Latest / The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson / Scaling SmallBiz: Be All In! with David Weiss

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Scaling SmallBiz: Be All In! with David Weiss · The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson

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  3, 10, 1, 0, ignition, liftoff,
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  Ending small business failure.
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  Welcome to the Small Biz Chat podcast with a number 1 small business expert Melinda Emerson.
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  Bolinda's goal is to end small business failure, and she'll give you the information
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  you need to succeed and live the life you've dream of.
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  Now here's the small Biz lady herself.
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  Melinda Emerson.
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  Hi, everybody.
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  I'm Melinda Emerson.
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  This small Biz lady, America's number one small business expert.
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  Now the whole mission of small business chat is to end small business failure.
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  We're all about helping people get peer to peer to advice in a comfortable setting when nobody
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  goes through but asking a question on small risk chat.
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  The reason why we do this is because we wanna get you guys an up close and personal access to
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  some of the top small business experts in the country.
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  And tonight's show is absolutely no exception.
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  And we're really excited tonight because tonight's show is being sponsored by MixedMax.
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  And let me tell you a little bit about MixedMax.
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  It is a marketing automation tool that works on top of Gmail.
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  So if you're like me, use Google Calendar, use Google Voice, and you use Gmail for your
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  business.
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  Next Max goes right on top of it.
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  It shows you when people open your emails, it lets you email people your availability.
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  So you don't do that all back and forth thing, you know, trying to tell people when you can
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  meet with them.
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  And it's a great way for you to automate emails to fill out.
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  So check out mixmax.com.
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  They've got a free trial, check it out, and that's mix max.com.
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  I want to introduce my guest.
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  David Weiss, He is a New York native and a sales beast where the company's selfie and they
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  produce photos and edible trees to help your business stand out David, welcome to small fish
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  jet ride.
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  Hi.
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  How are you?
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  Thanks for being here.
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  I think maybe just a quick note on that.
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  I don't I don't know how much of an effort I am, but I I like to learn a lot, and I'm always
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  reading new articles, trying to implement some new, tools, but I don't I don't think that
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  anybody's ever in effort in anything.
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  You gotta keep growing and really stay hungry after it, but I would I could share some of my
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  expertise and how we've kinda scaled this business in the past two and a half years to a
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  company of a pretty substantial size.
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  I'd say that maybe the the first thing that I could say is is that you you kind of have to be
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  all in.
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  I mean, especially in this startup world that we're kind of living in and when we're trying
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  to really, you know, get a bench press up there and get it, you know, clean, a clean hoist over
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  your head, you really have to be all in.
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  And just one of the sacrifices that I've had to make is not really having a life and having
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  that work life balance.
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  And that's just something that you're gonna have to commit to, and you have to be all in to
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  it.
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  And if you can't really give that, then you're not really gonna move the rock as far as you
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  want to.
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  It's gonna be a a sisypice the Greek god is destined to roll the rock uphill every day to
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  just wind up at the bottom each morning.
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  But, yeah,
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  Alright.
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  Well, tell us tell us about self e.
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  What is that?
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  How can we how can we get some?
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  So so selfie selffee is the edible photo booth and live on sighted events.
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  We print yes faces on demand onto food and drinks.
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  So we print on about a 14 or 15 different food and drinks.
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  But if you've ever wanted to eat a popsicle that has your face on it, we do that live at
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  events.
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  Then we're in we've scaled.
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  We started the business two and a half years ago in New York, and we've scaled it to 12
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  markets in the US, Canada, and the UK.
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  And just about an in under two and a half years, and it's a really, strong come out.
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  And I I think that a lot of this can really just be attributed to to just tenacity in our
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  in our outreach, in our sales, and in our marketing, and just kind of, again, it done
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  situation.
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  I mean, one one thing that I could say is that if you're the type of person, it's gonna say,
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  ah, you know what?
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  Okay.
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  Like, you know, 12 13, 14 hours.
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  Oh, it's, you know, oh, it's 10 PM.
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  I'm really tired.
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  I've been working since 8.
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  Oh, I need to, you know, turn off.
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  It's like, I don't know.
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  I I personally think that you should just go home because you're not you're maybe not ready
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  for it, or you're not ready to get serious about it.
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  When you're ready to get serious about it and you're ready to really stay after it, then it's
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  a it's a beautiful thing.
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  And some things that I felt, I'm pretty young also.
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  I'm I'm thirty years old.
