I am Charles Schwartz Show - Generated $2.5B With Performance Marketing - Cem Atik

Episode Date: May 6, 2026

Cem Atik built a portfolio that generated over two billion dollars in revenue without founding a single company from scratch, scaled a SaaS business from barely seven figures to forty-five million in twelve months, and now runs one of Europe's most active acquisition and growth operations buying distressed e-commerce and SaaS businesses and turning them exit-ready. Now he is pulling back the curtain on exactly how it works. Charles and Cem get into the real mechanics of acquiring and scaling businesses that other operators have given up on, from identifying the unit economics that separate a hidden gem from a money pit, to building a lead generation engine that converts without burning through ad spend, to running A/B tests that take a company from stagnant to scaling inside a year. Cem breaks down the organic content strategy that consistently delivers higher ROI than paid channels, the onboarding tweak that boosts conversions by up to forty percent, and what he would do in the first ninety days if he were starting a SaaS company from zero today. Together, they explore why selling the result always outperforms selling the product, why the highest return on investment platform is one most operators are already ignoring, and why knowing your unit economics matters more than any marketing tactic you will ever run. This is not a masterclass in theory. It is a field-tested breakdown of how overlooked businesses become acquisition-ready machines. KEY TAKEAWAYS: Why unit economics are the single most important number in any business and how most founders are measuring them wrong without knowing it How Cem's offer-testing framework identifies the highest-converting angle without committing your full budget to a single bet The landing page principle that will cost you more than your entire ad spend if you skip it before scaling traffic Why targeting an audience with purchasing power changes the complete math of your business model regardless of what you are selling How to use AI as a sparring partner rather than a search engine and why that shift produces decisions you can actually trust KEY POINTS 01:21 Two billion in revenue: Cem reveals the scale of what his team has built for businesses they did not start, while Charles breaks down why the number changes everything about how you think about acquiring versus building. 02:06 Finding deals no one else sees: Cem explains the M&A network strategy and why paying consultants above market rate ensures the best opportunities land with him first, while Charles connects it to how he ran the same play in real estate. 04:30 The unit economics test: Cem walks through the exact numbers he looks at before touching a business, while Charles pushes him on what it really looks like when a company thinks it is healthy but is not. 07:27 Sell the result, not the product: Cem uses a telehealth case study to show why reframing your offer around the outcome rewires the entire conversion process, while Charles ties it back to how every great brand in history has done the same thing. 12:20 The A/B tests that actually work: Cem shares the specific experiments that consistently outperform across industries, while Charles digs into where founders should be running those tests if they want the fastest feedback loop. 14:52 Where the real ROI lives: Cem breaks down why LinkedIn and Reddit outperform paid channels for most operators and what organic content actually needs to say to move an audience, while Charles challenges him on how you cut through when everyone else is doing the same thing.

Welcome to the proven podcast where we don't care what you think, only what you can prove. On this episode, Gemmetech, 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. Cam, I'm excited to have you on the show. Have you to be here. So there's a couple of people out here who know about sales and they know about Scali and they know about Saz, 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 make my passion to my job and also like, yeah, like my road map. 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. 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.

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. Yeah. When we're just talking about how much revenue we generate for businesses we are actively, yeah, was working on. Yeah. We reached last year two billion dollars. Little numbers.

Nothing big. Little numbers there. So you've done two billion rev for the companies that you didn't even start. You just acquired them. You scale them. You systematize them. to go from there. So a lot of people are going to have a lot of questions going, okay, I have a SaaS company, I want to 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? So the first thing is a couple years before when we was starting with this idea, I was thinking like, okay, how we can do that. And I just I just trade since I'm 19 a lot 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, get involved and growth together with them and that's basically a pretty similar process. We do it a bit differently because we specially look at also for businesses that are going close to being bankrupt sometimes.

So buying a business out from insolvency, it's a huge leverage for us. Just imagine a business that makes 30 million revenue last year can be maybe sold this year for one million, which is insanely cheap for sure. 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,

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. So you win with money, basically. So that means if an MNA consultant usually get 5%, we pay him maybe seven, yeah, that he gives us the good leads. 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 six. And all of a sudden, all the deals come to me first. I was like, it's not complicated. 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 it. 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 one. How do you know that that one that has now one 30th of the valuation? How do you know that it's actually going to be valuable and that you can monetize it? So basically, the most important things are the unit economics. A lot of people are underestimating this.

