IAM1322 – Co-founder Helps Teams Get Business Done, Faster and Smarter

Jacob Engels is the CEO of a German social media automation company called Postingheld and the Co-founder & Chief Revenue Officer at Paperless.io, a German-based document automation platform helping teams get business done, faster and smarter.

Before devoting his work full-time to Paperless, Jacob successfully started the social media consultancy Postingheld, which he is still running as the CEO. Prior to that, he was the Account Executive for sales enablement & marketing technology software Showpad, where he consulted with brands, including Audi, Coca-Cola, Heineken, Intel & PWC.

Jacob has written for Gründerszene, Business Insider, Salesmate & Hyrise – he’s also the co-host of the podcast series “Startups 101” hosted by German Startups founder Alexander Hüsing.

When not (or even when) working on Paperless’ go-to-market strategy, Jacob enjoys spending time on the golf course or traveling the world. He holds a Bachelor's degree in International Management from the renowned Hochschule der Bayerischen Wirtschaft (HDBW).

• CEO Story: Started his young entrepreneurial journey by helping the older ones get into their iPhone apps working. After studying, he co-founded his first company Showpad then, later on, ran two other companies Postingheld and Paperles.io.
• Business Service: Creating smart and flexible documents. Can be personalized, legally binding signed, and archived in the platform with data privacy.
• Secret Sauce: Creating value for the client through products. Understanding the full document life cycle to help in the best way possible.
• CEO Hack: Do things with high quality, not high quantity. Getting enough sleep. Execute fast and move fast because execution is the strategy for breakfast.
• CEO Nugget: Trying to make the client’s life easier, and bring in as much value as possible. Ask the right questions.
• CEO Defined: Solving other people’s problems the best way possible. Be empathetic. Ask the right questions.

Website: www.paperless.io

LinkedIn: jacob-engels-1166b5146

Twitter: jacobctengels

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00:16 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CE OS without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkins values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:44 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Grech from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Jacob Engels of Paperless.io. Jacob, super excited to have you on the show.

00:53 – Jacob Engels

Super excited to be on the show. Thanks for the invites. Hello everyone.

00:57 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, super excited to have you on and I wanted to read a little bit more about more about Jacob so that you can learn about some of the awesome things that he's doing before we jump into the conversation. Jacob is the CEO of a German social media automation company called Posting Held and the Co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer at Paperless.io, a German-based document automation platform helping teams get business done faster and smarter before devoting his work full time to paperless.

Jacob has successfully started the social media consultancy Posting Held, which he is still running as a CEO. Prior to that, he was an account executive for sales enablement and marketing technology company Software Show Pad, where he consulted with brands including Audi, Coca-Cola, Heineken, Intel, and PwC. Jacob has contributed to Business Insider, Sales Mate, and High Rise. Additionally, he co-hosts the podcast series Start-ups 101, hosted by the German start-up founder Alexander.

When not or even when working on a paperless go-to-market strategy, Jacob enjoys spending time on the golf course traveling the world. He holds his bachelor's degree in international management from the renowned HDBW. Jacob, super excited to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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02:09 – Jacob Engels

I'm super stoked.

02:12 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, let's do it then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit here, a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

02:19 – Jacob Engels

It started early for me. So when I was a youngster, around 10 or 11 years old, I was growing up, in a city full of more senior people, I'd say. And these senior people, friends of my grandfather, of my grandmother, of my dad and my mom, they got their little Apple products, their iPhones and iPads and computers. They were asking me for help to help them actually with taking pictures sending emails and texting their grandchildren on, WhatsApp, or Facebook, for example.

That was actually my first take on business because I expanded my network and helped a couple of senior people handle their iPhones and their iPads at home, making, making my first money there. And that I guess I can't I, can't say that for sure, but let me find a company later on as well, because I realized it's so nice to not work for someone, but everything you work for you do for yourself. And then I decided to study law as she was a big mistake. Not my topic at all way too dry.

And a friend approached me. He told me Jacob, I'd like to find something. And as you like to hold presentations back in the school I graduated with them. He was like you could be the person to run our sales department, come on as a Co-founder, and build the go-to-market strategy. So that was the first company and from that on man, it's been a right. That was seven years ago now. Founded three companies in that time.

