A busy week that I've been preparing for

This week I discuss exciting Visto progress, hiring, preparing for these busy times and 2 books I finished...

Happy Monday folks,

Another big week coming up (for all of us). Let’s start it off strong and…

Let’s jump in:

Update: Hectic week, in a good way, that we’re ready for

Very good news for my immigration tech company, Visto, as we closed a follow-on round of funding from our investors.

Follow-on round meaning that because we’ve had a really great last few months, we were able to raise a bit more money from previous investors who are liking where we’re headed, which is also great for us because it means not having to go find new investors!

Anyway, very exciting because more money in the bank = opportunities to grow, and that’s what we want to do.

So the big focus for the next few weeks is hiring, as we want to add 1 person to our sales team and 1 person to our engineering team.

This might be a stretch, but if you know any up-and-coming salespeople who are based in Canada and might be looking for a junior sales role, you can send them to my LinkedIn accouncement here (which also links to the job description in the comments).

The good problem that I’m facing is that I’m trying to interview for the sales role, while also continuing to do all of our sales (because our CTO, Alex, has his hands full with all of our product/customer support work, and I handle the marketing/sales/rest).

But since there seems to be a September surge in interest in our product, it means a lot of people are scheduling demos with me - this is great, but not ideal while also trying to schedule interviews too.

As they say though, these are simply growing pains, and I’d rather have growing pains than non-growing pains, if you get what I mean. The first half of my week is already looking hectic, but I wouldn’t have it any other way…

Key takeaway(s): Sometimes you just gotta buckle up

A lot of business stuff seems to come in waves.

For example, in August there were a few weeks that were pretty quiet (normal for us during the summer) while in September they’ve been much busier.

But sometimes as an entrepreneur things can over-pile up and you really don’t have much of a choice other than to buckle up and fight through it.

Case in point: this week, as I try to handle a growing number of prospective clients/demos all while trying to interview so we can hire for our sales role. It’s going to be a very busy week or two and I know it, and that’s okay for two reasons:

1. because it’s what you sign up for when you start a business. If you’re looking for an easy walk in the park, you picked the wrong path… and

2. I’ve gotten really good at finding a balance so that I’m ready for the highs.

As I mentioned earlier, August was a bit quiet for us. It usually is. So I used August to take some extra time to relax, recharge, focus on learning and rest, so I have the fuel in the tank for the inevitable next busy period.

Well, here we are, and I’m ready.

Do you strategically put your foot heavy on the pedal, or take it off a bit, when the time is right?

Content for the week:

Here’s some other content of mine, and book recommendations, from my last week:

For my weekly vlog I went into detail on a really crappy situation that happened to my home office, but spun it into some life and business lessons:

Note: you can also listen to just the audio on your favourite podcast platform by searching for “Josh Schachnow” (or let me know if you can’t find it).

I also finished two books this week: 1) Crushing It! by Gary Vee, and 2) This Won’t Scale by the Drift Marketing Team. In case you can’t tell, I’m very much in the marketing mode.

Crushing It! is a great book that I’ve re-read at least 2-3 times. If you’re trying to grow your brand, business, online presence, or struggling with social media, I can’t recommend it enough. In short, it covers why building a brand online is so important, how do it, and how to think about approaching each of the major platforms for social media.

This Won’t Scale is a book I got from a free Drift promotion years ago thanks to a suggestion from a friend, and is a really good (and short) read on how to approach marketing as a b2b tech company. But I’d argue you could apply to any kind of company, and the content is extremely practical and will apply for a long time.

And that’s it!

Make sure you’re subscribed so you can continue following along (or share with a friend if you think they’d enjoy following/learning from my journey) and have a great week,

Josh

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If you’re looking for more practical help, you can check out:

1. My immigration tech platform, Visto, that helps Canadian immigration firms prep and file applications much quicker.

2. Based on feedback from last week I put together a LinkedIn guide on how I got to 15,000 followers on LinkedIn. I’m thinking of making it into more of a “professional” guide, but if you want some pretty good advice, check it out here and let me know what you think?

3. If you need help converting long form videos to short snippet videos (for Tiktok, Shorts, etc.) let me know, I have a friend starting up a business doing just that and they’re awesome