Matt founded Warmfront in 2005 a product to keep athletes and people with active lifestyles warm in cold conditions. He also still works a full-time job at Furos Amazon Web Services consulting. What made Matt go off on his own? (0:53) Matt explains that years ago he was traveling and tried to use his laptop but didn’t have a table to work on, came up with an idea and wrote it down in his journal. The next time he traveled he actually saw the exact thing he was thinking about in a shop, someone else had the same idea. He decided that he was never going to have an idea on a piece of paper again. While riding his bike in the mountains in Colorado he was getting cold. Matt thought of an idea to keep his chest warm and came up with a product called the Warmfront. How does entrepreneurship combine with your day job? (11:24) Matt’s dad is to thank for his organizational skills. He admits that he is obsessed with organization and priorities are extremely important to him. The motivation behind what Matt does, whether it is work or his own business is a genuine accomplishment. At the end of the day, Matt looks at what is going to make him feel like he made a difference and those are the things he wants to focus his attention on. Warmfront is as automated as it could possibly be and doesn’t require much of his attention, allowing him to focus on Furos. How long did it take you to get that point with Warmfront? (17:52) Matt says that he is a developer and not an implementer. The moment he is done developing a product it has to be automated. He explains that automation has to be built in from the start. The product doesn’t have to be perfect, it has to be functional. Anything that Matt could automate, like store emails, he would automate and have it running in the background now. What is Matt’s morning reading list? (22:45) Every day Matt reads a chapter from the daily stoic by Ryan Holiday. In the mornings he writes in his gratitude journal where he looks back on and captures what happened the previous day. Matt was talking to a friend of his who’s been looking for a job for a long time. His advice to her was to write down 3 things that happened the previous day that was cool. According to Matt, doing so trains people to look for the better that’s out there and eventually, you will find what you are looking for. Matt says he also has books that have 2-page chapters and he has about 15 of them with audiobooks for when he is traffic to go through. He’s not trying to have an impressive library but rather focus on a few and master those because his list of 15 books he rotates through constantly will end up teaching him a new skill. Could you give us a few tips on how to have a job, a business and still be happy? (30:38) Get organized, use something like Trello and a free CRM to get organized. Realize that the universe is indifferent, it may feel like everything is lining up against you but the universe doesn’t care and it will not get in your way. Do your best and be optimistic. Matt says there will be times when it feels like you are the only person on the face of the earth that cares. Have systems in place for when the motivation wanes so that you can do what has to be done next. Ask for help and criticism and not for validation, for every Warmfront that goes out Matt encourages people to tell him what sucks about it. Build your systems before you build your brand. 

Talk With The Top: Colorado

Matt Sodnicar of Warmfront

Dallas Hogenson a co-founder and president of Signal HQ. Signal HQ intelligently combines data and insights from business systems to surface timely, critical information on the companies that are interested in a product or solution that you offer. What made Dallas go out on his own? (1:00) Dallas explains that he’s been a builder his entire life. Being one of the early employees at companies where he worked meant that he was responsible for building infrastructure. While doing this he realized how to build quickly, get feedback and iterate to move faster. He found a problem that he’s been looking to solve for 7 years and when he met his co-founder he realized that his co-founder had solved the problem. What is the problem? Describe the moment you realized how to solve it (1:52) Sales and marketing organizations are doing the exact same thing. They take a list of targeted accounts to send messages to but they don’t take into account which ones are interested in talking to them. People reach out to these lists as fast as they can’t even though there is no real relevance in the sales cycle by doing that and they create a lot of noise. Personalization is a good starting point,  you also have to understand what the person you are reaching out to cares about. The next big step in sales and sales technology is relevance. At Signal HG we are showing clients the behavior of companies, what they search for and their content behavior and what they are engaging with. Reaching out them having this information means that you are capable of reaching out around the same type of internal initiative, making you a valuable seller in that process for them. There’s this new term, revenue officers and executives, what is happening there? (5:03) Sales organizations and marketing organizations are being built as siloed entities. A lot of times these departments are trying to move the same way but move in different directions causing them to but heads. Companies are looking for ways to bridge the gap between sales and marketing. Having the revenue officer or executive there streamlines the process. Anything that touches the customer should have its own miro CEO who can bring all the revenue components into play like sales, marketing and success. Let’s talk about Signal HQ (8:22) Signal HQ is fairly new. Dallas was introduced to Alex at a dinner in 2018. When Alex showed him what he was doing Dallas was blown away. He didn’t even know that the solution was possible or existed at the time. The company is off to a great start and they are solving a problem that people have. They don’t even have to sell to people, they can see that Signal HQ is solving their problem internally. How does an organization get started with Signal HQ? (10:14) A good organization is someone who has an established sales and marketing team. They have some technology in place with company data, like a CRM. Signal HQ then links their system up to the CRM and they can show you of the companies in the system which ones are showing an interest in them. The system also shows the customer who their competitors are and companies they are not even thinking of that will be interested in what they do. Traditional CRM is good at showing you the engagement with things you own, Signal HQ is good at showing you engagement with things you don’t own. Can you break down the Human Design Experience? (14:39) When Dallas was building the enterprise sales forum they were hosting a few hundred different events each year. Some of the top executive talents would be there to talk to different groups. The aim was to give the people a great experience. They knew the content would be good, so they focused on making the experience something people would remember. The designed the spaces to drive interaction, memory and delight. The Human Design experience is how someone feels in their space, what they gather from their interaction and how they go forward. They get the people to be comfortable in these spaces with people they don’t know, and then they hear the speaker talk when they are more open and receptive. He uses the same type of thinking when building a team. 

