understand. I totally agree on that. But interestingly, right, so now with that experience, is it something that you're able to transplant over to? Because right now, obviously, you're more focused on the LinkedIn space, right? Is it something that you try to transplant into how you reach out to potential LinkedIn connections? Like not just on the title or the job function, but also some of these characteristics? Is there a way to do it in LinkedIn even? Or is that an approach that you're adopting?

Yeah, I try to, to be honest. But it's not always that easy. Because, like you said, until you ask me, you don't know about all these other hobbies I have. And I think on LinkedIn, it's still a platform where we try to show our more professional and serious side, because eventually one day we might use the profile to get a job. Or, you know, get VC funding or whatever. So there's a bit of unearning that needs to do. And if the person decides not to share something personal, then there's no way you can find out anyways. But otherwise, I think some helpful tips to anyone listening would be, for example, trying to understand or trying to see who else they might have interacted with. So, for example, if you have a customer, say, let's say I'm a customer and Walter is a customer, or your current podcast guest. And if you want to find other similar founders like me to be on your next podcast, you can see who else has interacted with my content and use those as signals to find similar profiles, like a lookalike. If you run Facebook ads, it's like a lookalike, but based on engagement signals like that. So that'd be one way to know, oh, this person is also a founder, or this person could also be x-grab. Then that could be a starting point of your conversation.

I see. And is that something that can be done in your software?

We do that to some extent. Right now, we are able to show you what the person has engaged with. For example, if you see a potential lead, we can show you what that person last did on LinkedIn, who they commented, whose post they commented on, and what post they like. In the future, we will give more insights.

I see. Well, I suppose now is a good time to then, maybe you can share with us how it works, using me as a guinea pig. Because obviously, we have an agency business as well, and being on LinkedIn, obviously, part of our commercial reason, obviously, is to look for suitable clients. And again, when you first talk about the clarity product that you're building, and that was what got me interested, because we do want to see if there's a more efficient way to reach out to connections, where there is a higher probability of them would be aligned and interested in what we are doing, and have pinpoints that our products can solve, rather than, like what you say, shooting in the dark.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, can we do a share of how it works?

Yeah, maybe you can just share screen, and let us walk us through your product, and how we can...

Okay. Yeah, I can share two features. I'll share... I'll start with the more interesting one, or the more recent one. Sorry, both are interesting to me.

Okay. It's just like you're the father of the child, right? You always love your child, no matter what.

Yeah, you have two child, but there's always gonna be a favorite child. Yeah, so this is our new, you know, newest child, and currently the most favorite child. So this is what we call the Find Leads feature. Yeah, so how it works is really similar to what I've shared with you, because even before building this feature, we have casted this manually a few hundred times even to make sure that this philosophy works. Right, so how it works is, what we're trying to do is to find active and relevant profiles for you. So these are your potentially active and relevant leads by tracking either your customers or your competitors or your industry KOLs, right? And then use those engagement signals to find relevant profiles to reach out to, right? That's the core philosophy behind the product. So let's say if I'm you today using the products and I'm trying to find other podcast guests or potentially podcast customers who might want to use podcasts as a marketing channel, right?

So, how about, let me throw that case to you, right? Okay. I love throwing challenges to my girls.

Sure.

Okay. So because we are doing podcasts right now, right? And again, we can talk about that later as part of, you know, how branding and attention works. But right now we are having our own podcast series. And because of that, we have B2B companies in talks with us about us helping them produce podcast series for their brand.

Okay.

And the purpose of doing that is not so much to be viral or bring a lot of attention to their brand, you know, but more because using the podcast series to create a legacy of brand content. You know, whether is it for outward branding or marketing purpose or internal branding purpose, to bring more understanding to their business, you know, and to reflect their years of expertise. So it is something that is interesting. And we realize that because we have taken the first step in launching our own podcast and doing the podcast, right, we now have certain, you know, certain things that we can share with these brands. So that becomes a branch of service on the agency side of our business, where right now we are looking for B2B companies, you know, it could be traditional B2B industrial companies, it could be B2B SaaS companies, and we want to look for them and talk to them about, you know, helping them produce a podcast series for them. So that would be the use case that I'm looking at.