Also worked for Show Pets in the meantime, because I understood that selling and sales in general are basically the main or the key skills you need to have when building and and running a company. And right now, as, you introduced me, I am Co-founder and CRO at Paperless.io document automation platform as a little side hustle so to say, I'm running the digital agency and consulting C posting head, which is posting hero basically in English. So we enable our clients to become more visible online.

04:44 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I absolutely love that, especially how you got that. I'm going to call it a bug, that entrepreneurial bug that a lot of those who are listening can relate to. And once you kind of get that little taste, you want to learn more into it, you're like, hey, this is pretty cool. I can actually make money from something I'm interested in or I love and I'm just curious about, and you can kind of learn more and more and more into that.

05:02 – Jacob Engels

Oh yeah, definitely. I always felt like just being a number in a system and making other people's pockets full and working for them, not for yourself is not where I want to end. So that entrepreneurial buck, yeah, really got me early.

05:20 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And I think so many times I, you hear this quote a lot where people say you don't have to be the expert and know everything. You just have to be a few steps ahead of the people that you're helping out. So when you were talking about as a kid, being able to kind of help out the older people that were around you with, the Apple products and be able to help them out. So many times we forget that you might be an expert in somebody else's eyes and you can have a business, you can make an impact just by being able to kind of help people get to where they want to be ultimately.

05:48 – Jacob Engels

For sure. I mean in the end, if you deliver value in the eyes of your customers, they are always going to come back and and also pay for your services. So that's basically also the 1st takeaway for the people listening here is that you need to create value in order to successfully run a business and not make it about making a fortune or just making your pockets full, but actually having a product or service that creates value in the eyes of the user.

06:19 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And I heard in a networking group that everybody's listening to the same station, Wii FM, which stands for What's in it for me. And when you understand that person's value, how you're able to make that impact, you're able to truly provide value in their way, then you really have something that you can kind of hit the ground running with. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more here about the value that you're providing at Paperless.io. Could you take us through a little bit more on what you're doing, and how you all are serving the clients you work with?

06:48 – Jacob Engels

Sure. So just mainly from the product side itself without the the business running in the background, so to speak. It is the approach that we take. So most people are familiar with DocuSign Adobe Sign, or Hello Sign, you sign all of these names and then sign companies where you've got your PDF and the whole process is duct-taped together. So if you're in Word, you're in Google Docs, you duplicate the sheet, you personalize it, you export it, you upload it to the signature tool, and then send it out.

And we think this is just too many steps where you lose too much time. So on the platform paperless, you can actually cover the full document life cycle from creating smart and flexible documents with, input fields and not relying on that 30-year-old PDF that was once there to be a manual, for printers. And then also personalized that in, in second, send it out, get it legally binding signed, and then archive it on the same platform as well. So it's the approach that we take and that combined with a great user experience because I feel like a lot of solutions are still lacking on that part.

Plus great data privacy. You can most probably hear my accent. I'm, I'm not from the US. I'm from from Europe, from Germany and data privacy is a big, big, big thing here with GDPR. And so we focus on that as well differentiates us. And then I said that earlier from the business side itself, in everything that we do, we just want to create value. It's not about selling the product or like we don't have a special sales approach and special sales techniques. When I coach people and also internally, I'm always like, hey, try to find out where the value is for the client and then double down on that value for them. So that's the business side and also what differentiates us from how we approach the market.

08:47 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I love that and I like that, you know, call it that, that secret sauce, the thing that kind of sets you apart and makes it unique. And I wanted to drill down a little bit more on something that you said. You use the phrase, I think full document life cycle. So when you were kind of building and thinking about building that company and thinking about how you provide value it sounds like I don't want to put words in your mouth, of course. Was that one of the things that was top of mind when you were kind of creating everything, not just saying, hey, here's a document, or Hey, how's the sign? Just understanding the whole journey that someone might take with the document. Oh yeah.

09:15 – Jacob Engels

For sure so again here you need to understand your clients and that was also the first thing that we did so we built an MVP to basically solve an internal problem that we have had. So we actually had the pain of losing so much time and so much business because we were working with those dumb PDFs. And so we build an MVP for us. And then with that MVP, we went out into the market with a pilot face. Once again, you're not actually selling the product, but simply inviting people to use it for free.

