Leveling Up with Eric Siu

What does it take to be successful as a new CEO? Whenever you're joining a new company, it's important to avoid rocking the boat at the beginning. In this session we discuss ways to have a successful transition into any company at the executive level.

As a B2B business, attracting an audience to your website to convert them into sales leads is not an easy process, but Madison Logic does it all for you. Madison Logic is an account-based marketing service that helps B2B companies convert their best accounts faster and today we learn more about the firm from its Co-Founder and COO, Vin Turk. Vin opens by explaining how he got the idea to streamline conversions in the B2B space before explaining exactly what it is that Madison Logic does. We move on to discuss how the firm makes its money on both the lead and display side before chatting more about their ideal customers. Vin shares some impressive metrics about growth and ROI, mentioning their unique journey without VC backed capital and how being featured on INC 5000’s list six times back to back made a difference in this respect. We get into exits, spinoffs, and the company’s long term vision next, before drilling down on their customer acquisition model which includes a brilliant strategy to become more vital to current ones. Wrapping up with Vin, we chat about how Madison Logic keeps values consistent in the firm as far as strategy and corporate culture, and hear some amazing tips from him around continuous self-evaluation and reflection, so be sure to tune in! TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:21] Before we jump into today’s interview, please rate, review, and subscribe to the Leveling Up Podcast! [00:40] The story of Vin’s idea to streamline conversions that grew into Madison Logic. [02:49] A real example of how Madison Logic connects sellers to buyers in the B2B space.  [04:58] How Madison Logic partners with news outlets to market to their clients. [05:48] Madison Logic’s business model making money on a cost per lead basis. [06:36] Ideal clients: enterprise and mid-market B2B technology companies. [07:30] Metrics around growth, ROI, employee count, and international offices.  [08:12] Why being featured on the INC 5000 list six times was beneficial to Madison Logic. [09:43] Exits and spinoffs Madison Logic has gone through; its long term play.  [11:38] Customer acquisition and why ML is focusing on expanding current customers. [13:33] ML’s favorite tools for contact discovery, automated outreach, accounts intel, and more. [14:32] The size and structure of the sales team at Madison Logic. [14:58] How Madison Logic keeps vision and values for corporate culture and strategy aligned.  [18:15] ‘Not sweating the small stuff’ at Madison Logic by trusting in overall growth. [19:42] Book recommendations from Vin and Eric for how to run a better business. [20:50] Vin’s favorite business tools and why he loves Slack and Domo. [21:25] The best way to get in touch with Vin online and learn more about Madison Logic.   Resources From The Interview:   Vin Turk on LinkedIn Vin Turk Email Madison Logic The Department of Defense Northeastern University Info Week IBM Oracle Intel Dell Cisco Inc 5000 Clarion Capital Bombora Salesforce Marketo Bizable LinkedIn Sales Navigator ‘Dharmesh Shah Vectors Elon Musk’ Ben Horowitz Mark Cuban Slack Domo Must read book: The Hard Thing About Hard Things, The Innovator’s Dilemma   Leave Some Feedback:   What should I talk about next? Who should I interview? Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review here Subscribe to Leveling Up on iTunes Get the non-iTunes RSS Feed   Connect with Eric Siu:    Growth Everywhere Single Grain Eric Siu on Twitter

Do you need to have a big company before you start worrying about things like vision and culture? I used to think so... but the truth is, building culture and demonstrating the vision is the most important job of the CEO and can make or break whether you're successful. In this clip, we'll talk about ways you can implement culture, recruit a-players and share your vision better with your team, no matter how big or small your company is!

