The Chat - Content-Led Growth with James Hanzimanolis

Episode Notes: From Cold Calls to Calendars on Fire with James Hanzimanolis

Guest: James Hanzimanolis – Outbound pro turned content-led sales strategist and author of Savage Outbound

Host: Terry Wilson – Co-founder at Chat Metrics, Host of The Chat

Episode Overview:

James Hanzimanolis went from running a high-intensity outbound agency to building a scalable, inbound sales engine powered by content – and it all started with a cold call to Seth Godin.

In this episode, James unpacks how that one conversation transformed his entire approach to sales and pipeline building. He shares the exact systems he used to book 300+ demos, close deals while he sleeps, and why content-led growth is no longer just a “marketing thing.”

You’ll walk away with practical strategies to layer your pipeline, escape founder-led chaos, and start building a revenue engine that actually scales.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why inbound leads convert 3x faster than outbound (and how to get them)
• The story behind James’s infamous call with Seth Godin
• How to build a layered pipeline that doesn’t rely on one channel
• The problem with most founders delegating sales too early
• Why do you need to test outbound yourself before you hire
• What “content-led growth” really looks like in practice
• The simple framework James uses to audit and improve outbound results

Key Quotes by James:

“You need to find a way for people to come to you instead of you going after them.”

“Outbound works – but it breaks when you try to scale without systems.”

“Every sales channel should be a layer, not your lifeline.”

“Your pipeline problems are just strategy problems wearing sales clothes.”

Episode Chapters:

0:00 – Intro & James’ outbound roots
2:45 – The call that changed everything (Seth Godin story)
4:30 – From cold outreach to inbound traction
6:20 – How James layered his sales channels for scale
8:15 – Why content isn’t just for marketers anymore
10:40 – Founders, don’t skip the early sales trenches
13:05 – What’s wrong with most outbound strategies today
16:40 – The early mistakes that nearly tanked James’ agency
19:30 – Wrap up & Part 2 preview

Resources & Links:

• Connect with James Hanzimanolis on LinkedIn
• Grab his book: Savage Outbound (search on Amazon or LinkedIn)
• Learn more about Chat Metrics at chatmetrics.com
• Follow host Terry Wilson on LinkedIn
• Subscribe to The Chat for weekly episodes with top B2B sales and marketing leaders

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00:00- Terry:

Welcome to the chat, come behind the inbound scenes of some of the world’s fastest-growing companies for the past 10 years. As chat metrics. We’ve had an exclusive inside view of how these industry leaders are revolutionizing inbound marketing and sales. Across diverse sectors. Each week, we bring you conversations with top minds in marketing and sales who share insider secrets and strategies for driving inbound success.

Join us on the chat, your front row seat to the future of inbound.

Welcome back to the Chat,

Today, we have someone who truly embodies what it means to break through the noise in sales and marketing. James Hanzimanolis has mastered the art of outbound sales, content

01:00-

Driven growth and the psychology behind what makes people say yes.

He’s booked over 300 demos just in the past nine months, generated millions of impressions, and transition from running an outbound agency to building a scalable content-driven sales engine. He is known as the Mike Tyson of Ghost Riding a title that says a lot about his punchy, no-nonsense approach to getting results and straight shooting

We’re bringing James on because he’s not just following trends, he’s setting them. If you’re a marketing or sales leader looking for the secret source behind what is actually working in B2B growth today, this episode is for you. James, welcome to the show.

James:

Thank you for having me on, man. I’m excited.

Terry:

Look, let’s jump straight into it. You’ve transitioned from a traditional outbound sales to an inbound led approach. You’re not a marketer. Your background is, is sales focused. Can you share the key factors that influenced this shift and how it’s impacted your client’s growth, and how are you able to make that transition?

James:

Yeah, so for years I was super into outbound.

02:00-

I started off in a boiler room in Philadelphia. And I, I loved it. For years, I was always at the top of the leaderboards. I always excelled and ended up creating really awesome high-velocity sales teams, which is really fun. The day I stumbled across Seth Godin’s phone number, and for those, for anybody listening who doesn’t know who Seth Godin is, he’s like the biggest marketer of our generation.

He’s, he’s quite literally the biggest. And I was like, there’s no way. This is his number. I gave him a call, and literally on the second ring, he picked up. And I’m starstruck. I didn’t think he was gonna pick up, I’m mumbling over the phone, not making any sense, like I don’t even know what I’m talking about. he stopped me and he was like, Hey, you know, when I was, you know, around your age, I did the same thing to Isaac Asimov, the rider. He was like, and he let me have a few seconds, I’m gonna do the same for you. He’s like, What are you calling me for? I’m about to get outta the Uber and get back into my home.

