Andrej Persolja

Experiencing stagnant growth? DM me to help reposition your tech startup to attract best-fit customers 🚀 Lowered CAC by 52% for my last startup 🏹 Founder, Positioning @ Tangible Growth

You've built a good product. You're growing. But does it feel harder than it should?

Hi. I'm Andrej. I help CEOs in complex industries fix three things that kill growth: unclear positioning, misaligned teams, and spending money on developing products & features users don't buy.

- If you are stuck in alignment calls
- not 100% happy with what your website says
- If your board or co-founders are asking questions you don't know how to answer... I've probably seen (and solved) what you are experiencing.

Because the real cost of these challenges? Isn't just growth. 𝐈𝐭'𝐬 𝐘𝐨𝐮. You're spending mental energy keeping everyone happy. Second-guessing your decisions on a Sunday night. Spending time in meetings instead of enjoying it with family. (You sigh, as you message your group of friends saying you won't make it to your basketball game for the third week in a row).

This 𝐢𝐬𝐧'𝐭 how leading a company should feel like. As a co-founder, I spent 2 years trying every marketing hack in the book chasing growth. Templates, frameworks, books... Nothing changed until we realized the problem wasn't tactics, but positioning. I never wanted to feel that way again, so I got really good at fixing it.

Because here's the truth: This is a 𝐧𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐥 problem at your stage. Internally, positioning breaks because your company is evolving. Externally, you are competing against teams with bigger budgets that make clear, de-risked decision. Most founders hire consultants hoping for the answer, but their frameworks never get implemented. That's the gap.

I've been fortunate to learn from and work alongside the best in the industry, including Seth Godin, Brian Tracy, and Philip Kotler, which created the foundation of everything I do with founders:

Instead of consulting, I work with your team. We map your market, find your strengths, turn them into a competitive advantage. One that works across your product, marketing, and sales.

The result of that is confidence & clarity on what to build, who to target, and how to win.This approach has:

✔️ Helped a CEO scale their B2B SaaS from $1M to $3M in < 12 months.
✔️ Helped a management team build a defensible strategy for a B2C tech company scaling from $10M to $30M
✔️ Helped a B2B AI team deliver 10 impressive leads (Accenture, Bridgestone, ERM) proving traction before going for Series A. 

I work with max 3 companies per quarter. If you want that to be you, book a call. 

Let's see how we can turn the challenges you are facing into your competitive advantage: https://tidycal.com/tangible-growth/discovery-call

Founder

With Tangible Growth, I want to help you turn poor positioning symptoms:

➡️ You have some loyal customers, but new clients don’t know what you do
➡️ You have long sales processes, low conversion rates
➡️ Clients object your prices.
➡️ You don't get enough or get poor quality leads
➡️ People are leaving your product.

Into a strong positioning strategy, where you will be able to leverage your newly found position to:
💥 Get more high-quality leads at a lower cost
💥 Convert more leads into clients
💥 Charge more
💥 Increase your product's lifetime value
💥 Grow sustainably!

Send me an email to grow@apersolja.com and let's nail your positioning.

That's a wrap for the unlockit conference. Listened to some good keynotes, spoke to a lot of inspiring people. Here are the highlights...

1️⃣ "If you are constantly running, it's difficult to try new things."
- Ravish Agrawal, growth at Gamma

Innovation is important. If you are constantly "on the go", you'll miss the 10x opportunity around the corner. 

2️⃣ "If I say something smart, but you don't have the context / knowledge to "get it", it won't mean anything to you. 
- Nina Lalić, BriefAgency

Goes back to your customers and meeting them where they are. If you don't, they won't get it. (If a customer's house is on fire, they don't care about the car running low on gas). You can have the best product in the world. It will fail. 

3️⃣ "What do we need to stop so we can create space ro learn and innovate?"
- Daan De Wever, Dstny

Connects to the first point. Just had a good chat with Alex, our CEO at Aimfox this morning. We both want to limit the amount of Zoom calls and hands on projects keeping us away from actually moving the needle. 

Thanks to Marija, Sofija, for supporting my introverted self during the conference 😅

// signing off for the weekend

Fractional Growth (CMO/CGO) | Growing Aimfox | 🏂 Fan of snowboarding, motorsports & rock concerts.

Sometimes I love my job. 

Last week at the unlockit conference a CMO came to me and said 'it's impressive what you are doing with Aimfox in the past few months'.

Being at the top - having a CMO / CGO role - is amazing, especially when it's going well, because you get all these people complimenting your work, when in reality, most of the work is being done by your teams.

Aimfox's growth isn't about me. 

Aimfox growth is Alex, our founder, who is making all the right moves and who I learn from on a daily basis.

It's our CTO, Nikola, who is leading the product side of things. 

It's our wonderful client-facing team in Ksenija, Tamara, Marija who are turning prospects into relationships into clients.

It's the designers, and developers, and a lot more people who are doing their jobs so we keep moving forward.

But I get to take most of the credit, so that's why I love my job :)

Who's crushing it with their teams lately?

