Creating a network is more than just who you know, but who you connect to who. Our guest today,Tom Kulzer, is a master at cultivating relationships. Tom founded the award winning AWeber Communications to help small businesses around the world better communicate and build relationships with customers and prospects using permission based email marketing. Tom’s focus is strategic planning, market strategy, business development, and team building, and believes in creating a unique workplace lifestyle with a culture driven by core values all while in pursuit of growing millions of small businesses around the world.
I can’t wait to dive right in and learn how Tom brought his business from zero to one million SaaS subscribers by connecting people and generating relationships.
Things you will learn in this episode:
[00:01 – 08:53] Opening Segment
- I introduce today’s guest, Tom Kulzer
- Activities and Success
- Announcements
- travischapel.com/makemypodcast
- Tom gives some background on his story
- Always doing odd jobs
- Parents owned a garment factory
- Entrepreneurship taught or caught?
- Tom’s examples
- Family business dynamic
- Factors that go into it
- Tom talks about growing up learning entrepreneurship
- Growing up around small businesses
- Used to working all kind of jobs
- Started a software company
- Developed AWeber over time
[08:54 – 16:44] The Benefits and Struggles of Software
- Tom talks about the value of his hard work
- Building up over time
- Evolving over the years
- Benefits and struggles of building a software company
- A constantly evolving market
- Increased competition
- Engineering capacity used on stopping abuse
- Recurring and predictable
- Customer solutions operations
- Pitfalls of software
- The things you don’t see
- Examples
[16:45 – 18:28] Do What You’re Passionate About
- Tom talks about the beginning of his hiring period
- First hire in customer solutions
- Loving what you do
- Work doesn’t feel like work
[18:29 – 28:24] Closing Segment
- Who you or What you know?
- What you know can open the doors to who you know
- Being the resource for others
- What then who
- Important relationships that made you what you are today?
- Tom’s friend that pushed him
- Relationship started from a newsletter
- Tom’s advice to his mentees
- Leadership strategies to build better relationships with customers and employees
- Be yourself
- Cultivate a genuine culture
- The RaNdoM RoUnd
- Remember to upload and tag us on instagram!
- Final words
Tweetable Quotes:
“At the end of the day software is something where… it’s a recurring base, so it’s very predictable, it’s very measurable in many ways. It has a lot of upsides, and it definitely can scale…” – Tom Kulzer
“I don’t look at work as necessarily work… Do something that you’re passionate about.” – Tom Kulzer
“The ‘who you know’ is for other people; being beneficial to them and connecting them to other people and helping them out with whatever struggle that they have.” – Tom Kulzer
Resources Mentioned:
You can connect with Tom on LinkedIn, and Twitter. Visit https://go.tomkulzer.com/home to learn more about his space.
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If you want to learn how to build YOUR network, check out my website a travischappell.com. You can connect with me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Be sure to join The Lounge to become part of the community that’s setting up REAL relationships that add value and create investments.
