The ratio for startup success does not favor many, but today’s guest managed to rise through the ranks and founded a now acquired startup. Adam Rosen is a serial entrepreneur, startup founder, and business coach. In this episode, he joins host Chris Swartz to share the trials and successes of his startup journey. The years of struggle also gave him an abundance of insight on how to make it in business. Adam shares practical lessons for startup entrepreneurs and business owners alike on entrepreneurship, the value of meaningful relationships, and the most important rule in startup. Listen in to learn all about it!

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Adam Rosen – From College To Founder Of Acquired Startup

I am here with Adam Rosen. Adam, how are you?

I’m doing good, Chris. I appreciate you having me here. I’m excited to be chatting with you.

It’s a pleasure to have you. I appreciate you reaching out and making the contact here. We’re going to share Adam’s story. He is a serial entrepreneur. He has had several startup companies. I want you to tell us a little bit about what you’re doing now and your journey in the startup world.

Even before we get into what I’m doing now, it’s always important to highlight where it came from. Number one is it’s interesting that I’m talking to you. It’s very ironic that your show is called FUEL because I never held a real job, a real 9:00 to 5:00. Coming out of college is when I started my company, but I got introduced to the world of entrepreneurship because, during my senior year of college, I started an entrepreneur accelerator at my school. Ironically, it was named FUEL for Funding Unique Entrepreneurial Leaders. It was a little different.

Anyway, I did that. My senior year went well. They offered me a one-year MBA and then three weeks before I graduated from that program, myself and my two original cofounders ended up becoming my first startup, which was basically a tech platform for college student organizations where our customers were Bank of America, Amazon and Eighteenth World. We did that for about five years and we’re acquired back in 2019.

To make it clear, when I say acquired people assume that I moved out to Hawaii, which technically I did, but I didn’t move out to Hawaii as a retired 26, 27, 28-year-old. I was not sipping Mai Tai on the beach every day. It was more of, “Let’s make sure we get our investors as much money back as possible.” Our students and customers end up in a good place and we can move on to whatever’s next in the journey. That’s what I did before starting what is my lead generation company now.

You’re enjoying some nicer weather there in Florida than we are here in Philadelphia. I don’t know what’s going on. It’s supposed to be spring, but we got another cold front here. I’m a little jealous there in Hawaii but enjoy man.

I grew up in the Northeast and I was talking to some people this past weekend and they were like, “It’s 70 degrees here.” I’m like, “That’s beautiful.” They’re like, “But in a few days, this can be back down to 30s and 40s. Spring is always bouncing back and forth.

I want to talk to you a little bit about the journey. I’d love to get your perspective because it seems like you’re going to be a little bit of a younger entrepreneur and you were about to graduate college and you’re already off to the races. I like this perspective and having that entrepreneurial bug because I feel like there are a lot of things you can learn in school. “I’m going to take this major. I’m going to do this,” but I feel like when you have that entrepreneurial bug, it’s inside you and you either have it or you don’t. I don’t know that that’s something you can learn. I don’t want to talk to you about how you were going through school, how you were building a multimillion-dollar business to have an exit strategy.

 

I didn’t even know what the word entrepreneur meant until my junior year of college when I took an entrepreneurship class. I’d say the bug I always had as a kid was I was wanting to do something special. I was wanting to be a professional athlete until I realized that I don’t have what it takes to become a professional athlete in any of the sports that I loved. I wanted to run a professional sports team. I did some internships with the Philadelphia Phillies. I did one for a Minor League baseball team and basically, long story short, I realized I was totally out of that industry when I was working like a dog 12, 14 hour days on game days, not getting paid a penny driving 45 minutes both ways to go there and back.

I remember one day I went to go grab a hotdog and when I got back with the $1.25 hot dog, the PR my advisor was like, “Did you pay for that hot dog?” I said, “You’re telling me after working for free all summer for 12, 14-hour days, you’re going to make me pay for this $1.25 hot dog?” That was the nail in the coffin.

