What Tech Bros Get Right...and Wrong

David definitely doesn’t want anyone to be like tech bros, but he has recognized a few things creative agencies might be able to learn from them.

Transcript

Blair Enns: David, I love the title of this episode, What Tech Bros Get Right and Wrong.

David C. Baker: You love anything that would lead to my potential cancellation.

Blair: You can't get canceled by dunking on tech bros.

David: Well, but the first part of it is what tech bros get right. Actually, that was the full title that I added, and wrong. [laughs] I'm going to go out with a bang, man.

Blair: You're not going to get canceled, but you might brace yourself for some sort of DNS attack. Denial of service attack.

David: Yes.

Blair: Okay, so where did this come from? What's going on?

David: Well, it's all over LinkedIn. I don't spend as much time on X anymore but used to be all over there, too. Anytime a tech bro just comes on with all these hacks and if you want more brilliant insights, then sign up at the link, and all this stuff is just so disgusting. Then I find myself thinking, what? There are some things that they do right. That thought first occurred to me maybe a year and a half ago or so.

Hold back. Whatever you're going to say right there, hold back. I have this kind of a note-taking app called Work Flowy. I love it. It's like a simpler man's notion. I started writing down things like, "Okay, yes, they're really annoying, but here's what they do right." I kept adding things to it slowly, and then I thought, what? Let's do a nontraditional topic. I'm ready to do something different so I thought, okay, what tech bros get right, which is obviously, a headline written to grab people's attention because they're immediately thinking there isn't a single thing they do that they get right.

Blair: Can we define the term, please? What is the tech bro to you?

David: Yes, it's not you. [laughs]

Blair: I'm not tech enough or bro enough.

David: Either one. It's not me. These are young, wealthy, uber confident. The confidence is like, "Where does this come from?"

Blair: They're younger than you and I. They're wealthier than you and I. They're more confident than you and I?

David: Well, that's pretty much everybody in the world, except for the confident thing.

Blair: Anyway, I'm just trying to get you into trouble.

David: Often they're usually running a startup. There's like "Get rich quick scheme" and there's going to be an exit. Then they're always talking about their amazing exit. Of course, you never hear any details about it, but this is what they're trying to create in you. You want to be like them, not maybe the arrogant, titled, sexist, [laughs] focusing more on wealth and status and so on, but the party things. I call them Lambo Luke's. You're the guy that's disgusted that somebody rented a car for a $1,000 a day and parked it in somebody else's mansion, took a picture of it but you're like, "That would be fun to drive too." They got more money than ethics. They tend to dress in a casual bro style. This comes from perplexity.ai, by the way, a search engine I really love. This is the first thing they get wrong. They're always wearing Patagonia, and I would have always prefer to wear Rab.

Blair: [laughs]

David: Anyway, that's just a minor point.

Blair: Okay.

David: There's all this masculine camaraderie, competitiveness, lack of empathy, other than that, these are great people.

Blair: Sorry, is this whole definition that you just went over, is this from perplexity.ai?

David: Yes.

Blair: Yes, so this is not your opinion.

David: Well, I added some things.

Blair: Oh, you've added the things, Patagonia versus Rab.

David: I added a few. I made it a little spicier. They were neutral, but yes, it basically comes from them.

Blair: If somebody young male, wealthy, opinionated, comes from the tech world, startup world, this person could not exist without social media. It's kind of startup person turning social media influencer with advice for you on how to live your life, run your business. Is that a decent summary?

David: Yes. The odd thing is, these are the new snake oil salesmen. I say men, male, because almost every one of them is male, but what they're selling is themselves. MLM, multilevel marketing is I think of this as like multilevel persona [chuckles] where they're trying to sell the dream that they have somehow achieved to other people and they're selling, they're selling. It's like "Sign up for this. This is more about what I did and what you can do." It's all fluff. There's no real substance in this from these people. That's what's really disgusting about it because some of them will have millions of followers, right? I'm not going to name names, but it's just weird. It's something that's uniquely Western.

Blair: Uniquely Western, uniquely of this time amid the observation that this person can't exist without social media because you can monetize the dream via social media in a way that you really couldn't before.

David: Right. They wouldn't want to live without social media, right?

Blair: Yes.

