Episode #790 - How A $1400 Contract Transformed A Startup Dream Into Reality with Feras Alhlou

Welcome to this edition of the million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell.

Looking back now, as somebody who has gone through startups and selling company or developing and selling companies, what do you think you did right? You guys did right. Even though you didn't have that experience and you know, you kind of thrown into that situation, what did, what are you proudest of the most that you did right there? I won't ask you what you did wrong because usually we do a thousand things wrong.

So I think, I think learning, learning, that learning mindset, that hunger to learn. I think, I think who was it Peter Drucker said the only sustainable competitive advantage or competitive edge that you have is, is the ability to learn ahead of the competition. And, and learning, you gotta, you gotta like learn and apply when we say learning here. So, so the ability to pivot from for example, when we had a successful web design and web development business to biv to pivot and start to offer online marketing services, there were better margins in there because web development was getting very competitive. People were offshoring. So pivoting to sell search engine optimization services and things around email marketing. And then later also once that got saturated, pivoting to, to become one of the, one of Google's top or initially one of Google's one of 200 global certified partners on, on the Google Analytics product. That was a big pivot for us. So, so that ability to learn and apply and not everything that you learn you can apply right away and sometimes you try things and you, they don't work out. But I think learning is essential. Learning and doing, learning and executing. I think these, this, this was a common thread in, in all the companies that, that we've started, including some of the new ventures that I'm involved in today.

Yeah. And so let's just say looking back, what time of year was it that you started? You know, you got laid off. When did you get roughly what time of the year? We won't talk too much about this because I don't want you to break down in tears.

No, no, actually, you know, you talk, you talk about it in a little bit more detail. I, I get emotional. I think it was, it was in that early Q. That first quarter of 2000, 2003, first quarter.

And then how long until you actually started the new company?

About roughly two months.

Yeah, and so two months there. So that's A busy two months. And during that two months now you really get busy and you really start to accelerate your learning curve and your growth curve and all the challenges you run into. How long did it take before you got to the point where you felt like this is going to work, we're going to make this thing and you know, the scary stage of, of are we going to survive or not? You know how long it takes for you to fight your way through that?

Yeah. You know, just like I will never forget that feeling of being laid off. I will never forget the feeling of closing that first deal when that first client said yes to a fourteen hundred dollar contract, huge contract for a four page website that took us two months to build. I'm not exaggerating, like There was no WordPress at the time. You had to do things in HTML and anyhow, so that feeling of.

There was front page though, wasn't there? Front page.

I forgot it was.

I think so. But anyway, go ahead.

So that feeling of yes. Like after several weeks of knocking on doors, trying different things, like is there a market for this stuff? Who's going to buy from us? We don't know how to sell. So after that first sale, like your confidence, or at least my confidence, like the boost you get is amazing. And then we just worked harder because we had a whole lot of, you know, a lot of rejections initially. I mean, I didn't know. I'll tell you a funny story. I was taking all these courses on how to sell and I remember one time I took a course and the instructor said, here are like 30 questions you should ask. You should, you should learn all this from your lead before you write down a proposal that will increase your chances of winning. So I went in this, this and this afternoon, this, this interview that was set up for me. I, I was, I paid someone to get me into, into that client. We got in there and I was speaking to a vp, a decision maker. And it was after lunch and I start asking these questions and all of a sudden I'm going through these questions and I'm looking at him and he's doing, dozing off, he's. The guy fell asleep. I put the lead to sleep because in my mind I learned that I have to ask all these questions. Yeah, I mean that's how bad I was in sales. I swear to God, I'm not making this up, Larry. So if I was able to do this to someone who didn't have a sales background, had to learn it through listening to CDs and going to Courses. Anyone can, I think, learn sales? It's not easy. I had to learn, like, if they have an objection, how do you respond if they ask about how many clients do you have? We didn't have a whole lot of clients. How many years of experience you have in this business? Like, I didn't have good answers for any of this, but there's a way to do this without making stuff up. So my long story short is learning the skills that you don't have. Um, and, and, and working hard towards mastering those skills. It's going to really help you as, as you grow these businesses and as you. Yeah, as you grow the businesses, you know, your business.

Yeah.

So.

You, you didn't really have a staff. I mean, it was just you and your partner. So you had to make the sales and then you had to actually build the sites, right?

Absolutely. No, no staff at the time. And, and, and in, in all the, the seven or so ventures that I've been in, I've always had a business partner. Yeah. And, and I'm not saying this is the only way to go. A lot of successful people have made it without having partners. For me, it just always finding someone who, who complements your skills. If you're. That not just, not just hard skills. These are important. Ideally, if you're technical and you can implement and they can sell, that'd be amazing, like a image made in heaven. But also the soft skills. For example, if you're the type where you, you're trusting and, and you're a believer, you need someone to always check on you and make sure that you're not right. You're not just being, you know, you're just not ma. Making the wrong decisions. You're, you're just not looking at, you're not doing the proper due diligence. So finding partners who would always check on you, check you and, and, and, and, and you know, slow you down. If you're the type who just wants to execute like me, that's important. So, so we didn't have staff, but the business partner that I've had, the, my business partner was, was a great support in that sense. He wasn't the one going out selling, but he was giving a lot of the other feedback.

Yeah, well, the thing, Ferris, is that you need, you know, salespeople need to be balanced by skeptical people on their team. Because as salespeople, we are naturally optimistic. We see the best thing. Salespeople are the easiest people to be sold, the easiest people to be conned, you know, because we want to Believe the best. You know, it's like someone says it's like that. We go, yes, it's like that. And then we better, no, he was lying. And so you need, you need people around you who can spot the obvious mistakes we made. And so that's a great point to bring up. And so how, how long would. Before you hired your, your first staff and how many, how big did it get before you started to pivot into these other business?

Yeah, so I think it was about six months into it. So it was toward the end of 2003 when we had the first hire and he was a colleague at the company that folded the trust level. He used to work with me there. So we knew each other, we could work together really well. And he became, later he became a third partner. And when you're building a business, your first hire, whether they're a founder or not is really important. Of course if they're a founder, they're there with you. But your first hire, it could make or break your business. Especially if you're hiring for a skill that you don't have. You're going to, your first hire is going to be a salesperson because you can't sell for whatever reason and they can't sell either. Then, then this could just bring you under. Right. So, so the first hire was about six months down the road and he was strong at delivery and, and take. Once I closed the deal, he took care of everything else. So I was sort of the client fa. I was the sort of the, you know, a consultant, senior consultant client facing out there networking and, and tried to get us business and he, he took care of delivery and implementation in the back office.

Talk a little bit more about that. Your first hire can, can make or break you because I'm sure you found that pattern to show up again as you've gone through starting other businesses.

Absolutely. And you know, sometime hiring is one of the most difficult areas of the business in my mind. And I, I just did a live stream a few weeks ago on just hiring like I think an hour and a half on tips on, on hiring. So, but, but a, a very, very bad, sad, crazy experience is we, at one stage we started, I think we, we hit six digits in terms of revenue and, and this is maybe, maybe we're about quarter million dollars a year two years down the road. And I figured, you know what, I've been doing sales and I've been okay at it. So now let, let us go after the larger clients. Let's just move up. We have that Growth, that growth mindset in us. So I figured, I'll get someone who's more seasoned. They know sales, they've sold to larger companies. So we did, we did some research. We found some candidates. We hired one person and it was, we were generous in our compensation and we didn't have a whole lot of money in terms of profit margin, you know, to play with at the time. Revenue was good, but profit margin wasn't there yet. And Larry, for three months, this man did not close one deal and we have to let him go. And that was another hard thing to do. But that put us back, I don't know, months back because we had all these growth plans and, and I mean, it, it was really, really difficult. Luckily we had a good revenue stream by that time and I was still selling. So.

Right.

It limited, it slowed down our growth. It didn't kill us, but it hurt. It was really three months of no sales and all the time it took me to train him and all that. So the thing out of the story is be very judicious, be very careful in hiring. Do all, you know, just learn a lot about hiring. And if you don't know a specific area that you're hiring for, get a friend of yours, pay someone to be part of that interview process. It will save you a whole lot of money.

