Episode 25 – Dancho Dimkov – BizzBee Solutions (Empowering Businesses)

16 Oct 2020

In the #25 episode of AskDproS Business Show, with Kesiena Aaron-Efe, Dancho was the honoured guest.

Dancho followed his dreams to the very end. He never once gave up, which made him the man, the father and the CEO he is today.

Dancho talks about his professional development and career, but also shares the story about BizzBee’s roots.

Other topics:
1. Being a digital nomad;
2. Freelancing;
3. Pros and cons of running a company;
4. Specialisation in B2B lead generation;
5. Starting a business with your spouse;
6. Having 30+ full-time employees;
7. Building BizzBee’s brand;
8. Standing out from the crowd;
9. Social media presence;
10. Building relationships in the B2B world and
11. LinkedIn.

Speakers

Podcast Links

Presentation Transcript

[00:00:00.000] – Kesiena – Welcome to AskDproS Business. AskDproS Business is about speaking to guys like you that have been there, done that, experiences, challenges, and things have worked well for you, and things that did not work so well for you. You come on the show, share your journey, your story so that all the people that want to go into business, we know that, you know, doing this. This will be the challenges that you face, you know. So guys on this show, we have Dancho. Dancho is a founder of BizzBee Solutions, which is a digital marketing agency. And Dancho is here to tell us his journey how they started. And now, I believe now he has a team behind him. The system is not more automated, which makes it easier for him. And Dancho on this show, we start from the beginning, which means telling us how these all things started for you? So for you, how the journey start for you?

[00:00:55.970] – Dancho – Yeah. Hello Kesiena. First, thank you very much for having me on the show. I’m always excited just to participate in this kind of podcast show, because if we can inspire at least few people to take on the entrepreneurial journey, we did our job. I mean, I know it’s a rough path. There are upsides and downsides, but, I mean, it’s not a one way thing you should more look at as a lifestyle rather than let’s make a business and run. But it’s more like, yeah, I want to be my own boss, and I want to keep doing what I want and probably someone to pay me for what we do.

[00:01:33.980] – Kesiena – Yeah, you’re welcome. You’re welcome, my friend. You’re welcome.

[00:01:36.840] – Dancho – I was just figuring out how did you named the podcast, but now I’ve realized it is ask the pros, and that as the pros. And I was like, okay, weird name. But now when you pronounce it, I was like, okay, now it’s clear.

[00:01:49.820] – Kesiena – It’s AskDproS because you had the pro, so I’m asking the pro.

[00:01:57.080] – Dancho – At one point I didn’t capture that part, that that was the meaning, but now I know it at least.

[00:02:02.180] – Kesiena – Yeah, it’s “ask the pros”.

[00:02:05.630] – Dancho – Ah nice. I should have one with ZZ, like BizzBee Solutions.

[00:02:10.820] – Kesiena – Yeah, Superman. So it’s all good.

[00:02:16.570] – Dancho – Nice! So, Kesiena, to not give you the long story, because then I’ll at least need a beer or something. But in short, yeah, I was actually working for a software and hardware development company, and we were doing hardware and a lot of weird codes. I’m an economist in background, so I’m not a developer. And I was actually managing the software development team. And it was a real hustle to talk with people. With IT people in particular. I mean, they’re in their own world. They have their own language, they have their own conversation. And it was really hard for me because on the other side, after work, I was working as a freelancer. I mean, Upwork, people per hour, you name a freelance platform, I was there. Where I was doing what I really liked it, doing market research, business plans, working with entrepreneurs and, you know, being always on top of the latest trends and technologies. So the switch for me personally was that at one point I was earning more money from my freelancing world than actually being at the full-time job. So I will be nine to five, and then from there, I actually need to keep on working and doing what I want. And at that point I said, look, software development, good salaries, of course, in the IT. But on the other hand, the passion that I had was more into working with entrepreneurs and having my own company.

[00:03:36.960] – Kesiena – Absolutely.

[00:03:38.090] – Dancho – So, like it or not, I mean, trade-offs, here you work 8 hours, here you work far less and you still get the same money. So as a young and lazy guy, I said, quit the job, take the freelancing world. And, you know, it is a risky move, especially because at that time I was just married, like, three months since I was married. And it is a risky move. I had an apartment on the lease that I need to start paying. But it did work out fine.

[00:04:05.160] – Kesiena – But it was your passion, you followed your passion anyway.

