[00:00:28] Jay: Hi, everyone, welcome to the First Customer Podcast. My name's Jay Aigner. Today I'm lucky enough to be joined by Connor Snyder. He's the CEO and co-founder of Storyy, and I said he was, I think a cool Criss Angel. Is that what I described you as the first time I saw you?

I

[00:00:41] Connor: Five, yeah

[00:00:42] Jay: think that was it, and I, you know, I still stand by that. So Connor, what's up, man? How are you, buddy?

[00:00:45] Connor: Dude, I'm doing so, so well. How you doing?

[00:00:48] Jay: I'm good. I mean, I feel you know, I guess underdressed, I guess. You're like, in a real studio over there. I need to up my game. It's like in between two ferns, but you have just one of you. So I need that. So dude, I know you're in Utah. You know, we've talked about that a little bit, but just tell me a little about where did you grow up, and did that have an impact on you being an entrepreneur?

[00:01:06] Connor: Yeah, man, I did grow up here in Utah and, yeah, I was surrounded by entrepreneurship my whole life. So my dad, is a drywall contractor, so I spent my summers, you know, going to jobs and learning how to do sheetrock and spot nails and all that. And, you know, my dad always said to me growing up, he's like, "You know, my goal is that you don't have to do this.

That's what I want for you." And so you do that couple summers, you're like: That's my goal too. I don't wanna keep doing it.

[00:01:31] Jay: Mm-hmm. 

[00:01:31] Connor: You know, that's, you know him, along with just a lot of neighbors we had were all entrepreneurs, and we had people in software and insurance and the whole gamut. And so for me, entrepreneurship kind of was, you know, I was privileged in that way where entrepreneurship was just...

I saw it play out with so many people, and it always seemed like a viable path because, you know, other people did that. But what was interesting is like when I was going to college and stuff, the thought was never in my mind, like, "I'm gonna be an entrepreneur." It was, "I'm gonna go learn some skill," which turned out to be marketing for me.

But like that definitely had an impact on me because even as I was jumping into a career, I always had this entrepreneurial background noise of seeing someone could do this or someone should do this, and like that was a possibility.

[00:02:18] Jay: I love that. Does your dad still run that business today? Is he still a contractor?

[00:02:22] Connor: Well, he's, so he still has it, but it's kind of his side gig now because he opened an arcade. So yeah.

[00:02:29] Jay: You know what? When you put the work in, at some point you just get to do whatever you want, right? You're like, "I've done it. I'll just do something fun now," and this is fantastic. So, do you guys talk about business now?

[00:02:40] Connor: You know what's funny is we definitely do, but I don't feel like we go deep into each other's businesses. Like he'll talk about, "How's the business doing?" And we'll talk like at a high level, and sometimes we'll go into like the strategy stuff. But, yeah, I feel like I can go to him for advice, but I also feel like we operate such different businesses.

It's kinda like apples and oranges for some things.

[00:02:59] Jay: Yeah. No, that's cool. Well, do you find yourself ever recognizing that some of the things you're doing are, like, the same things you saw him doing?

[00:03:10] Connor: You know, it's-- I feel like all of us have this tape recorder growing up that just like records, and then we hit this certain age and it just plays back

you know? Like

we have a conversation, be like, "Shit, I really sound like my dad." So I, there's definitely things I find myself doing,and there's things I definitely consciously do differently, right?

And so I think that there's some things in business and managing people that I do differently than my dad, but I also think there's hard conversations that I've learned a lot from my dad and how he handled those that I take lessons in. So yeah, I think we all learn from our parents for sure, and definitely, you know, that's the closest level of entrepreneurship I had for so long.

[00:03:52] Jay: Yeah, I love that. I love that. So tell me about Storyy. Where did it come from? What was the idea? You know, where were you at when you came up with that? Were you working somewhere else? Like, where did the idea come from?

[00:04:02] Connor: Yeah. So, you know, it really started when I was in high school because I was on Facebook all the time. All the time. And my mom would give 

me so 

[00:04:10] Jay: Where the, that's where the chicks were, man.

[00:04:12] Connor: That's where everyone was, man. And so, like, we were all on Facebook. All my friends were on Facebook. We had dumb Facebook groups and shit, and my mom would come into our office with our family computer where I had LimeWire and a bunch of torrent 

software that 

[00:04:23] Jay: Yep, yep, yep.