That was when it was like, “There’s got to be something different.” That’s when I happen to stumble across an entrepreneurship class that led to me running that program. I wouldn’t say I always was an entrepreneur as a young person, but I always wanted more. As I got older and started to learn more about entrepreneurship, I found that entrepreneurship, if done right, can provide amazing freedom and that’s what I desire. That’s what I think everybody desires one way or the other is freedom. That’s what I’m always striving for when I build my businesses.

I love what you sent over in the bio with the digital nomad thing. That’s one of the most important things in life and you can have all the money in the world. If you’re a slave to your business or your W-2 job, that doesn’t do anything for me personally. I think there’s a lot more to life than money. If you can’t enjoy the money, what are you doing?

Especially with technology, you’re in Hawaii, I’m here freezing in Philadelphia right now. The technology is we can sit here, we can have this face-to-face Zoom interview. You can be in Hawaii and I can be in Philadelphia. It’s an amazing time to be in business or to be alive with technology. If you can take that and run your business from anywhere, how does that play out for you? To me, that’s the ultimate goal is that you’re not tied to an office.

I used to think that was the only way to do things. In my tech startup days, I was constantly in the office. Anyone who worked at an office knew if they were there, they were going to find me there. I worked out of WeWork and there were several hundred companies in there. I was a Monday through Sunday type of guy in the office working from before the sun went up to well after the sun went down every single day.

I thought that was the only way to live and I think it was great for that chapter, but now I want to live a very different chapter. Part of the blessing of COVID was exactly what you said. In the past, it was Millennials. Now, there are the Gen Z-ers or Gen X-ers. They could use Zoom if they needed to. They could use whatever Zoom type of technology they wanted to use. Now, everybody can. I don’t care what generation you want.

Everyone can. You can never replace in person. Do you want to develop the best of the best relationships? You got to do it in person, but it’s an amazing thing because me and you got to connect. I went from Hawaii now, I’m in Austin, Texas for the next month, but we got to connect in Hawaii to Philly. Now, from Austin to Philly and when I bounced around the world more, I’ll be talking to people from all different time zones. That is the beauty of technology, but also the beauty of everyone to feel uncomfortable now behind this video screen, which a few years ago wasn’t even the case.

I think that’s one of the blessings of COVID if you call it that. It has advanced and opened up so many doors. For people reading, the opportunities that are coming out of this pandemic to create businesses and ways of doing business might have taken another 5, 10 years to get to this point. Even in my business, in the mortgage business, there were a lot of banks that still wouldn’t take a digital signature and some counties where we’re recording the deeds where they wouldn’t accept it. It was like, “When everything was shut down if you still want to do your business, you better figure out how to get comfortable accepting digital signatures. It took something that may have taken, my industry, for example, a couple more years that was in a matter of a couple of months. There are so many other businesses and opportunities now as a result of the pandemic.

We need the product to drag us. We’re not going to drag the product. Click To Tweet

I remember during my tech startup days, sometimes we would set up meetings, instead of a phone call, why don’t we try doing a Zoom type of meeting. It was so awkward and nobody wants to do and understand it. “Why are we doing a video call?” Now, almost every first meeting is now a Zoom call. Phone calls are still nice especially if you’re on the road bouncing around, but the nice thing about Zoom is in these conversations, you can feel out body language at least better than you could on a phone call. From a sales perspective, it’s a great asset and tool. The sooner you can get comfortable behind a camera, which does take time to get used to doing as well. It’s because it is a skill. It is a muscle.

We all jumped on and were like, “Is my camera on?” The first ten minutes of every Zoom meeting was trying to get that one slacker in the group up to speed. No, most people are fairly comfortable. How are you leveraging your success and what you’ve built? What did you learn going through that process and how are you using that to get to the next level right now?

Again, going back to my tech startup days because those five years, I call it the greatest, most expensive PhD that anyone could have. It was five years of true ass-kicking where yes, we were acquired but the amount of time and money we put in for the result that we got was not at all what any of us expected, dreamed of or hope for. In that, you get so many learnings. For me, my biggest learning is I do a lot of work coaching, advising startups and small businesses in all different industries and I always stress three words, product-market fit. How, as a company, can you get a product-market fit?

