Podcasts about mixmax

This episode is the audio from our recent webinar on multi-threading. Heath Barnett of Mixmax, Amber Smith, and Karen Hor of ZoomInfo joined us to share how top reps increase their win rates by 2-3x, shorten sales cycles, and drive expansion by mastering multi-threading. Check out more free content and get coaching at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://outboundsquad.com.

In this episode, Heath Barnett shares the evolution of the buyer's journey, how to optimize sales processes with AI and technology, and the future of sales and marketing in a buyer-centric world. Check out more free content and get coaching at ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://outboundsquad.com

This episode is the audio from our webinar on objection handling. We were joined by Will Aitken, Founder of WillAitken.com, Jack Wauson, GTM Team Lead at Mixmax, and Abdulla Casino, Manager of Sales Development at ZoomInfo. Check out more free content and get coaching at ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://outboundsquad.com

This episode is the audio from our webinar on cold email. We were joined by Jack Wauson of Mixmax and Florin Tatulea and walked through how to personalize your cold emails without wasting a ton of time researching. Check out more free content and get coaching at ⁠⁠⁠https://outboundsquad.com

This episode is the audio from our recent webinar on cold email. Jack Wauson of Mixmax, Meghan Morrison, and Cir Crawford of ZoomInfo joined us to share the state of cold email in 2025, a proven cold email framework, and how top teams are leveraging AI. Check out more free content and get coaching at https://outboundsquad.com

Cold calls are arguably one of the most important tools in your repertoire. Whether you're still mastering the art of feeling confident on your calls, or you're considered one of the best – you can still find ways to improve your strategy.In this Daily Sales Show episode, we've got all the cold call techniques you need to refresh and recharge your game. Join our guest experts, Sara Uy and Jack Wauson, as they walk you through LIVE mock cold calls and share their tips for success.You'll Learn:Strategies to book more meetings from cold callsSpecific language you can use for immediate improvement in call outcomesCold calling techniques to increase your confidenceThe Speakers:James Buckley, Sara Uy and Jack WausonIf you want to catch The Daily Sales Show live, join hereFollow Sell Better to get the latest actionable tactics from sales pros at the top of their gameExplore our YouTube ChannelThank you to our sponsors: MixMax, Pareto and Zoominfo

In this episode, Neil and Sam delve into transformative strategies for law firm owners, highlighting how to streamline client intake, enhance productivity, and manage client interactions more effectively. You'll gain insights into optimizing client consultations, leveraging virtual assistants, and using tools to manage emails efficiently—all aimed at reducing burnout and boosting your firm's growth. Tune in to learn proven strategies designed to make your practice more efficient and client-centric, ensuring sustainable growth and success.Key Takeaways from Neil and Sam:Signing Up Clients Yourself: Handling client sign-ups personally is inefficient and limits your scalability. As your client base grows, this manual process becomes a bottleneck, consuming valuable time that could be better spent on legal work. Delegating this task to dedicated virtual intake specialists can streamline the process. This allows lawyers to focus on more critical legal tasks and prevent burnout​.Constant Emailing: Constantly checking emails is distracting and stressful. This habit adds new tasks to your schedule and increases stress levels. Using tools like Mixmax for email automation and setting specific times to check emails can significantly reduce this time trap. This enables lawyers to concentrate on high-value activities​​.That Meeting Could've Been an Email: Unstructured meetings can waste a lot of time. To avoid this, schedule meetings on specific days, limit them to 30 minutes, and always have a clear agenda. Being selective with meeting invitations helps maintain control over your schedule. This approach maximizes productivity and ensures meetings are purposeful​​.Social Media Overusage: Excessive social media use distracts from productive work and reduces your ability to focus. Unless used strategically for business purposes, social media can detract from productivity and well-being. Limiting social media use is essential for maintaining better mental focus. Lawyers should be mindful of their social media habits to avoid wasting time​.Not Using Zapier for Repetitive Tasks: Failure to automate repetitive tasks leads to inefficient use of time. Tools like Zapier can automate many of these tasks, increasing productivity. This allows lawyers to focus on more critical aspects of their work. Embracing automation can significantly enhance the efficiency of your practice​.Other Ideas: Spending excessive time on low-impact tasks is a major time waster. Examples include perfectionism in minor activities, manual document management, and micromanaging staff. Prioritizing high-impact tasks and delegating or streamlining less critical activities is crucial. This approach optimizes time and boosts overall productivity. "Multitasking is not a way to manage your time; it's actually more of a time suck than an enhancement to your efficiency." — Neil Tyra"Sometimes it's good to be cutthroat with your own rules. If not, other people will make rules for you." — Sam MollaeiJoin Lawyer Club FREE, where lawyers and law firm owners come to reclaim control of their firms and their lives! Plus, get the full list of Best AI Tools For Lawyers inside!Get in touch with Sam:MLA WebsiteLawyerClubPurchase Sam's book

Ever wondered what's stopping you from launching your own recruiting firm, especially when life's complexities seem overwhelming? Finish The Year Strong Summit - https://finish-the-year-strong.heysummit.com/ AI Recruiting Summit - https://ai-recruiting-summit.heysummit.com/ In this episode of *The Elite Recruiter Podcast*, Benjamin Mena and Zaharo Tsekouras delve into the challenges and triumphs of starting a recruiting business—something many aspiring entrepreneurs can relate to. Whether you're hesitant to begin due to uncertainty or seeking guidance on scaling efficiently, Zaharo's real-world insights on navigating the obstacles, such as launching a venture during pregnancy, offer a roadmap. The conversation addresses key hurdles like building relationships, cold emailing success strategies, and the importance of niche specialization, which are current pain points for many beginner and experienced recruiters alike. 1. **Practical Strategies for Starting a Business:** Zaharo provides actionable steps on how to overcome initial fears, including focusing on minimum viable tasks and leveraging networks. She suggests utilizing tools like Ashby for resume searches and Mix Max for email sequences to streamline recruiting processes. 2. **Effective Client and Candidate Management:** Learn about thorough client qualification, the importance of initial outreach, and creating win-win outcomes for clients and candidates. Zaharo explains why understanding hiring processes and individual motivations is crucial for success, emphasizing ethical recruitment practices. 3. **Building a Successful Niche-Based Recruiting Firm:** Zaharo highlights the importance of developing deep expertise in a specialized area, such as the chief of staff roles, to attract incoming business. By gathering and utilizing niche-specific data, you can create valuable content that boosts organic discovery and credibility. Ready to bet on yourself and launch your recruiting firm? Tune in to this insightful episode now to gain the expert advice and motivation you need to get started! AI Recruiting Summit - https://ai-recruiting-summit.heysummit.com/ Finish The Year Strong Summit - https://finish-the-year-strong.heysummit.com/ Clay - https://clay.com/?via=411229 (3k extra credits when you sign up through this link)  Signup for future emails from The Elite Recruiter Podcast: https://eliterecruiterpodcast.beehiiv.com/subscribe YouTube: https://youtu.be/KwqUFu2gAHA Zaharo Tsekouras LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ztsek/  With your Host Benjamin Mena with Select Source Solutions: http://www.selectsourcesolutions.com/  Benjamin Mena LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminmena/  Benjamin Mena Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/benlmena/  Benjamin Mena TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@benjaminlmena

In this episode, Jason talks with Kyle Parrish, GM & VP of Revenue at Mixmax, about Kyle's journey to becoming a leader including the struggles and triumphs. Kyle also shares some interesting takes on capacity planning, the consequences of over-hiring and how to avoid it, and the effects of setting a target that is too aggressive. Check out the show notes, more free content, and get coaching at https://outboundsquad.com

This episode is the audio from our recent webinar on cold email. We were joined by Jack Wauson of Mixmax and Florin Tatulea and walked through how to personalize your cold emails without wasting a ton of time researching. (Check out the show notes, more free content, and get coaching at https://outboundsquad.com)

This episode is the audio from our recent webinar on AE Self-Sourcing. We were joined by Aaron Milner from Orum and Kyle Parrish from Mixmax and walked through a framework that will help you self-source 30%+ of your pipeline. Check out the show notes, more free content, and get coaching at https://outboundsquad.com

This episode is the audio from our recent webinar on objection handling. We were joined by Will Aitken, Founder of willaitken.com, Jack Wauson, SDR Manager at Mixmax, and Abdulla Casino, Manager of Sales Development at ZoomInfo. Check out the show notes, more free content, and get coaching at https://outboundsquad.com

Follow me on Instagram Email: hello@emmacossey.com Come join us in the free Freelance Lifestylers Facebook group Want more support? Check out the Freelance Lifestyle School courses and membership. Favourite Chrome Extensions: Onetab: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/onetab/chphlpgkkbolifaimnlloiipkdnihall?utm_source=ext_app_menu  Extensity: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/extensity/jjmflmamggggndanpgfnpelongoepncg?utm_source=ext_app_menu  Scribe: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/scribe-ai-documentation-s/okfkdaglfjjjfefdcppliegebpoegaii?utm_source=ext_app_menu  Mixmax: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/mixmax-for-google-chrome/ocpljaamllnldhepankaeljmeeeghnid?utm_source=ext_app_menu  Screely: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/screely-instant-browser-m/jhggpmcfjkkaeonckilhekpkfcalgank?utm_source=ext_app_menu  Loom: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/loom-%E2%80%93-screen-recorder-sc/liecbddmkiiihnedobmlmillhodjkdmb?utm_source=ext_app_menu  Giphy: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/giphy-for-chrome/jlleokkdhkflpmghiioglgmnminbekdi?utm_source=ext_app_menu     

Today on the show we have Elliot Kohtz, the VP of Success at Mixmax, a leading sales engagement platform.In this episode, Elliot shares his insights on the evolving landscape of customer success (CS) and its pivotal role in driving sales and securing retention, especially during economic downturns. We delve into the challenges of tool consolidation and budget constraints, discussing strategies for becoming an indispensable tool that companies consolidate towards rather than away from.We then explored how Mixmax leverages its comprehensive suite of tools to enhance sales engagement and customer success, making it a Swiss army knife for revenue-generating teams. Elliot also highlighted the importance of having meaningful, sometimes tough, conversations with customers about consolidation, budgeting, and the value Mixmax delivers.Wrapping up, we discussed the importance of adapting CS strategies to maintain and grow customer relationships in challenging economic times, emphasizing proactive engagement and the need for CS teams to be equipped to handle commercial conversations effectively.Mentioned Resources:MixmaxQuanticMind

Welcome to another episode of The SEO Growth Podcast! This time, we talk with Alex Ross, a Content Marketing Head, about the tenets for the success of a company newsletter. Today we chat with Alex Ross about getting your newsletter to feel like a magazine off a shelf. Alex chats to us about her time at Clearbit and how she contributed to the wide success of their monthly newsletter. Alex provides us with practical tips for creating a newsletter that resonates with your audience like lacing in pop culture references, having catchy subject lines, and keeping it light and fun. Alex also shares her process for producing newsletters, like ensuring there is an editor that goes through everything with a fine-toothed comb and injects the company's tone of voice into the piece. She also discusses the importance of receiving and incorporating reader feedback. She shares the importance of switching up topics and seeing what becomes most popular with your readers. Tune in to find out how to write the perfect company newsletter! In this episode, we talk about: B2B Newsletter Content Marketing Tone of voice Timestamps: [00:08] Introduction [01:10] Alex's time at Clearbit [02:08] The wide success of Clearbit's newsletter [05:44] The process for writing a great newsletter [08:19] Coming up with ideas for writing [12:00] How to engage with your subscribers [13:08] Understanding what resonates with your audience [19:50] Improving your B2B newsletter game [23:09] Wrap Up About Alex Ross Alex Ross has been in content marketing since blogs were ranking with just a couple hundred words. Working with several B2B startups throughout her career, Alex is no stranger to building content systems from the ground up. Alex is a Senior Content Marketing Manager for B2B companies.  When she's not creating content, you can find the San Diego native exploring her city through tacos, craft beer, and Padres baseball. Connect with Alex Ross on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-suarez-ross/  Join the Flying Cats Still feeling your stomach drop whenever you have to report organic growth to leadership? Things are about to change

"Everyone internally talks about what we do differently, and that translates to how they communicate their values externally. Anytime there's disarray inside the house, you can always feel it outside the house." Welcome to another episode of The SEO Growth Podcast! This time, we discuss with Aaron Janmohamed, VP of Marketing at BoostUp AI, about the transformative potential of a strategic narrative. In this episode, we chat with Aaron Janmohamed about the development of a strategic narrative and its impact on marketing strategy and organizational success. Aaron shares insights into the process of reviewing and revamping BoostUp AI's strategic narrative, emphasizing the importance of aligning messaging with the target audience's needs and creating internal alignment. He highlights the significance of customer interviews in shaping the narrative and discusses the role of the CEO in driving its adoption across the company. The episode provides valuable lessons for marketers and business leaders seeking to enhance their strategic narrative and effectively communicate their value proposition. Tune in to gain insights into aligning messaging with audience needs, fostering internal alignment, and effectively communicating value propositions. In this episode, we talk about: -strategic narrative -marketing strategy -organizational success Timestamps: [00:00:00] Discussing Strategy Development and Proper Marketing with BoostUp AI's Marketing Manager, Aaron Janmohamed [00:00:53] BoostUp AI's a strategic narrative review [00:03:02] Aligning marketing through a strategic narrative [00:06:56] Creating a strategic narrative from ICP conversations [00:10:46] Making adjustments to the engineering roadmap through customer feedback [00:12:33] Revamping business narrative and strategy [00:17:17] Mastering strategic narrative development [00:22:29] Building a marketing narrative [00:24:45] Strategic narrative review: Principles and guidelines [00:27:29] Wrap Up About Aaron Janmohamed Aaron is a seasoned marketing leader who left behind a successful career in enterprise sales to become a driving force in the tech startup world. With expertise in building high-performing teams, crafting strategic narratives, and creating desirable brands, Aaron excels in helping Series B and C startups reach new heights. His extensive experience in digital demand, product marketing, content strategy, brand development, and more, combined with his 10+ years in sales, making him a versatile and impactful marketer. Beyond his professional pursuits, Aaron is also a skilled writer, podcaster, and avid skier. Connect with Aaron on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronjanmohamed/ Join the Flying Cats Still feeling your stomach drop whenever you have to report organic growth to leadership? Things are about to change

