How to stay motivated to keep building

0:00The Voices of Search Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast, I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth, and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit I Hear Everything dot com. From advertising to software as a service to data across all of our programs and clients, we've seen a 55 to 65% open rate. Getting brands authentically integrated into content performs better than TV advertising. Typical life span of an article is about 24 to 36 hours. We're reaching out to the right person with the right message and a clear call at action that it's just a matter of timing. Welcome to the MarTech Podcast, a member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. In this podcast, you'll hear the stories of world-class marketers that use

1:04technology to drive business results and achieve career success. Here's a host of the MarTech Podcast, Benjamin Shapiro. I'm Benjamin Shapiro, and joining me today is Chris Golek, the former founder of Demand Base and the current founder and CEO of Channel 99, a company that is solving marketing attribution challenges by revealing the source of three times the website visitors compared to your industry standards. And today, Chris is going to explain how to illuminate the dark funnel problem that is costing you millions in misattributed revenue. Time for a one minute break to hear from our sponsor, Previsible. So you're looking for SEO help, and you got a couple of options. You could start replying to spam from agencies that claim they can get you to rank number one on Google. You can pay an hourly rate for a consultant who will inevitably nickel and dime you with hourly charges, or you can work with a cookie cutter agency to quickly launch a strategy-less project with low success rate. None of those sound very good,

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3:10Sorry, Chris, I want to move on to our lightning round where I'm going to ask you a couple of questions about your career, attribution, demand, generation. We're going to spin the wheel and see what comes up. Are you ready? Sure. All right, question number one. We're going to talk a little bit about motivation. You sold your first company for $380 million and pioneered an entire category with demand-base. Why are you here and what stopped you from retiring to your Lake House in Michigan? Yeah, well, I don't have a Lake House in Michigan, and it's really cold there. But I do like to go there in the summer. It's a beautiful place. You know, it's just passion for the industry. When I started demand-base, the initial vision of the company was to be a supply chain solution for marketers. That's effectively what Channel 99 is. It's a little bit of unfinished business. But I love building companies, the people, culture. I love seeing

4:12employees that become best friends and go on. They might go on to different companies. That's pretty gratifying for me. For most of us, you know, we're on the other side, not having had this giant windfall. And so we're still earning and working with A because we have to. And B, because we also have something to prove. After the exit, how did that turn? You're obviously working. You said you have unfinished business, but it's not about the result for you. So, you know, I want a little bit more about the motivation. It's the result for the people I work with. It's the result for families. There's a lot more motivation than just a financial one. So, you know, I'd also say whatever you think somebody made out of something, cut it in half. We never talk about the taxes after you sell your company. That's what my mother would say, right? That's what my wife says. Yeah. All right, that wraps up this episode of The Martek Podcast.

5:15Next to Chris Golek, the CEO and founder of Channel 99 for joining us. If you'd like to contact Chris, you could find a link to his LinkedIn profile in our show notes or on martekpod.com, or you could visit his company's website at channel99.com. And if you haven't subscribed yet, and you want a daily stream of marketing and technology knowledge in your podcast feed, hit the subscribe button in your podcast app, and we'll be back in your feed next week. All right, that's it for today. But until next time, my advice is to just focus on keeping your customers happy.