Incorporating AI into Agency Services Feat Ishaan Shakunt

Ian Binek (00:01.836)
Ishaan thanks so much for being on today. How are doing, man?

Ishaan Shakunt (00:02.296)
So.

Ishaan Shakunt (00:05.964)
doing extremely, extremely well. It's been a great day, week, month, fingers crossed. Things are great. Yeah.

Ian Binek (00:15.214)
That's awesome. Yeah, I've been following your LinkedIn post. I saw your post. You're wearing your necklace today and you have your new glasses. I love the swag you got going on with your company right now.

Ishaan Shakunt (00:21.548)
Yep.

Ishaan Shakunt (00:27.934)
yeah, I almost didn't wear the locket, the logo locket essentially. But then I guessed, I just posted about it. have to wear it. I just cannot not wear it.

Ian Binek (00:34.656)
Mm -hmm.

Ian Binek (00:38.474)
Exactly. Yeah, good move, good move. And, Ishaan what time is it for you right now? Because I know, isn't it like super late, right?

Ishaan Shakunt (00:49.87)
It's 9 .30 so it's not that late. It's fine. Yeah.

Ian Binek (00:54.826)
For you, yeah. So yeah, for those of you that don't know, Ishaan is in India and he is super committed to the game. He's working the late nights and the early mornings. So it's such a pleasure to have him on the pod today. We're gonna have some really cool conversations to discuss. So Ishaan, I just wanna get into it really.

We're going to be talking about Spear Growth We're be talking about cutting edge strategies and tactics you're using to kind of grow your agency as well as your clients, you know, performance. And so I just want to get started. Can you tell us a little bit about Spear Growth and your role there and, know, kind of give us a little bit of background on how the agency got started as well.

Ishaan Shakunt (01:25.672)
Mm -hmm.

Ishaan Shakunt (01:37.578)
I think I start from the background and then built up to the role today because I think a lot has changed, right? So quick background about me. I think it like the story starts in college.

College second semester, which is like year one. I'm a CS grad, right? So I like every other kid in India started doing my computer science degree. Jumped into that side. Then on my own, I realized, hey, like I don't know what to do. So I met these amazing people in college that knew what they wanted from life. And I was like, that's not me. So I just started doing anything. So I started with.

I think development and I got really bad at full stack, but I did know full stack. So I was like, Hey, I know some stuff. Something's happened left that then I did, think 47 other things. Also, I have a list. It was like random stuff, right? Like

stuff like we started an NGO, like an unofficial NGO of sorts. Then I opened a lemonade stand or we did this WhatsApp marketing. It was literally anything, right? Like just literally anything that went on for a year. It was an amazing year where I could do anything I wanted.

Ian Binek (02:59.717)
Right.

Ishaan Shakunt (03:10.598)
somehow I got to know about entrepreneurship and that's when in at least in India or at least in my circle, entrepreneurship wasn't cool and you didn't even know what it meant. Right? Like so in India back then,

What's that called? Shark Tank hadn't really come into India. Now India has its own version of Shark. I think after that entrepreneurship is much cooler, but I wanted to be an entrepreneur without knowing what it meant. I just knew that I'll probably be poor. Like start off on my own.

Ian Binek (03:42.782)
you

Ishaan Shakunt (03:46.314)
So, I was completely okay with that, learned how to, I literally practiced or sort of morphed my lifestyle into something where I didn't need to or didn't want to spend a lot. Did that decided

was sure I would go off on my own. There were two companies, like in India you have placements in college, right? So companies come to the college and in the last year of college, which is the fourth year, companies come and you just sit for placements, you get through companies and almost all students, at least from like, like if you are in a tier two and above college, you get placed through the college. It's not like you have to go and hunt for a job on your own.

Ian Binek (04:28.322)
Mm -hmm.

Ishaan Shakunt (04:28.716)
Right, so I decided not to set for placements except for two companies. The one was high radius and second was Deloitte because they were like non coding companies sat in one of them just to like high radius, which is the first company I joined went there. Got super lucky, sat for a single interview, got in.

got an amazing mentor there, got lucky a bunch of more times and got to lead SEO before my internship ended. I was in a year long internship before it ended. I got to lead SEO. Year two is when we just scaled like anything and Hiredis basically got valued over a billion dollars as it became a unicorn.

I was leading a marketing team, so that was like amazing. I got that entire exposure and all the craziness happens that happens with it. I think I stayed there for a couple of years, finally decided that, I'm not learning anything. So I just quit. I just, yeah, like, hey, I'm not learning enough. quit, got lucky again, got into this community called peak. Now peak community is this

Ian Binek (05:35.064)
Sure.

Ishaan Shakunt (05:46.088)
Or like at least when it started was just a bunch of CMOs and me. And that's how I describe it. Completely out of place. Got lucky there. Got to learn from CMOs. Got to ask all of my stupid questions. I remember asking a question. Everyone was discussing the best campaigns to run for the year and how the structure teams and all of that. And my question was, what is a campaign?

Ian Binek (05:51.574)
Okay. Yeah.

Ishaan Shakunt (06:15.418)
I really wanted to understand it. So, and I, that's when I realized most marketers don't really know the answer to stuff like that. Right? Like it was, everyone just uses the word, but no one knows. So just learned a ton there finally. And I was sure I was after leaving my job, it was just freelancing, right? Didn't have a plan, left my job, started freelancing and learning.

did not I was earning like any I was earning enough money to sustain myself for a year every single month and I was working like what like four hours a week or six hours a week it wasn't even a lot right so it was amazing yeah yeah it was a good times right so I had a lot of time on my hand hands to learn

Ian Binek (06:54.338)
Wow, that's wild.

Ishaan Shakunt (07:05.89)
Finally, someone told me James Gilbert. He told me that, hey, I asked him that, hey, all of you, I know a lot more marketing than a lot more CMOS here.

And that wasn't me being very, very arrogant. Like I just like, Hey, why do I not, am I not being able to say the things with as much confidence as everyone else? Like there's something missing. don't know what that is, but there's something off. I know all the basics. I know strategy. I know all of this marketing. I've seen results in all of these channels. Like what's missing. And he basically told me a CMO is not a marketer. It's a business person who happens to specialize in marketing.

So I had two options, either do an MBA or start my own business. I just decided I don't have the patience to do an MBA. So I started my own business the next week. That's the long answer of the origin story of me and Square Grows and all that. Yep.

Ian Binek (07:55.374)
That's hilarious.

Ian Binek (08:01.888)
Yeah, and I think what's funny too is if, you know, for anyone listening, if you check out your LinkedIn, right, you kind of have that in your bio a little bit about how your boss said you were a pain in the ass. And it's just because you were like, you know, you were driven, you were putting in the work, you were asking questions and your boss didn't really want to answer them, I guess, and didn't want to put up with it. So it's like, yeah, rightfully so. Like, I'm glad that you took that step.

Did I hear you right when you said that you were making a year's worth, like you could live off of a year's worth of your monthly rate like before you went like all in with Speargrass?

Ishaan Shakunt (08:46.592)
yeah. So two factors, right? One, I got super lucky. I'm a lucky guy. It's essentially that's a theme, right? So essentially, I picked up a lot of clients. once I figured out and I was I'm not I was already decent at marketing, right? So I basically pitched in the hell do the work and then just pay me for the results. That was my pitch because it was early day freelancing.

Ian Binek (08:50.039)
Okay.

Ian Binek (08:55.073)
Okay, alright.

Ishaan Shakunt (09:15.904)
I sort of wanted to get a few clients and then they did extremely well. So I did extremely. So that plus I didn't have a lot of expenses. told you, practice being poor essentially. Right. So, yeah.

Ian Binek (09:20.471)
wow. Yeah. Hey, that'll do

Ian Binek (09:35.34)
That's great. That's great. Okay, so, okay, so Grave Origins story. I think that's really helpful context to kind of talk about like where you're at now. So could you kind of describe where Spear Growth is now and you what you guys are specialized in and what your objectives are for the rest of this year and going into next year?

Ishaan Shakunt (09:53.507)
Yeah.

Ishaan Shakunt (09:57.56)
So I think now Speargrids is much more mature. It's three and a half years in. So now we know we do ads and SEO. Those are the only two channels that we do. And we do it for B2B SaaS companies, right? So our sweet spot is working with companies that are...

You know, have at least five, six people in the marketing marketing team, have PMF, have a budget, have a couple of marketing channels that work, then start with us. Right. It's usually the scale part. And then the, I think our sweet spot is companies that are like not unicorns. Like we have a four or five unicorn clients, but then I think,

Basically, are anti a lot of if it takes us a month to get approvals, we won't be able to get stuff done. Right. So that's not the culture and the team we've set. It's very hard for us to work when the approval cycles take too long. So it's it's a the company shouldn't be large enough that we can get approvals in days, not months. Right. So that's basically our sweet spot. That's what we figured out. Now we are twenty three folks at the moment. Right. So twenty two, twenty three.

And then the last few hires, like another fun fact, the last few hires were actually AI devs. They weren't marketers. So that's been a fun twist as well in the journey. But yeah, like we've worked with 50, 60 different companies till now, maybe, maybe more been doing great for SEO. think we're known for getting like MQLs and SQLs within three, four months and everyone else.

Ian Binek (11:16.024)
So well.

Ishaan Shakunt (11:39.246)
promises like traffic in a year, so we just outright beat them. And then for ads, it's usually just like, hey, we do everything and take on results and just take care of essentially the full funnel, right? Entire stack, all execution, everything, and just give us approvals and we'll get everything else done. That's why people work for us, with us.

