From Homeless to Building 6- Figure Businesses: Marcel Löwigt on Sales & Scaling with Systems

10XMarcel: I made some questionable decisions back in the days and it took me from homeless to six figures. two years later, I founded My second company. we scaled it up from zero employees up to sixty employees and from zero revenue to five million in revenue in 27 months.

Carmen: Hi everyone. This is Carmen Devat and I will be hosting today's episode of Behind the Founders. Joining me here today is Marcel Levig. Marcel, welcome. Can you introduce yourself?

10XMarcel: Hi Carmen. Hi audience. yeah, my name is Marcel. better named it's Tanics Marcel. I'm a serial entrepreneur. I'm in business for more than eighteen years now, and thanks for having me.

Carmen: Great. So to get us started, can you introduce what you're currently working on? I see that you are the founder of GrowthZilla OS. Tell us a little bit about what GrowthZilla OS does.

10XMarcel: Yeah, where Zel RS is one of our solutions for SMEs. I'm as I said, I'm I'm a serial entrepreneur. We have several solutions focused on growth from SMEs, So I came personally from an SME perspective. I owned several companies before, scaled them from zero to up to five million, for example, in in twenty, twenty-five months. I've done it several times and we found an a little bit tricky gap to close and the gap is Usually an SME needs some help with marketing, obviously, and there are a lot of agencies out there, and the agencies don't understand what their business of the SME is really about, and on the other hand, the SME does know how to do the marketing, and there is always some tension between both sides. So we developed the software. that replaces the whole marketing agency. So you have an agency in your pocket. You can just talk to it and it runs everything behind. So you can really automate everything. You have WhatsApp, all your socials, you have funnels, you have websites, social posts, it creates everything and it learns how you run your business, it interviews you. your your employees ETC. So basically it starts from four dollars a day to run your whole marketing and you don't need to pay retainers two, three, five, or whatever K a month to an agency. You can do it by yourself and it trains you. So it's best for you as an SME owner because you need to understand how you need to market your business.

Carmen: Mm-hmm. Great. Thank you so much for the lovely introduction. So, just for the listeners out there who are not really familiar in that space, what exactly is SME? What does it stand for?

10XMarcel: Yeah, it's SLB is small and mid-sized entrepreneurs, entrepreneurships. so usually there are companies between two and let's say two hundred and fifty employees in the range between zero and fifty million in revenue. and Obviously they especially when they are below twenty to thirty employees, they don't have a own marketing team, they don't have an HR team, so they don't know anything about marketing and sales tuck side of things. So they just have a good product or a good service and they get any on any way a client and then just close them and deliver, you know. So there's no real process for this, and this is why we developed this software.

Carmen: Okay, that's very lovely. So basically, if I understand correctly, you are really helping really smaller size companies, especially especially companies who are just starting out to really help them support the sales marketing by building this AI powered platform that would help them, especially in the marketing aspect as well.

10XMarcel: Exactly, yeah. So my my main purpose or my main background is sales. So I'm doing sales for twenty-six years now. I've worked with hundreds, more than thousand companies all over the planet and I personally closed more than twelve thousand deals on several niches. B2B, B2C, whatever you name it. so it doesn't matter what what industry it was. And I've wrote several books, five books. It's actually a sixth one is it's it's in my desk right now, and it's about all about scaling and how you scale with systems instead of headcount, You need processes and systems. So systems compound and yeah headcount is always a big issue in the companies, especially when you go for let's say the MENA region where all already also work, they think they can fix problems with more headcount, but the headcount

Carmen: Yeah.

10XMarcel: just compounds a problem, you know. So the system needs to be in place. And this is what we do.

Carmen: Yeah, yeah. I definitely resonate with what you mentioned about taking a look at the system. It's not necessarily about having more headcounts or having more people because sometimes oftentimes, I mean, I've had experiences also working in larger scale organizations. I feel like as organization grows, it can be a little bit how would I say The roles are not exactly defined as well. And then people end up not really sure what exactly they need to fulfill. And it's really down to the quality versus the quantity as well. So this is just something that I really want to acknowledge. Marcel, I'm just taking a look at your LinkedIn profile. And I think you do have a really interesting story. And if you don't mind me asking, you mentioned that since 2010 you found yourself homeless. So Tell me a little bit about your journey of how you got to where you are today.

10XMarcel: Yeah, it was in my second year of entrepreneurship. I made some let's say questionable decisions back in the days and found myself homeless from one day to another and really had no money because I was already or still in the in the startup phase and So I decided okay, I need to find a solution, and I don't wanted to ask somebody to help me out. for example, my parents or they would definitely help me, but I haven't asked them so they haven't known at all. And

Carmen: okay.

10XMarcel: I decided okay, I I I would rather be homeless and figure it out by myself and make it up back on track. And yeah, this is how it went. It took me ten and a half months to become send six figure again, just by the skill of how to know to make people buy, so make them buy. This is actually my my sales framework. I've written one of the books. it's it's exactly the same title, Make Them Buy. where I explain it. And yeah,

Carmen: Yeah.

10XMarcel: it took me from homeless to six figures. two years later, I founded My second company. we scaled it up from zero and zero employees up to sixty employees and from zero revenue to five million in revenue in 27 months. then I sold it. And I've since then I have done it plenty of times. I I don't count it to be honest, and I helped a lot of people. And yeah, it's it's all about mindset on the first end, and you need to understand that you need to replicate and yeah, compound with the things that really actually works and resonate with the other people. So, as I said, the title is make them buy, and this is my whole approach, my whole life. I'm I'm becoming 45 this year, so God will. And it's always about the other person. It's not about us. It's not about us as as a company, as me, as a founder, as a salesman, whatever, as a trainer. it's all about our clients and how we can help them and how do they need to have a solution in place, you know? So this is what we do.

Carmen: Yeah, I think it's really meaningful what you're currently building. And again, I find you're it definitely takes like a lot of resilience and like you said, also like the right mindset to be able to get to where you are today as well. so Marcel, I just wanted to revisit what you you talked about that you've written a couple of books. Tell the listeners out there your first book, what is the book focused on? What is it about?

10XMarcel: Yeah, the first book was actually the one I mentioned. It's what it was make than buy. I wrote it five or six years ago. It was absolutely written by hand, so no AI. so today maybe it it would be a little bit tighter or maybe a little bit longer.

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

10XMarcel: I don't know. I I recently thought about it to to rewrite it again.

Carmen: Okay.

10XMarcel: but the book was about How you understand how sales actually works, you know? So most of the people out there don't understand that sales is a system and not a skill. And the the the difference between the skill and the system is that anybody could learn it and could do it and have success with it, you know. So and the first on the first pages of this book I for example have written down how I collected six hundred K in Euros so it's seven something around seven hundred five K in USD in one month and had a peak close rate in this month of 94.4% which was on the first appointment they the the prospects have never seen me before and have never seen me after and it just took 30 minutes to close all all these deals and there's there's a specific Design of the sales conversation itself and how to set up appointments in this amount and go for the appointments. They have all showed up. I showed up and closed the deals. So and was an average of something around 3.5k or something, or maybe 4k. so each, so it was like My schedule was so packed, I had up to 13 appointments every single day and just go for this call for the calls or for the conversations and just close the deals, you know. So, and because the design of the speech, the whole conversation was so sharp, it was so easy to close. And since since then

Carmen: Hm. Yeah, because sorry.

10XMarcel: I I I I just designed a framework around it and now I teach others how to do it by themselves. Sometimes I run small cohorts. I I I work a lot on one-on-one and I sometimes have small cohorts a max of 20 people usually it's something around eight to twelve and I just had a a small cohort from From I attended the mastermind three months ago and was a speaker there for one and a half hours, some sales stuff. actually my my presentation broke up after two minutes, so I I was going for freestyle. Okay, it was better at at the end. So and some of their attendees just joined the cohort and they had tremendous success with just two conversations we had. So they scaled up by five figure each. within two to three weeks. Because they finally

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

10XMarcel: understood how to do it right and easy. Because make them buy is about the other person and you don't need to sell anything. They will buy anyway.

