Journey to 7 Figures

Brian Tate, founder and CEO of Oats Overnight, talks about the challenges of running a breakfast business and how his 12 years experience as a professional poker player helped him to grow Oats Overnight to $5M in revenue.

Visit https://www.leadquizzes.com/podcast for the complete show notes of every podcast episode.

Topics Discussed in this Episode:

• [02:00] How Brian went from poker into the breakfast business and seeing the market opportunity for overnight oats
• [03:45] The learning it took to manufacture their product and the struggles they had in the process
• [05:00] What going to market was like
• [07:28] Their strategies to get more customers
• [08:12] Deciding to work with Facebook in marketing their product
• [12:32] Adding Amazon as another channel
• [13:50] Figuring out the right audience to go after
• [18:04] Launching in Amazon and driving sales
• [21:38] The reasons behind their success and what inspires their flavors
• [23:40] Hiring poker players and the first roles that Brian brought into the team
• [26:08] The issue with space as the company grows
• [28:04] What contributed to their growth in 2019
• [29:19] The time when Brian thought the business would fail
• [29:46] The one thing Brian did that had the biggest impact on the company’s growth
• [30:14] Where Brian personally had to evolve to grow the business
• [30:57] Learning leadership and management skills

Key Takeaways:

• The biggest difference between Oats Overnight and the homemade overnight oats recipes that you can find online and make for yourself is the protein content and the different ingredients. The problem that Brian was solving for was mostly the convenience side without sacrificing nutrition or taste.
• The category of overnight oats has a small number of offerings relative to how much traffic there is, so it’s an interesting place to be.
• According to Brian, the mindset of poker players really fits with an entrepreneurial-type vision. They are very rational. They know that money isn’t made 9 to 5 but that it’s really an around-the-clock thing and that competition is always there so you’ve got to do better.
• There are a lot of variables that contribute to success in business, and it’s important to be able to approach those individually and understand what contributes to those wins or losses.

Action Steps:

• Have everyone in the company start in customer service. You can learn a lot about the company by answering emails.
• Be mindful of what you’re signing when it comes to commercial leases. Make sure you don’t bite off more than you can chew and that you’re not paying extra money for off-site storage and extra shipping costs when you can’t take deliveries in certain timelines because you’re out of space.
• Listen to your customers.
• Learn leadership and management skills from mentors and other people who have done it. When starting a business or running a company, it’s definitely important to get advice and talk things through.
• When you hire somebody, make sure you do it because you trust them, you trust their thought process, and you trust their ability to make decisions, and give them the freedom to feel comfortable and operate in the way they see fit.
• Be confident in yourself and know that if you’re making the right decision, it’s going to work out.

Brian said:

“There’s a lot of variables that contribute to success in business. Some things happen that are in your control like product development, customer service... and some things happen that are out of your control like recession or change in customer preferences…”

“For good and bad, people pin wins to things that were sheer luck and they dwell on losses that were totally out of their control. It’s just really important to understand that as you operate.”

More from Brian Tate and Oats Overnight:

• Oats Overnight
• Oats.com
• Brian’s LinkedIn
• Brian’s Facebook

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Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to this podcast! And don’t forget to leave me a rating and a review on iTunes!

Pete Caputa, CEO of Databox, talks about their strategy of creating an ecosystem for agencies to learn about Databox, and how building out a partner program helped Databox grow to $1.5M in annual revenue.

Visit https://www.leadquizzes.com/podcast for the complete show notes of every podcast episode.

Topics Discussed in this Episode:

• [01:48] Pete’s experience at HubSpot
• [05:07] How Pete got involved with Databox
• [07:45] How Databox started
• [10:32] Building out the partner program at Databox
• [12:41] Pricing for Databox
• [13:16] What they do to attract more agencies to Databox
• [15:25] How they define top partners
• [16:02] How they went about finding agencies
• [17:37] Their strategy of creating an ecosystem for agencies to learn about Databox through article contributions
• [21:21] Creating surveys and getting input from different agencies
• [22:00] Why they outsource the writing of articles
• [24:36] The Databox free program and why they decided to keep it
• [28:28] How they got more users to use their software
• [30:00] How they come up with ideas to help improve adoption
• [32:27] When Pete felt that Databox was going to fail
• [34:42] The one thing they did that had the biggest impact on their growth
• [35:38] The area that Pete was personally involved in growing at Databox

Key Takeaways:

• Agencies are being bombarded by software companies right now, and so the product really needs to work for them.
• The first thing that software companies get wrong is they start a partner program and they don’t even think about how the agencies are going to do their work.
• Most agencies hesitate to spend even a few bucks a month and so it’s good to set up the price so that it’s a very minimal amount of money per client, and it’s very easily justified by any time savings they would get from automating.
• The nice thing about agencies is they kind of pay attention to each other and they learn from each other, so once you get a few partners on board, it becomes a lot easier to be more credible with the rest.

Action Steps:

• Invite agencies to contribute to articles that you’re writing as a way for you to get in front of them without being promotional about what you do.
• Consider offering a freemium product by looking at its benefits to sales and marketing.

Pete said:

“I realized there was a real pain point for agencies, specifically, in that they were manually producing their reports at the end of the month for every client by logging in to multiple tools… and realized that we could automate a lot of that process for them.”

“I look at marketing combined with a freemium product and to me, it just feels like a cash register because, especially with organic content marketing, once you figure something out, it produces returns for you for a long time with very little care and feeding.”

More from Pete Caputa:

Pete’s LinkedIn

Pete’s Twitter (@pc4media)

Tools and resources mentioned in this episode:

• Databox

Sponsor link

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Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to this podcast! And don’t forget to leave me a rating and a review on iTunes!

Christina Stembel entered the $3B online flower industry with no experience and very little money. With a dream to innovate on how business was done, she came up with a unique model that eventually led to Farmgirl Flowers’ $23.4M in revenue last year.

Visit https://www.leadquizzes.com/podcast for the complete show notes of every podcast episode.

Topics Discussed in this Episode:

• [01:48] What gave Christina the idea of going into the flower business
• [03:37] Some of the things that Christina saw with the major players in the online flower market that made her think she could come in and stand out
• [05:56] How Christina came up with Farmgirl Flowers’ unique business model
• [06:49] How they tackled the problem of “waste” in the flower industry
• [09:27] What they did to make their bouquet pieces different from the competition
• [10:47] How Christina started Farmgirl Flowers with her personal savings and how she got it launched off the ground
• [12:49] What their first year in business looked like
• [14:24] How they started marketing in their first year
• [16:25] How they built their customer base by utilizing customer feedback
• [19:42] The different ways they get customer feedback
• [20:57] How they started doing advertising in years three and four and their strategy of pushing it through Yelp
• [23:30] Christina’s first hire and what she brought them in to do
• [26:47] Farmgirl Flowers’ supply chain, how they decided to get their sourcing, and how it evolved over time
• [30:39] The challenge of supporting American growers and why they eventually decided to get international sourcing
• [35:06] How much people cared about the idea of supporting American growers
• [36:38] The one thing that Christina did that had the biggest impact on Farmgirl Flowers’ growth
• [38:24] How Christina made sure she hired the right person.
• [39:05] The area that Christina personally had to grow in as a business owner to get to where she is today

Key Takeaways:

• In previous generations, people would hide behind the fact that it’s the thought that counts, but it’s not the thought that counts with younger people. If they’re going to spend $80 to $100 of their hard-earned money on a bouquet of flowers, it better be worth that much.
• Flowers have a very rough perishability time period, even more so than food. If you’re in the flower business, you can’t make a mistake. You have about three days to use those flowers before you have to dump them.
• 79% of the people that buy flowers are women buying for women.
• It’s the actual marketing spend that’s going to drive your growth. If you are spending on people managing that spend, that’s money you could be actually spending on the spend.
• You need as much money to get in front of people as you can.
• Parenting books are wonderful for managing people.

Action Steps:

• Get customer feedback and use it to make the necessary changes to create the best product offering that would allow you to meet your business goals.
• Find the platform that everybody else is using for advertising and put your money there.
• Become a good leader and manage your people well.
• Put a lot of emphasis on team culture early into your business.

Christina said:

“The industry is very old school. It’s ancient. Most of the American farmers are second or third generation and they’ve been doing things in certain ways. And getting them to break that, the system that they’ve been set up for and doing things for multiple generations is not easy.”

“Every dollar that I can spend, putting it back into marketing, is what’s going to help keep fueling our growth.”

More from Christina Stembel:

Farmgirl Flowers’ Website

Farmgirl Flowers’ Facebook

Farmgirl Flowers’ Instagram (@farmgirlflowers)

Christina’s LinkedIn

Tools and resources mentioned in this episode:

• The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle
• Books written by Brene Brown
• How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success by Julie Lythcott-Haims

Sponsor link

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Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to this podcast! And don’t forget to leave me a rating and a review on iTunes!

Heidi Jannenga, President and Co-Founder of WebPT, talks about how their cloud-based idea grew into the leading physical therapy software on the market. WebPT did over $80M in revenue last year with a 99% customer retention rate.

Visit https://www.leadquizzes.com/podcast for the complete show notes of every podcast episode.

Topics Discussed in this Episode:

• [01:38] How Heidi first came up with the idea for WebPT
• [06:03] How they saved a tremendous amount of money in building their platform by finding a technical co-founder
• [07:03] Launching their product, deciding on pricing, and getting customers
• [09:59] How much money they were saving versus how much money they were spending for transcription
• [10:41] WebPT’s secret sauce and how they started getting leads
• [13:13] Building WebPT’s marketing strategy
• [14:49] How much traffic they’re getting from their content and SEO
• [16:06] Creating brand awareness among university students
• [17:08] Doing trade shows and building their reputation
• [18:10] Going after the SMB space and engaging with their customers to improve their platform
• [20:53] WebPT’s retention rate in the past and now
• [21:52] The challenge of getting customers on board
• [23:54] WebPT’s workflow
• [25:42] WebPT’s Idea Portal and other ways of getting customer feedback
• [28:51] Bringing on a CEO and scaling the company
• [32:19] What made them decide to raise funds and how they did it successfully
• [38:17] Taking risks to grow the business
• [40:32] Growing through acquisitions
• [41:21] Why Heidi thought the business would fail and what she did about it
• [42:41] What had the biggest impact on WebPT’s growth
• [43:17] The area that Heidi had to personally grow in to grow the business

Key Takeaways:

• Having a technical co-founder and a subject matter expert is a very good fusion to launching a successful product.
• What’s tremendously important during the early stage of a business is staying niche.
• The number one reason acquisitions fail is because there’s not a culture fit between the two companies.
• It’s okay to be vulnerable even as a leader. You don’t have to have all the answers, and it’s okay to say you don’t know. That vulnerability component in a leader can lead to loyalty.

Action Steps:

• Know the impact that your business is having on customers.
• Bring people that are smarter than you into your business but still own that you’re the leader they’re looking up to.

Heidi said:

“You can’t discount the actual product. The product has to work… If it’s a shitty product, you’re going to have a problem with people leaving.”

“As a leader, it’s okay to be vulnerable. I think too often we have our work selves and we have our out-of-work selves, and the authenticity is what people really migrate to.”

More from Heidi Jannenga:

• WebPT’s Website
• Heidi’s LinkedIn
• Heidi’s Twitter (@HeidiJannenga)

Sponsor link

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Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to this podcast! And don’t forget to leave me a rating and a review on iTunes!

Brian Scudamore, Founder and CEO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK? tells the importance of figuring out your values and setting a painted picture for your business. Now, 1-800-GOT-JUNK? has grown to over $309M in revenue with over 250 franchise owners around the world.

Visit https://www.leadquizzes.com/podcast for the complete show notes of every podcast episode.

