Unstoppable Marketing Strategy with TK Kader

Damon Pistulka  00:01

Hey, there you go, Damon. All right, everyone, it is Friday, and you know what that means. It is time for manufacturing, e commerce, success. And I am Damon Pistulka, one of the CO hosts. We are so excited today because we’re going to talk, be talking today, unstoppable marketing strategy with TK Kader here today, I am so excited I can’t even talk right I’m going to turn it over to my friend Curt Anderson, right over there, co host with the most and the best hair in the house.

Curt Anderson  00:31

Take it away. Curt Damon, thank you, dude. Happy Friday, everybody. So man, what an honor, what a privilege we’ve got. TK Kader, in the house. TK, happy Friday. How are you doing? Happy

TK Kader  00:44

Friday, guys, I’m so I’m so pumped to be here, and I love the energy. So thank you for having me on this Friday, man, I

Curt Anderson  00:50

tell you, Damon, this is a privilege, you know, and I have. TK, he doesn’t even know this, so, so we’re new to each other, but like here, he’s right here on my phone. I’ve got the accelerator, the unstoppable life accelerator is right here in my phone. It’s right, I’m with TK all the time. So guys, do us a favor, drop a note in the chat box. Let us know where you’re coming from. You want to connect with TK on LinkedIn or any of his socials. We’re going to be showing some examples. So, TK, you are just a fierce, fierce entrepreneur, software guy, all about the sass. We’re gonna dive into that before we get into every all the magic that you’re performing today. I’m gonna go back in time a little bit. Okay. TK, when you’re a little guy growing up, just a little guy, when you’re a little guy growing up, who was your hero? Who did you look up to, respect, admire, who just showered you with the unconditional love? Who was your hero? Yeah,

TK Kader  01:43

oh, man, I would say my dad. Honestly, my dad was an entrepreneur. He moved to this country when he was 40 with me, my brother and my mom and started a company, which is kind of insane, because I’m 41 right now. That’s like me moving to China right now. Like, yeah, with my family, and, like, starting a family. And so I always admired him for that he was, he’s always been a really positive influence in my life. And he showed me that you can dream big and go after it, right? And that, honestly, that inspired me to become an entrepreneur myself. I would not, I would not do anything else at all. So yeah, that’s how it started. And then as I got older, I’d say it was Iron Man. For the longest time, every kid has, like, the superhero that he can code and he can fight crime and he’s, like, super cool. And as I’ve gotten older, this is an important distinction. I’ve started to realize that I actually want to be Tony Stark and not Ironman.

02:46

Yeah, yeah. Distinction.

TK Kader  02:51

Tony Stark’s I was way more fun.

Curt Anderson  02:53

So right, right. Got all the toy. I couldn’t agree with you more. What a great so let’s circle back to Dad. Dad’s name, please. Ken Kader. Ken Kader, and what was his business?

TK Kader  03:06

He was one of the early guys that started the prepaid calling card industry, early 90s for the South Asian population. So we immigrated to New York City, and so he was one of the first folks that started a prepaid calling card business. Before it got really weird, he was one of the pioneers to just help people call back home at affordable rates, which was really hard to do at that time. Yeah,

Curt Anderson  03:33

I tell you, that is so you know, and it’s no surprise that you have a business unstoppable. Damon, I mean, just think of the courage that it takes to leave a country come to another country. You’re going to go to New York City and start a business with your kids and your wife, and just what, How admirable. So TK, give a big give a dad a big shout out from us, and just how admire. You know, what an inspiration he is, and how, like, it’s just in your DNA, so you can’t even help yourself. So let’s go here. I believe you’re RPI grad, if I have that correct, right? Yeah, that’s right. So afterwards, you start a little software company. You’re at Bridgewater, if I’m not mistaken, that’s right. Then you end up with a little software company. Tell us a little bit about your journey. How did you know that you were going to be an entrepreneur? Why? Why’d you get into the SAS? Let’s, let’s hear about your, your early passion, yeah,

TK Kader  04:24

I just love computers. I learned how to code when I was 10 years old, and I remember, like, at around age 14, I built a piece of software and I burned it on a CD. It was like a custom software, and I did something very specific for one of my dad’s clients, yeah, and I sold it to him for 40 bucks. I like, like, you want this? He’s like, Yeah, absolutely, I want this. Like, cool, 40 bucks. And gave me two $20 bills, and I was hooked. Like, that was first, yeah, I realized I could code something, and then people wanted it. Like, people would pay for it, right? Um. And I think ever since then, I was hooked, ever since then, I just all I really wanted to do was create really great products that people love, and that ended up becoming my career. And fast forward to today, like I still do that, yeah, and I think, like, it’s important distinction where you I don’t like just creating products. Every product that I’ve been blessed with being able to create, I’ve had people write in saying, Man, I love this thing. And love is a weird word for a piece of software, but that’s the bar and it takes there’s a huge difference between just creating software creating software that people just love. And that’s when I was hooked. Well, I

Curt Anderson  05:41

love, you know, so avid Fowler, big fan of yours. And you constantly say, nobody wants software. You just want solutions. You know, nobody wants software. And I just, I think that’s such a brilliant line. And again, you know, it could be any anybody out there, whatever you know, your entrepreneurial journey is the solution that you provide, you know, like, are they? Do they really want that product or that widget, or, like, you know, I just need a solution. I have a problem I’m trying to solve. Let’s dive into, I believe. I don’t know if you’re in college when you get your first business, you know, started, but talk, lead us up to tout app. And I’d love for you to share who, what is tout app, and how did you what problem were you solving then? Yeah,

