As a founder, you get to pick the parts of the business you’re great at and make them into your ultimate competitive advantage.
Founder-Led, hosted by Collin Mitchell, 4x Founder, and 3x Exit Sales Leader, takes a deep dive into the journeys of founders who followed their passion and led their businesses from $0 - $1 Million and beyond by playing to their strengths and excelling in their chosen specialty.
Tune in weekly to peek into the minds of founders who are living the dream and making it happen.
Mastering B2B Sales in 2024 - JB Daguené, Founder & CEO of Evergrowth
Today’s episode welcomes JB Daguené, Founder & CEO of Evergrowth - a platform that enables revenue teams to deeply understand and prioritize customer needs through granular AI-driven TAM categorization at the top of the sales funnel.
JB has been part of the B2B sales world for over 15 years. He fell in love with SaaS during his tenure at TrustPilot, where he was the first sales person they hired. Within 2 years they went from 4 to 150 salespeople and over 4000 customers. Big part of his early success was a customer-centric approach, which is also what Evergrowth enables for their clients.
At TrustPilot, JB was able to make at least one sale per day. He achieved this by being a ruthless disqualifier and detaching from the outcome, allowing him to waste a lot less time chasing deals that will never close. He was also a hardcore list builder - which is a huge advantage if you’re a full-cycle sales executive.
Collin and JB speak on the effectiveness of full-cycle sales. The level of experience that you can provide by preparing your own research, starting the conversation from scratch and owning the whole sales process is much higher than just simply taking a lead that an SDR already prospected into. Typically sellers who do full-cycle see better conversion rates after the initial call, which in our current economic climate is becoming more and more of a necessity.
Tune into the full episode to learn more on how to master B2B sales in 2024!
Connect with JB - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jbdaguene/
Connect with Collin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/collincmitchell/
Check out Collin's Newsletter - https://salestransformation.beehiiv.com/
(00:00) - - JB’s Background & finding AI
(03:52) - - How to make at least one sale a day
(06:14) - - Why full-cycle sales is making a comeback
(09:02) - - What does Evergrowth do?
(14:38) - - How to utilize intent data
(16:35) - - The modern sales playbook
25 Apr 2024
How to Build Your First SaaS Product - Alan Zhao, Co-Founder of Warmly
Today’s episode welcomes Alan Zhao, Co-Founder of Warmly - the first autonomous revenue orchestration platform purpose built for SMB sized revenue teams. The platform orchestrates metadata from sales enablement tools, B2B intent, and enrichment tools to identify, track, and connect with website visitors who are ready to convert.
Before starting Warmly, Alan spent 2 years in the finance world. He compares finance to startups in that both are very dynamic, although on the trading floor your planning matters most while execution is simple - which is the other way around when running a startup. The thing that drew him into founding Warmly was a lifelong dream to build something of his own.
Creating your first product is never easy. The first iteration of Warmly was created as a LinkedIn alternative to help entrepreneurs find their co-founding match, but they quickly realized that the world didn’t need another social media platform. From there, they built 3 different variants until they landed on the product that Warmly offers today.
In early 2022, the Warmly team saw an impending tech recession and knew their next iteration had to solve a big problem. Alan noticed that the number one problem in sales is timing, so they found a product that was solving for it and built the first iteration of Warmly based on their future competitor, which allowed them to quickly go to market.
Alan has worn many hats during the Warmly journey. He started off as an engineer, then moved on to the CTO role, then did sales, and in Warmly’s current iteration he serves as head of customer success, while also doing social media and content marketing. All of these roles were great learning experiences for Alan and enhanced his ability to solve big-picture startup problems - which is what any good founder should focus on.
Tune into the full episode to learn more on how to build your first SaaS product!
Connect with Alan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-j-zhao/
Connect with Collin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/collincmitchell/
Check out Collin's Newsletter - https://salestransformation.beehiiv.com/
(02:34) - - Figuring out your first product
(04:51) - - What makes a good product?
(07:43) - - How to validate your product idea
(11:14) - - What roles should a founder own?
(15:15) - - Solving difficult problems as a startup
(17:14) - - Alan’s vision for the future of Warmly
(20:04) - - Advice for first time founders
17 Apr 2024
What Nobody Understands About Business - Joe De Sena, Founder & CEO of Spartan Race
Today’s episode welcomes Joe De Sena, Founder of Spartan Race (https://www.spartan.com/) - the world’s largest obstacle race and endurance brand, with more than 200 global events annually.
