Charles Cormier, Founder at RaasRocket.com

Hey, we're back here on the Fast Lane Pod with Greg Keel, and I'm here with Charles Cormier. He is the founder of Rise Rocket GTM Ventures, and we're excited to have him here. And so yeah, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got here, Charles.

Hey Greg, thanks for having me on. Serial entrepreneur, been in the game for 12 years, or 15 if we count some of my earlier failures in business. I've been launching bunch of digital companies in the, the last decades or so. I've been traveling the world with my wife. My first company was a nootropic. Before that, um, established here in Oaxaca with 5 dogs, a daughter, and, uh, yeah, just living the life with, uh, RazRocket. We do raising as a service for tech companies.

Nice. So tell us a little bit more about RazRocket. What, what led you to found this company and, and who and what are you helping them do?

Right, so if we start like way back, my first nootropic company, that one failed, right, because was physical products and so forth. And then after that, I was trying to balance out between cash flow and moonshots, right? So the, the cash flow parts, um, in my opinion, the easiest way to make money nowadays is, uh, agencies, right? So marketing agencies. So I've tried a bunch of agencies in the past years. I've been building websites for realtors, I've been doing Facebook ads, I've been doing AdWords. I started all kinds of agencies. I had a call center with 200 employees, and that led me to lead gen, right? So one day I launched this LinkedIn outreach agency, um, was reaching out to— on LinkedIn to people and converting them as clients that would still work, but then I realized that, man, this doesn't scale. It's like 20 connects a day and LinkedIn bans you for whatever reasons they find good. And then I was like, I need to try another lead gen method that is going to be game-changing. So that's when I discovered cold email. Cold email, you can send 500, 1,000 emails per day. And if you know about deliverability, you never get in trouble, right? So I started GTM Ventures when I discovered cold emails. So GTM Ventures basically, goal is to provide go-to-market services to clients using cold email. We created an amazing system and I signed up this guy called Sunny Ray 2 years ago. So Sunny Ray was a client of mine. I discovered that he raised $100 million and then I was like, why not use my go-to-market system with cold outreach? but for, for fundraising, right? So we decided to, uh, launch Raz Rocket together. Raz Rocket is, uh, using the same cold outreach that took me 10 years to create, but to raise capital. So we take the founder, we work on their pitch deck, work on their website, their LinkedIn page, their pitch, um, and their data room and all that kind of important stuff. We make them ready to go in front of investors. And after that is done, they receive anywhere from 5 to 10 leads a week, right? Which is pretty good because most startups wouldn't even receive one of these per week. They get practice on these investors, they get better, and every 20 meetings that they have, they get a check, right? So that's, uh, razzrocket.com. It's pretty unique. They get my expertise on top of funnel, which is world-class, and they get Sunny on the closing end. And yeah, we're pretty proud of what we've achieved so far. Can talk of shows like Spark Tank that we created to get more clients, but so far it's upwards, that one. We're already at what, around 50K MRR, and we started this one Q3 last year, so pretty impressive.

Nice, that's super cool that you're able to kind of transfer those skills you learned in, in the sales and marketing space and really help these founders who, you know, I mean, it's so hard to get investment and get traction with the venture capital world. But what kind of results have you guys had with some of your clients?

Uh, yeah, it's 5 to 10 leads per week, approx, right? And 5 to 10% close rate. So that these are easy numbers. I guess one lesson for entrepreneurs listening, right? And I often talk about these lessons on my LinkedIn and so forth, but in business, you constantly need to go ladder up, ladder up, ladder up, and take some jumps, right? So GTM Ventures, it's great, right? Like I still run that one. I still do go-to-market for a lot of clients, but cold email, for example, it's been a bit stagnant in the, last year's in that niche specifically, when you try to sell someone, it's not stagnant when it comes to reach out to investors, right? So me as an entrepreneur, I'm constantly leapfrogging to my next thing. You cannot stay like in one spot too much. I've been developing like a core expertise in go-to-market, but my lesson here for both listening is that you constantly need to take risk and go to your next thing. And it's not when you've been like 3 years comfortable doing one thing that you need to start, oh, getting out of your niche because COVID hit my business and everything goes to shit. You need to constantly come up with new ideas. Obviously develop a core expertise, but don't wait until it's too late, right? Like the story of my life so far has been like leapfrogging to the next level, to the next level, to the next level. What's my next level right now with GDM Ventures? Working this new venture capital fund called the MAC10 Fund, right? So, you know, like, it's always like meta, meta, meta stuff. So I work with VCs now with Raz Rocket, right? I help them raise capital. And then I'm like, why not become a VC myself? Right? Like, I'm a, I'm a good decision maker. I'm good at analyzing data. Instead of just like raising capital for them, why not start my own fund, right? Um, and then once I start my own fund, I may realize that there's this great startup idea to execute upon, but I haven't met the right founders, and maybe I'm gonna launch it, right? So it's always leapfrogging to your next act and, and not waiting until, yeah, it's too late, and keep on taking risk, right? So Entrepreneurship is not a static thing. It's a, it's a thing that constantly requires risks and movement and momentum. If you stop moving, you die.

