Joel Hansen

Our Toronto Tech Fest yacht party sold out in five days... Here's what it taught me about B2B sales. Just like organizing a successful event, a well-executed B2B sales strategy requires careful planning, consistent effort, and strategic actions. Here are the key takeaways: 🎯 Targeting the Right Audience: We didn’t try to sell tickets to everyone. We identified founders, investors, and builders who would appreciate and enjoy a yacht party experience. Similarly, in B2B sales, it’s crucial to focus on your ideal customer profile. Not every lead will be a perfect fit, so don’t waste time on those who aren’t. 📢 Engaging Communication: We kept our audience engaged with compelling social posts about the upcoming event. In B2B sales, regular and engaging communication helps keep prospects interested. This can be done by sharing relevant content, success stories, and industry insights. 🪩 Demonstrating Value: We showcased the unique aspects of our party: the water, the sunset, the music, the drink in the hand, etc. In B2B, it’s essential to demonstrate the unique value and ROI of your product or service. Use case studies, demos, and testimonials to show real benefits. 🛠��� Utilizing Tools and Technology: We leveraged platforms such as Luma and social media such as LinkedIn for promotion. Similarly, using CRM systems, marketing automation tools, and data analytics can streamline your sales process and make it more effective. 🏃‍♂️ Creating Urgency: Limited tickets and early bird pricing created a sense of urgency. In B2B sales, creating a sense of urgency through limited-time offers, incentives, and highlighting the cost of inaction can accelerate the decision-making process. 🤝 Building Relationships: We engaged with our community, letting them know they are valued. Building strong relationships through personalized outreach, understanding their needs, and providing tailored solutions is key in B2B sales. 🙏 Handling Objections: We addressed questions about the event promptly and transparently. In sales, handling objections with confidence and providing clear, honest answers helps build trust and move the deal forward. 🏁 Closing the Deal: Finally, we made the purchasing process seamless and user-friendly. In B2B sales, ensure that the final steps are straightforward and that you provide all necessary support to close the deal smoothly. Selling out our yacht party tickets taught us that success comes from understanding your audience, engaging them effectively, and providing clear value. Apply these simple principles to your B2B sales strategy to achieve remarkable results. Follow for more insights!

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If I was an A player / high performer seeking employment right now, I'd look for jobs at organizations running one of these business operating systems: Scaling Up: A Gazelles Company, Metronomics, or EOS - Entrepreneurial Operating System. There are several reasons for this: -Core Values-Driven CEOs: Many will have CEOs that actually live their company core values (and insist everyone else does, too), giving you the best chance possible to thrive -A Player Team: Because these organizations are more likely to use Topgrading to hire, you'd be part of a drama-free, A Player team (do not underestimate the importance of this; if you've had bad team members or have been dismayed by workplace drama, you understand) -Get Paid More: Compensation will likely be at the high end for your role because these organizations understand the value the A Player creates -5D Focused Leadership Teams: Leadership teams are focused on Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, resulting in less workplace politics (doing the wrong thing for the wrong reason) and way less stupidity from leaders All of these things will result in the most fulfilling working environment you've ever had. Remember the "Great resignation"? That may as well have been a myth to my clients. Why? Nobody leaves an A player team. NOBODY. That was a problem for companies that don't live there core values and that tolerate B and C players. Unfortunately, there isn't a public list of these companies. That would be one incredible A Player recruitment website. But there are a few things A players can do to find these employers: 1. Reach out to the organizations above to find out if they know of companies in your area using their systems/tools 2. Reach out to your local chapter of Entrepreneurs' Organization or Young Presidents' Organization - that's where the self-aware leaders using these systems/tools congregate ***Important interview question all candidates for all candidates to ask: Is your CEO a member of EO or YPO? Self-aware leaders tend to join these peer learning associations, and that's the kind of leader you generally want as an employer/leader.*** 3. Reach out to Metronomics, Scaling Up, or EOS coaches in your area to find out which of their clients is currently hiring. I'll be posting some of my clients' open positions - as well as background on the company - here in the near future. Find a company that is deserving of your behavior and talents. #Metronomics #ScalingUp #EOS #Hiring #JobSeekers #Jobsearch #employerofchoice #topgrading #fivedysfunctionsofateam #corevalues #YPO #EO #Grovertalent #talent #Aplayers #Aplayerhiring

