Generated $2.5B With Performance Marketing - Cem Atik

0:00Welcome to The Proven Podcast, where we don't care what you think, only what you can prove. On this episode, Cem Atik, the German operator who's generated$2 billion in revenue buying, scaling, and selling SaaS and e-commerce companies, breaks down how to spot undervalued businesses, fix what's broken, and scale them into massive exits. The show starts now. All right, everybody. Welcome back. Cem, I'm excited to have you on the show. Have you to be here. so there's a couple people out here who know about sales and they know about scaly and they know about sas 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 um yeah i'm sam from from from germany basically a small marketing nerd, I would say.

0:49And I make my passion to my job and also like, yeah, like, like my roadmap that I just want to share with people, I would say. So what I do is really simple. We buy businesses, we scale them, and then we sell them. Really simple. Mainly, we are just talking about e-commerce and SaaS businesses. Yeah. Yeah. To just keep it quick. Yeah. That's pretty much it. so but when you talk about doing that you've generated a certain number of revenue and sales and scaling 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 um when we're just talking about how much revenue we generate for businesses we are actively uh yeah was working on yeah uh we are we reached last year two billion dollars little numbers nothing nothing big little numbers there so you've done two billion revs for the companies that you didn't even start you just acquired them you scale them you systematize them you go from there so a lot of people have a lot of questions going okay i have a sas company i want to own a sas 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 uh the first thing is um a couple years before when we were starting with this idea I was like thinking like okay how we can do that and I just uh I just trade since I'm 19 a lot yeah and I was thinking about Warren Buffett what he does is pretty much the same only in another industry he just tried to figure out really undervalued businesses, get involved and grow together with them.

2:40And that's basically a pretty similar process. We do it a bit differently because we're especially looking also for businesses that are going close to being bankrupt sometimes. So buying a business out from the 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 1 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.

3:22But 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 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 M &A consultant usually gets 5%, we pay him maybe 7%, that he gives us the good leads. sounds, sounds bad, but the world, it is like it is just how the world is.

4:04Absolutely. 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, this is not complicated. This, it just, it's just how the world works. Now, when I'm doing it in real estate, there's very specific things we're looking for. You're looking for very specific things in businesses and sales 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 thirtieth of the valuation how do you know that it's actually going to be valuable and that you can monetize it so basically um the most important things are the unit economics a lot of people are underestimating this yeah a lot how much my software costs until the user can use it is a really important metric and no one has this on yeah uh yeah overview this number basically yeah So how big is my overhead?

4:57Did I have another Alpex cost? What are actually my monthly average cost that I have to provide the services is the most important thing. If I know I do 50k in revenue and I pay only 10k in Alpex and overhead and whatever, I know that I have 40k balance or basically gross profit. 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 unit economics and I see your P &L and I see that you're just spending like 35%, 50, 60 % in overhead, that's a big no-no for us. We're just looking for smart, lean, clean setups that are not too complicated to dive in.

5:42Because once we dive in and make it bigger, I mean, you know how it is. If you just scale a business, it's getting so freaking complicated. 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 that is lean and they have the software that's operational? Where are they failing? that actually depends uh sometimes it is as easy like they don't have a sales team yeah sometimes it is like their lead lead gen is not like uh not really yeah uh effective enough yeah like so let us say uh you just do ads google ads or meta ads yeah and you just uh yes send people or you redirect them to your home page i mean like why to your home page right what the hell is your intention yeah you just want to sell a service then promote your service on a way that someone can test it at least at least a bit yeah before he actually be able to realize if he really needs this or not yeah and that that has basically changed the process completely that's mostly the main issues one they don't have a really effective sales team and the second one is that the lead gen is not optimized or they didn't even test offers right and these are the main core common issues actually.

7:09So, so walk me through you, people come to you and they're like, okay, I don't even know how to do lead gen. I don't even, I don't know how to do any of this. Walk me through kind of like a step-by-step what they need to do. Like, okay, your software is good, but your lead gen sucks. Your marketing sucks. Your value ladder sucks. How do you walk them through? Can you imagine a company? We can either use an example or we'll just create one in our minds, you know, walk with you. What do they need to do? What are the next five things they need to right now to turn this around. Let us talk about telehealth as example.

