Produced By - The GTM Operating System: Scaling Revenue with Outbound, Paid and Content | #117: Alex Vacca

Episode Date: September 8, 2025

Alex Vacca is a nomadic entrepreneur, content creator and co-founder of ColdIQ, a go-to-market agency helping B2B companies scale revenue through outbound, paid and content systems. In just two years, he has grown ColdIQ from two founders to over 30 full-time team members, built one of the most respected GTM brands in Europe and attracted a global audience across LinkedIn, X and YouTube.Listen to this episode to get inspired by Alex’s bold decision to escape the traditional career path in his 20s and embrace a life of learning, exploration and entrepreneurship. He shares the story behind building ColdIQ, practical tips for attracting clients through content and timeless advice on staying consistent, focused and curious while building your personal brand and business.Connect with Alex:https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-vacca/https://www.youtube.com/@AlexVaccahttps://www.instagram.com/alx.vca/https://coldiq.com/Timestamps:00:00 – Why Alex left the safe path in his 20s01:45 – Podcast intro and guest welcome02:30 – Moving abroad alone and early career pivots05:10 – From crypto to cold outreach and sales07:45 – Travelling through 12 countries with just a laptop11:00 – Starting the agency from scratch13:40 – Building a personal brand alongside the business16:10 – First hires, growth mindset and team culture19:30 – Breaking down outbound, paid and content23:15 – The importance of founder energy in content26:30 – Daily structure, routines and staying sharp29:10 – Lessons from kung fu and being a beginner again31:00 – Hard things, self-discipline and staying curious35:00 – Long-term thinking, systems and building for freedom38:40 – How he built trust and reputation in his niche41:30 – Final advice for creators and entrepreneurs43:00 – Where to follow Alex and closing thank you  Connect with Tomas:X: https://x.com/TomasLoucky⁠⁠⁠Stan: https://stan.store/TommenLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomasloucky/⁠⁠Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisistommen/⁠⁠Unproduced:Newsletter: https://unproduced.substack.comYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@unproducednotesSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033Ddo8ibDlLYoaP7FFLIWMore:Links: https://linktr.ee/produced_by⁠⁠⁠Newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://producednewsletter.substack.com/⁠The Podcast Club: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/25420030/Tools & gear that support the show:Metricool: https://f.mtr.cool/HRJBZKRiverside: https://riverside.sjv.io/vDnDodFavikon: https://www.favikon.com?fpr=tommenRa Optics: https://ra-optics.myshopify.com/discount/TOMMEN?rfsn=8803777.591d19JamX: https://jamx.ai/podcasters-offer?ref_id=e02d48af-ef66-4e76-b804-c2e8d282a8bfSome links are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. If you find them useful, using these links helps keep the podcast running. Thank you!  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You don't want to have just a personal brand, but as a company, you also want to be like, okay, cold IQ, not just Michelle, not just Alex. And so I started posting literally two years ago, around August 2023. And since then, it has been the biggest growth level for our business. Even to this day, 80% of the lead we generate come from our LinkedIn organic content. I think the growth has been insane. It's a topic I can tell that interests a lot of people, like the intersection of sales and AI. It's one of the hottest industry right now. So there is a lot of interest.

people want to learn about tools, people want to learn about workflows. And so I attribute part of the success to this. I think we've been in the right industry at the right moment. And so we've been also very consistent. Since the beginning of the year, me and my business partner shook hands on the fact that we would post five times per week, no excuse. And so we've really built that discipline to post every single day. The more you scale, now the business is striving.

We can hire people to help us with the contents. But I think the consistency on LinkedIn, I would say is the number one factor that got us where we are today. Before we dive into today's episode, please hit that subscribe button. Your support helps us grow and inspire more people on their journeys. Thank you. Hello Alex, thank you for joining us today and welcome to the show. Hey Tomah, thanks a lot for having me. So Alex, for those who don't know you, can you please introduce yourself? Yes, I'm Alex, I'm 29 originally from Belgium. I'm living a bit as a nomad at the moment. I'm a moment, spending a lot of time between Barcelona, Cape Town and Bali. And I'm the co-founder

at Cold IQ. So we started the business a bit more than two years ago to define it in a very small amount of words. We are the go-to-place for everything go-to-market markets. So we have our own agency where we help B2B companies with a go-to-market motion. The way we got started was to help companies with called email and lead generation. And then over the last two years, we developed into a multi-product company. So we also have an info product where we teach people how to start the AI sales agency. And then we also created a tool directory on our website where we compare the best GTM software. So we have an agency, an info product, and then a tool director is to help people select the best tools for their GTM motion.

