When I started Daily CMO, I thought

“If I’m serious about this… I need a full-time team.”

You know. A "real" team. Employees. 9 to 5.

Clocking in. Clocking out.

The truth is, I didn't have that luxury. Don't get me wrong. I think having an in-house team is essential for building anything. No one builds anything great solo. No apps. No businesses. No buildings.

I talked about this during Underdog B2B Con.

But the truth is, for the rest of us, you don't need a 100% full-time team to start building things.

Underdog Con was run by just three people

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Get on-demand access to all 7 powerful talk recordings from Underdog B2B Con. Access the talks.

Sri, Elisha, and I.

That's it.

Only Sri was on payroll. We worked fully remotely.

People get a little surprised when they learn about that.

Here's what the team consisted of:

  • The main honcho = Reuben
  • The landing pages, videos & digital campaigns = Sri
  • Speaker management and paid ads = Elisha

The rest of the team was basically partners and freelancers.

Past Underdog Con attendee, turned partner and friend, Aiden Kueh – handled everything related to livestreams and photography during Underdog Con.

Graphic designer and past employee, Azhar Ramadhan – handled everything design from lanyard, tote bag, to putting up and dismantling the backdrop.

I first recruited Azhar in 2019. He no longer works full-time for us, but we continue to collaborate with him across multiple projects.

That's when it occurred to me:

A real team is made of people who want to win with you

A real team isn’t about employment status.

It's about having a group of people who care about a shared mission together.

Of course, I'm so naive to not know that anyone I hire is not signing up for lifetime employment. The job is a waystation. It's just another step they take to go where they want to go.

But we can embrace this. In fact, I'm building my entire career around helping people get to where they want to go.

  • Whether it be providing a service for them.
  • Running a conference.
  • Teaching a workshop
  • Hiring a freelancer or full-time staff.

I'm always happy to see someone who worked or trained under me go on to build great things.

If you're building something, don't wait to hire the perfect team. The world is filled with broken people. But we can be the ones to help them. And they don't have to be a full-time staff for us to begin to help them.

Just start. Build the mission. And find the people who want to run with the mission. No one you hire is going to stay with you forever. You're probably not going to be their last stop. But you could be the one who helps them get closer to their dreams.

Save your dates for Underdog E-Commerce Con 2.0

"When is the next Underdog Con?", "What is the topic?"

Every time we put a close to Underdog Con, people come up to us and ask when we'd run the next one. I'm excited to share that the next Underdog Con on E-Commerce marketing is set for July 25, 2025.

You can take advantage of the early pricing by purchasing a pre-sale ticket now.

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