Great. So I think two points, just to recap for those listening, I think two points you mentioned that's very important here is, you've got a target audience that is quite defined, right? So B2B companies, I think we can maybe define it even further, but I think B2B SaaS or B2B tech companies, like you mentioned, is good enough. Then second is you also mentioned that you have some resources they can share with them. So it's potentially like a helpful guide, a workbook or a lead magnet of sorts, right? So that is actually very effective that we found when you start that conversation with a new person that you connected with. So let's say you are trying to target B2B companies, right? Maybe you say B2B tech companies. So there's two ways to go about doing this. One is, of course, to track certain KOLs in your industry or even customers. Another way would be to track your competitors. That's also another approach. I'll start by, say, tracking certain KOLs in the industry first, like Amanda Kua. She's quite popular in Singapore. She works closely with Juliana Chan. So how this works is, the very first step is to track these profiles. And if it's something that is a bit challenging, what I would share at this stage is, I think from first principles, if you are trying to target B2B businesses from traditional industries, for example, like, say, logistics, maybe they are a very long-standing logistics company with a lot of history in Singapore, but more people need to know about them, right? They don't have a lot of brand presence. So I think from first principles, if you're trying to target these guys, who might the right person from that company engage with for LinkedIn? Would it be the marketing director from that logistics company engaging with maybe the Minister of Singapore, Transport Minister of Singapore, or Prime Minister, right? Or it could be that person who is a HR director by engaging with another HR director on LinkedIn, right? And then you use the HR director to access the CEO, or the decision makers in the company, right? So it's trying to understand from a first principles point of view, who is your target audience, and who might they engage with on LinkedIn? Yeah, so in this case, sorry, go ahead.

No, but the way you frame it, right? It feels interesting to me because before you share, I would have thought that, I'll just go, like for example, if I want to promote a podcast production service as a way to brand a company, immediately that comes to my mind is I'll probably just aim for the founder or the CEO of the company. But the way I hear you talk about that framing, that's not your approach. So maybe you can dive deeper into it and share some life. Why the difference in the framing and how your methods is actually more relevant or effective?

Yeah, I can show through the product as well. I think that would be a good way. So for example, if I'm trying to, let's say I'm tracking Amanda Kwok, who's a KOL on LinkedIn as well. And she runs her own podcast, One More Scoop. So over here, what we were able to show is the last 10 posts from Amanda. So over here, you can see a recent post. And you can click on it to see the content. And over here, we also show you the different engagement metrics. So that's important later on, but I think first and most important point to consider here is, again, we're looking at this kind of engagement signals to find relevant leads. So what I will do here is to pick the right post that is relevant to my business. Say, for example, if I'm trying to target founders or people who are trying to grow their brand on LinkedIn or on other media channels, then I might want to start something. I might find these posts relevant. So if you want to start a business, please read these. If you're starting a coaching, consulting or speaking business, we deliver a service based on your expertise, you are the asset. So if it's a post like this, it seems like a very strong signal to suggest that those who engage with a post who are founders would kind of agree with what she's saying, right? They will agree that, yes, I'm the asset. Therefore, potentially, they could be your potential podcast customers so that they can become the asset to share their stories on the podcast. Right.

Okay.

So, this is the approach. To find a piece of content that is relevant to your business. So, in this case, the go-to for building a business and a personal brand, this could be something relevant maybe for me, for C-Clarity, or it could be for you, because people who engage with these posts will agree that a personal brand is important. And from there, having a podcast series is just another extension of your personal brand. It doesn't have to be on LinkedIn or confined to any particular social media channel. This is a post that is relevant, like building a personal brand by Juliana Chan, Chris Toh is being tagged. What I'll do is I'll click on Scan for Leads, where behind the scenes, what we'll do is we'll look at all these different engagement signals, the likes and comments over here, and pull out the profiles that have engaged with Amanda's post. So we'll start scanning, so this will take a while. But I'll show you some of the examples that have been completed. So once it's scanning, you'll go into the Leads Found tab over here. And then over here, you can see, let's say this is Amanda Kua for example, but in this case, this is Tim. So this is the post from Tim, and the people who engaged with his post. So what's very powerful here is two things. First, we know that Eric is a potential lead, right, because he has engaged with Tim about why agencies screw up. And second, he is active and relevant, right? He recently engaged with a post on February 11th, about two weeks ago, and he agrees that agency bandwidth, agency operations is very important if you want to have healthy margins. So this is a very powerful conversation starter. If I reach out to Eric, I will say, hey, Eric, I saw that you are running an agency as well, because over here, you can click and view his profile. Right. So if I know that he's running an agency, I'll say, hey, is agency capacity a challenge for you as well? I saw that you were engaged with Teams post recently. Yeah. So of course, it's a top of funnel game as well. So over here, you can actually engage by all these different filters. You can engage by the job titles that you are targeting. You can engage by the company. We'll show you the company that have engaged with Amanda or Team. And location, if you are only targeting Singapore, you can search for Singapore and select the countries, and who they engage with. So is it Amanda or Team, Crystal? So based on who you select, I can also select Crystal, clear the rest of my selection. You can immediately see who are the profiles who engage with Crystal. Not that many because I scanned this earlier, but you can imagine this is your top of funnel. As you scan more posts, you will see more and more profiles over here, and then you just need to use the filter to find the job titles that you are looking for based on the different criteria.

Right, and once I have that list, I can then just do my usual outreach to get to them and initiate whatever connections and things like that, right?

Correct. Yeah. So I'll use this as a context, if they commented or if they engaged, as a context to start that conversation. But at least from here, what we found is when I sent a connection request to say Suraj from Dubai, I will know that my connection request is more likely to be accepted because he's active on LinkedIn.

And you mentioned, okay, so now I understand this is how I can get the leads, which is very interesting. I really never thought about, oh, you're actually looking at the engagement signals to see who is more likely to do the engagement, which is very refreshing to know. So now I've used the software to actually got my leads. And you were saying just now, okay, so now we move on to the outreach portion. And you were saying that, and you were asking about, you know, like, what was the hook or what was the value that we are giving, right? So typically in your case, how would you recommend, okay, now I have the leads, next step is outreach. Typically, what would be the structure or format of the outreach that would help me get the, you know, higher chance of response?

Yeah, great question. So yeah, this is really top of the funnel. The next step is to make sure that they reply to you, right? In fact, there's two key hurdles here. First is whether this person will accept my connection request, because LinkedIn, if they ignore you, you got to cancel your request and you can only send the next one three weeks later. So that's the first hurdle. Second hurdle will be for them to reply you and start that conversation going. So the first hurdle is if you are using LinkedIn Premium or if you still have certain quota, you can send a personalized message. So we have tested both with a personalized message and without for connection requests, and the results are roughly similar. So as of today, with this method, I've got about a 90%, nine zero of connection requests accepted because these are profiles that are active and relevant. So that will be the first step.

Sorry, I can't control myself because when you say, not much difference, are you trying to tell people that don't waste money spending on the LinkedIn?

So, yeah, I wouldn't say that. I would say it has its perks. Yeah, but we just didn't see a very strong statistical difference with and without a personalized message. But I think this is where it comes back down to the broader LinkedIn profile optimization, which is your headline, right? Can I see your headline and I know, oh, what is Alva about? Why are you reaching out to me, right? So if it's a strong and clear headline, then there's a higher chance that someone will accept your connection request.

So there's still an element of, I mean, there are two parts to it. I mean, the way I hear you say it, right? Of course, from a tactical aspect, a tool like yours can help give us more relatable leads. So from the get-go, the people that I am reaching out to already has a higher propensity to respond back to me because I'm trying to reach out to them based on relatability, right? So that's the first win.

Correct.

The second part, of course, then ties back to the branding part we talked about earlier, right? Like if you are not crafting your brand in a way that let people feel that you deliver value to them. And if you're crafting it, like just being a sales exec or a BD, then unlikely they are still going to engage. That's where you're coming from, right?

Correct. Certain fundamentals still has to be there. Because for someone saving on LinkedIn, when you send a connection request, he or she will definitely first check out your LinkedIn profile. Who is Alva? What's your headline? What do you do?

Right.

Are you here to help me or what? Like, you know, what is this? Why are you reaching out?