[00:04:24] Connor: My mom would be like, "Get off here.

You're not gonna make any money on Facebook. Like, this is a waste of your time. Like, go do something useful." And so, you know, lo and behold, in an effort to prove her wrong, I, ended up working for, the MBA program at the university I was going to. And, they had a marketing problem, and I was like, "Hey, I've heard about this thing with Facebook ads.

I'd, like, love to try it out and learn it." And so they gave me a budget, and I started running Facebook ads. And in the process of trying to get better at that, I go online and look at people and follow people that are doing Facebook ads and start learning from them and start kinda learning the strategy behind this stuff.

And so I ended up dropping out of school because I got a job offer at a solar company to do Facebook for them. And so I started doing Facebook ads for this solar company, and then ended up going to this mortgage company. And the mortgage company is where I had this, like, click moment for me, where I got this job at this mortgage company, and I thought that I was gonna be running ads for the brokerage.

And I'm guessing that you probably couldn't-- Maybe you'll know 'cause it's who you send the money to each month, like who your mortgage company is. But when you actually go to buy your house, you're talking to a loan officer and a person. And so you... At the end of the day, the mortgage company doesn't care about their brand in terms of customer acquisition.

They care about the loan officers, 'cause those are all 1099 sales guys.

[00:05:47] Jay: Mm-hmm.

[00:05:48] Connor: And so what ended up happening was I was like, "Well, I shouldn't waste time with the company brand. I need to go build personal brands for all of our loan officers," like 300 of this brokerage. And so I put together a program, which was we'd go write scripts for these loan officers that let them talk about the things they were experts in.

We'd take those scripts and post them on their social media. We'd turn some of that content into ads, and then we'd go share that content on all the platforms that mattered and let them build themselves as authority in their local area. And so we set up this very manual, tedious system to do this, but the loan officers loved it.

They just recorded a video and didn't think about it. We edited it. We made it so it weren't embarrassing for them to post it. And then all of a sudden, people see them in their feeds as the expert. Like, "Oh, man, they know a lot about loans. They know a lot about what I could qualify for." And all of a sudden they start getting their sphere of influence coming back to them.

They get repeat business. They get new business. They get all their past customers commenting, "Oh my gosh, I was so glad that I worked with you." And this content turns into assets that produce business for them. And so that's when it clicked for me. And, I had a coworker there that we ended up starting a marketing agency where we just did this that same strategy for people in a bunch of different industries.

And we started getting enough traction that I got hired on, at another company to be their product manager for a tech product they wanted to build that had some element of this to their software. And so, you know, as someone that's always loved tech, like, you know, reading tech blogs every day, for me, this was like a dream come true because I got to take all my marketing knowledge and learn about product development and technology and software.

And that ultimately, that experience, helping them build that along with my marketing agency then came full circle where I was like, "We need to turn our process that's manual..."

And you know, you know this from your background, any software, any technology is ultimately a process that you're automating, right?

Like you gotta take it, you gotta build the user flow, you gotta build a flow chart, and there's a process the software has gotta support. And so our marketing was a process. It was process-driven. There was a system to it. And so if we could build technology around that process, we had a software that solved a workflow problem for people.

And so that's what we ended up building was Story. Story was that combination of all the human talent and all of the, the simplicity that we could add to that marketing workflow and, yeah, productize it and that ultimately became Story.

[00:08:18] Jay: Wow. So, well, who are you going after today? Like, who's your customer today compared to obviously, you know, etching out your first kind of deals and doing it? Like, who are you going after today and how's that changed?

[00:08:31] Connor: Yeah. It's so, like, timely that we're having this conversation because we're just about to launch a new website that really doubles down on what we found our new ideal customer is. But in the very beginning, you know, our first customer was a loan officer who didn't want to be a loan officer anymore.

He was like: "Dude, I want you to blow up my personal brand. I wanna do movies, I wanna do podcasts, I wanna do mortgage." And so, you know, we're talking to him and he's telling me all this content that he wants, and then he at the end he's like: "All right, how much to do it?" And I literally in that conversation was like: "Dude, this is so much work.

I have no idea how much I'm gonna charge this guy. I need to just make up a number because it's gotta be so big that I'll find a way to do it,"

[00:09:12] Jay: Mm-hmm. Sure. Yeah. 

