247: How Your Mindset Can Make or Break Your Company - with Gavi Zeitlin

Hello, and welcome to Sas three in the making. Thank you very much for coming. I am your host, Matt Wolach. And our goal here is to help you scale your software company so you can gain more revenue, get a lot more valuation and get that dream exit. And I'm super excited here today because I'm joined by GAVI Zeitlin, Gabi, welcome to the show.

And that's awesome to be here.

Oh, it's so glad. I'm so glad to having you here. It's really going to be a fun chat. I'm really been looking forward to this for a while. This is my first podcast taping after the New Year. I know you guys who are listening to it. It's several weeks after that. But I have been looking forward to this all holiday break. So Gabi, let's talk about who you are. So everybody knows. So Gabi is the co founder at fire consulting in Gabi has more than 12 years of experience working with startups, agencies and fortune 200 companies on marketing product and business development. His rich experience across a variety of industries enabled him to gain a unique perspective on what makes a business succeed or fail. He developed the three pillars of the fire marketing method, we're going to talk about that here in a bit. I can't wait and launch fire consulting to help founders and business leaders sharpen the core of things needed in their businesses to help achieve effortless scale and dominate their markets. He really knows what he's talking about. Once again, Gaby, thanks for coming on the show.

Yeah, this is you nailed it. That's, that's exactly what I like to tell people do is find out where they're struggling where they're stuck to help them get to the next level. I really just sums it up right there.

Awesome. Perfect. So tell me about what you've been doing lately? And what's coming up for you?

Yeah, sure. So, um, you know, even lately, if I go back, you know, kind of the beginning of my career, I always found I had a very, very kind of unique perspective, going through the various stages of the different companies I was in. So I started on the startup that was eventually acquired by Fortune 200 company, it's kind of like a real one at in terms of just kind of seeing how things are done versus how on one side of the fence versus the other side of the fence. As well as also along the way to seeing lots of in that company, other companies as well successes and failures. And over time, I kind of really noticed the a lot of the successes and failures came down to three core things, which is what eventually became the fire marketing method. Fire itself, we launched last year as a consulting company. And I've been in a number of startups and businesses during that time, helping them refine and sharpen exactly, these three pillars to help them to success for their growth as well. So I'm really excited to get started between 23 and helping even more companies just crush it.

I love it, I love it. That's my goal, too. So we're doing the same thing. It's fantastic. I cannot wait to hear about this fire marketing methods. So what exactly is the fire marketing method I know that's for those of you who are listening, fire is all capitalized, FLIR E, fire marketing method, and when when should leaders use that?

For sure, so the firing marketing method is really comes down to three pillars. And the first is really getting your offer offering in place. And I'll talk a bit more about what what that means. Because most people kind of gloss over the offer, they kind of, they'll get something and then they'll kind of or they'll copy something and then they'll kind of run with it. And and that's kind of pillar number one, we're really want to focus on that pillar number two, is really building out your middle of the funnel marketing, a lot of people are very into very top of the funnel, top of funnel stuff. It's very sexy, it's very cool. But middle of the funnel is where where it's at in terms of being able to build a leveraged marketing system to be able to get people who are going to have shorter sales cycles, and better retention for your business as well. Because you're bringing people in the door, who understand your product and your and your business better and what how it's gonna work for them when they close. And then the third pillar is mindset, alright, and mindset is, I think, the most important pillar, a lot of people will dismiss mindset. But what I have found is that mindset is, if you don't have the right mindset in place, it is literally the difference between success and failure. Fire as an acronym is actually the breakdown of how you do the offer, right? So originally started as the fire offer method, as we kind of built out and integrated and built out this whole model, and what fire stands for the F and fire stands for focused. And that means having a focus niche, and a focus problem that you're targeting, I suppose to kind of having a general a general type of offer, you're very, very clear on exactly who you're talking to, and exactly what problem it is that you're solving for them. I is interest, right? This is. This means that you know that the market is actually interested in solving this problem. I had a conversation with someone a few weeks ago, and he told me he was sitting down with his accountant. And the accountant was using a software from the 80s on a computer that was running Microsoft DOS. Oh no. Like, I use like, like, man, like there are so many better systems you can use like it's 2022 You know, like now it's three and the guys like it's works for me, I don't want to have to change anything I did this right this is this works for me. So having suddenly you know, so I was actually interested in saw thing is absolutely key, if you're going to be developing something, are is results based, right. So one of the things that I talk about when it comes to offers and really any product is that people don't really buy products, they buy solutions to problems, and they have to understand where their current situation is and what the desired situation is. And if you can position your product that is the vehicle to help them get there. And the way to do that is to be able to clearly define the result that they're going to get with your product, right? Case studies, etc. The better your case studies, the better you can market using results. And then the last one E is execution, being able to deliver something that's that's as as sharp as possible to actually deliver that result. And not at all a lot of things. It's actually when again, when it comes to software, this is where actually a lot of all in one solutions can actually get a little bit convoluted, and kind of trip over themselves a bit by focusing on that problem, you can charge more that's the product is simpler, and the Margaret advise it better because you're able to articulate and show them exactly how they how they can execute solve particular problem. I'm using that so that's kind of the the the framework for fire as well as also the the marketing and the mindset component for thanks.

