This episode was recorded live at the Social Media Marketing World Conference in San Diego, California. We spoke with Daniel Glickman about how he markets a technology platform, how Wave.video helps businesses, and what he has done in 2020 to grow.
Introduction: [00:00:00] Welcome to the LA business podcast, a form for business owners and senior executives to share the experiences about the elements that drive their success. Your host is Robert Brill, CEO of Brill media.co, an Inc 500 company delivering the power of hyper-local advertising. Robert writes for Forbes, Inc and Ad trade publications.
Our goal is to bring you the stories about successes and failures of people who are making big things happen in marketing, entrepreneurship, and management.
Robert Brill: [00:00:38] Hey, everyone, before we get started with this episode of the LA business podcast, we have a little bit of a change of venue. We recorded, these episodes live at the Social Media Marketing World Conference in San Diego, California.
And I met some really interesting people and, I record these episodes live because I wanted to hear their stories and I want to bring them to you. So, I hope you enjoy the podcast and hope you know the episode and, I hope you can forgive the sound quality that you might hear the background noise.
All right, here we go. Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of the LA business podcast. Today we have Daniel Glickman, CMO of Wave Video. Daniel, thanks for being with us.
Daniel Glickman: [00:01:27] Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure.
Robert Brill: [00:01:29] So we met last, I had a really cool party. You had a bow tie and a really cool suit on, the roaring twenties, party here at Social Media Marketing World.
Um, what I, what I found interesting about the conversations, you have some interesting ideas about how-to market. Um, the technology platform. Um, can you, let’s jump right into it. Tell us a little bit about, um, Waive.Video, what it is, who it’s for, and then ultimately you want to go into how, how you’re growing, how you, how you, the things that you’ve done to grow and what 20, 20 looks like.
And it’s really about growing and scaling your business.
Daniel Glickman: [00:02:07] Awesome. Yeah. So Waved.Video. We’re based out of Boston. It’s a software that allows marketers or digital marketers to, leverage your videos for marketing funnels. Essentially. Okay. Video funnels. It’s a term that we essentially use to describe what most marketers are doing today, but maybe I’m not completely conscious about.
Whereas taking a set of videos, that a sequence of videos that leads the viewer through action. So similar to what we used to be doing with emails and blog posts and content, right? And now we’re doing it with video. And so, our platform empowers the marketers to do exactly that.
Robert Brill: [00:02:44] So does this, so just interesting about the product here.
[00:02:48] Like I guess the question is like, does this replace a landing page or does this, does this live with the landing page? What are like some best use, best uses of your, of your technology? Right.
Daniel Glickman: [00:02:59] So there are many different, um, flows or use cases. there are a few different places you would use video in your, in your funnel.
[00:03:07] The first it usually the funnel starts with social media or ads. So, you have shorter clips, maybe have a webinar to you that you have and directing traffic to the next step in the funnel, which may be a subscribe to my email and then get. the full version of the webinar. So, in which case you would have a landing page or your, the hosted somewhere on your website, but you want to password protect that so you can handle it with a password for people who actually subscribe to your newsletter.
So, this is just two steps, right? You’re gonna have the social, usually, sometimes you start with SEO widgets and things like that, but usually it starts with social nowadays. then you get some kind of educational content, then you bring them to the site itself where you’d have a promotional video of some sort and eventually a sales video.
Right? So, all of these are just a sequence of videos in different places, and you’re trying to get people to go from one to the next.
Robert Brill: [00:04:00] And they serve different purposes. they educate the consumer in different ways along their consumer journey. So, it sounds like your platform, I saw some of
You have the ability to edit videos, create videos for multiple formats, including like Instagram stories. Like, it looks like a really incredibly powerful tool.
Daniel Glickman: [00:04:20] It is. It’s, it combines the features of hosting, platforms and, editing platforms in one. And I think the biggest difference is that when you’re looking at.
Discovery, Platforms, they will typically use for hosting, such as the YouTube likes, right? They’re really designed around how to get more people to watch more of my videos. So that was really good for brand awareness, but not good for digital marketers. We think if there was a fun as I want people to watch my video, I want to tell them in the video what to do, and I want them to do that.
