From Startups to Synergy w/ Parker Mayes | Ep. 144

In this episode of the Biz/Dev podcast David and Gary talk to Parker Mayes, CEO of Inbound Revenue. Discover the rush of starting and scaling multiple companies, and learn how to cultivate a synergistic ecosystem that fuels innovation and growth. We explore the secrets to building a customer-centric approach, the challenges and rewards of juggling multiple ventures, and the power of creating a harmonious business environment. 

Links: 

Parker's LinkedIn
Inbound Revenue on LinkedIn
Inbound Revenue's Site

___________________________________

Submit Your Questions to:

hello@thebigpixel.net

OR comment on our YouTube videos! - Big Pixel, LLC - YouTube

Our Hosts

David Baxter - CEO of Big Pixel

Gary Voigt - Creative Director at Big Pixel

The Podcast

David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

Contact Us

hello@thebigpixel.net

919-275-0646

www.thebigpixel.net

FB | IG | LI | TW | TT : @bigpixelNC

Big Pixel

1772 Heritage Center Dr

Suite 201

Wake Forest, NC 27587

Music by: BLXRR

Transcript

[00:00:00] David: My wife is mad at me. So I'll let the spoiler out, they sold the company. The reason why that matters right now is, because they sold the company, I've had no dates for two months

[00:00:12] David: Hi everyone. Welcome to the biz dev podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host, and I'm joined per usual by Gary Voigt, who is currently not in a hurricane. Hello,

[00:00:25] Gary: Nope. Luckily, we are on the other coast. While it's hitting the west coast, I'm on the east coast. And, it's rare that this happens and kind of keeps us out of it, but thankful it did so far.

[00:00:36] David: Yeah. It's just a matter of time. You get smacked a lot.

[00:00:39] Gary: For sure.

[00:00:40] David: More importantly, We are joined by Parker Mays who is the CEO at Inbound Revenue. Hello, Parker. Welcome.

[00:00:48] Parker: Hey, thanks for having me y'all. I appreciate the chance to be here. Yeah.

[00:00:53] David: I know Parker Because I was actually a client of one of his many startups, but I've known him off and on. I'm a mentor at the NC state. Entrepreneurship clinic and such. And so I met Parker and his partner through that. And you guys were pimping out, let's go Raleigh pretty hard at those mentor things.

And I want to ask questions about that. Cause that's a fun story. But but you've been doing the entrepreneurship. You're a young guy, but you've been doing the entrepreneurship thing since what the cradle. Is that about right?

[00:01:26] Parker: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nine months before I was born. Really? No. It really, I, it started, it's interesting because I do come from a background where a lot of family members are entrepreneurs, but I didn't really self identify. With this whole, I love building things and creating things and leading people until I got to college.

Actually. You mentioned my partner Thomas, he and I met my first day at NC state. We were literally in the rooms beside each other in our dorm in Bowen hall at NC state. And the interesting thing was that he at the time already was running a company. And so I got to kind of be introduced to the world of entrepreneurship through him went down to capital club downtown, which is where their offices still are for nine miles media and just got to see the beginnings of something.

And that experience really had me realize wow, this whole idea of creating something from scratch or building something is what I really resonated with. And that was an experience that kind of started me on what is now been a six year journey of sales and now entrepreneurship.

[00:02:29] David: So this came up in our last episode and I asked this question and it was right on for that guy. So I'm going to ask you as well. Are you a lover of business? Or of a specific idea or do you care what you're doing as long as you're running a business? Does that make sense?

[00:02:47] Parker: Yeah. I just, I think there's a little bit of like the competitive element that's just like entrepreneurship is like people who are competitive, like loving, like winning, but it's the intersection of that and like loving making a difference for me, it's, I get to see a tangible impact every single day that I get to have on people and that's actually what motivates me.

And of course, to your point, that's, yeah. Concept agnostic is as long as I'm serving people really well and doing something that I'm, I enjoy then I can be doing whatever and I'm going to be happy as can be. But it's those two things. And I just find that in entrepreneurship, it's way easier to get to those two things because I can feel the competitive and the rush of playing.

And I can also feel loving what I'm doing and serving people every day.