Today’s guest, Gary Saarenvirta, has been thinking deeply about AI long before the current hype. Having worked in the AI space for over 25 years, Gary was shocked at how little math and science was used in big business, and founded Daisy Intelligence to fill this glaring gap. Daisy is a SaaS AI-powered platform that helps retailers and insurers achieve higher profits by helping them make smarter operating decisions. In this episode, Gary sheds light on some of Daisy’s product offerings and the specific ways they increase profitability. As someone with an engineering background, Gary always focused on the technical side of things, but with the growth of the business, he has become increasingly aware of the value of people and culture. We talk about various ways that Daisy looks after their team, including flexible remote working options during COVID and mentoring programs. Gary himself has seen the value of having a coach, and he shares how this has helped him grow as a leader. Along with this, we discuss why Daisy’s technology is uniquely differentiated and how they use optimal control thinking to ensure their software stands out. Gary believes that by making businesses more efficient, through autonomous enterprise, it will not only reduce product costs but decrease the cost of living generally. We wrap the show up by hearing some of Gary’s must read books as well as why being a small company that has productized AI has helped them attract top talent. Don't miss out! TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:21] Before we jump into today’s interview, please rate, review, and subscribe to the Leveling Up Podcast! [00:45] Learn more about Gary and his background, and his company, Daisy Intelligence. [01:48] Some of Daisy Intelligence’s current clients including, Walmart Canada and Allianz. [02:08] How Gary walked into the idea for Daisy after a stint in the corporate world. [03:48] Hear about how Daisy makes money as a SaaS platform and their pricing structure. [05:19] Some numbers related to Daisy, including employees, growth rates, and more. [06:49] What Gary has learned about the importance of culture as Daisy has grown.  [07:43] Specific tools and resources Gary has used to build company culture. [08:56] The ways that Daisy has taken care of their employees.  [10:22] How coaches have helped Gary grow as a leader and what’s been effective for him. [11:22] What optimal control is and how it’s helped Daisy to their $5.5 million ARR.  [13:06] Why making companies more efficient is one of Gary’s main motivators. [13:43] The time it took for Daisy to reach product-market fit. [16:30] How Daisy stayed afloat for 12 years before getting VC finance in 2015. [17:59] Gary’s favorite business tools and why he enjoys looking at cashflow. [18:42] Must read books that Gary recommends and other resources he consumes. [20:06] Bonus question: How Daisy manages to recruit such high-talent people.    Resources From The Interview:   Gary Saarenvirta on LinkedIn Daisy Intelligence Walmart Canada Green Shield Canada Allianz IBM Geoffrey Hinton Play Bigger QuickBooks Salesforce Patrick Lencioni Ideal Team Player TensorFlow Must read books: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, The Advantage,Built to Last, Good to Great   Leave Some Feedback:   What should I talk about next? Who should I interview? Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review here Subscribe to Leveling Up on iTunes Get the non-iTunes RSS Feed   Connect with Eric Siu:    Growth Everywhere Single Grain Eric Siu on Twitter

When should you split your focus and start to take on multiple projects? The problem with a lot of people is that they never focus on completing one project all the way through. Or they fail to diversify at the right time. In this clip, Eric shares his thoughts around the importance of creating a launch pad business before splitting to different projects.

How much should you spend on a business coach? How do you know if you'll get a valuable ROI from the experience? In this episode Eric shares his thoughts around why business coaches are worth it, and how to find a coach who will push you to greater heights.

When I first started podcasting, I was only getting 9 downloads a day. This sad trend continued through the next 12 months... and even after 2 years I was only getting 30 downloads a day. Flash forward to today and I'm generating over 1.3 million downloads a month. What happened? In this clip we'll discuss the lessons I learned along the way of recording over 2,000 episodes!

Elay Cohen, CEO, and co-founder of SalesHood joins us on the show today to talk sales enablement platforms, dominating a category, and boosting sales through collaboration! SalesHood is a sales enablement platform that has been at the forefront of its niche as it evolved from its early adoption phase to a broad base market offering! We hear about the platform’s genesis where Elay realized the benefit of doing sales enablement to help companies grow while he was Senior VP of Productivity at SalesForce. From there, we learn what sales enablement actually means before Elay talks about the many companies who have experienced hyper-growth since adopting their platform. Elay weighs in on how SalesHood makes their money as well as shares metrics about their growth rates, ARR, and more! We also get into the effects of COVID on the success of SalesHood and their clients, and how the platform is perfectly suited to thrive at this time of increased migration to virtual. Elay does a great job of explaining the story behind how they arrived at a product to market fit, which leads into the topic of creating and dominating a category, and the role Elay’s book, Enablement Mastery, as well as his initiatives to create communities around sales enablement have played in this. Wrapping up, we hear Elay’s thoughts on his favorite book, tools, and CEOs so make sure to listen in and hear it all! TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:41] Before we jump into today’s interview, please rate, review, and subscribe to the Leveling Up Podcast! [00:15] Introducing Elay Cohen and SalesHood, a sales enablement platform. [00:38] What led up to SalesHood; the need to build a system that helped with scaling.  [01:40] What sales enablement is and how it helps teams boost sales through collaboration. [02:35] Examples of companies using SalesHood that have experienced hyper-growth. [04:12] How SalesHood makes money using a price per seat model. [05:09] Metrics for revenue, growth, employee count, ARR, users, customers, and more.  [07:49] How COVID has helped SalesHood by enabling their clients to go virtual.  [08:36] The two-plus year journey taking SalesHood to product to market fit. [13:17] Creating/dominating a category and why Elay wrote Enablement Mastery. [17:18] The value of creating a community around a category to dominate it. [19:43] Elay’s book recommendation and what he’s learning from That Will Never Work. [20:47] Essential software tools Elay uses. [21:43] Why Elay is such a fan of Gordon Ritter, Jason Lemkin, and Carmel Jud. [23:39] The best way for people to find Elay online and connect with him.   Resources From The Interview:   Elay Cohen Elay Cohen Email Enablement Mastery Arthur Do SalesForce DocuSign RingCentral Sage Verizon Ron Baden Domo Adobe Sign (EchoSign) Fortify Parker Harris Marc Benioff Telogis Arjun Gupta John Hopkins University Northern Illinois University University of Texas at Austin Stanford University Dreamforce Jira Google Drive Google Docs Google Slides Google Spreadsheets Gordon Ritter Emergence Capital Jason Lemkin Carmel Jud Rising International Must read book: That Will Never Work   Leave Some Feedback:   What should I talk about next? Who should I interview? Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review here Subscribe to Leveling Up on iTunes Get the non-iTunes RSS Feed   Connect with Eric Siu:    Growth Everywhere Single Grain Eric Siu on Twitter