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Okay. Okay. And again, them now we talk about. So now the leads are relevant. We do the outreach, right? And based on what you're saying, when we do the outreach, what would be the sequence or what would be the content that you would, you know, typically outreach with to maximize that, the practice of, you know, delivering value and making, you know, people realize that you're here to help and not just to sell them something.

Yeah, so I think that is really the magic of what we are building really. So that is a new feature that's coming soon. But essentially, our approach is to be clear and upfront while we are reaching out. And there's a couple of ways depending on who you reach out to. So for example, let's say if William Choi is my customer, for example, I will reach out to Taheesan, Tahaseen here and say, hey, Taheseen, so you engage with William, right? He's actually a customer of ours, right? Is this, you know, how are you doing on this topic, right? So you engage with him about him leaving LinkedIn, right? So I will use that as an anchor because William is my customer, he's our mutual friend, to start that conversation. Right. But if it's more cold, let's see if I'm trying to track my competitor, or in this case over here, you can see I'm looking at Stephen Butler, right? And this person, I don't know him because thousands of people follow Stephen Butler and engage with his posts. So over here, if I'm reaching out to Ruchi, then I will be more direct. I think of you in a networking session. If you reach out to someone or walk over to someone in a networking session, you will say hi and start to introduce yourself and what you do. So same thing, I'll start by saying, Hey Ruchi, so that you've engaged with Stephen Butler's posts about, you know, competition, right? Is this something you are struggling with or finding challenging in your industry and company? We have some guides on how to help you tackle this problem, and a few other agency owners or coaches have used this, right? Would you want me to send it over to you? Yeah, so this is where we go back to your earlier point where you said you have some resources, some guides that are helpful. That is really very powerful. Because now you know what is on Ruchi's mind, right? Competition. You know he could be, you know, this is something on top of his mind, right? He engaged with the posts he commented. So for someone to comment on competition, you know this is something that is in their mind.

So the way you frame it would be, you know, like this day is a lot of outreach. I'm sure you receive a lot of that. And then they will say some nice things and almost very quickly as if they can't hold it. They can't pretend anymore. Then they were like, oh, you know, can we hop on the discovery call? Can we hop on the call, right? Now, I personally don't think there's anything wrong with it. I think there's good and bad. There's ways to debate the effectiveness, right? But from your point of view, right? Again, that's where some of these differing school of thoughts is. Because, like, for example, yourself, right? This is a product. A product, in your case, as how you demonstrate it, is pretty self-explanatory. It's pretty straightforward, right? So for a product like that, as self-explanatory and as straightforward, right? Wouldn't it make sense, actually, to just cut to the chase and go into a discovery call request? Because the problem and solution proposition is actually very, very clear already. Or you still have thoughts about how you want to angle that approach.

Yeah. So this is, like you say, different school of thoughts and different preference. So I think both being more direct or being a bit more conversational has its merits. I think Chris, though, his preference is obviously being more conversational with the courses he's talking about. But I also think it's not as simple as that. Meaning, for example, there's also factors like, what is your business model and what is your business? Right. For example, if I'm selling a SaaS product like C-Clarity, and we are charging, as of today, $39 USD a month, if I hop on a call for every potential lead, my business will die already, right? It will fail before we even try to close these deals. So that wouldn't work for me. But if you're an agency selling a few thousand dollars of contract per customer, then it might make sense to hop on a call. But that being said, then this is where the philosophy comes in. And I really like some of the content you share about the cold emails you get. Because I think as salespeople, end of the day, he right here is a sales process, right? As salespeople, I believe it's a personal opinion that we should be more of a guide than trying to like hit our KPI. Meaning, before I hop on a call, I would prefer to understand, do they actually have the problem I can solve or not? What is their problem? So I will ask them a couple more questions. Hey, do you have challenge with this problem? Or like I will speak to Jason, right? Because now I know he's in marketing. I will check out his LinkedIn profile. I'll say, hey Jason, I saw you engaged with team's post about agencies screwing up, right? Is that something you're finding challenge with in your own company? Are you facing any sales problem or manpower problems, for example, depending on the post, right? Now you can see there's a lot of context within your agency. We have a guide that can help you with this. Would you want to check it out? Depending on what he says, if he says yes, great, then I will follow up with him. But if he says no, then I will say, okay, right, so what is your business about? Then I'll start a conversation, right? So are you in the growth phase or who are your potential customers? What kind of challenge do you have? And if it's relevant, then I'll say, hey, we have something that can help you. Let's chat more or I'll send another helpful guide, right? Or maybe start to have a call already. But otherwise, I'll say, hey, okay, this is an area that I'm not so familiar with, or I can't help, but I'll point you to some other resources or information, right, if possible.