I'm heading to the unlockit conference in Belgrade. Let's meet?

This week I'm putting high-intensity work on stearoids. 

First, doing a positioning workshop with our team at Aimfox. We have some strategic stuff to figure out, typically best done in person. 

Then heading over to UnlockIt conference where it's going to be all about growth. 

If you are around, I do have a couple of meeting slots left. Would love to meet with Founders, CEOs, Growth people in the SaaS industry.

And if you know someone that's going, do send them this post. I'll appreciate the intro :)

I'm speaking at the Post Hustle Summit on February 28. Here's what we'll be talking about: 

Most founders think they have a traffic problem.

You don't.

You have a clarity problem.

I work with a SaaS company that went from $200K to $1.5M ARR in 3 months. 

What made the difference? Not spending more on ads, or hire more people into the sales team.

We fixed the narrative and build the funnel around it.

The conversion rate went from 0.35% to 2.14% for a website visitor to a paying user. That's a 7x lift. 

Here's what I see constantly: Founders building amazing products that nobody understands. They're confused why worse products are winning. They think they need to "market better" or "get more traffic."

But the market doesn't buy the best product. They buy the one they understand.

At the Post Hustle Summit, I'm sharing the 3-Step Positioning Framework:
→ Specific - Stop selling to "everyone." Define the segment. 
→ Clear - Remove the jargon. If they have to think, you lose. 
→ Resonant - Does it hit the nerve?

Then we'll do the "Above the Fold" Audit live. You'll open your homepage, look at your headline, and figure out if you have a marketing problem or a positioning problem.

(Spoiler: It's usually positioning, cause I'm biased.)

Join us February 28: https://lnkd.in/d78_Awik

I love that Dipalie Mehta, Zach Hammer, Anita Cavrag will be there 👏

Google and Meta are lying to you. 

The reality is that advertising today is a black box, much like the AI one. 

You are feeding money into Google, Meta, you get back users. What happens in between? Who knows. 

The reality is that iOS doesn't provide click data anymore, gdpr is blocking tracking in Europe, cookie blockers do the rest. 

So Google, Meta are actually collecting data from about 30% of the actual conversions, says Yann A. Skaalen, founder of Digtective. 

So they run on 30% of data. If that sample is big enough (if you are an enterprise compamy), you are probably ok.

But in $10M scaleups? The 30% simply isn't enough, so Google, Meta are working based on bad data. And with advertising... What you put in is what you get out. Put in 💩, yourl get out poo. 

How to solve that? 

The entire episode is out now on 1 Message Away

Paid channels are getting more and more saturated = expensive. We used to pay $4.17 for a paying user. 

That was years ago. 

Average is now closer to $80. 


Here is how to keep CAC down:

- Get clients on calls
- Figure out their priorities. 
- Turn that into ad messages.

// Test & iterate.

Focusing on positioning helped a startup I co-founded lower CAC by 52%. Imagine what you can do if you could easily predict that your growth would double over the next three months. It sounds incredible, but that’s exactly what happened to my startup.

Try and answer…

👉 What are 3 things that your clients are doing before going to bed? 

If you can answer that with high enough certainty, you probably can lower CAC by using that knowledge in your ad messages.

During my longest fractional CMO tenure, there was 1 topic that always popped into our meetings: 

How many new leads are we generating this month?

Yet through analysis we found that sales had more MQLs to deal with than they could handle (while keeping the quality up).

This might be controversial, but… in most companies… Generating leads isn’t the problem.

When doing audits in companies, we typically find leads that got lost in the process. ($400k worth of them in with the last client). 

And they got lost in the process because the company had clear KPIs for acquisition. But once a prospect was in the pipeline? That’s where the lines between marketing and sales got blurry. And despite ownership was clearly defined, the clients weren’t pushed further in the pipeline.

Where is your bucket leaking?

What's preventing you from forecasting your sales?

A healthy funnel / user journey is the first step  in your growth going on 🔥

At my last fractional CMO tenure, we went from 0% to 37% conversion rate in the PLG funnel. Delivered Accenture, ERM, Bridgestone as leads. 

With Aimfox, the first thing I did was to collaborate with product to redesign the funnel. Went from 0.35% to 2.14% website visitor to paying user. 

7X the conversion rate. 
7X the revenue. 
Want to scale? 

Fix that funnel.

Send to founders that need to hear this or save for later.

Hey! I work across video, digital and hospitality – mostly behind the scenes :)

At Kobal Production d.o.o., we operate under two brands: Kobal Production – a video agency focused on creative campaigns for web, TV and social (kobalproduction.com) & CodeIf – our digital team, building custom websites and platforms (codeif.io). We share the same office, work side by side, and collaborate on projects all the time. The two brands are here just to make things clearer for our clients. We mostly work with large, multi-million euro companies in both B2B and B2C. Even though I run the business, I can’t help staying deeply involved on the creative side – and honestly, I wouldn’t want it any other way. That’s where I feel most at home.

