Leading a Category Defining Brand with John Williamson at Songfinch

In this episode, I chat with John Williamson, founder and CEO of Songfinch, a platform that transforms personal stories into custom songs. We discuss the challenges of leading an innovative brand in the music and gifting industry, focusing on the importance of resilience and transparency in leadership. John shares key moments that fueled Songfinch's remarkable growth, including the shift to emotionally-driven marketing strategies and the operational tactics that supported this success. He emphasizes the significance of fostering a culture of ownership among employees, highlighting the value of genuine connections in building a thriving brand.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:29Speaker 01

  When you get into a space and you don't have other competitors to help make mistakes, essentially, or bring any additional eyeballs to the table, you have to be the educator, the innovator, and everything in between. I think it's unbelievably difficult. I think you have to give yourself the leeway to be unbelievably transparent and say, I don't have the answers to this. We're going to collectively, as a team, figure it out and definitely mess it up along the way. But if we can build this framework in which we can test, we can learn, we can fail, and

• 1:07Speaker 01

  we can continue to try to piece together insights and wins through that, I think that's been part of our process.

• 1:17Speaker 02

  Welcome to Grow Think Tank. This is the one and only place where you will get insight from the founders and the CEOs of the fastest-growing privately-held companies. I am the host. My name is Gene Hemmott. I help leaders and their teams navigate the defining moments of their growth. Are you ready to grow? Today, we look at how do you lead a category-defining brand? What is it? Why does it matter? All of those things unpacked in today's episode. Today, we have us with John Williamson is the founder and CEO of Songfinch. This company started out slow. I will, he talks about the numbers inside here. I'll let you wait. But it started out really slow in forms of revenue and forms of feedback from the world on their idea.

• 2:02Speaker 02

  But after it caught fire, it really caught under something special. And we talked about that as well. And so, building into a Category defining brand is not just about being the best at what you do, but it's about being different from everyone else. It's about truly figuring out a way to reach the masses and get them to see you and to act upon that. And that's exactly what Song Finch has done. When you look at this brand and maybe even see their marketing, you will see that they are doing things differently than their peers. There's lots of companies out there that can create, you know, custom songs, but that's a very different experience than what they're doing. It's more human to human and about the real connection. I will remind you in giving a gift, it's the thought that counts,

• 2:47Speaker 02

  but if you try to do it, it's easy and as low cost as possible, you're probably not going to have the result you want. I'm not trying to sell the Song Finch product, but I do believe in the human to human connection that they're offering. And the way they express that through the service they offer is really quite brilliant. So John Williamson and I talk about this creating a category defining brand. Hopefully you can pick up a few strategies for yourself. My name is Gene Hammett. I'm a CEO coach. We do executive coaching and we do manager coaching as well, helping people be better leaders, helping them truly create a brand that really will last beyond them. And so when you think about what you're doing with your own business, hopefully you have that going for you.

• 3:32Speaker 02

  But what I offer to you is a chance to create in even more alignment with your executive team, even more leadership at the top levels and middle levels of the company to really create the kind of growth that you want. That's what we specialize in. If you've got something on the horizon, you've got some opportunity in front of you, you want to make sure you're prepared for it. The best thing I can offer you is a chance to get really clear about it. You're a listener of the podcast, so my gift to you is to send me an email, [email protected]. We'll have this conversation that gets to the heart of your leadership blind spots and helps you create a plan to move forward. I will give it to you. You can run with it and you can come back to me years later and say thank you. Or you could ask for my help and me and my team, whatever it takes,

• 4:15Speaker 02

  will support you and accelerate you through the different stages. And that is my promise. Just send me an email, [email protected]. Now here's the interview on building a category defining brand with John Williamson. Hey, John, how are you?

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Doing well. How about yourself, Shane?

