Peer Effect

Rishabh has successfully raised $13 million for his business Fermat. In the last quarter alone, he went from $100K to double-digit-millions. Making his company possibly one of the fastest-growing e-commerce businesses of all time.  As founders, there’s always one event that you consider to be your tipping point.  This is exactly the moment we dive into in today’s podcast with Rishabh Jain.  Rishab...

Joe Khoei is the founder of SalesX, a 3-time winner of the Best Sales Agency award at the US Search awards. Today’s episode, goes back to the start of SalesX, in 2010.  Joe bootstrapped his business solo from the start.  Within a year, he was learning all things digital marketing to meet his client's needs. And his income plummeted for it.  Fast-forward 13 years, Joe reflects on the codes of...

Ben Johnson is the Founder of Particle41. He’s a serial entrepreneur who’s raised $35 million over the course of his career.  And in today’s episode, we go back to a moment when Ben and his co-founder had gained momentum with their company, Legal Inc. Just when they thought they could take their foot off the gas, they had to press even harder to save their business. Their main seed investor, who w...

Ben Fletcher is the founder of The Mothership, a consumer branding growth company. He successfully raised $22 million in 2 years and got to £10 million in revenue.  Today we’re going way back… to 1999.  Ben poured everything into his first-ever virtual event with blue-chip recruiters. He was excited. And the expectations were high. But after a low turnout. The recruiters are left feeling disappoin...

We’ve all experienced those nights spent tossing and turning in dreadful anticipation of a difficult conversation. Today’s guest, David Valentine, remembers one particular night five years ago. It was the night before he had to tell his best friend and business partner that the partnership was over. But here’s the thing about those gut-wrenching moment before a very difficult event. They are usual...

COVID was an obstacle for many businesses. But while the lockdown created temporary challenges for certain industries, the introduction of remote work completely obliterated the idea of office life. As a result, Lucy Minton’s one-year-old business became almost unviable practically overnight. In this conversation, we’ll walk through this worst-case scenario. We’ll talk about how to prepare for a b...

We’re constantly trying to find that equilibrium in life where it feels like we’re doing a great job in our business and we’re doing a great job in our personal life. But why does it still feel unachievable? In this episode, I talk to Jeff Greenfield about practices he’s put in place to ensure quality time with his family, intense focus on his business, and the type of wellbeing that allows you to...

Founders love a good stretch target. The only problem is this can often put them under massive pressure. This is exactly what happened to my guest today.  Ken Babcock's wife Judy was set to give birth in a month and Ken used that deadline to place a somewhat self-imposed timeframe on his fundraising round. Find out what happened in this session.  More from James: Connect with James on LinkedI...

I thought I'd take this opportunity to do a quick episode on taking a look back at this year and looking ahead to next year.  More from James: Connect with James on LinkedIn  or at peer-effect.com 

We’ve been talking a lot about risk in the last few weeks and today’s conversation puts an even finer point on this topic. What happens if you take the risk and get the worst possible outcome? Kyle Roof, my guest today, lived that reality. He took what he felt was a measured risk to start a business and he lost everything. Every penny, every employee, and his brother ended up in jail. But here’s t...

It’s very tempting to lock ourselves away and build, build, build. We tinker so we feel productive. But what if that’s just a lie we tell ourselves? Are we just avoiding the real work? Are we avoiding the real feedback from our customers? In this episode, you’ll hear from Scott Hurff, the co-founder of Churnkey. We talk about the risks and safer bets he took when building his SaaS and the processe...

After all that we’ve been through in 2022… and are still carrying from previous years — right now, you just want to make it to the end of the year. But how can this be transformed into a strong mindset? One that’s calm and ready? Let’s discuss in this week’s podcast. More from James: Connect with James on LinkedIn  or at peer-effect.com 

Today I wanted to do a quick session on something that has come up for a few of my clients recently. It's about the danger of rushing.  There's so much chat around hustle culture and it feels like we're getting sucked into the short term immediate timeframe, which actually becomes quite dangerous. I'll address the antidote in this episode.  More from James: Connect with James o...