7:37We have a business we are working with. They're doing telehealth. They're selling minoxidil. Minoxidil is for hair growth, for people like, yeah, who are not bold like me, yeah? So what happens here is you don't sell minoxidil. You sell a lifestyle, a feeling, a result, yeah? And you just need to promote this result, yeah? Not minoxidil at all, yeah? So instead of saying like, hey, buy our minoxidil, you just should change the angle 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.

8:19People are not buying minoxidil because they just want to buy minoxidil. They buy minoxidil because they expect a result for that. So selling the result and the feeling is much better. But let us stay on telehealth. Let us say you are just a platform for mental health. 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. Are 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.

8:55yeah you just need to talk about my pain point yeah just make it make me much more clear that i have this pain point and then sell me the solution for it yeah and that's pretty much it so i think a lot of people get that i mean we'll stay with the monoxysmal side of the people going involved there's a million people out there that have 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 looked like this there's a bazillion people doing that How do you break through all of that and become signal versus noise?

9:29That 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 that 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 like how I set myself apart. That's the first thing. Let us say there is a niche which is also medium competitive and you just want to find a way out and set yourself apart. Then you should maybe just more think about like how can I combine my solution also with a no-brainer offer?

10:11So that means you have minoxidil right now, as example, but everyone is charging$100,$200 for that. But you send one or even two weeks of testing for free, as example. It's only an example for you. But yeah, you just need always to tweak your offer and also tweak what exactly you're just providing to your audience, right? So as example, you're still in telehealth. You can give them a week 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.

11:01And that's pretty much it. 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 week, as an example. Okay, then I know this. So we stopped doing one. And that's basically a process. You just do a B test over a B test, test different angles, different offers, and try to figure out what is working the best. And as more offers that works, you find as faster you can scale.

11:36That'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? Cause 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, Hey, 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, where are you doing this? Cause I agree with you. Results-based marketing is king for me. It's always, it goes back to the idea of like, Hey, this is our product.

12:05This is Billy. This is what it looks like before. This was after. And you're selling a lifestyle. This is what we 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 A-B testing that we run into? Like, hey, you know what? You should probably do this. This works better than this. That is pretty. I mean, there is no answer that you just can give over every industry. But what you can say is that people who are able to do free trials, they are much more likely to convert than people without free trials.

12:48I 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 than softwares which have no onboarding process. So it don't need to be complicated. You just need to tell them how you use your tool properly within video, within short introduction. A Loom video is enough. And even that, people showing what the tool exactly does in action is something that increases the conversion rate. And that is a B-test that you just can test and it's always successful for the Loom video. yeah with loom video without loom video i mean test it test it with whatever you you want you will always win with the loom one um that is one a b test that is working really good it's nothing special yeah um also something about like when you're just highlighting really important buttons in in the 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 uh a lot of people are not just realizing that.

14:02But 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? That is usually a trigger point that people are starting to explore the software. It's stupid, but that's really something that is working.

14:24What else? There are so many tests. I mean, I have a whole library about that. Right, so I'd love to hear more about the test, but also where do you test them? Like people are like, okay, I've done all these things. Where do I send the loom videos? Where do I send the intro? Where do I 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, there are a lot of things you're doing that other people aren't.

14:56There's a reason your investors invest with you. What are some of those things? so the highest return of investment do you actually get on linkedin uh and on reddit yeah maybe maybe two channels that yeah i mean everyone knows they they are yeah massive but no one has them as as their main source on the channel so when you are just on linkedin and you're just talking all always about the problems that your service is uh solving yeah or the the pain points of a lot of entrepreneurs, as an example, people will start to ask questions, getting curious about what you're doing. And writing a piece of content is definitely much cheaper than when you're just doing ads over meta.

15:39The highest return of investment is really on organic content. So Reddit, maybe X, LinkedIn, that is working with the highest return of investment. 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're targeting for, right? The channels where you just can grow the fastest, the fastest is for sure Meta, Google, and also, I mean, TikTok affiliate is going also, yeah, getting bigger and bigger in this area, yeah? But honestly, if you're just asking me, highest return of investment, LinkedIn, Reddit, I would also say TikTok and maybe Instagram and also shorts.