TK Kader  06:18

yeah. So toutapp. This was Ted up. Started around 2010 so like 14 years ago. That was my, one of my first big businesses that I created. It was super simple. When it started, it was idea that in order to go create a lead or generate opportunities, you got to email someone before it was just cold calling or just waiting for someone to come in. But you the fact that he could cold email someone was still new, relatively new. The problem was, if you cold email someone once, you don’t really know, you can’t really turn that into real opportunity. You gotta do like seven touches, and you gotta follow up. And so that’s what toutapp was. It created software for salespeople where it would say, cool. If you want to go cold email this person, you should do a cold email. And then it evolved over time to you should also cold call them. You connect with them on LinkedIn. And here’s a whole plan on how to really, really pursue someone, to turn them into a real prospect and an opportunity. And toutapp was one of the first pieces of software that helped you streamline all of that. And we started. It started my second bedroom. I kind of put it out there as an engineer, and then it grew to about 100,000 salespeople on the platform. We raised venture capital from Andreessen Horowitz. We grew the company, and then we sold it to a market leader called Marketo. So that was kind of like one of my first wins in software, right?

Curt Anderson  07:47

And for friends out there, Marketo is part of Adobe, is that correct? Yeah,

TK Kader  07:53

when I sold the company, I thought I was done. I’m like, Cool. I’m gonna see you guys later. But they were like, look, we’re turning around the company that just gone private. They were a public company. They went private. They added us onto their platform, and so they added me to the executive team, and we did a two year transformation. There a lot of fun stories from that, and then we sold that to Adobe, and that was a really cool experience to get that double win from that,

Damon Pistulka  08:22

right? Yeah, oh, very cool.

Curt Anderson  08:24

Gosh. You know that that is, you know, two birds with one stone, my friend, that was, what a, what a great win. We if you could go back in time to to tow that I’d love to hear when, you know, when did you finally realize, like, you know, the tipping point we’re, like, struggling, scrappy entrepreneur to like, Hey, we’re onto something here. We’ve got momentum, we’ve got revenue, we’ve got traction. Like, do you remember that point?

TK Kader  08:47

Yeah, um, it was kind of crazy, because I was actually working on a different product on my nights and weekends. I still had a day job, and I was, I’m like, this thing’s going to be huge, but in order to generate like, sales for that product, I’m like, I gotta email people and get it moving. And I hated doing that, so I created tout app over the weekend to like, be able to sell that first product. Yeah, and so. But then I’m like, well, if I’m gonna build it. Might as well put it out there. So I just put it out there and almost overnight it took off. Obviously, it’s never overnight. It’s because I worked on that product and learned how to do sales and market like I was grinding it on that product. I just copy paste it, changed the name, and created this new product, but everything else was the same. That’s why I took off so quickly. And even then, I was like, I don’t know, this seems, seems like a toy, like this. Other thing is way more complicated. It’s going to be huge. The moment I realized that I should probably shut down everything else and just double down on tout was it was like, one day I rigged my phone where every. The time someone signed up, swipe their credit card. It would make a cash register noise, and it would like be a text message from it said, Mr. Moneybags, and make a cash register. That’s awesome. And there was one day where that thing would not shut up if it’s just like, crank because, you know, all the upgrade flows were built, and people were just like, doing the trial, swapping the credit card. And I looked at it, and there was like, $864 that was like, getting transferred to my account that day alone. And I think that was the moment I’m like, Oh my God, that’s insane. And so I realized that a lot of times we think that it’s going to be this huge, complicated thing that people want. Sometimes it’s the simplest thing, but it solves such an important and urgent problem, it changes like it, like the people are like, you’ll know when you’re selling something people people love and they want, and then they will hunt you down and pay you for it. And that’s when I realized I gotta double down on it, man,

Curt Anderson  11:02

good for you this, I tell you, I love it. And so again, folks, uh, chiming in. You know, follow TK on LinkedIn, go to his YouTube channel. You know, thou, 10s of 1000s of followers on YouTube, enormous amount, you know, hundreds of videos. TK, you come out with a video every single Sunday. I want to just, I’m going to give everybody, just like, a little taste of your expertise, and like how you’ve built these multiple, you know, as a serial entrepreneur, you know, multiple companies, and you know, I’m one of your students. I’ll give you a raving, raving testimonial. You’re an amazing coach, guide, resource, mentor, Sherpa, whatever you want to refer to yourself as you talk about a thing called the thing about the thing, yeah, just, can you enlighten folks say, uh, we Damon, you know, we run a lot of people trying to be a little bit of everything to everybody. You know, I bend metal, I cut steel, or, like, whatever product I produce and, like, well, I could sell to anybody. TK, can you talk a little bit about the thing about the thing, if you would. Yeah,

TK Kader  12:02

the thing about the thing. This is a phrase that I learned during my time at Bridgewater. Bridgewater is the largest hedge fund in the world. They were very unique culture, and have a whole bunch of things that they teach you that is fairly different than anything else. And one of the things I always talked about is the thing about the thing, meaning, no one cares about this one thing. They care about the thing, about the thing so, so the thing I always say in my YouTube videos is No one wakes up in the morning, none of us. And it’s like, I really want to buy some software today. Like no one wants that. However they do wake up and they think, well, like, Man, I really need to figure out, how do I win more deals, or how do I get more leads, or how do I drive increase my AOV, or increase my conversion rate, like, that’s what they think about. That is the thing about the thing that’s the result that they want. Now, will they buy software in order to solve that? Sure. Will they hire someone to solve that? Sure, that’s the thing. So with entrepreneurs, we are artists, in a way, and so we get obsessed about the thing, the thing we created, and sometimes we forget the thing about the thing, which is what our customers actually care about. So having a distinction between the two just makes you a better entrepreneur, and makes you more successful, because you realize what your customers actually want, and the vehicle you use, or the tool that you use, or the service or the product that you use to deliver that. And there’s a difference between that.

