IAM769- Entrepreneur Runs a SaaS Company in the Identity Space

Adam Robinson was born in Houston, Texas, and graduated from Rice University in 2003 with a Bachelor’s degree in Economics.

In 2014, after a decade of working on Wall Street, Adam launched Robly Email Marketing. The business grew to $5 million in revenue in the first two years and by 2017 was awarded #1 in Customer Satisfaction across the entire email marketing space. After proving Robly’s viability, Adam worked to scale the business. After testing and scrapping a few ideas, he and his team launched GetEmails, a SaaS company in the identity space, in 2019.

Adam was recently given the title best-selling author with the release of his book Permission (Sh) Marketing, which explains his controversial views on privacy and identity.

• CEO Hack: Checklist
• CEO Nugget: Product focus is key
• CEO Defined: Being a leader, a visionary of your work, and taking responsibility

Website: https://getemails.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-robinson-64409348/

https://www.amazon.com/Permission-marketing-fastest-growing-companies-permission-ebook/dp/B087KTYCH1/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=permission+%28sh%29marketing&qid=1589473708&s=digital-text&sr=1-1

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[00:00:02.20] – Intro

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.

[00:00:26.10] – Gresham Harkless

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 Adam Robinson of getting emails dot com. Adam, it's awesome to have you on the show.

[00:00:39.29] – Adam Robinson

Thanks, Gresh. Happy to be here.

[00:00:41.50] – Gresham Harkless

No problem. Super excited to have you on. And before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Adam so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. Adam was born in Houston, Texas, and graduated from Rice University in two thousand and three with a bachelor's degree in economics. In twenty fourteen, after a decade of working on Wall Street, Adam launched Rob Lee's email marketing. The business grew to five million dollars in revenue in the first two years, and by twenty seventeen was awarded number one in customer satisfaction across the entire email marketing space. After pro proving Wobly's viability, Adam worked to scale the business. After testing scraping and scrapping a few ideas, he and his team launched Get Emails, a SaaS company in the identity space in twenty nineteen. Adam was recently given the title best-selling author with the release of his book Permission ShMarketing, which explains his controversial views on privacy and identity. Adam, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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[00:01:35.90] – Adam Robinson

Yes, sir. Let's do it.

[00:01:37.20] – Gresham Harkless

Let's do it. So to kick everything off, I wanted to kinda rewind the clock a little bit. Could you take me through what I call your CEO story? We'll let you get started with all the awesome things you're working on.

[00:01:46.29] – Adam Robinson

Sure. So the abbreviated version is, I moved to Manhattan and these guys I was I was working at Lehman Brothers that trading credit default swaps actually, which is like they made a movie about it called Yes. The guys living in my apartment started Vimeo at the same time, like, on my first day at Lehman Brothers. And so I watched that thing just, you know, grow exponentially, and these guys had such amazing lives. And, like, I just had this desire to, like, do the same thing. So after the financial crisis, you know, a lot of people got kicked to the curb who had the job that I had. So did I. Yeah. You know, we everybody did pretty well before and had saved a little money and, like, I was just you know, somehow, it's obviously, every story is super long and complex. We don't have time for it. But lo and behold, like, the first company that I actually started worked, which was just a gift from God.

And it happened to be in this space that's ultra-competitive. I think, you know, there's a ton of small vendors and, like, a couple of vendors like Mailchimp and a couple of other ones really dominate it, so it's hard to get real scale, and so, you know, but we have, like, this nice cash flow positive business that we come up with. And, you know, the challenge is just like how do you differentiate in this hyper-competitive, super-commoditized space? And, you know, we sort of, in trying stuff and failing, came across this identity resolution market, and there seemed to be a bunch of enterprise vendors that were doing this identity stuff in different ways. And nobody's serving this, like, you know, it's you wouldn't even call it mid-market, but just, like, small businesses that have large web presences that it could be really valuable for. And we can talk a little bit more about the product later. Well, I'll just say right now. Basically, like, we figured out that, you know, we could identify a chunk, call it like a third of any small businesses or medium-sized businesses anonymous web traffic.

So, what that means is, like, you know, we can give them their information legally in a compliant way so that an e-commerce store can send them retargeting emails to bring them back to their website and buy stuff. You know, if you own an e-commerce store, your eel is probably perked up. It's a pretty valuable technology. Definitely. And we can provide it very cheaply. So, just because of how the way it works, there's if you're curious about how it works, go to our website and click the just click to our YouTube channel. We have, like, all sorts of education about, you know, how it works, how it's legal, all this kind of stuff. But, you know, it was really interesting for other business owners. You know, we went through this exercise where we originally tried to make people, use it, switch to our app to use this feature, and we saw that they were signing up for Robly.