But having so, yes, I understand where you're coming from with that. But again, like what you mentioned, right? Given the pricing structure of your product, doing a one-on-one really will, I mean, it will take donkey years, right? There's no better way to say it. So right now, how are you approaching this? Of course, you have your own tools, so you already know how to get the leads. So in your current situation, what have you found to be the best way for you to reach out and quote unquote at scale without burdening with too many individualized discovery conversations?

Yeah, so this is where our customers or our target customers are different from how we do marketing. So our target marketers are agency owners, a few thousand dollars per contract. This process would work perfectly. But for us, because we are a tech company, our pricing model is SaaS, it's monthly recurring revenue. How we are doing it is through two approaches. One is through content. In fact, I should show the content feature as well. But us being creating a content feature, we are creating our own content to share. But like I said, even that is quite a slow process. It's like SEO. So, another channel that we are looking at very soon is working with key industry, key opinion leaders, like KOLs and other influences in the space, who are prominent in the sales and marketing space to talk about how they use the product. Because it becomes a reach and distribution problem. Marketing is very simple. If you break it down, the fundamental at its core, it's content creation and content distribution. So, we need to crack the distribution problem ourselves too.

You realize when I asked you, I was also asking for myself, right? Because our AeroChat also say, bro, no way am I going to do a thousand discovery. Exactly. There's no way.

Yeah. Our companies will die.

Yeah. True. But at least for us, I think, but I totally agree with you on that because at the end of the day, marketing is reach, who you reach out to, whether it's target audience. And if you already know your target audience, then how you quantify it and scale it in the largest way, which is then the distribution that you talk about. So, I think for us, I don't know if it's, I mean, to be perfectly honest, I don't know if it's going to work, but we think that there's a good shot of it, which is to make us our own media, to make us the attention. And again, this is why we are doing a podcast. We are bringing the attention to us, so that we save ourselves the trouble of going out to people.

Correct.

Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I think it's a good strategy. It's definitely worth a shot. Especially if you have the bandwidth and the resources. Because at the end of the day, it's about building that thought leadership. And thought leadership is essentially becoming that top-of-mind, when people think of you or think of your industry. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, hope it works out. I'm sure it will. Yeah. Yeah.

Thanks. And so, again, you know, like I look at the... So, how can people... You're saying that the product is now ready for registration and people can just go to a web. So, can you just quickly share, right? Where can people go and sign up for, you know, start using your product?

Yeah. So, our website is cclarity.io. So, the spelling is a bit special. It's C, then plus clarity. So, it's a double C. So, cclarity.io.

Would you be able to just open another tab? Just go to the homepage so that we can see very clearly, like, where can we sign up? Also, it's from here, right?

Yep, from here. Then you can click on sign in or click on this. And then it will bring you to the product page already, over here. So, you will start seeing this page. So, this is our other flagship feature. Maybe I can do a quick demo as well. It's very fast. So, let's say, any topics you have in mind about podcasts or about AeroChat?

Podcasts, yeah. Since we are on a podcast, personal branding and outreach using podcasts as a medium.

Okay. Personal branding and outreach.

Yeah, using podcasts as a medium.

Medium, okay. It's still a very under-tapped strategy. Let's say, okay, especially in Southeast Asia. How I would approach it is to leverage this as a channel to lead Jen to... Okay, I'm just adding my own opinion now, podcast, guest, and leverage their network and reputation to guilt top of mind.

You're basically spilling my beans already.

