How David Amselem Scaled Dalet Media and BigVu by Partnering Artificial Intelligence With Personal Ideas and Creativity

[00:00:03] Hector: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the how to scale a business podcast. My name is Hector Sonti Esteban, and I'm just your host for today. Our guest of honor, our special guest is Mr. Dale Zawinski. He's the founder of Revenue Reimagined. And that's what we're going to talk about today is revenue and all the ways which we might be able to get it in the year of 2024.

[00:00:21] Hector: So Dale, thanks for hanging out with us today.

[00:00:23] Dale: Hey, Hector. I appreciate the invite. Looking forward to having a little conversation and see if we can help it. Some people.

[00:00:28] Hector: what's cool about following you and your partner over the last little bit is that I love bringing people on in your kind of position because you have larger sample size than business owners who have their sample size of one on a lot of times we feel like we're different or our problems are different.

[00:00:43] Hector: but, in doing what you do, it seems that you're able to have a little bit larger of a sample size and then really find some strategies Let's call it a wide range of founders, right? That, things that work for more than just one type of person. But I'd love for you to catch us up on how you got there.

[00:00:56] Hector: maybe what were some of the steps along the way or maybe what were some of the stumbling points along the way? catch us up on some of those points and then a little bit about what you do with your clients now. Yeah,

[00:01:05] Dale: Yeah. back in the day, I'm actually a recovering coder. So I used to code,when I was in university and got tired of going on site and doing implementation or encoding. I thought sales would be great to go do and then found out sales is totally broken. So I wanted to go work around sales and then found out it really wasn't the sales people.

[00:01:22] Dale: It was like really the leadership. Yeah. and it was always coming down from the top there, just doing things that weren't. As productive for the end customer, the end user. so decided to get into some leadership, and then did a couple of startups, from other countries. So my first startup was actually local in the Boston area, but then my second startup was actually at a Rotterdam in Holland and brought them into the U S.

[00:01:44] Dale: office in Cambridge and just get the startup bug from there. I just really enjoyed it. loved watching really cool tech, but really good founders with a great origin story want to grow and expand. And the challenges, while they to be always different in different places, you can always get root problems all the time.

[00:02:01] Dale: I decided to start my own business originally. So I was a solopreneur and then, Adam and I started a podcast called revenue reimagined. Adam went out in his own and we ended up getting a client together. there's a longer backstory on how we first got connected, but we got a client together.

[00:02:17] Dale: And then what we realized was us working together. Behind the scenes where we probably should have been competitors in space actually worked out better for the founder and the entrepreneur and how to grow the business faster because most of these times in the seed series a world, it's all about time to scale.

[00:02:32] Dale: It's all about, how do we extend runways and doing it together? We just found that we could make decisions much faster.

[00:02:41] Hector: Some metrics that I feel are, I would imagine, are really important in the, VC world people who are looking to get. funding, I would imagine that a lot of our listeners are self funded or not at that place quite yet.

[00:02:52] Hector: So I'm wondering,

[00:02:53] Hector: you know, they're bootstrapping, but I feel like there's still comparable metrics. There's still comparable things to be thinking about. So if someone isn't necessarily worrying about, VCs or investors, or you mentioned seed rounds and stuff like that, but there may be in that similar spot.

[00:03:06] Hector: Is there a comparable way to think about what you're talking about or to be focusing on those same things in terms of, strengthening the runway or you talked about time to scale, those applicable to someone who's bootstrapping as well?

[00:03:18] Dale: Yeah. A hundred percent at the bootstrap stage, you're still trying to figure out who wants your product, why they want your product. And you're still trying to figure out, if I pitch out the X number of people, how many are going to convert the top of the funnel?

[00:03:29] Dale: How long does it take them to get through the funnel? And how many are falling out the bottom? and how many you're going to close, then the question becomes how many stay with me. So in the beginning, when you're bootstrapping a lot, you may put just as many people as you can in the top of the funnel, whether they're your ideal customer profile or not, you're just trying to get a little bit of product feedback from the market.

