Intro: 00:00 We were in the right place at the right time and we got our sales strategy right and got our marketing strategy right. Intro: 00:05 All the while you must tell your story and you must be focused on serving them. It's not really necessarily outcome with the knowledge that you gained while you're facing these issues, we get so caught up in trying to do everything at once. Where success is simultaneous, not sequential. Show Overview: 00:21 Welcome to the Ajax Union B 2 B marketing podcast. On this podcast, we interview ceos and the fastest growing companies in the US. Our goal is to find out what they did to grow so fast, what business and marketing strategies they used to have explosive growth. And now your host for Joe Apfelbaum, CEO and founder Ajax Union, a B 2 B digital marketing agency in Brooklyn, New York. Joe Apfelbaum: 00:49 Curt Bashford is the CEO of GD, formerly general devices, a medical device and software technology company whose core purpose is to improve the health and well-being of the public at large. Curt shares with us what he did in order to secure him a spot on the INC 5000 this year. I'm really excited to have a fellow EO member join me on this episode. Let's begin this amazing episode and find out how Curt grew his business. Welcome to the Ajax Union B2B marketing podcast. As you know, we're interviewing dozens of ceos and leaders of INC 5000 businesses and your business was featured on the INC 5000 to the year as number 2503. Congratulations. That's amazing. Curt Bashford : 00:49 Thank you. Joe, Appreciate that , Kinda at the halfway mark there. Joe Apfelbaum: 01:37 The halfway mark. You're in good company, so it shows that your 2016 revenue was 6.1 Million which is three year growth of 142 percent. That's a pretty incredible growth for business. Curt Bashford : 01:51 Yeah. Yeah. Now the trick will be sustaining that, right? Joe Apfelbaum: 01:54 Yeah. We'll talk more about that. I'm so glad that you can join us here today. Thanks for taking the time to talk to us about your business, your growth, your marketing strategies. Are you ready to share some insights on this program? Curt Bashford : 02:05 Ready to roll. Joe Apfelbaum: 02:06 All right, let's do it. So you mentioned earlier about getting out of your comfort zone. Do you feel like you get out of your comfort zone when you talk about your business? Like when you tell the story of your business? Curt Bashford : 02:15 I used to, um, not so much anymore. You know, it's, it's a muscle memory a little bit. I'm wondering what I could do it in and can just roll in and talk. I think about it too much. It's harder. Joe Apfelbaum: 02:28 So let's try to test some of that muscle memory. Tell us a little bit about your business. What do you do and why do people do business with you? Curt Bashford : 02:35 Right. So, so, you know, is uh, y, you know, we also needs out there for hospitals and emergency medical services. So we created some invasive innovation where, which we call response innovation to solve problems and help those two entities communicate better. Um, ultimately to save time, save money, certainly for, to save lives and help healthcare. Joe Apfelbaum: 03:01 That's awesome. So you're supporting hospitals by creating technology that helpS them be able to do what they need to do faster and better Curt Bashford : 03:10 ambulances, emergency medical services communicate with those hospitals better patient care. Joe Apfelbaum: 03:16 so what do you attribute your growth over the past four years? Do you have something specifically that you did? I mean, because you where your business was founded when I was born. Curt Bashford : 03:26 Yeah. ANd I've been here, this is my thirty first year here now. So I started when I was two w we've gone through a few different evolutions. I'm probably the biggest pivot point. Um, you know, we went through and we went from becoming a design manufacturing from a design contract from into a manufacturer that was one pivot back in about 1990. Um, and then we had our own products, but I mean we're, we, we had some moderate growth but we were kind of really a operationally centric company. I'm an engineer by background. The founder is an engineer, so we're very engineering technically order oriented, which means we make cool stuff, how to sell it, Joe Apfelbaum: 04:08 which is a comical stuff, but you don't know how to sell. So what changed? How did he start selling it Curt Bashford : 04:12 to um, you know, w we had some processes and we did well in, in some niche, you know, territorial markets and such like that. Um, but we, we hadn't broken that ceiling if you would, um, in [inaudible] I'm founder retired and myself and my two partners for you could say his exit strategy that kind of opened the door for us to make another pivot. You know, there was a good Company, he had a great foundation here, but we kind of wanted to go a little bit bigger, a little bit different direction. so we started to make some changes. Um, firsT senate changes was on salesforce. We only had a few direct guys so, um, where we had boots