Dallas Hogenson of Signal HQ

Bas Hamer is the founder of Possum Labs an aggregate of years of experience building testing systems across industries. The Possum Lab offers companies a way to create automated tests in Alexa-like English that inside or outside the company to understand what you have built or are about to create. What exactly does Bas Hamer do? (1:39) Bas explains that he always tries to automate himself out of a job. He takes what he learned over three different customer implementations of building custom test automation systems and turns that into a product that people could use by themselves. Over time, Bas found that different customers kept asking him to build the same system which is why he turned from staff augmentation into the idea of a public business. His main goal is to figure out how he can what he’s been doing, remove himself and enable the customers to do it themselves. People can then build their own test automation suites. What does your process actually look like? (2:51) Bas start by comparing his process of learning to Alexa. People know that Alexa doesn’t really understand English, but they know what English words Alexa understands and compensates for this when talking to Alexa. His company helps people to describe their test cases in Alexa-like English which is then interpreted by a computer, making it easier for people who are not developers or programmers. They remove all the abstraction and make it easier by using English that people are more familiar with. This provides people with an interface they can use that will leverage their skill set without them feeling they have to become a developer. Let’s talk about the use cases for this kind of technology (5:30) People can describe in very clear and precise English how their software should work, sell the software and then realize they have to test it because they have to maintain it. You can map from English to code and then execute that code against a website or web application. Behind the scenes, you have a bunch of rules that you can configure how to understand the application. Just like a person can describe how their products work over the phone, you can describe in English, how you want to interact with the website or application which then gets mapped into code. Essentially what you are doing is creating test cases to find out if your workflows are working. Describe the moment you decided to build out the software to be customer facing rather than you being the consultant. (11:01) A few years ago, Bas started working at a company who wanted him to be a developer. He described the system he built and they offered him more money if he could build the same kind of system for them. Because of this, Bas doubled his income and had extra money to run more experiments and employ an assistant. Next, he built out his internal toolkit to get some leverage to implement the system faster. Because people were still intimidated by the complex Visual Studio, he decided to build a user interface for his system. 

Bas Hamer of The Possum Lab

Frank Trevino Frank is the CEO of Exodus Space and also involved with the AI company, Tin Man Kinetics. He tries to educate people to see the positive side of AI versus all the negative things we see coming out of Holywood. How did Frank get started in Space? (01:09) Frank explains that there is a commonality between being an AI strategist, a digital marketing strategist and working space. He says that AI and digital marketing are both data-driven and looking back on his career he can see how he pivoted from traditional marketing to digital marketing first. His role slowly changed from engaging with customer to product development. Next Frank went into space but realized that things don’t happen very fast in space, it required a lot of patience. Frank got out of space and went into technology where he amongst other things worked in business intelligence and eventually AI. After working in Asia for a while he went back to the States and found himself in a position where he was able to combine his knowledge of AI with space. Frank is now working with two companies, Tin Man Kinetics, an artificial intelligence and digital solutions company, and Exodus Space. Where are you in the process of bringing space and AI together? (10:29) When Frank first worked in space, things that took 20 years takes about 10 years now. The other good thing is that there are more technology players coming into space. He thinks that their vertical take off and land space plane, which is in the conceptual stages now, will be ready in 2024 or 2025. The other project they are working on, Human Rated, will be ready in the early 2030s. They are looking at markets they can get into to see how they can give the investors a return. One such market is payload to the International Space Station, and the other is taking up satellites. Talking a little more about the AI component and issues associated with it. (13:21) Frank agrees that the security and ethical issues around AI will always be in the back of our minds. One of the ways they address this issue at Tin Man Kinetics is by having the tag lag line “Technology with heart”. Their goal is to help offer solutions to help people do positive things, and that is how they educate people about AI. One of the mandates in their charter is to hold charity events. They invented an app that incorporates images with machines learning and big data. People are invited to take images and the app redraws the images in Van Gogh’s or Picasso’s styles. At the end, the best images are printed out and auctioned off with the money going to charity. This helps to educate people about the positive side of AI versus the negative picture Holywood is painting. How does Frank’s marketing background and AI come together? (16:31) Franks starts by explaining the differences between AI, deep learning and machine learning. Frank is using AI to look at pictures to determine the demographics of the people in the image. Before using AI, the company didn’t know they have all this data available to them, because AI wasn’t available to do the analysis and find the patterns in the images Now, the company is using this new information to run a loyalty program The exciting part for Frank is that AI is always looking at the data you have and figuring out what data you are trying to find. Where the images were phase one, video is phase two from where AI is going to extract data and find patterns we can use in marketing. He says that AI is very versatile also outside of marketing. People are using AI to find new combinations of spices, to be creative and compose music and to direct movies and in HR to determine what training is best suited to the individual. Frank’s book recommendation 

