Table of Contents
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This week I talk with Steli Efti, Founder of Close.io! In this episode we talk about growing up as an immigrant kid in a factory town, discovering books at 16, starting a slew of businesses like a DVD rental company and a hypnosis hotline, discovering sales, building a remote team and more!
Show Notes:
- 1:04- Childhood
- 2:30- Early realization on conformity
- 5:00- Single most important moment in his life
- 7:43- Nature vs. Nurture
- 9:20- Positive reinforcement
- 10:37- School experience
- 13:20- “I’m going to prove the world wrong”
- 16:00- Turning point
- 21:36- “Anyone can start a business”
- 22:14- The interesting and exciting thing about stocks
- 24:08- Ownership creates wealth
- 27:40- Dropping out of school
- 31:00- Loving people more than money
- 32:40- 24 hour DVD rental business
- 34:10- Getting DVD rental machines
- 36:10- Learning the importance of Branding, Pricing, and Location
- 37:40- Finding a hook to get his brothers involved
- 40:28- Sold or gave away everything to buy a 1 way ticket to Silicon Valley
- 43:29- Getting into hypnosis
- 45:35- Hypnosis Hotline
- 47:30- Monetizing something that you are passionate about
- 50:20- Moving and starting a tech company in the US
- 53:14- How I thought things would go
- 54:24- Internal turmoil and stress
- 55:00- Fundraising
- 56:41- Pretending everything is ok when it is coming to a painful and slow end
- 57:41- Three month vacation to reassess
- 59:30- Getting out of debt
- 1:01:15- SwipeGood
- 1:03:58- Biggest struggle with startups- hiring salespeople
- 1:05:36- Moving to outsourced Elastic salesforce
- 1:06:36- Deciding to create own CRM service… close.io
- 1:08:35- “The last thing I wanted to do was launch a software business”
- 1:09:16- Love/Hate relationship
- 1:10:42- Catalyst for getting out of services and pursuing software
- 1:12:35- Team thoughts on the side project becoming more successful than the main thing
- 1:13:57- Least scaling growth-hack of all time
- 1:15:08- Having businesses as customers rather than consumers
- 1:18:22- Transitioning to a fully remote team
- 1:21:29- Pros and cons to building a fully remote sales team
- 1:24:31- Balancing content creation with the responsibilities of being a CEO
- 1:26:12- Personal process for recording a podcast episode
- 1:29:45- Forsight on the next year- A lot of change!
How to reach Steli: Twitter, The Startup Chat, Close.io blog
