This episode of the From Start to Scale podcast features Jeff Ellman, Co-Founder of UrbanBound & Hireology. Jeff has a unique perspective on building and scaling companies and how to navigate tough times. We discuss his journeys through building two companies: UrbanBound and Hireology and how he has overcome the challenges encountered (and succeeded). Jeff drops nuggets about hiring the right people, adapting to the changing economy and selling through it, metrics, retention models, and more. And he wraps up with some key advice at the end. Enjoy!

Jeff’s bio:

Since 1999, the companies that Jeff Ellman co-founded have assisted over 1,500 professionals find employment, 15,000 residents find housing, 8,000 businesses develop a structured hiring process and 50,000 people relocate across the globe. Jeff has dedicated his 20-year career to helping people through life's transitions. The businesses he co-founded include Humatal-a recruiting and consulting firm, Homescout,-a residential real estate company, sold to Coldwell Banker in 2016, and Hireology-a technology platform that helps companies make better hiring decisions, which was recently ranked #94 on the Inc. 500 list of America’s fastest-growing companies. Jeff's latest company, Urbanbound is a web-based application built to simplify one of life's biggest transitions, moving to a new city.

Originally from Michigan, Jeff resides in Chicago with his wife Elyse, sons Brody, Connor, Brooks and dog Harvey. He enjoys reading business books, traveling, playing golf, basketball, pickleball, and rooting for his beloved Spartans, Tigers, and Pistons. A troubled Detroit Lions fan, Jeff can often be found dreaming of that elusive Super Bowl championship.

You can find out more about Jeff in the links below:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-ellman-%E2%9C%94%EF%B8%8F-9a8189/

Twitter (X): @jeff_ellman

Podcast: UB on the Move

From Start to Scale is sponsored by our proud partner:

Newmann Consulting Group | newmannconsulting.com

Transition out of founder-led sales and into a scalable sales org

This episode of the From Start to Scale podcast features John Barrows, CEO of JB Sales. We get into some impactful topics right away - hiring early sales reps, how to leverage AI in sales, and what you can do to improve as a sales leader and coach your team. John shares high level strategies and deeper level tactics in this episode so that anyone can walk away with value. Come along with me for a high energy, fun conversation.

Here’s a 20% discount on the individual membership for JB Sales.  https://go.jbarrows.com/enroll/1958448?price_id=2665148&coupon=FSTS010824

John’s bio:

John is the CEO of JB Sales, a sales training organization focused on elevating the people and profession of Sales. He has trained and consulted with some of the world’s fastest growing sales teams like Salesforce.com, Zoom, Amazon, LinkedIn, and many others. He’s an active seller who still does his own prospecting and manages all his own deals because he believes that you can’t teach Sales unless you live it, especially with how fast everything is evolving in the space right now.  

John has over 380k followers on Linkedin and has been recognized as one of their “Top Voices” in Sales for multiple years along with being invited to their [I]nsider Group to help shape their product strategy.  He is a Top Sales Influencer for Salesforce.com and a leader in their SalesBlazer community. Fobes has recognized him as one of the Top 30 Social Sellers in the World.  JB Sales is also recognized as one of the top 3 Sales Training organizations according to G2. 

Lastly, he is the proud author of an Amazon bestselling children’s book called “I want to be in Sales when I grow up” that he wrote with his daughter to help introduce Sales to the younger generation with 100% of the profits going to charity.  

You can find out more about Jim in the links below:

Website: https://www.jbarrows.com/ 

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbarrows/ 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnmbarrows/ 

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@johnmbarrows 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/JBarrowsSalesTraining 

From Start to Scale is sponsored by our proud partner:

Newmann Consulting Group | newmannconsulting.com

Transition out of founder-led sales and into a scalable sales org

This episode of the From Start to Scale podcast features Mike Dwyer, co-founder at Prompt Therapy Solutions. From undergrad to successful entrepreneur, Mike and I dive through his journey of building Prompt to what it is today. Hear how Prompt started with 2 best friends growing up to over 70 employees and hitting profitability. We dive into intentional bets made into customer success early on, how they generate over 50% of their business from inbound, and how the sales team was built. If you are an introverted founder or salesperson, this one is for you!

Mike’s bio:

Michael's lengthy history as a physical therapy patient led to the founding of Prompt. With a background in finance, he noticed that there were many inefficiencies within physical therapy practices that could be corrected using the technology available to us today. He partnered with lifelong best friend Adam Baliatico to build a modern and truly all-in-one system for therapy practices that enables them to operate more efficiently, profitably, and improve the patient experience. Mike leads the sales side of the business at Prompt.

You can find out more about Mike in the links below:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-dwyer-1936377b/

Website: promptemr.com

From Start to Scale is sponsored by our proud partner:

Newmann Consulting Group LLC | newmannconsulting.com

Transition out of founder-led sales and into a scalable sales org. Book time to learn more today

This episode of the From Start to Scale podcast features Alex White, Samir Rayani and David Hoffman, founders of Next Big Sound who sold their company to Pandora. Their story is amazing from start to finish and we dive into details that made NBS what it was. The founders share descriptive stories of how they created demand using a PLG strategy (before the term was coined) to how they sold Sony as their first big enterprise deal. We discuss things that worked and things that didn’t in a company story filled with tips and nuggets you can learn from.

Bios:

Alex (CEO), David (Product) and Samir (CTO) co-founded Next Big Sound in 2008. The company was acquired by Pandora (NYSE: P) in 2015. 

Today, Alex leads Subcity, democratizing access to capital for America’s small businesses by first leveraging their dataset to pair advanced manufacturing entrepreneurs with the billions of dollars in economic development incentives and tax credits that are already allocated to support this strategic industry.

David and Samir are building Beam, shoppable mood boards for DTC brands.

You can find out more about them in the links below:

Linkedin: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexanderswhite/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrdavidhoffman/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/samirrayani/

Twitter: 

@mralexwhite

@dodeca

@samirrayani

Websites:

https://subcity.com/

https://heybeam.com/

From Start to Scale is sponsored by our proud partner:

Newmann Consulting Group LLC | newmannconsulting.com

Transition out of founder-led sales and into a scalable sales org

This episode of the From Start to Scale podcast features Scott Schnaars, Vice President of Americas at Cloudinary. This episode has PLG -> enterprise selling structure, motion, strategy and hiring all over it. From making sure you hire the best reps with a straightforward hiring framework to prospecting and qualification in enterprise selling through a PLG motion, this episode is filled with nuggets. Enjoy!

Scott’s bio:

Scott Schnaars is Vice President of Americas at Cloudinary. Cloudinary provides a rich platform to enable developers, marketers, and creative professionals at companies of all sizes to manage their image, video, and other digital assets. They have 1,000,000 developers on the platform and over 10,000 enterprise customers worldwide.

Prior to Cloudinary, Scott was SVP of Worldwide Sales at Dynamic Signal and VP of Sales and Marketing at Retention Science

You can find out more about Scott in the links below:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottschnaars/

Twitter: @schnaars

From Start to Scale is sponsored by our proud partner:

Newmann Consulting Group LLC | newmannconsulting.com

Transition out of founder-led sales and into a scalable sales org

This episode of the From Start to Scale podcast features Coco Meers, CEO and co-founder at Equilibria. We talk about building and selling her 1st company Pretty Quick which was a marketplace and eventually sold to Groupon.  We dive into the trials and tribulations of building a marketplace company and what it takes to make a successful one. Then we transition to Coco’s current company Equilibria which has seen incredible success and the pros of the business were so attractive to entice her to start it. There is a ton of her ‘why’ baked in throughout the entire show. Enjoy

Coco’s bio:

Coco Meers, CEO and co-founder at Equilibria, a women’s wellness company. Prior to Equilibria, Coco was Founder and CEO at Pretty Quick which was sold to Groupon. She was general manager and ran the internal, Pretty Quick business for several years. She is an active angel investor and advisor through Rebelle Collective.

You can find out more about Coco at:

Linked: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cocomeers/

Website: https://myeq.com/

From Start to Scale is sponsored by our proud partner:

Newmann Consulting Group LLC | newmannconsulting.com

Transition out of founder-led sales and into a scalable sales org

This episode of the From Start to Scale podcast features Afif Khoury, Founder and CEO of SOCi, Inc. Afif and I get right to it talking about how he figured out he had product market fit to having to make difficult decisions and deprecating an entire inside sales team. Afif talks about the growth of the company and building different revenue streams with different customers to derisk the business. From recruiting and hiring to mistakes he made that he wish he could take back, this episode is jam packed with info any founder or GTM leader would benefit from. 

Afif’s bio:

Afif Khoury, Founder and CEO of SOCi, Inc., has been at the forefront of technology for 20 years. From his early contribution to the Human Genome Project, a career as a high tech M&A attorney, a manager of two successful Venture Capital funds and Founder & CEO of two successful startups, Afif has made a career out of following the data.

You can find out more about Afif in the links below:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afifkhoury/

Website: https://www.meetsoci.com/

From Start to Scale is sponsored by our proud partner:

Newmann Consulting Group LLC | newmannconsulting.com

Transition out of founder-led sales and into a scalable sales org

This episode of the From Start to Scale podcast features Christian Duffus, founder and CEO at Fonbnk. Chris already has 3 fintech exits under his belt and now onto his 4th company. One of his specialties is creating viral loops when it comes to go-to-market and customer acquisition. Chris reflects on his past companies in how they were successful and ultimately exited + what he has done to make Fonbnk the success it is today. This one is jam packed with takeaways - you are sure to learn something new.

Christian’s bio:

Christian Duffus is founder and CEO at Fonbnk. Fonbnk is a new distributed finance company enabling a frictionless, financial onramp for emerging markets. They has raised over $5M in seed funding and have already sold over a half a million in revenue. Christian has founded and sold 3 companies including Vite.money that was acquired by RoundlyX and Leaf College Savings that was acquired by SOFI.

You can find out more about Chris in the links below:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-duffus/

Twitter: @cduffus

From Start to Scale is sponsored by our proud partner:

Newmann Consulting Group | newmannconsulting.com

Transition out of founder-led sales and into a scalable sales org

Season 2 start - welcome back!

This episode of the From Start to Scale podcast features Vince Panozzo,  SVP of client partnerships at Hunt Club. Vince has been through 3 exits, and a career long go-to-market leader with incredible success and experience leading revenue teams. We dive through scaling a growth startup to figuring out how to find product market fit. He shares his personal plan on how he manages his time and gets through top priorities to make meaningful impact on the business. He is passionate, smart, and knows his stuff. Come along for this one.

Vince’s bio:

Vince Panozzo joined the leadership at Hunt Club in 2021 and currently serves as Senior Vice President, Client Partnerships, reporting to Hunt Club's CEO. Vince is responsible for go-to-market strategy including net new customer acquisition and growth of existing customers. He leads a team focused on Sales, Customer Success, Channel Partnerships and Sales Enablement.

Vince is a serial go-to-market leader for startup and growth stage companies with 3 exits over the course of his career. Prior to joining Hunt Club and transitioning to the talent space, Vince helped build and grow several health technology companies over nearly 2 decades, including roles as Chief Revenue Officer of Strata Decision Technology (acquired by Roper Technologies) and VP of Revenue at SwipeSense (acquired by SC Johnson).

You can find out more about Vince in the links below:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vince-panozzo-4783657/

Twitter: @vincentmpanozzo

From Start to Scale is sponsored by our proud partner:

Newmann Consulting Group LLC | newmannconsulting.com

Transition out of founder-led sales and into a scalable sales org

It is a wrap. Season 1 is in the books. Thank you all for listening and being a part of this amazing journey. I love receiving all the emails and DMs about episodes that resonated or you learned something in. Keep them coming

Thank you to my guests:

Jim Franklin

Rami Essaid

Jen Henderson

Kyle York

Jen Saxton

Adam Burrows

Carrie Kerpen

Peter Cowen

Sam Ettus

Gabe Cooper

David Cohen

Tom Coburn

Cody Barbo

David Furth

Elizabeth Andrew

Kathryn Minshew

Shadi Bakour

Shaun Savage

Adam Harris

Liz Giorgi

Brad van Leeuwen

Nick Cromydas

This is only the beginning. Season 2 is coming out in the fall. Catch up on any episodes you missed and please leave a review