He’s also the author of “Spartan Up! (https://www.amazon.com/Spartan-Take-No-Prisoners-Overcoming-Obstacles-Performance/dp/0544286170)” - a NY Times bestseller and the host of “The Hard Way w/ Joe De Sena (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-hard-way-w-joe-de-sena/id952870930)” - a top 0.5% podcast that gives you the ultimate blueprint and action steps to assimilating their powerful conversations into your own life. He’s also a sought-after podcast guest, with his most famous appearance being on The Joe Rogan Experience (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-joe-rogan-experience/id360084272).
Joe’s introduction to fitness came when his grandmother got cancer. His mom was trying to find a way to bring her back to health and landed in a health store where a yogi introduced her to yoga, veganism and an overall healthy lifestyle.
Fast forward, Joe was working on Wall Street and feeling the wear and tear on his body from the lifestyle that is required to succeed in that space. He then remembered his moms journey which inspired him to pick up a healthy lifestyle. After feeling the effects of a hot yoga session, Joe was hooked and his fitness journey truly began.
When Joe was young, he had a small business cleaning pools for a few notorious crime families, which scaled to over 700 clients over time. This business was tough - he had to learn all the fundamentals from scratch under the threat of pissing off some seriously scary people. He ultimately sold this business and moved on to Wall Street.
Joe loves a good challenge - and building Spartan has been exactly that. Joe calls entrepreneurship the toughest sport in the world. Even though his career in Wall Street helped fund the early days of Spartan, it was still a very long and painful journey to get to stability and profitability. By 2019 they were on top of the world - they had just bought out their largest competitor, their brand became internationally recognized with events in over 50 countries and they were finally making money - and then, COVID happened.
Tune into the full episode to learn more about the epic journey of Joe De Sena!
Connect with Joe - https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/josephdesena
(https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/josephdesena)Connect with Collin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/collincmitchell/
(https://www.linkedin.com/in/collincmitchell/)Check out Collin's Newsletter - https://salestransformation.beehiiv.com/ (https://salestransformation.beehiiv.com/)
(00:45) - How Joe got into fitness
(04:32) - Joe De Sena’s first business lessons
(08:32) - The reality of running a business
(11:30) - How Spartan is changing kids lives
(18:17) - The challenges of building Spartan
(21:06) - How COVID almost killed Spartan
(25:06) - Surviving COVID and getting back on track
(27:45) - What’s next for Spartan? Expansion? IPO?
9 Apr 2024
Welcome to Founder-Led: Meet Your Host, Collin Mitchell.
Founders are a unique breed.
Enduring the level of financial, emotional and psychological pressure it takes to build a company for a statistically tiny chance of success is a path built for the few.
Today we sit down with Collin Mitchell - 4x Founder and 3x Exit sales leader to learn about his new podcast - Founder-Led.
Founder-Led takes a deep dive into the journeys of founders who followed their passion and led their businesses from $0 - $1 Million and beyond by playing to their strengths and excelling in their chosen specialty.
In this episode, Collin speaks on his career as a salesperson that led him to start 4 companies that led to 3 exits - and his first company that he still owns to this day.
Collin's path to entrepreneurship stemmed from a childhood that was best defined by struggle. As a kid, Collin grew up on food stamps and government cheese, and while many end up staying true to their roots - Collin decided enough was enough and took a sales job early on that ultimately shaped him into an entrepreneur by giving him the most important skillset a founder can have - generating revenue.
His first business started in 2012 - Collin and his wife were young adults who really wanted to do their own thing and build their dream life. Their first business, Monster Technology, scaled from 0 - $5 million in ARR in 26 months. That business is still active to this day and provides a great life for those who came along for the ride.
A huge topic in 2024 is - should founders focus on acquiring investment or bootstrap their way to profitability? Collin thinks there's not a wrong answer either way, but he sees a ton of value in founders figuring out how to get to that first million by themselves, as it builds a ton of savviness on how to operate on a shoestring budget.
Tune into the full episode to learn more about the show and hear some golden tidbits from your host - Collin Mitchell!
Connect with Collin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/collincmitchell/
Check out Collin's Newsletter - https://salestransformation.beehiiv.com/
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