The Scale Up Show: Recent Episodes
Ryan Staley
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Sam Jacob, Max
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Google just released Gemini 3, and I tested it with 3 real business use cases: prepping for a $200K sales call, building an interactive sales dashboard, and creating a complete website from scratch—all in minutes.In this video, I show you LIVE examples of:✅ Gemini Agent prepping an entire sales call (research, pitch angles, objection handling, follow-ups)✅ Dynamic dashboards with real-time calculations and interactive sliders✅ Full website generation with 921 lines of working code in under 60 seconds✅ Custom image generation and prompt engineeringThis isn't theory—I'm screen recording everything as it happens so you can see the actual speed and quality.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS:0:00 - Intro: Why Gemini 3 is a Big Deal1:15 - Benchmark Breakdown (Why This Matters)2:27 - Use Case #1: $200K Sales Call Prep4:46 - Visual Layout & Interactive Infographic Demo7:03 - Use Case #2: Building a Website from Scratch (Live Code)9:27 - Use Case #3: Interactive Q4 Sales Dashboard11:51 - Testing the Prompt Generator Live12:45 - Final Thoughts & Why This Changes Everything🔥 GEMINI 3 KEY BENCHMARKS:• 72.7% on ScreenSpot-Pro (screen understanding) vs GPT-5: 3.5%• 76.2% on SWE-bench Verified (coding)• 100% on AIME 2025 (math competition)• #1 on LMArena Leaderboard (1501 Elo)• 37.5% on Humanity's Last Exam (highest recorded score)💼 BUSINESS USE CASES SHOWN:1. Sales Call Preparation: Company research, competitive intel, pitch angles, discovery questions, objection handling, follow-up templates2. Dashboard Creation: Interactive sales performance tracking with live calculations3. Website Development: Full responsive sites with custom code in under 60 seconds4. Visual Content: Automated infographics and social media assets🚀 TRY GEMINI 3 YOURSELF:→ Free Access: https://ai.google.dev/studio→ Gemini App: https://gemini.google.com (select "Thinking" model)→ Agent Features: Requires Google AI Ultra subscription📊 WHO THIS IS FOR:• Sales professionals preparing for client calls• Marketing teams needing dashboards and visuals• Business owners who want to move faster• Entrepreneurs testing AI for productivity• Anyone comparing ChatGPT vs Gemini vs Claude🎓 WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:- How to use Gemini Agent for multi-step business tasks- Prompt engineering techniques for better results- Real-world applications beyond basic chat- How Gemini 3 compares to ChatGPT and Claude- Time-saving workflows you can implement today⚡ THE BOTTOM LINE:Tasks that used to take 6-8 hours (sales prep, dashboard building, website mockups) now take 10-15 minutes with Gemini 3. I'm not affiliated with Google—I'm just showing you what's possible right now.🔗 RESOURCES MENTIONED:• Gemini 3 Official Announcement: https://blog.google/products/gemini/gemini-3/• Google AI Studio: https://ai.google.dev/studio• My LinkedIn Post (Benchmarks): [YOUR LINKEDIN URL]💬 QUESTIONS? DROP A COMMENT:What business task would you use Gemini Agent for? Let me know and I'll test the best suggestions in a follow-up video.----------------Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind. Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies → https://www.aiforrevenue.com/superhumanrevenue-newsletterRyan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/DISCLAIMER: This video is for educational purposes. I'm not sponsored by Google. All tools and features shown are publicly available as of November 2025.Video produced by: Ryan Staley© 2025 Whale Boss | All Rights Reserved
GPT-5.1 just changed the AI game with 3 superpowers most people are completely missing. In this complete guide, I break down exactly how to use Speed + Warmth, Adaptive Reasoning, and Instruction-Following Precision to 10x your productivity in sales, marketing, and strategy.What You'll Learn:✅ How to choose between GPT-5.1 Instant and Thinking modes for maximum ROI✅ The secret adaptive reasoning feature that makes GPT-5.1 85% more accurate✅ Why speed + warmth eliminates endless revision cycles (and saves hours weekly)✅ The 4-part prompt framework for repeatable, reliable AI workflows✅ Real-world applications across sales, marketing, GTM, and executive decisions✅ 5 workflows you can implement TODAY to delegate entire projects to AIQuick Answer: What is GPT-5.1?GPT-5.1 is OpenAI's November 2025 release featuring two modes: Instant (prioritizes speed + warmth with adaptive reasoning) and Thinking (deep analysis for complex tasks). It scored 85% on AIME 2025 benchmarks and introduces 8 personality presets for tone control.Quick Answer: What are GPT-5.1's 3 Superpowers?1. Speed + Warmth - 2x faster on simple tasks with conversational, human-like tone2. Adaptive Reasoning - Automatically decides when to think deeper (85% AIME score)3. Instruction-Following Precision - Follows specifications exactly, enabling repeatable systemsQuick Answer: Should I use GPT-5.1 Instant or Thinking mode?Use Instant for 80% of daily tasks (emails, content drafts, quick research). Instant now has adaptive reasoning that automatically engages deeper thinking when needed. Use Thinking mode only for complex strategic decisions, multi-step analysis, or long-context workflows requiring 196K token limit.Q: What is GPT-5.1?A: GPT-5.1 is OpenAI's November 2025 AI model release featuring adaptive reasoning, speed optimization, and improved instruction-following. It comes in two modes: Instant (default, fast, with adaptive reasoning) and Thinking (deep analysis for complex tasks).Q: What are the 3 superpowers of GPT-5.1?A: 1) Speed + Warmth - 2x faster responses with natural, conversational tone, 2) Adaptive Reasoning - automatically decides when to think deeper (85% AIME benchmark), 3) Instruction-Following Precision - executes exact specifications for repeatable workflows.Q: Should I use GPT-5.1 Instant or Thinking?A: Use Instant for 80% of tasks (emails, content, quick analysis). Instant has adaptive reasoning built-in. Use Thinking only for complex strategic decisions, multi-step reasoning, or tasks requiring the 196K token context window.Q: How much does GPT-5.1 cost?A: GPT-5.1 is available to ChatGPT Plus ($20/month), Pro ($200/month), Team, and Enterprise users. Free tier access rolled out after paid users. API pricing varies by mode (Instant vs Thinking).Q: Is GPT-5.1 better than GPT-5?A: Yes. GPT-5.1 scored 85% on AIME 2025 (vs GPT-5's 75%), responds 2x faster on simple tasks, follows instructions more precisely, and includes adaptive reasoning which GPT-5 lacked. Users describe it as "what GPT-5 should have been."----------------Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind. Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies → https://www.aiforrevenue.com/superhumanrevenue-newsletterRyan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/Explore the latest advancements in artificial intelligence with GPT-5! This video explores how to leverage chatgpt and other ai tools to create powerful ai productivity tools. Discover the potential of generative ai and create your own ai teammate with the newest gpt5 features.
Summary
In this conversation, Chris Savage discusses the evolving landscape of entertainment and the importance of trust in video content. He highlights the current phase of shock and awe in video production, driven by advancements in technology that blur the lines between reality and fiction. Savage emphasizes that as audiences become accustomed to these changes, the focus will shift towards the quality of storytelling, where compelling narratives will ultimately prevail.
Takeaways
Trust matters more in the video.
We're in a phase of shock and awe.
Technology is crossing the uncanny valley.
The feeling of disbelief in realism is common.
Interesting stories will dominate the future.
Quality storytelling will always win.
The evolution of entertainment is ongoing.
Audiences will adapt to new video technologies.
The narrative will be key in video content.
Business and entertainment will intertwine more.
Keywords
content creation, SEO, automation, personal branding, audience engagement
Summary
In this conversation, Ryan Staley discusses the importance of maximizing content creation efficiency through automation and SEO strategies. He shares his experience of generating a significant amount of content in a short time and emphasizes the role of personal branding and audience engagement in achieving success on social media platforms.
Takeaways
Maximizing content creation efficiency is crucial.
Automation can drastically reduce the time spent on tasks.
SEO research is essential for visibility.
Building a personal brand enhances credibility.
Engagement strategies are vital for audience growth.
Leveraging tools can streamline content production.
Quality content can be produced quickly with the right approach.
Social media presence is important for business success.
Understanding your audience drives better engagement.
Consistency in content creation leads to better results.
Takeaways
Maximizing content creation efficiency is crucial.
Automation can drastically reduce the time spent on tasks.
SEO research is essential for visibility.
Building a personal brand enhances credibility.
Engagement strategies are vital for audience growth.
Leveraging tools can streamline content production.
Quality content can be produced quickly with the right approach.
Social media presence is important for business success.
Understanding your audience drives better engagement.
Consistency in content creation leads to better results.
Get the 30 Sales and Marketing Agentic Prompts-https://www.aiforrevenue.com/whale-boss-gpt5-revenue-framework-examples
Summary
In this conversation, Ryan Staley introduces Claude Skills, a groundbreaking feature that allows users to customize AI for their businesses without any coding. He discusses the significance of this feature in transforming AI workflows and enhancing the capabilities of AI agents. Throughout the conversation, Ryan provides practical examples of creating custom skills, including a data journalism skill and a sales qualification skill using the Medic framework. He emphasizes the efficiency and impact of these skills in various business contexts, highlighting the potential for significant advancements in AI applications.
Takeaways
-Claude Skills allows customization of AI without coding.
-Creating custom skills can enhance AI workflows.
-Data journalism skills can analyze trends effectively.
-Sales qualification skills provide impactful data for deals.
-The process of creating skills is straightforward and efficient.
-AI skills can be used across various business functions.
-The future of AI skills is promising and transformative.
-MCP servers are less efficient compared to Claude Skills.
-Visualizations and reports can be generated automatically.
-Resources for further learning will be provided.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Claude Skills
02:57 Exploring Claude Skills and Their Applications
06:01 Creating Custom Skills with Claude
09:01 Advanced Use Cases and Visualizations
11:54 Implementing Sales Skills and Strategies
14:43 Conclusion and Future of AI Skills
In this conversation, Ryan Staley discusses the newly launched Agent Builder by OpenAI, highlighting its features, practical applications, and future implications for AI development. He emphasizes the ease of building functional agents without coding and explores the potential impact on startups and enterprise solutions. Staley also addresses misconceptions about the tool's competition in the market, providing insights into its capabilities and the technical requirements for effective use.
- Built a fully functional agent in under eight minutes.Agent Builder is a significant developer announcement from OpenAI.
- The tool is designed for both internal and external use cases.
- It simplifies the process of creating AI agents with templates.
- The platform is currently in beta and requires API access.Agent Builder is more developer-focused, but accessible to startups.
- It can automate various business processes and enhance productivity.
- The future of AI tools will involve closer integration of technical and business logic.
- There is competition in the market, but Agent Builder has unique features.
- Misinformation exists about the tool's capabilities and market impact.
Keywords
agent builder, agent builder openai, agent, agent builder tutorial, agent sdk
In this conversation, Ryan Staley discusses the transformative potential of Claude 4.5, focusing on its 30-hour autonomous work capabilities across marketing, sales, leadership, and personal productivity. He provides practical workflows and examples to illustrate how businesses can leverage AI to enhance efficiency and effectiveness. The discussion also covers new features of Claude 4.5 that can further aid in various business functions.
- Claude 4.5 can autonomously work for 30 hours on complex tasks.
- AI can significantly enhance marketing through content creation and competitor analysis.
- Sales processes can be revolutionized with AI-driven prospecting and personalized outreach.
- Leadership can benefit from AI by receiving strategic decision support and executive briefings.
- Personal productivity can be improved by automating life organization and skill development.
- AI can generate detailed reports and insights that save time and resources.
- Implementing AI requires starting with one high-impact use case.
- The new features of Claude 4.5 offer exciting opportunities for businesses.
- AI can operate like a personal assistant, managing tasks and schedules.
- Businesses that adopt AI early can gain a significant competitive advantage. Keywords
AI, Claude 4.5, marketing automation, sales optimization, leadership tools, personal productivity, skill development, autonomous work, AI transformation, business growth
Ryan Staley Featured on the CRO Spotlight Podcast
Ryan joins Warren Zenna for an in-depth conversation on the state of AI today—separating the hype from the real-world applications.They explore the various stages of AI integration in business, including augmentation, automation, and orchestration, and how these can transform roles, particularly for Chief Revenue Officers (CROs). Staley shares insights from his journey into AI consulting, emphasizing the importance of adapting to new technologies and the skills necessary for success in the evolving job market.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to AI and Its Hype
02:07 The Reality of AI Tools and Their Use Cases
04:56 Challenges in AI Product Development
07:48 The Future Landscape of AI Solutions
10:48 Understanding AI Workflows: Augmentation, Automation, and Orchestration
13:34 The Evolution Towards Autonomous Organizations
16:18 Impact of AI on Employment and Job Roles
21:50 The Evolution of AI Communication
23:48 The Importance of Prompting Skills
27:35 The Changing Role of Chief Revenue Officers
29:36 Implementing AI Across Organizations
32:58 Ryan Staley's Journey into AI
In this conversation, I dive into the transformative capabilities of GPT-5, highlighting its advanced reasoning and prompt engineering techniques. I share how I’ve been leveraging these features to unlock new possibilities in business, from using connectors to tap into data to analyzing decisions from multiple perspectives. Along the way, I provide practical examples and encourage listeners to put these techniques into action so they can boost their productivity and effectiveness with AI.
The Ultimate GPT-5 Go-To-Market Prompting Toolkit: https://www.aiforrevenue.com/ultimate-gpt-5-go-to-market-prompting-toolkit
Chapters
00:00 Unlocking the Power of GPT-5
02:43 Advanced Prompt Engineering Techniques
03:52 Leveraging Connectors for Enhanced Insights
06:02 Agentic Workflow Prompting: Unleashing AI Potential
08:26 Practical Applications of AI in Marketing Strategies
In this conversation, Ryan Staley and Jonathan Moss delve into the intersection of AI and business strategy, particularly in healthcare and go-to-market approaches. Jonathan shares his experiences with AI applications in his role at Expirity, discussing innovations in patient care and the importance of reimagining go-to-market strategies. They explore practical use cases of AI, including market analysis and candidate sourcing, while emphasizing the need for precise prompts to achieve optimal results. The discussion concludes with insights on evaluating vendors using AI and the importance of sharing knowledge in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.
00:00 Introduction to AI Nerdery
01:52 Exciting AI Innovations in Healthcare
04:09 Reimagining Go-to-Market Strategies with AI
06:16 Utilizing AI for Market Analysis
09:29 Sourcing Candidates with AI
13:49 Evaluating AI Results and Future Use Cases
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly AI strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies→https://hi.switchy.io/ggi6
In this special short episode, Ryan Staley shares insights from a private presentation he delivered to Chief Revenue Officers at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. This "fly on the wall" style episode provides a laid-back conversation covering core AI implementation concepts, frameworks, and practical strategies for revenue leaders.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to AI Implementation for Revenue Officers
00:56 Step-by-Step AI Adoption Framework
01:53 Building a Specialized AI Team and Momentum
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly AI strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies→https://hi.switchy.io/ggi6
In this conversation, Ryan Staley and Wen Sang discuss the innovative capabilities of Genspark's AI agents, exploring how they can assist knowledge workers in various tasks, including building websites and conducting research. Wen shares insights into the functionalities of GenSpark's Super Agents, their real-world applications, and the future of AI development, emphasizing the importance of articulating intentions when using AI tools.
Try Genspark Free — The All-in-One AI Workspace: http://genspark.ai/?via=jyezuj
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Genspark and AI Agents
02:29 Exploring Genspark's Super Agents
05:24 Real-World Applications of AI Agents
08:17 Building a Website with AI
11:06 Demonstrating AI Capabilities
13:43 Conclusion and Future Prospects
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly AI strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies→https://hi.switchy.io/ggi6
In this video, we will explore how to effectively utilize GPT-5 as an agent for various tasks, including project management, automation, and coding. I will provide insights into crafting effective prompts, leveraging the model's capabilities, and enhancing productivity through AI. The discussion emphasizes the importance of using specific language and structures to achieve optimal results with GPT-5.
The Ultimate GPT-5 Go-To-Market Prompting Toolkit: https://www.aiforrevenue.com/ultimate-gpt-5-go-to-market-prompting-toolkit
Chapters
00:00 Unlocking GPT-5's Potential
03:56 Mastering Project Prompts
08:16 Automation and Capability Enhancement
11:54 Coding with GPT-5
15:34 Final Thoughts and Bonus Features
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly AI strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies→https://hi.switchy.io/ggi6
In this conversation, Ryan Staley interviews Wen Sang, co-founder of Genspark AI, discussing the innovative features and vision behind Genspark AI. They explore the capabilities of the AI tool, including its ability to create presentations, take meeting notes, and assist knowledge workers in their daily tasks. Wen shares insights into the technology's architecture and demonstrates its functionality live, showcasing how it can streamline the presentation creation process. The discussion concludes with tips for effectively utilizing Genspark AI to enhance productivity and creativity.
Try Genspark Free — The All-in-One AI Workspace: http://genspark.ai/?via=jyezuj
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Genspark AI
02:35 Innovative Features of Genspark AI
04:33 The Vision Behind Genspark AI
07:28 Live Demonstration of Genspark AI
19:48 Tips for Effective Presentation Creation
In this episode, I share how I'm using JSON prompting with Veo3 to create high-quality videos quickly and efficiently. I walk through my three-step process: starting with content curation using Grok 4, then refining prompts to fit my voice and goals, and finally generating the video content itself. I highlight how powerful JSON prompting can be for dialing in both specificity and engagement. I also share some sample outputs and encourage you to explore these tools if you're looking to level up your content creation workflow.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to JSON Prompting with Veo3
02:45 Step 1: Curation with Grok 4
04:49 Step 2: Customizing JSON Prompts
06:13 Step 3: Creating Videos with Veo3
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly AI strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies→https://hi.switchy.io/ggi6
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/g2H5
I compare the performance of Genspark and OpenAI's ChatGPT Agent Mode, showcasing their capabilities in generating marketing strategies, YouTube video outlines, and visual presentations. Through a series of tests, I highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each AI tool, ultimately concluding that Genspark outperforms OpenAI in several key areas, particularly in speed and output quality. I emphasize the importance of understanding these tools to leverage AI effectively in sales and marketing.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to AI Tools and Comparison
02:52 Genspark's Rapid Growth and Features
05:55 Presentation Quality: Genspark vs. OpenAI
09:02 YouTube Video Creation: A Comparative Analysis
12:08 One-Pager Creation: Genspark vs. OpenAI
15:04 Final Thoughts on AI Tools and Future Prospects
In this conversation, Ryan Staley and Amos Bar-Joseph discuss the innovative capabilities of GetSwan, an AI-driven platform designed to enhance business operations through agentic workflows. They explore how Swann can streamline go-to-market strategies, automate lead qualification, and personalize outreach efforts, all while integrating seamlessly with existing CRM systems. The discussion highlights the efficiency and effectiveness of using AI to manage sales processes, ultimately transforming how businesses engage with potential clients.
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind. Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/g2H5
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Swann and Its Capabilities
02:38 Building Agentic Workflows for Go-To-Market
05:53 Using Swann for Lead Qualification and Outreach
08:45 The Power of Personalization in Messaging
11:39 Exploring Use Cases and Future Potential
In this video, I discuss the transformative potential of AI and automation tools in the workplace. I share my experiences with multi-tabling agents, illustrating how these tools can significantly enhance productivity and efficiency. I emphasize the importance of orchestrating multiple AI agents to achieve complex tasks and highlight the future of work, where human roles will increasingly be complemented by AI capabilities.
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/g2H5
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Chapters00:00 Introduction to Multi-Agent Orchestration
02:52 The Concept of Multi-Tabling in AI Workflows
04:16 Real-World Applications and Success Stories
04:19 Harnessing AI Agents for Productivity
07:05 The Future of Work: Multi-Tabling with AI
10:22 Transformational Insights from AI Integration
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7S
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In this conversation, Ryan Staley interviews Ajay Kumar, the head of AI product growth at Salesforce, discussing the deployment and innovative use cases of Agent Force. Ajay shares surprising applications of AI in various industries, particularly in customer service and marketing, and highlights the integration with OpenAI. The discussion also covers the future of AI, including predictions about AGI and the potential for background agents to revolutionize workflows.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to AI and Agent Force at Salesforce
02:33 Surprising Use Cases of Agent Force
06:49 Impactful Use Cases in Sales and Marketing
10:36 Integration with OpenAI and Future Roadmap
14:53 Demonstration of Agent Force Features
26:14 Top Use Cases and Agent Types
29:00 Acquisition Insights and Technology Integration
33:17 The Future of AI Agents
38:55 Personal AGI Experiences and Innovations
44:31 Predictions for AI's Future and Accessibility
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7S
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Ryan Staley discusses the high failure rate of startup ideas and shares his personal journey of validating his own startup concept. He emphasizes the importance of building in public, leveraging AI tools for market research, and the psychological resilience needed for entrepreneurship. Staley also shares insights from industry experts on creating a minimum viable product (MVP) and understanding founder market fit, while encouraging a long-term vision for success.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Startup Challenges and Personal Journey
01:40 Validating Startup Ideas: Week One Insights
05:29 Key Takeaways from Industry Experts
08:52 Psychological Resilience in Entrepreneurship
10:30 Looking Ahead: Next Steps in the Journey
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7S
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In this conversation, Ryan Staley and Tom Andrews discuss the capabilities and challenges of Make.com and its new agent features. Tom shares insights on how Make.com integrates various systems for automation, the importance of automation skills over AI agents, and the learning resources available for those interested in mastering the platform. They also explore the limitations of current AI agents and speculate on the future of automation technology.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Make.com and AI Agents
02:36 Exploring Make.com Agents and Automations
05:15 The Value of Automation vs. Agents
08:19 Learning Paths and Resources for Make.com
11:12 Challenges and Limitations of Current Agent Technology
13:35 Future of Automation and AI Integration
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7S
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In this video, I reveal how to enhance CRM systems using the deep research capabilities embedded in AI models like OpenAI. I share a step-by-step guide on creating effective prompts, connecting CRM systems such as HubSpot, and transforming insights into actionable strategies for revenue growth. I emphasize the importance of leveraging AI for data analysis and highlight the potential it holds to significantly improve business outcomes.
Chapters
00:00 Unlocking CRM Potential with Deep Research
02:50 Step-by-Step Guide to Implementing Deep Research
06:12 Transforming Insights into Actionable Strategies
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7S
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In this conversation, Ryan Staley and Tom Andrews discuss the integration of AI and automation within Pavilion, focusing on the development of a mentoring program. Tom shares insights into the challenges faced while building an AI-driven matchmaking system for mentors and mentees, the iterative process of refining prompts for better results, and the eventual success achieved with the Manus platform. The discussion highlights the importance of clear communication in AI prompting and the potential for transferring these techniques across different applications.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Pavilion and AI Integration
02:51 Building a Mentoring Program with AI
05:49 Challenges with AI Matchmaking
08:43 Iterating on AI Prompts for Better Results
11:39 Finalizing the Mentoring Match Process
14:54 Transferring AI Prompting Skills
16:37 Conclusion and Future Insights
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7S
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In this conversation, Ryan Staley interviews Amos Bar-Joseph, the founder and CEO of Swan AI, about the innovative approach to building an autonomous business using AI agents. They discuss the shift from traditional growth strategies to a model that leverages AI for operational efficiency, the creation of self-learning systems, and the integration of AI into go-to-market strategies. Amos shares insights on how to build a business that scales without increasing headcount, emphasizing the importance of human-AI collaboration and the iterative process of developing AI capabilities.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Autonomous Business Models
02:48 Reimagining Growth Strategies with AI
05:50 Building an Autonomous Business Framework
08:54 Leveraging AI Agents for Operational Efficiency
12:03 Creating a Self-Learning Support System
15:08 The Role of AI in Go-To-Market Strategies
17:58 Integrating AI Agents into Business Processes
21:01 Future of Autonomous Business and Closing Thoughts
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7S
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Summary
In this conversation, Ryan Staley and Mike Palmer discuss the future of AI and data, drawing parallels to past technological transformations. They explore the importance of understanding customer needs, the potential for AI to enhance productivity, and the evolving landscape of data applications. Palmer emphasizes the need for companies to adapt and innovate in order to thrive in the changing environment, while also highlighting the creative potential of humans in leveraging new technologies.
Chapters
00:00 The Evolution of AI and Data
10:09 Future of Data and AI Applications
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7S
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This is my 500th episode!
In this episode, Ryan Staley discusses the challenges many organizations face with Microsoft Copilot and how to unlock its full potential. He shares insights from his experiences at a recent Gartner event and provides a step-by-step guide on how to leverage Copilot effectively. Staley emphasizes the importance of using advanced features and prompts to gain valuable insights and improve productivity. He also explores various use cases for Copilot, including developing business strategies and analyzing data, ultimately encouraging users to explore the tool's capabilities further.
Strategic Implication: This is a step in the right direction to level the AI playing field for enterprise teams previously limited by tool restrictions.
The Question Authority: If your organization restricts AI tool usage, have you audited what capabilities already exist within approved platforms?
Share your experience—what AI capabilities do you see Copilot missing that still need to be unlocked?
Chapters
00:00 Unlocking Microsoft Copilot's Potential
08:38 Advanced Use Cases for Copilot
09:04 Conclusion and Future Insights
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7S
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In this conversation, Ryan Staley interviews Mike Palmer, CEO of Sigma Tech, discussing his journey to leadership, the importance of maximizing learning years, and the transformative role of Sigma in the data landscape. They explore user demands for data applications, the significance of pattern recognition in high-growth companies, and the need for trust and transparency in AI solutions. Mike emphasizes the importance of understanding customer needs and building products that deliver accurate and reliable results.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Sigma Tech and Mike Palmer
06:12 User Demands and the Rise of Data Apps
14:49 Building Products with Purpose and Accuracy
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7S
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In this video, Ryan Staley discusses how to automate business processes using Claude Opus 4. He outlines three key steps: setting up integrations, conducting a time and automation audit, and streamlining email communication. Staley emphasizes the capabilities of Claude Opus 4, particularly in agentic coding and its ability to analyze inefficiencies in time management. He also shares insights on leveraging AI tools for better ROI and the future of AI integration in business.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Automating Your Business with Claude Opus 4
02:48 Understanding Claude Opus 4's Capabilities
05:45 Conducting a Time and Automation Audit
09:09 Streamlining Email Communication
11:56 Final Thoughts on AI Integration and Future Trends
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7S
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In this episode, Ryan Staley and Brandon Taylor discuss the critical role of company culture in the context of AI-led transformations. They explore how to assess leadership and team dynamics, set expectations for change, and ensure cross-functional alignment. Brandon emphasizes the importance of a world-class culture, the need for personal alignment with company goals, and the use of scorecards to measure performance effectively.
Chapters
00:00 The Importance of Company Culture in AI Transformation
02:51 Assessing Leadership and Team Dynamics
05:56 Setting Expectations for Change and Growth
09:04 Cross-Functional Alignment for Success
11:50 Utilizing Scorecards for Performance Measurement
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7S
In this video, Ryan Staley explores Genspark, a new AI super agent, by conducting three tests to evaluate its capabilities in presentation creation and research. He shares insights on the effectiveness of Genspark compared to other tools, discusses best practices for maximizing its use, and concludes with thoughts on its current limitations and potential for future development.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Genspark: The New Super Agent
02:51 Testing Genspark: Presentation Creation
06:00 Research Capabilities: A Comparative Analysis
08:54 Maximizing Genspark: Best Practices and Strategies
11:45 Conclusion: Genspark's Current Limitations and Future Potential
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7S
In this conversation, Ryan Staley interviews Brandon Taylor, VP of Enterprise and Partnerships at CompanyCam, discussing his extensive experience in scaling SaaS businesses and the transformative role of AI in go-to-market strategies. Brandon shares insights on the common challenges faced in B2B sales, the importance of hiring the right people, and how AI can enhance efficiency and effectiveness in sales processes. He highlights specific use cases of AI in his leadership role and the future potential of AI in shaping go-to-market strategies.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Brandon Taylor and His Background
04:01 AI Go-to-Market Strategy and Its Importance
07:07 Leveraging AI for Efficiency in Sales
10:17 Custom Applications and Use Cases of AI in Sales
12:59 Future of Go-to-Market Strategies with AI
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7S
In this video, Ryan Staley discusses the transformative role of AI in go-to-market strategies, emphasizing augmentation over replacement of team members. He shares real-world examples of companies that have successfully integrated AI to enhance productivity and revenue. Staley highlights the importance of leadership in leveraging AI for team efficiency and provides insights on creating effective AI assistants. He also explores how AI can drive brand innovation and concludes with a call to embrace AI for sustainable growth.
Chapters
00:00 AI-Driven Go-To-Market Strategies
01:49 Augmentation vs. Replacement in Teams
04:54 Real-World Success Stories
06:48 Leveraging AI for Marketing and Sales
09:12 Building Effective AI Assistants
11:39 Creating High-Impact Outputs with AI
14:06 Innovative Approaches to Brand Development
16:11 Practical Applications of AI in Business
18:25 Resources and Next Steps for Implementation
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7S
Summary
In this conversation, Ryan Staley and Mike Haylon discuss the innovative AI Studio at Asana, focusing on its no-code workflow builder and how it integrates AI to enhance productivity and streamline processes. Mike shares insights on real-world applications of AI in sales, the importance of context and direction for AI agents, and the future of AI in business.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to AI Studio at Asana
01:06 Exploring AI Studio's No-Code Workflow Builder
05:01 AI Integration in Workflow Management
09:11 Real-World Applications of AI in Sales
10:51 The Future of AI Agents in Business
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7S
Summary
In this conversation, Ryan Staley discusses how to deploy Agentic automations in ChatGPT in three simple steps. He highlights the advanced reasoning and memory features of the latest version, demonstrating how to create and manage tasks effectively. Staley shares insights on dynamic task customization and the potential of automation to enhance productivity and business transformation.
Chapters
00:01 Introduction to Agentic Automations in ChatGPT
02:52 Exploring Advanced Reasoning and Memory Features
06:12 Creating and Managing Tasks Effectively
09:04 Dynamic Task Customization and Automation Insights
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7S
In this conversation, Ryan Staley interviews Mike Haylon, GM of AI Studio at Asana, discussing the integration of AI into Asana's go-to-market strategy. Mike shares insights on the launch of AI Studio, the internal transformation at Asana, and the importance of leadership in driving AI adoption. The discussion highlights the journey of AI integration, customer engagement, and the tangible business impacts of AI-driven workflows.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to AI Studio and Mike Haylon
01:11 Asana's AI Journey and Product Launch
03:19 Internal Transformation and AI Adoption
07:24 The Journey of AI Integration
10:11 Driving Change: Customer Engagement and Behavior
14:35 Leadership's Role in AI Adoption
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7S
In this video, Ryan Staley delves into the capabilities of ChatGPT, particularly its potential for AGI and how it can significantly enhance workflows and productivity. He discusses the importance of identifying key use cases, maximizing output through automation, and leveraging AI for revenue generation. He emphasizes the transformative power of these technologies in business and encourages experimentation with AI tools.
Chapters
00:00 Exploring ChatGPT's AGI Potential
02:52 Maximizing Workflows with ChatGPT
06:14 Automation and AI Integration
09:08 Scaling Offers and Revenue Generation
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7S
This episode was a standout—we had to reshare it.
In this episode, Ryan Staley discusses the silent AI revolution, highlighting how many employees are secretly leveraging AI to enhance their productivity without their organization's knowledge. He explores the concept of the shadow AI economy, where a significant percentage of employees use personal AI tools due to lack of training or restrictions from their employers. Staley provides actionable strategies for organizations to embrace AI innovation, including anonymous surveys, innovation amnesty programs, and reward systems for sharing AI successes.Chapters00:00 The Silent AI Revolution05:47 Strategies for Embracing AI Innovation
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7S
This episode was so good, we’re bringing it back!
In this episode of the Scale Up Show, Ryan Staley interviews Frederic Aouad, Chief Commercial Officer at Stay22, about the company's remarkable growth from $15 million to $30 million in just one year. They discuss the key elements that contributed to this success, including the importance of a strong product, market expansion strategies, and the integration of AI to enhance team efficiency. Frederic shares insights on identifying adjacent intent in travel content and fostering a culture of innovation within the team. The conversation concludes with reflections on the positive impact of AI adoption and the future growth trajectory of Stay22.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Stage 22 and Growth Journey
02:39 Key Elements of Revenue Growth
05:28 Market Expansion and Upmarket Strategy
08:34 Identifying Adjacent Intent in Travel
11:16 Fostering a Culture of Innovation
13:39 Integrating AI into Go-to-Market Strategy
16:33 Results and Future Growth Opportunities
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7S
This episode was so good, we’re bringing it back!
In this episode, Ryan Staley interviews Jeremey Donovan, EVP of RevOps' strategy at Insight Partners. They discuss Jeremey's extensive background in sales, tech, and marketing, and delve into the transformative role of AI in go-to-market strategies. Jeremey shares insights on the challenges and opportunities of AI in sales development, the distinction between inbound and outbound sales, and the potential for AI to enhance full cycle selling. The conversation concludes with Jeremey highlighting successful AI-driven initiatives within portfolio companies and offering advice on leveraging AI for sales efficiency.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Jeremy Donovan and His Background
05:53 Sales Development and AI: Opportunities and Challenges
11:59 Full Cycle Selling and AI Integration
17:59 Conclusion and Where to Find Jeremy Donovan
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind. Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7S
This episode was so good, we’re bringing it back!
3 AI agents that do the work of an $84B industry... and 99% of leaders don't even know they exist. The AI Agents require ZERO coding required (and they just went public)These new no-code AI agents eliminated 10 hours of weekly work- and I'm showing you the exact setup that took me 10 minutes to deploy. → The new agent tools from OpenAI, Google & Perplexity that change everything→ My 'Instant Deploy' system that takes 7 minutes to set up→ The automation sequence that runs your business while you sleepChapters00:00 Introduction to No-Code AI Agents02:53 Exploring OpenAI's New Capabilities06:12 Deep Research with Google Gemini09:05 Market Analysis with Perplexity.ai#Throwback
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind. Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7S
In this conversation, Ryan Staley delves into his experiences with Manus, an AI agent, exploring its capabilities and limitations. He shares insights on how to effectively prompt AI for better results, analyzes the quality of the outputs generated, and discusses the importance of clear instructions when interacting with AI tools. The conversation highlights both the potential and challenges of using AI in content creation, particularly on platforms like LinkedIn.
Chapters
00:00 Exploring AI Agents: The Quest for Functionality
02:48 Prompting Techniques for AI Agents
06:01 Analyzing Output: Quality and Engagement
08:56 Improving AI Interactions: Lessons Learned
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind. Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7
In this Ryan’s guest episode on The AI Agents Podcast. He discusses the implementation of AI in business, sharing his extensive experience in the go-to-market space. He emphasizes the importance of aligning AI use cases with business KPIs and addresses the challenges of gaining buy-in from executives. Staley provides insights into successful case studies and offers practical first steps for companies looking to adopt AI. He also introduces the AI model metrics, explaining how different models can be utilized for various business needs. In this conversation, the speakers delve into the evolving landscape of AI tools, particularly focusing on deep research capabilities, the necessity of using multiple AI models for different tasks, and the transition from basic chat interactions to more complex automation workflows. They discuss the implications of AI on the future workplace, including the potential for generational shifts in skill levels and the impact of AI on job roles. The conversation also touches on the innovations in AI operator tools and their future potential.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to AI Implementation in Business
02:48 Ryan Staley's Background and Experience
05:56 Framework for Scaling Teams with AI
09:12 Case Studies and Success Stories in AI
11:54 Challenges in AI Implementation and Buy-In
15:00 First Steps for Companies to Adopt AI
18:13 AI Model Metrics and Use Cases
25:59 Exploring Deep Research Tools
31:00 The Value of Multiple AI Tools
32:48 From Chat to Automation: Evolving AI Use
37:10 The Future of AI and Workplace Dynamics
48:22 Innovations in AI Operator Tools
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind. Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7
In this conversation, Ryan Staley discusses with Jonathan Mast and John Golden the transformative impact of AI on sales teams, emphasizing its role in improving efficiency, automating processes, and enhancing lead scoring and forecasting. They explore the importance of sales leadership in adopting AI, measuring its impact, and addressing challenges in implementation. The discussion also highlights the need for sales professionals to adapt and leverage AI to enhance their skills and effectiveness in the evolving landscape of sales.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to AI in Sales
01:50 Impact of AI on Sales Teams
04:36 Automation in Sales Processes
10:05 AI in Lead Scoring and Forecasting
13:36 Sales Leadership and AI Implementation
18:05 Measuring AI Impact in Sales
21:17 Challenges and Missteps in AI Adoption
24:45 Future-Proofing Sales Roles with AI
27:28 The Future of AI in Sales
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind. Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7
In this episode, Ryan Staley and Shane Murphy-Reuter discuss the integration of AI in go-to-market strategies, exploring Shane's personal use of AI tools, the future of go-to-market processes, and the importance of balancing technology with emotional connection to customers. Shane emphasizes the need for go-to-market teams to return to their artistic roots while leveraging AI to automate operational tasks.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to AI in Go-To-Market Strategies
01:17 Personal Use of AI by Leaders
06:41 The Future of Go-To-Market with AI
11:58 Balancing Technology and Customer Connection
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind. Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7
In this episode of the AI Agent Show, Ryan Staley interviews Shane Murphy-Reuter, the president and go-to-market leader at Calendly. They discuss the evolving role of go-to-market strategies, the integration of AI in business processes, and the importance of creating a seamless customer experience.
Shane shares insights on the opportunities presented by a holistic approach to go-to-market strategies and how technology can enhance customer interactions. The conversation also touches on the future of AI in organizations and the need for a balanced approach to technology adoption.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Shane Murphy-Reuter and Calendly
02:47 Understanding the Role of President of GTM
06:02 Opportunities in a Holistic Go-to-Market Approach
09:12 AI's Impact on Go-to-Market Strategies
11:53 Integrating Technology and Customer Experience
14:48 Navigating the Future of AI in Organizations
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind. Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7
In this episode, Ryan Staley interviews Aytekin Tank, the founder and CEO of JotForm, about the launch and development of their AI agents. They discuss the journey of creating AI agents, the success of the launch, and the features that set JotForm's AI agents apart.
Aytekin shares insights on user engagement, customization options, and the importance of training AI agents effectively. The conversation also covers various use cases for AI agents, particularly in customer service and event management, highlighting the value they bring to businesses.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to AI Agents and JotForm
01:27 The Journey of Developing AI Agents
05:39 Launch Success and User Engagement
10:01 Demonstrating the AI Agent Features
15:07 Customization and Integration Options
20:16 Training AI Agents Effectively
25:54 Use Cases and Trends in AI Agents
32:45 Conclusion and Future Directions
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind. Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7
In this conversation, Ryan Staley and Sri Ganesan discuss the challenges and strategies surrounding AI adoption in professional services, emphasizing the need for organizations to integrate AI into their operations effectively. They explore the concept of AIOps, highlighting how automation can lead to significant efficiency gains. The discussion also delves into the future of AI agents and their potential roles in enhancing project management and organizational efficiency.
Chapters
00:00 AI Adoption Challenges and Strategies
09:05 Implementing AIOps for Efficiency
14:20 The Future of AI Agents
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies → https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7
In this episode, I shared the evolution of AI models and their practical applications in business, particularly in sales and marketing. I highlight the significant cost savings achieved through effective use of AI, specifically a model that saved a client $50,000 in just 15 minutes. I break down the AI model matrix, explaining various models and their capabilities, and emphasizes the importance of prompting techniques. I also introduce the concept of deep research and how it can be leveraged for business growth, providing a simple two-step process to maximize AI's potential.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to AI Models and Their Impact
05:15 Understanding AI Model Evolution
10:24 Deep Dive into AI Model Matrix
13:20 Leveraging Deep Research for Business Growth
19:05 Conclusion and Key Takeaways
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly AI strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies→https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7
In this conversation, Ryan Staley interviews Sri Ganesan, founder and CEO of Rocketlane, discussing the integration of AI in project management and customer onboarding. Sri shares insights from his previous ventures, emphasizing the importance of building a world-class business across all functions, not just the product. He highlights the need for agility and expertise in a fast-paced environment, especially in the context of rapidly evolving AI technologies. The discussion also touches on the future of professional services and how businesses can adapt to leverage AI effectively.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Sri Ganesan and Rocketlane
02:30 AI-Driven Customer Onboarding and Project Management
05:14 Lessons Learned from Previous Ventures
08:08 Balancing World-Class Standards with Scalability
11:13 Navigating the Evolving AI Landscape
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind. Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies → https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7Most people using AI right now have no idea what's coming. Here's the brutal truth: GPT-4.5 can already perform better than 80% of people's level for a job that 432M people have.I’ve tested it and the results are polarizing because of 100x improvement taking place in the next 3 months1. What is GPT 4.5 and why is it a path to complete disruption2. 10 GPT 4.5 use cases3 GPT 4.5 workflows that outperform 80% of Sales People in persuasion and influence and at the end I will show you a hack to 10x the quality output for any AI model in seconds.I deliver AI transformation for PE, VC and Publicly Traded Companies CROs and CMOS, to multiply Sales, profit and capacity without hiring in less than 60 days. #GPT4 #openai #GPT-4.5Chapters00:00 The Rise of GPT 4.5 and Its Implications02:50 Exploring Use Cases of GPT 4.506:07 Emotional Intelligence in AI08:58 Workflows for Sales Success12:13 Persuasion Techniques and Psychological Principles15:04 The Future of AI in Sales and Marketing
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind. Weekly AI strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7
In this episode, Ryan Staley and Darryl Kelly discuss the innovative use of AI agents in personal and parenting contexts. Darryl shares his journey of leveraging AI to enhance his cognitive abilities and support his children, particularly in managing ADHD. The conversation explores the creation of affirmations for emotional support and the importance of integrating AI with human interaction for better outcomes. Darryl emphasizes the need for meaningful conversations around AI and its potential to improve various aspects of life.
AI #Parenting #ADHD
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to AI Agents and Personal Insights
03:13 Leveraging AI for Personal Growth and Parenting
05:51 Creating Affirmations and Emotional Support for Children
09:12 The Harmony of AI and Human Interaction
12:06 Enhancing Cognitive Load and Executive Functioning
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind. Weekly AI strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies →https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7In this episode, I challenged both Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Grok 3 with identical tasks that CEOs and Marketing Leaders need daily - real-time trend analysis, strategic interpretation, and data visualization. I'm revealing the results of my head-to-head comparison between the two most advanced AI models available right now - Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Grok 3.#claude3 #grok3 #claude #grokai Chapters00:00 AI Showdown: Claude 3.7 vs. Grok 306:07 Brand Awareness and Its Impact14:03 Final Insights and Recommendations
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind. Weekly AI strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies→https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7
In this episode of the AI Agent Show, Ryan Staley interviews Darryl Kelly, CEO of Aspect, discussing the integration of AI in workforce productivity and personal development. Darryl shares his journey with journaling and how it led him to create a custom AI model that reflects his thoughts and motivations. The conversation emphasizes the importance of innovation in established companies and the transformative power of AI in both personal and professional contexts.
aiagent #AI #advisor
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Darryl Kelly and Aspect
04:03 The Importance of Innovation in Established Companies
10:03 Personal Journey with AI and Journaling
17:57 Live Demo of Custom AI Model
25:54 Conclusion and Future Insights
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind. Weekly AI strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies→https://hi.switchy.io/U6H7
In this episode, I outlined a straightforward three-step process for creating effective AI agents, emphasizing the importance of using both free and paid versions of tools to maximize capabilities.
I've built over 100 AI agents in Copilot, and I've distilled it down to 3 simple steps.
Here's my 10-minute blueprint.
microsoft #microsoftcopilot #aiagent
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to AI Agent Building
02:49 Stacking Tools for Optimal AI Performance
06:07 Creating a Content Calendar Agent
09:04 Testing and Refining the AI Agent
11:50 Recap and Next Steps
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly AI strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies → https://www.aiforrevenue.com/superhumanrevenue-newsletter
In this episode, Ryan Staley and Jonathan Lister discuss the evolving landscape of AI in sales, particularly focusing on video AI avatars and autonomous agents. They explore market responses to these technologies, the shift towards automation, and the implications for sales productivity. Jonathan shares insights on how companies are adapting to these changes and the increasing acceptance of AI-driven solutions in the go-to-market strategies.
Takeaways
- The market is increasingly accepting of AI-driven solutions.
- Buyers prefer automation and less human interaction in sales.
- AI tools can significantly enhance sales productivity.
- Open AI is being leveraged for research and presentation quality.
- The efficacy of AI models is improving rapidly.
- Sales teams are expected to adapt to new AI tools.
- Autonomous agents will complement rather than replace human roles.
Connect with me:
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
X- https://x.com/Ryan_Staley1
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Video AI Avatars
01:04 Market Response to AI and Video Avatars
04:29 The Shift Towards Autonomous Solutions
06:02 Leveraging AI Tools for Sales Productivity
09:04 Understanding Autonomous Agents in Go-To-Market Strategies
11:42 Executive Perspectives on AI and Productivity Gains
Ryan Staley discusses the competitive landscape of AI agents, focusing on the emerging startup Convergence and its tool Proxy, which is positioned against OpenAI's offerings. He highlights the significant funding differences between the two companies and explores various use cases for AI in sales and marketing, emphasizing automation and efficiency. Staley concludes with insights on the future of AI technology and its applications.
Takeaways
🔹OpenAI has significant funding but faces competition from smaller startups.
🔹Convergence's Proxy tool offers free trials and competitive features.
🔹AI agents can automate various sales and marketing tasks.
🔹The cost difference between AI tools can impact business decisions.
🔹Automation can lead to increased efficiency in business operations.
🔹AI can assist in data collection and CRM management.
🔹Social media integration is a key use case for AI agents.
🔹AI tools can help in competitive marketing analysis.
🔹The future of AI includes more autonomous agents.
🔹Staying updated on AI developments is crucial for leveraging opportunities.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to AI Competition
02:46 OpenAI vs. Convergence: A Comparative Analysis
06:07 Exploring Use Cases for AI Agents
08:59 Automation and Efficiency in Sales and Marketing
10:54 Conclusion and Future Insights
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind. Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies → https://www.aiforrevenue.com/superhumanrevenue-newsletter
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
In this conversation, Ryan Staley interviews Jonathan Lister, COO of Vidyard, discussing the transformative role of AI in video marketing and outreach. Jonathan shares insights on how Vidyard leverages AI avatars to enhance personalization at scale, improve customer management, and streamline sales processes. The discussion covers various use cases, engagement metrics, and the future potential of AI in go-to-market strategies.
Takeaways
🔹Vidyard focuses on video for go-to-market strategies.
🔹AI avatars enable personalization at scale in outreach.
🔹Quality outreach is now achievable with AI technology.
🔹Customer management can be enhanced through AI-driven communication.
🔹Trigger-based workflows can automate responses to customer actions.
🔹Engagement rates for video outreach are significantly higher than emails.
🔹The technology is evolving rapidly, necessitating adaptation by sales teams.
🔹Bulk video generation allows for efficient outreach to multiple prospects.
🔹AI avatars can be customized for individual recipients.
🔹Understanding and utilizing AI in sales is crucial for future success.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Vidyard and Jonathan Lister
01:10 The Role of AI in Video Marketing
03:15 Use Cases for AI Avatars in Outreach
05:10 Enhancing Customer Management with AI
06:08 Personalization at Scale with AI Avatars
10:01 Quantifying Engagement and Conversion Rates
12:50 Trigger-Based Workflows in Sales
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly AI strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies→https://www.aiforrevenue.com/superhumanrevenue-newsletter
Ryan Staley discusses the transformative potential of OpenAI's latest AI agent, which can automate significant portions of human work for a low monthly fee. He explains the implications of economic task automation, how to access and effectively use AI agents, and provides real-world applications and case studies. The discussion concludes with insights into the future of work and strategic implications for businesses.
Takeaways
🔹OpenAI's AI agent can replace trillions of dollars in work.
🔹Only a small percentage of businesses grasp the implications of AI.
🔹Economic task automation can significantly impact job roles.
🔹Most jobs have tasks that can be automated rather than entire roles.
🔹AI's capabilities are rapidly advancing, nearing AGI.
🔹Understanding AI's impact is crucial for job security.
🔹Accessing AI tools requires a pro account for full functionality.
🔹Real-world applications of AI can enhance business strategies.
🔹Case studies illustrate successful AI integration in companies.
🔹The future of work will be heavily influenced by AI advancements.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to AI Agents and Their Impact
02:47 Understanding Economic Task Automation
06:08 How to Access and Use AI Agents
09:02 Real-World Applications and Case Studies
11:52 Future Outlook and Strategic Implications
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.
Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies → https://www.aiforrevenue.com/superhumanrevenue-newsletter
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
I've unlocked DeepSeek's advanced reasoning engine - so that by the end of this video you can deploy it in less than 30 seconds with zero coding.Takeaways🔹DeepSeek caused a $600 billion market loss due to its advanced capabilities.🔹NVIDIA's stock drop reflects broader concerns in the tech industry.🔹Security risks are paramount when using AI tools like DeepSeek.🔹PhD level advanced reasoning can be accessed safely with proper precautions.🔹DeepSeek is available for free, offering competitive alternatives to paid models.🔹Microsoft's support for DeepSeek highlights its significance in the AI landscape.🔹Transparency in AI reasoning is crucial for user trust and effectiveness.🔹Users can leverage multiple platforms to access advanced AI models.🔹Understanding the technical aspects of AI tools can enhance their application.🔹Feedback from users is essential for improving AI tool offerings.Chapters00:00 The $600 Billion Drop: Understanding the Impact of DeepSeek03:18 Navigating Security Risks with Advanced Reasoning06:35 Exploring DeepSeek and Its Alternatives10:19 Practical Applications of Advanced Reasoning Models----------------Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind. Weekly strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies → https://www.aiforrevenue.com/superhumanrevenue-newsletter
Just wrapped a live stress test of OpenAI's newest release. Here's the raw, unedited breakdown you won't see anywhere else 👇🧪 THE EXPERIMENT: → 3 distinct business use cases → $200 enterprise access → Zero preparation, pure testing🎯 WHAT ACTUALLY WORKED:- Travel booking: 4-minute execution, fully automated flight search ✅- News aggregation: Lightning-fast AI updates ✅- Real-time decision support ✅⚠️ CURRENT LIMITATIONS:- Complex research tasks need refinement- No login credential storage- Some tasks require human intervention🚀 BUSINESS IMPACT:- Cuts travel booking time by 80%- Automates multi-source research- Handles parallel tasks simultaneously🔍 KEY INSIGHT: While not perfect, this is just the beginning. The acceleration is mind-blowing, and the business applications are about to explode.---
Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind. Weekly AI strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies→https://www.aiforrevenue.com/superhumanrevenue-newsletter
In this episode of the Scale Up Show, host Ryan Staley interviews Glenn Sandifer, a seasoned executive in the security industry and author. They discuss the importance of relationships in achieving professional success, the insights from Glenn's book on dating outcomes, and how to leverage LinkedIn for business growth. Glenn shares his experiences in building sales pipelines and offers practical advice on using Sales Navigator effectively. The conversation emphasizes the significance of personal development and strategic networking in both personal and professional realms.Takeaways
You are 100% in control of your own dating outcomes.🔹Understanding who you are and what you want is crucial.🔹Mutual submission in relationships leads to better outcomes.🔹Sales Navigator is a powerful tool for professionals.
🔹Building soft connections is essential for networking.
🔹Setting daily KPIs can drive better results in sales.
🔹Integration of tools like Sales Navigator with CRM is key.
🔹Time management is critical for effective sales strategies.
🔹Measuring activity is not complex and can be easily tracked.
🔹A systematic approach to sales can yield significant benefits.Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Glenn Sandifer and His Journey
02:54 The Intersection of Relationships and Professional Success
05:49 Leveraging LinkedIn for Business Growth
09:33 Creating a Robust Sales Playbook
15:32 Conclusion and Key Takeaways----
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3 AI agents that do the work of an $84B industry... and 97% of leaders don't even know they exist. The AI Agents require ZERO coding required (and they just went public)These new no-code AI agents eliminated 10 hours of weekly work- and I'm showing you the exact setup that took me 10 minutes to deploy. → The new agent tools from OpenAI, Google & Perplexity that change everything→ My 'Instant Deploy' system that takes 7 minutes to set up→ The automation sequence that runs your business while you sleepTakeaways
- 97% of leaders are unaware of these AI agents.
- No-code tools can save significant time in workflows.
- OpenAI's new capabilities are still in beta but promising.
- Google Gemini offers deep research capabilities quickly.
- Perplexity.ai provides multi-step reasoning for market analysis.
- AI tools can automate tasks like web scraping and data collection.
- Setting up these tools requires minimal time and effort.
- The market research industry is worth $84 billion.
- AI can help create personalized customer journeys.
- These tools are designed for ease of use and accessibility.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to No-Code AI Agents
02:53 Exploring OpenAI's New Capabilities
06:12 Deep Research with Google Gemini
09:05 Market Analysis with Perplexity.ai
In this conversation, Ryan Staley and Morgan Ingram delve into the significance of video content in the digital marketing landscape, particularly on platforms like LinkedIn and YouTube. They discuss the challenges and benefits of using video, emphasizing its role in building trust with audiences. The discussion also touches on the evolving nature of content consumption, with a focus on the shift from traditional written content to video as a primary source of information for decision-making. Additionally, they explore the importance of trust over mere attention in the content creation process and the necessity of having a strong team to drive business success.Takeaways
🔹Video is harder for people to create, but it builds trust.🔹AI-generated content lacks the personal connection of real video.🔹The trust economy is more valuable than the attention economy.🔹YouTube is becoming a key platform for B2B decision-making.🔹Niche content can lead to high revenue despite low views.🔹Building trust with your audience is essential for success.
🔹Content should focus on depth and authenticity.
🔹Having a strong team is crucial for business growth.🔹Video content can differentiate brands in a crowded market.
🔹Engagement on platforms like YouTube can lead to significant revenue.Chapters
00:00 The Power of Video in Content Creation
07:03 Trust vs. Attention in the Digital Age
12:29 The Shift Towards YouTube for Business Insights
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In this episode of the Scale Up Show, Ryan Staley interviews Frederic Aouad, Chief Commercial Officer at Stay22, about the company's remarkable growth from $15 million to $30 million in just one year. They discuss the key elements that contributed to this success, including the importance of a strong product, market expansion strategies, and the integration of AI to enhance team efficiency. Frederic shares insights on identifying adjacent intent in travel content and fostering a culture of innovation within the team. The conversation concludes with reflections on the positive impact of AI adoption and the future growth trajectory of Stay22.Takeaways
🔹A strong product is essential for business success.🔹The business model allows for scaling without renewal friction.🔹Moving upmarket can lead to larger deal values.🔹Identifying adjacent intent can uncover new opportunities.🔹Fostering a culture of exploration is crucial for innovation.🔹AI can significantly reduce time spent on tasks.🔹Team upskilling is necessary for adapting to new technologies.🔹Adoption of AI tools can lead to efficiency gains.🔹Creativity and instincts play a role in go-to-market strategies.🔹Continuous exploration and testing are key to growth.Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Stage 22 and Growth Journey
02:39 Key Elements of Revenue Growth
05:28 Market Expansion and Upmarket Strategy
08:34 Identifying Adjacent Intent in Travel
11:16 Fostering a Culture of Innovation
13:39 Integrating AI into Go-to-Market Strategy
16:33 Results and Future Growth Opportunities-----Want to become Superhuman through the use of AI?
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In this conversation, Ryan Staley interviews Morgan Ingram, a B2B revenue expert, about the integration of content and sales strategies, particularly focusing on LinkedIn video content. Morgan shares insights on creating effective video content, the importance of understanding algorithms, and utilizing AI tools for content optimization. He emphasizes the need for a structured approach to video creation, including hooks, promises, and calls to action, while also discussing the significance of research and leveraging platforms like YouTube for content ideas.
Takeaways
- It's essential to integrate content and sales for better outcomes.
- Understanding how to show up effectively is crucial for success.
- A strong video framework includes a hook, promise, plan, and call to action.
- Videos should ideally be 30 to 60 seconds for maximum engagement.
- Researching successful content on platforms like YouTube can inform your strategy.
- AI tools like vidIQ and Perplexity can enhance content creation efforts.
- Spending time on research is vital for creating impactful content.
- The art of content creation is as important as the science behind it.
- Engagement can be increased by asking viewers to comment or DM.
- Continuous learning and adaptation are key in the evolving landscape of social media.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to B2B Revenue Strategies
01:09 The Power of Content and Sales Integration
02:32 Mastering Video Content on LinkedIn
05:57 Framework for Effective Video Creation
09:33 Researching and Creating Pillar Content
12:17 Utilizing AI Tools for Content Optimization
15:52 Exploring New AI Technologies for Research-----
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In this episode of the Scale Up Show, host Ryan Staley interviews Fred Auouad, Chief Commercial Officer at Stay 22. They discuss the unique culture at Stay 22, emphasizing the importance of investing in people through training and development. Fred shares insights on the adoption of AI for skill training and the unexpected results that have emerged from its implementation. The conversation also covers the impact of AI on sales and partnership success, highlighting how it has transformed their operations and improved efficiency. The episode concludes with Fred's thoughts on the future of AI in business and the importance of embracing change.Takeaways
- Investing in company culture leads to higher productivity.
- Training and development are essential for employee retention.
- AI can significantly enhance productivity without adding more staff.
- Creative applications of AI can lead to unexpected efficiencies.
- Standardizing processes with AI improves team collaboration.
- AI can transform unstructured data into valuable content.
- A culture of candid feedback fosters a positive work environment.
- Embracing AI is crucial for staying competitive in the market.
- Investing in people yields long-term benefits for the organization.
- AI adoption requires a mindset shift towards continuous learning.
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In this conversation, Ryan Staley and Amanda Kahlow discuss the implications of AI superhumans on the workforce, the potential for job displacement, and the need for a new societal structure. They explore the challenges of parenting in an AI-driven world, Amanda's journey in creating OneMind, and the transformation of the buying experience through AI. The discussion also touches on Amanda's favorite AI use cases and her vision for the future.
Takeaways
- AI superhumans can perform tasks traditionally done by humans.
- Job displacement due to AI is inevitable and will require adaptation.
- A new societal structure may emerge as a result of AI advancements.
- Parenting in the age of AI requires a focus on empathy and emotional intelligence.
- The buying experience in B2B is currently broken and needs improvement.
- Creating a category-defining product is essential for success in AI.
- AI can enhance the efficiency of sales processes and customer interactions.
- Universal basic income could be a solution for job displacement.
- Women empowerment is a key part of Amanda's mission.
- AI tools can help structure meetings and improve productivity.
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In this episode of the Scale Up Show, host Ryan Staley interviews Amanda Kahlow, CEO of 1 Mind and former founder of Sixth Sense. Amanda shares her journey from overcoming a challenging childhood to becoming a successful entrepreneur focused on AI-driven solutions. The conversation delves into the concept of 'super humans' in AI, their applications in go-to-market strategies, and how they can enhance customer interactions. Amanda also discusses her personal use of AI in decision-making and the creation of her AI clone, Amanda AI, to streamline communication and sales processes.Takeaways
- Amanda Kahlow has a rich entrepreneurial background with a focus on AI.
- 1 Mind aims to create 'super humans' that enhance customer interactions.
- Super humans can perform tasks like qualifying leads and giving demos.
- The technology is designed to improve the buying experience for customers.
- AI can help streamline sales processes and reduce deal cycles.
- Amanda emphasizes the importance of earning the right to engage in enterprise deals.
- The use of AI can transform traditional marketing and sales strategies.
- Creating an AI clone can help in personalizing customer interactions.
- The super human can access vast amounts of information instantly during calls.
- AI is seen as a critical component for future business success.
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In this episode, Ryan Staley and Jeremey Donovan delve into the practical applications of AI in business strategy, particularly in hiring and go-to-market strategies. Jeremey shares insights from his extensive use of AI tools, discussing how data-driven approaches can enhance decision-making and productivity. The conversation also explores the nuances of industry movement and the importance of understanding constraints when leveraging AI for business growth.
Takeaways
- AI can significantly enhance productivity in business roles.
- Data-driven hiring decisions can challenge common beliefs.
- Moving from larger to smaller companies may not hinder success.
- Industry experience may not be as critical as previously thought.
- AI tools can streamline go-to-market strategies effectively.
- Understanding constraints is crucial for effective AI use.
- Human expertise remains essential in validating AI outputs.
- The future of AI may lead to more self-service capabilities.
- AI can help reduce ramp-up time for new roles.
- Trust in AI outputs is a key consideration for executives.
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In this episode, Ryan Staley interviews Jeremey Donovan, EVP of RevOps' strategy at Insight Partners. They discuss Jeremey's extensive background in sales, tech, and marketing, and delve into the transformative role of AI in go-to-market strategies. Jeremey shares insights on the challenges and opportunities of AI in sales development, the distinction between inbound and outbound sales, and the potential for AI to enhance full cycle selling. The conversation concludes with Jeremey highlighting successful AI-driven initiatives within portfolio companies and offering advice on leveraging AI for sales efficiency.Takeaways
- Jeremey Donovan has a diverse background in sales, tech, and marketing.
- AI can significantly enhance productivity and efficiency in sales.
- The distinction between inbound and outbound sales is crucial for AI application.
- Skepticism about AI's effectiveness in outbound sales is warranted.
- Nurturing leads digitally until they are ready to engage with sales is essential.
- AI can help identify gaps in sales opportunities and improve deal management.
- The future of sales may involve more proactive AI-driven strategies.
- AI's role in customer support is a low-hanging fruit for companies.
- Successful AI integration requires careful consideration of its application.
- LinkedIn is a valuable platform for connecting with industry professionals.
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In this conversation, Ryan Staley and Laurent Charpentier discuss the evolving role of AI in business, particularly in fraud detection and sales processes. Laurent shares insights on how AI is being integrated into their operations, the importance of team engagement with new technologies, and his vision for future business ventures leveraging AI.Takeaways
- AI is crucial for enhancing fraud detection strategies.
- Automation provides better control over financial processes.
- Data accuracy improves as AI models evolve.
- Engagement with AI tools boosts team morale and productivity.
- AI can help in summarizing meetings for better efficiency.
- The legal implications of AI usage are a concern for companies.
- Building proprietary AI models can mitigate data privacy issues.
- AI tools can enhance sales coaching and performance.
- The future of business will heavily rely on AI technology.
- Exploring new use cases for AI is essential for growth.
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In this episode of the Scale Up Show, host Ryan Staley interviews Laurent Charpentier, CEO of Yooz, a leading provider of cloud-based e-invoicing and purchase-to-pay automation solutions. Laurent shares his inspiring journey from a technical background to leading a global company, emphasizing the importance of learning and mentorship. The conversation delves into Yooz's innovative automation solutions, the significant impact of AI on finance, and the future trends in the industry. Laurent discusses the strategies for product development and how customer feedback shapes their approach. The episode concludes with insights into the creative aspects of being a CEO and the exciting possibilities that lie ahead in the realm of AI and finance.Takeaways
- Laurent's journey from engineering to CEO is inspiring.
- Learning from mentors is crucial for success.
- Yooz automates the entire purchase to payment process.
- Manual processes in finance are time-consuming and inefficient.
- AI can enhance human capabilities in finance.
- Customer feedback is essential for product development.
- The future of finance is heavily influenced by AI.
- Yooz's solutions can reduce processes by over 80%.
- Creative thinking is vital for product innovation.
- The importance of focusing on delivering value to customers.
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In this episode, Ryan Staley discusses the challenges and opportunities of AI transformation in organizations, focusing on leadership's role in driving successful implementation. He highlights common leadership patterns that hinder progress, the importance of fostering a culture of experimentation, and practical steps leaders can take to embrace AI effectively. Staley emphasizes the need for leaders to demonstrate AI usage, create safe environments for innovation, and share successes across teams to unlock productivity and enhance job satisfaction.
Takeaways
- AI transformation is often hindered by leadership's lack of demonstration.
- Leaders must actively engage with AI tools to drive change.
- Patience from stakeholders is diminishing, increasing pressure on leaders.
- Creating an AI sandbox can facilitate experimentation and learning.
- Cross-team collaboration enhances innovation and ideation.
- Safe to fail environments encourage risk-taking and sharing failures.
- Successful AI implementation can lead to significant productivity gains.
- Embracing AI can make work more enjoyable and fulfilling.
- Regular training and hackathons can accelerate AI adoption.
- Leaders should dedicate time for AI exploration without immediate ROI expectations.
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In this episode, Ryan Staley discusses the silent AI revolution, highlighting how many employees are secretly leveraging AI to enhance their productivity without their organization's knowledge. He explores the concept of the shadow AI economy, where a significant percentage of employees use personal AI tools due to lack of training or restrictions from their employers. Staley provides actionable strategies for organizations to embrace AI innovation, including anonymous surveys, innovation amnesty programs, and reward systems for sharing AI successes.
Takeaways
- AI innovation is often hidden by top performers.
- Employees fear sharing their AI tools due to potential backlash.
- Organizations need to recognize and support AI usage.
- Anonymous surveys can uncover hidden AI practices.
- Creating an innovation amnesty can encourage sharing.
- Rewarding AI successes fosters a culture of innovation.
- Providing time for exploration can lead to breakthroughs.
- Daily AI usage can significantly enhance productivity.
- Companies must prepare for the future of AI agents.
- AI transformation requires a supportive organizational culture.
--
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In this episode, Ryan Staley and John Munsell delve into various AI use cases, focusing on practical applications across different sectors. John shares insights on how AI tools like GPT and Perplexity can be utilized for tasks ranging from blog writing to analyzing medical reports and legal documents. The conversation highlights innovative internal applications of AI in education and healthcare, as well as the importance of fostering a culture of AI utilization within organizations.
Takeaways
- AI can be used for diverse applications beyond marketing.
- Creating scalable prompts enhances the effectiveness of AI tools.
- AI can significantly reduce the time spent on administrative tasks.
- Innovative use cases in education can improve student engagement.
- AI can assist in analyzing complex medical data for better understanding.
- Legal applications of AI can streamline contract reviews and applications.
- Perplexity is effective for real-time information gathering.
- AI can serve as a thought partner for critical analysis.
- Encouraging a culture of AI usage can lead to cost savings.
- AI tools can be tailored to specific organizational needs.
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Summary
In this engaging conversation, Ryan Staley and John Munsell delve into the intricacies of AI strategy and implementation. John, the CEO of Bizukka, shares his journey from software development to focusing exclusively on AI training and consulting. They discuss the importance of creating a structured AI strategy canvas to help organizations effectively integrate AI into their operations. John elaborates on the concept of scalable prompt engineering, emphasizing the need for a systematic approach to crafting prompts that can be reused and adapted across various applications. The conversation also touches on the challenges of prompt drift and the importance of calibration in maintaining effective AI interactions.Takeaways
- AI is not a one-time solution; it's an ongoing process.
- Many organizations struggle to grasp the full potential of AI.
- The AI Strategy Canvas helps filter and structure AI initiatives.
- Standardization is key for successful AI implementation.
- Understanding the target audience is crucial for effective AI use.
- Prompt engineering should be systematic and structured.
- Calibration of prompts can significantly improve AI output.
- Organizations need to adapt to prompt drift as AI models evolve.
- Using containers for prompts allows for easier scalability.
- AI training should focus on upskilling employees to avoid job loss
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Summary
In this episode of the Scale Up Show, host Ryan Staley and guest Alexander De Ridder discuss the future of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and the role of AI agents in transforming industries. They explore the expectations surrounding AGI, the challenges of scaling AI models, and the profound impact AI will have across various sectors. Alexander emphasizes that while AGI may not be as earth-shattering as anticipated, the evolution of AI agents will drive significant change in how businesses operate and interact with technology.
Takeaways
- AGI is expected to emerge around 2025 or 2026.
- The real revolution in AI will come from agents, not just foundation models.
- Scaling AI models presents significant challenges, especially with multimodal capabilities.
- AI agents will transform industries by providing enhanced utility and capabilities.
- The evolution of AI will be gradual but profound, affecting every sector.
- OpenAI is well-positioned to lead in AGI development.
- AI models are becoming increasingly capable in tasks like math and reasoning.
- The cost of AI services may rise to ensure quality user experiences.
- Agents will serve as the application layer for AI technologies.
- The technology behind AI is improving rapidly, with new advancements weekly.
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In this conversation, Ryan Staley interviews Alexander De Ridder, founder and CEO of SmythOS, an AI operating system that connects networks via specialized AI agents. They discuss Alexander's journey in the AI space, the lessons learned from competition, the importance of user experience, and the distinction between AI agents and traditional LLMs. Alexander introduces the concept of meta LLMs, which allow for the orchestration of multiple AI models and APIs into workflows, emphasizing the need for flexibility and ease of deployment across various platforms. The conversation concludes with insights into the future of AI agents and their applications in an increasingly omni-channel world.
Takeaways
- SmythOS started as a platform to build AI agents.
- The better product doesn't always win; ease of use is crucial.
- Understanding AI workflows is essential for trust and effectiveness.
- Data governance is a significant barrier to AI adoption.
- AI agents can automate complex workflows beyond simple tasks.
- Meta LLMs allow for integration of multiple AI models into workflows.
- The market is shifting towards omni-channel communication.
- Companies need to adapt to diverse platforms for customer engagement.
- Building agents once and deploying them anywhere is key.
- Learning from past failures is vital for future success.
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Reminder: If you’re exploring AI tools and it’s looking promising,
Keep experimenting.
It doesn't matter if you find one tool that seems perfect.
Or if everyone says how great it is.
I see too many people get stuck on one solution.
Remember, there are multiple AI agents that can enhance your productivity.
If tools are going to offer different strengths, you should explore them all.
You can continue to use that one tool.
But don't stop experimenting with others.
Until you master the best fit for your needs, ‘don’t take your foot off the gas.’
Watch the video for my breakdown of 3 different, but impressive AI agents (with my results.)
Takeaways
- Experimenting with AI agents can lead to valuable insights.
- Replit is a promising tool for non-technical users.
- N8n offers automation capabilities that can streamline tasks.
- Bolt allows for quick MVP creation without coding skills.
- Hands-on experience is crucial for understanding these tools.
- Each tool has its own learning curve and potential.
- Engagement from the audience can shape future content.
- AI tools can significantly enhance business productivity.
- Continuous experimentation is key to finding effective solutions.
- Feedback is essential for improving the content shared.
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In this conversation, Ryan Staley and Kris Rudeegraap discuss the importance of promoting their podcast episodes, the impact of AI on business, and the significance of understanding personal strengths and work preferences. They share insights on how to effectively navigate these themes in a professional context.
Takeaways
- Promoting content is essential for visibility.
- AI is transforming how businesses operate.
- Understanding personal strengths can lead to better job satisfaction.
- Adaptation to AI is necessary for future success.
- Work preferences should be considered in career choices.
- Effective communication is key in podcasting.
- Engagement with the audience enhances the podcast experience.
- Exploring new ideas can lead to innovation.
- Networking is important for growth.
- Continuous learning is vital in a changing landscape.
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Featuring Kris Rudeegraap, CEO of Sendoso, this conversation dives into the evolution of sales development, focusing on how Sendoso has leveraged AI and automation to enhance outbound sales efficiency and effectiveness. Kris shares valuable insights on tracking SDR activities, automating repetitive tasks, and utilizing intent data to prioritize high-value accounts. The discussion also covers the future of go-to-market strategies and the importance of organizations adapting to new technologies and methodologies.Takeaways1. Kris Rudeegraap is the co-founder and CEO of Sendoso, a direct mail and gifting platform.2. The evolution of outbound sales has necessitated new strategies and tools.3. AI and automation can significantly enhance sales development efficiency.4. Tracking SDR activities can reveal opportunities for automation.5. Intent data is crucial for prioritizing high-value accounts.6. Gifting can be an effective strategy for engaging prospects.7. Organizations need to rethink traditional sales playbooks in light of new technologies.8. Crowdsourcing ideas from team members can lead to innovative solutions.9. Investing in AI training for employees can improve overall productivity.10. The future of sales development will increasingly rely on AI and automation.
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In this conversation, Roman Arutyunov and Ryan Staley delve into the intersection of technology and business, discussing how innovative tools can enhance product-market fit and drive entrepreneurial success. They explore the nuances of leveraging technology effectively to meet market demands and the critical role of aligning products with customer needs.
Takeaways
- Technology can significantly enhance business operations.
- Understanding product-market fit is crucial for success.
- Innovation should be aligned with customer needs.
- Effective use of technology can drive growth.
- Entrepreneurs must adapt to changing market dynamics.
- Feedback loops are essential for product development.
- Collaboration can lead to better technological solutions.
- Continuous learning is vital in the tech landscape.
- Market research informs better product decisions.
- Success often hinges on the right technological tools.
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In this episode of The Scale Up Show, host Ryan Staley interviews Roman Arutyunov, co-founder and SVP of products at Xage. They discuss Roman's journey in cybersecurity, the founding of Xage to protect critical infrastructure, and the importance of creating a delightful user experience in product development. Roman shares insights on entrepreneurship, emphasizing the significance of execution over waiting for the perfect idea.
Takeaways
- Xage was founded to protect critical infrastructure.
- Identifying customer weaknesses is key to product development.
- Creating a delightful user experience is essential.
- Execution is what separates successful entrepreneurs.
- There's never a perfect time to start a company.
- Focus on usability and solving key problems.
- The journey of entrepreneurship is filled with ups and downs.
- Fast growth is achievable with the right product.
- A minimal viable product should prioritize user experience.
- Connecting with customers through feedback is crucial.
Sound Bites
- "We founded Xage to protect critical infrastructure."
- "Identifying weaknesses leads to delightful experiences."
- "The journey is definitely worth it."
---
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In this conversation, Ryan Staley and Greg Galant discuss the integration of AI in public relations, the evolution of podcasting, and the opportunities that AI presents for innovation in business. Greg shares his experiences from starting a podcast in 2005 to leveraging AI tools in his company, Muckrack. They explore personal and team use cases of AI, the challenges of adopting new technologies, and the importance of fostering a culture of innovation within organizations.
Takeaways
- AI is revolutionizing the way businesses operate.
- The early adoption of technology can lead to significant opportunities.
- Creating niche content is easier with AI tools.
- Personal experimentation with AI can lead to innovative solutions.
- Encouraging team members to share AI use cases fosters a culture of innovation.
- AI can enhance productivity and efficiency in various tasks.
- Understanding the adoption cycle is crucial for technology integration.
- Patience is key when encouraging companies to adopt new technologies.
- AI tools can simplify everyday tasks and decision-making processes.
- Building a strong online presence is essential for business growth.
Sound Bites
- "AI is unlocking so many new doors."
- "I would just start making lots of podcasts."
- "It's a really exciting time."
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In this conversation, Ryan Staley interviews Greg Gallant, Co-founder and CEO of Muckrack, discussing the company's innovative approach to public relations through AI integration. They explore Muckrack's growth journey, its business model, and how PR professionals can leverage the platform to enhance their media coverage and relationships with journalists. The discussion also highlights the importance of identifying newsworthy stories and effectively targeting media outreach.
Takeaways
- Muckrack has grown sustainably, focusing on profitability.
- The platform serves as a comprehensive tool for PR professionals.
- AI is being integrated to automate tedious PR tasks.
- Identifying newsworthy stories is crucial for effective PR.
- Targeted outreach to journalists increases chances of coverage.
- Muckrack helps users find the right media contacts easily.
- The importance of customizing pitches for journalists.
- AI can assist in generating initial drafts for outreach.
- Understanding industry trends can enhance PR strategies.
- Building relationships with journalists is key to successful PR.
Sound Bites
- "We're approaching 300 employees, we're still profitable."
- "It's like a software platform for the PR department."
- "AI can take the busy work out of it."
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In this episode, I break down the growing frustration with AI-generated content. However, ONLY if it is the wrong kind.
Here is my logic on why a simple video went viral to over 700,000 people and had AI leaders from the biggest companies in the world reaching out to me.
- Authenticity: People crave realness. The video was genuine, not just another AI script.
- Value: It provided clear, actionable insights. No fluff, just straight to the point.
- Engagement: The content was interactive, encouraging viewers to comment and share their thoughts.
- Relevance: It addressed current pain points in the industry, making it highly relatable.
- Quality: High production values made it visually appealing and easy to watch.
- Timing: Released at a moment when people were actively seeking solutions.
- Human Touch: Even though it involved AI, the human element was front and center. True success in content creation is about connecting on a human level.
And that's not what generic AI content does.
Tune in to discover how to create impactful, relatable content that truly connects.
🎧 Listen now and learn how to stand out in the era of AI!
Takeaways
- Ryan generated 700,000 views on LinkedIn with a single post.
- ChatGPT 4.0 can act as a high-level reasoning assistant.
- AI can craft detailed business strategies in seconds.
- Understanding AI models is crucial for effective use.
- Custom instructions can significantly improve AI interactions.
- AI can help in building a company from scratch.
- Personalization of AI can enhance user experience.
- AI can streamline planning and goal-setting processes.
- Using AI can save hours in strategic planning.
- Engaging with AI can lead to valuable business connections.
Sound Bites
- "I created a company in eight minutes!"
- "ChatGPT 4.0 is like having a PhD assistant."
- "It crafted a sales initiative in 27 seconds!"
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Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Advanced Voice AI is Changing the Game. It’s not just talk... It's revolutionizing interactions. I tested with the custom instructions of Marc Benioff to understand the future of Salesforce's Agents.
In this episode, Ryan Staley shares his insights from recent experiences at a SaaS startup event in New York and the massive Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. Ryan discusses the challenges faced by tech startups and large enterprises in implementing AI strategies, revealing that many companies lack a systematic approach to AI integration. Ryan highlights the importance of operationalizing AI across organizations and shares key takeaways from his interactions with Fortune 1000 and Fortune 500 companies. Ryan also delves into the emerging AgentForce initiative by Salesforce, exploring its potential impact on the industry and the innovative pricing models being introduced.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
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KEY TAKEAWAYS
- At a SaaS startup event, it was surprising to find that only one out of 26 companies had a systematic strategy for implementing AI into their products.
- During interactions with Fortune 1000 and Fortune 500 companies at Dreamforce, it was noted that many organizations are defaulting to using AI tools like Microsoft Copilot without proper training or systematic rollout.
- Salesforce's AgentForce initiative is focused on creating autonomous agents tailored to specific industries and functions, leveraging retrieval augmented generation (RAG) to provide higher-quality answers based on the data within Salesforce.
- Many companies expressed skepticism about the timeline for rolling out Salesforce's AgentForce, with some believing it could take up to a year and a half to fully implement, despite the potential benefits.
- There is a significant opportunity for both small tech startups and large enterprises to operationalize AI effectively. A systematic approach to AI can lead to substantial improvements in productivity and revenue growth.
BEST MOMENTS
"Only one out of 26 companies could answer... what are your plans or your systematic strategy for implementing AI into your product?"
"A lot of companies are defaulting company-wide to models like Microsoft Copilot because of the embedded security comfort factor."
"By taking a systematic approach, you can multiply the output of your entire workforce."
"Salesforce's new version is, in my opinion, no do-it-yourself AI; let Salesforce do that."
"This could automate parts of people's jobs... it's going to be really interesting to see how it implements."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
In this episode, Ryan Staley flips the script and is the one who is being interviewed and engages in a thought-provoking conversation about the challenges and strategies of growing a VC-backed company without external investment. Ryan shares insights from his extensive experience in sales and leadership, discussing common pitfalls that CEOs encounter, such as focusing too heavily on product development at the expense of go-to-market strategies. The episode also delves into the transformative impact of AI on business operations, highlighting the importance of integrating AI tools effectively within teams to enhance productivity and efficiency.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Many leaders, particularly product-focused ones, can become so engrossed in their products that they neglect essential aspects like go-to-market strategies and customer distribution.
- Companies often overlook the value of their existing customers. Focusing on upselling and cross-selling to current clients can be more cost-effective than acquiring new customers.
- The rapid advancement of AI technologies presents both opportunities and challenges. Companies need to embrace AI tools and integrate them into their operations to enhance productivity and efficiency, rather than waiting for proven ROI.
- When hiring, especially for leadership roles, it’s crucial to assess the company culture and ensure that candidates understand the realities of the organization.
- Small execution details can significantly impact a company's success. Leaders should focus on refining processes and ensuring that all team members are aligned and aware of their roles to avoid operational inefficiencies.
BEST MOMENTS
"Your biggest strengths become your biggest blind spots... I've had product leaders that are so obsessed about the product that they ignore the go-to-market side."
"I was so focused on ramping up because that was hardwired into me as a revenue leader that that's what I needed to do."
"The cost of acquiring a new logo is far greater than the cost of generating more revenue from your existing customers."
"Most people are not ready for it... they try it for five, 10 minutes and it sucks. And then they don't try it again."
"You have to understand where they're at, contextualize that, because if you're talking to someone like they're a $30 million company, and they're a $1 million company, their eyes are going to glaze over."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
In this episode, Ryan Staley welcomes Max Votek, a pharmacist turned entrepreneur and co-founder of Customer Times, a leading digital consultancy. They delve into the transformative role of AI in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries, discussing how innovations like design memory tools are revolutionizing clinical trials and decision-making processes. Max shares insights from his extensive experience working with Fortune 500 companies and highlights the importance of capturing institutional memory to enhance efficiency and innovation. The conversation also touches on the advancements in no-code tools, such as Make.com, and their potential to streamline workflows and improve productivity.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The podcast discusses strategies for growing a business like a VC-backed company without taking on investors, emphasizing the importance of defining the type of business one wants to create—be it a lifestyle business, performance business, or an empire.
- Customer Times has evolved from a boutique consulting firm specializing in CRM to a global company with 1,300 specialists and 300 clients across various industries, including manufacturing, life sciences, and financial services while expanding its expertise into AI and other technology platforms.
- There is significant innovation in the pharmaceutical industry, particularly with AI tools that enhance clinical trial processes. These tools help capture and organize data, improving decision-making and efficiency in developing new treatments.
- The concept of institutional memory is highlighted as a critical area where AI can provide a "superpower" to clinical trial teams, allowing them to build on past experiences and streamline the trial process, ultimately leading to better and faster outcomes.
- The use of no-code tools like Make.com is discussed as a way to quickly prototype solutions that integrate various AI models and tools, enabling users to create content and automate processes efficiently without extensive coding knowledge.
BEST MOMENTS
"Pharma has been very close to my heart... I was passionate about implementing technology for Big Pharma... bringing new technology and new tools for this industry."
"One of the things that I think is really cool that you guys are doing is delivering breakthroughs in medicine and health due to AI."
"With these tools, companies can capture every single step of the trial process... and make that knowledge accessible for the next trial."
"The more data you feed, the more quality you would get with the newer models."
"You're doing some really cool things in heavily standardized industries, which is definitely something that everyone should focus on."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
In this episode Ryan Staley welcomes back Jason Chikola, CEO and founder of Rev.com, to delve into the transformative concept of AI memory and its implications for both individuals and organizations. Jason discusses the profound changes in workplace dynamics since 2020, highlighting the challenges of remote communication and the overwhelming number of virtual meetings. He emphasizes the potential of AI to enhance our memory capabilities, allowing professionals to capture and recall vital information more effectively.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The transition to remote work has led to an increase in virtual meetings, resulting in employee fatigue and a sense of unproductiveness.
- Digital memory allows individuals and organizations to retain and recall important information more effectively. This includes capturing voice recordings and insights from meetings.
- AI can significantly reduce the time spent on tedious tasks, such as analyzing large volumes of transcripts or customer interactions.
- Combining various forms of communication (voice, email, chat) can provide a comprehensive understanding of customer needs and sentiments. This unified view is crucial for organizations to respond effectively to their clients.
- There are multiple ways to measure sentiment, including voice tone, word choice, and body language. Leveraging AI to analyze these elements can help organizations identify key moments in customer interactions.
BEST MOMENTS
"I think that there's something wrong with the way we're working today. And I think we have the opportunity to kind of take back control."
"If I want to recall something that I heard in a meeting, a computer can do that better than I could."
"The real value is getting rid of those energy vampires."
"If you could solve medical billing with AI, you'd make doctors happier and you'd have fewer retire early."
"I believe there's three distinct ways to measure sentiment... voice, the words themselves, and body language."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
In this episode, Ryan welcomes Jason Chikola, a pioneer in the gig economy and the founder and CEO of Rev, a leading voice AI platform. Jason shares his fascinating journey from launching a labor marketplace to developing cutting-edge speech recognition technology. Jason discusses the evolution of Rev's services, including their new SaaS product, Voice Hub, which leverages large language models to enhance productivity for professionals like journalists and lawyers. The conversation delves into the importance of ethical recording practices, the future of voice technology, and how businesses can effectively utilize AI to improve their operations.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Jason's journey began in the gig economy, specifically with the founding of Upwork, and evolved into the AI space with the creation of Rev.
- Rev's new product, Voice Hub, serves as a centralized platform for managing important recordings, offering features like transcription, summarization, and custom prompts tailored to various professional needs.
- Jason emphasizes the need for quality assurance in remote work platforms, advocating for vetting talent and maintaining high standards to ensure customer satisfaction and effective service delivery.
- The integration of large language models (LLMs) into Rev's platform aims to enhance user productivity by providing tailored insights and summaries from recorded conversations, making it easier for professionals to extract valuable information.
- The discussion highlights the significance of social etiquette and ethical practices in voice recording, stressing the importance of transparency and consent to foster trust and comfort in professional interactions.
BEST MOMENTS
"We want to delight the customers. And we experimented with a couple of different kinds of work. We found our stride in what I would call speech detect services."
"Your tool was one of the first AI tools that I ever used before AI was even sexy."
"We think LLMs are just this tremendous breakthrough that's creating more productivity for people every single day."
"If you ask everyone in the company to come up with their prompts, it's going to be a mess. What would make more sense is to define one template."
"If you don't educate people on how to use it for their job-specific function, you're not going to realize an ROI with what you're doing."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
In this episode, Ryan Saley welcomes back Dan Gottlieb, VP of Sales Tech and Gen AI expert at Gartner, for a deep dive into the evolving landscape of sales technology, particularly focusing on generative AI. Building on their previous discussion, Ryan and Dan explore the differences between general-purpose large language models and niche-specific sales tools, emphasizing the importance of ease of use and integration within existing tech stacks. They discuss the challenges sales reps face in adopting new technologies and the critical role of sales leadership in leveraging data for competitive intelligence and talent development. Dan highlights the pressing need for tools that simplify administrative tasks, allowing sales teams to focus more on selling.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- There is a distinction between general-purpose technologies like large language models (e.g., ChatGPT) and niche-specific sales tools. While general-purpose tools require more effort to extract value, specific tools are designed to integrate seamlessly into sales workflows, making them more user-friendly and effective for sales reps.
- Sales professionals should familiarize themselves with the fundamentals of large language models. This knowledge will enhance their ability to leverage similar technologies that are tailored to their specific sales needs shortly.
- For sales leaders, the emphasis should be on using case-specific technologies that provide insights into deals and help communicate progress effectively.
- There is a significant opportunity for sales leadership to utilize technology for talent development. By providing managers with data-driven suggestions for coaching individual sales reps, organizations can enhance the overall performance of their teams.
- A major unmet need in sales teams is the reduction of time spent on non-selling activities. By focusing on automating administrative tasks and improving knowledge management.
BEST MOMENTS
"I think there's more limited upside in the general purpose technologies because of how much effort a sales rep has to put into learning how to use the technology today."
"The value prop of this technology right now is time savings, a little bit of conversion benefit, but mainly time savings."
"I think a lot of folks are jumping over [administrative tasks] because they want to think about AI for conversion, conversion, conversion."
"How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business, or an empire?"
"I see some cool software that's focusing on this problem, trying to give managers in natural language suggestions for ways to help individual reps get better at their jobs."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
In this episode, Ryan Staley welcomes Dan Gottlieb, VP of Sales Tech and Gen AI expert at Gartner, to discuss the current chaos and future trends in the sales tech landscape. Dan shares insights from his extensive experience, including the evolution of sales technologies and the impact of generative AI on the market. He emphasizes the importance of understanding the underlying technologies and methodologies to leverage AI in sales processes effectively. The conversation delves into "technology as a teammate," exploring how sales professionals can collaborate with AI agents to enhance their workflows and decision-making.
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KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The sales tech market is currently experiencing significant disruption, with various categories of sales technologies converging to meet investor growth expectations. This has led to a state of "mayhem" where distinguishing between different products and their capabilities has become increasingly challenging.
