Growth Enthusiast Make Things Grow

18 Mar 2021

Being the growth enthusiast he is, Dancho enjoys helping companies, businesses and people grow.

Always eager to know what’s around the next corner, and profoundly loving what he does, Dancho never feels tired and burned out.

He says that it’s a sport to think and do things differently rather than a challenge.

Topics:

1. BizzBee background and story;
2. Being a digital nomad;
3. BizzBee’s services;
4. Working with clients, partners and employees;
5. Doing things while walking;
6. Start with marketing as soon as possible and
7. Finding the right people and giving them room to grow.

Speakers

Podcast Links

 

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00.370] – Dancho – Well, if you ask me, I started as a freelancer, so my whole background was in freelancing platform. And what I’ve realized later down the road is that you need marketing and you need networking.

[00:00:14.870] – Intro – Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs and founders without listening to a long, long interview? If so, you’ve come to the right place. Gresham values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you’re in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

[00:00:41.990] – Gresham – Hello, hello. This is Gresham from the I AM CEO podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Dancho Dimkov of BizzBee Solutions. Dancho, it’s awesome to have you on the show.

[00:00:51.130] – Dancho – Hello, hi, Gresham. Thank you very much for having me on the show.

[00:00:54.730] – Gresham – Definitely! Super excited to have you on. And before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Dancho, so I can hear about all the awesome things that he’s doing. And Dancho is a growth enthusiast. He is inspired by growth. Growth in companies, people, relations and businesses. By enabling and sharing his knowledge and energy and curiosity in everything he puts himself into, he has had the opportunity to do just that throughout his career, make things grow. He always tries to see what’s around the next corner and believes in it’s a sport to think and do things differently rather than a challenge. Dancho, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

[00:01:29.520] – Dancho – Yeah. Always ready to speak and help fellow entrepreneurs and small businesses.

[00:01:34.260] – Gresham – Yes, absolutely. And I love that word growth and all the awesome things you’re doing, but they kind of kick everything off. I want to hear a little bit more on how you got to do all the awesome work that you’re doing. Can you take us through your CEO story? We’ll let you get started with all the awesome work.

[00:01:45.600] – Dancho – Yeah. I mean, of course, there is always a short story and the long story and the long story requires at least a few beers to share it. So I’ll stick it to the short one. But I started as a freelancer. I mean, I was working on Upwork and People Per Hour and all the freelancing platforms. And I was having a full-time job in a software development company. And you do a full-time job, but with not passion. And after work, you’re excited in working as a freelancer. And as a freelancer, I was actually working with entrepreneurs because I was a management consultant doing market research, business planning, helping entrepreneurs start a business, actually helping them grow. And I was very excited. I mean, after work, you work some with some Sci-Fi high tech companies in order to grow their businesses. While doing regular job, you’re just doing the boring software development part. And at one point I said, you know what? I should actually stick to what I’m passionate about and helping companies. And that’s how I actually in between decided first to work as a remote, like a digital normal, full time, travel Europe with my wife. Enjoy life, it was pretty good. You get up, you work a bit, you travel in Germany, in France, in Italy, you sunbathe, you work a bit again. And at one point, we said that, yes. If we want to start considering a family, we’re going to actually need to formalize this into having a business. And that’s how actually the idea behind BizzBee Solutions emerged. To start a consulting company that will actually help things grow. And as I said, to even grow our businesses, it also helped us grow our family because now I have a small kid and also grow the employees within the company.

[00:03:22.730] – Gresham – Yeah. It’s incredible to kind of hear the impact that you can have just by being and having that growth and how it expands beyond just the business and into life and all the things that we’re doing. Definitely look forward to, hopefully grabbing a few beers and hearing that long form version. That definitely sounds exciting.

[00:03:38.270] – Dancho – Exactly.

[00:03:40.010] – Gresham – I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper and hear a little bit more on how you help your clients and how you provide those solutions. Can you take us through a little bit more about that and hear how you service the ones you work with?

[00:03:48.210] – Dancho – Sure. As a consulting company, we were working primarily with entrepreneurs. So you have an idea or you just got it something and you don’t know whether it’s worth it or not. So we can actually do a market research and see how big is the market and whether it’s worthwhile pursuing. And with the ones that were happy, we’re like, okay, now what? Well, we were actually doing whole business plans in order to how much you’re going to make out of that business idea and the opportunity. And once they started the business, they were like, okay, now we started. So what now? And that’s why we actually said, well, on the supply side, we can help you with product sourcing, find your manufacturers in China and everything. While on the sales side, we can actually help you with lead generation, reaching out to potential clients, even bringing you to the appointments. And as a whole cycle, we work with entrepreneurs, and we build it into a relationship. Now we started specializing a bit because we’ve worked with more than 400 companies from around the world. So you name a country, we have clients there. Now we really specialized a bit more into the B2B world because in B2B, it’s really more complex when it comes to sales, when it comes to decision making, when it comes to sales cycle. And in the B2B, we do magic when it comes to high ticket service providers. So if you are a marketing agency, sales agency, any way of consultancy company or even software development or a SaaS, with those companies, we can do some exponential growth. And our core magic is, in addition to the things that I’ve told you is reach out and prospecting through LinkedIn, and email where we actually go out there on the behalf of our clients, find their potential clients, start talking with them, start building relationships. And if we see that they are a good fit, only if we see that they are a good fit, then we’re actually bringing to our clients and saying, here is a lead, just close it, appointment is scheduled and everything, just show up and seal the deal.

