Scaling modern brands:The New Playbook for Consumer Growth with Patrick Burke

0:01John Lee Dumas:Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by HighLevel, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. Today we'll be breaking down how to scale modern brands, the new playbook for consumer growth. To drop these vibe bombs, I brought to Patrick Burke in the EO Fire studios. Patrick is a county manager at Hostinger, leading marketing across the US, UK, AU, and California. 15 years in the trenches at agencies, startups, and global brands. He is an American expat in Spain as we speak. And today we talk about brand versus performance, going from zero to one to one to 10.

0:33John Lee Dumas:We talk about creator-led growth and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Patrick and our sponsors. Stop duct taping your business together. High Level runs your website, your funnels, email, automation, scheduling, payments, and memberships all in one place. And when you sign up at highlevelfire.com, you get a 30-day free trial plus my exclusive bonus stack that includes weekly office hours with me and much more. Visit highlevelfire.com, highlevelfire.com. Fire Nation, are you ready to build something special in the next 50 days? Check out my free YouTube series, 50 Days to Something, short and strategic step-by-step videos by me, JLD.

1:15John Lee Dumas:On day 50, you'll have a valuable asset, and the best part is it's completely free. Visit eofire.com slash YouTube and start day one today. Patrick, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. What's up, Fire Nation? So one thing I think that most people disagree with about success is that the best way to start your career is by joining an early stage startup. I know that that comes with a lot of risk. And so most people tend to follow a more traditional career path. but actually I think that it's actually less risky by starting off at a startup because when you work at a startup you end up getting exposed to a lot of different areas of the company whether it's marketing or product or actually learning how to like run a business basically like learning the P &L and the unit economics so you end up gaining a lot of skills that you would need regardless of what you decide to do afterwards but also you get exposed to different things that you can see which one might, you know, be the most interesting career path for you.

2:24But I think the most important reason is that you learn some really intangible skills like ownership, which take a lot longer to learn when you're in a big corporation, like stepping in the gaps that are, you know, needing to be filled and just really figuring shit out as you go. So I think that, you know, whether you're deciding if you want to be an entrepreneur or not, even if If you want to pursue, you know, working at a big tech company like Google or something, starting off at an early stage startup, whether it's one you built yourself or joining another one, is an incredible way to build a skill set and figure out what you are interested in doing for the rest of your career.

3:03John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, we're talking about scaling modern brands, the new playbook for consumer growth. And I want to start by talking about brand versus performance, Patrick. So when it comes to consumer marketing specifically, how should founders think about balancing brand building with performance marketing as they scale? Great question. So to start, I'd say if you're just starting out, it's all about just making a sustainable business model. And with that territory usually comes performance marketing. But as you scale, brand building becomes more important because there's only so much demand that is out there.

3:42and a large swath of the market might not be in market ready to buy your products yet, but they will be in the next several months or even the next 12 months. And it's super important to start building long-term brand building so that when people do come into the market, your name is already top of mind. And with performance marketing, it tends to focus very much on people who are already ready to convert. They might already know about your category, and then they're just deciding on, you know, which brand that they're going to choose. So they're doing comparison searching and things like that.

4:19But that's only going to take you so far because, you know, like I said, a huge part of your total addressable market hasn't even decided that they have your pain point yet. So as you scale, you need to start balancing those two things, performance and brand, so that you don't oversaturate the bottom of the funnel to the point where you don't have anywhere to grow. I think the trickiest part about this is that you need to figure out what the payback period is for people who are not in market yet because they're not ready to convert by the very definition right away. So you are going to be spending on marketing to reach them, but they might not be ready for the next six months or a year.

5:02So it's really about figuring out which different niche to target or which different channel to use that has a payback period that you can sustain because it's all about managing your unit economics and your cash flow so that you can keep investing and scaling your business.

5:18John Lee Dumas:Let's talk about going from zero to one and then, of course, one to 10. So from your experience, Patrick, what are the biggest differences going from zero to one versus one to 10? And where do most founders just over and over again get that wrong? I've done a bunch of growth consulting with founders and early stage startups. And I would say that the thing that I hear most often is very specific questions about channels. Like I think that founders hear about SEO. They hear about Facebook ads when they start doing research around marketing. And they think that they need to dive into one of those channels to get their first customers.

5:57But actually, my advice is usually that going from zero to one is more of a sales job. and you're doing things that aren't built to scale. You're really just trying to find customers in any possible way. So there's a lot of like famous examples out there from like startup lore of like Pinterest going to the Apple store to put them on the browsers inside of the Apple store and just doing like crazy things that don't scale. And at zero to one, you're just basically trying to find your initial customers and then actually have a conversation with them, figure out what their likes are and their dislikes are, how they interacted with your product, and build the product in a way that will satisfy what they need and solve their pain points.