I was excited. And before we discuss more, your business, I was reading more about your biography and your LinkedIn. And I think you really well describe, like, different parts of your life throughout your 20s, because I think you achieved quite a lot already. So can you briefly tell us what did you actually do? Because I think, like, when you decided to travel the world, start the business, I think it can be quite inspiring.

So can you tell us more? Yeah, for sure. So I was since I was 21, I had a very traditional path, like growing up in Belgium where I was from, did my high school there. In Belgium, it's very common to do a gap year when you graduate from high school, which I did. So I spent four months in Antrop, which is another scene in Belgium to learn Dutch. And after that, I moved to Sydney in Australia for six months because my English was pretty bad. And still hear the French accent to there. Cannot get rid of it.

But I would need to actually practice and learn English. And after that, I really always knew that I wanted to do something around business. My parents have their own companies. I was like, I want to be an entrepreneur. I want to have my own business one day. So I enrolled for a business school in Brussels. And for the first three years of my bachelor, I was really bored. I was like, okay, this feels so removed from all the cool size of entrepreneurship.

At that time, I was reading a lot of biography, like the Barberians. of Steve Jobs, I was so inspired. I was like, wow, this is the best way to learn business. Actually, learn from people that have done it, not from some business school professors that have never built a business. And so after the three years, I had to decide, do I do a master degree like everyone is doing? You know, that's like the general part in Belgium. If you study business, usually it's like bachelor, master.

Then you work for consulting. You try to get into like McKinsey, a Boston consulting group. and I was like, yeah, I'm not sure if it's really what I want. And so after my bachelor, I decided to do a coding bootcamp. So at that time, tech was like super up and coming. Everyone wanted to like move to Silicon Valley. Like that's where like the cool startups were being built. And I decided that I wanted to get a bit more technical.

So I enrolled in nine weeks coding bootcamp at Low Wagoon. They have like coding school around Europe to teach people computer programming. And during that boot camp, met two guys that were like a bit nerdy that we're talking about that new thing called Bitcoin. I was like, well, I've never heard about this. It was 2017. So it was like before the mainstream about like Ethereum and Bitcoin. I think back then I didn't know what it is. I'm trying to remember. Yeah, same year. Like for me, it was really, I was like, what do you mean? Like internet's money. Like, what is this? Do you remember, sorry, to interrupt. What was the

price back then? I think at that time, it was still below 10K. I think we were around like 8 or 9K. Like, really like it has changed a lot. And I've always been very curious. So those guys started talking about that internet money. And I was like, wow, like this might be the next big thing. So I was asking a lot of questions. I was honoring them all the time. I was like, how do you buy it?

Like, how do you sell it? And I didn't have a lot of money at that time. But I had a bit of money saved. So I invested around 10K of my savings into crypto. And I got extremely lucky like zero skills, pure luck. You know, sometimes there with things in life. it's like a bit of skills, a bit of discipline and a bit of luck. For me, it was 100% luck.

Like, I was underwent. Like, I crypto investments, but I ended up making 5x what I invested. So I ended up in December 22, I was reaching the end of the boot camp. And I was like, what I'm going to do with, it was 50K. And I had set that threshold to be if I reach 50K, I sell everything. Because otherwise, I know that it's so volatile. I might lose everything. So at 50K sold everything.

I was like, okay, I'm 22, I have 50K, I have no idea what to do next. Let's travel. And at that time, I had read the four-hour work week from Tim Ferriss. I don't know if you've read it, but... Yeah, of course. I think it's like a classic that you have to read. It's a bit of like the Bible of digital nomadism, right? It's like, working from anywhere.

And I was like, wow, this is exactly the life I want. I love freedom. I'm super curious. And so with the money I made with Bitcoin, I was like, let me do what Tim Ferriss is explaining in the book. he had that concept of a mini retirement. So every year, he goes somewhere for one month and try to learn something new. So that's how he became like a kickboxing champion.

Then he went to Buenos Aires to become like a professional tango dancer. And I was like, let me do this, but condense in one year. So every month, I'm going to go to a new country to learn something new. And so I started to plan a bit my itinerary. So I went to China to learn Kung Fu. Then I went to Nepal to do yoga. then I went to Thailand to do Muay Thai, then I went to Bali to do some volunteering. And so each country was linked to like a new skill or a new activity I wanted to do.

And so this was like a very forming year for me. And around that time I was trying to learn as much as possible about like all the tech jobs. And at that time, one thing that was very up and coming was growth hacker. That was like the very exciting job that everyone wanted to have. And so during that year, I knew that I wanted to do everything I could to become a growth. hacker in a startup. And out of those countries that you visited, which one did you enjoy the most and why? I think the one that gave me the biggest cultural shock was China, because I was also in a part of China that's usually not very touristy, you know, it's not Beijing, it's not Shanghai.

I was in a city called Deng Feng. That's where I have all the Kung Fu school. It's really in mainland China. You needed like a special visa to be able to go there. So usually China, I find if you want to visit the big cities, but they don't like too much to go to the remote areas. And I was really living on the campus with like all the younger Chinese guys training to become Kung Fu Master, usually to go there to then enroll in the army later on. So it was a very interesting experience that I don't think a lot of people went through. And based on what did you choose what countries you're going to visit? Or what countries and also what type of skills you're going to learn?

I didn't have anything specific in mind. Like, it wasn't something around like a professional activity. I think during that time, I was reading a lot of books. Like, I've always been like an average reader. I think that year I must have read like 30 or 40 books. So I was like trying to get into like entrepreneurship and like learning about startups. But about the skill per se that I was learning in the different countries. I didn't have like a set list of countries.

I was just looking like, what would be a fun activity to learn? and then I was just looking, what's the best country to do that? For example, I was like, oh, I always wanted to be a good cook. Let me go to Italy. And so by chance, I have like a remote cousin that lives in Milan, and it was the neighbor with a private chef. So I was like, oh, let me go to Milan for a month,

and I'm going to work for the private chef. And I think it was the perfect age to do that. I think in your 20s should be the decade where you expose yourself to the biggest amount of things, not being too set in like your career and making money. And so at that time, it's probably one of the best decisions I've ever taken because I don't think I would be who I am today without those forming months around the world.

Yeah, I'm glad to hear that. And to be honest, I think it's just like amazing experience. I've always enjoyed traveling as well, although not as exotic or interesting as you. But I can only agree that like getting out of your comfort zone by moving to different country or living in a different place, it's definitely something that I would recommend to everyone. one as well. I agree. And it's also like a bit magical in today's world that you can do both now,

right? It's like for the generation of our parents was like, okay, you need a career. And if you were someone that was constantly traveling, like you would be some sort of hippies, like a bit disconnected from the world. And I think now that's one of the biggest joy of our generation is that being able to manage your business from any place in the world, like I find that like such a great opportunity. Even though I would say that with age, you also feel the need. of having a base, like the older I get, more realized that I want to build something somewhere. And so now I've been very lucky that a lot of my friends are in the same situation as me to have like online businesses, they make online money. And so usually we travel between us to different

destination. But I feel now some of my friends are starting to settle down, having children. And so the nomadic life is nice for your 20s, for your early 30s, but at some point you also need to pick a place and build there. Yeah. And I think that maybe sometimes people, people might be a bit scared because of language barrier. And these days, of course, you can probably speak in most places English. But what was it like, for example, in China or some more exotic destination, was it still okay with English? Or how did you communicate?

In China, it was very difficult. Most people don't speak a single word of English. So we need to use a lot of a translator. But it's part of the charm of traveling in my experience. You know, it's like sometimes I was reading book of what it felt like to be an explorer in like the early 20th century or like the 19th century was like people couldn't communicate, no internet, like no communication. I think there is a sense of adventure that we lost a little bit.

And now if you go to Thailand, you go to Bali, it's like these are like team parks for adults, right? It's like everything is like made for you to go around. It's very easy. You order a cab. Everyone speaks like decent English. So I like those countries that's a bit more wild where you need to like be a bit resilient to go about it.

Makes it more excited. Yeah, much more. And you also get experience. It teaches you to also be a bit like gritty to like find your path, knowing where to go, asking people around. Like I think it's part of the traveling experience. And then in terms of languages, I would say that for Latin America, there you just simply need to speak Spanish.

I think the experience you're going to have in Latin America if you just speak English, it's not going to be that great because most people don't speak English. And if you speak the local language, like, you're going to have hell of a time, but you need to speak the local language. And I think it also shows to people that you just make some kind of effort. And it's like if you hear someone speaking your native language, it always makes you kind of appreciate them or more friendly and supportive to help them to communicate. And just as you mention it, what's your level of? Spanish. Are you fluent? Yeah, I'm quite good. I'm not like bilingual, but I can I can

really get around. I did also my Erasmus during my business school. I did six months in Madrid. Then during my world trip, I spent like around five to six months in Latin America. So I had plenty of time to practice. And now I live in Barcelona so I can still maintain. Yeah. No, I really enjoy talking about traveling and dista. But then when in your story, when did you get idea for the cold IQ or does this cover to place? Yeah, so then after that world trip, I had around four years where I was working for different startups in Germany. I got accepted into a program that got me my first job in Leipzig, which is a city in