16:26So 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 max. 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 AI slot. That's this, that's that. When you're giving away free things, when you're doing these organic ones, are you using AI?

17:02Are 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-brainer that you're just 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.

17:39This 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, 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 UCG videos 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 who are looking always for an 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 cutter and then you have 500 videos you can post them on your organic channel you can just use them for ads anything that you just have in mind right you can use them basically everywhere you've brought up organic channel a couple times and i know people are going to ask like what is he talking about organic channel is that like my blog is it my my home page what do you mean by an organic channel for you uh organic channels basically are uh yeah in my opinion are tiktok for sure uh youtube shorts it's Instagram Reels, yeah?

18:47And LinkedIn also for sure, right? You can also try X, yeah? But I would stay on the three big ones, which is TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram for sure. Gotcha. So from there, let's talk about, all right, you're getting this business and most people don't have a problem when it comes to getting business, they have a problem keeping up with it. How do you deal with the scale? How do you deal with this influx of all of this traffic? How do you deal with regulations and all that? So how do you 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?

19:22The first thing that we're always starting with is basically the website, the landing page, the lead magnet page, whatever we are starting with. Because you can do the best ads in the world, you can just do the best advertising in the world if your landing page is not converting, it is not converting. Point. There is nothing else you could say there. So the first thing is just really create a page, which is based on data, highly able to convert. I mean, there is a lot of websites you can check out. You can check out their competition. But I would recommend to check out, in the e-commerce space, maybe the Baymart Institute.

19:57It'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. Which are really important and really huge. And that's pretty much it. You start on your page. If your page is not converting there is no point to move forward. First thing is always your landing page, your offer, you just need to figure out. Do a lot of A-B tests. Do maybe 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?

20:34Because 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 SaaS, I will just check out my library but I mean they're working together with Google, Adidas, Shopify Levi's, Amazon and they do all of this UX research and tests and I mean there's no better source that you just can find to get valuable and valid information than the Baymart Institute. I will put all these links in the show notes as well. We'll get access to Sam. So, because these are the tools that people want.

21:16These are the things that are like, okay, what the hell is Baymart Institute? Because I've been doing this for a really long time. I've been scaling business for 20 years. I've never heard of Baymart. I'm like, hold on, I'm going to write this down. So what are the other tools? So now we're getting into this, you open up. What are the tools of the trade that you have that you're using like Baymart that are like, what the heck? This already does my CRO for me. I never have to do this. For example, years ago, I used to use something like TemplateMonster or ThemeForest.net because I didn't want to make websites because I'm just not making websites anymore.

21:44That came with that problem up for like$16 a pop. Those don't work anymore because they don't have the integrated CRO into it. So what are some of the other tools that you're using on a daily basis that get you there? so for for testing landing pages usually we're using one page.io it's it's it's an it's an um platform or a website builder yeah really really common here in europe the good thing is uh in the 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 uh then you just can basically copy and paste and then you have a perfect website.

22:24And then you say like, hey, give me five different offers based on this. And then you have five different websites in the same CI, perfectly shaped in the shape you just want to test. And yeah, I mean, in old, if you just look like three or four years back, it was really a mess to test new offers or new angles. Now it's a matter of minutes because you have cloud code. He's doing your pages, at least the CI. and then you just maybe need to change up a text and that's it, you can just test five different offers at once Beautiful So, OnePage.io Yeah, OnePage.io is a huge tool We use we have also made by, I mean, my partner made this, because he's doing more of the business development thing, he set up with our team a certain CO dashboard, you could say with Lovable, where you can see your most important metrics, which is really important because, as I said, you win with unit economics from the beginning and also by the exit.

23:31If 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. That's why we're using our own dashboard where we can see all these numbers. What is the customer lifetime value? what is the customer acquisition cost all of these, how much we spend, how big is our return of investment, yada yada all of these things that you just have in mind about other tools, for sure cloud code, we use a lot of cloud

24:05we also use usually as a platform we use Wursal for our SaaS businesses maybe, pretty sure you guys hear about that before, Wursal 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 are you automated with ai because again to everyone hears the numbers oh i've done two 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 the for lack of a better term the shite that comes in with all of this so um let us say we have just problems with chargeback yeah usually i mean people are using stripe yeah or or any other services yeah uh 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 processor for your SaaS solution.

