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670: Betterment Vs. Vanguard, Betterment Passes 200,000 Investors, $8B in AUM with CEO Jon Stein May 25, 2017

Show notes

Jon Stein. He's the CEO and founder of Betterment. With his passion about making life better and his career experience advising banks and brokers, he founded Betterment in 2008. Jon is a graduate of Harvard University and Columbia Business School. He holds a Series 72463 and he's a CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst). His interests lie in the intersection of behavior, psychology and economics. What excites him most about his work is making everyday activity and products more efficient, accessible and easy to use.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos
Favorite online tool? — Greenhouse
How many hours of sleep do you get? — 6-7
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Jon could have taken risks a bit earlier in life

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:15 – Nathan introduces Jon to the show
02:05 – Betterment is the largest independent investment advisor online
- 02:10 – Betterment manages your money in the way old institutions can't
- 02:19 – Betterment automates the best practices of investing and the same technology drives the cost down for you
- 02:32 – Betterment is leading in their industry
02:45 – Betterment charges a fee that is the percentage of the asset finder management
- 02:50 – It is 2.5%, which is the lowest in the industry
03:15 – "We have to put our customers' best interest first"
03:30 – Betterment currently manages $8.2B
03:50 – Jon studied economics and behavioral biology as an undergraduate
- 03:58 – When Jon graduated from Harvard, 80% of the graduates took to the finance industry
- 04:47 – Jon didn't want to follow the people he knew in finance
- 04:31 – Jon wanted to help people so he thought he'd study medicine
04:50 – Jon found himself back in New York, consulting banks
- 04:58 – It was 2001-2002 when Jon got his pre-med from Harvard
- 05:13 – Jon was 23 when he went back to New York, in 2003
- 05:45 – The banks were not paying attention to what their customers wanted
- 06:58 – Jon realized that the industry was fundamentally flawed
- 07:12 – There was no scaled advisor that served the market and the people like Jon could
07:28 – Jon started at Columbia Business School in 2008 and he already the idea for Betterment even before he started there
08:10 – Jon didn't know how to code when he started and just learned in business school
08:46 – Jon didn't have student debt while he was in business school and he saved some money from his consulting
09:14 – During the early days, Jon and his co-founders didn't need a lot of money
09:30 – Jon and his co-founders have invested their own money into Betterment
- 09:39 – Their initial investment was less than 400K
10:14 – Betterment has raised a total of $205M
10:34 – "I always wanted to build a company that would impact the lives of millions of people for the better"
11:04 – From Day 1, Jon knew that Betterment would be a capital intensive business
11:20 – Team size is 220
- 11:26 – About half of the team are engineers and product managers
- 11:31 – Most of the team is involved in building the business
12:14 – Most of Betterment's customers are from word-of-mouth
12:46 – Betterment's paid acquisition
13:03 – Betterment's goal as a company is to make noise
13:11 – There's now a better way to manage money
14:11 – People should put their money in Betterment rather than in Vanguard because they're burning money
- 14:18 – Betterment can make them more money on their assets
- 14:39 – Warren Buffett is an active investor himself
- 14:45 – Jon thinks that Warren Buffett's advice was great during his time, but the technology has moved forward
15:11 – Betterment will make you more money than you would make in a single fund
- 15:27 – Betterment's website has all the information about how they work
16:00 – Betterment's role is to maximize people's money
16:07 – Vanguard is a fund company that sells you funds
16:10 – Betterment is independent from their funds
17:17 – "We are growing faster than any firm in the history of this space"
17:42 – People are becoming aware of what Betterment is doing
18:21 – 240K customers have invested in Betterment
- 18:44 – There's no minimum amount to invest
19:24 – "We're building an institution for the next century and we're not interested at selling right now"
19:35 – Betterment's revenue is driven from their 2.5% of the asset management finder
19:48 – Average revenue
21:05 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Just because it has worked in the past, does NOT mean it will still work today.
There are better ways to manage your money, especially with the new advancements we have in technology.
Take risks as early on as you can.

Resources Mentioned:

The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
Organifi – The juice was Nathan's life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
Freshbooks – Nathan doesn't waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

669: How to Do First Real Estate Deal at 18 Years Old, Now $400k/mo In Rental Income with Best Seller Dean Graziosi May 24, 2017

