The First Customer - Unleashing the New Era in Content Creation with Founder Tim Branyan

[00:00:27] Jay: Hi, everyone. Welcome to The First Customer podcast. My name's Jay Aigner. Today. I'm lucky enough to be joined by Tim Branyan. He's a serial entrepreneur. He's founder of TrueFanz, RepuStream, a bunch of other stuff. Tim, it's great to have you on. 

[00:00:40] Tim: Yeah, appreciate it, Jay. It's been cool to get to know you right before the episode started.

[00:00:44] Jay: Yeah. Yeah. It's one of my favorite times is the little, you know, five minutes before the show. so beyond having a very cool, recording space like you have, tell me a little bit, where did you grow up and did that have an impact on you being an entrepreneur?

[00:00:56] Tim: Yeah, so I grew up in Kokomo, Indiana. It's about 40 minutes north of Indianapolis, more of a blue collar town. Grew up, you know, low middle class. Had love in the family, but we weren't rich by any means. And I think the environment, Shaped me to have an auditing sort of decision early on in life. My, my options were fairly slim being in, in Cocoa, Indiana, as far as the occupation or work. So in high school, and I, you know, I think it's somewhat common. I started thinking, okay, what can I do? What are my skills? What do I want to do? And, so for me, that primitive choice. It was the military. so I guess, you know, my environment being here in a small, smaller town in Coquitlam, Indiana, there's like 50, 000 people here.started to help me in making these, more long term decisions, I guess.

[00:01:51] Jay: Very cool. is anybody in the family, an entrepreneur?

[00:01:54] Tim: so my dad actually is a Christian comedian. So that is another thing. So early on in life, I got to watch him, You know, leave his work and then on the weekend, get prepared to go out and do his craft, which was comedy. And, so I did have an example growing up of, you know, the reality that you can go and pursue something or do something different than the norm. Yeah. And then our family, just in general, I come from a creative family, but I threw it throughout the year. I really don't think there's anything too special about my environment per se. That was the catalyst.

I think it was, I've always been aggressively curious and wanted to figure out how things work. And I've been less fearful and more so, You know, curious towards trying something versus buying into the reality that it's not going to work more optimists than

pessimists. When it comes to building something, I don't know if that's directly correlated to Indiana or family life. It's just, I don't know.

It's always felt that way.

[00:02:51] Jay: What's Indiana known for? what's it's 

[00:02:53] Tim: So the. But it is 

[00:02:56] Jay: Iowa, right? I can't 

[00:02:57] Tim: we're known for that for sure. And agriculture, we're starting to become known for business. I think more and more large companies are realizing that they can operate a business here and take advantage of some of the tax laws and the incentives for.

For. Operating a business here out of Indiana. I mentioned this

before we jumped on the call. I work for the SBDC, which is the small business development center. I'm a state servant through them and Purdue. And, that's been a really fun role to meet new entrepreneurs, but then also just kind of dive into what makes Indiana awesome. What are these programs? What are these products? What are those tax reasons that make us a cool state to do business in? And,that's about nine months of experience in that role. Indiana is a cool place, man. It's one of

my favorite places. 

[00:03:43] Jay: All right. I've not been. I'll have to Fly over it at some point. Is it a flyover state? I don't know. Is it in the

[00:03:49] Tim: It's right in the middle? man. A lot of people fly over, they miss it. Don't miss it.

[00:03:53] Jay: All right. Don't stop. take, did a layover in, in Indiana, at least check it out. so what was the first business you actually started?

[00:04:02] Tim: So how far back are we going? Are we going high school? Are we going,

[00:04:05] Jay: I mean, I'd love to hear the high school story and then kind of maybe the more official business story later on. But I mean, it is always interesting to hear everybody's little, you know, Side hustle thing that they kicked off 

[00:04:18] Tim: Yeah. so my first hustle in high school was modding. Xbox is a huge gamer. Halo two is this thing that was this, you know, awesome thing in my life. It's pretty much took over my life. and Xbox,the regular Xbox. I don't know if you were a gamer or not, or you're a gamer. Yeah.

Okay. 

[00:04:37] Jay: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I went to Full Sail to make video games, man it's it's hard to 

[00:04:40] Tim: Yeah. Okay. Beautiful. So, the regular Xbox, had some features, had some functions, but it definitely, you know, out of the box, you couldn't browse the internet. You couldn't play it, play a conglomeration of different games from different, you know, consoles. So I would soft mod people's Xbox is a hundred dollars to get their Xbox soft modded. I would put the new firmware and the new soft. Software on the actual X Box and it would allow them to then browse the internet or play emulators. And, yeah, not a really compliant or legal business. I was underage at the time, thankfully. So I didn't, I avoided that con. I think it's been long enough. anyway, I would then help them get games. That was the residual component of it. So that was my first hustle was. You know, realizing that there was a market in my high school and, filling the gaps, finding things that people wanted, and then building this platform that would allow them to do that.

