Steli Efti - Baremetrics

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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