- The introduction of generative AI has dramatically transformed the sales tech landscape, prompting companies to rethink how they position their products and the value they offer.
- Organizations need to shift from a vendor-first perspective to a more informed approach focusing on understanding how technologies work. This includes grasping concepts like Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) to ask better questions and make informed decisions about technology investments.
- Instead of solely focusing on metrics like expanding the pipeline, companies should thoroughly audit their processes at a granular level. Identifying specific workflows and pain points will help determine where AI can add the most value.
- The future of sales technology involves viewing AI not just as a tool but as a collaborative teammate. Sales representatives will increasingly work alongside AI agents to enhance their decision-making and execution capabilities.
BEST MOMENTS
"The state of the market in one word, I would call it mayhem."
"A lot of companies right now are very much stuck in a vendor first point of view, where they're learning about what sales tech companies are providing."
"How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors?"
"AI is capable of handling tasks at a far more granular level."
"I believe that that is really where it's going to be: an individual contributor seller is going to have a team of agents that they're managing."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan welcomes back Kyle York, CEO of York IE, for a deep dive into the innovative integration of AI within business operations. Kyle shares his unique approach to productizing services in the advisory and venture capital space, emphasizing the importance of creating scalable, tech-enabled solutions for startups. The discussion explores the evolving landscape of business models, particularly the shift towards results-driven services, and how companies can achieve efficiency without sacrificing quality. As they navigate the challenges facing early-stage startups in a chaotic economic environment, Kyle offers insights into the future of entrepreneurship and the potential for impactful innovation across various industries. Tune in to discover how to grow a VC-backed company without traditional investment and the strategies that can lead to sustainable success.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
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KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Integration of AI in Business Models: Kyle emphasizes the importance of integrating AI and technology into business operations to create scalable and efficient service offerings, particularly in the advisory and venture capital sectors.
- Productization of Services: The approach to productizing services involves listening to the needs of startups and creating a modular advisory-as-a-service platform that aligns with their financial goals, offering various subscription tiers across different business functions.
- Demand for Results as a Service: There is a growing trend among business leaders who prefer comprehensive solutions that deliver results rather than just purchasing tools or software. This shift reflects a desire for efficiency and effectiveness in operations.
- Market Disruption and Innovation: Ryan and Kyle highlight the potential for disruption in traditional consulting and professional services industries by leveraging technology, automation, and subscription models to create more agile and responsive business solutions.
- Future Outlook for Startups: Despite current economic challenges, there is optimism about the entrepreneurial class's ability to innovate and drive significant impact in the coming years, suggesting a resilient spirit within the startup ecosystem.
BEST MOMENTS
"There's a real gap on the go-to-market side for companies... I wanted to take that expertise and experience, but productize it and build it into a platform for the startup landscape."
"I thought there was an opportunity for a one-stop resource hub... to integrate technology, AI, and automation to build the next great companies."
"Every industry can be disrupted and models can be evolved... companies are going to take a different spin or slant on the company they want to build in that sector."
"I think everybody's looking for a little bit of a lowering of the heat... and I have strong faith that the entrepreneurial class is going to make a huge impact in the next couple of decades."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This episode features Ryan's interview on The Revenue Reimagined Podcast for a discussion on the transformative impact of AI in the tech and sales sectors. He explores the nuances of AI, distinguishes it from automation, and takes a look at the potential challenges and fears surrounding job displacement due to AI advancements. Ryan also touches on the future of autonomous agents and the need for regulatory measures to mitigate risks associated with rapid AI development.
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KEY TAKEAWAYS
- AI should be viewed as a tool for skill transformation and customization, while automation involves precise processes that need to be executed consistently. Many people mistakenly equate the two, which can lead to ineffective implementations.
- Clients come with varying levels of proficiency in AI, and even those who rate themselves highly often have untapped potential. Continuous learning and adaptation are crucial for maximizing the benefits of AI tools.
- There is a significant fear regarding job losses due to AI advancements. The potential for widespread unemployment raises concerns about macroeconomic stability and societal impacts if a large portion of the workforce becomes obsolete.
- Effective use of AI requires a deep understanding of prompt engineering and the nuances of how to interact with AI models. This foundational skill is essential for leveraging AI effectively in business processes.
- The development of autonomous agents, which can execute complex tasks with minimal human intervention, is on the horizon. However, without proper understanding and guidance, these agents could exacerbate existing issues, such as poor communication and ineffective outreach.
BEST MOMENTS
"AI is not a catch-all, but you could use it as a team of helpers for any individual department or organization."
"There's going to be a lot of people that lose their jobs if the government doesn't get their shit together."
"Even people that rate themselves as a four out of five still have a ton that they could use it for that they're not."
"I think if the government doesn't step in and regulate, you're going to see significant wide-scale unemployment that is going to change the face of the country."
"If you don't understand how to effectively even prompt, what you're going to do is have an autonomous agent that scales shit."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan sits down with Kyle York, CEO of York IE, to discuss his innovative business model that combines venture capital with advisory services. Kyle shares insights from his journey of scaling a company from zero to $200 million before its exit to Oracle, highlighting the unique challenges and opportunities of bootstrapping a service-heavy business. They look at the integration of AI and offshore outsourcing within their operations, as well as the importance of a pragmatic approach to growth, R&D, and go-to-market strategies.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
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KEY TAKEAWAYS
- York IE combines advisory services with venture capital, offering a subscription-based model that provides tech-enabled services in research and development, go-to-market strategies, and general administrative support for startups.
- The company emphasizes a bottoms-up approach to business building, focusing on understanding market needs and gaps rather than solely on product capabilities. This includes a strong emphasis on financial engineering and capital strategy.
- York IE leverages AI and automation to enhance its advisory services, creating tools that streamline processes and improve efficiency. This includes using AI for market research, content creation, and operational analysis.
- With a significant portion of its workforce based in India, York IE utilizes offshore resources to provide cost-effective services while maintaining high-quality outputs across various operational functions.
- The company acknowledges the challenges of scaling and has learned to focus on optimizing existing services before expanding its offerings. This strategic approach allows for better resource allocation and operational efficiency as they grow.
BEST MOMENTS
"Our model is a subscription-based model where we sell tech-enabled services in R&D, go-to-market, and G&A. Each service is modularized and has different tiering structure and price points based on what your startup needs support on."
"AI to me is only as good as the data that you feed it and humans' ability to leverage it... Too often, I'm seeing AI as the be-all, end-all and not the enhancement or differentiation of things."
"We basically created a platform called Fuel... It’ll go crawl the datasets that we have and look for companies and points of views and perspectives and spit you back those topics."
"Business building is hard... Not everything I'm saying is created equal. Some of our services are growing faster, have higher revenue or higher margin, or are more tech and AI-enabled than others."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
In today's episode, Ryan is interviewed by Anna Furmanov of the Modern Startup Marketing. Together, they explore the transformative power of AI in sales and marketing. Ryan shares insights on how sales professionals and revenue leaders can leverage AI tools to enhance productivity, streamline processes, and ultimately double their performance while working fewer hours.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
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KEY TAKEAWAYS
- AI tools can significantly reduce the time spent on non-selling activities, allowing sales professionals to focus more on customer engagement and strategic work. For instance, leveraging AI can cut down research and preparation time, enabling salespeople to spend more time with clients.
- Specific use cases for AI in sales include analyzing company reports to tailor sales pitches and reframing customer inaction as a loss to encourage decision-making. These strategies can differentiate sales professionals from their competitors.
- Crafting effective prompts is crucial for maximizing the output from AI tools. Providing context about the organization and desired outcomes can lead to more relevant and actionable insights.
- AI can be used to analyze large datasets and visualize information, helping businesses identify key customer segments and trends. This can streamline the process of creating ideal customer profiles and inform marketing strategies.
- While AI can enhance productivity, there are concerns about data security and the potential for misuse. It's important to approach AI with a critical mindset, ensuring that outputs are validated and aligned with real-world insights and expertise.
BEST MOMENTS
"I think like kind of the way to look at it is most people just look at it as a productivity enhancer. You know, it helps me write emails. It helps me do this, which I think is a massive misappropriation."
Give me 3 or 5 examples of companies that have successfully implemented this strategy and break down tactically exactly what they did. So then you have real-world examples to pull from. And then you could also say, ask it to cite its sources as well.
"Let's say you've got this challenge at work and maybe you don't have other folks on the team, right? Or you don't have other people to talk to about this challenge. You could literally just like tell it what the challenge is and then say, can you help me figure out how to solve this? What are three approaches you would take?"
"If I don't need it, I'm not going to use the tool. Whereas some people are like, Oh my gosh, this is a new flashy, shiny object. I must use it."
VALUABLE LINKS
Modern Startup Marketing - Apple Podcasts
Modern Startup Marketing - Spotify
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
In this episode, Ryan continues his discussion with Matt Van Itallie, the founder and CEO of SEMA, on the creation of an AI advisory council. Matt shares his vision and strategic approach for the council, focusing on helping technologists share benchmarking data and best practices related to using generative AI in coding. They delve into the different use cases for non-technical knowledge workers and the importance of senior developers in maximizing the benefits of Gen AI tools. Matt also highlights his favourite use cases for leveraging AI tools and the various tools he uses, such as OpenAI's tool, Claude, and Copilot.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Building an AI advisory council can help share benchmarking data, best practices, and ideas related to using Gen AI code.
- Gen AI tools are being used by both technical and non-technical knowledge workers for various tasks such as prototyping, document analysis, and brainstorming new ideas.
- Senior developers tend to get the most out of Gen AI tools due to their experience and ability to leverage tools effectively to get to the right answer.
- Different Gen AI tools like OpenAI's tool, Claude, Copilot, and ProSearch have different specialties and can be used based on the specific purpose.
- The format of the AI advisory council includes a Slack channel, occasional emails, meetups, and sending books to participants to ensure active engagement and value delivery.
BEST MOMENTS
"The most important thing is that teams pick an enterprise-level license, so they protect their IP."
"We try to be experimentalist in everything we do, whether it's figuring out the products to build or features, including AI Advisory Council. So, we heard what they wanted to get out of it and how they wanted it structured. Today, it is a Slack channel, an occasional email and occasional meetup."
"I am certain there is huge ROI on the coding side. It's at least 40x over a two year period in terms of how much more productive coders are relative to the to the cost of enterprise licenses."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
In today’s episode, Ryan interviews Matt Van Itallie, the founder and CEO of SEMA. They discuss the challenges of growing a company without taking on investors, and the impact of Gen AI on code analysis. Matt shares insights on SEMA’s revenue, team size, go-to-market strategy, and the importance of building trust with private equity firms. They also look at the challenges and opportunities the use of AI in code checking presents, and the best practices for deploying Gen AI code.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
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KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Unique Go-to-Market Strategies: Utilizing trust-based partnerships and referrals, SEMA has successfully grown its business in the private equity space.
- Importance of Gen AI Code: With Gen AI code becoming more prevalent, it is crucial for organizations to manage it effectively to mitigate risks related to IP, security, and exit strategies.
- Enterprise-Level Licenses: Ensuring that team members have enterprise-level licenses for Gen AI tools is essential to protect trade secrets and data integrity.
- Encouraging Experimentation: Celebrating experimentation and sharing lessons within the team can lead to innovative uses of Gen AI tools and foster a culture of learning.
- Addressing Identity Concerns: By equating the use of Gen AI with open source tools, developers can overcome concerns about their coding identity and embrace the benefits of new technologies.
BEST MOMENTS
"Just replace the word Gen AI with open source. Are you a real developer if you use open source? Of course, I am."
“We're absolute proponents of using AI where it makes sense to increase productivity and job satisfaction. And for us, coders using it is probably number one on the list in terms of how much more productive they can be, because it helps avoid some of the routine work. It lets them experiment faster, et cetera.”
"My mission in life is to help founders and revenue leaders avoid all the pain and suffering in revenue growth so they can flip it and create a life of their own design."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
In this episode, Sahil continues to discuss Spiralyze's unique performance-based pricing model for A-B testing services. Sahil explains how they use a massive data set to predict lift for clients and only charge if results are achieved. Sharing insights on growth challenges, maximizing growth channels, and the need to resist the allure of shiny new tactics, the conversation delves into the evolution of Spiralyze's business model over the years, emphasizing the importance of continuous reinvention and rapid iterations to stay ahead in the market.
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Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Spiralyze utilizes a unique performance-based pricing model where clients only pay if they achieve the predicted lift in conversions from A/B testing.
- The CEO emphasizes the importance of constantly reinventing and adapting the business model to stay ahead of the curve and avoid plateauing growth channels.
- Consistent practice and repetitions are key to mastering skills and improving outcomes, as seen in the CEO's dedication to daily sales pitches and LinkedIn posts.
- Identifying and overcoming bottlenecks in growth channels, knowing when to shift focus, and resisting the allure of shiny new strategies are crucial challenges in scaling the business.
- Sharing knowledge and insights with others in the industry can help build a supportive community and drive collective growth and success.
BEST MOMENTS
"We'll get you this much lift for this much. If we get you less than this, you pay nothing. If we hit a home run, and this is what we think a home run looks like, by the way, just to quantify, it's about 30% lift, conversion lift, in the first three months, you pay us our full fee."
"I've been finding like 30 different use cases, most of them new per client that I work with."
"I personally did about 100 sales pitches and reworked it over and over and over. I still am very involved. I do about five a day."
"Here's the reality: what worked for us six years ago wasn't going to get us to the next level. And what's working for us now? I don't know what the shelf life on it is, but I think it's safe to say, whether it's a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, it's going to plateau."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan interviews Sahil Patel, the CEO of Spiralyze. Sahil discusses how SpiralEyes helps businesses improve their website conversion rates through conversion rate optimization. He explains the importance of pattern recognition and AI in identifying successful tests and executing them at high velocity. Sahil also shares insights on their unique pay-for-performance model and the advantages of being a self-funded company.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Spiralyze has a pay-for-performance model, allowing clients to pay based on the results achieved, which is a unique approach in the industry.
- The company runs about 40-50 tests a year for clients, significantly higher than the industry average of 10 tests a year, thanks to automation and AI integration.
- Spiralyze leverages pattern recognition and AI to identify successful tests across various websites and industries, providing valuable insights for clients.
- Using tools like ChatGPT, the company streamlines content creation by reducing unnecessary words and improving efficiency in drafting A/B tests.
- Spiralyze is self-funded and has organically grown to a team of 145 people, showcasing the advantages of bootstrapping in maintaining control over the company's destiny.
BEST MOMENTS
"Most of our clients on average get about 20 to 30 percent more conversions on their website when they work with us and use our product."
"If you want to take and get big wins, you want to take big swings."
"I found most marketing campaigns, a lot of the problems can be solved just by removing 30 to 50% of the words."
"Sometimes 90% of people leave the site and don't do anything. If you had a restaurant, and 100 people walked in the restaurant, and all but three left, you'd say you have a big problem. And yet every day, generally speaking with B2B websites, that's what's happening. 100 people are coming, 97 of them leave and don't do anything. And it's really expensive to get all that traffic there."
"A test that works on someone's paid landing page, paid traffic, has very different characteristics than say organic traffic. So to make a meaningful prediction, it needs to be relevant to the website."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
In this episode, Ryan continues his conversation with Robin Daniels, the CMO at Zensai, as they discuss various use cases of AI in human development. The episode delves into how Zensai leverages AI tools like Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT in their products to enhance learning, performance management, and employee engagement.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Zensai leverages AI in their products, specifically with Microsoft Copilot and ChatGBT, to enhance learning, performance management, and employee engagement.
- Zensai strategically focuses on Microsoft technologies for rapid development, distribution, and trust in the industry, rather than building their own AI team.
- AI helps in creating courses quickly by analyzing documents or videos, reducing the time spent by learning and development teams significantly.
- AI provides recommendations for managers on how to respond to employee feedback, enhancing communication and problem-solving in the team.
- Robin uses AI daily for various tasks, such as summarizing documents, analyzing data, and improving efficiency in workflow, showcasing the practical benefits of AI integration.
BEST MOMENTS
"We are building what we call the 'human success platform', and it's really focused around three core vectors. One is around learning, one is around performance management, and the third one is really around employee engagement."
"We've now instituted what we call AI coaching, where the AI can read through that [data] and come up with a couple of recommendations for how I can respond in the best, most human way."
"Why do 70% of people want to quit their jobs? Because they don't feel like there's any future in what they're doing. They're not learning, they're not growing, they're not developing, they feel like stuck."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan interviews Robin Daniels, the Chief Business and Product Officer at Zensei. Robin shares his wealth of experience as a CMO and CPO, discussing how AI can impact human transformation and how Zensei's Human Success Platform leverages AI to empower individuals to reach their full potential.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Zensei's mission is to empower individuals to be the best version of themselves through their human success platform, leveraging AI to guide personal and professional development.
- By creating emotional connections and standing for something, B2B companies can create a strong brand identity that resonates with customers and drives loyalty.
- Zensei's decision to standardize on Microsoft's platform has led to faster time to value, tighter integration, and benefits from platform upgrades.
- AI can be used to analyze data points and patterns to guide individuals on their career paths, helping them set goals, learn new skills, and stay engaged.
- Leveraging Microsoft's massive distribution network has been a strategic advantage for Zensei, allowing for easy adoption and implementation for their customers.
BEST MOMENTS
"I love the mission of what we're trying to do. We basically want to change the way that companies think about getting the best out of their people. We call this 'human success'."
"The more we know about you and what you care about, the more we can guide you, meaning AI can guide you, and we use Microsoft AI in our products to do that."
"I think in my experience, the brands that have done well have courage, conviction, and a point of view. And I think it's very rare to find that honestly in the B2B world."
"It's so impressive what they've done. I mean, talking that much for water, it's not cheap. And it's just water. It's freaking water."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
In today's episode, Ryan continues his conversation with renowned podcast host, Will Barron. They consider high-performer traits in sales, focusing on the importance of habits and how they can impact success. Will also shares his insights on the use of AI in sales, sharing a practical example of leveraging AI tools to streamline content creation for his YouTube shorts.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Setting habits, especially in prospecting, can lead to consistent performance and success in sales.
- Assertiveness, comfort with talking about money, optimism, not being a people pleaser, high self-esteem, personal accountability, and goal-setting are key traits of high performers.
- Controlling emotions and pushing through tasks even when not feeling like it is essential for success.
- AI tools can be beneficial for speeding up processes, such as generating content ideas and questions for content creation.
- Using AI tools for generating questions for content creation can save time and increase content output, leading to higher engagement and views.
BEST MOMENTS
"One of the things that I get the all new starters in our program to do is to prospect daily. And that is such a transformational leap in most salespeople's and small business owners and founders, if they're doing founder-led sales."
"Nobody wants to do cold outreach. Nobody wants to do content creation if you're doing inbound marketing, inbound lead sales. Nobody wants to do cold calls. But you have to do them routinely, systematically, every day to build that habit. And then it becomes like brushing your teeth, where it's an activity which is neutral."
"I used to be a massive procrastinator. Unless the deadline was three minutes from this moment in time, I wouldn't have started any project. I got over that by understanding this concept of the emotional, 'caveman' part of my brain."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan sits down with Will Barron, the renowned host of The Salesman Podcast. Will shares his expertise on how to effectively combine attention and prospecting strategies to overcome challenges in sales, particularly in acquiring new customers.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Combining attention and prospecting in sales is incredibly important in overcoming challenges in pipeline activation.
- Will Barron emphasizes the importance of creating content that answers buyers' questions and aligns with their desires to attract and engage prospects effectively.
- The key elements of a successful outbound strategy include targeting the right person, crafting buyer-centric messages, and focusing on booking meetings rather than closing deals.
- Consistent exposure through multiple platforms and interactions can help build unconscious trust with prospects, making them more likely to engage.
- Simplifying messaging to create curiosity and elicit a response from prospects can be more effective than overwhelming them with product details.
BEST MOMENTS
"If you can just call someone, or you are just able to email someone to book meetings, you absolutely shouldn't be doing content marketing."
"You've got features, benefits, great, no one gives a shit. What are the desires of the buyer? How can you tie what you do with not even solving a problem, the desire behind that problem, why they want to solve it?"
"You're just trying to give them just enough where they go 'Wills emails me, and I would not be doing my due diligence in my role if I don't jump on a quick call of him."
"I think there's a lot of value of being like hyper direct. At least that's the way it is. I've shifted and I'm like, hey, this is where I'm at. This is what my pricing is."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This is the second part of Ryan’s conversation with Tyler Barron, CRO of Encapture, where they discuss AI use cases for sales and marketing. From leveraging AI for strategic research and RFP automation to creative prospecting and collaborative ideation, Tyler and Ryan share their expertise on using AI to enhance efficiency, scale ABM efforts, and improve deal scoring.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- AI tools can significantly enhance strategic research for high value deals, allowing sales teams to efficiently analyze financial documents and earnings calls to identify potential problems and align solutions with strategic initiatives.
- Automating RFP and vendor questionnaire responses using AI can save significant time and resources, especially for companies dealing with similar questions across multiple clients.
- Leveraging AI for one-to-one creative prospecting can lead to highly customized outreach using a prospect's own language and quotes from their public appearances.
- AI powered call analysis tools can be used for efficient "game film" sessions, allowing teams to quickly review and learn from customer interactions without listening to entire calls.
- Collaborative use of AI tools across departments can dramatically reduce project timelines and enable rapid implementation of time sensitive campaigns.
- AI presents opportunities to scale ABM efforts by enabling the creation of custom content for specific accounts more efficiently.
- Data driven deal scoring using AI can help identify patterns in successful deals and apply those insights to future opportunities, improving win rates and deal velocity.
- Focusing on analyzing top performing customers and deals can lead to significant increases in deal size and help identify the most promising opportunities in the market.
BEST MOMENTS
"We primarily are getting value out of AI tools right now for strategic research. We have higher ACV deals, longer sales cycles, and we're trying to prospect up to the C suite."
"I think one of the biggest things that I've learned about kind of the scale up stage is that you can't outrun your supply line as a revenue leader and so you really got to bring everybody along with you at the company"
"Every year doubled our deal size and a hundred X, our largest deal. Just from that alone. Vista equity uses it to actually to convert companies from a bill to three bill in like three years."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Tyler Barron, CRO at Encapture joins Ryan in this episode. In this part 1 of 2 episodes, Tyler shares his journey transitioning an AI company from consulting to SaaS, focusing on FinTech solutions. They explore the challenges of demonstrating ROI in AI, adapting to market changes, and the importance of customer-driven product development.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Transitioning from consulting to SaaS requires repositioning the company, developing repeatable processes, and building the right team.
- Market listening is crucial for product development; focus on what customers are willing to spend money on, especially during economic shifts.
- Demonstrating AI ROI involves quantifying problems, focusing on practical use cases, and tying solutions to tangible business outcomes.
- Simplicity in execution and low-friction processes are key to the successful implementation of new systems and technologies.
- Executive level sponsorship, particularly from operations leaders with P&L responsibility, is vital for AI adoption in organizations.
- AI solutions don't need to be perfect. Even 50% improvements can significantly move the needle financially for businesses.
- Selling AI solutions involves working on a "big math problem" with customers, making it an intellectually engaging and partnership driven process.
- AI implementation often faces resistance due to a lack of comparison points; persistence and demonstrating value over time are crucial for success.
BEST MOMENTS
"We saw a lot of companies out there in our space, like really, really getting to a lot of pain around that. A lot of our peers in FinTech have had a tough time."
"Why does it have to be 99 percent accurate if 50 percent actually moves the needle financially."
"The biggest thing with AI is that your unit economics improve over time one, because the AI gets smarter, but to your cost basis on a lot of these tasks can ultimately stay flat and you can pick up the efficiency."
"Look, I'm not an AI expert, so I think I can probably give some very pragmatic answers to what I, what I see and hear, which... there's a lot of buzz and there's a lot of over promising around just AI in general, but there's also some very good quantifiable common sense use cases."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Join Ryan in part 2 of his conversation with podcaster Andy Paul as they explore the pros and cons of AI in sales. They discuss new use cases for AI and share transformative examples for revenue growth. Andy provides interesting ideas around the challenges of AI adoption, the importance of helping buyers make decisions, and the need for thoughtful application of technology in sales processes.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- AI is currently being used primarily to automate repetitive tasks, but there's untapped potential in helping buyers make decisions.
- Despite technological advancements, B2B selling productivity may have decreased over the past 20-25 years due to misuse of technology.
- The focus on using AI for building pipeline may be misguided; the real issue is often not knowing how to win deals and help buyers make decisions.
- AI can be used to rapidly condense annual reports and customize information for more relevant first appointments with potential clients.
- Many salespeople fail to understand company pressures and industry-specific problems beyond their own offerings, which AI can help address.
- Thoughtfulness and curiosity are superpowers in sales, but current sales processes may be training these qualities out of sellers.
- The goal of sales interactions should shift from "discovering" information to helping buyers define what they want to achieve.
- High win rates are crucial for efficiency; a team with a 50% win rate needs to do significantly less selling than one with a 20% win rate.
BEST MOMENTS
"We need to have thoughtful people who are looking at the problem from the right perspective
"Pipeline is the siren song that's going to cure all for companies. That's what most folks are attracted to."
"If we're gonna make the decision to actually sell to this person, actually bring this opportunity into our pipeline, we should win it. It's that simple."
"Thoughtfulness is definitely a superpower. I agree with you on that, man. And I think like one, one other one that I'm seeing that's... is curiosity as well, right?"
"We're training curiosity out of our sellers and saying that this is the way they should act when really we want the opposite."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan is joined by fellow podcaster Andy Paul to uncover the secrets of building massive attention and growing connections in today's digital landscape. With nine years of podcasting experience and over 200k LinkedIn followers, Andy shares his knowledge on scaling attention, creating distribution, and the power of consistency.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Consistency is crucial in podcasting. Train your audience to expect your content at regular intervals to build a loyal following.
- Focus on creating high-quality, engaging content that keeps listeners coming back for more.
- The size of your audience isn't as important as having the right audience. Target your content to your ideal listeners.
- Prepare thoroughly for interviews and don't hesitate to challenge guests' ideas to create more engaging conversations.
- Podcasting can be an excellent tool for prospecting and reaching your target audience.
- Being thoughtful and developing a perspective on your circumstances can set you apart in sales and business.
- Success in sales often comes down to being human-first, building relationships, and genuinely helping customers make decisions.
- The key traits for success in sales are connection, curiosity, understanding, and generosity.
BEST MOMENTS
"I was inspired to start this podcast... I heard John Lee Dumas speak... And I was thinking, well, yeah, that sounds like a fun way to create content that people will find valuable."
"Consistency, I think, is really the thing that I keep coming back to... you're trying to sort of train the audience that you are going to be there at a certain time or a certain point in time every week."
"For me, over all the years that I've been doing this, my focus has always been, is I'm going to be as prepared as I can be overprepared for every conversation."
"We're one person throughout our entire lives, you know, as we are in our life, we are in sales and, you know, if we show up interested in other people, if we show up and are curious about things that are important to them, we make a real effort to understand them, if we're willing to give of ourselves to help them achieve what's important to them, we'll succeed."
"The only reason somebody talks to you as a salesperson these days is because they need your help."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan speaks to Brendan Kamm, the CEO of Thnks for the second time in this episode. Ryan and Brendan talk about his AI use cases as a CEO and discuss how Brendan leverages it to enhance his daily operations within the business and improve communication within his team. Brendan also talks about how to adapt and engage with AI to improve it and make it work for you and your business.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Brendan uses AI to improve his writing, ensuring it aligns with his brand values, and engages in conversational interactions with AI models to generate ideas and gather feedback.
- AI can significantly reduce time spent on non-customer-related activities, allowing salespeople to focus more on building relationships.
- Creating custom AI models for your brand can help ensure consistency in communication and improve team members' ability to provide clear, detailed instructions.
- Leveraging AI for sales research, such as analyzing 10K reports and industry trends, can help representatives be more prepared and in tune with their prospects' concerns and goals.
- Experimenting with different AI tools and prompts can lead to more effective outputs and a deeper understanding of how to utilize these technologies for various tasks.
- Uploading multiple sources to AI models like Notebook LLM allows for a comprehensive analysis of an industry, providing valuable insights for sales and strategy.
- Brendan has found one of the biggest challenges in growing a business, is instilling the same level of passion and care in team members as the CEO has.
BEST MOMENTS
"I've created sort of custom bots that reflect our sort of brand values, and that's been really helpful, and I can just run it through and say, Hey, am I, you know, am I on target?"
"If I can take all my non human interactions and make that less time consuming and less focused on the operational and the sort of behind the scenes things, I have more time to spend building relationships."
"I'll also tell you I use a lot of explain to me like I'm five, explain to me like I'm 12. Like I'll go through the whole progression just to make sure I understand something."
"I think you need to instill that level of care and confidence. And like, Hey, man, we're all on the same team headed in the same direction."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Join Ryan for part 1 of 2 as he speaks with Brendan Kamm, founder and CEO of Thnks. Kamm shares insights on leveraging gratitude in business, discussing his company's innovative platform for expressing appreciation in professional contexts. The conversation explores the human element in sales, revealing top use cases for connecting with people authentically. Kamm's approach to scaling a business without losing sight of personal relationships offers valuable tips for closing revenue and building successful companies.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Thnks is a gratitude expression platform targeting large distributed sales teams, allowing for easy sending of small appreciation gestures.
- The company has grown to $30-40 million in ARR since 2016, with a team of about 50 people and under $15 million in total funding.
- Thnks relies heavily on network effects and product-led growth, with recent expansion into paid advertising and enterprise-level deals.
- Brendan emphasizes the importance of authenticity and relationship-building in sales, moving beyond mere tactics to focus on long-term connections.
- The company has observed measurable business outcomes from gratitude gestures, such as faster rescheduling of cancelled meetings.
- Brendan suggests focusing on thoughtful, personalized gestures rather than relying solely on traditional gifting occasions like birthdays or holidays.
- Ryan and Brendan highlight the balance between leveraging technology and maintaining human connection in modern business relationships.
BEST MOMENTS
"We call it a gratitude expression platform. Basically, it's a way to send a small gesture of appreciation in a business context.”
"Our philosophy is people like to do business with people they like. I think that's always been the case and everyone likes someone who appreciates them."
"It's easy to fall a little bit into the trap of tactics, right? And it's not that you write, you need tactics and you need to get your numbers, but it's, it's too easy to kind of let go of the end result, what you're really looking for."
"We want to focus on that sort of authenticity and that idea that these things take time. It's not just, I sent a thing. Did I get what I want back? It's gotta be less transactional than that over time."
"You can have hard business outcomes and track how these things affect even not in something as simple as that."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Join Ryan for part 2 with Thomas Hansen, COO of Amplitude Analytics. Thomas talks with Ryan about the steps he took to uniquely climb the corporate ladder and how anyone can do the same. Ryan and Thomas also talk about how to leverage AI in your career and how AI is creating a new opportunity that has never before been possible!
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Even as COO, Thomas still has an SDR role.
- Thomas built out his knowledge and skillset, allowing himself to create a diverse portfolio, enabling him to climb the corporate ladder.
- You have to know your strength and your superpower, then apply that. Thomas encourages everyone to get diversity in their career early on to discover this but also to teach you how to spot new ways of creatively doing things.
- Saying yes and working towards things that may not be seen as the obvious or linear option, has created the most value for Thomas in his career.
- Look for AI roles that might not be in your comfort zone, to gain experience and exposure. Or become the internal champion in your existing role and company.
- Industry after industry will be revolutionized by AI, including VC, particularly in entry level positions.
BEST MOMENTS
“You’ve got to know yourself, you’ve got to figure out what is your one superpower”
“I just think that early in your career, doing stuff that’s not the linear boring path, that’s not so obvious, it teaches you to be scrappy, tenacity, to open up your eyes to different ways of doing things”
“One of the things that has created the most value in my career has been taking on the non-linear and the non-obvious choices”
“Think about what you can embrace in the current role you’re in, in terms of being the internal champion for use case and how you’re leveraging internally for your own business in AI”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan is joined by Thomas Hansen, the COO of Amplitude Analytics. Thomas has an impressive track record, having worked at companies like Microsoft and taken UiPath public as the chief revenue officer. He shares some really interesting insights about leadership, how to grow, inspire, and leverage AI to elevate your team. He also discusses an unexpected topic from the company's CEO in part one of two of Ryan and Thomas' conversation.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Amplitude Analytics provides insights on customer product usage, helping companies build better products and monetize their user base more effectively.
- Different growth stages require different leadership skills; it's crucial to understand where your strengths lie and hire stage-appropriate executives.
- Situational leadership involves adapting your approach based on individual team member's needs and circumstances to maximize their potential.
- AI is a transformative force in business, with Amplitude leveraging it both for customer-facing features and internal operations.
- Consolidating tech stacks can increase efficiency and productivity, allowing sales teams to spend more time selling and less time managing tools.
- Embracing AI technologies like conversational intelligence can lead to significant improvements in metrics such as Average Selling Price (ASP).
- Leaders should lead by example. Thomas personally conducts cold outreach to 10 potential clients weekly, demonstrating the importance of staying hands-on.
- Continuous learning and experimentation with new AI tools and technologies are essential for staying competitive in today's business environment.
BEST MOMENTS
"Every stage of a company and its formation is unique. And frankly, different stages also tend to by and large require different folks."
"My point of view on situational leadership is, it's not about others adapting to work with me. It's a bit about me recognizing where a person is at any given point in time in their journey, including having a sense for what's going on in their personal life."
"In my 32 years being an operator in the tech space, I've seen some tectonic changes. You had the arrival of the internet, you had the mobile explosion, you had the cloud. And then for me, the fourth big change, the biggest change of everything is the arrival of AI."
"As much as I may be the president of Amplitude, my role every day is I'm selling. I also work as an SDR. Every day. It is on me personally, as it's on all of us to take personal ownership for growing our businesses."
"I do a lot of cold calling outreach through LinkedIn and through email. I do, if you believe it or not, I do 10 a week."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan continues his conversation with AI expert Jeff Mills from iMerit. They explore the future of work, the impact of AI on various industries, and how individuals can adapt to thrive in an AI-driven world. Mills shares invaluable insights on job automation, the importance of adaptability, and the exciting opportunities that AI presents.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- AI will automate back office tasks, but it's a tool that enhances human productivity rather than completely replacing workers.
- Adaptability is crucial in the AI era, as people will need to switch industries and professions more frequently.
- AI skills, both technical and non-technical, are becoming essential for nearly all jobs across industries.
- The job market will evolve, with new industries and opportunities emerging as AI technology advances.
- AI is not just a vertical or niche; it will be embedded in everything we do, from social media to household appliances.
- Model stacking and multimodal AI are creating exciting new applications and opportunities in various fields.
- AI tools are empowering individuals to perform tasks that were previously limited to specialized professionals or agencies.
- Understanding and embracing AI is crucial for future success, as it will be integrated into all aspects of work and daily life.
BEST MOMENTS
"Darwin taught us that it's really not the strongest that's going to win. And it's not the smartest that's going to win. It's the most adaptable that's going to win."
"AI is going to be a lot like Excel. You're going to have people who actually are the coders, they're, they're, they're actually in there building the software, building the program, right?"
"There's gonna be issues. Yeah. I mean, there's gonna be problems, but at the same time, like. Don't be super scared of it (AI) either."
"I've effectively hired, I don't know, 10 employees for 30 a month now because they all have skills that I didn't have."
"There's no job that's going to exist that doesn't, have AI in it soon."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
In this episode, Ryan is joined by Jeff Mills, a veteran in the AI and machine learning space. With over 25 years of experience, Jeff shares invaluable insights on scaling businesses, particularly in the AI industry. From his early days at Yahoo to his current role as President at iMerit, Jeff offers a unique perspective on growing companies while maintaining a social impact focus.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- iMerit works with leading AI companies in mobility, tech, and medical verticals, providing data solutions and annotation services for AI model development.
- Jeff talks about the importance of high-quality data in AI development, comparing it to a chef selecting the best ingredients for a Michelin-star restaurant.
- iMerit has evolved to include automation and a platform for data labelling, while still maintaining human-in-the-loop processes for validation and verification.
- The company employs a workforce pyramid, ranging from general workers to highly specialized experts in various fields, to meet diverse AI development needs.
- Retrieval Augmentation Generation (RAG) models are expected to be a significant trend in AI development over the next year and a half.
- iMerit adapts to customer needs, focusing on problem-solving and developing expertise in specific domains as required by clients.
- Jeff stresses the importance of domain expertise in prompt engineering and evaluating AI model outputs.
BEST MOMENTS
"You are literally a prompt engineer. You have created the box."
"We like to write, but we also are good readers. We want to lead by example, but we also are good at reading, hearing what someone's challenges are, what their problems are. And ultimately we're in the problem solving business.”
"We’ve built a workforce pyramid, so there's certain work that can be done if you have kind of expertise at a wide level."
"I've been in AI for about, you know, 25 years in different ways."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
In the second part of Ryan’s conversation with Jordan Wilson of Everyday AI, they dive deep into the world of AI tools and agents. From favorite tools like Chat GPT and Cast Magic to exploring the future of AI agents, this episode is packed with insights for businesses looking to leverage AI effectively. Jordan shares his expertise on strategic byproducts, micro GPTs, and the exciting developments in AI from tech giants.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Jordan Wilson uses Chat GPT extensively and recommends Cast Magic for podcasting tasks, praising its ability to run multiple custom prompts simultaneously on audio content.
- Creating micro GPTs for specific tasks is more effective than trying to build one large GPT to handle multiple functions, ensuring better quality output.
- Major tech companies like Microsoft, Google, and Meta are heavily investing in AI agents, signalling a shift in the future of work towards AI-directed tasks.
- The adoption of AI agents in businesses is expected to follow a similar pattern to large language models, with early adopters gaining significant advantages.
- Advancements in GPU technology, particularly from NVIDIA, are driving down compute costs and energy requirements, making AI agents more accessible.
- The podcast industry is leveraging AI tools for content creation, transcription, and keyword extraction, enhancing productivity and output quality.
- Strategic byproducts from AI tools, such as creating a "customer Grammarly" from sales call transcriptions, can provide valuable insights for businesses.
- The future of work may involve skilled workers becoming directors of AI agents, and managing multiple tools across platforms to perform various tasks.
BEST MOMENTS
"I'm a huge chat GPT fan. I have been a fan of the GPT technology for a very long time. So I would say that still chat GPT is the most used tool."
"Instead let's create, you know, 10 micro GPTs that do the smallest little task, but they do it very, very well. Right. So it's this balance of productivity and saving time with quality and kind of this granular control."
"Every single big company in the world is sprinting toward agents because they see that's kind of the next goldmine, right?"
"I think we're having similar conversations that we've had about large language models and all these AI tools with companies that are implementing agents and those that are not"
"If the adoption rate is, you know, 20 percent for large language models, what do you think the adoption rate is going to be for you know, agents? It's going to be much lower, right?"
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanwilson04/
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan talks with Jordan Wilson, founder of Everyday AI, about the rapidly evolving world of generative AI. The conversation explores the current state of AI technology, its impact on businesses, and the risks of falling behind. Wilson gives his take on how companies can integrate AI into their workflows and why leadership must take an active role in adoption.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The state of generative AI is both fascinating and alarming, with rapid advancements occurring across various domains including language models, sound generation, and multimodal capabilities.
- Companies still on the fence about adopting generative AI are at risk of losing market share to more nimble competitors who embrace the technology.
- Integrating generative AI into workflows doesn't necessarily mean building custom models; it can be as simple as using AI-powered tools like Microsoft 365 Copilot or advanced web browsers.
- Leaders should lead by example in AI adoption, understanding that it's not just another SaaS solution but a fundamentally different way of operating.
- Using outdated or non-internet-connected AI models for business decisions can be detrimental, as up-to-date information is crucial in today's fast-paced environment.
- Understanding the basics of how large language models work, including their limitations and best practices, is essential for effective implementation.
- Upgrading hardware, such as PCs with new AI capabilities, can significantly enhance productivity and AI integration in the workplace.
- Transitioning from traditional search engines to AI-powered tools like Perplexity and ChatGPT can save hours of research time and improve efficiency.
BEST MOMENTS
"If you're still reading through 50 page PDFs to pull out that one little bit that's relevant for you or your company, all of these things that are part of our day to day tasks, you should be using generative AI."
"If you are still using traditional search engines, you are waiting hours a day"
"Think if you worked through the whole two thousands, the decade of the two thousands, the entire decade without using the internet?"
"If you don't understand it at its core you are probably going to misuse it and you could end up doing more harm than good."
"Here we are every day waking up and scratching our heads, looking at what's happening and saying, there's no way this is happening."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanwilson04/
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This is part two of Ryan’s conversation with Aytekin Tank, the founder and CEO of Jotform, a form building platform created from his desire to help automate the communication between people. Author of Automate Your Busy Work, Aytekin shares his framework for cutting time spent on menial tasks by 70% and reveals how AI is transforming Jotform's products. From the importance of prioritization to embracing system thinking, this episode shares actionable insights for entrepreneurs looking to scale their businesses efficiently in the age of AI.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Clarify priorities through time audits to understand how you spend your time and identify tasks to automate or delegate.
- Embrace "laziness" and impatience as drivers for finding efficient solutions and automating repetitive tasks.
- Make time to save time by researching automation tools and learning new technologies like AI and prompt engineering.
- Adopt a system thinking approach, transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager of automations and AI.
- Use tools like Dead Man's Snitch to monitor and maintain your automated systems, ensuring they continue to function properly.
- Focus on important tasks that are often not urgent, following Eisenhower's wisdom on prioritization.
- Leverage AI for code reviews and fraud detection to significantly improve efficiency and accuracy in tech development.
- Explore AI integration in products through copilots and agents to reduce learning curves and enhance user experience.
BEST MOMENTS
"Bill Gates said, 'I would always hire a lazy person to do a hard job. Because he will find an easy way to do it.'”
"Eisenhower says that he had two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The important are never urgent and the urgent are seldom important."
"With copilots, you can actually give people an option... They don't have to learn it anymore, they can just tell us what they need."
"It's about figuring out your priorities. For example, for me, in the morning, that's my best time."
"We use AI for code reviews... It becomes easier because it's going to catch many types of code problems."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Aytekin Tank is the founder and CEO of Jotform, a form building platform created from his desire to help automate communication between people. Aytekin, a trained developer, bootstrapped Jotform from scratch. He is also the author of "Automate Your Busy Work" and is passionate about writing and sharing business advice.
He joins Ryan to discuss his experience of bootstrapping his company from the ground up and the strategies that helped accelerate the growth of the business.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Growth often takes time in the first few years of a bootstrapped company but Aytekin highlight the many positives of bootstrapping your company, including the independence you retain and less pressure externally.
- Jotform is a free product but where there are paid add ons and options.
- Aytekin wanted to create a simple to use form building platform after being unable to find what he needed himself.
- The pandemic helped accelerate the transformation into digital and Jotform was on of the businesses to feel that.
- A developer by trade, Aytekin had to train himself on everything including the management of people.
- Creating a culture of independence and innovation, supported with a clear mission statement has helped Aytekin grow his teams and scale the company effectively.
- To compete with the growing competition, including Google forms, Aytekin focuses on automation and delegation in his own work and across his teams.
BEST MOMENTS
“It’s about the [business] journey, it’s not about reaching one state, it’s about what we can do for people”
“I love seeing other people use it [Jotform] and get value from it”
“It’s a very horizontal product, everybody uses forms”
“Starting my company was all about independence, building my own product”
"We also improved out product in terms of automation"
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley interviews Randy Wootton who shares his incredible journey from the U.S. Navy to working for tech giants like Microsoft and Salesforce to becoming the CEO of Maxio, a company that has integrated a platform with over 2,400 customers and $13 billion in annual invoicing. Randy reveals the seven secrets of success for SaaS CEOs, offering invaluable insights on navigating the challenges of scaling a business.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Randy Wooten transitioned from a successful career in the U.S. Navy and working for tech giants like Microsoft and Salesforce to becoming the CEO of Maxio, a company that has integrated a platform with over 2,400 customers and $13 billion in annual invoicing.
- As a CEO, Randy emphasizes the importance of delivering shareholder value, establishing a winning strategy, shaping company values and standards, building an effective executive team, managing the board and investors, allocating capital strategically, and investing in your personal growth.
- Randy discusses the challenges of selling to CFOs compared to CMOs, highlighting the need for a different go-to-market motion that involves bringing in influencers and references, as CFOs tend to be more introverted and rely heavily on relationships when making purchase decisions.
- Maxio uses the McKinsey Horizon Model to allocate funds for current and future growth, dedicating resources to core business (Horizon 1), near-term opportunities like payments (Horizon 2), and long-term game-changing initiatives (Horizon 3).
- Randy believes that AI will significantly impact go-to-market strategies, with boards expecting companies to incorporate AI efficiency assumptions into their fiscal year 2025 planning, and he advises businesses to start experimenting with AI tools now to stay ahead of the curve.
- To navigate the challenges of being a CEO, Randy recommends finding a mentor who has been in a similar position, working with a coach to improve interpersonal effectiveness, joining peer groups like EO or YPO, and cultivating a personal advisory board for support and guidance.
- Randy highlights the importance of being a system of record and having differentiated data that can be leveraged with AI to create intelligent engines that offer benchmarks and insights to help customers run their businesses more effectively.
- By sharing his experience co-founding the VetForce platform at Salesforce, which empowers military veterans, Randy demonstrates his commitment to making a positive social impact alongside his professional achievements.
BEST MOMENTS
"I am there to deliver shareholder value. That's primarily driven by delivering the results."
"One of the things when I became CEO, the first time was I wanted a mentor, someone who had been in the same context."
"I think for my own career growth, I had reached this inflection point where I thought, gosh, the patterns that I've seen in this scenarios, would it apply to a different vertical in this case, selling to the CFO?"
"Unless you're absolutely crushing it and everyone's gonna make a whole bunch of money, like there is [something] everyone starts to revert to it's like Maslow’s hierarchy of need. They're all nice until it becomes, okay, how are we going to carve up the pie?"
"I think anyone who's truly appreciative of what's happened in their life will also recognize how much luck has played and connections, and we'll be willing to give back to other folks."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan speaks with Bill Strogis, CRO of Trax Technologies with a wealth of experience in enterprise software sales. Together, they dive deep into the mind of buyers, uncovering the predictable patterns that drive purchasing decisions. Bill shares his unique perspective on the biggest mistakes companies make in sales and provides hyper-tactical advice for growing your business like a VC-backed company without losing your freedom.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Aligning your sales process with how buyers make decisions can give you a significant advantage over competitors who rely on outdated practices.
- Leveraging the neuroscience of buyer behaviour can help you create a sales motion that is aligned with the buyer's journey, increasing your chances of success.
- Creating a customer engagement model that outlines what both parties need from each other can help build trust and prevent misalignments later in the sales process.
- Effective selling is about having meaningful conversations that create intrigue and get buyers to rethink how they want to solve their problems, ultimately leading them to see the unique value your solution provides.
- Building a truly profitable, sustainable, and durable business requires doing things the hard way, focusing on excellence and effectiveness rather than volume.
- Sellers often make the mistake of assuming buyers know exactly what they need and how to buy it, when in reality, buyers rarely evaluate software for a living.
- Educating buyers with all the information upfront is ineffective. Instead, focus on creating intrigue and getting them to rethink how they want to solve their problems.
- An analytical, engineering-like approach to building a sales motion, considering variables and objectives, is essential for enterprise selling success.
BEST MOMENTS
I don't want to talk to 50 people in a week when 49 of them can't buy my software, right, or don't have the capacity to."
"Every time you get asked for something, you should ask for something in return. And you've created this dance where you're starting to get really good at negotiating without it being an overt negotiation."
"Buyer behaviour is a fairly predictable thing. Most people go through the same things and they ask themselves the same whys, why should I do this? Why should I do it now? Why you like those things are fairly predictable if you understand them."
"It's hard to get somebody who's not paying attention to pay attention. It's not an easy thing."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan speaks with Andrew Johnston the head of sales at Superhuman for a second time, to explore the landscape of AI tools. Andrew shares his unique perspective on what makes an investable AI company, the importance of seamless integration and workflow, and the future of AI.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- AI agents and chatbots are limited in their effectiveness unless they are built with seamless integration and have their own unique value as part of the chain within AI.
- Successful AI tools have integrated in a smart way, with 75% of their own built IP or workflow and 25% leveraging LLMs or fine-tuned data.
- Security is a huge concern in the AI space, and tools like Liminal AI are addressing this by enabling secure use of LLMs within highly regulated institutions.
- RevOps teams can benefit from AI tools like Cinch, which enable sales leaders to build dashboards, reports, and alerts using natural language and prompting.
- AI research tools like Agent Herbie bring resources directly to the user's email, making market analysis more accessible for sales reps and marketers.
- Microsoft is going deep on AI integration across their entire stack, including a proactive team copilot and AI capabilities built into PCs.
- When investing in AI companies, distribution and go-to-market strategy are key differentiators, along with good UI/UX design and core software fundamentals.
- The simplest AI use cases that save 10-30 minutes of time and deliver clear outcomes are often the most powerful and effective tools for CEOs and CROs.
BEST MOMENTS
"What I try to look for is for companies that have integrated in a smart way, but have built a unique IP or workflow so that it's more like 75 per cent of what they've built."
"I think what's important is two things. One is. If you're going to invest in a tool or you're going to find a tool that you use, like, does it get you to an outcome or is it just a chatbot?"
"Distribution is key. You know, who's your market, who you're going after, why is the product sticky? I think that's really, really important to think through."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Join Ryan for part 1 of his interview with Andrew Johnston, the head of sales at Superhuman, for an in-depth conversation about measuring the impact of AI products. Andrew discusses strategies for growing B2C and B2B businesses, highlighting the key factors that contribute to Superhuman's success.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Superhuman, designed as the fastest email experience, saves users around 4 hours per week and helps them respond 12 hours faster, offering a glimpse into how email would look if designed in 2024.
- Superhuman's B2C growth leverages PLG levers, while B2B uses a product-led sales motion, targeting power users within corporations to expand team adoption.
- Transitioning from B2C to B2B requires adapting messaging, targeting different buyers, and meeting higher ROI expectations as the company moves upmarket.
- Quantifying ROI involves comparing pre and post-adoption metrics, such as time savings, email volume, and response speed, to demonstrate productivity gains.
- AI enhancement, like writing emails in the user's voice, complements the core value proposition, with 15-25% user adoption of AI features.
- Connecting productivity metrics to business outcomes, such as increased sales rep capacity and outbound activity, is crucial for resonating with decision-makers.
BEST MOMENTS
"Point blank Superhuman is the fastest email experience, or designed to be the fastest email experience in the world."
"The way I like to think about it is if Gmail or Outlook were designed in 2024 versus 2005, how would that product look and what, what things would it have natively built in? And that is superhuman."
"Bar none, I think the first thing is getting the tool right, right? So it has to provide value, productivity gains, and efficiency gains as it stands. And then AI is the enhancement on top of that."
"We're trying to correlate the metrics that matter to that sales leader with the things that we know are true and what we can provide based on the outputs that the tool has seen."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley interviews Ozan Unlu, the CEO and founder of EdgeDelta, an edge observability platform. Ozan shares his unique journey from engineer to salesperson to CEO, offering valuable insights on integrating AI into your organization profitably. Discover how to leverage AI without compromising margins and unlock the potential for growth.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- AI has tremendous potential in various businesses, but it must be implemented in a way that ensures sustainable margins and a path to profitability.
- AI augments human capabilities, providing context and awareness to professionals, especially benefiting those with less experience.
- Preprocessing and curating data sets before feeding them into AI models is crucial for cost-effective AI integration at scale.
- Integrating AI has significantly boosted productivity and efficiency in software development, potentially doubling the speed of feature development.
- AI can accelerate research and analysis tasks, such as reviewing financial reports or customer interactions, saving time while providing comprehensive insights.
- Regularly using AI to analyze website copy, marketing messages, and meeting discussions helps ensure clarity and effectiveness in communication.
- AI assists in observability by identifying anomalies and potential production issues in large-scale data sets.
- Continuous inference is a key concept for making AI work at scale with massive data volumes in observability.
BEST MOMENTS
"AI has a tremendous amount of potential in a lot of various different businesses. I think there is going to be very few businesses that are unaffected or untouched by AI."
"It's not so much replacing a person or replacing a role. It's very much augmenting what someone can do."
"We have probably doubled the amount of features and the efficiency and the speed at which we can develop within our organization internally.”
"If you have a large scale, if you have a lot of data and you are in observability trying to understand how do I actually make AI work at this scale, come talk to us."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
In this episode, Ryan shares some of the most exciting insights he has taken away from spending 30 hours using ChatGPT4o and Microsoft Copilot. Ryan pushes past the release hype and gives you the real use cases and best solutions for using AI in your existing applications.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Microsoft and Google are talking about the future capabilities of their AI software, these are things that aren’t available for use yet such as agents and text to video generators.
- ChatGPT4o is as fast as promised, the speed at which charts and graphs can be built at a high quality is impressive. There is even a tab to be able to create a PowerPoint and export.
- ChatGPT4o can integrate with Onedrive and google drive, the implications of this are far reaching in almost any business case.
- Microsoft Copilot always appears to lag behind ChatGPT releases. However the Copilot functionality has a lot of use cases. Such as summarising web pages and creating content.
- The Excel and Teams capabilities within Microsoft Copilot.
BEST MOMENTS
"There are some things blowing me away that are out right now”
“I love that use case because it makes creating visuals a snap”
“I think Microsoft is a sleeping giant here”
“This is gonna change a lot if you starts to understand this”
“Google Gemini is Still behind, still has issues”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Join Ryan for part 2 with Advait Shinde, the chairman of GoGuardian. Advait shares his journey of growing his company from zero to over $100 million in just 10 years. He offers invaluable insights on bootstrapping, the power of a strong founding team, and the unlimited potential for businesses to create value in the ever-evolving landscape of technology and AI.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Having a co-founding team with hands-on product and engineering experience is crucial for accurately assessing the complexity of building and marketing a software product from scratch.
- Entrepreneurs should prioritize building bootstrapped software businesses that require minimal upfront capital, allowing for greater control and flexibility in directing the company's growth and vision.
- Self-awareness and reflection are essential for breaking through self-imposed limitations and achieving ambitious goals.
- The most valuable companies of the future may not exist today, as new markets, services, products, and technologies continue to emerge, presenting near-unlimited opportunities for businesses to provide value to people.
- Focusing on providing the most value to the most people, especially in the context of rapidly evolving technologies like AI, can lead to immense success and growth.
- The economic and business landscape should be viewed as an ever-expanding pie with unlimited potential, rather than a fixed, finite pie with intense competition.
- Embracing the differences between preventing malware on corporate networks and ensuring a safe learning experience for students led to the creation of a purpose-built solution for K-12 education.
- Rapid iteration and incorporating user feedback on a daily basis were key to building a strong product-market fit and driving the company's explosive growth.
BEST MOMENTS
"We figured if we were able to enable this digital transition to be seamless, that we could do a few things. Firstly, we could take all of the amazing content and learning experiences that exist online and deliver them into the classroom in a way that would increase engagement."
"If you have that right team, you should be able to first hand build and market and sell a software product from scratch just with a co-founding team. And I think that that's critical as opposed to, let's say not having technical or product experience and therefore being sort of obligated to outsource that out to a consulting firm or something like that."
"Rather than view the world as this sort of fixed pie that everybody's sort of out competing each other with, I think it's much more interesting to imagine. The world of possibility that has yet to manifest entirely and in that, I think that there seems to be a near unlimited amount of opportunity."
"I think the process of really developing more self awareness of your own fear or insecurity or your own tendencies, especially to the extent they're shaped by your society or family or community or childhood experiences, all of these things sort of come together. Impinge a set of constraints on you. And so developing an understanding of that self awareness of that, I think allows you to pretty reliably break through those limitations."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan is joined by Advait Shinde, chairman of Go Guardian, to talk about the future of AI for work and learning. They discuss how AI and machine learning in depth, Advait gives some tested AI frameworks for those trying to learn and master AI and also gives his thoughts on the future of AI in the workplace.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Go Guardian enables students to learn and have access to better techniques to improve learning experiences.
- Relating concepts in the context of things people already understand can help people learn and retain information
- Whilst AI tools can aid learning in adults you can’t expect young children to be able to guide and give the necessary prompts needed.
- A system needs an understanding of what stage of learning a student is at before beginning. One of the key ways to do that is to ask the students questions and identify the level of mastery from their answers.
- A learning plan is just a sequence of skills that are required to meet an endpoint.
- Large language models allow certain tasks to be completed much more efficiently, but they only can do this because of decades of thorough research by individuals and still require a lot of human input.
- Advait believes AI skills will be essential for the future of work. He compares AI skills to internet skills 20 years ago, they were once brand new but now they are essential in any job.
BEST MOMENTS
"The way that we learn is by understanding the relationships of concepts between each other and I think chatgpt does a great job”
“You can’t expect a young child to take the self-directed control over their learning”
“Being successful with LLMs requires you to drive that learning yourself”
“The system needs to understand what is the current state of the student, what is the starting point of this journey”
“As AI changes workflows, more or less every workflow will be AI-enabled or AI-assisted…everything we know and do will be affected by AI”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Join Ryan in part 2 of his conversation with Alex Ottsberger for a deep dive into leveraging AI at scale across his 1500 employees and infusing it into their product. Discover the mind-blowing outcomes and results they've achieved by harnessing the power of AI on both the people and product side.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- AI is a driving force of change, comparable to the impact of mobile and the internet, but human adaptation is key to realizing its potential
- Enterprises are exploring AI's value and accumulation points, with a focus on understanding its capabilities and limitations in the short term
- AI can significantly enhance employee productivity and effectiveness by automating tasks and providing content-generation support
- Investing in AI skill acquisition for employees is crucial, as it empowers them to become "superheroes" in their roles
- Embedding AI into existing marketing platforms and processes can yield high value for companies
- AI-powered testing and experimentation enable marketers to test multiple variables, leading to better results
- Context-aware AI assists marketers throughout the campaign creation process, from brief writing to blog post suggestions
- Enterprises must address regulatory concerns and find valuable use cases that align with their specific needs
BEST MOMENTS
"AI is going to be, in our lifetime, one of the driving forces, just as mobile was or the internet was relative to change in terms of how we work, how work gets done, what we can do as society and humanity
"I don't see AI as a zero-sum game. I really see it as actually expanding everyone's capability. It is a superpower that you give people."
"Embedding AI into existing processes can gain a lot of value. In our platform, Optimize D1, which is really that entire marketer life cycle and marketing life cycle where people ideate and create content and test content."
"You know, the generation and the people that can start taking advantage of this, they're just going to be more productive relative to what they do."
"Being context aware when the AI knows where you are in the process. So imagine, for instance, you are starting a campaign, you are writing a brief about the campaign, why you are running this campaign, you know, writing a brief for a campaign can be a tedious task for a marketer."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
In this episode, Ryan gives more of his unique insights on the latest in the AI world. Ryan updates on a few of the new ChatGTP4 and ChatGRP4o features, the Omnimodel release and the Google Gemini AI integration.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- If you like seeing visuals, where use cases are broken down into steps then head over to Ryan’s YouTubechannel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFGndSHN4KkE89kUP74U7Qg
- Some of the new voice updates for ChatGPT have changed the landscape for AI, paving the way for uniqueness and making things feel more personal.
- ChatGPT can now do real-time translation in 40 languages, impacting Duolingo’s stock almost instantly.
- They have made GPT4 available for free, but you will need to pay for chatGPT4o to access speed and more advanced capabilities.
- Notebook LM is one of the new features where you can have customised data, based on your interests.
- Googlelabs the testing centre, has fewer ‘guard rails’, allowing you to flexibly test various use cases.
BEST MOMENTS
"There’s some things that they did not talk about at all that are absolutely amazing”
“All those capabilities are available for free now”
“You can pile a lot of data in there and have it customized based on your interests”
“VEO is text to video, the demos they showed are absolutely amazing”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan interviews Alex Atzberger, the CEO who took Optimizely from $100 million to $400 million in just four years. Alex shares his incredible journey, revealing the challenges, tough decisions, and the single best decision that led to this remarkable growth.
In the upcoming episode, Alex will dive into AI integration and the fascinating innovations at Optimizely. Don't miss out on the insights and knowledge shared by Alex.
Follow Alex on LinkedIn or visit optimizely.com for more on his journey and the incredible work at Optimizely. Stay tuned for the next episode. You won't want to miss it!🔥👏
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Creating a strong sense of mission and purpose is crucial when walking into any company, along with identifying the company's special assets and creating a north star for the organisation.
- Optimizely's success story began with combining content management (EpiServer) and optimization (Optimizely) to create a powerful platform for marketers.
- Building the right culture and leadership team is essential for scaling a company, as every single person matters in execution.
- Acquiring Welcome, a workflow AI-accelerated engine, was the best decision made during the four-year period, bringing in valuable solutions and people.
- Execution is everything in a company of Optimizely's size, and focusing on the main thing leads to wonderful results.
- Making changes in the leadership team, especially when it involves people who put their trust in you, can be emotionally challenging but necessary for the company's growth.
- The muscle built during the journey from $100 million to $400 million makes the next $400 million growth more feasible, enabling the company to do things they couldn't do before.
BEST MOMENTS
"Content is the heart of everything. What we are doing right now here together is content. You know, everything in a brand, everything in a, in a, in a digital team, everything on a, on a advertising team, PR, everything starts with content."
"I think I have the strongest leadership team in MarTech at this point, you know, um, you know, the founder of one of our acquisitions stuck around and is now the CMO of the company."
"The best decision, uh, was, uh, probably to acquire a company called Welcome."
"I always think it's quite personal when you bring people onto a journey, um, people that trust you. I think trust is the ultimate currency in life."
"Every single person matters, but it's all about actually executing what you say to do."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Join Ryan for the second part of his conversation with Matt Wolach, the CEO of XSellus, on the topic of lead generation in today's business landscape. Wolach shared his expertise on some common mistakes that companies make and discusses the importance of understanding your ideal customer profile and the most effective strategies for generating leads across various platforms.
🔍 Understanding your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is key to successful lead generation. Knowing exactly who you are targeting and what resonates with them is vital. 🛑 Don't give up too soon. Successful lead gen strategies take time and persistence. Building an online presence and attracting the right audience is a long-term commitment. 🚀 Tailor your lead gen strategies to fit your deal size and market. Automated approaches work for lower deal sizes, while personalized, targeted efforts are crucial for larger deals.
Tune in to the full episode to gain more insights on lead gen and its impact on your business growth.
Find out more about Matt Wolach on LinkedIn or visit his website, https://mattwolach.com/, for free giveaways and valuable resources.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Understanding your ideal customer profile (ICP) is crucial for effective lead generation, marketing, and sales conversations.
- Persistence and consistency are key when implementing lead generation strategies; many companies give up too soon without seeing results.
- LinkedIn remains a powerful tool for B2B lead generation, but success requires time and effort to build a strong presence.
- Identifying the right marketing channels for your business depends on factors such as your target market, industry, budget, and time constraints.
- Deal size influences the approach to lead generation; smaller deals require automation and volume, while larger deals demand personalization.
- SEO will continue to play a role in lead generation, but businesses must adapt to changes in technology and algorithms to stay ahead of the curve.
- Utilizing AI and technology for content creation and lead generation requires a strategic approach to ensure quality and effectiveness.
- The biggest mistake founders make in lead generation is implementing strategies that don't align with their business's stage, market, or resources.
BEST MOMENTS
"If we don't know exactly the person that we're trying to sell to in terms of lead gen market to, if we don't understand what keeps them up at night, what they're worried about, what they hate, what they love, what they're trying to do, it's going to be really hard to convince that person to take steps, to take action, to book a call."
"Some of the things that we do in lead gen are going to be a much longer commitment than a few weeks or a month. And we need to stay with it."
"We need to make sure that we're identifying the three to five [marketing channels] for us that work really well for our industry, for our market, for our time allotment, for our budget and do that, because you're not going to do all 18, but let's do the ones that actually fit for us."
"I think every SEO is always going to have a place. I mean, it's people are always looking for. We've been trained for the last 20 years that if you have a problem, just look it up, figure it out."
"Sometimes we hear, 'Oh, I heard about this company that did this amazing thing. I'm going to start doing that.' Well, that company is 10X your size or less than 10X lower than you, you know? So if you do the wrong thing at the wrong time, it's not going to work."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan talks with Matt Wolach, CEO of Xsellus, to dive deep into the world of closing deals and skyrocketing demo conversion rates. Matt shares his game-changing framework that helped him achieve exponential growth and gives many opportunities to learn from a true sales mastermind!
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Discovery is vital in the sales process;ask industry-specific questions to demonstrate expertise and uncover the buyer's pain points.
- Educate buyers on industry shifts, company founding story, and how your solution solves their problems to build a strong connection.
- Associate your product with the buyer's pain points to make them realize the value of your solution.
- Take the lead in the sales process; guide the buyer and be their trusted advisor to help them understand how your product can solve their problems.
- Calculate the financial impact of the buyer's problems to demonstrate the ROI of your solution and make pricing discussions easier.
- Understand your ideal customer profile (ICP) and ask process-based questions to uncover their challenges and pain points.
- Avoid the curse of knowledge; ask about the buyer's problems even if you already know the answer to help them realize the severity of their situation.
- Focus on the tangible ROI components, such as time, money, and people involved, to create a compelling case for your solution.
BEST MOMENTS
"People don't take action from, 'I want to check this out.' They take action from pain."
"If you can tell that founding story and talk about, let me tell you about this guy, Steve, and he was really frustrated that he couldn't do this or that... If you tell that story, obviously a little bit with a little more beef than what I said, but that now connects the buyer to a person, as opposed to connecting them to a brand."
"Once I get discovery really good, and I kind of connect the dots on each of those pains to the way it gets solved with my tool, then I don't really have to do a lot else extra, and it's amazing how kind of easy, simple that associate that demo process comes to be."
"Discovery is as much for your buyer as it is for you. And so if we skip that piece, then they're never going to realize how bad things are."
"The devil's in the details and that's what really moves the needle is when you know those fine aspects."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan shares his insightful experience working with over 220 executives and uncovers his top three problems with AI adoption in business today. Discover how you can excel past everyone else as Ryan provides valuable insights to help you embrace and develop AI use in your business.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Most executives want their teams to use AI tools but aren't taking the time to understand them personally, hindering effective adoption and innovation.
- Create a daily routine using AI to stay ahead, brainstorm ideas, and unlock new possibilities.
- Lack of internal collaboration and knowledge sharing about AI use cases is a missed opportunity for growth and efficiency.
- Many AI users operate in stealth mode, fearing employers will demand more if productivity gains are revealed.
- Incentivize and reward employees for sharing top AI use cases and innovations to spark widespread adoption.
- Executives must personally use AI to grasp its capabilities and limitations, as it's an "alien life form" with vast potential.
- AI enables doing higher quality work in far less time but requires incentives for employees to surface these gains.
BEST MOMENTS
"The AI's that you are leveraging today are going to be the worst version of AI's that you'll ever use."
"Create a routine where you use it every single day. You could start off simply by just replacing Google with it for 15 minutes."
"If they share and proliferate it throughout their organization, there should be really big opportunities, but why they're not sharing it is because they're afraid that their employer is going to ask for more from them."
"If you leverage those three stacks, you are going to be ahead of the majority of organizations out there. And I know this because I've spoken to a ton of them about this."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley sits down with Sankar Sundaresan, CEO and founder of Sky Genie, an AI-native company revolutionizing pipeline management for tech companies. Sankar shares invaluable insights on common mistakes CROs make, the importance of explainable AI in predicting pipeline yield, and how to align demand generation efforts with recent market traction. Don't miss this information-packed episode that could transform your approach to revenue growth!
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Sky Genie is a growth acceleration platform helping revenue teams drive efficient and predictable growth by reverse-engineering pipeline needs and providing a GPS-like system for planning and course correction.
- The biggest mistake CROs make is relying on rules of thumb for pipeline requirements without considering past execution data and the importance of having enough capacity to create and convert pipelines within the quarter.
- Explainable AI mimics the judgement process of experienced CROs, capturing their expertise in ML models trained against past performance data to provide accurate pipeline yield predictions.
- Aligning demand generation efforts with recent positive market traction in specific vertical segments, products, and geographies can significantly improve win rates and revenue growth.
- Continuously tweaking the pipeline generation machine based on recent win-loss data is crucial for capitalizing on tailwinds and addressing competitive challenges.
- A two-step approach to pipeline generation by identifying the most promising segment/vertical/geo/product combinations and then determining the best channels for those combinations leads to more efficient and targeted efforts.
- AI is best applied to high-level, critical questions like predicting pipeline yield and identifying opportunities at risk of slipping based on conversational intelligence data.
- Sky Genie focuses on giving CROs the tools to develop high-confidence, long-term pipeline plans that set them up for success, rather than just chasing current quarter deals.
BEST MOMENTS
"The single biggest mistake is just relying on rules of thumb. Like I need three X pipeline. I need four X pipeline because you'll be amazed at, you know, how many jobs we've seen dropping to the ground when we actually show them."
"I think there's a huge opportunity to align where we're building pipeline with where sales teams are actually able to win as evidenced, not by people doing research on 6sense and things like that."
"Instead of making it a one-step answer, it's really a two-step answer. You solve for it one step at a time, and therefore you get to a better, more efficient way of generating the right kind of pipe, using the right channels for exactly the type of pipe you need to generate."
"If all you're doing is just chasing current quarter deals, I think you're just setting yourself up for failure, right?"
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Join Ryan for part two with Mark Roberge, the original CRO at HubSpot who took the company from zero to $100 million. Roberge shares his unique insights on native AI companies versus adapted companies, offering a fresh perspective on how to effectively use AI in go-to-market strategies.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The science of scaling framework helps boards and founders determine when to scale revenue and at what pace, focusing on product-market fit and go-to-market fit.
- AI may significantly reduce development cycles and sales cycles, potentially leading to billion-dollar companies run by fewer than 10 people.
- AI could enable the creation of highly customized micro-products for niche markets, allowing for a multitude of smaller, specialized companies.
- Integrating AI into employees' workflows is crucial for staying ahead of the curve and capitalizing on the AI revolution.
- Embracing AI tools can save employees significant time, enabling them to explore new opportunities and innovations.
- The top 5% of individuals who actively learn and implement AI technologies will have a substantial advantage in the current business landscape.
- Identifying real AI challengers involves assessing incumbents' access to data and considering how workflows may change in a mature AI world.
- AI native companies with access to unique data sets, like AI sales coaches, have an advantage over incumbents in certain categories.
BEST MOMENTS
"When you think ahead to like a mature AI world when does, when you think about that, does the workflow change so much? That the underlying architecture of the incumbent is no longer relevant."
"We're in a hype cycle. We're about to get the first taste of companies that had no product and revenue that raised over 100 million that are going to go out of business because there's no traction."
"It's such an opportunity right now because the average person just gets like status quo. And the more you can push, push, push, push. That's what we're doing a lot with our portfolio.”
"Everyone's so excited. Cause we haven't felt this in like 20 years."
"The more we get the message out, the more people we could help, the bigger, the impact we make and the bigger the community gets, which helps everybody."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Join Ryan for part one with the legendary Mark Roberge, former CRO of HubSpot and current venture capitalist. They dive deep into the world of AI companies, discussing the immense opportunities and potential pitfalls. Mark shares his unique perspective on identifying promising AI start-ups and provides invaluable insights for entrepreneurs and investors alike.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- AI is a generational technology, potentially bigger than the internet, but currently in a massive hype cycle similar to the dot-com era.
- Most current AI ideas are basic integrations into existing workflows, not reimagining the workflow, and are likely to be disrupted.
- Joining an AI company now provides valuable experience, even if 90% fail, as the winners will scoop up experienced talent.
- The AI technology creating operational efficiency in the short term may not be the same as the disruptors redefining industries over the next decade.
- Understanding prompting, the foundation of AI language is crucial for developing micro-workflows, agents, and eventually autonomous swarms.
- The innovator's dilemma and appropriate beachhead selection are key concepts for AI startups to consider when building for the long-term vision.
- RevOps, once seen as supporting humans, may flip to AI doing the job with humans tweaking and refining.
- Technical issues like hallucinations and latency will likely be ironed out as the technology matures, revealing AI's true potential.
BEST MOMENTS
"I've never had more conviction for my students that come up to me. Like, 'Hey, what's up? Professor, like what, what should I do? Like, I want to be, I want to go into startups. Like, what should I do?' And I, I've always had like different opinions. I was like, do you have to go to AI? Like every tech company is going to, in like six years is going to be native AI. You have to get that experience now."
"I think all the tea leaves are similar to like 1997. Let's not forget that in that time, we dialled up to the internet using AOL, launched a Netscape browser and did searches through AltaVista, right? Where are those companies? Lycos, right? Is, is, is, yeah, is OpenAI Netscape or is it Google? Like we got to figure that out, right?"
"The AI technology that's going to create significant operational efficiency and growth this year and next for companies, especially these bigger companies that my CROs are from is not going to be the trillion dollar new company that disrupts the space."
"I've kind of come to the conclusion that the AI companies, vendors, technology that is going to create the most operational efficiency, even for our start-ups in the next year is not going to be the same AI technology company, et cetera, that becomes the disruptor over the next decade and redefines the sales and martech sector."
"RevOps has become huge, didn't even exist 15 years ago. And for the most part, RevOps is seen as an organization that supports the humans to do their job. And that flips with what you're saying. Is, at some point, it flips where RevOps does the job and humans there to tweak it."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
🎙 Exciting news! I recently had the pleasure of having Stephanie Valenti on the Scale Up Show for part 2 of our conversation. We dove deep into the topic of retaining perceived value in a fast-moving market, especially with the rapid advancement of AI and technology. If you're looking for insights on how to navigate this challenge, this episode is a must-listen.
🔍 In the episode, we discussed strategies for retaining perceived value in a fast-moving market, drawing from my experience in various leadership positions across B2C, B2B, and enterprise environments. We also explored the impact of AI on client relationships and continuous value creation.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Embrace constant creativity and think outside the box to bring value based on your organization's strengths
- Understand the initial impact that made clients choose your business and continue to focus on that throughout the relationship
- Leverage AI to supplement human experiences and provide consistent value to clients
- Stay informed about competitors, AI advancements, and work closely with product teams to deliver value rapidly
- Prioritize human elements like co-selling, sponsorships, and events that AI cannot replicate
- Be proactive in client communication at the executive level to gather feedback and address any lack of value
- Segment business and assign executive ownership for constant communication and proactive feedback gathering
- Consolidate client feedback, identify trends, and take action to maintain and enhance value
BEST MOMENTS
"It's constant creativity on a leader's part, how are you thinking outside the box to make sure that you're bringing value based on what your organization can provide."
"You've got to think about what is the human element that can supplement an AI experience."
"It's the human element. It's the co-selling. It's the sponsorships. It's the events. And it's no surprise why those are at the top. It's because it's human and that can't be replaced, at least yet." -
"You generally don't know if you've lost perceived value until it's gone if you're not proactive
"Proactivity is key. After that, if you start to lose, then you're just playing catch up and that can be a really dangerous game."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Stephanie Valenti, a four-time executive operator, shares her insights on turning chaos into scalability in organizations. She emphasizes the importance of creating structure, processes, and a strong team to achieve long-term growth. Valenti also highlights the need for pre-work, such as defining mission, vision, and values, and setting clear goals. She advises founders to slow down and celebrate successes, analyze what worked, and prioritize and prune initiatives to avoid shiny object syndrome. The conversation will continue in part two, where Valenti will discuss retaining perceived value in a fast-paced environment.
Don't miss Part 2 of our conversation for more insights on retaining perceived value in a fast-moving market. Stay tuned!
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- During COVID-19, Stephanie recognised she had a gap in knowledge where ‘wider’ business was concerned as she had always worked in fortune 500 companies. She then became a COO for a manufacturing company where she learnt an incredible amount.
- Start-ups operate differently to large businesses, in the early stages it’s more about trial and error than planning.
- Understanding structure allows start-ups to move into the next phase of their business and to scale effectively.
- Sometimes you need to slow everything down to be able to then scale and grow. This is especially true when trying to figure out product market fit.
- Tracking things early on with help you choose the strategies and tactics that work further down the line. It helps you avoid ‘shiny penny syndrome’ as a founder and aids you in making effective decisions.
BEST MOMENTS
“I could do four whole podcast shows talking about my experience and the mistakes and successes that I had”
“In a start-up, it’s in the moment, it’s let’s throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks”
“What would a structure look like at $100 million? What roles would we need? What types of people would we need?”
“Slow down to speed up”
“When money is involved it’s super emotional so of course then want to keep moving it forward”
“Just because something worked once, doesn’t mean it will again”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Get ready to supercharge your AI game with Ryan as he shares three mind-blowing mistakes 99% of people are making with AI implementation. Discover how to overcome these pitfalls and join the 1% who are revolutionizing the way they integrate AI into their business.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Treat AI like a person, not software, to maximize its strengths and adjust for its weaknesses
- Provide context to AI about its role and experience to improve output quality
- Understand that AI excels at complex tasks but may struggle with simple ones like math
- Document what AI does well and poorly for your specific use case
- Leveraging AI effectively can free up time and allow you to focus on things you love
- AI is advancing rapidly, and staying ahead of the curve is crucial for success
- Psychological patterns can hinder AI adoption, leading to missed opportunities
- Integrating AI into your business can have positive downstream effects on personal life and relationships
BEST MOMENTS
"The expectations that people have are that it does everything amazing. Now, what I'm going to get into are the three mistakes that people are making, but I wanted to kick it off and show you that because that's that key understanding of how to use it, it's not going to be a straight line going across, there's going to be tasks that it's amazing at, and then tests that it's not so good at is going to be some of the keys to the castle."
"You need to expect it to act like a person, right? And as weird as that sounds, it's not a person. It's not sentient.”
"If you could free up like 10 hours a week how amazing would that be? Or if you could just offload. To an AI intern, like the things that you hate about your job and do the things that you love doing, like how cool would that be?"
"This is a psychological pattern that I see people falling into that's stopping them from literally using one of the most powerful things that we've ever had in terms of mankind, and it just kills me inside."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
In this episode, Ryan dives into the world of AI, sales strategies, and customer success together with Saas Fuel Podcast host, Jeff Mains. From leveraging AI in sales and Go-To-Market strategies to maximizing customer success stories, this insightful discussion is a must-watch for SaaS founders, leaders, and entrepreneurs. Join us as we explore the intersection of technology, sales, and human touch in today's business landscape.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Maximize customer success stories by capturing before and after states to create compelling case studies that showcase your solution's value and build trust with potential customers.
- Foster strategic partnerships with industry influencers and associations to expand your reach, tap into their audience, and gain credibility.
- Invest in targeted content marketing that addresses specific pain points and positions your product as a solution to your target audience's challenges.
- Leverage AI to automate repetitive tasks, accelerate skill acquisition, and enable your team to focus on high-value activities.
- Implement an acceptable use policy for AI tools within your organization and provide foundational training to empower your team to innovate.
- Encourage curiosity and experimentation with AI tools to unlock new possibilities and drive innovation across your organization.
- Integrate AI into your go-to-market strategy by understanding the KPIs, challenges, and emotions that drive your target audience's decision-making process.
- Cultivate technical literacy and AI skills in the next generation to prepare them for the rapidly evolving business landscape.
BEST MOMENTS
"Nothing speaks louder than success, but not your success, their success. The solution is about them. It's not about you."
"You could basically go in there and tell it to act like the chief HR officer at a hundred million dollar SAS company that's publicly traded."
"I think 2023 was a year where everyone was focused on integrating AI in their product, specifically tech companies. And I think 2024 is the year where you want to integrate AI in your people."
"Curiosity is what I would say. Yeah, that's kind of where I was headed."
"I would say like acceptable use policy, step one, step two is like, you know, what's the model that is sanctioned by the company that you're going to use temporarily. And then step three is basically embrace it."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Join Ryan as he interviews fellow podcaster and tech analyst Michael Fawcett. They explore how AI can revolutionize sales strategies and supercharge business growth and outline the incredible potential of AI to streamline processes, enhance skills, and boost productivity.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- AI can dramatically reduce time spent on tasks, automate execution, and provide custom training to rapidly upskill sales teams.
- Leveraging AI for deep work tasks like deal strategy and revenue leader tasks can lead to significant time savings and improved outcomes.
- AI enables salespeople to acquire new skills such as graphic design, music, and video creation within seconds, enhancing their capabilities.
- Onboarding time for new sales reps can be reduced from months to weeks by using AI to create custom learning plans and role-playing scenarios.
- Retention can be improved by using AI to automate tasks that salespeople don't enjoy or excel at, increasing job satisfaction.
- Small and medium businesses can use AI to focus on their top 20% of customers and multiply outcomes without adding headcount.
- The sales professional of the future should focus on gaining attention through depth over quantity and consistently look for ways to leverage AI in their daily tasks.
- Tracking progress and iterating on AI usage can lead to becoming a leader in the organization and future-proofing one's career.
BEST MOMENTS
"You have the capability to become superhuman and offload a lot of the things that you don't like about your job, acquire new skills at an insane rate and do things that you've never been able to do just by using words."
"I tested it on basically the KPIs of the executives that we were selling to... It got like 95 per cent of the way there with one question. I was like, okay, this is scary, but exciting at the same time."
"If you enable your team, specifically with prompts and a prompt library, and a whole innovation environment around AI, what will start to happen is they will naturally start to want to find ways where they could automate the things that either they're not good at, or they don't like."
"Customized learning is huge. You could take the data set from what the company does, who they sell to, their ICP, and then you could probably even download the new employee's job experience from LinkedIn and factor that in and have a whole learning plan customized based on that."
"I would just make it a priority for my team and my org to use and innovate with these tools. Make it a priority, do a weekly meeting with your team, give them a running start by you learning as a leader, and then having them come back and identify the best practices after the first week and then innovate on top of that every week thereafter."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley interviews Alex Levin, co-founder and CEO of Regal.io, who shares his incredible journey of scaling his company from zero to $9 million in just two years. Discover the secrets behind Regal.io's success and learn valuable insights on founder-led sales, creating urgency in your team, and the importance of failing fast and iterating quickly.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Founder-led sales can significantly impact the early stages of a start-up, allowing for a deeper understanding of customer needs and faster growth.
- Creating a sense of urgency and accountability within your team is crucial for staying ahead of the competition and driving progress.
- Embrace failure and iterate quickly by testing small ideas with customers to gain valuable feedback and avoid costly mistakes.
- Personalize customer experiences using first-party data to build trust and differentiate your brand in a competitive market.
- Leverage AI and automation tools to enhance customer engagement while maintaining a human touch for high-value interactions.
- Invest in building strong relationships with co-founders who have complementary skill sets to divide responsibilities and tackle challenges efficiently.
- Focus on understanding customer needs and building the smallest viable solution to gain traction and validate your product.
- Continuously engage with customers through various touchpoints, such as personal interactions and branded calls, to create a cohesive brand experience.
BEST MOMENTS
"We went from zero to a million in AR in six months. Then we hit 3 million in the first year, 9 million by the end of the second year."
"Brands that see that personal interaction is yet just another touch point, an important touch point. That's part of the cohesive experience with a customer. We're going to succeed. Brands that don't are going to go by the wayside."
"The successful companies are the ones that set it up so they can constantly be failing on small things and iterating and moving forward."
"Imagine like my wife's friend who runs a little business where she's an Allstate agent. She in her town knows everybody and she knows everything about them and their kids and their pets and their whatever. And the reason she does so well is because when somebody walks in, she really cares about them."
"I think using founder-led sales for a while really does have an impact, making sure that you're sort of really understanding what the need is."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Listen to this episode as Ryan shares how you can invest just 2 hours of your time for a 30-hour return! He challenges you when using AI to always ask if what you’re doing is a micros task or is it something that can be utilized and leveraged at a later time?
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The tool taskmagic allows you to upload video or audio and it creates content for you.
- Some of the best content Ryan has, is conversations and discussions he has had with others, so he decided to utilise task magic.
- Ryan intergrated prompts and use cases so he now has a one-click option for content creation.
- Ryan is a big advocate for human in the loop, meaning having a human authenticate and sense check AI content after creation.
BEST MOMENTS
"I have it preloaded with different use cases that I have so I can one button click and have that content created”
“The four areas of leverage are capital, code, people and content”
“I’m sharing this with you so when you’re looking at AI systems you can effectively do the same thing”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan interviews Ryan Collier, host of The Chat GPT Report podcast. They dive into the latest AI trends, discussing the potential of MidJourney and Twitter's partnership, the pros and cons of Microsoft Copilot and Google's AI ecosystem, and the future of AI hardware like Brilliant Labs' glasses!
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- MidJourney and Twitter's partnership could revolutionize user experience by integrating powerful image generation capabilities directly into the platform.
- Microsoft Copilot and Google's AI ecosystem are neck-and-neck in the race to dominate the office productivity space with native AI integration.
- Brilliant Labs' AI glasses prioritize sleek design and user experience, potentially outshining competitors like Apple's Vision Pro.
- The future of AI hardware lies in finding the perfect balance between functionality, comfort, and privacy concerns.
- Successful AI products will focus on seamless integration into users' daily lives and solving real-world problems.
- The AI industry is rapidly evolving, with smaller companies challenging tech giants in the race to develop game-changing products.
- Podcasting in the AI space offers a wealth of diverse perspectives and insights from experts across various industries.
- The construction industry has significant potential for AI integration, but adoption may be slower compared to other sectors.
BEST MOMENTS
"I'm very excited, Google Glass 10 years ago tried it, but they did not have the backing of large language models to combine into it because back then it was basically was doing Google searches for you with the glasses right now, there's much more information that can go into these things and it's, it's exciting"
"I work in construction. That's, that's my day job. I'm a sales rep for a construction company and being in the AI space where, with the podcast, we have to kind of keep up with stuff where things are happening every week. And then you get back to the construction side and you're like, we are kind of far behind, you know?"
"There's going to be multi-billion dollar industries to get you away from your phone, and there's multi-billion dollar industries that are trying to get you to stay on your phone, and they will not be the same company."
"I think what I was most impressed with and what I appreciated was more, he kind of gave his team a lot of credit, I was more impressed with that”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan talks through the three business use cases that can save you 10+ hours a week! Ryan compares them with other solutions on the market such as ChatGPT and Gemini and explains why these could be pivotal in your business.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The three core areas are: Advanced company research use cases, long-form information extraction and complex data analysis.
- You can use these use cases for big clients and smaller customers.
- Research that would take half an hour to do manually can be done almost instantly and it will be of higher quality than you could manage manually.
- You can use Claude to digest and break down long-form content such as research papers.
- The more context you can provide to Claude, the more specific and curated answers it will give you.
BEST MOMENTS
"These three examples are tied to non-specific AI use cases that I’ve used previously”
“This is basically an AI research paper”
“We have gone through 8 years of innovation in 4 months”
“There are so many use cases within business and within life that you could leverage this for”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan is joined by Alfredo Ramirez, CEO of Viopta, a global leader in collaboration intelligence. Dive into the world of AI and discover how Viopta leverages cutting-edge technology to help over 40 million people collaborate better. Alfredo shares his insights on AI use cases, executing them efficiently, and the significant impact they can have on your start-up.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Viopta, a B2B SaaS company, enables organizations to make hybrid work effective by focusing on collaborative work and addressing user experience issues in meetings.
- AI-assisted solutions help scale internal resources, allowing teams to focus on more valuable, creative work while improving customer service and sales processes.
- Generative AI has numerous applications in automating tasks, generating content, and providing valuable insights to scale a workforce efficiently.
- When starting a new business, focusing on an area with prior experience and background is crucial for success.
- Accelerating the sales process by reaching decision-makers and streamlining security approvals is a key challenge for B2B SaaS companies targeting large enterprises.
- Upselling and cross-selling products to the existing customer base is an effective strategy for growth, especially in the current global economic climate.
- Viopta's space insights provide intelligence on meeting space usage, helping organizations optimize their office space and improve user experience and engagement in a hybrid work environment.
- The future of work involves hiring the best people, regardless of their location, and leveraging technology to enable effective collaboration and engagement.
BEST MOMENTS
"We started seriously looking at how can we leverage AI in a much broader sense in our business to scale the resources are our people in our business."
"AI is going to help in so many different ways. And so automating tasks is probably the low-hanging fruit that we can pursue today."
"You have to start defining kind of what's the values and the outcomes you want from this technology and focus on that."
"Pursuing that opportunity to go establish new, helping to populate Mars or other planets or moons out in space, would be quite fascinating or travelling through space would be incredibly exciting."