• 4:32Speaker 02

  I am doing great. We're gonna have an incredible interview here. Before we dive in, I'd love to know more about your company. So tell us about Song Finch.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, Song Finch is a platform that turns personal stories into custom songs. We've grown really fast after a very long buildup. So it's this idea of, you know, this overnight success, but there was really a ton behind it in which nothing was catching on. And I don't know, like it's a, it's, these songs are really created to deliver these like really highly emotional experiences between individuals. And I think it's a really interesting time to be working on a human centric company with all the things that are going on within the world of AI. So it's awesome.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  I know a lot of my friends are playing with the whole let AI create some songs for you and poems and things like that. And they're fair. I mean, I've seen some of them that are better than others. Are you guys leveraging AI for this? Or are you guys doing this all from scratch?

• 5:40Speaker 01

  Everything that we do is from scratch. We built like an instant product, which was our answer to AI, which just allowed us to kind of cater to some other use cases that people weren't going to spend, you know, the 200 plus dollars on, like the original song. But for us, like, it isn't even about the output. Like, it's inevitable that output of like gen AI music at some point in time is going to get better than what humans create. I mean, you gotta look at it. I mean, these companies are training models by ingesting the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Like, the output should be great, right?

• 6:21Speaker 01

  But I think like the question for us is about like how you get there and like that journey to get there is part of the process. You know, if I'm if I'm getting something to be the centerpiece of my fifteenth anniversary with my wife that's coming up. Like, do I want the process of doing that to take me thirty seconds with a text prompt, even if the output's great? Or do I want to like collaborate with a real musician that's put ten thousand hours in to become an expert? And, you know, they've been married for ten years as well, so they can like deeply feel what I'm trying to communicate. Like, I'm gonna pick that route rather than a machine.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  That's a really good point to put it. It's not about speed sometimes.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  Oh, not not at all. I I think we live in this world, right? Where everything is about how fast can I get it? And that's that's consumers have been trained like that now, right? Especially younger generations. It's about like, I think of something, I want like the food to appear at my doorstep, those types of things. But I think the angle that we're taking with this business is like really building these deep human connections. And how do you how do you explore those further? How do you go deeper on those rather than just trying to simplify everything? I think we're gonna have enough simplification all around us with all these things that are being automated and sped up.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  And I think you're going to have this kind of equal and opposite reaction to some of that, especially within like the art space. Like, I want things that are genuine. I want things that are real. And I think the more AI infiltrates like our day to day, I think more and more people are going to begin to think like that.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  You know, you've got an interesting journey with this company. I was looking at the details behind this. So in twenty twenty two, you were honored, I guess, for the first time at one sixty six, which is very impressive. But then you did what's really hard, which was climbed up to the top eleven in twenty twenty three.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  And for those I was a little mad that we didn't get top ten, but yeah.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  Okay, I get it. I I've talked to people who are number two and they were mad that I didn't get number one, so.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  Um, but, you know, it's rare. That people climb on the chart to that level because what got you to in 2022 to be 166 was as you know stacked revenue over a three year period. For those that don't know, um, it's measured on revenue and there's certain minimums, but you must have really blown it out in 2023 to be able to get to that level of climb. What was the level behind that?