A lot love it all Super, very important things and something that a lot of people are quite missing. And I love how earlier when you talked about the offer, I think a lot of people kind of missed the boat on their offer, what are some of the biggest mistakes you see that leaders are making around their offer?

This mistake is not talking to your customer enough, right? Like if particularly an early stage startup, it's not talking to your to your customer. And then as the company starts to grow, it's not talking or listening to sales calls enough, right? Start listening what people are actually saying like one of the things that happens, particularly as a company grows just as relevant when it's smaller, right, you have your marketing your sales team, right and, and making sure that they are overlapped as well as possible. And there's a feedback cycle is absolutely critical. Because if marketing is going out there, and they're talking, and they're saying something, and sales is talking to the customer, and they're saying something, and the customer is having an objection, it's never getting addressed in the marketing, right, that's, you're having a recipe where basically you're trying to drive the car forward. But the hand brakes on it, you're stalking going anywhere, you're gonna go really, really hard with a lot of energy. And had building that kind of feedback loop with very early on in the organization is absolutely key to be able to do that. And the offer really comes down to gun again, there's actually a methodology, right? Again, fire is one of them, I need them to really articulate, right? I wake up every single morning, who's my customer? What's the problem I'm solving? Who's the customer? What's the problem solving, who's the customer? What's the problem I'm solving, because not only is that going to help you product developments can help general focus in the organization. As the organization grows, you one of the things that people really want to have is a sense of mission, right? Instead of people kind of saying like, Oh, I'm customer service in some SAS company, like, oh my gosh, I help, you know, accountants save, you know, two hours of their day from just mundane tasks, right. So they can be with their families more. Right, like, like, that's a very, very different type of message and feel you're gonna have both your product and your marketing as well as your entire organization, as you scale getting really clear on that.

I think it's super important to get clear on that. And the other thing I thought you touched on, which is really important, a lot of people don't think about is mindset. And when you think of mindset, why would you say it's super important for a business leader to be in the right mindset?