Show notes

Dean Graziosi—he knows how to create success. From extremely humble beginnings, he started with a firewood business in high school to a collision repair shop and his first real estate deal before he turned 20. From there, he created a multi-million dollar real estate business, became a New York Times best-selling author multiple times, and is one of the most watched real estate and success trainers of our generation. He maximizes his success and profits on each of his endeavors along his evolution and his businesses have generated nearly one billion dollars in revenue. He's obsessed with sharing his success along this journey with the world.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Untethered Soul and The Surrender Experiment
What CEO do you follow? – Ernest Shackleton
Favorite online tool? — N/A
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6-8
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Don't believe your thoughts, they lie to you most of the time. If you could just observe your thoughts and throw away the shit that doesn't serve you, man, you could just go a lot faster"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:22 – Nathan introduces Dean to the show
02:28 – Dean skipped college
02:42 – When Dean was 16, he would buy wrecked cars and flip them in his garage
- 03:00 – He has bought some of the cars for $500 to $5000
03:11 – Dean got his first real estate deal at 18 with no money down
- 03:17 – Mrs. Laprezzti gave him a deal with no money down
- 03:20 – Dean paid Mrs. Laprezzti monthly and he renovated the place
03:49 – Dean's social studies teacher who was also a real estate agent gave Dean leads of people who had houses that were not selling
- 04:45 – Dean gave Mrs. Laprezzti $2500 a month for a 4-unit apartment, for 3 years
- 05:05 – Mrs. Laprezzti needed $2K for her expenses for the condo
- 05:31 – Dean didn't care that he may be paying more
- 05:48 – Dean promised that he'd pay her in 3 years
- 05:55 – At the end of 3 years, Dean had the room fully rented and he was able to get a bank loan and pay Mrs. Laprezzti off
- 06:10 – Dean was making $4200 when he rented out the place, then he sold it
- 06:24 – Dean still owns around 400 houses, right now
06:56 – Dean's dad was born during the Depression
- 07:20 – His dad was a mechanic and a collision repair shop guy
07:26 – Dean evolved by maxing out on the equity he could gain from each of his houses
- 07:38 – After the condo, Dean got an old, rundown mansion and turned it into 10 apartment units
- 07:53 – Dean refinanced the apartments and bought more apartments
- 08:00 – It was the late 80s and early 90s when Dean transferred to upstate New York
  - 08:09 – Dean bought some land and went into the process of subdividing
- 09:10 – Back then, Dean was just hustling for the next property, taking the cash, and making a creative deal
  - 09:30 – "There's always a creative deal"
  - 09:45 – It's about buying off-market deals
- 10:21 – Average revenue from all of Dean's properties is $380K
  - 10:45 – The market value for 380 units is around $20M
  - 10:54 – Dean is half leveraged in all of the units
- 11:45 – Dean authored a couple of books because he is obsessed with marketing and sales
- 12:10 – Dean's last 2 books are self-published
- 12:21 – Dean's first book was with a publisher
  - 12:24 – Dean didn't want an advance deal from his first book
  - 12:31 – Dean used to get 35-40% of gross sales
  - 12:43 – Dean's first book is Totally Fulfilled
- 12:46 – Dean's latest book is Millionaire's Success Habits
- 13:01 – Most of the publishers don't market your book and rely on you to market your own book
- 13:07 – Dean sold a million copies of his second book
  - 13:10 – Dean had an infomercial running everyday, offering the book on TV
  - 13:25 – "You definitely need a marketing mechanism if you need to write a book"
- 13:38 – Dean's most effective marketing strategy is giving away free books
  - 13:42 – Dean has an incoming infomercial with Larry King, who has impacted Dean's life
  - 13:56 – Dean met Larry King through mutual friends
  - 14:01 – Dean told Larry that he made an impact on Dean's life, gave his book to Larry and asked Larry if he can interview him
  - 14:09 – Larry came to Dean's studio
  - 14:22 – 8 years ago, Dean watched Larry interview Joel Osteen
  - 14:59 – Dean did the first interview show on TV without scripts, teleprompters or voiceovers
  - 15:09 – The show broke a hundred million dollars in sales
- 16:05 – Dean only negotiated for a bigger share in book sales because he knew that his books would sell
- 16:25 – Millionaire's Success Habits is a hardcover book and still ships that way, there is no ebook
- 17:00 – com is for people who have the ability to find success trainers that are qualified
  - 17:10 – They have courses and high-performance coaching
  - 17:25 – It's a step-by-step on how to become a high achiever
  - 17:33 – They just broke $220K in sales
  - 17:55 – 100% of the money is going back in
  - 18:10 – "It's a feel good, it's a legacy thing"
  - 18:13 – They might sell Growth in 3 years
  - 18:19 – Dean and his 2 co-founders split Growth equally
- 19:08 – Dean started a $100K year mastermind with Joe Polish
- 20:13 – When you go and share one of your greatest strategies, others will shares theirs. too, and it multiplies
- 20:35 – "Mastermind has been the greatest lift of anything I've ever done"
- 22:30 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Persevere and be patient, the right time will come.
Sharing your strategies for success doesn't create more competition; instead, it gives others permission to share how they became successful as well.
Don't let your thoughts stop you—observe them and throw out the shit that doesn't serve you.

