REACH OR MISS - Entrepreneurial Marketing Success

By Hayut YogevBusiness Entrepreneurship Marketing

REACH OR MISS - Entrepreneurial Marketing Success episodes

February 28, 2022Ep. 256 – Lisa & Deevo: everybody genuinely has at least one superpower that they can share
Lisa Staff is a master photographer, former fashion model, and expert interior & exterior designer. She has had success at every turn in her entrepreneurial career due to her ability to connect and understand people on all levels. She embodies the metaphor of meeting people where they are and turning their lemons into lemonade.
Deevo is a thought leader, photographer, videographer, blogger, serial entrepreneur, ex-college athlete, former corporate executive, a single father of two promising young ladies, and now an emerging strategy consultant and paid speaker, who is fast making his way as an expert in creating digital architecture to help small businesses and entrepreneurs’ brand and market.
In 2018, Lisa & Deevo founded Sprout Connectors, a full service creative agency with a focus on social media management and content storytelling. They mix an efficient blend of content savvy with a relentless creative lavishness and depth of imagination to serve up an inspiring brand community.

Most passionate about
Business-wise, I am running my photography agency, which I've been doing since 2003. About a year and a half ago, Lisa and I partnered and formed a new business called Sprout Connectors. It’s a branding and marketing acceleration agency for small businesses and entrepreneurs.

We are also launching some training workshops, working on a TED Talk proposal, and traveling the planet as much as we can, given the closures all over the place. We’re just trying to live our life.

Best advice for entrepreneurs
First and foremost, as it pertains to your customer perspective, you must develop, if you haven't already, the ability to listen.

There’s a fine line between adding your own unique twist and approach to things and melding that metaphorically with what your client wants out of the situation, being able to look at that intuitively and intraoperatively and clearly understanding what their vision is, what their business objective is.

At the core of that, you need to be able to read the room and understand that everyone you engage with is uniquely qualified and uniquely different in their own sense.

The biggest, most critical failure with customers
For me, it's the ego piece. As a business owner. If you can't tell, I'm very firm on my approach to everything. I have very specific ideas about how things should function. And because I've had a decent amount of success in my businesses, I come to the table sometimes thinking that I know the way to do things. That's really just my ego talking.

Biggest success with customers
The accomplishment is the fact that we've been in business collectively for over 20 years and we've launched a new brand together. In our first year of business, we were already profitable.

Being able to pivot into a new business model, adjust that, and have an impact right away with our clients was a big success for me. Still having the understanding and humility that we have a lot of room to grow and being able to do that has been monumental in my business.

Lisa & Deevo’s recommendation of a tool
I use HoneyBook for my photography business. We use it for onboarding as well.
It's CRM and workflow software that you integrate with your back-of-the-house procedures. Contact information, databases, email systems—any way that you communicate with your clients, not only does it enable you to track it and keep an inventory log of your conversations, history, contracts, all that sort of stuff,...
23 min
February 21, 2022Ep. 255 – Patrick Parker’s one key success factor is Focus. “Because there’s so much noise going on in the world about what works and what doesn’t work.”
Patrick B. Parker is an accomplished Tech Executive turned Founder with domestic and international experience in operations, custom software development, multichannel product distribution, and marketing involving both start-up and growth operations. He has bootstrapped companies he founded to millions ($MM) in ARR and has raised venture capital to build out teams, to refine product features and user experiences, and to execute go-to-market (GTM) strategies.
Today, his company works with amazing entrepreneurs that are looking to make a major impact within their industry. Thoroughbred Solutions helps clients with everything from business ideation to product/service development to building scalable marketing strategies and everything in between.

Most passionate about
I'm extremely, deeply involved in Software As A Service. I love technology and Those are definitely my passions, but my purpose is really helping young entrepreneurs and brain builders with building out their businesses—helping to make them successful and to de-risk the process.

Patrick’s career and story
I was a software architect before launching my own business. Then I started building out entreprise software, web apps, mobile apps, things of that nature. From there, I got into branding business building as well, being involved on the software side.

We've gone above and beyond to bring in experts and all of the various functional domains so that we have that expertise in-house.

