For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Marcus Fontoura, Azure Core CTO, Technical Fellow at Microsoft, holder of 50 patents and the author of A Platform Mindset. Marcus is certainly a man who knows how to scale tech without breaking it.

If your startup is taking off so fast that you can’t keep up or are drowning in bugs and relying on hot fixes and workarounds to hold things together, this episode is for you. It teaches you how to stop scaling your technical debt and redirect your energy and resources into scaling success.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Marcus helped to shape some of the planet´s fastest scaling systems, including Google and Yahoo.
• Disconnected systems slow you down more than missing features. Decide on the technology, platforms, and tools early and get everyone to use them.
• When you tell developers which tools they will use from day 1 it frees up bandwidth for them to create faster and avoids resentment when you have no choice but to standardise the platforms used.
• Recognise when it is time to move from the validation stage to the professionalisation stage.
• Invest in infrastructure and tools that are easy to scale as demand rises.
• Avoid over engineering.
• Make sure all of your systems integrate to avoid silos and repeating work. Marcus explains how.
• Most startups (75%) fail because they scale too fast.
• On average, a day per week per developer is wasted fixing poorly planned and implemented code etc.
• Creating a high performing team culture is the key to fast and efficient growth.
• People don´t change easily that is why you need to cultivate sound cultural values, communication, trust, collaboration, willingness to take feedback etc. 
• Protect your company values even when hyper scaling. 
• Don’t hire brilliant jerks, they pull everyone down.
•  Cultural skills are hard to teach, but most tech skills can be taught in months.
• The CEO needs to be a good role model.
• Build trust and collaboration between teams.

BEST MOMENTS

1:09 "The fix? It starts with the platform mindset." 

4:30 "Tech growth equals preparing for scaling." 

16.33 "Developers waste 23% of their time…reworking bad past solutions."

30.00 "Recognise what you don´t know and pull in people who can actually help you." 

43.12 "Understand the phase you are in… and scale accordingly." 

50.11 "Any system you build should have inbound and outbound APIs." 

54.25 "The culture enables a lot of efficiency when teams trust each other." 

1.08.11 "When you are ready for hyper growth…hire the best talent you can get." 

1.16.30 “Have a growth mindset to build a culture to leverage platforms for impact.”

ABOUT THE GUEST

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

Multipliers Book - https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Liz-Wiseman/author/B00369WNUW

Ideal Team Member - https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Patrick-Lencioni/author/B001ILFMB2

ABOUT THE HOST

Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals. 

For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Graham Riley, a LinkedIn strategist, speaker, and founder of LinkedIn Enterprises. For 20+ years, Graham has been helping B2B companies generate millions in revenue using LinkedIn. His strategies don´t just get you likes; they drive deals.

He and Mike discuss how you need to respond to drastic algorithm changes, why your execs need to engage on LinkedIn, quickly create content, take advantage of LinkedIn visitor data that many people are not even aware of, and much more.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The majority of LinkedIn advice is out of date.
• LinkedIn is not just another social media platform or a resume repository. It is a sales generator.
• Engagement is the key to leveraging LinkedIn. Respond to your comments and do it properly.
• Comments that elevate what was said and add value are the most effective. 75% of visitors to Graham´s profile visit after reading his comments.
• Your execs' silence is hurting your brand visibility.
• Execs want to hear from thought leaders, from other execs. LinkedIn enables your execs to connect, build awareness, trust and belief.
• With LinkedIn, you have to take a strategic approach.
• Use business impact language.
• Say the right things to the right audience at the right time to generate curiosity in your ability to solve the problem.
• Create a great LinkedIn profile by consistently doing a series of little things right.
• Marketing, sales and product delivery are all a part of acquiring a customer and turning them into a repeat customer.
• Recently, the algorithm changed. If your posts have no interaction, they will not be seen. Engaging with comments the right way is essential.
• Train AI train well, use the right AI tools and do it well.
• Take your business whitepaper, distil it and turn it into snackable content.
• Keep repeating your messages. If you don´t, people forget.