I don’t want them to watch more videos. Sometimes that’s, that’s powerful too. But normally a way, I think as a visual market there is. Watch my video, I’m going to teach you maybe how to do something and then I want you to take the next action, which is maybe subscribed to something. Give me some info or buy my stuff.
Right? So that’s what makes us unique and how we positioned ourselves in the features that we have. Our around. That use case.
Robert Brill: [00:05:16] So who are your customers? I imagined there, you know where a social media marketing world, I imagine any marketer who wants to reach consumers and the agency, do you have a, an avatar of your, of your consumer who you typically want to reach or do you have multiple personas.
Daniel Glickman: [00:05:34] Well the core persona, would be a digital marketer that’s, that has a website, a blog, a social presence, does content marketing. So, which describes a lot of digital marketers nowadays, right? they may be, have webinars that they’ll trying to leverage better to generate traffic and generate leads.
Often if you’re, if you’re a marketer that has webinars and just that’s the webinar and just leaves it there, then you could use a software like our solution like ours. Um, if you’re a social media marketer and just want to make social media stories or ads, et cetera, you can also use our bathroom. So, there are multiple use cases of course, but businesses that have a strong online presence and the, there are lots of online activities.
Would it be our core audience?
Robert Brill: [00:06:21] So, so it sounds like, I mean it’s really interesting cause I have, I have a good understanding of who that is cause I’m one of those people. I imagine you also go off you go. So like approach agencies big and small. So, okay, let’s talk about, you know, if I’m, if I’m on your marketing team.
And you’re the head of marketing, what are, you know, I’m really interested in how do companies grow and scale their businesses. Yeah, right. It’s a marketing challenge. So, what are the types of things that you do to grow your business now? Certainly. So, you have a, you have a booth here at the social media marketing world conference.
You are day and night into the wee hours. I say that jokingly because. The thing closes at six but you are all day. You and your team are all day giving demos. So I imagine exhibition at these type of conferences is important, but like take us through a breakdown of, of your marketing and, and what, you know, I’m looking for lessons and insights that other business owners of all types can learn.
About how they can grow their businesses.
Daniel Glickman: [00:07:21] Yeah. Right. So I will talk a little bit about what we do very well and maybe what we didn’t do very well, to be helpful. so let’s start with what we didn’t do very well, because sometimes that’s more interesting as marketers, we don’t share that as much.
Sure. So, we’ve, we’ve played around or we’ve gone through a journey and we still are a journey of pricing. We’ve, we’ve attracted low price points and we’re moving up the scale at this point and last year we’ll be focusing a lot about growth rather than then increasing revenue. We wanted to hit the 10,000 paying customer Mark.
So we brought on prices down to get their auto market. what that didn’t allow us to do is to scale through ad spend. so the, that was something we didn’t quite figure out when we started this, is that even though in hindsight it’s very obvious, right? The, the lifetime value of those customers was lower.
Yeah. We’re very happy that we have 10,000 customers. But those come with a lower lifetime value. And add, the cost of a custom acquisition for the customers via ads was way higher. Right? So as a result, we had to scale back a lot in our ad spend. It kind of ruined our whole ROI and our ad budget, which was pretty significant the year before.
But during that year, we had to cut back a lot, which meant that we couldn’t grow so much with new audiences. That we, they would normally bring up for ads, right? Because with ads, you can target new audiences that never heard of you. And, um, and that was sort of a downside to it. So, it’s really, I think that’s a big, big thing for startups and new businesses in the growth stage to figure out, okay, our, I have lifetime value versus cost of acquisition.
Figure out which channels really, really bring that highest Delta.
Robert Brill: [00:09:16] So this is really interesting. I just got off of a pitch conversation for a forum with an internal conversation. We’re going to talk to the potential customer. And I said something that is, you know, they’re, they’re, they, they’re running some ads.
They’re not getting the amount of conversions that they want. And I, if I said on the call, I said, this might be an unpopular opinion for maybe. The product isn’t right, or the messaging is, I’m not saying that it’s the case for you. The pricing isn’t right or you have the right core value proposition that you’re just not saying it the right way.
So here’s my question for you as a, it’s just a bit of a tangent. Did you have an agency doing the media buy for you or were you doing it internally.
Daniel Glickman: [00:09:59] No, we did it internally and, and here’s the thing, the cost of acquisition, there was nothing wrong with it. Right. There’s a certain market value for that
Robert Brill: [00:10:08] But that’s exactly my point.