So that was, that was one of my first, and I did really well. It was funny. I, people would take the bus to my bus stop. I didn't have a car yet. people would take my bus stop. And drop their X Box off with me at my house. I'd have a 24 hour turnaround. I'd get a hundred dollars and then they would typically come back for more features or functionalities or games that they wanted to get out, take custom requests, and then help them get that on their X Box. So I did really well. And then like the demand got a little too crazy. So my customer support started to go to trash and it was just, it became a little too much. So I stopped operations. anyway, that was my first hustle. I guess the first legitimate business was, let's see, a platform that, Automated a lot of your social activity online.

It's called rocket grow. It's first learning experience too, is what was legitimate. It got us into trouble with regards to, API and, how we were, how we built that platform was. Breaking terms in service. So it was my first big win, but also first big learning experience on what to do and what not to do. it was really young, but that was probably my first, you know, big win. I've always had ideas and I've always, you know, kind of tested the market with bootstrapping and going out and trying to do new client acquisition and testing the market on a lot of stuff. I've done that a lot.

There's been plenty of things that I thought, you know, would be awesome. That didn't end up being awesome, but through those, swings of the bat, if you will, I've aligned with some things that worked really well, or things that taught me some serious

[00:07:11] Jay: That's awesome. Yeah. I mean, well, if you were, I think Xbox, you know, Microsoft probably doesn't care about the, you know, the modding at this point, if it was Nintendo, they probably would still come after you. just you don't want to, you don't want to mess with Nintendo. That's like one kind of rule,in game legal stuff.

so walk me through till you got to TrueFanz. And then I think there was breppy stream and a bunch of others. So like, what are the other. Businesses you spun up. I mean, now you're a serial entrepreneur. How did you go from, kind of that first toe in the water, you know, real business, learn some lessons to, okay, now I'm ready to, apply this formula 

[00:07:49] Tim: Yeah, I mean, I'm still in the process of developing the formula and things change and I'm adapting and I'm failing forward with enthusiasm. I think that's a key component and I've more so shifted the, I've learned about, just the efforts. The consistent efforts that will be your workout plan that over a prolonged period of time will result in, you know, prosperity, but that workout plan, if you will, quote, unquote, has to be well thought through and well planned and tested and constantly adapted and changed. it's kind of a complicated way of saying that you have to do the reps. In order to get the crunches. That makes sense.

but you gotta understand what sort of six pack you want to get before you start doing crunches, right? Or that'll help you with the amount of crunches you need to do. And you know, the style or the theme of that crunch to get to X.so, you know, I'm still. And I'm still adapting. but what I've discovered is that, service, like your ability to solve problems is going to be what gets you paid. So if you're empathetic and you are hospitable to your customers, as you're designing something or building something or providing something, if you're hospitable and empathetic to what they want and what they need. That's going to help you build a product that is the logical choice for your customer base. So I think,

you know, that's the number one thing that's changing and adapting, but that also kind of stays the same. it's a foundational element to whatever product business or service that somebody's in, it's being hospitable, you know?

So I was just on the phone earlier with my developers and there was just a little qualm that,I would see it as something that is, it's right in plain sight. It was, you know, when somebody logs in, they're choosing their password, but instead of going straight into the login dashboard, it's refreshing and then showing them the login screen again, that's causing confusion. I would argue that if

we were empathetic and we were thinking about hospitable hospitability, that's even a word to our users, then we wouldn't allow that to happen. We would guide them with a welcome message or we would guide them into the dashboard. So. You know, creating a culture in my workforces, of people that are constantly thinking about, like putting the emphasis on customer experience. I just believe that at its simplest form, that'll produce results that'll produce testimonials that'll produce favorable sharing of our stuff. And. Yeah, man. So that's a complex question. How do you get everybody to care? How do you get everybody to be empathetic or hospitable

in what they're doing? that's a billion dollar answer. and I think it's just leading by example and highlighting areas where we've missed that mark and being truthful and being honest when something sucks or taking ownership of when something has gone array.

You know, that, that's another kind of culture thing too.yeah, there is no, I wish that there was like a little one bite sound bite answer to this. The truth is that a lot of what makes people successful is not. Is not glorious, it's not marketable, it's not sellable, it's ugly, consistent, painful, sometimes boring crunches day in and day out

for a very prolonged period of time and measuring and observing what went right, what went wrong. Until you start to break through this lull, or you realize that it's time to adapt and change your product or service or do something different because you are not, you know, getting results and fine and knowing that balance. So I would love for it to be one

sound 

[00:11:34] Jay: your soundbite. You had your soundbite. You had it right there. That was it. You came back around and you got it, at the end. There was your soundbite. The crunches and breaking through. I think that's, I mean, I think it's important, right? I mean, it's, there's nothing sexy about, some of the periods of making a successful business.

