👋 Howdy to the 560 new legends who joined this week! You are now part of a 33,405 strong tribe outperforming the competition together.

LATEST POSTS 📚

If you’re new, not yet a subscriber, or just plain missed it, here are of some of our recent editions.

💡 Elicia McDonald Interview. Partner at Airtree Ventures. Transforming Aussie tech with top-tier investments.
⚡️ How Sidebar Went From Zero To One. Launching a startup from scratch is hard. Here is the breakdown of how Sidebar went about it.
💝 Ross Chaldecott Interview. Co-Founder & CEO at Kinde. High-level technology driven by high-value culture.

PARTNERS 💫

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HOUSEKEEPING 📨

Today is a bit of a different post. Today will be a getting to know me post. I have been interviewed in a bit of media lately (Bay Area Times, Just Go Grind, Strategy Breakdowns) and some of the feedback has been really nice. So I am going to use the next couple of weeks take this chance to talk a little about myself.

And I know I am not Elon. I am just learning as I go. My current resume is; founder & CEO of Athyna, building AI-recruitment, doing $6.5M recurring. Also founder of this newsletter. 35k in a year or so and #1 ranked mentor at Startmate, the Y-Combinator in the Southern Hemisphere.

Now that I have gotten that off my chest to counter the imposter syndrome, let’s dive in.

BUILDING IN PUBLIC 🔎

1/ On my background

I grew up in a small spot called The Mornington Peninsula, about an hour south of Melbourne. It’s a beautiful place where I spent my time surfing, riding bikes, and generally just being outside and active. School wasn't my thing—I got expelled twice, mostly for being a class clown, but I was always entrepreneurial.

I bought my first house at 19 and had three houses by the time I was 22. A health scare at 23 shifted my focus, leading me to travel the world and eventually land in the startup scene. Fast forward a bit, and here we are with Athyna, helping businesses build amazing global teams.

2/ On my first job

My first job was working at the local golf course. It was the perfect gig really. I was a ‘cart boy,’ which meant I got to drive carts all around the course. It was like having a car before it was legal to drive. We used to take the carts to the carpark and do burnouts in them.

3/ On taking risks and making big bets

I learned to take big bets from a very early age. Because I bought my first house at 19, it meant that by 20 I was winning and losing on a much larger scale than people around me. I learned what big wins and big losses feel like.

An example of this is the GFC. I had a house I purchased, that I’d worked my ass off renovating, set to go to auction. We had a 5-week advertising period, which is pretty typical for an auction, and during the middle week I decided to go to Vanuatu with my family. One day on that trip we came home from the beach and the television on every channel was talking about the financial crisis—“stock market crashes, world’s real estate markets in turmoil, the next depression looms” etc etc..

_{*Both of these houses looked a lot shittier than these images before I bought them.}

I was set to make $100-150k profit on the sale of that house, and the work I’d done, and I lost $15k. If the GFC hit a month later than it did I’d have been an extra $100k up. But what I learned was that it doesn’t really matter. If you have a loss, the sun will still rise the next day.

Having this as part of my early life meant I was more willing to take on risks. I remember someone congratulated me for making it 2-years with AdventureFit. I asked why they congratulated me and they said “most companies fail within two years”.

I said; “huh, that’s funny, that’s the first time I have thought about failure.” And it was true. Eventually that startup did fail, but I didn’t. I just moved on. The important thing was that I tried.

4/ On building Athyna

Athyna was born out of my own need to build a team on a tight budget while running my first startup. Once I had kinda nailed building an offshore team, I realized there was a huge opportunity to help other businesses to do the same. My thinking was that this was always going to be the world we were heading to, but COVID accelerated things by maybe ten years.

People were already hiring offshore pre-COVID, but it was less common. And a lot of it revolved around India, the Philippines, call centres and virtual assistants. Which never made any sense to me. It’s a great time for us to be in business, to be honest. First, people know remote can work.

And second, people want to hire and build remotely. They are sick of competing locally in ultra competitive, sparse talent pools, and/or they are focussed on profitability.

5/ On Athyna’s main GTM channel

Most of our growth has come from cold outbound email. We started outbound on week one at Athyna sending 50 emails per week and have since scaled our outbound machine to 1.2M outbound emails per week.

It’s pretty difficult to actually send that many emails per week to your detailed ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) so we built a full suite of sub-brands. We now send ~100k per day per sub-brand. I won’t mention the names of the brands, but they are along the lines of WeHireDevs.com and so forth.

We have a fair bit of fun with it. We have brands in the name of our creative director and our head of sales. We have one dedicated to my best friend, my brother, and even my dog.

People say outbound email at scale is dead. It’s not—you just have to be really good at it. It’s about putting the right message, in front of the right person, at the right time. If you get all three right you have a client. Two out of three you have a lead. Only or god forbid zero of the three and you are spam. Most people are spam.

For several years, outbound alone accounted for 80% of our revenue. We are still a small company, so being able to do this at our current scale leads me to believe we are probably the best in the world at it.

6/ On my personal brand & Athyna

My personal brand acts as a megaphone for Athyna. It helps attract talent and opens doors for business opportunities and investment. Talent sees the values and vision we represent and wants to be part of it and on the client and investor side, I am building a massive base of allies, especially through my newsletter, Open Source CEO.

The most interesting thing though, at least in my newsletter, is the fact that negative CAC is becoming possible today. Look at Hubspot’s acquisition of The Hustle, they bought a media asset, which makes money plus they get leads and close deals from it.

Smart companies are moving farther and farther away from SEO and traditional media buying and more and more towards creators and owned assets. It’s not hard to see why either.

I ran the math on 13 acquisitions in a recent newsletter deal report and found that newsletter acquisitions had a value per subscriber at a whopping $38 per subscriber. You can buy a good sub for $2. Not a bad deal.

Personal branding in general though is more just building my online reputation. It’s necessary today, and I know that a big part of my job is to tell the story of Athyna and to tell it as far and as wide as possible.

7/ On going through COVID and layoffs

One of the most challenging moments was during COVID-19 when we lost 70% of our revenue almost overnight. It was a real test of our resilience. We had to make tough decisions—it was the only time we’ve ever made layoffs, actually. There is no easy way to navigate layoffs. You just have to be upfront and honest and be as open-handed with the team as you can be.

We made the mistake of not doing all of our layoffs in one hit. We had to come back and do a second round a few weeks after the first, but with everything that was going on during COVID in March 2020, we really weren’t to know what was going to happen.

But we got through it and we came out of it stronger, more agile, and with the knowledge that we are hard to kill. I think that knowledge actually goes a long way.

8/ On my content diet

I am a voracious reader, and, well, I guess 'audio-book listener' if that's a term. So it’s a long list, but a few books that have helped me are: Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek, Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and How to Win Friends and Influence People. They would be my leadership stack.

I loved Predictable Revenue back in the day. Fanatical Prospecting and The Sales Acceleration Formula as well. They helped me to build Athyna’s outbound engine.

In terms of other things that have inspired me—I got a lot out of a couple of books on Bezos and a couple on Elon. Mainly just to get me to push myself. Those are the type of books you put down and think ‘I need to be better.’

I also love the Founders Podcast, Acquired, and My First Million when it comes to podcasts to improve.

9/ On what I do in my free time

In my free time, I love surfing, staying active, and spending time outdoors. Travel is also a big passion of mine—it helps me reset and find new inspiration. I also enjoy reading and weightlifting.

My lifetime goal with weightlifting is to snatch 120kgs and clean & jerk 150. I am 38, with a partially torn ACL right now and torn discs in my back, but if I had to place a bet, I’d say I’d get there one day. Wish me luck anyway.

10/ On mentors

I've been fortunate to have several mentors over the journey. Right now my main advisor is Bryce Maddock, CEO of TaskUs, who is also one of our investors. He has given me awesome advice on how to scale this business, as he has built a very similar business from $0 to $1 billion in revenue. The funny thing is, I actually pitched Bryce in one outbound email. Really good example of why you should always shoot your shot in life and in business.

11/ On work life balance

Honestly, there’s still a lot of work to be done here. I make it a priority to set boundaries and ensure I have quality time with my family and for myself, but balancing work and life is definitely a challenge, especially when you’re building a startup.

One thing I have often come back to is a morning routine. When things get really out of hand and you start doing all the wrong things, I just try to win the morning. If you can win the morning by looking after yourself, there is a good chance you’ll win the entire day.

12/ On one trait of successful entrepreneurs

Resilience. The ability to bounce back from setbacks, learn from failures, and keep pushing forward is essential. Entrepreneurship is a rollercoaster, and being able to stay focused and motivated through the ups and downs is crucial.

If I had one more, I would choose empathy. I think the key to being a great leader is to be able to be empathetic. If you can put yourself in the shoes of others and act selflessly when you can, it will go a long way and your team will usually follow your lead.

And that's it! You can follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn and also don’t forget to check out Athyna while you’re at it.

BRAIN FOOD 🧠 

How to Start a Startup by Sam Altman has an absolutely killer collection of classes, and Ben Horowitz’s lecture on management is a standout. This one's packed with straight-up advice on making tough calls as a manager, from demotions to dealing with raises.

If you're aiming to level up your management skills and like straight-forward, actionable advice, definitely add it to your watch-list.

TWEET OF THE WEEK 🐣 

TOOLS WE USE 🛠️

Every week we highlight tools we actually use inside of our business and give them an honest review. Today we are highlighting Attio—powerful, flexible and data-driven, the exact CRM your business needs.

See the full set of tools we use inside of Athyna & Open Source CEO here.

HOW I CAN HELP 🥳

Want to work together? Here are the ways I can help:

1. Hiring global talent: If you are hiring tech, business or ops talent and want to do it for up to 80% off check out my startup Athyna. 🌏

2. Want to see my tech stack: See our suite of tools & resources for both this newsletter and Athyna you check them out here. 🧰 

3. Reach an audience of tech leaders: Advertise with us if you want to get in front of founders, investor and leaders in tech. 👀 

And that’s it from me. See you next week, Doc 🫡 

P.S. Let’s connect on LinkedIn and Twitter for more content.