That’s my point, because I often find there is a disassociation sometimes between advertisers and what the market is telling you. The market is telling you, look, it costs X amount of dollars to acquire me as a customer, and at some level it’s going to cost me X plus two and X plus 10 and X plus 20 to acquire the next batch of consumers.
It incrementally gets more expensive, and the other sizer is coming to us and saying, look, we want to acquire a customer at $10 the market saying. No, it’s $25. So my question to you is, you recognize, I think is incredibly insightful and like self-aware that you recognize that no, this isn’t a failure of ad buying.
This is the marketplace telling us what, what it can bear, right? Like, do you feel, do you agree with that statement or like, do you, how do you feel differently about it?
Daniel Glickman: [00:11:01] No, no. I, I’ll just, I, I would build on top of that. So yes. I think the cost of acquisitions or affliction of two things. One, what you can control and alignment.
You can’t, you cannot control the cost of getting in front of people that, um, there is any, if your core audience has a certain price from a lower price, whatever, right? And different platforms and that you cannot control. Right. The ad from the market control of staff, you can control the conversion ratio.
You can control, how interesting you are all of those things. And you can control the, the value you can drive from that person and the customer value, the customer lifetime value. So, if you are, um, and that’s up to you, you have to tweak it, right? So that when you’re saying, when I’m saying cost of acquisition per customer, you’re absolutely right.
You have to work on your positioning, on your messaging, on your pricing. All of these things are variables in the equation, but there is a certain cost to getting in front of them on different channels, and it’s just different for different channels, different for different ad buying and that’s, and that’s not in your control as much, right?
Robert Brill: [00:12:13] Then the fortitude, the stick to witness, like the worst thing, and I was on a different pitch conversation on Friday, and what I told someone is like, the worst thing you can do. Is run a campaign for a month, toss out the baby with the bathwater and say, Oh, the agency’s not working. And then jump to another agency.
And you start all over with the learnings with a different view. And you do these three times. You’ve done three different times where each agency has to start from scratch to learn your business. You might know the marketplace, you might know the vertical, but knowing the intricacies of your business brands, marketers, I believe need that stick-to-itiveness. They need the plan of action to go from, Hey, I think we’re going to do well. We’re in the ballpark. We’re close, now let’s have a plan of action as testing methodology to understand like. Now it’s going to perfect the messaging. Let’s perfect. Exactly the core value proposition.
Daniel Glickman: [00:13:10] Yeah, I think so.
I think there’s a lot to say on this topic, so certainly it’s a mistake to hop between agencies. There’s absolutely no question you’re wasting everybody’s effort here. There is often this desperation of early stage companies. To think that a lot of pressure from investors, etc., as well, to think, Oh, if I could just find this magical solution, right?
If I could just find the right agency. I heard this amazing story of this one. Any other somebody that’s just nothing. Magic is not, this is marketing. It’s how I work. It’s expertise. It’s money. It’s gained the knowledge. You have to do it, and it’s going to cost time to get there now is a difference in quality between one agency and another, of course, although some agencies all they’re interested in is getting through the next month and not really servicing you to the best, to your best, absolutely. Just like in any business, on any industry, other agencies that specialize in a certain niche, and maybe this is not your vertical and whatever. Absolutely. So, you have to choose well, but the thought that, Oh, just sort of randomly hopping. Do you mind? Have I? Maybe I’ll hit some jackpot.
But that’s just, you know, wishful thinking. Um, and, and I think when you start working with an agency. Again, some agencies provide tremendous value. Sure, absolutely. I’ve worked with and without agencies, and there are pros and cons to each. When you’re selecting an agency, I think one has to have an honest conversation with both sides and open it up and show, open up the data and say, this is my lifetime value. This is how much I need to spend per customer to make it worth it for me, and then have that equal inflammation for the elbow side. This is how much it will cost me to get in front of your potential customer. This is how many of them I think I can get to actually respond to the app, which means X cost minimum.
Right. So, if we can make these two models match, we’ve got win-win situation. And if you cannot make these models match, well maybe it’s, maybe you need to find somebody who’s a better expertise with the market, with your, with, with your niche. That could be the case. Or maybe this is just not the median for you.
