Justin Welsh (@thejustinwelsh) talks setting a high bar for yourself, releasing products without knowing how to code, growing on social media (esp. LinkedIn), selling courses, dealing with burnout, and growing his solopreneur empire to $3M in 3 years with Courtland (@csallen) and Channing (@ChanningAllen).
In today's SaaStr podcast, we present the Cutting Edge. Where SaaStr's own VP of Sales, Bryan Elsesser sits down with the best revenue leaders in SaaS to share cutting-edge tactics and strategies. In this episode, Kevin Dorsey, VP of Inside Sales at PatientPop shares how to build trust in today's competitive market. Video + show notes: https://www.saastr.com/kevin-dorsey-patientpop-cutting-edge-sales/
Justin Welsh is the former SVP Sales @ PatientPop, the startup that offers the first all-in-one practice growth platform that's HIPAA-compliant and is proven to grow your practice. During his 5 years at PatientPop, Justin grew sales from $0 to $56m alongside the full build-out of the sales team. Before PatientPop, Justin was one of the first 10 employees at ZocDoc, where he spent 4 years in different roles including Director of Strategic Sales. In Today's Episode We Discuss: How Justin made his way into the world of Sales and came to be one of the industry's leading scale up Sales leaders with PatientPop and ZocDoc? How did Justin experience burnout? What were the first indications and signals for him that he was suffering from it? How did it manifest itself in how he carried himself and his behaviour? How did Justin communicate the situation to his bosses? What does Justin advise others in communicating burnout to their superiors? As a manager observing their team, what are signs that an individual is burning out? What is the right way to approach them to discuss the situation? What options do managers have available to them when faced with a burned out employee? How does micro-management fit into the signals that suggest clear burnout of the individual? Justin has said before that "culture must precede performance", what did he mean by this? What actions and communications must they adopt to ensure that this feeling of culture over performance is accepted by the team? With that in mind, how does Justin think about KPI and goal-setting? What can leaders do to create an environment of safety for their team? Where do many leaders go wrong here? Having seen multiple scaling culture, where do SaaS organisations tend to break down both in terms of culture and process? What are those inflection points? What can be done to actively mitigate these 2 significant points of failure? Justin's 60 Second SaaStr: What does Justin know now that he wishes he had known when he started at PatientPop? Sales leader Justin most respects and why? If Justin could change one thing about the world of SaaS today, what would it be? Read the full transcript on our blog. If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Justin Welsh Ever feel like you can't really connect with prospects or have an organized workflow to get deals closed? Outreach.io, the leading Sales Engagement platform, supports sales reps and their managers by making it simple to humanize and personalize communication at scale; automating the soul-sucking manual work; and dramatically increasing the productivity and efficiency of all revenue-generating teams. You can check them out at outreach.io/saastr to chat with them and receive a free copy of their new book -- Sales Engagement: How The World's Fastest-Growing Companies are Modernizing Sales Through Humanization at Scale.
Luke Kervin walked into a doctor's office with a business card for a company that didn't exist and a product he hadn't built. He walked out with a signed contract for $500 a month. He did that nine times before writing a single line of code. That SaaS product validation approach was Luke's method for finding product-market fit - and it launched PatientPop. Luke's PMF journey started with failure. His original healthcare idea flopped, but asking doctors what kept them up at night revealed a much bigger opportunity. Validating product-market fit took under two weeks with nothing but business cards and a brochure. Then he proved the model by manually driving 21 new patients per practice in the first 30 days. Luke Kervin is the co-CEO of PatientPop, an all-in-one practice growth platform for healthcare providers. The company was founded in 2014, raised $24 million, and scaled to 142 employees in just two years with a field sales team closing at 30%+ rates. 🔑 Key Lessons 🎯 Finding product-market fit doesn't require code: Luke signed 9 paying doctors using only business cards, a brochure, and a landing page - proving demand in under two weeks. 📉 A failed idea can lead to finding product-market fit gold: Luke's original idea flopped, but asking doctors what kept them up at night revealed a much bigger opportunity worth $24 million in funding. 🤝 Hire two sales reps to avoid false conclusions: One rep crushed it while the other struggled - hiring only one could have led to the wrong conclusion about product viability. 🚀 Manual delivery proves product-market fit faster than code: By manually building directory profiles and websites, PatientPop drove 21 new patients per practice in 30 days - validating before automating. 🏢 Moving upmarket requires a different playbook: PatientPop jumped into mid-market sales too early and discovered larger practices had different needs, longer sales cycles, and required a different selling process. Chapters Introduction Meet Luke Kervin and PatientPop What PatientPop does for healthcare providers How the idea started in a doctor's office The pivot from failed idea to finding product-market fit Validating demand without a product All nine doctors signed up Proving product-market fit with a manual MVP Tactics that drove 21 new patients per practice Growing the sales team and early mistakes Criteria for choosing what business to build Why hiring two sales reps matters Building the executive team Mistakes moving to mid-market too fast Pricing model and expansion opportunities Fundraising strategy across angel, seed, and Series A Lightning round Resources Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/126 Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
Luke Kervin is the Co-Founder & Co-CEO @ PatientPop, where he has scaled the team from 10 to over 130 in just 12 months. As a result, PatientPop recently raised their Series A led by Toba Capital, allowing them to further ramp up their customer base and expand the employee ranks to over 200 people. In Today's Show with Luke We Discuss: How Luke came to found his first SaaS business in PatientPop? What is Luke's criteria for selecting a potential business idea? What does the idea need to have? What elements of an idea will concern Luke? How did Luke go about validating the idea for PatientPop? What are the most common methods founders get product validation wrong? Why did Luke build a fake product, a fake website and fake business cards to validate the idea? PatientPop has grown from 10 to 130, so how did they scale so fast? What are the inherent challenges of company culture maintenance with such hyper-growth. If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings Saastr