Resources Mentioned:

The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
Organifi – The juice was Nathan's life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
Freshbooks – Nathan doesn't waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

668: Will Bill.com and Intuit Lead Small Business FinTech Space? May 24, 2017

Show notes

René Lacerte. He's the founder and CEO of Bill.com, the leading business payments company. He's a fintech industry vettor and has been working to simplify business payments since 1999, when he founded PayCycle, which was later acquired by Intuit in 2009. Bill.com is now working to help bridge the digital divide between banks and businesses by partnering with 3 of the top US banks and 45% of the top hundred accounting firms. He believes that banks play a critical role in the advancement of fintech. While technology advancement since Silicon startups are divided by or driving much of the industry change, René believes that banks are and will remain the center of the financial universe for quite some time.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Advantage
What CEO do you follow? – Pete Kight
Favorite online tool? — Dropbox
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6-7
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Don't stress over the hard decisions"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:22 – Nathan introduces René to the show
02:07 – Andy from Wealthfront disagrees that banks will remain to be the center of the universe
02:27 – Bill.com makes close to $40B a year
- 02:32 – The average transaction is $1700 to $2000
03:16 – "We make doing business really easy"
03:17 – Bill.com automates the back office of businesses
- 03:24 – They take all the paperwork, workflow, payments and integration with the accounting software
03:40 – Bill.com charges per seat, per subscription and transaction fees
04:15 – The subscription model is their main revenue stream
04:36 – Bill.com charges .49 cents for every electronic payment and $1.49 for paper
05:30 – The fintech space is a natural viral coefficient space
06:00 – Bill.com had $110M from venture capital
06:12 – René was 32 when he started PayCycle, in 1999
06:20 – René worked in Intuit prior to PayCycle and stayed there for 5 years
06:34 – René had some experience innovating products from Intuit
06:54 – René grew up in a family of entrepreneurs
- 07:04 – One of René's grandfather's businesses is an automatic data processing company
- 08:26 – René's father went back to college to understand more about business
09:16 – The idea of Bill.com is that there's a better way to take advantage of technology to make payroll easier
09:58 – Bill.com helps define and automate the back office
10:06 – PayScale does online payroll and started with household payroll, which Intuit doesn't want to do
- 10:47 – PayScale raised $150K
- 11:23 – PayScale was acquired by Intuit for $170M
12:21 – Average number of paying customers of Bill.com
13:16 – "If we get customers active and get them using it, they don't churn"
- 13:26 – They're active when they already have paid for Bill.com
- 14:04 – Average customer pay per month is $100
- 14:15 – You can try it for the first month, for free
- 15:00 – Bill.com automates some of their tools to make the customer feel that they need the product
- 15:18 – Bill.com does A/B testing to check how they can get their customers engaged
- 15:52 – Bill.com is adding thousands of new businesses a month
16:56 – René tracks how many months the payback will be when it comes to CAC
- 17:23 – Payback target is 10-13 months
18:07 – LTV is around 5 years
18:48 – René has raised $50M
19:39 – René's strategy is to maintain a strong relationship with VC
19:53 – Team size is 225
20:10 – Bill.com was launched in 2008
21:07 – Bill.com isn't selling anything and not partnered with anybody, today
22:45 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

It is important to engage your customers.
Banks are and will remain to be the center of the financial universe.
Hard decisions and their consequences will pass, so don't let them bother you too much.

Resources Mentioned:

The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
Organifi – The juice was Nathan's life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
Freshbooks – Nathan doesn't waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

667: PayU Passes $180M Revenue, New Risk Assesment Product To Grow Financial Services Arm with Ex PayPal CEO Laurent Le Moal May 22, 2017

