Latest / GTM Made Simple / Solo Founders Take Years. Partners Take Months.

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Solo Founders Take Years. Partners Take Months. · GTM Made Simple

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  Sangram here. I get a lot of questions around how you grow as a business because when marketing at
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  Pardot, we got acquired by Salesforce and that was a great exit that went from 10 million to $10
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  billion company. And then I got to build terminus with two other co-founders, which we grew at a
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  million to 5 to 15, and then had a private equity exit at a pretty substantial rate. then I
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  did two more things, something called booking a weekend. If you go check it out, we're helping
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  authors write books and then build a community called peak. And now I'm building GTM partners. But
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  here's the one thing that's common in all of them. And this is something I want people to really,
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  really understand. Growth does not happen alone. So when I think about every one
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  of those stories, I'll just go through a couple of them. When you think about building terminus, I
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  worked with Alex, Pat and Rick Ross. Why? Because they actually started the company first, and I met
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  them later on, and I could see very quickly that they both were technical founders and business
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  founders, and I was the marketing sales guy. So it made sense because we complemented each other's
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  responsibilities. So we were able to grow. Way faster than me setting up in a shed or in my
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  parking in a coffee shop and trying to create, market, sell, build product like 80 different
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  things operations, all the things that are founder are solopreneur or business person has to do. It's
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  impossible. Let me take it back. It's not impossible, but it can take years to get what you
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  can get in months. It can take days. What? What you might be able to build by yourself in months or
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  years. So it's very important. I've learned if you want to have real growth, you have to learn to
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  grow with somebody. All right. Here's another one. Think community. I started with Judd and yeah, Judd
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  was my business partner at that time. And we build a great community for marketers who wanted to
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  become a CML supporter, not because he is great at operations and I was decent at marketing and
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  sales. Same thing with GTM partners. Now with GTM partners, we are again big. We're almost like in
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  five years, about 10 million in revenue. And my co-founder is Bryan. Now, Bryan was a product guy
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  through and through an engineer and knows how to build things. And here I am again, the marketing
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  salesperson. So in every one of those areas, I'm looking at it and saying, man, growth truly does
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  happen when you are actually with someone that complements your business, complements your skills
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  in every way. As a matter of fact, it's a side gig just for the fun of it. Because I've written three
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  books and I'm one of my friends. His name is Tim Elmore. He has written 30 books. So for fun, we say
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  that between Tim and I, we have 33 books. And then we were like, wow, they both have written a lot of
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  books and I'm only within three years within the 30. So it's kind of an internal joke. All of my
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  books have been about building business, and each of those books built a $100 million business. But
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  you have written books that are on leadership, on individuals and individually have been built. But
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  you've written 30 books that have helped other people get to their dreams. So why don't we just
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  create something called The Bookman? We can. Or we can bring people together and and help them write
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  a book. And we really have been doing that for 2 or 3 years now. And it's been a phenomenal
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  experience for no other reason than it's just super exciting to do what I got to do. So all that
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  to say is that growth truly happens. It almost accelerates when you do it with someone. Now,
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  here's another thing to think about from a personal perspective. I think about my family like,
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  well, how do we grow as a family for events like, I'm going to be in New York this week. I literally
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  am taking my entire family to New York, like this summer. And I said, well, let's just go and spend
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  three days in New York. Well, I'll go for the first day. I'm going to go speak. My son, who's 15, he's
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  going to do the recording. So see, he has a job. My daughter wants to see how I put everything. So
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  she's going to go and attend. And then the next day we're literally going to be in the hop and
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  hop out Busses, and we'll be able to just spend a few days in New York. And now you got business
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  and work together. And then you know what happens. We grow together. Instead of me telling how to
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  work hard, they see me working hard. And we learn that together instead of me telling, well, you got
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  to take breaks in life. They see me working hard a day, and the next day you're literally in the hop
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  and hop out of busses all day long. So all of that can be learned when growth truly accelerates,
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  when you do it together. So I don't do growth alone anymore. And if you are someone who's trying
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  to grow alone, it's just gonna be harder. It's just gonna be longer. It's gonna just take more time.
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  It's gonna be more frustrating. But if you can find a business partner, maybe one, if not two, but
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  one for sure who could complement in almost every area of whatever you're not great at, then you can
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  grow much faster and it will accelerate every single thing in in business and in life. Thank you.