“You need to know all extraneous variables affecting your audience's pain point and use the LEMA framework to build content around that.”Lily introduces us to the LEMA Framework, which stands for Logic, Explicitness, Memorability, and Actionability. She explains that remarkable content needs to engage readers, be clear and explicit, leave a lasting impression, and provide actionable steps for the audience.Throughout the episode, Lily provides insights on how to apply the LEMA Framework to content creation. She highlights the importance of defining the search intent and target audience, crafting headings and subheadings that address the readers' knowledge level, and creating a thesis with novel ideas. Lily also emphasizes the significance of providing clear actions, breaking down complex information into digestible pieces, and using visuals to enhance understanding.Tune in to discover how to use the LEMA Framework to create content that captures your audience's attention and delivers value!In this episode, we talk about:Content strategyLema frameworktarget audienceTimestamps:[00:05] Introduction[01:20] Exploring the LEMA Framework: Logic, Explicitness, Memorability, and Actionability[06:37] Coined concepts, novelty, and relatability[09:45] Analyzing a blog post breakdown and defining search intent[15:00] Understanding the audience's needs and goals[17:17] Creating an outline tailored to audience interests[19:34] Crafting clear and specific H2s[24:50] Applying the LEMA Framework and tailoring content to different audiences[27:20] Wrap UpAbout Lily UgbajaLily Ugbaja is a Content Marketing Consultant who's helped brands like WordPress, Hubspot, and Zapier win more of their best buyers with content. She runs 3 blogs of her own and previously worked as a Content Marketing Manager at Animalz helping brands like SimpleLegal grow traffic by over 500%.Connect with Lily Ugbaja on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lilyugbaja/  Join the Flying CatsStill feeling your stomach drop whenever you have to report organic growth to leadership? Things are about to change

"Using the Realm of Relevancy framework in your marketing efforts can make your content an unlimited resource for you to constantly pull from."Welcome to another episode of The SEO Growth Podcast! This time, we chat with Liam Bartholomew, Vice President of Marketing at Cognism, about creating a framework for the longevity of your content after launching a successful marketing campaign.Liam shares an exciting concept called the Realm of Relevancy! It's a handy tool used to create a unique point of view for your company. The assessment starts with a big-picture idea that both your consumers and your company can relate to. From there, it branches off into different points of view, each with its own set of mapped-out content.This approach creates easy-to-use content, essentially making it an unlimited resource for you and your team. Liam shares how the team at Cognism categorizes the content into specific types: top-down, middle-out, or bottom-up. By doing this, they can tailor their messaging to fit the specific type of content, addressing all the needs and viewpoints of their target market.Don't miss out on discovering how you can use the Realm of Relevancy to create evergreen content that resonates with your audience!In this episode, we talk about:Content structureRealm of RelevancyPoints of viewTimestamps:[00:00-01:53] Introduction[01:55] What is the easy mode content structure?[03:00-05:10] Fueling your media machine.[05:10-07:49] Designing a Realm of Relevancy framework. [07:49] Defining your company's point of view with your team.[10:00-11:55] The Realm of Relevancy made simple.[13:45] Categorize your content.[14:15-17:07] What to do after you've launched a successful campaign.[17:15] Frame your messaging.[19:30] How Cognism implemented this framework.[20:25] Track the right metrics.[22:45] Wrap-up.About Liam BartholomewLiam is a B2B SaaS marketing leader who is passionate about demand generation. He is shaking up B2B marketing to move it away from traditional lead generation, demonstrating how we can all do more fun, advanced, and buyer-centric marketing. Connect with Liam Bartholomew on LinkedIn. Join the Flying CatsStill feeling your stomach drop whenever you have to report organic growth to leadership? Things are about to change

“Product-led content is any type of content that strategically weaves a product or a service into the story, and uses it to illustrate a point, solve a problem, or help the audience accomplish a goal.”Welcome to another episode of The SEO Growth Podcast! This time, we speak to Dr. Fiorenza Dossetto, Brand and Editorial Lead at ActiveCampaign Postmark, about the importance of creating product-led content that successfully showcases your product without sounding too “salesy”.Dr. Fio shares the importance of weaving a narrative around your product in a way that feels relevant and valuable to your audience, as this ultimately leads to more sign-ups and higher rates of customer satisfaction. She talks about how to create low-effort, high-impact content that aligns with your product, resonates with your audience, and helps them engage with your brand.Dr. Fio also shares her experience getting external SMEs for email marketing campaigns, and how service agencies can use case studies to create their own product-led content. Tune in to learn more about how to use product-led content to create a powerful story for your brand!In this episode, we talk about:Product-led contentStorytelling in content marketingSEO distributionTimestamps:00:01: Introduction[00:01:10] Understanding product-led content [00:03:37] Benefits of product-led content[00:06:23] Tips for creating product-led content[00:08:44] Mentioning products in shareable content: A controversial take from an SEO expert [00:10:22] Repurposing content[00:12:00] Creating content that's relatable[00:14:08] Common mistakes to avoid[00:16:12] Getting external SMEs [00:17:28] Creating product-led content: Tips for service agencies[00:19:24] Lessons learned from implementing product-led content at Postmark[00:21:03] How it impacts your marketing strategyAbout Dr Fiorenza DossettoFio (fee-oh) is normally quiet but can talk non-stop about product-led content, strategic thinking, and why em dashes are the best punctuation mark of all time. She works 4 days a week as the Brand & Editorial Lead at Postmark. She often uses her Fridays to write ContentFolks, a content marketing newsletter that is a blend of sticky notes, big content ideas, and small practical examples.Connect with Dr Fiorenza Dossetto on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fiorenzadossetto/ Listen to our most popular episodes: A Content System Beats Content Ideas, with Brad Smith @WordableHow to create a company culture that puts you ahead of the pack, with Adam Harris @Cloudbeds How Typeform's Branding Experiments Guided its Content and Product Strategy, with Alex Antolino @Typeform Join the Flying CatsStill feeling your stomach drop whenever you have to report organic growth to leadership? Things are about to change

"We've started a Global Payroll-themed talk show, which is a video-first podcast. We invite guests on the show, we interview them about topics that are relevant to global payroll leaders—as a way to build a relationship with them and to learn about our market through them, basically."Welcome to another episode of The SEO Growth Podcast! This time, we spoke to Sam Morris, Head of Marketing at Payzaar, about his experience using video content to generate leads for a niche market. Sam shares his experience in marketing to the global payroll function, a niche market within payroll HR managers, and how their career trajectory impacts their pain points. He discusses the importance of understanding where your niche market lives online and how video content can help bridge the communication gap.This episode also explores the potential impact of technology on the future of work and how to prepare for it. Tune in to find out how you can target a niche audience, even while under-utilizing LinkedIn!In this episode, we talk about:Global payroll marketingDemand generationBuilding relationships with contentTargeting niche audiencesTimestamps:[00:00:01] Introduction[00:02:04] Understanding the career trajectory of a payroll professional[00:03:04] Selling to a niche market: Lessons from a global payroll company[00:08:59] How a company is using video content to reach their ICPs[00:11:25] Prioritizing accounts for guest selection[00:12:44] Using podcasts to create content and learn about your market[00:14:33] Building relationships and generating leads through podcasting[00:16:53] Learning about your market through video content and lead gen[00:20:53] Emerging technology and the future of workAbout Sam MorrisSam Morris is a SaaS marketing leader and lead generation expert. With experience in video content, digital events, and podcasts, he helps Payzaar learn about its market through engaging content that challenges him to get creative. Connect with Sam Morris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/smorrisrosenstein/ Listen to our most popular episodes: A Content System Beats Content Ideas, with Brad Smith @WordableHow to create a company culture that puts you ahead of the pack, with Adam Harris @Cloudbeds How Typeform's Branding Experiments Guided its Content and Product Strategy, with Alex Antolino @Typeform Join the Flying CatsStill feeling your stomach drop whenever you have to report organic growth to leadership? Things are about to change

Meet Sandeep John, Director of DemandGen at Outplay, as he chats about turning branding campaigns into successful lead generation machines. Sandeep discusses the importance of branding in building demand and shares insights on his background in sales and marketing.Connect with Maeva on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maevaeverywherePrevious guests include: Andrew Davis @Paddle, Casey Hill @Bonjoro, Camille Trent @PeerSignal, Erin Balsa @Haus of Bold, Emilia Korczynska @Userpilot, Brooklin Nash @Beam, Nick Warren @Alyce, Steffen Hedebrandt @Dreamdata, Vuk Vukosavljevic @lemlistFarzad Rashidi @Respona, Andrea Skarica @Mixmax, Ashley Levesque @BanzaiListen to our most popular episodes: A Content System Beats Content Ideas, with Brad Smith @WordableHow to create a company culture that puts you ahead of the pack, with Adam Harris @Cloudbeds How Typeform's Branding Experiments Guided its Content and Product Strategy, with Alex Antolino @Typeform Join the Flying CatsStill feeling your stomach drop whenever you have to report organic growth to leadership? Things are about to change

Gomada co-founder Julian Schaaf explains how he gained 300 sign-ups in a year via content distribution, operations, and testing strategies. He discusses hiring, wrong SEO hypotheses, and prioritizing customer feedback.Connect with Maeva on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maevaeverywherePrevious guests include: Andrew Davis @Paddle, Casey Hill @Bonjoro, Camille Trent @PeerSignal, Erin Balsa @Haus of Bold, Emilia Korczynska @Userpilot, Brooklin Nash @Beam, Nick Warren @Alyce, Steffen Hedebrandt @Dreamdata, Vuk Vukosavljevic @lemlist, Farzad Rashidi @Respona, Andrea Skarica @Mixmax, Ashley Levesque @BanzaiListen to our most popular episodes: A Content System Beats Content Ideas, with Brad Smith @WordableHow to create a company culture that puts you ahead of the pack, with Adam Harris @CloudbedsHow Typeform's Branding Experiments Guided its Content and Product Strategy, with Alex Antolino @Typeform Join the Flying CatsStill feeling your stomach drop whenever you have to report organic growth to leadership? Things are about to change

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.We are joined by Jonathan Abrams, Co-Founder and General Partner at 8-Bit Capital. Jonathan previously was an angel investor and entrepreneur founding both Nuzzel and Friendster, the latter of which he helped grow to over 100MM users and where he met his current partner at 8-Bit, Kent Lindstrom. Jonathan also co-founded Founders Den with Zack Bogue of DCVC in 2011, which quickly became one of San Francisco's earliest and most popular startup work and event spaces.We think you'll really enjoy Jonathan's story, and how he thinks about all aspects of seed-stage investing.A word from our sponsor:Tactyc is the first software solution for venture capital portfolio forecasting and planning. The platform is rapidly increasing efficiency and data-driven decision-making for GP's and works with over 150 funds globally.Tactyc makes it easy for managers to build (and maintain) their portfolio models without dealing with complicated spreadsheets. It enables portfolio construction in minutes and for managers to share their intended fund strategy with potential investors. Post-launch, Tactyc also offers advanced analytics for GPs to optimize reserves, analyze probabilistic outcomes for their investments and extract insights for future capital deployment.Check them out at tactyc.io.About Jonathan Abrams:Jonathan is a co-founder and General Partner of 8-Bit Capital, an early-stage investing firm. He is also a co-founder and Managing Partner of Founders Den, San Francisco's favorite workspace and community for startups and investors.Previously Jonathan was the founder of the professional news discovery service Nuzzel and the pioneering social networking service Friendster, and a software engineer at Netscape and Nortel. Jonathan is an investor in over 50 startups, including AngelList, ClearTax, CoinList, Docker, Front, HelloSign, Instacart, Mixmax, Pachyderm, Republic, SafeGraph, Sense, Shortcut, Slideshare, Stream, and Zeplin. Jonathan received an Honors B.Sc. in Computer Science from McMaster University in Canada.In this episode we discuss:01:57 Jonathan's journey to creating 8-Bit Capital with Kent04:08 The opportunity they saw when founding 8-Bit06:07 How his experiences at Nuzzel and Friendster shaped his view as an investor08:20 What being founder friendly truly means11:37 Shifting from an active angel investor to a fund manager14:41 The hardest lessons leveling up from an angel investor18:14 Dealing with the deal flow noise as a team of two21:20 How to deal with conscious and unconscious bias when advising founders23:28 Jonathan and Kent's decision-making process25:02 Thoughts on scaling 8-Bit28:11 Competing against larger, later-stage funds getting into seed-stage investing31:23 Deciding on follow-on investing33:35 How they came to decide on 50-50 fund construction for follow-on35:41 Keeping and increasing their pro-rata in competitive later rounds38:19 Biggest lessons from Friendster39:49 The advice he would give himself at the start of 8-BitI'd love to know what you took away from this conversation with Jonathan. Follow me @SamirKaji and give me your insights and questions with the hashtag #ventureunlocked. If you'd like to be considered as a guest or have someone you'd like to hear from (GP or LP), drop me a direct message on Twitter.Podcast Production support provided by Agent Bee Agency This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ventureunlocked.substack.com

In this episode, we talk about:Video content productionVideo marketingVideo marketing metricsConnect with Rish on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rishabhb/Connect with Maeva on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maevaeverywherePrevious guests include: Andrew Davis @Paddle, Casey Hill @Bonjoro, Camille Trent @PeerSignal, Erin Balsa @Haus of Bold, Emilia Korczynska @Userpilot, Brooklin Nash @Beam, Nick Warren @Alyce, Steffen Hedebrandt @Dreamdata, Vuk Vukosavljevic @lemlist, Farzad Rashidi @Respona, Andrea Skarica @Mixmax, Ashley Levesque @BanzaiListen to our most popular episodes: A Content System Beats Content Ideas, with Brad Smith @WordableHow to create a company culture that puts you ahead of the pack, with Adam Harris @Cloudbeds How Typeform's Branding Experiments Guided its Content and Product Strategy, with Alex Antolino @Typeform Join the Flying CatsStill feeling your stomach drop whenever you have to report organic growth to leadership? Things are about to change

Hello again listeners! Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Leader Interview Series.This time, we're joined by Tara Panu, VP of Marketing at VoiceFlow, the collaborative platform used to build chat and voice assistants, to talk about leveraging customer research like a product marketer. Every marketer knows the customer needs to be at the center of all their efforts, but how do you ensure that? Tara spent her first 30 days in her role interviewing customers and prospects, jumping into sales calls, and practicing social listening on LinkedIn. Her efforts revealed new opportunities that she took in to craft her strategy and, finally, her messaging and value proposition started to resonate with them. But that was not her ultimate goal.As she's a customer-centric marketer, she made sure that not only Sales and Marketing but the entire company was leveraging from her findings and keeping their ICP close to better execute their jobs. Tune in to see how she made that happen! In this episode we talk about:Customer researchCustomer-centric marketingMarketing strategyTimestamps:00:00 - 00:54: Introductions00:54 - 03:42: How Tara's background as a product marketer influences her role as VP of marketing03:43 - 06:36: First challenges when joining VoiceFlow06:37 - 10:22: The first 30 days knowing the customers10:23 - 13:32: Why you should go to sales calls instead of listening to recordings13:33 - 16:14: The emergence of the Conversation Designer role16:15 - 19:48: Sourcing customer research interviews19:49 - 24:00: Making sure that customer research findings are used effectively company-wide24:01 - 28:22: Making the most out of customer research interviews28:23 - 29:04: Connect with TaraAbout Tara PanuTara has a passion and obsession for understanding customers deeply. She started her career in customer marketing, then turned to product marketing, and is now leading the marketing department at VoiceFlow. Connect with Tara on LinkedInConnect with Maeva on LinkedInJoin the Flying CatsStill feeling your stomach drop whenever you have to report organic growth to leadership? Things are about to change