Yeah, no, I can totally relate. And, you know, you used a word, momentum, there. And here on the Fastlane Pod, you know, we talk a lot about making quick decisions and building stuff fast and really trying to move forward quickly and iterate fast and You know, what has your experience been with the successful entrepreneurs you've used? Did they, did they iterate quickly? Did they, you know, turn their ideas into actual products and plans quickly? Uh, how's your experience been with that?

Yeah, um, first thing first, there's very few that are successful. Very, very few. Uh, 5%, I would say, of clients or founders that I work with are savages, right? And The thing is, even if you're savage, you might not hit the right time with your product and the market, right? So product-market fit is something I've been obsessed about in the last 10 years with cold emails, the best machine, right? You just test out a bunch of offers to a bunch of audience, and eventually you get some fit. We can talk today about the partnerships approach or the podcast approach, which I love as well. but even if you have product-market fit, us venture capitalists, what we're seeking is founder-product-market fit, right? So you have a great idea, the market wants it, and you're the right person to build it right now, right? So it's like a set of conditions, it's a set of stars that needs to align, and that is extremely hard. Now, to your question, the traits of a founder, right? Like, what's a savage? They need to be odd, you know, like you, Greg, you're odd, you're not normal. So am I, I'm not normal myself, right? That's the people I recruit or that I want to work with. They need to be obviously very entrepreneurial. Corporate backgrounds don't take you far much nowadays. They need to be gritty, right? Once it gets hard, they need to go on and continue and have healthy coping mechanisms. They need to be incredibly smart, right? They need to understand things way quicker, have insights and act upon them, right? Like they have to, they need to have a gigantic bias for action. They need to have agency and accountability, right? Integrity, I won't use the word integrity too much, but just like doing good generally and not trying to fuck others. And the deal is like a great quality at scale, right? Like, because you just keep on doing good and you align with, all the other actors, not only you win, but they all win. Um, and then they need to choose the right co-founder, right? So that's why I'm saying it's like rocket science, because imagine, like, one epic founder is hard enough. Try to get two in one room, that's like almost impossible. So that's why us VCs, we use the power law a lot to invest. It's like invest in 10 founders and startups and maybe one will succeed, right? But yeah, generally, generally speaking, the best VCs, they definitely invest in the best founders regardless. I mean, yes, we're looking for the great idea and the product-market fit as well. But let's say that I invest in a great founder, right? I can still do something with them even if they fail with their current ideas. I can recycle them, right, and put them in another company on my portfolio. I can give them a role, right? And just, it's generally very pleasant to work with them, and I gain insights just being around them. So we try to optimize for, for humans first. But yeah, that question can be answered by like, yeah, what quality do I have? What quality do you have, Greg? That's generally what we're looking for.

Yeah, I can totally relate. And you know, as we close up here, um, you know, what advice do you have for, for founders who are looking to get in the space, maybe it's their first time, you know, trying to raise capital, trying to build something bigger than themselves. What, what do you have to say to them?

Um, raising capital, first understanding, like, I guess, the VC psychology, right? Um, putting yourself in the VC shoes and then probably doing some role-playing with GPT. GPT can talk like a VC, it can ask questions like a VC, it can hop on calls like a VC, right? And then, yeah, establishing a system like mine with the cold email that will constantly put you in front of VCs is immensely useful. The podcast angle, right? Which we talked about earlier, starting a podcast to interview VC is a genius idea, right? So you just like constantly get in front of them, you ask them questions, you understand them, you empathize with their situation. And once you get to understand them, then your chance to getting funded dramatically goes up, right? So I would strongly recommend creating a cold email engine and creating your own podcast and interviewing VCs. I call it limitless shot on goals, right? As a guy that plays sport, Greg, you know that. Shooting on the goal is the sport. If you're a quarterback, that means like constantly fucking making passes, constantly, every day, 1,000 of them if you can, 2,000 of them. Now, do you know players that have systems to do 1,000 passes a day? By the way, maybe that's too much. You can tell me what's the right number, but most kids won't have a system to do 1,000 passes a day.

Why?

Because I don't know, they don't have a football field nearby, they, they don't have a parent to bring them to the football field, right? So as they— the best of them, they have a system, like their, their backyard is a football field, they have a buddy to practice every day, right? Well, that's it, the podcast system. It gives you like limitless shot on goal, and that practice constantly makes you better, and eventually that makes you fundable. Not every idea is fundable. You need to make your research and ideally have a system to give you, like, real-life sales leads. And I have my conditions with that. I won't go through the full list today, but yeah, it's constantly about trying, and eventually you can make it. And in my opinion, it's super important to launch a company nowadays and trying to make it because there's this thing called AGI that is coming. They'll slash a bunch of jobs. Most jobs won't ever be recuperated in the next, uh, 5 to 10 years. And I do believe that founders will live through that. So my full life mission is about like helping founders launch something and make it.

Yeah, I can totally relate. And, you know, as, as we close here, you know, I think your, your theme here at the end was You got to get in front of these investors. You got to be talking to them. You got to be able to understand where they're coming from and what they're looking for. And it sounds like over at Raz Rocket, you've created something that makes that a lot more viable for the average person. So that's pretty exciting.

Yes, sir.

All right, well, thanks for coming by today, Charles. We look forward to having a second convo here in a in the future, and we will dig deeper into your success at Raz Rock and GTN.