Curt Anderson  13:24

Yeah, I just love that. Damon, your thoughts on that?

Damon Pistulka  13:27

Yeah, it really is. I mean, we get so tied up, like you said, We’re artists. We you know, whether you’re making a physical product or a software product, you go, this is awesome. It’s so great. Look at how it works, how efficient it is. And at the end of the day, someone goes, You mean, that turns my lights on and off automatically, and you just would spend, you know, three months developing this thing, and you’re like, yeah, it does, but it doesn’t off this. You’re like, Yeah, that’s cool, you know, so that that is, you know, you’re buying that result, buying that solution, buying the the the easier lifestyle, or whatever it is that you’re buying. It’s one

TK Kader  14:04

of the reasons why dead artists have more valuable artwork. Like as artists, we value our art more than the but when we’re dead, there’s no more and people it gets marketed differently. You’ll never Yeah, so the value goes up. Same with entrepreneurs, same with business owners. It’s the same thing. When we get out of our way of what we care about and think about what the customers care about, it changes the game and but if I say that, it’s like, sounds obvious. I’m like, Oh, of course, I care about what my customers think about. But when you phrase it as what’s the thing about the thing. It rewires your brain to think about it in a dramatically different way. It’s like a pattern interrupt to think about like, how do I get you to stop thinking that you know everything to like, Wait, hang on. What is the thing about the thing? It’s like, so it’s a trick. It’s a trick that I use when I’m coaching folks or teaching folks, or even myself to. Reframe how we think about our business.

Curt Anderson  15:02

Yeah, I love that. And again, check out. TK, videos. Go to his YouTube channel, and he gets, he does a deep dive, walks you exactly through it. And I don’t care what space you’re in, that little exercise is so powerful. TK, I want to slide in here. Back to, you know, trying to be everything to everybody. You know, we end up being nothing to no one, jack of all trades, master of none. I one. Another thing that I really admired, that you preach, is the ICP, you know, the ideal customer profile. Just share a little bit for folks and like, how that’s been so critical for your success. Like, just really laser focusing on who that ideal customer is that

TK Kader  15:37

you’re targeting. Yeah, the idea behind the ideal customer profile is you for every business, there’s two things. There’s your total addressable market. That’s everyone that could potentially buy your product at some point. That is a very large circle within that is a very small segment we call the ideal customer profile, that is the set of people that are most likely to buy in the short term. Let’s just say you’re at $1 in revenues and you want to get to $100 like who are the people that are going to get you to 100 and almost always, that set of people are very different than the total addressable market. And that’s when you think about it in that way. You’re not saying your idea is so small. You’re not saying your market’s so small. You’re just saying, like, look, just to get to my next revenue, which part of this total market is more likely to buy, where I can really communicate to them. I can reach them, I can differentiate myself, and I can give a compelling alternative to what their default is, and that’s what we call an ideal customer profile. It’s what is that next stage?

Curt Anderson  16:50

Yeah, I love this. And so again, for entrepreneurs out there that are, you know, challenged, struggling, trying to, you know, not strong and you know Damon, we encounter a lot of folks that are challenged with marketing. You know your your videos are just spot on, on, just really getting down to the basics. Another line that I shamelessly, just completely unapologetically stolen, borrowed from you is, how do you out teach the competition? I believe that’s that’s a line of yours, if I’m not mistaken. Is that correct? Yeah,

TK Kader  17:21

I learned that from Jason, freed of 37 signals. And I’ve like, yeah, exactly. That’s right. And

Curt Anderson  17:28

it’s an I just don’t date. I’m like, it’s in that book, but I’ll tell you, you’ve really done a great job of preaching that, though. Yeah, well, I

TK Kader  17:35

learned it, and it served me so well. I learned it probably, like, 20 years ago from Jason, and I’ve just practiced it. And you were asking me before, like, hey, like, when did you get into the content game? I’m like, I never really thought about being in the content game. I was taught just teach people what, you know, share the journey and lots of good things happen. So before I started my YouTube channel, which now has 400 episodes, over 400 Yeah, I blogged. I blogged. I have a blog that I blogged before I started my YouTube channel. So I used to write down my yearly reflections and what I learned from scaling my company. And even before that, I shared like, Hey, I was working on a landing page. Here’s what I learned. Here’s and what I learned is, if you can, if you can teach people, if you can serve your ideal customers, they’re going to buy from you, it’s the best form of marketing. So that’s what I’ve always believed. That’s what I was taught, and that served me well. So I’m a big believer of if you have competition and you’re targeting an ideal customer profile, if you can serve them, if you can teach them, they’re more likely to buy from you than the competition, even if you charge more. And that’s served me really well, and that’s a core tenet of what I teach in my in my videos and when I coach founders as well. Yeah,

Curt Anderson  18:59

excellent. Well, if you don’t mind, what I’d like to do is I’m going to take a little peek at your YouTube channel for everybody here. Yeah, and I’m showing this for a couple reasons. Number one, strongly encouraging folks to follow you. You have all sorts of courses that people can take. You have a community that people can join. But I also want to just, you know, I’m showing this for, you know, any entrepreneur could really go this direction, just talk a little bit about, you know, your process, your concept of like, how you’re just relentlessly putting out all this content.