Topics Discussed in this Episode:

• [01:45] How Brian started his business
• [03:23] How he got his first customers and leveraged the power of free press
• [04:50] What it was like to fire all his people and rebuild the business from scratch
• [06:17] Brian’s lesson learned on partnership and mentorship
• [07:43] The process of defining the business culture and values, and figuring out the right people to hire
• [09:39] What they do to make sure that they’re incentivizing those core values
• [12:02] The value of mentorship and what it was like to join the Young Entrepreneurs’ Organization (now Entrepreneurs’ Organization)
• [16:06] Why Brian decided to go down the franchise route versus expanding the business himself
• [17:28] How Brian attracted people who had that ownership mentality
• [18:51] Hiring a COO and building the executive team
• [24:28] The Painted Picture and the impact that had on the business
• [24:28] Some of the marketing channels they used to grow the business
• [29:01] Setting up a PR department and building the business by getting their story out there
• [30:23] Getting a major acquisition offer and turning it down
• [32:55] Having to change some of their talents when the business hit different sizes
• [37:17] What Brian did when he thought 1-800-GOT-JUNK? would fail
• [38:21] What Brian did that had the biggest impact on their growth
   

Key Takeaways:

• How do you know who the right people are to hire? You need to figure out your values and find the right people based on those values.
• For a company to grow in scale, you need to have values that everyone in the company aligns by. And it’s more important that you’ve got values and that they’re yours and you own them versus what those values are.
• Storytelling is important to make sure your teams are alive with the values that are important to you.
• Everyone has the responsibility to make the world a better place, whether it’s with us or taking and learning from us and doing it on the outside.
• Entrepreneurs break rules. Sometimes it’s better to beg for forgiveness versus ask for permission. You don’t want anyone to get hurt, you don’t want to do anything dangerous, but you get out there sometimes and you push boundaries.
• We’re in the storytelling age more than ever. It’s about finding new and different ways to tell stories and tell the world about the interesting and unique things that you as a leader or an entrepreneur are doing.

Action Steps:

• Figure out the values that you stand on. What words describe who you already are? Not who you want to be or try to be but who you are today.
• Give your people feedback immediately. If some of them are not living the company values, tell them why, tell them which value they’re not living, and give them some feedback. If they’re living the values and demonstrating them, you also want to give them feedback and give them the kudos as to how they’re doing such a great job, and celebrate those values.
• As a leader, you must live and demonstrate the values of your company.
• Be careful when you set a “painted picture”. Just think big. Don’t let anything else get in your way. Then recruit the right people to help you make that picture a reality.
• Build your business out ready to scale by having the right systems in place to recruit the right people, train the right people, and so on.

Brian said:

“It’s important to take a team and, even if they’re not experienced, to trust the team, to work with them to create values. You decide, what words are important? Does it resonate? And then stick to those.”

“Failure is temporary. But also, let’s not forget, success is temporary… Success and failure go hand in hand. Never get too cocky that you believe that you’re always going to succeed. Be willing to endure the storms that you face in life.”

More from Brian Scudamore:

Brian’s LinkedIn

Brian’s Twitter (@BrianScudamore)

Brian’s Instagram (@brianscudamore)

O2E Brands’ Website

Tools and resources mentioned in this episode:

• Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't by Jim Collins
• The One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard and Johnson Spencer
• WTF?! (Willing to Fail): How Failure Can Be Your Key to Success by Brian Scudamore
• Double Double: How to Double Your Revenue and Profit in 3 Years or Less by Cameron Herold
• The E Myth: Why Most Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It by Michael Gerber

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Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to this podcast! And don’t forget to leave me a rating and a review on iTunes!

Patrick Campbell, Co-founder and CEO of ProfitWell, talks about how they grew to over $10M in revenue by taking on the role of pricing experts for their clients and revolutionizing how businesses price their products and services through their technology.

Visit https://www.leadquizzes.com/podcast for the complete show notes of every podcast episode.

