EE509: Mentor Moment: Dan Murray-Serter - Turn Your Customers Into Your Best Marketing

Welcome to this week's Mentor Moment. Most founders think celebrity marketing is about reach. Dan Murray-Sertur learned it's actually about trust. In this clip, the founder of Heights shares how a chance encounter with one of Britain's most recognizable names became a masterclass in customer advocacy, and why the best marketing doesn't start with a sponsorship deal. It actually starts with a product people genuinely love. If you're building a brand, selling a product, or trying to stand out in a crowded market, this one is for you.

Stephen Fry was our first paying customer.

No.

Um, yep. So he was, um... W- I won't bore you with a long story, but we got very lucky that someone, one of our investors was Damien from WeTransfer, he's the founder of WeTransfer. He knew Stephen Fry and was like, "Do you want me to send him the product before we launch?" We're like, "Yes, please."

[laughs]

When you send people supplements, you don't know what's gonna happen.

Yeah.

You don't know if they're gonna take them. You don't know anything. And so he ended up taking them and having an incredible experience with them. And so we were launching January the 6th, 2020. He emailed us on January the 5th, 2020, which is when everyone that we'd sampled to, their supply would run out if they'd taken it every day, and that was all strategic. It was that, so then they can go and buy it the next day-

Got it

... and they'll be their first customers. Um, he literally didn't wanna wait. So he got my email off Damien and said, you know, "Can... I've got..." You know, every year pretty much we do a screenshot posted, like, of the email and the all the, the chain and stuff, and he's been a great sport about the whole thing ever since. Um, and uh, basically like, you know, "These products have been amazing for me." Um, something along the lines of, you know, "I thought they'd done absolute wonders for my brain. I feel sharp, mentally lighter," or yada, yada, yada, yada. "But you know, I've just gone on the website and I don't seem to be able to buy, so maybe they haven't worked at all." Um, so it was quite funny.

[laughs]

Um, I was like, "Hey, Stephen. Amazing. Thank you. Well, you know, um, we'll give you a code to buy it a day early. We launch tomorrow, but if you give us a testimonial and review that we can use forever," et cetera. He's like, "That sounds like a good deal." So if you go on Shopify now and sort by customer lifetime value, Stephen Fry's number one. My mom is number two.

[laughs] I love that.

He's never, never missed a day-

Knocked Mom off top spot

... a month. Such a-

That's incredible

... he's, it's super cool. So he is, like, the most committed of all customers. We launch a new product, he's first in, buys it every time.

That's incredible.

Um-

I could talk to you for literally hours. We've got three minutes left.

Okay. Okay.

So I'm gonna rattle through some quick fire rounds.

Well, let me ask you a question really quickly. We learned how our marketing story works. You asked me how, like, what's the big, like-

Mm

... lesson on how we, uh, learned that. So every company has to work out what their USP is and how they can permeate storytelling through that in their category. In