They were using this identity product, not using any other part of the software, not switching. They were downloading a file and uploading it into their other email marketing app. Like, that was, like, ninety percent of the users for it. So it was very clear. It's like, well, two important things here. One, it's like, you know, there's, like, if you read this Y Combinator stuff, right, there's something about product market fit in there, if someone's willing to endure a horrible user experience and still thinks your product's great. Secondly, it was very clear that it wasn't a good product if we were making people switch because they didn't wanna switch, and it was clear by how they were using it. So, we spun it out, last fall, and launched it as its own product on November 4, and that's kinda how Get Emails came to be.

[00:05:13.00] – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I absolutely love that. And I love that, obviously, the pivoting aspect and paying attention to, you know, the feedback that you're getting and making a pivot from that. And then also to just being aware of, kind of where there is a gap in providing that gap, which I think is at the heart of entrepreneurship, how you're able to provide that solution. So I know you mentioned that there are videos and content on your site as well too. Could you take us through exactly, like, how that, I guess, customer journey goes on how they can sign up and what exactly and how exactly you serve the clients you work with?

[00:05:43.50] – Adam Robinson

Sure. So at the so I'm I'm kind of this belief that you know, you need to make it as easy as possible for people to buy. Like, our real our our best customers pay somewhere between, like, a thousand and twenty thousand per month, but our software is set up so that anybody can try it for free. At the moment, we are actually doing a freemium offer, which for a lot of reasons, I think we're gonna roll back. It's just not a great freemium product because you have to have web traffic to actually get value out of it. And the point of freemium would be everyone gets value out of it and talks to everyone they know. And that's just not sort of what ended up happening when we launched it a couple of weeks ago, but you live and you learn. But Mhmm.

Regardless of what it is, it's like you just show up with your business, whether it's an e-commerce store, a blog, a publisher, whatever, you sign up for free on our website, and it takes you through, like, three steps. One is you take the script and you pop it in on your website, on your WordPress or Shopify or whatever, which we have a bunch of guides to do, and then you just do this one-click integration with your Mailchimp or Klaviyo account or whatever you're using to send emails, and then you set up an automated series to go out for right when you get the data because we pass you the data in real-time, and boom, that's it. And then you just set it and forget it, and then you just, like, see it making money for you.

So, we try to make it as easy as possible to process to set up. It's like upgrading, downgrading, cancel anytime. I'm just sort of a big believer in this, like, you know, I don't think people want contracts. You know? I think it's like a joy when someone can purchase a product for five thousand dollars a month and know that they can cancel it the next month. And I think it's important for a startup also to have the burden of proof of return on investment on the company when you're early days because I think you make a better product, you know. I think if you go to sell it someday, it's much more valuable to have people on contracts. But, you know, this is sort of the posture we're taking out of the gates.

[00:07:43.19] – Gresham Harkless

Nice. Absolutely, you know, love that. And I think, you know when you're always trying to make sure that you're providing value. And when you're providing value, I think, as you said, sometimes, the contract thing doesn't really matter because even if you don't have a contract, people are so beholden and kinda stuck to what it is that you're doing because you're providing so much value. So I think it's, you know, definitely important for us to kinda, remember that as well. So, you might have already touched on this, but I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. This could be for you or your company or a combination of both, but what do you feel kinda sets you apart and makes you unique?

[00:08:14.39] – Adam Robinson

So I think for me, you know, I wanna kinda answer this in two ways. Mhmm. I think that, like, my secret weapon's just focus, and I don't know, when I left, the job that I had in finance was you were looking at screens all day and you were just answering phone calls and, like, making prices for people on bonds, basically. And it was very reactive. It was, like, you know, your attention was always getting pulled around. It was very information-heavy. And I think it's maybe, like, I don't know, probably Tim Ferris or something. I read Four Hour Workweek or something right when I quit. This Dream idea of, like, working from anywhere and having this cool tech company, like, part of, you know, one of the pieces of advice that that he gives and it's like, turn off the noise, you know?

So in two thousand eleven or twelve, or whenever it was, I quit finance, like, the first month, I just sat there at my computer emailing people, and you're it's just gone like, your life is just gone. Nothing comes from that, you know, especially when you're, like, aimless trying to figure out what you're gonna do with your life, like, and it's very easy. You know, social media is only getting better. Like, TikTok is so much more addictive than Snapchat, and so on and so forth. So I think the ability you know, I somehow cut all of this stuff out of my life, like, eight or nine years ago. And I'm talking about, like, reading news and stuff. Just I don't get on the Internet, which is weird for a tech guy, and for somebody who does so much advertising on social media. But I think that's really helped me a lot, you know, just be able to, like, focus on things.

