What's your personal background? What motivated you to start your own company?

I haven't held a real job since I was 19. I've been working as either a freelancer or entrepreneur throughout all of those years. I had many ups and downs and failures along the way. Lead Cookie was by no means my first company, it was probably my 12th... just a lot of failed projects before I finally got one off the ground.

What no code tool(s) did you use to build Lead Cookie and what purpose did each play in the final product?

At Lead Cookie we run everything through virtual assistants and SaaS tools. We use Airtable, Trello, Asana, and Zapier heavily to run a majority of our company. We have become masters of Zapier at our company and accomplish a ton without writing any code.

Airtable acts as our central customer management database, as well as our system for organizing all campaigns.

Trello & Asana allow us to do project management across our wide team.

Zapier connects everything together to help make us more efficient.

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What were the initial costs to get Lead Cookie off the ground?

Very little, basically just a website and starting to hire a VA but those were paid for by our first clients. I basically got this all off the ground for virtually no costs. I had the idea, put together a pitch, and then sold people and ramped up costs as we started building up the company.

What was the process of building your product from idea to launching?

1. Brainstormed a handful of ideas on a piece of paper "Linkedin Marketing Agency" was the initial idea.

2. I put together a horrible web page with an 8 minute long video of me explaining what we do.

3. I reached out to a ton of people i knew and sold 15 customers in the first two weeks by going to people in my network.

4. I hired a VA and Project Manager to help me run everything.

5. We just kept going from there.

How do you attract customers?

We have a lot of different channels including our own outbound efforts and content. My personal brand also drives a large portion of our revenue.

What are the biggest challenges you've overcome building Lead Cookie?

When you run a business in the digital marketing space, it is rapidly changing. We have seen Linkedin change as a platform rapidly over the past few years which means we have had to evolve our offering as the industry evolves. The market has also rapidly commoditized which has lead to us moving from being a "Linkedin Lead Gen" company to a "Digital Sales Team for B2B Companies". We have to constantly evolve and adjust as the market shifts.

How much money is Lead Cookie making per month?

Our revenue fluxuates between $40k-60k per month. I personally spend about 4-6 hours per week on the business.

What's your advice for non-technical people who want to start a company?

Come up with an idea.

Build a landing page.

Sell it to someone you know for validation.

Repeat.

Here is an article I wrote on how to validate your value proposition fast.

What are your future plans for Lead Cookie?

Currently I am launching a business incubator that partners Lead Cookies with other entrepreneurs to launch their outbound ideas. We are also evolving our offering and building a handful of new brands and products that are all fueled by Lead Cookie.

I'm turning into a serial entrepreneur and embracing it. ‍

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How do you think the rise of no code tools will impact entrepreneurship?

Anyone can build businesses way faster. As long as you have some basic tech savvyness, you can go a long way in terms of building something great without writing any code.

Is there anything else you'd like to add?

I write about my entire entrepreneurial journey at Jake-Jorgovan.com. Feel free to follow or reach out anytime!

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