East Germany, worked there for a year, then it was like a bit too small. I was very ambitious. I was like, okay, I want to be in the city where things happen. And I think in Europe, usually if you want to work in tech, it's either. Paris, London or Berlin. So I was like, okay, I'm going to spend my 20s in Berlin, super international city, like a lot of things happening. So I spent almost five years in Berlin working for a lot of super cool startup. And the latest one I worked at before joining Michel, my business partner at Cold IQ was World Coin. So that was the crypto company of Sam Altman, crazy project. That could be an

entire podcast, but I work there in operations. Really learn a lot because I think it was one of the smartest team I've ever worked with everyone, like top tier A players. So it taught me a lot about operations, how to run a business that's now to this day, helped me a lot into managing, yeah, the business at Cald IQ. And the story is that CaldaiQ actually got started by my business partner. So Michelle for the backstory made a lot of money with affiliates when he was a BTIR. younger. So he was really always finding ways to like generate some good passive income with affiliate. And then one day, he decided to apply that to sales tech. So he was running a lot of called email campaigns. He started to research a lot of different tools. And then he was like, hey,

wait, I made money with affiliates before it was with betting websites of all industries. I was like, I made it work with betting websites. What if I can make it work with sales tech tools? And so he created a directory of all the best sales tools to run outbound. And from there, the traffic started to pick up. And then some people are like, okay, cool, I love your website. I love of the tools you are like showing. But I need help to orchestrate all those tools to run cold email for my own company. And so that's how he was like, oh, let me do that for you.

And that's how he started delivering the service to one client, two clients, three clients. And then at that time, I was becoming a bit unhappy. you know, it's like, I think a lot of men go through this when they approach the end of 20s. I had probably one of the best jobs I could have at WorldCoin, like a very prestigious, one of the top tech company to work in the world. But I felt a bit impactless. Like the company is growing. You're just like a gear in the system.

Like you want to do things, but then you have like approvals. You have like a manager and a manager of a manager and a manager of a manager of a manager. So you feel a bit small. And at that time, me and Mish have been friends for like more than a decade now. And he called me one day and he was like, give me one of the important pep talk in my life when he told me that he always saw me as one potential competitor to him in business. He was like from all of our friend group. I think you're the only one that could compete with me in business.

But if you stay working as an employee, you will never be anything remotely of a competitor. And I think that gave me a bit of fire to be like, come on, fuck it. I'm 27. If I don't take a shot at it now, I will never do it. So I quit my job and I was like, right now AI is happening. That's going to be the equivalent of the internet in the early 2000. I need to do something around AI. And then little by little, Mish told me about that tool called Clay.

That was like the new hot thing that all the companies needed help to implement. And somehow we ended up starting working together. And it was like, okay, let's just make it a massive business. I filter with potential. Meish are very complimentary. Mish is like the visionary, very creative person, and I'm like a really good operator. I can just juggle a lot of different things.

I can manage team. I can hire people. I can build processes. I can build systems. And he's a really good creative person. So I'm like, okay, that's a match made in heaven. And so that's how we wanted from being the two of us to now being, yeah, 31 people full time.

That's called Dacue. Wow. 31, you said? Yeah. Wow, it sounds like a perfect timing, you know, not fully satisfied in the job. There is an AI boom, you've got a friend who calls you, and such a great opportunity. So, wow, it sounds really cool. And just out of curiosity, I haven't really checked it before, but is the word coin still around?

Yeah, yeah, it's thriving. Maybe I can explain it in very shortly what they do, but some alt-man is the CEO of Open AI. Everyone knows Open AI that's like the company behind ChatGPT. The tool we use every day, follow us. And his hypothesis is that AI is going to become so good in the coming years that very soon we won't be able to distinguish an AI from a human. And so we need to find a way to verify who is human on the Internet. Because right now you might be interacting with like some customer support,

with like some agents that you think are human. humans, but they're actually just AI agents in the background. And so the whole goal with WorldCarn is that they developed a hardware device called the orb. So it's like a spheric aluminum device that scan your irises to just give you what they called a world ID. And so it gives you a way to verify your humanness on the internet. And so to give a very concrete example, imagine in gaming, a lot of people play video games,

but they don't know if they're actually playing with humans or if you're they're playing with bots. And so by being WorldCore and Verify, you can actually log in to a specific gaming platform and showing to everyone that you actually are verified human. So it sounds a bit dystopian, and I think to have like the mass adoption where maybe still one or two years away from it

because a lot of people are like, oh, I sound so black mirror, I need to scan my eye reads. So a lot of people are like a bit hesitant to do it, but the world is going to wake up to the needs of having such like a humaneness, verification system in the coming months or years. So when I joined, it felt like, imagine explaining that to your parents who are,

