IAM2174 – CEO and Co-Founder Offers a No-Code Platform Digital Sales and Leadership Performance Library

Alex Kutsishin is the co-founder and CEO of Fuel, a digital sales and leadership performance library designed to redefine business education and performance standards.

With an entrepreneurial spirit evident since his youth, he has co-founded 10 companies, each marked milestones, and innovation from pioneering medical offices in Washington, D.C. To introduce the first American-based, low-code, no-code platform for custom mobile websites.

In his role, co-founding a mortgage technology firm, he achieved a remarkable 7,000% growth within 4 years.

Alex discusses his experience in building scalable teams and reaching a global audience with innovative business solutions.

Alex emphasizes the importance of self-mastery, life mastery, leadership mastery, and sales mastery in becoming successful in business.

Website: Fuel !nc
LinkedIn: Alex Kutsishin

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Transcription:

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Alex Kutsishin Teaser 00:00

And then we realized that nobody in sales, nobody in leadership became a great because all they did was focus on sales. They became great because they had a foundation that self mastery, life mastery, leadership mastery, and only then sales mastery. So those are the 4 pillars, life mastery, self mastery, leadership mastery, sales mastery.

Intro 00:25

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:52

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Alex Kutsishin on the show. Alex, excited to have you on the show.

Alex Kutsishin 01:01

Well, thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Gresham Harkless 01:04

Yes, I'm excited as well too. I'm super excited to hear about all the awesome things that you're doing. And of course, before we do that, I want to read a little bit more about Alex so he can hear about some of those awesome things. And Alex is the co-founder and CEO of Fuel, a digital sales and leadership performance library designed to redefine business education and performance standards. With an entrepreneurial spirit evident since his youth, he has co-founded 10 companies, each marked milestones and innovation from pioneering medical offices in Washington, D.C. To introducing the first American-based, low-code, no-code platform for custom mobile websites. In his role, co-founding a mortgage technology firm, he achieved a remarkable 7,000% growth within 4 years.

Alex has won numerous awards, including an EY entrepreneur of the year. And one of the really big things that I absolutely love when I was preparing for this is Alex said he loves to play chess against himself. And he said he will often ask himself the question, what would I do if I came out with a competing solution right now. And I think one of the most powerful things you can do is not so much what you do, but sometimes the questions that you ask. So super excited to have you on the show. Alex, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Alex Kutsishin 02:12

I am pumped, let's go.

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Gresham Harkless 02:13

Let's get it started then. So to kick everything off, Let's rewind the clock a little bit. Here, a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

Alex Kutsishin 02:20

As you mentioned, I'm a 10-time CEO, right? This is not the first go-around. And by the way, thank you for having me on. And the community, I'm so grateful to be here. So I really appreciate this. This means the world to me. I love connecting with communities like yours and what you're doing. I think it's a beautiful thing and congratulations on all your success. So my CEO story. I was inspired by my parents who brought me to the United States when I was 7 from Ukraine. And as a CEO, one of the things you have to be willing to do is make some hard decisions and take some big risks.

And so my CEO journey really began by watching my parents make some very difficult decisions very early on. And then when we got to the United States and the American dream started to unfold, which was watching both my parents in just 2 years of being in the States, right? Both start their own companies. My mom started an interior design business, my dad a limo business. And what I really noticed I think now when I think back, obviously I couldn't articulate it. Long story short, I saw two, both my parents become entrepreneurs. And of course I followed in that in their footsteps, at age 20, starting my first company, which was in the medical space in Washington, D.C.

And then I just got the bug. The bug I got was about building team. And so it's been really fun that in my career for over now, going on 22 years and I'm turning 42 this year, so going on 22 years of building businesses, I've gotten to choose almost every single person I get to spend my life with, right, it's a really unique experience. And so that's how my CEO journey began. It's seeing my parents, starting my first business, falling in love with building teams, seeing great results. The first company went up to 3,000,000 a year in revenue and then it was just like, let's go. And then I fell in love with something else about being a CEO and building teams, scalable teams.

How do you build scalable teams that can impact a lot of people? My business partner, Todd, talks about how he fell in love with my email signature when he first met me that said, solving billion person problems. That's what my email signature said. And so, it still says that. And so in 2011, when we launched, April 2011 when we launched the low-code, no-code platform for creating custom mobile websites and mobile apps. That is where I saw the ability to cross borders because all the other businesses were localized.

Maybe we could touch the United States, but mostly we're localized. And then all of a sudden we had a hundred countries using our platform. And I'm like, wow, we're in one room with 27 people and companies from a hundred countries are tapping into our, this is exciting. And so the next  two businesses have all been about scaling and reaching millions and billions of people and not just the local market. So that's the story of how we got here with the CEO.

