How Stan uses Founder-Led Marketing to create a magnetic personal brand

• Growth breakdown: How Stan founder, John Hu, has become in expert in Founder-Led Marketing, using it to scale Stan past $30M ARR.

• Cool things I saw to take your business to the moon.

• Top tools for your business.

Stan: Explosive growth with Founder-Led Content.

🏆 The one thing:

If you’re short on time, here’s the one thing to take away:

Creating Founder-Led Content is often over-complicated.

The ultimate goal is to create trust with potential and current customers.

This is the process John (aka Jay), Founder of Stan, uses to build this trust and scale Stan:

• Share the whole journey, not just the wins. Authenticity wins hearts.

• Position yourself as a subject-matter expert. Become the industry authority.

• Give away so much value it hurts. This gives you the credibility needed.

The Founder-Led Content Trust Equation = Authenticity + Authority + Credility.

📚 The tactic:

A brief explanation of the tactic.

The idea of brand building has been around for hundreds of years.

People want to feel a part of something bigger than themselves. They want to feel connection.

One of the best examples of this is Apple. From early on Apple crafted what it meant to be an Apple user.

You are creative. You push boundaries. You are part of the in-crowd.

And above all, you had a community of people to connect to.

It is this connection that overrides features. Apple users wouldn’t care if the latest Samsung has longer battery life and faster processing power.

Because Samsung would never be able to replace this connection to Apple.

This is what Jay has done building Stan.

But instead of just building the business’ brand. He has put his face to it. Making Stan much more personal and easier to connect with.

As technology and AI improve, products get closer together. It is cheaper and easier to build something than ever. But what is not easy is building a personal connection and trust that goes beyond product.

But this is exactly what Jay has done, becoming a voice of truth for creators:

• Building Stan in public (growth, financials, future plans)

• Sharing his lessons learned along the way

• Giving away tips on how to become a Creatorpreneur

And importantly, he is growing on the platforms his target customers use every single day. He is putting himself on potential customers’ feed. For free.

Jay has become synonymous with Stan. Not too dissimilar to Steve Jobs with Apple.

Just in the modern way: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

🎯 The execution:

3 actionable insights from the tactic.

🙋 1. Always authentic

Every successful journey has its setbacks.

Most people hide them away.

But Jay embraces them.

For example his struggles with mental health as a Founder, or the threat of TikTok’s ban to the business.

This is a big reason Jay has been able to build such a strong brand. Because people can take the whole journey with him. Not just the highs.

This makes Jay more relatable.

Something which is super important to building a following.

But also proves that he is someone you can trust.

Which is the ultimate driver to more paying customers.

💡 2. Simplify complex ideas

One thing that Jay is awesome at is explaining complex ideas.

I come away from every LinkedIn post of his with actionable takeaways for my business or my personal life.

I leave every YouTube video with about 15 different simple and crisp frameworks for extremely difficult business functions, like hiring.

What Jay does better than 99% of people is simplify concepts into the fundamentals or first principles.

Now I’m not saying he makes everything easy. But he makes them simple. Hiring is still extremely difficult. But it’s a lot less overwhelming using his 3-Step framework.

The same goes for all his frameworks. For example, his content creation process like a reverse triangle to make content creation simpler:

Or his dozens of growth flywheels that he’s actually used in his business.

Jay has mastered the art of explaining complex topics. And the biggest reason why is because he has learned from experience.

So like Jay, speak from experience, it will come across in your communication and your audience will be able to spot that you are an expert.

📚 3. Makes every story a lesson

One of the biggest objections to building a personal brand is that Founders don’t want to come across as bragging.

And while that is a legitimate concern - because no one likes a show-off - sharing your success does grab people’s attention and gives you authority. Something you need to build a lead-generating content machine.

Jay manages to navigate this in an awesome way by taking away all his ego and packaging his content around lessons to be learned, i.e., value.

Jay leads with value, and supports it with numbers. And never once have I felt that he is showing off.

To add to this, even his videos about his personal struggles and Stan’s setbacks are focused on the lessons to be learned.

Let’s take a look at one of his recent videos where he shares that Stan has grown to $25M in ARR. He doesn’t just show Stan’s number but the lessons that got them there, including their organic growth flywheel.

And look at the comments from the video:

All singing their praises for Jay and Stan.

Why? Because every video he gives away a ton of free value. Value that is changing people's lives.

Giving value creates the most powerful communities.

I also need to add. A personal brand will be worthless if you don’t have an awesome product and customer support behind it. And this is something Stan definitely has.

Vitalii and the engineering team are awesome. Alyssa and the Creator Success Team are super stars. In fact their whole team is, it’s one of the biggest drivers for their success - click here to read more.

My picks to take your business to the moon 📽️

• How to grow your personal brand on Twitter (link)

• Why empathy comes before vision (link)

• The best email to get engagement (link)

• Overcoming the limiting beliefs to building a business (link)

Tools of the week 🔨

• CopyAi: Future proof your business with GTM AI

• Shield: Analytics for LinkedIn