Transcript of Generated $2.5B With Performance Marketing - Cem Atik New

Welcome to The Proven Podcast, where we don't care what you think, only what you can prove. On this episode, Cem Atik, the German operator who's generated $2 billion in revenue buying, scaling, and selling SaaS and e-commerce companies, breaks down how to spot undervalued businesses, fix what's broken, and scale them into massive exits. The show starts now. All right, everybody. Welcome back. Cem, I'm excited to have you on the show.

Happy to be here.

So there's a couple of people out here who know about sales and they know about scaling and they know about SaaS, but they might not know about you. So give everybody a little bit of an idea of what you've done, the revenue that you've generated. Give everybody a little bit of detail to who you are and what you've done.

Sure. Yeah, I'm Sam from Germany, basically a small marketing nerd, I would say. And I made my passion to my job and also like, yeah, like my roadmap that I just want to share with people, I would say. So what I do is really simple. We buy businesses, we scale them, and then we sell them. Really simple. Mainly we are just talking about e-commerce and SaaS businesses. Yeah. Yeah. To just keep it quick. Yeah. That's pretty much it.

So, but when you talk about doing that, you've generated a certain number of revenue and sales and scaling. Can you talk a little bit about that to get the audience to go, what the heck? Because Sam, it's a huge thing that you've done.

Ja, when we are just talking about how much revenue we generate for businesses we are actively, yeah, was working on, yeah, we reached last year $2 billion.

So little numbers, nothing big, little numbers there. So you've done $2 billion in rev for the companies that you didn't even start, you just acquired them. You scale them, you systematize them, you go from there. So a lot of people are gonna have a lot of questions going, okay, I have a SaaS company, I wanna own a SaaS company, I wanna buy companies. Let's go through this whole process. Let's go through when you're looking for businesses to buy and then we'll get to what we're doing if you're scaling one. When you're looking for businesses to buy that are these SaaS companies, where are you looking and what are you looking for?

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So the first thing is a couple years before when we was starting with this idea, I was like thinking like, okay, how we can do that? And I just, I just trade since I'm 19 a lot, yeah, and I was thinking about Warren Buffett. What he does is pretty much the same, only in another industry. He just tried to figure out really undervalued businesses, yeah, get involved and, yeah, grow together with them. And that's basically a pretty similar process. We do it a bit differently because we're especially looking also for businesses that are going close to being bankrupt sometimes, yeah. So buying a business out from the insolvency, it's a huge, yeah, leverage for us. Just imagine a business that makes €30 million revenue last year can be maybe sold this year for €1 million, yeah, which is insanely cheap for sure, yeah. That's one thing. And the second thing is we usually, I mean, this is more a network thing. So it's not like you can do a lot of ads for it or you just can talk about it. We already do ads for that in Europe, yeah. But mainly, these contacts or these leads or businesses that could be interesting for us coming over our M&A network.

Over the last years and also because we are investor-backed, happy to be able to say that, yeah, we have a huge M&A network, over 200, 300 M&A consultants, yeah, that are interested to just give us the best possible deals because they know that the percentages that we share are much higher than the competition, yeah. So you win with money basically. So that means if an M&A consultant usually gets 5%, we pay him maybe 7%. Yeah. That he gives us the good leads. Sounds, sounds bad, but the world, it is like it is.

It's just how the world is. Absolutely. I do this with real estate for years where, you know, your real estate agents are going to get 1% or 2% of whatever they sell. I'm like, well, I'll give you 6%. And all of a sudden all the deals come to me first. I was like, duh, this is not complicated. It's just, it's just how the world works. Now, when I'm doing it in real estate, there's very specific things we're looking for. You're looking for very specific things in businesses and SaaS models. What are the things that you're looking for when you're looking for a business and they come to you and they're like, hey, I used to make 30, I'm now worth 1. How do you know that that one that has now 1/30th of the valuation, how do you know that it's actually going to be valuable and that you can monetize it?

So basically, um, the most important things are the unit economics. A lot of people are underestimating this. Yeah, a lot. How much my software costs until the user can use it is a really important metric and no one has this on. Yeah. Yeah. Overview this number basically. Yeah. So how big is my overhead? Did I have another Alpax costs? What are actually my monthly average costs that I have to provide the services is the most important thing. Yeah. If I know I do $50K in revenue and I pay only $10K in Alpax and overhead and whatever. Yeah. I know that I have $40K balance, you could basically, or basically gross profit, yeah, and I just need to pay taxes and other stuff. But I know my business is healthy, right? So if you don't have control about your unit economics, and I see, yeah, your P&L, and I see that you're just spending like 35%, 50%, 60% in overhead, yeah, that's a big no-no for us, yeah. We're just looking for smart, lean, clean setups that are not too complicated to dive in, yeah, because Once we dive in and make it bigger, I mean, you know how it is, yeah?