Gresham Harkless 05:12

Nice, I appreciate you so much in sharing your story and your journey and your family story as well too. So I know we touched on it a little bit, but I want to drill down a little bit more, hear a little bit more about Fuel, how you're working with making that impact and doing some awesome things with the clients you work with.

Alex Kutsishin 05:27

Yeah, so excited to talk about this. So Fuel is very unique. I had a mentor who was also a business partner of mine, James. He always talked to me about, look, if you're going to be an entrepreneur, you always want to look for markets where there's a large audience, there's a need and there's no leader. Large audience, there's a need and there's no leader. And what better way, which by the way, hey everyone, write that down. If you're an entrepreneur and you're looking to, write that down. There's an audience, there's a need, there is no leader. We need to fill that gap. That's the gap that you can be successful with.

And what I found was for Fiddlefly, which was the mobile company, I took out my phone and I scanned a QR code back in 2009, end of 2009, on a TV. And when I scanned that QR code, what opened up was a desktop website on my mobile device. I was confused. I was like, what in the world was this about? Okay. And so that became the audience, the need and the gap, right? We all have phones. We all want to be able to see things on our devices much better, and there's nobody doing it. Okay, boom, easy, build a business. Very fast growing business as well.

Then in sales boomerang, industry legends told me there's a gap. So everybody pay attention. When you talk to somebody that is in an industry that's a legend of an industry that's an expert of an industry telling you there is something broken listen up okay listen up and in this case my co-founders Ken and Brandon said look We are trying to solve this problem. And I said, who feels this problem in this space? They're like, everyone. I was like, everyone? Like, yeah. And at the time they're only serving like 30 lenders. Wait a second. We cannot build this for you. You're going to cannibalize it only 30. No, we need to create a solution for the world. And so here we go.

We built something that for the world came from people in the industry that said there's a gap for fuel. Same thing happened. Same exact thing happened. I get a phone call from my business partner, Todd Duncan, who's an author of 22 books, 3 New York Times bestsellers. Over 6,000,000 people have gone through his program and he says to me It's broken. Aha. It's repeating itself Here we go again someone that comes from the space 30 years in this right is saying listen, this is not working This is the greatest thing ever. Wow, are you gonna be back next year? And he said, he started to scratch his head. He said, oh my God, they're waiting for me to come back next year, but what are you gonna do tomorrow? You're waiting for me? What are you gonna do tomorrow? And he realized there is no access for tomorrow.

And so he said to me, he said, Alex, I love having the person that has $20,000 to spend with me in a year to become better. I do. I really love that. He's like, all I think about now is when they're writing me a check for 20,000, I say, how can I help 20,000 more people? Instead of the one person that can afford me, how can I help 20,000 more people? And so fuel was born, which by the way, was originally in Todd's head called sales rocket. And I said to Todd, what's a rocket without fuel? It's just a hunk of metal just lays there. It's amazing. It looks beautiful, but it does nothing and he's all sales fuel and so we started with sales fuel and then we realized that nobody in sales nobody in leadership became a great because all they did was focus on sales.

They became great because they had a foundation That self mastery life mastery leadership mastery and only then sales mastery. So those are the 4 pillars life mastery, self mastery, leadership mastery, sales mastery, right? Then there's time mastery in there too right but that's inside those things and so what's Fuel? Fuel is the world's largest library of performance instruction and personal development that's ever been invented. And the entire thing is built on micro learning science, which is over the years proven to cause far better retention, okay, to get information across to a larger group of people or even an individual.

The impact of micro learning has gone. Here's the secret. Here's what fuel does now. The secret is access, unlimited access. Remember, the big mission is can we help hundreds of millions or billions of people doesn't matter where you come from doesn't matter how much money your parents made or what financial situation there is for you the cost of this platform which will most of our current alpha and beta customers that were uncovered the cost for their teams because it's nearly free. It's 72 cents a day, $22 a month, okay? That's it.

And so for $264 a year, you give every person on your team unlimited access to instruction, that by the way, gets updated every week. A new course is released every single week. So there's something fresh and interesting from people who are in the industry now, in the business world now. We don't mind books from 20, 50, 30 years ago. Please continue to read those things. What we're saying is we want this to be timely and relevant.

Gresham Harkless 10:34

Nice. I appreciate you breaking that down. 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 or even a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

Alex Kutsishin 10:46

My superpower is extreme action. So when I read books and I hear something in a book that I love, I stop listening, because I do all audible, I stop listening and I go try that thing right away. Extreme action. If it makes sense, I don't want to try to remember it. I want it to be ingrained in me. I want it to be part of me. And so when I hear something I love, I don't wait to use it. I use it right away. And so one of the efficiency hacks or one of the ways I'm very efficient in expanding my own knowledge, my own skill set, my own skills in general is by putting into action as soon as possible something I've learned.

