How Ovationup CEO Zack Oates grew Ovationup to $3.2M revenue and 300 customers in 2024.

please welcome sack Oates from Ovation up what's up team okay so I'm going to talk about a little bit how I built Ovation with twenty thousand dollars in marketing budget so um a little bit about me by the way I grew up in New Jersey and yeah they do teach you how to use blow dryers there which is how I became 6'4 so basically what Ovation is is it is a feedback platform primarily for restaurants so we have a little over 2 000 restaurants we work with a little over 2000 restaurants about a hundred retailers and uh one blood sucking lawyer other than that we primarily work with restaurants so I don't know do we oh there we go so um we were doing 40K in mrr we had been around for a little while kind of like slow slow slow slow but the problem was that we were growing fat right we're going out um and then covid hit and just everything sucked and then we were trying to figure out what to do for a little while and then we've eventually kind of like you know hit our straw right um so but before we get into this I'm gonna tell you a quick story so I have a four-year-old a three-year-old and a nine month old and basically um they run around all the time they're crazy so this is this is our backyard and we have our our kitchen table is like right here and they would run around our kitchen table and run around and run around and run around and they would just smash into this glass door just every single day just smash into it and my and they actually uh would escape and so um and this is not a fenced in backyard there's a lot of cows back there they come up like right to this fence so it's a little you know and they would like stick their hand through the fence and try to pet the cows so my wife got a little uh worried and so she put in this lock well as part of putting in this lock she drilled two little holes right there right when she drilled that second hole the whole thing shattered now the reason I bring this up is because think about that hundreds of times my kids pressed against like slammed into it but because there was so much surface area that they were hitting that glass it was totally fine but that one little one little drill bit and boom the glass shattered so we're talking about the reason I bring that up is because one thing that I learned in this whole process of covid is that you can do if if you're doing a lot of stuff for a lot of people you're really doing nothing for anyone if you do something for someone that's what gets you to break through so if you're looking for money forget the Tam Screw The Tam Let It Go focus on what can you do for a very specific group so I'm going to talk about this uh this B2B how to do B2B marketing and it's really focused around being accepted by your Niche doing a podcast who here does a podcast okay everybody should do a podcast and I'll tell you why and then second one is trade shows there's a there's a very easy cheap way to win at trade shows I'm going to talk about that so be accepted by your Niche first of all this is this is the amount of LinkedIn connections I've added new connections per year and in uh 2014 I did an MBA so I got a lot of a lot of connections there and then I started actively Marketing in 2018 looking for people in our Niche and so this is you know if you're adding this many people to your LinkedIn uh per year in a very specific Niche you're gonna you're gonna get to the right people now the reason the thing I call it is I call it pip cats Partners investors press customers advisors thought leaders look for the PIP cats and connect with them okay these pip cats are gonna be what's gonna this is this is how you unlock your business but you you first have to pick your niche then uh contribute with your personality who are you right so this I I like food as you can tell um but you know this is like you know do case studies post personal stuff post thought leadership post things about your company so these are things that as you the more that you post and the more that you're connecting with your pip cats in your niche the more you're gonna be then ask yourself what does your team lack Rory was talking about finding people who had done it before right so find out what is your what is your team lack what do you need what do you need for that credibility so for me I found somebody who is okay uh I found somebody who was five years ahead of me John Moody founded the restaurant 365 found somebody who was extremely respected in in the industry I found somebody who had a lot of credibility in food and beverage and then I found an investor who uh ended up putting money in but there were there they only invest in Hospitality tech companies so as soon as I took money from them all of a sudden we were all over the news about you know these guys invested in us so find these advisors now one thing that I did is have you guys heard of a fast template no yes maybe so use fast template founder advisor standard template so this is uh this is what I used for my advisors to get them on board and how I gave them equity and how I knew how much to give them equity and everything was already kind of decided before we had started working together right because it's already it's already kind of like predetermined what are you going to be in there like how much Equity based on your stage so when I talk to the advisors I you know send them a LinkedIn message um would love to connect we chatted and then I would say usually sometime on that first call I'd say hey you know we are looking for advisors I would love to talk to you about that and then I'd kind of gauge their interest now we had a couple people say no and that's okay um we had a couple of advisors that came to us that really wanted to be a part of it and then conversation two and three I realized it wasn't going to be a good fit for us and so we kind of uh said no um and that's okay but when you find those good advisors they are gold because not only does it does it really solidify you as a key player in that Niche but then they have all the connections they have all the people to go and introduce you to so second thing do a podcast now first of all you don't need a ton of equipment to do a podcast okay go online and get one of these mics it's a hundred dollars if you can't invest a hundred dollars into this then see me afterwards I'll give you a loan very low interest it's not that much money and and the key is just start do it you don't need a lot of things if I'll tell you what even if you don't have this microphone I do I do about 30 of my podcasts with my MacBook okay I use the mic that's on the why because how many audio files are there out there like these people that are just obsessed with really good audio quality let me tell you in your Niche probably not that many right so don't unless you're in a podcast Niche then get a really good mic and set up and disregard everything I'm saying um but why you're so now you're connected to your pip cats right you're connected to the to the Press investors Partners customers advisors thought leaders so if you're connected with them invite them on the podcast and I'll I have a template for you to to use to invite them on the podcast but what are you giving them you're giving them content to make them look good right even if you are a nobody I'm a nobody why did they come to my podcast because I created a couple of podcasts initially with really good quality and it's fun and it takes 15 minutes and there's no prep call don't don't don't make them work for it tell them it's gonna be 15 to 20 minutes right so you have a few minutes at the beginning of like oh hey great to have you on the podcast you've done some really cool stuff okay you ready to go then at the end of the podcast what do you say hey thank you oh by the way the last question to ask on the podcast is who else should we have on the podcast right and then you reach out and and who do all these pip cats know other pip cats so then you reach out to the other pip cat to be like hey you were just mentioned the podcast by this guy so would love to have you on and she's like oh cool I'll come on right so now all of a sudden you're getting really cool people on the podcast and then um and then at the end of the call the last five minutes you say by the way do you know what what we do Innovation and they're like oh I kind of checked you guys out yeah you guess feedback for restaurants we're working with these customers do you know what it would mean so much to me if I could just chat with you later on next week and would love to get your opinion on what we do and you know how many dominoes is now a customer because of this right this is how we're able to to build these relationships now this is going to come in handy um yeah so do it cheaply you can find people to edit these podcasts it's very very easy very simple to do that so I have this whole template that I use...