Build Your Own Sandbox

Chris Cunningham is one of the co-founders of ClickUp.

ClickUp is a $4 B business (on its 2021 valuation) that is the everything app for work.

We use it internally at K&J, and so do 20 M+ others to run their businesses.

When it comes to marketing a CRM, Chris looks for the space his competitors aren’t swimming in.

In the SaaS community, this was comedy.

No other SaaS provider thought to make a satirical page based on the day-to-day musings of work, but Chris did, and it exploded.

The account has over 1 B+ views on Instagram and has 330 K+ followers.

Based on the account data, it has generated over 21.6M visits to ClickUp’s home page.

Chris would have had to pay nearly $11 M USD to do this via paid, and has managed to do this on a budget of < $1 M USD.

So how do you find the space where others aren’t swimming in? Here’s the methodology:

1. Check out industries that you don’t live in, e.g if you are in SaaS look at what’s popping off in construction

2. Use Google or ChatGPT to source ideas: “What is the best influencer content in construction?”

   

   Screenshot from my ChatGPT query

3. Review the top five accounts (on whatever social platform they are dominant on) through the lens of “How could I apply this to my industry” - Grab the username of each account (MattBangsWood)

4. Now, head over to Google Chrome and install Sort Feed and go to either TikTok or Instagram on your desktop > Jump to Reels

5. Then open “Sort Feed” and select “Views”

   

   Sort Feed Chrome Extension

6. You’ll see the 25 top-performing posts from that creator - download them and then ask yourself, “Which of my competitors aren’t doing this, and can I replicate it for my vertical?”

In a world where AI is making it simpler than ever to replicate other people's work, your best bet as a business is to create sandboxes that your competitors aren’t playing in.

A Players

I found this excerpt on talent by Brad Jacobs useful.

"I do a mental exercise where I picture the person coming into my office and saying, 'Brad, I quit.' And then I try to feel and visualize what would be my reaction if that person came in to me and quit.

If my reaction to that is, 'Yes! I don't want to smile, so I don't want to act like I'm happy about this. Nobody likes firing people. No problem at all, we'll replace them'—that's a C player. That's someone you should get the courage to get off the team right away.

On the second category, if my reaction to it is, 'You know, it kind of sucks. I would've preferred that person stayed, but it's not the end of the world. We'll hire a headhunter. We'll get someone as good, maybe someone even better, and things will work out'—that's a B player.

But if when I visualize that person quitting, my reaction to that is pure terror and absolute panic, and like somebody took a baseball bat and just whacked me in the stomach and then punched me in the face. I'm going, 'Oh my God! Like I'm never going to find someone as good as her. No way. I'm never going to have someone as talented as that person. I'm never going to have someone who brings to the table their particular superpower.' And I can't even hear what they're saying anymore because I'm just having this internal panic dialogue going on—that's what you call an A player.

So I want all A players around me. I want people whose relationship with me I value so much that if it was terminated, I would be lost."

If you are struggling with your staff, visualise the scenario above and see how many come out as A players.