#161: Strategy | How to Enter New International Markets, Hiring Locally, and the Content Approval Trap with Max Van Den Ingh

Dave sits down with Max Van Den Ingh, founder and CEO of Unmuted, a B2B SaaS marketing agency based in Amsterdam. Max shares his insights from his background in Sales, sharing how his approach of building relationships has translated to a successful marketing agency.

Max and Dave Cover:

• His high-touch approach to entering new markets by focusing on understanding the landscape and building relationships
• Challenges and advice for hiring in international markets
• The shift towards scrappier, more authentic content in B2B Marketing and the case against multiple layers of content approval

Timestamps

• (00:00) - - Intro
• (05:26) - - The US Approach to Marketing
• (08:14) - - Max’s Initial Agency Skepticism
• (11:25) - - B2B Marketing Strategies for Dutch Tech Companies
• (13:24) - - Challenges of Expanding SaaS in EU Markets
• (17:40) - - How to Effectively Use Local Expertise
• (23:03) - - Building Your First Customer Playbook
• (26:47) - - Creating a Long-Term Strategy for New Markets
• (29:27) - - Branding and International Expansion
• (35:44) - - Challenges of Hierarchy in Large Organizations
• (37:10) - - Multiple Layers of Approval and In-authentic Content

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Dave Gerhardt [00:00:08]:
Max. Good to see you, man.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:00:16]:
Happy to be here.

Dave Gerhardt [00:00:17]:
Where are you?

Max Van Den Ingh [00:00:18]:
I'm in Amsterdam.

Dave Gerhardt [00:00:19]:
You're in Amsterdam?

Max Van Den Ingh [00:00:20]:
Our office.

Dave Gerhardt [00:00:21]:
First time we met was Austin.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:00:23]:
Correct.

Dave Gerhardt [00:00:24]:
Then I sat next to you at golden hour. We hung out again, and you told me I needed to have you on the podcast, and I agreed.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:00:32]:
Nice. Yeah. We've been hanging out for a little bit. You're coming over to Amsterdam with your wife and kids, I believe at some.

Dave Gerhardt [00:00:39]:
Point, I want to. Let me tell you, we went there. I went there when I got asked to speak at a conference when I worked at drift years ago, and I wasn't going to go. And then David, who was the CEO, was like, you got to go if we have opportunity to speak internationally. And I. My daughter was like, maybe one. And my wife and daughter and I, we went and I spoke at sas stock in Dublin, and then we went to Amsterdam, and it was amazing. And I haven't gotten out of the us much, but Amsterdam could be the best place I've ever gone.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:01:10]:
I mean, it's close. It's like a six hour flight.

Dave Gerhardt [00:01:13]:
Yes. Yeah, we flew. It was perfect. We figured while we were over there, we went to both places. But for somebody who loves. I love being outside. I love the sunshine. I think as a dumb american, I thought Amsterdam was coffee shops and red light district.

Dave Gerhardt [00:01:30]:
And we got there and I was like, oh, my gosh, this place is unbelievable. Everybody's on bikes. Like, it was just instantly, we're like, I could totally. Yeah, I could totally get used to this way of life. It's a beautiful place. And so, yes, I would love to find an excuse to come back. And I know I have a good tour guide if I ever make it that way again.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:01:47]:
I mean, I just had friends over from New Jersey, actually. He visited Amsterdam with his fiance and I provided a bunch of tips. I told him not to go to the red light district and all that stuff and to avoid sort of the city center, which I call the shitty center, because it is just not so much fun. You have to go a little bit deeper into the city, to go a little bit to the outskirts, and that's where the people from Amsterdam actually lived. And I told him also to rent a car and to go to the beaches because we have a really good beach sort of layout. And he was really happy about it. It's only a 30 minutes drive and you're there.

Dave Gerhardt [00:02:21]:
We also spent. I don't remember exactly where the neighborhood was, but I want to say there was like a museum and just a big, big open field and everybody, it reminded, it honestly felt like New York or Boston, but it was museum Square.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:02:34]:
It's called literally. Yes, because there's all the museums there. Like you have the Rijksmuseum, you have the Vincent van Gogh Museum. Yeah. Yes. Nice. How are you doing?

Dave Gerhardt [00:02:44]:
I'm doing good. I'm doing good. I'm excited to talk to you. The thing we wanted to talk about is basically marketing outside of the US, which I've not done a good job talking about. I live in a bubble and I have gotten to know you a little bit. I think you have interesting opinions about b two B marketing. Strong opinions about them. And so I thought, who better than to be my tour guide and lead me around here than use? But first, do a quick introduction on yourself.

Dave Gerhardt [00:03:12]:
Who are you? Tell us about your business. Tell me how you got into this world.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:03:17]:
Sure. Yeah. Max, 31 years old. I live in Amsterdam. Spend about ten years working in tech. Started my career actually in sales, which was amazing. I worked at this sort of car leasing companies for electric vehicles. So mainly we sold Tesla leasing contracts.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:03:34]:
And I spent so much time selling these cars to CEO's. And that's also how I found out about this whole b two B industry. Because I found out that most of these successful entrepreneurs, they don't run fashion brands and well known companies, they run quite boring companies, actually, but they earn really good money doing so. So that was actually quite interesting. And that was sort of my first look into the world of b two B. And from there on I moved to marketing to product, worked at a B two B SaaS company. And then about four years ago, during the COVID pandemic, I started unmuted. And my company is a b two B SaaS marketing agency.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:04:16]:
We work with dutch tech companies. We're about 15 people now. So that's what we do.

Dave Gerhardt [00:04:22]:
I have a question. What brings you to the US so often to go to these b two B SaaS relevant events if your focus is only dutch tech companies, is it? Well, I don't want to answer for you. Why do you do that?

Max Van Den Ingh [00:04:36]:
Yeah.

Dave Gerhardt [00:04:36]:
So other than it's fun and you get to hang out with me, it's.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:04:39]:
A lot of fun for sure. I mean, the US is fun. I've learned at a young age or early in my career, I'd say that if you want to stand out with a small budget, you have to do things differently. You have to do things other people don't. And you have to sort of figure out a the new ways or figure out the new channels before others do, and sort of embrace or understand the new content formats before others do. And typically in the Netherlands or in EU in general, we're pretty far behind on what's happening in the US. So I've always been sort of inclined to follow american marketers, follow american SaaS companies, join american communities to sort of learn what's happening out there before it enters my world. So that gave me sort of a competitive edge, which is why, yeah, I've always been quite interested or sort of keen to hang out with people from the US just to learn, be inspired.

Dave Gerhardt [00:05:41]:
Yeah, I love that. I feel like that's kind of what I thought you were going to say and why I asked the question. I do feel like an underrated thing of anybody that has been successful, grown their career in marketing. I think the marketers that I like to be around are the ones who are super curious and enjoy learning and, like, treating this like a craft. I actually, just before I saw a post from Karen Flanagan and he posted this chart that was the timeline of a marketing career. As you get more senior, your knowledge of marketing gets worse. This is a very common scenario in marketing. If you're an aspiring marketing leader, I urge you not to follow this path.

Dave Gerhardt [00:06:15]:
Always practice the craft. And he has like, a chart that shows like, as marketing seniority goes this way, you, your knowledge goes down. And that was something that I've always struggled with because when I was manager at a company that was growing, it was like, you get pushed to manage people and become into people and process when, like, the things that got me here was being good at marketing, understanding copywriting, psychology, being obsessed with treating marketing as a craft. And I'm like, I don't want to let that go away. I don't. I want to be a manager who still does that. And I like to be surrounded by people who do that. And that's why I'm having so much fun building exit five now is because, like, I get to run the business and grow the business, but I still get to, like, treat marketing like a craft.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:06:58]:
Yeah.