[00:04:09.510] – Dancho – Yeah, the passion was the driving force because I was like, yeah, I can keep climbing the corporate ladder and learn my even higher salary. But, you know, when you’re watching on the clock, what time is it? And when I’m going home, it’s not really a passion compared to, I would realize that it’s 03:00 a.m. and I’m still doing what I want. It has a completely different sense. And I was like 27-28 at that time, I decided to actually be a digital nomad. And as a digital nomad, you’re like, you, your car and your wife and you’re just travelling around Europe. I mean, we are based in Macedonia. So for us, it was really a driving distance to go to Germany, to go to France, to go to Italy, to go to Spain, to go to Netherlands and see all the nice stuff. And, you know, the digital nomad life. You woke up, you work a bit, you travel a bit, then you work again a bit. Then you travel to a different city or different country, and it is living the dream at that age. But at a certain point, you realize that that is not what you want in life. I mean, yeah, we all want to just walk around and enjoy the beach and everything. But at some point when you start considering about family or growing your family, but also growing your business, not just as a freelancer, you’re realizing that, like it or not, you actually need people in order to grow the business. So you can start working on your own. But then as you have more work and more work, you actually need people. You need people to start working alongside with you in order to keep up with the demand. And of course, when there is enough clients, you don’t want to just give up on those. You always have to capture the work. And with that driven intention, for me, it was that okay, we need to start a team in Macedonia in order to keep on with the management consulting, but also having the travelling lifestyle. My first thought was that easy peasy, just hire some freelancers from third country. And then there you go. You have a team. We tried, it didn’t work.

[00:06:12.980] – Kesiena – I did that.

[00:06:15.180] – Dancho – You also tried that route? That route didn’t work at all, because when people work as freelancers, it means that they probably have a different work that is full time. And then you cannot really get the quality that you want within that time frame. And there are so many different mentalities. I mean, we work with people from India, people from Philippines, from Bangladesh. And, yeah, there were some really good freelancers from them. But there were also a lot of people that they were just saying, okay, we’ll do it and then just disappearing. And I’ve realized that they’re affecting my brand and image, because in front of the clients, they’re talking with me. They have no idea that there are people behind. And then I realized that, like it or not, there has to be a company, with people full time that I could maintain the quality. So, for example, if I don’t like something I can say, okay, let’s do it from scratch. I’m not happy. I’m not comfortable just giving it to the client. But, you know, when you start building a team, it has a lot of new headaches because I didn’t had an experience before that. So it was like, okay, there are a bunch of people in an office, and you need to figure out what to do with them.

[00:07:26.760] – Kesiena – So what was the most difficult thing that you faced?

[00:07:33.050] – Dancho – Well, in terms of difficulties, it was having too many hats. I need to be my marketing hat. I need to start promoting the company and ensure that our voice is heard. Second, I need to put my hat and actually try to talk with clients, negotiate with prospects, and try to get some work. Then I need to be actually a project manager because I need to have a team and tell them what to do and measure and everything. And on top of that, I need to figure out how to keep developing the company on a strategic level, like introducing new services. And there are position intended for all these that you as an individual need to do on your own. And it’s interesting Kesiena, I mean, if you have a partner or if you start the company with five people, you can delegate, you’ll be responsible for that, you for that. But when you’re starting on your own, you need to make sure of all of that. Because if you’re too focused on sales, there will be so many clients that you cannot serve or if you’re focused too much on the execution. Yeah, clients will be here. But there will be no new ones. And that is like juggling between either execution either marketing.

[00:08:37.790] – Kesiena – You have to have a balance.

[00:08:40.040] – Dancho – Yeah, and the balance is always important, but I somehow always neglected it. I mean, for me, balance is taking everything into consideration. Well, for me, I’m like focus. Are we now in execution? Let’s do execution. Are we now in sales? Let’s do sales. And it brought a lot of headaches in that area.

[00:08:59.880] – Kesiena – Yeah.

[00:09:01.560] – Dancho – And when we started BizzBee, I’ve started myself, my wife and four interns, we couldn’t even afford to have full-time employees. So we started with interns and then started growing them into full-time employees. And it’s interesting, Kesiena, I mean, when you bring people and you know that this is it, time flies. I mean, we had days where we work 18 hours per day. It’s like from morning till evening. But, you know, as you said, the passion when you were inspired on what you’re doing, you stop counting time. And when they said, was it yesterday or was it last week? And we were like, we stoped counting time. For us is just pushing forward and pushing the boundaries. So that was how we actually got to BizzBee. And its starting point with four interns. And the next stage in our company was the exponential growth. I mean, within twelve months, we went to four people to 30 something people, within twelve months. And those, I think, were the key mistakes that are interesting for entrepreneurs, because in terms of starting a business, I mean, yeah, you can just say tomorrow I’m starting the business, go start the company and that’s it. But, to survive alongside that high growth, or even, we had to take a step back in order to continue the growth. That I think was the most valuable part here. So what happened with us was that we were always sales-driven. If there are clients, we recruit more people. If there are clients, we recruit more people. But at one stage, we had projects that are like, we need ten people for two months. And those are our risky move, because, yeah, if you want to fulfill, you need to hire ten people in a very short time frame. But while recruiting all that, we got to a point that we were 30 people, without any capacity of the company. We didn’t have any HR, we didn’t have any structural marketing. We didn’t have project management in place. So it was like headaches, headaches, headaches.

[00:11:07.260] – Kesiena – And there was no proper organizational structure, right?

[00:11:10.320] – Dancho – Nothing, nothing. And I was really feeling like Superman just jumping from fire to fire and extinguishing them as they become. But then I realized I was really doing it wrong. I mean, you cannot rush the growth of a company or growth of the business. Yeah, you can get some venture capital. Someone throws a lot of money, and then you can bring a group of 10, 20, 30 people in a group. But that’s not the thing. That’s just a group of people. And that’s where I realized that if we want to grow, we need to take a step back, slow down a bit on the growth. Start focusing more on the current people that we have. Start thinking about project management, start thinking about, okay, but where are we headed this BizzBee Solution. I mean, we were offering market research services, business planning services, lead generation services, product sourcing. And they were like five or ten more services. So we were all over the place. And our primary focus was also on the freelancing platform. I mean, that was my background as a freelancer. So for me, it was like the more you apply on more job gigs, the more work you get, the more people you need to execute. But then we realized that I hadn’t spent a dime on marketing or on promotion in things that actually you need if you want to grow as a company. And this was actually a turnover Kesiena for us, because we realized that you cannot just jump on the freelance platform and grow to 30 people and still depend on the freelance platform. The freelancing became so competitive because people were offering very low value, very low pricings, which was quite competitive for us to compete. And we said, okay, well, let’s actually move outside freelancing world. And then I realized how hard is to run a company. I mean, if you can consider that you need blog post, you need a website, you need social media, you need content creation, you need so many things and so little time. And this is the main problem that I personally face. But honestly, based on that, it was the main service that we offered. If you check our website, now we’re specialist in B2B world when it comes to lead generation and appointment setting. So probably I need to go over all those pains in order to realize that you need a constant flow of flips in order to grow your business. But also you need to have your marketing, sales in and check in order to have a healthy growth rather than now you have five leads, then zero, then one. And perhaps driven by that, we actually now specialize in B2B lead generation. That’s how currently BizzBee operates. And that’s how we currently help clients.

[00:13:52.640] – Kesiena – Cool Dancho, nice. I love the journey, the story so far. You going back a bit. You spoke about starting this with your wife. So starting with your wife, was it like a partnership or she was just helping you?

[00:14:06.590] – Dancho – Well, formally, I think the company is registered on my name and she was helping me. But in practice, it was like shoulder to shoulder. I was working 18 hours, she was working 18 hours as well. And perhaps that helped me a bit because, you know, when you feel down or depressed, you know that you’re not alone and that your spouse is also here with you in order to help you through the journey. I mean, there are so many entrepreneurship stories I’ve heard is like they did 18 hours per day, and then they got home and then their wife or spouses, okay, it can be also for men, are not satisfied with the relationship and they get divorced and the marriage falls apart. While in my case, I got lucky, I think. I mean, my wife was also excited in this. So we were like, hand to hand pushing things forward were yeah, different activities. But all the effort that I put, I think that my wife put the same effort as well.

[00:15:03.880] – Kesiena – Okay. So there was the job satisfaction between the both of you. And you said that that really made you do business properly. Because you know that you had that shoulder, you have that partner and you have that person to cry to when it’s not going well. And you guys can put your ideas together and you grow the business from there, right?

[00:15:27.580] – Dancho – Yeah. Well, Kesiena, starting a business and running a business is a pure roller coaster. It goes so up, then tomorrow there is two pissed of clients that are cursing around, it goes so down. Then after three days, you get a new project, you’re so excited. And then the other three clients from previous said that they want to do a follow-up project. You’re extremely excited, you’re jumping on the clouds. And then the next two months, there is not enough work to cover the capacity. So you’re juggling between stuff. So it is really a roller coaster. And I mean, I could recommend to partner with someone because it takes a toll. I mean, you shouldn’t sleep for months, for years. And it’s not a sprint. You cannot just start a business in two months, become a millionaire. But it is a marathon, it takes time, it takes passion. So if you’re really stuck with something for the rest of your life, at least choose a business that you enjoy doing. I mean, choose a business that your’re passion. It’s not like you’re gonna work less or smarter, but at least you’re going to enjoy during the hours that you spend in work.

[00:16:32.350] – Kesiena – So as of all the rules you spoke about earlier, it could be the marketing, the editing, the sales. Now that you have a team, what role do you play the company now?

[00:16:46.220] – Dancho – Well, now it’s a different story. I mean, BizzBee is five years on the market already, and now we are 20 something people. And that’s the interesting part. At this point, I don’t know how many employees we have and I’m saying full-time employees in house. Because now we have a sales team with the sales manager. We have a marketing team with a marketing manager and a project manager that takes care of the employees and the execution. And from day one, when I was starting BizzBee, my whole goal is to create a company that would work independently from me. I mean, at the end of the day Kesiena, when I took those initial interns, they had one goal. The moment they won’t need me, they’re hired. And we keep on with that strategy because I needed a business that could operate without the owner, because in so many cases, the company cannot breathe and everything is towards a single person, which becomes a bottleneck. And now, for example, the project manager has the authority and the capacity to fire people. She doesn’t like someone to work with, she just fires them or they’re incompetent. But then she puts a new job ad, she does the interview, she recruits people, she onboards them, trains them and get them. And it’s the same for the sales manager, and the marketing manager. So I’m not really needed in the ongoing activities. And honestly, I have the cycle closed, so marketing can actually bring the awareness, can bring some interested leads, and then they move them to the sales, sales then have several calls, proposals, financial decision making. They do the decisions. And from there, there is usually a kickoff call where the sales person is meeting with the project manager and the client. There is a proper transfer where the project manager takes off. If the project is one month, six months, twelve months, the project manager is doing the execution, and then we have the administration that takes care of invoicing, legal part and everything else. So even if I disappear for a month or two, which before the Corona we were actually going to different places for two to three weeks, I know that the company keeps generating money and keeps working. That was maybe also a problem for me when I was a freelancer, that if I get sick or if my wife gets sick, there is no more revenue. I mean, we both stop working, take care of each other, and there is no additional revenue. Well, when you have a company and when you have a structure in place, even when you take a holiday or even when you are sick, you know, the company keeps working.

[00:19:15.060] – Kesiena – Yeah. Works for you.

[00:19:16.410] – Dancho – And honestly, that helps me just to add on top of that, for me to focus now my time instead of working in the company to start working on the company. So now everything I do is strategically oriented, whether we are creating new services, whether I’m creating webinars or whether even like this, I’m trying to spread the word to as many podcasts as possible in order to inspire other entrepreneurs to start the entrepreneurship journey. Now I’m even writing a book, which is expected mid 2020 – 2021 to be out. I mean, it is like 250 pages. But in order to do that, you need time. You need time to things to stop or continue without you. So you can actually focus on improving your services, improving the processes, figuring out completely new services that you can introduce. But now I have the luxury to do that. Before that it was like juggling between a lot of it.

[00:20:13.680] – Kesiena – Yeah. Now you said BizzBee is five years now. Were there points in building this brand that you said to yourself, okay, this is it now. We are going all in. Was it the second year or third year? What point did things really start getting, you said, this is it now, no going back for me?

[00:20:36.600] – Dancho – Well, I think that from day one for me, it was no going back because, you know, we took a loan. We rented an office, we bought five, six computers. We hired four interns. And I was like, I have enough money for two months to figure this out. Otherwise, we had an apartment that we need to pay. We had bills that we needed to pay. And from there, we never looked back. I mean, I’ve, even one point, we said, okay, let’s quit the company and find a job. Because first, it was very inspiring for us to grow BizzBee as a company. A second, we learned a lot. I ever have a theory that if you’re a business owner in one year, you can learn almost as a four years working as an employee in a corporation. Because as an employee, you have jobs and responsibilities and you learn them and you go in-depth. While an entrepreneur, it’s like, okay, we have a problem. I need to learn all about it and how to solve it. Once you solve that, there is a new problem, then you need to learn a lot about that. So it’s never the same day again. Every day is a completely new experience. But like it or not, that for me became like normal. It’s like, okay, one month ago, not two months ago, sorry, we said, let’s introduce newsletter. So bee-weekly, now we have a newsletter. But in order to that small project to work out, there were so many decisions. They were so learning curve. Okay a newsletter, what should we have? What kind of section? What should we put in each section? Now we have it for like, a few months and then it’s standardized and I’m losing the excitement. Now we’re saying, okay, let’s do video interviews. Who are we going to interview? What’s going to be in the interview? How we going to promote, which is completely new. Now we’ve did, like, ten different video interviews. So that’s good. Now I’m saying, okay, how about if we create a digital B2B marketing magazine? Can we do that or what if we actually create a series of webinars? So as I’m showing you that it’s not learn one thing, and I’m just going to keep on doing that. But it’s always doing something new, something exciting, something that you’ve never even considered before. And you need a lot of learning and you need a lot of mistakes in order to capture it.

[00:22:42.510] – Kesiena – Yeah, it’s a good idea. But now in BizzBee, what are you basically doing? What I understand is you’re adding different products. There is no one product like other. There are different products to their products, so they can start with like a Coca Cola start, we just said Coke anyway. But later on, you have the first price, you have the fans, you have other products. So you’re adding different products to your brand. And now there’s the question I always ask in my interviews. At what point did you sat back, look at BizzBee and say, this is my brand now and I’m going to grow this brand. How have you managed to brand your business to be different from others? In a way, what makes you different to other people doing the same thing as you? The same B2B digital marketing around you or anywhere else to say?

[00:23:40.680] – Dancho – I see. Well, when I started BizzBee, I mean, the business “B” in our title is also as a business B, as you can see the BizzBee. We were focused on a marketing capture that has unlimited potential in marketing in terms of hard-working bees, you can create logos, you can create bees with different characters and stuff. But from unique selling point angle, what you’re referring to as a brand, I think we’ve started two or three years ago. Because the first few years I didn’t have a need for marketing because freelancing platform, there is a gig. You apply it, you get it, you execute it. So you don’t really need a brand or positioning on the market. But then a few years ago, when we said, well, look, freelancing is not really working for us anymore. We need different channels and we need to actually go out and fight on the open market. We need LinkedIn, we need email. We need to reach out to potential clients, talk with them. At that stage, I’ve realized how back we are. We are like a three year old company with zero year marketing in itself. So we needed to catch up on all that marketing that we left behind in order to grow as a brand. And when it comes to differentiation, the only differentiation that we are having is that we built everything we tried on us, and then we try to sell it to clients. So we are currently using LinkedIn Outreach. I personally have five LinkedIn profiles that we’re using LinkedIn Outreach in B2B, for high ticket service providers. So we are having, like, an internal laboratory. We test we experiment, we figure something out works, we offer it on the market, then we have a new idea. Okay, how about we use digital magazine, for example. If I want to offer the service, I’ll first do it for BizzBee, I’ll just try to learn everything, try to see all the pitfalls that could be done. And based on that, we can then go to the outside world and think, look, there is a new service that we can offer. I was never personally into the being cheapest on the market. That route from the start I didn’t like to go, because every time when you’re comparing on price, there will always be a cheaper option. Absolutely. Even if you’re the lowest cheapest price, someone will say, well, I’m a freelancer. I can do this in my spare time so I can do it for free, even. While on the other hand, when you’re going on the more expensive option you always have, the luxury, first to spend more time with a client, put some additional value and not to be well for that kind of money, that’s all I can do. But actually try to really think to help the client. And this is where clients starting to feel. You know, when someone is after you just for the money and you’re like, well, 5 hours I spended, that’s it. Well, there are suppliers I really want to hear you out, give you some recommendation and really help you. And it really makes a difference when people are really trying to give you an advice and help you rather than I’m a supplier, if you give me money, I’ll just work for you.

[00:26:44.440] – Kesiena – Yeah, that’s true. I’m going to social media now because you just mentioned LinkedIn and it’s one of the biggest. We know social media can be good, it can be bad as well. What other social media accounts do you play with? Do you work apart from LinkedIn?

[00:27:02.340] – Dancho – Well, Kesiena, when it comes to B2B world, I mean, that’s the word where we specialize, linkedin is the main platform that you can use. I mean, you can go to Facebook, but it’s more B2C, which is not really your target. You can go to TikTok, but it’s really for a really young audience. I still haven’t tried to get work around it. But when you’re approaching in the B2B world, you need a database that it’s up to date on its own. So for example, if you change your job, you go on LinkedIn and you’re just going to update your database. So having access to LinkedIn, it’s really good for the B2B, especially the high ticket service providers. And we always preach, yeah, what kind of other options do you have? You can go on Facebook, you can put a flashy LED light “buy here”, but that’s really for consumers, you know, swipe your credit card, $3, $5, immpulsive buying. However, when you’re selling $5,000, $10,000, we even have 50,$000 to $100,000 service, things change. You cannot really go anywhere. Actually, you cannot even go to a platform and say, hi, my name is Dancho, I sell this, is just 50,000 euros. Would you buy it? Here is the terminal to swipe your credit card and it doesn’t work. They’re like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Who are you? Have I heard about you? Have you done anything like this? I want to talk with your reference. I don’t trust you in order to give you that amount of money. And then we’ve realized that in the B2B with high ticket service providing, relationship building is the key. And for me, it’s really weird. I mean, Kesiena, I will always give the example in the bar. But when you go to a bar and when you meet a girl, you’re not just saying, Hi, will you marry me? Of course she’s gonna say, who is this weirdo? But you start, hi, let me buy you a drink. What’s your favorite movie?

[00:28:52.740] – Kesiena – Movie and stuff.

[00:28:53.610] – Dancho – Okay, sport team is a very bad example. But what’s your favorite movie? And whatever she said, you’re saying same for me. I love that movie. You haven’t seen it ever. That’s the relationship building. Okay, maybe on a false pretense, but my whole point is that, yeah, you engage in the conversation, see if you click. If you click, you deepen the conversation. If not, thank you very much. And then you just continue to the next person. And I really don’t know why online people are not doing the same, because even on physical events, when you go to a conference or to a physical event, you’re saying, Hi, my name is Dancho. You start building some chit-chatting and see if there is a qualification or an opportunity. But it’s not like, Hi, my name is Dancho, would you like to buy? No, thank you. Hi, my name is Dancho… Of course, nobody would like to even talk to you. You’ll be the party crusher in that case. And it’s funny on LinkedIn or on email or even on all social media people do that. They are like, Hi, would you like to buy? No, thank you. And they’re doing the number of games. I mean, they reach out to millions with a conversion of 0.00001, they’re gonna get some results. But if you’re trying to do as a high ticket service provider, that could damage your brand. I mean, you know how awful it looks when you see a consultant or a coach or a digital marketing agency that they price their services a lot. How desperate is just reaching out to prospect, hi, buy my service. Instead of like, Hello, how are you? How is business?

[00:30:24.470] – Kesiena – How was your day?

[00:30:25.640] – Dancho – Yeah, how was your day to start. And you know, people love to complain. I don’t know why it’s in our DNA. But when you say to someone, how was your day? They’re like, oh don’t ask, I started and this happened and this happened. And you were like, oh, so sorry to hear that. How are you currently surviving the Corona, which is an open-ended question people talked a lot and then you’re really trying to help the people. It’s not like you’re faking it. It’s like, okay, what are you currently doing in marketing? Well, we tried this, we tried this. Have you tried a better way or have you tried LinkedIn? We’ve tried it. Are you happy with the result? Can I help someone, even if you’re not my client, can I help you use LinkedIn better? Because when I position myself as that I’m really trying to build a relationship. And yeah, we did have a lot of discovery calls. Where on the discovery call is like, look, listen to me, I heard you out, here is what I would do if I was in your place. First, Linkedin, forget about it. It’s not for you. You need a digital asset, you need a landing page and you need this and that. And that’s actually giving a free value, a free advice. Because I know that when I start with that approach, I have a long term friend rather than a client. When you start looking at that. Yeah, relationship is there are clients will come and order a few hundred euros service. And if they’re very happy down the road, they can come back with 10, 20, €50,000 services. And that’s the difference between relationship building and actually spamming. I mean, the other root is just spam everybody in terms of until they ban you, block you or just say, please stop bothering me. I really don’t want to hear anymore from you.

[00:32:04.380] – Kesiena – Yeah, Dancho, I like the part where you talk about relationship building. I think is one of the core on the line. Would I say, base factor we need to build our business on. Apart from getting a good relationship, you also have to be relatable as well, because when you’re relatable, people will be able to talk to you. You’d be more easier to approach, as well. And speaking about LinkedIn or social media and all that. And I know that people always say that never build your house or whatever on a rental property, and, you know, LinkedIn is the rental property. And tomorrow, if LinkedIn should go and there’s no LinkedIn, what other areas do you now build your business with?

[00:32:58.960] – Dancho – Yeah, that’s a very strong question. And it’s not just on LinkedIn. It’s also saying, never put your money on Zuckerberg’s bag because he can just close the channel and that’s it. It’s funny for me, Linkedin is just one channel of gathering new leads for us. But there are so many things after we get the lead that I can tell you a whole story. For example, with the lead generation on LinkedIn, yeah, we are reaching out to people trying to qualify them, start building the relationship. We don’t use LinkedIn as a sales channel because there is absolutely no selling in the chit-chat, and there is absolutely no pitching on the chit-chat. Chit-chat is: How are you? We actually help this if you’re interested? Come on a call. So we’re trying to take away all the audience from LinkedIn and bring them on a call, because once we have them on a call, we can provide them with value. We can get their email because in order to come on a call, we need a Zoom, for the Zoom we need an email. And then we can start building them into our newsletter from one thing. Then the salesperson could try to give them some free services in order to not hook them up to our services. But to just experience how great is working with us.

[00:34:16.230] – Kesiena – Give me a taste.

[00:34:16.450] – Dancho – Yeah. When you go to a supermarket, you know, those cheese plates that they just try sir? That’s the goal. Try if you like it. That’s very nice. Where can I buy a kilo? In best case. But it’s even wonderful cases like they become a loyal customer and they start buying kilo per kilo on a regular basis. So same with us. Once we collect them from LinkedIn, we do have them with us. And then in our database we’re trying to nurture them with newsletters with blogs and everything. To follow up on your logic, if LinkedIn shutdowns, I mean, we do SEO as well. We do blog writing, we do Facebook, we do YouTube video creation. But my whole goal is that when you’re doing inbound marketing, which most of the marketing agency do, it’s not a quick win. With SEO, you cannot create a blog and expect clients within the first month because you create a blog, then SEO takes in, the search engine, takes in. It will take some time. With the outreach is like within a few weeks you can get several people on the call. It cannot be faster, because even if you put ads, people don’t know you. You cannot sell on ads like 400 euro service. Here is an ad, but with LinkedIn, when you’re relatable, you put it really good. You are talking about yourself. You’re creating even several posts, sharing stories. How you start it is also showing that, yeah, I’m not a CEO of a company and you don’t have the right to talk with me. But CEOs have problems as well. They also have ups and downs. They also have the pressure. Even in corporation, they need to report to the board in order to the shareholders in order to bring results. So from my perspective, LinkedIn is the best B2B platform for high ticket service providers. There are so many lead generation channels out there, but when it comes to efficiency and speed of getting results, I truly believe that the LinkedIn is the best one.

[00:36:13.300] – Kesiena – Nice one Dancho. I loved that man. In case of your business or your career as well, what would you say is the best advice you’ve gotten so far? Someone was giving you in order for you to build your business, what’s the advice they gave you?

[00:36:27.070] – Dancho – Well, I think there were two, but let me just recalibrate, which was where. There was a very nice saying, that I’m preaching around here. If you want something done, you’ll find a way. If you don’t want something done, you’ll find an excuse. And for me, it is a mantra, and we use it here with the employees, because if something is finished, you’re okay. But when someone doesn’t finish something, you’re like, okay, is it because he cannot do it or because he doesn’t want to do it and just starts finding excuses? And when you set up that mentality, it’s like, as an entrepreneur, you will see so many obstacles. It’s like if you find an obstacle, I cannot do it because of X, Y, Z and so many excuses. But on the other way, if you want it done, you’ll find a way. You’re gonna go avoid the obstacle. You’re going to find a way how to keep pushing in the same direction. But if you’re really not passion about your business on the first obstacle and there will be so many obstacles throughout the entrepreneurship journey, you’re like, yeah, I wanted to start with the marketing agency and I created the proposal, but I don’t know how to do it in PowerPoint presentation. That’s it. I give up. I’m not going to do marketing agency. Well, if you want it, it’s like, okay, what should we do? Well, you need a PowerPoint presentation. I have no idea what’s that, but left screen YouTube tutorial, how to do it right, screen a blank PowerPoint presentation. One guy is talking on the left and you’re just following them. We have a presentation now you need to start selling. Well, I have no idea how to do it. Well, let’s screen YouTube tutorial, how to send messages or email or how to pitch, how to do it. And that’s the mentality that I’ve incorporated not just in me, but around me, because it is really just an excuse. I’ve seen so many times when you really want to do something, you’re going to turn the world upside down in order to do it. On the other hand, if you don’t want to do it on the first obstacle, that’s it. I tried, but this happened. That’s really is a driving force for me.

[00:38:32.450] – Kesiena – Yeah, nice man. My last question, which is someone saw you and said, Dancho, I love the way you lead BizzBee, I like everything you do there. I want to start my own business as well. What will be your advice to this person?

[00:38:50.010] – Dancho – A person that wants to start their business?

[00:38:52.780] – Kesiena – Yes.

[00:38:53.560] – Dancho – I see. Well, Kesiena, I’ve said this so many times to so many entrepreneurs. If you’re not passionate about your business, don’t bother. I mean, I’ve seen entrepreneurs that are driven by money. And of course, I’m also driven by money. But it shouldn’t be the main reason for starting a business because in absolutely any industry, if you start, if you’re good at, you’re gonna make a lot of money. Even if you’re good at a haircut as a hairdresser, the best one in Macedonia earned a lot of money. A lot of money because they do hairdressing for celebrities and stuff. On the other hand, they’re patient about what they want. But I’ve seen so many entrepreneurs, it’s like, you know what? I’m gonna create a platform and I’m gonna create blah, blah, blah, within three months I’m gonna make millions. And I’m like, good luck with that. If your driving force is not solving a problem on the market, but actually just financial incentive for you, then better get a job because you’re at least going to get a financial incentive without trying to solve that big of a problem. And honestly, I strongly believe that when I talk with entrepreneurs within 15 minutes or half an hour, my focus is more to understand what is the driving force. And as I am reconnecting with the previous conversation, obstacles will come. There will be so many ups, but there will be so many downs. And if you’re really not passionate about what you’re doing, on the first obstacle, you start finding excuses, well, I’ve tried and it didn’t work it and stuff.