And typically it's literally I'll stop and I'll call somebody and I'll try it on the spot. Right? One of my favorite lessons I learned was how should you when you're co-calling what should be your first question? Right? Is this a good time for you? That's the wrong question. Is this a bad time for you? That's the right question. Why? Okay? Same answer but you get the result you want. I'll give you teach everybody here a little thing you might already know all about this. What's the most powerful word in English language? No that's the most powerful word in the English language. We were like what do you mean that's the most when you say no you're in control. When you say no, you're in control. Hey, you wanna try that? No. You wanna go there? No, you're in control.

So when you call somebody and say, is this a bad time for you? And they say, no, I got a couple of minutes. They feel in control. But if they said, yes, I got a couple of minutes, they gave away their power and so they're already on defense. So my point is the minute I heard that, I think I made like 15 phone calls, like as soon as possible and tried it and got 15 for 15. No, this, no, I got a couple of minutes. No, I got a couple of minutes. No, it's a good time. No, I'm fine. Like, oh my gosh, are you serious? This is brilliant. And now I just, everyone takes a minute to tell me, no, I got a minute, what's up? This is great. So, extreme action.

Gresham Harkless 12:38

Yeah, I absolutely love that. You might've already touched on this, but I want to ask you now for what I call CEO nugget. Little bit more word of wisdom or piece of advice. I like to say it might be something you would tell your younger business self if you happen to a time machine or might tell your favorite client.

Alex Kutsishin 12:52

And so my biggest advice that I give to any CEO is constantly play chess against yourself. First do it in a real chess set so you can see how mind boggling it is. I know the next move, I'll prevent that. We'll go ahead and make it and then go ahead and prevent it and then go ahead and make the next one. But I already know what I'm going to do. Try it. See what happens. See what side wins when you play against yourself. It's really incredible. Dominate me if I was against me. Oh, I might as well put it into play myself. Don't let anyone else get there. And it literally has been the secret weapon for the last 3 businesses at least and we've had some of the most tremendous growth in these businesses that you can imagine and It it doesn't seem to fail if you always seem to find something and I guess I can give one example here in fuel. We're launching on July 8th.

And one of the, I asked, I said, okay, if what if a competitor came out at exact same time as us was launching same time as us, how would I crush that me and I was like, oh, I would offer a guarantee. I say, you take our library and after 90 days, see an impact, a culture shift, a belief shift in your people and performance start to be impacted in a positive way, we'll send you all your money back. So guess what? That's what we're launching with 90-day money back guarantee. I was like, of course I'd crush myself with that because who would want to try this and have all the risk versus this that has no risk? And so there you go. And so even before launch, I played chess against myself.

Gresham Harkless 14:16

Yeah, that's such a huge thing. So now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And our goal is to have different quote, unquote, CEOs on this show. So Alex, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Alex Kutsishin 14:26

And I think it's very similar feelings, very similar feelings. A company is a living organism. In fact, the only difference between you and a company is that a company can't vote for their president or local government stuff. Everything else is the same. Everything else. And so it is a living, breathing thing. And so as a CEO, the company begins as a child and you give it what it needs. You feed it, you dress it, you shelter it, you give it everything it needs. You start to surround it with people that are going to take care of it as well, that believe in it as well and want to be there. And so being a CEO is creating a child, right? Raising that child by building a village and you build the village in the form of, hey, be here while you love it. When you don't love it anymore, where do you wanna go? What is your goal and how do we help you get there with a smile on your face? So that's the joy of being a CEO.

Gresham Harkless 15:23

Nice, I definitely love that definition and that perspective. So what I want to do now is 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, find about all the awesome things you're gonna take my work now.

Alex Kutsishin 15:37

Awesome. Myfuel.io, www.myfuel.io, go there constantly, check it out, see what's going on there. You can follow me on LinkedIn at Alex Kutsishin. Come check us out. Give your team a gift, right? When your company's powered by fuel, what you're saying to your team is, I believe in you, I want you to be the best version of yourself, and I'm supporting the investment I'm making in you with the check I'm writing by giving you access to become a better version of yourself. And there's no better way that the world can move forward than everyone believing in the people they're working with. And so yeah, come find us myfuel.io.

Gresham Harkless 16:13

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much again, Alex. We'll have the links and information that show knows as well too, so that everybody can follow up with you, find about all the awesome things that you're doing, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Alex Kutsishin 16:23

Thank you, you do the same.

Outro 16:24

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by CBNation and Blue16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Want to level up your business even more? Read blogs, listen to podcasts, and watch videos at CBNation.co. Also, check out our I AM CEO Facebook group. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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