A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:30:40 · Dan Mishin
[00:30:40] S0: If we take a step back, I believe in value led customer acquisition and not just ads. Value ad customer acquisition, in my opinion, is the gold standard. OK, so I'm an immigrant. I'm on a visa that's dependent and tied to my employer. I want to have independence. Maybe I want to change a job. Maybe I want to start a business. To transition into a self sponsored visa, like an O 1 visa or an EB 1 visa or an EB 2 NIW visa. Those are the three very popular visa types for people that want to be independent. I need to go ahead and do a lot of work in preparing for those cases. Because the requirements are really high. You need to be extraordinary in a certain field. So what ManifestOS has done is we've launched a Slack community for people that are not there yet, but who want to ultimately file for those extraordinary ability visas, and we've created free training programs that go every month. Every month there is a free training program for different people, for different cohorts, who go through classes that teach them how to work on their careers in a way that enables them to apply for those extraordinary visas. We created a mentorship program where people get paired with each other. Somebody who went through the immigration obtained that visa with somebody who wants to do that. They get paired in couples and they work together and mentors coach them to apply for those visas. We provide them a ton of information, tons of content, tons of curated videos. We invite former U.S. immigration officials to speak with them. We bring immigration judges to speak with them. That community is mind blowing for people. There's so much value there. In person meetups, events, and it's knowledge. It's motivation to build your case. It's training, and it's community, just meeting people. You know, immigration is lonely. You meet people that way. This is not the most obvious marketing tactic because it's not about, you're not selling anything to anyone. We're not promoting Manifest OS in that community. It's not even called Manifest OS Community. It's called Extraordinary Ability Club. People join, people get a ton of value.
00:32:40 · Dan Mishin, Pablo Srugo
If they get so much value and Manifest OS lawyers go to that community, answer the questions for free, provide them with content, do webinars, do trainings, and do consultations, if you get a lot of value, you're probably going to buy from ManifestOS Law Attorney. Because you already have the relationship, you've built the trust, you got a lot of value upfront, and you're just going to proceed with it. [00:33:03] S2: Does this work in B2B as well or just B2C?
00:33:03 · Pablo Srugo, Dan Mishin
[00:33:03] S2: Does this work in B2B as well or just B2C? [00:33:06] S0: We have the exact same community for B2B buyers. So who manages immigration? An HR manager that handles mobility inside a large company. Some companies have thirty, forty, fifty people in that department. Small companies have one or zero point five, or it's the CEO who does it. We built a community called Mission by ManifestOS. And Mission by ManifestOS is the community for those people that manage mobility programs inside companies. Slack group, anytime there is a news update or regulatory update. They all get together and talk about what does that mean for their business. Weekly webinars, monthly in person meetups, annual conferences, and we've gotten vast majority of Fortune 500 company representatives to be in that community. These are our buyers. These are buyers of legal services from ManifestOS Law attorneys. They build relationships with ManifestOS. ManifestOS doesn't charge them anything. It's totally free and we give them so much value upfront. They meet ManifestOS Law attorneys. They meet government officials. We help them understand changes in regulations for free and nobody has ever done anything like this in this industry. Because it was always transactional. Hey, like, I'm going to cold call you and see if you want to buy my services. And then if you don't, I'm going to cold call you again and annoy you. I don't believe in annoying sales. I believe in sales where you give value and then the person can choose to buy if they want to.
00:34:25 · Pablo Srugo, Dan Mishin
[00:34:25] S2: I love this communities thing. I'm also part of many communities that have gone nowhere, right? Where you get invited to this Slack group, and it's like, cool. And then it just, there's just no activity. There's nothing. Imagine, I'm a founder and I'm like, yeah, Dan, you know what? I want to sell through communities. I think it makes sense but tactically, how do you do it? Take HR managers. HR managers are my buyers. I want to do a community for them. What are the key ingredients and the key things you have to do to at least get the core right? And then I'm sure it gets easier and easier. [00:34:52] S0: I mean, the worst thing is that you post a message in a Slack group, nobody responds and it's a weird feeling. So early on, a mobility manager would post a message. I would basically take that message, think about, hey, which other mobility manager can actually help them answer that question? And I would forward them the message and be like, "hey, can you do me a favor and respond to this person?" And I did that for a couple months. And that's how you solve the cold start problem. And now we have wonderful people who do this, who are moderators and who are community influencers. Who enable and basically keep the motion going. So people get value out of this community all the time. But as a founder, in the beginning, you have to do it yourself.
00:34:52 · Dan Mishin, Pablo Srugo
[00:34:52] S0: I mean, the worst thing is that you post a message in a Slack group, nobody responds and it's a weird feeling. So early on, a mobility manager would post a message. I would basically take that message, think about, hey, which other mobility manager can actually help them answer that question? And I would forward them the message and be like, "hey, can you do me a favor and respond to this person?" And I did that for a couple months. And that's how you solve the cold start problem. And now we have wonderful people who do this, who are moderators and who are community influencers. Who enable and basically keep the motion going. So people get value out of this community all the time. But as a founder, in the beginning, you have to do it yourself. [00:35:29] S2: How do you get people? Because that's the other thing that matters is, who you get into that community matters. There's different, especially on the HR manager’s side, that’s the thing about community. It’s like, who else is in there? And then that drives a lot of the value of the content. [00:35:42] S0: Look, I mean, every market is different. In our market, we just went to conferences and we were like, hey, this is what we want to do. Do you want to be a founding member? Help us build this thing together. Help us figure it out. Do you see value in this? And maybe it's not even for every industry. I don't know, maybe if you sell car parts and you're selling into car dealerships. Maybe for car dealers that work at car dealerships, it's not valuable. Maybe that's already solved.
00:35:42 · Dan Mishin, Pablo Srugo
[00:35:42] S0: Look, I mean, every market is different. In our market, we just went to conferences and we were like, hey, this is what we want to do. Do you want to be a founding member? Help us build this thing together. Help us figure it out. Do you see value in this? And maybe it's not even for every industry. I don't know, maybe if you sell car parts and you're selling into car dealerships. Maybe for car dealers that work at car dealerships, it's not valuable. Maybe that's already solved. [00:36:06] S2: But for you guys, how did you do? Is that how you do? You went to a conference, you found the right people and just kind of pulled them into your community?