6:44And going from 1 to 10 is a completely different challenge because at that point, it's more about finding channel market fit. And I think the area that a lot of founders get wrong if they're already at the 0 to 1 stage and they're looking to go from 1 to 10, is that they want to try a whole bunch of channels because they think that that's the best way to grow their product. Maybe they're looking at, like I mentioned, SEO, but also Google Ads and Facebook and content marketing and a whole other bunch of things that they've heard of. But actually, they should, after going from zero to one, focus on one channel, maximum two, and get that business model working.

7:26like understand the unit economics, the CAC, the return on ad spend, and turn that channel into a scalable channel because you can go a very long way with the right channel and the right business model. So it might carry you even for two, three years before you even have to look into another channel. And obviously I'm generalizing. This isn't for every single business model out there type of business. but for most businesses going from one to 10 is about finding one or two sustainable channels that you can grow and scale your business with instead of trying to spread yourself too thin and, you know, going, um, trying to try to, uh, go across too many channels where you won't have all the experience and the skills that you need.

8:14And it'll basically be a distraction from where you should be just focusing on the thing that's really helping you grow until you're at a size where you can hire more specialists and scale into other channels.

8:28John Lee Dumas:I think that's a really funny story you brought up about Pinterest going into Apple stores. Because rewind the clock, 14 years, I launched Entrepreneurs on Fire. 14 years ago, over 5 ,000 episodes ago, I went into my local mall in Maine and I went into the Apple store and on every single Apple phone, I went to the podcast app. I followed and subscribed to entrepreneurs on fire. And I clicked auto download on like probably 100 phones. Like my girlfriend at the time was now my wife. She was like, you are absolutely crazy. You need to leave. They're going to kick you out of here. And I'm like, well, if they ask me to leave, I'll leave.

9:04John Lee Dumas:But like, I'm going to keep doing it till I'm just going to keep doing this. And like, literally I did that Because Fire Nation, sometimes you just have to get a little kickstart and you got to figure out how you're going to do it and you make it happen. And then guess what? I was getting all these downloads. The apps, the chart started picking me up. I was going up the chart. So then I was getting organically found. And then the snowball effect just happened. And sometimes you need to put in the work and put in the effort and go a little guerrilla marketing to make things happen. And we have a lot more to talk about on these topics when we get back from thanking our sponsors.

9:37John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, ideas are exciting, but systems will allow you to create freedom. That is where High Level comes in. High Level allows you to build and run your entire business from one platform. Website builder and hosting, funnel and landing pages, email marketing, automation and workflows, calendar booking, payments and subscriptions, even course and membership hosting. Everything works together seamlessly. Plus, award-winning 24-7 support, so you are never stuck. And when you go through my link at highlevelfire.com, you unlock my full bonus stack, a 30-day free trial of High Level with full access, a private 50-minute coaching call with me, weekly live office hours with me, a digital copy of my book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, my 50 Days to Something execution roadmap, and more.

10:23John Lee Dumas:Stop piecing tools together. Start building momentum. Visit highlevelfire.com and start building your something today. Hey, Fire Nation, are you ready to create something special in just 50 days? If you just thought, yes, then check out my free YouTube series, 50 Days to Something. Every video is short, clear, and built to move you forward one intentional step at a time. Clarity, offer, validation systems, momentum. By day 50, you are not working on something. You have built something, something to be proud of. And this is completely free on my YouTube channel right now. If you're done letting weeks just drift on by, visit eofire.com slash YouTube.

11:07John Lee Dumas:That's eofire.com slash YouTube and press play on day one. 50 days will pass in the blink of an eye. The only question is whether you'll still be thinking or finally building something special. Patrick, we're back and I want to talk about creator-led growth, like growth from a creator. So there's a lot of noise around podcasts and influencers, but what actually drives revenue versus just vanity metrics? Creator growth has absolutely exploded in the last several years. It was, you know, already a lot of people were using it for marketing from the early, you know, podcast days, but it was more of like the wild, wild west.