BEST MOMENTS

1:47 "Graham is the only guest who has managed to get 400 people tuned in for this LinkedIn event, normally it is about 200 people." 

5:30 “People trust people…content from individuals especially executives builds more trust." 

10:53 "The power comes when all of those components are working in harmony with each other, just like in a car."

32.44 “LinkedIn is telling you that you should care about how much your comment is getting seen.”

46.00 “How you behave and communicate with me is shaping my perception of how much attention I should pay.”

1.03.04 “Somebody with a free profile can generate opportunities, but it’s much harder.”

1.06.12 “Use your LinkedIn profile to mimic the professional behaviours that you would have at a trade show or conference.”

1.11.14 “ Around 75% of the people who visit my profile have come from the comments that I've made.”

ABOUT THE GUEST

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

ABOUT THE HOST

Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals. 

For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Chris Silvestri, the founder of Conversion Alchemy. Chris helps B2B SaaS companies break through the noise, reach more would-be customers and show them why they are the obvious choice. Chris’s carefully honed approach uses the alchemy of copy, UX, and decision-making psychology to turn browsers and visitors into loyal, paying customers.

He digs deep into customer research, pulls out real insights, who your real buyer is, what their buying decision making process is and determine what language will resonate with them, so that your message lands and converts.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Mastery is about going deeper than your competition.
• Invest in customer research. You can't write copy that converts without it.
• Build a repeatable research process.
• There are layers to research. 
• The surface layer of research is reviews and competitors’ products. The deeper layers include the customer experience while using a product like yours and why customers behave as they do.
• Focus on the individual decisions customers make during their buying journey and why they make them.
• Uncover your unique narrative by asking customers what they think existing providers are doing wrong. 
• Use reviews to understand the language your customers use.
• Your copy needs to resonate with – daily users, the purchasing decision maker and the check signer.
• Use AI combined with human data to simulate personas. Chris explains how and which tools to use.
• According to HubSpot, 72% of SaaS websites fail to clearly explain what they offer.
• Get your value proposition right.
• Blend features with benefits.
• Test and tweak your copy.
• To truly connect with people, use their language, their pain points and their motivations.

Be clear on what you do, how you do it and who you do it for.

BEST MOMENTS

1.14 "People underestimate the power of good copy when it comes to conversions." 

3:25 "Invest more in research." 

6:36 "The deep-seated layer tells you why customers make the decisions they make and how they make them." 

15:24 "To uncover your customer´s pain points….reviews are a good starting point."

31:00 "You can make sure that everything it gives is accurate and that it doesn´t hallucinate." 

40:40 "You can simulate personas with AI, but not real customer behaviour, at least not yet." 

47:73  “Imagine that your copy needs to continue the phrase "I want to … that's your valuable position." 

59:00 "The right message basically has the right positioning with the right language for the right audience." 

1.05.36 “The best copy is copy that doesn´t look like copy.”

ABOUT THE GUEST

https://conversionalchemy.net

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

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Demand-Side-Sales-101-Customers-Progress/dp/1544509987

ABOUT THE HOST

Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals. 

For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Lukas Gentele, CEO and co-founder of Loft Labs, to discuss how to ensure that your open-source project doesn’t end up being one of the 80% that fail. Lukas has successfully launched multiple open-source projects and turned them into profitable businesses. Through this episode, he provides the bones of a framework you can use to do the same.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Open source needs to solve real problems, ones that people are willing to pay to have solved.
• Your open-source product needs to solve problems, but not to the point where nothing is left to build a commercial product that will still attract buyers.You are building 2 tools. Avoid interdepartmental rivalry - don´t silo the development of the two products.
• The build it and they will come mentality doesn´t work.
• Write and continuously publish content to increase the chances of your product taking off.
• Create communities of your own. Use them to better understand who your customers are and what their pain points are now and in the future.
• Fully engage with users to turn them into contributors. Value ideas and usage insights just as much as coding.
• Don’t expect your community to build a lot of code. They will, but it will be limited.
• Recognise those that contribute.
• Years on, continue to engage with your users, release enhancements and new content to maintain momentum.
• Continuously update your readme, include a demo video, don´t skimp on the support docs. Without these using your tool becomes too difficult and your reputation suffers.
• Offer a free trial for paid features.
• Make the transition from open source to your paid product a no brainer and easy.