Frank Trevino of Exodus Space

Craig Baute founded Creative Density in 2011 after helping start a coworking community in Toronto. He now sits on the board of the national coworking association, Coshare, founded Denver Coworks and is a consultant and partner for future coworking spaces. In 2008 he discovered the benefits of coworking while being a remote market researcher for a Chicago company and living in Grand Rapids, Michigan where he learned about movement. Prior to opening Creative Density, he was a market researcher and strategist for new products. He has an MBA from Grand Valley State University where he focused on international markets and has recently lived in Australia, Hungary, and Canada. Craig is now focusing on helping the coworking movement grow in a variety of forms. His passion is to help use coworking as a form of economic development in small towns throughout America and internationally. What made Craig go off on his own? (0:59) Graduating during the height of the recession was the driving factor for Craig, and what motivated the choice to go out on his own. How did you get to the co-working space (1:19) In Michigan, Craig noticed that there were a large number of manufacturers that supplied 60% of the world's furniture. It was these manufacturers that started their own co-working spaces throughout grand rapids as a way to beta test various pieces of furniture. Craig was remotely working at the time and decided to join one of these co-working spaces. After struggling to get a job, Craig was offered an opportunity to start his own co-working space with an associate out in Toronto. However, running into some issues with the Canadian government about his citizen status, he decided to bring his co-working business plan back to America. After a lot of research, Creative Density was started in Denver Colorado. Opening up a podcast studio space (6:52) For the first two months, Craig felt like opening up the podcast space was an ideal way to waste two thousand dollars. Craig says that the last two months, they have experienced real traction, with six podcasters using the space on a regular basis He feels that this has really become an affordable resource for people to stop making excuses and start doing a podcast. Craig expresses how exciting it is for him to listen to shows that were recorded in the very studio that he provides. What made Craig decide to invest the $2000 in the podcasting space? (7:49) Craig explains that deciding on the podcast studio was not based on a specific strategy or goal. For him, it was more about having the additional money to spend and wanting to do something cool and new that would spark the creativity of the community. Craig also mentioned that he has been an avid podcast listener since 2004, which also played a role in deciding to invest in the studio. His vision for creative density was that it was never meant to be just an office space, he wanted people to come together and create. What’s next for Creative Density? (12:00) Craig says that there are definite plans for expansion, as they are about to open number three. He also mentions that they are currently going into a operations management contract / quasi- franchise. Craig explains that they will be helping people who want to establish a co-working community. He mentions how the co-working space market has shifted, moving from an average of 10 000 square feet spaces to an an average of 27,000 square feet. So Craig will be helping other space owners by partnering with them, it remains their space, so it’s a “Powerd by Creative Density” space. What do you recommend for somebody in Denver who wants to get into the community of business owners? (24:42) Craig explains that breaking into the community of business owners is much easier if you have done something. He uses recharging scooters as an example, something which people are normally amazed to hear that he does. Craig also tells us about the research he has done related to renting out cars on Turo, which is basically an Airbnb for cars. He states that doing something that makes you interesting to other business owners is his advice for breaking into the community of business owners. Craig says it is key to stop making excuses and start doing something. 

Craig Baute of Creative Density

Becky Mickletz is the owner and CEO of Remickz Marketing. Remickz creates a full circle experience that will make your company memorable. Remickz provides as little or as many services needed to set you up to stand out and succeed. They focus on both personal and brand development. What made Becky go off on her own (1:00) While working the nine to five jobs at various marketing an design firms, Becky realized that the one trending factor was that “everyone is trying to get their shit together” She noticed that everyone's figuring it out as they go some more than others. And this was the golden ticket for her, she needed to take advantage of this and build relationships. It was these relationships that would help her succeed, whether it was in that business or as a freelancer, It helped her gain traction, and connect her with other people. Becky knew she had to “take the leap” by quitting her job and seeing how it would go. She then realized that she is actually doing well. Nine years later, and for Becky it feels like it has passed by in  “the blink of an eye”. Where is she now (2:24) While mostly doing branding workshops and events over the last few years, educating her clients has been a focus over the last few years She found that all the talk about design and using cool terminology meant nothing if her client did not understand what branding is. Becky said that the more she can teach her clients, help them understand her language, the better their relationship would be, and the longer their company would be around. This is what has motivated her to run events such as Now Featuring. This event covered everything from graphic design to negotiating your mental health as a business owner. Becky firmly believes in educating clients, so much so, that she is expanding on the workshop and hosting it quarterly. Brand Activation (4:45) Becky explains that brand activation is the tangible manifestation of your business and it could be something as small as a business card. She indicates how you need to look at branding as a whole, it is not just about looking good or cool, because anyone can do that. For Becky, it is important to do more than just create a cool logo and having it shared on social media She feels that you need to create real experiences with her audience, bring them into your space, have good conversations and create memories. Branding Process (7:00) During the branding process, Becky indicates that for her the biggest questions asked out of the gate are related to the audience. She feels that the biggest mistake people make is they take the concepts created and they asked their entire friend and family group for opinions. Becky states that when redefining a client's unique selling proposition goes back to redefining who they actually want to attract, and who they are attracting. She says that once that is done it’s all about fine tuning it and trying some new things out Brand Check-up (20:00) Becky says that when business owners move towards doing a “brand checkup “ they should start by checking in with the type of clients are attracting She says that giving away free stuff is probably the worst thing you could do to attract clients. For her, the next step would be revisiting your mission statement. Go back and revisit the reasons you started and who you wanted to attract. It is also part of the process to check what your competitors are doing And finally opening up a conversation with your mentors or people in your field. Seeing what they are doing and learning from them. Running Social Media with a Small Team (22:45) Becky explains that outsourcing the things you don't enjoy doing can sometimes really bring new energy to you as a business owner She explains while outsourcing is great, budgets and constraints need to be considered. Becky highlights LinkedIn as a great resource, and can't understand why more people aren’t using the platform. Finances and taxes have been her weaknesses as a business owner, and she has taken steps to improve those aspects of her business, and personal development by using various tools such as Quickbooks and other project management tools  

Becky Mickletz of Remickz Marketing

What made Jean go off on her own? (0:54) Jean felt like she could do a better job working with the client rather than working for an employer and working indirectly with the client She wanted flexibility and the freedom of her own schedule Does Jean come from agencies or client side? (1:46) She worked for a number of agencies before she started her own business, which is why she started an agency. Jean has expanded a lot more into other parts of digital marketing beyond just agency-style services. She worked for a couple of companies before she went on her own for about six years. Jean has been doing digital marketing for a total of about twelve years. The last five and a half years she has been doing her own transition. What kind of agency is GinBall? (3:35) Ginball works mainly with e-commerce clients and digital course creators. Their main type of services are direct response, they don’t really do branding but just direct response marketing and social media Everything from identifying your ideal target market to creating a communication strategy to creating a content strategy, and then disseminating that across your website, your social media outlets, and channels. They also do online advertising for Facebook, Instagram and Google Adwords Jeans’ videos (15:16) Clients say they don’t have time to create video content. Having one piece of content that can be repurposed into many different ways, and platforms is a great idea. You can create four videos in one afternoon. One video for each week of the month and just have your team repurpose it and create different content out of it and then put it on many different channels. More about Jeans’ courses. (18:07) A course on technology and tools within your business to help you stay productive and help you increase revenue, it’s called Tech Up Your Business. Another course about marketing for your Amazon book to make it a bestseller. This is the strategy Jean uses. Rolling out a course about digital marketing. What are Jean’s plans for when she has her courses running? (19:25) She will keep the courses rolling because there is always new strategies, technologies, and platforms that need to be reviewed. One complaint from business owners she gets all the time is that digital marketing is complex. She is looking at getting on boards for nonprofits. She feels like she had a lot of opportunities in the past to grow her skill set when it comes to being on the board of an organization. She wrote and published a book and is in the process of another book The name of Jeans’ book and if it can be found on Amazon? (27:25) It can be found on Amazon. It’s in paperback or on Kindle. The name of the book is when new customers how to attract, connect, and converting more prospects into customers in 60 days, using digital marketing. 