[00:05:38.250] – Gresham – Nice. I definitely appreciate that. And I think as you kind of talked about in the process of what you all do, there’s so many different parts of a business and trying to manage each of them know what to prioritize and not. It’s great to be able to lean on your expertise and the team and all the awesome things you’re able to do to understand. These are the things that can help you to get to that next level, because that’s what I think a lot of our listeners are really in the business of is how can we take it to another level? And what should we do in order to make that happen? So I love that you do that and you’re able to break that down, but also to step in and do that.

[00:06:08.000] – Dancho – When it comes to growth, there are always too many channels. Gresham, I think, you are also into marketing. And in reality, you have the inbound, attracting people to you either by content creation with SEO, with stuff, which is mid to long term strategy. I mean, you cannot post a blog and expect five clients the next day, it takes time. While waiting for that in between, you need to start to pick up the phone and start reaching out to people and saying, hi, would you be interested in my service? And honestly, I’ve seen so many entrepreneurs, they are afraid to actually reach out to potential clients. It’s like either it’s ego or they’re just scared to approach to people and start talking. And for me, it’s like the opposite. I have an idea for a business. I don’t even start a business until I talk with few potential clients. It’s like, look, I have an idea about this. What do you think? And the insight and the feedback that I got with talking to those people helps me fine-tune the business and add some features that I was not aware that they were relevant. And actually, when the product is finished, when I got back to them, it’s easy. They’ve already gave me feedback they like. They gave me some ideas for improvement, which I applied. So it’s just normal to become a client.

[00:07:16.050] – Gresham – Yeah, that makes so much sense. And it brings up a kind of a valid point that I think we all kind of learn as we go on in business, is that as much as we sometimes maybe have to in the beginning, do all of the things you’re very quickly going to grow, you’re very quickly going to succeed by understanding what your lane is and being able to kind of do what you do best. But at the same time, be able to lean on partners, employees, whatever it is a team to be able to get to that next level. So it’s so important to understand that, and understand the importance of doing that outreach. But even if it’s not in your zone, you just have somebody like yourself and your team to be able to kind of lean on.

[00:07:47.850] – Dancho – Exactly. And when we work in the B2B world, we are really holding clients in terms of don’t worry now, we need to take care of this, of messaging and all the aspects.

[00:07:58.160] – Gresham – Yeah, absolutely. And I know you mentioned that might be part of your secret sauce. Do you feel like that’s the thing that you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique? It could be for yourself or your business or combo of both. But do you feel like that’s what that is?

[00:08:09.010] – Dancho – Well, when you ask me, I think that what we are really doing uniquely, and it’s weird because that should be the norm, not being uniquely is that our outreach is nothing compared to spamming or mass spamming to people. Because I don’t know why in the digital world, when you say outreach, it’s intended sent 1 million emails and with conversion rate of 0.0000 something. And boom, you had several meetings while, on the other hand, if you look at on the other spectrum, it’s like, no, actually, you need to reach out to 50 people or 100 people, but start talking with them, start conversating. And it’s not just like, hi, my name is Dancho. I’m actually offering this kind of solution or this kind of service. Not interested. Thank you very much. Bye. Next one. Hello, my name is Dancho, I’m offering… That doesn’t work, you need to start talking with people and just start understanding them. And in between qualifying them if they are relevant for you, if they’re not, you never brought up, would you want to buy, we don’t even do that. We’re like, well, I see I can help you if you want to come on a call because I don’t want to be like, well, if you buy this or just through email or chit-chatting, try to sell something. And for me, it’s interesting, Gresham is that imagine that when you go to a bar and you meet a girl, you’re not proposing her straight away. It’s like, on one knee, will you marry me? It’s like, Hi, let’s have a drink. Do you like sports? Okay, a bad example for girls. What do you think about the weather or something? And if you see that there is a connection, then you take it to the next stage and you’re moving the relationship deeper. If you see that there is not really a connection, you continue to the next person, but you never actually go directly. Hi, my name is Dancho, I’m 35 years. Will you marry me? No. Okay, next girl. Hello… And for me, it’s interesting that people in real life are really doing the right way, starting with people chit-chatting, even on B2B events or conferences. That when you go to B2B matchmaking events, you never just, here is my business card, but just start talking with people and the same people when they move to LinkedIn or email, it’s like a different switch. Now I need to spam everybody. And I was like, well, we actually took the concept that work in real life, and we’re just applying it on the social media. And for me, it is a secret sauce. Although I told you nothing weird or something unique, but I don’t know why everybody else feeling that when you’re on the online, you can do as much spamming as possible. And you feel when you’re being spammed compared to when you meet them in real life, they’re really completely different people.

[00:10:36.700] – Gresham – I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or a habit that you have, but what’s something that makes you more effective and efficient?

