Today, on the Early-Stage Founder Show, I’m talking with , the Co-Founder at CEO at , an all-in-one sales engagement platform that is built for the modern sales team. (Note: It has no relation to the I work for which makes simple help desk software for growing teams). Now that we have that out of the way, I’m excited to get into today’s topic of how sales reps are saying goodbye to the used car salesman cliche and starting to incorporating lessons and strategies from the marketing world into how they sell. In our chat, we cover what exactly it means to take a marketing approach to sales and how you can apply these lessons in your own startup. If you think the sales process has to be sleazy, then this is an episode you need to hear.

Today, I’m talking with , a Growth Marketing Manager at , and formerly the Growth Marketing Manager at . I first came across Alex when I stumbled upon a few of his articles on SaaS conversion optimization. These articles were great and you should check them out, but after digging into thing a bit more, what really stood out to me was the incredible results that Alex was getting from his content marketing efforts that made me find these articles to begin with. In our chat today, we’re going to dive into how Alex doubled ConversionXL’s blog from 125,000 visits a month to 250,000 in his first year, his tips to scale beyond that, and even what startups shouldn’t consider content marketing for their primary growth channel. Whether you’re already getting results from your content or just starting out, this is an episode you don’t want to miss.

Today, on The Early-Stage Founder Show, I’m talking with Josh Haynam, the Co-Founder of Interact, a company that makes it easy for businesses to generate leads and drive sales using quizzes. Interact’s main competitors have raised a combined $24 million dollars while they’ve remained bootstrapped the entire way. This hasn’t slowed them down as Josh and his team consistently win customers away from the big players and have grown over 300% this year. They did all of this with content marketing and in our chat today, Josh will walk us through the exact process they use to get these results and how he plans to scale the strategy over 100x from where it is today.

Today, I’m talking with Jim Brown, the host of the SalesTuners Podcast where Jim talks with world-class sales performers to help listeners close more deals and make more money. For many founders, sales skills don’t come naturally, but Jim argues despite any objection a founder can make, they need the be the first VP of Sales for their company. And no, you can’t just bring in a sales person to handle this for you. Luckily, Jim also lays out a process you can follow to develop sales skills and demystifies what it actually means to sell. If getting on the phone and trying to convince somebody to buy your software is your idea of a personal hell, then this is the episode for you because you’ll find out why when you sell the right way, selling doesn’t have to be so bad.

Today, on The Early-Stage Founder Show, I’m talking with Wyatt Jozwowski, the Co-Founder at Demio, a SaaS webinar platform designed to help you attract more customers and build better relationships. Wyatt and his team have a rapidly growing business today, but their startup’s outlook hasn’t always been so bright. In fact, just a few years ago, they almost had to shut the company down. In our chat, we’re going to dive into what went wrong in the early days and how they turned things around to get where they are today. If you’re thinking about throwing in the towel or just want to learn from the mistakes of another founder, then this is the episode for you.

Today, I’m talking with Lars Lofgren, the Senior Director of Growth at I Will Teach You To Be Rich and an all around expert on B2B growth. Lars helps companies build out new channels and optimize existing ones to give them predictable ways to find and accelerate their growth. The plan was to cover how Lars approaches growth on a strategic level and then dig into the A/B testing program he has used to help companies triple their conversion. But things changed once we got started. While Lars shared his approach to growth, as we started talking, it was clear that A/B testing simply isn’t the right tool for early-stage startups. Even Groove, the company I work for with over $5 million ARR, is too early for this advice. So we changed things up. Today, Lars covers what an early testing approach could look like, but this episode is about much more than testing. Instead, we shifted the conversation and Lars laid out the principles for early-stage startup growth and the best way to get started. If you’ve never heard Lars talk about growth before, then you are in for a treat. And if you have, then you’ve probably already fast-forwarded through this to get to the good stuff.

Today, on the Early-Stage Founder Show, I’m talking with Adam Robinson, the Co-Founder and CEO at Hireology, a platform that helps businesses manage their full employee lifecycle, from hire to retire. Adam is also the author of The Best Team Wins, a book that shows you how to build your business through predictive hiring. As your business grows, you’re faced with a new set of challenges and one of the hardest you’ll have to tackle is hiring. Adam is right, the best team truly does win, and if you want your startup to succeed, you’re going to have to get the right people in place to help you get there. In our chat, we’re going to dive into Adam’s step-by-step playbook that you can follow to hire the right person for the job and build your best team.

Today, I’m talking with Kristin Zhivago, the author of Roadmap to Revenue: How to Sell the Way Your Customers Want to Buy and President of Zhivago Partners a digital marketing management company that helps clients with customer and digital presence research. We hear it time and time again, “You need to get out of the office and talk to your customers.” But we rarely hear about what that actually looks like in practice and how that helps us grow our business. In our interview today, Kristin changes that by laying out how to interview your customers to get the information you need and then what to do with that information once you have it. If you aren’t regularly having calls with your customers, and I mean multiple times a month, then you need to listen to this episode. Even if you are having those conversations, tune in so you can be sure you’re getting the most out of them.

Today, on the Early-Stage Founder Show, I’m talking with Barrett Brooks, the Director of Marketing at ConvertKit, a SaaS startup that makes email marketing software for creators. At the time of this interview, ConvertKit has an Annual Run Rate of just over $9 million dollars and they got here completely bootstrapped. Barrett and his team have had a lot of marketing wins we could talk about, but today we are going to dive into his experience launching a new conference called Craft and Commerce back in June. They went from idea to execution in only 5 months and we’re going to find out not just how they did that, but why it was such a big priority.

Today, on the Early-Stage Founder Show, I’m talking with , the owner and Lead Planner at , an event management company that partners with startups to plan and host incredible events so they don’t have to. I had on the podcast a couple episodes ago and she gave us a great high-level look at what goes into planning an event and how to avoid some of the common mistakes. Today’s chat with Xander is a perfect compliment to that as we really get into the nitty gritty details of event planning as he shares the game plan for hosting a successful live event. This episode is super actionable, so get your pen and paper ready to take some notes. If you’re interested in hosting a conference or any live event really and want a game plan for how to get started, then this is the episode for you.