[00:03:48] Dale: Then when you actually get them through the funnel, you may find. As you grow, your initial customers are going to churn at a much higher rate. And so what I tell a lot of founders that are going from like the bootstrap to the seed type area when you're in that space, don't worry as much about your churn because you may have not hit the right ideal customer profile when you're bringing them in.

[00:04:08] Dale: You think, I'm a big fan of Gary Vaynerchuk and he, always say was like, the market is never wrong, the market's always right. So if they're telling you that, the feature functionality, the value proposition that you originally promised wasn't necessarily the right one, they may churn out.

[00:04:22] Dale: obviously revenue is king, cash flow is king. You want to make sure that you're driving that stuff, but, metrics stay the same. And I would say the faster. From a founding perspective that you can start getting a hold of those metrics, the better you're going to be as you start to grow. Because if you have likeAdam and I come in to start talking about how to scale the business from founder led sales into say product market fit, we're going to want to start asking the questions on what do your conversion rates look like?

[00:04:46] Dale: How many leads or people do you bring into your funnel that actually will close and how many stay with you?

[00:04:52] Hector: one thing that I've to appreciate about this show is that a lot of our guests, let's call it, they layer on experiences and skills and that, there might be a,20 year multi decade career, but a lot of times there's experiences at the beginning of that career that are pivotal or hallmark or foundational to some of the things that they continue to build on. Are there things that you look back to from your first or your second venture that you still make sure to consider as you are building this new business and as you're consulting with some of your clients?

[00:05:21] Dale: Yeah, I think there's. two major things. One is like always learn. if you think that you know what's going to happen, it's never going to happen that way. So always be learning, always trying to think as I get older and as I learned through the process, it's gone from one part now AI and generative AI and chat bots, but you always have to be learning because, go to market revenue marketing sales is.

[00:05:43] Dale: always changed fairly quickly, but now it's changing at a rapid pace. what you're doing today may not work in three months. So you always got to have your eye on the ball, play a little bit of chess and look forward. And one of the things I didn't do. when I was first starting my ventures that I'm learning as I grow through the processes too many times as founders or as owners, or when you're starting with the business, you make a lot of decisions based on gut instead of the data, and while data isn't going to lie, you can actually manipulate data.

[00:06:11] Dale: So you got to combine them together. But too many founders go with their gut feeling versus what the data is really telling them. And so as a founder, I would dig in a little bit more on the data side to make sure you understand what the data is at least telling you and be honest with the data.

[00:06:25] Hector: Yeah, I feel like that's such a big transition point for business owners because most of them, they're in that technician kind of a role where they know everything that's going on with the business. And then all of a sudden they start to remove themselves from the process and. A lot of them feel like they're losing control, and it seems like the solution, if you will, to it, you're not going to control things, but the solution to be aware to be in the know is to have these numbers.

[00:06:47] Hector: And if you're just running things based on feeling or emotion, or you don't have those numbers to look at, then you can't make the best decisions that you might be able to.

[00:06:55] Dale: hundred percent. It's so true. you gotta, combine them together because you can also play games with the numbers as well, which wouldn't help you either. But, just have some self awareness that. The numbers may not be lying or the numbers may be truthful and make sure you pivot quickly but make sure you give yourself enough time. So I say it on both sides. You got to make sure that you pivot fast enough, but give yourself enough time to let it play out.

[00:07:15] Hector: maybe you can even just give our listeners an idea of what someone who's moving from that bootstrapping phase into, I see around or someone who might not have considered that,you mentioned to be thinking about these things as soon as possible. Have you ever encountered someone who was like, too late to the party, where they're all of a sudden, they're in the middle of this, but then they haven't got their house in order, their foundation's not correct. And can you share like,maybe how that might have played out?

[00:07:40] Dale: people don't have their house in order, which is really. What becomes fairly tricky because what I was learning before I started my own business is a lot of the founders that I would go and work full time for as like a head of sales, head of revenue. They were almost out of their runway, right? They may have had three or four months and all of a sudden they're like, Hey, you've done this before. you can generate sales super quickly. we need deals in two months. And the problem with that is this is an evolution and not a revolution.

[00:08:07] Dale: You actually have to evolve through the process. and make sure that we have product awareness. People know who we are. They're, the value proposition is really solid. Your origin story is coming across. And I think what ends up happening is. were running so fast and founders as a general rule of thumb have a hard time documenting the processes they've executed to get to where they are and the success they've run.

[00:08:29] Dale: Then they'll bring a person in and be like, go run it the way I've run it. And it just doesn't work that way. I think a majority of the founders have this challenge. I see it all the way through B companies. To be honest with you, like beef B series, they don't have these numbers. A lot of series a companies don't know what their conversion metrics are.

[00:08:45] Dale: And they when they get funding and then they're having challenges with the revenue, problem really isn't that they. Don't have the right numbers. The problem is they just didn't really have a process in place. So when I talked to funders, the best thing to do is build a solid foundation, document everything that you know, and just start iterating over that process.

[00:09:04] Dale: make sure iterate over the process and then. Just track the numbers that you can track. Like you're not going to get them all, especially as a startup. you don't know where your best markets are. You're not going to really understand your conversion rates or the time and funnel.

[00:09:16] Dale: But if you're starting to think that way, especially now, when you go to investors, The promise of a delivery now isn't really working. You actually have to show you're delivering. You have to show you're thinking about these metrics. You have to show that you have a path to at least get there.

[00:09:29] Dale: If you're not there, because as a bootstrap, if you do want to go get funding, the thing that you have to. Figure out is how do I generate the maximum amount of valuation for my company without giving up as much equity as they're going to want. So is that's the balance, like the more traction, the more.

[00:09:45] Dale: value you are producing, the less equity you'll have to give up in that process.

[00:09:50] Hector: This has been a really good, just laying the foundation to the next half of the conversation, which is, really, we haven't really talked about a whole lot of what you guys focus on is just driving revenue. So when we get back from break, Dale, I want to talk about, whether it's your pillars or your key philosophies, you guys seem to have a system, if you will, that people can plug into.

[00:10:06] Hector: So I'd love to chat about that, when we get back from this break,

[00:10:10] Dale: Hey, y'all today's episode is brought to you by amplify media. And we are a podcast and content inclusion company. we'd like to think of ourselves as a platform Because chances are, if you're listening to this, you have a passionate product, a mission, a message, something that you want to get out to the world, but you may not have the time team and the tech skills to be able to do that.

[00:10:25] Hector: if that's the case, we can help go to amplify media. com. That's a M P L a F Y media. com. You can also check the show notes for info. with that, let's get back to the episode. All right, Dale. we've only got a few minutes, you know,we got the last half of it to cover it. So we can only probably dip into the bucket, we scratch the surface, but if you could lay out the revenue, model that you guys.

[00:10:47] Hector: preach is the wrong word, but that you recommend or prescribe a lot. what does that actually look like?

[00:10:52] Dale: Yeah. So we have a framework that we built out called the line. and what it stands for is audit. Learn, implement, grow and nurture. And so most people that come, they think they have a problem on X and they say, I have a top of funnel problem. Great. you need more leads. We really do need to audit what's happening within the business, what's happening within your systems, and get a little bit more deeper understanding because I think the problem that many people think they have may not be the exact problem that they have.

[00:11:21] Dale: So we've started think of ourselves as like the special ops of go to market. Because we'll parachute in, we'll try to diagnose super quickly and then execute within, a few months between three to six months is usually our engagement. to make a difference and start changing that trajectory.

[00:11:37] Dale: So if your trajectory is going down, we want to stabilize it. That's the audit piece. We're learning. Then we start implementing, growing, and then you could nurture. And so on that turnaround, we had one client that was thinking that they needed more leads. The problem wasn't that they needed more leads.