Dave Gerhardt [00:06:58]:
For you, everybody that I've talked to, they were like, oh, you have the perfect background to start an agency. But then, like, 90% of people that I said, don't start an agency, you're not going to have any fun. It seems like you're having a fun time. What's been your experience in starting and creating a marketing agency?

Max Van Den Ingh [00:07:15]:
Mandy? I was always saying I would never in my life start an agency because it's like the stupidest business model, it's not scalable.

Dave Gerhardt [00:07:23]:
So every agency owner that I have ever talked to also says that, yeah, right.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:07:27]:
So you're always like, I hate agency people and they don't have good quality and they're just expensive and like, what are they doing all the time? And there's only junior people out there and they don't understand my business and all these things. So, and I had this background, like working in SaaS, working in growth and scalability and all these things, and I was like, okay, an agency is none of that, so that's not going to be my thing. And I always had these sort of ideas for SaaS startups, but I was comfortable in my job and I was thinking, like, I don't have, I don't know, 100k or 200k in the bank to just not have an income and build this thing from scratch. So it never sort of happened, starting a business, so to say. And then during COVID actually, I was sitting at home like most people, I had a job and I was bored. And I read all these people who said, like, this is sort of the time to pick up that side project, to start doing something that you can look back on two, three years from now where like, okay, I'm happy that I spent this time not on watching more netflix, but on producing something. So I thought, why don't I, I was really intrigued with notion. Like notion was just coming up, I don't know, four years ago, like big time.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:08:38]:
And I wanted to do something with notion. At my company where I worked, we used Asana and I was like, okay, I'm going to write down everything I know about marketing in this notion and that's going to be my side project. So I created all these chapters to write down my thoughts about copywriting, advertising frameworks, all these things. And then at some point I had this sort of bible of my marketing knowledge and it was great, but I didn't really have any sort of purpose for it other than just creating it. But just the minute I finished it, I started getting people reach out to me asking for help with marketing because their sales teams, they couldn't go to conferences anymore and they still wanted to grow. And they saw me post on LinkedIn about sort of this digital marketing stuff that was possible. And from that point on, I was like, okay, wait a minute. These companies want me to sort of help them with marketing and with growth.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:09:29]:
Why don't I just do something that I know I can make some money, do it for three to five years and then who knows? I can start my SaaS company. So that's a little bit how it started. And then it turned out to be very useful to have created that notion, because when I started hiring people, they could just use that resource to do marketing the way I think it should be done. So that's a little bit to start. And I've been having a lot of fun with it.

Dave Gerhardt [00:09:56]:
Do you still see think you'll build a SaaS product at some point?

Max Van Den Ingh [00:10:01]:
I think so, yes. Yeah, I like it. I like building.

Dave Gerhardt [00:10:06]:
Do you have ideas, not that you have to share them now, but do you have like deep in your notion or notebook somewhere? Do you have ideas of products and things that you would want to build in this space?

Max Van Den Ingh [00:10:15]:
Yes, and they're not very deep. They're very, they're there. It's a moonshot list and it's on my favorites of.

Dave Gerhardt [00:10:24]:
So what do you mean they're not very deep? Like, there's not a lot of ideas or they're not very like a substance wise deep.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:10:29]:
No, no. There are ideas, but they're not hidden away. They're not hidden away. Yeah.

Dave Gerhardt [00:10:33]:
Okay.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:10:33]:
No, I have ideas, but I'm going to focus on the agency first. I'm enjoying this.

Dave Gerhardt [00:10:38]:
All right, so you start this agency, and you mentioned earlier that dutch tech companies don't are further behind in marketing strategy and growth tactics than what we hear today. And I actually would have bet you that, because I'm talking to you, we're going to say dutch tech companies, but I actually would bet you that a lot of people listening would just find this relevant in general, because maybe they're in an industry that is a little bit. We often talk about B two B SaaS in the US, which is very early adopt AI this, this, that. Right. Growth hack this. But I think what I want to talk to you about is just general, we'll use dutch tech companies, but I think generally, let's talk about when you started this company and even what you see now. What do you mean? What do you think people miss? What is the part of the B two B marketing strategy? I don't know if it's basics. I don't know if it's the playbook.

