David Kelly

My FAVORITE way to build a business is from $0. Having no marketing or growth budget might seem like a problem... but it really just requires more creative solutions to grow. And here's a secret: Many of these "secret" free marketing channels are more sustainable than paid platforms, which is subject to the paid platform's latest whim (looking at you, Facebook Ads).

At AppSumo Originals, we've hired 10+ team members over the years. I've been responsible for compensation structures, negotiation, hiring, firing, review cycles, and everything involving building a team. I'm happy to talk about how to find the best early employees — and make compelling compensation packages for them (using a variety of levers like bonuses, equity, and salary).

A lot of people think you need lots of tools to optimize your CVR (conversion rate). But, that's often NOT the answer. Most new entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, and small businesses need to focus on more fundamentals to fix their CVR. I'll share my experiences optimizing CVR for businesses ranging from brand-new to established 7-figure businesses.

I'm an email marketing NERD. I was the Email Marketing Lead for Student Loan Hero, and helped email marketing become a seven-figure revenue channel for them before being sold to LendingTree. I've also helped lead email marketing for Sumo.com, plus consulted for brands like Degree 33 Surfboards.

I've helped launch five SaaS products from scratch. These five products each have had limited marketing and ad budgets... but have generated between six- and seven-figures of revenue. I can share the EXACT go-to-market strategies we've used to launch these products from scratch into successful businesses (even if you have limited or no marketing budget).

I've helped build six-figure per month companies with small teams — and a zero-dollar marketing and ads budget. Good times! Before my current role at Sumo, I was employee #11 and the Email Marketing Lead for Student Loan Hero — which sold to LendingTree for $60 million.

Too many entrepreneurs — both new and experienced — get rose-colored glasses for their idea. It's easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees when it's your own business. Using the same strategies we used to build our seven products that have all made $100,000+ each (and, collectively, millions of dollars), I'll show you how to properly validate your business idea... and make sure you're not wasting time or energy.

Growing a startup can be so challenging... why do we do this to ourselves?! I've been there. As recently as last year. Grinding and trying to grow a startup when we had no money to spend on advertising or marketing. But we found a way to grow to 7-figures, and a big part of it is mindset. I'll share what I know.

Over the past four years, with four major product launches, I've learned some key differences between FAILURE and SUCCESS when launching a new product. From the "hot" marketing channels and how they actually perform (Product Hunt, etc.) to creating a simple-but-effective product launch plan, I'm happy to share the learnings from five products we've launched that have generated millions of dollars in revenue.

Product Management is the BIGGEST decision for new businesses. If you don't have PMF (product market fit) with a new business, you don't have anything. I have 11 years of experience as a Product Manager — including in the past for the 40th most website in the world with billions of pageviews per month — and I can help you understand how to figure out your product strategy.

A lot of founders start thinking about the advanced tactics before they've even defined product market fit. When we've identified product market fit successfully, growth has come magically — even without ads or marketing. It's possible, and I'll share lessons on how we've done it successfully with a million-dollar SaaS company... and lessons learned when we tried to do it with another business, but it wasn't successful. You can learn from both situations for your own business.

Before you grow a successful company... you start out with NO marketing or ad budget. The way you grow in the early stages is mostly focused around manual outbound marketing. I'll share the lessons I've learned over the years, and how you can apply outbound marketing to help your own business grow.

In the post-COVID era, emotions are at an all-time high. And your emotions reflect on the team and your business' results. It's hard to find people to "let it out" who understand. Your employees and subordinates aren't the ones who are there for you to vent, and it's hard to find other entrepreneurs who get it. I'm here with a compassionate ear to listen.

Have used AWeber to manage an email list of 100,000+. I wasn't off-shoring this either — I was in AWeber every day managing our campaigns, writing emails, setting up automations...

ActiveCampaign is a great "in between" email marketing service provider (ESP), that blends together the typical email marketing features like scheduled emails and automations with CRM functionality. I've used ActiveCampaign extensively for companies ranging from a brand-new business startup to a fintech company which grew fast. I've done everything from create and setup the initial account to a full audit of how to improve existing setups.

I've used Ahrefs on a blog with over a million visitors per year. We did careful keyword research to find the BEST keywords to target for organic SEO. I'm very comfortable using Ahrefs to identify SEO-focused keywords for blogs and other businesses that want to get more SEO traffic.

I used to lead many of the social channels at Fox Corporation when I was a Product Manager for News Corp. To push out messages on social, we were early users of the Buffer platform. To this day, I use Buffer to schedule social messages — and I'm friends with a few Buffer guys so I know the tool extra-well.

I recently helped a new SaaS product set up their first marketing automation process using Customer.io. This includes setting up the initial framework, creating the account, and configuring the marketing automations inside of Customer.io directly. I've done the work myself, so I don't just talk about "theoreticals" — I can share exactly how to do it because I've done it, too.

I was one of the early adopters of Facebook Ads. Back in 2010, I managed monthly budgets of $50,000+ for a web content business. And recently, I ran multi-thousand-dollar ad campaigns for an ecommerce store in the cosmetics space. I'm not the biggest expert on complex Facebook Ads setup, but I can give you general tips and strategies to optimize your Facebook Ads spend as part of your larger marketing strategy.

As a marketer, my bread-and-butter for measuring how campaigns are performing is within Google Analytics. I'm familiar with tracking marketing results, campaigns, and more within GA. I love GA so much I even use it on my personal site — and have custom alerts set up on it, too!

I've used Infusionsoft for both an ecommerce company and for a marketing thought leader with an email list of 250,000. I've set up campaigns, emails, and everything. I've personally done the work inside of Infusionsoft — I haven't off-shored it — so I can see how it's REALLY done, and can help REALLY guide.

For years, I helped manage the LinkedIn presence of an eight-figure entrepreneur. I'm intimately familiar with how to create posts that go viral on LinkedIn — and build your brand and presence to get more followers... and sales.

I've used Mailchimp for so many brands — a marketing thought leader with a 100,000+ email list, an ecommerce brand who relied on email marketing for 70%+ of their revenue, my own personal brand. I wasn't off-shoring the work either. I was the one in the weeds of setting up emails and automations.

I've e-met Laura (the founder of Edgar) a few times over the years, and I've used the Buffer platform for helping blogs and content businesses get more social traffic to their site. I'm familiar with setting up variations, adding a bunch of content, a lot of small optimizations — and of course measuring results.

I was an early YouTube producer for Noah Kagan's YouTube channel, which now has 500,000+ subscribers and 58+ million views. I learned from some of the best YouTubers in the industry — including Brian Dean — on how to effectively grow and monetize an audience on YouTube.

Zapier is such a cool tool to integrate and automate your marketing processes. Especially if you're a solopreneur, or a new business owner, and you don't have much time. I've used Zapier to connect lots of different tools together — including a giveaway tool, an email tool, and lots more.