The First Customer - Cold calling your way to a successful business with Nick Balée

Hi everybody, my name is Jay Agner. Welcome to the First Customer podcast. We talked to founders about, you guessed it, how they got their first customer. This episode and every episode is sponsored by my company JD A QA Software testing where your one stop shop for manual automated performance and security testing check us out at jdaqa. com. And with that let's get on with the show. Hi everyone, Welcome to the First Customer Podcast. My name is Jay Agner.

Today I'm lucky enough to be joined by Nick Ballet from Project Talent Group. Nick, how are you buddy? Hey, I'm doing well, Jay. Thanks for having me. Yeah, man, you got it. So Tulane graduate, I I see you jumped around a bunch through biz dev and a bunch of sales stuff along the way. So let's just kind of get started. Where where did you, where did you grow up and where did you go to high school and stuff? Yeah, so I'm actually, I'm originally

from Brazil, so I was born in Brazil. My dad is a cultural anthropologist and lived there for 10 years after his. PhD at Columbia and you know, my mom is Brazilian, was working in a museum. They got married and then I moved here. I moved to New Orleans when I was four years old, so grew up in New Orleans. That's a professor at Tulane I went to. Public school Gatorade. Then I went to Brother Martin High School for, you know, high school, and then I went to Tulane. So graduated Tulane 2010.

And yeah, I mean, New Orleans is a pretty cool place to grow up. I played a lot of chess as a kid. Tournaments,Hmm. you know, I was actually professionally trained by a like an international master. And you know, as a kid I usedWow. to, I used to write business plans. So like, you know, I've always wanted to have my own business. But I remember when I was 12, I would just, you know, I had this, I forget what that game was called. I think was called payday. I don't know OK now.

if you remember that game or not, but you could have these little business cards and like you, you would land on, you would land on a on a square and it would give you a company and then you could. To start building an empire and things like Wow. that. So I used to play that game by myself and like write out plans and things like that and. Yes. So I went to Brazil after college. So I got my undergraduate degree in history and went down to Brazil and studied in

the Amazon. And actually I started a company down there with the indigenous tribe that my dad got famous Hmm. with that called the Cop or Indian. So he, he did a lot of anthropological work down there. But I basically started a company to reforest the Amazon because there's a lot of lumbering organizations going in and cutting down their trees. So they offer these, they offer them money

in exchange for. Taking their wood. So I offered them money for the seeds from the trees and then sent them to reforestation companies and you know, it was like bottom at 50%, sold it for 100 and then you know, had kind of an operational business going. Wow. That is a. Story out of left field I I, you know, I try to do my homework a little bit on these calls I had would have had no idea that that was something you did. That's pretty cool. What was the name of that company?

Yeah, it was. It was called the Association of the Gup Indians. It wasOK. actually, it was a nonprofit. I wouldn't really call it a company, but it was it was sustainable. We were trying to create a sustainable environment to reforce the Amazon and. You know, ultimately, you know. That's not what I wanted to do long term. And Brazil. And it was great to go back down there. You know, I lived there for a year after college because, you know, I went a few times in high school and middle

school. But, you know, my mom side of the family was down there. So I I spent a whole year traveling the whole country. You know, I did a lot of archaeological Hmm. sites that was going to be an archaeologist, you know, that was going to maybe follow my dad's footsteps. Um. And yeah, I mean, but I've always had a passion, you know, for business That was kind of so when I when I started doing that company, I was like, wow, you know?Uh, my. My godfather

actually helped me do it. But you know, he had tried to get this set up for 10 years and then like, you know, I went in What and what a how old were you when you and did it in like 3 months. did that?Wow. So yeah, you you did get started early. 22. The history degree, I'm I'm curious because I thought I wanted to be a history teacher when I was a kid and then realized that was probably not a great long term profession, just financially Right.

what what kind of history? Did you study something specific or was it just kind of like general? Like how did that work? Yeah. So I mean I took a lot of courses and you know, like imperial Spain, Caribbean history was kind of my, myOK. Forte. You know, So I wrote my thesis state, my thesis paper on, you know, capitalism kind of growing in the 16th, 17th, 18th centuries and kind of what what that means for like, you know, modern, you know, ourHmm.

modern economy and you know where that comes from historically, I will say. You know, I didn't. I don't make money with my history degree. However, the amount of research that I had to do to write those papers is basically the same kind of research I do to run our business now. So going, going and finding leads Hmm. and like where do I, where do I contact

the leads and researching them. It's the same thing all you you write this, you write this document on imperial Spain, let's let's get all the magistrates in this little district and see what they had to say. And you put all the pieces Wow. Uh, that is together and then you write the paper. super. I I I do. I do Blinkist, which is, I don't know if you heard Blinkist before, but it's like kind of like Cliff notes for audio books.