What I mean by product-market fit is will somebody buy from you once? Will they buy from you a 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and a 6th time? Will they want to pay you more money because you’re providing more value? For my tech startup, that was our biggest problem. We were great at getting new business. We are great. We leveraged cold email. That’s how we got into the company we’re doing. We could always get sales appointments. We were good sellers. We had an interesting product. However, it wasn’t a sticky product. Any business, I don’t care who you are, if you can build that foundation of a strong product or service that has a strong product-market fit, it will allow you to scale and scale the right way without you feeling like you have to clog up holes in a leaky bucket.

It is one thing to be able to sell a product once but it’s that stickiness. Even if you’re a service-based business, somebody’s going to want to come back to you. Are they going to want to tell their family or friends, which is in my world, that’s the biggest thing? When you look at those three things, how do you ensure as an entrepreneur or a business owner that you may come up and say, “This is great. We’re going to create stickiness because this is why they’re going to want to come back? I imagine there’s a lot of trial and error too. Like you think there might be stickiness, but does the market respect that and want to come back?

My business partner and I talk about this a lot. With the email company that I have now, we’ve been going so slow with it, building out the foundation because our whole thought process for the past year since we started was we need the product to drag us. We’re not going to drag the product. What I mean by that is like you said. You can sell something once. You can drag people over the finish line. You can convince someone to stay with you, but for us, we intentionally in the beginning would only do three-month contracts each time.

Is that the smartest thing long-term? No, you want to lock into as long of a term contract as possible and get paid as much as possible upfront. That’s what the smart business move is, but for us, we wanted the market to say, “This thing is working. We want more of this. You guys should grow this thing.” We intentionally let the product drag us. Until now, we’re like, “There are legs on this. Let’s continue to clean this up. Let’s continue to improve our systems. Now, let’s focus on how we scale this in a responsible way versus in the past it was, “Let’s scale before we’re ready and we’ll figure all that other shit out afterwards.”

That’s what a lot of people do. They start to scale and then, “It’s all going to figure itself out,” which ties into the next thing as you do that. Before we get to the wins, we’ll talk about some of the pitfalls, some of them, “Oh shit, why do we do this,” or how do we course correct? The biggest thing in business and in life is sometimes you think you have it all dialed in. You can spend all the time in the world on the perfect plan and then you execute and it sucks. It’s like, “That didn’t happen,” or there are external market forces. How did you adapt? Are there any kind of takeaways you can give to our readers when you hit those roadblocks?

The biggest thing is not being too married to anything. Sometimes as entrepreneurs, we get too married to ourselves or our thought process on things, our business or certain products we have out there because we love it. Our ego tells us that this is the greatest thing ever and the market should love it. One of the things that we did a very good job of, I would say and to give ourselves credit with my tech start, we were always ahead of the curve than the companies that were much more well-funded than us.

 

They ended up following us on a lot of these trends that we found and the reason why is because we were constantly boots on the ground, talking to our buyers, selling our buyers, listening to them, testing new products, seeing which ones stuck and which ones didn’t stick. The big thing is how do you not get too married to a specific thing that you’re putting out there to give yourself the flexibility to test and pivot as quickly as possible? Because as a startup, as an entrepreneur, that is part of the journey. You’re always going to be testing and failing, but you have to learn from that and figure out how you can iterate based on that.

You touched on another point too. When you have business partners, that adds a whole nother dynamic because it’s like, “Are you married to the idea because it was your idea and then your business partner cut it, for better or worse?” You may see the holes in it. That’s always a challenge as well in business and I’m sure you’ve experienced that with a business partner.

Technically in my tech startup, we had five co-founders, myself and four others. It ended with me and one other. Technically, it started with me and two others and then we added two more on the tech side to become founding team members. It ended with me and one other. We’re still business partners to this day. He was like a brother family to me but as you can imagine, there was a lot that went into three co-founders no longer working with us too. That is one of the biggest challenges that not only did I experience, but talking time entrepreneurs, every day, that’s one of the biggest challenges I hear with partnerships and a big reason why is because we all have an ego and trying to escape from that ego can be a challenge.