If you just scale a business, it's getting so freaking complicated, yeah? And yeah, you don't need this from the beginning.

Right. So when you go in and if they're this lean and they've optimized this and they've done their job really, really well, why do you think they're not making the profits? Why do you think they can't scale? What is their issue that they run into if they've already built a system that is lean and they have the software that's operational? Where are they failing?

That actually depends. Sometimes it is as easy like they don't have a sales team. Yeah. Sometimes it is like their lead gen is not really effective enough. Yeah. Like, so let us say you just do ads, Google Ads or Meta Ads. Yeah. And you just send people or you redirect them to your homepage. I mean, what the fuck? Why to your homepage?

Right.

What the hell is your intention? Yeah. You just want to sell a service, then promote your service in a way that someone can test it at least, at least a bit, yeah, before he actually be able to realize if he really needs this or not, yeah. And that has basically changed the process completely. That's mostly the main issues. One, they don't have a really effective sales team. And the second one is that the lead gen is not optimized or they didn't even test offers, right? And these are the main core common issues actually.

So, so walk me through— people come to you and they're like, okay, I don't even know how to do lead gen. I don't even— I don't know how to do any of this. Walk me through kind of like a step-by-step what they need to do. Like, okay, your software is good, but your lead gen sucks, your marketing sucks, your value ladder sucks. How do you walk them through? Can you imagine a company? We can either use an example or we'll just create one in our minds. You know, walk me through what do they need to do? What are the next 5 things they need to do right now to turn this around?

Let us talk about telehealth as example. We have a business we are working with, they're doing telehealth. They selling minoxidil. Minoxidil is for hair growth for people like, yeah, who are not bald like me. Yeah. So, um, what, what happens here is you don't sell minoxidil. You sell a lifestyle, a feeling, a result. Yeah. And you just need to promote this result. Yeah. Not, not, not, not minoxidil at all. Yeah. So instead of saying like, hey, buy our minoxidil, you should, you just should change the angle and say, hey, 'grow your hair back' or, yeah, '6 months until your old hair is back,' something like that. So you just need to be really precise and really sharp with what you are saying. Yeah. People are not buying Minoxidil because they just want to buy Minoxidil. They buy Minoxidil because they expect a result for that. So selling the result and the feeling is much better. But let us stay on telehealth. Let us say you are just a platform for mental health. Yeah. So instead of saying, hey, I'm a platform for mental health, come here and talk with people to get better. Yeah. You can say like, are you depressed?

We have people you can talk with. Are you have X? We can help you to do Y. Yeah. And this is always a thing. If you just want to sell something to me, you just need to talk about a pain point. Yeah. You just need to talk about my pain point. Yeah. Just make it, make me much more clear that I have this pain point and then sell me the solution for it. Yeah. And that's pretty much it.

So I think a lot of people get that, right? And we'll stay with the minoxidil side of the people going bald. There's a million people out there that sell a million offers. There's a billion people on Reddit. There's a billion people all over the place that are showing, hey, this is what it looked like now. And then 6 months from now, it looked like this. There's a bazillion people doing that. How do you break through all of that and become signal versus noise?

That actually depends on 2 factors. So first of all, Did you really need to set yourself apart? This is the one important thing. Sometimes there is so, there are so many niches that are so competitive that you don't even need to sell something special. Yeah, because the demand is so important, so huge that you just can build a foundation, you do your groundwork, and then you can just think about like how I set myself apart. That's the first thing. Let us say there is a niche which is also, yeah, medium competitive. Yeah. And you just want to find a way out and set yourself apart. Then you should maybe just more think about like, how can I combine my solution also with a no-brainer offer? So that means you have Minoxidil right now. Yeah. As example. Yeah. But everyone is charging $100, $200 for that, but you send 1 or even 2 weeks of testing for free as example. Yeah. It's only, only as an example for sure. But yeah, you just need always to tweak your offer and also tweak, tweak what exactly you just providing to your audience. Right. So As example, you have still in telehealth, you can give them a week test trial, yeah, or at least one session for free.

And look here, someone who used something and is happy with that will like 100 times more interested to convert or yeah, to just buy the service instead of someone who has no idea about what you guys exactly are doing. And that's pretty much it. You just need to A/B test your offer. And if you find something that works, don't Don't stop there. Find more offers because as more angles you find, as better you can grow because let us say free sample is working fine. Let us say, yeah, 2 weeks free sample is working better than 1 week as example. Okay, then I know this. Yeah, so we stopped doing one and that's basically a process. You just do a B test over a B test, test different angles, different offers and try to figure out what is working the best and as more offers that works you find, as faster you can scale. That's how businesses scale from from 0 to 7 or even 8 digits within a year because they don't stop to test, right?