Topics Discussed in this Episode:

• [01:40] How they got the idea for Price Intelligently and what it does
• [02:46] The pricing problem and how they went about trying to solve it
• [07:14] How they took their idea to their first customers
• [09:12] How they got potential customers interested in their content
• [11:26] What it looks like for someone who wants to improve their pricing
• [13:25] Tactical things that you can do to improve your pricing
• [14:39] How they work with their customers
• [15:45] How they handled things in the early days of Price Intelligently
• [17:58] The strategies they used to grow their business
• [19:44] Outsourcing their sales and finding the right person that could do it
• [21:03] Having systems in place with following up with the inbound and creating outbound leads
• [21:58] How they did their inbound content strategy
• [25:08] How they got to over $10M
• [28:18] Developing the tool ProfitWell and what it does
• [32:10] How long it took them to build ProfitWell and how much it cost
• [36:45] How they found the best people to work on ProfitWell
• [38:49] How they’re able to gain their customers’ trust
• [40:56] What they did that had the biggest impact on their growth

Key Takeaways:

• The biggest problem is getting people to realize that your price is the exchange rate on the value that you’re providing. And that value is crucial to measure for the customer that you’re trying to sell to.
• If you get your value metric correct, what ends up happening is you basically align yourself to your customer and how they want to see and pay for your product.
• As you grow, you have to be comfortable with failing.
• Getting to $10M takes work but it’s not difficult if you are willing to give up some constraints.

Action Steps:

• Get some data to help you with your pricing decisions. Don’t be afraid to talk to people about your price and about your value.
• Ask people traditional, non-leading questions like: At what price is this way too expensive that you’d never consider purchasing it? At what price is this a really good deal that you would purchase it right away?
• Get your value metric correct.

Patrick said:

“It doesn’t really matter what business you’re in... the thing that’s amazing about the world of technology and the world of online is that a lot of us will produce something of value... and then all of a sudden, when it comes time to price that product, we just lose our minds.”

“A lot of people, they’re very scared to go talk to people about their price, they’re scared to go talk to people about their value. But you have to realize that everyone understands that things cost money… You have to talk to them about value.”

More from Patrick Campbell and ProfitWell:

ProfitWell’s Website

Patrick’s LinkedIn

Patrick’s Twitter (@patticus)

Patrick’s Email

Tools and resources mentioned in this episode:

• High Output Management by Andrew S. Grove

Sponsor link

14-day Free Trial to LeadQuizzes

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to this podcast! And don’t forget to leave me a rating and a review on iTunes!

David Darmanin, founder and CEO of Hotjar, talks about how they successfully got people to use their product in its beta phase and eventually monetized it. Find out how they have grown to $16.5M ARR and 21K paying customers in just 4 years.

Visit https://www.leadquizzes.com/podcast for the complete show notes of every podcast episode.

Topics Discussed in this Episode:

• [01:30] The origin stories of how they got started with Hotjar
• [03:50] What Hotjar does and how they marketed it
• [05:11] What they did to drive customers’ interest in their product
• [07:00] Hotjar’s many different features and how they were developed and launched
• [08:58] How they started monetizing their product by creating a public roadmap
• [11:51] The types of incentives they put in place to get referrals
• [15:17] How they got traffic and got people to find out about their product outside of the referral program
• [18:40] How they covered the costs during the beta period stage of their product
• [21:58] How they figured out how much they were willing to pay for a beta user
• [26:45] What their timeline looked like until they got to $1M million annual recurring revenue
• [27:33] The key two things that they did to get people to start using their product in the beta phase and get their feedback
• [31:02] What it was like for them to transition from free to paid
• [35:23] Having a remote workforce and how they are able to make that work
• [48:08] How they communicate with their workforce

Key Takeaways:

• If you want to displace existing players and existing solutions, there is a certain threshold of improvement you need to reach in order to get attention.
• If you communicate very openly with your users and your customers, it’s incredibly effective because you’re bringing them on board with you on the journey.
• If you’re thinking of doing a referral program, it’s really important that it’s simple.
• When it comes to incentivizing, there are two types of people --those who are competitive and those prefer just kind of a fixed reward.
• Email is incredibly effective to drive traffic, especially if you are launching something new.

Action Steps:

• Before building your product, ask yourself: Do people actually need this? Is there real value being delivered here?
• Build trust with your users/customers with transparency.
• Do a referral program.

David said:

“We pretty much allow teams to understand how their site is being used. And that knowledge empowers them to make the right changes, to grow, to improve the experience.”

“We need to keep one thing in mind, which is we have a limited amount of time… If you really believe in an idea and if you feel like there is an opportunity, because timing is important, it’s really important that you drop everything to do that.”

More from David Darmanin:

David’s Twitter (@daviddarmanin)

David’s LinkedIn

Hotjar’s Website

Sponsor link

14-day Free Trial to LeadQuizzes

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to this podcast! And don’t forget to leave me a rating and a review on iTunes!

Squatty Potty’s CEO and co-creator, Bobby Edwards, talks about how Squatty Potty became the talk of the town when it got picked up by Howard Stern, and how their success on Shark Tank and their viral “unicorn video” ultimately led to $28M in revenue.

Visit https://www.leadquizzes.com/podcast for the complete show notes of every podcast episode.  

Topics Discussed in this Episode:

• [01:38] How they came up with the idea for Squatty Potty
• [05:12] How they first started manufacturing their product
• [07:15] How they went on the influencer route
• [09:43] How they began to scale their business and crafted the message to get people to respond to their product
• [12:42] How getting on Dr. Oz and being talked about by Howard Stern impacted their sales
• [14:24] How they scaled up in terms of manufacturing
• [16:32] How they went about the process of selecting their manufacture
• [17:36] How they did their PR and marketing
• [22:48] How they got into Shark Tank and ultimately got an investment from Lori Greiner
• [24:54] How they approach taking on a partner and giving away equity
• [27:40] Some of their strategies of getting into retail stores
• [31:21] How they created a video that went viral and raised their sales
• [36:28] How they launched and promoted their video
• [38:50] The one thing they did that had the biggest impact on their growth

Key Takeaways:

• Necessity is the mother of all invention.
• You need to get your message and nail your message before you could scale your product.
• It’s very valuable to get face to face with people and talk to them about your product because then you can see in their face what is connecting and what is not.
• People look for information when you’re trying to sell them something. They look for validation.
• Sometimes your own instinct works better than anyone else’s advice.

Action Steps:

• Reach out to writers and bloggers and get the right people to write about your product.
• Talk about your product to people face to face.
• Craft the message that you need to make people respond to your product.
• When it comes to taking on equity partners, choose wisely the people you’re going to partner with.
• Get slow and steady retailers to sell your product.

Bobby said:

“There’s no silver bullet, there’s no magic, there’s no one out there that will solve your problems for you. There’s no consultant that’s going to help you create this. It comes from you.”

“Nobody will take care of your baby like you will. There’s not one solution out there that will solve everything. You’ve got to just be resourceful.”

More from Bobby Edwards and Squatty Potty:

Squatty Potty’s Website

Bobby’s LinkedIn

Sponsor link

14-day Free Trial to LeadQuizzes

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to this podcast! And don’t forget to leave me a rating and a review on iTunes!

Smart Nora is the revolutionary contact-free snoring solution that earned a spot on Oprah’s Favorite Things in 2017. Its CEO and co-founder, Behrouz Hariri, talks about how they raised over $1M in Kickstarter and eventually grew to $8.5M in annual sales.

Visit https://www.leadquizzes.com/podcast for the complete show notes of every podcast episode.  

Topics Discussed in this Episode:

• [01:32] How Smart Nora came to be
• [03:17] Smart Nora as a product solution and the product design process
• [08:04] Some of the feedback that they got that led to changes in their product design
• [10:58] How much they invested in testing and designing their product
• [12:55] What they did to prepare for the $1M in pre-orders that they got
• [14:21] The Kickstarter process and their next steps after creating their Kickstarter video
• [17:54] Behrouz’s tips on what to do on the PR side
• [19:24] How they sold their pre-orders on their Shopify store
• [23:33] How they got their product manufactured and how long it took
• [26:38] How they managed the quality of their product and what they did about IP protection
• [29:17] How they shipped their products and how they made their next million in sales after the pre-orders
• [31:49] Switching their focus to marketing and making more sales
• [34:09] How Smart Nora landed on Oprah’s Favorite Things
• [35:09] Getting into corporate wellness programs as a next step
• [37:09] The one thing they did that had the biggest impact on their growth
• [38:08] The areas where Behrouz personally had to evolve and grown in to grow their business