When you realize, “There are too many cooks in the kitchen here,” how did you address that, for the people reading that might be in a position where it’s time to go in a separate direction from people that they might’ve thought they would be good business partners with.

You all have to be rowing in the same direction. If you’re rolling in the same direction, everything is good. We talked about sports. You can have the best players in the world, but you put them on the same team and for whatever reason, it doesn’t work, fit and stick. That’s because they’re not all rowing in the same direction. Maybe all three of them are both in their career where what’s most important to them is going to the All-Star game versus like, “There’s one superstar. There’s someone that’s a little past their prime. All they care about is winning and they have the young upkeep that is starting to get into their prime, but they know that they’re still more role players. How do you put that perfect mix together where everyone is rowing in the same direction, where all that matters is winning a championship?

I think it’s the same thing with startups. If the founding team members have too much ego involved and everyone’s not rowing in the same direction, you have to figure that out as quickly as possible. You need to make a change as quickly as possible and that’s why it’s so important. I don’t care if you start a business with a family member or a best friend or someone that’s close to you. That’s why it’s so important to have the legal documentation in place right away because I’ve seen so many relationships get super ugly. If you don’t have that legal documentation in place, you’re shit out of luck because that is part of that part of the world. I see its cons I see it more often than I see the opposite where partnerships work out swimming lean and smooth.

It’s planning for the worst but hope for the best. It’s how you get all that in place. I definitely think when you have a business, getting everything in order and navigating those partnerships. Let’s go back a little bit and we’ll talk about your journey. You mentioned when you were younger, you wanted to do something special. What does that mean? When did you realize it? Is it when you were a young kid? Was there an a-ha moment for you?

It is literally since I can remember. I remember being five years old and thinking for sure I was going to be a Major League baseball player. Every kid dreams that and wants that or that type of thing, but that dream never went away. I remember I was very fortunate. My father ran a lot of big radio stations in New York City and one of the things he always wanted to give to my siblings, myself, as well as to all of our friends was he wanted the opportunity to introduce us to as many celebrities as possible.

The big reason why is he would always say, “Adam, I want you to meet these people, because I want you to see that they are no different from you, me or anybody else. They’ve just been able to accomplish extraordinary things because of the extraordinary work and talent that they have. I remember meeting at 7, 8, 9, 10 years old the biggest of the big like the Jay-Zs of the world and Beyoncé. Kanye West is always one of my favorites. All these people have accomplished all these amazing things, but you see they are no different. I think that played a big role too.

“You cannot hit a target you cannot see.” – Zig Ziglar Click To Tweet

It’s like, “I don’t want to just live a standard life. I want to try to accomplish something more.” I never knew exactly what that was and frankly, even now, I don’t know exactly what that means, but I know that that is burning within me for better or for worse. That’s something that’s always been there for me since I can remember.

I have two daughters and for people reading that might have kids or may have kids in the future, one of the things is I do have my own business. I bought and sold real estate. I’ve always worked as soon as I could work. I cut lawns and shoveled snow, the whole deal. It’s anything you could do. That was in me by nature. My oldest is a little bit different. She doesn’t have that entrepreneurial mindset, but she’s got other things she wants to do like policy work in Washington and help do things like that, which is great.

I’m trying to show her to say, “You can do these awesome things, but also have a good life. I try to not push like, “Be an entrepreneur. To start a business,” because that’s what I want to do. She’s not me and she’s her own young lady now. I introduced her to things. It’s like the celebrity things like, “We’re going to go on vacation. We’re going to do this or we’re going to fly first class. Wasn’t that pretty cool?” You get their wheels spinning to see that, “This seems like a better way to do things and I’d like to do this and then hopefully instill that kind of drive to achieve those things.”

That exposure that your dad did is so cool because it’s showing you, “Look at these high-level people. They’re like you and me, but they work hard, whatever it is, their talent or their athleticism. They’re putting in the work and here’s the reward. When you see that as a tangible thing, I give silly examples with my daughter, but there have been times when we do things and we’re blessed to do things some people may not have the opportunity to do.