on the ground we did well and where we didn't have boots on the ground, we didn't do so much. I'm so we put some by practices in place here linked up with a manufacturer's rep organization, gets more boots and that gave us a little bit of growth, a little bit of working capital to start to do some other things. Curt Bashford : 05:08 IT thrust me into a new role. So I went from being, you know, in operations, but more technically oriented to being the ceo to run a business. My fi, my deGree undergrad and masters in engineering. What do I know about running a business? So, uh, you know, I kind of, it hit me like a lead balloon, I guess, that I got to go learn some things. So, um, uH, I got a business coach that helps set things off and then kind of like you, I believe, um, in 2014 I got bob would l so remember, you know, New Jersey and you know, between those two, that kind of thrust me into the world or were others learning the other, but he's got the same issues and problems and how do we do these things. And so I got into a kind of a learning Mode then, um, applied some of that here, meal from the culture up because before then I didn't even believe culture was a real thing. Right. And again, an engineer, we don't have feelings, we don't have the emotions. What do you need culture for? Joe Apfelbaum: 06:07 That's pretty incredible. Yeah, no, I'm a technical person myself. So I totally, I totally get that. Like what do you need foster for? Let's just get the work done, let's find a solution. RighT? So, so since you got a business coach and he joined eo, you grow your business significantly. You were your feature on the [inaudible] now that you grew the way that you grew, like what's more important to your business right now? Is it now? Are you looking back and saying, ok, now I'm focusing on pre-tax profit. I'm focusing on ebitda or I'm going to continue to double my business over the course of the next three years. Like what is your, what's your approach now? Curt Bashford : 06:43 Good question. Um, I think we're still in growth mode. So we had some evidence by, by the awards, and we want to continue that. I don't know that we quite want to double our beehag is to hit 10,000,000 revenue now again, by self we know means nothing. Arabia, revenues, vanitY and, and all that. But that's kind of our target. So it's really comes out at a book and if you look at the progression and companies, how they're majority companies, ninety six percent are somethings in that no less than a million, four percent in less than five. And we want to get to that point four percent. That's kind of a, a lofty, beehag target for us that we'd like to get to, um, we'd like to make some profit along the way, but we've been kind of reinvesting that into the growth because as, as you know, as you do grow, you find that you need to do a lot of things differently, processes, systems and people and you have, uh, you know, growing pains along the way that you got to take care of. I think we're still in that mode. Joe Apfelbaum: 07:48 You look at revenue per employee or profitability per employee. Do you look at a per head count or anything like that? Curt Bashford : 07:54 We haven't done that. Um, you know, our head count along with the growth, we've, we've, they will more than doubled in people too and they're probably already are having looked at revenue in those terms though. Joe Apfelbaum: 08:07 Cool. Cool. Let's talk a little bit about your marketing, because in order to grow, you need to have really awesome, incredible marketing. What marketing strategies do you use? You mentioned boots on the ground getting salespeople. Did you do any like search engine optimization? Curt Bashford : 08:22 The paint, we're finally just getting down to doing things properly that we need to do as part of our growth balloon. Part of that was related to a, um, a replacement market of our own products that I gave us, kind of a bump them give us some working capital for that. Um, I would say at best and being generous, you know, a lot of our marketing in the past, it was kind of a ad hoc, you know, what's, what's the quick fix to the day, you know, where do we need to throw something out there? Um, I, I very, very little strategy. Um, we are now. I actually hired our first full time marketing person last year before that and kind of we learned some bad habits. He, along the way being engineers, we tend to do everything ourselves, right? Technical people or we can do that. Curt Bashford : 09:08 Why do I need an outside person? And then you find a ceiling in. Yeah, your limitations that you really want to do it. Right? So I got a good guy last year and he's taken us in new directions and things differently outside the box. So we're starting to slowly now. Yeah. In place. The things we need to do. You mentioned seo, so we're, we've got the foundation work, we just started an ip retargeting program. I'm more looking more critically at shows because we used to do too many, too many shows. Anthony's, he used to do full coat color ads in magazines in the. We get, roy said, now we'v
