Mark Johnson
Appearances
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I mean, in my book, I talk about, you know, the different types of investors, um, When you're raising money, you have to look at kind of the avatar and where you are in the growth curve. You know, are you a startup? Are you a more mature business? Are you kind of on a trajectory where you've been around a couple of years and have a track record, prior performance?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
And so when you look at a true startup, you know, somebody that's got this idea that's really unfounded or unproven, you know, you're primarily looking for venture capital firms. They invest in startups or, you know, maybe you're looking for what we call an angel investor. That's typically a very wealthy person that may have been a business owner that sold their business.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
You know, now they're worth, I don't know, you know, 10, 20, 50 million dollars. They're willing to take those types of risks because they know if they can hit a home run, you know, obviously the return on investment is going to be substantial.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
But when you look at the different types of investors, you know, family offices, private equity, venture capital, each one of these different groups likes to focus on different things. Private equity firm likes to buy traditionally existing cash flowing businesses. They come in. They put in some capital, they make some management tweaks, they scale the business, then they exit.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
The venture capital firm knows, okay, we're going to invest in five companies. Realistically, we're going to lose money on one. We're probably going to hit singles and doubles on the other three. And then that one, boom, is the home run that makes up for the others. And that's just the investment model.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
And so it depends when you're a business owner and you're going out there trying to raise capital that the first thing you do is you identify the type of investor that you want to be focusing your efforts on. Because if you're out there, you know, for example, with a startup and you're talking to investors over here that like to invest in more seasoned, more established businesses.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
chances are you're not going to be very successful because your message is not related to that audience.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
It's, I'll give you this. I learned this. I did this. I'm a, I'm a, byproduct of it that which you build fast will crumble even faster and that which takes a long time to build will last you a lifetime yeah so a brand will take you a long time to build but it'll feed you forever yep it just and i'm i'm a i'm standing before you today
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
How many people in our internet marketing circle have made it 20 plus years? I can count on probably two hands. I mean, I mean it, really, right? And every single one of them has a strong brand. But at the same time, Learn, as a company, we built it as a rocket ship.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
You know, there was no slow and steady 10% a month increase, optimize and, you know, do the CRO work and do the split testing and focus on one funnel and painstakingly obsessed over every part of your product delivery process. That ain't me. I didn't do that. We were, you know, and look how fast it crumbled. Look how weak the foundation ended up being.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
Even though I was doing 40 million, it was super profitable and I was about to sell. What I'm doing today, what I'm doing now, for our software company, it's taking us anywhere from three to six months to close contracts. with big enterprise companies. But those companies are closing a contract after giving two to three week demo periods. They're reviewing it.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
They're having meetings with their C-levels. They're fully buying in or saying no. But when the ones that were buying in they're going to be with us for years and they're going to pay big fees.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
So albeit it's really hard right now in the early stages, but come talk to me in three years when we've got a ridiculous MRR and I'm able to start every month knowing that we're not only covered but in profit and that all I have to do day and night is obsess about that product. It's a great life.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
So what most marketers, unfortunately, Ryan, are not trained towards and it's been kind of my thing now, I call it change the timeline, right? And that is flip it over. So many of us want to make the million in 30 days. And now me today, any opportunity that can make me a million in 30 days, I almost always know it's the wrong opportunity.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Best of Right About Now: World class Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
I'd rather make it over the course of a year, but then know that next year it'll make me 1.3, 1.4. And the year after that, it'll make me, you know, two. And then I want that because I know that whatever that is, it's going to grow much, much stronger and much better. So brand is the exact same way. You can't get brand in 30 days. You just can't.