First Customers

John "Small Mountain" Hill, author of Selling from Scratch and Founder of Adapted Growth, an international sales/marketing agency coaching service.  Show Notes John's book: Selling from Scratch https://amzn.to/41MZkCf (paid affiliate link) Sales Throw Down podcast: https://www.youtube.com/c/SalesThrowdown Sales Practice Lab: https://offers.adaptedgrowth.com/AGSaleslab Topics Covered: Networking CRMs LinkedIn Content Marketing One to One Networking Getting warm lead referrals from your LinkedIn network Look for strategic networking opportunities (Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.)

Alberto Voltolina, CEO/President MGG North America, American/Italian company that went from $0 to $1.5 million in one year. They are a worldwide leading equipment manufacturer and supplier for paint brush & paint roller manufacturers like Sherwin Williams, Baer, and more. It was fascinating to learn how high ticket manufacturing equipment is sold at this level. However, the lessons I learned in this episode apply to the sales process at any established company or startup. Show Notes Alberto Voltolina: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alberto-voltolina-97a9a317/ MGG North America: https://www.mggmeccanica.com/ Topics: - Cold Calling - In Person Sales - Sales Dinners - Event Networking - High Ticket Sales - Supply Chain - Manufacturing Industry

Ron Karr, author of the Velocity Mindset, helped his clients increase incremental revenues by over 1 billion dollars. We go deep into what the Velocity Mindset is and how it affects the sales process. From prospecting and cold calling to closing the sale, Ron has a unique effective approach for asking the right questions. I learned a lot from Ron. I know that you will too. Show Notes Velocity Mindset by Ron Karr https://amzn.to/3JvThuP (paid affiliate link) Lead, Sell, or Get Out of the Way by Ron Karr https://amzn.to/3ZEPReD (paid affiliate link) Ron's Website: https://ronkarr.com/ Healing Back Pain by John Sarno https://amzn.to/3ZH0XjA (paid affiliate link) Twitter: https://twitter.com/ronkarr Linked-In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ronkarr You Tube: http://youtube.com/ronkarr1 Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Sergey Lechshenko, Founder/CEO of Beverly English Career Coaching, a business he started in Kiev, Ukraine before the war. When the war started he had to adapt to find customers and continue growing his business. Listen to the story of an entrepreneur with a dream to serve customers around the world while helping his home country's economy in a time of chaos. Show Links: Website: https://beverlyen.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chrisbeverlyen/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@beverlyenglish LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sergey-leshchenko-81371198/

Jeff Bealeis Mr. Marketology. He's Founder and Marketing Strategist at The Marketology Group, develop marketing strategies for frustrated businesses who want to go from brand awareness to sales. He’s worked with brands like Home Depot, Turner Broadcasting, and more. Jeff is an expert marketer with decades of experience. In this episode he shares his journey from being in the military to becoming Mr Marketology. His practical actionable advice shows you how to get your first sales using digital marketing and automation. Show Links: Complimentary marketing assessment:  https://go.oncehub.com/marketingassessment Marketing lunch and learns: www.lunchmoneymarketing.com Website: www.mrmarketology.com LinkedIn: LinkedIn.com/in/jeffbeale Twitter: @mrmarketology Instagram: @mr.marketology Facebook: @mrmarketology

Warren Greshes is a legendary sales pro, award-winning speaker, and author of several books over the past 30 years.  He was inducted into the National Speakers Association hall of fame in 1998, and one of his books is considered to be in the top 10 best sales books of all time. The title says it all. It's The Best Damn Sales Book Ever. Listen to his hilarious energy-packed stories in this episode and level up your sales game.  Side note: He once owned a minor league baseball team. Learn More about Warren Greshes: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/warrengreshes Twitter: @WarrenGreshes YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/user/WarrenGreshes Warren's Books & Courses: Udemy Course, Supercharged Prospecting: https://www.udemy.com/course/supercharged-prospecting/ The Best Damn Sales Book Ever https://amzn.to/3IylOOB (Amazon affiliate link) The Best Damn Management Book Ever: https://amzn.to/3kzNV81 (Amazon affiliate link) Warren's Volunteer Work: Caring House: https://caringhouse.org/ The Helius Foundation / Echo: https://www.heliusnc.org/ Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Omayya Atout, Founder & CEO of Songlorious, a SharkTank featured company that hit $5 million in revenue after only 2.5 years. You can hire their roster of musicians to write and record custom songs for any occasion to tell your story.  Topics Covered: - Optimizing Facebook Ads - Taking risk and Going all in - Their full Shark Tank experience from getting on the show to working on the deal afterwards - Learning to code - The future of Songlorious Learn more about Omayya & Songlorious: Website: https://www.songlorious.com/ Omayya on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/omayya-atout-30558b4b/

Stewart Townsend is the Chief Revenue Officer of PodcastHawk.com, a company advised by Pat Flynn & Jordan Harbinger that helps guests automate getting booked on podcasts. Topics Covered:  - Mastermind groups  - Networking  - Podcasting for lead gen  - How to get interviewed on a podcast  - How to increase your podcast booking rate Learn more about Stewart & Podcast Hawk: Website: https://podcasthawk.com/ Stewart on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stewarttownsend/

Matt Leavell, CEO of BuyLowWarehouse.com, earned $1 million in their first year and ranked in the Inc 5000 fastest growing companies in the USA in 2022. After decades of taking business risks and learning hard lessons along the way, Matt found success selling wholesale goods by the truck load. Armed with a strong sense of loyalty and determined to build trust within his community, he's built a great company in an industry full of scammers.  Listen and learn as we uncover the strategies and tactics he used to grow from near bankruptcy to bringing in millions in revenue every year. Topics Covered: - Trust - Loyalty - Door to Door Sales - Ebay Sales - Selling Liquidation Merchandise by the item, pallet, and truckload - Facebook Groups - Niche Software - Freight Brokering Connect with Matt: Website: https://buylowwarehouse.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewleavell/

Austin Linney, CEO Crementum Capital and mindset coach, overcame addiction and has doubled his revenue every 6 months for the last 1.5 years building a business with a mission. He's a serial entrepreneur, real estate investor, business and mindset coach, and host of the weekly podcast: Construct Your Life. His motto: Your not in business, your in the people business. Austin tells an inspiring story about the ups and downs of his life and how he's turned the pain of his past into a mission for his future. Topics Covered: - People-focused business - Starting a coaching business - Buying and Building businesses - HVAC & Plumbing business - Addiction & hitting rock bottom - Making an impact - Mindset Connect with Austin: - LinkedIn - AustinLinney.com

Sam Eisenberg, Co-Founder of Design for Decks, a boutique pitch deck design firm whose decks have raised over $2 billion dollars. He's also the founder of Read with Love, a voice-cloning audio book service for busy education minded parents that uses AI to copy a parents voice and use it to create recordings of stories there kids can listen to when they are away. Topics covered: - Craigslist Sales - Pitch Decks - No-Code Startup - Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) - AI Voice Follow Sam: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-shmuel-eisenberg/ Design For Decks: https://www.designfordecks.com/ Read With Love: https://readwith.love/