"There's a bigger focus around delivering more value within our customer base. And there's easily another 50 million that we can go after."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Learn the pieces of knowledge Ryan has discovered from spending hours with hundreds of executives that will help you surpass everyone else in terms of skills regarding AI! Ryan breaks down the 3 key components you need to focus on and explains why these will be pivotal for your AI literacy and help you protect yourself and your career.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- There are many components and underpinnings to AI than many people first realise. It isn’t simple, there is complexity at all levels.
- Some of the use cases for AI video are disturbing and we are only at the beginning stages.
- 5-10% of U.S jobs could easily be displaced by AI over the next 5 years.
- Understanding how to use AI with business use cases is essential.
- It’s rare to understand the business use cases and applications and the tech capabilities. You need to know enough to understand what can be provided.
- Be able to communicate with the engineers and business leaders so that you can speak one language that everyone understands.
BEST MOMENTS
"AI is not just one thing, it’s a thousand things”
“That’s 5-10 million people being out of work”
“Really understand the business use cases, start super small”
“I’m not saying you need to be an engineer but you need to know enough to be dangerous”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan sits down with Andy Jolls of Roxology, to discuss the groundbreaking impact of AI on go-to-market strategies. As a 25-year executive and full-stack marketer, Andy shares his insights on how generative AI is revolutionizing content creation, data analytics, and personalization. Listen in to discover how you can harness the power of AI to drive unprecedented growth and stay ahead of the curve!
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Generative AI is solving the problem of the blank page, enabling marketers to create high-quality content at an unprecedented pace, resulting in 5x ROI in just a few months.
- AI-powered data analytics is transforming the way companies gain insights from vast amounts of data, making it easier to identify target audiences and optimize strategies.
- AI-assisted email is set to become more competitive, pushing marketers to embrace personalization through imagery and video to stand out.
- Search engine optimization is evolving as generative search experiences like Google's SGE gain traction, requiring marketers to adapt their content strategies.
- Embracing AI as a thought partner rather than just a solution tool can help tackle GTM problems in innovative ways, leading to breakthrough results.
- AI is enhancing the creation of images, voices, and videos, enabling marketers to create more engaging and personalized content at scale.
- AI avatars and clones may become more prevalent, allowing individuals who are uncomfortable with direct exposure to still participate in content creation and thought leadership.
- Integrating AI into existing workplace stacks, such as Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, can streamline adoption and unlock powerful use cases for go-to-market teams.
BEST MOMENTS
"I think what we saw on go to market was sort of the natural place to start with, like the lowest hanging fruit, the fruit that was like laying on the ground, rotting, like it's so, it's such low hanging fruit, right?”
"Half the reason why people are not using it before is just not being able to wrap their mind around how to use it, how to prioritize what to use and, and like what specific use cases. And then at the same time, like emotionally deconstruct, like how, how big this is and how important it is."
"I think once you know, and, and I think open AI gets credit for this, once they could actually put this into a UX that it was pretty easy for people to do and see the results and the models worked well enough, the data sets were big enough. We had enough parameters in the data and it could work fast, the output could be pretty good."
"We’re swimming in data but trying to get insights out of that data is actually really difficult. So, on the marketing side, we could use these for surveys and not just sort of quantitative surveys, but the tools will actually help you analyze all of your open-ended survey questions. It's quite good at that."
The data is the oil in this or maybe even the enriched uranium. Like it is a precious, precious piece of this equation. And Google has the most."
"I think there's an opportunity there to get better and I think AI is going to help with all of that."
"You need to take the time and you need to change your view of this from I think like from a solution tool to a thought partner tool and realize like it's going to actually just be on a journey with you."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
In this episode, Ryan gives his thoughts on Claude 3 by anthropic and puts it to the test! He talks about many of the unique features of this update as well as the three use cases it’s best for. Ryan also discusses the possibility of it rivalling the current dominant powerhouse of AI, ChatGPT!
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Claude consistently performs very highly on acumen tasks.
- Ryan tested Claude on grade school math, and it scored significantly higher than ChaGPT.
- The third task Ryan tested on Claude was data analysis and it gave great answers that were accurate.
- Do not put confidential information into Claude unless you have an enterprise or protected account.
BEST MOMENTS
"Claude 3 highest level is significantly better than ChatGPT 4”
“Let’s test is on grade school math, Claude did a better job”
“I asked Claude are you better… and it was really funny what the response was”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan sits down with sales guru Jeffrey Gitomer to discuss his secrets for long-term success. With over 25 years of experience, 13 bestselling books, and 2,500+ corporate events under his belt, Gitomer shares invaluable insights on leveraging social media, AI, and unwavering consistency to boost sales and build a thriving business.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Consistently post valuable content and testimonials on social media to attract customers instead of making cold calls
- Leverage AI to organize and distribute your content, making it easily accessible to salespeople seeking advice
- Invest time in yourself by reading, writing, thinking, preparing and creating during the first hour of each day
- The top 1% of salespeople love what they do, maintain a great attitude, and genuinely believe in their company and products
- Provide social proof and focus on the customer's needs rather than giving lengthy demos or pitches
- Embrace AI as a tool to eliminate poor salespeople while enabling the best to provide even greater value to customers
- Develop a strong online presence across multiple platforms to maximize reach and impact
BEST MOMENTS
"People don't like to be sold, but they love to buy."
"If you have content, you're going to win. If you don't have content, you're not going to win. Just that simple."
"AI is going to eliminate shitty salespeople and the good ones will capture it, take advantage of it, use it in everything that they do and be able to provide value to the customer in a way that's higher than ever before."
"This is your time. Invest time in yourself and your business so that you can reap the reward, not make the payment."
"There's no second place for sales. It's you either win or you have nothing."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan compares Google Gemini and ChatGPT Plus in this informative episode. He outlines the pros and cons of each and how you can easily and quickly implement them into your own workflow. Ryan also highlights the big shift in AI and these tools that he sees coming soon!
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Ryan tested Google Gemini and ChatGPT Plus through the lens of creating a brand new start-up and the tasks that would be required.
- ChatGPT was quite dry but Gemini outputted a good amount of personality.
- Ryan’s second test was on creativity, they both gave very good responses.
- Visuals were the next test, in this test he asked for logos and Gemini didn’t follow the instructions very well. DALL-E seemed to understand the directions better.
- Overall Gemini was a lot faster at producing what it was asked for and the UI was very good.
- Microsoft business users are more likely to move over to ChatGPT as it is built for them and integration will be better.
- It’s critical to have a model-agnostic approach so that you are able to leverage the model that will serve you best and has the best tools for your needs. Innovation will not stop.
BEST MOMENTS
"Google Gemini is the ChatGPT equivalent that they just released last week”
“The really interesting thing is Gemini has a bit more personality”
“What I did notice is Gemini was a lot faster”
“The moral of the story is these models are getting much much closer”
“It’s critical to have a model agnostic approach when you leverage this”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
As a serial entrepreneur behind 5 companies and over $200 million in revenue Jeff Mains is now helping other founders achieve rapid growth through an operating system for alignment, ROI-focused decision-making, and monopoly control of niche markets. Enjoy his key insights on avoiding dilution, tight focus, strategic use of AI, and indispensable tools like Reclaim.ai and Slack.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Avoid giving away too much equity too soon to co-founders or investors. This dilutes your ownership early on.
- Founders often don't delegate enough as the business grows. Hire strong leaders and let them own areas.
- Clearly define your ideal customer profile and niche down as much as possible to own the market.
- Use AI strategically where it adds value to the user, not just because it's new and trendy tech.
- To protect against fast copycats, shrink your niche and own the market rather than going broad from the start.
- Having an operating system drives alignment on vision and consistent tracking of KPIs across the organization.
- AI and Slack are indispensable tools for managing his schedule, communication and productivity.
BEST MOMENTS
"I don’t think I’ve ever given anything away without leaving claw marks all over it."
"You can only be as big as you are small, so if you want to get big, go small."
"Everybody in the organization has visibility, alignment. They understand their roles, their KPIs, and managing their own goals."
"If you think about, you know, we work with B2B SaaS companies, we don’t do B2C, we don’t do, you know, all of these other things and, and, and that’s it."
"When you can get into that community and, you can say, we’re one of you, you’re one of us, then it’s a lot easier to expand out from there."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan discusses OpenAI's new AI text-to-video generator called Sora. He outlines the 5 key features people are missing about Sora and also achieving AGI. Ryan sees both exciting creative potential but also risks like deep fakes.
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KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Sora combines NLP and computer vision AI to create video "worlds", not just static clips.
- It can smoothly transition between unrelated videos like an underwater scene to drones.
- The AI understands real-world physics to show interactions realistically.
- Sora's training approach opens exponential growth in data it can learn from.
- Real-time training may enable applications like robotics and self-driving vehicles.
- Businesses can benefit from easy video creation but must monitor for misuse.
- Ryan previously predicted the rise of AI video generation as a 2024 trend.
- Regulation will be important as capabilities like editing real people emerge.
BEST MOMENTS
"This isn't just like a text to video engine. This is what they're calling a world builder."
"Now at the same. You can loop the same video...you can't even tell that it's the same loop going over and over again."
"If you put all these together, those are kind of the hidden things that I see underneath the layers of all this Talk that everybody has that most people are not paying attention to."
"I think overall, like it's going to stretch what's possible."
"I talk about this specifically, so it's really interesting to see that this is going to come to fruition."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
In this episode, Ryan talks to Alex Reynolds, co-founder and CEO of Vendelux, an AI-powered event measurement platform. They delve into Alex's unique go-to-market strategy of stationing team members in event hubs to network in-person. He shares how to 10x ROI for events through smart AI-driven targeting, strong pre-event outreach, and post-event follow up. Event marketers will learn highly actionable tactics to reduce costs and risks while increasing revenue.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Station team members in event hub cities like Vegas to eliminate travel costs and efficiently network at the many events held there weekly (saves travel time and maximizes face time)
- Target events using AI and data to map which ones have your ideal attendee profiles, factoring criteria like vertical, company size, titles, current customers etc. (optimizes chances of meeting qualified prospects)
- Do extensive pre-event outreach starting 2-3 weeks out via personalized invites to satellite events, rooftop happy hours etc. to entice targeted executives (drives event ROI through quality conversations)
- Schedule 1-on-1 meetings upfront by having the right team member meet prospects/customers already somehow connected to them (increases relevancy and conversion rates)
- Create FOMO with satellite events by highlighting exclusivity and limited slots to motivate invitees to prioritize attending (generates event buzz)
- Have designated team members fully focused on working the event and diligently follow up post-event while momentum and connections remain fresh (maximizes lead conversion)
- Reduce costs by only allocating budget to events AI data scores as wins, and eliminating expenses on non-winning events (optimizes ROI)
- Increase revenue by focusing on events attended by well-matched prospects expected to convert based on historical data (grows pipeline contribution)
BEST MOMENTS
"If you show up to the event and you're amongst 10,000 or 100,000 people, it's incredibly difficult to get attention from the people that you care about."
"To me, three, two to three weeks is the sweet spot a month out. A lot of people are just not, they're thinking about other things, they've got other things on their mind."
"We have customers that are cutting their costs per lead by 50 per cent increasing, you know, the revenue from the channel by 100 150 per cent and then that's leading to doubling and tripling their event budgets for for the next year."
"Just sending the right people so that you can have those one-to-one touch points in person. I mean, kind of the traditional roadshow is dead."
"If you get to the event and you haven't done the pre-work, you've already lost."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan talks through how you can use ChatGPT to answer a question that 44/45 SaaS execs couldn’t answer and why using it as a sales rep has saved him over 10 hours a week and increased his result by 130%!
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- You don’t need a lot of marketing support or capital to grow.
- Ensure you utilise ChatGPTs data analysis tool, Ryan talks about exactly how to do this in the episode: https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show/unlocking-your-ideal-customer-in-minutes-with-chat
- Look at and identify what is the top idea customer profile of the top 20% of your clients. Then look at the average and range of that and work out what you can execute from this.
- Leveraging AI alongside data analysis is opening up endless opportunities for scale and revenue growth, without needing capital or workforce.
BEST MOMENTS
"I use this strategy to 2x our deal size annually”
“We’re looking at our ideal customer profile and we’re creating our perfect customer profile”
“It’s one of the simplest levers you can pull to increase revenue and increase business”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan is joined by Collin Mitchell in this episode where he shares his top-tier perspective from helping companies deploy outbound at scale to drive explosive growth. Learn Collin's step-by-step framework to go from cold connection to a sold deal on LinkedIn without coming across salesy. Discover targeting and research hacks to set your outreach apart in a noisy landscape. Collin also reveals his candid take on whether outbound is dead, the biggest mistakes killing results, standout examples of AI done right, and so much more.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Outbound works if you zig when others zag with a personalized, multi-channel approach tailored to each prospect. Emails alone don't cut it anymore.
- Spend more time researching and segmenting your list for quality over quantity, 1000 well-targeted prospects can generate a huge impact vs blasting out mass emails.
- Don't pitch, nurture relationships by adding value, sparking curiosity and letting hot leads ask you for a meeting once interest is piqued.
- Casual, short messaging performs best on LinkedIn, speak and sequence like a real human vs overly salesy and rushed.
- AI excels at scale prospect research but still falls short of generating messages that sound truly authentic and personalized.
- Inbound leads from your content who already know, like and trust you convert super warm despite lower volumes vs outbound.
- Outbound lower barriers like accessible data and sales tech means more noise - but smart messaging and targeting sets you apart.
- Pick up the phone and introduce a human voice and personality early in outreach cadences for best results.
BEST MOMENTS
"It's not that outbound is dead, it's just different."
"Emails hard. It's harder than it's ever been...the dirty little secret [agencies] don't want to tell people."
"Take the opposite approach [of salesy LinkedIn messages]...casual, short messaging is what will work."
"If you try to rush the [LinkedIn connection] process, it's going to hurt you."
"Those [inbound leads] are very warm...they already kind of know, like and trust you."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Want to learn the frequently ignored strategy that has the potential to make your sales, marketing and leadership better? AI can make this strategy a reality for you in just minutes. Listen in to this episode as Ryan reveals how you can do this and stay ahead of the competition in the accelerated growth of the SaaS space.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The cost of software keeps going down which presents opportunities but also fierce competition.
- You can use AI like a ‘professional trainer’ with your ideal customer profile.
- Time is the most infinite resource we have and using AI in the right way, like this process, frees up valuable time.
- The data analysis tool in chatgpt is now embedded and is a very straightforward function to use.
- What you need to ask the data analysis tool to do once it has your data is to identify trends and patterns in the customer data, this is the starting point.
- Have it create your ideal customer profile and look at different levels of detail within this such as the biggest problems it can find in the data set.
- Once you have built the foundation anything else you need can be built on top.
BEST MOMENTS
"Attention is becoming harder and harder to get”
“By leveraging chatgpt you can nail this really fast probably at a level at 150% at what you would have done before manually”
“It doesn’t matter if you are a rep, sales leader, CEO this is valid for everybody”
“The data analysis tool is basically a free data scientist”
“Once you start chatting with it, you’ll get really clear insights”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan interviews Steve Benson, CEO and founder of Badger Maps, the number 1 routing and mapping app for field sales teams. They discuss Steve's journey in building Badger Maps to $6 million in ARR and how referrals are the company's biggest source of new business. Steve shares the framework he uses to maximize referrals and word-of-mouth marketing. Drawing on insights from working with over 4,100 sales teams, Steve reveals the #1 consistent problem across teams and the biggest opportunity for improvement!
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Referrals are Badger Maps' biggest driver of new business due to their focus on serving salespeople who naturally share recommendations.
- To maximize referrals, reward both referrers (e.g. gift cards) and referees (e.g. extended trials), make asking easy for all customer-facing roles, and track metrics.
- The #1 problem Steve sees working with 4,100+ sales teams is not leveraging best practices and knowledge sharing across team members.
- Sales leaders should facilitate bite-sized internal training sessions where team members share specialized processes and methods with their peers.
- Badger Maps saves field sales reps 5-10 hours per week by optimizing routing and planning to reduce drive time between meetings.
- Technology enables today's sales reps to achieve 3x the productivity compared to manual processes.
- Most sales teams underutilize the array of technologies available to free up time and scale reach.
BEST MOMENTS
"If you make [salespeople] happy, they will spread the word for you to their friends and people they work with."
"Someone in the organization knows like there’s a team of 30 sales reps and someone knows how to do that really well. But that knowledge isn’t shared across the organization very well."
"Have Jessica from Tulsa explain to the rest of the team how she’s doing this really smart thing that she’s doing.
"You can make one guy into three guys really with the right kinds of tools."
"I would guess thousands of [sales teams] over the years...I’ve worked with in different capacities."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan wanted to give a quick update on one of the single biggest opportunities of the AI world right now. Ryan outlines the new capability and what this can mean for your deliverables including key examples where he has used it.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- GPTs are categorised by different areas, including trending, giving you the ability to understand which ones are performing better than others.
- Ryan enabled three different plug-ins and gave each one clear instructions on what he wanted it to do.
- You can stack multiple GPTs in one workflow that you would ordinarily have to hand off to different people.
- Think about something you work on currently that requires work and output in different areas, this could be a perfect use case.
BEST MOMENTS
"It’s so simple and so subtle but it’s a really big unlock on what you’ll be able to deliver”
“I just wanted to get this out to you so you could start working on it right now”
“You could use different gpts and have them go through an entire workflow and basically create an output”
“I want you to be ahead of everyone else”
“These are all examples of how you can create a stackable workflow from one piece of information”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan interviews Chris "Tito" Tito, co-founder and CEO of Hidden Layer, a company providing security solutions for AI models. Tito outlines Hidden Layer's full platform to secure AI, including scanning models for malware, monitoring model behaviour to catch attacks, and proxying API calls to block abuse. Tito then discusses various impressive enterprise use cases he's seen and talks about the common mistake businesses are making.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Pre-trained open-source models often get reused internally but may contain backdoors if not scanned thoroughly first.
- Current cybersecurity tools don't inspect model code so can't catch malware that is desperately needed for specialized AI security.
- Tito stresses that while AI promises much value, it requires thoughtful implementation with appropriate safeguards.
- Models deployed into production pipelines are vulnerable to surrogate attacks and theft.
- Safeguards are needed for both internally hosted models and external API-based ones.
- Diverse, specialized use cases are extracting tremendous value from AI across industries.
- However, many teams lack the skills or processes to properly evaluate or fine-tune models.
- Generative AI is increasingly being used for fraud, deception and reputation attacks.
- The talent shortage, especially in adversarial ML, poses scaling challenges for AI security start-ups.
BEST MOMENTS
"We have found thousands of examples of models that have been loaded with malware where we've malware hiding in weights of models."
"Current cybersecurity stack is not even parsing models. It's like trying to point a windows product at a Mac file."
"If you have the inputs to the model and you have the outputs to the model, you basically have the training set and the labels."
"Every time we talk to a customer, we find a new [AI use case]. The world is getting really creative."
"There's just an enormous shortage of adversarial machine learning talent out there."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan talks in this episode about how ChatGPT unlocked 10 years of knowledge in just 2 minutes and why this is what focused him on AI and its role in the future of business. Ryan also talks about the recent breakthrough at the Google AI research wing, Deepmind.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Ryan tested AI at first by using something he knew to be true and in this first instance, it was already 95% of the way there. At first, this scared him.
- Testing the AI further changed Ryan’s prior perception, he started to see its use cases in business.
- If you can build a solid foundation for your AI use cases, you can then build upon this foundation and easily leverage AI in a multitude of ways.
- The research wing of google AI had a breakthrough where the AI could understand how to handle mathematical equations.
BEST MOMENTS
"I stopped and I was scared shitless”
“I got turned onto it by one of the guests from my show”
“One of the biggest barriers for AI is understanding how to handle mathematical equations and how to solve those”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan interviews Cliff Simon, co-founder and CRO of Carabiner Group, about the concept of Revenue Operations. Simon provides tactical advice on implementing RevOps using real examples from his career scaling multiple start-ups. Learn how RevOps helps drive growth through data, customer journey mapping, and ecosystem-led strategies. He also shares his system for booking over 80 meetings a month through communities to drive pipeline!
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Implement RevOps early in your start-up journey to capture key data on customer journeys to inform strategic decisions as you scale.
- RevOps helps govern data, identify target customers, improve customer retention, and prepare for future fundraising or exit opportunities.
- Approach communities by adding value to others first without expecting anything in return to build relationships and organically spread brand awareness.
- Consistency in showing up and engaging personally and authentically both online and offline drives referrals and new business opportunities over time.
- In-person events and word-of-mouth referrals are powerful during economic uncertainty when other lead sources dry up.
- Focus on building a profitable business with retained earnings versus over-relying on outside capital to grow unsustainably.
BEST MOMENTS
"If this is the thing that's going to unlock your business, why wouldn't you invest there? It's not a cost centre."
"I can think back to one specific call when we were doing a CRO school...that one conversation led to five customers because people hit up, hit me up after the fact."
"It's got to be all of the appropriate pieces coming together, whether that's the right pieces of technology, the right service providers, the right talent inside of an organisation."
"I still think that's like pretty far across the chasm for a lot of folks, but it's coming and it's coming faster than I think any of us anticipated it coming."
"We all as human beings crave authentic, interpersonal relationships and you can't, you can't get that from an AI."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
One of the biggest releases of the GPT store occurred last week and in this episode, Ryan wants to highlight one of the best opportunities OpenAI released that many people missed! Ryan takes the time to walk through this important release and how you can make the most of it!
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
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KEY TAKEAWAYS
- OpenAI has released an option to keep your data secure whilst making effective data analysis.
- The reason many people haven’t used OpenAIs data analysis function is because of concerns around data sharing but this effectively eliminates any risk.
- It’s important to always remember that it is early days, things won’t always work perfectly.
- If you want to take large data sets and get recommendations on output, this is a great tool.
- Looking at any customer data can be a mammoth task, this will not only break it down for you but give you solutions.
BEST MOMENTS
"This is one of the examples of effective data analysis”
“It’s not bug-free, we’re early on”
“It covered everything from thumbnails to content structure”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan interviews David Farrell, RVP of Sales at Namely, about career advancement and leveraging AI. They discuss the key mistakes people make when seeking promotions, how to find mentors, become invaluable thought leaders, get constructive feedback, and self-promote accomplishments!
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Seek internal or external mentors with relevant experience to provide advice and broaden your skillset. Dedicate consistent time to learn from them.
- Become an expert in your field by taking bold action and volunteering for projects. Solve problems using the latest tech like AI. Thought leadership stands out.
- Ask managers for constructive feedback on skill gaps and your reputation. Then address those deficiencies to show improvement.
- Promote accomplishments like improved metrics or new efficiencies to leaders. If you don't, they only remember you as initially hired.
- Know your data and metrics thoroughly. Advocate for yourself by showing clear progress. Don't let poor data drive decisions.
- Adopt innovations like AI early to boost efficiency, even if the company isn't providing training. The skills pay dividends in recognition.
- Ask leaders outright what blind spots are preventing you from being promoted and how to address them.
- Mentor others both externally and internally. It might feel like you don’t have time but the exchange of ideas helps you develop and progress.
BEST MOMENTS
"I try to just figure out how do I, how can I help the organization win by getting what I want out of it?"
"Become an expert in your field or just invaluable...those are the people that get promoted."
"If you're not tracking your progress, if you don't know your data points...decisions are going to get made without you."
"Adopting new tech early as a tool to scale and create efficiencies...I really see that with AI."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan dives into the brand-new releases from both the new GPT store and ChatGPT for Teams. He test drives new tools like Consensus for academic research, VideoGPT for generating videos, and GPT Finder for discovering the best language models. Though impressed by some offerings, Ryan spots monetization and quality control issues that could hamper adoption but still believes the Teams release will convince many businesses to fully embrace AI, particularly given the enhanced security and dedicated workspaces!
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
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KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Consensus summarizes academic papers relevant to prompts, but requires signing up for a paid account, showing how third-parties may use the GPT store for lead gen.
- VideoGPT generates animated videos from text prompts but quality needs refinement based on Ryan's test video of a "dad bod" outrunning friendly GPT bots.
- Discovery tools like GPT Finder promise to uncover top language models but failed to deliver helpful results in Ryan's first hands-on attempt.
- Monetization and quality control are unclear for the GPT store, though mining user data for training seems a priority over profits currently.
- GPT for Teams offers enhanced security, custom models, and data privacy assurances lacking in consumer ChatGPT.
- Dedicated workspaces and role-based access controls make the Teams release enterprise-ready for rigorous compliance needs.
- The "no training on customer data" pledge may convince companies to embrace AI despite lingering ethical concerns.
- Upsell prompts show insights and analytics features require the Enterprise tier, hinting at sales funnel tactics ahead.
BEST MOMENTS
"It takes you to consensus which is the designer of this and it takes you to their website and it's kind of like blurred out."
"The title of the video is dad bod versus GPT which I thought was the absolute amazing video."
"There's a whole other section as you see over here on security and privacy."
"Sometimes you just need to work with it a little bit. That's what happened on the research side with pulling up the papers."
"I could see OpenAI doing the same thing because as it's set up right now it's not a pay per use model is really open source."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan is joined by the Co-Founder and COO of Obie insurance, Aaron Letzeiser, who shares how identifying one costly mistake led him to pivot and embrace AI for growth. Listen as Aaron talks about the critical decisions that make-or-break start-ups; from avoiding common founder missteps to leveraging partners for customer acquisition. Aaron also brings a tactical playbook for scaling with limited resources and shares actionable growth tactics.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Aaron pivoted from a free platform to a paid insurance offering based on 200+ customer discovery interviews
- Partner with non-competing software platforms to embed services and decrease churn
- Stay laser-focused on a single niche before expanding into adjacent markets
- Use AI to drive core insurance underwriting and operations via visual recognition models
- Market conditions like rising interest rates can significantly impact lending partners
- Revisit sales processes and tighten SOPs during rapid scaling to ensure quality
BEST MOMENTS
"We really should have continued to listen to our customers and utilize that as the guiding principle of what we ended up building."
"Do one thing and do it well. That was advice we should have taken sooner."
"AI is endless. We use visual models to identify fire hydrants and drive insurance underwriting."
"As the team grows, how do we ensure the quality does not also drop off?"
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan reveals his top predictions for AI in 2024 including what existing features will advance and develop as well as brand new capabilities.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
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KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Open AI will start to be leveraged for private use cases with open-sourced models.
- AI advancements in video in 2024 will mimic the image advancements in 2023
- We are going from GPT to agents
- The top priority in 2024 for a vast amount of organizations is shifting from AI in product to AI in people
BEST MOMENTS
"This will be the year we go from open-AI to open-source AI”
“Individual videos will be customized for individual people”
“Agents are a collection of automated processes that the GPTs are going to provide”
“The number 2 area that was being focused on, is sales and marketing”
“83% of organizations don’t know how to implement AI”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
In this episode, Ryan is a guest on the AI Chat podcast hosted by Jaeden Schafer, founder of AI Box, a no-code AI app builder. They discuss leveraging AI tools like ChatGPT to help grow and scale companies. Jaeden talks about building an AI automation platform and they debate whether AI will replace the bottom third of sales roles. Ryan also gives tangible tips for using AI to save time and increase strategic thinking.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Ryan tested ChatGPT by roleplaying as a CFO, giving context about metrics and emotions. It answered over 90% accurately based on his sales experience.
- He uses the TEAMS framework: AI for Time-savings, Execution efficiency, Acumen gains, Money generation, and Skills advancement.
- Jaeden's start-up AI Box is a no-code platform to automate workflows by chaining AI models using customized prompts.
- Simple ways to start with AI: swap Google searches for ChatGPT and automate your most tedious weekly tasks.
- AI will likely replace the bottom third of sales roles first, like SDRs. But higher-value complex sales still need human connection.
- Remotely working with AI is less effective than being in-person, much like post-COVID return to offices based on falling productivity.
- Automating functions with a singular vision prevents continuous re-evaluation and improvement that humans intrinsically bring.
- Yoshio Bengio, pioneering AI researcher, says we've seen 8 years of progress in 4 months recently. It has caused massive disruption but there are also tons of opportunities ahead.
BEST MOMENTS
"Just verbally talking and showing appreciation from person to person just does wonders, right? Which is totally outside of it. [AI]"
"If you haven’t fully tried to integrate this [AI] into everything that you do at work is like, obviously there is, there’s no better time to start than, you know, Five months ago or 10 months ago."
"I had things that I literally have to have. Like a prompt in my, on ChatGPT that is open every day on my computer because it's just something I have to do all the time."
"I was literally using it the night it was released!”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Want to transform your sales team with AI? Ryan is guest on Enterprise Sales Development with Eric Quanstrom, where he shares practical tips for leveraging generative AI to give your team a competitive edge. Learn how AI can help sales reps vastly improve business acumen, conduct lightning-fast market research, quickly generate pitches and collateral, and much more. With Ryan's guidance, AI becomes an easy-to-use "cheat code" to make your team 2-3x more effective.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- AI can rapidly improve sales acumen by revealing executive KPIs, challenges, and emotional drivers
- Prompt engineering not needed - effective prompts provided to sales reps
- AI allows creating entire sales departments, comp plans, etc. in minutes
- Sales reps must embrace AI or risk replacement by younger AI-powered reps
- Using AI over time creates a "self-scaling organization" through continuous innovation
- Free AI tools can be highly effective when focused on the right business use cases
- Taking continuous action with AI, even starting small, compounds over time
- Feeding AI good inputs drives good outputs - "garbage in, garbage out"
BEST MOMENTS
"I tested it with that question of all those things that I just mentioned and got probably close to 90, 95 percent of the way there with just a single question."
"You could literally look at my LinkedIn profile, looked at, look at my last, like few months of content, I post on this stuff all the time of actual use cases."
"You don't need to learn how to be a prompt engineer. You don't even need to learn how to identify the business use cases."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan shares a previous insightful episode with Terry Jones the founder of Travelocity and Kayak about innovation and disruption. Terry provides an origin story going from a travel agent start-up to American Airlines executive, then launching Travelocity and taking it public in the dotcom boom. He shares lessons on innovating within big companies, creating culture, celebrating failure, and more.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Culture allowing failure and having curious team members who take risks are critical for innovation
- Circulate ideas widely to get around negativity and old ways of thinking
- Deliver small product upgrades frequently to engage customers
- Use both old sales methods like dinner meetings and new video tools
- AI and new business models are revolutionizing industries today
- Top leaders must drive change by reaching down to celebrate innovation successes and failures
BEST MOMENTS
"At Kayak.com all the customer complaints went directly to the engineers. Give the pain to the people who cause the pain."
“The company doesn’t care how much effort you put into it. They only care what they get.”
“Don’t forget the old methods work too... Did you like call him? Did you go take him to dinner?"
"If you fail, you get driven out. Well, kill projects, not people."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Myron Golden joins Ryan to share his insights on business growth, mindset shifts, and personal development. Drawing from decades of experience coaching thousands of entrepreneurs, Myron reveals the key principles and mindset changes needed to rapidly scale any business 10-50x.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Double your leads by moving cold audiences effectively by warning about negative outcomes rather than promising positive ones
- Boost conversions from 10% to 20% by detaching from the need for a "yes" and creating buying environments
- Recognize and replace limiting programming through intentionality to fill identity gaps
- Play bigger faster - a 20-year-old Myron could have been a multimillionaire by 25 with the right perspective
- Principles always work if you apply them right; what got you here won't get you there
- To scale from $10K to $100K+ per month, focus on doubling leads, boosting conversions, adding premium offers, and implementing continuity.
- Getting caught in the "trap of the familiar" limits growth; you have to think ahead of where the puck is going, not just where it is now.
BEST MOMENTS
"If you will become more intentional about everything you do...take inventory of the things you’re doing and ask yourself, how many of those things am I doing on autopilot?"
"People will work hard at what’s not working so they don’t have to think about what would work."
"The difference between where most people are and where they could be does not lie in their potential. It lies in their perspective."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan has interviewed 100s of CEOs and in this episode shares the 6 key things he has learnt from all of these conversations. He talks about why this is relevant going into 2024 and highlights why these 6 things are essential knowledge for anyone wanting to found a company or become a CEO.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
- Figure out your strengths and lean into them as well as learn to recognise your weaknesses. Find someone to help with the things you aren’t naturally great at.
- Overnight success is a myth, everyone has failures.
- To be a successful CEO, you need to struggle and have difficulties, figuring things out as you go.
- There is not a one-size-fits-all go-to-market strategy. You need to research and decide which would work best for your business as well as you as a CEO or founder.
- Speaking to real people gives you a different type of knowledge and wisdom than if you were to just ask Google, or AI for the answer. People talking about their own experiences is invaluable.
- What it takes to become a successful CEO when odds are against you.
BEST MOMENTS
“Every CEO I spoke to had exceptional strengths but also had significant weaknesses”
“Every interview struggles massively at points in their life, nobody had a perfect plan from day 1”
“There’s not one single cheat code for growth”
“My eyes have been opened to things and areas I didn’t even know existed”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan is joined by Andrew Kahl, CEO of Back Box, a network and security automation company. Learn Andrew's tips for decisive decision-making and ensuring product-market fit when starting from zero as well as his views on customer retention and strategic alignment. Andrew also gives his perspective on today's economic uncertainty, longer sales cycles, and investments in AI.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- A traumatic childhood experience with his father losing his job fuelled Andrew's motivation to start companies and be in leadership roles.
- Decisiveness and ensuring your solution solves an existing problem with a sizable market are critical when going from zero to one product.
- Strategically aligning your product roadmap based on user feedback builds sustainability and retains customers.
- Despite economic uncertainty, Back Box is still seeing deals happen, though with longer sales cycles lately.
- Andrew sees AI as an early-stage technology and wants to ensure it won't compromise infrastructure before implementing.
BEST MOMENTS
"I remember going to bed that night thinking when I'm older, I'm never going to let somebody else dictate my future."
"If you create something because you think it's cool, but there's no problem out there...you're going to find a lot of frustration."
"How you take care of [customers] is critically important...that should be the long tail of the relationship.”
"I don't want to implement something just because it's popular or everybody else is doing it."
"I've been having fun with chat GPT...I created a silly little poem the other day and it's pretty cool too."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
One of the biggest challenges many businesses are facing right now is sustainable scaling, particularly in regards to AI knowledge. So, in this episode, Ryan talks about how to increase and improve your teams output using ChatGPT, aiding you in becoming a thought-leader in your organisation, industry and beyond.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Don’t wait for others to take action. You always have options and actions you can take yourself, so get started now.
- Stop putting off learning AI, just a short time spent learning now will save you hundreds of hours within the year.
- Start with you, once you have learnt the basics and understand what’s possible you can then start getting your team working with AI tools.
- Create an innovation engine in your organization so you can then collect expertise, thoughts and ideas and innovate with them.
- You can start to see the results of AI implementation within a month.
BEST MOMENTS
"73% of employers priorities was to hire talent, specifically AI talent”
“Instead of waiting 9 months I could have taken the bull by the horns and made shit happen by myself”
“That’s a 20-40x investment”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Have you ever wondered if there’s a way to multiply your time, money and your mind in minutes? In this episode, Ryan shows you exactly how you can do all three of these things by improving your knowledge of AI. Ryan also uses recent examples of his own experience to prove just how much worth this can have to any business as well as you as an individual.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- We’re in the midst of what Ryan calls the ‘messy middle’ of AI, which is the balance between opportunities and overwhelm.
- There are 5 categories you can implement into your life to scale your AI knowledge:
T – Time
E – Execution
A – Acumen
M – Money
S – Skills - To implement this, chose a category per day for 5 days and get the flywheel going!
- There are a lot of things that in the past would be done via an agency or outsourced, you can now do many of these things yourself utilizing AI.
- You can learn new skills in minutes with AI, building and scaling what you are able to do in terms of time but skillset wise too.
BEST MOMENTS
"We have a very high stakes problem at the moment but with that problem comes and opportunity”
“I’m going to test AI on something I know to be true through over 10k hours of direct experience”
“We went from logic to emotion all in one swoop”
“I’m an AI first organization”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
From concept to cashflow, Ryan breaks down chat GPTs potential in this episode. Learn how to elevate your use cases with AI and specifically what you can do to create AI opportunities. Ryan also reveals some of his top tips and knowledge from his in-depth knowledge of sales and AI integration as well as how he views the future of monetization and one of the biggest dangers to be aware of.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The monetization of chat GPT isn’t going to happen the way many people first predicted.
- Many leaders, even those without a tech background, want to use AI to create new opportunities.
- Chat GPT can help with guidance, having a conversation and it being created.
- Stage number two is where you give ChatGPT more specific prompts alongside context, allowing it to provide more accurate and tailored results.
- Integration, so using ChatGPT with other APIs/systems is the third level which helps you create complex and bespoke results.
- Privately use GPT to do a task for you, choose a task that you do repeatedly and regularly so you can compare your experience.
- Be careful with any property information if sharing at scale because chatGPT can, and will, show others how it was created initially.
BEST MOMENTS
"I’ve talked to a lot of individuals, even leaders who want to create a new opportunity with AI”
“Try something simply for yourself, make it private, see what experience you have with a simple task that you do day in and day out”
“It will basically give you what kind of data it has and at the same time will also identify how it was created”
“Sam Altman…was very vague on purpose”
“What gets used the most that brings the most users on is how they are going to monetize and pay people”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan is joined by Bob van Luijt in this episode to discuss his open-source AI company Weaviate. Listen in as Ryan and Bob break down Weaviate's unique vector database technology powering the next wave of AI applications. Bob talks about the business model behind many open-source infrastructure companies, how Weaviate helps developers easily build and scale AI solutions, and where Bob sees AI transforming businesses over the next 12 months.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Weaviate provides the core infrastructure for storing and indexing vector embeddings from AI models to enable faster search and retrieval.
- Open-source companies like Weaviate make money by offering additional services like support, training, and managed services around their free technology.
- Weaviate targets developers through a "bottom-up" product-led growth strategy focused on helping them succeed with AI applications.
- Current AI systems are limited by their binary nature, but new probabilistic AI promises opportunities to build more nuanced applications.
- Combining generative AI models with vector databases enables more complex AI agents for legal services, cybersecurity, and other business use cases
BEST MOMENTS
“I was a part of a community called a Google developer expert community. And I was invited in 2016 to Google IO. And during the keynote, Sunder Pichai, the CEO of Google went on stage and he said, we got to move from mobile first to AI first."
“How do we make sure that, that we really can go to production and that we can bring it to their customers as well? Because AI, and I don't mean this, I really mean this, it's like a seismic shift in how we build technology”
"If you store it and you can't get it out anymore, it's useless. The problem we had was that most search was always keyword based."
"We passed that point of good enough. So that opened the eyes of a lot of people. It's like, Hey, actually we can, we can build stuff with this."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan revisits past interviews with CEOs and founders Matthew Tillman of Open Envoy, Doug Dennerline of BetterWorks and Joao Ferror Dos Santos who is running a 30-day experiment making ChatGPT the CEO of his new company Aesthetic Apparel. They discuss leveraging AI to grow companies, best practices for leading teams, the future of HR tech, and more. With over 20 years in machine learning and experience scaling multiple companies, these guests provide valuable insights for entrepreneurs looking to build successful businesses.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Commoditization of AI through open-source tools allows start-ups to leverage advanced technology like computer vision more easily.
- Building a strong team that challenges the status quo daily is crucial for any high-growth company.
- As a founder, you must recognise what things are worth delving into deeply and what ideas and thoughts need to be put ‘on the back burner’. Investigating and getting involved in anything to do with your business can be too easy as you have so much passion for it.
- Focus on your business and what you can do more of today to grow it.
- Customer feedback is always an opportunity, the information you get is invaluable.
- AI will transform HR by eliminating bias and repetitive tasks so managers can focus on developing employees.
- The rapid advancement of AI demands more ethical guidelines and oversight to match the pace of technological innovation.
- Turning AI experiments into real businesses requires thoughtful strategy while preserving what makes the story compelling.
BEST MOMENTS
"Math is totally commoditized and free. I'm an investor in Stability AI. If this human is being treated like a robot, let's find them some value add work to do." - Matthew Tillman
“You optimize towards customers that will love you and refer you” - Matthew Tillman
“The reality is machines do this black and white input better than you can handle it” - Matthew Tillman
"I want smart, hardworking people that have an opinion, that come to the company and challenge it every day and have fun doing it." - Doug Dennerlein
“The hardest people worked for me was when I was able to connect the corporate goals to individual goals, both personally and professionally” - Doug Dennerlein
“I have a very low ego environment in my company and I don’t believe in lines”- Doug Dennerlein
“I want to create content that I will respect, I don’t want to use templates to sound like everyone else” – Joao Ferrao
“We are disrupting basically almost everything and the reality is it’s a big double-edged sword”- Joao Ferrao
“Technology is accelerating ahead of our emotions” - Joao Ferrao
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan gives his thoughts on the recent OpenAI fiasco including the firing of CEO Sam Altman. He talks about the impact he thinks this will have as well as revealing the reasons behind the firing of Sam Altman. Ryan also talks about how to create a business that isn’t over-reliant on one AI model and the steps you can take to protect yourself operationally.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- After being fired by OpenAI, Sam was offered a job in AI research at Microsoft.
- Shortly after he was fired, 700 of the 800 OpenAI employees issued a letter to the board threatening to quit.
- Ryan believes Sam was fired due to safety. That risks were identified, and Sam wasn’t open and communicative about these.
- Some companies are already heavily reliant on OpenAI and if they were to fold or go bust this would impact them severely.
- It’s essential to not rely on one AI model for your business as many scenarios could negatively impact your business, exactly like the situations currently occurring because of the OpenAI issues.
- Create a prompt library so if you have to pivot from one AI model to another you have all your data and research to hand to use across any language model.
- If you are looking at leveraging anything AI internally then make sure you leverage the best capabilities of various AI models.
- Evaluate where you are at with your current use and dependency on particular AI models, including tools.
- Create solutions moving forward that leverage an agnostic approach towards models.
- Understand the differences between closed-source and open-source AI models, effectively leveraging what will work best for you.
BEST MOMENTS
"We still don’t truly understand the reason and know why”
“Sounds like Microsoft still want to work with OpenAI”
“There’s talk of customers trying to pull out, of partners trying to pull out”
“You want to have a model agnostic solution or model agnostic solution to integrating AI”
“We’re early on, this is a highly unregulated environment”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Join Ryan as he talks to Manik Sura, CEO of Therma, about how he turned his passion for sustainability into a thriving tech startup using AI. Manik gives behind-the-scenes advice on building a VC-backed company from scratch along with his top lessons learned and how AI is altering not just the business world but the planet.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Cooling equipment drives nearly 10% of global warming through energy use, food waste from spoilage, and the release of ultra-potent greenhouse gases. The problem is growing rapidly as developing countries adopt more cooling.
- Manik’s start-up Therma uses sensors, data science, and controls to dynamically manage the operation of AC units to save businesses money while cutting emissions.
- After early struggles trying to digitize food safety logs for users, Manik realized he had to fully automate temperature monitoring instead of just moving paper forms to mobile devices. Adoption and growth took off.
- To thrive as an entrepreneur, Manik recommends believing you can shape the future through sheer persistence, maintaining a higher purpose beyond personal gain, and surrounding yourself with great people.
- AI promises big climate benefits by optimizing energy systems, predicting weather and usage patterns, monitoring illegal deforestation, improving recycling, and more.
BEST MOMENTS
"If food waste were a country, it would be like the fourth largest emitter."
"You can actually create the future...If you stick with something and try and work on it, often good things happen."
"Do it for some reason beyond yourself...It makes it worthwhile to wake up."
"Every technology stack being used to tackle climate change can be augmented with AI in one or multiple ways."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Join Ryan in this episode as he interviews AI expert Jaeden Schafer on how he leveraged chatGPT to rapidly grow his AI podcast to over 1 million listens! They dive into the controversial implications of AI-generated content and Jaeden's unique growth strategies for standing out on social media. Don't miss his exclusive tips on launching multiple niche podcasts simultaneously to determine the best niche.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Launch multiple niche podcasts at once, with keyword names, to identify the best niche through organic performance
- Use AI tools like AnswerThePublic and ChatGPT to generate endless episode ideas and scripts
- Grow an engaged audience on one platform first before expanding
- Partner with influencers in your niche to cross-promote once you have authority
- Focus on the social platforms you naturally use rather than trying to force new ones
BEST MOMENTS
"I started 10 podcasts, not episodes, but like full blown podcast channels in whatever that niches and I gave them all a one word keyword name."
"You just direct your own movie and it will just throw it all together with the actors you pick."
"I actually had podcasts with like 100% AI generated content and multiple got over 100,000 listens on them."
"At the end of the day, like going to a conference has its own value for networking, but I might just want to sit on my couch."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This is a special episode where Ryan talks through the top things to come out of ChatGPTs Dev day, specifically focusing on the three things that will change the entrepreneur and business landscape. Ryan breaks down what is happening and talks about why he thinks it will be life-changing.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- There is going to be a GPT store, this will be done in the B2C interface. This will allow those without coding expertise to use AI in ways that were previously inaccessible to them.
- The platform will become multi-modal which means you just identify what you need and it will automatically use the right tool for that.
- ChatGPT are now talking about what they call ‘assistants’ which are effectively autonomous agents that have access to a wide range of tools.
BEST MOMENTS
“These are life-changing developments”
“They are knocking down the walls to make autonomous agents very easy to build”
“I built my assistant in probably 10 minutes”
“What you’re going to start seeing is this next evolution”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan reveals 3 core strategies for revenue growth that he discovered using AI. Ryan outlines these strategies in detail including examples, based on experience and knowledge from his access to hundreds of executive teams working with AI within SaaS companies.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Give AI context to what you are doing including who you serve and what your offering is.
- Tell AI the outcome you want.
- Be specific in your prompt about what you want from AI.
- Pre-QBR preparation can have a significant impact, from gathering metrics to looking at pain points and opportunities
- AI is an amazing resource to have, allowing you to tap into information and 'labor' that you otherwise would miss out on.
BEST MOMENTS
"One of the things I see is there’s not a secondary sales process”
“Use data to upsell additional services”
“Be specific and tactical”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
In this episode, Ryan interviews Eric Xiao, founder and CEO of Laxis, an AI assistant for revenue teams. They discuss Eric's journey from software engineer to investor to founder, and how he has grown Laxis to over 25,000 users and 3,000 organizations with almost no marketing budget. Eric explains his go-to-market strategy of partnerships, marketplaces, SEO, and referral programs. They also talk about trends in AI productivity tools, challenges in fundraising and hiring, and opportunities to eliminate repetitive and mundane tasks for revenue professionals with AI.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Eric grew Laxis to 25k users with no marketing budget through partnerships, SEO, marketplaces, and referral programs.
- Getting early exposure through Product Hunt led to a partnership with Cisco that gave significant credibility.
- Free cloud credits from Google and Microsoft start-up programs enabled partnerships with AppSumo.
- AI can save revenue teams 5+ hours per week by automating notetaking, data entry, and other repetitive tasks.
- The future of productivity AI lies in specialized agents for outreach, coaching, research, scheduling, and more.
- AI agents need to become more accessible before mass adoption can occur.
- Leveraging AI thoughtfully can eliminate soul-sucking work and empower revenue teams.
BEST MOMENTS
"We have over 25,000 active users from over 3,000 organizations."
"At Cisco Live I was invited as a guest speaker. Our logo and Cisco's were together on a billboard on Highway 101."
"AI can easily save sales reps time taking notes and filling the CRM. That alone saves 5+ hours per week."
"I want to find the best people who believe AI can change things. Team building is my top focus right now.”
"The future is AI agents for recruiting, sales, coaching - automating tasks people spend money on today."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Using the chat GPT voice feature, Ryan interviews an AI version of Chris Vos! Listen in and follow along as Ryan talks about AI objections with AI itself and demonstrates a great use case for this new feature.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- You can use calibrated questions to try and overcome objections from others about the financial pressures of adopting AI in a business
- If you have been told that the business or individual is too busy to adopt AI into its workflow, this may actually be a disguise for other objections.
- With a CFO objection, it’s usually due to not having the financial detail, show them the numbers and how it could realistically look to implement but also what the numbers in terms of outcomes would look like too.
BEST MOMENTS
“Hit them with the mirroring technique to dig deeper”
“The goal isn’t just to overcome the objection but guide them to a solution that’s mutually beneficial”
“The too busy objection often disguises other underlying concerns”
“Keep them engaged and let them come to the realisation that they can’t not afford to move forward with your proposal”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Soumyadeb Mitra is the founder of Rudderstack. He joins Ryan to talk about his journey including being personally recruited by the CEO of Snowflake as a machine learning expert and growing a series b company. He also talks about AI, where he sees it heading and the integration with marketing tech and data.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Rudderstack helps solve companies problems around data, particularly around collection of data and how to build use cases out of it.
- Data marketing is constantly evolving and to build growth and be successful you have to adapt and evolve with it.
- Try and understand the problems enterprises have, you can then build your product around this, creating good product market fit from day one.
- Having an understanding of how enterprises work gives a unique context and ability to create a great product market, having real-world experience.
- Whilst AI has great use cases it can’t replace everything, it isn’t there yet, but it has the potential to be.
- To get the best results with AI, you need to be as specific as possible and provide context.
- Companies are all unique and change management takes time even with the strong capabilities of AI, wide-scale change won’t happen overnight.
- Rudderstack are focused on a product recommendation model, they have their core products but expand and develop based on customers' recommendations.
BEST MOMENTS
“He had access to the third most powerful computer in the world”
“Rudderstack is the culmination of 10-15 years of working in data and data marketing”
“There’s wild stuff you can do [with AI]”
“Yes a lot also will be automated but will I be the first person to jump into that, probably not”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
What are 60% of sales organisations failing at? Join Ryan in this episode as he talks all about generating clear ROI that your customers believe in, including how to identify tangible solutions, the framework he uses and some of the key ways you can leverage AI to create game-changing results.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- If you don’t have a clear ROI plan then it will impact leads, opportunities, close rates and more.
- Most companies can’t dedicate the time they want to or need to on this but anyone can leverage AI to help.
- Even if you are using AI solutions that have been tailored or built for specific needs it will almost always still require input and time from you particularly if you want something of high quality
- Whenever Ryan and his team present a solution, they make sure that the result they expect to achieve is clear via messaging and presentations allowing for fast implementation.
- An AI prompt library is a great asset that will help you leverage AI fast.
- ChatGPT is known for not being perfect with numbers so Ryan suggests you use it to help you generate ideas and concepts and then build the last 5-10% onto what it gives you for accuracy.
BEST MOMENTS
“Most people don’t talk about this in public”
“Always do that extra 5%/10% on the quality side”
“The number one thing people in big companies are trying to do is avoid doing more work”
“I use ChatGPT which I think is the best for creative thinking”
"You are gonna be looked at completely different to every other competitor that you run into because you're speaking in their ROI love language"
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
The saturation crisis in SaaS is at an all-time high, join Ryan in this episode where he tells you how you can break through the noise, get noticed and leverage AI to differentiate yourself and your business.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- You can use AI to leverage competitor reviews and accelerate your results.
- You need to be clear and specific with your prompts with AI to get responses and results you can use effectively.
- You can use AI to outline the weaknesses of your competitors and how you can use that to your advantage.
- Instead of spending hours sifting through information, you can utilize AI to do the hard work and then weaponize this information against your competitors.
- Having the right data and information means you can proactively plan your future messaging and actions.
BEST MOMENTS
“If you’re really tight in what you’re doing in your prompt, you can get really good results”
“I think this is absolutely game-changing in multiple ways”
“You could use it in your messaging, you could proactively cover the objection before it comes up in a sales meeting”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan shares the key things he learnt from the recent event he attended. He walks through the framework he uses to leverage events and also talks about how he, and you too, can use ChatGPT vision when attending large-scale events like these.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Always have a focus on new business when attending events
- Identify 5-7 people you want to meet in advance before going to an event
- There are large companies spreading misinformation about AI, this could be because they aren’t up to date or because they are threatened by large language models
- Download chatGPT on your phone to unlock all capabilities including using vision
- Categorize companies by their solution, customer base and revenue and look at the results to see who may be your best partners.
- ChatGPT can be utilised to take frameworks, information from events and be told to create guides from them, making it bespoke to what you want to use it for.
BEST MOMENTS
"I always try and learn something insightful and interesting that I can immediately apply when I get back from the event”
“I’ve been a nut about AI, really into it, deep into it, trying to find all the use cases”
“Summarization of notes with action items, you can even ask it (chatGPT) to summarize”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan speaks with John Barrows and shares practical strategies on using artificial intelligence and revenue cheat codes to scale yourself and your company. They give key tactics for becoming "superhuman" and accelerating growth and the conversation covers everything from leveraging technology to optimizing sales funnels.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Leveraging artificial intelligence can help streamline operations and unlock growth.
- "Revenue cheat codes" refer to unconventional marketing and sales tactics that get results fast.
- Creating sales funnels and workflows that convert is critical for scaling a business.
- Mindset shifts are required to go from solopreneur to successfully managing a team.
- Getting clarity on your superpower and ideal clients helps you stand out.
BEST MOMENTS
"The only limit is your mindset and willingness to experiment with new ideas."
"Don't be afraid to take risks and fail fast, that's how you learn what will catapult your business."
"Delegating tasks that drain you is essential so you can focus on your genius zone."
"Ask yourself: What makes me uniquely able to help this audience?"
"When you combine smart tech with human insight, the possibilities are endless."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Imagine if you could see into your business's soul? In this episode, Ryan explores the new capabilities being developed by ChatGPT to be able to revolutionize your business and identifies many example use cases where you can utilise and leverage it too!
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- ChatGPT has ‘vision’ which enables you to use voice, picture and text to explore and revolutionize your business.
- Today in regards to AI will be a similar era to the internet, those early adopters will reap the benefits in years to come.
- You could easily code landing pages and even software with these new tools from ChatGPT.
- These general source capabilities will start to be refined, if you can learn to leverage it, particularly before most then you will benefit and so will your business.
- Take some time to try out these tools and experiment with what is possible.
BEST MOMENTS
“It’s like the early days of the internet”
“He turned a drawing into software”
“I’m really excited, not just with the capability of these tools but for you”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan is joined in this episode by Subbu Viswanathan, co-founder and CEO of Disprz, a learning, upskilling and talent mobility platform. Subbu shares how Disprz helps enterprises get their workforce ready for current and future roles through their suite of products tailored to different levels of digital maturity. He provides insights into Disprz's unique go-to-market strategy of early international expansion across 4 continents, as well as the frameworks and AI they leverage to quantify skills development and connect it to business outcomes. Subbu also discusses the importance of skills-based thinking in recruitment, performance reviews and succession planning.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Diversifying products and regions early on helped Disperse surpass $10M ARR in the journey to $100M.
- Disprz uses NLP-focused AI to understand roles, map skills to courses, identify gaps and enable personalization - improving ROI on learning.
- They break down roles into 12-15 component skills across functional, digital, leadership and meta categories that can be measured at 5 levels.
- Disprz is shifting enterprises to experience and skills-based hiring, reviews and succession planning.
- Frequent leadership gatherings and elevating regional heads are key to navigating the complexity of global expansion.
BEST MOMENTS
"I often feel we don't get paid fairly for it."
"Just as anybody in the world needs to use Excel there will come a time or the time is already here where everybody needs to use chat gpt for day-to-day work."
"Comedy is serious business. Likewise, soft skills are really hard."
"The diversity, it was never a single product solution that also caused certain challenges."
"No company is going to grow from $10m to $100m without going through the share of challenges."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/subramanian-subbu-viswanathan-7946632/
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan talks with sales expert Rob Jeppsen about how AI can help sales leaders and their teams boost productivity and performance. They share how AI tools like ChatGPT can take care of time-consuming tasks and free up salespeople to focus on their strengths, providing examples of how to leverage AI for research, prospecting, presentations, and more. Ryan emphasizes that AI is here now and adopting it early creates a huge advantage.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- AI tools like ChatGPT can take mundane tasks off your plate so you can focus on your strengths as a sales leader.
- Ask AI very specific questions tied to metrics and details to get the best, most actionable answers.
- Have your team share new AI use cases weekly to build an internal enablement library and drive adoption.
- Properly applied, AI can help your top salesperson produce 2-3X more and boost most reps’ output by 20-40%.
- Adopting AI early creates a competitive advantage - get started now before you get left behind.
BEST MOMENTS
"AI tools let you scale humans - we've never had that ability before."
"The macro reason this is different is there's utility AI that even your grandma could use."
"First-time leaders at 29 can outproduce seasoned 46-year-olds with AI.
"AI can reduce sales rep ramp time from 3 months to 3 weeks."
"This is the single biggest change the human race will undergo due to the speed."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Get on the List Today: https://www.aiforrevenue.com/sale-ai-accelerator-home
Ryan talks to you in this episode about why you can no longer afford to ignore the power of AI for business, including how you can increase your volume of work by 20% alongside increasing quality by 40%!
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The relationship between time and business and time and sales is often misunderstood. Time spent doesn’t equal success, it’s about using your time on the right tasks and AI can help with this.
- In the largest AI study conducted, individuals leveraging AI created 12% more and completed 25% faster too. The results they leveraged with AI were also of 40% higher quality.
- To get the best results from AI, you need to focus on top level executives and then the employees you have the largest number of.
- Look at your team members and tasks and really think about where automation can be implemented and what it would look like.
- Investigate what is possible in your business with AI, then create small steps towards this, discovering use cases as you integrate more and more automation and AI.
- If you can learn how to become competent in AI, learning how to leverage it to its best, you will be in high demand and start to become a leader.
BEST MOMENTS
"Unlock 10-20 hours in your week whilst also increasing your output by 40%”
“I can do 12% more tasks, I can do it 30% faster and I uplevel myself 40%, that’s freaking wild”
“There are salespeople that make more than executives”
“Organisations like Netflix are paying to have someone who is competent in AI”
“Dive into the numbers, look into the resources”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Get on the List Today: https://www.aiforrevenue.com/salesai
We’re all being told to switch to AI, but what could this mean in real terms for your business? Join Ryan as he outlines the ways AI could save you up to 80 hours a month and give you time back to focus on sales and other high-value tasks.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- AI can be used to manage digital tasks, to help save you time and wasted activity so you can focus on more value-added tasks that need a human touch.
- There are five buckets to leveraging AI:
Time
Execution
Acumen
Money
Skill(s) - It’s critical to look at all your non-sales activities and figure out the best mix of large-language models you can use
- If you can utilize the right language models in the right way then there is no need to spend thousands on tools.
- There is always a learning period when you start using AI, build this into your timeline.
- Create a daily AI log, so you are tracking your progress and what you are learning. You can also track and think about what other use cases this tool, model or prompt could work for
BEST MOMENTS
"The ultimate timesaver, how to leverage AI for that”
“I look at AI as a digital butler”
“AI is like life with 10 power-ups”
“I think this is going to change people's lives faster than anything in the history of man and I wanted to share this with you"
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Get on the List Today: https://www.aiforrevenue.com/salesai
Ryan talks about how to leverage AI to skyrocket productivity and get an edge over the competition. He shares the reasons why many sales leaders are lagging behind and explains how to implement an “anti-fragile” sales process through AI for quick wins. Ryan also provides a step-by-step guide for prompts, frameworks, goal setting, and continuous learning. Ryan stresses that ignoring AI means volunteering for extinction, as it is evolving all businesses. He invites you to join the Sales AI Accelerator program for more tactics on achieving AI mastery!
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Many sales leaders don't use AI personally, so their teams lack it. Implement it yourself first.
- Do an 80/20 analysis to identify key tasks AI can automate, like research, gaining back 7-10 hours a week.
- Learn prompting methods using context, examples, frameworks, level of detail, and size/structure.
- Set smart goals to integrate AI over 2 weeks. Log usage daily to refine approaches through feedback loops.
- Never stop learning. Join the Sales AI Accelerator program for continuous AI mastery tactics.
- AI delivers 40% better performance. Ignoring it means extinction. Embrace AI now for quick wins.
- AI is the biggest change in mankind. Help usher it positively through your work.
BEST MOMENTS
"I can't tell you how many CROs I've talked to...that are not even using AI personally."
"Just by having something like that in place could literally shave off 7 to 10 hours a week."
"If you have the 2.0 upgrade, you can leverage plugins and stack 3-4 different tasks in one command."
"It's not an option. It's the evolution of what's happening... Ignoring it, you're volunteering for extinction."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Get on the List Today: https://www.aiforrevenue.com/salesai
This episode discusses how sales roles could be impacted by AI automation in the next 12 months. Ryan explains how tools like Google Duplex demonstrate the rapid advancement of AI in mimicking human conversations. He warns that 30% of sales jobs could get eliminated due to AI's ability to automate communication and data analysis. However, Ryan offers solutions - take a personal audit of automatable tasks, understand the AI landscape, take initiative in your company to utilize AI, and establish yourself as an AI expert. By proactively using AI as an "Iron Man suit", sales professionals can augment their abilities rather than be replaced. Ryan makes an urgent call to action to ride the AI wave rather than be crushed by it.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- 30% of sales jobs could get automated in the next 12 months as AI tools advance rapidly.
- Audit your role for repetitive, automatable tasks and outsource them to AI.
- Don't wait - take the initiative now to utilize AI daily and become the AI expert at your company.
- Leverage large language models like GPT as your "master tool" instead of multiple niche AI tools.
- Complete a 30-day AI challenge to build expertise and identify use cases.
- Lead with AI expertise to future-proof your career and create new opportunities.
BEST MOMENTS
"We're human now. How do we then evolve to become a cyborg with how we work and effectively become superhuman where we're like Tony Stark flying around."
"You don't need to buy 50 slave tools if you understand the one master tool and how to leverage it, and that's the large language model foundation."
"By taking the lead with yourself and understanding AI, you will now be the go-to person - the AI expert in the organization."
"I wanted to make this episode to call out this threat because I see so many people falling asleep at the wheel with AI."
"You're either riding the wave or you are getting crushed by it. The challenge is up to you."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Join Ryan as he interviews Shay Howe, CMO of ActiveCampaign to talk about all things AI in growth and marketing. Shay shares what he would focus on if creating a start-up now: identifying market demand, building owned channels, and leveraging AI for content generation and research. With uncertainty around algorithms and paid media, he emphasizes product-led growth and referrals as key strategies.
Shay provides examples of how ActiveCampaign uses AI for attribution insights and highlights the importance of verticalized, practical content. He predicts storytelling and thought leadership will evolve to cut through AI-generated content.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Look for existing market demand when starting a company, don’t try to convince people they need something new. Find where a solution is missing.
- With changing algorithms and paid media, build owned channels like email and communities vs. relying solely on external platforms.
- Leverage AI for content generation but avoid jeopardizing SEO. Use it for ad copy, headlines, chatbots, and translations.
- AI excels at research and brainstorming. Use it to analyze competitors, explore verticals and generate ideas.
- Feed survey data into AI to get summarized insights on trends and themes.
- As AI democratizes content, focus on original, verticalized, practical information. Teach and help implement rather than just sharing ideas.
- Storytelling and thought leadership will be key to cutting through AI-generated content. Build authority through genuine value!
BEST MOMENTS
"I would look for where is their demand already, it's fishing in a stock pond, right? Like we don't have to go out and try and find the fish. It's already there."
"I think thought leadership is going to actually really start to evolve and folks going to have to find ways to build true authority and market."
"I think the trick is going to be where, where can that AI side, what opportunities will it open that we have not yet seen that the first mover is going to have strong advantages in, right?"
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan interviews Stefan Smulders, founder and chief strategy officer of Expandi, a LinkedIn automation SaaS company. Stefan shares how he bootstrapped Expandi to $8 million in ARR in just 4 years through relentless hustling, including doing over 700 product demos in the first 3 months. He emphasizes the power of inbound marketing through valuable content creation, building a personal brand with his face on it, and capturing leads into a tight community. Stefan also stresses the importance of focusing on reducing churn by improving onboarding and guidance instead of only chasing new signups. With the right team in place to solve these challenges, he’s confident Expandi can scale to $20 million ARR quickly. Tune in to hear Stefan’s energy, insights and unique story on growth marketing and scaling on LinkedIn.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- Stefan completed over 700 product demos in first 3 months to validate product-market fit and learn users' needs
- Expandi focused on inbound marketing through content creation and giveaways to build an audience
- Stefan his personal story and face on the brand to stand out and build trust
- Expandi captured leads into the community, to build relationships and get feedback
- 90% of new signups still come from content and inbound marketing
- The biggest challenge now for Expandi is reducing churn by improving onboarding
- With the right team, Stefan is confident Exapndi can rapidly scale from $8M to $20M ARR
- Relentless hustling and grind in the early days was key to explosive growth
BEST MOMENTS
"I was working around 16, 17 hours a day and mainly running demos."
"We started heavily to distribute all these pieces of content and that drove so many people."
"If you really understand what's the pain points of the people you want to reach, you can easily host live sessions.”
"The biggest transition I needed to understand and make was, okay, we need to leverage data-driven approaches."
"If we can solve both of them [problems] and we are working on a daily base, we will grow to 20 million within no time."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan is joined in this episode by Ori Karen, founder and CEO of LinearB, a software delivery management company nearing unicorn status. Ori shares how he and his co-founder built the company remotely, him in Tel Aviv and his partner in California. He outlines LinearB's growth strategy of focusing on the mid-market before expanding to enterprise. Ori stresses the importance of constantly evolving based on customer feedback. He also discusses key challenges around scaling the company efficiently and how LinearB is leveraging AI, using it to build internal tools that increase productivity.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- Ori and his co-founder built strong trust by working together previously, enabling them to scale a remote company.
- LinearB found product-market fit by staying focused on the mid-market before expanding upmarket.
- They grew rapidly by releasing MVPs, gathering customer feedback, and quickly iterating.
- Efficient growth and scaling teams 10x in size are their current scaling challenges.
- LinearB is using AI to build internal tools that drive productivity.
- Engineering leaders are an underserved audience that crave content, now more than ever.
BEST MOMENTS
"Being a co-founder with someone is sometimes more intense than a marriage."
"We weren't tempted to go after enterprise customers. We stayed focused on mid-market's high-velocity end-to-end sales cycle."
"If you really want engineering teams to improve, you've got to democratize the data."
"It's not enough to just spot problems, you need to program workflows to solve them."
"Engineering leaders are lonely. It's a very lonely job."
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
Ryan interviews Greg Rich, CEO of Vivantio, a SaaS company providing service management solutions. Greg started working in customer service at age 13 in his family's business and co-founded Vivantio in the early 2000s to fill a gap in the market for cloud-based service management software.
Greg talks about keeping up with rapid advancements in AI and using it to improve customer experiences. He shares how Vivantio scaled from nothing to $5 million in ARR through channel partnerships, expanding to the large U.S. market, and focusing on customer education. Greg discusses the challenges of scaling marketing and sales as Vivantio transitions to a high-growth organization. Tune in to hear Greg’s unique origin story and his vision to reach $20 million ARR in the next few years.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Greg Identified an untapped market for cloud-based service management SaaS in the early 2000s.
- He leveraged partnerships to fill the sales gap without significant cost early on. Greg was also creative in using low-cost marketing and pay-per-click to grow.
- Vivantio focuses messaging on educating customers about service optimization, education is key and Greg’s customer service background has enabled him to create and foster a customer-centric culture.
- Vivantio expanded to the U.S. in 2011, and now 50% of revenue comes from the U.S. market.
- Greg has developed tech to leverage customer data and AI to provide industry benchmarking as well as predictive analysis.
- The biggest challenge when transitioning to high growth is scaling marketing and sales.
BEST MOMENTS
“One of the first things we did was realize that Russ and I weren't sales and marketing people...how do we fill that gap without the money to pay people?"
"We leveraged our relationship with partners who were able to fill that gap we didn't have."
"Now 50 per cent of our customers are in the U.S."
"My biggest challenge is go-to-market - how do we scale, reach more people, get our message across succinctly?"
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
www.vivantio.com
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
Two-time founder and current VC investor Harpinder (Harpi) Singh joins Ryan in this episode. His firm, Innovation Endeavors was co-founded by the CEO of Google Eric Schmidt and they have invested in many companies including Uber. Harpi gives the interesting insights he has gained at a macro level of the start-up scene and talks about what you can do to make yourself more attractive for funding in the current climate. If you are looking at funding or just want to know what’s happening in the start-up space, particularly around the utilisation of AI this is an episode not to miss!
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Harpi met his founding team at Standford, sold 6 ½ years later, building another start-up which he then also sold.
- Having two to three founders appears to be the sweet spot for success for start-ups.
- As a start-up, you’re in a race against time to find product market fit and go-to-market and you want to try and do this as quickly as possible with the lowest cost. If you can focus on the right KPIs this can aid you with both things.
- The toolkit that is available now to start-ups just got 10x bigger and better. They are now able to utilise AI and associated technologies faster and more effectively due to their agility and ability to take on more risks.
- Chat GPT releasing an enterprise-specific AI will have a large impact on the marketplace, especially alongside Microsoft and Google releasing their own too.
- If you’re an enterprise, you really need AI software that is end-to-end so you aren’t having to add the complexity of merging tools.
- Harpi’s top 3 tips for a company to be highly investable is to create a must-have product. Be vigilant about the feedback you get back from the market and only act based on it.
- Founding in an economic downturn doesn’t have to be difficult it has its own unique opportunities such as being able to hire easily.
BEST MOMENTS
“With new data and compute you are able to come up with automation, with decisions making that’s much faster”
“The fundamental advantage start-up companies have is the speed up iteration”
“Almost every founder I talk to says they wish they had a co-founder”
“People are using AI to give super powers to their people”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.innovationendeavors.com
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
Dmitri Adler is the cofounder of Data Society which is an award-winning AI software and engineering firm serving the enterprise and service sectors. Data Society is one of Ink 5000 fastest growing companies and also one of the top ten ed-tech companies identified by Forbes! They bootstrapped themselves to $10 million using process-driven customer service and AI. Dmitri joins Ryan to discuss how they have achieved all of this and specifically highlights how to collect relevant data and the importance of AI literacy.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The skills and expertise execution of Data Society’s team paired with excellent customer service is why they have such good customer retention.
- Finding various yet consistent ways to drive value for their clients is one of Data Society’s core values.
- Processes to quantify customer feedback have been essential, Data Society ensures they do customer evaluation at multiple steps throughout the customers' journey.
- Humans are social animals and learning solo can be limiting. If you learn with others, such as your colleagues, it can be a lot more effective.
- Data Society tailors their programmes to clients’ use cases, ensuring it’s actionable means that it has a higher retention rate; people stick with it.
- We use AI to either do something by following a pattern or to make a recommendation based on a pattern it has learnt from. So, your organisation needs to be able to collect relevant data to utilise AI effectively.
- AI is a great impersonator and learning from people but when people can’t discern what is real and what isn’t from AI, that creates a distortion of the world and will lead to bad decisions.
BEST MOMENTS
“We’re focused on the enterprise, it’s very much about customer service”
“Customers come back when you do a good job”
“We’ve stuck to our guns in terms of what we’re very good at”
“If you want to use AI you have to have data that it can learn from and that it can utilise in order to tell you something”
“The most dangerous thing about AI is when you don’t know what it is doing, it’s powerful”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
Vinay Patankar is a three-time founder, including Process Street, an AI-powered process management platform that started with a workflow product. Vinay shares his experience of being a digital nomad for 10 years and how it inspired him to create Process Street. Ryan and Vinay also talk about the democratization of AI and the biggest value they think it will add to businesses.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Vinay began working as a digital nomad, doing this meant he had to create his own work as remote working wasn’t really a thing yet. He began creating a series of internet companies including SEO sites and selling other services.
- When he had 20 people on his team, Vinay started to feel overwhelmed by the management aspects, it became a personal pain and that’s what led to the creation of Process Street.
- A lot of AI products that are and will continue to be launched are to make repetitive processes more efficient or higher quality.
- Humans don’t like doing repetitive work but it is required for human prosperity, this is how AI can aid us.
- Human quality control and unique creativity are not things AI can replicate but most other things can be automated.
- HR, finance and real estate are the three main industries Vinay aids with his products.
- Process Street is similar to a lot of collaboration platforms but its main difference is Process Street has a builder and collaborator user model.
BEST MOMENTS
“Why isn’t there a software that does this for me, it felt like what I was doing was very repetitive”.
“The biggest value AI is going to add is the execution of these repetitive processes”
“I see it as just another form of automation”
“You can manipulate data in interesting ways”
“We don’t want to be creative in these scenarios, there are parts of businesses and types of businesses where you don't want that creativity"
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
Lloyed Lobo is the founder of Boast AI. He scaled from zero to $10mil+ and all with no investment! Lloyed created an entire community, utilising this community for growth and now has written a book about it. He talks to Ryan about how you can grow and lead a movement from scratch and then leverage it for your next opportunity and gives an amazing breakdown of how to bootstrap your way through building a business, avoiding giving up your freedom and equity to investors.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Entrepreneurship is all about taking something from nothing and dealing with risk and uncertainty to create a positive outcome
- After the advice from an entrepreneur, Lloyed took a sales job to learn the skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur.
- One of the best ways to bootstrap a company to $ 1 million plus ARR is to sell a service.
- Lloyed first started the company from his bedroom, he had to get very good at communicating with his customers and learning exactly what they wanted. They didn’t have anything else they could rely on.
- When starting out, talk to your customers to find out what their pain points are and discover what they need. You need to do things that are manual and won’t scale in the beginning.
- Think about the bigger picture and the wider purpose of your product, connect with your customers and help enable their success.
- Utilise other people’s credibility and brand reputation by collaborating with them.
- Get back to basics with your marketing and branding, simple can be very effective especially if you utilise tried and tested methods.
BEST MOMENTS
“You attract the energy you give out”
“I used to procrastinate on everything”
“Everything you do as an entrepreneur is all communication”
“You won’t know exactly what to build if you don’t do the work manually…do things that don’t scale in the beginning”
“You’re asking about the problem, not the solution”
“Building a service is a great way to bootstrap it”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lloyedlobo/
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
Gaurav Oberoi is the CEO and co-founder of Lexion.ai, a generative AI in the legal space. He is a 4x founder and was also a former VP of Product and survey monkey. Gaurav joins Ryan to talk about how to tactically create a mode with AI, how to get the best product market fit and the importance of time to value and demonstrating high-value ROI early on.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Lexion.ai makes software that helps companies accelerate the entire contracting process. They bring AI and acceleration to every part of the process.
- Linkedin is a great social platform to leverage, you can put content out there that provides value and also notifies people of your business at the same time
- It’s essential to focus on delivering a very high-quality product with high ROI otherwise having a good referral engine is useless.
- Positive feedback isn’t all you need to build a product, you need commitment from your early interest clients as well as the ability to read between the lines and push for the harder feedback that isn’t always immediately obvious.
- AI is quickly becoming more sophisticated but it still has a lot of limitations such as when something has been done incorrectly or where more context is needed.
- When using AI you need to teach it your personal rules, all the context it may need, generate guard rails and remember that it will constantly be evolving and you are driving that evolution.
- If you want to grow a start-up then you need to show high value quickly, the faster and more clearly you can show the ROI the better.
BEST MOMENTS
“Our software is all about any kind of document process that needs accelerating”
“Nowadays the most powerful social network for b2b companies is LinkedIn”
“It’s not really when people have paid that you’ve got success, it’s really when you see repeat usage that you know it’s working”
“Having significant data about users and their activity is a significant mode”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
Matthew Tillman is the CEO of OpenEnvoy and has worked in the machine-learning space for over 20 years. Matthew talks to Ryan about how he built his solution to generate 38x ROI for his customers, where to spend your time in your start-up as well as machine learning and the role of AI in reimagining what is possible.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- OpenEnvoy replaces complex accounts payable processes by replacing human-centric workflows with AI.
- One of the ways to overcome many go-to-market challenges is to hire a team that has the right skills to both create value and demonstrate it effectively to your customers.
- Matthew recognised there was a problem in the accounts payable industry as none of the companies could handle variable cost invoices, so he set out to fix it.
- As a founder, you have to recognise what things are worth delving into deeply and what ideas and thoughts need to be put ‘on the back burner’. It can be too easy to investigate and get involved in anything to do with your business as you have so much passion for it.
- Focus on your business and what you can do more of today to grow it.
- Customer feedback is always an opportunity, the information you get is invaluable.
- Think about which people can add value to your business but also who you as a leader and founder can add value to, to get the most out of your people.
- Focus on the customers who will love you and therefore will refer you, this is one of the least optimized customer acquisition levers.
- Machine learning and tech are so much cheaper, in many cases even free. This wasn’t possible 20 years ago; it has democratised many industries.
- Opensource tech means you get an incredible amount of feedback whilst having to provide a lot less value.
- Matthew believes that AI gives us the opportunity to stop treating humans like robots, finding solutions to help find them value-add work to do instead of treating people poorly.
- Demonstrating a 38x ROI for his customers proves that the OpenEnvoy solution is providing incredible value.
BEST MOMENTS
“All founders have to be insanely passionate about whatever they’re working on”
“I love hearing from customers, good or bad”
“It’s really important to nail your schedule”
“You optimize towards customers that will love you and refer you”
“The reality is machines do this black and white input better than you can handle it”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
Jason Smith is the CEO and co-founder of Klue, a five-time entrepreneur, Jason took a year off to travel with his family, recognising the importance of dedicated time and renewed focus. Jason talks to Ryan about his unique approach to handling and solving the pipeline gap problem as well as the things he has learnt in his entrepreneurship journey and what he will be focusing on in the future.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Jason grew his previous company from a start-up to $15 million!
- One thing Jason learnt early in building businesses is focus, so you can execute and prioritise the right things and get results.
- After working incredibly hard for many years, Jason re-evaluated his life and decided to take a year off to spend travelling with his family.
- Entrepreneurs tend to live in natural cycles, with a start and end to things, this is something Jason lives his life by.
- It’s a skill to allow time to pass before starting new ideas, what might seem like a great concept when you first think of it will probably feel different a couple of months down the line. Give yourself time to assess new ideas and concepts.
- Identify where you have lost to competitors and within that, what deals you could have won. This will give you the direction and focus for what needs to change to close the gaps in your pipeline.
- If you truly understand your competitors, you can get into the fine details of exactly how they operate and what you can do to disrupt those operations.
- Market and competitor understanding generates trust with potential clients.
BEST MOMENTS
“Love the fact you took a single product and grew it as big as you did, not a lot of companies have the discipline to do that”
“Build the niche that you need then expand from there”
“Building businesses is not easy, it’s time-consuming”
“If there are deals you should have won, how do you win them?”
“You create trust with your prospects when you can elegantly talk about your market”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
www.klue.com
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
Ryan Wedig is the CEO and founder of Vasion who went from $0 to $70 million in just 7 years! Ryan opens up and works through his execution strategy, including the mistakes he made and what he would do differently if he had his time again as well as the key indicators he uses to measure performance.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Originally Vasion were in the print space and they quickly realised they needed a strong direct sales team to enter this industry.
- Vasion carved out a niche for itself by going after early adopters and demonstrating themselves as innovators.
- Performance isn’t subjective, it can be measured and can be forecasted.
- Don’t focus on ‘arriving’ somewhere or hitting the goal but instead on your performance and what it will take to get there.
- Culture isn’t always a priority but it should be one of the most important things you focus on as it impacts everything you do.
- As you scale, the skillset required will mean you need a broader set of personalities, this is when you really need to focus on building the right culture and measuring it.
BEST MOMENTS
“The technology was novel enough and innovative enough”
“The word success is kinda a silly concept”
“Culture is nowhere on your list, it should be the second most important thing on your list”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
Laurent De Grauwe, a sales and marketing executive for over 20 years, joins Ryan in this episode to give interesting perspectives on the world of AI, tools and go-to-market strategies and teams. Laurent's unique perspectives are based on his breadth of knowledge gained from working at Microsoft as well as with start-ups.
Laurent talks about how go-to-market is a team sport and the importance of remaining customer-centric and authentic in your approach. He also defines concepts from his point of view and reveals the biggest mistake companies are making with their go-to-market strategies.
Join 2,500+ readers getting weekly practical guidance to scale themselves and their companies using Artificial Intelligence and Revenue Cheat Codes.
Explore becoming Superhuman here: https://superhumanrevenue.beehiiv.com/
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Laurent believes many people start their go-to-market strategy from the product but this isn’t the best way, he believes you need to start from the customer and end user, identifying their pain points and whether you can offer value to them.
- It’s easy for companies to get stuck in the product-fit stage of a company because they haven’t previously engaged the customer enough or gained the right insight and research.
- When you have an idea, talk to as many people as possible, stress test it with potential clients and then you will have enough feedback to create a first version of your product.
- There is a vast amount of tools available, it can be overwhelming and confusing to know the best ones to use for your business, something to consider is how easily you can connect tools to your existing software.
- It’s easy as a business to forget to connect authentically with people as humans. If you do the right customer discovery and build your creditability, your customers can see and feel your value to them.
BEST MOMENTS
“Can I shape my value proposition so it might resonate?”
“Customer-centricity is not just a buzz word it’s a starting point”
“When you have an idea, go stress test it, talk about it with as many people as you can”
“When you find the right balance between building connection and building your credibility, then you start to earn trust”
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
Amrit Robbins is the CEO of Axiom Cloud Inc, his newest start-up which he transformed from a previously failing start-up, whilst retaining its investors customers and employees! Amrit talks through his framework for creating a product based on the outcome, why and how technology and product development can create a high impact as well as the value businesses can deliver without AI.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Ask questions is core to Axiom Cloud's client strategy, gaining an understanding of who the key stakeholders are, their pain points and what it is they want to achieve, demonstrating true customer empathy.
- Having the right technology, to help aid people with their difficulties is very scalable, more so than environmental policy. This is what Amrit is trying to do, to have the biggest impact on climate change.
- Simplicity and an outcome-based approach are what Amrit focuses on in product development.
- Make your customers excited and they will want to buy from you.
- One of your core competencies as a business should be around product development, so your team have buy-in from day 1 and in all of the work that they do.
- The biggest challenge of Axiom Cloud is getting through the constant bottlenecks of a new company, particularly around the scalability of their platform.
BEST MOMENTS
“One of our superpowers is really truly understanding our customers”
“Policy is forcing people to do things that they wouldn’t otherwise do”
“There’s always so much room for improvement here, in terms of making things better”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
www.axiomcloud.ai
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
In this episode, Ryan is joined by an individual with possibly the deepest and richest background of anyone he has ever interviewed! Doug Dennerline originally started out in Silicon Valley back in 1982 at HP, he then worked his way to becoming the CEO of Cisco and took it from 400 sales reps to 6000 with a 9.8 billion dollar budget. After this, Dough was the CEO of Webex before founding and selling his first start-up and now is onto his newest start-up called Betterworks which is reinventing the way people are managed.
Doug and Ryan focus on leadership and people management in this episode including the importance of finding the right HR partner, how to build a great team and incentivise them to generate revenue and how AI will change the HR world forever.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- BetterWorks is trying to reinvent the processes in how large companies manage people.
- 70% of large companies still do annual reviews even though most people hate it and it doesn’t improve performance. What’s more important is creating conversations between managers and employees and becoming aligned with goals and targets.
- Doug joined Cisco in 1998, during the dotcom boom which he says is still one of the greatest experiences of his life, being there when so much was happening.
- Doug’s tech guy went on to be the CEO and founder of Zoom!
- Many more businesses are recognising that their people are their most important asset, Doug gets great satisfaction from seeing CEOs and HR professionals who love the Betterworks product, he gets to see its impact on the workplace.
- Companies that value their people, whose employees feel they have purpose and direction in the company create more revenue.
- CEOs should spend time with their people who have to go through their review processes, this will make them realise things need to change.
- AI will change the world of HR, from helping with how to have difficult conversations to writing reviews.
BEST MOMENTS
“The annual performance review, research has proven people hate giving it, people hate getting it and it doesn’t improve performance”
“The hardest people worked for me was when I was able to connect the corporate goals to individual goals, both personally and professionally”
“Cisco just had massive growth when I was there”
“We bought Webex in 8 days, closed that deal in 8 days!”
“I went from being a sales leader to an operator, a CEO, and I’ve been running SaaS companies ever since”
“I really enjoyed the start-up aspect, the impact you can have on a smaller company”
“The company with the best team has the highest chance of winning”
“I have a very low ego environment in my company and I don’t believe in lines”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.betterworks.com/magazine/companies-can-win-with-culture-and-okrs-a-discussion-with-doug-dennerline-john-doerr-john-chambers/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
Tania is the CEO and founder of Bunny Studios, her second start-up after successfully exiting her first company. Tania has been doing some really amazing things in her niche, including creating a marketplace through Bunny Studios and the way she is managing AI disrupting her space. Tania and Ryan talk in-depth about the creation of Tania’s companies as well as how AI is disrupting the business world, Tania’s approach to it and how you can handle the related challenges and barriers in your business too.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Bunny Studio provides content creation at scale, mostly working with companies that need content at a high volume and they provide what they need from start to finish.
- It was when looking at becoming a voice actor freelancer that Tania realised the difficulties in getting jobs, finding them and for agents to find voice actors. This led her to founding Voice 123 in 2003.
- Tania sold Voice 123 after founding a second company, she wanted to be able to put all her focus on Bunny Studios.
- Most people do not create a full product from the start, the less risky thing to do is to test smaller products on a marketplace and tailor your product market fit.
- The biggest challenge for a lot of companies right now is AI, but Tania says it can also be a big opportunity.
- AI can be a useful tool for a lot of businesses, it doesn’t have to be able to replace jobs or companies but instead this companies in that space utilise AI for customers and then spend time on other aspects to increase customer satisfaction.
- With the rise of AI, it may be the case that people will crave authenticity more including in relationships and intimacy which may in turn create more and new products that people will pay for.
BEST MOMENTS
“We were so inexperienced at the time we didn’t realise you could go and ask people for money”
“One of the biggest learnings is you don’t create a full-blown product right from the get-go”
“We were very lucky in the beginning, and I think it’s because we were focusing on such a specific market maybe that’s the reason the success rate was high”
“I think AI will be able to do the more routine things we do for creating content, complex things a human will have to do it still”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
Bob Elliott previously worked with Ray Dalio for 14 years, was the head of his investment committee and was also involved in creating the largest hedge fund in the world with over 100 Billion Dollars! Bob recently co-founded the charity GiveWell and is now the co-founder and CEO of Unlimited, an investment start-up that uses propriety tech for alternative investments to give access to all. He joins Ryan to talk about what drove him to create such a company, the things he has learnt from his experience in the finance industry as well as what he sees for the future of tech and AI in how the economy operates and functions.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Unlimited democratizes unique alternative investments that otherwise wouldn’t be available to 99% of people.
- Unlimited isn’t just democratizing access to the returns but bringing institutional equality and information to every investor.
- Utilising content platforms is a way to show proof that you have the expertise in the industry to help engage advisors and investors where they already are. Content creation in these places builds the credibility needed to convert them into clients.
- The thing that got Bob excited was not to create his own investment fund but how he could in fact bring unique investment opportunities to everyone, how he could create a start-up to make this possible.
- The problem with hedge funds and managers is they charge very high fees, if you can bring the fees down then it radically transforms the result for the investor. Using the right technology allows Unlimited to offer its services at a much lower cost than traditional avenues.
- The things we have learnt about the world in the past 40 years around finance are no longer going to work in the future and we need to be prepared for that.
- Advances in technology, including AI will help with company productivity which in turn helps employees, it won’t be replacing everyone's jobs like some of the fear rhetoric out there.
BEST MOMENTS
“[We’re] bringing that sort of institutional quality investment insight and making it freely available to everyone”
“It nagged at me whether there was a way to bring those sophisticated asset management strategies and bring them to the everyday investor”
“Weak growth and weak economic activity and falling stock prices isn’t that bad if you can protect yourself from that by holding bonds in your portfolio”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ttoillebob/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
Ryan is joined by Pete Hunt, who has worked at two of the biggest tech giants in the world, both Facebook and Twitter. Pete talks about everything from meetings with Mark Zuckerburg, to how he created a high valuation to sell his previous company, to how he has built a company to revolutionise the way we harness the power of data.
Pete also talks through his thoughts on threads as a product, the differences between working at Facebook and Twitter, the reliability of AI and his number one piece of advice for getting the perfect product market fit.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Most of Elemntl’s revenue comes via inbound leads.
- Smite built trust and safety tools for social media platforms, pretty much anyone not owned by google were a customer of them including TikToks former named company Musical.ly
- Smite grew fast but Pete came to the conclusion that it would be best to sell due to the marketplace of social media platforms, there’s always a limited amount.
- After selling to twitter, Pete actually stayed working there for over 3 years.
- So many companies have issues with controlling their data, made more complex by constant new regulation. Pete's newest start-up, Elementl, was started to help control this problem.
- Looking at AI as a way to accelerate your business process is one of the best ways to utilise it’s strengths.
