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#176: Jesse Scheff, Founder & CEO of EasyUpp, the MLS for Automotive Retail, on Community Marketing, Transitioning from Bootstrapping to Fundraising, and Knowing When to Set Aside Assumptions

September 17, 2020

Jesse Scheff is the Founder and CEO of Easyupp, an online platform that allows a salesperson to sell a car from any dealership. EasyUpp is dedicated to providing great dealers and salespeople a platform to help more customers. Built on relationships, Easyupp believes that the people are the purpose. If a salesperson has a customer that wants to buy from them, they should never be limited by inventory. Easyupp provides salespeople a way to help that customer at any dealership and provide dealerships with customers they would have never reached otherwise.

Jesse is the President of National Auto Dealers Association class, and likes to approach old challenges in new ways. He is a 3x Ford Triple Crown Award Winner--awarded to only 21 dealers nationally, and he doubled year over year departmental profit and pushed annual sales well over $200 million.

About Our Partners

This episode is brought to you by Hawke Media. Hawke Media is a full-service Outsourced CMO based in Santa Monica, CA, providing guidance, planning, and execution to grow brands of all sizes, industries, and business models.

Hawke Media was recognized by Inc. as the country's fastest-growing marketing consultancy and is proudly one of Glassdoor's "Best Places to Work"​, 2019 #893 on the Forbes 5000 list, UpCity Top Los Angeles Digital Marketing Agency. Hawke’s collaborative process, à la carte offering, and month-to-month fee structure give clients the flexibility they need to boost digital revenues and marketing ROI.

Hawke Media The company has serviced over 1500 brands of all sizes, ranging from startups like Tamara Mellon, SiO Beauty and Bottlekeeper to household names like Red Bull, Verizon Wireless and Alibaba.

Listen to our interview with Erik Huberman, Founder and CEO of Hawke Media, in episode 23 of the Just Go Grind Podcast.

This episode is also brought to you by Toptal. Toptal is an exclusive network of the top freelance software developers, designers, finance experts, product managers, and project managers in the world. Top companies hire Toptal freelancers for their most important projects.

Connect with Jesse Scheff

Some of the Topics Covered by Jesse Scheff in this Episode

  • What is EasyUpp and the pain point it is designed to solve

  • The first steps Jesse took to start EasyUpp

  • Early customer discovery

  • From being a one-man show to finding a co-founder

  • What the EasyUpp platform started as and how it has evolved

  • EasyUpp's business model and determining pricing

  • Onboarding sales people and dealership partners

  • Geographic expansion and growth

  • Early bootstrapping and Jesse's advice for early-stage fundraising

  • Networking to find investors

  • Determining use of funds

  • Figuring out when to utilize prior industry experience and when to set assumptions aside

  • Jesse's resource recommendations and consuming relevant content

  • The biggest challenges Jesse has faced on his entrepreneurial journey

  • The effect COVID has had on Easyupp and the automotive industry

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