11:48And now it's become a more mature category. And it's been a big growth driver for the marketing that we do at Hostinger. And what we find is that authenticity and the actual creator that you work with is a huge part of what can make or break a campaign. And also the way that you integrate into their content. So there's multiple different ways that creator growth can work. It can be used for performance marketing and for brand marketing. So it can actually accomplish both of the goals at the same time. And depending on the format that you use, those different goals can be accomplished. So for example, if your goal is performance marketing and you're trying to drive revenue instantly, it's more important to be integrated organically into the content so that someone who's watching maybe a tutorial or something like that and following along step by step

12:43John Lee Dumas:is ready there at sign up. And, you know, you can then show how your product is an integral part of the workflow or whatever the topic is, and then give them, you know, discount code and a call to action so that they can convert there on the spot. And that works especially well on YouTube, which tends to be a really strong performance channel for creator growth. But if you are looking to do brand growth, that also can work, but it tends to be a different strategy. So with brand growth, it's more so looking at more like simple integrations or mid-rolls where you are going for max reach. Like you're trying to reach as many people as possible with the right messaging at the right time.

13:23And not all those people will be ready to convert. But again, going back to what I mentioned earlier, you will reach some people that are ready to convert. And also in the next several months, you'll build up that longer tail of people that will know about your brand and that will compound over time. and those are kind of the two main ways of doing creator growth. Both of them serve different purposes, but the thing that's common across both of them is finding a host who is very authentic and can talk about your products in a way that really does it justice, basically. So it's kind of a bit of intuition.

14:02You know it when you hear it, but you want to look for someone or creators who will take the time to, you know, get to know the product a little bit and ideally use it. That's like the best case scenario. Obviously that's difficult when you're just starting up and no one's using your products yet, but when you can find someone who uses your product, that's like a perfect scenario. And, you know, it's all about trust. It's like, you know, with podcasts, it's like a two way kind of conversation that you're listening into. there's that you know post-social benefit where you feel like you're in a living room with them and having a conversation so when they mention your product it's kind of an implicit endorsement in the sense that you know they um are a trusted voice that you listen to regularly and by them recommending a endorsing a brand it tends to mean that they've vetted it and there's that kind of subconscious understanding that that host that you're listening to or that creator wouldn't recommend, you know, ideally a product that they don't recommend in real life.

15:04So that's a big part of it. And then in terms of vanity metrics, what I would say is, you know, it's super important that you have your measurement framework set up. So whether that's, you know, data warehouse or some sort of tracking system to see that your integrations are getting the targeted goal, whether it's clicks or conversions, and then calculate, you know, make sure that you're hitting your goals, whether those are based off of CPM, which tends to be how a lot of people price out creator growth based on the average views. And make sure that you're not just spending on noise. So noise I would describe as like, yes, you may get a ton of views.

15:45Maybe you're sponsoring a video that gets 100 ,000 views. But if you're not seeing anything in terms of signal like clicks, but ideally conversions and leads and free trials, then that just means that you're not reaching, you know, the right audience. Maybe it's because you didn't focus on the right topic or you're not focused on the right category or you haven't chosen the right creators and found the right partnerships yet. But essentially, you know, creator growth has been a huge and growing market. And I think that the main thing is just to start testing different creators because it's also a bit of a numbers game and you want to try working with a lot of different channels to see which ones stick and then basically doubling down on your winners and cutting your losses.

16:29John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, I've been doing Entrepreneurs on Fire, like I mentioned, for 14 years, over 5 ,000 episodes. And I can vouch for what Patrick's saying is I have never had a sponsor who I haven't personally vetted and who I don't personally endorse. So it does give it that implicit endorsement by having a partner. Like, for instance, how Hostinger is a partner of Entrepreneurs on Fire. And I know they're a great service. I know they're a great team and I've utilized their services before. And I know that if anybody in Entrepreneurs on Fire world, Fire Nation uses them, they will love them because it's a great company and they over deliver.

17:03John Lee Dumas:So this is just a very powerful conversation to have around all of this stuff. And I want to talk about the new builder economy. So Patrick, with AI and no code tools absolutely exploding. And I mean exploding. You said the launching is no longer the bottleneck. So what the heck is? Interesting. So a lot of people would say distribution right now. And I think that is a big part of it because as products become easier and easier to build, it means that there's more competition, right? There's more products. So therefore there's less, fewer people to do marketing from. So actually building distribution is a big part of that.

17:43But I guess I would kind of also, even though I know it isn't easy to launch, I would also say that maybe it's not just about distribution, but it's actually taking the first step. So I know that a lot of your audience knows about AI tools and no-code tools and probably are very tech savvy. But at the same time, I mean, I talk to beginners constantly. we're at Hostinger, we talk to our customers from the CEO all the way down to the whole organization. We regularly take calls with our customers and ask them about their experiences with our products. And even though, you know, a lot of our customers are using our products, they're still very much beginners and they have a lot of beginner questions.