Ian Binek (12:00.302)
That is so cool. So a couple things. We'll talk about the AI devs maybe a little bit later in the pod. But I am very curious about that. But I think something that stands out, right, is that three and a half years in, 20 plus member team, you guys are killing it. You've decided on an ICP that's very clear. You you mentioned

Ishaan Shakunt (12:06.344)
Yeah

Ian Binek (12:28.48)
You mentioned that you have your clients, they're PMF, like they've found product market fit. How are you clarifying that? Like, how are you finding these clients that, you know, know that for sure? And obviously like you can tell by revenue, right? When you're looking at the revenue, like, yeah, like this offer like actually has good conversion rates, like, we're growing and scaling the company. like, how are you getting in with those companies before they decide to maybe even hire an internal marketing team? Because I guess

at that point, right, in a startup, if they find PMF, they're probably looking to get more venture funding so they can accelerate Growth, right? So how are you kind of like nudging yourself in there and working with them? I'm just curious about

Ishaan Shakunt (13:05.82)
Yeah.

Ishaan Shakunt (13:12.79)
So just to clarify, there's two things, right? So one, how do we know someone has PMF or how are we doing our own marketing? Which is the, what specifically are you asking Ian?

Ian Binek (13:26.764)
Well, I would say like how are you guys, yeah, I guess you could say how you're doing that marketing. Like how are you getting into these guys DMs and figuring out that you want to work with them and that they want to work with you too.

Ishaan Shakunt (13:41.08)
So the short answer is mostly inbound, right? So the short answer is LinkedIn, niche communities. So we are an inbound agency, so I don't want SEO ads. it's all out. We do a lot of inbound, and I'm pretty good at networking. So that's the channel aspect of it. And then the second aspect is the positioning aspect.

That's a very good at our SEO positioning is just next level. Our ads positioning is not as good, but we're getting there. And then I think we're getting better and better at offer. So I think if those are the three things that contribute and then obviously when you do good work, you get reference, but yeah, I mean that's the obvious bit, but then I think those three is as what's driven most of our Growth.

Ian Binek (14:41.634)
Great answer, I mean.

Ishaan Shakunt (14:41.793)
Positioning offers and inbound channels. I can give you a longer answer in exactly what way.

Ian Binek (14:48.522)
No, I think that's fine. think that, I think like, there's not like these cutting edge. I think the thing is, like, people think that, there's like this one thing that they're doing that's driving all of this success. And it's just not the, you know, it's just the how it works. mean, it's combination of strategy, combination of the offer and positioning. So it makes perfect sense to me. And I'm sure it's just something that needs to kind of get drilled into more people's heads is marketing takes a little bit of time. Like, as you mentioned with your SEO campaigns,

Yeah, it's like four -ish months, but you are starting to drive MQLs from there. So maybe this is a good segue into the next question, which is, I'd love to hear a little bit more about that strategy and that tactic of driving inbound pipeline from SEO in just under six months, really. That is kind of unheard of, right? Like you said, most SEO agencies guarantee traffic, but they don't really guarantee inbound qualified leads. So I'm curious, what does that look like inside of SpiritGrowth?

Ishaan Shakunt (15:48.024)
So we've, I think figured out a couple of things really well, right? So, and by the way, it's nothing, it's different, but it's not too advanced is how you would put it. It's like a bunch of first principles. For example, you know, like you would look at like a typical keyword research. Let's start with keyword research, right? Keyword research strategy would basically be.

go to a tool, put two filters and then say, is my keyword list, like do some manual filtering on it and that's how people do keyword research. Okay, it's fast, it's efficient, but it's not, it doesn't work, right? And also second thing when you look at is you publish a bunch of blogs and there's a lot of conversion around blogs. We don't, right? So it's just like, okay, there's a bunch of things I've seen that doesn't work. And then third major aspect is I think,

getting the work actually done because a lot of SEO agencies and folks like, like this is what we need to do, but then no one really does it. And like, you know, like, so if you can get really good at these three things and just talking about the content side, right? You could very easily drive results. Right? So for example, now, if I just break that down into getting things done, just means

one setting expectations and this is the most important part setting expectations extremely, extremely well. Right. So, during our sales process call one is when, so before call two, would have given them my clients, the entire strategy. We don't do audits. We don't do any of that stuff. I think it's a waste of time and money of everyone, right? It just is stupid. Like, you know,

Ian Binek (17:33.601)
Okay.

Ishaan Shakunt (17:34.176)
you companies give you money and time and then you do a bunch of things, put it into a bunch of tools and then say that, Hey, company comes to say, Hey, I have a problem. You do an audit and say, yes, you have a problem, right? Like that's a lot of time wasted. So we don't do that. So essentially call one in sales. And this is an important part in delivery is essentially

Ian Binek (17:49.992)
It's a good take. I like that take. Okay, okay, keep going.

Ishaan Shakunt (18:00.27)
Hey, this is exactly the two things you need to do. Let's not do everything. So one is limit the amount of work anyone has to do. Don't tell them to fix a thousand two hundred and thirty six changes. It's a don't ask them to make 56 blocks. Great. So let's just figure out, OK, what are the two things you need to focus on for the quarter makes it less overwhelming. The next thing is let's call one.

by then the call to happens with every single stakeholder that is, that is involved in execution. So if there's a content team, I want them on the call. If it's a web dev team, I want them on the call. This is before we ever signed the client. And that's a mandatory step in our sales process. So when everyone is on a call and I just walk them through it, this is a spreadsheet you'll see. So that's, that's the second part, right? Like getting very, very good at creating a roadmap that can actually be followed.

