Andrej Persolja

Experiencing stagnant growth? DM me to help reposition your tech startup to attract best-fit customers 🚀 Lowered CAC by 52% for my last startup 🏹 Founder, Positioning @ Tangible Growth

You've built a good product. You're growing. But does it feel harder than it should?

Hi. I'm Andrej. I help CEOs in complex industries fix three things that kill growth: unclear positioning, misaligned teams, and spending money on developing products & features users don't buy.

- If you are stuck in alignment calls
- not 100% happy with what your website says
- If your board or co-founders are asking questions you don't know how to answer... I've probably seen (and solved) what you are experiencing.

Because the real cost of these challenges? Isn't just growth. 𝐈𝐭'𝐬 𝐘𝐨𝐮. You're spending mental energy keeping everyone happy. Second-guessing your decisions on a Sunday night. Spending time in meetings instead of enjoying it with family. (You sigh, as you message your group of friends saying you won't make it to your basketball game for the third week in a row).

This 𝐢𝐬𝐧'𝐭 how leading a company should feel like. As a co-founder, I spent 2 years trying every marketing hack in the book chasing growth. Templates, frameworks, books... Nothing changed until we realized the problem wasn't tactics, but positioning. I never wanted to feel that way again, so I got really good at fixing it.

Because here's the truth: This is a 𝐧𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐥 problem at your stage. Internally, positioning breaks because your company is evolving. Externally, you are competing against teams with bigger budgets that make clear, de-risked decision. Most founders hire consultants hoping for the answer, but their frameworks never get implemented. That's the gap.

I've been fortunate to learn from and work alongside the best in the industry, including Seth Godin, Brian Tracy, and Philip Kotler, which created the foundation of everything I do with founders:

Instead of consulting, I work with your team. We map your market, find your strengths, turn them into a competitive advantage. One that works across your product, marketing, and sales.

The result of that is confidence & clarity on what to build, who to target, and how to win.This approach has:

✔️ Helped a CEO scale their B2B SaaS from $1M to $3M in < 12 months.
✔️ Helped a management team build a defensible strategy for a B2C tech company scaling from $10M to $30M
✔️ Helped a B2B AI team deliver 10 impressive leads (Accenture, Bridgestone, ERM) proving traction before going for Series A. 

I work with max 3 companies per quarter. If you want that to be you, book a call. 

Let's see how we can turn the challenges you are facing into your competitive advantage: https://tidycal.com/tangible-growth/discovery-call

Founder

With Tangible Growth, I want to help you turn poor positioning symptoms:

➡️ You have some loyal customers, but new clients don’t know what you do
➡️ You have long sales processes, low conversion rates
➡️ Clients object your prices.
➡️ You don't get enough or get poor quality leads
➡️ People are leaving your product.

Into a strong positioning strategy, where you will be able to leverage your newly found position to:
💥 Get more high-quality leads at a lower cost
💥 Convert more leads into clients
💥 Charge more
💥 Increase your product's lifetime value
💥 Grow sustainably!

Send me an email to grow@apersolja.com and let's nail your positioning.

Sometimes I love my job. 

Last week at the unlockit conference a CMO came to me and said 'it's impressive what you are doing with Aimfox in the past few months'.

Being at the top - having a CMO / CGO role - is amazing, especially when it's going well, because you get all these people complimenting your work, when in reality, most of the work is being done by your teams.

Aimfox's growth isn't about me. 

Aimfox growth is Alex, our founder, who is making all the right moves and who I learn from on a daily basis.

It's our CTO, Nikola, who is leading the product side of things. 

It's our wonderful client-facing team in Ksenija, Tamara, Marija who are turning prospects into relationships into clients.

It's the designers, and developers, and a lot more people who are doing their jobs so we keep moving forward.

But I get to take most of the credit, so that's why I love my job :)

Who's crushing it with their teams lately?

Fractional Growth (CMO/CGO) | Growing Aimfox | 🏂 Fan of snowboarding, motorsports & rock concerts.

Google and Meta are lying to you. 

The reality is that advertising today is a black box, much like the AI one. 

You are feeding money into Google, Meta, you get back users. What happens in between? Who knows. 

The reality is that iOS doesn't provide click data anymore, gdpr is blocking tracking in Europe, cookie blockers do the rest. 

