One of the Best AMAs Online Today.

Who is Christy Laurence?

Christy Laurence is a 7x award-winning Founder/CEO of Plann, a social media strategy and scheduling tool used by millions worldwide. She has bootstrapped the company to 2.5M downloads in 160+ countries and is a global thought leader in the social space. 

After 5 years, Plann has listed in the top 800 grossing apps in the world, has a passionate global team and blog visited by millions of people. Christy also mentors on 3x female-focused accelerator programs to help them build successful tech teams and SaaS businesses

What is Plann?

Plan is the Leading social media strategy, scheduling and analytics suite. The company wins with unbelievable content, resources, and advice for its users. On top of the accolades described above and these resources, Plann allows users to build a brand calendar right inside Plann to plan blog posts, clubhouse chats, product launch dates, email newsletters or anything your brand needs.

Where Can I Learn More About Christy and This Community?

If you like this AMA and want to ask the best of the best your own questions, you can join our private slack group too. It comes with over $50,000 worth of credits from companies like AWS, Airtable, DocSend and more.

Excited to add that Plann is the newest deal offered by the community to our members. 

Big thanks to Christy and the team for adding even more value to our members!

This is literally one of the most exciting AMAs we’ve had and I believe it’s one of the best AMA transcripts you will find online today. 

Here is the full transcription starting from the first question. Please note that extra comments from the community members and admin (when not related to the AMA) have been removed. 

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Q:

What is your best advice for female founders?

A:

In all honesty, I see myself as a Founder, and haven’t ever given myself, or really owned the title of ‘Female Founder’. I’d give you the same advice I’d tell anyone, own your strengths (and if they happen to be higher empathy, or emotional EQ then own them), and understand how you can get support for your weaknesses.

My weakness was that I didn’t have many males in my immediate circle to ask for help with (as I found a lot of male founders have who they need in the networks to be able to reach out to for help/advice in tech), so building a well-rounded network of ALL people to be able to ask for help is probably my biggest advice!

Q:

Christy – awesome product and thanks for joining this AMA. I really like how you’re using social proof (quotes, endorsements, etc). When you started, what were your strategy and tactics for getting high-quality influencers and brands? And how has that changed over the years?

A:

A lot of love and a lot of tears has gone into building Plann! 💙 I could almost write a whole book on this, but here’s highlevel how I approached influencers:

• Focus on a group of people who are currently underserved (in the beginning I made Plann to support the visual/art/creator world who really don’t know how to market themselves online, and there was no tool to support them)
• Learn who they learn from, who are they looking up to? Find them. Turn on their post notifications.
• People forget that behind every IG feed is a real human, so talk directly to the human. Be funny, share their posts, heck, start a relationship! Don’t drop an emoji, ask engaging questions of them, and others posting on their images! If you’re doing this on the regular, they’ll start to notice you. (I did this in bulk, and was charmingly persistent haha).
• As the relationships developed I started sending them screenshots of what I was working on, and asked for their thoughts and input (#co-creation) and they’d be bought into the problems they were helping fix for themselves and their community.

I sent out regular emails about the changing social media landscape – what ever I could do to keep them ahead of everyone else (#helping them build thought-leader status). 

Soon enough I built a community, moved them into a FB group and was able to discuss a lot with them – and on launch date, none of them had any problems sharing the news. Basically…do the exact opposite of what your parents said “Don’t make friends with strangers on the internet” 😉

What is different now? Not much tbh, we’ve just scaled it wider than the creative industry (SO.MANY.NICHES!), and added ambassador tiers!

Q: 

Building a tech team to scale globally… How did you model your org chart structure? How did you account for exponential growth with your hiring plan.

A:

I didn’t model it off anything, as we’re bootstrapped we just had to move/evolve and make it work for us. In the early days, people were working across 2-3 teams just to get things done, and as we’ve scaled we look at what teams are under the most fire (and effecting business ROI the most) and make sure there’s a leader and very clear lines of support.

Q: 

How did you hire to handle the freemium users without the revenue coming in, but still delivering a high-quality service?

A:

Great question, this was SO hard! We actually had to cap growth in the early days because the operations couldn’t keep up. I literally couldn’t afford to do email marketing in the second, or third year because we had so many email addresses I couldn’t afford the enterprise plans to house them all, we just had to do what we could to make it work. The product experience was the most important, and there were times we just had to be ok with letting our customer success slip to longer lead times then we wanted and be ok with that.

Q: 

Any favorite resources to review that you would recommend to build an app that serves millions?

A:

I’m obsessed with product, the one that comes to mind off the top of my head, and it’s a company that does this comic book style teardowns of user experience.  (DM ME TO FIND THIS FOR YOU!) Honestly though? You don’t have to re-invent the wheel, download the grossing apps in your category and study the crappola out of them! They’ve spent the money you don’t have, learn from them! 