Sean Brandenburg is the CEO of Central Cargo North America, a freight forwarding company that made $1 million in its first 4 months and continues to grow. Sean has spent 30 years in the freight forwarding and logistics industry. He's a sales pro with tons of experience in generating millions in sales at every company he's been involved with. Customer service is a high priority for Sean and it shows up in the way he treats people and how long his clients stay with him. As always I learned a lot on this episode. This was another key on the quest to understand more deeply how the best businesses in the world landed their first customers. Listen and learn folks! Topics Covered: Freight Forwarding Logistics Supply Chain Issues Shipping Costs Inflation Strategic Partnerships Starting a freight forwarding company Customer Service & User Experience Traditional Marketing Tactics Digital Marketing Tactics Follow Sean: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanbrandenburg/ Website: https://www.centralcargo-northamerica.com/ Books mentioned:  The Referral of a Lifetime: https://amzn.to/3XM4zzF (affiliate link)  Superconnector: https://amzn.to/3kKGfzJ (affiliate link)   Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Kent Wilson is the COO of RV SnapPads, a fast growing company that started in their family garage and grew to over 500,000 units sold across North America. I was blown away by their story. They've built a great business with a bright future. I was inspired by how they prioritize customer service and listen to their customers' feedback. As always, I learned a lot during this episode. I've already started rethinking my own ecommerce work based on this episode. Come get this free wisdom. Topics Covered: How RV SnapPads stared Community Sales Customer Service Customer Feedback Supply Chain Issues Shipping Issues Finance Issues SWOT Analysis of their business Net Promoter Score (NPS) Chat Automation Ecommerce and more! Follow RV SnapPads around the web: Website: https://rvsnappad.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rv_snappad/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUlTjTRL4YuDHgcoeGRJr2A Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SnapPad/

Scott Stouffer is the Co-Founder & CTO of Market Brew, an SEO Testing Platform helping Fortune 100 companies & SEO agencies predict search rankings & outrank their competition with machine learning. Him and his company have several patents that are cited by Google and other search engine companies. They raised millions in VC funding and scaled up to 64,000 paying customers... but then they decided to risk it all and change their entire business model. This episode is a gold mine of SEO knowledge and insights into the history of SEO. Listen and learn folks!  Topics Covered: Scott's SEO Advice as a Search Engineer ChatGPT and how it affects SEO Reverse Engineering Search Engines vs Building a Search Engine Selling to investors vs selling to users Seed Round vs Series A Round Angel Investors vs VC Funding / Venture Capital Black Hat SEO vs White Hat SEO Particle Swarm Optimization Genetic Algorithms Content Marketing Internal Linking Link Graphs Growing up in Ohio Gaming & Programming as a kid The Dot Com Bubble in the 90s & early 2000s and a whole lot more! Follow Scott around the web: Website: https://marketbrew.ai/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottstouffer/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/scott_stouffer

Christina Aldan is an international TEDx speaker, award-winning corporate trainer, and brand strategy consultant at Arana Software. She's helped a lot of startups get their first customers. This was like entrepreneur therapy. I highly recommend listening and learning from Christina's vast experience and wisdom gained from her work with startups and executives. Topics covered: The biggest, most common problem startups have when trying to get their first customers Selling without selling. Emotional Intelligence Emotional Triggers Traditional Marketing Digital Marketing Content Marketing Getting more from your content Follow Christina around the web: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luckygirliegirl/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/luckygirliegirl YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ChristinaAldanLuckygirl TikTok: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luckygirliegirl/ Website: https://www.luckygirliegirl.com/

JK Molina grew Tweet Hunter to over $1 Million in ARR & recently sold the business. With 175,000+ Followers on Twitter, JK is now showing you how to monetize (not grow) your audience at Tweets and Clients. Lot's of sales and startups lessons told through several great stories packed into this episode. Topics Covered: - Growing up in Guatemala - Entrepreneurship as a kid -  Door-to-Door sales - Cold Calling - Cold DMs - Digital Marketing - Monetizing your Twitter audience - and a lot more! Follow JK Molina: Twitter: @OneJKMolina Instagram: @OneJKMolina LinkedIn: JKMolina Website: https://www.tweetsandclients.com/

Nick Bouwhuis started Bouwhuis IT as a teenager in the Netherlands. Bouwhuis IT is an information technology company specializing in cyber security for local businesses. He shares his story about growing up in the Netherlands, and how he found his first customers. Topics Covered: - Netherlands school system vs US school system - Starting a business as a teenager - Running a business part time - Cyber Security Best Practices - Life in the Netherlands Learn more about Nick & his business: https://nick.bouwhuis.io/