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  I just turned 32 weeks ago, but I I actually feel like I've had transformational times in
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  sales, specifically, in outreach.
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  And when you figure out that little kinda or that little bob or weave, it's really
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  beautiful.
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  And I've really felt like this transcendence feeling.
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  It's kind of a a crazy a crazy thing to to feel.
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  And so kind of kind of what I'm really playing with all the time, I mean, everything is
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  positioning in outreach and how you're actually outbounding people So that's pretty much what
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  I'm thinking about all the time all day, every day before I go to sleep first thing in the
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  morning.
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  Is is how do you actually what's the most effective way to really outreach people and fit
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  fit the key to the
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  talk about that?
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  Let's talk about that.
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  What are some of your favorite offline marketing tactics?
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  Like, how do you go about doing that?
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  Well, 1st of all, I mean, I'm all in, and this is my baby.
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  So anybody that I talk to, I'm just always selling.
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  I think that offline, I'm I I think that I'm more of a beast really online than offline, but
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  I mean, it's it's really just just being the biggest, you know, just preaching, preaching
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  your brand, preaching what you do.
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  Also, we have the luxury.
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  We we've we've created this category and recreating demand for something that wasn't
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  currently there.
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  You know, it didn't exist 3 years ago that somebody could be in an event, take a photo, an
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  edible photo booth and then get their face on food and drink.
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  It it wasn't available before.
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  So nobody knows that they want something before somebody invents it.
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  Right?
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  So it's always kind of thing that we keep pushing this prerogative because there there
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  was no market for it until we created it.
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  So we kind of have the luxury, and I mean, we really thought about it a lot before we brought
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  it to market, but we said, hey, photo booths are played out.
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  Everybody has a photo booth.
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  It's almost like a necessity and an event but honestly, I don't I they're just played out.
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  We've seen them everywhere.
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  So we said, hey.
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  Let's make an update to it.
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  Let's make it edible.
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  Let's make it extremely shareable and extremely fun.
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  And so I think that that just kind of goes throughout the brand.
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  Sure.
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  Sure.
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  As we implemented MixedMax, our, open rates are 86%.
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  Our reply rates are 52%, and our RSVP, yes, rates, 41%.
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  My advice for other companies interested in Mixmax is definitely go for it.
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  It's also a really easy onboarding process.
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  It's very user friendly.
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  It's easy to get in there.
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  I wish we had started using it a lot sooner, and it's it's made my life much, much easier.
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  When it comes to I know I know you're you're putting people's faces on anything edible, but
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  what about all ask your business card?
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  Are those dead?
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  Do I need a popsicle with my face shield that you remember?
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  I've I've I've actually we've done because we could do custom sheet cookies and custom shape
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  products.
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  So at a couple of trade shows, I've actually printed my business card on a cookie.
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  It's not so it's not so great, actually, because people eat it, and then they don't have
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  your number.
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  You know, so then they I know, so it's not it's not such a great, really, strategy, but I'd I
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  would say that it really depends on what your average sale price is.
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  I mean, if you figure that in 3 years, that I'm gonna be giving away $500 worth of business
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  cards, you know, 3 to 4000 business cards.
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  And, I mean, we keep I buy them in, like, 1000, 1000 piece increments because we always keep
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  updating them, tweaking them, adding markets that we've gone into.
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  And so when you think about what your your selling price is that that kind of gives the
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  answer.
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  So in 3 years, you're giving away $500 in marketing materials know, to 10,000 people, I
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  mean, we're I'm making sales out of it.
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  Our average sale is anywhere from 5 to $25,000 for an event.
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  So even just if we make one sale from 1 of the 10 to 15,000 business cards that I've given
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  out, it's definitely worth think that if your, you know, if your average sale is, you know, I
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  mean, another another vertical of our business is we do drop shipping.
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  So you upload photos to our website.
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  We drop ship you cookies, that's like a $40 sale.
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  So it just kind of it's an equation that you have to think about and do the and just do the
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  equation to your
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  head.
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  Alright.
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  Well, let's talk about the biggest networking mistakes you see here.
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  So you already talked about what you said putting your business card on a cooking not be
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  such a good idea if it's a thing.
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  Right?
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  But but I but but still it's impactful and really memorable.
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  And so in that way, it is it is in the mind and on the top of the mind of a lot of people
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  because that's just something that's such an easy illustration to draw this this crazy
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  cookie printer he gave me his card on a cookie.