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Tuned into The Unofficial Shopify Podcast featuring Mia Ray from Glam-Aholic Lifestyle. Inspired by entrepreneurs who bootstrap their businesses, show up, post from the heart, and follow their passion. Trying - and failing. Trying - and learning. Trying - and succeeding. Building a community who believes in your vision takes hard work. Check out her company at glamaholiclifestyle.com. "I was just being myself." "I built my community and THEN I offered them a product for them to purchase." - Mia "Consistency is critical." - Kurt #smallbusiness #entrepreneurship

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I’ve never read a book written by a friend, until now. Fin Heureuse is only available in French for now. In it, Derek Morin reverse-engineers his startup exit in just 24 months. And he does it with flawless execution. Knowing the person behind the words you're reading is a feeling I might not get to experience often, but I loved every page of this book. Here are 3 things that stood out to me: → The ugly > the bad > the good Derek doesn’t hold back. He even shares how he planned to push some people out right before executing his exit plan. → The recipe + the ingredients + the cooked meal From revenue numbers to growth metrics and the accounting books, he shares it all. You’ll also see how he course-corrected in real-time. → From decision made to the finish line, step by step He lays out the 24 months in chronological order, event by event, sharing what he learned along the way. It was a short, fun, and informative read. Reading Derek’s book encouraged me to do two things: → Be more surgical about our growth and direction, even without an exit in mind. → Start planning my own book, a dream I aim to achieve one day. Now while I work on convincing Derek to write the English version, I highly recommend it to my French-speaking founder friends. -- That’s Derek Morin, a successful founder, author, and friend. Follow him to learn how to build a no-BS startup.

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This post from Alexis Grant is clear, concise and to those who have this on their radar, includes valuable nuggets. Bottom line: once you’re on your journey, moving at highway speed, pay attention as traffic, accidents, potholes and better routes etc can appear and approach rapidly, requiring decisions to be made. Huh? Ok, forget all that. Just read her post.

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Two weeks ago, I started the r/CanadianBacon sub on Reddit so Hardbacon expertise can be found on Google. (PS: For those of you that are not aware, Google search result now mostly display Reddit threads for any query, which basically relegates websites like Hardbacon to the second page of search results) There are already 630 Canadians in this sub and I personally answered dozens of personal finance questions from the members. We are also getting better at paid acquisition and running campaigns on Facebook, Bing and Google (yes, the irony is not lost on me). We launched 2 Linkedin newsletters (Canadian Bacon in English and Gras Dur in French) that generated 15,000 articles views so far. We are also running multiple ads campaign to grow our email newsletter and are currently working on a soon to be launched SMS-based newsletter. My point is there are always other ways. Thanks Google for teaching me importance of traffic diversification :)

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Try more things. Fail more often. Learn faster. Burn brighter. Plant more gardens. Launch more startups. Make more babies. Build more community. Help others do the same. This is effective opportunism. Pronoia & Purpose. E/opp is a better meme than Hiis. Just as inspiring, but more secular. Gender neutral vs. male-coded. More conjectural, less prophetic. E/opp is building & growing your mind & body. Building & growing startups. Building & growing families & communities. Effective Opportunism.

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If you want your company to grow, you’ve got to design it for growth. Last week, we took our team at Candybox Marketing out to a Jays game in Toronto and surprised them with Candybox-branded Stanley mugs. But here’s the kicker: we’ve set aside 40 more Candybox Stanleys for the next 40 team members who will join us. Some might see this as an unnecessary cost, but we see it as essential planning. Finance, Operations, Shareholders, and even some owners might have different opinions on expenses and efficiency. But if you want to build a fast-growing company, you’ve got to invest in your team and plan for expansion like it’s a sure thing. My experience has taught me that hiring top talent quickly is crucial. Cutting corners or undervaluing your team only holds you back. If you want to stay ahead of the competition, invest in your team and prioritize growth. And yes, get them a Stanley, and stop being a cheapskate.

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My Co-founder, Heshanka Fernando pulled me aside and said this. "Dude, with all the customer calls we've done and the growing interest, I think it's time to start building." "And this time," he added, "let's be craftsmen." It got me thinking about something Karri Saarinen , Co-founder of Linear , once said about the crucial role of craftsmanship. I used to think that craftsmanship didn't matter much in the early stages of a startup. I believed that validating the idea and getting software to users quickly was more important. I even thought that if users put up with a subpar experience, it meant the idea was validated. But I began to doubt this approach. I never wanted to give users a buggy, poorly designed product. My goal was to create something that users would love. But somewhere along the way, I lost sight of that. It’s time to get back to that vision. The landscape has changed significantly over the past decade. Today, you need to launch something remarkable, or you risk receiving false positive signals. But how do you embrace craftsmanship with a tight deadline? In one word: Focus. Identify the core experience that keeps users coming back for a second time and concentrate your efforts there. List all the areas you're deliberately not focusing on. Now, ask yourself if you will be proud to release a product with this scope. Then, go build.