You’ve got like two minutes. And I told him who I am, what I do, and how I’m super big into outbound sales. And you know, I’m like, how could I level up my career? His advice was, You have to find a way.

03:00-

For people to come to you instead of you going after people. And I loved it. It hit me like a bag of bricks after that; it just went absolutely all in on content creation. the time, I was working a phone burner, which is a power dialer, a really awesome company, and started posting on LinkedIn every day. There were inbound coming in as I slept at night, putting time on my calendar, deals were closing faster, I’m scratching my head thinking, you know, I spent all this time doing outbound all these years. Having 10% close rates, in some cases even less, for every outbound uh, demo we bring in. But with the inbound stuff, it’s closing at like 30 or 40% because they’re putting time on my calendar, they genuinely need my product or service. I very quickly became super bullish on it. That transition was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. My LinkedIn doesn’t get nearly as much traction anymore ’cause I’m trying to rebuild my audience, but slowly I’m getting there, and it’s, It’s 100% been worth it.

04:00- Terry:

In your experience, what are the most effective strategies businesses can implement today to accelerate growth?

James:

I think one of the biggest problems is that when companies look at how to generate pipeline, like if we’re just talking about exclusively pipeline, how do you bring in more companies become very bullish on one or two ways? My feelings are, you should have, you should look at your outbound as layers. Everything should be another layer on top of each other. So it’s not, oh, should we do Twitter ads or SEO, or should we do outbound or content-led growth? should be doing all of that. The best strategy is to start first, really depending on your business and who you’re selling to, but after you figure out who your target audience is, where they are.

James:

For some people, it’s gonna be Reddit. For some people, maybe you’re calling older folks, they’re still gonna pick up the phone, figure out what channel’s gonna work best for you. Go all into that channel. I. And over time, you start adding new layer over new layer. What you want is an entire ecosystem of ways to generate a pipeline.

05:00-

And some of it should be fully sustainable on its own. You shouldn’t have to manage it. You should just be able to have it there. It is a really great example of that. on the flip side, you should understand how to have a, like a successful outbound channel all the levers to pull in order to get absolute top results. so this is something I can go on about forever, but if we look at every single channel, like I’m doing consulting projects right now on the side for outbound companies because they read my book or something, I still have people reach out to me for it all the time. And it’s amazing. I, there’s one guy we just started working with, and he’s, his company is calling out a HubSpot; they’re doing 35 calls a day, and their pickup rate is like 2%.

Terry: 

The target they’re going after is completely wrong. They’re having five conversations a week. One demo book per month is where they’re at right now, give or take. And I’m like, well, if you have a power dialer and you have, you know, and I, I start listing off all these different things. It’s very inexpensive to do,

06:00- Terry: 

But you can completely change the direction of the pipeline that comes in from those channels.

James: 

And so it’s about finding those layers and then figuring out how do I tweak each layer to really give me the best results.

Terry:

Because those sorts of results just aren’t sustainable. You’re putting that much effort in and getting one meeting a week, a month. It just doesn’t, it doesn’t stack up in anyone’s books.

James:

Yeah, I mean, at first it’s gonna be like that for anybody, especially if you’re new to a channel. if somebody

Terry:

To me, or tomorrow, Hey James, do SEO go help us with SEO. I’d fail for the first year, which is perfectly fine. If you’re new in business and you like, either hire a consultant to do it or you know, figure it out yourself and spend a little bit of money at a time and slowly build up that channel. It amazes me when I see founders who have teams of like five or six people, but they’ve never made a cold call in their life. I’ve worked with people like that before who have, you know, they’ve hired me to manage the sales team,

07:00-

And then they tell me how to do my job. Like, oh, you should be closing them faster over the phone.

James:

We should do, Like actually closing over the phone. I had a who used to say that to me, and I was like, ah, it doesn’t work like that anymore. You know, it used to work that way. It doesn’t work that way anymore, for what we’re selling. We have to handhold and so anyway, founders need to be doing this stuff first before they delegated to someone else. Or you find a strategist at the very beginning to do it for you, or like a really good consultant to do it, and you go from there.

Terry: 

Yeah, I, I agree. I agree, but it. In any case, it’s simply not sustainable. And you’re right, many do start that way, but there are some that hang in for way, way too long. It’s almost like the, Einstein’s, definition of insanity, doing the same thing again, expecting different results. I mean, that’s the classic founder not having the experience coming out and.