Yeah, so so let's just kind of discuss a little bit what mindset is, mindset is also, always trying to think of a good acronym for this. So like, I can tell you this, Tony Robbins says that the growth of a business is 80% mindset 20% tactics. That's how he leverages all sides of it. And I can definitely say this is true. One of the things I always found fascinating when I was working in corporate, was when you can have somebody stand in front of a room with a lot of very senior people and speak with utter confidence about absolutely nothing. Because they have no idea the details of the subject matter anything actually related to move your project forward. And I'm flipside, you have the people who are actually involved in the project, know the details, but they're just they don't want to speak up even though even though they're the experts, right? That has nothing to do with with your skills has nothing to do your practice has everything to do with your mindset. And what it really comes down to is the the identity of who you are. And kind of a kind of break that down a little bit more but like when it comes to like, like you always have to ask yourself, or you should ask yourself, Who am I and the way your brain works is the brain is always looking for evidence to show that something is true. So usually people will believe will believe in their ability based on what's happened in the past and based on what happen in the past. So when they get confronted with a challenge. If they're nervous or afraid they won't confront the challenge, they won't take the action needed. And that's usually exactly what's needed to move something forward. And there any of the reasons why that that happens is because you know, you have the amygdala in your brain, which is controlling the fear area. And as soon as something comes up, it just activates those, that fear danger, don't go there. Okay. And the real trick for mindset is being able to identify when I go into that patterns, okay, you know, I decided I'm, you know, I'm gonna start doing webinars, or I'm gonna start doing outreach, or I'm gonna start doing something related to partnerships. All of a sudden, it's like, hold on a second, I guess, I got to talk someone on the phone, or this person is a real senior person and kind of person who could talk to that person on the self talk to start. And also in as much easier just to go back to talking about developers about the next, you know, feature the product that we should be building, right, it will revert to your comfort zone, Revert fine, and then kind of where you revert to find, that's where the depth of, of people and organizations really starts. And the reason why it's so important for the leader to have this, because everyone below you is is is there going to be pushing, right? You have to be the person who's who has that mindset to say, you know, what we have that we have that, that vision of where we want to go to, and you got to pull everyone else along with you. Right. And this is why mindset is so important, because it will literally act as a glass ceiling for the growth of an individual in an organization.

It's super critical. I totally agree. Yeah, you can't have something that's going to be limiting you. When you look at an organization, what are some of the common symptoms that you see in that business? Or in the leader that show that there's really a lot of mindset work that needs to be done?

Yeah, so there's, there's a few places, there's a few places I would look at. So the first one kind of like the obvious one would be business metrics, right? How fast are you growing? Are you growing at, you know, 10% a year, or you're not growing? Are you growing? 3050 100% a year? Right? Um, and, and the, the question usually comes like this, but you could be growing, maybe you figure out a strategy to tackle, it's working really, really well, you want to execute it, you know, it's like, like, you know, what, we got our FTE our team in place, we know how to address our object objections, it's really dialed in. But I noticed that like the average life cycle, or str is like four months on the leaf, right, it's like, that's a symptom, that, that you're you figure out a growth strategy, but there's something unhealthy about the organization, what's going to happen is that you will hit a wall eventually. Right? So usually, that's where and that's kind of like the balance, though, versus the other side of that, which is that, you know, as the business grows, there's always going to be this tug of war between operations, marketing and sales, right, you know, operations and marketing and sales are always new, kind of pulling on each other. But if there's, there's a healthy tug of war there, right? There's a healthy toggle, because we're all wanting to achieving the same goal, right? That's where that's healthy tug of war, but it's when people are leaving, and people feel frustrated. And, and or the business is stuck, right, that's usually the symptoms start to show up there. But also, if you if the founder shows up in the morning, and he's like, okay, like, we're good. I don't have to push too hard anymore. You know, I can match a lot your listeners are like that. But that's also good symptom, which again, I've experienced it, which I've experienced in certain organizations of the plateaued.

That's nasty, I've seen that as well. But I, I'm hoping that nobody out there is doing that, if you're listening to this show, you're probably wanting to improve wanting to get better. So I'm glad that you're doing that and taking that action. Because once you get to that point where you think you're good, then you pull the you know, the take your foot off the gas, and you don't quite put as much effort into it, you stop learning, you stop growing, lots of bad stuff happens. And so try not to ever get to that point, try not to feel comfortable with where you are, if you want to continue to grow, you've got to be hungry, you've got to continue to get after it in order to make sure that you're still getting things done. still improving the company still growing, scaling, and getting to your dream. So I love that.