Dave Gerhardt [00:11:28]:
But when you talk about the dutch tech companies being behind, what are some of the things that you see the early adopters in the US doing that you want more people to do and that you're trying to help them do? Let's talk about strategy.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:11:41]:
Yeah, I think there's a little bit of a buildup before we get to the point where we understand why there's a difference sort of in mindset and in approach. I think it has a lot to do with market size. So marketing is of course the same everywhere, right? We have like, foundational principles, the 22 immutable laws of marketing, stuff like that. That's the same everywhere. But the size of the market is so different here in Europe compared to the US. Like in the US, you have, I don't know, more than 300 million people basically in the same country. Of course there are states, but they all speak the same language. Well, most of them speak the same language, especially in sort of professional America, corporate America, where here in the Netherlands, we're 18 million people and we speak Dutch.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:12:37]:
So if you want to sort of go after a bigger market as a dutch tech company or dutch SaaS companies, you would have to go to Germany, UK, Belgium, France, places like that. But you have to build a new company, essentially to go after that market. And what you see is that in all those countries, there will already be a SaaS company that you then have to compete with, who is dominating that internal market already. And they are french, they have french friends, they have a network there, they have their office there, they have their background story there. They have the cultural nuances in place, they have the content native already. So moving from one market to another market in EU is extremely difficult. It takes a lot of time, which means that mostly SaaS companies, they just stay in their own country, and then they grow a little bit outside of their own country. And it can work, but it will probably never be as successful as they are or were in their home country.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:13:46]:
Meaning they're just running a smaller sized business and there's less feedback to work on. If you get like 20, 30, 40 demo requests for a SaaS company per month here in the Netherlands, that would be considered already quite significant. That will be a nice sort of stream of demo requests, while a us based company could get that amount in a day, meaning you have so much more feedback to work with and to understand if the marketing programs that you're putting out there are performing, if they're leading to revenue. While here we just don't get that feedback that often. So it's harder to optimize, it's harder to learn. Learning curve is just going slower because you don't have that feedback. And this is a little bit my vision on why I think we're sort of behind, because of the market size, if that makes sense.

Dave Gerhardt [00:14:33]:
It makes sense. So you have smaller markets and so to get the big market, you have to add up two or three smaller markets. But the challenge is each one of those smaller markets talks differently, thinks about things differently. There's a lot of nuance there. Is that the right way?

Max Van Den Ingh [00:14:50]:
Am I understanding that legislation as well?

Dave Gerhardt [00:14:53]:
Yeah.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:14:54]:
So for example, Germany, it's terrible. You cannot do anything there marketing wise. That's like non boring because you get legal letters and everything. You go to jail. So if you want to go to Germany, like a lot of companies think, let's go to Germany, because it's a big country, something like 80, 85 million people. So they're like, okay, that's where we can really grow. But they're very traditional. They want to do business only with german companies, not with that foreign company.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:15:23]:
So you have to open office there, you have to have like a registered organization over there. You have to have representatives that are from that country to even make a chance. So the investment, before you even know if it's going to sort of have an ROI upfront, is huge, which is why most companies won't make that investment. And then as a result, they're not going to be successful in that country.

Dave Gerhardt [00:15:48]:
So is this why you focus exclusively on dutch tech companies?

Max Van Den Ingh [00:15:52]:
I mean, we've worked with some international tech companies before and those collaborations were nice, but at some point I thought working in an agency as a consultant, you have to switch context continuously. Right? One day you're working for this customer, the next day you're working for that customer. They use this CRM, they use that CRM, and that context switching is quite heavy on the brain. So at some point I was like, if I can sort of strip away some of that context switching to just make sure that we work with people who have a similar sort of communication style, that would be nice for my team, but I don't think we'll focus on dutch ten companies forever.