how to your family, people were like, I have no idea what my son is doing. Now that like GPT is becoming more mass markets, people are understanding, okay, what are AI agents, people are starting to realize, okay, we need a system to, to recognize who's a human on the internet. Yeah, I completely understand with the speed of advancements in the AI. Who knows when people listen to this episode, it's maybe going to be outdated already. Are you struggling to stay consistent on LinkedIn? Fanpost helps you create high quality posts in minutes, so you can write faster, show up more,

and stress way less. Built by creators for creators is the easiest way to grow your presents without burning out. Try it free at fanpost.com. to your startup, to your business, when you started, what was it like with the competition and with the market, whether already similar tools, similar companies or not that many? Yeah, so I think lead generation agencies have been there forever, right? It's like a lot of companies for the last, let's say, 10, 15 years, sending cold emails has been a very common way to generate more revenue for companies. It's like one of the easiest way to prospect.

So typically you do some cold email or you do some cold calling. But I think what we shuffled the card a little bit is the invention of clay. So I don't know if you're familiar with clay, but it's a tool that you probably have seen on your LinkedIn feeds that everyone is talking about. We ended up becoming one of the biggest clay implementation agencies in the world. And for the audience, for people that don't know what clay is, you can imagine clay as a, a very big Excel spreadsheet that's connected to all the B2B data source in the market. So email finders, so like tools that help you find the email of a prospect, tools that help you find the company headcounts,

tools that help you integrate the data to your CRM, tools telling you what is like the latest news about that specific company. And so before Clay, all that data enrichment process was a pain in the ass. Like you had to download a CSV file, you would upload the CSV file in one tool. then if you needed more data, you would kind of re-unload the CSV file, re-uploading in another tool. And Clay changed the game

because you could finally centralize all the data enrichment that you need to do good prospection in a single tool. And a lot of companies realize the need of this because called the email in 2025 or even in 2023 when we got started. You cannot just send 20,000 emails

to 20,000 people with the exact same thing. Like, this doesn't work anymore. like just shooting a lot of cold emails to like thousands of people, you're not going to get any answer. Like you need to figure out who's in the market to buy your product or solution. And the best way to do that is to look for what we call intent or trigger that would indicate that the prospect is in the market for your product or solution. And Clay solve that issue pretty much.

Like you can find the exact data point you need to figure out who you should actually reach out right now to pitch your offering. It's like sometimes you get these sales pitches in your LinkedIn inbox that literally no sense just for the people to get an idea what we're talking about. Exactly. Like you really see like bad outreach is just like a message that feels like it could have been sent to 10,000 other people. Like there is nothing about you.

There is nothing about your business. There is no relevancy. I think that's the word that people should always keep in mind when you do odd bonds. like how can you be relevant to the person you're like reaching out to? Like what do they care? What do they need? What is something that happened to them recently that would make them buy from you? And that's what you need to figure out in your outbound process.

If you just shoot like, hey, here is what I do, work with me. Like no one has time for this. Yeah. And throughout the journey of the business, have you noticed that there are like more competitors emerging? Because I can maybe imagine that with the rise of AI that people see it a bit easier or like there's like opportunity or has it been the same? No, it has been massive.

Like I think the amount of right now some people call it clay agencies. So it's like agencies implementing clay for for the companies has been scarerocketing. And that's one of the biggest issue in my opinion of running an agency is that there is very little moat as a business. Right. You have no tech. Everyone can go on YouTube, watch some tutorial, create a landing page and start pitching to services. And so we had the case that was like a very sad episode in the entrepreneurship journey. Like I bit earlier this year, we had like two of our best people that left and just copied the

business to launch a competitor. That's like part of part of the game because there is nothing that prevents anyone from launching a similar business. It's not like you're building a software and you're doing a lot of internal development. So right now it's one of the easiest business to start. But I really think that everything we have done over the last two years in terms of brand building and reputation, like really puts us in another category. Also with Clay, they have also a partner program a little bit similar to what Salesforce and HubSpotts did to grow through partners. Like to also position us as like one of the top partners. And so we also get referrals from Clay and from other tools that we implement.

I think in business, the longer you can stay in the game, the easier it's going to get. And so for us, we've been there for like more than two years, posting everything on LinkedIn, people start to really be like, ah, I've seen those guys, I know Alex, I know Michelle, I've seen Cold IQ. And so I think our brands is helping a lot to separate us from the competition. I was going to say too that it's worth building the brand and the reputation that you've been, as you said, in the game for two years, building your name. Like, it perfectly comes back to LinkedIn and the power of building your personal brand, because you've got a great following.

As we discussed before, it's not only LinkedIn, but other social media platforms. And just as we are talking about it, is actually that the reason why you started building your brand like on the LinkedIn because of your business to build your name, find clients, or have you even started with LinkedIn before? Yeah, so for that, I actually own it to my business partner.