David: There's constant selfies and short abbreviated terrible grammar sort of got your statements. Then in the replies, some of them are just ridiculous, so odious almost. They're playing a game. They're almost acting, but they don't have an agent. They're selling who they are to other people, and other people buy it. It's tech bros. You step back and you're so disgusted, but then you say, "Well, wait a second. There's something here. I don't like any of what I see, but there must be something here." This is obviously a psychological sort of a phenomenon, but what do they do well too? That's what's interested me.

Blair: Okay. Where do you want to start with what they do well or what they get wrong?

David: Let's go with what they do well because I've already beat them up enough. People know I don't want to be a tech bro.

Blair: People have discerned that this is somewhat personal.

David: Right. There's no way I'm wearing Patagonia. This is out.

Blair: What do you have against Patagonia?

David: Oh, nothing.

Blair: I don't own any Patagonia, but they make good product.

David: I'm just making fun of the fact that all the tech bros wear Patagonia. It's sort of a statement.

Blair: Okay, so now moving to our positive selves, what do they do well?

David: There are six things here. I believe that every one of these is true. I'm not just saying this is what they should do, or this is what they say they do, or what people think they do. I'm saying, no, they really do this. I think it's admirable. My whole point is to explain their success. Is there something that we can learn from the tech bros? I think there are. There are six things they do well.

The first one is that they're very disciplined and hardworking. They're not sitting around, they're not trying to get somebody else to paint the fence for them like in Tom Sawyer, they really do work hard. There's a lot of hustle.

Now, what they're doing is another thing, but these are not lazy people. They're disciplined and hardworking. I think, we could be more disciplined and more hardworking. I've said, I've talked a lot about it. What's more important, somebody who's super smart or super disciplined, it's like I'll take a disciplined person any day of the week. Give me somebody with average intelligence or even below it, as long as they're disciplined. These people are disciplined and hardworking. That's the first thing.

Blair: Yes. Those are admirable traits, no matter what you do. That's a good one. Discipline and hardworking.

David: The other one is "Practice what you preach." You'll see this theme as we go through here. I'm thinking of the typical listeners here. My clients, your clients. Maybe I shouldn't throw your clients in here after you hear what I'm going to say, but they're always talking about-- here's one simple example. You need to have a very tight positioning as a product company or whatever it is. Your website needs to reflect that. Well, the typical firm doesn't have either one of those things. These people practice what they preach. If they say some ludicrous, you need to make 30 sales calls a week or whatever the number, whatever it is, they're doing that. They are practicing what they preach. I think there's something about the young male that sees that.

They see somebody who is consistent in what they say and their behavior, and that draws them. I think there's room for us in this industry to practice more of what we preach. We're always talking about, and you need to spend money on marketing. It's like, "Well, how much money do you spend on marketing?" It's just all this stuff that goes on and on and on. I feel we lose a little bit of credibility here, and this is an area where they practice what they preach. They don't recommend stuff that they don't also do, that they haven't tested, that they've also done, that they've learned from. Actually, that's probably another one that I should add here is they're very transparent about their failures, and they're over-transparent about their successes. [chuckles] They'll talk to you about the things they've tried and where they messed up. It's a constant learning, fast fail. It's an ambitious, "Practice what you preach. Let's just figure this out." I admire that.

Blair: Yes. If you extrapolate that to the listener, you run a performance marketing agency, well, show me the numbers in your firm. How do you do it in your firm? When you're putting case studies in front of your clients, I've long thought that a really good case study in your case study mix should be your own firm, assuming it's applicable. It begs the question, why don't advertising agencies advertise?

David: Yes. We did a great episode on that once. Why don't PR firms do their own PR?

Blair: Yes. These first two positive attributes of these tech bros, as you're calling them, discipline, and hardworking combined under one attribute, and then practice what they preach, I wouldn't have thought of that, but as you speak to it, it's obvious. They're saying, "Hey, look, it's simple. I did it." Whether it is simple for you or whether you can replicate that is another thing, but this idea that they are doing it and saying, "This is what worked for me." All very admirable.

David: Yes, like you need a sales funnel. That's what a tech bro's going to tell me. Then I'm going to go sign up for his emails and it's like, "Well dang it, I'm dropped right in the top of the sales funnel."