You can definitely use this as a LinkedIn post later on. If you don't mind, share with you the secret. So over here, once I tap in my opinion, then there's these different categories you can choose. So maybe this is, I would say maybe this is an insight, or a challenge, maybe it's more of an insight. So these different categories also change the writing style of the content. So once I click on this, I'll click on Magic Write. And next you will see, we give you three different drafts to choose from. So you can read over here, quite different writing styles. And in fact, we can generate up to six drafts. There's a generate more below. But these three different drafts are often sufficient for you to pick a writing style that fits your content and your own tone of voice. And what is happening behind the scenes that is not so obvious here, is we actually also will listen and read your recent LinkedIn post and use that as one of the writing styles here.

Wow. Okay.

So that's actually done behind the scenes.

Well, I like the fact that, you know, the little formatting. Because, you know, like right now, the way I do it, right, is I will just have voice notes. You know, I'll read voice notes into my own robot and then it will transcribe to text. And I'll throw it to some AI to format it. And my biggest problem is, you know, when it comes to the formatting, I still need to go and manually touch up a bit. But this, your one just, you know, straightway does the formatting, which makes it even easier.

Correct. Yeah. So we really emphasize a lot on, we spent a lot of time to get the formatting right. That works on LinkedIn, right? Which is not too AI, but also in a way that's easy to read, right? We don't try to be...

And not too Facebook, not too IG.

Correct. Exactly. And then you can also generate three more options here. This first three usually is good. But I think the secret source behind this is, it studies your writing style. It studies your writing style behind the scenes. So once you like one of it, let's say this one, and then you can come over here. This is a standard editor. They can also preview and make sure that your hook is there, right? Check your input, right? Cross-check, make sure we don't hallucinate. And then, yeah, once you're ready, you can actually publish and post over here, schedule and post over here.

Also, you can actually link to your LinkedIn account to post from inside here. Okay. Now I totally get why you have more followers than me. You have a way.

Well, if you use this, you also grow the followers.

Yeah, I need to use your product to catch up with you.

So the idea here is, you know, why we don't use AI to automate, like give you like a 30-post automation and all that stuff, right? It's a very fine line to cross, especially when we're trying to create content for thought leaders like you, right? Yeah. We don't want to create generic content, right? That's why if you see from the very first page, I'll just go back to the first picture, we kept it super empty. These are just some examples you can use, but we don't generate anything for you before that. We want you to just dump your insight, because you have your insights, your opinion, your contrarian view, you have customer case studies. We don't want to create anything general or generic.

Got it. So, sounds exciting. And you mentioned that there are a few more features coming up for Clarity. So, can you just generally share with us, what's the roadmap like for Clarity, see Clarity in 2025 and beyond?

Yeah, so the whole goal for our product and the company, the core mission is really to help business owners generate leads through LinkedIn. So, the next big item on the roadmap would be, what's next after finding these leads that you saw earlier? So, something that I can share that's coming out soon will be, for example, being able to connect to these potential leads, directly through our product, and then nurture those relationships to the product as well. Because we understand that it's a process, certain leads may take a while to close. So, that's coming soon. And also, improve analytics so that you can understand how your outreach and how your content combine to help you to grow your network and get those leads.

So, what I'm hearing is you're kind of evolving and growing into being more complete in terms of being a lead pipeline kind of management.

The goal is to help you to build a lead pipeline from both inbound and outbound methods. But I think the struggle I often hear from founders or agency sales teams is either outbound or inbound, like content, content, content, and hope something sticks. Or outbound and just co-ourge, co-ourge, co-ourge, and they have very poor conversion rates. But today being in the space like both you and I are, we understand the power of personal brand, we attend Chris Toh's workshop. So I actually believe that it's when in an era, especially with AI and all the poor and bad cold emails we get, it takes a combination of two. Through a personal brand, grow it, but share your thought relationship as well. And this is the very powerful combination of outwish and outbound and inbound.

