Misfit Entrepreneur May 2023 - 353: Defining Success on Your Terms, How Joseph Gissy Built a $50M+ Business in 18 Months

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Dave Lukas Chats with Joseph Gissy

353: Defining Success on Your Terms, How Joseph Gissy Built a $50M+ Business in 18 Months

This week’s Misfit Entrepreneur is Joseph Gissy. Joseph is a serial entrepreneur and founder of Tactive and Gissy Ventures. Tactive is a wealthtech platform that automates investments for investors and connects them with financial advisors across the US. It also helps financial advisors grow and scale their practice through branding, marketing and lead generation. The company was valued at over $50M in just 12 months and ranked a Top 100 company in Wealthtech 3 years in a row in addition to receiving a number of other rewards.

Joseph has had an interesting entrepreneur journey and is still in the early stages of it. When we first spoke, we discussed the successes and challenges of growing his businesses and it reminded me of my journey in a number of ways, so I wanted to have him on as he is a young entrepreneur in the thick of building a fast-growing company and the lessons he can share can help everyone in their own journey.

www.JosephGissy.com

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Show Notes

Joseph had a financial services background and worked with his father as a financial services professional starting in 2010. He started to get burned out on workshops and the “game” of running a financial advisory firm. He started to look for ways to automate his processes and marketing to free up his time. As he started to build things out, he would talk to advisors he knew about and many of them started asking how they could get involved. He saw the opportunity to help advisors connect with potential clients at scale. Joseph started a new RIA firm and started trying things out. It worked and started to grow. They hit $1M+ in revenue in less than 12 months and continued from there.

Talk about how you figured out the market and built the business around to maximize the value for clients…

Most of the financial industry is built on a 70-year-old theory called Modern Portfolio Theory.
Things are happening much faster today making it very hard to buy and hold for a very long term like MPT subscribes.
Most people sell at the wrong time and buy at the wrong time.
Joseph’s solution is a more dynamic/active approach with a goal to preserve capital while growing it. And the software/AI automates it.
Because it is a software platform, it can serve different types of individuals and their personal needs instead of a one size fits all type model.
It helps people find the right financial advisor for them if that is what they want or helps make it easy to invest on their own.

How many times has business broke along the way and what are some of the best lessons learned in fixing it?

The big one was with building the initial Robo model.
He was working with a group building the solution and implementing parts of their code.
In the middle of it, Goldman Sachs bought them, and he saw the writing on the wall that they were essentially going to get cut off.
He knew he would have to pivot and hire his own programmers and do things in house. He went out and raised capital and then hired a team and had to rebuild things.

Have you ever been at a point where you didn’t think you were going to make and had to pull out a miracle to keep things going?

It feels like that most days!
Nowadays, it is not such a big deal as the business has grown and has good cashflow.
“I always operate like my back is against the wall as that is when I am at my best.” This philosophy has served him well.
Whatever business you are in, you should strive to have a recurring revenue model.
Joseph runs lean and has a big focus on running the business with fiscal responsibility.

You mentioned to me that you had gotten to a point where it seemed like everything was on your shoulders and you had to find a way to better operationalize the business. Take us through how you did that.

Joseph never thought that he would have to do so much.
Having employees compounds it because they don’t know what they don’t and it takes a lot of work, especially early on to get things up to speed.
Joseph hired a coach and implemented EOS.
One of the things that helped the most was to write and document all of the processes from A-Z.
Nowadays, the employees know more than him and have taken ownership of their areas.
Joseph refocused on what he was good and most passionate about in the business, which was the marketing side.

What should entrepreneurs know about how to effectively market online?

They need to do it!
We are more connected with people than ever.
First, build a personal brand around how you are.
People connect over personal brands that they like and relate to.
You need to engage and interact with others on social media and online.

Any hacks or tips to better market your business online?

Joseph spends a lot of time listening to marketing podcasts and watching videos of top marketers.
A good tip is to start a group on Facebook, even locally. Invite people and make sure you are focused on helping better the lives of the group.
Focusing locally is a good way to niche down and do well.

You coach and help businesses overcome limiting factors. What are the common things that hold entrepreneurs back the most?

Themselves. Getting over their own fear of success.
It seems easy to keep doing the same things, but that is not growth.
You must be fearless and keep pushing and breaking out of your current objectives.
Get over your fear and move forward, forward, forward.

Biggest surprises on your journey so far?

That early on, how many people wanted to join his company with him.
If you are a good person and put yourself out there, people will join you.

Final thoughts?

Don’t be afraid to act when the opportunity you’ve been waiting for presents itself. It will never feel perfect or perfectly right, but don’t miss out on what you know is a great opportunity.

Best Quote

I always operate like my back is against the wall as that is when I am at my best...

Define success on your terms. The way you see success is different than others. Take the time get clear on it for yourself.

Failure will never overtake you if your will to succeed is big enough.

Forget what everyone else thinks. Ignore the noise and focus on what is most important to yourself and your vision.

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