Well, appraisals are good. Celebrations are good. Oh, yeah. Once in a while they're good, but never be like, Okay, I've made it. That's it, I can retire now, you know, so I'm gonna go make my million. It's like I used to always joke and say, like, I remember, if you go back, let's say like, the earliest internet marketing, when people would like market all these, like, you know, make money online and retire on the beach kind of thing, right? And it's like, well, if you notice the person who's marketing the course, he's not lying on the beach all day, right? This guy has made a ton of money, doing all the stuff, but he's like, he's moving. Right? He's like, it's not because he doesn't have the money. It's because it's like, I want to keep moving like I got to this level, the next time we get to the next level, we get to the next level, right? And that's what that you've achieved. The real peak of human of human achievement as your you know, as you move forward, and be able to break down again, all those the use of the limiting beliefs and the mindsets of a hold people back is absolutely key to be able to get to that next step. Because if you don't know how to recognize it, and the techniques to be able to shift it and change it, like eventually you will hit a ceiling. I know people. I know a guy actually one of my one of my mentors, my mentors, not one of my mentors As in SAS, he always says that he knows within organizations, he can build a business from nothing. And he's like, I know, I can get to about the one to $2 million a year mark. And then I got to hand over somebody else. Right, he recognizes where he needs to step out. Right, that's also part of it, right to understand that there's also this different skill set that's needed. When you're growing a company to become, it's usually about the million dollar mark, where you where you convert from being kinda like the lead salesman in the company to for growth, to becoming a business operator. That's also it's a wildly different mindset needed. And some people don't necessarily have both those skills, I'm able to be able to identify, you know, I think I've hit my peak here, I need to put people in place now who have this expertise, I'm able to either step back or learn how to operate the business, right. And that's kind of the mindset shift.

I love it, it is a shift. And it's something that a lot of people go through, sometimes whether they realize it or not one of my clients in particular, he just said that he was, you know, the sales guy, and he's doing a great job of it so great, they needed to grow. So they hired other people on the team and more salespeople, and now, he's completely shifted his role from selling to now recruiting and managing people and running meetings. And it's a it's a complete shift. He's making it successfully, but he has said, it's been, you know, definitely a transition. And there were some bumps in the road along the way, and you've got to be able to, to handle that. So it's critical,

right. 100% And one of the one of the stories, I one of my favorite entrepreneurs is Russell Brunson. farmer from Click Funnels. And, and he tells a story that he got to this point where he was running the company, you know, I don't know, there were $150 million a year or something like that, and create some some huge number. And he was like, I'm not doing my zone of genius anymore, I need to get out of this. And he said, I'm a step down as CEO, become chairman of the board, go back to my area, move the company forward, and somebody else will come in and run these things. Right. So it happens at all levels.

Yeah, it definitely does. And being able to identify that and know that you need to do that is is important. So if you're starting a company, it's likely that you're good at leadership from a certain range, and being able to turn it over is sometimes scary, but really important. What I want to ask you in terms of importance, what would you say is more important, cuz you talked about mindset. So to you, tactics and strategies or mindset, where do you put that balance?

So So I quote Tony Robbins before and I would definitely say that's true, I would just I would add something to what he says, which is, you know, is that 80% of it is, is mindset. But I think the other thing that people don't talk about so much, which is understanding principles, and not necessarily the latest tactic or strategy, because if you can really understand the principles, let's say the principles of sales marketing, right, you know, let's say the principle of marketing or say most people think marketing is getting your message out there. That's usually how people, how can we get our message out there and there's, there's LinkedIn and there's Tik Tok. And there's there's bearsden times square square. And there's this channel means that channel and this is the principle of marketing is, how do I identify a customer who has a problem that my product solves? How do I get my message to communicate? Right? That my problem, problem consultant, what's the most efficient way for me to communicate that to him? So he can take action? Right? That's a principle, right? Now you can take that, and you maybe experiment, a few different things. And then you find you know what, I found that cold email posting on one social channel like LinkedIn, and webinars is the optimal process for us. And then you focus on optimizing that thing. You ignore LinkedIn, you ignore. Tick tock, you ignore everything else. Now LinkedIn, ignore tick tock, right. That's one of them, you should be focusing on. Right, and then you just double down until you're able to maximize the heck out of that channel, like most people will get wide, as opposed to going really, really narrow. Wasn't narrow and deep.