• 8:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you know, just numbers really quick. I, I guess we all live and die by data. We had a 24,000% three year growth. That's what landed us at number 11. And the numbers behind that was like a hundred and $90,000 to one and a half million to five and a half million to 37 million.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  So, um, I don't know. It was, it was, it was a, an unbelievably wild ride. I think when you grow that fast, um, you just try to make sure the walls and the ceiling don't collapse in on you. Um, so it's this constant move of, you know, it's, it's like a game of whack a mole, right? It's like you feel like you have this side covered and then these other ones are popping up in these other places and you're kind of diverting and moving that attention around. Um, so yeah, that, that's, that's the, the, the high level idea of like what's behind growth is like just looking at the immediate, but also like always thinking like five steps ahead.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  I've got to highlight this too, because if I heard that it was a 37 million dollar company, doesn't matter what industry you're in. My immediate thought is, oh, he must have a lot of employees, but that's not the truth. You have what 21 employees. I would imagine some contractors to help you guys.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're, we're 21 now. To be fair, when we were, uh, at peak growth before we had a bunch of technology built, I think we've got as high as 65. Um, but yeah, I, I think, I, I, I think it's about, um, you get to a point where it's not just top line growth like, and that's usually when like you hit, you hit some of those headwinds on that growth, right? And that did happen for us after that thirty seven million, we hit, we, we hit some headwinds and, um, you can push through those, but they left me kind of trying to understand is, is how we're pursuing this top line growth at all costs makes the most sense.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  And I think, uh, for us, it was like, let, let's, let's look at efficiency through this as well. Let's make sure that we're not just like trading dollars or other dollars on the performance marketing side. But let's really figure out how to maximize each of these dollars that we're spending and maximize the return that we're getting back. And I think like, that's when you just start diving in, you know, when you raise a bunch of venture capital, like I see it time and time again, every single time, like you try to spend your way out of potential problems. And we definitely had our share of that where you try to spend your way out, you, you hit a couple of roadblocks and believe that like you can throw money at things to solve them. Sometimes that works, most of the time it doesn't.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  And I just think like through that process, you start whittling away at like where you're spending those dollars, how everyone is operating, and I think that's allowed us to get smaller and more compact and ultimately more focused on the, on the activities that we should be, that we should be working on.

• 11:54Speaker 02

  I'm kind of curious, what are some of the headwinds that you faced? Short version of those that would relate to other business owners. So if you had something that was completely because of, you know, a technology headwind that was, you know, in your space, that doesn't apply. I'm just wondering.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I think just direct to consumer econ businesses in general. Um, I think I was in a groove, um, while we were like growing, especially like the five, five and a half million to thirty seven million dollar time period. Um, you know, I, I said to myself on many occasions, like, wow, did we build the greatest business of all time? Like, and I Thought that we were just going to be able to keep doing the like the exact same tactics. Like the tactics were working so well to go from like the one million to the five and a half to the thirty seven. And it's like, cool, now we're just going to keep doing these same things. We're just going to do more of it. And maybe what are we gonna do fifty seventy five a hundred like sky's the limit.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  And I think like you get to a particular point where you start seeing diminishing returns on performance marketing dollars that are spent. You start to see this world in which you've been driving CAC down. And then it starts to tick up and you're like, all right, what's going on? So then you start kind of questioning a lot of the things that that you were doing and you start to. You know, for me, we we had a bit of a a panic period where it's like, all right, like. We maybe we're not going to be able to just like take this really unbelievable like category of UGC. And combine that with some really wide net marketing spend dollars on meta and ride this to the to the moon.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  We're going to have to get in and get really serious about like, how do you unlock that next part? And I think overall for me, like this is startup number five for me. But this is the first startup that I've broke that let's call that thirty million dollar annual revenue mark. And I think that thirty to a hundred is full of a whole bunch of different skills and abilities. And I'm learning those things on the fly along with a lot of our team.

• 13:59Speaker 02

  Let me break in here for a second here. John was talking about that sometimes when you're growing. You think that you can do the exact same tactics or strategies that got you there. And I want to remind you, I've been doing this for more than fifteen years. I've been a consultant in different ways. Pretty much all my life, professional career. And I really want to reinforce the fact that sometimes you have to look at things differently. You have to think differently to solve new problems and you have to be be willing to embrace that uncertainty. And that that kind of innovation, that kind of of new way of seeing things is a very important skill inside your own leadership. Now, ideally, it's not just you doing this, you are doing it with your team and they are bringing.