Advising to do things, close faster, for instance, as an outcome, as opposed to getting on, on the calls and actually seeing what’s going on. Yeah, interesting. Look, I, I jumped over

08:00-

Your comment pretty quickly about Seth Godin, probably, for two reasons. One, because I have had that conversation before, but secondly, uh, it’s still, shockingly stunning in my mind that you could actually get Seth Godin’s phone number and call the guy. You spoke a little bit about the impact of that. Tell me why he had such legendary status in your mind before then and before you stumbled across his number? I.

James: 

So when I first started learning about sales, I listened to a lot of podcasts. I read a lot of books and audio books and all that kind of stuff. the first podcast I came across that talked about sales, wasn’t like a traditional podcast. It wasn’t like a Jordan Belfort type of podcast. It wasn’t like the, um, you know, 30 MPC or anything like that. It was for creative agencies. And so they had a lot of people on that podcast. It was called The Future by Christo, and some of the people they had on there were like Marty Neumeyer, who’s the guy did the branding for Apple. They had, Seth Godin. They have a lot of people

09:00-

Like that in there who talks about. as a creative, but the angles that they had were just so unique that I was addicted to the show. I still listen to it here and there. I really like the show a lot. when I, when the Seth Godin episode came out, I was like, this guy’s the man who is this guy. And I started looking into him and I see his, you know, his background and everything he’s done and I just quickly became a fan. I read This Is Marketing, loved it. which was quite a while ago, but. that, that’s why when I talk to a lot of salespeople and I’m like, have you heard of Seth Godin before? 75? 80% of them say no, or, well, it sounds familiar, but I have no idea who that is. Quite literally the Jordan Belfort of marketing and so if you’ve ever worked in marketing before, you should know who that is.

Terry: 

It. Very interesting. I made the comment before that, you know, you’re not really a marketer. Your sales are now transitioning into marketing, but that. Highlights that very early on you did have a lot of exposure to marketing. You

10:00-

Know, a podcast like that’s very different to the Jordan Belfort, the Grant Cardone style of, you know, the old, uh, a, b, C always be closing.

And it’s a very, very different concept of a different way of, of doing it. I’m mean, I cut my teeth in some. Very, very old sales books, and I mean very old sales books that were paperback and dogeared when, uh, when, uh, when Adam was a, was a kid actually. So, um, for me it was a case of looking through those and trying to decipher to bring it into the more modern realm.

But that was still a long time ago now, and I look even today. The practices and processes really haven’t changed much. The psychology hasn’t changed much, so there’s lots of new ideas and, uh, plenty of advice from the gurus out there. but look as, as, as far as you’ve mentioned in the past that the decline of traditional outbound sales.

what innovative tactics are you currently using that others might not be aware of?

11:00- James: 

For outbound, you mean? Or, or just

Terry:

Yeah. Yeah. But I guess for, for sales in general, so I mean it’s outbound in my mind, there’s this, at the moment, there’s a very big, crossover between content creation and pure outbound. a out, as you say, it’s probably a layer that’s overlaying very, you know, that’s overlapping quite closely and that’s why there’s a little bit of confusion here.

But I’m thinking in terms of what you are doing for your clients. What’s working at the moment.

James:

I see. So if we’re talking about, like, what, I’m gonna answer this from a different perspective. I, I want to

Terry: 

Sure.

James: 

From let’s say you’re a sales rep and you are just starting off your first gig in your first boiler room. I think everybody should start in a boiler room. I don’t think anybody should work in the cozy committee who’s gonna, you know, let you have, you know, four days, uh, in office and then. You get a three-day weekend, and you have 20 calls a day.

12:00-

I don’t think that’s good for your career. I think everybody should start a boiler room.

Terry: 

I agree

James:

It I don’t

Terry:

A hundred percent.

James: 

share that opinion, but it’s, we’ve gone to a place in SaaS specifically where things have become so comfy and sensitive that, we are surprised when they have a green banner. Like, oh, what went wrong? dude, you weren’t making enough calls. I thought I could just do social selling all day. This is coming from a social seller. It’s like when you’re that new in your career, you have to do a lot more. Social selling, again, should be another layer that you have, but it takes years. if you’re lucky, it takes less than a year. Usually it takes a few years to establish a sense of authority online, regardless of what platform. It could be Reddit, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, wherever your target audience is. so I’m actually still subscribed to the older methods of selling.

Yeah, pick up the Jordan Belfort book or you know, listen to what he talks about. If you knew the pickup rates you’re gonna have now they’re less than than what they were five years ago. It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be doing calls anymore. And so

13:00-

I’ll argue against that in my posts and I’ll say things like, oh, you know, you need to do content and prioritize it. but that’s just because I’m being very black and white on LinkedIn. The reality is like if you’re a rep, even if you’re a first time founder and you try to get your first few clients. Don’t go all in on, on just content. I, I think a lot of it has to do with really going hard at outbound, even if the numbers are lower than what they used to be.