Or maybe you need to tweak something in your business model.
Robert Brill: [00:15:34] You know, another interesting point. You know, cause we, we really focus on ad buying. Like I would argue we’re almost not an agency because we primarily serve other agencies, power their media, buying teams, programmatic, you know, social, the whole thing.
Sometimes we work with the advertisers because they happen to be relationships I might have, but we don’t actively seek them out. And it’s like, like we know that if there’s no one that has any sort of role around strategy. We know that’s like we’re halfway into the failure zone already because there’s no one thinking about that.
I learned that recently when I got such a nasty gram from one of these prospects we’ve been working with. I told this person like, we don’t do strategy.
And like four months after we started working together, they didn’t understand that we don’t do strategy.
Robert Brill: [00:16:25] challenging so yeah, it’s like it’s understanding. I think often what we do, and I know I’ll do really the conversation, I’m really much more interested in what you have to say than what I have to say, but I often find that a lot of what we do is. Akin to coaching therapy. Yeah, it’s, it’s like, let’s get it all out the door out, out, out into the world so that we can all understand what exactly needs to be done.
So I find that a lot of times people in charge of marketing, they have an idea about the tactics, and I’m talking small and midsize. I’m not talking about fortune 500 or even large brands. I’m talking about. You know, just smaller budget. Smaller companies, they don’t even realize. They just know I can buy ads on Facebook and Google.
Daniel Glickman: [00:17:10] Let’s do that.
Robert Brill: [00:17:11] It’s like I’ve had to learn. One of the biggest things I learned over the last six years of running my agency is like, no. If you’re saying that, chances are it’s going to evolve into $1,000 test, and that one test may or may not randomly perform over a three-day weekend, and that’s going to be the thing that they say, Oh, well. Your agency doesn’t work. It’s like, we don’t like, I steer away from this type of people. Like there has to be a commitment, a doubling down on like the relationship. So, I, I digress. So, so you, you’re doing ad buying. Um, you, the customer, the marketplace spoke to you about what it wants and what it, what is willing, how you can acquire customers, and what the cost of acquisition is
So did your ad buying fundamentally, it sounds like the data from the ad buying reverberated back into your business.
Daniel Glickman: [00:18:02] Um, yes, of course. So, we, last year we focused a lot on growth and we, that most of that growth came from our existing audience. Um, because the cost of acquisition compared to, we dropped the lifetime value and purposed increased growth, but that meant we couldn’t spend as much in terms of acquisition.
So we ended up really acquiring a lot more customers from our existing audience. Um, and that came through a lot of programs such as influencer programs, community management, um, content marketing, a lot of this kind of work, which really outreaches to the existing base, and this year that we’ve met where, so moving to the next level where we’re actually looking more at the growing the audience, growing the traffic.
Growing and through acquisition as well. So, the other side of that equation is, okay, we have to increase the lifetime value. Let’s, let’s bring those numbers up so we can spend more on acquisition. So that formula works better. Right.
[00:19:05] Robert Brill: [00:19:05] So can I ask you, so,
[00:19:06] Daniel Glickman: [00:19:06] yeah,
[00:19:07] Robert Brill: [00:19:07] so, and this is kind of a, I don’t, I don’t, I kind of don’t think you’re going to have the answer because it’s like a weird question.
And I don’t like metrics don’t work like this necessarily. But would you say there’s always a question. Of, okay, I’m going to run as I’m going to get a customer immediate customer acquisition. What I’ve been hearing and what I’ve been experiencing with some of our ad campaigns is that you can reach people all you want, but if they don’t know who you are, like it’s not gonna make a difference, which then means either there’s something misaligned with the messaging or the provide proposition or the landing page, but all those things would be 100% correct.
You just need to nurture brand. You know, I, I, I think with Google has this, research report that says people need between 20 and 200 touch points before they make a purchase. So, my question is, do you, is your customer journey or funnel more focused in on nurturing brand and build a relationship with the customer?
And some of it is direct customer acquisition. I never met you before, but come by us. Or is it reverse? Is, are you like getting a bunch of customers by running ads? It’s like, I’ve never heard of you, but I like it. I’m going to buy. And just a little bit of customer nurture going on. Like how, how would you balance that?