It's just, you know. It's not all glitz and glam. And obviously, as a business owner, you have to portray things in a different light and you know, things are great and things are whatever, but like people aren't looking under the hood and seeing behind the curtain, like it is a lot of work. It's a lot of grinding.

It's a lot of banging your head against the wall until things kind of, you know, break for you. So, I think that's very relatable. what are some of your first, who are some of your first customers for your different businesses and like, how did you get them? 

[00:12:18] Tim: so I'll talk about one that's like route, like more so like relevant and I think 

[00:12:24] Jay: run 

[00:12:25] Tim: a lot of different businesses. So we've done a lot of direct outreach and we use platforms like Instagram, or if we're going to beat it, B2B LinkedIn, and we create, kind of an analysis of who are we targeting, right?

What are their pains? What are their needs? What are they going through? What sucks? what's not? You know, what's familiar to them as far as like competitors out in the market. And once we do this analysis, we have a better understanding of who our customer target audience is. then we craft a message and this message adapts and changes, but it's think of it kind of like our harpoon, if you will, We go out into the market on DMS and we send anywhere from 50 to 100 DMS per person on my team and We're doing this in a very personalized way with what we think is internet etiquette.

We're not just spamming people We're literally looking at their profile taking a few minutes to better understand who they are what they have going on finding that connection point of You know, what do we have in common with that person or where's their overlap or what do we genuinely admire about who they are, what they're doing. And that becomes an ingredient in our target message, our harpoon, if you will. And, we use voice and video message really effectively to connect with that person. show them that we're real, show them that we are authentic and that we have something. And then our calls to action have. Typically been to a demo call or a one on one call to better understand that person, to then close them on whatever they offer is. So it's a process that is slower.but it works a heck of a lot more effectively than anything else we've ever done.so we've done, we've tried to do ads before. I haven't had a ton of experience with like running ads. I know there's guys out there that build out these awesome systems and people are using AI. I just. You know, the manual approach, the manual slash tech hybrid approach, has just worked really well built multimillion dollar businesses with this direct outreach campaign, specifically just on Instagram, not even counting like other platforms.

[00:14:27] Jay: Okay.

[00:14:28] Tim: So,

[00:14:30] Jay: do you remember? Who your first customer was for TrueFanz or, you know, these companies and where they, is it, especially the B2B, I mean, B2C, it's a little tougher to maybe remember the thousands of people that joined the platform, but, you know, tell me about, you know, how you found them and maybe it's through these outreach programs and then kind of how you took whatever you learned from that and applied it to your messaging and to your marketing and to whatever else to kind of get more of those same 

[00:15:00] Tim: totally. So with regards to TrueFanz, there was a niche that we accidentally discovered going through that system that I was just describing, we ended up meeting, Her name is a big rig Barbie. Her name is actually Leanne. She's an all her and her husband are awesome people. And we saw her content and she's this beautiful truck driver that also is, she's a mechanic.

She's a small business owner. She's truly beautiful inside now in a lot of different pillars of that word. And, she, you know, we found her profile and we sent her a message. It was an authentic message and she ended up. Joining the TrueFanz platform and doing exceptionally well with very minimal effort. And we discovered this whole new niche of Really kind of unicorns, pretty girls that do cool stuff outside of the adult industry that commanded a large audience represented our brand really well that we wanted to work with. And we also discovered accidentally this whole trucking community and this whole like big rig. Motorhead sort of niche that we never really sought out to connect with, that we, you know, we thought would resonate with our platform and it totally did. So that, that one introduction led to a whole new discovery of, people and creators in a niche that. You know, created this win, not only for us as a platform, but for them as creators went on to make a substantial income for their brand, their goals, and it's just been a cool, it's still a resonating, you know, win for, yeah, just kind of accidentally discovering that industry and building that relationship opened up doors. to that whole market. And I think that's what happens if you quote unquote chop the tree long enough, doing this direct outreach method, you're going to get better at sending messages, you know, the learnings and the doing you're going to get better. at doing these messages and who you meet may open up a whole new line of discovery and new niche for you and your business.

that's my thought

[00:17:01] Jay: No, I love that. and what was the, or what were the indicators that it was something bigger than just, you know, this one content creator and maybe something you guys should look into and, I mean, cause, you know, you can get a customer in some space that, that maybe is a dead end or like, isn't something you should chase?

