IAM170- Founder and CEO Helps Entrepreneurs Build The Right Products

Jay Gibb is a former software engineer, now the founder and CEO of B2B SaaS company CloudSponge. Together with his team, Jay has helped thousands of businesses drive growth over the last 20 years. With a unique blend of tech expertise and soft skills, Jay is an expert at helping entrepreneurs across all industries build the right products to reach a larger customer base and boost growth.

• CEO Hack: Hiring a podcast agency- Interview Valet
• CEO Nugget: Routine of reaching out to customers to find out their painpoints, how they're getting value out of our services and generating case studies.
• CEO Defined: Fire yourself from doing tasks and quickly find someone who is a specialist to do it.

Website: https://www.cloudsponge.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaygibb/

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Transcription

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:26

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Jay Gibb of CloudSponge. Jay, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Jay Gibb 0:36

Thank you, Gresh.

Gresham Harkless 0:36

Awesome. And what I wanted to do was read a little bit more about Jay so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. And Jay is a former software engineer now the founder and CEO of a B2B SaaS company cloudSponge. Together with his team, Jay has helped 1000s of business owners drive growth over the last 20 years with a unique blend of tech expertise and soft skills. Jay is an expert at helping entrepreneurs across all industries build the right products to reach a large customer base and boost growth. Jay, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Jay Gibb 1:07

Let's do it.

Gresham Harkless 1:08

Let's do it. So first question I had was to hear a little bit more about your CEO story, what led you to start your business?

Jay Gibb 1:14

Sure. So the origin story of Cloud Sponge started with consulting, so me being an employee and then partner agency, like, basically like a software development shop, it was a piece of software that we were building that just didn't exist, there some source packages that did address book importing, which is what Cloud Sponge does, and I guess we'll get into that next.

And there were lots of people, developers mostly out there sort of searching for answers that we were searching for, as well. And we kind of noticed that this thing that we had to build that we felt should be available as a SaaS tool just wasn't out there. And there was a gap in the market.

So we just decided to take what we had built for ourselves and put a price tag on it and put it out there and see if anybody wanted to buy it. And that was about eight years ago. So since then, I've sort of learned to be a CEO. I didn't start off as one. And then, now eight years later, where we're a thriving company, that's, it's got tons of customers.

Gresham Harkless 2:24

Awesome, awesome. awesome. Yes, great to hear, and true entrepreneurial form, where you see an issue, you see something that hasn't been created. And rather than just saying, hey, I think somebody should create it, you decide to create it yourself. So definitely happy that you did that. And now I wanted to hear a little bit more about what you touched on tell us a little bit more about Cloud Sponge, what exactly you guys are doing

Jay Gibb 2:42

Right, So Cloud Sponge is software that you install on your website. And what it does is it allows your users to access and search and share address book records from their address books with your website without leaving your website. So most of the time, that's for, places where you have to create a recipient list. So maybe it's a recipient list for an E-card that you're sending to your family or an event that you're inviting people to or a coupon you want to send to your friends and referral programs, those types of things.

And, the typical user experience that most people see most of your listeners have certainly experienced is, please enter a comma-separated list of email addresses here, right or something really archaic, very thoughtful, right? forces your users to switch to a different tab or a different window and copy and paste sort of manually create a list or for things that are sort of longer Recipient lists like event invitations and holiday cards, they'll even have like instructions that teach your user how to go off the website and create a spreadsheet and export as a CSV and what the heck's the CSV mean, it solves that problem. It basically allows people to access through Google Contacts, Yahoo Contacts, outlook.com, office 365, AOL, and all the different places where people store their contacts, but allows them to access those places without leaving your website so that they can build those Recipient lists sort of longer and easier and without getting frustrated.

Gresham Harkless 4:13

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Yeah, I think back to the ways that I've done is like 7000 or 8000 steps, it seems like where you have to make sure you download it from Gmail, then upload it here and then do that. And then you forget that you didn't put the commas are you supposed to put semi-colons or whatever it is, but it is great that you guys seem to have developed something that is a lot easier for people to use to accomplish the ultimate goal, which is like do you seem to be able to send something to the people in your inbox?