BEST MOMENTS

00.30 "80% of open-source projects ultimately flop." 

02:52 "Focus on the right problem in the right market." 

07.47 “When you ship new features and talk about them, you create more and more opportunities.”

22.04 “ There needs to be a balance between what's open source and what's commercial.”

25.32  "That's the beautiful effect of open source; people actually want to work with the folks that built it."

30.12 "You are effectively building two different tools. One is open source, one is enterprise. ."

34.27 "If we had just launched a commercial offering, I don't think we would have a company today."

35.29 “There's a balance between what you open source and what you don’t. You don't want to tip the scale either way."

39.23 "Over 90% of users are consumers, not contributors."

45.29 "These people feel even more engaged with the product. They feel part of this community. They feel part of the project."

58.00 “Your success will equal other people's successes.”

ABOUT THE GUEST

https://www.vcluster.com

https://github.com/loft-sh/vcluster

https://slack.vcluster.com 

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

https://x.com/lukasgentele

https://www.loft.sh

ABOUT THE HOST

Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals. 

Today, Mike is joined by Sam Piliero, founder of The Moonlighters, a marketing agency helping brands scale profitably. Sam and his team break down why most brands struggle to scale their ads, and how small fixes in strategy can make the difference between them running ads that are burning cash and ads that enable firms to scale profitably.

Sam explains how to use AI for marketing, work out what strategy is right for your company and which ad platforms are providing the best exposure and ROI, right now.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Small changes in strategy can take you from burning cash running ineffective ads to spending a lot less while seeing sales soar.
• AI combined with manual oversight is now an effective way to craft, monitor and tweak ads.
• The new Meta UI is going to be transformative.
• The number of campaigns you should be running changes as you evolve.
• Nurture your existing customers but dedicate most of your budget to customer acquisition.
• Setting up your pixels and using that data is vital. 
• At the start, be everywhere. Gather the data, then focus on the platforms that work best.
• Leverage all of the channels in the G Suite (Google).
• Right now, there are lots of opportunities on X for small businesses.
• Include as many formats as possible in each ad campaign to increase your placement levels.
• People resonate with stories.
• Analysing your ROI is essential. Sam explains exactly how to do it.
• Drill down into what times of the day/week convert best for you.

BEST MOMENTS

3:19 "he next six months, we're going to see an acceleration of the use of some of the AI tools." 

5:46 "You have to really focus on what's actually functioning the best today, and then focus on six months, nine months, then a year from now." 

7:22 "Allow the market to iron things out, be a little bit later in adopting these new things." 

9:55 "Companies that scale successfully evolve their customer acquisition model."

12:38 "Early days, it's okay to have even just one or two campaigns." 

17.20 “Facebook and Google are the best converting platforms, period, right now.“

21.01 “Almost every time the geo-located campaigns are outperforming the E-com side because we are targeting a specific cohort of people.“

25.35 “Whenever big advertisers remove themselves from an ad platform, the cost of advertising decreases drastically.”

26.43 “If you spend the same amount across the board, e.g. $1,000 you would typically be seeing Facebook and Google outperform.”

32.05 “The more value you put in a piece of content, the more views it gets.”

33.16 “Virality is not only unique, it is actually earned.”

42.00 “Don't overreact to slight adjustments in the ad account.”

51.29 “Always focus on minimizing wasted ad spend and reallocating that ad spend to the best possible place.”

EPISODE RESOURCES

https://themoonlighters.com/techgrowth

https://www.youtube.com/@SamPiliero

Social - @SamPiliero

ABOUT THE HOST

Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals. 

For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Marcelo Calbucci, the author of PRFAQ Lab. He has been successfully growing startups for 18+ years and is a former Amazon exec. His book PRFAQ Lab breaks down the framework Amazon uses to determine whether an idea is viable and how to develop it. This framework has helped to ensure that in a world where 92% of start-ups fail, most of Amazon´s succeed. As do other start-ups that use the framework.