- Start-ups need to focus on the top of the funnel more so than any other business type and size. It can feel repetitive but don’t undervalue it and put the hard work in at the beginning.
BEST MOMENTS
“We started the company to bring start of the art software engineering best practices, to build rock solid, testable data pipelines that you can trust”
“It was 2011 in the tech industry, nobody got fired”
“The thing I don’t like about threads is it’s a lot of brands being brands and people engaging with brands”
“There’s really strong engineering at both companies but Facebook really valued speed of delivery”
“Distribution is a massive competitive advantage”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.elementl.com
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
Joe Baffone is the founder and CEO of Annexus Health, who provide tech enabled services to manage health and life science services. Joe talks to Ryan about his unique business model and why taking two years to identify their monetisation strategy before product building was one of the best decisions they made. Joe also talks about the rest of his business journey including unique insights on networking and systematic ways to build your business.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Like many of us, people Joe loves were touched by cancer, he realised there was nothing that offered solutions to help patients manage their care. This inspired him to try and do something to help.
- Annexus was originally bootstrapped but recently got funding to help them scale and grow!
- Joe advises those looking to start a SaaS company, is to not take a step until you have a rock-solid and tested monetisation strategy.
- You need organisational structure and operational mindset to create scale.
- One of Annexus' main methods of customer acquisition is building strong strategic aliences with large healthcare organsations, service provers etc. This is closely followed by their referral techniques.
- Operational excellence that gives Annexus the ability to ensure they are as productive as they can be as a company and as individals.
BEST MOMENTS
“Watching and seeing so many people struggle with administrative and financial toxicties because there wasn’t solutions available to help them, the patient”
“We are a transaction model to health science”
“Before we even started, we really thought long and hard about the monetisation strategy”
“Collaboration with strategic partners is probably number 1”
“Align at the board level with those industry associations, get them as customers then it’s very easy to fuel that out with the rest”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
The world is going through yet another major change in humanity as AI starts to infiltrate every aspect and area of our lives. Ryan wants to begin to share what he is up to around the progression of AI and share the knowledge and expertise he is gaining with his audience so you can benefit from everything he has learnt, and is still learning, about AI.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Ryan has had an MVP created for an AI product, he decided now is the time for him to serve the market in this way
- You’re able to compress hours into minutes with AI if used the right way
- What would have taken years to learn can now take hours or even minutes as you simply ask AI what you need to know
- Automated execution is either how you automate a task or dictate smaller tasks to then get the outcomes that you want
BEST MOMENTS
“We are going through one of the single biggest changes in the history of mankind”
“I want to start sharing this journey with you because I’m getting exposed to some really great things”
“I’m starting to get excited about what’s really possible, not just for me but for my family, community and my business”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
Kian is the CEO and founder of a groundbreaking platform with AI skills assessment, Workera. Kian is also a lecturer and has created some of the most popular courses on AI and machine learning with over 3k views per video! Kian joins Ryan to talk about how AI intersects with learning and development and its role in helping workforce transformation; from employee skillset management to mentorship.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Workera’s key method for customer acquisition has mostly been via outbound sales
- Workera provides an open platform that helps companies understand their employee's talents, measuring skills and then use that skill data to empower them to make decisions; on everything from up-skilling and recruitment to project management
- Kian and his team knew they needed investment to begin and sustain Workera, because of how quickly they wanted to get things moving but also because of the tech-heavy side of the business.
- The gap many students are finding is not in content and information to learn but actually mentorship but this is difficult to scale, this is the first problem Workera wanted to solve and did so using AI and utilising existing psychometrics.
- Employee assessments, using psychometrics, are often a stressful task with poor UI. Workera have reinvented the testing, creating a much better user experience that is empowering and mentor-like with a feedback loop rather than just selection-based.
- A recommendation system will only work as well as the data it is given. You need good data that is rich and meaningful.
- Workera allows companies to utilise their employee's time by assigning the right tasks for their skills and putting them on the training they actually need.
- Benchmarks are helpful to employers but also the individuals, so they can learn what to focus on and what opportunities are there for them specifically.
- Identifying the ideal customer profile and providing value and thought leadership aimed at that profile is one of the main things Workera focused on to scale and gain market share.
- You don’t train a tech person in the same way you would a non-technical person. You need to think about whether your employee is a builder or a consumer as well as what existing skills they already possess.
- Many individuals already have the right skill set for AI, they might even be better at some aspects of machine learning than people who have solely trained in it!
BEST MOMENTS
“What we want to achieve requires investment especially if we want to do it as fast as planned”
“Everyone should have access to a mentor that can help them in their next stage”
“We had to change the mindset of assessments, reinvent”
“The recommender system will be as good as the skills data that fuels it”
“Skills building becomes highly focused and intentional”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
Akash is the co-founder and CEO of Adonis, he has also helped multiple companies create over 100 million dollars in valuations! Akash joins Ryan to go in-depth on how to build a company from the ground up and create a great product market fit in record time.
Akash comes from a software engineering and machine learning background and has spent a lot of time building software in healthcare, he talks about his journey to building Adonis, how they have achieved a 5% market share in a year and his strategic framework to ensure you don’t become replaceable in business!
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Adonis builds software to help medical doctors of all shapes and sizes collect revenue from insurance companies
- The main strategy Adonis now uses is inbound on their website, driving traffic via events after previously relying heavily on word of mouth and referrals.
- It was after going through the health system himself and enquiring about the problem Drs were having, that Akash realised a lot of these pain points came from a data problem.
- Adonis focuses on giving a unique experience and being a company with the most up-to-date knowledge in their field. They ensure that they are in no way replaceable by any of their competitors.
- As an early-stage company, think about what your defence is against larger and corporate companies.
- Before starting your company, look into the space and see what the existing solutions are and what they are offering. What can you do that is truly unique?
BEST MOMENTS
“Obviously you’re doing something right with how fast you’re growing”
“It was a dream of ours to be able to run companies together”
“There's so much opportunity in healthcare to solve problems and create a big impact”
“We’re building software to help them get paid”
“If you’re looking to solve a problem, one must look at the existing solutions in the space”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
Aviv Grafi is the founder of Votiro. Aviv bootstrapped the company for four years, becoming it’s CEO. He joins Ryan to talk about his journey and why he decided to make the difficult decision to step down as CEO. He also talks about how to make yourself happy in business, his emotional journey to stepping down to a CTO role and the importance of prioritising yourself as well as the implication for AI in the enterprise and cyber security space.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Votiro are now looking at how they can effectively expand internationally.
- One of Votiro’s key marketing strategies is by focusing on partnerships, particularly in reselling.
- Votiro is a cybersecurity solution, utilising software as a service to ensure that every file and document entering an organisation is safe. They replicate a document allowing employees to open any file and see it without having to think twice about its safety.
- Recognising they needed to differentiate themselves to get their share of the market led Votiro to finding niche partners to work with.
- Covid impacted Aviv’s ability to communicate and manage his team was what made him first consider no longer being the CEO.
- After great growth, Aviv came to the realisation that the best thing for both the company and himself would be to hire a professional CEO and so he stepped down to make this happen.
- Consumer AI will help how people work every day but it’s important to recognise how AI will change enterprises and how they work and also how it would fit within security systems.
- AI should be used to reduce work and this can definitely be adapted to the security space, but there will be a downside too, scammers will be able to take advantage.
BEST MOMENTS
“We take a document and redeliver that as safe”
“Every minute I spent out of the office was spent still mentally in the office”
“The bad guys are also using that [AI] for their advantage”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
Mari Martinez is the CEO of Vengreso and joins Ryan in this episode to talk through how he transitioned a 7-way merger sales company into a SaaS company, which he is now also taking global! Mari also talks about the evolution and future in business, SaaS and AI for the knowledge worker and the unique ways you can utilise Podcasting and LinkedIn to market and create organic leads.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Vengreso focuses on a product-led growth strategy with a sales-led motion
- Social media influence is a huge opportunity, Mari spends most of his time on Twitter and LinkedIn as this is where most of the b2b salespeople are including sales reps and marketing leaders
- Fly message is a unique product that doesn’t only utilise snip technology across app platforms but also utilises AI to help form replies and responses for you.
- You can’t plan for every eventuality but what you can do is recognise trends and patterns early and react to them.
- Research, identify and adjust plans, keeping yourself agile as a leader and company.
- Teaching himself product design and product development is how Mari turned himself into a sales leader, sales influencer and marketing leader. He is now asked by Fortune 100 companies to air them with their marketing strategies!
- Mari believes that start-up leaders have to be ‘scrappy’, making decisions quickly, taking risks and investing themselves completely in whatever they do.
- If you want to be a business owner, a start-up founder, you better make sure the only thing that impacts is yourself. This will incentivise you to eliminate the pain as soon as you can or make you quit early if it is not for you.
- The goal of Flymessage is to streamline the lost productivity in the knowledge worker, which is trillions of dollars worth of productivity a year!
- Write down 20 questions that your buyer would ask to lead to them needing your product, for your product to solve their problems. Then create content around this.
BEST MOMENTS
“Product-led growth is really going out and having the masses”
“Save an hour or more a day to reduce the typing out or copying, pasting and editing a message, we are eliminating all of those things”
“83% of all users said that they actually use the same message one time or more over a month, 61% said they do it daily”
“I’d like to say I was smart enough that I planned the whole thing out, but I wasn’t, I was smart enough to see the trend though”
“Make the sacrifice, at the stage you’re at, to make it a reality”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
Darren Gallop is the founder and CEO of Carbide and joins the show to share his amazing backstory including his journey from a university dropout to creating a record company to becoming a serial SaaS founder! Darren also talks to Ryan about his opinion of AI, cyber security in business and shares the single biggest challenge Carbide is facing.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Carbride’s primary go-to-market strategy is traditional sales via both outbound leads and inbound content leads such as creating valuable seo enriched content and appearing on podcasts.
- All the new privacy and specific regulations have created a complex world, particularly for small and medium-sized businesses. Carbide offers a solution to businesses, figuring out exactly what they need to do to comply and helping them do it too.
- After creating a music SaaS company, Darren began to discover what a pain point complex security measures and compliance were for clients and businesses alike. This is what started him on the journey to creating Carbide.
- AI will mean that many companies will cease to exist, especially if they ignore it.
- If you aren’t doubling down on how to leverage AI in your business then you will struggle, particularly if you are an agency or service-based model.
- You can’t be everything in a business, not if you want to scale and be successful. You need to bring in people who are better than you at the things you aren’t good at.
- Many companies still have the incorrect perspective on security, they see it as administrative red tape have to get through.
- Moving upmarket has allowed Carbide to work with companies that generally have a good perspective on security and realise its importance for a modern company.
BEST MOMENTS
“We really dialled in on being highly effective in a small market”
“I think we’ll see layers of regulation popping up quickly {with AI]”
“A lot of companies still don’t think about security for the purpose of security”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
This episode is a recording of the talk Ryan recently gave at the 2023 SaaS open. Ryan talks through hitting $30mil in ARR and how you can apply it to your business in 2023, Ryan also gives tips on using podcasting as a pipeline and the internal use cases for AI.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Look at your 5 biggest wins, 5 fastest wins and 5 biggest losses and you can learn quickly.
- After getting an initial large customer, Ryan and his team focused on expansion.
- The comp plan was planned purposely differently from its competitors, building in a residual payment and finding this meant clients wouldn't then want to leave.
- Fast implementation where their customers barely had to do anything helped Ryan and his team disrupt the space.
- If you can find the patterns and outliers in your business you can then use a strategy to repeat success.
- Focus on building strong relationships with your sales reps, so much so that you can align their personal goals and mission with the company mission.
- People go too broad with events, you need to think of specifics and niche down
- You can utilise a podcast as a pipeline by interviewing those in your space including potential clients and customers.
- People love promoting themselves and their brand and if you give them a vehicle for it, such as podcasting, they love you for it. You are proving value before asking anything of them.
BEST MOMENTS
“This journey started for me out of failure”
“Think about how lazy people are and how resistant to change is”
“We still go the deals but we got ridiculous margins”
“You can literally interview those perfect customers I talked about in a podcast format”
“I created value for them before asking anything”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
Yaniv is a silicon valley veteran, founder of content audience platform KeeWee and now Generative AI Writing tool Anyword. Working on LLMs and generative AI for more than 5 years, Yaniv shares his insights on growing a company in an emerging space, dealing with the rollercoaster of founder life, the seismic shifts industries can undergo overnight and his thoughts on the future of generative AI. Join Ryan and Yaniv as they break down one of the most exciting new technologies of the last decade and the opportunities for founders, creators and investors.
Key Takeaways
-
Anyword Ai content creation tool spun off from publishing platform KeeWee, has been building generative AI for 5 years.
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Specializes in using a combination of specialized training data alongside your data to generate personalized performance content and copy for brands
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Used by big brands with a go-to-market strategy focussing on mid-market marketing teams and SMBs upselling users from free and trial plans.
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Specialized LLM using millions of points of A/B testing data to inform best decisions.
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Content is easier to create than ever using LLM’s now the focus needs to be on quality and performance
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Two primary ways to use LLMs 1. Help me with ideas and write them. 2. I have an idea help me refine it.
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Written content can be broken down into Formula/Talking Points/Tone of Voice
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Anyword has different prediction models for each channel to enhance performance, it's 82% accurate predicting which of 2 pieces of copy will perform
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LLM’s are a competent sidekick but true experts with a unique take will always outperform them however plagiarism is potentially a huge problem.
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Very difficult to turn data and insights and actions, which is a big opportunity for generative AI
Best Moments
“When I was like pitching investors five years ago and saying, Hey, in five years AI is gonna write most of what you read or people are going to use AI to write, they’d say you're crazy.”
“It’s easy to create content when there's, there's a massive amount of quantity just like we're seeing with all the streaming services It all comes down to quality.”
“Today we're at 82% accuracy. 50% is random, and we've tested it a lot. We're pretty confident and it's getting better the more data we train it on.”
“We were like a hundred per cent growth month over month, over a month. We didn't buy into that hype and we started understanding how we can position ourselves differently.”
“Our cost per lead is just decreasing all the time. Really since we, since we launched. It's, it's keeps on decreasing over and over because there’s way more organic traffic”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan StaleyFounder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCEShttps://anyword.com/yaniv@anyword.com.
ABOUT THE SHOWHow do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
Brandon Metcalf is not just another entrepreneur, he is the CEO of not just one but three companies including Place Technology. Brandon is reimagining how businesses can operate and flourish in a technological world and talks about the unique things he is doing to be disruptive and change the space he is in. Brandon talks to Ryan about how he manages multiple companies including what he has learnt from each and also reveals the single best strategy for building and growing a business.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Brandon is a big advocate for scheduling and being process driven. He is not a procrastinator and says these three things are why he can successfully manage so many companies and scale them the way he has.
- To lead a successful life, you must find the balance between work and personal life. Brandon manages this by having a calendar for all things, both work and personal.
- Pushing Slack for all internal comms allows email to be freed up for external communication within his businesses.
- As a leader, delegation is essential and giving the right amount of support and ensuring everyone is aligned as a team.
- Brandon supports his team to help them meet their goals and progress but he is firm about the fact they need to put the hard work in themselves to achieve.
- If you choose to build a business around something you have knowledge of and passion for, then it will be much easier to scale and find success.
- Workflow, automation and visibility when building a business allow it to find product market fit quickly and keeps things simple and organic. Teams can then focus on what they are supposed to.
- The main challenge for Place technology is that people don’t know what they do, once they have the client looking at their offering they can convert easily, but it’s getting seen by the client in the first place that they are struggling with right now.
BEST MOMENTS
“If it’s not on my calendar it's not happening”
“I learned the importance of the balance of the rest of your life outside of work”
“You need to work hard to get to where you want to go”
“Do something your passionate about and that you know”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/metcalf/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
Dr Cindy Gordon is the CEO and founder of SalesChoice, an AI solution for B2B sales. Cindy has over ten years experience of working with AI and is doing some incredible work around leveraging AI software to predict revenue. She joins Ryan to talk about the work they are doing right now, what we may see in the future and the human side of AI.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- AI can have a place in behavioural insights, this is something Cindy is looking at and the many benefits it could have.
- SalesChoice has an audit trail and attributions needed to understand the algorithm behind the AI they are using.
- Driving value and building use cases that solve real business problems whilst remaining ethical is SalesChoice's main vision.
- AI should be an advantage for humans and humankind, SalesChoice is passionate about bringing more humanity to these tools and the business world.
- The key to AI is not what is populated but that the right data has been entered in the first place.
- The human side to AI is key, AI is created, operated and managed by humans, it is they who need to put the right checks and balances in place and we will see this happen via new laws.
BEST MOMENTS
“AI can play a very interesting role when it comes to coaching people”
“One of the hardest things in the world is bootstrapping a business”
“We care about you focusing on the best opportunities with the global knowledge of your company”
“You can unlock trillions of focused revenue enablement [with AI]”
“We need a lot more humanity in the business world”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/cigordon/?originalSubdomain=ca
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
This show was brought to you by Progressive Media
Manuj Aggarwal is a founder and chief innovation manager at TetraNoodle, a data science and AI consulting company he is also a fellow podcasting hosting the podcast Bootstrapping Your Dreams.
Manuj has over 15 years of experience in working with AI and talks to Ryan about how not to be fearful of new technologies and how you can embrace them in your business; saving you time, money and helping you grow. Manuj also runs through how Auto GPT works including the best value cases he can see.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- TetraNoodle is focusing its efforts on being an authority and thought leader in all things AI to attract clients. They also run events and utilise outbound sales.
- Ask yourself, where is your team spending most of its time and then figure out how AI can help you with that/those tasks.
- By introducing the right technology, TetraNoodle can save up to 80% of its clients’ time.
- When the internet first came along people resisted it and missed opportunities, don’t be those people this time around with AI.
- Start using the tools being released by Microsoft and Google and start streamlining your business operations.
- Do everything you can to understand your customer and give them something they need and want before they even know they want it. They will never leave you and will bring you more business via referrals.
- Don’t upload private or sensitive information to Auto GPT as it can share this information with others.
- No technology is inherently bad, it’s all about people use it.
- There are always unwanted consequences to new technology but it’s also the inevitable journey of human evolution.
- AI won’t take your job, but someone who can use it will as they will be able to work smarter than you.
BEST MOMENTS
“Spread the right information rather than fear-mongering”
“We can easily introduce AI and save at least 75%-80% of their time”
“The idea is to think how we transition through those periods of technological revolution and what did we miss out on”
“Tools like Auto GPT is a preview of what this will turn into”
“AI won’t take your job but a person who can use AI will”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/bootstrapping-your-dreams-show/id1453077497
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Eric Olden is the CEO of Strata Identity, an identity management company. Eric is a serial entrepreneur and visionary and has been transforming the way businesses navigate the complex world of cloud and hybrid security systems, having previously worked in a senior role at Oracle he is now leading one of the most innovative companies in the tech space. Eric joins Ryan to talk about digital identity, creating a new category in his industry and how he came to create the holy grail of identity management.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Strata uses a hybrid model to sell its software by using both the cloud and data centres.
- You can use a product-led motion to accelerate your sales cycle, giving you the best of both worlds.
- Almost half of the company is in sales or go-to-market in some way, showing prioritising these areas can help build sustainable growth.
- Strata’s software Maverick, decouples the application from identity security and allows upgrading external software without rewriting the application.
- The first task for Eric with Strade was to find the perfect product market fit, once this was achieved he focused his attention on how to sell the product in a repeatable way.
- Working at Oracle with customers who wanted to go to the cloud but had so many pain points to get to it is what gave Eric the idea for Strata.
- To create a new category in the industry, Eric had to first figure out if the problem is big enough. He interviewed people to assess their issues and pain points and how that would fit with the product.
- Strata used strong SEO and media presence to attract people to its product and then created content marketing around the use case of its product.
BEST MOMENTS
“It does for identity security what the m word did for compute”
“It’s really mission critical for some of the big enterprises because without it they’re stuck, they can’t move their applications to the cloud”
“You don’t have to convince us the cloud is where we want to be, the problem is getting there”
“Marketing and product-led growth are hand in hand, the intent is that we use the marketing effort to attract people and aware of the product so they can serve themselves”
“When we were doing product design we really mapped out the sales process and then made sure the experience and the product supported each thing”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
Strata.io/podcast
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Liam Patterson is the founder and CEO of Bidamic, a marketing tech platform that lets retailers unlock their full potential. Bidamic is the 4th company Liam has founded and he joins Ryan to talk all about his entrepreneurial journey and the amazing things he is doing in the e-commerce and marking space. Top topics include how AI is impacting business and how you can utilise it in yours, the power of outbound and Liam also reveals his single best strategy for growing a business.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Bidamic’s primary go-to market for revenue growth is predominantly outbound via email, LinkedIn and cold calling. They also attend events to raise awareness to marketing brands and marketing decision-makers.
- A lot of Bidnamic’s potential clients don’t realise the software that could be helping them, just speaking to them about what can be done for them is one of its main strategies for selling.
- Using scientific learnings and data allows Binamic to calculate the bid price for the exact customer, for the exact product for the exact search term
- Bidamic are enthusiastic users of AI, from using it in the products they sell to applying it to their everyday business practices including analysis and data collection.
- If there are mundane repetitive tasks, we need to be smarter as businesses and use AI, allowing us to lead strategy and creativity instead.
- Outbound has a terrible reputation but it’s an incredible way to grow a business in the early days, especially if you are bootstrapping.
BEST MOMENTS
“A lot of the companies we work with are easy to identify, they are on google shopping”
“We find it pretty powerful to get in front of them via outbound”
“Let’s embed and let's utilise existing AI tools”
“Conversational AI would be really cool”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Angelina Lawton is the founder and CEO of Sportsdigita. A trailblazer in the sports world, Angelina has been named one of the 30 most powerful women in sport by Forbes! Angelina talks to Ryan about how she has transformed the way that over 450 of the biggest brands in the world market and sell, from massive sports brands to Fortune 500 companies and reveals how they generate referrals systematically as well as the lows and highs of her business journey.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Inbound sales and referrals are the majority of Sportsdigita’s market strategy. More recently they have spent time building their outbound and lead generation.
- Digideck is Sportsdigita’s core product, which is a programme for building cloud-based presentations and includes integration with Salesforce and other platforms.
- The sports world has a herd mentality but can be difficult to penetrate. Angelina hired salespeople who already had existing relationships with the sports world and then the referrals began pouring in.
- Recognising what your business is at the core is essential. It took Angelina time to figure out that she was actually building and running a software business, once she did she hired people with the skills she was missing to aid scaling and success.
- Angelina and others like her, expect bigger brands to be on point and up to date with their branding and marketing but so often she has found this not to be the case in actual fact, they are the companies that need the most help and guidance.
- Sportsdigita is starting to figure out how AI will fit into its business and how to leverage it whilst recognising the importance of the human influence in content and marketing.
BEST MOMENTS
“Think PowerPoint but on steroids”
“Sports is a herd mentality”
“AI is on the horizon and we know it’s surrounding us and we’ve got to figure out what to do with it”
“We do think there is always going to be that human component, guiding the content”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelinalawton/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mike Montague is a fellow podcaster, author and the director of community at Sandler Training. He joins Ryan to talk about how he got started in marketing and his book as well as giving many online marketing tips for various platforms including LinkedIn and YouTube and also reveals the number one reason people don’t listen to your podcast!
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Mike was gifted with computers at a young age, he was programming from 8th grade!
- Mike got into internet marketing after creating and hosting a successful internet radio station in the mid to late 00s.
- You need to create forward-looking profiles, talking about who you want to speak to and attract and talk about the problems you solve, making your profile outwardly focus rather than simply about you and your services.
- You can demonstrate your experience in a variety of ways such as hosting events and creating valuable content.
- People can get too focused on getting more followers and likes but what matters is what you are doing with the audience you already have, are you serving them well and getting good engagement?
- Stop putting things off and waiting for perfection, just get yourself out there and build consistency in all you do.
BEST MOMENTS
“When I was young, so was the internet”
“There are things you can to do build your credibility but it’s not what you think”
“Everybody moves too fast, it’s the hard work you actually do that builds a business”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
Mike’s Book LinkedIn The Sandler Way
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Gil Allouche from Metadata joins Ryan in this episode. Gil is the founder and CEO of Metadata, he came from a systems engineering background and then went into marketing where he worked on automation and creating a product leading to 5 patents in his technology. Gil talks to Ryan about many topics surrounding AI and automation including how his company solves the age-old problem of pipeline and why we shouldn’t be frightened of AI and instead embrace it wherever we can in business.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Metadata built a programme where marketers can log in and automate all the mundane and repetitive tasks they need to execute to build a sustainable and profitable pipeline for their sales counterparts.
- Specialising in b2b, Metadata is able to focus on complex data environments and products to suit businesses directly.
- Gil is a software engineer and has been creating, building and inventing for a long time, he was creating new and unique technology that he didn’t want to be taken from him so filed 5 patents. This uniquely places Metadata in the market as no one else has the ability to have the tech they do.
- One of the things Metadata is focusing on is how to make the messaging of AI more accessible to individuals as it can sometimes overwhelm and frighten those who aren’t in the space.
- The more comfortable you are trying to utilise and lead the way with AI rather than fighting it, the more success you will find in the future.
BEST MOMENTS
“They will learn through experimentation what works and what doesn’t”
“I’m a software engineer I like to create things and build stuff and I experienced stuff from early on, I like to invent”
“It’s one of the big differentiators, no one has the technology we have”
“It’s a way of removing barriers to sale for your products”
“I’m not afraid at all of AI”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Alex Castro is the founder and CEO of M Corp. He is the creator of the REM score method and one of the best-selling authors in the AI space. Alex is uniquely placed to educate on AI having been in the space for over a decade and having a breadth of knowledge in Identifying how businesses can implement the world of AI. Alex talks to Ryan about how we can all utilise and integrate AI for use in day-to-day services and how we can push this further by using the web3 space and even creating NFTs.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- M Corps go to market strategy is about the art of the possible. How they can enable companies that have data and AI strategies and allowing them to realise these visions.
- M Corp is a services firm that has developed IP products and solutions in how to collect good quality data that you can then feed into an ai model to facilitate automation.
- People fear that automation limits jobs but it in fact creates more demand from customers.
- In the AI/Automation space, there is a new version being created every 48 hours, -vs- the typical 3-month period of other industries.
- Having individuals use and utilise AI for certain tasks frees them to focus on more value-added activities including product development. It can also be used with quality data to show which products are worth spending time on as proven by M Corp with many of their clients.
- What M Corp advocates for in AI, is to not buy projects anymore but instead buy an ‘engine’ and click it into what you already have and then an engineer managing that for you.
- The best way to keep up with AI and its developments right now is to choose one of the companies with big infrastructure and apply and modify it for your own use.
BEST MOMENTS
“There’s a 12%-30% uptick in customer engagement when automation kicks in”
“Every 48 hours there is another version of AI being deployed”
“We don’t have any investors and we don’t have any debt”
“They began to dwindle down products that weren’t performing”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this episode, Ryan is joined by Drew D’Agostino of Crystal. Crystal is an emotional intelligence tool that leverages AI to create better conversations with clients, and prospects as well as internally with co-workers. Drew talks to Ryan about how he is approaching the business and what they are doing in the space including the journey to finding the perfect product-market fit and the uniqueness of building a SaaS tool that connects with people on an emotional level.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Crystal’s primary go-to-market strategy is b2b which accounts for 75%, 25% comes from its b2c channel
- Crystal is founded on the truth that people have fundamentally different personalities and that these are strong, observable and measurable
- Crystal was founded 8 years ago but in the past 2 and a half years Drew and his team have had to pivot and make significant changes, particularly in how it is packaged and sold as a product.
- Initial inbound leads aren’t a challenge for Crystal, what they have historically struggled with is the middle funnel; taking raw interest from a pool of leads and allocating the right time and sales team to them.
- There are multiple reasons people would use Crystal which presents a unique challenge when trying to capture use.
- Investing in SEO was a decision made in 2019 that has paid off for Crystal, for example, they are now one of the top personality tests taken and this generates a lot of leads.
BEST MOMENTS
“When people have these differences between one another it can make communication very difficult”
“We’ve been building a 2 and a half-year-old business on top of an 8-year-old product”
“Top of funnel isn’t a problem for us, we really get a lot of inbound interest”
“If you ask 10 random people why they came to Crystal, they’ll generally give you 10 different answers”
“It’s deeply in our DNA, having a SaaS tool that connects with people on an emotional level”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/drewdagostino/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Casey Ellis is the CEO of Bugcrowd, a platform that connects users with digital locksmiths/hackers to help solve their problems, they also offer task service management and security consulting. Casey has 18 years of experience in the security space and has supported every type of client from small start-ups to large national corporations. Casey and Ryan have an in-depth conversation around AI and Security and Casey also talks about Bugcrowd's interesting combination business model, talks about marketing virality and reveals why his company were a chosen partner by open AI to try and penetrate AI as an open-source programme.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Bugcrowd uses a traditional SaaS business model alongside operating a marketplace too.
- Bugcrowd uses a combination of direct sales and channel marketing for its go-to-market strategy.
- The ethos behind Bugcrowd is that cybersecurity is a human problem and they focus on human creativity to solve it and then utilise technology to accelerate the solution.
- Having the ability to develop innovative tech as well as recognising and empathising with the human component uniquely placed Casey to build a solution like Bugcrowd.
- If you are looking at putting all of your eggs in one basket with one platform, make sure you have a great relationship with them.
- Viral marketing starts by creating value, initial value is what will engage people and want them to share.
- Being in the cybersecurity space for a considerable amount of time and building up a good reputation for doing what they do well, means Bugcrowd and its team often get approached for testing new tech.
- Casey believes having the goal and conviction around what you are looking to achieve in business is a better motivator than money.
BEST MOMENTS
“Cybersecurity is a human problem technology just makes it go faster”
“Don’t be valuable create value”
“When new stuff comes out, we get a phonecall”
“There’s a trust in us as an organisation”
“I wanna see the production of wealth actually being the product of something I’ve set out to solve”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/caseyjohnellis/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan is joined by two-time venture-backed entrepreneur and AI enthusiast Suman Kanuganti. Suman was also recently awarded Forbes 40 under 40 and is the co-founder of Personal AI. Personal AI is a unique and personal AI model to aid and communicate with one another. Suman talks to Ryan all about his vision for the company including why he chose the b2c market and to be venture-backed as well as the value he sees it bringing to everyday consumers now and in the future.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Personal AI is a consumer-based product messaging app that learns whilst you communicate.
- Educating consumers about AI is something Suman sees as Personal AI’s responsibility as well as serving as a go-to-market strategy.
- We all have limited time anything that can save us time in communication can aid our relationships, this is Personal’s AI mission.
- Suman opted for funding due to the complex development that would be needed for his concept to function.
- Suman sees the ai that is created from your communication through Personal AI as not even benefitting your future self but also those around you and potentially, even after you are gone.
BEST MOMENTS
“We are about to serve everyday consumers”
“That education itself is a go-to-market strategy”
“It’s super simple and easy to understand”
“This is about investing in yourself”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Eric Daimler is the chair, CEO and co-founder of Conexus AI. He also sits on numerous boards and is a leading expert in the field of robotics and AI. He joins Ryan to talk about the revolutionary things Conexus are doing in the world of AI, how you can set up AI in your own company and how he thinks AI will create endless possibilities for humanity and the world we live in.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Conexus was originally bootstrapped, funding its MVP and explorations before attracting funding to hire staff to turn themselves into a scalable product and business
- Conexus integrates data models, allowing for collaboration between teams.
- AI and Robotics are simply a system, they are something that senses and acts, learning from the experience.
- Good AI can create a seamless customer experience by solving universal problems, particularly with databases and systems.
- For the future, Conexus is aiming to focus on product-led growth with its offering.
- Focusing on automation first is how Conexus plan to grow without having to expand its team.
BEST MOMENTS
“AI, robotics, learning algorithms can be thought of as a system”
“It’s not because of security, it’s because your systems suck, they don’t talk to one another”
“It’s super useful for everyday business and the operation of complex systems, especially when lives are at stake”
“We’re lucky to be the leaders in the expression of category theory for the integrity of the integration database”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Jonathan Fishbeck is the founder and CEO of Estate Space, the no1 cloud software for ultra-high net worth market individuals, to manage non-financial assets. Jonathan is a three-time founder and has been serving the luxury market for over a decade!
Jonathan reveals what led him to decide to serve such a unique market and the challenges he has faced including how they combatted churn. Jonathan and Ryan also talk about how to leverage AI in your SaaS business.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Jonathan was surrounded by his family’s business, which dealt with unstructured data on a large scale and took a company from 2 million to a billion dollars in revenue.
- Recognising how important security was and planning for this was one of the key stages of development for Estate Space
- Building a beta version of the software allowed Jonathan and his team to figure out what their product needed to look like and whom they were building it for
- Estate Space offers a marketplace on its platform to support its ecosystem and speed up fulfilment for its clients
- Estate Space wanted to keep things simple and so chose to be product led and make things as easy as possible for clients
- The decision to make a legacy product rather than prioritise speed to market was tough but Jonathan feels was the right choice for Estate Space as now they have more control and can completely fulfil their vision.
- Estate Space has started leveraging chatgpt in everything they do including newsletters in marketing and sales.
BEST MOMENTS
“We had a perfect recipe as a services company so we knew the gap in technology”
“We learned in beta what we needed to build for our commercial product and also learned who we needed to build it for”
“We’re selling to people to do business with each other”
“We’re agile so we’re able to help them in the most helpful manner”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Adam Robinson is the founder and CEO of Retention, a platform built to increase retention, re-engage audiences and 10x abandonment revenue. He joins Ryan to talk about finding the sweet spot in a marketplace, how he took Retention from 0 to $50 million in 3 years with zero funding and the secrets to finding the perfect product market fit.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Starting to build a Shopify app that focuses on large stores
- An agency partnerships operation has been essential in Retention’s growth generating around 40% of their leaders
- Finding a COO that understood his vision, had in-depth knowledge was a good culture fit and had a complimentary skill set to his own helped Adam scale Retention to the numbers it has today
- Retention offers two main solutions, to build your email list 20% faster and to capture the missed abandoned cart traffic.
- Being able to capture an email address from a person’s visit to a website was something Adam wanted to solve, it took him 18 months and started as a feature in his existing company but became so popular that he took it to then build the company Retention.
- There is a higher rate of churn with smaller companies using Retention’s products but Adam puts that down to being unable to show a major ROI impact with smaller numbers.
- Not targeting larger companies at the beginning was a mistake for Adam and his team, it was incorrect for them to assume that bigger companies wouldn’t want to use their product.
- Take your top 20% ICP, look at the outliers there and then find an approach that will work for these, this will help you scale.
- You have to be open to the idea that your product might not be right, you have to be willing to give up and start again to get the right product-market fit, to rebuild and reinvent.
- If you can deliver the right amount of value then your customers will keep paying you, over and over.
BEST MOMENTS
“Affiliate and influencers are a really important channel if you have a product like ours that’s new and doesn’t have competitors”
“There’s no situation that can possibly fluster this dude”
“You immediately understood the value of this, when I said I could give you the email address of people who don’t fill out forms”
“Market it fit is really intuitive value understanding”
“Live with that uncertainty, I have sold a product that sucks, I’ve sold a product that’s ok and I’ve sold a product that’s great”
“They’re easy to sell value to because they want value”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-robinson-64409348/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Aaron Schoenberger is the founder and CEO of Soteria Intelligence an AI software business featured by both the BBC and The Guardian. Aaron has a patent on deep learning based on social monitoring and has been in the AI space for over 5 years. In this episode, he reveals what’s possible right now in the AI space and shares how you can apply these learnings to your business both creatively and effectively.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Soteria Intelligence has primarily been self-funded, bootstrapping its way to success.
- Focusing on inbound sales and how to be content-focused, particularly around social media use, is Soterias main marketing strategy.
- Soteria team pride themselves on being thought leaders and future-focused and a lot of their growth has been based on the organic publicity surrounding this.
- Growth has been measured and it’s important to Soteria that they scale intelligently and do things in an agile way.
- Soterias solution aims to give businesses actionable intelligence and insights to help make their results increasingly better over time.
- If you can find ways to engage customers highly then you should take these opportunities. Sometimes they may cost you more time or money to capture but in the long term, the relationships you build with that customer are better and will generate more revenue.
- Google have recently started taking a multi-modal approach to how they display their search results, so using language, audio, video and other factors. This was something Soteria had to overcome when getting their patent, google have validated some of their own research.
- When Aaron first came up with the concept for Soteria’s solution, many people thought he was a bit crazy, but, over time AI had become more relevant and understood and now he has recognition and validation.
- One of the challenges Aaron has always had is educating the masses and explaining how their solution has value. He cites Chat CPT as one of the best things to happen for them as it has put AI in the forefront of people’s minds.
BEST MOMENTS
“I’m deeply passionate on the b2b side about the customer experience”
“We’ve tried to scale intelligently and not too quickly”
“When you look at behaviours on a very large scale you can start to look at those multi-modal elements and fuse them together to produce the end results”
“Why not engage people and create life-long relationships that generate a lot more revenue in the future”
“Nobody knew what AI was when we launched this, it was a pie in the sky concept”
“Now the masses understand AI, now the masses are interested in AI”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/company/soteria-intelligence/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Steven Forth is the co-founder, managing partner and CEO of Ibakka, a software company which helpscompanies design their pricing as well as how to communicate that price and its value across the entire customer journey. Named one of the top ten pricing authorities in the world by Open View Venture, Steven joins Ryan to talk about all things pricing including how he has helped both start-ups and Fortune 500 companies drive returns and increase profits through pricing.
Steven also reveals his framework on how to give value and measure it effectively as well as how he became the leader of a LinkedIn design thinking group with more than 200k members and why AI will eventually take over software.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Ibakka relies heavily on partners and inbound sales for their go-to-market strategy.
- VC firms and private companies are Ibakka’s key partners, who introduce them to clients.
- Ibakka is prolific on LinkedIn, for their own blog posts but also their engagement with others.
- Your price should be based on the value you are creating, Ibakka helps companies identify what this is and how to communicate it to their clients. They also track their own value for their clients so they can present this to them when it comes to renewal.
- You have to quantify your outcomes after the fact, to show clients your value to them.
- Often value and promises to a customer aren’t tracked, which means when it comes to renewal the sales teams aren’t armed with the information they need for one of the key factors in SaaS companies, retention!
- There are six ways you can make your customers' business better: help them increase revenue growth, help them decrease operating cost, increase operating capital, help them defer capital expenses, help them reduce risk or increase optionality.
- More and more companies are starting to worry about operating capital due to interest rate increases. So if you have a solution that can reduce this, this is a valuable area of growth.
- Many companies have increased prices due to general inflation, but this could be disastrous, you need to ask yourself, how is inflation affecting your customer's business and act accordingly.
- Steven attributes part of the success of his group to a ‘power law’ in that the more people who join the group the more people want to join it.
- AI will take over all aspects of software in the next 5-10 years.
BEST MOMENTS
“We’re prolific on LinkedIn, not just in our own blog posts but with other people”
“Pricing is about a lot more than just sticking a number on a price tag”
“The implementation and customer success teams often don’t know what promises were made and nobody is tracking to see if they are being delivered”
“The best salespeople are not all sales people”
“2 years ago, because of interest rates people didn’t care about increasing operating capital, today people are starting to care”
“Just because inflation is increasing it doesn’t give you a free pass on raising prices”
“The more people that join a group the more people want to join it”
“AI is eating software. Every aspect of software will be touched by AI”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan is joined by Joao in this episode. Joao is currently in the middle of a social experiment, where he has made Chat GPT the CEO, co-founder and creator of a company! He talks to Ryan all about the method to building this experiment including the challenges and what has surprised him along the way. Joao and Ryan also talk about the wider conversation on AI including the effect it may have on various industries as well as the human impact.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- After seeing the concept of using CHAT GBP to educate on building a business Joao wanted to take things further and that’s when he decided to launch the social experiment with just $1000 and an hour a day.
- Within two hours Joao had a business plan and angel investor and so posted about what he was doing on LinkedIn: this post now has over 5 million views!
- Chat GPT and other AI tools are good for getting you to the ‘average’ level in terms of content creation but if you want to excel then you need to differentiate yourself.
- Remaining authentic and original in his content is important to Joao and so what he focuses on the most is his differentiating elements; a mix of accuracy, humour with some wholesomeness.
- So many content creators are organically sharing Joao's story, so they are going to lean into this more by looking to influencer marketing next.
- AI is a double-edged sword, it will help in so many ways and speed up development in new technology, particularly in healthcare and environmental sectors but there are a lot of unknowns around how it will impact labor.
BEST MOMENTS
“Most challenging thing was definitely managing inbound”
“Good copywriters, good storytellers, aren’t losing their job, yet”
“I want to create content that I will respect, I don’t want to use templates to sound like everyone else”
“The story is pretty crazy…we’re probably the craziest fashion label of 2023”
“We are disrupting basically almost everything and the reality is it’s a big double-edged sword”
“Technology is accelerating ahead of our emotions”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joao-ferrao-dos-santos/?originalSubdomain=pt
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Tom Albert is the founder and CEO of measured risk, which helps triangulate risk with advanced data science technology. He has worked with the NSA, Department of Defence and has gone on to be a top 5% sales producer for Oracle and developed an AI engine that can see most of the information on the internet from social media to the dark web! He joins Ryan to talk about all this, including being featured on the show Unicorn Hunters and more in this unique and varied episode of The Scale Up Show.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Measured Risk started as a consulting company which then transformed into SaaS.
- A unique product offering and word of mouth are where Measured Risk is receiving most of its sales. Despite this, they don’t want to stand still and are planning on increasing their marketing and reach.
- Measured Risk took a cautious approach to scaling, allowing them to not have to take on too much funding, keeping things lean as they grew.
- Democratising your product and solution is a unique way to grow, to not be scared to release it into the market. It also then becomes a lead generation mechanism as you can see consumption data, what people’s use cases are and it helps develop and shape the future product.
- One of the key ethe behind measured risk is their commitment to helping their country and the world globally. They believe their capabilities have applicability in defence.
BEST MOMENTS
“We started with a vision of product”
“We don’t want to be reactive; we always want to be out driving opportunity”
“We’ve been smart about how deployed capital, measuring it with the demand of the market”
“We’re gonna go ahead and open this up to the world”
“Chat GPT style, democratise it and see what happens, light the match and watch it explode”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomalbert/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan is joined by bootstrapped SaaS founder Jesse Ouellette in this episode. Jesse talks about how the pandemic presented the perfect opportunity for the creation of Leadmagic, a website identification tool and talks about how you can turn your knowledge into revenue as well as what 99% of companies are missing in their outbound email activity.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- It was after losing his job and feeling frustrated that Jesse decided he wanted to run something of his own. He started off consulting and then during the pandemic bootstrapped his own SaaS company, Leadmagic.
- The pandemic presented a unique opportunity, Jesse had much more time on his hands and decided to spend that time learning more about software and this enabled him to go into the market.
- There is space for more than one product in a market and Leadmagic prides itself on its accuracy, even if its appearance and UI aren’t the most polished.
- Jesse’s sales background has allowed him to pre-empt and identify his client’s current and future needs with accuracy.
- If you keep your cost of sales down but your product proposition value high, then you will be able to scale quickly and efficiently whilst keeping your customers happy.
- Being an entrepreneur and founder isn’t easy, no matter how it is often sold, there are no quick wins, it’s hard work and it’s difficult.
- To turn your knowledge into reoccurring revenue, you need to build an asset. You then need to find a way for people to interact with this asset before purchasing anything.
- 99% of companies don’t have a plan in place to deal with the downsides of sequencing tools. So much of their outbound traffic is being lost to spam filters.
BEST MOMENTS
“You can have more than one product in the market”
“I know what people need, I have a good sense of that”
“If you’re gonna charge people, you’re gonna charge them on impact”
“You’re jeopardising your future as a start-up”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesseoue/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Dorian Selz is a three time-founder and the CEO and co-founder of Squirro, a semantic enterprise business platform helping other businesses with their decision making. He joins Ryan to discuss the benefits of AI, particularly how it can be used to reduce churn in a business. Dorian also reveals the top 3 reasons people leave your service and why Squirro wouldn’t be where it is today without the backing of Salesforce and clients such as The Bank of England.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Squirro uses outbound and inbound marketing strategies to target business functions with specific value propositions.
- Squirro has a good reputation within the financial industry, in part due to working with large clients such as The Bank of England.
- Acquiring the backing of Salesforce was not only beneficial for Squirro in terms of financial means but also in terms of expertise and experience.
- The Achilles heel of all search engines is that the end user cannot express what they are looking for. Dorian set out to take information to people rather than them having to go to it, this was the concept behind Squirro.
- You need contextualising of any end user and a better understanding of the content at hand for machine learning to work effectively within businesses.
- The top 3 causes of churn are product issues and defects and products not working as promised, people not feeling they are taken seriously and finally not having their issues addressed or problems fixed.
BEST MOMENTS
“People have effectively heard of us and come to us and that’s the upside of inbound, reputation”
“At a time, we even beat google at their own game”
“So you’re linking the probability, then the direct linkage that you see through patterns”
“We help you allocate your time wisely”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dselz/?originalSubdomain=ch
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ed Vincent is the founder of the subscription-based live-events SaaS platform Festival Pass. He joins Ryan to talk about some ground-breaking concepts including how to integrate Amazon primes business model and NFTs into your business to create your own capital! Ed also discusses the alternatives to raising capital through venture capitalists and what this looks like in reality as well as reveals the biggest mistakes people make with subscription-based businesses.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Festival Pass uses a membership model where consumers pay a monthly or annual fee to join the platform and receive credits in exchange depending on what level they pay for.
- Ed is beginning to bridge the gap between Web3 and live events by introducing an NFT based subscription model.
- Festival Pass get its tickets and other products from a variety of primary and secondary sources, allowing them to provide variety, volume and value.
- Transparent pricing is one of Festival Passes core concepts and one of the things that differentiate them form their competition.
- Consistently raising capital every 6-12 months with strategic individuals is one of the ways that FestivalPass have been able to avoid institutional capital.
- Festival Pass is starting to work with influencers but instead of paying in cash, paying them with products, such as free festival tickets.
- FestivalPass have an inbuilt reward system to keep people committed to returning and staying on the app.
- You can’t purely focus on growth in subscription business models, you have to ensure every transaction makes a net profit.
- When creating NFTs for your business, use it as an extension of your core product offering but treat it as a shared ownership in the success of the company that has value today and potential future investment too. It’s both a utility and a benefit.
BEST MOMENTS
“We have over 70k users on the platform”
“Once you’re a member you get all these benefits, so you’d never want to not be a member”
“Our goal truly is to sell 10k of them (NFTs) this year”
“Every single business in this world will be on Web3 in 5-10 years time”
“The more you commit to being on the platform the higher your reward”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kiranvangaveti/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Kiran Vangaveti is the founder and CEO of BluSapphire, a SaaS provider for Cyber Security. Kiran joins Ryan to talk about how he bootstrapped his way from 0 to $3million ARR, building on his 24 years of experience working in several fortune 100 companies. He talks about the founding principles of creating BluSapphire and the steps they took to build a capital-efficient company using an open-source model.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- BluSapphire have seen an ROI of over 400% and has a current ARR of 3 million with an aim of increasing it to 200% over the next two years
- Before recently raising capital, BluSapphire mostly relied on word of mouth for its strategy but now they are slowly starting to build communities and channelling this way instead; establishing themselves as thought leaders.
- There is a lot of time wastage in cyber security. Triaging can take hours if not days, the concept behind BluDiamond is to fix this particular problem for cyber security companies in a variety of different technological ways.
- BluDiamond keeps its system as open-sourced as possible, which is unusual in the commercial space. This decision came from Kiran’s enterprise background, to allow people to work with their tools effectively.
- One of the founding principles of BluDiamond was to raise a capital-efficient company. Technology is great but you have to know how to operate a business as one the effective ways to do that is to bootstrap.
- In the beginning, BluDiamond took on a few clients, enough to sustain them, then once their product went live they purely focused on product-driven services.
BEST MOMENTS
“We’re looking at security as a service”
“Our aim is to establish ourselves as thought leaders in the space”
“The idea is to keep it as flexible as possible”
“We always believed in trading in the black, being capital efficient”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kiranvangaveti/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Jordan Hauer is the co-founder and CEO of alt-tech company Amass Insights as well as co-founder of crypto-enabled marketplace Big Data Protocol. Jordan was one of the pioneers in email transaction data, a lead technologist at a multi-billion-dollar equity fund and was identified as one of New York’s top CEOs in the analytics space!
Jordan joins The Scale Up Show to talk to Ryan all about his unique perspectives and alternative ideas on leveraging and developing data as well as the growth and expansion of data science in his lifetime and career.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Jordan’s experience in the hedge fund industry taught him to build personal, strong face-to-face relationships and this is something he has translated into his businesses.
- Attending events is a strong way to build industry relationships as well as asking to be introduced and referred by colleagues.
- Amass Insights try and develop a detailed understanding of all the data providers that are out there in the world and decipher which are valuable for an investor.
- Amass Insights are currently looking into how to use invoice data to predict sales and trends.
- After working in a traditional hedge fund company, Jordan began to ask himself why they weren’t using the data available to them in the ad or marketing space. This question is what started him on his entrepreneurial journey and on to eventually co-founding Amass Insights.
- Getting to this stage of his entrepreneurial journey wasn’t easy. Jordan co-founded two start-ups previously and had to deal with a lengthy and costly lawsuit after creating the second but it helped him build resilience and he learnt a lot of lessons from this low point of his career.
- A new concept of Jordan’s to build growth is ‘Alternative Data Happy Hour’ which is a live industry event aimed at potential customers, utilising existing relationships and connections.
BEST MOMENTS
“Just know the right person, they don’t care who you are, as long as you can make a decent case for your data set”
“I was the real brains behind the operation and I was not getting compensated for that”
“I realised for me to get where I wanted to be in both life and career I needed to have full control over how the company was operated”
“We can’t be trying to capture a piece of every single deal, we need be connectors and known as the people who have all these relationships and know where the data is”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanhauer/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Paul has been in the AI space for over 12 years now and in this conversation with Ryan he talks about all things AI, from the tools you need for your business to how to capitalise on AI in the most innovative and growth-focused ways.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Marketing AI Institute is a media and education company that focuses on building an audience that can be monetised
- They focus on a SAAS-like model for their education arm of the company, built around subscriptions
- Paul knew he could uniquely offer a marketing AI solution, the landscape was very different in 2015 but he recognised the gap in the market.
- It’s important that all companies working with AI consider the ethics and the implications these have for the business.
- Take the time to aggressively assess your own platform and think about what it would take for someone else to build and create a better and smarter version of it? What could AI do to improve your platform?
- There are three main areas to consider when contemplating AI use to increase revenue: intelligent automation and repetitive tasks, personalisation and enhancing creativity and decisions making.
BEST MOMENTS
“It’s all about building an audience that can be monetised”
“The ethics side is really critical”
“Could someone come along and 10x productivity [with AI] -vs- human rules?”
“You’re basically going through existing workflow and asking where can AI help me”
“The future of business is AI or merged-AI or you become obsolete”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulroetzer
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Muhammed Younas is the CEO and founder of VFairs, a software for events business which he bootstrapped from zero to $30 million. Muhammed talks to Ryan about leveraging customer service, chat GBT and referrals to create both a premium for his product and exponential growth!
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Word of mouth has always been at the forefront of vFairs marketing and growth strategy
- Muhammed takes the hospitality side of events seriously, he has always recognised the importance of everything being perfect for his clients because even small things can’t go wrong at large events.
- Muhammed and his team have a wealth of experience in creating and running events themselves which put them in the best place to create products that work for their clients
- VFairs are powering event promotion and content through the power of AI. Muhammed states that the most important thing when using AI in your business is to constantly ensure it is the best solution for your customers.
- The continued focus for vFairs is to offer services for businesses that are forward thinking and to anticipate their future needs.
- Muhammed and his team are systemising word of mouth by always having the customer's end goal in mind when creating their products.
- Customer service and happiness are something vFairs prioritises, they overspend on their customer support but never pass this extra cost onto their customers, creating positive experiences that result in recommendations again and again.
- VFairs clients see them as an extension of their own team, providing a service that helps them run their events in a whole host of different ways.
- The VIP experience, customer support and unique services vFairs offers, allow them to charge a premium over many of their competitors.
BEST MOMENTS
“As much as it is a software business, it is also a hospitality business”
“One has to be a forward looking organisation to be able to do a virtual event”
“We overspend on our customer support and we do that happily”
“They see us as an extension of their team”
“I just want an acknowledgement from that customer that they love our service”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/younas/?originalSubdomain=ca
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Jon Darbyshire is the CEO and co-founder of SmartSuite, a b2b, no code, data management programme that competes with the likes of airtable to become the number 1 tool for business!
Within the first week of launching, Jon and his team brought in over 400 paying customers and growth has continued on this trajectory for the next 3 years. He talks to Ryan all about how he made this happen and the steps you can take to leverage his knowledge and replicate his success.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Jon previously founded Archer Technologies which he then sold for $200 million cash buyout! He then retired but couldn’t stay away from the start-up world for long and that’s how SmartSuite was born.
- SmartSuite doesn’t have a single marketing person on their team, their growth has simply been down to virality, mainly through videos that existing customers have created.
- SmartSuite is a no-code platform that helps businesses manage any process or project inside their organisation.
- Jon and his team took a partner and affiliate model approach to marketing and growth. This is due to the experience Jon gained from running his previous software company.
- SmartSuite receives a lot of leads from freelancers and small firms and although each of them only produces a few leads each, the volume overall is very high. SmartSuite are now focusing on the higher-level clients to try and replicate this lead gen on a bigger scale.
- SmartSuite is so confident in its product that they don’t ask clients for exclusivity, they actively encourage clients to use its competitors.
- SmartSuite spent 3 years developing their core product, focusing particularly on millennial and GenZ workflow, so they could compete with the big competition already out there.
- One of SmartSuites challenges is with their free users, they had to carefully think about how to incentivise them to more to the paid plan by creating the right amount, but not too much friction with the free service whilst also understanding why they might not be switching.
BEST MOMENTS
“Over the last three months you have had 3000 customers”
“We basically become a work management system for businesses that help them manage activities across all their different employees”
“A lot of the times we were selling to an account but also communicating and selling to a partner that was also going to be doing the implementation”
“The freelancers and small consulting firms have created a lot of leads on the SMB side”
“That’s ballsy man, I love it”
“Our number one goal is to get people's hands on a keyboard so they can make up their own minds”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jondarbyshire/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan is joined by Jamie Shanks, the founder and CEO of Pipeline Signals, a sales enablement platform. In his time, Jamie has trained over 250k sales and marketing people on social selling and he talks to Ryan about this as well as the unique ways he found to bootstrap his own business and build a marketing machine at a very low cost, delving deep into how to create a cost-efficient team and what it really takes to make it happen. He also gives his thoughts on the future of sales enablement tech in the next 3-5 years!
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Bootstrapped founders living within their means that are scaling towards profitability this year
- Pipeline identifies customers on the move, sales intelligence that is routed into a company's CRM to track engagement. They then allow sellers to turn these into leads.
- Pipeline utilises teams offshore, to allow them to cut costs but still have high-quality talent. They see this as the future of growth and great operating leverage.
- Anything that can be recreated easily, via a standard operating procedure is a perfect candidate for an offshore team to handle.
- controlling their own destiny is one of the key focuses for Pipeline: where they have happy customers, provide great service and have great net retention so they create revenue.
- Sales intelligence comes in a variety of contexts, from product usage to job changes.
- Pipeline are finding data sets that the customer can’t find themselves, to give them unique prospects and opportunities.
- Net-retention revenue is now the gold standard and the human experience in sales matters, slowly big tech is starting to take notice of this.
BEST MOMENTS
“It’s training an implementation as well as the automated process”
“Controlling our own destiny is most important”
“Social selling outperforms cold calling”
“Technology companies in the boom times didn’t have to look at their CEX process and their enablement process with great scrutiny as customers had the money”
“We’re investing heavily on the enablement side so that in the future of acquisitions companies will say I NEED to have people hand-holding our customers”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jamestshanks_signals-pipelinedevelopment-pipelinecreation-activity-6987812140699041792-RCEQ/?originalSubdomain=ie
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On today's show, Ryan talks to Matt Swalley, Co-Founder & CBO of Omneky. A company that is doing amazing things by leveraging generative AI for marketing. Matt went from being a fortune 10, chief of staff to a first-time founder and leading a company that finished in the top 20 out of 1000 at TechCrunch Disrupt.
He and Ryan discuss the AI of the future - where it's heading, what's changing, and how they started preparing for this big boom in 2018.
KEY TAKEAWAYS -
- Omneky is north of $10m+ on AR and uses a mix of partnerships and direct sales. The aim is $100m per annum and to be publicly traded within a few years.
- Omneky is an artificial intelligence-powered marketing platform that uses real-time performance data and traditional analytics to discover what with an ad is working.
- Using data analytics, generative AI, and other elements all kinds of social media channels and ads can be optimised in a way that enables firms to follow their customers and generate more leads and revenue.
- Leveraging AI enables you to catch everyone's eye despite people´s increasingly shorter attention spans. You can pull data from multiple channels, uncover what works, then automatically create highly relevant content in numerous iterations. Enabling you to be everywhere and appeal to many different types of customers.
- You still need humans to come up with extra ideas, check the output, eliminate bias, tweak the designs, and develop the AI. Omneky has its own development team.
BEST MOMENTS
“For direct sales – a combination of outbound emails and retargeting with digital ads.”
“It was really fate and networking that bought me here.”
“There´s different leverages you can pull with digital advertising and insights you can pull from that data.”
“The beautiful part of this is that there´s still a place for humans in every element of this.”
“Today, it´s (AI) really on fire.
“Things are moving on, people get on or get blown away.”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
Website - https://www.omneky.com/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-swalley-59249533/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business, or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEOs, and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom, and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to LinkedIn) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Steve Cody is the founder and CEO of Bunking which is a marketplace for shared living and travel.
He also has another business called Marketplace Studio, which is a software development boutique firm focused on marketplace creation. He started in business as a teen with just $1,200. Then went on to create 17 more companies in just 30 years. Businesses that have generated over $750 million in sales.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Bunking launched in beta mode about 3 months ago and is pre-revenue.
- They are running 4 go to market tests to uncover the niche that has the lowest customer acquisition cost, with the highest network effect.
- Bunking connects like-minded people to get together to use shared living and travel to have adventures they could not otherwise afford.
- Bunking is focused on the travel retreats sector, followed by remote work and roommate living.
- Collaborative living is becoming a huge thing, especially themed homes. E.g., YouTubers or tech workers living together learning and bouncing off each other.
- The impact of network effects is huge. Bunking enables individuals e.g., retreat owners to tap into this far more.
- Be prepared to think out of the box and pivot. Bunking did not turn out to work much like the way the team first thought it would.
- When you have a business idea, ask what do you want to get out of it? E.g., more free time or something else. Answering that question impacts how you make it a reality.
- Leverage your data from the start. Think about what you need to know about your customers to improve how you serve them.
BEST MOMENTS
“We´re building supply and getting user feedback.”
“Post CoVid there's a lot more people with their own schedules and more mobility”
“You have to start with the premise that you’re going to find a way to make it happen”
“Bunking is almost like a dating platform, because we're connecting like-minded people to do joint bookings.”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
Bunking Website - https://bunking.com/
Steve Cody´s Website – https://www.stevencody.com/
Steve Cody LinkedIn - https://ca.linkedin.com/in/stevemcody
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business, or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Alex Quilici is the CEO and founder of YouMail. Before that, he co-founded and sold Quack to AOL for over $200 million. To grow YouMail Alex pivoted multiple times, going from B2B to B2C, before creating a unique dual approach business model which has enabled the company to gain traction and grow at a phenomenal rate.
You are not going to want to miss this episode. In it, Alex talks about grit, perseverance, and what it takes to be successful in a startup.
KEY TAKEAWAYS -
- Using a two-company approach has enabled YouMail to help businesses to stop making bad calls, while at the same time equipping consumers to effectively block spam callers.
- YouMail has fully leveraged its knowledge of how spam/robocalls are made and used it to create multiple revenue streams. Doing this by providing solutions for consumers, carriers, and those firms that have imposters making calls pretending to be them.
- When things are not working out, don’t be afraid to pivot. Start by leveraging what you already know to identify and solve a different problem within the industry or marketplace that you have been working in.
- Recognise what skills you don't have and hire to fill that skill gap. Free yourself up to leverage what you know and what you do well.
- Imagine the world differently to create your vision. For example, Quack came out of Alex wanting to be able to do anything he could do on his PC while he was out and do so from his brick phone. Once he had that vision he went out and made it happen.
- With a big vision, you may fail to completely achieve it, but the process of working to fulfil it will generate amazing innovations.
- To get your big vision done everyone needs to be singing from the same hymn sheet and understand their role in delivering it.
BEST MOMENTS
“Be open to being told you are wrong”
“Ask if everything went as I wanted, what would it look like?”
“For YouMail, we asked what it would look like if we were wildly successful. The answer was we would want there to never be another call somebody doesn't want.”
“With a vision, you should be able to tell people it at a cocktail party”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
YouMail website - https://www.youmail.com/
YouMail apps - https://www.youmail.com/home/apps
Who Not How - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Who-Not-How-Accelerating-Teamwork/dp/B08KYLJ29H/
Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Buy-Back-Your-Time-Unstuck/dp/059342297X/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business, or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEOs, and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom, and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Christian Keltz is the founder and CEO of UserGems, which runs an AI-driven prospecting solution that enables companies to drive effective growth and prevent churn by keeping track of job changes for key contacts and accounts. Enabling them to create a bigger pipeline and faster sales cycles. He was also a leader in Google´s product group and has held important positions at McKinsey and Microsoft.
Christian talks about the experience of starting out using Y Combinator funding and pivoting multiple times. Including how he managed while nearly running out of money several times over 5 years, before breaking through and experiencing 10x growth. Using the data, he has built up across a large sample size he dives deep into how the current market conditions are impacting the way decision-makers buy.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Sales and marketing have to be highly orchestrated to be effective.
- Pipeline anxiety is an issue that can be avoided.
- UserGem was bootstrapped before becoming funded. In the episode, Christian explains why he did it like this.
- It is possible to develop product and business ideas fast. Put together a regular timeline then ask yourself what can I do to launch in just 2 days? Doing this forces you to innovate, think about crazy options, and greatly accelerate the idea to launch timeframe.
- Work efficiently, so you can avoid having to seek further funding.
- When a buyer/decision maker leaves a company, you need to know where they go, so you can sell to them there. As well as know who is replacing them, so you don´t lose a customer. In the current market, retaining customers is rightly seen by business owners as vital.
- AI enables you to identify who the stakeholders are, as well as what type of contact/conversation you need to have with each one, and when.
- The future of sales and marketing tech will be more about orchestrating the individual actions of who is who and reaching out to them in the right order, at the right time, and in the right way.
BEST MOMENTS
“Instead of looking at how you could double over the next year, ask what you would need to do to multiply yourself x10”
“Just because a customer is asking for it, doesn´t mean they will pay for it.”
“It's about reaching out to the very same people with the very same message at the same time across all the channels you can.”
“Over the past 3 or 4 months all of our conversations are focused on actual churn prevention.”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
UserGems website - https://www.usergems.com/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/christiankletzl
Email – christian@usergems.com
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business, or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEOs, and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom, and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Maarten Verwaest is the founder and CEO of Limecraft, which takes technology, automation and AI to help media companies manage their workflows and include clients such as Associated Press.
Not only has Maarten founded 3 SaaS companies, but he has also facilitated 2 successful exits and in this episode talks about how he initially created capital for a $ 3 million MVP as well as shares the knowledge that saved him from closing down; instead adding 10% growth month on month!
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Initially, Limecrafts primary go-to-market strategy for growing revenue was trade shows due to the high trust base and network-heavy industry of media. But since their surge in demand in 2020, they have started to focus on content marketing in-house.
- Limecraft gives companies the gift of time, they automate repetitive work allowing companies to focus on the true creative elements.
- If you eliminate repetitive tasks and focus on high-value ones, you also increase your ability to scale and grow.
- Focusing on the retention of existing customers and referrals is one of the ways Limecraft has been able to grow at the rate they have.
- It took a lot of trial and error for Limecraft to get to the successful pricing model they have built today. They learnt the most from their early clients and their thoughts around what pricing fit and worked for them.
- Limecraft got its competitive advantage by listening to the difficulties and pain points their industry and clients were struggling with and addressing them. When it came to scaling, they knew exactly what to do and what they needed to focus on solving.
- Creatives and the creative industry don’t generally care about the ins and outs of technology, they just simply want it to work for them, so this is what Limecraft focus on.
- Mainstream AI is not currently well adapted for video content. Maarten feels like it’s his duty to make people understand and recognise this.
BEST MOMENTS
“We automate repetitive work”
“Our net revenue retention is 25% without having to do any additional sales”
“If you’re developing a SaaS company you need to filter out the good early adopters, they will challenge you, they will help you figure out what pricing works”
“Creative people don’t give a shit about technology, they just want it to work”
“90% of the text it recognises is plan bullsht it’s nothing to do with the video”*
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/maartenverwaest/?originalSubdomain=be
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan is joined by Adam Baker, ex salesforce employee who has founded, scaled and exited two SaaS companies as CEO. Adam chats to Ryan about his 20+ years of experience in software development, the problems and challenges currently being faced by founders and how he and his team are changing the landscape of enterprise sales with his newest solution Dealpad.io
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Dealpad.io are very intentional about whom they speak to, whom they want to sell to, ensuring they only work with their ideal buyers whom they know they can make successful. It means their marketing budget is relatively low.
- Linkedin is one of the main platforms that Dealpad.io use to reach its customers, directly engaging with them, learning and helping them with their specific pain points and needs.
- From his own experience of being a buyer, Adam recognised the challenges his ideal customer would be facing and tested solutions with this in mind when creating Dealpad.io
- Buyers in enterprise sales are becoming more sophisticated, nailing their own processes, making sellers vulnerable and in turn giving them less control.
- Dealpad.io gives the capability to see what your buyers and sales teams need and how they can be helped.
- Optimism isn’t enough to close deals, so much time is wasted on focusing on advocates within a team that actually don’t have the authority to make decisions.
- Regardless of the economic situation we are facing right now, software is needed more than ever to create efficiency and close as many deals as possible.
- Adam believes that a founder's belief in solving problems, timing and product market fit are the three key elements to building a successful company.
BEST MOMENTS
“We’re very intentional about who we want to sell to, who we want to work with”
“We do most of our marketing on LinkedIn because it’s where our customers are, it’s mostly intentional outreach”
“I’ve been the buyer, so I know the pains we’re solving”
“All of this data helps the sales individual understand is their buyer content, do we have everybody in the process we need and where do we need to lean in and help them through their journey”
“That’s all founders have to believe, that we’re solving a problem”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamlbaker/?originalSubdomain=uk
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Scott McCrady is the founder of SolCyber a security platform that aims to simplify businesses security needs. Scott previously held senior positions at both EDS and IBM and joins Ryan to talk about how he got to this stage in his journey, his plans for the future as well as sharing his killer framework for creating a solution with perfect product market fit.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- SolCyber has been doubling its revenue each quarter and looks to continue this growth trajectory next year too.
- 1/3 of SolCybers rev comes from inbound, 1/3 from outbound and a 1/3 and 1/3 via the channel. The mix of these three has helped with sustainable growth.
- Scott’s aim was to build a product that would make a mid-market company's life so much easier that they wouldn’t be able to say no to buying it.
- Market timing can mean more than people give it credit for. As a founder there can sometimes be luck involved in your success, especially when it comes to getting funding.
BEST MOMENTS
“We’re really providing a sophisticated level of security and the midmarket likes getting access to that”
“A lot of it depends on the timing of the market, funding today is very different to 12 months ago”
“As a founder som times you get lucky sometimes you don’t”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottmccrady/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Gregory Shove is the founder and CEO of Section4. Gregory has founded 6 companies and created over $250 million in exits! He talks to Ryan about how he made all this possible as well as how to recession-proof your business.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Section4 Relies heavily on a consumer flywheel for its growth, the success partly being due to its high NPS score of 70
- After realising he didn’t like working for other people, Greg began his first start up with his wife, before selling it.
- Gregory loves the early stage of creating a business, whether it’s bootstrapped or funded, it’s the early stages he thrives in and enjoys the most.
- A high-touch, high-value sales process needs a high ACV and good renewal rates.
- Managing yourself as a CEO and investing your own time and capital to find the right product fit, is one of the biggest pieces of advice Greg would give to anyone starting out.
- Ask yourself, are you looking at all the relevant data before making business decisions?
- Think about your core customer, how do they buy and how and why do they renew? How could this change in a recession? Base your next decisions on this.
BEST MOMENTS
“Lots of capital which comes with all sides of upsides and all types of downsides”
“I don’t like working for other people”
“Who is your core customer, how are they buying and renewing and how is that going to change in a recession?”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Jay is the founder and CEO of SkyPad, a SaaS company which bridges the data gap between retailers and brands. He joins Ryan to talk about his world-class expansion techniques that have built SkyPad to over 140% NRR plus over $10 Million in ARR. He gives the lowdown on his growth path and the core metrics he and his team focus on.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- SkyPad had significant growth throughout the pandemic and is looking at around 35% growth going into 2023
- The primary go-to-market strategy is expanding to meet the needs of their customers via new solutions and products
- Investing in technology is one of SkyPads strategies but they still recognise the need to expand their team with talented people; you need those who can generate ideas for continuous innovation and development.
- Customer input is essential to building software that works for your clients and remains to be successful.
- Before their great growth, SkyPad did spend some time in the red, surviving with funding from their own reselling business.
- An aggressive marketing strategy towards existing clients, as well as the retail community, is one of the ways SkyPad exponentially grew.
- SkyPad has an incredible close rate on their demo, 75%, so the key for them is to simply get in front of prospective clients.
- MRR is a key component for SkyPad, it is one of the core metrics they focus on alongside the churn and the team that make it happen.
BEST MOMENTS
“What we’re doing is special, it’s essential”
“You don’t want to sit there and develop in an ivory tower, you want customer input”
“They send us all the data and we do the distribution”
“We have very large companies using SkyPad”
“Most important are the team, the people behind it”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Lars is the CEO and founder of GreenRope, a SaaS CRM company that he bootstrapped himself, he is also the author of the book CRM for Dummies. Lars talks to Ryan about his journey of perseverance through adversity, why entrepreneurs create incredible value as well as the new strategies and processes they are implementing to stimulate growth at GreenRope.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- GreenRope has generally been focused on organic growth but is changing its strategy to try and break its $2 million ceiling by focusing on partnerships.
- GreenRope is a subscription-based CRM and marketing system.
- GreenRope is an accessible and flexible platform that allows its users to choose and use the features that work for them.
- When Lars was in the air force, he was part of a very large ‘machine’. He found the bureaucracy stifling, he wanted to express his creativity and solve problems and effect change, which he felt he could do so if he worked for himself.
- As an entrepreneur, you have to be able to think about what value you can provide to people and consider the right price for it.
- When you choose to grow organically you can only grow alongside the capital you create which can become challenging as the market you are in matures.
- Perseverance and dedication are what Lars attributes to his continual success throughout his business journey. He also stresses how important it is to be flexible and pivot when needed.
BEST MOMENTS
“It can be challenging to be small, to compete against big companies…but also not a lot of BS, when we need to get things done we get things done”
“I just knew that I wanted to work for myself”
“What can you create to compete with what is already out there?”
"Perseverance separates a lot of people from success and failure"
"Being a CEO can be lonely"
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmitrykudrenko/?originalSubdomain=ua
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Dmitri is the CEO of Stripo, an email marketing solution. He talks to Ryan about the exact work he did to create Stripo, his key processes for success including why one of his primary growth strategies is viral word of mouth as well as his recommended framework for email conversion!
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Most companies already know what they want to say but need technical help in creating email marketing that converts, this is where Stripo come in.
- Dmitri found separating their initial business model to suit a global market was part of their early success.
- Directly targeting clients at enterprise companies, with a campaign for them, can be a simple but highly effective way of achieving growth as you have a paid proof of concept around your solution.
- Focusing on content marketing allows Stripo to provide extra value for its clients.
- Data is the most important thing when creating an email campaign.
- A lot of people try to create the perfect email without thinking about the processes and structure needed behind it to be effective and consistent.
- It’s best to focus on the time you spend to implement a system and process, continuously optimising and learning from your audience.
BEST MOMENTS
“We built this product the first time without big ambitions”
“We build a community around our product”
“Templates are important, but content marketing is much more important”
“We mostly focus on saving time but creating beautiful emails that you want”
“The most important thing is data”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmitrykudrenko/?originalSubdomain=ua
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Adam Sandman is the founder and CEO of Inflectra, a leading maker of software test management. He joins Ryan in this episode to talk about how he transformed his lifestyle businesses from $1 million to $10 million in under 6 years. He also talks about how to be capital efficient in the current climate as well as how he utilised a bankrupt company to help build an entire community for his organisation.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Adam began programming at just age ten and was previously a physicist until
- Revenue growth is 10% YOY for Inflectra
- Direct marketing including SEO and content marketing are the primary growth strategies Inflectra focus on and they are looking to create an outbound sales team this year.
- At first, Inflectra was a lifestyle business which competed against others purely on cost. But once they added additional features Adam realised the growth potential and this is when they started to grow rapidly.
- The first step to doing this was building a sales team, Adam could no longer be the only generator of sales.
- You have to be mindful when hiring, you don’t want to have to make people redundant, this can really damage company culture and reputation
- Inflectra follows a classic sales process at first and then aims to upsell a client once they have buy-in.
- Focusing on customer experience-driven sales is one of the main things Adam contributes to Inflectra's success.
BEST MOMENTS
“We try and get in with a land and expand model”
“PLG is in the mix but it tends to be driven by customer success just because of the customer segment size, they tend to be more process driven when buying software”
“The single best strategy has been customer experience-driven sales”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.inflectra.com/Company/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Join Ryan and Corina for a unique episode of The Scale Up Show! After 22 years in the SaaS space, Corina wanted to share the 11 top things she has learnt and wishes she knew when first starting out. This episode gives incredible insight for anyone who is going through the journey right now, particularly the early stages.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- FunctionFox have had profitability every single year for the past 18 years and they continue to grow year on year.
- FunctionFox was started on 500k from friends and family and since then they have used profits from the business to continue to build and grow.
- Being a pioneer in their industry for so long has meant they have held a good market share and a lot of their sales and growth comes from referrals.
- 1 - Have a really clear mission and goal at the start of creating your business, to help you remain focused. Clear and timed goals are essential in staying on track and keeping your team aligned and engaged to believe it is possible.
- 2 – Be Niche Focused:
- 3 – Hire slow, fire fast: Is the candidate right for your team and aligned with what you want to achieve?
- 4 – Culture is key, you’re only as good as your team.
- 5 – Have something amazing to offer: Make sure your product or service is good, solid and reliable.
- 6 – Put the right KPIs in place and follow them: Start small and simple and keep them visible.
- 7 – Hire for the skills you don’t have
- 8 – Surround yourself with the right people: Networking is essential, learn from those who have gone before you
- 9 – Take calculated risks and make mistakes: this is where you learn the best lessons
- 10 – Celebrate your wins and success: You have to do this along the way, to keep up engagement and motivation for both you and your team
- 11 – Just be yourself: The more authentic you are the more trusting you can be to your team and your customers too
BEST MOMENTS
“We have only used our profits to grow”
“The biggest proportion of our sales comes from referrals”
“If we build a product specific to them they will see us as the professionals not the generalists out there”
“Set good values, communicate often, be direct”
“Know your KPI’s and follow them”
“We built it because we needed it ourselves and I believe that’s where the best companies are born”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The founder of Narrative, Nick Jordan, joins Ryan in this episode. He talks about what made him enter the world of entrepreneurship after previously working at global tech companies Adobe and Yahoo. He then talks through his solution, why so many companies are missing out on the value of data right now and his highly-effective referral-based growth strategy.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Narrative has a mixed growth strategy. Focusing on both their enterprise sales team and referrals.
- Nick hadn’t always dreamt of starting his own company, he knew the work involved from watching his father create his own business. But 5 years ago, he wanted to fix the problems he had been seeing in data.
- Every company assumes they have enough data to be able to utilise it effectively to drive results. But this isn’t the case, they often have gaps in data sets and a lack of knowledge of how to make their data useful
- If you can get the right data at scale you can generate trust and a lifetime lifestyle brand.
- If you collect the right data you can look at supply chain optimisation and shopping basket analysis, using it to aid growth via ancillary products and add-ons.
- Narrative can often feel like a marketplace, they are ‘the pipes’ that make it easier for people to work together. This is what enabled their referral-based growth strategy; they work with both sides of the market.
- If you make things easier and more efficient for both sides of a marketplace, this means that they want to use your software outside of your marketplace to make other areas of their business easier too.
- Narrative’s solution allowed the smaller companies in the data world to get a much bigger market share, by putting all of their solutions together on one platform, one marketplace making it more appealing for buyers.
BEST MOMENTS
“Certainly, I’m not the only person with this problem…no one had fixed the problem in the way I wanted them to”
“People are often drowning in data and often the data they have isn’t efficient in solving the problem they want to solve”
“We’re starting to see people use data to actually source deal flow”
“Referral-led growth, the easiest way to cut through that is to have someone who already works with a company, so you need to be working with them”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The CEO of LegitScript, Scott Roth, joins Ryan in this episode to talk about his business experience, including being VP at SalesForce and his strategies to grow a SaaS company to upwards of $50 million! He also talks about the steps you can take to integrate AI into your business today and how to leverage it for the future.
LegitScript is a SaaS company that aims to make the internet and payment eco-system safer and more transparent. They have a comprehensive solution that contains areas and data they have built themselves as well as human insights from their analyst team; using these to help platforms identify risky or problematic ads and transactions that are happening that shouldn’t.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- LegitScript has been seeing profitable growth in all areas, including $50 million in ARR and 200+ employees to date.
- LegitScript has an enterprise monitoring business as well as a certifications business.
- Using their own tech and highly skilled analyst team, LegistScript help to highlight risky and problematic payments, ads, listings etc to businesses.
- Being part of SalesForce when they went through tremendous growth helped form Scott’s mindset which has been career-defining for him.
- A growth mindset is one of the essentials that Scott has learnt in his career. You must constantly look at things as an opportunity, growing your own skills and keeping up the pace with the industry and company you are in.
- Gaining an understanding of other aspects of a business means you can learn to collaborate effectively with other teams, meaning you can get things done more efficiently as well as more easily.
- Learning your non-negotiables in life helps you decide what is worth focusing on and direct your energy in the right places, in your career and personal life too.
- LegitScript is currently bringing all of its data together, including from human sources, to one place so it can apply machine learning to produce insights for its analyst team as well as its customers.
- There is a plethora of 3rd party tech out there that businesses can utilise to help save them time when building solutions; be smart and use it.
- Aligning your sales and marketing team is an internal barrier to growth and execution, this is the first thing any business should focus on when looking at growth.
BEST MOMENTS
“Our mission is to make the internet and payment eco-system safer”
“Always have a growth mindset, looking for opportunities to take things to the next level”
“So much of what we do is collaboration across departments”
“Ok, what are the 3-5 things that are going to move the needle in this next period of time [of growth]”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
www.enchoice.com
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Dave has over 25 years of experience in digital transformations, he built his first start-up in 2002 and later merged with another in 2019, becoming CEO of EnChoice. Dave talks to Ryan all about the journey to decide to merge and what had to happen for this to be a smooth and successful transition. He also talks about what they are doing to continue to grow their business and disrupt the space including how to build a business that investors are interested in the long term.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- A great sales and marketing team that understands its customers is an essential part of Dave’s growth strategy alongside workflow and organisation where content drives sales.
- One of the main barriers and challenges EnChoice have to deal with is the age of technology they are working with.
- Upgrading these technologies and giving high-value service are two of the main ways EnChoice is disrupting the space.
- To make a company highly valuable from an investment perspective, Dave and his team focus on the IP of EnChoice as well as thinking about the future needs of their customers.
- EnChoice has recently pivoted towards larger solutions in the server space, it’s not been straightforward but it’s taking these kinds of educated guesses that keep them ahead of their competition.
- Companies spend a lot on inefficient processes, small changes can have big results for them from both a cost and productivity perspective. Anything that can be automated can make a huge difference for them and their customers too.
BEST MOMENTS
“The solutions we are providing are a lot more modern and that’s what gets people excited”
“Having your own IP is important, even though in today's world everybody's IP is a combination of everyone else's IP”
“Any time you pivot into a new direction you're bound to have some recourse”
“We’re really putting the focus on big systems that we can then leverage”
“If you don’t have an ai strategy you don’t have a future”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
www.enchoice.com
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Drew Sechrist is the founder and CEO of Connect the Dots, a network intelligent programme for finding the strongest connections in people and companies you want to reach. He joins Ryan to talk about his experiences working with Marc Benioff at Salesforce, including his role in taking the company from $0 to $10 Billion, as well as his insights into creating his own start-up in machine learning and AI.
Email to skip the waitlist: drew@ctd.ai
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Connect the Dots construct a personalised graph for their clients based on every email you have ever sent in your life which can then be used to find warm leads for people who fit into your ideal customers.
- After gaining significant experience in the --- space, Drew read an article about Marc Benioff leaving Oracle to start his new venture, SalesForce. He wanted in.
- One of the things Drew took from working closely with Marc is the speed he would work and implement at, this had a ripple effect across the organisation and is something Drew has mirrored in his business.
- Drew also found that Marc was never phased by tough times or bad news, he would always look at opportunities and the upside to situations.
- At the beginning of SalesForce, Drew and Marc focused on selling to smaller businesses this was due to the engagement they would get from them but also the higher conversion as they were more willing to take a risk with a new platform.
- Relationships are incredibly important regardless of who and where you are selling. To be effective at selling, you have to be able to build and maintain relationships.
- Before you build relationships somewhere, you can leverage the existing relationships you have to ‘get an in’ to people and places; you need to connect the dots. This is what gave Drew the concept for the application Connect the Dots.
- It’s in your best interest as both an individual and a business to connect all your accounts using a platform such as Connect the Dots.
BEST MOMENTS
“If you have speed across your organisation, that multiplies”
“There’s no such thing as bad news for Marc”
“The dot com bubble bursting made the company [salesforce]”
“Life isn’t happening to you, it’s happening for you”
“You have to have and you have to develop good relationships to be a good salesperson”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/drewsechrist/
ctd.ai
Email to skip the waitlist: drew@ctd.ai
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Rabi Gupta is the CEO and founder of Evabot, a corporate gifting platform that leverages AI. He joins Ryan to talk all about how to leverage AI to build rapport and revenue growth. Rabi also talks about how AI can be integrated into any business, help build relationships and what the future of AI may look like.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Evabot relies on a heavily product-led strategy for growth. Leveraging recipients of gifts and their data.
- Rabi and his team wanted to solve to problem of building relationships quickly, this is what gave them the idea of gifting. This then evolved into how to understand what gift people would like, into using AI and then Evabot was born.
- The concept was by giving a gift, to act as a trojan horse, Evabot would then have incredible data and information that could then be used to build more revenue.
- A singular question can capture more than one answer. One of the keys to Evabot’s success was trialling various ways of asking questions to users.
- One of Evabot’s initial challenges is to prove and show they weren’t just a gifting platform but an AI sales tool. Rabi drove this forward by creating a solution that looks totally different to their existing one and trialling it first on their own employees.
- Evabot is not Rabi’s first start-up. What he learnt from his existing projects is how important the team you build is to your initial and future successes and that you need to work with people you enjoy working with.
- Thinking big but understanding that each day is a small step towards the success you desire is one of the mantras Rabi tells himself and instils in his team too.
BEST MOMENTS
“What we are doing today is helping businesses build rapport with their customers using AI”
“The first gift was just a trojan horse to get this information”
“Create a solution that looks different to the existing solution to get you out of this [product] bucket”
“If you just keep at it the luck will eventually come your side and you’ll find something for you and eventually you’ll be successful”
“Every day is just one more step towards success”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rabigupta/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan is joined by the CEO of Realync, Matt Weirich. Matt talks to Ryan about his journey to founding Realync, a sales enablement solution for leasing teams; allowing them to create their own video tours and more to give them as many tools as possible to make their sales. Matt talks in detail about having to pivot to find the best product-market fit, how he is creating transparency and flexibility in the real estate space as well as the growth Realync has achieved as a side effect of the pandemic.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Realync now has a ARR of close to 6 million.
- They focus on multi-family space property management companies. Running campaigns trying to bring in leads but also relying on outbound sales e.g conferences, networking etc to grow. However, their primary strategy for growth is to expand with existing clients, to do work well for them on one property in hopes of being able to take on more of their portfolio.
- Matt set out to solve one of the biggest problems in leasing, to be able to show people the property they want, virtually. It’s been a journey but 9 years later they have been able to do this.
- Initially Realync product market fit wasn’t right, they had to pivot quickly and learn fast.
- In the early days of founding a business, it can be difficult to know whose advice to listen to, there is always a lot of ‘noise’.
- Being the ‘new guys’ in the industry, Matt and his team had to build strong relationships and learn everything about the space.
- 2020 was a pivotal year for Realync, the pandemic meant that people couldn’t do business as usual, in person. The virtual technology they had built allowed businesses to continue to run and they grew by 450% in one year.
- You learn over time in business where you need to pour your energy. This helps you avoid ‘shiny object syndrome’.
- The single best thing Matt believes Realync has done is to install an experienced and effective leadership team. It has driven growth forward and allowed him to focus on other things too.
- Matt believes there are a lot of unknowns for the future of tech, it’s becoming increasingly hard to predict what will happen next.
BEST MOMENTS
“Listen to different people with different ideas”
“Finding the perfect product-market fit was the inflection point”
“There were so many lessons learned over this 9-year journey”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattweirich/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Paul McCarthy joins Ryan in this episode to talk about his 25+ years of experience in the software industry, including working with the likes of SONY. Paul also talks about founding the maintenance platform SnapFix and how he is creating a universal language that can be used for any software in any language as well as his plans for the future of SaaS.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- SnapFix’s primary growth strategy is via digital marketing campaigns and outbound dialling to warm leads.
- SnapFix’s solution creates a simple way for multilingual teams to communicate and collaborate.
- Initially bootstrapped, SnapFix has now had three successful rounds of funding since 2019.
- Paul grew up as one of 12 children on a farm in Ireland. He always had an entrepreneurial spirit and after completing a computing engineering degree started to travel across the globe implementing complex solutions including for SONY.
- In addition to learning about farming from his family, Paul also gained a lot of knowledge about maintaining and managing buildings; this was the foundation for SnapFix.
- Seeing the many frustrations and barriers, mostly due to bad communication, in the building management industry, Paul was determined to use software to fix it; SnapFix was born.
- Paul set out to create the simplest maintenance platform and figured that everyone understood images and the traffic light system, so he used these as his workflow foundations for building the software.
- Paul believes that once you add a form, you create rigidity, to ensure simplicity they avoid forms at all costs.
BEST MOMENTS
“The Instagram for the maintenance and the management of your building”
“The common denominator was WhatsApp, a wonderful solution for chat but wasn’t fit for purpose for getting things done”
“I see the traffic light as the universal symbol of teamwork and everybody understands it”
“We’ve declared war on forms”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulmccarthyireland/?originalSubdomain=ie
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Second-time guest and CEO of RevGenius, Jared Robin, joins Ryan to talk about the biggest mistake people make in building communities and why the industry is underserved as well as the opportunities to be found via referrals and word of mouth in all industries. He also talks about his mission to bring inspiration and creativity to all the spaces RevGenius are in.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Ryan met Jared during the pandemic in a transitional time for Jared in particular.
- The primary go-to-market strategy going into the next year for RevGenius will be focused on media, sponsorship, and how to gain more reoccurring revenue.
- As a founder, you can’t do everything forever. You need to accept there are people out there that can do certain things better than you if you want to grow.
- Focusing on hiring people who are better than you, helps you strive to become a better company through experience, ideas and operationally too.
- Due to the rise of social media in branding, there is a ceiling to what clients are willing to pay for marketing and also high expectations.
- The best founders are those who are the most humble, this is what Jared has seen time and time again.
- Jared doesn’t regret the mistakes he has made on his business journey, he learnt the most by fixing them.
- The biggest hack for building a community is to do it full-time. Everyone else is doing it as a side project.
