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Welcome to the Sales Transformation Podcast, the definitive stop for leaders driving change in the sales world. Hosted by Collin Mitchell, we dive deep into the minds of Founders, CEOs, VPs of Sales, and Sales Development Leaders from trailblazing startups to industry-leading public companies.
Our mission is simple: to illuminate the path to extraordinary sales leadership. We explore a broad spectrum of sales territories, from the intricacies of Founder Led Sales and Outbound Sales to the transformative potential of Technology in Sales and Social Selling. Whether it's mastering your CRM, optimizing conversions, scaling sales teams, or engineering a complete Sales Transformation, our conversations are set to challenge the status quo and redefine sales success.
With a new content every day of the week, we bring you unfiltered interviews with the luminaries of sales, people who have not just succeeded but transformed the way we think about sales. Collin Mitchell also shares sharp, tactical sales tips every week, packing decades of sales wisdom into bite-sized insights.
So, if you're ready to rewrite the sales rulebook and learn from the best in the business, the Sales Transformation Podcast is your ticket. Write us a review, share the show, and join us on this journey of sales evolution. Let's transform the way we sell, together!
Hey there. Welcome to another episode of the sales transformation podcast. We are, of course, here to bring you valuable insights and strategies to help level up your sales game. On this episode, we have a fantastic guest joining us, Mike Swigunski, a best selling author and nomadic entrepreneur. Mike will be sharing his expertise on building trust through content creation.
Announcer:Let's dig right into it. Here's our host, Colin Mitchell.
Collin Mitchell:I'm very excited today to have Mike Swygunsky on. Mike is, a best selling author and nomadic, entrepreneur. Mike is the mastermind behind the global career and recognized authority in the remote work industry. His book, Global Career, How to Work Anywhere and Travel Forever, underscores his digital acumen and transfer transformative impact in the remote work realm. Mike, welcome to the show.
Collin Mitchell:How you doing?
Mike Swigunski:Yeah. Doing fantastic, Colin. I'm calling in from overseas in the Republic of Georgia in a small city of Tbilisi.
Collin Mitchell:Yeah. And that's your that's your home base. Right? There?
Mike Swigunski:Yeah. So I've been based here for about 3 years and kinda use it as a travel hub. Spent about 6 to 9 months here a year, depends. Actually, head into Cyprus in a couple days to celebrate, a friend's birthday this weekend. So looking forward to that.
Collin Mitchell:Awesome. Well, you, you know, have a very interesting story experience, and now you're kind of sharing it with others. So, really excited to have you on. This is not, you know, something that we've talked about before and haven't had somebody on with, you know, this type of lifestyle that you have that I think a lot of people, would love to learn more about as well. But, you know, the thing that we kinda discussed that we were gonna talk about is, you know, the art of the digital deal, buying and selling over a 120,000,000 in online, transactions.
Collin Mitchell:So, why don't you kick us off, and I'm sure I'll have a ton of questions, that we can dig into from there.
Mike Swigunski:Yeah. So it's been a fascinating journey of kind of working and traveling around the world for the past decade. And my my journey started off my first job out of college was teaching financial economics at a university in Prague. And I'll give kinda the short cliff notes version. So I started working locally overseas and then transitioned to working for start ups, in sales and marketing.
Mike Swigunski:And that was kind of a one way path to getting a remote job. And one of the people that, one of the companies that I started working with as a early employee was for Empire Flippers. And so when I joined the company, I was employee number 4, And we started doing deals that were, you know, 25, $50,000. A 6 figure deal for us at the time was was a huge deal. Right?
Mike Swigunski:And over the, you know, 4 years that I was there, we we started going from these smaller deals to bigger deals. And it it taught me a a lot of valuable lessons about sales, marketing, trust, how to have a big impact, how to build trust remotely. You know, we weren't selling these $1,000,000 businesses face to face like a a realtor in most cases. We were having to do it over the phone. And then to scale, you have to teach other people who aren't the founders and who aren't the early employees how to do this.
Mike Swigunski:So there's a lot of techniques that we utilized, and there's a lot of techniques that I've brought into my own businesses. And one of the biggest and most powerful things to build relationships is you can still have the online component, but some of my biggest deals that I've done in the 4 to $5,000,000 range have gone from buying a $100 bar tab, creating a networking event, and saying, hey, guys. 1st few rounds are on me. And this creates a really nice networking dynamic. By spending a few $100 to buy people a round of drinks, you're getting some of those people.
Mike Swigunski:You need to invite the right people, the right network there. But once you get them there, they kind of are are really thankful for just buying that first round. Right? You're kind of the center of attention. And I would always approach these networking events as, hey.
Mike Swigunski:I'm gonna bring a few friends. I'll buy the drinks. You just hype me up, Kind of tell people what I'm doing. And there's not really, like, a sales pitch. I didn't go in with, like, hey.