When we do those things, I have her take a look like, “It was pretty cool to sit courtside at the basketball game, right? “Yeah. How did that happen?” “It happened because dad busts his ass.” That’s a cool thing that your dad did and probably had more of an impact. You had no idea at the time how much of an impact that would have, but that’s an awesome story, man. Kudos to dad for having the wherewithal to come and show you what it’s like to meet those people.

On that note because you sparked thoughts too and I love that you’re doing that for your kids. One of my favorite quotes is by Zig Ziglar. He says, “You can’t hit what you can’t see.” He’s referring to goals, but it’s the same thing with anything. I’m not a parent so I don’t know what I’m talking about here especially, but I would imagine the greatest gift you can give your child is one, unconditional love, but two, it is showing them what is possible and that there is a way there’s a path to accomplishing that thing.

If you could expose them to it, whether it’s private jets, sitting courtside, freedom and spending more time with your kids or whatever that is, that that’s that bigger thing that you’ve accomplished that you’re able to share with their kids, just by them seeing it makes it so that they can believe it. The next thing is, “What do you need to do in order to accomplish that if you want that for your life as well?”

Freedom is a big part of that too because girls play sports. Regardless of the time of day or day of the week, I’m always at the sporting events, in the middle of the day or after school. I’ll probably miss here and there, but most of the events and whatever it is at school. It’s like, “That’s pretty cool. Dad’s busy, but he can still have the flexibility to show up at my game at 3:00 in the afternoon. I try to show them the lifestyle piece because it’s not about sitting courtside or flying first class. Those are things to expose them to, “These things exist. Be aware if you’re interested. If you work hard, you might be able to do that. Some people could give a shit less. It’s not important. It’s more about freedom and lifestyle. My daughter, she wants to have an impact and help other people.

Any of these organizations are going to fundraise. If you want to have an impact, typically, you need money behind the organization to do that. It’s being aware of the different ways that you can leverage relationships and that’s the other thing too. I’m not good at many things. My kids and my family will tell you. They’re like, my wife says I have amnesia. If it weren’t for her, I’ll put something down and I’ll be like, “Where is that?” She knows exactly where everything is. One thing I’m good at doing is I’m good at building relationships. I’m good at meeting people, building and nurturing relationships.

 

My family is blown away and annoyed. Anywhere we go, I know if I came out to see you in Austin, there’s a good likelihood that I have a huge network of people in Austin. Anywhere I go, it can be in an airport in another country and someone’s like, “Chris.” I’m like, “Yo.” That’s my big thing. It’s the same as you. My hopes and dreams of being a professional NHL player are out the window. My claim to fame is, “I know a lot of people.” I call it a relationship capitalist. It’s like, “I’ve got that capital. If I need to use it, if I need something, I know I can probably pull it in from somewhere and that’s one of the things that are important. That relationship capital is way more important than actual capital.

I would imagine for you, it’s because it’s genuine. People can always smell BS. Whether we realize it or not, our intuition can always pick up on it and you know the people that are slimy and are just trying to get something from you. We all can feel that but when you come at a relationship in an authentic, genuine way where you’re legitimate-looking to develop a relationship and add value if there’s a way to add value, people will appreciate that. They’ll want to spend more time with you. People don’t want to spend time with you when they constantly feel like, “What are they trying to sell me? What is it? What do they want for me? Coming from a disingenuous spot, it’s impossible to develop relationships. Clearly, you’ve done a great job of it in your career.

The authenticity piece is so important because if you’re out there you’re an authentic person. You’re building those relationships. As I said, you’re going to have that relationship capital. You’re going to have that built up to a point where anything you need if you need funding for your startup, you’re going to have somebody. If you need an attorney to draw up some documents or get you through a sticky situation, you’re going to have somebody. The people that you have, if they’re aligned with who you are and your authentic self, they’re going to be good people. You can have all the money in the world and there are a ton of examples of this like celebrities, athletes and multi-million billionaires that get hosed.