So what are some of the tests that you've done? Because you've done a lot of A/B testing. What are some of the tests that you found like, hey, these work, these are good ones, versus the ones you've done like, ah, you probably shouldn't try these? What are things that have worked? And then where do you test them? Is it Google Ads? Is it Facebook? Is it Gram? Is it— where, where are you doing this? Because I agree with you, results-based marketing is king for me. It's always— it goes back to the idea like, hey, This is our product. This is Billy. This is what it looks like before. This is what it's after. And you're selling a lifestyle. This is what we talk about all the time with Advil. Advil doesn't sell ibuprofen, the drug inside. They sell a little magic pill that gets you back to spending time with your kids or getting back to work or whatever it is. We get that. And I think all of us understand that. But what are some of the A/B testing that we run into? Like, hey, you know what? You should probably do this. This works better than this.

That is pretty, I mean, there is no, yeah, just answer that you just can give over every industry, but what you can say is that people who are able to do free trials, they are much more likely to convert than people without free trials. I mean, we all know that, that's really common, but we can go a bit deeper. We figured out that services which have a great onboarding process, Yeah, convert to up to 40% higher. Yeah. Then softwares which have no onboarding process. So it don't need to be complicated. Yeah. You just need to tell them how you use your tool properly within video, within short introduction. Yeah. A Loom video is enough. Yeah. And even that people showing what the tool exactly does in action is something that increase the conversion rate. Yeah. And That is an A/B test that you just can test and it's always successful for the Loom video. Yeah. With Loom video, without Loom video. I mean, test it, test it with whatever you want. You will always win with the Loom one. That is one A/B test that is working really good. It's nothing special. Yeah. Also something about like when you just highlighting really important buttons in the dashboard.

Yeah. So If you just highlight a button in the dashboard, which is really necessary to move forward in the process to using the software, right? A lot of people are not just realizing that. But if you just highlight something, people want to click on it. And if they click on it, and there is an error message, why it not?

What?

Why is it not working? Yeah, that is usually a trigger point that people are starting to explore the software. It's stupid. But that's really, yeah, really something that is working. Um, yeah, what else? There's so many tests. I mean, I have a whole library about that, right?

So I'd love to hear more about the test, but also where do you test them? Like, people are like, okay, I've done all these things. Where do I send the Loom videos? Where do I send the intro? Where do I, where do I spend my money? What is the best ROI on which platform? Or, you know, because a lot of times people ask this and I'm like, well, it depends on where your platform lives, where your people live. It depends on their watering hole. But have you found very specific platforms that have better ROI and convert on a higher level? Because again, if you're talking $2 billion in revenue, a lot of things you're doing that other people aren't. There's a reason your investors invest with you. What are some of those things?

So the highest return of investment do you actually get on LinkedIn and on Reddit. Yeah. Maybe two channels that, yeah, I mean everyone knows they are, yeah, massive, but no one has them as their main source on the channel. So when you are just on LinkedIn and you're just talking always about the problems that your service is solving, yeah, or the pain points of a lot of entrepreneurs, as example, people will start to ask questions, getting curious about what you're doing, yeah. And writing a piece of content is definitely much cheaper than when you just, yeah, doing ads over Meta, yeah. So the highest return of investment is really on organic content, yeah. So Reddit, maybe X, LinkedIn, that is working with the highest return of investment. Yeah, but you just need to be able to sell yourself talking about pain points and be able to put this into the right frame that it's working for the audience you are targeting for, right? The channels where you just can grow the fastest is for sure Meta, Google, and also, I mean, TikTok affiliate is going also, yeah, getting bigger and bigger in this area. Yeah.

But honestly, if you're just asking me highest return of investment, LinkedIn, Reddit, I would also say TikTok and maybe Instagram and also Shorts. So everywhere where you can post organic content and has the chance to go viral is a good platform if you just are low in budget in the beginning at least. Yeah, definitely.

So from there, when people go into this, there's a lot of people that they try and give LeadMax. They're like, oh, or they use USCG, or they use these artificial AI people saying, hey, this is, I use this product and look at me, it's amazing. And we're getting skeptical of all that. Everyone's like, yeah, but that's, that's AI slop. That's this, that's that. When you're giving away free things, when you're doing these, these organic ones, how do you, are you using AI? Are you using other people to do it? Are you creating these reviews? What are some of the things that you're doing to help convert people?

So especially when you are in the startup phase, I definitely recommend you to do the videos with real people because I mean, let us say you are the co-founder, yeah, and you just want to do founder ads. So that's the best thing and a no-brainer that you just, yeah, talking by yourself. That's first thing. The second thing is using AI works later on really great, but instead, the only thing that AI should do in the beginning is maybe writing scripts, helping you to find the right frame, testing different angles. This is something where you can use AI really good. But honestly, what I would do is make a post on LinkedIn, say that you are looking for students, yeah, where you pay $50 or $100 an hour for, and they should just promote your product. You just send them a framework and then you have like 100, 200, 300 UCG videos talking about your product. Yeah.

Right. And most people never think about that.