[00:03:34] David: That's a nice way of saying it. So I want to specifically ask before we get into your inbound revenue, because I know that's your main

[00:03:40] Parker: Sure.

[00:03:40] David: now, but I want to talk about Let's Go Raleigh. I have, I think I've even pimped that out on this podcast I love, I was one of, I've been one of your earliest clients.

And

[00:03:51] Gary: talked about it a few times.

[00:03:52] David: yeah, it's just a great idea. And. 

My wife is mad at me. So I'll let the spoiler out, they sold the company. The reason why that matters right now is, because they sold the company, I've had no dates for two months. And my wife is very, she's what's going on? I don't understand. Why are we just watching television?

There's no cool dates coming. I'm like funny. You should say that. So the high level thing is incorrect me wherever you'd like to let's go. Raleigh is a. It wasn't even a site. It was a service that was all done through text which was very cool, very lean startup that allowed you to plan dates with your significant others and other outings.

I cheated and used it. I had them plan my son's graduation dinner. I've had them plan things for business. Actually Gary, when you guys came to for leadership I had them plan the action, the comedy event.

[00:04:43] Gary: Oh, okay. Cool.

[00:04:45] David: so I've had them, so I kind of have cheated using that a little bit for various things, but they basically plan an event for you, a dinner date going out afterwards, whatever.

And it was wonderful and it's, you pay a monthly fee for it and they become basically a little concierge.

[00:05:01] Parker: Appreciate you saying those things. I'm not very much on the front end of the business, mostly customer or mostly, prospect facing or just like early, doing the social side and that side. So I don't even really get to hear any of the, customer feedback long term and that kind of thing.

So it was really, it's cool to hear you say that and appreciate it. Yes. So the concept came really was a huge passion of my co founder who comes from a family, divorce background and and for him, a huge passion is authentic relationship, just building community and especially for us, like marriage.

Being such a huge thing. He recently got married, has been in a relationship and that kind of thing. And what we what we wanted to do through that was make it easy for couples to spend time together. And that was really the mission behind it. And so how it kind of all came to be was just aligning our passion for a relationship and building relationship.

And then on our. Background of tech and being able to build something that's, scalable and and really impacts people. What happened was. Over the last almost two years, we had been building the company and similar to, what we've talked about here. It's okay, there wasn't a ton of competition in the space, but what we were having trouble figuring out was, okay, is it a concierge or is it a subscription experience?

Or what kind of really is it that people would, at their core, pay for and could become mainstream. And that's what we How it went through multiple pivots and things to try to figure that out. Just like any early stage company, what we ended up finding was that really the subscription experience membership slash concierge was something that people would at least pay for, but the scale that it needed to be done at in order for it to really become what Thomas and I envisioned for us building with our lives, over the next.

10, 20 years was massive, tens of thousands of subscribers in, dozens of cities. And that was what we had kind of projected, but it was just a really massive lift for him and I, who, what you'll end up hearing is that our background is really B2B. And so this B2C world of social and advertising and Facebook and everything just didn't get us fired up and out of bed every morning.

And so the reason that we ended up transitioning it to new ownership. Is because he and I got to the point where we really said, Hey, like for us, like B2B sales and tech systems fulfillment, we really, with our skills would be better suited and better served in a different, more B2B focused industry.

And the timing just happened to work out that one of our. Other longtime customers, they've been subscribers for 12 months, him and his wife, they were looking to buy a business. Their background is in marketing and social and influencer world. And so they literally came to us and said, Hey, we hear that you're, working on growth.

Is this something that you're looking to transition or are you looking to continue growing? And it was just that kind of the perfect time that they ended up wanting to take over the company. And so we set it up and literally over the course of a week or two went from, okay let's transition and let's really focus full time on inbound revenue.

We no longer own let's go Raleigh and have a check to back that up.

[00:08:16] Gary: Timing.

[00:08:17] David: That's a fun story. It's unusual in the fact that the speed, you went, two years. And not saying this was a, a hundred X exit or anything, but go from two years idea to tangible product to sale. That's a fast

[00:08:35] Parker: Yeah. And I don't pretend like it's some massive exit. Of course, you know that, but the, like for us, the fact that. The concept, the product, the customers do live on, like the fact that the idea that we formed is able to go on and continue. Like our passion is still there for it. Just Thomas and I believe that we weren't the right people to take it and scale it and build it to what we wanted it to be.