So, Michelle, that's how he got the first clients for Cold IQ. He tried many times to be consistent. on LinkedIn, nothing was really happening. And then he loves to tell the story. I think it's a really good story that one day he was really sick. He didn't feel like it. He was like, oh, I really need to be consistent. I need to post that LinkedIn post.

But he was like trying to justify to himself to not do it. And on that specific day, he sort of gathered a force to be like, no, I said I would do it. Let me post that post. And that post went viral. I think it made like 600 likes, book like 20 meetings. And from that post, I think he clearly. was like three new clients. And so when I joined him in the business, after three months of like

setting up some operations, he was like, why don't you start writing as well? And so I was like, I also want to develop my brands. Like I think it's also the program with a business. If there's only one famous person in the business, like it makes the business a bit weak, right? You don't want to have just a personal brand. But as a company, you also want to be like, okay, cold IQ, not just Michelle, not just Alex. And so I started posting a thing, yeah, literally two years ago, around August 2023 and since then it has the biggest growth level for our business. Even to this day, 80% of the lead we generate come from our LinkedIn organic content. And I was going to say that, as you said, if you started two years ago,

you've got quite impressive following. Just a few more cases you'll be celebrating beautiful milestone on LinkedIn. Yeah, I think the growth has been insane. It's a topic I can tell that interests a lot of people, like the intersection of sales and AI. It's one of the hottest industry right now. So there is a lot of interest. People want to learn about tools. People want to learn about workflows. And so I attribute it's part of the success to this. I think we've been in the right industry at the right moment. And so we've been also very consistent. Since the beginning of the year, me and my business partner shook hands on the fact that we would

post five times per week. No excuse. And so we've really built that discipline to post every single day. Now we have a team to help us. We have an amazing designer. We have also a million or personal brand manager that's helping a lot to coordinate the content. So things get easier, right? The more you scale, now the business is striving. We can hire people to help us with the contents.

But I think the consistency on LinkedIn, I would say is the number one factor that got us where we are today. I'm glad to hear that. I was going to ask you, how do you manage everything, such as growing your brand, growing your business, and even to have life? So is it like having a right team systems and everything in a place? Yeah, it's having the right systems.

Like I think a lot of people still look at content as like a marketing topic to be like, I'm just going to give it to my marketing team. It's not something I need to personally deal with. And I would strongly disagree with that. For me, content is probably the highest leverage activity for any founders in today's age. This is truly the biggest legion method for most businesses in B2B. you need to invest a lot in content. And so for us, we invested a lot of time

in building systems and operationalize our content system. So it's very well managed. My personal brand manager, Emily, we would talk like maybe once a week to discuss a few topics. Interesting thing I've discovered, new workflows that have been working in the company. She's going to interview some of our people in the business to also present some interesting findings.

And based on this, based also on the sales calls that I'm sometimes watching from a sales team. I'm just going to gather as much data from things happening in the business or during the sales call or also more generally, more broadly what's happening around the eye and sales and try to make as interesting content as possible. And so usually me and me are going to draft the posts. Then we are going to have a designer that's going to come in. She's going to get a brief of like, okay, do we need a carousel?

Do we need an infographic? and then she's going to make the design to go with the post. And so usually I have at least seven posts ready in advance. So I just need to schedule it. And then, yeah, I'm ready, ready to go. I like it. And I completely agree, especially if you consider how much content there is. So it's really important just to stand out like with the right visualist, well-written copy.

And just the design that stands out and the overall post that also achieves your goal. So thank you. example and you really explained it well. I'm pretty sure that you received a lot of DMs and like one of those DMs probably is something that is like, oh Alex, have you got any advice or how to grow, how to, you know, skyrocket or stuff like that. So when you get messages like that or even if someone asked you, what would be your answer? Focus on the right things in business. I see it now and even though I'm giving the advice is something I want to be peace of myself. But I think in today's you have so many

call it shiny objects. Alex Olmosi calls it the woman in the red dress. You know, the reference to Matrix movie when it was the woman in the red dress passing by. I think operating a business in 2025,

it really feels like this. Like, also the more you start to have any sort of success, everyone's want to offer you things, partnership and coffee chat and synergies and ketchup calls. And you need to be very focused. You need to know what is truly

an action that's going to move the needle for your business and you need to do more of this. And so for me, for example, I know that I have 10,000 urgent things I should be doing. Like that's the reality for most business owners is that everything feels urgent. There's so many things you should be working on. But I know that on a daily basis, the action that moves the needle the most is me posting on LinkedIn. And so that, for example, is one of my non-negotiable. I know that I need to post Monday, Friday.

