200 Podcast Episodes! (Resource for Growth)

Today I published the 200th episode of the Just Go Grind Podcast!

In the show, I interview a variety of diverse founders, across different industries.

One of the topics we always discuss is growth.

How did they acquire their first customers?

What was their initial product when they got those first customers?

How did they scale from their first customers to thousands (Or more)?

You can listen and subscribe on most podcasting platforms.

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/just-go-grind-with-justin-gordon/id1397036566?mt=2

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2brgfQPQQiBiFlAI8sJblD

Episodes with show notes: https://www.justgogrind.com/podcast/

An example excerpt from the show transcripts is below. Although Cole sold physical products, I think there is a lot to learn from him for Indie Hackers as well about the hustle needed to acquire customers.

This story comes from Cole Zucker, Co-Founder of Green Creative (a company he grew to $60M in revenue), in episode #137 of The Just Go Grind Podcast.

"At the time, my back was against the wall. The alternative option was to go back to China and find a job again. That didn't seem like a reality I was willing to face. I think that a lot of people, they are at their best when they are their most desperate versions of themselves. There was total desperation there because I felt like this has to succeed. There's no other alternative. The only thing I could think of is how do you get as close to the end-user, end customer as possible? That was to knock on doors. Our customer is the end-user, the McDonald's, the JoS A. Bank’s, the J.Jill’s, the Adidas’ of the world in the retail arena. However, we don't sell directly to them.

We sell through middlemen distributors and these distributors will sign large scale contracts with these big retailers and commercial businesses across the country. For example, when a light goes out in a McDonald's, it's not the job of the guy flipping hamburgers at the McDonald's to replace the light and go to the Home Depot around the corner. There's a number. He has an iPad, they replace it. The company has a local warehouse and they come and they replace the light as quickly as they possibly can. Those are our customers. Those are the people, the distributors that we were talking to, and those middlemen didn't feel any interest or had no motivation to sell our product. The only thing I could think of was to jump them and get in front of end users, but I didn't know any end users.

The only way to do it was by hustling and walking into parking garages when the garage door would open in a commercial business in Downtown San Francisco and try to find the engineering office and then walking in and saying, “Hi, do you have a minute? I have a pitch I'd love to tell you about,” or going into a hotel and trying to find the general manager or going into a jewelry store or a furniture shop, and trying to get the decision-maker in front of me so that I could tell him why he or she needs to buy our products and use LEDs."