Daniel Glickman: [00:20:28] Yeah, yeah. Certainly. We have a bit of each of these stories. It’s very hard to control. I say, I say I don’t want customers in one certain journey. it’s very hard for a company to say I don’t want them right. Because they are willing to buy off. So, we definitely have some, did I also have impulse buyers?
They come in and they’ll just. Willing to buy right away. 90% of our customers buy within two hours of reaching a website, and they do it, um, essentially because they, see it as a trial period. Right. And the, the, they put up the grill, they called the software and the ether that I can, they don’t, right.
Those tend to be higher. The ones who did it without any kind of a relationship with our product and brand tend to be much higher charter customers because they’ll just like, it’s an impulse buy. They come in and see, Oh, this looks like it might be what I need, and then maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t,
Robert Brill: [00:21:21] and I don’t even know if I need it.
Daniel Glickman: [00:21:23] You know, it’s kind of is, I’m looking for something in this area, otherwise I wouldn’t put that in the credit card. But it’s a, it’s a random gambler, right? They don’t know that this is what they need. They’re just trying it. What we do is we go from our ads, strategy goes from.
Awareness. we, we use content. We use ads, different kinds of ads to basically and videos a lot of videos to see who’s engaging with the general topic that we’re in, that we represent the general areas of influence we represent, which is video marketing, mostly, um, and content marketing in general, social media marketing.
So that intersection of those three is what I’m trying to really get people in. And then some of us are very tactical ones, like, you know, people are looking for, um, stock videos. Then clearly their editing, videos or whatever, so they might also be interested in us. So, so we have some of those kinds of things.
Right. Um, and, and those ads, well designed to bring people to our content, to our website, not to drive a sale. So, our goal is to build an audience with that brand. We tag them through, um. through a pixel, right? Yeah. And then we give them an a, and then what we do is we’ll promote content to them. So, with a blog post and repurpose them into videos. We were very good at this kind of work, and possibly because our platform does it. and so therefore we had to learn how to be the best at it and practice it. Um, and that was a journey too, but we can promote content to them and then they engage with the content.
And so some people are ready to buy today. Some people don’t need our product today, but they’re really interested in it because they know that at some point they’re going to be working with it. Right. If you sell too early, what’s the point? Right? Don’t sure. So if you look at the nurturing sort of thing, and if only a technical standpoint where you say, okay, I have a pool of people, another pool of people haven’t heard of people, you don’t really get what you’re trying to, how you’re trying to work with them.
Then it’s not going to work as effectively as if you combine this approach with influencer marketing and content marketing and SEO as well. Cause they, they’re, when they click on that ad, they’re also going to go to Google and search. For, you know, what I heard here, even true, I saw it on an ad. I’m going to do my own work.
I’m going to search, right? So, I gotta make sure I’m on the search on the top and the front page. So, they see my name again. At least see it and say, Oh yeah, yeah. That’s like those guys. They are good at this, right? When the time comes to buy. They are the kind of know what we’re about. They know what the solution is, you know, as a few key words or key phrases associated with our solutions.
[00:24:07] So they kind of get it and they walk in with a more open mind and a more and more ready for a purchase. So really, we work on these stages. but then again, of course there are those that just show up somewhere along the journey in the random phase and they’re like, Oh, this, I’m gonna try it. I’m going to buy it.
I like it a lot, and I’m going to continue with whatever that means to me.
Robert Brill: [00:24:29] So, so do you know, do you have a way of tracking when a consumer is kind of like, like early in the consumer journey with you.
Or middle or late in the consumer journey, like do you have a way of identifying that? Like, you know, the, the, the 90% of people who see an ad and then they purchase within two hours.
Like, do you know, like you got a hundred purchases can, is there a way through. I dunno. It’s like, is there some metric that helps you identify, like isolate the ones who are, I dunno, like new to that journey so you can keep marketing to them while they’re in their trial period.
Daniel Glickman: [00:25:08] To an extent. Um, the different tactics we use, of course, we you know, exclusion categories, cookies, a UTM codes, et cetera, they’re limited. You’re very limited in that ability. Just realize, I’ve just learned recently a technical thing is Facebook actually strips out UTM codes from a lot of the links, when somebody, for instance, fixing an ad in mobile. So yeah, we found some ways around it, but it’s, you know, just shows up as organic.