I need to have a quality pose going out and the rest can wait. And I think that's probably one of the best advice I can give in business is like, what is an action that you know is moving the needle for your business, that you can repeat every single day? Because I truly believe that it's putting the reps that gets you anything meaningful in life. It's the same if you want to have a great body. It's like you can have a crazy session and lifting weight for four hours. This doesn't compare to going 45 minutes every single day for two years.

And so putting the reps is really what build people and what build businesses. I think so too. And I can agree. Like people text you and think that it happens overnight or in a few weeks. And then you ask them when they started on LinkedIn and they tell you a little few weeks or a few months ago. So it's really about sticking in for the long run. And also something we discussed just before the recording. For example, when it comes to podcasting also that it takes time and there's just a few episodes.

and if you don't see results in the beginning to keep going and in the future you hopefully see results. I like the answer to you gave. What helps a lot as well is like enjoying the process, right? It's like you should really design. That's what I try to do for myself as well. It's like designing a lifestyle where I could be living like this for the coming five years. Like for me, if I start to see that I hated the previous week, it means that I need to change something. Because I truly believe that growing a business is a market.

It's not a sprint. And so you really need to make sure that what you do, you enjoy it, and you are ready to live like this for the coming months or even years. Because that's how you achieve anything meaningful. I agree. I also try to say to have fun and enjoy the journey because it just makes it easier to show up if there is something that you are just looking forward to. And as we just discussed LinkedIn, what about the other social media platforms? because I saw that you are, for example, on X, YouTube, Instagram. We've got some impressive following on other platforms too.

So are these just like additional ones to this? Or have you got any bigger plans with those as well? Yeah. So the goal for us is to build the best content system out there. That's where Michelle, my business partner, is spending most of his time. We're really impressed with people like Gary Vaynerchuk, Alexo Mosey, that really manage to be everywhere. Like you can connect on any social media.

They are everywhere. And so right now we feel that one of the biggest lever we can pull for our business is also to build an entire content system. So LinkedIn, I think we really get it under control. We have good processes. We know what works. We know what doesn't work. And so right now we're starting to tiptoe a little bit in other platforms. So on X, we've had like a few threads that run viral.

It's more about like general tech stories, AI stories. Like we don't really pitch the business too much. Like we haven't really cracked the code on how to transfer eyeballs. We get on X to meetings booked. Like on LinkedIn, it's very easy for us to see the correlation between impressions to meetings books. On X last week, I got retreated by Elon Musk, which was like crazy events. Really? Oh, my God.

Yeah. Like, out of the blue. And the trade went to 50 million impressions, which is completely insane when you compare to like LinkedIn metrics. But funny enough, it's it did. didn't book that many meetings. So it's like it's great. It's like my following just exploded on X.

I think I gained 15K followers in one day. But it didn't translate into a real business impact. And so right now we really try to be as consistent as possible on LinkedIn because we can clearly see posting on LinkedIn and revenue are directly correlated. And now we would want to create that correlation with YouTube, with X and Instagram. But yeah, you have only a finite amount of hours in each day, right? that's also the part when you want to scale a business. It's like you should never stop doing what got you where you are.

And so in our case, it's LinkedIn. And so LinkedIn still needs to get a priority. But at the same time, you want to keep scaling. So it's like, let's keep respecting the legion methods that has grown in a business. And at the same time, trying to like experiment for even expanding to other platforms. But I would say no platform is matching LinkedIn anywhere close at the moment. I like it and I agree. And just out of Kirstie, what was the post on X about that he retweeted that?

Yeah, so with our team, we're always looking for some cool tech stories. And so that was a story about an app that Meta released a few years back where they were spying on people. So you could actually track your behavior on your own phone. And so it's the whole story on like how Meta actually acquired. It was an Israeli company. and how then they could actually spy on the user behavior. And that's also what helped them figure out. For example, that snapshot I was taking over.

And that's actually the story on how Meta decided to create the story feature on Instagram to kind of keep up with what was happening with Snapshot. So it's kind of like a very thrilling story on the hidden decision happening in the big tech companies. And I think on X people love this, a bit like not conspiracy theories, but he'll kind of stories that haven't been like shed a light on. And so I think Elon always love to have a bit of beef with Zukberg. So you probably love a story that's a break some boss. Yeah, yeah, that didn't put a Zuckerberg in a good light.