Carmen: Mm-hmm. Amazing, amazing. I like what you mentioned about that when it comes to the space of sales, it's about having the correct systems. And then once you have the correct systems implemented, anyone can successfully do a lot of closing, as you've mentioned as well from your experiences. And I'd like to go back to a little bit about your work with. Growth, Zilla OS, right? Because you mentioned you really helped to support a lot of those small scaling businesses. A lot of them don't have the marketing team to be able to be able to grow or be successful in sales. What would you say? I I mean, I guess I have a lot of questions actually, but I guess the first question I wanted to ask is what would you say are the biggest challenges that they face when it comes to the space of struggling to close deals and sales and so on?

10XMarcel: biggest issue always is a full pipeline. So if you have a broken pipeline, obviously you could have a great service, a great recommendation or publication, whatever. but if no one knows you, this is the biggest problem at all. So and the second part is they don't know how to market themselves. So it it's It's really hard and they don't have the money obviously to hire the right people. If you buy cheap, you buy twice, three times, four times, five times. Maybe you know it. I think a lot of our listeners will also say, Yes, that's true. and I worked with a lot of agencies as well around the globe, and to be honest, most of the agencies don't know what they are doing. I will never ever blame anybody because they need to learn it and they they learn it because th this is why they hire me. And the the issue is for the SMEs. They don't know them, they don't know how. They know maybe a lot of tools out there, like the usual LLMs or Claude, whatever you name it, ChatGPTC, but at the end, you need to understand how to prompt this and what you want to get out of this. And there's no guidance. Yeah, you can boy buy a course or another course or a coaching or whatever. Everything needs to be in your head, and you need to understand what is actually the right thing in the right moment. And SMEs usually don't have the time, they don't have the knowledge, they have don't have the nerves, they don't have the team. So founders, especially below five million revenue, mostly do it by themselves. So they are sitting on the weekends, they don't have the family time. They don't have the money to hire somebody. So it's always a problem. It's like being a red in a red race. It's always tight. It's time sensitive. You don't know what you're doing at all. You're just trying to figure it out and make the end's needs. Yeah. So this is why we developed a software that really can help you with it. You know, so

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

10XMarcel: you don't need five or ten different subscription, you just need one. And we actually we have over fifty models in there and you just use your voice like an interview, like we just do it right now, you know.

Carmen: Yes. Yeah, amazing. And so far, what kind of what kind of subscribers, you had using this model or this platform?

10XMarcel: Yeah, it's it's actually developed for service businesses in as as in SMEs or as SMEs. so it could be, for example, a practitioner, a spa, a clinic, a plumber, a roofer. So real life businesses. It's it's

Carmen: Mm.

10XMarcel: absolutely not made. You can do it okay, but it's not really made for like for people like me, like a coach or a consultant. Because We are focused in SME growth. Always. I'm doing this for eighteen years now, so I know exactly how to do it. For i I can give you an example. I just had a three months ago, I just had a conversation. they hired me for a small audit for four with four workshops. it's an it's an SME, it's a family owned business, it's second generation, they have one on fifty employees, they do something around twenty five million revenue, and they saw they have a sales problem. And by the end of this first conversation, so initial conver consultation was guys, you don't have a sales problem, you have a margin problem, and margin problem is system problem because your margin is so tight that you cannot do anything. And the reason why your margin is so tight is because you don't have systems in place. And the biggest issue is you don't have a real CRM system. And if you don't have a CRM system, you don't know anything about your your prospects. And if you want to have a CRM system, you can you need also a good marketing solution because your pipeline in your CM needs to be filled, you know. So and we figured out with these four workshops that just in the in the how is it called give me a second just in the face of Getting a proposal to the customer, they lost nearly 12% of margin because everything was messed up, you know. So and this is what what we what what I personally do. I dive deep in, in the business, in the people in the business, and understand how do they operate it, and then find the problem and fix it one by another.

Carmen: Mm-hmm. Okay, great. So let's change topics a little bit. obviously, part of your business does involve using AI to be able to bring this platform to life. I'd love to gather your thoughts because obviously right now we are in the age of AI. Everybody's using AI. AI is I've had one conversation with another guest of mine. in this podcast and they're talking about AI is kind of becoming the new Microsoft office. You need to know those tools and those softwares and those skills. in general, what are your thoughts around AI? Because people are having different thoughts and approaches and perspectives. I would love to hear your thoughts about AI.

10XMarcel: Yeah, depends on on the the point of view. I think it's a tool, and it's a great tool. I'm not the kind of person that says, okay, we we go all in on AI and we don't need humans.

Carmen: Mm.

10XMarcel: not at all, but There are several things you can really do very well with AI, and you can do it even faster, but there are a lot of tools out there, and every single day there are coming 500 new ones. So you get kind of distracted every single day when you really dive into this, and you want to stay yeah online and go with the same pace, you know, like but you don't know you don't need it. You just need two to three tools and just automate your business. So it's better to have two to three good tools that really cover your business and everything else is just noise, you know. So this is my my thought about it. And I've seen it a lot of times. The SME owners are usually very kind of afraid of it. So maybe

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

10XMarcel: they have some experience with Chat GPT, or maybe in the last six months it's more clawed because it's more famous right now. but They don't know how to use it right, you know. So and this is where it comes down to companies like ours, like mine. we need to guide them. They need to learn how to use it the right way. Otherwise, it just wastes time and money because obviously tokens are already also money, you know, so and you don't make anything out out of it if you don't know how to use it right.

Carmen: Hmm. You talked a lot about guiding the entrepreneurs in terms of using AI in a more sustainable or in a more efficient way. From your experience, what do you think are the most what do you think are the most common mistakes that people make when trying to navigate with these AI tools?

10XMarcel: It usually they use AI like a like a dictionary, like a library, you know, so they just ask and get some answers. Okay, then what what will happen at the end? You have a lot of information, you confuse, and nothing gets started, you know. And this is what I mean when I say you need to know how to use it right. I always look at AI as a tool, as I said, and a tool that is right for you and your business. What is your goal? So it's all about goals and targets. So, for example, you want to scale your business, you want to hire some people, you want to increase your revenue, whatever you name it. So there's always a mechanic behind it to reach that goal. And you just Take this tool AI and place it at the right position in your process. But the system and their process thinking is usually the main problem in using AI. It's just like a tiny AI conversational friend for them and not using it like it's really a tool and bring them the results.

Carmen: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that makes sense. I think it's also about, you know, It is in a way, you know, when when it comes to navigating with AI tools, it is a bit of a skill that needs to be practiced, whether it's applying the correct prompts or the correct strategies to be able to really gather the accurate data or information or ideas that will be really helpful when it comes to boosting your sales or boosting your marketing and everything like that. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about your the operational aspect of things from with GrowthZilla, OS, and so on. So tell me a little bit about your team setup. Do you have other people supporting you? Because I can imagine that, you know, when it comes to building this platform, maybe there might be some specialists out there to help you bring this to life. Tell me a little bit about your team setup.

10XMarcel: Yeah, actually we have several team members all over the planet. some are just for sales things, some are for development things. I also run agencies, one in the US, one in the UAE. so we have agency employees that do these kind of things with their which the software can do but in a bigger scale and the more personalized way. So we have actually I don't know how many people, it's something around 20, I I would say. and every single person has just one path they need to go, you know. So it and I'm I'm I'm doing this obviously all day long. If you have someone who can run multiple things, he gets distracted and the results will Just fail, maybe, or will take a lot of time to reach your goal. So practice what you preach, you know.

Carmen: Yeah, yeah, absolutely for sure. Definitely. so right now you're saying that you're in terms of your team, you have quite a couple of different team members to support you. do you currently right now, do you foresee any challenges where you're like, okay, if there is something that I can pass over or delegate to someone else, what would that be?

10XMarcel: the first thing I always recommend to founders and for myself actually I'm I'm looking for exactly one hiring in in this specific case, is you need a PA. You definitely

Carmen: Mm.

10XMarcel: need a PA because it buy buys back your time. So you need someone who you can really trust and who is really hands-on. If you don't have this kind of person, you will always be the one that I just named, you will always be the red in the red race, you know. So You just need to delegate these specific things and your phone needs to be quiet all day. Otherwise,

Carmen: Yes.

10XMarcel: it's like, yeah, I mean you're just staying or having your desk right on the on on the highway, you know. So it's it you will never ever reach your goals because you're so distracted. So this is my recommendation. Hire A PA who you can really trust, and this is the tricky thing who is the person

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

10XMarcel: you can trust?

Carmen: Mm-hmm. Yeah, especially for sure. I think especially when it comes to the EA, a lot of the times, and it's interesting you mentioned that because here at Cherry Assistant, we we have a lot of experience also hiring EAs, administrative assistants for variety of business owners. And I think oftentimes such roles are often overlooked. They think, as long as you're very organized, you have experience with calendar management, scheduling, but it goes beyond that as well. It's you're pretty much as an EA acting as the right hand person to really trust, advise, strategy, and you're really handing over your life in their hands because they're basically going to be the one running and helping you to stay organized to ensure that your life is a lot better as well and to ensure that you have the work life balance met as well. Yeah. Just

10XMarcel: Hundred percent. So it's from my perspective it's it's it's absolutely fragile to hand over your things to another person.

Carmen: Yes.

10XMarcel: but you need to do it. So otherwise you cannot scale. And I've also experienced it on my end. I always scaled the fastest, made the biggest amount of money, and had the most success and actually also the most amount of fun when I had a team, when I had people around me, just one, two people that are really close to me. And help me to reach the goals so for others, for all the employees, for all the clients, and so on. You know, so you it's it's like a win-win-win situation. So me as a founder,

Carmen: Absolutely.

10XMarcel: I always always win if all the others win. So it's a real,

Carmen: Yeah, absolutely.

10XMarcel: real fragile position, and yeah, you need it.

Carmen: Yeah. And also like what you mentioned there, it's a win-win for everybody. It's really like a it's like a it's like a team effort. It's like a team collaboration as well. Yeah, yeah.

10XMarcel: Hundred percent. Hundred percent.

Carmen: Great. Marcel, just one final question. And this is something that I typically love to ask for all my guests coming on to this podcast. So if you had one piece of advice, or maybe you might have multiple, it's entirely up to you, that you would like to pass on to someone who is considering the entrepreneur path or considering to start a business, what would it be?

10XMarcel: Yeah, it's pretty easy. not because I'm I'm coming from a sales background, but sales is the most important thing you need to learn in your life. Because sales are, from my perspective, two things you need in every single area of life, and it's energy and communication. so this is for example the reason why the book is called Make Them Buy because I I can give you the definition, maybe someone will something out of get something out of you.

Carmen: Yeah, sure. Yeah.

10XMarcel: so what make them buy really is becomes so clear in who you are and the value you create that the other person wants to move toward you. People make their own decisions. Your responsibility is to be clear enough that the right decision becomes obvious to them. Become someone, another person can freely choose. Never someone they have to be convinced into choosing. The strongest influence in the world isn't preservation, it's congruence. People trust what is really what is real long before they trust what is explained. This is what make them buy means.

Carmen: Yeah. Amazing, amazing. Thank you so much, Marcel, for coming on to our podcast and also for sharing your journey and also your business, also how you've started and also your perspectives and your philosophies around building Growth of Silla and also

10XMarcel: Yeah, sure.

Carmen: sales and marketing and everything like that. So this is Behind the Founders. Be sure to stay tuned for the next episode. Thanks again.

10XMarcel: Thanks.