Tom Hunt

$3.6m ARR. $0 raised. I have no idea what I'm doing.

Jan 2014.I'm walking home from a depressing New Year's trip to Oslo with an ex. girlfriend.It's raining in East London.I made a decision:I would replace my management consulting salary (£42,000) by the end of the year.I had no idea from where, but that was the goal...I just about hit it and left the corporate world.And I haven't been back since.Fast forward a decade and I've:- Tried and failed with 17 businesses- Invested in 11- Learnt a LOTThe one that is finally working is called Fame:- We have a weird culture (in a good way)- We start and grow podcasts for B2B businesses- We are fully remote and have 75 full-time team membersI live for our awesome team at Fame, building businesses and great marketing.And I post about them here 🤗

Founder & CEO

We start and grow the world's most profitable B2B podcasts.

Clients include:

👉 IDEO
👉 Workday
👉 HighRadius
👉 People.ai
👉 Zendesk
👉 Bevy
👉 Circle
👉 Suzy
👉 Mazars
👉 LeanData
👉 CXL
👉 Ramp
👉 Alibaba
👉 Signify
👉 eToro

$4.5m ARR. $0 raised. I have no idea what I’m doing.

“We need to let them go.”

I’m in a 1-1 and a manager thinks someone in their team isn’t performing.

I'm in shock, to me they seemed enthusiastic and a culture fit.


We dug into the details:

- What weren’t they doing?
- Why weren’t they doing it?

The manager thought they either didn't understand or couldn't do the role.

Then I ask:

“How did onboarding go?”

“What do you mean by onboarding?” they reply.


And that's when we found the issue:

We skipped the onboarding process and replaced it with "a couple of calls".


If you’re recruiting right, you owe it to yourself to onboard right.

You can’t expect someone to join and start performing, you need to set them up to succeed.

Onboard right or do it twice.

Agree?

I had a terrible boss.

And I spent more time with them than my partner.
 

They never raised their voice.

They smiled (kind of).

But they also started:

- Passing my ideas off as their own
- Expecting email responses at 10pm
- “Checking in” multiple times per day
 
Again, they weren’t ever aggressive or rude, they just slowly eroded my confidence each day.

I thought this was normal e.g. you get a job, you get a manager like this.
 

And then…

I moved roles and got a new manager, they:

- Stepped in when needed
- Never emailed after hours
- Saved most comms to our weekly 1-1
 

A great manager won’t get you promoted.

They will change the trajectory of your career.

Agree?

My 7 favourite startup lies:


1. We’re scaling
-- No, you still don't know how/if you'll be profitable

2. We’re going viral
-- No, your CEO’s LinkedIn fundraise post got a few more likes than normal

3. TechCrunch picked us up
-- No, your $10k per month PR agency got you featured

4. We’re partnering with Google
-- No, you’re paying Google Cloud for servers

5. The inbound pipeline is strong
-- No, some competitors requested a demo to see what you’re building

6. We have FANG-level talent
-- No, one of your devs interned at Netflix 6 years ago

7. The team are fully incentivised
-- No, they have paper options based on an inflated fundraise


And my absolute favourite:

8. We’re worth $30m
-- No, a hyped up VC gave you this valuation to make themselves look good (so they can raise their next fund)


Thank god we don't have to lie to ourselves.

Here’s to the bootstrappers 🥂

(Exit the hype-train and subscribe to Cash Machines)

I probably shouldn’t share this…

I like to call it the “Pay Rise Formula”.


Most people go about asking for money in the completely wrong way:

1. Pay review arrives
2. “Can I have more money?”

It’s an easy "not yet" from the boss.


But if you follow these three steps, you boost your chances of a pay rise by at least 56%:

(Not a guarantee but it works)

1. 6 months before the pay review ask your boss: “what do I need to be doing in the next 6 months to get a pay-rise?”

2. Write those things down and make a plan to hit them. Work hard.

3. A few weeks before the pay review, show the list (with things ticked off) to your boss in a 1-1 and ask them to confirm if you are actually doing those things


If done right, there is no way a boss can push back on a raise with the "not yet" excuse.

Pro-activity pays.

Agree?

"OK let me get this straight..."

"Because it kind of sounds like you built yourself a job."