It is great if you can design the specific skill set you're looking for and find someone who's got lots of experience with that and they will come in and be motivated. You know, they get caught, get caught up in your vision, your mission, and they want to bring their strength and partner up with you and do something great with you. But so much of the time I find that we get conned into believing, you know, this person. You know, first of all, they'll come in with their credentials. I can, you know, because you'll have your, your things you're looking for and they say, well, I've done this, I can do that. And we've, we don't check enough to see have they really ever done that or they're just saying they've done it. You know, what's what actually, you know, it's like one of the things far as I do on this, getting guests for this call is we do such a background check on everybody. Because first of all, I can't interview someone who doesn't have experience, real world experience. And it's like, you know, it just, by the time I get to that, I'm not ready to pass out because it's like trying to get, you know, blood out of a stone, you know, it's just like they just don't know anything. And you don't want to make them look foolish, and so you try to make them look good. But when I get somebody who's got the experience is very easy because, you know, we've traveled the same road one way or another, and you have the same experiences in different ways. And I felt, I fell in that trap myself that at different times, you know, you need a certain thing. Okay, we've got it defined. Let's bring in an expert, and they're going to come in and do it for us. I found out that never, never worked. You know, you, you know, it's almost like you need to figure it out yourself and then bring somebody in that you can train.

Absolutely.

You know, and then have them prove themselves to you and then gradually move them into that position. Responsibility. Yeah. You know, that, that seems to work more often than not for me.

Absolutely. I mean, you need people to grow, whether you're. It's a product company or it's a services company. And obviously with services company, you need people. You can't grow without people.

Yeah.

So on one hand, you're closing deals, you need people to deliver, or you need people to help you sell. On the other hand, don't rush, do not rush the hiring decision, even if you have to slow down revenue or implementation. I think rushing a hiring decision, and I've made this mistake more than once, unfortunately, because, you know, the pressure is so, so high from your team. Hey, Faris, we need help. We've got these projects. So I need to hire a delivery person. And then you, you just, in the heat of the moment, you, you cut corners. You don't do all the thorough interview, that process that you should follow. You don't check their references. You, you don't just explain to them what is expected of them. Their role. The, the job description is not very well defined. You just, you rush that high decision, the hiring decision, and you end up in a bad situation. So my advice to entrepreneurs is, is take your time. You need, you need to hire, to grow, but take your time and follow, follow all the best practices. There are a bunch of Stuff on YouTube on how to make a good decision, you know, in terms of hiring. So don't, don't rush hiring at all.

Well, and especially as you've said, early on, you know, it's even more critical early on. And so in our business, we always refer to it as recruiting. You know, you've got to Be always recruiting. And great companies grow from within because great people are using, doing pretty well somewhere. You know, they're, they're usually not out on the sidewalk looking for a job with a sign. You know, you usually. They're doing pretty well and you like to find them and offer them a chance to do better. And the way to find that is word of mouth, you know, from somebody who's, who, you know, who's already works for you. And I've heard over and over again from people how they, they found most of their best people through their own organization or they ran into them, you know, in the normal, you know, patterns of life, you know, and when you talk about with new companies in all of these companies, the recruiting, the hiring is such an important part that's going to be reassuring to people listening to this who are having hiring problems from a receptionist all the way to sea level positions that they're going to feel like it's not just me.

Absolutely. And you mentioned a good point there, Larry, is your network, I mean at one point, if you need to hire five people, if you're like experiencing massive growth, there's a limit to how many you can find from within your network. But initially word of mouth because the trust level has to be there. You wanna, you wanna, I mean learning a technical skill or even learning a soft skill, I think that's very, that's, that's easy. But if you hire someone and, and they happen to be a jerk.

Yeah.

Like what are you gonna do with that?

Right.

If they happen, if they have to be, I don't say the word lazy. Or maybe it's okay if they just don't work hard.

Yeah.

Or they just don't work the bare minimum. So, so that is, that's what I'm concerned about. I used to joke and it's actually, it's not a joke. I always say when it comes to hiring, I look for three things. They, they like to learn and, and they work hard and they're nice.

Yeah.

These are the three criteria I look for. And we've hired people who had zero experience in, in a very highly specialized area of work. But they had amazing. This one, one case, amazing customer relationship management. They're just really great with customers like from an account management perspective. And we were looking for a technical account manager and this one person who came recommended, as you mentioned, from, from one of our senior folks and he said this, this guy is like a sponge. He learned, just give him the opportunity. He wants to leave sort of a dormant industry. A sector that wants to come into this area of analytics. And we took a chance on this, on this person and he became one of our top account managers. So, so, so that trust and that the word of mouth, like he came through someone we knew. So, so that's three things.

Again, those three things are very important and I want to make sure people, you know, get locked in on them because, I mean, I think it covers it. I think it covers the battlefield, really, for the new person.

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