Dave Gerhardt [00:16:29]:
No, that was a bad. That was a silly and bad. That was a bad question for me. What I really want to know is, so of the companies that do this well, that do successfully market in multiple countries, multiple markets, what do they do? Is it, you got to find somebody locally in each one of those markets and I, they kind of run it like a business unit. How do you be successful there?

Max Van Den Ingh [00:16:53]:
Yeah, that's essentially what you have to do. You have to have one or two people that are from that country, that also live in that country. Ideally a marketer and a salesperson, the marketer that starts creating content natively for that market. So not only sort of translating stuff that has already been created in one country and then only translating it. That's typically nothing that doesn't work really well. So this person needs to understand the market there and the nuances and the cultural differences and the interests and the legislation and those things, and have to take that into consideration to start creating native content in that region. And then indeed the sales rep, whatever the role is, ideally already has a network and has a presence or has a following in that country and can almost do sort of founder lat sales even though that person is not the founder, but they have that existing network and they can get those like first ten clients in. So the marketer can work on some local case studies and can get some quotes and some reviews and some word of mouth can start happening and then they can organize an event and you can invite people because you know people and, and that's essentially how you build any business, right? And that's what you have to do if you want to sort of grow or like you.

Dave Gerhardt [00:18:10]:
Yeah, this is really good. And so I like the idea. It's basically like, all right, if you want to expand into a new market globally, the best way to do it. I like how you said, you said it's a two part strategy. You got to hire two people, right? You hire a marketing person. Because we believe in content. Some of the VC's and the traditional enterprise folks would say just hire a salesperson. But I think we're marketers on this podcast.

Dave Gerhardt [00:18:31]:
We know what we're like. You need the air cover and then you don't just get like the shitty, just like AI translated content and like, here it is. And then you have this pod of two people who are working together, sharing feedback with each other. This means you're probably going to have to go to local events and meetups, maybe dinners, breakfast, whatever. You're going to be doing this thing together, boots on the ground. And then I think, I like the idea of how you said it's got to be a sales rep with somebody who has experience selling in that market. So they already have existing connections, they already have existing relationships. But also it seems like it can't be a sales type of profile that's very veteran or complacent.

Dave Gerhardt [00:19:13]:
You have to be hungry. You have to want to go and be like, yeah, I have nothing. We're going to literally go knock on doors and just show up at events and try to get our name out there.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:19:21]:
You have to grind and sort of build it up again, just like the founders once did in the early days. Of the company in the original country where you started.

Dave Gerhardt [00:19:30]:
Yeah, it's a new variation of the startup.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:19:33]:
I love that it's a new company. Yeah.

Dave Gerhardt [00:19:35]:
I often see people in like the exit five community and others, or if I'm on webinars or whatever, people will say like, hey, what advice, you know, how do you go and get your first customers? And I think people want some like framework or like playbook to go and do that. And it's like, well, step one, step two. But what you just described is the actual playbook is, first of all, you need a, you need a product. So you're not saying hire the marketer, hire the salesperson, but don't have a product. We're saying, like, in this example, you have a US or whatever base company. You should already have a clearly defined ICP, you should already have a clearly defined offering. You have a way to pitch it. You're saying like, it's literally start creating content and hire a salesperson and it's going to be one to one, hand to hand.

Dave Gerhardt [00:20:17]:
We're going to reach out to ten accounts today and we're going to see, oh, we got no responses. Okay, then maybe is it, our pitch is wrong. They don't know who we are. Do we need to tweak all those elements? Okay, let's go back and go again. And it's got to be this constantly iterative process. And then also, I think people, when they hear you say like, oh, the marketers got to start creating content, I think people assume that means you're just cranking out like five blog articles a week where it's like, no, the real way to do that is like, you got to do less is more. And so I'd rather have the marketer focus on fewer things and go really deep and write the definitive guide to x for your industry. Really well researched.

Dave Gerhardt [00:20:56]:
Pair that with sales, start doing outbound and doing outreach. And I think that's the playbook to get momentum going, right, but that's the whole thing, right?