So the timing that worked out was that they are going to be able to continue that on, and then he and I are going to be able to grow and do things that we really believe are kind of in that zone of genius that we can continue to grow and scale.

[00:09:10] David: Very cool. So now that you've transitioned officially full time, I shouldn't say that. Do you have other irons in the fire or are you all inbound?

[00:09:19] Parker: It currently is inbound. We have a secondary venture as anyone does, but we have a secondary thing that we're hoping to launch in early 25. So that we're going to spend about six months case studying ourselves, our business on this new concept, and then we'll launch it with us as a case study in January is kind of the concept.

And we really feel like we can get inbound to what we call our graduation point, which is a self sustaining team of, anywhere from five to 10 that will continue to grow with Thomas and I's coaching as we spend more time on a new venture. And that's the really what we want to do with the next 20 to 30 years.

[00:09:58] David: And that's a, I'm assuming a B2B play.

[00:10:00] Parker: it's a B2B play. It aligns pretty adjacently with inbound revenue's sales world. This is more kind of, of a LinkedIn social play that is B2B focused. More on the content side for founders and salespeople.

[00:10:14] David: Very cool. I look forward to hearing more about that when you go more public with it.

[00:10:18] Parker: Absolutely. Yeah,

[00:10:20] David: Gary, did you have a question? You unmuted

[00:10:21] Gary: Yeah. I want to hear more about inbound revenue. Cause I know

[00:10:24] David: What that's where I was

[00:10:25] Gary: and the other thing. So

[00:10:27] Parker: Yeah. I know a little all over the place. Yeah. Inbound revenue, it is a sales consulting company at the end of the day. Thomas comes from digital marketing world that I mentioned earlier. He and his brother built a video production agency up to 12 people over the course of a few years together 12 full time team members here in downtown Raleigh, he still operates there as an executive coach.

I spent a couple of years working for a web design agency we worked with. E com companies, it's called Amped. It's still exists here. They recently got acquired by MailChimp and are now MailChimp forms. So that was a big kind of a cool moment for them in terms of exit. And I was early days there leading sales.

And so what happened was the two of us took our digital marketing background. And we basically said, Hey, why don't the same systems that we've built for these companies that are, email marketing, cold outreach systems. They would work just as well for any other marketing agency or marketing consultancy that's out there.

Why don't we just productize it, scale it and sell it. And that's what we've done. We went from two years ago, we started at zero with literally nine miles media as like the first client, that was where we had built the whole system. And then over the past two years, we've grown. And now we're serving about.

40 agencies across the U S and Canada. And and so that's where we're at hiring multiple full time team members here in our Raleigh office. And and it's just exciting times, but it was the background of marketing agency world. So now what we do is we do cold email, cold outreach calls and LinkedIn on behalf of dozens of marketing agencies to book sales meetings directly on their calendar so that those founders and VPs of sales can literally just take the meetings and and close the deals.

[00:12:11] David: So is it a software thing? Is it just pure consulting?

[00:12:15] Parker: So it is a. It is a service that essentially manages a tech stack. So there are tools out there that exist instantly for sending cold email and Apollo for finding contacts. And what we've built is essentially a tech stack of tools like that. That we manage on behalf of these agencies so that we can literally we'll help you find your target niche.

We'll write your copy. We'll set up the systems to send it via domains and email addresses. And then what we'll do is we'll actually book it directly on your calendar. So you get a dedicated client success manager in that way. It's a service. And then we manage all of the software. There's no software that we've built in house, but we're managing this full stack essentially.

Okay. Absolutely.

[00:12:58] David: Okay. So I, it's for marketing agencies. That's

[00:13:03] Parker: That's right. So essentially Thomas and I come from agency world about, and still to this day, about 30 out of our 40 clients are agencies about six months ago, we started expanding into two additional areas, kind of like the software development world and the. Just kind of like business consultant world.

So we've got five or six clients of each of those across industries. But we've found just, our bread and butter was marketing agency world. So we've stayed pretty true to that with biz with development agencies and consultants being kind of a secondary world to operate in.

[00:13:36] David: if I'm understanding correctly, I'm a marketing age. I own a marketing agency and I haven't really figured out how to get this whole pipeline thing rocking that. And so I call you and I say, Hey, You guys help me out with that. And then you're going to say, okay, you should use software a for this software B for that, and then I sign up for those, or are you signing up on my back?

[00:13:57] Parker: no, we'll sign up. That's the nice thing is we're really an end to end provider. So we'll we have agency accounts already set up with the Apollos and the instantly ease and the mail forges. And then what we'll do is we'll say, Hey, if you pay us, for example, nine 97 per month, that's going to cover everything in your tech stack on a monthly basis, the hard costs, and then we make money off of performance.

So when you complete. Your sales meetings with your qualified prospects that we book, then that's when we actually like make money as a company at, the 200 bucks per meeting that we book at.

[00:14:30] David: Do you guys make my go.

[00:14:32] Gary: Is there any instance where you're selling the service to the marketing agency and then the marketing agency is recommending the service to one of their clients as well?

[00:14:39] Parker: Definitely. Yeah. We have that in terms of like white label offers and agencies do that. I think a lot of times they'll put it as a line item for them and then be able to upsell to their clients. And so we're kind of this back end partner that never sees the client, but they, we've worked successfully with them and now they bounce it out to additional partners for sure.

[00:14:58] Gary: Yeah. Okay.

[00:15:05] AD: BigPixel builds world class custom software and amazing apps. Our team of pros puts passion into every one of our projects. Our design infused development leans heavily on delivering a great experience for our clients and their clients. From startups to enterprises, we can help craft your ideas into real world products that help your business do better business. 

[00:15:35] David: So I know with some of our clients, like we have a big, we use SendGrid to send all of our programmatic emails. It's just what we do. And we send a lot. And so we have a big old account that we manage. We'll say, Hey, we're paying, a hundred bucks a month or something like that to send, I don't know, a hundred thousand plus emails a month.

And we'll be like, Hey, client A, if you send 20,000 emails or less a month, you could pay us 25 bucks, which is way cheaper than what you would pay if you had your own account with SendGrid. And we make a little, we stack up enough of those, we're charging, let's say $400. I'm making that number up, and we're paying $200.

We make 200 bucks. Is, are you guys making money in that way too, through your accounts, your big boy accounts?

[00:16:23] Parker: No, I we do get bulk discounts, right? So like for us with Apollo, if versus a standard person's getting 10, 000 credits, we're buying a million, then Apollo has given us a discount, but we really factor that into the tech stack also. We're not like, it's not the juice of the squeeze of the 50 bucks that we could get out of someone is not worth a million.

Us, not like really what we sell is Hey, we're only charging you on a monthly basis, the hard costs of setting up the tech stack. And we like that because it aligns us with the marketing agency or the service based B2B company that we're working with to say, Hey, really, we're taking the risk too.

If we don't perform, then we don't make money and they get excited about that. And if I know that I can book 10 meetings at 200 bucks a clip. I get way more excited about the two grand than the 50. And so I would much rather lean into, Hey, you're only paying for the hard costs, then make the 50 bucks. I would much rather them sign on and us do a lot of work together over the longterm.

That's what I get excited about.

[00:17:25] David: Now, here's a dumb question. But if my job is a, I own a marketing agency, it is supposed to be my job to bring in leads for my clients. So why do I need you to do that?

[00:17:40] Parker: I get that question a lot. And in fact, when I outreach to people, sometimes they'll say, Hey, I own a marketing agency. I should be able to do this. And I do get that. A lot of the clients we work with, they aren't just, lead gen agencies. For example, nine miles, a high ticket video production company, right?

That's just what they do. They're really good at video. I've got another one. High ticket web design. They're really good at designing great websites. I've got another one. Even think of the like SEO PPC world. Yes, they should be good at PPC, but they work for e comm companies like they PPC for e com like the back of their hand and PPC for e com versus B2B PPC marketing agency is actually a lot different, right?

So we acknowledge that Hey, you're a video production expert. Let us be the sales experts, bring you in clients that are looking for video rather than them trying to figure out a space that isn't their niche. And that's most of the time who we work with.