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Those who know me well know that I'm a big proponent of projects / ideas / choices that are the right answer to multiple questions. In my chat with Kathryn Coulter and Karl Yeh of Benevity's "The Social Impact Show", I talk about how this approach informs various choices I've made in work and life. The choice to be vegan or bike everywhere are the right answers to multiple questions. The decision to become #BCorp certified, embrace #employeeownership, and prioritize #sustainability are all also the right answers to multiple questions. When I come across opportunities like these in my work life, I pursue them because they allow me to multiply the positive effects of my limited work time. Why spend time doing something that's the best possible answer to one question when I can be doing something that's the right answer to multiple questions? This approach is also baked into Unwrapit's unique approach to corporate & event gifting... our team has created a solution for corporate and event gifting that we truly believe is the right answer to multiple questions. Questions like.. - How do we build strong #relationships in a digital-first world when the people we're trying to reach are all over the place? - How do we free up precious time and brain space while still sending a thoughtful gift to a large group of recipients on a special occasion? - How do we gather data and insights from a large group of recipients without losing the human touch? - How do we reduce our company or event's CO2 #emissions to ensure we're not saying one thing about the environment and then reverting to the old ways of doing things? Check out the full episode of The Social Impact Show for more thoughts on what how we're revolutionizing social impact with corporate gifting. Enjoy! 😀 🍿

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Short teaser of my upcoming COO podcast. In this episode, I chat with Jean (John) Lafleur, Co-Founder and COO Airbyte about fundraising, what the role of the COO means to him, how to build teams with talent density, and fighting entropy. I will be posting an update here next week and a link to the full interview! Follow me for more updates and COO interviews.

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If you own an online business with an offer of $3k or more… I have an insane opportunity for you ONLY AVAILABLE until Monday, June 10th. We’re dropping our barrier for entry to partner with Scaling Lean’s Fully DFY Team where we lock arms with your company to build out your very own 12-month marketing plan… We’ve been underground for the last few months > Crafting VSLs. > Building funnels. > Writing copy. > Refining Offers. > Placing Ads. > Building tracking systems. > Developing extraction campaigns. You name it… we’ve done it. We have created an incredible system that pulled in multiple 7 figures in the last 2 years… And I won’t lie – this is not a plug-and-play system. It’s a fully DFY Custom Build - hand-crafted and detailed to hit your conversion metrics and convert your leads in a predictable sales cycle. We will personally be crafting a custom marketing system for the clients who choose to partner with Scaling Lean. I can tell you that this strategy brings the most qualified prospects into your online ecosystem… We go for QUALIFIED, vetted leads… Not just leads that flood your pipeline where you are left to sort, sift and dig through to find qualify. The best part? >> We’ll build your high-converting follow-up systems >> Craft your world-class no-brainer offer >> Write your text and email nurturing campaigns >> Script your VSL >> Place and track your ads every single week >> Build your congruent copy funnels And it will all happen over the next 30 days for a fraction of what 99% of consulting programs cost today. The cherry on top… We don’t lock you into a 3, 6, or even 12-month contract – leave when you want if you want. Oh yeah, and you get all the awesomeness that comes with working with the Scaling Lean Founders one-on-one every week helping you craft your 12-month marketing strategy. This deal closes Monday, June 10th at 12 pm MST. We say that because we’ve already had a surge of interest to partner with our DFY team and only have limited spots before we increase our price! First come, first serve for what I think is a deal of a lifetime! Comment #SCALE if this remotely interests you.

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Two weeks ago I travelled out to Montreal and did my first “talk” (I wasn’t supposed to give a talk) at Evolving Web’s EvolveDrupal event. A few things I comfirmed about myself: 🦸‍♂️ I’m not scared of talking in front of people. Like at all. I truly love being a showman and I may have missed a speaking or acting calling earlier in life. Who knows maybe I’ll start doing it now. 😂 I lead with Humor. I always have in my daily life. I love making people laugh but it was interesting to see the rapport build quickly even in a group setting using humor. 🤡 I believe that edifying yourself and then quickly letting people know you don’t have all the answers is the fastest way to build trust. Everyone can talk about how good they are at something but few will talk about the things they are bad at, and in the end, I personally tend to trust the people who are aware of what they can and CAN’T do. 😳 The notion of “do it scared” has always been an interesting one for me. Mainly because I don’t get many options in life to do things that actually “scare” me anymore. So doing this even though I was anxious was a great way to confirm the “do it scared” notion is accurate and I’m better off for it. Ps. This photo was probably taken after I first realized that the deck I worked on the night before and the animations I created weren’t going to work so… improv it is. #speaking #conference