So if you want to change, someone to change the header tag, take a screenshot of exactly where the header tag is, what it should be, what it is, all of that. It has to be very clear and easy to implement. So we have very, very good roadmaps. And then the third thing is when everyone's on a call, we show them the roadmaps and say, Hey, would you be able to implement this? And if they say yes, we still ask how, where will you make time? you have other priorities? We just keep pushing. And this is during sales.

not after we signed them. And once we know and all the teams are aligned that yes, we will do it. And if we don't see that here, if we cannot get alignment there, we just tell them that, go figure it out amongst yourself and come back if you can actually implement otherwise

It's straightforward, right? So those are the three things that help you implement stuff. Similarly, we just figured out like we just took every single challenge of the three challenges I mentioned and we just applied first principles to it and said, okay, in an ideal world, if anything is possible, if I didn't have to care about anything else, just getting good results, what would that look like? Right? Like most people won't do this during sales because the sales close rates will go down.

Ishaan Shakunt (20:02.03)
Right? Most people won't do a lot of things because that's not how sales works or any of that stuff. Right? Our sales close close rates are 60%. Industry averages are 12.

Ian Binek (20:13.492)
Yeah, that's really high. Yeah, wow.

Ishaan Shakunt (20:15.884)
Yeah. So, I mean, you don't have to follow. It's just like use first principles and then figure out how to get things done. And so we figured out better ways to do keyword research, better ways to sort of do tech. Just like, and just the simple stuff, just better ways to figure out, okay, what are the three things you need to do to make sure you get results? Then okay, in an ideal world, how would you do those three things? It's essentially that.

Ian Binek (20:37.762)
That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah, I think I think you're right. I you're getting all these quality clients through your pretty in -depth sales process. And I'm sure that the people that are in that process recognize that, like this is a little different than like what most agencies do. And as a result, they're more committed and you can quickly sniff out if they're not. And you don't want to work with people that aren't because that just makes you look bad. They don't get results like that's just not a great.

relationships.

Ishaan Shakunt (21:07.598)
yeah, and then we get companies come back that, we spoke two years ago. You told me I wasn't ready to SEO. You were right. I think I'm ready now. Let's work together. And there's nothing in the world that can stop that sale. Right. Except me maybe. Like say you're still not ready. Then maybe, yeah, sure. Right. But apart from that, there's nothing else that can stop that sale. It just goes through.

Ian Binek (21:26.294)
Yeah.

Ian Binek (21:31.032)
That's awesome. Yeah, it's so cool to see those referrals. think that's like for me, I I'm only six months in. But what I really get a lot of joy from is someone says, I saw one of your LinkedIn posts or I listened to your podcast and actually really found it useful. So hopefully I can get to that point where it's like, hey, I talked to you two years ago and I won't you you said you weren't ready for paid ads, you know.

Ishaan Shakunt (21:50.038)
Mm

Ishaan Shakunt (21:57.602)
Dude, you're doing amazing. think you're one my goal. I told you I started the business basically because someone told me to learn business. So I didn't know anything. My goal was to one of my goals for the year and this is real was to understand what departments exist in a business.

Ian Binek (22:18.668)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Ishaan Shakunt (22:19.19)
Right? Like there is an HR department, sure. But why and what do they do? Like there's a finance department, sure. But what, what other departments are that was a literal goal for your one of mine. I was that clueless. Right? So you're doing amazing, man. Like just absolutely amazing.

Ian Binek (22:36.598)
I appreciate that man. I'm trying, I'm trying. I see big names on LinkedIn like you and Tass and so many other people. You know, we've had on the pod and I'm like, I'm just trying to be like you guys. So yeah, I appreciate it man, I really do. And Sean, I'd like to get into the next question. You were talking about AI a little bit before, but can you tell me a little bit more about those hires that it sounded really interesting and you know, how are you using AI in your agency and what do think it's going to do for the...

the rest of the digital marketing industry.

Ishaan Shakunt (23:06.688)
Yeah. So for context, because I think agency owners will also listen to this, right? So for context, the way I run my agency, essentially I do one major thing here, one or two major things here. And then there's a lot of small things. This is most definitely the major thing for the year. Right? So

Ian Binek (23:15.48)
Yes.

Ian Binek (23:33.806)
Okay.

Ishaan Shakunt (23:36.052)
Essentially, I like taking a big bet.