Does marketing mean making money? It can be very easy as a marketer to focus on all the ways to generate a profit and make a lot of extra cash through sometimes shady ways. But is that best for the long term? In this clip, Eric Siu shares his thoughts around long term strategies to develop a marketing breakthrough and avoid short term thinking. This will help you from getting stuck at a ceiling.

Making money is easy, according to our guest today, Taylor Welch, co-founder of Traffic and Funnels, but knowing how to invest and multiply wealth is the hard part. This is why he has made it his mission to arm people with the skills they need to grow their money and minds beyond self-imposed limits. We kick off this episode by learning more about Traffic and Funnels and how they help clients build online digital marketing systems and show high-level consultants, coaches and experts how to develop lead generation machines to scale businesses to seven figures a year. From there, we dive into the importance of mindset. For a long time, Taylor was a skeptic about how important it is, but through seeing the power of positive, intentional thinking firsthand, he now knows that it’s a foundational pillar of success. We then turn our attention to leadership where Taylor shares his approach. For him, it’s about fostering his team to be able to not only make decisions but understand the motivation behind their choices. It's not about not making mistakes; it’s about what you learn from them. We round the show off by delving into the flywheel approach to business, SalesMentor, and why all businesses don’t need to make money. Be sure to tune in today! TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:41] Before we jump into today’s interview, please rate, review, and subscribe to the Leveling Up Podcast! [01:04] Learn more about Taylor’s background and the work that he currently does. [02:23] Find out about Traffic and Funnels, what they do, and how they make money.  [04:26] The importance of mindset and why people stay stuck where they are. [05:48] Why Taylor believes it’s important to have lower ticket, affordable products. [08:35] Passion is an equally important driver in creating a product as money is.  [09:33] Where Taylor puts his time and energy in the business. [10:05] Taylor’s tips for entrepreneurs who want to scale their businesses effectively.  [11:39] Learn more about how Taylor coaches his leadership team and the approach he takes. [14:46] How Taylor thinks about risk when delegating decision-making.  [16:32] Some of the $10,000/hr. tasks Taylor dedicates his time to. [18:04] Why Taylor believes that leadership is the hardest part of running a company. [19:11] The marketing strategies that are helping Traffic and Funnels’ growth currently. [21:37] Find out how to strategically repurpose old content and frame it as new. [23:03] Traffic and Funnels’s approach to new ads and new offers. [26:01] The flywheel approach: How entrepreneurs create new businesses from existing ones. [27:03] Why it’s not necessary to build every business for money. [28:04] Learn about SalesMentor and the work that it does. [30:16] The book that’s shaped Taylor’s thinking and the tool he’s using in his business.   Resources From The Interview:   Traffic and Funnels Taylor Welch on Instagram Taylor Welch on LinkedIn Wealth Cap Holdings ‎Daily Mind Medicine Chris Evans on LinkedIn Mastering the Rockefeller Habits Verne Harnish Russell Brunson Jay Abraham Ray Dalio Asana Elon Musk on Twitter Must read book: Principles   Leave Some Feedback:   What should I talk about next? Who should I interview? Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review here Subscribe to Leveling Up on iTunes Get the non-iTunes RSS Feed   Connect with Eric Siu:    Growth Everywhere Single Grain Eric Siu on Twitter