Jean Ginzburg of Ginball

Chris Raulf   Founded in 2009, our team of digital marketing experts specializes in helping small and medium-sized businesses with all of their search engine optimization needs. If you are seeking more TRAFFIC, more LEADS, and more BUSINESS from your website, we can help deliver results with the perfect blend of online marketing solutions to take your business to the next level. What made Chris go off on his own? (0:46) He always wanted to be his own boss and have his own company. One morning Chris read his horoscope and it said if you don’t make a decision now or like  a big change, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life He thought about it and wrote in a letter of resignation two months later and his business was up and running. That was six years ago. How has Chris grown since then? (1:37) Chris does search engine optimization and hosts his own SEO and digital marketing classes. Teaching digital marketing and SEO classes got him a lot of leads. After starting the SEO business, Chris was already profitable after six or eight weeks. He initially thought he would be a local SEO agency for the rest of his life, but the website got found nationally and he started working with companies all over the US. Is training and teaching the core of Chris’ work? (3:58) Chris loves teaching and is passionate about SEO and digital marketing. He started workshops where he teaches SEO, social media marketing and PPC. The workshops are held in Denver and recently launched in London. Chris also teaches part of a masters degree in France which is an online degree at the University of Strasbourg. He believes that teaching is the best way to build authority and generate leads. Where does an agency like Chris’ agency fit? (7:08) For new customers, the first thing they do is an SEO audit. The strategy will then be broken down into the five pillars of SEO. The technical health of the website undergoes a check-up. While doing the audit they ask if people are able to find what they are looking for and what the user experience like? Next up is on-page SEO where they optimize each page for three keywords and optimize the tags and the content. Backlinks which are part of the off-site SEO are one of the strongest ranking signals in Google’s algorithm. Social media marketing has to be part of the overall strategy with content marketing as the foundation. If someone can’t hire an agency, how do they get started with SEO? (10:12) Chris got into SEO before Google was even around. LinkedIn has a training section where people could learn they can go to Lynda.com and look for SEO courses. It’s also worth looking for and paying for a good SEO course online. Google updates its algorithm three times a day to combat black hat SEO. People should take a more global approach with techniques that will work in the future. They shouldn’t do something that will get them blacklisted. Chris recommends that if someone is an expert in their field, they should put their knowledge on their website. Doing so will make a difference in the future in a world where search engine algorithms are continuously changing and where artificial intelligence is playing a bigger role every day. 

Chris Raulf of Boulder SEO Marketing

Tim Sprinkle Tim Sprinkle founded Layup Content in 2014 after nearly 20 years in journalism, writing and editing for a long list of national publications including Wired, Outside, Entrepreneur and many more. He made the transition to digital content early on, with editorial stints with sites including Seeking Alpha, a content community for financial services professionals; Yahoo Finance, the #1 business and finance site on the web; and more. He is also the author of a few books, including “Screw the Valley: A Coast-to-Coast Tour of America’s New Tech Startup Culture: New York, Boulder, Austin, Raleigh, Detroit, Las Vegas, Kansas City.” Today he’s taken this experience and, along with a talented team of like-minded writers and editors, turned his attention to corporate communications, helping startups and established businesses craft content programs that make sense for their markets and drive real results. This includes everything from email campaigns, to blog posts, to thought leadership, to content strategy and much more. What made Tim go off on his own? (0:49) Tim says that he is not sure if he actually made the transition, or if the transition was made for him. He has been a journalist for a long time and being laid off, and the risk of being laid off, as well as the immense amount of upheaval in the industry all played a role in him moving on. Tim explains that he also experienced personal changes, such as moving to Colorado, and not wanting to leave. He mentions that there are not many opportunities for traditional magazine journalists in Colorado. In order for Tim to keep doing what he loves, he needed to find a way to do it without working for a large media corporation. What does Layup Content do? (1:46) Tim explains that what they do varies from day to day, they help clients get their message out using various platforms and mediums, depending on what the client is most comfortable with. Tim tells us about how he fell backward into finance and his experiences that brought him to what he does today. He mentions how he had the opportunity to actually see “content” become what it is today. What does Tim see happening in content (8:36) Tim says that the main thing that he has noticed about content is that more people seem to be getting into creating and understanding the need for content He explains that even smaller business understand the need, and are putting content out. Tim explains that when he decided to go into content writing, he did not expect it to be the next big thing, and that is exactly what it was. He says that there are a lot of great platforms to get yourself out there, but if you poorly, everybody sees that and it’s hard to come back from that. How does Tim deal with working in an industry such as finance that is tightly regulated? (14:05) Tim explains that he appreciates the fact that the industry is so well regulated. He does not think that anyone would want to live in a world where “boiler rooms are advertised on google” Tim indicates that being tightly regulated opens doors for alternative marketing solutions such as content. He uses crypto backed ETF’s as an example of how getting information from experts and creating content can bring people together who have similar interests, but would otherwise never find each other. Tim’s tips for someone who wants to get into content (17:23) Tim explains that the first thing you should know is that it is not easy-flow work, and often it is not a lot of fun He highlights that with the endless amounts of content farms out there, you have an equally endless amount of bad writers. He says that if you decide to scale, you will have to bring some help on, and finding good people takes time and tends to be difficult Tim says that you need to create a benchmark of sorts, that proves to yourself that you can write, and create. 