And then making sure I'm funding it well, making sure I'm just going all in and making you and then just seeing it through. Right. And then I'm very, very careful about how I take these bets. And I'll only invest, for example, if I'm investing X amount of, say I'm putting in a hundred thousand dollars towards something, I'll make sure that I have the money to see it through. I don't have to cut it in the middle. And if I invest that money, the agency won't completely go off track and you know, it won't just be an existential crisis. So that's the.

amount of money I have to invest in these large things, right? So just that's the caveat. So with that caveat, the second thing is this entire AI is coming to the AI pit. Now I'm not that big of a believer in AI changing the world, even though I'm investing heavily in it, I'm not.

Ian Binek (24:28.074)
Okay, interesting, interesting. Okay, okay. So yeah, this will be really cool though to hear what you're doing then if you don't believe that AI is going to like change the world.

Ishaan Shakunt (24:37.994)
Yeah, I think it's basically it enables more complex compute. So I did a lot of research on this obviously before any of your big initiatives. If you make a cup one or two a year, you have to do a lot of research behind them. So my basic, my thesis is just going to enable more complex compute, which basically means there are a few things that is much easier technically to implement.

And so which means a few things which are very hard to automate earlier are much easier to automate now. And the second thing is because of all of that, the UI becomes simpler. Right? That's, that's it. Right now, if that's it, the beauty of it lies, there's a couple of roles where you could have automated 80 % of it, but the 20 % was so fragmented across the role that you would still have to do it.

which meant you cannot really, and if you do that stuff, you would need to understand the other 80. So you're not really saving all that much time. So you didn't automate it. Now with AI, when I sort of charted a lot of the rules and I looked at, okay, what is possible, what is impossible? A lot of work can seriously be automated to an extent that I needed to be automated.

So, okay, that was insight one. And I can give examples for what's we're automating and all of that stuff as well. The second was, also have this big bet on how agencies should look like, or like what the future of marketing is and how few roles may or may not even require to be full -time roles ever. Just basis of all of that, right?

I decided that, if someone had to automate all of this, sorry. then the third thing major insight was AI is going to increase productivity to a point where the benefit of a large team goes away to a large extent. Right.

Ishaan Shakunt (26:45.678)
So if these things are true, then why would I want to hire a lot of people when I could just automate a bunch of things, pay my team just extremely high salaries and just make sure I have the best people ever. So anytime, let's say if I automate 60 % of someone's tasks, give them a 30 % bonus. keep an additional 32 automate more stuff. They're happy. We are happier. Clients are happy. Everyone's basically, you know, like doing well. So that's essentially our

Ian Binek (26:56.652)
Mm -hmm.

Ishaan Shakunt (27:14.21)
like the thesis, we'll find out whether or not it works in a year.

Ian Binek (27:19.97)
That's so cool. And yes, it's a great one. like again, with your background, you take this why approach. You need to understand the why behind all these things. And I think a lot of people, like you said, especially in marketing, like they didn't know what a campaign necessarily even was. And like for you, you're like taking a step back and you're like, what is AI? Like, why is it useful? And like you said, I productivity, that's a big, it's a big.

a big one, right? mean, AI is not going to come in and like make those traditionally human made decisions. It's really just going to like help you analyze data faster, help you be more productive. And that just increases throughput and potentially revenue for the business too. So great analysis. And I love that you're just like, Hey, like, let's just get two people on the team. Let's have them get like a, a serious marketing background, understand everything we're doing. And

Ishaan Shakunt (27:49.687)
Yeah.

Ishaan Shakunt (28:04.812)
Yeah.

Ian Binek (28:17.356)
like their job is to just automate the crap that like people hate doing anyway. So it's such a cool, such a cool way to use AI.

Ishaan Shakunt (28:20.856)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Ishaan Shakunt (28:27.89)
I mean you could use tools but that is half -assing it. Right? And if it's one of the two major projects, I might as well full asset.

Ian Binek (28:37.006)
Sure, think especially, yeah, like you said, you could use tools, right? But those tools are gonna charge a premium to use their service anyway, right? And if you're able to build something internally using AI and potentially no code automations or coded automations even too, I mean, in your sense, you have that code background and you know who to hire for that stuff.

Why not? Right? You'll save a lot of money and it could turn into something proprietary that you could sell or offer to your clients anyway. it's like you're setting yourself

Ishaan Shakunt (29:13.782)
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm not saving money in year one or two. I think it's going to be more expensive. Even if I break even on this investment by the end of end of year one, I'm very happy and that's success for me. So I'm definitely not saving money. Yeah, but I think there's a lot of capabilities that no one has built yet and I don't want to wait. So I just build it essentially right. then

We could just give it away, right? I'm not, yeah. We'll just figure that piece out, yeah.

Ian Binek (29:45.806)
That's awesome. Yeah, you don't have to have it all figured out yet. Like see what you got first before you decide like, this is what we're to do a year from now or two years from now. yeah, just like one step at a time. That's really cool. Ashaan, let's get into the next question, which is like overrated strategies in 2024. So we have, obviously we talked about AI and you kind of talked to your, don't believe AI is going to change the world. So is there anything else like overrated right now that you feel

Ishaan Shakunt (29:54.45)
yeah.