They run with the wrong people who are aligned with that hustle and that drive of, “I want to meet Adam because I know he has money. Adam likes the ego piece of, “Everybody wants to be around me,” but who are you attracting? What are their motives? That’s the thing where if you focus on the relationships that you build, no matter what you’re looking to do, it’s going to make life so much easier. I wish that I learned how important the relationships that I built would be in my life.

I sit here and I joke and it was an a-ha moment because it’s not super exciting to say, “I’m great at meeting people, building relationships and connecting people.” I was like, “I need to get a high-level hobby or I need to do something that’s a little sexier than this. Through my coaching, mentorship and stuff, there was a guy I sat next to on a plane. He got on the plane and we’re sitting in first class. This guy on the plane was wheeling and dealing the whole time. He barely took the phone away from his head to order his Jack and Coke. I was like, “Badass.” I’m chomping at the bit for this guy to get off the phone.

As soon as he did and it was appropriate, I said, “How are you doing, Chris? We started talking. This dude was next level. He had casinos. He had all kinds of crazy investments. He infuse capital into businesses and sold them. He raised hundreds of millions of dollars for different ventures. We talked the entire flight. A lot of my Meetups and things are in Dallas. It was from Dallas to Philly and we just bullshit the whole time.

He was brilliant dude, super next level. He was testing me like that like the older dude in mentorship fucking with me a little bit. “Tell me this, tell me that.” By the end of it, we hit that point where it was like, “Dude, I’m good at talking to people. He told me. He was like, “I hate talking to people. I’m a numbers guy. I’m an introvert. I raise capital.” He’s like, “You had me talking from wheels up to wheels down Dallas to Philly.” He’s like, “You have no idea what that’s worth.”

I got off the plane and I was like, “Holy shit.” There were so many other cool, crazy things that we talked about, but that was such a lesson. I was like, “You know what, this dude is right.” He is like, “I would kill to be able to do what you just did because I don’t like to talk to people.” I was like, “No shit.”

It’s a thing when the things that we’re best at, we tend to undervalue because it probably comes naturally to us. That’s probably something you’ve always undervalued. You’ve always had it as a skill though, but it takes someone like that saying, “I don’t know if you realize this, but that’s an insane skill that very few people have.”

The more genuine you can make relationships, the more value you can add to people. And the value will always come back in some way, shape, or form. Click To Tweet

Yeah. It’s not sexy. I’m not hitting a baseball out of the park. I’m not all these things. It’s something that’s like, “Okay.” I share all that to say, “Whatever it is, that’s the unique skillset that’s you, that’s authentic, own that and your life will change.” I get so many random requests to be on the podcast and I can sniff through them in 30 seconds. If it’s super sales bullet points like, “I got my new book out, this and that.” I’m like, “This is not what I do.” It’s exactly what you said in the beginning.

I just want to meet cool people and have good conversations so that the people who are reading this podcast can get some good value from some real genuine people. I appreciate you sharing everything with us. We definitely accomplished that and I’m happy you reached out because as I said, I get so many emails, which was cool when I started to get these emails. Your email caught my eye and we had a little meetup before. What’s next for Adam? Where are you going? What are you working on now? What’s the next step in your journey?

First, thank you for the kind words. That’s the power of emailing anything you can connect with somebody who I never knew about a few months ago, but then find out about your show, reaching out and us getting connected. The way I see this stuff is hopefully it’s not just the relationship that ends after this episode. The beauty of relationships is hopefully we’ll be able to continue that relationship and that’s for anybody reading.

Also, how do you not make relationships transactional? The more genuine you can make relationships, the more value you can add to people. The value will always come back in one shape in some way, shape or form. It may not be instant. It may not be from that person you even added the value to, but it will always come back to you if you’re always focused on how do I give value?

First, “How can I get value from people?” My main focus right now is on my company Email Outreach Company where again, that was the one thing we did exceptionally well with my tech startup was getting on sales appointments we did it all through cold email. Everybody always says cold email does not work and they are right. Cold email doesn’t work if you don’t know what you’re doing just like any medium like Instagram ads, doing a billboard or a newspaper ad. It doesn’t matter. If you don’t know what you do, you won’t be successful. Most people don’t know what they’re doing when it comes to cold email. I wish I didn’t learn what it was and how to do cold email, but we were forced to learn how to do it because of the circumstance we had.