So there’s a limit to how much you can exclude them. I don’t know Facebook themselves that I would exclude them, and it’s a lot of technical work around that to do it. But, um, even then it just never, never acts up. People clean up their cookies, they show up in a different device. they, you, they find you the group, right?
And they hear about you through an influencer. So, I believe, yeah, we, we try to set up these programs, but we always have it set up in such a way to, if somebody enters in random point in the journey, it still works out. It just, yeah, maybe I’m not quite as prepared, but it’s never, it’s never like, Oh, you don’t know what, it’s not like a cereal, you know, Netflix series where, and say if you missed, if you missed the last two seasons, stop here, go back to season one.
Wouldn’t make sense.
Robert Brill: [00:26:27] So basically give the consumer message, give them, know that they’re going to look for some sort of validation around the messages that you’re sending them. Give them a lot of content and give them an opportunity to purchase.
Daniel Glickman: [00:26:45] I don’t know.
Robert Brill: [00:26:45] I don’t know. That’s probably not the right order, but that’s sort of the general, I, I really think it’s interesting how you’re using content to nurture and build brand.
Cause you know, all I’m thinking about is ad buying, right?
Daniel Glickman: [00:26:58] Well, we use ad buying to promote content. There are early stages. So, um, we look at an educate position, so right. There, it’s very hard to try and position of cellular product. It’s an ad, especially nowadays, people who want to understand and yeah, the education part is a bit more expensive cause you’re, you’re going much broader in the market, right?
You’re not, you know, building an audience. And so a smaller portion of those people are going to eventually buy your product. Right. but if you’re building start audience and you become known among that audience. Over time, they will buy. Right? As long as they were potential customers. They might not need it today.
They might need tomorrow, but if you’re only going for the ones who need it today, then you know, then you’re not looking down the road. You essentially are missing out on a whole bunch of people that will need you tomorrow. And you’re missing out the 99% of the market. You’re only attacking the more highly competitive market of those at everybody else is bidding on right now.
Robert Brill: [00:28:04] Sure. Everyone wants right now. And that’s the toughest market.
Daniel Glickman: [00:28:07] And that’s a comparison stage. And that’s exactly when customers would compare you to your competitors.
Robert Brill: [00:28:12] Sure.
Daniel Glickman: [00:28:13] And, and guess what? That’s very tough. And if they’re already in that stage when they discover you.
Well, they’re going to go either with who they already know and trust, or all the cheapest.
Robert Brill: [00:28:24] Right? And you don’t want to be, you don’t want to be the price competition, especially if you’re raising your rates, even if you have a much better product.
Two, three, four or five questions. Number one. Is, are you, I mean, I imagine you’re a private company.
Yes.
Daniel Glickman: [00:28:41] Yes, indeed.
Robert Brill: [00:28:42] And do you have any venture funding or is it bootstraps?
Daniel Glickman: [00:28:45] Um, we are, we are, um, a spinoff of a larger company called JetBrains. Oh, yeah. It’s a funny name. Um, there are $1 billion company that, if you’re a Java developer, you know who JetBrains are.
Nobody else does. Huge company. They develop, um, software for engineers, and we can, we were the first internal startup because we said, we want to do stuff for marketers. And they said, okay, well, you just, we’re going to spin you off. You do your own thing. So we, yeah, we have, we have money from outside, but it’s not a VC.
It’s not your traditional investor. yeah, we have money.
Robert Brill: [00:29:22] So you have, it’s interesting because I think, you know, when you look for businesses that are trying to be unicorns with all the SoftBank debarkle that’s happening with, WeWork and others, it’s like they have a different set of playing rules, like I imagine, and I don’t know, you can tell me like.
It sounds like your company actually wants you to be profitable according to traditional business metrics.
Daniel Glickman: [00:29:45] Yes.
Robert Brill: [00:29:46] Right.
Daniel Glickman: [00:29:46] Absolutely.
Robert Brill: [00:29:47] Fascinating. But, it probably also means that you have a little more latitude than I do with my company, where I’m 100% bootstrapping yet, and it’s like, it has to kind of like pay out from day one.