Ian Binek (30:15.436)
you know, maybe agency owners, or even just like marketing professional CMOs, like they're over indexed on, and you think that there's going to be like a correction in the next like year or so, and people are going to realize like that was a waste of time. Like, what do you think?

Ishaan Shakunt (30:30.927)
that's so much.

Ian Binek (30:33.848)
Okay, this is good then. Let's hear it all.

Ishaan Shakunt (30:42.902)
I think the one that I'm most interested in or I'm working most closely with, obviously there's the entire automation bit, but then I think one more thing that we're working very closely with is creating better offers and what that enables, right? So I think a lot of people look at positioning and say that, hey, you need better positioning. Offers is very, very similar.

like extremely, extremely similar. I think there's going to be a time where suddenly people start just thinking a lot more about offers. And that's like a prediction. I know B2B SaaS. And I think next year or so, you'll see a lot more influencers just talk about offers all the time. And the reason is we've seen

difference in performance of any marketing activity across I don't care about the channel it's going to be better if you have a great offer right it's just a very hard skill to master maybe I think six people or so in my team I gifted them all a great book on offers they all read it we all read it we all tried making offers and all of us failed

It's just like a tough scale, but once you get it once, so now we have our own systems to make offers and we have our own checklist and what a good offer is and all of that. Once you get it, like our outbound or best outbound campaign right now has a 13 % positive reply rate and it can be scaled. The copy, there's almost no personalization apart from the name.

So, all of that stuff you can remove, right? Like, and this outbound, right? People say outbound is that I'm not even good at outbound, but that offer works, right? That's an interesting one that I think people aren't paying attention to.

Ishaan Shakunt (32:48.834)
but then I'm trying to just make it work and then everything against it, right? A lot of things are related. For example, more SDRs and that. A lot of people talk about that just over hiring SDRs, over doing outbound. I think personalization is another big one because I already touched upon it. Like people just like, if I in an ad or in an email, I told you where your kid goes to school.

Ian Binek (32:48.916)
Mm -hmm.

Ishaan Shakunt (33:16.362)
you would report me to the police not buy from me, right? Like it's not useful. I don't, I just think personalization is becoming like, because it's possible now people are overly investing in that. Whereas what's much more useful is, does this person need what I do? And if you can build your list based on needs versus personalization,

Ian Binek (33:20.085)
Yeah, of course.

Ishaan Shakunt (33:44.288)
It's the same amount of work, man, just work on the needs. And if someone needs you, then sell to them. then everything else, it just sounds obvious. Right? Like doesn't matter what I call you and how I start the sentence. If I'm giving you what you need, you know, the sale goes easier. Marketing goes easier. Everything is easier. I think the personalization is another big one. It just like.

I don't get it. Maybe maybe someone's doing it well. I just haven't seen like no matter how much you personalize.

It hasn't been that big of a difference. For example, I tried using the name of the CEO. I've tried using, like, haven't like, if I reaching out to someone, I name drop the CEO in the, in the email. I've tried that. Didn't make that big of a difference compared to a need, right? Then I've seen people talk about, you know, buying donuts from the closest donut store.

Okay, I mean, that's interesting. You did your research, but then if I don't want what you are giving, I'll just laugh and giggle and be like, Hey, great job, man. But then won't really. I don't know. So that's just my take on personalization. I think that's another big one. Right. So yeah, that's just a few things that's from top of my mind, but there's a bunch of things people are getting wrong today.

Ian Binek (35:10.964)
I have seen that a lot more in the LinkedIn feed. A lot of big names like CEOs of like, you know, copy AI and, even like Adam Robinson, which I think he was on your podcast. Big name now he's growing like crazy. But what's interesting is he writes, you know, if I, if I started my, my email and I say, Hey, Hey, Bob, I checked

Ishaan Shakunt (35:24.226)
Yep, yep.

Ishaan Shakunt (35:38.317)
Hmm.

Ian Binek (35:40.462)
like, you know, Wonderworks and you're, it looks like you serve these clients. And then I say, do you need ads? like, obviously I don't say it like that, but that's like, it just like, feels like that first sentence, like, although it's personalized and you may be able to get it to a point where AI has this great prompt where it is pretty templatized and it seems like, yeah, okay. Like did you research?

Ishaan Shakunt (35:50.402)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ian Binek (36:09.811)
Like you said, it doesn't really add anything to the email. Because at the end of the day, you want them to either take action on starting a discovery process for your services or tell you that they're not interested or not responding. That's it. There's nothing else that's needed in that email.

Ishaan Shakunt (36:31.47)
Yeah, yeah, 100%. Yeah, have nothing to add there. That's just something that I think a lot of people are optimizing for, where I don't think it needs optimization whatsoever.

Ian Binek (36:34.006)
Yeah. Yeah, we.

Ian Binek (36:44.276)
Absolutely. Yeah, it'll be, I'm curious to see what happens with a software like clay, you know, cause clay is like one of those big ones, right? That is allowing for that, kind of AI personalization. but like you said, like, and I think as more people realize this and test, mean, you, you've got the numbers to back up your reasoning here. Whereas like some people are just like really bullish on it, but they don't have the numbers to actually back up the point of like, Hey, let's see if works or doesn't.