It's 11:37pm in 2017 and I'm sat with a good friend enjoying a spicy margarita in a seedy city bar.

He's shouting into my ear because they closed something called a "Series A":

- How their going to change the world
- An upcoming TechCrunch article
- All the people he needs to hire
- Their "enterprise motion"


But something isn't making sense to me:

1. He has to report to the board every month
2. Any cost greater than £25k must have board sign off
3. He can't take cash out whenever he wants
4. Board needs to sign off his salary
4. If he leaves in the next 4 years he only keeps a slice of his own company
5. If they don't sell it for a massive amount he may get nothing
6. To sell it, they need investor sign off


He replies:

"Yeah I see what you're saying, but the reality is the company is now valued at £20m, my stake is £6m, so I'm basically a multi-millionaire"

😳


As you can imagine, it didn't work out well.

Glad I stuck to building Cash Machines.

$4.5 million ARR, 0 raised.

$500 invested.

It’s been a wild ride.


We have built Fame as a service business with mostly intangible assets.

We did it without selling a single piece of equity to venture capital.

But even asset-light businesses get stuck.

You often need to buy speed to hire a star developer, fund a new marketing campaign, or pay a tax bill.

In those moments, I did not want to wait weeks for a bank.

Unless I had another option.

An option like iwoca.


They fund small businesses that move quickly and have already funded 100,000 businesses in the UK. 

They lent £3.3 billion to business owners who need to move fast and build resilience.

You can apply for business finance between £1,000 and £1M in about five minutes.

They typically give you a decision within 24 hours.

Apply here to check your options: https://lnkd.in/euSG4SCm

NOTE - applying does not impact your credit score.

#Ad

Brand partnership • $4.5m ARR. $0 raised. I have no idea what I’m doing.

It felt like the responsible thing to do... 


But then it turned out to be one of the worst business decisions ever.

Depreciating assets hurt the balance sheet, locking up capital that could be used for growth. 

For example... 

We are in a hiring sprint, bringing on 2 - 3 new team members in Feb. 

Old Tom would have dropped thousands upfront for laptops that would be worth significantly less by next year.

That isn’t scaling.

It’s a cash drain.

Instead, we are using Raylo.

It took 60 seconds to set up a subscription for the latest HP laptops, and they arrived the next day.

Here is why I recommend Raylo as an affordable option for small businesses:

- Protect Your Cash: We paid £0 upfront. Every pound saved on hardware goes straight into growth.

- Upgrade Freedom: With the MacBook M5 rumors floating around, I am not worried because we can upgrade the team to the latest models for free with Raylo's monthly rolling option.

- Zero Drama: If something goes wrong with a device during the subscription, Raylo's Lifetime Warranty covers technical faults and they sort it quickly.


Or in other words:

Stop buying "stuff" that rots on your balance sheet. 

Convert your tech to OpEx and keep your capital for growth.

Check out the subscription options for your team here: mdsh.io/raylo-business 

#Ad

Dynamic Dreamz - Shopify, Shopify Plus, Website Design Agency

- Responsible for Inside Sales Operations
- Responsible for Marketing of Services to Total Addressable/Available Market
- Pro-Actively participating in Agency's strategic growth discussion, Collaborate on Actionable Insights and Executes plan with management personnel 
- Responsible for Pre-Sales and Post-Sales Activities 
- Overlook End to End Delivery Cycle management
- Accounts Creation, Handling and Management

> Exploring & Practicing Go To Market (GTM) As much as I can.

Overall Responsible for RRR
Reputations
Relationships
Revenues

Business Development Operation, Sales & Marketing Head || Strategic Growth Hacker

As BDM, Mainly involve with business development (Inside Sales) activities both Inbound and Outbound. 
As BA, Understanding the client business requirement -> creating task for production team to perform, managing end-to-end delivery. Mostly Prefer to use Agile Principals but again as needed.