[00:09:13] Connor: But enough of a number that it's worth it. And honestly, the number I picked was high enough where I was like: "I hope it just kind of scares him away," because 

[00:09:20] Jay: Sure. Yeah, yeah, yep

[00:09:22] Connor: So we charged him five grand a month for, I think we did two posts a day for him. And he said yes on that call, and so I got off that call and was like: "All right. Time to figure out exactly how we're gonna pull this off." But we knocked it out of the park for him and we started getting a lot more of these, like, individual personal brand clients.

And over time what's happened is we still get individual personal brand clients, but we get a lot more companies because a key thing that companies have realized is they have to have a media production arm to their marketing. It's like the amount of content that has to go out and the amount of content that needs to be video content is such an advantage when you're doing it that you've got to invest in that, and a lot of companies aren't in a position to go hire a full-time videographer and editor and social media manager.

And so giving them that whole team at the cost that's less than a full-time employee is just a huge opportunity for those businesses who are also trying to build personal brands and personal credibility with people within their company. And so that's when we started finding a lot more traction and retention is those teams.

And so we'll keep doing stuff for the personal brands, but it's those teams or the brands that have built teams around them that we've found is more of our sweet spot.

[00:10:36] Jay: Hmm. I'm gonna tread very carefully because I don't want to talk about AI in the same context that everybody's talking about it.

[00:10:48] Connor: Yeah

[00:10:48] Jay: I get kind of why it's good and not good in marketing. I think most people kind of get that at this point. What I am curious about, and it's because I'm kind of figuring out the same thing in our space, and we kind of talked about it a little bit before the show, is like where do people fit into your process as it becomes easier to make software and do things with that software, obviously with AI?

What-- For you guys, as, you know, creatives and as editors and all these things, like where kind of specifically do the humans kind of fit in for you guys, and where do you envision them fitting in, you know, kind of in the future? 'Cause that's the interesting question to me is like how are people pl-planning on keeping them around?

Because if you plan on not having people around, I think you're gonna be kind of, you know, in a bad spot in like six to 12 months when you realize, like, there's lots of things that AI can't do. So where are you guys keeping people in the process? And don't say human in the loop or I'm ending this podcast immediately.

[00:11:46] Connor: No, totally. So the way I've been-- The way I think about this is like, at the end of the day, AI has to find some happy medium across all of its training data when it's doing any sort of subjective work, right? There's like factual information where it's like, this is true or not true. It's like a binary thing.

But whenever we're having a, something that's like a matter of taste, and we're talking without much prompting or training or whatever, right? Like AI is going to have a point of view that is going to be palatable for the vast majority of people, right? Now, the problem in any creative space especially, and I would, I'd say marketing is often a creative space, though not always, is you've gotta be able to stand out.

And so in a way that's similar to fashion, if you're doing five years ago or 10 years ago's marketing strategies, you're not gonna stand out and get attention, which is ultimately what people are paying Storyy for. And so you have to have this, this balance of like, when you're going to use AI or human talent, the question is how do we make sure that we're doing something that's outside of the norm, but not so far outside of the norm that it's not gonna be effective?

And then what are things that, are truly repeatable tasks that have more binary evaluations 

of output? And so when I look at like AI, I first look at things like validation in QA, where it's like we can define some of the subjective things, and AI can be applying against a defined scorecard of like the things that, that can have binary decisions.

But when it comes to like producing the output, you ultimately end up doing a lot of prompting that would also be ended up just being made like creative decisions from an editor. And so I haven't seen the quality improvements or the time savings yet when AI is driving the actual output creative process.

Now, we have a bunch of internal QA move things around processes that AI has absolutely sped up.

[00:13:53] Jay: Sure. Yeah, yeah. Yep. Yeah

[00:13:54] Connor: But I think at the end of the day, we're trying to get attention. We wanna do attention as fast and cheap as possible, but there is a, there is an element of this that requires this to be different from everybody else, and where you bring AI into that process has to be very selective.

[00:14:12] Jay: Yeah. Yeah, it's just an interesting-- I mean, as a marketing guy, like it's just very interesting to think that like nobody's really... I mean, again, before the show we talked about like nobody's really cracked the code on where they fit in the different-- humans fit in the different places yet.

Even with like product creation or like ideation, which I think I probably would bucket with creativity, right?