It doesn't really affect our revenue. So really cool take. Definitely a good one. I think that'll be an interesting one to see what other people feel like too.

Ishaan Shakunt (37:20.486)
I think we just hosted Clay's, I think, first or second event in India. So we were the partners that got them to host it here and it was like a great event. lot of people showed up. So I'm a huge, I'm actually a fan of Clay, love the software. We use it for our clients, not for Outbound, but for a lot of like ad optimizations and SEO CR optimizations, building better lists, that stuff that we use Clay for. So Clay is good.

Ian Binek (37:26.724)
well.

Ishaan Shakunt (37:49.334)
I'm just curious to see what they'll do. They raised that a very, very high valuation for what the software is. I'm hoping they figure out some way to raise the next three rounds. I don't know how they will, just looking forward to it, I guess. Yeah.

Ian Binek (38:06.402)
that yeah, won't, I won't, won't necessarily go into how you're using clay for SEO, but I'm curious, like maybe that'll be a future, you know, post we'll see on your LinkedIn or something because that is kind of something that I think a lot of marketers don't understand is that they can use clay for, for in bounds, not just outbound as well.

Ishaan Shakunt (38:17.92)
Yeah.

Ishaan Shakunt (38:28.452)
yeah, it's a Google Sheet with APIs.

Ian Binek (38:31.702)
Yeah.

Ishaan Shakunt (38:33.322)
You can use it for like the entire outbound positioning is new. Like I saw Clay's homepage before they focus on outbound. Outbound is one use case that Clay enables. And if you look at the older versions of their homepage, that's when I was checking out Clay. They don't talk about outbound as much. Outbound is one thing. And then they realized, by the way, genius move by them. They realized if we just talk about outbound and forget about everything else, because that's what

that's all people seem to be using us for. Let's just talk about that. And that was amazing positioning by them. But then like that doesn't take away from the fact that their tool can do a lot more many things. And maybe some of those other things are as useful if not more useful than Artbound. So yeah, that's.

Ian Binek (39:24.428)
I love that. That is a really cool insight. I didn't even know that because I'm kind of new to Clay, honestly. past like five months I've heard about them. really cool insight. Okay. All right. Well, Ishan, last question for you today. We wanted to hear some parting advice for our budding entrepreneurs and people that are looking to get started with an agency or maybe their

a few months into their agency, maybe they're like me, only six months in, what would you, what kind of advice would you give to those people that are thinking about starting and becoming an entrepreneur?

Ishaan Shakunt (40:05.262)
Do you want the long answer or the short answer?

Ian Binek (40:08.684)
Let's hear, if the short answer is truly short, let's hear the short one and then let's get into maybe a little deeper. I'll ask a question afterwards.

Ishaan Shakunt (40:17.262)
Sure. Yeah. So for most people, like you shouldn't probably do it. Right. So just for context, you don't make nearly as much money as you think. Right. Like just, and if you're doing it for money, don't do it. If you're doing it for freedom, don't do it. takes away most of your freedom. Right. So

Make sure you have a good reason to do it apart from money and freedom because you aren't getting that. At least for the next five years you're not. Right? So, Ian, I'm sure you'll relate to this but year one you make lesser than you much lesser year two you make lesser year three maybe it starts catching up but if you're doing well but you don't make enough money right you'll probably see being you'll see the same thing right now.

Ian Binek (41:08.494)
I agree. I agree. Yeah. I mean, hey, like you got some dark days. Like when you're an entrepreneur, you have some dark days. You're like, wow, my friend is over here. Like when I left the company, he was like the same level as me making the same money as me. I left the company and like I'm making like two times less and now he's making like maybe 50 % more. Like, yeah, you got some dark days where you're like, wow, like that's crazy. But

Is there a flip side to this? Let's hear the flip side. Is there a positive to the entrepreneurship?

Ishaan Shakunt (41:43.599)
No flip side, right? Like I just think that most people should not do it. It's not a great way. Like for most people, it's not a great way to live life, right? So I think it's, I think the origin stories of people are always very interesting.

And then you'd almost never like you have to, there's very few people who stay in it for money. Right? So for example, for me, I fell in love with the B2B SaaS. I started it because I, told me he'll learn business. And I said, I don't want to spend three years, one year prepping for MBA, two years doing an MBA and then getting it. Like it just seemed very inefficient. To me, so I'm just, would rather start a business without knowing how to.