Blair: [laughs]

David: He practices what he preaches. I admire that.

Blair: Okay. Third on the list, competitive and ambitious. Yes, to a person they are, aren't they?

David: Yes, almost to a fault.

Blair: It took me 35 or 40 years to actually admit that I love ambition in another human being. For decades, I wouldn't allow myself to say that I valued that attribute.

David: Why?

Blair: I don't know. I don't know.

David: Is it a family thing?

Blair: It was never directly stated, no, not even implied. I don't know where I got that ridiculous idea, but the first time I heard somebody say, "I admire your ambition," and they weren't speaking to me, they were speaking to somebody else, I thought, "Yes, I do too. Why did I previously think that that's not something you can say out loud?"

David: Yes. I was just judging this-

Blair: Person.

David: -it's sort of like a-- [laughs] it was like a Shark Tank thing at the local university and the person who was managing this competition, I started to look her up on LinkedIn and followed the trail and saw that she was a business major at the school before this, before she became this person that's managing these contests, and she has a roasted pecan business and it was really interesting. I have no idea what the numbers are behind it, but I'm thinking, "Well, that's amazing." Somebody who is working in an entrepreneurship program is also ambitious, and I just love this. I don't know that you can be ambitious without being competitive. Maybe I didn't need to say both of those things, but these people are competitive and ambitious. God knows our industry could use a little bit more of this.

Blair: Oh, pull on that thread a little bit more. What do you mean by that, we could be more competitive? Do you think we're too cooperative? Do you think we're too touchy-feely, too worried about how everybody's feeling, and not striving hard enough?

David: I don't think that's true for our peers. We're very open and collaborative. I think that's fantastic. I think we're a little bit afraid of our employees nowadays over the last three or four years and so some of the natural ambition that might rise to the surface gets checked because we're not sure how the team will feel about that, but largely, bigger than all those things is just this killer instinct. We seem to be missing it. I don't know why. I guess because wealth takes a certain place in our lives, which is probably a healthier place, but maybe one out of 40 or 50 firms really has the ambition to grow and have some sort of an exit, and I've always wondered why it's not higher. Sometimes I think we're like CPA firms. I don't know.

Blair: We're going to get into this in our next episode. Stay tuned, people.

David: Oh.

Blair: Yes.

David: Oh, this'll be interesting. I don't even know what that one's about. You've already started thinking about it.

Blair: The blog post has dropped. The email goes tomorrow. All right, that's a whole other topic. I'll touch on that in the next episode. Lots going on here. Discipline, hardworking, practice what they preach, competitive, and ambitious. Was there more you wanted to say on competitive and ambitious or do you want to move on?

David: No, let's move to the next one. It's harness the community to sell for them. I love this one.

Blair: Me too.

David: They have disciples everywhere and it just spreads. It's like a personal version of the network effect and I just so admire that. When I think about my business, I don't really know the numbers, but there are probably 15 people who just regularly send folks my way and they're so complimentary and gracious and generous. Then there's, I don't know, a bunch more people who think highly and we've worked together or we haven't or we've rubbed shoulders, but I don't have this army of people that are fighting behind me for free on the battlefield. These tech bros, they just inspire this loyalty and a community, and often the community is actually formulated a little bit. It's like the tech bro understands this and that's part of what they're selling is this community that will keep buying from them, but also keep selling for them. I just so admire that. I don't really know how they do it. I just am impressed.

Blair: If you think of multi-level marketing as the unseemly version of this, of scaling your sales force, this is the more palatable version of that scaling your sales force. It is a phenomenon. People aren't just buying from you, they are actively referring you and taking pleasure in actively referring you. Maybe there's a little financial remuneration going on and maybe there isn't. I think this is a really keen insight. I think back to Dan Sullivan, founder of Strategic Coach. He has this, I think he calls it a 10X program or he calls it something else, and he has this 10 criteria for 10X-ing your business. I think it's the very first one where he says, "Your customers become your sales channel." That idea, if you can solve for that problem, man, you just unlock. My goodness, I'm not going to sound like one of your tech bro people, you unlock an exponential audience. The size of your audience just multiplies. Your reach grows quickly. I think that's a really interesting observation.