[00:10:46.140] – Dancho – Well, when we’re talking effective and efficient, I was thinking in which direction. I have several books recommended and stuff. But now 2021, I’ve decided that I have to become a bit more fit. I really need to lose some weight and try to be more active. And as a CEO, I’m stuck in front of the computer for way too long. And now the small switch I did, and it really helped me a lot is that most of the calls I’m no longer doing it in front of the computer. So instead of like sitting in front of the computer all day and talking with my employees, talking with my suppliers, talking with my clients and everybody. Now I just pick up my phone and I start walking. And I just walked through the city center, may go through the park and everything, and I still do the same calls. I still do the same efficiency. But on the other hand, I’m actually stretching a bit. While walking, I can even do some small chores while I’m walking. And if you ask me, it changed my life energy because you become far more fit, you are more exercised.

[00:11:46.310] – Gresham – I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger self?

[00:11:55.670] – Dancho – Yeah, well, if you ask me. I started as a freelancer, so my whole background was in freelancing platform. And what I realized later down the road is that you need marketing and you need networking. I mean, my company was growing two, three years with zero marketing, because you go on a freelance platform, you find a gig, you apply it, you got it, you have people to work on it. And that’s about it. But when we say, okay, we want to go outside freelancing platform. We realized that we’re two or three years behind with the marketing and everything that was going on. So if I can give an advice to fellow entrepreneurs, it’s like to start with marketing as soon as possible. Even as I told you before you start a business, you need to start talking with people and start getting some feedback and growing your business.

[00:12:41.410] – Gresham – Awesome. So now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO? And we’re hoping to have different unique CEOs on the show. So Dancho, what does being a CEO means to you?

[00:12:51.590] – Dancho – If you ask me, a CEO should just find really good people and give them the freedom to grow. I don’t know, my keyword is really growth, but if everything needs to go through me, then I’m actually bottleneck and no one can actually boost their growth. However, if you find the right people, you just delegate and it’s like, okay, there will be certainly several problems along the way, but figure them out. If every problem comes to me, we are 25 employees at the moment. There’s no way I can actually do anything productive. I would just be fire extinguishing. There is a fire there, shut it down. There is another fire. And for a CEO, it’s really just pay more attention on finding the right people, and you have to give them the freedom in order to fly.

[00:13:38.950] – Gresham – Absolutely. I appreciate that, Dancho. And I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there’s anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best they can get a hold of you and find out about all some things you and your team are working on.

[00:13:51.550] – Dancho – Yeah. Our company name is BizzBee Solutions, it’s on the wall. In our Bee Academy, we have some free ebooks. I can actually invite everybody that are in the B2B world to actually go. There are seven ebooks where we break down everything we do. From actually how to define who is your ideal client, to how to build a database, to how to create really conversational starter messages, and how to do LinkedIn outreach, email outreach, even once they respond, how to actually start the nurturing chit-chat part. So whenever if anyone is interested, I mean, they’re for free. It’s not like you pay something. And I’m just hoping that with this conversation, we’ve touched some of the entrepreneurs and we inspired some of them to actually say, yes, I’m going to go for it. I’m going to start a business. And for the other people that already have a business, they’re going to say, you know what? From tomorrow, I’m going to start proactively looking for clients. I’ll start pick up the phone, I’ll start sending some emails and start growing my business. There’s no point in waiting for Google to say, okay, here is some traffic, but it’s like, roll over your sleeves and it’s like, okay, I need to grow my business and go out there and start talking with clients, understand their problems, solve their problems, and start earning more money.

[00:15:04.220] – Gresham – Yeah, absolutely. And there’s definitely opportunity out there. But as you said, you have to roll up your sleeves in order for that to happen. And people that want to get a copy of those ebooks and get in touch with you, what’s the best way for them to do that?

[00:15:14.280] – Dancho – Well, our website is www.bizzbeesolutions.com. And when it comes to personal profile, I’m quite active on Facebook and LinkedIn. I never got to Instagram or TikTok. I see now it’s for the new kids in the hood, but I don’t know. I’m kind of either too old for that or it doesn’t resonate with me. So my two main communications are LinkedIn and Facebook. And on LinkedIn and Facebook, I’m Dancho Dimkov, so you can easily find me.

[00:15:41.920] – Gresham – Awesome. I definitely appreciate that, we will have the links and information in the show notes as well, too. So truly appreciate all the awesome value that you provided today, all the things you’ve created as well, too, to help people level up and grow and to be better in their businesses and their organizations and their lives as well, too. So definitely appreciate you, my friend, and I hope you have a phenomenal day.

[00:15:59.760] – Dancho – Yeah, Gresham, thank you very much for having me on the show I AM CEO. I really think that you’re doing it very good, because with these kind of shows, you can actually inspire a broader audience of entrepreneurs in order to get out and start moving things.

[00:16:14.380] – Gresham – Yes, absolutely. I definitely appreciate you for reminding us of that as well, too. And I hope you have a great rest of the day.

[00:16:20.140] – Outro – Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast, powered by CBNation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us. I AM CEO is not just a phrase. It’s a community. Your driven CEO geer at ceogeer.co. This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.