Daniel Glickman: [00:29:59] So there’s that. Yes. And compared to the traditional VCs, which are constantly. Pushing you to grow regardless if your business model works or not? Yes, I think they, they, they are thinking of the next, their own exit, like the next funding round. So, they will often push you to grow, grow, grow, even if you’re losing money.
They’ll figure out the business model later, as long as there’s a market, they’ll figure it out and I just need to get them to the next round. And then whoever’s the next investor where push them to the next drop and it’s, and it’s a little bit of a pyramid scheme.
It’s not a scheme. But it’s a little bit of that element in there. And we call it risk, right? Yeah. Some of them, I’m never going to feel it. I figure out a business model and, um, and some will, and that’s okay because on average, it works out for us. In our case, we were looking to be profitable, we are not yet.
Um, and we’re also looking for growth. They seldom come together. Um, but yeah, if you’re a bootstrapped. It’s a huge benefit to be able to get to profitability first and then either raise money on your own terms or do what the heck you want with their own money. It’s, it’s amazing, especially if you’re, very clear about your own life work.
Or your own life goals.
Robert Brill: [00:31:27] Right.
Daniel Glickman: [00:31:27] If your goal is to retire at a certain age, have do something with their life, not become a workaholic and work forever, which is where the VCs are going to take you. Right? Um, so it’s much more difficult to get there and it’s a longer road to growth. But if you can get to profitability early without other money. Without outside money, I would hands down do it. There’s simply no question in my mind, and then choose to take some money from somebody else if you want it and say, but you’ll never going to control me. I’m going to tell you what I’m going to do. You’ll never get to tell me, and you don’t want it buy.
If you’re profitable and you’re good and there’s a good market, you’ll find people will give you money.
Robert Brill: [00:32:08] Right. So that’s a good situation. Yeah. So as we wrap up the interview, Daniel, I’m a big foodie. You live in Boston, I imagine. Just like you’re in San Diego, you travel a lot.
I’m actually going to Boston, later this month.
What kind of, is there any sort of like Bostonian food that I should be looking at or what do you love to eat? Like, give me some ideas.
Daniel Glickman: [00:32:31] Oh, wow. well, certainly Boston is known for, for different seafood. We’ve got good oysters, of course, different kinds of oysters, but, um, not like in a Gulf of Mexico.
But we’re, but there’s a lot of good seafood. there’s a small chain I like called Tate. It’s kind of a chain of, um, um, it’s like a cafe slash restaurant ish kind of thing. very, very good food. I think they’re Israeli originally or face. Yeah. So, it’s got that twist to it. Um,
Robert Brill: [00:33:02] T A T E
Daniel Glickman: [00:33:03] T A T E I think.
Just my perennial favorite, if you’re into like a light fare and a, if you just walk around the Sea Bell area, finding lots and lots of really nice sort of restaurants.
A pier 34 is a nice one. They like you can find very upscale, um, and Oh, if you’re from, not from a very large city of probably love dim sum and the Boston Chinatown, that’s something that. Um, a lot of people don’t know what Dim Sum is, it’s kind of like a very special cuisine, of, um, so small dishes, kind of like the Chinese tapas.
[Robert Brill: [00:33:42] I had Dim Sum with my wife in Hong Kong.
It’s like I could eat that all day.
Daniel Glickman: [00:33:49] And, yeah, so those are great. There’s lots of food in Boston, checkup TripAdvisor, and
Robert Brill: [00:33:55] is good personal recommendations. Daniel, how can, uh. How can people find you?
Daniel Glickman: [00:34:00] Oh, I’m, I’m all over the place, so you can find me at Waves.Video. Um, on LinkedIn just search for Daniel Glickman and my personal website, CMOconfessions.com. And I have my own podcast, which is BTU or the business to user podcast. which I launched recently, and I’m very excited about. So, all of these ways are, I’m there
Fantastic.
Robert Brill: [00:34:22] Thank you Daniel. Appreciate your time.
Daniel Glickman: [00:34:24] You’re very welcome. Glad to be here.
Robert Brill: [00:34:26] Thank you for listening to this episode of the LA business podcast. If you like what we’re doing on this podcast, please consider subscribing on Apple or Google play, leaving a five-star review and sharing with your friends. If you have any questions, comments, or recommendations for a guest you’d like to hear on this podcast, please email me, [email protected] thank you.
[00:34:52] Have a fantastic day.