If you want to learn how to de-risk your startup and build with confidence before you write a single line of code, listen in and turn your ideas into validated and fundable billion-dollar products, services and businesses.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• 92% of startups fail. 
• Amazon start-ups use a simple framework called PRFAQ to validate their ideas, align their team and get investors. An approach that has been highly successful, with the majority of their start-ups succeeding.
• PRFAQ stands for Press Release and Frequently Asked Questions.
• Using the 7 step Press Release format enables you to identify the problem, who is experiencing the issue, your solution, how it works and how people can get your product. 
• Writing a press release as if you have already launched the product opens your mind and improves understanding.
• Manually write your PR. Writing has been scientifically proven to help you think, it activates different sides of the brain.
• The FAQs you need to include are those that help you to define vision and strategy.
• Validate your idea before you start coding. If the market does not exist, don´t build it.
• Understand the job the customer is trying to complete and what steps they are currently following to get it done. Don´t guess.
• Understanding where to find your customers is a vital part of your research.
• PRFAQ also works well for services and businesses. It is a great way to align a team and share the vision in an undiluted form.
• PRFAQ is good for pitching.

BEST MOMENTS

3:40 "You have to wear your archaeologist or anthropologist hat and really observe how people work through the problem that you're trying to solve." 

7:13 "The best way to address that problem is to eliminate the problem." 

12:43 "According to Harvard Business Review, startups that validate … market need for their solution are 2.5 times more likely to succeed."

30.53 “It's not really a customer discovery framework. PRFAQ is a framework that helps you discover what you don't know and helps you to capture and think critically about that.”

47.34 “So, your slides don't have the typical gaps that most pitch decks have.”

48.53 “According to Forbes, startups with well-structured pitch documents are 60% more likely to secure funding.”

52.31 “Every product you know that Amazon has launched over the last 20 years was backed by a PRFAQ.”

EPISODE RESOURCES

https://www.theprfaq.com

ABOUT THE HOST

Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals. 

For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Jonathan Mast, the founder of White Beard Strategies. He is a leading voice in AI prompting mastery with over 400,000 followers. Jonathan has helped 1000s of business owners and entrepreneurs unlock AI's full potential using his structured four-step framework. Enabling some of them to experience a 5,000% uptick in their ROI.

This episode is a must listen if you want to stop wasting time with bad AI outputs and start getting results that actually move the needle. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Technology is there to be leveraged to make your life and that of others better.
• Adding value for your customer is where the growth is.
• Most people are using AI wrong and blaming the tool when they get poor results.
• AI can´t read your mind, you need to give it context and invite it to ask you for clarification.
• Give AI an avatar to write as e.g. You are an expert copywriter who specialises in ….
• One prompt is rarely enough, you need to provide a framework e.g. To write a book, you need to provide hundreds of prompts.
• It is still hard to get AI to only use the body of knowledge you give it to create content. Mike shares his method for doing this.
• AI works with a limited amount of memory, so if you give it too many instructions in one go, it soon loses the thread and goes off track.
• Johnathan shares several ways to get around usage caps and gain access to all of the AI models.
• Make using AI a win for your team.
• Learn how to leverage AI. Doing so turns you into a sought-after employee.
• Do something new each day with AI.
• To overcome the hallucinations issue. Trust, but verify.
• When brainstorming with AI, use your voice. Weirdly, you get much better results. It is also good at transcribing.
• AI does a great job of organizing and contextualizing what is sometimes a very random stream of thought.
• The fastest way to learn AI is to use it consistently.

BEST MOMENTS

00:55 "It´s not AI that´s broken, it´s your prompts." 

7:12 "Give the AI permission to ask you clarifying questions.."

21.15 “If we give it too many things to do, it's simply not going to follow through on that… it works best in a prompt if we give it 1, 2 maybe 3 things.”

38.59 ”When you're rolling it out at first, make it a win for your team, not just a win for the company.”

44.29 “Trust but verify.”