David: I think this happens because they somehow shape the conversation for this person. If you're talking with somebody that admires some other person, they will insert that other person into any new conversation with a new person. It's almost like a religion. They're seeing their reality through how this person sees it, but then they feel this is such good news, they want to share it. You deserve to learn from this person too. I guess we'll talk a little bit more about why that's the case, but just harnessing that community to sell for them is just so powerful.

Blair: That's number four under what the tech bros do. Number five is they're not always in selling mode.

David: Yes, they help people. You've taught me that selling is really helping people. When you enter a conversation like that or a potential relationship, everything feels different. You don't feel the pressure to do things you would have before you're helping people. There's something in here.

Now, it's not pure because a big part of you says ding, ding, ding, warning, like, "I'm going to get fleeced at some point, but I'm being helped right now." Like, "Wow, I can't believe all the stuff he gives away for free." It's webinars or private conversations on Twitter or public ones with hundreds of people, or he's got enough energy to meet everybody at a bar and connect, and that'll be a memorable thing with all kinds of selfies. It's not just selling. They get this right.

I think that in our industry, we have this right. We understand that. We just don't do it. We don't provide enough free help for people because all kinds of possible reasons. Maybe we're struggling with what our positioning should be. Maybe we don't feel we have things to say. Maybe we don't have the time, whatever that is. We get the spirit of it correct. We just don't actually do it. This is tied back to how hard they work. They're spending a lot of time actually helping the community. Now it has an ulterior motive, but it really does help the community. It gives them things to think through, how to solve things. Of course, they're usually selling different levels of access to different people, but, God, I've really thought a lot about this. You'd think maybe I want to be one of these people, right? This is pretty sad.

Blair: [chuckles] Well, it strikes me as quite similar to content marketing, the way you and I advocate that you do this. Basically, I've heard you say numerous times, you give your thinking away for free. You give it away for free. You give it away for free.

David: Right.

Blair: The idea is there is a hook there. There is a trade-off. At some point, maybe there's an ask. You're giving, giving, giving. You're asking, can I help you? Is this different in any way?

David: I don't think so. You're a little bit more sure you're going to get screwed with the tech bro, but it's basically the same thing.

Blair: [laughs] Okay, number six on the list of what the tech bros do well is FOMO.

David: FOMO, a sense of belonging. I think this probably ties back to the community thing, but it's so important, it's separate. You're not just connecting with this leader. You're connecting with other people that share the same priorities and perspectives and have the same needs and desires that other people do. There's this community that's created to solve this sense of belonging that's so missing. I think this is probably missing more among young males as well, which is part of why there's such a draw here.

It's one thing for somebody to be your client. It's another thing for them to feel the sense of community with your other clients. We don't think enough about that. I think there could really be something there where I'm not just staying with you as a firm because you do great work, but I'm staying there because of the other people you bring to the conversation. We don't ever think about that. I think tech bros do this really well.

Blair: This is a really keen observation.

David: Does this make you want to be one? Is it that compelling?

Blair: I think I'm too old to be a tech bro. I think that ship has sailed. Does it make me want to be one? No, but it really does help me understand whether you have a like or a dislike for this approach. Underlining all of it are some very strong attributes, some things that, as you say, they're doing very well.

David: Yes.

Blair: I think I was a little bit cynical of the topic here, but you really have looked past your own cynicism of this group and dug into the things that they deal with. Do you want to talk a little bit more about what they get wrong? Well, do you want to go back to the hate sandwich?

[laughter]

David: Yes. Just to reiterate, I really despise tech bros, but I think we can quietly admire some of the things they do but not forgive that they're leading people astray. They're dumping them. They're using them. There's nothing there. There's a lot of sexism, a lot of weird thinking about money. I'm not dismissing all that. I acknowledge all of that. I just think we can learn something from a lot of different places, and this is one that's always struck me as interesting. I resisted this for a long time because it's such a weird topic, but I don't know. It's just I like it. Don't be like them, but recognize that there are some things you can learn from them. That's how I leave it.

Blair: For your feedback, the email address is david@punctuation.com, or you can find him on X or LinkedIn where he's quite active. David, this has been really enlightening. Thank you for this.

David: Thank you, Blair.