Like, what was, how did you guys kind of run that down and figure out it was something that could be applicable, you know, past your 

[00:17:24] Tim: Yeah. just the sheer volume that was produced through that one creator was significant enough to take a closer look at, you know, who the audience is, even as the creator, what makes this creator unique, what, what You know, what industry is this person in, like truly, like just take deeper dives into what the totality of this creator was. And this has happened multiple times. It's just one example. There's been several niches that we've accidentally discovered. you know, seeing the, and all the real metric that we're looking at is. What someone's producing as far as income. That's a very clear sign that someone has influence and someone can move traffic to an offer if they can convert a sale. So, you know, people opting in to join someone's community and purchase their digital goods, a large volume of those purchases. It's like, that's a very clear indicator that this person is a true influencer. And. You know, often, sometimes it doesn't even matter how many followers somebody has, it truly matters how much relationship strength they have with their tribe.

So whether somebody has a, yeah, I would take somebody that has a thousand TrueFanz, people that buy their stuff and engage with them and know, like, and trust them, or someone that has a million followers that just peruse and browse or aren't real or whatever. So we really are looking to help people that have a community or a Investing in really building a community. And it's less about the numbers. And you know, and I would argue that to any business owner, it's like, do you really want a million followers or do you want, you know, 500 people that truly know, like, and trust you and love you and vibe with what you do and who you are, it's less about, you know, the actual number count,

[00:19:12] Jay: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think, I heard,do your homework and pay attention. Right. I mean, I think that's the biggest thing. And if you listen for the indicators of what's next past your first customer, your second customer, your third customer, we didn't figure out, you know, one of our.

ICPs for years, but we just kept hearing it. And eventually it clicked. We're like, Oh, a new SAS company is a great potential partner for us. Right. Cause they're in there. They're trying to figure out what's going on with quality of the product. And we go, Oh, Hey, we can help you with that. And they're looking for a partner to, to help them with it.

And this is a match made in heaven, but we heard it forever before we kind of clicked and we're like, Oh, the same thing we've heard for the last, you know, Five years, maybe we should pay attention to. but I think it is, I think, you know, your point is great. There's like, you want quality. yeah, you want high caliber clients with high caliber reach, that refer you and your businesses to other people.

I think that's great. So, God, I feel like I could talk to you all day. let me, I have one more question, non business related.if you knew you could do anything on earth and you couldn't fail, what would it 

[00:20:21] Tim: And I'm in the process of, of figuring all this stuff out at the end of the year. I just started, man, I'm doing like a family mission plan, something that will hang up for our kids. And, I'm in the season of planning literally right now, you know, expanding my vision. I've been, by the grace of God, man, like I've been blessed with some cool opportunities and. What I imagine is going to be a larger influx of income. And it's forcing me to stretch that exact question. or in line with that exact question. So man, I am, I'm in the process of discovering that for myself. Like I'm thinking, I'm trying to think even bigger, like, and it's less about the income in more about. The outcome and an impact and truly man, like what I'm calling kingdom work stuff that, that we can produce that aligns with my gifts and that aligns with purpose. And that to me is fulfilling when I'm doing work that is, that, Yeah, by the grace of God, I have these gifts and talents. If I can align those as a form of worship and what I do, that's a huge win for me and in my faith and what I'm doing.

So, I don't know the exact answer to that yet. and truly, man, I've gone after pretty much everything that I've. Try it that I've had, you know, been compelled to go do, I guess if I knew I couldn't fail,maybe singing, man, that'd be a sketch. That'd be

[00:21:47] Jay: All right, dude, look, I've never heard 

[00:21:50] Tim: maybe that's exciting. 

[00:21:51] Jay: heard your dad's profession. I have heard,they want to be a comedian and they're just too scared to do 

[00:21:56] Tim: Yeah. maybe, 

[00:21:57] Jay: I think it's a great 

[00:21:57] Tim: that'd be in a heck of an experience, right? Like a singer, musician, like just getting in front of

stage and sharing. Yeah, Just like sharing your gift. And then it's, what's crazy is everybody gets aligned. Like at a concert, you've been to a concert, right? Where everybody's like on the same sheet of music and you're creating that experience through their music.

That's pretty cool.

[00:22:17] Jay: that is cool. I like that one. All right, man Well, that's a great answer. if you want to find out more about you tim, 

[00:22:22] Tim: Yeah. just Google Tim Branyan or at Tim Branyan, all main, you know, all, all social medias or just timbranyan. com.

[00:22:30] Jay: Cool, man Well, I love what you got going on. I hope people check you out and have a great holiday season I know we're right up against it, you know, merry christmas. Happy holidays Happy new year all that stuff and the season of planning is upon us for sure. So thanks for being on brother.

We'll talk again soon. All right. Thanks tim. See you man.

[00:22:47] Tim: It's cool, dude.

[00:22:51] Jay: All right 

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