46.03 “By giving it (AI) permission to ask you questions, it'll avoid most of those hallucinations.”

51.18 “Have a conversation with AI. Don't expect to give it one prompt and get perfection.”

53.17 “We make too many assumptions that AI will figure it out. In other words, we don't give it enough context.”

57.53 “We are not at a point, nor do I see us ever getting to a point, where AI is that proverbial money tree in the backyard.”

ABOUT THE GUEST

Personal Website: https://jonathanmast.com

White Beard Strategies: https://whitebeardstrategies.com

AI Prompting Mastery: https://www.facebook.com/groups/aipromptsforentrepreneurs/ 

 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jonathanjmast

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanjmast

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@jonathanmast_withai

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jonathanmast

Threads: https://threads.net/@jonathanmast

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

ABOUT THE HOST

Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals. 

Mike speaks to Aditya Jain, the co-founder of Passion Fruit and a leading SEO growth strategist who has helped companies move beyond vanity metrics and generate income from their SEO efforts. They discuss why most businesses get SEO wrong and spend too long chasing rankings instead of revenue. Many are targeting high volume low intent keywords.

Aditya Jain is going to change the way you think about and use SEO. He provides truly practical advice that works in the modern marketplace. Including how to use AI to improve targeting and speed up content creation and data analysis.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Companies waste months chasing rankings instead of revenue by optimizing for high volume, low intent keywords that never lead to sales. 
• Position yourself to solve your customer’s pain point and target those in your SEO. Regularly review this, Aditya shares some of the tools and framework he uses.
• Ask your customers what their problems are. Use Aditya´s method to ensure you get honest answers and insights.
• When it comes to building your website, your North Star is matching user intent
• Your pages also need to be search engine and AI LLMs (e.g. ChatGPT and Perplexity) friendly. If they are not, your content will not be found online.
• Write with the intent of answering your customer´s questions, especially when using AI. If you don´t, you will get a high bounce rate, and your traffic will crash.
• Measure how each page is performing, including the sales generated.
• Use SEMrush, it is a cheap and quick way to get started.
• AI enables you to dig deeper into your data and sometimes that of your competitors.
• Don´t just follow trends, you need to focus on what you really do and want to do.

BEST MOMENTS

0:18 "High traffic doesn't pay the bills, conversions do." 

00:28 "Understand which keywords actually drive revenue and how to adjust SEO in real time to capture more business." 

2:24 "What drives growth is your customer’s pain point, figure that out and position yourself to solve that problem." 

7:40 "We actually have a living, breathing document of all the common questions and concerns etc that our customers have." 

10:16 "90% of pages receive no organic traffic because they optimise for broad, low intent keywords."

13:28 "Your North Star is not just revenue, it’s actually – am I matching my user's intent and am I building topical authority?"

15:10 "The readability of your code base, etc., is increasingly important."

33.10 "Any marketing strategy that involves producing content or doing SEO just comes down to delivering on customer needs.”

50.17 “Reviewing the data actually just tells you what type of customers want you, and then you choose, is this a customer I actually want?”

EPISODE RESOURCES

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aditya-j-985a92108/

https://www.getpassionfruit.com

ABOUT THE HOST

Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals. 

Mike speaks to Peter Kaliuzhny, the founder of GetSales.io, who is an expert on B2B sales. He has closed numerous six figure deals with Fortune 100 companies. Peter leverages LinkedIn and can turn any profile into a lead generation machine, which is free to use.

Peter explains how to optimise your LinkedIn profile, create break-through first connection messages and generate inbound profile links. He shares how to understand your customers and use that knowledge to generate massive leads and sales.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Greatly boost your earning potential by creating LinkedIn content that showcases your expertise.
• LinkedIn is a powerful lead generation and sales tool, not just a place to find a job.
• Tech growth is about leveraging technology to get better results and generate sales.
• LinkedIn marketing is free.
• Optimise your LinkedIn profile to gain 30% more views and 3x more engagement.
• An effective profile reflects your values, your goals and outlines how you can help.
• LinkedIn marketing is not about spammy DMs that will get you blocked. Make true connections and turn those relationships into sales.
• Peter doesn’t use LinkedIn SEO – he explains why.
• Actively drive inbound links to your profile. Peter explains how.
• Consistently create high-quality content that solves your customer´s pain.
• Be careful when using automation with LinkedIn. Peter shares how to do it properly.
• Start slowly and use the same IP.
• You have seconds to make a positive first impression. Peter shares how to compose your first message.
• AI can be helpful when creating your initial messages.
• Humour triggers emotions which helps build a connection.
• Personalise your message and make it truly relevant to your prospect.
• Ask people you already know well who they think might be interested in your service.
• Regularly review and re-balance your network.