Like there's some like line in the sand where like it goes from like complete new or complete human idea, and then if you, like carry it too far, then you lead the witness with the AI and it starts to carry down one path. If you stop too soon, it gets vague and starts to look like everybody else.

So there's some balance here, and I'm just curious, you know.

How you're planning on kind of balancing it going forward, 'cause people are gonna be looking for it, and it's something to sell against, I think. It's a great selling point. Like you guys have human beings that are awesome at something. Now, what are they awesome at for you guys, I guess is my question.

[00:15:03] Connor: Yeah. So to me, I think it's when people come to us, part of the question you're always asking with content is like, do you want IKEA content or designer content, right? Do you want Old Navy content or do you want Coach content? You know, like for some people the answer is, I just need the most simple, easily repeatable content and that's good enough for what my audience is looking for, right?

So part of this is like we've got to understand on the marketing side who are the right people for us. If you're just looking for factory produced content, I think AI can handle a lot of the mechanics of that. But there-- I've also seen people who've turned their c- channels into 100% AI driven cuts and I'm not seeing stuff go viral.

I'm not seeing them increase their reach. They might have taken a task off their sold shoulder where the content output's there, but the, if that's a leading indicator of how much less time am I spending on my content, the lagging indicator is, well, how many people are actually engaging with me?

How much more is this driving new attention and new reach? And I've seen people, the only people that are doing that well have built very dialed in, very intentional processes and all of them have people involved, but to what degree and where? And it's way more like ideation and validating ideation and then like validating output and making sure the output looks good.

And so like where we sit is we are doing that for every piece of content because like at the end of the day, your content's getting created for humans, so you better have a human look into this to make sure it makes sense to humans, right?

[00:16:37] Jay: Yep. Yep. Yeah, and I totally subscribe to the, at least the short-term future world is like product, AI being shepherded to develop whatever, and then validation. Like, those are the three kind of pillars that it's gonna be going forward. It's gonna be really smart people making really cool ideas, and then it's gonna be people valid- help validating that those ideas work for human beings.

It's... And then the middle part, who knows, right? We're gonna see what that kind of turns into. But I love that answer. Well, speaking of personal brand, I am curious, like, how do you deal with it? You're like Mr. Personal Brand for everybody else. Do you-- Are you only Storyy guy, or do you have your own stuff?

Do you like, what, who is Connor outside of, you know, kind of your co-founder role?

[00:17:20] Connor: Great question. No, I view Storyy as one thing I'm gonna do in my life. And so Storyy isn't me and I am not Storyy, like Storyy is our whole team, right? You know, I, So, like, when you ask me that question, there's two thoughts in my head. One is, you know, I... Like, what do I do for personal brand? Well, I'm like, mechanically I dog food, you know?

Like your own dog food, right? So it's like I'm going in and using our stuff and hitting friction points and being like, "Oh, this should be better for people," right? Like, you wanna always be understanding what experience your users are having. But then, like, on a more, like, broader level, like who's Connor outside of Storyy?

You know, for me, I'm just a freaking nerd, man. Like, I love anything tech related. Like the amount of gadgets that I've got at my house is insane just because for me it's so fun to understand what's at the cutting edge. Like, I'm that early adopter, try it, understand it. Like I, to me it's symbolic of human progress, and it's the thing that got me so enthralled with social media up front was this crazy idea that I could be in my house having a conversation with someone on the other side of the world who grew up in a completely different bubble and environment than I did.

And like, it's kind of naive looking at it now, but I still really believe in that promise of the internet and what content can do is it can connect people that would never have been connected otherwise, and there's so much power in that. 

[00:18:45] Jay: So cool. 

[00:18:45] Connor: I love anything technology related for that reason.

[00:18:50] Jay: Reminds me of like when I, my dad was doing like ham radio stuff when I was a kid, and like you could like kind of visualize that like here and it's gonna bounce off the atmosphere and hit like somewhere in Europe and you're gonna be talking to somebody. So it was the same kind of... But also I grew up, you know, in the '90s, so like age of discovery of the internet, all, you know, was something I grew up with.

So I appreciate that very much. So, I am curious, what are you trying to do with the business?

Do you wanna sell it one day? Is it something you hold close to the vest that you only talk to internal team members about? Does everybody know? Like what do you, what's your goal for the business?