• 14:42Speaker 02

  These ideas to you. It's not just doing the same things over and over. Maybe we can do more of those things. Because what I've seen is most companies get to a plateau point and it takes a completely new level of thinking in order to break through that. Just my two cents on this. Back to John. Well, let's dive into team because one of the things that we pulled out of you guys to put you on the show. Cause we curate these experiences. We have a lot of people that listen in and they want to be on the show and I get it. And we get about 20 a day, so we, we don't take them really, uh, those that are listening in. We curate the guests we want to have on the show. So John, you're here by invitation, but you, you built a category defining brand.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  What are the core elements when you look back at a core, you know, a, a category defining brand?

• 15:28Speaker 01

  The core elements of building a category defining brand. It's, I mean, we, we, we built, yeah, like we built the category. Like this idea of like personalized music or this idea of, you know, this 40 billion dollar a year, like personalized gifting space. Like the idea of setting up shop in that space and building a music company. Um, that was unheard of before we did it. So I think like the, the one thing to really point out is like, when you get into a space and you don't have other competitors to help, uh, make mistakes essentially, or bring any additional eyeballs to the table. You have to be the educator, the innovator and everything in between.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  I think, uh, it's, it, it's, it's unbelievably difficult. I think you have to give yourself the leeway to, to be unbelievably transparent. Say, I don't have the answers to this. We're going to like collectively as a team, figure it out and definitely mess it up along the way. But if we can build this framework in which we can, we can test, we can learn, we can fail and we can like continue, um, to try to kind of piece together insights and wins through that. I think like that, that's been part of our process.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  I know you've made it work. I have clients sometimes that come to me with new ideas and say, well, I'm going to be a, a leader on this. I'm going to have to educate them. Market. My biggest question behind that is, are you prepared for how long it might take? The investment it might take, and it might not work to educate people into something new. Did you wrestle with that before all this?

• 17:05Speaker 01

  I mean, I mean, I gotta tell like, I launched, we're talking about twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three, and these like big numbers. Like, I launched this company at the end of twenty sixteen. Twenty sixteen, I did like a hundred thousand in revenue. Twenty seventeen, I did like a hundred and twenty thousand in revenue. Like, twenty eighteen, no one wanted to buy it. I probably did another hundred thousand. I should have shut the business down. Twenty nineteen was, again, I think one fifty or something. But it was like four years of what could this, starting with this idea, hey, this could be really cool. And I could see how this could work to, you know, kind of bashing our heads against the wall to say, no one understands it, no one gets it.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  And ultimately, like, you know, January twenty twenty, twenty twenty comes along, I have thirty thousand dollars left from the just under a million dollars in angel funding that I had. I have no team left except me and my co-founders. And I'm about to spend the last thirty thousand dollars on a meta campaign and send notice to all our investors that, hey, it wasn't based on lack of effort, but like, we're not going to keep doing this. So having that epiphany moment right there, being like, oh, it's not the customer's fault, like, it's ours. Like, how we've been explaining this and what we've been talking about for four years is just, it's probably not it.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  And I think like that is that education moment, like those first four years, we were talking about like, here's personalized music, here's how it works. Here's like what you need to do. And it was like very formulaic. It took, you know, minutes at a time from a customer standpoint to be able to understand it. And we know, like, as you try to like acquire new customers, you have three to seven seconds in an advertisement to try to like hook them in and get them interested. So like our methods at the beginning just weren't good. And this is like a classic like positioning pivot that I did as a Hail Mary, like twelfth hour. Was like, hey, let's let the customers, what we're selling here is not personalized music. What we're selling is like the crazy emotive experience that is a result of personalized music.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  Music is actually just a vehicle to get you there. So, understanding that and taking that idea and just putting together a piece of UGC that basically showed that moment come to life and the music kind of took the background. That's what unlocked it. And I launched what I thought was going to be the ad that basically cleared out the bank account. And it was the ad that did more revenue in one week than we did in the previous year and made us say like, this can work, like this is, this is it. Like, you know, it's not some small niche business that like people that buy vinyl box sets are interested in. It's for anybody with a soul that wants to connect with another human being. Like, music is the greatest way to do that. Now, like, let's tell the world that.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  I, I've seen those moments and I don't know if they come through you guys or not, but it does catch me emotionally when I see, you know, the guy talking, hey, she, she's about to get in the car. She doesn't know that I have gotten a song for her. And he puts it on just like it's a regular radio station or whatever. And all of a sudden it's their story of their life or whatever it may be. And she's got tears and he's excited because he's done something, you know, meaningful, romantic. And that's what I'm picturing for you. Like, that's, that's what drew people in. Is that fair to say?