BEST MOMENTS

1:00 "Master the art of safe and effective LinkedIn outreach."

8:50 "Test, see how the conversation goes…. Don't just pitch something right away, explore it instead." 

14:37 "Really connect … if you want to sell, you never sell. You have to think about how you can help them resolve their problem." 

15.05 “Optimise your profile, fine tune it so that it is aligned with your goals.”

27.02 “Post really good content, consistently. content that helps them to solve that pain.”

31.46 “You have to identify those leads and understand what you really want …once you do that, you can go for automation.”

48.01 “Never send a wall of text.”

59.29 “Don't ask for a call.”

1.11.03 “Create content related to your job, to your expertise, it is super cool.. you increase the value of yourself….”

1.11.18 “They will be paying you more later on, if you show your expertise.”

ABOUT THE GUEST

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

ABOUT THE HOST

Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals. 

Today, Mike is joined by Sabir Semerkant, a top E-commerce growth strategist, with 25+ years of experience. Over the years he has helped brands like Coca Cola, Canon and Tommy Hilfiger to achieve massive growth. Sabir has turned that expertise into his 8D Method - a step-by-step framework for unlocking scalable, profitable e-commerce growth. His rapid 2x program has helped brands grow by an average of 108% in just 21 days

In this episode, Sabir breaks down pricing, marketing, product research and profitability strategies that will transform your online business. He also shares what not to do, his e-commerce sins.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• 90% of e-commerce startups fail within 120 days. Sabir knows why and how to stop that from happening to you.
• Be sceptical, there are a lot of scammers actively selling things that will kill your business e.g., toxic backlinks that will mean your business disappears from the search results.
• Sabir teaches his students to take care of all of the 8 dimensions an E-commerce business needs.
• Step 1 is optimising your site for customer attention. You have 1.7 seconds to stop the scroll.
• Landing page speed is critical. Optimise it for your market and the devices they use.
• Be laser focused and tackle one vital thing at a time. After addressing customer attention, your bestselling product landing pages are next.
• Master marketing across multiple platforms.
• Use your data to understand your customers and turn them into repeat buyers. 
• You need to get people to buy from you at least once every 6 months.
• Your product pages need to be optimized structurally, for SEO and content. For e-commerce, SEO is vital.
• You have to put your face on your brand and tell your story.
• Couponing works, but constantly using promos will bankrupt you.
• Even small incremental improvements can have a massive cumulative impact, e.g. If you improve by 40% your sales actually increase 3x.

BEST MOMENTS

00:39 "E-commerce in 2025 is a battlefield."

02.14 "Tech actually is the thing that helps you elevate and accelerate your growth profitably." 

13:25 "As an entrepreneur, you need to have a healthy dose of scepticism.." 

21:00 “Don't dwell in the past, … the realities of 2025, are very different from the realities of 2020, and 2022 ."

30.00 “What is the consumer attention span in 2025? - 1.7 seconds.”

41.03 “Most Shopify owners don't know the behaviour of their consumers.”

54.30 “If you're not correcting these problems, it's de-ranking you.”

1.01.36 “When you are doing couponing to that extent, you're robbing yourself of your future.”

1.20.23 “I'm Mr. Miyagi … I'm telling you how to wax on, wax off.”

ABOUT THE GUEST

https://growthbysabir.com/masteringtechgrowth

Harvard Business School article - https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=62855

https://www.luckyorange.com

ABOUT THE HOST

Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.