Episode Summary:
Join us as Dean Fiacco, founder of Scaled Mail (cold email infrastructure SaaS) and Beanstalk Consulting (cold outbound agency), shares his journey from tech sales to running two successful businesses. Dean breaks down the realities of cold email deliverability, why inbox infrastructure is critical, and how he’s balanced scaling an agency while building SaaS. From domain reputation to hiring strategies, this episode is packed with practical insights for agency owners, outbound teams, and aspiring founders.
What You Will Learn:
- Why scaling cold email requires more than Gmail/Microsoft accounts.
- How Scaled Mail grew out of Beanstalk’s inbox challenges.
- Best practices for domain reputation and inbox-to-domain ratios.
- The importance of simplifying agency operations and client selection.
- Hiring strategies that work: probationary periods, tests, and “hire fast, fire fast.”
- Why agencies often spin out SaaS products and how to approach it.
Featured Guest: Dean Fiacco – Founder of Beanstalk Consulting (cold email agency) and ScaledMail (cold email infrastructure SaaS).
Host: Ben Reed – RevyOps founder and host of the Next Gen Sales Leaders Podcast.
Episode Highlights:
- [00:00] Welcome & Intro: Dean introduces Beanstalk and Scaled Mail.
- [02:30] From pain point to SaaS: How inbox headaches became Scaled Mail.
- [04:06] Why not just Gmail?: ESP limits and deliverability challenges.
- [06:59] Domain reputation: Protecting your main domain with lookalikes.
- [10:04] Inbox ratios: Safe setups for Google, Microsoft, and SMTP.
- [12:23] Marketplace solution: Prebuilt packages to simplify scaling.
- [15:46] Redundancy matters: Avoiding provider lock-in and outages.
- [21:23] Running two businesses: Delegation, teams, and evolving roles.
- [25:58] Agency growth tips: Keep it simple, choose the right clients.
- [31:23] Hiring tests: Ben’s “three-day challenge” for new hires.
- [34:06] Hire fast, fire fast: Dean’s approach to evaluating talent.
- [40:33] From agency to SaaS: Why services spawn product ideas.
- [58:04] Sales as a founder skill: Why talking to customers matters.
- [01:08:12] Parting advice: Dean’s call to action—just start and sell.
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