Jay Gibb 4:39

Yeah, right. And that's how we earn like what you were when you said in the intro there, that we're helping companies grow faster, mainly because this is usually a primary part of our customers like a growth machine. It's a key cog in the wheel of growth to get more referrals or to sort of, distribute their content more widely. Things like that. And so it's really a key part of tons of tons of growth. And our customer base.

Gresham Harkless 5:05

Yeah, it makes perfect sense. And anytime you can save time that is of extreme value to anybody that is an entrepreneur or business owner. So definitely appreciate you for doing that. And now I want to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And this could be what you might have already touched on, but just kind of your distinguished era, what do you feel kind of sets you or your organization apart

Jay Gibb 5:22

Secret sauce? Well, I mean, I think for us, niching down has been a big part of our secret in terms of, you know, throughout this journey, we've been pulled in those very specific directions that have already talked about, like the specific direction of the referral program, or the specific direction of ecard Recipient lists. And I'll have somebody that I want to sell my product to who says Man, like, if only you just also had like a unique link generator and the ability to send these emails, then I could use you for my entire referral program.

And we get pulled in the direction of building those things and sort of losing focus, by getting too broad and sort of trying to please everybody. For us, like saying no to all that stuff. And staying niche down into just, we want to be the best single point of integration for the world's address books, period. And what our customers do with those address books is up to them, we're not getting get involved in all those really specific use cases, we're just going to make sure that we have something that supports them.

And then I'll refer that business out, like if they want a referral program platform, then I know a lot about that, I'm happy to tell you all about the different referral program platforms that exist. And I'll even mention which ones are already integrated with Cloud Sponge, but I'm not going to build that for right.

And so I think for us, it's been a really powerful thing, niching down and staying really focused on this, because it's allowed us to actually have an appropriate experience or an appropriate product for much bigger organizations that would never buy a referral program platform off the shelf, but they because they're gonna build that themselves. But this is one feature of the thing that they're gonna build that they definitely don't want to build, they definitely want to outsource this one feature.

And so by staying really focused on that, we've allowed ourselves to sort of go upmarket and break into much, much bigger companies that have engineering organizations of hundreds of people. And they just realized that this would be a massive waste of resources for them to build this one feature.

Gresham Harkless 7:21

Yeah, and I love that you mentioned that because this idea of niching down is incredibly huge. Because if you do something better than anybody else, then even if they try to, take those resources and try to create it, they might start to scratch the surface. But because you've been doing it for such a strong period of time, and because you've been so successful at it, they usually won't be able to do it at the level that you are. So they might even just say why don't we just use Clouds Sponge instead? Yep, absolutely. I love that.

So now I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an app or book or habit that you have, but it's something that you feel makes you more effective and efficient as an entrepreneur or business owner.

Jay Gibb 7:55

Well, one of the things that I think I've done the most of those CEOs and founders that I know haven't done is hiring a podcast agent. And that's the reason why I'm talking to you today. It's the reason why I'm able to sort of reach out to your audience and talk about what I do. I think a lot especially the founder CEOs like me, the SMBs, and startups in the smaller groups aren't aware that this is a thing, right?

So you know, for me, I use a service called interview valet, there are probably about 8 or 10 other ones that I evaluated on my journey to choosing them, and I'm happy with them. But it's for me, it's great because I get to describe to them who I am and what I do, and what kind of people I want to speak to or reach out to. And they do all the work to find guys like you they do all that and really all I really need to do is show up on time have a good microphone and internet connection and put myself on the calendar. And that's it. Like they handle everything for me. And it's a really powerful thing. I think more CEOs should do it.

Gresham Harkless 8:56

Yeah, absolutely. And as we talked about before, anytime you have any way you're able to kind of save any type of time where you don't have to go through and do the research on Google try to find those people but you have somebody like Tom and interview valet who was in episode number 11 By the way, who has the opportunity to really kind of niching down and helping to save you time so that you can focus again on what you do the best

Jay Gibb 9:16

Yep.