BEST MOMENTS
“I’m not as effective as someone else can be, no matter what my ego wants to tell me”
“Bring word of mouth, to the light”
“A lot of the SaaS CEOs I have had on the show are serial”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaredrobin/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan is joined by the founder and CEO of Ganymede Technologies, Nathan Clark. Nathan has a unique background, starting out as a bond trader who then moved into product. Nathan then began his own company, creating the next amazon web services for the biotech industry.
Nathan delves deep into the complex and advanced concepts of SaaS in the biotech industry and what we can all learn from them. Ryan and Nathan also talk through the revolutionary tools being developed in AI drug discovery and how they and other SaaS solutions are disrupting other industries.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The biotech and pharm industries are often home to a lot of smaller, early-stage companies. Ganymede can work with them to help with their tech.
- Ganymede help organise and order the complexity of the data that comes out of pharmaceutical companies, whilst remaining respectful of the data too.
- Nathan’s passion for tech allows him to get deep into the technology and systems and fully understand features and products.
- Choosing to invest and understand the importance of treating biology as an engineering project has immeasurable potential for the future.
- If you know what industry you want to create a business in, go and work for a company that is renowned in that space and learn as much as you can first.
- Make the services for your client first, then figure everything else out afterwards e.g API. Work backwards, you can build faster if you simply focus on client needs.
- Reducing data entry speeds up science, Ganymede helps accelerate scientists by around 20% providing better value for clients particularly around go-to-market.
BEST MOMENTS
“It’s really about messiness and complexity”
“We have a lot of fintech blood in our veins”
“Technology feels like a real way to truly understand the business”
“Software is becoming more data-orientated and more functional”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-clark-4b850134/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Adam Tank, founder and CCO at Transcend Software, an engineering automation company. Adam is a serial founder, angel investor and award-winning inventor solving one of the world's biggest water problems. He has also founded and created a VC-backed robotics company that he then took public.
He joins Ryan to talk through his many accomplishments and reveals his tactics and secrets to achieving them as well as his formula for growth including his ‘flywheel’ concept.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Transcend has grown from 19 employees in 2019 to close to 70 today, their revenue has followed the same trend going from three figures in year one to 7 figures 3 years later.
- Transcend started in SaaS founder led-sales, they still are in many ways today but in a more structured way, particularly by SEO and webinars.
- If you don’t deliver something of value to clients and customers, then you don’t have a business but way you sell and market a product is paramount to its success.
- Both starting and scaling a company is all about customer-led growth. Revenue is important of course, but having your customer develop your product means they are buying in.
- Go and find the people you believe will be your ideal customer before you build your product or service and learn as much as you can.
- There are 5 components to the ‘flywheel concept’ including your customer, your product, your development and implementation.
- 75% of the company Transcend is purely development.
BEST MOMENTS
“What is a business if there’s no product, what is a business if there’s no service?”
“It’s all about customer-led growth”
“We have so many processes over the years to ensure we do this properly”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryzhokhin/?originalSubdomain=ua
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Andrew Ryzhokhin has been in IT and engineering for over 20 years, he co-founded the company Ardas, which started as a software development company but is now moving towards building a productized component eco-system for its clients! Andrew discusses this unique offering with Ryan as well as his experiences in SaaS and how to use outsourcing effectively regardless of the stage your business is in.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Go to market strategy us SEO optimisation and events for their b2b customers
- Ardas is creating an ecosystem, based on its wealth of products and experience, to allow its clients to focus on their unique SaaS features and utilise everything from product development to user management.
- Andrew has worked with a large variety of marketing agencies and freelancers in his time, Ardas have an in-house team to eliminate previous pain points he has dealt with previously.
- The stage you are in as a business has a direct impact on how you should approach creating and managing an offshore development team. In early stages, you can have less specialised roles but as you grow you need more people focused on specific things.
- Video feedback from customers is one of the ways that Ardas operate referrals. It has significant conversion for them, particularly when compared to their SEO leads.
- Building trust with your clients is a big challenge but one that has reaped rewards for Ardas.
BEST MOMENTS
“I could write a book based on my experience with different marketing agencies and freelancers”
“You need to test and match your requirements with what you are obtaining”
“You need somebody who will drive development from your side as well, you can’t leave it to outsourcing”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryzhokhin/?originalSubdomain=ua
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
CEO and founder of Accelevents, Jonathan Kazarian, joins Ryan in this episode. They talk about the almost 7 years Jonathan managed to bootstrap the company for, as well as why he finally decided to gain some funding and the impact that has had on growth. Jonathan also reveals to Ryan his strategy that created the 95% inbound sales, his leveraging of Upwork and what he is continuing to do to grow the company.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Word of mouth has been Accelevents primary growth strategy. 95% of their growth has been based on inbound sales driven by their product-led platform.
- After 6 years of being bootstrapped, Accelevents wanted to add more governance and additional cash flow throughout seasons so this year, they took on VC-backed funding.
- After creating his own event, Jonathan concluded that technology should be there to make running events easier for organisers. This was the beginning of the creation of Accelevents.
- Although Covid hit them hard it was also the pivotal moment where Accelevents decided to completely go all in on their virtual concept of events, something they had been wanting to do for a long time. They then went from $375k in revenue in 2019 to $3.4 million in 2020!
- One of the main things Jonathan attributes to their 95% inbound growth at Accelevents is that they invest heavily in supporting their customers. Building this stellar consumer confidence has led to the growth they have seen.
- Hire people that are better than you at what they do. You can go only scale yourself so far, you need others to build a successful business.
BEST MOMENTS
“There’s an inherent product-led motion that our platform provides and that’s been number 1 for us”
“Technology should be there to make life easier, not harder for event organisers”
“It’s not about that little bit of code, it’s about building a business”
“We want all of them to recognise they can create a great experience using our platform”
“Hire people that are better than you at what they do”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jkazarian/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This is a short-form solo episode, where Ryan breaks down the differences between VC-backed and bootstrapped companies so you can understand how to create revenue from them, their motivators and more in a simple, easy-to-understand way.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- A lot of VC companies seem to be more stressed out currently, including having to carry out redundancies and other cost-saving exercises.
- Bootstrapped CEOs on the whole seem to be calmer, they have more of a safety net, particularly around cash flow.
- If you’re trying to sell to a VC-backed company, the pressure is on an increase in revenue and the top line, so it’s important to be aligned with this
- PE-backed is slightly different, they look for 15-10% bottom line growth annually, and the focus is generally around doing more with less.
- Private (bootstrapped/privately owned etc) focuses on control. They will sacrifice the speed of growth to remain in control.
- Publicly traded companies' number one focus is the stock price.
- If you can recognise and understand the differences between the driving forces of these four ‘buckets’ of companies, then you will be setting yourself up for success.
BEST MOMENTS
“I have clients on both sides, and I interview people on both sides”
“If you’re selling to these types of companies, if you can do more with less or show them that more for less philosophy this is going to get them really excited”
“I’ve never seen such a heavy focus on stock price”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan is joined by the co-founder and CEO of NFT-based SaaS product Pinata, Kyle Tut. Kyle has a background in blockchain development and was previously the operations chief at RaceNote where he was responsible for developing management processes for products.
Kyle talks to Ryan about his journey into a technical space as a non-technical founder and his step-by-step approach to this. Kyle also gives some good tips on how to create and nurture relationships built on trust and respect with an audience/client base that is more complicated and sceptical than the average.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The majority of Pinata’s revenue comes from developers who use and develop their API into their product in marketplaces
- Content marketing is one of the key ways that Pinata markets to its clients, providing value and conversation around their solution as well as other important aspects of the market.
- Building relationships with developers is different to usual businesspeople and consumers. You have to give more time and information to build increased trust and respect.
- Kyle always knew he wanted to build his own company. He loves storytelling and providing value.
- Kyle became interested in the NFT and Crypto space due to the technology and its development. The monetary value and financials surrounding it is simply an added bonus for him.
- As a non-tech person, Kyle knew he needed to gain some education around tech so started attending hack-a-thons. He then established and nurtured good relationships with tech-savvy guys leading to eventually meeting his co-founder.
- Meeting technical people as a non-tech individual can be a barrier, but Kyle says you simply need to go where technical people are and build and nurture mutually valuable relationships with them.
- An option for Kyle was to outsource all the tech but, having someone leading that truly understands tech, particularly tech ideas, is invaluable and how Pinata was born.
- Talking to people, prior and during building their product, helped Pinata gain interest and loyalty from the space but also helped them create a better product that serves their customer base as best as it can.
- Avoiding buzzwords and keeping their products and content simple ensures that Pinata remains accessible for everyone no matter what their experience and what stage they are at.
- NFTs can be anything, including consumables, such as a cup of coffee. Kyle believes that this is the next narrative in NFTs.
BEST MOMENTS
“Developers are much different to traditional business or consumer relationships”
“I had always known that I wanted to build my own company”
“I was lucky to be there in the space at the time”
“As a non-technical person, it is difficult to learn how to meet technical people”
“We’re finding a lot of success in our long-form content”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyletut/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This is a rare solo episode from Ryan! Ryan has taken some time to reflect on over 100 CEO interviews over the past year and wanted to share the TOP 6 takeaways from them with you all.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Lean into your strengths and recognise your weaknesses. Find someone to help with the things you aren’t naturally great at.
- There is no such thing as an overnight success, everyone has failures.
- Struggle and difficulty are part of becoming a successful CEO and founder, figuring things out as you go.
- There are many ways to create a go-to-market strategy, it’s not a one-size-fits-all.
- You will receive ‘non-google’ insights when speaking to people and their experiences
- What it takes to become a successful CEO when odds are against you.
BEST MOMENTS
“Every interview struggles massively at points in their life”
“There’s not one single cheat code for growth”
“My eyes have been opened to things and areas I didn’t even know existed”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan is joined by the CEO and founder of Tint, Matheus Riolfi. Matheus talks about how to add margin to SaaS projects in a unique, yet simple way and explains how you can do this with your business too. He also talks about his journey to becoming a founder and how to gain funding early on in a start-up. Listen in to learn more including how Riolfi is using Tint to democratise the insurance industry through the power of AI.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Direct, inbound sales are the secret to Tint’s growth success.
- Work with tech and SaaS companies to create insurance products to protect customers and clients and therefore the company too.
- The concept of insurance in many companies is unknown. This allows Tint to educate and inspire businesses about their product.
- Once a client decides to work with Tint, they operate on a plug-and-play product. They work as a partnership with the business including great API to make the process seamless.
- Your customers will have problems, tap into these as much as possible, solving these issues and then base your core business around them; this will lead to exponential growth.
BEST MOMENTS
“Typical founder journey, it’s never linear”
“We are a plug-and-play product”
“Our challenge is definitely how to scale our business at this stage”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mriolfi/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Simha is the CEO and co-founder of Ushur, a service engagement platform that leverages data and tech to digitally transform backend processes for industries that struggle with customer service.
Simha talks to Ryan about his journey through entrepreneurship, including his experience in running $ 100 million revenue companies, and consulting and scaling teams. He explains how he and his team have created a new category within the SaaS space with their unique customer experience automation product and how he bootstrapped his way to gaining fortune 500 companies as clients before gaining VC backing. He also sheds light on what he believes the future of tech to be.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- After gaining two fortune 500 companies as clients, Ushur was able to obtain VC backing. The growth since the funding 3 ½ years ago has been over 200% each year!
- Primary revenue growth was based on building a SaaS platform that focused on and was built solely around the industries they knew needed their platform.
- Simha always knew entrepreneurship was for him, he was surrounded by like-minded people and this always inspired him to take risks and continuously look for opportunities.
- Focusing on industries where customer service and experience were lacking was the main goal when Simha and his team started Ushur.
- There’s a lot of friction in industries such as Insurance when customers are trying to reach the company but it also works the other way round, something that Simha had to bear in mind when building and expanding the platform.
- The evolution of communication and the impact this has on customer experience, particularly around what Simha coins ‘micro engagement’ is something he and his team knew would be at the core of their product.
- The brand recognition Ushur has built has allowed them to grow through recommendations and trust.
BEST MOMENTS
“We built a horizontal platform with a vertical go-to-market strategy”
“Having discipline and focus allows you to run a long race”
“Many things in life are serendipity and accidental”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/simhasadasiva/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan is joined by Ryan Buick, co-founder of Canvas app. He talks through the hyper-short process he used to get funding from one of the largest VCs in the world. Ryan also explains how he and his team are democratising the need to transform your data into measurable business results alongside solving the many problems of a data-backed world.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Founder sales, investor intros, and creating a highly personalised network are part of Canvas’ main go-to-market strategy.
- Creating inbound leads via content also forms part of Canvas’ growth strategy.
- Canvas connects directly to businesses existing tools, saving companies both money and effort.
- It's essential to continue learning as a start-up founder, constantly thinking one step ahead, and anticipating what both your customer's and your investor's wants and needs will be.
- Ryan is conscious of working with the best and most advanced data tools but whilst doing so, simplifying the processes. Creating a product that solves a multitude of pain points for their customers.
- The data market is currently quite saturated, Ryan believes that there is going to be a change coming and only those companies who offer something truly unique, with great product market fit, will survive.
BEST MOMENTS
“It’s all lip service until you start actually getting people to pay for it”
“Most people are still going to rely on spreadsheet skills”
“They have all the data they need but they aren’t leveraging the insights they have”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
www.canvasapp.com
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Matt Blumberg is the co-founder and CEO of the senior executive marketplace Bolster. Matt has written three books including ‘The Start-Up CEO’ and created the 2nd best company to work for in the USA, due to the culture he developed.
He talks to Ryan in this episode about how the Bolster marketplace connects CEOs, start-ups and scale-ups with senior executives as well as breaks down his framework for what you can do to create a great culture and high-performing team.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The Bolster marketplace connects CEOs, start-ups and scale-ups with senior executives. It’s the only marketplace that finds senior executive talent.
- Bolster is a marketplace, so its revenue is based on transactions.
- The primary revenue growth strategy is to focus on early-stage to mid-stage CEOs of companies. They do this by tailoring their marketing towards these CEOs, mostly through events, content and networking with investors.
- Matt has always had a passion for creating a better work environment, he wanted to build a culture that people want to work in.
- If you create a culture people want to work in, then you will build a high-quality and therefore high performing team.
- Matt and his team are very content-generous, they want to help founders and CEOs as much as they can.
- Opportunities, autonomy, culture and values have been the main frameworks for driving the incredible culture Matt has built in all his businesses.
BEST MOMENTS
“Any way that we can help a start-up be more successful by scaling their leadership team, their CEO’s capabilities or scaling their board we are the place to come”
“Bolster are changing the way people look for executive talent”
“You can hire a senior executive to do anything”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
www.startupceo.com
www.bolster.com
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Erik Kostelnik is the CEO of the sales and marketing platform Postal. To date, Postal has over 600 b2b customers, has raised 35 million in capital and has grown to a series B company in just 2 years. Erik has 3 successful exits under his belt including a sale to Twitter, Postal is also a product Ryan himself uses and recommends highly!
Erik talks about why Postal is an enterprise-first organisation, the insane growth companies can gain from using an offline-marketing strategy and the importance of community in the modern marketing world.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- There aren’t many businesses right now that focus on offline engagement. This was a gap Postal recognised and capitalised on.
- By focusing on communities and value, Postal help companies develop their offline presence and build engagement in a unique and tactile way.
- Campaigns are all about the ‘when’ and the ‘what’. Companies need a systematic approach towards campaigns so that they can reliably track and test them.
- Ensure you hire people that haven’t reached the pinnacle of their career yet, you want them to still want to prove something and have that drive.
- Be open to adapting and changing your current strategy to align with your sector and find a true product-market fit.
- The current best operators in technology are probably the companies that will be able to afford and invest in the future of tech.
BEST MOMENTS
“Building technology around helping companies build eCommerce and touch points is a very powerful thing”
“It’s not about the stuff, it’s about creating a love language”
“We remember the last thing sent to us; we don’t remember the last email we received”
“We’re still learning, we’re still early days”
“I encourage everyone to take a good look at product market fit and the sector you’re going after”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/erikkostelnik/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan is joined by Chris Savage, the CEO and founder of Wistia, a video platform that allows businesses to utilise the power of video. Before founding Wistia, Chris graduated from Brown university, he is also the podcast host of Talking Too Loud and a proud coffee lover!
Chris talks about how he builds his vision strategy, the impact of planning for the future before making decisions today and the current content/video market and what you should be focusing on in your business.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Wistia’s mission is to help businesses drive with video, there is a multitude of ways for them to deliver on this mission including creating content that helps their clients solve unique problems.
- Chris recognised early on that through platforms like YouTube, video content online no longer was restricted to those who could code and were tech-savvy, it would soon be open to almost everyone. This is how Wistia began.
- Being focused on your long-term strategy allows you to make the right decisions instead of being distracted by the immediate short-term.
- Consider your market and potential growth for the future, then work backwards from this point to build your business and its goals and direction.
- Audiences now have unlimited competition for their time, your content is effectively ‘stealing’ time from them, it needs to be top-tier!
- Consumption of all video has gone up since the pandemic, particularly long-form which is a dramatic change.
- The best growth strategy is to find an opinionated product, that solves a unique problem for your customer whilst constantly and consistently improving and adapting.
BEST MOMENTS
“The most consistent, core thing we’ve done is building up that brand equity consistently with content”
“You can do all sorts of things depending on how people are consuming your content”
“If we’re going to fail, it’s going to be into obscurity”
“The audience is in control, they have unlimited competition”
“Don’t be afraid to market simple things”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://wistia.com/about/chris-savage
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Fellow podcaster, two-time founder and CEO of Referral Rock Josh Ho joins Ryan in this episode. He talks about his background in engineering and marketing which led him to create Referral Rock, a software company that helps companies design, launch and manage referral programmes. Josh reveals the secrets to harnessing the power of referrals and how to scale a business effectively.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Referral Rock’s Primary go-to-market is an SEO inbound marketing focus.
- Josh and his team built Referral Rock to focus on data, branding and engagement to help companies harness the unique power of referral programmes.
- Referral Rock focus on larger companies with a pre-existing brand focus, as referrals work best when you have this, and RR software is most effective when it is built around enough volume
- Through founding his first business, Josh learnt two things, that he wanted to sell to businesses and how to use marketing and SEO effectively to get customers
- Referrals can go a lot ‘deeper’ than most people think. Everyone knows what a referral company is, but many don’t understand the best way to make them work in modern business.
- Not all referrals are incentive or money based.
- The brands that have the potential to do referrals best are those that already have recommendations, but they don’t easily recognise or track them.
- Referral programmes have so many options and advantages, Referral Rock allows you to get to know your customers and use your data creatively.
- Referral Rock aims to get a 10-15% uplift from the referral programmes they build for companies.
BEST MOMENTS
“We’re profitable with 20 people”
“The dream of building software that makes money while you sleep”
“You had the right idea, just the wrong timing”
“Am I just incentivising the wrong behaviour?”
“We’ll investigate that brand a bit and get that baseline number so we have something to compare to”
“Our metric to focus on are engaged members”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://referralrock.com/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan is joined by the founder and CEO of Intelligo, Shlomo Mirvis. Intelligo focus on due diligence, business intelligence and risk management in SaaS form; they are on a mission to give businesses in the investment space the ability to run advanced background checks in a simple but incredibly effective way.
Shlomo talks to Ryan all about who Intelligo are, whom they serve and the outcomes of their solution. Shlomo also talks about the importance of company culture as you grow and his single number one strategy for revenue growth.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Intelligo’s primary go-to-market approach is from two avenues, direct sales including inbound and outbound and partnerships.
- The partnerships that Intelligo focus on are those who also sell to the same organisations as them, their competitors, which is usually any law, accountant or consultant firm. They also work with background check companies whom they don’t see as competition, as their own platform is unique and allows those companies to improve efficiency and customer value.
- White labelling their solution is something that Intelligo are considering for the future.
- Intelligo aren’t simply a background check company, they also manage risk, they look after everything from running reports to managing data and compliance.
- Comprehensive background checks and due diligence investment processes are the niches that Intelligo decided to focus on for their platform's unique solution.
- Shlomo wanted to enable trust at scale and help those who have previously been ‘burnt’. By building Intelligo he has made the process of due diligence and risk management simpler and safer for all involved in investing.
- It’s essential to focus on a niche in the early stages of a business, to allow the company to build perfect product-market fit before expanding.
- The best and most effective strategy for revenue growth is to provide value from all angles. Happy clients also mean great referrals, and providing value allowed Intelligo to grow.
- As a CEO, Shlomo asks himself how he and his team can create a learning environment, where people aren’t afraid to take risks.
BEST MOMENTS
“We’re unique in the background check industry, we’re not just a background check company but a risk management platform”
“We chose to focus on a very unique niche”
“93% of series A companies don’t make it to series B”
“We have a very good product market fit, clients are very happy”
“We live in a world of too much data”
“The best most effective strategy is providing value”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shlomo-mirvis?originalSubdomain=il
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Eric Westerkamp is the CEO of CaliberMind, he talks to Ryan about the biggest challenges he has faced in his career, why he believes that machine learning is the future of tech, as well as the biggest mistakes CEOs are making with their data. He also talks about the importance of a data-driven leadership approach and how to leverage machine learning appropriately.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- CaliberMind core clients are high-tech companies, tech-enabled service companies that are b2b; companies that understand how data relates to growth. Their primary revenue growth strategy is to focus on these companies with direct marketing techniques.
- CaliberMind works by mimicking what a dedicated data science team would do for a company.
- Companies are beginning to realize the impact of siloed teams on revenue growth.
- A lot of marketing companies aren’t data-driven. They have to consciously make that decision and then decide how to get meaningful data and understand the questions they want to ask.
- We are going to start seeing more accessible machine learning. People and companies are starting to realise the real-life application and this is the direction Eric sees tech going.
BEST MOMENTS
“We’re giving them insights on exactly what is and isn’t working across their sales and marketing”
“They’re realizing to really maximise their growth they need to run it like a revenue cycle”
“Organisations have to make the decision to become data drive”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericwesterkamp/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan is joined by Chad Ingram, CEO and founder of Distro, a platform where you can find, hire and pay remote developers. Chad talks about why he created Distro and how it solves one of the biggest problems in tech. The three-time founder also shares his philosophical and tactical takeaways from his experience in business.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Distro is primarily product-focused, they are trying to make the balance between this and acquiring new customers, without compromising on quality.
- Previously you could either pay developers more money to retain them or you could contract a Dev shop to build your product. Distro created a third option for businesses.
- Distro is Chad’s third founding company, previous to this he created both an employee benefits platform (Beny) and a customer engagement company (Jump).
- After discovering how much he spent on Dev in his previous company and recognising how easily and frequently developers would move jobs, Chad was inspired to create a better solution. This is why he founded Distro.
- It’s been the norm in recent years to brag about headcount, the bigger the number the better in some cases. However, Chad predicts this is beginning to change, due to a lack of talent and a downturn in Capital.
- Companies are getting more creative about alternatives in hiring and building companies, particularly in roles and positions that they would have only considered as in-house staff previously.
- You can solve most problems with capital but when you do so, you aren’t using your entrepreneurship skills and finding alternative solutions.
- Being clear on your company values and it’s mission creates a clear path to enable growth.
- To scale a company, you have to continue to do the ‘hard things’, over and over again.
BEST MOMENTS
“With Distro, we created an alternative to hiring a dev shop”
“Being a SaaS business the majority of the expense on the P & L was headcount”
“There’s just not as much talent now to meet the demand of these growing tech companies”
“How we behave are our core values”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chad-ingram-2bb07067/
Distro.io
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Superside is a tech-enabled design company that is revolutionising design at scale for brands such as Amazon, Meta, Spotify and Coinbase! The founder and CEO, Fredrik Thomassen joins Ryan in this episode to share the steps behind creating a $40 million SaaS company in just 7 years.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Superside primarily uses inbound content marketing as their go-to strategy, following up on the leads with SDRs or direct calls.
- Design teams can frequently slow down marketing. Superside is a solution that allows a company to get direct access to a dedicated team of top-rated creatives from all over the world.
- Fredrik and his team were struggling to get funding for Superside but once they were fully transparent, they managed to get investors on board. Fredrik believes it’s important to engage the investors with simple presentations and be fully truthful in how you represent the company.
- Realising that their company was heavily about engaging people, Fredrik knew he would need to find the very best designers and creatives in the world to be on his team.
- An experienced marketing and sales team is one of the main reasons Superside was able to grow and scale to where they are now.
- A key strategy for Superside is to get the best product-market fit with their clients, doing more for those who fit the best with what they do.
BEST MOMENTS
“We use a pretty traditional b2b SaaS sales model”
“Doing more for less people, for less companies, has been our winning formula”
“It’s a bottom-up plan and expand strategy which is very different [to usual agencies]”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredrikthomassen/?originalSubdomain=no
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this episode, Ryan is joined by the founder and CEO of SaaS buying company Vendr. Ryan previously worked in a sales leadership position at HubSpot before creating Vendr, where he successfully grew from Zero to $30 million in just 3 years. He talks to Ryan about how he pivoted from sales to founder and shares his top secrets to scalable success and how you can do it too.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Vendr’s primary strategy for revenue growth is inside direct. They have found that mid-market is their sweet spot and rely heavily on this and an outbound strategy.
- The creation of Vendr was to help companies buy software efficiently. Through their knowledge, expertise and management they help companies save both time and money as well as aid them in buying the perfect software fit.
- Ryan always knew he wanted to build and run his own company but up until starting Vendr, he hadn’t had much success.
- After creation, Ryan quickly realised how scalable his concept for Vendr was, it superseded his expectation of being a lifestyle business and has now raised over $215million in funding.
- As almost every company in the world becomes familiar with SaaS they also quickly discover the chaos it can sometimes bring, Vendr helps to solve this.
- Sales are the most important element in Ryan’s success, he believes in ‘selling first’, learning what the problems your customers have and then solving them and selling that solution to them.
- Don’t build things simply because you think they might be useful or you want to have tech, build things that you know solve a problem.
- “Let’s make it hard to not buy Vendr” was one of Ryan’s core principles when founding the business. He set out to ensure that the ROI for the customer would be so good and easy for them to understand that they can’t say no to buying their product.
- Delight your customers, ask them why you are delighting them and then ask them to refer you. Then execute this, doing all the work for the referral. This is the highest closing channel Vendr use.
BEST MOMENTS
“I’ve tried plenty of start-ups in the past, all of them have failed”
“If you can distil your business down to one line, it actually means you’ve drastically simplified your mission”
“A lot of your problems go away if you’re selling”
“Build things because it actually solves a problem”
“Lack of transparencies leads to inefficiencies”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanneu/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Andrew Peterson is the CEO and co-founder of Signal Sciences, a security monitoring platform. Andrew helped pioneer this industry-defining web platform, that protects websites, mobile apps and APIs which then lead to an 825million sale in less than 8 years.
Andrew talks to Ryan all about his entrepreneurial journey and the biggest lessons he has learnt along the way, including the importance of perseverance as well as always continuing to be engaged with your team and processes. Andrew also opens-up about where he thinks the future of tech lies.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- It’s important to note that when you grow as a company, each time you double the number of members on your team you are transforming dramatically, particularly in the way you manage and operate.
- Deciding whether to take venture capital or not isn’t a simple process. It’s important to weigh up whether you are happy for the company to be made public, to be sold or even go bust. These are the three main outcomes for backed businesses.
- Ultimately, you need to decide whether you are more focused on growth or your own control over a business.
- Perseverance is essential to any entrepreneur and business owner, you have to understand that the journey is long, Andrew states that it is a marathon that feels like a sprint the whole time.
- Make sure you are thinking about your go-to-market strategy as early on as possible.
- As you grow and hire, you still need to be involved in the day-to-day of the business, to help lead these teams and to continue to be engaged.
BEST MOMENTS
“Every time you are doubling the number of people on the team things actually change dramatically”
“Are you trying to optimise a business around growth or are you trying to optimise around control, controlling a business”
“Every time that you raise funding, you’re selling percentage ownership of your company to them”
“Building a business is not just about building technology, it's about building all the pieces”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmarshallpeterson/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Patrick Woods is the founder and CEO of Orbit, a platform that uses the power of data and API to pioneer a unique go-to-market model, with clients ranging from big tech companies to Patreon clients to those in the Web3 Space. He talks to Ryan in this episode all about the incredible tech they have built, why a community can create value across an entire company and how he has leveraged his consulting experience to build an innovative SaaS-based product.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Word of mouth and direct and organic inbound leads are what largely drive Orbit’s growth
- Orbit is for community-based companies, it aids them in centralising their activity across channels so they can get the full data of a customer's journey.
- When a company recognises the value in its community, it can begin to measure a variety of metrics including reach, conversion and what Orbit call ‘love’.
- ‘Love’ is an Orbit metric that focuses on a customers frequency and quality, measuring and scoring their engagement and
- Aiding their clients with Data, using Orbit means sales teams gain a much higher conversion rate as they can target the right people with the right information.
- Orbit is focused on creating value first which is why they offer three different tiers of service.
- Orbit’s number one strategy to grow its revenue is what further value it can create for its community. This mindset has so far worked very well for them, simply answering and solving their problems.
BEST MOMENTS
“With Orbit, you can see that journey end to end and on an individual level”
“An active community de-risks every other part of the business”
“When you are building a community you want to understand who has been active lately”
“It’s important for us to create value first”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickjwoods/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ayal is the CEO and co-founder of the cloud-security company Anjuna Security. Anjuna Security boasts many high-profile clients including several Global 2000 companies and government bodies. Ayal and his team focus on an integrated marketing approach to aid them in scale and growth and he talks to Ryan all about their strategies, the incredible things they have done and are continuing to do in the cloud-security space as well as his primary focus on hiring the best for his team.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Anjuna Security use a direct enterprise sales approach, primarily their outbound solution for their go-to-market strategy
- Using a cloud infrastructure is hands-off but it also has security risks attached, something that puts off many organisations. Anjuna Security allows you to move to the cloud with complete security.
- Ayal managed to solve one of the biggest problems in security, how to protect data when it is in use by an application.
- Security solutions are an enabler to the online world, without security so many online services wouldn’t be able to be offered.
- Enterprise sales, alongside partnering with vendors that present them with opportunities are two ways Anjuna Security has been able to grow quickly.
- Something Ayal focuses on in his role is hiring the best people and allowing them the flexibility and freedom to do what they do best.
- If your board has faith and trust in you, then they should allow you to make the best decisions, they should know you are making them in the interest of the company.
BEST MOMENTS
“How do you protect data when it needs to be used by an application?”
“Security has always been an enabler of other things”
“Find the best people that I can, the best people in the world and let them come in and make sure I remove every obstacle in their way to allow them to be awesome”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ayalyogev/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Dominic is the founder and CEO of B Generous, a Fintech company that is producing solutions to help create a better world. Dominic has an impressive philanthropic past including working as a senator on the finance committee, sitting on boards of charity foundations and helping celebrities amplify and grow their humanitarian efforts.
In this episode, Dominic talks to Ryan all about his past efforts and how he created one of the most unique business models Ryan has ever heard of for a non-profit community.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- B Generous has created a ‘credit’ model for their charity website. They created a donate now pay later button on the site with no hidden costs creating the sole credit product in the non-profit space.
- This product means that B Generous help non-profits receive full donations, upfront, by financing.
- When working in politics, Dominic realised how passionate he was about helping people but he wanted to do more, which led him to create his first company GVNG.
- He started to work with clients including Val Kilmer and Forest Whitaker to help them grow their non-profit.
- After 6 years as CEO of GVNG, Dominic then founded B Generous, to continue helping others with their philanthropic
- Around 72% of giving comes from individuals, this is a huge market based on the fact Americans give over $1 billion a day!
- B Generous have a low cost as they ask their clients if they want to cover part of them, the take-up on this is very high, passing this saving also onto their clients.
- The biggest challenge with growth right now is the tough market non-profits are facing, Dominic is concentrating on building the authenticity and branding around B Generous. The B Generous team come from the market they are serving, and this is what differentiates them.
BEST MOMENTS
“I was very passionate about making the world a better place”
“I was looking for something at the intersection of profit and purpose”
“When you compare this to the eCommerce market, they’re roughly the same [in size]”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominickalms
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Indus is the founder and CEO of Quolum. Former software engineer turned product marketer, he sold his previous company to Oracle. He was head of growth at Chargebee where he discovered a unique opportunity to cut out large SaaS costs for companies. Listen to this episode to hear Indus explain his interesting yet simple approach to SaaS.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Quolum is a subscription management business, helping clients consume SaaS in a way that works for them focusing on security, privacy and value.
- Quolum’s primary go-to-market strategy is outbound, where they focus on finance professionals, particularly mid-market businesses, to enter their funnel.
- Indus’ innovation around this subscription management product came from his experiences as chief of growth at Chargebee. It was here Indus found an astonishing amount of wastage in SaaS subscriptions.
- Quolum created what they call a ‘SaaS’ card that clients only use to buy SaaS products, allowing them to be able to manage everything behind the scenes.
- Brand building is essential to Quolum’s growth, focusing on being recognised for their innovative solutions that save companies both time and money.
BEST MOMENTS
“Finance are paying money for these products, they need to know whether that product is legit, so [we're] redefining the category”
“At the front, it’s a duck that quacks like SaaS, at the back it’s a duck that quacks like Fintech”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/khaitan
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan is joined in this episode by Shruthi Rao. Shruthi is the co-founder of Vendia, a serverless blockchain platform that collects and delivers data. Shruthi has an impressive history including working with the current Amazon CEO, creating crypto’s first mining operation and advising Ethereum. Shruthi talks to Ryan about her journey and reveals her 5-step framework for creating a successful start-up.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Vendia has seen the positive impact of having big-ticket clients such as airlines and BMW, it means that the mid-market clients are seeing this and wanting to work with them too.
- A content-led approach is something Vendia are working on within their go-to-market strategy, particularly around ‘thought-leadership’ curated content.
- After hearing about Bitcoin Shruthi decided mining it herself would suit her better, she then ended up setting up in a village in India and was so successful she broke the grid!
- Work backwards from a customer. Figure out what they want/their problem is, whether it is widespread and if so, how you can solve it.
- Vendia realised that their solution needed to work with customers wherever and whomever they already were with. It needed to be flexible across platforms and clouds.
- Storytelling is something Shruthi believes is essential to building any new business, giving the how and the why.
BEST MOMENTS
“That’s what we created, a partner leader-sharing platform”
“I was not making meth, I was hosting servers!”
“The storytelling is the number one way we connect with pain”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.vendia.net/blog/author/shruthi-rao
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Sunny Han is the CEO and founder of Fulcrum a SaaS manufacturing platform. Whilst building Fulcrum he spent a lot of time doing his due diligence and visited many factories and potential clients before settling on the best final product.
He talks to Ryan openly about the difficulties he has faced in his journey including losing co-founders but also digs deep into what it takes to make success happen.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- For Fulcrums go to market strategy, Sunny’s team focus on inbound, SDM and STRs that target people very specifically. It’s a low-volume approach but has a high yield.
- Whether you are a start-up or a large corporate, you only have a limited amount of resources. You must decide what to focus your efforts on.
- Fulcrum is a SaaS manufacturing platform, it aims to bring both modern & innovative concepts to small and mid-size production companies.
- From consulting, Sunny not only learnt how to make the product great he also learnt how to build the company for greatness, particularly around culture.
- Having a high standard as an individual can cause a poor environment for those who work closely with you. Sunny recognises this as one of his biggest mistakes in his early days in business.
- Conflict helps improve the coverage of tasks that need to be done, it stops things from being missed and prevents mistakes.
BEST MOMENTS
“We just crossed the 4 million ARR threshold at the end of last quarter”
“No matter what stage you’re at, you have a limited amount of resources”
“People buy differently, even if they’re the same types of customers”
“The creation of culture has more to do with removing things than adding things”
“A lot of the time, people fire themselves”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/yusunnyhan
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Sunny Han is the CEO and founder of Fulcrum a SaaS manufacturing platform. Whilst building Fulcrum he spent a lot of time doing his due diligence and visited many factories and potential clients before settling on the best final product.
He talks to Ryan openly about the difficulties he has faced in his journey including losing co-founders but also digs deep into what it takes to make success happen.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- For Fulcrums go to market strategy, Sunny’s team focus on inbound, SDM and STRs that target people very specifically. It’s a low-volume approach but has a high yield.
- Whether you are a start-up or a large corporate, you only have a limited amount of resources. You must decide what to focus your efforts on.
- Fulcrum is a SaaS manufacturing platform, it aims to bring both modern & innovative concepts to small and mid-size production companies.
- From consulting, Sunny not only learnt how to make the product great he also learnt how to build the company for greatness, particularly around culture.
- Having a high standard as an individual can cause a poor environment for those who work closely with you. Sunny recognises this as one of his biggest mistakes in his early days in business.
- Conflict helps improve the coverage of tasks that need to be done, it stops things from being missed and prevents mistakes.
BEST MOMENTS
“We just crossed the 4 million ARR threshold at the end of last quarter”
“No matter what stage you’re at, you have a limited amount of resources”
“People buy differently, even if they’re the same types of customers”
“The creation of culture has more to do with removing things than adding things”
“A lot of the time, people fire themselves”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/yusunnyhan
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Yahya Mokhtarzada is the founder and former CEO of Truebill. Yahya and his team created growth of over $100 million in just 2 ½ years and then managed to sell the company for $1.3 billion! In this episode, Yahya breaks down how he made this a reality and how you can apply his processes to your own business
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Truebill is a personal finance app and Yahya has actually found that this market increases in times of financial uncertainty. People are more interested in getting their finances in order when times are harder.
- Paid acquisition is Truebill’s most common strategy for growth. Their team are also very creative in getting the company name out there including e-commerce channels and podcast promotion.
- Organic growth and referrals aren’t something that works for Truebill, Yahya believes this is because people don’t want to talk about money, especially if it can be suggested they may be struggling.
- Unsatisfied with the market offerings of personal finance apps, Yahya set out to create Truebill, to make a personal finance simpler, putting money back into people’s pockets without telling them what to spend their money on.
- Truebill has the ability to be able to cancel subscriptions etc in app, without the individual having to spend hours on the phone with various providers. Another unique feature is it’s ability to scan your bills and find you better deals.
- Truebill becoming product-led, offering the most use and value for the customer is how they went from $1.5 million to $100 million in just 2 ½ years. They also allow their customers to choose their own price, from free tier up to $15 a month, depending on their individual needs.
- There is some stigma surrounding the personal finance market, this meant it took Yahya and his team longer than usual to find each round of investment.
- Yahya puts the continuous exponential growth of Truebill down to a few key things, such as having a great core product that people liked, their incredible marketing team and their investment in tracking and measurement.
- Intelligent tracking and measurement of their app allowed Truebill to adapt and pivot to their users’ needs fast.
BEST MOMENTS
“Organic growth was never a strong suit for our company”
“I really think it’s the best personal finance app out there, giving you a set of tools to understand your money and do better with it”
“Most people are surprised to see how many things they are paying for each month and how much money is floating out of their account automatically”
“Personal finance does not have the same engagement and user behaviour as you’d see in a game, photo sharing app or anything else”
“We had a good core product that fundamentally people liked and found useful”
“I’m really anti-survey, they can be really misleading and tell you the wrong thing”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.forbes.com/sites/karenwalker/2021/06/07/how-the-truebill-brothers-took-a-basement-idea-to-500m-valuation/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Yahya Mokhtarzada is the founder and former CEO of Truebill. Yahya and his team created growth of over $100 million in just 2 ½ years and then managed to sell the company for $1.3 billion! In this episode, Yahya breaks down how he made this a reality and how you can apply his processes to your own business
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Truebill is a personal finance app and Yahya has actually found that this market increases in times of financial uncertainty. People are more interested in getting their finances in order when times are harder.
- Paid acquisition is Truebill’s most common strategy for growth. Their team are also very creative in getting the company name out there including e-commerce channels and podcast promotion.
- Organic growth and referrals aren’t something that works for Truebill, Yahya believes this is because people don’t want to talk about money, especially if it can be suggested they may be struggling.
- Unsatisfied with the market offerings of personal finance apps, Yahya set out to create Truebill, to make a personal finance simpler, putting money back into people’s pockets without telling them what to spend their money on.
- Truebill has the ability to be able to cancel subscriptions etc in app, without the individual having to spend hours on the phone with various providers. Another unique feature is it’s ability to scan your bills and find you better deals.
- Truebill becoming product-led, offering the most use and value for the customer is how they went from $1.5 million to $100 million in just 2 ½ years. They also allow their customers to choose their own price, from free tier up to $15 a month, depending on their individual needs.
- There is some stigma surrounding the personal finance market, this meant it took Yahya and his team longer than usual to find each round of investment.
- Yahya puts the continuous exponential growth of Truebill down to a few key things, such as having a great core product that people liked, their incredible marketing team and their investment in tracking and measurement.
- Intelligent tracking and measurement of their app allowed Truebill to adapt and pivot to their users’ needs fast.
BEST MOMENTS
“Organic growth was never a strong suit for our company”
“I really think it’s the best personal finance app out there, giving you a set of tools to understand your money and do better with it”
“Most people are surprised to see how many things they are paying for each month and how much money is floating out of their account automatically”
“Personal finance does not have the same engagement and user behaviour as you’d see in a game, photo sharing app or anything else”
“We had a good core product that fundamentally people liked and found useful”
“I’m really anti-survey, they can be really misleading and tell you the wrong thing”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.forbes.com/sites/karenwalker/2021/06/07/how-the-truebill-brothers-took-a-basement-idea-to-500m-valuation/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Brendan King is the CEO and founder of the number 1 digital solutions marketplace in the US, VendAsta. Brendan grew the marketplace from $5 million to $100 million in just 5 years. This is an insightful episode where Brendan talks to Ryan all about the evolution of the company as well as topics never previously discussed on The Scale Up Show!
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- VendAsta’s primary go-to-market strategy for revenue growth is an inbound model. They generate inbound demand and then qualify leads that they then close.
- Small businesses are often time poor. VendAsta aims to help these small businesses with technology so they can operate in the same way a larger business would.
- Brendan has always been an entrepreneur, he created his first business in university, resulting in a company which created over $15 million in sales.
- Early on in Vendasta’s creation, Brendan realised that companies needed a lot more services than they could offer and although they could start to build and provide some, it wouldn’t be possible to provide everything. This is what gave him the idea to create a marketplace where these other products could be found.
- Because Vendasta began in the marketing and advertising world, most of its vendors are media companies and website agencies. They in turn have focused on the products people would buy from these specific company types.
- The number 1 growth strategy that Brendan would recommend for revenue growth is to attain channel partners, it creates a flywheel for more vendors which then leads to even more channel partners and becomes a continuous growth cycle.
- The marketplace Vendasta creates has to be curated and trusted. It’s essential that they only allow quality vendors whilst creating the right amount of choice.
- One of the biggest challenges Vendasta has faced and is still facing is to get the right talent needed for them to keep growing, particularly in senior management.
BEST MOMENTS
“The way to help them is to give them access to those products and services that all the vendors have and the folks that actually implement them”
“Sometimes you’re telling the truth a little bit in advance when you’re a small company”
“We’re a lot more specific about vendors we let on the marketplace because that’s our reputation on the line there”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://ca.linkedin.com/in/brendanking
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Brendan King is the CEO and founder of the number 1 digital solutions marketplace in the US, VendAsta. Brendan grew the marketplace from $5 million to $100 million in just 5 years. This is an insightful episode where Brendan talks to Ryan all about the evolution of the company as well as topics never previously discussed on The Scale Up Show!
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- VendAsta’s primary go-to-market strategy for revenue growth is an inbound model. They generate inbound demand and then qualify leads that they then close.
- Small businesses are often time poor. VendAsta aims to help these small businesses with technology so they can operate in the same way a larger business would.
- Brendan has always been an entrepreneur, he created his first business in university, resulting in a company which created over $15 million in sales.
- Early on in Vendasta’s creation, Brendan realised that companies needed a lot more services than they could offer and although they could start to build and provide some, it wouldn’t be possible to provide everything. This is what gave him the idea to create a marketplace where these other products could be found.
- Because Vendasta began in the marketing and advertising world, most of its vendors are media companies and website agencies. They in turn have focused on the products people would buy from these specific company types.
- The number 1 growth strategy that Brendan would recommend for revenue growth is to attain channel partners, it creates a flywheel for more vendors which then leads to even more channel partners and becomes a continuous growth cycle.
- The marketplace Vendasta creates has to be curated and trusted. It’s essential that they only allow quality vendors whilst creating the right amount of choice.
- One of the biggest challenges Vendasta has faced and is still facing is to get the right talent needed for them to keep growing, particularly in senior management.
BEST MOMENTS
“The way to help them is to give them access to those products and services that all the vendors have and the folks that actually implement them”
“Sometimes you’re telling the truth a little bit in advance when you’re a small company”
“We’re a lot more specific about vendors we let on the marketplace because that’s our reputation on the line there”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://ca.linkedin.com/in/brendanking
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Tamas Kadar is the founder and CEO of SEON. Founded in his dorm room at university, Tamas and his team managed to create 300% growth last year alone and are set to top that % this year. Tamas joins Ryan in this episode and breaks down, step by step, how to rapidly scale your business in the early stages and talks about why being customer-centric, collaborative and flexible has been the underpinnings of their success.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- SEON helps online businesses prevent and mitigate fraud by screening customers based on their digital footprint.
- SEON Are a product-led growth company. They offer free trials and are primarily led by content-based marketing.
- SEON focuses on being customer-centric, creating a good user experience and being flexible to solve their individual business needs. Allowing them to focus on growing their businesses rather than losses.
- It was after suffering losses in their own business that Tamas and his team felt unsatisfied with the current solutions out there. So they decided to build their own.
- Hiring a CCO role was one of the first steps to accelerating SEON’s growth.
- The world switching to digital gave SEON an advantage over its competitors during the pandemic. It allowed them to scale quickly.
- Nail the lowest company revenue deals if you can, this means the sales chain is shorter and can allow you to grow at a much faster rate.
- Creating and implementing friction-free processes from clients to investors is something Tamas and his team have focused on at SEON.
BEST MOMENTS
“The solution applies to all fraud types and all online businesses”
“We allow them to concentrate on growing their business instead of focusing on losses”
“The pandemic has really accelerated our growth”
“We are reverse engineering our lead sources to invest in those channels and sources that are bringing in results”
“I really try to optimise everything from being friction-free”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
www.seon.io
https://medium.com/authority-magazine/cyber-defense-tamas-kadar-of-seon-on-the-5-things-every-american-business-leader-should-do-to-f10856d009b1
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Tamas Kadar is the founder and CEO of SEON. Founded in his dorm room at university, Tamas and his team managed to create 300% growth last year alone and are set to top that % this year. Tamas joins Ryan in this episode and breaks down, step by step, how to rapidly scale your business in the early stages and talks about why being customer-centric, collaborative and flexible has been the underpinnings of their success.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- SEON helps online businesses prevent and mitigate fraud by screening customers based on their digital footprint.
- SEON Are a product-led growth company. They offer free trials and are primarily led by content-based marketing.
- SEON focuses on being customer-centric, creating a good user experience and being flexible to solve their individual business needs. Allowing them to focus on growing their businesses rather than losses.
- It was after suffering losses in their own business that Tamas and his team felt unsatisfied with the current solutions out there. So they decided to build their own.
- Hiring a CCO role was one of the first steps to accelerating SEON’s growth.
- The world switching to digital gave SEON an advantage over its competitors during the pandemic. It allowed them to scale quickly.
- Nail the lowest company revenue deals if you can, this means the sales chain is shorter and can allow you to grow at a much faster rate.
- Creating and implementing friction-free processes from clients to investors is something Tamas and his team have focused on at SEON.
BEST MOMENTS
“The solution applies to all fraud types and all online businesses”
“We allow them to concentrate on growing their business instead of focusing on losses”
“The pandemic has really accelerated our growth”
“We are reverse engineering our lead sources to invest in those channels and sources that are bringing in results”
“I really try to optimise everything from being friction-free”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
www.seon.io
https://medium.com/authority-magazine/cyber-defense-tamas-kadar-of-seon-on-the-5-things-every-american-business-leader-should-do-to-f10856d009b1
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Peter is the former VP of sales at the CRM platform HubSpot, he reported directly to the CEO and started when they had just 100 customers! Listen in to this episode as he breaks down and shares the number 1 strategy he learned from Hubspot which he now uses at his current company, Databox. He also discusses the importance of data-driven decisions as well as how Databox differentiate its product from others on the market.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- It has taken Databox just 6 years to go from zero to close to $6.2 million ARR
- Databox’s go-to-market focus is around being a ‘freemium’ product. They rely on customers paying to upgrade to further services.
- Demand for Databox’s product is mostly created via organic SEO and recently they have added some outbound and brand-building techniques such as Podcasting.
- Companies produce so much data just from operating, Databox enables companies to have visuals of all their data on a central platform.
- Performance focus in management is how Peter believes HubSpot scaled so quickly. He said the culture meant that almost everyone ‘had a number on their head’. There was always a process to check each and every thing that was being done throughout the organisation.
- Empowering people to own their pieces of the business is one of the most important lessons Peter learnt at Hubspot and something he built Databox foundations on.
BEST MOMENTS
“The trick with our product -vs- other freemium products is customer-dashboard software, every customer set-up process is unique”
“A big proportion of our customers are marketing agencies and consultants who use the software to report results to clients”
“It was fairly bottoms up in terms of empowering people to own their piece of the business, that was a really valuable thing for me to learn”
“Numbers are pretty important when it comes to finding those opportunities and whether they work or not”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/pc4media
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Peter is the former VP of sales at the CRM platform HubSpot, he reported directly to the CEO and started when they had just 100 customers! Listen in to this episode as he breaks down and shares the number 1 strategy he learned from Hubspot which he now uses at his current company, Databox. He also discusses the importance of data-driven decisions as well as how Databox differentiate its product from others on the market.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- It has taken Databox just 6 years to go from zero to close to $6.2 million ARR
- Databox’s go-to-market focus is around being a ‘freemium’ product. They rely on customers paying to upgrade to further services.
- Demand for Databox’s product is mostly created via organic SEO and recently they have added some outbound and brand-building techniques such as Podcasting.
- Companies produce so much data just from operating, Databox enables companies to have visuals of all their data on a central platform.
- Performance focus in management is how Peter believes HubSpot scaled so quickly. He said the culture meant that almost everyone ‘had a number on their head’. There was always a process to check each and every thing that was being done throughout the organisation.
- Empowering people to own their pieces of the business is one of the most important lessons Peter learnt at Hubspot and something he built Databox foundations on.
BEST MOMENTS
“The trick with our product -vs- other freemium products is customer-dashboard software, every customer set-up process is unique”
“A big proportion of our customers are marketing agencies and consultants who use the software to report results to clients”
“It was fairly bottoms up in terms of empowering people to own their piece of the business, that was a really valuable thing for me to learn”
“Numbers are pretty important when it comes to finding those opportunities and whether they work or not”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/pc4media
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan is joined by the founder and CEO of InEvent, Pedro Goes. Pedro became an entrepreneur when he was still in high school and by the time he had finished college he had created an event, marketing and sales platform which would go on to boast Forbes 2000 Global companies, including Amazon, Coca-Cola, Santander, Unilever and more!
Pedro talks about the importance of resilience in business, why market fit is the key indicator of a company's success, how he utilises content marketing as well as growth in the tech space. He has some interesting thoughts and insights on how you can not only scale your business but how to do it sustainably too.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- InEvent has grown to $5 million ARR since 2019, they currently stand at a team of 130 people
- InEvent work with companies to employ an end-to-end event platform, from broadcasting to communication.
- Pedro believes in trying multiple go-to-market strategies and matching them to each channel.
- The decision for InEvent to go from bootstrapped to funding came from recognising where growth would come from next and listening to the features and developments customers wanted them to build.
- A lot of companies are unable to complete their journey for a multitude of reasons. What is essential to survive and what Pedro believes allowed InEvent to thrive is his and his team’s resilience.
- Adaptability and the ability to diversify are why InEvent was able to deal with difficulties in their journey and changes in the market wants and needs.
- No problems or issues are big enough for you to fail if you have revenue. Sales are the most important aspect of your business and to do that you need to have a great market fit.
- Content marketing is something InEvent find works well for them. Generally, they use current trends and mould them to their own vision.
BEST MOMENTS
“Our software is very cohesive, we have over 200 features”
“One thing I do really well is resilience, the ability to survive in difficult conditions”
“It all comes down to market-fit, there are no problems if you have revenue”
“Capture the trends and post with them”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/pedrogoes
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan is joined by the founder and CEO of InEvent, Pedro Goes. Pedro became an entrepreneur when he was still in high school and by the time he had finished college he had created an event, marketing and sales platform which would go on to boast Forbes 2000 Global companies, including Amazon, Coca-Cola, Santander, Unilever and more!
Pedro talks about the importance of resilience in business, why market fit is the key indicator of a company's success, how he utilises content marketing as well as growth in the tech space. He has some interesting thoughts and insights on how you can not only scale your business but how to do it sustainably too.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- InEvent has grown to $5 million ARR since 2019, they currently stand at a team of 130 people
- InEvent work with companies to employ an end-to-end event platform, from broadcasting to communication.
- Pedro believes in trying multiple go-to-market strategies and matching them to each channel.
- The decision for InEvent to go from bootstrapped to funding came from recognising where growth would come from next and listening to the features and developments customers wanted them to build.
- A lot of companies are unable to complete their journey for a multitude of reasons. What is essential to survive and what Pedro believes allowed InEvent to thrive is his and his team’s resilience.
- Adaptability and the ability to diversify are why InEvent was able to deal with difficulties in their journey and changes in the market wants and needs.
- No problems or issues are big enough for you to fail if you have revenue. Sales are the most important aspect of your business and to do that you need to have a great market fit.
- Content marketing is something InEvent find works well for them. Generally, they use current trends and mould them to their own vision.
BEST MOMENTS
“Our software is very cohesive, we have over 200 features”
“One thing I do really well is resilience, the ability to survive in difficult conditions”
“It all comes down to market-fit, there are no problems if you have revenue”
“Capture the trends and post with them”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/pedrogoes
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Justin is a 2x CEO and the current CEO of Strike Graph. He shares the key strategies and frameworks he and his team have used to build success, including step by step how they created 115% NRR within 2 years of existence and how security can shrink a sales process down from 18 months to just 2-3 months!
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Strike Graph aids companies in security measures so they can focus on getting the deals done with the right security in place.
- Strike Graph offer flexibility, every one of their products is unique and the art of their technology is to create security that is both efficient and meets the standard.
- Strike Graph use a variety of methods for attracting new customers including via conferences and direct sales.
- The differentiation of Strike Graphs products means once a customer knows they need security measures and they have seen what they can do, they can close sales incredibly quickly, usually in under 30 days!
- Creating a varied product that works for a business in all stages has been one of the winning solutions for Strike graph.
- Justin mocked up the solution they thought would work, Justin believes using data models to test products is valuable to gather what customers want and need.
- Operationally understanding what clients’ pain points were in security and anticipating what they might want next helped Justin and his team build a flexible and innovative solution.
BEST MOMENTS
“You are literally not going to get the deal over the line if you do not have these security measures”
“We’ve worked really hard for our customers to scope the right security practice for their business”
“Really we can close a customer in just a couple of calls”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.strikegraph.com/blog/author/justin-beals
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Justin is a 2x CEO and the current CEO of Strike Graph. He shares the key strategies and frameworks he and his team have used to build success, including step by step how they created 115% NRR within 2 years of existence and how security can shrink a sales process down from 18 months to just 2-3 months!
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Strike Graph aids companies in security measures so they can focus on getting the deals done with the right security in place.
- Strike Graph offer flexibility, every one of their products is unique and the art of their technology is to create security that is both efficient and meets the standard.
- Strike Graph use a variety of methods for attracting new customers including via conferences and direct sales.
- The differentiation of Strike Graphs products means once a customer knows they need security measures and they have seen what they can do, they can close sales incredibly quickly, usually in under 30 days!
- Creating a varied product that works for a business in all stages has been one of the winning solutions for Strike graph.
- Justin mocked up the solution they thought would work, Justin believes using data models to test products is valuable to gather what customers want and need.
- Operationally understanding what clients’ pain points were in security and anticipating what they might want next helped Justin and his team build a flexible and innovative solution.
BEST MOMENTS
“You are literally not going to get the deal over the line if you do not have these security measures”
“We’ve worked really hard for our customers to scope the right security practice for their business”
“Really we can close a customer in just a couple of calls”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.strikegraph.com/blog/author/justin-beals
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan is joined by the CEO and founder of Fintech start-up Onramp Funds, Eric Youngstrom. Eric has extensive experience in the start-up world and has generated more than $400 million in shareholder returns in successful exits. He has created Onramp Funds, a platform to create a line of credit for SMBs via a truly unique business model of SaaS and Fintech.
Listen in to this episode to hear his strategies and principles and how you can apply them to your own business.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Inbound and outbound sales are Onramp’s main go-to-market approach.
- Onramp work with small business merchants, particularly e-commerce clients that sell physical goods. Their product is designed to solve the cash-conversion problems found in these businesses.
- The mission of Onramp is to help small e-commerce merchants extract their profit sustainably, so they can continue to operate and receive better offers.
- For an early-stage company, Onramp has a significant partner network based on their experience in the market, helping them match their clients with the best partner to help them.
- Eric has built his start-ups around treating small businesses the same as bigger companies. Treating the CEO as a CEO, giving top-tier customer service and assistance, to aid them to grow and scale their businesses.
- Testing new approaches is just as important as using tried and tested strategies too. This is something Eric and his team have always kept in mind, ensuring to leverage a variety of approaches.
BEST MOMENTS
“It’s almost like a line of credit that updates as soon as they pay it off”
“Our merchants just came to know they were gonna get helped no matter what”
“If your sales slow down, your payments slow down”
“We’re looking at our business and making sure we’re well adapted to live in the world that is, not the world that was”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://onrampinvest.com/founder-spotlight/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan is joined by the CEO and founder of Fintech start-up Onramp Funds, Eric Youngstrom. Eric has extensive experience in the start-up world and has generated more than $400 million in shareholder returns in successful exits. He has created Onramp Funds, a platform to create a line of credit for SMBs via a truly unique business model of SaaS and Fintech.
Listen in to this episode to hear his strategies and principles and how you can apply them to your own business.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Inbound and outbound sales are Onramp’s main go-to-market approach.
- Onramp work with small business merchants, particularly e-commerce clients that sell physical goods. Their product is designed to solve the cash-conversion problems found in these businesses.
- The mission of Onramp is to help small e-commerce merchants extract their profit sustainably, so they can continue to operate and receive better offers.
- For an early-stage company, Onramp has a significant partner network based on their experience in the market, helping them match their clients with the best partner to help them.
- Eric has built his start-ups around treating small businesses the same as bigger companies. Treating the CEO as a CEO, giving top-tier customer service and assistance, to aid them to grow and scale their businesses.
- Testing new approaches is just as important as using tried and tested strategies too. This is something Eric and his team have always kept in mind, ensuring to leverage a variety of approaches.
BEST MOMENTS
“It’s almost like a line of credit that updates as soon as they pay it off”
“Our merchants just came to know they were gonna get helped no matter what”
“If your sales slow down, your payments slow down”
“We’re looking at our business and making sure we’re well adapted to live in the world that is, not the world that was”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://onrampinvest.com/founder-spotlight/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Sri Chellappa is the president and co-founder of Engagedly, an INK-500 fastest-growing company. He has had two successful company exists, is a Forbes contributor and has also made 7 feature films and runs a music production studio! He joins Ryan to talk about his fascination with people, start-ups and numbers as well as his secrets to leadership and employee engagement success.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Sri has discovered Engagedly couldn’t compete on marketing spend alone, so instead focused on being active in the market, via social media, webinars and also by building a strong outbound team.
- Engagedly is a people alignment platform: it aligns people strategy with your business strategy.
- Sri has always found the start-up world fascinating, following how they can create so much value so quickly alongside high agility and often, high rewards too.
- In his consulting years, Sri recognised the disconnect between employees and management, this is one of the reasons he wanted to create Engagedly, to solve this problem.
- Sri discovered in his research, that companies needed performance management, but with an engaged employee result, so that is what he and his team focused on creating with Engagedly, leading to 1 million revenue in just 2 ½ years.
- Engagedly are the only mid-market platform that fully covers employee engagement, from learning and development to performance management. It’s a very broad platform.
- Data proves that employees want to be recognised, this starts with management, particularly when using a platform like Engagedly.
- Motivations drive behaviour, and the incentive for this can be different for different people, this must be taken into account when aligning organisational objectives to individuals' goals.
BEST MOMENTS
“There’s a lot of things we do on our thought leadership side that help us get leads from both inbound and outbound as well”
“I realised I really like people and I like working with people and I like numbers”
“It’s been a long struggle and the struggle is far from over, it’s a tough market”
“You want to know when you are wrong and not be blindsided by it”
“Employees want recognition, they want to be recognised for what they do”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://engagedly.com/srikant-chellappa-selected-as-2022-st-louis-titan-100/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Jason is the founder and CEO of Glint, which enables gold as a currency. They have over 104 thousand registered users across 200 countries, have completed over half a billion in transactions to date and are set to grow to 100million in revenue in the next 3 years!
Jason talks through his journey to founding fintech company Glint, how Glint has managed to create just a $15 cost to acquire customers and how you can leverage his principles in your own business.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Unlike many companies in the fintech space, Glint has embraced the regulations and worked with them to reach as many clients as possible.
- Growth for Glint doesn’t just come from acquiring new customers but also by building additional revenue streams.
- Gold is about reliability, so once you have built the trust and relationship with the customer they generally don’t leave or move from your company.
- One of the elements Jason attributes to successfully innovating the financial services industry is that he was outside of it; he could see clearly what could change.
- It was when working through the financial crashes of recent history that Jason discovered how weak the banking system and currency were. This influenced his progression into working with gold in the digital world.
- It would have been easy for Glint to just be a peer-to-peer system, but Jason wanted it to be a real utility, which is why following all regulations and integrating with MasterCard was essential.
- Algorithms can deliver low-hanging fruit to you if you have a big enough audience to market to. Customer acquisition becomes more expensive the more targeted you are.
BEST MOMENTS
“Glint is a solution for everyone…you can buy as little as 1 cent on our platform”
“Revenue per client is increasing each month, as customers' confidence increases in our platform”
“When you put the money in the bank is ceases to exist”
“I had no idea how I was going to do it at the time, but that was my apple moment”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chris Ronzio is the founder and CEO of Trainual, a modern business training model company. Chris is an operational genius, who grew his company in four years as a SAAS platform. Chris is also the author of ‘The Business Playbook’, a podcaster and won EY entrepreneur of the year in 2021.
Chris talks to Ryan about his operational successes, how Trainual makes sharing what you do in your business easy and how to create revenue growth through 100% inbound motion.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Trainual is a 100% inbound company, centring most of its marketing digitally and around organic and educational content.
- Trainual is a business playbook, it’s your modern business training model.
- It was when running his first business in high school, a video production company, that Chris started learning how businesses work.
- When Chris realised that logistics and processes were industry agnostic, it started the beginnings of Trainual.
- To scale, bandwidth, delegation and consistency are the core competencies needed.
- Trainual allows business knowledge from the bottom to the top, to be retained, regardless of staff turnover.
- Organising chaos has always been Chris’ strong suit. He can take large amounts of input at speed and then compartmentalise and prioritise to then move forward strategically. He attributes his ability to scale and grow to this strength.
- Context, chaos and clarity are the three-step framework Chris’ used when he was consulting clients and something he still works with today.
- The abundance of opportunities in business creates chaos. This is a good thing; you just need to learn how to work with it.
- Look for themes in your feedback. This allows you to recognise the big opportunities and where to focus your energy.
- Making a product compelling was Chris’ first aim, to make it so good that the product sells itself. This, alongside creative marketing, is the core reason Trainual have been able to have revenue growth purely from inbound sales.
- Some of the creative marketing Trainual have utilised are social proof, helpful content and webinars.
BEST MOMENTS
“It’s very product-led growth”
“The biggest challenge for business owners is getting down how they do what they do and sharing it with others”
“My mindset has always been to make incremental progress”
“I think my ninja skill is organising chaos”
“Chaos in business is a good thing”
“All that educational content starts to build trust with the consumer”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.chrisronzio.com
https://trainual.com
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ken Babcock is the co-founder and CEO of Tango, which allows users to create bespoke, flexible, and aesthetically pleasing step-by-step tutorials. Ken was a former product lead and data scientist at Uber and managed to secure the same investors as Slack! Join Ken and Ryan as they discuss Ken’s entrepreneurial journey and his tips for viral growth.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Referrals and influencer marketing have been two of the biggest go-to-market strategies Tango have implemented. They are a product-led growth company so casting a wide net and endorsements are key.
- An influencer's following isn’t the most important metric, a sometimes narrow, but targeted audience is more effective.
- Tango allows you to create documentation in your flow of work. As you work, Tango creates a step-by-step link in the background. It then allows you to edit all in one place.
- After working at Uber, Ken was inspired to go to Harvard business school in preparation to start his own entrepreneurial journey.
- This is where he met his co-founders for Tango and he dropped out mid-way to start Tango, a risk that paid off.
- The referral-driven elements of Tango have been really powerful for their growth.
- The pain points around documentation are mostly felt by the end user, which is why Tango focus on being a product-led company.
- Knowing that customer service teams are one of their main demographics, Ken and his team focused on influencers that work within this space.
BEST MOMENTS
“There’s a collaborative element to Tango that brings a lot of users onto the platform”
“It’s packaging a lot of stuff that’s freely available but disparate and putting it all in one product”
“It was a culture of the best idea wins…people were really empowered to take action”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
www.tango.us
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenbabcock
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Founder and CEO of Allset, Justin Clegg joins Ryan in this episode. Justin had a great start in AI, he founded 3 Silicon Valley start-ups and worked at multiple fortune 500 software companies before building his newest venture, Allset. He reveals his step-by-step framework for creating a repetitive start-up flywheel of revenue growth and talks about why Allset is on track to becoming one of the fastest-growing start-ups in Utah and even the U.S.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Allset is Justin’s fourth start-up venture, they focus on building tools for communications and payments for underserved home companies
- Allset is on the trajectory to go from zero to 1 million by the end of the year!
- There are a few different go-to-market strategies Allset focus on. Number one is they rely on a strong capital-efficient sales team. Secondly, they offer demos to potential clients. Thirdly they attend many trade shows and conferences across the states and invest in digital channels to build their network.
- The pandemic saw the focus of capital moving away from Silicon Valley, this gave Allset the initial opportunity to find funding.
- Building a strong brand and having their story known alongside being an SME are all things that have helped further funding to be obtained.
- Fundraising isn’t suitable for all businesses; it doesn’t make or break a successful company.
- You must believe in what you are building, be in a large attractive market and have existing customers to attract significant fundraising.
- It’s important to remember that strings and expectations are always attached when raising capital.
- Sales is a key cornerstone of a business, and it can solve all problems in a variety of ways.
- Being surrounded by start-ups in Silicon Valley meant that Justin was immersed in possibilities, he was surrounded by unique and novel concepts that were ground-breaking.
- If you can align your vision and focus with customer pain points, that they are willing to pay you to resolve, you are on to a winning concept.
- Growth is simply about press, PR, getting the business and brand in front of the right people and of course, revenue.
- Good product-market fit means if your product was to stop then at least 40% of your customers would be disappointed or frustrated.
- Writing code, building your product, and listening to customers is critical to the beginning stages of a start-up and creating a great product market fit.
BEST MOMENTS
“Selling software becomes a huge opportunity”
“Fundraising is not for everyone”
“For every $1 you take there are strings attached”
“[to build growth] Do things that scale and tie yourself to revenue”
“Build a good product, build something people want”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/justindclegg
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan is joined by founder and ceo of North Americas fastest growing automation platform, Maropost, Ross Andrew Paquette. Andrew grew Maropost from 300k revenue to 25 million in just three years as a one-man sales operation.
He talks Ryan through his framework for turning a product into a platform and how to do so whilst destroying a highly competitive market.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Previously a 100% Direct Sales model, Maropost now focus on three go to market strategies: Direct Sales, Free Trials and No Touch Model.
- Maropost started as a marketing automation solution, but have since builtmultiple products including commerce cloud, retail cloud as well as service cloud due to launch very soon.
- Maropost have a great reputation with their customers and growth was built largely by referrals and word of mouth.
- The market Maropost moves in is incredibly competitive due to the sheer volume of solutions. Driving more value is how they set themselves apart and is also their main growth strategy.
- When making decisions about Maropost, Ross tries to keep simplicity in mind. He tries to avoid making decisions that result in overcomplicated processes and products.
- Having one product makes it easier to manage and creates consolidation which is reflected in simplicity for your customers too.
BEST MOMENTS
“We’ve now got this very defined path to significant amounts of revenue which is really what the industry needs the most of”
“There’s got to be a lot more value driven for the cost”
“I’m willing to sacrifice in some ways the cost, functionality and certain levels of efficiency because I get a whole slew of value from one product”
“There’s beauty in simplicity”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.rosspaquette.com
https://www.entrepreneur.com/author/ross-andrew-paquette
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Fathom is a free app that records, transcribes and highlights your calls so you can focus on the conversation. It is the only start-up to be part of the 50 zoom app launch partners yet it is number 1 on the marketplace!
In this episode Ryan is joined by founder and CEO of Fathom, Richard White. He talks about his experiences in the start-up world across the years including working with the founders of twitch and selling a start-up on Ebay! He also talks all about his company Fathom and what they are doing differently, where he sees the future of tech going and why he believes there are just 10 go to market strategies.
To skip the Fathom waitlist simply head to the link below!
fathom.video/pod
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Fathom is focusing on a consumer model currently, where they focus on virality and b2b growth, monetisation will follow.
- Fathom is the number one zoom app on their marketplace, they are also the only start-up to be included in Zooms 50 launch partners.
- A combination of AI and great user tools enables Fathom to allow users to keep track of what happens in their calls in real time, highlight important moments, key things that are mentioned and so much more and it’s all free!
- With a background in computer science, Richard came into the start-up world when he bravely told the company Kiko Calendar that their product was technically good, but the design was terrible and he ended up working with them.
- Richard got to meet some great people when working with Kiko Calendar, reddit was founded in the same room as Kiko Calendar and the guys that did Kiko went on to create twitch!
- For Fathom, Richard has been able to build on his previous experience with start-ups. He was able to start building the product, the team and raising money from day 1.
- Richard wants Fathom to remain as a free service but in time will be putting up a paywall for certain features, so that when the product gets adopted on a wider scale by teams there are additional products and services they will want to use and therefore pay for.
- Growth rate, retention rate and k-factor are the key metrics Fathom have been tracking before deciding to move into the next phase of monetisation.
- K factor is essentially tracking each user at sign up and how many sign ups they then generate. A K factor of over 1 is considered to be viral. This is the stage Fathom are at.
- Richard designed Fathom so that everyone in the meeting could see it, as well as this following legal and consent laws/guidelines, it also is self-promotion for Fathom. Any attendee of a meeting where it is being used is a potential sign-up.
- Fathom run a points system for all users, they also run a programme for their top users. They reward their top users with gifts such as swag boxes and also equity stakes in Fathom itself!
- As a fully remote company, Richard and his team rely heavily on the apps slack and hubspot, they are the two apps Richard ranks the highest!
- The AI tools and models Richard is seeing in the tech space means that things are becoming truly automated for the first time, this is where he sees the future of tech.
BEST MOMENTS
“We’re human, we like seeing other humans, it really adds context to what is being said”
“There’s some % chance that any attendee at a meeting where fathom is being used, will lead to a sign up”
“All the things initially marketed as AI weren’t AI…for the first time we are starting to hit a tipping point where these things are starting to be really useful”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rrwhite
fathom.video/pod
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan StaleyFounder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan is joined by Michael Brooks in this episode. Michael is both the founder and ceo of goLance, a freelancer platform that is both fully remote and staffed completely by freelancers.
Michael talks to Ryan about how they differentiate themselves from other freelancer platforms, what he has managed to build through the power of relationships, communication and trust as well as the highs and lows of having a fully remote, fully freelance team.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- GoLance try and provide as much value as they can on places like Quora, LinkedIn and in Facebook communities, they find this is a great way to market themselves and the acquire a lot of clients and referrals this way.
- GoLance works like a recruitment agency except it’s all digital and all jobs and candidates are freelancers. They differentiate themselves from other freelancer platforms by assuring quality.
- There is a lot of cultural work attached to what goLance do, they don’t simply match jobs to freelancers, they ensure the culture fit is right as well as the experience level and communication style.
- Pricing at goLance works similar to Airbnb, they charge a flat rate of 7.9% which represents great value to both client and freelancer.
- Some freelancer platforms, such as Upwork, are very transactional and they are also strict about how communication between freelancers and companies takes place. Golance are a lot more open and transparent, they want communication to flow and take place as it should so have little restriction on what is and isn’t allowed.
- Michael isn’t frightened to turn down business or capital that he knows doesn’t work for goLance. It’s more important to him to get the right fit and work with people that align with the values and culture of goLance.
- For a 7-year old company, getting to 40 million plus revenue is exciting, but something Michael also finds incredible is the fact that some of goLance’s freelancers have earnt 7 figures with them in this time too!
- A hands-on approach to managing relationships and their freelancers is something Michael is keen to keep going at goLance. It allows them to have complete control over the process and the quality for their clients too.
- Having a human being reach out and connect with you, giving you answers you need, is so much more effective than ad-spend. Giving value on Quora and similar sites has been a winning strategy for goLance.
- When you’re in touch with your market, you can drive your business to meet their needs.
- Find a problem in your industry, look at how your competitors are addressing the problem, then look to see how you can solve it.
- Building a remote culture, especially with a fully freelance team can be a challenge but there are ways to make it easier, such as having multiple interviews with prospective freelancers and finding creative ways to make them feel part of your company.
BEST MOMENTS
“Providing value is the best marketing one can do”
“No one feels hurt, everyone feels like they have a lot of value”
“We want to build relationships that last forever”
“You can drive your business by understanding the responses of your community”
“Find creative ways to create culture and give people a sense that their part of your company”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://blog.golance.com/author/michael-a-brooks/
https://pr.linkedin.com/in/michaelabrooks
https://www.amazon.co.uk/REMOTE-Freelancers-Thriving-Business-Anywhere-ebook/dp/B08DM7VT5D
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
David is a bestselling author and a rebranding expert, helping multiple companies transform their business all through the power of branding. He joins Ryan in this episode to share the techniques he uses, the many things he has learnt in his 40+ years of experience and talks about why simply meeting your customers’ expectations is never enough.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- David started in the world of branding 40+ years ago. The interesting advantage he has with this wealth of experience is being able to see first hand the timeless things that have always worked.
- The fundamentals of branding don’t change but if you pay close attention you can change and pivot to leverage what will work right now.
- You shouldn’t always be tactical with branding, David goes deep into companies touchpoints to see what real problems they are having so they can recognise what to focus on.
- Very few companies do post sale branding. But it exceeds the customers experience level and creates brand loyalty.
- Everything is automated now. Think about what parts of your sales process you can humanise to give your customer a better experience.
- Great branding is often compiled of a variety of small little things, rather than something big.
- Try and anticipate your customers next need, don’t just focus on the buyer’s journey but your customers whole journey. Allowing you to create customers that come back to you time and time again.
- Just meeting a customers expectations is not enough, that is the bare minimum. Think about what you are doing that can impact a customer on a day to day basis and are if there is a way you can add an element of surprise.
- David transformed the company KnowBe4 from zero to a billion dollar ‘unicorn’ company in just 8 years through his branding techniques.
- Look at your market, look at what everyone is the space is doing and what’s expected, then find ways to go beyond that, to become remarkable and impossible to ignore.
BEST MOMENTS
“Being thick skinned enough to have passionate impartiality, you’ve got to be strong enough to look objectively”
“That whole big picture look can sometimes be at the sacrifice of little things that impact everyday decisions and the customer experience”
“What more are we doing to add value of a day to day basis as well as what I call the elements of surprise”
“We’re all in the business of helping customers, prospect, to come to new conclusions and they’re not going to come to new conclusions with old information”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidbrier
https://www.risingabovethenoise.com
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Brand-Intervention-Steps-Transform-Have/dp/0999529706
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Patrick is the founder and ceo of Profitwell, who recently sold resulting in a joint venture with the company Paddle.
Profitwell offer a suite of tools that plug directly into subscription management systems, optimising pricing strategies, revenue recognition and more!
Patrick talks to Ryan all about the pricing strategies he has used to increase revenue as well as his unique 3-step go to market strategy. He also talks about the tactics he has used to grow Profitwell including giving away free subscription financial metrics to over 30,000 companies!
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- There are only around 150,000 subscription and Saas companies and Profitwell used this small market to their advantage by brand building and content marketing.
- When your pool of potential clients is small then you have to market to reflect this, generally focusing on high lifetime value and high retention.
- Automation is the future for Saas b2b product. Clients want a simple plug-in software to do the work for them so they can focus on their customers, product and higher value tasks.
- In all businesses there are resilient stages and endurance stages. If you can recognise which one you are in you can then choose the right ways to deal with your challenges.
- The way Profitwell ran their BDR was unique in the industry. They decided to run all messaging through their growth team, rather than relying on inexperienced sales reps. They also built-in unique content to their core marketing strategy, including video and podcasts.
- 80% of Profitwells dollars come from inbound, this meant it took them time to work on their referral programme because they didn’t need to rely on it, something Patrick recognises as a missed opportunity.
- When developing their middle funnel marketing, Profitwell ensured they focused either on personas they were targeting, or they targeted the ‘need’ or ‘pain point’.
- The way to think about pricing is to concentrate on anything that improves your revenue per customer, for this there are a large amount of levers, including the obvious price increases but also things like add-on strategies and value metrics.
BEST MOMENTS
“When you have a small pool your go to market has to reflect that”
“We automate your retention and the tactical side of the retention…we’re the best in the world at recovering failed payments, we’re the best in the world at cancellation flows, a bunch of these things”
“We just reinvested every dollar we made back into the business and grew from there”
“Discount doesn’t really move the needle until it’s a massive discount”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickccampbell
https://www.profitwell.com/test-tear-down-install/author/patrick-campbell
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark Stouse is the ceo and founder of Proof Analytics. He joins Ryan in this episode to focus on the customer-focused innovative pricing solution he and Proof Analytics created to cut their sales cycle, from 6-9 months to just 2 weeks! Mark also talks about the importance of taking your time with the hiring process, why Proof Analytics are renowned for mixed marketing and the evolution of the SAAS market.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Proof Analytics is one of the world best and fastest automated revenue marketing and optimisation platform.
- Customers are generally having substantial trust issues with saas companies, so are moving away from annual contracts and looking at more shorter-term, flexible solutions.
- Proof Analytics allow customers to pay just $45 a month, this has resulted in them shortening their sales closing time from 6-9 months to just 2 weeks!
- Being one of the first to automate market-mix modelling, has allowed proof Analytics to really dominate the space.
- Hiring the right people is imperative to create a great company. Mark and Proof Analytics focus on getting the right people with the right values and don’t compromise. They want to ensure the team are fully aligned with their values and act in accordance with these.
- You should hire slowly and take the time to get the right people. You can then fire quickly if needed, if they aren’t right for the role, particularly in a start-up, then cut your losses.
- The brand work alongside the lower cost base of a monthly subscription has allowed Proof Analytics to grow substantially.
BEST MOMENTS
“Customers are moving away from annual contracts”
“We’re renowned in the area of market-mix modelling”
“The natural human tendency is to be expedient”
“You have to hire slow and terminate quickly”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
www.proofanalytics.ai
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
CEO and founder of Postie Dave Fink joins Ryan in this episode. Postie is a software company that integrates direct mail with digital marketing to create powerful campaigns. They are a self-proclaimed ‘sneaky big company’ and have 3x their revenue year upon year upon year!
Dave talks all about this success, how Postie was built and hypothesises that sales tactics and marketing hacks aren’t enough to build a long-lasting successful company, that simply put, a great product and service builds success. He also discusses why direct mail is one of the best kept secrets in marketing and utilising this with his team’s wealth of tech and marketing experience led them to where they are today.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Through Posties own growth and profit they have been able to behave like a late series B company. Up to a year and a half ago Postie spent $0 in marketing! They relied on a very talented sales team and reputation. More recently, marketing and good storytelling began to back up Dave and his company’s hypothesis that they weren’t just a good sales company, they now use a variety of marketing tactics, including content marketing, which has transformed them into a marketing-led organisation. Posties was built on the foundations of direct mail. Direct mail is an incredibly scaleable channel that is data rich but what it often lacks is speed and optimisation. So, Dave and his team built the technology to make DM dynamic! Originally bootstrapped, Posties sourced funding in 2017 but they have built and grown to a late series b company without needing another round of funding since. Posties recognise themselves as unique in the market, they are a channel management solution focused on software, workflow and support but with better targeting, simpler execution and better measurement. Long hours, hard work and lots of trial and error created Posties success. They simply built a great product that solved a pain point that enough of the market had and then worked on it, providing great service along the way.
BEST MOMENTS
“We’re performance driven, we’re quant[ative] minded, we want control over the optimisation of our media spend”
“Let’s build ad-serving tech to empower marketers that expect a lot”
“If we did not have a great product market fit, the ability to deliver on what we were selling I don’t think any sales tactic would work”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://postie.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidlfink
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Shaunak Roy joins Ryan in this episode. Shaunak is the CEO and founder of Yellowdig, an active learning platform adopted by hundreds of colleges and universities. Yellowdig have a unique approach to sales and revenue, they use what they call the B2B to C Model, with a majority inbound sales method and work alongside the distinctive traits of the education space to grow and scale.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Yellowdig creates connected learning environments, regardless of where students/teachers are located. It creates a unique user experience that doesn’t exist online or a physical classroom either. Shaunak had always known he wanted to start his own company, he also knew that if he did create a company he wanted it to be scalable. This is why he wanted to create problem-solving technology. Shaunak started to learn everything he could about building a product, business models and the education space. It was a tremendous learning experience for him as he started to build Yellowdig. Yellowdig’s first product wasn’t a success but the schools loved the concept, so they went back to the drawing board to make it better. Yellowdig are a B2B to C company. This means that they go directly to the user of their technology and give them a pilot. If they then like this, they then use them to champion the school/administrator to buy the product. The majority of Yellowdig’s leads are inbound, via faculty members referring and user webinars. As the education sector trust largely on referrals, Yellowdig are careful not to be to ‘salesy’ towards them. This is a group that doesn’t like to feel like they are being sold to. Gathering useful feedback from users is essential to Yellowdig’s progress. Education is a very impact driven space to they want to ensure they can give all the facts and measures to their clients.
BEST MOMENTS
“I’ve always wanted to start a company which is why I did”
“The B2C to C is essentially an extension of B2B”
“Raising money is a big question, especially for saas companies”
"It's a change in mindset, a lot of institutions are old school so you have to be patient with them"
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaunak-roy-65231b
https://www.yellowdig.co/profile/88adc34e-9c40-41eb-9adc-5f06046ad8e8/profile
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Julie Brinkman, CEO at Beyond Pricing, joins Ryan in this episode to talk all about her passion for business growth and the unique strategies and capital principles she has applied to different markets across the years. She has gained a wealth of experience including a role as CEO in a HR start-up and holding senior positions in global company Groupon.
Most recently she has taken Beyond Pricing from a struggling position at the peak of covid and led them to 100% YOY growth. Join Ryan and Julie in this episode for some great takeaways on capital growth and business strategy.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Beyond Pricing gives short-term rental managers and owners the tools to grow revenue. The world of short-term rentals have changed during and since the pandemic. It’s had to cope with these fast changes but Julie and her team have managed to stay ahead. Beyond Pricing has two distinct growth functions, product-led growth strategy and a traditional direct-sales model, depending on the client they are trying to attain. Beyond Pricing have to manage their products for vastly different spectrums of the short-term rental market, from one of the biggest property managers in the US to individuals who just have one singular property. They have to tailor their products for each of their individual client’s needs. Julie spent 10 years at financial advisory firm DeloItte, she then decided she needed to work somewhere more dynamic and applied for a role at Groupon. This is where she learnt about how to manage a great sales team but also gained the passion for business growth and strategy. Julie wanted to see what she could do at a smaller business, which is when she made the decision moved to a role at the HR start-up Hirerology, before moving onto her role now at Beyond Pricing. Blue sky thinking is something Julie believes in and attributes it to a lot of success she has found in business, including at start-ups, because of the belief that anything is possible. Beyond Pricing are not a traditional subscription model business, clients subscribe to them and then they take a percentage of sales. This means they grow with the market but are also incentivised in the same way as their clients. During the pandemic, Julie and her team focused on retention and strategies that would help their clients through this difficult time. They kept their customers in mind in every decision they made.
BEST MOMENTS
“We acquired them through a product-led growth strategy”
“There are a lot of parallels between saas and running your own short-term rental business”
“I got really addicted to growing a business, setting strategies and hitting goals”
“I let my results speak for themselves”
“I don’t think you can run start-ups unless you think anything is possible”
“Those companies that deliver real value to customers in a real way will survive”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.beyondpricing.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jrbrinkman
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Miro is a former software engineer turned tech-founder based in Bulgaria and is the co-founder and CEO of OfficeRnD, a leading software company specialising in products to help people to work flexibly. Miro runs a 100% inbound company and in this episode he shares exactly how he achieved this. If you are wanting to grow and/or looking at lead generation then this is the episode for you!
KEY TAKEAWAYS OfficeRnD is a global company with offices in Bulgaria, Australia and the UK. One of OfficeRnD’s core products is flex, which solves most of the issues with co-working spaces by focusing on member experience. Another one of their products allows companies to be more flexible in their workplace strategies, enabling them and their staff to use their offices in a more flexible way. OfficeRnD went through an accelerator programme which both Miro and his partner found incredibly helpful. It gave them motivation and aided them in finding the right problems to try and solve. It was essential that Miro and his partner researched and spoke to customers before developing their software, they needed to ensure they were trying to solve a problem that existed. At the beginning, OfficeRnD focused on content marketing, using blog posts to gain customers. Alongside this they also answered and gave information to users on Reddit and Quora. This is how they began their 100% inbound business. OfficeRnD furthered their inbound rate by focusing on seo, including building high quality content around ‘quick win’ keywords and getting on other blog lists and recommendations. The next step is for Miro and his team is to systemise their referral programme and put in a solid framework, they believe in the strength of word of mouth, especially in their niche and small market. Miro’s advice for those looking to create a second product is to give it as much autonomy as you can, so it can truly grow and meet its potential.
BEST MOMENTS
“Our software helps teams synchronise their schedules and arrive in the office on days they want to or need to”
“Engineers usually develop solutions for problems that many times they just don’t exist”
“If you’re a first time founder…the high quality accelerators [programmes] can be extremely beneficial”
“I love word of mouth, it’s a small market, a niche market that we are in we try and do everything we can to make our customers happy”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.officernd.com/blog/author/miro/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan is joined by Jeff Bzdawka in this episode, a seasoned leader of tech and hospitality. Jeff is the CEO of Knowland, as well as the COO at Travel Click and also led tech for the global brand Hyatt. Join them for a conversation about customer service, the complexities of the hospitality industry and of course SaaS and Tech!
Jeff has always considered himself a hotel operator first and has put his passion for providing caring service at the forefront of everything he has done. He talks with Ryan about the importance of customer focus and how simply unlocking strategy can have a long-lasting impact of lifetime customer value; this is exactly what he has done at Knowland.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Knowland are in the hospitality space, specifically groups and events so the pandemic has had a huge impact. Jeff joined Knowland as CEO to help aid the company in its role as a critical hotel partner during the industry recovery of covid. Knowland is a saas based business, that focuses on the insights. It’s not only about the data for them but instead but what can be done with it to support their clients. A company’s foundation is built of people and product, and this is what Jeff attributes much of Knowlands success to. To recognise and sustain a strong product and stronger team. Bringing hospitality and tech together and using the tech to scale and enable change, create better experiences and drive results is what excites Jeff. Often integration of technology by saas companies into the hospitality industry isn’t the best it can be. This is something Jeff was and still is passionate to change. Knowlands product is well placed to scale globally, they understand the complexities of the industry and can see the opportunities. Jeff looked at the decision making processes and the PS wrapper, to get closer to clients and provide additional revenue by upselling.
BEST MOMENTS
“Creating and taking that data in actionable insights, lead generations, helping hotels understand how they can sell better and to fill their hotels with more profitable business”
“Sales people selling to sales people can be a challenge”
“It’s a lot easier to sell to a happy customer than go out and find new [ones]”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffbzdawka
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan is joined by Matt Young in this episode. Matt was born an engineer and now runs UserVoice, a product feedback software that helps companies make data driven decisions and prioritise future requests to help their growth
Matt and Ryan talk about growth strategy, the power of learning from your clients and what it means for a software companies’ success when they truly back their engineers.
KEY TAKEAWAYS UserVoice help answer the age-old problem of product market fit. UserVoice gets a lot of inbound requests from companies, they are often searched for when a company is struggling and follow a content-marketing strategy to aid this. When a customer talks to UserVoice about their unique problems, they start with the outcome and work backwards. Being a multi-product company was needed for UserVoice to grow and Matt Young headed this. The way people want to talk to the companies that provide their software services has changed, they want to know more detail and more data. There’s a lot more information that you have to be clever about learning. UserVoice offer help beyond the software, this is something that attracts more people towards them. Having the ability to work with lots of different product companies means that UserVoice can have visibility what works and what doesn’t. The companies that do the best are the ones that measure twice and cut once. When starting product research, it’s important to be crystal clear about what you want and expect to learn. Facilitate meetings between your marketing and product teams. The information and ideas they gather can be useful to both teams to share. Listening to your customers is about using the information they give you to go away and create the best product. It doesn’t always mean doing exactly what they say but about –understanding and facilitating their needs.
BEST MOMENTS
“We try to share as much as possible to become thought leaders and industry experts”
“This is a way to put quantitative and qualitive data behind what an engineering team has asked to build”
“People who see us and say I really wish our company had that”
“Do you know that if you went to build a solution in mind that it would sell?”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattcyoung
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Jordi Torras is the co-founder and CEO of Inbenta. Inbenta started off in the professional services space before making the jump to saas and have doubled in size every year since! They are a multi-award-winning company and have many big brands on their books.
Jordi talks with Ryan all about his innovative AI solution for digital companies, the power of natural language processing as well as the challenges he and the AI industry face.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Inbenta are essentially a b2b company. Their ideal customer is a b2c that produce digital products and have big operating call centres.
If you are able to answer a customer’s question without them calling a call centre, then you get a faster resolution, a cheaper resolution and a happier customer too.
After working for five years in search engines, Inbenta realised they had the potential to build new technology, an AI, that instead of using keywords would use meaning.
In order for Inbentas products to work, they have to solve the problem manually before handing off to ai. This is something still commonly seen when building ai to solve complex problems.
When selling these types of tools to companies, the companies usually have three questions: how certain is the outcome, how fast will they get results and how little hassle will it be for them to implement. You need to be prepared to answer them!
If you build technology around your clients and potential client’s natural growth, then this allows for natural growth for you too.
If you have a complex product, it can end up having a bad end-user journey. It’s essential you focus on this, especially as you grow and adapt.
AI has had exponential growth in the past 5 years, many companies have sadly over promised. Resulting in customers having a bad experience with AI. Meaning that you have to try and re-energise and re-build faith in them in regard to AI products.
Jordi believes technology is driving human progress and this will result in unique solutions to the world’s problems we face, including climate change.
BEST MOMENTS
“We use a classic b2b sales process”
“We have this layered approach where we understand language”
“How can I make technology that is tied with the natural growth of the company?”
“We can save the climate change problem and we will”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.inbenta.com/en/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
It’s the 200th episode of The Scale Up Show!
Founder and CEO of Rainforest QA Fred Stevens Smith joins Ryan today to talk all about how he grew his business past 8 figures, how he paid the ultimate price for a mistake and what it means to pivot and completely rebuild your business!
KEY TAKEAWAYS The first 7 years of the business was around a different product before realising that what had been designed wouldn’t be sustainable. Fred and his team had to completely change their strategy, which included firing 2/3 of their team and design a new product.
You can’t get product market fit once you get hyper-growth. You become locked in. This is why Fred wanted to do something really radical.
Although the product and go to market was essentially wrong, Fred and his team learnt a lot and believed they could build something that actually solved problems in the market sustainably; this is what drove them to pivot.
Hyper growth can be a trap for some companies and Rainforest QA was almost one of them. Many companies get so focused on revenue that they aren’t working on their product enough and this is where disaster can strike.
There’s a very big disconnect between model building and company building, it’s easy to misunderstand that when you are a first-time founder.
Do not even think about raising funding against future revenue growth without first knowing you have product-market fit.
Most ideas and most start-ups fail because they don’t get to great market fit. You can’t create market fit you can only uncover it. At the end of the day it boils down to net-revenue retention.
QA is an ‘insanely broken industry’ according to Fred, which is why he was passionate about creating a solution that helped engineers.
BEST MOMENTS
“I realised we were just going to be treading water here”
“They had insane hyper-market fit”
“You can’t really create great market fit you can just uncover it”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
www.rainforestqa.com
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Jimmy Mackin is the CEO of Curaytor, a marketing solution which specialises in real estate. Curaytor bootstrapped its way from 0 to 11 million in just 7 years, aided by their unique go to market strategy is ‘leading with your why’.
In this episode, Jimmy talks all about leading with your why, by always putting your customers’ needs first and by building an organisation that your employees love, that you love as a founder and that customers love too. He also delves into what he and his team at Curaytor do differently in the market and the common mistakes CEOs make.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Curaytor have also been a company that has engrained themselves with their audience. Their philosophy is to build their audience before they need it. It’s all about focusing on content marketing to help acquire customers, this comes in many forms including podcasting, social media and blogs. Curaytor is a marketing solution which provides the people, the plan, and the platform to get their marketing right. Often when you are starting off a company, you think of capital as a solution to all your problems, but this simply isn’t the case and can distract you from what you should be focusing on. A lot of people in the SAS industry purely focus on the growth metrics, of course these matter, but when they become the focal point you can easily lose track on the customer. It can remove the connection with customers and lead to the wrong decisions being made. Jimmy and his team at Curaytor simply ‘road the waves’ early on in the market, as they were happening. They didn’t overthink their strategy at the start they just mirrored what other successful companies were doing and one of the big waves at the time were FB ads, so that’s what they focused on. Once a company gains a good amount of revenue, they can gain a fear of losing it. This means they can become very risk adverse which in time causes them to become irrelevant.
BEST MOMENTS
“Leading with the ideas our beliefs and world views to attract them to who we are before we sell to them”
“How do we help our customers get more customers?”
“You should only raise capital when you absolutely need it”
“Market performance always trumps individual business strategy”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmymackin
https://www.curaytor.com
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan is joined in this episode by Daniel Graff-Radford, the CEO of Allbound, the world’s best partner relationship platform. Prior to this, Daniel was the lead product and strategy at the company OnSolve where he helped take it from zero to 110 million!
75% of the worlds goods and services happens though partnerships, which is why Daniel was so excited to be approached to join the start-up Allbound back in 2018. Listen in as he talks to Ryan about what it is they do at Allbound, the developing sector of channel technology and how Dan’s unique methodical approach to all areas has aided him in business.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Allbound helps companies who have a channel programme get their partners on board. It’s a bit like a ‘deal-desk’ but for all channel partners rather than your direct reps.
If you want to sell your product in Europe, ideally you need to ensure you have a set-up in that market to find lasting and sustainable success.
Taking revenue from zero to 110 million, involved a lot of strategy. Daniel focused on new opportunities for products as well as existing teams they already had. He also spent time carefully forecasting what the meaningful software would be for future clients’ needs.
When looking at new features to add to a company, portfolio or product, it’s important to look at whether it is more viable to acquire it from elsewhere or build it yourself. This can be done by focusing on the potential future and means of the company, what options are already out there and what resources would be required for each option.
As his first CEO position at a start-up, the very first thing Daniel looked at with Allbound was the product; what was making customers happy and what were their pain-points.
Dan and his team put a plan together to create a sustainable and exciting product for the future and pitched this to investors. This led to investment and a continued 30% growth year on year.
One on ones with team members and employees ensures you get to hear the voice of everyone in the company. The same is the case when speaking with customers too. Matt always tries to do as many one-to-ones as he can to maximise it’s impact.
The why is more important that the number. Finding out why a customers likes or dislikes a product is essential to knowing what product to create next.
Discovery calls with customers is a great training tool. Dan and his team like to listen to calls and discuss them with team members, new and old, as a learning and training tool.
Dan’s biggest growth challenge at Allbound is finding the right talent. This is a new area of the industry, very often it’s about finding the right attitude and spending the resources to train.
Give yourself permission to fail, this way you will learn things faster. Failure is required to build success.
BEST MOMENTS
“But it’s the best decision I ever made and this is the most fun I have ever had at any company”
“If you take over a company, you’re taking over stuff that’s going great and you’re taking over stuff that’s not so great”
“How people binge Netflix, but I binged customer interaction”
“Getting your unfair share of that growth means you’re making a bigger difference to other people on the market”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
What You Do Is Who You Are: Book
Allbound.com
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44063692-what-you-do-is-who-you-are
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan is joined by Matt Ellis in this episode. Matt is the founder and CEO of Measurable, the world’s most widely adopted ESG environment for commercial real estate.
Measurable has a unique technology offering that specifically focuses on ESG and real estate. The platform they offer is made up of four parts: their flagship software product for enterprises, a real-time data product for building optimisation, a pure data product powered by API as well as a professional services layer that incorporates all three of these.
Ryan and Matt discuss what led to the creation of Measurable, sustainability in real estate, the importance of being dynamic and what the maturity of a market means for your product.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Matt started in the real estate world in San Diego as a broker. It was then he learnt about green building, which sparked a passion in him as it allowed him to align his personal values with his professional life.
Matt realised there was an enormous transition starting to take place, to sustainable businesses and this would disproportionately affect the real-estate market. He set to create a way to help businesses deal with this transition via technology and this is how Measurable was born.
As a subject matter expert, Matt knew enough to get the idea rolling but he was also aware that he was a tech-person, so he found the right team to help him build his vision.
In the early build of a business, the product actually matters less than people realise. What matters at the beginning is to establish a vision and a narrative.
You have a high reward as a business when you are one of the first to launch a product because it’s not established or defined, it’s also high risk. But if you get it right, you can gain a very large amount of the market.
The maturity of a market impacts every decision you make. Having data to support you in making these decisions, particularly in an early market, is crucial.
Matt attributes the growth of Measurable to instilling the narrative and product vision into every single employee in the team, regardless of their job role. Measurable ensures that everyone understands the growth strategies and product vision so they remain consistent as a brand.
BEST MOMENTS
“[ESG] is the world’s largest asset class so it’s a big market for us to address”
“I wanted to build a technology approach to helping our customers make this transition and that’s where the idea of measurable came from”
“What matters is establishing the vision and the narrative”
“With market maturity, the ‘asks’ get more specific”
“We are so consistent and everyone is singing from that same sheet of music that it has a compounding effect”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy
EPISODE RESOURCES
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
© PLEASE NOTE: This communication and any attachments is the copyright of the sender and contains information which is confidential and for the exclusive use of the intended recipient(s). The sender does not accept responsibility for any loss or damage resulting directly or indirectly from the use of this e-mail or its contents or any attachments. All communications and the contents and attachments of this email are herein are made WITHOUT PREJUDICE and without liability on the sender or Progressive Property Ventures LLP nor is any liability accepted for the consequences of any action taken on the basis of information provided in this message or its attachments. The contents of this message also may not be used for any legal purpose or as evidence in legal proceedings without the express written consent of a partner of Progressive Property Ventures LLP.
Any views or opinions presented in this e-mail are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Progressive Property Ventures LLP.
Progressive Property Ventures LLP
Company Number OC361197, VAT number: 110742655 Registered office: Unit 10, Office Village, Hampton, Peterborough PE7 8GX.
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Why are sales and relationships more important to the success of a CRM company than the tech? Join Ryan whilst he talks about this with Nikolaus Kimla, CEO and founder of Pipeliner Sales CRM.
Nikolaus and his team decided to change what they felt was wrong in the CRM system and focused on relationships and their sales team to achieve this.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Nikolaus and his team came from banking compliance background, they created the biggest banking compliance solution over 15 years ago. They were thinking about what to do next when they went to a conference where they were introduced to pipeline management, Nikolaus loved the concept and then decided to move into the CRM space. Nikolaus and his team spent some time interviewing potential users and clients and they all said the same thing; CRM sucks. So, Nikolaus set out to create a CRM system that didn’t suck! A system that would work with its users that would also be easy to replace their current systems. Sales is important to society but it isn’t treated as such. It creates a net positive impact on society and this is something Nikolaus is very positive about which is why he calls sales people ‘SALEPRENEURS’; sales people are the world’s creators and peace producers. It’s essential to be transparent with your numbers and data for sales people. They need to be working from the same information and data that you have, to give the individual the power and tools to help them sell. Create a ‘buyer centric’ environment, process and structure in your sales team to make things simple for your people to follow. They need to understand what is expected from them and how they can achieve it. Focus on this and you will know exactly how to support your team to do well.
BEST MOMENTS
“We have taken a completely new approach, we felt there was something totally wrong in the industry”
“Sales has a very big impact across everything in life, a positive one, it creates value”
“Sales people are world’s creator and peace producer”
“At the end it’s the relationships, not the technology”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy
EPISODE RESOURCES
www.pipelinercrm.com
https://salespop.net
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
© PLEASE NOTE: This communication and any attachments is the copyright of the sender and contains information which is confidential and for the exclusive use of the intended recipient(s). The sender does not accept responsibility for any loss or damage resulting directly or indirectly from the use of this e-mail or its contents or any attachments. All communications and the contents and attachments of this email are herein are made WITHOUT PREJUDICE and without liability on the sender or Progressive Property Ventures LLP nor is any liability accepted for the consequences of any action taken on the basis of information provided in this message or its attachments. The contents of this message also may not be used for any legal purpose or as evidence in legal proceedings without the express written consent of a partner of Progressive Property Ventures LLP.
Any views or opinions presented in this e-mail are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Progressive Property Ventures LLP.
Progressive Property Ventures LLP
Company Number OC361197, VAT number: 110742655 Registered office: Unit 10, Office Village, Hampton, Peterborough PE7 8GX.
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ed Roshitsh is the CEO of Brightfin, one of the fastest growing Inc 5000 companies. Ed is also the author of Leadership book Solid Handshake and created an increase of 3 billion in shareholder value for multiple PE Portfolio Companies including Blackbaud, Vertafore and PointClickCare.
Brightfin were put together by a private equity firm out of Chicago in the peak of the Pandemic. They had a hypothesis about the market and put three separate companies together to create Brightfin who now hold a revenue between 32 and 36 million.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Brightfin are an IT expense management system, they’ve created just one platform to manage your mobile, telecom and cloud investments. Brightfin are the only company in the world that offers company expense management built on top of the service/workflow architecture.
Word of mouth, client referrals and unique products are what Brightfin rely on to market themselves, they are solution led. Frequently referrals turn into clients and their great product almost sells itself too.
A multi-fronted marketing approach that is measurable is essential to building a predictable revenue. If you collect data accurately, focus on the right metrics and reverse engineer, then you can start to build a predictable revenue path.
The world of marketing has changed. You didn’t have all the tools and sophistication of today 20 years ago but you were able to simply call people and reach them.
Brightfin have 10 operating principles that their team all adhere to. This helps create a team that is aligned and working towards the same goals and aspirations.
Resource is a challenge in every company. You don’t have enough resources to do and fix everything you want to. It’s about prioritising what matters right now in the business and focusing on that to drive you forward.
BEST MOMENTS
“You can build a pretty good and predictable revenue path by reverse engineering how much you need of x, y and z”
“Right now the hardest work is to cut through the noise on your website digitally”
“Collaboration and consensus building is what helps us get to the best decisions”
“Bad news should travel faster than good so we can fix it”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/roshitsh/
https://www.brightfin.com/resources/team_member/ed-roshitsh/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
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Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Andrew Rosener is the founder and CEO of the number one media domain brokerage in the world, Media Options. He is also the co-founder of the first NFT-based music group Ape-In Productions.
He joins Ryan in this episode of the show to talk all about the power of a good domain name, how he grew Media Options so quickly, why building a successful business is all about hard work and the future of the internet!
KEY TAKEAWAYS Media Options is 100% sales led but Andrew believes this is only possible because of the high calibre and quality of the product. They focus on the top 2% of domain names and this allows them to find and work with high value clients. Media Options have a split, between domain names they own and the brokerage side of the business. It was 2008, Andrew had 300k in savings and he had been collecting domain names since the 90’s. He decided to give the concept of Media Options a go, the first year was a challenge but by year 2 they started to really build something. They relied heavily on selling domain names at the start to get cashflow and Andrew admits there was no secret to success; it was simply hard work and will power. Andrew has been ‘first’ and ‘early’ in a lot of things in his life. Based on his instinct he has predicted the outcomes of Covid, bitcoin and now the next part of the internet. He says this is down to practicing listening to and honing in on his instincts. Due to the nature of the business, Andrew believes there weren’t too many things they could do to counter-act the effect of Covid. He puts the success throughout this trying time down to the amount of high achievers he had in the company and the expertise and history they had in the domain-space. Networking helped Media Options with their fast growth. Andrew had his own network he had been building for years but he and his team also reached out to previous clients and customers to gain more business; relying on referrals and word-of-mouth. All companies should have a systemised referral process. A great domain instils trust to the customer or client. A domain name is all about this trust and creating a smooth experience. Andrew sees the future of the internet as sophistication. In 10 years it’s predicted 90% of the world will be online and will the developments in software he believes that we will move away from the ad-centric internet age we are currently in and move into the next phase; opening up endless opportunities for a more dynamic place.
BEST MOMENTS
“We have the lion’s share of the market on high value domain names”
“It took pounding the pavement, dialling for dollars, hundreds of emails a day, just grinding to make it work”
"We sold Zoom their Domain name!"
“Trust is literally the oil that makes the world go round…it lubricates the gears of commerce”
“Domain names are all about creating a smooth experience for your customer”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://mediaoptions.com/about/our-team
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewrosener/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Yoav Vilner is the co-founder and CEO of Walnut, a no-code platform that allows businesses to instantly create tailored and interactive product demos. Walnut has worked with clients such as Adobe and Dell and have acquired 56 million in funding in just 2 years!
Join Yoav and Ryan as they talk about the Walnut product, the importance of getting branding right and why you need to get people talking about your business!
KEY TAKEAWAYS Walnut focus on a sales-led go to market motion. They work with smaller start ups as well as fortune companies, working alongside sales and marketing teams. The aim of walnut is to create something bespokely designed for your company, ensuring it works perfectly for your exact needs and wants. When deciding what to focus on in his entrepreneurial journey, Yoav wanted to ensure he was building something people really needed. He noticed how much the market was changing and so started developing something to meet these new and ever-changing needs including remote-working and the now hyper-focus on the bottom-line due to a turbulent economy. At first Yoav used connections to find investors and clients but quite quickly Walnut began to get clients purely from word-of-mouth. When pitching and designing, Yoav and his team focused on friction points and difficulties the company was facing. They didn’t simply focus on their product but instead turned the spotlight back onto the potential client, ensuring they were learning about them along the way. When building your company and brand, it’s important to not frighten clients with too much jargon, to focus on the service you can give to them and to really make a name for yourself, setting yourself apart from the competition so that clients recommend you. Putting out quality content that is useful to potential clients is a great way to become noticed and well known in your field.
BEST MOMENTS
“You leveraged referrals to get their friends”
“Walnut is the fastest thing and the coolest thing I have done”
“Build the biggest brand, as fast as you can, while your technology and product are still adjusting”
“Be suspicious of other people’s advice unless it’s from their specific background or industry”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/yoav-vilner/
https://www.walnut.io/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ambuj Kumar is the cofounder and CEO of Fortanix, a pioneer in confidential computing which allows full and complete control over data. Ambuj has 200 employees, more than 100 fortunes and over 50 patents! Ambuj and Fortanix have had an interesting journey so far and have even acquired investment from the CIA as well as tech-giant Intel. He talks to Ryan in this episode about how he built the company and delves deep into how he centred the customer journey and product to create lasting success for Fortanix.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Fortanix is a data first, multi-cloud security company. They provide a product that allows enterprises to keep their data secure. Customer retention at Fortanix is very high. They find that once that have sold to and obtained a customer they keep using their services. They ensure there are always new and innovative features for customers to come back for/upgrade to. Success looks different to everyone. The journey is difficult so Ambuj says you need to find your own path and your own unique way of dealing with difficulties and challenges that come your way. Having a mission has always been important to Ambuj. He is passionate about people feeling safe and secure online as well as differentiating himself and creating something unique; this is what drove him to create Fortanix. Early on, the people that worked with Ambuj did everything from marketing to product development. They would own each task from beginning to end and he attributes this to their early success. Even in this highly technological world, people buy from people. Your advantage when starting out is that you can be personal and give clients that service. Differentiate yourself from bigger guys with this and show your passion in every way and you will find clients. As you grow, try and keep this smaller business ethos in the way you deal with clients. When hiring you need to understand where the employee is starting from. You need to tailor their onboarding to their existing knowledge and background and you can do this by building robust hiring processes that cover all bases, allowing all employees to learn and thrive within your company.
BEST MOMENTS
“There is not one path to success, there are multiple avenues that look very different”
“You have to believe it will be good for them, it will be good for you and if its not you change your offering so that it is good for everybody”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.fortanix.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ambujkumar/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Jeremy Slate is an author, entrepreneur and the CEO and founder of Command Your Brand. A company which helps podcasters find the right guests for their show, the right show for individuals and more. He joins Ryan to talk all about branding, marketing and podcasting. They also discuss the importance of PR and the strength this can have in building your company presence.
KEY TAKEAWAYS When your sales, PR and marketing all work well together that’s what builds a refined and resilient brand. The purpose of a press release is for people to look at it and then want to work with you. They are to create media attention to get people out there to work with you. When you are looking at appearing on podcast shows you need to look at what value you can and will offer. Ask yourself, what makes your offering unique? Consumer behaviour is changing, things can no longer be ‘forced’ upon a consumer via advertising. It’s now all about giving them what they want, when they want it and catering toward their needs more than ever.
BEST MOMENTS
“PR is what makes me people know you and trust you”
“What can you offer that no one else can, there are hundreds of people doing the same thing”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
Comandyourbrand.com
Getextraordinarybook.com
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
There has started to be a drop in capital in the start-up and venture capitalist space. People are starting to be more conservative in hiring but what should you be focusing on when it comes to hiring right now and how can you actually use the current downturn to your advantage? Listen in to this solo episode with Ryan to learn three key ways you can hire for revenue in this current downturn.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Look at the top 20% of your employees and spend time talking with them to ensure you are doing everything you can to retain them. You don’t want to lose these people. If people are leaving, find out why. Focus on getting to the root cause of why they want to leave. Ask your top performers to bring people in they know that are like them.
BEST MOMENTS
“Someone who’s amazing at their job can do the job of three people who are very average”
“People temporarily get blinded by money”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://foundersuite.com
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Nathan Beckord is the CEO and founder of Foundersuite, a platform used for raising angel and venture capital investment for businesses across the globe. He joins Ryan in this episode to talk all about capital investment including the steps you can take to make yourself more appealing to investors as well as how Foundersuite built and created a solution for every step of fund raising, from their investor database to email tools and pitch decks, they have built a solution to help every step of the way for any business looking to acquire investment.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Events, accelerator programmes and partnerships are how Foundersuite market themselves and create leads. They find that most of their customers are start-ups and entrepreneurs and doing this alongside their own ‘honey pots’ such as podcasting and other content creation works well for them. Nathan views it as a multiple pipe approach rather than just one big, all in, marketing strategy. Nathan was working with companies with later stage capital investment which then led him to being a consultant. After a few years, he asked himself if there was a better way of helping people find investors; he believed there was and this is how Foundersuite was born, starting with a CRM suite. The start-ups that raise a good amount of money on their terms, are those who build good relationships with investors. You can do this by building you network with other start-ups and entrepreneurs, so you are known in the right circles. You also want to build momentum by having multiple meetings a day multiple days of the week, investors will sense this and it will make them want to make a deal with you for fear of missing out. Something that can get you ahead of the game in investing, is to reach out months in advance of wanting to fund raise. That way you can warm up and build relationships with potential investors.
BEST MOMENTS
“You want to see them go on to raise capital”
“There’s that whole FOMO, investors are very driven by greed and ear. Greed of making money and fear of missing out on the next great deal”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://foundersuite.com
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
A solo episode from Ryan where he opens-up all about the biggest mistake in his career. He talks about why it was the biggest mistake, what he learnt from it and how you can prevent yourself from making a similar mistake in your journey.
KEY TAKEAWAYS One of the biggest mistakes that Ryan made was that he grew up with a ‘lone wolf’ mentality. He started in sales where it was quite cut throat and he thinks it was this environment that cultured a ‘you against everyone else’ mindset in him. This led to Ryan feeling quite isolated and alone. What helped him to overcome that was to build a network of peers. What he sometimes calls ‘building his own board’. Creating a group of people, you can lean on, leverage and talk to, that are your ‘executives’.
BEST MOMENTS
“I took a lone wolf mentality”
“They can be the best listener in the world but sometimes you can still feel like you’re all alone”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan is joined by Founder and CEO of Condeco Software, Paul Statham. Condeco software are a market leader in workspace management and resource scheduling software. Paul talks all about how he scaled the company and why listening to your customers and the market and innovating to match their needs is the key to success and longevity as a software company.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Condeco’s product was launched back in 2005, it took them over 10 years to hit their first 10 million in revenue. They then took on investment and over 5 years got to 60 million. Then just last year they managed to grow from 60 to 100 million in just 18 months. They work with enterprise clients to right size their workspace scheduling. It’s an incredibly complex task and having the right data and software to make it happen is a fine tech art. Offices are very different spaces post-pandemic. There are a lot more complexities involved, including a lot more flexible working. This is something Condeco have mastered and they even won an award for the work they have done with their software. The US can be a really difficult market to crack if you aren’t from there. It’s one of the reasons Paul moved across there from the UK. What Paul and his team now calls ‘customer success’ is simply just listening to their customers and changing and adapting their product to suit their needs. Something they have done since day one and has allowed them to have the success they have today. Condeco’s scale and growth from 10 to 60 million relied on building their teams, both in size and with leadership too. It was hard to hand over the reins but Paul realised he needed to bring people in so that they could scale big and scale together. Empowering people and allowing mistakes to happen is how Paul manages his teams. He believes in controlled risk, fostering change and allowing people to innovate themselves, being careful to never micromanage.
BEST MOMENTS
“One of the challenges in the post-pandemic world is how do you bring people together to collaborate again”
“Our first 50 customers helped us build the best product on the planet”
“Selling is an art form”
“Always be ready to listen to the customers, to the market and to innovate to what they want”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-statham-82b4841a/?originalSubdomain=uk
https://www.condecosoftware.com/news-and-press/2022/04/11/paul-statham-of-condeco-on-the-labor-shortage-and-the-5-things-we-must-do-to-attract-and-retain-great-talent/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Doron Friedman, CPO and Co-founder of SpotOn, speaks to Ryan about the multiple start-ups he has built, what inspired him to create SpotOn and the unique solutions it offers to their customers.
KEY TAKEAWAYS SpotOn has created multiple platforms and solutions that help restaurants, retail and a whole host of other small businesses at point os sale. Since the birth of SpotOn, Doron has helped build it from nothing to a valuation of 3 billion dollars and employer of 2000 employees in just four years. SpotOn’s primary go-to-market strategy is direct sales, with a 500+ sales rep team who directly build strong relationships with their customers to offer and create solutions specifically for them. SpotOn are constantly creating technology and products to help solve the pain points and difficulties that businesses face. Everything SpotOn do is to help businesses save revenue, decrease costs and give great services to their customers. Doron's father was his main inspiration to becoming an entrepreneur, even though he warned him against the stress and difficulties you face in the entrepreneurial lifestyle. But, Doron just knew that it’s what he wanted to do and if he could be half the entrepreneur his Dad was he will have done well in life! At 21 he created a bagel business across colleges on the west coast which became successful, he then had the concept of creating on-demand credit cards and so found the tech people he needed to build it with him. At 40 after managing with some difficult financial situations in this business, Doron decided to start again and this is when and where SpotOn was born. You must find people in business to work with that compliment your weaknesses. Find those who are different to you and that have different strengths to help you build success. Spot On has one of the biggest percentage most women-leaders in a tech company. Two of the most recent additions to spot on solution is pacing technology for restaurant orders and stock tracking on multiple platforms for small retail businesses. During the pandemic SpotOn tried to do everything they could to help their clients. They asked their teams to work as hard as they could to help them, they released and built new systems before they were ready and even gave away free solutions. They cared and therefore helped in any and every way they could.
BEST MOMENTS
“We’re not always right, we make mistakes all the time. We have a saying, fail fast and pivot”
“If we’re to have empathy with our clients, we need to have empathy with each other”
“We thought in order to make something really powerful we wanted to build it from the ground up”
“If you can add value and save people money at the same time it’s the biggest win in the world”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.spoton.com
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Clint is the Chief Strategy Officer and Co-founder of SugarCRM, a CRM company with a difference. SugarCRM turns their customers into fans, utilises them as marketing tools and differentiates themselves in unique ways. Clint has also co-authored multiple CRM software patterns and in this episode talks to Ryan all about how SugarCRM do things and what got him and the company to where they are today.
KEY TAKEAWAYS If you have a sales culture in your company, SugarCRM can help you on marketing and customer service but where they really shine is around the depth of expertise in sales automation and everything and anything to do with it. There’s four levers any company can pull when it comes to differentiation, quality, price, service and convenience. To a large degree most companies start by differentiating around quality or price. It can be difficult to differentiate on quality in the commoditized world we live in now and differentiation on price is almost always a race to the bottom. So, Clint instead focused on service and convenience instead. SugarCRM is a CRM that focuses on sales tools, marketing automation and helping customer services deliver outstanding service. SugarCRM manage the whole buyers journey, with great tools and data, with the end goal of creating fully engaged and happy customers. You either build a lifestyle business or a growth business. In the world of entrepreneurs there a lot of lifestyle business, it’s about putting money in your pocket to fund your lifestyle. When they then become popular they realise that they now need to look at how to manage the growth they are seeing. Technology and innovation launches you and this is what people love at first. But as time goes on, especially with your customers, you need to be focused on solving business problems and not just talking tech. There’s a lot of mechanics in building a CRM. Clint was good at building the software and tech but it took a while for him and his team to master selling it. He said it simply comes down to philosophy and aligning that with your goals. Being midmarket is a mindset, it doesn’t have a set figure. What it really means is that you aren’t a small business anymore but you also aren’t large. To promote growth, you also need to move away from the ‘playbook’ that started your business and instead look at the one which is where you want to be. Be open to shed tradition and become comfortable in a growth mindset that is by design and not by accident. Product experience, brand experience, employee and customer experience are all things a company needs to go from a good company to a great company. You have to turn your customers into your marketing machine. You need to make them and their experience excellent. This is what makes you a great company rather than just a good one.
BEST MOMENTS
“Make it easy and put a smile on your customers face, frankly that’s what’s at the core of customer relationship management industry is all about”
“We sell software, to help sellers sell”
“In the end, people buy a product or service, so it’s got to be good”
“Good companies understand product experience, great companies understand product and brand”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.sugarcrm.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/clintoram
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Two-time CEO and first time founder of OCX Cognition Richard Owen talks to Ryan in this episode. OCX Cognition is a software and data science company that uses machine learning to create real-time NPS and customer health performance. Previously to this, Richard Owen ran DELL’s ecommerce platform and he has also built two software companies.
Richard and Ryan talk about NPS (Net-Promoter-Score), NRR (Net-Recurring-Revenue) and how using machine learning to predict and measure these can provide an invaluable resource and tool for companies. Richard also talks about and advocates on how your customers are your best marketing assett as well as your best collaborators too!
KEY TAKEAWAYS OCX are due to reach their first million, they sell large tickets to enterprises, focusing on margins at a high value rather than volume of clients. There’s a narrative in the business community that you launch and are successful in six months, but this simply isn’t true. It takes a lot of hard graft, time and commitment to grow and reach your first million and beyond. Companies are always trying to figure out net revenue retention. What we know to be true in the business world, is that customers ultimately renew based on their experiences with the company relative to their expectations. Previously companies would either ask their internal teams or you would survey customers to gain this information. But this was far from an exact science. So, what OCX Cognition does is use machine learning instead to predict behaviour. OCX Cognition are really bringing a lot of computer and logic based science to what was previously a very anecdotal and guesswork situation. When OCX Cognition was created, Richard worked with clients as a service based product, using other data systems from people he knew. Once they had created solutions and value for these clients, Richard then used the capital gained to build and create their own software. If customers want to work with you and are interested in your end solution, then you can follow this approach too. But be prepared to make many changes along the way and forever be evolving to meet clients and customers needs. Your biggest cost when starting is in engineering. You are spending time and money creating software that you won’t use or that doesn’t work so be hyper-aware and wary of this fact. Your customers are your best marketing asset and your best collaborators. Word of mouth and recommendations are powerful tools and customers will tell you what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong too. What every company needs to understand is there a whole host of experiences that contribute to a customer making a decision on whether to stay, go forward or retract from a vendor and these interactions all start very early. The customer is in a constant state of revaluating where they are and how they feel about the company. Out of everything you are do as a company, what things have the highest impact? Think about this and work accordingly, not everything you do or focus on is equal.
BEST MOMENTS
“What every CEO of a company wants to understand is what essentially is my true condition of my customer base”
“Leverage your clients as capital”
“Every new customer we take on we are learning something that improves our fundamental algorithms”
“Think of this as a continuous stream of activities that a customer is consuming and all of those activities impact their static level of loyalty to that company”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://ocxcognition.com
https://www.linkedin.com/company/ocxcognition
https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-owen-98ba3/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan is joined in this episode by co-founder and president of Happy Cog, Matt Weinberg. Matt founded his company in high school alongside a friend and they ‘bootstrapped’ their way to huge profitability. They now serve a variety of high value clients and are also one of the fastest growing private companies in the US.
Matt talks to Ryan all about what it took to build the company, what they do there and why their ethos of simply keeping their clients happy is how they have achieved their extraordinarily high referral rate!
KEY TAKEAWAYS Happy Cog’s go-to-market strategy is heavily weighted to referrals. They have lots of happy clients and they are happy to recommend them time and time again. Happy Cog are full service interactive agency, they help companies solve all their digital needs. Their core services are web development, native app development, software integration, design, content strategy and marketing including seo, paid media and everything that goes along with it. Sometimes clients hire them for just one thing but many times they hire for a multitude of solutions. Matt and his friend started their first business in high school, it developed into them going into offices and helping them set up hardware and software and offering business solutions. They quickly realised that the internet was growing like crazy, that this would be the future and so started helping small businesses with the online world. They both went to college and got ‘normal’ full time jobs but they would work on their business on the side, as the business got bigger they quit their day jobs and the rest is history! Part of dealing with the growth Matt has seen in the business is having to do continual process changes. As the company and operations have got bigger, things have had to change to keep the clients happy. Constantly re-evaluating how good a job they are doing to keep the clients happy is why they have such a high referral rate. Happy Cog are in the clients service business. Their job is to help their clients achieve their business goal. They need to help their clients create more value than what they are paying them otherwise there is little point in hiring them. They align themselves alongside their clients’ business goals to create ultimate success and client satisfaction. When you are talking about creative work, it’s hard to separate emotion from logic. It’s important to understand your clients emotions towards things especially surrounding decisions. Listen to your clients and be transparent about what you believe will and won’t work for them and then show them why. Happy Cog’s goals for the future is to stay sustainable, by doing great things for their clients, for their employees and remaining cash flow positive so they can continue to grow and do great things.
BEST MOMENTS
“Our development department is about 65% of our revenue”
“If we make our clients happy, I strongly believe they will tell their friends about us and we’ll get more business”
“What’s valuable for them [the clients], what makes it a success?”
"if we do great things for our clients, for our employees and we're cash flow positive then we can have a sustainable business"
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewweinberg/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Right from the beginning of founding Surefire Local, CEO and founder Chris, had a dream; that using big data would solve the complexity of marketing in an internet based world for small-businesses. He went onto create Surefire Local, an ad-software company that simplifies data marketing, so the business owner can focus on what they do best and leave the complex world of modern marketing to great technology.
Listen in to this episode with Chris and Ryan to learn all about how Chris built Surefire Local, the details of what they do there and what has cultivated its success.
KEY TAKEAWAYS The vastness of 'web 2.0' and the multi-channel omnipresence of marketing has created the modern marketing paradigm. It has both made things easier yet more complex, often overwhelming businesses, and this is the problem Surefire Local look to solve by leveraging data. Surefire Local integrate their software to work in the way their clients conduct business. Having the right software, in the right place in the customer journey solves a lot of problems. The DNA within Surefire Local is for small businesses to have the right tools to gain the control they both want and need to scale a successful business. Chris knew that if these small businesses took control over the multiple channels and avenues available to them in this web-focused world, and then had consistent structured data built into it too, then marketing and business success would almost be inevitable. Being able to tangibly show what outcomes you can create for a customer makes all the difference when pitching to them. If they can fully understand what it is you can do for them then of course they will be more engaged and want to work with you. Surefire Local create and build structured data for clients so they can do exactly this, including highlighting how customers interact with specific businesses. The next steps for Surefire Local is to build bigger systems to deal with the exponential growth and scale they are seeing. It’s a good problem to have but something Chris can’t wait to start looking at and implementing. A lot of people become obsessed with looking at the competition. When you focus so much on competition you will always feel 'less than. Surefire Local have never looked at the competition, instead focusing on what it is they are doing which is why they have ended up with the best product; there is nobody doing what they are doing in their space.
BEST MOMENTS
“What I’d encourage all those entrepreneurs out there to do is to never settle”
“What we do is make it super simple and have customer success built in a way that guides”
“When you have a lot of humans involved, especially at that level, there’s lots of room for error”
“We think very hard about the customer journey and making it congruent”
“Elon Musk is sort of my idol”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrismarentis
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Join Ryan as he talks to the co-founder and CEO of Black Swan Data, Steve King. They explore the road that lead to success for Steve and Black Swan Data, the power of AI in predicting human behaviour for product research but also in the medical industry and how investing in the innovation of new technologies and tools in AI will continue to make the world a better place for all.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Black Swan Data are the fastest growing start up in the UK right now. They use artificial intelligence to predict human behaviour in new and innovative ways. Some of their big-name clients include Disney and Pepsi Co! They just passed 10million ARR last month and with a growth rate of 100% they are still at the ‘fun bit’ as a young company. Black Swan Data work in product research and new product development. Over 80% of new products fail, so what Black Swan Data do to combat this is ‘social prediction’. They listen to the public conversations and opinions to help project and predict with almost 90% accuracy, what people will be talking about and interested in. They then give these predictions to companies so they can make informed choices about the new products they will create and release. Steve also has a foundation called ‘White Swan’. This leverages the same technology but instead uses it to spot patterns and associations in diseases. By giving people and Doctors access to this data, they can help speed up diagnosis. After a more difficult start being bootstrap funded, Black Swan Data discovered that no one was really doing longer-term predictions for products using AI. So, this is what they decided to focus on and has been the key to their success. Speaking to fellow founders and like-minded people helped Steve with the development of the technology and company. He finds talking things through and asking for advice really helps guide him in more challenging times. Steve believes companies are making too many qualitative decisions. They need to spend the time and become more diligent, to look at real, quantitative data to enable better and more accurate decisions. Something Steve struggles with is his own personal value of fairness. It is what makes his product so good as he listens to people and Is empathetic to their needs and wants but it also can make things difficult from a commercial perspective.
BEST MOMENTS
“Over 80% of new products fail in the first 6 months”
“These things are all patterns that Doctors don’t really get the opportunity to see”
“I knew what we had was incredible, I knew it was useful”
“I just believe if people can find the right technology, and AI tools which allow them to get the right data to make long term decisions better, then the world becomes a better place”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.blackswan.com/our-story/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/steveking/?originalSubdomain=uk
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this episode, Ryan has a great conversation with the current Strategy Officer at Market Muse, Jeff Coyle. Jeff is a data driven search engine market executive with over 20 years of experience in lead generation, inbound consultation and is also a top 50 award winner for artificial intelligence and machine learning. Listen in to this episode to hear Jeff discuss Market Muse’s marketing strategies including what using a hybrid model can mean for you and your business.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Strong inbound marketers create a large flow of customers. Jeff and his company use a hybrid of sales based and product basked marketing for growth and although this can be complicated, he finds it incredibly robust and effective. Market Muse is a content intelligence platform that sets the standard for content quality. So, creating an appropriate experience for a person or team using Market Muse means that every content decision you make, is made with market muse data including ROI predictions and data. A phase of development that makes you top tier as a search engine professional, is creating and executing an adjacent content strategy, E.g content operations, paid social, community management and conversion rate optimisation. Building a content led seo allows you to demonstrate your expertise. It shows you understand your customers, the business and you can also build content and communities post-purchase too. Strong referrals from existing customers are invaluable. As well as being a great lead generator they also build trust in the brand. If you only focus on the end customer, like PLGs often do, then you will never learn how to sell to a buying team. You’ll never learn the skills to become a hybrid model. Understanding how to make that jump from the end user to learning to work with buying teams is essential.
BEST MOMENTS
“It’s effectively giving me insights and then action in the form of operations for content with the goal of being able to predict ROI and execute more efficiently”
“How people get there, what they do when they get there, all really matters for search”
“I love champion referrals, they are a great source of revenue for every business, somebody who loves your product”
“If you don’t know how to sell to a buying team, how to make your proposition sexy, you’ll never get to the content marketing lead, the editor, GM or CO and that’s where PLG companies get it wrong”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffcoyle
https://blog.marketmuse.com/marketing-ai-profile-jeff-coyle/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Is data the new oil? Should you be friends with your clients? Join Ryan to find out these questions and more as he speaks to CEO and founder of VisiQuate Brian Robertson.
Brian has been leading the use of advanced analytics to disrupt economics and improve how the healthcare industry operates. Listen in to this episode to discover why the data economy is so expansive, what ‘business health’ really means and how Brian has managed to achieve success in this space for over 30 years.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Brian is incredibly proud of what his team achieved during the pandemic especially as they were previously very trade-show centric. In the healthcare industry in the US, you have to be known to become successful. One of the ways to become known in this competitive industry is to be highly recommended by existing clients, building credibility alongside reputation. VisiQuate have quite a complex and long sales cycle. They therefore take the time to build relationships with their clients, creating relationship equity and trust. It’s really about the power of relationships in their business. We live in a data economy now. Data is often referred to as the ‘new oil’, Brian parallels the process of data to the processing of fossil fuels into oil. The stages both have to go through is strikingly similar. Data is hyper-valuable so it can be difficult to gain trust from clients. Brian’s goal is to be friends with his clients, he wants to be so trusted by his clients that he is on their Christmas card list. If you're working in enterprise sales, having a strong relationship based on true value and therefore trust, is essential. A great way to create momentum and buy in with a new client is to involve them in the processes as much as possible. One way Ryan’s team does this is through their systems training, they guide the client through locating their own issues and problems and then help form the solutions.
BEST MOMENTS
“Data is the new oil”
“Everyone on the team is an expert at what they do”
“Are you good at what you do but are you fun to be around and likeable?”
“The goal is to have it happen organically and naturally, where the client is coming up with the ideas”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bcrobertson
https://www.visiquate.com/about/leadership/brian-robertson
https://thehealthcareinsights.com/visiquate-helping-healthcare-organizations-achieve-peak-business-health-with-advanced-analytics/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Join Ryan as he talks to Dr Stephen Timme the founder and president of FinListic Solutions, a top-rated B2B Sales Intelligence Solution. He pioneered 'Client IQ', a client and intelligence service and he is also co-author to Insight-Led Selling, a book about adopting an executive mindset, credibility, communication and impact.
They discuss Stephen’s go-to-market strategy, the importance of being relevant to potential buyers, understanding their unique positions and why customer relationships and simplification is key to success in a solution-based business.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Stephen believes in being ‘capital efficient’ and there are a few ways to go about this. Firstly, by showing the financial impact and value of their services via their unique platform Client IQ. Secondly, they ensure that all the relevant goals and departments are broken down into measurable pieces to make them more objective and create success. Thirdly they work with clients and customers to figure out their own unique goals and targets. It was Stephen’s realisation that at least 30% enterprise sellers were promoting and selling features and functions to clients that they didn’t even want or care about. So he came up with solutions that he knew aligned with the clients own specific goals and strategies. Getting down to your clients true wants and needs is essential in creating a solution that works for them. Your clients might not even know themselves what that is so it is your job to help them figure it out, from simply looking at what their competitors are doing to just asking the right questions to the right people in the business. Having in-depth financial knowledge on clients or potential clients is absolutely necessary to be able to provide the right solution for them. One of the key elements to fact find the necessary information for a client is Stephen’s large and experienced research team. They look at everything, from visibility, clients KPIs, competitors etc so they can gain a wide-reaching and accurate understanding about what solution a company needs. They then put all of this information into an application; it’s customer intelligence automated, meaning the client can then focus on everything else. One of the challenges at the moment is that there are so many solution providers, it’s a crowded space and market. Differentiating yourself is key, you need to make yourself credible and get yourself noticed. The future of AI and Machine learning will be in labour. Stephen believes this is where it will start to have the most dramatic and proven impact going forward.
BEST MOMENTS
“30% of enterprise sellers are still promoting features and functions that buyers couldn’t care less about, so we pivoted”
“Take off your solution hat and just read up on what people are up to”
“It’s all about them [the clients] not about you”
“Have a plan, it’s that simple, go ahead and set goals”
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
EPISODE RESOURCES
info@finlistics.com
LinkedIn: Dr. Stephen Timme
https://www.finlistics.com/blog/author/dr-stephen-timme
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Insight-Led-Selling-Executive-Credibility-Communicate-ebook/dp/B097J39XH1
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan’s guest on this episode is Piotr Surma. Piotr is a serial start-up founder and AI enthusiast who has a long relationship with tech that includes HP & Nokia along the way. Piotr is the founder CEO of the no code platform Applica, a platform so good that people initially thought it was fake! The proprietary AI automates text-intensive work by extracting meaning from unstructured and semi-structured documents and takes the tedium out of doing the paperwork.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Having a product with a USP is one thing, but being so different to anything else has so many disadvantages when it comes to actually selling it that there may even be reasons why there’s nothing else like it. Competition is always a healthy thing. It pushes innovation that in turn creates growth. In the tech industries, research and development is the most valuable thing, but also the highest risk and expensive too. Creating a trust in AI is probably one of the most difficult tasks facing tech companies at the moment. Have the sales team that knows how to translate the products and platforms to customers in an understandable way.
BEST MOMENTS
‘We realized that system integrators are doomed to slow, organic growth rather than exponential growth.’
‘I would be a little afraid of being in a category that’s totally empty because it might suggest that there is no need for such a product.’
‘I think that the success that we see has something to do with our way we cut through the noise.’
‘The most important part of our go to market was looking for the right people.’
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Piotr Surma – Applica.AI
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is an 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 salespeople and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Christopher Doyle is the motivated CEO of Billd with extensive experience in leading new business-line start-up operations from concept to scaled operations and developing high-performing management teams. Along with his co-founders Jesse Weissburg, they have a long history of working with thousands of contractors and seeing these issues first hand. He joins Ryan as the first fintech/ payment company CEO on The Scale Up Show.
KEY TAKEAWAYS The way that contractors finances work is fundamentally dysfunctional and depends on too many variables that would choke a company’s growth. Streamlining this with a simple buy now, pay later would seem like a simple solution. Marketing your company in the construction industry is quite different to most others and there’s a lot to be said about the value of an in office presence in the form of a swag bag etc. As your company grows, your role as a CEO will change dramatically and you have to know when to build your specialized teams and always remember a jack-of-all-trades is a master of none. Your reputation is your biggest asset. When the quality of your hard work is getting noticed, your customer retention will grow and this can see some unexpected doors of opportunity open too.
BEST MOMENTS
‘We ended up being super boots on the ground with the supplier and then we’d be hand-holding our customer because the product didn’t exist.’
‘Even though my heart is in bootstrapping and I just enjoy that, we need to scale the business and I can’t be the head of legal.’
‘Even for a small purchase, to make sure that we’re that reliable solution, our customers one hundred percent sense that and they trust us.’
‘What really matters is your credibility amongst your peers and who you’re working with.’
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Christopher Doyle - https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopherldoyle
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to LinkedIn) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is an 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 salespeople and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Prabhjot Singh is the CEO of Pyze. He has a wealth of experience in deep data analytics, growth marketing, and application performance management that includes developing and taking to market differentiated products, utilizing data to stay ahead of the competition, and leveraging advanced AI/ML techniques to accelerate product value. He joins Ryan to look into partnering and the potential it can have.
KEY TAKEAWAYS If your company is a startup, it can be incredibly tough to even get a meeting with a bigger organization’s VP. Partnerships can be the key to becoming a much bigger deal, getting you noticed and a much more stable proposition. Since the advent of the Covid pandemic, businesses have had to revolutionize how they operate in order to survive. Even if they were already using quite a lot of tech, that’s also seen a generational shift. When making a pitch, be specific. Go in knowing what the company you’re pitching to inside out. Understanding what pressures they face, their ownership structure, all the verticals and their requirements. When you’re going into a partnership, you have to make sure that it’s a hundred percent fit and you’re both working towards the same goals.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Where we are in the digital transformation journey, people are going from these on prime legacy systems to the more modern no code platforms and the cloud.’
‘When someone’s making an investment in your software, they’re putting their job on the line in some ways. And especially when you’re a startup.’
‘Being able to go in and understand what their specific business goal is and then understanding what are the investments they are making and how you can fit into that kind of landscape is really, really important.’
‘You got to find someone who has a pain that you can solve.’
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Prabhjot Singh - https://www.linkedin.com/in/psinghsf
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to LinkedIn) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is an 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 salespeople and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Andrea Breanna’s life’s work has been on building high traffic websites and is the straight talking founder of RebelMouse that has built two of the most important new media companies of this decade. It also powers content hubs and media properties for brands, like United Airlines, BlackRock, Flonase and many more.
Before that, she was CTO of HuffingtonPost, where she led product, design and engineering. In today’s interview with Ryan she discusses both of these and much, much more.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Due to the rise and reliability of remote technologies, the physical office has less importance. Face to face still plays a key part, especially in sales, but for the day today running, you have the whole world to recruit from. As far as the customer experience goes, for a high percentage of companies the website will be the first point of contact and so many companies still fail to see the potential even now. Creating an ever evolving and positive user experience can guarantee return visits. There’s always the temptation to continue to burn money in VC funded companies because of the nature of the model. Moving away from that and switching to a more sustainable model may seem painful, but in the long run it can enhance your business. For a company, your sales team is the most important part of the company and as such can also be the most expensive if they’re not completely on brand and aligned with your mission.
BEST MOMENTS
‘We’re globally distributed. There are eighty-seven of us actually and we’re in thirty-one countries. ’
‘Consumers don’t have empathy for a bad website.”
‘Now, a year and a half after announcing core web vitals, very few sites are getting a good grade. Most of them are getting absolute failures and that type of thing is what we keep all of our clients monitored on so it’s not like each client has to worry about that, the platform worries about those things.’
‘What you’re told is to learn to burn money.’
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
Andrea Breanna - https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreabreanna
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to LinkedIn) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is an 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 salespeople and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Stephen Phillips, the CEO of Zappi and chair of the MRS sustainability council joins Ryan on this episode to discuss sustainable growth, survey consulting and workable business models.
Zappi is a platform of data and trends for creators.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Investing in a company that seems like a safe bet doesn’t make for a great choice from an investment perspective. There are few high growth prospects to be had from this method. When it comes to founding a tech company, the importance of knowing where your particular skill set lies in the company and then identifying the roles that need filling and finding the right people for them has to be your first and foremost on your agenda. As your company expands there could be a point where you and your partner companies aren’t on the same page and it’s important to recognize this and be able to uncouple for your continued growth. Trust your team. This becomes harder as the company expands, but the importance of keeping that trust at the core is worth millions.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Advisors keep telling me that we’re very capital efficient.’
‘If you combine really understanding the market you’re trying to digitize and also having the digitization expertise and skills, then you’re in a pretty good place.’
‘Everyone has their failures and also successes.’
‘They had been charging large amounts of money for someone to spend months doing what we could do at the flick of a button on our system.’
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.comwww.ryanstaley.io
Stephen Phillips - https://uk.linkedin.com/in/steve-phillips-2121ab
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is an 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 salespeople and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
After a conversation with Sindhu Joseph a while ago, Ryan came across something that regularly occurs. There’s many, but the single biggest mistake stopping you from acquiring new customers is easily overcome with this piece of helpful advice.
KEY TAKEAWAYS The biggest mistake that happens when you’re trying to close a deal with a new client is basically the new customer not doing anything. They’re not pushing for changes, innovation or taking a risk. Nobody wants to cost their company anything or destroy their career. This works on a primal level. The larger the financial decision is for a company, you’ll normally find more decision makers getting involved. Focus on the outcome for the shareholders, and each individual involved in this decision making process.
BEST MOMENTS
‘One of the biggest decisions people will make in their life is around their job and their career.’
‘If you look at the brain, there are three core components that it looks for. How to avoid pain. How to go towards pleasure and how to conserve energy.’
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
Ryan Staley
Founder and CEO
Whale Boss
312-848-7443
ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
www.ryanstaley.io
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is an 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 salespeople and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This episode sees Ryan talking to Steve Pockross, CEO of Verblio, a multimedia content creation platform that powers modern content marketers and SEO agencies. Verblio was awarded two Inc 5000 growth company awards, six consecutive Mercury100 Awards for Fastest Growing Private Companies in the Boulder Valley, and also won a Colorado Companies to Watch award. Verblio acquired the video company Automagical in 2019 to expand its content offering and further engage audiences for its clients.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Over the last decade, content marketing as a channel has developed more as a channel than any other marketing channel. The only thing you can guarantee about digital marketing is its unpredictability. The best practice is using many different channels without spreading yourself thin. Defining exactly what traits you want from your team members means you can nurture talent of your own rather than hiring in a more expensive candidate because of their experience. As a CEO, you have spent time creating the perfect team and building the company. In order to keep the company aligned to your original mission, you need to spend as much time engaged with your team members and keep it personal.
BEST MOMENTS
‘What could I do and what results could I see from them?’
‘On our people's side we made a really big decision to hire young talent in, to hire for traits over experience.’
‘We hired her as an intern, she was a clear talent and she’d never managed one other person and we put her in charge of basically the main people business of the company.’
‘Always prioritize and cultural fit over skill set every step of the way because your magnet for talent as a bootstrapped company is making people want to be there with you.’
‘We’re a content company. We want you to want to read our stuff.’
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248 Steve Pockross - https://www.linkedin.com/in/spockross
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 salespeople and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
After a really busy time with some amazing people and fresh from a mastermind in Mexico, Ryan has figured out the number one secret entrepreneurs don’t talk about and in this super short episode, he’s here to share it with you.
KEY TAKEAWAYS No matter how your company is founded, what your vision is or how smart you are - that might not be what your customers take from your business. Feedback from your customers is an essential tool that can change your direction in a more positive way. Always keep your options open.
BEST MOMENTS
'A lot of the things that I want to talk about at my eulogy for my family, for my loved ones are things that I’m already doing right now.’
‘I have about five or six different opportunities I could pursue that could change the whole entire direction of my life.’
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show
Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?"
Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to LinkedIn) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is an 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 salespeople and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan talks to theunconventionalVC turned entrepreneur, François Gaouette who after spending 15 years financing technology start-ups, decided to create what he calls “the Amazon for activities”. What he created in 2008 was Amilia, with the goal of revolutionising the recreation industry using an online registration platform that’s both versatile and comprehensive.
KEY TAKEAWAYS From the local YMCA to the multi-sports complex, for a company specialising in the sports and leisure industries to increase annual profits, the need for digitisation has never proved itself so conclusively as it has over the of the pandemic. A community isn’t competitive. Any new developments are shared. This behaviour is encouraged and the whole community benefits. If you discover something in the business world, you don't tell your competitors about it. Understand your own strengths and weaknesses as well as those of your team. A white collar worker will probably not be the ideal choice for plumbing work. Being able to spot the right person for the job is a talent that’s not to be ignored. You yourself don’t have to know absolutely every detail. Leave that for the people that will excel in the roles you create.
BEST MOMENTS
"So one of the things now that I'm not scared of having a big chunk of money because I know I'm going to create a lot of value out of it right that's awesome."
"You don't have the restaurant to stay at your home."
"I never thought I would become an entrepreneur, but while it's really fun, well, stressful, scary. But I highly recommend it to everybody to try it in their life. Worst case that will happen, you'll learn something and you'll find a job very easily afterwards."
‘"I read the best people at their job, and I let them do it."
"My whole purpose in life is to build a business where I could play golf all the time and be rich out of it."
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
François Gaouette - https://ca.linkedin.com/in/francois-gaouette-3b63303
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to LinkedIn) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is an 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 salespeople and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this episode, Ryan talks to Sindhu Joseph, the founder & CEO at CogniCor. Sindhu is an author, speaker, advisor and also has a Ph.D in AI along with holding 6 patents. Ryan and Sindhu discuss the power of AI, how it is gaining traction in all industries and what they expect to happen in the future.
KEY TAKEAWAYS CogniCor's digital assistants have a deeper understanding of customer queries; they help in faster resolution and assist customers in making the right product choices. CogniCor’s CIRA platform is constantly learning and developing. It understands your business and engages your clients on their terms, while delivering conversational AI interactions that are easily understood and efficient. As the technology advances, the use of AI has proved how valuable it is in alleviating inhuman workloads as well as the augmenting of existing systems. Every system is only as good as the data it has to work on. Eliminating ‘the human factor’ as much as possible is key to cutting ineffectiveness. Businesses are now faced with the difficult choice of investing in high cost data science as opposed to low cost call centers. As the technology is improving at an expediential rate, that choice is becoming far simpler. When teaching a mainstream mission learning AI system, it uses massive amounts of historical data to learn from. The side effect of this is that it takes on biases and prejudices that become permanent.
BEST MOMENTS
"Seven billion? Doesn’t that mean they just kind of suck at what they’re doing to have seven billion complaints?”
‘"There are inefficiencies in every large organisation. Sometimes it’s very evident, sometimes it’s not"
"If there’s no external forces, I don’t think any business would adopt AI or any change for that matter."
"People are afraid that if they make the wrong decision, they are going to get fired. It’s easier to do nothing"
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
Sindhu Joseph - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sindhujoseph
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode Craig Hauben joins Ryan to catch up and share. Craig’s an executive with over twenty five years of experience in healthcare industry, is the Chief Executive Officer at MediSpend, an information, and technology company that provides global, end-to-end transparency reporting and HCP engagement solutions for life science companies.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Finding out what you want to do, playing to your strengths and knowing where your talents lie not only saves you and your company’s time, it also increases efficiency. Building something new isn’t about conformity and what has gone before. Those are simply starting blocks for where your company or product can go. Trusting yourself and where you want to be, rather than where you think others want you to be is a key leadership quality. Spend time with your customers. Their feedback is crucial to your survival and growth.
BEST MOMENTS
' If I go to the doctor’s office and I give him a box of donuts, I gotta report it.’
‘So I have an oddly broad set of experience in sales, but interestingly I’ve never had to carry a bag in my life.’
‘The window of what’s acceptable whether it’s language or behaviour has definitely narrowed.’
‘Most of my competition is focused on status quo.’
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
Craig Hauben - https://www.linkedin.com/in/craighauben
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to LinkedIn) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is an 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 salespeople and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Native to sunny Sydney, Australia, Darren Chait is the San Francisco-based Co-founder of the meeting notes platform HUGO – voted one of the top ten most innovative companies of 2021 By Fast Company. He joins Ryan to discuss how to avoid soul crushing meetings, keeping everyone on the same page and creating with no code.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Despite a global shift to a more decentralised way of working thanks to the various technologies, there’s still a disparity when it comes to how information from meetings is shared. Building a new product in a vacuum can be dangerous. There’s not just the bugs issues, but there’s also the danger that the market demand for that product could have evaporated. There’s never going to be an exact playbook. Whatever worked before may only work once.
BEST MOMENTS
' We had a million and one SAS tools that were powering collaboration already, Slack was already prolific and so on, but meetings were exactly the same.’
‘You can tell a lot about an org by their SAS stack.’
‘We definitely were a fan of not building underwater.’
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248 Darren Chait - https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenchait
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to LinkedIn) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is an 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 salespeople and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this episode, Ryan is joined by Paul Powers. Paul is a self-made serial entrepreneur with a law degree from Heidelberg University who co-founded Physna, a software company that compares 3-D models. Physna's software can compare and analyse thousands of 3-D models in seconds, improving design and quality control.
KEY TAKEAWAYS If you’re creating a new market, working the bottom up model will create some serious competition, so you need to be able to balance that with some top down sales and contracts to truly succeed. When you’re developing something that has the potential to unlock thousands of different ways it can be applied, it’s very easy to look at those avenues instead of working on the original concept. Maintain focus on the source and the rest will come later.
BEST MOMENTS
' The way that Physna’s designed is to allow you to find anything with whatever you have.’
‘If I could marry those two, business and technology, that to me felt like the most exciting route to take to have the biggest effect I could.’
‘It’s bridging the gap between what’s physical and digital. It’s kinda like taking software from binary to trinary, if you will.’
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248 Paul Powers - https://www.linkedin.com/in/techlab/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to LinkedIn) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is an 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 salespeople and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Joining Ryan on this episode is Jonathan Finkelstein, the founder and CEO of Credly; a top 50 hottest tech company recently acquired by Pearson that helps the world speak a common language about people’s knowledge, skills, and abilities. Thousands of employers, training organisations, associations, certification programs, and workforce development initiatives use Credly to help individuals translate their learning experiences into professional opportunities using trusted, portable, digital credentials.
He is author of Learning in Real Time, a frequent contributor and speaker on HR and learning technology, a former board member of the American Alliance of Museums Media & Technology Committee, and producer or host of thousands of online events and programs for talent development, learning and HR audiences.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Creating a shorter form credential system connects people to the right job. This in turn facilitates upward mobility that is much more capability based. While more industries and businesses are looking towards specialized training certifications, having a system in place to easily recognize the skill sets that individuals possess is important for translating and transferring those skills to a new arena. No matter where your organization is right now, the importance of holding onto your core values should always be at least equal to striving for larger financial goals.
BEST MOMENTS
' A lot of people over the last year have been re-thinking what it is they want to do in the world, what are they good at?’
‘What do you have to show for it at the end? The state of the art was still at best a paper certificate saying ‘good job’ attaboy, attagirl, you completed this thing.’
’Virtually everyone that engages in learning or taking an assessment or getting a certification has some positive benefit they have in mind.’
‘We want people to understand what their human capital is actually worth.’
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248 Jonathan Finkelstein - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jefinkelstein
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to LinkedIn) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is an 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 salespeople and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Myron Golden has consulting clients whose businesses are doing 7 and 8 figures in revenue using the business optimization strategies Myron taught them.
He is a best selling author in the arena of personal finance and financial literacy. In addition, he is also a speaker on the subjects of sales marketing and business growth. He joins Ryan to not only talk about the subtleties of how to approach a sales pitch and how to use perspective, but also to look at how to adapt and stay on trend.
KEY TAKEAWAYS There’s a basic law of polarity . Be mindful of this when you’re getting your customers to focus on your sales pitch. ‘You can’t let what you know keep you from learning what you don’t know.’ In order for your business to flourish, it needs to adapt to change. The pandemic has decentralised businesses and created more autonomy in generations because for the first time there has been a break in the programming.
BEST MOMENTS
'It’s easier for people to believe something bad than something good.’
‘It’s impossible for anything to only be bad and it’s impossible for anything to only be good.’
’Groupon was like the biggest thing in the world for fifteen minutes and now it doesn’t exist’
‘Customers will tell you they want an improvement. What the marketplace needs is something different.’
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show Learn more about Myron's ChallengeHere
Myron Golden – Ig @myrongolden https://myrongolden.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/myrongolden
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is an 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 salespeople and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In a flip from the normal format, Ryan himself is interviewed by Nick Cegelski & Armand Farrokh for The 30 Minutes to President's Club andasked about his tips for successful sales and building a client portfolio. You might need to grab your pen and paper for this one…
KEY TAKEAWAYS The perfect customer profile - by using the 5 x 5 x 5 method and looking for the sweet spot, you can lighten your workload and maximize your time so quickly. Always look for the ideas of people and encourage them. No matter what level they’re at. However big the mistake, learn from it and follow where the money goes. Always explain and give a reason for what you’re doing.
BEST MOMENTS
'If you give somebody something first that’s customized to add value to them, nine and a half times out of ten, their number one question is “How can I help you”.
‘It’s like when you first fall in love. You’ll do anything for that significant other’.
’Don’t use the pandemic as an excuse not to meet your customers live.’
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
The 30 Minutes to President's Club - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/30-minutes-to-presidents-club-no-nonsense-sales/id1510861233
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Vladimir Blagojević is the co-founder of Fullfunnel, a Valencia based company focused on training and guiding marketing and sales teams to engage win deals with target accounts and create a stable demand for products and in this episode he discusses with Ryan the nature and importance of B2B marketing.
KEY TAKEAWAYS With the correct technologies and channels in place, your business can withstand even the most diverse market conditions. Positioning is essential. Your buyers first contact with your online presence should be a landing page with a map of informational needs already laid out for them. By using testimonials, online engagement, social media and market research as part of your toolbox, you can position your brand in a much more positive and trusted light. Then you can take prospective deals in a more vertical direction.
BEST MOMENTS
'We decided to change the play and we decided to focus on LinkedIn, so the 5 million pipe pipe and the 2 million deals was actually all done using LinkedIn.’
‘I don’t think there’s a better account research than actually talking to buyers. This is such an underestimated play.
’What you don’t want to do is pitch on your first date. You don’t want to go to the bar and meet somebody and propose their hand in marriage.’
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248 Vladimir Blagojević Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimirblagojevic/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to LinkedIn) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Tony Greenberg is an investor, operator and driver of transparency. Partner in $60b + exits from Internet to blockchain who is currently working on healing, AI, decentralizing, blockchain tech, cryptocurrency infrastructure, cost of compute software, cost containment, and sourcing IT.
KEY TAKEAWAYS To truly make a difference you have to focus on how your business is working to create efficiencies, both technically and environmentally and move away from the business models of yesterday. The more data you have and the more data you manage will help to work on technologies that can drive a direct effect on the lowering of costs all around, but it also requires some out of the box thinking for any advancement. Having the passion, the correct fundamental belief system and ability to share your vision are all well and good, but you have to surround yourself with responsive people who share them. The old adage “No man is an island” is of ultimate importance when being a CEO.
BEST MOMENTS
'There seems to be an emotion around the millennial sub and minus community that says that they’re building these companies that many of them don’t have boards. That they’re doing this to create impact the universe or let’s change the world. I don’t want you to change the world, I want you to make the world better.’
'I used to think I knew everything. Now I know I know nothing, except my own businesses.’
'You gotta get a who to go-to, and sometimes that’s me.’
' I want to pedal to the metal and not too see people starve, but see people continue to follow through on their commitment to their shareholders.’
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248 Tony Greenberg Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonygreenberg
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to LinkedIn) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Gina Bianchini, the entrepreneur, investor and co-founder of Mighty Networks. Her mission at Mighty Networks is to usher in a new era of digital businesses built on the power of community.
Prior to Mighty Networks, Gina was the CEO & Co-Founder of Ning, a pioneering social platform that flipped the script and offered creators and brands the opportunity to build their own social networks.
KEY TAKEAWAYS To understand how to make social technologies work you need to understand how people systems work. Understanding what size community your customer wants or can cope with easily is very important. Not every brand needs thousands of members in their own space. To innovate, stay curious and push yourself. Embrace the new. There is a massive connection between communities and habit reinforcement.
BEST MOMENTS
'I used to think of myself as the Rip Van Winkle in terms of the dot com boom’
'I actually went into finance because it wasn’t my ninja skill.’
'While I’m a community maximalist, I’m not a community maximilist.’
'How do we create a path for people to raise their hand and go deeper to get even more value?’
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248 Kurt Daniel LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtdaniel/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to LinkedIn) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Marc Daniels, CEO of Results BI, joins Ryan on this episode to discuss the importance of Strategic Planning. Without a Strategic Plan, business leaders waste a large percentage of their time trying to convince customers and partners that they have everything under control when they don’t.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Having investors and angel investors is a good thing, but keep an eye on how much of a stake you actually have in your own company. Only 30% of companies put together a formal strategic plan. This isn’t to be confused with a forecast or simple goal setting. Only 10-15% of those companies then execute them. Throw away threats and look toward trends. Try and identify the upcoming trends and set yourself up for some leverage within them. Narrow your focus, reduce the noise by keeping your plans direct and to the point. Don’t over complicate.
BEST MOMENTS
'I was reading books on business management like crazy.’
'There’s no way you can personally keep your eye on 10 different projects.’
‘Stop working for the company and work on the company’
'Always have an agenda. Every meeting should have a clear purpose, the agenda and you should be reviewing the key metrics for your executive team.’
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
ABOUT THE GUEST
Marc Daniels is at the point in his career where he’s doing what he loves to do the most - helping companies grow. His long and varied career spans many decades starting in 1979 working for Computer Discounts of America, one of the US's first Computer Mail Order Companies and since the early 90’s, he’s specialised in Strategic Planning and continues to be successful with Results Business Intelligence.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marc-daniels-231456a3 https://www.linkedin.com/company/results-com_385424 Results BI official website: https://Resultsbi.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/resultsbi Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marcldaniels/ Youtube: https://www.resultsbi.com/sales-page1606595794414
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to LinkedIn) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode, Ryan speaks to Nick Bonfiglio an expert in business data for over thirty years and received series A funding for his company, Syncari. During his career he’s also been the EVP of Marketo and the CTO at LucasFilm during Star Wars.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Due to Nick’s innovation, the way that corporate data is handled and used has seen the first major advancement in nearly two decades. You have to be completely tenacious, iron willed and disciplined whilst your company is growing and be able to step up at any time. Whilst working on your innovations, your focus has to remain on the customer’s success has to be paramount. To achieve growth, you need to be armed with the correct data and the capability to process it accurately. Revenue operations is the key to this.
BEST MOMENTS
‘ I like software and startups more than the film industry.’
‘ Everything we do is based around the success of the customer.’
‘Getting to foundational, accurate, consistent and truthful data across the organisation is the foundation for everyone.’
‘IT is been reducing in responsibility, size and budget a lot over the last few years.’
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
ABOUT THE GUEST
Nick Bonfiglio isfounder and CEO of Syncari, former EVP of Product at Marketo and author. Syncari is a company set up to help GTM teams solve costly data inconsistencies in their CRM and related platforms, through modern multidirectional synchronization of business applications.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickbonfiglio https://www.linkedin.com/company/syncari/ Syncari official website: https://syncari.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/syncari Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mySyncari/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCio50y27Db1rxvp6IkHj2TA
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to LinkedIn) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this solo show, Ryan talks about setting out your goals for the next 12 months and whatever they may be, there’s a way to complete them as long as you take the time to look inwardly and are willing to adapt.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Create your identity. BE the person first, then you DO the activities needed to get the results you want to HAVE. Stretch goals are achievable, but the key way to do that is to adopt the business identity of others that have already done that. If you don’t think you can change, look at who you were in 5th grade.
BEST MOMENTS
‘Human potential is nearly limitless, you can acquire new skills in any area at any time’
‘Look at failure like AI would look at failure. It’s just feedback’
‘I might work 50 hours a week, but I might only get 30 hours of productivity’
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Impact Belief System https://impacttheory.com/blog/impact-theory-belief-system-25-bullet-points/ The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
ABOUT THE GUEST
Since founding UpClear in 2007, Thierry has been a driving force behind the Company’s rapid growth. With an absolute passion for client satisfaction and collaboration, combined with a focused strategy of embracing our software-as-a-service model, we now serve clients in over twenty countries across four continents.
Understanding the challenges commercial teams face from over ten years of experience in the USA and Europe in the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods industry, Thierry developed BluePlanner, our revenue management software, and created UpClear. His aim then, as now, is to provide an intuitive ‘one-stop-shop’ for the commercial teams: “If it makes the job harder or more complicated it isn’t right.”
Thierry is an avid runner, participating in the New York and Paris marathons every year.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tsoudee UpClear’s official website: https://upclear.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/upclear/ Instagram: @upclearglobal
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to LinkedIn) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
‘Revenue operating system routine’ – what is your revenue routine? In a break from the interview episodes of late, Ryan takes a time out to focus on one core growth item that can sometimes be lost in the day to day operating of your business, no matter where in your company you are.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Always look at what all the elements of what creates revenue. There are three core buckets to look at. Size, situation and struggle need to paid attention to on a weekly basis. Ignoring these can be detrimental. Eventually this simple routine is easier and takes less time as the revenue increases.
BEST MOMENTS
'How you serve is just as important as how you sell’
‘If the light is focussed, it turns into a laser that can cut through steel’
'It’s important that you remain hyper attentive’
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to LinkedIn) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this week's show, Ryan is joined by Thierry Soudee, founder and CEO of UpClear for a candid talk about Revenue Management and software development.
UpClear have been around since 2007 in the UK and now have offices in New York, Mexico, London, Paris, Hong-Kong, Tokyo, and Sydney with a team made up of Consumer Goods experts and ‘techies’ who continuously bring the analytics to life.
KEY TAKEAWAYS A product led strategy is key to building a solid client base. In global software, the key to it’s success with the client is the simplicity of it’s use. Don’t expect to hit all your company milestones quickly. Patience reaps rewards. Your physical well being can have a positive effect on your productivity and success.
BEST MOMENTS
'We’ve really relied on word of mouth and referrals to grow the business up’
‘OK client, I’m going to develop that for you and it’ll work perfectly for you. And we’ve kind of said no to that’
'You need to completely believing in what you’re doing, no compromise’
'My time is spent with the team’
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
ABOUT THE GUEST
Since founding UpClear in 2007, Thierry has been a driving force behind the Company’s rapid growth. With an absolute passion for client satisfaction and collaboration, combined with a focused strategy of embracing our software-as-a-service model, we now serve clients in over twenty countries across four continents.
Understanding the challenges commercial teams face from over ten years of experience in the USA and Europe in the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods industry, Thierry developed BluePlanner, our revenue management software, and created UpClear. His aim then, as now, is to provide an intuitive ‘one-stop-shop’ for the commercial teams: “If it makes the job harder or more complicated it isn’t right.”
Thierry is an avid runner, participating in the New York and Paris marathons every year.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tsoudee
UpClear’s official website: https://upclear.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/upclear/
Instagram: @upclearglobal
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to LinkedIn) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Prior to founding AdGreetz, Eric Frankel was President of Warner Bros. Domestic Cable Distribution. While running a $1 billion a year division he created advancements in new technologies such as on-demand video, high definition quality and online distribution. He also created and successfully launched the first-ever broadband Internet network, In2TV.
In this week's show, Ryan and Eric look very closely at the constantly evolving world and benefits of targeted advertising.
KEY TAKEAWAYS The formal education system is lacking in terms of training the next generation of business leaders. The best way to grow and develop these people is through practical experience. Target the relevant channels for your product – hyper personalisation. Know what the world wants before the rest of the world wants before your competitors and then getting the best team together to sell that idea. Building the right team is the most important thing. Mentorship is one key to success.
BEST MOMENTS
'Rather than looking for that skip ad button or delete, you’re going to pay attention’
'I’ve embraced things in my career that no-one embraced or understood for a long time’
'My favourite tool is our CTO - he’s actually worth a dozen or two dozen people’
'I don’t want you to work for free because the sandwiches are fifteen bucks’
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
ABOUT THE GUEST
Eric Frankel is the CEO and founder of AdGreetz, the industry’s leading video personalization tech platform that is disrupting the $628b advertising marketplace by empowering brands worldwide to build stronger relationships with customers and to easily increase engagement 5X-7X and activation 2X-3X by producing and deploying thousands (or millions) of smart, hyper-personalized, data-driven, relevant, video and display ads and messages (versus a generic, much less-activating version) on 26 channels, optimized by AI/machine learning in real time.
Eric’s official website: https://www.adgreetz.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stargreetz/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-frankel-bb79666
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to LinkedIn) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Rob Moore is a world record holder, globally-acclaimed business mentor, the founder of Progressive Property - the UK's largest property investment property education centre - podcaster, public speaker and renowned entrepreneur.
In this week's show, Rob shares the secrets behind his incredible success, how he grew and scaled several business enterprises into nine-figure revenue generators, and how he plans to use his considerable success in order to inspire others and change the world.
KEY TAKEAWAYS The formal education system is lacking in terms of training the next generation of business leaders. The best way to grow and develop these people is through practical experience. Revenue streams should always be diversified whenever possible, so as to maximise our financial potential, and to safeguard our income should certain monetary avenues be closed. Entrepreneurs like variety when it comes to their work/life balance. The best are those who recognise the need for harmony and balance between the two, but who step up completely when one begins to suffer. Building an audience is all about consistency. You have to post content regularly. You must be clear about what your niche is so as to attract the right audience. Also, look for the ways in which you can hack virality.
BEST MOMENTS
'I help young and underprivileged people start businesses that change the world'
'I enjoy inspiring other people in the same way that people inspired me'
'I'm the most consistently inconsistent, and the most inconsistently consistent person you're ever likely to meet'
'You have to be disruptive, controversial, polarising and memorable'
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
ABOUT THE GUEST
Rob Moore is an author of 9 business books, 5 UK bestsellers, holds 3 world records for public speaking, entrepreneur, property investor, and property educator. Author of the global bestseller “Life Leverage” Host of UK’s No.1 business podcast “The Disruptive Entrepreneur”
“If you don't risk anything, you risk everything”
Rob’s official website: https://robmoore.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/robmooreprogressive/?ref=br_rs
LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/robmoore1979
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Reena Gupta is living proof of how someone from a small town can rise to the top in business so long as they have resilience, purpose and vision.
Reena is a successful solo bootstrapped entrepreneur who got to where she is without any formal business experience, and who has since founded five companies, become a Sales Force advisory member, and also a mentor and author. In this week's show, Reena tells you all about what you need in order to hit the heights of success from a standing start.
KEY TAKEAWAYS When we achieve the pinnacle of success, we can pay this success forward by helping others. By raising others up, we raise ourselves up. The pandemic has show us all that careers cannot be taken for granted. It is vital that we examine the rocky road that many careers are taking, and looking for ways to return harmony and balance. We need to stop valuing everything by monetary worth, when in reality true value should be calculated by our value to people. Partners should always be selected based upon the value they can provide for you, at the very stage your company is going through at the time.
BEST MOMENTS
'I really want to make an impact and I really want to pay it forward'
'The more I work with women, the more I find that career and life harmony is missing'
'Depending on each other is such a big deal'
'If you want to fix the problems of the world, learn to love yourself'
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
Reena Gupta - https://www.momrelaunch.com/about-us/our-founder/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan talks to Arjun Lall, the co-founder of Rocket, a next-gen recruiting agency powered by machine learning, and Hireflow, which accelerates outbound recruiting so you fill your roles.
Arjun talks about the ways in which he has helped companies to dynamically grow their teams and strengthen their offerings, how machine learning can play a part in identifying strong candidates, and the story of his company's incredible success and how they achieved it.
KEY TAKEAWAYS No ideal candidate was ever found by using a piece of computer code. Ultimately, the human touch is always needed. But machine learning and software can streamline the process. Bumps in the road are to be expected when it comes to your business journey. What matters is that the main trajectory continues to grow and rise. Resilience and persistence are the key. Fear can be a good motivator in pushing us forward, but what matters is that we pick ourselves up when the challenges stop us in our tracks.
BEST MOMENTS
'Our business is built around combining some really interesting technology to help companies better identify candidates who are a good fit for them'
'Ultimately you join a company through the way it makes you feel'
'There is always a win-state'
'I don't fear failure'
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
Arjun Lall LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/arjunlall/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to LinkedIn) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
For the past thirty years, Chris Beall has been participating in software startups, with a focus on consistently creating, and taking to market, products that are successful from the get go.
Chris join Ryan to talk about his incredible success in the start up field, how he contributed towards the growth and sale of countless companies, and the value of the human being at the centre of every experience.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Selling is about pinpointing what we're all about, not just about what somebody's words are about. We must appeal to the elements that connect us. Sales are a conversation between two human beings that works best when it flows organically and allows for a deeper level of connection. Technology and humanity can compliment each other in wonderful ways, but only if we think about it carefully and design it carefully. People dominate markets by talking to everybody before their competitors have talked to anybody.
BEST MOMENTS
'The most powerful part of any software system is the human being that we inappropriately call "the user"'
'Working with animals, you get to learn how to sell at a level that's universal'
'Everybody I talk to who does big numbers in sales, tends to have sold door-to-door at some point in their life'
'I have this obsession with people'
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
Chris Beall LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-beall-7859a4/
Connect And Sell - https://connectandsell.com/category/chris-beall/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to LinkedIn) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
As we pass into a new year, Ryan is here with six questions you should be asking yourself - the answers to which could give you the rocket fuel you need to push harder and fly higher in 2022!
KEY TAKEAWAYS The six questions you need to ask yourself are:
Where were you 12 months ago? What were you focused on back then? How has your life changed and improved? What do you know now that you didn't know back then? How has your measures of success improved in the past 12 months? What are you measuring now that you weren't measuring back then? The new year provides us with a great opportunity to move to the next level by placing a clear marker in the business you have now, compared to the business you had at the beginning of 2021
BEST MOMENTS
'When I did that, I powered through areas that I stopped in before'
'This is a framework of thinking if you're trying to work out how you've advanced'
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to LinkedIn) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan to talks to the co-founder of Alveo, and who has spent the last decade building and scaling amazing marketing teams for several IT channel companies ranging from SMB service providers to Fortune 100 IT Distributors.
MJ talks about her amazing journey, and how she consistently helps businesses to accelerate their revenue growth by addressing the core components of their go-to-market strategy.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Creating solutions and accelerating growth first begins with adjusting our mind-set and preparing mentally. Growth and scale require different outlooks than operational routine. The opportunist phase is where the business owner is in the process of working out whether people will pay them for the product they are making or the service that they are providing. The next stage is refining process and making it repeatable. Those who do not see growth are the businesses that fail to recognise that product (services), marketing and sales are factors that need to grow together coherently.
BEST MOMENTS
'There should be a lot of testing and understanding the feedback you're getting from the market'
'Scaling is usually where we see companies investing in infrastructure'
'It should be a combination of product, marketing and sales. Those three functions need to mature at the same rate'
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
MJ Patent LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mjpatent/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to LinkedIn) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This time, Ryan tells you how to harness the fear we all have regarding the unfulfilled solutions in our lives, and how to use it positively to impact your sales!
KEY TAKEAWAYS Look at what you're selling and identify whether its a vitamin (nice to have) or a painkiller (a solution to the pain you might be experiencing). People are four times more likely to move away from pain than they are towards pleasure. Sometimes the offering we have is far more attractive if it solves a pain point. Fear of missing out drives people to want to be a part of something. This is achieved by companies through careful offerings that always seem limited.
BEST MOMENTS
'Are you selling vitamins or painkillers?'
'Emotion is what drives action'
'This is to be used for good'
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Kurt Daniel is a software and SaaS executive with experience at Microsoft, Parallels and others, and who was pivotal in helping to build, lead and scale three startups now worth $35 billion.
Kurt talks about his incredible experiences in business building, and the strategies he's employed to achieve multiple billion-dollar valuations.
KEY TAKEAWAYS When using a freemium model, it's best to keep it limited. If you make it too generous and then take it away then people may lose trust in you. A common mistake that founders make when trying to scale from one million to ten million in revenue is that they launch a second product too early. The key differentiation points between companies flooded with demand and those who aren't are the problem being solved, the usability, approachability.
BEST MOMENTS
'I like product and marketing led'
'I would be disappointed to work for a company that just sold to very large enterprises'
'You need a product that's very usable'
'Startups are risky. Some will fail and some will not'
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
Kurt Daniel LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtdaniel/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this week's show, Ryan tells you how a simple 90 minute exercise every week can drastically accelerate your business, and add dynamic impact that leads to positive transformative results!
KEY TAKEAWAYS Far too many in business spend too much focussing upon performing their main activities, instead of stepping back and gaining perspective and looking for ways to optimise output. Speed, conversion and targeting are the best ways to accelerate sales. By incrementally moving forward on any of these factors, you can grow sales without the need for more people.
BEST MOMENTS
'You keep putting books on the bookshelf - eventually there'll be no more room for books'
'How are you expanding your brand out to the marketplace?'
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Far too many companies think that all problems can be solved simply by throwing more people into the equation until a solution is found. In this episode, Ryan tells you how you can grow exponentially WITHOUT the need for more people!
KEY TAKEAWAYS You cannot be efficient unless you're effective first. There's no point in pushing more people at a fundamentally flawed problem in your business. Fix the problem first. Change doesn't have to be sweeping. Often, making incremental, positive changes can have huge effects on your revenue. Choke points can sometimes be the impedance upon our sales process. Look for ways to free up the funnels and watch your deals flow through much faster.
BEST MOMENTS
'You're going to see exponentially improvements if you do this'
'Don't scale the suck!'
'You'll close deals in half the amount of time'
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Darrian Mikell is the co-founder and CEO of Qualifi, a platform that powers the fastest phone interview experience in the world, and helps recruiting teams to hire great candidates faster than ever before.
Darrian talks to Ryan about the process of growing and scaling Qualifi - of taking an original problem in need of a solution and turning into a thriving business model - as well as the main challenges he faces as a founder, and how he overcomes them.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Often the best business ideas are built around the solving of problems that we face. It's almost guaranteed that if we are finding a process frustrating, then someone else in the world will be, too. When trying to hire good candidates, you have to remember that other companies are also doing so. Speed matters. Growth always works best when it's swift, but along the way, we have to remember that money needs to be spent wisely. Not necessarily in a more conservative way, but more thoughtful.
BEST MOMENTS
'What we do now is a direct result of the pain points that I was facing'
'Speed is everything in the world of recruiting'
'Every company is trying to grow, right?'
'I can uniquely think into problem spaces and come up with solutions'
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
Darrian Mikell LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrianmikell
Darrian Mikell Twitter - https://twitter.com/darrianmikell
Darrian Mikell - https://linktr.ee/darrianmikell
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
David Perry is the CEO and co-founder of Carro, a new eCommerce partnership featuring over 30,000 Shopify brands, and which specialize in helping brands to rapidly gain attention, land sales and attract new customers through crafted partnerships.
David joins Ryan to discuss his incredible story, one that has seen him impact the business world of such brands as Sony, The Matrix and Playstation, as well as his success formula when it comes to branding, and the ways in which he is revolutionising the sales space through impactful collaboration.
KEY TAKEAWAYS The great thinkers and creators are the ones who not only serve an audience in the present, but who are also always planning for the audiences they have yet to meet in the future. Branding is vitally important. By selectively identifying a product with a brand name, you can gain instant traction and boost sales. Consumers are always looking for solutions that make their lives easier. The fastest growing companies are those that take the process away from the end result, and make consumption far more agile. Our offerings should always come with a "gamification" element, whereby completing a process makes us feel as though we are levelling up in some way. People like to feel as though they are constantly improving and getting better.
BEST MOMENTS
'Don't make what people need today. Make something they're going to need in the future'
'Branding matters! If there's any way you can put a brand on something, then do it!'
'Licensing in is cool, but licensing out is even cooler'
'Every single industry is ripe for disruption'
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
David Perry LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/dperry/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan is joined by special guests, Justin Michael and Tony Hughes, to discuss their incredible new book 'Tech-Powered Sales: Achieve Superhuman Sales Skills', a book now being described as "the bible for sales at all levels for the future", and showing you how technology can exponentially accelerate your growth through actionable, proven methods, processes and technology stacks.
KEY TAKEAWAYS People are burning through lists swiftly, and getting their domains blocked and flagged left right and centre. This damages their brand and prevents success in the future. The key to breaking down these barriers is to apply old school strategies to new ways of thinking - applying technology to traditional thinking in order to increase effectiveness and reach. The right attributes in your ICP, effective monitoring, looking at the trigger events that give you good context, and awareness of need, is how you get much more productivity in sales and a shorter path to revenue.
BEST MOMENTS
'The future of technology is where a buying intent meets seller relevance'
'It's really cool - the power of mentorship'
'This is stuff is esoteric'
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
Tech Powered Sales - https://www.tonyhughes.com.au/techpowered-sales
Tony Hughes LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/hughestony/?originalSubdomain=au
Justin Michael LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeljustin/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan talks you through the ways in which you and your business can scale exponentially in 2022 WITHOUT the need for more leads, and without the need to grow your sales team!
