Tapping The Power of Marketing Automation with Sean Tierney

Oct 28, 2014

Welcome to episode 23 of the SuccessLab Podcast. In this episode I’m in the lab with Sean Tierney, founder of Grid 7 and co-founder of Artilage. We talk about about shifting gears when something isn’t quite fitting, and marketing automation, which Sean is a genius with.

1. Can you tell us a bit about your journey (this will be more your entrepreneurial endeavors)?
   • The first entrepreneurial endeavor goes back to 8th grade. I took my parents video camera to a play and recorded it. Then snuck a flyer into the program and started selling VHS tapes of the play to the parents who were in attendance. I got 100 orders. I made $1000 on that first play. That’s a big chunk of money for an 8th grader. The whole experience was incredible. That really turned me on to entrepreneurship. Since then, I’ve done several things. I took a 40-foot city bus, gutted it, and put night club style floors and seats, and fiber optic lights. We drove that around for a while doing pub crawls and such.
   • JumpBox is probably the business I’m most known for. Basically I created a class of software called virtual appliances and became the largest provide for Amazon DM ware and parallels. Just have done a lot of stuff.
   • Also covered in the podcast: how Sean discovered marketing and business process automation through real estate.
2. Recently you sort of took a hiatus from some of this to get back to your core, can you tell us about that and what you’ve discovered?
   • Basically one of my companies, JumpBox, kind of burned me out. So I was still working and consulting, but it was a hiatus from the products company. So I went to the Dominican Republic, read a bunch of books, learned kite surfing, and tried to unplug for a while.
   • I arrived at a point, where I’m really happy where I’m at now.
3. Shifting gears, I know you are passionate about helping startups. In working with them, what are some common missteps or mistakes you see them make?
   • With startups the most common mistake I see is being attached to your idea. It’s your perception of what you think the solution is rather than going in and seeing what your customer wants.
   • In the show, Sean talks about customer development and Four Steps to the Epiphany.
4. You work with a lot of businesses on automation, being everywhere, and getting more leads in the funnel more efficiently. What are some of the primary things you recommend businesses automate?
   • One of the most important concepts is lifecycle marketing. It’s the idea that in business there’s a lifecycle. It’s the continuum of increasing engagement with you (or your business) that you can systematically move people through, and marketing automation is how you do that.
   • It depends on what they need and where they’re at, but basically you want to shoot for the things that are going to create more revenue - typically that’s client acquisition. So that’s where we start.
   • In the show we also talk about how to “be everywhere.”
5. What tools do you recommend for automation?
   • Check out grid7.com for a list of tools Sean uses to generate results
   • Active Campaign, even Boomerang for Gmail, If This Then That, Zapier, there’s a bunch of tools.
6. How do you recommend entrepreneurs go about systemizing their businesses?
   • When you start out do everything manually. Flinstone it.
7. You talk about being everywhere, obviously a challenge for busy entrepreneurs, how can they do this efficiently?
   • It can be a mix of automation and delegation, but it’s on a case by case basis. See what’s going to move the needle then start in on that. The 80/20 rule.
8. Do you have a tip, tool or even a book you can share? Something you’re loving right now?
   • Check out Sean’s blog for reviews of his latest reads (there will be 20 of them).

Connect with Sean:

Twitter:  @ScrollinOnDubs

Blog: scrollinondubs.com/

This week’s Biz Hack: Where to distribute your awesome press release.

Action Items: Somewhat related to the Biz Hack, this week’s action item continues with the media outreach theme... 

Quote of the week: Another great quote on decision making: “Make a decision. It doesn’t have to be a wise decision or a perfect one. Just make one.” ~ Seth Godin

Next week we’re in The Lab with Hugh Stephens, he is the founder of Dialogue Consulting in Australia. I first learned of Hugh when I came across a tool he developed called Schedugram, which allows you to schedule Instagtram posts. I started researching him a bit, and he is one impressive guy. We talk about what it’s like to operate multiple businesses and how he has handled growth. Be sure to tune! Hugh gives a lot of really great nuggets for entrepreneurs.