Yeah, I mean, it's so damn simple. I mean, there are so many students on LinkedIn, yeah, who are looking always for opportunities like that. That's one thing. And the second thing you have in library about maybe 200, 300 UCG videos, then you just give them to a cutter and then you have 500 videos. You can post them on your organic channel. You can just use them for ads, anything that you just have in mind, right? You can use them basically everywhere.

You've brought up organic channel a couple of times and I know people are going to ask like, what is he talking about organic channel? Is that like my blog? Is it my homepage? What do you mean by an organic channel for you?

Organic channels basically are, in my opinion, are TikTok for sure, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, yeah, and LinkedIn also for sure, right? You can also try X, yeah, but I would stay on the 3 big ones, which is TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram for sure.

Gotcha. So from there, let's talk about, all right, you're getting this business and most people don't have a problem when it comes to getting business, they have a problem keeping up with it. How do you deal with the scale? How do you deal with this influx of all of this traffic? How do you deal with regulations and all that? So how do you, how have you handled that type of growth when all of a sudden there's an onslaught of people begging for your product in one day and you just don't have the platform for it?

The first thing that we always starting with is basically the website, the landing page, the lead magnet page, whatever we are starting with because You can do the best ads in the world, you can just do the best advertising in the world. If your landing page is not converting, it is not converting. Point. There is nothing else you could say there. So the first thing is just really create a page, yeah, which is based on data, yeah, highly able to convert, yeah. I mean, there is a lot of websites you can check out, you can check out their competition, yeah. But I would recommend to check out in the e-commerce space, maybe the BayMart Institute. It's a huge website, you can just buy a a huge network platform. You can just buy a plan there and they just give you the whole, the newest CRO updates, CRO, conversion rate optimization, which are really huge, which are really important and really huge. And that's pretty much it. You start on your page. If your page is not converting, there is no point to move forward. First thing is always your landing page, your offer. You just need to figure out, do a lot of A/B tests, do maybe 5 pages with different offers, test them.

Yeah. So that's the first thing. Once you set this up, I'm going to interrupt here.

What was the name of the website again? Because I'm literally going to write it down right now as well.

Baymard Institute. Let me just send it down to you. That's an institute which is working with the biggest brands, especially about e-commerce. And there's also one for SaaS. I will just check out my library, but I mean, they're working together with Google, Adidas, Shopify, Levi's, Amazon. And they do all of this UX research and tests. And I mean, there is no better source that you just can find to get valuable and valid information than the Baymard Institute.

I will, we'll put all these links in the show notes as well. We'll give access to Sam. So, because these are the tools that people want. These are the things that are like, okay, what the hell is Baymard Institute? Because I've been doing this for a really long time. I've been scaling business for 20 years. I've never heard of Baymard. I'm like, hold on, let me write this down. So what the hell? I was like, hold on now. So what are the other tools? So now we're get into this, you open up what are other tools of the trade that you have that you're using like Baymark that are like, what the heck? This already does my CRO for me. I never have to do this again. Like, for example, when it— years ago, I used to use something like TemplateMonster or ThemeForest.net because I didn't want to make websites because I'm just not making websites anymore. That cleared that problem up for like $16 a pop. Those don't work anymore because they don't have the integrated CRO into it. So what are some of the other tools that you're using on a daily basis that get you there?

So for testing landing pages, usually we're using onepage.io. It's a platform or a website builder. Yeah, really, really common here in Europe. The good thing is in the days of cloud code, you just basically build a website, upload your CI, tell them exactly what you want, give them the information that it needs, and he builds an HTML code. Yeah, then you just can basically copy and paste and then you have a perfect website. Yeah. And then you say like, hey, give me 5 different offers based on this. Yeah. And then you have 5 different websites in the same CI, perfectly shaped in the shape you just want to test. Right. And yeah, in, I mean, in old, if you just look like 3 or 4 years back, yeah, it was really a mess. Yeah. To test new offers or new angles. Now it's a matter of minutes because you have Claude Code, he is doing your pages.

Yeah.

At least the CI. Yeah. And then you just need, maybe need to change up a text and that's it. You can just change test 5 different offers at once.

Beautiful. So onepage.io.

Yeah, onepage.io is a huge tool. We use, we have also made by, I mean, my partner make this, yeah, because he's doing more the business development thing. He set up with our team a certain CEO dashboard, you could say, with Lovable, yeah, where you can see your most important metrics. Yeah, which is really important because as I said, yeah, you win with unit economics from the beginning and also by the exit, by max. If you just want to make a business exit ready and want to make it attractive for an investor, you just need to highlight your best numbers and you just need to be aware of your best numbers. And that's why we're using our own dashboard, yeah, where we can see all these numbers. Well, yeah, what is the customer lifetime value? What is the customer acquisition cost? Yeah, all of these, how much we spend, how big is our return of investment? Yada, yada, yada, all of these things that you just have in mind. About other tools, for sure, Cloud Code. We use a lot of Cloud Code. We also use usually as a platform, we use Vercel for our SaaS businesses.