TK Kader  19:31

So I will say YouTube is probably like the hardest for content. You know, I think like posting on LinkedIn is one of the most approachable things you can do for if you want to put content out there. Going on Twitter is one of the more approachable things. Blogging is slightly more involved, but still approachable. YouTube is long form content, and so you know, each of the videos are 16 minutes, upwards of 34 minutes. And there’s a sweet spot there. And in order to create a 16 minute video, and I’ve put out one out religiously every Sunday for the last five years, and and to put that out, it takes about one day of work for me and about five days of work for the team that I have, is that, right? Yeah, and, and it’s not what you would think. It’s not crazy editing, although we put a lot of effort into our editing, it’s not crazy graphics, but it’s just creating the content where it really serves the audience. And so for me, I Tuesdays are my filming days, and I start that day starts at 7am with my production team, and then I go and it takes an entire day to film that 14 minute video. Now, obviously the filming itself is not that long that takes, probably like if it’s a 14 minute video, probably 22 minutes, but the work that goes to what I say during those 22 minutes takes the full day to really prep for on top of the prep work that my production team has already done. And we get, I get, I hear from people all the time, like, I like, like, I can’t believe you’re giving this much away for free. And our view has always been like, well, we want to put out incredible content. We want you to make money on the free content and then go, come join our community, our course, our program, coaching, whatever you like, with that money to get even more. Because I tell them, like, we have such a high bar for our free content. Imagine how good the paid tier is. Yeah, that’s, that’s literally how we how we position it, because otherwise you just, you won’t no one wants shitty free content. Like, it’s like, no one’s gonna buy from me if you’re like, Oh, this is the free so you got to pay for the good stuff. This is their shit. It’s like, no, it’s so incredible and free, yeah, and we’ve had people, you really can’t make this up, because we do it this way, because we hold such a high bar, because we take a full day, even for me, to film one episode. We’ve had people that have wired us money. They literally are like, I have made so much money just from your free stuff. I’m just gonna walk I just need to wire you money. Like, sign me up program. I don’t care. I’m good. I just need to send you money and like, you can make that stuff off. Like, honestly and so content. You know, I think we’re in a place right now where everyone wants to be like, Oh, I create content. It’s like, no one wants to consume your content. They really want to learn. So if you’re going to do it, come from a place of service and really, really serve your audience and the rest sorts itself out. Yeah, yeah,

Damon Pistulka  22:54

that’s where you, you know, like you said, really understanding your ICP today and serving them with great, great education,

TK Kader  23:02

yeah, yeah.

Curt Anderson  23:03

And here’s the, here’s the IC, you know, and there’s multiple, but again, you know, check out the volume of these views here. TK, you know, 10s of 1000s of views per video. And, you know, and again, you know, I’m, I’m one of these guys. I probably followed you for a year, you know, every Sunday, you know, I’m like, Hey, where’s TK, here he is. You know, coming out with new information, and just absolutely love it. You have a contagious enthusiasm, wonderful tips and strategies for folks just giving it away. And finally, I’m like, Hey, man, I gotta, I gotta be a part of this, and then pull the trigger. I want to, I want more, and invest in your expertise. So again, I personally, this was a great opportunity for me to thank you for what you’ve done for us and thank you for our business. So this is great. You know, I want, I saw your book down here. I want to give a little shout out to here it is right there. How does somebody punch Sunday in the face? Can you just, yeah, yeah. How? How does somebody go about punching Sunday in the face? I love that title,

TK Kader  24:04

yeah. Um, so after we saw Marketo to Adobe, I took a little bit of time off. I’m like, I don’t really know what I’m going to do next. And, you know, I wanted to start a software company, but I didn’t have an idea, and I was, like, kind of dabbling around. So one of the things I did is I wrote a book. And I wrote a book not about business, but I wrote a book about the personal side of being an entrepreneur, and in the spectrum of me being an entrepreneur, from when I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur, but had a job and I hadn’t quite quit and went to cold turkey and started a company, all the way to when I raised $15 million from the best venture capital firm in the world, and we were scaling our company, there was this underlying thing of the only way my business is going to succeed is if I run my personal life effectively. And when you are not running your personal life effectively. Me, a bunch of things happen. Like you burn out. You get this pit in your stomach on a Sunday afternoon. It’s scientifically proven. It’s the transition into the work week that creates a lot of anxiety for people, and that’s what it’s called, The Sunday jitters. And we all get it, even if we love our jobs. And what I found was the years where I really took care of my personal life, my business did better, the year where the years where I neglected it, my business did not do well. And in a world of hustle culture and grind culture, I think that message of you got to, just like, run yourself as a professional athlete and be effective and get it, get your mindset right that will allow you to be successful as an entrepreneur. Was lost, and so that’s why I wrote the book. It’s not a long book. It’s a very tactical book. You can finish reading fairly quickly, and what you can do is learn essentially how to run your personal life, as well as some of the pro CEOs that are out there, and some actionable tactics that you can follow. And I follow this myself, and one of the biggest things even now, I coach over 500 founders personally, globally, you know, they’ll get a lot of success, and they’ll come back to me. They’re like, Hey, man, I’m like, getting burnt out, or, like, I’m not. I thought there would be a boom, like, I did all this stuff, and I thought, like, I’d feel amazing, but I don’t. And I’m like, so you’re telling me you’re successful, but you’re unhappy. And so one of the biggest things, what that we teach people is, we call this thing the unstoppable Sunday. An unstoppable Sunday is this 15 minute practice that we teach people to do every Sunday, just as a mental trick to get focused on what got what went well, what didn’t go well, what do I do next? It’s very structured way of doing it. I teach that in the book, and that alone has created a lot of positive impact in the world. And our view is like, if we can help entrepreneurs and founders be effective in their personal life, they’re going to create better businesses. Yeah, and then we’re giving them all the tools to build better businesses, or at that point, they’re unstoppable. So that’s kind of a full end to end thing that we do