[00:11:52] Dale: The problem was that were getting plenty of leads, but the process was broken. HubSpot implementation was broken. So leads were actually going in the HubSpot and just disappearing because they had, workflows overriding each other and no one was like really following up. So when we stopped the process and started doing some stuff manually to just figuring out how to manage the leads coming in, then we rebuilt the HubSpot and then we started getting them as new leads came in.

[00:12:17] Dale: We simplified the process. We eliminated. It was something like 87 workflows went down to seven, to do the same thing. And so the problem wasn't that they needed more leads. Maybe in the future they do need more leads. I don't think that's that ever will go away, but it was really servicing the leads that they were getting already.

[00:12:33] Dale: So audit, learn, implement, grow it, and then nurture, which is really that. Net retention, revenue, et cetera.

[00:12:40] Hector: what's great is that you have that audit part about it because I think a lot of people, they skip that part where they just start and tried implementing new things and they don't really assess. have you ever been, shocked, but like maybe surprised when you look in and start to do some of those audits about things that are either better or worse than, you might have anticipated.

[00:12:57] Dale: Yeah, a hundred percent. I'll give you an example. There was a series B company. I think they had just raised like a 20 to 30 million series B round. And when I started to talk to them, they had something like. Eight BDRs to like four AEs. and they wanted to bring in more BDRs.

[00:13:13] Dale: Now it was a very competitive market. There's a lot of commoditization in the market, which is fine, but I really never heard of two BDRs or one AE. And so when I started digging through the data and digging through some of their numbers, they weren't adding up to me at all. And the problem became their ICP wasn't defined well enough.

[00:13:29] Dale: So they were just putting a bunch of stuff into the funnel and then you start. comping BDRs on meetings or, whatever the compensation was. And then you're wasting the AE's time because they're not actually focusing on the right deals. They're just focusing on all the deals coming in.

[00:13:43] Dale: that really surprised me because they didn't really have a process in place being a series B company. You think by the time they got to that B round, they would have that stuff nailed and I never had seen a model that way. So

[00:13:54] Hector: And so had you come in and just done essentially what they wanted, which was just more people, more BDR, more account executives. I could imagine there's going to burn through the

[00:14:02] Dale: more cash. Yep. There goes your runway. Like all the stuff we can talk about, like your runway is going to be gone. you're going to burn the people out a lot. Like you're going to burn the ease out. Cause they're getting just crap leads and everyone's yelling at there. then you don't really get alignment, right?

[00:14:15] Dale: You get BDR saying, if BDRs are rolling into marketing, now you've got marketing and sales. Hey, we're giving you all these leads sales. Like, Hey, these are crap. We like the same old thing that's happening all the time in sales. So, what I like to do is when we start getting deals in the door, what you want to end up doing is driving.

[00:14:31] Dale: If they're the wrong, Ideal customer profile, we feed it back into marketing and the BDR so that we can change that up. it's an evolving process. there's no start and end date to like a ideal customer profile.

[00:14:42] Hector: Yeah. And then the next part of it you mentioned is kind of stabilization sort of period. what sort of things might businesses be doing in that? part of the process in terms of, implementations or chain, what does that focus on?

[00:14:54] Dale: getting market feedback. So let's say we need to change up messaging. Let's say we need to, make sure that we're putting a new outbound cadence. Does that messaging work? does it resonate? If not, can we pivot very quickly and change it up? And drive the behaviors. We're looking a bit dry, both from our internal team as well as the marketplace.

[00:15:13] Dale: And then the question is if that's not working, do we have a good product market fit? Is the messaging resonating? Do we have to go back all the way to the value proposition?

[00:15:21] Hector: I was fortunate to come up in the direct sales kind of world. And although a far cry from enterprise sales and B2B sales, at least a lot of the phases are the same. The process is stretched out a lot, longer, but I'm curious If really most businesses just need to tighten up This conversion architecture, right? This funnel process was so things don't leak, or if there's things that you actually are layering on and doing more of, right? think so many business owners, they want the shiny object, the sexy new thing what you've been talking about is let's just go back and let's clean up fix the basics.