Gresham Harkless 9:17

Awesome, awesome, awesome. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget and this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice if you can happen to a time machine what would you tell your younger business self

Jay Gibb 9:25

I got a couple of things that fit into that category. But one of them that I think here audience might get value out of is case studies. I feel like if I could go back to when we first started Cloud Sponge when we first got our first 5 or 10 paying customers that we're getting value out of the service and I was really happy and everybody who worked here it was really like a relief to get those customers and get some money coming in the door is like that proves that we were onto something I wish that I had done gotten into the routine of doing case studies with those people and reaching out to them and asking them to tell me like, What was your thought process before you discovered us? Like, what were the problems that you were trying to solve? And why did you start searching for this thing that we sell?

And then getting through unpacking how they're getting value out of our service from our company, and writing all that down, even if it's just a write it all down internally for ourselves, and not even to publish it on a website or a blog. Although that's, that's the logical outcome, there was so much that we learned from the case studies that we started doing,

I wish I had done them sooner, like got into pain points and anxieties and value, like where we were actually delivering value was on the growth side, or in the time-saving side, or the ROI calculations. And all these things that were sort of opaque for us for a long time became really clear and transparent once we started doing a case study, so I wish I'd started doing those from the get-go.

Gresham Harkless 10:57

Yeah, that makes sense. And I imagine it probably was instrumental in you kind of building in, like you said, niching down and creating and developing the even greater product as you be able to do. I imagine those case studies were pivotal in that.

Jay Gibb 11:10

They were and also they were pivotal for figuring out what we should be writing about on our blog, and what words we should be using to describe our product on our homepage. And it just informs so much in terms of the rest of the marketing machine that like it was a big mistake not to do them sooner.

Gresham Harkless 11:29

Yeah, that makes perfect sense well as great insight and a great example of a CEO nugget. And now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of being a CEO, and we're all gonna have different, quote-unquote, CEOs on this show. So I wanted to ask you, Jay, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Jay Gibb 11:42

Well, coming in from the perspective of a founder, CEO, or like an SMBC, I think it's different from if you're talking about, like, CEOs of giant organizations, or very large organizations, but for me, it's been about firing myself from every job at the company as quickly as I can, basically, as soon as I figure something out, and I do it, and I repeat a process, and I find a way that works for us.

And I figure out how to answer a question or how to build a thing or how to do a task, my job as a CEO is to fire myself from doing that and hire somebody else to do it, so that I can move on to the next thing so that I can sort of block and tackle and be the first person to take on every challenge.

And then once we've done that, like, get somebody else to do that and find people to do those things that are way better at that than I am find specialists find individuals that have a certain passion for those types of things. And every time I fire myself, I make sure that I level up that role with somebody who's much better than I was. And that's been working for me.

Gresham Harkless 12:46

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And I definitely think has an incredible perspective, especially as you said, as a founder, of the company to be able to do that and understand the long-term goal that you have, and be able to bring those people in to help you reach that goal. So Jay, I truly appreciate you for taking some time out of your schedule. What I wanted to do was pass you the mic so to speak, to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and our listeners know and how best they can get a hold of you.

Jay Gibb 13:10

Oh, you can reach me on CloudSponges.com Just click the chat bubble. And kinda if I don't get it myself, somebody will get it for me. Now the one thing I would ask is for your listeners, like if you're out there using a website, and they're making you type in email addresses and create Recipient lists using CSV uploads and spreadsheets and comma-separated lists, just tell them about us. Like tell them about Cloud Sponge and ask them as a user of their system that we're out there and make sure they know we're out there. I'd really appreciate that.

Gresham Harkless 13:37

Yeah, I think everybody will appreciate it. Definitely a huge time saver. So, Jay, I appreciate you for creating that and obviously, I appreciate your time today and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Jay Gibb 13:47

Very good. Thanks, Gresham.

Outro 13:48

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co

I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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