Hello again listeners! Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Leader Interview Series!This week, we're talking to Andrew Davies about his first year heading up marketing at Paddle, a $2.4 billion valued company that helps SaaS businesses set up, run, and scale their payment infrastructure.We discuss the challenges he's faced and the changes he's made to grow the marketing department in three distinct areas:Product marketing, including customer marketing and the website itself Demand gen, which involves managing business development representative (BDR) teamsBranding, which deals with the brand's reputation, reach, and engagement with the wider marketPaddle has grown extremely rapidly, riding the pre-and post-covid wave of software and infrastructure investment. This year, it acquired ProfitWell, an analytics and retention tools business, along with its customer base and teams. Andrew tells us how he's helped Paddle get to the next level by: Merging the marketing departments of the two companies. Broadening marketing efforts across distinct channelsExpanding the tactics of the BDR team to include direct mail and outbound callingImproving branding recognition with an expanded PR strategyTune in to find out what it's like to be CMO during the rapid growth stage of a $2.4 billion SaaS company.In this episode we talk about:Marketing leadershipManaging business and departmental growthSaaS marketing and SEOTimestamps:00:06 - 03:06: Paddle's participation in SaaStock and SaaStr this year03:06 - 07:22: The challenges Andrew has faced since joining Paddle07:22  - 11:18: Changes Andrew has made to the marketing department11:18  - 19:30: Where Andrew has doubled down or cut back on existing marketing efforts 22:49  - 25:34: Wrap-up About Andrew DaviesAndrew Davies is currently Chief Marketing Office at Paddle. Previously, he was Head of Brand & Digital at Episerver after it acquired Idio, which he co-founded in November 2019. He also supports and invests in early-stage startups, helping them solve issues around proposition development, teams, and B2B/SaaS marketing.Connect with Andrew Davies on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andjdavies/ Connect with Maeva on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maevaeverywhereJoin the Flying CatsStill feeling your stomach drop whenever you have to report organic growth to leadership? Things are about to change

“It's not SEO in-house vs. agency anymore. Having SEO in-house is a must, so the question for the SEO agency option is when”Welcome to the 4th episode of The SEO Growth Podcast! This week we're again with our founder and CEO, Maeva Cifuentes, jumping again on this popular and endless debate: should you build SEO in-house or delegate it to an SEO agency?The short answer is… both! Teams are getting smaller, but not goals. Those just keep getting bigger and harder to achieve. And if you're a B2B SaaS in growth or scaling mode, teaming up the deep product understanding from your in-house team with the technical and industry experts of an SEO agency is an unbeatable formula.Having a dedicated in-house SEO professional early on is crucial. You'll need data from them when you want to scale and use bigger impact strategies to generate extra revenue later on. However, SEO is such a vast space that finding someone with all the holistic skills (and capacity) necessary to execute it well is very rare. Having an agency as your full-stack SEO department to leverage all those in-house learnings can scale up your content operations really fast, and in the most strategic way. But for the Jack-of-all-trades CMOs that have very little SEO expertise, choosing the right high-quality agency to fit their needs can feel daunting and stressful. How do you separate the average from the exceptional? Hint: pay attention to the questions they ask. Tune in to find out and choose with confidence!In this episode we talk about:SEO agencySEO in-houseTips for hiring an SEO agencyTimestamps:00:00 - 05:58: WebSummit Lisbon05:58 - 10:49: Teams are getting smaller, goals aren't10:49 - 14:50: When in-house and agency SEOs complement each other14:50 - 16:32: When to start looking for an SEO agency partner?16:32 - 23:46: What good quality SEO agencies should be asking you23:46 - 25:01: Connect with us on LinkedInConnect with us on LinkedIn:Mila: https://www.linkedin.com/in/miladibellaMaeva: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maevaeverywhereJoin the Flying CatsStill feeling your stomach drop whenever you have to report organic growth to leadership? Things are about to change

Utilizing Artificial Intelligence to Your Discovery Responses Detail-oriented focus is a limited resource. So, when you automate the fundamental aspects of your legal writing, you can focus on the essential elements of your brief. In addition, empowering your support staff/associates to draft documents following your guidelines ensures that your feedback focuses on the most critical aspects of their work, as opposed to consistency, spelling, and formatting errors. In this episode of TSL.P Podcast, Nathan Walter joins us to discuss using artificial intelligence in your discovery responses. Nathan Walter is the CEO and co-founder of Briefpoint, a company building an AI platform to facilitate end-to-end litigation automation. After graduating from UCLA Law, Nathan practiced litigation for five years and currently works with Stanford's Center for Legal Informatics' Machine Generated Legal Documents project lead in surfacing novel applications for AI-backed litigation automation Join Nathan and me as we discuss the following three questions and more! What are three tech tools to help attorneys with their day-to-day work. What are three ways Briefpoint can assist attorneys in their work. What are three ways technology is heading that attorneys need to keep an eye on. In our conversation, we cover the following: [00:22] Tech Setup: Nathan describes his current tech setup and how he optimizes their use. [17:45] Three tech tools: Three tech tools that aid attorneys in their daily work: Client Intake Processes, Contract Lifecycle Management Tools, and Grammarly. [27:15] Briefpoint – Nathan explains in depth what services Briefpoint offers its customers. [32:39] Tech Trends – Nathan discusses the technology trends that attorneys should be aware of and their legal applications. [41:08] More on Briefpoint – Nathan elaborates more on Briefpoint, mentioning a number of user-related concerns. SHOW NOTES: Connect with Nathan: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nathanwalter/ Website: briefpoint.ai/ Equipment Mentioned in the Podcast: Hyperx quadcast condenser mic: row.hyperx.com/products/hyperx-quadcast-usb-microphone Salesloft: salesloft.com/ MixMax: mixmax.com/ Discord: discord.com/ Playstation 5; Overwatch 2: store.playstation.com/en-us/concept/216627 MacPro Laptop: apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro Lenovo Carbon Model: lenovo.com/ iPhone 11: apple.com/by/iphone-11/specs/ iPad: apple.com/ipad/ Mechanical keyboard: mechanicalkeyboards.com/ Das Keyboard: daskeyboard.com/ Gideon : gideonlegal.com/ Software & Services Mentioned in the Podcast: Google Voice: voice.google.com/ Grammarly: grammarly.com/

Hello dear listeners! Welcome to our third episode of The SEO Growth Podcast.This week we're joined by Usman Akram, Head of SEO at Flying Cat Marketing, as he talks us through how we can report our SEO efforts to leaders and stakeholders.We discuss how it can take time to show the results of your SEO strategy. So it's important to find a way of reporting to leaders that justifies the budget you're investing—and demonstrates you're on the right track.Whether you're part of a big company with a dedicated Head of SEO or a smaller company where the Head of Marketing does it all, it's crucial to show the business impact of your SEO strategy.To show how SEO impacts revenue, check the conversion rates on the top-performing pages of your website. Often, 50% of conversions come from just five pieces of content. Once you identify which pieces they are and how much organic traffic they generate, you can use this information to guide your content strategy.You'll also find out how attribution models can help you report SEO when you don't have conversion data. By modeling customer touchpoints, you can understand and predict which steps in the customer journey lead to conversion. A common objection from leadership is how long it takes to see ROI from SEO.  We show you how to estimate ROI by setting SEO targets at the beginning of a project. So instead of having a strategy based on the number of pieces of content or backlinks you create, your end goal is an exact timeline for ROI. By using simple math, Usman demonstrates how you can develop a whole roadmap for your SEO strategy and estimate your results, outcome, ROI, and cost of acquisition. So tune in to find out how to report the value of your SEO efforts—by focusing on ROI over rankings and traffic. In this episode we talk about:SEO reportingSEO strategyCalculating ROI from SEOTimestamps:04:13 - 12:33: What indicators can you use to show your SEO strategy is on the right track? 12:33 - 18:51: Structuring an SEO report for your leaders18:51 - 20:59: Using an attribution model instead of direct conversions data20:59 - 27:17: Attribution models: First touch, last touch, linear, W-form, and U-shaped 27:17 - 32:20: How to calculate return on investment (ROI) from SEO32:20 - 34:49: Wrap upConnect with us on LinkedIn:Mila: https://www.linkedin.com/in/miladibellaMaeva: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maevaeverywhereUsman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/usman-akram5000 Join the Flying CatsStill feeling your stomach drop whenever you have to report organic growth to leadership? Things are about to change

“Rankings are obviously very important; people just get too blinded by rankings and forget all the most important things about business and sales.”Welcome to the 2nd episode of The SEO Growth Podcast! This week we're joined by the founder and CEO of Flying Cat Marketing Maeva Cifuentes as she walks us through measuring your SEO results.We talked about how too many people consider SEO or rankings as the end goal, rather than a means to an end. The goal, she explains, is increased revenue—and SEO helps us get there.A common misconception is that you can use trackers like Hubspot or Google Analytics to measure how SEO contributes to revenue and call it a day. Maeva explains that you need to use other tools, such as business intelligence apps, to get the full picture.Another overlooked fact is that last-touch data doesn't tell the whole story—nobody lands on a page and then immediately commits to a million-dollar piece of software. You also need to look at first-touch or assisted conversion data because it tells you how and when customers started interacting with your product.A common question we get at FCM is: how do I know SEO is working for me? Or more crucially: what do I do if it isn't working? We break down key metrics like relevance and search volume and things to keep an eye on like correct indexing and search intent.So tune in now to find out how to correctly measure your SEO results and let us know your tips and tricks in the comments!In this episode we talk about:SEO resultsSales touchpointsSEO strategyTimestamps:00:00-04:00: The SEO Roundtable04:01-06:07: The end goal of SEO 06:08-12:14: How to track SEO results and the associated revenue12:15-15:10: The critical touchpoints for measuring SEO success15:11-19:21: How to know when your SEO strategy is working19:22-24:59: What to do if your SEO strategy isn't working25:00-27:00: Wrap upConnect with us on LinkedIn:Mila: https://www.linkedin.com/in/miladibellaMaeva: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maevaeverywhereJoin the Flying CatsStill feeling your stomach drop whenever you have to report organic growth to leadership? Things are about to change

Ethics & Experience: How to Better Handle Layoffs   The high profile tech layoffs keep coming, and the response of employers forced to make cuts has been under scrutiny, whether the method is via mass zoom calls, or through making vulnerability posts on LinkedIn. Got me thinking - IS there a good way to do this, or or is this simply a hard task which is always going to be unpleasant?   You will learn:   - Ethics and Experience, guiding principles of redundancy - CEO, HR or Line Manager? - Importance of messaging sequencing - Fiduciary duty to organisation, account lockouts, permission, access - Do we have a redundancy protocol? - How does Remote impact Redundancy approach - Psychological closure for stakeholders - Off boarding & support - Employer action, Hiring Manager action, Colleague action   All this and more with Christine Ng, Head of Talent & Media (Quantum Motion), Brian Evje, HR Lead (NREP), Kate Bischoff, Attorney & HR Consultant (k8bisch LLC) & Margaret Buj, Senior Talent Partner, (MixMax)

Five productivity tools and tips courtesy of Akua, to help you get the most out of your life, business and work routines!Adrian was joined live by Akua Nyame-Mensah on 13th May 2022 to discuss with the listeners/viewers how you as a business leader, executive, professional or an individual can tackle stress, overcome burnout, and learn how and where you should focus your time and energy to get the most out of your daily lives, careers and businesses.Watch the full Live Q&A, "Surviving to Thriving", on YouTube by Clicking here.Akua Nyame-Mensah, is a certified executive and leadership coach (ICF), recognised facilitator, speaker, and host of the Open Door Conversations Podcast.  As a former startup executive, she launched an online platform (Lamudi Ghana) for the first African-based technology unicorn Jumia Group.  Akua has had the opportunity to live and work in the U.S., Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa and has consulted in and visited over 30 countries worldwide. In her work, she loves combining 'traditional' coaching approaches with leadership psychology, neuroscience, emotional intelligence research, and spiritual modalities. Akua works with leaders who are juggling a million responsibilities. She helps leaders clarify where they should focus their time and energy each day through her company ANM & Company.Let us know your thoughts! Join the conversation on our Social Media handles.SOCIAL MEDIAYouTube: https://youtube.com/thesoundofaccrapodcastWebsite: https://thesoundofaccra.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesoundofaccra/Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesoundofaccraFacebook: https://web.facebook.com/thesoundofaccraLinkedin: https://gh.linkedin.com/company/the-sound-of-accraLISTEN TO OTHER PODBITE EPISODES BELOWhttps://linktr.ee/thesoundofaccrapodSupport the show

Today's guest on the SYCK Podcast is seasoned recruiter and interview coach, Margaret Buj. We cover a lot of ground in this episode, starting with how recruiters use keywords in LinkedIn to find candidates. Margaret talks about the top things that should be on your resume and how to make yourself more attractive to recruiters. We also talk about how to prepare for interviews with a recruiter versus hiring manager. With close to 20 years of international recruiting experience, Margaret has a lot of SYCK advice to share and I'm excited for job seekers to hear this conversation!    IN THIS EPISODE: [02:55] Margaret explains her Talent Acquisition role and how she pursues candidates for niche roles [11:15] Is it important to submit applications early and how recruiters use LinkedIn to find candidates [16:50] How important is company experience and how referrals play into your job search [28:16] What recruiters look at on a resume [36:20] How to prepare for a screening call with the recruiter [41:52] What job seekers should not do and advice for improving your resume   KEY TAKEAWAYS: It is really important to have relevant keywords, job titles, and sectors listed at the top of your resume and LinkedIn profile in order to get a recruiters' attention. If you have only worked for less known companies, be sure to include one line explaining what the company does or the complexity of the organization as a way to help the recruiter better understand your competency or experience. As a job seeker, don't rely solely on job boards. Be proactive and use multiple methods to improve your job search like targeting your top companies and connecting with decision makers and recruiters. RESOURCE LINKS Syckpodcast.com   BIO: Margaret Buj is an experienced Talent Acquisition Manager and Interview Coach who helps job seekers to get hired, promoted and paid more. She has 17 years of experience recruiting for global tech companies and tech start-ups across Europe & the US (including Expedia, King, VMware, Microsoft, Avanade, Typeform, Mixmax), and in the last 16 years, she's successfully coached over a thousand people worldwide to get the jobs and promotions they really wanted. She's worked with professionals at all levels in private (across multiple industries, mostly technology and FMCG) and public sector (including NGOs, UN jobs, education). Margaret has spoken at career events & conferences and has done training sessions and workshops in London, Monaco, Athens & Saudi Arabia. Her advice has been featured in FoxBusiness, BuiltIn, GOBanking Rates, Management Today, Financial Times, Management Today and CIO Magazine.  Margaret Buj WebsiteMargaret Buj on LinkedIn