And it'll like there was one the other day that was called Guns, Germs andOK. Steel. I know if you heard of that book before but it seems like it's right up your alley. It's about like how like the reason why Spain and those other countries just because of the geography being like east to West instead of north to South, let them grow crops like a lot easier than they they hold civilization and agriculture like, you know matured a lot faster which allowed them to kind of Really.

get the edge on the rest of. The world, basically, but a very cool book, so very, very interesting. I love the kind of tie, so. I mean obviously there's That's cool. a little bit of time between 22 when you did that business and and project talent Group, what did you kind of fill the time with in between there? So, you know, I came back to the United States. This was in 2011. And you know, that was kind of right after the, I guess, whatever the Great

Recession, right. So I was coming out of college 2010 and I knew New Orleans didn't have like the best, I think the economy for somebody like a business person, unless you're like a professional, like accountant, lawyer or doctor. I mean there are some industries, but there was, it was struggling for a Hmm. little while after Katrina. You know, I think, I think now they're, you know, economically thriving and things like that. But I remember I, I like the only

job I could get. Was a door to door sales job and it was like Commission only, right? So I would. I would go door to door trying to sell like New Orleans Hornets tickets to people in Right, right. parking lots, things like that. You know there was it was before Groupon, so I'd have these like promotional advertising like tickets and then but it was it was actually business to business.

So I would, I would go and then I would go in the buildings and just go into the office and say hey I got this thing for sale. You know sometimes there were GG golf courses like Planet Beach, things like that and ultimately that. Company moved me to Houston, TX, which so I stayed in New Orleans. Just it was short stint, you know, after coming back from Brazil and then I moved to Houston and then, you know, I was doing that for another six more months and then, you know, I got a I got a base

salary job. At a an Hmm. Right. IT telecommunications company? Same thing. Cold calling. And umm, yeah, I mean I I blew it out, the water actually, at that job. So like this Hmm. is like kind of when LinkedIn was starting to starting to become a thing And then I, you know, they gave me this territory to work like hey, this is your zip code, but if you have someone in your Right. personal network you can sell to that person. So it's like, alright, they gave

me the zip code. I didn't sell anyone in that zip code, you know. So I, I went on LinkedIn and I started finding people from my high school alumni association, Hmm. from Tulane alumni Association and just started building relationships, man. And then that's. But then I gave the training on LinkedIn and how to use it, and then Wow. Um, and I have to it, you know, kind of changed the landscape of how they're doing business imagine. That as a business ownernow.

those days conditioned you very well for the things you have to do today. Ohh, yeah. I mean, I I think all that experience, you know, like if I were to Right. try to start this ten years ago, probably no shot. You know what I mean? Just the level of because I remember I'd be in these calls with people and I'd have to bring us me in. To. Right. You know, figure out what the companies needs were because I didn't understand. I didn't even know what I was selling. I Right.

was like, alright, here, let me just go, let's go door to door. Like here, do you want to buy it? Like I know it's good. It's a good product, you know. And ultimately that's what I learned about, you know, business is just, it's just relationships and you know the relationships, it's not what I did learn in my sales career is that I was trying to be everybody's friend. Hmm. And you know, sometimes people would just be wasting my time kind of thing. You know, they wouldn't have a need. I'd be

talking to them for months. Now I've Right. learned the relationship is built over fulfilling the needs. So now I just go after the need and build a relationship and the foundation from that because ultimately, you know, the service we provide is, you know, we're transforming companies through empowering people. So I get to be the matchmaker between changing Right. Wow. No, I someone's life for their career and love that. I love that sales experience. helping a company transform.

I hear that from a lot of. Business or more on the coaching side and the marketing sides, they they're always recommend. Business owners have some sort of sales training or experience you know I mean it's and it's until I until I personally. And I said this in a few episodes, but I can't remember where I heard it now. But if somebody was like, you know, name the I, maybe it was the fanatical prospecting book Jeb Blount or

whatever. But he was like, you know, name the top five things you think of when you hear the word salesman. And it's like pests or like annoying and like, you know, all these things that like kind of prevent people, I think business owners and founders, etcetera, from really going after it because they don't want to be the sales guy that they've been annoyed with their entire life. Right. Have you found that to kind of ring true?For you.

Yeah, a little bit. I mean in in my industry, you know I I guess I'm a sales centric CEO where you know I think I think the CEO of any companies, you know a sales role because ultimately you're marketing your brand, you're marketing the product, you know what's your business is doing the vision. And so you know kind of transition into this was it was a nice flow. You know, I did find that yeah people, people can get you know upset when you reach out but you know. ForYep.

me, it's not about it's you might get 9 nose, but it's all about that one. Yes, you know what I mean? So persistence is key. A lot of people aren't made out for sales, you know, So I've seen, I've seen a lot of people watch out. Like if you Right. Yeah. No, that's that's, I think make it past the first, I'd say three that's the key is the. Once years, you're probably going to stay. in, that's kind of where I was alluding

to is like once I did. Realized that I was a salesman because people would ask me like, what are you the sales guy for your company? I'm like, what do you mean I'm the CEO, I'm not the sales guy. But once I realized I am the sales guy, the light kind of turned on and business opened up. So. Typically I ask what your first business was. You started, but you already went over that. So that's that's pretty cool. Typical. Tell me about project talent. Like where,

where did that come from? Like, where, you know, where did it grow out of? OK. So I I worked in the telecommunications industry for 3 1/2 ye ars andthen I got into staffing in 2014. So nine years ago strictly on the business development side, you know, worked for a lot of different agencies and you know then it became pretty clear as like this is this is not that difficult to do. You know, I was like well, this is I was really passionate about it, however, you

know, I felt like. A lot of the organizations that work for, we're kind Hmm. of trying to mold me into the messaging that they wanted me to say, right? They're like, hey, say this, this is how this is what you're supposed to say. And then that wouldn't work. And then when I would say the things I wanted to say, it would work, right? So ultimately when I

start a project talent group. I just did it my way and you know we got 40 sign clients, you know, 4 full time employees Now I mean we're we're growing really, really fast and for me it's all about the authentic self. So you know, project talent, you know, we're really, we really, it's like be cool, be you. I don't want to get in your way, but just kind of you go set the world on fire by, you know, being your authentic self to Right.

the customer because ultimately if it's relationships you can't really quantify human into a robot. So I think a lot of these bigger companies and that's why, you know, there's a lot of turnover. Is you know they try to kind of put you into their platform and like this is how you have to be and you know for me personally that just that didn't work for me. So ultimately that's why you know I wanted to to to branch out and start my own

Wow. Well, congratulations. You have thing and then you know here we are weathered the first year of storms. You actually we're we're coming up on a year and five days. know, I'm sure there's been lots of challenges along the way. What were some of the things that set you back initially from starting? Like what what Yeah. kind of what reasons why you didn't start sooner? Ohh. You know, I think there's probably a little bit of fear, you know, and.

I was like, yeah, I wanna do this. But you know, I realized everything that I want is on the other side of fear, so. You know, fear is false. Evidence appearing real or face everything arise. And then when I started getting into into How did you? the practice of just consistently facing Attack such a crowded space. my fear, like I grew into who I was supposed to be. So. Yeah, That's a good question. That's a good question.

Because sales are sales, right. I think it has to do with the amount of outreaches and it's also, you know, the relationships that you build. It's the like I said, going back to the authenticity, it's like, OK, so when I started out my brands, Nick Bullet, right. So let me go out and make as many connections as possible, so. I probably reached out to, I want to say 50,000 prospects, you know, because I realized that, you know, kind of based off my kind of previous ratios, I wasHmm.

like, all right, for every 1000 phone calls that I did. Would would convert to Right. one deal. So it's like so how do I do that as many times as possible. So I just basically like, so I just wrote, I wrote out a plan, I was like alright this is how many numbers it's going to take to get you know a customer and then once I get the customer I got to fulfill the need. So if I get as many customers as possible I'm going to have a Did you? Was it? And you don't have to

better shot at closing the deal. So I get into too much, but what? What just, I just played the numbers man, mechanism?Did you use for outreach? Was that's what I did. that like phone calls? Was it emails or LinkedIn? Was it a combination of those things or? Yeah, it was. It was a combination. You know what I what I realized is it's been mostly e-mail marketing. You know,Hmm.

so it's funny because I used to do like 200 callsa day in, you know, some call centers and maybe talk to one person or two people or whatever, but people seem to be a lot more receptive to, you know, the digital marketing, you know, e-mail marketing, , LinkedInyou Right. know, it's just, hey, here's what I do. This is, this is, this is who I am. Let me know if you need help without any without really trying to push it that

much you know because. That's what I learned too, because you were talking about earlier about, you know how sales can come off as pushy and you know that kind of methodology, it's not. I just, I Hmm. learned overtime and I used to be like that when I was younger. But overtime, it's just that's just not how it works. You know, people aren't receptive to that. And there's nothing wrong with like putting your name out there and

trying to get business. You know, that's that's, you know, we're in America this is who we are. You know, so I I kind of So. got into that psych psychological perspective, you know, of service and I'm trying to fulfill. So I've done a lot of self help books. I've Hmm. read a lot of stuff, You know, it's it's about being in alignment with helping

others. So when I'm helping others and I and I and I focus on that, then it's not as transactional, it's more So is that based off of a specific sales of a relationship and I'm trying to give and then when I when I give that's that's strategy that you use or is it kind of when it comes back as opposed to trying just something you develop over time to go and take. yourself? I've I've been through probably What would be your? What would be your

most recommended?Book or 9 or 10 different sales trainings, and sales training to a business owner who this is this is a conglomeration of all those. doesn't have a bunch of sales experience. OK, alright. I'll put those in the notes. So I would say Sandler sales training is a good one as well as Brian Tracy, Psychology of Sales. So he talks about the the mind, the mind, because it all starts here because. When you're on the phone with somebody. They

can feel your energy. So if you're in a place where I gotta hit a number, I'm gonna do this, I gotta do that. You know, that's not authentic. So that's why I keep bringing it back to the authenticity So how did you, how do you balance piece, which is like everyone that works keeping that on the authenticity but also here. It's like, hey, just be you, be calm, just talk to people, you know, kind of wrangling your your team That's that's really how we get things into a brand or or kinddone here.

of you know some some set of standard operating procedures like how, how do you kind of balance the two? Yeah. I mean, that's a good question. So every organization needs structure, right, and organizational development and you need sales to move things, move things forward. You need OPS to kind of hold things together. You know, I I learned that early in my career. Because I was, I was getting all these deals in, right? And then the team couldn't fulfill it because I was bringing him way too

fast. So I was like, OK, well, I have to listen to the internal side. It's just different sides of the brain. So I was a pretty high eye on a DISC assessment. And a lot of people in operations and finance are, you know, like conscientious orHmm. esses. So I learned the different communication styles and how to articulate, you know, where a deal was because sales is also its external sales, Right, interesting. but it's internal sales within the

organization. I can bring a deal in, then I got to sell my team on Hey, let's work this order. So that's that's kind of how. You know, one of the things that we figured out here is what everybody's role is. So now you know we're working and seeing, you know, if like we kind of made this Hmm. analogy to like a band playing music, like if if one person's off chord or off key, you know the whole song is off. So we're all, we're all in key right

now. You know, like you know I'm running sales got the somebody working on Right. Interesting. I like the band analogy. That's a good one. recruiting, I got another guy doing OPS. You know, so and it's just we're just now What? What do you how did you did you start?And then you mentioned you're kind just a like In Sync unit.

of 50,000 prospect approach, which is very interesting, but did you start with a niche in mind with like kind of who you're going after or did you define that and is that still changing today? Yeah, that's another good question. So it. You know, my background is mostly IT engineering, you know a little bit of finance that's kind of. So I kind of

started with that. So you know my my first big customer was a big software company here in Philadelphia and you know made a bunch of placements early on had some success started bringing people on board to try to expand into other verticals. So now Hmm. Interesting. you know our our, our verticals now we we

did find our niche basically. So it's it's IT engineering, financial services and legal and we don't do anything else outside of that you know because in the beginning I did you know we got a lot of jobs that. You know, we're just completely outside of the wheelhouse and we're just spinning our wheels trying to fill a little order, but you know. It's Hmm. all about kind of being an expert in a couple of areas and then that's because our ultimately our, our product is our

talent and our ability to find talent. So we try to recruit in the same verticals. So you know, let's say hey you come to me, I need to hire an IT project manager. Hmm. Well, cool. I got four other clients that Got it. Wow, very. I like that answer. I'm recruiting on for the same position. Here's some people that are warm in the So, so you mentioned your first pipeline. So it's it's faster speed to customer. I don't want you to mention it market because deliveries, everything.

