How He Convinced 300,000 People to Work With Him, From Malaysia At first, no one would pay attention to this entrepreneur. Now, he has 450 staffers in 40 offices around the globe.
By Jason Feifer •
Introducing our new podcast, Problem Solvers with Jason Feifer, which features business owners and CEOs who went through a crippling business problem and came out the other side happy, wealthy, and growing. Feifer, Entrepreneur's editor in chief, spotlights these stories so other business can avoid the same hardships. Listen below or click here to read more shownotes
A few decades ago, there weren't many stock photos featuring Asian people. Consequently, advertisers and media companies in Asia were using a lot of photos of white people -- something that was in no short supply. This got a Malaysian entrepreneur named Andy Sitt thinking: What if he built an Asian stock photography marketplace? There was demand, certainly. All he needed was supply.
Related: This Founder Shares How She Was Able to Attract Better Customers By Increasing Her Price
So he called a ton of photographers throughout Asia. "And like 99.9 percent of all photographers would reject us," he says. Why? Because Sitt was a nobody. They'd never heard of him and his company hadn't proven itself yet, so why would they want to work with him?
Almost every entrepreneur has some version of this problem: When your company is brand new (or even when it's not), it's hard to convince other people to work with you. And yet, you need these other people. You can't survive without them. They're your future suppliers, or contractors, or partners, or sponsors. Which means you need to find some crazy way to prove to them that you're worth working with. That you're legit. That you're a bet worth taking.
Related: What to Do When Your Product Goes From Beloved to Hated on Amazon
That's what this new episode of Problem Solvers is about. Over many years, and many experiments, Sitt solved this problem – and now his company Inmagine Group is a powerhouse in Asia, with 450 staffers in 40 offices around the globe, and more than 72 million images sourced from 300,000 contributors.
How did Sitt convince people to work with his unproven company? Take a listen below. Or subscribe on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you get your podcasts.
About our sponsors:
Best Self makes products to help entrepreneurs perform at their highest level, and that includes smart tools like a dry-erase 13-week wall calendar. Their most popular product is a beautiful journal, which entrepreneurs can use to help organize their time, set and achieve goals, and so on. Best Self's co-founders suggest devoting five minutes every morning to it, to create the habit of thinking about your day, your needs, your time, and your goals. The journal helps you step back.
ProsperWorks knows what everyone in sales knows: CRMs are really tedious. "Somewhere along the way," its website says, "CRM got really hard to use." And that's why ProsperWorks has built a CRM that's the opposite. By integrating with tools you're already using and eliminating repetitive tasks with automation, ProsperWorks is beautiful, easy to use and drives productivity to help you and your team sell more, faster. Try ProsperWorks for free by using our link.