Show notes

Laurent Le Moal. He brings extensive knowledge of digital payments in emerging markets to PayU where he serves as the CEO. He culminated an 11-year career at PayPal as general manager for continental Europe, Russia, Middle East and Africa, leaving a billion dollar development vision across diverse geographies. Prior to PayPal, he founded an Italian startup called Talent Manager. He built a 40-person team there and now the startup has expanded to France and Spain. He also has experience in McKinsey and Antal International. He leads PayU's strategic direction and development and is currently building on the company's position and high-growth markets all around the world. Given the company's focus on being an expert in a local market in which it operates, Le Moal leads the creation and implementation of payment methods which best suits PayU's customers all around the world.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things
What CEO do you follow? – Chris Skinner
Favorite online tool? — The Top Inbox
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6-7
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Just go and experience more"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:19 – Nathan introduces Laurent to the show
02:22 – PayU is a payment gateway which is basically serving merchants
02:43 – PayU has their own original platform
02:53 – "I believe that payments are extremely local and regional"
02:58 – Since Laurent joined PayU, they moved from pure payments to actual financial services offering credit solutions
03:22 – Payment is still the bigger market for PayU
03:34 – Laurent thinks that financial services is strategic move for payment companies
03:56 – Nathan had Monish Anand in Episode 617 who talks about data science
04:25 – "The ability to offer credit is the ability to manage risks"
- 04:38 – All banks are using the same credit score model
- 04:48 – If you go to India and want to address 90% of the population, then have the means to repay their debt
- 05:16 – If you have a technology that does credit scoring, then the rest of credit is just mechanics
05:40 – Talent Manager is Laurent's first company
- 05:54 – Laurent started small in Milan
- 06:39 – Laurent was 25 when he started Talent Manager in 1997
- 06:56 – It was easy to get consumers
- 07:20 – Laurent raised around €5M for their first round
- 08:01 – It was growing fast
- 08:22 – Laurent goes to India and sees companies with a high burn rate, which is a couple of hundred million rupees a year
- 09:26 – Talent Manager was able to have a couple of million in revenue
- 09:36 – Talent Manager's software was sold
10:29 – Paypal started in 2004 with 3 people in Europe
- 10:35 – They were looking for someone to do a market study about the potential for PayPal outside of eBay
- 11:00 – PayPal expanded outside of eBay
11:22 – When you go to a high-growth market like India, most of the companies are still trying to increase the engagement of consumers
11:47 – Laurent had different stock options with PayPal
13:01 – PayU is part of Naspers, which is a diversified group and one of the biggest technology investors for the high-growth market
13:28 – PayU has their payment business and a fintech arm which is investing in interesting startups
13:56 – For PayU, the opportunity is not to just be an operator, but an investor
14:04 – Laurent believes that in fintech, it is difficult to scale your business
15:08 – Laurent invested Monese who is building the new bank for "unbanked" people
16:11 – Laurent shares how he got into PayU
- 16:30 – Laurent join Naspers and PayU on the basis that he'd manage the business and transform it into a financial service company
16:53 – In 2016, PayU 's total payment transaction was around $18B
17:12 – Growth rate is around 40% year over year
17:20 – PayU forecasts to maintain their growth rate
- 17:24 – PayU sees a really big push in India where the growth is around 70%
- 17:30 – Laurent sees India as the most exciting market in the world
17:50 – Laurent sees their financial services to be continuously building in the coming years
- 18:10 – Laurent wants 10% of their revenue to come from credit
- 18:24 – Credit is the consumer credit where you give money to people and make money based from the interest rate
- 18:38 – "What is important is when you start credit from scratch, it's actually to build your portfolio in a very consistent way"
19:06 – PayU takes 1-3% per transaction
19:35 – Team size is close to 1500 from 4 main regions and they have 16 offices
20:54 – In fintech, there are regulations including money laundering regulations
21:53 – Average ARR in 2016
22:24 – PayU just launched LazyPay in India
- 22:35 – The concept is to give you the possibility to buy something online then pay your debt later
- 23:43 – The merchants love it
24:08 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

The payment gateway space is expanding and more startups are giving people easier access to credit.
Regulations are necessary, especially when it comes to managing those who try to take advantage.
Just go out there, gain more knowledge, and experience MORE.

Resources Mentioned:

The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
Organifi – The juice was Nathan's life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
Freshbooks – Nathan doesn't waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

666: Sentient $100M+ Raised, A/B Testing With Artificial Intelligence with Exited Founder and SVP Jon Epstein May 21, 2017

Show notes

Jonathan Epstein. He's the current senior VP for international at Sentient Technologies, the maker of Sentient Ascend, the first conversion optimization solution that is powered by evolutionary artificial intelligence. Epstein has been in many companies at the forefront of technology and media including GameSpot, which he's the founding CEO, and Omek which was sold to Intel and GameSpy which was eventually sold to IGN.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Hire With Your Head
What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos
Favorite online tool? — BuiltWith and SimilarWeb
How many hours of sleep do you get? — 5-6
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "I wished I had stepped on entrepreneurship early"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:22 – Nathan introduces Jon to the show
02:18 – Jon's good exit range is from tens of millions to the hundreds of million dollars
02:39 – Jon helped the founding CEO of Gamespot turn it around
03:18 – Jon has worked in an actual gaming company
03:29 – Jon started at IDG as magazine publisher
03:49 – GameSpot was the first professional online review site for games
03:56 – GameSpy had an editorial element and Jon published some of its software
04:35 – GameSpot was launched in 1995
04:45 – Jon launched the magazine Digital News and Multimedia World
- 04:53 – Jon was working for IDG when he launched the magazines under their brand
05:28 – Jon had great partners when he started GameSpot
- 05:55 – The initial idea came from the 2 co-founders
- 06:20 – It was clear that the internet thing was happening
- 06:30 – The problem, then, was that the release of the magazine came out way too late for newly released game reviews
- 06:55 – Having the magazine online is a better way to update the gamers
- 07:13 – GameSpot took in external investors
- 07:34 – GameSpot was sold for stock in ZDNet
08:09 – Jon had an international role and wanted to gain experience in dealing with other countries
- 08:16 – ZDNet had joint ventures and Jon had been with them for a while
08:34 – Jon had invested from ZDNet to GameSpy
09:04 – Jon had 8% of GameSpy
09:28 – Jon joined GameSpy in September 2001
- 09:32 – GameSpy was sold in March 2004
- 10:01 – Jon made around $61M cash from GameSpy's exit
10:21 – Jon stayed with IGN after the exit and stayed there for a while
10:30 – Jon joined Double Fusion, which is a venture-backed startup
10:55 – Sentient had been around for 9 years and was one of the best funded companies
11:21 – Jon fell in love with Sentient because of their goals
11:29 – Sentient was built with a powerful AI platform
- 11:34 – It focuses on AI at scale and is able to run AI problems across millions of GPUs
11:58 – Sentient does multiple types of AI
- 12:00 – One is deep learning or neuron-network which is used for handwriting, voice recognition and image analysis
- 12:12 – Another product of Sentient is the evolutionary computation which is an AI that mimics natural selection
12:38 – Sentient ran a hedge fund using their products
- 12:51 – The fund size is growing rapidly
13:14 – Big investors invest to hedge funds in order to achieve stable, good returns
14:16 – Sentient is a SaaS business disrupting the world of AB testing
- 14:48 – Using the evolutionary AI approach speeds up AB testing
15:41 – Sentient currently has 25 paying customers
- 15:52 – Average contract price is $3K-30K a month
16:12 – Zero customer churn
16:24 – CAC
- 16:52 – Sentient is also doing paid advertising
- 16:56 – Sentient attends conversion conferences where they spend $5K-10K for sponsorship
17:40 – Sentient has raised a total of $143M
17:52 – Sentient has around 110 employees
- 17:58 – There are still 15-20 open positions
18:24 – Sentient was founded in 2007
18:57 – "We think it's too early to sell"
19:15 – Mark Cuban said that the first trillionaires will come from AI
20:35 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Never be scared about exits – it just means new doors are opening for you.
Be in a company that you're really interested in—where you can align yourself with their goals.
Start as early as you can when it comes to entrepreneurship.

