Ben Chestnut Banned Calling Customers 'Small Businesses' In External Marketing
Ben Chestnut · Ben Chestnut: Why I Sold MailChimp; How My Kids Found Out I Was a Billionaire | E959 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Dec 12, 2022 · at 8:21
Ben Chestnut is the co-founder and former CEO of Mailchimp. He reflects on how his mother's work as a home hair stylist shaped his view on small business owners' ambitions.
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“Because of my mother, I think I never called our customers small businesses. I never said small, I would say businesses, or I would talk about their dreams of becoming big, but I never like called it. It's useful, you know, internally to call it a category SMB category, right? Like internal reference only. That's what I would tell my writers and marketers, but outward facing. I really, really hated to use the word small business because they have big, big ambitions.”
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