EP. 223 - DevNTell - Escaping Founder-Led Everything with Javier Lozano, Jr. : Helping Tech Founders Install Simple Growth Systems

**Javier Lozano Jr** (0:00)
Your website, within 5 to 10 seconds, max 10 seconds, someone should be able to know what you do, how to contact you and how you're going to fix their problems instantaneously. And they can't be thinking about it because your brain naturally has this fight or flight kind of mentality.
And so if you can't figure something out, you're like, I gotta get away from this, this is too much work, I can't think this through. And so it's always important to kind of start, as you're building, figure out what your positioning is.

**Narb** (0:28)
Welcome to the DevNTell Podcast, where founders, hackers and anyone in between showcase their products built on the bleeding edge of tech. Yam GM, welcome to show Javier. I'm excited to have you on today, man.

**Javier Lozano Jr** (0:40)
Yeah, me too. I really appreciate this opportunity, Narb, it's gonna be really fun to kind of just dive into some marketing stuff.

**Narb** (0:47)
Of course, yeah, yeah. Go to market and marketing, it's a really, really big topic. I think it's always been, but I think even more so today, given how easy AI has made, AI has made builders out of basically everybody.
But I guess before we get into all that fun stuff, would you just like to give a intro about yourself?

**Javier Lozano Jr** (1:08)
Yeah, so as you mentioned, I'm a fractional CMO, CRO, so I work with founder-led or CEO-led companies that are in the startup phase to growth stage phase, probably anywhere from about a million to 15 or so.
And they're just looking to start aligning marketing and sales. They don't really have any kind of ways of creating a predictable pipeline. They are struggling with aligning marketing and sales. There's fingers pointing, there's no true strategy or go-to-market motion that they can lean into. And so I come in and I build that foundation for the team. And so really, my goal is to really start helping these founder-led companies start kind of getting that baseline. And then they can start adding on team members where they can start holding to more accountability because they have something to work off of. So I've been in the marketing world and for quite some time, started my first company back in 2008 and exited that company in 2018 And then basically kind of worked my way into marketing. So I take marketing for a different role.
I came through St. Bill's. So I was a very good salesperson back in the day. And so I really have used that to help me create the right kind of conversation with sales and marketing and find alignment there.

**Narb** (2:21)
Amazing. And I researched a bit about your background. You're also a world champion in karate, if I'm not mistaken.

**Javier Lozano Jr** (2:30)
Yeah.

**Narb** (2:30)
Could you take us through that a little bit?

**Javier Lozano Jr** (2:32)
Yeah, for sure. So basically, I started doing martial arts when I was 10 So I'm going to date myself here. I got inspired because of the teenage version of Ninja Turtles. And so every kid at that age is like, I want to do that. And basically, I just started doing that as I was 10 years old, got a black belt and then started competing around 15 or so, and was not very good at the regional and national scale. So then I had to start putting more time into it. And I eventually won a world title in 2000, won a state title in Colorado in 2001, was doing pretty well there and had a life goal fuel of opening a martial arts and fitness studio, which I ended up doing in 2008
And I thought I'd be doing that until I was like 65, and just kind of like walking around with a cane. But I guess business and go to market, I'll kind of change that, and my new desired passion, what I'm doing now.

**Narb** (3:33)
Awesome, man. And do you think kind of that experience in sports kind of helped you build a foundation to kind of springboard you into the start up scene and really kind of build those foundational skills?

**Javier Lozano Jr** (3:50)
100%.
I would attribute a lot of my success in career just from working my way up to becoming a leader because of my martial arts background. I mean, everyone considers martial arts this whole like discipline thing, and it is that. I think it's all sports in general. But the thing that I kind of learned a lot from it too, is that when you're competing and you're fighting, you have to make really fast decisions. You have to start pivoting and shifting and changing strategies and approaches, and you don't have time to think about it. And so that's, in my opinion, in business, you have a little bit more time. But that kind of shaped how I approach my go-to-market kind of strategies in a way, and has really given me that tenacity to never give up. And so I really bring a lot of that competitive feeling that I had whenever I was competing one of my younger days into business. And so I bring that just like I've got to win, we're going to win, we're going to be the best, we're going to do all this.