Max Van Den Ingh [00:21:03]:
To get momentum going. You don't have momentum in every country. You have it in the country where you have built your momentum. And that's the big difference between us and EU. If you build momentum in us, it can go pretty far into the country, into the nation. But if you build momentum in the Netherlands, in dutch content, there is going to be zero momentum in Germany. So if you want to start selling in Germany, you have to build it from scratch. And you and I both know that building up momentum from scratch is pretty tough.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:21:37]:
You have to really do the work, really do the unscalable things that gives you traction. Indeed. Like reaching out to ten people, sort of offer something for free, or do something for them first before you even get to speak with them or get their attention and invite them to dinner and make sure they have a good time. And then from there on you become sort of friends. That's also how people here start in every country, start a business, you have friends, they like your LinkedIn posts. And then that one friend, they might also have a person in their network that might be someone who could become your customer. And from there it sort of starts to work. But it's the kickstart problem for sure.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:22:16]:
It takes a long time. So if you're serious about growing into different countries in EU, you have to make the investment in having those two people and allow them to build up for at least a year or so, and then make the assessment whether or not your product is a good fit for the country. Because I believe that when you enter a new country here in EU, it's as if you're going to find product market fit again, and you have to find go to market fit again because it might be different. They might not use LinkedIn or that one channel that's working so well for you in this country. They might not use that platform. For example, in Germany, there's this platform called Zing. I don't know if you've ever heard of that. No, that's LinkedIn in Germany.

Dave Gerhardt [00:22:58]:
Damn, do I need to be on that? Is there a growth opportunity there, Max?

Max Van Den Ingh [00:23:01]:
Yeah, big time. I think if you start on Zing, so, you know you have these LinkedIn automation bots, right? They go out and sort of connect with people and then send a message. Yeah, they even exist for Xing. So in Germany, that's the whole thing. Like, that's where you can build, that's where you can sort of build momentum.

Dave Gerhardt [00:23:19]:
I love that. So you mentioned it's almost going to take a year. And so I think this is where I've been inside of companies where we've had, well, it's different. We've had a lot of money in scale and we can go do things, hire 20 people at once. But I like what you said, which is it's almost like if you want to make a dent in that new market, you need to not count it in your existing revenue plan for a year. You need to just basically take the sunk cost of, like, were going to spend 150k for a marketer and 250k ote for sales. Were going to spend four hundred k and thats an investment that were not even thinking about and were going to let them do their thing for a year and then well start to figure out how we can because to your point, I think its easy to jump right in and be like, all right, well, were going to get this much revenue from this market this year when your point is, well, you actually have to go prove you have product market Fitzhen this needs to be treated more like an experiment than pipeline that we can plan for this year.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:24:19]:
Oh, yeah. Like the people that you're going to hire, they have to have this sort of entrepreneurial mindset. And one nuance, by the way, the salary range that you just described, I think you would get a lot of candidates for that kind of money out here. So I think you can get some hungry people for a lot less than what you just described. That's obviously a big difference. But I'm curious, Dave, at your time at drift or privy, like, was european market sort of any big focus for you or did you have any teams working on that or.

Dave Gerhardt [00:24:50]:
Yeah, we did. First of all, thank you for being a great future podcast guest. Do what Max did. Make this a conversation. Ask questions back. Yes. Home run, Max. Thank goodness.

Dave Gerhardt [00:25:01]:
This is what a podcast is about.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:25:03]:
All right. God, I mean, I also want to learn from you, right?

Dave Gerhardt [00:25:06]:
Not that I want to be interviewed and not that I want to be interviewed, but I just, I love the conversational element of this. And sometimes I feel like in this chair and I'm just like, question, question to people who have reached out to me and pitched to be on the show, and then they just sit in the seat and they're like, next question, next question. Don't do that. So what was interesting about drift is we almost like, if you want to build a company at scale, and Jason Lemkin has talked about this. He was just on our podcast couple weeks ago and he said this all the time. I don't know what the number is, but I think it's like any, any public SaaS company or any, im making it up. Any company, over 100 million, its like you need 30, 40% of that to come internationally if you want to build a unicorn type of business. And so I think they knew that early on at drift, they obviously raised venture capital and the goal was to grow globally and expand.