“So these were super important milestones that we were able to achieve thanks to this combination of real strategic SEO and really high-quality content, that our sales team had a direct impact on with their advice.” Hello hello! For episode 78 of the Flying Cat Marketing podcast, we sat down with Andrea Skarica, Growth Marketing Manager at Mixmax, to discuss Mixmax's collaboration with Flying Cat Marketing, and the results they were able to achieve through combining subject matter expertise with an SEO framework for predictable growth.Mixmax is a fast-growth sales engagement tool that allows sales professionals to automate and personalize their cold email outreach and win more replies and meetings by turning email from a static experience into a more interactive one.In this episode, we deep dive into how, through their collaboration with Flying Cat Marketing, Mixmax was able to Define their tone of voice.Create enjoyable content their Ideal Customer Profile could relate to.Increase and improve their SEO profile.Increase their sales-related keywords.According to Andrea, “[Mixmax is] ranking on page one for Outreach alternatives, SalesLoft alternatives, and some other [keywords] like email sequence software, even best sales engagement platforms.”“So when I arrived [to Mixmax,]” says Andrea, “I had quite a small budget, [and I was told] "Okay, so what are you gonna do to improve our growth organically rather than investing in paid?”...I decided; Okay, let's go and build a content strategy backed by SEO."By collaborating with Mixmax's own sales team and gathering their Subject Matter Expert advice, we were able to achieve results like a 548% increase in sessions.Tune in to learn more about combining SEO and thought leadership content can achieve huge results for businesses.In this episode we talk about:SEO Organic content marketing Subject matter expertise Timestamps:00:35-04:11 Mixmax and Flying Cat Marketing: Where it all started 04:12-06:10 Building thought leaderships content distributed through SEO and social media06:11-11:40 What results did Mixmax achieve through organic content marketing?11:41-13:47 The importance of understanding the ICP pain points 13:48-16:11 Why was nailing down the tone of voice a priority for Mixmax?16:12-17:49 How to set your sales content apart from competitors 17:50-22:31 How Mixmax and Flying Cat Marketing built a seamless subject matter expert process22:32-26:25 How to use LinkedIn to connect with your ICPConnect with Andrea Skarica on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreaskarica/While you're hereFollow Flying Cat Marketing on the following channels to get more tips, tactics, and knowledge on content marketing:Listen to the Flying Cat Marketing Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7dCyOzFGosoNYJhbDOvfQdApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/flying-cat-marketing-podcast/id1535206202?uo=4Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=579505&refid=stprFollow me onInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/flyingcatmarketing/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/flyingcatmarketingLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/flying-cat-marketing/

Robby Allen is the Chief Revenue Officer of AgentSync. Founded in 2018, AgentSync raised over $110m from Craft Ventures, Caffineated Capital and Marc Benioff. Robby previously helped scale Sales teams at SaaStr, MixMax and Zenefits. You can find Robby at https://www.linkedin.com/in/robbyallen This Episode is brought to you with the support of Bambee and Indeed --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/uncharted1/support

Liran Hirschhorn returns to go in-depth on how he and his team using third party eye balls including running white listed ads against influencer profiles. Using a mixture of Hispey, MixMax, Upfluence (Free Chrome Experience) they dial in to get the maximum return. We discuss group buys on weekly stories over a month to maximise exposure (calculating eyes for each stories and expressed conversion rate)... And bartering for your budget requirements and never paying the ad rate card. The chat is mainly focusing on TikTok (18-25) and Instagram (25-34) which accounts for around 70% of the users on each platform. ___________________________________________________ Grab Tickets for Seller Sessions Live Brought to you by Thrasio on May 7, 2022 Featuring: Ivelin Demirov, Tim Jordan, Destaney Wishon, Adam Heist and many more Hosted by: Danny McMillan, Sharon Even, and Izabela Hamilton Grab Tickets at: https://live.sellersessions.com/ Conference tickets include the “Afterparty brought to you by BetterAMS and Clear Ads”. Purchase tickets to the VIP Dinner “brought to you by Avask” https://live.sellersessions.com/ Big Thank you to our sponsors: Seller Sessions Live in brought to you by Thrasio (May 7) The VIP is brought to you by Avask (May 6) Afterparty is brought to you by BetterAMS and Clear Ads (May 7) Thank you to Perpetua, YLT Translations, SellersAlley & Pinformative ___________________________________________________ Grab tickets for Branded By Women Live brought to you by Branded. Hosted by: Sharon Even and Izabela Hamilton Featuring Yael Cabilly, Melanie Shabangu, Olivia Jones, Amy Wees, Cassandra Craven, Jana Krekic, Michele Venton, Cara Sayer and Kata Phipps. Tickets: https://brandedbywomen.com/ Big Thank you to our sponsors: Branded, AVASK, Helium 10 and Multiplymii

As a leader who has so many things to do, it can be hard to get everything crossed off on your to-do list. You might get to the end of the day and wonder where did all that time go. So in today's episode, Akua shares with you her top five tools that have helped improve her productivity in business so that you can get more done in less time.Not only will you learn about these five tips, but she'll also teach you how to apply them in your own life and business. And in her signature program, Uplevel for Thought Leaders, launching soon, she deep dives into this even more. So whether you're just starting out or you've been in business for a while, there's something for you here. Tune in for more!Highlights from the episode:Akua's top 5 things that have changed her productivity and businessWhy being intentional with boundaries is important in business to increase productivity.How Akua doubled down on her rituals, routine and leveraged her calendar when things are about to get stressed so that she can be as productive and effective as much as possibleWhy as leaders, it's up to us to decide what we're willing to accept and place our boundaries on, and we can't expect others to respect our boundaries if we don't respect them ourselvesSetting aside intentional time to connect and to prioritize business development activities to help business growth.How turning app notifications off during non-business hours have helped Akua tremendously in focusing on the task at hand without any interruptions.Providing different amounts of time for different conversations helps with boundaries.Akua's top 5 tools that have helped make a huge difference in getting things done and can help you increase your productivity as well.Using software or apps like Akua's favorite calendar app MixMax can help you manage your time more efficiently.How scheduling content in advance allows her to "show up" on various social media platformsWhy she believes leveraging video and sending voice messages allows her to connect with her audience in less time and provide value.Her program, Uplevel with Thought Leaders, is a step-by-step process showing you how to show up effectively, productively, and consistently on social media without overwhelm.Resources Mentioned: Bog post: The (current) Tools behind My Business Connect with Akua Nyame-Mensah:Instagram: @akua_nmWebsite: www.akuanm.comLinkedIn: @Akua Nyame-MensahTwitter: @akua_nmWork with AkuaLearn how to make the most of your current Leadership Style by taking my Quiz

On episode 12 of the Founders Forward Podcast we are joined by Lex Oiler, CEO and Founder of Billbox. Billbox is "reversing the debt cycle by making it easier for patients to pay medical bills- while improving their credit score." Lex took the idea for Billbox, started the company, and raised capital all within a few months (with a product launch slated for early 2021). Before starting Billbox, Lex was a product designer at Mixmax. On top of her journey from designer to founder, Lex is a holistic health coach. We talk everything from wellness to design to crowdfunding.

Kyle Parrish is the VP Sales at Mixmax and a methodical sales leader. On today's episode, Manoj Jonna and Danny Leonard sit down with Kyle to discuss his journey in sales. They cover a plethora of topics, including:  Starting off in sales after watching friends on water polo team going that way Background as college athlete helped develop fearlessness for rejection The “Yes, and…” principle  How he crushed his first sales job interview Finding mentors early in his career at Oracle The need to find a way to give back to others  There will be a ‘next quarter' - taking learnings from a bad quarter and applying them to future quarters (asking for help) How he found his mojo at startups More early career guidance for junior salespeople Outside of work, Kyle lives in the Bay Area and has a passion for athleticsEnjoy this episode of The Ramped Podcast & How I Sell - thank you for tuning in!

Daniel Scriver shares insights on how to develop your career from his experience as a college dropout turned designer turned CEO. — YOU'LL LEARN — 1) How to develop new skills through self-teaching 2) Why Daniel left a dream job at Apple 3) Why you should always seek discomfort Subscribe or visit AwesomeAtYourJob.com/ep628 for clickable versions of the links below. — ABOUT DANIEL — Daniel Scrivner is the CEO of Flow. Previously he was the Head of Design at Digit and Square. He's worked for some of the most respected brands in the world including Apple, Nike, Disney, and Target. Daniel advises world-class teams at companies like LendingHome, Empower, TrustToken, Designer Fund, and Notation Capital. He's an early-stage investor in businesses like Superhuman, MixMax, Notion, Good Eggs, Burrow, Madison Reed, Stance, Almanac Brewing, and many more. And he's been invited to speak at some of the world's most prestigious organizations including Andreessen Horowitz (A16Z), General Assembly, Techstars, Designer Fund, and 500 Startups. • Daniel's website: DanielScrivner.com • Daniel's Twitter: @DanielScrivner • Daniel's LinkedIn: Daniel Scrivner • Daniel's podcast: Outliers with Daniel Scrivner • Daniel's company: GetFlow.com — RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE SHOW — • Product: Neumann U 87 • Software: Superhuman • Book: Rich Dad Poor Dad (What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money - That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!) by Robert Kiyosaki • Book: The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy by Thomas Stanley, William Danko, Sarah Stanley Fallaw • Book: Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio — THANK YOU SPONSORS! — • Find Your Dream Job. Learn Ramit Sethi's pro-tips at IWT.com/podcastDJ• United Harvest. Get superior meats at unitedharvest.com. Promo code: AWESOME• Blinkist. Learn more, faster with book summaries you can read or listen to in 15 minutes at blinkist.com/awesomeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Mixmax is a app that send engaging emails with instant scheduling, free unlimited email tracking, polls, and surveys right in Gmail. Olof Mathé: - https://www.linkedin.com/in/olofmathe/ - https://twitter.com/olofster - https://mixmax.com/

Intro For the past five years, the term 'digital nomad' has made its way to people's bucket list as more and more technologies have afforded us the option to work from home – wherever that may be. Like our guest for this episode, she has had the opportunity to travel all over South America for a year all while having a full-time job. With this opportunity also comes the challenge of joining a social circle or a community that can help you settle in the new city that you're in. But how can you do that? How can you build connections and create a community in a new place where there's a language barrier? Also, how permanent are these relationships and are you obligated to keep them long-term? In this episode, Hannah talks about how to make friends and find a community during your travels, and also shares her perspectives on friendship and why it's okay to be okay with saying goodbye to newly found connections. Guest Bio Hannah Kim is a Tech Support Specialist at Mixmax, Inc. Over the past year, she has travelled all across South America, to places such as Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Brazil, Chile, and even Argentina – all while working a full-time job. Key Takeaways Work hard, play hard: What it's like to be a digital nomad [03:28] Socializing tips for introverts [06:17] Events where you can meet locals and expats alike [08:26] Differences between creating/finding a community at your home city versus abroad [10:35] How to make friends during your travels (and not become too emotionally attached) [13:34] Diaspora of communities abroad [17:57] How to overcome language barriers and form great relationships with locals and expats alike [21:39] Quotes “There's only one of you. So your perspective [and] your ideas are going to be unique and original. So don't try to copy someone else's life.” (Hannah) “When we move to new places, we kind of expect strong or authentic friendships to fall in our laps. And then we get sad when it doesn't happen. Some things won't work out but you will find people who you connect with.” (Anya) Live Your Best Life! Want to learn how to self-validate, let go of self-doubt, and figure out what a successful life looks like for you (not your parents)? Then download our complimentary audio guide here. Take the first step to living your own life beyond anyone else's expectations! Find episode transcript here --> https://www.navigatingculture.co/the-homesickness-cure-podcast-how-to-make-friends-and-meet-people-while-youre-traveling