Terry: 

I, it’s a combination of both, isn’t it? You’ve gotta start somewhere. So make sure you’re doing something as far as content’s concerned to start to build your brand. And doing the hard yards, with the outbound actually can give you a lot of content to talk about, whether it’s what you’re doing. Or what you’re learning from those conversations that you’re having about the product and your offering and your audience and your market and the pains that they’re struggling with.

Perfect place to actually get a lot of content that you can share with your prospective audience.

James:

People always say, How do

14:00-

You, how do you know what to talk about? Like, how do you have things to even post? And sometimes I’ll ask myself like, what do I post? I even have to ask myself that question? It means I’m not doing enough in real life. So, like making cold calls on a Friday afternoon. If you, uh, if you have an engineering background, building your product and posting about it in public, how you have, or like if you mess up on a marketing campaign. That’s how you have stuff to post about. But there are people scratching their heads, what do I post about? And they’re sitting around thinking about the perfect words. no one’s gonna give a shit if you are just posting about whatever’s in the top of your mind that, you know, like, a better example of this is you look at the people who just copy and paste everything outta chat, GPT. I put out a free GPT for people to use. I think I sent it to you like a month ago. I think you were the first person I sent it to. And

Terry: 

it to do a bunch of different stuff and off different writers or whatever. The reality is, people are gonna use it, and that’s perfectly fine. If they use it, I’ll eventually probably put a paywall up behind it, or

15:00

Whatever, but everybody’s gonna sound the same. Everyone’s gonna be covering the same thing, and that’s literally the last thing that we need. So go out, do something with your business, and then post about it. If you’re not doing things in real life, none of it really matters.

very true. If you want content, then it’s like Gary Vaynerchuk said, that don’t create content, document content, and actually follow what you’re doing and what you’re experiencing, and start to share that. I think there’s a lot more, uh, a lot more viability in that.

Terry: 

Your journey in sales began after a setback in the supermarket industry. How did that experience shape your approach to sales and leadership?

16:00- James: 

How did my, so let me start. I’ll cover the whole story. I used to be the dairy guy at Whole Foods. I used to go and restock the fridge. And I worked with this guy who was just such an asshole. He was the biggest asshole I’ve ever had to work with in my entire life. he was bossing me around for months. And one of my coworkers comes up and she’s like, you know, you don’t have to listen to him. I’m like, he’s my manager. What do you mean? And she’s like, no, he’s pretending to be your manager. And I was so upset about it. He had made really mean comments about my newborn he used to like, I can’t even talk about it too much ’cause it gets so mad, but. it was all, and I was already ready to quit that job. opened up where I would actually be the manager and I’m like, oh, I’m 100% going for this. Because I was, everybody would come in, they would work their eight hour shift and they would leave. I voluntarily, voluntarily started working overnight shifts. My coworkers were a lot weaker than I was working. A grocery job is actually way more physically demanding than you would imagine.

17:00- Terry:

I stack the U-boats. I mean, you’re lift, it’s literally like lifting 10, 20 pound weights for hours on end. You’d be just drenched in sweat in the, uh, the back of the room. And I would fill up all the U-boats from my coworkers, female coworkers who were really like skinny and weak, fill ’em all up. And I’d just be absolutely exhausted afterwards. And I’d pulled 12 hour shifts every day ’cause I needed the money. When the opportunity opened up for a promotion, I went to my manager and I was like, Hey. I’ve been working really hard. I’ve been helping everybody out, been training the new guys, been doing everything I’m supposed to, been staying late. want this promotion. It’s a perfect fit for me. he just kind of went, ah, okay, we’ll talk about it. I didn’t get the promotion and that was the absolute final straw for me. shortly after that, I started looking around for a new sales job and I told my wife, I was like, you know what? I’m quitting. I wanna work in sales. She’s like, in sales, are you crazy? You’re like a, because at the time I was a hippie. I dropped outta school. I lived a very peaceful life. That was what I wanted to do. I was like, well, I did this when I was like really young. My dad had me selling stuff at the age of, you know, 12, 13. I was like, I’m gonna get into it. I’m gonna make a lot of money. There was a job opening right down the street at Walmart. when you first go in, there are these people who wave you down.

James: 

I think so too.

Terry: Your journey in sales began after a setback in the supermarket industry. How did that experience shape your approach to sales and leadership?