So Google, Meta are actually collecting data from about 30% of the actual conversions, says Yann A. Skaalen, founder of Digtective. 

So they run on 30% of data. If that sample is big enough (if you are an enterprise compamy), you are probably ok.

But in $10M scaleups? The 30% simply isn't enough, so Google, Meta are working based on bad data. And with advertising... What you put in is what you get out. Put in 💩, yourl get out poo. 

How to solve that? 

The entire episode is out now on 1 Message Away

During my longest fractional CMO tenure, there was 1 topic that always popped into our meetings: 

How many new leads are we generating this month?

Yet through analysis we found that sales had more MQLs to deal with than they could handle (while keeping the quality up).

This might be controversial, but… in most companies… Generating leads isn’t the problem.

When doing audits in companies, we typically find leads that got lost in the process. ($400k worth of them in with the last client). 

And they got lost in the process because the company had clear KPIs for acquisition. But once a prospect was in the pipeline? That’s where the lines between marketing and sales got blurry. And despite ownership was clearly defined, the clients weren’t pushed further in the pipeline.

Where is your bucket leaking?

What's preventing you from forecasting your sales?

A healthy funnel / user journey is the first step  in your growth going on 🔥

At my last fractional CMO tenure, we went from 0% to 37% conversion rate in the PLG funnel. Delivered Accenture, ERM, Bridgestone as leads. 

With Aimfox, the first thing I did was to collaborate with product to redesign the funnel. Went from 0.35% to 2.14% website visitor to paying user. 

7X the conversion rate. 
7X the revenue. 
Want to scale? 

Fix that funnel.

Send to founders that need to hear this or save for later.

d.labs

People Expert 

TAIA Translations

Taia is a startup providing an online translation and localization management platform. We provide a plethora of high-quality language services with zero hustle by pairing modern AI technology with professional translators. Any need your growing team might have - we are here for you. 

My journey and role in Taia:

TALENT:
 - Hired 20+ new employees in 2021, across two hubs (London, Ljubljana) as well as full-remote, ranging in experience from board to entry-level. With an average time to hire of < 45 days.
- Built a robust recruitment process placing a great emphasis on candidate experience.

PEOPLE OPS:
- Implemented a new onboarding process suitable for both on-site and remote employees focused on enabling them to come up to speed fast and feel like they belong utilizing HR practices such as user manuals etc.
- Implemented a regular 360 feedback session each half a year with the aim to help employees grow and improve their performance.
- Implemented regular monthly 1:1/feedback sessions between team leads and their direct reports. Provided training and support to all team leads to carry this process out successfully.
- Together with employees developed their individual learning plans.
- Provided coaching support to employees. 
- Spearheaded the process of defining company vision, mission, and values, while making sure all employees were included in the decision-making process.
- Written an employee handbook that served as the main source of truth for all employee-related topics.
- Supported team leads with training and guidance with different employee-related matters.
- Set up a clear and structured offboarding process
- Ensured legal labor compliance (contracts, requirements, etc.) and payroll reporting in the UK, Slovenian and Croatian companies.

Human Resources Manager

GenePlanet

GenePlanet is a scale up and a leading European provider in the field of genetic testing. The team consists of more than 150 employees all around the world.

- Responsible for communication, coordination and administration of on average 10 open positions per month.
- Responsible for certain aspects of HR administration and compliance (health examinations and workplace safety).
- Written copy for all HR internal communication in English.
- Was responsible for keeping HRIS (People HR) up to date.

Human Resources Assistant Intern

Bynder

Bynder is a fast growing Amsterdam based scale up with more than 450 employees. It launched in 2013 as the first pure SaaS digital asset management system (DAM), and has quickly become a world leader -rated #1 in terms of user-friendliness, support, and security.

At Bynder I was a part of a People & Talent team where I supported HR, L&D and Recruitment functions. I was initially recruited just as the HR Intern, but due to my strong desire to learn more (and the fact that I stayed on top of my HR  tasks) I got a chance to help out in L&D and Recruitment as well.

- I independently developed new activities and interventions to increase employee well-being according to the identified needs, while also coordinating existing well-being initiatives.

- I took part in implementation of new talent development initiatives (developing a culture of feedback and continuous learning) and helped in updating the exiting ones such as 360 feedback process and performance reviews.

- I was responsible for all aspects of HR Administration in the employee life-cycle.