Maybe pretty sure you guys hear about that before. Vercel is a really great platform where you just can build and deploy yeah, SaaS projects. We usually like to work with Vercel because it's really simple and user-friendly.

Beautiful. Now, so let's go through this. You're using these tools, you go through this process. We have to talk about fulfillment. We have to talk about scaling. When do you bring in other people? Where do you hire from when you're doing this? Because as you're bringing more problems on, there's customer services issues, there's chargeback issues, there's a bunch of all these other issues. When do you bring in real people? How much of that are you automating with AI? 'Cause again, everyone hears the numbers, oh, I've done $2 billion. Yeah, you don't hear all the headaches and the chargebacks and the customer service and all the other trash that comes with it. How do you deal with the, for lack of a better term, the shite that comes in with all of this?

So let us say we have just problems with chargeback, yeah? Usually, I mean, people are using Stripe, yeah, or any other services, yeah? Over the last years, we have also, yeah, just getting in touch with a lot of, yeah, service providers for sure. And if I know my chargeback rate is high because a lot of third-party countries are using maybe the service, right, then there is a service that I just have in my network and I can just, yeah, talk with them directly and say, okay, we just need you guys for this project. That's one thing. So a part of that is for sure networking and finding the best payment provider, payment processor for your SaaS solution. That's one thing. Let us say we are just in a good position and we just want to expand to TikTok shop affiliate, yeah, then I have as example a good contact of mine, Mika, yeah, he's doing this especially for SaaS businesses, yeah, so I just go to him and say like, hey Mika, we have a new project here, can you just look over it and he's checking it and says like, okay, I can do this or I cannot do this, yeah, and I mean everyone can just reach out to Mika, but here's one thing, we working on these different service providers on different projects, Yeah, so the pressure that I just put on a business, yeah, because he's working on like 4 or 5 projects is a whole total different story.

And he will also rethink if he's just accepting a new project or not twice, because you know, if he's failing a project, yeah, he will just maybe lose also other projects. Because if I see someone is failing, is just really off, I just change the service provider usually, yeah, on all projects after a while. And that's Yeah, and that's pretty much it. Yeah, you are just reaching points where you say, okay, I need another channel to expand our reach, our growth, our sales. Yeah, and then you just basically plug and play that. Services that we cannot provide by ourselves, we usually like to outsource because it's easy and it's cheap. If you just hire 3 people, 4 people, that is mostly like at least twice or even 3 times more expensive than hiring a good service provider with a lot of reputation in this area.

So where do you find these service providers versus, because it sounds like you're not hiring individuals. It sounds like you're not going on Upwork. It sounds like you're going and you're finding them in a different place. Where are you finding these people?

I mean, over the last years, a lot of it is in my network, but usually I find them over contacts. Yeah. So I asking someone as example, hey, did you know a good guy who's doing Meta as example? Yeah. Or, or LinkedIn. LinkedIn is basically a really good source for that. So because how I decide which people work with me together depends really on two things. First of all, how is the vibe if I just talk with the person? Is it a cool guy? Is he great? That's really important. The personal note is really important. And the second thing is, what are the businesses this guy worked before with? If I see brands like AG1, Leica, Pavel B, if I see big names behind him, yeah, then I know he will never ever risk at least a tiny bit of his reputation only for just getting another $5K more, right? So I usually looking for people who have the luxurious situation that they can decide, yeah, with which they work together with. And they are usually not more expensive than service providers who don't. That's a big myth, yeah. Right, right.

So if you're going in and people want to do this as well, are there part— certain SaaSes that you're like, yeah, don't sell that, stop doing that. You know, like if you're going in and you're bringing this SaaS provider versus that SaaS provider, what are the ones that you know convert really, really well versus the ones that are just complete— they don't convert at all when you're trying to scale them?

Um, yeah, so there is one thing that is really great in SaaS, and that is if you're just solving an issue from an audience that has money. Yeah.

Right.

So that's a huge indicator. If I, I mean, if you just, if you just do anything for veterans as example with your SaaS, the chance that you just will fail or your audience is much likely smaller. Is, I mean, it's pretty obvious because veterans are, I mean, how many veterans or the biggest popularity of veterans, you know, that they are maybe, yeah, not interested in that because they don't care, right? So if I just go to handymans and try to sell them a SaaS solution for their phone, they will say like, I use my phone since 20 years, why I should use now your solution, right?

Absolutely.

But there's Charles. Yeah. And he's buying real estate and he has issues to manage all the, all the 500 apartments that he has. And if I can solve his issue there, it's huge. I, um, um, as example, I, I'm Ryanair right now, right? And I can save 5 or even 10 minutes for every flight.

Yeah.

It's, it's a no-brainer because they, they save millions of dollars. Yeah.

So, right.