Q:

What’s something you did well early in your career that you wish you did more of?

A:

Interesting question! I was always a workhorse and got a lot done (I love it), so I wish I’d taken a little bit more time to learn how to manage people – not everyone is like me haha. It became really important building Plann and scaling the team, esp across so many different cultures that having more mature EQ skills a little earlier would have helped!

Q:

Ideas to get low CPI’s (Cost Per Install)?

A:

There’s a book called Traction (by Justin Mares) that I love, I make everyone in my growth team read it.

Basically – there are over 25 types of marketing, and you can’t do everything all at once, so start doing tests in different places, laser-focused tests, to see what works, then pick your top 3 and BULLSEYE.

We barely do any paid (bootstrapped life!), and here’s where we get the best CPI

• Referral program (how can you get your best customers to clone themselves so you don’t have to pay for it?)
• Facebook groups recommending the product (product-led growth, you really have to be solving problems in a great way that others don’t)
• SEO is also a big one for us – we have a huge wealth of knowledge in our team that helps anyone keep on track of social, with lots of people re-visiting

Q:

Hi Christy, 👋  Thanks for your time! What is your top tip when building your personal brand while building a professional or company’s brand at the same time? 

A:

It’s definitely challenging but totally possible to do both. Align or partner yourself with brands who are already like yours, and you’ll grow by association. Christy + Plann + Pexels, or Christy + Plann + Canva = builds Plann, while building Christy as a global player too. You can then talk about your personal experience aligned to them, and then the perspective of the business – double the content with the 1 event. I cannot stress to you enough the importance of consistency.

Q:

Hi Christy! What was one of the biggest unexpected challenges you faced when growing/scaling Plann?

A:

I HAD NO IDEA WHAT I WAS DOING!! Hahhaha. No but really, I don’t code, and I don’t pretend I know how to either. (When I first started I didn’t even know that developers weren’t all the same thing 🤦‍♂️ ). The biggest challenge was learning how the insides of a tech business worked, so I literally moved from Sydney to Silicon Valley for 6 months to learn, leaving my husband at home and digging my teeth in. I cannot tell you how much I learned by just being around people talking about tech all day. For example, I had no idea how to build an AWS infrastructure (or what one was 😁 ), esp for the scale that I was at – and that was probably my biggest learning curve for scaling.

Q:

Hi Christy, When is the right time for a SaaS company to focus on social and what is the right way to think about what content to create?

A:

Honestly? The best time to focus is as soon as you have the idea. Social Media helps build a community, build traction, build your email list, get you leads, AND help you with product-market fit before you’ve done anything. I cannot stress the importance of a pre-launch campaign.

Q:

Christy, Are you a big fan of HubSpot for your marketing efforts? Do you use Seamless.ai or ZoomInfo? Any preferences? Any tools that you are willing to share that you use outside of the one you built?

A:

I use GetVero for my email marketing stack (I love how they have visual funnels and product tags for segmentation), and honestly, the rest is managed on Notion! Plann covers our content library, content creation, brand/content calendar, scheduling and analytics…I don’t really need much else 🙃  I do have a subscription to mailshake for cold email funnels, but for me personally I like being a human on LinkedIn more.

Q: 

Christy, how did you decide to build a global team? What’s different about that vs building a local or national team?

A:

I’m based in Sydney Australia, and I optimized all of my business for the US audience from day one, so it made sense to have people on the ground able to help in that timezone, and many others (Plann operates in 7 timezones, and I love it), you get to meet customers where they are. Also, having a global talent search means you’re not limited to where you live, the internet doesn’t have borders, so I decided neither would Plann. 

Q:

How does one pick a true social influencer to help enable growth, in a market that is flooded with “influencers”?

A:

I hear what you’re saying, the term ‘influencer’ has been muddied over the last few years! Here’s my thoughts: Does the person you’re talking to have influence over others? If they were talking about a new kitchen appliance, would I trust them, or connect with them enough to go and check it out. Follow them and learn how their audience engages – then you’ll know if they’re a true “influencer”. Some of the best influencers have less than 5000 followers.

Q:

Is Instagram still relevant with audio lead channels such as Clubhouse?

A:

There are always going to be new and trendy platforms showing up, and I’m crossing my fingers that clubhouse doesn’t die after the honeymoon period as many do in this space. The best thing about marketing is anything new gives you great reach, and that’s always where you’ll find the early adapters of products! If you want to make clubhouse a regular part of your marketing/content/brand plan, you can actually add a custom event into your Plann calendar to keep track of EVERYTHING marketing going through, and share with a team if you have one.

Q:

Christy! Thanks for hopping on to share the wealth with us today! I see on Plann’s website you offer a lot of “free resources” as lead magnets. What have you done to successfully convert people that download one of your free resources to becoming paid users?

A:

We show up to teach our community how to make hard things easy, and then even easier with us. All lead magnets point to a problem that’s hard, and how Plann makes it easier.

Most then enter a lead nurture email sequence, with light re-targeting spend where we convert them into the product, and there’s potential to add discounts if they’ve not converted over X many days. Always a work in progress! P.S. Lead magnets are great retention tools!

Q:

Christy, what’s your biggest challenge right now? What keeps you up at night?

A:

How my very amazing, lean team can continue to out-innovate companies with millions in funding haha. I’m a crazy ideas person, I wake up in the middle of the night excited about what’s possible and then struggle sitting on my hands waiting for developers to build it! 😁

Q:

Hi Christy! – how highly would you rate the value of good content? Single most important? Nice to have but not vital? What can founders here do to up their content game? (Aside from use Plann that’s a given!)

A:

Read: What can you repurpose that you already have to add MORE value! (ROI of time matters in every single activity!) Great Content = trust and brand building. If we weren’t making great content and I asked for your email and gave you something you’d never use, wasn’t insightful and wasted my time – what confidence would you have in my brand to deliver on what else it says it does? Coming from a bootstrapped founder, with no money to waste throwing up the walls of paid adverts just to see if it works. V-I-T-A-L.

Q

Hi Christy! How do you keep a global team on the same page? Best practices that your team uses for that and keeping culture alive? 

A:

There’s truth to the saying that the traits of the founder filters through and our found in the team, and I’m crazy 😁 . Slack is super helpful, and I make a considerable effort for my team to get to know who they work with. For example, what foods you eat at Christmas is possibly the weirdest food that your teammates on the other side of the world have. Photos are shared and team calls always have to be on video. We’ll have flossing challenges, dress-up product calls, random thought starters and encourage sharing and discussions of industry news to keep it all interesting, I don’t want to work anywhere boring haha. Today’s thought starter in slack ‘Describe your valentine’s day in 3 emojis.’

For keeping people up to date, the general channel is cleared for me to give company-wide updates, sometimes share videos of product updates, and the roadmaps, screenshots are shared widely. My favourite channel is #goodnewsweek where everyone shares great news, either about work or personal life

Q

Hi Christy, how should startups measure the success of social proof? and how do you gauge on how much you should spend on this channel?

A:

Social Proof essentially means that people who have already been validated by a community, will back you. In the early days, that for me meant giving away free product, or discounts, of going the extra mile – there wasn’t any cash outlay.

Q

Best way to fill contract-based or project-based roles to handle tasks.. Upwork? Fiverr? etc.. 

A:

Anything works if you’re able to find the right people! Personal referrals are always my first shot. Re: those websites, absolutely I’ve done that too, I’ve kissed many frogs but as soon as you find a gem out there, snap them up and give them consistent work. Once you’ve found a gem, can you help them with their business? Can you make them feel part of your team? My SEO expert I found on Upwork, and she is AMAZING. Now her books are completely filled with my friends and I know I have the most loyal contractor ever.

Q:

Hi Christy! Alternative sources for funding w/o giving up equity?

A:

Honest answer — NO IDEA! ❤️

Borrowing against your mortgage?? 😅

Q

Hi Christy, when hiring – what qualities do you look for in A-players?

A:

Huge learning for me, there’s a huge difference between A-B players, but they almost sound the same during interviews.

I believe A players are people you want for 2-3 years max and add huge value to the team, so to ensure that, here’s what I do after making some bad hires:

• I pay the top candidates to produce a days worth of work (that I’ve written a brief for)
• The brief ALWAYS includes making them do their own thinking so you can see how they problem solve, and think for themselves
• Sometimes I’ll throw in a mistake and see if they pull me up on it (I want their opinions so I want to make sure they will share it with me)
• I make it longer than a day so I can see how much work they can get through so you can see quality vs. time right away.
• How do they communicate?

Not looking for perfection, looking for the way someone thinks. Pro-active, thoughtful, problem solver, can create on direction, plus culture fit of empathy/great comms = this is what I personally look for in my A team.

Q:

How has the pandemic affected your business and what do you see coming for 2021?

A:

There’s been a huge mix, sadly we’ve lost businesses that have had to close, but it’s super exciting to see so many people starting side-hustles and really understanding how important social media is to the success of all channels. eCommerce is exploding, thousands of people join social media every second, the platforms themselves are creating more features to help too. 2021 I see a further explosion in all honesty, perhaps the rise of some new channels but LinkedIn right now is definitely killing it – and why I made the decision to add it to Plann a few months ago.

All Done! See You Next Time.

That brings us to the end of our AMA with Christy! Thanks for reading!

Again, be sure to check out Plann and stay tuned for our next AMA!

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All the best to you!