How much my software calls until the user can use it is a really important metric. and no one has this on, yeah, overview this number, basically. So how big is my overhead? Did I have another other Alpex costs? What are actually my monthly, yeah, average cost 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 Alpex 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 a control about your unique 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 complex. 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've done to? If they've already built a system,

then it's 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. So let us say, you just do ads, Google ads or meta ads,

and you just send people or redirect them to your homepage. I mean, what the hell? Why to your homepage? What a hell is your intention? You just want to sell a service, then promote your service on the way that someone can test it at least,

at least a bit, 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 really affect the 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 common issues, actually. 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 of a step by step of what they need to do. You're like, okay, your software's good, but your lead jed 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, walk with you. What do they need to do? What are the next five 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're selling monoxidil. Medoxidil is for hair growth, for people like, yeah, who are not bold like me, yeah? So what happens? is you don't sell monosidil. You sell a lifestyle, a feeling, a result,

yeah? And you just need to promote this result, yeah? Not monoxide at all, yeah? So instead of saying like, hey, buy our monocidil, you just should change the ankle and say, hey, grow your hair back or six 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. People are not buying monocidal because they just rent to buy monocidal. They buy monocidal 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. So instead of saying, hey, I'm a platform for mental health. Come here and talk with people to get better. You can say like, are you depressed? We have people you can talk with. I you have X, we can help you to do Y.

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, just make me much more clear that I have this pain point and then sell me the solution for it. And that's pretty much it. So I think a lot of people get that.

And we'll stay with the monocidal side of the people going involved. There's a million people out there that can 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 six months from now it look 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 two factors.

So first of all, did you really need to set yourself apart? This is the one more important thing. Sometimes there are so many niches, there are so competitive that you don't even need to sell something special. because the demand is so huge that you just can build a foundation, do your groundwork, and then you can just think about how I set myself apart. That's the first thing. Let us say there is a niche which is also medium competitive, yeah, and you just want to find, yeah, 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 monoxide right now, yeah? as example, yeah, but everyone is charging $200, $200 for that, but you send one or even two 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 what exactly you just, yeah, providing to your audience, right?

So as example, you have still in telehealth, you can give them a weak test trial. 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 to just buy the service instead of someone who has no idea about what you guys exactly are doing. And that's pretty much the, you just need to A, B test your offer.

And if you find something that works, 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, two weeks free sample is working better than one weeks as example. Okay, then I know this, so we stop doing one. And that's basically a process.

You just do a B test over a beta test, test different angles, different offers, and try to figure out what is working the best. And there's more offers that works you find as faster you can scale. That's how businesses scale from zero to seven or even eight 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 AB 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, you probably shouldn't try these. What are things that are work? And then where do you test them? Is it Google ads? Is it Facebook? Is it Graham? Is it where are you doing this? Because I agree with you. Results-based marketing is cane 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 after. And you're selling a lifestyle. This is what we're talking about all time with Advil. Adelville 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.

I think all of us understand that. But what are some of the AB 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's no, yeah, just answer that you just can give over every industry. But what you can say is that people who are, 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 convert to up to 40% higher, yeah, than software 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 intro deduction, 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 successfully 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, A, B test that is working really good. It's nothing special.

Also something about like when you're 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 is it not working? Yeah. That is usually an trigger point that people are starting to explore the software. It's stupid.

But that's really, yeah, really something that is working. 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 tests, but also where do you test them? Like people are like, okay, I've done all these things.

Where do I send the Lube videos? Where do I send the intro? Where do I spend my money? What is the best ROI on which platform? Because a lot of times people ask this, and I'm like, well, it depends on where your platform lives, where your people live. 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 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 an 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. So the highest return of investment is really on organic content. 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 the fastest is for sure meta, Google, and also, I mean, TikTok, 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. Definitely. So from there, when people go into this, there's a lot of people that they try and give lead Macs. 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 slot. That's this, that's that. When you're giving away free things, when you're doing these, these, these organizations, organic ones.

How are 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 on the no brain that you just, yeah, talking by yourself.

That's the 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 bucks an hour for,

and they should just promote your product. You just send them a framework, and then you have like 100, 200, 300, 300 UCG, talking about your product. 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 your opportunity 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 color, 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.

basically everywhere. You've brought up organic channel a couple times, and I know people are going to ask. So, like, what is he talking about organic channel? Is that my blog? Is it my homepage? What do you mean by an organic channel for you? Organic channels basically are, yeah, 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 free big ones, which is TikTok, YouTube shorts. and Instagram for sure. Gotcha. So from there, let's talk about, you're getting this business and most people don't have a problem

when it comes to getting business, they're 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 handle 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, delete magnet page, Delete 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 creating a page, which is based on data, yeah, highly able to convert. 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 huge network platform. You can just buy a plan there and they just give you the new CRO updates, CRO, conversion rate optimization, which are really huge. Yeah, 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, you're offered, you just need to figure out, do a lot of A-B test. do maybe five pages,

with different offers, test them. 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. Baymart 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 Saz. I will just check out in my library. But, I mean, they're working together with Google, Adidas, Shopify, Levi, Amazon, and they do all of these

