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George Revutsky, CMO for Soothe \u2013 the world\u2019s largest on-demand massage service. He\u2019s also the CEO of ROIworks \u2013 a growth agency that runs growth and build growth agency teams for funded startup and Fortune 1000 companies like Headspace, TriNet and Original Stitch just to name a few. Listen as George talks about how he generated double digit revenue for Soothe in straight 11 months.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? \u2013 Don\u2019t Make Me Think
• What CEO do you follow? \u2013 Aaron Levie

• Favorite online tool? \u2014 Optimizely and Hotjar
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?\u2014 No
• If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be? \u2013 \u201cKnew the value of moderated user testing and customer development when founding companies or evaluating product\u201d

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Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:10 \u2013 Nathan introduces George to the show
• 01:48 \u2013 ROIworks started as an agency 10 years ago
• • 02:12 \u2013 Used digital tools such as aid acquisition, A/B testing etc. for a series of experiment
• 02:40 \u2013 Typically, they would make some kind of retainer
• 03:15 \u2013 They used to have 3-6 months contract
• • 03:40 \u2013 Shifted to monthly
• 03:51 \u2013 Average pay per customer
• • 04:00 - $ 240,000 per customer
• 04:05 \u2013 Number of total unique customers
• • 04:25 \u2013 Worked for hundreds for the last 15 years
• 04:45 \u2013 First year revenue
• 05:05 \u2013 ROIworks is making roughly around $ 2 million a year
• 05:15 \u2013 12 people in the team
• 05:30 \u2013 ROIworks changed their model
• • 05:43 \u2013 Used to have smaller retainers
  • 06:16 \u2013 Now they\u2019re getting larger retainers and less clients
  • • 06:25 \u2013 They\u2019re getting deeper with these Series A and B clients
• 06:30 \u2013 Monthly head count expenses
• 06:50 \u2013 Agencies should retain a 25% percent after all the expenses
• 07:20 \u2013 What George does with the cash flow as the CEO
• • 07:40 \u2013 \u201cWe like to be conservative and be safe for our team members\u201d
  • 07:50 \u2013 Keeping some cash in the bank
  • 08:04 \u2013 Give bonuses to team that is coming from the cash flow
• 08:54 \u2013 How Soothe works with ROIworks
• • 09:00 \u2013 The founder of Soothe invested in one of George\u2019s startup
  • 09:15 \u2013 George takes a leave from 6-12 months
  • • 09:27 \u2013 George co-founded SplendidLabs during his leave
    • 09:50 \u2013 It is a machine-learning based personal shopping assistance
    • 10:08 \u2013 Sold it because they can\u2019t find a particular market fit
  • 11:13 \u2013 Became friends with the owner of Merlin of Soothe
  • • 11:40 \u2013 George started providing ROIworks\u2019 discounted marketing services to\xa0 Soothe to help the beta testing
    • 12:21 \u2013 Soothe grew steadily and Merlin got Angel funding
    • 12:33 \u2013 Soothe got Series A for $ 10.6 million
    • 13:00 \u2013 Merlin asked Gerry if he can worked with Soothe in Hollywood
    • 13:35 \u2013 They got 3 months of dramatic revenue bills
    • 13:51 \u2013 Merlin hired George directly as the contract CMO
    • 14:30 \u2013 Able to put together 11 straight months of double digit growth
    • 14:45 \u2013 The growth led to their Series B which is for $ 35 million
    • 14:55 \u2013 ZEO is their biggest competitor
• 15:10 \u2013 Created a playbook to acquire customer
• • 15:30 \u2013 Doing Facebook advertising, AdWords, re-marketing and a lot of paid ads
  • 16:00 \u2013 Paid acquisition is foolproof
  • 16:17 \u2013 Soothe was in the Ellen show for Mother\u2019s Day
  • 16:59 \u2013 Who to approach with the Ellen team
• 17:45 \u2013 Connect with George through george@roiworks.com and ROIworks.com
• 19:00 - The Famous Five

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3 Key Points:

• Make your team members happy \u2013 it will boost their confidence and will reflect to their work.
• Be happy on being a part of one\u2019s success.
• There are tons of ways to acquire customer \u2013 you just have to find what works best.

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Resources Mentioned:

• Toptal\xa0\u2013 Nathan found his development team using Toptal\xa0 for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn\u2019t have to hire a co-founder due to quality of Toptal\xa0 developers.
• Host Gator\xa0\u2013 The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for cheapest price possible.
• Freshbooks\xa0\u2013 The site Nathan uses to manage his invoices and accounts.
• Leadpages\xa0 \u2013 The drag and drop tool Nathan uses to quickly create his webinar landing pages which convert at 35%+
• Audible\xa0\u2013 Nathan uses Audible when he\u2019s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5 hour drive) to listen to audio books.
• ROIworks.com \u2013 George\u2019s business website
• george@roiworks.com \u2013 George\u2019s email address
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives