074: Should you Invest in Sales or Marketing? Ryan Buckley of Toofr says…

Background on Ryan Buckley of Toofr:

Ryan Buckley is the Founder at Toofr.com, a cold emailing tool open to the sales community. Ryan is also author of The Parallel Entrepreneur which is about how he built and runs Toofr and his other businesses. He is the Co-founder & COO at Scripted.com, a premium ghostwriting platform. Ryan is living in Walnut Creek, California with his wife and two daughters. He was born and raised in Silicon Valley and holds two Bachelor's degrees from UC Berkeley. He started his first internet business while enrolled in the joint Master's degree program with the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Ryan plans to start more businesses, write more books, and eventually run for public office.

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

[1:09] Ryan considers himself a serial entrepreneur. He founded Scripted.com, a marketplace for freelance writers and Toofr, a tool that helps find email addresses.
[2:55] Application Programming Interface (API) is a set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications.
[4:29] Ryan’s first taste of entrepreneurship involves picking up trash.
[8:06] Ryan and his partner started Scripted back in 2007.
[11:18] “It was definitely like the cliché hardworking San Francisco startup. I think a lot of people think of cliché startups is like climbing walls and ball pits but that wasn’t us at all…”
[13:36] Looking back, Ryan regretted investing more in sales before putting up their marketing machine.
[14:48] Marketing is cheaper than sales.
[24:22] Ryan learned how to code and started Toofr out for fun.
[26:37] He charged people through subscriptions and his first customers were his friends.
[28:38] “Being able to describe your products in few words is really powerful”
[31:40] Ryan hired a part-time content marketing manager.
[36:36] Prioritizing between his businesses and within his businesses is one of Ryan’s challenges.
[38:36] Ryan wrote a book entitled The Parallel Entrepreneur.
[43:36] “Just like starting a family, there is no perfect time to do it (starting a business), they just do it. And I think the entrepreneurs that are successful are the ones that don’t delay, don’t wait, and don’t overthink it.”

Fabulous 4 Questions:

📖📚 Favorite Book(s)? Tao Te Ching by Stefan Stenudd and Lao Tzu.
🙌😎 Favorite Amazon.com purchase? iPhone Charging Cable.
🌱💸 Favorite Tool that's GROWN your Business? Mixpanel, SEMRush.
💭💡 BIGGEST Challenge keeping your Business from GROWING? Prioritizing tasks both between and within my businesses.

Key Point from the Interview:

“Just like starting a family, there is no perfect time to do it (starting a business), they just do it. And I think the entrepreneurs that are successful are the ones that don’t delay, don’t wait, and don’t overthink it.”