Daniel Johnson shares his story about starting in South Africa and immigrating to the UK, selling his first business at 17, and starting a successful marketing agency that works with clients around the world. We go deep into his marketing philosophy, marketing strategy, and the marketing tactics he uses to work with clients like Google, Neil Patel, and ConsenSys.  Topics covered:  Immigrant Mentality Selling a business Startups Traditional Marketing Digital Marketing Marketing Philosophy, Strategy, and Tactics Community Based Sales

Angie Correa, an Ex- Corp Exec with 25 Yrs of experience at companies like NBC, Yahoo, and Maxim magazine, left corporate sales to start her own business helping others do the same. Talking with Angie was like taking a masterclass in sales. The principles she explained are worth billions. We had a great time discussing how she was able to successfully get the first customers for her business. We also went through her past experiences at large companies reviewing her sales process for getting $10,000,000 sales deals.  Topics discussed: Retail Sales Corporate Sales In Person Sales Networking Eat What You Kill Sales Trust Based Sales

Product design is expensive & risky. Cadversity is here to change that. Nick Maciel started Cadversity to help people with ideas bring their physical products to life. Nick tells the story of his life as an entrepreneur from childhood through his college years. He's exited two businesses and is successfully building his third, all while getting his graduate degree. He shares valuable hard-won lessons about customer acquisition. How'd he get those valuable first customers? Listen to find out. Cadversity Services: Computer Aided Design (CAD) 3D Print Preparation  Manufacturing Drawings Dimensioning & Tolerancing Photorealistic Renders & Animations Topics Covered: Cold Prospecting LinkedIn Marketing Networking Though Leadership Follow Nick & Cadversity around the web: FreeCADQuotes.com Nick on LinkedIn Nick on Twitter

Caren Schwannauer, co-founder of Staq, offers valuable advice on sales and content marketing. She also shares the story of how their first client grew into a successful billion dollar company. She convinced me to change my own tactics based on this conversation. I highly recommended taking notes & learning from this high performer. How did she find Staq's first customers? Listen and find out. Topics covered: - In-Person Sales - Event Networking - LinkedIn Content Marketing - Market Mapping Learn more about Staq: https://staqteam.com/ https://www.tiktok.com/@hellostaq Follow Caren around the web:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/caren-schwannauer/ https://twitter.com/CSchwannauer Full Transcript:  https://parisvega.com/2022/12/13/caren-schwannauer-co-founder-of-staq-a-successful-recruitment-and-growth-consultancy-first-customers-e4/

The story behind the launch of Morphio, the world’s most advanced marketing software, using artificial intelligence (AI) for marketing insights & security. Learn how they changed their business model based on customer feedback, which strategies they used to grow, and which tactics they recommend all new companies should try. (Since this recording Morphio has been acquired by Hawke.)

Our guest today is Josh Pigford, the founder of Baremetrics. His company has grown steadily every year since launching in 2013, and currently generates $1.4 million/year in recurring revenue. Baremetrics customers are made up of over 800 SaaS and subscription businesses that rely on the metrics, dunning, and engagement tools built by Josh and his team. Topics Covered: - Creating in public. - Entrepreneural Experimentation. - Twitter Sales (Since this recording, Baremetrics has been acquired.)

Our guest today is Chase Bowers. Chase is the founder of Dropified, the platform for managing your dropshipping business. Dropified is the fastest growing company in Alabama with a 3-Year growth rate of 4,971%. They are #55 overall on the 2019 Inc 5000 list and in 2018 generated $ 5.1 Million in revenue. The Dropfied tool, formerly known as Shopified, started out as a way to help Shopify store owners save time managing their stores. The products offered by Dropified and the business itself has grown a lot since then. It all started with the basic principles Chase lives by. How did he find his first customers? Listen to find out. Topics covered: - Launching a SaaS product through affiliate sales - Slack Sales - Solving your own problem - Growth Mindset To learn more about Dropified go to https://www.dropified.com/