18:29And I think like that's given me a lot of insight into the way that people build products now with these new tools and just kind of like the confidence that they get from having these conversations and like learning about the tools. But in the early days, like I think, you know, people were, when I was starting out, for example, I guess WordPress was probably the first CMS I used. And even though I heard all about it, like how easy it was to use and everything. I was still kind of nervous to get in there and actually make changes. And I think when I built my first website, I hesitated a lot. I did a lot of research and I found like it was easier than I thought, but it still took a lot of time.

19:14I mean, it took hours or days to build a website. I'm one of the e-commerce sites that I built. I remember just several weeks of making that work, creating the content, creating the logo and all of those things. but I think there's still a low level of confidence in people who haven't actually gotten in and tried it on the technical side. And I'd say that like the biggest barrier is really just that first step. It's like anything in life, like whether it's going to the gym or, you know, whatever, it's just actually deciding I'm going to sit down and go, you know, launch the business because you can figure out how to do marketing, like especially with AI.

19:53Now you can figure out, you know, you can create ads with the AI, you can create, you know, content with AI, but actually like, you know, it's the best time ever to, to create a product. And I think that the barrier for a lot of people I speak to is just really like actually trying to do it and taking that first step because it's, it's shockingly easy now to actually get an MVP up and running. Um, and you know, I remember like 10 years ago, that was something that completely, killed startup ideas. And you'd have to try to find a CTO. You'd have to maybe find an MVP agency if you raised some money.

20:32And now you can just sit down at a laptop by yourself, create a spec document and launch a startup in hours or a weekend, and then just get it out there to people, get their feedback, and you're off to the races.

20:47John Lee Dumas:It truly is incredible, Fire Nation. So there's no excuse for you not to sit down and just come up with an idea that you're passionate about that also solves a real problem in a growing industry and execute. So Patrick, bring us home, brother. You do some great work all over the place. And I mean, you're really having a lot of fun with your current focus right now. So tell Fire Nation a little bit more about what exactly it is that you do, how you help entrepreneurs, and then we'll say goodbye. I work as a country manager for Hostinger, which for the US, UK, Australia, and Canada, which essentially is like a CMO of those countries.

21:23And Hostinger exists to build for products to democratize tech and make powerful products easy for non-technical people, easy to use. So my job is all about getting our products in the hands of founders and entrepreneurs so that they can start building their business. and whether that's talking to a customer on a day-to-day basis and hearing about their pain points and then relaying product feedback to the team so that we can make the product even better for them or if it's creating a campaign that helps us reach entrepreneurs that don't know that we exist and that there's an amazing option to use a product like Hostinger that has everything built in and it's affordable to start launching their business.

22:11that's basically our mission. You know, we've got 5 million people using Hostinger, but we'd like to get the message out there to as many people as possible that, you know, it's never been a better time to start a business.

22:22John Lee Dumas:Well, Fire Nation, that is the absolute truth. It has literally never been a better time to start a business. And of course, we have partnered with Hostinger to get the word out. So if you want to head over to hostinger.com slash onfire, if you use the code onfire, you're actually going to get 20 % off, 20 % off. So definitely make that happen. It's the best deal around hosting her.com slash on fire and build your site today, build your future today, build your freedom today because you are fire nation and fire nation, you take action. So Patrick, I want to say thank you for what you do. And I know that fire nation knows that they're the average of the five people they spend the most time with and fire nation, you've been hanging out with PB and JLD today.

23:05John Lee Dumas:So keep up the heat and for links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com, type Patrick in the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up. And Patrick, thank you for sharing your truth, knowledge, and value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute your brother and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Patrick for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, are you an entrepreneur on fire who's looking to share your amazing message with the world? If yes, we are now accepting applications for EO Fire. So to learn more about becoming a guest, visit eofire.com slash guest and I'll catch you there or on the flip side.

23:40John Lee Dumas:Stop duct taping your business together. High Level runs your website, your funnels, email, automation, scheduling, payments, and memberships all in one place. And when you sign up at highlevelfire.com, you get a 30-day free trial plus my exclusive bonus stack that includes weekly office hours with me and much more. Visit highlevelfire.com, highlevelfire.com. Fire Nation, are you ready to build something special in the next 50 days? Check out my free YouTube series, 50 Days to Something. Short and strategic step-by-step videos by me, JLD. On day 50, you'll have a valuable asset. And the best part is it's completely free.

24:20John Lee Dumas:Visit eofire.com slash YouTube and start day one today.

24:31Thank you.