Romina Brown is a strategic consultant with over twenty years of experience in sales, marketing, and business management in the luxury and beauty industries. Romina has worked with major brands in the multi-ethnic haircare space, as well as national retailers, beauty companies, and barber supply stores Romina is the founder and CEO of the business development consultancy company, Strategic Solutions International. Her consultancy recently launched a first-of-its-kind cloud-based platform to provide pertinent industry insight and syndicated data from retail chains and independent beauty supply stores, including information about industries under the beauty supply umbrella such as cosmetics, skincare, haircare, lashes, nails, and accessories. Romina joins me today to share her insight into the retail industry and the trends she has witnessed. She discusses the current “see now, buy now” phenomenon and how brands thrive by being able to connect directly with their consumer base. Romina also highlights the importance of finding your niche and why you must transform data into insights that will advance your brand towards sustainable growth. “Don't be afraid to be a pioneer. People always try to tell you what can't be done until they see you doing it.” - Romina Brown This week on the SmallBizChat Podcast: Connect with Romina: This episode is sponsored by… Mixmax Mixmax is a powerful email automation tool for business owners, entrepreneurs, and sales teams. Powered with innovative technology and designed to make communicating with clients and customers easier, Mixmax combines the power of Gmail with the efficiency of automation to power the world's fastest-growing companies. It's time to automate, schedule, and engage your clients and customers and systematize your sales process like never before! Try Mixmax for free at Mixmax.com Fix Your Business! Are you ready to run your business with intention? Ready to create a business that allows you to live your dream life and take those dream vacations you deserve? Then you need a copy of my latest book: Fix Your Business: A 90-Day Plan to Get Back Your Life and Remove Chaos From Your Business. Fix Your Business gives you concrete advice on the problem areas many small business owners face as well as the step-by-step process to find solutions so you can live the life of your dreams. It's time to take back control of your business and change how your business is run. Order your copy of Fix Your Business and design your business - and life - with intention. Let's End Small Business Failure - Together! Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of the SmallBizChat Podcast - the show on a mission to improve small business success. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the show, and leave us a rating and review. Help us spread the word and end small business failure by sharing your favorite episodes with your friends and colleagues on social media. Visit our website or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, or YouTube for more great content, tips, and strategies to improve your small business.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Recognized by President Obama as a Top 100 entrepreneur under 30, Neil Patel is a highly regarded expert in the online marketing space who has helped brands grow their marketing capabilities, including Amazon, Microsoft, Airbnb, Google, and SalesForces. Neil is the co-founder of Neil Patel Digital and Crazy Egg as well as the founder Kissmetrics. He has earned significant recognition from the United Nations, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and Entrepreneur Magazine for his professional expertise and business growth. He is a New York Times bestselling author, as well as co-host of Marketing School Podcast, with over one million monthly listeners. Additionally, Neil is an esteemed speaker, sharing insights with several hundred audiences, including brands such as Facebook and Thomson Reuters. Neil joins me today to share his expertise in elevating online marketing strategies to drive traffic, engagement, and sales conversions. He highlights specific areas to consider investing in when it comes to your strategy and particular tools to help you stay on track. Neil also discusses his podcast, how he targets his audience strategically, and his recommendations for ensuring that people see your content in a hectic world. “You need to always keep improving yourself, your product, your business… and never stop.” - Neil Patel This week on the SmallBizChat Podcast: Resources Mentioned: Connect with Neil: This episode is sponsored by… Mixmax Mixmax is a powerful email automation tool for business owners, entrepreneurs, and sales teams. Powered with innovative technology and designed to make communicating with clients and customers easier, Mixmax combines the power of Gmail with the efficiency of automation to power the world's fastest-growing companies. It's time to automate, schedule, and engage your clients and customers and systematize your sales process like never before! Try Mixmax for free at Mixmax.com Fix Your Business! Are you ready to run your business with intention? Ready to create a business that allows you to live your dream life and take those dream vacations you deserve? Then you need a copy of my latest book: Fix Your Business: A 90-Day Plan to Get Back Your Life and Remove Chaos From Your Business. Fix Your Business gives you concrete advice on the problem areas many small business owners face as well as the step-by-step process to find solutions so you can live the life of your dreams. It's time to take back control of your business and change how your business is run. Order your copy of Fix Your Business and design your business - and life - with intention. Let's End Small Business Failure - Together! Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of the SmallBizChat Podcast - the show on a mission to improve small business success. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the show, and leave us a rating and review. Help us spread the word and end small business failure by sharing your favorite episodes with your friends and colleagues on social media. Visit our website or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, or YouTube for more great content, tips, and strategies to improve your small business.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stephanie Chandler is an expert in business, marketing, and social media and was awarded by Small Business Trends in 2012 as a Top 100 Small Business Influencer. With a passion for writing and public speaking, Stephanie founded the Sacramento Speakers Network, the Nonfiction Authors Association, and the Nonfiction Writers Conference. She is the award-winning author of many books including The Nonfiction Book Publishing Plan, The Nonfiction Book Marketing Plan, and Own Your Niche, which earned a Global Ebook Award for Best Business Book of the Year. Stephanie's expertise has been featured in publications including Entrepreneur Magazine, BusinessWeek, and Wired and has served clients including Visa Business Network, Yahoo! Small Business, Dell, The UPS Store, and American Express Open, among others. Stephanie joins me today to share her insight on book authorship and the publishing process. She discusses why you should take the time to produce a high-quality book that will help you elevate your presence in the professional marketplace. Stephanie also highlights what to consider when it comes to choosing between traditional and self-publishing, and the importance of investing enough money, time, and resources into bringing your book to fruition. “There is no other business card like writing a book.” - Stephanie Chandler This week on the SmallBizChat Podcast: Resources Mentioned: Connect with Stephanie: This episode is sponsored by… Mixmax Mixmax is a powerful email automation tool for business owners, entrepreneurs, and sales teams. Powered with innovative technology and designed to make communicating with clients and customers easier, Mixmax combines the power of Gmail with the efficiency of automation to power the world's fastest-growing companies. It's time to automate, schedule, and engage your clients and customers and systematize your sales process like never before! Try Mixmax for free at Mixmax.com Fix Your Business! Are you ready to run your business with intention? Ready to create a business that allows you to live your dream life and take those dream vacations you deserve? Then you need a copy of my latest book: Fix Your Business: A 90-Day Plan to Get Back Your Life and Remove Chaos From Your Business. Fix Your Business gives you concrete advice on the problem areas many small business owners face as well as the step-by-step process to find solutions so you can live the life of your dreams. It's time to take back control of your business and change how your business is run. Order your copy of Fix Your Business and design your business - and life - with intention. Let's End Small Business Failure - Together! Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of the SmallBizChat Podcast - the show on a mission to improve small business success. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the show, and leave us a rating and review. Help us spread the word and end small business failure by sharing your favorite episodes with your friends and colleagues on social media. Visit our website or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, or YouTube for more great content, tips, and strategies to improve your small business.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ellen Rohr is a financial expert dedicated to making business “uncomplicated.” She is the founder of venture capital and consulting company Bare Bones Biz, president of Zoom Drain and Sewer, LLC, and president of Benjamin Franklin, The Punctual Plumber, where she increased sales by $40 million in under two years. As a thought leader in her space, Ellen has contributed to companies and publications, including Wells Fargo, Huffington Post, HGTV, National Association of Women Business Owners, and Business News Media, among others. Ellen joins me today to demystify business finances and discuss what you truly need to know about money as a brand leader. She highlights certain aspects of finances where people tend to get stuck and why keeping up with your brand's financials isn't as complicated as it may seem. Ellen also highlights specific numbers and statements to keep an eye on, the power of knowledge and mentorship, and how to ensure that you are truly elevating your brand by being financially smart. “If you have to learn it yourself, you don't have to do it forever, and you will not regret having learned that.” - Ellen Rohr This week on the SmallBizChat Podcast: Resources Mentioned: Connect with Ellen Rohr: This episode is sponsored by… Mixmax Mixmax is a powerful email automation tool for business owners, entrepreneurs, and sales teams. Powered with innovative technology and designed to make communicating with clients and customers easier, Mixmax combines the power of Gmail with the efficiency of automation to power the world's fastest-growing companies. It's time to automate, schedule, and engage your clients and customers and systematize your sales process like never before! Try Mixmax for free at Mixmax.com Fix Your Business! Are you ready to run your business with intention? Ready to create a business that allows you to live your dream life and take those dream vacations you deserve? Then you need a copy of my latest book: Fix Your Business: A 90-Day Plan to Get Back Your Life and Remove Chaos From Your Business. Fix Your Business gives you concrete advice on the problem areas many small business owners face as well as the step-by-step process to find solutions so you can live the life of your dreams. It's time to take back control of your business and change how your business is run. Order your copy of Fix Your Business and design your business - and life - with intention. Let's End Small Business Failure - Together! Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of the SmallBizChat Podcast - the show on a mission to improve small business success. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the show, and leave us a rating and review. Help us spread the word and end small business failure by sharing your favorite episodes with your friends and colleagues on social media. Visit our website or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, or YouTube for more great content, tips, and strategies to improve your small business.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

David Weiss is a New York City-based entrepreneur and co-founder of Selffee, a brand activation company with products including edible photo booths and edible selfies. Before his work at Selffee, David served as a sales executive for Fashion Avenue Knits, collaborating with merchandisers and designers in the development of brand apparel lines while also overseeing and generating sales. David is an alumnus of the University of Delaware Lerner College of Business and Economics, where he graduated with a degree in marketing. David joins me today to highlight his growth strategies with Selffee and his mindset when it comes to sales and marketing. He shares the importance of effective brand positioning and outreach, and why being intensely invested in your work is essential to your success. David also discusses networking foleys, business cards, and how to make professional connections aside from merely talking about your business. “When you're ready to get serious about it, and you're ready to really stay after it, then it's a beautiful thing.” - David Weiss This week on the SmallBizChat Podcast: Connect with David Weiss: This episode is sponsored by… Mixmax Mixmax is a powerful email automation tool for business owners, entrepreneurs, and sales teams. Powered with innovative technology and designed to make communicating with clients and customers easier, Mixmax combines the power of Gmail with the efficiency of automation to power the world's fastest-growing companies. It's time to automate, schedule, and engage your clients and customers and systematize your sales process like never before! Try Mixmax for free at Mixmax.com Fix Your Business! Are you ready to run your business with intention? Ready to create a business that allows you to live your dream life and take those dream vacations you deserve? Then you need a copy of my latest book: Fix Your Business: A 90-Day Plan to Get Back Your Life and Remove Chaos From Your Business. Fix Your Business gives you concrete advice on the problem areas many small business owners face as well as the step-by-step process to find solutions so you can live the life of your dreams. It's time to take back control of your business and change how your business is run. Order your copy of Fix Your Business and design your business - and life - with intention. Let's End Small Business Failure - Together! Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of the Small Biz Chat Podcast - the show on a mission to improve small business success. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the show, and leave us a rating and review. Help us spread the word and end small business failure by sharing your favorite episodes with your friends and colleagues on social media. Visit our website or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, or YouTube for more great content, tips, and strategies to improve your small business. Small Biz Chat Podcast is produced by Auxbus. You can create your own great podcast - faster and easier - at Auxbus.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Subscribe & Download Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Google Play Follow us onSoundCloud Listen on Spotify Guest: Phil Strazzulla ​Company / Business name: ​​​​​​ ​​​Select Software Reviews Phil is the founder of SelectSoftware Reviews where businesses can learn about the best software for their organization. Phil started his career working in venture capital before getting his MBA at Harvard Business School.Tools / Books / Resources mentioned: Tools: Zoom, MixMax, Mailchimp, Google AnalyticsShow Notes:00:56 minute mark:Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Be a trusted advisor for your customers. Phil starts off by explaining about his business which is to provide consumable information for businesses to make informed decisions on buying the right business software from the myriad options that are available for them. Phil's company makes money by partnering with some of the vendors and with paid advertising on the web site.04:28 minute mark:Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Always start by identifying an ideal customer. Delight that customer first. Phil talks about the ideal customer for his business and that is the HR manager of any business with employees between 100 and 1,000. Phil's aspiration is that the beachhead of the HR customer will gradually lead to other functions in the org.08:31 minute mark:Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Business will evolve. Don't sweat over trying to get it right the very first time. Phil talks about the origins of his business. His desire to start a company originated in college when he interned at a one-man company and realized the impact he could have. Phil talks about how his business evolved 7 or 8 times since inception and how each iteration made the company a better business.11:40 minute mark:Agile entrepreneur takeaway: As an entrepreneur, be prepared to go though lean times. Find strength within. Phil talks about the exhilaration of signing up marquee customers in the beginning but how that excitement was worn off when they didn't renew afterwards. He talks about the learnings such as the tracking the customer interest to get an idea of what is working and what is not. He talks about the pain of going through lean times and watching his classmates shutter their own businesses within 9 to 18 months of starting their businesses. He found strength within to keep going by staying lean.19:43 minute mark:Agile entrepreneur takeaway: It's always a better business model to do something that is already being done in the market faster, cheaper, and better. Phil talks about 2 key challenges he faced in running his business. (1) Time management (2) Prioritization. Phil reminisces about few things he could have done better. (1) Not trying to change the behavior of the customer (2) Instead focusing on helping something that is already being done better, faster, cheaper etc.23:07 minute mark:Agile entrepreneur takeaway: Start with something you know and keep learning and building from there. Phil continues talking about the need to start a business in an area that you are familiar with and understanding the customer behavior. Phil learnt the the hard way about HR and how HR managers make buying decisions. Phile also gives inside scoop on few tools he uses: Zo...