KEY TAKEAWAYS We can't become what we need to be by remaining what we are. While many believe that luck comes through hard work, the truth is that the smarter we work, the less luck we need. Targeting matters. It's way better to work to identify those clients who can provide more revenue, as your time will be far better used in the long run. Look at the tangible customer pain you've solved. What were your customers moving away from in order to work with you? What is your customer's dream destination?
BEST MOMENTS
'The smarter I work the less luck I need'
'It's my 5x5x5 model'
'You're four times as likely to make a change if you're moving away from something'
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Speed is everything, especially when it comes to sales and scale-up! In this show, Ryan talks about how you can accelerate your thinking, and by doing so accelerate your growth and dynamically achieve your scale-up ambitions.
KEY TAKEAWAYS Studies show that the subconscious mind processes around 10 million bits per second. Other studies say that the mind processes 400 billion. The key to unlocking speed in your thinking is the tapping into the vibrations of the subconscious. We tend to do this when we "zone out". Ideas begin to flow to us.
BEST MOMENTS
'Life is like a ten-speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use'
'I wake up the next morning open up my journal, and a lot of times the answer to the problem will come to me'
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Your energy levels affect everything you do in business and life. in this episode, Ryan talks you through the ways in which you can dynamically increase your own entrepreneurial energy levels, and be more present when the moment demands it!
KEY TAKEAWAYS Starting a company is difficult. It takes a lot out of you. If you're not careful then the overwhelm can sometimes suck the energy from you and prevent you from making leaps and bounds ahead. The key to keeping energy levels high is to reach that sense of accomplishment while putting the work in to get there. If you always feel like you're chasing, then breaking that cycle can be hard. Celebrating wins is crucial, no matter how small. Take time out regularly and document every win. When you look back on these later it can serve as a great motivator.
BEST MOMENTS
'Does energy create innovation or does innovation create energy?'
'I am going up in the house with some energy!'
'Everybody wants to be at the destination but nobody wants to climb up the hill'
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Most think that cash is king when it comes to startups, but as Ryan discusses in this week's show, it's a two-edged sword. Sometimes, having too much cash can kill your startup...
KEY TAKEAWAYS Overfunding can sometimes have a detrimental effect because founders can sometimes take their eye off the ball between expenses and revenue. Overspending can result in a negative cashflow. When this occurs, many choose to fire employees, or start to sell off company assets. Investors can be a wonderful source of finance and insight, but adding too many can be dangerous. Every investor you accept causes an extra level of management, and also reduces the percentage you own.
BEST MOMENTS
'Who would think that having too much cash could kill your business?'
'They start burning through money really fast'
'You need to really know the boundaries and lines that you want'
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This time, Ryan tells you about the single greatest mistake that founders make when it comes to scale and growth, and how you can make sure you avoid it!
KEY TAKEAWAYS Depending on where we are in our business's lifecycle, the problems we face on a day to day basis will be markedly different. Once you have a product that you prove can be sold, you need to find a repeatable sales motion. Find something you can repeat over and over again. Many founders can't even sell their own product and yet they try to assemble a team to do so. You have to have a product that not just you can sell, but others.
BEST MOMENTS
'The problems you have from zero to one million are different to the problems you have from one million to three million'
'Test the hypothesis, prove the value, prove that it can be sold'
'Hit the gas and scale!'
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Colin Mitchell is a four-time founder who went from zero to five million dollars in just two years, and who is now generating huge amounts of measurable revenue in podcasting.
If you're looking to grow your brand and generate more revenue, then this show may contain the tools you need to level up your plans!
KEY TAKEAWAYS Being on the frontlines in sales is where you develop the skills and techniques that can take you higher, from people acquisition to knowing what your customer really wants. Documenting your sales process, testing new things all the time, and working these things out alongside your team, can result in wild success in a short period of time. A tool in acquiring a great sales team is to attract them with good comp plans, and offering larger bounties per sale. The best in sales should always be rewarded well, as they act as the lifeblood of your revenue. Determining the best ways of monetising a podcast brand for you, is easily identified by answering the question "What type of relationships will drive revenue for my business?". Identify your clients and you can build relationships in very different ways than they may be used to.
BEST MOMENTS
'I got my first sales job and knew that it was my way out of living like that'
'A lot of times, the sales playbook is in the founder's head'
'We produce podcasts and we do it with a strategy that drives revenue for the host'
'You can build relationships with your ideal clients by inviting them onto your show'
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
Sales Transformation with Collin Mitchell - https://sales-hustle.simplecast.com
Collin Mitchell LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/collin-saleshustle/
Collin Mitchell Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/Collin.SalesHustle
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ike Kehal is the CEO of Social27, a virtual event platform that has been helping businesses connect digitally throughout the pandemic and beyond.
In this episode Ike joins Ryan to talk about how he bootstrapped his way to a million dollar valuation, and then within three years grew to over $15 million through product-led growth with a sales team of only five people. It's an incredible story, and Ike's here to share it with you today!
KEY TAKEAWAYS When you work at a large organization such as Microsoft, never discount the access you have to the amazing minds who have made that company what it is. The best way to grow a business around a certain product is not to dream about it all day. You need to be out there in the field, building relationships and understanding the pain points of your prospective client base. Overnight success is never quite that easy. The businesses that see explosive growth are the ones with a clear purpose and a solution that the market has been waiting for, but it's always built on the back of years of clarity of vision. When you grow a company, you have to do so from a customer perspective, reigning in talent that will ignite and accelerate your customer experience in a positive way. The pandemic has meant that talented remote workers can be sourced from around the world.
BEST MOMENTS
'I got a good understanding of how you take strategies and you globalize them'
'I always had enterprise in my soul'
'We have one foot in the real world and one foot in the product development world'
'We had a very clear vision'
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
ABOUT THE GUEST
Ike Kehal is the CEO of Social27, a virtual event platform that has been helping businesses connect digitally throughout the pandemic and beyond. Ike started his professional career at Microsoft where he focused on partner programs and marketing. He went on to co-found and/or run four successful organizations, eventually starting Social27. Ike has been working in the B2B Marketing industry for over 13 years with a specialty working with virtual and hybrid events.
Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ikekehal/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Today Ryan takes you through the viral growth strategy that venture capitalists use to achieve exponential growth without inbound leads, paid ads, and without cold outbound prospecting!
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley- https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
KEY TAKEAWAYS Having not one but two referral systems with KPIs is the number one way to double or triple your business in the fastest way possible. Some of the biggest companies in the world have remarkably effective referral systems that drive sales. Dropbox and Tesla are among the two greatest examples of this. In the past three years there has been an explosion of online services. In 2019, more information was submitted to the internet than in the entire history of the internet preceding it. When we trust a voice, we are far more likely to respond when it asks us to buy. Build trust and activate your referral system in order to generate far larger sales and growth.
BEST MOMENTS
'I am a big, big student of the game'
'84% of buyers now kick off their buying process with a referral'
'People use referrals as a shortcut to make decisions'
'9 out of 10 decisions are made upon pure recommendations'
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
It doesn't matter what your background is, or if you don't feel as though you're a natural born salesperson, with the right mind-set and few strategies at your fingertips, even support staff can close $100,000 sales. In this episode, Ryan talks you through everything you need to enable your people to way better than they may believe.
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley- https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
KEY TAKEAWAYS Not believing that you're an effective salesperson is a limiting belief. In reality, if you create a company or become a leader, then you are effective at influencing, and you have convinced at least someone of an idea. Each conversion has a gate they need to pass through. Conversion in terms of spend, and the speed at which the conversion happens. Sales have to be so compelling, so interesting and so beneficial, that "drag" does not matter, and your client wants to take up your solution no matter what. When we solve a million-dollar problem, we must also relay the benefits of solving it now. The value added will compound, and this should always be communicated.
BEST MOMENTS
'It's aways darkest before the dawn, right?'
'This is one of the most critical conversion points of the sales process'
'Time is just as valuable as money'
'There's the problem, the push, and the person'
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley - https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Russell Rothstein is a 2x Bootstrapped founder, currently the CEO of IT Central Station, which has a $3 TRILLION market for enterprise technology through the power of crowdsourcing, product reviews and voice of the cutomer, as well as being father to five children.
Russell joins Ryan to talk about the journey he's taken in order to grow to eight figures plus after nine years of bootstrapping - the lessons he's learned along the way, and the importance of patience when it comes to scale.
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley- https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
KEY TAKEAWAYS Many of the most successful companies in the world are ones who have taken the concepts of other sectors, and brought those schools of thinking into another. Peer-to-peer reviews for enterprise technology didn't exist in a large way until Russell saw the benefit of such services as Trip Advisor on hospitality. Growth and scale takes patience. You must spend time understanding customer needs, building your product accordingly, and developing validation. If you spend enough time in nurturing impactful relationships, and do your utmost to convey your passion, your purpose and your vision, then they're far more likely to want to chance on you. The number one driver that entices people to share content online, in a large or small scale, is altruism. People like to help other people.
BEST MOMENTS
'We're not the overnight success - we're the nine year success, and growing!'
'Your initial idea for a product is never what you end up going to market with'
'Articulate your vision - share your vision'
'That's a superpower - listening well to customers'
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show
Russell Rothstein: https://www.linkedin.com/in/russell/
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ryan talks about "The Big Three" sales strategies that enabled a company with only four sales representatives to achieve a staggering $30 million in revenue in just six years, without the aid of marketing!
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley- https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
KEY TAKEAWAYS There is a lot more in terms of details when it comes to successfully closing an enterprise sale. However, the core foundations of sales remain the same. The 5x5x5 methodology involves looking at the deals you pushed over the line that brought in the biggest revenue, the deals you were able to close in the shortest amount of time, and also the deals in which you suffered the biggest losses. Big decisions in small or big companies are based on results, certainty of outcome, time and work. There are three core sales operating systems that every company needs in order to see exponential growth:
1 - The Whale Scale - customer deal value 2 - Expansion Scale - customer lifetime value 3 - Referral Scale - leveraging the foundations of Whale Scale and Expansion - harvest new customer acquisitions from both.
BEST MOMENTS
'I'm going to share some secret sauce today'
'Founders are a combination of a mythical creature, a rock star and a superhero'
'This allows you to scale up fast!'
'How do we continue to acquire customers, while also escalating the deal size'
VALUABLE RESOURCES
The Scale Up Show - https://omny.fm/shows/the-scale-up-show
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this high-energy return to the subject of scaling your business, Ryan returns to share with you the empowering and insightful ways in which you can grow and develop your business and its capabilities, in order to meet the challenges of tomorrow.
Ryan discusses the importance of revenue and why it is any business’s lifeblood, why balance is crucial in work and life, and how he personally pulled himself back from failure in order to come back better than ever.
Apply for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session With Ryan Staley- https://www.scalerevenue.io/4-schedule-page1611678914248
KEY TAKEAWAYS The pressures upon founders to serve the needs of people, or to execute on really aggressive numbers, are very hard to achieve. If we do not strike the right balance between work and life, then the frustrations of one can negatively impact the other. If we employ the necessary startegy, and focus on attaining the mind-set required, we can pull ourselves back from any challenge, and achieve even greater heights.
BEST MOMENTS
'I want to share some of the best stuff in the world that you can learn about revenue growth’
‘As you grow in life, there are different experiences that will make an impact on you’
‘Revenue is the oxygen – the lifeblood of every business’
VALUABLE RESOURCES
ABOUT THE SHOW
How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO’s and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Microacquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more
This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.
ABOUT THE HOST
Ryan is a Founder, Podcast Host, Speaker, Loving Father, Husband and Dog Dad. He is a 18x award winner and grew a business unit from 0-$30M in Annual Recurring Revenue while he adding $30M in capital revenue in less than 6 years. He did this all with only 4 sales people and without demand generation.
Whether you are a new Founder, VP or CEO who is already generating 6, 7 or even multiple 8 figures annually, you are going to gain knowledge about sales you didn’t know existed.
CONTACT METHOD
Ryan Staley - https://ryanstaley.io/podcast/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ryanstaleysales
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Grab your Free Copy of “The 4 Biggest Mistakes That Stop Companies From 10X’ing Their Revenue” at https://www.scalerevenue.io/10x
Sean Cahill started his career in sales, so it’s only natural that he absolutely hated marketing. To Sean, marketing was the group that gave them garbage leads that they couldn’t sell.
Eventually, he landed a job at Cisco that caused him to fall in love with marketing. From that experience, he developed a thirst for working with startups, where he started working in funnel generation for startups. This led to him starting his own company and developing a pipeline for startups and working to get them into a Series B.
Today, Sean works at Unify Marketing as the National Practice Leader for Marketing. He still loves working with startups!
To grow pipeline, Sean stays focused on these 3 main areas: People Processes Technology
Sean realized early on in his startup phase that one of the biggest issues in the startup world is that when startups get a Series A , and they develop an MVP to take to market, and then they focus on the Series B.
Typically, it takes the startup getting $1M in MRR in order to get a Series B, and founders realize the only way they can close that many sales and generate that much revenue, they have to get more leads.
So they work to buy more leads, which then throws off their close rates and then they try to shorten their sales cycles and every time they try to pull another level to make up the slack, it just completely puts the entire process in chaos.
Startups don’t need more leads.
They need better leads.
They need the leads that are the most likely to close within 30 days.
They need the leads that are going to generate the highest ACV.
So how can a startup go about getting all of these ideal leads for the goals they need to accomplish?
This is what Sean would call the Perfect Customer Profile.
To begin developing this, you could: Go into your CRM and identify everyone that has bought from you. Begin to identify commonalities among those buyers. Take those commonalities and set it against your entire database and start tracking who else has those commonalities. Begin to understand what features you can identify in prospects that could be able to trigger a sale. Then focus all of your sales efforts on that data set that is most likely to become a buyer.
This whole process is called building a Propensity Model.
The whole idea is that instead of focusing on more leads, you are only focusing on the better leads, so narrow your database down to 1000 of your best leads.
Sean suggests targeting these better leads on a smaller level. These leads do not get the spray and pray marketing that gets blasted to the rest of the world.
Nurturing these leads comes in many forms, but Sean has had the most success with the following methods: Email Phone Calls Social Media Video from a tool like Video Card Send a specific and targeted physical gift
If whoever you want to target could have a $30K ACV, then it’s ok to spend $1K targeting them.
Using this method, Sean was able to get MRR from $10K to $30K and increased close rates to 50%.
Because everyone is inundated with more touch points and communications points than ever, the people who end up closing business are the people who end up being creative and thinking further outside the box.
The best part about this whole concept of Propensity Modeling and then following up with your 1000 best leads can be set up with automation using tools like Salesforce and integrated tools.
Being able to do this in a very personalized way at scale is the magic that can truly change your trajectory.
When it’s all said and done, you’ve basically automated your entire SDR process, and then you’d have your ADR or BDR just sort of co-pilot the lead through the entire process.
When you follow this process, your conversion rates will go through the roof because you are targeting better, you are following up in a more effective way, which means you will close more sales!
The biggest mistakes that companies make when trying to go from Series A, to Series B, to Series C are: Not properly defining product market fit Not having someone be your Chief Devil’s Advocate to tell the Founder when they are wrong. Thinking your total addressable market is everybody. Not giving your product the Mom Test. Investing too much in top of funnel. Not moving enough people from top of funnel to end of funnel. Not focusing on having a high conversion rate. Not having the right leadership at the beginning. Just because someone is good at sales doesn’t mean they should be your Chief Revenue Officer.
On the marketing side of things, some of the biggest mistakes made are: Not adopting industry best practices. SaaS companies still selling perpetual licenses. Not moving towards modern marketing. Change happens slowly inside the Fortune 1000.
Connect with Sean on LinkedIn
Need help scaling your revenue? Apply to work with Ryan here.
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Grab your Free Copy of “The 4 Biggest Mistakes That Stop Companies From 10X’ing Their Revenue” at https://www.scalerevenue.io/10x
I recently took part in a Million Dollar Mastermind. Today I will break down some of the things I learned there that can be applied to your business right away.
There was a wide range of people involved in the Mastermind, and it focused mainly on entrepreneurs. Most of the people were earning well over $1,000,000 a year and crushing it!
I will break down three takeaways that you can apply right now to grow and scale your business:
1: Boring beats beautiful
Someone who works between 20 and 25 hours a week and earns between 7 and 8 figures a year said the following: Do not let your creativity get in the way of your profitability. Stop getting bored and start getting paid.
His primary mechanism for growth was to do the same event once a month for this entire year and continuously convert and refine it. Using that method allowed him to crush the numbers!
2: Consistency creates a crowd
Another person runs a multiple 7-figure options business. He was on Impact Theory, one of the world's top podcasts, and has more than 700,000 followers.
This is what he did to build up such a massive audience: He spent 2 hours every day on Facebook, in groups, or forums, answering questions based on his subject matter which was about money. He showed up to do a Facebook Live every day at the open or close of the market.
His consistency created a crowd.
3: Disconnect from dreams
Whether you are a consultant, a SaaS founder, or a revenue leader, you need to create opportunities to disconnect your revenue generation from your time. Doing that has to do with product creation and product fulfillment.
Even though the results might not be 100%, here are some key areas in which you could do something at a massive scale and make a huge amount of money while serving your audience at the highest level: Create digital products for your product creation by doing one-to-many solutions for people instead of one-on-one. You can do that by creating a SaaS (Software as a Service) solution. On top of that, you could also implement a subscription or a membership model and build a team.
Links and resources:
Apply here for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session with me, Ryan Staley.
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
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Grab your Free Copy of “The 4 Biggest Mistakes That Stop Companies From 10X’ing Their Revenue” at https://www.scalerevenue.io/10x
September was an intense month, with lots of travel that was mostly work related. I had a unique opportunity to make some presentations with Pavilion, which is a community of primarily C-Level executives.
I was able to present on Enterprise Sales Go-To-Market Strategies and Enterprise Sales Operations. I was able to do this live in 2 different sessions and had hundreds of my ideal clients listening live and on the replays.
It was an amazing experience and I came away with 3 big takeaways that I wanted to share with you today.
I’ve had over 40 people reach out for help with their businesses and wanting to work with me or give me positive feedback about my presentations.
1 - I used a storytelling framework that I stole from Russell Brunson from Clickfunnels. It works like crazy!
The Storytelling Framework is: Story Strategy Tactics Case Study or Examples of the Outcome
In the past, I have focused heavily on the strategies that I was talking about, but after sitting through enough boring corporate presentations, I decided to do something completely different for this one.
For Story, I did the following: Used pop culture references for feeling Used principles - momentum, inertia, math, quantum leap and show them in a new way. Used war stories - tangible examples where I walked through what I went through when I was in the trenches helping other people with sales.
For Strategy, I systematically explained what’s involved, both conceptually and philosophically.
For Tactics, I give them step by step guides or exercises leading them through your method.
For Case Studies, I give them examples of the results my method provided.
2 - Engagement and energy - ask for feedback and get audience involvement. Use sarcasm or analogies or whatever feels comfortable to you. You have to have energy and speed as you go through your presentation because you don’t want to bore your audience to death.
3 - Time - allow enough time to cover the following:
Outcome - the audience needs to have Outline - your framework with sub-bullet points Context - play off of the current environment
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Covering a very wide market can be an exasperating experience! After solving thousands of pains for all kinds of companies in every different market, Aaron Krall finally got fed up and decided to niche down. So he started a group called SaaS Growth Hacks five or six years ago, and it now has 27,000 members.
Aaron Krall is the former Brand Manager at L’Oréal and the former VP of Marketing at Lead Generation Specialists. He also founded a SaaS growth accelerator to help companies with their SaaS growth, and he developed a new SaaS software.
When Aaron started SaaS Growth Hacks, he did not know much about SaaS. He did not have a SaaS product either. He simply emailed SaaS founders and asked them to share any problems that they were having.
When he first started contacting SaaS founders, he felt out of his league and inadequate. Over the past five years, Aaron has spoken to at least 1,000 SaaS companies and worked with hundreds of them. So now he feels that he has a pretty good grip on the market.
Aaron looked at all the data he collected over the last five years. He came up with the top 20 percent of everything that can be done with a SaaS company to make the most impact and get massive growth quickly.
When Aaron finds SaaS companies he can help, he implements that 20 percent to give those companies a guaranteed revenue increase.
The companies Aaron can help the most usually meet three criteria: They are the best-kept secret in their market. They are succeeding despite themselves. They have excellent use cases, customer stories, or customer loyalty.
When companies meet those criteria, the founders usually: Do not yet have a product-market fit. So they do not know who they can serve the most. Tend to undervalue their service and do not realize how valuable it is to their customers. They do not leverage partnerships.
Identify your current customers who have paid you the most money and have been around the longest. Talk to them and find out what pain you could be solving for them. (Go to Aaron’s Facebook page and ask him to send you the interview questions he uses. He will be happy to share them with you!)
Aaron asks his customers what the highest amount would be that they would be willing to pay for his SaaS product.
Aaron prefers to work with those clients who have partners out there who would love to work with them and are willing to increase their price and increase the perceived value of their product.
Generally, most SaaS companies are undercharging because creative people tend to undervalue what they create.
Aaron does not usually recommend raising your price for current customers.
If you can solve something no one else is solving, you will automatically have a mini-monopoly.
It is easier to find customers when you know who you’re going after.
An equation I used to grow from zero to $30,000,000 in ARR in less than six years: Have the big promise for a big outcome at the top Add the certainty of the solution you are offering Add how fast you can deliver the result and how little hassle will be incorporated in that result
Ideally, you want to 10x the outcome of the solution you are providing.
Partnerships can be broken down into three categories: Channel partners: Those are people who have built an audience similar to yours, who will promote you to their audience. Content partners: Find all the articles, listicles, and blogs that talk about the top 10 products in the market in the same category as yours, and try to get your product into those. Deep integration partners: Integrate your product with someone else’s product in some way.
As a founder, ask yourself what real estate is unused currently in your market that you could leverage while also benefiting someone else.
You can find a lot of unused real estate in expired trials.
If you have a retargeting list, that is real estate that you could rent to another company.
You can also create partnerships by sharing Facebook audiences with other people on Facebook.
Look at where your traffic spends its time and be aware of what they are looking at. Those are called traffic streams, and within them are transaction points. Come up with creative ways to get integrated into those traffic streams and transaction points.
You can also get to know who your target audience is and do some outreach towards them.
SaaS companies should not do free trials anymore because SaaS products are no longer something new or different. So instead of focusing on the offer of getting a free trial, focus on getting the outcome for free.
Links and resources:
Apply here for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session with me, Ryan Staley.
Aaron Krall’s website
Aaron Krall on LinkedIn
Aaron’s Facebook page
Books mentioned:
Play Bigger by Dave Peterson, Al Ramadan, Christopher Lochhead, and Kevin Maney
$100M Offers: How to Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid by Alex Hormozi
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
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Could you imagine doing motion capture work for Mortal Kombat? Even though Pek Pongpaet, the founder of Impekable Solutions, was lucky enough to do that, he still dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur. Since then, he started his company and bootstrapped it to become a 7-figure business. Impekable Solutions is now 10 years old and has been selected as an Inc. 5000 company 3 times in a row!
Pekstarted his career in tech as an engineer and then became a self-taught designer.
Although Pek had many ideas for projects back when he was still an engineer and designer, he could not execute any of them because they were never good business models.
Pek has closed over $17,000,000 in business throughout his career.
Impekable Solutions typically serves the enterprise with their software development and software design PPC. They have done work for some of the biggest companies in the world, like Apple, Google, and Adobe.
It was a gradual process for Pek to work his way up to the point of working with some of the world’s biggest companies.
He started by making himself available for product design work. He worked very long hours. Then he hired an intern designer to help him, and his freelance business became a tiny agency. He finished his first year with two full-time designers.
The demand kept on growing, so Pek hired two more people, and the business grew organically.
They got their first big break with a large brand from working with a startup that was later acquired by LegalZoom.
Pek was trusted in Chicago. He was known to be a good designer, so Groupon, a Chicago company, hired him to do some work.
Motorola, also a Chicago company, was another one of their early big brand clients.
After working for big brands like LegalZoom, Groupon, and Motorola, Pekgot known for his good work. That helped him step up the ladder and get more work from big companies in the Bay Area.
If you are a founder and you are not yet out of the woods, step on the gas when you reach a point where you can breathe a bit. Remember that it is a marathon, not a sprint, so you need to pace yourself.
A CEO’s time is valuable for doing long-term strategic work. So pause, and become aware of making the best use of your time. When you have resources, make sure that you don’t go back to doing things you no longer need to do.
Pek only knows how to sell to people who know and trust him. His technique for getting a big company like Apple was to get an introduction from someone he knew.
Pek became very good at design and communications technology, so they eventually became partners with companies like Twilio and Adobe. Nike was using Twilio, and they were having a problem and needed some help. So Twilio introduced Nike to Pek and explained why they trusted him.
When you know something deeply, and you are trusted by a big brand and they recommend you, that will get you through the door.
Pek has real-life ninja skills, so he used to teach those skills to some club bouncers. When it comes to business, his ninja skill is relationships. Everything he has achieved is a result of relationships. That extends to his employees as well as clients.
Some tactics for building lasting relationships: Keep in touch with people without having any expectations. If someone you know changes jobs and starts working for a company you would like to work for, that will be a good time to check in with them. You can send them a personal note to congratulate them and ask if you can catch up with them once they have their bearings.
Links and resources:
Apply here for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session with me, Ryan Staley.
Pek’s podcast: Founders
Pek on LinkedIn
Books mentioned:
The Third Door by Alex Banayan
Leading With Emotional Courage by Peter Bregman
Founders At Work by Jessica Livingston
The E-Myth Book by Michael E Gerber
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
You2 by Price Pritchett
The Quantum Leap Strategy by Price Pritchett
Good to Great by Jim Collins
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
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Today, I will be sharing three very cool nuggets that I learned from some of the world’s top entrepreneurs!
In this episode, I will discuss three highly valuable takeaways from an event I recently attended. I will go over excuses, zero to $150,000,000 in revenue, and the number 1 reason why businesses fail.
Excuses
Anthony Trucks is a former NFL player who speaks and does personal development. He once fell asleep at school and overheard someone using the same excuse he had often used for himself- that he did badly at school because he was adopted and had a rough upbringing.
Rather than allowing that incident to shape him negatively, he used it as an opportunity.
Anthony Trucks had a dream to make the NFL. He realized that if your identity doesn’t match your dream, it will not take place.
I have heard the same concept from at least 4 different people I truly respect. The concept I want to share is: . Be, do, have
Many people want it to be: Have, do, be. (They want to have the six-pack before they start eating healthily, and then they will be happy.)
You first have to become the person who does the right things every day to create what you desire.
When you are a founder, a revenue leader, or a sales exec, excuses can come up very easily because you are trying to do many hard things.
Zero to 150,000,000 in revenue
Kaelin Poulin, also known as Ladyboss, grew from zero to 150,000,000 bootstrapped and without investors.
She started with information products. Those she was serving wanted coaching, so she started doing coaching as well. Then, her people wanted to do a live event, so she did that too. On top of everything else, her people wanted products, so she added products, and from there, she also added specific types of products.
That five-step iteration got her from zero to $150,000,000, using her super-simple three-step framework: Listen Ask Execute
She used one of the simplest and easiest ways to scale revenue the fastest- she kept on selling more to her existing clients.
She managed to do what she did because she focused on doing only one thing at a time.
The number 1 reason why businesses fail
Some stats on businesses failure: 50% of businesses fail in year 1. 80% of businesses fail in the first 5 years. 96% of businesses fail after 10 years. Less than 5% of businesses make $1,000,000 in revenue per year. Less than 0,5% of businesses make more than $5,000,000 in revenue per year. 0,00006% of businesses get to $10,000,000 per year.
Those stats all come down to 80% psychology and 20% strategy.
One of the biggest mistakes business owners make is to start with a strategy.
Here is a 3-step framework for success: Focus on the state you are in. (Do what you can to be full of energy.) Focus on your story. (Become aware of your self-talk.) Work on a strategy.
If you implement these strategies, you will notice a big difference!
Resources:
Need help scaling your revenue, Ryan can help. Apply to work with him here.
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Did you know that the presentation is the most undervalued asset of the enterprise world? James Ontra, the CEO and Co-founder of Shufflrr, certainly does! That is why he is changing the way the enterprise world thinks about presentations. He helped create a technology that is saving hundreds of Fortune level companies millions of dollars by adding clout to their Powerpoint slides and turning them into valuable business assets.
James was doing CD ROM technologies (slide libraries with video) in the 1990s. Then the web boomed, and he became the CEO of a funded company that did high-end presentations. The company did not make it because the internet was not ready for the work they were doing.
James and his sister then founded a consultancy and did high-end presentations for many large organizations. That process taught them how to organize slides, use them effectively, and make up a slide library.
They took those principles and built them into Shufflrr, which is all about presentation management.
Presentation management is having an organized and structured library, from which anyone can take and reuse content at any time.
Emotional storytelling is a key element of an effective presentation. Structured emotional storytelling allows the presentation to follow the conversation rather than the presentation forcing the conversation.
Good advertising is based on ratings, which are all about data. That can be dull. Storytelling, however, can change that dynamic because once you have been emotionally convinced about the importance of something, you will take all the logical data and use it to reinforce your belief.
Presentation management will help you increase your business intelligence.
All Shufflrr’s presentation management data comes out through API and can be shared across certain platforms to create new efficiencies within global organizations.
Shufflrr is a communication strategy for better efficiency.
For about 10 years, Time Warner used a process to chart the various ratings for their shows across 94 different markets. Eight months after implementing Shufflrr’s system, they regained their business intelligence and realized that the real value came from the emotional sale and not the data. They became far more efficient as a result.
How to tell your prospects an emotional story: Collect the best slides from the best presentations ever done by your organization. Weed through those to find the very best slides. Bring those slides together and make them available to everyone out in the field. Manage all the content regularly, as a published library.
The marketing department should be responsible for creating a library of quality content and slides for the salespeople.
Financial data should get updated quarterly.
James’s travel clients in various locations prefer to update their data following their peak seasons.
People who sell the best emotionally do 2 things: They use an impactful image or video to make an emotional point at the beginning of the presentation. (That creates a connection that can later be backed up with other data.) Then they create a flow, using a story to form the presentation and a different slide for each scene. Each scene should have a specific goal, and each consecutive slide should represent the goal of that scene and take you through an emotional process just like a movie would.
The slides should represent the facts and allow the audience to calculate the value equation for themselves.
Links and resources:
Shufflrr website
Need help scaling your revenue? Apply to work with Ryan at https://scalerevenue.io/apply
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I have a huge passion for founders that bootstrap their companies. That’s how I plan on funding my company - by bootstrapping! I’ve worked with companies who took on funding and it always destroyed the culture of the company.
A couple of observations about recent startup trends: All the money is going to obvious start ups. There are 10x more SaaS startups than there were just a year ago.
Investors are going for startups with: $10M ARR Growing at a rate of 100% - customer expansion 110% net revenue retention (NRR)
To figure out NRR:
Customer expansion/Customer retention = NRR
Rand Fishkin - Founder of Moz - took on funding and he eventually wrote a book about the process, called Lost and Founder. When he was asked if he would do it all over again, he said that he would not take the money.
Rand’s is a cautionary tale of what happens once you accept funding.
Data indicates that early stage funding is decreasing rapidly - seed funding, angel funding - have decreased from 10.6% to 4.9%.
Series A funding has decreased from 36.5% to 26%.
Late stage funding increased from 52% to 69%.
All of the money that previously went to early stage funding is now getting pushed up market to later stage startups.
The amount of monthly new business applications nationwide is also decreasing. They went from an average of 500K/month in 2020 to 300K/month in 2021.
Getting funding can take up to 18 months. If you think about it, you can do so much for your business in 18 months if your focus isn’t on getting funding.
The way investors are holding out for more late stage funding, it really shows they are cherry picking winners with their funding criteria. And if you could meet their criteria, you could probably grow your company without taking on funding, and have a much better experience as a founder and be able to preserve the culture of your company.
Need help scaling your revenue? Apply to work with Ryan at scalerevenue.io/apply.
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Some leaders have what it takes to bring out the best in people! In 2014, Nick Hughes, the CEO, and Founder of the global entrepreneurial platform, Founders Live, came up with a unique and fun way to help early-stage companies.
He started putting on big monthly networking events in Seattle, where he held pitch competitions between 5 pre-selected early-stage companies. Each company got 99 seconds to give their value proposition pitch, talk about what they were building, and explain why it was important. Then they got 4 minutes to answer questions before the crowd voted for the winner.
When entrepreneurs from across the world started asking Nick if they could do the same thing in their cities, he realized that many talented people do not get the chance to become successful because they are disconnected. They also lack the global exposure, information, resources, and growth capital to build a successful digital company. Nick saw an opportunity to build a global community to solve those problems while also celebrating entrepreneurship at the earliest level.
When you have an idea as an entrepreneur and want to get an early version of your product or service going, start testing it with people straight away. Dream big and think about all the possibilities.
The top 3 mistakes people make when they do their pitch: Trying to pack way too much into the 99 seconds. (Think about your value proposition and share it briefly and effectively.) Not telling an inspiring story. (Craft an impactful story to motivate people to follow you.) Not using visually inspiring slides and using bullet points and long sentences. (Prepare your pitch. Use effective and impactful slides to amplify your message.)
Founders Live has online pitch resources available. They also have pitch coaches and hold an event every 3 or 4 months in some cities.
Experiencing those events and participating in them is very valuable for early-stage founders. It allows them to get feedback on their pitches.
If you feel nervous about presenting a pitch, prepare, believe in yourself, and step into it. If you do a good pitch, you stand to gain confidence in your business and grow it.
It is a good idea to practice delivering your message in a safe place and getting some feedback before doing it in front of your potential investors.
Telling a powerful story can change people’s lives and inspire them to go forward and do great things!
Steve Jobs was an icon and a great example of a forward thinker. The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs, by Carmine Gallo, is worth reading. It has a lot of information about innovation and contains a piece about presentations.
Founders Live Prime Time will be starting in Q4. It is a global series of competitions focused on the continents. Five winners from the city-level events will be the finalists pitching at that event. The vision is for the continental events to be big celebrations of entrepreneurship.
Links and resources:
Find Nick Hughes on LinkedIn
Founders Live
Founders Live Prime Time
Books mentioned:
The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs by Carmine Gallo
The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs by Carmine Gallo
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
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I’ve got a ton of exciting things coming up for my business and it’s caused me to go back and analyze past successes to pull out the specific things that made me successful.
Very soon I’m giving a talk for the Chief Revenue Officer School for Pavilion and another for the Enterprise Sales Go To Market Strategy.
In order to provide the most value in my presentations, I had to go back and reverse engineer some of the things we did to see success.
Here’s my equation for success:
Dream Outcome x Likelihood of Success
_____________________________________ = VALUE
Time Delay x (Effort + Sacrifice)
Let's break this formula down piece by piece! Start with the dream outcome. It’s the journey from hell to heaven that you are going to take your customers through. THE BIG PROMISE. 90% of the world plays in this realm. Perceived likelihood of achievement. People want to know the ROI they will get from the solution. Perceived likelihood Time delay - the shorter you can make the time to achieve the desired outcome, the better. Effort and sacrifice - how much effort do they need to put in? How much sacrifice do they need to make? The lower the number, the higher the value.
Using this exact formula, I managed to generate $30 M in ARR with 4 sales reps.
I did it in a commodity market (managed print services) with typical margins of around 15%. By bundling all of our services together into a managed plan, we were able to get 50+% margins.
In this example:
-
The Dream Outcome - 20-30% hard cost savings in 4 or 5 different categories.
-
Perceived Likelihood of Achievement - Presented exact cast studies of success from exact verticals, and exact niches.
-
Time delay - competitors were pitching to replace every piece of hardware in the fleet, which took a lot of time. We proposed a 2 week implementation with no hardware replacement.
-
Effort & Sacrifice - the effective gain of not having to spend hundreds of hours testing new hardware and disrupting the business if they chose the competitor’s solution. Our solution was zero effort on the client’s part.
The value we created was completely different than the rest of the marketplace and it allowed us to close the deal!
Resources:
Need to scale revenue? I can help, Apply to work with me at https://scalerevenue.io/apply.
Alex Hermosi - $100 Million Offers
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Tyler Kemp is a sales leader and CEO that has spent his career helping a lot of people make a lot of money! Other than that, he’s just a normal guy! That is, if a normal guy sits on the board of a $16 billion company!
Tyler launched IntentFlow and he has dealt with the largest lead gen of any company he’s ever worked with.
Failure paved the way for Tyler’s success, and he’s had some valuable lessons from his Founder journey.
Everything Tyler has done with IntentFlow has been bootstrapped. He had to learn the hard way what would and would not convert. He learned that he couldn’t just outmarket a lame offer.
Tyler had to learn that demand generation is the only way to do things at scale, and he really struggled with demand generation.
Later when Tyler built Lead Roll, he had to learn how to solve the SDR puzzle with the “closer system”.
His failures with Lead Roll were: What is it really? He didn’t define what his product was - he just did whatever he could to generate revenue. The market has to decide what your product becomes. Don’t put your product in a box. He realized companies needed way more help than they were providing to really be successful. So he had to raise his prices and provide more services to get the results. Firmographic leads have about 97% waste. They had to solve for volume and move away from all the firmographic leads and sacrifice data for actual behaviors.
At IntentFlow, they figured out how to identify the demographic details of the person searching for information. (Datalake, Identity Graph, Bitstream Data) he has partnerships with these SSP’s he is able to match search based behaviors with all of the identifying data for that behavior. It’s completely cookie-less.
They are able to reduce CPC costs by almost 100% and the best part of it is that they have a performance guarantee, so they don’t get paid if the leads don’t perform.
This is a great option since pixels are going away! So if companies are buying leads from traditional data sources, this is a huge win.
Tyler has found that most companies don’t really have a targeted profile for their ideal customer. By solving for identity, you can then retarget in perpetuity instead of just 7 days with a traditional pixel.
The leads IntentFlow provides can be used in both inbound and outbound marketing.
Tyler says in order to scale: Understand your average market rate to acquire a customer. Reduce your cost to acquire to below cost per lead, you set yourself up to scale. Better targeting will reduce your inbound and outbound cost per lead.
Resources:
intentflow.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tjkemp/
leadroll
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For Part 4 of my series on influence and persuasion, I will share my interpretation of another 2 components from Robert Cialdini’s powerful book, Influence.
Today, I will be talking about 2 of the strongest and most impactful components in the book. They relate to people being similar to you and social proof.
What I am about to share is grim yet powerful.
People have a very strong tendency to emulate others. That tendency is so strong that when the media publishes a story about suicide, approximately 58 more individuals who view themselves as similar and would not normally commit suicide also commit suicide.
People will kill themselves if someone else does it in a situation that appears normal to them. There is even an aspect to that called the Werther Effect, named after an 18th-century book that sparked a wave of suicides across Europe because people wanted to emulate the main character.
If, for example, a young person learns that another young person committed suicide, they are more likely to do the same thing. Older people might take their own lives if they hear about another older person doing it.
I am sharing this to show you how powerful it is to identify people you have helped who are just like those you are selling to. I am also sharing this is so that you can protect yourself in situations where other founders, revenue leaders, marketing leaders, or sales reps at the same stage as you, are doing better than you.
Investigate the social proof you look at to make sure that it is real and not counterfeit.
If you are working with someone in a specific vertical, get hyper-specific about your solution so that others in the same vertical can also leverage your solution to accomplish their goal.
Uncertainty makes people want social proof.
People are now starting to take mental shortcuts. Currently, 84% of all business transactions start with a conversation with someone else. Because people think that they can avoid going through a sizeable review process by talking to someone they trust about how to do it. That is why it is vital to set up a referral system.
Setting up a referral system will provide you with opportunities from mid-market up to companies worth $80,000,000,000.
My mentor, Myron Golden, says that people always want to do what everyone is doing and they do not want to do what no one is doing. When he presents on stage, he calls people up to participate in his program. When people see others walking up, they want to do the same, so more and more people keep on walking up. That aligns with social proof.
Leverage social proof and integrate it through all the different parts of your sales process. Especially if it is a longer sales process and you are selling SaaS or a high-ticket solution.
Reassuring people with milestone testimonials can help them if they feel unsure about moving forward during a deep dive. Milestone testimonials can also help you convert from one stage of the sales process to the next.
Even though most people leverage social proof at the close of a sales process, you also have the opportunity to leverage it along the way. That will validate your prospect’s future experience based on what their peers are saying. It will also help speed up your sales process.
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Could you imagine being raised in an environment where it is all about sales? Dailius Wilson’s dad was a VP for Hewlett Packard, so DW grew up listening to his sales calls in the car every day. Even though his dad advised him against getting into sales, being raised in that way helped DW develop the drive and enthusiasm he needed to become the sales expert he is today.
DW is a 4 times VP of Sales. He helps companies grow from zero to $20,000,000 in ARR. He is currently the VP of Growth at GetAccept. He is also a writer for HubSpot and is involved with many different groups and communities. He is joining us today to share his ninja skills and take a deep dive into what he has learned from the many adventures he has had in his life.
Sales is a meritocracy. So you will be promoted quickly and earn well if you can deliver.
No matter what stage he has been through in his leadership journey, DW has always loved calling his customers on the phone and talking to them. He still does it today.
Regardless of if you are a VP of Product, Finance, or Sales, doing a little bit of selling is a great ethos for success.
DW feels that sales, marketing, and growth are all connected because if marketing works the first time, it will result in a sale.
A captivating effective ad that ultimately converts is effectively a digital direct sale from the first marketing effort.
Although sales are vital, you can use every other skill you have in different areas to gain respect from others and show them that you are a well-rounded professional.
DW’s top 3 ninja skills are: . Think about how you can replace the steps in your day-to-day workflow with technical thinking and machines. That will help you work 10-20 times faster.Automating human processes . There is a difference between writing marketing copy and sales copy. You can add a lot of value by doing those effectively and in different ways. (Like doing a podcast.) As a salesperson, you will gain credibility if you write something authentic every month and share that content with the people to whom you are trying to sell.Mastering content and copy . It is vital to invest in self-improvement. You stand to gain a lot if you spend about 8% of your annual earnings on up-skilling yourself.Continually improving and developing himself
To automate your sales process if you are a founder or sales leader, use third-party proof points. You can watch a leading SaaS video or listen to a good podcast. Get inside your own business before making any decisions.
If you are a founder, sales leader, or salesperson, think about exactly what gets done between 9 am and 5 pm. You might see people making calls without doing any research or making any introductory efforts, or following up in any way. Reps need to follow up on all meetings.
As a leader, you need to partner with all the individual contributors, as well as the leadership in the business, to smooth all the processes out and ensure that as many processes as possible can be automated. Think about automating to the point at which you can personalize. It is possible to automate and personalize things simultaneously.
It is a good idea to automate your prospecting, if possible.
If you are a leader in a business with around $1,000,000 in revenue, you should already have a strategy that works for product-market fit or a customer or industry that you are already selling to successfully. Use that as a blueprint. Then, think about 3-5 pain points that occur within that market, and direct your marketing, messaging, and sales points around those pain points. Talk to individuals about the problems they are experiencing. That will make your approach more organic and palatable.
95% of people can be up-skilled quickly and effectively when it comes to their writing abilities. Sales writing follows a predictable formula, so it helps to incorporate a structure in your writing. As you become more comfortable over time, you can start to deviate from the structure.
Scott Barker, a good sales leader, landed himself in a good position by focusing on telling the right sales stories and finding the right salespeople.
The best thing for a leader to see is their people becoming better than them. That will lead to mutual respect.
Try to double your net worth or your knowledge every 12 months, even during difficult times. It helps to diversify your strategy and have multiple income streams.
Ask people you respect who influenced them.
DW enjoys listening to Lewis Howes’s podcasts and The Masterclass.
DW’s number 1 tip for growing from zero to $20,000,000:
Take the pressure off sales and put it into closing. If more than 50% of your leads are coming from outbound, you will find it hard to grow. Learn to live by the 80/20 rule of bringing in 80% of your leads from inbound, and 20% of your big deals from outbound. If you live by that rule, you are sure to scale.
The steps you need to follow for growing from zero to $20,000,000 are: Build a category that you can own and dominate for what you do. If you create a new trend, your name will be the first to appear on Google. Invest in zero-cost growth strategies as much as possible, as early as possible. Find a way to keep people infused into your business, even if it means giving away part of your company. That will create brand loyalty in your employees and incentivize them to stay.
Links and resources:
Find Dailius Wilson on LinkedIn
Books mentioned:
The Hero’s Journey by Joseph Campbell
The Hero's 2 Journeys by Michael Hauge and Christopher Vogler
To Sell is Human by Daniel H. Pink
Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling
Lewis Howes Podcasts
The Masterclass
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
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Today, I will cover another 2 principles from Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence, and explain how to apply them in your life and sales situations.
In this episode, I will share my interpretation of the Forbidden Principle and explain how to get customers to stay true to their word in terms of identity.
People always tend to want what they cannot have and hate it when they cannot get it.
Some examples of the Forbidden Principle are: You had a crush on someone when you were young. But when you started dating them, you found it disappointing. When you wanted something, like a particular car, but felt let down soon after getting it.
People find it hard to come to terms with not getting something they want, especially when they are on the B2B and buyer side. When you are selling higher ticket items or enterprise software, speed is vital.
A great way to use the Forbidden Principle to close customers is to use the Reverse Close. That means telling your customers that they can have something, but they cannot get it right away.
Use the Forbidden Principle in the murky middle phase towards the end of a sales process. Use it with customers you have already built a relationship with, those who are aligned with you, and those who are already on board with your solution.
Tell your customers that due to all the demand, even though the resource needed to implement what they want is there, they might have to go to the back of the queue and wait several months to implement it if the deal does not get wrapped up quickly.
If you knock several months off a sales cycle, you could get 2-3 times more revenue with the same staff and resources.
Another simple example of the Forbidden Principle is based on identity. A psychologist, Tom Moriarty, did a study on human behavior. He found that only 20% of people sitting on a beach would do anything if they saw someone stealing from someone else’s towel or bag. If, however, someone asked someone else to watch over their things while they went to the bathroom, 95% of people would take action if anyone tried to steal anything. In fact, those in his study (the 95%) felt so morally obliged and became so vigilant that they would physically tackle anyone who tried to steal something.
When it comes to community, reciprocity is very prominent at the core of all humans. Identity and being true to our word are also very prominent with us as humans.
If people commit, they feel obligated to follow through. So, towards the end of the sales process and just before you are about to close someone, do them a favor or help them out. That will plant the seed in their mind, or pre-frame them, to help you out in return.
Ask your customers to commit to doing a testimonial for you after the deal gets signed. Explain to them that the testimonial will help you to help others like them. Also, once the deal is signed and you have successfully executed what you promised, ask them for three referrals.
That element of persuasion is a great way to get your customers to pre-commit to doing some other things besides giving you testimonials and referrals and helping you out. It will help you expand in the next phase of the solution you have given them.
If you use these potentially game-changing elements in your business consistently, amazing things are bound to happen!
Links and resources:
Apply here for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session with me, Ryan Staley.
Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Grab your Free Copy of “The 4 Biggest Mistakes That Stop Companies From 10X’ing Their Revenue” at https://www.scalerevenue.io/10x
How you do one thing in business will lead people to believe that it is the way you do everything else too. It is vital to understand that, especially when it comes to sending out spam messages.
Judi Fox launched her company in 2008-2009. Since then, she has been using LinkedIn to generate business for herself, her clients, and her customers. In this episode, she shares her best practices and explains how she helps others get big business on LinkedIn.
Much of the advice given for LinkedIn, especially around spam messaging, comes from those who tend to forget that different businesses have different sales cycles and lead times. That also pertains to building trust and negotiating contracts.
If you enter into a contract with someone and then send them spam, the relationship starts off by leading them to believe that you will continue to treat them in the same way over the years you work with them.
You do not have to build thousands of long-term relationships to have a thriving business if you have a high-ticket or high-trust item in the financial service industry, the medical field, engineering, or technology. Lean into having referral partners and public conversations.
Spamming people will not work on LinkedIn.
Having public conversations on LinkedIn will convert to more responses to your direct private messages. Go onto LinkedIn-not to create content, but to create a list of people who are always having great conversations. You can then show up and add to those conversations. That will show people how you talk to others and make them more inclined to reply to your direct messages.
Start with the LinkedIn news. Pay attention to the content created by the LinkedIn editors (particularly that of Dan Ross, the Chief Editor) and notice what they are promoting. Those are the conversations that you should join and amplify on LinkedIn.
Be a good communication partner. That will earn you the right to talk privately in your direct messages about things you would like to sell.
Create a list of 10-20 of your niche clients and parallel business partners who get a lot of attention on LinkedIn, feed into your business, do not compete with you, and could become excellent referral partners. That list could serve and sustain your business for the next five to ten years if you involve yourself with their conversations.
Your success on LinkedIn depends on how you set yourself up to build enough trust for people to refer you easily.
It takes time to build up the trust and credibility needed to create a great referral pipeline.
In The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, there are Connectors, Persuaders, and Mavens. Here is a summary of each one: Connectors might not be great referral partners or make things happen for you, but they can alert you to what could work and open doors for you. Persuaders might not have more than 100 followers, but they are persuasive people. They can tell their followers about something new in a way that motivates them to take action. Mavens enjoy summarizing their finds, information, and networks and tend to give shout-outs for free.
Links and resources:
Find Judi Fox on Instagram
Judi Fox on LinkedIn
Books mentioned:
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
You Squared by Price Pritchett
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
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Today, I will be taking you to the next level of persuasion and influence. I want to give you 2 nuggets to apply in your business.
There are many different areas where mental shortcuts can be helpful for you. In this episode, I will go through 2 more principles from Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence.
I will be covering #3, Contrast, and #4, Scarcity today. I’ll back them up with real-life sales examples to show you the power of the principles and help you apply them directly in your life and business.
The Contrast Principle:
A big mistake that startup founders, salespeople, and even VPs of Sales make is that they do not always have a tangible ROI.
If you have a solution to save money, you need to be very specific about exactly how much it will increase your revenue.
When a buyer wants to use contrast to help them decide if the value on a return is worth giving up a certain amount of money, they need to know exactly what the value of that return will be for a different amount of money.
For example, if one company has a 36-month sales cycle for a $1,000,000 deal, and another company has a 9-month sales cycle for a deal of the same size, the second company’s sales cycle is only 25% of that of the first company.
Money comes in terms of speed as well as in terms of revenue. So if you look at it that way, after 4 years, the company with the 36-month sales cycle will have $1,000,000 in revenue, whereas the company with the 9-month sales cycle will have $4,000,000 in revenue. That is a difference of 400%!
When you talk about the value that your solution creates, the solution for your ROI needs to be identified clearly as a tangible outcome. You need tangible numbers to show how you are reducing costs (from invoices, for example). If you do that, it will be possible for your potential prospects to process their potential revenue faster, so they would get to their number quicker.
In terms of the contrast principle, everything needs to be made as clear and simple and as black and white as possible for your prospects.
If you do not know the exact outcome, you can give a range of examples to help your prospect understand.
When you can get deep and make your value more tangible, your sales cycle will speed up, your margins will go up, and you will see your competition melt away.
The Scarcity Principle:
In human psychology, people want something more if its availability has decreased recently. That’s because they think that the trend will continue and that thing will no longer be available.
So, people want something more if: Its availability has decreased recently There is competition for the same service
When the movie, The Poseidon Adventure, came out, the rights for it got sold in an auction format. It was the first time that had happened, and many TV companies were bidding for it. The bidding went up until Barry Diller from Fox News got it for $3,000,000. All the networks were aggressively going after the rights, so there was competition, and there was also recently decreased availability because it was the first time it happened. That was one of the highest amounts ever paid for a movie.
The scarcity principle also works well in marketing when there is a count-down clock for a special offer.
Links and resources:
Apply here for a Revenue Growth Consulting Session with me, Ryan Staley.
Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Grab you Free Copy of “The 4 Biggest Mistakes That Stop Companies From 10X’ing Their Revenue” at https://www.scalerevenue.io/10x
Today, I wanted to nerd out with you about something that I never thought I would be so interested in! Our topic is persuasion and influence!
Did you know that 90% of what you do everyday is subconscious? That means only 10% of what your brain does everyday is done consciously!
That’s staggering when you think about it!
The reason this is important is not because of how it impacts you, but it’s because of how this relates to your prospects and customers.
If you ignore the 90% of the subconscious thoughts that impact how your prospects make buying decisions, then you are likely to be missing out on a ton of sales!
25% of your daily calories are burned by thinking! Who knew? So your brain is constantly looking for ways to conserve energy. That means you have to understand the brain hacks that your prospect’s brain is implementing in order to see more sales.
Brain hack #1 - request for reason
In a recent study, they looked at the responses given when someone cut in line in front of another person. They were looking for ways to make cutting in line in front of someone else socially acceptable.
So they tried different approaches to make this happen.
When someone asked if they could cut in line first, more than 60% of the people standing in line responded that it was fine.
Then they did the same experiment but they also gave a reason why they needed to cut in line.
They had 2 approaches to the reason - one reason that made sense, and one reason that didn’t make sense.
This leveraged the mental shortcut that our brains make. Guess what happened?
93% of the people said it’s ok to cut in line for a completely illogical reason
94% of the people said it’s ok to cut in line for a logical reason.
Why? Because people like to do favors for other people.
Brain hack #2 -
In 1971, Dennis Reagan did a study where he gave a 10 cent coke to half of the people in his experiment.
He later went on to ask the entire group for a donation to a charitable cause.
Those that did not receive a coke gave a donation of 25 cents. That was a 25 cent gain on the transaction.
Those who did receive at 10 cent coke gave an average donation of 50 cents. That’s twice the amount from the previous group.
This happens because of the reciprocity brain hack. If someone gives you something, reciprocity causes us to want to give back more to them.
If you give someone something of value, when it’s completely unexpected, the first thing they ask is “what can I do for you?”.
An example of this wwe see play out in our everyday lives is getting mints when a waiter brings you the bill in a restaurant. Likely there are mints or chocolates, stickers or other little gifts.
Just by doing this simple little gesture, wait staff increase their tips by 17%.
Some wait staff will do this by offering you a to go drink or something else that is more customized and personalized to your tastes.
When they gave the customized gifts, they found that tips increased by over 30%.
You could use this technique in a situation where you want referrals, but giving an unexpected gift to a customer, they will be much more likely to want to do a favor for you!
You can leverage these tips to improve your close rates and get much further with your prospecting.
Need help scaling your revenue? Ryan can help! Apply to work with him at https://scalerevenue.io/apply
Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
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Today’s episode is part 2 of the interview with Mark Metry. We pick up with Mark explaining that the gut microbiome has so much to do with how we handle stress and anxiety because of the Gaba neurotransmitter that is manufactured in the gut.
Gaba helps regulate your feeling of calm. If you’ve ever been around someone that is constantly anxious and restless and can never really settle down into a place of calm, they probably have a problem with the Gaba neurotransmitter.
All neurotransmitters are made out of the same chemical compound, which is called amino acids. Amino acids aren’t something that your body creates, you have to get them from the food that you eat.
Mark’s formula for healing your brain: Fix your nutrition - To change your stress and anxiety levels, you have to start with food.
The food you eat gets used by your brain to rebuild your neurotransmitters. These amino acids become the build blocks for rebuilding your brain.
What kind of food should you primarily be eating? Healthy sources of dietary fat - eggs nuts, red meat, avocados, When you eat the standard American diet, full of processed and junk foods, it literally decreases the brain’s ability to utilize the healthy foods you feed it. Experiment with mindfulness meditation. Take healthy supplements. Fix your sleep.
Then your brain will begin to slowly calm down and heal.
Then you can use that as a bridge to: Create new healthy habits. Begin to read, etc.
You have to address the brain first and get that in order, then bring the body in sync with the brain.
Supplements for Brain Health: Omega 3 fatty acids Vitamin D Magnesium L-Threonate - for sleep and anxiety issues Gaba supplement - for anxiety and calming yourself down
Ryan likes to take Udo’s oil - it’s an essential omega 3-6-9 stack and it’s mainly derived from plants.
Wondering how coffee affects your mental health?
Mark says coffee is a powerful medicine that has been misused by modern society. Mark’s tips to keeping coffee in a proper role in our lives: Don’t grab coffee first thing out of bed. Hydrate first and eat breakfast. Go for a walk and give your body a chance to acclimate before you hit it with coffee. Based on studies, smaller cups of coffee throughout the day are much better for your body than huge amounts less frequently. If you have anxiety, your brain may process caffeine differently, so consider adding a fat to your coffee to give you brain a chance at processing it better.
Alcohol:
Alcohol can be a bit of a wild card in terms of social anxiety. Many who struggle with social anxiety also struggle with substance abuse because it can ease the social anxiety.
Alcohol drains your neurotransmitters and your brain borrows it for the next day, which makes the next day horrible.
Mark doesn’t use alcohol at social functions because he wants to give his brain practice at handling social situations.
You want to avoid using alcohol as a medicine to be “yourself”.
Mark’s Guide to Supplements
Noowave Coffee
OliPop- an alternative to soda
IMRS Mat
Connect with Mark - www.markmetry.com
Need help scaling your revenue? Ryan can help. Apply to work with him at https://scalerevenue.io/apply
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Not all entrepreneurs are extroverts. In fact, many entrepreneurs self identify as introverts and on top of that will claim to have some social anxiety both in business and personal situations.
Mark Metry suffered from social anxiety for many years, without even realizing what it was. Mark had thought he was introverted for much of his life, never realizing that he was actually suffering from social anxiety.
Mark even got to the point of being depressed and suicidal. At one pivotal point in Mark’s journey, he began processing his feelings. One revelation he had that helped heal him was realizing that he was trapped in his head.
The start of overcoming his anxiety was the realization that he was not his thoughts. This sent him delving into the neuroscience behind thoughts and what makes them subconscious vs. conscious thoughts.
Understanding this difference helped Mark begin reversing out of his depression and suicidal thoughts.
Mark uses the cognitive bias codex to help understand how to hack his brain function. Our brain has effects and illusions that help create our reality. The spotlight effect is one of these illusions that heavily impacts people with social anxiety.
The brain is the hardware that houses the mind. If the brain is the hardware, the mind is the software. Both have to be in sync in order for you to have good mental health.
How to shift your belief system that your brain holds:
Rebuild the foundation of your brain from the ground up.
Go in layer by layer and rebuild your house.
It’s a combination of science - the gut microbiome has a lot to do with it. We have multiple layers of consciousness from bacteria in the gut microbiome. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that is designed to figure out where you fit in society - your status. It goes off partial information, so it may be partly right and partly wrong.
90% of the serotonin neurotransmitter is processed in the gut microbiome, based on the food you eat and the stress levels you have.
“The 2nd Brain” is the name of the gut microbiome.
Your brain creates algorithms and stores them in the brain.
When you are stuck in anxiety, you have to get your brain out of the cycle.
Join us for Part 2 of this interview to get the tactical steps for overcoming anxiety.
Need help scaling your revenue? Ryan can help. Apply to work with him at https://scalerevenue.io/apply
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If you’ve worked really hard to build deep and intimate relationships with a client and invested a ton of time and effort along the way, when it comes time to sign a deal, you want it to be with you!
It’s disappointing and completely deflating when you lose the deal after investing so much in the relationship.
Today, I’m sharing 3 frameworks to go from having million dollar years, to closing million dollar deals.
In today’s market, the skills that I am going to share with you today are going to be more critical than ever.
When moving from selling transactional deals to recurring revenue of tens of thousands for dollars, you have to make a shift.
What you have to remember is that when the type of sale shifts to MRR from transactions, the number of people involved changes.
It’s no longer just your contact making the decisions, so you now have a tribe of people responsible for the decision.
The tribe overrides the relationship.
If there is no relationship with the tribe, they look to logic to make a decision.
If there is no logic, then likely a decision doesn’t get made and nothing changes.
Sometimes doing nothing is more advantageous for their careers than making a wrong decision that ends up backfiring. Understand the top 3 biggest problems in their department. What are the most important projects behind those problems? Focus on those 3 biggest problems.
Now look at those problems through this lens:
What’s their biggest problem growing revenue? - topline expense
What’s their biggest problem reducing expenses? - bottom line expense
What’s their biggest problem reducing customer churn?
Align your solution to help all 3 areas.
If you put every solution as a direct impact to those 3 main focus areas, and back it with the logic of solving their 3 biggest problems while bringing in focus the 3 outcomes the company wants anyway. Then the solution will become a no-brainer.
Your job to be successful is to close all the doors except for one. So this will allow you to only pursue opportunities that will close.
Don’t overvalue the relationship. Focus your solutions through the lens of growing revenue, reducing expenses and customer churn.
Need help scaling your revenue? Ryan can help you. Apply to work with him at https://scalerevenue.io/apply
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Brad Seaman is the CEO of MonsterConnect, a company that focuses on helping outbound sales reps be more productive. He also created a call center technology company.
Brad loves the complexity of B2B business solutions and the convergence of AI in the space.
The difference between inbound and outbound sales
Outbound - it’s a proactive outreach and you have to qualify the leads to make sure they can buy and that they are a good fit. Could be phone, email, linkedin outreach to pre identified targets.
Inbound - people may be ready to buy but they aren’t always a good fit.
Ultimately, sales comes down to: Quality Quantity Speed
If you don’t have your brand established, inbound sales is a long game.
If you are not getting the results you want, you probably aren’t doing the work. Many times your revenue goes up when you are prospecting (whether you close the deals or not) and when you stop prospecting, your revenue goes down. Action creates results.
Characteristics of Outbound Sales: It’s a metric you can control. It’s a proactive action you can take. Sales cycle is longer. More profitable sales. The sale is not as competitive.
It’s not an inbound vs. outbound scenario - you need to be doing all of the activities needed to get a sale.
Brad believes that if you do the work and take the actions, you will get the results.
A secret hack for outbound prospecting:
If you read job posts, many times you can glean data that can tell you the direction they will be taking in the next few quarters.
The best intent data is job postings. Brad says to read the job posting backwards and you can glean a ton of data.
In looking at job descriptions, you can also identify which companies are pro outbound sales. You can also identify the pain points that company is having and may be looking for solutions for.
As a sales person, they can be your best data source. They allow you to be a storm chaser instead of an insurance salesman.
Most companies don’t really understand why people buy from them in the B2B scenario.
ZoomInfo is a good tool to develop a data set. Having a team dedicated to identifying targets and creating the data around those targets can be a great resource for sales reps.
The best outbound process is one that you actually do.
Resources:
Brad Seaman on Monsteconnect.com
Brad Seaman on LinkedIn
If you need help scaling your sales, Ryan can help you. To apply to work with Ryan, go to scalerevenue.io/apply.
Support the show: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-staley/
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There’s only one thing that sucks worse than losing a deal to a competitor…
That’s losing a deal to no decision being made!
It happens all the time and it’s like the ghost that comes out of nowhere and kills all your whales!
Today, I’m showing you the simple 3 step framework to keep this from happening to you.
When you are dealing with whale prospects, you utilize massive amounts of: Time Energy Resources Emotion
So, if you get nothing from those deals, it can take a lot longer to recover.
Whale deals are not for the faint of heart!
I’ve learned this lesson the hard way - from working my way through about 1000 whale deals, and I don’t want you to have the same learning curve that I did.
When you are dealing with whale prospects, it all boils down to this...
3 Questions of the Career: What are their Career Priorities? What are their KPI’s? What is their Career Vision?
Timing is one of the most important things you are dealing with in whale prospects.
The average time a person spends in a C-Suite role is 16 months. So, if you let a deal drag on for too long, you’ll have to start all over with the next executive.
To keep a deal from going cold, find out: What is the most important thing in their career right now? (What is important to them) For your role, what is success and how is it measured? (How are they evaluated?) What is your vision for your job and your career? (Where do they want to go and what’s the outcome they need to get there?)
When you structure a deal to help the client hit their KPI’s, the deal will get done almost instantly because of the massive incentive it provides.
When you can help your point of contact position the solution you are providing as a win to Sr. Management, then you play a role in getting your contact to achieve their goals, while the company meets theirs, and you win the deal - no matter how you chop it up, those are wins all around!
Results: You get bigger deals Your deals will close much faster
Need help scaling your revenue? Ryan works with companies one on one to make this happen. You can apply to work with him at:
scalerevenue.io/apply
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Are you ready for a Challenge? Join me LIVE with other CEO’s, Founders and Revenue Leaders from July 26th-30th at the Referrals for Revenue Challenge: https://www.referralsforrevenuechallenge.com/go
Today, I’m sharing with you something that I learned strictly by taking action. This wasn’t a situation where I was pondering or researching to try and find answers to my problems, but this take away happened because I was taking action.
What I am talking about is creating strategic byproducts. Now, when this happened to me, I didn’t actually get the results I was looking for. I actually made quantum leaps in my business in a fraction of the time.
A strategic byproduct is a term used by Dan Sullivan and he defines it as an unintended byproduct of taking actions on another front.
My strategic byproduct happened as a result of me wanting to serve the market in a different way. I shifted my business model and had to stop doing what was working in order to serve people at a higher level.
In the book, Quantum Leap by Price Pritchett, he lists out some common traps that can inhibit our growth:
“The more of the same trap” - reliance on trying harder rather than trying differently. The Faith in the Familiar Trap - relying on your usual routines for success. The What isn’t Seen Isn’t There Trap The You Have To Do It All By Yourself Trap The Playing It Safe Trap The Choosing the Wrong Risk Trap The passivity Trap - wishing for what you want instead of pursuing what you want The Failures Aren’t Allowed Trap - the unwillingness to make mistakes, interpreting problems as proof that you should give up and quit, , The Perfect Timing Trap - waiting for the right circumstances
4 Strategic Byproducts that came out of my business shift: Created 2 new partnerships from being on Clubhouse for an hour. My messaging wasn’t hitting the market right - closed the gap between my message and the results I was getting. Learned more about my market in a week than in the previous year. I am not afraid to test anymore.
Failure findings = leveraged learning.
I can try 10 new things and 9 of them won’t work, but one of them will. So, I will double down on the one thing that works and then find 9 new ways to try something. Then rinse and repeat!
The Quantum Leap Strategy by Price Pritchett
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I am continually fascinated by looking at what billion dollar companies are doing to achieve success.
When you reach that status, it’s probably pretty certain that they’ve had their share of failures before they achieved that success.
So, anything I can do to shortcut or hack my way to success on the back of their success, then I’m all in.
Today, I’m sharing one of the most counterintuitive hacks I’ve ever seen, and I found it by looking at Hubspot!
Hubspot is probably the #2 Sales CRM, and they are only eclipsed by Salesforce. They recently crossed the $1B ARR mark.
Their traffic sources are: Content - 6-7% Google - 24% Word of Mouth - 30%
Logic creates decisions.
Emotions create action.
You create emotions by your messaging and your relationship with them.
I see companies that: Have an amazing product Have a 90% retention rate. Don’t talk to their customers after selling them a solution.
If you develop a deep relationship with your customers, not just in the initial sales phase, but all the way through the customer lifecycle, then you will get the WOM effect.
The impacts of having these well developed relationships with your customers is: It will reduce your churn rate. It will increase your net promoter score. You will begin to get inbound leads.
Companies will spend more.
The sales cycles will be faster.
Your margins will be higher because they have a relationship with you.
These are the 3 questions of the relationship: Relationships to people - who are the most important people in their lives and why? (who and why) Relationships with passions. (What do you like to spend time on outside of work?) Relationships to the person. (Why do you like that the most?)
Leveraging these 3 questions will allow you to develop much deeper relationships with your clients than anyone else.
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The reality is that buying behavior is changing and we need to be aware of these trends so we can adapt and change so our numbers don’t stagnate.
I read some really interesting data the other day and I wanted to make you aware of the data. It’s from a Forester 2021 buying study with over 1000 respondents.
Looking at things from the buying process will help you get more sales.
How are buying habits changing? Buyers now means a buying group. 63% of companies now have 6 or more people involved in the buying process. It’s a more complex buying process. The number of buying interactions jumped by 10, going from 17-27. Trust is a huge factor. Buyers go everywhere for information. Self directed research is king. More options = less clarity.
These 3 important areas of buyer considerations that you need to keep in mind if you want to be in the top 1% in sales.
If you want to be a leader in your space, you have to become a student of the game.
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In looking at how many software companies are growing their base, I am finding that some of the more successful ones are really investing in referrals. Now, you know I love referrals as an easy way to grow revenue, so I thought it was worth diving into a bit more.
There are 3 ways to increase your WOM Metrics: Measure Mandate Magnify
Measure:
A lot of companies don’t track what percentage of customers comes from word of mouth.
This is a key metric.
HubSpot is a ninja in marketing and content marketing and 33% of their revenue comes from word of mouth referrals.
Mandate:
It has to be a mandatory work flow to ask “Where did you hear about us?”.
Ask at multiple points in the sales cycle - sales reps need to be asking and it needs to be built in the automation.
Magnify:
If you focus on it, it grows.
If you set a goal for the metric, it grows.
Bill.com just had an IPO and saw 50% of customers come from other customers.
If your percentage of WOM grows over time, that’s a good sign.
This is how I grew my business, starting from zero, with no marketing department or anything.
Accelerate It By: Getting your customer the outcome they need with the solution you provide. What is your mini-brand (niche)? Focus on that before you start expanding. Systemize the referral process. Don’t get distracted. Stay focused on where you have synergy. Share social wins.
I’m such a fan of referrals because:
Referrals are the cheapest traffic you can get.
They cut the sales cycle in half.
They are 120-150% more profitable.
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Have you ever learned something in your career the hard way? Often, we only realize the value of lessons much later when we have gained a lot more experience. Today’s guest, Sam Jacobs, learned about humility only after quitting his job in investment banking to start a record label that failed abysmally. He also learned some vital lessons after getting fired multiple times from several different companies over the last decade.
Sam has had a huge diversity of experiences. He is the Founder and CEO of Pavilion, the premier community and premier development platform for high-growth leaders and their teams at every function.
After grinding for a long time, Sam started Revenue Collective as a group therapy session and community for his friends and peers so that they could support each other, help one another find jobs, and get better at their jobs. He started the community as a group in New York. They got together every quarter to talk about their problems and challenges over some drinks or a meal. People from all over the world started hearing about it. They began reaching out to Sam to start new chapters. So they got some other chapter heads in London, Toronto, Boston, and Amsterdam, and they also added Indianapolis, Denver, and Atlanta.
Revenue Collective started charging dues at the start of 2018. Sam was still working then, so it was a side-hustle for him. After getting fired from his job a few months later, he decided to do it full-time. He figured that if he got 2000 paying members, he could survive in New York.
It was a huge success, and they rebranded to become Pavilion. The mission of the company is about helping each person get where they want to go in their life through their work.
Pavilion was profitable, and Sam was not planning on raising any money. However, he got an email from Elephant Ventures, offering him $25,000,000. So he took the money and used it to build his company to where it is today.
Getting fired sucks for many reasons, regardless of how much you get paid for severance. Despite making a lot of money at Gerson Lehrman Group, Sam was not happy there. He went through a divorce at the same time as he got fired from GLG, so he lost a lot of money, and his income also dropped drastically. That was the start of a radical transformation for Sam.
Sam went to work for Axial in their very early stage. After getting fired, he went to Livestream. He left there to join TheMuse.Com as their CRO and, after seven months, was asked to leave. They felt he was not a good fit for their culture because he was too hard. He then moved onto Behavox but got asked to leave because he was too lenient.
Getting fired at the executive level is not quite as crazy as getting fired as an account executive. At the executive level, you get fired as an individual contributor because you did not hit your number. If you get fired as a C-Suite executive, however, it is probably because your vision does not align with what the CEO wants to do, and ultimately, you are in service of the CEO’s vision.
Although he is introverted, Sam loves to help people. Since starting Revenue Collective in 2016, Sam has been sincerely looking for ways to help his friends and the broader community.
Sam loves hearing about people who work hard, want to be better, do things the right way, and succeed. He recently did a workshop for their Rising Executives Program and realized that 5 of those who joined their January class have already been promoted to VP.
Getting fired from The Muse was a turning point in Sam’s life. That was when he decided to stop relying on other people and start charging dues for Revenue Collective. He also decided to try for sponsorship, so he asked Kevin O’Malley of SalesLoft for $10,000 to put together a dinner for him in New York each quarter. Kevin agreed, and Sam started charging dues of $50 per month. 19 of the 21 members paid their dues. Sam kept on moving forward, and more people wanted to join his collective.
To build a successful company, you need to find a technical person to build a product. Unfortunately, finding engineers is the hardest part of building a company because most engineers want to work for other smart engineers. That is why you need to have a product-driven founder.
Before, Sam never gave himself the right to believe that his community could get big and never allowed himself to dream.
Covid was an inflection point because everything became digital, and many networking businesses failed to adapt and went out of business. They adapted very quickly, however, and grew 5x during Covid.
Over the past few months, Sam finally let himself believe that the thing he was doing could be huge.
A paid membership model is a more elegant way to do things because it forces people to commit, and they can be your customer.
Sam built Pavilion, which is worth $100,000,000, using other people’s tools. That makes him wonder if we could be moving to a world where engineering talent is no longer the prerequisite that it used to be to build a valuable company.
Quantifying his values and writing down what he believed internally for his company (then Revenue Collective) was extremely powerful for Sam. In 2018, he decided that if his company grew to 1000 people, he would stay close to the reasons he started in the first place, keep on checking in with those values, and be as helpful and useful to the membership as possible.
You don’t need to be a genius with B2B. You only need to listen to your customers. They will tell you what they want, so keep your mouth shut and listen.
One of Pavilion’s values is: Listen closely. Act quickly.
All Sam thinks about is what people need.
During Covid, Sam decided to start an exclusive community that people could only join if they were out of work. It was to help people find jobs and provide group therapy for those who could not. He called it On the Bench, and there are currently 200 people in the program. Sam had no master plan. He just tried to do the next right thing.
There are 3 jobs for the CEO: Never run out of money Recruit or build a team Set the vision
You need to delegate effectively. Sam is lazy, which is good because he delegates.
Delegating helps you scale. If you set clear direction and clear values, you can grow.
Telling people to go and figure things out is good for creating their self-reliance. It can also be difficult because sometimes it is better to have someone else help you figure things out.
The top sales and marketing levers that Sam pulled to get the growth he did from a bootstrap perspective for Revenue Collective were: He created brand affinity by explicitly encouraging people to put Revenue Collective on their LinkedIn profiles. Initially, 50% of the community did it. Now, 82% of the community does it. He created a multi-level marketing component to Revenue Collective because he shares the money from the dues with people for the work they do for the platform. Some of the members tied their brands to Revenue Collective because they benefited personally from a financial incentive for doing that. He does unscalable things that lead to scale, like coaching calls, to show customers that he cares. Sam feels that people are overly obsessed with ‘scale’ on the margin.
Venture capital is good if you have a strong product-market fit and a strong go-to-market fit. The limiting factor in your growth is just money, so if you have something that lots of people love, get it into as many hands as possible, and cement your competitive advantage, venture capital can be very powerful.
Venture capital is a bad thing if you misdefine what you perceive to be your exceptionalism, and as a consequence, you take on a lot of money, obligation, and an expectation of growth that you are not ready to deliver on.
It could take 18 months to 2 years to work yourself into a position to raise money.
Sam cares about a different way of doing business and teaching people that you can split the difference and leave some money on the table. It is okay to do something for someone without asking for anything in return, even if some people take advantage of your generosity. It will all come back to you eventually for what you want to achieve in your life, including making money.
There is a different way to live. It is about helping before asking for help, looking to offer advice, and not treating relationships transactionally.
Links and resources:
Sam Jacobs on LinkedIn
Join Pavilion
Email Sam Jacobs: sam@joinpavilion.com
Need help scaling your revenue? Apply to work with Ryan at https://scalerevenue.io/apply
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Right now, there are some really big companies that have tapped into a way to bring in a tsunami of new customers to their business.
Success leaves clues, and it’s important to look at what they are doing and what you can use for your business.
I was listening to Tony Robbins speak at a business conference. He asked the crowd of 5000 business owners an important question.
“How many of you have a referral system that you track KPI’s on? Please stand.”
350 people stood up.
He then went further, asking those who were already standing...
“How many of you have 2 or more referral systems that you track KPI’s on? Remain standing.”
Only about 150 remained standing.
Out of 5000 business owners, only 150 had multiple ways to get referrals and track results. That’s just 3% of businesses.
This is the single best way to grow and double your business.
So why are so few businesses using it?
I looked at about 9 different businesses and at every revenue level, and none of them had a referral system in place.
This was proving to be a pattern, and I don’t understand why businesses aren’t using this method.
Referrals are a no-brainer because: Referrals have half the sales cycle length 125-150% more profitable than a normal deal because they are from a trusted source. 84% of buyers are kicking off their sales cycle with a referral 83% of customers are happy to provide a referral after the sale, but only 29% of sales reps are asking for referrals.
Why companies fail when trying to grow through referrals: They don’t know the profit pathways - you want to stack the pathways. They don’t have a process that is easy to collect referrals - need a super simple model. Behavior = prompt + motivation + ability. They don’t prepare properly. They ask general vs. specific questions, so the referrals they do get are not their ideal clients. They don’t know their prospect’s peaks. What are the avalanche points in the buyer’s journey. Emotion creates action. This makes most companies ask for referrals at the wrong time. Ask when they are happiest. They don’t leverage persuasion properly. You have to “pre-suade” to persuade. Tap into the monkey mind. If you give someone something of value, they feel the need to repay the debt. This is hard wired into human survival.
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When you become an entrepreneur, networking becomes extremely important. If you come from the corporate world like I did, the focus is always on revenue. Once you leave the corporate world, you have to focus on networking and it becomes much more important.
The premise of Larry’s book is based on the NCG Factor.
What is The NCG Factor? A formula for building life changing relationships from college to retirement. When you think about your legacy, it’s important to understand what people are saying about you today, and not only focus on what happens after you are gone.
The difference in the smaller pipeline outperforming the bigger pipeline is relationships.
Larry interviewed people from all walks of life for his book. He examined both the inner circle and outer circle of the people he
Inner circle - could be as small as 5 people who you rely on.
Outer circle - people you meet along the way
Position yourself as an indispensable part of their network. When you become indispensable to others, they will open their whole world to you, not just the things that you do in your job.
How can I help you? - ask this question everyday and really mean it. Look for ways you can figure this out in relationships. Ask the question and follow through. Ask only after you learn about the person both personally and professionally.
The way you build relationships is the way that you can help yourself personally and professionally.
Putting others before yourself allows you to ask for favors when you need them.
“If you lead with yourself, you’re going to leave with yourself.” Lead with wanting to learn about the other person.
If you help people help you by identifying the people you want to connect with, then you will have better connections and build deeper relationships.
Larry’s advice for nurturing inner circle relationships at a high level: Assess who your coveted inner circle relationships are. Ask your inner circle who they can introduce you to. Build the relationships before you need them.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of working so hard to hit your goals, and never network outside of your company.
Top networking mistakes: Not networking and building relationships Leading a transactional life and not focusing on philanthropy or other aspects of leading a better life.
Connect with Larry:
The NCG Factor
Find Larry on LinkedIn
Apply to work with Ryan at scalerevenue.io/apply.
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Unicorns aren’t as rare as you might think, and I’m convinced that by hacking the success of unicorns, we can create more of them!
Today, I’m sharing 3 ways Invisible unicorn companies have bootstrapped their way to a $1B valuation. What is an invisible unicorn? A company with a $1 Billion valuation without taking outside funding.
There are 3 methods of becoming an invisible unicorn: Presale Partner Sale Prototype Sale
Presale Example - Loot Crate - focused on efficiency over funding. On average it can take 18 months to get funding. That’s an 18 month sales cycle - an 18 month distraction! Instead, they focused on scaling the company organically.
They had a landing page and sold all these crates with geeky pictures. They took the revenue from selling the crates to actually buy the products in the crates that they already sold.
Tough Mudder - they presold registrations to races and the CEO used a $7000 investment and turned it into a company with $100M in annual revenue, They used the preregistrations to races to fund the building of the obstacle course.
Partner Sale Example - Clickfunnels - they provide marketing software and grew to over $100M in revenue with no outside funding. They achieved $100M in revenue in 3 years. Russell Brunson leveraged JV partnerships and did webinars and gave the JV partner 50% of revenue sales.
Prototype Sale Example - Simplisafe - they are a hardware business, which is typically a revenue intensive model. While they were providing the security systems and putting them out there, he kept creating prototypes that he could create at scale.
If you need help scaling revenue for your company, I’d love to help you. Go to scalerevenue.io/apply to apply to work with me.
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Today I’m sharing 3 important tactics in Palantir’s billion dollar sales playbook. Palantir is doing a few things differently than a lot of other SaaS companies. What they are doing right can be a lesson to companies from $1M to $1B, so I wanted to share them with you today.
3 Plays from the Playbook: Be flexible with game changing deals - Palantir had initial margins of 18% and they now have 55%, which is in line with other SaaS companies. Get really good at selling big deals - They have 149 customers, but 66% of revenue comes from 20 customers. They do a billion dollars a year from 149 customers. Systemize your second sales process - their average deal size grew 41% YOY. The average deal size from their top 20 customers grew 34% YOY. Across all segments their deal size grew by huge amounts YOY.
If you have a process built into your sales process to sell your existing customers more after they become your customers, your business can grow by leaps and bounds.
Case Study:
A company I was consulting for did not have a secondary sales process, but had great customer retention. We took one non-sales employee and spent 25% of their time focusing on serving customers at a higher level and systemizing the secondary sales process and in a month and a half the results paid for my 6 months of consulting fees. Just by focusing on the secondary sales process they made a huge improvement in their revenue numbers.
Remember - It’s 7-8 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to upsell existing customers.
If you need help scaling your revenue and want to see if I can help you, you are welcome to apply at scalerevenue.io/apply.
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Sometimes when you are going about the course of your daily life, you can run across situations that reveal amazing business lessons. That’s what happened to me last week when I was at the beach with my family on vacation.
All of my family and extended family rented a big beach house in Florida and we spent a lot of time each morning at the beach.
One morning around 11am, I was sitting on the beach reading my book while the kids were playing on the beach and my parents were hanging out and enjoying the family.
I kept feeling like I was hearing a familiar tune playing off in the distance. Over the course of a few minutes, the music became louder and more familiar.
The next thing I knew, all 7 of the kids in our family came running up to all of the adults asking if they could get ice cream!
Sure enough, a surfer looking dude came up the beach pulling a boat on 4 wheels and it had a gigantic cooler on the boat and it said “Gulfstream Ice Cream” since 1997.
It was 85 degrees and full sun and we had already been at the beach a couple of hours. We had planned on going to get the kids ice cream later that afternoon.
Suddenly, Grandpa (my Dad) looked at me and said, “What the heck, we’re on vacation!” Before we knew it, there were more than 20 people in line to get ice cream, and Grandpa bought a round for all the grandkids!
This leads me to the 3 important sales lessons that the top 1% of 1% practice - and that’s why this ice cream guy had been doing this since 1997! Consolidation of customers - choosing a family beach with different generations ensures that there are plenty of people to buy ice cream for the kids. It also means that the average order size may be 8-10, not 1-2. Cravings - be there at the exact right time customers are most likely to buy. We didn’t care that it was 11am and we hadn’t eaten lunch yet. We were hot and ice cream was the perfect remedy! Capitalize on the circumstance - because there were no other vendors on the beach, he could charge 2-3x the price because he executed on #1 and #2.
If your sales organization needs help scaling revenue, you can apply to work with me at scalerevenue.io/apply
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Do you know what it takes for a company to win? Today’s guest, Scott D. Clary, knows that companies win by having demand generation coupled with a strong and smart outbound playbook. Yet, most tend to focus on the outbound without getting the demand gen or the marketing piece.
Scott is a Career Sales and Marketing Executive who is rewriting the book on sales, marketing, and brands. He has worked with execs and entrepreneurs to 10x their business. He has sold and marketed to the most Fortune 500s and Fortune 1000s and featured in over 100 news sites. He speaks globally at industry conferences and has articles written in Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Hacker Noon, and The Startup. Currently, he is running a SAAS sales and marketing organization and is the host of the Success Story Podcast.
Scott understands how to create huge amounts of content to turn any organization into a media company, how to build a community around the content put out by a person or a brand, and how to build the marketing engine of tomorrow.
He is joining us today to share strategies for building the marketing engine of tomorrow and aligning that with a sales strategy.
Scott started working for Bell Canada right after finishing high school, and he was making more money from sales than almost everyone else he knew! He enjoyed the money and was good at his job because he was always very technical, and selling came naturally. He worked for Bell for eight or nine years, always in sales and moving through larger markets after completing university. He made a lot of money and even made the President’s Club for a couple of years. After his tenure at Bell, he went into a smaller telco company where he later went into the first leadership role in his career and sold to large enterprise companies. That role involved complex implementations and longer sales cycles.
He left when the company was bought by private equity and went on to do his own thing to consult with other companies and teach them what he had learned in enterprise sales and sales leadership. He did not do well on his own, so he partnered with two people. They did fairly well, almost hitting $1,000,000 at the end of year 1. He had some great experiences and learned some great entrepreneurial lessons. They had set everything up to be project-based, so he did not enjoy the place he was in, and they soon closed that business up.
Scott went back to work at the company that eventually led him to where he is now. They had an exclusivity agreement, so they brought Scott on board to bring their software products for broadcast to market through a company called Grass Valley.
After about a month-and-a-half, they were officially acquired. They have been growing aggressively for the past 2 years.
Scott is now a Director at Grass Valley, where he is running most of the SaaS development, SaaS sales, and Saas marketing, as well as helping to modernize, revolutionize, and change the business. Scott describes what he does at Green Valley to be like leading an innovation unit within a much larger company.
Grass Valley does about $600,000,000 in revenue per year.
Scott’s side-hustles are a podcast and writing a newsletter.
Any company needs to have sales and marketing alignment and congruence. Although that might seem obvious at a service level, if you take a deeper dive, you will realize how many companies have disjointed sales and marketing business units.
A process for implementing a strategy and execution process for sales alignment:
Step 1:
Find your first 50 customers. You then need to find a product-market fit and build out a customer profile or a buyer persona. After that, you need to give that to a marketer to develop demand against the customer profile or a buyer persona to start bringing in leads.
Step 2:
A sales leader needs to build an outbound sequence that matches the ICP and BP that your marketing has bought into, and is marketing to. The outbound sales messaging must target the same ICP buyer persona. Solving the business pain points with which CMOs tend to struggle should drive the majority of your marketing collateral, which should be the content on your blogs and social media, and be covered in your webinars.
The sales must use a personalized outbound, target the same profiles, and solve the same pain points as the marketing is advertising for. That will bring alignment.
Both the sales and marketing departments must be congruent and aligned with the personas to create the best possible customer experience. Having similar discussions in both business units will encourage CMOs to book a demo.
After getting the initial alignment, you must have your Marketing and Sales Executives constantly feeding information to each other to keep on updating that persona. There should also be scheduled one-on-ones between the VP of Marketing and the VP of Sales to discuss the lessons they have learned. That congruence needs to be maintained as the organization grows.
Scott feels that to be an effective marketer you have to take advantage of every single channel on which your company can show up.
To do that, you need an effective, reliable, and educational content strategy that can answer any question your buyer may have. The easiest way to do that is to have a long-form, educational piece of content that you break up into blog posts, YouTube videos, or podcasts. Then, break it up even further into 2-4-minute pieces that go on Facebook and LinkedIn. Break that down even further into a 60-second piece that can go onto Twitter or TikTok, or a 30-second piece, that can go onto YouTube Shorts, LinkedIn Stories, or Snapchat Spotlights.
To summarize: Show up all the time. Win the war of attention on social media. Find a content strategy that is replicable and scalable.
To repurpose a piece of content across the platforms: Figure out your target market. Get to know the questions that your target market has. Create a pillar piece of content and use it on a platform like a podcast to interview as many different experts as possible. Use questions that you know will drive traffic and that other COMs also want to know the answers to.
You can take it a step further by turning a video into a blog post by: Creating show notes for the podcast. You can write a blog post. You can use otter.ai to summarize your ideas before writing your blog post.
Title your blog post in line with the high-search volume queries that someone has to get Google to direct people to your article.
You can take the answers to your questions from the podcast to Quora to drive more traffic.
You can break down the podcast content into a 2-minute clip and optimize it for grabbing attention on social media. You can do the same thing, sub-60-seconds or sub-30-seconds, for Instagram Reels, TikTok, LinkedIn Stories, Snapchat Spotlight, or YouTube Shorts.
Remember that at least 90% of your content must be educational.
The best platform for creating revenue from Scott’s strategy for B2B is LinkedIn. For non-B2B, the only channel that Scott sees effectively flow into other social media channels is YouTube.