Resources Mentioned:

The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
Organifi – The juice was Nathan's life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
Freshbooks – Nathan doesn't waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

665: Blessed or Gutsy? CEO Turns Down $400k Salary to Launch Own Agency May 20, 2017

Show notes

Joe Koufman. He's responsible for introducing at least 3 married couples in countless contacts to establish business relationships. In early 2014, he parlayed his passion for connecting people and founded a company called AgencySparks, which is essentially a dating service for brands and marketing agencies.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Challenger Sale
What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Hilimire
Favorite online tool? — Lucky Orange
How many hours of sleep do you get?— "I try to get 7"
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "I would have invested even more in relationships. They will absolutely pay off down the road"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:36 – Nathan introduces Joe to the show
02:29 – AgencySparks focuses on making connections for brands and agencies
02:34 – AgencySparks is paid by the agencies to help them with their business development and outreach to potential clients
02:50 – In many cases, AgencySparks can help subvert the RFP and the client will hire the agency directly
03:15 – One of AgencySparks' clients tells them about Coca-cola's water sustainability efforts and that they need the story to be everywhere
- 03:46 – AgencySparks was able to make a connection with one of their agencies that focuses on public relations and they made a deal
04:13 – AgencySparks is shifting their model now
04:20 – AgencySparks is traditionally paid by agencies to get them through a thorough, upfront, vetting process
- 04:27 – AgencySparks is getting paid through monthly retainers and a percentage of the deal
- 04:34 – The monthly retainer is $5K per agency, which is 12-month deal
04:50 – AgencySparks was launched in early 2014
04:58 – Joe spent years with KnowledgeStorm which was acquired by TechTarget
- 05:05 – TechTarget went public and bought KnowledgeStorm for $58M
- 05:26 – Joe spent 6 years building marketing and business development in Engauge
- 05:31 – Engauge was then acquired by Publicis
- 05:56 – When Joe left Engauge, he had job offers from 6 different agencies and that's when he had the idea of AgencySparks
- 06:21 – Joe's highest offer from one of the agencies was $400K and he said "no"
06:55 – AgencySparks is Joe's first entrepreneurship stint
07:11 – Joe didn't have any equity in KnowledgeStorm
07:45 – Joe made a big transition while he was at KnowledgeStorm
- 07:47 – Joe started as an account manager in 2000
- 08:05 – Joe moved to sales and realized that he was just going to have the same exact salary
- 08:23 – Joe did well in sales and had grown big accounts
- 08:50 – Joe's last salary was $210K, in 2007
- 09:20 – By the time Joe left, he was making around $300K in 2013
09:43 – When Joe started AgencySparks, he knew that we wouldn't have much revenue, at first
09:52 – First year revenue was $270K
- 10:03 – Year 2 was $370K and Year 3: $430K
10:13 – 2017's goal is to double
10:25 – To achieve their goal, they have to change their model a bit
- 10:45 – The client is asking AgencySparks for different options
- 10:59 – They want to have multiple agencies in one category
11:27 – AgencySparks currently has 11 clients
11:40 – AgencySparks has other revenue streams
- 11:48 – The commission percentage is 10%
- 12:10 – AgencySparks offers other services like info-product
12:40 – March 2017 revenue
13:00 – Team size is 4 and all are in Atlanta
13:18 – Greg Crabtree's labor efficiency ratio is the idea of hovering between 2 and to 3.5, so for every dollar spent on payroll, you should be bringing in $2.50 - $3.50, in terms of revenue
- 13:47 – As a CEO of a company, if you're not pulling out the salary that you would be making as a hired CEO, then your business isn't profitable
14:00 – Nathan's computation within The Top's 600 interviews done with SaaS companies
15:04 – AgencySparks' net margin
15:27 – Joe is the guy who would re-invest his money into the business
15:33 – Joe isn't a family business guy
15:44 – Joe is looking into 5 years, then selling his business
15:52 – AgencySparks already has interesting offers
16:14 – AgencySparks has a method that is a repeatable and sustainable as a business development process—which is part of what they're teaching
16:57 – "The challenge is that this is a very relationship-focused business"
18:28 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

As a CEO of a company, if you're not pulling out the salary that you would be making as a hired CEO, then your business is NOT profitable.
Continue to grow your business as much as you can, but be mindful of the interesting offers that come along the way.
Invest in relationships.