But see, it's so funny with content is like sometimes, I don't know, that thread. I was like, oh, there's a really good story. Like my team put it together. And then somehow Elon saw it and Fisher completely. when clearly I have like some media in the US that reach out to me to be like oh you want to do an interview about privacy and I was like oh oh like that's becoming a bit bigger than myself like for me I just want to grow my business I'm like the new hero data privacy yeah I remember there used to be some speculations before that there would be fight between Elon and Zach like

I don't know if it was MMA or BJJ or something like that yeah it was for MMA I wanted to go like in doing like the UFD I remember they even spoke that it could happen in Coliseum in Rome, but then they said that it's impossible, but even had like some ideas that could happen. So it was really interesting. He's so good at having beef with people. Like I find it very entertaining. Yeah. And Alex, just to be aware of time, we'll be finishing soon. What are some of your hobbies or some things that you enjoy doing in your free time? I'm a big sport practitioner. That's also for me, one of the or non-negotiable.

Every single morning I'm working out. I do a lot of things. I'm training for high rocks at the moment. So I love lifting. I love running. I also live close to the sea. So I'm swimming in open water. I'm also doing a lot of fighting sports.

So I'm doing some kickboxing and some boxing. Because that's really what allows me to be very sharp mentally. For me, I can really feel it if I'm traveling and if my sport routine is not adequate. I don't feel my best in the business. And so in the morning, I know there's going to be some chaos every single day that I will need to deal with. But I know that if I've done a hard thing in the morning, if I've done like a hard workout session, the rest of the day is going to feel easy. So it's almost like a mental exercise that I do is great because you're also like forge your body.

But you also train to be sharp and resilient mentally for everything that's about to happen in the business. Yeah. That is something that I completely relate to both to start a day that way because I think it's the tone for the rest of the day and also exercise in general because it just helps you to switch off from maybe work from other worries and just focus on the workout and it makes the whole difference then you mentioned a few before but have you got any other recommendations for any books such as some that were impactful to you or that you would recommend to people about business one of my favorite one is hard things about hard things it's actually by one of the co-founder of a16 z which is

one of the biggest VC and it's like... It's Anderson and Horowitz. Yeah. Yeah. So it's actually written by Ben Horowitz, one of the co-founder. It's teaching a bit about the unsexy part of running a business, having hard conversation, letting people go, how to be a good manager in wartime, how to be a good manager in peacetime.

It's funny. It's almost a book that I read too early because I was 22 and I read it. I was like, I'm not way close to be any manager or any CEO. But like sometimes a book that I reread. I think it's the type of book that you need to face a problem and then reread it and be like, okay, that's actually the best way to manage a situation. So that's one, another one I really love biographies. And for me, a book that changed my life is the biography of Steve Jobs.

I think it's one of the most inspiring book I've ever read. Walter Isaacson, right? Yes, correct. Yeah, that I read when I was 15 or 16. I was doing some traveling in the US with my parents. And I remember being at the back of the car and like, couldn't put the book down and I was like wow this is exactly the the life of greatness who I want to live for myself but I highly recommend it as well I knew of course Steve Jobs

as everyone probably knows but after I read the book it's kind of opened my eyes as well so it's just amazing one and Alex we discussed it already but can you summarize where people can find you follow you and promote any further services yes find more about me or you can go on LinkedIn Alex Vaca Simon X same on YouTube. There's not a lot of others on YouTube, so you might have to do some more extensive research. And then if you want to learn more about a business,

you can go to coldaiku.com. And there is multiple ways where we could provide value. Either you can just go on a website, find the best go-to-market tools out there. We try to give a very fair comparison. If you want to learn how to start your own GTM agency, we can also share all the learnings we have had over the last two years. And then if you need to help with your go-to-market, you can work with our agency directly

and you can book consulting call with us on the website directly. As always, I will add any links to the show notes. And then the very last question, Alex, is there anything I should have asked you and did not or any final piece of advice or anything you would like to share? I would just like leave on a last note that I try to have fun. Like it's also something I've understood for myself over the last two years is that it's going to sound maybe a bit corny, but the happiness is not the destination. It's like, enjoy the journey.

For me, I've understand in the business. It's like we've reached a certain amount of success financially in terms of recognition. And it's like, no, I don't have like a destination in mind. I'm just like happiness is now. It's like building that business, building that personal brand. Like enjoy the day to day because that's actually the happiness. You don't need to wait for the end destination. You don't need to wait for the exits.

the need to waste for the million of followers. It's like, enjoy today. It's very true. And I think it's a perfect piece of advice to finish with. So thank you so much, Alex. I really enjoyed it. I've known you from LinkedIn, but I'm really glad that we made it.

So thank you so much. I wish you all the success. I really enjoy the conversation. So happy to keep in touch. And yeah, thank you. Keep smashing it. Likewise. Thanks a lot for having me.

And I also very enjoy the conversation. Have a nice one. Thanks for listening to Prejudyibai with Check the show notes for all the links and don't forget to subscribe, like and share your feedback. Speak soon.