- I assisted Learning & Development department with developing and delivering more than 20 trainings on topics of Growth Mindset, Feedback and Goal-Setting.

- I coordinated and assisted with the delivery of Bynder Academy, one-week-long on-boarding program for new employees.
 
- I administered LMS platform (Lessonly) and independently developed one e-learning (Recruitment for Managers).

- I assisted with performance appraisals and payroll reporting.

- I supported the process of data collection, data revision and implementation of a new HRIS (Sage People).

- I assisted Recruitment department with recruitment for all open internship positions (pre-screening and first-round interviews).

- I took care of office management tasks and organisation of internal and external events for one month and a half when Office Manager was on leave.

www.bynder.com

People & Talent Intern

Zavod Bob

I was employed by a Youth Centre Bob to work on the project called “March up(on) labor market", which strived to facilitate the job searching process and ensure a smooth transition to the first job for young unemployed. We were trying to achieve this through mentorship, training and coaching initiatives. This was an EU-funded project carried out in three Slovenian cities (Ljubljana, Sežana, Koper) and I was responsible for the group in Sežana.

What did I do:

-  I independently carried out project planning, project promotion, and sourcing of the participants.

-  I communicated with relevant stakeholders ( f.eg. Employment Services of Slovenia, Youth Centres, Media).

- I independently designed and delivered more than 15 trainings on topics of career guidance, assertiveness, and active citizenship.

-  I provided more than 50 hours of coaching support to the participants of the project.

-  The project had a great success rate, with 5 out of 6 participants in the group gaining their desired employment before the end of the project.

Youth Worker - Trainer

HIT Lab Oy

HIT Lab (Human Information Technology Laboratory)  was an interdisciplinary startup utilizing artificial intelligence, big data, predictive analytics and advanced trends in applied psychology in order to transform the employment dynamics on a global level. 

While at HIT Lab I was working on two products. First one was a tool using psychological insights and AI to form highly creative and innovative teams. The second one was a new type of career guidance platform, which combined the features of a psychological assessment tools, e-learning platform and a job board.

So what did I do:

-  I Independently developed three module training called: "Capacity Building Training for Labour Market Digitalisation Specialists" aimed at the EU officials with the intention to promote digitalisation of career guidance (and consequently our platform).

-  I conducted research and wrote 18 reports on the topics of psychology, career guidance, human resources, labor market, digital systems, counselling and artificial intelligence, which were used for the development of two products I mentioned before.

-  I assisted in HR department with the intern recruitment and selection processes.

- Conducted on-boarding training and mentoring for new interns.

-  I assisted the marketing department with design of promotional materials, market research, business strategy development.

-  I got a chance to pitch our business case to our potential partners - IBM.

Career Guidance and HR Intern

When I was a little girl, I always said I wanted to be a jeweller when I grew up. I can still remember in vivid detail the exact moment when this profession became a thing I wanted to pursue in the future.
 
While watching a documentary I became completely enchanted by observing how the craftswoman took a rather ugly, undefined form of yellowish rock and through some exposure to heat and force made it into a fine, intricate, shiny masterpiece. I was hooked. And even though later on I never went down the path of actually pursuing this profession, this idea somehow stayed with me.  Now, instead of gold, I hope to craft an even more demanding substance - people. I strongly believe we are all like these undefined lumps of gold - full of undiscovered potential and only by being exposed to right influences we can realise our full potential. That is what attracts me to the areas of learning, talent development & HR - being able to help individuals grow, learn and achieve their professional and life goals, thus becoming each their own masterpiece.

So in my quest to discover more about those topics and to mould my own gold, my life path took me from Slovenia, to Finland, Netherlands and back. 

- I have worked in a Finnish startup developing solutions for career guidance.
- I helped young individuals by means of training and coaching on their path towards their first employment.
- I took part in all HR and L&D processes in a vibrant tech scale up in Amsterdam. 
- I have set- up the whole HR function in a start-up Taia Translations.
- I have often distinguished myself by taking initiative and going an extra mile, driven by my curiosity and passion to grow.

You have to mould the gold while it is still hot they say, so now I am working as People Expert at d.labs.

Aa a part of that role I am constantly on the lookout for new diamonds and promising lumps of gold to join our amazing team (if I have piqued your interest, please take a look at the open positions below) … and if you see yourself in one of them, please reach out I will be very glad to meet you! :)

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