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INspired INsider Podcast


INspiredINsider Show with Dr. Jeremy Weisz features interviews with successful entrepreneurs, Ecommerce founders, & visionary leaders.

Leaders reveal deeply personal stories and explore the tough journey, big challenges, and mistakes that they overcame to achieve success.

You will find inspiring stories from: Founders of Atari, Baby Einstein, P90X, Einstein Bagels, Skymall, and many more.


Thank you for listening from your host of http://InspiredInsider.com Dr. Jeremy Weisz. Go to InspiredInsider.com for Full Video episodes. 

Nov 29, 2018

Tom Kulzer is the founder of AWeber. AWeber is one of the top email marketing providers on the planet and helps over 100,000 businesses build their audience. Tom started AWeber all the way back in 1998.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

  • [1:30] Jeremy introduces his guest, Tom Kulzer.
  • [2:30] Why does AWeber have live customer support?
  • [5:30] Tom talks about growing the business and making his first hire.
  • [8:45] How does Tom hire the right people?
  • [13:30] What is the process for collecting and incorporating customer feedback?
  • [16:00] Tom talks about the categorizing and tagging aspects of AWeber.
  • [23:00] Tom gives a little peek behind the process at AWeber.
  • [28:30] How does Tom stay productive?
  • [31:00] Why did Tom drop out of school? How has it impacted him?
  • [34:30] Tom talks about email back in 1998.
  • [39:00] How AWeber has evolved over the years.
  • [43:45] Tom talks about the culture he’s created at AWeber.
  • [49:00] The lowest moment in the journey so far.
  • [50:45] Milestones that Tom is proud of.
  • [52:00] Tom talks about how AWeber has impacted client businesses.

In this episode…

What is the impact of automation on your sector of the business community? Are you thriving due to automation or is your organization suffering? On this episode of Inspired Insider, you’ll hear from entrepreneur and innovator, Tom Kulzer. In his conversation with Jeremy, Tom opens up about the early days of AWeber, how he scaled the business, the challenges he faced along the way, how he built his team, what it takes to stay productive, and so much more. Don’t miss this valuable behind the scenes look at AWeber and Tom’s fascinating story! 

Do you have to be a college graduate to be successful? If you take a quick look at some of the most notable leaders in business, the answer is no! Leaders like Steve Jobs and Michael Dell enjoyed massive success without finishing higher education. On the other hand, leaders like Tom Kulzer stress the value of education beyond grade school, and that doesn’t have to mean traditional higher education either. Don’t put yourself in a box or others, if you don’t have the “Right stuff” on paper that doesn’t preclude you from going out there and building something you can be proud of. 

How do you scale a business from the ground up? Do you secure the best team money can buy right away or do you bide your time looking for the right moment to reinvest your profits back into the company? Tom Kulzer built AWeber from the ground up and knew very quickly that he couldn’t do it alone. When Tom reached out to find his first team member, he was so nervous about getting this important role wrong. Thankfully it all worked out for Tom, and AWeber grew from that moment on, bringing on a whole team of talented individuals. What can you learn from Tom’s story? 

When was the last time that your organization took a serious look at how they review and respond to customer feedback? Is this something that your business does on a regular basis or in a more happenstance manner? For Tom Kulzer and his team at AWeber, responding and incorporating customer feedback is critical. They have learned the value of keeping a close tab on what their users want to see from their platform and what they can do to meet those needs. The fact of the matter is, if you don’t work hard to keep the customers you have, someone else will do whatever it takes to win them over. 

One of the hot topics in the business world today is automation. Some sectors are embracing automation with open arms, and some are decrying it as the death knell of their industry. Love it or hate it, automation is the wave of the future. Embracing the ingenuity of automation, AWeber is leading the way with their take on email marketing. AWeber is built for time-strapped content creators, small business owners, and entrepreneurs. They’ve created easy-to-use automation tools to launch automated email sequences, tag and segment subscribers based on their behavior, send remarkable one-time promotional emails or newsletters, and track the success of various campaigns. Automation isn’t always a scary word when it comes to email marketing; it’s helping businesses work smarter, not harder.

Resources Mentioned on this episode

Sponsor for this episode

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Rise25 was cofounded by Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran.