Episode description

Landon Taylor created two successful digital marketing services businesses before starting a product-powered business with recurring revenues. His first agency drove traffic to its customers, which led to his second business, Best Company, which produced qualified leads for large home services businesses through its bestcompany.com consumer review site. 

Their work in consumer reviews led them to his latest business, Snoball, a word-of-mouth marketing platform they use to predictably and efficiently drive customer referrals. With their systematic approach and some human-in-the-loop help, Snoball creates a scalable customer acquisition channel for large home services businesses in the US. 

Landon speaks openly about his approach to “parlay” one business into another to create new businesses that are larger and more valuable than the last. Rather than raising big VC funding, Landon invests his own resources to find and create new businesses. 

Quote from Landon Taylor, CEO of Snoball

“Fear can be debilitating for an entrepreneur. If you fear failure, if you take a leap and you’re gonna fail, you’ll be paralyzed. You won’t be able to move forward, see opportunities, and take risks that will open up doors.

“You’ve gotta get to the mindset that failure is not fatal. Everybody who’s been successful has failed multiple times, right? So just take the leap. It can be a small leap. Or it could be a mental leap of believing that I can build, I can create, I’ve got something unique.

“It might be as simple as wanting to do a LinkedIn post, but you hit this wall of ‘I can’t.’ So get beyond that to believe I can, I’ve got something unique, I can build, I can create.”

• Landon Taylor on LinkedIn
• Snoball on LinkedIn
• Snoball website
• BestCompany.com website

This week’s podcast is sponsored by my friends at Cypress Growth Capital. For 15 years, Cypress has provided non-dilutive growth funding to bootstrapped SaaS founders, including many successful founders I’ve interviewed here on this podcast.

Connect with Cliff Sentell at cypressgrowthcapital.com/practical to find out how they can help with your practical growth plans. 

Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app.