Links and resources:
Scott’s Website
On all social media: @ScottDClary
The Success Story Podcast
answerthepublic.com
Canva
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I’ve been having a lot of conversations with tech founders and CEOs as I try to understand the VC world more.
In the beginning, most founders just want funding. That’s all they need.
The business news cycle would have you believe that virtually every company is a unicorn and gets massive amounts of funding.
However, I want to give you a case study of a $300M exit so that you can understand the mechanics behind the numbers.
The numbers behind this case study are very telling.
Things you need to know as a Founder: Only 3% of companies make it through to get another round of funding VCs put in only about 10% of the investment up front VCs get 15% interest in the entire investment YOY VCs expect 3x,3x,2x,2x returns in each of the next 4 years VCs walk away with almost 2000% ROI Most founders get fired within 2 years of VC investment
If you are seeking VC funding for your startup, you should: Do your research Numbers don’t lie - understand what the expectations are Know what you are getting into - the shelf life of a CEO is less than 3 yrs.
Need help scaling your company? I may be able to help you scale and you can apply to work with me at:
https://scalerevenue.io/apply
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Would you like to know how to create a micro-community for your customers and learn to leverage community internally with everyone working for your organization?
The power and value of a community should never be underestimated! Building a community will allow you to gain more customers from referrals, provide more value and build long-lasting, impactful, and meaningful connections with people.
Today’s guest is Galem Girmay, the Co-founder of RevGenius. Galem built, developed, and cultivated her community from zero to 5,000 in just 3 months! She is joining us today to talk about the value of community and explain how to create a community internally and externally.
EPISODE NOTES
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Building a community for potential customers within an organization will enhance the diversity of the people joining that community.
You can look at building a community in two ways: You can do it internally with the people with whom you work, to build a stronger culture within the organization. You can do it externally by building strong relationships with your buyers, clients, or prospects.
It is powerful having a community of buyers and various personas all in one room because they learn from each other. They will gain from the value you provide them with, and they will look to you for guidance.
Creating a community will allow you to help people create networks to build themselves up and become impactful leaders within their industry. You will also gain more customers from referrals and provide even more value.
A virtual community is a community that starts online. After creating either an online or an in-person community, you will need to think about switching and creating a program that will also work the other way.
Some things that will help you when you create a community: Build out content for your buyers. Build out case studies with those in your communities. (That will give you direct access to your buyers or clients.) Provide insights.
Creating a buyer community will allow you to give different types of input to a diverse pool of people from various backgrounds and industries with different strengths and skillsets. It will also give you a different perspective that could help expose any blind spots that you might not have even known existed.
One benefit of having a strong virtual community is connecting with people all over the world and learning from them and their different cultural aspects.
Think about who your audience is and where to find them. Also, consider the different areas they are coming from. (Eg. enterprise, mid-market, or entrepreneurship.)
With all the changes that have been happening globally over the last six months, building a community is critical right now because it will help humanize the experiences that people have been having.
Having an online community helps people think outside of the box to find new ways to connect and build meaningful long-term relationships.
Building different programs for people, and providing them with value and additional resources, is a way to become a go-to thought leader and build long-term relationships in your community space.
Continuing education and exploration becomes a lot easier when you are part of a community.
When putting a large event together, you need to pre-plan and think about how you will support the people after the event. When creating a community, you need to get people into the community and also think about what you can do to hold people’s hands, keep them engaged, and convert them into a buyer, once they are in the community. You can continue to keep people engaged with conversations and content, and you can answer any questions people might have after a webinar in your community.
Galem’s suggestions for milestones when creating an online event: Find a platform like Slack to host the event. Invite all the speakers and create multiple channels within the platform for all the speakers. Get everyone who registers for the event to join a community so that they can get all the event resources and hopefully connect with you to have direct conversations and ask questions. Continue with your relationships going forward. That will be beneficial to everyone involved. Look at the entire online process from a holistic perspective, and humanize it wherever possible. Creating a micro-community is a great way to humanize the process.
To overcome your fears of starting a community: Understand why you are doing it, who you are doing it for, and how to make it happen. Think about the format (audio, video, or both) and how you want to present it. Keep your thought processes aligned with where you want to go. Think about how you can scale it in the future.
Galem’s community focuses on sales, marketing, revops, and leadership. When creating their podcast, they wanted to do things differently. They wanted people to engage and come back to their podcast regularly. So they decided to allow people to attend their recordings in person. They also wanted people to be able to jump in with their questions and get a response immediately, so Chalk.com allowed them to create a community room where people can listen and ask questions.
The biggest mistakes that people tend to make when building a community: Not fully understanding the mission and purpose behind the community. Not fully understanding what they want the outcome to be. Not having all their ducks in a row before launching and going live.
Links and resources:
Galem on LinkedIn and Twitter
The RevGenius website
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Currently, I’m in 2 masterminds for my own business development.
One of the mentors has a lifestyle business and he works about 15 hours a week and makes about $3 million a year. The other has grown a performance based business to almost a billion dollar valuation.
I just came back from a mastermind event just on fire with ideas to try and implement big things to hit a crazy goal.
When I got everything mapped out, and I was all hyped up and my brain was just on fire with all these ideas.
Then I looked at my top 3 goals for the week and I realized I didn’t hit any of my goals this week. What the heck was I doing?
When we look at one common theme of successful entrepreneurs, one thing they all have in common is this...an ability to stay focused!
That’s it! It makes all the difference though. So, I found this focus exercise in Dan Henry’s Digital Millionaire Secrets book: Write down the most important things - create a circle with all the things you are focused on, edge to edge as you go around the circle. Then draw lines towards the center so your circle now looks like pizza wedges. Now go and delete to complete - delete your focus areas down to 3 for right now. And you can’t go on to number 2 until you finish number 1. You always have to finish the next one before moving on to the next number.
I share a quote in this episode about what focus really is...it boils down to figuring out what to say no to!
I challenge you to do this focus exercise yourself!
Resources:
https://scalerevenue.io/apply - if you need help scaling revenue and implementing sales systems
https://Ryanstaley.io - if you want to connect to drop me a note
Follow me on LinkedIn
Digital Millionaire Secrets
by Dan Henry
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Are you tired of constantly receiving tons of spam from automated businesses? Although business automation is a growing trend right now, it is not for everyone. Today’s guest, Mark Firth, is a B2B Growth Expert who leverages LinkedIn regularly. He has attracted hundreds of clients to his business and made millions of dollars since early 2018. Yet, he has not touched a single piece of software in all that time.
Mark is joining us today to share his zero automation approach to running a successful business.
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Mark began his career in B2B sales in 2003, doing cold-calling. He started at IBM, then worked for Siemens, and then for what was known as the Dealer Channel in Telecommunications and IT in the United Kingdom.
Mark went into corporate to make money, have time, and get freedom but got none of those. Although he was earning six figures, it was not enough for what he wanted to do with his life. So, by the time he turned 30, he had had enough of the corporate world.
Mark started his business, Linkedpreneurs, to help other small and solo business owners to grow their B2B closed share consulting or small businesses. The difference between Linkedpreneurs and other organizations is that they use zero automation. Although Linkedpreneurs leverages LinkedIn, they have not used any software since early 2018. They believe in relationships, informing, entertaining, and educating.
In 2018, Linkedpreneurs stopped getting any leads. Immediately, they saw what that meant in terms of response, engagement, and quality of prospects. So over the next month, they messaged a subset of people personally and asked them why they did not respond. 80% of the replies they received fitted into 3 categories: I get so many of these messages every day, so leave me alone. (I.e. Linkedpreneurs were no longer standing out.) I’m not looking for what you are selling right now. (I.e. they were triggered in the wrong way. Statistics say only 3% of people are buyer-ready.) I can’t take you seriously when you send automated messages.
After that, they set about designing a system of personalization. It was a way of starting conversations using the information already available from people’s profiles to understand a bit about them. They supplemented that with a 2-minute video strategy, and it worked very well! Using that process got them hundreds of clients and made them millions of dollars!
Mark has systemized his way of doing manual messages by leveraging LinkedIn to start conversations with people. Conversations need context, so by looking at people’s LinkedIn profiles, he can find out everything he needs to know about them to create the reason for starting a conversation with them.
Everyone loves talking about themselves. Typically, Mark starts a conversation with someone on LinkedIn by asking them a relevant question about something going on in their life. That shows them that he has taken the time to look at their LinkedIn profile and paves the way for an intelligent level of conversation.
Give people context. Give them the seeds for a conversation, and create a grey opportunity for them to talk about how they are dealing with challenging circumstances.
Mark calls the second thing he does ‘Experts Take a Stance’. Everyone is asking questions, so you don’t stand out that way. The best way to elicit information from someone is to make a statement about a polarizing issue and give them the chance to correct what you have said. It will help you to select the individuals who share your interests and are up for a conversation.
All the B2B sales methodologies are based on open questions. However, Mark and his team have found that using statements is much more powerful than asking open questions.
The biggest mistake that Mark sees people making on LinkedIn right now is following the influencers. The content of many influencers is very broad, so you need to take a deeper look at what they are doing and know that it is a fit for you before following them blindly.
The biggest mistake that Mark used to see was people trying to follow the automation.
With B2B, you need to have a very specific market message match, and you need to focus on very specific problems. Otherwise, you could end up with lots of followers who do not need your service.
Mark feels that the direct messaging strategy is rarely an issue because direct messaging still works for some niches and offers. The product to offer is usually the issue, so people need to get more creative coaching.
If you want to work with someone to grow your business, find someone who understands marketing, and not with someone who understands a subset of tactics within marketing. The people you work with need to understand what the problem is that they are solving.
Be careful online. Do your due diligence. The general rule is that when something feels off online, it usually is.
Mark’s framework that you can apply to grow your mid-market B2B business: Forget about cold-prospecting and draw a timeline of your life. Include everywhere you lived, worked, and the schools, colleges you went to. Cross-reference those searches on LinkedIn. Message those people and start a conversation with them. Then ask to connect. By doing that, your conversation will have context. Once you have the process up and running, you can outsource it to a virtual assistant or a staff member.
Reframe your thinking. Think about context rather than lead generation. Start thinking about areas of commonality and shared interests to create the context for conversations with people.
Links and resources:
Mark Firth on LinkedIn
Mark’s website
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My mastermind was in Boise, ID with about 50 other entrepreneurs who are at the top of their game. It was a little bit intimidating at first, but eventually you realize that they are just like everyone else.
Russel Brunson taught for the entire 2 day event, and the last time I had seen him in person was when he was teaching to 5,000 people. This time, it was a much smaller group of about 50 people and I got so much out of it.
I’m obsessed with how successful companies have achieved their growth, and I’m always interested to hear what founders have done to achieve growth.
Russell Brunson grew Clickfunnels from $0 to $100 Million in just 3 years, without taking on any outside funding or Venture. The first year of Clickfunnels, they didn’t even run any paid traffic; instead, he leveraged relationships to grow.
Since I am doing the same thing in my business, this was very interesting to me.
Now that live events are starting to come back, I wanted to give you my 3 biggest takeaways from this event, and hopefully you can use them for your next event. Get strategic about partnerships - joint ventures Be hyper intentional about what you want to get out of it. 3 main takeaways. Map out and think through all the people who are there to identify the people that I wanted to talk to. How can I help them? Who can I seek out to help me?
I hope you can use this framework to get more out of your next live event!
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Brant was a typical IT guy, running a network and writing software. He was working for a manufacturing company that needed to get ISO 9001-certified for quality, so he became their Quality Manager in addition to all the other hats he was wearing at the time. Rather than using tons of paper, documents, and logs for the certification, Brant wrote the software to do it, and they passed their first audit with flying colors!
The auditor told Brant that it was one of the better software packs that he had seen. He suggested that Brant consider selling it. That was when the light bulb went on for him, and he knew that he had something valuable.
It was a big leap of faith because he did not have tons of money to invest in his product, nor did he have any investors. His equity was sweat and hustle! He did his research and knocked on the doors of companies that he knew needed his product.
The following year, Brant had their first product on the market, and he started selling it to local manufacturers. He got incorporated during the next 6 to 12 months. He did custom ERP solutions for many different industries as well as selling his quality management software.
Along the way, Brant was trained to be a Quality Auditor and a Quality Consultant. He also got into business process consulting in the manufacturing space and incorporated everything he did into a software interface.
Although most people consulting in the business process space hire programmers like Brant to write their software for them, which is usually pretty complicated, Brant did his in reverse. He got to where he is today by sticking with the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) method. His software is super simple. It has an easy user interface and a personal touch for customer service.
Selling something that he made that improved people’s lives was a game-changer for Brant.
Brant experienced explosive growth with QT9 Software within 3 years. They went from $1 000, 000 to almost $6 000, 000 in revenue with one salesperson and one person doing all the marketing.
He carved out the best way to sell his software and to reach the best people to sell it to by combining his sales and marketing into one.
Here is his process: He nailed his sales and marketing. He brought in good lead generation and started closing deals at a regular pace. He brought in a sales rep, trained him to do software demos and respond to prospects and leads, and shared as much of his knowledge with him as possible. He handed the reigns over to the sales rep and continued to support him.
He followed the same process with marketing.
Brant attributes much of his success with scaling to his hiring the right people. He recommends hiring people who are an exact fit for your mindset and the way you operate. After doing that, Brant stepped away and stopped selling but continued to support the sales and marketing side with his ideas.
To scale, you need to figure things out and get them down properly. Then bring in the right people to help you carve things out and deliver your message.
Hand things over to the people you have hired. Divorce yourself from the sales and operations side, and don’t feel compelled to keep on running things, writing software, or doing whatever your service is. Once you’ve got it down and your customers love you, transfer your knowledge and relay your information to someone capable of doing it.
Brant shares his top tips for cracking the code on selling for your company and then sharing that with your team.
On the sales side: He put himself in his customers’ shoes. (He was the customer at one point, so he reconnected with that.) He focused his message on his customers’ specific needs and pain points rather than pushing his product. He relayed to his customers how he could solve their specific needs and pain points.
On the marketing side: He did his own email campaigns and attended trade shows. He utilized Google as his #1 source for bringing in things. He looked for other ways to get people to find him. He used SEO and e-marketing methods. The e-marketing methods were fantastic! When he found something that worked, he fine-tuned it.
Brant used a lot of trial-and-error to figure things out and get himself out there. He started his process by looking at who in Google Ad Words was a marketing source (not a competitor) on all the keywords his customers were looking for, and then signed up with those sources right away. He could tell within 60-90 days whether or not they would work for him.
The biggest mistake people tend to make while trying to scale rapidly is not having the proper infrastructure in place. Also, many companies do not understand that scaling sales is substantially easier than scaling service.
Brant advises you to focus on your employees and care for them because it is way better to have them believe in your vision and have your back every step of the way when you are having growing pains! Do the same with your customer base, especially new customers, and you are sure to see your growth go through the roof!
Links and resources:
Brant Engelhart on LinkedIn
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I just had to share this with you because I’ve seen it completely change lives.
When Tony Robbins was in the process of writing the book, Money Master the Game, he interviewed 50 billionaires.
He found out that only 4 out of 50 billionaires were actually happy. Think about it - 4 out of 50 billionaires were happy and the rest weren’t.
How do you set up your role to support you at the highest level so you can support your clients at the highest level.
This concept punched me in the face when I was in the corporate world. One time I wasI talking to a woman who was high achieving and she was completely burnt out, frustrated and she had no time to herself between work and children. She had mom-guilt on top of it.
It took just a couple of small changes for her to get in a different mental space.
These 3 steps get your brain back in a good space: Don’t allow email for the first hour of your day. Don’t look at your phone for the first and last 30 minutes of your day. Give yourself some dedicated time to just think - you need space to be creative
When you are a high achieving and high intensity person, you really do need to give yourself some space each day without stimulation from screens and devices.
When you give yourself this space, you will come up with creative ideas and actually be able to prioritize your life and begin to architect your day in a way that allows you to perform at a higher level and also achieve fulfillment in your life.
Try it for a week and let me know how it goes for you!
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Jason got into sales by accident. When he was in high school, he wanted to be a forensic scientist. He even had a mentor but lost interest after discovering that the job involved sitting in a lab all day.
While in college, someone came into his classroom to talk about a company through which he could run a house-painting business and make some money during the summer holidays. Jason signed up without realizing that the job also involved marketing and door-to-door sales. He knew nothing about sales at the time, and although the average cost of a paint job was between $3,000 and $8,000, Jason did very well. He sold $100,000 worth of paint jobs over the summer. After that, he loved sales!
The biggest learning curve in Jason’s sales journey happened the following year, in 2009, when he returned as a Sales Manager. He taught other people how to sell, yet he had limited experience selling and prospecting.
Jason spent the next six or seven years with that company and started an outbound call center for them. That was how he got into the inside sales game.
Since 2013/2014, Jason has been working in the corporate space, consulting with companies to help them with their marketing and lead generation. More specifically, with Blissful Prospecting, he has been helping people land their first meeting.
Jason helps people with their emails and assists them with gaining more confidence on the phone, handling objections, and getting good qualified meetings by reaching out to people proactively.
Much of Jason’s target market has become hard to reach lately. People have been getting tons of emails, calls, and all kinds of ads, which makes it very hard for salespeople to get meetings right now. There are currently two ways in which salespeople attack that problem: They are determined to email and call as many people as they can. Although their outreach volume is high, the meeting quantity is usually low, and the quality of the meetings not good. As a result, there is often a lot of rejection. They customize everything for each individual in their target market. Although that sounds like a quality approach, it takes a lot more time than is necessary. So even though the response rate will be higher and the rejection lower, the volume of the meetings will not be there.
To find a balance between the two, you need to have a quality-first approach. Quality first means picking out a subset of individuals in a similar industry with similar job titles and a common use case or set of technologies. That will allow you to templatize three-quarters of your approach because you will be reaching out to people with similar problems, similar businesses, similar roles, and working on similar things. Then, you can customize the last bit.
When you optimize the volume, people will feel like it’s for them, and you will get quality meetings.
Outbound is about approaching a target market first and then putting something in front of them (like emails, phone calls, etc.), rather than putting something in front of people and waiting for them to come to you.
Jason does not recommend doing outbound with companies that do not have good inbound engines.
Your priority is to have excellent content and to know how to get your people to do something without having a salesperson calling them.
Outbound is all about how to take your great content and thought leadership and proactively put it in front of the people who will not come to you organically.
Think of ways to have a one-to-one conversation with someone and share things with them without them having to download anything. It is all about frictionless sharing. To know what to share with them, you need to think about what they are focused on, what they are working on, and what their priorities are. Then put content in front of them that will align with those.
The process in a nutshell: Ask your prospect what their top two priorities are and what problems they are having. (That will be content for top of the funnel that will help you get a meeting.) Consider how to control your prospect’s experience when you sell to them and deliver a personalized experience at scale. Create great content around those things.
To create great content from a sales standpoint, you need to think about curating content specifically for your prospects. It has to be relevant and credible, and your prospect needs to know that you took the time to curate what you thought would be helpful for them.
You will notice some clear patterns after asking more than a dozen people in various roles what their priorities are. That will help you provide context when you reach out to them as prospects and engage with them.
You need to move in the same direction and at the same pace as your prospects. To do that, get in front of them with something that they care about. Guestimate (make an educated guess) what their priorities are, and then do some research to back that up. Then you can have an intelligent conversation about something they truly care about.
The tools that Jason recommends are:
Seeking Alpha
Jason uses a three-part framework: Identify Engage Convert
Identify: Identify your ideal client profiles and your personas in the empathy piece. You need to understand the path of these people. (Jason calls it the Prospect Path.) Those are their priorities, problems, and their desired and undesired future state.
Engage: This is your messaging, comprising of your email, phone, and sequencing. You need to have a good multi-touch/multi-channel strategy. Keep your sequencing simple. Data shows that you need 10-12 touches before you can get hold of most of the people you reach out to, so use Jason’s Weekly Touch Pattern for 3 weeks in a row.
Jason’s simple Weekly Touch Pattern:
Day 1: Use the Triple Touch - Email, call and then send either a LinkedIn connection request or a voicemail. The message is focused on priority #1.
Day 2: (Do this two business days apart.) Call and email. Your email is a reply to the first one that says “Any Thoughts?”
Use short emails and then call. Follow that same pattern for 3 weeks in a row. Week 2 will be focused on priority #2. Week 3 will be focused on priority #3.
If you are doing full cycle sales, you need to think about segmentation. Create a strategy to tier your prospects. Don’t treat all your prospects equally. In other words, don’t spend the same amount of time going after a C-level VP person as you would a manager. Make sure that you spend your phone time on the people with whom you want to get meetings.
If you are not doing much in terms of outbound, think about how you can supplement what you are doing. Adding an extra meeting or two to your calendar each week can do a lot for your pipeline!
If you are a full-cycle rep selling enterprise, and your deal size is between 40 and 200K, you will need to spend about an hour a day on your productivity piece. In those 5 hours each week, if you spend time on Monday doing your research, you should manage to reach out to at least 2 or 3 companies per day. If you reach out to 10-12 companies per week and make contact with 2 people at each company, you could get 1 appointment per day.
Jason on LinkedIn
Blissful Prospecting Website
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Are you going to take the blue pill or the red pill for sales or sales systems?
That comes from the movie, The Matrix, created in 1999. What it comes down to is that the red pill is the willingness to learn a potentially life-changing truth that could be unsettling. Alternatively, by taking the blue pill, you could choose to stay in contented ignorance.
What has happened is that the market seems to have conditioned everyone to gear themselves towards taking the blue pill, which represents automation.
One of my mentors is well-recognized and has done some amazing things. He gave a talk once and sold $3 500 000 in a forty-five-minute presentation. When going over the concept of automation, he went on a rant about how his Twitter account got hacked. He reached out to them multiple times, told them what had happened, and asked them to help him shut his account down, but he never heard from them again.
Twitter is a publicly traded company, yet they ignored a massive security breach to someone’s account. I have seen that happen with other social media networks too. It happens because, once you are in the matrix, you become nothing more than a number.
When people adopt either digital or other customers, they think that if they automate everything, their work is done, and they never need to talk to their customers. That is living in ignorance, so I will give you a tangible example of something you can use to avoid that. You will notice the difference in your results if you use it.
This example is relative to sales:
Rep A had $1,200,000 in the pipeline and monthly recurring revenue and worked for 55 hours per week.
Rep B has $ 500 ,00 in the pipeline and monthly recurring revenue and worked for 35-40 hours per week.
At the end of the year, Rep A got $75,000 in net new monthly recurring revenue.
At the end of the year, Rep B got $125,000 in net new monthly recurring revenue.
The difference is that Rep B got 150% of the results while working 20 hours less per week. If you scaled that to a team, can you imagine what that would do for you, your company, and your team?
The simple difference was that Rep A took a quantity approach, and Rep B took a quality approach.
The quality approach taken by Rep B was deeply seated in him spending quality time with his customers and becoming emotionally connected to them.
Rep A used automation as much as possible and blasted out tons of content with email messaging.
Every organization typically has a sales process and a market strategy. We included a relationship strategy for every account to scale from zero to $30 000 000 with only four salespeople.
A relationship strategy is when you have a longer sales cycle that involves multiple people (say between five and thirty) in a complex solution. It works for smaller deals as well as for super-large deals.
The process for creating a relationship strategy: Take all the players into account, and map them out by department ( IT, Finance, and Operations/Sales/Marketing). Prioritize the departments (I call them decision-making funnels) on a scale of 1-3 (1 being heavily influential with budget and authority). That will clarify the department on which department you should focus most. Insert the players in those departments vertically. (The C-Level, the VP, the Director, the Manager, and the end-user in that department) Rate your relationship status with each of those players. Use the scale of 1-10 as you go through the sales cycle and have different checkpoints at each point in the sales cycle. (E.g. after the initial meeting, after the demo, after the discovery, after the proposal.)
As you go through a longer sales cycle of three months plus, you have the time to reflect on, upgrade, and transform your relationships. So, for example, you can upgrade a relationship that started as a 1, into a 10, over time.
By attaching this one simple exercise to your sales process, you will know exactly what the opportunity is when you get to the end of the process. You will also feel pretty confident that you will close the multi-million-dollar, life-changing deal for your organization. You cannot automate this process, however. You have to do the work manually to get the deal done.
This process is sure to make a big difference in your business, but only if you take the red pill and implement what I shared with you today.
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Shawn Finder is the General Manager of Sales at Autoklose in Canada. Ollie Whitfield is in charge of product, marketing, and partnerships for Autoklose in the UK. Autoklose is a VanillaSoft brand.
Shawn began his career as a semi-professional tennis player. Then, in 2014, he started a data business called Exchange Leads, and in 2017, he parlayed that business into Autoklose and used the database built by him in 2014. Then, about seven months ago, Autoklose was acquired by VanillaSoft.
Shawn grew Autoklose from zero to seven figures in about 18 months. Since the VanillaSoft acquisition, Shawn has been managing the sales team at Autoklose as the product line of VanillaSoft.
Ollie got involved with marketing immediately after finishing school. He continued with marketing for the next 8 years until he moved over into the world of SAAS. Now he is with VanillaSoft and Autoklose, where they do product marketing, partnerships, webinars, and podcasts. Ollie’s job involves a lot of thinking, figuring things out, and trying new things.
Shawn scaled from 0 to 7 figures in 18 months by:
- Keeping things bootstrapped and very lean.
- Hiring the best people.
- Building a team culture.
You cannot scale on your own. You need to make sure that you invest in the right people, and continue to grow those people, to become successful.
The first person Shawn hired was the VP of Sales. He ran the sales team and did demos. It was tough to decide whether his first hire should be a salesperson or a CSM.
Shawn recommends that your first hire should be a mixture of a salesperson and someone who knows how to do customer success. That person needs to ensure that your first clients are not just using your product but using it correctly.
What Shawn did early on to drive demos and drive customer interest:
- Six months before they had a product ready, Shawn was already building an email list.
- He had a landing page ready, talking about what he was building.
- Shawn kept on building through communities, networks, and Facebook groups, where he continuously spoke about what he was building.
- He often made 30-second videos to show everyone how things were developing and what they looked like.
The result was that on the day they launched, they had well over 500 pre-booked demos.
Shawn’s goal was to make people feel like they were investing in his product rather than buying a solution.
Shawn has never used paid ads. He built his email list organically through webinars and talks, and he created a book with 27 top influencers in sales. He also built relationships with all the influencers, and they promoted his book and shared his posts. He also became known through word-of-mouth and using LinkedIn.
Creating a podcast has worked exceptionally well for Ollie in the SAAS and B2B space. As a result, he has learned:
- To use an Excel spreadsheet to track the guests.
- To run the podcast as lean as possible, and use free software whenever possible.
- To use the podcast to educate the audience with different markets, companies, and business models.
- How to do his business better and how to grow his brand.
The podcast has helped Shawn and Ollie reposition their brand. Before launching, they did a 2-3-minute explanation of what people could expect, who they would be interviewing, and why people should care. They also made sure that the podcast would be discoverable on platforms like Apple and Spotify and highlighted the headlines that would follow. They started with five podcasts in the first week and then dropped to two shows per week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Now, they do an email blast once a week, where they pick the most relevant podcast for their audience, cut a short clip, and post it on their social media platforms with their company brand profiles behind it. Ollie usually expects a hit mark of around 50% when he sends all the information to the podcast guests, and they share it with their audience.
The top 5 things that Shawn and Ollie would do to grow their revenue and scale fast with limited resources and a high-ticket solution in the range of $40,000 plus:
Shawn:
- Find out what works, and then double down on that. (It could be content writing, a LinkedIn or Facebook strategy, or even cold emails.)
- Build lean. (In other words, wear many hats.)
- Be productive.
Ollie:
- Build your brand as early as possible- either personal, company, or both. (That does not include SEO.)
- Learn everything possible from outreach using LinkedIn, email, phone, or whichever channel you think will work best. Become proficient first, and then become an expert as soon as you possibly can.
When lean, Ollie executes on both inbound and outbound by having good calendar discipline.
Shawn would recommend hiring a content writer. Content, like blogs and e-books, and SEO were helpful for his company to get more organic long-term traffic.
Links and resources:
Shawn Finder on LinkedIn
Email Shawn – shawn@autoklose.com
Ollie Whitfield on LinkedIn
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Today, I will give you some examples of something that I love! It is a technique known as the Single-Serving Customer or the Third Door.
The concept comes from a movie called Fight Club about twenty years ago, with Edward Norton and Brad Pitt. In the movie, Edward Norton was a defeated soul in a corporate job who spent a lot of time flying across the US to customer meetings. After meeting Brad Pitt on a flight, Edward Norton says to himself: “You are the most interesting single-serving friend I ever met.” That was an excellent way to describe the kind of person we tend to strike up a conversation with on a plane. They feel like our best friends at the time, but we never see them again.
Thinking about that, I realized that it also applies to what often happens to us in the corporate world. You meet someone and get excited because they feel like your best friend. But after getting them as a customer, you never contact them again. That is the concept of the Single-Serving Customer.
A while ago, I read a book called The Third Door by Alex Banayan. The author describes how he hacked his way onto the Showcase Showdown on The Price is Right while he was a college student. Even though he knew nobody when he started, he applied the core concept of his book. That can also be applied to sales, business, or life in general. The result for Alex Banayan was that he went from being a college student to interviewing people like Pitbull and Lady Gaga, then Warren Buffett, and finally, getting his pinnacle interview with Bill Gates!
The Third Door means that there are essentially three ways in which you can get into a club:
- You can stand out front and wait in line with everybody else to get in.
- You can pay big money for VIP access.
- You can get in with the third door, which is the door at the back club where you know someone. You walk right in, get a table, and get served.
The club could represent your customers, a network, or influencers with whom you would like to connect.
The concept of the book, The Third Door, is about scaling. It clarifies how getting deep with your relationships and helping other people will allow you to open that third door without having to wait in line or pay lots of money. That concept can be applied to sales and influence if you look at it at scale.
As a result of automation, tech tools, and AI, many people tend to look at a single-serving example to get new customers. They also try to leverage things at scale without the perspective of having an individualized and deep relationship. When you apply the concept of the third door, you will start to see some crazy results!
Here is a tangible example of how I applied the concept of the third door with my customers:
We focused on a secondary sales process for a SAAS company worth about $6 500 000 in revenue. (Once you get someone as a customer, you need a secondary sales process to get them to upsell and expand.) The company was transitioning someone from training to sales. That person spent only 25% of their time on sales over the following two months, and their results were between 300 and 400% return on positive reviews. (Social proof.) They also got tons of feedback on what was and was not working well in their market, and they were on track with 200-300% of the revenue from existing customers in the previous year.
Most companies are unenthusiastic about creating a secondary sales process. That is not good enough because they spent a lot of time acquiring those customers, and it costs seven times as much to acquire a customer as it does to get additional business from existing customers. So, once they get that customer, they do not have a specific sales process to continue serving them and expand the amount they spend.
Some companies are so focused on doubling or tripling their revenue that they fail to notice the gold and diamonds that they have sitting right there in their customer base of people they love. Yet they are chasing someone else.
Do not have your customer be your single-serving friend. Serve that customer and continue to serve them. Put in your secondary sales process to bust open that third door to multiple companies and customers that are like your existing customers by continuing to upsell and expand. You can create a warm lead machine from scaling referral systems.
Implement a secondary sales process, and you will see massive results! Just by doing just this one thing, you can either double your sales or double your revenue in twelve months. You will have more fulfilled customers and get tons of feedback.
Links and resources:
Books mentioned:
The Third Door by Alex Banayan
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Max started his entrepreneurial journey in the eighth grade, selling his Halloween candy to the kids on the school bus.
In college, he pivoted from architecture to doing a Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies (BIS). He also started his bike-share program, Rack n Ride, for which he won a business plan competition and got a grant from the university.
Max went on to do another startup called Last Call Social, where he did social media campaign management for small businesses. After that, he applied for several jobs in San Francisco and landed a job with Udemy, which was a big break that got him into tech. He then got a chance with a company that raised about a million dollars in venture funding.
After starting Saleshacker as a media company, Max did a blog, meetups, conferences, started doing angel investing, and wrote his first book, Hacking Sales.
Max ran Saleshacker for five years.
One of his first investments was a company called Outreach in 2014-2015. He sold his company to Outreach in 2018 and became their VP of Marketing for the short term. A year later, he moved into a sales engagement role where he focused on category creation, evangelism, and strategic deals.
He then started the GCM Fund and wrote a book on career hacking, detailing advice from his experiences from his career journey. He also wrote a book on sales engagement.
Max wrote his first book, Hacking Sales, in six days because he wanted to make it an e-book. Although he knew nothing about writing at the time, tons of new sales technology was coming out, and he wanted to profile all of it.
He sent out a form, asking about seventy vendors about their companies and their customer use cases. Of those, he got about fifty back. That gave him some content to thread through his book, along with his processes. He then spent six days in Bali putting it all together. After coming home, he had it edited and published. He sent it out to his Sales Hacker list and sold many copies of it. After two months, Wiley wanted to buy the rights to the book, and Max refused. Ten months later, he agreed, however, because he had saturated his network by that time. So he became a published author.
In 2017, LinkedIn had an algorithm for posting your career information that easily got vast numbers of views and likes. Max took advantage of that. After every post he did, he would copy and paste the post into Google Docs, along with the stats, to keep track of things. Max ended up with about 13,000 words of valuable information with which people were resonating. He decided to polish it up, figure out what he needed to add to it, and turn it into a book. He completed everything within three days, and that was how his book, Career Hacking, came about.
Before writing his books, Max compiled as much information as he could from credible sources.
He found it helpful to get his expert peers to help him out with his books because that made it easier for him, and it also added credibility to his writing.
Max shares three systems for scaling startups for small to mid-size businesses:
- Figure out what your ideal customer looks like.
- Find where those people are and get them into your funnel in some way. (Use an outbound strategy or drive them to your website.)
- Perfect your messaging.
After doing that, you can run either a scalable or a non-scalable process.
The core framework for Max’s book Sales Engagement involved using information about 25 different companies. The things that separated the exceptional companies from the rest were:
- The exceptional companies were clear about their ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) before starting the rest of their process.
- The exceptional companies made lists of their target accounts to ensure that they were all lined up and ready to be sold to.
- For their messaging, the exceptional companies had an outreach system of action to refine things over time.
- The customer development of the exceptional companies was well-honed.
To improve your messaging, take a step back and talk to your customers. That will help you understand what you need to be saying to the different types of customers.
Companies that have not yet raised from seed should make a concerted effort to get traction, show growth, and get the money they need. That will build a strong foundation. Once they have the money, they can step back and refine things. It would be wrong for those companies to continue focusing on doing that after acquiring the money they need.
In other words, you need to find something that works first before you worry about scaling, rather than scaling first and then trying to find something that works.
Some of the most effective tools for lead lists are:
- Resources to help you find your ICP or the accounts you want to go after.
- Contact information.
At Outreach, they use data providers for companies in their region. They use Zoom information on the sales side and Clearbit on the marketing side. They also use LeadIQ and Seamless.AI. Research your ICP and then find a database to supply you with the contact info you need.
It is critical to have an automated platform like Outreach that includes sentiment and attribution for successful outbound.
Currently, Max feels that there is more sales technology available than we need.
Links and resources:
Follow Max on LinkedIn
Max on Twitter
At Outreach
At Saleshacker
At GTM
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Today, we will get into the biggest mistake that unknown brands make with enterprise sales.
When I was leading my team before, we closed over 35 $500,000 plus deals. After completing so many cycles, I started to notice some specific patterns.
Once, we had a deal that was not big according to enterprise standards. We attended between 18 and 20 meetings over about two years and flew back and forth. That was not a smart use of time, based on the size of the deal and what we were doing. We ended up burning a lot of time, energy, and effort without even getting the deal. It was painful, and I don’t want you to have to go through that.
I have seen companies taking 2 to 3 years to get big deals. They focus on process, leads, marketing, or ideal customer profile, which are all important. However, nobody seems to focus on time or how fast they can make the deals go through the sales process.
Once we started focusing on what we could do to speed up the process exponentially, we compressed large deals that would normally take two years down into between five and nine months. I call that “time to close”.
Here’s a simple example:
If you have 12 $200,000 deals in a 12 month period, it equals $4 Million in revenue annually. If you focus on tightening the time frame and reduce it from twelve to six months, you could get to a total of $8 million annually. So, just by focusing on how to speed up the process, you will double your revenue with the same resources.
When things happen in a much tighter time frame, you will have happier customers, people who are much more engaged, and more predictable growth.
Now, when I engage with companies on scaling revenue, I do a minimum of a three month-engagement where we implement a seven or eight-figure sales system within that time frame, rather than doing a six-month or a year-long engagement.
There are four quick steps you can take to do that:
- Identify the average sales-cycle length for your big deals.
- Identify the number of weeks per stage.
- Identify the longest stage.
- Ask your prospects what would speed up the longest stage. (Ask at least ten of your prospects that question.)
If you are relentless in following those four steps, you will begin to see the patterns. In doing that, you will be able to halve the time it takes to make the sale and double the revenue.
This method applies to any type of sales process.
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Anthony Blatner came to the marketing world via the tech side of things.
Anthony is the Chief Advertising Officer at Speedwork Social. He started his career at IBM, doing software development and building e-commerce stores. After leaving IBM, he started a mobile app development agency where he built mobile apps for various companies, from big tech companies down to startups. That was in the very early days of mobile apps, and Anthony saw that some software and apps did well and even went viral with a good marketing or distribution plan.
Anthony found himself getting pulled into helping his clients with their marketing after building apps for them. That was how he made the transition into the world of marketing.
Anthony sold his mobile app development agency several years ago. Since starting Speedwork Social, he has spent several years focusing on LinkedIn ads and B2B. He now helps tech and B2B companies use LinkedIn ads to reach their target customers and manage their ad campaigns.
Links and resources:
Anthony Blatner on LinkedIn
On Speedwork Social website
Anthony’s email - Anthony@speedworksocial.com
LinkedIn ads is a more expensive platform than most other ad platforms, so for your sales funnel calculation, you need your LTV (Life Time Value) to be at least 15K for the ROI (Return on Investment) to make sense on LinkedIn.
Most of the LinkedIn ad campaigns start at between $8 and$12 per click. The lead costs are usually between $50 and $100 to start, depending on who you are targeting.
There are several reasons for using LinkedIn paid ads:
- If you are a B2B company that needs a targeting niche professional at scale.
- Targeting a specific decision-maker at a specific company.
- LinkedIn will be one of the platforms least impacted by the rollout of the iOS 14 changes.
- LinkedIn is the only place to have many of the targeting options for B2B companies.
An example of what a LinkedIn ad campaign would be:
- Start with who you want to target and the offer you would like to put in front of them. (A sales funnel.)
- Package your offer into an ad unit that will show up on LinkedIn and grab someone’s attention, and then position your product or service as a solution or option to help them. (A lead magnet.)
- Once you have an email or someone has been to your website, your sales team can follow up with them directly and move them down the funnel. (The follow-up.)
Anthony recommends a multichannel approach in the follow-up.
When someone signs up for a lead magnet:
- Get them to the next page with the lead magnet embedded on it right away. (That is when they will most want to read it.)
- Send them an email with some links so they can scroll around and learn more.
- Make contact soon after they sign up, and have your sales team ready to call out.
Look for the deal size and the target-ability of your audience.
Your minimum audience size should be around 100 000 people on LinkedIn. Your absolute minimum can go down to about 20 000- 30 000 people if you know what you are doing and who to target.
Anthony does not recommend importing your Facebook campaign to LinkedIn.
The iOS 14 rollout will have an impact on retargeting. Basic retargeting will be limited, and the audiences will be a lot smaller.
An actionable five-step framework for using LinkedIn ads:
- Take your best piece of content (or create something valuable for your industry or target audience)
- Have a good lead magnet
- Create a lead-generation campaign on LinkedIn (Be very specific about who you target)
- Set up a lead-magnet
- Start the rest of your sales process
A tip:
- In your lead form, ask for the individual’s LinkedIn profile URL. That will help you learn more about them to evaluate if you are getting the right people.
- Before you launch, set up a few different split tests so that you can see some performance data coming in over a month.
- If you want to run a small test, ballpark about $3000 for your ads for a month.
- Consider what your typical sales process and sales cycle are.
- Look at how many of your leads have made it through to the next step, and how many people have purchased over three months. (From there, you can start calculating some ROI metrics for your campaign.)
Most people doing extended campaigns spend around $5000 per month.
The biggest mistakes Anthony sees are:
- Targeting too big an audience.
- Trying to drive sales by offering free demos or consultations to people who do not know what you do.
- Trying to start too directly and too fast.
Anthony recommends that you start with image ads. Image ads usually convert a lot better because someone can view an image and digest it immediately.
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Harpaul Sambhi was raised in the suburbs of Toronto, Canada. His lifelong desire to impact and help millions of people motivated him to start his first business, Careerify.
The premise of Careerify was employee referrals, and they empowered every employee to become a recruiter. They built technologies that, with a couple of clicks, helped their employees leverage their social networks to find and refer people who would be a good fit and available for the jobs at hand. That created a win-win-win situation for the employer, the employee, and the candidate.
Careerify was bootstrapped by Harpaul, and he scaled it to a quarter of a million users and a couple of million dollars in revenue in eighteen months. Careerify was sold to LinkedIn.
Harpaul recently started his second business, Magical, which focuses on automating soul-crushing, repetitive tasks.
With Careerify, Harpaul experienced several years of trying many different things and failing miserably.
One of his mentors told him that to be successful, you have to be unconventional. That means you should be on either end of the pack, but not in the middle. Because when you are in the middle, you become just another competitor amongst the thousands against whom you are competing.
Harpaul looked at the conventional things that he and his competitors were doing and saw that they were all doing the same things, like inbound marketing, messaging, and webinars. He decided to change tack. He realized that people like to do business with people they trust. So he started thinking of ways to create trust with people.
The product Harpaul was selling at Careerify was employee referrals. Referrals became their sales engine, and they started using their technology to provide referral solutions. Referrals became about 65% of their business. Then, they began using growth tactics to rev things up even more by combining outbound and inbound with the intelligence they had been gathering about people’s networks to acquire new customers.
Harpaul felt a high likelihood that his current customers would be interested in what their alma mater is doing. That brought about a solid 7x increase in the conversion rates of email responses and responses overall.
Harpaul points out that mailing someone a personal note is an unconventional thing to do. It will cost you no more than $1.50, and it will have a much higher conversion rate than sending out an email.
Building trust with someone unknown usually gets done through people or affinity via brands. Using trust as a tactic along with the tactic of land and expand, helped Careerify grow very quickly.
After selling Careerify, Harpaul stayed on with LinkedIn, on their product team, and he even helped with LinkedIn’s transition to Microsoft. At Microsoft, he found the partner ecosystem to be phenomenal! Now, when he thinks about selling to, marketing, or building relationships with larger businesses, he no longer takes his failures personally. Working for Microsoft also allowed him to gain a better understanding of how to triage, get into deals, and not lose deals, to begin with.
While at Microsoft and LinkedIn, Harpaul was fortunate enough to be a part of some of their corporate development and evaluations. That taught him that corporate development could get done at a lower scale without buying a big company. He points out that very few small business owners, or people with between zero and 250 employees, think about user acquisitions as a way to do asset deals for user acquisition.
Approximately 60% of Harpaul’s new team is from LinkedIn and Microsoft.
For Harpaul, everything boils down to people wanting to work with people that they trust and like. That boils down to recruiting, sales, and how you build your life. With some of the deals he looked at with acquisitions, if Harpaul did not like the people, and even though the technology was great, he would not agree to partner with them.
With social acquisitions, you should ensure that the users, the entity, and the asset you are buying, will ultimately continue to live on in its current form because that is where the success lies.
The idea for Harpaul’s new company, Magical, took twelve years to become a reality. Magical is a product that studies and learns what people are doing and then does their repetitive tasks. Most of us, while doing a repetitive task, have wondered if a computer could do it. That thought was always on Harpaul’s mind throughout his career. He realized that although we are all unique as individuals, our processes can get summed up in a handful of fundamental frameworks. Sourcing, for example, could apply to sales, recruiting, or even verticals in real estate. So Harpaul decided to automate the process with Magical. Their goal is to remove the soul-crushing tasks from people’s lives, to allow them to do what they love. Magical is still in stealth, but you can sign up on here.
Links and resources:
Magical website
Harpaul Sambhi on Twitter and LinkedIn
Email Harpaul – harpaul@getmagical.com
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Scaling is a hot topic right now. Companies are desperate to do it through any means, even by taking on funding - VC funding or PE funding, in order to scale revenue.
Today, I’m going to share with you one of the best ways to scale revenue that is hiding in plain sight. It’s a resource that few companies tap into to the fullest potential.
I’ve found examples of 3 companies that are doing this extremely well, and that is selling your existing customers more products and services every single year.
Tapping into your existing customer base for revenue growth is this resource hiding in plain sight that I am referring to.
Example #1: Salesforce is one company that leverages their existing customers to the extent that 73% of their new bookings come from existing customers.
You’ve heard me talk extensively about how smart this is from a company’s perspective. I’ve seen as high as 80% of revenue coming from existing customers before.
These deals are great because:
- They close faster than new deals (⅓ of the time)
- There is less paperwork involved
- Trust is already established
This is just a massive lever that can be pulled to scale revenue.
Example #2: Zoom is a company with around $2 billion in annual revenue. Zoom is selling their existing customers 30% more for at least 13 quarters in a row. They are clearly doing something right to continually upsell their existing customers more and more each quarter.
Example #3: Slack just got acquired for close to $28 billion. They have $1 billion in annual recurring revenue. Slack is actually adding more new seats from existing customers than from new customers every month.
I realize you probably aren’t the size of a Slack, Zoom, or Salessforce. But you don’t have to be, to put this tactic in play in your company. There is a beautiful simplicity in this process.
The fastest way to add revenue to your bottom line is:
- Create upsells
- Create cross sells
- Create an expansion engine
So, that’s easier said than done, right? Not so fast. It’s actually much easier than you think.
- Understand your customer and have a continuous review process with them.
- Compensate your sales reps for upselling your existing customer base.
- Always be seeding news sales and selling in every review.
This is so critical because every time you solve a problem for a client, several new ones will probably pop up.
When you do this you will begin to build a recurring sales engine, just like Salesforce, Slack or Zoom.
Many times, people step over dollars to pick up pennies. New customers are not the only way to drive revenue. Your existing customers are waiting for you.
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Today, I’m talking about a cool nugget that I recently learned about. I am referring to the hidden sales system that helped Box, now a ten billion-dollar company, grow from zero to four million users in a little more than eighteen months.
I want to share this system with you because it is easily applicable, anyone can use it, and it can make a massive impact on your business.
A guy named Adam Hayes did a write-up about this system on Twitter. It was one of the growth playbooks of Box, which is now a ten-billion dollar company. It is the sales system that Box used to grow from zero to four million users. It is simple and easy to use, and any business can take pieces of the system and apply them.
Box went viral in the beginning. It was successful for several reasons after posting a three-minute demo:
- Their position in the market. (It allowed people to get rid of the USB drive.)
- They were solving a complex problem in a simple way.
As a result, Box started to pique interest and gain excitement. They got a wait-list of around 75,000 people, and I found their approach super cool!
After that, they tried many different routes to get traffic, inbound leads, and create a pipeline.
I talk to CEOs consistently, and the number one problem that both sales leaders and CEOs experience is their pipeline.
In the beginning, Box was using SEM (Search Engine Marketing) on Google, and they were acquiring customers between $233 and $355 for their $99 product. Their return on advertising was terrible! What they did next, however, was near and dear to my own heart. It caused them to take off. I have used this myself, and I hope my clients also implement this system because it works like fire!
Rather than monetizing and getting as much revenue as possible from every person, they implemented a referral system. (You get an additional 500 megabytes worth of space for free for every person you bring on.) By doing that, they increased their referrals by 60%. When they talked about their growth, half of it was attributed to referral mechanics.
What they did was simple. In the last part of the onboarding process, they asked users to recommend and add some of their friends to Box. After doing that, they kept on growing and growing!
All they did was offer extra space in return for referrals, and in 2010, they hit the four million users mark!
In 2008, Box had 100,000 users. Then, only fifteen months later, in January of 2010, they had 4,000,000 users! Most of their users came from word of mouth and viral. They said that 35% of their daily signups were coming from their referral program. Since they launched, they have seen a month-over-month growth of between fifteen and twenty percent from embedding a simple referral system into their implementation process!
Can you imagine what it would do for your business if you did the same thing across multiple points?
I think that taking a page of growth from the playbook of a ten-billion-dollar company is something truly amazing that you can apply very simply.
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Van West is the CEO and Founder of Vocalytics and one of the founding members of The Open Voice Network.
The origin story for Vocalytics started two-and-a-half years ago, although the business started officially about a year-and-a-half ago.
Van got into marketing in his early twenties. By his mid-twenties, he had worked for several start-ups. He got tired of the marketing side of the business, however, and wanted to step more into active business development and a sales role and have more influence on building an actual business. Van discovered that his calling was to build companies. Over the last ten to twelve years, he has raised some venture, brought some products to market, built solutions, built consumer, and then built enterprise. He loved going into the enterprise space over the last six years. Specifically as an enterprise SAAS person and providing value at the top tier of the industry.
Five or six years ago, Van had a lot of success. He was the first key hire into a computer vision start-up where they essentially took dumb security cameras and made them smart.
Part of the origin story of Vocalytics happened several years ago. Van realized when integrating with security cameras that most of the cameras had an embedded microphone on board. But nobody was accessing that data or putting it to use, even though the technology was available and accessible. Currently, there are more than two billion security cameras in the world. And connected microphones are embedded in security cameras everywhere. Vocalytics got started with Van looking for ways to leverage that data for enterprise intelligence.
Van considers it to be enterprise SAAS when you are selling to companies the size of Fortune 1 in Arkansas. When dealing with those big companies, Van has had most of his experience driving seven to eight-figure deals over the last five or six years.
Clubhouse has added a lot of value to the market by taking widely available technology and creating an app and a platform for people to broadcast themselves as thought leaders and engage in conversations with incredible individuals. Van has not had much time to dive into it himself, however.
Vocalytics is a very solutions-oriented company, and they fit into specific use-cases as buckets. Their technology turns dumb noises into intelligent sounds. They use machine learning and artificial intelligence in different ways to classify the background noise and clean it up. They have a portfolio of over 500 ambient and acoustic sounds in their library to help them understand behaviors and activities and the environments in which the sounds occur.
At Vocalytics, they focus on integrating with security cameras to produce safety and security moments. And to accurately interpret, understand and classify those safety and security moments in real-time.
Vocalytics got built with privacy as a human right. Privacy is a fundamental pillar of how they architected all of the company. They keep their processing local and run tiny ML to keep their data secure.
Van sees the market shifting out of facilities and into the home in the future.
Van feels that you’re not establishing a baseline unless you are having an organic interaction. That allows you to measure how successful an interaction was, improve it, and coach around it.
Van’s experience in enterprise SAAS has been going into prop tech, integrating with the physical world infrastructure to extrapolate value from artificial intelligence and machine learning, and leveraging those technologies to extract value from existing assets, and managing his customers’ expectations.
Vocalytics has started to hit their stride in understanding that the market, the world, and the society we are living in today have to be built towards the new normal and not the normal that we all grew up in. So they spent much of the last year working on customer development.
Vocalytics has an opportunity right now to provide some incredible value for the health, safety, and security of the world we’re living in-Covid and beyond, and branching out into customer experience later on down the line.
Links and resources:
Vocalytics website
Van West on LinkedIn
Email Van West - van@vocalytics.ai
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I started a podcast about two-and-a-half years ago. I stopped after only eight episodes, however, because it involved too much time and effort.
Now, I know that there are ways that you can outsource a podcast at a low cost and have a lot of the production work, including the editing and the posting done for you. So all you need to do is come up with something creative. Then show up, talk, and create value for your audience.
About ninety percent of podcasts stop after ninety days. I am on episode 76 of my current podcast. I have been doing it for about seven or eight months now, and I have met the most amazing people!
Last week, I met the Chairman and the CEO of the fastest-growing company in Chicago. I met the CEO and marketing head of the fastest-growing platform in SAAS right now. I met the founder of multiple companies that led to a 1.8 billion dollar exit. And new customer opportunities have popped up on top of that too in the last week! I’m talking about Tres Comas. It has transformed the way I am thinking.
Leveraging a show provides relationship opportunities, revenue opportunities, and partnership opportunities.
Leveraging a show will expand your brand and your legacy. At the same time, it will transform the way you think. (It did that for me.)
In the eighty’s, when Tony Robbins was not yet a well-known name, he mastered NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming). Eventually, his status and results got to the point where he made an agreement with the Army. ‘
The shooters in the Army had a massive failure rate. Tony Robbins claimed that he could get the worst shooters to hit an 80% success rate by working with them for just one day. So, he spent a few hours with the best of the best shooters, looking at how they were doing things and reverse-engineered that.
He looked at three things:
- What they did specifically, piece-by-piece.
- The order in which they executed the things they did.
- What they believed. (Most people do not look at their belief patterns.)
Tony Robbins got close to an 88% success rate with those who were failing their shooting test!
Imagine if you had a show. And you were constantly getting inside the heads of people with different views and different perspectives who were exponentially more successful than you. Can you imagine what it would do for your business if you could understand their beliefs around what made them successful and happy, what they did at the micro level, and the order in which they did it? Can you imagine what that would do for you?
60% of people only use social media for the news.
The people you surround yourself with correlate directly with your opportunities to grow as a person. And to grow your brand, your company, and your influence. And also to make the impact on the world that you want to make. Having a show is the best way to do that.
Imagine how many people could get your message or how many people could benefit from your solution if they knew about it. You could be serving your audience by helping them understand that.
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Terry Jones has become a powerful voice in the world of entrepreneurship through his numerous speaking engagements and the publication of his books, ON Innovation and Disruption Off. Terry is the Managing Principal of the consultancy, ON Inc. He has been on twenty boards over the years. Now, he is on five boards, and he is the holder of several patents.
After leaving Travelocity, Terry figured out a great career for himself, where he could be a speaker and a board member. He also consulted for several years.
For Terry, being curious is the key to success. Success, particularly in technology, is about being curious enough to put different pieces together in a new way to create more value.
Culture and having a team of people who want change and drive innovation forward are vital. Those are the two most important parts of innovation. Creating a culture where you allow failure is critical. It is usually the project that fails- not the person. It is imperative to build a culture where you take a risk, be more agile, and make decisions quicker.
During Covid, digital disruption accelerated. And new business models emerged. The companies that will be successful coming out of Covid will be the ones that understand that those disruptions are permanent. And get on board.
Many companies are now writing contracts for outcomes. And subscriptions are on the rise.
The new business models are supported by new technologies which are a combination of AI, 5G, and IoT. Those are technologies revolutionizing manufacture.
Terry believes that new technologies combined with new business models are giving companies new life and new leverage.
Selling outcomes involves finding out what your customer's goals are and then figuring out what you, as a salesperson, can do to get them there.
Manufacturing is becoming componentized. Manufacturers are outsourcing parts of their factories to people selling various components. Then they are putting all the necessary components together for specific outcomes.
When looking at innovation and disruption, the number one mistake that Terry sees companies making is that they tend to limit innovation. People need to be left to innovate. And then they need to celebrate their successes their failures.and
Acceleration happens in companies where people feel okay about trying something out without any fear of it failing.
Leaders always need to welcome and listen to any new ideas. They could even create incentive programs to encourage people to come up with new ideas. And circulate any new ideas widely within the company.
Cloud-connected innovation with disparate products is driving everybody now-even consumer products.
People in sales always need to keep looking for a new edge. And they need to remember that the old methods also work.
Terry’s quotes:
“I think what’s key is being curious.”
“I’m always curious about new things.”
“One of the great things about speaking as I do now, on disruption, is I speak to so many industries.”
“Success, particularly in technology, is about being curious enough to put different pieces together in a new way to create more value.”
“Culture and team are the two most important parts of innovation.”
“Creating a culture where you allow failure is critical.”
Links and resources:
Terry Jones’s website
Terry Jones’s books:
ON Innovation
Disruption OFF
Books mentioned:
The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs by Carmine Gallo
The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs by Carmine Gallo
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I’ve been seeing today’s issue in forums, in conversations with customers, etc and there is a lot of misguided information in the marketplace. I feel like so much of the advice being given for people who want to close deals up to multi-million dollar deals is completely oversimplified.
Remember, complexity is the enemy of execution, so I understand the need to simplify things.
I’m seeing many people resort to using a selling methodology - don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of good selling methodologies out there, but the common thing I see with them all is that they are incomplete.
The framework I am sharing with you today helped close over 35 $500K to $20 million deals, even with inexperienced sales reps. This methodology would also work with smaller deals - $40K, $50K, and $100K. It has stood the test of time, and it’s worked in a variety of situations.
This methodology was developed after putting together all of these deals and I was able to determine that it really boils down to 3 things.
- The strategy - all about the customer
- The logical strategy - the buyer process/approval process
- The emotional strategy - drives 80% of the decision making process because it is ingrained in our psyche.
- The sales process - how will you align your sales process with their buying process?
- How you orchestrate your team in the process
- Level up the chance of success and getting the outcome you desire by giving your customer the outcome they desire.
- The execution - the tactics, and what you are going to say during the process, what problems are you solving at each phase, how can you get a synergistic effect.
- Find out who the competition is:
- Not doing anything
- Competing priorities
- Your competitors
- Control and strategically accelerate the speed of the sales process
- Find out who the competition is:
Logic is how people make decisions, emotion is what creates action.
To effectively nail the strategy you have to make sure you have everything integrated vertically with the decision makers, but also horizontally, with all of the stakeholders and collaborators.
It is key to getting in touch with the emotional outcomes that will happen when you solve their problems.
Accelerating the speed of the sales process is one of the most critical outcomes because it can unlock your ability to grow your revenue with no additional resources, but by tweaking the sales cycle to cut down on the length of the sales process.
Do not make the mistake of trying to fine tune your sales process by starting with tactics. That is absolutely the wrong way to go about it. You have to start from the macro - the big picture and then refine down to the micro - the small details.
It just makes no sense to start with the micro and focus on the details.
Need help? Book a call by emailing Ryan at ryan@whalesellingsystem.com
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I have two special guests joining me on the show today!
Andrew Gazdecki is the CEO of MicroAcquire, which experienced 9000% growth over nine months! On top of that, Andrew has had two exits, he was the CRO at Spiff, and he was a 30 under 30 Entrepreneur. Now, he helps other entrepreneurs sell their businesses without some of the traditional friction that exists in the market today.
Kevin Schrage is the marketing genius and founder of BrandArrow, which he started almost two years ago. Over the last fifteen years, Kevin has been in various marketing roles, where he has done some amazing work using his genius to scale SAAS companies. As an entrepreneur during that time, he also started a couple of app companies with Andrew.
Andrew and Kevin have worked together on and off over the years. They have both experienced massive growth. Today, they will talk about what they are doing currently and discuss their mission.
MicroAcquire serves small tech companies by giving them options for meeting buyers quickly and reducing the friction typically associated with selling a business. It allows founders to sell their business without any exclusivity, fees, or commissions. They started by focusing specifically on SAAS businesses but have subsequently expanded to e-commerce marketplaces, mobile apps, and some crypto companies. Their sweet spot is any tech business with five million dollars in revenue and below.
MicroAcquire attracts businesses in three categories:
- Businesses with under $100,000 in revenue.
- Businesses with $100 000 to $1,000 000 in revenue.
- Businesses with $1,000,000 in revenue and above.
Businesses with $1,000,000 in revenue and above have become the more normal listings for MicroAcquire.
The sellers on MicroAcquire are typically people looking for liquidity. Or people who feel they have taken their business as far as they can and would like to pass it on to someone new who can bring some fresh energy into the business and hopefully grow it. The sellers are often business owners who have lost momentum due to weak sales and marketing.
Many founders of tech start-ups want to build a billion-dollar company. Once they realize that they are not on that trajectory, they look to sell their business so that they can keep swinging at a better opportunity. MicroAcquire gives them a soft landing to do that.
The buyers on MicroAcquire are people who would like to run a one to five million dollars a year company.
Entrepreneurs need to understand that they are limiting their options when they raise money with venture capital. With venture capital, you are often locking into a binary outcome.
MicroAcquire rolled out its premium subscription program in September. The premium subscription program was created as a filter to ensure that the buyers are serious.
Facebook ads and Instagram have been very beneficial to the rapid growth of the business. There has also been a lot of organic growth happening.
Working with The Hustle Contest also put a lot of fuel on the MicroAcquire fire. The idea behind the contest was to give away a SAAS company valued at up to $25 000 to someone willing to share their story. After launching the contest their numbers rose insanely!
Having fun is part of MicroAcquire’s marketing strategy.
Kevin recommends that you need to be willing to get your hands dirty and just execute to grow a business.
Andrew produced tons of content for MicroAcquire. As well as using social media, he also built a lot of content to educate entrepreneurs on selling a company and everything involved with that. Many people do not move fast enough when it comes to producing content. And if your voice does not get heard, you are not going to be found.
Paid channels are also an effective way to grow a business. With the paid route, the revenue is predictable. Organic marketing is sometimes not a predictable revenue source.
To put fuel on the fire for the $500,000 market, you need to have a well-built customer journey process set up to make things as efficient as possible.
Andrew feels that the best customer acquisition strategy is to talk to your customers. Get to understand them. That is where content ideas come from. Build relationships with your non-paying customers as well as your paying customers. Get to know what your customers care about. Get to know what they like about your service and what they hate about your service. Get your customers to write reviews about your service and have them tell your brand story for you. Learn from your market constantly. You can even learn from your competitors and figure out how you can work together. The key is to care.
Very good content comes from a data-driven approach. Things don’t have to be perfect to create rapid and amazing content. Post things that you would like to read without thinking about what others might think of it. Create tons of value. Find your voice, your tone, your niche, and your audience. You can use tweets or blog posts that resonated with people to create longer-form blog posts. Then use that to create an e-book. And then turn that into something that you record for YouTube.
Links and resources:
Andrew Gazdecki on LinkedIn
Andrew Gazdecki on Twitter
Kevin Schrage on LinkedIn
Kevin Schrage at BrandArrow
Kevin Schrage on Twitter
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He said there were basically 4 things he would do differently:
- Traffic
- Capturing community
- Capturing email and having a follow up sequence
- Define the sales process
He further went on to explain that for each one of those 4 areas, he would only have one focus for each category - leveraging the power of one.
I’ve personally revamped the way I do things in my business starting in January. I refined it during February and now I’ve seen the results in March of getting over 300% more done in my business.
Following the principle of Occam’s razor - the simple solution is probably always the best, I’ve developed my 5x3 framework for exploding growth and productivity.
I’ve also been working with a sales rep to implement this framework and he saw his pipeline increase from $300K to $1 million in 90 days.
The bottom line is, you are either creating momentum or inertia - speeding up or slowing down - and this is the framework for creating momentum.
The 5 x 3 method:
1) Identify 3 main goals for the year
2) Broken down into 3 main goals for the quarter
3) Broken down into 3 main goals for the month
4) Broken down into 3 main goals for the week
5) Broken down into 3 main goals for the day - and do those first each day!
This sort of focus management will give you the ability to dictate your destiny.
Just by using this framework, you can change your trajectory in your business and in your family.
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There are 5 ways to scale revenue:
1) Get brutally honest about product/market fit. The size of the problem we solve is directly proportional to the size of the sale you will make. Solving valuable problems means your solution is worth more money.
2) Develop your Ideal Customer Profile based on your product/market fit. The biggest constraint in sales is the amount of time and resources you have to dedicate to finding your ideal customer.
Firmographics - industry, size of company, revenue amount
Psychographics - defensive, proactive,
Technographics - are you displacing technology or replicating technology, etc.
A trigger event is something that happens in the buyer’s world that creates a need. It could be an acquisition, a merger, a buyout, a new hire, etc.
3) Define your buyer personas - including a trigger event.
4) Know your conversation narrative. Create a buyer persona centric narrative.
5) Drive the right concurrent combinations - use outbound to drive inbound and then get right back to the pattern interrupt.
Check out Tony's new book: Tech Powered Sale
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The three different areas of SAAS are:
- Commodity
- Middle-tier pricing
- Premium value
With commodity sales, the pricing gets dictated on the lowest cost in the marketplace.
Middle-tier pricing is based on the cost of the goods.
The premium value is based on the result that you create.
You can break things down into three basic models:
- There is , which is the lowest commodity form. Sales reps are not usually involved in that form at all. That is where content and websites walk users through and encourage them to sign up to own their product. You can also have multiple sales models operating along with that. It would be something of a very low price, like $10-$100 SAAS per month.customer self-service
- Then there is the , which is more of the middle-market, middle-of-the-road SAAS product from $100 per month to around $2000 or $3000 per month. It is a combination of the marketing hybrid and sales, and it is more like the SDR or BDR model, where you are quickly churning people through. It applies to the kind of call where you book, do a demo, and then close with a very short sales cycle. traditional sales model
- The third model is . With this model, you are selling to whole companies. And at that level, you will have deals from $40,000 to tens of millions of dollars per year. As you start to scale, there will be more than one decision-maker involved. The enterprise space is more geared towards customization and specifics for an organization. A lot of persuasion needs to happen on multiple levels in the enterprise space because it is complex. And it touches many different people in different departments, with varying motives, goals, and objectives.the enterprise space
To recap: Self-serve is more about marketing content. The traditional sales model is about marketing content and sales with very short sales processes. With the enterprise model, marketing is super important, and brand is also super important. But a lot more work needs to happen on the sales side when you are talking about multi-million dollar deals.
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After dropping out of college about twenty years ago, David started a service-based photography business. From there, he began building online communities around photography. From those communities, he started to hear the pain points and problems that other photographers and small businesses were having. He teamed up with some software guys and techies and started building software to solve those problems.
Over the last ten years, David’s path has been to buy up the company. So he owns it, operates it, and grows it like a real business, instead of a startup.
David is currently the founder and owner of three companies. He has gone from one product to another and then one business to another, learning a lot as he goes.
David loves the startup stage because there’s a lot of energy, a lot of passion, and many problems to solve in that stage.
When a business reaches a million dollars, it’s a good point to move into some more operational types of things. It took David ten years to realize that that point is not within his wheelhouse. Now, once they get to a certain place, David has a CEO that takes over. Being more operationally and financially-minded, the CEO builds the teams from there. And David goes back to start something new.
Don’t look for the easy way to run a business. Look for the right way to solve the problem. You need to know yourself and have self-awareness.
The Diffusion of Innovation got developed in the 1960s. It was popularized by the book, Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore. It shows a bell-curve of people, ranging from innovator, to early adopter, to early majority, to late majority, to laggard. There are very few people on the front and fringe of innovator and early adopter. And our world doesn’t try to train or equip people to be there.
People tend to fear the early stage of a business because there are many risks, uncertainty, and questions that don’t have answers. The answers have to get found along the way.
Warm Welcome started as a test project. David wanted to see how cheaply and efficiently he could get a rough prototype to market because that is the only way to start getting feedback.
The world of tech is moving at an insane speed. And the cost to create things has dropped dramatically, so anyone can afford to build something today. So sales and marketing are huge skill gaps for young founders nowadays.
Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn said: “In order to build something that scales, you have to do the things that don’t scale.” That is something that young tech founders need to hear and realize. In the first few years of business, they have to stop focusing on making everything scalable and do the service, sales, and marketing work that does not scale.
Many startups end up having to rebuild themselves after two or three years. Because they spent too much time in the beginning building what they thought was right instead of creating feedback loops very early on when the business was still moldable and shapeable.
Warm Welcome is a way to personalize your business with video. They wanted to focus on it strategically so that every touch-point would have a warm personal interaction. To get feedback on it early on, David invited people to his office to talk to him. He wanted to see how they responded when they saw or tried to use the product.
Often, people are not honest with their feedback. But when you are looking at their eyes and face while they are trying to use something, you can tell when they lean in and want to know more. And you can tell when they lean back because they are confused. You lose out on that kind of feedback when you use text because there is no nuance with text. With video, in-person, or hybrid of some sort, you have a much higher chance of actually understanding someone. When you can understand them, you can make changes, iterate, and improve your product.
Go and sit down with people. Listen to their problem. Then, see if your product solves their pain-point or problem. Most people focus too much on their product rather than on the customer’s problem. Make your conversation about their problem. Not about the product. If you do that early on, they can help you mold and shape the product to solve their problem.
You will stand out in someone’s inbox or LinkedIn message when you associate a video and a human with your product rather than just text. Video is a fun and interesting product. It can help many different types of people.
You need to plant a seed for your product rather than launching it. It could take years for it to grow, but you need to keep on nurturing it.
Walmart has someone in their stores to give everyone a warm greeting. Yet they don’t do that online because they think their website will build trust. But it does not. Having a video of the founder, or the account rep, smiling and greeting people as soon as they hit the website will build far more trust than anything else.
A video business card can deliver way more information than a paper card. And people can communicate through it. You build trust when people can see you, look in your eyes, and understand that there is a human behind the business.
Having a personal video on your contact page telling people how glad you are to work with them and that they can click a button to send you a message is a much cleaner and better client experience. It is a much better way to connect with your clients and customers and build their trust.
Links and resources:
David jay’s website
Warm Welcome website
Books mentioned:
Crossing the Chasm Geoffrey Mooreby
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There are always new answers if you go in deep and want to provide massive value.
Myron Golden helps entrepreneurs sell and scale from the stage. He has helped people have million-dollar days. And he talks about lots of things that are not commonplace. He looks deeply into the psychology of beliefs and logic.
Myron teaches people to understand the history of the person to whom you are selling, and to truly understand their perception around what you are offering them.
Beliefs that people have before ever talking to you, or before talking to any salesperson, exist in almost every situation. Their experiences shape their view of the world. And also their view of the solutions that you are selling them. It is their perception of the facts rather than the facts themselves that shape their beliefs. Their experiences, and all the positive and negative things that have happened to them shape their beliefs and the way that they look at things. That happens both in business and in non-business-related things.
The experience that you had before becomes the frame around the fact. For example, if someone, or a company, spent $20,000 on software that was hard to implement and did not work, they will believe that big software expenses are useless. Or a sham. Or not effective. You would need to interact with that person differently than with someone in the same situation, who had a great result.
I have always been a big proponent of outcome-based selling because people do not care about either the features or any of the nuances of the product. People only care about the outcome that they are going to get.
Deloitte Consulting did a study on that in the B2B sales space. They found that customers are now expecting three things:
- It is customized to them
- It must be easy to implement
- It must create a tangible and get a specific result
Myron's teaching is geared towards breaking down a belief pattern that someone has around their focus on the dollar amount versus their focus on the outcome.
Many of my coaching clients focus consistently on their solution in that market rather than on the outcome.
If you get laser-focused on a tangible and crystal-clear specific outcome, customers and prospects will be way more excited about what you have to offer than they would if you were trying to find their pain and solve it.
Once you get to a person's beliefs around what you are offering them and take action, everything changes.
Links and resources:
Myron Golden’s website
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Ben started working in logistics and supply chain. He then landed his first sales position ever at Mintel. They gave him the territory of the south-east US, their worst-performing region.
After turning Mintel’s worst-performing region into their best-performing region, Ben got asked to manage their Account Management group. In 2012, he got sent over to London. There, he had three excellent years running sales for CPG with a team of twelve nationalities, speaking sixteen different languages. After that, he got sent back to Mintel in Chicago, where he is currently, to manage a business unit and the broader part of the Americas commercially.
Ben had amazing teams! He learned from them quickly. Then he got them to work well with one another to drive growth.
Ben looks at building cohesive teams and then getting them to work well together as one of his skills.
Ben is hungry to learn all the time - from absolutely anybody with whom he comes in contact.
After spending so much time helping his customers understand the market, Ben’s top distinctions are:
- Ben works with organizations with open innovation teams. Open innovation teams are looking ten years into the future. Within Mintel, they have a team that focuses just on the future and on trends.
- At the executive level, when you get into the C-Suite and above, fuzzy ideas work best. Executives feel comfortable working in abstract and fuzziness.
- Mintel has subscription models and databases, which make things much more prescriptive. That works well for their entry-level employees.
Everyone should have a vision for the future and a career plan. If you have those, you need to dial in and get even more specific. You need to know where your opportunities lie down the road. Think about what you always wanted to do that you have never done. And what you would do, after you have managed to make more money than you will ever need. Then, consider the impact that would have on your family and your career.
There is a gap between wanting to be a manager and wanting to step into a leadership role. That gap goes from being an excellent manager to setting a vision. Or alternatively, pushing and helping your teams set visions and then stepping out of the way to let them develop those visions.
The people around you will ultimately let you know if they want to follow you and call you a leader.
Ben defines leadership by looking at the people he would aspire to be, historically. Two of those are President Lincoln and Coach Wooden. They both had confidence yet remained humble. And they surrounded themselves with excellent people.
A side-effect of those qualities in sales leaders is revenue growth. Ben’s team is always looking for what they can do to get themselves to where they want to go.
A positive energy element is necessary for building a cohesive team. For Ben, the Ted Lasso show epitomizes much of what he loves in terms of that energy element.
Ben has a group selling single-copy reports. They have traditionally done it in a specific way for a long time. Now they have two individuals working on it who have a growth mindset, coupled with the humility to go out and learn from others. Their new ideas that they are breaking what they were doing in the past. Their net goal is to double the revenue that they were doing. Now, single-copy reports are becoming a funnel-generator. Something that was pretty unexciting before is now one of the most exciting and important aspects of the business. Because two leaders refused to continue doing things in the way they were getting done in the past.
Links and resources:
Book mentioned: Disrupt You Jay Samitby
Ben Dietz on
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Sometimes, information is not taught. It is caught.
I made a shift in my business and decided to get laser-focused on serving entrepreneurs and CEOs wanting to scale their businesses.
I have been in the revenue world for twenty years, and I have had awesome experiences meeting many different flavors of people. More recently, I have been working one-on-one with almost a hundred CEOs, coaching them to scale their revenue. And those folks are experiencing rapid growth!
The vast number of people out there who have different areas of giftedness caught my attention. Those people have fine-tuned their craft over many years and experiences, and they serve the marketplace at a high level. Yet none of them has everything. The common thread between all of them is that they don’t have it all across all areas.
There is a comparison culture happening on various social media platforms, including LinkedIn. When going down that path, it is easy to fall into the trap of believing that you don’t have what it takes.
When we try to do something difficult, we tend to forget about the vast number of companies that fail.
My mentor taught me that if you are a hard driver, and want to do big things, you might forget that what you have done already is very impressive. You have done amazing things in your life that nobody else has ever been able to do. Yet we forget that. And sometimes, even the smartest people in business, who have had the most success, forget that too.
I urge you to ask yourself what you are amazing at doing. What have you done that is unique, different, and special that you do not give yourself enough credit for?
To better your situation and learn to trust and believe in yourself, you need to stop and think. Ask yourself what you have done that nobody else has ever been able to do before. If you have a limiting belief about yourself and can’t think of anything, ask someone else what you have done. It could lead to a whole new life for you!
Never forget how much of a beautiful gift you have. And how much of a beautiful gift to the world you are!
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When at university, Kris got some seed money from the Center for Entrepreneurship to start a business. After that, he went down the Senior Enterprise Accounts Executive path to learn as much as possible about how startups work.
In the early days, Kris was all about networking. Each week he would choose three or four events from an events website and go and meet people.
He was in sales during the day, and in the evenings, he surrounded himself with inspiring people. He was networking his way to success by finding other potential cofounders, advisors, and mentors. That was his path of getting to understand what he did not know. He learned that anyone and everyone can be an entrepreneur.
He wanted to network with as many people as possible to max out his LinkedIn game and create an environment conducive to others wanting to start companies.
For Kris, it was all about keeping the momentum going and keeping his mind focused on startups until he felt ready to start his own company. He wanted to have the best problem solution, a good network of people, and a pain point big enough to make him want to make the jump to starting his own company.
Wanting to click a button to make it easier for him to send someone a gift card for Starbucks coffee was an ‘aha’ moment for him. The first version of Sendoso was CoffeeSender.Com.
It started as a side-business. Then Kris’s friend joined forces with him as the co-founder and started selling the app. Kris was more focused on the product and post-customer side of things.
After generating a couple of hundred thousand dollars in sales, they moved into the next stage, and Kris quit his job. He soon realized that he needed more than just coffee gift cards to make huge money. So, based on customer feedback and his past pain of trying to do direct mail and gifting, Kris got led to Sendoso.
Early on, they invested in SDRs and the outbound engine. They planned to have a strong AE to SDR ratio. They still have a strong method for making sure that there are enough meetings to go around as they hire more AEs.
They invested in the brand, and partnerships were also powerful in the early days.
Kris’s advice to someone starting their company is to just do it. Don’t hesitate. Just build it and get across the finish line with the first version. Then focus on sales as soon as possible to build momentum. After that, build a team of people who are having fun and loving what they do.
Links and resources:
Kris on LinkedIn
Email Kris - kris@sendoso.com
Kris has agreed to let Sales and Marketing Built Freedom listeners sign up for the beta version of Sendoso:
click here to sign up
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Who is preventing your freedom?
I recently read a book called by Dan Sullivan, the Founder, and CEO of Strategic Coach. I read the book because I was resisting letting go of some things that I usually handle in my business. Who Not How
The book is all about finding your ‘who’ for what you are not good at doing or don’t like, or the tasks that rob you of the energy that you need for the tasks that you do amazingly well.
The book covers four main things:
- Freedom of time
- Freedom of money
- Freedom of relationships
- Freedom of purpose
The key takeaway I have is that .time is not money, but time creates money
You can gain by hiring someone else to do the tasks that have to get done but suck the life out of your soul. By hiring someone, you will free up a significant number of hours for yourself each month, and you will be paying them less than you earn for the output you produce. The return on buying back your time at a discount is exponential.freedom of time
You can gain by taking off a certain number of hours each week and applying a percentage of them back to work. If you apply those hours to the top ten percent of your needle-moving activities, they will give you much, much higher results for your business.freedom of money
You can spend some of the hours that you did not apply back to your work and managed to save on building your relationships with friends and loved ones.
You can dedicate the rest of those saved hours towards your purpose, which might be volunteering for something that you believe in and feel passionate about.
It will take you some time to manage the people you hire to do the individual components or pieces. So you need to think it through and set it up so that it will give you a six-inch putt and take you 95 percent of the way there. Then you can make your final decisions. It will change your life exponentially!
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Kathleen is incorporating what she learned about building a media business into the marketing strategies she uses for clean.io.
Kathleen describes herself as a content-first marketer. The first person she hired when she joined clean.io was a content manager. That person was a trained journalist whose skills were writing, knowing how to interview, knowing the right questions to ask, and turning what they learned into great content.
Two books that were an inspiration to Kathleen were Content Inc and Killing Marketing, written by Joe Pulizzi, and in both of them, he wrote about the content-first approach to marketing. That approach to Kathleen is about going faster.
Kathleen believes that today, great content lies at the heart of all marketing. Content needs to be looked at as a product and not as a channel. Content treated as a product drives massive audiences and super-loyal followings.
When content gets treated as a channel, it might get you to its website, but you will not go back there regularly. However, when the content is excellent and gets treated as a product, it drives habit so that content becomes part of your daily life. So you purchase a subscription, and you get it every day. In other words, when content is the product, the content is so good that people are willing to pay for it.
The best media companies, and the best non-media companies that think like media companies, are becoming super-successful by injecting more brands and more personality into their content. And they are hyper-focused on their ideal audience, so there is a higher purpose behind their content, and they invest fully in what they stand for.
A subscriber is a person who pays for access to content to derive value from it regularly. A member, however, has an emotional tie to what they decide to join. People become members because they believe in what that brand stands for, and they want to associate themselves with it.
Membership suffers from far lower churn. It drives a more intense level of loyalty and passion. People tend to become much more vocal brand advocates for the things they join or become members of, than the things to which they subscribe.
Good brands are building communities to reinforce their brand loyalty and customer longevity.
Kathleen would prefer to build a community on Slack rather than on Facebook because when you have your community on Slack, you own it. With Facebook, the rules could change.
For a community to be successful and take off, it needs to feel like the members own it, not the organization sponsoring it. It is best to create a community in a space where the members are already spending a lot of their time. You need to drive tremendous value in your community to get people to join it.
HubSpot started creating content and building an audience before their product was ready. That is a hallmark of the media company model. To keep on driving top of funnel awareness for their products, HubSpot has to build a new audience first and then introduce their product (which is content).
Kathleen sees a definite movement afoot, particularly in the tech and SaaS worlds, where the lines between product companies and media companies are starting to blur.
Start from where you are. Recognize that you need to improve the quality of your content and dedicate your resources to that. Then, increase the volume and think about the content products that you are going to put out.
Links and Resources:
Kathleen's website
The Inbound Success Podcast
clean.io
Books mentioned:
Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork Dan Sullivanby
Content Inc Joe Pulizziby
Killing Marketing by Joe Pulizzi
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In this episode, we will be going over the four biggest mistakes that are killing your referral engine.
. The number one baseline assumptionis that you are executing for your customers
Dan was talking more about referrals from partners that lead to customers.
I am talking about referrals from your customers, which I think are the crown jewel of referrals.
The four biggest mistakes:
- How consistently do you ask for referrals? How many referrals have you got from your top ten customers over the last month? Or your top five customers? Or your number one customer? Like with lead generation, demand generation and content marketing (both inbound and outbound) are both built on consistency. And so are referrals. Use a methodology so that you ask for referrals consistently throughout the presales cycle, the execution agreement, or after you get someone as a customer. You don’t ask often enough. You don’t ask consistently.
- Asking an open-ended question creates difficulty in the customer's mind in terms of who they should refer. Ask questions related directly to the specific referrals for which you are looking. Asking specifically makes it easy for the person you're asking for the referral from to execute on that. So if you are as specific as possible and even take it down to individual names by mentioning those with whom they are connected, it will exponentially increase your success.You do not ask effectively. You ask an open-ended question.
- Don't ask a customer for a referral when they are mad at you, unhappy, or distracted, because the likelihood of that referral converting could be up to 75% less than if you were to ask right after you have done something to make that customer happy, or when they are at a peak just after having bought something, or when the customer sees the tangible results of a solution you have implemented for them.You do not ask emotionally.
- Amazon created zero friction for e-commerce and buying, which revolutionized and changed everything. Ask for a referral in the same way. Ask effectively and emotionally, and make it effortless. After getting the names, offer to copy the person who referred you in on the messages to those they referred you to to make it easier for them. Most times, they will agree because you made it so simple for them to execute on that. You do not make it effortless.
You will exponentially increase your referrals and create your own referral engine if you execute those four things and do not make those four mistakes. The results you will get will be insane!
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Dan is an active networker. He focuses on making a difference in the professional lives of IT practitioners, VPs of Sales, and CROs. Dan developed a company called Camp IT, of which he is currently the President and Executive Director. Camp IT provides virtual and on-site conferences. Before Covid, the business was 100% in-person. In the second week of March 2020, Dan shifted it to 100% virtual, and since doing that, the business has grown tremendously.
Dan’s family started Camp IT thirty-seven years ago. Before that, Dan was a salesperson in IT, so he has gone through the whole range of cold-calling, hunting, farming, and all the different required skills. And those skills are different from the skills required when running your own business.
Over time, Dan has noticed that people buy from those they trust, those with integrity, and those with credibility.
The challenge for many entrepreneurs lies in knowing what to do right now, given the current environment, and knowing how to scale when customers are not at their desks. Dan explains that the key to that is leveraging the relationships that you have. Although Dan has built some great relationships over the past couple of decades, he understands that you cannot just rest on past relationships. You need to keep on building new ones and stay focused on finding a common thread with individuals, even if it has nothing to do with business.
You are always one degree away from someone who is potentially a buyer, just by figuring out the commonalities you have with individuals, establishing that baseline, and asking for introductions. The key to that is that you never ask for introductions until you have given introductions to someone.
Dan attributes the growth of his business to speeding up his networking efforts, flipping to virtual, and positioning himself.
The key to networking is going a lot deeper than just meeting people and figuring out how to help each other. Think about individuals as human beings who are trying to put food on the table. Dan always thinks about how he can make his attendees more effective. And give them insights, help them indirectly to get promoted, and help them articulate the successes they have had with their businesses. From the sponsor side, he thinks about how he can establish a connection between the sponsors and the buyers in the virtual world.
Dan’s secret sauce is based on relationships and connections that go back decades.
With networking, you have to always think about the human side of it. That means you need to step back, get rid of what you are trying to pitch, consider people’s worries, concerns, fears, needs, and desires, get to know them as people, and help them in their personal lives.
Dan reaches out to people by getting to know them, establishing a human connection, and thinking about their human needs and what is in it for them. The pitching is not most important. Creating a human relationship is most important. Let the conversation flow rather than asking direct questions. And you should know what your ‘why’ is, and what their ‘why’ is.
Dan looks at LinkedIn as a place for him to connect with people where he can reach out and help them.
When you give a whole lot before you take anything, it separates you in several ways. Firstly, you will be seen genuinely, and people will know that you truly care. Most of the time, when people get helped by someone else, they either want to pay it forward to someone else, or they want to pay it back. Either way, you are creating goodwill.
The best way to network is to go out and help people. Those that respond could potentially introduce you to other like-minded people. In that way, you could get ten to fifteen introductions just by extending yourself to those who need help.
You can join some online groups that are trying to make a difference, where people are volunteering. In that way, you can meet like-minded people.
Don’t only reach out to those who are your direct prospects. Reach out to the people who would possibly sit between you and those people, who are connected to other targets and could make a trusted introduction to your intended target.
To better understand the human side of someone and show that you care, you need to think about what they could be going through right now. You can assume that there are five things that they could be thinking about:
- They could have fought with their spouse the night before.
- They could be trying to get their child into college, and they are paying for it.
- They could be figuring out when to retire.
- They might be figuring out when to take a vacation.
- They could have an ill parent or relative.
Behind every buyer is a human being who has the same stresses as everyone else.
Separate your business or corporate brand from your personal brand. The personal brand is who you are as a professional, and that is not necessarily tied to the company you work for. Your personal brand has to be full-service because not every salesperson has a unique understanding of the individual, nor do they necessarily value the individual beyond the buyer. People want to be heard, and they want to know that someone cares.
Be firm while you are being generous because there are some advantage-takers out there.
Dan shares an excellent process for networking:
- You need to join an online networking group with a ‘pay it forward’ mentality.
- Go in there with the idea of opening your network and giving.
- You need to introduce each person you come into contact with within the networking group to two or three people who could be connectors.
- When you meet new people, don’t just pitch them. See if they can introduce you to other people because constantly introducing people will build your network and your street cred. And that will lead to opportunities for you.
- Once you receive those opportunities, you can start selling.
You need to be aware and understand everyone in your ecosystem.
Dan likes to do ‘Pay it Forward Fridays’ where he calls up four people who he met during the week, after promoting them on LinkedIn, and introduces them to each other.
It all starts with going out there with the idea of helping people.
If you are a good networker, your success is how successful you have made other people.
Links and resources:
Contact Dan on LinkedIn
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Today I will share what I call the 3x3x3 Rule with you.
During the first six or seven months of starting my business, I made some amazing progress. There were some things that I didn’t like, however. I did not like the results I was getting in different areas, and I did not like my focus structure, so I consciously looked at what I needed to do and how I could improve. I know that my problem is not unique. Many people have the same problem, especially as they escalate up in their careers.
I am a big fan of modeling. So I wanted to know how to make a truly massive impact with modeling, taking things to the next level, and learning how to apply to my life, thirty years of someone else’s experience.
In January, I read by BJ Fogg and by Brian Tracy. Those books were critical, and I am still reviewing and applying what I learned from them. Tiny HabitsEat That Frog
tells us that first thing every single day, before doing anything else, we need to focus on doing the most important thing for that day. It is a simple concept, but most people just don’t do it. Most people start their day by responding to emails or looking at social media, which are about reacting to other people’s priorities. Others do their mind-numbing work at the beginning of the day. Then they procrastinate and leave the important things for later in the day. Eat That Frog
I started applying what I had learned. Because, at the beginning of the day, you are freshest, so you can overcome things and think the sharpest. If you are disciplined, prioritize, and don’t allow yourself to stray, that will impact the outcome.
Before going into a month, I would identify my three most important goals (or ‘frogs’) for that month. Before going into a week, I would identify my three most important ‘frogs’ for that week. And every day, I would look at my three most important ‘frogs’ for the following day. All of those would then filter into my annual goals.
It is a simple concept. But if you apply it and write it down so that you always have a view of your annual, monthly, weekly, and daily goals, it is sure to work for you. It works for me! I am still busy working on it, and already, I have seen 3x improvements!
Links and resources:
Books mentioned:
Tiny Habits BJ Fogg PhD by
Eat That Frog Brian Tracyby
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