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On Tuesday I caught up with Brandon Kuipers, one of the founders of Zox.    They have sold almost 10,000,000 products on Shopify since starting the business in 2011.   But they have been running into a problem: Like many stores, they offer hundreds of products and customers get overwhelmed and can't figure out how to find the products that are right for them.   They have solved their problem using an Octane AI smart quiz.   Here's what really stood out to me: ✅ Their quiz has solved decision paralysis for over 50,000 people so far. ❤️ Customers are loving the AI quiz, even sharing their results with each other. 🤖 The AI quiz asks shoppers a few questions, most of them free form where the shopper can type anything, and then it uses AI to write a personalized message to every single shopper and helps find them exactly the right handful of products that they will love out of the hundreds of products on the store. 🚀 They hadn't been able to make a quiz previously because they are constantly adding new products to their store. The AI quiz automatically updates itself with any new products without the Zox team needing to do anything special. ⚡ They made this quiz on vacation in just a few hours, most of which was just them thinking about what questions they wanted to ask in the quiz. I'm really excited about our AI quiz option on Octane AI. It's not our most popular quiz type just yet, but for some brands it is making previously impossible experiences possible.   We have a lot of plans for improving our AI quiz technology, we're overflowing with inspiration. I can definitely imagine a world where your quiz is creating itself (we already do this actually), automatically improving itself, and forming more and more personalized bonds with each customer.   What do you think of AI powered quizzes?

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"Siena learns like a human would. It’s not simple input/output. No two customer interactions are the same and Siena’s AI can handle almost any customer context without pre-programing exact answers. It can even match your brand tone and voice." – Damon Dixon, Founder of douxds when douxds faced the challenges of providing swift, personalized support to their growing customer base, they turned to Siena AI. the results speak for themselves: 🚀 17% increase in CSAT scores (from 3.6 to 4.2) ⏰ 44 hours saved per month 📈 more resources allocated to marketing and growth initiatives Siena's ability to provide instant, empathic support across all channels—web, social, and email—has been a game-changer for douxds. their CX team can now focus on gathering strategic product feedback, informing and enhancing product development efforts. read the full story in the comments and reach out to us if you want to see what it's like to have Siena on your team! 🪄

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Sometimes startups are just too early. Essentially, their product vision is too far ahead of a future market shift. When we introduced our Fractional Office product (Flexday Suites) to Canada in June 2022, most landlords scoffed at the idea of accepting private office bookings by the day. One landlord exclaimed: "An office will never be rented on a daily basis - we are not hotels." Landlord views changed when we brought customer demand and launched our proprietary FlexServe technology. We made it real. The FRACTIONAL OFFICE category is picking up steam! In the past few days, we've added 3 more landlords to the platform - WTF Group, Hullmark and Lifetime Developments in Toronto alone. Welcome! What is also super-interesting is several other landlords are now adding fractional days-of-the-week products to try and catch demand from the fast-growing, fractional workspace category. Examples include Oxford Properties and their OxWorx initiative, MRP in DC and their HeyDay product, Tram Developments working with Cushman & Wakefield brokers to market fractional offerings and even iQ Offices and their new Sprint Spaces - now available though Flexday. 🌱 We believe these are the 'green shoots' of a fractional office future. ♻ Join us in creating a more sustainable, utilization-based office world.

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I've recently encountered an interesting "feature" while using the KFC Canada (Yum! Brands Subsidiary) mobile app. Each time I open the app, a prompt appears asking if I want to keep the previous order settings, even though I've already clicked "Yes, Keep it." Despite my efforts to dismiss it, the prompt keeps appearing, which I find extremely annoying. Why should this prompt persist if my location/order setting hasn't changed? As an iOS developer committed to delivering a pleasant user experience, I believe it would be better to provide users with an option to disable the prompt, or just to eliminate it entirely, as other competitors do. I understand this feature is meant to ensure users confirm their order type (pick-up/delivery) and location before placing an order. However, it becomes especially bothersome when I need to open the app multiple times. What are your suggestions? Do you have a better alternative to this feature? #iOSDevelopment #iOSDeveloper #KFCCanada #KFCCanadaApp #KFC

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