[00:19:27] Connor: Yeah, I definitely wanna sell it. You know, I'm not trying to do that now. I feel like I've got more to do in it, and there's more that I'm finding personally fulfilling and fun in it right now. But definitely wanna sell it one day. I think that, like, when you're building a business, you should always be building to sell it, even if you have no plans on selling it, 'cause it forces you to, like, build in certain ways and ask certain questions, right?

And so, like, to me it's like build to sell. I think I'll sell it one day, certainly. Like, I'm gonna die one day. Like, I'm gonna wanna retire. So, like, certainly on that time horizon I'm gonna wanna sell it. But all that, like, I definitely wanna sell it at some point. And then, yeah, I think there's lots of other things that fascinate me that I wanna be able to go and dabble in that I'm hopeful that Storyy, whether it's sold or just by growing, opens up doors to try other things.

But, right now Storyy's definitely the focus and building it is the focus.

[00:20:17] Jay: Love it. All right, man, non-story related, non-business related, if you could do anything on Earth and you knew you wouldn't fail, what would it be?

[00:20:26] Connor: Shit. Okay. I mean, here's the problem. You limited me to on Earth, and, like, one of my-

[00:20:33] Jay: No, no, no. I say on Earth. I take that back. I have lots of space friends. I'm a space nerd. I'm an astrophotographer, so I take that back. I guess should I say anything in the universe? Then people will get, like, too existential.

Sure, just low Earth orbit, between here and moon. I don't know, Mars.

What 

[00:20:46] Connor: This is

like my big, hairy, audacious personal goal is I want to build Storyy to a point where I can afford a ticket on a rocket to go to the moon. Like, I think that's gonna happen in our lifetime. We're not there yet, but I think it's gonna happen in our lifetime and I'm always like, I want to be able to do that before I die.

Leave Earth and, like, go look back at this pale blue dot, I just feel like would be the coolest thing ever. So that's 

like my 

[00:21:13] Jay: Love that.

[00:21:14] Connor: big, hairy, audacious goal. If I-- So if I could be like an astronaut tomorrow, that would be it. But

[00:21:18] Jay: You can in this scenario, you can't fail. That's great. I actually love the thought of like, maybe if you could just like see it as you died, and it's like the last thing, and you just got shot off into space. That kind of feels like just like as you're playing like, you know, Freebird or something as you fly into space.

But,

no, dude, you're awesome. I love your energy. I love the product. It's just a cool story, dude. And I didn't mean that. But like in general, like, yeah, there you go. There's no rim shot in post. If people wanna talk to you about something they heard today specifically, how do they reach out to you directly?

[00:21:47] Connor: Yeah. So if you wanna talk to me, you can email me. It's connor@storyy, two Ys, S-T-O-R-Y-Y.com. Yeah, shoot me an email. Always happy to chat and answer questions and tell you more about what we do.

[00:22:00] Jay: And where did the name of the company come from? I have to know before we go. And why is the second Y silent? I'm not gonna let you take that joke. I'm gonna steal it from you. I'm gonna use it against you. So tell me, where did the name come from?

[00:22:14] Connor: Yeah. Look, for me, content, is just intertwined with story, right? It doesn't matter if you're doing it for your personal brand or your business, there's a story that's gotta be told. And you, sometimes you tell it in 30 seconds, sometimes you tell it in 15 minutes. But, Storyy is ultimately what we're about, is helping people share their authentic message in a way that gets attention.

And so, like, Storyy is at the heart of that, and that's why the name of this is Storyy. And, you know, Storyy with two Ys, part of it is we want it to feel like you've got two, two of you, so that you've got a whole extra muscle of creative talent that's helping to share that story. But that's kinda the, what we decided to, you know, have the explanation be after, 'cause the reality is story.com is a lot more expensive. 

[00:22:55] Jay: I was gonna say, we all... I mean, look, you can tell that story all you want, buddy, but I think we know, I think we know, I think we know why the domain ended up with two Ys, even if the company wasn't the same name. I'm gonna guess that story.com was worth a pretty penny. But, Connor, you're awesome.

Storyy, check it out in the App Store near you. Is that where we get it?

[00:23:14] Connor: Yep. Storyy.com or on the App Store, either way. Yeah, and if you ever want a free video edit, yep, just sign up and we're happy to show you what we can do for free.

[00:23:23] Jay: Love it. Check out the new website and, I'll catch you again soon, Connor. It was good talking to you, buddy. Take care. See you, man.

[00:23:29] Connor: Take care. Later. 

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