Curt Anderson  27:22

well again. And I’m sorry to be such a little fanboy, but, you know, so I’ve got my little right here, Damon, so could be a Sunday, could be whatever day, and, you know, I’m at the gym, I’m out, you know, the dog, I’m on a bike ride, whatever it is. And I can just pop in a little, TK, and just get a little little, you know, and I and what I love and what I admire. TK, is like you give such, you know, you’re not talking to talk. You’ve walked the walk. You know, you built nap, you had great success, you know, trans, you know, selling a company to, you know, being part of the team for Adobe, and now you’re just, you know, sharing this expertise, sharing your passion with just such a with integrity and just a genuine, you know, self servant attitude, if you will. And you know, what I love is on top of it, like you’re saying, like, Hey, you can go, you know, be unstoppable. Be that relentless entrepreneur. But you also, like, you know, you have a little tip on like, hey, write your three things of today. And you know, number three, you know, hey, you know, crush, you know, crush it. Get customers. Call mom, yeah, go to the gym, you know, get a haircut, not for me, but maybe for you. But you know, you give, like, those little personal tips on top of, like, hey, go out there and just give everything that you’ve got. But in the same regard, if you’re not taking care of yourself, no, this is worth any of it, right? Yeah,

Damon Pistulka  28:39

and that’s really cool, though, because I’ve, I’ve discovered the same thing over the years, is if you don’t integrate your life and your career the right way, people talk about balance, like they’re one or the other. Hey, let’s be honest. I mean, you were talking about it earlier. Starting a company, you’re working nights and weekends, doing it. You can’t do that. You can’t be an entrepreneur, really, and go, Oh, I turn my clock off at this time, or that you’re, you’re, you’re but what you can do is you can learn to integrate your life and your work and really create like you’re saying, the habits that help us to put Yes, I need to make sure I’m taking care of myself. Yes, I mean, to make sure I’m paying attention to my family like I should, because when that goes to hell, I can’t do what I’m doing at work and or in business, you know? So,

TK Kader  29:28

oh yeah, cool. One of the things on that I’ve also seen is, as entrepreneurs, we are experts at moving the goalpost, so you’ll set a goal and like we are terrible to ourselves where we’re we set a goal. We work, work, work, work, work. As we’re accomplishing that goal, we’ve already moved the goal post to this next thing. Yeah, and so, and we’re so good at that, we’re as good at that as accomplishing goals. So to us, you. Um, we we just feel like we’re failures, because we’re constantly alright, I did this, and like, a lot of times like, I’ll find I’ll be on a coaching call. I’m like, Hey, can we just talk about how you hit like, a million AR when that was a dream. We start working together when you were pre revenue. We’re terrible at that. And so one of the things we started doing is we now actually ship trophies when you hit certain milestones, nice, just to force you to celebrate, because we’re terrible at that. That’s part of what makes us great entrepreneurs, but also part of what holds us back, because if you’re never celebrating even for five seconds, you’re not really going to be able to go the distance because you’ve never congratulated yourself or expressed gratitude. So I think one of the most interesting things is, you know, talking about the mechanics of an ideal customer profile and the thing about the thing, and then also talking about the mechanics of how you think about winning and celebrating. They’re all it’s this alchemy of what makes for successful business people. So it’s super fascinating when you go down the rabbit hole of that, it

Damon Pistulka  31:07

is, it is, that’s really cool, yeah.

Curt Anderson  31:10

And I think one word you’re hitting on the head right there, is gratitude, you know, just really trying to be in that state of mind, you know, Damon and I use the word, you know, how do you how can you be in radical gratitude? Just thank you for the challenges, thank you for the frustration, thank you for the wins, thank you for all of it, you know. And just, really, you know, I know it’s probably a lot of it’s cliche. Let’s dive into you have some new and exciting products I’d like to talk about. TK, so I’m going to pull up instant and instantly. How’s that? I’m going to pull up instant, instantly. And here it is, right here. Tell us a little bit like, how are you making the world a better place with this new platform?

TK Kader  31:45

Yeah, you know, as we mentioned as a couple of things here, one, over the last five years, I’ve taken everything that I learned and I’ve shared videos on how to start and scale software companies. I created my coaching program on how to start a software company, and another coaching program on how to scale software companies. And last year, I was four years in, I had coached north of 400 founders, shipped trophies, and I was like, you know, I wonder if I could do it again. And so I started following the same training that my students go through to develop a software idea and bring it to initial revenues and then scale it. And to my surprise, last year, I came up with two ideas, brought both of them to revenues, and we’re both now actively scaling them. So that’s how this came to be. And I thought that was super important, because we were talking about this, like, no one wants to hire a fat trainer,

Damon Pistulka  32:48

yeah, yeah. So relevant, yeah.

