"What you sell" or "Who sells it" in business

After nearly 20 years of building businesses, I still find myself testing different paradigms or playbooks invented or pitched by solopreneurs or freelancers or infotainment entrepreneurs.

I know 99.9% of these are snake oil salesmen techniques, but I also recognize some niches haven't been filled yet. Still, most end up flopping, unless you execute with the amount of capital and manpower that a handful of alternative options come up, and this becomes less lucrative.

The newsletter feeding experience

A recent example here is an autopilot funnel with SparkLoop and Refind I've been running for a while, stopped in 2023, re-running a year ago, and stopping this month again after assessing results.

Autopilot systems tend to work in cycles, or more often, working for 3 weeks then poor results for 3 months, then another spike of new contracts or data pools, and degraded results a month in. This is why predictable results are unlikely, but a pool of poor subscribers results in the mix.

It's also hard to tell right away as many investors, execs, professionals still sign up with gmails and hotmails. Ever considered the people behind X or Reddit profiles? I can point at 30-40 millionaires with ridiculous X aliases and scary avatars that don't want to reveal their identity in public.

Similar trends with paid ads (LinkedIn in particular) which is a dead end all year long for B2B, and even Instagram yielding better results at this point!

The boat tour experience

Another primer here can be found in your restaurant pick up, looking for a new hairdresser, or travel experiences (like our family boat trip on Monday):

The Blue Lagoon is a beautiful spot near one of the islands here, accessible by boat, and therefore crowded with hundreds of small motor boats every day.

Since everyone provides the same service (boats), you'll find boat swamps on the beach, posters and billboards on the street, paid ads for rentals, caravans carrying boats on the corners. Picking one turns out to be a challenge, yet most intercept some business.

Are you in the “what" or “who" part of the sales journey?

Amazing businesses check both boxes - customers go to them because of a niche, quality, tailored service, and a great track record with a veteran executive team, long-lasting success, great reviews, etc.

In reality, most businesses can't tick most of these boxes. Remember, Nasdaq- leading tech companies reach trillion-dollar valuations, employ hundreds of thousands of people, spend hundreds of millions of dollars in advertisement, fly straight to their blue chip clients, organize epic events (Salesforce invited Metallica to their conference this year) and so on.

If you see a commodity product working well, it's either a marketing gimmick, or they invested heavier in one of these two areas:

1. Better positioning (new services or servicing better a fraction of their audience, specific segments they build stronger expertise in and differentiate)

2. Better brand/trust - more community support and ads, hiring executives with established networks, raising from VCs who can open doors, founders moving to San Francisco or New York to stay close to partners/clients/industry events

Both are possible, and most companies crawl up that latter one bit at a time. But staying afloat in a commodity market that gets more competitive daily is wishful thinking.

If you want to make it work today, you need moat. This is unquestionable expertise/trust/data/contacts you can't match easily with another vendor or pull with AI.

Mario

Hear from Telelink’s CISO Ognyan Yuskeseliev on turning compliance into your company’s biggest growth lever - watch the full podcast episode here:

🗣️ See how DevriX is building momentum - industry veterans joining our HQ, executive advisors guiding strategy, and frameworks that turn data alignment and AI augmentation into measurable revenue growth.

📚️ Books I read this month

• The FP&A Handbook: Mastering Financial Planning & Analysis (25% in)

• “Revenue Architecture” by Jacco van der Kooij (50% in)

• Ray Dalio’s “How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle” (45% in)

• Hooked - on habits and cues and product alignment (50% in)

• “The Sweaty Startup” by Nick Hueber (10% in)

🔖 Get more from your spend. Align formats and bidding strategies to reach intent-driven buyers and lower acquisition costs.

🔖 Deliver IT solutions with less code. See how consulting firms cut costs and speed up deployment using low-code automation.

🔖 Measure ROI in process redesign. Track both financial and operational gains from business process reengineering with this ROI evaluation guide.

🔖 Optimize how teams use resources. Learn how consultants apply resource allocation frameworks to boost efficiency and reduce waste.

🔖 Build smarter lead scores. Use this data-driven lead model to prioritize high-intent buyers and tighten your B2B funnel.

🔖 Use AI against evolving threats. Organizations deploy neural networks for real-time cyber detection from insider breaches to zero-day attacks.

🔖 Handle skewed data effectively. Boost model accuracy in fraud and churn prediction by rebalancing imbalanced datasets.

🔖 Your brain bends your sense of time. Memory, stress and perception reshape how we judge duration, affecting daily decision-making study.

🔖 Simplify to strengthen long-term gains. Allocate budgets toward systems with compounding returns, guided by the Silence Dividend.

📰 Undersea cuts hit Azure services. Undersea cable cuts in the Red Sea disrupt Microsoft Azure in key regions.

📰 Uneven job growth warns of recession. Healthcare and hospitality jobs now drive growth, a typical precursor to economic downturn.

📰 French government struggles amid debt woes. Bayrou’s exit leaves Macron choosing his fifth prime minister to manage €3.3T debt.

📰 Germany signals foreign policy shift. Chancellor Merz proposes a national security council and alters China ties.

📰 Streaming levels sports ad field. Dynamic streaming ads let smaller brands secure prime sports spots once exclusive to global names.

📰 Protecht adds AI to risk strategy. Protecht’s Cognita integrates AI into risk workflows and ensures clarity with auditable guidance.

📰 Koah adds ads to AI apps. Koah raises funding to introduce in-chat ads for broader monetization.

📰 Global AI rules redefine competition. Evolving AI regulations in the U.S., EU and China now shape market access and margins.

📰 AI transforms front-end development. AI tools speed up dev cycles by automating design to code processes.

📰 Murdoch settlement cements media control. A $3.3B deal secures Lachlan Murdoch’s hold over Fox News and WSJ trusts.

📰 GPT and Gemini spark AI competition. OpenAI’s GPT and Google’s Gemini drive enterprise AI adoption as Apple and Meta join.

Let’s see the latest offers from Flippa. Don’t forget to sign up for their newsletter for daily/weekly/monthly offers like these.

Profitable LA Pet Care Business: A trademarked pet care brand in Los Angeles with recurring bookings, 150+ clients, and turnkey operations. Generates steady revenue with low overhead and a 51% profit margin - offered at $140,000 (reduced 7%)

AI Review WordPress Site: An AI-focused review site monetizing through advertising, sponsored content, and affiliate marketing of AI products and services. Streamlined operational model allows for easy management and scalability - asking price is $200,000.

Footwear Review WordPress Site: An established review and content site covering running shoes, hiking shoes, and GPS watches. Features 1,000+ published articles and generates revenue through affiliate partnerships and display ads - asking price is $443,696.

Bulgarian Workwear Amazon Store: An 11-year-old Amazon FBA business based in Bulgaria, specializing in high-quality protective workwear and accessories. The business is run by a lean team and leverages Sellerboard for automated monitoring of sales, ads, and inventory - selling for $1,602,532.

Electronics eCommerce Retailer: A 31-year-old B2B/B2C electronics retailer in IT and consumer electronics with a strong 101K Facebook presence and loyal customer base. Operates with an 84-person team and uses AI-driven automation to boost efficiency - selling at asset value for $12,200,000. 

Need My Help?

Keeping myself busy - here are the main projects I focus on:

🌐 Scaling enterprises on top of WordPress? DevriX provides martech retainers to SMEs, publishers, eCommerce, SaaS, and more. Our plans start from $1,200/mo to $40K/mo and we manage high-traffic platforms (hundreds of millions of monthly views), B2B SaaS apps, partnership management solutions, supporting $10M - $250M businesses with scalability, custom funnels, CRO, big data augmentation, AI-driven processes, HubSpot workflows, programmatic SEO - and everything a modern business requires in digital in 2025.

🚀 Work 1:1 with me? At Growth Shuttle, I run two popular plans: Async Advisory ($3,500/mo) for $3M - $30M founders and executive teams and the smaller Strategic Growth Circle ($997/mo) for $100K - $500K entrepreneurs, agency founders, scale ups.

🌠 Feature your business across the community? The B2B Ecosystem includes this newsletter and 40 other digital properties (directories, newsletters, blogs, SaaS, and social accounts) targeting B2B executives. See how your business can benefit.

📈 International founder looking into US LLCs? Check out doola and their “Business in a Box” model. Suitable for both foreigners and US citizens and both for residents and non-residents.

📊 Into digital M&A? I work closely with Flippa’s marketplace. They offer a vast variety of online businesses for any buyer’s interest. Or if you’re ready for an exit, Flippa provides the tools to list your business and close the deal.

💼 Looking for investment opportunities? Check out SeedBlink.