Yeah, definitely approach.

So definitely, that I've definitely say it's mindset, because a lot of people look, they think, the more channels I'm on, the better, but really, the more channels you're on, the more you're distracted, the more energy and resources that you're taking away from your team of realizing actually able to get real results. Again, I just give you a good example. It's happened with me, right? Because I was working in the SAS company, and you know, struggling struggling to sell the product was us. It was a startup funded startup and just struggling to sell it. And, you know, we'd had this email list of like, 10,000 people, and I just started marketing webinars to the email lists first webinar was a disaster. I don't know like 20 people on the webinar, no one nothing moved from it, but I got better within the six week period. We're getting 150 people on the webinar. 50% of those people were signing up and booking calls with us a warm calls. And basically those webinars were We're the result, here's the product. So they already come in there and seen the product. And basically, the call was kind of like the final the final details what they needed to know, to implement in their business, those calls went very quickly. And then 50% of all those calls converted to ticket sales. Well, again, this is just like a just a different way of doing it, where most people will look at that and say, Listen, like, usually we have a team of STRS. And once they get the lead from marketing lead, the SDR is gonna own this bucket of leads, and they're gonna develop this until, you know, they become a saleable have set. And we'll have, we'll have sales meetings, and we'll integrate the best ideas, and that's going to be how we're going to do it. Right. As opposed to, let's try something else. Right, let's let's test something else. So that things work. Otherwise, we're gonna double down on the thing that's working for us.

I love it. So fun when you find something that works, I'm glad you did. And doubling down is absolutely the way to go. I want to before we go, I want to make sure I hit on some impostor syndrome, because I know you're big on this. How do you identify and overcome impostor syndrome? Just to make sure everybody knows, you know, maybe explain a little bit about what impostor syndrome is? And then how can you identify that make sure you overcome it?

Sure. So impostor syndrome is, once again, it's being confronted with something, you really have to take the next level, but your brain is telling you, it's not safe, don't do it, and you go, it's easier to get distracted with something else, right, and just ignore the thing you actually have to do to move forward. And, and the reason why this happens is because it really has to do with identity. So I'm gonna try to go a little bit deep here, right? So bear with me for a second. That's to do with your identity. Right? And, and it's the internal struggle that happens, which is that if I go and take this action, what does that mean about who I am? Right? What more importantly, what does it say about you what my family will say about me? Right? Maybe there's stories from the past that are holding you back, that keeping you from actually stopping and taking that extra from doing that. So the most important thing to realize how your brain plays tricks on you. And there's a and there's a few steps and things that you can do to kind of really kind of center yourself to get over this. So the first one is you want to get really, really calm. Right? So you want to focus this is why meditation is good. EFT is good. Wim Hof breathing is good. I think whatever your your calming method of choice is, it's really important to get calm, because then you get into a state, where you're able to really start thinking creatively creatively about the next step, the second thing you want to do is, you really want to have a clear vision about who you want to be, let's say in a year's time, three years time, right, and say, This is where I am now who don't want to be in three years time. And it is action, this does have to align with who I am today. This is aligned with who I want to be in the future. And then the third technique is what I call a game player mode. Right? This is where you kind of mentally take yourself out of your head. Because the head is where all the problems start. And you basically view yourself as like a third player in like a video game. And you're gonna basically direct yourself to take the action needed to move up to the next level in the game. Wow. Right. So these are like the three, these are the three stages that are kind of the three steps you can do to identify and overcome impostor syndrome. Again, get calm, be super clear. Again, you can you want to sit down actually write this out in three years, you know, this is my bodyweight. This is the type of this is how I dress. This is how much money I'm making. This is what my business looks like, very great. This is what my, this is what my home life looks like it very detailed about that. And don't get focused on who you are today. See, like this, this is who I want to become, okay, it is 100% American become true, not necessarily. But the point is that, it allows you to start directing your actions today, that take you out of your image of who you are in the past. Right you like you are, who you are in the past, right you are, who you are today and who the vision of you're in the future is that you want to move towards. And when you do that, you know, you're gonna start reaching out to people who will who you normally wouldn't have in the past, start creating new opportunities for your business and start trying putting new systems in place that maybe you've never done before. You'll do something let's say like hiring someone, let's say you're, you've you've owned the marketing and sales process for the entire first $100,000 of the business in MRR and then you got to go hire a marketing and sales leader and to do that I was like, hold on, give this up. But if you actually imagine hold on Second, I want to be CEO in three years I'm CEO I'm not the guy running the marketing campaigns. Okay, fine. This aligns with who I want to be I can let it go now. Right and that's how you really work on getting over imposter syndrome right? And yeah, like this is obviously a very, very basic level I'll usually go pretty deep with people to really identify what those are so we can just obliterate them or obliterate those those limiting beliefs. So they can they can start using all the tactics and strategies and things they know they need to do to actually achieve the next level and their business without having this old self and all this old baggage and crap holding them back.