UX research and tests. I mean, there is no better source that you just can find to get valuable and valid information than the Baymard Institute. I will put all these links in the surnotes as well. We'll get access to Sam. Because these are the tools that people want. These are the things that are like, okay,

what the hell is Baybarn Institute? Because I've been doing this for a really long time. I've been staying on business for 20 years. I've never been able to have been able to write this guy. So what the other tools? So now we're getting 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. For example, years ago, I used to use something like template monster or themeforest. Because I didn't want to make websites because I'm just not making websites anymore. That came to that problem up for like 16 bucks a pop. Those don't work anymore because they don't have the integrated CRO into it. So what are some other tools that you're using on a daily basis that get you there? So for testing landing pages, usually we're using one page.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 five different offers based on this. Yeah. And then you have five different websites in the same CI perfectly shaped in this shape you just want to test. Right. And yeah, I mean, in old, if you just look like three or four 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 cloud code. He is doing your, your pages, yeah, at least the CI. Yeah. And then you just maybe need to change up a text. And that's it. just test five different offers at once.

Beautiful. So OnePage.I.O. Yeah. One page. That I.O. 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, where you can see your most important metrics. which is really important because as I said, yeah, you win with unit economics from the beginning and also also by the exit. 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, where we can see all this numbers. Yeah, what is the customer lifetime value? What is the customer acquisition coast? Yeah, all of these, how much we spend,

how big is our return of investment, yada, yada, all of these things, yeah, as you just have in mind. About other tools, for sure, cloud code. We use a lot of cloud, yeah. We also use, usually as a platform, we use Wursell for our SaaS businesses. Maybe pretty sure you guys hear about that.

Versal is a really great platform where you just can build and deploy, yeah, SaaS projects. We usually like to work with Versa 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 have you automated with AI? Because 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 the 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're just in a

good position and we just want to expand to TikTok. shop affiliate. Then I have as example, a good contact of my Mika. He's doing this especially for SaaS businesses. 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. And I mean, everyone can just reach out to Mika, but here's one thing. We're working on these different service providers on different projects. So the pressure that I just put on a business, yeah,

because he's working on like four or five 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, 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 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 free people for people that is mostly like at least twice or even three 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 is in my network, but usually I find them over contacts. So I'm asking someone as an example, hey, did you know a good guy who's doing meta as example? 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 wipe if I did 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, Laika, Pabbleby, 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'm usually looking for people who have the luxurious situation that they can, decide with which they work together with. And they are usually not more expensive than service providers who don't.

That's a big myth. Right, right. So if you're going in and people want to do this as well, are there certain sizes that you're like, yeah, don't sell that. Stop doing that. If you're going in and you're bringing

this status provider versus appa size 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. Yeah, so there is one thing that is really great in SAS, and that is if you're just solving an issue from an audience that has money. Right. So that's a huge, I mean, if you just, if you just do anything for veterans, as example,

with your 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 to do that because they don't care, right? So if I just go to handymen's and try to sell them and 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, but, but there's torals, yeah, and he's buying real estate and he has issues to manage all the all the 500 of apartments that he has and if I can solve his issue there it's huge I um as example I I'm I'm Ryanair right now right and I can

say five or even 10 minutes for every flight yeah it's it's a no brainer because they they save millions of dollars yeah so if you just can have an if you're if your if your SaaS 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 talk about this all the time. You're going to 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 said, cool, I've mastered this ability to sell. I know it better than anybody else. I sent him down and he trained with it. I was like, cool, what are you going to do now? He goes, I'm going to 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 going to make a dollar versus $100,000 for each one of your clothes. So there'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 talk to you because I'm not buying your company because you're overvalued and I want to get a one 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 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 in like in. 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 abate day about 55%. I was like, no, you don't have. And they said, yeah, we have. And I say, 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. 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% EBDA because what I see is they these guys was doing 60 million and they had 40 employees. That is not working.

40 employees 60 million, 55% habitat, no way. No way. There's no way. There's no way. There's no way. And we're talking about developers. We are not talking about 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 six, eight months, but after that they're going to be very cheap. Sorry, guys. Yeah, screw it up. When you walk into an environment like that and you're acquiring these businesses at a fraction of the cost, do you just wipe, say, sorry, guys, you're 55 or 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 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 can say, like, hey, these are the things you guys should fix. Otherwise, later on, you will fail. 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 these information for free? Why? It's common to nothing. And the work is already done.

It's like having a podcast where all you do is give out proven information. Like this. What are some of the roadmaps that you do? Because again, I don't monetize this in any way to perform. What are some of the roadmaps of 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, four or five things that you're on 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. Hey, do this because you will generate estimated more revenue. 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, yeah, might map, 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. This is 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 spend 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 an example, you save at least, or your employee saving at least one hour, and he can just, instead of focusing on optimizing, he can focus on the next steps to scale, figuring out new keywords, just doing more A-B testing into campaigns, doing more experiments, and that's 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 an 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 one, cut it, point.

Simple stuff. And that saves you a lot of time, especially when you are just having ad accounts, which spending 10 or 20k a day. It's a massive release in work. So when you're doing this, 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 because it's still over 100 bucks. Now you're getting back and you're getting this instantaneous feedback. Are you using AI to adjust the AB testing? Are you still doing that manually? Unfortunately,

AB 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 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 cloud or using open claw? Are you using? What are you using? What is your main go to? Cloud code mainly. Also open claw sometimes. But more our AI, expert is using it for building automations.

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.gma dot app for that,

yeah, that people are understanding like, oh, okay, there is a pyramid. I understand this as example. So that's, yeah, one thing. What else we're using? I'm just thinking about, I mean, there's so many tools. There's like four or five things that is going up to my mind. For everything that is official, we also use an integration to make.

Make.com. 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. It doesn't matter what happens. Right. Even if you're just like, hey, I got your message. I'm in a meeting right now, yada, yada.

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

I mean, a lot of things in the health care industry won't be changed by AI, optimized, and yeah, that we just have a lot of, yeah, less work that's 400% short. But health care or any kind of works that the plumber do 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 in 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 and Claude. And I just work on this since four months and I have sleepless nights with that, right? 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 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.

Right. And also, my problem that I have, my problem that I have with Cloud 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, 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. We're going to be Mad Max. It's going to be Terminator 2. We're going to have robots that kill us the next six 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 six months. it's still way far behind. And yes, it's picking up and it's picking up. But I think the best example of this was they said it was going to take another six months to two years for chat GPT to have a timer.

I was like, are you kidding me? Sam Alton 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 the situations that want to know how you 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 are so many data online. I mean, we have big brands like HotSpot, which are just releasing so many case studies.

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. That's my first, definitely my very first recommendation. It's so simple, guys, Google. The second thing is I would just definitely recommend to be active on LinkedIn

because there's a lot of people with sharing really valuable things on LinkedIn, especially about SaaS, especially about e-commerce. And the third thing is, just feed these information to your cloud code, 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 them in question and sees Claude not as

a source of knowledge, see it as a sparrings partner that has a different opinion and telling you, yeah, things from his opinion. If you just see Claude as in sparrings partner, the result that you just get from it

will be much better. I just have like really long discussions with Claude. Even my wife says, like, what the fuck are you doing? And you're just talking with an AI. And I said, yeah, yeah, but he's just giving me answers that just really let me think about my decisions. Say, like, you are still talking within machine?

Are you insane? Yeah, that's basically my wife, yeah? Yeah. And that, that's it. Yeah. Just using it as a sparing's partner. Claude is your friend, yeah? And Claude will help you to make your life easier, accept that, and use Claude for

that. Right. Doesn't matter what you can't understand that there's a, 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 ones.

Yeah, it'd 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 and do 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 things, 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 in this person who did that. I'll be dead. I'll be, I'll be, I'm in that situation. In that situation, I'll wait at you from the line. that's going to be turned and put into ovens because it's just, we're all going to do.

I'm so mean to my AI. It's embarrassing. What are some of the sizes that if you were going to do it, 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 you 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 are just doing cases exit ready or preparing cases for exit. It's still really old-fashioned industry where you just need to hide a lot of information. But we just started to work like one and a half years ago on a SaaS business, which was doing barely seven digits. So they was just right now crawling to the seven 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, with the same pace, yeah? And what work can you keep, what is not working you, you just pause. That's basically. Love it.

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 lincoln is the best source of contacting me um i'm pretty active on lincoln post trying to post everyday value even if it's hard uh 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 Addick. Yeah. And my title is two billion plus in revenue. Exit Ready Buy Design. We build what buyers won't. Really simple.

Love it. Yeah, 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 nice and you're clawed. 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 on. 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 in my point of view. Jim 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 two billion in revenue a year. And the last, 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.