Best advice for entrepreneurs
The biggest thing is to just start now.

Start having those conversations with people in your target audience. Start understanding what challenges they're facing and then what possible solutions might look like.

The biggest, most critical failure with customers
We've had one customer, out of several hundred, that has opted to leave and go work somewhere else. The struggles I've had have not been with customers as much as with market conditions. As a serial entrepreneur, starting businesses from a young age, I've failed a lot.

It’s been more about being able to bring on capital or manage cashflow—things of that nature.

Biggest success with customers
I've launched a ton of different ventures. The first one, I launched as a side hustle was a staffing company. I grew it to a million in revenue within the first year.

That allowed me to have the seed capital to start my next venture, which was a software development company. That has probably been my greatest success story.

My greatest personal success, or the greatest reward, that I see is being able to help my clients and customers realize their dreams.

Patrick’s recommendation of a tool
CRM
HubSpot

It helps you track that customer.

It helps you create touchpoints around that customer's experience and journey.

Patrick’s one key success factor
The biggest thing, especially when we're working with clients, is that there's so much noise going on in the world about what works and what doesn't work. We stress to clients that they need to understand that no two entrepreneurial journeys are the same. It's the same for your backstory as it is for your roadmap of where you're going.

At SAS Partners, we use proven frameworks to help entrepreneurs focus on the activities that are...
22 min
February 14, 2022Ep. 254 – Mark Colgan: “It’s one thing to market and sell to people. It’s another thing to actually deliver on the promise that was sold.”
Mark Colgan is an entrepreneur and revenue leader responsible for increasing revenue across a small portfolio of companies where he leverages his 13 years experience of B2B Sales, Marketing and Recruitment.
Mark currently splits his time as Co-founder of Speak On Podcasts, mentoring B2B Startups via GrowthMentor and ScaleWise, The Product Onboarders and coaching 100’s of SDR’s through his Outbound Prospecting and Cold Email Bootcamp course via The Sales Impact Academy.
He’s a Techstars 18′ Alumni and a regular speaker within the B2B SaaS industry, his work has been published by SaaStock, Mailshake, Pipedrive, LeadSift, Lemlist, SugarCRM and Baremetrics to name a few.
Mark currently lives and works from Lisbon, is addicted to travelling and exploring new cultures and places. You’ll often hear him saying “por que no?” (why not?) to anything that sounds fun or gets the heart racing like wingwalking, skydiving and paramotoring.

Most passionate about
We are building an agency, which is completely remote.

And we're in the podcasting world. We help people secure interviews on relevant podcasts so they can get their brand message out there and build awareness about that.

Mark’s career and story
I studied marketing at university, but as part of my degree, we had to work for one year in a company. I actually got a job in recruitment and I did so well in that year that I was invited back to the company once I graduated.

I spent the first two to three years of my career in recruitment, working for some of the largest recruitment companies.

I started to teach myself digital marketing because it was all very new back then. I managed to get a role in a separate company as the first digital marketing person. So, I got very good at implementing CRMs and marketing automation, as well as a lot of the technology and putting that all together.

I realized, once I was traveling, that I didn't really want to go back to a nine-to-five job. I enjoyed the freedom. And I enjoyed the ability to be able to travel and work from wherever I wanted. So, I set up my own consultancy, focusing on HubSpot CRM and marketing automation, all of the things I love building together – building things and putting them together.

I managed to be invited to work for a company as their chief revenue officer, which meant essentially that I was looking after marketing sales, customer success, and product. In this case, the product was the service. I did that for just over a year which brings us up to June 2020, when I left that company to start speaking on podcasts. This is the agency that I currently focus and spend most of my time on now.

Best advice for entrepreneurs
I’ll split my answer into two parts, but it's pretty much the same answer: Focus on the customer. What I mean by that is to really understand who it is that you are going to be working with. What are their problems and their challenges, and can you build a solution to help them overcome some of those challenges and problems?

The second part is to then think about distribution. What I mean by distribution is how you can get in front of as many of those ideal customers, whom you’ve defined, as possible.

The biggest, most critical failure with customers
My most critical failure would be not focusing on the client delivery part of the business.

It's one thing to market and sell to people. It's another thing to actually deliver on the promise that was sold. I've been in situations where I wasn't focusing on that because it wasn't really supposed to be part of my job, but then I...
17 min
February 07, 2022Ep. 253 – Michael Unbroken: “You have to be able to separate who you are as a human being, to an extent, from who it is that you are as a business owner.”
From homeless to hero, Michael Unbroken, is the Founder of Think Unbroken, best-selling author, award-winning speaker, podcast host, coach, and advocate for adult survivors of childhood.
Since 2016, Michael has empowered over 100,000 trauma survivors to get out of The Vortex, learn to love themselves, and become the hero of their own story. Michael has written multiple books including the best seller Think Unbroken: Understanding and Overcoming Childhood Trauma, spoken in over 80 countries, won investments from Undercover Billionaire Grant Cardone, and is on a mission to end Generational Trauma in his lifetime.
About Think Unbroken: Our mission is to empower trauma survivors with the tools and curriculum of Think Unbroken to get unstuck, learn to love themselves, get "Out of The Vortex" and reclaim their power. We believe that by creating palatable and practical tools that Trauma Warriors around the world can overcome their past, heal from trauma, and BECOME THE HERO OF THEIR OWN STORY!

Most passionate about
One of the two biggest things that I'm moving toward right now is having the number one mental health and personal development podcast on the planet. The other biggest goal is to be in the best physical, mental, and emotional shape of my life this year.

Michael’s career and story
I spent the majority of my childhood being homeless and deeply in poverty. I started doing drugs when I was 12 years old. I was expelled from school when I was 15 years old and I spent a lot.

As I headed into my later teen years, I thought about life from the perspective of “What is the solution for poverty? What is the solution for abuse?”

“How does somebody really get out of this?” I decided it must be money. So, I made a decision that I would chase money, but do it legally.

I started learning skills. I started learning leadership. I started learning how to be productive with my time. I started learning how to manage cash flow and P&Ls and inventories. And I worked for a fast-food restaurant. At 18 and a half, almost 19 years old, I had 52 employees underneath me. So, I started learning about legit business.

In a couple of years, I was working for a Fortune 10 company here in America. No high school diploma, no college education. I started making six figures. That just destroyed my life because money is not the solution to your problems.

And, in that, one of the most beautiful things happened. I remember I was lying in bed the next day, eating chocolate cake and watching the CrossFit games. And I'm like, “Hold on, something here is not right. There's something really wrong with everything in my life.” I went into the bathroom, looked at myself in the mirror, and asked myself, “What are you willing to do to have the life that you want to have?” And the answer was “no excuses, just results.”

It started me on this beautiful journey where now, 11 years later, I am talking to you. That has been a process of healing, of discovery, of therapy and coaching, and education and investing in myself, investing in my community and my businesses.

Best advice for entrepreneurs
If I were an entrepreneur at the beginning of this, if I rewound my life 15 years, the first thing that I would tell myself is, “You need to learn to be okay asking for money. You need to put yourself in a position where you move through the discomfort of not valuing yourself for what you are. Charge what you are worth.”

In that, because it is a trade-off, you have to bring massive value to your customer. You have to take care of them. You have to be their best friend. You have to follow through. You have to do what you say that...
25 min
January 31, 2022Ep. 252 – Robyn Johnson’s best advice: When you’re looking at customer approach, make sure that you’re offering what your customers really want.
Robyn Johnson has been heralded as one of the country's foremost leaders on the topic of selling and marketing products on Amazon.com. Robyn has been a guest on shows like Entrepreneur on Fire, Confessions of A Marketer, and is a SEMrush Academy professor.
Robyn is the co-founder of Marketplace Blueprint, a digital agency that specializes in listing optimization and advertising on Amazon. She has over a decade of experience of selling online on Amazon, eBay, and other eCommerce venues.

Most passionate about
I get to help people who have physical products market those products on Amazon. We have an agency that helps run the ads and does the listings for people.

I'm also really passionate about Disney, Star Wars, and my kids. We try to squeeze in as much travel and adventures and board games as we can.

Robyn’s career and story
I had no intention of doing this. I had no marketing experience about 11-plus years ago. I was working in a church but you don't get paid a lot and my son got sick. There was a moment when they were testing him and I knew that the test was going to cost a certain amount.

I took a hundred dollars out of our emergency fund. I can still remember the five twenties in my hand. It felt like a million dollars. We started buying things at garage sales and then reselling them on Craigslist.

From that hundred dollars, we built a million-dollar business selling physical products on Amazon. We moved from buying used items to buying things in retail stores to wholesale.

I started coaching other high-volume Amazon sellers and we realized what a big problem Amazon was for brands. About five years ago, we started our agency. Now we get to work with brands that are “Shark Tank”-size companies and some publicly traded companies.

Best advice for entrepreneurs
When you're looking at customer approach, make sure that you're offering what your customers really want.

Make sure you're really keyed in to what's going on in your buyer's mind.

Don't try to skip steps. Enjoy each moment.

The biggest, most critical failure with customers
The thing that set us back the most was related to cash flow.

I hired somebody who was supposed to manage our cash flow but I wasn't monitoring it well enough and it got us in some trouble. Then it took us quite a long time to get out of it. And it added a lot of stress. It made the business very much not fun for a long period of time.

Biggest success with customers
The biggest success is when we've gone out of our way to provide off-Amazon connections or use the resources in our network to help other sellers.

There was a publicly-traded company that had worked with an agency previously. They're a large company, so they had significant sales on Amazon. By communicating what changes we needed to make and reassessing and changing their approach to their ads on Amazon, we were able to grow their year-over-year sales by 118%. That extra revenue helped them get another round of investment that netted $40 million for the company.

Robyn’s recommendation of a tool
If you have a physical product, go to your product on Amazon and your competitors' products on Amazon. Look at your website, then review their website and reviews. Copy and paste all of them in Google Word Cloud.

Robyn’s one key success factor
My key success factor is...
22 min
January 24, 2022Ep. 251 – Nothing happens until you sell something
Among all the challenges entrepreneurs are facing getting more clients is the challenge that is mentioned most.
Customers are the oxygen of any business. And yet, we often think about getting customers and sales as a given.
Surprisingly, in most cases, focus on getting more customers to grow your business is much easier than most entrepreneurs think. But often, they prefer to focus on finding a cheaper manufacturer or making changes in the product, or replacing the team rather than increase their leads and customer base.
Why?
Probably because customers’ marketing and sales are something most business owners are not certain of.
They are not aware of the speed and volume of growth they can get through focus on the right customers to generate more leads, and sales
In today’s episode, I chose to focus on the stories of three successful entrepreneurs who realized that focusing on the customer is the easiest and fastest way to win.

Karl Maier: “The customer is critical. One of my mentors said, many years ago, that nothing happens until you sell something. So, obviously, that starts with the customer.”
Karl Maier has been part of the leadership team in six established companies which have at least doubled sales in two years. Leveraging his successes, Karl developed the Abunden Framework© and led the development of the practical management tools in the Abunden Tools App. These online SaaS (Software as a Service) tools build the management structure for companies to grow and succeed.

Karl’s best advice for entrepreneurs
The customer is critical. One of my mentors said, many years ago, that nothing happens until you sell something. So, obviously, that starts with the customer.

I think the principal is to talk to a number of different potential customers and really understand what their problem is. Can you solve it in a way that they're willing to pay for? That's the most fundamental part of starting a business, in my mind.

Then you have the option to be Hands-on all the pieces of the company, but that limits your growth, or are you willing to transform and delegate it to other people to grow the company? I think that’s a very fundamental choice, one that I would encourage people to reflect on and decide which way they really want to go.

The biggest, most critical failure with customers
My first software startup was during the dot-com boom. Everybody said, “Technology is going to solve all the problems.” I think I got sucked into that and I really didn't understand my customers.

I was ignoring how the products were actually bought and sold. In the end, the company failed because of that. So that's a lesson. We remember failures better than our wins, I think.

Biggest success with customers
We had a service company in the health safety industry. I was part of the C-suite management team. And we really did build a team. There was great communication and connection. People respected each other. They worked hard and were able to really understand what our customer's problem was.

High-value people were getting malaria and getting sick. We were able to come in and cut their malaria rate in half the first year and then half again the second year. So we clearly were solving their problem. We were able to come in and solve a problem, do it effectively.

We were able to grow the company. We grew it in four years by a factor of seven.
34 min
January 17, 2022Ep. 250 – Only those who quit fail. never, ever give up. You just have to keep going
There are a few reasons why so many entrepreneurs fail, and around 90% of the entrepreneurships fail. However, many of the most successful entrepreneurs I interviewed for my podcast told me the same thing; Keep going. Only those who quit fail.
In today’s episode, I chose to focus on the stories of three successful entrepreneurs. The main reason for their success was their state of mind; no matter what happened and how big the failures they experienced were, they never ever gave up until they succeeded.
I think you will find those stories very inspiring.
Brian Roland: “A lot of failures look like trial and error. It's an iterative process. It kind of hits the failure category but we learned so much through the process that it's hard to see it as a failure.”
Brian Roland is a Social Entrepreneur and Founder of Abenity, the 6x Inc. 5000 Company that’s powering corporate perks for top brands including U.S. Bank and MasterCard.
And while Abenity provides millions of subscribers with private discounts, the company’s social mission is fighting extreme poverty with every program they deliver.
Abenity recently exceeded a million dollars of total giving and hired a CEO to accelerate growth with their fully remote team.
Brian lives in Scottsdale with his wife and 3 daughters and is investing his time in efforts that help like-minded entrepreneurs establish a social mission of their own.

Most passionate about
In 2006, my brother and I built a SAS company (software as a service) that helps large corporations offer employee perks and benefits to their people.

We've negotiated discounts on everything from pizza and the zoo to movie tickets, oil changes, car rentals, and hotels. We put it all in one spot for our clients and brand it to look like the company and the employees saved coupons all over the United States and travel offers across the world where they can enjoy special corporate perks.

When we founded our business, we really wanted to stand for something outside of our industry. So, we built our business with a social mission. There was an output to our cause for every input into the business. That is what gives me the most passion and mission at this point in my career.

Brian’s career and story
As a third-grader, I was making laminated folders because my folders would tear apart.

I started playing the trumpet when I was young. It teaches you to be the entrepreneurial solo artist, where you're running the show and everybody's looking at you. It teaches you to be a team player, where you're sitting in the symphony and blending in so that nobody notices your contribution, but they hear it, they see everything. That led to teaching trumpet lessons, which led to making a CD and moving to Nashville to go to school, which led me to sell cell phones—having the a-ha moment that the music industry is actually not that entrepreneurial.

In that role, I discovered this gap: Companies would love to offer perks and benefits to their people but they had a hard time finding the perks to offer and vetting the purchase to make sure they were good.

That's how we built Abenity. We've probably built five or six businesses inside of it. This is what led me, two years ago, to realize that the business had grown to a certain level of maturity where the number of businesses that I could launch within Abenity reached its peak in terms of what the team could have accomplished in a healthy way.

There was this moment...
51 min
January 10, 2022Ep. 249 – Miriam Schulman: “You need to make sure you’re building customers and creating customer experience rather than just focusing on sales.”
Miriam Schulman is an artist, author and founder of The Inspiration Place and The Artists Incubator Coaching Program where she helps artists (from amateurs to professionals) develop their skills, tap into their creativity, and grow thriving art businesses. Her podcast, The Inspiration Place, is on the top 1% of all podcasts globally and is listened to in over 40 countries.
Miriam has been featured in Forbes and has been a guest on numerous podcasts. Her art has been featured in The New York Times, Art of Man, and Art Journaling magazine by Stampington, as well as seen on NBC’s “Parenthood” and the Amazon series “Hunters'' with Al Pacino.
Her forthcoming book on how to “make it” as an artist is scheduled to be published with HarperCollins Leadership in February 2023.

Most passionate about
I have been working on a book for Harper Collins. It's a traditionally published book.

I've been writing a book called Artprenuer to help artists learn how to earn a sustainable living from their creativity.

Miriam’s career and story
I wanted to be an artist when I was young.

When I left college, I figured, “Well, if I have to make money from what I'm doing, where can I make the most money?” So, I went to work on Wall Street instead.

It took me a while, even after I had that awakening, to realize that, yes, I could turn my art, my painting, into a sustainable living. It was about 20 years ago that I started down this path, truly learning how to apply those marketing skills.

It was about not just becoming good at my craft and becoming good at art, but also becoming good at being an entrepreneur.

I got involved online. First, I was selling my artwork online. Then, in 2012, I started teaching online art classes.

Best advice for entrepreneurs
What I've taken from that time when I was on Wall Street and that I still use now, which I feel is critical in everything I do and for every business, is focusing on customer experience.

I think of every touchpoint that happens along the customer experience and pay attention to that. You need to make sure you're building customers rather than just focusing on sales.

The biggest, most critical failure with customers
There are two that I'm going to offer. The first one is not building an email list from the very beginning.
I had so many sales and I couldn't imagine a time when I wouldn't have that stream of customers coming to me, so I didn't build an email list.

Another thing is something that a lot of us have to work on overtime, and that is understanding how to price your offerings with an abundance mindset, not a scarcity mindset.
It’s about understanding that customers are not always looking for the cheapest price. There are many times when not only will customers be suspicious if the price is too low, but they also prefer to pay more money.

Biggest success with customers
I would love to tell you a story about one of my clients. I took her through this process.

When my client Fay came to me in 2020, in the last year she had lost her job during the pandemic and was going through a divorce. She was a painter and had two children.

She could turn her creativity into a full-time job. But the problem was that she was pricing her art at $50 per painting—and, in fact, sometimes less. We had to work together to build her mindset and teach her that it
28 min
January 03, 2022Ep. 248 – Khaled Maziad: “You can’t go against the market. You need to clearly know what they want and then give it to them.”
Khaled Maziad is a marketing consultant who specializes in the Psychology of persuasion and high-ticket sales.
He helps coaches transform their uncharged-non-monetary offer into a high-ticket one without having Tony Robbins like Brand.
He shares his story on struggling to give away his stuff for free to charging high-ticket offers and helping his clients from all around the world do the same.
He is known as the Copy & Messaging Alchemist. He has been featured in FOX as one of 21 Entrepreneurs You Need to Know About in 2021.
He has also been featured in ANLP, Fox, CBS & NBC. Khaled is a professional member of ANLP International CIC, a certified Master of NLP, and holds a degree in Civil Engineering.
Before becoming marketing, Khaled worked with traders and professional fund managers, helping them master their mental edge in trading and life. He also had over 15 years of experience as a Project manager, where he managed multi-million dollar projects on 3 continents.
Khaled lives with his wife and two kids in Sydney, Australia.

Most passionate about
We focus on what we call transformation – transformational entrepreneurs or transformational cultures.

We specialize in helping people make their email entertaining and persuasive, in a way that helps them feel their products.

Khaled’s career and story
I started as a civil engineer many years ago. It had nothing to do with marketing or anything like that.

I was working as a site engineer and had a project manager who was very influential and charismatic. He knew how to manage people.

When they chose someone to manage the project, they didn't go with someone who was just an expert. They chose someone who was a leader, someone who could manage. This is something that helped me when I started.

When I became an entrepreneur, I was doing something called trading psychology. I was helping people trade in the stock market.

Best advice for entrepreneurs
The biggest advices I have for entrepreneurs is about one of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs often make.

You can't go against the market. You can't fight against it. You need to clearly know what they want and then give it to them.

The biggest, most critical failure with customers
One of them was not testing offers before validating them.

I worked on a product once that I was perfecting and I didn't show it to anyone. I didn't get any feedback. I didn't ask anyone if they wanted it or not. I worked for about a month on it. When I put it out there, no one even cared about it. The tool was a really big failure.

Biggest success with customers
We had a product that helped people by working on their messaging. We did a beta test first at a lower price, just to test how it worked. When we took a small group for the beta test, we were surprised that the people got value from the test. When we published the course and pushed the program, some of the beta testers asked to pay full price.

Khaled’s recommendation of a tool
The best tool is more about how to do market research.

There are many forums out there.

Khaled’s one key success factor
You need to believe in what you're doing. You need to believe that you will succeed.

Khaled’s Mountain
Since we believe that the...
31 min
December 27, 2021Ep. 247 – Mark Lachance best advice: “If you want to scale your business, “don’t fall into the trap.” You don’t need to be the smartest person in everything and everywhere.
Mark Lachance is a serial entrepreneur, strategic thinker, and investor. He possesses a deep understanding of blitzscaling companies. Having owned and operated several businesses that have experienced hypergrowth through creative business development and lead generation, he is a master of sales and marketing and continues to apply and grow his expertise through current projects.
Mark is currently the CEO and lead investor of Maxy Media Inc., one of the largest TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, and Google Display Network performance marketing agencies in the world. Currently, Maxy Media is the number one advertiser in terms of monthly spend on the TikTok platform in Canada and top ten in North America.
In 2016, Mark successfully sold EVO Payments International Canada, an end-to-end payment solutions provider and merchant acquirer which he founded in 2009. He guided the company from its inception with one employee to over 200 employees across Canada.
Prior to founding EVO, Mark was one of the founding members and president of VersaPay Inc, a payments solutions provider, which was taken public in 2010. Before joining VersaPay, Mark was a founding member of Pivotal Payments, which is now a multi-billion-dollar public company. He helped set the foundation and drive the company's sales and revenues before his successful exit from the company in 2006.
Mark has made several other highly successful investments in various industries such as payments, cryptocurrencies, marketing, nutrition, fitness, and sports. Over the past twenty-five years, he has invested in and consulted for dozens of other ventures, which have resulted in highly positive returns.
Mark speaks and travels the world with his wife, Sonya, and their two boys.

Most passionate about
I've just launched a book called The Lucky Formula.

I also run a digital media agency.

Mark’s career and story
I went to a university in Boston. Right after school, there weren't a lot of great opportunities.

So, I had to go to work with my father in construction. I absolutely hated that.

I got into sports and was a sports agent for about seven or eight years. It was a lot of fun. I represented professional ice hockey players.

I started a company in Boston. Then, I was able to get clientele all across Canada.

I had four successful exits in the payment space. Sandwiched in between there was an unsuccessful venture in real estate, a colossal failure.

From there, I got into the digital media space. We've grown from two employees – myself and my business partner – to over 350. We're going to hit this year. We're targeting 50 million in revenue. We want to grow this to a billion-dollar valuation in the next two to three years.

Best advice for entrepreneurs
If you want to scale your business, my biggest advice is, and I learned this myself the hard way, is “don't fall into the trap.”

You don't need to be the smartest person in every department and everywhere. You should hire the smartest people to do what you're not the best at. Stay in your lane.

The biggest, most critical failure with customers
Back in 2006, I was fresh off an exit from one of the companies that I was a founder of and that I was able to sell. I was able to sit on millions of dollars. I mistakenly took those millions and plowed them into real estate.

I remember exactly where I was in 2008, with the financial collapse. You remember the real estate marketplace. I intelligently, at that time, rolled all of my money. I basically put all my chips on red. It went
24 min

About REACH OR MISS - Entrepreneurial Marketing Success

From the publisher's feed

The REACH OR MISS podcast is about the customer focused entrepreneur. Hayut Yogev chats with Guy Kawasaki, John Lee Dumas, Michael Stelzner, Kate Erickson, Chris Brogan, Mark Schaefer, Joe Pulizzi, Marcus Sheridan and more successful entrepreneurs and opinion leaders about their Customers Approach and Focus.

Share REACH OR MISS - Entrepreneurial Marketing Success

Sign up to save your podcasts

REACH OR MISS - Entrepreneurial Marketing Success

REACH OR MISS - Entrepreneurial Marketing Success episodes

About REACH OR MISS - Entrepreneurial Marketing Success