$1M/MTH Founder on Building Curaytor From Zero: Chris Smith (4K)

Meet Chris Smith, one of the founders of Curaytor (an Inc. 500 fastest-growing business). He is the best-selling author of The Conversion Code, a marketing & sales expert (One of the "4 Best Marketers Under 40" by the American Marketing Association), and one of the "founders" of attraction marketing, but he started in boiler room sales.
Born in a rural small town in Florida, Chris started his hustle as a teen, moving lawns & knocking on doors. He started in sales as a senior mortgage banker at Quicken Loans but then transitioned to speaking, blogging & consulting for Top Producer CRM & Realtordotcom. That's where he started his personal blog/videos called "Tech Savvy Agent." Which landed him as Chief Evangelist for Inman News, working under Brad Inman, and later as Chief People Worker at Dotloop under Austin Allison (now Pacaso).
From all of this, he met his co-founders, Jimmy Mackin and an unnamed CTO, where they started Curaytor in 2013. Early stage Curaytor was built on being the connector for other tech communities like their Facebook Group Tech Support and building Graph Search on Facebook. This is when Mark Zuckerberg & Facebook completely changed their business.
I spoke with Chris, to talk about their journey starting from 0 to $1M to $1M/MTH to now building for a "potential" $100M exit. Chris breaks down how you can build from 0 to $1M to $1M/MTH and beyond, just like they did! Here's his story!
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In this conversation, we discuss:
(00:00) Intro: Chris Smith’s journey with Curaytor
(01:24) 0 to $1M: balancing sales & marketing to grow
(03:24) Why, when markets are bad, you shouldn't stop marketing
(04:42) What agents can do to get listings today
(05:54) Why most realtors are better at sales than marketing
(10:36) The day Mark Zuckerberg killed Curaytor's search
(13:52) Knowing when to innovate vs iterate in business
(16:23) Framework: 101 straight weeks of email newsletter to grow to 40,000 subscribers
(17:56) Chris’s top sources for staying on the cutting edge of tech & marketing
(18:54) Best 3 Twitter follows
(16:23) Taking big swings: Chris’s approach to content marketing innovation
(19:53) 40,000-subscriber email newsletter framework
(21:57) Be a curator of content
(22:45) The simple yet perfect content strategy - Glennda Baker style
(24:02) Building a global talent pool: Hiring overseas for exponential growth
(25:37) How to find quality talent for your team
(26:29) How small businesses (agents) can build full marketing teams
(27:23) The first hire for most agents
(28:04) $1M to $1M/MTH to $100M Exit - and the 1 thing to nail for agent's
(31:41) Why nailing your listing marketing should be your #1 focus
(32:21) When stepping down as a CEO can help you level up
(33:35) Secrets behind Curaytor's world-class culture
Resources:
Chris' links:
Instagram
chris_smth...
X Twitter
chris_smth?lang=en
Linkedin
/ conversioncodechris
Book
www.theconversioncode.com/author
www.amazon.com/Chris-Smith/e/...
Website
www.curaytor.com/
Tech Savvy UA-cam
/ @techsavvyagent
Early Curaytor Search
web.archive.org/web/201403310...
Glimpse into Early Chris'
bettercalldaddy.podbean.com/e...
SELECTED MENTIONS FROM THE EPISODE:
People:
Jimmy Mackin (Chris's business partner)
Andrew (Chris's business partner)
Brad McCallum (real estate agent in Calgary)
Gary Vee (Gary Vaynerchuk)
Kara Swisher (tech blogger)
Brandon Wise (founder of Wise Agent CRM)
Max Pigment (Chris's former boss)
Ivan Sorenson (designer Chris follows on Twitter)
Books/E-books:
"The Conversion Code" by Chris Smith
"Death of a Sales Force" by Chris Smith (e-book)
"Day Trading Attention" by Gary Vaynerchuk
Resources/Sources:
Product Hunt (for discovering new software and apps)
Twitter (as a source of inspiration and content ideas)
"Sources Doc" (spreadsheet of content sources in Google Docs, Sheets, etc.)
My Links:
📧 Newsletter: www.breakingandbuildingleaders.com/
🎙 Podcast: podcasters.spotify.com/pod/sh...
🎥 UA-cam: / @breakingandbuildingle...
🐣 Twitter: AndrewBayon
📸 Instagram: andrew_bayon
🕺 TikTok: www.tiktok.com/@andrewbayon

[@chris_smith]

Product Hunt

[@bringbackthefiretv495]

What was the site he recommended please? I can't find it and couldnt understand him. Was it Producta?

[@andrewbayon]

Product Hunt, sorry! I’ll grab everything he mentioned and link it in the description

[@bringbackthefiretv495]

@@andrewbayon thanks so much! Probably just my ears 😂 I appreciate this video so much!