Dave Gerhardt [00:25:59]:
But I think the way that we got there was we had such a strong brand and inbound. It was like the first two years, it was almost like this huge net and we would kind of sift through the pockets of like, whoa. Actually, we have a million dollars in revenue from Europe right now and we don't even have a presence in Europe. Let's go have a presence over there and see what we can build. Because I do think, I agree with what you said, but I also think there's some blurring lines of like, there are companies that will buy the non localized version of your product. Like, you know, if you can use it, if legally or whatever you can use it, there's going to be some bleeding over there and you're going to try to look for pockets of customers in those markets. And so I think we had a bunch of customers in places like the Netherlands, in places like UK, where you could still use the product. And so I think we more looked at it like, all right, now let's go find these pockets and hire folks in that area.

Dave Gerhardt [00:26:53]:
But I think it was exactly what you mentioned, which is we had, marketing can kind of be there a little bit earlier just because of the distribution through content, but we hired salespeople and in a couple of those markets early on to do exactly what you said. I do think one of the mistakes that we made early on, though, was not, not dedicating a marketing resource. I think I thought that we could just like, you know, do marketing and like, it would just be good enough. But I think to your point, if there's a market that you're serious about going after, having someone there who really knows that market and can own marketing, the challenge is it's a tough hire because you got to find that many mini entrepreneur type of hire verse. You either could get someone too senior that doesn't want to write the blog post and send the emails, or you could find someone too junior that isn't going to be able to build the network and build the relationships. And so I think there's a lot of nuance to hiring. But we also went about going up market, right?

Max Van Den Ingh [00:27:48]:
I mean, I guess it also really depends on what type of product you're selling. So at my company, we work with sort of high ACV companies. They have created a software that sort of solves some sort of critical business issue. And they have a very typically very small list of target accounts. I guess with drift, most sort of commercial organizations could benefit from drift and probably with privy, most ecommerce businesses could benefit from privy. So you would already like in any country, have quite a sizable amount of companies that could benefit from your product. But like we work with a lot of SaaS companies, that in the Netherlands maybe have like 600 or 800 companies they could ever sell their product to, and that's it. So they're never going to be this sort of unicorn, not even $100 million or euro valuation company because the total addressable market isn't big enough.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:28:48]:
And they can only become that unicorn country if they start going into the next european country, in the next european country. But as weve already established, it takes quite some effort.

Dave Gerhardt [00:28:59]:
All right, lets wrap up for a couple of minutes to talk about you like the scrappy b two b marketing stuff. What to you is exciting right now about b two B marketing? What tools, tactics, channels, maybe stuff that youre doing, youre doing with clients. People listening to this are the practitioners or b two B marketers who want to hear what's interesting to you. You're at the forefront of this. What stuff is exciting to you? Why is this a good time to be a b two B marketer?