Cold emails are better than cold calls.

Especially if you know what you’re doing. We got Mastercard as a client during my tech startup days because we emailed Ajay Banga, their CEO who is gracious enough to get on multiple phone calls with my business partner for mentorship and advice, which led to them becoming a client of ours. We can get you connected to anybody that you want. That’s the basic premise of the business is we work primarily with startups, but now with larger companies to help get them on more sales appointments and we do it all through cold email outreach.

To touch on that a little bit. I hear so many people say that email marketing is dead. People get too much email. I am OCD in my business email about getting to zero inbox. I’ll sort and organize everything. My personal email, it would probably take a week of my life to get through. I’m always like, “I’m going to sit down one day. I’m going to unsubscribe fucking everything here,” so I can get emails that I need because we’re inundated with email.

I’m a big guy like, “Don’t send me shit because I bought a pair of shoes from you.” I’m always like, “If I opted in and I want your stuff, hit me with it.” Just because of the fact that I got a sandwich from your shop and I used my card and signed up for I don’t know. You see the numbers. Is email marketing dying or just changing?

I see it in a very good way. When we do emails, by the way, it’s even tough for them what you’re saying. You’re saying, “I bought something from someone’s store and now I’m on their email list.” Now going to send me email marketing newsletters type stuff, “20% discount,” or whatever that might be. For us, we have a team that’s figuring out the email addresses of talent acquisition at Fortune 1000 companies as an example. We’re then cold emailing them to say, “Are you facing this problem? Here’s our potential solution. Here’s our social proof. Do you have fifteen minutes to chat about it?”

The reason why I say that email is probably more alive than it has been is because text messages started to take over, especially in the workplace. Now though because it started to overtake the workplace, people now want a separate text messages and email. Text message is personal, email or Slack-type services, that are business and professional. There’s a lot of noise out there, but there is noise in any marketing medium. There’s always going to be noise wherever you are. Most of it is crap. Most of it we’re going to disregard or mark as spam.

Most of it, we’re going to delete right away but that’s why it’s so important. It is how do you get to the point as quickly as possible? How do you know who your buyer is? How do you know what problems your buyers facing? How do you present your solution in a way that’s short, sweet and clear to the point to make it easy for them, where if they are having that problem, they’ll get on a phone call with you?

The other key though was following up because of exactly what you said. For us on average, it takes four emails to set up one successful meeting for a client. Most people aren’t going to follow up four times. We’ll have 8 or 9 follow-ups in the sequence and there are times we get a response on that 8th follow-up email where the person apologizes for not getting back sooner.

They end up getting on a phone call with one of our clients and they ended up purchasing the product or service. It’s the art of the follow-up and doing it in a respectful way. Not antagonizing people for not responding to you, but doing it in a way where it’s like, “If you’re interested, let’s talk. If you’re not interested, that’s totally okay. I’ll stop reaching out to you.

It’s being tactful with it. You used to get some of these email marketing campaigns like, “This is the last time I’m going to reach out to you,” or this crazy trying to give me a hard close in email. I’m like, “Great because I was meaning to unsubscribe.” What types of industries do you see that you serve that work best or that you’re most drawn to?

Industries have been across the board. The two big people that we don’t work all that well with or we don’t work with general, I should say is B2C because the B2C route is a little bit more challenging. The B2C route you could take is getting on podcasts like yours to share your message. Maybe you’re trying to sell a book or your fitness app or whatever that might be, but we try to stay away from B2C. The second is if they’re a niche company that has a niche audience where there are maybe only about a thousand different types of people to reach out to because, at the end of the day, cold email is a numbers game.