Tim Sprinkle of Layup Content

Ryan Estes is the founder and CEO of  Founder of TalkLaunch. A friendly agency that makes it simple to improve sales every day. Ryan believes that no matter where you are in your entrepreneur journey be it validation, launch, or scale, podcasts will take you further. He is a strong advocate, believing that meaningful conversation is good for business and good for people. What made Ryan go off on his own? (0:36) Ryan explains that he had a sales job, and even though he had two young children at the time, his boss was a tyrant and he hated that. He took some online courses about leadership and management and realized that he was in a toxic leadership environment. Ryan says that after the courses, he also knew which leadership attributes he really respected and possessed. Emboldened by this realization and equipped with two courses he decided to take the leap. Being entrepreneurially minded Ryan had many different businesses, from a record label to a paint company. Ryan says he reached a point where he realized that he had to go pro on the internet, so he funded Talk Launch and has been doing that ever since. What exactly does Talk Launch do? (2:17) Ryan explains that Talk Launch is primarily a social media management company that specializes in Facebook and Instagram advertising. He says that this is usually in the realms of integrated marketing, automation, web development, and social media management. Ryan indicates that everyone's needs may differ from person to person, but yet, everyone's eyes are still always on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. He demonstrates that all social media platforms such as Twitter, Snapchat, and even Pinterest have advertising ecosystems, but they all really pale in comparison to the Goliath that is Facebook and Instagram. So as Talk Launch, they onboard the client, identify exactly what is the offer, and then they develop the customer journey to the sell Since there has been such a shift in Facebook, what do you need to do to be successful? (4:17) Ryan says that in the beginning, it was mainly all about posts, and kindof egalitarian, every post had the same weight. So you focused on building up your likes, and then you build a large audience. He explains that now Facebook buries everyone's posts and an algorithm brings whatever fake news people are into to the top. Ryan indicates that now you have to be very specific about your targeting in order to reach the audience that you wish to speak to. Ryan also says that Facebook is always changing the business manager on Facebook, and there are always new options being made available and old options falling away, so the platform is constantly evolving. With multi-channel campaigns what automation software does Ryan use? (8:15) Ryan explains that there are a ton of different tools they use, and they are constantly switching out, and trying new tools But for the most part, they try and stay within Facebook’s ad platform, because Facebook does reward people who use the platform, and it’s tools. He says that they have used dashboards like Hootsuite to bring everything together in one place, But usually they will use native apps. As a podcaster, how has Ryan been using his show? (12:21) Ryan explains that his show is also a founder show and that he uses the show with respect to the audience that he has built up over the years. He says that he mainly uses the show to answer the questions that have been sent to him. Ryan also says that he has found the podcast to be a valuable networking tool, allowing him to connect with other CEO’s and founders that have information that he finds interesting and valuable. He says that under normal circumstances it would be very difficult to speak to these CEO’s and founders unintrusively for an hour. What are some upcoming plans Ryan has? (15:00) Ryan indicates that he has a couple of things that he is working on at the moment. He just recently had to kill a project that he was working on. It was a crowdfunding platform for the service industry, and although it was successful, it was not scaleable. Ryan says that it is really easy for entrepreneurs to fall in love with an idea, especially after spending hours and hours on making the idea better. So now he is really perfecting the validation process as an entrepreneur, to determine if an idea is really worth it or not. Ryan says that he is really excited to be working on the emotional state of entrepreneurs and remote workers, defining what it is that causes them emotional turmoil. And seeing how he can do something about making life easier for them emotionally. He would like to deliver services and software that can help breed connections and help people hold off these difficult feelings in a way that may be more productive. 

Ryan Estes of Talklaunch

Chad Burmeister   Chad Burmeister, the CEO of ScaleX.AI is our guest today. ScaleX.AI delivers Sales Acceleration, Powered by Artificial Intelligence. Chad is an expert in building high-velocity sales teams at companies including Cisco-WebEx, Riverbed Technology, ON24, ConnectAndSell, and RingCentral.  Chad was voted Top 25 Most Influential Inside Sales Professional by the AA-ISP 7 years in a row (2010 – 2016) and continues to be at the forefront of inside sales and high-velocity selling strategy & execution.   What is ScaleX.AI? Provides sales acceleration software and services powered by artificial intelligence to help sales teams 10x the number of sales activities that they do on a daily/weekly/monthly basis typically resulting in a 2x revenue impact The business result that our customers see is 10x more sales touches (more emails, more dials and more social touches)   Why did Chad start ScaleX.AI? (1:52) He saw over the last 10 years that things evolve in technology Decided that it was time to bring artificial intelligence to sales. Now you can leverage artificial intelligence to enhance what resources are able to do to get a 10x multiplier   When did Chad see the opportunity? (3:07) The challenge was when you start to deploy technology and people's systems process. The toughest part is that the generation of salespeople is used to doing digital texts and emails rather than phone conversations. A lot of the reps were spending a lot of time on things that don't matter. Set out to collapse time involved while still being personal.   In their first quarter they drove over $350k in sales.  That's when he knew they'd stumbled on to something that is very important for sales people and companies.   Bad sales activities (6:09) It's not wrong activities, it’s just that they should be doing them more efficiently Invest the time to approach somebody with a level of depth in your in your A accounts. If you have hundreds or thousands of potential prospects in a region or across the country then you can’t take the time to send those five bullets every single time. Now that so many people have moved to digital communications it really has left open the phone conversations. If you can bring phone activity to the process,  75% of meetings come from phone conversations not from e-mail and social   Best Practices (8:48) Agent assisted dialing gets you through gatekeepers and can get you right the decision maker It actually speeds up the process and therefore it also means you have to be good in other areas. They turn to a company called Qwilr that integrate to salesforce. It's all self-contained and instead of spending hours post phone conversation, now you just send a link to the prospect within five minutes and you're off to the nextcall They automate the agent assisted dialing so a rep can drive 250 - 500 dials in a day. The e-mail personalization technology -  it looks at the recipient, it looks at the sender and it writes the first two sentences on behalf of the rep. This bot has seen 100 million personalized e-mails go out in the past three years and knows exactly which ones get the best reply. So automating the e-mail personalization is the next order of magnitude increase that they see. All of this software organizes and helps you know when to send e-mails, when to make calls, what to say.   There are tools that help you improve your actions inside LinkedIn. From sending connection requests to sending another note 3 days later as a follow up.   They integrate two Sales Force as the primary CRM. Most clients do have a CRM and want them to integrate into that CRM.   Companies who don't have CRM can still do business because they're able to manage much of the outbound prospecting process without a CRM. However in an ideal world you know most clients especially arefunded startup or a publicly traded company you're going to have a CRM and it doesmake the program just that much better than it is without a CRM awesome.   Who is the ideal customer? (16:39) Funded startups and publicly traded companies who invest in a lot of leads and just can't get them called or emailed or connected with socially fast enough are the ideal customers.   How do we build our team correctly? (19:05) There are pieces of the program that you can leverage that will bring you huge lift to go get your first several dozen customers. Encourage companies to look at Sales Loft, Outreach.  They give you a very good footprint of how to do your cadence. The piece that's been missing is the plug in and that is the scaleX 1-click personalization plug in. It gives you a double in your open rates and typically a three to five times better reply rate. The second thing is investing in the automated agent assisted dialing. There's a simple app that's available for download it's called LinkedIn helper.   ScaleX awards (23:37) Top 20 sales management application of the year because this technology gives managers a better ability to understand what all the activities are happening by their sales team Top 50 tech companies by the Silicon Valley review in the Bay Area.   Chad’s book recommendation The Lost Art of Closing by Anthony Iannarino This book is about a different approach to selling geared to the new technological and social realities of our time.  The key is to lead customers through a series of necessary steps designed to prevent a purchase stall. The book will change the way you think about closing, and your clients will appreciate your ability to help them achieve real change and real results.