Awesome, man. Thanks for sharing how your product work. And again, once I look at it, yeah, I can definitely see how where are missing in certain steps. Definitely a tool that will be very effective and useful in us, helping us to find the right leads and to reach out. So thanks for the sharing on your product. Now, before we wrap up this very insightful conversation, I want to bring us back to almost right at the start of this conversation, where you talk about transitioning from being in a corporate to starting something, because you want to make a legacy, you want to make full, you want to live life to the fullest, no regrets. But at the same time, the reality is, you didn't hit it off on your first venture. There was certain ups and downs, and you had to scale down, or you have to conclude before you move on until... So, if I'm remembering correctly, it's about a couple of tries before you settle on C-Clarity, right? This is the latest one, right? Now, a lot of business owners, a lot of founders, especially young, new founders, they might face this challenge where, you know, I start something, you know, and again, whenever we start something, we always think we're going to make it, right? We always think that we're going to, we're going to strike it big, and then reality happens. And then a few months down the road, you know, everything's just, you know, goes bad shit crazy. Having gone through that roller coaster, right? That valley and then, you know, all these ups and downs, how do you navigate that emotional roller coaster? And having gone through that, how would you advise, what kind of insights can you share with our fellow, you know, founders and new entrepreneurs, how to navigate all this? And is there, you know, any meaning after all this, behind all this?

Yeah. Thanks for the very deep and difficult question. Well, I think-

We must end with a bang.

Okay. So I think it's always going to be hard, no matter how many tries you have. And I think if you speak to serial entrepreneurs, they will still find it hard. And to be honest, after doing this a couple of times, hopefully, what I say can be helpful. But what I also realize is, you will never understand it until it happens to you. Meaning, you will never really comprehend what another founder say with this kind of advice until, you know, hopefully, touchwood, but one of your startups fail and, you know, it didn't work out. But I think, you know, what I can share from my own experience is, try your best, it's very difficult, but try your best to detach yourself from the outcome of your company. Because there are so many things that can kill a startup. It's not just, it's not that you're a bad founder or you're a bad person, you're a bad developer or you're a bad salesperson, right? There are market conditions that you cannot control. There are war that breaks out in the world that is totally out of our pay grade. There's no way we can control and prevent that, right? COVID happened, right? So many businesses failed. And I think, right, that's obviously easier said than done to really understand and detach yourself. But I think the other maybe slightly more tangible points to just keep in mind for every founder out there who's struggling is that what you're going through right now, this process of starting a company, getting business, building a product, managing a team, this is like MBA 101, right? Even if your business or your startup fail, you will always be able to get a job. But these experiences are never wasted, right? And the dots will only connect backwards. So, case in point, I can share a bit of my personal story. When, so my very first startup was 10 years ago, we were building a search engine for commercial photos. But eventually, we struggled with a few things, but we got accrued hired, so we were quite lucky. And then, eventually, I got into that company. And because of that experience of running a startup, I took a shot at applying for Grab, and I got it. And I asked my boss, why did he employ me? He said, because you had startup experience. You didn't have a $10 million exit, right? I'm sure I can't retire yet. I'm not at that level. But that kind of startup experience was very valuable. And it made me a better product manager. And not only that, when I went into Grab, to really reinforce home this point, I found that I realized that there are many of my other founder peers inside Grab as well. I'm like, hey, how's your startup going? Nice to see you here. Right, so it shows that people with founder experience or founder mindset, I don't think it's a job, right? Founder is never a job. It's a mindset. It's an attitude. You want to really eat glass and make something happen and live an impact, solve a big problem. So if you have this mindset, it will always carry with you to anywhere, any job you apply for, and you'll always be employable. As long as you're not an arrogant freak who think that you're better than everyone else. If you're humble, you have this attitude. Most companies will want to employ someone like that, that get, that ready to go, that roll up my sleeve attitude. Everyone will want an employee like that. So if all else fails, we can always find a job that we really enjoy in. And again, nothing wrong with that at all. I really loved my time at Grab when I was an employee, different companies, I joined SMBs as well. So I think there's a lot more to life than being a founder, there's a lot more to life than confining ourselves to our job title. I think, again, easier said than done. But my advice is try to detach, try our best to detach yourself from the outcome of your startup. There's so much more to life than that. There's your family, there's your loved ones, there's the hobbies that you want to pursue. There's the different places in the world you want to visit. Life is all that and a lot more, not just your startup.

Thank you, Keith. Thank you for your time with us. Hope to see you in another episode. I'm sure we still have a lot more to talk about, but thank you. Thank you for your time. Hey guys, if you enjoy this podcast, subscribe and share with your friends. We drop new episodes every week, so stay tuned. See you in the next one.