For our clients, we’re reaching out to 1,000 new people every month to 5,000 new people a month or even more than that. A lot of it is a numbers game. If you’re too niche, then it’s a challenge. In terms of different audiences that we work with, it’s everything from tech companies to public speakers to people that sell machines that kill viruses in hospitals to insurance. It’s literally anything in between. It can work for anybody that’s B2B and has a big enough audience.

I appreciate you jumping on the show and sharing all this stuff with us. It’s always great to meet cool people and have good conversations. It’s as simple as that. Hopefully, everybody listening got something out of this. We got some nuggets. If you want to connect up with Adam, get more information, and learn a little bit more about the startup journey or the cold email marketing and how that might help you B2B in your business, Adam, how can everybody find you?

You got to build to sell. Build your company and sell it from the start. Click To Tweet

You can find our website. It’s EOCWorks.com. The name of the company is Email Outreach Company. My email is Adam@EOCWorks.com. In terms of social media, I’m most active on Instagram where you can find me @AdamIRosen. It’s the best way to contact me. Let me know if I can help in any way. Chris, this has been a pleasure. I appreciate you having me on.

I’m not going to let you off the hook until you hit the three questions. We got our hot seat here. Rapid-fire questions, three quick questions. It’s simple and fun. The premise is you’re stuck on an island, maybe in Hawaii, but you’re not getting off the island. There’s nobody else on the island with you. Outside of family, friends and close loved ones that if you didn’t bring you to get in trouble, we’re going to give you a disclaimer that says, “Of course, you would bring them,” but who would you bring that is living or passed away or any anybody that you can think of to be stranded on this island with that you would want to bring with you?

You’re going to help me with him with what his name is. He is an Australian guy. He’s passed away, unfortunately. He was like the nature or the animal guy. He was all around.

Is it The Crocodile Hunter?

Yeah. I think he’d be a great guy to have on there. He knows all the animals he’d be a riot.

Are talking about Steve Irwin?

Yes. Thank. I feel like he’d be an interesting guy. He knows all the animals. He would tell me which ones I should be worried about, and which ones I want to be worried about. I think he’d be an entertaining guy to have.

It’s a good one.

It’s probably the first one that’s been mentioned so I’m going to go with Steve Irwin.

I would attempt the accent, but I would just butcher it and it would terrible. We’re going to leave that one alone. The second one is a book. What’s a book that you’ve read that’s had some influence on your life that you’d like to share with our readers?

One of my biggest pieces of advice to any company and I didn’t do a good enough job of it is you got to build to sell. Build your company and sell it from the start. I don’t care if you’re in insurance. I don’t care if you have a tech company. I don’t care what industry you’re in. Build your company to sell it from the start. The best book that describes how to do this in a simple way is called Built To Sell. Any startup, entrepreneur or anyone thinking about getting into entrepreneurship, it should be book number one in my mind. You got to build to sell. I don’t care who you are and what you’re building.

The last one is another fun one. What’s your favorite food or guilty pleasure? What do you have to have on this island? What are you taking with you?

I’m going with a nice T-bone steak. I love bread pudding so I’m going to get bread pudding. I’m going to pick a dessert too. I can go with some bread pudding for dessert.

Adam, it’s been a pleasure. Thanks for jumping on the show. It’s great to connect. I look forward to staying connected. For everybody out there, if you got something from this, we ask that you share it on social media. Give us a five-star rating on iTunes and we look forward to catching you on the next episode. We’re out.

 

Important Links

• Adam Rosen
• Adam@EOCWorks.com
• @AdamIRosen – Instagram
• Built To Sell
• iTunes – FUEL with Chris Swartz
• https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/adamirosen/
• https://Podcasts.Apple.com/us/podcast/the-rise-with-skrizz-adam/id1569755270

 

About Adam Rosen

I embrace my mistakes. I embrace the journey. I embrace the unknown.

I love the goodness of people.

I believe we are more capable than we realize.

I believe that things are better on the other side if we’re willing to take the leap.

I enjoy connecting with genuine people that are on their own growth journey.

I do a lot of my talking on IG: @adamirosen

…enough of the “I’s” 😊

Tags: cold emailing, entrepreneurship, goals, partnerships, product-market fit, startup