Max Van Den Ingh [00:29:26]:
I mean, it's an amazing time to be a b two B marketer. You were there at golden hour as well. There were some really, really strong quotes from quite some, I guess, experienced marketing leaders, let's put it like that. And what you see is that this whole new marketing playbook, this whole new wave of content is emerging and it's less driven by tools and by big platforms. I feel also because of all the data privacy stuff, tracking being less available, what I see with unmuted is that we start using less tools. I know there are more marketing tools than ever before, but there hasn't been a period where I used this little amount of marketing tools in my daily life. I have a CRM, I have LinkedIn, I have slack, I have maybe I have loom. And that's pretty much it.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:30:22]:
And what I love seeing right now is that slowly the wave or the mindset shift is being made where people in b two B understand that all the content that they put out and their communication and that stuff doesn't have to be sold. Sort of professional and perfect. And I really like that sort of scrappy, imperfect approach to creating content. Just like we had at the start of this podcast. Like, we went into the room, you were like, okay, no preparation. Three, two, one, let's go. And I really enjoy that because it makes it more real, it makes it more authentic. I see a lot of videos being shared with subtitles that are not perfect.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:31:03]:
And guess what? People still understand what you're saying because, like, they're not stupid. They have a brain. They understand what you're trying to say. And if your word wasn't perfect, then still the message comes across. And that's communication, I guess. So. I think it's cool when companies sort of understand that reality and see that the way people consume content and information and be inspired, that it's changing and that it's less about this sort of formality and more about the entertainment or like making a point of using a strong hook and using it like doing that in a creative way. That's like this whole wave that makes me very excited about BDB marketing today.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:31:42]:
And I think we spend great time here at Unmuda to sort of pursue these types of modern content for our clients.

Dave Gerhardt [00:31:49]:
Do you think that can be true even as companies mature? Because I agree with you. I agree with that approach. I've been doing that approach for ten years. I actually just scheduled a video clip that's going out like later today, and I noticed that in the edit of the video clip there was a typo in it. And I was like, man, we could fix this, but why am I going to spend a revision cycle of three days to fix it? I'm going to ship this. It's just in the captions, it's not a big deal. Do you feel like there's a level of scale or company where you can't make those mistakes?

Max Van Den Ingh [00:32:16]:
Yes and no. So I think you still can make those mistakes even if you're a bigger organization. But the chances are you're not going to make the mistakes because all the layers are there. And I've been analyzing a few bigger tech companies recently, and they come to us to help them understand how they are currently executing their go to market and see where they can improve or see where they should add new ideas or marketing programs to help them unlock the next phase in their growth. And what I keep seeing is that bigger organizations in the top of the organization, like there's a person or a committee who knows what the direction of the company is. And then they create sort of this strategic narrative or direction of that vision. And then they hand it over to some manager, and that manager hands it over to another manager, another manager, and then at some point a creator starts working on it and it's such a long distance there and so much can go wrong. It's the same as when you do that game with friends where you tell something in somebody's ear and then they have to tell it to the next person and the next person, and then at the last person, like the original message, it's completely different, right? And what we see and what I believe in is that those people sort of who have this vision and that subject matter expertise, they should be creating the content and it should be sort of broadcasted as directly as possible to the people that need to hear it.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:33:42]:
Because you skip that whole layer, you make it authentic. And I think if you're a really big company and you do that and you have those people that create the content, then sure, there can be mistakes in there because they're also humans, but all the layers, they take all the mistakes out. And with that also a little bit of the authenticity. I mean, I'm all for like, sort of making sure stuff is in place and well designed and, and things like that. I like the aesthetics, but I think there's also authenticity in making it real, if that makes sense.

Dave Gerhardt [00:34:10]:
Yeah. Very well said, max. All right, we gotta wrap. Max, good to see you, man. Thank you for coming on this podcast. I'd love to have you on again in the future, especially as we build our presence in the Netherlands, which I would love to do.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:34:23]:
Do you have a lot of members in exit five from the Netherlands?

Dave Gerhardt [00:34:25]:
What's the best time of the year to be there?

Max Van Den Ingh [00:34:27]:
April, May, June, July.

Dave Gerhardt [00:34:28]:
So right now, like, this is like where I'm in, in Vermont. It's like it's PE. Like we're here. Like, I don't want to go anywhere the next three or four months. This is the time. It's beautiful out.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:34:36]:
Yeah.

Dave Gerhardt [00:34:37]:
All right, my friend. Good to see you. Go follow Max. We'll link on LinkedIn, check out his agency unmuted, and you'll see Max in the exit five community. He's in there, a loyal supporter. Good to see you, Max.

Max Van Den Ingh [00:34:45]:
Alright, man, I'll talk to you later, buddy. Appreciate it, bye. Like exit, exit.