James: 

How did my, so let me start. I’ll cover the whole story. I used to be the dairy guy at Whole Foods. I used to go and restock the fridge. And I worked with this guy who was just such an asshole. He was the biggest asshole I’ve ever had to work with in my entire life.

16:00-

He was bossing me around for months. And one of my coworkers comes up and she’s like, you know, you don’t have to listen to him. I’m like, he’s my manager. What do you mean? And she’s like, no, he’s pretending to be your manager. And I was so upset about it. He had made really mean comments about my newborn he used to like, I can’t even talk about it too much ’cause it gets so mad, but. it was all, and I was already ready to quit that job. opened up where I would actually be the manager, and I’m like, oh, I’m 100% going for this. Because I was, everybody would come in, they would work their eight hour shift, and they would leave. I voluntarily, voluntarily started working overnight shifts. My coworkers were a lot weaker than I was working. A grocery job is actually way more physically demanding than you would imagine.

Terry: 

I stack the U-boats. I mean, you’re lift, it’s literally like lifting 10, 20 pound weights for hours on end. You’d be just drenched in sweat in the, uh, the back of the room. And I would fill up all the U-boats from my coworkers, female coworkers who were really like skinny and weak,

17:00-

fill ’em all up. And I’d just be absolutely exhausted afterwards. And I’d pulled 12-hour shifts every day ’cause I needed the money. when the opportunity opened up for a promotion, I went to my manager and I was like, Hey. I’ve been working really hard. I’ve been helping everybody out, been training the new guys, been doing everything I’m supposed to, been staying late. want this promotion. It’s a perfect fit for me. he just kind of went, ah, okay, we’ll talk about it. I didn’t get the promotion and that was the absolute final straw for me. shortly after that, I started looking around for a new sales job and I told my wife, I was like, you know what? I’m quitting. I wanna work in sales. She’s like, in sales, are you crazy? You’re like a, because at the time I was a hippie. I dropped outta school. I lived a very peaceful life. That was what I wanted to do. I was like, well, I did this when I was like really young. My dad had me selling stuff at the age of, you know, 12, 13. I was like, I’m gonna get into it. I’m gonna make a lot of money. There was a job opening right down the street at Walmart. when you first go in, there are these people who wave you down.

James: 

They stop you, they try to sell you on

18:00-

Discounted electricity utility plans. The pay was $11 an hour, which was a $5 de decrease from phone burner, not from phone burner, from uh, whole Foods, but there was like a, a tiny commission, $25 for every deal that you closed. And I promised my wife, I’m like, I’m gonna make this work. I’m gonna absolutely crush it. I picked up a second sales job at the same time, and I worked seven hours a week for a little over a year. I mean, seven days a week, excuse me, for over a year.

Terry:

Yep.

James: 

10 to 12 hours per day. Some days were 16 hour shifts. And then I streamed video games at night on Twitch competitively for extra money.

So every night I was getting roughly like three hours of sleep. But I love sales so much, and I got a legitimate job. At one point, I quit those two jobs. Started working at MRP, which was a boiler room. I mentioned it was the best experience. I loved it to death, was making way more money than I had ever made before.

19:00 Terry: 

Mate, you know, there’s always, in most people’s successful people live, there’s always, a catalyst. There’s a moment that gets him to move from one to another. I mean that for you. Um, moving from Whole Foods. Into sales, you know, you’ve gotta take it backward steps sometimes. I certainly did in my career.

Earlier on, I’m a qualified accountant and realized if I wanted to move into. management in the industry I was in at the time. I had to get into sales and marketing. And so I took a big backward step. And my big backward step was the sales manager that I used to give a hard time to every month for not hitting his numbers.

Uh, all of a sudden he was my boss. So that was sort of a reverse step to yours. but you know, what do they call it? Um, eight Crow. I ate Crow and, and did what I had to do and, and got on and, and the rest of history. But, um, you know that that’s a great story and I love hearing stories. Because it’s a bit of a change, even though you’ve had some experience in, uh, in, you know, as a, as early in your, um, childhood years.

20:00-

It doesn’t always work out that you’ll come back to that. So, no, it was a, was a good story. Shutting down your outbound agency, I’m sure, was probably a a, a significant decision. Particularly given, you know, how driven you are, I know you are. What were the biggest challenges you faced during that transition and how did, and how did you overcome them?

And I’m not just talking from a business perspective, I’m sure you know, personally, you’d had to deal with some stuff there as well.

Terry: 

So stay tuned where we move the conversation with James beyond his transition into sales and start to talk, a much deeper level around his strategy in terms of growing the business.