If you just can have an, if your, if your SaaS solution can save people a ton of money, that's a huge thing and a huge no-brainer, but you always need to be able to explain that properly that they understand it.

Right. So we, we talk about this all the time. You're gonna do the same amount of work no matter what you're doing. Might as well do it for people who can pay you thousands of dollars versus paying you pennies. And We did this, and the best example I have is I taught someone human behavior in sales, and he says, cool, I've mastered this ability to sell. I know it better than anybody else. I sent him down, he trained with it. I was like, cool, what are you gonna do now? He goes, I'm gonna find the most expensive product I can find to sell. Takes me the same amount of energy that gives me the best ROI. So he went in and he sells access now into these huge funds all throughout Dubai, and he's crushing it. Where this other kid took the same amount of knowledge and the same training and went and he's selling Netflix subscriptions. I'm like, you're screwed. It's the same amount of energy. It's the same thing, but you're gonna make a dollar versus $100,000 for each one of your closes. So it's just really simple, basic things like that. What are some of the pet peeves that you run into that you're like, God, I wish if I never talked to you, 'cause I'm not buying your company 'cause you're overvalued and I want to get a 1 to 30 ratio, which is what you're normally working into.

What are some of the things you wish you could tell owners of SaaS companies? You're like, guys, I, I wish you would just do this. Please just for the love of God, do this.

Honestly, I would love it more than everything else if everyone would care about their unit economics as like they care like a family member because this is more important than everything else. I just talk with businesses which doing $100 million, even $150 million and I say like, hey, we have really good numbers, we have a huge profit margin and they say like, hey, we have an EBITDA about 55%. I was like, no, you don't have. And they said, yeah, we have. And I said, if you have that, the first thing that I do is get all my money, all my influence that I can get, my investors, and give you $100, $200 million to bring this to work even better.

Yeah.

And say like, okay, let us see. So what we did is just, yeah, creating a P&L with them together. And we see that it's not like just with this 55% EBITDA, because what I see is these guys was doing $60 million. Yeah. And they had 40 employees. That is not working. 40 employees, $60 million, 55% EBITDA. No way.

No way. No way. There's no—

And we're talking about developers. Yeah. We are not talking about like, like, like someone who's working in a shop or so we're talking about developers. They are insanely expensive.

Yeah. So for now, for about another 6, 8 months, but after that, they're going to be very cheap. Sorry guys.

Yeah.

Screwed up. Um, when you walk into an environment like that, and you're acquiring these businesses at a fraction of the cost, do you just wipe, you say, sorry guys, you're 55, are you 40 developers? Have a nice day. And you give them all pink slips or how do you handle that normally?

So usually we are just looking from the beginning. Yeah. If someone has a huge overhead, yeah. At least our CFO is looking over it and yeah, just try to give them some tips. Even if we are not interested to invest in them, we always give them a little roadmap or an audit. You could say like, hey, these are the things you guys should fix otherwise. Later on you will fail. Yeah. That's always something that we do. We just always try to provide value. Yeah. Because even if we are not working together with, it's for free to help people because I already did the work to make my own research. Why I should just not give them this information for free? Why? It's called Rizafin. Yeah. And I, and the work is already done. Yeah.

So it's, it's like having a podcast where all you do is give out proven information like this. Um, what are we saying? What are some of the roadmaps that you do? Because again, I don't monetize this in any way, shape, or form. What are some of the roadmaps, the things that your team gives to the people that are like, listen guys, we're not going to buy you. You're a lost cause at this point. Here's some stuff, go do this. What are, you know, 4 or 5 things that you feel like come to the top of your mind that you normally give out?

So we usually give a roadmap with priority points on it. So that means based on their numbers and based on their current stage of the business, what are the points that have the most priority to fix? Because they bring more revenue or they save more costs. That's usually the first list that we just give out. So like, hey, reduce this because this is ending in X. Yeah. Hey, do this because you will generate estimated more revenue in X. Yeah, that's usually what we tell. And the second thing is for sure that we give them also a little mind map or yeah, a little, a little roadmap, you could say about like things they should just have that they currently have in their business that are manually that they could outsource or even optimize with AI. That's also something that we do because I mean, there are so many things in these days that you just can really simple automate with AI that costing you maybe 40 or 50% of labor work, right? And you just want to reduce that if it's working.

So can you give me an example of some of those things that you guys are automating with AI?

Really simple. Let us say you're just doing Google Ads. Yeah. Every day you need 30 minutes checking accounts and excluding search terms that spent money without revenue, right? So you can write a script that is doing this automatically. Point. So that's one thing, 30 minutes every day. You can do this for search terms, for locations, for devices, for everything. Yeah. And if you just fully optimize your account. Google Ads account as example, you save at least, or your employee saving at least 1 hour and he can just instead of focusing on optimizing, he can focus on the next steps to scale. Yeah. Figuring out new keywords, just doing more A/B testing into campaigns, doing more experiments. And that's the thing, just focusing more on scale instead of optimizing or just, yeah, spending time in optimizing that you just can automate with AI is really simple because it's really simple. Let us say you want to spend $100 each search term max before you just made a decision. Then you say to a search term excluder, as example, a script that I built, by the way, hey, please check all keywords out that spend over $100.