How do you deal with waking up each morning not knowing if it’s going to be the best week of your life or the worst? When you’re raising money this uncertainty can stretch out for months and it takes a toll. Especially in the current macro conditions! In this episode, you’ll meet Varun Bhanot, the founder of MAGIC, as we revisit April when he was in the middle of a raise and not knowing if the com...

Why would you need a business coach when everything is going great and you’re totally happy with where you are? In this episode you’ll meet an entrepreneur who is ten years into what she thought would be a scrappy little business. But it’s not so little anymore and she’s found herself in a place where dealing with all the growth is becoming a worry! How do you grow and stay true to your mission? T...

Today we’re peering into the interpersonal side of running a company and managing a team. My guest today found herself in a moment where she and a key contributor left an interaction both feeling attacked, undermined, and shaken. That ONE interaction had longtail consequences which included alienating the team, creating a toxic work culture and feelings of perceived spite. My guest today is Jessic...

Imagine being under so much pressure that you burst into tears in front of a stranger. I think for most people, that would qualify as one of the most memorable moments in their life. But for founders, that level of pressure can be sustained for months at a time—and even years. So how does one cope? In this episode I’m talking to a founder who is searching for inner peace while she navigates supply...

Last week we talked to a founder who had sold his company and was looking into the abyss of the next phase of his life and career. Today, we’re talking to a founder who is at an even earlier inflection point, one where he faces this question: To sell or not to sell? Indus Khaitan built an enterprise product that had big name customers and healthy revenue. It seems like a time in a company’s lifecy...

Selling your company. It’s an outcome that can be considered the closest thing to the finish line for an entrepreneur. So why is it memoirs aren’t written about the amazing vacations founders take post-exit? Or movies made about a mid-life retirement and endless days on a beach in Thailand? Because to a founder, that sounds awful. In this episode, I talk to Joe Keeley about the emotional and pract...

When Joe Burns and his co-founder attended a Growth Accelerator Program, they were asked one question by their coach which changed the course of their business and their partnership. "What revenue number do you want in three years?" If you haven't asked yourself or your co-founder that question, you will want to after you hear Joe's story. In this episode, we go back to that mo...

Today I'm talking about imposter syndrome and Idiots Mountain--a topic which came up at dinner with friends this week. In 1999,  David Dunning and Justin Kruger came up with a Dunning Kruger Effect based on the realization that high competence individuals often underestimated their ability. In this episode, I'll teach you how to use this phenomenon to get the most out of where you are in...

It’s Spring of 2019.  And Chelsey has just purchased a landscaping business.  But after a few days on-site, not only does she realise that the numbers are negative. But that she and her attorneys had been misled by the previous owner.  Chelsey was left with a big problem to solve. How can she turn this business around, and make it even better than what she had just purchased? In this episode, Chel...

Today I'm talking about one of my favorite things I share with my clients, The 1-10-100 Triangle. In 1992, George Laitz and Yuang Chung proposed the 1-10-100 Rule, which maintains that data entry errors cost exponentially more, the longer it takes to identify and correct them. This coaching session is about how to apply this rule to your business to reduce wasted resources and wasted time.  M...

Do you really need a co-founder? Shaunak found out his answer to this question the hard way.  After acquiring a co-founder based on a VCs recommendation, just 1 year later, Shaunak was in a break up at a pivotal moment in his business.  In desperate need for help, he fell back on his network, hired a contractor and got the business back on its feet with their help.  In this episode, Shaunak shares...

Something has been coming up quite a lot for my clients in recent coaching sessions. It's the idea of going faster versus getting there faster.  For entrepreneurs, founders and CEOs, there's  this idea of "I need to work more" and "I need to just go faster." But when you take a step back from that approach, is it actually the right one?  More from James: Connect with...