I fell in love with hospitality during my high school years, when I spent two summers working as a waiter – saving up to buy my very first camera. I truly believe everyone should work in this industry for at least a few months – it teaches you a lot about pace, responsibility, and people. I wanted to connect that passion with our family wines, and that’s how Neks Lounge Bar was born in 2024 – a cozy bar in the center of Ljubljana (Rimska cesta 6) that brings people together through good coffee, wine, music and slower moments. One small thing that sticks: guests can write a letter to their future selves, and we mail it back in two years.

I also run Pod zvezdami (podzvezdami.si) – a side project that brings together live music, wine, and intimate summer evenings on the courtyard of our family estate in Štanjel. What started as a small idea has grown into a well-known brand across the Slovenian market. So far, we’ve organized 25+ unique events and welcomed over 4,000 guests from all over the country. It’s a mix of everything I love: atmosphere, connection, and moments people carry with them long after the night ends.

Our team currently includes more than 11 in-house members and over 40 external collaborators.

From time to time, I teach video content creation at the UDO Academy (by Marketing Magazin), working with both job seekers and company teams.

I’m also an active member of Slovenian Business Club (Youth section).

And one more thing: I really LOVE to travel! I believe that traveling is one of the most enriching things a person can do. I love visiting exotic places and discovering new cultures – it always gives me a fresh perspective.

This is simply how I’m wired – I enjoy working across different projects and bringing ideas to life in different ways. I create with heart, and that’s what keeps it all meaningful for me.

Lenart Kobal

Kako v naši agenciji zares uporabljamo umetno inteligenco?

Pred dobrim letom smo v Kobal Production sprejeli ključno odločitev: procese bomo razstavili do osnov in jih zgradili na novo. Z uporabo umetne inteligence. Danes lahko potrdim, da je to naš največji operativni preskok od samega začetka.

Pri tem ne govorim o uporabi ChatGPT-ja za pisanje objav. Govorim o tem, da smo zgradili lastno aplikacijo, ki v enoten sistem povezuje finance, projekte, prodajo, dokumentacijo in HR.

Finance brez iskanja papirjev:
Naš sistem samodejno prepozna vsak prejeti PDF račun, podatke pa strukturirano zapiše v bazo. Ker je aplikacija neposredno povezana z bankami, se transakcije samodejno uvažajo in povezujejo s pravim računom, projektom in stroškovno kategorijo. Konec meseca priprava za računovodstvo ne pomeni več ur brskanja po arhivih, ampak se zgodi z enim samim klikom.

Največja vrednost tukaj ni le prihranjen čas, ampak brutalno natančna analitika. V vsakem trenutku vemo, koliko nas stane določen tip projekta, kakšna je realna marža in kateri segmenti nam prinašajo največjo dodano vrednost.

Operativni sistem za vodenje projektov:
Namesto klasičnih orodij smo razvili lastno različico "Asane". Vsak projekt ima jasno definirane faze, mikro naloge, odgovorne osebe in stroške. Naročniki imajo dostop do svojega dela portala, kjer spremljajo napredek in nalagajo datoteke, komunikacija pa teče prek integracije s WhatsAppom, ne da bi pri tem izgubili strukturo v sistemu.

V ozadju vsakega projekta teče stroškovni model, ki beleži interni čas, zunanje izvajalce, lokacije in opremo. Na koncu vidimo do centa natančno, kakšna je bila čista marža, kar je popolnoma spremenilo naš pogled na določanje cen.

Prodaja, ki temelji na podatkih, ne na občutku:
Ko pripravljamo ponudbo, sistem že pozna realne stroške preteklih projektov in trajanje vsakega mikroprocesa. Ponudba je tako matematično utemeljen model. Ko jo naročnik potrdi, se iz nje avtomatsko generira celoten delovni proces. Producent ne začne z praznim listom, ampak s potrjeno strukturo, ki ji le sledi.

Digitalna dokumentacija in HR:
Vzpostavili smo lastne predloge dokumentov, zato pogodbe generiramo v nekaj klikih. Podpisovanje poteka digitalno, po potrebi tudi s SMS verifikacijo identitete. Vse je avtomatsko arhivirano pod projektom, vedno sledljivo in dostopno.

Prav tako smo uredili preglednost za ekipo. Vsak zaposleni ima na enem mestu vpogled v svoje plačilne liste, potne naloge, dopuste in urnike. Dostopne pravice so strogo definirane, povezava z internim strežnikom pa omogoča varno delo od koderkoli.

Kaj se je dejansko spremenilo? 
Imamo bistveno več nadzora, več podatkov in predvsem več miru. Danes si vodenja agencije brez tega sistema preprosto ne predstavljam več.

Če vas zanima, kako se lotiti podobne optimizacije procesov v vašem podjetju, z veseljem delim naše izkušnje in vam pomagam najti pravo pot.

Founder and owner of companies in creative production and hospitality | Kobal Production • Codeif • Neks Lounge • Pod zvezdami | Management Board Member, Slovenian Business Club Youth Section

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Andrej Persolja's LinkedIn Performance

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