If the return of investment is under 1, cut it. Point. Yeah.

So simple stuff.

And that saves you a lot of time, especially when you are just having ad accounts which spending $10K or $20K a day. Yeah. It's a massive release in work. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. And so when you're doing this, how do you, are you using AI to quickly speed up that ROI? In other words, if you're like, hey, go test these, don't spend this much money on these, 'cause if it's all over $100, now you're getting back and you're getting this instantaneous feedback. Are you using AI to adjust the A/B testing or are you still doing that manually?

Ah, unfortunately, uh, A/B testing is still a lot of manual work. What we do is talking with AI to get different ideas, brainstorming, testing different angles. But AI is a good module for doing data-driven decisions, right? So that works great. But to say like, hey, test this vertical as example, it's right now not working. Maybe in like a couple of years, I'm pretty sure that we will be on this point. But right now it is more for doing manual work that is really data-driven, as I say, like We reach point A, yeah, in spend. If it's profitable, let it run. If not, cut it. Yeah. So then AI is working really great.

So right now we know that AI doesn't mean artificial intelligence. It actually means always incorrect. What tools are you using to offset that? Are you using Claude? Are you using OpenClaw? Are you using, what are you using? What is your main go-to?

Claude Code mainly. Also OpenClaw sometimes, but more our AI expert is using it for building automations. Yeah. So I'm not so involved in that. I'm using a lot of cloud code. I use Gamma.app to do presentations, especially for our projects when we are just talking, because a lot of people are actually not really understanding what we are doing. To make it more visible, attractive, and understandable, we use Gamma.app for that. That people understanding like, oh, okay, there is a pyramid. I understand this as example. So that's, yeah, one thing. What else we using? I'm just thinking about, I mean, there's so many tools. There's like 4 or 5 things that is going to my, yeah, up to my mind. For everything that is official, we also use an integration to Make. Yeah, make.com. Pretty, pretty common. As example, we were working in a partnership and you're writing on ClickUp. Also a project management tool, you write a message on ClickUp that is going to me, yeah, and I don't react within 25 minutes, I get a notification on my phone because for us the most important thing is answering in time and I think it's also the biggest showing of respect if you just answer just in time, doesn't matter what happens, yeah.

Right.

Even if you're just like, hey, I got your message, I'm in a meeting right now, yada yada.

Exactly, exactly. Everyone has time for that.

Right. When do you sit there and say, okay, this is an AI, this is, this is going to be a person. We're still in that environment. I need personnel to demand before. What are the things that you're like, I don't see that changing anytime soon?

I mean, a lot of things in the healthcare industry won't be changed by AI, optimized. And yeah, that we just have a lot of Yeah, less work, that's 400% sure, but healthcare or any kind of works that a plumber does, like a handyman does, I mean, that's pretty obvious, right? What I still don't see, maybe I'm a bit too skeptical at this point, is that AI just really start to thinking by itself. Based on your mind. So what I try right now is to clone myself in Claude. Yeah. And I just work on this since 4 months and I have sleepless nights with that. Right. And it's, and it works barely. Yeah. So what I mean is with Claude is understanding me, he can do all the decisions like I would do. Yeah. But in the moment where emotions has a relevancy in your decision, it's still hard to to really just get a correct or even a really solid answer from Claude, right? Because I mean, it's an AI. There is no feelings inside it. Claude cannot reproduce feelings right now.

Yeah. It also, that's my problem that I have. The problem I have with Claude is it's still always incorrect. There's so many times where I'm like, hey, go do A, B, and C. I'm like, awesome. I've trained it. I've spent months training it. And all of a sudden it does X, Y, and Z. I'm like, no, no, no, A, B, and C. Like, oh yeah, I'm sorry. You caught me. And I'm like, what do you mean I'm sorry? You caught me. So everyone's like, oh no, it's going to take over. It's, we're going to be Mad Max. It's going to be Terminator 2. We're going to have robots that kill us in the next 6 months. We're not there yet, people. Relax. Yes, it is an extinction-level event for employees. It's just not going to happen in the next 6 months. It's still way far behind. And yes, it's picking up and it's picking up. And I think the best example of this was they said it was going to take another, 6 months to 2 years for ChatGPT to have a timer. I was like, are you kidding me? Sam Altman said it. I was like, are you kidding me?

So we're not there yet. Relax, people. We're not going to be wiped out at this point. Breathe. But for the people who are running into situations that want to know how to do what you do, Sam, and they want to step up, what are the things that they can start doing? Where can they learn? Where can they pick up some of these details? Or is this just trial and error?