TK Kader  32:51

And so I really wanted to be able to bring a new energy to my videos and my coaching. I’m like, listen the thing that I’m teaching and the framework, like I just applied it. So I’m I’m, like, not uncertain about this, like, I know this works. And it ended up being a double whammy, because everything we teach now we actually, you can use one of our software platforms to implement, yeah, so one of the big things we teach is content marketing, the best ways to stand out in a market and to generate leads is to serve your audience. Biggest things people struggled with when doing content marketing is they didn’t really know how to write the content. They didn’t really know how to capture the leads. They didn’t know how to follow up with the leads. So instant is a content marketing platform that’s AI first, so you set it up. You tell it who your ideal customer is, what you’re offering. And it helps you write the content post daily your entire team. It helps you create the landing page to capture the leads. And as the leads are flowing in, it writes the email for you on how to it reads the leads website, creates a personalized email on your behalf, so you can follow up with the leads and turn them into meetings and revenue end to end. And because it’s so incredible with AI, you get all of that starting at $49 a month, which is an incredible price point, considering you’d have to hire like three people in a marketing to be able to do all of this, right? And on top of that, I’m an engineer first, so I went back into coding for this, not just go to market. Oh, yeah. Again, no one wants to hire a fat trainer. And so I’m like, I’m gonna go all in on this. And so I’m really excited for instant, we’re approaching our 100th customer coming on now, which is incredible. Over I think 18,000 leads generated on the platform so far, using content and you, teaches you and runs the content for you, captures the leads, falls out like all of it is for you, and, and, and so that’s what instant is, and you can get started 49 bucks a

Curt Anderson  34:56

month, right? Congratulations, man. This is a. How does it feel being back in the back in the playing field, if you will. How’s that feel? Yeah,

TK Kader  35:04

you know, when I decided to become a coach, I took that very seriously. I Tony Robbins is the best coach in the world, and so I joined his programs. I got a Tony. I learned how to coach so and coaching is an art form in itself, and so I learned what it takes to coach someone, because it’s not just telling them what to do. Coaching is a completely different art form, and this new element of coaching, plus being in the trenches, challenges you in a whole different way where, you know, I have a lot more empathy for what the founders are going through from just like it’s one thing to coach and say, Well, you really got to do this. And they’re like, oh my god, I really have to do this. And you can’t tell them. You have to get them to say it. That’s part of coaching. But now that I’m in it also, it’s a whole different dynamic of appreciation for what founders go through, because I’m in the trenches with them. It’s a whole different appreciation on the My Teachings. Because now it’s not I did this once I got success, here’s what you need to know, and you should do it now. It’s like I did this once I got success, I coached 500 people on it for five years, and now I did it again, and I’m doing it with you, and you should definitely do this. Yeah, and that level of energy, I’m really grateful to be able to bring to my audience, to my customers, to my clients, because that’s like hard mode. I think, yeah, it feels really good to be able to do that. Yeah,

Damon Pistulka  36:43

yeah, that’s crazy. It’s very cool to be able to do that, because, you know, most coaches you’re going to talk to are going to be there. They may be a coach, but they’re not in the game, and that’s where you’re in the game. So like you said, I just got the bumps and bruises from this. That’s how I learned how to do this. That’s why I’m telling you that you want to do it this way. And I made those mistakes.

TK Kader  37:06

Yeah, yeah. That was, that was the thing. Last year, I realized my students are more successful than most coaches out there, and like most of the SAS coaches out there, like my students are more successful than they are, yeah? So I’m like, Okay, how do I up this even more? And I’m like, Well, I want to be able to do it now. So, so that was, like, that was my thing. And instant, like, and also, like, you know, the thing is, I know not everyone’s in the software industry, but we’re all impacted by software. Yeah, we are with AI. We are in one of the biggest shifts, like of our lives. It’s an incredible time to just be living but also to be in software of what you can do. And so that alone makes it really exciting to be back in the game on building software products that it’s completely different, because it’s like, you know, the pitch is different. It’s like, it’s not like, Hey, you can use this tool to publish a land. It’s like, no, the AI will help you do these three things that are the hardest about content marketing. How do you publish content? How do you determine no lead? How do you follow up on the lead? It’s a different game with software now, and it’s so exciting and how you sell it. So I’m really grateful to be to be able to do this,

Damon Pistulka  38:23

yeah, well, then too, on the backside of it, even creating the code, is a lot different with AI. I mean, yeah, being able to check it and do the things that you can do, it’s just like stuff that you would have to sit around think about, how are we going to do this? What do we have to do? You can go, oh, let’s get some ideas, and then we can take off. Or it can do a lot of

TK Kader  38:41

it for us. Totally, it’s, you know, I’ll tell you, Damon, it was one of the weirdest things where, like, you’re working on something, and you look at the code, and right now, I’m the only engineer on instant megaphone. I have a co founder and a CTO, so it’s half and half. So I built all of instant myself. And honestly, like, the most jarring thing is to look at some other kind of like, I don’t remember writing this. It’s like, it’s like, you know, you’re writing a book. Imagine you’re writing a book and you’re on chapter three, you’re editing a paradigm, and you’re like, I didn’t write this. I agree with it. Yeah, it is a crazy time, even on the creation side of it

Curt Anderson  39:23

as well. That’s hysterical. So alright. TK, let’s go here. You just mentioned megaphone, so that was a great lead in that. Yeah, you have another company that you’ve launched. Please share with us what is megaphone. How are you making the world a better place with this software?