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  I don't know his name, but I know the concept and he can find it.
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  I mean, one thing I'm I'm actually in a I'm sorry if there's any feedback on the line, but
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  I'm actually at this an AgTech conference that I just kinda slipped out for.
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  So I'm I'm kind of doing networking everywhere all the time.
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  And the one thing that I would really say that the biggest folly you can make is doing
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  something like is is first of all, positioning it like you're networking at all.
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  And if you're leading with a business card in your hand and it's such a thing where you're
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  saying, Hey, well, I wanna talk to you specifically, and I need you to be my customer
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  or something like that.
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  I think that that's already kind of a misstep.
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  And I I actually find that that I find the best VC people, the best future employees, the best,
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  just friends and the best allies in my business by by intentionally not talking about my
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  business and what selfie does but just trying to connect with somebody on a personal level,
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  and then everything rolls from there.
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  I mean, I I was, we were at, it's this tech startup conference in New Orleans called
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  collision.
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  They're actually moving it to Toronto this year, and we're gonna be there as well.
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  But we were, we were at some networking tail event, something like that.
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  I was like, everybody's just really transactional talking.
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  Just it's so obvious what they want.
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  You know, you see them walk up to you and you're like, okay.
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  Yeah.
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  Like, That's great.
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  You know, good luck.
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  That's awesome.
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  You know?
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  And then I'm just outside, and I'm talking to this guy.
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  And I meet this guy who's a VC guy, and he manages, like, a $5,000,000,000 fund.
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  And this was just literally by going and standing outside on the balcony and just kinda
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  shoot in the breeze with somebody.
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  Well, I know once you make a connection, email is still the the best way to follow-up.
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  What are some of the your email tools that you like to leverage when you're using.
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  Oh, oh, yeah.
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  I this is I mean, I am I am not I mixmax in no way pays me.
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  They are the most powerful outreach tool and email marketing tool that I've ever seen in my
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  entire life.
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  My operations director.
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  I we have our whole entire team on Mixmax because it's so powerful.
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  You you can try for free, it will it will literally change your game.
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  I don't know how many times that my director of operations and I we're saying like, hey.
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  When are they gonna make Mixmax for my personal life?
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  And for texting because, like, there there's just so many useful tools on it that there's
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  something even like a send later.
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  So have you ever been up at, you know, 1 in the morning, 2 in the morning, writing that email.
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  And you're like, oh, let me just save it as a draft.
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  I don't wanna send it.
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  It's not gonna hit at the right time.
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  So Mixmax has a 2 it's send later.
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  So all you do, you write the email.
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  You say schedule to send tomorrow morning at at 6:45 in the morning, and then boom, it's off
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  your plate.
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  And that's really what it does a lot of is automating the the follow-up process and gets
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  it kind of down to a science I and again, I am in no way.
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  I I they are not paying me to say this.
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  I just really love their service.
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  I could not do my job without mix mats.
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  We have about three people on the sales team, but I'm I'm I'm kind of working anywhere from
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  from 2 to 500 open opportunities at a time, and I would not be able to do the follow-up without
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  knickknacks.
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  So that's everything from, you know, following up a person that I meet out somewhere.
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  And so it does sequencing.
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  So it's like, you send out your, you know, your standard email.
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  Hey.
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  Nice meeting you, blah blah blah.
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  Whatever.
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  You know, some nice photos and what you do, and then you can set what what's really called in
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  the outreach game as a cadence.
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  So you you could just set the cadence and the sequencing and follow-up to to auto do it.
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  This is all done through MixedMax, which which again, like you said, is, is a native extension
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  of, sorry, for the music, is a native extension on Gmail.
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  So kind of just a winning equation that I find, and what I've done a lot of research on is that
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  apparently 8 follow ups is the winning equation.
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  So when your cadence is is 8 follow ups, somebody will respond to you.
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  Alright, you guys.
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  I thank you so very much, and this will not be possible tonight without our wonderful sponsor,
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  MixedMax.
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  If you use Gmail, you need MixMax, and I'm just saying it like that.
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  Because that's what I use for my business.
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  The mission of small business chat is to end small business failure.
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  I am Melinda Emerson, small business lady, your host, until next time, remember that you never
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  lose in business.
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  Either you win or you learn.
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  God bless.
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  Thank you for listening to the Small Biz chat podcast with Melinda Emerson.
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  For more resources and small business success strategies, visit succeed as your own boss.com.
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  Subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and join us next Wednesday.