Join Andrei and our guest on today’s episode, Oliver Feakins, as they will be discussing marketing strategies and tactics for scaling tech startups in 2022 and beyond. Oliver is the founder of Trusted Search Marketing and TrackFive, an online technology company that builds and manages intuitive web platforms where employers and talent meet.

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐎𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫:  

𝑊𝑒𝑏𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒: https://trustedsearchmarketing.com/ 

𝑂𝑙𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝐼𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliverfeakins/  

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐀𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐢:

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢: https://marketiu.com  / https://marketiu.ro   

𝐴𝑛𝑑𝑟𝑒𝑖 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreitiu/   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketiu   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝑇𝑤𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟: https://twitter.com/marketiuagency   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝐼𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑚: https://www.instagram.com/marketiuagency/  

𝐸𝑚𝑎𝑖𝑙 𝑎𝑡 hello@marketiu.ro

𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦:

▶️Watch the episode on YouTube: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-YouTube 

▶️ Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show 

▶️ Podbean: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Podbean 

▶️ Spotify: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Spotify 

▶️ Deezer: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Deezer 

▶️ Stitcher: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Stitcher 

▶️ Castbox: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Castbox 

Episode transcript: 

Andrei Tiu  

Hi there, this is Andrei and you are on the Marketing Innovation Podcast Show. Our special guest today is Oliver Feakins, the founder of Trusted Search Marketing and TrackFive, an online technology company that builds and manages intuitive web platforms where employers and talent meet. Today we discuss marketing strategies and tactics for scaling tech startups in 2022 and beyond. So without further ado, Oliver, it's a pleasure to have you here on the show. How are you? How's your morning going? Because you are login-in from America, right?

Oliver Feakins  

That's right. Yeah, absolutely. So my morning just getting started and your day is just about the end, right?

Andrei Tiu  

Yes.

Oliver Feakins  

Great. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Andrei Tiu  

It's a pleasure, pleasure, really looking forward to discussing today. I think it's going to be a very dynamic and interesting discussion. It's always nice to share thoughts with a fellow entrepreneur. You have even more experience because you found it more businesses during the past almost 20-ish years, right?

Oliver Feakins  

Yeah. 20 years. I started my first business when I was 14 years old. So yeah.

Andrei Tiu  

Wow! Okay, let's talk a bit about that one, maybe as a as a warm up.

Oliver Feakins  

An appetiser, right? So, yeah. So, um, you know, first off, I come from a family of entrepreneurs, but while mainly my father, right, so I'm actually as a sound here before the show, I was actually born in England, in Southampton, and, you know, grew up in London and Southampton and my father was in the Royal Navy, but he turned into an entrepreneur. While he was in the Navy, he opened up a catering company while he was stationed, you know, in the UK, and then he was stationed in Portugal and he opened up another catering company, he ended up selling it, making some money while he was enlisted, left the military and parlayed that money into other startups. So I got to watch the entrepreneurial process over and over and over again. My father was a somebody that really likes to manage companies. He was the entrepreneurs entrepreneur, he liked to get in scale, a company and exit, which is what a lot of entrepreneurs like to do. And by the way, for your entrepreneurial audience, like that's an important skill to recognise, right? Like, if there's a difference between starting a company and managing a company. They are not the same thing. Those two job descriptions and responsibilities are not interchangeable. They're two different things right? So you have to be able to reskill, refocus for both of those things. But anyway, you see my father do it and work tirelessly and work really hard. I was able to kind of get in to do a similar thing. So at 14 years old I was a DJ, like kids birthday parties and stuff like that, you know, and I worked for a company at 14, and they went out of business, and they were selling, they had like 17 different, you know, vehicles and DJ equipment sets. And they were like, they just wanted to get rid of it. So for like, 3000 US dollars, they were selling a van, all the music and all the DJ equipments and lights, everything you would need to get started, including the vehicle for $3,000 is a great deal. 

Andrei Tiu  

Nice!

Oliver Feakins  

Yeah. So I basically wrote a business plan to my dad and said, look: I and my friend would like to do this. His dad is going to put in $1,500, I want you to put in $1,500 and here's how we're going to make this successful. So at 14 I couldn't even drive the vehicle. And, you know, I, you know, I started working on that right and grew up once I hit 16, you know, really scaled it up. I remember coming home from school and going to my dad's office, and one of our biggest markets was school dances, so looking to get the school. So, you know, I had to go sell this. So I would literally spend all night on the internet, like basically copying all the fax numbers, because this was 20 years ago.

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah!

Oliver Feakins  

Of all the high schools and schools all across Pennsylvania. And I would like 1000s of fax numbers, and I would make a flyer, and I would literally one by one stay till 11 o'clock at night at my dad's office faxing these to, you know, attention to school dance manager, you know, and sending the flyer and you know, all day long, I was hustling it for 14, 15, 16. And I would get like one or two contracts for you know, the years worth of school dances from each one of these schools that came through. And I wrote that business all through school, through college and it really taught me how to grind and hustle. You know, my father gave me a really good piece of advice. He is a consummate salesperson. So he used to tell me, nothing happens 'till you sell something. And I lived those words to this day. And I've seen so many entrepreneurs silo themselves into specific things, whether it be: "We have to have the best product", "We have to have the biggest sales, we have to do this, this, this". And a big mistake of entrepreneurs is not really looking at this as a holistic, you know, a combination of things that have to execute at the same time. So that gave me that sense of hustle, it showed me kind of how to set this up. And you know, I went to go work for some tech companies and some large tech companies and then when I was about 21 years old, you know, I hadn't even finished college and I dropped out of college to work. And I ended up starting my own company scaling that company pretty well going back and finishing college. And then, you know, scaling other companies up as well. So I don't really know what it's like to work in my adult life for a company, I've always been an entrepreneur, so I don't think I could have it any other way.

Andrei Tiu  

That's fun and also, as you're saying, grind the hustle. But I guess during your high school, you were probably a bit of a rock star with the music business. No?

Oliver Feakins  

Yeah, it's funny, right? Like, you know, and it's fun, but I always tell people, like, you know, I've coached a couple of people through the entrepreneurial process. And, you know, sometimes I just, A. People give up too easy and B. I think that people underestimate the amount of time and sacrifice it takes to launch a successful business. You know, I wasn't going to parties, I was DJing them right, and getting paid, I was going and hanging out with friends, I was sitting at my dad's office, sending faxes, you know, when I launched my other companies, you know, I was coming home and you know, at 11 o'clock at night, because I was, you know, working and growing my business, because I normally did have to manage the clients and create the product. But also, with the sale, I had to do the bookkeeping, I had to do everything. So you know, the amount of sacrifice when you're at that level, and it's, it sounds like a lot of your entrepreneurs or solo operators or kind of just getting started. So I mean, that should resonate. But my advice to your listeners would be to really, you know, it is a lot of work. And the sacrifices are huge. Everybody wants to