Chad Burmeister of Scalex.ai

Mike Mierz and his team at Sled Dog Media help creative agencies build outbound sales systems. Sled Dog Media supports companies by building their lead generation funnels and helping them acquire new customers so agencies can focus on their clients. Mike has been an entrepreneur and sales guy his whole life, using his skills selling his own services and the services of his employers. Now, Mike and his team use LinkedIn, email, and other strategies to help other business owners build their brands and attract new clients. Mike’s beginnings Mike has always been entrepreneurial. When he was a kid, he knocked on neighbors’ doors to offer lawn mowing services for $5. He didn't have a “real job” until the very end of high school, but since junior high—or possibly younger—he was always making money from his neighbors. After college, Mike studied philosophy and theology because he thought he wanted to be professor. But he realized during school that it wasn't what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. He got into the coffee business—specifically into specialty coffee, which is like the high end of coffee, and did so from a craft (rather than a business) perspective. He competed in barista competitions and got to the national level. At that time, Mike had no interest in business but found himself needing to make more money. He started managing cafes and noticed that the guys who fix espresso machines are jerks and not great at their job but can charge a lot of money. Mike went to Seattle, took some classes, learned how to fix machines, and returned to L.A. to start his espresso machine repair company. He offered equipment preventive maintenance to his friends who were shop owners. It was still a side gig for him, more of a craft thing, and still not a business. Mike got hired as an account manager by another company. He didn’t really want to sell, but his boss told him that he’s a salesperson and that he’s going to have his own company someday. He ended up moving up to be the sales manager at that company and selling coffee to all the tech companies in the bay area. He started to realize that he actually likes it. For him, it's really fun and rewarding when he closed a big deal. About Sled Dog Media (04:43) Sled Dog Media is a marketing company that helps small- and medium-sized businesses, mostly agencies and creative businesses, build their sales from scratch. Currently, their core products are their email and LinkedIn services. Mike’s business before Sled Dog (05:41) Mike used to work for a company that had old-school sales strategies—driving around town, knocking on doors, walking into people's coffee shops or hotels, etc. Their website was a mess and Mike helped them refine it. He knew that if they invested in marketing, the wholesale business would be much easier and grow even faster. That experience sparked Mike’s interest in marketing, and specifically in digital marketing. He started to learn about how to use organic social media like Facebook ads. Around this time, Mike ran out of the money he had saved up. Some people knew about his background and asked him help with marketing for their company. Mike was able to start an agency, which he wasn’t even intending to do then. Like many businesses, Mike’s first contracts were referrals within his existing network. While referrals are great, they’re not consistent. One of Mike’s friends mentioned cold email as a strategy. Initially, he was super resistant until gave it a shot and turned out that it really works. It was relatively low investment, simple to systematize, and easy to scale. Mike started using these strategies for his own business, then began to offer it as a service to their clients. The significance of branding (12:17) While a lot of small- and medium-sized businesses are hyper focused on direct response marketing, Mike sees the importance of building a brand. Mike’s previous successes all came about because of branding: using social media to land contracts, networking in the coffee industry on Twitter, and leveraging his network to land a sales management job. If you put out content that actually engages your audience, builds a brand, and builds community, Mike believes that investment makes your direct response marketing efforts that much stronger. For small businesses that only have a couple hundred or thousand bucks Mike recommends putting those dollars into Facebook. For every dollar you put in Facebook, Facebook's going to give you three. To get good responses, he said, “You gotta build a machine, and part of that is getting people to care about who you are, what you're about.” How to get started using LinkedIn effectively (16:55) According to Mike, LinkedIn is underutilized. Out of the 500 million monthly users of LinkedIn, only 1% are posting content, and then 1% of those posting content are posting video. That is a massive opportunity to stand out and it doesn't take a lot of effort. Mike puts out content on a daily basis and also engages with the content of other people. Unlike Facebook—where if you're a business you now essentially have to pay for your reach—on LinkedIn, you can still get really good organic reach. When you engage with someone else's content on LinkedIn, your comments on any post that's getting a lot of activity will show up in the feeds of people who follow you. That’s extra organic reach. On LinkedIn, you can talk about what you do best and what you're great at. Your headline and bio are important for sharing who you help and how. The headline alone, when done well, allows you to connect with people without saying anything about what you do—your headline does that for you. For your bio, make it sales copy that’s about five sentence long. What are you about: what do you do, who do you help, how do you help them, how do I contact you if I want that? Book recommendations (26:15) Never Split The Difference by Christopher Voss. Mike is reading this book currently, and it's essentially a book on sales and negotiations. The book is about how to use psychology and how to engage in the sales process and conversation in ways that help people not feel defensive, not feel attacked, and to better understand what someone wants and needs. Essentialism by Greg McKeown. The book requires you to become really, really good at saying yes to the right things that matter and no to all the things that don't matter. For Mike, the concepts in this book help him from a business perspective as well as from a life perspective. 