Guest: Robby Allen - Former Head of Sales @Mixmax (Founder @Buena Vista Ventures; Formerly @Flexport, @Zenefits) Guest Background: Robby was born and raised in San Francisco and knew from a young age that he wanted to build and scale companies. At Zenefits he took the outbound SDR team from 0-250+ reps. At Flexport he built a global outbound team across 3 continents. After that Robby was the head of sales at Mixmax, taking the team from a self-serve business to a B2B sales model. Currently, Robby runs his own consulting practice: Buena Vista Ventures. Buena Vista focuses on emerging technology companies, mainly SaaS businesses, looking to build and scale high performing and efficient sales organizations. Outside of the office, you can find Robby playing basketball or hiking to the top of a peak. Guest Links: LinkedIn Episode Summary: In this episode, we cover: - Scaling SaaS Sales Functions Across Multiple Growth Phases - Hiring & Onboarding Sales Teams at Massive Scale - Building Sales Development Engines - Sales Compensation Plans Full Interview Transcript: Naber:  Hello friends around the world. My name is Brandon Naber. Welcome to the Naberhood, where we have switched on, fun discussions with some of the most brilliant, successful, experienced, talented and highly skilled Sales and Marketing minds on the planet, from the world's fastest-growing companies. Enjoy! Naber:  Hey everybody. We have Robby Allen on the show today. Robby was born and raised in San Francisco and knew from a young age that he wanted to build and scale companies. At Zenefits, which had a $4.5 billion evaluation on $584 million capital raised, Robby took the outbound SDR team from 0 to 250+ reps. Then at Flexport, which had a $3.2 billion valuation on $1.3 billion raised, Robby built a global outbound team across three continents. After that, Robby was the Head of Sales at Mixmax. Mixmax has raised $13 million, and he took that team from a self serve business to a B2B sales model. Currently, Robby runs his own consulting practice, Buena Vista Ventures, Buena Vista focuses on emerging technology companies, mainly SaaS businesses looking to build and scale high performing and efficient sales organizations. Outside the office you can find Robby playing basketball or hiking to the top of a peak. Here we go. Naber:  Robby! Awesome to have you on the show today. How are you my man? Robby Allen:     I'm good. I'm good, Thanks for having me, Brandon. It's good to be here. Naber:  Good. Fresh off your recent trip to Europe. You're in a feel good mood. You've got good energy. I'm loving it. You and I have known each other for awhile, and I'm really happy and proud to be chatting with you today. I think there's a lot that the audience can learn from you. What I think we'll do, if it's okay with you, is we'll go into some personal stuff first - let the audience get to know you a little bit better. We'll go into a few different things around your basketball career. I want to talk about some of the things that you did growing up, get an idea for some of your interests, all the way from Robby as a kid and what you were interested in and what you were like, all the way through to the end of the end of school in Eugene. So, if you're okay with it, could you give us maybe five, seven minutes, and it will probably last a little bit longer than that because I'll ask questions, hopefully not too rudely, to explain a few things. But could you give us a few minutes on what Robby was like as a kid and what it was like being Robby Allen as a child growing up? Robby Allen:     Yeah, sure. And to start, I'm super excited to be here. Super excited you're doing this. and can't wait to see the first handful of these episodes released into the wild. I think, given your network and the people you know it's going to be fun. But yeah, a little on me. So I was born and raised in San Francisco. People tell me that's something unique that live here, because so many people scratch, and claw, and work hard to move to San Francisco because, in the world of tech, it's considered to be the land of opportunity. I was fortunate in some ways to grow up right in the middle of it. And I knew at a really young age that I wanted to build and scale companies. It was just something where when I was five years old, I used to tell my mom that I wanted to put a suit on and can go downtown to work. Obviously the suit thing has changed, people don't wear suits anymore in San Francisco, unless you're in finance or something like that. But from a young age, I've been very interested in this notion of building things from scratch, building wealth, building value for markets and that sort of thing... Naber:  Hey, can we pause on that just for a minute. Did you ever, did you have any businesses or ways of making money growing up? Well, actually there's a really good question that someone asked me the other day, and I want to pay it forward to the audience, and get your thoughts. What was your first way of making money? Robby Allen:     Yeah, that's a good question. So I used to hustle Pokemon cards, if you remember what those are. I had a little business that in elementary school - and for folks that don't know, Pokemon was a Japanese trading card game that got really popular in Japan, and then overtook my generation, I guess - and I went to a Japanese bilingual school in San Francisco called Clarendon. So everybody there was first generation Japanese where their parents immigrated from Japan, and I happened to grow up right around the corner from there. So I went to school there. And so there was a lot of popularity around that and I saw an opportunity, I think, that was one example. I got into sneakers, when I started to really get into basketball. And so I started to buy and trade sneakers that were,popular. I would buy them when they were released for a cheaper price and sell them for a little bit more. It didn't make a lot of money, but it was something where I was able to get good at it, so to speak. Those were, I guess those were a couple things. I think that eventually scaled up until I landed in the world of sales where I think I really enjoyed that because it was something where I could control my own destiny, so to speak. Naber:  Nice. Those are good examples. Wow. I mean...the purpose of the question, that comes from an executive that a at a company that I used to work at, but his take is that he believes that work ethic starts at a very young age and entrepreneurial spirit starts at a very young age. And that that is one of the hardest to teach in your twenties and thirties. And he feels that people don't necessarily develop that in their twenties and thirties. They actually develop it as at a really young age. So that was that's he purpose of asking that question. But you have some pretty kick ass examples. That's great. Quick insert here, what is your favorite sneaker you've ever traded for? Robby Allen:     Oh, man. Yeah, so I think it's kind of a random one that most people won't know, but it's the story here, it's a pair of Air Flight 89's and my younger brother and our mutual best friend, who grew up around the corner from us in the Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco. When I was really young, we'd sell lemonade on the corner on hot days in San Francisco, and we would play up the fact that my mom grew lemons in the backyard, but mostly it was just the concentrated lemonade that you'd get from Safeway. And so we'd sell this. And then I remember I'm, the listeners won't know this, but I'm very tall. And so at a young age I became really big, and the whole cute factor of selling lemonade certainly drifted away from me, and I was no longer necessarily somebody who was an obvious candidate to sell lemonade. So I, naturally the opportunity still being there, I recruited my younger brother and our buddy Ian. A I sort of operated in the background, refilling and getting them out there. And we made enough money one Saturday afternoon, a sunny afternoon in the fall in San Francisco, where we could all go to a sneaker store on Haight Street and buy a pair of Air Flight 89's. And so I guess you could say that was a trade of labor and lemonade for sneakers. But, I'll never forget that pair because all three of us walked out of the store with the same shoes. Naber:  That's a great story. Two things. One, what did you say something and lemonade? You said something and lemonade. Naber:  Labor and lemonade. Naber:  Labor and lemonade would be the title of your first book. Second of all, everyone of us mere mortals at six foot and under always wonders what it's to be tall. And, people always think of the upside, pun intended. But some of the downside could be you could retire from lemonade sales very early in your career. Which is, that could be a sad story. But it's a good story for you. Naber:  I had to let that drift away, yeah. Naber:  That's right, you're good. So let's talk about high school for a second. So you went to St I's College Prep in San Francisco, is that right? And played basketball? Robby Allen:     Yep. Saint Ignatius, that's where I really got into sports. And yeah, I played basketball and did high jump at SI. Naber:  Cool. What position do you play in Basketball? Robby Allen:     I was I played power forward. I was pretty new to it...I started playing basketball really in high school. I was a baseball player before that, but an injury prevented me from continuing that path. So, I was tall and I could jump and I was pretty quick. So I started to pick up basketball, and they stuck me in at power forward, and I didn't really have a ton of skill per se. I was just springy and my batteries we're always charged. So I did that for four years, and then I went to college up at Oregon, at University of Oregon. And I decided not to follow the basketball path, but after about a year, sort of missed it. Missed the organized sports, missed the competition, and was one of those guys in college who you could basically see me at the rec center seven days a week playing pickup basketball. So I actually ended up finding a local junior college called Lane Community College. I met the coach and I got to know him, and he gave me a full scholarship, and I ended up going and playing two years of basketball at a little junior college in town. I was still going to University of Oregon, and I went to the business school and took a full load of credits there. And then unbeknownst to most people I knew, I was also taking the bus on the other side of town and taking a full load of credits at Community College just to play basketball. And it ended up being this really fun thing because community college, most people, you and I work with and know didn't spend any time in community college, and this is a little secret I have. And it ended up being amazing thing for me. You get to meet, you meet a lot of people that are decades older than you, and they're just now getting to getting around to going to school to maybe get an associate's degree or something that, to up level a little bit. And so it was humbling in the sense that I, I really grew to appreciate what I had, at the University that I was going to across town, and I got to get my two years of basketball in at that level, and that was all I needed, and went back to U of O and finished up my degree. Naber:  Awesome man. Wow. Very cool. I love that you went after your passion, with a credits at this school, basketball at the school vengeance - missing your craft. One more thing, I think you've done some coaching in your, day as well while we're on the basketball. And when I say the basketball, I mean while you're on your basketball career? I got used to saying the basketball, or the football, or the baseball when I was in Australia. So sometimes I put the in front of a sport arbitrarily. Anyways, while we're on your basketball career. So let's talk about some of the coaching you did as well. What does your coaching career consist of? Robby Allen:     Yeah, so, after hanging it up so to speak, from a couple of years playing in college, I...one of my assistant coaches from my college team, actually took an off season job as the head coach of a local high school team for Mohawk High. It's about 45 minutes outside of Eugene, Oregon. And, to give you an idea, I mean this is high school, probably had 200 students and at the...and I come from a school where there were probably 65 kids who tried out for the varsity basketball team every year, and only about 10 or so made it, it was a big thing...Seven kids showed up to the tryouts, so all seven kids made it. And this is ranging ranging from kids who had played basketball to had never played in their life. So this is a very different challenge. I think the team had finished in last place out of 10 people for the last 10 or so years. And so myself, and I recruited another buddy who played on the team with me to come be an assistant coach for the team, and it was more than a challenge. Because you know, we did not have any real semblance of talent on this team. But you got to know this group of kids, and we would take a yellow school bus two hours north and south of Eugene twice a week to go play games. And in some of these towns that I probably never would have otherwise set foot in my life. And I actually remember, at halftime, there was a game in, I can't even remember the name of the city, it was a western Oregon town. There was a hoedown at halftime, where about 30 people came out in cowboy boots and did a cowboy hoedown. And they had a live auction, or so they had a live raffle. And so they drew a raffle prize. There's dust and hay now all over the court, these kids have to come out and play the second half still. And they draw a number and someone in the crowd wins, and they're going crazy, and we don't know what the prize is. And they walk like 1500 pound pig basically, from the locker room. And they auctioned off a full grown male pig and somebody took home the pig...just to give you an idea of the spirit of some of these games. But that was was a learning experience for sure. But, the end of the story is we ended up finishing in second place in the league, which was the best they'd ever done. And, while it wasn't necessarily the team I would have picked or recruited myself because, frankly, we had we had to take a...there wasn't enough interest in the school. I started to really figure out that coaching was something I was passionate about, and that was a takeaway I brought with me. And still to this day, it's a guiding thing for me in terms of looking for opportunities to coach. Because even when you're making a small difference in a group of kids that are never going to play basketball at a high level, you can still have an impact on their life in a positive way. So that was a fun experience. Naber:  Cool man. We're going to cover that in a little bit, a little bit more on coaching from a professional context. That's a great story. So that, that brings us to post-Eugene. You get out of sphere-O'Ducks in Eugene, and your first role after school is what? Robby Allen:     Yeah, so I'm actually at the time working for a craft beer company that was based in Eugene - a company called Ninkasi Brewing Company. Their CEO was a former Wall Street guy who came back to Eugene and built this really, really successful fast-growing craft beer company. And I was able to finagle a job at that company, which as you can imagine, was a really fun job to have in college, and it made me very popular, especially during the summertime. And part of me thought I wanted to pursue that post college, but the more I dug into it, it just wasn't, it was more of something that...I like the idea of building this business, but it wasn't necessarily the industry I wanted to work in. So I had some people that I was close with giving me the advice that, starting a career in sales would be a good place to start. And I ended up taking a job at this company called People Matter, which was an HR technology company. And frankly didn't really know a lot about the business, didn't really have a great why for why I picked it other than it was the first door when it was an opportunity that opened up to me. The role was just a straight up outbound SDR role., the first outbound SDR the company had ever hired, reporting directly to the VP of sales. Little to no training, threw you out into the wild. And I flailed a little bit for, for probably about a month until really starting to get the hang of it. And I think the thing that I liked about it was the challenge of being able to basically directly challenge and try to add value to people that were often 20 years my senior, and help book meetings and that sort of thing. And I did really well at it against all odds. It wasn't something where I was necessarily set up for a ton of success, and that was something that I remembered and brought with me in future roles where I was the one responsible for hiring and training folks in that role...and that office was a satellite office for a company based in South Carolina, and I'm remember I was on a camping trip with my wife, girlfriend at the time, and I came back and I turned my phone on and somebody, I had 15 will voice messages and all my colleagues told me, hey, they shut the office down. I was as Oh my God. So, they closed the office down. It was something that I think I just didn't have enough business aptitude or savvy to see something that coming, per se. I was just focused on my own success, but it ended up being a blessing in disguise. I got introduced to a company called Zenefits, where a friend of mine worked. I had been a successful AE for nine months and like any successfully AE of nine months was convinced I should be an AE, but decided to take a step back to take a step forward. So I actually came in as an SDR at Zenefits. And I was an early employee there, and it was an amazing atmosphere. I mean, it was the kind of place where the phones were ringing all day, and there weren't enough sales people to take the number of demos that we were setting and the deals we were closing. And, so I came in there and it was the start of a really, really interesting journey. And I, I went from the top performing rep to becoming a manager, and building out this outbound team. They were sort of an all inbound shop before that. I built out a team of about 20 SDRs in San Francisco, hired a manager and placed them there. And the CEO, Parker, approached me and asked me, "hey, do you want to move out to Arizona and build this at 10x the scale." And I remember telling him no at first. I was like I'm a San Francisco kid, my girlfriend's here, all my friends and family are here. And I remember he told me this thing that always stuck with me. He said, "Robby, once or twice in your career, if you're lucky, a big, maverick tidal wave will come up behind you. And it's your decision if you want to grab a surfboard and jump in and try to ride it or not. And when a CEO tells you something that, it's kind of hard not to get fired up...So about two weeks later I was on a flight to Phoenix, and was moving out there. And over the course of the next two and a half years I built, and this is always kind of wild to say out loud, I'd built and scaled out at an SDR team of about 250. So we were hiring 30 SDRs every month, and really going from product market fit to repeatability to full-on hypergrowth, in this really condensed time period. And there are a ton of learnings and I'm sure some things that we'll be able to unpack along that journey. And it was a big growth experience for me. I was 25 years old, in a room full of 200 people that I'd hired in this whole organization we'd built out. And so learning just how to grow, with this growing business, personally. And how to uplevel my skills, and understand what the things were that I could do to add value at the certain different stages we went through. I was an amazing experience. So we went on a journey from a zero to $70 million in ARR over those three years. Which was a lot, and an amazing journey. And when that journey concluded, I had done everything I've set out to do at Zenefits and wanted to move back to the Bay Area. And so I came back to SF and actually got introduced to a company called Flexport. My old, my former former boss... Naber:  Let's pause for a second because I want to keep your head space in the Zenefits zone for a minute because we'll hop into Flexport and a little bit. But there's just so much to unpack with Zenefits that while your head's on the space, I'd to keep it there for a few minutes. For those that are listening, you heard the amount of scale both from a hiring, bookings, and revenue perspective, and just an operational scale - just unbelievable. Somewhat unheard of hypergrowth scale you guys are operating at, and you being the spearhead of a lot of that operational execution for hiring to make sure that you're building pipeline and building the pipe for the sales team at scale. All the way through to making sure you have a pool of talent and a bench of talent to mobilize within the organization. All of that is obviously vitally important to the massive scale and results that you guys had. So let's pause on that for a minute. So first of all, let's talk about hiring teams. There's a lot of people that are going through either their version of hyper growth, or what would fit everyone's definition of hyper growth. Whether they're hiring a significant number of people in their head, or in reality they're hiring a lot of humans to do a various number of roles. So let's talk about that. So when you think about recruiting at massive scale, what are a couple of the fundamentals that people need to keep in mind and remember, or get right, that you think about as a framework for how you scaled that much growth for hiring? Robby Allen:     Yeah, a great question. And I think, with the benefit of hindsight, I can probably speak a little bit