Resources Mentioned:

The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
Organifi – The juice was Nathan's life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
Freshbooks – Nathan doesn't waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

664: How Agency Did $750k First Year, Now $100k+/Month with Webris CEO Ryan Stewart May 19, 2017

Show notes

Ryan Stewart. He's a digital marketing expert with over 8 years of client facing experience. He currently owns and operates Webris, a Miami-based digital marketing agency specializing in SEO and content marketing.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Attached
What CEO do you follow? – N/A
Favorite online tool? — SEMrush
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Just self-awareness things about who am I as a person, where I want to go and how I want to live my life"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:17 – Nathan introduces Ryan to the show
01:39 – Webris is an SEO agency which does a lot of digital marketing and link building
- 01:48 – They specialize in generating organic growth for any sort of clients
02:00 – Webris has a retainer model of 5K-6K a month depending on the work
- 02:15 – They require a minimum of 6 months
02:22 – Webris currently has 22 clients
02:30 – Webris is doing $100K minimum MRR
02:38 – Webris was launched March, 2016
02:52 – In Webris' first year, they earned 750K
03:00 – Webris also has a training program
- 03:11 – Ryan is doing concept marketing for himself
- 03:32 – Ryan had link building training where he taught how to build links at scale
- 03:44 – Ryan also did blogger outreach PR stuff
04:18 – Ryan didn't do any advertising on Youtube, but he has a good content
- 04:30 – He has a good email list and a Facebook group with 10K people, a Facebook page and Twitter page
- 04:42 – Ryan uses concept promotion on the videos with more views
05:30 – Ryan uses automation in Google Drive Suite
- 06:14 – Ryan launched a video regarding using Google Suite for automation
06:50 – Ryan thinks that YouTube is more powerful than the blog
- 07:09 – YouTube is much easier to use for engagement purposes
07:22 – Ryan also does mini-checklist processes for their clients
07:26 – If you have an email list and you can get 100 engaged views on your videos, it is more than enough to set you on the right direction
07:37 – Ryan's email list is 10K with 30% open rate
- 07:49 – Ryan would get 500 views in 12 hours after sending his content out to his email list
08:02 – Ryan uses SEO for his YouTube video titles
- 08:22 – They'll go after the keywords on their blog
- 08:31 – "People aren't really using the same keywords on YouTube"
- 08:37 – For YouTube, you need to grab attention from the titles
09:07 – Team size is 7, in Miami and some are remote
09:30 – Webris is doing a lot of content creation and they pay per article
09:57 – Webris can also negotiate with other people for content
- 10:06 – They pay $100-200 depending on the client niche
- 10:20 – Ryan posts job ads on Upwork and on the Facebook group Cult of Copy which is run by a copywriter, Collin Theriot
- 11:01 – Webris has an in-depth content generation process
- 11:12 – Webris mitigates the process with the research upfront and by building a really good outline for the writer
- 11:35 – Webris will also just google for bloggers in a specific niche and pay them around $500 to write
- 11:54 – Content is dependent on niche
- 12:28 – You just got to go out and pay writers the right amount
12:50 – Prior to Webris, Ryan was doing his MBA and realized he hated everything about that life
13:59 – What Ryan made last year is less than what he did when he was 20
14:21 – Ryan's #1 goal is that his people are happy
14:33 – Ryan spends $4K a month on their office space
16:00 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

If you hate doing something – just quit.
Paying your writers the right amount will lead to great content.
In every decision you make for your business – consider your people.

Resources Mentioned:

The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
Organifi – The juice was Nathan's life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
Freshbooks – Nathan doesn't waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

663: How He Gets Mega-Brands to Pay Him $5,000 To Test Their Ads Before Going Live with Delivv.io CEO Trevor Wolfe May 18, 2017

Show notes

Trevor Wolfe. He's the CEO and co-founder of Delvv.io. He started his career in New York, where he held product innovation and marketing positions for Kantar and TNS. He also led the marketing for New York brands, Gerson Lehrman Group, along with Moveline—which is a tech startup in NYC Company and Morgan Stanley. Throughout his career, he's launched over a dozen analytics and research products and is an active advisor to investors in market research, adtech, and media tech startups in New York, Vegas, and Africa. He holds a BBA in international business from Hofstra University and is an aspiring sailor. His cat's name is Junior.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Tracy Kidder's books and The Power Broker
What CEO do you follow? – Scott Belsky
Favorite online tool? — The Top Inbox and Slack
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5 and half to 6
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Trevor would tell himself to go find his fiancée so that he could spend 5 more years with her