Mike Mierz of Sled Dog Media

Chad’s beginnings With over 20 years of broad based experience from global marketing to enterprise sales, Chad learned what he is passionate about. Mentoring, coaching other sales professionals and organizations to get better excite him. The key to his sales success was his training in the ValueSelling Framework 17 years ago where he has stayed in contact with the individuals who did the training and the business they were running. That opportunity influenced him to be a franchisee for the organization. He wants to make sure that he is doing something that he is passionate about - helping other individuals with subject matter that he has some expertise in. Chad’s solution of choice (02:38) Chad’s training 17 years ago, gave him tools that’s not just focused on sales or marketing. The training enlightened him how to do it, how to have value based conversations whether it be for internal alignment in the organization I was in or with prospects or as a way to create personas. He explains that the framework and the methodology that they teach is simple, very easy to understand, very pragmatic and very easy to adopt, that he could coach to it, mentor to it and inspire teams with it. At the same time he could do data analytics from it which made it really his solution of choice. As he became an executive, he thinks that the challenge is to make sure, if you're investing in training your sales or marketing teams, that it's something they're actually going to use and will provide them value. Chad shares that in sales, they want to make sure they're having as many conversations as possible structured in a way that is going to provide the most value to both parties. Their sales framework does not only focus on sales, but also on organizational alignment, marketing, and sales enablement. Breaking down walls in smaller companies (06:02) According to Chad, they provide tool set that gives marketing and sales a common language and a common framework. It enables them to clearly understand each other’s needs. They can get to a point where they understand each other's vision and acknowledge what each party has to bring to the table in order to optimize the revenue generation results. It may take a little while sometimes to master, but it does provide huge dividends for sales and marketing teams, especially when you know there's aggressive growth. Through their value prompter tool, it's very easy for everybody to be on the same page and generate impressive results.   Communication within the team (07:48) Chad talks about the people in the team and their differences. Older and more experienced ones have a lot of perspective through which they view the current marketplace, their current employer, the current sales and marketing landscape. He thinks that people that have been around a little bit longer are struggling at times with the speed at which multichannels evolve and which channels are okay to use. It’s more of the decorum. On the other hand, Chad thinks that millenials or the younger end are very comfortable with technology. For them those touchpoints can stimulate the sense of connectedness that may not be necessary at all times. In order for them to interact more effectively with other people in a business environment, they are equipped with tools the close that age gap and help them, regardless of industry expertise, have more effective conversations with people. Chad mentions that sometimes they need to tweak the tool a little and introduce some technology and how that works. They teach the tools and the frameworks leveraging that technology. He says that at the end of the day, it's all about getting into that common language and framework. Chad discusses a challenge that a lot of their larger global customers have - mix of people. Internally, there may need to be some understanding of what's the standard operating procedure for communications. When people in a team have a framework where they can have a consistent type of conversation, there will be increases in efficiencies and impacts because everybody does their part well. Everybody's on the same page. Building an inner team communication (12:52) Chad says that to be able to facilitate that inner team communication, his team typically uses an online class to give everybody that kind of introduction. Then, they do classroom training where they practice the conversations, the behaviors that are necessary to make it work. The training is participant centered. They engage in activities so that as they're going through the process of implementing the framework, they're starting to see the advantages of it. After the workshop, Chad’s team puts up together some type of reinforcement, coaching or mentoring to make sure the learner has access to the information and the support when and how he needs it. Chad’s team has an extremely integrated learning management system that allows them to pull in video, audio, podcast, content quizzes, gamification, etc., designed in such a way that it's going to be optimal for the team that they will work with. Applying the system in own business (14:20) Chad affirms that they use their sales methodology to sell it. It's a living, breathing approach based on proven formulas and tools that they then are able to bring a timely context too as they implement with clients. For Chad, there's no better way to prove that you really believe in your product unless you apply it in your own business. Dealing with shifts in the market (16:44) As an entrepreneur, Chad always looks for ways to make their team more present when somebody wants them to be where they want them to be, when they want them to be there. He shares that there are new tools and new approaches coming out all the time. Every three to four months, Chad and his team dedicate two or three hours in the afternoon to get together as a group. They share ideas that could be utilized to drive more value for the customer. The goal of their team is to make sure that everything they do provides value for their prospects and customers. Although at times, it’s a little more challenging for the team, they've gotten great feedback from clients on how much they appreciate the availability. Book recommendation (23:00) Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull - It's about how the team at Pixar came up with some of their stories like the process they go through to pressure test and brainstorm some of the creative ideas that they come up with. Sales EQ by Jeb Blount - Chad thinks that the concept of being more human and having the ability to increase your emotional awareness is key for anybody, not just in sales. Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and Into Your Life by Gary John Bishop - It’s a self help book for self empowerment and self accountability. So those are the three that when I'm asked, those are the ones I typically will point to because I think they provide a great deal of value in multiple facets of what's required today to be an effective human being. 