So first of all, always rely on data. So there's so many data online. I mean, we have big brands like Hotspot, which are just releasing so many case studies. Yeah, there are so many big brands in the SaaS area, which are just openly talking about their tests and what they're doing. Just read the information that you just can find with Googling. Yeah, that's my first, definitely my first recommendation. Yeah, it's so simple, guys. Google. Yeah. The second thing is I would just definitely recommend to be active on LinkedIn because there's a lot of people which sharing really valuable things on LinkedIn, especially about SaaS, especially about e-commerce.

Yeah.

And the first, and the third thing is just feed this information to your Claude code. Yeah. Even if we are not on the Skynet moment right now, it takes a while until we are just reaching Skynet. But feed Claude with all the information that you get, create skills, and based on that, asking questions and see Claude not as a source of knowledge, see it as a sparring partner that has a different opinion and telling you, yeah, things from his opinion. Yeah. If you just see Claude as a sparring partner, the result that you just get from it will be much better. Yeah. I just have like really long discussions with Claude. Yeah. Even my wife says like, What the fuck are you doing? And you're just talking with an AI. Yeah, but he's just giving me answers that just really let me think about my decisions. Say like, you are still talking with a machine. Are you insane? Yeah, that's basically my wife. Yeah. And that's it. Yeah. Just using it as a sparring partner. Claude is your friend. Yeah. And Claude will help you to make your life easier. Accept that and use Claude for that.

Yeah.

Right.

Doesn't matter if you're sitting.

Right. And understand you can't make a fish climb a tree when it comes to clot. There's certain things it just can't do yet. So, just exhale, relax, breathe through it. What are some of the most—

Yeah.

Be nice. Yeah. There are times where it's funny because there's times where I bark at it and it gives me better results than when I'm nice to it. I'm like, "What the heck? Why? Why are you doing better when I yell at you? I don't understand." I'm like, "Please stop making me yell at you." But sooner or later, all that information will come into a robot and it'll come to my house and it'll kill me. I've made peace with this. All the times I've yelled at it, it will come to my house and it'll kill me at some point.

That's why I'm always polite, always saying thanks, always asking, please, like a real gentleman, because I don't want to be the person in that position where it says like, hey, you remember like 25 years ago, you told me an asshole. I don't want to be this person who does that.

I'll be dead. I'll be— I, I will. Yeah, in that situation, I, I'll wave at you from the line that's going to be turned and put into ovens because it's just what we're all gonna do. I just, I get— I'm so mean to my AI, it's embarrassing. What are some of the sizes that if you were going to do it, um, that, you know, some of the success rate you had? I know you talked about sell things to people that have money and you talked about that. What are some of the victories that you've had with your personal brand and what you guys have offered Can you tell me about some of the grand slams that you've hit?

Yeah, I just need to be a bit careful here because I cannot say too much about them because especially when you're just doing cases exit ready or preparing cases for exit, it's a still really old-fashioned industry where you just need to hide a lot of information. But we just started to work like 1.5 years ago on a SaaS business, which was doing barely 7 digits. So they was just right now crawling to the 7 digits. And after 12 months, we hit the first $45 million in revenue. And right now we are just going to, yeah, we are just in the direction to passing the $100 million annually, yeah, on the end of this year. And that's basically like 99% of the work is based on information that you just can find online, really. Test with a huge pace and execute, yeah, uh, with, with the same pace, yeah. And what working you keep, what is not working, you, uh, you just pause. That's basically it.

Love it. When, if someone comes in and they want to track you down and they want to connect with you and they want to learn more about it and they're like, hey, how do I do this? What's the best way for people to get a hold of you and to connect with you?

Actually, LinkedIn is the best source of contacting me. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, post, trying to post everyday value, even if it's hard. Yeah, I would say definitely LinkedIn. That's the best way to find me.

And what's your LinkedIn title?

It's basically my first and my last name. So it's Sam Attic. Yeah. And my title is 2 billion plus in revenue, exit ready by design. We build what buyers want. Really simple.

Love it. You know, Sam, I'm really helpful and really grateful that you gave all this information. It was, I think people actually got value. They're going to go and they're going to Google and they're going to start being a whole lot nicer to Claude. They're going to stop selling stuff that people don't want. One of the things I love about you is that you're all about value. You're not here pushing products. You're not trying to sell anything. You're actually like, hey guys, this is what you need to do to try and help people out. I appreciate it so much. Thank you for coming on.

Thank you for your time, Charles. And if I was able to help at least one person, This was definitely worth, from my point of view.

Cem doesn't chase trends. He hunts for broken businesses, rebuilds them from the inside, and walks them toward an exit. A kid who started trading at 19 now moves $2 billion in revenue a year. And the lesson underneath all of it is simple. Know your numbers cold, sell the outcome instead of the thing, and let a strong network put the right deals on your desk. We'll catch you on the next episode.