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:12 – Nathan introduces Trevor to the show
02:06 – Delvv is a platform that allows advertising and marketing professionals to get a peer review on creative campaigns before using them as paid ads
02:22 – Delvv has 2 models: the marketplace, where they go to agencies and brands, and the subscription model, where you can use Delvv's own organization
03:05 – Delvv was launched in March, 2016
03:29 – The subscription model has just been launched and is already being used by Ogilvy
- 03:31 – The subscription model is per license fee
- 03:48 – Delvv packaged a panel of 30 professionals to start an organization
- 03:57 – The panel processes the feedback and turns it into a report
- 04:17 – The 30 professionals are paid depending on campaign feedback
04:32 – If Ogilvy pays 5K for a campaign feedback, $1500-2200 will go to the 30 professionals
05:12 – Trevor and his co-founders have spent more time in advertising campaigns
05:39 – Delvv is doing more digital now, but most of their revenue comes from TV and radio campaigns
06:00 – Delvv has worked with 17 different brands and they're working with Delvv in 10 different countries
06:16 – Delvv did $180K since May 2016 in marketplace sales
06:30 – Delvv has paid 700-1200 professionals to do the campaign feedback
- 06:41 – Some of them are from agencies and would spare 30-60mins for the feedback
07:10 – Delvv is getting $4000-6000 per contract
07:23 – Delvv has 8 full-time workers and a few contractors and interns
- 07:30 – The team is based in Johannesburg, South Africa
- 07:45 – There's an advantage to having a team in South Africa
- 08:11 – The disadvantage in South Africa is the electricity, but not the internet speed
- 08:21 – Once a week, the power in the whole city goes out for a few hours
09:05 – Trevor and his co-founder funded the business for $10K
- 09:37 – They have raised $300K from Angel investors
09:49 – Trevor was 32 when he launched Delvv
- 10:29 – Trevor has kept his expenses down to $2K to save up for the business
- 10:41 – "I've traded my shoebox of an apartment in New York for a 4-bedroom house, here, with open garden and a pool"
11:18 – Delvv has 80K in contract for the month of March
11:33 – "We really wanted to push the SaaS based platform"
12:08 – Delvv will start their seed round of about $1M on an equity round
- 13:12 – Delvv has a UK investor, a local fund and VC in South Africa as their investors
15:00 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Campaigns are significant to any company and having feedback can help you save more money.
There are pros and cons in having a business in another country – try to find a way to work it out if you really want a change of environment.
You can enter the world of entrepreneurship by saving up and making your expenses as low as possible.

Resources Mentioned:

The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
Organifi – The juice was Nathan's life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
Freshbooks – Nathan doesn't waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

662: $425k Per Month With Software Product Helps With Sales Leads with Corporate360 CEO Varun Chandran May 17, 2017

Show notes

Varun Chandran. He's the founder and CEO of Corporate360, a big data marketing software startup. He bootstrapped the company in 2012, grew the business into multimillion dollars in revenue with international clients and 40 employees across 5 countries. Prior to Corporate360, he worked for some of the leading technology companies like SAP, Oracle, Dell and Netapp in 3 different countries. He's a college dropout and a national footballer. He loves data science and travelling. Under his leadership, Corporate360 became the first international startup from Kerala, bringing IT jobs that foster social empowerment.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – N/A
What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
Favorite online tool? — Google Apps
How many hours of sleep do you get every night?— 4 hours
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Build something that changes lives"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:12 – Nathan introduces Varun to the show
02:00 – Corporate360 is a sales intelligence data company for B2B enterprises
02:08 – Corporate360 is a SaaS business that sells their software through subscription
02:30 – Corporate360 has standard pricing
- 02:38 – Typical deal size would range from 20K onwards, annually
- 02:48 – They have some monthly contracts, too
- 02:57 – "We are evangelizing data as a service model as opposed to buying a marketing list"
03:33 – Corporate360 was launched in 2013
03:40 – Team size is almost 70 in 5 countries
03:47 – Corporate360 is totally bootstrapped and they're reenlisting profits back to the business to grow it
04:00 – Varun was 30 when he started Corporate360 and it was his first take on entrepreneurship
04:14 – Varun spent 8 years in the corporate world
04:26 – Varun had sales development and marketing roles
04:43 – Varun started the company with minimal capital of less than $10K
- 05:02 – Varun used the capital to learn data science and hired contractors from India and the Philippines
- 05:22 – The initial investment was for building the application, launching the website, and a basic outreach email campaign
05:55 – Customers use Corporate360 differently
- 06:01 – There's inside sales, analytics, campaigns, marketing and for sales operations
- 06:18 – One of Corporate360's customers is from Japan—they wanted to run a competitive attack and get competitive intelligent software
- 06:30 – The company from Japan started a subscription and they gave reference to teams in China, Singapore, and eventually to the Europe and US market
07:08 – Corporate360 is currently serving 300 customers
- 07:22 – They currently have 40K seats
- 07:28 – Seats per user license is sold only for inside sales
- 07:35 – Analytics and marketing are based on data and not per seat
07:58 – Corporate360 average deal size will be per user
- 08:04 – Varun shares how an inside sales deal works
08:52 – "We are not part of a data syndicate"
09:00 – Corporate360 source their data from their own algorithms
09:37 – FullContact focuses on getting data from syndicates
10:27 – Varun shares how they differ from other data sources
12:06 – When you subscribe to Corporate360, you can get a 360 degree viewpoint of 7 modules
- 12:22 – Corporate360 provides detailed information about the leads that they have and why they are the best fit for your company
13:30 – Average ARR
14:00 – Gross customer churn
- 14:16 – Corporate360 designs their services based on client feedback
- 14:46 – Churn is less than 10% annually
- 15:12 – Most of their customers are startups
15:51 – CAC
- 15:58 – Corporate360 doesn't have field sales and just 7 account managers
- 16:20 – They tried LinkedIn ads as paid ads
- 16:34 – They spent $200K on LinkedIn last year
- 16:47 – The budget for paid acquisition will go down this year
17:15 – LTV can be from $45K to a million
17:36 – Corporate360 headquarters in Singapore
- 17:40 – They have a large BPO center in India and Philippines
19:40 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Small capital can go a long way—don't be discouraged if you are beginning with little.
THe data space is quite saturated—have something that sets you apart from the data syndicate.
Build something that changes lives.

