I come from a bootstrap mentality, someone who didn't have money to spend on ads and marketing, so outbound was the only thing I knew. In my first SaaS company I single-handedly closed the first 500 paying clients through cold calling, outbound sales, email marketing. Those tangible lessons and experiences are what I pass on, and I'm literally following the same playbook today for my second startup, Jobtable, hitting the phones, cold calling.

I love speaking to startup founders and entrepreneurs who are just going through the grindstone. It's very nostalgic. It always puts me back into that place of just starting out. If you have insights and experiences to share, it would be a shame to keep that bottled in. Even if a mentee takes the tiniest fraction of something they can apply to their business, that's very rewarding for me.

It's always the same answer, no matter what company or industry you're in. How do I get my first 1, 10, 100 customers? Cold call, outbound, just speak to people directly. To me there's no better, more efficient way to get sales fast. That's exactly how I closed my first 500 paying clients, and it's what I'm doing all over again with Jobtable.

On the practical side, most of what I talk through with mentees is the specifics of outbound: how to segment your lists, how to target, the messaging, how important the content and the pitch are. The best salespeople and marketers today are the ones who understand human behavior, why people react or don't react to things. It's usually the little things in your content that make a big difference. Small things compounded can be the difference between a 10 percent and a 13 percent conversion, which is significant.

When I'm speaking to someone starting out, I always talk about mindset, even if they don't ask, because I think it's that important. My mantra is no plan Bs. When I decide I'm going to do something, when I truly believe in it, there's no plan B, there's no failure as an option. You're going to figure it out and make it work. A plan B is literally a plan for failure, and the moment you instill that tiny grain of doubt, your chances of failure go up exponentially because you've already put it in your head.

When I get into that mindset on a call, I really hit people with it and you can see it land. They go, yeah, I've got to tighten up the mindset game. It sounds cliche, but it's real. You've got to have thick skin and a tough mind to start and grow a business. That's usually where I see the aha moment happen, when I talk about mindset.

For sure. Just last night I sent in a help request looking for a social media marketer to brainstorm some ideas with, and I requested a couple of sessions that same morning. It had been a little while since my last one, but I've definitely tapped into the mentors myself plenty over the years.

That's the thing about this place, it cuts both ways. I'm here giving my experience on sales and bootstrapping, and when I need a second perspective on something outside my lane, the same community is right there. You don't have to keep it all in your own head.