by name, but how did you get that first customer? So it was. It was actually from that initial e-mail outreach. So IRight. you know had this database of emails and then I just started downloading you know names and going back to that that history paper kind of research methodology where hey, let's. So basically I found target sized companies that I wanted to work with and I knew there would be low

barrier to entry. And then I just reached out to who I knew the decision makers were that were probably going to have a need in the area that I focus on. And then I reached out to all of them in Philly. And then I got into a really nice sized client that had multiple jobs And you know, he had aHmm. terrible experience with recruiters in the past. They weren't giving them the Hmm. time of day. They didn't want to focus. So I was like, OK, well let me do the

best that I can, you know. So I actually was working like 90 hours a week to fill That's interesting. A lot of people, that order. And then I got their first customer was somebody. From them all filled. And you know, he's a their previous life. You know, friend, he's one of my best clients today. family, whatever. But yours I think based off of your. Pretty strong sales background was from a more traditional sales outreach campaign,

right. That's an interest, it's, it's different, which kind of speaks to your, your strength in that area, right, Because a lot of people probably wouldn't even even if they had 50,000 contacts wouldn't know what the hell to do with them, right. So the fact that you were able to go through those and then land a sizable client is, is impressive. So if you, if you had to kind of take everything and you've actually alluded to Right.

a little bit earlier, if you had to kind of take everything you know today and if you were to start Project Talent Group Thank you. over tomorrow, what would be your first step? Hmm. Yeah, that's a. That's a good question because now we're coming up on the year and I just kind of wrote out the business plan like where we are as a business, you know, it would really be. Coming up with some pretty hard boundaries about what we're going to work

Hmm. and what we're not going to work. You know, like these are the payment terms. This is the kind of contract we want because I got a lot of contracts in the beginning that were just all over the place, you know, like net 90, net 60. So and in verticals that were just kind of all over like I got a healthcare client of you know wanted to hire doctors and you know just. Couldn't find anyone for that. So if I was going to start from Yeah, that makes sense.

scratch again, I would just say, hey, I'm just going to go, I'm going to just going I think a lot of companies are a lot of to only do it, nothing else. founders. And I mean, I was guilty of it too. And it sounds like you had a little And then whatever comes after that, bit of it when you started this was. You we'll, you know, we'll grow from there.

got you have to balance. Yeah. Taking in everything so you have business and you start, you know, keeping the lights on and all that sort of stuff which causes those 90 hour work weeks to start. But you have to balance that with eventually just stretching yourself so thin that you're not being effective anymore, right? Alright, well let's let's change gears a

little bit. What are three things that you're kind of doing on a daily, weekly, monthly, whatever basis to kind of increase your longevity to Right. make sure you're healthy for for, you know, as long as you possibly can be? Sure. You know, one one thing that I've learned about growth is that you can't grow in a place of comfortability. And you know, I used to be somebody that would avoid uncomfortable conversations. Mm-hmm.

So now with my team, you know we're just in the day-to-day like having uncomfortable conversations with like where we're at, how do we grow, where where are we going to focus on in those core areas and being able to listen and take that in and grow from that. You know, I think that's really helped us kind of figure out where we're going as a business in terms of what we do weekly It's going to be a little. and day-to-day. You know, like I, we have like a recruiting engine, like to

call it recruiting engine. My business partners is a in a car, she loves cars. It's got to be a well, well old machine, right. So we have our process in place with that. So every week we have a white board meeting where I track where we're at with interviews, what you know what, what process we are with the client. And then I look at the sales pipeline like hey these are the clients that were in Hmm. Very cool. warm conversations with like how do we activate those and then keep moving

things through the pipeline. So we have like closest to the dollar and then you have like. Be order, C order D order and it's just about moving things through to close. So we do that, we do that about Got it. like Monday and Friday. You know we'll touch base in the beginning. Hey, this is we're at setting weekly targets. And then Hmm. at the end of the week, Friday, today, we're like, hey, did we hit our target and instead of doing these stretch goals

like, hey, this is our 510 year plan. I kind of actually make an analogy to a like a, a football team because you know, when the Saints won the Super Bowl, I remember Drew Brees and Sean PaytonNo. talking about, yeah, we're just going to focus on this week. You know, they're they're not talking about what's going to happen in the playoffs or anything like that. It was just like they're the next team that's coming in. That's what that's they got their process, that's what

they're doing. So we've got really into like the day-to-day grind, but also just Makes sense. What about you personally? let's just tackle this for this week, What are you doing to?You this week, next week, and then, you know, not trying to set these. Level our long know the increase your longevity and your targets, but it's about kind of staying health. in the moment and focusing on what we can do today. Hmm. Yeah, That's a great question. So I I work out pretty frequently. You know, I

I, I don't. I basically created some