Chad Sanderson of Value Prime Solutions

Jake is the founder of two fantastic companies in sales and lead gen, he’s a real wealth of knowledge on how to grow your business with outbound tactics. At Lead Cookie, he helps B2B sales teams generate more leads through done-for-you Linkedin Prospecting. The service is 100% risk free as we have a 30 day money back guarantee. I scaled Lead Cookie from Zero to $33k MRR as a productized service in 6 months. At Outbound Creative, he helps agencies win their dream clients through custom consulting.   Prior to starting Lead Cookie, he ran business development for a video production agency and won the business of multiple Fortune 500 clients and A-List touring artists. He doesn’t have an office, but loves Colorado and can be frequently be found traveling the world. He and his team are 100% remote, with no plans to change. Early beginnings Jake started with  a recording studio at his basement from the age of 16-19 years old where he charges bands $10 a song to record them; into a full-time audio production company. Eventually he paired with another guy as business partners and ended up forming a video production and animation agency; and ended up stumbling into multiple fortune 500 client. He sold his first business to his partner and went into consulting for several years. A year ago, he ramped up Lead Cookie and has been a huge success since it kicked off. Sales & Systems (~2:30) Jake’s expertise is on building outbound sales process. He thinks that a lot of people struggle to get going or to get that right, so he focused his career on it for several years. His agency started using outbound to grow and get more clients by first running a dream client campaign where their target customers are worth up to the top, like event planners in the industry which led to their first customers closing huge fortune 500 deals. Starting Lead Cookie (~5:55) Jake came across LinkedIn when he was doing solo consulting. When he got a customer without doing anything that intentional, he dabbled more into using LinkedIn by researching about thought leaders of the industry and learn about their best tactics and how to master the platform. He studied Josh Turner and John Nimmo, looked at what they were doing, teaching, and he went out and started testing the tactics that they were teaching which led into his first-month booking 11 phone calls, had another 10 leads in the scheduling process, then ended up closing three deals within 60 days. When Jake saw that most were focusing on Facebook Marketing and Facebook Advertising and there was almost no one specializing in LinkedIn. He was getting more clients from LinkedIn than anywhere else; this made him focus on the LinkedIn platform and provide a productized service. Productizing The Service (~9:20) They optimize on people’s profiles, send a four-step drip sequence to prospects on a daily basis and they ramp up traffic to their LinkedIn profile. They just focus on this one thing that they know works and when paired with the right customer, they basically know that they will see results for them. They don’t take things that are custom when people try to push them out of their process. Building out those processes do let them operate at a lower cost They give away scripts and they teach online on their website. They have an ebook where they literally teach all of their tactics (https://leadcookie.com/ebook) He shared their secret sauce which is the organization of the processes and their ability to take all of that time off someone’s daily work. Ramping up Traffic on your LinkedIn profile (~12:35) Jake introduces Dux Soup, a Google Chrome extension that will basically go visit 500 profiles of target prospects every day which they just use for visiting profiles. It is a tool that will get you more eyeballs on your profile, leading to getting inbound connection requests. You’ll see traffic to your profile jump up by a thousand percent typically after about a month and doing it every day. So if you have your profile optimized, you've got good copy on there, you have an engaging and an engaging headline and a call to action, this can be a great way to drive leads to your business. Dux soup is $15 a month, set this up in five minutes a day. It’s a super quick, easy tactic if you don't have that much time and you're just kind of wanting to ramp this up as another channel. Sales Analytics and Automation (~15:50) You need to try to be a closer and get people to say, Yes or No as quickly as you can so that they’re not wasting up time or muddying up the middle of your funnel Have a Nurture Status in your CRM. This is super powerful for the people that say, “Hey, not right now”, or anything like that. Add them to an email list or add those to a quarterly follow up where you go through and try to nudge all those. Jake is a big believer in Sales, so having to do personal outreach not trying to automate everything, that even if you outreach to those every 2 or 3 months, that nurture status is super useful. Another tool that Jake uses is Rebump (https://www.rebump.cc/), that if you are operating in Gmail, you can basically do an individual drip campaign. Like while you are writing an email, you can personalize the first email and then set a drip campaign to follow up with that person a few times. This is really useful for people that are in the middle of the funnel, who haven't gotten a call yet, they've expressed interest but haven't engaged yet. There are so many leads that just get stuck in that period before you get them on the phone. Jake finds that that is a really great tool to personalize that first followup with them, but not personalized everyone after that. So it's still more personal than trying to just automate your entire sales funnel. Use of a Virtual Assistant. Jake has a virtual assistant who prepares call briefs every day for him and so he doesn’t have to research any other projects ahead of time or to find them in the CRM. He just gets an email every day with the websites, LinkedIn profiles, CRM links for all his calls for that day and saves time probably 30 minutes a day. Creating Systems for Virtual Assistants (~21:30) You have to look for the low hanging fruit first or the biggest burden and the biggest pain. Find out how much time would a task save you if you hand it over. Write an SOP or Standard Operating Procedure. Jake blocks out a morning to spend an hour to document while he does the task, he’ll go through it and do the process himself again, write down instructions and take screenshots along the way and normally puts it in a Goole Doc. It’s useful to schedule an hour call to walk your VA through it, send them the document, and have them read it prior to the call. Then do one, show them how it’s done, then shadow them after and let them work on their own. Have your VA ping you for any questions. Actionable Tips To Get Started With LinkedIn Sales (~24:30) Drive traffic to your LinkedIn profile using Dux Soup Send outbound connection requests on LinkedIn, by sending connection requests on a daily basis using Sales Navigator so you can do a higher volume. Don’t do this without Sales Navigator or you might trip their limits. After you send like 100 connection requests per day to your target customers, when they accept, ask them a question or provoke a conversation around your business in some capacity or what you are offering. Check Out: Lead Cookie’s Ebook for scripts, profile optimization tips, and everything else to get started! Jake’s Book Recommendation  

Jake Jorgavan of Lead Cookie

Talk with the Top Colorado is dedicated to sharing positive business stories about the Colorado business and entrepreneurship community. Every week we interview entrepreneurs, executives, and business leaders to help them share their knowledge and their story with the community at large.

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Talk With The Top: Colorado

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