more intelligently to it, then I could at the time. Naber:  To all of our benefit actually, to all of our benefit. Robby Allen:     Yeah. So I think the first thing that's just so important that you hear time and time again, but I think that there is no amount of time that you can spend that is too much, is getting your foundational team - your founding team, you're first team - right. And in in my case, I had the benefit of building out a team in San Francisco, and was able to sort of, get a couple - two of the top reps, my friends Alex Snatch and Andrew Case, both of whom became very close friends, and were at my wedding. and to this day are still very close friends - top reps in San Francisco and were able to get them to move about the Arizona with me. And so having that institutional knowledge there on the ground made such a big difference because there's already this dynamic of what excellence looks for every new hire that comes in. And I think that that's really important, And I think that for folks that are, that are starting a new role or coming into a new environment, if you're in a sales leadership position, whether you're an SDR manager, or VP of sales, or a VP of marketing, or whatever the case may be, you should probably already know who the first two or three people that you're going to recruit and hire into the organization are going to be. And the reason for that is because you can create an environment that you've got a little bit more control over, and create a culture that you're comfortable with and familiar with and that you can help integrate your new people into. Because once you start to add new folk onto the team, if you don't already have that foundational culture in place, you can't go back in time and rebuild it. And that can be a recipe for disaster. And so I was very fortunate to have benefited from that without necessarily prioritizing it. But it's something that I've learned now over the years that you, you can't really spend enough enough time in the beginning recruiting and focusing on who is going to be my founding go to market team. Naber:  Yup. Yup. That makes sense. And then, let's talk about operationalization of that hiring as well. So your founding team, you need to get both the culture as well as that group right - the first few people on your team. Then we need to get into the actual operations of hiring that many people. Can you give us an understanding of...if you think about it this way - from the top of the funnel to the bottom of the funnel, or from one part of the operational execution to the other - what are some of the best practices from a recruitment perspective that you need to nail when you're hiring at scale? Robby Allen:     Yeah, so I think it's a great question. And we went through many iterations of this. We went through me being the sole owner of top to bottom recruiting for this organization to having an internal recruiting team of 15 recruiters that were sort of running an engine. And so I saw every evolution along the way. And I think there were a couple of takeaways that I recommend to folks when I talked to them. And the first one is, when you think about your role as a leader, at the end of the day, it's your call. And the success or failure of the sort of decisions that you make when you're hiring people rest on your shoulders. And so when you think about what is the highest point of leverage that you have throughout the entire recruiting process? In my opinion, it's two things. One, it's setting the tone in terms of what to look for, and what our criteria are, and making that very evident so that everybody who's involved with the recruiting process is aligned on the same page, right? So defining the role but also making sure that you walk the walk in terms of the team that you're building along the way. So it's self represented. And the second thing is when you think about the leverage that you have as a leader or a hiring manager, it's actually this final stage interviews and the decision of go/no-go, and the ability to close candidates and then everything that happens after that in terms of the successful ramp and management of the team. And so the thing that I suggest to most folks, is please negotiate with your CEO, or the leader, or the person who you're recruiting to, whether you've got internal recruiting resources or outsourced external resources. you need the support in terms of I prospecting and management. We've proven in so many different aspects of the business, and we can take sales as an example that specializing the sales process in terms of appointment setters, and deal closers, is just more effective. And from a recruiting standpoint, you should think about it in a similar way. And so there's just going to be...it's nice for all of us to think that we can take a sniper approach to recruiting and just pick the four people we want to hire, hyperfocus on them, and close three out of four of them. But the reality of situation is that it's never been more competitive to recruit, really in any market. And that it's a candidates market so to speak. And so you want to get recruiters working for you. And it is worth the cost of admission. And it's just something to think about when you're either taking a new role or managing up, that you really want to help define the amount of work that, that recruiter's going to do for you. And so in the beginning at Zenefits, we had a couple of SF based recruiting firms doing a lot of this recruiting for us in Arizona. And I would take flights out there twice a week and hold full on interview days where we would do upwards of 10-15 interviews, and do batch hiring. But it allowed me to really isolate and focus on being super present in the interview, and making conscious decisions to place the right bets on these people that we were hiring. And that combined with the support of the folks that I mentioned earlier who were already high performers being involved with the process, allowed us to get a lot of those early hires right, and that helped us along the journey. Naber:  Awesome, man. That's great. It's gold. One of the things that I always touch on with either my clients, or folks in groups, or keynotes, or whatever, is specialization. Once you get to specialization within the process of bringing great talent onboard and the operationalization of it - so bringing in sourcers, bringing in recruiters, and making sure you don't have generalists working on it, but specific people working on specific pieces of the process - it's a great analogy to sales that we've proven it out for SDR, for sales, for account management, customer success, the specialization across the entire spectrum. I mean it's just gold what just came out of your mouth. So I hope that people take that onboard. Two more things I want to talk about within Zenefits, and then we'll move on. So you're bringing in a shed load of those people all the time. And you're keeping your culture and your values in mind the whole time, while at the same time running at breakneck speed for bringing those people in. Two questions. One is, as you're evaluating talent at that scale - so some people that are listening are going to need to hire five people in a year, some people that are listening are gonna need to hire 500 people in a year, or maybe even 5,000 people in a year depending on,the level of responsibility that they have, listening on this conversation - So when you're thinking about bringing those people on board, interviewing all of them, sourcing all of them, what is the calibration method that you guys have used that has been most successful to make sure that you have multiple people inside the organization giving input on this person being the the right person to hire? So the right candidate, what's the calibration method that you found, that is most useful or valuable as you're going through that level of hiring at scale? Robby Allen:     Yeah, it's a good question because I think the thing that worked well for us in the beginning was not necessarily the thing that worked well for us on the pathway along the journey. And that transition wasn't super smooth. And so I was the single point of accountability, or single point of failure success, however you want to state that. And that I made the hiring decision for the first hundred or so sales reps that we hired, where I was in every single interview. And so, as you can imagine, this absorbed a ton of my bandwidth, but we were fortunate to have a lot of support in terms of ramping and making reps successful and then hitting their numbers, and we were able to stay ahead of that. So I was able to do that. Handing off that decision responsibility took quite a bit of calibration. And I think that at the end of the day with recruiting, it's nice for organizations to have a fully calibrated, well-oiled recruiting machine where you can predictably make the same decisions about hires based on an agreed upon set of criteria and principles. And I think that there's companies out there that do this really well. It's really hard to do during a hyper growth phase. And I actually recommend, to most folks, that you hold onto a single point of accountability or a single decision in terms of this hiring, as long as you can. And then as you get folks up to speed and you're able to delegate out some of some of the hiring responsibilities, do that. But I think it is really the single most important thing that you can do, when you're at a hyper growth stage. And narrowing that level of responsibility for decision down to the smallest group of stakeholders possible, it may sound counterintuitive because a lot of bigger companies do as well where it's delegated across many people. But in my opinion, I think it's better to hold on to it. And when you get to a point where you've got folks that are...Because when you keep in mind we're hiring 30 new people to start on the first Monday of every month, that by the time we've got a hundred people on board, the most ramped folks that we have on the team had been there for four months. Now this is an experience in scale that most businesses what won't necessarily have to deal with. But I think to some degree, many hiring managers have been in a position where next most tenured individual just doesn't have a ton of tenure. So you have to work with those folks, and help them become owners, and help them really understand that as an owner of the business these are the specific things that we look for, and here's how you embody those certain principles, and those are things you need to work on. But for me it would actually was holding on to that as one of the singular most important points in my job, as long as I could. Naber:  Yup. Solid. I like it. I lied, I actually have two more questions in addition to that other one. The next one in on onboarding. So, this is something that most people overlook and turn it into a checkbox exercise. What was it that you guys did to make sure that everyone - you mentioned this twice around setting them up for success - what did you do to make sure they were set up for success in the onboarding phase and anything after that? Anything you would include in that phase to make sure they're set up for success at massive scale, as you were bringing a lot of people on board in the sales function. Robby Allen:     Yeah, that's a good question. So a couple things. We, had an owner of the onboarding program from day one. So one of the things that we did was we hired somebody into a sales enablement capacity as one of the very first hires that we made. And they ran a two week bootcamp, where we put folks through everything from systems training, to market training, to competitor intel, to pitching, to live role play, and we actually would have folks get certificates. And this was something that we took really seriously because, two reasons...One, it allowed us to create a system of measurement where we can say, okay, if we are able to deliver x amount of training, what output can we measure with...months down the line, weeks down the line. And that gave us actually a feedback loop that tied back into our recruiting conversations were actually talking about ramp success of people that we had recruited three months prior, in recruiting meetings. And I think it's important that you've got that feedback loop of success on hires all the way back to recruiters that isn't just anecdotal, but it's actually looking at the data performance based on, based on how these folks got ramped. So one thing was just creating an owner early on with sales enablement was critical. Systematizing it and having a way to measure rep performance week over week and having benchmarks and then really sticking to those. Making it clear that if new hires didn't hit certain criteria along this journey in their first three months, there wasn't going to be a grace period. I mean, it really was you needed to perform at a certain level, even in the early days. And so that wasn't so much putting numbers on the board in the first month as it was showing competence, and learning, and demonstration of ability to be coached, and some of the things that we looked for. And so those were a couple of things. And to be frank, that onboarding program, we needed to tear it down and rebuild it every 90 days because what we were measuring and what we were coaching on needed to be updated based on how the business had evolved, because it was such a dense time period during hypergrowth. Then you really have to constantly be looking at it through the lens of, is the foundation correct, and do we need to rebuild it? And it turned out we needed to rebuild it every 90 days. And so it was a lot of work. But, it created a lot more relief for the managers of those people and for the people themselves once they were able to pick up their bag, so to speak, and know that they have the skills to succeed. Naber:  Cool. One more side question on that. Is there three things that you can say every person that is onboarding new sales development, sales talent, people within the sales and marketing org, or just generally onboarding...Are there a few things, maybe three things, that you have to put into or get right within your onboarding program or project? Robby Allen:     Yeah, that's a good question. So I think the first thing is it everybody needs a crystal clear understanding of what their role is, and what what the value is that they're adding to the business. And hopefully this is something you did in the recruiting process, and it sounds obvious, but helping people understand why, what it is that they're doing is so critical to the overall success of the company and the vision of the company, creates a lot of buy in early on. And for a lot of people it's one of the reasons why they consider and decide to take a job in the first place, is what's the impact that I can have? How is this going to help me grow personally, but also this business grow? And helping create that reminder is, I think, really important. And then helping people feel, helping people understand how they can fail and that failure is appropriate, I think is really important too. And I think you have to define what that failure means, but people need to feel safe, safe to fail. And by fail, I don't necessarily mean fail to show up to work,. What I mean is fail, fail in an effort to do the right thing, right? So maybe you decided to call the CEO of a company that you're prospecting into, and you get a connect, and maybe your pitch wasn't quite as sharp as you wanted it to be. But at the end of the day, you were doing the right thing, you were calling up in the organization. That's something that you want to celebrate and help people understand that that's actually something where you're doing the right thing here. Now let's talk about how we can perform better, in that specific scenario. And so creating that environment, I think is really important too. And I think the third thing is you have to create a rigorous system of measurement. So what a lot of sales leaders do is they'll pair up a new hire with the top rep on the team, tell him to sit in on demos and take notes, for as long as they need. And then after about four weeks, let's start funneling demos so that new AE, or if it's an SDR let's start or funneling leads to that SDR. And then it just becomes this sink or swim type of an environment. And you see this perpetuated I think get a lot of sales orgs, and it's understandable. I think that most of most sales leaders are great at what they do because they're looking at the bottom line results, not necessarily the top line inputs of pipeline or new talent. But if you're not really rigorous about these are the specific things that you need to do to be successful, you institute this feeling in a rep that there isn't necessarily a repeatable playbook for success, and it's actually their responsibility to create a path to success. And so what ends up happening is every rep does something different. And when every reps doing something different, you can't scale. And so you never cross that chasm, from product market fit, to repeatability, to hypergrowth. And so once you've actually got folks doing things repeatably, now you can really press the gas, and make things happen a lot faster because you've at least got the knowledge that everybody is executing and selling in a similar fashion. But you can't do that unless that folks are getting ramped up the same way. Naber:  Nice. Awesome. Man, great advice, Robby. Thanks. That's great. And then last question on Zenefits, and we'll move on after that. The machine that you put together, from a sales development perspective, from the outside looking in, just unbelievable - for all the different moving parts you had to piece together, and the best practices that you guys deployed while you were doing that. So someone that's building a sales development function, as you know, and as many people listening are going to have to do - either one, they're a sales leader and they're building sales development function. And a lot of people think that translates well, but oftentimes it doesn't. And number two, a founder, or someone that's never done this, or never been in sales before, or someone's the head of marketing, oftentimes they'll have to build sales development engine to try kick off and catalyze their first phases of growth, and then high growth, and then hyper growth. So when you're talking to people that are building sales development engines, like you did at Zenefits, and then ultimately you did at Flexport as well, which we'll get into in a second - what are the fundamentals, actually let's pull it back, not the fundamentals; What is your mindset when you're building a sales development engine, Robby? Let's start there. Robby Allen:     Yeah. Well I think, when we think about a sales development engine, your typically building this because you don't have a marketing engine pumping out leads, right? You aren't necessarily really building this engine as a first investment in the business, in a lot of cases. Typically you've already got some salespeople in the org, and closing some deals, and you want to scale that function up. But when you look at some of the other inputs into where the demand is being created, you don't necessarily have the level of confidence in what those inputs are to scale that. So you think about, okay, let's take this matter into around hands. And so I think you have to have a hypothesis about, okay, if we're going to make this investment, there's two things that we need to get right. And the first thing is the economics need to make sense, meaning we're going to need to know pretty specifically what kinds of deals and customers we're going after here, what what the win rates and conversion rates are going to be, so that we can understand if we hire one SDR how many AEs this is going to support, and ultimately how we can make the economics of the model work. So the first thing is just having a hypothesis about...and often for companies, if you're going outbound, that's going to be a slightly more upmarket targeted customer, a named account that you understand to be in your demographic of product market fit. That's pretty typical, but it can depend. And then I think the second thing is we're investing in building a talent funnel for for the business. And, this looks different at every company. If you're at a very technical enterprise sale, it can be really challenging to have a 20 year veteran AE and a one year out of college SDR, and how are you going to bridge that gap and promote that person. And in some cases you can't. So I think for the folks that are thinking about their own career paths, definitely look for the type of company where you can get promoted and elevate into full cycle roles and see growth there as well, where it's not such a big bridge to jump. But in any case, the business needs to think about what are we going to do from a talent perspective. And the best companies develop this talent pool, and and ended up recruiting directly out of their SDR organization. And, so for a much lower cost, and much faster ramp time,and typically much more successful rep, they're able to scale up the AE part of the business too. So I think about the economics of the role itself, and then the payoff being not just the output of the role, but the multi year promotion path that you're seeing for folks that you're hiring into that role. Naber:  Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. I mean, that's again, gold. Okay, cool. So let's walk Flexport now. So you get to a place where, you're ready to make a move. Why Flexport and tell us about that jump in a minute or so, and then we can talk about your experience there, and let us know what you did. Robby Allen:     Yeah. So my former boss and VP of sales at Zenefits, Sam Blond, who's now the Chief Sales Officer over at Brex, he was consulting at the time for Flexport, and