Mike Swigunski:I wanna be the person who's gonna sell your business. It's a very long sales process. Sometimes, 2 to 3 years for an entrepreneur to to kind of package and wanna exit their business. So it's just essentially building strong relations, getting people's information, staying in touch, and kind of positioning yourself as the expert in this industry. And so that's kind of how how the journey's been.
Mike Swigunski:And it's been a a very exciting one because I've seen every way the Internet is monetized, sold every type of business out there. So the Internet's almost ruined for me, but for every, every con, there's, like, 10 plus sides for it.
Collin Mitchell:Yeah. And so, I mean, how did that those experiences of, you know, realizing, you know, hey. You know, getting the right people in the room, you know, buying the 1st round of drinks, and, obviously, you know, there's the whole role of reciprocity, right, where people, you know, want to you do something for them. They feel like they wanna do something for you. Right?
Collin Mitchell:So, just curious, you know, how that turned into leading you to, you know, doing these large transactions.
Mike Swigunski:Yeah. So I think that's the simplified version. There's a lot more that goes into it. And for me, it's just always being relevant, always being top of mind. I personally produce a lot of video content.
Mike Swigunski:And before somebody even gets on the phone with me, they're they know about my story. They know about my book. I've published on Forbes, an entrepreneur. They've kind of gone through and read a lot of this stuff because people are smart and savvy now, especially multimillion dollar business owners. So they're googling you, they're doing research before they get on the phone call with you, and they've watched 10 hours of video content that you've produced.
Mike Swigunski:So they feel like they already know you, and it's very powerful because imagine having 10 sales calls with this person before they get on the first call with you. They're already presold, and it's just the power of creating content. And, Colin, you probably experience this all the time. Like, you're you're producing so much good quality valuable content, and people are getting to know you that when they talk to you for the first time, they almost feel like they know you. You've made 600 podcast episodes.
Mike Swigunski:So it's one of these things where if you're creating the right content, attracting the right audience, those videos and those pieces of content are gonna do all a lot of the sales and marketing for you.
Collin Mitchell:Yeah. I mean, content is a huge strategy of, you know, building trust with these people. Right? And there's people who do it right and people who don't. Right?
Collin Mitchell:There's a lot of people who, you know, build this online persona of may not be necessarily, you know, as as authentic as you would think. So I think that the key there is, like, creating content, you know, having sort of this digital presence online, being consistent, like, consistently showing up and adding value, is is a very powerful tool for sales and marketers, if done right. But, how did you get started in content, and what's kind of your strategy and thoughts around, you know, what you do in order to build trust online?
Mike Swigunski:Yeah. Great question. So I got started with a travel blog, and I built my first website. And the reason I got started with it because I was living overseas. I was kind of known in my network as, like, the travel guy.
Mike Swigunski:I I was a leader for a study abroad program for university. So I was just very well known as, like, if if you're traveling somewhere, ask Mike kind of what to do, where to go. And people were messaging me, especially since I lived in Prague for a few years. Hey. Where should I go?
Mike Swigunski:What should I eat? Where's the best nightlife? And I was sending these huge Facebook messages to people. And eventually, it was like, man, people are really curious about this. So I just I was like, okay.
Mike Swigunski:Instead of sending these long, you know, Facebook messages, I'll just make a blog post, have, like, links, maps, photos, like, all these other things that are way better, and, you know, I can send them the blog post and put a lot more effort into it, and it'll be a lot more valuable for the person that's going to that new city. And that's kind of how I first got it start got it started, with creating content. And it's really transformed from, you know, writing books, written content, to now I'm just very bullish on video content. I think if you look at any platform, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, they're all kind of prioritizing video content. And it's it's a great thing to do, but it's it's hard.
Mike Swigunski:It's not easy. So there's a lot more elements to it, and that's something that I've kinda realized that the type of video content or the type of content you're creating needs to meet what your audience wanted. And the way I've kind of figured out this was I have an email list around 4 45,000 people, and I was like, I was getting ready to start a podcast. And I love podcasting. But before I do this, let me survey my audience and see what they want.
Mike Swigunski:Where are they hanging out? Where is my audience of 45,000 people hanging out? And they drastically said on YouTube. So that's why I was like, okay. Light bulb moment.
Mike Swigunski:Let's create content on YouTube because my audience is there. My customers are there. So there's gonna be other people like them hanging out on those platforms. And if you don't have a big audience, you can go to Facebook groups or figure out kind of your target audience and and incentivize people to take a survey and figure out where they're hanging out to figure out what type of content. And so that's why I started creating YouTube content.
Mike Swigunski:And YouTube is very powerful because it essentially finds the right viewer for your type of content. And, yeah, it's been a a fantastic journey, something I'm still learning a lot about. But it's, every week, I'm creating new content and absolutely love the journey.
Collin Mitchell:Yeah. Wow. Couple of key important things there, right, is make sure you're creating content where your audience is hanging out. Thanks for tuning in to today's episode. We hope you enjoyed it and that you didn't forget to subscribe and share so that we can help more people transform the way they sell.