[00:40:25.440] – Kesiena – It’s true, you’re right. You got to have the passion as well. You also have to know why, why you want to do that as well? Because that would drive you far and will give you the urge to succeed as well. And to end this, what will be your last thing for someone that will listen to this and say, I listened to the founder of BizzBee and he said this, and this is going to stick with me for a long time. What would be that thing?

[00:40:52.840] – Dancho – With entrepreneurs, if I need to choose one thing, for me is that proactivity is king. If you are waiting for the phone to ring and someone to call you, yes, I’m interested in your service. You’ve already lost. Instead of waiting for the phone to ring, you need to proactively start looking for clients even when you haven’t started a business. I mean, our service is so much used in pre-start because you know what? I have an idea for a business that could do this kind of service. Well, reach out to as many people and check if they would be interested in this kind of service. It would save you so much time and resources to stop before you begin rather than just blindly follow the idea. So in my head, you cannot be an entrepreneur and just have your ego up. I’m not going to call anyone or I’m gonna wait and they will come. But the proactivity within the entrepreneur makes you talk with people because then you will listen to new ideas. I mean, you know what kind of service you want, but when you start talking with your target audience, you’ve realized that so many features that are hard to build are not really needed, or they have some very simple additional needs that they have that you can easily fulfill. So by talking with people and spreading the idea that you have and the business that you have by proactively reaching out to people, you’re going to get so much insight, you’re going to get a whole lot of new clients and even people in a pipeline. Whether you think there are so many pre-launch campaigns, before a movie or before a book, before a product launch? Because they’re making a hype about the product. When the product is out, you already have a market. So it’s not like, look, I’m going to invest my whole life saving on this product and hopefully it will succeed. But you already have people lined up and waiting for the product to come out, and it has to do also Kesiena, with the branding because I just recalled on the iphone experiences and stories that people are waiting in boots for two days when the new iphone is coming up and they’re not like, well, whether it’s going to succeed, they already have customers before even trying to create the product.

[00:42:58.510] – Kesiena – Yeah, nice man. I loved all the answers, I loved the conversation. You’re also doing a great job as well. And guys want to get in touch with you, where is the best place for them to get in touch with you?

[00:43:12.600] – Dancho – Well, as a LinkedIn guru, LinkedIn is the main platform that I use…

[00:43:18.420] – Kesiena – What about Instagram? Do you use Instagram?

[00:43:21.570] – Dancho – Honestly no, no. There are newer generation that starts at Instagram. I admit, I think I have a profile, but when you’re not checking it daily, you’re not frequent. Facebook, old school. We still can check it and use it to communicate with people. But I think that the best way to start in this B2B outreach and start looking for clients and how you can bring more people to you is if they go on our website bizzbeesolutions.com and we have a section which is Academy. We have a series of seven different ebooks that are free, and each of them talks about different parts from the outreach process. How to find your ideal client, compared against your strengths, but also the needs on the market. Once you have them how to build a database of leads. There are so many tools and activities that you can do. How to create outreach messages to connect with your audience into relationship building, not into selling. How to then nurture when people start responding, how to actually move them into what is your favorite movie to actually keep on the conversation, pick up the curiosity high so they would be really like, I want to hear more from this guy. And these kind of ebooks are small. I think there are 30 to 50 pages each, designed, so there is not that much content, but I think it’s a very great starting point for everybody that wants to start a business and needs to think about getting clients even before starting the business itself.

[00:44:48.500] – Kesiena – Yes. Dancho, thank you so much for your time and thank you so much. I loved the conversation so far. And I’m also grateful for the time as well. I love this.

[00:45:00.140] – Dancho – Yeah. Kesiena, thank you very much for having me on the show. I mean, I truly hope that we will get to inspire a few more entrepreneurs and more people will actually start the entrepreneurship journey. And honestly, I’m really glad that there is a podcast like Ask the Pros, because with this kind of podcast, people can actually educate themselves and not blindly believe that, I have an idea, I’ll become a billionaire, but there are ups and downs and it is a journey. This kind of podcast, like Ask the Pros is actually meant for them to realize, how is it on the other side and that it is not a simple journey. It is a roller coaster, as I said.

[00:45:41.060] – Kesiena – Yeah. I loved it, nice one.