Mix Activities like below : 

+ Sales Coaching
+ On-Portal Sourcing, Management (Elance, Upwork, Guru, PPH and Fiverr etc.)
+ Generating business from LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Nurturing & Leveraging B2B Ratings / Reviews portal like Clutch.co, Goodfirms.co, wadline.com, sortfolio.in, topdevelopers.co, extract.co and referial.com for Inbound Lead nurturing / qualifying prospect / closing deal
+ Help HR department to source executive level BD / BA resource
+ Team building and Team management
+ Account management / feed LTV in Account

Ongoing Shaping / Learning Activities like below : 

+ Agile Methodology in sales management and Project management
+ E-commerce Trend's Ins and Outs
+ Following Sales Enablement Technique and Trends

Business Development Manager | Business Analyst - Responsible for Inside sales operations

Potenza Global Solutions Pvt. LTD.

- Increasing International & global sales, contracts, partnerships preferred.
- Influence and negotiate with clients at all levels.
- Developing successful deals, partnership and opportunities in a global environment.
- Managing team of business development executive(s) to process lead to close deal.
- Project price estimation, quote, proposal creation, dealing with client and closure.
- Create, improve proposals, sales letter, etc. for improvements in sales.
- Internet research about potential outsourcing partners and eventual partnerships.
- Work on various freelance job portals like elance, Upwork, guru, pph and fiverr etc.

Oversees a company's global operations.
In some instances, responsible for all of a company's foreign business.
such as in charge of international sales and account management related activities.

Business Development Manager

Acquaint Softtech Private Limited

•Managing Business Development Team with individual contribution.
•Managing Project Management Team with individual contribution from service deliverable perspective.
•Identify and Interact with End-Clients in all major Market like USA , UK , UAE , Canada, Austrailia and so on.
•Overseeing complete business operations in the assigned region with forecasting monthly/ annual sales targets & executing them in a given time frame.
•Involved in Database creation, Lead Generation, Pre-Sales Activities like Market Research, Customer Identification and Prospecting, Customer Analysis Review, New Territory Business Development and Creating call strategy.
•Overseeing complete production operations in the assigned region with forecasting as per client's timeline targets & executing them in a given time frame.
•Interacting with CXO’s, VP’s, Directors and IT Managers to understand their current IT environment and propose our solutions as per their pain points.
•Promoting services like web design , web programming , seo , content writing , mobile application development and so on IT Services.

Oversees a company's global operations.
In some instances, responsible for all of a company's foreign business.
such as in charge of international marketing and offshore development related activities.

Weifang Keyuan Digital Co. Ltd. China

-Increasing International & global sales, contracts, partnerships preferred.
-Influence and negotiate with clients at all levels.
-Developing successful deals, partnership and opportunities in a global environment.
-Project price estimation, quote, proposal creation, talking with client and closure.
-Create, improve proposals, sales letter, etc. for improvements in sales.
-Internet research about potential outsourcing partners and eventual partnerships.
-Work on various freelance job portals like elance, guru, getafreelancer, etc.

Oversees a company's global operations.
In some instances, responsible for all of a company's foreign business.
such as  in charge of international marketing and outsource related activities.

International Business Manager

Weifang University Of Science & Technology China

Foreign Trainer as well as Business Manager IT Services ( computer science department ) at Weifang University Of Science & Technology Shouguang, Shandong ,China.

Foriegn Trainer Cum Business Manager IT Services

Glowing Soft Technologies

Oversees a company's global operations.
In some instances, responsible for all of a company's foreign business.
in some way also responsible for project line up and give update to client on timely manner.
overall in charge of international marketing and offshore developmemt related activities.

Business Development Executive

Vodafone India

Mainly Responsible for Back End Operations at Zone Level Office.

AAD Executive (Admin & Account Department)

I helps B2B, B2C and D2C entities to stay on course about staying up to date with online presence

> 14+ Years of working professional around IT Sales, Marketing, Client Service, Business Development, Rev Operation process.
> Deals with whole process of Sales & Operation for off-shore development (Information technology) Unit.  
> Handling Sales, Marketing, BD, Rev Operation process as a core responsibility.  
> Exploring Go To Market (GTM) As much as I can.

I am target oriented and readily available to face challenges. 

My objective is to earn very much money so l can start charitable trust for underprivileged children who are not able to get education due to their economical situation.

Reach me on :: 
LinkedIn Message.

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The Battle

Tom Hunt

Mukesh Patel

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taplio

The Battle

Tom Hunt

Mukesh Patel

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

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);}Tom Hunt's LinkedIn Performance

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