TK Kader  39:38

Yeah? So, like I said, I didn’t know what next company I wanted to start, and I’m like, I’ll just work with 1000 founders, serve people, and we’ll figure it out. And I ended up with two ideas. The end of the day, my entire career has been, how do you get people more leads in pipeline? That’s what people care about the most. Like you go to any business owners I came in. Do you want more? In pipeline there, it’s like, Yes, all right, like, and so turns out there are two big ways to get leads and pipeline today that’s different from 10 years ago, when I started toutapp. 10 years ago, the differentiated way was outbound. Today, outbound has diminishing returns. The two big ways, one is content, and that’s what instant is for. You can launch an instant content funnel like that in like minutes. The other way is to get your customers to introduce you to your future customers. And the thing is, people don’t ask, or they’ll ask once, and then they’ll forget. So megaphone is a referral automation platform. It’ll monitor your customers. It’ll automatically email you. Don’t have to do anything. You just set it up. It runs on your behalf or on your sales team’s behalf. It will email your customer and say, Hey, do you know another person that would get value from our products and services? I pre drafted a referral email for you. Just click on this link, and you can send it out so your customers, just click that button, send it to a friend, and that friend books meetings with your sales team, and it is an incredible platform. We’re seeing about a 10 to 12% referral rate from customer bases. So the bigger the customer base, the more referrals you’re gonna get. The referrals you get have a higher win rate. They buy more. It’s incredible, yeah. And so that’s what megaphone does. And for those of you that are like wondering, like, okay, like, is this gonna work for me. If you hit that launch megaphone button, we have an ROI calculator, so you just put in how many customers you have, what your average deal size is. It’ll estimate for you how much revenue you can generate through referrals. Nice, so that’s what megaphone is. And I’m obviously like, you know, you don’t. You’re not supposed to. You’re not allowed to have favorites with kids. But I love them both. I’m really excited about both of them, honestly. Well,

Curt Anderson  42:10

you know what they say? TK, when it comes to your children, which one’s your favorite? You always say the one with the most earning potential. And so you can look at it megaphone and see which one has the most earning potential. Maybe that would be your favorite. But you know, two wonderful, beautiful kids here that we’re looking at. So this is just super, super exciting. So as you’re going through this process, through this journey, you’re now, you’re so you’re, are you pulling in your community with the with your process? And these two startups? Yeah,

TK Kader  42:39

we teach a lot around content marketing, so before, we used to teach them, and now it’s like, look, you can use whatever you want. You can figure it out. Here’s the templates, but you hit one button and you can launch it with instant. And if you’re an early stage company, instant is the way to go, because they’ll get you more customers. If you are a later stage company, and you’re already doing everything with marketing and sales, megaphone is the way to go, because that’ll get your customers to get you more customers. Yeah. So there are different going back to ICP. We practice what we preach. The ICP is very specific for these two companies, yes, early stage companies that just don’t have marketing. They’re like, I need to get marketing going instant. Like it is a marketing team in a box. They’ll get you cranking with AI for later stage coming. Like, look, we’re good, but we really need something that’s going to help us pull ahead. It’s like, cool. Mobilize your customers. You have a 5000 customers. We want a megaphone deal. This morning, they have about 5000 customers, and now they’re gonna get every single one of them are gonna get an email asking for a referral. Just imagine the math on that is in, yeah. So, so, so that’s how we were. We’re doing it, and we share it. We share this just the same on the YouTube channel. And again, I stay true to, I’ll never do a video where I’m like, you should get megaphone. It’s more like, listen, here are the different ways to grow, and you need to pick which one. Here are the three principles you need to know. Or if you want to do a referral system, here’s the three principles you want the easy bot and use megaphone. So that’s kind of how my role has evolved. Where, for the last five years, I’ve sort of been the framework dealer, and now I give you the framework and also the software, the easy button to to launch it, which I’m really excited about. It’s a lot of fun. That’s

Damon Pistulka  44:28

awesome. That’s awesome. Cool, excellent.

Curt Anderson  44:31

Alright, as we start, and I Damon said he would probably, he probably time, right? So I do have, I have one more share, Damon, I have one more share. So let’s go so unstoppable. TK, just talk a little bit about what’s going on here. What can people take advantage of with your unstoppable program?

TK Kader  44:49

Yeah, what we always record if you run a software company, we just started a B to B program as well. And what. Recommend is you watch the YouTube channel. It’ll teach you how to think about the principles. 400 episodes, completely free. And then, if you want to like work with us, we give you the step by step on how to implement everything that we teach on the channel. So all you need to do is hit that join the Legion button in the top right, and that gives you our different coaching programs that we have. If you’re starting a software company, you have an idea, we have our launch challenge. If you have some revenues, or you have a product built, and you’re getting to the next stage, you grow that’s our flagship, our go to market program. And I work with CEOs upwards of 100 million in ARR right now. So we have our scale program for that. So we have a program, depending on the stage that you’re in, where we give you the step by step on how to implement all the go to market pieces, the sales and marketing pieces to grow your company. Because that’s the that’s the biggest thing holding companies back today. It’s distribution. It’s a noisy world out there. So that’s what we teach in unstoppable

Curt Anderson  46:04

Well, it’s a fantastic program. So alright, we’re going to start winding down. I want to be mindful of your time. I know you’re super busy working with hundreds of entrepreneurs. TK, let’s go here again. You had such an incredible journey at especially at such a young age, you’ve got a long runway ahead of you. You know just your your dedication is just so inspiring, so admirable, on how you’re helping just hundreds and hundreds and probably 1000s, literally 1000s of entrepreneurs in iTest to be one of those. What is the best business advice that you feel that you’ve ever received through your journey that you would love to pass along best business advice that you received.