I love it. That's such great stuff. Gaby, I know we are We're running short on time. But I want to make sure I get one question to you what what's one piece of advice you would have for early stage leaders who are starting their software company and really looking to grow? From a mindset impostor syndrome perspective? What can you share with them?

Yeah, so I would sit down and do that exercise I said before, right? Like, say, like, today, you have a bunch of tasks in front of you, right? Things you know, you need to do today, right? But be very, very clear. Where do I Where do I want to be in three years, and it is so clear, I want to be like, like, more vivid in your mind than any movie you've ever watched. Right? And very clear your mind like this is this is the eventual target on getting to, this is where I'm going. Right? And be very, very clear about that. And then allow that image to drive all your actions for it. Because again, in the early stages, particularly like it can be brutal. It can be brutal, like people people are gonna say, Fu and when you call them, when you cold, call them or send them emails, you know, you're gonna do webinars where nobody shows up, you're gonna do all these things that can say, Oh, my God, why am I even doing this? Why am I even doing this? But if you have that, why, if you have an image, so clear, in your mind, everything, every hurdle you're going through doesn't matter. Because spending principle about the reason why is that the brain is always looking for evidence that something is real. And if you will say, Oh, I do XYZ, or I did something that was a total disaster. The brain come and says, See, I told you, you you couldn't do it. I told you, you couldn't do it. Right? Because, look, here's the evidence for why you can't do it. You know, again, this guy said fu on the call, and you haven't sold anything in a month. Right? All these Disasters are happening around you, you know, you are a loser. And so the self talk that comes in, right, but if something does happen, right, and you have that vision of the future, you know, oh my gosh, like, I close through three sales calls in a row, like, Dude, this is this is my vision, this is my future happening, I can see that happening. You're really excited, like over the top excited about it, then that's how you're gonna stay focused and really, really move forward to to accomplish what you want to accomplish.

That's fantastic. Great stuff. I hope everybody takes that to heart for sure. And unfortunately, we are out of time, Gaby, how can everybody get in touch with you? How can they reach you?

Yeah, so come check me out on LinkedIn, Goddess Island. I think my name spelled on the screen here. But if you're listening, it's GA VI, z it li N very active on LinkedIn. So come and connect with me. Follow me. Say hi. And I look forward to learning about your business and seeing what what awesome thing that you are building.

Very cool. We'll put that in the show notes as well. So anybody listening, you'll be able to click on that and see that. But this has been great. Gaby, thank you so much for coming in.

No problem. Now. This is This is fun.

It certainly was. And thank you everybody for watching. Thanks for listening. Make sure you're subscribed hit the subscribe button so that you do not miss out on any other amazing leaders and thinkers like GAVI. Hit that now so you don't lose any of those cool opportunities. Thank you very much for coming. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Take care