[00:18:41] David: So it's mostly, for lack of a better term they have a deliverable that isn't marketing.

[00:18:46] Parker: Right or isn't, yeah, isn't B2B Legion, right? As an example, right?

[00:18:52] Gary: It is an outreach, but it could be an added service.

[00:18:54] Parker: Exactly. But exactly, if they have some sort of manufacturing company that's looking for some sort of sales development need and brings us in, then that would be totally, fair game. 

[00:19:04] David: Of the things we like to ask about when it comes to entrepreneurs and you're a serial entrepreneur, I'll get it out.

[00:19:12] Parker: Yeah.

[00:19:13] David: that first year we called it, it's not even the first year we call it. The slog is the time in which you create an idea to the time anyone cares. And that it can be a few months or it could be years, depending on like Kickstarter was eight years before they started making profit, right?

It can take a long time.

[00:19:30] Parker: That's wild. That's wild.

[00:19:31] David: You're how far in, in inbound, how many out two years,

[00:19:36] Parker: years. Yeah, we're like coming up on two years.

[00:19:38] David: but you kind of think, tell me if I'm wrong, but you remind me of the guy who bought a house for a little bit of money. And then three years later, you take the equity of that and you buy a bigger house and you're starting to go like this.

And so now you're 30 years old and you live in this massive house that people are like, how did you do it? I get the feeling. This is how you do businesses. Since they're all somewhat related, you're taking. Business one ends successfully or not, but you've got this network that you're now going to leverage business B.

Is that

[00:20:08] Parker: that's right. And it's it's two things, right? One it's thomas and I have just agreed That for the foreseeable future, he and I are building businesses together, right? There's the foundation of him and I as two really uniquely skilled individuals in two different things with people, relationships, and on his side, systems, processes, and building really good ones.

And so there's a little bit of that foundation. It only gets better every single time we start a new company because he and I get better at the process of building businesses, right? Together. And that's really exciting as one piece of it. The other piece of it is yes, there's the like, there's the knowledge, but there's also like this ecosystem that we create, right?

Think about so if inbound revenue is a sales consulting company and Thomas and I want to start seven more B2B service based high growth scalable companies Then what we're going to do is we're going to build other companies that can serve each other And they're also going to be able to grow together So Think about this company concept, right?

If we're doing a second company that's gonna be video content, social media for B2B B2B companies, founders, and salespeople, then how aligned is that industry founders and salespeople to what inbound already does? It could, this new company could be an upsell to existing inbound CU customers. It could be a package with inbound customers.

It could be a referrals back and forth, like everything that we're going to build over the next 20 years is going to be an ecosystem that will build on top of each other. If we sold inbound revenue as a company, right? Okay. So we end up exiting inbound revenue and someone buys that. There's either an opportunity for.

Each company internally to take the inbound revenue process, and every company now does its own lead gen, or we build, something else down the road that does a new and improved way of building lead gen, right? So that's the concept is it's actually building an ecosystem that grows itself by serving the company, serving each other over time.

[00:22:16] David: So I'm going to play devil's advocate for a second here.

[00:22:19] Parker: Sure, please.

[00:22:20] David: I was just listening to podcast, Alex Ramosi podcast. I think I said his name, right? I'm fascinated by that guy. 

[00:22:27] Parker: Brilliant, dude. Thomas and I are terrible.

[00:22:30] David: He's it's hard to take him seriously at first. Cause he's just the dude only wears a tank top to show off his muscles.

And you're like, this guy's a business guru. What? And then you listen to him and he's do you just have someone like feeding you like these niche y like lines of business? Cause they're just constant. But anyway, in his recent podcast, he said the exact opposite of what you just said. He said, if you run a consulting style business. Mike, let's say inbounds pretty close, but specifically me is what he's kind of more talking to, but if you're running that kind of business and you're dabbling now, he was specifically talking about coaching, but if you're dabbling in another one, another business, he would recommend you kill one to fully invest in the second or never go into this one and fully focus on the consulting.

And he said, if you do both, you're going to end with. You're going to end both unsuccessfully. Clearly you take a very different, so tell me why does this work for you? But someone like Alex, who's a very successful said you're not doing it.

[00:23:33] Parker: Oh, for sure. And keep in mind, Alex and I's net worth are completely different.

[00:23:38] David: on a whole different planet for sure.

[00:23:39] Parker: And, and being, six, two years into entrepreneurship, six years into career versus where Alex is also a completely different game. So for anyone listening, I don't want to say that I'm like, and Alex is wrong. And I know you're not asking that. The reason that I think about it this way is that I have this belief. That when, that what I want to build and what I get excited about, right? What Thomas and I are really excited about. is the first couple of years of starting something new, of building and creating and of forming the early days of an idea, right?

And that's just what we love. And if we can create a roadmap that in one to two years, we can build a company to the point where it has. Let's say, as just arbitrary numbers, 10 full time employees and it's doing a couple million in revenue and it is and it is self sustaining, which means it would continue to grow with the coaching of Thomas and I over time.

And if over the next 20 years I get the chance to do that 10 times, so spend basically two, every two years, start something new that gets me really fired up, is relevant to the time and something that's really exciting. Mike. Alex, he might be saying, Hey, you're not going to build the 500 million company.

And he might be right. We'll see over the next 20 years what happens. And if I could build. 10 companies that are doing 20 million ARR each. That's still a really exciting outcome for me after the next 20 years. And so I think that's what he's talking about. I think he and I are playing maybe a little bit of a different game.

He's going for the one big giant, billion dollar company. And I'm really excited about, 200 million ARR. Across 10 companies of portfolio. And it's just a different game to play, but is that the wrong game? It's just every entrepreneur's individual decision on that, I think.

[00:25:39] David: I would, I'm an old guy, especially compared to you. My, my prediction is you're going to get tired of starting new companies. After you're like 35, you're going to look at the man.

sucker.

[00:25:52] Parker: luckily I have almost 20 years till I'm 35. So we're good.

[00:25:56] David: Oh, that hurts me. That hurts. I know you're not that young, but I know you're also not that far off. That hurts my feelings. You're like a 10th as old as Gary. That's the truth.

[00:26:06] Gary: That's true. Yeah.

[00:26:08] David: Gary's looks pretty good, but he's hiding his Walker

[00:26:11] Gary: I started my design career with chalk.

[00:26:13] David: Chalk on stone.

Oh,

[00:26:14] Gary: the most, that was the most tech tool we had.

[00:26:17] Parker: Yeah. It wasn't a nap. It was like one of those felt boards. You know what I'm talking about? Where it was like the cut out like felt and it magically sticks to the wall. You know what I'm talking about.

[00:26:25] David: Now don't talk smack about that, man. I have so many good memories of a felt board. Oh, my, okay. My mother was a Latin teacher for 42 years and she would tell these incredibly detailed Roman stories with a felt board. I'm not kidding. She had hundreds of little dudes like you're talking about. We're talking Roman togas and all of that.

And she would tell stories with the felt board. So man, oh, no

[00:26:50] Parker: I love it. No, I remember, yeah, I remember Sunday school, and it's like the Sunday school teacher with arthritis and they're making her cut out, The board or whatever. Anyway.

[00:26:59] David: I have been that Sunday school teacher. That's how old I am anyway. So You guys, so you got ahead of me because I was going to ask the question as to whether or not, like you were talking about your next idea, the

[00:27:11] Parker: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[00:27:13] David: as might be the one you would invest in for the next 10 or 20 years, but it doesn't sound right.

You sounds like you're going to,

[00:27:19] Parker: yeah, really it's just the ecosystem is what we're building for the next 20 years. That's it. And I think that companies will exit out and fail often. Whatever happens. But the idea to me of Having this portfolio of companies, even think Raleigh founded, so Raleigh founded a coworking space here in Raleigh has a bunch of different companies in it, and I get excited about what if I had a coworking space that was eight different companies, but just, I owned all eight companies and they got to be this ecosystem that feeds itself.

That gets me really excited. So I know we're so I think, this is all very conceptual, but. That's what is the exciting future of if there was really a space and ecosystem for all of these companies to thrive and be able to grow together.