TK Kader  46:44

Oh, that’s good if you’re just starting out, like, if you’re like baby TK, where you have a job and you want to become an entrepreneur. A lot of times, I think those folks focus on ideas. They’re looking for that great idea. And the biggest advice I ever got that I give every single time when I’m meeting the baby entrepreneurs or the aspiring entrepreneurs, is stop focusing on ideas and choose the problem you want to solve. That little shift as soon as you shift it to like, what’s the problem I’m solving that people have that’s urgent and important? It changes the game for you. So that’s what I would say to the baby entrepreneurs, the ones that are aspiring like, you know, 20 years ago, it was a dream for me to even start a company. For those of you that are in it, that are growing, you know, you’ve got successful businesses, or you’re going through the twists and turns. There’s ups and downs of every business. The biggest advice that I got is to find some form of gratitude. I think that, as I was talking about earlier, it’s really easy to be stressing out about the next milestone. And the reality is when, if the baby version, the baby entrepreneur of you, version of you, like, let’s just say, five years ago or 10 years ago. If they ran into you on a suite and start struck up a conversation with you today, they would be at awe of what your day to day looks like. So here you are obsessing about who you want to be five years from now and as you should be. It’s the minute you think about you from five years ago meeting you today, they’d be so proud of you. They’d be so they’d be like, I want to be that guy. Like, like, they want to be like, how do I take you to dinner? Like, tell me everything. And it’s easy for people to forget that we get so and that’s why we’re who we are, that we are high achievers. We want to get that next goal. That’s that’s why we do what we do. That’s why we’re great at what we want to go out there and slay, but we won’t be able to do that if we don’t have some grace, we don’t have some gratitude, and that’s the greatest piece of advice I got us for a scaling entrepreneur,

Damon Pistulka  48:48

yeah. Man,

Curt Anderson  48:50

dude, drop the mic right there. TK, man, that was phenomenal. Alright, so as we wind down, first off, I want to give a huge, huge, huge. Thank you to tk, I do you know what? I know we’re like way over time, I’m sneaking in one more question for you. I’m sneaking in one more question for our friend. TK, I know you Dallas, by chance. Are you? Are you a baseball fan? By any chance?

TK Kader  49:15

I love baseball. Yeah,

Curt Anderson  49:17

you love baseball. Excellent. Okay, you’re Are you Rangers? Who’s your team?

TK Kader  49:21

I was just at a Rangers game. I’ll be honest. I’m not the biggest follower of sports, but I love going to sporting events, very good, like as live. I’m good. I never watched it on TV. So there’s a baseball quiz I’m going to fail. I’ll tell you right now. So

Curt Anderson  49:36

alright, well, here we go. This quiz. You ready? So alright, the Rangers are playing the dreaded let’s say they hate the Yankees. Everybody hates the Yankees. They’re playing the Yankees. It’s a tie score, bottom of the ninth. Okay? Rangers playing Yankees. Tie score, bottom of ninth. There’s a guy on second base, tie score. The manager like they need a win right now, so the manager turns on the bench and says, T. K cater, grab your helmet, grab your bat, get up to the plate, hit into this winning run. Okay, you with me? Yep. As you grab your helmet, grab the bat, you walk up to the plate. What is your walk up song?

TK Kader  50:19

Oh, man, uh, so I’m playing for the I’m playing for the Rangers, yeah, whoever? Yeah, I think it would be Drake’s starting from the bottom. And here, here we are. Now,

Curt Anderson  50:34

all right,

TK Kader  50:37

I’ll use that to straight to like, look, we’re on a very tense situation. But look, man, this is awesome. I’m about to go put the Yankees out of business. Yeah, let’s go.

Curt Anderson  50:49

Awesome. Answer Man,

TK Kader  50:52

family friendly show, yeah.

Curt Anderson  50:53

Thank you for playing our little game there. So that was great. Answer, man, Dave, you got it? Damon, yeah,

Damon Pistulka  50:59

I got it, yeah. Let’s hear it. Get it going here. All

Curt Anderson  51:03

right, so anyway. TK, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, there it is. There’s your song, right there.

TK Kader  51:09

Thank you guys. Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah.

Curt Anderson  51:11

So, all right, we’ll wind down. So first off, how about a big round of applause for our wonderful guest today. I can’t express my thanks, my gratitude to you, and just thank you for just absolutely smashing a home run for us today. And you know what, Damon, we’re just going to close this thing out, and I’ll pass it off to you. But hey, TK, what we’d love to share with everybody, go out and be someone’s inspiration, just like TK is, for just 1000s of folks out there, and you’re just going to make the world a better place, just like TK is so. TK, hang out with us for one minute. Thank you, Damon, don’t you take it away, my friend.

Damon Pistulka  51:46

All right, everyone. Well, it’s awesome having you here with us today. TK, love the insight, love the fact that you are helping people, but you are in the trenches with your own businesses, so you can help those coaching clients even better. And there’s a lot of valuable information in this show. So go back, if you got in late, go back to the beginning. Start over. And there’s just, you’re gonna, you’re gonna learn a lot of good stuff. And what we talked about today. Thanks everyone for being here today. We’ll be back again next week. B