was helping out specifically with their SDR team. And so he introduced me to Ryan, who's the CEO of Flexport, and I had the chance to meet Ryan and some of the other folks on the team. And, basically, Flexport is this interesting business where it's a SaaS business in a sense that they are building a software as a service product, but really it's a freight forwarding business. And I personally had not spent any time in the logistics or freight forwarding industry. So it was a new dynamic. I mean, I remember taking some supply chain classes that were required in college, and I was practically asleep the whole time. I didn't really understand contextually why it mattered, but Flexport really helped bring out that perspective, and maybe we can talk about that later. But, they basically, the business itself...Freight forwarding and logistics is an interesting supply demand business. where there isn't necessarily a lot of inbound demand regardless of where you are in the market. Essentially importers, people who make physical products overseas need to basically employ third party freight forwarders like Flexport to help them move those goods wherever they need to go in the supply chain. But they're not necessarily signing up for demos on websites the way that you would with Marketo, or Salesforce, or something like that. So they needed to have an outbound strategy for new logos. And at the time it was a little bit Willy Nilly. There were a handful of Sdrs in San Francisco. They were doing a good job, but it wasn't really set up to scale. And so I got introduced and it was a cool opportunity to be for me, one because it was a completely different industry and a new mental challenge that I was just interested in. But when I looked at the business, I saw a couple of things. One, it was growing really quickly, in spite of having basically no predictable demand generation model. So that told me that despite the fact that there's a gap here, the business is growing exponentially. And that was really exciting to me. And two, there was a unique opportunity, for me to learn, where I was going to get a chance to scale out a global team. So we needed to hire SDRs in New York City, and LA, and Amsterdam, and Hong Kong, and San Francisco, and a few other markets. And so that was, that was a unique opportunity where I had only really operated in the US before. So I came on board, shortly after leaving Arizona and coming back to SF and took a role there as the Head of Global SDR. Naber:  Very cool. So I have three things I want to talk about within your Flexport experience. Firstly, everyone has this moment, if they're going to look after global teams and businesses that have either global scale, global ambition, everyone has this moment where they move to a geographical diversification of focus and resources, away from just a single market or a single region within a market.This Is the first time, at least at scale, that you had had to do that, across different countries where you're diversifying both talent focus, resources that you're spending as well as using, and just your time management and decision making focus across multiple markets. What are some of the things that you learned, that someone needs to think about as they're diversifying across multiple markets, when you were doing this at Flexport? Robby Allen:     Yeah. So it's a great question, and there's a couple things that I learned, kind of after the fact, that I think I almost wished I'd known at the time. But the big question, and that we wrestled with Zenefits, or sorry, at Flexport, in regards to building this SDR team, was to centralize it or to decentralize it. And so at the time when I joined, we were centralized, meaning we were booking and setting demos where all of our global offices in one office in San Francisco. So we were calling out into all these different geos. And the thinking was that because it was centralized, we would be...there was a central knowledge hub. We could help ramp reps faster. We could institute best practices. We could roll out change faster. We can just generally move faster. And to remind, at Zenefits, we were a centralized model, right where we had this giant office in Scottsdale, AZ. But what we figured out was that these global markets were really different. Outbound in Amsterdam will look very, very little like does in San Francisco, or New York City. It's just, it's a completely different game. And, similar to Hong Kong, which is worlds away, in terms of being able to prospect into accounts. And so we ended up deciding to decentralize it, which was the right decision because most of the subject matter expertise for that local market lived in that local market. And so you had a GM and you had some senior salespeople in that local market who could partner up with an SDR to help target the right types of accounts. And so I think for me that was actually a big exercise and just letting go. And not being the one to control all the campaigns that we were running and all of the different messaging we were using. And the advice that I got from a senior executive at Flexport at the time was encouraging me to think about the function as a service to the global GM's that we were working with, as a service provider. And it a sales person, you're not, you don't typically think of yourself as a service provider. But basically what they were telling me was that to really focus on listening to what the unique problems where in each of these markets and provide expertise and consultation on how to solve them, but ultimately give that local GM the credence and responsibility to make that decision. And honestly, it was hard for me. I came from a place where I was successful because I was the one who is controlling and making decisions for this big organization at Zenefits. And so Flexport was a challenge for me just in the sense that, success meant letting go and I'm bringing subject matter expertise to the table and making recommendations and offering it more as a consultant, but ultimately leaving those decisions to the local GM's. And so, to come back to your question about how I'd recommend folks who have global geos that they're selling into. I think you have to treat each one its own unique problem set and hopefully get an expert in there to be the owner of that problem set sooner rather than later, and then just provide support. Naber:  Yeah, I see that a lot right now. Whether it is hyper growth businesses trying to scale from afar. So using SF or, or wherever their headquarters is, as a hub, and hiring a couple of people in a new office. Or whether they have a bunch of people in that new office or that new market and they're now moving to this model of having a GM where you have a local owner so that all of those issues, problems, and solutions can roll up through one person that understands the market versus multiple points of contact that need to then have multiple points of contact back at the hub where you've got different stakeholders that may or may not play ball, as well as others. And understanding that markets are different or situations are different. So I hear a lot of people talking about moving to that GM model as they, one, open up an office or, two, they move to it after they feel they've made enough mistakes with a non-GM model. I've heard a lot of tech businesses talk about that lately. How can you burn a lot of cash and a lot of resources as quickly as you make mistakes when you're in high growth or hypergrowth. So, I've heard a lot of people try to move away from that. The second thing I want to talk about with Flexport is Compensation Plans. So one of the things that - you and I have talked about this in the past a little bit - but one of the things that you did at Zenefits was you had to think about the construction, from a micro and mid macro perspective of putting together how people got paid, what the measurement was, and you guys have iterations and iterations of that over time. Especially as you scale, and as you either make mistakes or some things go well, and you doubled down, etc. So when you were at Flexport as well as at Zenefits - and you can talk about Mixmax too if you want, but don't move on to that too quickly - but from a comp plans perspective, what did you learn about putting together comp plans, and what are the landmines that people should try to avoid as they're putting together comp plans for sales and sales development reps? Robby Allen:     Hmm. Yeah. so the first thing I did at Flexport was I moved it from a quarterly payout to a monthly payout. And the reason that I lobbied for this, and frankly spent a little bit of personal capital on it, was that inside sales rep need quick feedback loops. And the quickest feedback loop is the direct deposit into your bank account based on the prior month performance. And because it was taking 120 days to get that feedback loop, reps weren't necessarily feeling the way that they were performing in the way that you really want folks to feel, based on these incentives. And so we moved it to a monthly program and overnight, you would see, the folks that were performing the highest behaving a certain way, and folks that weren't behaving a different way. And that's not to say that folks were coming in and being gaudy about whatever their OTE's were. But it's more just to say that you noticed a difference in terms of what the first of the month and the last day of the month, and everything in between, looked when there are monthly feedback loops. So I'm a big fan of feedback loops early and often. And when you can program one of the most important feedback loops in sales, which is incentives and cash comp plans, you want to have that happen pretty frequently. and I think especially for SDR roles, if anybody listening to this is doing a quarterly payout, or in hopefully not anything longer than that, I would consider what the operational burden would be to maybe move that to a monthly payout. And if it's not too high, I would do it. And the reason why, just because reps benefit from that feedback, especially in a hyper growth environment. So that's the first thing that we did. And the next thing that we did was we move the goals up. And that's always a hard thing to do, but the team was performing well and so we moved the goals up, and the OTE stays the same. And I think that that's always a challenging thing for a young manager to do in their career, is help people get onboard doing more work for the same pay, so to speak. But we are fortunate to have some really talented people on the team that just owned it, and went out and crushed their numbers and set the bar really high. So yeah, I mean there's a lot of specific things that I can talk about with regards to comp plans, but I'm always the belief of system of rapid feedback loops, uncapped upside, as long as it's not going to put the business at risk in any way. Those are the two things that I always try to make sure are built into comp plans. Naber:  Awesome, man. That's great. Great answer. And then, last thing, and this is more general because I know that you and I've had enough conversations where I believe that one of your superpowers is your, strategisation - that's a word... - for how you navigate your career and subsequent accurate execution...What I've always been impressed by is your ability to identify and understand very, very quickly - digest, ingest, and execute based on what you've learned, from a career development and a career navigation perspective - it's, it's fascinating to have conversations with you, especially over time. So when you're thinking about career development, career navigation, n your mind, tell us about your mindset for how people should be thinking about the next opportunities that they take - because you've had hundreds and hundreds of these types of discussions - and what actually matters. Robby Allen:     Yeah, that's a good question. So the framework that I've used that has worked well for me, is I think there's really two things that actually matter when you think about and you evaluate an opportunity in your career. And this is what I tell people who are interviewing, or how I use this framework myself. And I think the first thing is the name on the front of the Jersey. And so at the end of the day, in the beginning of your career, it's easy to get caught up in minute details about specific roles that you're in, titles, and small variances in compensation and things that at the time feel really important. And certainly to some degree are important - titles matter, comp matters. But five to 10 years after you move on from that role and you're doing something different in your career, what people are going to look back on is what was the story of that company at what part of that journey did you participate in, and what was your role in the journey? And so I think when you think about the opportunities that you're evaluating, the name on the front of the jersey is going to matter a lot more, when it's all said and done. And people associating your name with the type of companies that really matter and that are lasting go through journeys, are the ones that are going to grow your career actually quite a bit more than titles and compensation, early on. And the next thing is the people you work with. And this is a tough thing to evaluate, but when you're going through the interview process, it's really important to do a thorough evaluation of the folks that you're going to work with. Your boss, your boss's boss, your peers. If you're coming into a leadership role, the folks that are going to be reporting directly to you, and anybody around your peripheral. And the reason being is you're going to spend more time with these people than you are your family. You're going to be in there grinding it out, working with these folks hip to hip, going on a journey. And what you figure out after you go on a journey, and then start a new journey, and look back is that all of these people that you work with go on to do more journeys. And the network that you build internally, the people that you work with, can create so many opportunities for you in the future, or not depending on the quality of talent of people you work with. So I just recommend that people are thoughtful about choosing the type of people they want to sign up to work with. and it can be hard in an interview process to really get a thorough understanding, but you've got internet resources at your disposal - use linkedin. Understand are the people that you're working with active online and the type of people that are investing in their own careers, because that's gonna pay off later. And I can't tell you how many deals in my career that have gone a lot smoother because I have an internal contact with somebody that I used to work with at Zenefits or at Flexport, when we're able to open the door and get directly to the decision maker and get to a decision a lot quicker. And that's one example of hundreds. But, the people that you work with and the name on the front of the Jersey are, are really the two things I think at the end of the day that actually matter. Naber:  I love it. I love it. And, you mentioning that your network is your net worth is something that I think people remember and take away. That's awesome. So, let's hop into Mixmax. So you're at Flexport, you're making the move to Mixmax. Let's talk about that for a minute. Robby Allen:     Yeah, sure. So, my journey at Flexport was going really well, and I ended up actually getting an introduction to an early stage founder, at Mixmax. And Mixmax is actually a tool that we were using at the time, and something I was really passionate about because it was a sales productivity tool that some of the teams were using internally at Flexport, that I thought showed a lot of promise and it's really interesting. And they were looking for a Head of Sales. And so we had a dialogue going, and the opportunity presented itself for me to jump in and own the full sales process end to end, and get to build a team out from scratch. And this was a business that had gone from about zero to 5 million in revenue, all on self serve. And so they're looking to take this jump into more of a B2B sales type of a model. And I jumped at the opportunity. It was the right timing and the right place for me to go earlier than I'd ever been before, and wrap my hands around the full share of the B2B sales model at the business. And so I came on board and recruited out a team of 10 reps, so five SDRs and five AE's. And we built out an SMB, and Mid-market, Enterprise Sales team, and went to market with it. And it was an amazing journey. And we went from about zero to a million in revenue on the B2B side in about six, seven months. And it's, it's funny because I looked at the time at Zenefits, and we did,six times that or something that, in that same time period. But this was harder, and almost meant more. Just because the market that we were competing in was very competitive and going from a self serve model to a B2B model was more challenging than I could have imagined. Naber:  Okay. So, I wanna I wanna I wanna stay here for two specific topics. One of them is exactly what you just said. Going from a self serve business to a B2B or more towards an enterprise sales business - choosing enterprise loosely for the way that I say that, for defining it. But let's talk about that. Talk about the learnings you had going from that self serve business to a non self serve business as you were building at Mixmax. The learnings as in, what did you guys do well, and combining that with what do you wish you would have known at the time that you could have done differently. You don't need to define them in those terms, but comprehensively, what did you learn or what are your learnings from it? Robby Allen:     Yeah, so I think the first thing is that when you have to understand that, despite the fact that we were pretty well established, early stage SaaS business, humming it away at about 5 million in revenue, you have to look at this switch to a B2B notion as a completely new exercise in product marketing fit. And the reason being is that the notion of convincing an entire org, or at least an entire team, to buy an an annual license of your product versus signing up for a much lower risk, per se, at a slightly higher cost and doing a monthly, it's just a completely different notion. And so I think one of the things that we didn't do well early on was that we tried a bunch of different plays. And what I mean by that is that we, the product had brought applicability from recruiting, to account management, to customer success, and sales, and SDR, and we didn't necessarily nail our niche until about a couple months in, when we started to figure out that AE teams were the right team. Oftentimes they were using products that were more designed for SDR's, just by nature of inheritance and not having other options, and that these were the folks that were typically signing up on their own, and these are the ones we want to go after. And so I use this analogy sometimes when I think about scaling playbooks across different phases of growth. But, if you look at it basketball, and I use a lot of basketball analogies, so you have to bear with me. But in the product market fit phase, all you're really looking for is a mismatch that you can exploit. And so if you've got one, let's say, player on the court that's taller, faster, stronger, can jump higher or has one move that you can repeatedly go to to get a bucket when you need it, that's where product market fit is. It's not a whole range of plays. It's one play. And so we figured out what that one play is, and we went there, and we started to scale it. And, in the back of your mind, you're telling yourself, okay, I know that we're gonna have to broaden this playbook a bit more, but part of this product market fit is repeatedly running that same play again, and again, and again. Naber:  Hey, Robby - can you give an example from a sales perspective? Robby Allen:     Yeah, sure. So, I think in the context of Mixmax, the way that our business works was we would land in accounts through self serve model, we would identify the ones where we had traction, we would go outbound, so to speak, where we would reach out to the folks using the product and convert those into larger paying accounts. Very similar, I'm sure, to what you guys did with Sales Navigator at Linkedin, right? And, and so basically what we look for there is okay, we're running a range of different plays. We're running plays against recruiting teams where we're seeing similar things, account management teams we're seeing similar things, we're seeing the win rates with a AE teams just a little bit higher. And we started to figure out why and it's because of a couple things. One, the buyer who in this case is the VP of Sales, or the leader of the Sales org, typically has a budget and decision making power, and there isn't necessarily any approval process beyond them. ,And so if we can make a business case and the AE's can go to their boss and say, we need this tool to be succes

Olof Mathe is the co-founder and CEO of MixMax, a productivity tool for Gmail. MixMax lets you track emails, set up meetings, save time with email templates, and schedule emails to be sent later. The Show Notes MixMax A Long Commute Inspired This Former Google Gmail Designer Olof on Twitter Omer on Twitter Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to the podcast Leave a rating and review Follow Omer on Twitter Need help with your SaaS? Join SaaS Club Plus: our membership and community for new and early-stage SaaS founders. Join and get training & support. Join SaaS Club Launch: a 12-week group coaching program to help you get your SaaS from zero to your first $10K revenue. Apply for SaaS Club Accelerate: If you'd like to work directly with Omer 1:1, then request a free strategy session.