25:45That'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 mine, 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 read out out reach out to mika but here's one thing we're working on these different service providers on different projects yeah so the pressure that i just put on a business yeah because he's working on like 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 yeah he will just maybe lose also other projects because if i see someone is failing is just really off i just change the service provider usually 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 ourself 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.

27:11So 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. Yeah. So I asking someone as an example, hey, did you know a good guy who's doing meta as an 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.

27:46First of all, how is the wipe if I just talk with the person? Is it a cool guy? Is he great? That's really important. The personal note is really important. And the second thing is, what are the businesses this guy worked before with? If I see brands like AG1, Leica, Pableby, if I see big names behind him, yeah, then I know he will never ever risk at least a tiny bit of his reputation only for just getting another 5k more, right? So I usually looking for people who have the luxury situation that they can decide, yeah, who, with which they work together with. And they are usually not more expensive than service providers who don't, yeah.

28:27That's, that's a big myth yeah right right so if you're going in and people want to do this as well are there part certain sizes that you're like yeah don't sell that stop doing that you know like if you're going in and you're bringing this size provider versus that 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 um yeah so there is one thing that is really great in SaaS and that is if you're just solving an issue from an audience that has money. So that's a huge... I mean, if you just do anything for veterans, as example, with your SaaS, the chance that you just will fail or your audience is much likely smaller is, I mean, it's pretty obvious because veterans are, I mean how many veterans or the biggest popularity of veterans you know that they are maybe not interested to do that because they don't care, right?

29:35So if I just go to handyman 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 there's Charles and he's buying real estate and he has issues to manage all the 500 apartments that he has. And if I can solve his issue there, it's huge. As an example, I'm Reiner right now, right? And I can save five or even ten minutes for every flight. It's a no-brainer because they save millions of dollars. If you just can have an... If your SaaS solution can save people a ton of money, that's a huge thing and a huge no-brainer but you always need to be able to explain that properly that they understand it right so we 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 basic 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 he trained with it i was like cool what are you you do now?

30:50He 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, the same thing, but you're going to make a dollar versus a hundred thousand dollars for each one of your closes. So it's just really simple, basic things like that. What are some of the pet peeves that you run into that you're like, God, I wish if I never talked to you, cause I'm not buying your company, cause you're overvalued and I want to get a one to 30 ratio, which is what you're normally working into.

31:28What 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 and like a family member because this is more important than everything else i just talked with businesses which doing 100 million even 150 million and i said like hey we have really good numbers we have a huge profit margin and they say like hey we have an abit da about 55 i was like you know you don't have and they said yeah we have and i said if you have that the first thing that i do is get all my money all my influence that i can get my investors and give you 100 200 million to to bring this to work even better yeah and say like okay let us see so what we did is just yeah do it creating a p &l with them together and we we see that it's not like just with this 55 percent abita because what i see is they these guys was doing 60 million yeah and they had 40 employees that is not working 40 employees 60 million 55 percent abita no way no way no way there's no and we are talking about developers yeah we are not talking about like like like someone who's working in a shop or so we're talking about developers they are insanely expensive yeah so well for now for about another six eight months but after that they're gonna be very cheap sorry guys yeah yeah screwed up um when you walk into an environment like that and you're acquiring these businesses at a fraction of the cost do you just wipe so say sorry guys you're 55 are you 40 developers have a nice day and you give all pink slips or how do you handle that normally so usually we're just looking from the beginning yeah if someone has a huge overhead yeah at least our cfo is looking over it and um yeah just um try to give them some tips even if we are not interested to invest in them we always give them a little roadmap or an audit you could say like hey these are the things you guys should fix otherwise later on you will fail yeah that's always something that we do we just always try to provide value yeah because even if we are not working together with it's for free to help people because i already did the work to make my own research why i should just not give them this information for free why it's coming nothing yeah and i and the work is already done yeah so it's it's like having a podcast where all you do is give out proven information like this um What are some of the roadmaps that you do?