That's just me. So that's how I got started. You're at the end of year one, starting of year two, our vision of the company started forming and our vision truly today. And that's how a lot of the decisions we take now that that's the filter we take every edition through now is I fall in love with the B2B SaaS space. And I genuinely want to change the way marketers

are dead. That's when you ask me, Hey, what do people over index on? I'm like, there's too much. It's hard to hire here. It's very hard to, like find even

to take good decisions. A lot of it because it's because of the exec itself or the team or the data they're getting or there's so much crap in this space that is like, I like this industry too much. Let this remain in the state it is. So by 2030, so our vision has a time limit by 2030. I'm going to change the industry and the way we are doing it is we just sort of, for example, I'll figure out a net new role. For example, we have

Ishaan Shakunt (43:39.218)
a role called com strategist in copywriting. That was a role we figured out that hey, unless you have that role, you cannot create the best copy. You cannot create offers. You cannot create fun as you cannot get all of these things. That role is missing today. So let's create that role, create SOPs for it, create training for it, create JDs for it. Then let's get a hundred companies to adopt that role. And when these hundred companies or most of these hundred companies start doing a better job than everyone else, everyone else will adopt on its own.

Same with our SEO processes, same with our ads processes. just like, we'll identify things that we want adopted in the industry and then just bring that into existence essentially. So that's how we're thinking of achieving that. And that drives me much more than most other things. So yeah, like that's like.

Ian Binek (44:09.88)
That's awesome.

Ishaan Shakunt (44:33.74)
Yeah, for most people, shouldn't do it unless you are crazy enough to have a very weird motivation like this. It's like my genuine, genuine advice.

Ian Binek (44:45.774)
Yeah, no, I love that. I don't think a lot of people would would say that. I think a lot of people say they get into entrepreneurship because they want to learn or they want to have freedom and time freedom. But I've kind of noticed the same thing. You really don't have any more time freedom. You have way less because you don't. It's really hard to turn off. Like, it's really hard to turn your brain off. Like when you're thinking about the business, like you're like thinking five, 10, 15 steps ahead.

Ishaan Shakunt (45:05.036)
Yeah.

Ian Binek (45:16.138)
even when you're sleeping in the middle of the night, you get up in the morning, you're brushing your teeth, taking a shower, like you're thinking about it. You can't just think about like, I'm really excited for the football game that's gonna be on later. I have way less of those thoughts than I did when I worked full time, like for someone else.

Ishaan Shakunt (45:28.488)
yeah.

Ishaan Shakunt (45:36.526)
yeah, I think what keeps me sane, I'll show you this. This is my desk. So these essentially are post -its. This is just like have a company vision. This is my personal vision for the year. And I have 12 goals each year. Right now, what that allows for.

is I have goals for my health, my relationship, like just me as a person, friends, family, my own finances, like a lot of different things. what that, what, it's all the way I am here working all the time. So I can just look towards the right and I can read them. So that's a good reminder of, Hey, you need, you have other things in your life.

you know like some things you don't forget but others you do or you just miss out and you're literally like hey shit I forgot about that right like so yeah these things help like so build your own systems around your life and your entirety of year one is literally just figuring out I think at least for most people for most people have seen it just figuring out how do I live my life how do I what do my relationships look like

What do people around me think? Who I want around me. That's your one, right? Your one is not PMF. Your one is not like all of that exists, right? But I'm talking about your one of entrepreneurship, not even of your business. Right? Your one of entrepreneurship is figuring out life. You know, so that's another thing people don't really understand. And I didn't, I for sure didn't. Yeah, that's another interesting. Yeah.

Ian Binek (47:14.709)
Exactly.

Ian Binek (47:23.796)
And how could you? And how could you know? Right? Like, how could you know? There's nothing that prepares you for entrepreneurship. Everyone's entrepreneurship journey is different. that's awesome, Aashean. Great conversation. That's all I have for you today, But I think this episode, great. Just in general, I think there's a lot of takes that most marketing professionals we've had on have not taken and they haven't talked about.

Ishaan Shakunt (47:27.839)
yeah.

Ishaan Shakunt (47:33.432)
Yeah.

Ian Binek (47:53.439)
So this is truly unique and I feel like I learned a lot so I'm sure our listeners did

Ishaan Shakunt (47:59.266)
Thank you so much, man. Like this was a, questions were really good. And again, like you're already killing it. Like I was, I hadn't had anything. hadn't, there was nothing I had figured out by the, you know, like month six, month seven. Right. So I think I almost crashed the company by month nine. So

Ian Binek (48:20.787)
Sounds about right. I feel like I've almost done that a couple times too already. So that sounds about right, man

Ishaan Shakunt (48:26.926)
But you're doing really well, man. And thank you so much for having me the podcast and asking such great questions.

Ian Binek (48:32.894)
Absolutely. And before we finish up, Ashawn, could you tell the listeners how to get in touch with you if they'd like to work with

Ishaan Shakunt (48:39.81)
yeah, just search for me on LinkedIn, guess, right? Just search for Ishan Shakunt, or you can look for Spear Growth, which is S -P -E -A -R -G -R -O -W -T -H, speargrowth .com. Just hit us up. Maybe see if you're a good fit. Let's chat. And if you're not, I would at least be happy to help you out, however I can. Just send me a message.

Ian Binek (49:04.778)
Awesome. All right, Ashan. Well, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much again.

Ishaan Shakunt (49:09.878)
Yeah, likewise, thanks Ian.

‍