How Verticaliq CEO Bobby Martin grew Verticaliq to $2.1M revenue and 140 customers in 2016.

this is the top where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of Revenue or customer base you'll learn how much revenue they're making what their marketing funnel looks like and how many customers they have I'm now at $20,000 per top 5 and6 million he is help on global domination we just broke our 100,000 unit sold Mark and I'm your host Nathan lka okay top drive this week's winner of 100 bucks is Rick segman Rick segman he is stuck brick and mortar business that is his Focus so congratulations Rick if you guys want to win 100 bucks every Monday on the show in order to enter simply subscribe to the show on iTunes now and then text the word Nathan to 33444 again text the word Nathan to 33444 folks many of you reach out to me and you say Nathan so many guests on your show talk about the importance of batching but whenever I try and batch you tell me this you go Nathan they don't book backto back times so you or they don't show up after they book it's frustrating the answer is guys you have to use Smart Tools I use a tool called AC scheduling at Nathan lat.com schedu I'll tell you specifically how I use it later on in the episode Nathan L here this is episode 541 coming up tomorrow morning you'll learn from Connor Lee of hip lead they've hit 120 Grand in monthly recurring Revenue by helping 30 customers get more leads and I'll tell you what I'm going to buy a company in the B2B lead space very soon it might be Connor you don't want to miss that episode tomorrow Nathan ladka here good morning folks Our Guest today is Bobby Martin who believes that too many startup Founders pivot way too early quit too earlier early and expect rapid takeoff through his experience of starting and selling first research which was a leader in sales intelligence for 26 million to a Fortune 500 firm done in Brad street he's learned firsthand the challenges and solutions at each stage of entrepreneurial growth he's the author of the hockey stick principles the four key stages to entrepreneurial success which was named an 800 CEO read best seller his current Adventure is his chairman and co-founder of vertical IQ a leading provider of sales research insight for banks he's an angel investor and serves as an active board member with with several Innovative startups including local eyesight boardroom insiders my life site Sage works and etail insights while he's a national speaker is still a HomeTown guy and focuses most of his investments in North Carolina where he's lived and worked Bobby are you ready to take us to the top I'm ready all right let's do this man so you got the book you got the early exit for 26 million you have your current Investments it's all very exciting I want to spend most time on vertical IQ if possible tell me first though uh first research you so up for 26 million to 4500 firm what year did you launch that company in 1999 wow so you were one of the early ones huh yeah it was you know before I even really knew what a startup was man I just had an idea and decided to pursue it and how old were you at that point 29 wow okay so the the that exit did you get a were you kind of pre- or post bubble did you get a a great valuation because you beat the bubble or was that a suppressed valuation because you came after the bubble it was uh it was before the bubble so I would say we got a good valuation uh so it was March 2007 when we closed so nothing had really hit the fan yet and what was briefly tell us what first research was what was the business uh we provide industry profiles to sales and marketing professionals to help them prepare for meetings with all types of businesses so it's industry intelligence for sales and marketing professionals and was that business model assass or pay as you go or agency kind of fee Consulting what was it it was a it's a SAS model of course it's information as a service as opposed to software as a service but that that's how do we get paid Upfront for subscriptions okay and then it TI us forward after that so you built that how many years did you build that and then why did you decide then to write a book at the end well we built the business it spent about seven or eight years building first research it was an incredible journey and in fact the sale to done in Brad street sort of snuck up on me it was not something I was planning to do but after the sale I hung around for about a year working to you know transition the company into Hoovers and done in Brad street was that by choice or you had you to get an earnout uh both okay both and so after that I uh you know I started actually thinking about all these ideas that i' had from first research and quite frankly I wrote the book because I love the process and I I just really got into interviewing Founders and just found them to be incredibly interesting people and so I just love the journey okay so you write the book most people say don't write a book you lose money and it takes a lot of time and it's super tough you decided to do it just cuz it was interesting and you had just gone through it absolutely you know it wasn't it was like not because of those things that I did I did those things those things were fine with me I just absolutely love the journey and so it's been a blast to tell you the truth and let's quickly touch on this because I do know we have some folks listening Founders CEOs who are thinking should I write a book to get more distribution or to grow the business uh did you self-publish this or did you uh kind of go the publisher route I went the publisher route so I partnered with flat iron in which is an imprint of McMillan publishing and had an agent and everything and quite frankly they've been fantastic I mean you hear all this news oh you should self-publish don't you know go with Publishers but they're really good at what they do their editors are outstanding and their marketing is outstanding so it's been a good partnership did you negotiate in ADV this wasn't probably important for you but it would be for maybe some of our other listeners uh did you negotiate hard for an advance or did you just try and maximize profit per book or revor share uh my agent uh with writer's house Lisa deona she negotiated the deal with the publisher and most of most of it was upfront if it does really well right now we're off a fantastic start but uh then of course there could be additional Revenue down the road but it was mostly Advan an Advan up front what was your Advance you know I think I'm under confidentiality on that it's a how many how many years ago was it published uh it was actually published in May oh okay so that's new okay God I was under the impression this was like you know early 2000s okay so you just recently published this thing exactly the hockey stick principles that's right and you said it's doing great quantify that for me how many copies have you sold yeah you know I get my six-month report soon but I'm thinking at least 10,000 um and it's doing really well on Amazon I've been really pleased with that in the retail stores it's all over the bookshelves uh thanks to McMillan and their their wonderful distribution and uh and I'm doing a bunch of speaking engagement so I mean I would love to sell several hundred thousand copies quite frankly 2017 and 18 are going to be the years where I really just get out there and uh beat the drums like crazy and of course the whole process is a blast the speeches and everything and learning and talking uh I've just enjoyed it so you know shooting for hundreds of thousands of books we'll see anything since you've been through it anything you can uncover for us that drove like the most sales for the book that you just did not expect ah great question uh I thought that a lot of our sales would come from online like from people just seeing me in the media and that kind of thing which we've gotten a fair amount of that but quite frankly that's been a little bit disappointing um you know the traditional blogging all that's been pretty dis disappointing quite frankly I think my publisher has driven a huge percentage of our sales and that surprised me uh they've been outstanding just through kind of distribution in Brick and mor locations or any specific tactic yeah definitely bit brick and Mortal locations and also their connections throughout the industry and uh media and that type of thing and you know quite frankly they're pretty Savvy at it so a lot of those traditional channels like the bookstores libraries quite frankly have been wonderful uh in terms of sales and they've generated a lot of that now I'm building up my own platform of of people and that's growing rapidly but up till now they've been the the spearhead for so you mentioned you're going to be kind of hustling to sell more of this book in 2017 2018 how are you balancing that now as chairman and co-founder vertical IQ yeah that's a great question well I hired a president in vertical IQ who's been doing a lot of the David uh the day-to-day operations his name is Kevin mcnamer outstanding high energy guy and is sort of active chairman I'm probably working 10 to 20 hours a week with vertical IQ and then on top of that um I'm an angel investor so I'm involved with eight other businesses in fact one of the guests you had on Darren Pier some detail insights I'm really involved with that company for example and and several others but I'm still a 4050 hour work we got um I just kind of Juggle...