Key Takeaways:

• When you’re a user of your own product, it really accelerates the feedback process.
• The great thing about Kickstarter as a format is there are so many examples you can follow. There’s a nice formula that people have perfected over time and it’s such a good place to get inspired.
• In any Kickstart pre-order campaign, your delivery date becomes the last thing that people remember. The freshness of the pre-order fades after a few months and it can get very contentious between the funders and the campaigners.
• When your Kickstarter campaign is ending, there is a lot of momentum toward the end, coming from both social media word of mouth and press coverage.
• Good decisions move you forward, but a lot of conversations that don’t end with a clear strategy leave a lot of people stranded.

Action Steps:

• When you’re a startup, look at your options and the real feedback that you get from people and let that pull you into the next step.
• When you start a Kickstarter campaign, make sure you have a great video that will serve as your centerpiece.
• When you do a pre-order campaign, have realistic updates for people and set good expectations.
• What to do on the PR side:

1. Draft your press release and select outlets that you know are interested in a product like yours. Send them the press release on the condition that they will not publish it until the day of your campaign.
2. Pick a goal that you can actually deliver your product with.

Brandon said:

“The biggest lesson that I think we learned around our paid digital marketing is that if you’re testing with really small budgets, it’s not representative of the CPA or CPC that you will get with bigger budgets.”

“There’s always this conflict of how much meaningful time to invest into a decision or a conversation, where it’s not more than the priority it has for the business but it’s also not so little that we make a lot of nonsensical decisions or a lot of non-decisions.”

More from Behrouz Hariri and Smart Nora:

Smart Nora’s Website

Behrouz’s LinkedIn

Behrouz’s Twitter (@_Behrouz)

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Brandon Bruce co-founded Cirrus Insight, an all-in-one productivity sales platform that connects Gmail and Outlook with Salesforce. Find out how they grew to having over 150,000 paying users across 5,000 companies and gained up to $12.8M in revenue.

Visit https://www.leadquizzes.com/podcast for the complete show notes of every podcast episode.

Topics Discussed in this Episode:

• [01:36] How they came up with the idea for Cirrus Insight
• [04:56] How Brandon knew that his friend was going to be a good business partner
• [07:28] How they managed the transition period before they launched their business and getting their first customers
• [10:53] How they got feedback from beta users
• [14:15] How they got people to start as free users to becoming their first customers
• [19:21] How they decided to launch their product and move forward with their business
• [22:40] What the early months looked like for Cirrus Insight in terms of revenue
• [24:47] How their first hires helped them grow the business
• [25:53] How they developed the traffic and their email list and put their sales model together
• [32:35] How their pricing has evolved from the time they first launched
• [35:52] How they compensate their sales people for their demos
• [39:09] How they prioritized feedback and what to build on the development side and the operations side
• [44:48] What Brandon did that had the biggest impact on his growth
• [46:23] What they look for in the people that they hire

Key Takeaways:

• There’s an emotionally stabilizing effect of having another person you can share the roller coaster of building a business with.
• The biggest thing that causes early stage companies to fail is that the founders break up. It is a threat to building a company.
• It’s helpful to have smart people on deck to help with the million things that have to get done.
• Community involvement whether online or in person is key to growing a business.
• The opportunities to hire software developers primarily comes through referrals.

Action Steps:

• If you’re in the software or app business, find the marketplace online where people are likely to search and/or gather for product offerings like yours.
• Be active in the Salesforce community and be active in all the boards, trying to answer as many questions are possible.
• Build a customer success team just as you would build a sales team.

Brandon said:

“We’ve always known that there’s a risk in the market that a very large competitor could come in and stomp on everybody. So you’re kind of always aware of that and yet you get very used to living with that risk.”

“Dig in earlier to something like this, building something that looks like a snowball and pushing it downhill… Get started early and often.”

More from Brandon Bruce and Cirrus Insight:

Cirrus Insight’s Website

Brandon’s Email

Brandon’s LinkedIn

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses

Sponsor link

14-day Free Trial to LeadQuizzes

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to this podcast! And don’t forget to leave me a rating and a review on iTunes!