[00:28:04] David: I love that idea. I don't think I've heard of that one yet. Coworking space full of my own companies. As an entrepreneur, man, that's just, that's like catnip, right? I totally could see that. There's something about entrepreneurship and no matter how humble you want to be, there is an ego side to it.

And boy, an idea like that just scratches that edge. You look all of that. It's like Mufasa up on the mountain. Everything you see is

[00:28:27] Parker: Yeah,

[00:28:29] David: totally can see that.

[00:28:30] Gary: As a visual person, it's like that last page in the annual report for P& G where it lists all their subsidiary companies and it's just a barrage of logos extending out like a family tree.

[00:28:41] Parker: exactly. Yeah. I love it.

[00:28:43] David: All right, Gary, do it.

[00:28:45] Gary: With your experience so far building companies and your continuation of building new companies, what would your top three pieces of advice be for any new entrepreneur or startup?

[00:28:56] Parker: Yeah. The first thing is related to co founders. I think a lot of times people I just see, especially in early stage founders, I, this is a lot of times who I'm thinking about is there's this world where a lot of people are like, Oh, hustle and grind culture. I'm going to do it on my own. And for those people, I always encourage, Hey that my experience over the last few years has been. Having a co founder has been one of the biggest blessings in my business. And that's my experience knowing that, Hey, if I had to do this on my own, I would have totally flopped years ago. There's the other side of it, which is, okay, if you're looking for a co founder, like having that conversation with a lot, thinking of it literally like a marriage you're going to date and you're going to have conversations and you're going to do all the things that person would do in order to get you over the over to the process of marriage.

And so that's my first thing is. Early stage founders. It's building in soul building solo is a hard journey. Looking for a co founder is an important process and having those, like really thinking about it in that way marriage. And then secondarily the second thing that I think about is that for us as a business, Like it was incredibly important to be like massively voice of the customer focused in terms of the feedback loop that we were having as we were initially starting inbound.

So going from 0 to 10 clients. Every single week I was having conversations with those clients. Hey, what's working. What's not talk to me more. Like I was getting as much data as I could in those first 10 clients that now has propelled us, of course, a year later, right? We literally a year ago had 10 clients.

This end of this year, we've got 40 clients, six months from now, our projection is wanting to hit 80 clients, right? And so we're really trying to increase that time, right? And that's a feedback loop constantly talking to customers number two. And then last thing is just like for us, this is like my co founder and I as Christians as well.

It's the way that we think about business is loving people and serving people first. I think, especially as a sales company, people think, Oh, what are they trying to get me to do? Or what are they trying to get? Like that for us is just the opposite of the way that we think about it, which is like sales as helping.

And so I think in any area of business, whether you're in sales or just building anything, like for us, the key of, Thinking about loving people first and serving people first and that leading everything that we do internally and externally has made a massive impact on the way that our customers think about us and the way that our team members think about growing the business with us.

[00:31:40] Gary: That's refreshing to hear. It's quite the opposite of the used car salesman stigma that a lot of salespeople get.

[00:31:47] Parker: Fair enough. I appreciate that because that's the exact that's the exact picture that people get in their head when they think of sales. And for us, like everything inbound revenue is in terms of its DNA is about flipping that and really putting out the mindset into the world that sales is helping, asking the right questions, understanding what people need, and then being able to determine, Hey, is what I'm doing actually a good fit to help them.

[00:32:13] Gary: Nice. If anybody wants to learn more about you or your business, where can they reach out or where can they visit?

[00:32:21] Parker: Yeah, sure. I'm on LinkedIn. It's Parker Mays, M A Y E S. And then if you're, yeah, if you're interested in checking out what we're building at Inbound Revenue, it's just inboundrevenue. co. But yeah, follow on LinkedIn. We're about to start posting social content and that's case studying our new business to come.

[00:32:37] David: man. I'm going to keep it. I'm keep watch.

[00:32:40] OUTRO: Hi, I'm Christy Pronto, Content Marketing Director here at BigPixel. Thank you for listening to this episode of the BizDev Podcast. We'd love to hear from you. Shoot us an email, hello at thebigpixel. net. The BizDev Podcast is produced and presented by BigPixel. See you next week. Until then, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Threads, YouTube, and LinkedIn.