E19 - Larry Kim (MobileMonkey, WordStream)
b"In this episode we speak with Larry Kim. Larry is the CEO of MobileMonkey, the world's fastest growing Facebook Messenger marketing platform, used by millions of users. \\n\\nListen on RealLifeSuperPowers website: https://reallifesuperpowers.com/podcast/larry-kim-mobilemonkey-wordstream/\\n\\nHe\\u2019s also the Founder of WordStream, the World's largest PPC Marketing software platform, managing over a Billion dollars of ad spend for tens of thousands of customers (acquired by USA Today in July 2018 for $150 Million). He\\u2019s a top contributor to Medium Magazine and CNBC. He\\u2019s received \\u2018Marketer of the Year\\u2019 awards from Search Engine Land, US Search Awards and PPC Hero.\\n\\nIt takes seconds into the interview to sense just how humble Larry is. He\\u2019s super down-to-earth and despite building a very successful unicorn he tells us \\u201cI would argue that I did everything wrong, so this time around I\\u2019d do the opposite to what I did the first time around\\u201d. \\nHis mindset is one of \\u201cif you can dream it, you can do it\\u201d. It\\u2019s clear he\\u2019s not in it for the money, for him it\\u2019s about the challenge. \\u201cI want to see if I can do something twice as big in half the time, or take the company public\\u201d. \\n\\nDespite massive success turning WordStream into a unicorn, Larry feels in retrospect there are many things that he would have done differently and, in fact, plans on doing differently this time around. Some examples:\\n \\nA total addressable market - creating a software that every business could use. He explained that there are about 100M small businesses on Facebook but only about 5M do online advertising. Those businesses were the potential WordStream customers. This time around he wants his product to have a wider pool of potential customers.\\n\\nBe crazy. You get the people and the investors you deserve. Be more aggressive and take bigger risks \\u201cI like to project big bald visions and I wonder if one of the problems was if I wasn\\u2019t bold enough\\u201d. His big dream was to be a 100M USD business, he then thought it was crazy and hilarious but they actually surpassed those numbers significantly. That made him wonder what might have been if they had bigger and more strategic goals.\\n\\nLarry attributes his entrepreneurial success to his mom. She was a piano teacher and as a small kid growing up in Canada he learned everything about marketing sales and product differentiation by observing how she managed her small business. \\n\\nHe went to grad school to study engineering. Being the free spirit that he is it\\u2019s probably not surprising that he had a hard time being part of the system, needing to \\u201cjump through hoops, dealing with assignments and finals and labs\\u201d. \\n\\nAfter graduating he immigrated to the US and worked at a software-related job for a few years. He then quit and started his own marketing consultancy business, his first client being the company he had quit, and from then, on one client referred another. \\u201cAs a 20 year old I was making between 150-200K USD a month, it was pretty crazy I was buying houses and cars\\u201d. When he got to about 10 customers he realised this wasn\\u2019t scalable, so instead of hiring more people he wrote software to automate his \\u201cstupid repetitive tasks\\u201d. He then figured that instead of trying to build a scalable business he can sell the software instead. He cold emailed hundreds of VCs and through that got tens of meetings and eventually 2 offers. \\u201cAnyone who says cold-mailing is useless, just tell them Larry Kim raised 20 million from that\\u201d.\\n\\nLarry shared with us that his friends and family compare him to Forrest Gump. The reason being that as we\\u2019ve learned - he\\u2019s autistic. He says that\\u2019s his superpower as well as his kryptonite. We find this so very impactful and inspiring. It comes to show that everything comes down to mindset. And wow does Larry have the \\u201cright\\u201d mindset if there\\u2019s such a thing. He\\u2019s wired for success and nothing will stop him. He envisions and he executes overcoming whatever is required."