Resources Mentioned:

The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
Organifi – The juice was Nathan's life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
Freshbooks – Nathan doesn't waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

661: How Unbounce Hit $12M/Year In Revenue, 14k Customers, Very Little $$ Raised with Co-Founder Oli Gardner May 16, 2017

Show notes

Oli Gardner. He's the co-founder of Unbounce. He's seen more landing pages than anyone in the planet. He's a prolific international speaker and he's on the mission to rid the world of marketing mediocrity by using data-informed copywriting, design, interaction, and psychology to create a more delightful experience for marketers and customers alike.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – How to Deliver a TED Talk
What CEO do you follow? – N/A
Favorite online tool? — UsabilityHub
How many hours of sleep do you get? — Maybe 3 hours
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Learn how to make decisions"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:10 – Nathan introduces Oli to the show
01:49 – Unbounce is a SaaS business and a conversion platform for marketers which started as a landing page platform
- 02:00 – They just expanded to convertibles that have overlays that captures more leads and signups on the website
02:17 – Unbounce was launched in August 2009
02:33 – Unbounce has 6 co-founders
- 03:11 – Oli was broke and filed for bankruptcy
03:26 – Unbounce was initially funded by friends and family with $15K CAD
03:38 – Unbounce had a seed round and Angel round and has raised a total of less than 1 million CAD
04:12 – The 6 co-founders are all equal
- 04:22 – All are working full-time
- 04:50 – They've figured out a rough valuation
- 05:25 – 5 of the 6 co-founders are still active
05:41 – Team size is 184
- 05:49 – Members are based all around Canada and some in South America
06:14 – RPU is $93 CAD a month
07:05 – Unbounce lets anyone in for at least 2 years
- 07:11 – Their plans have been restructured in a way that is most beneficial
- 07:38 – Their $10-plan has been removed
07:57 – Unbounce now has professional marketers
08:10 – As Unbounce continues to grow, they're trying to scale with their customers
08:33 – Unbounce currently has 14K active users
08:42 – You can create a demo account but you can't get your own domain with demo
09:13 – Average MRR is just under $1.4M
09:47 – Unbounce had a problem with churn, like what most SaaS businesses have encountered
10:03 – "We know that you need landing pages for everything you do"
10:55 – 5% is the problem churn with Unbounce
11:30 – If Salesforce or Marketo have been integrated, the company is a larger company
- 11:47 – Overlays have been successful and there's so much traffic and data
- 12:09 – Overlays are called overlays because they are similar to popups
- 12:20 – "We're trying to be responsible with the technology because technology is not the problem, we are"
12:52 – Oli respects Bounce Exchange when it comes to the overlays world and they're doing a lot with machine learning
13:06 – The biggest difference in using Unbounce is you will feel that you're not using templated overlays
13:40 – Unbounce's value is different from SumoMe and their targeting is getting smarter
13:55 – Most services like Unbounce charge $250-5K a month and Unbounce starts at $99
- 14:06 – There are cheaper ones in WordPress, but they're not really good
14:21 – Oli is primarily a public speaker now and spends most of his time on the road
- 14:25 – Oli was actually scared to start public speaking years ago
- 14:33 – Nathan recommends watching Oli speak in public
- 15:15 – The rest of Oli's time is spent with Unbounce's marketing team and data scientists' team
15:48 – Unbounce just got engaged with a new marketing agency
16:03 – LTV
16:14 – Unbounce had one marketing guy and he left, so they switch to a 5 digital local agency
16:33 – CAC
16:43 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Being broke should NOT hinder you from starting a business.
A great product with a reasonable price will always attract more customers.
Learn how to make decisions and don't hold back.

Resources Mentioned:

The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
Organifi – The juice was Nathan's life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
Freshbooks – Nathan doesn't waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

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