• 20:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, you're, you're just talking about this and I have bumps. And I have, I've, I've watched thousands and thousands of these reveals. Like, it's really weird when you have this culture where internally in the office, like, there's always somebody crying every day of the week and it's a positive thing. It's like they're absorbing a story. They're reading what is ultimately strangers' connection, like strangers to us and strangers to the artists of the time. And like, these like deeply human stories, they just, they, they hit you in the chest. It doesn't matter like if you know the person on either side. It's like, wow, I can, I can relate to a moment like this.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  And I think, uh, yeah, that's what fueled that, that, that emotive power from the UGC standpoint is what. Fueled all the growth and now we're here today and like that that format has been stolen by

• 21:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Hundred hundreds of like day to day pop up competitors and things of that sort that like are just kind of trying to repeat what we've already done.

• 21:26Speaker 02

  Well, I know that that's a different challenge and headwinds that you have. John, as we begin to wrap up today's conversation, you're the leader of this category defining brand. Like, what have you learned about leadership in an innovative space like you're in right now that you could share back with our listeners?

• 21:42Speaker 01

  I, I, I, I think good people follow good purpose, but I think that they stay for great leadership. Right? So I think the it's, it's, it's almost like I'm cheating running this company because it's really easy to get connected to like the good karma flywheel that we've built essentially. We're paying millions and millions of dollars to independent artists. Um, that music has previously been a pipe dream for them and now they're able to like pursue that professionally. And on the customer side, I've already talked about it, like we're, we're creating this environment where you're like bringing these moments together that are, that are unforgettable for people. So it's that setting that table, it

• 22:27Speaker 01

  almost like makes my job as a leader, uh, easy because it's like, there's so much connection to the purpose and what it is that we're doing. And I think like the only thing I have to do within that environment then is to, to just be, be, be humble and be very transparent. Like we're an open book here. It's like, uh, probably to, to a fault at times, but it's like, you know, we're, we're all in this for the same purpose. Um, some days, uh, you know, the, the next great idea might come from somebody that's doing a summer internship, or it might come from somebody on the leadership team that's been there and done that. Um, and creating this environment where there's no like

• 23:09Speaker 01

  true pride of authorship. It's only about getting to the right solution. But I don't know, like from, from my point of view, like that, that underbelly or that foundation of just the purpose within the business, like kind of sets the whole tone and sets the table for, for me to just kind of operate on top of.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  Now, I'm gonna break in one final time today. John just talked about people stay for good leadership. And I agree, if your company can attract talented people, you may be able to get them to come on board. But if you don't show up as the best leader for them, if they don't feel supported, they don't feel heard, they don't feel included, if they don't feel like they're a part of something special, they will begin to wonder what else is out there. And if they truly are talented, intellectual, problem solvers, and creative, and really, you know, forces of nature, they won't be very patient if you have poor leadership across your company. Now, only you can tell what's going on there. I don't think you can say, "Well, I'm just not that good at having tough conversations,

• 24:10Speaker 02

  or I'm not that good at holding people accountable." You've got to work on your blind spots, you've got to identify their weaknesses, and that is a big part of what I do in my own coaching for clients like yourself. So, I'm not trying to sell you on this, but this is what I do day in and day out. And I see the power of it when it works, and I see the power when people ignore it. So, all that being said, you want to make sure that you know that people stay for good leadership. That means you've got to not just provide good leadership, you've got to be evolving, because they're growing, just like you expect them to do. You've got to grow your leadership skills, and you've got to grow the leadership skills of the people that they report to. Because, no, I'm assuming you have multiple levels in your company. It's not just you trying to get some things done.

• 24:53Speaker 02

  If you have 10 people, 100 people, 1,000 people, there's different levels of leadership that also has to be in alignment with keeping that person in place and keeping that person engaged around the work that they're doing. Back to John. I want to wrap this up with one question that may sound like it's a compound question. Let me give you a choice. And I don't know which plays a bigger role in the success of your company, but you have an emphasis on A-level players in your culture, but you also have an ownership feeling across the company. Which of the two would you like to answer that's played the biggest role toward your company's success?

• 25:31Speaker 01

  Can you, can you, can you position?

• 25:33Speaker 02

  So you had mentioned that you hire A players.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 25:36Speaker 02

  That emphasis is, is related probably to the ownership thing, but it might be different. You have a culture of what you would call a, a team of ownership. People are taking ownership of, of their work and their problems and whatnot. Uh, which of the two and why had the most impact on the success of your company?

• 25:54Speaker 01

  I, I, I, I think it's the, the ownership component wi- wi- without question. I mean, you know, I, I, I think how you define A players. It starts with like those that see what they're doing, not just as like a job that they clock in and clock out of. But they feel unbelievably tied to the output and success and failure of what it is that's going on. And in a space like ours, where we're not just like selling a product, we're delivering this unbelievably emotional experience. Um, it's not enough to be better, like we have to be different. And to me, that's like what, what, what building this category defining brand is really about, right?

• 26:34Speaker 01

  It's like we're emotional at our core and I, I, it, it, it's like every single person um has a connection to like that, the emotional stakes that are involved, right? So it's like from the customer to the artist, it's like every single person, whether you're answering, answering a support ticket, writing a line of code, uh, crafting a song or building a new feature. Like all of it is tied into like this, this expected output. And I think everyone feels like so much responsibility, not responsibility, but ownership around each of those. And like the role that they play within it. And it's like for a customer to, to come back after we like deliver this thing that is highly objective.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  And for them to be like, oh my God, like the, the, I, I've never, I've never experienced anything like this. I've been married for 30 years and my husband got me this and uh, like it, it, it, it created this, this newfound connection. Like, or you know, uh, we do memorial songs all the time. Like talk about like hitting you in the chest and hitting you in the heart. It's just like. Matt, I, I, I don't know. It's, it's that, that's where the ownership comes, comes from. Everyone feels that and they feel like if they do their part, like we accomplish that mission. So that's why I always say like my part in this is, is relatively easy. Like I, I, I think if

• 27:59Speaker 01

  it wasn't so tied into emotion and purpose, I, I don't know, you know, I, I don't even know how I would attack that in regards to like granting ownership. I think it's like the root of what it is that we do. People just are connected to that.

• 28:14Speaker 02

  I can relate to it and you have one of the types of businesses that can do that. And every business can probably do it, but it's just really easy for you, given that for me, music has such an emotional connection. Um, I used to be a dancer. I don't even talk about it on here that much anymore, but I, I loved music and dancing. And before that I hated it, to be honest with you, but I, I, I stretched myself to learn the dancing and, and accept that music was a big part of that. Uh, but John, thank you for being here, part of here, a guest on the podcast and sharing your wisdom.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  Thanks, Gene. Appreciate you.

• 28:45Speaker 02

  Wow. What another great interview here on the podcast. Love what we're doing. Hopefully you've got some new perspectives to see when you're educating the market, building a category, defining brand isn't easy, but it's worth it. And so hopefully today we'll, we'll something that will keep you coming back for more. If I can help you in any way through executive coaching, CEO coaching, send me an email, [email protected]. And when you think of growth and you think of leadership, think of growth and content. As always, the courage will survive.

• 29:17Speaker 03

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