And I think it also, you know, another thing that I would say is something that I think the people that work with me would say is I I I really seek to understand people's psychology and motivation and create an environment and that, like, a, makes people's lives better, they wanna be a part of, and then, b, like, sort of goes with whatever's motivating that person. You know? So, I think it's like trying to, you know, maybe the Delivering Happiness book is, like, kind of a similar, you know, sort of thing when you talk about your employees. But, I mean, it's like I'm trying to figure out how to how to create a company that, you know, in finding the right people for these positions, it's making their lives better. Therefore, it's making our business product, and service better. You know? And that's, you know, that's a more important part than the product for me. Like, I don't really care what we're selling for the most part. Like, I want to work around, you know, really interesting people in a growth environment, above all. You know? So, so yeah. I mean, those are two things that make me kinda interesting.

[00:11:05.50] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. And, I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

[00:11:16.50] – Adam Robinson

I think checklists are the greatest the least technologically sort of savvy thing in the world, but, like, I think they're the greatest thing for getting stuff done possible.

[00:11:29.70] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. And so now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. This could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client, or if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

[00:11:41.00] – Adam Robinson

I had kind of a revelation that just I didn't go into the full story, but the nature of how we started our first business Mhmm. It was much more sales and marketing-focused than it was product-focused. We're kinda going after this one competitor, and, like, we built a product that was just kinda good enough to get people to switch over, but, like, we were ignoring every other part of the market and whether it was gonna be competitive in the real world or not, you know? And I just have this belief now after all the the successes and failures that I've had that, like, in today's world, product is, like, the most important thing in product market fit by a factor of ten. And once you have a great product and good product market fit, the sales and marketing, it's accelerate that. Right? But sales and marketing with a bad product in today's world is, like, it just doesn't work. But the great thing is is you can be product-obsessed, and you can find that product market fit. I mean, there's a ton of examples for it.

So, if you can read about it on Y Combinator's blog, I think they explain it unbelievably well. But, like, the advice that I would give, a, my younger self, and, b, anybody else who's, like, in this position of wanting to be an entrepreneur and starting. And it's such a hard position because it's like you're trying to run the Boston Marathon against marathoners, and you haven't run a mile in the past twenty years. Right? How would you ever be in shape to do that? How would you know? Right? So, I think reading a lot of this stuff can sort of get your mind at least moving in that direction. Right? And, like, you know, like, your intuition's wrong. It just is. Right? Like, you know, your intuition about the product is probably wrong. But almost definitely. Right? But, the advice that I would give my my younger self and to any other person is just like, dude, like, keep reading those marketing books because that's that's stuff very important. It's gonna be important later on, but, like, the product part of this thing is what's go like, if a growth environment, a sustainable growth environment is what you're after, the product part of this thing is the most key to that by a factor of ten, and I believe that.

[00:13:48.89] – Gresham Harkless

Now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO, and we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. And, Adam, I wanted to ask you, what does being a CEO mean to you?

[00:13:58.50] – Adam Robinson

I think to me, it means above all else, just being a leader. You know, and, you know, like, sort of what when you ask me that question also, what how I think about myself, like, I like to take responsibility for the failures and give the responsibility of six or give the the the the praise and rewards for successes to the people I work with. You know? I think that's, like, not necessarily what it means, but, like, when I think if I were, like, writing, like, the qualities of who I'm trying to be as a CEO, like, that's another big one to me. And then it's just, you know, the visionary, the the the sort of vision.

[00:14:40.60] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Adam, truly appreciate that definition and that perspective, and I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know and, of course, how best they can get a hold of you, get a copy of the book, and find out about all those things that you're working on.

[00:14:57.00] – Adam Robinson

Sure. Yeah. The only additional thing is, you know, if you've got an e-commerce business or a blog, check to get emails out. It's You probably haven't heard of anything like it, and it's a really cool technology. It's on our website, w w w dot Get Emails dot com. You can actually get a free copy of Permissions Marketing, which Gresh and I were talking about before. It's kind of like a satire of Seth Godin's nineteen ninety-eight book, Permission Marketing because what our product allows you to do is something that's exactly the opposite of his vision of marketing in the future, but it works. So I kind of, like, thought it would be funny to create this parody on it. And then in terms of the best way to get in touch with me, you can just email me Adam at get emails dot com. I don't have much of a social presence. Our business is at use get emails on Twitter and Facebook. But in our YouTube our YouTube channels, get emails, and it's great. It's got a ton of educational content, a ton of funny little ads, and stuff that I do every week, with my girlfriend. So, yeah, that's how you can see what we're up to.

[00:16:02.60] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much. Again, Adam, we will have the links and information in the show notes just so that everybody can follow up with you and then connect with you and get a copy of the book as well. But truly appreciate that and the reminders of of focusing and being able to make sure that we laser focus, especially on the solution and the product that we're creating. So I appreciate that reminder, and I hope you have a great rest of the day.

[00:16:22.20] – Outro

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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