[00:15:52] Hector: Is that most of what it is? Or is there, Something else that once all that's done, it's okay, actually, here's the seasoning or the secret sauce or the thing that, makes all of that go at an accelerated rate.

[00:16:02] Dale: think that's really through the growth stage that we have. So I found a lot of times we got to get back to basics, back to fundamentals, back to one on one when we do our podcast, we'll bring it all the way back to the origin story. okay, what was your origin story? Why were you so passionate about this thing that you're building product service, whatever it is.

[00:16:19] Dale: And if you can articulate that and get that into the market. And people are responding to it. Okay, now you have an ideal customer profile and buying persona. Now we can write messaging around it. people are trying to write messaging before they know who they're talking to or what the value proposition is going to, elicit.

[00:16:34] Dale: Cause you can put all the fancy stuff on top of it, but if you are building on top of a shaky cracked foundation, it's all going to crumble down. And that's what I see a lot happening. People are just trying to put duct tape and patch the walls because, Hey, we got to generate revenue for this investor or that investor.

[00:16:51] Dale: that's great. You can go do that, but you're still going to fail in the future. you're just pushing the inevitable out. So a lot of times when I used to get brought in full time, I'd get brought in right after a series a would get raised, for example. And after the series, they would get raised.

[00:17:05] Dale: I'd look at the, Numbers that we would give to the board or the investors. And I'd be like, it's not going to happen. the deals aren't there. The numbers aren't there. Our pricing strategy is off. Like it could be a multiple of things. So then you got to go restate the investors. And then as a head of sales or head of revenue, you're behind the eight ball before you even start.

[00:17:20] Hector: Yeah, such a great conversation. One, one last thing I'd love to get your thoughts on is this whole AI thing. Some people think it's the best thing in the world. Some people think it's, the Terminator reincarnate. how are you looking at it from your perspective and the way that you're working with your clients?

[00:17:33] Dale: Yeah, I think, It's a tool. It's another tool in the toolkit. I don't think it's going to take over many people's jobs. right away. I think there's an evolution that's happening. Like open AI is building these custom bots, you'll have Claude and Bart and Lama, like all the large learning models are coming through.

[00:17:49] Dale: I highly recommend back to one of the first things we were talking about, always be learning and like figuring things out. because now people are building custom AI bots to answer certain questions. I know right now I'm in the process of writing a book to help founders go through the process and I built my own custom chat GPT thing for.

[00:18:06] Dale: Asking questions about the book, right? So now you can put the content in and you start asking questions. So these are things that can, make you more effective and efficient. You just have to be super careful that you don't, depend on it for everything.

[00:18:20] Hector: Yeah, super, insightful and especially in sales, like you said, it's a tool. So I think people can look at it that way. one last question for you, but before we get to that, if people want to go deeper in your world, listen to you, listen to the pod, where's the best place to go?

[00:18:33] Dale: wherever you listen to your podcast, Revenue Reimagined is the podcast. our website is revenue reimagined. com. I'm on LinkedIn all the time. So happy to, work with anybody on LinkedIn. Come say hi, write a bunch of content around there. And hopefully, soon we'll have the book out.

[00:18:48] Hector: Dale, last question here. In your opinion, what is the secret to scaling a

[00:18:52] Dale: Foundation fundamentals. Do the fundamentals really well, and then you can scale from there. If you don't do the fundamentals well, you might get lucky, but, I find most people fail in that space.

[00:19:02] Hector: Yeah. Great stuff. For all you listeners who stuck with us, we appreciate you being here. We would love and forever grateful for a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts. And if you know someone who needs to hear this, who's in the midst of scaling their business, hit that share button, send them a text, let them know you were thinking about them and go get connected with Dale on LinkedIn if you're not already.

[00:19:19] Hector: And as always, we appreciate you being here. We'll see you on the next one. Later y'all.