Then, you ask them a lot of questions, follow up with them daily, and send them emails with detailed questions to understand their needs and preferences. This information is used to complete the product and add features based on their feedback. So yeah, understanding the full document life cycle to help in the best way possible.

10:18 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely appreciate that. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple Book a habit that you have or even something more about Paperless.io. But what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

10:32 – Jacob Engels

By now, I realize that I'd rather be four more 4 hours productive than be 9 or more hours busy. So if there are no tasks anymore, don't try to create tasks and just do it for the sake of working. Rather do the things that you do with high quality and not high quantity. So there's one thing and also what comes if you, if you were a founder is that you find yourself not sleeping that much in, in certain times. And I realized that if I'm having a good, a good amount of sleep, 8 hours, maybe even more, I am also way more productive and way more sharp and, and clear on my mind. So those are the two things. But also we are living in a culture of execution paperless.

So we don't try to overthink too much, but rather execute fast and move fast because execution eats strategy for breakfast is what I like to say. I talked to many founders and many CEOs who asked me questions about their products and whether they should be green red blue or yellow. And in the end, you never know, try and error and then execute, what works and double down on that. But don't put too much thought into stuff. If you don't talk to customers and if you don't execute, sales or marketing strategies, no one's going to buy your product, and your company's just going to fail. So rather try to jump into the market, execute, move fast, talk to most clients, and don't overthink what is in the back there.

12:15 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And you might have already touched on this, but I want to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this could be around sales, it could be around marketing, all those different aspects that you have. So it could be that or something that you might tell your younger business self if you were to hop into a time machine.

12:32 – Jacob Engels

So for us and for me personally, what I've found works very well and it's sales-specific is asking questions. When I'm talking to a BDR or an SDR trying to sell stuff to me or even an AE, what I notice is that they have their presentations and they run through the presentations for 30 minutes, 40 minutes, 50 minutes, and forget about me as a prospect. Again here the the big value question, how can they bring value to me? And you will never understand if you don't ask the right questions. So take the time.

And I mean, if the client is not willing to answer questions, most probably it's not a client that you want in your, in your customer base, right? It's all about having open and honest communication with them and trying to make their lives easier. I said it in the beginning but try to bring as much value as possible into the process as a founder and don't think about the money. Try not to close a deal as fast as possible and get, the deal size bigger, but rather try to create impact and give the client the most value possible and the money's going to follow.

And also you, if you deliver good quality, you're going to expand accounts. Don't forget about that. The initial land doesn't need to be huge. Rather try to have good customer service and then expand later on. The most powerful question is basically what Simon Sinek said right? The why?

14:06- Gresham Harkless

Absolutely appreciate that. And so I now want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be ACEO. We're hoping for out different quote CE OS on the show. So, Jacob, what does being a CEO mean to you?

14:17 – Jacob Engels

Being a CEO means solving other people's problems in the best way possible, not just externally but also you are the spokes for a person, and for everyone internally. So don't try to be away from the business or try to be cool or cold, but try to be as empathetic as possible and really listen to the people talking to you so you can solve that challenge. And again here ask, ask questions. Don't just follow what people say, but drill down on their challenges and problems and get a good overview of what happens in the business.

15:00 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Jacob, truly appreciate that definition. Of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I wanted to do now was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best people can get a hold of you. Subscribe to your podcast, and find out about all the ventures that you have, you have, and all the awesome things that you're doing.

15:19 – Jacob Engels

What I do as a little side project, I help Co-founders or founders who are not in later-stage companies that really just have an idea on their mind to start a business from really creating the ideal customer to creating pitch decks and so on and so on. To anyone listening to this podcast, I really want to tell you that you need to execute, keep on, keep on growing your business.

15:49 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I absolutely love that. And people that want to get a hold of you, what's the best way for them to do that?

15:54 – Jacob Engels

LinkedIn for sure. Yeah. I spent hours on LinkedIn every day.

15:59 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. Well, to make it even easier, we're going to have the information, the show notes as well as LinkedIn information and all of that. Of course, appreciate your time today.

16:07 – Jacob Engels

Thank you, it was a lot of fun being here. Thanks for the invite.

16:10 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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